Ep 47: Expert Tips for Marketing, PR, and Personal Branding with Julie Solomon | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00)
Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Today we are breaking down the interview with our good friend Julie Solomon. This is the three and three AJ and Rory bringing you our three highlights and Babe, I’m going to let you lead us. Your leadoff batter today.
AJ: (00:16)
Yeah, well I think the first thing is what an amazing gift it is to be able to see a friend as well as a client actually live in their gift and Julie’s interview is such, her living into her gift, she is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to getting brand deals and just being proactive and knowing what to do. And I’m telling you what, if you haven’t listened to this interview and part of your income plan, your revenue plan is getting brand deals, listen to it. I get that as anywhere in the possibility of that something I’d like to be generating revenue from. Not just getting free stuff but making money. You have to listen to it. But I think all of that is to say one of the things that was really surprising to me in this interview and I didn’t expect for her to really talk about was the importance of confidence and how for a long time she didn’t have it because no one, Julie today, you wouldn’t think that she ever struggled, struggled with confidence.
AJ: (01:18)
And I love the context of what she talked about this. And I think this is really relevant for anyone who is out there trying to build a personal brand. Because at some point I know that you have asked yourself, should I really do this? Can I really do this? What are people gonna think? Or what if I tell people, and this just doesn’t go anywhere, or am I going to look too self-promotional? Or what if, what if? What if and I know that for many of you listening, that is the exact thing that is holding you back. It’s not your ability or capability. It’s nothing to do with that is your own mice mindset of can I, should I, what will people think if I do? And she really breaks that down and talked about how, you know, she was watching everyone else and there was this little voice inside that kept getting bigger and louder and bigger and louder.
AJ: (02:11)
And for years she ignored it and pushed it down. And then she talked about the, how she had a, a group of people who really loved where she was doing what she was doing for them and maybe didn’t want to see her explode out of that position and break out into her own. And I think confidence is so much of our own, our own mindset and our own belief, but then it’s also compounded by the people that we surround ourselves with. And so she spent like 10 minutes talking about this concept of confidence in a really unique way. And I just think that’s a, it’s a really unique thing to talk about when it comes to building your personal brand because you’re going to have to have, not a little confidence but a lot of confidence because there’s gonna be some naysayers and there’s gonna be some people who don’t want to see you succeed and who don’t agree with your message and you better have some confidence to back it all up.
RV: (03:03)
Yeah. Well, I, I thought that was powerful also. And like you said, it’s interesting to see our friend do that, who we know is this like, you know, amazing, confident person you know, proactively or practically one of my favorite tips was just if you’re pitching yourself for TV, do it on video and what a simple tip. But she, you know, really helped with that mindset of, of, of putting you in the frame of mind that a Booker or you know, like a producer is in and how they’re trying to think about shows and things that they’re putting together. And I also thought, you know, so, so that concept of just show people what you’re able to do. This was specifically for TV getting booked on television shows. That made a lot of sense. Like why wouldn’t you pitch in the format or the medium that you’re pitching for?
RV: (03:54)
I think you could also play that too if you were trying to pitch yourself for a podcast for like a major podcast production or a radio show, you should pitch in the medium that you’re, you know, you’re going for. So I thought that was super relevant. Relatedly. And this is something that we’ve found to be true for us as well, that it makes sense to start local before going national. You know, get those local television appearances cause they really need the content, particularly at the local level there. They’re trying to fill their calendar with meaningful stuff and you also don’t have to travel, which is really nice and you can do a lot of local gigs and almost become like a regular in your, on your local TV market and, and really build up the kind of real that you would need before you then go out and pitch to national.
AJ: (04:42)
Yeah. I think part of that is related to confidence in what Julie talked about is these people who are booking you, they need to have confidence that you are going to be good in this visual medium that you’re going to be showcased in, in this case that you’re referring to is TV. But it’s like they need to see that you’re not going to be stumbling, bumbling around and that you’re comfortable in front of TV. And she said even doing podcasts like this where it’s a visual medium and you’re having a conversation and you know, even if it is just like this or in the context of Rory interviewing Julie, she that that works. But people need to know and they need to have a confidence before they book you. And put you on there that they know what they’re going to expect.
RV: (05:21)
And I think so the second tip for me and for you was the same was around micro-influencers and I thought this, this was a healthy mindset shift.
AJ: (05:29)
Yeah. So I think that there was two big things that for me that were kind of like, huh, Oh yes. I’m talking about, and this is not the second or third time throughout the summit that I’ve heard people talk about the value of the micro influencer. And she talked about how there’s a huge misconception out there that you have to have hundreds of thousands of followers to get brand deals. And she goes, that’s just not,
RV: (05:51)
I mean I thought that I thought that
AJ: (05:53)
I was getting more money for brand deals and I had what, seven, 8,000 followers then my friends who had hundreds of thousands of followers and who were only getting free gifts versus actual paid money. And it all came down into positioning and messaging and audience awareness and how to pitch yourself and how to book yourself at this concept that there is a huge value in engagement more than followers. And she said for the micro influencer engagement has to be high. She goes, doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter about your follower counts. Sometimes it’s just how loyal and how engaged all the four are the followers that you have.
RV: (06:33)
Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this the other day that you know, you know, social media is so, it’s so like public or it’s like superficial. It’s what you see. The parallel for me is in golf they say you drive, you drive for show, but you putt for dough. Well your social media count is like a drive. It’s all for show. But I was thinking about somebody who has a 300,000 let’s say it says 300,000 followers. If they get a 1% you know like engagement rate, let’s say on 300,000 you’re talking about was the 10% would be 30,000 is that right? 10% would be 30,000 so 1% would be 3000 so would you rather be someone who had 5,000 people on your email list or 300,000 followers. And I think most people would say, Oh, I want $300,000 and I probably would too.
RV: (07:27)
Cause I think I could turn that into more email lists. But the reality of the actual reach there is about the same that maybe 10,000 people on email is, is worth having several hundred thousand followers on social because of the algorithms and what small percentage. And you know, what she was saying is your engagement rate when you’re a micro influencer is it’s easier to keep it high because you don’t have to have so many people engage with something as you have more and more followers. It’s like the content has to be so good that not just a small subset, but like a huge chunk of the audience has to really like it and engage. And so that’s just, again, to the perception of all of this is understanding, you know, I think the perception is really, really important. There’s value to perception, but also being able to appropriately to, to value the, the, like the monetary aspects of that and what’s that worth. And brands are intelligent, right? Like they know that and they know that somebody that, that gets, you know, a 10% engagement rate on a few thousand people is worth a lot and they know exactly who they’re seeing and they know exactly what type of people are seeing those. And you know, a lot of times too, you don’t have to pay as much for a micro-influencer as you do for a macro, you know, or a major influencer. So,
AJ: (08:48)
Or, it depends on how you pitch yourself according to Julie.
RV: (08:51)
Yeah. Well, I mean positioning, but positioning is always a part of it, but I think you, you have to go out and do the work and that, that’s probably to me, the third thing here is just her mindset.
AJ: (09:07)
Don’t sit back and wait. Yeah. She talked a lot about how all these people get all these followers and then they go, where’s my brand deal?
RV: (09:16)
Yeah. Where’s my money?
AJ: (09:17)
There’s like, I’ve done all this work. My job is to put out the content. My job has to get the followers. Why am I not getting this attention? Why am I getting these deals? Why am I not getting this? And the short answer is well, cause you’re not actually going out and asking for it. You’re actually, you’re not actually doing the work to go out and attract it and actually put your, literally put your content in front of them in a very direct way. And she talked about how on Facebook and Instagram, like DMS matter, she goes, DM these brands like actually get the conversation started there and then she talked about how on Twitter it’s more for media. She goes, if you’re really trying to get into media then be researching those media outlets on Twitter. But if you’re really trying to get in touch with brands, Facebook and Instagram as the way to go. And DMS is a really simple, easy way to start. No excuses, which I know is your big last thing is this concept around no excuses, but it’s not waiting around for people to come to you. It’s not this concept of build it. And they will come, no, build it. And then go invite them to come, go knock on the door and say, come tell them what you have inside, not build it. And they will come. That is not a real,
RV: (10:29)
It’s not a real business model. Yeah, you gotta be proactive. And that’s, I think that’s another misconception again, that I had, I just kind of think, Oh well, I’m sure all these people with millions of followers, like people just come to them and to have Julie go, no, you are proactive. You’re, you’re promoting your marketing, you’re your engaging, you’re networking, you’re reaching out to people and go, yeah, that’s the real, that’s the real work of getting a brand deal. And most people aren’t willing to do that work. And it’s like, it’s a classic example again of the real truth from behind the scenes being exposed from somebody who’s, who’s out there doing that. And I just, I love that about her. And I love her special snowflake syndrome. I just think that’s the coolest, I just think it is because, because we all think we’re special snowflakes, right?
RV: (11:19)
Like we all listened to it go, yeah, that doesn’t apply to me. Or yeah, I don’t need that, or I’m, I’m too smart for that, or I, I don’t need that really do that. It’s such a niche. Tiny audience on my end won’t work for my industry. Or the other thing is is is we kind of go, Oh well you don’t understand how hard I have it. You don’t understand like what I’m overcoming. You don’t understand that I have to deal with compliance or you don’t understand like in health care you can’t, you know, no one will just do this cause it’s healthcare. Or like there’s all this stupid stuff that we tell ourselves and it’s not that there aren’t certain kind of things that need to be navigated around, right? Like compliance for financial and the financial industry is a real thing. But it’s not the excuse to not do it at all.
RV: (12:07)
And what we do is we jump to, we take things that are our challenges and we turn them into excuses and we just go, Oh, because this is a challenge. Someone laid this down. I’m going to use that as my excuse to get out of it. And ultimately to be successful in anything like getting brand deals or building a personal brand or doing any, anything significant, you have to just move past the special snowflake syndrome and go, yeah, there’s nothing special about me. And there’s nothing special about the people who’ve been successful other than they didn’t buy into special snowflake syndrome and they worked, they did the research, they believed in themselves, they built a confidence, they made a presentation and they made it. They made it happen. And you know that, that that’s the secret. Like that’s the key. Like brand builders can teach you all the formulas and the frameworks and the structure and the order and the sequence and the logic. And you know, we have all these things get that can really help shortcut a path, but you still have to walk the path. And,
AJ: (13:08)
And I think just to like make it really clear, a special snowflake syndrome is actually give the definition that Julie gave.
RV: (13:16)
Giving yourself an excuse as to why your circumstances won’t allow you to achieve something you really want.
AJ: (13:22)
And I think we all battle that in some area of our life. It doesn’t matter if it’s building your personal brand or your finances or your fitness or your marriage, or friendships or family relationships, whatever. We all battle that in some arena. And what she is saying, well, that’s the thing that’s holding you back. And I love what you just said too. It’s don’t let the challenges you have become the excuses you make. Just because it’s a challenge doesn’t mean there’s not a way. Just don’t want to become an excuse.
RV: (13:53)
So listen to that. Julie was preaching it and she was doing fantastic job. So go listen to the words from her mouth. And thank you for staying. Stay in a part of what we’re doing. We’ll get to next time.
Ep 46: Expert Tips for Marketing, PR, and Personal Branding with Julie Solomon
RV: (00:01)
So Julie Solomon is my new next door neighbor, best friend or neighbor bestie, they just moved to Nashville recently and we got the chance to work together like six or seven months ago and got to know each other a little bit. And I just adore this woman and I adore her story and her heart, what you’re gonna hear all about. And she’s already never home in Nashville, so I don’t actually get to see her that much. Even then. Now she is here, but you know, the official, let me give you like the official so she’s a seven figure entrepreneur and she hosts a podcast called the Influencer Podcast, which is an incredible podcast. So she’s been an expert in marketing and PR and personal branding. You know, her whole career. She’s been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post people magazine, but her podcasts, literally has gotten millions of downloads. She has listeners in like 170 countries. And so over the years she’s worked on campaigns for people like Dave Ramsey or Lenny Kravitz. But in the last couple of years she’s gotten to interview, you know, Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, Rachel Hollis, people like that. And she’s just awesome. And I, I knew when we put this together, you had to, you had to get to meet her if you didn’t already know her. So, Julie, welcome, welcome to the show.
JS: (01:21)
Yes. And thank you so much for having me. You know I love any more soul of time that I get with you. So it’s amazing to be here.
RV: (01:29)
So tell us like your, tell us a little bit about your story, right? Like it seems like one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you is cause it seems like you sort of started behind the scenes promoting everybody else and then you stepped forward and became the personality. Is that an accurate
JS: (01:49)
Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. And I think that partly due to confidence and partly due to just knowledge and experience and then how, you know, how, how I saw that I could really show up and serve people I’m a two part in and why and why I was kind of behind the scenes and then went in front of the scenes. So I started well growing up I’ve always had a knack for connection and you know, loving to talk to people. I’m a very curious person. My mom was a medical sales rep growing up that, you know, so that, that knack for marketing and sales and just kind of doing that. I, I saw it, you know, around me. I came from a line of realtors, you know, so just that knack for really kind of being that being that people person being someone who wants to serve people kind of in that, in your face capacity. It was always around me growing up and majored in marketing and communications. Started my career in New York City as a publicist. So that was kind of, I remembered at one point in college, I was watching some kind of like red carpet, like Golden Globes or something. And I kept seeing these women in like black dresses with like little walkie talkie things behind the celebrities, like walking them around. And I was like, what is that? And I kind of looked into it and it was a publicist and I was like, I want to do
RV: (03:13)
Laura bodyguard. It couldn’t use the potty card, but you went to publicist route, route.
JS: (03:20)
And so I, you know, and I think at the time it was, it was a little bit of, I knew that I could probably do that very well. I, you know, I’m, from what I just said, I love people. I was always really good in terms of integrations. Really organized type A, did well in school, could stay on top of my stuff. And I think at the time I probably didn’t realize it, but I might’ve really wanted to tap into more of my visionary stuff, but I wasn’t confident enough to do that yet. So it was a lot easier just to kind of like sit back and in play that integrative role, which ended up serving me very, very well. And so women,
RV: (03:57)
Let me talk to you about, I want to stop you on that part because, cause I want to get into some of the tactics, particularly in publicity because the, that’s like I think something you’re really good at and always have been. But before that, tell me about the confidence issue because more and more as I have learned and gotten to meet entertainers and celebrities, you’re married to one a and an actor, a very successful actor. And it’s, it’s like the confidence really matters on camera and really believing it. And then also the confidence to just like start your own thing and go after it. So what, what was the point where you made the pivot from going, you know, I, I don’t have the confidence to, I’m ready to take the leap. So, so what was kind of going on in your head that was the limiting belief that was holding you back? That you kind of like something happened, he flipped the switch and you, you went for it. Do you remember much about that?
JS: (04:54)
Yeah, I just, somewhere along the way of growing up, I cultivated this belief system in me that as a woman, in order to be accepted, I needed to s to stay small and quiet and just cute and just kind of like stick to my little like box kind of thing. You know, it’s dream but not too big speak, but not too loud, you know, you don’t really want to be a big deal. And so I kind of allowed that to hold me back and you know, I would, I’ll, I’ll be a publicist for the people, but I’m going to stay right here. And so I would always kind of like dabble in this idea of wanting to all these kinds of creative endeavors, if you will. Always wanted to write a book, but I didn’t have the confidence to do it. So I became a book publicist, you know, I always wanted to have these creative endeavors that didn’t have the confidence to do it.
RV: (05:48)
It goes to the people, but you were never the person.
JS: (05:52)
Exactly. So it was kind of like in some way I was like feeding off of their energy, kind of felt like I was a part of the cool kids club, so to speak, but didn’t really have the confidence and the self and the I think the, not that necessarily the self awareness, but I think it’s, it was just purely the confidence to really step into that and say, I don’t have to believe that story anymore.
RV: (06:17)
Wow. And I, I mean, I know for sure you know, I still to this date have these moments where I really struggle with, I know for sure somebody is watching right now or they’re listening and they’re going, holy crap. Like that’s me. Like, I, I’ve wanted to pursue this dream. I know I have a mission I, you know, I feel called by God or I feel like this is why I’m here. But they don’t have the con like they’re up against that block and they’re, they’re probably watching or listening because they want to do it. And, and this helps them feel close to it, but making that leap. So what do you remember what happened that like, cause that’s a big time limiting belief. Oh does he know that you were carrying that? Like oh women are supposed to sort of play small. Were you, you were aware of that and then how did you break free of it?
JS: (07:05)
I mean I think that if I, to get really honest with myself, I do believe that there was something in here that was telling me like, cause I also at the same time I had this small voice inside me that was longing for more, that wanted to pursue more, that was curious about gangs. And it just kind of kept getting louder and louder and louder. But I also knew that by staying small and not really taking action on those things that I wanted to take action on, you know, I wasn’t being authentic. I wasn’t really living authentically. And so, you know, it’s kind of that idea of my beliefs became my thoughts like which became my feelings, which became my actions, which became my results. And so that’s just kind of what I allowed myself to stay in. And then it wasn’t until I mean it was a while.
JS: (07:50)
It was probably about almost seven or eight years into me doing PR. I had at that point had met Jonathan, had moved to Los Angeles and that, what was the other thing too? I think that at that time I was also surrounded by people, at least what I kind of look back on now, that they might have been a little afraid to kind of lose me in their life. And so they didn’t really want me to grow either. And, and I kind of allowed that to be like a really easy excuse for me not to grow as well. But once I met my husband to is so about just supporting my dreams and letting me go and, you know, having that path and holding space for that it was a multitude of things. I think it was I moved,
RV: (08:37)
He’s a good piece of arm candy too. It’s, it gives you confidence and they, when they land a good piece of arm candy,
JS: (08:43)
Yes. He’s not, he’s not too shabby to look to look at. And I, I got that zest in New York, you know, I was around so many different types of people and different types of industry and cultures and so I got this zest for it but didn’t really have the confidence to like drive it home myself. And once I moved to La and met John and we had gotten married and we were pregnant with our child that’s when it really started happening. I had been doing the PR thing for about seven or eight years at that point and I was just kind of getting to this really stagnant place. Like I was hitting that ceiling. I wasn’t inspired. I had, mind you my PR work, I got to do a lot of really awesome things. I got to work with a lot of incredible authors and thought leaders and we’re part of really amazing projects.
JS: (09:29)
So you know, my work there, I don’t want to kind of just shy it away because I did learn so much. I learned a lot about business, a lot about marketing, a lot about, you know, being an entrepreneur. But I would even see some of these people, even the, the old CEO of my publishing house was Michael Hyatt and he even left the company to then go off and do what he does now, which is this massive entrepreneurial company and machine. And so even watching people like him, I was like, man, like people do this and it works out. Like people really do follow that, you know, and really listen to that. So if they can, like, why can’t I? It’s kind of that idea of if you spot it, you got it. So so I started kind of again and it was slow because I had this limiting belief, took some time to kind of retrain.
JS: (10:17)
So I started kind of dipping my toes into blogging, which was kind of my side hustle at the time. And I started out as a lifestyle mommy blogger. I was writing content, I started to acquire brand deals. I started to really use my, my expertise and my technique of pitching to pitch myself for media, pitch myself for, you know, paid collaborations with companies and really use my expertise as a publicist to kind of help me along the way. But again, I found myself kind of hitting that ceiling of like, you know, lifestyle and fashion. Blogging really isn’t my passion either. I love to write, but fashion is not really a passion for me. Like I’m not as passionate about it as some of the other people that I see or talking about this or that or whatever. So I kind of got back to the roots of like, what my why was like, why do I want to do this?
JS: (11:09)
What, what problem do I really solve for people and how does that align with my why? And that’s when I kind of went back to the, to the, to the connection piece and the communication piece and the marketing and PR piece and tried to figure out ways to kind of merge those things together. And so I thought, well, maybe, maybe I’ll start blogging about marketing and PR and branding. And maybe help these bloggers and youtubers and content creators that are now my people years that I’ve met through this blogging space. And that’s what I started doing.
RV: (11:42)
One of the things that jumps out to me about that too is, is just like the people you were around had something to do with with it. And that is so true. It’s like you’re either around a group of people are holding you back or you’re around a group of people that are pushing you forward. And when we started brand builders group, you know, we were very clear on like, all right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna support people and help them, you know, get clear on their positioning and figure out what problem they solve and who their audiences and their primary business model. But the thing that’s come out of it, which we never really saw is the community of all the people that come to the events. And it’s just like this rabbit, like quick friendships that are developing. And it’s like, it has nothing to do with anything we’re doing other than just putting the people together.
RV: (12:31)
So I, I think that networking thing is, is powerful. So I want to talk about the publicity thing cause I don’t think people understand it and I don’t think I even, Eh, do a great job of it. But what is your mindset like you mentioned pitching and a that like when you think about publicity, like getting PR. So if somebody’s watching and they’re like, okay, well I want to watch the ban but I’ve never been on good morning America and I’ve never been featured in Huffington post and I’ve never been whatever. How do I do that? What is your like mindset and process just in terms of ground, how do you get PR who gets selected to be interviewed? You know, like what’s that all look like?
JS: (13:15)
Yeah, I mean I think the first step, and I think this goes with, with whenever you’re trying to cultivate any type of audience for what you do, you’ve got to know who you’re talking to. So that’s the first step. Because you want to make sure that you’re pitching the appropriate outlets for what you want to talk about. So a lot of it is research on the front end. Like if you, if you want an article in Forbes magazine or forbes.com or Huffpost, you first have to figure out what, what am I bringing to the table, what is the content that I’m going to be sharing and who does that content for? And then once you get clear on that step, the next step is, okay, now who is the editor or the freelancer or the writer who serves this content in this audience. And a lot of times you can find that through Google. You can find it through Twitter, you can find it through going to Huffington post or going to forbes.com and going through the articles and see who was the contributor for that piece. And you can reach out to them directly and say, Hey, I have this idea. This is who it’s for
RV: (14:15)
Through Twitter or Instagram or like
JS: (14:17)
Through linkedin. Yeah, I mean in this day and age, when I first started PR in 2007 there was no Twitter there. Facebook was kind of really early in its, in its beginning there was no Instagram. We literally had media databases. There was one called Cision that costs an arm and a leg that people had subscribed to for a year to get it. And then you might have gotten lucky if you, if you googled back then, but now in 2019 I mean honestly if someone comes to me and says like they can’t find a contact, I usually kind of think I have to call them, call them out on that excuse because we have more information available to us now than we ever have of, you know, it’s like sign up for the $20 a month on linkedin. Right. Like get the email, you know, it’s not that challenging of, of a, of a thing at this point to find a contact or to find someone who may know someone a little bit of work.
RV: (15:09)
Are you shy? You’re not in, you’re not shy about approaching. It was like if you’ve done, if you’ve done the research and you know that this media outlet produces this kind of media and this is the writer or the interviewer that covers segments just like this, and, and, and I can talk and provide value to that audience, then you just basically like straight up send him a linkedin message or a tweet or a DM and you tell them, I know you write on this. I know you serve this audience. That’s who I’m an expert in and here’s the content, you know, I’d love to like, is it that simple?
JS: (15:43)
It is that simple. And a lot of times you can actually take, if you’re someone who has a blog, for example, you can take a piece of content you’ve already written and repurpose it and send it to them. Say, yes, you know, I sent this out. We got a lot of feedback about my audience. It really served them in this way. These were the, you know, this is what we hit on. This is how it helped them. This was the call to action. Okay. And I think that it would fit your audience. This is why I already have it written. If you want to read it, let me know your thoughts. I’m happy to tweak it for you. Let me know. You know, if you need anything else or if I need to help you pull together something else to make it happen or responsive to this.
JS: (16:16)
Oh yeah, they’re responsive. I mean even the other day I there’s a company called create cultivate that have conferences all over the country that target my ideal audience, that target my ideal woman and I’ve been wanting to be a part of their conference for a while, kind of put it on the back burner, saw something that came up the other day and it reminded me and I literally found an email, sent it to them and said, you know, hey, I’m going to be in La for a couple of weeks. I would love to have coffee. And I also know that you have some conferences coming up. This is what I’ve been doing this year. These are the topics that I’ve been speaking on. I would love to come wrote me back the next day and said, we would love to have you at our San Francisco conference
RV: (16:53)
And this is just like send an email, lay it out and just,
JS: (16:58)
Yep. And you may, again, there is a little research on the front end. I don’t want it to sound like it’s just, you know, I mean, and I’m also going off of the basis that you are someone who actually has valuable content to share. Right? Well going off of the basis of that
RV: (17:11)
You have something worthwhile bring them. Yeah.
JS: (17:15)
Right, exactly. But it’s a lot of the times, again, it’s that fear of like, well what if no one gets back to me? What if I email the wrong person? What if I hear crickets on the other end? And that may happen and you know, you have to kind of go into it with, with, you know, for every 10 pitches you send out, you may get five that actually respond to you and then three out of the five that you actually land and hey, that’s three more that you would not have if you would have never reached out to begin with. And you can craft, I mean,
RV: (17:44)
We have a good ratio that’s not like, that’s not like you’re making a thousand calls and you’re going to sell one person. I mean
JS: (17:51)
Exactly. And it’s actually easier now more than ever because when I was doing meaty, yeah. You know, back then that that was before, you know, dotcoms had really blown up and there were more traditional editors that were on, you know, there were employees of the company, they were on staff there. They’re looking for contributors, they need the content. They don’t have a team and a staff of writers anymore. So they love it when you come and you hand them everything on a silver platter, you have it curated and you’ve done your homework. Like take a little time to read what these writers that you’re pitching to are editors that you’re pitching to have you actually written, give a little time and a little feedback to them so they know that you’re being serious about what you’re offering.
RV: (18:33)
Yeah. So I love this. Now I know I want to talk to you a little bit about like national TV cause that’s the thing like, oh my gosh, you know, like people think media and they go, good morning America, the today show. Yeah. Like, you know, is it, when is it realistic to do that? Like should you wait, should you just go for it? And you know, I know that you’ve, you know, you’ve, you’ve worked with people who are on those, you know, have been on those outlets and what does it really take to sort of catch the attention at that? Like huge, you know, major national scale,
JS: (19:09)
Right? Well there’s a couple of ways that you can go. But specifically for TV, there’s kind of a little niche here. Like there can be instances, again, depending on the climate, you know, of our culture. So if, let’s say if your, if your topic is politics and you’re coming out with something fall of 2020 during an election, you may have a better opportunity of getting a national television spot, depending on what that topic may be. So the seasonal approaches can change certain things with television, hot topics, folks can change certain things with television. But you know, traditionally speaking, if you’re someone that wants to hit a national television spot, nine times out of 10 a national television booker or producer is gonna want to see something from you that is on camera, right? Whether that’s, you know, a local television spot, you’ve done what they’re, that’s youtube interviews that you’ve been on, any kind of local media, they’re gonna want to see how you are and in your dynamic on camera if they’re going to potentially put you on camera.
JS: (20:11)
So the first thing that I would always tell clients of mine in the past is that sometimes you do have to start small to kind of build up your reel and build up your deck, go to your local television station and you know, pitch them, start small and kind of build it up. Reach out to dotcoms that have digital television shows or digital and interviews there, things like that. Anything, even something like this, you know, where they can just, they can see you on camera, they can see how you’re dynamics, they can see how, how you flow your dictation, all that kind of stuff that will go into effect. So that is the first key. Those are the kind of the two folds there. You could go off the bat and national media and see what happens depending on the topic and what not. Or what I always say is build up the deck and build up the real, and then you can have a real that you just send out and then they can see for themselves.
RV: (20:57)
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s the big thing that I learned. You know, I’ve, I’ve had a few major national appearances, not a ton, but I is remembering that TV is a visual medium and whatever you’re doing, the more you can make it visual and just if, even if that’s just you as an interviewer, ultimately to attract eyeballs, you have to do something that’s interesting visually. The other thing I remember is it goes by insanely fast, like a five minute segment feels in real life. Like 10 seconds. I mean, yes. So, so I think that’s great. All right, so I’m a little bit kind of, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.
JS: (21:36)
Is that, and no one ever really thinks of this. If you’re pitching yourself for TV, you can always do a pitch on video. So they see lar, we’ve actually had some pitches come through on video for us for the podcast, which was great because we got to hear the person auditorily. We got to really kind of hear their passion and how they were and how they really sounded. So video pitches can work really well as well.
RV: (22:03)
What a simple, yeah, what a simple thing. A, I love that. I love that. Okay. So I, I want to, I want to get to, you know, kind of also on the line of pitching his brand deals. Yeah. you know, this is a thing we have a saying around Bram Ram builders group where we say, you know, there’s a lot of people out there unfortunately who are Twitter rich and dollar broke. They have lots of followers and they don’t, but they’re not converting it to money. And it’s amazing. You know, we’d meet these people with a million followers and like they have no income coming in and you know, we teach all these different business models and you know, as you, as you know, you’ve been through our training and we try to help people figure out one. But when it comes to brand deals, like I go Julie, like Julie is she, she’s the master and I know you have your course pitch at perfect, which is killer course for people on this space.
RV: (22:56)
But can you dislike, talk to us a little bit about what is, what is a brand deal? What’s the likelihood of getting one, you know, how much do they actually pay? I mean I know if you’re tiger woods or you’re Michael Jordan, but like if you’re, if you’re a person, how many followers do you need to have to get one? And then what’s the process of actually of actually getting one? Cause I think like national TV, we all SORTA sink. We sit around waiting going, what do I have to do to make somebody find me? And I’ve really appreciated your outlook, which is like, no, that’s not how it works. Like you Kinda, you gotta go get it. So can you talk about it?
JS: (23:34)
Yeah. And actually I love that you bring this up cause this is the entire reason why we created pitch it perfect was that when I was starting out, I didn’t have, you know, compared to a lot of my friends who had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, I had way less than 10,000 followers and I would pitch a brand and I would make, you know, three times more on a brand deal than they would. They would actually be accepting gifted product. And I would be over here making five, $10,000 for the brand deal. And so I would have these women predominantly that would come up to me and say flat out, you know, they would say, no offense Julie, but how is it that I have a hundred thousand followers and you have 7,000 followers and you’re waking, you’re making way more money than me.
JS: (24:14)
And I’m like, well, I know how to pitch myself. And so that’s when I said, I really need to create something that can support these people that are interested in doing this and having it be a really good source of a, of a revenue stream for their business. So we created pitch perfect under, under that pretense. And since then we’ve had thousands of students go through it. But with, with that in mind, well, one of the biggest issues that we see from people that come into our program, one of the biggest things that they say is, I thought that I had to have a certain amount of followers in order to get a brand deal. But now I know that that’s not true because I’ve gone through your program or I thought that brands were just gonna come to me when I was ready to work with them, you know?
JS: (24:57)
But now I know that that’s not possible. And that’s the thing that really kind of letting people know that there’s no brand ferry that just falls from the sky and is going to give you a brand deal. Just like with anything like you, you’ve, you’ve got to go out. If it’s something that you really want to make a model in your business and kind of part of your revenue stream, you’ve got to get your ducks in order and kind of go there. So there’s kind of certain tiers. First off, I will say that there’s really no set number to start building that relationship with a brand brand. Love what is called, you know, micro influencers, which is anyone that has 10,000 or less followers. We’ve had students that have had as little as 300 followers that have gotten brand deals. So what we really talk about is you want to get in there from the beginning to really start the relationship.
JS: (25:42)
It’s kind of like a marriage of sorts. You wouldn’t go to someone and marry them most likely the first night that you meet them, you want to warm the relationship up. You want to go on a few dates and really kind of get to know the person and see how you can support one another. Same thing goes when you’re working with these brands. So it’s really about coming and approaching, asking them certain questions, you know, how you know, what is it that you’re looking for? What is your bottom line? What are the new products and services that you have coming out? Who are you trying to target? What is your current budget in your marketing plan? Do you even have an influencer budget? Do you even pay influencers or do you only do gifting? Really asking these kinds of questions on the front end.
JS: (26:21)
It’s gonna kind of help you save a lot of time in organized. So there’s no quite follower number. But I will say that mostly, you know, you get those 300 to 500 follow a 300 to 500 influencers that have that number of following that get brand deals. But I would say mostly I see any anywhere from 2,500 followers and up, it’s really about the engagement rate. So brands like to look for an engagement rate of at least 4% or higher. Now obviously, typically the smaller your follower number is, the higher your engagement rate’s going to be because you’re not going to have as many followers there that need to engage with you. So that’s why they really do love micro influencers that you may only have 2,500 followers, but if you’ve got a 25% engagement rate in 25% of those 2,500 people are seeing it, you could actually outweigh someone that may have 10,000 followers, but only 0.03% of their followers are seeing their content. So it’s really about, we really like to focus more on the engagement rate and getting your engagement rate strong, as strong as it can be. Then the following number per se. So you’ve got your micro influencers, then you have your macro influencers.
RV: (27:33)
Who are you talking to? Like if you’re going to go, I want to deal with Nike, like who are you trying to get ahold of? Is it the senior vice president of marketing or is there like a person that may be,
JS: (27:46)
Yes. So it, it depends a lot like a company like Nike for example, they are going to have this farmed out. You know, their in house team is not going to be dealing with pitches from influencers all day long. They’re going to be sending it to an influencer marketing company, a PR company, you know, there’s kind of a bunch of different umbrellas of how that can unfold. So the first thing, again, you have to go back to the research. Linkedin is a really good place to start researching some of the, you know, who’s the PR Rep and just asking them, hi. You know, I’m so and so. This is my website. This is what I do. You know, I’m really wanting to build a relationship with Nike who is the best contact, you know, that works with the influencers for you guys. Simple as that. I mean, it’s really just getting out there asking the questions,
RV: (28:30)
But just find somebody and ask them who’s the right.
JS: (28:34)
Exactly. Deeming brands on Instagram works very, very well. Facebooking brands, sending dms on Facebook to brands works really, really well. And linkedin and Twitter is really good for media. For brands, I would say Linkedin, Facebook, and Instagram are going to be your best bets.
RV: (28:50)
Oh, interesting. So Twitter, you say that again. Twitter is good for media. Yes.
JS: (28:54)
From media. Yep. And then Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin is better for brands and then the companies that represent the brands, the PR companies and that sort of thing. But a lot of times with Nike, you know, if Nike has a $10 million marketing budget, they’re not going to go. I mean, no, mostly they’re probably not going to go to micro influencers and they’re not even going to go to macro influencers. They’re going to go for the celebrity endorsement deals. We’re going to say we’re going to get so and so.
RV: (29:21)
What’s the realistic, what is the realistic version? Right? So let’s say somebody is watching and they’ve got 7,500 followers or maybe 25,000 followers, you know, and there you, you know, but they’ve never done a brand deal. What size company would they look and, and then like how much does a reasonable amount to expect? You know, it’s like, you know, celebrities get millions of dollars, but what does just, you know, kind of a person get,
JS: (29:52)
Yeah. So again, it also depends on like how full Tom are you going into it. So for example, I’ve got a girlfriend of mine that has 250 ish thousand followers. Influencer marketing is her full time Gig and she makes anywhere between 30 to 50 grand a month off of brand deals.
RV: (30:07)
Okay. Say that again. So she has 250,000 followers. Yep.
JS: (30:12)
And she makes about 30 to 50 grand a month off brand deal. Okay.
RV: (30:17)
Gotcha. So, so posting content on social is her full time. That’s her full time job. That was her job. And, and what do they kind of like? So what does that, that’s probably several brands and then would be, what do they normally ask for? Like what do you have to do for them?
JS: (30:33)
Yeah, so it depends on the assets. It depends on kind of what they’re typically it is. It’s a, it’s an Instagram, it’s a static Instagram post, so on your feed it is brands really love Instagram stories because of the swipe up feature and they can, they can see how many clicks are going and it’s a lot easier to kind of equate into, into follow for them to really see what their ROI is. So they really like Instagram stories and like Instagram is their main focus. Facebook not Twitter, not so much. They may ask for some Pinterest stuff depending on who the brand is and what their focus is. And it also depends on, you know, what is the brand’s goal? And this is one of the questions that I always tell my students to ask when they’re reaching out to brands. Are the brands focused on conversion or are they focused on awareness? Because that’s also going to factor in on how much they pay you on who they choose to work with on why they’re choosing to work with them. So that’s another big thing. If they’re looking to convert dollars, there may be some influencers out there that for whatever reason they don’t convert really well, but they have a huge platform for awareness. So it really kind of just depends on where, what is, what is the goal of the brand and then they can align with the influencer that way.
RV: (31:46)
So the other thing is while we’re on this topic, this is awesome. This is so enlightening I guess is a world that I know nothing about. Like it’s very eye opening to me how this is how this works. And it’s also very simple and sort of straight forward. It’s like, oh, you know, you just go do it. But what about influencers paying other influencers? Does that, are you seeing, like, do you hear of that happening much? That’s a, a growing thing.
JS: (32:14)
Yeah, it, it used to not mean, I mean when I first started into this industry of blogging in influencer marketing, which was 2013 ish, it that wasn’t happening as much, but now that influencers are essentially becoming their own brand, they’re creating their own products and services and getting it out there. You definitely see that happen more and more. And in the, in the online course creation industry, you would see it a lot with you know, launches that that affiliate launches that people would do or they would come on board and kind of do a co launch and support one another that way. But I’m seeing it now more with influencers. You’ll have an influencer who has a products coming out and now see it out to other influencers to support that. Or even the brand may put some marketing dollars behind that influencer to then use to kind of see it out that way. The other thing that the brands are doing are also white listing Facebook ads. So they will ask for an opportunity, what does that mean? So they will basically take the posts that you do for them and then they will sponsor it. So they will pay the money to sponsor it as an ad and then that will run for a certain amount of time time. So obviously if the brand is doing that, then they’re going to be saturating you even more, which means more money in your pocket.
RV: (33:28)
Hi. So that, so you do a, like you create a post on Facebook, like a video of like a product review or something like, Hey, I love this microphone. It’s amazing microphone
JS: (33:39)
And that’s sponsored. So you’re getting money in your pocket to create that piece of content for the brand and then the brands going into your Facebook ads and they are putting money in and promoting that post. Exactly.
RV: (33:53)
Yeah. Interesting. So you don’t make any money off of that, but they’re paying you to create it and then they’re exposing you to a bunch of people.
JS: (33:58)
Right. And what I say is to take it one step farther to say, yeah, you can boost my posts, but if you’re going to be doing that, we need to have terms. And limitations because you’re essentially oversaturating me to my followers and I need to be compensated for that.
RV: (34:13)
Yeah. So you’ve kind of worked that, worked at an a, this is so, so interesting. I mean, I think the thing of all of this, this is just, yeah, it comes back to that original piece about the confidence and just the siting. Like, you know, I’m going to do this. So I have one little, one last little thing I want to ask you about before we do that, where do you want people to go to connect with you and follow you? You’ll, we’ll put a link to your website and pitch it perfect in in the, you know, recap, show notes of this, but is there where, where’s the best place to find you?
JS: (34:48)
Yeah. So if you want to learn more about that, that specific skillset of pitching [inaudible] been talking about today, you can go to pigite perfect.net and then if you want free resources on an array of things including pitching, branding, marketing, I of course have the influence or podcast and you can find [email protected] or iTunes, stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then my website is just Julie solomon.net and there is where you can learn more about me. I have a lot of free resources on there as well. And then of course it links to the various other things that we’ve talked about today too.
RV: (35:23)
Love it, love it, love it, love it. So we’ll link, we’ll link all that up as well. So the last thing I want to, to have you talk about is when, when, when you came here, you came to Vaden villa, you, you were, we did a two day strategy session with you and John was there and loved it, loved meeting you guys. And I think we became friends out of that. But the, there was something that you said that has stuck with me ever since was you, you have this thing, I just, I love this so much called special snowflake syndrome. And again, I think the thing that just sticks with me from, from you is just that decision to just go and just freaking do it. Can you, can you just land the plane by talking to us about what a special snowflake syndrome. How do you know if you have it, what, what, what is the problem with special snowflake syndrome? And then just like what do you do about it?
JS: (36:23)
Yeah, I know being diagnosed with sss can be detrimental to your, to your overall success. And again, it comes back to that confidence piece. So really to me, special snowflake syndrome is just an excuse. It is a way in which we use certain circumstances to keep ourselves small, to limit ourselves and to make up excuses as to why we can’t achieve something. So an example would be, you know, I, you know, I don’t, I should, I shouldn’t have to worry about sales and marketing, but I’m the influencer. I should just be able to cope. Did to create my pretty content and to post it on Instagram and to do my Instagram stories. I shouldn’t have to learn about business. I shouldn’t have to learn about strategy yesterday. I have to learn about this finance syndrome or this finance stuff. And it’s like, well no, you’re in special snowflake syndrome.
JS: (37:13)
They’re, you know, you think that you’re just this special snowflake who doesn’t have to worry about certain things or it doesn’t have to figure out certain things. And also that idea of when we kind of get into a little bit of that idea of I’m, I’m powerless or I’m helpless to something, right? Like, I just can’t grow no matter what I do. Or I just don’t have enough time to figure that out. Or there’s no way I’ll ever have enough money to invest in myself. I just can’t do that. I’m not like everyone else. It’s like, no, you’re in special snowflake syndrome. You know, the, we all have the same amount of time of day. We all choose to use it, how we choose to use it. It’s really goes back to that accountability piece that you really have to start being responsible and accountability for the, for your own beliefs and for the decisions and choices that you make. Because really at the end of the day, the only thing that you do have power over is yourself and your thoughts and the truth voices and the beliefs that you choose to have. You are actually kind of powerless to everything else outside of that, but it’s that idea that, you know, I’m so different. I’m so unique. Woe is me. No one can understand me. No one can, can understand what it’s like to walk in my shoes. Therefore nothing will ever work for me. That’s the special snowflake syndrome.
RV: (38:31)
I love this so much. Suck it up. Yeah. Is Great. Great. Great. Well Julie, thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for your inspiration. Also, you know, your strategic clarity and your tactical clarity but just kind of your, your mission and I know you’re, you’re inspired to help people get their message out. So it’s been, it’s been wonderful having you, as always, we’ll continue to promote you and thanks for, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
Ep 43: Get Started with Ed Tate | Recap Episode
RV: (00:01)
Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Man, I love Ed Tate. I’m so glad that you got to meet him and I’m excited to break this down for you. It’s sort of fitting that I’m filling in for AJ doing this recap just by myself, but because I’ve known Ed for years and, and in fact I’ve known Ed longer than I’ve known AAJ and he was one of my early mentors and you know, we honestly hadn’t had a conversation about the business about like how to grow your business and build, build a business in recent years because we just kind of become friends and usually catch up about friends’ stuff. And so I am honored that we got to see us to do that with you here as a part of the podcast. And so this is our recap, right?
RV: (00:51)
So what we’re doing is, is I’m going to share with you the big highlights, the big takeaways, at least that, that I took away from this interview, especially again, having known Ed for so long. And I think hearing his mentality and his outlook on business affects me differently now than when I first started. And the first thing that he said that really stuck with me that I think is super important for you, right, is he said, there is business in every economy as long as you reach outside the walls every day. So what he’s saying there is, look, the economy’s always changing, right? Sometimes there’s great market economy, sometimes there’s down economy, great Mark is bad markets. Yeah, sometimes there’s like a virus that breaks out and that affects the world. Or sometimes there’s a natural disaster, a tsunami or a, you know, there’s wildfires.
RV: (01:51)
Like there’s political elections, there’s Wars, there’s all of these things that are constantly happening in the world, constantly shaping the market or the landscape, new competitors, new technology, et cetera. But, but what he is saying is so critical and it’s like, if you don’t believe this, I don’t know how you can succeed longterm. And what he’s saying is that you have to believe and you have to know that there is business in every economy, every market, every, every condition or circumstance by which the world can be operating or what’s happening around us in the world. There is always business to be had because if you are an expert, if you really know something that can help people, people are always going to struggle with problems. They’re always going to struggle with motivation. They’re always going to need somebody to help them grow and develop and improve, whether it’s great economies or bad economies.
RV: (02:54)
And the key thing though is that you have to be willing to reach out. You have to be willing in all markets, good and bad to tell people about what you do. And I think Ed said something like, you have to have 20 different ways that people can find out about you. And I think that is is true. You need to have lots of ways that people can find out about you. I mean, generally speaking, we love to, you know, one of the things we do at brand builders group is we help people get really clear and phase one, you know, so we’ve got these nine essential phases. And the, the in phase one brand identification we talk about, you know, getting clear, we talk about getting clear on one message, you know, one audience, one business model and one medium. Meaning that those are your primary focuses, but almost always you can repurpose the content that you’re doing and ultimately in many different places and as long as you’re just repurposing things and spreading it across multiple mediums where people can find you.
RV: (03:59)
Like you got to have a lot of, a lot of you’ve got to have a lot of fishing poles in the water so to speak. Like you got to have a lot of, a lot of things out there. I remember hearing a speaker one time say you need to pump intellectual property out into the market as fast as you possibly can. You need to publish everywhere as much as you can. Publish audio, video, the written word, the spoken word, like publish on social media and white papers and blogs. And I don’t think he was advocating to say, look, it, you have to do all of these things to be successful. What he was saying is the more that you can systemize and habitualize and, and operationalize the idea of your ideas, getting out there, your outreach, your message, your movement, your, your brand, you’ve got to get it out there.
RV: (04:51)
And if you do that, you’ll survive in any economy. Like there’s, there’s businesses that do well in every economy. And so that was just a fresh reminder for me. And I think really just important because, and it is also to every experience level, right? Like some of you that are our clients, right? Like you might be listening in and maybe you’re earlier in your journey and you think, Oh my gosh, you know, I’m competing against all these more experienced people. But I’ll tell you on the other side of that, I’ve got tons of friends who’ve been in this industry for 20 to 25 years and they’re battling because there’s all these new people coming up into their fee range and stuff, and so they’re having to kind of battle to stay at the top. So everyone is battling, so to speak. But as long as you are believing in what you do and you’re pumping out content and you’re helping people, you can win and in any, any market.
RV: (05:48)
So that’s, that’s really good. The second thing from ed, which I thought was related to this, and I never actually heard him say this before, is he has this, this philosophy that he says, never put up a zero. Never put up a zero. In other words, on any given day, you can’t let the sun fall without having done something productive that moved your business forward right there. That even if you don’t make a sale per se, right? Like, even if you don’t get a contract, even if you don’t get a new customer, you should always, you should always go for at least one new piece of business every day. That’s what he was saying. I thought, I thought that was powerful. And it’s interesting because we used to teach sales so much and it’s been almost two years since I’ve taught sales specifically and it’s going to be a little while before we get back into teaching some of that.
RV: (06:44)
But to hear Ed talk about, Hey, don’t let the day end without getting a new piece of business. That’s a great mentality or mindset. But, but, but the part that I really loved was that he followed that up with at least get a new appointment. Right? If you can’t get a new customer, at least get a new appointment. If you can’t get a new appointment, at least get a new contact to follow up with. So there’s, there’s something that you’re doing on any given day that that is advancing the business. There is, is, is some marketing acquisition that you’re doing. And even if you can’t generate the revenue, you should be getting appointment. If you can’t get an appointment, at least talk to somebody new every day. And again, I haven’t been able to talk much about this over the last couple of years. And so it was interesting to kind of have someone else talking to me about it and was really, really good reminder.
RV: (07:40)
Now the last one I think honestly, I think is the most important one. I really do believe this and this take away [inaudible] one of the reasons I believe it’s true is because when I look at people like Ed, I see this habit in their life. [inaudible] When I look at our most successful clients, right? Like people who we help at brain builders group and I, and, and you know, we’ve had some really great wins in the, in the last year we’ve had, we’ve had clients hit number one, Amazon bestsellers. We’ve had people get on the today show we’ve had people grow their, their, their social media followings by over 50,000 people. Like we, we’ve had some clients that have really had some massive wins just here in like our first year of working with people. And you know, I see this to be true in them.
RV: (08:35)
And then when I look in my own life, I see this to be absolutely true. And when you hear it, it might sound like a marketing ploy, but it’s really not. It’s if you could just like put your, put your defense mechanism down for a second, like put your wall down for a second and just, just hear this Ed said, is you have to invest in your dream. You have to invest in your dream. Like you have to spend money on your dream. You have to spend time on your dream and look, even if you never buy anything from brand builders group, that’s totally fine. But understand this truth. In fact, Randy gage said this to me one time when I was younger and this always stuck with me. He said, you should, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream.
RV: (09:27)
Like, if you wouldn’t invest in you, why would anyone else, you know, I think about shark tank, like these people who go on shark tank and they’re asking for all this money. And one of the questions the sharks always ask is they say, how much money have you put in? Because they want to see that you believe in your own dream to the extent that you’ve put your own money. And that’s what winners do. That’s what ultra performers do. That’s what multipliers do. That’s what influencers do. That’s what hall of fame speakers in New York times bestselling authors and world champions of public speaking and, and you’ll huge celebrity followings. They invest in their own dream. And I think so often we’re reluctant to invest in our dream because either we think it’s stupid or we’re not sure it’ll work out. Or you know, honestly, sometimes we’re skeptical because we feel like, Oh, I don’t want someone to take advantage of me.
RV: (10:18)
And it’s not that at all. Like, look, doctors spend more money than anybody else in their education, right? Like they spend tons and tons of money on education. It should be no different for entrepreneurs. It’s just that your education happens in a different place. It doesn’t happen in a traditional school because traditional schools aren’t really set up. Most traditional schools, there are some, but most of them aren’t really set up for the entrepreneurial environment for like a small business environment. That’s just not the way the institutions are typically structured and most of the professors and things don’t have that kind of experience. So but it’s the same truth. It’s the same path. And so that’s just a question to think about, right? Is are you investing in your own dream? Like are you actually willing to put your own money where your mouth is? And if you’re not, then that should tell you something.
RV: (11:16)
You know what? What I think it says is I think it says this is a still a, this isn’t even a dream. This is a fantasy, right? This is something that is like this figment of your imagination that you kind of would love to be. It become true, but you haven’t actually backed that up with commitment. You actually haven’t gotten to the point of believing that maybe this could be a reality. You haven’t stepped forward with dedication, you, you, you haven’t actually added the element of even making this dream a possible reality. The moment that you invest right moment, you say, all right, I’m going to put some money in and it doesn’t have to be your life savings. You don’t have to mortgage your house always, right? Some people do that. You don’t have to do that. I’ve never been the guy who’s is mortgaged my house.
RV: (12:04)
I’ve always been the guy that was like, all right, I’m going to go generate some revenue. I’m going to go acquire a customer and then I’m going to invest most or all of that right back into the business and get the next one and then reinvest and get the next one and keep my lifestyle low, right? While we invest in the next thing. And, and that’s, that’s why brand builders group is set up. Like, look, I’ll just go ahead and share this with you. I know people see brand builders group and they see, Oh, you guys work with Lewis Howes. And Julie Solomon and Kevin Harrington from shark tank and Suzanne Hendricks, right? Like she’s got a million followers like, and people think or, or Mike Johnson from, from The Bachelor, right? So, Mike recently was one of our clients came to one of our events, right?
RV: (12:52)
And people see that we’re working with these and they assume that everything we do is expensive. One of the reasons why brand builders group is set up the way that it is is yes, we do some very high level one-on-one stuff for some high level entrepreneurs. These are people that make real money, right? They’re, they’re high six figures, seven figures, multi seven figures, eight figures. We have clients that have nine figure businesses. Like we have clients that do hundred million dollars in revenue in their, in their real business, and then they’re building their personal brand. But we will always as a company be set up to offer a low price point product. And we like our lowest price point product at this point is a $99 a month subscription. And the reason is, is because when I started my dream, I didn’t have any money.
RV: (13:44)
Like when I started, when I, the first time I said, I want to be a professional speaker. I didn’t have any money. I spent like the last $600 I had flying to take a humor course from Darren LaCroix, who’s one of ed Tate’s good friends and they’ve been business partners and joint done lots of joint ventures and things together because I identified humor as a place that I needed to get better. And that was like such a huge amount of money for me. And so brand builders group is always going to have something for people who are just starting out. And you know, at $100 a month, it’s gotta be something, right? If it’s $5 a month, it’s not enough to make somebody care. It’s not enough to make somebody show up. And, and frankly, I, I firmly believe that the education that we are providing to people is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that is available for $99 a month.
RV: (14:39)
And again, I’m not, I’m not making a sales pitch here for our service. I’m, I’m trying to illustrate this point though, that the people who break through the wall believe in themselves and, and one of the ways you know that you believe in yourself, like you have to give yourself a chance. And in one of the ways that you know that you’ve actually given yourself a chance is that you put some money in. Like you went to a conference, you’ve read some books, you’ve taken some classes you’ve learned from some people. And that is something that, like I said, I have done, these are our most successful clients have done. And I don’t mean with us, I mean with they got to be successful before we ever even saw them. They were investing in all sorts of things. So you got to invest, you got to believe in your own dream.
RV: (15:25)
You got to at least be willing to give yourself a shot to give yourself a chance and say, you know what, if there’s one thing I’m going to invest in, if there’s one thing I’m going to put my money and it’s not real estate. It’s not a market, it’s, it’s not. It’s, it’s in me, it’s in my brain. It’s that I’m going to say that the most valuable asset that I can invest money into is my own brain, my own mind, my own personal development. And that is something that winners do and we believe it’s so much that we will, no matter how famous our clients are, are. And no matter how big our client roster is, we are always going to have something. For those of you that are just starting out, no, our goal is going to be to escalate you, right? Like our goal is going to be able to help you learn enough that you can make money so that you can reinvest that into doing more with us because we want you to grow and we can’t, you know, we can serve you at a deeper level, right?
RV: (16:20)
Like our virtual training is, it’s education, it’s education directly from me and AJ and all of our senior strategists, but we know ultimately our goal is to get you into a one on one coaching environment with one of our strategists and to get you to our live events because we know that that’ll serve you faster and in a deeper way, but not everyone can start there, but whether it’s with us or whether it’s with somebody else, you’ve got to invest, right? Like you’ve got to place that bet on yourself. Don’t be afraid of losing. Don’t be afraid of failing and don’t be afraid of being taken advantage of someone. I can say firmly, I’ve, I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my own education and there are certain types of education that are better than others. There is no doubt about it, but I have never invested in any program where I didn’t at least learn enough to get my money back.
RV: (17:19)
Right? Like there are some where it’s like, man, that that experience could have been, they could have charged a hundred times what they were charging and I would have paid for and I would’ve got my money back. And that’s what we strive to do at brand builders group. But there’s never been one course that I bought that I didn’t at least learn something from or one conference that I went to that I didn’t at least get a great idea from. But you got to take that shot and no one else can do that. And, and if anyone else gives you the money, it’s not the same. It’s not the same as you betting on you, right? So again, I don’t care who it’s with, but if you have this dream, if you have this calling, if you have this message inside of you, then you have to take a chance on you believe in yourself, make that investment of money and time and work. Never put up a zero and believe that if you just do all of these things day in and day out, ultimately you, well, when that’s all for this one brand builder, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 42: Get Started with Ed Tate
RV: (00:01)
Yeah, there was a time when I had a dream the first time I had a dream to be a professional speaker and I didn’t know exactly what that entailed. And one of the first people I encountered on that journey is the man you’re about to hear from Ed Tate, who now at this point we have known each other for coming up on 15 years and he is wild to think about that cause this, this man literally knew me like at the very, very beginning. He and I were actually in the same toastmaster club and he had just won the world championship of public speaking, which was the biggest thing that I could ever imagine at that time and was one of several people who mentored me. He is also a certified speaking professional. He has really been a corporate trainer and keynote speaker for you know, the last 20 plus years and he’s fantastic on stage. He’s also an executive coach and does a lot of like kind of presentation coaching for media and you know, people who present like a winning high stakes presentation. So anybody who has like an important presentation, whether that’s a keynote or just like presenting and he has a fascinating journey that I think is different from a path that you, you may, you may hear about often. So so glad to have you old friend. Welcome back and thank you for being here.
ET: (01:22)
Well, thank you for inviting me, Rory. I really appreciate it.
RV: (01:25)
So at Brand Builders Group, we study reputation, you know, that’s our new space. We like that. Our little pivot from, you know, everything was all about discipline and now we’re all about reputation, which are kind of connected. But you know, when you just hear that word, you know, like you’re someone I think of just as a great reputation. Everyone knows you’re a great guy, you’re gonna kill it on stage every single time. But when you hear the word reputation, what do you think about, like what is your definition of it? What are your personal philosophies on building one and, you know, how important has it been in your career? And, and just give us like a little bit on that
ET: (02:02)
Reputation. I think it’s that mental space that you possess in someone else’s head. That’s what a reputation is. You know, when we think of, you know, the, the tried and true examples, McDonald’s, you know, I’ll or FedEx, et cetera, FedEx just rang my doorbell just a couple seconds ago. They have specific reputations and you know, I think the worst reputation you can have is like no reputation and that is be the best secret that no one’s ever heard of, you know. So I think that’s one of the challenges Here’s something else to consider as well. You know, like you mentioned, I’ve been in this business, there’ll be, it’s actually 19 years this year and you’re doing this professionally.
ET: (02:44)
Condoleezza Rice said you never wanted to be the past, anything, you know, and, and I think that you’re constantly want to evolve. You, you constantly want to develop your brand. You constantly want your brand to stay with the times and the relevant, if you will. So in my particular case I got my start my jump by winning the world championship of public speaking and we can talk about that like a little bit later on. Okay. That helped my career and then I became a CSP, a certified speaking professional, that helped my career. I was in this space called making managers into leaders. So for example, my customers or my clients, they know me it with that brand in that particular space. Does that make sense what I’m saying? So far? Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve constantly tried, like your company is evolving into a new space. Okay. You’re into brand building, right? Right. Okay. You are disciplined before or that was the brand before you’re evolving because the marketplace says this is something that you need to do. And I think this is something critical for all of us
RV: (03:46)
And be the one that compete. Okay.
ET: (03:52)
Well number one, like when you’re starting out, you know, what is your brand? You have to establish your brand. And then number two is you got to get the word out in terms of what is your brand. Cause if you don’t I think the worst thing you can have is saying this sameness as the enemy of any presenter or any company when you look and sound the same like everyone else. And that’s a Patricia Fripp Buddhism if you will. Then no one that no one’s going to recognize you.
RV: (04:18)
Huh. Well I think that’s really interesting because I think a lot of people who are just starting on their personal brand journey, like they either are doing the work of figuring out who they are and what their brand is about. Or there’s some people who immediately jump into like telling a bunch of people but they’re not totally clear on it. And, and it’s like you have to do both. You know, we say the reputation formula is results times reach equals reputation. So I think that’s, I think that’s interesting. So I wanted to ask you about how you got your start as a personal, it was building your brand and one of the things that I think is, is you very unique about your, your past. I mean we have the world championship push. I want to hear about it. I want people to know what that is. But you also worked for a company doing other people’s content first and that’s a model that I think is really good for a lot of people that not enough people talk about everyone thinks I got to create my own content, I got to like build everything and do it all from scratch. And you know, if I remember correctly, you sort of started and spent a fair bit of time like teaching other people’s content. Okay,
ET: (05:26)
First. Yeah. Why? I worked for a company called career track career track at the time was the largest public seminar company in the world and I worked for them for exactly 18 months. So it was, it was part of my strategy to get experience and I wanted to like a, there’s a friend of ours, his name is Darren Lacroix and he says stage time, stage time, stage time. I wanted to get a lot of stage time, so that was my purpose. That was my strategy to get a lot of stage time and I did that for exactly 18 months. Then I worked for another company called them like leadership and we would get leadership programs and I did that for like another two years, but it was a strategy that a got me a great deal. That was a stage time number two. It also got me a lot of credible customers and that can actually put on my resume, if you will.
ET: (06:14)
So, you know, for example, glaxosmithkline, Johnson and Johnson and Nielsen, Nielsen Ratings Company, you name it. Like if you go to my website, so who’s who of Corporate America? Well, because I worked for this other company, I was able to legitimately claim that I actually work with those particular organizations. It gave me the other, the third thing is that for me, it gave me, it may be bulletproof onstage. I honestly believe this to be true and I know you have the same skill. There’s nothing on stage that can happen that I can handle. I got that experience by working for career track. For example, one, I’ll remember one particular client in particular a, the postal service in Dallas, Texas. Okay. And it is my first day leaving corporate America. Okay. It is my, this is my first Gig after I’ve left Corporate America, I’ve left this really nice paycheck. Okay. And seven o’clock in the morning and I’m passing out workbooks. I, I pass on a workbook to those good old boys, six with five of biscuits, shy of 300 pounds. And he just stands up and he yells, I don’t want to blank be here now. Blank is not the word he used.
ET: (07:22)
Anyway, immediately skew security comes in, they’ve got guns, Poles. And I’m thinking to myself, what is the, I can call my boss and still get my job back cause I’m thinking, well what in the hell have I gotten myself into? So apparently something had happened over the previous week and they, they were like this heightened alert, if you will. And the fact that this guy was yelling, they were just, you know, security was hyperspace sensitive sooner when they called the boss and the bosses, this woman she is, she’s not even five feet tall with high heels on. All right. She says, what’s going on here? They explained what was happening. So the good old boy, the boy, this woman and I, we walk out in the hallway now you got to see this. I’m watching this. This guy is huge. She’s this little tiny woman and this is back in the day when they had the Motorola flip phone and remember that I was like, you know, like a star Trek.
ET: (08:11)
So she said, Huh? She says, you’ve got two choices. Choice number one, you can go back there and shut up and listen to this guy for the rest of the day. Option number two is I’m going to call your boss and tell them what’s going on. So she whips out her a flip phone. She starts dialing a number. She says, I got one more digit. What’s it going to be? Hmm. Wow. Guess what he did? He went back in there and he shut up for the rest of the day. Now I did my program and the guy walked up to me and he apologized and said, you know, I apologized to you. I really needed to hear this. But the lesson I learned was this. It’s always your stage that woman taught me, no matter where you are, it’s always your stage, you know. So again, going back to the point, there’s nothing on stage that can’t handle, I love Dallas,
RV: (08:56)
A postal service because they, you know, I learned many, many lessons about being on stage and again, nothing that that can handle on stage. Yeah. Well and, and I think what that’s, that’s, that’s interesting and just a great model. I mean that’s, that’s the whole point is I want people to have their eyes open to her. You can start by working for someone else. You know, that’s a, that’s a good way to like kind of build up. And it’s real common. I if I remember right, I think Tony Robbins did that. I think mark Sanborn did that. He’s another hall of fame speaker. Mark St Horn. He was, he worked for career track. Laura Stack worked for career track a w as what if like a career track was called the crew track mafia cause it was actually basically
ET: (09:33)
Out of Colorado and does ward. There’s a lot of people who are actually in the speaking hall of fame today. Got Their start working for someplace else. Now the flip side of this is this do it only for limited amount of time. And what I mean by that, it is so easy to do it for, you know, for years and years and years. When I started doing this, I knew specifically 18 months, I literally quit 18 months to the day regardless of how popular I was with the company because I, I saw other people be there for eight nine, 10 1115 years and I didn’t want that to happen to me because I realized if I did that I would never be able to start my own business,
RV: (10:13)
Which is what you wanted to do. So some people may be okay with that, but like if you have the vision, then it’s like you’re using it as a stepping stone deliberately. Exactly. How did you make the, tell me, how did you, how did you make the leap? Like how did you actually start? I also happen to, you were being very highly paid in a corporate environment. That’s not an easy thing to walk away from the, and then when does toastmasters show up on the scene and like what, what does it mean to be the world? I mean you are literally the world champion of public speaking and there’s probably a lot of people that have not actually heard that term before. So, so walk us through like that transition of what it felt like to leap and how you did it and you know how to toastmasters fit into that. Okay, so I’m a, I’m going to tell you a story that you haven’t heard before. Okay. How I got started with this in the first place. A number one is I’m a stutterer. Okay. And there is no cure. First
ET: (11:10)
Salary. And when you grew up in a neighborhood where your stutter, guess what kids are, they’re horrible. You’re absolutely horrible. So my dad was in the military and we would move to a new neighborhood almost every 18 months to two years. So we’re moving to Chicago and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. So one thing I did in preparation to move to this new neighborhood, because I didn’t want the new kiss and know that at the start or cause they’re gonna make fun of me in school. So I read newspapers out loud. I used to practice in the mirror during the summer. Kids usually like to play basketball. And that was really good at doing play by play outside doing basketball. I was so good that the other kids would give me their names and I would just do that.
ET: (11:50)
But it was a way for me to actually practice speaking. So how do I get started in this is I don’t want to be made fun of by kids. That was my motivation. I happen to go to a high school that had an a a TV station. I was a news anchor for four years. I went to a college that I actually got a job as a disc jockey. I was a number one disc jockey, my entire four, not a college station and actual radio station. And I did that. So these things prepared me for not looking back on it. In hindsight, those things prepared me. So when I actually competed for the world championship and the year 2000, those things prepared me. At the time I wasn’t executive, I was actually working for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. I was their, their, their training director and they were very, very supportive of me at that particular time.
ET: (12:35)
Now for those of you who don’t know what the world championship is, it’s a year long competition, 25 to 35,000 contestants and in the year 2001 the entire thing, Rory knows about this cause he’s been on a big stage a couple times twice. It is. And I want to tell you this, I, Hey, don’t make it on the stages as remarkable. You know, it’s absolutely remarkable. And most of you, if you follow Rory, you know how good he is on stage. You know, I like to say too, anybody can win at once. It takes a real man to lose twice.
ET: (13:14)
Okay. You keep going with that story. Okay. Anyway, so then your next question, how to make that transition. I, I literally, I told my wife, I said, I really want to try this. I said, I think this is something I really, really enjoy it and really good. The fact that I won the world championship, I got like a lot of the media attention right away. People dear old started approaching me, et Cetera for the first time. So I was at the right place at the right time, et cetera. So I got a lot of attention. I also knew that this was temporary and it wouldn’t last. So I I, I relied on my business acumen skills. I said to myself, this is something that I actually have to promote. I have to market. I just can’t wait. I can’t just sit back and wait for the phone to ring.
ET: (13:59)
So it was combination of taking advantage of the opportunity, which would tap into me and also marketing myself. You and I, you know, this is a term of endearment. We’re sales dogs. And what I mean by that is we both know how to sell. We both have know how to market, you know, we don’t have to close deals, we know how to close business, et cetera. So I’ve made a decision. The decision was like, if I could not make the same type of income I was making in corporate America, this was going to be a hobby. I was very, very clear about that. Being on stages, addictive. People love it, they love the attention, the adulation. But for me is I have a family. I got to take care of my family and if this ft I can’t make the same type of income that I made before then I was going to go back to corporate America. I went to my wife and I told her, I said, it’s going to take me a year to get this off the ground. Just give me a year. And if, if I can’t get it off the ground, I would go back to corporate America. So after a year we still weren’t making the income that we, that I was accustomed to. Now at the same time,
RV: (14:58)
I don’t hear as fast though. Like that’s, that’s, I mean that’s fast.
ET: (15:03)
The way I looked at it, I didn’t have a choice. It was just like it was going to be a year or not. Now I also told my wife, I says like your, your lifestyle will not change. Fortunately for me, I had a lot of money in the bank. I didn’t have to work for four years if I didn’t want to. Wow. I said, your lifestyle will not change. So if I can’t make this happen in a year, I will interview and I had a reputation in the computer industry. I’ll become an executive again. And that’s what happened because of the income wasn’t there. I interviewed, I did kind of cheat a little bit and what I mean by that is that I told the company that I am not going to start for six months. So I actually bought myself an 18 month window and that was a point where I started to see that the income was going to match my previous income. And then from that point in time I never looked back.
RV: (15:45)
So what were you doing like, like I think this is the thing like it’s interesting to hear you say this was one of the reasons that I wanted to have you beyond the fact. Interesting side note, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this. I tell a lot of our members and stuff that I s I studied 20 years of world championship footage, I graphed all the presentations. I measured the average number of lasts, the amount of time to the message, how many times they hit the message. And a lot of people think of Darren. Darren was like my humor mentor, right? And people think of him as the funniest, but your speech has the most number of laughs. I know. And a lot of people don’t give you credit for that. But
ET: (16:26)
So back, there’s a book where they actually documented the number of laughs of links of the labs, et Cetera. So I’m number one. I always pull that over him. Every time I see him
RV: (16:36)
There it is. So, but, but so you won the world championship. And I think what I want people to see is, you know, you might think, oh, something happens like that and that’s how you become a speaker and all of a sudden you’re a speaker the rest of your life. So it’s kind of like I want, I want people to be in touch with both the reality of you, you it, even doing something like that, you still have to promote yourself and also be in touch with the reality that even if you don’t do it, you know, and like I, I guess that would be an example. Although I got, I got pretty close that you can still build this, you can still build the career without it. What matters is not so much the trophy, it’s, it’s, it’s the process and the hustle after that. So what were you doing to get clean?
ET: (17:20)
Okay. So I’m going to jump ahead seven years because the experience I have is not a normal experience. And that is, again, I got media coverage, media attention right away. I got, I got an agent, I got speakers bureaus, I got training companies. That’s not a normal,
RV: (17:40)
Not anymore particularly these told about that time. It really did kind of like, it happened instantly
ET: (17:46)
And I also was smart enough to, I constantly had to market myself as well, so I can’t, so that happened that there was a seven year window, Rory. I literally didn’t have to pick up a phone and then we had to the worldwide economic crisis of 2007. So I want to pick up my stories from there. I lost it all. I lost the agents, I lost the training companies, I lost the consulting firms. They all went away. I had a half a million dollar business and it went to two zero in two weeks. Okay. A person I called up at the time was mark Sanborn. Mark Sanborn. Is he speaking hall of fame? I’m pretty sure your, your followers know who he is. You’d just Google him. And I explained to him what happened and and he said, ed, what you need to do is let go and let God, and he says, you need to get your hustle on.
ET: (18:33)
You know, you need to let this go. Because I was so distraught, you know, and I was like, Oh, poor, poor, pitiful me pour for filled pedal for me. And then I called up another friend of mine and her name is Lisa Joe Lansburgh. And again, I was about to cry this, this about the had this pity party, right? And she said to me, she says, ed, I can’t talk to you now. I says, what do you mean at least Joe, you went to my best friends, you know, why can’t you talk to me now? She says, I just found out my next door neighbor, they’re little, they’re four year old and their five year old daughters have been assaulted. Can’t talk to you now. In that moment it was like, you know, there are significantly more important things in the world than you losing your business.
ET: (19:17)
These little girls have lost their childhood, you know, and they’re never going to get that back. And my pity party was literally the over that day it was over and I said, and just like mark Sanborn had advised me, get your hustle on. So every day I have this philosophy, never put up a zero. And what I mean by that, every day, reach outside of these four walls and tell somebody about and ask for business. Now am I successful every day? No, but you know what? I like my chances, you know? And actually that was that philosophy. Help me make it through. Starting from scratch. 20 think about 2007 2008 worldwide economic is the, the, the Great Depression of our lifetime. It’s never, the economy’s always your economy and there’s business and every single economy, as long as you’re willing to reach outside of your four walls every day. That’s what I learned.
ET: (20:12)
So guess what? I still do that to this day. I’ve just closed a deal yesterday. You know, a coaching client yesterday. Guess what? I reached out every single day. Never put up a zero. Now, there are times when I put up Zeros. Yes, absolutely. Here’s the key. If you don’t, if you, if you, if you do put up a zero, don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes you know your schedule doesn’t work out so you can’t reach outside your four walls. Start a new wedding straight. So that was my mindset. That was my philosophy. But that’s like, that’s like maybe you’re putting up a zero in terms of a client, but it’s never, it’s never zero in terms of
RV: (20:48)
Effort. Like you’re exactly, you’re always making that. You’re always making that call. You’re always sending that email. You’re always making that out. Yeah.
ET: (20:55)
New when something there’s, you could do one thing every single day. If you do one thing every day, let’s, what is it like 260 business days? That’s 260 outreaches. If you just do one activity a day, guess what? You’re going to, you’re going to get some business. If your readings out once a day for 260 business days, you’re going to get business. You’re going to stumble across the business.
RV: (21:16)
Yeah. Well, so talking about keynote, so it sounds like, you know, for awhile, that’s interesting. I didn’t actually realize you did sort of have the fantasy of sound like for a little while, for a little while. Like it was in a way, I guess back in those days it was w you know, there’s an element of the world championship that is a little bit like American idol. You know, it’s a big for people in that space that know it. It’s, it’s a big freaking deal. You know, and we traveled the world for five or six years after speaking to groups. That was how we saw the world. And that was a big part of how I started my career, even though I didn’t I didn’t when I came in second for, for the record.
ET: (21:53)
But Rory, here’s the point. It wasn’t necessary that you want. Yeah. They, some people still treat you like a world champion. They saw you on the big stage and you were smart enough to leverage it. And that’s the lesson here. You know, actually, you know what has actually meant more to my career than winning the world championship is being a CDSP. And here’s the cool part about being a CSP. A CSP is everyone who’s listening to this, you know to this broadcast, they can become a CSP. There’s only one person who wins a world championship every way. It’s not the trophy, it’s the metal. You know, I gotta I have a metal right there that says I’m a CSP. You know, I’ll only word that one day. You know what, it’s, the CSP actually has meant more to me and more to my career then than the trophy and then winning it. So you were able to leverage it. You’re proof. What I’m saying is that that puts you on a platform and you ready to deliver that platform.
RV: (22:52)
That is the point that eds no, I, I totally get that. And that is, you know, I never really thought about that. Yeah. The only one person gets to be a world championship, but to CSP that Ed’s talking about is called certified speaking professional. It’s the highest ranking earned designation that is available through the National Speakers Association, which is sort of the governing body of the speaking profession specifically. Ed and I are both CSPs and you, you, you know, they try, they have to, you have to, they audit like all your clients and all this stuff. So, so on the topic of speaking, just since that’s sort of like the world that we play in and we live in, where do speaking gigs actually come from even today? Is it, is it, is it the outreaches that, like if you go, okay, I got so many speaking gigs on my calendar, like where do they in, in real life, where do they come
ET: (23:46)
From? How do you, how do you get them? Is it called outreach or what? So it’s a combination of things. And I’m sure you teach this to your followers, you know, it is a combination of you know, writing leads to wealth. Okay. So it starts, it starts with writing, you know, so like a, if you have, you know, if you have a podcast, if you have a newsletter, et Cetera, whatever your intellectual property is, make sure that you get it out to the world. So writing leads to, well, so like that’s, that’s one form of outreach. Another form of, I’m a salesperson, so I’m sold a half a billion dollars worth of computers in my career. I have no compunction whatsoever calling cold calling companies. Now that’s old school and I know how to do it. And we do that on a regular basis. We also have marketing campaigns.
ET: (24:35)
And what I mean by that is, so for example, I have an assistant, so my assistant, she has access to three of four different databases. We, we on Mondays we go through these complete databases. We, we identify organizations that have putting on conferences, et Cetera, where I would be a good fit. And then when, what we do is we identify those particular individuals and then we started an email campaign to them and we send out three emails that go out over six weeks where people respond to them. We we, we send them information about us and we get into conversations. And then for the people who don’t respond to us, we put them in the, into the pot for next year. So that’s part of our process. So we have a system that we use every single day that we make sure that something from our organization is going now.
ET: (25:23)
And right now we’ve got, we’ve got like pretty much on an automatic process. So you have to have some type of system where there’s, you know, and using technology, using people. However, whatever type of system that you have that constantly sends out who you are, what your brand is, publishing your brand. Cause I think it’s a killer for you not to do outreach in some form or another. You don’t have to do cold calling. That’s my super power. I’m a former C level executive. I think I can call, I can get on the phone today and call a c level executive Cole, because I’ve been in her position, I’ve been in his position. Does that make sense? And this the thing I’m inviting people to do. What’s your strength? So for example, with me, I suck at social media except linkedin. I’m damn good at linkedin.
ET: (26:10)
Linkedin has made me thousands of thousands dollars. I haven’t made it. I haven’t made a quarter from Facebook. Okay. So Facebook doesn’t work for me, but you know, use the tool or use the channel that works for you. That, that would be my advice. Now, am I going to ignore Facebook? Of course not. I got to figure it out. You know I want to leverage youtube more. I want to, I want to do live streaming more. So these are things that I need to get better at. These are rope. These are roadblocks for me today. But you know, if you interviewed me a year from now, Rory, I’m a, I’m a figure it
RV: (26:44)
[Inaudible] yeah, I think it’s a, that’s an interesting distinction too. I think there’s a lot more people who are in the brand builders group community that are good at social media and are wanting to be a speaker. Then there are speakers and that don’t use social media. And I think it’s interesting, the speaking world is one that social media certainly helps just because it’s an avenue to pump your intellectual property out there, but a lot like I would, I would venture to say a lot of the busiest speakers I know the highest paid speakers do not have a huge social media presence. And if it, I mean there are some, when you get into the celebrity level of speaking basically, so there are certain social media people who become celebrities. This is the j Shetty’s of the world right now. Mel Robbins, Rachel Hollis, of course, Rachel wrote a book that sold millions of copies sold and Mel Robbins Jay Shetty would be a good example. Gary Vaynerchuk would be a good example. I like that. But that’s the rare, rare exception. Most of the people who are making a living as a speaker, it’s not really coming from social media per se. It’s more from being out speaking, just introducing, showing videos of them, talking and like getting them in front of the people who book, who book meetings.
ET: (27:59)
Well, once thing I did is I invested, I have this phrase, invest for your interest. So I you’re like in the middle of the economic crisis in 2007, 2008, I did something counterintuitive. I actually spent more money on coaches and investing in programs than I did the previous decade. Counterintuitive. The reason I did that is because the world as I knew it in terms of marketing and promoting myself no longer existed. It didn’t work and I needed fresh ideas. I also needed someone to hold me accountable. So one of the programs I enrolled in, and it wasn’t to coach anybody, it was for me to learn about marketing is I became a certified girl marketing coach. And here’s one of the things I learned from that is I have, I did not have enough channels in terms of people finding out about me. I had a website, I had a business card, I had a, a, a one sheet package and that was it.
ET: (28:56)
I only have three ways that people could ever find out about me. Guerrilla marketing and says you must have a minimum of 10 and I’m going to say today you got to have a minimum of 20 social media is only one. It’s not like, oh I’m on Facebook, I’m on this. None of that. No, no, no, no. That’s just one type of channel that’s only, that’s on the van. Only counts as one. What are different ways that people can find out about you in terms of your business? So I think one of the things that, you know, again, I’m going to call them ordinary everyday people, you know, non household names. What you need to do is you need to have multiple channels in terms of how people find out about you and your, and your company is perfectly positioned to do that for them.
RV: (29:38)
Yeah. I mean we, and we teach those of you that are watching, that are familiar. When we teach the con the content diamond is a big thing that we talk about, you know, creating one piece of content, just tearing it apart and repurposing and all these different outlets and, and so forth and so on. But I agree with that. I, I remember I heard someone say one time they said, you need to pump your content out into the world as fast as possible and as many mediums as possible, every which way you can. You can get it. And it’s just, it’s just a matter of people knowing about you. And, and that became one of our taglines at brand builders group was like, if, if people, people don’t know about you, they can’t do business with you. I love, I love what you’re, what you’re saying there Ed.
RV: (30:23)
So buddy, we could go on and on and on about this stuff. I think this is so fun for me to walk down. Some of it nostalgic. Where should people go connect with you if they kind of want to follow you and, and, and see what you do and, and you know, just stay plugged into what you have going on. You can, you know, the easiest is this like Ed tech.com EDTA t.com and you can find my, you know, Facebook and all my social media. You can find it from there. So if I’m not promoting anything, so if you want, you want to hang out with me, find going to connect me with me. Just go there. Yeah. Well, and I mean, when it comes to presentation coaching, I mean, I still to this day, like, you know, the world champions when it comes to the mechanics of speaking from the platform, the world champions are, they’re the best.
RV: (31:09)
It’s not the hall of fame speakers necessarily. It’s not the highest paid speakers. It’s certainly not the celebrities. It’s not the New York Times bestseller. It’s not the politicians, the people who win the world championship or compete at that level have studied this craft. I’m into a science and, and they’re amazing at teaching. And that’s, you know, and for me, that’s you, you know, Darren Lacroix Craig Valentine. I think Mark Brown would be in that. David Brooks. Those were some of the legends, you know, specifically on the art of speaking. And so I just really appreciate you brother, and I appreciate the reputation you’ve built and, you know, thank you for supporting us along the way and, and we just, we wish you all the best. Thank you. And, and youtube my friend.
Ep 41: Following Your Life’s Calling in the Face of Persistent Fear with Luvvie Ajayi | Recap Episode
RV: 00:00 Hey Brand Builder. Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m joined by my wife and business partner, CEO brand builders group, AJ Vaden. Hello. And today we’re breaking down the interview with Luvvie Ajayi who I absolutely love and she is a brand builders group client and is somebody that we just got to meet really over like the past two years and I’ve gotten to know a little bit and work with her and also learn from her. I think she’s definitely one of those, one of those clients. And I think when I think of that interview and when I think of Luvvie in general, I think the most clear, consistent thing that she says and does in terms of her strategy for building her brand is it’s just incredibly authentic. And she talks about the way to break through the noise is to just kind of passionately own what you believe and to come out right and just say it and don’t be afraid. The fallback, which I think takes a tremendous amount of, of courage. But that’s, I think, you know, her book is, I’m judging you, right? So she’s like putting it right out there. Like that is a part of her brand is, is to really just like lay it out there on the line. So I, and I think she does that. I think she, that’s what her brand is all about. And I think that’s, that’s one of the biggest things that I, I took away from her.
AJV: 01:24 Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that she says in the interview is it’s not always about finding your voice, it’s about following your voice. And I think, and as that relates to building our, growing your personal brand, it’s just how confident are you in being your authentic self? Because I think you will, you’ll find in Luvvie is she, the girl’s got confidence and she’s got boldness. She’s very bold. But that’s because she truly believes in what she’s saying. And I think for any of us, if we’re afraid that people are going to be judging us, then perhaps the message that you’re trying to share isn’t the real one. If you’re so concerned about what everyone else is going to say and what everyone else is thinking, is that your real truth? I think that’s set there. Deep root of Luvvie as she goes.
AJV: 02:10 No, this is my truth. And to some degree, who cares if you like it, right? Cause this is my truth. And you don’t have to like it because it’s my truth. And there’s a whole group of people out there who need to hear what my truth is. And that’s who, I’m speaking to. And for you a quote unquote haters. It’s just not for you. So don’t follow me. Don’t like it. Don’t read my book, don’t listen to my podcasts, don’t read my blog, don’t read it and then get so offended. Just don’t follow me. But how passionate are you about your message? Like is it your truth to the point where you’re like, not trying to offend anyone but if they get offended. So we it, I think that’s just a really good kind of place of going, is this my truth? Is this my core message to the point of, wow, so what, what you think?
RV: 03:03 Yeah. Well, and I, I love that. Like conceptually, if it is your truth, it’s like what other option do you have to really just come out and say it and you don’t want to water down your truth. You don’t want to Dodge. Yeah. Sugarcoat the truth. It’s like, if this is your truth, it’s what you really believe, then you have to just kind of come out and own it and dominate it. And she’s a good example of someone who does. Although I would also throw in there, you know, she’s a great real life story of somebody that was, you know, 15 years to an overnight success.
AJV: 03:32 Consistent. Yeah. And you said like
RV: 03:35 10 years on the blogging plus. Yeah. She was like one of the, the O G bloggers, like she’s been blogging for a long time.
AJV: 03:43 That’s so true. But again, it’s like [inaudible] I think the most consistent thing that you will hear through all of these interviews is consistency. There’s, there is no way around, there is no like, Hey, start tomorrow and you know, get whatever 6 million fans or like our followers on Instagram, unless you’re Jennifer Aniston who started her Instagram account and then like in 24 hours, that’s six
RV: 04:06 And spent decades building up her personal brand and becoming Jennifer Aniston.
AJV: 04:10 So I think all of those things I think are important. It’s consistency is the game. But what I really loved about that kind of point is it’s more about what’s your real truth and if it really was your truth, and I didn’t be so offended
RV: 04:23 I wasn’t thinking about this before, but, but something about the way that yours saying it, babe, about there’s some quote, and I’m probably gonna mess this up, some stuff off the top of my head, but something, a quote from a Mont Mcgon D that was like, I’m not interested in being right. I’m only interested in truth. And I also took that away away from her because even though her, her book is like, I’m judging you. And she’s very, you know, forward and bold. Bold is a great word, I think for Luvvie. And I totally admire that about her. It wasn’t just like being judgy. That’s not what her thing is about. Right. She has these three questions that I thought were super powerful, which was do I really mean it? So again, is it truth? Can I defend it? Which also is, is it truth and am I saying this out of love, which is also truth, right? It’s like I’m not saying it to just be right. I’m not saying it to offend you. I’m not saying it to just get my opinion across
AJV: 05:19 To get attention or to be controversial. Is this just just who I am?
RV: 05:25 Yeah. And if, and if, if it passes those three tests, then I think what she is saying is it can be sharp. It can be pointy, it can be penetrating like [inaudible] because, because it’s not about just being right. It’s not about just having some flagrant opinion. It’s that you really mean it. You’ve thought through it, you can defend it and you’re saying it out of love. And to me, one thing that didn’t really come up in the interview, but where I would say this applies directly for personal brands is in media training. If you’re going to be on TV, you have to have an opinion and it needs to be sharp and pointy and powerful, right? Like what makes TV is drama. Doesn’t mean you have to be mean. It means you have to be clear and you have to be opinionated. And that’s what often creates drama on TV, which is [inaudible] two opposing opinions. But the, you know, that’s why the people you see on TV are never the really like level-headed, you know, key even keel people. Cause it doesn’t make, nobody wants to watch a TV show for a bunch of people getting along. It’s, it’s just not interesting generally speaking. And so having an opinion and knowing what that is I think is,
AJV: 06:34 Is it important? Yeah. Agreed. That’s great.
RV: 06:37 The other thing she talked about, and maybe you can talk about this baby is probably the third thing is about the audience because that was very aligned with some of the stuff that we teach.
AJV: 06:46 Totally. She said that, you know, when you’re speaking, when you’re writing, when you’re just talking in general, do it through the lens of who is my single target? Who was that single individual? Like what are their demographics, what are their psychographics? So demographics is like, how old are they? What gender are they? Where are they from? You know, what is their socioeconomic status? And the psychographics are, you know, what do they care about? What do they believe in? What do they value? What are they struggling in? What questions do they have? Ha, you know, like where do they need to be met? Those are the things that you want to be thinking about as you’re writing and speaking your message. It’s who are you directing this to? Who is that single individual that you were talking too? And I love that because you know, you talk a lot about how when you were riding take the stairs that you really felt like the first chapter that this even worthwhile was when you really concentrated.
AJV: 07:44 Like I am not writing to people, I am writing to person one person. You had one person in mind. And you know, I think too, even with me it’s like when I think about like my message in my keynote and what I do, it’s like when I think about this is the exact person that I am speaking to, it is so much easier for the content to flow cause I’m not trying to make it general. It’s not general. It’s do I very specific unique individual. And that makes a world of difference in the uniqueness and in your stories and in the message and in the endearment and then the true sincerity that’s coming across because you’ve got this, this one person in the back of your mind. I’m going, this is you, this is for, this is the message that will change your life.
AJV: Not Hey, someone out there who might be listening. No, it’s no, I know you’re listening. I know who you are. This message is for you. I think I just totally changes the whole ball game and and if you listen, if you follow Luvvie that is how she talks. That is how she writes. And I think it’s really, it really like if you’ve ever been in church and I have this, I have this moment, all the, I’m like somebody tell him like that’s what I’m going through right now. Like it’s like what’s what’s happening? But it’s like you’re sitting there in the audience and you’re like, man, that was for me today. That was for me. I needed that. Like that message was speaking to the heart of what is going on in my life. That is how people need to feel about your message.
RV: 09:16 Yeah. And that it’s so powerful and passionate and punchy when you visualize that one person in your head like this is who I’m talking to versus let me sit down and write my, you know, my memoir for the world. The other thing about that, the avatar thing, cause that was another big takeaway from me that [inaudible] for those of you that are listening, if you’re, if you’re a client already of ours, you know we, we T you know we’ve got these, this four phase process that we talk about a brand builders group and when we get to phase three we talk about high traffic strategies. And when you get into that phase, the technical, it becomes all, there’s some technical components of advertising and when you get into the backend of Facebook or you get into the back end of Google and YouTube and you literally the world is your playground to reach hundreds of millions of people and it actually becomes an exercise to go, wow, who am I really trying to reach? Yeah. The more, the more well versed you are in who your avatar is, the, the faster that process is going to go, the smoother that process is going to go. And the less money you’re going to spend because you know exactly the person you are.
AJV: 10:24 Hopefully the higher conversion because that person will, you know, it’s like whatever that mess that you say this. Sometimes it’s like, I’m like, you have a radar.
RV: 10:36 Oh, a signal. A signal. Yeah. It’s a good that you pay such close attention.
AJV: 10:42 Sonar radar signal. You’re sending out a signal and they’re picking it up. Yup. Same will happen in the advertising and ad spend if you have that very targeted perspective. I think that’s such a good point because we know so many people who were like, I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in Facebook ads or ad words or whatever, and it’s like, it doesn’t work. And it’s like, well, we also know people who’ve spent millions of dollars and say it’s worth every single penny. So what’s the difference? Do you know who you’re targeting? Do you know where to find them
RV: 11:16 And are you watching the data of what converts? I mean, that’s the other thing that happens in phase three is phase three from a data perspective will teach you a lot about who your avatar is versus who you think it is. Because you might, you know, you start phase one, learning your identity, phase two, brand creation. You start putting all this content out, but then you get to phase three and you’re running ads and you’re seeing this type of person is engaging and this person is not, and this person is buying in. This person is not as like, wow, my voice really appeals to a different audience than I ever anticipated. That’s one of the most exciting and fun things is to go. You really start to fine tune it. So anyways, you can’t do that without aiming at somewhere first. So pick out that avatar. Be bold, be passionate, be unapologetic. That was the word as we were talking about this to me, what, what I love about Luvvie is she is bold and unapologetic and unfiltered, unfiltered, and she’s just living her truth and she’s not trying to be mean. She’s just being direct about her truth and it’s winning for her and it’ll win for you. So go out, do that today and we’ll catch you on the next episode of the influential personal brand.
Ep 40: Following Your Life’s Calling in the Face of Persistent Fear with Luvvie Ajayi
RV: (00:07)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon so I have to share with you all.
RV: (00:56)
I’m so excited for you to meet our next guest. This woman, was somebody that I met actually through Brand Builders Group and somebody that we started to talk about her brand strategy and all that kind of stuff. And I wasn’t personally familiar with her before and she is a rockstar and a total firecracker. And I don’t know how we had crossed paths before, but I’m telling you, you are, you’re going to, you’re going to love this woman. Her name is Luvvie Ajayi. She is a New York times bestselling author, speaker and digital strategist who really kind of lives at the intersection of like comedy technology and then activism. So her, her first book was called, I’m Judging You. The do better manual was an instant New York Times Bestseller. She also has a Ted Talk that has like 4 million views, which of course I’m very jealous of because her Ted talk has more views than mine, but that’s okay.
RV: (01:59)
And she has a podcast called ransom and randomness where she shares a lot of her, you know, raves and faves. And so she kind of like, you know, she interviews, she’s interviewed people like Oprah Winfrey and Gina Davis and Shonda Rhimes and she just like is she critiques pop culture. And then it’s also like using her voice for gender and racial justice. She has, she has a course a school called the do better Academy, which teaches people how to thrive in their business and their careers. And anyways, I’m telling you, she’s just, she’s just awesome. So Luvvie, thank you for making time for us.
LA: (02:33)
Thank you for having me Rory.
(02:35)
So you’ve been blogging for 16 years. I didn’t even know the word blog had been around for 16 years. Right?
(02:44)
Right. Yeah, I started blogging in 2003 when I was a freshman in college and I was peer pressured into doing it because I’m very pure, impressionable. Like my friends were like, we’re going to start web blogs. You should tune. I was like, okay. And
LA: (03:00)
I started blogging about my undergrad life and back then my major, cause I thought I was going to be a doctor. My major was psychology, premed and then I got a D in chemistry, chemistry that semester. I blogged about that too and I was like, fuck, you know what I’ll do. I’m going to be a doctor anymore so that’s not going to work for me. So as that dream died, the blogging thing kind of took over and I looked at it very casually. For me, it was just this thing that I’d like to do after, after I went to class or maybe I didn’t go to class that day and it took on a life of its own. Like basically people, more people started reading, reading it. Back then there wasn’t like a career as a blogger. It wasn’t considered a thing. It was just this thing that you did. It was like your online diary. When I graduated from college in 2006, I actually deleted my college blogs. I was like, Whoa, kind of feel like I finished a phase. I don’t have the material that I have before. I’m going to start a new blog where I’m talking less about me and my life and talking more about the world. And I started awesomely luvvie.com August, actually, August 8th, 2006 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
RV: (04:15)
That is so rent wild. So, so it’s interesting cause you know, like if someone goes and sees you now they’re like, Oh, it’s just got hundreds of thousands of followers and then blah blah blah. But how do you stick with something for, for 16 years? Like there’s gotta be times when you’re like, I’m freaking sick of this. Or like I don’t have anything to say or I mean is there, or has it always just been like you always got stuff to say and
LA: (04:41)
Like, well I think the power of blogging and the gift of blogging back then because there were no expectations of it being a career was that we were able to, a lot of us who started that early and we didn’t, didn’t continue. So that’s why you don’t know their names. I always say that I wasn’t necessarily the one who threw the best party. I was the one who threw many parties and just kept on throwing them. And writing was a practice. So I didn’t realize that I was actually practicing this craft. For me it was just something that felt like a hobby, something that was low stress, which funny enough, made it more fun. So I did it over and over. I kept on doing it. I didn’t feel like something that I was obligated to do. And I think that was a gift in that it allowed me to build that right in practice. But also it allowed me to build the voice that was authentically me because it wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t like I was thinking, huh, I should cover this today because that’ll get me some Google hits or clicks. Back then you were writing for the love of writing and it crafted and I really didn’t realize that it was something that had big, become increasingly important to me until I realized that when I didn’t write it felt wrong.
LA: (05:56)
So what do you think?
RV: (05:58)
So let’s talk about the writing thing. Cause cause I know you’re a speaker also. I don’t want to, I want to talk about that. Like you and I kind of share that. But I, I came at it backwards. I wanted to be a speaker. Like I spent my, my whole college was like doing the world championship of public speaking and I wanted to be a speaker. And then it was like, Oh, if you really want to make it as a speaker, you gotta, you gotta have a book and you know, if you can write a bestseller, then it sounds like, okay. So then I stumbled into writing and then I’ve since like fallen in love with the idea. What do you think are some of the secrets of great writing particularly today? Right. Cause there’s so much noise. Like it’s just like, and it’s not just, it’s like there’s books and there’s eBooks and there’s podcasts and there’s your, you know, random social, and that was video and like your feed, you know, like Jay bear, he’s another friend, he’s one of the other faculty members. He always says like, you’re, you’re not just competing with other writers. You’re competing with everything that competes for attention to puppy dogs and fantasy football. And so like, yeah, and babies. Right. how do you compete with babies? How do you write to compete with babies
LA: (07:06)
Knowing that you are not competing with babies, that you can exist in the same space with the cute baby. I think what customer, the noise now, what cuts, what elevates content is content that feels really authentic and thoughtful and does not feel contrived because I think all of the media that we consume now has actually gotten us slightly better and picking out what’s contrived and what’s not. And now when you are right or what makes you stand out honestly is the voice and the perspective that you bring. Because let’s be clear, none of us are talking about something that nobody else was talking about. There’s a million people talking about the same thing you’re talking about. You will not be the singular person covering a topic and you have to be fine with that. What people want to hear and what makes people come back is they’re like, I see myself and I see my thoughts in what this person is saying or they just gave me perspective.
LA: (08:00)
I didn’t have, I always say that content needs to be either funny or useful or interesting or timely, as many of those as you can be as possible best if you’re not funny, don’t, don’t try to be funny. But if you can be useful and timely be that, you know, so I’m, I just say take the pressure off trying to compete with the baby cause you’re not gonna win that battle. The cuteness is too much. That’s not your lane. You’re not even one in the same stadium, let alone race. Your job is to create the best content that you can. That the barometer I use for myself is if I’m not the person who wrote this, if I’m not the person who created this, would I still find this interesting or good?
Speaker 3: (08:42)
[Inaudible]
RV: (08:43)
Interesting. Yeah. Just so kind of like, Oh, if I was a random person, what would this, would this either be funny, useful, interesting or timely for me if it wasn’t me? So I like I liked that a lot. You’ve talked, you, you’ve used already the word a couple of times, authenticity and like your own voice. And that kind of a thing.
LA: (09:04)
How do you,
RV: (09:05)
How do you find the line of going, I want to be real and I want to be transparent. I want to be authentic because that cuts through the noise and it’s me and I don’t want to be fake, but I don’t want to share, you know, so much like that. It’s too personal and you know, and also it’s like there’s a risk of being judged, right? There’s this risk of people like you got haters and trolls and yada yada yada. So like how do you find that line of the right amount of yourself to share with the public?
LA: (09:39)
Yeah, that’s a great question. For me, one of my separate spaces, I, I, I compartmentalize my work in that I’m a public figure, but not my whole life is public. I don’t feel like I owe people access to every piece of my life. And I think some people feel pressure of being like, yeah, how do I figure it out? No, what your lines and your boundaries are. And for me a big line in a boundary for me is my relationship. You know, like me and my, my fiance, like you won’t see him and I post pictures of [inaudible].
RV: (10:12)
Congratulations by the way, because now you said Beyonce and only on on the influence of personal brand. Would you ever hear such a personal detail?
LA: (10:22)
I’ve already got the team, but yeah, I think knowing that the personal boundaries and why, right? Because you have to know the pieces of yourself that you must protect from people no matter how much and how large and how deep information you share elsewhere. So that’s a big second piece is being clear that building community, the community that you’re telling this information to needs to not just be the larger public, even though the larger public can have access to it. Because be clear that no information that you share online is really private. So also operating off that. But I think about my audience as a single person. Like you made us do the avatar exercise and you’re saying that every brand needs to have that one person that you’re thinking of that you’re using to serve. So I think about that person whenever I’m giving information out.
LA: (11:13)
Like, if she’s listening to this, if they’re listening to this information, will this be helpful to them? Even if I’m being vulnerable. And it’s with the idea that vulnerability comes with risks. Authenticity comes with risks. At no point is the information that you’re releasing guaranteed to land perfectly well with everybody, which is why I use three questions to ask myself whenever I’m sharing any information, anytime I’m talking about something, even when it’s difficult, it’s the, it’s a checklist for myself in these moments to kind of tell me either yes or no. Don’t do it, go for it. And mine is, can I do, I mean can I defend it? Am I saying it with love or thoughtfully? And I use that as a checklist because in the moments that I want to be really authentic, really real, really vulnerable, it can be scary cause you’ll be like, am I sure I want to say this?
LA: (12:07)
Could this, see the thing is we can’t use the idea of could this face backlash as a criteria because we’d say nothing. You can say the sky is blue and somebody is going to disagree with you. So that can’t be the barometer that you’re using to say yes or no to saying something that you think is important. So I think everyone should come with their own checklist of things that kind of serve as your own. Like, okay, so I’m not being impulsive, I’m not just going on a social media rent just for the sake of the fact that I’m angry or sad. Have I thought this through? Is this something that is worth my time to do?
RV: (12:41)
Hmm. I love that. Do I mean it? Can I defend it and am I saying it thoughtfully or with love? So I’m going to talk about that last one a little bit because I mean your books comes right out and says right on the cover. I’m judging you. You make no qualms about it. You are commenting on top
LA: (13:01)
Culture. It’s, it’s really interesting cause I think
RV: (13:08)
Of all like my friends and you know, various like people we interface with and clients and stuff. You have, you kind of walked this very unique space of being both like a speaker and like a thought leader, but also an activist. How do you, how do you kind of find that space or like, you know, is that just something you decided to do? Did you stumble into it? And I guess I don’t even really know what my question is here. I’m mostly interested in just your perspective on,
LA: (13:38)
Okay.
RV: (13:38)
Why and how you view the written word as both your right and your responsibility to kind of speak your truths and how do you kind of reconcile with,
LA: (13:50)
You know, the various challenges that come with that. Yeah, so I called my book. I’m judging you because I feel like it’s a phrase that feels accusatory, but really at the bottom of it, it’s not because we try to tell each other, Oh, we don’t judge anybody. We don’t try to judge each other. We absolutely do. And my thing is we judge each other for the wrong things. We spend so much time judging each other for, you know what we’re looking like, you know who we love, you know what God we practice or who, you know what God, we don’t believe in that. The things that we’re supposed to actually be judging each other on are the values that we bring to the table. How good we’re treating each other and other people. How we are leaving this world better than we found it. That’s what we need to be judging each other on.
LA: (14:37)
You know, we just judge each other on like, how are you just being a good person who cares about other people around you? So I called my book that because I wanted to hold a mirror to all of us, you know, have been like, yes, we’re absolutely something that’s fine, but let’s probably shift some of the things that we’re judging each other about and how we’re walking through this world. And for me, I stumbled upon all my, all my titles that I go by today. I stumbled upon all of them, speaker, writer, whatever, activists this person. Like I feel like life got me there because I was just doing the things I was compelled to do. And no, I love that you had clarity at 17. You’re like, I’m going to be a speaker at 17. I really thought I was going to be a doctor.
LA: (15:20)
So literally that I am today is opposite of what I thought I would be. And it’s because I ultimately kind of followed the path of doing the thing that felt like doing. So if it felt like speaking up about this issue I did. If it was about getting on the stage and talking about this thing I did, if it was about writing this book I did. So I don’t necessarily take myself seriously and that I was like, yeah, manifested all the sums, all strategy. None of it was strategy. Funny enough it was, I think my story of my journey is kind of a Testament of what happens when you kind of just follow your own like your own voice without necessarily doubting it. You know what I mean? Like you follow the things that you feel like doing without expectation, without any type of like plan and things just kinda came together.
LA: (16:10)
One question I get all the times when people say something like, well how do you find your voice? Or like how do you find that thing? It was less about finding it and more about not doubting when it’s in front of your face. We spent so much time but low hanging fruit thing like that thing that you wake up thinking about doing that thing that you always like, I should try that non, I’m not going to, that is probably the thing that you should be spending more time on. And because we’ve been told we’re supposed to be the doctors and the lawyers because everything else kind of has no blueprint. We’ll talk ourselves out of doing a lot of things that we want to do. So I think I just didn’t talk myself out of it and when I tried to talk myself out of it, it didn’t work.
RV: (16:52)
Yeah. So that’s, that’s the part that I love. I love that. I think it’s like, I think that’s super profound is it’s, it’s, it’s less about sort of finding your own voice and just following your voice without doubting it. The hard part is the without doubting it. Do you think that inherently you’re just like a rebel or you’re just that courageous or like why do you think that you didn’t stop yourself? Cause it sounds like maybe you did have some of those thoughts. It wasn’t just like love. He’s going to tell the world what she cares what she thinks and she doesn’t care that that’s not really what it is. It’s more like, well this is what I think. There could be some negative things about doing this but I’m going to do it cause I feel like I have to or I feel like I should or like walk us through that part and not outing.
LA: (17:45)
Yeah. I think for me the moments when I wanted to not do the thing that I wanted to do, I paused and I acknowledged that moment and I was like, yeah, I’m totally frightened. This is frightening. I shouldn’t do this. There’s, it makes no sense. Like you’re not a writer. Anytime I would try to talk myself out of that moment, it will stick with me where I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s like when I walk out of a room and I knew I was supposed to have said something and I did it, it kind of sit with me. I’d be like, ah, I should’ve just done it. So I hated feeling like that. I had it feeling like I didn’t do something I was supposed to do. So I was like, you know what? Okay, I’m just going to do it. Even if it’s scary, I’m just going to do it and close my eyes and run away if I need to, but I’m just going to do it.
LA: (18:30)
Cause I didn’t like the feeling of you should have done something where you didn’t eat. So I kind of operated from that idea is at the end of the day, I have to be okay with me. I have to be able to sit with me. It’s not as, it’s less about people’s ideas. It’s more about will I be sitting here for three hours obsessing about the fact that I didn’t say that thing or do that day. And if I will, you know what? No, just do it. Do it, whatever fall happens. But at least you won’t have the moments of so it’s one of those like having a life of Oh well instead of what if yeah, the writing thing and, and I, I started realizing that a lot of my, the best thing that I’ve done with the best since I’ve happened for me have been things that I’ve done in the middle of being afraid of saying that thing that felt scary.
LA: (19:24)
Choosing to not apply for a job cause I was like, I think I should make this writer’s thing work. All the things that I’ve done that have paid off by dividends, the Ted talk that you’re talking about that has like four, 4 million views. I was afraid of that talk, turned it down twice because I was afraid I wasn’t ready for it. One of my friends ended up being like, Hey, you’re not everybody get this done. You can, you can write this Ted talk in two weeks and kill it. And I was like, okay. So in those moments too, it helps when you have people who can reflect those backs to us and be like, you don’t have the courage right now. I’m going to give you the courage that you should have.
RV: (20:01)
Let’s talk about speaking for a second cause that that’s become a big part of your current primary business model.
LA: (20:07)
Yeah.
RV: (20:09)
If somebody wants to be a speaker, like how did that start happening for you? Cause it sounds like, you know, this was a casual blog and then it was like okay, now I’m writing and suddenly I’m a writer. And then how does that become speaking? Like where do you start getting speaking engagements? Do people come to you? Did you go to the [inaudible]
LA: (20:29)
Yeah. How did all that start to happen? Funny enough, 95% of speaking engagements that I’ve had, people came to me today. Yeah. Not even back then. My first speaking engagement was because somebody came to me. So my professional background after I graduated from college and I was like doctor is not it. I really fell in love with marketing communications cause I had an internship during college. So when I graduated I ended up getting a marketing internship for a nonprofit in Chicago, a journalism nonprofit. And I was like, this is where I belong. I was usually the person who introduced the organizations I worked for to social media cause I’m an early adopter of all of these platforms. Facebook I’ve been on since July, 2004. So marketing was big. And then I had a full time job working for another organization that actually taught nonprofits how to tell their stories using social media. And April, 2010 I got laid off that job but a month later they hired me to come do us a workshop, a Twitter strategy workshop. Wow. First ever paid speaking engagement
RV: (21:37)
From the people that fired you? Yes, I do. As a consultant, like as a trainer. I love that. That is a great story.
LA: (21:46)
First ever speaking engagement. And it’s funny because I have no clue. What was I thinking? Oh I am a speaker out. They literally was like, we want you to come lead this Twitter strategy training. All right, great. And I did that and then I got speaking engagements. I got invited to do a panel at blogger, which was the large, at that point was the largest community of women writers in the world. And they have your moderate a panel with Lizz Winstead who’s co-founder co-creator of the daily show. So like I felt like I was Forrest Gump, like Forrest Gump just stumbled upon these major moments. That was me. People were like, and then people saw me in that room. I got my next speaking engagement out of that room. So it was basically kind of organically grew. And then the more I spoke, the better I got and here we are.
RV: (22:36)
So a lot of it was just, it’s been a journey. It sounds like a lot of consistency and then a lot of courage to just be vulnerable and say what you feel like you’re supposed to say, even if you are scared to say it at certain times.
LA: (22:54)
Yeah. I, I called myself a 16 year overnight success. People see the hockey, the hockey stick success and think it just happened. I’m like, it was 16 years of consistency and I’m the person who stayed at the party and you couldn’t forget me because I was there the whole time. And I continue to be there. That hard work, that consistency. And my, I’m a, I’m a forever student. At no point do I think all right, I have made it. I am here. There’s no, there’s nothing left to do. I’m always evolving and what I’m doing, what I’m speaking on, what I’m teaching, I’m who I am and my audience has been able to grow with me and see all of that, which is why my book instantly hit the times list without like a lot of, shoot, I didn’t do any morning national, I wasn’t on the today show, I wasn’t on good morning America.
LA: (23:48)
But my, my book end up number five because my audience has seen that consistency. They’ve been along on the journey, they’ve seen the story and the transparency and they also see the courage. And I think sometimes we think courage is the big moments of maybe you go March or you know, you sign a big check. Or I think courage is in the tiny moments every day that the times that we tell ourselves, okay, this piece of doubt that I have, I’m going to move it to the side and do that thing anyway. That thing that I’m afraid of, I’m just going to do it anyway. Like I don’t believe fearlessness means lack of lack of fear. I think fearlessness means you are acutely afraid of that thing are you fear it, but you say, you know what, I’m going to do it anyway. So that fearlessness also carries me through.
RV: (24:37)
Yeah. That is so good. One other question. Well I actually have two other questions, but just in terms of the early adapter, cause I see that, I see that very much in you. Like you’ve been early adapter. Is there anything that you’re paying attention to right now, whether it’s like a social media platform or a topic or a trend or like is there anything that just kind of like has Luvvie’s attention that you’re going, this is coming and you all should be ready for it?
LA: (25:07)
Ooh, that’s good. People always talk about like video is the next frontier of content, which of course because people love that. But I think the people who are really doing well right now are creating content that does not feel like it’s attached to any larger strategy, if that makes sense. It feels very organic. It feels like you’re getting a glimpse to somebody’s life. Like the influencers who are doing very well right now are the ones who are telling you about their day. Even when they’re not sitting in front of a computer screen doing the work. They’re the ones who are able to move units and sell books. The ones who people feel personally attached to. I think now people are less people. You might have a million followers and you get a lot of likes, but if you drop a tee shirt and you can’t sell 30, then you really see that right now people are putting a lot of stock into feeling like they know somebody and whether it’s video or in written word, that’s huge. That’s huge and will continue to be huge. But in terms of platform, I’m seeing how all the platforms are mimicking each other’s content. I really think Instagram is currently the space that people are spending a lot of their time in. Yeah.
RV: (26:28)
Are you on TiKTok? Just curious
LA: (26:31)
Know what’s funny? I was thinking about TikToc. I’m not on TikTok. It used to be called what Musically? I feel like my job is not to be on every platform. TikTok, I’m gonna leave, I’m gonna leave to the demographic that is at right now, which kind of like what teenagers. I’m not on TikTok yet because my audience is also not on TikTok, so we actually wouldn’t even make sense. You don’t TikTok right now.
RV: (26:55)
Yeah. Yep. No, that’s an interesting thing. I, you know, we made that decision with Snapchat long time ago. Just a conscious decision, I’m not going to do it. I don’t regret that. I don’t regret that one. There’s a few that there’s, there’s a few that we’ve missed. We were super late to the party with Instagram and like, you know, well that there was some other stuff going on there, but I had to, I’m, I’m re had to restart my Instagram profile here recently. I’m restarted it from scratch. So but I think anyways, it’s just, it’s, I think it’s fascinating to see people like you and go, like, what are you thinking about? So Instagram is really like the place.
LA: (27:30)
I love what it’s changed considerably in terms of where I spend my most of my social media time. It used to be Facebook and then Twitter, and then Instagram. It’s completely switched. Instagram and then Facebook and Twitter less
RV: (27:44)
[Inaudible]. But like you’re saying, it’s, it’s the idea of people feeling like they know you, like they actually know you that is really working.
LA: (27:53)
And I think that’s, I think that’s super cool. So, yeah.
RV: (27:56)
Where do you want people to go lovey? If they want to get to know you, they want to follow you and like check you out and see what you’re up to.
LA: (28:03)
So I am all on all the platforms besides Snapchat and ticktock. [inaudible] I also have the benefit of being a one name social user person so you can find me on all the platforms. But just my first name, L U E and fun fact love. He’s actually a a British slang that really kind of means darlin nice. I do Googled lovey 15 years ago, the D the definition in Marion website would’ve come, come up number one, you to Google. Love you. Now it’s all me.
RV: (28:41)
That’s bad. That’s good. That’s a good thing. You own it. Pretty soon you can be like Oprah and you could be down to one letter. You’ll just be hell. Oh,
LA: (28:53)
That is a power right there.
RV: (28:55)
And yeah, just, Oh and like you will haveL magazine and you know, like
LA: (29:02)
That’s just saying, listen, Oprah has crowned me and her one of her lists. I was like, you know, I would not mind being the heir apparent, but yeah, push the envelope a little bit more. I’m, I’m slightly edgier, but she’s amazing. She’s, she’s actually goals in terms of the evolution of career. She didn’t just stick to being the person who was doing one thing and she was a Chicago girl and made everybody come to her. I’m in Chicago also and I love my city. So I was like, there’s already a model for that.
RV: (29:33)
Yeah. Yes, there’s, there’s certainly is lovey, I want to just thank and I think I get a lot of, I draw a lot of courage from watching you and just seeing, you know, looking at your body of work and what you’ve done and just, you know, willing to use your voice to do good in the world and do what you believe is right and all of that. And I think that’s really, really tremendous. And I just, I, I’m so thankful that you made some time to share with us. And I also want to applaud your consistency, girl. I mean you’ve been doing it for a long time and just like it’s, it really, you know, it’s just, it’s just a really, you’re a really great story and I think people can can learn a lot from just watching you and following your steps.
LA: (30:20)
Thank you. And I, and I’m really proud of my book. I’m judging you because I like is the manifesto my thoughts like my larger thoughts but on paper. So I hope you can go get it and yeah, follow me on all social. I’m on Instagram specifically also lovey. Rory, you are incredible because when I saw the podcast you did with Lewis, two and a half pages of notes, I sent it to all my friends and I was like you have got to watch this because it was like a masterclass and that’s what I became obsessed with brand builders group now and I believe I like posted all over Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and I was like y’all have to see this and then you DMD me. It’s incredible. I I respect the work that you’re doing. I think it’s amazing and glad you exist because this work is necessary.
RV: (31:07)
Yeah. Well thank you. That makes me, that makes me feel good. Well, let’s rise together, my friend and inspire, inspire people. So we wish you all the best. We’ll definitely stay in touch. This won’t be the last time lovey. I gie everybody. She is fantastic. Make sure that you go follow her and get the book. I am judging you. And there it is. All right, my friend. Take care. Thanks Laurie.
Ep 39: The Professional Noticer with Andy Andrews | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00)
Hey, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We are back, Rory and Aja Vaden, husband and wife, best friends, business partners, and your partners and guides and mentors and roles and leaders. Hopefully for you as a support coach on your journey to build and monetize your personal brand. We are breaking down our top three and three from the Andy Andrews interview. And I’ve known Andy for a lot of years. We’ve known Andy for a lot of years.
AJV: (00:31)
I was a reader of his work way before anything else.
RV: (00:35)
Yeah. And he was one of our big mentors. If it wouldn’t, if it weren’t for him and his work, we probably would have never become authors, probably never would become New York times bestselling author for sure. And so he’s made a big impact on us. And so it was really cool to get to bring you to him or bring him to you so you could hear so AGL, I’ll give you the, why don’t you take it away? Give us, give us what was your number one takeaway?
AJV: (01:00)
Yeah. I think my number one takeaway is this whole idea that your learning has to come before your writing. It’s a, you can’t think that you can just say the same thing over and over and over in five, six, 10, 15 different books and people aren’t gonna realize like, Hey, this is just regurgory regurgitated, repackaged information.
RV: (01:24)
You don’t want regurge [inaudible] nobody wants for their surgery.
AJV: (01:29)
But I loved how he said, he said, listen, I’m not going to be one of those guys who just says the same thing and then have my editors and publishers spin it and repackage it and sell the audience the same old thing that just looks slightly different. He goes, I really want to provide different and unique messages that mean something that I really provide value based on my own personal life experiences or those that I have come in contact with. And I love that. So just the whole concept of you can’t be continually writing a proof prolific information or valuable information or even at its most basic element worthwhile information if you’re not continually out there learning ahead of your writing.
RV: (02:11)
That’s my number one. Yeah. That was my number, my number one too. And I just, I think as an author it’s a, it’s an important thing that you see a part of your job is learning a part of your job is learning. Like it’s, it’s, it’s not separate from the writing process. It’s the first step in the writing process is to be learning. And I think, you know, part of how you create a different angle on the world or a different, a different view is because you’re assimilating all of this information from a number of a number of different sources. And I think so is this your number one as well? Well, that was my number one as well. And, and my number two is where he talks about also I love what he said. This, I want to say the quote exactly.
RV: (02:58)
He said that part of the role of a great author is to dedicate yourself to seeing the details that will be valuable to other people that most people overlook. And so I think in addition to learning, there’s, there’s learning and then there’s paying attention to and there’s zooming in on and there’s highlighting. And that’s a really important skillset. Also a great comedians. You know, he talked about talks about that as well, about what makes things funny. But as for you to, you know, grab one little point out of everyday life or one little point out of a book or a show or something and be able to zoom in on it and, and teach that as a learning point for everybody. Everybody. So that was my number two thing is just kind of the skill of learning is number one. And then the skill of zooming in and noticing is number two.
AJV: (03:46)
Yeah, it’s the notice the notice. So and I don’t really know how this connects, and this isn’t really a point, but it’s a side comment. So I’m going on a tangent, but on this concept of honing in and really focusing on one point, I think one of my biggest pet peeves in the professional workplace, both as a leader, as a student all of the above wrapped up into one is when people read for the sake of reading and not for the sake of learning. And I think as a leader in our former life and I, you know, I had, you know, over whatever, 75, 80 direct reports for many years and I would give away books often. I still give away books often. And I would have people come back to me all the time say, yeah, I love that book. And they’d show it to me and it’s underlined and it’s highlighted, but I would never see notes.
AJV: (04:38)
And I would say, so what have you applied? Like what was your biggest takeaway? And they would give me some sort of general synopsis and I said, no, no, no. What did you do after reading this? What did you learn? How did it change your thinking? How did it change your actions? How did it change your conversations? And so often I realize like they just read it for the sake of reading, but not for the sake of noticing something that was very unique and intentional that they could then apply in their life or in their work. And I, what I love about Andy is he is so intentional on the little details as well as the big overarching, you know, message or concept. But it’s like you’ve got to notice the little things and you’ve got to implement the little things in order for it to work.
AJV: (05:25)
You don’t have to make huge big changes to see big huge differences. Little ones can many times be, all it takes is a little tweak here and a little tweak there. But gosh man, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves in the workplace is when people don’t notice the things that need to be fixed. It’s like you walk away, you lucky walk away, you walk around all day with like blinders on. I attended sunglasses that I don’t, I don’t enable you to see the whole picture. And I’m like, you’ve been doing this for years. How have you never noticed this and because you’re not actually trying to, I love that about Andy and his whole, and I think the reason, okay, so I’m going to tie this together so it actually makes sense of why I’m going on a tangent here. I think one of the things that he speaks about writes about and that he just is about is what are the things that make a really big difference even if you don’t feel things that you have done, things that could make a difference.
AJV: (06:21)
So he said that for him, for example he hasn’t won five super bowls and he hasn’t been the owner or CEO of some big company and he doesn’t have like these big huge championships, these one or these like crazy life stories. Like he didn’t, he was, he didn’t land a plane on the Hudson and he didn’t do all these things. He said, my supernatural gift has been to notice, to notice the things that no one else takes the time to notice and then to write about them and to talk about them and to build that. One thing that I noticed and to add whole collection of work. And I think that should give everyone a lot of confidence of going like you too can be a noticer. You two can pay attention to the things that are happening in your surroundings, in the news or on social media.
RV: (07:07)
If you’re any type of a speaker, an author, I mean that’s what people are paying for you to do is to help distill the world around you and make it directly applicable. And I think that that is a part of, you know, to what you’re saying about the reading and the absorbing is that it’s almost like real learning is evidenced by the fact that action takes place afterwards and people rely on you as a thought leader to, to distill the information down, to communicate efficiently, concepts that they can then go, Oh wow, I didn’t see all of that. But you took all of that in and then you gave me the nugget and now I can make a change in my life.
AJV: (07:45)
Yeah. So I think, I guess my point number two is be a noticer. Like be a noticer. Pay attention and then share your unique twist on whatever it is that catches your attention. Well, whatever it is that notices or whatever you notice and actually be a noticer.
RV: (08:02)
Yeah, love that. So that’s worth it’s worth striving for. For me, the third one was actually pretty simple. It’s is something that I think I, I share as a personal philosophy with Andy is he says, you know, I strive to write books that will last a hundred years because they’re based on time tested principles. And I think it’s sort of like, you know, in, in any, anything that you’re teaching, any type of information or marketing or or knowledge based transfer. There’s, I almost think of like these two, there’s like two planes, there is, there’s practices and then there’s principals. So principals are the timeless truths that never change. And then there’s the practices which are like the really specific tactical things. And a lot of times those do change. And so it’s a little bit of a balance of both. But you just have to at least be aware that if your writing or teaching or you’re creating a video course, that’s all practices is very specific.
RV: (09:00)
It can change over time. You know, think about teaching practices of social media. Those would change frequently. You’d have to update with new screenshots at least once a year most likely. But the principles of, you know, social marketing or word of mouth marketing, those have been true forever and they would apply even regardless of if the medium is social media or word of mouth or you know, whatever. And so I just thought that was interesting that he noticed that and that was something that he does deliberately. And you know, I tried to strive to do that too is I really want to peg the principal so that you know, when Jasper Liam or reading something 20 years from now they would go, wow, this is still, this is still true today.
AJV: (09:44)
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. That wasn’t my third point, but I’m going to borrow yours and make it my third point, which is, you know, it’s so funny because I had to go to the dentist this morning and my dentist has like these huge TVs like right above you. So I guess you don’t have to talk to the hygienist is they clean your teeth. I don’t know why they do it, but they always have the same show on. It’s the only time of the year. I watch it for 20 minutes, twice a year as the what’s her name? Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest. Right. So it’s their show. And it was so funny because today they had a Harry Potter on, don’t know what his real name, Harry Potter, I have no idea. But Kelly was talking about how Halloween this year, 2019 that she had a ton of Harry Potter costumes and she was like, I mean, Harry Potter has been out now 15 years, 15 years.
AJV: (10:35)
And they were talking about how there’s an art of performing timeless stories. And that’s very much what Andy was actually talking about in the interview today is how do you write something that’s not trendy that regardless if it was now or in 30 years, you’d be like, wait, when was this written? And then as I was thinking about it as you were talking over the weekend who were in, I watched a masterclass by Sarah Blakely on entrepreneurship. That was awesome. But here’s the thing that was amazing. I mean first female, self-made billionaire ever. She could have talked about so many things to do with what it means to be an entrepreneur and take your concept to product and then to market and then to go from a million to 10 to hundred to billion. That’s not what she did. Her masterclass is about mindset and what I loved most.
AJV: (11:28)
I think the biggest thing that I remembered is she was like my dad when I was young. I gave me a Wayne Dyer cassette tape or whatever it was, whatever. And that didn’t make me thinking it’s like, cause people still listen to you and read Wayne Dyer today. And it’s like, and it was already old when she got it. It is that timeless thing about the way you think and the way you view things and mentality and mindset and philosophies and principles, not just the tactical practices of what you do. And I think too that if you’re trying to appeal to the masses, if you’re really trying to enhance and grow your personal brand in a way that really does set you off on a trajectory to be known and to break through what we call she hands wall. Some of that has got to be a little less tactical, a little less practice and a little more philosophy and principle, principle and mindset and the way you think.
AJV: (12:29)
And I think those are a lot of the timeless principles that we tend to get away from because we think people don’t want those. We think people need to know how do you do this and what do you do and how do you go from here to there where many times the real key of even doing that is the more soft skills as you would say, and how you think and how you view things and [inaudible] and I love that it’s like between this Harry Potter reminder this morning and the Andy, Andy’s Andy Andrews interview and Sarah Blakely, like those are three people all in the same weight from completely totally entrepreneurship, Hollywood movie author, but are all saying the exact same thing. And it’s how to be timeless. Like what are the timeless principles that really do withstand the trends and what’s just happening right now? So I love that.
RV: (13:19)
Yeah. So that’s your role, right? That’s a part of what you’re doing. Somebody out there, right need right now needs for you to help them interpret the world around them. They need you to help them distil all of this information down in, into actions and mindsets that they can apply directly into their life as such an important role. And what a gift to be able to go out and do that on every given day. So go ahead, go forward, do that, and we will catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Okay.
Ep 38: The Professional Noticer with Andy Andrews
RV: (00:07)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV: (00:55)
I continue to just be honored at how people that I’ve admired and been mentored by, you know, over years ended up becoming my colleagues and then friends. And I think that’s one of the most amazing things about this business. And building a personal brand is like if you are first to student, then you just end up finding new ways to meet amazing people. And that’s, you know who Andy Andrews is. To me, I was first a student of his Andy is incredible. So he has been on national television more than 200 times. He has 25 books that have been translated into 40 different languages. His, the, probably the two most biggest best-sellers, one is called the Traveler’s gift. One’s called the noticer. Traveler’s gift is my favorite. AJ loves the noticer. A J also loves the heart mender, which is one that you may don’t hear as much, just really, really good. But Andy as a speaker has spoken for four U S presidents. Uhe has coached the special operations command for our country. He’s been part of nine consecutive national football,ucollege national football championship teams in a row. Uhe’s been married for over 30 years. And I just, you know, as I think about the people that we wanted on this faculty that you could learn from and go, man, this is somebody who’s impacted millions and millions of people. Andy wasn’t an obvious choice to have. He also has a new book out. It’s just worth mentioning. It’s called the bottom of the pool and that just came out in June, 2019, which shares some of his biggest business secrets that he actually was under contract to not share here into recently. So, Andy, thanks for being here, man.
AA: (02:37)
Hey buddy. I’m honored to be here and I could grieve. I may seem uncomfortable to sit and listen to somebody say those nice things about you, but I appreciate it and I’m, I’m honored to be here with you. Okay.
RV: (02:51)
Well, and I just I guess I get that, you know, it is kind of always weird to hear someone, but it’s also like, wow, you’ve done so
AA: (03:01)
The, it’s been a long climb to the middle for me. I hear all these things, you know what I mean? Like Rory, dude, will you call my wife,
RV: (03:08)
Tell him, tell her somebody say, well, I I remember watching you speak, I saw you twice when I was a kid. I, my teens and then early twenties once was at the national speakers association. And I remember just being like, man, this guy is amazing. And you are there. You’re there. That, yeah, I was there like as a young, like at first, like one of my first or second NSA conferences,
AA: (03:35)
The only, only one I’ve ever done. So I know which one you’re talking about.
RV: (03:38)
Yeah. Yeah. So I was there and and I think, you know, for, I imagine that a lot of the people watching now, you know, they may not, some of them are very established, a lot of them are established. They might be a doctor or a lawyer or a, you know, fitness, you know, celebrity or whatever. But in the world of speaking, most of them are watching cause they’re like, I want to speak, I want to stand up, I want to be on those big platforms. Inspiring millions of people. But like, I guess my, my first question is, what do you think is the, what does it really take to make it in the industry is, let’s talk about speaking first and then we’ll talk about writing and all of that. But, you know, you’ve been around for years speaking, you know, dozens of times every year, some of the world’s biggest stages for some of the biggest companies national football teams. Why do you think you’ve been able to get to that level and stay at that level for such a long time?
AA: (04:35)
That’s a great question. And even even the speakers Bureau said to me one time, they said, you know, most speakers have arcs, you know, they land the plane on the Hudson and then there they speak for three years. But you know, that story has been told or they have a, a specific thing and that, that once you cover everybody and then cover everybody twice, it’s hard to keep booking you. And, and and they said that I was one of the very few that ever experienced it, didn’t have an arc and you know, or a career arc. And, and they, and I told him, I said, well, the reason is because I’m a nobody. You know, I’ve a, I, it’s easy to have an arc if you have done something like I have five Superbowl rings or something, you know, but I don’t have any Superbowl rings.
AA: (05:30)
I don’t have you know, I have any gold medals. I wasn’t the hero of some national disaster. I’d never been the CEO of some major company or I don’t have a radio show and I’ll have a television show. I’m, I’m a dad and I’m a husband and I’m, I’m a friend and I’m, you know, concerned citizen. I’m a buddy and, and I have a, I have developed an expertise over time at at noticing things that are valuable to people. And so, so there are two answers to your question. One, one is you say, how do you, how do you do that and, and continue to climb and over time and remain relevant that that is a key to remain relevant. We all have authors that we don’t read anymore. You’re right, right. I mean, we have conversations. Sometimes we go, yeah, you know, I used [inaudible] do you read so-and-so?
AA: (06:34)
Yeah, yeah. I used to read those books a lot. Oh, you don’t? No, no, no. Why not? Well, you know, just kind of, it got to be the same thing. Oh, okay. And so, you know, a lot of authors and speakers will hit on something and maybe it’s because they are a massive expert in something. Okay. and I have never been a massive expert at anything, but I am hugely dedicated to learning details that are valuable to other people that most people never see. You, you, and I know I have a background in comedy and you know, what a comedian does is to notice things that nobody else notices. And then when you bring them up, everybody goes, Oh my gosh, we all do that, don’t we? And I mean, that’s part of what a comedian does. And so to take that same thought process and put it into creating value for, for clients and for people and for families and for organizations and for CEOs and for churches and for communities. And so to, to create, to have inside yourself a passion for a passion, for learning things that are valuable to others.
RV: (08:05)
Yeah, that’s, that’s like such a great [inaudible], you know, type it into here. My own notes on how it’s just like, that is such a great tweetable moment of it is so simple. Like so is the noticer, you know, that, that the notice are such incredible book. Do you think that that book and what ended up being sort of like foreshadowing of your career was just like this, you know, the guy who, the guy who sees, who sees things that everybody sees but like turns them into lessons and, and that
AA: (08:36)
To, to a great degree, I mean, you know, and, and you know, I even have a, a thing I do now called the professional noticer and it is like my own thing, you know, and, and but that was, it was a foreshadowing because Jones that, Oh man, that came into my life years ago when I was living under a pier and in and out of people’s garages. You know, this old man, he, he, that’s what he called himself. He said, I’m a noticer. And when God was passing out talents, I didn’t get the cool ones. I can’t run fast, I can’t sing great. But I notice little things that make a difference to other people. And, and, and I’ve obviously, I’ve thought about that for years and years and years,
RV: (09:23)
Decades now. Well, and the thing I love about it is just there, there’s, there’s such an inherent service of that it’s like, it’s in the personal brand. You know, I think this is one of the things that’s so frustrating to me is that the personal brand is not about the person. It’s about the value they provide to other people. Like even what you’re saying is noticing things that are valuable or valued.
AA: (09:50)
Two, two
RV: (09:50)
Others and just like paying attention to that. And that is an expertise. So I’ve never, I’ve never thought about that with you before, of like, what is Andy Anders and expert on? But like that is your thing. Like that is what you do so very, very well. So can we talk about the books for a second? Cause so, so 25 this is your 25th bottom of the pool’s your 25th book
AA: (10:12)
If you say so. I have no idea. I’m sure somebody tells you that but I honestly don’t know. How do you, how do you,
RV: (10:20)
Right, so many but like books, like I once heard somebody say, you know the first book is easy. The first book is easy to write. It’s the second book. That’s hard cause it’s like the first book is like your life stories. But then after that is,
AA: (10:33)
Yeah, it’s like a, it’s like a comedian’s, a body of work. If you, if you want to find the funniest albums in a comedian’s body of work, go for the first and the third. Skip the second one because you know, the comedian has spent his entire life with the material that became that 45 minutes or an hour for that first thing that got him noticed or got her notice and, and that first hour and people ate it up and then all the money people came in and said, man, come on. Come on. We’ve gotta have something to follow up. We ain’t got one album out there. Come on. We’ve got to have something to follow it up. And so, you know, spent a whole lifetime gathering the material that everybody loved and six months gathering the material that was not as, not as funny as you know, but, but, but the people who last learn their lesson quickly now, you know if you, I, I haven’t been, I have not been smart in a bunch of ways as a, as a writer and, and I’ll tell you what those are.
AA: (11:50)
Because if you, if you want to, if you want to just make a ton of money and that’s all you want to do, there’s a lot of people that can tell you how to make a ton of money. And, and a lot of that has to do with what you have to do and what you have to be on a daily and monthly and yearly basis. And, and I was told right at the beginning of, you know, when the Traveler’s gift hit you know, that was my first novel and that was my first book with a major publisher. And I was told right off the bat, you know, okay, we got it. You know, they, I was signed to a three book deal you know, a book a year and, and I quickly realized, how do you do it? I do book a year, I don’t, I don’t know how to do a book a year.
AA: (12:44)
And, and the thing that I didn’t understand at the time, but I began to understand and it kinda got me, I say in trouble, not in trouble, but they were, they were disappointed in me because I was obviously not going to be one of these guys that, that pumped out book after book, after book, year after year, after year after year and built themselves into this this thing where there is a core group of, you know, I don’t know if I’ve a hundred thousand or million people that just buy everything. But for the most part, you know, when you step back and look at it a lot, and I, this is not everybody, this is, and this is more me I’m telling you about what I sure figured out I had to do. I did not want to become derivative and I did not want to, I did not.
AA: (13:40)
What does that mean? I didn’t want to to have somebody go, wow, you know, I’m four books in to Andy Andrews stuff now and it’s kind of the same story. And as Canada, the same message just like over and over again. And, and so I realized, I would tell him, I said, I have to learn. I got to abuse my kids. I get to be with my family. I’ve got to, I gotta walk around out there. I, I’m a relatively young person. I don’t know enough to write a book a year unless I continue to do the same thing and put it in a different way. Okay. Do you want to, you want to persist? Let’s persist. Okay. The next book is about perseverance and the next book is about staying in the game. And it’s like, come on really. I mean cause at some point the audience or your readers at some point people go, it was kind of same thing. And so I said [inaudible] and so it was to detriment of my career to, to not do that. I just, because I thought I’m not here just for this one time, these books that I write
Speaker 4: (14:59)
[Inaudible]
AA: (14:59)
I want to write books that lasts a hundred years. I don’t want to write books that in three years you read the book and go, well I know when that was written or that was written before the internet boy that was written when Brittany Spears was huge boy that was written when general hospital was on the air. I mean I don’t want to write books like that. I wanna write books that your grandchildren can, can pick it up. And then, unless they look at the date, they don’t really know. No, when was this? And so, so it has taken me a long time. My, my writing for years lagged way or let’s put it this way. My, my writing was trailing my learning and I, and, and so because I only learned so much and so fast and was determined not to lap that I did not want to get my writing ahead of my learning that it has taken me a while to get to where I really can put out some books now because I’m, I, I’m making, I’m connecting dots for people faster than I’m able to put a book out. And I’m so that, that’s, that’s [inaudible] the other part of it is just being, you know, a detriment to my career I’m sure was that I want I S and I still,
AA: (16:42)
I want to do something that’s valuable for you. Okay. You know, you and I, Rory have been around enough people in our lives that are enamored with what they do and, and, and, you know, and it’s hard not to be in this business cause you know, people, if people are coming up to y’all all the time, when is your orange juice? Okay, great. Excellent.
RV: (17:13)
That was something I was, I wanted to, I was going to ask you about too is like the whole being committed of service to others when you know some people are drawn to this cause you have the stage and the lights and you know, you, if you do a great job, if you do an incredible job, you know you make an impact and people are so grateful and gracious is, is, is the humor, is the humility. So just before we move into that, cause I do think that’s interesting on this last little part you were saying, what it sounds like to me is like you have to be a great read or before you can be a great writer. Like you have to be a good learner before you’re good teacher and you have your entire career. Like you, you chose at some point to slow down the release of books so that the learning could be out in front so that you were always, you know, and that’s where you, that’s where you were saying when the writing is lagging behind, it’s like it’s lagging behind your learning.
AA: (18:07)
Why am I, how am I learning? Yeah, I love that. Cause we just, we have to, because ultimately in the end, the whole, the book, the bottom of the pool, it’s all about the thought process. You know, at the bottom of the pool was not a book where you go, okay, these are the seven things you’ve got to do. And then you’re successful where you know, okay there’s the four things you do and then you’re all of a sudden, yeah, it’s not that. I told my son the other day, my 19 year old, I said, buddy, I said, I wrote this book for you and your younger brother because one day, I mean, you know, when I’m gone, the world is obviously changing all the time. Technology changes everything. And I said, so people will always tell you this is how you have to do it now or this is the industry standard.
AA: (18:59)
Well, you know, look at best practices. Well I said, there are always people to tell you how to do whatever. And, and I said all they’re doing, it may even be a great average, but they’re contributing to the average. Instead, at some point you are going to have to learn how to think to a different conclusion then everybody else has come to and [inaudible] you know, that is the only way. And if you look at the, you know, the, the quotes on the book, you know I spent a number of years now working with specific, some specific companies and specific teams and so to create results that are just ridiculous. And so if you’re really, if you’re a multibillion dollar company and you want to double in a year, well can you find some other multibillion dollar company in the mortgage industry like you are, that has doubled ever in a year, ever. Okay. Well if you keep thinking like they think you didn’t even get a chance [inaudible]
RV: (20:22)
Like you have to elevate your thinking and, and I w so one of the books or in this metaphor deepen your thing to the bottom of the pool, cause that that name, that name does sound like a horror movie, doesn’t it? The bottom of the book, but it’s beyond your boundaries and, and break through some of the stuff to a deeper understanding. I remember one of the other books that you wrote, which a short read, but it was at the time, I have to say, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t my favorite. I was like, Oh, and, and ever, but since I’ve been like, man, this book had a huge impact on my life was you wrote a book on how do you kill 11 million people? You know, was about the Jews and the Nazis and like, you know, all this stuff that was happening and you go through the whole book and then it’s like, how do you kill 11 million people?
RV: (21:13)
How do you kill 11 million people? You lie to them. And I was, that was so simple and I’ve been like, wow, people will lie. Like people will lie, governments will lie. Ceos will lie. Like people will lie. And until you learn to think for yourself I mean, that had such a profound impact. And I think for a personal brand, right? Like you are the noticer, you are the conduit of great ideas. We have to be the ones that are deepening our thinking that are not just kind of going with the flow. And so I think, you know, to hear you talk about how you’ve systematically kinda kind of done that and that. So, so that’s what every, every book is like that. It’s a deeper level of thinking. It’s a new thing that you notice. I think you used the phrase connect the dots. It’s like you see us a pattern or a theme and then you kind of come in and you’re like, okay, there’s enough enough instances of this that I’m going to just kind of connect the dots. And that’s a book,
AA: (22:13)
Right? And it’s, it’s, it’s curious because that’s the other thing I was going to say, that it’s probably hurt my career is I don’t, you can’t find all my books in one place in the bookstore. I wish they would put all the books in the Andy Andrews place or whatever place that is, but you can’t find them there. Because I, I’ve I’ve, I’ve had you know, nonfiction fiction, children’s current events, those different lists
RV: (22:46)
I’ve had business you’ve even had like spiritual, like yeah, you’ve been all over.
AA: (22:51)
And so it’s, it’s one of those kinds of things where you know, if you stick to what you do, okay, well I figured out something pretty valuable with that. How to kill 11 million people thing. I figured out something that that there, there is something beyond what is true and the scholar the truth, if you go beyond what is true all the way to the bottom of the pool, you can often find the truth and the problem in business and in our personal lives is most of us stopped with what is what is true and why wouldn’t you? It’s true. It’s the answer. It’s, it’s obvious it, that’s the right answer. It’s true but, and it produces results and you can be in first or second place and still be only dealing with what is true. But if you want to double or triple your results, if you want to get to a different of thing, you got to go find what is the truth.
AA: (23:49)
Now, a quick example is like if you took a blind person and put them in, you know, in a room and said, we’ve got an animal here. You never heard of it. It’s called an elephant. Gonna give you a few minutes with it. Want you to tell us what it’s like and tell us you know, how we could use it in society. And after 10 minutes, you know, the blind person may say, excuse me, the blind person might say, well an elephant is very wide, very tall, flat. He used them for a gate, several of them for a wall. See, that’s true. All that’s true. It’s not the truth because until you got to the bottom of the pool about an elephant, you would never have a complete picture of what an elephant’s really like or having any idea of the many ways it could be used.
AA: (24:44)
And so with the idea that the Nazis lied. Yeah, well that’s true. And everybody knows it’s true. Yeah. White man, they killed, they killed 11 million people. They you know, they create a world war for everybody. They were liars. They were deceivers. Everybody knows it’s true. Okay. But the thing that kept bugging me, the thing I kept trying to go to the bottom of Hill on that would have application for us today with our dealing with our, our families in the organizations and dealing with our own governments. The thing that had application to me was, and it kept bothering me about the Holocaust. It’s like, how do you kill 11 people now I’m not saying how do you do it? Like what weapons? Weapons. And I’m not saying like, how crazy do you have to be to do it? Okay. What I’m saying is we’ve all seen the pictures of the people at the railway stations, thousands of them loading themselves onto cattle cars.
AA: (25:55)
And there was a, a Nazi soldier here with a machine gun and 10 yards down there was another one. Machine gun G, why? What’s going on? How do you get these people to load themselves peacefully onto cattle cars week after week, month after month, after month until 11 million market acquire. They run it. Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they rush the guards? What are they high? What’s going on? How do you kill 11 million people? And when I found the answer, just like I was so stunned, I could not believe it. And that is you only tool. You create a policy of lies and they had four and he can get the book, I’m going to tell you the whole thing, but it had four different directors that were policies about what they would say, how they would lead them into the trap of believing them.
AA: (26:44)
You know how they would go and, and, and negotiate with them and they would take their money and then give them food and say, you’re fine. You’re, everything’s good. And the people are thinking, if they were going to kill us, they would just kill us. They wouldn’t take our money and give us food and exchange so they’re not going to kill us. Okay. And you know, you lead them to the point where you’re going, Hey, we got to get outta here today. We’ve got to get outta here because the Russian troops are coming over the Hill and we’ve got a place down here where we’ve got skills, factory jobs for all the men. The women will stay at home, the kids are skills. And so just if your father’s board, your people on the trains, please get them on. And peacefully they did. It was you lie.
RV: (27:31)
Yeah. So I think that that, that was profound and even though you’re not an expert per se on anything, it’s like your super power is noticing things like that, bringing through it, thinking through it, thinking through it. It’s like we have to advance the level of thinking that has been done for people. And it seems like that, you know, that that is a big part of your, of what your super powers. I so I know we’re, I know we’re running short on time there. There’s another little element that I want to just kind of ask you. It’s kind of like a little bit of a curve ball, but you, you brought up comedy and I, I wasn’t planning on talking about this, but you know, I never really noticed the parallel because between what you, what you do like your super power and, and comedy, but they are the same thing.
RV: (28:21)
It’s, it’s noticing the thing that most people don’t pay attention to but it like happens to everybody is, is you’re also hilarious on stage and you’ve always been so, so funny and you know, it’s like, it helps a lot to be funny in the speaking world. So like if, if you had to teach comedy or if there was something where it’s like somebody was not funny D like, do you feel like you were just born with it or is there something that you have learned in a way that’s like, you know, practical that anyone could take to, to become funnier in their writing and in their speaking?
AA: (28:58)
I think, I think you can learn to do it. I think now as far as the speaking goes, there are so many things that are skillsets. Okay. Within that. But there is one, there’s kind of a talent thing too as far as, but that basic talent, just being able to talk, just being able to to talk is, is that talent okay? But everything after that is a skill that you add onto it. And the, the funny part is, is not to tell jokes. You know, comedians don’t tell jokes, you know, you do material, you, you come up with observations. And so, so if you, if you narrow it down and look at where are these things are coming from, they’re coming from who is aggravated by this what have we missed? What is the exaggeration of this? And what if I dialed in really closely on this basically four different things.
AA: (30:06)
There are some offshoots from those, but you know, I mean, you don’t, you don’t talk about it, the exaggerations, you know, you don’t talk about a guy who’s six foot five, you know, you walked into the gym and I’m playing basketball against a guy who’s bigger than Sasquatch. This guy is like 11 feet tall. It’s a funnier story and everybody knows he’s not 11 feet tall, but it’s a funny, don’t worry ago. It’s exaggeration, you know? And then the you know, there, there’s so many ideas of, you know, of what, what have we missed? Okay. You and I, I used to do a bit about you know, when he and I would get into it, I’ve given to it by saying something about, wow, did you hear there in Texas? They did another like execution there and the prison systems and they, you know how they do it in Texas, don’t you? They do it with a lethal injection, which is a shot, basically what it is. I mean, you grew up, you’re terrified of shots and now they’re executing with, but I always wonder, you know, when, when you execute somebody with a shot, do they still rub the out go home?
AA: (31:34)
Like we don’t want to infect you want to kill you? Oh my gosh. No. It’s just a thought process of an observation and daily news. Just something that everybody is seeing. But in another way, Rory too, is what is the opposite of this? What is the opposite of this? So,
RV: (31:59)
So those are, so those are just, so basically if you just kinda like okay, notice the things that frustrate you and then kind of exam, you know, like just, you kind of work on that a little bit or, right.
AA: (32:13)
Cause you think, you think about, think about this. Am I the only one? Am I the only one? CNS? And then you know, and then you’re telling if people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did it. How many of those are there? Right.
RV: (32:28)
Well, I never made that connection, but that makes so much. That’s makes so much sense. It’s just like you’re, you are, you’re a noticer. Like as it turns out, like what I think Andy Andrews, part of, part of your superpower, which makes you funny and profound and insightful and intelligent, is you notice things that are of value to other people and that are entertaining too.
AA: (32:53)
Other people. So you gotta be a little entertaining. So they will listen long enough to figure out what’s valuable.
RV: (33:00)
Yeah. But maybe, maybe there’s not as much randomness as one might think on the surface to, to all the various things that you’ve talked about. There’s, right.
AA: (33:09)
And here’s a, here’s a great, I mean, you didn’t ask this, but this is one of the best things I ever took from comedy and taking it into a speaking career. And that is, yeah, people will look at comedians they love and go, it just came out of nowhere. Man, this is so spontaneous. It’s just unbelievable. You know, people used to say that about Robin Williams, and Robin did have a lot of spontaneity, but that was only because he was allowed it. But it wasn’t, I mean, in a, in a typical performance, it might be, I don’t know, eight or nine or 10%, maybe spontaneous, but it’s like, this is not spontaneous, you know, on the tonight show, we saw him do this five nights in a row at the comedy store before he did it on the tonight show. And, and so what you’re wanting to create is the illusion of spontaneity.
AA: (34:12)
You want to create the illusion of it. And so, and I, I use this in my speaking a lot because I tell people, you know, we’re just having a conversation here and, and I don’t know, not really doing a speech, we’re just kind of, cause if I was doing a speech man, I’d have to be nervous because demanding that I be incredible. I already know that I’m not. And so, you know, let’s just kind of have a conversation and, and in fact we’ll just, we’ll just pretend we’re a big living room and having a conversation and I’ll go first dude, this guy thing. But what I’m saying about creating the illusion of spontaneity that I use a lot in speaking is I will create a situation. I know where I’m going now. The more it looks like, and you know, you’ve seen me, Rory, on stage.
AA: (35:11)
People go, he’s kind of nuts. I mean, it’s like this is the add poster child. I mean, and I know that. I understand, but I want him to think that because why do people go to bull riding? Why do people go to NASCAR? Just like you can’t take your eyes off it. There might be a wreck here any moment. Okay. And how many speakers have you listened to is like, there’s Bora, their minds, the information may be incredible, but if you’re, if you haven’t got something, and so what I want to do is I want to create something where the audience is involved with it. I know where I’m going. Give you an example. I used to do a routine, in fact, I heard it the other day on Sirius XM, so I haven’t been booked as a comedian for years. And every day I’m on six Sirius XM comedy channels. But I heard this one on Sirius XM the other day and I was like, wow. I, I used to do this routine about Lassie, about rumor that, and you’re so young.
AA: (36:21)
Yeah. But so Lassie and Timmy and, and I used to do this bit about Lassie, but rather than saying like, most people would go, Hey, do you remember Lassie? You remember Lassie from television. You know, wonder if funny how Lassie would do that. I mean that’s what a lot of people would do. Okay. But what I want to do is, I want to say, and is there a memory, we’re talking about television or something or some comment about television and go, man, when I grew up, we had great television shows. I mean I don’t, I wonder, we had animal shows, animal shows you what do they have animal shows now I don’t even know if they ha we, you remember him hearing you get my age. We had like a gentle Ben and flipper and Rin tin tin and a fury the horse and, and invariably someone’s going to go Lassie, Lassie. Remember Lassie? Never hell as you would. Here’s your cup of cars. Yeah. Let’s see. I do my bit. And the audience is going, dang man, somebody just said Lassie and the dude does four minutes on it. Unbelievable. It’s the illusion of spontaneity.
RV: (37:41)
Well, you’ve gone, you’ve gone far with this. The simple skill and, and trait of noticing. And I think that’s been super insightful for me. Hopefully for the people watching is just like the power of tuning in to what are the things that other people aren’t seeing and then developing those, whether it’s for entertainment or is for insight. That’s, that’s a super powerful lesson and we just appreciate you so much and we wish you the best and hopefully we’ll see you. We’ll see you back here again sometime. And anytime you ask, I’m William, so Andy, where do you want people to go if they want to like learn more about you, stay connected with you and all, you know, all of the stuff that you’re up to. Thank you. Meet me at Publix. I shop at Publix grocery saying you find more about may of let’s, ah, I, you know, I have a podcast too is not, is not as big a deal as yours, but it’s called the professional noticer. And we
Speaker 5: (38:35)
Do it every week and we answer questions and laugh and I have great time, but the professional noticer is my podcast and then we’re also doing stuff with a wisdom Harbor and Andy andrews.com. So,
RV: (38:51)
Well that’s awesome. As it turns out, that’s a good title for your podcast is not as much randomness to Andy Andrews as one might think. And you are a professional noticer. Thank you for showing us what that looks like a little bit behind the scenes that keep, keep making us laugh, man. Keep, keep inspiring us. We love it and we appreciate you so much. Thank you buddy. Honored to be here.
Ep 37: The Marriage of Music and Business with Brett Kissel | Recap Episode
RV:00:00 Hey brand builder. Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m joined here by my wife and business partner and CEO, AJ Vaden of brand builders group. And we’re just breaking and breaking down for you are our three and three today of Brett Kissel, which I love because Brett introduced us into the music space and was really our first client, like well known client in the music space. And so this was a super, super interesting interview. Really great to see how these strategies and techniques and things apply over in the music business. So this is our top three and three. So AJ, why don’t you kick us off?
AJV:00:45Yeah, so my first one I think applies to all of the creatives out there and I loved his entire interview. And if you are in any sort of naturally deemed creative space, so anything in the artistry world, you should really be really listened to this cause. I think one of the high highlights or insights for me that I gathered from this is he talks about how so many people who are creatives ignore the business side of what they do. And he said, that’s just a really big mistake because you’re, you’re depending on somebody else to build, run and grow your business. And that’s a problem. Right? And at the same time, if you had to pick what’s more important, the creative side or the business side, he says, well, you know what comes first, the chicken or the egg? He said, well, in this case it’s probably the creative side because the business doesn’t really work if you’re not any good.
AJV:01:32So you have to be really good. You’ve got to be rather, it’s a great musician or writer or whatever. Your creative space is a screenplay writer, any of the things. But I think it was really interesting. He said, once you’ve got the creative side them though you have to have business acumen, you have to know how to grow a following, build a following, how to handle your finances, how to get brand deals, how to find the right management team, the right agent, how to get yourself booked. I E be a sales person. He said at the end of the day, so much of what I do is basic salesmanship. He goes, I was in sales, but not technically right, but considering himself as an artist, I have a guide to sell myself and my work to the small deals to the big deals that he’s gotten. I loved his story that he shares about when he was 16, he went down to the car dealership and negotiated himself a free truck and he was willing to do for that free truck. That was his first brand deal and he was 16. And just getting started and, but he knew how to negotiate and how to craft himself, how to craft himself as a barter asset in terms of getting other people to do things or expose your product or services to things. And I think this all comes around this whole idea of like your brand is a business. It’s a business. It’s not just about beautiful messages and pretty pictures and that, well it is, but so much more. It’s so much more.
RV:03:00Yeah. I mean, any, any company, any business has a product, right? And like the product is super important. You got to have a, a beautiful whatever, a a very well functioning whatever. And it’s very important. But there’s all these other components. There’s marketing the thing, they’re selling the thing, there’s accounting, there’s HR. This makes me think of eight figure entrepreneurs. So if our phase four of that brand builders group, we divide things into phases and phase four is called eight figure entrepreneur. It’s all of the non artistry parts of the business. It’s basically, you know, teaching how to run a business entrepreneurship. Yeah. And that’s, that’s really, really important. And I think I also picked up on the brand deal thing and him starting really young. That was one of my highlights. There’s another interview that will be coming out with Julie Solomon.
RV:03:48She talks specifically about how to get brand deals and the details you’re gonna want to listen to that as well. But the thing that Brett said that was, was really powerful and I think is important is he said your brand deals are going to win if you can talk about products that, that, that you authentically and genuinely are excited about. So. Right. So he went and got like this truck which, you know, I wouldn’t want a brand deal for truck. I would want some other type of car or getting a truck all the time. Well, I would like very off brand, but I know, but I would like to have an F-150 so you know, if anyone’s out there or you know, any company you want to do a brand deal with me for a truck.
RV:04:32No, there’s a whole market for this because it could be the truck for the non manly man.
RV:04:37Nobody said anything about not being manly. I don’t, that was another level there. Babe Anyways. Anyways, let’s carry on here. Not the non manly. I mean it is true. I probably, I’m probably more of like an Escalade truck or something with massaging seats. Anyways, let’s carry on. The people are interested in our, in our issues. So but, but, but what could you be excited about, right? Like what are the things, what are the products you actually use and just approach those people and say, Hey, you know, I’ve got a platform. And, and I this, you know, Julie talks more about this too, but, and also when Brett was really young, it’s, you don’t have to have millions of followers. Like micro influencers are a big part of the day. It’s like if you’re reaching a dedicated audience and you’re truly passionate about the product and you use it, you can help that brand when you can make some money from them and you can introduce products to your customers that you really believe in. Yeah.
AJV:05:32Kind of enough set on the brand deals part, but I wasn’t really just,
RV:05:35I can’t focus, I’m still thinking about the non manly man comment from my wife. It’s okay. I’m still married. Yes, that’s true. Okay. Well that’s I think a big part of
AJV:05:45This interview is also around talks a lot about online engagement and the social media component of as an artist or as anyone. Like how do you really do that? And he said, I thought this was really interesting, that record label at the time gave him a strategy that he was going to follow. And I said, Hey, listen, you’re young, you’re in your 20s. You don’t wear a wedding ring. So I’m, let’s really position you as available and single and really trying to help people in their twenties, figure out who they are and where they’re going. And the problem was
AJV:06:15He was married.
RV:06:17big problem
AJV:06:18And very proudly married and happily married and knew where he was going. And you know, he’s married and has got kids and he was like, yeah, no,
RV:06:28He’s the coolest family guy too. That’s just Brett.
AJV:06:31It’s not who I am. I’m going to be me online. And that includes my awesome wife who’s also an influencer in her own right. And it’s gonna include my awesome kids. And if that doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work. And he said, here’s what I have found out is that because I am my authentic self, which means covered in cookie dough batter or pancake batter, he said, I will get two to three times more likes on being my normal dad husband self than I will on F on a stage with Garth Brooks, 30,000 fans. It’s incredible. The engagement and the authenticity and the realness of me just being me is three times more popular than the, Hey, let me position myself as this single available guy traveling the world, playing on stages. I said three times more just being me.
RV:07:25I love that.
New Speaker:07:25Yeah, I love that. I dunno if I would get more likes if I didn’t wear a wedding ring. I’m not going to find that though. Boy, you’re not to know. I would never do it. I would never do it. And that’s kind of disheartening, you know, some of that, some of that stuff exists, but just, you know, being, being yourself is super, super powerful. I, you know, I, I noted the exact same thing. So that was one of my big takeaways is just real life social media posts. And it’s the same way. Like when Jasper, I mean fortunately like our kids are so entertaining, Jasper and Liam and we get the same thing, like lots of posts, engagement. It’s that real, that realness, that everyday life I think that people can relate to. So just do that. And you know, that’s a, Sam, not sorry to be referencing these other interviews, but we have these other podcasts interviews.
RV:08:13He dives in deep, deep, deep, deep on technically like where to post your real personal stuff and then where to post your motor businessy stuff. And he’s got a really good strategy. So stay tuned for that interview as well. The last one for me, my third takeaway, which was just really huge and inspiring, and I didn’t say this earlier, but I, I love Brett. Like he is a guy that is just nice and everything about his brand to me represents like genuine and authentic and sort of like, you know, almost like the little engine that could story of he’s the true authentic musician. Yeah. That’s country people are just good people. Well, and here’s the word and you know, he is a client, so we’ve actually worked, worked with him and his manager jam, they came over and we worked with them. But this idea of the long shot is, is everything is like he was just a normal kid from like a small town.
RV:09:07Right. That wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t make it as a country star. And you know, people see him, he literally, if you didn’t listen to the interview, I mean, he literally opens for Garth Brooks. So he’s a huge, like one of the huge Canadian act Canadian country music, male vocalist of the year on and on and on in Canada and, and he’s really just getting known in, in the U S but he’s touring with Garth Brooks. And what he talks about is he remembers when he first started, he was doing small customer appreciation events. He was doing rodeos like when nobody was paying attention to car dealerships, like these tiny, tiny events. And I, when he said that, I’m like, man, I used to speak at a Perkins restaurant for Toastmaster groups for like three people on a Friday night in a Perkins restaurant. I still remember what that feels like.
RV:09:57And, and you just don’t, you can never hear that story enough because you see the glamour and the glitz and you think, Oh my gosh, it’s so far away. I can never be that. And yet when you meet these people and you hear their stories, it’s the same freaking story every time. It was the person that was willing to play the rodeo, play the Perkins, like do the small gig and do it over and over and over. It’s, it wasn’t a big break or some, some lucky find. It was that discipline regimented. Like this is my dream and I’m going after it and I will start so small and I’ll get better and better and better. And now just like, I mean we, we went and we went with Brett to, to with his team to see Michael bublé. Like he, he gave us tickets. It is like, yeah, I know Michael bublé and Garth Brooks and it’s like, what? Like, who are you? You’re like a real life celebrity. And yet he’s this, this country boy married man, dad, just like living on a prayer. Ah, I just, I love that his story, we can tell it makes me cry.
AJV:11:02So my last point would be similar to that, but in a different respect of if, when you listen to this interview, he started when he was ven yyears old and someone in his family, I think he said it was his grandmother said, I just, I see music in you. And I think for so many of us we won’t be where we want to be without a support system. So maybe it’s your family, maybe it’s friends, maybe it’s mentors, whatever. But having a support group of literally a group of people who are supporting what you do, advocating for what you do, believing in you is vital to any success. Imagine if no e iin his family would have said, I see something in you. So we’re going to foster it. We’re going to buy you the, and we’re going to buy you the instruments. We’re going to get you the lessons. We’re going to take you to all these road shows and rodeos and, and country fairs. And
RV:11:53Now they’re driving and someone’s driving you.
AJV:11:55Oh, the things right. We’re going to dedicate time and give you our basement or garage to practice in. We’re going to allow you to start this band. And more than that, we’re going to take you down to those car dealerships and help negotiate and barter deals for you because that’s what we want to do for you. And I think as a parent even though my, my babies are really little, they’re o aand a half and set and ven mmonths now, it’s like this concept of like e oof my jobs as a parent, I E supporter and advocate for my kids as well as people around me that I love and believe in. It’s, it’s to let them know that they can do it. And then not just to say, you can do it, go do it. It’s to actually help advocate and support the process.
AJV:12:36And if you don’t have, and you don’t have people like that, you need to find them. And is that they don’t have to be paid. People, friends, family, mentors, church, maybe they’re paid coaches are paid consultants, whatever. I feel like that’s what we are for a lot of our clients is we are this community. We are this network, the support system, because we truly do believe in sharing good. And the more that we can share, good, the better that the good guys win. But at the same time, there are people that are in your life that you need to share what you want to do so they can actually help support you along the way. And for him, it happened really, really young and it was fostered and it was really pushed. And that we need that too. Does it matter if we were ven oor venteen oor irty seven? It’s like we still need that push.
RV:13:22We need someone to say, no, it’s worth it. Go for it. Yeah, it’s going to be hard, but it’s also going to be the most amazing ride of your life. Yeah. Maybe it’s not the road more traveled. But it’s gonna be the road that’s yours. And so I think all of that is to say is like you’ve got to have community behind you to make sure that you don’t give up or get frustrated or think that, wow, this is just as pipe dream. I, I’m from this small town and I don’t have these resources. I don’t have these connections. Who cares what I have to say because they do. And you’ve got to have people that are willing to say it matters. You matter, your message matters. So don’t give up. And I just think that was just a really good moment. As, and as a reminder, as a parent of like, that’s my job as a parent is to not just say I believe in you, but to help foster the development of their passions.
RV:14:14Love it. All this just wonderful, wonderful guy. So check out the interview with Brett Kissel, Canadian country, male vocalist of the year, a whole host of other awards, great music. By the way, my favorite Brett Kissel song is called ree to oe tree, o, e. I’m counting down the hours. Anyways, Rory doesn’t sing as you can tell. But check, check out some of his music, listen to the interview, and just stay tuned. We’re so grateful that you’re here and we want to want you to know that we believe in you and you can do it. So stay the course and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 36: The Marriage of Music and Business with Brett Kissel
RV: (01:04)
It is a wonderful honor to introduce you to one of my newer friends. Brett Kissel is an amazing young man. He actually was recently named male artist of the year by the Canadian country music awards. And he is in his twenties, in his late twenties and is just a rising superstar internationally. He actually won an award from the worldwide radio summit in Hollywood that named him international artist of the year, which was previously given to people like Adele and ed Sheeran and Drake. He has won two Junos. He’s won 12 CCMS Canadian country music awards. He’s got an honor from the from Canada’s walk of fame six times Western Canadian music awards and he’s just amazing. He’s toured with Garth Brooks. He’s the only Canadian to ever do that. He’s a fifth generation Albertan and he just is a total family guy, has built his following from nothing when he was a kid. And I thought it would just be awesome to kinda hear some of his stories and philosophies about how he’s done that. So Brett, welcome to the show.
BK: (02:16)
Well, thank you very much Rory for for having me. What a glowing introduction. I don’t think there’s any way I can actually live up to all that stuff because open the awards, well the circuit and the awards season, a lot of that even has to do with, you know, some, some luck and, and stuff like that. But I’m very thankful that I get an opportunity to chat with you and learn from.
RV: (02:41)
Yeah. Well I’d love to hear early on, how did you start? Like at what age did you start performing and start doing concerts and just I mean I think you’re still very, very much on the rise, but you are certainly have broken through the mainstream in Canada now moving into the U S you know, we met you live here in Nashville, we got a chance to work with you cause we do, you know, you some of your management team, but like you’ve been at this for a while and I would love for people just to kind of hear the story of how you got started doing music and, and you know more than that just building your fan base.
BK: (03:22)
Well, well yeah of course. I mean, my, my, my journey in, in country music I think is very similar to a lot of others, but I’ve always related my career to that of athletes and, and guys in sports. You know what, I, I got my guitar when I was young. It’s like a kid hockey stick or a baseball bat, you know, when you’re five or six years old and you really take a liking to it. I was playing hockey as a little kid up in Canada. Every idiot my grandmother, she said that she saw music in me and so she got me a guitar. That guitar was a big, big thing to get because I immediately stopped sports and I just focused on music and nobody else in my family ever played music. Nobody’s saying nobody did anything. So the fact that this was really unique, I think to my family and to my extended family too.
BK: (04:15)
So I had that great support system and it was a thing led to enough. I started playing around family and then, you know, one family member, maybe they know somebody who’s got a customer appreciation at the local Ford dealer in town. So I go and I sing a couple songs as a seven year old there. I mean I didn’t know what I was doing, I just didn’t ever have fear of the stage, I guess then you know, somebody’s need there and and says, why don’t you come and play this rodeo in the nearby town and play a couple songs there. So I’m nine years old and I’m playing songs there and now I’m 11 and people are skewed, make a recording because we buy it. So I made my first cassette tape locally with a guy who’s a producer and we made like 500 copies and my parents and I thought we will never be able to give away 500 copies and yellow eggs at them.
BK: (05:11)
So we sold them. I mean people were buying it cause I was a little kid, like every grandma and grandpa was supporting this little boy and a cowboy hat, but I’ve a hundred cassettes, new record. And then, and then before we knew it, we’re opening up a savings account and a checking account and a business account for me because I’m making 500 bucks, 1000 bucks. And, and, and from there, you know, I really just started to learn how to, how to save money and reinvest into myself. And at that time, I’m like 12 years old and I got nominated for a Canadian country music award. And that, that took me from kind of a regional act to an act. And to get that national exposure on TV up in Canada was very special. And from there into my teens, the minute I graduated high school, I knew this was all I’d ever wanted to do.
BK: (06:02)
And this is all I thought I ever really could do. And it’s all I needed to do. So I’m true. We built a business and weren’t necessarily country artists or performers, but were businessmen, business women who would teach me a lot of those great things. And so you know, I, this a a business music was my business and I’m very thankful that I was able to then take those lessons that I learned as a kid and as a teenage bring that energy down to Nashville, which I’ve done for the past 10 years or about eight years living in music city and it’s been a hell of awry.
RV: (06:41)
[Inaudible] Well, and so, so talk to me about like reputation in general and I’m just curious about what your thoughts are on, on the word reputation. Like what is your definition of it? What are your philosophies about one, why do you think it matters sort of in the music business and beyond that just sorta like how do you go about establishing one
BK: (07:05)
Man that, that is such a great question, Rory. And, and reputation is everything in business no matter what. And, and I’ve seen it firsthand for myself because I know I’m not the best singer on the best songwriter or guitar player or entertainer, but I try my very best to develop a brand that’s based on reputation, a good buy. And the thing about it is that people, the fans, and I’m one of them to first and foremost, I’m a fan of country music. I’m a fan of certain brands and if you’ve got a good reputation, you want to see those people or those brands when, now Garth Brooks for an example has won everything. Like Garth Brooks is like, Elvis is like the Beatles. It’s like, I mean he will go down in history as if people were, we’ll use them like, you know, talk about it like you talk about shed spear or Beethoven or for stuff like that.
BK: (08:02)
It because he’s got an incredible reputation whether you love it, go, not have his voice or not, you know, there is an amazing guy and you want to see guys like that win. And it’s interesting because as good of a reputation on can, one hopes to build, if you’ve got a bad reputation that that even spreads like wildfire even further. So it’s important thing that you, a bad rap because it’s so hard to come back from that. I don’t know. I don’t know. Some of these celebrities and their stories are as to why, you know, things went up for them. I’m not, I’m not here to judge. All I’m here is to state the facts that a celebrity with an incredible reputation is few and far between the, you know, to find but a celebrity with a bad reputation or bad press or bad things. I isn’t it crazy how we hear about those stories even more so, so, and they, if that said, protecting your reputation and working to make sure that you’ve got a good one and something that’s very solid so that people will continue to support you and want to see you win, that’s kind of the name of the game.
RV: (09:14)
[Inaudible] Yeah, I, well, I love that and I think Garth is a great example of that. Of course. Aja is a huge Garth fan. We got to see him about a year ago and that was, that was incredible. I think he lives up to all the things that you’re talking about. Now. I want to talk about social media for a second and, and just kind of nurturing a fan base. And how have you done that or are there, are there, are there things that you’ve done that you feel like have worked for building your reputation off the stage? Cause clearly it’s like, you know, performing when you’re on stage is what it’s all about. You’re an amazing singer, amazing songwriter. We’ve, we’ve had your music playing around the house a lot lately and just you know, that is certainly one part of it, right? Is, is the performance. But what are some of the things that you do behind the scenes that maybe people either don’t know about or don’t see or they sh they should be doing if they’re wanting to try to like build the kind of engaged fan base that you’ve been able to create?
BK: (10:23)
Well, you know what the, the first thing that I’ll say, Rory, is that everybody has a different perspective on social media. And you know what? Well, what works for me may work for a, I dunno, this artist or that person and what works for Gary V. May not work for Joe Rogan. What works for Joe doesn’t work for you. And we’ve all got our different paths. But for me, I’ve found great success in being very real in showing vulnerable parts of, of my life. And I’ve honestly found it to be therapeutic, to not have to put on a show for my fans or on in Facebook or Twitter. When people follow me, they’re truly getting a real life inside look at I am and what I’m doing. And if that’s interesting, if you don’t find it interesting, that’s fine. You don’t, you don’t need to engage or anything.
BK: (11:19)
But I’m really happy that I can be myself and that’s where I post happiness and social media because like I said, it can be therapeutic to, to vent and to get things out and maybe get some advice from other people or from others. But you know what, I’m, I’m a performer on the stage and that’s for 90 minutes of my day. The other 22 and a half hours. I’m a husband. I’ve got three beautiful kids, two daughters and a and a and a son, Mila. My oldest daughter, she’s three. Aria is next in line. She’s two. And then Leo, our son, he’s six months old. So we’re in the heart of the chaos. And I think it’s very relatable because I’m no, every other family who’s going through the ups and the downs of balancing career and life and the beautiful chaos that is being a father and a young parent.
BK: (12:15)
When I show that side, I mean, you know it to Rory. I mean, it’s like that’s, that’s real life and people, people want to see real life. So that’s where I get the most engagement is, you know what’s interesting is that my, my record label early on said, Hey, you know what? This is our strategy with you. And I said, okay, hit me. What is it? Think you don’t wear the wedding ring so you can look available. Let’s not talk about your family too much. You pop your 19. Everybody’s really trying to discover themselves in their twenties into their thirties. So let’s, let’s keep you that way so that you’re relatable. And honestly, I, from the, from the minute one ice and I, we said, and I’m going to swear here, but I said bullshit. Like no way. This is who I am. This is what I do. I’m proudly married and everything like that. And if you want to go on just analytics, I will get twice or three times the likes of a picture of me as a stressed out dad with pancake batter all over my tee shirt hanging upside down on my shoulders. Then I will in front of 30,000 people opening for Garth Brooks at a, at, at a festival. People are like, okay, that’s cool, but this is relatable. So that’s kind of my stance on how I do my socials.
RV: (13:32)
I love that. I think that’s that and that it’s very fitting with your brand. I mean you’re, you are just very relatable and real and, and, and real life. So one of the things that I think you’ve also done really well, and I think, you know, we have a brand builders group. We don’t work with a ton of musicians, but it seems like more and more we’re getting into the space and we really have a heart for musicians because it’s, it can, it can, it’s such a, can be such a tough road financially. And even when you make it, it’s like you’re gone all the time performing. And so we have a real passion to try to help musicians create some monetary streams that don’t require them to like be out on the road all the time. Right. And you guys have done a a good job of this and I know, I know you’re working on other, other revenue streams and things, but I think you guys are very forward thinking in terms of how you do it.
RV: (14:27)
And one of the things that I think you’ve done really well so far is just like these brand deals and you’ve been able to kind of get some brand deals. You’ve been able to create longterm relationships there. And I wondered if you could just share a little bit about how, what is like, what exactly is a brand deal? How do you get them? Like, how do you find people, how do you charge, you know, what do you do? What do you deliver? Like just all of that cause that, that feels like a very immediate, immediately monetized double stream, if you will, for, for musicians.
BK: (15:11)
Well, yeah, I mean [inaudible] it really is and it’s such a, an interesting world we live in right now where social media is the new King now. It’s been King for a while, but a lot of companies are really are really figuring that out and allocating their investment dollars, fitting in public lists, city influencers and people on social media as opposed to the return on TV, which is ever changing a radio, which in a lot of ways is you know, is, is a fat that’s, you know, trying real hard to rebrand. And it’s still very important in country music. But in some areas it’s, it’s dying. In print, we all know is dead. So with all people are living on their phones, okay, we know this. So what does that mean for me? I’m very passionate about a number of products. And I remember my wife and I, we sat down and we thought to ourselves, what kind of things do we use in our lives that make our lives easier?
BK: (16:06)
Is it this is it this? What, what, what do you like to drink? What do we like to eat? Where do we like to go? What do we like to wear? It’s all of these things. And we, we took an approach because she’s a, an influencer in her own right. And we took an approach about genuinely wanting to talk about brands that we love. That was, that was priority number one because there’s authenticity there. That I would say if I, if I stopped and this conversation ended right now, if you are associated with brands that you’re authentically connected to, that’s a win win for both. That’s where we can extract money as the influencer and as the spokespeople for that brand. And that’s where the brand is going to win because you talking about something that they’re not reading from a script and they’re able to craft a message that is unique and doesn’t look like a sales job because that’s today’s.
BK: (17:01)
You can see, of course we need hashtag ad on everything for, you know, the whatever, whatever rules we got to follow. But if I’m talking thing, I don’t know anything about people are going to see through that and it’s going to look bad. So authenticity is number one and when you’ve got something off authentic, you can take it to step two, which is truly try to monetize and extract as much value as you can from the company because we know that we’re going to be more effort and a bigger return on their investment of sponsorship into us. Everything that I do, Rory isn’t cut and paste. It, it’s, every company has different needs and different wants. Some of them are a lot more about social media, some of them a lot more about what I’m going to say from the stage.
BK: (17:52)
And some of them are a lot more about the return is what they’re going to get from clients and entertaining important customers. For example, it’s very difficult for me to craft a message for an oil company in Northern Alberta. You know, on social media, they’re, they don’t care about that. But what they do want to do is they want to wine and dine certain clients to get the next big project or, or something like that to, to come here. Sometimes they need to educate me on their big environmental you know, changes that they’re making and they need somebody like myself to craft a message because energy in Alberta is such a hot topic for the rest of the world. And then sometimes you’ve got a juice company, Oasis juice who just want to be associated with families and we’re a great growing family.
BK: (18:38)
Then you’ve got a company like Mark two or exclusively intrude other denim company there. You know, they’re like a, they’re a store of everything from boots. It’s an apparel company and they want somebody who grew up on a farm and somebody who’s a busy douse, we can wear these on stage. It all fits. So what I do for this company is different from what I do with the vehicle company. And you truly make it unique. It’s, and then you can kind of craft a dollar amount to get from them at that point once you have that meeting.
RV: (19:10)
And so do you, how do you, like what, okay, so I love that. So I’d love the authenticity element. I love the idea of, of promoting the stuff that you actually use every day and you can speak intelligently about, right. What do you, how do you get them? Do you just like email the company website or call them or like go to their headquarters and walk in the door? Like what, what do you do to kind of open that conversation? I mean, you’re, I guess, you know, your stage, your name carries a lot of weight and your reputation, particularly in like Canada in certain circles, but, but did they find, did they all reach out to you or do you find them,
BK: (19:54)
So there’s a bunch of different ways that, that this happens. You know, what before my name had had any relevance in Canada, it was cold call and it was a, it was a meeting. It’s all about connections. You try to find someone who knows somebody. It’s basic sales. I mean, you can watch that on, on YouTube. You can see a fit, you know, it’s literally, it’s just basic salesmanship. So when I was 16, I got my driver’s license in my home province and I felt that there was a market of new drivers like me that were going to be buying their first vehicle. So who were they going to buy it from? Were they going to get a used vehicle where they’re going to buy brand new? Well, I found a company that had ills and you, it was called driving and it was based in Edmonton.
BK: (20:50)
My, my, our Capitol city two hours away, so I’d cold called them. Oh, 16 years old, asked if I could speak with the CEO. He wasn’t available. So I spoke with the marketing director and I asked if I could have a meeting, went in with my dad. I drove to town or into the city. You know, the next week, and I had this, like this presentation lined up. I, I, I remember doing it in school. Figuring out how to do a presentation. It was like a special project. So a beautiful do a Tang and everything I was going to do. And I said, if you give me a deal on a vehicle, I’ll be able to take this to my network of friends and other people like me. This is in 2006. So this was before Facebook was big, but before anything, and I said, if, if, if you’ll do this, I will try my very best to give as many vehicles and at least give them make make driving force be their first call.
BK: (21:46)
And it’s up to your sales people to deliver. I cannot guarantee you I’m going to sell vehicles, but I will do my very best. Well, it may or something, but he’s like, I’ll tell you what Chad, we’re just going to give you a truck. Like, Oh my God. He’s like, you believe in me. This is great. If, and then you know, you’re an artist. So if you can do a couple of gigs for us a year, how much do you or do you charge for your gigs? I’m like, well, if it’s me and my guitar, it’s $2,500 if it’s me and my band, it’s 7,000 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, well, I need three shows at 7,000 that’s $21,000 all ours. And then I wasn’t dollars back and value and basically then we’re going to give you this brand new 2006 GMC three quarter time. So I drove
BK: (22:37)
And now they send me into the city of Edmonton to meet with the mayor and as well as the CEO of the company to get higher releasing of, you know, 250 citywide vehicles. They’re the ones who send me up to Fort McMurray, Alberta to Suncor or this whatever oil company that need no 290 lease vehicles. So instead of the CEO brokering the deal, they send me in for, I don’t know, they call it razzle-dazzle. Like, seriously, I love that stuff. And now I’m a paid employee of the company and I’ve been with them. I’m 29. I’ve been with them for 13 years and I started as a phone call when you’re sick, who says you can’t do it? Blah, blah blah. Yeah, you can’t. Now my name carries weight. So now my manager or my assistant can just call up juice company and say, Hey, we’d like to make this work. Let’s sit down, let’s meet, you know, next time Brett’s in Montreal, we’re going to try and figure out a time to meet. So now it’s easier. But anybody says that it’s so tough. It is tough. I get it. But you can do it. I love that. Anyone who says it’s tough, it is tough but can do it. That’s a debt.
RV: (23:46)
That is so true. And so I want to hear about like so did you have a definitive moment where that, where that pivot happened? You know, we call it breaking through the wall or we have specifically she hands wall of where you’re like bouncing off the wall and being absorbed in the noise of the mainstream. But then you know, you sort of find your uniqueness and you create velocity and clarity and you, you break through the wall and then your life as a personal brand shifts from push to pull. And so now you know, like your story that you just shared a cold calling, that’s very much like a classic push story. Like you’re out there hustling, you know, networking cold call and talk in like doing whatever you’re doing, but then at some point it’s, it flips to pole, which is where it seems like you’re at now, right? Your manager or your assistant can kind of make the call. When did that moment happen for you? Or, or, or was there a specific moment or you know, like talk about that kind of like breakthrough point and you know, how did you notice it or how or, or, or, or when did you notice, or when did you notice it? Like I’d love to just kinda hear, like your perspective on that.
BK: (25:01)
Wilson and Rory at first, I honestly, I want to compliment you and to everybody who’s listening to this, I remember vividly one of my favorite parts of getting together with you to talk about the growth of my brand was when we talked about Shan’s wall, when we talked about that I was able to go back home and look, not physically look through my calendar, but remember important meetings and important times of my life where it was push, push, push and hustle and no return. And, and it was just, it was like I was beating my head up against the wall truly until you finally break through. And there were definitive moments. There wasn’t just one because there’s so many different aspects of my career. There’s even a way that you can put that into perspective for your own personal relationships where you’re working so hard to try and get something.
BK: (25:53)
But finally you make it through, you know, with your spouse or with your children. But when it comes to business and music, there were some really, really, really great times driving force. And that deal with me was a big moment on the entrepreneurial side for me and the sponsorships spoke to person side. I am kind of like the NASCAR guy of Canadian country music. I’ve got logos everywhere. I couldn’t be more proud of that. We know we can deliver, we know and we know the weekend we can give back to the communities and have so many things. It’s not conceded your worry. It’s not that like, Oh well I don’t want to pay for cowboy boots, let’s get them sponsor. It’s a lot deeper than that for me. But if you do want to think about it simply, well yeah, I mean why pay for this when someone can, you know, we can strike a deal.
BK: (26:45)
We can work together on this. So all I’m saying is that driving force moment was big for me on the spokesperson side. I realized I can do that at 16 and I’ve never stopped and I get turned down more times than people say yes. That’s the thing. You have a thick skin. Like I don’t care when people say no because I know I can go to somebody else. And somebody’s going to say yes one way or another real sudden. The spokesperson side that that breakthrough was in 2006 what May 27th I turned 16. I had a truck the first few, like literally five, six days later. So that was a big thing on the music side of things. It was the day that I finally got a legitimate manager in business. I was 20 years old and I’ve been doing everything locally by myself or it was me and my wife.
BK: (27:40)
We had local managers who were great. He didn’t have the connections nationally or internationally or specially in Nashville. I mean they could help book gigs for me, but that was just that the local rodeo in Calgary or Northern Alberta or Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that wasn’t the NFR that I wanted to play. That wasn’t PBR, that wasn’t the big stuff. So I needed a real manager and I cold called a bunch of managers, but I called this one guy and I loved him the most based on seeing him at award shows. Louis O’Reilly was his, he was from Saskatchewan. He was a small town guy. He grew up on a farm. He was starting to work with a guy who was an agent named Jim Cressman, who is also a small town doc. Grew up on a farm. I’m like, these are my people. They’re going to get my story.
BK: (28:28)
And they’re building up their own businesses respectively and working with some of the biggest names in Canadian Adian country. So I cold called them, flew them out to a show. I saved up money so I could pay for their flights and even put them up first class and everything like that. Put them in the nicest hotel in town so I could really like wheel and deal them. And I got a great manager after that gig in Louie for agent, shortly after in Jim Cressman who you know. And those were the guys. Now my team went from one person to three and I’m talking three pitbulls and we could go and full world out to reviewers. We had a record deal, which was another big thing in Canada. Within a number of years we had awards, we had tours, we had everything. We stripped the team in place. So go, I’m sorry, I’m talking so, so much for right here. I’m just passionate about it. But I just love the path that I was able to,
RV: (29:26)
And I mean this is, this is great. This is exactly what I want. I wanted people to hear, because I think, you know, even like becoming an international music star is that for most people it’s like such a farfetched dream. They’re like, I don’t even know how to start. And you think, Oh well, you know, you come to Nashville and you play in the Bluebird cafe and you get discovered and then you’re Taylor Swift. And it’s like, that is such the wrong way to do it. Like, it’s like that maybe happens one in a million, but, but what I love is just your story of just relentless discipline, you know, taking the stairs to use our phrase from our first book and just doing the things that people weren’t willing to do and like, you know, playing the stages and doing the business side of it and then finding your way to the managers and, and, and that opening doors and just like one thing leading to the next, to the next to the next.
RV: (30:15)
And I love it right now because I think, you know, in the U S like you’re still breaking through and I think it’s, it’s, it’s going to be awesome, like 10 years from now for people to come back and listen to this interview and hear like your mentality and approach and you know, when you break through in the U S will be like, Whoa, where’d this guy come from? And yet it’s like you’ve been doing this since you’re 12 years old, like plan local car dealerships and rodeos and then kind of kind of working your way up. So one, one question. I do want to have, I, I got one last little question. In terms of music specifically, how important do you think it is for musicians to really build the business side of it and the business acumen? Like you know, you’ve been really focused on not only getting brand deals but also helping you, you know, you’re, even the way you talk, it’s like how can I get the most for my sponsors and how can I help them? Do you think that that’s, that’s like a necessary skill set for musicians to really make it this day or do you think you know, no, that’s more of just like an ancillary benefit that, you know, if you have it good. If not, it’s okay.
BK: (31:29)
Well, you know, it’s, it’s a very interesting thing because of course, I mean all I can really, you know, go on is my opinion on, on the matter in, for me, the business side, while you’re developing the artistic side, I believe it’s a very important marriage and it’s something that everybody needs to think about and work towards on a daily because you can’t have one without the other. If is there one that’s more important? I will say yes, it’s the art side. It’s that you can have marketing ideas in the world and try to reach out to for dealers that have $1 million sponsorship deal, it ain’t going to happen. If you’re not good or it ain’t gonna happen to hit song. So you need that side. But if you haven’t developed the business side to be ready for when the art happens in something, then truly you’re missing out on a great opportunity to have longevity in the business. And longevity comes from financial security on Jevity comes from a sponsorship and connections and you know, and, and great people that you can connect with around the world. So you got to develop your, that’s what matters. But I think it’s very, very important to have the beef side ready to go.
RV: (32:46)
[Inaudible] I love that. Well, and I know that’s why, you know, originally when Jim, cause we were working with Jim Cressman and he introduced this to you and like, even the fact that you’re working with us, it’s sort of like very much outside the norm of, of what musicians would would be doing. And it’s like, that’s why you’re doing it. It’s like you’re, you’re always forward thinking to, to be set up to sort of like to prepare yourself to receive, you know, as, as the future unfolds. And I just I really, really love that. Brett, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more, either about your story or your music and just kinda like connect up with you?
BK: (33:26)
Well, thanks man. Well, I mean my favorite platform is, is Instagram. So you can just follow me, Brett Kissel. I can see if you want even a little bit more personal side of what life is really like following my wife to Cecelia. And then one of the greatest things is that, you know what, just come and see me at a show, visit my tour page on Brett kissel.com and I mean that’s kind of a really, really great way to see what I’m like on the stage. And then social media will show you exactly what I’m like off the stage. It’s a great life that we live traveling around playing music. And I, I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you orient and not talk as much about music, but to talk truly about well the entrepreneurial spirit that us artists, a lot of us, so truly do have. So I thank you very much.
RV: (34:16)
Yeah. I mean this is, this has been wonderful man. I thank you so much for sharing your story. I just, I think it’s so inspiring as well as instructional and informative to hear. And I think the last thing I want to invite you to share with people’s, if there’s someone out there listening right now and let’s say that they, you know, they kind of have the big dream, whether it’s in music or not, but they are, they’re at that moment where they’re like hitting their head against the wall, kind of like you have been and they’re bumping up against that roadblock and they’re, you know, feeling like no one’s listening. No one’s paying attention. What would you, what would you say to that person right now?
BK: (34:58)
Well, I think the first thing is, is you got to look inside and you haven’t, if what you’re selling, what you’ve created, what you’re working towards and what you’re working on, whether that’s an invention, whether that’s your song writing, whether that’s you know, any type of entrepreneurial idea. Do you genuinely believe that it’s gonna that it’s gonna work? Cause if you do and you’ve got that heart and soul invested into it, well then that’s great. Then you can go to step two. Now you can always rework step one and make sure that what you’re doing is refined and unbeatable because then when you go out to step two, it’s just about continuing to work hard, hard work, pays off. It always has. It always will. You know what? Two of my biggest influences are people that I’ve never met, but I really hope to.
BK: (35:49)
One day one is dwarf Johnson with his drank and his perseverance, his incredible gratitude. But his work ethic and the other one is one of the softest entrepreneurs. She’s fierce and fiery, and that’s Dolly Parton who’s developed and built that in music and, and, and Edmond and parks. And so Dolly and, and the rock couldn’t be further from each other, like look at them. They couldn’t be further from each other. But do you know what they have in common? Work ethic? They are workers in the room. And I truly respect that because hard work pays off. And it’s something that you and I talked about, Rory, that has been neat for me out work, everyone. I know I’m not the most talented, but I know that I’ve got that farming background and it’s in my blood. The rock did it. Dolly Parton did it. I want to do it to outwork everybody. So that’s what everyone else needs to do. Well, someone else has been out or taken a bit of time off or a holiday or something like that. Work your way in and take that meeting and work till midnight. Do what you need to do out everybody if that.
RV: (37:08)
Well, there you have it. We’ll end on that note. Brett Kissel, ladies and gentlemen, go follow them on Instagram. We’ll put a link to his website, Brett kissel.com Brett, we wish you the very best my friend. We’re honored to be in your fan base and part of your truth. And we’re just, we’re committed to, to see you break through in here in the U S as you have in Canada and around the world. We know it’s coming brothers, so, so keep at it.
BK: (37:33)
Oh buddy. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Hi to your family. We’ll see you back in music city very soon.