Ep 440: Be An Author Entrepreneur with Allison Trowbridge
AJV (00:03):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, and I’m so excited to introduce everyone to a new friend of mine, Allison Trowbridge, who also goes by Allie. Ubut if you’re gonna look her up online, you’re probably gonna find her by Allison. Now, before I do a formal introduction of Allison, I wanna make sure you guys know who this episode is for and why you wanna stick around. First and foremost, if you have a dream, a passion, a goal, or you’re even on the road to being an author, this is an episode that is curated for that person who wants to write a book and get it out into the world. So that’s who this is for. It is for the established, the aspiring, or the one day, maybe that might be a thing I wanna do. This is who this is for
AJV (01:07):
You’re an author of any sort. This is an episode for you. Second, it’s for everyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, and they’re going, well, how does this personal brand thing and content and writing, like, how does this fit into my entrepreneurial journey? That is also something that we’re gonna talk about. And then third and definitely not last, we’re gonna talk about how authors are entrepreneurs. And I think that’s really important. Being an author is like starting a business, and so it needs to be treated like one. And we’re gonna talk about everything that it means to be an author and an entrepreneur in this world of marketing and personal branding. Now, let me introduce you to the one and the only Allison Trowbridge,
AT (01:59):
Aj, I’m so thrilled to be here with you. Oh my gosh. I just have to say, I have to say, AJ and Rory are officially hands down my new favorite people, favorite people in Nashville, probably favorite people in the world. I adore the two of you, and I’m obsessed with your content. I, I met AJ and Rory recently, and I started just going down the rabbit hole on everything you guys do online. And I have learned and gained so much from everything that you, you share so generously. So thank you for being you and everything you do for authors.
AJV (02:35):
You know what I love connections like this because Allie and I were connected by a mutual friend. And you know, it’s kind of one of those things too, when you get a random email, even though it’s from someone that
AT (03:02):
This one
AJV (03:02):
AT (03:32):
The biggest the biggest thing is I, I just learned before we started recording that their son, Liam actually asked after me at church on Sunday. And so that for me, I’m like, I’m in
AJV (03:45):
AT (04:52):
It was just Harry Potter mode,
AJV (04:55):
So there’s all these different things that really kind of led to like, why are you such a well positioned person to talk about this author entrepreneur concept? So let’s hear it from you. Like, tell us a little bit about your journey.
AT (05:10):
Oh my goodness. Well, aj I got started actually in the nonprofit world. So I spent my, I mean, I grew up with a deep love of books and I always had this dream of writing a book someday, but I got my start in my twenties working in nonprofits, working in anti-trafficking, anti-human trafficking. And when I was 22, I was graduating from college and I pulled in all-nighter with one of my best friends. And I said, there has never been a book, like there needs to be a book called 22 that speaks to all of these existential questions that we’re wrestling with right now. There needs to be, we need a mentor and it needs to exist, and I don’t see it anywhere. And so whatever I do career-wise, I’m going to write that book someday. And it was, gosh, it was seven or eight years later before I actually got a book deal on that idea, and it started to come to fruition.
AT (06:02):
But it’s so interesting because I’ve, I’ve heard you and Rory say a lot that you are, you are most equipped to serve the person that you once were. And so it was so interesting to be going through that season of life saying, I need guidance, I need direction. Someday I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna do that for someone else. So just one thing I wanna say. If you’re, whatever you’re in the midst of right now, maybe you’re like, I have no idea if I will ever write a book, but I’m like, I’m just in it and I’m wrestling with certain things right now. Pay attention to what that is. ’cause That may be directing you to where you’ll go back and help someone else someday. But that was really, that was really my origin story. So spent my twenties in human rights also as a partner in an impact investment fund.
AT (06:49):
So I was in the business world, and then I always knew in the back of my head that I was gonna write this book. It wasn’t a career move, it was just, it was almost a, a soul calling it that I felt like I had to, I had to follow through on this. And so went down the, the route of, I, I mean, first I built a, a really meaningful network of other authors and people doing similar things. And I just wanna call that out too because I think a, a lot of a lot of aspiring authors have the dream of publishing a book and they just get kind of stuck with it, and they kind of sit in a silo thinking about it. And I think becoming an author starts with becoming a good literary citizen and actually supporting other authors supporting the community of, of that was so strange.
AJV (08:36):
That was so weird. But I know the last thing you said was being a good author, so, okay, we’ll just pick up there. Okay. So it’s still recording. Okay, perfect.
AT (08:48):
Becoming an author really begins with becoming a good literary citizen. And so I, I really got my start in the book space by befriending and supporting other authors and championing them, making connections for them, supporting their book launches. And so I just wanted to call that out just to be thinking, if you have this dream of, of writing a book, how can you begin by supporting others who are further along in that dream knowing that someday down the road, that community will also rally around and support you. So fast forward am able to find an agent, put together a book proposal. I didn’t have any social platform. I wasn’t a well-known figure, but it was really based off of this, this concept that I knew there was a huge audience for and really identifying and communicating that effectively. Now, I made the ill advised ti life timing decision to publish that book while I was doing my MBA at the same time.
AT (09:58):
Which I, I would not advise. That was a very, very intense year of
AJV (10:39):
Well, I love, well, I love too that all of this is kind of organic and following your calling, and I love what you said that it’s like more than a career move, writing a book is a calling. Yes. And I often feel like being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur should be like that too.
AT (10:58):
A hundred percent. It’s not worth it otherwise. It’s too hard.
AJV (11:02):
It’s not. But often I think people use this as, Hey, I’m gonna do this thing so one day I can get this thing, which is freedom of time, freedom of money, it’s whatever. But then you realize, oh, snap. Like this is all consuming. And if there’s not like that deep calling, it’s when we feel burned out, exhausted, spent tired, whatever is the word you wanna use. But you know, those are, those are the same. Those are synonymous. It doesn’t matter. It’s like whatever you do in life, it should be a calling, not just a career move. So I love that you called that out.
AT (11:42):
Yeah. And something else that AJ did my wifi.
AJV (11:49):
Yeah, you’re breaking up. All right. You’re back.
AT (12:10):
I have, I have no idea what’s going on. I think I, I, it says I have full bars on my wifi and it’s Google fiber, so maybe I’ll switch to my iPhone wifi just to,
AJV (12:23):
I mean, we can, whatever you think. I mean, we can just keep rolling with it if it
AT (12:26):
Okay. I’m sorry about that. That’s okay.
AJV (12:30):
Okay.
AT (12:30):
It’s like a little trap door keeps dropping me out.
AJV (12:33):
AT (12:34):
Well, I heard the last thing you said. I, I can run with it.
AJV (12:37):
Okay.
AT (12:38):
You know, aj what that, what that makes me think of, I actually, so right now at Copper, and we’ll fast forward to this, but, but we’re hosting an accelerator for aspiring authors, and we had my friend Donald Miller on earlier this week talking about his writing practice and, and the process of writing. And he said something that, that really, that really kind of shook me, which was about, he, he carves out certain, a certain set of time every single day to focus on writing whatever book he’s writing. I was asking him how he produces so much, and he said, you know, he is like, you’ve gotta love the process. And it’s funny because if I were to tell you, if you were to ask what is 22, about 22, the book, my book about, I would say the, the moral of the story is that the journey is the destination.
AT (13:30):
It’s about learning how to lean into and love the journey of our lives instead of thinking we’re gonna arrive at some point. And I think that that is such an important piece of wisdom to apply to authors, also to apply to entrepreneurs. I think the, the big temptation is to think that we’re doing these things for some end result. I wanna be an entrepreneur because I want the big payout when I sell my company someday, or I wanna be an author because I want the credibility of hitting some bestseller list. And you are really going to, to hate the entire process if you don’t fall in love with the journey. Fall in love with the actual creation and the writing. Fall in love with learning how to reach your reader, your, your audience, and identifying what their pain points are if you’re an entrepreneur, learning how to enjoy the building. So it was something that was a, a really important callback for me this week of, of just this reminder to, to love the process of these things that we feel called to create.
AJV (14:34):
Yeah. You know, it’s so funny, as soon as you were talking, it made me think about this quote, how, and I think I saw it on Instagram, but you know, you look around at everything you have today and you realize that many times you have today what you once dreamed of and what you have today is what drives you nuts. And it’s kind of like, man, the thing that we wanna dream of is now the thing that is crazy. And it’s like so true. I think we all need to be taken back sometimes to falling in love with the process and not this desire for an end destination. Because if it’s all about that one day, you’re gonna look around and be like, wait, what was this all for again?
AT (15:14):
Totally. Totally.
AJV (15:15):
It’s Hannah Montana. It’s all about
AT (15:18):
Time. Totally.
AJV (15:18):
It’s all about time.
AT (15:20):
Yes. And, and the thing that’s that’s funny is that if you want to continue on that journey, you’re gonna begin again and go through the process all over again. I know authors who not only have hit the New York Times bestseller list, they’ve been selected by Oprah as part of her, the Oprah’s book club, and they still are like, it feels like the first time every time. And I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m still learning. And so I, I think it’s the falling in love with that process because those mountaintop experiences are gonna be short-lived, and few and far between. But if you love the journey of getting there, if you love the hiking up the mountain, then you’re gonna, you’re gonna really enjoy your life a lot more, I think. Oh
AJV (16:02):
Yeah. So tell us about ’cause I know we’ve had conversations about this, but I, what I love is your take on being an author is being an entrepreneur. Yes. Yes. And it needs to be treated like that. This is a business, it requires a business plan, it requires that, and most people who are writing books, unless you’re a full-time author, likely don’t know that going in
AT (16:26):
Yes. Well, I, I think a lot of the frustration around becoming an author starts starts with this point. So a lot of people will say to me, how do you write a book? How do you get published? Tell me how you get published. And they get frustrated because they think that there’s a silver bullet. Like, why isn’t everybody telling me how this actually works? And that’s like someone, an aspiring entrepreneur saying, how do you start a company? It’s, the answer is, there’s a lot to it. And it’s, it’s, you have to be able to give that full life commitment into the pro.
AJV (17:41):
Okay.
AT (17:42):
I’m, I’m gonna switch to my phone wifi. This is ridiculous. And I’m gonna call Google Fiber after this. I’m sorry. I dunno. Okay. It says it’s paired. Can you hear me Okay?
AJV (18:12):
Can. All right. So the last thing you said is it’s a commitment.
AT (18:18):
Let’s see. I, I think I’ll go back to the beginning of the author, entrepreneur thing. Okay. how did you tee up the question, the idea of just
AJV (18:29):
The fact that most people don’t know that being an author is like starting a business
AT (18:35):
AT (19:33):
The author really needs to be the entrepreneur. So if you think about the book writing as being the product development, after you develop the product, then you need all the other parts of the business. So you’re gonna need marketing, you’re gonna need sales, you’re gonna need partnerships, business development, operations, finance to make this all happen. And I also think about when it, when it comes to choosing your publishing path, should you self-publish? Should you go with a traditional publisher? Should you go the hybrid route? I really think about that just like taking an equity partner. So if you work with a traditional publisher for your book, that’s like being a startup that’s taking venture capital. It’s not for everyone. It’s for a small percentage. And that, that finance partner is gonna give you money upfront, which is fabulous, and they’re gonna take a lot of ownership, and they’re going to expect a huge result.
AT (20:30):
And they’re, they’re investing and making these risky betts hoping that one outta 10 books that they invest in are gonna pay for all of the ones that they lose money on. So it’s understanding those economics. And if a traditional publisher isn’t jumping at your book, it doesn’t mean it’s not a great book or a great idea, or that you’re an amazing author, just means they’re looking for that like venture return, then it means that they’re not seeing that based on the market, based on your reach. And that’s okay. So, so traditional publisher is like having a venture investor. Self-Publishing is like bootstrapping where you’re, you have a startup and you’re like, I am going to learn to do all of the pieces of the puzzle, and I’m gonna do it myself. I’m gonna own the whole thing myself. I’m gonna figure it out. Or I’m going to hire for the pieces where I don’t have natural strengths.
AT (21:20):
I’m gonna hire brand builders group to help me with the book launch part and to understand the, the branding and marketing piece. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get support in different areas. And then you have the, the hybrid publishing down the middle, which I kind of think of like having an equity partner. You get to own your intellectual property, you get a lot more control over the process. You still get the high-end professional results, but it’s a higher cost of capital. You’re putting more in on the front end. So I think shifting our thinking as, as authors and creatives realizing that if you just wanna write, there’s plenty of spaces to just write. There’s ck there’s, there’s blogging, there’s newsletters, there’s LinkedIn, there’s you can journal, there’s a lot of spaces to write, but if you wanna be an author and publish a book, you’re actually selling a product to a customer. And because you’re selling a product, the book, you’re gonna have to think about it in the same way that ACEO thinks around selling the product in a business.
AJV (22:31):
Oh my gosh. Every single person in the world needs to hear that
AT (23:12):
Yes. No, it is.
AJV (23:14):
You know, it’s like,
AT (23:16):
Yes. And, and I spent as much time, so I was able to get that traditional publisher, Harper Collins chose to work with me, but my book proposal took about as long as it took to actually write the book, which is crazy. But it’s because I had to show them that this is a worthy investment. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (24:03):
I mean, that’s so important for everyone who is listening to realize of as you’re, you know, thinking and dreaming of one day, you know, I’m, I have all these books in my office, but it’s like holding up this book, and it’s like, that’s a product.
AT (24:18):
Yes.
AJV (24:18):
And businesses produce products, and in order to make the product get into the hands of other human beings, there needs to be a sales pitch, a marketing plan, a distribution plan. And those things take human resource, human capital, capital and dollars. They take dollars. Yes. Yes. And it’s treating it like a business. So I would love to know from you, in this world today, as you think about this author, entrepreneur, what do you see? Because I think this is a great opportunity for you to also share like, what is Copper books and what does Copper Books do? Because you have so much access to authors aspiring and current, but what are they doing well, and what do you know they should be doing
AT (25:11):
Yes. Well, my, my heart in this journey has always been for the author. I, I believe for one, that a book can change your life. Like, quite literally, can, can change your life. It can change the world. I, and, and it sounds like a cliche, but I really mean it. I I mentioned earlier that I began my career in anti-trafficking and human rights, that entire social movement, the reason why you as a listener know about that issue right now is because of books. There were a series of books published in the early mid two thousands on, on this issue, and it laid the groundwork for an entire social movement. So I get so passionate about the way that, that a book can move the needle, but then even more so, I think there is no more transformative or meaningful process for a human than to write their story and to write a book.
AT (26:05):
So, wherever you are, however many people you think may wanna read your book, I could not encourage you more to do it, because going through the process, it will transform you. It will be a before and after. It’s a meaning making journey. So I, I love the transformative process. I also think that this should be the golden age of publishing. It used to be that that publishing was an industry of gatekeepers, because it takes time and energy to determine what content can potentially sell. It takes a lot of time to read a book, right? And so the industry has operated off of gatekeepers and a small group of people being able to publish their work that has gotten blown open, blown, wide open over the last decade. It has never been easier to self-publish a book. It has never been easier to reach readers yourself to build an audience yourself.
AT (27:04):
20 years ago that wasn’t possible. Authors weren’t able to build their own audience. And so a lot of people get frustrated by the fact that they need to build a relationship with their reader. I think it’s the most liberating thing possible. You need to be more intentional. You need to, to really strategize it, you need to develop your personal brand and think about how you’re gonna outsource that trust so that people are coming to you to solve these problems that they have. And there’s consistency in all of that. But I think it is the most exciting time. If you have a dream of writing a book, now is the time to do it. Okay. So fast forward to, to Copper. So we built actually a tech platform. So, so you’re in the, in the iOS store, you can download the Copper Books app. We, we made it a place where authors and readers can connect and build community around books in a way that was centered around the author.
AT (28:00):
So with, we always say the author is the star of the show. If you are a, an author with a book, however you published it, self-publish, hybrid, traditional, you get verified. We link your book. There’s a all of this book data on the back end of it. And then readers can connect directly with the author of the books that they’re reading. We have a live events feature. If you’re a reader and you just love books, it’s a really great place for recommendations. You can track what you’re reading, create bookshelves, all of these things. So that’s the, the platform we created. And I actually did that with venture capital backing, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life to, I think the number is about 2% of, of all venture funding goes to, to female founders. So, I mean, you wanna talk about a steep mountain to climb that was, was not the most enjoyable the entire way.
AT (28:50):
I’ve gotten a lot of rejections, pitching, pitching this company, but was, was able to build raise the capital, hire engineers, build the platform. Here’s what we learned, seeing all of our community and our users. I realized that the people who were leaning in the most, who needed the support, who needed, who needed the tools and the resources and education, was actually the aspiring author. And so I built this platform thinking it was a two-sided marketplace for authors and readers. What I discovered is that the aspiring author is the most underserved group. And so I say all that in that we have shifted the entire focus of the company into how do we serve the aspiring author? How do we serve the person who is getting woken up in the middle of the night because they have this dream, this calling in them, this idea that they wanna put on into the world and they don’t know where or how to begin with it.
AJV (29:53):
Mm. I love that. I love that you said that too. They get woken up in the night with this at least once a week. I will wake up around four or 5:00 AM like looking for Rory, looking for my husband on the other side of the bed, and he’s missing. And then I’ll usually like go back to sleep. ’cause I know where he is,
AT (30:40):
My gosh. Yes. Yes. I would say I, all of the best parts of, of my last book 22 were like one-liners that I voice noted into Evernote in the middle of the night. Like, so much of my writing process is sitting up in bed being like, oh my gosh, I have to get that down and, and I’ll, I’ll voice note it into voice to text. So then I get up in the morning and it’s half gibberish, but I’m like, that’s a really great idea. Buried in there. I gotta put that in the book.
AJV (31:10):
But a lot of that comes back to enjoying the process. Yes. The process. And it’s a calling. Yes. It’s not a career move. It’s a calling that needs to be one of your signature lines, ally. It’s a calling, not a career move. Oh,
AT (31:25):
That’s good, aj. That’s good.
AJV (31:28):
It’s gotta be one of your signature lines. But I think all of this is so important because for the author, right, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first book or your 10th book, the same business planning is required for every single book. So tell us about this new awesome course that you are launching the author entrepreneur.
AT (31:49):
Yes, thank you. Well, so one of the things that, that we’ve experimented with this, one of the things we experimented with this year was helping to solve this pain point for aspiring authors. And we launched an accelerator this fall for aspiring authors nonfiction specifically who are working on their book ideas. And AJ it was one of the best, most fun, most life-giving things I have ever done. Everyone who went through it said that it’s, I mean, it’s totally rocked their world. It’s been the fav their favorite thing in their life right now. It’s, it’s been an incredible, incredible ride. And that was kind of my test ground to see is this a real felt need and can we, can we solve it? Is this you know, are these the questions that aspiring authors are really asking? And so, coming off of the success of the Accelerator, we’re, we’re, we’re wrapping it this week.
AT (32:47):
We’re gonna transition that content into an evergreen course where someone can go through it on their own time. So, so the accelerator was a live accelerator twice a week, every week. It’s a, a much bigger commitment. And a lot of what I heard from these aspiring authors was, oh my gosh, I want to do this, but it’s, you know, I don’t have capacity right now, or I, I’m gonna focus on the book next year, or Is there any way, are you gonna do it again? And and so instead of trying to do the accelerator all over again, I, I said, well, what if I can make this easier for that aspiring author and cheaper, honestly, to do it on their own time? So that is this course that we’re launching, we’re announcing it and opening up registration on December 12th. And because we love Brand Builders Group, we wanna give a discount to anyone who comes through Brand Builders Group. So just use the code bb g Yeah. For $200 off the course. We would love, love to have you in it. Oh,
AJV (33:49):
That’s awesome. And if you guys are listening and you wanna check this out, you go to copper books.com/course. I’ll put that in the show notes, and then use BBG as a discount codes copper books.com/course. Use BBG for the discount code. Now, what I, I know we’re almost out of time, but what I wanna talk to you about is kind of what you just said. It’s like, are these the questions that these aspiring authors are really answering, and what are the answers they need to know? So if you were to highlight one or two things that an aspiring author needs to know, what would they be?
AT (34:27):
One of them would be get to know your reader, who identify who your reader is. So thinking about your audience is one of the most important parts. If you wanna write just for you, that is beautiful, and I could not encourage you to do it more, but if you want to sell a book and actually create meaningful transformation in the lives of the person who decides to read your book, then you need to, you need to write with them in mind. Mm-Hmm,
AT (35:23):
What are they struggling with? Because that is going to be the big umbrella idea that’s gonna be the consistent line through the book that you write. It’s gonna be the, the shareable the way that, that people talk about your book and share it with others is to, to solve that pain point. And then it’s gonna help you start to, to speak on that content and attract that kind of reader, that kind of audience now long before your offering something to sell to them. So, so that would be one. And the second, which is related to that is I would really get clear on what your big idea is. So if you could distill your book down to one sentence, I think that the books that go the farthest in the market are ones that can be easily distilled down to one big idea.
AT (36:16):
Because I know when I buy a book, I’m usually buying into the big idea that I know that the book stands for and saying, I want more of that. So I agree. Let me give an example. 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I’ve given that book to so many people, and it’s, it’s about how, it’s about the shortness of life, and yet how you can expand your days. I, I call it the anti anti productivity productive productivity book. And so it’s easy for me to share the concept of the book with other people and encourage them to buy it. And many times I’ll buy a book because I love the idea. Maybe I read part of it, but I’m buying into the concept. So I would encourage you to really get clear on who your reader is and start to build a relationship with them now and then. And then really, once you’ve identified their problem, identify the big idea of your book that’s gonna solve that problem for them. And that is gonna help you make decisions around the content that goes into your writing.
AJV (37:19):
Hmm. I love that. And I think I love that. It’s just clarity. All right. You gotta know what yes. What it is and who is for
AT (37:25):
Yes. And, and it’s an act of service. It’s an act of service.
AJV (37:30):
I love that. All right, one last question. Yes. what is your favorite book?
AT (37:36):
Oh my goodness. Oh, I have so many. I would say my favorite book is Vitor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Okay.
AJV (37:45):
I’m
AT (37:45):
Obsessed. I’m obsessed with this. I with meaning, with meaning making. Mm-Hmm. And, and I think it is, is the most beautiful. I think it’s one of the greatest books of the 20th century and the most beautiful journey in how you create and build a meaningful life. And everything I do in my work is around trying to help people build meaningful lives, whether it’s through reading incredible books or creating them.
AJV (38:12):
Oh, I love that. Well, I always love a good book recommendation. Ooh, A man search for Meeting. I just wrote it down. Put it on the list.
AT (38:19):
Amazing. And 4,000 Weeks, too. You’ll love that one. All right.
AJV (38:23):
I’ll put that down too for you.
AT (38:24):
AJV (38:25):
AT (38:56):
Yeah. And
AJV (38:57):
Those are not exclusive. Those are, those are, you know, together. And we have to treat it that way. And that was such a good reminder to all of us. It’s one thing to write a book, it’s another thing for someone else to read it. And so thank you so much. Ally. If people wanna connect with you online, where should they go?
AT (39:16):
You can find me on Instagram at Allie Bridge also at Copper dot books, on Instagram and LinkedIn. All the places, all the normal places. Would love to chat with you all. Would love to hear what your book idea is. And lastly, I just wanna say, if, if that dream won’t let you alone, it’s, it’s there for a reason and follow it.
AJV (39:40):
Hmm. Love it. So good. Everyone please check out Allie go to copper books.com. Visit her online, chat with her on Instagram. Do whatever you gotta do. But get connected and stay connected. And also catch the recap episode, which will be coming up next. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later, y’all.
Ep 437: How To Get Better Outputs Using ChatGPT | Kyle Stout Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you want to be better at using AI to write copy? Well, I do. And if you happen to be in the category of me and millions of other people,
AJV (01:09):
It also sounds a little stiff or perhaps a little static or generic, or it feels like you could have read that anywhere else on the planet. It doesn’t cater to your avatar. And probably just generally speaking, it doesn’t sound like you it doesn’t sound like you. Well, we’re gonna talk about a few tips that you can start using right now to give chat g p t better prompts in order to get you better output. So here, here we go. You ready? I’m ready. Let’s do this. Number one, start by training chat, G p t. You can train chat, g p t and that means you have to teach chat, G p t how to write for you. It has to get to know you, your company, your products, and your avatar. So start with having it create your ideal avatar.
AJV (02:02):
So actually start by saying like, please create my ideal customer avatar based on blankety blank, blank, blank. Based on, you know, and this is just an example of mine. Hey, please create me a, an ideal customer avatar that is a female age, 35 to 45, who is successful in her career, lives in the United States, makes over six figures who is super ambitious and driven, but struggles with feeling not worthy, not enough, feeling invisible. You know, you kind of just go through the process, right? So first of all, you have to know who your avatar is. It cannot make it for you. But what you wanna do is you want to have it create your ideal profile by you telling it all of the demographics and psychographics, right? Where do they live? How old are they? What’s their industry? What’s their,
AJV (02:59):
Their socioeconomic status? And then the psychographics. How do they feel? What are their goals? What are they looking for? What are their fears? All the things. But by feeding it into that and having it create your profile, it will remember that as you start giving it new prompts, or you can just copy and paste those, that prompt or that output that it gives you and copy and paste and saying, Hey, please create me a landing page for X product that caters to, and then you can copy and paste and insert your ideal profile. But the thing is, is like, the more that you teach it, the more that it remembers. So the more that you do in there, it’s gonna remember that time after time again. So step one is train it on your ideal avatar. Step two is train it on your products, right?
AJV (03:46):
So the next thing you’d be is, please write me a product service or program description that is fill in the gaps. If I’m just using a brand builders group, it would say, I would say, Hey, please write. I wouldn’t say, Hey, but I would say, please write me a service description for a one-on-one personal brand coaching program that includes unlimited events to two day live experiences in Nashville, Tennessee. That includes 14 course curriculum access that in, you know, I would keep going on and on, and then it’s gonna write that. So I’m going to feed it my current descriptions. Now, if you don’t have a current, you know, product or service description, it can help you. But it’s gotta know your avatar and it’s gotta know who you are, what it’s for. It’s gotta know your company all the things that it’s gonna do.
AJV (04:39):
And so this is better suited for once you have your clear right service offering, your product offering, then have it go in there and have it build that this is a part of training it. It’s not that you’re u using chat g p T to create everything. You don’t have some of that work you gotta do yourself, right? That’s your job. And that’s why companies like Brand Builders Group exist, is we help with that part of the strategy, but it’s to help feed it into chat G P t to train it. So it’s now it’s learning who your avatar is, what your product is all about, or your service is all about. Then you wanna also teach it about your company, right? So for me it would be, you know, help create a company profile for brand builders Group who blank, right? So I’m going to help help it learn about brand builders group. So in my case, I would say like brand build create a pro a company profile for brand builders group who specializes in servicing the bur the personal brand strategy arena, who we cater to, coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, small business owners, buy dah, dah, right? So I’m gonna feed all of the things that we already have established
AJV (05:57):
About our avatar, about our offering, about our company is an effort to train, chat, G p T. So that’s step one. That was a long step one, but that’s step one. Step two is keep everything in one chat thread so you can build off of each new prompt. That’s a quick and easy one. Number two, use prior prompts in your new prompts to get more specific. So you can just copy and paste, use the little clipboard icon right there in chat, g p t, copy and paste the avatar. And you say, Hey, write me a email that caters to this avatar for this service offering, right? And you could just copy and paste the whole thing in there. It’s long, right? So some of those prompts are gonna be long, but the more that you do that upfront, the less you have to do it later on.
AJV (06:45):
Okay? That would be the the third thing. Fourth thing, be specific with what you want, right? So if you’re going, Hey, write me a landing page an active voice use X copywriting formula. So for us, it’s like, Hey, please write me a landing page, an active voice using the 15 Ps of copywriting from brand builders group who caters to blank avatar. That is not a discount oriented service offering that blank, blank, blank, right? And so I’m talking about be specific. So I would include things like please use humor, be concise. This is for a first time buyer. On and on, right? I’m gonna give you some of those examples in a second, but be specific, right? The more you do this upfront, the less you have to do it later on, or it changes, right? Use things like, are you looking for active voice, which is what most of us are probably wanting, or is it passive voice?
AJV (07:51):
Is this for a first time buyer? Is it for a repeat customer? Is it a, a re-engagement campaign of some sort for people who showed interest but never purchased or they did purchase, but it was X amount of years ago. Is this a discount, seasonal discount type of thing? Do you include a discount or not? Is this seasonal or not? Right? Is this something that you do every summer or every winter, every Christmas, every back to school, whatever. Do you want it to include humor? Do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be verbose? Do you want it to be concise? Do you want it to be in the voice of a certain person, right? So it, you can say, write it in the brand voice of AJ Vaden from Brand Builders Group, or write it in the voice of c e o of Brand Builders Group. You can be that specific. In that case, you would also need to train it on you as a personal brand. You can say things like, oh yeah, I mentioned this. Like, is there a certain copywriting
AJV (08:55):
Formula that you want it to use? Use things that say, I like it. Please use an email. Like, and you could use examples of other people or other companies. You can give it feedback, right? Rewrite this with more humor or less humor, or make it longer. Make it shorter. Make it more nuanced with different things based on who they are in your list. It’s like these are long-term clients that I’m catering to for this. You can do it for the sales pipeline, you can do it for nurture. All of those things. You have to be concise that this is a, the first email of a five email series, or this is the second email of five emails. All of those things are the things that we need to think about that most of us aren’t thinking about when it comes to using chat G p t.
AJV (09:50):
So there’s a lot in here, but here’s what I would say as your takeaway from this is number one, train chat, G p t. Help it get to know you, your business, your product, your avatar. Number two, get specific. No upfront, is this a funny email? Is this a short email? Is it serious? Is that with an offer or not an offer? Is it for a first time buyer or an existing customer? Is it for a past customer? That does no, has no longer has any engagements with you? All of those things are what you wanna think through, detailed out first, because those are a part of the prompt that you need to get or give to get the output that’s actually going to be usable. And just note too, it’s like, it’s not gonna write it perfectly, but it will take you from a copywriter to a copy editor, which most of us can edit in our voice. But we struggle with writing it from top to bottom. That’s where chat g p t can help you, save you thousands of dollars, save you tens if not hundreds of hours and help you get something that you can use right away. So how do you get better outputs with chat G P T? You learn how to tell it what you want upfront, and that’s what we did right now. So go test it out. Go use it and tell me what you think.
Ep 436: Become A Better Copywriter Using AI with Kyle Stout
AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody. Welcome to the influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. Super excited to have a conversation around something that everyone is talking about and continues to talk about. And so we’re gonna continue that conversation here today on the topic of AI and your personal brand. And so, before I introduce my awesome guest, Kyle Stout, I wanna tell you guys just a couple of reasons why you wanna stick around for today’s interview. So here are some things to ask yourself. And if you have the answer is yes to any of these questions, then this is an interview custom designed for you. Number one, do you want to use AI better? If you answer yes to that, stick around for this interview. Do you want to figure out better questions, better prompts to be putting into AI to get what you actually want? The answer is yes.
AJV (00:57):
Then you wanna stick around. And if you wanna talk about how AI can improve your email marketing, content marketing, or anything else that you’re doing online, then this is probably the conversation that you wanna stick around and listen to. So without further ado let me introduce you to our guest who’s going to make us better not only at using ai, but also becoming better email marketers for everything that we’re doing in our business. So Kyle Kyle Stout is the founder of Elevate and Scale, which is a marketing agency that helps with direct to consumer brands improve their revenue and put their sales on autopilot. Who does not want that
KS (01:52):
Thank you for having me.
AJV (01:54):
Yeah, this is gonna be a great conversation. I know everyone’s been talking about it. Everyone Conti continues to talk about it, and I feel like the same questions continually get asked from everyone in our community, everyone in our audience, which is, how do I become better at using ai? And so I would love to hear a little bit of your backstory about how you got to where you are and how have you learned so much about using AI in the most efficient and effective way?
KS (02:25):
Okay. So my background is in copywriting, and there have been a lot of these AI copywriting tools that have been out prior to what everyone now knows as like chat, G P T and that level of, of ai. And honestly, they weren’t really very good. I had, you know, but I was always kind of keeping an eye on it just because I thought, well, it would be really useful if it was really good someday. And then chat G p t, of course has changed everything and all of the new you know, technology that’s come about since then has changed everything to where now you can actually get really good copy. But what I have found to be the most important thing for getting, not just copy, but the best outputs in general from the AI tools that you’re using, is the detail in the prompts that you give it. And being specific with what you’re looking for in an answer as opposed to just asking a very broad question. Because you have to think that, okay, while this AI is very smart, it’s considering so many different possibilities of answers like way beyond the what we would ever consider in our mind. And it’s trying to come up with this, you know, generalized response that will cater to all those things instead of honing in on the specific, you know, variables that you really care about.
AJV (03:39):
Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s, well, one, I love that you have such a, a strong background in copywriting because I feel like you still have to be a copy editor to use ai. Well, and I still, I just know from our community at Brand Builders Group, we’ve got, you know, 750 monthly members and one of the biggest struggles that people still have is copywriting. And most of the use cases that we’re encountering from our community and even just increase from this podcast is, man, where do you find good copy? How do you write good copy? Who can, who can do it affordable and make it quality? And so I’d love to hear your take on just the AI generated copy as a copywriter, because I think what a lot of people think is, oh, this is going to solve this problem I have, or it’s gonna replace, you know, all of these people. And it’s like, I don’t agree with that. So I would love to hear your take on being a copywriter and using ai.
KS (04:39):
Yeah, so it’s definitely not as good as a, as a trained copywriter. And you know, I still have copywriters on my team who are writing the copy for our clients, but it is, I mean, it’s honestly pretty good to where in a lot of cases you can get copy that’s good enough to where you just need to go in, make some tweaks, of course, add in the personal language that fits your brand, that that’s the biggest piece is you want to mm-hmm.
KS (05:31):
So yeah, I think that you, it, again, it’s not as good as the copywriter, but you don’t have to have a copywriting background to use it. One thing about great copy is that it is very conversational. Mm-Hmm.
KS (06:17):
So things like that. So you’ll learn just by practicing little tricks of like your go-to things that you always include in the prompts, but really it’s gonna get you the, the base level of information you’re trying to convey. It’s pretty good at getting that. Then you just need to kind of massage it and humanize it to your brand. And that’s where you can really save a lot of time and money and you know, be able to produce really good copy without having to go hire a full-time copywriter if you’re, you know, not in a position to do so.
AJV (06:47):
Yeah. No, I love that. And I think you kind of nailed it on the head and a part of our conversation today is you have to know what you want in order to put in the right prompts so you get the right outputs. So let’s talk about that for a minute. Like, how do you get the best outputs? Like what’s the key to putting in successful prompts and like, how do you get better at telling it what you want so you actually get something that’s more usable?
KS (07:16):
So there’s a couple of pieces here. So before jumping to like, having this really detailed prompt, I think it helps to actually train the AI a little bit for, so let’s say for example, you’re using chat G P T and you open a new chat thread if I, for any business, any whatever it is, if it’s your personal brand, whatever, you keep all the conversation in that one chat thread. And I initially like to start off by having it do some research on creating an ideal customer profile for that business. Mm-Hmm.
KS (08:01):
So you know, a business that sells t-shirts online or, you know, whatever your business is. And then I put including information on demographics, psychographics, behavioral patterns, and customer needs and pain points. And that will give you a really detailed output of all of these demographics. And like, especially the really important stuff are like the big pain points, the, the wants, needs, desires, all of that of your ideal customers. So now the AI is familiar with, okay, the prompts you give, it’s going forward, it’s going to take into consideration this profile that you’re targeting. And then not only that, but you can take that output you just got from it, and then you can copy and paste that back into a prompt and say, now give me, you know, 10 topic ideas for videos or for emails or for whatever it is. And then that will usually give you 10 kind of broad ideas for your category where whatever, you know, industry you’re in, and then those broad ideas, you can actually go back and have it give you 10 more or even more than that.
KS (09:00):
But I like 10, you know, 10 more specific pieces of content. So now you have 10 different kind of angles to take to talk about that broader topic. And that’s how you can scale up the, or or solve the problem of, okay, what do I, what do I say in my content? So at, at this point now, there’s unlimited ideas for topics. And when you drill down to those specific subtopics and then you have the AI write the email or write the video script or whatever about that, now it’s gonna be a lot more refined. And so you can copy and paste in your ideal customer profile, in your prompt, you can copy and paste in the specific smaller, more refined topic that you wanted to write about. And then below that I would give it some details of like what, what type of content this specifically is.
KS (09:46):
So if it’s a, if it’s a sales email, if it’s a nurturing email, if it’s a, a video that’s, you know, and I tell it what objective I have for the video, and then I’ll, that’s at the end of that I’ll put in my little personal notes. So for example, I always tell it to use active voice because I find that a lot of times it uses passive voice, which is just not good copywriting. I might tell it to use a specific copywriting formula, and you can Google these if you don’t know any copywriting formulas that you might like. Little details like that. So other, other things would be like, don’t mention this, you know, ’cause you find that it kind of gets into patterns where it does certain things you like and does certain things you don’t like. So I always tell it not to do the things I don’t like. And with that kind of prompt, that’s how you’re able to get a really good rough draft of copy that now it only requires a little bit of editing and you don’t, you, it is not just completely off the mark to where you feel like you’re having to start from scratch each time.
AJV (10:39):
How long are your prompts
KS (10:43):
So here’s the thing, if you do this upfront as you go, because it remembers all your, your chat history, you don’t have to do that every single time. So for a while I was doing that every single time because I, because I was getting such good outputs, I started to think, oh, I guess I have to do these really long, detailed prompts every single time. What I have found is that if you take it through that journey of doing some customer research, then doing some topic research and then having it write specific types of content for you from that point on, I can say, Hey, write an email about this, this particular product or whatever. And it’s, it’s already on point. It remembers all the stuff I told it before, so I don’t have to be that detailed every time. So yeah.
KS (11:22):
But it does help to at, at some point be that detailed and to give it feedback of, I don’t like, you know, use less humor, use more humor, you know, be more concise, like whatever. And it, it just kind of picks up on on your preferences. And then from that point on, that’s where, that’s honestly, I think is the biggest difference where some people have a really bad experience with AI and some people have a really great experience and the people who are having a great experience, they maybe didn’t know this is why it happened, or they aren’t sharing that because they just spent so much time practicing and doing all these iterations that they’re, the, the AI is just working more effectively for them than for someone who just starts and they try to jump right into write a script for this video right from the very first prompt without a lot of detail of, you know, considerations of your brand and your target customers and all that.
AJV (12:13):
Oh, that’s so good. But it’s, you know, it’s like the more specific and the more detailed you are in the beginning, it’s gonna remember that and it’s, you’re gonna have to be less and less of that over the course of time.
KS (12:24):
Exactly. So I always, on my in chat, G P t I have like all my saved chats. So for whatever it is, whether I’m planning my YouTube videos, I have a chat that I only use for that. Or if I you know, for certain clients, you know, stuff I’m, if I’m researching ideas for emails, I have a certain chat for each one of them. So, and then that way I don’t have to go through that whole learning curve again. I just save it and go back and just pick up where we left off. And it’s, it’s super easy.
AJV (12:49):
Oh, love that. Super, super insightful. And although I’ve heard tons of people talk about you gotta just ask better prompts, you gotta have this, you gotta have that. No one has made some of the comments that you just did, which I think is really helpful because you have a copywriting background such as use more humor, be more concise, use an active voice, like those are all the things that I’m like, yes, that right there would even help. Like, you know, it’s like we do a ton of copy and we’ve been using custom G P T to kind of like train our own copywriting, like bot mm-hmm.
AJV (13:52):
You know, it’s like, but it’s because people aren’t using these type of nuanced just little tips. That’s awesome. So, so, so, so, so super helpful. So that kind of like leads me to my next questions, which would be, what do you think are some of the, the strengths and weaknesses of using AI to generate, you know, content and, you know, and I would say just content in general, but then super specific to email marketing content.
KS (14:22):
Yeah. So the biggest strengths and the things that I really love about it the most are doing the initial ideal customer profile type of research. Because when I first am am working with a client, that’s a, that’s a big time consuming task that we do. Before we write any copy, we need to nail down the messaging strategy. And a lot of that is just really dialing in on what are the big wants and needs and pain points, because that’s what’s gonna drive all of the topics we write about. ’cause Even if we’re, you know, if we’re selling supplements or, or t-shirts or whatever, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s a an online course, whatever, we’ve got to write the message in a way where the person who’s receiving the email feels like you care about them. They wanna know what’s in it for me.
KS (15:02):
And so you always wanna frame it around those things that, those desires and those problems that never go away for them. So that’s the first part, just saves a ton of time and helps us be, you know, really thoughtful and strategic with that. Then coming up with, you know, sometimes you just, especially if you’ve done a lot of emails for, you know, for your business or for a particular business, you get to where you’re like, okay, now you know, how do we find another way to talk about the same things? And that’s where chat PT is really mm-hmm.
KS (15:48):
So adding in those little, ’cause at first, if you just ask it for topics, it’ll give you a bunch of topics, but then you’ll run through those. So that’s where you start. You have to start throwing in extra things like, you know, I need topic ideas with this extra little detail to, you know, narrow down the list of topics. So that’s a, those are the two best things. I really like it to, to get alternative headlines, subject lines, things like that. So copy we’ve written, but we’re like it’s good, but we don’t love it. Let’s get some ideas. And it doesn’t always mean that we’re gonna use what chat p t gives us verbatim, but it will give us ideas. I’m like, oh, I like that thing. I didn’t even think of taking that angle and I’ll write my own version of it based on what I got from chat p t, but I would’ve never got the idea in the first place if it wasn’t for chat p t.
KS (16:35):
So those are the things I, I use, if those are the things I would say are the biggest strengths that I have found personally. And also just saving time and, and all the processes, actually, I guess that’s the biggest strength. The weakness would be that the copy is still not to the level that you can just copy and paste it in and, and send it off and, and be good to go. Like you, you’ve, you do need to, like you said, not everyone can, but every, all marketers can, you know, they can tell whenever it’s AI copy and it is a little bit more generic. And so it’s not like, it’s not a matter of will your customers know it’s AI or not, it’s just not going to resonate with them in the same way as if you personalize it more and you add in your personal touch and your own signature phrases and how you say things, that’s what’s going to take it from just okay copy that explains what you’re trying to communicate to copy that really connects with the person and forms that emotional connection where now they wanna do business with you over the other coaches who offer the exact same service you do, but they just like you better.
KS (17:38):
Right? So that’s what we wanna do with our copy. So that has been I would say that’s not a huge weakness. It’s, but that’s something to keep in mind. A weakness, another weakness just for me personally is there are some tools that are great for creating original art, but for creating the kind of graphic design I need. So designing really nice emails and I just haven’t seen one yet. There are some that are kind of, you know, testing the waters right now, but I have not seen any that come close. I mean, just, it’s just nowhere close to what a good graphic designer would do on our team. And so that would be a huge
KS (18:20):
Time and money saver
AJV (18:31):
Yeah.
KS (18:31):
But again, it’s like there’s a learning curve of how do you even put the prompts in to get the output the same way that I know copywriting and I know the little nuances to ask it. If you’re not a photographer and you don’t really know the nuances of a lens and different colors and aperture and all that kind of stuff, which I don’t know anything about, then you won’t be able to get as good of a prompt as someone who does have that background.
AJV (18:54):
Yeah. Like one of the things, and I’m so glad that you brought that up too our team plays around with Mid Journey a lot with just like, like we’re, we’ve been making, like taking all of our clients’ photos and turning them into like superheroes mm-hmm.
KS (19:11):
No.
AJV (19:12):
But one of the things that you kind of said, it’s like, and this is what I heard anyway, so tell me if I’m wrong, but it’s like, almost like you already have to be an expert in your field and then AI can just help save you time. But if you don’t know some of these nuanced things, it’s not gonna give you what you want. So instead of, you know, you don’t have to be a copywriter, but you still have to be able to copy edit, right? It’s like,
KS (19:36):
Yeah. You
AJV (19:37):
Know,
KS (19:38):
That, that’s exactly how I feel about it. So a lot of people, they, they feel threatened by ai and I’m not saying it won’t completely eliminate marketers, right? So it’s, it’s possible. But for the time being and, and in the near future, what it looks like is it’s just gonna make us way more efficient and effective at what we do. And like you said, so a a good copywriter with AI is gonna be way better than someone who is has no copywriting background using ai and they’re gonna be way faster than a great copywriter who is not using AI ’cause they’re just not saving as much time, right. So mm-hmm.
AJV (20:32):
We
KS (20:32):
Have an idea of how we would like our company to communicate to us and how we would like to be communicated to versus you know, photography and graphic design is a lot more technical in nature. And if you just have, if you’ve never had any experience with it, you would just never even even learn the terminology. So I definitely think it’s easier for the average person to pick up the copy side of ai.
AJV (20:53):
Yeah. And I love that too, where it’s well I have a question. Do you think that using like chat G P T and other AI sources is going to allow copywriters to lower their prices because now they can do more volume?
KS (21:10):
I def Well, so yeah, I think it’s gonna affect different parts of the market. So you definitely will have a lot of those people, you’ll have a lot of those services where it’s gonna be high volume, low cost. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (21:46):
They
KS (21:46):
Don’t, they’re not really, I, I thought people would not like the idea of us using ai. I found that they kind of, their attitude is, well, if you’re not using ai, you’re like, are you really even keeping up? Are you gonna be able to, you know, keep, are you, are you gonna be innovative and be able to help us keep up with everyone else? And they don’t seem to be like bothered by it at all as long as the final output, which is the emails we’re creating for them. As long as they like those mm-hmm. They like how it represents their brand, they’re performing well. They never really ask questions about about that.
AJV (22:19):
Yeah. No, that’s interesting. I think our response has been right nor wrong is yeah, I’m still happy to pay your full prices, but can you get it done faster?
AJV (23:11):
And they’re on a limited budget, which most of us have budgets. So super helpful. So I wanna kind of expand beyond AI before we went outta time. ’cause I could talk about this for a really long time ’cause I find it fascinating. But I would love to just talk about email marketing in general of, I think this is one of those things that over the last few years, at least in our circle in our community, that people have kind of stopped talking about. I think there has been such a unbelievably heavy focus and emphasis on social media that people have stopped talking about the value and the importance of your email list and email marketing. And at least for us, we find that we would much rather have a bigger email list than a big than a big social following. I care much more about our email marketing than a do just having a new, you know, social media campaign. I’m not saying it’s not important, I’m just saying I think there is, I there has been a devaluing on the importance of your email list and email marketing in the digital landscape. And I would love to kind of just be like, let’s, let’s talk about the importance of your email list and the importance of email marketing and let’s bring it back to, hey, don’t forget all this other stuff is not yours, but your list that’s yours.
KS (24:28):
Exactly. That, that’s really what it comes down to or comes back to for me, is that your email list is really the only channel that you own and control where you can directly communicate with your leads and customers versus social media. And so to your point, the, the two things I see the most often as far as, you know, why do people neglect email marketing is one, they’re just, you know, there’s so many new and sexy things out there with social media and AI and all this stuff that they know like, email’s always been there, it’s always gonna be there. I’ll get to it at some point. And so they think that, and they haven’t actually personally seen firsthand how valuable it can be. So it’s, it’s a lower priority for them. And then for other people, I think that it’s, it’s just kind of taken for granted. Like they maybe they have been doing it, but they didn’t realize that they haven’t been strategic about it. So maybe they do a monthly newsletter and so they’re like, yeah, we have a list and you know, we don’t really generate very many sales from it. So they’ve kind of written it off, but they, they never really did the deep dive into, okay, what can I actually do with email mm-hmm.
AJV (25:34):
KS (25:35):
They did that with everything they did on social media. They were just a sponge and they wanted to learn everything and they didn’t take that same attitude with email. So they haven’t gotten the same results out of it. And you know, I mean, truthfully, social media is awesome and a lot of businesses have have built their businesses off of social media and they get almost all of their sales from there, if not all of their sales. And so they might be thinking, why do I need email? But I can tell you on the other side, so like with the types of businesses we work with, email typically generates 30 to 60% of their total revenue.
AJV (26:09):
Hmm. And
KS (26:09):
It’s a lot easier to do than social media. It’s a, it’s a lot cheaper to do than social media and it’s a lot more reliable month to month. And you don’t have to worry about, you know, all of a sudden they make a change in the algorithm and now your people aren’t, aren’t getting your content as much, or you have to pay more for them to see your content. You don’t have those issues that you have on social media. Yeah,
AJV (26:31):
No, I love that. And you said something that I wanna dive into is people don’t know what they can do with their email marketing. So what can people do with their email marketing? I would, would, I would love to kind of bring this back to the focus of, you know, what we talk about at Brain Builders Group because it’s a huge part of our business. Like, I think less than 1% of all of our clients come from social. It’s like we track all of that so super diligently, not most of ours come from podcasts, but it’s, it’s so interesting of how we’re tracking it, but if we were to go to our email engagement and our email, it’s like, so monumentally more significant to us. So what can people be doing in their email list with email marketing? Like, what are some of the things that are really working?
KS (27:18):
So the first place every business should start is, I call it optimizing your sales process, which is really just creating all of the automated email sequences that make sense for your business to get someone to go from being a stranger to being a customer. Mm-Hmm.
KS (27:59):
Whatever your sales process is, map it out step by step. And in your analytics, look at how many people make it to each step. And then there’s gonna be typically at least one area where there’s a major drop off where lots of people make it to the webinar, but very few sign up for the call on the webinar. That’s gonna be the first place where if you put in an automated sequence to do follow up right there, where you’re gonna get the, the most immediate return on your effort because there’s just a lot of low hanging fruit. But ideally you won’t wanna have that follow up in place in between every single step in your sales process. And what it does is, is just more follow, you’re giving them relevant information for where they’re at in the sales journey. So depending on the software you’re using, for example, if you, if you have a webinar or a free training, typically there’s, you’re gonna have a pitch at the end.
KS (28:47):
You might have some value content for most of it, and you have a pitch at the end. And if the, so if you’re using the right software, you can see if people make it to the end or not. So if people don’t make it to the end, you can send them follow up information to send ’em the information that would’ve been in the pitch that they didn’t see. So a lot of times we assume, oh, when no one signed up, we assume they weren’t interested. Well maybe they didn’t even see the offer in the first place. So yeah, that’s, that’s the first place and that’s really where, I mean, to me that’s the, not only the highest priority, but you’re gonna get the most return for your effort. ’cause Once you set it all up, it’s just running 24 7. Beyond that, you wanna look at, okay, now how are we gonna start doing email campaigns on a regular basis to the different people on your list?
AJV (29:31):
Yeah. No, I love starting with the sales process because at the end of the day, most of this is for some sort of conversion. It’s nurturing, conversion, nurturing, conversion. So I love, love starting there. What would you say for the people who are going, okay, I have something in place, but it’s not really working, what would be some of the best things to put in the emails as you’re thinking of like, okay, maybe you have a webinar and they didn’t show up. Or maybe you have an application that people have to fill out and maybe they have to schedule a call and like all the things. And if they didn’t buy, what’s the follow up? What, what would you say for the people who are going, yeah, I have that, but it’s not really doing it, it’s not working. What would you say to go back and look at in terms of like, the actual words and content in the emails?
KS (30:19):
Okay, so let’s say if you had the webinar people sign up, but no one’s really responding afterwards. First thing is, ’cause you might need to, there’s multiple tests you might have to do here. But first let’s just assume that they like the webinar. And we, and we’re just gonna try to change the outcome with the emails, is I would look at, okay, at this stage, what information do they really need? Mm-Hmm.
KS (31:01):
Let them know about all of the, you know, unique value props of your business. But really you also want to make sure you are addressing questions and objections. So all of the big questions people have, all of the sales objections address those early and often in those emails because a lot of times you won’t get the opportunity, they won’t give you the opportunity to a, to answer those questions, right? So you’re not gonna hear them ask, but they still have those questions. So all of that stuff needs to be given to them early. So it’s very easy for them to make a decision to move forward. And then the, the overarching thing here is that all of the emails should be framed around them. Mm-Hmm. So even though I said you wanna introduce your brand, tell your brand story all that, I don’t mean you just go on and on about yourself and how great you are.
KS (31:43):
It’s all about what you bring to the table and what that means for them. What, what they are going to get out of it, what they are going to experience. So talk about the, you know, before and after of this, of their scenario. So if you offer some sort of you know, service, whether it’s coaching or professional service or whatever, know people are paying for outcomes. They’re not just paying for the service. So you wanna tell stories and you know, and involve the emotions of what someone is experiencing in this before state, before they have the results they want and what they’re going to feel and experience after they have those results. And so that’s gonna make, that’s just gonna resonate a lot more with people and it’s gonna make your, your marketing a lot more powerful. And then if that, if all of that doesn’t work, maybe it’s the offer, maybe you just need to try a different offer on the front end and the people who already signed up and didn’t engage with the first one, they’re not lost.
KS (32:35):
You can always just try to, you can pitch them on a new free offer and then get them involved in a new sequence. And you can bring of course, other new, new leads into that as well. But that’s a great way. Sometimes it might take two or three offers before you find the one that really resonates. And so if you keep testing these emails and nothing’s working, it’s not always the emails. Sometimes it’s just the, the way you started the relationship with them in the first place was either targeting the wrong people or it just positioned you with the wrong offer for what they’re looking for.
AJV (33:06):
Yeah. Super insightful. And I subscribe to all kinds of weird offers just so I can watch the email sequences
AJV (33:49):
Yeah, tell me more. It’s like, I’m not a prospect, but yet I’m interested and it’s really easy. And I would just say like, for anyone listening, if you don’t do that, do that. Right. Be a study of this process. There are plenty of people who do this well and plenty of people who don’t do it well. So just start kind of like testing things out out there and just, you know, kind of like put yourself in a bunch of funnels. ’cause You’ll see really quickly like how many are they sending? How long are they? Which I have a question for you about that. But also just reading like the meat of the emails is so insightful. And I love what you said. It’s like you can’t make it about you, you gotta make it about them. And that’s where looking at the analytics makes a big, big difference.
KS (34:32):
Yeah, definitely.
AJV (34:34):
Okay, so here’s the this is an ongoing debate in our company about email link. And there’s two schools of thought on this and I’m probably much more into tell ’em exactly what they need to know, what they need to hear and nothing else. And my husband, my business partner loves to tell them all the things. And so I’m gonna use you as our tiebreaker here. What would you say that you’re seeing in terms of trends when it’s like, how long should the email be?
KS (35:04):
So I would, I would say is the rule of thumb is to be concise. Like more often than not, lean towards keeping the emails short and to the point. But I will say the emails we do tend to be longer. On average, they tend to be a little longer. And, but it’s more challenging to have a really effective longer email ’cause you have to hold their attention. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:27):
Longer.
KS (35:28):
So it depends on what you’re selling. So for people, for a personal brand, I actually prefer just text only shorter emails, keep ’em brief, keep ’em specific around a specific topic. One call to action and, and keep it pretty simple. And, you know, if you, if you don’t get to cover everything you wanted to just send another email later to, to take that other angle. Just because again, people have short attention spans in the personal branding space. Whether you’re a coach, consultant, whatever it is they really, really wanna know about you and like they want to, it’s not just about your service because you probably have, you know, insane competition, whatever you’re offering. There’s just, there’s a ton of coaches and consultants. So it’s not always just about your unique mechanism. They have to relate to you. And, and so if you can keep these emails, you know, if they’re, if they’re not reading the emails, they’re not gonna relate to you.
KS (36:20):
So you want, if you keep ’em shorter, keep ’em specific, keep ’em friendly, conversational, that’s a great way. But just, just to throw it out there. And maybe this will give your husband some fuels. I will say a lot of our emails are longer and, but a lot of times it’s because for example, if we’re, ’cause we work with a lot of product-based businesses, so a lot of times we’re doing a combination of having educational content in the email with an offer, with a relevant offer at the end. So for example, if we’re selling supplements, there’s a million, you know, angles we can take for topics around, you know, you could, it could be as general as, you know, fat loss or building muscle, but we like to get specific into things like, you know, how to shop for healthy groceries on a budget, you know, those kind of things.
KS (37:03):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:12):
No, those are super great. I think one of the things that I’ve noticed I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but the higher the price point, the more the coffee.
KS (38:22):
So that’s definitely, that’s all, that’s been a, a long time thing with copywriting. So like the, the really, you know, if you go to a long sales page for a big offer especially if it’s like, you know, multiple thousands or 10,000 plus. Yes. So you’re expecting this super long sales page with a, maybe a really long video sales letter on the sales page. But what’s interesting is that that doesn’t have to always be the case with the emails. In fact, I actually learned this from Frank Kern. I I did this program with Frank Kern and it was a huge investment and his, his emails were all very brief, but of course it was Frank Kern. He is, he is a legend in the marketing space and the copywriting space. So, so I was already pre-sold based on that, but he kind of taught us this format of, you have the, the offer section of the email stays pretty consistent from email to email when you’re selling these high ticket services.
KS (39:17):
Meaning that you’ll say like, you know, in this program you’ll, you’ll get, and then you list off like four or five bullets of the, the benefits, but it’s the copy that goes before that where you’re having a different conversation each time. So you’re trying to target a specific pain point specific benefit each time, then you lead to the offer. But really the email itself is pretty short, but he is having you do a high frequency of emails. So as opposed to it being one long email or maybe five long emails, it’s like 10 shorter emails Yeah.
AJV (39:46):
You know,
KS (39:46):
Within a certain timeframe. So yeah, I definitely feel like that, while that is the rule of thumb, you don’t have to go, you don’t have to feel the pressure of doing really long copy if you’re selling something high ticket.
AJV (39:59):
No, I love that. And I think in general, I, I find myself anyway preferring, I’d rather get a higher frequency and keep it short if I can. We follow the, the window pane policy, right? It’s like if I have to scroll, I’m probably gonna come back to it later, but if I can get the gist of it and just like what you see as you’re pulling up your outlook it’s like that’s gonna give me the gist of, oh, I do wanna read that. Versus my goodness if I see some of these emails where I’m like, I’m scrolling, I’m scrolling, I’m like, I’ll get to it later and then eventually I just end up deleting it. But that’s just me. That’s just, no,
KS (40:34):
No. I mean, that’s,
AJV (40:35):
You find
KS (40:36):
That that’s pretty normal. And I, I think really it’s like you have to have a, usually there’s a sales call involved with a high ticket offer mm-hmm.
AJV (40:42):
KS (40:43):
I think that that’s where you need to have a really good sales script and, and sales call, you know, experience dialed in for people and those short emails. It’s just, it’s not so much selling the full high ticket program. It’s like, we’re just trying to sell the call right now in those shorter emails and then let the sales call do its thing. Right. So, ’cause people will try to do too much in email and like you said, if you don’t read it, then the whole purpose was defeated.
AJV (41:09):
Mm-Hmm.
KS (41:25):
The, probably the most common mistake is relying too much on discounts and emails. A lot of people have this idea that if I’m, like, they think that they’re going to be annoying their list by sending an email. So they think if I’m going to email them, I have to make it really good, I have to make it special for them, or they’re not gonna buy, which is not true at all. But, you know, if you have that preconceived notion, you’re gonna, you can see that play out because that’s will, that will frame how you write your copy. But a lot of times, you know, people get addicted to the spikes in sales that come with offering a big discounted promotion, and then you end up training your list to only buy when there’s a discount when you do that. And so I see this, I mean, I see this all the time over and over where it’s, it is difficult to wean people off of those discounts. So you’re better off not getting to that place in the first place if you haven’t already done that yet. So that’s that’s probably the most common one. Another one, which is maybe a little bit lesser known would be that not sending every email to everyone on your list. Hmm.
AJV (42:25):
So
KS (42:25):
I, it is another assumption people, people make, which, you know, I can’t fault them because if, if you don’t, if this isn’t your world and you’re not nerding out on email marketing stuff, then you would just assume, well, I have this really valuable asset, which is my email list, and so I’m gonna get the most value I can out of this. So every time I send an email, I want it to go to everyone that can possibly reach it, because that’s how I’m gonna get the most amount of sales.
AJV (42:47):
Yeah.
KS (42:47):
And again, that’s, that’s actually not true. What would be better is to segment your list and create different segments of groups of buyers so you can segment them based on how recently they’ve engaged with you, based on their past purchase history, based on where they live, their gender, all kinds of things. And then you craft the content of the email more specifically to that group. And now you can actually send out more frequent emails, but not everyone is getting every email and the emails they are getting are a lot more personalized to them. So that’s a way to not only get more sales per email send, but have a way to scale up the volume of emails you send without annoying your list. Because not everyone in your list is going to be getting all of those emails.
AJV (43:30):
Love that. I love, just don’t try to make it so general that applies to everyone, but cater to the different segments of your list so you can make it more personable. Love that. Such a good tip. And all right, here’s my last question. So I love those, those are really good. What would you say that you would tell someone who’s asking, okay, but what kind of emails do I send to my list now that I have all these people on the list? Let’s say they’re not in like a sales funnel, but I just have a large list. Like, or even if I have a small list, what do people want? Like what do people want when it comes to emails today?
KS (44:08):
Okay, so you first have to have the attitude of, i I call it always be testing. Kinda like salespeople say, always be closing, where you have to be willing to have some emails just not perform well. Mm-Hmm. And know that you’re, you’re testing new topics. So if you’ve done the initial research of, you know, defining your ideal customer profile, you have some idea of the big wants and needs and pain points they care about, then first just start with the big ones and start crafting some content around a specific pain point or a specific benefit that ties to what you’re selling. And just first start with those. So keep it more like evergreen. These are, these are emails that would be relevant today and a year from today, and they would always be true. So first just start testing those to get an idea of, okay, of the big topics, what does my list care about the most?
KS (44:59):
And you’ll know, because you can’t judge the first email because if you haven’t sent an email in a long time, or if it’s the first one you’re sending, you have nothing to compare it to. So send one email a week for a month at the end of the month, look at, out of those four emails, okay, which one performed the best? What, what was said in that email? What was the offer if it was different? And then the next month, keep that same type of topic in rotation, but try talking about it from a different angle and then maybe mix in a couple of other, you know, slightly related topics. And then try something completely, you know, brand new left field as another one to test. And as you go on, you’re gonna start narrowing it down to certain benefits or certain things about your service that they care about most.
KS (45:41):
And there are a lot of times it’s surprising a lot of times the things that you think are most important are not really what they care about. And so that’s where a lot of times we have to give them what they want mm-hmm.
KS (46:20):
So I’ll, again, I’ll go with, you know, I always use supplements as a, as examples. So well, let’s just say jewelry for, for example. If say you’re selling jewelry, a specific pain point might be that people have a hard time defining their style. Mm-Hmm. So you just write an email, just give them a little few tips about how they could define their personal style. And then at the end of the email, you share some jewelry options that are great for matching with different outfits or different styles or whatever. They’re very versatile. And so now you have a very, it’s a non-salesy, very relevant offer for them. And if they’re not in the market to buy today, they at least got those tips and hopefully they learn something interesting. So they’ll keep coming back to open future emails. And if you, if you just take that, that framework and that attitude and just test different topics each time, after two or three months, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what works for your list and what doesn’t
AJV (47:14):
Love that. I just, even like, as you were talking, thinking about fun and creative ways that just thinking about our list, even at Brand Builders group of, you know, we cater so super specifically to people who are trying to build their personal brand to increase brand awareness for lead generation or speaking or writing a book of even doing something that would be super heavy incentivized for just people who are in the book stages of wanna know how to sell this many books. Here are the 10 things you can do right now. And that would be a super easy thing just as you were just even talking about that, about how to reengage people that we’re not doing. And so again, it’s just those little reminders of like, oh yeah, like we should do that.
KS (48:00):
Yeah. That’s and that’s exactly what I’m talking about, where the, the tendency is to, oh, we need to tell them every single time about the book part and about the public speaking part and about everything else. And what I always tell people is, well, you can do that sometimes, but hone in on one specific thing at a time. And when you see the reaction to it, you start to learn which aspects of your offer they really care about most. And you, then you can just lean into that more.
AJV (48:23):
Love that. So awesome. What an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. This has been so helpful and so insightful. And for everyone listening I will put all of this in the show notes, but also there is an awesome free resource that Kyle has provided if you go to when before you send.com. So when before you send.com, you can download a really awesome checklist that you can go through before you launch your next email marketing campaign. So go grab that resource. It’s going to be what we covered today and so much more, but win before you send.com. Grab that resource. And also if you wanna learn more about Kyle and his business, go to elevate and scale.com. And Kyle, if people just wanna follow you on social media, where should they go?
KS (49:18):
Yeah, the best place would be my YouTube channel, which is Elevate and Scale.
AJV (49:22):
Elevate and Scale. You got it. Kyle, thank you so much. This was so awesome. So many awesome tips. And for everybody else, stick around for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 433: Building Your Consulting Practice by Positioning Your Expertise | David Baker Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all. We are gonna talk about how to build your consulting practice by positioning your expertise. And I say consulting but you could be a trainer, a coach, a speaker, an author but this is consultative approach to what you do. How can we build that by positioning your expertise? And this was motivated. This was inspired by a conversation that I had with David Baker, who was a recent guest on the influential Personal Brand podcast. And I thought this was relevant enough to a break it away and have a separate conversation around this idea of expertise and really overcoming the challenge of being a generalist, which really just means overcoming the temptation to say yes to everything I suffer from that. I know you suffer from it.
AJV (01:04):
So we say yes to all of them most of them not in our wheelhouse, not where we feel like we’re a, you know, a deep expert, but we feel confident enough or well versed enough that we can go learn it, figure it out, or do good enough. And then what accidentally happens, and I see this happen all the time, all around me, is that all of a sudden, without effort and without intention, you have become known for something that you don’t want to be known for. You have strayed away from your natural giftings, your uniqueness, and the things that you do better than anyone else because you have said yes to the wrong things for long enough that now people come to you for things that you aren’t as good at. It’s not your passion, it’s not your expertise. And you wonder why you feel like you’re working all the time.
AJV (01:58):
You’re burnt out and you’re tired. You’re tired.
AJV (02:49):
I have to study, I have to ask questions, ask. But when I stay in my lane, my expertise where I have knowledge like nobody’s business, right? It’s like, I could do this in my sleep. I could talk about it in my sleep. I live it, I eat it. I breathe it. Yes, I can help you with that. I feel a hundred percent confident in it. It doesn’t feel like work. Why? Because it comes natural to me, because I have spent most of my life doing it, learning about it, talking about it. And that’s what I do now. So the question is then why do we say yes to all this other random stuff? And I believe it’s for one of two reasons. One, we have a scarcity mindset, or we’ve got fomo,
AJV (03:39):
Because I, I don’t know if my next deal or my next client, I don’t know, right? I’m scared of the economy. I’m scared of the money in my banking account. I’m scared that I can’t generate a lead. I’m, I’m scared, right? It’s scarcity in this fear induced pattern, or it’s this kind of FOMO thing of you’re, you’re in the middle of a land grab, right? You’re like, I gotta take it all. I gotta grab market share why? It’s up. It’s like I’m new, so I gotta take everyone. It’s like I gotta get my reputation built up. And that happens by saying yes to everything. And it’s like, that’s also not right. I’m, and there’s some middle ground in there. And yes, I know that there are some times where we gotta take on business because we gotta, we have mouth to feed and bills to pay.
AJV (04:21):
And it’s like, you just gotta take it. But there’s a, that’s a finite amount of time, and it should be in only desperate situations. Because what we should be doing is narrowing our focus, honing in on that expertise. And so people know when to come to you because they know what you do. And it is crystal clear because you have made it crystal clear because your positioning is right. Your branding is right. Your talking points are right. Your, your conversation is right. Who you work with is, right? It is clear. But what muddies up the water is when you start adding in stuff that now your expertise is just broadened to the point of, well, I can do a little of sales, I can do a little leadership. Sure, I could probably talk about billing and some customer service. And all of a sudden that honed in focus on sales is so broad that you’re like, well, sales is everything.
AJV (05:20):
And so people go, well, I don’t know what to hire you for. And now you’ve muddied the water so much that people aren’t clear. So don’t do that. How do we do that? How do we not do that? Right? Here’s a few things that I thought was really wise from this conversation with David Baker. And I thought, this is fascinating and interesting. ’cause I hear people at Brand Builders group say all the time, well, man, I just, I think I’ve run out of things to say. It’s like everything that I have to say about it, it’s in my book, or it’s in this. And it’s like, well, maybe that’s not true. And I love David said, the, with a narrow focus, you always have more to say with a narrow focus. You always have more to say. The more narrow your focus, the more you have to say.
AJV (06:12):
And as I was listening to him, I just had this immediate thought about my husband and business partner, Rory Vaden. Now Rory is seemingly an extrovert, seemingly but really he is a secret introvert. And I have given him a hard time, most of our marriage and even dating relationship of he’s not a great general conversationalist. And I am like, baby, like you need to learn how to make small chat. And he’s like, I don’t know how to do small chat. I don’t wanna do small chat. I’m not good in a networking social. But here’s one of the things that I think is so fascinating. Every so often we’ll meet a new couple or meet a new set of friends or, you know, whatever. And when a topic of his expertise comes up, he is the ultimate chatterbox
AJV (07:10):
And where, where did all these works come from? He’s like, we could go weeks when he’s like, I, I got nothing to say in these meetings or these environments until something comes up where he has something to say. And while David was talking, I immediately thought of Rory of going, that’s it. He has so much to say about a few things because on those things, he feels like I have something of value to give here. I have deep experience, I have deep expertise, I have a deep passion about it. And it’s like when those topics arise, you know, because the words are flowing, right? He is chatterbox central and when he doesn’t have anything to say on topics he doesn’t feel confident in or he is not interested in, he’s like, I got nothing to say on this. I’ve got nothing to add. I’m gonna let those around me who have interest in that share.
AJV (08:05):
And I thought that was a really good example to me of going, man, you don’t run out of things to say when it’s a topic that you feel like you have true expertise in, because you’ve done the research, you have these conversations. You think about it, you research, you read about it, you talk about it. So there is always something to say. And so there is always more to say when that topic is narrow, because that’s where your focus is. So you look at the, look at things through the lens of that narrow focus, and then new things start to rise all the time through that. And that was just a great highlighted moment of like, even in my personal life of going, and there is so much power in the value that you provide when you narrow in your expertise, when you narrow in your focus of going, man, it’s like, I know when I wanna talk about anything X, Y, and Z, who to go to, right?
AJV (09:01):
Because I know that they are a deep expert in it. They are read up. They are ready to share and provide value that happens when you choose something that has a more narrowed focus and it gives you more opportunity to provide value. So back to that, it’s like talking about a narrow focus gives you more to say, not less to say. And I love that. And David actually said in our conversation, he said, an author is just someone who uses a book to force you, the author, to think about what you have to say. He said, that’s the power of writing a book on a narrow focus is that you spend all this time trying to say a lot about a little versus saying a little about a lot. It’s like, go deep in a subject matter, not wide go deep, right? But an author’s goal is to figure out how do I have enough to say about this narrow focus that I can fill 200, 250 pages of words that are about this singular thing?
AJV (10:04):
So you have to learn how to say a whole bunch about a little, right? A a generalist says a little about a lot. An expert says a lot about a little. And that same thing could go, you don’t have to be an author to do that. Speaker a blogger a content creator for social media. It doesn’t matter, but it’s honing in that focus. And the gist of this really comes down to you have to be willing to talk about what you have to say in order for you to figure out what you actually have to say. There is an art and a practice of the more you write about it, the more you talk about it, the more you learn about it, the more you read about it, the more you research it, you figure out, you distill, right? You filter through all of this stuff for you to figure out, this is what I actually have to say.
AJV (10:59):
And the more that you do that, you are positioning yourself of being a true expert. And the more that you do that you can charge more and have fewer clients, which means you can have more time to expand on other things that you have passion and interest in. So back to the topic at hand, it’s like how do you build your consulting practice By positioning your expertise is you become known for one thing. And that’s because your branding is, your branding is aligned, your conversation is aligned, your clients are aligned, your service offerings are aligned with a narrow focus. ’cause You don’t have to be a big firm to make a lot of money, and you don’t have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Being a small firm, being a solopreneur is not a bad thing. It’s the right thing
AJV (11:53):
For the right person. So you don’t have to go big to be really, really good
AJV (12:00):
At what you do.
Ep 432: Charge More by Doing Less with David Baker
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here today, and super excited get to interview a, a fellow Nashvillian today. And also David is a, a brand new acquaintance of mine. I actually got cold pitch pitched him, which I, one out of a hundred times will say yes to those. But I thought this conversation looked super interesting. So I thought this would be worth coming onto our show because he is teaching the business of expertise. And as you guys all know, we talk a lot about the importance of being an expert in your field on this show. So what a better way to kick off today’s show with some conversation around what it means to be an expert and the pros and cons and everything in between. So, before I formally introduce David, I just want to give you a little preview of why you stick, need to stick around to the very end.
AJV (00:59):
I would say these are some of the highlights that I kind of pulled out of this, but I’m like, yeah, I wanna, I wanna know the answers to these things. So if you have a question around why long-term relationships could be dangerous for your advisory practice, then you’re gonna wanna stick around if you wanna talk about productizing your service offerings. ’cause I know so many of us are constantly going, man, like, how do I get out of the business of exchanging time for money, constantly time for money? Then this is an interview for you, and if you wanna just in general talk about how to position yourself as an expert, then this is a show that you don’t wanna miss. So, stick around. Don’t fast forward, don’t hang up early. Listen to the entire show. And then you can also catch the recap episode shortly after this.
AJV (01:49):
So now let me formally introduce you to David Baker. Here’s something that’s fascinating. He grew up with a tribe of Mayan and Inmans Indians in Guatemala. And we were just talking. He said, why is your zoom in Spanish? And I’m like, oh my gosh. I was just in Mexico and I couldn’t get it out. And he was like, oh, well, you know, I speak Spanish. I grew up in Guatemala, but not just grew up in Guatemala. Grew up with Mayan Indians. He’s also a airplane pilot, a photographer. He rides motorcycles. He lives here in Nashville, which is a super plus for me. But his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, fast Company, U Ss a Today, Inc. Magazine, Forbes. I could go on and on and on, but instead of me telling you about him, why don’t I just introduce him? So, David, welcome to the show.
DB (02:37):
Thank you. Thank you. You got me all excited about sticking around for this. It’s like, wow, that’s sounds interesting. And how did I not pick up that? You’re in Nashville too. I, I when you told me that just a minute ago, I thought, well, how have we not met? I know. Yeah. That’s, that’s great. Thank you for having me.
AJV (02:53):
Love getting to meet other people who live in Nashville. ’cause I feel like so many of my friends today don’t live here. So when I meet somebody else who’s local, it’s a, it’s an extra treat. So as we get into this conversation just to help our audience a and b get to know you a little bit better, can you just kind of give us like a high level overview of how did you go from growing up in Guatemala to moving to Nashville, to writing books, to speaking and podcasting? Like how did this all come about?
DB (03:23):
Well, I’m a total fraud, and this is the, I’ve chosen to say that on your podcast the first time. No, I, my parents were medical missionaries. That’s how I grew up in Guatemala. So, lived in Costa Rica for a year while they learned Spanish, very poorly, learned it
DB (04:11):
And then one day, just with a lot of hubris, honestly, I was talking with my wife. I was sitting on the couch and I said, you know what? The ads in this local newspaper really suck. They’re just like, I could do better than this. I don’t know anything about it, but I think I could do better. So I started an ad agency, didn’t know, had never worked at one, didn’t know anybody else in the field, did it for six years. And it was a pretty ordinary, average firm, you know, it, it was successful, but not wildly successful. But as a part of that process, I subscribed to a newsletter. And part of what came with that subscription is that you could ask the newsletter editor questions for free. I think it was, that was his way of just staying in touch with the market. And one day I said to him, why don’t, why don’t you advise your clients rather than just doing a newsletter?
DB (05:02):
Why don’t you do consulting for them? And he gave me his reasons for why he wasn’t interested, but he said, why don’t you do it? And before I could even think about that, the answer to it, I, he said, and I’ll just put an ad in the newsletter, and you just gimme 10% of whatever you make. And I didn’t think much would come of it, but it seemed like kind of an interesting idea. And people started calling, and very quickly, within six months, it just completely took my life over. I think people were hungry for just business advice. And so that it was somewhat accidental, but I embraced it very quickly with sort of a combination of some expertise and a lot of curiosity and willingness to kind of be out in front of my skis a lot. And since then, obviously it’s been, that just really started the process of learning. And so I just, I feel like I’m just learning a lot all the time and helping people in the process process. So that was 30 years ago, next March when I started this firm and worked all across the world with thousands of firms, and just really love what I do. So I, I’m completely irrelevant to most of the world, but I want to be deeply relevant to a small part of it. And that’s small consulting, branding sort of firms.
AJV (06:16):
Well, I love that. ’cause I think that’s all of our challenges, right? If we try to be everything to everyone, then we are nothing to no one
DB (06:35):
Six, but only four of them were any good, but, so let’s just say four. Yeah.
AJV (06:41):
So a, a huge part of the audience that listens to this show. It’s also, you know, an aspiring author, aspiring speaker. Mm-Hmm. And so what would you say is like, how have you written so many books? Like what would you say is your inspiration? What’s your process and how do you find time to do that in also the midst of all the other stuff you have going on?
DB (07:02):
Hmm. Gosh, I love that question. Not many people ask it. I, I really, really love that question. You know, I think it starts in my mind with having a business that makes enough money that I don’t have to work all the time. So, a business that delivers enough extra time for me to, without any guilt, spend time working on it. That’s part of the answer. I think the other is that I feel like at my core, I’m an author who happens to be a speaker, and who happens to be a consultant. I’m, I’m really feel like I ha I have to say things, even if nobody’s listening, I have to say things. And so, what really makes me think I love this question is, so I, I’m getting ready to do a talk next week, and it’s a new one. I never give the same talk again.
DB (07:53):
I just can’t do it. I, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I’m just saying I can’t do it. So I’m thinking about what am I gonna talk about? And the topic is, surely there’s more. And then realize, oh my gosh, do I really have anything new to say? And I, I just, just for fun, I added up all the stuff I’ve written, and it ended up being 2 million, 400,000 words over the last published words. So, and a 10th of those are across all of the books, right? So 90% were in other things, articles or podcast episodes or whatever. And so many things hit me after I realized that it’s like, okay, with a narrow focus focus, you, you never run out of things to say, now you think you’re going to, but the narrow your focus, the more you never run out of things to say, I have more unwritten articles now where I have the idea that I’ve ever had in my life, even after written two, 2.4 million words.
DB (08:50):
That’s one thing. The other is that I, like, not that many people read the articles I write, but the articles create an audience who then are going to buy the books and the articles are how I work out what I think. And those things get shaped into a book, right? So if I’d written a book without all of that, all those years of work writing articles, then I wouldn’t have an audience and I wouldn’t have thought through all of these things. So I feel like there’s sort of this mix, this weird mix. You’ve got to have a blog or something that forces you on a regular basis, maybe it’s a podcast, whatever it is that forces you to keep figuring out what you think mm-hmm.
AJV (10:03):
Hmm.
DB (10:03):
I’ll never figure that out until I start writing. So it’s not, oh, clarity. Now, let me write that down. No, it’s like, until I, I wrestle with articulating what I’m thinking, then the clarity comes. So to me, writing is how I figure out what I think.
AJV (10:19):
Hmm. That’s so good. And I loved your comment too about, you know, blogging or even podcasting or just creating content, whatever it is, it’s like, that is the arc of figuring out what you have to say. It’s, it, it takes practice, right? It’s like with anything, in order to be good at anything, you have to do it a lot. And the same thing goes with our thoughts and what we have to say. I love that. Yeah.
DB (10:43):
Yeah. I mean, you’re, so you’re doing this podcast and you’re doing it, I think it’s twice a week, right? Or, you know, it’s regularly. And there are probably times when you think, oh, today I am so excited about another time. It’s like, I don’t know really what I’m gonna say. I don’t know, do I have anything new to add? But this forces you to be on stage and people like you and me and your listeners, we don’t wanna look stupid. Yeah.
AJV (11:07):
We
DB (11:07):
Don’t wanna look stupid. And we’re trying to, we’re like, I wanna stand in front of a group, and then I want to open it up for questions, and I want to not fear a single question that would come my way. And unless you keep putting yourself on the stage in a light, you’re you, you don’t refine what you think. Right. Because, and what forces you to refine it is you don’t wanna look stupid. That’s just, it’s a natural instinct. Right?
AJV (11:33):
Oh, I love that. It’s the whole concept. It’s like, I love that just that idea of like, you can only refine what you think if you talk about it all the time. Right?
DB (11:41):
Right. Yeah.
AJV (11:42):
And I think that, you know, for most people, you know, myself included, sometimes it’s like we struggle with wanting to be a generalist. Like we struggle with, oh, you know, I just think about the amount of speaker press, Kitts that I review for our community at Brand Builders Group. And it’s like, I can speak on nutrition, health, fitness, mindset, goal setting. And I’m like, no, you can’t
DB (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah. I
AJV (12:06):
Can’t. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And I love that too. It’s like your entire thing is that like, like narrow it down, right? That’s the, that’s the goal of expertise, right? Mm-Hmm.
DB (12:47):
AJV (13:36):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (13:36):
That then allows you to have excess opportunity that you can waste some of. So if, if you’ve got two options, two potential clients that wanna hire you, then you just choose the one that’s the better client. That doesn’t take any courage at all. But what takes a lot of courage is to say no to one opportunity that isn’t a great fit. So don’t put yourself in those positions. Put yourself in a position where you don’t have to muster all that courage. It’s not a question of knowing the right thing, it’s a question of having the right courage. Hmm. So I I just added a second person recently, but up for all these years, it was just me. Okay. And Billings were somewhere between 900001.7 million, and that’s taking about 10 weeks off a year. I’m not proud of that. We don’t use all that money. We don’t need all that money. That’s not, I’m not saying that I’m better than anybody that way, I’m just saying mm-hmm.
AJV (14:33):
DB (14:33):
Can, you can make a lot of money. You don’t have to be a big firm to make a lot of money. And what that, what that income allows me to do, what it gives me is the freedom to go out and figure things out and then write books, and then that just layers better marketing on top and more opportunity. I can be choos or, and choos or, and it’s just this cycle that repeats and helps make you better and better. Right. The world is just way too complex anymore to pretend that you can know everything about everything you, I’m feeding back to the comment you just made about the generalist, right? Like, people don’t pay a lot of money for generalists. They just don’t, they want, like, if you’re in a messy divorce or some kind of bankruptcy or whatever it is that’s, or a medical issue in your life, all you care about is hiring somebody that knows exactly how to help you in this situation. And, and the money doesn’t matter. Right. But when it’s like you need something done around your house and you just find a handyman that can do most anything and maybe not great at anything, that’s good enough. Right? Like, this is how we think and that’s how our clients think too.
AJV (15:41):
Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that people struggle with so much is being afraid to be narrow. Mm-Hmm.
DB (15:50):
AJV (15:50):
Right. They’ve got FOMO
DB (16:02):
Right, right.
AJV (16:03):
I know that in my previous consulting life, I said yes to all kinds of stuff that I should not have said yes to. ’cause I’m like, ah, if they can do it, I can do it. I’ll figure it out. Mm-Hmm. But then it took 10 times the amount of time and effort and energy and resources to go and do that for the same price. Mm-Hmm.
DB (16:19):
I
AJV (16:19):
Guess it wasn’t that thing that I could do in my sleep. Right,
DB (16:22):
Right.
AJV (16:23):
Yeah, go ahead.
DB (16:24):
Well, I was just gonna say that sort of ties in with the whole idea of packaging productizing your services too, right? Because you want the efficiency that comes from doing, like, you, you should be leading that relationship. You’re not simply listening to what a client needs, and then you’re taking orders like a waiter would and says, oh, you need that, that, that, okay, now I’ll put, I’ll put together the perfect solution for you. No, it’s like, you’ve done this enough that you know generally what they need, so much so that you can put together a package and either they buy the package or they don’t, and if they buy the package, this allows you to be very efficient in how you work with clients. It also allows you to notice the patterns from one client to the next because you’re doing similar things for each of them. So it just, it, it really builds your practice better.
AJV (17:15):
Yeah. And I love that. So let’s talk about that for a second because that was one of the other things that you had said earlier, is this idea of productizing, right? Mm-Hmm. Your service offerings. So what do you mean by that? How do you do that? Like, what advice would you give people out there going Yes, yes. Like, how do you do that? Help me. Help me. Yeah.
DB (17:33):
Yeah. So here, here’s an illustration. So let’s say I’m going under the knife for surgery, and I’m a little bit nervous, and I talk to the, you know, the, the anesthesiologist will come in first, and, and then the surgeon will come in and they’ll ask you some questions. And usually it’s very perfunctory. But what if you just slowed that down a little bit and you said, Hey, I’m nervous. Can you tell me how you do this? Like, what, what are the steps that you follow? Here’s what you don’t want to hear to the dancer. It’s like, well, listen, I’ve done this a lot. You really need to trust me. I’m just gonna cut you open first. That’s the first thing I always do. Then I’m just gonna kind of look around and figure out what seems like it’s in the right place and what isn’t.
DB (18:15):
And depending on, you know, and like, no, you want, you want 17 steps in order. You want to know that they have done this many times before, that they’re an expert, and you’re, you’re putting yourself in the hands of somebody else. Now, a consulting relationship is not quite as important or critical as that, but your clients have a right to know how you think in advance, what, how you think about certain things and how you go about things. Because what they want to know is that you have applied a process in the past, and if you apply the same process for them, it’s likely to result in something good for them. Right? There’s a good result at the end of it. Productizing your service means that you you approach things in a pretty normal way and this in a regular way. And that regular way should be informed by your, your positioning, right?
DB (19:17):
So, my productized service should be very different than yours. And I also use a productized service to protect myself. So if a client comes to me and they’re sort of a hot mess, they just need lots and lots of help, and I wanna help them, right? But they want a fixed price. And I’m thinking, man, I don’t have any idea. I I don’t wanna learn all this on my own dime and figure this out for you. Like with an unpaid proposal that’s 80 pages long or something, I, I want to protect myself. So if I’m gonna give you a fixed price, I’m gonna have to shoot really high to protect myself. That’s not in your best interest either. So let’s start with a diagnostic or a road roadmapping exercise. Maybe it lasts for two weeks. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
DB (19:59):
It’s $10,000 or 20 or five or whatever it is. And if you’re gonna start going down the productized path, that’s what you would always start with, is how a relationship begins. Picture that you’re on a plane with somebody, you’re both in first class, you’re just chatting. It turns out that they’re possibly a client of yours, they’re a candidate client, they’re not happy with whoever they’re using now. And they’re so intrigued that they say, you know what? This is really interesting. I can’t believe we just kind of ran into each other here. How would you start with somebody like me? You ought to be able to pull up a webpage and say, this is exactly how we start. We call it this. It costs this, it takes this long. This is what it involves. That’s productizing your service offerings. And that’s how you do it to start with at the beginning. And then you can productize everything else as well down the line.
AJV (20:49):
Yeah. No, I love that. It’s like the first product that you sell is a diagnostic.
DB (20:54):
Yeah. Right. Right.
AJV (20:54):
I said, I can’t tell you what you need until I get in there and know what you need.
DB (20:59):
Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. And, and this ought to be at least as profitable as anything else you do for the client. This should not be a loss leader, right? This is not, you shouldn’t have on your website. Click here for a free 60 minute consultation. It’s like, no, you’re giving away your very best thoughts at that point. Instead, those early conversations should be about whether it’s a good fit. Like, tell me what you’re, what you’re facing, and let me tell you how I approach things and, and how I think about these kinds of things now. Okay. It seems like it’s a good fit. Now let’s do this diagnostic and really figure out what’s wrong, and then we’ll spend the rest of the money way more effectively, rather than just sort of bouncing around at the beginning without knowing where we’re headed.
AJV (21:47):
Now, would you also suggest when people come back from a, you know, diagnostic research type of engagement, that they also have a, a set suite of offerings? Yes. Or, yeah. So can we talk
DB (21:59):
Absolutely about that
AJV (22:00):
A little bit? Like how do people determine like, what are my suite of offerings?
DB (22:04):
Yeah. In
AJV (22:05):
Consultative arrangement.
DB (22:07):
That’s, it’s really good to think about that one. And so not too far from where you’re, where you live. I think it’s at the what’s the mall? The really big, the Green Hills Mall near where you live, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (22:30):
45 pages long. Yes.
DB (22:33):
DB (23:31):
‘Cause This is the best client relationships mean that we do these things for you. Otherwise, and this is particularly true, if you have a large firm with a lot of people doing different things, if they don’t wanna use this one third of your services, then you’re gonna lose a lot, lot of money because these people are just sitting around, right? So the best advisors lead the relationship and they’re gonna listen to what the client thinks they need, but then they’re going to say, nah this is what you really need. You need this list of services. And so it should be very specific. It should be in order, and there should be less and less variety around them. And if more and more clients aren’t using a particular thing, then just drop it off. It’s hard to be more specific than that. But generally, you always want a first one, like that road roadmapping thing you were talking about.
DB (24:18):
And then you probably want four or five or six other things on there. If people wanna get a sense of how to productize their services, we just released a completely new website. And I like I’m not sure your listeners or clients of mine, I’m not saying it for that reason, but they might want to look at the service offering. So they’re all very specific. They’re packaged in different ways. They’re all priced. That’s how you want to think about it. You want to get away from Cheesecake Factory menu towards the fixed price sort of menu.
AJV (24:45):
Yeah. What’s what, what website should you go to? If you picked,
DB (24:49):
Oh, sorry. Yeah, I didn’t even say right. Punctuation.Com. Yeah, it just released yesterday. So
AJV (24:54):
Punctuation.Com, if you wanna go, just check out what a suite of offerings mm-hmm.
DB (25:09):
Right? Right,
AJV (25:10):
Right. A huge part of this, it’s like when you offer less, then you can become better at it, which means you can charge more for it. Right. You can charge at a, a premium. But it’s like when you have 20, 30 things that you’re trying to do, it’s like, then you’re never doing the same thing enough to go, man, I can literally do this in my sleep. Yeah. It doesn’t mean near enough time to complete the same task. And
DB (25:34):
Don’t you think there’s sort of a dirty secret in our industry that many of us in our hearts don’t really believe we’re worth the money?
AJV (25:42):
Oh, yeah,
DB (25:43):
Definitely. And, and so we overdeliver, we, we keep checking in more than we need to. We write reports that are totally unnecessary, and let it, let’s just like, if you wanna report, take notes, I mean, that’s how we ought to think about this stuff, right? But we’re still, we’re so oversensitive about delivering value that we’re undercutting ourselves constantly. And if you are, I wrote a more recent book called Secret Trade Craft, and one of the things I said in there is that as you mature in your particular field, you should deliver less for more. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (26:27):
Delivered
DB (26:28):
To clients to justify your views because you were you were not very confident, right? Yeah. And, and, and you strip all that stuff out and you get to the core of what they need to hear. And this is really, really valuable because experts know how to cut to the chase. Right. And they’re not embarrassed by how simple their advice is that, anyway, I just wanna, I I, I wish I could preach that from the mountaintops,
AJV (26:54):
DB (27:23):
Yeah.
AJV (27:24):
I now know why this book is constantly selling thousands of copies every single week. Mm-Hmm.
DB (27:42):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (27:46):
Right name. Clear
DB (27:58):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (27:59):
And there’s power in that. So I love that. I love that idea of productizing it by starting with a diagnostic and then, then you can go, okay, all the things I offer, you need one, four, and five.
DB (28:10):
Right, exactly. Right. Yeah. And I know how to charge for it. We don’t have to waste a lot of time figuring that out. Right. No scoping questions.
AJV (28:18):
I love that. That’s so, it’s, it’s good sage advice for all of us where we feel like we have to offer everything to remember. No, you don’t.
DB (28:27):
Yeah. No, you don’t. It’s motivated, it’s motivated by our own insecurities more than it is. And when you have a client who’s pushing you to deliver everything, they’re not a qualified client. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (28:36):
DB (28:37):
Like a qualified client trusts you to do just what they need and not, and not waste their time with anything extra.
AJV (28:43):
And that’s where that courage to say, no, you’re not of me. No, I don’t do that. That really comes in. I love that. So, so good. That’s such wanted advice. Okay, next question. ’cause I know I’m watching the clock and I promised, you know, 45 minutes. But I would love to know like, what are some of these like, positioning mistakes that people make? So we’ve been kind of talking about, you know, this idea of like, position yourself in a way that you are this expert mm-hmm.
AJV (29:27):
And now they’re like, how do I get out of this? Mm-Hmm.
DB (30:04):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (31:01):
And if you want, I leave this out, but if you want, did you enjoy the work? So those three things, and you’re gonna end up with this map of maybe five to 20 different options, right? Then the next thing you do is try to draw a circle around the things that you’re going to include in your new positioning. And this is where the tension comes, because your tendency is to want to draw the biggest circle possible so that you don’t waste any of the opportunity that you’ve had, right? Mm-Hmm.
DB (31:56):
It’s like, nah, you can’t really do that
AJV (33:24):
DB (33:48):
That right? That’s a more human approach, right? It’s a more human approach. It acknowledges how difficult it is. Like the, the way you said that just a second ago is like that logically, literally that’s what you should say. But it’s not what we humans do. Yeah. It’s just too hard, right? So, yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think we just need to recognize that this is a hard thing, right? What I don’t wanna do is, I don’t wanna wake up one day and realize it’s like hit myself on the head. It’s like, shoot, my business is, has been shaped entirely by what other people want me to do.
AJV (34:20):
Hmm.
DB (34:21):
Now, in a way, you kind of have to do some of that, right? You can’t just create a business that nobody
AJV (34:34):
DB (34:35):
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, right? Your clients want you to do this ’cause they love you. Well, that would make that client happy, but then what’s gonna happen to your life? I mean, you have, your business has got to serve you the business. It, you, you’ve gotta be in charge of this thing, right? Don’t let the, don’t wake up one day and realize, okay, I started this business years ago because I wanted more time, I wanted more money, and I wanted more control. And now I look at my business six years later and I realize I’m spending too much time working. I’m working harder than I was. I’m making less money and I don’t have as much control that is messed up, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:19):
DB (35:34):
And
AJV (35:34):
It’s like, well, it’s so full because I jam packed it full. That’s why. Yeah. No one else to blame just me. But it’s that, you know, it’s back to, it’s hard to say no.
DB (35:45):
It is, it is.
AJV (35:46):
It’s a lot of clarity, a lot of courage to go, that’s not good for me. Even though it might feel good when I say yes. Yeah. It’s not good for me, not good for business to be like that.
DB (35:59):
And you’ve gotta make some brutal decisions that are going to disappoint some people, right? I, I’m not a particularly a religious person, but there, there’s this story of Jesus walking through this town, and he had the power to heal everybody. And I’ve, by just touching them, and I’m wondered, you know what, why didn’t he just touch everybody? Hmm. Like, and that’s sort of like you and you, you’re not, we’re not Jesus, but we, we have the power to help a lot of people, and it’s really hard to walk away from that. But, you know, you’ve gotta put your own oxygen mask on first. And some of the things that look really selfish, if you didn’t, if you’d never heard that repeated at the beginning of flights all the time, and you saw parents putting their own masks on first before they help their kids, you’d think, well, geez, that is selfish. No, no. It’s, it’s, it’s how more of us are gonna survive than not. And we have to keep there’s just, there’s so much. When you are good at something and you’re a genuinely good person, you wanna help everybody. But that is sometimes done at the expense of who you are and the other people in your life, and it’s just gotta stop.
AJV (37:14):
Hmm. That is so good. You can say that 1000 more times because we all need to hear it. We all need to hear it. And the, the truth is, and I love that story about Jesus and it as it relation to how we run our businesses, it’s like we aren’t meant to help everyone,
DB (37:31):
Right?
AJV (37:31):
Like we are uniquely positioned to help the people that we were meant to help.
DB (37:36):
Yeah. And
AJV (37:37):
If we stay focused on that, we will help more. Yeah. In the right ways that we are, you know, only we can do. And I love that. That’s so good. All right, I’ve got one last question for you.
DB (37:47):
Okay.
AJV (37:48):
How do you make your, you, your expertise or what I would say your uniqueness, how do you make that more narrow mm-hmm.
DB (38:10):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (39:11):
And if you find a lot more than that, then you’ve got to narrow it further, right? If you find less than that, then you’re probably gonna run out of opportunity and you need sufficient opportunity. You don’t want to go into any specialist sort of advisory role, assuming that you can lock up more than about 1% of the opportunity. And so the math is pretty deep, it’s talked about in the book, but that’s how you decide exactly how narrow to go. And so, so you’re broad and you picture yourself walking towards the right solution. And there are two things that will stop you on this path. As you walk from generalist to specialist. The first thing that might stop you is courage. And you just gotta get over that, right? The second thing, the legitimate thing that would force you to stop on that path is running out of opportunity. So you want to be in that special place where there’s not too many competitors, but still enough opportunity. And that math is 10 to 200 competitors.
AJV (40:10):
Hmm. That’s good. I love that. And I think too, it’s like many of us, I think we forget to look around and go, what is everyone else doing? Not that we should do what we do based on what others are doing, but it’s still good to have that comparative analysis of what is out there, what are people doing? Mm-Hmm. What are people charging, right?
DB (40:30):
Is
AJV (40:30):
There enough demand? Is there not enough demand? Not that it would change who we are and what we do, but mm-hmm.
DB (40:36):
AJV (40:36):
To have that comparative analysis of is there enough demand in the marketplace? Is there too much supply? You know, just basic laws of economics. Super.
DB (40:45):
Yeah. I mean, if we, we could apply that to your, your business. So the people who know branding, there are tens and thousands of those people, right? You apply branding in a very narrow way in your business, and that’s personal branding. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:10):
And it’s so funny because we left the world of, you know, corporate consulting and sales specifically in sales when we started Brain Builders Group. And it was a, a very decided decision of we don’t work with companies.
DB (41:26):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:26):
We work with people, right?
DB (41:28):
And
AJV (41:29):
The hardest temptation in the last five years has been to say no to all the people that we work with. They’re like, oh, we love what you’re doing for us. Can you come do this for our company?
DB (41:39):
Right. Because
AJV (41:40):
It would’ve been so easy to go. Sure,
DB (41:42):
Yeah. I’m not,
AJV (41:44):
It applies and it’s been the hardest thing in the, it’s where we’ve been most disciplined of going, we don’t work with companies. We, in fact, we had to put it in all of our branding to hold ourselves accountable.
DB (41:55):
Right, right, right.
AJV (41:56):
It’s everywhere. So that we remind ourselves, oh yeah, we said we weren’t gonna do that.
DB (42:00):
Well, the best, the the best way to understand positioning is that there are a lot more things you don’t do than there are things that you do. Right? So it’s choosing a positioning is, is an exercise in irrelevance. Yeah. You’re becoming irrelevant to more and more people. And in the process you’re becoming more relevant to a smaller group.
AJV (42:19):
Love that. And I’ll say my drop on that comment, that was awesome. Such a great interview. I love also the narrow focus of the interview, which is apropos for the conversation. Y’all, if y’all wanna check out David and learn more about all the things that he does, go to david c baker.com. I also wanna give him a shout out for his I don’t think it’s your latest book, but it’s
DB (42:46):
The next to last book, right?
AJV (42:47):
Next to last book. It’s expertise is. So go to expertise is, I’ll put both of those in the show notes. David, if people wanna catch up with you on social media, is there one place that you would send them?
DB (43:02):
Probably LinkedIn David C. Baker, my middle initial, sometimes help you get to the right place. Or just the whatever, the slash dc b on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with people there.
AJV (43:13):
That’d be awesome. And we’ll put that in the show notes. Again, so check him out on his website. David C. Baker, connect with him on LinkedIn, and then go check out his book expertise Is is the website. Pick up a copy. Read it. David, pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank
DB (43:31):
You, AJ.
AJV (43:32):
And everyone else. Stay tuned for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential Personal brand.
Ep 407: Telling Stories That Make a Difference | Damon West Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So I just had this amazing conversation with a newer friend of mine, his name is Damon West, and he’s got an incredible story from being a collegiate athlete to working at a very large investment bank, to getting hooked on meth, to being sentenced life in prison, to getting parole, to becoming a motivational speaker and a multi-time published author. And the stories just awesome. But while I was talking to him, it spurred this idea to make this video to share with all of you. And I think it was really good cause we were talking about how do you incorporate these crazy stories, these events, these, I can’t believe this happened to me, type of story into your message. And how do you take a very, you know, you focus story, in this case, a very me focus story and turn it into a message that is universally helpful to your audience, where I’m not just telling you my story to help you get to know me, but I’m telling you my story.
AJV (01:14):
Because within that story, there is a message that means something to you, the person who is listening, the end user, right? So at Brand Builders Group, we have a really simple formula that talks about this, which is tell a story, make a point. If you’re going to tell a story, what’s the point of that story? The story part is about you. The point, the message is about them. So what are you trying to convey during this message? And this was just a really great storytelling conversation, is really what it ended up being, is how do we tell our story in a way that actually helps other people? And so here’s a couple of things that I just wanted to share from this conversation cuz I thought they were worthwhile. So number one is just asking yourself, and I’m, I’m literally using words out of his mouth cuz I thought this conversation was so great, is what’s the SWAT team story in your life?
AJV (02:14):
Like, if you’re struggling on how to make a point and create a message, then ask yourself like, what are the SWAT team stories in my life? And what I mean by that is, you know, in Damon’s life, there was a SWAT team raid, and that’s how he got arrested. A SWAT team busted down the doors, rated a, I think meth house would be the appropriate term and arrested him, right? That’s a SWAT team story very literally for him. But all of us have those swat team stories in our life, those defining moments or events or decisions that said, my life was going this way and then this thing happened. That SWAT team moment
AJV (02:59):
And then my life went in another direction. Could be good, could not be good. But what are the SWAT team stories, the stories that make you stop in your tracks and go, wait, what that happened to you? Like this thing, this decision, this event, this moment? Like, wait, I, what? So what are the SWAT team stories in your life? And then what’s the message within that story, right? That, what’s the point of that story? Because that’s what takes a story that’s yours and makes it a story that other people need to hear. Because there is a message, there is a point, there is something within that story that is universally applicable to anyone who hears it. I’m going, I needed to hear that today. I needed to be reminded of that today. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is know what your signature stories are.
AJV (03:50):
When I was talking to Damon, we, we were both talking about how it doesn’t matter what audience you’re in front of, right? This is maybe an audience of one and maybe you’re just practicing in the mirror, right? Maybe you are the audience of one. Maybe it’s in a one-on-one coaching call. Maybe it’s on a podcast like this. Like right now, technically I’m talking to my camera, right? Although others will hear it. I’m talking to myself, right? The only thing I see right now is a little green dot on my computer. I’m talking to myself. However I have you in mind, right? So maybe it’s that maybe you’re making content videos or maybe you’re speaking on stages. Maybe you’re speaking on stages to hundreds of high schoolers or thousands of people in corporate America. The the point is, it does not matter who you’re talking to.
AJV (04:32):
It’s what are the signature stories that you tell no matter what, because this is a signature story of your message of your life. And it’s profound in many ways. And so we have lots of stories. Like I have a list of probably at this point, a hundred different stories that I could tell, but I have two or three that I tell no matter what. Those are my signature stories. And it’s like, I know that this was such a defining moment. This was such a swat team story in my life that it doesn’t matter what audience am I, I’m in front of, this is a story I’m telling. That’s what we’re calling your signature stories. It’s those one or two stories that are in every single message that show up in all the different types of conversations because they’re that powerful because they were powerful to you.
AJV (05:17):
And if they were powerful to you, if they changed you, they have the power to help change someone else too. So what are your signature stories? All right, so have your list. The next thing is knowing how to tailor your presentation without changing your message. And I thought this was really profound because in an era of everyone’s something that’s a little special to them, right? Most audiences wanna feel like this was catered to me. This was tailored for me. This was crafted or built or customized just for my audience. At the same time, that’s what we think we want. But what we really want is we want something that we know is going to be impactful to the audience that’s going to help them, help them make better decisions, help them think differently, help inspire them in some way. And sometimes having something brand new isn’t the best way to do that, right?
AJV (06:07):
Sometimes the good old tried and true is what people really need, although that’s not what they think they want. So knowing how to tailor your message or your presentation know how to tailor your presentation for the audience without ever actually changing the message. So here’s how you do that is you can tailor the opening. You can tailor the ending. You can work in industry lingo or statistics. You can make it about the event. You can weave in acronyms. You can tell a story about the audience. You can do something about the city that it’s in. Like I have go-to stories and jokes. If I’m ever speaking in Las Vegas there are just, this is like, I’m gonna tell this joke or I’m gonna tell this story if I’m in Las Vegas because it, I know it’s gonna be a home run no matter where I tell it.
AJV (06:56):
Or if I’m ever speaking at 8:00 AM I always have a story for an 8:00 AM if I’m ever speaking over lunch. I have little jokes that it’s always for lunch meetings. If it’s I’m, if I’m the closing speaker and I’m the last people, that last person there and people are constantly leaving to catch their flights because nobody thought about having a speaker right before everyone leaves. It’s like, I have stories and jokes just for those time that’s tailoring the presentation that makes it feel custom and unique. Although my message is never impacted. So how do you tailor your presentation for the industry, for the audience, for the company for the location, the locale, the theme of the event without ever actually changing the message itself. Cuz when people say, Hey, I I love that you customize this, what they’re really saying is, I love that it felt like you customized it just for us, but what they really want is the goods.
AJV (07:47):
And you only know it’s the goods because you’ve delivered it enough to know that point resonates. That story is what people remember. You need to be doing your message and your presentation so often that it’s like, I know a laugh is coming here. I know a silent moment is coming here. And not only happens cuz you’ve done it dozens, if not hundreds of times. And so people say they want something custom, but you don’t wanna try out brand new stuff and an audience like that, that’s for your small group of friends or for your mirror, right? That, that takes practice to know it’s like it’s gonna crush that’s gonna make a difference. That’s going to actually be what they asked for while also giving them what they want, which is making it feel custom and tailored. And you can do that without ever changing your message. So don’t change your message. Learn how to tailor the presentation, right? And then I have these other quick three things that I just thought were really good. Just little motivational bombs for you today. So number one I thought this was so good for all of us, is that there’s only two ways to think about the future. It’s with fear or with faith. And they both have more in
AJV (08:54):
Common than you think. They are both a hundred percent based on things in the future. One is negative and one is positive. Fear is thinking about all the bad things that might happen in the future. Faith is remembering that good things are coming your way. And as we’re doing all these things, we’re thinking about, you know, speaking on that stage or writing that book, or getting our message out into the world or, you know, starting this new venture or this relationship or having a baby. It’s like we can choose to be filled with fear, which is the negative, or we’re gonna choose to have a little faith because they’re both a choice. And it’s just which one, which path are you gonna take? Is it the path of fear or the path of faith? And that I needed that yesterday when I had this conversation.
AJV (09:36):
So thought maybe it would be good for you too. Number two is that you are always more capable to overcome more than you think. You are always capable to overcome more than you think. And I think that’s just a reminder to all of us. It’s like once we’ve overcome it, then we’re reminded of like, whoa, I did that. But before it happens, or even during, we’re like, I don’t know if I can do this. But the truth is you can, you can do it. You can overcome this. You can make these new decisions, you can create these new habits, you can do this. And you are way more capable of overcoming more than you ever thought was possible. You are capable. That was number two. And then number one, I asked a amen at the very end. I said, with all these life trials that you’ve been through that you have overcome without, you know ease with lots of difficulty what would you say is like the number one thing when it comes to keeping this positive mindset and choosing a faith future over a fear future?
AJV (10:41):
And he said, number one key to my mindset and to my emotional wellbeing and my overall growth is just consistency. It’s nothing big. It’s just showing up every day. It’s making a choice. I’m not going to, you know, do drugs again. I’m not gonna take that sip of alcohol. I’m not gonna eat that cookie if I want it. I’m not gonna spend that money here. I’m going to investigate here. I’m gonna wake up every day. I’m gonna get in the shower and I’m gonna try. I have to put in the work. And he said, it’s n nothing profound and it’s nothing big, he said. But it’s those daily decisions. Those defining moments that were made in the, the ease of the moment where I could have easily said, this is too hard. But it didn’t. I said, no, this is hard and I can do hard things. And it was a great reminder to me, and I hope it’s a great reminder to you that success isn’t easy. It takes work whatever that success is. It’s not supposed to be easy. Who said this was supposed to be easy? But the best things in life come from overcoming. I, I know that for most of us when we look back, it’s like we don’t remember the things that came easy, but we profoundly remember the things that
AJV (11:53):
Came hard then we overcame because it changed us, it challenged us and it grew us. Those are the things that we remember and those are the things that your audience is gonna remember too. So don’t be afraid to share those moments of your life, the hard stories because they do make a difference. They made a difference for you and they make a difference for people like me. So tell your story. Get out there and I’ll see you later.
Ep 406: Turning Your Story Into A Message with Damon West
AJV (00:02):
Hey, y’all, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden to hear AJ Vaden here. And I am joined today with a newer friend, ab, but a friend who has lots of mutual friends with myself and Rory. So, so glad to be adding Damon West to our list of amazing guests on this podcast, but also a new friend in our, you know, circle. So before I start this interview, I want to remind everyone, as I always do, why you should stick around and who this podcast was uniquely designed for. So, number one, if you have a desire to write and publish books, speak on stages, and get your message out into the world, which should be most of you, which is why you listen to this podcast. This is an episode that you wanna listen to because we’re gonna talk about how Damon went from, you know football player, college football to prison, to author, speaker on stages, and a lot of things in between there.
AJV (01:05):
But ultimately, it’s like, it does not matter where you are today. If you have that desire on your heart, there is a way to make all of the things of your past a part of this story that leads you to where you wanna be. And so we’re gonna delve into that. We’re also gonna talk about just how do you do that? Like, how do you get outta prison and go, I’m gonna change my life. I’m gonna do something different. I’m gonna make different choices. And they’re big and they’re bold, and they’re not what I expected. And I know a lot of people in our community are entering into new phases of their life, and perhaps it’s not that dramatic, right? That transformative, but to some degree, we’re starting over. It’s a new time on our life, whether it’s we’ve sold a business, starting a new business, we’re leaving a company trying to go out on our own.
AJV (01:50):
We’re trying to take this side hustle. We’ve been doing it and making it our full-time thing. Or maybe you’re just stepping out on a limb for the first time going, man, I want to do this, but I am scared now. This is hard and new, and what am I doing? Like, what am I crazy? So it doesn’t matter where you fall within that spectrum, this is a podcast that is gonna be uniquely inspiring and informative to you. So I encourage you to stick around. So now I could give you a whole bunch of background bio. I mentioned a little bit of it, but as I formally introduced Damon here are just f to me. Here’s a couple of things that I think would be really powerful for you to know. Is one yes, he did go to prison. I think you should know, like, this is someone who, when they talk about setbacks, when they talk about, oh yeah, I made some bad choices. Like this led to some pretty severe consequences. And it was in prison for a few years, so it’s not like, you know, three days in a white collar, you know, prison upstate, right? It’s a different type. And I think that’s really important for us to get. It’s like, regardless of how bad you think your situation is, or, oh, I can’t change from now. Like, well, no, that’s not true. He is the author of now three books or four,
DW (03:06):
Well, four in a children’s book. So yeah, four four in a children’s book. Yeah. So
AJV (03:11):
The list is growing even as we speak. Yeah. But also he’s been on stages all across the country. He is a, well, you know, well sought after speaker. He is a multi-time author and also an entrepreneur. So everyone who is listens to this, you’ve got some degree of some of those things within you. And so I know, I know that you’re gonna love this interview. So Damon, welcome, welcome to the show,
DW (03:35):
Aj. Thanks a lot, so much. I mean, you covered so much in that introduction too, but look, it’s, it’s so exciting to be here. Like you said, we do have a lot of mutual friends, Amber Lee, ed Mullet, you know, ed Ed’s a very big mutual friend of mine, John Gordon, Catherine Gordon. So it’s great to finally meet you and, and be a part of your show because I’ve got a lot to say about what we’re gonna talk about today, about building your brand and, and how do you make it, how do you break away from the pack and chase your dreams in life? Because like you said, I had to do it. I mean, and like, and you hit the nail in the head. It’s not like I went to prison for a couple years. I got sentenced to life in prison in Dallas, Texas, and I spent seven years and three months of that life sentence in a maximum security level five prison in the state of Texas. The highest security level there is, or the worst of the worst go. And then I made parole, I made parole, and I’m on parole AJ until the year 2073. Hmm. So when you talk about making plans and having to follow the rules of your plan every single day, I got, I got a lot to say about that.
AJV (04:36):
Yeah. Well, I mean, and that’s a part of what I kind of wanna just start, start with. And I know people are gonna be like are you gonna give us more of that story? Because Yeah. In the world. And so here’s my first question for you. It’s like you have this amazing journey from successful college athlete to prison inmate to motivational speaker and ler. And that’s quite the remarkable journey in your short 47 years. So can you just share with the listeners who maybe are getting introduced to you for the first time, what are some of those pivotal moments or mindset shifts that allowed you to transform? Right. And I, and I would say too, it’s like maybe in some of the not so awesome ways, right? Because I know that there was an accident during your football days and yeah. That led to choices that were transformative to the more positive transformative. So what were these moments that happened in your life that led to such an influential personal brand today?
DW (05:36):
Yeah. I think that the way to start this off is by, you know, I tell people all the time that at no point in my life did, did God just reached out with his hand hand one day and put his hand on my head and said, Damon, you’re healed
DW (06:18):
But I was a very functional addict. And I graduated college, went to work in the United States Congress, worked on Wall Street. I was a broker for UBS when I was introduced to meth for the first time. And I say that there’s been people put in my life because the choices that we make in life are gonna take us down different roads. And as you alluded to, some roads are good, some roads are bad, but there’s always gonna be messengers along the way on those roads to help guide you where you need to be. But the trick is, you have to be receptive to all those messengers. And sometimes when we’re not in the right space, we don’t, we’re not receptive. We can’t hear or see the messenger in front of us. And I made a lot of wrong turns, again, with that fork in the road.
DW (06:57):
When I tried meth for the first time in 2004, 18 months after their first hit of meth, I was living on the streets of Dallas and I became a criminal. I started breaking into people’s houses to fund my addiction. And and the Dallas SWAT team got me in 2008 and they, they arrested me in this traumatic SWAT team raid. And they took me to Dallas County Jail. And then a year later I was sentenced to life in prison. My mother and my father had this conversation with me. They, they right after I’m sentenced to life, they, they let my parents talk to me for five minutes, just kind of on the side of the courtroom. And my mom was reminded me about how they raised me, how, you know, the stuff they heard in the courtroom isn’t the man they raised. In fact, she tells me, when you go to prison, you, you won’t get in one of these gangs.
DW (07:39):
She said, you come back as the man we raised or don’t come back to us at all. So now I’ve got this giant ultimatum and I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, AJ cuz I’ve never been to prison before. I don’t know anything about prison. And I’m in this Dallas County jail complex for the next two months before the prison bus comes to get me. And I have this encounter with one of those people that I would call the messengers in life that’s an old black man named Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson shares with me what prison’s gonna be like. And he’s telling me about the violence I’m gonna endure the first couple months. But he tells me things like, you don’t have to win all your fights, you just have to fight all your fights. You know, and that’s true in life. No one counts your wins and losses, but everybody kind of watches the seat as he or she get back up.
DW (08:19):
And that’s what he’s telling me, get back up. But he, but he tells me this, he says, let me break it down from your different way. And that’s when he tells me, he said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of wine, water. And he said, you have three choices of how you’re gonna respond to this pot of wine water. You can be like the carrot that turns soft, the egg that becomes hard in the boil water, or a coffee bean, which changes the pot of wine water into a pot of coffee. Hmm. And that a agent, when he told me the story about the coffee bean, I remember, I was like, I can understand that. And that’s the way people’s reactions are five to 95 years old when they hear about the coffee bean for the first time. Because you can wrap your brain around those three choices.
DW (08:55):
Mm-Hmm. So Mr. Jackson is one of those people that I met in life that guided me. He was a mentor. Cuz we all need mentors, aj, everybody needs coaches. We all have to have coaches in life. But as I went through prison, I ran into other people in there. There was my, my first cellmate Carlos, you know, Carlos was explaining to me about thinking how your thinking is everything. Your thoughts control your actions, and if you have the wrong thoughts, you can’t have the right actions. And, and so he helped me with the way I think. And a, as I got through the prison process and I started transforming myself in that prison to a pot of a pot of coffee. The parole board came and took notice and they allowed me to leave prison early on parole. Now, as I said, I’m on parole for the rest of my life, but since I got outta prison in 2015, I’ve ran into these other messengers in life because now I’m hyper aware of the roads that I’m on.
DW (09:41):
And I’m looking for those messenger every day. But I’m gonna tell you something, aj, the main thing I’m looking for every day is how do I serve other people? Because that’s like what I pray for every day, aj. I just, man, I just wanna know two things every day from God put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize it when I see it cuz I don’t wanna miss whatever that is. And that’s like the first key to everything else you’re gonna open in life is that the secret to life is serving other people. How do I serve others? Mm.
AJV (10:11):
That’s so good. And you know, it’s so interesting. I have a friend right now who’s really suffering from addiction. And we just had a conversation this past weekend about choices, right? There are defining choices. And then there’s daily choices, right? We have these daily decisions we have to make and we have these defining choices that we have to make. And those daily decisions turn into habits, right? Which could be good or bad. And these defining ones are the ones that can send us down one of these roads and that every, and I love what you said, like every road has, you know, messengers alongside the road. And it sounds like to me it’s like prison saved you.
DW (10:51):
It did. Yeah. It was, was getting a life sentence on top, not just prison, but being sentenced to life in prison. Aj my, my angels in life, my angels didn’t have wings. My angels had a assault rifle. They had shields, they had helmets. They, they came through the window, they busted outta my door. They were a SWAT team. Mm-Hmm.
DW (11:36):
And, and there’s many different levels of adversity and there’s a lot of different ways to be in prison. Aj mm-hmm.
DW (12:15):
But it took some serious adversity in my life to make me get off this comfort zone that I’ve been in in life, even when I was in, on drugs and, and, and in my addiction. There’s a comfort zone that people get into. Misery is a very comfortable place too. And your friend that’s going through that right now, you’re right. It’s the daily choice every day that you have to make to change these, to make these good habits. And whenever I was in prison and my back was against the wall and I just surrendered because that’s one of the keys to all this. You gotta surrender this idea of control over things you do not control. Once I surrendered that, I started, I was able to work on myself and, and look, yeah, you’re right. Prison did save my life. And one of the things I talk about with people all the time is that, especially people that wanna get up there and speak or write books, is that, and, and Ed, my ed, ed and I talked about this when I was on his podcast, the things that you think might be the, that the disqualifiers in your life, because the things that have gone wrong, the, the places you messed up, those actually may be the great qualifiers for you to help someone else.
DW (13:16):
You know, these are the things, yeah. These, the things you think disqualify you might be the great qualifiers. Your liabilities may be your biggest asset. But how do you turn that around? How do you make that into a message that people can digest and understand?
AJV (13:30):
I mean, I would say, I think for the most part, and you know, I’ll speak for just myself, but it’s like when I listen to speakers and read books, it’s like, I think most would agree that I don’t really wanna hear about all the successful things that you’ve done
AJV (14:14):
What if that happened to me? Like what would I do? Like, would I let it grow me or would I let it destroy me? And it’s like, those are the stories that are, in my opinion, more transformative, more life giving than hearing from the person who got it right all the time. Did all the right things. Not that those are bad. It’s good to hear those stories too. But I think there’s something about that comeback story that for most people they’re like, okay, well if you did it, there’s hope for me. So here’s my question in that, because you are speaking on stages and you, you are so vulnerable with your stories and you don’t hold back, which I love and I appreciate. So here, here’s, here’s something for the audience, I think it’s like how do you incorporate those sorts of elements of your story into speaking engagements and books and even interviews like this where one, what did you have to overcome to be like, yeah, I’m, I’m just gonna be honest, right?
AJV (15:12):
I’m just going to tell you what happened. I’m gonna tell you the truth. So how do you do that one and how do you do it in a way that’s beneficial for me? Not just hearing your story, but also, you know, we always say it’s like you tell an eye focus story with a you focus message because I think you do that really well. But then also for those people who are going, yeah, that, that’s cool for you to do, but my story’s so dark, it’s never gonna see the light of day. Like what advice would you give to that person who has that story? And it really does need to be heard, but they’re afraid to share it.
DW (15:45):
Great question. And you tapped on a little bit of it just now and, and you, you talked about vulnerability. Vulnerability is a strength. Vulnerability gets a bad rap. I mean, people think of the word a lot of times people think vulnerable vulnerability means you’re weak. It’s some, it’s some form of weakness. Vulnerability’s a strength because when you’re vulnerable, you let those walls down, those guards down, you show how human you are. And like you said, that draws people in. Now someone says, Hey look, you know, that person’s been through something, I’ve been through something. Maybe there’s something they’re gonna say that’s gonna help me get through what I’m about to go through next. And here’s the deal. Everybody’s got a story out there. I i I believe that everybody’s got their personal stories of overcoming. And you said it earlier in the show, everybody, people need to hear those stories cuz we, you know, we’re all gonna relate to people in different ways.
DW (16:32):
And your story may be the one thing that helps somebody get through their worst day. So if you’re trying to figure out how to tell your story, I’ll just give you what happened to me when I got outta prison in 2015. I’m on parole for the rest of my life and, but I know I’m sitting on this really powerful story wrapped around this great message. And there’s the first part, the story that I can tell and the message within. I think if you’re gonna be out there speaking, have a message, have this, and this is your brand, this is what you build your brand around. What’s the message like? My call to action at the end of every presentation is be a coffee beat. Mm-Hmm.
DW (17:13):
The last four words he ever said were be a coffee beat. But it was a statement, it was an order. Like, go do this. And that’s what you want to build a message inside your story. But I think that you have to work your way up to that. And, and if you’re trying to tell a story in front of an audience, it’s like reading a book. If a book doesn’t grab me in the first seven pages, I’m shocking it aj I’m not, I’m not re it’s, you got seven pages
DW (17:48):
Mm-Hmm.
DW (18:30):
DW (19:10):
No one’s gonna let me in. I found a cop and a judge that would take me around and sponsor me to, to take me into schools. But I knew that if I wanted to have a presentation and I wanted to be able to tell a story, the message within it, that would be impactful. Because that’s what you have to do. You have to figure out how am I gonna serve this audience? How am I gonna serve the reader? It’s all about serving people. We talked about this earlier, servant leadership. How am I gonna serve this audience? I knew I had to practice and get good at my message. There’s no such thing as an overnight success, aj. You know that. I know that. But people are drawn to that when they see those, those Instagram account accounts with the private jets, the Lamborghini and all that.
DW (19:48):
I want that. I want that. Well, you know, it takes a long time to get to something, you know, a lot of hard work. Most of the days that I spent the first two years outta prison were not in front of audiences. They were in my parents’ spare bedroom cuz there was a mirror in that spare bedroom. It just happened to be there. When I moved in every single day I’d come home from work, I worked at a law firm, which is a really good job for a guy outta prison,
DW (20:27):
The mirror was my audience, but I sharpened it up. I was poised, I was ready to go. And then in 2017 dabble Sweeney, the head coach at Clemson, brings me in to talk to his team. The first big college football coach in America that gives me my shot and my presentation was so on point, so direct on message and it, and it served Dabo s team so well that Dabo got on the phone. He started calling every coach in America for me. I mean, Nick Saban, Kirby smart Lincoln Riley, he’s calling ’em all up and he’s telling about this guy he gotta bring in. But Dabo introduced me to a guy named John Gordon. And then John Gordon calls me up out of the blue and he’s telling me, he is like, Hey man, I was just, I just got done talking to Clemson’s football team and Dabo was telling me about your story and, and, and the coffee bean message.
DW (21:15):
And, and that’s when John says, Hey Damon, write this book with me. We’ll call it the coffee bean. He said, the world needs your message. This is where I think that you, a lot of people give up before they get to this point, but growth follows belief. And you have to believe in yourself before other people will believe in you. And the belief in yourself is gonna become from the consistency, getting in your reps, putting in the work. And that’s the thing about life. You know, no one could put in your work for, you have to put in your own work in life. But when you get that belief in yourself and, and the reps behind it, then I think other people will believe in you because your message has to be developed. And when it gets in front of other people, cuz like you said, you don’t, you know, you hear these stories about people wanna talk about the goods they had done pour out about the stuff you overcame. That’s the, that’s where the secret sauce is.
AJV (22:06):
Yeah, I love that. And I love just that reinforcement of you have to be ready before the opportunity comes, right? Yeah. You’ve gotta be doing this way before you get your chance. But it also, it’s like I really like, I think one of the things that if, as you’re listening, you haven’t picked up on this before, it’s like there, you’ve gotta have a message deep within you that is bigger than any obstacle, bigger than any rejection. It’s like, I don’t care how many times I’m gonna get told no. Like I know I’m meant to do this. So if I have to practice it for myself in front of the mirror for the next two years, then so be it. But I know that this, this is the message that I have to go out and share. And I think that’s just a really good reminder for all of us is like, it takes time, it takes practice, it does not happen overnight.
AJV (22:54):
And not only does it not hope that it happen overnight, it’s like no, you’re doing tons of work behind the scenes no matter what you’re doing. And anyone who has started a business, started a family in a marriage, raising kids, you know, doesn’t matter what it is, how much work it takes that no one sees before anything actually works. And so one of the questions that, as you were talking about, cuz you mentioned talking to football teams, but you also talk to lots of corporate audiences. You talk to all types of audiences. And I was just like looking at your client list on your speaker press kit as I was prepping for this interview. And it’s like, man, you’ve got audiences that range from students to corporations to associations. And clearly your books have mass audience appeal. And one of the questions that I have for you with such like a powerful, unique story, right?
AJV (23:45):
Is what, what are the common themes or messages that you’re able to kind of universally share with audiences that regardless of their background, like these apply? And then how do you find those, right? Because I know, and I’m just thinking at, we just came off the hills of a two day event that we hosted for our community and brand builders group. And I think one of the things that people have a hard time doing is translating these like deeply personal messages that it’s like, I know if I’m in, if I’m in a room full of, you know, student athletes, I’m gonna crush it, but how do I make that work with a group of, you know, direct saleswomen from Arban or whatever, and it’s like, yeah. So how do you take these like big powerful stories and find these common themes as you mentioned, these messages of your stories that resonate across any audience?
DW (24:39):
Great question, John. So when John reaches out to me and he’s telling me, Hey, let’s write this book, we’ll call it the coffee meeting. We start becoming friends. John’s watching me grow as a speaker and he is about to really watch, watch Me grow as an author because John Gordon’s about to hitch me to his, to his rocket ship and put me out there in a different level, right? And he knows what’s coming. And he told me this, Roy, I mean he told me this aj he said, listen, he said, Damon, he said, you have been going out sharing your message and you have been sharing this. Be a coffee beam, man. That’s your brand. That’s your message. Be a coffee beam, you see it behind me, see it on my shirts, you see it everywhere. He said, stick with this. He said, and I’m gonna tell you this, a lot of speakers, a lot of authors, they’ll go and they don’t see a result fast enough.
DW (25:26):
And three years, four years down the line, they don’t see the results coming in yet. And then they changed their message, they changed their brand and they go a different direction because they weren’t seeing the results fast enough. He said, results take time to measure. I’ll never forget that. He said, stick with be a coffee bean. He said one day, if you do this, you’ll be known as the coffee bean guy. And that’s gonna be a pretty big thing to be known as. He said, I’m known as the energy bus guy. And that’s a very big thing to be known as. Stick with the coffee bean. Don’t ever change your brand or your message no matter what audience you get in front of. It’s always gotta be about being a coffee bean. When John told me that, that’s like one of these huge nuggets, and I know you and Rory talk about this a lot.
DW (26:09):
You gotta to build your brand, you gotta stay consistently on message. Now how does that translate? Because if I’m going to talk to a bunch of 18 to 22 year old college athletes, you know, there’s one message for them, right? And then there, if I’m going to talk to corporate America, if, if Walmart or AIG brings me into a corporate boardroom, what am I gonna say to them? Here’s what I would tell you. Do your research, tailor your message to fit your audience. Know what stories go with what groups, but never leave behind that core message. Every group I’ve spoken, and at this point aj, I’ve spoken to thousands, not a thousand, two, 3000 different audiences in that time. And I’ve never not told the story of the coffee bean, and I’ve never not told my backstory. Now, is my backstory the same in a corporate audience as it is in front of a college athletic?
DW (26:59):
No. Mm-hmm.
DW (27:46):
This is the same thing was what I’m saying right here. Now you’ve individualized it, you’ve personalized it for your group in front of ’em. They know that you put in the work to come and sit in front of them that day. You didn’t just come there to get a check, you came there to serve mm-hmm.
AJV (28:14):
I love that. What I wrote down, and I think this is such a good reminder for me to remind our whole community about this. So for everyone listening, it’s just the power of, you know what Damon just said, it’s like you have to know how to tailor your presentation, not change your message. Yeah. Right? It’s like, no, your message is your message and that’s what you wanna be known for. And I tell you what, Damon, you should have some like pretty big endorsements coming and you need to be hitting up like Starbucks and all the coffee shop
DW (28:43):
I’m tried.
AJV (28:44):
If you’re the coffee bean man, you need to be like Starbucks. Where at all,
DW (28:48):
I’ve tried Starbucks. It’s hard to get through to it. If you know somebody from Starbucks and we get off air, tell me, because I, my gosh,
AJV (28:54):
God, gosh. Well, I’m a bulletproof coffee girl, so i’s been a mile, it’s been a minute since I’ve been to Starbucks, but I will tell you, it’s like, but it’s like, again, it’s like once you become known for that thing, it’s like in brand builders group language, it’s called what we call breaking through she hands wall. It’s like you wanna be a power washer, not a water hose, right? Yeah. It’s like you, you’ve gotta just know exactly what your message is. And when people think of you, they need to think of coffee bean story, right? It’s like, when I think of a coffee bean story, I think of Damon. When I think of Damon, I think about these coffee beans and it’s like, once that happens, then you have broken through Sheehan’s wall, right? And then that’s a great reminder for all of us is tailor the presentation.
AJV (29:32):
But don’t change your message. Don’t change your message. I love that. That’s such a good reminder. And I’m also, I’m watching the clock and we have like five or six minutes left, and I actually wanna ask you two more personal development questions kind of about these books that you’ve written. And you’ve invested a lot of time into this message in writing these books. And so there’s two last questions I have for you. So, all right. I know that a huge part of what you talk about, what you write about is resilience, perseverance, and mindset, right? There’s lots more. But those are three things that stood out to me. And so some tactical advice for anyone who is listening or just for me what are some key strategies or practices that individuals like me and everyone listening that, that can adopt to help increase these qualities of perseverance? Resilience mindset shifts to navigate setbacks in our personal or professional lives. So it’s like a, when you know, the, you know, s h i t hits the fan. I’m on a, I’m on a non cussing roll right now so I can spell it, can’t say it
DW (30:43):
No, great question because we all go through this and, and, and is look, John, our friend John Gordon. John says that fear and faith have more in common than the letter F to begin with. John says, fear and faith, both believe in futures that haven’t happened yet. Fear is this negative future. You can choose to believe in that you get the choice, that’s good. But faith is a positive future. You get the choice to believe in that too. And you can choose your path every day. And it’s always better to choose faith over fear. If you’re gonna pick a future that hadn’t happened, pick the positive one. And this is where I, I try to like land every day, is like, I’ve gotta focus on the positive every single day because there’s gonna be negativity around me. There’s gonna be things that happen in life that can pull you out of this, this good time that you’re in.
DW (31:29):
But you gotta focus on the positive. I learned two things about diversity in life inside that maximum security prison, aj, this is what I learned. I’ve learned that adversity’s never as bad as you think it’s gonna be. Hmm. And you are always capable of way more than you think you are. Mm-Hmm.
DW (32:16):
Is it the traffic or is it you? It’s always gonna be you. And it’s always how you see three words that I love putting together. Position determines perspective. Mm-Hmm.
DW (33:03):
He said, man, these eight coaches are gonna be in this room. The best coach in America is gonna be named. I can sneak you in. I’m at the event right now. I drove an hour and a half because this event, he sneaks me in the back door and I’m there and I, I go open to meet all these coaches cuz I got this story I wanted to share with them. And every coach I met that night, AJ slammed the door in my face. They all told me no, there was one coach left one hour. It took me to get seven nos in one hour. I mean, I’ve been defeated that night and I’m in the corner of the Toyota Center. I’m getting ready to leave. I’m licking my wounds, feeling sorry for myself. The voice in my head is telling me, go home. You’re an imposter.
DW (33:36):
You don’t belong the imposter syndrome. And, and know we’re all gonna, you’re gonna go through this. When you’re out there speaking and writing a book, you’re gonna ask yourself sometimes, do I belong here? But let me tell you something, do not listen to yourself. Talk to yourself, because the voice in your head can be fear. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (34:28):
I love that. I love that so much. It’s sometimes we just need a little dose of inspiration to go, I got this, I can do this. I can do hard things. I took my kids on a hike yesterday to just commemorate Memorial Day and just like, just really just a, an hour and a half of just like, silence and helping my kids understand what Memorial Day is all about. And halfway through this hour and a half long ha now my kids are small, they’re almost four and just turned six. This is a long, this just feels like a marathon for them, right? It’s not that long. It’s two and a half miles, but it felt like a marathon for these small humans. And my husband ends up carrying my four year old, but my six-year-old, I’m like, Hey, if you can make it all the way back to the car, you get a sticker and a sticker is worth a quarter.
AJV (35:14):
And at the end of the week he gets to turn in his stickers for quarters for doing hard things. And he’s like, I get a sticker. And I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna give you a sticker buddy. It’s like 25 oh cents. It’s the whole quarter, right? And he gets motivated and he’s like, he’s hustling. And we get towards the end, he goes, mom, I just, I need to quit. I’m like, you need to quit. He goes, yeah, I need to quit, mama. My feet hurt. I need to quit. I’m like, nobody. And I pause like in the middle of all these people, they’re probably like, who is this crazy, like, you know, like cheerleader mom. And I’m like sitting there and I’m like, I need you to say this with me. I can do hard things. I’m like, yes, yes, I can do hard things. He’s like, no mom, I can’t say that. You’re so embarrassing. And I’m like screaming at the top of my lungs, I can do hard things. And and it was like, tell me,
DW (36:00):
Roy’s recording this while you’re doing it.
AJV (36:02):
Wish she was recording of it. I think she was quite a while back carrying my four-year-old. And here’s like the craziest part. It’s like, I don’t know if it helped him, but it helped me. It’s like, I hope it helped him, but it helped me. And it was like such a reminder that it’s like, no, I can do hard things. Like I hope Jasper, that you got something outta that. But at the end of the day, it’s like, after saying it like 10 times screaming in the middle of the state park, I’m like, no, I can do hard things. And I needed that reminder. And it’s like, sometimes it’s like, gosh, we just need to remind ourselves. Oh
DW (36:37):
My God, aj I love that. Cuz you’re hitting on something that, that, that is like the big force in my life that’s going on. Like every time I go out and I serve other people, this helps other people. I, I know it does and I hope it does, but I know one person it helps for sure. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (37:46):
Yeah. That, like when you were saying that, it just reminded me of that yesterday. It’s like, I don’t actually know if it helped him
DW (38:17):
Take your time. I don’t care. This is a fun conversation. Go on, go as long as you want. Let’s go.
AJV (38:21):
So in the Coffee Bean, the book, which everyone should go and check out, which I think is so great, and I’ll use this as my, you know public service announcements. If you want to check out more about Damon West and his speaking, his books, all the things he has going on and also grab a copy of this book, the Coffee Bean. He’s got other books too. He is got one for kids. Go to damon west.org. So that’s damon west.org. And then again, the book is called The Coffee Bean. It’s co-written with John Gordon. He’s got a version for kids, which I love all kids books, so I’ll be picking that up myself. Or follow him on Instagram, which is at Damon West seven. So it’s at Damon West seven on Instagram. Or just go to damon west.org and you can get all of his social themes there.
AJV (39:09):
But I’ll also, we’ll put this on the show notes for you. Okay. So last question. In a coffee bean, you talk about the importance of mindset and in my interpretation, how that can shape our influence, how it can shape our personal brand. So here’s my last question for that person who really does need to cultivate this, I can do hard things mindset. For the person who does have a lot of limiting beliefs, what would you say is the number one thing for that individual to cultivate a growth mindset? A I can do hard things. This overcoming of self-limiting beliefs. Like what would you say is the one thing that they can do to really well both build their personal brand, which for us is just their reputation, but also to just live a better life. Like, what is the thing that we can do to change our mindset, to build a better mindset?
DW (40:01):
Yeah. This is, this is something that, that I had to remind myself of, and I think every one of us do. And aside from the things you just said, because that’s very important. You just said something very important because your brand is your reputation. This is you. This is like, you know, everything about what you’re putting out. That’s your reputation. So guard that, but it’s consistency. Be consistent. Take the same action every single day. And, and you know whenever, whenever you’re consistent, you start building this confidence in yourself because like, you know, ed talks about this a lot. You keep promises that you make to yourself. Mm-Hmm. But be consistent. Show up every day. One of the hardest things about working out is just getting to the gym. And if you can get yourself to the place where you need to be every day to be consistent, that’s when it’s gonna happen.
DW (40:48):
But it’s gonna take time. And just understand that, that you have to put in the work. But consistency trumps everything else. Consistency can beat talent. By the way, talent is great to have, but talent doesn’t beat someone who is consistent and won’t go away. Someone who’s persistent. Someone that gets in front of the, a mirror in a spare bedroom where they live on parole and practices a presentation that one day is gonna be their business that, that they use to create other businesses with. Because the speaking business, I mean, you know, aj it’s something I never, I, I tell my wife almost daily that I cannot believe this is my life and I get to go out and impact a world like this. But it provides for a, a life for my family that’s created generational wealth. I mean, every generation’s changed underneath me now, but it started out in my parents’ fair bedroom, speaking in front of a mirror for two years to get my presentation right, to go speak one time in front of Dabo Sweeney. You know, that’s what it’s about. Being consistent.
AJV (41:47):
I love that. You know, I’m, I’m actually, I’m reading through the Old Testament right now. I’m in this like Bible and a year program and I’m reading through the Old Testament. And one of the things that has stuck out to me most about the Old Testament is how often people get their answers or their desires given to them is persistence. Like, I can’t, I, I’m gonna start counting like how many times a king said, yes, I’ll resolve this, just leave me alone. Or how many times it was just like pure persistence, pure dis consistent. I’m gonna show up every day at this, at this king’s doorstep. I’m gonna show up every day at this, at my master’s door, and I’m gonna ask and I’m gonna ask. And they’re like, oh my gosh, just I’ll give you whatever you want. Stop asking me. Yeah. And it’s such a great reminder that it’s like so much power comes in persistence.
DW (42:36):
And you’re in the Old Testament right now, like the book of Job man. If you want to read a story about a guy that was consistent and just showed up every day while the S H I T was hitting the fan read job, man. This dude, this dude endured way more than any anybody you can imagine. For years this went on, lost his entire fam. I mean, everything was taken, but he had faith and he had consistently, consistently, he believed every day that I have faith in this and it’s gonna work out. And that’s, you gotta have what they call the patience’s a joke. You know, I tell people all the time that that since we’re talking about the Old Testament, that that God doesn’t set bushes on fire anymore. H ha that’s a very Old Testament thing that God did to get people’s attention. But you know what God does today? God sets people on fire. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (43:44):
Reach it. Love this. Y’all check out Damon. Go to damon west.org, check him out, follow him, buy his books. Spread the spread. This good news Damon so, so awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your story and these words of wisdom. And for everyone else, stay tuned for the recap episode. That will be coming up later this week. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much.
DW (44:10):
Thank you. Thank you.
Ep 399: How To Find Your People | Phil Treadwell Episode Recap
AJV (00:03):
So I just had a pretty enlightening conversation with Phil Treadwell, who I happened to be interviewing for the influential personal brand podcast. And we got on this little bit of a side tangent talking about, you know, real estate and mortgage professionals and what they can do in today’s, you know, somewhat tumultuous unique market. And we got on this side conversation about social media that led to another side conversation, which has now led me to this conversation, but I thought it was worthy enough to make an entirely separate video about, because I think this is something we really forget. And this is a little bit about social media, but also just human interactions. So it doesn’t matter if you’re online or offline, I think this conversation is really important. I will start with the online piece because that is a continuation from this conversation that I had with Phil Chadwell on our podcast.
AJV (01:04):
But here, here’s kind of where it stemmed from is that as you’re thinking about how to use social media for your business, right? And we talked a lot about how social media is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for a variety of reasons, good reasons, healthy reasons, bad reasons, unhealthy reasons. But it’s a tool, right? And we have to treat it like a tool. And in this particular instance, it’s a business tool. And here’s kind of where this all started, is that social media, it’s a tool. But like with any tool, you have to ask yourself first, why am I using this tool and how can this tool be used? So I’ll say that again. Why am I using this tool? And then how can this tool be used? So through the lens of social media, what we talked about is, you know, if you just ask yourself for a second, for the audience that you’re trying to reach, why do they get on social media?
AJV (02:11):
Do they get on for education, entertainment to stay in touch with friends and family? Do they get on to see what’s happening in, in the world and media? Or is it to shop and look up pretty things? Why do they get on, right? And I thought it was a really good example that Phil shared in our interview, and he goes, most people, as they’re sitting in line at the D M V, this is the exact example he got where he gave, we’re, we’re trying to, you know, you know, kill 15 minutes and you decided to pop on social media. Were probably not sitting there trying to go, yes, real estate professional that you are defined for me the terms and definition of amortization, right? That’s probably not what we’re doing. Now, some of you maybe it is, but in general, I think it
AJV (02:58):
Just begs the question, what is your audience doing online? And is what you are doing online appealing to them, right? So that’s the first is why is your audience getting on social media? And then the second is, how are they using it both in their personal and professional life? So why are they using it? And then how are they using it, right? And I think those are two very distinctively different questions with some similarities. And at the end of the day here’s what resonated with me is that so often as we think about social media as a business tool, we think about it as an educational tool. We think about it as a marketing tool, a branding tool a selling tool. But we forget that the heart of why most of us human beings get on social media is for human connection. Truly, yes, we find vendors, we check people out, we listen to music, we learn about, you know, media, entertainment, political things, news, whatever is happening.
AJV (04:08):
Yes, we do all of those things. We learn, we get information, and most of what we’re doing most of the time is actually checking in with people.
AJV (05:13):
And Jenny Allen is single-handedly my most favorite author of all time. And I explained this book, find Your People as a Adult Version of How To Make Friends
AJV (05:57):
This is also something that I don’t just wrestle with in my professional life or using social media or as a, you know, thinking about business. I struggle with this in my personal life as in almost 40 this year, almost 40 year old. I find that it’s really challenging to find people that I can do life with who’s in a similar life stage. Who we go through similar challenges, right? So for me, a mom of two young boys who also runs a business who’s in business with her husband, who works out of their home, where we both travel a lot, right? That’s kind of unique. And I have found it’s really hard for me. So I picked up this book cuz I was like, I need you to teach me how to make friends Jenny Allen, help me. And what I learned is that this was is this so much more than about making friends.
AJV (06:43):
This is about the human condition of we are built, we are truly built, and this is this, I’m gonna bring this all together in just a second. I promise. We are truly built to connect with people who are in proximity. And I think a little bit of that is true online and offline. And I think one of the reasons that so many of us default to online is because we have immediate proximity. It’s this thing right here that’s in our pocket all the time. And we default to that versus, you know, taking it the offline part cuz that’s harder, that’s more awkward, that’s more uncomfortable and it’s definitely more time consuming, right? But one of the things that I learned is like I was trying to do life and build friendships with, not that they’re not still my friends, but with people who don’t even live in my city.
AJV (07:30):
Some of my closest friends do not even live within a drive away from me. I have to get on an airplane for hours to see some of my closest friends, which is why as a human being sitting here in Nashville, I’m going, I don’t feel like I don’t have friends when I have tons of friends, but I need friends that I can walk to their house, that we run into each other at the grocery store. I need friends that I’m gonna naturally see at church or at different functions across town. I need, I need friends that there is natural crossover. In other words, it needs to be easy, it needs to be convenient, there needs to be things that we have in common. We need to be in proximity of each other if we’re gonna have that natural opportunity to do life together, to build real community.
AJV (08:16):
And so much of that has to do with proximity, convenience. But mo most importantly, it’s what we have in common. Do we go to the same grocery store, the same coffee shop? Do we go to the same church? Do our kids go to the same school? Do we live in the same neighborhood? Do we work out at the same, you know, for me, bar three class, right? It’s like, what are the things that we have in common? Because that’s where there’s natural connection. And then it hit me, the exact same thing happens online on social modi, on somo, on social media, both professionally and personally. And here’s how I’m gonna wrap this all up. My encouragement to you is that before you start talking
AJV (08:54):
About the what that you do, right, interest rates, how many sales you’ve made, how many people love you, how many flights have you been on, how many stages were you on? Like, that’s cool, that’s fine. But that does not build connection. And that’s what we’re trying to do on social media, right? Social media is the networking tool of the 21st century. It’s not meant to only be online, but it’s a starting point. But in order to build connection, it’s like, I need to get to know you. I need to know who you are where w you know, where do you live? Not like your address, but you know, like, do you live near a beach? Like for me, I live like in this, you know, foresty tree area. It’s like, I want to know the little things about you that’s a part of the human condition, the human connection that makes me wanna follow you.
AJV (09:40):
I wanna see what you’re gonna dress up for as Halloween or what you thought about the Arrows tour with the Taylor Swift concert. It’s like those are the things that are equally as important, and they may seem counterintuitive, but the who part of this, the human connection part is equal to the what part? At least 50% if not more. So as you’re thinking about social media and how do I use this as a tool and how do I use this to help separate myself and differentiate myself? The number one way that you can differentiate yourself is to actually let people go get to know you. You’re the only you there is, there’s lots of loan officers, there’s lots of attorneys, there’s lots of dentists, there’s just only one you, so who are you, right? Like, what do you like to do and what are your thoughts?
AJV (10:27):
And you know, find your own balance in there. I’m not gonna get into the weeds on that. My point is, is we wanna get to know the who. That it’s that human connection that I wanna know that there’s other people like me out there doing things I like and struggling with, things that I struggle with. And we follow people. We’re drawn to people that we have things in common with offline and online. So as you’re thinking about the, why is my audience getting on social media and how are they using it? Just don’t forget the who part of that. It’s not just about the what and the education and information that’s part of it, but it’s about the who, who are you, who are they and what do you have in common? If you like this, then go check out the full conversation that I had with Phil Treadwell and I’ll catch you next time. See you later.
Ep 398: How To Build Your Brand In Mortgage and Real Estate Industry with Phil Treadwell
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here today. And before I introduce my guest, I’m gonna put a disclaimer out there because every so often we will do an episode that is super niche for a very unique audience, and today is one of those days. And what we’re gonna be talking about today is how to use a personal brand to help you. If you are a real estate agent, you could be a real estate developer, a broker, you could be a loan officer, you could be in any sort of role that’s kind of touching this mortgage and real estate industry. And we decided to do this because one, at Brand Builders Group, we have a ton of audience members who serve the real estate industry, but also because the real estate industry is a little bit tumultuous right now.
AJV (00:58):
And one of the biggest questions that we get in terms of a personal brand is, well, how do I use that to actually leverage and differentiate myself to generate more leads when the market is interesting? I’ll just say that. But then also so many of people in these industries are also coming to us going, how do we diversify our income streams where the income stream that I had have been my main thing has kind of disappeared a little bit, or it’s, it just looks different today. And so I invited a newer friend of mine, Phil Treadwell, to be our guest on this particular show today because I got to meet Phil because I was on his podcast. And when we were talking at the end of that, I was like, you know what? I would love to have you on to talk about these niche topics on the influential personal brand.
AJV (01:49):
So now let me formally introduce Phil to you guys in case you don’t know him. So Phil Treadwell is a mindset coach. He’s a national speaker and a fellow podcaster. He’s also the founder of M one Academy. And as I mentioned, he’s host of the Mortgage Marketing Expert podcast. So if you’re in the real estate industry, that is a must listen to podcast, he’s also received lots of cool awards, like the 40 most Influential Under 40, Hey, but then also Top 20 Mortgage Professionals by Yahoo Finance. So it’s always good to tout some of those credentials while we’re having you on the show today. So feel welcome. So glad you’re here.
PT (02:28):
Well, thank you so much. That was a incredible intro. I’m excited to have another conversation. We, we covered a lot of cool topics on my podcast and it’s gonna be fun to do it again.
AJV (02:37):
Yes. Well, I’m so excited, and I also love getting to do these super niche podcasts that serve a really, you know, specific part of our audience. And so let’s just jump right in. So here’s the big question, right? It’s like, you know, real estate’s kind of crazy right now. It’s up, down all around. Interest rates are real high and making a lot of people not wanna buy, which means a lot of people in the mortgage industry are going, oh,
PT (03:26):
I think that’s a great question. At the end of the day, a personal brand, as you all know, needs to be about the person more so than the brand. We have some of the largest corporations on the face of the planet that are trying to personify that company. Well, mortgage and real estate, it’s about the person they work with, the realtor, the loan officer, the individual person. And yet we have so many professionals in the industry that are trying to create a shtick or a logo or a brand. And we need to be continuing to emphasize it’s about the person. Mm-Hmm.
PT (04:18):
You have a unique how you do it. And so it’s a matter of showcasing that with your own personality, with your own ways that you can get those people’s attention. And that’s really where people are, are thriving. Even in this market. There’s opportunities in every market. I don’t care whether interest rates are high and supply is low, people pay for solutions to their problems. And it’s just you using your uniqueness, you as a person and your ethos as a professional to solve those problems for people. And a personal brand just gives you the opportunity to put that out at scale, put it out at a really high level for people to find you and realize that you have the solution that they need.
AJV (05:00):
Yeah, I love that. I remember when I started I was part of a team of people who started our first company in 2006. What a great time to start a business in 2006. But we were so naive, we didn’t know, like we didn’t know what a good market was. We definitely didn’t know what a recession was. And I remember someone telling me in those first couple of years of starting our first company, and they said that during the Great Depression in the twenties, that more millionaires were form were formed during that 10 year period than any other 10 year period in US history. And, and that’s because it’s like you’re gonna, it’s all about how you view it, right? There’s op opportunities in every market, just like you said, it’s just gonna be like, who’s the one who perseveres gets creative, stays persistent and does something a little different. So what would you say are some of the things for, you know, the real estate professional, the, you know, mortgage expert, what would you say, what are some of, of the things that you’re seeing out there that really lends itself to working right now when it comes to building your personal brand?
PT (06:04):
Yeah, great question. Most mortgage and real estate professionals, when they know that they need to be on social media, they know they need to be creating content, they start putting out educational content, which in and of itself is a great idea. However, we have to realize that when people get on social media, they’re typically on social for a reason. In Texas, we, I talk about the, the God forsaken D M V. Now, that’s not what’s on the sign, but everybody that’s been here knows you wait in line for hours. It’s, it’s just a terrible experience. Well, when people are in that experience or you’re in the waiting room in a doctor’s office or in line to pick up the kids or whatever it is mm-hmm.
PT (06:48):
Right?
PT (07:32):
Instead of coming out and saying, Hey, here’s the biggest myth about the housing market right now, here’s three things you need to know. If you wanna start investing in real estate and coming up with a hook and letting people know, I have a solution that you need. I have an opportunity to show you how to do something. There may be a misnomer. And that’s what’s really working and getting people’s attention when it comes to educational content. But I think the other thing where people are, are grasping and, and really getting, gaining a lot of ground in this market is realizing that social media is also about social proof. And what I mean by social proof is if, if five years ago I said, you need to use aj, she’s an awesome loan officer, she’s gonna have an incredible process. She’s gonna take care of you.
PT (08:15):
If she says she can get it done, she can. Five years ago if I said use aj, they just wouldn’t use aj. Mm-Hmm.
PT (08:59):
It’s why when we meet someone, the weather, it’s the first thing we talk about. It’s the one thing we have in common with that person at that time. And so we realize that our aunt’s, brother’s cousin went to the same school as, you know, whoever they had. And, and we, we uncover all of these things that are in common. Social media is the perfect opportunity as you build your personal brand to find these quirky little things that are about you, that you like to do for hobbies that you notice about the world and share those with people so they can make that connection and solidify that referral that you worked so hard to get in the first place.
AJV (09:34):
Oh my gosh. Like, we’re gonna have to go off on a tangent because there are so many things that you just said that if you’re just listening and you weren’t really listening, you probably just let that slip by. And I cannot let that happen. So let’s talk about this for a second, because these are really, really good because everyone talks about social media. Some people talk about how much they hate it and how they can stand it. Other people don’t talk about it because they’re too busy on it and Right. And then there’s a whole group of people who are the I would say the educators of social media who are constantly teaching PE are trying to teach people how to use it, right? And it’s just like this funny, it’s this funny combination of how this really works. But at the end of the day, social media is a tool, right?
AJV (10:18):
Just like any other tool, food is a tool, right? Our, our money is a tool and there are good things and bad things about every tool, depending on how you use it. A hammer can build a house or it can be a, a weapon to hurt somebody. It’s a tool, right? And this is like such one of my pet peeves when people go, oh geez, social media is, you know, the number one just destructive thing for our youth. And it’s like, as probably we could say the same thing about food or parenting or a hundred other things, right? It’s a tool. So let’s talk about how to use this tool effectively in business, which that’s how I treat it. Like this is a business tool, right? And so I use it like I would in any other business tool, like my email. I’ve gotta have a schedule and I gotta manage it.
AJV (11:06):
So there’s a few things that I think are really important just to kind of come back on, as you said, ask yourself this question or this is what I heard anyways, which was ask yourself, why are people getting on social media? Mm-Hmm.
PT (11:57):
You know, I, I don’t know that I would recommend one topic I’m a big fan of and versus, or, and we get caught up in that a little bit now. I would say if you’re gonna do long form educational video type content, then YouTube and Facebook are probably going to be better suited for, for that type of content. If you’re going to do short form content that drives traffic to some of these other platforms, you’re gonna look at reels on Facebook and Instagram or potentially TikTok. But to your point, you’ve gotta know who is your audience. I have a a basic marketing formula that, that I kind of walk people through. And that’s the very first question. Who’s your audience? Who’s your target market? Who is it you’re trying to serve? The next question in there is what problem do you solve? What value do you provide?
PT (12:48):
Message you provide that particular audience? And then the third piece of that is, what’s the most effective medium to deliver that solution to that audience? And so where to find that audience is very dependent upon what problem you’re solving, what message you’re providing, so that you can create the most effective medium. Cuz especially in real estate, we have a lot of people that know a team that creates a lot of leads with a YouTube channel. So I’m gonna go out and create a YouTube channel or I, I love the, you know, podcast. I listened to a lot of podcasts. I’m gonna go start a podcast. Well, the reason I started a podcast specifically was I was a regional manager that was trying to reach more people and add value to their business that I could network with, potentially recruit. And I felt like a podcast was the most effective medium to deliver a valuable advice to build their business.
PT (13:43):
I didn’t know a lot of loan officers that sat on YouTube for hours. I didn’t know a lot of them that were even really on social media a ton because this was around 2018. But I did know people that listened to Audible and listened to podcasts cuz they could do it in their car. They could, you know, while they’re at the gym, walking around the house, even the background at work. So the platform is super important from the standpoint of is it the best place to give this message to that audience? Now we all know too, Facebook is kind of aging up or has continued to age up for a while. So if you’re looking at Gen Xers or, or older, Facebook is a great platform for you. Instagram, it’s gonna be solidly millennials, you know, TikTok has been Gen Z, but I’m gonna be honest, there’s probably as many millennials or more than there is Gen Z on TikTok anymore.
PT (14:32):
So a lot of it is about posting content different places and really understanding is my audience there When I post a video even now, and I’ve spent a lot of time, you know, researching some of this stuff, having conversations and testing content, I still take the same video and I post on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, shorts, LinkedIn and TikTok to really understand, okay, the message of that video, the problem that I’m solving there is that audience on that platform resonating with it or not. So again, the the audience and who you’re trying to reach is, is very important. But when determining that platform, I think that that that messaging in there is a, is a critical piece.
AJV (15:12):
Yeah. You know, that’s so interesting. And I just wanna reiterate what you said. It’s like one for all of you listening it’s, and this doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, but it’s like, until you know who is your core target audience, the rest of this is a moot point. It’s like, if you don’t know that you’re just slinging mud on the wall and hoping some of it sticks, which just, just isn’t a good strategy, right? It’s just not. So step one is you’ve gotta really know demographically and psychographically speaking who your core target audience is. And then I love this part of what you said, it’s, and then you need to know why they’re getting on social media, right? Like to your point, it’s like if you’re, if this is a way to, you know, kill 15 minutes at the D M V, do I really wanna know what, you know, the, you know, definition of amortization is probably not.
AJV (16:00):
Or it’s like I want something that’s quick light, you know, probably more inspirational or entertaining in that moment. But if I was gonna sit down and go, Hey, and now I’m trying to learn something, would I go to Instagram or would I go somewhere else? Right? If I really wanted to have an in-depth conversation about what’s happening with interest rates in the mortgage world, I probably am not going to Instagram in general for me. Right? And that might be different from your audience, but those are the questions that you’ve gotta be asking. And I think that’s so good. It’s just sitting there going, why would my audience get on this platform in the first place? And am I, am I appealing to that or am I automatically going, no, I don’t, that’s not what I’m getting on here for. I don’t want this. That’s exactly right. All the work and effort you’re doing feels like it’s not working because you’re just doing it wrong.
PT (16:49):
Yeah. And, and you bring up a great point around what they’re getting on there for. Cuz it goes back to this, this conversation and business about solving someone’s problem. In those environments where people are trying to escape and they wanna be entertained or inspired, you need to solve that problem. They’re gonna pay you in time and they’re gonna give you their attention for that solution. So your content does need to be entertaining. And I will say when it comes to a well-rounded personal brand, I believe your, the majority over half of your content needs about who be, excuse me, the majority of your content needs to be about who you are, not just what you do. Mm-Hmm.
PT (17:43):
Mm-Hmm.
PT (18:31):
And as I’ve started to share that story with people, I now get five to 10 people a week that take a wing pick and tag me in it. And it’s become part of this relatability that you have with people. You ha i I think it’s important as you’re thinking about this, this question that you’re posing, why are people getting on social media? I think it’s to relate to people. And so the content needs to be relevant. If you’re working with first time home buyers, you’re typically gonna be steering towards a younger demographic in most cases. So what type of content do they wanna see? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (19:37):
Yeah. And I love what you said too earlier, it’s at the end of the day, and I think this is a, this is like the second thing that I wrote down, a really good reminder to everyone. It’s like a personal referral isn’t even enough anymore. It’s like, like you said five years ago, you say, Hey, use aj and it’s like, great, I’ll use aj, but now it’s like, well, let me learn about aj. Right? And that’s because the ease of doing so is like mm-hmm.
AJV (20:21):
And it’s like, I clearly, you know, I believe in this and anyone listening knows I believe in this is my business. But it’s like, it, it’s really true. It’s like people are going to go to Google and type in AJ Vaden and it’s like, what pops up or what doesn’t pop up, right? And it’s like if I go, I don’t care who you recommended me to cuz I do this all the time. I’m like, I need a new dentist, I need a new hair stylist, I need a new, if there’s no website, there’s no chance I’m using you. I don’t care how much you tell me you’re awesome. Right? If I can’t find Google reviews or some sort of social proof, I’m out. Cuz I’m just like, what, who did you refer me to? Like, don’t even have a website. There’s no reviews, there’s no social media. And so I would just love to hear your opinion on, for this unique industry, right? Calling, I’m just calling it the real estate industry mortgage included. What’s a, what’s enough like, right? Yeah. Like what’s the bare minimum and what would be like, this is what you should have.
PT (21:19):
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a tough question because it is obviously is subjective to each person. I get a lot of questions around how often should I post, how much is too much, what’s not enough? And my answer that I give about the frequency of posting is you need to be consistent. If it’s once a day or it’s once a week or a few times a month, I don’t know that there’s necessarily a wrong answer so long as you’re consistent. Because people will look at your profile and see, okay, you posted three days ago, but the last post before that was six months ago and it was three months before that, or two years before that. Right. People do pay attention to that. So I think it needs to be consistent more so than anything. I also think, like I’ve said before, there needs to be a good mix between personal and business content. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (22:26):
I know that name. I know Scott. I was like, this sounds so familiar. Yeah,
PT (22:30):
Scott’s a is a, is a, is a friend of mine. He’s he’s been on the podcast several times and he was telling a story about a guy who was a top producer and was just having a, a bang out year, you know, 20 20, 20 21. And one of his best friends ended up buying a house but didn’t use him as his loan officer. Now to his credit, the, the loan officer went to his friend and said, Hey, you know, just curious, did you felt like you didn’t couldn’t use me or whatever. And the response was super interesting. The friend said, Hey, I knew that my wife and I would have a ton of questions and we, we really needed to understand the process better. And I noticed that you kept posting that you guys were having record months and you were doing all these, these transactions and doing all this volume and we didn’t wanna slow you down.
PT (23:17):
And I think that that’s powerful for people to realize some of these things that we put out there. Yeah. To boost our reputation can potentially be working against you. So reviews and testimonials are good, but whenever we try to, what I kind of do ego posts where we, we kind of stroke our ego a little bit, sometimes that can have the opposite effect. There’s ways to show your experience, your credibility, position yourself as an expert within that context of that personal brand without deterring from it. So again, the frequency just needs to be consistent and mix it up. But just be careful. Why is your audience on there? They’re not on there to see that you have, you know, all of these accolades and that you’ve done all this stuff. There’s a time and a place for that. And a lot of times that’s not on social media.
AJV (24:02):
That’s say that for your website.
PT (24:04):
Yes. Yes.
AJV (24:06):
I think that’s really good. Now that lends me to another really quick question, and then I’m gonna change, change directions on us here. Do you think that in this world social media is enough? Or do you really think people need to have, even if it’s like a quick splash page or just a one page landing page? Do you really think people need to have a website or a blog or a podcast or a social media enough?
PT (24:33):
I, I personally believe you need a website. Now, I’m not saying it has to be a super robust website, but at the end of the day, your website, in my opinion, is your digital business card. Your social media platforms are gonna cater different types of content to different people. But social media is also about directing all of that attention someplace. If marketing’s about getting someone’s attention, we don’t really make any money on marketing. Where we make money on is sales where we create a customer. And that’s a lot of times more difficult to do if, if not impossible for most in mortgage and real estate to do. You need to have a website, you need to have a place that you can drive traffic. You need to have some type of a, of a call to action in that way. Again, it doesn’t need to be complicated, but having that is, is extremely important in, in today’s day and age for sure.
AJV (25:21):
Yeah, I think that’s really good. And I’ll just share one really quick thing. If you’re going hi, a website here’s just one really quick thing that I learned that’s really helpful. In interim, if you don’t have the time or the resources to actually go and get, even if it’s a mediocre one page website, which quite honestly today is you could probably whip something up for 1500 bucks if you just use a template, let’s just say you don’t even have time or capacity for that. Just at least go by your name, just by, you know, in my case, aj vaden.com and then have it redirected to whatever your most robust social media profile is. Right? Yeah. And it’s like, I did that for years when I was like, I don’t have time for this, so I just had it redirect my LinkedIn profile until you’re ready to do whatever. So, but at least secure your name and have it a redirect somewhere. Would you say that could be a good workaround for the very short?
PT (26:17):
A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and there’s lots of places and like I’m a big fan of Link Tree mm-hmm.
PT (26:57):
And one thing that I wanna make sure of when we talk about social media being enough is I have a personal belief that social media is about creating relationships. It’s networking. In the 21st century, you have to take the relationships offline. Mm. You, you can’t just have conversations with people, at least in mortgage and real estate and expect to have a long-term sustainable foundation for a business by simply just trying to interact with people online. Now, what does offline mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean in person. That might be email, that might be text, that might be in the dms, but it can’t just be in the interaction on the social media profiles because you’ve got to at some point create relationship. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (28:05):
Yeah. I love that
PT (29:25):
That’s a, that’s a good question. I’ve, I’ve not actually been asked this question before and I’ve done hundreds of episodes of my podcast and, and been on on a lot of others into the hundreds as well. So I love this question. And I think my first instinctual or instinctive, excuse me answer is let’s go ahead and take some of our own advice. Meaning if we’re teaching people how to build wealth with real estate, a great way is to invest in real estate yourself. Hmm. You’re gonna create that much more credibility by saying, Hey, I actually own a couple of rental properties, or I have some Airbnbs or VRBO os and now I can show you in a different way how to utilize these things as well. I, I mean there’s even here in D F W, some, some top loan officers that make more money passive income through their real estate portfolio and, and things that they’ve built on the side than they even make, especially now in in their mortgage business.
PT (30:19):
Mm-Hmm.
PT (31:00):
If you have an audience of a specific amount of people and there’s certain type of products that that audience really needs or wants, there are ways to make money on advertisements or affiliates or things of that nature by just spreading the word about products, you know, that you believe in. So once you create a certain amount of attention and following, there are are numerous ways that you can do that. And I know a lot of people that have made their side hustle their full-time hustle, and you can still participate in real estate, you can still be a loan officer by pursuing this thing. And in today’s day and age, entrepreneurship is, you know, obviously kind of a buzzword, you know, in the eighties and nineties, I mean, you didn’t have a job and then now it’s, you know, this this key to financial freedom. But for most of us it’s about really staying consistent and persistent over time. And as those things build up, it opens up so many opportunities. So the answer for those that haven’t built a brand yet is you need to spend a lot of time doing that and you’ll find all kinds of ways to monetize it. And whether you have a personal brand or not, you can invest in real estate and start doing the things that you’re teaching people to do already.
AJV (32:07):
Yeah, I love that. I think that’s so good. And I’m gonna just throw this in cause I, you mentioned this, like you were just on a two and a half week jaunt around the country. And I think speaking would be one, it’s like, no, you’ve gotta have expertise and you have to have some stage presence. But how did you get into that? All right, so how did you make the transition from regional manager to podcast hosts to, you know, you’ve got content you’re speaking, so walk somebody through the trajectory of like, okay, this is what it really looks like if you’re interested.
PT (32:41):
Yeah, it was, it was a happy accident. You know, I started the podcast to build my region and all kinds of cool things happened because of that. I was able to speak on some panels at industry level conferences that you’re not necessarily getting paid for. They may cover your ticket to the event, but then you start networking with a lot of people. And I think there’s a ton of mortgage and real estate professionals right now, regardless of how big your business is, that has a specific area of expertise that you can reach out to industry events and say, Hey, I have a proficiency for this. I’d like to know, is there anywhere in your event where that makes sense for me to be a panelist or for me to have a little short spot where I can just kind of share this thing and, and have it very defined.
PT (33:24):
And then from there, as you start meeting other speakers and you start continuing with your craft, I’ve never been to an event where they’ve reached out to me to speak that they haven’t said, Hey, who else do you know that might be a fit mm-hmm.
PT (34:13):
I took a few workshops on showing up better in communication and speaking to where I, all of a sudden someone reached out and said, Hey, we want you to, you know, fly to this place and, and speak. We’re gonna cover your travel and your ticket. We can’t really pay you anything. But at that particular event, there was a Hall of Fame football player that spoke right after me and then Rudy Rudiger for the one for, for Rufi, if everybody’s seen the movie Rudy. And so it was me and then Darren Woodson, who’s a hall of fame cowboy football player and ESPN n commentator. And all of a sudden I’m like, okay, well I didn’t get paid for this event, but all of a sudden I’m on stage with these people and then it just turns into, you know, paid speaking gigs. And so there, there is a, a huge opportunity, especially for mortgage and real estate because there’s so many types of businesses within our business.
PT (35:03):
Not all real estate teams are the same. Not all mortgage teams are the same. So whatever your skill is, listen to podcasts on it, read books on it, get educated, take workshops, invest in yourself and then come up, here is what I’m good at. Here’s what I’m proficient, here’s what I love talking about that I can, I can bring some passion to and then literally start asking people to do that. I still will reach out to events and say, I all the speakers you have on there, I love what they’re doing. I have some friends on there, here’s where I think I can add value. And then there’s at the same time other places that reach out and say, we want you to come, you know, speak at our event. That’s become something I really enjoy doing and, and want to do a lot more of. And it, there’s, there’s opportunities for everybody, especially in this space to, to be able to do that as well.
AJV (35:47):
I love that so much and I think that’s such a great reminder. And the number one thing that I gleamed from what you just shared is sometimes the best opportunities are not the ones that you get paid for. That’s right. But you’ve gotta be willing and you’ve gotta, you know, be a little opportunistic. Yes. And it’s like you’re gonna get paid eventually. You just may not get paid in that moment. And I yeah. Know so many people who are turning things down cuz it didn’t offer to pay. And I’m like, well, have you ever been paid before? No. Well, it’s like
PT (36:50):
Yes.
AJV (36:51):
And I, that is such a great reminder of like, man, the gift is in the practice. It’s in honing the skill, it’s in the networking, it’s with who you meet. It’s like that’s the gift. Like that’s how you get paid until one day you get paid even more.
PT (37:10):
Yes. So there’s, there’s two quick things that I wanna, I wanna put an exclamation point on that. The first one was I, this last two and a half weeks, I spoke eight times in five different cities. And as I came back and was kind of debriefing with, with my coach and my mentor a guy who’s done Ted Talks and, and has a very high speaking fee and, and really coaches me on this side of my business. And he was just asking me to kind of give my impression on it. And the first thing that came to mind is almost exactly what you just said. There were things that I learned throughout each of these hour long, you know, onstage me talking to an audience, you know speaking events. There’s things that I learned that I could only have learned by doing that thing.
PT (37:53):
And we need to remember that you can’t dial in something, you can’t get better at something, you can’t fix something that you’re not actively doing.
AJV (38:42):
So good and such a good reminder to, to all of us. And I probably could come with like, come up with like five more questions that I’m like, I know everyone is gonna want to hear. However, we’re out of time. And so if you really want to learn more about what’s happening in the industry and how to build your personal brand to grow your business, diversify your income streams, then I would encourage you to go check Phil out at his website. You can go to phil treadwell.com, I will spell that out in the show notes, but it’s phil treadwell.com. You can also go follow him on all the social media sites, which is everything is at Phil Treadwell. So Instagram do you have a social media platform of choice that you want people to go to?
PT (39:25):
I mean, Instagram’s probably where I’m most active, but I’m active on all the socials. If you, if you DM me on one of the social media platforms, I’ll get it and I’ll respond.
AJV (39:34):
Awesome. Phil, thank you so, so much for being here. So many good nuggets, so many good tips. And y’all, so much of this is transcends the real estate industry. This is just good business advice, but I think for this unique opportunity to serve the real estate mortgage professionals and our audience, this one’s for you. Stick around for my summary episode next and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 387: Redefining Success | Ryan Blair Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all. Today we’re gonna talk about redefining success and what does success look like to you? I just had this awesome conversation on our influential personal brand podcast with a gentleman named Ryan Blair. He’s a multi-time, multi, you know, time entrepreneur, billion dollar companies and just wise beyond his years and also humble extremely humble. And one of the things I loved about this conversation was this conversation of redefining what success looks like. And I think a lot of us are challenged today, specifically in 2023, with looking around and defining our success by what other people are doing. And I only know that’s true cause I know I suffer from it. And I can’t be the only one, right? I can’t be the only one who looks around going, man, is like having a really nice house. Does that mean success or free time?
AJV (01:01):
Does that, is that success or, or money? Is that success or fame? Is that success? And we, we kinda get caught up in it when we look around. And one of the things that I have found is that, for me at least, and I can only speak for me, but I know that there’s gotta be other people like me out there, is I need to put blinders on when it comes to success. I, I need one of those cones that like go around the heads of dogs after they’ve gone to the veterinarian. And I need to not be able to see what anyone else is doing. I need to be able to focus inward and upward of going what? Like, what God? Like what, what do you have for me? Not what does success look like? Like where does that word even come from?
AJV (01:42):
It’s what do you have for me? Because the, the truth is, is like I already know what God has for me. He has a promise for eternity. And that’s what I’m working towards. And my challenge for living in 2023 is that there’s so much things that distract, distract me from what I really should be doing, which is raising two awesome human beings, St. Jasper and Liam being an amazing wife to my husband helping, serving working. I believe in hard work. Those are things that I believe in. And that doesn’t always mean it’s gonna result in millions of dollars. It means it could, but it doesn’t mean that it will, that doesn’t mean I’m any less successful of the person next to me. And so I’ve spent a ton of time over the last few months really thinking about what, what is success to me? And here’s a couple of things that have come up with myself and my husband, Roy Vaden is, success today doesn’t look like more dollars than our banking account, which I’m not mad about it. I I’m not, I’m not saying I don’t wanna make more money. I think the more I make, the more I can give, the more I can do. But also I’ve realized it’s like, man, we, that was the only thing that we looked at in terms of success for a really long
AJV (02:58):
Time. And today, success looks like free space on the calendar. We’re buying back our time of going, I know success today looks like freedom with time to do what we feel like we’re being called to do. Not forcing ourselves to do the things that we think we should be doing because someone else told us that’s what we should do. Someone else could be our parents, our neighbors, our colleagues friends, right? But it’s like we’re defining success by the amount of hours that we have in our day to do the work that we want to do. Not freedom in terms of, Hey, I wanna, you know, go have a lunch every single day with a girlfriend, which I would love to do. But it’s like, no. It’s like, do I have the hours to do what I feel like God is calling me to do?
AJV (03:47):
That is success, right? The second thing is, success looks like having the confidence to say no, right? So the first thing is time. The second thing is the ability to walk away the wherewithal to know that’s not good for me, even though it seems like it today. I know six months from now, that’s not a good decision for me. That could be relationships, business deals, investments. There’s a lot of temptation to go, Hey, that’s going to be a great r o i. However, it’s gonna also simultaneously cause a lot of stress, right? It’s going to take away time and put pressure on versus give me time and take pressure off. And so it’s confidence to say no. It’s willingness to walk away. That is what success looks like. The next thing success looks like. How many lives impacted? How many people served versus again, dollars in the banking account.
AJV (04:43):
I believe that the dollars come when lives are changed. When people go, I want to pay you. Like you’re, you’re helping me so much. I desire to give you my money, versus I take your money and then hope I do a really good job. That is success. Success has shifted to, I want more time to do the work I’ve called to do. I want to feel convicted and saying yes when it’s a yes and feel powerful to say no when it’s a no. And man at the, and most of all, it’s, it’s helping. It’s serving, it’s feeling freed up to help someone in a way that someone else has helped me. It’s, you know, paying it forward, but it’s a, it’s a life impacted, it’s a life changed knowing that that will result in probably financial success. And even if it doesn’t, that is more successful, right? Not dollars, not social media followers, not even email list subscribers. It’s like I subscribe to all the things. I think social media is a powerful tool. I think AI is a powerful tool. I think owning your own context is a powerful tool. Those are tools, but that is not success. Those are tools that help you be
AJV (05:56):
Successful. Those are tools that help you on the journey, but those are not success money. That is a tool, not success businesses, right? Those are tools that does not define your success. Cuz the truth is, is no matter where you are, there are successes and failures, failure failures all day long, every day all through life. You are not a success or a failure. We all succeed and we all fail. And so what is success? Right? And I think that depends on the season that you’re in. And, and that should change. It most definitely will change and it should like success. What it looked like for me prior to having children versus what success looks like for me today is wildly different, right? The number one thing I think about more than anything else on this planet is how do I get my kids to know and love the Lord?
AJV (06:51):
If I achieve one thing, then call it a day, my life was successful, right? That is not probably what I would’ve said pre-children. I didn’t have context of what success looked like in the stage of life, right? And success will likely look different five years from now and then five years from then. But it’s like, it just take a moment to redefine what that is. Without worldly voices popping in, friends, voices popping in, siblings, parents, even your children popping in. It’s like, if we don’t define it, we won’t find it. And so you’ve gotta take the time to define it so then you can go after it. And I don’t know what it looks like for you. So I’m just sharing what it looks like for me today because it’s wildly different than it was at any other time in my life of going, I’m for the first time actually going, what would a successful day look like?
AJV (07:47):
A successful year? Knowing that I am not a success or a failure. I simply have successes and failures. But I’m just me who also has successes and failures at the same time. So just a, a word of encouragement. And also a prompt to spend some time on before you go after that next thing you’re after or even after. The thing that you’re after right now is just take a moment and define what does success and this thing look like for you in this season? And then make sure you continue to iterate on what thats, that success is in every season that you enter. So hope that was helpful for you, and I hope you stick around. I’ll see you next time.