Category: BRANDING

Ep 92: The Three Components of Becoming a Highly Booked Speaker and Thought Leader with Josh Linkner

RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) So you are about to learn how to book over a hundred keynotes a year in the next 20 minutes. So Josh Linkner, uh, is I think the epitome of just a thought leader and an expert. He’s really the world’s foremost expert on innovation, both in academic from an academic standpoint, but also from an experiential standpoint. So you know, that we’re all about practitioners. So first of all, he has had five he’s, a five-time tech entrepreneur. There’s a combined exit value of over $200 million. And he also won the Ernst and young entrepreneur of the year twice, which is insane. That’s like winning two Nobel prizes in the world of entrepreneurship. And then on the thought leader side, he speaks over a hundred, uh, for over a hundred paid engagements. Every single year he is doing, he’s got three books, he’s a New York times bestselling author of three books. RV: (02:03) He writes for Forbes and inc. And just like, literally, if someone is booking an innovation speaker, they will eventually book Josh. Like it’s just a matter of time. So he’s here to share all of his secrets for us and tell us how that works and how in the heck he pulls that off. So buddy, thank you for being here. Truly a pleasure and an honor to join. Thank you. So how do you book a hundred keynotes here? Like what is it, is it, do you think in all seriousness, do you think it is a, is it a combination of a thousand little things or is it a few big things? Yeah. Well, first of all, not everybody wants to do that and I think you are pursuing speaking, you know, there’s no right or wrong. My record, I would think we were chatting earlier as 163, but someone might not want to do that. So please don’t feel obligated anybody, but I’m happy to show what we do. You know, Roy, I think it’s a lot of little things we spent over a decade dissecting JL: (03:00) The speaking industry and understanding how do people set fee? How do you create demand? How do you interact with bureaus? And I wish I could say there was one silver bullet thing, but it’s, it’s the intersection of being a strong thought leader being good on stage, certainly, but also really developing your brand. And I know you guys are the world’s expert at that in a way that the market understands and is willing to buy. And one thing is funny, you know, in my previous business I had about 500 people and 100 of them were in sales. So we had a massive sales organization. We don’t, we’re not, there was a hunting business with hunting down clients and we were able to win 74 of the top 100 brands. The speaking industry, in my opinion, is a fishing business. So it’s more it’s I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of success getting on the phone and cold calling meeting planners. But if you have the right SEO strategy, your website’s gorgeous, your marketing is cohesive and understandable. Your value proposition is clear. It’s about casting, tons of lines in the water and making them irresistible. And ultimately you’re going to get, you know, plenty of activity, RV: (03:59) Man. I love that. That’s such a good distinction between kind of the two and that’s the world that we came from. Also, we used to our old business was training salespeople, how to sell, like training them, how to hunt and then brand builders is basically, you know, how to fish. It’s like how to, how to make people come to you. So, um, you know, and I like to, I like the way you’re talking and thinking about that between like being a thought leader, um, and being great on stage and then really developing your brand. So let’s tackle those. Uh, so let’s talk about the thought leader part first. One of the jokes that I have around brand builders group is I tell people, I say, hopefully at least half of what we teach you is real substance because I, you know, I really think, you know, there is a, it really should be thought. Leader has a lot of depth and it should be about experience and education, but fortunately, or unfortunately it does seem like marketing and perception matters a lot. So how do you think you really become a true thought leader and what is the balance between the like, you know, I actually am an expert and I’m marketing as an expert and I’m doing things to, to position myself as an expert. JL: (05:19) The way I think about it is I think that if you’re a speaker specifically, you’re really running three interchange, interconnected businesses at one time, and let’s think about them separately for a second. One is a thought leadership business where you are truly an expert in your field. The second is a brand marketing distribution business on how do you actually sell yourself as a speaker and a thought leader? And the third one is that of a performing artist, being a great storyteller, being terrific on stage, et cetera, you really need all three of those firing on all cylinders to be successful. You can only get so far if you only have a little bit in each of those categories. So the first thing I would do, Rory is dissect separate those two, marketing yourself as a thought leader is different than being a thought leader. So going deeper on being a thought leader world, as you likely know, craves deep expertise. JL: (06:08) In one thing, you know, I’ve had the chance I’ve hired 10,000 people over the last 30 years, I could, I’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars of capital. So I could probably talk about hiring practices. I could probably talk about deployment of capital and financial rigor and a bunch of other stuff, but I don’t. I talk about one thing, which is my core passion for 40 plus years, which is the deployment of human creativity to drive productive outcomes, AK innovation. So if I tried to speak on a lot of things where even if I’m semi qualified in many of those, uh, my entire business would collapse. So the first thing I would recommend people do is get super, super deep in one thing and be known for it. If your one thing is customer service being the most profoundly expert world beater in that particular thing. JL: (06:53) So instead of being, you know, really wide and an inch deep go go seven miles deep and a, you know, a millimeter wide. And to do that, I think it’s all about, you know, constantly learning, constantly reading. You should know everything there is to know in your field, read every book there is on the topic, study the masters, watch every podcast, watch every Ted talk, follow every other thought leader, you know, really go deep as an expert in your field. And that again, when you think about these three concentric businesses that enter intersect, um, the first thing you gotta do is get really smart in your area of expertise. But beyond that, I think that, so that would be to be an extra. RV: (07:28) Okay. So hold on. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. JL: (07:30) One last point, first thing to do is be, be an expert, but to be a thought leader, then you have to have a point of view. You have to ideally reveal something surprising and different and show leadership in the field. Not only expertise, RV: (07:42) Love that. Okay. So almost everyone we talked to has that same advice. I mean our entire phase one event is all about helping people figure out what is their one thing like that entire experience is really just taking them through a series of exercises to help them figure that out. And I liked the, I liked the term that you used, that you are a semi qualified to teach a lot of things. Cause I think most of us are semi qualified to teach a lot of things. How do you, what is your advice to someone who is struggling between the, you know, four or five, uh, you know, different things? JL: (08:23) Well, ideally it’s the one that you feel you’re most passionate about that you have the deepest level of expertise in. And, um, the other thing that you want to look at is, is marketability. So if I was really, really passionate, which I am by the way about jazz guitar, that was a good example. Good example. I could talk about out of play jazz guitar, but there’s not a big market for that on main stage keynotes. Um, on the other hand, my, my core topic innovation is a much more marketable thing. So the first person you want to look at, you know, where where’s your passion, where’s your deep expertise today. And then where does that intersect with market opportunity? And, and once you identify a broader lane of market opportunity like leadership or innovation customer service, then you also have to say, what, where can I add my own unique twist or unique flavor? So instead of being the, you know, one of a thousand leadership speakers or 10,000 leadership speakers, why are you one of a kind and in your particular flavor of, of that broader topic? RV: (09:16) Got it. Yeah, I like that. So JL: (09:19) One, one person that we work with it, you know, he was a really smart guy, wrote a book. He spoke on leadership and his principles were awesome, but they were really generic. And as you know, generic doesn’t really sell. So we started working with them and learn that he also was really into comedy. He actually performed comedy at second city years ago. So we said, well, what’s the intersection of comedy and leadership. And we went through a lot of work. We teased out Saturday night live. So he then said, wow, what if I became the guy that showed leadership lessons from Saturday night live because it’s this awesome organization that reinvents itself every week and has got talent that it keeps developing a lot of really cool metaphors. So then he went super deep on the research on SNL. He interviewed cast members and studied and read everything there was about it. He became expert at the intersection of leadership and comedy Saturday night live. So in that case now we’ve found something deeply compelling and unique and can’t be ignored and doesn’t blend into everything else. RV: (10:13) Yeah. I mean, that’s, uh, almost like thinking about a painter, right? Where you like a painter pallet where you have like, okay leadership, but leadership with what else and mixing it together. It’s like the same color, but a new shade. Um, it’s kind of like, I think that’s really, really cool. And we talk about color and shade a lot, but we usually think about it more from a message perspective more than a topical area, but you’re kind of saying the same thing, which I’m really, really, I love that. I think that is that’s awesome. So, JL: (10:45) Um, can you talk about that? RV: (10:46) So the, the point of view part, I mean, that is kind of what you’re talking about here, but like how do you identify that, that unique point of view as you’re saying, or that unique perspective or that unique slant? So I guess in order to become an expert, I almost hear you saying, go read everything in my space, follow the stuff in my space, know it, and then it’s almost like I have to kind of add something on top of it. I need to add a layer to it. Or a uniqueness is the word that we would use from Larry Winget is a uniqueness, um, or this, you know, how do you identify the uniqueness? JL: (11:25) Well, eventually just like, so again, I should have said I’ve been playing jazz guitar for 40 years. I’m deeply passionate about the art form. And if you personally, you have to do, if you want to be a musician is you have to learn the craft, AKA build some expertise. So I have to have, what are the chords, what are the skills? How do you, how do you play a note, right? That’s the equivalent of basically being a, you know, an expert in your field, but then if all you do is play other people’s music, you’re a house band at the holiday Inn, you know, you’re, you’re not, you don’t have your own original voice or content. It’s those that take the expertise and then build upon it and develop their own message, their own voice. Those are the ones that, that, that, that become superstars. JL: (12:03) And so in our speaking world, if all you do is study other people and have no perspective of your own, that that’s going to be a limiting factor. Once you develop expertise, then the next step of saying, how do I interpret that in a unique and compelling way? What’s my individual point of view. Um, what I learned is that speakers who only recite cliches are gonna cap out at a certain level. But if you, if you’re the opposite, if you’re revealing surprising truths, if you’re sharing, uh, something to different than, or helping people see the world in a different and fresh way, that’s where the opportunity really lies. RV: (12:35) Um, I love that. Um, I think that that’s a great parallel of the it’s basically, are you playing cover tunes at the holiday Inn or are you packing out arenas? Like no one goes to a Garth Brooks concert to watch him play the Eagles. Like they go to watch him play his stuff. Um, that’s a really practical, practical parallel. So I love that. So that first business is the expertise. The second business is, um, the brand distribution. And so is that kind of like content distribution, like a media company? Is that it kind of the right vibe or what do you do? You know, explain what you mean by that second? JL: (13:15) Yeah. So the first business is thought leadership first, you know, part a building your expertise and then part B, having that in a unique point of view, second business that you’re running concurrently as is not immediate business. At least the way I would look at it. That’s, that’s sort of the business of being a speaker. It’s all the things that you do off stage such that you get onstage at higher volume and higher fee. So that’s your overall brand, which you guys help with. It’s your positioning. It’s how you interact with bureaus. It’s how you set your price point. It’s, it’s not the content, it’s not the delivery. It’s the business side of your teaching practice. RV: (13:49) So the, so the, the media component of that, like pushing out your content could, could maybe be part of, it’s kind of like a part of business. A speaking part thought leadership is like putting your, like you write for Ian. Can you write for Forbes and things like that, that you would, you would classify that as more of the thought leadership piece of your business. JL: (14:10) I would, you know, the lines start to blur, obviously, because when you put a piece out of content, which is thought leadership that obviously can drive activity, which is marketing, but I would look at the second component here of a speaking business. The business side of it is everything that you do to get on stage. So that’s, it could be paid marketing, it could be SEO, it could be Bureau relationships. It could be, um, content that’s driving activity. It could be social media marketing. So all the business side of your speaking practice, not the delivery, not the original content development, but the business side. And, uh, and that’s, that’s, um, I know you, you really help people with dramatically. Um, one thing, I don’t know if you’d like a tactic or not today, but we’ve developed a really simple formula of how to communicate your value to bureaus and planners. That seems to be working beautifully. Yeah. RV: (14:54) Uh, no, we, we don’t, we’re not interested in that. Let’s just skip past that. Cause we don’t want any tactic. No, of course he has share. We want to know. We want to know. JL: (15:03) Awesome. And so this has done through tons of mistakes, by the way, through ton. And then once we kind of figured this out, we field tested and on and on. So this is just, I know it’s a bit formulated, but if I were you as a, if someone wants to build their speaking business, communicate your, your elevator speech kind of like this, here’s the old way. What do you speak about answer? I speak about cybersecurity instead of just answering that question in terms of the, the, the general topic that you speak on. Here’s what we like. We like this, this three column approach. The first column is the burning problem that you solved. The second column is why you, why you’re the right person to solve it. And the third column is the transformation that you create. How is that audience different once they’ve embraced your teachings? JL: (15:47) So again, burning problem, why you, your credibility essentially, and then the transformation that you create. So instead of Roy saying, Hey, I speak on cybersecurity. I would say something like this. Now I help organizations that are deeply concerned and overwhelmed with the threats of security, both internal and external, and they’re deeply, uh, uh, frustrated. They’re unable to devote enough resources to serve in clients and building their company because they’re constantly playing defense. I’m going to go to the second column as somebody who’s written five books on cybersecurity and work with 49 of the top 50 big brands around the world and has a proven methodology to protect and insulate against cyber threats. That was my second column. Third column is now the transformation that I create, I would continue and say, I work with organizations to give them the confidence and creative freedom that they know that they are, their security threats have been mitigated, such that they can get on with the hard work of growing their business. And that was sloppy. I’m not a cybersecurity expert, but the notion is say what you do in that format, the problem that you solve, why you and the transformation you create. RV: (16:51) I love it. I love it. So on the business side of speaking, JL: (16:56) You know, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve built these successful companies in lots of different industries. That’s one of the RV: (17:01) Things I think is a big problem. Speakers have is they don’t treat their business like a business. They don’t invest into it. They don’t run it like a business. They don’t keep financial statements. They don’t do marketing, they don’t do sales like JL: (17:11) They don’t. So would you say that a lot of the principles of running a, any great business apply to running a great speaking business? Or do you say no? No. The speaking business is totally different. There are some unique elements to the speaking business, but I would lean on the first one that you got to run it like a business. Imagine if you ran a law firm, you’re like, yeah, I don’t really know. I just, people show up and maybe I send them a bill. Maybe not. I mean, the sloppiness that some speakers embraces is troubling. I think you’re exactly right. You don’t be really deliberate. What percentage of your revenue do you reinvest in marketing? How do you track leads and inbound opportunities? We have detailed dashboards and analytical models. We have throughput. I mean, we, we at it with the rigor of a software company and that’s been very, very helpful. JL: (17:52) Uh, and I, I would recommend people know, take that same approach, treat it seriously. Cause cause there really is a, is a wonderful opportunity. One thing real quickly to just say is that our research has indicated that the industry itself is really big, bigger than most people think there’s actually $4 billion of speeches bought and sold every year in North America alone. So the reason I’m happy sharing what we do is I don’t think it’s going to hurt my business. There’s a massive opportunity out there now. It doesn’t mean you can be half ass about it. You have to be good. You have to treat your business seriously. But if people who really pursue this with vigor, I believe there’s profound opportunity. RV: (18:26) I love that. Yeah. Well we very much appreciate the abundance mentality. I mean, this has been super duper powerful. And on that note, uh, you know, there’s this whole third section you talk about was kind of like the performing artist. Um, we’re not going to have time to get into that today, but, uh, one of the things that you do is you offer events specifically for speakers and building their speaking business, right? So where do you want people to go if they want to learn more about that? JL: (18:53) Yeah, a few years back when I switched you over a decade ago, when I started speaking, there was no real solid high quality training programs to help you build a speaking business. And so as we gained some success, we wanted to give back to the industry that we love. So we created a company with a playful name called three ring circus, and we help either newer speakers that have substance and also existing speakers that want to take their game to the next level in terms of both fee and volume, really build and scale and launch their speaking practice. And we help people develop all three of those components. And if you want to learn more, the website is the number three ring R I N G circus.com because Hey, after all it’s a circus out there, RV: (19:30) [inaudible], there it is. There’s the elevator pitch for the three ring circus. I know several of you listening are our clients and prospects. Obviously speaking it speaking is a huge part of building a personal brand. And, uh, you know, I will say this while we share and teach a lot on it. I consistently hear amazing things about Josh’s team and what you guys are teaching and, and, um, just really, really good stuff. As you can tell here, clearly from a few minutes with this guy, he knows what he’s doing. He’s super intelligent. And I think, you know, I just really appreciate Josh, you being willing to share such a methodical approach. And so many of these insights just abundantly and with open arms, because there’s, there’s a lot of people listening right now that I know want to be out speaking and be speaking more speaking at higher fees. And, um, so any last thoughts for somebody who is sitting there right now with the dream, you know, maybe where you were all those years ago going, Hey, one day I want to be out on stage and, uh, you know, I, I share that same sentiment of it can feel hopeless. Like there’s not a plan or a path, cause it’s not like a common industry or a common trade. So what would you say to that, that person right now, JL: (20:45) First of all, as I mentioned earlier, a massive industry, it’s not going away. There’s plenty of room for us all. If you have something to say, um, second of all, it’s not all about raw talent. It’s not that you were either born really great as a speaker or not. I mean, these are skills that can be developed and learn. Uh, and there’s no question. Now there is a specific thoughtful game plan to, to build a speaking business. The only word of caution I would have is treat it seriously. You, you said this earlier, Rory, but like, you know, if you’re going to open a restaurant and you don’t just like paint your windows and you know, go get a picnic table, you know, you invest in your restaurant and you make sure it’s great and you really build your craft and same thing. There, there’s plenty of opportunity for those that treat it seriously, but you have to be willing to do what it takes to build all three of those concurrent businesses be a really thoughtful thought leader, be a really strong business person in the middle. And then, and then number three, be great onstage. And if you’re willing to do the work, the opportunity is there. I love it. Josh Linkner ladies and gentlemen, check him out and go take a peek at three ring circus. See what they’re up to. And uh, we’ll we’ll I’m sure we’ll hear from Josh again more. Hey Josh. Thank you for being here, buddy. We wish you the best. Thank you. And thanks for your leadership in this field too. I think you’re giving a great gift to your listeners. So I just really appreciate, thank you.

Ep 87: Embracing Vulnerability as Your Superpower with Dave Hollis | Recap Episode

AJV: (00:06) [Inaudible] RV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s Rory Vaden joined by our CEO, my wife, best friend, Amanda Vaden. We’re breaking down for you. The Dave Hollis interview, which was a powerful interview for me. I, I was not familiar with Dave. I mean, I was familiar with Dave, but we, that was like our first conversation for the most part. And so anyways, we’re breaking that down for you with our top three and three and I guess, babe, why don’t you kick this off? AJV: (00:36) All right. Well, my first one was this concept of that you have secret shoppers in your brand every single day. And I loved that. I think that is such a great reminder to all of us, that every single day we have secret shoppers who are observing, interacting, buying from receiving content, from interacting with our personal brands on a daily basis. And just keeping that in mind and, you know, does even for us, as I think about both of our personal brands, but then also our company Brand Builders Group who are the secret shoppers around us and how are they engaging with us interacting with us? What is the perception they’re getting from us? And I think too, something that would really hit me is that our brand is also represented, by our team and they are an extension of our brands. AJV: (01:31) And for all of you who have a personal brand or company brand, making sure you take that into consideration is that the people who work with you are an extension of what you want to be known for and how you want to be known. And it’s not just how they interact with you directly. It’s how do they interact with the people around you that are supporting your personal brand? Because they too are the ones giving impressions of your, of your personal brand and what you want to be known for this concept of secret shoppers, which is nothing new, but a great aha and reminder of, Oh, yes, I do know this, but it was a really great refreshing way to, RV: (02:10) Yeah. That is, that is, that is cool. That didn’t stick with me. So hearing you say that as like, Oh, that’s a good insight to draw out of it. That even for me to go, wow, that was a, that was a good, a good thought, for sure. So for me, the whole theme was really sort of summed up when he said vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower. Vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower and we just watched Brenae Brown’s call to courage the net, which was incredible. Yeah. Her Netflix special. And you know, it’s interesting. And, and, you know, you may not be aware of this, but there is a little bit of a context going on here. You know, like our hearts really go out to Dave and Rachel. They announced here with a few weeks ago when this came out, that they’re actually going through a divorce, which is something that’s you been, they’ve been talking about and praying about for years. RV: (03:02) And they kind of made that decision. And it reminded me of, of, I’ve been trying to make some sense of some of this with Brenae Brown, where she said, you know, vulnerability doesn’t mean you’re telling everybody everything that’s happening in your life. And that I think is a really big takeaway, not necessarily sharing the details and the facts of everything happening in your life with everyone in the world. That’s not vulnerability. She defines vulnerability as emotional exposure. And so that’s just sort of like sharing feelings that have happened and sharing stories about certain times in your life. But it’s not the same thing as just saying here’s everything here, here’s everything. And that people bond to the feelings, not necessarily to the facts of everything that’s going on in your life. And so anyways, that was just a, you know, something that I’ve been kind of questioning and trying to draw some clarity about. And I, I felt like I got a good, a good distinction there for me. AJV: (04:02) It’s so interesting because throughout the entire interview with Dave, I didn’t even pick like none of my takeaways have anything to do with vulnerability or openness or anything at all. It’s like, I’m looking at Rory’s points and I’m like, can we listen to the same interview? Because that is not at all what I got. So here’s my second one was this this piece of the interview where he talks about this meeting, that he got to sit in with Steve jobs during his time at Disney, he got to sit in with this meeting with Steve jobs. And Steve was talking about perception and customer loyalty and customer interaction and engagement. And he said, you just have to remember it. I’m gonna quote this because I’m not really about the facts here. I, you said everyone who interacts with your brand is giving you a brand deposit or a brand withdrawal based on their experience. AJV: (04:54) And I think that is a really big takeaway. And I don’t think we spend enough time talking about that as entrepreneurs and business owners and influencers and whatever you are, author speaker so forth is that every scene, every single interaction that you have with a customer or a potential customer is doing one of two things. It is putting a deposit into your credibility bank account, or just taking one out scary. And I think that this was such an aha enlightening conversation for me on a completely different perspective from you, because I am so in touch with all of our customer touch points. And it was just like tightening up every single system of how are we engaging on social media? What are we putting on the podcast? And it’s, I think it’s really important. I’m just remembering, it’s like, Hey, every single thing is going towards you or against you. And it’s knowing how to get more of the deposits and less of the withdrawals without us taking all of the word withdrawals so negatively, because there’s going to be some of those regardless. And I just think that was just a good reminder, too, of like every interaction is doing one of two things, are you even thinking about it that way? RV: (06:07) Yeah. Well, and as you were talking there about are kind of the way you and I processed the interview different, which I think is fun. You know, so the book right, has his new book get out of your own way. It’s interesting because he shares as a man sort of his resistance to vulnerability. That’s a big part of like what the book is about. And I think that really hit me hard, which is like, okay, where am I? Where am I resistant to being vulnerable? Where am I resistant to sharing? And one of the questions he shared that I thought was so powerful was he simply, he simply said this, where was pain present? Where was pain present? And if you think back to any circumstance or story in your life, and again, you don’t necessarily have to share all the details every time you share a story, but, but to go, where did I experience pain? RV: (07:01) And this to me is actually transcends the vulnerability conversation to just even copywriting, right? When we talk about the 15 P’s and when you lay out, okay, why did you create this course? You should ask yourself, where did you experience pain when you were trying to learn the lessons? Like we always say, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so asking yourself that question, I think is really interesting, where was pain present? That is a place of emotional connection with other humans is to be like this was a place or a time or a way in my life that I experienced pain. And just even allowing other people to see into the idea that you, to experience pain creates the connection beyond and outside of the facts of what caused or didn’t cause that pain it’s just the, the feeling. So I thought that was a really good question on both the tactical level and you know, an emotional level where, where was pain present? AJV: (08:01) Yep. That’s good. Alright. My third one is criticism is the price of entry for building a personal brand. RV: (08:09) You’re stealing my that’s my third one. AJV: (08:11) That’s my third one, but mine are probably still a little bit different. And I liked how he talked about how unfortunately, most of us pay attention to the 10%, not the 90%. He goes, have you got 10 people? You’re going to pay attention to the one that was unhappy versus the nine who were incredibly happy. And he said, you got to build your business for the 90%. Not for the 10%. You’re always going to have people who criticize you welcome to the club. You’re always going to have somebody who doesn’t agree with you, but build your personal brand in a way that aligns with your value. So much to the point of when people don’t agree with you and they don’t align with you. You’re still okay with that because your brand stands for something that is so aligned with your values and your mission and your message that the 10% no longer really matters. Not to the point of like offending anyone, but to the point of, you know what, that’s okay. Just follow me. Just don’t buy from me. My brand wasn’t built for everyone. That’s okay. But I need to focus on the 90%. Not the 10 person. RV: (09:15) Yeah, well that was my, my takeaway too. And it reminds me of a rule that I learned from a guy named David Glickman, who was one of the guys that I studied early on when I was learning the psychology of humor. And he said, you got to remember the rule of 2%. The rule of 2% says, 2% of the audience will hate you. Why? Because 2% of the audience always hates you. They just hate you. There’s no explanation. Like you’re gonna have people that just happen to intersect with you. That just don’t. And I don’t know if it’s exactly 2% or whatever, but you know, to realize it doesn’t matter how small or how big you are, like, you’re gonna have people that disagree with you. And you know, to what age I said, it’s just being, if you’re rooted in truth, like you’re rooted in your own identity, your own principles, your own values, then you’re not offended by the people who don’t like you. Cause you’re not trying to win them over. Like you didn’t lose, neither of you lost. It’s just, this is what is, and so anyways, AJV: (10:18) I likened it to this. It’s like, as long as you know, what you stand for, you have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. And that is the crusher. Just knowing what you stand for. And as long as you know, then you also have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. Loved it. It was great. RV: (10:36) And for you listening, don’t be afraid to go where there has been pain. We love you. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 85: Using Elevated Realism to Build the Visual Identity of Your Brand with Nick Onken | Recap Episode

Speaker 1: (00:06) RV: (00:06) Welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down our friend, Nick on kin master celebrity photographer. I don’t know what else to say. Photographer guru photographer, extraordinary, extraordinary. The champion of all or so rent photography. I don’t know. Amazing guy, super powerful interview. And of course joined by my wife, our CEO, AIG Vaden. Why don’t you, why don’t you kick us off? What did you think? AJV: (00:37) Yeah. And I’m actually going to refer to my notes because this is one of those interviews where you kind of just get lost in the conversation. Nick is so conversational, he’s just just kind of a wealth of knowledge. And so I’m going to refer to my notes. I had five main points try to fit, but I’m going to try to fit them and still make them all fit. So my first one is just that great reminder that people connect to you through seeing photos of you and this digital landscape that we live in and the virtual atmosphere and how most of us are interacting today. It’s a, that the pictures of you that you post on social media is how people connect with you. And, you know, I know so many friends and, you know, professional and personal colleagues who say, well, I, you know, social media is just not for me. AJV: (01:23) Or I just do it for personal, or I only do it for professional. And we’re in this really interesting time where well kind of digital is the way, and that is how people connect to you and see you as human. Like this is the human interface and that is that personal dialogue. And you know, it’s interesting. I was at a friend’s house this weekend and she, she had her friend over there who I had never met before. And she said, yeah, I told her to follow you a few months ago. And she said, I know that you post like tons and tons of stuff about personal branding. And I was like, Oh yeah, you probably haven’t seen any of that. All I really post is pictures of my kids. And she said, actually, I really enjoy just getting to know you and your family. She goes, I love the fact that I’m meeting you for the first time. And I actually feel like I already know you. RV: (02:18) I didn’t know this. You didn’t, I didn’t real. I missed this. AJV: (02:20) Yeah. We were in the kitchen and she said, actually, I’ve seen your kids kind of grow up over the last six months. And you know, I have a one-year-old and we have a one year old, I had a role in it. You did. And it was just really interesting to me. I was like, man, I’m behind, I’m behind the game here. I’m behind the eight ball. I, I don’t know you. And I don’t know your three kids. And I felt really behind because she was like, yeah, I’ve been following you. She goes, I love the pictures of your kids. I love seeing your family. She goes, your kids are so cute. And she already knew so much. And it’s like, we all, it was like almost gave us a launching pad for this new friendship, for this new conversation. And I had never really viewed it through that lens before. And I actually felt like I was missing out because I didn’t have that same background knowledge on her. And it was this very weird aha moment. And so when Nick talks about in the interview of, Hey, we connect to people through seeing pictures of them, it was this great aha coming to fruition and this very first encounter of wow, that really, that really connects, that really makes RV: (03:30) It’s almost like it accelerates the relationship and so many ways. And I think it’s funny cause our feeds are probably completely inverse. Mine’s almost entirely business. I share. I do share personal stuff in stories, but not even that often. And yours is almost entire, your feed is entirely personal. So like many things, when you add a Rory in an ADJ, you have a great, you’ve got a great thing, but yeah, well, that’s super powerful. I, you know, Nick said that the camera sometimes adds a few pounds to 10 pounds. I’ve never met a camera that had less than 20 pounds to me, but I wasn’t upset by that. And my biggest takeaway from, from him, which is, I think what his thing is all about is elevated realism. And it reminded me of what Kristen Giza said a few weeks ago about TV. RV: (04:20) I think she called it heightened authenticity, the similar, like it’s like be yourself, but bigger, like you know, and a simple tactic in just that phrase, I think is super powerful, elevated realism. And when you look at his photos of Justin Bieber or of, you know, any of the people that he’s taken, you, you see this like, Oh, that’s what it looks like. I think of Louis behind the hot air balloons, Louis, they did a photo shoot. It really did. I mean, well, and so this was a tactical point that, you know, for someone I’ve never put a lot of stock stock in photography pun intended I have, but as someone learning a lot more about it and placing a much higher value on it, a simple tactic of make sure the background of your photo is a part of telling the story. And I thought that was just a super simple thing that like, you know, it’s, we underestimate, it’s like a very subconscious thing of what’s going on in the background, but particularly when you’re, you’re, you’re doing elevated realism and you’re, you’re producing an energy and an emotion with a photo that sort of faded background, but like whatever it is contributes a lot to that. And I thought it was both a tactical tip tip and also like a very artistic tip for how to do that. So that was a big, big one for me AJV: (05:45) Positions into my second, third, fourth point. I’ll put into one, which is make sure that your pictures and your captions make sense. RV: (05:54) Oh yeah. That’s really simple. Hashtag what was it girls with? Irrelevant captions. AJV: (06:01) Well, how’s it gotta be just girls Nick, come on. But yeah, I just, I think that was really an aha moment. Cause you know, I spent a ton of time looking at pictures and reading captions I’m in social media by trade quite a bit. And I just thought it was really interesting and you know, so I started actually going back through some of our teammates profiles while I was like listening to the podcast and I was like, Oh yeah, make a note. I’ll make a note there. And it was like one of those like aha moments where it’s like, okay, if you’re fully dressed, standing by the edge of an ocean or by the edge of a pool. And it’s like, great, first of all, that makes no sense to me. Why are you in a suit by the ocean? And then too, like reading the captions and I’m like, Oh, okay. AJV: (06:42) Yeah, I totally get what he’s saying. And I already knew that where it’s like, Hey, if you’re in a bikini or if you’re shirtless a shirtless male why are you like, you know, posting about deep thought and you know, soul searching. And it’s like, is that, are you finding your soul easier? Cause you have no shirt on, I’m not sure like what’s happening there, but it’s like, how are you making sure that your captions in your post connect in an authentic and real way? And are you just picking pictures you like, or do they actually help project the contents? And I thought that was a really good way of looking at it. It’s you know, and I think you could start either way. It’s like, what picture do I have that’s representative of this content that I’m trying to post, but then also what pictures do I love and what does that tell me to say, what does that prompt me to say? RV: (07:33) Well, even the story of that. AJV: (07:35) Yeah. Like what feeling does it, you know, kind of create in me. And I think you could go either way, right? You could start with the content and find the picture, start with the picture and create the content. But I just making sure they connect was a big aha. Yeah. Not necessarily a new one, but Oh yeah. Need to make sure we do that. RV: (07:53) Yeah. Just the little conscious, conscious things like this that will make a huge difference. And I think that it seems like it would be easier to find to, to, to find a picture that you love and then tell a story from, from that. But yeah. So anyways the, my big second, my second big takeaway, which I totally understand with physical products, but didn’t necessarily connect so clearly to personal brands is that different packaging results in different pricing, different packaging results in different pricing. We all know that like the way, you know, when you buy a Coke, like Coke or coffee, or you, you can go, what’s the difference between a Starbucks coffee and a seven 11 or a, you know, whatever air Jordans or what I grew up on, which was air Jordash. Like there’s, there’s certain things that you expect in the packaging, right? Apple has real. Yes. Well, it’s called Jordache, but I called it air door dash, but it was from Payless shoes. AJV: (09:01) Oh yeah. [inaudible] RV: (09:03) I call it air Jordash cause I wanted air Jordans. This is the whole story of my life. All of my ambition comes from the fact that I could not afford air Jordans when I was a kid. And so I wore air Jordache and then I was like, one day, I’m going to be able to buy your Jordans and you still don’t have any, I don’t have any, but, but Jasper got some what’s your sweet anyways. Yeah, Nordstrom rack. I’m on discount. But so your pictures, your photography as a personal brand represents a huge part of your packaging. And it’s, it’s, it’s funny because on the one hand you go, how come this photographer will charge me 500 and this photographer will charge me 5,000, but that’s also probably the difference between you charging 500 and you charging 5,000 for whatever the thing is that your doing. Yeah. And at least making a connection in your mind to go, my photography is directly correlated to the price that I can charge an excellent photography allows me to charge more. It enhances the perception of my credibility. And that was just a really important connection for me. AJV: (10:13) Yeah. Well again, great transition to my next one, which was, I’m literally reading my notes because I tried to capture this. You are creating the perception of what you want people to see you as right? Your pictures, your imagery creates the perception of how you want people to view. You see you as you’re creating the lens and which they put all of their thoughts around you. And I think that to your point, it’s a really big deal. It’s the way that you project yourself and your imagery. It is the perception that people have and you actually have influence over that. All right, these are your pictures. And I think that is a big deal and that is really important. And I really love that. It’s like, Hey, if people see you as one way, well, you can change that. Yeah. Post different images, post different pictures, create different content. AJV: (11:07) You have that power use it and you can do it through your images and your story. And then the other thing that I had kind of noted in this area is that people want to see you as human, which is why I post so many personal, personal pictures. I’ve decided Nick’s interview it’s because I have the human element. That’s, that’s what I’m going with. But I think that’s really important. And, and actually it was really interesting because as I was listening to his interview and I was like looking through my own feed of like, okay, okay, I’ll see how that connects. And I see how that connects. And as I asked myself, I was like, how do I really want people to perceive me? And I think for me, it’s like, yes, I’m the CEO and cofounder brand builders group. And I do all this stuff work-wise but more than anything else I want to be seen as Jasper and Liam’s mom like that truly is, it’s like, that is my number one priority. AJV: (11:58) It’s my number one, calling all thing and breweries wife. Right. You know, I’ll take that child of God all the things, but, you know, I think that was really, it was like an aha moment, the personal things in general. Yeah. Like that I would, I would much rather be seen as a human being versus I CEO or this or that. It’s just, just me. And I think that too is very reflective of what you get in my feet. And that was completely unintentional. Now I will put some intention to that, but it also was an aha moment of RV: (12:34) It could be good to put a business call to action in there every once in a while. AJV: (12:37) I do, I tied it in occasionally. But then I just, you know, that it’s a completely different feed than you would have found two years ago. RV: (12:47) Yeah. And it’s funny to me, cause people will comment on my profile or they’ll message me and they’ll say you have a beautiful family and I’m going, Oh, they must follow AJ. Because I don’t post a ton of the pictures, but like, or they’ll see us and they’ll be like, I love keeping up with your family. And I’m like, Oh, you’ve been following AJ. So, AJV: (13:08) But again, I just thought it was like very interesting.

Ep 84: Using Elevated Realism to Build the Visual Identity of Your Brand with Nick Onken

RV: (00:01) You are about to meet one of my favorite friends, one of my most creative friends, and in, in in some ways one of my most famous friends, but I think it’s like he’s, he could, he’s like the,, the person that is still in some ways undiscovered outside of his trait, which he is a legend in a Nick Onken. And I just think Nick is the coolest guy, has the coolest brand. He’s a world renowned photographer, so that’s his trait and he is a legend in that space. He has photographed personalities like Justin Bieber and Tom Hanks and little John and Jessica Alba. He’s done shoots for global campaigns for international brands like Nike and Coca Cola and Adidas. His work’s been published in magazines like Conde Nast traveler. Cosmo Marie Claire. Like he’s also the host of NION radio podcast where he’s interviewed people like Usher and Scooter Braun and Donna Karan. RV: (01:06) He’s been featured in Fast Company, Huffington post, MTV, and literally his work has just been featured everywhere. He’s also traveled to over 60 countries, seven continents. He’s an author, he’s the author of the travel photography book called Photo Trekking. He is, you know, probably the primary, I guess I would say primary photographer for Lewis Howes, of course, a close friend of ours. And I think yeah, Nick’s just entire personal brand is devoted to inspiring the world to activate their creativity. And it’s like he’s just amazing and you’re about to, you’re about to meet him. So, Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Nice to meet y’all. So buddy this is one of, one of the, one of the many reasons why I love you is I feel like you’re really good at something that I don’t consider myself naturally very good at, which is just the visual identity. RV: (02:03) You know, not even just photography, but the visual expression of a brand. And there’s a concept that you shared with us. Well with me about elevated realism. Can you talk about you know, and you know, we don’t have to just stay in the lane of photography, but I’m kinda thinking about just, you know, the, the people listening their, their personal brands and just like building their, their visual presence, whether it’s online or in print or everywhere. But I think one of your uniquenesses is this concept of elevated realism. Can you just explain what that is? Yeah. So, and this is great because I think this is kind of a concept that we, that I’ve used a lot in advertising for big brands for like Coca-Cola and you know, in that world it’s called lifestyle photography is certain to NO: (03:00) A certain extent where you’re kind of manufacturing this, this aspirational world, but lifestyle, like you’re still kind of doing everyday things. And then you combine that with celebrity portraiture in editorial and, and you kind of get this mix of like elevation. You get this mix of, of, you know, authentic realism. So I kind of translated that over to the personal brand from just from doing all this work and what I learned throughout working with all these people. And so, and these brands. And so elevator realism really is that creating an aspirational look which you’d find in a magazine or an ad but also feels real. It feels authentic because you know, as you know to be, to build your personal brand, you want to be guiding people through a process. You want to be seen as a guide and you know, you want, you don’t want to be too far out of reach, but you also want to be relatable. And so that’s kind of the idea of elevated realism is like you’re creating an aesthetic that’s aspirational but yet relatable at the same time. And you know, for me, I, I like, I create storytelling assets around this. So we build, it’s usually driven around a concept of who you are and your brand. So after they’ve worked with you to develop you know, to develop these, these ideas, these concepts of who this person, you know, who they are authentically, then we kind of, we come and create the the creative from that. So RV: (04:27) Interesting. Yeah. So do they come to you like, like one of the exercises we do with people in phase phase one of course you’ve been to our phase one event that we at the very end of phase one, like post that phase one event, we go through brand characteristics lists and we just kind of come up with like words that sort of capture the essence of a person. Is that kind of what you’re talking about here is like, like how do you capture, or what exercises do you go through or take someone through to kind of like clarify what, what energy or what emotion or what they’re trying to convey. And it sounds like you do that first and then you figure out how to stage the shoot. NO: (05:11) Yeah, absolutely. So I have a story diagnostic sheet that I start with, which is probably about 10 to 15. I think it’s 10 to 15 questions that the client fills out and it’s, it’s everything from around like what’s the, the message, the vision, the mission, the message, how do you help people. And it kind of gets people thinking within that. And a lot of times sometimes they’ll work with your team or you know, if they’re working with other people or they’ll just fill it out themselves. It kind of depends on who. But then some of the other questions that come into it are like, you know, what are your activities? Do you love? Like what what kind of locations, tell your story, what kind of props help tell your story, what kind of, you know, one of them is like, what’s your favorite emoji? Like just cause they get people thinking expression, you know, some things. And then we kind of take that sheet and we’d go over their answers and then we build a week, RV: (06:03) Build the creative of the shoot out of that. So say like, see, like I mean with Louis, with our, our last shoot was in Turkey. Yeah. With all the balloon, the hot air balloons and stuff like, and the HELOC was the helicopter helicopter. I mean y’alls freaking shoots are Epic dude that the Iceland shoot. I mean he still uses pictures from that Iceland shoot from a few years ago. And that the Turkey shoot with the hot air balloons was so NO: (06:30) Just like magnificent. Thank you. Thank you. And the whole idea behind that was like rising to your greatness. And I pitched him that kind of, you know, he was like, we’re going back and forth around it. And I was like, well what about the idea of shooting with you in capita, Nokia with all these hotter balloons in the background? Because the whole concept of rising to your greatness is really up yet obviously you know him. That’s like who he is, helps everyone rise to their greatness. So that’s, that’s the concept that we pulled out of that. And then, you know, we did some other Epic James Bond type of stuff with the helicopter and things like that. But then, you know, I had, you know Bo Easton? RV: (07:04) Yeah. NO: (07:04) So, yeah, he hired me to do a shoot and we did, you know, his whole football thing. But he’s also got as busy, you know, he’s more his business and like his, his thought leadership now. So one of the concepts that we created, cause like family is so big to him. Mmm. And so we were like, okay, well let’s shoot you with your family on a football field. So we’re not like saying, Oh, I’m like fuck totally football, where like hinting at that background, not story element, but we’re focusing on him with his family. And so we kind of, you know, and he was the hero of all the shots and in a certain sense in terms of like what the focus was and how we were, you know, composing the shots and how we were organizing and how I was directing everyone within the shots. And then, you know, so they’ve used a lot of those to kind of like show that family man concept that, that story that we’re telling. With that. So, you know, it really comes down to simple. RV: (07:58) It’s like as simple as that. Like you’re, I mean that, that’s just such a simple idea of just like you’re telling a story of who the person is or like what, like who either who they are, what they’re about, just sort of subtly like with the background or where the location is. And you know, like the kind of props maybe that show up in there. NO: (08:18) Yeah. So the, the location and the props are all kind of just hinted in the space in the background while the focus remains on the person because obviously like the person is the product and the hero. So we, we we focus on that, but we utilize the environment to tell that story. So say for instance, like Chris harder, he’s a super book nerd. He loves books. And so we had, I came up with this idea, it was like, let’s pull all the books off of like all of the shelves and put them in his, in the living room. And we just books all around him. And then we just had him sitting there reading reading books, reading one of his favorite books. But then, you know, I’d have him look up at, so it was like RV: (08:55) We had this like eye contact, but he’s surrounded by books. Right. So it’s still focused on him. And that’s one reason why Chris and I get along, we share that, we share that, that passion for learning and reading. I love, I love Chris. What a cool, that’s so cool. Yeah. So you know, and that’s kind of a big piece of, that’s the elevator realism that I’m talking about. It’s the, you know, the way that I shoot it also comes through in like the lighting that I use, the way that I direct, the way that I, you know, there’s all these little pieces to it that come together in the moment of the actual shoot. So you have the prep and then you have the actual shoot. I mean we’ve worked together so like you’ve been able to experience kind of the of bro and like, and this is crazy. RV: (09:37) Like, I mean, the photos you took of me, we’re so good. I mean, I, I, I don’t know why. Like, I don’t, I don’t have a trained enough eye to go like, Oh this is the difference between my shot with Nick and my shot with other photographers. But it was just like somehow you captured like my energy, my personality. And it was like businessy but, but, but conversational like it just just blew my mind. So talk about directing the shoot a little bit and you know, not everyone’s going to be able to work with you. So, so I mean if some of y’all are listening, if like if you can, if you can do it like just freaking hire Nick, it’s unbelievable. But the concepts here I think are also like you could shoot it with your own, you know, like some people are just starting out, they don’t have a ton of money or whatever. RV: (10:29) Like you have a process here that I think it’s cool about the story part. And then when you get to the direction, talk to us about the direction and, cause here’s one thing and I’ll share this tip with everybody. I mean I’ve done, I’ve probably done at least a few dozen photo shoots in my life. Maybe a hundred, you’re the first person ever that put music on during the photo shoot. And I re that stuck with me as such. A simple like that is such a simple, was such a simple part of directing where I was like, you are such a pro of just going like, what’s the music that captures the energy that you know, you’re, you’re wanting to like give off. So talk to us about direction a little bit. How do we do that for ourselves? Or how do we direct our photographer to do it? RV: (11:15) Or like what are just some of the things you think about? Yeah. Well, I mean that’s, that’s such an interesting question because there, I mean, it takes a long time to become, to understand how to direct and I’m still learning, I’m still getting better at it. But that’s one thing with, you know, hiring the right photographer, you’ve got to kind of see what, like their, you know, see their subjects in their work. I mean, as with anything to see what they’re pulling out of their subjects first. But when it gets into directing, you know, for me, I like energy. I like this, this constant flow of energy. That’s why I bring music into it because it loosens people up, it gets them moving and once they get moving, they start to get out NO: (11:54) Of their head. And then once they’re out of their head, then you know, then you can really kind of move. And the thing is, is everybody’s going to take a bad picture. You just shoot a lot more and then we just delete those. So, you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll a lot of times just get people moving, get people doing different things, even if it’s not a good shot. Because in, in that respect, if, if you’re moving, once you get people into that flow state of just being, getting used to being in front of the camera it gets, they get, they get, they’re able, they’re more comfortable able to, you know, feeling free enough to move. I also try to use a lot of positive reinforcement as I’m shooting as well. Yeah. And then, and then I also have to keep in mind what I’m trying to like, how to compose the shot, what lighting I’m trying to use and what the lighting’s doing. NO: (12:40) And so I have like a thousand things going on in my head as I’m clicking that camera. As I’m looking through that, the lens and thinking of like, okay, composition, motion, action. You know what, I don’t want this. What action do I want this person to do and do I want to look into the camera? You know? And so it’s like I’m constantly throwing different things out at PM. And that just takes practice. You know, for me it’s taken, I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I’ve worked in, everybody’s different, every subject is different, you know, different people have different energies. Some people just like walk on and they just like bring it and like bring all the energy. And I’m like, not even really doing much, but then there’s other people who are not as experienced. And so can we talk about that? NO: (13:20) I want to talk about that cause that, that fear of being in front of the camera, like that’s a real, that’s a real thing. And I don’t know why, but it’s like, why do we have such a fear of being in front of the camera and what can we do, whether it’s on a photo shoot or if it’s just like, you know, doing a video blog or, or, you know, shooting a selfie that we’re going to post on Instagram or something. Like what are, why do you think, why do we have that fear? And like, do you have any ideas for how to move us past that? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is the fear of being seen right? And the fear of being like almost in a vulnerable state. And especially because the camera captures who we are, right? And in this state. NO: (14:03) So I would say first thing is just like, you know, take care of yourself and you know, the camera’s going to, I typically add like a, like 10 pounds, a few pounds, I want to say 10 pounds. That’s a lot. But just the way he is. So that’s why you say like no baggy clothes because they look super baggy, you know? That’s what I’m saying. You know, it’s like if people don’t feel comfortable with the way they look, they either got it yet either just rock the way with confidence, the way that you look or do something about it. You know, I, I, you know, I can only do so much of capturing, you know, we can do stuff in posts, but then it gets, starts to get like inauthentic if you’re like heavily retouching things. So, you know, I think it’s just like thinking about what, you know, really getting down to what makes you fearful of being in front of the camera. NO: (14:48) And I think so pick it outfit. Just don’t pick your newest outfit necessarily. It’s like pick an outfit that you feel confident in and like pick an outfit that you like the way you look, like something as simple as that. Yeah, absolutely. And if you really want to go to the next level, hire a stylist to help you revamp your wardrobe. And if, you know, if, especially if you want to take your personal brand to the next level, it’s like you got to think about all these things because all the aesthetics say something about who you are. So if you’re just like schlep, you know, wearing sloppy stuff, you know, what is that going to say about you in the photos? You know, what is that going to say about you? I like the way that you’re, you make decisions the way that you care about yourself, the way that, you know, what are you preaching in comparison to that? NO: (15:31) So talk about that. Like the energy part. Yeah. Anyways, so just to, just to comment on that last thing that you said, I remember this blew my freaking mind when I don’t remember where we were. Somebody asked Louis this question, what is your number one secret to building a huge brand? And I was like, that’s an interesting question. I had never asked him that question. I was like, I wonder what he’s going to say right here. And I’m thinking, you know, like yeah, funnels or webinars or digital marketing or like networking. He said photography, he said photography is my number one secret of how I’ve built up a brand. And you know, it’s, it’s interesting cause I think of photos as like what you’re wearing and how you look. But the way that both you and him talk about it is it’s like, it’s more about the energy that you’re giving off that you’re capturing. NO: (16:32) Like it’s, it’s like it’s more about the energy than it is. I like the look. Yeah. Yeah. Because we all want to connect with somebody. Right. And photography connects you with that person. Like we look at, you look through magazines, right? And you see these celebrities that are, you know, they have like eight page editorials of them and you know, of photos like high, high end imagery of them, and then you feel more connected to them. I mean we see that everyday on Instagram. It’s like we get, we connect to people through photos of them. Right. And I think this is a very subconscious thing. And you know, the psychology of both, like graphic design and photography is, is huge as well. I was a graphic designer before I was a photographer and I went to school for visual branding and things like that. NO: (17:15) And you know, it’s the reason that we buy Coca Cola versus the, the the generic brand, you know, they might even be the same product, but branding different, different packaging. Well allow you, you know, make dif make the difference between the choice that you make. So photography plays a huge part of that. Graphic design plays a huge part of that. And when you project, you know, you’re basically creating the perception that you want people to see you as and you have that choice, right? If you’re not conscious to that creation of the brand and what you want people to perceive you as, then you’re not thinking about that stuff. That’s why photography, that’s why Lewis says photography is such a, one of the biggest key key things within his within his brand is that he’s creating this image that people want him to view him as. And so we create this higher level imagery. But like, he still feels super relatable. Like you would just, you know, it can be friends with them just from seeing them online. And so it’s, it is that elevated realism that really portrays him and like creates the elevation within, you know, and makes people want to follow him, makes people want to do, you know, have him as their guide kind of thing. RV: (18:30) Well, and it’s just like, it’s interesting to me because if somebody would have said like, if it, if it weren’t you and Louis, like if somebody said, I’m going to do a photo shoot with hot air balloons behind me, I’d be like, that’s the cheesiest idea that I have ever heard of. Okay. But the way you do it, it’s not that at all. And, and it’s, it’s almost like what you’re describing to me here, Nick, is like, that’s where the magic is, is it’s, it’s like do somehow tell your story if it’s authentic to you somehow you tell that story. Like how do you balance that? Like, Hey, there’s a place for creative genius here versus, no, that’s stupid. It’s cheesy. NO: (19:14) Yeah. I mean that all comes through the eye of the photographer. Right. So that’s the way that I see when I do photography. So every photographer has a different different point of view. But for me, like I’ve always seen things with this authenticity but also like this kind of cool, elevated edge. And so whenever I, when I’m out shooting, that’s the magic that happens within the moment is that like I can see from the lighting, the composition, the things that are happening within the frame that make it feel real and authentic and not cheesy. You know, that’s just the way that I’m built. That’s the way that I see. That’s the perspective that I take on photography. And that’s where the photographer actually really the vision of the photographer is, is what you’re also looking for. Cause it’s like somebody else could take, take these concepts and like shoot somebody with books and, and, and whatever. NO: (20:04) Totally. It’s in the moment. It comes down to the lighting, the photographer, you know, the, what they see, how they direct, how they envision it and how they pull out of pull, what they need out of the subject out of the the personality and the energy and all that stuff. And then, then it comes to post to like the coloring, the composition, you know, just in the backend, you know, creating an aesthetic look as well. So that’s, that’s kind of like the components, but that’s what it comes down to the photographer at the end of the day. So you want to hire the right photographer by looking at their portfolio and seeing like, Oh, do I see myself in their photos? Do I want the sustetic do I want, you know, am I, do I feel like I would be comfortable with them? RV: (20:48) Yeah, that’s a good question. Do I see myself in their photos like that? That feels somehow easier to me than do I like, cause like to me it’s like I can’t tell like I don’t, I don’t have like when you say how you see, when I see, it’s like I look at, I almost think I look at every photo I go, Ooh, that’s really good. Like that’s good. But then I see one of yours especially of me and me, like gosh that is so different somehow, but I don’t know why, but and do I see myself in their photos I think is super cool. I want to come back to what you were talking about a minute ago about you said something where you said that we connect to people through photos of them and that the more you see someone, the more you feel connected to them. RV: (21:38) And I’m having a light bulb moment here. I’ve always resisted posting pictures of myself on my social media feeds because not because I’m a F I’m self conscious of how I look because I’m self conscious of coming across as overly promotional or self centered or like arrogant of like, Oh Hey, here’s a giant feed of, you know, here’s a bunch of pictures of me. But the way that you said that was interesting where you’re like, no, it’s like, it helps the audience feel connected to you. It’s not about like promoting you. Have you ever heard anybody have that weird fear that I’m sharing and like what? Like what’s your initial thought on that? Cause that literally, I never realized that until you said that. And I was like, I hate posting photos of myself, but not for why most people do. Which is like, Oh, I think my, you know, I think I look silly. I don’t care. Like I’ve always been like, this is who I am, but NO: (22:41) I don’t want to be overly promotional. Yeah. Necessarily. Got a couple, like a couple things came to mind on that. RV: (22:48) A free coaching session between Rory Vaden and Nick on. Ken, if you’re just joining us, I’m getting free consulting advice here from Nick NO: (22:56) 105 so absolutely. So the first thing is, is this is kind of funny because like, so I was like four or five years ago I was at scooter’s wedding and we were all riding and Justin was there and Justin Bieber for that, for that. My friend Justin was there, so we were driving, we were riding around in the, in whatever his SUV and scooter pulls out as the scooters, like you’ll just need to follow Nick. And I was like, okay. I was like, sweet, awesome. And then Justin Luke pulls up my Instagram and he’s like, dude, why don’t you have any photos of you on there? And I was like, ah. I mean, I don’t know, I just like posting photos that I take. RV: (23:38) He still followed me for a couple of years, NO: (23:40) But that kind of stuck with me after a while. And this is kind of before really personal branding on Instagram was like kind of big, right? Like, this was just, this is kind of the earlier days of, of Instagram. And so I kind of started, you know, a few years ago, I’m just looking through analytics and things like that. I was looking at like the engagement of photos on my always highest on your personal photos. Yeah. People, you know, I get more likes on photos of me than photos that I take on my main account. And especially because it’s more like behind the scenes stuff or it’s conceptual stuff of me. And like they just kinda took me back to that moment of like, and then, you know, I was like, maybe he unfollowed me cause I was posting pictures of me. I don’t know. NO: (24:26) I mean he had followed everyone, but but you know, it’s, it’s, you know, you just got me thinking of like, okay, you know, people are following, like, especially with social media, people want to see what you’re up to. People want to connect with you as a human. I think that’s the biggest thing is they want to connect with you as a human to feel that human touch. And so I think that’s why photos of you putting foot posting photos of you on your feed really help people to connect with you. I think there’s also an element of like what story are you telling with that photo and how does it connect with that photo. So whenever I’m, I’m posting on Instagram a photo of myself, I kind of, I want to make the caption link to, you know, have some sort of context as to what the picture is. NO: (25:09) Hmm. And the story that I’m telling through that picture just to connect everything cause then you get into like the whole there’s, there’s a hashtag called girls without irrelevant captions and it’s like, it’s hilarious cause they’ll put you, it’s like, it’s unreal. They’ll post like a photo of them in a bikini by the pool and then have some sort of like really like esoteric, conscious, loving like quote. And it’s just, it’s just funny. It’s, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not congruent. It’s not. And then that just kind of like pulls away from authenticity of like, what are you talking about? Like you just want to show your, show your assets and get more validation through that versus like actually conceptualizing and telling a story through the photograph and aligning it with the caption. So I think that’s highly important. It’s like congruency and all the stories that you’re telling from your photography. NO: (26:02) Then stuff that you post online to the stuff that you post to the captions that you write. And I think, you know, when it comes to, you know, the imagery that I build with people is like the high level like website banner stuff and you know, stuff for press. Like people use, like Lewis is like put my, use my photos of him in like success magazine and like all these different magazines. So you have like an an arsenal of assets to use as like high level stuff, but you can also put them into your Instagram feed. Well, mixed with other things. Like your Instagram feed doesn’t have to be all photos of you, but I think if you pepper them throughout, you’re kind of still helping build that connection for people to you. RV: (26:45) Yeah. So how often this is, this is going to be like, like if you do like how many shoots a year, if somebody was really like doing this, you know like I get, I get the idea of going, Hey you need to do a shoot for your website. One of the things we’ve gotten clear with our process of helping people build their websites and do their overall brand strategy is we take them through phase one. Okay. Which you’ve been through, right. Finding your uniqueness and then what we realized is pretty much the next thing that needs to happen is photography because you need to be able, you know, photography and copy cause you need to get the pictures before you design the website cause you have to be able to design the website around the pictures. That was something we always screwed up, which I feel like we’ve gotten more clarity on is like go get the pictures. So anyways I realize now and go okay you know the importance of photography. Sure. With your website or a book, you know like a book launch or something. But other than that, if you’re just like looking to like create a connection with your audience and like pepper, your Instagram feed, how often should we be doing this? Like where we’re hiring somebody to [inaudible] photos of us. Yeah. I mean I think NO: (28:00) Couple of times a year. It kind of depends on like the packages that you’re getting, who you’re working with and all that. And like how many different final images that you can get out of a shoot. But probably two, I would say probably two to four a year. Okay. Just to kind of once a quarter fresh. Yeah. Once a quarter. Keep things fresh. You know, you can keep your, your high, your arking over your high level imagery like on your website and stuff consistent for like a year. But like when it comes to like more social media stuff, you can probably do two to like one a quarter, I would say. RV: (28:33) Interesting. Okay. Man, there’s so much, I can’t believe how fast this went by. Like there, there is so much here. And like I’m saying, you know, if you can hire Nick and have him come shoot you, there’s other photographers we have in our community as well that, that, that we liked. But it was, it was really wild to experience a shoot with you. And the, the difference of just, I mean, I, you know, I’m not going to post any of these pictures, but there was a time back when Rory was in his early twenties that I did some commercials than I did. I did some modeling shoots. I might’ve even had some abs that I was showing off back in those days. And you know, so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve worked on sets, I’ve, I’ve had photographers, but you know, the shot with the doing the shoot with you was truly different. So where should people go if they want to just follow your work or just connect with you or like see some of your photos what’s the best way to connect up with you? NO: (29:32) Yeah, I mean Instagram is kind of the, like at Nick honkin on Instagram is kind of the hub for everything. So you can get to my, like my website photography website, my hats, my, I have a photographs by Nick honkin Instagram account. It’s just photography. So everything stems from, from there. RV: (29:54) Huh. And what’s your photographs by Nick on kin? Is it, is it that long handle? NO: (30:00) Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s photographed by Nick honkin.com at the Instagram handle as well. And that’s just strictly photography, like curated portfolio. RV: (30:10) That’s, it’s incredible. Y’all like go look at this stuff. I’m telling you. It’s really, really, really wonderful. Well Nick, I really appreciate you sharing some of your secrets and just like helping us find the right photographers, ask the right questions, you know, prepare ourselves for the shoe, what to be looking for. And then overall, I just think, you know, a big part of your uniqueness is just this elevated realism is just like bringing, bringing our best to a shoot and drawing the best out of your subjects. And I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re extremely talented, my friend. I used to have like a really rare gift and I just appreciate you sharing it with us. NO: (30:45) Thank you. Oh, and one other thing, I do have a free ebook on how to elevate your personal brand visually. It’s Nick honkin.com/personal brand and it’s a free ebook. Talks about a lot of the stuff that we talked about today and a lot of visual examples and, and all the goods. RV: (31:02) Nick anakin.com/personal brand. I’ve walked through that ebook. It’s awesome. Super tactical and and useful. So we’ll put links to that in the show notes. My brother, we wish you the best until I can get back with you and get a shoot going, NO: (31:19) You know, best. Until then. Let’s do it. Thanks.

Ep 73: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix | Recap Episode

Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible]. AJV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down the interview with as well. What I was going to say, I was gonna say legendary influencers because you think I forgot their names now. AJV: (00:24) I think you forgot their names. I thought you forgot what we were doing. AJV: (00:28) Well that is possible, but I was thinking like legendary, like you know, mega online influencers, massive reputation, early adopters, freaking awesome people freaking awesome and, and not the least of which this isn’t part of my top three, but it frustrates me that there are people as cool and as funny as them. Like Stevie is not funny, which it’s like, I hate people like that. AJV: (01:02) So is Sazan, AJV: (01:02) I know, like, and super fashionable, genuinely funny. It’s like we like you, but you also, you guys kind of sucked too. Like I like jealous and angry that you’re just naturally awesome. Anyway, separate of that. We actually have some useful constructive takeaways from truly an awesome interview. And we do, we love them. We work closely with them. We know them. Everybody that we know that works with them loves them, they’re just awesome. AJV: (01:34) It’s just a recap of how awesome Stevie and Sazan are, so we’ll talk about that for a few minutes. AJV: (01:37) But so my, in terms of my big three takeaways, so my first one was just be early and that was something that, yeah, you know, Saz talked about in terms of like, just knowing, you know, that weird connection with her friend who was dating the founder of Instagram back in the day and you know, basically one of the things where they were talking about like the early you are, the less good you have to be and that right now is tic toc, right? AJV: (02:07) Like that is the world that’s happening. And so I’m going, okay, I don’t understand tick-tock, I don’t like it like it. Well, there’s, there actually are some funny videos on there that. AJV: (02:16) Donald Trump impersonations AJV: (02:19) Yeah, AJ loves the Donald Trump impersonations, but it’s like, man, the earlier you are, the less good you have to be. It’s because that, that was that first one AJV: (02:29) In general. Just the whole concept of you gotta be early to the game. You really can’t be the late adopter and the social media game. You’ve gotta be on that forefront. You gotta be in the early adoption stage. And I’m gonna just figure it out as you go. But to that point, I think that’s really, that’s really good. One of the things that I love, so a minor in any specific order per se, but I love to hear about how they’re killing it on YouTube. I just feel like a lot of our interviews here lately have been like this reemergence of YouTube activities. Yeah. And I love that. And she said, you know, it’s like people find us from Google actually find us searching on Google and find their YouTube videos more than anything else that says something. So just knowing how to title your videos, how to use the descriptions of your videos, I think that’s really a big deal on YouTube. And then the other thing she said, you know, I was like, YouTube is the second highest ranked search engine. So outside of Google it is YouTube and people are really going there for education. So if you’re in more of the how to world, you better be on YouTube. Yeah. That was a really good just aha. Like very straightforward. AJV: (03:42) Yep. Yeah. And we talk about at the phase three event, we talk a lot about the search traffic and on Google and YouTube and you know, I think that that lends to my second one, which was to be trendy, like to be on trend. And they actually talked about, you know, this tool trends.google.com which I was like, gosh, I’ve heard about that. I’ve never once looked at it or paid any attention to it. And to hear them be like, yeah, this is, this is the source of where we figure out what we’re going to make videos on. Which just, it’s like, it’s so simple that it’s so easy to miss, but it’s obvious, right? Like pay attention to what the world is asking for and talking about. And it’s like you don’t even have to be good. You just have to, it’s the difference between like trying to pave a road on some back country highway and get people to come or just go where the interstate is, where all the traffic just is. And so anyways, I thought that was a handy little tool. Trends.Google.Com like I’m going to get into that and pay attention to what people are doing. And then I think relatedly on the trends was like hashtags and realizing that, you know, hashtags, are to social media, what keywords are to search engine optimization. If that light bulb hasn’t clicked for you, AJV: (05:01) You know, make sure you pay attention to that on the interview because that is really, really important to connect those concepts and understand, Oh, this is how people find my on social media is from hashtags. So those are follow trends. AJV: (05:17) Yeah. My second one is this, they spent a few minutes talking about this, but how they have been really afraid to redo content. And then I had this aha moment and Stevie talked about and he was like, Saz, your most, most visited, most viewed videos of all time are beginner makeup tutorials. Why wouldn’t you make more of those? And they had this fear for a long time. Well, I’ve already done that. But if that’s the number one thing that people are finding you for and coming to you for, why not do more of them instead of this concept? Well, I already talked about that this one time. Why not say, actually I’m going to talk about that every time and just increase that exposure. And I think so many of you have this fear of, well, I, I just did a video on self-development a couple months ago and you think you can’t do it again. Where the truth is is you could probably do one every single day and it would only enhance your followers and your engagement versus detract from it. So just a really great reminder of your most visited, most viewed, most downloaded, most commented, most lagged, most whatever videos or posts are the ones that you should do more of. AJV: (06:33) And even just tension to that, like, do you, do you know, do you know what your most viewed visit videos are? Do you know what’s causing people to find you? I mean obviously they’re, they’re super in touch with that stuff. AJV: (06:47) That was just really just, it’s really good information as well as you know, the how to do it. In terms of like the more softer like who you are approach, but it’s also a very tactical approach and I love that. So what’s your last one? RV: (07:01) So my last one, which you might find boring, but it’s like you can’t hear this enough and, and I hope that it sticks when you hear it from people like Sazan and Stevie is be consistent, right? Like I know you probably get sick of us saying it, but it’s like half the battle here is just sticking around. It’s just continuing to hit publish and staying there weekend and week out and day in and day out. And it’s like, on the one hand, I could see how that can be like, you know, discouraging or annoying and be like, yeah, we’ve heard it. On the other hand, it should be super empowering to go. Like all I have to do is keep publishing. I don’t have to, I don’t have to create Nobel prize books, you know, like I don’t have to or ideas or Pulitzer prize books or Nobel prize ideas. RV: (07:48) Like I just have to show up and be there all the time consistently. And if you are late, right? Like if you miss the early train, which I have typically missed the early train on all these platforms just because, you know, I’m like, social media isn’t my favorite thing to do. And I’m trying to not be that with tech talk. I’m trying to just at least be there. But it’s just like show up consistently and just stay there. Social media is not going anywhere. Like this is a part of the rest of our life. It, it’s a part of our life for the rest of our life. It’s changed the world. It’s so ubiquitous. It’s like this is how people consume media. And so you gotta be there and the best time to start up the plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time was today. Same as social media. Like the best time to start a profile would have been 15 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So get on with it and and stay consistent and don’t miss the schedule. AJV: (08:50) That was really long, long winded. RV: (08:52) That was not, that was not long. Three minutes, AJV: (08:56) Not three minutes. Was that three right. And more testing. And the last one I have, and I’ll make mine very short and succinct since mr. Verbose over here took up all my time. But the last one for me is something that stevie said at the very, very, very end, which I thought was so insightful. Did you hear people all the time going, well, I’m just too old for that. I’m just too old for that. I can’t be on tictoc. That’s for kids. And it’s like, well those kids will age those 18 year olds will be 21 year olds and then 25 year olds. And I just thought that was really interesting. It’s like, Hey, you have to go where the people are and if you want to get in and make a difference without all the algorithms coming into play, the time is now, and this is a nurturing environment. AJV: (09:42) It’s not where you come in and you just start selling from day one, just like you wouldn’t in any sort of relationship. Right? You don’t come in and you don’t talk about yourself, you don’t ask them questions there. There’s a process to it. The same thing happens online. It just takes a little longer. There’s this nurturing that happens and the people that you don’t think are your customers today, will be one day, right? So as they evolve, their needs will evolve. And I just thought that was a really good reminder for anyone who was like, Oh, well I’ve already missed that train or I’m too old for this and no, you’re not. No, this is, this isn’t going away. This is only increasing in how we do things. So you better get on it. And then I also loved how he said, if you really feel like you’re just too old, a really great place to start is YouTube. AJV: (10:28) I just think that too is really just a good for God. Can’t be on tick-tock, what am I going to do and tictoc. But it’s just figuring out what the place is for you. But just a great reminder to all of us. It’s like the people on any platform they will grow and evolve and age and their needs will evolve. So were you there in the beginning and are you growing with them? I loved it, but it was really just insightful. RV: (10:53) Yep. And if you’re on YouTube, you can be on tictoc, right? I mean if you follow our content diamond, we’re just going to repurpose. That’s what, that’s what we’re doing, right. our tictoc is just a shortened repurpose part of the video. So my tick talk is right. I don’t know what AJ’s tictok will be all like Trump impersonations and funny dances, but probably something with my toddler for sure. Yes. so you can do it. And here’s the thing, like if you didn’t listen to the interview and you’ve ever wondered, how do you build these huge social media empires, these, these, to have millions of followers on multiple different platforms, sharing their secrets, go listen to the interview and get like, and follow them on Instagram. Yeah, they’re super entertaining. RV: (11:35) But then you’ll know why they have yes, cause they’re more funnier and fashionable than I am naturally. So you can follow that and find out for yourself, but check it out. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 72: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix

Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue. [inaudible]. I’m your lead host, Rory Vaden builder’s group, hall of fame speaker and New York times bestselling author of take the stairs. Speaker 3: (00:36) Hi, it’s Rory Vaden, and thanks for listening to the influential personal brand podcast. Did you know that the ideas we share on the show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you want to raise your public profile and turn your reputation into revenue, please visit free. Call that brain builders group.com to sign up for a free brand strategy call with one of our personal brand strategist. Again, that’s free. Call dot brand builders group.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you RV: (01:21) Oh my gosh, you are so lucky to be listening to this podcast today. Let me tell you why you’re about to meet one of the coolest couples ever, Suzanne in Stevie Hendrix. These guys have become friends of ours, their clients, a brand builders group. I consider them mentors like I’m learning so much from watching what they do. They have built a following of millions and millions of people on social media. Their podcast has over 9 million downloads. They get 15 million monthly impressions. They have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. Design has over a million Instagram followers. Stevie’s got hundreds of thousands of followers. They’re the coolest people ever. Suzanne is just fashionable and Stevie is so funny and I’m a little bit jealous of how young they are and you’re like the cool kids that I always wanted to be friends with that I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with and anyways, thanks for being here guys. Speaker 4: (02:19) That’s like the best intro I think we’ve ever received. Thank you. We take that soundbite from this show and just put it on our website. We’re going to transcribe that on our content diamond, their content diamond, your words. That was, that was amazing. We’re so stoked to be here. Obviously we had you on our show as well and I mean those two shows were packed full of great information. So we’re happy to be here. We consider you a friend and a mentor and a leader for us in an answer prayer. So thanks for having us party. So Speaker 2: (02:54) I mean this seriously, like I am one of those people that I’d like, I feel like I don’t really get social media still. Like obviously we use it for business and stuff, but like I’ve just not been naturally good at it and I’m not super like social anyways. And you guys have built this monster following. How did that happen? Like how did it start? Which platform? How did it grow? How long did it take? Right. Like some people right now are just starting out and they’re going like, okay, like millions of people seems like so far away. Yeah. And just kind of give us a little bit of the journey piece. Speaker 5: (03:26) Yeah. You know, this journey started for me back in 2010 2011 when I was in college and at the time Instagram had been around. And what’s really interesting about Instagram was that, you know, we were studying radio, television, film, and I remember in our news department, one of the producer girls there, her sister or her cousin was dating at that time, the cofounder of Instagram. His name was Mike Krieger. And I remember because we were doing, we had a little commercial talk show that we did that she produced. She was like, I’m going to get him on as a guest. And I hosted this show and I just at the time probably had a thousand followers on Instagram at that time. I mean that was kind of like, I was like, okay, great. But he came onto our show at that time and I’m in just in college and I got to interview him about this platform that really hadn’t taken off. Speaker 5: (04:20) This is when those filters, all you had that was really available to you, where like the Calvin filter and all of those little filters and that was it with the borders and people were just sharing pictures of their dog, their food. It wasn’t really seen as a space where brands were tapping into marketing agencies were looking at, and I just got to ask him some questions. And I think from that interview there was something in me that was really intrigued by social media and I decided to just kind of keep an on with like Instagram. I didn’t know exactly what my brand was per se, but I was just so fascinated by this new way of connecting with people through social media. And I just saw a little bit of that. And so I had a blog at the time, it was a very small blog, but it was my website and I started just practicing some of my copy on there, talking about the trends in beauty and the things that I was passionate about. Speaker 5: (05:16) And then when you fast forward to, you know, after I graduated college and you to Stevie, we decided to move to LA. And that’s where I really realized the potential and the power of social media because I met a lot of local bloggers in LA, which I did not really have that in Dallas and in LA man. I realized these girls are actually making these little side jobs and hustled and it was like a side hustle business and then I got really fascinated by it all and thought if I can start figuring out ways to monetize my blog, this really could become my own virtual business. I just didn’t know the model. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just saw the resources in front of me, which were social media did have an Instagram page that was growing pretty quickly at that time because there wasn’t the algorithm and all of that you see today on Instagram and so I think a lot of it was the timing, you know, being on that platform at the right time, having my blog to actually push some credibility out to like check out my trends, things like that. Speaker 5: (06:18) People started latching on to it and the rest is history. We started our YouTube channel shortly after that and YouTube was really great because I love creating or Instagram. Yeah, it started after my blog and after Instagram. And so I just fell in love with YouTube because we both knew how to edit video. We both knew how to shoot video and the framing when we learned that in college, that’s what we were studying. So I thought, let me take a lot of that knowledge and put it into what I’m trying to create online instead of waiting around for like the NBC to come and hire me to work for them and their company and their platform. And so I just saw that there was this potential, but I just knew I couldn’t do it alone. So Stevie is where, you know, that was kind of the turning point was when like Stevie came on board and we both realized, Hey, if we take this seriously, this could really be our full time job Speaker 4: (07:12) to give you the credit. Because I didn’t take it seriously at first. I remember I was working, I was doing a marketing job where I was kind of traveling the West part of the United States and I was trying to do the acting thing in Los Angeles. And I remember she called me one day and this is in 2014 and she said, Hey, you know, at this point I think you had maybe 150 maybe 200,000 followers on Instagram. And you said, Hey, some of the girls that you know, I’ve met in the blogging space. She said, you know, they’re starting to make real money. And I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, they are making money, you know, from linking outfits from posting brands X, Y, Z. She said, and they’re making a lot of money. I said, Speaker 5: (07:49) yeah, I remember that. She said, Speaker 4: (07:51) girls are making tens of thousand a month. I said, no, they’re not. She said, yeah, they are. Speaker 5: (07:56) I even told him, I said, there’s one girl making $50,000 a month off of her. At the time it was like, Whoa. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Speaker 4: (08:06) Pool of bloggers who were linking and linking a ton, right? So if you think about how many girls were just going clicking on their links, it makes a lot of sense. But you know, she convinced me, basically you should come back, help me run this social media business full time and let’s see what we can do with this thing. And I have to give her credit because of her foresight, because now the landscape has changed. I mean tech talk is here and people are ready. They are, they have been waiting for that new platform to arise before the algorithm gets super complex and it’s hard to get your face out in front of millions of people. You know, Instagram was a place where people didn’t expect it to have that much power. I think there were a select few and they’ve capitalized early, but even forces on, you know, she had the foresight to realize she needed to continue building her brand and growing these numbers even when we didn’t see any monetary value in it yet. And you know, when I came on and started managing her and helping her with her social media, you know, little jobs began to trickle in, you know, like $300 from target, $500 from so-and-so. And then it started to grow from there. And that’s how it all started. And then we obviously you started Speaker 5: (09:13) and then I will never forget Rory, when Stevie and I, we created our own little tiered package that we would go and target little mom and pop shops on Etsy because at the time these small brands wanted social media exposure and a lot of the times just some high res images of their products. And so we created this little business model, you know, where it was like, Hey, we can offer you the platinum package, the silver package, the gold package, which you’re going to get all of these assets if you do that. And I remember the most expensive one, we were charging like $500 and we thought, Oh my God, no one’s gonna like buy that. And we were thinking, Oh my God, that is so expensive. Like let’s just hope and pray. And all these brands just kept coming back. We’ll do the $500 we’ll do the $500. So we were constantly readjusting our rates and learning as we grew and as we sharpened up our skills. So that’s where it all started. Yeah. And it’s just evolved and changed so much. Speaker 2: (10:10) So right there. And I love that. You know, that’s so similar. Like people ask me about my speaking fee these days, right. And like, you know, it’s tens of thousands of dollars. It’s, it’s up there. But like my first gig was 50 bucks, my second was 500 and it was like, you just get so good at what you’re doing and it starts small. And what I love is, you know, like people always talk about charge what you’re worth. And I always tell them, don’t charge what you’re worth. Charge what you can get and like charge something that’s such a no brainer for people to buy from you. And then as the demand increases, then you can raise just like let the price raise itself. And I didn’t realize that part of your story. That is so, so cool. We had people literally Speaker 4: (10:51) that would, you know, email us because when I came on board, you know, it was like size had four hands basically. And another, another mind on her working on her business. So, you know, I was now the gateway between her and the brands. I was emailing the brands back. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, I’m going to manage her. And I said, how much should I charge? You know? And literally I had to figure this thing out from scratch. You know, I started emailing brands back and like you said, trying not to be greedy or pushy and you know what I mean, but also standing firm and what we felt like our value was based off of the demand. Right? So it’s like so-and-so gave us a thousand dollars to do the same thing. You know, and you’re asking for just as much or more. Speaker 4: (11:28) So you know, that’s fair. And I would have brands that would email me six months later and be like, want to work with SAS again at the same rate? And I go, she has 150,000 more followers now than she did then. And it’s different because, you know, I remember talking to a friend who was a mentor at the time and has a really great mind for business and managing clients and he said, you’re not charging for your time. You’re charging for your audience. He said, and so it doesn’t matter how much it takes you. You said how many more followers do you have now? And you need to based on that information, the engagement, et cetera. Speaker 2: (12:00) Yeah, so I love that. I mean that’s like the super bowl commercial, right? It’s 30 seconds, but you paid 5 million bucks because you’re in front of such a huge number. I love that. So how do you get a lot of followers, right? Like I know that’s just such an obscure question, but like you guys have done it consistently. You got 9 million podcast downloads, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook now tick talk, which I want to talk about here in a little bit, but like you’re doing it so consistently across all these platforms. Why do you think that is? Like there’s millions of people they could be following. Why are they following you? No offense. Speaker 4: (12:41) We both have our own angle to answer that question. And I actually want to talk about this earlier, so I’m glad you brought it up. So right now, and I know we want to talk about tech talk, I’m just gonna bring the tech talk is here, right? Tech talk is happening right now and it has been happening for awhile now. I remember somebody told me about it a year and a half ago on a trip in Europe we were at, she was like, you know she’s a foreign girl. She’s like, you should try the cheek talk. It’s very good. Not a lot of Americans doing it, but they’re paying lots of people on the platform. You need to try. And I was like, thank you. What’s your accent? I can’t remember where it was from. But anyways, I remember at the time thinking, what is this tick tock jibberish she’s talking about, I wish I had listened and you who are listening now listen to this, jump on this platform now. Speaker 4: (13:22) And I want to say that because to gain followers, and I told this, this is on the tech talk platform is very young. I think there’s a lot of 18 year olds on there who are, you know, even from our age being just 30 they think so differently than we do. Her little brother’s 19 they just think they react differently to humor and things like that. But I said to Sam, I said, we need to get on this platform. And I said, and we need to follow the trends. And we didn’t really do this on Instagram. I think Instagram was a lot of vulnerability, blood, sweat and tears, effort, effort, effort. I said with tech talk, I said, this platform is so young, it’s so fun. It’s so trendy. And so it kind of goes against the idea of like staying true 100% to your brand. Speaker 4: (14:10) And I told, as I said, I said, I think what we need to do is both, I said, we need to follow the trends, but we also need to present like our brand and our mission statements people, right? So it’s like we’ll have a video where people would do a ton of dances on tech talk, we’ll do dances or we’ll do you know, members, women, you know, common things that one person is going to see and be like, I relate with that 10 people are going see to be like, I relate with that a hundred people. Everyone relates with that. So do common things. I would say if you want to start growing things that people can commonly relate to, don’t be a hipster. Don’t be somebody who’s like, I have my own way of thinking because people, me too hear common languages common, you know what I mean? Speaker 4: (14:52) Things they can understand. Because if you are too, too niche or, or the way in which you present things is too outside the box and not easy to digest. I don’t think you’re going to gain a lot of followers. You might gain it a niche of strong followers, but in some ways you have to water down, right? Like even if it’s comedy is your thing. Make your comedy digestible for everyone in middle America because then you will start to gain followers. But like you say, Rory, you know the she hands wall, it’s like you’re going to gain gain, gain followers. Once you get them to love you in a sense on social media, then you present your mission, what you’re really about. And I think you do it along the way. I think people will pick up, Hey, he’s a pretty nice person. Like he’s talked about this or that or I know they do a lot of humor, but there’s something sweet and down to earth about them. Right? Once you get them to love you, you gain a bunch of followers. You present them like Speaker 5: (15:45) and was like, this is what you need now. Like I’m going to deliver you something that you need that you didn’t realize that you needed. You know? And that’s where social media can be a really powerful tool. I’m just gonna piggyback off of everything you’re saying cause I completely agree. I think part of it is timing, but the other part of consistently growing with your audience is the consistency of what you’re putting out there. And a lot of people have that instant rise, right? With social media. And Instagram and we see them grow really fast at the beginning and then it goes down like this because they’re not able to keep their audience and that’s what’s tough too is sometimes when you grow so quickly you will reach a point where you’re just like, okay, I’m plateauing. It’s like I need to keep this audience and that’s really when it becomes a priority to center everything that you do really around what your audience does need and catering to their needs. Speaker 5: (16:40) Because for us, we say that everything that we do, we do it because we love connecting with people and that all the things that we put out, we try to put it out with purpose. Even a silly video that we do, we put it out in hopes that yeah, we hope that it brightened up your day a little more. We hope that it made you laugh. We hope that this video was a sweet escape from maybe your harsh reality you’re in and all of that to say we constantly think about something we learned in college, which is the idea of like what’s in it for them. Everything we put out, we have to think about that. It’s not about us. Even though we’re on the social media stage, you, if you can always point back to your audience and make them feel a part of the community, you’re going to continue to grow. And it may not be as fast once you reach a really increased pace, but then it’s about keeping that audience that you have built. And I think that’s the age that we’re living in right now in social media. It’s not about how quickly can I hit a million followers. It’s about how can I engage the community that I already have and keep that community. And then over time you will see growth. Speaker 4: (17:44) And I just want to add one final point, like to that connectivity that you talked about, you know, really with your audience, you know, it’s so important, but also, Oh gosh, I just lost it. Wow. I just lost it. I had a really good, Speaker 2: (17:57) that’s all right. It’ll come back. It will come. It’ll come back to me. Yeah. That’s an interesting concept there about like, you know, get the followers first, you know, kind of have a broader net to get them Pharrell and then you know, kind of work into telling them more about what you do. That’s just a really high level strategy is, is super interesting. So I want to talk about video for a second specifically because I mean at this point hopefully everybody knows like video is pretty much the thing that matters. It’s like where the whole internet is going. Everything is video, video, video, video. And we did an interview with Michael Stelsner, the founder of social media examiner and he just totally hammered on all the data and trends pointing so aggressively and heavily towards video. And y’all edit your own videos still, right? Speaker 4: (18:49) Yeah. Yes. Okay. That actually kind of goes back. That reminds me, what I was going to say is that connectivity is so important connecting with people. But I think also people really recognize service like when you’re doing a service or when you are serving or when you were putting effort in. So one part of that is connecting. It’s the effort that you put into connect with people, right? But a lot of the times like you’ll see people that bust through because they just put the effort in the work into putting up their videos. There’s guys who have millions of followers on Instagram and tick tock who are not funny at all. They’re not funny at all. But guess what? They edit three videos a day and they make it very simple and very common and they’re getting comments and they’re getting shared and they are pumping out content and they are serving and people see their effort. Speaker 4: (19:42) And like I said, it’s digestible, it’s simple. It relates to the every person, every man, every woman, and they’re getting tons of followers. Whereas the person who’s putting in mediocre effort, mediocre service and a little bit of connectivity, they’re not going as far. And so you really, I think when it comes to editing your videos to breeze in it, we still edit our own videos is because there’s an understanding that we have of our content that no one else you can quite get except for us. And we can train somebody to get it close. But there is something when you edit your own video, the timing, the understanding of the content and how it should splice together, that is so important. It’s almost like a comedic actor. You can have a great, if you’ve ever been on set or if you’ve ever been, you know in the movie business you can do a really funny scene, but the editor is the one who decides which cut he’s going to take and how he’s going to cut it and the timing of that. And that has so much to do with how funny that scene is. Right? And so that’s why we edit our own videos because we know like we’re going to maximize our connectivity by editing our own videos. Yeah. So, and I want to hear about that. Like what does the video editing process like? What do you think is the key to a good video? You know, like what are just some of the more fundamental things I guess that Speaker 4: (20:57) people need to know. Like you know when you’re putting together your plan, you need to make sure these five things are in place. Speaker 5: (21:05) Yeah, I think the first thing we can do this together. I think the first thing is know the platform that you’re posting it on. You know, this is similar to even your content diamond. You know that a YouTube video is going to be different than a quick one minute video you’re creating for the Instagram audience, which attention spans even shorter than the YouTube audience. We already know that the internet in general is going to be a very distracted community because even on YouTube, that person watching you, they may have five tabs open already on their computer. So you have to even think about how am I going to grasp their attention on this platform? And then on the other platforms you have to run that same question through your mind. Tic talk is even quicker than Instagram for that generation who just graphs that information super quickly and they want it sliced and diced a certain way. But you can take one video and you can do all of those different effects but for catered for that specific platform? Speaker 4: (22:07) No, I agree 100% I think it totally depends because you know obviously you have one minute videos on Instagram and TechTalk and then you have TV and then you also have you know YouTube which can go as long as you want it to go. But even on YouTube, I mean specifically YouTube is a platform that I really feel like is for somebody who is, they feel a little bit old for social media maybe, but they still want to tap into it. YouTube I feel like is still a great place to tap into the social media market and a place I think you still can grow. Like I said, tech talk as well. Obviously it’s a very young platform but YouTube I think because it’s the number two search engine behind Google. So when people are searching for things, they’re searching for expertise. How to YouTube is so popular and also too YouTube still rewards people who post consistently. Speaker 4: (22:56) So if you are posting consistently, you know, two videos a week is kind of the recommended. If you want to grow, you need to be posting two videos a week. You can still grow on YouTube. So I think you know, when you’re editing for YouTube, what I would recommend is three to eight minutes, maybe 10 at the max. There’s a creator named David doebrick and he does a ton of videos blogs and he is huge, but his videos are all very, very short. And I think what he’s done is just hack the algorithm as far as I’m going to put up videos that are short, people are going to watch the full thing. I’m going to be rewarded on YouTube behind the scenes because it’s going to show that my watch time is a hundred percent right. And then they’re just going to roll onto my next video. So you could be creating a three part video, you know where it’s two minute, two minute, two minute, and they’re just rolling one video to the next. And YouTube is seeing, Oh my gosh, they put up three videos and they have a hundred percent watch time on all of them. Speaker 5: (23:50) Yeah. We just actually went on, we went on my YouTube analytics, which that wasn’t around like you know, several years ago when I started, but YouTube has built this back end page for creators to really see how their videos are performing on various levels from at what point do people click out of your video, a specific video they left at this marker and I look at that and like, yeah, I started going off on a tangent there. I mean they really do help you refine and kind of figure out what that perfect video is for your audience on the platform. But something that I saw recently was the people that are coming to my YouTube channel, the number one place that they’re coming from is Google. They are actually finding my content and discovering me from Google now Instagram and miscellaneous is what they call it, which is usually social media. Speaker 5: (24:39) That was like number six or seven and I push a lot of my content on Instagram and drive it to YouTube a lot thinking that that’s where I’m getting a lot of that attraction. But the truth is, is when you upload a video on YouTube from your title to the description, you treat that as if it’s a blog post, because those key words are going to be transferred and related onto the Google platform for SEO. And so when you create a content, a video like for me how to do makeup for beginners, there’s actually a site that I use. I go on trends.google.com I can specifically search what people are looking for on YouTube. I type in the keyword makeup and I can now see across the world people are Googling makeup for beginners. So all of a sudden I just got a really great video idea. Speaker 5: (25:28) I’ve been doing this for the past year, working closely with the trends as well as the content I want to create, but I package it in a very SEO friendly way and I have seen incredible results and it’s no wonder why number one is coming from this outside world and they’re now discovering who says on is and now they’re following my Instagram and they’re following our podcast, but they came from Google, which is an unknown platform for us that we don’t always tap into, but this new audience is now coming from YouTube. So YouTube, like Stevie said, is definitely powerful. Speaker 4: (26:03) Well also too, don’t be afraid, and this is a big thing that we’re still trying to learn how to get over. Don’t be afraid to repackage content because just like she said, beginner makeup on YouTube, it has been at the top of the trend search. It just sits there. It stays there, but it stays there. All of your videos have performed super well and you’re like, should I do another beginner’s makeup? The answer is yes, because guess what? You’re getting a ton of views on it. Speaker 5: (26:31) People want to learn on YouTube, they want how to, yes, Speaker 4: (26:34) easy makeup, beginner’s makeup, simple glam, like just continue to do some of that content that does super well, that evergreen stuff. Just repackage it, retool it a little bit and represent it in a different way. And don’t be scared to do that. Be thinking I have to come up with something super unique every time when if it’s working for you and the algorithm is rewarding you for it. I would say keep going with it. Speaker 2: (26:58) Yeah, and I think that’s an interesting thing about Google and search engine optimization in general is it’s like what usually performs well is the really simple concept. The really simple question. It’s like what you were saying earlier, Stevie about it’s the thing that everybody is searching for and it’s like, it’s not rocket science stuff. It’s like the common everyday person. So I want to talk about hashtags for a second because I never have really understood hashtags. And then I accidentally said this to somebody a couple of days ago and I was like, actually I think maybe that’s it, but I don’t know cause I don’t, I don’t actually follow them closely enough. As I said, hashtags are to social media. What key words are to search engine optimization. Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with that? And then just like how in the heck do we use hashtags? Like without Ben an hours and hours? Like figuring them out? Speaker 5: (27:56) Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, yeah, like you said, hashtags are the key words I think on every platform. You know YouTube, they call it something different like alternate tags. But YouTube has a tic talk has it, Instagram has it and it’s a great way to get your content exposed to a particular audience. It’s more niche. So you have to be kind of specific and selective with your hashtags. I’ve learned that more is not more, in fact, you should just do less is more. But just be very specific with it. And also when you’re looking at the hashtags, see how that hashtag in itself is performing. So if I know that there’s a better hashtag I could be using, Speaker 2: (28:36) how do you know how it’s performing? Speaker 5: (28:38) So like for example on tick-tock, if me and Stevie did a video cooking and I’m beginning to type in the hashtag and I type in hashtag healthy when you click healthy it’s going to pop up immediately. It’s going to have a drop down box of all of the hashtags right now that are trending with the word healthy in it. And so some of them don’t make sense. Like let’s say it was like healthy body or let’s say it was like, and our specific thing was a recipe and it said like healthy dog, like that wouldn’t make sense but it’s healthy recipes is getting 250 million people under that hashtag. Then I’m like for sure let’s go with that one. So tick talk that’s, Speaker 2: (29:16) so this is just the search tool, like whatever the basic search tool is natively in the platform, type in whatever you kind of think and then just pay attention. It’s like typing into Google search bar, how it makes suggested like search terms based on volume, Speaker 4: (29:33) right? What I’ve heard with tech talk so far is that tech talk is a little bit different than Instagram to where if you hashtag your hashtags will directly Speaker 2: (29:42) put you into a pool, a select pool of say like 150 people, right? So you post a video, you have 10 followers on tech talk, right? You post a video. Well, I have 52 followers on [inaudible] and they’re Hendricks is our one of my tick-tock followers. So yeah, no, I, dude, Hey, when I said to you, I didn’t mean to you, I was talking to you, not you Speaker 4: (30:08) followers on tick-tock, right? And you have a hilarious video with your daughter. You’re not going to hashtag basketball, you’re going to hashtag daddy daughter another one that’s popular or maybe even a trending hashtag. There’s trending hashtags on tech talk that you can see. But basically maybe you could say cute girl or something or cute baby and you put that out there, right? And people that are interested in cute babies on tick tock, 150 of them are going to see it. And then if those 150 it performs well out of them, it’s going to send that to a larger pool. And if it performs there, it’ll send that to a larger pool. Speaker 5: (30:41) And it all depends on what that person was already interested in. So tick tock has, you know its own and Instagram had their own algorithms, like if my homepage is going to look different than yours on Instagram because maybe on mine I’ve just been engaging with tons of recipe accounts. So Instagram automatically is going to try to appeal those specific accounts to me and take talk is doing the same thing. So if you’re engaging in liking funny videos right now, they’re going to bring you more and put you in those specific pools. And then if you’re the creator, they see how well you do in that pool. And if you do well you go to a bigger pool and a bigger pool and a bigger pool. So the hashtags are actually very important. I wouldn’t overlook them. I would definitely utilize them for each platform. Speaker 4: (31:25) I want to go make a point, worry about kind of what we talked about on our podcast earlier with you about procrastination. I think a lot of people, they neglect social media. Just, it’s almost kind of like they procrastinate on social media. We all know that we could be using social media, whether you get a thousand followers or you get 10 million followers. I just told my parents, you know, they started their Instagram, I don’t know, six months ago and it’s been performing really, really well. They’re getting good engagement now and I told them years ago to start it Speaker 5: (31:53) and they have a flooring store. It’s a foreign store. Yeah, right, right Speaker 4: (31:56) there in round rock, Texas and they have a flooring store and they were like, we don’t need that. That’s, Oh yeah. And I said, you need to start one. I said, it’s important. Even if it doesn’t bring you new business, it can basically for you where people can go on your Instagram and go, wow, they have really good taste. Actually we want to work with them. And maybe they found you another way. I said, but it is such an important tool. So whether you have 500 or 5 million, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s so important to start, you know, the biggest advice we can give to people who are sitting here like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do all this and all these hashtags and all of this kind of stuff. Get content up. Don’t worry about how funny. I mean you would be surprised how many low, I would say more quality videos go viral than high quality videos. Speaker 4: (32:42) I mean, have you ever noticed how many terrible quality videos from webcams and stuff like that go viral? I mean it’s, it’s amazing. So I just want to encourage anyone out there who’s like, okay, I need to get on this social media thing. It’s almost like what you talked about with procrastination. That’s fear, right? That fear is actually the thing that keeps us from starting. And that’s the same for so many of us. And I’m, I’m even talking to myself because years ago when the algorithm for Instagram was favorable, when I had maybe a couple thousand followers, aye, you started posting a couple videos that Sal’s encouraged me to do. She was like, you need to post more funny videos. I posted these videos and one of them has like 500 comments. If I got 500 comments now and I have about 128,000 followers back then, I probably didn’t even have 10,000 if I get 500 comments down, I’m like, Oh my gosh, that was my best video ever. Speaker 4: (33:35) You see what I’m saying? And so the point I’m trying to make is that if I could go back to earlier, you are, the less good you have to be is kind of like what it feels like a hundred percent because the platform is so fresh. It’s so new. People are excited. They’re ready to just discover and be a part of it and they’re excited about that. Whereas now, you know with Instagram it’s like when Instagram started it was like beautiful coffee photos, photos of where I am. You know, full little photos and now it’s like what is that? Speaker 5: (34:05) Right? I think nowadays people are also really hard on themselves. Everybody thinks they need to figure out like their personal brand and aesthetic before they start in sign up on a social media platform. But the goal should be not that you have to know exactly what content you’re posting and how you’re going to do it, but the goal should be, I’m on social media and the purpose is because I need to connect with people. I need to grow an audience because I ultimately want to cater to that audience with this genius product that I want to develop or whatever. The goal is to get people connected to you, to get them in front of you and however you have to do that in the beginning, I guarantee you no matter what, that’s going to change and evolve as your audience grows and changes and evolves. Speaker 5: (34:51) So even if you think you have it all figured out and you start out and you’re like, I’m just going to do this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, I’m putting out this content that no matter what, I’ll tell you right now, social media, every day it grows and it changes and you got to kind of jump with the next wave. Not to let that scare you, but for that to encourage you that you don’t need to have all the answers, whether you’re an expert or not at social media, you just need to be on it and you need to be present and your goal should be, I just need an audience to connect with because then I can actually sell to them. Ultimately, whatever it is you’re trying to package and sell. So that’s the thing with social media that’s different than a lot of other traditional things where yeah, you could do a speaking engagement, you could go do something, a keynote somewhere, and now you’re on a stage, hundreds of people listening to you. Speaker 5: (35:39) But that’s a different audience. The social media world, their attention spans, they’re already doing a bunch of things. You just need to get them to do this. Like you need to get them to stop and just notice you however that needs to be. Let it be authentic to who you are. Don’t try to do comedy if that’s really not your thing, but just get their attention and once you get that attention going, man, then you can start getting more strategic as time goes on and really cater and package to them. You know, whatever you’re trying to sell. Speaker 2: (36:09) I love it. There’s so much here. I think it’s just awesome to kind of get behind the scenes of the way that y’all, you just even how you think about it and approach. It is so cool and insightful. I do have one more question for you before that. Where do you want people to go if they want to connect with the is, see how you do your thing and learn about your family. Of course, you know, says like Stevie, your videos are hilarious as you’ve got all sorts of lifestyle, makeup and fashion and you know stuff. Where would you point them? Speaker 5: (36:42) Well, we’re currently working on our joint website, which we’re really excited about. sun.com you know, we’re working on that, creating that Hendrix home online, but in the meantime you can obviously go to our Instagram pages. Like if you go to my Instagram at Suzanne, you’re going to see in my bio pretty much our whole life spilled out. In a nutshell, you’re going to see our podcast, you’re going to see a link to my YouTube channel. You’re going to see a link to his page on Instagram as well as our family page. So Instagram is probably a good place to start. And then we’ll let you kind of branch out depending on whatever you guys like to go listen to our podcast or go on my YouTube channel for tips and all of that. But Speaker 2: (37:18) I always call it tell people, I say, go to Suzanne’s Instagram, you’ll see everything there. Even me, I’ll be tagged in many ways. Speaker 5: (37:24) Yes. And then our, our newest platform that we just dipped into, which we’ve been talking a lot about is tick-tock. So if you want to check that out, that’s our joint page. We’re just doing one page and it’s been really fun. So that’s our family account at the Hendrix’s and you can check that out. But brace yourself cause this guy here does some hilarious, crazy videos. Speaker 2: (37:43) The best thing the has brought is a time to do. Speaker 5: (37:47) It’s in us. Yeah. Speaker 2: (37:49) So my last little question for you is just where do you see all this going? What are the trends you’re paying attention to? I mean obviously we’ve talked a lot about Tech-Talk that’s like our chance to get in right now while it’s still relatively early. But in general, are there any other like major trends you would highlight and you know, do you think social media is always going to be here? Do you think Facebook’s going to disappear one day? Do you think like it’s only going to be videos and images will disappear or like anything at all? Like just in your head space, like you guys are in this all the time. What are you thinking about and paying attention to related to the future of social media? Personally, I feel like just just as humans, I mean even in, you know, go back through the history, we’ve Speaker 4: (38:35) gone through so many ups and downs and so many different trends and styles and lifestyle types that I think that all things have a place and just in different time, you know, whereas images now are less sacred than they used to be. In my opinion. Images used to be so much more sacred, you know, powerful pictures. You know, you go on Instagram now and the beautiful thing about Instagram is that it empowered everyone to become their own photographer and to do their best and to put it out there for the world to see, which at the same time kind of devalued. You know what I mean? Truly beautiful pictures. Even though there are those that stand, I think in the upper echelon, you know, that’s really hard to reach. At the same time, we’ve been numb to that, you know? But I believe that at some point the beauty of photography and the appreciation for true great photography will come back. Speaker 4: (39:24) But I don’t know when. My thought right now though with TechTalk, you know, is that you’re connecting with a super young audience who is super fun and they want to laugh. You know what I mean? They want those quick, gratifying giggles, you know what I mean? And so what we’re doing is we’re jumping on the platform and we are riding that way. And you even said to me the other day, baby, you said, you know, this just makes me feel really young. And I think what people love about social media and like tech talk right now, is that everyone around the world has the same feeling about it without even talking to each other. There’s this buzz, there’s this fun, there’s this hype of like there’s a new platform. Everyone’s jumping on. We’re figuring it out. There’s this buzz around it right now, but I believe that social media in some way will always continue because of the connectivity to that brings the world. Speaker 5: (40:15) Yeah. We’ve seen that during this time right now with the Corona and the crisis, you know, social media is the one place that’s bringing people together. In a sense it has become home for a lot of people who weren’t even active on social media prior to this crisis. But people are looking for connection and now is the time to really rise and to use your voice and your platforms in any way that you can. And like with anything in life, you don’t know what the future holds. You only know who holds the future. And I just believe that social media is a space where I feel like God has allowed us to not only share our life and the beautiful photos that we take of our daughter and our of our content, but it’s also been a stage for us where we can actually share our voice. Speaker 5: (41:05) And I don’t think social media is going to ever just disappear. It’s going to continue to grow and evolve, but so are we as humans. And I think we’re going to be able to handle that change when it comes. So I’m excited for the future of social media, but I’m also excited for our future to not only be on rented real estate, Rory as you’ve trained us and to actually build the Stevens is on home that we are right now virtually and to actually bring our online into this virtual home and we’re doing it alongside brand builders group, which has been awesome and we just can’t wait to see what that future holds. Speaker 4: (41:42) One quick point babe, that I do want to say is that we have seen this on Instagram, right? It’s the only thing you can really compare to tech talk the audience and what they want will mature. So right now it’s super young, super funny, super goofy, right? Instagram is not what it was before. So what people want and what they’re looking for will mature. Just like the age, the average age of a tech talker, right? Say if it’s like 19 years old, five years from now, their desires at 25 year old is looking for is different than a 19 year old what they’re looking for. So if you’re somebody who’s like, I’m too old for this. If you gather 15,000 followers and you have a thousand followers that are super loyal to you in five years from now, they’re going to be 25 30 years old, what are they going to be looking for that you can provide them at that time? And so that’s why it’s important. Speaker 2: (42:36) I love that. Well you guys, you are so awesome. As I say, it’s like I feel honored to work with you and to be your friends and to be a part of what you guys are doing. I think God has a huge plan for your life and already making such an impact. And I love how you’re using these tools to bring the good life, which is the name of the podcast and you know, to people and, and really use it for encouragement and stuff. And so anyways, we just want to encourage you and thank you and we wish you all the best. Speaker 5: (43:05) Thanks Rory. Tell AIG we said hi. Speaker 2: (43:09) That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the influential personal brand podcast. But here’s some great news, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us. And other new potential listeners to find. Our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected]. We will give you free lifetime access to 25 of our most popular interviews on video in your own private members only area. Speaker 4: (43:49) So go right now, rate us, review us, and then send a screenshot of it into [email protected] and we will get you set up with free lifetime access to our most popular video interviews all in one place. Also, please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. And until next time, remember that building a business isn’t nearly as valuable as building a reputation

Ep 71: Putting the ‘Real’ Back into Reality TV with Mike Johnson | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06) Welcome to this special reality TV recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast that was different. A reality TV star, mega star, Mike Johnson from the Bachelorette and I, I mean, I, I’ll say this, I want to get his insights on what he had to share, but you know, he came to one of our events here not that long ago and people were freaking out, freaking out, snapping pictures with him, interrupting the conversation, strangers, not even part of our group party walking up and been like, can we take a picture? AJV: (00:48) All, all the ladies. RV: (00:49) But Mike is such a really great guy and he’s super likable. Obviously he’s done really, really well on the show. And I don’t know, it was interesting to hear about reality TV as a part of building your personal brand. AJV: (01:02) Yeah, it was fascinating. And I would say that I would love to say that, Oh, we were, you know, super fans and I was a fan girl, but I don’t watch reality TV, so I didn’t have a lot of context for why exactly does America love him so much? But he’s a super, super lovable guy. I think you guys will see a lot of why he was so popular on the show by listening to the interview by itself. But yeah, this is not new. But I feel like one of the biggest messages that he shared, which is something you’re going to hear from so many people that we interview, it’s just be yourself. He said, be your authentic self. And he goes, I think one of the reasons that I was really likable on the show is I was being myself and he goes, I was just keeping it real. AJV: (01:52) Like I was wearing my doo rag when it was time to wear my do rag and I’m a nice guy. So I was a nice guy on the show and I just, I think all of that is something that we hear all the time about how do you actually be yourself and in his unique case when there’s 20 cameras around, how do you keep it real? Like how do you actually be yourself? And I think to me, I really related to it in terms of how we are on social media, right? So many people use way too many filters. Like I see some of my girlfriends post pictures and I’m like, wait, is that them? I can’t tell because there’s so many filters, they’re almost unrecognizable and there’s this whole concept of be you, but yet not quite the real you be you, but a little bit altered a little bit. This don’t be afraid to be too vulnerable. We don’t want to come across as weak, but you know, you want to make sure you’re fun and you’re lively and engaging and it’s like, well, sometimes it’s just not you. So how do you really be you? And I thought he gave some really great insights and feedback on how to do that in a very intense, a really intense session in terms of doing it for live TV. RV: (03:08) Yeah, for sure. Well, and even just the hearing, the selection process of, of how they grab people for the show, right? So there’s all of these, these different rounds I guess, of, of editing or selection that they go through. And I think, you know, they’re looking for characters, like they’re looking for characters because they know that, that that strong characters, strong personalities create great TV. And I think that translates specifically to personal brands is like you, you have to be a strong character. You have to be like this amplified version of, of who you are. Or it’s just, it’s not really amplified. It’s, it’s more of like uninhibited or accessible or exposed. And I think, well authentic is a word you would use, you would be able to use for it. But Mike, Mike is acting as if no camera is there. And so he is being his personality as if no camera is there. RV: (04:13) Allowing people to see, okay, as a personal brand who’s presenting on camera, you have to get comfortable with the camera being there. Like you have to be comfortable being yourself, even though there is a camera. I remember one of my speaking mentor saying, you can’t be great on stage until you’re comfortable on stage because you’re going to be so consumed with being awkward and nervous and uncomfortable that you can’t even focus on connecting to the audience. You can’t even deliver a message or instruction or inspiration because you’re not being yourself. You’re consumed with this awkwardness and you know, so, so being able to be that person in your own skin and being okay with people seeing like the full heightened version of you, even when you’re making out with somebody. I mean that’s, that’s very extreme, but I think that that is, is part of the lesson is just being comfortable with, AJV: (05:06) Yeah, and I think like too that, that’s such a great point because I was, I’m laughing inside because we have so many clients in the brand builders community who are camera shy. I mean, they are incredible business people. They’re super successful entrepreneurs. They’re authors, they’re, amazing content creators. They’ve done incredible things. But yet the camera goes on and it’s like [inaudible] crickets. It’s like, hello, are you there? Okay. Hello? Is it still you? And it’s just like this weird thing where as soon as the camera comes on, they’re like too professional or they try to be too perfectionist and they try to write out a script for what they’re going to say on camera. And then, Oh, I messed up a word, got to do it again. And it’s like, y’all, you gotta be able to turn the camera on, makeup on, off in your case cloth, done cloth on, done AJV: (06:02) Off on. AJV: (06:04) But it’s like you gotta be able to turn on the camera and just go, no script, no planning. And in many cases, no being dressed up, no makeup, if that’s kind of how you now have your super glam and that’s your brand, then do your thing, girl or man, either way. But I just to that point, it just kind of like was laughing inside because you do have to be comfortable on camera, especially in today’s age to have a successful personal brand. But yet, I know that some of you who are going to listen to this podcast, if we were to turn a camera on you right now and go, all right, say your piece. You’d be like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Give me a minute, let me write something down. Let me make an outline. And it’s like, no, speak your truth and do it regardless. Right. To turn the camera on and go. And I think that to me in my opinion anyways, being on reality TV, Shirley is, I’m sort of training for that. But even Mike told us, he goes, Oh my gosh, I’m so nervous on this podcast interview. AJV: (07:09) Yeah, that was funny cause he wasn’t, he’s not used to being on podcasts, but here he is on TV. No, no problem. So it’s a different medium. I think it’s just, you know, the first time you do a podcast, even if you’re a professional speaker, like you get a little nervous, you know, the first time you do a speech on stage, you get a little nervous. Right? Or, or even if you’ve been a speaker, you stand in front of a, an a camera and you do like a TV shoot or you know, like a movie shoot or commercial something. It’s different in different set or shown up. I remember the first time I did a live news, you’ve done this the morning like the morning shows. It is, it isn’t. It’s a different environment and you have to just be able to trust that you as you are is good enough and to just sit and allow people to experience who you are and be okay if they like you be okay if they don’t like you, but the, the best experience for them and for you is to just allow them to have access into it, into who you are and to not have to pretend and not, I’d have to fake and not have to try and cheat. RV: (08:15) And I think Mike wasn’t trying to steal attention from the camera. He was just being himself and. RV: (08:22) said, which I really love. He’s like, I wasn’t trying to win a game. I wasn’t ready to win a game. And I think that is really insightful too for a lot of reality TV. It’s like, yeah, maybe some people are getting on there too. Get married and fall in love. But I think we all know that somewhat unlikely in many cases, but he wasn’t trying to win a game. He was just like, man, I’m just on there to see where the journey takes me. I wasn’t trying to get on there too to when I was trying to get on there to follow the journey. And I thought that too was really interesting. And then just his in general. But I also think what is really fascinating about this too is how one thing can completely catapult you into another thing. And he went from being a financial advisor, a very successful one, which people probably don’t know about to being on the bachelor and then the bachelor in paradise to now he’s getting ready to do all different types of things that I don’t think we’re able to share, but really cool and amazing things because of that. AJV: (09:23) So it’s, it’s that leverage and that platform that it gives you. And you can get a platform in a lot of different ways and clearly being on TV and reality TV is definitely going to help you increase that platform, which could help you do X, Y, and Z. So what are you doing to build your platform? It just happened to be that reality TV. Was his, his catapult vision RV: (09:48) [Inaudible] certainly a word catapult data pulls you in. That’s definitely a word. I like it. Well, and I, yeah, reach, I mean there’s that reach and I would say it’s easy to kind of judge people, right? And go, Oh, reality TV or Hey, you just want to be famous or whatever. But look, reputation formula, this is textbook brand builders one-on-one reputation is relation is your rep. Your results times your reach equals your reputation. So reach is a huge part of this. Like if you want to change the world, like you got to know, people got to know about you. You got to do something to increase your reach. You don’t have to go on the bachelor or the bachelorette like, but you, you, you could you just, but you, you do need to be mindful of reach. You can’t, you can’t be, I think in one part of your brain going, Oh, you know, you’re a fame monger and that’s bad. And then the other part of your brain going, who I, I want to reach more people and be successful. Until you reconcile that, like you’re going to sell self-sabotage because you’re not really believing in just going, it’s not about fame. It’s not about any of that stuff. It’s just about reach and making a difference in getting in front of more people. So I thought it was a really sweet interview. He’s a sweet guy, very lovable. Not, not at all, you know, fake or anything. He’s just really awesome. AJV: (11:11) Really down to earth. Check it out. You’ll like it. AJV: (11:14) You don’t get a chance to hear from the bachelor and then a bachelor in paradise on any other day. All right. Thanks for being here. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 70: Putting the ‘Real’ Back into Reality TV with Mike Johnson

RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Well, if you’re like me, reality TV is a little bit of a black box. You wonder sometimes how does it work and what does it take to be on the show. And, and you know what goes on behind the scenes and we’re so excited to introduce to you a friend of ours, a new friend of ours, one of our brand Mueller’s group clients, Mike Johnson, who you may recognize from the 2019 the 15th season of the bachelorette and also bachelor in paradise. He is super popular on the show. America’s sweetheart with the big smile, which you may not know about Mike, is that he is a former air force vet, he has a sister who’s in the service, has been to 30 countries and is really building out his personal brand in a variety of different ways. One of the things that we’ve had lots of chats with him is about this direction he’s working on related to intimacy and self love and relationships. And so we’ve been working on some of that, but we thought it would be fun for you to hear from a real life reality TV star about how the heck it happened and, and what does it mean and what does it take. So anyways, Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you guys for having me. It’s so weird when someone says a reality TV star. RV: (02:19) Yeah, I remember I was at that event with you for Elizabeth from our team and it was like, man, we couldn’t even have a conversation as fan girls fanning on you like crazy. And I’m just sitting there like, don’t mind me. I’m, I’m just here to carry Mike’s bags. I’m here to, to fold his socks and, and do whatever he needs. AJV: (02:40) How so? We want to like help everyone get to know you a little bit pre reality TV. So what, what on God’s green earth, possessed you from going from the air force to this financial world that you were living in? You were on this fast tracked career path going, you know what? I think I’m gonna be a reality TV star. I think I’m going to put myself on the bachelor. How does that happen? MJ: (03:08) Well, you know, they say success is never a straight line. It’s a bunch of squiggly lines all over the place. Right. That’s definitely the truth with me as well. Never did I ever think in a million years. I would be on reality TV. Never care to do it, quite honestly. And that’s no disrespect to the ones that do care to do that. Mmm. I just had some pretty good friends in my life that thought I would be a good candidate for it. And they, one lady, she said I would be the bachelor one day, even before I even watched the show. And then a friend of mine after me bloviating to him about how much I wanted to be in a relationship and get married after him laughing. He said, Hey, you should try out for this show. And I was off work one day and well, it’s like, why not? RV: (03:53) So, so, so what, so what happened? Did you see an ad? Did you go Google it or like, like what, what does that mean? Like how do you try out for the show even? MJ: (04:03) It’s like well some of my castmates from Hannah Brown season of the bachelorette, they were handpicked, you know, they live in like certain Chicago, LA, New York, Miami, taboo areas, me down here in San Antonio. We don’t get those opportunities. But they’re still blessings all around it. The way I did it was a friend of mine, he just DMD me on Facebook, a casting call link. Then I was off work. And so that’s the only reason I did it. And as a financial advisor, I got to wear a suit cause I’m, you want me to have mindset? Hey wears a suit and no one else was in a suit that day. AJV: (04:44) Stuck out, MJ: (04:45) Stuck out. I even got on the news that day. It was kind of funny. RV: (04:48) So you went to a live in person casting call and you’re standing in line with what, a hundred couple hundred people MJ: (04:55) About? I’ll say about probably eight to 1000 people. Whoa. I would say 10% were guys. So I could have found out like that day to be off. And I was just myself. I had how to win friends and influence people. I have that book of me cause I thought it would be a really long line. So I was just reading my book in my suit and making people laugh and being joking and talking to people, making people smile. They liked me. I don’t know how I’d be a, I was so comfortable. It was, it’s kinda when I tell people how comfortable I was and just being authentically myself and just not caring, but just being myself. That really resonated with the casting directors after that. And so I did altogether, it was probably seven months of interviews, personal interviews, to been flying me to LA to me going down to Dallas, which is a big hub for, that’s the hub for Texas. You know, the phone calls, background checks, everything. It was like I have a top secret security clearance. It was like that all over again. AJV: (06:11) Just making sure you weren’t a stalker. MJ: (06:13) Very true. Very true. Not a stalker. AJV: (06:16) Well that’s crazy. So then you get on the show. So what do people need to know about what it’s really like on the show? MJ: (06:26) Well, long hours. Oh gosh. Such long hours. People would think so. I think it’s a, it’s like a hundred hours of filming for an episode. Wow. Two hour, a 90 minute episode with commercials. Right. So there’s so much filming. You’re up all hours of the night. And so for those that watched it, again, I was pretty authentic. I mean, I was wearing my doo rag on this show because I felt that if we weren’t reality TV, it should be reality. There was no need for me to, AJV: (06:59) Hmm, MJ: (07:00) Look perfect for the camera. I felt that nothing, that’s why the audience resonated with me so much because I was just who I am. The same person, whether it’s on TV or not. MJ: (07:10) Okay. My mom heard me curse for the first time. That wasn’t, sorry mom. Sorry about that. Sorry. I was definitely a embarrassed about that at first. But then the beautiful thing about the show is that it helps break you out of that shell from, for me, I don’t want to speak to no one else. I have subgroups of friends and like I have my extremely professional group. I have my extremely my day one friends that may not be as successful as I am now. And I’ve in the past acted different towards each group. They’re still a part of who I am. But when you’re on TV, you’re gonna, they’re going to see all of who you are authentically. Right. And people that have had a bad experience on TV or a good experience on TV, I think it boils down to that person hasn’t been able to see themselves fully. And so when you’re on reality TV and they’re doing so many, so much filming and so many different scenarios, they produce your way, produce your way. Your natural reaction is how you are truthfully. AJV: (08:16) Okay. MJ: (08:16) Right. And so when people say they didn’t have a good experience, I think that they just haven’t seen themselves before in different situations. AJV: (08:23) Do you think it’s hard to be authentic on reality TV? MJ: (08:28) I think when you realize and understand that people like you more for being yourself because what you’re actually doing is helping them grow. I think once you’ve realized that, it becomes quite honestly easy. I literally forgot cameras were around me. AJV: (08:48) How is that even possible? Yeah, MJ: (08:50) I know, right? It’s like I’m kissing a girl right here on my couch and there’s like 20 right there, fill me guys that I just forgot there was cameras. I was just, one of my goals for this decade is to be in the moment, no be present. Focusing exactly on what’s happening right then and there and that’s what I did on the show. And by doing those things, you, you embrace it so much more, you feel it so much more. And that’s, that’s my advice for how to forget that there’s cameras around. RV: (09:18) So how do you balance the, like I’m, I’m trying to win a show with, I’m also trying to be myself and like, you know, this need to, you know, kind of edit your behavior too to make good TV or whatever. Like how do you reconcile all that or do you really just not pay attention to it and just do what you would do if nobody was there? MJ: (09:39) Good question, Rory. I honestly feel that I had an advantage because I never really watched this show. And so I was not scared at all. And to me it wasn’t about winning. This is a show about love. And I took it as we’re dating each other seriously. You know, and let’s say that I don’t want to use AJ for example, but let’s say there was a young lady that we found each other attractive. I’m not sure. Speaker 5: (10:05) Yeah, don’t use AJ positive tape. You’re outta here outta here. Vaden, out of here. MJ: (10:17) So not if there was a young lady that I found attractive, just because we find each other drag, it doesn’t mean that we’re compatible. And just because she’s in a position of power, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a say so on who my heart desires. Right. And so that’s how it took the show. It wasn’t about winning. He was all about finding a connection. And I think that’s what propelled me to being one of America’s sweethearts from that season. RV: (10:44) And you think you can find real love on a, on a, you know, manufactured show in a manufactured environment with, you know, handpicked people. MJ: (10:53) I think it’s hard. But I think dating in 2020 is hard in and of itself. I think that, well, I know for a fact I’ve met a few of the couples that are now married from the show and I’ve spoken to others that are, are married from the show as well. I’ve been married for years and so I think one of the biggest things when it comes to being on a show that’s about love is having the real conversations. Like, okay, you live in Kentucky, I live in Texas. How are we going to make this one right? Or you’re a dentist and you have a very successful career in Kentucky. I’m a financial advisor and LA, no, what are we going to do? And it’s comes to having effective communication and learning how to compromise. You know, when it comes to, when it comes to love, it’s the same thing to me as being out in the real world. The only difference would be I get to see who you kiss. That’s not me. When if I was dating a in the real world, she may go on dates with other individuals. AJV: (11:56) I just don’t have to see that. And that is such a good parallel that I have honestly never thought about until this moment and a confession. I have never watched the bachelor or the bachelorette, so I’m kind of a novice in this world and so when all these people were fan girling you, I was like, I guess it’s that popular show I all my friends are like, are you kidding me? It’s so popular. But like the way that you just described that as like match.com E harmony, Bumble, Tinder all got together, had a baby and then put it on reality TV. And it really is the reality of how baiting is today in terms of, yeah, I’m going to check out all these people profiles. I’m going to see what they’re like. I’m going to look at their picture, I’m going to chat them up, I’m going to meet with them. I’m going to meet with 20 of them. I’m going to narrow it down to the three I like the most and I’m going to do it on all these different sites. I was gonna say, the only difference is that producers are the ones putting the collection together, curses the whole app. It’s a really interesting parallel that I’ve never thought about before. RV: (13:01) The other thing that’s hitting me too is like you go, well reality TV isn’t real. Those are totally fake. But you go, well no, that is exactly how it is in real life. You’re all fake. Like you all pretend on your first date, you all put on a show, you all put on a performance and it’s really like, I think that’s going to be such a beautiful part of your story is as, as we build out, like can see your personal brand unfold of like, that’s what intimacy is all about is getting beyond the camera, getting beyond the fakeness, beyond the pretense. Pretend and just AJV: (13:36) being you’re awesome self RV: (13:36) Being a real connection. Yeah. AJV: (13:38) Okay. So all right, so I know everyone who watches the bachelor, other than me apparently, already knows who you are. So what has it been like after the show? So what have been some of the, the huge benefits of how this is propelled your notoriety and your online influence? I mean, you’ve got a huge social following. You’re doing all this cool stuff, you’ve got all these brand deals. So clearly there’s been some good, even though you didn’t in front of your mother, cussed in front of your mom. Well I would imagine she’s also probably never seen you make out with girls before. But I would imagine that is equal to the benefits. There’s plenty of pitfalls. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us about that post show. What’s it been like? MJ: (14:29) Post show is crazy because you have, you know, if you, if people like you, whether they like you for whatever reason, good or bad and they like you and they follow you on your social platforms. You now art influence area and AJV: (14:47) Yeah, MJ: (14:47) But that’s what it is. And so I have everyone from RV: (14:51) Middle-Schoolers to MJ: (14:53) Senior citizens following me on my social platforms. And one of the pitfalls is that I think lady Gaga said it best and she said it’s so succinct. Fame is fame could be perceived as prison because for example, we’re in self quarantined time right now. This is real world real time right now. And I had some friends less than 10 cause that’s in Texas. That’s the rule at my home. I was helping a small local businessman and we were doing all the proper precautions. But I had people saying a bunch of negative things towards me saying that I’m not being safe, I’m not quarantining, I’m being such a bad example. And I wanted to say one, I have less than two people, 10 people in my home, don’t you think I care about my safety? And then too, people always will have something to say no matter what the case is. MJ: (15:44) No people told me to not get more tattoos and I should no get tattoo removal. But I’m being praised and I’m an inc magazine, the only bachelor to ever be an inc magazine. And so I look at it as being authentically true to you. It’s just amazing. I can connect with them people on such a deeper level. People, the beautiful thing of being on reality TV is that whether you did good or bad, people resonate with you more and people appreciate you for being you. People are appreciating me for telling my struggle. My ex and I had a miscarriage. People appreciate it. Hey, the male side of that, right? People appreciate the fact that I will say exactly how I feel and not care and people appreciate. The bad side of that is that certain people feel that I should watch my words, certain people feel that I should, should not do certain things. MJ: (16:45) But then if I fall to that, I’m not being authentic to myself no longer. And so for the longest time post show, it’s been about trying to have a balancing act, right? What I’ve learned and what my mom has always told me and what our moms have always told all of us, it’s just, you know, be yourself just to be yourself. And I think that’s the most beautiful thing that is, I’ve already known, but it’s truly hit home post show. Cause I, at the end of the day, I’m a beautiful human being and I can’t help everyone, but those that I can help, I want to help them even more. So I think that’s what it is. AJV: (17:20) So it’s interesting because yeah, I remember as a kid, my mom’s saying, be yourself and I’m sure you’re, I mean I tell my sons that it’s like, I want you to be yourself and we’ve got this little mantra right now. My oldest just turned three and he’s into this word weird. And so every day I help him say, I weird, I weird, weird daddy. Mommy, you’re weird. I’m like, yeah, weird. So it’s like got this mantra, I weird. But I would love to know like what’s one tip that you would say like how do you be you like how do you be yourself, RV: (17:58) particularly when you have the [inaudible] yeah, like because you have the pressure of a camera and you have the pressure of the world watching. Like when you’re most, you’re most incentivized to do something that’s not you to be like a polished version of yourself. Like even post show, just people are now watching because they’re watching you, they’re following on social media. AJV: (18:19) How do you do it? MJ: (18:21) I think it’s even bigger post show because during the show you can’t see the comments, right? Post shows. When you see the comments, that’s when people respond to you. And I think to answer your question it’s like one of my models or it’s not my model. I’ve stolen, I mean it’s been said hundreds of times before, but the thing that gives you the most butterflies do that. And so what has always given me the butterflies post show was just, I used to get so nervous and try to Polish myself and I would get so many butterflies, but the way an antidote to those butterflies, it’s just again, embracing your uniqueness and knowing that you’re not going to be able to make every single individual fall in love with you. But the individuals that do fall in love with you are true fans of yours because of how authentic you are. MJ: (19:12) It’s just like a dating. I can’t make a hundred girls like me, but for the 20 that like me, for me, those 20 will really, really ride with me and that’s what most important is. And I can pick a one out of that 20 because if I like the rock, he’s the most famous person on all social media, not just to include Instagram, but Facebook, all different forms. He curses, he’s really big in the gym. He is, he focuses on embracing the pain, being authentic. And so I think that to be succinct when we can be introspective and do exactly what we feel, but of course being a good human being, that’s how you win. That’s how you connect with people and that’s how you can propel your career. Whether you’re like me, a reality TV star or like my former self, a financial advisor or someone that is a wife or husband. MJ: (20:09) Like yesterday, for example, I did an IgE lie and one of my insecurities as I’m growing aging man at 32 years old, my hairline is starting to go back and a lot of my fans are 21 right? And so I’m thinking, man, there I’m competing with like a 22 year old guy, 21 year old guy. Well, in all actuality, my fans like me because the strength that I have and so I make fun of it. The my, my love language in one way is just to laugh, right? And smile. And so I was, I went like this on camera. I said, Hey, does anyone know about some, some medicine that I can use or some nutrients I can use to help me with my, my insecurity of losing my hairline. Right? And someone said Biosyn. And so I think that’s what makes people resonate with you so much more. AJV: (20:57) Okay. No, I think that’s, that’s so good. And it’s so true to this whole concept of building your personal brand. RV: (21:05) Yeah. And the intimacy in the honor, I think just the honesty with yourself. I mean, if you’re building any personal brand, you know, being honest about who you are and what you’re truly passionate about, people see that and they are attracted to it or they see you being fake and they’re repelled from it. So. Mmm. Well, one last question before we let you go though. Mike, where should people go if they want to connect with you and kind of follow your journey and then kind of see what’s, what, see what’s going to happen from here. MJ: (21:33) Absolutely. Mike Johnson, one underscore that’s going to be on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook. I dunno how people find me, but just Mike Johnson, I don’t know how they find it. And my johnson.com is coming soon. What domain you’re, you AJV: (21:52) We can’t wait to continue to watch you on your brand journey. We have some insider info on all of the amazing stuff that’s in store for you. We’re not going to share your secrets. Everyone’s going to have to stay tuned. Follow Mike, stay in touch with us and we’ll see you again on the influential personal brand podcast. MJ: (22:11) Awesome. Awesome. Last time, last words, I would just say, make sure we all keep our mental health up and make each other laugh during these quarantine times.

Ep 67: Gratitude with John O’Leary | Recap Episode

AJV: (00:00) Welcome friend to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Man, did we need to hear from John O’Leary right now! AJV: (00:10) Seriously. He’s so awesome. He’s just the best guy. AJV: (00:15) I mean his attitude, his mindset if you haven’t listened to the purpose. So yeah, I mean his story is incredible. We’ve been friends for years. One of the most successful speakers in the world, truly. And just an amazing guy, but to hear, to hear his story, you know, it’s like you can’t, we were talking to him about how he’s built his career and everything, but you can’t, his career is built on gratitude and love. Like his secret is not some business process or something. And that, that was my first big takeaway and I had never heard him say this, but he said, you know, there is an ROI on love. And when he was telling the story about loving on the AV guys that are like backstage at a keynote that you know, nobody talks to and if they do talk to them, it’s like, Hey, get this done for me or get this put in. AJV: (01:02) Or, you know, why doesn’t this work or whatever. And having those guys refer him, I just like that is the epitome of him. And I just thought that was a good reminder for all of us. Especially now when things are difficult and things are hard. Like you’re never too busy to love on people. You’re never, you’re never too broke to love on people. You’re never too important to love on people. And the world is starving for that right now. And I teared up in the interview like I, I just needed it so badly. He’s so amazing. AJV: (01:35) And you’re a big seller AJV: (01:36) And I am a softie. It’s true. It’s true. AJV: (01:39) We might take on John like outside of the interview is that anyone who can capture the heart of a three-year-old as an inspirational speaker has got my vote. Our child, our oldest child, Jasper talks about John O’Leary. Every day and I don’t mean some days, every single day he said, daddy friend, mr John, I want to watch the video daddy’s friend, mr John. And I just, to me there’s something about like what is it about him that has captured this curiosity in even a three year old and there is this uniqueness about John, I really do help you watch the interview. But actually it’s very rare that I take notes but I have a lot of notes. It’s very rare. But there were just like so many good one liners and nuggets and just like you said, it’s really an era of needing messages like this. And this is kind of in line with what you just said. It wasn’t my first point. My points are kind of out of order cause I had so many. But I loved this and he said there is no such thing as a little job. AJV: (02:49) And I love that and I, you know, it’s like we very much have the attitude, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO, the business owner, the entrepreneur, you are also the trash taker, the cleaner, the window washer. It’s like at one point do you think that you have elevated among the above the jobs that need to be done? And I just really believe that a servant’s heart and a true leader never rises above that. If there is trash on the floor, you pick it up, right. If there is something that needs to be cleaned, you do it. There is never this concept of rising above. And I loved it. He talked about this story about Lavelle, the janitor, janitor, the janitor in his hospital room when he was in the hospital bed for six months after he had this horrific accident. Yeah, truly fighting for his life. AJV: (03:39) And he said, he said, I believe that Lavelle saved my life many times because I was so succeptible to the tiny viruses. A little cold or anything could have been what ended his life. And he said, but because Lavelle was in there cleaning his room and making it sanitary every day, that was a part of what saved his life. AJV: (03:58) There’s no little jobs. AJV: (04:01) I’m just even reading this and it’s like I’m going to have to like hold the tears back because he said that today in the midst of covert 19 he said there is never been a greater reminder in our country of how every job matters. AJV: (04:16) Yes, like the grocery store when he said delivery truck AJV: (04:22) Tricity internet. I mean imagine if we didn’t have internet right now, like that AJV: (04:28) Be a big deal. It would be interesting. That would be a big deal. Or just people who are willing to get up and go to the grocery stores and keep those open and people who are willing to get up and put their lives at risk to keep a coffee shop open or the restaurants open. AJV: (04:43) The nurses right to, Oh my gosh, of course the doctors, gosh, our first responders and all the people who you know, you just never realize like what I mean how critical that just delivering, getting mail delivered is like keeping the country running. Being able to get things at your house. The person who picks up a side job running to the grocery store to grab groceries that an elderly person can get groceries delivered to their house. Amazing. AJV: (05:11) So many things. I just love that in the midst of this and then just also talking about that story of lavel just putting a name and a face to, it’s like some people may see it as a janitor. He said, no, this man kept me alive. It’s just such a powerful perspective. AJV: (05:30) That’s powerful. Yeah. And you know, kind of playing off of what you just said, I think when he was actually telling the story of how they got started and, and you know when he went out and started speaking and it was totally by accident and then you know, he ended up going, okay, this ha, this is our full time thing. We have to make it work and we have to do whatever it takes. And I feel like you and I have been there in our relationship, like with our business where it’s like both, both times. Yeah. We didn’t have a choice. Like we had to make it, we had to make it work and okay, AJV: (06:03) But we did have a choice. We chose to make it work. AJV: (06:06) Yeah, well we, we chose to do whatever it took to make it work. Like you always have a choice. You can take, you can take a safer route. But to that point of like there’s no small jobs. I remember a couple of weeks ago this is a little sort of side note, but Mmm, there, there was chaos in our house and there’s chaos every once in a while cause we have two little kids and everything. And I was overwhelmed and I just scooted out of the room like, and I just went upstairs and, and then later that morning AJ was like, I could tell she was upset and not upset, but just like she was quiet and I was, you know, she kind of brought up like, Hey, you bailed on me. And I felt so bad in that moment because it’s like you have to be willing to dig the ditches. AJV: (06:56) Like you got to do the work of digging the ditches and whether it’s your spouse or your business partner or the people next to you, everybody has to be willing to dig the ditches together. And I think, you know, people use that analogy like who you’re going to be in the foxhole with and a fight, which I think is, you know, inspiring and if you’re a war person or whatever, but the reality is for most of us, the daily life isn’t a foxhole. It’s not a matter of life and death, but it is a matter of digging ditches. It’s a matter of who’s doing the work and are you staying in the fight? Are you staying in the battle? And Mmm, just doing the work it takes to make it work. And so I took that. That was one of my big takeaways was when he was talking about doing whatever it takes to make it work, which also ties to what you were saying about there is no small job. Yeah, you got to hang in there and you gotta you gotta dig the ditches AJV: (07:46) And just appreciate like I don’t rise above the small jobs like yeah, I just, I love that. So yeah, so I guess that would be my first point. I will, I’ll claim that as my first point. My second point, which I think is kind of connected to that a little bit, but I just thought it was worthwhile sharing is don’t be so had to read this so I get it right. Don’t be so arrogant to think you should get paid in year one. AJV: (08:12) Wow. AJV: (08:13) I was like, I am right. Because I think so many people are like, what should I charge? What should I charge? And like part of like what we do at Brand Builders Group is helping people set their pricing schedules and their fee schedules. And it’s a really hard sketch. A hard question. But I love to, the attitude of like, if you really went back and you said, okay, well how did we get started and what did we do? It’s like, okay, well we spoke a lot for free. AJV: (08:37) Yep. AJV: (08:38) I lot like, I mean for eight years I was still speaking for free. Like I was still getting paid to speak, but I was still speaking for free. And it’s like, remember AJV: (08:46) Still speak for free at certain events, like still to this day, AJV: (08:50) But it’s like really before your speaking career took off, you know, I was like, you spoke over 300 times for free. And it’s like that very first year that we really launched our first business. You know, I spoke something like 220 times for free that year. AJV: (09:04) Can we tell him how much you made? The first year we had this, this is, this is not in Brand Builders Group. You’re making even less than brand builders group AJV: (09:15) [Inaudible] everyone gets paid before. AJV: (09:16) Yes. but in our first, our first year in business, you made like in our first business, 30, 20, 40,000, 24,000, $24,500 rolling in it. That, and then, you know, by the end of our, I mean, okay, a few years later they were making that every month. And then, you know, a few years later you’re making that more like every week. AJV: (09:36) Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s really is amazing and I think that’s, you know, not to like broadcast, you know, what we make or anything. But in year one I was making $24,500 of speaking for free. AJV: (09:49) A ton, AJV: (09:49) Like every day. But then it was by year 10 you know? Yeah. I mean it was more like I was making that a week. I was making it that a week AJV: (09:58) And to put things back in context. Okay. So brand builders, we’re now about a couple of years into the business. So year one you made AJV: (10:07) $600 I think it was technically, I think I made 13 AJV: (10:11) Oh yeah, for delivery work. Cause you assisted on some delivery work but AJ is the CEO of brand builders group and she gets paid last. She only gets paid if there’s anything like leftover and it’s been AJV: (10:23) Virtually zero now for virtually zero other than the delivery work. Yeah, I do. Some clients do some of that, but I just, I thought that was so important and I guess it hit me because we get asked that so much and I think 12 years later into our professional lives and personal lives, it’s we forget that the reality is, is when we started speaking, we didn’t charge. We said yes to everything and that’s so much of what John was saying. He said, my business group has, has said yes. I just said yes. He said we were yes, led and mission driven. And he said, and don’t be so arrogant to think that you should get paid the first time you do it or the first year because we did it for years. We still do it like, like we are, you know, after the sell of an eight fair bit, eight figure business and all the stuff that we’ve done, it’s like we still don’t get paid and we’re digging, AJV: (11:19) We’re digging ditches right now. We’re, we’re brand builders. Even though the, you know, the clients are doing well and our T, you know, like we’ve been able to get our team up to good levels of pay. AJV: (11:28) But there’s just, I just loved what he said. There’s like this, this attitude of people get entitled. I was like, I deserve to make this money. My time is worth this says you says who? And I just loved his attitude of like, don’t be so arrogant doing that work. Yeah. I love that. I just thought it was such a good reminder of when you’re asking yourself, what should I get paid and what should I charge? Maybe the question is like, well, just how many times can I do this before someone says, can I pay you? AJV: (12:00) Great. Gosh, that’s such a, such a great reminder. Yeah. It’s again, just so powerful to hear this inspiration and, and here’s the thing. You may be there right now, right? Like, maybe you were a speaker or you were an employee or you were someone making a lot of money and all of a sudden, boom, covid hits, you know, some crazy things happens in China with a bat. And here we go. Like all of us have to just do whatever it takes and you rebuild by serving, figure out a new problem and start serving it and start solving it and start helping and don’t be above it. And then the money always follows, like the money will come back around. Mmm. Way more important than the money. And this is what he’s all about. And this was my third takeaway was just being reminded of how much life is a miracle. Yeah. Towards the end. And he was just talking about you know, like one and there’s like a one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is of your, of your DNA coming together the way that it is. AJV: (12:59) And just like the fact that you’re here and, and then talking to somebody like John who’s so grateful for everything and go, go, you know what? Imagine if you didn’t have your hands right, like imagine if you didn’t have your hands or if you didn’t have your eyesight or if you didn’t have, like there’s so many people that are, you know, living with a lot of fear right now because their immune system is really weak and just really dangerous time for the vast majority of, of us. And, and perhaps you, we have so much to be grateful for. It’s, it’s so beautiful that we’re even here. We you know, as, as crazy as the current situation is of the quarantined world. It’s also pretty incredible how we’re able to connect and do business virtually and have our basic needs met and food delivered to our house. AJV: (13:50) And there’s, if this was, if there was ever a time in history to have this, it would be right now, like this has to have been the easiest time, the most medically advanced to ever have something like this. And it’s all about that perspective. I remember seeing something on Instagram about Covid where it said your grandparents were called to war. You’re being called to sit on the couch. You can do this. I posted, that’s right. I saw it somewhere and I’m always sealing AJ’s lines and but it’s true, but it’s true. You know, like we’re, we’re alive. We’re here and just don’t forget the miracle of, of that. The miracle of life. There’s so much to be to be grateful for. AJV: (14:32) Yeah, mine is probably my third point is similar to that and I think it was, it was probably towards the last half of the interview when we were talking to John about just how has this affected your business? What’s your attitude? What’s the plan on the go forward? And I just, I love that he said, I’m just so grateful for the season and I think it’s really hard for a lot of us to admit that openly because there are so many people who are struggling. There are so many people who’ve lost their businesses, they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their lives, they’ve lost family members. You know, you’ve, you will look at New York and you’re going like, how can I publicly say I am grateful for this season when people are every single day on the front lines risking their lives, people are dying, people like they are suffering. AJV: (15:17) And at the same token, there is this amazing privilege that has been given to so many of us to be at home. To refocus and reprioritize. And I, I really honed in on what he said and he kind of like took this and two parts in the beginning he said, you know, in year one I speaking my speaking career started because our little girl scout asked me to speak at her girl scout troop and then a parent in the audience was a part of the rotary club. And then some was there was a part of Kawanna. So his first year he spoke three times all for free year two, he spoke eight times, all for all for free. Year three though, he started charging and making money. He spoke 60 times. But yeah, 14 years later he has spoken more than 2000 times to millions of people. AJV: (16:07) And many different continents. And he said, he said over the last, you know, two months, he goes, I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve been able to tuck my kids into bed. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve gotten to make them lunch. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 day, you know, and he’s kind of goes on and on and you’re like, it’s interesting because the first half of our interview is very much about how did you get your speaking career started and what you can expect. And it’s like, it goes from girl Scouts to like literally millions of people being impacted by John’s story on multiple continents in 2000 times. And, but yet, but the the amazing part of this interview is like, I’m so grateful for the things that I never knew I was missing. Like being home for 41 days. AJV: (16:57) And you also, in the context, if y’all don’t understand, like for John, somebody who’s primarily a keynote speaker and their primary revenue, like the keynote speaking business, he’s gone all the time. But this pandemic is impacting speakers radically. I mean, our entire keynote business is basically on the course of three weeks. Over the course of three weeks. Lost every event. Yeah. You know, indefinitely disappeared. You know, some of them will come back at some point maybe, but it’s okay. AJV: (17:28) But for him to, to have that attitude, it’s not like he just has it all hunky Dory right now. Like it’s entire business bookings for the rest of this year AJV: (17:40) Just went out the door. AJV: (17:42) They’re like, this isn’t like, Oh, it’s this one thing. It’s like, no, that’s his entire business went poof. And yet he is still choosing to be grateful, AJV: (17:50) Choosing to consciously be thankful for the things you do have versus unconsciously complaining about the things that you don’t, or being entitled and thinking that you’re above facing the challenges that are in front of you and. AJV: (18:04) Or that you’ve somehow earned or deserved to not have to deal with difficulty. RV: (18:09) Or to not that you’re above, above the work. Just really, really great, great reminders. Loved it, man. We needed this. And go listen to it. There’s a good chance you need it. Even if you don’t need it, you need it. Go listen to John O’Leary and be grateful. Know that your work matters. There is no job too small. There’s, there’s no audience to serve. That’s too small. There’s no message that’s too small. The work is important. The world needs you. Go find them now. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 66: Gratitude with John O’Leary

Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible] RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Hey, you’re about to meet one of my very dear friends and a man that I absolutely love. His name is John O’Leary, and he’s also one of the busiest professional speakers you know, in the world today. Although the world of professional speaking is changing dynamically, which we’ll talk some about, but if you don’t know John, he was in a very serious explosion with a five gallon gas tank when he was nine years old and he was burned on a hundred percent of his body. Over 80% of those burns were third degree. And now he is one of the most booked inspirational keynote speakers in the world. He’s the bestselling author of a book called on fire, seven choices to ignite a radically inspired life. He has a new book that is called in awe, which is a followup to that. And we just were sitting around chatting and it was like, man, we gotta get you back on the show to some talk, some shop and talk through a building a keynote business. So John, welcome to the influential personal brand. JO: (02:11) Rory Vaden. Thanks for being my friend. And on most podcasts when I hit record, we started going right away. You and I had 49 minutes before we hit record just to talk. So we really are friends first and foremost. But I’m glad to be on the podcast. RV: (02:26) Yeah, well that that is for sure. And you know this, cause I sent you the video that Jasper has been learning all about fire and every night he’s like I watched John, I watched John and so your, your, your story’s inspiring. Even to our little three year old man and just helping him, you know, learn about fire and gratitude and all that. So I, you know, I love you man. JO: (02:49) Well I love him. He’s a cute little guy and I think you learn about fire, you learn me something, you stay away from when you’re a kid, but as you get older you got to figure out how to harness fire. And that’s what I’m excited about talking with you during this podcast. Like how do you go from being repulsed by something or being driven by fear to being inspired and motivated to do something bigger in your life. And that’s everyone of your listeners. That’s what they’re striving to do in their own words. RV: (03:18) Yeah. Well, and so tell me about your, tell me about the, your, your keynote career. Like how did you go from, okay, so this burns happens when you’re a kid and a lot of people that are listening, you know, they, they, they want, you know, that that’s part of what they aspire to is go and, Hey, I want to stand on stages and, and inspire people. And so you’re, you’re one of those stories that just, you have an incredible story and You know, tell us how did you kind of move officially into professional speaking JO: (03:54) Haltingly awkwardly and painstakingly slowly. So that’s the truth. And I think it’s most of our truth for those of us who had at some point or another, made it in front of the stadiums and the auditoriums and the Rotarian clubs. It takes a while to elevate from where you are to where you want to go next. But what you need to know is it’s possible. It is absolutely utterly possible. There’s been many who’ve done it. So the best way to achieve success is to follow those who’ve done it before you. And for me, Rory, I got burned at age nine. The great goal of my life was not to be an international speaker, but to be ordinary. So my desire from age nine until about 28 was to fit in, which meant at age 11 I was playing soccer at age 16 I was trying to find a six pack of beer to split it with my friends. JO: (04:44) I was trying to be funny, I was trying to be cool. I was trying to fit in like everybody else, which meant also I was trying to be who I really wasn’t. And I did that for the majority of my young life. And then at age 28 a third grade girl scout asked, mr John. That’s me. If I would speak to her troop and man I, I’d never spoken before publicly, I had never told anybody how I got burned. I had no idea how to string a couple of sentences together or how to build a database of potential clients. This was not the goal, but in life, when an opportunity knocks, I’ve always said yes, whatever that thing is. Even if it’s helping a friend move on a weekend, my answer is yes. I just try to live in yes. And so I said yes to this little girl. I planned this talk for probably, I’m not exaggerating, 40 hours to deliver a talk to three third grade girl Scouts. JO: (05:40) And when I delivered, I bet you will be so underwhelmed by this. I looked down at several note cards. I never looked up and that’s my first talk. One of the fathers in the room was a Rotarian. He asked if I would speak to his group and I said yes. And then one of the members from that group was a Kiwanis club. So in year one I spoke a grand total of three times was not even paid with a box of Samoa. So I got no cash. You know. You did get some MOAs or no, I got nothing. No Do-sey Doe’s no Thin Mints, nothing. I got maybe a free lunch at a rotary club and then year two happened. I spoken maybe eight times, Nope, no cash, maybe a gift card to a shell gas station when I was still open. And then year three, it started to become a business. JO: (06:29) It always had been mission led. It had always been yes, led, but it all of a sudden began to take on the underpinnings of an actual business. I hired my first employee, I borrowed against our home actually to pay her salary. And this woman named Deanna and I started building this thing up from the ground floor and we delivered 60 keynotes in year three in the 14 years that have followed. I’ve spoken two thousand times, 50 States, a couple dozen countries, a couple of million people live. And a couple of cool things have grown out of that. But it has been a wild whirlwind of just saying yes to the next audience in front of you and showing up with everything that we had to inspire the people in the room, not to realize how great I am. Cause there’ll be bored by that, that message, but by how great they are. JO: (07:20) So how did you go and I wanna I want to talk about covert and how that’s affected your business and the like what your mindset is going in into some of this and a little bit but, but I mean to go from eight to 60, that’s a lot in that was really like your first year going after this. So, so what did you guys do then and how much were you charging and like how did that, like that, that, that, that was a real business, which you took a real risk. You took the loan, you got a heat lock. It sounds like you got all he lock and started the business. A hired your first person. Was she just out there emailing people and calling them or what was happening? Yes, to both. So I brought her on after already probably booked about 20 that year, add about averaging $1,500 a keynote or something like that. JO: (08:16) And so there was a little bit of cash coming in the door, but she was asking for more than I’d booked in the entire year. And by the way, I’m married, I have a mortgage, I have one child and another one on the way. And so this is not like, well, it was my part time gig and I was independently wealthy. Neither of those things were true. I had to make this thing work, which is also one of the reasons I think, in fact, it did work. We had to make a go of this thing. We better figure this thing out. And we were motivated not only to stay out of the broke house, but to keep people alive, keep people moving forward, make them recognize how beautiful their life is and their calling to do more for others. So we started off speaking for free. JO: (08:56) I’m begging you guys, if you’re just beginning and you’re just listening to Rory Vaden today for the first time and you’re thinking you want to deliver a message on a platform someday, don’t be so arrogant enough to think that you’re, you need to be paid right off the bat. There is a benefit to going into school houses and synagogues and churches and rotary clubs and serving. Many of these people that you serve on the front side will become your advocates downstream. And so even when we were just kind of showing up to love, I’d still walk out with everybody’s business card in the room and I would still Rory Vaden following your, your process man, I would still follow up with emails. We would still begin sending out a monthly at that time newsletter to encourage them to keep moving forward, but also to remind them that there’s a guy named John O’Leary who alive and well and ready to serve when they are ready. JO: (09:40) So even in the early stages of this business, when there was not a business model, so to speak, there was the beginning of a database, there was the beginning of a followup and there was the beginning of a long term dream of what it could look like. RV: (09:54) And, and, and is that, I mean, over the next 14 years, has that changed much? I mean does it basically just the same thing, build a database, go out and speak, contact people get like what? How has that change and were there any big breaks? Like were there any big moments where you said, Oh, when this happened. That really catapulted my career. RV: (10:16) So it’s a great question because you live this every day, your life. What I’ve always found at least in the first 15 years maybe I’ll find something very different than the next 15 is that the idea of big breaks is, is sometimes exaggerated. I’ll book a huge event in front of tens and tens of thousands of people and the right people in that room thinking now I’ve made it and the following day I wake up and I’m really not that changed. I’ll book a huge huge radio show or television show or podcast boom baby now we got it. I’ll create a book that is worthy enough to be a New York times bestseller, becomes a number one New York times bestseller and still I haven’t made it. And so you have a beautiful quote about when the rent is due. It’s like it’s due everyday man, get up and pay it again cause it is due every single day. We’ve had a lot of breaks but but none of them that have actually made us overnight successes. What have made us in quotes, overnight successes is showing up and going to work the following day. JO: (11:18) And so some of the things that have grown in the last 1415 years is the database. When you collect information over the course of years, we now have a couple of hundred thousand people that we we’ll get to love on every single week. Another thing that has happened is we started getting into social media. So now we have I think 300,000 or so followers online and then you ask yourself, well how can I serve them better? What if they had a really cool life giving book? And so I wrote a book called on fire. It became a number one national bestseller. It’s still selling now four years after it’s released at a high level because it’s about reminding people not only that they matter, but here are the next steps that you can take to impact. Even more lives through yours. After that release, we said, how do you touch more lives? JO: (12:02) We created the live inspire podcast. Rory Vaden has been a guest on this thing. We have a hundred thousand plus listeners every single month that checked out the millions of downloads. Now 2 million over 2 million downloads of a million downloads, and it’s awesome. It’s a cool way to get in front of people, not only the mass audiences, but it allows you to reconnect with a guy like Rory Vaden or a guy like John Gordon or a lady like Renee Brown or you. You name the person and now you get to meet these people one-to-one here, their stories. But my kids and I, cool story. We were watching Apollo 13 and they wanted to know when the guy died. This guy played by Tom Hanks when he died at the movies in the sixties so when did he die? It turns out commander Jim Lavelle lives in Chicago. JO: (12:45) He’s 94 years old. He’s been married for 70 years. He’s the world’s greatest failure just about everything he did in life. He failed except for the fact that he kept moving forward. And so he even failed to go into the moon except for the fact that they figured out how to Slingshot around the moon and come back safely. So one of the great stories I think of our society bringing this guy back with technology foreign figure to a cell phone and yet commander Jim Lavelle is alive and well in Chicago today through the efforts, not only of him and his two person crew, but through what we were doing in Houston. Yes, they had a problem with they redeem the problem. RV: (13:23) That’s amazing. That’s such a cool, that’s such a cool story. And I, I I mean one of the things that has always just blown me away, and this is, I guess part of what I would hope for people to capture from you is just like, you have such a genuine heart to serve. And we were, we were talking about some of the Covid stuff going on and how it’s affected your business and you were just, you were telling me that, you know, I don’t want to have the big high price thing because like my guy is the ups guy and the nurse and the teacher and the stay at home mom. Like your, your, your people are the people like just the, the, the people and how have you always had that heart to serve? Cause I have no doubt whatsoever that that is a huge reason why you have built such a successful keynote career. But I just, I guess I have a hard time understanding how do you go from almost dying just trying to just barely survive and just be normal yourself. Right. How do you go from that to where it’s like I can barely live. I don’t, you know, you lost, you know, a big portion of your hands. Right? And to, all I do in life is care about other people. Like that’s a big leap. JO: (14:39) So let me begin answer the question by starting with the end in mind. For the listeners that just want to grow their business. I can’t tell you how many speeches that have been referred to me through the AV guys. These are the folks who wear black shirts and black pants in the back of the room. That big time speakers like myself ignore because they’re unimportant. They’re only there to get the video up on the screen and the sound of the room, and besides that, they’re useless except for the fact I really love these guys. I like, I love them. And so I hang out with them. I’ll launch with them, I’ll hug them on the front side, hug them afterwards, thank them for their work. Stay in touch longterm, they refer me speeches because I don’t do this on purpose, but those guys then go on to the next venue the following day and if someone sinks, they’re like, by the way, you should meet a guy named John O’Leary. JO: (15:26) Mike, he’s so genuine. He blows away the audience. He gave me his card. In fact, I was texting them last time. Here’s this, here’s the number. And so we get, we get referrals all the time from AV guys. I received three referrals from guys driving town cars. These are the guys like why would you ever talk to a guy driving you, cause they’re completely unimportant except for the fact that I believe in the dignity of human life. And I see the guy in front of me having a far better story than the one I’m going to share from a stage later on. And so I’ve heard so many amazing stories, exchange cell phone numbers with these guys and then have been referred to future clients because of the chauffeur. And so is there an ROI in love? Yes. Okay. Yes. But your real question is why, why do you like people? JO: (16:10) Number one is I recognize that my life is a miracle and that’s not because I got burned and survived the unsurvivable, the likelihood of us being in the room, if you just look at the biology and we’ll have an after hours with Rory Vaden and chattel there if you want to get into the functioning of how we were reproduced into this position. But here’s, here’s the biology man. When you add up your mom and your dad and the likelihood of their DNA becoming one turn into Rory Vaden, the math is less than one in 400 trillion. So the very fact that Rory Vaden is in the room is one in 400 trillion just from mom and dad coming together. We were miracles and we get, we get bored by life and we act like COVID. 19 will be the end of us or recession’s going to break our back or losing a third of our portfolio has ruined what we wanted to do later on in life. JO: (17:01) And what I need you guys to do, listening, ladies listening, is to recognize that you’re made for so much more than this. Like you are a gift. You are miracle. You need to act like it. And once you can act like you can also recognize that the dignity of those around you. So Rory, I’m here because a whole lot of people showed up for me, but maybe the most important person in my story was the janitor. And this is the guy who came into my room as a kid when I was nine. He did his job, he did it for about minimum wage, and he did his job for the next five and a half months while I was treated in burn care. And if he had not done his job at a high level, there’s a high likelihood that I get some small little infection. JO: (17:43) COVID 19 as a reminder, it doesn’t need to be a missile that claims your life. It can be something you can barely see under a microscope that can claim your life. This guy’s job is to protect a little boy from that. His name was Lavelle. I believe he saved my life in the hospital. And I’ve never forgotten the fact that there’s no such thing as little jobs like that. They all matter and an epidemic. And now a pandemic like COVID 19 reminds us of the profound value of grocery store workers and truck drivers and nurses and custodians like their work matters. We just for too long have overlooked it. JO: (18:20) Wow. what a perspective. So, so what is going on with your business? How has [inaudible] affected you and what are you doing about it? And how are you thinking about it? Awesome. Gosh, there’s a lot of questions right there. So from a societal aspect, it’s breaking my heart because I recognize that people’s portfolios have been wiped out to a degree that many of us have become unemployed, that many of us have lost their lives and lost lost loved ones. And that help. The healthcare system itself is incredibly taxed during this time. So just as a citizen of the world I ache, I really hate it. It makes me sad thinking about it. But I also remember a conversation that I had with my grandfather, and this will get me emotional too, cause he’s my hero. My grandfather served in world war II. He was in the Navy for three years, came all married sweetheart, built an incredible life. JO: (19:19) And after September 11th we had lunch together on the 17th and I’m writing this story about this right now. So in September 17th grandpa and I met at a little pasta place down the street from his office. He’s near the end of his life. He’s certainly near the end of his working life. And I learned over lunch that he had just invested a large chunk of his savings into American airlines and United airlines, right as the market has come back online. And everyone who’s got any savvy at all knows what’s going to happen to the airlines after the bell rings and we get to sell or by no one’s going to be buying these two airlines. They’re the ones that collided into buildings and into th th th they’re gonna fall dramatically. And grandpa Bobby bought them heavily. So I say grandma, grandpa, I think he kind of made a mistake man. JO: (20:11) And he took a bite of his pasta then a sip of his tea in front of them and he said, John, do you know that they refer to our generation as the greatest generation? I just said, yeah, I’ve read that book Gramps. And he said, you know why? I’m like, tell me. He goes, it’s not because we survived the great depression and it’s not because we went off and we fought in world war II. And it’s not because we were the most productive group of all time for humanity. They built the nations. He’s like, let me tell you what it was. We never forgot the lessons that we learned along the way. And I think that’s really important to remember during this COVID 19 pandemic. What made the greatest generation, the greatest generation, I think back then and still today, is not what they did. JO: (20:53) It’s that they were made better because of what they endured. They were made better because of the depression. They were made better because of world war II. They were made better because of their great productivity. And so when this crisis happened on nine 11 six days later, when the markets reopened, he’d still remembered what his, what he’d lost, but also was taught during the depression, during the war and during the decades that followed. And so it’s why my grandfather, as a citizen was making an investment into organizations that he wanted to be around longterm. So what am I thinking about right now during COVID 19 I’m thinking about the lessons that I can learn right now that we can apply longterm. I don’t want to forget man, what I know to be true, Rory, this too shall pass. I don’t know if it’s next month or in 16 months, but sometime the pandemic passes, sometimes we’re back at work sometime the markets return and my, my great concern is we’re going to forget what we’re learning right now and I want to be like my grandpa. JO: (21:48) I want to be part of the next greatest generation that did not forget the lessons being taught during COVID 19 so what I’m remembering right now is I’ve had 41 dinners at home with my wife. That’s never happened since we’ve been married ever. Wow. 41 nights in a row, tucking my, my, my little girl, my three boys. And it never happened. Since I’ve been born, I’ve had 41 lunches. When you and I finished this podcast, I’m going to hang up race home and make them lunch again. 41 peanut butter jellies in a row, man, 42 tomorrow. But man, rather than cursing the fact that I can’t get on flights, personally, I’m extraordinarily grateful for this season because I know it will pass. I know it will pass. So that’s what I’m doing personally, professionally, I’m trying to pivot into the storm. I’m trying to raise the sail high and figure out what we can do digitally through the profound blessing, the technology to influence clients and influence last longterm starting today. And so this big ship of ours here at live inspired are pivoting into what we can become. And by the way, we would not have done this had everything in life gone perfectly the way we planned, but, but now we have this beautiful opportunity to become so much more significant and life giving than what we would’ve done if John O’Leary was on a plane today speaking to only a couple hundred or only a couple thousand. Now we believe we can influence millions of lives starting right now. Why wait? RV: (23:16) I love it man. I absolutely love it. Well John, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you more and just kind of follow your journey and see what you’re up to. Of course, in all that book, that book is out like you all. Can you, can he, you can just feel this man’s heart and it comes through in his writing and so excited for y’all to get your hands on this new book. But where else did you direct people, John to connect with you? JO: (23:43) So thank you for your compliment. Like it is all hard. I haven’t been through media training. I probably said the wrong thing all the time, but it is heartled man. So where they can go to learn more about the book and about who John is as good a readinawe.com. So that’s read in awe.com you’ll learn about the book, you’ll learn about John, you’ll have the links to social media and the podcast. But the reason really I’m driving folks there is when this whole thing broke out, we recognize that there would be some collateral damage. And last year, Rory, 1.5 million Americans attempted suicide. And this was one life was awesome. You got nothing to complain about, no pandemics, no reset, nothing man. One and a half million. So on the front side of this, our team got together and said, how do we invest in people? And so we built a 21 day campaign. So just love them and encourage them and to remind them that they’re not alone and that there is a next step. So there’s a cool 21 day challenge somewhere on that website. sign up for it. You’ll benefit from it. You’ll realize you’re not alone. And you’ll also realize your best days remain in front of you. RV: (24:54) Yeah. John, buddy, I just, I can’t thank you enough for your, your attitude and your mindset and your heart. I mean, I’m sitting here almost in tears myself, just like being encouraged, being reminded of the importance of gratitude and then also just experiencing you living it through your life and through your lens. It’s, it’s so impactful to me and to, to everybody. So thank you for what you’re doing. I hope you are relishing the time with the family and you know, the world is, the world is still very much, very much a need of John O’Leary. So I hope you keep, keep inspiring virtually and digitally through this time. And we just love you and we wish you the best. JO: (25:43) Let me say one thing, man. I twice now, the publisher of my books have sent me back the first edition with my picture on the front of it and what I’ve always sent back to them as a reminder, read the book and then redo the artwork of the, of the book because that’s not it. And so on the first one on fire, there’s mirrored letters of flames that if you look at it just right, you actually see your picture of Rory Vaden and whoever else is reading on fire. They’re going to see their little image in the letters. And if you read on in awe, there’s this big brilliant blue sky with clouds floating past with a red kite flying high, reminding us what it was like once when we were kids and how we can return to that to day to day. And so you said the world needs more John O’Leary? I don’t. Thank you. I think the world needs more people who are fully alive. And do your exhibit a of that. So Rory Vaden keeps shining the light, keep living it out. And thanks for being my friend. Of course, brother, much love God bless you. Feel likewise. God bless. See you buddy.