Ep 352: 5 Simple Things You Can Do To Better Build Your Personal Brand with Lori Harder
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden on the Influential Personal Brand. Welcome to another episode. So genuinely excited to have my friend Lori Harder on the show today. You guys are in for a super awesome special treat because Lori really is the epitome of someone who has taken her reputation and all of the success and all of the things that she’s accomplished and turned it into so many different things over the course of her career. So let me just tell you for a quick second why you need to stick around. Then I’m gonna formally introduce Lori if you don’t already know about her. And then we’re gonna hop into this. But here’s what I would tell you. If you are a person who is in any sort of transition and you’re trying to figure out how do I make a successful transition from one career to another, one industry to another, one company to another, this is the one to be a show that is very much going to help you.
AJV (01:02):
Or if you’re a person who is, let’s say you’re doing many things, but you’re trying to figure out how do you make them consistent and have a good through line so that everything feels like it’s connected, then this is an episode for you. Or if you’re trying to figure out what lane do you really want to be in, this is an episode that was truly built to serve the needs of those questions and for those of you who are going through this process. So with that said, I will now give you a formal introduction of the one and the Only Lori Harder, and then we’re gonna hop in and actually let her talk for a second. So quick interview or quick overview. If you don’t know Lori Lori has built three that is right, three separate seven figure businesses. She is the founder and CEO of a new product line, which we will talk a lot about the evolution of this process as we go through this.
AJV (02:02):
She’s also go a bestselling author of a Tribe called Bliss. She’s the host of the Earn Your Happy podcast, which is if you don’t listen to it, it is a must listen to podcast with more than 46 million downloads, which is incredible. She also is a co-host of another awesome podcast called Girlfriends and Business. She has a lot going on but she also has all this other really cool background information that you may not know. Like you may not know that she was a three time world champion in the fitness industry. She’s an 11 time fitness cover model. She was a gym owner. She’s a seven figure business owner through a direct sales network marketing company. And the list kind of goes on and on and on, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to have her on the show today is because she is someone who has been there, done that, seen the ups, seen the dams, and is still here to tell you all about it. It. So without further ado, Lori, welcome to the show.
LH (03:03):
Ah, I’m so excited to be here. And you guys, it’s been so much fun having you on my show too. So if you wanna like hear the reverse of this, you can go on on that near it.
AJV (03:24):
This is all of the amazing,
LH (03:25):
Hold on a minute.
AJV (03:26):
That’s that accumulates over the years. Yes,
LH (03:29):
Totally.
AJV (03:30):
But like truly like in all honesty, you have done so many amazing things and I bet a ton of our listeners know about you probably follow you, but then I bet there’s a fair share where this is their first introduction to you. And so just to help kinda give everyone a little bit of background, can you just tell us a little bit about how your career started and how you got to where you are now?
LH (03:55):
Yes. I’m gonna give you a brief overview. So I’m gonna skim through some things, but the reason that I’m gonna go way back for a minute is just because I want everyone to know that no matter where you’re from, what your education level is, you truly can create any life that you want. And my story will show that and, and prove that I’m from a really small town in upper Michigan. Like most people don’t even know Michigan has an upper part. Like truly they’re like, it’s lower Michigan, Detroit. No, there is something way up in the woods that is more Canada than Canada is
LH (04:44):
It made what I saw in the world as possible. Very small. It made you know what I thought people were capable of doing very, very small. And that’s not to say it negative, it’s to show you the picture of I didn’t really get to exist outside of this circle. So a lot of the work that I have done now and out in the world and what my book is based on and why I’m so passionate about having these conversations on podcasts is because we need to see what is possible through other people and hear these stories. So doing that when I was 18 years old, I decided to leave, which meant I had a choice. And I believe that you guys all have this. You’re, you’re facing a really tough choice like this right now where you’re going to leave everyone and everything behind.
LH (05:30):
And some of you don’t have to leave things behind. But some of you may have to make the choice to leave things behind and build a future that is completely built in the uncertain and in the risk with new people that you have never met in your entire life. And this obviously isn’t done overnight, but this is what majority of the things that I have done is based on is because I think that everyone who is in a pivot and in a transition is in that moment that I was in when I was 18, choosing, do I choose this very uncertain future or do I go back and stay in my very like contingent based happiness or contingent based group and love? Or do I go and try to figure out what this call is on my heart and why in the heck I’m waking up every single night and why I have low key anxiety 24 7.
LH (06:21):
And this is the place where I just started building everything else. It was like the, the, the first, I think the first big awakening and just breakthrough for me was realizing when I, when I had started working out, I come from a family that dealt with a lot of anxiety. Most of my family was all on some sort of medication or depression medication or anxiety medication. And they were all overweight. And the first big moment for me was when I was in middle school, I went and stayed with a family because our congregations were far away from each other. They were like two hours. So I ended up staying with the family for a week. And first I wanna just say I love my family more than anything. You could still love them and you can also want to be different.
LH (07:07):
So
LH (07:49):
I went home, I lost five pounds. Like I literally had been dieting since I was eight years old. Ended up losing five pounds in this one week that I was there. Cause we were so active and we ate really healthy. What did this do for me being in that environment without even trying made me or, or turned me into something else? Right? I actually got a physical result. I had a mental result. I felt really good and I couldn’t unsee it. And that was the moment for me where I really started getting into fitness and saying, okay, I want to help people transform because fitness has transformed my life so much. So I, I pretty much spent the first from probably 20 to 30 was really that dedication to like that fitness portion of my life in transforming people.
AJV (08:35):
Can I pause right there for just one second? Yes. Cause you said something that I think is so impactful and maybe it’s just hitting me personally right now because one of my childhood best friends right now is in recovery and she’s actually in a program right now. And one of the things that they told her her in this inpatient program is, you know, there are three changes that you have to make if you wanna see real change. Mm. You have to change people, places and things. Oh. And what you just said right there is a really important thing about you said is like your environment actually can have a, a physical manifestation in your life. And it’s like, I think it’s really amazing of going, nothing else changed for you other than being in a new environment. And because you acclimated to that new environment, other things started happening.
AJV (09:26):
A lot can happen in a really good way and in a really bad way. So I’m just kind of curious, it’s like, did, did you notice that in the moment of going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like this is so different. And then did you notice like the environment made a change? And I’m just kind of curious for everyone who is out there who is, you know, kind of sitting there going, I don’t really love where I am or what I’m doing, or, or they suffer from comparison for whatever reason we all do it. Like what kind of impacts have you seen around that environmental change?
LH (10:02):
I, so I think environment is everything. I think your environment is stronger than any willpower you can create on your own in that prior environment that you’re in. So when I go to make a change or a pivot, this is a huge part of pivoting. When I go to make a change or a pivot, I simultaneously look at what I will have to do, like what kind of habits I will have to do, but what kind of environment I will now have to either buy into, put myself in, or even be looking at, right? Cuz it’s, it’s all of the input. It’s, it’s what we’re reading, it’s what we are looking at and consuming on social media. It’s what conversations we’re having. Mm-Hmm.
LH (10:55):
So whenever I’ve done anything, let’s say when I went from fitness to personal development, I went from going to all the fitness events, reading all the fitness magazines, looking up to all the fitness people. My vision board was full of fitness things and fitness goals to just like that, looking at who is helping people write books, who is authors, who’s an author that has a podcast who is in the space of like writing books that help people write books. I hired a coach for writing books and overnight I flipped everything and set myself up in an environment where it would support me moving forward on the goal of writing a book. And I think that that was a big reason why number one, I was able to like go from you guys. I did not graduate high school. That’s another thing I wanted to share. Went from like an eighth grade reading level to writing a book because I had coaches and had to understand how to do it. And I put so much specific time into that thing. And so I think environment is literally everything.
AJV (11:55):
I think that is like, this is gonna be one of those quotes that I pull out and post all over social media that is so good. It’s like your environment is often stronger than your own willpower. Mm-Hmm.
LH (13:03):
Yeah. It’s easy to forget when you’re with
AJV (13:04):
Me. All these things. I think this is so awesome. I love this. So on this conversation, you went from really having this incredible fitness career to being a cover model, to owning a gym, to then having, you know, this seven figure very successful, which you still have you know, business and network marketing to then transitioning from this that kind of world to this whole new world of more like information products with courses and books and events and a podcast. Tell me how on God’s green earth did you make these transitions successfully? Because I think that’s where a lot of people struggle. It’s like they’ve been known for this one thing for forever and now they’re trying to do this life pivot and they kind of get stuck with, well, people aren’t gonna know me for this, I’m not known as this. And then they just kind of give up. Mm. How did you do that successfully?
LH (14:05):
I don’t know if I figured this out in the beginning or if this was, you know, I think some of the things we do were just kind of, we don’t even realize we’re following a bit of like desire and intuition. But I, I not long down the path started to realize that if you know how to attract people to you as like a, whether that’s a personal brand or whether you are a CEO or founder of something, if you understand how to attract people to you, you can almost funnel them into anything, in my personal opinion. So what do I mean by that? I mean that even if right now I didn’t have any of those things and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, do, I would just start talking about the things that I was interested in right now.
LH (14:56):
Like maybe I’m like, maybe I wanna start a products company or maybe I wanna start like a skincare line, or maybe I wanna start a wine brand. What I would start doing is talking about wanting to start those things and like the, the journey of what I’m feeling going through it and maybe the journey of how am I setting up my environment, like what we just talked about. And I would be consistent with it because, and, and this is truly what I did. I, I didn’t necessarily always know what I was rolling into, but I always shared the journey of what, where I was at and what I was feeling and what I was thinking consistently every single day. And I think there’s so many people out there that I think it’s everyone, right? We all are on this journey of, of desiring to evolve.
LH (15:39):
And so I think if that is the topic of desiring to evolve and how are you doing it and what does it look like and what are you doing that’s different and what is, you know, what is this journey? Who did you have to maybe leave behind? What was that feeling? All of a sudden I realized I had this audience who was pretty tuned into what I had to say. Mm-Hmm.
LH (16:23):
So whether the product is a book or whether the product is an actual physical product, that company is serving something that I, I feel needs to be served or a need that I see or that I have. And it’s, it’s based off of my personal core values. So I don’t become, I don’t have to become a different person as I pivot into different businesses, I literally get to show up fully me in every single business because it is literally based off of my core values and, and my desires and, and a need at one time. So it’s not hard for me to talk about any of the products that I’ve ever created, whether it’s a e-course or whether it’s a book or whether it’s a physical product because I base all of these things off of things that I either was and lessons I’ve learned.
LH (17:10):
So it’s very easy for me to obviously talk to my past self and talk you through you know, what I went through or it’s very easy for me to be like, this is what I needed and here’s what it does for me. And it’s a part of my life every day so it doesn’t feel unnatural. Where sometimes I know we can maybe be thinking of products or something like that, that you’re like, oh well that’s making money. Maybe I should do that. And then it feels very awkward. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (17:45):
Yeah. I tell you what, that, that is so vitally important. Cause I think a lot of people make their decisions about what businesses or what products or services to get into based on some sort of market analysis or market research. And you’re saying no, it’s the opposite of what are my core values and how do I exhibit those into products or services that I think will serve the people who need ’em because I needed them. And if I did, then so do others. And I think that’s a really strong way, which quite honestly is probably going to be the answer to my next question,
LH (18:19):
AJV (18:19):
Which is how have you kept everything consistent mm-hmm.
LH (18:41):
Yes. I I, so I love this question though, taking it to like the, the second level of this is, you know, what you can do, especially as you pivot, there is always a gift in what you just did. Even if, even if what you just got done with, or maybe you were working a corporate job that you feel like you’re like, ah, I wasted two years of my life or five years of my life. Absolutely not. There are so many gifts that that past thing has given you that you are going to get to integrate into this new thing of yours. I was just thinking about how my past of doing e-courses and meditations and speaking in public and learning to create a talk is gonna help me so much with getting this new product out because I am going to get the product out through events.
LH (19:26):
And if I hadn’t, you know, spoken publicly, if I hadn’t felt like I can just get up in, in front of a crowd now and connect with them on a very human level then I wouldn’t have this great modality and these great ideas around, okay, we’re gonna do events, we’re gonna do some challenges that maybe we include like, you know, some daily rituals and maybe a meditation. Like these are all things that are coming from my past that are now making me think in the grand scheme of honestly, I’m thinking about how do we create community? Because if you can create, you already have a community essentially. If you’re creating your own personal brand, I just want to now take the community I have, insert a product and create even more community around it. So essentially I’m gonna continue being me and building community and also say, this is one of the things I’m obsessed with that I use every single day.
LH (20:16):
And this is what our community does. Or, you know, choose it if you like it. And that’s been, I think that that has been such a huge realization for me is, is if you can build that community, it’s kind of like, what, what does the community need? What are they doing? What are the healthy rituals? What are the, what are the habits of this community? How, how do you, how do you want to connect them to each other? Cuz that’s next level community, right? Like, that’ll really take your community deeper. And it’s just kind of of like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat that same idea.
AJV (20:50):
You know, what’s interesting is that even as I sit here thinking through all of the things that you’ve done through your career that I can already just hearing you talk, pull out as an outsider looking in, what are some of the through lines that I see, which I think is really fascinating that I didn’t correlate to before, but now hearing you talk about some of your core values and it’s just things that you believe in. It’s like health is a theme through every single thing that you do. Happiness, community, like those are themes through every single thing that you do. And I, so I’m curious, it’s, was that intentional? Like, did you like kind of like outline those before and was that a very strategic decision or did it just evolve and happen naturally?
LH (21:35):
You know, I think I really realized the power of community when I had started the Bliss Project and also when I had started writing that book, because simultaneously while I was doing those things, I was in search. I had, I had told you guys at the beginning of this podcast and aj you know, like I was looking for my own community because I had started kind of the, the fitness thing is a very solo journey. Like, you’re, you’re pretty, you have to be pretty self consumed to get to that point and stay at that point with your body. You, you, you kind of have to be pretty selfish. It’s, it’s actually, it’s actually fairly hard to be social because you really need to control, especially when you’re competing all the time, you really unfortunately need to control what’s going in your mouth 24 7.
LH (22:19):
And it can get really tough if you’re very social. So when I got out of that, and that’s a whole other thing that I had to like, figure out how to like recalibrate and be what does normal look like? What is health? What does normal healthy look like? And I, those words aren’t even the right words to be using. It’s just trying to figure out what, what works for me, what, what is like truly a baseline that feels really good. And so from there I was like so freaking lonely. Like I had started, you know, even, even my when I started the membership, I had a fitness membership, you guys, and, and that was a huge focus for me. That was one of the first things that I really outside of network marketing also started making money with was, it was around the same time I had launched a fitness membership and, and we would do challenges where they were, they started as 30 day challenges, then they went to 14, then we realized people had the attention span that only seven days would work
AJV (23:17):
Try and error.
LH (23:18):
Yes. And even from that, you know, I launched those challenges. We, we were trying to get those right for three years. So I didn’t just throw it out and say, oh, that one didn’t work good. Like, we took the same challenge and we kept launching it and we launched it four times a year. And that’s how it became a really great challenge. So I just want you to like, oh my god, three years to even get like one of those things, right? And so around that, yes, I had, I had a bit of a team, but we were all, all kind of working solo and I was really lonely. And I just, I did not, I didn’t have support around like, I dunno, like when things would go wrong in my business. Like I had my husband, but we can’t count on one person to be everything for us.
LH (24:01):
And we did, we weren’t speaking the same language business wise yet. It just wasn’t a good thing. When I would go to him, like with any stresses or what I should, our creation process was very different. So this was when I actually went to a Jack Canfield event. I was like, I need help. I, I think I wanna start doing other things, but I also need to tribe like, so I had enrolled in a Jack Canfield event. I was also becoming interested in personal development at this time because I realized that in fitness I couldn’t get them to transform if I couldn’t change their mindset. So I wanted to go and learn from people who knew how to do that and, and add it to my program. So this all was happening at once. It was like, okay, this is gonna fix a lot of things for me.
LH (24:45):
That was my hope anyway. And it did. But I ended up going, and simultaneously while I was doing this, he was talking about masterminds and I was like, what’s a mastermind? And he was talking about how he gets together with a group of friends. He did it like weekly or biweekly. And this was this group that would support each other through business and even life. And it was very, it was very planned out. And to me right away I was like, okay, that doesn’t feel like it’s gonna take away from my life. You know, according to like prior experiences where maybe I would try to get something together and the people just weren’t there yet and I was trying to drag them with me and they didn’t wanna go where I was going. I was like, okay, find people who wanna go where you’re going.
LH (25:22):
Create a touch base where you are accountable to them every single week. It did not go, actually we did every other week for one hour, created this with another fitness woman and then another woman that she knew. So a total stranger and then another woman that I had just met. But we all had goals that were similar. We all wanted to grow our business. And that is when I just realized the power of connecting with people. Our businesses all accelerated so fast by doing this. And, and here’s the thing is like, I was serious, so I wanted to create accountability and so did they, like when we first got on our first call, it was like, how serious are we taking this? And it was like, well, I, if you don’t show up, like without an excuse or if you have to travel, like you’re out.
LH (26:06):
Like if you don’t show up or if we go, if you continue to go over or if you come here with a problem but you’re not into it you know, if you, if you’re not willing to find a solution, that’s not why we’re here and we just can’t move forward with you, we’ll find someone else. And so this was like an expectation from the beginning. Well that scared the hell outta me. I was like, oh my God, this is serious. But my vision was so much bigger than my fear because I would pay attention to it daily at this point. I was, I was going on walks or runs or working out and I would specifically choose to visualize what I wanted every single day during those moments of movement. And so my vision was, was just, even, even if it was just 1% bigger than my fear, I kept it bigger than my fear.
LH (26:46):
So really started showing up to that. And that taught me so much about consistency, accountability, who you are around putting it out there, talking through your fears. Like my comeback rate is so much faster when I’m in these groups because it, where where maybe I would be, let’s say somebody tells me like when I was trying to get a a a book deal, right? And they tell me this is real. Your book sucks. Your writing is basic. This idea’s been done a million times. No. Like, no one will buy your book. Okay, well instead of me being like, my book sucks, I shouldn’t put this out there, I’ve already been turned down 20 times, that is a real number. Instead, I got on this call that week with those women and they said to me, are you kidding? Like, this book is amazing. You’re incredible. You’re a great writer. That’s just some, you know, jerk that you literally need to get over and we’re gonna make a plan to get out there again right away. Who’s your next call next day? Get on another call lit. Literally that week because I went right back into it and they made me feel so much better. I got a six figure book deal that week, literally same week where I would’ve not first time author. I would’ve not, I think I would’ve just like walled and given up.
AJV (28:04):
That’s so important because you said three things there that I just like, this is a very big deal. And the first of them comes back as something you already talked about is your environment. Mm-Hmm.
LH (29:00):
Wow.
AJV (29:01):
Four times more likely. And the main reason is they don’t share their failures.
LH (29:08):
Oh
AJV (29:08):
Wow. They don’t share their failures. And so I think the environment is huge. You said the community is huge, but then the third thing is just literally having a support system. Yes. Having people who believe in you is if frigging big deal. Mm-Hmm.
LH (29:24):
AJV (29:26):
Was help you up.
LH (29:27):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:22):
Think this is like a really big deal. Cause I think about all of the people who are in our community at Brand Builders group and I just know that so many of them suffer from, well I have been doing this for like 10 months.
AJV (30:39):
Yeah. And yes. And it’s like, Daisy even hear you say that you were doing the exact same challenge for three years of just going, okay, well that didn’t work. Let’s let’s launch it this way. Okay. That didn’t work. Or show it again. It’s like you were doing it four times a year for three years, 12 times for over three years to go, okay, I think we finally have a formula that works. Mm-Hmm.
LH (31:11):
Yeah.
AJV (31:11):
We were basically stalking these people at this point, but it took two years. We had two years of rejection when we were getting our first book deal. And it’s like people, it takes time. And I love what you said. It’s like, you know, I, again, I wrote this down too. This is gonna show up all over social media in some way so that there’s always a gift in what you just did. Mm. There’s always a gift in what you just did. And it’s like in a huge part is that bounce back factor, that ability to come back and go, okay, well that didn’t work. What’s next? But we gotta have perspective of this. This is a, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. And it takes time and trial and error and a whole bunch of perseverance. And it’s a whole lot easier to do if you’ve got a whole bunch of people coming along with you on the sidelines.
LH (32:00):
Oh my god. You know what I think of all the time that is, is so crazy because we all watch it every year, is is football, like majority of people like athletics, basketball, golf, like, so I think the reason, I mean, the reason that athletes can number one, get so good and also just like they’re resilient is because they have a team and also they don’t have an expectation around if they fail, they don’t get to quit. There is no quit. Like there’s another game
AJV (33:30):
I think of that,
LH (33:31):
Oh my gosh. With just athletes, they have an expectation of, okay, get back in the game. Like if they suck so bad, like I think of those people who are, who are throwing the, what is it? The, the the free throw or the kickers, right? They don’t get to be like, oh, I sucked and go cry on the sidelines. Even if they just lost something for their whole team or, you know, it was a huge turning. They could have been a huge turning point for their team. They are great and athletes are great because they don’t dwell on the past. They do not dwell on what happened. Their next thought is what’s next? Okay, what can I do next? And I’ve just adopted that. I’ve stopped being willing to look back unless it’s to say, what could I do better? And then I say, what’s next?
AJV (34:17):
That is so good. And that is also so representative in your trajectory through your life and your career of this evolution of all the things that you’ve kind of done. So I wanna kind of pivot just a little bit right now and talk tactically about some of the things that you’ve done. And so I’ve got a few questions outlined that I know are gonna be really important to our audience. So here’s the first one. Keys through your eyes, through your opinion, I don’t care what anyone else says, just through Lori’s eyes, what are the keys to creating courses that both create real value but also generate real revenue?
LH (34:55):
Mm. Well, a few things that I’ve learned is that a good course is only good if people complete it.
AJV (35:03):
LH (35:05):
And a lot of the courses that I created in the beginning I learned really quick and relaunched them. I like segmented them because I came out with like 12 modules, then quickly segmented them to six, like took it down and chunked them up. And then even there we started selling even like individual things like individual modules. So with that said, you know, we can think that we’re perfecting it by adding more, but I think we’re in an era of less is more. And to make the number one thing I want people to feel when they go into a course is accomplished. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (36:16):
They’re true.
LH (36:17):
Because those work, they just do show up, do the work, make yourself feel better, work out, eat well, repeat, do it again,
AJV (36:28):
It’s so true.
LH (36:30):
And so yeah,
AJV (36:31):
Go ahead. That point of less is more. It’s like my number one complaint with like, pretty much every single course that I purchase is I get in and I’m like, I don’t have time for this right now. Totally. Cause I get in and I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s 14 modules I I don’t even care about. If they’re one minute each, I can’t even get that far. I’m like, huh. Cause I wanna be able to like do an entire course in one sitting.
LH (36:54):
Yep.
AJV (36:54):
That’s how I roll. And so if it’s, if I can’t do it, I’m like, oh, now I have to schedule it. And then that just never happens. So I love about the concept of less is more. I would pay more money to get the information in a more consolidated version. And that’s what I hear you saying.
LH (37:09):
Totally. And people do pay that for different things, right? Like how many I was just thinking about the book or the, the audibles that take books and they chunk them down and you pay for essentially the cliff notes of the books. And I was like, see, I will buy more of those, spend more money so that you can just tell me what the book’s gonna tell me right away.
AJV (37:34):
Well it’s a, it’s a whole thing. Like we talk about this all the time when we talk about the keynote business and you know, we’ve been in the keynote business for a really long time and I remember earlier in our career, I remember so many people saying, you charge that for an hour. And the answer is no. You get 15 years of consolidation and experience in trial and error and knowledge and research and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent. You get all of that in an hour. That’s what you’re getting. It’s not an hour rate. It’s no, you’re getting 20 years of stuff primed into an hour. So you don’t have to go through all of that. That’s what you
LH (38:19):
Oh my gosh. Totally. Like literally it was just in a mastermind that was four days long and lots of hours for me to come back with three things that I’ve given to people and they’re like, shut up. This blew my mind. And I’m like, you’re welcome for sitting in there for four hours and traveling and spending all that money.
AJV (38:36):
So glad it cost you, cost you five.
LH (38:38):
Yes. Could now could you go and bring something back to me?
AJV (38:41):
LH (39:00):
Mm-Hmm.
LH (39:43):
Like just sit for a day and say, what are three key things that have changed my life on this journey? And from those key things, you can literally tell a story for each one, each. So break ’em down. You have three things in front of you. Tell a story for each one. Extract the lesson, have them maybe do some writing around it. Like it’s that simple. Like that is what people need is just that moment of like, oh, if I did this, this would really change the game for me and move the needle. How can I implement it? How can I integrate it? And when
AJV (40:16):
Yeah. You know, it’s that whole concept of save the best for first
AJV (40:22):
LH (41:13):
Yeah. I love that you even shared that as I’m like thinking about just different things in the future. I’m like, gosh, why don’t, I mean that’s such a great even marketing idea to be like, look, our conference is one day and we’re just gonna have more of them, or whatever that looks like because we want you to take something from this day and go integrate it like that. Same with courses that we just talked about. Yeah. How can you think of it in a, a different way of like how your people learn best or what do they need most to do? Like is it just the one thing and then go integrate it? Like how could you build it so that it works better for them?
AJV (41:44):
I mean, every, every audience, every community is different, but mm-hmm.
LH (41:56):
That’s
AJV (41:56):
So good. It’s like 30% of the time is learning, 70% of the time is doing. And we do it with you because selfishly that’s how we do it. It’s like that’s, I learn we need, that’s how we learn. And it’s like we can’t be the only ones go home at the end of a a mastermind event going, oh, when am I gonna have time to even look at these notes? Versus no, we’re gonna do those notes in session together. So I love that Less is more help ’em feel accomplished quickly. Give ’em the best goods right up front. Change their life in the first hour. That’s amazing. So, okay. I’m gonna, I’m just like, I’m gonna go rapid fire. I love it. I don’t wanna miss any of these. Ok so next one. You know, I’m sure this is going to be such an easy answer, but how do you get 46 million downloads on your podcast?
LH (42:44):
Oh God. How
AJV (42:45):
Do you do this?
LH (42:46):
You know what, I think it was consistency, like consistently showing up and I talk about it everywhere I go. So at every speaking thing I’ve ever done, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it at everything or weaved in like, you know, I’ve had this many interviews and this is what it’s taught me. I talk about it on social media every day. I you know, started a a a text list where I’ll also text you a reminder like, listen to this episode if you’re feeling this way. In the beginning I definitely feel like it was important to do a good launch. And that’s what I focused on. So, you know, if you’re thinking of launching a podcast, I think having a good launch strategy strategy, and I’ll share just a tiny, a couple tiny things around that. If you can speak anywhere when you’re launching, that would be awesome.
LH (43:36):
Or if you can have an event, because I think one of the main things that got me onto new and noteworthy is I was holding a Bliss Project event and I didn’t even really realize what I had done in a, in a good way. So take this and plan it better than I did. But I, I had that event and it had like four to 500 women at it. And what I did is I literally asked them, cause I launched the podcast that week, knowing the event was there, but I said, can you take out your phones and subscribe and leave a review now? And I think all of those going at once, you know, helped it stay up in new and noteworthy. And then I also continued to ask through the event, I’m like, Hey, you know, I spent all this time in front of this microphone because I wanna give you like the, the best stuff.
LH (44:18):
It’s truly like the, the things that have changed my life. If it changes your life or if you like it, would you share it? Would you just remember to share it? And on the podcast, I ask on just about every episode share this with someone. Like you get now to be, even if you’re not the person giving me advice, like you get, like when I share podcasts, I get to be the hero. And I say that like, I’m the hero. I just shared this awesome information. Be the hero. Share this information. Would you share this? Would you rate and review this? People will not do what they’re not asked to do. So I consistently, specifically ask for what I want on every single podcast. You guys am almost a thousand episodes in, that’s over a thousand asks. So it’s, it’s definitely going to help spread obviously when you do that
AJV (45:09):
Well. Yeah, it’s like if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
LH (45:13):
Yes. Ask so
AJV (45:15):
Good. That’s just, I mean, simple, but again, the fundamentals work.
LH (45:21):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:22):
LH (45:55):
Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So for me it was really what is the next challenge? And I felt like I had really done. So I was at that place where that realization where I did not, I did not dream past where I was like, I, I became the author, the the speaker. I had done the things and I was like, I never let myself dream outside of this. This was the cap. And I hit that place in like 2018 and I was like, I don’t think I wanna write another book right now. That was a really long journey. And I, I was feeling, you know, as you can tell from my journey, I’m a bit of a squirrel brain. So I was like, I need, I wanted a new challenge and I was craving a challenge that would force me to become a different person in order to fulfill it.
LH (46:45):
And I also was having a lot of conversations with my husband and started going to dinner with Chris and his friends. And I was noticing this stark difference in conversations. I was so lit up. Not that I wasn’t lit up with my friends, but at the, the place that I was, we were kind of having the same conversations about how do we get our courses out? How do we, you know, all of those, which is amazing, but I, I was having them and my brain likes new things often this know that thy self, right? And so I was going to dinner with my husband and they were having conversations about investing in companies, investing in each other’s companies how to really start pulling in lots of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not some of them talking about billions. And this was blowing my mind.
LH (47:32):
I was just like, they’re having this like a normal conversation. Like it because people had exited for 300 million and this guy for 500 million. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. My girlfriends are not having this conversation right now. They’re burnt out and they’re trying to figure out how to launch their next course, which is amazing. But also, what if this was an opportunity for them because they had already built their brands. I was sitting here thinking, okay, these women could, like, immediately I was thinking of all the ways they could implement and help grow these things. Cause I’m like, they have the audiences and you guys are looking for the audiences. Yeah. So we were just missing how to raise money, how to invest in each other, how to start a company. And so I was starting to feel this really big call. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, God, not me.
LH (48:15):
No, why. But I was feeling it like, oh, it’s gonna be you who’s gonna bring this back to your friends? And I was like, oh, crap. So I just literally got that soul hit and it was like, oh gosh, I am on this journey. Learned how to raise money, started learning about physical products. So, so similar, yet so different. So the really cool thing about a personal brand is that if you can start learning about physical products, you have so much of the equation already done that a lot of people who might be good at physical products don’t necessarily know how to do yet. So if these two worlds could collide, it’d be like, it’s mind blowing, right? Because you have both Hals of what you need. You need the marketing, which is like very much of what you’re learning in a personal brand is like how to market yourself.
LH (49:06):
All you’re doing is you’re taking marketing yourself and you’re gonna now market a product that technically is you. If you build it the way that I told you throughout your core values, it’s just something that you do and use, right? So it’s kind of, it’s kind of the same thing. And now people are really buying the core values and the founder and all of those things behind the products, which I think is really cool. So things that you want to know about building a product, find somebody who has done what you have done before. Do not go into this just Googling. Like you have to start by Googling, but then you need to sit down with as many people as you can and say, what do I need to know? What do I need to look out for? I would say start with a product that feels really natural to you.
LH (49:50):
Like a, a need that you see, or that you, you can see the world needing out there. Like a white space. Look for what the differentiator is. Why, why is it different from all of the other products out there? Why is it better? Why are you the person and that your team who can market it the best? I would stay away from your first products for anything that has a lot of legal tape around it. Anything that is really regulated, you, you’re gonna spend this is no joke. You will spend 10 times more on legal fees. There’ll be a lot more things that you cannot do when you are marketing online, when you’re marketing in retail. So it really stops a lot of the organic things that you can do, especially if you have already built a brand. It, it’ll even kind of stop you from being able to use what you already have.
LH (50:38):
So with that said, I would stay away from things that have a lot of like red tape or regulations. Okay. So finding that thing that maybe, and I would focus on one, I would focus on one product so that all of that money in r and d and research and all of the copywriting and everything, you can put all of your money behind that one message and you can tweak that
LH (51:23):
So it’s a lot of energy and it’s a much bigger team. So I would say start with one thing. Start with something that you can see needs to be improved out in the marketplace. And from there, honestly it’s, I don’t wanna say it’s easy, but you just have to have meetings with formulators co packers and you’ll learn all of these things along the way. Cause it’ll be how to make a lipstick and market it out to the world or put it on retail. You’ll get all of your answers, I promise you. And then from there, you’ll wanna talk to people and research people who have done it.
AJV (51:53):
Oh, those are so good. And I, I love what you said too about just avoid any sort of thing that has lots of legal tape because you’ll spend all of your investment money voyers.
LH (52:04):
Yes.
AJV (52:04):
So avoiding those sorts of things, it’s just an easier, easier, not easy, easier mm-hmm.
AJV (52:23):
Before I ask you this last question. For all of you who are listening, I as before we started the recording, I said, Hey, where do you want me to send people who wanna connect with you? Because if you have listened to this interview and your mind is not blown with the amount of information that you have gotten, then you need to go back and listen again. We’re clearly spaced out. Like there is so much richness, there is so much gold in this interview. You don’t even know what you’re listening to because I, I just know how much time, money, resources, education that you have gone through to be able to quickly spit out some of these things that we all get on a free podcast. And so if you want more of that, which I think you do, I think you should probably tune into this. Lori has a really cool daily text that if you just text the word daily to this number, which is 3 1 0 4 9 6 8 3 6 3. So again, text the word daily to 3 1 0 4 9 6 8 3 6 3. Now don’t worry, I will also put that in the show notes. You can grab that. But you are gonna get a daily text from her. So Lori, tell ’em really quickly what this is all about.
LH (53:48):
Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for sharing this. I, this is actually the spot where I create all content from. So you kind of get like the real me sitting down and talking to like a best friend. And these are the conversations or the, the, the quotes or the nuggets that I’m getting from masterminds or things that are really pushing me forward. Or maybe there’s a block and then there’s a thought around the block that helps push it forward. These are some, you know, different things that Chris and I do to really like, keep our, our vision in front of us. These are different affirmations that are rocking my world. These are just like, if I was your bestie and I was sending you like cheerleader texts every single day, like truly from my heart and from here, that is where I, because I sit and I write from my heart, truly. Like, okay, if this was my best friend, what would I be sending her right now? And from there, that’s where I kind of create all other content. So you get the first videos, you get the first texts, all of those things. So I will only spam you with things that will change your life.
AJV (54:52):
LH (55:27):
Oh God. Go, go to the scarier places first. Like at, go to the, do whatever you can to knock down the doors of the people who have done it and ask the go learn from them and ask them questions. Like join their stuff. Ask for one on one time. Like they will, everything that we have said on here, they will accelerate your journey. They will save you money. They will save you heartache. Make sure they’ve done what you wanna do.
AJV (56:18):
Oh my gosh, this is such a good reminder. I says, don’t do it alone. Mm-Hmm.
LH (56:46):
I gotta live. I gotta live there too. I want to.
AJV (56:50):
Y’all, this has been so good and I’m a quick learner. I take advice. Well, so if you got value from this podcast, please share it. Please, please go like it, leave a review, please share it with someone that you think it’s going to be helpful for. Be the hero, get this content out in the world. So and then go do the same, right. Quick learner. Mm-Hmm.
LH (57:31):
Bye.
Ep 337: How to Convert Your Speaking Business into Lifelong Clients with Matt Mayberry | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all, welcome to the recap episode on my conversation with the lovely Matt Mayberry. I just love my conversations with him. He’s so humble and he’s so helpful. I thought this was a great conversation, and so I’ve broken it down to my three main takeaways and I say three, but they’re kind of like all jumbled into like one main takeaway. So here’s like this kind of like overarching theme that I got from a conversation with Matt. And I don’t know why I had this like interesting aha moment during this conversation. But I loved what he said when he said that his definition of culture is just behavior at scale. And it got me thinking that for a company, we talk a ton about culture, but for an individual, the same goes for reputation. And then I started thinking about this concept of a reputation is to an individual, what culture is to accompany, right?
AJV (02:05):
Because both of the things are, what do you want people to feel or to think when they experience you? Right? So we’ve all been a part of different customer service experiences where you’re like, man, like that was amazing. We’re like, man, how are you even business? Right? How, how do you operate like this? And you know, it’s like, I’m not gonna say that people haven’t said that about us. Like we’re not perfect, but there is a culture in the way that people treat each other treat leadership, leadership, treats, leadership, leadership treats employees, how we treat our clients that the interactions like that’s a feeling, right? Those aren’t words on a page or pictures that it’s a, it’s a feeling I I’ve walked into offices before buildings before where it’s like, you could feel the culture that was there, right. Walking into a no offense, a holiday in express versus walking into a Rosewood property has a very different feeling and culture that emanates.
AJV (03:10):
And I don’t just mean due to the element of how nice things are, but it’s, it’s a feeling, right? You get the same thing. If you’re on the phone with somebody like the energy just emanates from them, the same thing happens with you and your reputation, your personal brand, as it does with a company. The difference is as an individual, my reputation, my personal brand is about me and for a company. It’s the culture, right? What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create this feeling. And this experience that people go through as a part of being a part of this company as a client or as a, a team member, but as a, an individual, a personal brand, we do the same thing and it has to be curated and it has to have intention. And there are countless countless books, classes, seminar coaches, consultant, speakers that could go on and on and on about how to create company culture.
AJV (04:16):
But where are the books, classes, coaches, seminars, consultant, speakers, about how to create your reputation, right? And that’s what we do at brand builders group. That’s what we’re passionate about. That’s what our uniqueness is. We lived in corporate consulting for 15 years, working with leaders about company culture and employees in retention and performance. And now we work with individuals about how do you do the same thing for yourself, which is your reputation, right? And the intentional creation of your reputation is your personal brand, right? So your personal brand is to an individual, what company culture is to an organization. And that’s how I really want you to think about this. If we go, it’s like, man, as, as, as leaders, we spend tons of time talking about culture and core values. Are we spending the same amount of time of going, what do I want to be known for who do I want to be known by?
AJV (05:22):
And then how do I become known for those things by those people that is personal branding and it needs, and it requires the same amount of focus and intention as it does to create a culture within an organization. Right? And I just, I just loved that just concept and a parallel of reputation and personal branding is to an individual is what company culture is to an organization. So it’s kind of like the broad overarching takeaway from me and that and then I, I wrote this down and I literally was like, man, that’s really important of just going your culture. Isn’t your core values, these aren’t words and definitions on a website or a flyer that you hand held a new, higher onboarding. But a culture are the daily behaviors that happen when the leader isn’t around. And so if you are a leader, right, and when I say a leader, I mean a parent, I mean a volunteer, I mean an employee, an employer, an entrepreneur, I mean anyone like what are the behaviors that need to happen on a daily basis to create the culture that you want?
AJV (06:49):
And then for an individual, what are the daily behaviors that need to happen for you to establish the reputation that you want? Have you thought about that? And if not, this is the time to do that. Like literally pause this recap right now, give yourself five minutes and go, what is the reputation I wanna have? What do I want people to think of when they think of me? And in order for that to happen, what are the three to five behaviors that I have to display on a daily basis to create that consistency. So that people associate me with what I want to be associated with and then do the same thing for your company. It’s like, what are the behaviors that need to happen with your executives, with your leaders, with your managers, with your employees in order for this culture to be curated and lived out on a daily basis, culture and reputation are the end result of daily behaviors.
AJV (08:02):
And we spend a lot of time talking about end results, and we need to talk about what are the daily behaviors that have to happen consistently to give us that end result. And then the last thing that I wrote down and I think again, just paying attention to all the things that I need to do as a leader, as an entrepreneur. But also
AJV (09:26):
So what’s your story and how are you using that to build your company culture, to build your personal reputation, to build your personal brand. What’s that story that what’s that defining story of your life that it’s like, this is a piece of what made me and here’s what I learned from it. And here’s what you, stranger friend, family member can learn from this. This is how you can apply something that I’ve learned from something that I went through and actually take it and apply it to your own life. Because here’s what I know at the end of the day. If you give me a whole bunch of words and acronyms and steps, I might retain some of it. But if you tell me a story how remember most of it. So what’s that story that makes you so unique that it sets you apart. So again, I would encourage you to pause right now, don’t put this on your to-do list.
AJV (10:25):
Don’t set a time to do it a month from now, which will never happen right now. Give yourself permission to take three to five minutes and just go, what are the stories that have shaped me? What are the stories that other people can relate to that? By sharing this piece of my story would help someone else that there’s a lesson to be learned from my employees, from my audience, from my clients, from my family. But what is this story that makes you, you y’all such a good interview. Go listen to it, take the time. Do these two quick exercises. I promise you, I took the time before doing this and I did it for myself. It makes a difference, but you’ve gotta have the intention before you actually create the plan. So take the time, create that intention and then go make the plan. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 336: How to Convert Your Speaking Business into Lifelong Clients with Matt Mayberry
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming, uh, at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:53):
Hey everybody, this is AJ Vaden. I am one of your co-host on the influential personal brand podcast. And I’m so excited about my guest today, because not only is he an amazing expert guest, he’s also a personal friend. And as someone who’s been helping me out a lot this year with some of my own goals, which maybe you’ll get to hear a little bit about in this interview, but before we get into it, I wanna tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this interview, right? So here are three things that you want to know that should entice you to wanna stick around and listen to what Matt Mayberry has to say. Number one, we’re gonna talk about how to use all the things that you’ve gone through in your life and how you can actually use those to help you leverage success and influence in whatever you’re doing right now.
AJV (01:45):
Now, I think this is really important because for most of us, there are things that we have gone through in our lives that we don’t actually talk about, but it’s those things that endear people to us. It’s those things that help us build trust, whether it’s with clients or employees or with friends and family. And by just simply embracing those things and sharing them, they not only help you build trust in the marketplace, but they actually help you build your business. So that’s number one. Uh, number two, you wanna stick around if you have any desire now or later in the future to write a book or write a second book, um, to speak consult, train, uh, right. For, uh, very, very well known publications. If any of those things are going, like, how’d you get into that? You wanna stick around for this interview and then last but not least if you or somebody who has gone through are going through or who inevitably will go through as serious life or, or career transition.
AJV (02:45):
And you’re wondering like, what do I do next? This is an interview that was literally curated for you. So that’s why you wanna sticker out. And we’re gonna cover all of that. I’m like 50 minutes. So it’s gonna be, be jampacked now without further. Anddo let me give you just a little bit of background on my very special guest, Mr. Matt Mayberry. So Matt is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker. He does leadership development. He speaks on culture change, organizational performance. He’s actually been named one of the top 30 leadership thought leaders in the world. Like that’s huge, not in America in the world. His insights have been on all of the big name brands, Forbes, Fox news business, insider NBC at ESPN. Let here learn a little bit about his background with that. Um, but more than that, like he works for huge global corporations like Phillips 66, Allstate, JP Morgan chase, uh, fifth, third bank, the FBI, like even the FBI is hiring this guy. So y’all like, give it up for Mr. Matt Mayberry. I am so excited to have you, Matt. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
MM (03:58):
Hey AJ, thank you so much for having me I’m really excited for today.
AJV (04:01):
Yeah. And so here’s, so here’s what I wanna start. Cause I know that, um, many people all around the world know who you are, but there might be many people in our audience who are getting to meet you for the very first time. And I know that even in this question, I’m going to learn things about you that I did not know before this call today. So here’s where I’d like to start is just, how did you go from where you were? Right. And it’s like, I know I have the privilege of knowing that you had this opportunity to play in the NFL, right? But even prior to the NFL, you had a lot of life events leading you on a certain path and a trajectory then that got you to the NFL. Right? And I’d love for you to talk about the path to the NFL, but then you took a really stark pivot, a career change into what you’re doing now. And I’d love to know is just like, give us a little bit of your background. What got you to the NFL and then what happened there? And then tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now.
MM (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks AJ. You know, I, I think for me, my journey to help, you know, give some context and clarity for everybody. I, I think that anytime you hear, you know, former professional athlete or even former collegiate athlete at a very high level playing division one, you know, whether that’s football or basketball, I think the first assumption is that that individual was destined from a early age that they were gonna be a professional athlete in the next LeBron James, or, you know, Brian Och or Ray Lewis. For me, that wasn’t the case. I, I, I certainly was a gifted athlete, but really starting at the age of 14 years old, I started hanging around with the wrong crowd. Um, you know, I grew up in Dar Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago, which I live in downtown Chicago right now. But for me, my life starting really from that age on all the way up to I was, you know, really 17, 18 years old was a full blown out drug addict, two near death experiences.
MM (05:51):
My own mother, the woman that brought me into this world that I love so much has seen me do cocaine five times with her own two eyes, uh, broke my father’s ribs on multiple occasions when he would confront me about why I was coming home past curfew and, and really my best sport growing up, believe it or not was baseball. A lot of people thought that I would be drafted straight outta high school, skip college and go play in the major leagues. But I got kicked off my baseball team cuz I got caught stealing one of my teammates wallet it’s one afternoon while the rest of my team was out, you know, at practice I stayed behind because when everyone was getting dressed, I saw all this cash that was sitting in one of my teammates, wallets. And I, I stole that money cause I thought about all the drugs that I could buy and the rest is history.
MM (06:33):
I got kicked off my baseball team, uh, and, and things were really bad for me in that point in my life, uh, so much so that my high school was gonna expel me. If I didn’t go to a drug treatment facility for at least one month. And even though me or my parents or, you know, people closest to me, never thought that I would be a professional athlete, even though that people around us would always say that I had the potential to one day be that I certainly had a lot of opportunities from the high school administration because I was a gifted athlete. Uh, for example, I probably got more opportunities. Uh, second chances, third chances, fourth chances that maybe the next person wouldn’t have gotten because I did have that talent. Uh, quite frankly, they should have expelled me right then and there, you know, it, it shouldn’t have been an ultimatum where, Hey, Matt, go to this drug team facility for one month.
MM (07:22):
We’re gonna give you an opportunity to get sober and get your life in order. And maybe, maybe you’ll be able to come back to school and you still have football, right? So you can utilize that. And, and for me that was a turning point in my life because, you know, I always say that, you know, an individual can change their life. In one of two ways, they can either get inspired by some monumental event. They can get inspired by the, uh, hustle and bustle of life. They can get inspired by an audacious goal or dream that they have that’s near and dear to their heart, or they can change their life out of desperation. And for me it was desperation. Uh, this for me was really my turning point where I didn’t wanna put any more tears in my mother’s face. I, I didn’t want to experience another near death moment where my mother, father, younger brother and all my aunts and uncles and cousins were gonna be in the hospital room, thought that they were gonna lose their son, their cousin, their brother, that particular day.
MM (08:18):
And I, I remember very vividly when I went to that drug treatment facility. You know, I didn’t go to change my life, but I, I I’ll never forget the moment that changed at all. It was, I never believed any epiphanies or moments in time that could drastically alter one’s life until that moment and experience. And I came home and had the opportunity to eat dinner with my family one evening. And I has to be excused after maybe 15 minutes of sitting down at the dinner table and I went to take a shower. But the turning point for me was when I had the strength and courage for the first time, really in three years, at that point in my life to look myself directly in the mirror, I looked back and, and I, I saw just what a terrible human being. I was all the hurt that I caused and my family members, my friends, the people closest to me, my grandparents who loved me so much.
MM (09:05):
And, and for me that moment, I, I still remember it to this day. And I got goosebumps on my arms right now, talking about it, you know, for me that was the turning point that changed at all. Hmm. And I, I never believed in moments in time or epiphanies that can, that can just change it all for one person. Right. I always thought it was an accumulation of events. And for me, it was obviously there was a lot riding on that one particular moment, but it was that moment of looking myself directly in the mirror and seeing what a Demonn and terrible miserable life I was leading that really just made me go back into my room and say, okay, thi this isn’t how I wanna live the rest of my life. And I, I guess you could say from there, the rest is history.
MM (09:43):
I still had football. So I made a major goal of, I, I want to get a division one college scholarship. I want to have new friends. I wanna get rid of my drug friends. I, I quit the drug cold Turkey, continued through the drug treatment program, got faster, uh, went to college football camps. I, I think one particular summer before my, my senior year, I think I went to over 45 colleges, uh, where my father drove me all across the country, just going to their camps, meeting the different coaches. Wow. And I ended up going to Indiana, had a great career there. And then obviously I had an opportunity to play for the hometown team, the Chicago bears, uh, which I did not have the eight year, nine year NFL career that I had hoped for. And at this point it was a monumental event for me in my life because here’s the hometown kid, drug addict, overcame, you know, that period of his life, hometown, newspaper.
MM (10:37):
I mean, all my friends, family, everyone ate it up. But for me, I got hurt in a pre-season game. And what was projected was which in my eyes, I thought I was gonna have this very long fruitful career. I was gonna set my family up for success. One game, one dream, completely shattered in, in one, one moment. Uh, I was not able to come back from that injury, playing the San Diego chargers out in San Diego, California. And for me, that was my career. Um, and
AJV (11:53):
Yeah. I mean, wow. Like that’s so crazy. Like we could spend the rest of our time today, just talking about that little part of your story. Um, but there’s two things about your story that I think are really applicable to our audience that I wanna kind of like talk about is one you’re pretty open and vulnerable and transparent about all these different things in your life. And I actually, I believe that’s probably one of the things that makes you so sought after is that it’s not about all of your successes. It’s about all the things that you’ve gone through, Phil, the failures and the successes. Right. Um, that really make you so personable and relatable. And so I’m just kind of curious for you cuz I know being in this industry and honestly just being a human being, most people don’t wanna talk about all the things that didn’t go well.
AJV (12:47):
Um, because we all have them, right. I have a whole dark closet of dirty secrets that it’s not awesome to like put out there. Right. But at the same time, that really is what makes us who we are. And so I would just love to hear from you, it’s like how much of your story do you build into everything that you talk about? Why is that important to you and why do you think that helps people when they’re building their career to actually cover all the story? Not just the parts that make you look really good.
MM (13:20):
You know, that’s a fantastic question, AJ. I think for me, I had to learn the hard way. You know what I mean by that is when I did get injured in the NFL and I got asked to speak at a leadership event, you know, I, I didn’t have the really desire to do the work that I’m doing now. It wasn’t like I wrote this down on a piece of paper and said, Hey, when I’m done playing football, this is exactly what I want to do. Um, you know, for me, I got asked to speak at an event and really for the first two years of me speaking, when I knew that football wasn’t really gonna be a part of my journey moving forward, I didn’t talk about the things that I just shared. And I’ll never forget a moment where I had a mentor who knew my story kind of knew what I overcame from an early age.
MM (14:01):
And he said, why don’t you ever talk more about your struggles and all the challenges and obstacles that you had to overcome throughout the course of your life? And I said, why would I share that? Why would I share the, the, the, the darkest and deepest secrets that really only my friends and, and closest relatives knew and the, the people that were a part of that journey? Why, why, why would I talk about that stuff? And he said, watch what happens when you do mm-hmm
MM (14:45):
And I shared my whole story. And I think for the very first time at that point for two years, I was speaking, it was one of the first times I’ve ever seen really a whole entire ballroom full of tears. And afterwards I saw the transformative effect of me sharing my story and me Bo being vulnerable as a man and, and really saying, Hey, you know, our deepest and darkest secret sometime can really be the gateway of discovery and purpose and fulfillment and passion for other people in the audience. And, you know, turning point could, because from that moment, I started to really adopt that approach of sharing more of my story, sharing more of myself. And now I know that no one wants to hear my successes and my successes are relatively small to everybody else in this space. And I, I think the big thing that does separate me is my story, my DNA of how I got to where I am, because those are the characteristics that really make me who I am. And every single person that is listening to this podcast or in the audience of a speech, even if you’re not a drug addict, everyone’s gonna lose a loved one. Everyone is, you know, experiences, divorce goes through a difficulty we’ve all experienced the past three years with COVID 19. So everybody can relate to overcoming challenges and how you coped with that. So that that’s really what I took away from being vulnerable in sharing my story, AJ.
AJV (16:08):
I mean, I think that’s really, really important just to touch on again for anyone who’s listening. Um, and I just, I love what you said. It’s like, and I, I love your humility too. It’s like, actually you have pretty awesome accolades, Matt. But with that said, everyone has some sort of professional accreditation or award or something that we can talk about what we’ve done. That doesn’t really differentiate us. What really differentiates us are those unique stories that no one else has, even though they might be similar. Right? So, um, actually my best friend, my high school, best friend childhood best, friend’s been my best friend for almost 30 years, just recently got out of a 90 day, uh, rehab program. And your rehab story is very different than hers, but the point is like, it doesn’t matter what we go through. It’s like, it’s our unique take the lens in which we made it through the struggle that other people latch onto that, you know, they are like, man, it’s like, I just needed to know someone else has been there.
AJV (17:18):
I just needed to know I’m not alone and feeling this way or going through what I’m going through. And it’s like, that’s really what people need more than. Let me tell you about the, you know, MBA, CSP, CPA, all the things behind our names, cuz that doesn’t really tell a story. It doesn’t really create any sort of trust or engagement as much as man. Let me just tell you my story. Let me just tell you what I’ve been through. And so my question to you and to anyone who’s listening, what I really want you to hear is how do you decide what parts of your story to include, where to include them, how to include them. And I ask for
MM (18:35):
Another great question. I, I think, you know, and again, I had to learn the hard way when I first started, it was kind of me getting on stage. And even though I was telling maybe in an emotionally charged and powerful message, it still was really about, let me tell you about Matt Mayberry mm-hmm
MM (19:20):
So before every speaking engagement, let’s say, you know, I don’t just have two or three calls with the event, organizers. I try to have five or seven, uh, to where I’m talking to different members. I’m talking to not only the organizers that are planning that, but I want to talk to some of the attendees. I want to be able to walk in their shoes and know their challenges and kind of what they’re going through. And then I take that back and really integrate bits and pieces of that into my story. But for me, even when I’m telling my story, whether it’s overcoming the drug addiction, whether it’s getting hurt in the NFL, it’s not just me sharing you about Matt Mayberry’s journey. It’s about using that learning experience in my journey to drive home, drive home a relatable point that is really hopefully gonna be an actionable takeaway to improve their leadership or their organization or their culture or their team. So for me, that revolution probably started eight years ago, very early on when I was like, I’m just speaking about myself, even though I, I think I’m relating to people a little bit more than I was, I need to shift some things around. So for me, I, I, I think the biggest piece of advice is you have to be relentless, almost obsessive with, it’s not about you. And I know everybody says that, but you would be very, very shocked at how very few speakers actually are obsessive,
AJV (20:36):
Not shocked at all.
MM (20:37):
AJV (21:04):
I mean, I tried not to be so obvious when my mouth fell open. When you said five to seven calls, cuz it’s like, we always do a pre-event call, but I don’t think we’ve ever done five, six or seven. Like that’s extraordinary. Talk about feeling prepared and knowing the audience that you’re stepping into.
MM (21:24):
Well, it wasn’t always like that though. AJ
AJV (21:26):
MM (21:29):
Amazing. You know, for me, I think that is the, the is the consultant inside of me. And I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that. But I think for me, uh, the key noting at consulting kind of simultaneously feed off one another. So, but really on the keying in just the speaking side of it, if I’m just delivering a 60 minute speech, I, I think over the years, probably the past five years, the, the consultant inside of me is really cultivated where I apply that same, you know, mindset and focus to all the keynote work. So it wasn’t always like that. But within the past five years, I’ve really gotten aggressive with that.
AJV (22:02):
Yeah. Well, I would love to know just because I, we do have such a strong community of people who identify as coaches, trainers, consultants, speakers, what do you do on these five to seven calls? Like, are they all the same kind of outline with just different people or what do you do on five calls?
MM (22:19):
You know, it’s it’s so it’s it’s first, the first two to three calls will be with the event. Organizers. I want to have a very firm understanding of what the event’s for, why they’re having it, what they did last year do is this an event that they have annually? Is it quarterly? I’m really getting a basic understanding. You can do that typically in one call, but I kind of like to, you’ll be very surprised if you ask the same questions in call number two, they’re gonna give you a completely different answer almost. So I, I typically like to start there with the two calls and then from there it’s meeting with different leaders of the organization. So if I’m talking with, let’s say the CEO and CEO and CFO for one of the calls call number four, five will actually be with frontline managers who are gonna be in the audience for that particular event.
MM (23:04):
Because even though the CEO and COO maybe is telling me one thing, maybe the frontline managers have a completely different challenge that senior executives don’t even have a clue about. So for me, it’s being very and thoroughly prepared about, uh, really, really, really deeply understanding what is success to them because every pre-call is gonna entail. These are our objectives, this is why we’re having the event. But if, if you take it a step further and really push for, how do you want your audience to feel when Matt Mayberry steps off stage, what do you want them to do? And what do you want them to think about? Just those three questions is a complete game changer and really gives me a framework to kind of take back and into my preparation to really deliver a speech that is very tailored for that particular audience.
AJV (23:57):
That’s so good. And I think, you know, like the big takeaway that I just hear and what you’re saying is that you have to get to know your audience and that doesn’t matter if you’re a speaker consultant executive. It’s like if you’re, you know, an employer, right, your audience is your employees. I think that’s a really great reminder for this very interesting time
MM (24:27):
Absolutely. And I learned that very on, you know, because people do have more inspiring stories than me. Uh, there are people who have way more business experience than me. There’s plenty of people who run more successful businesses than me. So I had to realize, you know, what is my uniqueness? What is my uniqueness? And how can I exploit that, uh, in the service of others is which I heard that first from your husband, uh, RO Vaden, the great RO Vaden
AJV (25:23):
And I love that. It’s like, it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s figuring out what your uniqueness is and then leveraging that to differentiate yourself. Like, I mean, that’s the heart of like what people are looking for to begin with. It’s like, what makes you different from the speaker last year or from, you know, the consultant next year or whatever. It’s like, what’s that it factor that makes you you, right. I love that. And I actually, I think it’s so awesome that you do so many calls and you know, like what I heard in the back of my head is like, man, this is really good sales and marketing, right? It’s like, you’re building relationships with these people. You’re getting to know their culture, right. You’re just, you’re prepping up for, how can I stay integrated into this company, into this organization long after I perform a keynote on stage
MM (26:09):
And you, I mean, that’s really it, AJ. I, I, I think this now at this point in my career, I mean, that’s really a, a keynote for me if I’m doing a keynote, uh, the, the purpose of that keynote. I mean, obviously I get compensated very well for my time delivering a keynote. I love it. I love the energy. Uh, but at the end of the day, it really is that gateway to open a relationship for deeper, more ongoing work where now, I mean, some of my clients, we’re going on four years of, of wor working and partnering together. So for me, it’s not just to have a call to understand the audience it’s to truly set that relationship open, to continually add more value and maybe even over deliver than what they’re expecting.
AJV (26:50):
Absolutely. We’ve always said, uh, internally our internal moniker, uh, is that speaking is our paid prospecting.
MM (27:00):
Absolutely. Couldn’t have said it better.
AJV (27:02):
Um, it’s always been our paid prospecting. There’s very few times and the in life where you have a captive audience trapped in a room forced to listen to you for an hour. So it’s like you better over deliver. And when you do, there’s a lot of benefit that can come from it. Right.
MM (27:19):
Absolutely.
AJV (27:20):
Um, so I wanna talk, so I wanna talk a little bit about what you actually talk about just because I think this is really timely for where we are in just American work culture. Um, because you talk about leadership and culture and, you know, organizational performance. And we can, I can use all these other fancy words, but like, ultimately it’s like, I would love to hear some of the conversations that you’re having with leaders, entrepreneurs, organizations, whoever it may be around how to lead right now, or how to create culture in a virtual working environment, which a lot of companies still haven’t really figured out, or just, how do you like get optimal performance out of a whole team, not just an individual, so you can take any one of those topics and go, I like that one. Uh, but I would love for you just to speak some wisdom into, you know, what you talk about for your profession, what you love talking about. Like, give us, give us some insight what’s going on out there. Why is everything crazy?
MM (28:22):
Absolutely. You know, I think one of the things for me that I, I really talk lot about now is, is humanizing leadership. And, and what I mean by that is you would be very, very surprised and shocked if you just went, walked into an organization, let’s say you’re walking into an 18,000 person organization. And you interviewed all of the direct reports for, let’s say maybe 17 leaders on the executive team. And if you sat down with those direct reports and asked them, how many times a week, a week or month are you getting one on one frequent check-ins about not only your performance, but also how you’re feeling and development opportunities to advance your career and frequent check-ins about how you’re feeling in your wellbeing. Nine times out of 10, those direct reports are gonna relay back to you that they’re either not happening at all, or they’re happening very rarely, maybe twice a year.
MM (29:14):
So for me, it’s all about humanizing leadership. I think a lot of times our first assumption is to, I need to inspire with vision. I need to lay out this strategy. We need to focus on execution and all that stuff is very much needed. I mean, there, there’s no under minimizing that, but I think the first part is, I mean, you have to humanize leadership, you have to lead with empathy. You have to be vulnerable about what people are experiencing and going through in their personal life, as well as the professional life. And I think the more you can, you can bring that humanity in, into your one-on-one interactions with your direct reports and really, really prioritize it. Uh, even before you do your strategy or go to market route. I mean, to me, that is when you really, really start to create transformational performance, uh, in a team environment.
MM (30:01):
Uh, one of the other things I talk about as it relates to culture specifically, because that type of leadership does benefit culture. Uh, but, but really one of the big things that I do in my work is lead cultural transformation. So an organization let’s say is they went through a merger five years ago and this merger has caused some cultural friction. So they’ll bring me in to kind of not only revamp and enhance their current organizational culture, but also completely define and remodel a new culture and how that ties to the performance of what that organization does. And, and one of the very first things we do is we define their culture. And what I mean by that is, again, if you ask the employees of an organization, what is your culture here? Nine times outta 10, you’re gonna get someone to rattle off the core values.
MM (30:49):
You’re gonna say, Hey, are on the website, our mission statement set that that’s not culture, right? That that’s maybe a fabric and part of culture, but culture is really behavior at scale. It’s what everybody in their organization does when the CEO is not there it’s behavior at scale. It’s how we behave, what we believe and the experience that’s created both internally and externally. So for me, it’s, it’s really helping that organization define their culture. You know, what industry are, are they in? What is their uniqueness? Who do they serve? And, and really, what do we want our organization to consist of? Like, what do we want the core of our DNA to be all about? Because once you define that culture, then you can worry and work on the behaviors, connecting the values to behaviors, right? Because having a core value is just one piece of the puzzle.
MM (31:39):
That value has to be a daily behavior that has lived across the organization. So, so really for me, those are the two of the big things that I, I talk about AJ. Uh, and then the other would be just on the job transformation. And what I mean by that is there’s so many books and articles written about leadership, let’s say, but when you look under the hood of an organization, particularly larger organizations, you’re gonna find that all of their leadership development training, everything that they do, as it relates to enhancing the performance of their managers and leaders is not related to on the job performance. Mm-hmm,
AJV (32:38):
My gosh. I could go on so many tangents right now. Um, I’m gonna try to like brain myself in, cuz I, I could really go on a very long tangent, so, okay. I had three ahas, like three, like little epiphanies as you were talking. Um, and one of the things that I think is really important for anyone who’s listening in, to me, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a fortune 500 company or you’re a small business owner with five employees, or you’re a solo entrepreneur. Like there are elements of this that pertains to you, no matter what, or if you’re an employee stayat home mom or anything, it’s like, we all lead something. We just don’t treat it that way. But there’s something that you said about this on the job training and performance that I’ve noticed this trend in, uh, just haphazardly over the last 10 years is, you know, I left corporate consulting four years ago or it left me, I don’t know. Um, but separated from that four years ago and we started brain builders group. And one of the things that I had realized, and I’m just curious how much of this that you see is that it’s being outsourced to virtual learning and video trainings and tutorials and this whole concept of the metaverse and VR and all this stuff that removes every piece of a human element and pretty much every piece of on the job training from it.
MM (34:04):
Right. So
AJV (34:06):
I would love to hear your take on that.
MM (34:08):
You know, you’re, you’re absolutely right. And I think that the organizations that rely solely on outsourcing it are the ones that, you know, either will be distinct in 10, 20 years, or they’re gonna go through massive restructuring or their performance is gonna negatively be impacted dramatically in the market, uh, compared to the organizations that they do, classroom learning, they utilize zoom, they do, you know, AI, they, they have all of that that is coupled with on the job performance. And, and I think that that is the big indicator of, of really impacting and transforming the actual business performance, because that’s what we’re all in business for. I mean, unless you’re running a nonprofit, you have to be profitable. You gotta grow that profit every single year. And quite frankly, if you’re a publicly traded company, you have to also have the right perception on wall street.
MM (34:59):
And, and I, the way to do that is you have to really impact on the job. It goes back to football. You know, you don’t train to be a better football team by just watching film. You have to go to practice every single day. You have to take what you learned in the game, you know, in the film room. And then you have to apply that on the practice field, you have coaches that tell you don’t step left here. You need to make this right adjustment and go this way. And, and the same applies to leadership, same applies to business and you are right. I think one of the big misconceptions the past, you know, I would say five, 10 years has been, you know, we can spend our time better elsewhere. And my, all of my job is spent with leaders and, and executives convincing them that no training on the job needs to be your number one priority.
AJV (35:47):
Yeah. I love that so much. And I just, I know that that’s been like a huge increase that we’ve doubled down on this year with our team. And one of the things that I had found is it’s like the more virtual you go, the more distracted you can become, because there’s just so many different things buying for your attention. And one of the things that we have done over the last six months is for our, you know, community director who trains, all of our strategists is we’ve stripped away every single task off of her plate, other than being with our team. Like, that’s your job. It’s like, if it’s not that it needs to go. It’s like, you know, what we used to say is like, whether you spend time with paper or you spend time with people and your job is to spend time with people and this.
MM (36:31):
Yeah. But you guys did a very key thing there. And I love, I love that. I love that so much. AJ is you said, you know, we, we took all the things off of her plate. You know, she had to focus on that one priority and that’s, that’s the number one thing that most organizations do, uh, that, that really inhibits their performance and really declines the, you know, the growth that they’re looking for, because they’ll tell their managers and their leaders that we want you to be in the market, coaching your people more, but we’re just gonna continually dump all of these priorities and all these things on your lap and say, they have to be done by next month.
AJV (37:03):
MM (37:08):
Was us. It’s a lot. It’s it’s everybody. But you also learned from that and, and course corrected, which I think is very, very important.
AJV (37:15):
Yeah. Well, you know, to, I think, uh, the lessons in life, it was the hard way
AJV (38:12):
And he was talking about, you know, Kobe’s, uh, work ethic and discipline. And although Kobe was clearly very naturally talented, he just outworked everyone else with his workout routines. And he would start, he would do three workouts a day when others were doing one or two and he would go in at 4:00 AM. And as he was leaving, you know, the other teammates were coming in at 6:00 AM and he was already done with his first workout. And it was just that discipline of repetition creates excellence. Um, but it’s that consistency part. And it, and to me, that is just no matter what. And it’s like, you are a fairly new parent
MM (38:54):
Noah, fairly new and married. I was no, not, not, not yet.
AJV (38:59):
Okay.
MM (39:57):
Right. You know, I, I couldn’t agree more with you. I think that it goes back to the, kind of the, the old adage of, you know, everyone wants to achieve the dream without doing the work. And I think that at the, you know, for me, like every single year from my, my friend mutual friend that we have John Gordon, uh, you know, he wrote the book, the one, you know, one word and, and this year, my one word is process. And I think at the end of the day, I, I think one of the things that I’ve been so benefited by being an athlete for most of my life is, you know, going to the practice, just doing the daily work, going through the grind and, and understanding that it’s not even about the wins and losses. It’s about every day showing up and improving at your craft, whatever it is, you do getting a little bit better for that particular day.
MM (40:40):
And there’s two types of people. The, those that will think that that is cliche and yeah, you know, there’s, there’s a way around it. There’s a way around it. While the others, as you mentioned, Kobe Bryant, they’re doing the work and every single day, it’s about the process. It’s not even about wins or losses or increase in profit. That’s a goal. And that’s something we want to do. But at the end of the day, it’s all reverse engineering that to the present moment. And how can we maximize the process, the journey, which quite frankly, at the end of our lives is really what’s gonna matter most.
AJV (41:12):
Yeah. I love that. And I just think that’s so universal and you just really can’t hear that message enough. It may be said a million times. And for most of us humans, we need to hear it a million times more. You just can’t hear it enough. It’s like consistency matters doing the work matters, taking shortcuts do not help you in the long run. They really suck. Um, okay. So I’m watching the clock. I’ve got two more quick things for you. And I love this conversation so much, um, culture, you said it’s like culture is just behavior at scale. And I think that’s so good. And that’s so fascinating. And so, um, two things on this. So one for anyone who’s listening without doing like a formal assessment or, you know, hiring someone like yourself, it’s like, are there any quick tips that you could give to somebody that could just take a look around? And I’m gonna say the culture of your company, the culture of your household, but it’s like, how can you see, how can you recognize the culture that is all around you that often has been created accidentally or UN unintentionally. So how do you observe culture in the way that you described it as behavior at scale?
MM (42:27):
You know, that, that’s a very interesting question. And I think culture in and of itself is very fascinating. And I think one of the reasons why is because, you know, culture, you, you can’t see it, but you can certainly feel it when you walk into an organization.
MM (43:24):
And then it’s also putting a behavior next to that value. That’s what a lot of organizations don’t do the very first piece to actually building a great culture and identifying, are you living up to this? Well, you can’t just have the, the word trust on your website or say that trust is the core tentative of who you are and what you do. There has to be an actual daily behavior next to that. What does trust look like in your organization or your company? What does it look like? Like very simply clarify that make a concise statement, a daily behavior that is actionable, that is related to that value. And every single month, simply it could be done survey based. It could be done, uh, an accountability, which I use scorecards where a lot of the organizations I work with the senior level executives, there’s a scorecard that’s distributed to their direct reports on asking them, is this value, is this behavior currently being lived on a monthly basis?
MM (44:20):
And then we get those results back. And it’s very fun from there because there’s some leaders that don’t like, what, what we received back from the direct reports. But I think one of the things that you can do regardless of where you are, is, are, is that being lived mm. Is that being lived and it could be even be your personal life. You know, if you have a, a value or you have a core characteristic of, of who you make, what makes you, you is that constantly being cultivated and lived. And every Sunday evening, before you start a new work week, you know, is, is this being lived in everything that I do?
AJV (44:56):
Hmm. That’s so good. You know, I’m,
AJV (45:50):
Right. And it’s like, you can feel it. Like I was actually, um, we have this family Bible study that we’ve committed to this year. Um, and we meet every Sunday for four hours and it’s a family Bible study. Yeah. It’s a commitment. Um, but it’s awesome. And we’re reading through the Bible together. And one of the conversations that we had just two days ago is how there are parts of the country just talking about the United States that you can feel the culture, right. It’s like, they’re, you know, it’s like, you know, Southern California has a feel to it. Absolutely. New York has a feel to it. The south has a feel to it. Um, and it’s like, I liken company culture to personal reputation. It’s like, how do people feel in your presence versus how do you want them to feel in your presence?
MM (46:43):
Absolutely. And another thing I think, as relates to, you know, culture real quick, AJ, cuz it also kind of revolves around personal reputation and, and also the work that you guys do at brand builders group is, uh, being very clear on expectations. I, I think from both a as an influencer author speaker perspective consultant, you know, stating the services and the value that you provide is very different than constantly going to your clients and your customers and your partners and asking, are you consistently, are, are these expectations being delivered? Mm-hmm
MM (47:35):
And I think on the reverse for leaders and managers, one of the, one of the most awesome exercises that I have them do, and this is, this is a complete game changer because in healthy cultures and very positive and thriving organizational cultures managers with their direct reports, there’s very clear expectations, but most organizations you walk into, even if an employee’s been on the job for 20 years, 20 years, I see it all the time. And you ask them, Hey, in your role, your particular role where you are right now, where you’ve been for the last eight years, can you tell me that top eight biggest priorities day to day mm-hmm
AJV (48:51):
That’s so good. Um, and I think if you’re not taking this as your own takeaway, you should take it. It’s like, you should do these own exercises for yourself if you’re listening. Right. And it’s like, I like literally have like a page to do items of like, you’re this little direct reports, right. I’m going, are we on the same page? Right. Because that starts to emanate in every single thing that you do within the company and then in your client relationships. Right. So, um, okay. I know we only have like three minutes. So before we wrap up, I just wanna make sure everyone, um, knows where to go if they wanna connect with you. And so if you wanna connect with Matt, the central place to connect with Matt Mayberry is to simply go to his website, which is Matt Mayberry, online.com. So Matt Mayberry, online.com. You can learn about consulting speaking. Um, he’s got an upcoming book. You definitely wanna learn about that. You can follow him on different, uh, social media platforms that Matt Mayberry online.com. So with the last couple of minutes, um, I just wanna do two quick things. Um, and then we’ll wrap this up. So one, give everyone just a 62nd preview of your second book that you’re finalizing the menu script on. So when’s it coming out? What’s it about?
MM (50:08):
Yeah. So it’ll be out February 1st, 2023. And it is called culture is the way how leaders at every level can build an organization for speed impact and excellence. I’m, I’m very excited for that book. Uh, it really dives into some huge misconceptions, a little, some of the stuff that we talked about here today, but it goes even a little bit deeper. Uh there’s case studies in that book of some of the clients that I partnered with over the years of, of taking them through actual real life, cultural transformations, the results, and also laying out a, a strategy and, and really framework that leaders and managers, regardless of your industry and your organization, how you can implement that into build a world class culture that truly as AJ talked about, feels amazing, which will help you attract top talent, but also drive significant results in the marketplace.
AJV (51:01):
Mm. I love it. So culture is the way, love that title. So coming out, um, to an online store near you,
MM (51:34):
My favorite sport is football.
AJV (51:36):
Okay. What’s your favorite team?
MM (51:37):
My favorite team is unfortunately the Chicago bears
AJV (51:42):
Fortunate or unfortunate depending on where you live.
MM (51:48):
Ooh, that’s a tough one. Uh, my favorite book, uh, I will have to go off of one that I just recently read, uh, that I really, really enjoyed becoming super natural by Joe Spencer.
AJV (52:00):
Oh, very good. Becoming supernatural. Okay. Love that. Um, then you put the arts. What do you mean by the arts
MM (52:07):
Just different, you know, I’m a very creative person, believe it or not, because most people don’t take former athletes. Uh, macho men is very creative, but for me, it’s just, I, I love paintings. I, I love going to art galleries. I love, uh, you know, everything about the creation process, uh, you know, going to watch comedians going to, uh, you know, just watch the mechanics of musicians for me. It’s just, I’m, I’m a huge fan of creative in the arts and, and really bringing all that creativity and innovation. And really, for me, it’s all about the energy into my own life.
AJV (52:41):
I love that. All right. Last one. I know that you’re relatively newly married in the last couple of years, so I’m gonna still say that you’re a newlywed, what’s one lesson that you have learned about yourself from being married.
MM (52:56):
She is always right.
AJV (53:24):
Ah, I love that, Matt. I love talking to you. I love learning from you. Thank you so much for being on the show and thank all of you guys for listening. Stay tuned. Uh, next time for another episode on the influential personal brand. We’ll see you later.
MM (53:40):
Thank you, AJ.
Ep 335: Reinventing Yourself for the Next Big Thing with Former NFL Player Clay Harbor | Recap Episode
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, this is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to my recap episode on my conversation with former, former NFL player Clay Harbor. I don’t know why that’s such a tongue twister for me, former NFL player, Clay Harbor. And this is a, I would say an inspirational, motivational episode, but also with some tactical details about how to launch and grow your personal brand if you are thinking about starting or growing your coaching, consulting, speaking business. Definitely worth a full listen. But here is my take on this episode and some of the big things that I walked away with from this and my, my view on this, and I think this is a, a really important conversation to have, is how is comparison holding you back? And on the interview, Clay talks a lot about showing up and the difference between 80%, a hundred percent, 0% and the importance of not just showing up but showing up consistently.
AJV (01:07):
And then it got me thinking about my own life and lives of people I know and how much that comparison is the reason that we don’t show up. And most often the reason that we don’t show up consistently. And so here’s my question for you today, if you’re listening to this video, is what are you comparing yourself to or who are you comparing yourself to that you need to let go? And I don’t care who you are, what you do, there is something or someone that you compare yourself to that at some point in your life will make you feel not good enough, not worthy enough, not smart enough, not successful enough not doing enough, not helping enough, not making enough whatever it is, fill in the blank, not enough. And that’s what comparison does. Comparison makes you feel not enough.
AJV (02:08):
And that’s the problem with comparison is so often as individuals specifically individuals who are trying to do something bigger than what we’re currently doing is we get stopped by looking around and comparing our step one to someone else, their step 1000. And we just don’t know what their step is. And I just, I know when we started Brand Builders Group just four and a half years ago, it was really easy to go, Oh my gosh, here we are starting a personal brand strategy firm. And our personal brands had recently been scratched and completely, we were completely starting over. So neither my husband, Roy Va in our eye had any social media followers. We, we had lost our podcast. We hadn’t even started a new one. We hadn’t even created a website for Brand Builders Group when we started.
AJV (03:06):
And there was a lot of opportunity for us to go, We can’t do this because of this, this, this, and this. Like, what are people gonna think if we’re a personal brand strategy firm and we don’t even have a podcast launch, we have no social media followers, we don’t even have a website for goodness sake. What will people think? And I know that in many times in our life and in my life specifically, that would’ve stopped me. It would’ve held me back and said, Well, here’s one excuse of why I’m not ready. And here’s another excuse of why I don’t have time and here’s another excuse of how I can’t afford it. And here’s another excuse of, well, what are people gonna think? I could go on and on and on. The point is, is they all had to do with comparison. Cuz the truth is we did launch Brain Builders group with no website and with no social media followings and with their podcast. And we were just fine. We were just fine. And that had a lot to do with doing it in spite of what we thought other people would think. It was doing it in spite of,
AJV (04:51):
Sorry, you’re gonna have to cut this part together where we fell downstairs. He’s okay. But we had to do this in spite of what we thought other people were gonna think. Because here’s the truth, we could have launched with all of those things and people were still gonna have opinions, good or bad. So we could launch without all of those things. And people were still gonna have thoughts, good or bad. So why not just do it? Cuz the truth is comparison most often just hurts us. There’s always gonna, people who love you and love what you do, gonna and love what you do. There’s always gonna be people who don’t love you and who don’t love what you do. That cannot be what holds you back because that only hurts you, comparison hurts you. It’s an internal thing that we suffer with and we’re the only ones who actually have negative effects from how we compare ourselves to.
AJV (05:43):
And it, it’s really easy in a world today to get caught up with, well what does this person have and what do they look like and what are they wearing and what are they doing? And how many followers do they have? And what, how many likes do they have? And how many downloads and how much do they make? And sometimes we just need to stop looking around and put on some blinders and go. Everybody is on their own path. Everyone is on their own journey. And truly as an outsider looking in, we get a very surface level perspective of what every single person is going through. Cuz at the end of the day, we all know that every single person on planet Earth has a struggle. They have problems, they have issues. They have their own insecurities. They suffer with their own level of comparison.
AJV (06:27):
And we don’t get that picture. We don’t get to see all of the struggles and the hurdles and the obstacles that happened you know, years before or days before. We don’t get to see the behind the scenes that would eliminate the level of comparison and the significance that that has in our own decision making. And so if we stop looking around and we just put our heads down and and focus on what are we called to do and what do I feel like my mission is? And you know, for me it’s like, what is the calling that God has on my life and how can I serve people? And I think that’s the biggest thing is like when we’re focused on showing up for other people, comparison starts to go away. When comparison creeps in is when I’m worried about me, myself, and I, but when I’m worried about who I’m serving and I’m worried about my clients and I’m worried about my family and I’m worried about my friends and I’m worried about causes that I believe in when I’m worried about the people that I know are suffering, it’s like my comparison goes away cuz it’s not about me.
AJV (07:26):
It’s not supposed to be about us. And when you focus on serving and you actually focus on like, I think I could help somebody I I know I could help somebody. And even if it’s one person, it’s like, focus on that person. And those feelings of comparison start to go away. And it doesn’t really matter if you have a nice website or hundreds of thousands of followers or a bestselling book or you know, a notable podcast. And those don’t get me wrong, those things are great and I think you help a lot of people and you get more reach. So don’t get me wrong here, but when you focus on the one, when you focus on serving who’s right in front of you, the neighbor next door the kid down the street, your colleague, your coworker, that client who really needs you, comparison just diminishes.
AJV (08:12):
It just starts to go away. But you gotta show up. And you gotta do it consistently because comparison will creep back in the moment that you stop focusing on the people around you, the people that you were called to serve. And so I do encourage you to go listen to this whole podcast cuz it is about showing up and doing it consistently and not making it about you. And I think that’s where we get to shine the most is when it’s not about us. When it’s about the audience and the people that we can help and that we can serve. And the benefit for us, in addition to doing good works is that feeling of comparison goes away. And what it’s filled with is satisfaction of knowing. It’s like I have purpose. I can do things for people who need help. And it gives you a newfound level of purpose and passion and mission that maybe didn’t exist the minute before you did it. So focus on serving, it, eliminates comparison. Show up, do it consistently and go check out this whole podcast. I’ll check you, I’ll check you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.
Ep 334: Reinventing Yourself for the Next Big Thing with Former NFL Player Clay Harbor
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:53):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is AJ Vaden here. And I have a friend on the show today with me, clay Harbor. You guys are in for such a treat. I’m about to give you guys a my version of his bio, my version of what you should know about clay, but let me tell you first why you need to stick around for this episode. So if you have ever gone through some sort of what I’m gonna call a change in identity, right? You could call it an identity crisis. I don’t think that’s what clay went through, but it’s a change of identity, right? So this is the show for you to talk about how do you take, you know, a large portion of your life that was leading up to this moment, and then how do you take all of that transition?
AJV (01:42):
What you’re doing, reinvent yourself, reimagine who you are, and then kind of like re-engage back into the marketplace. That is what clay is doing. That’s what he’s been doing. That’s what so many of us do at some point in our lives, both personally and professionally. So if you have ever found yourself in a pivot point situation of like, this is what I was doing up to this point now, what am I gonna do moving forward? This is an episode that you wanna stick around to also, I would say, if you wanna know how to grow maximum exposure and your online platform, by doing unique things that are out of the ordinary, this is also a show that you wanna stick around and stay tuned for. Cuz we’re gonna talk a little bit about that as well. So now let me introduce you to my friend, clay Harbor.
AJV (02:32):
Here’s some things that I think are fascinating, that you would wanna know is one at clay as a nine year NFL veteran, like nine years is a long time in NFL and my opinion but you were also a college hall of Famer at Missouri state, right? So pre pre NFL you are a nationally sought off speaker. You are a personal trainer, you’re a coach. You have so many cool things in your resume. But one of the things that I think is really fun and just unique are some of the things that you don’t have in your resume. Like I’m surprised that you don’t have in here that you also, you had a stint on the bachelorette like that’s how that did make it in here. I think that’s really interesting. I think also the things that are in here that really are so awesome about you is that you are so humble.
AJV (03:23):
Like you are so humble. You do not talk about all these amazing accomplishments. You do not talk about all these awards you’ve been featured in all major sports media. You’ve done brand deals for anything from bud light to American airlines. And those are not things that you ever talk about, right? Those are some of the things that people will hold at the pinnacle of their career and you don’t even mention them.
CH (04:12):
Wow. One introduction. I appreciate you having me, AJ. And you, I just appreciate the opportunity to talk to your audience here and, you know, have a conversation with you. And I appreciate everything that you and Rory do and have done to help me really figure out exactly what it is I want to do and to structure that. And I think that’s a good lead in to his conversation is, is, is structure because when people ask me, how do I go from, you know, playing in the NFL for being in college, you know, just working towards this goal my whole life and just identifying as NFL player. Okay, your career’s over. I have a couple injuries now, what, you know, for me it’s what do I wanna do now? And that’s a question that I had for a long time, and I didn’t really know exactly where I wanted to go and just figuring out old, old school way of writing down the things that you enjoy doing and going to brand builders.
CH (05:07):
And the first thing they have is go, what are you an expert in? What do you enjoy doing? You know, what do people come to you for? What kind of advice do people coming for, come to you for? And having all these questions really helped me to figure out where I wanted to go with my brand after the NFL. And for, for that, for me, it had a lot to do with, you know, habits and routines and, and, and things of that nature. So that was big for me. And that’s what I wanted to really chase.
AJV (05:34):
Mm. I love that. And that didn’t start in the NFL. Like that started way before the NFL for you. Like that’s how you got to the NFL. So one of the things that I would love for people to get to know about you is like, what do you think that it takes to create the extraordinary results that you’ve achieved in and outside of professional athletics, but, you know, super specifically like making it to the NFL is a really small amount of people, right? That’s, that’s extraordinary talent, but more importantly, it’s extraordinary discipline and habits that are gonna both serve anyone really well during their professional sports time, but then also way after. And so I, I think it would be really cool for you to tell people, like, how did you get to the NFL?
CH (06:23):
It’s funny that you you, you already brought it up in my opinion is is habits to me when I look back at everything I did and, and how I was able to succeed. Cause you go back to college. Obviously I have a natural ability. I start to realize in college early on, but it’s not much different than a lot of the other guys I’ve seen. And people have asked me this, you know, there’s a lot of guys out there that can run and jump and play football. What made you go from the same level that these guys for you to keep improving and to keep moving and improving, to, to get to the point where you’re in this smaller college, Missouri state university, haven’t had a draft pick in 20 years from Missouri state university draft in 20 years before I got drafted there hadn’t been one draft pick and I got drafted in the fourth round, the Philadelphia Eagles.
CH (07:08):
And that itself was a huge accomplishment for everybody in the, in the area. Wow. How this guy from Missouri state do this? And I’ll tell you, AJ, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s simple but not easy. And that is you have to have habits. You have to have discipline and you have to have a routine for me. The thing that really kept me on track was having a knock out routine from the time I woke up to, I would look at my day and say, how can I fit in all these things I need to fit in? I gotta make sure that I’m eating healthy. I gotta make sure that I get this workout in. I gotta make sure I work on catching the football. I gotta make sure I work in on blocking and that can work in any sort of environment that you’re in and any job you’re in you, you improve, you get 1% better every day.
CH (07:53):
And then by the end of the year, you’re 37% better than you were at that the beginning of the year. So for me, it was getting 1% better every day, always changing my routine to be as effective as I could. And I just kept getting better as a freshman. I got better as a sophomore, better as a junior. And I got to this point where I was a really good football player in college. And then you get drafted and go to the NFL and you you’re back to the bottom of the total pole again.
CH (08:28):
And I do the same thing. I go through my routine and I fix it and I make it the best I can you go through these position battles, highly competitive environment, but you just gotta focus on yourself. That’s why I made sure to do. I focused on myself. I focused on my routine and I made sure I was disciplined. I wasn’t the most talented guy, but I was a guy that had put in the most time and could fit the most things in my day because I had that routine. And that’s how I improved and players that were better than me. That only lasted 2, 3, 4, 5 seasons. I was able to last night, I was able to take care of my body and, and be able to put myself in position to where I could take care of my family and, and things I’ve always wanted to do coming from an underprivileged background. It was always in the back of my mind to be able to take care of the people that were, you know, important to me. And that’s what I did. It was all about habits, routine and discipline.
AJV (09:18):
Wow. You know, you said something that really stuck out to me. I one, I love all of that and I think it’s so true. It’s like talent can only get you so far. Right? It’s like, you’re gonna have all the talent in the world, but if you’re not gonna apply that in a focus direction, it there’s a limit to that. Right. but you said something, you said, I focused on myself. So whether or not you meant this or not, this is what I heard. It’s like, yeah. I wasn’t comparing myself to other people. I was focused on what I was doing, not what other people were doing. So can you talk a little bit more about, you know, both in and out of football, like the power of just like, you know, putting blinders on, right. It’s like stay focused on keeping the main thing, the main thing, and that is not what everyone else is doing. It’s what you’re doing.
CH (10:01):
Absolutely. The most important person you can compete against is yourself. You’ll look on online. Or for me, I see some of these speakers, these guys, these athletes that I’ve had better careers in. And I see their, you know, they’re getting booked at maybe this gig, this gig. And I go, I have a better story. I’m a better speaker. You can’t focus on that. You gotta focus on yourself. How am I gonna improve myself every day? There’s the same thing in football. I look at these tight ends. These other tight ends, when I’m drafted, I say, I can do everything they can do. Why am I not getting this opportunity? Then I just focus on myself. And then that shows you put the time in and you keep working. You keep repeating things over and over again. You have a good habit. You have good routines, you have discipline.
CH (10:40):
That’s gonna show. If you keep showing up day in and day out, you start to stack these days. And that’s when you improve. You’re not gonna improve in football. You’re not gonna go from a rookie to a pro bowler. You know, it’s gonna take you a little bit of time. Maybe sometimes, you know, guys will get lucky with a big catch or a big play, or, you know, in the speaking world or the business world, you’ll come up with just one big idea, but that’s not common. You know, what’s common is you’re putting in the hard work day in and day out. You’re improving a little bit every day, a little bit every day. And then you look up six months later. Wow. I’ve I was back there, you know, six months you look back, I was a guy that was barely making the team.
CH (11:19):
Now I’m a starter. And that’s when you keep going and you keep going. And the next thing you know, like my, my college career, wasn’t playing at all as a freshman, barely got in the field, improve, improve. Wow, I’m on the field. Now, as later, later in my freshman year, I’m playing sophomore year. Next thing you know, I’m an all American. And I look back at, at everything that I did to get here. And that was just a day in and day out. It didn’t happen in one day mm-hmm
CH (11:59):
You gotta consistently show up just like my time as a fitness coach, you know, I’m a certified personal trainer. I’m a certified as strength conditioning coach. You are not gonna see results in a week. When you keep showing up. My mom has lost 50 pounds in the last three months. Wow. Cause I finally got her on a routine in a program. She walks a mile every single day. I explained to her, your diet, your walking, your activity level, everything comes together. Now. She feels so much better. She’s able to walk and play with the grandkids. She’s able to travel with me when I go see my brother and all these things. But she, she took a day, a day, a day, a day. It’s you’re not gonna wake up and it’s not gonna happen. That’s why I try to explain to people is it’s the day to day, every day routine,
AJV (12:40):
You know, it’s the exact same thing with building a personal brand establishing yourself in the marketplace, building a business. It’s like, none of this happens overnight or in a, a week or a month or in a year for most cases. This is, you know, it’s what they say. It’s like anything worth doing takes time. Yeah. Right. It takes time. And it’s that discipline and consistency of showing up that I think that’s huge. You gotta show up,
CH (13:03):
Showing up is the number one thing. You go back to me and my fir my personal fitness brand. And when I’m, when I’m doing that, here’s what I tell people. If you, if you can only go to the weight room for an hour, go for that hour. It’s like in, in school, if somebody fails or somebody’s not getting the grades they want, it’s because of the missed assignments. If you get a 0% and then you get a hundred percent, you’re still only at 50%. Okay? So now you go back and you get a 60%. That’s not good. I mean, you still might be failing that day or, you know, you’re barely passing, but that 60%, and then you come back and you have a really good day. You get that a hundred percent. Now you’re an 80, you know, you go from a 50 to an 80 just by getting, just by showing up in the weight room.
CH (13:42):
When you miss the days, when you have the days where you don’t do it, where you’re not focused, you’re not gonna do any work. Those are the days that sets you back. If you can just sit down and do some work, you keep moving forward. Cuz every day improves. You improves you when you stay still and don’t do anything. That’s when you go back down and when you, when you start to, you know, you start to fail and whatever your business is, whatever your enterprise is, it’s your health, your fitness. If it’s your speaking business, you gotta keep moving forward. And you don’t miss days. That’s if you just show up every day, the discipline have that routine, you show up. That’s when you start to see the improvements,
AJV (14:16):
Oh man, we get in this podcast right now. That is so good. That is so much truth because it, it is like, it’s like you can apply that to your finances, your health, your marriage, your relationships your, your platform. It’s like, you know, I think about, as you were talking, we have a, a good friend of ours who is recently named one of like the sales influencers of the year on LinkedIn and oh wow. It was a really simple formula. He posted a content video on sales every single week for about 18 months.
CH (14:49):
Yeah,
AJV (14:50):
It was. I mean his content, clearly it got better. His skills get better, but it wasn’t like, it was that different. Yeah. It got better, but it wasn’t different. Yeah. It was consistency. He showed, showed up. He gave value and the more he did it, the better he got, but it was, he showed up and he goes, I’m committed every Wednesday. I’m gonna do this video. I’m gonna post it. If it helps one person it’s enough for me. Yeah. And then it was helping 10 and then a hundred and then a thousand and then a hundred thousand. Right. But it was consistency. I think the challenge is how many of us want it right now? Yeah. It’s instant gratification. We don’t wanna wait. We don’t wanna put in the work. It’s like, we want it now. And we want it. All of it right now.
CH (15:30):
Yeah. You got, you gotta be consistent. You wanna grow following on social media, your platform, it’s consistency. It’s consistently posting and doing things like that. What I always say is people is sometimes it’s better. I know some, the people tell me, well, I don’t know when the right time to do it is when should I start? And I always tell ’em this. I go a great plan. A good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow. Mm-Hmm
AJV (16:00):
Yeah.
CH (16:00):
You’re gonna, you’re gonna get some pretty good and you’re gonna keep getting better and that’s gonna exponentially improve you. If you’re trying to work on social media, you don’t know exactly. You don’t have the perfect aesthetic. Hey, start, start right now. Start posting. You’re gonna keep getting better and that’s gonna help you to improve in your business and your speaking business. You know, it’s, for me, it was like, I don’t know if I’m ready to do these, to do these events. Oh, Hey, I’m ready enough. And I’m going to learn and keep getting better. A good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow. So you start doing it and then you see yourself improving, you see yourself feeling more comfortable, then you’re, then you’re ready to go. Everything’s firing. You can set up your routine, you know what to expect. And that’s another thing that gets you going, you gotta get started and you gotta stay consistent.
AJV (16:43):
Ah, so good. I love one of our good speaker friends. Eric Chester always tells us and reminds us, he says the difference between a good speech and a great speech is a thousand speeches. Yeah. That right. It’s doing it. Yeah. It’s just doing it right. It’s showing up. It’s being consistent. It’s putting in the work. So, okay. So I wanna talk about, I’m gonna change, you know, change chords just a little bit. And I wanna talk about kind of this, this pivot moment that you went through, not all that long ago when your NFL career ended and now you’ve got post NFL life of all right. Now, what am I gonna do? So can you take us back to that? And because I think a lot of people in our audience are struggling in one of those pivot moments of, you know, they’re in a full-time corporate job and they’re trying to pivot too.
AJV (17:34):
It’s like, I wanna go out and do my own thing or I wanna start my own business or maybe they have their own business and they’re looking at evolving it or selling it or starting something new, or maybe they’ve sold their business. And they’re like, you know, what does chapter two look like for me? And what do I want to be known for? And, and I can just personally say, like, I went through this in 2018 of when we had our separation from our former company. And yeah, I was known for 15 years. As a sales consultant, I was really good at it and was making a lot of money at it. Yeah. But I looked up one day and I was like, I don’t wanna be known for somebody who helps companies increase their top line and bottom line. Yeah. Like I don’t, I don’t wanna look 15 years from now and go, that was my legacy.
AJV (18:19):
That’s how people think of when they think of me as they think of me as a sales consultant, I don’t wanna be known for that. And so it was a, an intentional shaping of how do I, how do I even wanna be known in the marketplace? And it’s a, and I think anyone who’s going through a major transitionary time has gotta look themselves and I, and go what what’s next? And who am I? Right. Who am I? I’m not this. Who am I, so can you gotta walk us through, like, what was that journey like? And how did you kind of get to where you are today?
CH (18:49):
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a very good question. And that’s, that’s something that I like helping people with. It’s a journey that was difficult. And for me, it’s a journey I’m still going through. I think every day, it’s, you know, it’s something that you, you, you gotta figure out for yourself is, you know, am I happy where I’m at and what I’m doing and, and is this the path that I wanna be on? And I, I’m happy that I’ve finally figured out exactly what I want to do. And I want to thank you, firstly, and Rory for helping me a lot with that with brand builders, but I’ll go back to 2018, you know, NFL, I think I’m still playing. It’s a little different for me because I wasn’t ready to get to end. I’ve played this long career and I wanna keep going. And I get injured during a workout, which I would’ve got signed with a, with a team, the Buffalo bills, I’m on the field.
CH (19:33):
I’m working out. If I’m healthy in shape, they’re gonna sign me. I’m running a route. I’ve ran a million times. I run the route I plant, I cut. I end up tearing my groin. So now that’s tough. I go to the doctor, I see ’em out for six, six months almost with this groin tear. And you know, I missed the whole season. And now it’s a question thing for me. Do I want to continue working to get back to the NFL or do I want to move on to something else? And for me, icontinue to try to try to go back to the NFL. I got some calls that didn’t really go for me. So then I try to figure out what I want to do next. And going through figuring that out. I’ve, I’ve went through the fitness stuff. I love fitness, but what I really decided is what do I, I want to help people and I can help people with their health and wellness.
CH (20:21):
And I still do that and I can help people with their story. And I think that I have a story that really could move people. And that’s what made me decide what I wanted to do for other people. It’s gotta be a passion when I’m on stage. And when I’m speaking, I’m speaking to kids, I spoke to a lot of football teams, obviously being in that, in that space and a lot of high schools, colleges, and just speaking to them and telling them how I did what I did, how I got from here to there. And then underprivileged kids coming from an underprivileged family to become, you know, what I’ve become. And my brother who didn’t play in the NFL and he was able to do the same thing and our parents never graduated high school. My brother’s got three master’s degree and he’s working on the doctorate.
CH (21:02):
You know, he was the assistant director of, of the assistant director of academics for university of Colorado for five years. And now he moved on to start his own high school as a principal. And he just passed his superintendent exam. Now he’s gonna be a superintendent of a big of a big high school. And our parents didn’t graduate. Didn’t graduate high school. So using those steps and me and him uses the same strategies I used. We work on a daily routine. We have positive habits, he’s got three kids, a wife, and he’s still studying to do his doctorate. And the guy works out six days a week. Where do you find the time he’s got a routine that helps him through that? But I think that’s number one thing is finding something you’re passionate about and, and using that field when you’re going through this transitional phase and really sitting down and it’s like, you learn in brand builders, write down what do people, what would people say you’re good at?
CH (21:52):
What do you enjoy doing? What are the, the main things that people come to you for advice? And when I started, started thinking about that, and I realized that is how I’ve become so successful. How did you do this? How did you shape your body in the certain ways of fitness professional? How did you, you know, make the NFL and gain all that weight? When you had to go from a wide receiver to a tight end, you had to be at a certain weight and I’ll tell ’em, it’s, it’s simple, but not easy. It’s a routine, it’s a discipline. And it’s, it’s, it’s that. And going through that transitional phase, those are the questions I ask myself. And that’s what really helped me to decide where I wanted to go. And obviously, natural, what are you good at naturally? What’s something you enjoy doing. That’s a big question, cuz you don’t wanna go through life. Even if it is very lucrative, you want to be good at what you’re doing and you wanna, for me, I wanted to make an impact in other people’s life. And those were the questions I asked myself and that’s why I went to the direction I did. Mm
AJV (22:49):
Man. That’s so good. It’s it always makes me think about like how long was I doing something that I didn’t love doing? Yeah. Just because I was making a lot of money. Yeah. and that was my truth. It’s like I was not happy doing what I was doing for a minute before. I actually wasn’t doing that anymore. And I, my story’s really similar to yours. It wasn’t planned or expected. It was really unexpected. But I needed it. I needed a, I needed like, you know what they say? It’s like they needed, I needed an abrupt change in my life for me to do a, a full evaluation. But I hadn’t asked myself, what do I love doing maybe ever.
CH (23:29):
Yeah.
AJV (23:29):
Until 2018, it’s like, I started doing something. Got really good at it. Just kept doing it. Yeah. But never in like 15 years that I stopped to say, what do I want to be doing? Yeah. What do I want to be known for? Yeah. and so I’m kind of curious, like for you today, like, do you have an idea of what you want to be known for in this next phase of life?
CH (23:52):
Yeah, absolutely. I want to be known for someone who’s a servant to others, someone that spends his time and energy to help people better themselves. And you gotta do that by first, you know, bettering yourself and then you help people find that path, that same path that you did to improve yourself. And if that’s for business, if that’s for health, that’s something that I’m really passionate about. And just going from where I grew up going from where I started from to where I finished and my story and my brother’s story and my family’s story and things like that. I wanna see those results for a lot of people, for more people that can get out of this perpetual your perpetually, like your poor or whatever. And I want you could, there’s ways that you can improve yourself and help your whole family’s future. And that’s what me and my brother really took tar.
CH (24:47):
We would talk as kids. I mean, these aren’t normal conversations kids have. I remember me and my brother sitting up and talking to each other, how we’re going to buy mom a house and we’re gonna help dad get a car and help our family and our grandmas. And we’re having these conversations. And you know, we put these strategies at the time. We didn’t know exactly what the strategies were, but that’s what we were using. We were using that routine. We were using habits and we’re being consistent and that’s what we did. And that’s what I really am passionate about doing, because I did it. Anybody can do it. Maybe you can’t be an NFL player and play nine years in the NFL, but you can be successful at what you want to be in, be at be if you use these strategies, if you use these habits, if you use a routine and you use discipline,
AJV (25:30):
Man, I, I love this so much. And it’s like, you and your brother you’ve changed your family tree. Yeah. It’s like, that’s, I mean, that’s gonna, that’s a legacy. That’s gonna go for generations.
CH (25:43):
Like that’s. And that’s what we’ve always talked about. Yeah. Is our family for so long, we’ve been underprivileged, you know, for so long, going back, both sides of our family nobody’s ever went to college, you know, and we both graduated college with good grades. And my brothers, obviously he had better. He was better at the school, the classroom stuff than I was, but it’s, it’s looking back and seeing what we were able to do just gave me so much confidence that I could really help anyone. If you use these strategies and you do these things to get to where we were in their specific career. Me and my brother have reached such a high level, just doing these simple strategies of having, just having a routine, getting up at the same time every morning, you know, making sure you get your workout and focusing on your health and wellness, just having these routines, having these habits, always having a book, we’re reading, always having a project.
CH (26:34):
We’re working on something to keep bettering ourself. My brother, if he, he always has this allotment of his schedule, he’s always learn working on some project, whether it’s a certification, whether it’s another degree, whether it’s something he’s always bettering himself. And that’s something I took. That’s why I became a certified personal trainer, a certified fitness coach, certified strength conditioning. I just applied to Kelly business school just to have that allotment of something to do to always better yourself, find your routine, find your schedule, keep it going, keep moving forward and keep showing up. And that’s when you look back and a year down the road, tears down, there you go. Wow. That’s where I was.
AJV (27:12):
Yeah. So why do you think it is that people can’t do that or don’t do that?
CH (27:18):
Well, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult. I always say it’s simple, but it’s not easy. And that’s a lot of things. Why can’t people stop eating junk food?
CH (27:58):
But the days that matter the most, the times that matter the most and your habits and your routine is when you don’t want to do something, you show up anyways, you don’t wanna go to the weight room. You end up getting yourself in there. You really wanna watch this and that. You don’t wanna open the book and do this project. You do it anyways. And there’s there’s habit stacking things you can use in certain things that me and my brother use when in college I used to, I used to be a video game guy. I wanted to play Xbox and I look back and go, what am I doing with this time? What, what am I getting out of this? I gotta stop playing, but you’d go home after practice. You’re tired instead of studying, instead of going to get a little extra workout and working on your craft.
CH (28:38):
So now what I would do is I’d unplug my Xbox. I’d put my controller up high somewhere that unplug my TV. So now when I do get home the next day, man, if I wanna do Xbox, guess what? I’m gonna have to go find my controller, plug in my TV, plug in my Xbox and sign in all over again. So now it’s like, I might as well just do this. And there’s little tricks that we’ve always helped each other do and use and that way. And there’s a lot of those, those things that we’ve done. And that’s what a lot of, lot of everything, the things I speak on is, is how those little tricks can help and, and, and just help you to improve and make you more consistent. But it’s just goes back to showing up every day.
AJV (29:19):
Yeah. That’s those are so many good little nuggets in there and you know, it’s a, it’s about removing the temptation, right? Yes.
CH (29:26):
Yes.
AJV (29:27):
You wanna lose weight? It’s like remove all the bad food from the house. Yes. Donate it. Give it away. Get it out of the house, right? It’s like unplug your TV, right? Yes. Turn your phone off after hours. All the hide, your remote, right? It’s like all those little things of like, you have to learn how to remove temptation, right? Absolutely. That’s temptation
CH (29:51):
Bundle something. One thing my brother does is something I’ve, I’ve always loved is he, he has a couple shows. He has to watch. Only time he can turn on Netflix is when he is on the Peloton or when he is riding a bike. So you don’t wanna work out. Okay. If I, if I work out, I can watch this 20 minute show this 30 minute show. So then he’ll go work out just so he can watch the show. You know, you bundle things that way and that’s an improvement. You know, maybe it’s a 1% improvement, but those 1% improvements add up and they keep you showing up and they keep you improving.
AJV (30:24):
Oh my gosh. There’s so much richness in that of, and that could be applied to whatever it is in life. Right? Yeah. It’s, I’m I’m reading a book right now called the ruthless elimination of hurry. And one of the statistics in this book I thought was fascinating and it said that the average American reads roughly 200 words a minute. Right. if that’s true, if that’s true and you were to read one hour every day for an entire year, you would actually be able to read almost 200 books in a year.
CH (31:00):
Wow. For one hour.
AJV (31:02):
Yeah. For one hour a day. Wow. at the average rate of reading. Yeah. Words a minute then. So think about that 200 books. Yeah. And like my goal this year was a book a month and I’m on track and I’m like, so proud of myself. Yeah. And then I read this and I’m like, oh man, I have a long way to go. They have a long way to go. And I’m a really fast reader. I bet my average reading speed is twice that. And I’m like, oh, what am I doing with my time then? And so it really forced this internal reflection of how am I choosing to spend my time? Because when I say I don’t have time, that’s not true. I’m giving my time to things unintentionally that are sucking up all my time instead of them on the things that I should. So I thought that was amazing. But then these were the other two statistics that I literally put the book down and was like, you have to come here this like what? And these statistics and these were from two and 19, 2019 statistics. And so they’re probably even far more greater right now. Yeah. and so here was the next one, the next one said the average American and the course of a year spends 700 hours on social media.
CH (32:16):
Wow. That’s
AJV (32:17):
Twice what it would be to read one hour a day. So if we don’t have time to better ourselves, look at what you’re doing instead. So it’s twice the amount of time. That’s two hours a day. Yeah. In and off of social media. And I literally put the book down and was like, no effing way. And so I pulled out my phone cause you know how your phone can track your social time. Tell me what its, and it was like this like aha moment of like every like five minutes here, five minutes here, five minutes here. It’s like,
CH (32:53):
It adds up.
AJV (32:54):
Then this was the one that I was like unbelievable. The average American each year watches TV for more than 2000 hours. That’s two and a half times the social media. Not in place of, in addition to,
CH (33:14):
Oh my gosh.
AJV (33:15):
So think about those things when it’s like, don’t have time to get healthy. Don’t have time to lose weight. Don’t have time to do this. Next thing. Don’t have time to read. It’s like I say these things, right. I have two young kids. I have a two year old and I just turned five year old running into business. I’m like, I don’t have time to go do that. I don’t have time. Like yes you do. Cuz my phone just said, so my phone said, yo girl, this is how much time you spent on social media last week. And then I was counting up like how many hours of Bridger Tim did I watch? You know? And it’s like all these things. And it’s like, yeah, yes you do. It’s like, but we’re not consciously aware of our time is going cuz we don’t have a schedule. We don’t have a routine. We’re reactive. We’re living this default life of just letting everything fill up our time because we don’t have a regimented schedule and routine that we’re proactively trying to get better. Yeah. love that so much. That’s so good. And it is simple that it’s so hard, right? It’s so difficult. It’s so hard.
CH (34:10):
There’s some crazy statistics like I next next speech I give I’m, I’m gonna put those in there and there’s, there’s a time and a place for social media connecting. But that amount of time you need to work that into your schedule and you know your routine say, Hey, after I finish a project, I will give myself five minutes or 10 minutes to figure out social media. And that’s how you bundle it. And you make yourself, you can make yourself be extra productive with it. If you give yourself an allotment at the end of a project, you have your to-do list. You go down and I’m a big guy of having a to-do list. I know some people say yes, some people say no. Some people say yes on goals. Some people say no on goals. I’m big goals. I’m big to-do lists. That’s what’s helped me throughout my life.
CH (34:52):
When I’ve been the most productive is goals. To-Do list. And you put, you put your list up. Okay. Here’s are the most important things I have today. Okay. After I finish this, I will give myself five minutes here on social media. I’ll give myself five minutes here and that’s the way it should be. And that’s something I’ve implemented. And I know I’m cuz I, you know, I make, I have a business, a social media business where I, I do influencing, I do brand partnerships. I do consulting with some of these companies. So sometimes I’ll convince myself that what I’m doing is necessary and I need to do this for work. And I find myself just scrolling. I go, okay, what am I doing there? And you’re convincing yourself that you really you’re benefiting from that, but you’re not, you’re not being productive. And when you put it in, you fit it in after the end of checking something off your list at the end, okay. I I’m gonna work on this for an hour then to give myself five minutes. Mm-Hmm
AJV (35:49):
Yeah. I mean I have found for me, it’s like I have to set a timer. It’s like, if this is a part of my business, which it is, it’s like, yeah, but this is what I’m gonna allot to it every day. Yeah. Set the timer. Cause otherwise that’s true. It’s like you just start scrolling and you’re like, oh wait, what was I doing? What was I supposed to be doing?
CH (36:05):
AJV (36:06):
Somehow I’ve ended up on the revolved shopping website and I’m like, that is not what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Focus back on track. I love that. That’s so good. That’s so wise. That’s so smart and it’s so applicable. No matter what your business is, it’s like, I think it’s a really great task for anyone who is listening to this show right now, just to take a quick inventory of what are you doing every day? Like do you actually have a schedule? Do you actually have a routine for your personal brand, for social media, for podcasting, for learning, for reading, for improving, for creating content, right? It’s like gotta have a schedule. Otherwise it’s like that just the, the at entirety of the urgent, right? There’s always gonna be something that’s urgent. That’s happening that fill, fills up this time that you’ve set aside unless you protect it.
AJV (36:51):
And I think that’s so applicable universally. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing as a parent, an entrepreneur and athlete doesn’t matter. Okay. All right. I’m gonna switch gears. I have two other quick things that I wanna talk about before our time runs up together. So one of the things that you did that I think is really fascinating that I did not know about you until well, well, after we were friends and chatting is you have this stint in the reality TV world. And you know, I was, and this was like, you know, six or seven months ago. And I was like, oh, I didn’t even know that about clay. And then I was like mine. And then one of our, my friends was like, do you not know how many like followers he has that are like just all these women that were like crazed for him.
AJV (37:35):
And I was like, I totally missed this part of Clay’s life. I don’t know how I miss this. So here’s what I wanna know. It’s like one, why did you decide to do it? Yeah. Right. How did that help you grow your platform, grow your audience. And then two, what are ways like I think what I think what would be most interesting is to this audience is why, like, why do you think people follow you? Right. Because I think a huge part of this is just exposure. Right? That’s putting stuff in front of a group of people that you’re like, no, I like him. Yeah. Like I wanna see like what he’s all about, but then how do you keep that going way after, you know, in this case a show ends. So walk us through that. Why’d you do it? How did it help your audience? And then how do you keep it going?
CH (38:15):
Absolutely. So I wish that I would’ve been a part of brand builders while a long time earlier than this, you know, it would’ve really helped me in my journey, but you know, I’m here now and it’s really been great. So after I, when I go on the batch ride, it’s my, I know my football career is winding down and I’m starting to look and see, okay, what is going on afterwards? And as far as the bachelorette, I get contacted by these people. They go through my agent and you’re like, Hey, he’s still on the football team. Like we, this is all in the off season, you know, we’re very, we’ll let you do what you need to do. We just want, really want you to come on this show. And so I’m thinking I’m like, should I really do this or not? And I’m like, maybe there’s, you know, some things can come from it.
CH (38:59):
And one of my passions was announcing announcing football and being a commentator. And I had known a few ex football players, Jesse Palmer, friend of mine. He went from being the bachelor to being on the ESPN and all these shows, Jordan Rogers, same thing, football players are being announcer. I’m like, Hmm, these guys have really used this platform to jump into their second career. Yeah. And that’s kind of what I was thinking. I go, I’m single, I’m unattached. I’m I’m not opposed to meeting someone and dating and getting married. I, I do want that. I want a wife. I want kids. I want all of that. So I would be open to that. But then also I think that this can be a way for me to move into a second career. I didn’t know much about social media back then. I had a private Instagram. I was on Twitter for a little bit.
CH (39:46):
And I had a Facebook page that I was connected to. My family didn’t even know people made money off of social media at that point back in 20 17, 20 18. So I go on the show and I actually end up getting hurt on the show. Not, not emotionally, physically
CH (40:32):
Yeah, great TV. So I ended up getting injured and whatever, and you know, I still go back to the NFL and that’s after that is when I tore my groin. It was kind of a, a spiral of things that happened. I ended up pull, tearing my groin in my workout. So after that, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do. And then I go on the the spinoff show called bachelor in paradise for same kind of reasons. I’m open to, I’m open to a relationship hoping that happens. But I think it’s a way at that point, I start realizing this is a way that you can get exposure and build your brand. Maybe I could jump into announcing things like that. And it’s really puts you in front of a big audience, ABC prime time, eight o’clock it’s a great opportunity if you wanna build your brand for the cults kind of.
CH (41:14):
Yeah. So that’s, so that’s what I did. I didn’t leave there married or engaged, you know, sorry, mom. She always calls me. She wants grandkids, but I’m focused on so many things right now, mom. If you’re watching this it’ll happen soon. I promise
CH (41:57):
And I think you have to keep consistently working on it and it’s not something that’s gonna happen. Keep putting forth good content. And then you work with brands. I’d never worked with brands before. And then, then people like the content you’re putting out. They like how you brand yourself, what you stand for. And they keep working with you. I don’t have the most followers in Bachelor nation or anything like that. But I get a lot of deals with some reputable companies because of my brand health and wellness. You know, I I’m speaking on, on good things than just keeping your image and your brand is so important. These guys like, wait, I got better engagement. I got better, but you don’t have a brand. You don’t have something that you stand for. Yeah. So that’s a very important thing. When it comes to working with these companies and these people, when they want to hire you, it, it really comes back to your brand and brand building. Like I said, I wish I had went through some of these courses before I went on the show, but now I know more and more, you know what these companies are looking for, what these people wanna do when they’re hiring you, how do you sell yourself? That’s all things that I’ve learned from, from you and Rory and it’s, it’s been great. And I’m still learning.
AJV (43:02):
Yeah, I know. That’s so good. It’s you know, and a thing I love about this is a great reminder to anyone who’s like working to build their audience, build their platform. It’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, there’s, I know there’s so many things out there where you can like buy followers and you know, you can buy accounts now. And it’s like, why? Right. Yeah. What you really want is to be known for what you believe in, right. It’s to have a reputation that compliments all of your values and beliefs and, and I love what you said. It was like, really like this show was a way to get more exposure. Yeah. But you know, it’s like, but what they were getting exposed to is the real you, right? Yeah. It’s like, they’re coming, they’re saying I’m all about health, fitness, wellness, positivity, schedule, routines, mindset.
AJV (43:48):
And it’s like, although they met you here. Yeah. Right. They’re they’re following and staying with you because they align with you. They like you yeah. They’re, they’re getting value from you. They start to learn from you and trust you, which is why they stay. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. I mean, that’s not any different, like, you know, I follow Leo Messey and Christiana, Aldo, right? Yeah. World famous soccer players and Nashville just got our first soccer team. Right. We just, oh, nice stadium. And so I’m like really going all in on learning all things, soccer outside of my kids’ Peewee soccer. And so it be fascinating. Like, you know, Christiana Ronaldo has got the largest social media following in the world, in the world, almost 600 and 600 million followers across platforms. Yeah. Almost twice the size of the United States.
CH (44:41):
Oh,
AJV (44:42):
Wow. Enormous. Right. Wow. But here’s the thing it’s like, people first heard about him because of his amazing skills in his sport. Yeah. But once you go to his profile, he has hardcore health, wellness, fitness. Yeah. He a die hard health, nut nutrition. It’s about his family. I think they have five kids. It’s about a lot and commitment to his wife being a father. Yes. He talks about soccer and modeling and there’s lots of shirtless posts that doesn’t hurt him. I’m sure. Yeah. But it’s a lot about like what you put into your body exercising fitness routine schedule habits, right? It’s like people may have heard about him because of soccer. Right. People may heard, learned about you because of the bachelorette. If they were watching. Yeah. Know, people may have heard about me because of something, but if you can stay true to your brand, if you can stay true to the reputation that you’re building, and if you get clear on what you wanna be known for, then when people find you, it’s easy for them to go.
AJV (45:42):
Yes. I want more of that. Yes. I like this. Yes. I will follow this. Yes, absolutely. To engage with this. But if that’s not clear, then I don’t know what I’m coming for. Right. Yeah. It’s like, it’s the same. It’s like, if I would’ve come to your profile, you know, back in 2018, when you were on the bachelorette or whenever that was 17. Yeah. And you were just pictures of you and chicks all the time. I would’ve been like pass. Yeah. But if I would’ve come and it’s like, no, I’m looking for health, fitness, wellness, inspiration, motivation habits, routines. It wouldn’t have mattered where I learned about you from, because once I’m there, I’m like, that’s what I want more of.
CH (46:20):
Yeah.
AJV (46:21):
And that’s sounds for any of us. So it’s like the question is to everyone listening, it’s what are you doing to increase your exposure? Right. Absolutely. This was a great way of growing and building your platform. But it was in a way that was in line and true to who you were and what you had to be talking about already.
CH (46:40):
Absolutely. You gotta have that brand and that’s how you get, get an audience and keep an audience, a loyal audience. And, and even after, you know, the show, a lot of people, you know, a lot of the people that go on these shows are audience start to go down and dip and you’ll see people that don’t really have a brand, just keep posting themselves with, you know, friends or family and stuff. And you, you know, you gotta, you gotta give people a reason to follow you. And, and for me, it’s a lot to do with health and wellness. And now I’m really working on some cool things to do with the motivational space, the habits and routine coming out there. And I’m really excited to show people that side of me too. So it’s, it’s, you gotta give some reason, you know, what am I getting out of following this person of, of staying, you know, involved in what this person is doing. And if you give people something, you, you generally give them something that they, they can use, they will follow you. And, and that will, will help both of you.
AJV (47:33):
Yeah. You gotta give them some value, right? Like
CH (47:35):
Gotta give value. Absolutely.
AJV (47:37):
Like give value, build trust. Yes. Again, simple. Not easy. Yes. Alright. Last question, clay. And then I’m gonna let you go. What do you wish people knew about you that they don’t know right now?
CH (47:49):
That’s a good question, AJ. And you know, there’s, there’s quite a few things. I, I mean, I don’t wanna tell people that my, you know, my first love was, was trying to be a singer and I, my mom had to tell me, clay, you have a terrible voice and you’re never gonna do that. But that’s something funny, mom.
AJV (48:07):
Thanks.
CH (48:07):
But something that I, you know, I do we’ve talked about a little bit on the show is just where I’ve come from. I haven’t spoke out much about my, my history, my background, where I come from, you know, people see me and, you know, living a good life and taking trips and, you know, and living in a nice home or nice car, whatever. But I really want people to know that this is not something that I was given for me. It was all about discipline routine and hard work. And, you know, I was, I lived in a trailer with 12 people growing up. I didn’t have my own bed until I went to college, shared to bed with my mom and my brother. You know, this is where I came from. And this is what people can do. If you just have the habits that discipline routine you can grow and you can change your life. Even your family’s life, your, your family’s trajectory this way. Me and my brother, both it wasn’t just because I hit a home run and could play NFL football. You know, some people might say, oh, you got luck. You could play NFL football. Look at my brother. He didn’t play NFL football. And he’s doing the same thing
AJV (49:05):
He’s
CH (49:05):
Working. Yes. He, he’s working a great job. Him and his wife are, are doing very well financially. They have amazing kids. They keep bettering themselves. They keep this routine. They always have a project. It’s, it’s something that, that anybody can do. And that’s something I want people to know that I wasn’t given to me. I had to work for it. And that’s why I’m so passionate about getting my message out there,
AJV (49:28):
Man, clay, I hope this becomes a pivotal part of your story. I hope that one day for every kid, every young person, every adult who looks out there and says, woe is me. Yeah. Look at my situation. I can’t do anything about it. That would be able to then look at you and go, but yes you can. Yeah. But it’s hard work. It’s hard work. It’s discipline and it’s habits and it routine. It’s like, yeah. I love that you changed, you know, the trajectory of your family tree, you and your brother. It’s like, I would really love to meet your parents one day. Yeah. How proud of you guys, they must be. And man, I just, I love your story. I love your heart. I love what you doing. So honored to get, to know you and get to be a part of your story and your journey. Thank you so much for being on the show today. If people wanna follow you online, where should they go?
CH (50:19):
You can follow me on my Instagram clay HARs 82, or you could just message me on my website, clay Harbor, online.com. And if you want to just talk to me about possible speaking, gig consulting health and wellness training. My website, it’s all there. Clay Harbor, online.com. Social media, clay. Harbor’s 82 on Instagram. And yeah, I appreciate you having me on AJ. And I look forward to seeing you and Rory at, at the next brand builders event.
AJV (50:49):
Yes, likewise. And y’all, it’s like if you’re looking for a great podcast, host, go to clay Harbor online.com request him as a guest. If you’re looking for a speaker at your upcoming event, go to clay Harbor, online.com, check him out. You will not be disappointed. I promise I’ll put all these links in the show notes and we’ll catch you guys next time on the influential personal brand. See you later.
Ep 333: Build Your Brand by Building Your Audience with Amberly Lago | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, y’all a J Vaden here and welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Amber Lee Wago. And I love her
AJV (01:52):
So, you know, I have a lot though. Okay. I don’t even know where to start cause they’re not three. And I know we usually say three, but I have more than three today. So here’s a couple of things that I think are really good. We talked a lot about a common theme in this interview with knowing who your audience is, right? So if you’re creating content and I would say content is not restricted to social media or blogs or podcasting we all create content. I literally was on a text thread with a girlfriend today. Who’s like, Hey, I, I’m making a really big change in my professional life. And it’s really hard for me to ask for help, but would you be open to dinner or coffee or drink? So I can just get some professional advice or just some input on this decision I’m making.
AJV (02:47):
And it’s like, to me, I’m already mentally preparing of like, how can I best serve my friend in this conversation? Right? It’s like, I know where she is. I don’t know what advice she needs, but I’m already going, like, what do I have that could be a benefit to her. That is content
AJV (03:48):
So again, to me, it doesn’t matter if you’re a salesperson, a mom, a friend, an entrepreneur, a CEO, and executive speaker, author podcaster, wrap it all up right into one it’s communication. And in order to be an effective communicator, you have to know your audience, right? That’s not new. That’s not like we haven’t heard that before to have effective conversations and to be involved in effective communication. We need to know where the other person stands. That is your audience. This is just to an audience of perhaps more than one, right? And so you’ve got to know your audience. So then the question is, how do you get to know your audience? And that’s a part of your job and curating, who do you want your audience to be? Because you actually do get to influence that. And a huge part of it is who is the audience already around you?
AJV (04:49):
And what do you have to share and give to those people? What is the audience that you already have online and offline, but just as much as who is the audience that you want to attract, that you want to curate, that needs to hear what you have to say. That can benefit from something that you have to say, because I just really come from a place of every single person listening to this and everyone not listening to this. You have something to share that can positively impact and benefit the life of someone around you, whether or not you believe that to be true or not. It is true. There is a story and experience. There is something that you have that will help someone else, but it will be more helpful when you know who that someone else is, because that will allow you to reach those people.
AJV (05:45):
And it will allow you to have a bigger impact because there’s a little bit more focus and intention. So again, in order to have effective communication, I E creating content, you have to know who your audience is. So you need to know things about them. You need to inquire, you need to ask them, you need to have a relationship with them, but you need to know who they are. So that ties into my second one, which I think this is really good. How do you curate this type of audience? This is so simple that it kind of blows my mind. It’s like one of those things where it’s like, it’s so simple and it’s so true, but yet we don’t do it. Or at least I don’t sometimes. So this was a great reminder to me, the way that you curate an audience is to share what, you know, that’s, it
AJV (06:59):
There’s in this phenomenon of this thing called the imposter syndrome. And for a long time, I was embarrassed to ask what is that exactly? Because everyone talks about it, but I was really unclear what it’s about to Google it when they like, what is imposter syndrome? And then it hit me. And I was like, what an odd phenomenon that people somehow don’t feel adequate enough to live up to the accolades that they’ve actually done. Why this is, it was, it was foreign to me at the time. And this is my reconciliation of that is that often now you don’t have to agree with this that’s okay. But this is mine often when we suffer from things like imposter syndrome, it’s because we found, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t get to speak what we know, and either we put ourselves there or we volunteer to get put somewhere, or we got hired to put somewhere, but we’re in a situation where we’re no longer speaking what we know.
AJV (08:09):
And we’re trying to seem more credible or we’re trying to share pieces of information that are academically correct, but they’re not personally in tune with us. And I believe that’s where a lot of imposter syndrome comes from. Because if you just share what you know, then that’s just who you are.
AJV (09:08):
Whether someone else agrees with it or not. That’s okay. But when you speak, when you share what you know through your lens, you naturally start to attract people and simultaneously repel people. The problem with that is the third thing we’re gonna talk about is we want to be liked by everyone and we’re gonna have to be okay with not being like every one. That’s hard. It’s hard for me too. It’s like, sometimes I get like hateful comments and I’m like, delete
AJV (10:17):
Not, that is not a life worth living. Well, there will be people who love you for just the way you are. Just like, there will be people who do not even like you for who you are welcome to life. That’s already happening all around us. It’s just amplified with the digital, the digital atmosphere that we live in. But the more authentic you become, the more polarizing you will also become. But that means that you are attracting the audience that needs you. And you are naturally repelling the audience who does not. And that’s actually a really great thing because you’re reaching the right people and the people who don’t can go find someone else. We have to be okay with that kinda like three high level things. But I also wanted to share some of these one liners, cause I thought they were really good that I just really love this.
AJV (11:15):
It’s treat your audience like family. And she goes, I have even a hard time saying audience. These are friends. These have become family, but treat your audience like family. Just really quick little things actually listen to your audience meaning actually pay attention to what they’re engaging on. And I love what she said. She goes, if you really wanna know what your audience needs and wants, ask them and pay attention to what they’re asking you for. Go back through your DMS or look at your emails, look at your text messages pay attention to what your family and your friends and the people around you and your everyday life pay attention to what they come to you for, what they ask you for. But listen to your audience, actually pay attention to what’s happening. That will give you the direction of everywhere.
AJV (12:03):
You need to go. Just listen. So good. Become known for one thing, right? You, we talk about this a lot at Ram builder, screw you break through Shehan wall by becoming known for one thing, but it’s the more you talk about one thing, the easier it is to become known for that thing. So focus, right? Put a little blinders on here. Don’t get distracted by all the shiny things, all the temptations focus. And you can do that when you know who your audience is, the focus I thought that was really great purpose instead of trying to find your purpose, try to serve other people and you will find purpose by doing that. So good. Y’all instead of me trying to just sit here and go, what is my purpose? Right? I’m like a journal about it. I could read about it, or I can go serve other people and find purpose in the process.
AJV (13:04):
So good. So, so good. And then last but not least everyone you need to serve is already all around you. He just have to see him. And I love this. If you didn’t listen to her story I will encourage you to go do so now because she has a really amazing story about being in a pretty tragic motorcycle accident, went through 34 surgeries and lost her very well known fitness business, but she’s built a whole new business by just showing up and being present for the people around her. And it started in a gym not online. It started in a gym by her showing up every single day. The same thing can happen for you. You do not have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars and you do not have to make millions of dollars to make massive impact in this world. Y’all, it’s an killer episode, highly recommend it. So glad that you’re listening, I really encourage you to listen to this one. If you suffer from imposter syndrome, if you’re trying to find your way, this is an episode worth listening to, so come back, check us out again and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 332: Build Your Brand by Building Your Audience with Amberly Lago
RV (00:00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:00:53):
Hey everybody. And welcome to the influential personal brand. This is AJ Vaden. Here I am one of your co-hosts along with my partner in crime, Rory Vaden. And today I’m always excited because we have such awesome guests, but I’m, I’m especially excited for our guests today because Amber Lee Lago is one of those people that even though we’re on zoom and she and I have never actually got to meet in person, you can feel the joy that just emanates from her being. And it’s like to honestly like your whole aura, just like brightens the room. And even when you’re over zoom, it still does that. And I just, I love to get to spend time with you. I love to get to talk to you. And I’m so excited to introduce you to our audience, but for anyone’s listening, if you ever had a friend or if you’ve ever known anyone that just being around them makes you in a better mood.
AJV (00:01:49):
That’s what you’re gonna get from Amber Lee today. So wherever you are, here’s why you need to stick around. You’re going to leave the next 45 to 55 minutes in a better place than where you started that I can promise you I don’t know all the amazing things we’re gonna talk about right now. That’s the beauty of the conversations that I get to have with Amber Lee. But what I do know is that you’re gonna be in a better place than where you are right now. So you need to stick around, you need to pay attention get out of pen and paper, right? If you’re driving, don’t do that, but listen intently, right? But this is one of those conversations that you just never know what you’re gonna get. And I feel that way every single time that I talk to you and I’m so excited to introduce you to our audience.
AJV (00:02:33):
So let me give you a little bit of a formal introduction so that I don’t forget any of the awesomeness that makes up all things, Amber Lee. So a quick, quick recap for all of you listening. If you are new to Amber Lee Lago, she is a peak performance coach. She’s a TEDx speaker. She’s a podcaster. Her podcast is awesome. I love it. She is a leading expert in the field of resilience and transformation, and she’s got a hell of a real life story to back that up. She is the best selling author of true grit and grace. She’s the founder of the unstoppable life mastermind. And I just love that title so much. We’re gonna talk a lot about this mastermind is its launching right now. But I think more than anything, what I love so much about you is you, you have this passion about you and what you’re doing and you have a real life story that goes along with it. And I think there’s a lot of power in having, you know, academic credentials and I’m not downplaying those at all, but for me anyways, in my life journey, people like you who have these real life stories mean so much more. And that is why I’m so excited to introduce you to our audience. So thank you so much for being on the show today.
AL (00:03:51):
Oh my goodness. AJ, I just love you. Did you see me kind of grabbing my arms when you started talking? It’s because I had goosebumps because when you were talking, I was thinking the exact same thing about you that when I see you even through zoom, I’m like, oh my goodness, you radiate joy and light. And just so I’m so grateful to be here and connect with you again and with your audience. So thank you for that most amazing introduction.
AJV (00:04:22):
Well, it’s all true. And I’m honestly, I’m, I’m so excited to introduce you to our audience and for all of you who are listening, you know, that we bring on really special guests that kind of like pull back the veil and kind of give up behind the scenes, real life perspective of how do you build a personal brand? How do you become known for something? How do you tap into that thing that we call personal branding, which, you know, to us is synonymous with reputation, but, and how do you build an audience and how do you find an audience and how do you become known for something that you wanna be known for? And so Amber Lee, this is where I wanna start just in case anyone listening doesn’t really know you. I would love for you to just give people a chance to get to know a little bit of your backstory, a little of your background, and like ultimately today, right? You’ve got this bestselling book, you have this awesome mastermind you’re launching, you’re a TEDx speaker. You’re an amazing podcaster. You’re keynote speaking. You’re doing all these things that you didn’t always do. Those things. Mm-Hmm
AL (00:05:38):
That’s such a great question because I actually just had a conversation with someone who was interested in joining my mastermind yesterday. And she said, yeah, but Amberly, you have all these things because you know, you have this story that you can tell this story. And so, you know, basically it was easy for me to get to where I am. And I just wanna say like five years ago, I didn’t even own a laptop. So when you say you have a bestselling book, you’re a podcaster. I knew nothing about technology. And I remember that
AJV (00:06:15):
Is there. I wanna make sure people had actually heard that five years ago. Mm-Hmm
AL (00:06:22):
Didn’t own a laptop. I had a smartphone. Is that what they even call it now? Like I
AJV (00:06:29):
Many, how many people truly are listening today? Do you think that truly give themselves the excuse? I’m just too late to the game, right? Mm-Hmm
AL (00:06:53):
My story’s not enough my story. And I’m like, we all have a story, you know what I mean? It’s like, we all have something to share an experience to share that could be a roadmap for someone else. And when we get caught up in that comparison or we give ourself, we make start making excuses, you know, I was 37 when my book came out. Yeah. I’m like, no, no, no, wait 37 that’s later. No, I wish I was 37.
AL (00:07:49):
I actually did those things because it wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t even have social media. And it wasn’t until I wrote my book and I had, you know, I hand wrote about 90% of my book on these notepads. I have notepads all over my desk. I love notepads, but I didn’t own a laptop. And I didn’t have a lot of people that also believed in me. And they thought I was crazy for wanting to write a book. You know, I was in the fitness industry for 26 years and they were like, why don’t you just stick to that? You’re the fitness girl. And I’m like, but no, I wanna write this book. And so I hand wrote about 90% of it. And one day was very discouraged when I couldn’t figure out how to send a picture. Like, I didn’t even know.
AL (00:08:34):
My husband had a, like a, a PC, like a computer. I did not know how to work. And I was, I asked to speak at this event for Lona Jane, which I was really excited about. And still I was a little bit like, okay, a lot imposter syndrome. Like, why do they want me? And I had to send them a picture like of me. And I was trying to find a picture to send. And I asked my husband, well, can you, you know, teach, show me how to send this picture in an email. And he’s like, oh, what do you want now? And I was like, that’s it. I’m just gonna go buy my own computer. And I went to the Mac store and I bought myself a laptop. And then I went to type my whole book up. I got a publisher and I love that you talk so much about the marketing and branding and the personal brand, because I love learning from you.
AL (00:09:25):
And so that’s one of the reasons I think so many people love all that. You share, love your podcast so much because we learn so much from you. Okay. I knew nothing. And this publisher was like, we don’t do any marketing or branding for you. So if you wanna get your book out there, it’s up to you to do it. And so I was like, well, I don’t have a big budget. Like I have zero budget. So let me try this social media thing out. And I had like a couple of hundred followers on Instagram. I literally, that were like friends and family. I basically had that account. So I could stalk my oldest daughter. I didn’t even know how to post. And I was like, well, I’m just gonna start sharing. And I started sharing what I had gone through, how I had to completely reinvent myself.
AL (00:10:15):
How’d I had to learn how to love myself again. And I started to share like mostly, you know, from a scar and not an open wound. And you I’ll get to the question that you asked, sorry, for this long, I love this cancer, but you know, I had this incredible career and fitness and for 26 years, that’s what I did. And so I had, I was a trainer. I had trainers that worked for me. I taught a trainer certification preparation course. I was like in it, I was sponsored by Nike. I was doing infomercials. If you walked into like a Rite aid or something, you would see vitamin labels. And there would be me right on the vitamin label. And so I, I thought life is good. After a lot of grit to get to where I was, I was like, life is good.
AL (00:11:10):
And that all changed. When, you know, one day coming home from work, I got T-boned hit by an SUV, thrown 30 feet on, on my motorcycle and slid across the asphalt. And I remember looking down at my leg and my, one of my first thoughts, AJ was this can’t be good. I might have to train clients on crutches for a while. Like I was already thinking, how am I gonna keep training my clients? I had no idea just how much this was gonna change my life. Rushed to the hospital. And I was putting induced coma. And when I woke up from a coma is when I learned, I had a 1% chance of saving my leg. And to me, it was like my leg. That was my livelihood running was my drug of choice. I mean, that was what I did for happiness. A lot of people would like to, you know, get rid of anxiety by having a drink or something running is what I did.
AL (00:12:12):
That was my therapy. And I thought, what am I gonna do? And, and I thought, well, 1%, well then there’s still a chance mm-hmm
AL (00:13:22):
I thought this can’t have happened for nothing. Like there’s gotta be, you know, I want other people to know that they can hang on to hope that they can. All you need is just a glimmer of that hope to keep moving forward. Because I was in a place where I did not wanna live. I went from surviving this accident and 34 surgeries to really sinking down into despair and depression and went from being this fitness expert to all of a sudden, I was drinking every day to try to cope with the pain. And it was at that moment, there was a turning point where I thought there’s gotta be more to life than this and climbing my way back out of that and rebuilding myself in every way, spiritually, mentally, physically, financially. I mean, we had 2.9 million worth of medical expenses. And so for anybody listening, who is going through a struggle right now, whether it is financially or physically or emotionally, I think there’s been a lot going on in the world, or even you’re in a place in your life where, you know, you don’t, maybe you didn’t get hit by an SUV, but you got hit by something in these last couple of years, that there is a way that you can strategically take steps to rebuild and tap into your resilience, to get through those moments.
AL (00:14:52):
And let me tell you if I can do it and completely reinvent myself and learn to love myself, you know, go from being a fitness model to being scarred up from the hip down and doing that all in my late forties. And now I’m 50, then anything’s possible.
AJV (00:15:13):
I mean, there are so many different paths that I could take this conversation from just even this very shortened version of just a tiny part of your story. That, there’s one thing that really sticks out to me that I think applies to probably every single person listening, which is this devaluation of their own story. And like, even to hear you say, it’s like, man, I hear this. I’m a podcast from my speaker and it’s oh yeah. It’s like, I do those things, I think today and every day. Right. I think throughout, you know, I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s different today than it was 50 years ago, or it will be in 50 years from now. I, I think that in general, we downplay the significance of our own stories and we forget that we all have a story and that our stories are lives are there for a reason now, regardless of what, you know, anyone’s beliefs are, who’s listening.
AJV (00:16:18):
It’s like things happen for a reason. And a part of that reason I do believe is to help us share it’s to create that community. And so I would just love to hear from you of your take on, like, how did you find the significance of your story in such a way that you’re like, there’s a message in here and I feel so compelled to share it that I’m gonna hand write it, right. And I’m gonna figure this out at 45, 46, 47, because there is something in this that I have to get out in the world. And I think that’s a really important thing because we all have those things. And most of us just don’t find a way to share ’em and it doesn’t matter to me, like you don’t have to be an author or a speaker or a podcaster or anything to go. I have a story that has the ability to shape and even change someone else’s life. So I could share it to a friend, to an employee, to a stranger, to my barista at the coffee shop. But how, how do you find the significance of your story and believe that it has the power to actually make a difference. And so I’ll just start with, how did you do that?
AL (00:17:38):
Well, you know what, I think that sometimes you have people around you that help you do that because I did not see the significance in my story or myself. I mean, I, to be completely transparent, I hated myself. I, I really just was very unhappy and I didn’t feel like I was enough. I didn’t feel like I was a good enough mom anymore. I felt broken in every way. And it wasn’t until I think a couple of things happened. And I mean, first of all, I will say that, like you said, we all have a story. We all have things that we’re, we’re really good at. And I would really urge anyone listening today to really think about what is that thing that people tell you that you’re good at, or that people come to you. And they’re always asking you advice on this one thing or this one thing that you could just talk about all day and it lights you up.
AL (00:18:43):
It gives you goosebumps. You would talk about it, whether you were paid for it or not, you would fly across the country to talk about it. Like, what is that thing or things, and start writing those things down. But for me, I did not see like I said, I felt really broken and I remember, you know, I was so wanted to get back. I wanted to get back to training clients. And I remember thinking I needed my clients now more than they needed me because I needed a purpose. I needed a reason to, I wanted to get back to work. I wanted to do what I loved again. And so I remember thinking, well, who’s gonna wanna train with me. Like I’m broken, I’m on crutches to my surprise. My business boomed because people saw me going into the gym in my wheelchair and getting up outta my wheelchair to do tricep push downs, getting back in my wheelchair with my leg, all bandaged up.
AL (00:19:43):
They saw me coming in after a surgery and having like an I IV in a wire that was going in a cast on my leg. And I was on the row machine doing the row machine with one leg. They saw me on crutches. They saw me back in a wheelchair. They saw me limping. They saw me before I could get my leg all the way up around the bike in the day that I got it all the way up and I could do the bike, like a normal person. Well kind of it wasn’t very pretty, but kind of
AL (00:20:26):
And I thought, if Ambery can show up, I can get my button at spin class and I can do it too. And then I would have somebody come up to me and say, Hey, do you mind talking to my aunt? She’s having a real hard time getting off the couch. If you could just call her. And so I’d call her and I’d give her a pep. And so IPEC talk. And I was like going to one person at a time. And I found myself on the bicycle at the gym. And there was a girl riding the bicycle beside me. And she noticed like, all these people were just coming up to me nonstop, like the whole hour that I was there on the bike and they were, would come up and they would tell me their problems. And I would offer solutions or suggestions that had helped me.
AL (00:21:08):
And she goes, don’t you get tired of people coming up to you with all your, their problems? And I said, well, no, not if I can help ’em. I said, I, I, I, I like helping people. So there was my first clue that there was something there because, and then it was at the doctor’s office. So I’d had all these surgeries still, like I said, I wasn’t, I had looked down at my leg with kind of discussed, cuz it was all scarred up. And it was given me so much pain. I had tried all these different treatments, ketamine, infusions, spinal stimulator, spinal blocks, Eastern Western medicine. I mean, you name it. I had tried it. I was on 73 homeopathic pills at one time, a day and 11 prescription medications and nothing was helping with this complex regional pain syndrome. And I remember I had this solution. I was like, well, we’ll just amputate. And I went to the doctor who saved my leg and I said, Hey doc, I really appreciate you saving my leg and, and doing all these surgeries. But you know, it’s slowing me down. We just need to amputate it. I can’t live with this pain. And he did something that just changed it for me.
AL (00:22:32):
He put my leg in his, you know, usually they’ll put your leg on the table. And I thought, gosh, I can’t believe he’s putting my, my ugly leg on his clean white coat. And he looked at my leg like it was a masterpiece and just something shifted. And I thought, wow, if he can look at my leg like that, maybe I can learn to look at it like that too. And so every day I just started to love my leg for healing the way it did or, you know, enabling me to walk again, enabling me to train clients again. And so I think that sometimes when we have somebody believe in us or look at us differently and they see the significance in us, it allows us to start to look at the significance if we can’t see it yet. And so that’s why I think it’s really important.
AL (00:23:36):
You know, I’ve heard the same success leads clues. When I started getting asked more and more to share my story because it was genuinely helping people and inspiring them and giving them hope. I said, well, how can I make myself better? How can I learn more? And I just dove into, you know, getting better and every way, spiritually physically, I already worked really hard on physically trying to get better, but mentally, emotionally. And then I started getting to my surprise, getting asked to speak at like bigger events. And then then I thought, well, I think I wanna do this thing. I think I, you know, somebody said, you know, you should write a book. And I thought, well, maybe I could make a bigger impact. If I wrote a book, it wouldn’t be one person at a time. Maybe just, maybe somebody would read this and I could share how I got through all of the struggles and it would help them get through some adversity they might be going through too.
AL (00:24:41):
And so that’s what made me decide to write a book. But I think that, you know, if we think about some of the things that we love doing, what brings us joy, I love people being with people, brings me joy, being with people and seeing the transformation in them. Ooh, that’s my favorite thing. And so when we think about what brings us joy, what we’re really good at those questions that people ask us all the time and it doesn’t have to be even people in your real life. What are people on social media asking? Yeah. Like what are people asking you in DMS over and over for me? Because at the time I didn’t have social media, I just went on what people were asking me like in real life at the gym, you know, when I would walk down the street. And then as I got to be on social media, I started really paying attention even more to what people were asking and I’ll never forget AJ.
AL (00:25:38):
I had this. So I was doing this big event. Like I was speaking at this event and we all gave away, you know, a, a free gift. Well, I was like, well, I’ve got a gratitude journal. I’m giving away. Like I’m, I’m living large. I’m giving away a gratitude journal and it’s even downloadable
AL (00:26:48):
But but you know, it’s like, he’s like, well, that’s the beauty. You don’t really know what you’re doing. And I still don’t. I think we’re all, I I’m just still trying to figure it out. That’s why I listen to your podcast so I can learn that the latest, you know, tricks and tips, but I think it,
AJV (00:27:07):
You have it figured out it’s everyone else who doesn’t have it figured out. And I say that sincerely and we, you know, over the last six months our company brand builders group has been going through our own reinvention and we just launched what we call B BG 2.0, because we’ve really spent the better part of this year, 2022 of refocusing on who we wanna serve, who we are as a company. And honestly, what do we think that we’re the best in the world at and as a part of its startup. And when we’re all getting started, it’s just, we do whatever you have to do. And you know, many people just stay on that track. And I really felt through a course of a, a variety of different events this year, that we needed a reentering back on the heart of who we are back on our uniqueness, back on what makes us different back on what’s made us who we are.
AJV (00:28:03):
And you said something and that I just wanna touch on for a minute, because I think where you have it figured out that truly no one else does is you learned the power of your surroundings. And most of us don’t learn that you see that the challenge that I see with so many people today is what they’re looking for is an audience. And an audience is just another way of saying a collection of individuals. And what we really need to be saying is how do I reach an individual? And people wanna see numbers, not people. And you saw people and people saw you. And for anyone who wants to build their personal brand, you know, build their reputation, grow their business. They need to focus on the people that are already in front of them.
AL (00:28:58):
Mm-Hmm,
AJV (00:28:58):
AL (00:29:24):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:29:25):
And it’s really them
AL (00:29:31):
Well, you know, I was just at, I spoke at a friend’s mastermind. That was, it was beautiful. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Sundance, but I had never been to Sundance. And it was in Sundance, Utah, AMA beautiful. And when I’m at, at events, I’m, I am there for the people like I am there the whole time. And when I’m speaking at any event, I don’t just go and speak on stage and leave. I am there to meet people because I love people. And I’m there to be all in. Like my schedule’s blocked out. I’m not taking a bunch of call. Like I am there. And even my family knows, like when I’m at an event, I’m there. And unless like, you know, I I’ll talk to him at night, but during the day I’m like, if it’s an emergency, call me twice, you know, otherwise. And so this last event, I was speaking on a panel and my phone rang twice and I answered it and my husband was like, see, I told you she would answer it if you
AJV (00:30:40):
A test drill. Yes,
AL (00:30:42):
That’s a
AJV (00:30:42):
Test.
AL (00:30:43):
But yeah, but I’m, I am there and for the people,
AJV (00:30:49):
But that quite honestly is what most people are missing today. I really do believe that it’s like, you know, we talk a lot about online marketing and social media and funnels and webinars at brand builders group. But to be really honest and transparent, where we shine is in the offline reputation, everything that we can attest to in our entire business and why brand builders group even exists has nothing to do with podcasting or email lists or social media or websites or design. It has to do with long standing offline relationships that we spent time and years, years nurturing and building and pouring into and giving to give, not to receive. And because of those relationships is how everything else came a lot. And it’s no different than what you’ve done. It’s like you became known in the gym and then they’re like, well, I need you to know other people. And then those people are like, and I need you to know other people. And it’s like the real magic isn’t that
AL (00:31:56):
It sure is. And I mean, AJ, that’s how we met. Yeah. I had like three people saying, oh, do you know AJ? You same got to meet AJ. You have, she’s amazing. You just have to meet her. So by the third person, I was like, who is this AJ? But the
AJV (00:32:13):
Same happened to me. It was like, like, it was like, it was like, just like the, world’s like, you know, colliding of all these different relationships. But I think that’s, that’s the beauty of what I love about this part of your story is it’s people got to know you and it’s through relationships and it’s, you know, it’s through all these things that it’s trust, right? It’s like, it’s like, I know that, you know, know, I love what you said. It’s like my goodness, if she can do it, I can do it. I think about, I have, I have a girlfriend who has quadruplets that are six months older than my oldest. And when she got pregnant with quadruplets, she had an 18 month old and every single day where I have a hard mom day, I’m like, I have two, she has five, I have two, she has five. And it’s like, she can do it. I can figure this out. I’ve only got two. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not hard, but it’s like, that’s what she is for me and motherhood of. But that would never happen if there wasn’t a relationship. Mm-Hmm
AL (00:33:31):
Oh, thank you. Can I just hang out with you all day?
AJV (00:33:35):
Please feel I like it though. But it’s like, I think that is really important. And then you, and I love what you said and it’s like, then I said, well, you know, if I write a book, I can reach more than just one person mm-hmm
AL (00:34:02):
I love this question.
AJV (00:34:05):
I have my own thoughts of love, hate relationship with the publishing world. But I would love to hear your take on like okay, for all of you out there, here’s what you need to know. If you wanna write a book and you actually want people to read it. So,
AL (00:34:22):
Okay. If you wanna write a book and you actually want people to read it, you actually have to start writing today. Like make a commitment that you’re gonna do it, decide, and then get out your notebook. Look, I didn’t even have a computer when I started and I would get discouraged along the way. And I would have that soundtrack going on in my head. Like who do you think you are? Like, who cares about what you have to say? Like you’re not smart enough. You don’t have a college degree. Like all the things I would tell myself, but then I would focus on this. Isn’t about me. This is about who I can serve. And maybe this is really going to help someone cuz I don’t ever want anybody be to be in that dark place that I was in, where I was thinking, you know, my kids could find another mom.
AL (00:35:15):
My husband could, you know, find another wife. I don’t want anybody to ever have to feel that way. But mostly I don’t want anybody to ever feel like they’re they’re alone. You know that they, you know, pain tends to isolate and isolation for me led to addiction. And so whatever I could do, that’s why I wrote my book like that. You can get through hard times, but I would say start writing there. There’s so many ways to do a book. You, whether it’s hybrid, whether it’s self, whether it’s traditional, you have to decide how fast do you want your book to get out there? So talking about, you know, people again, I got my publishing deal through people. I had a friend of mine that invited me to, you know, go to this conference that was all for authors and there was gonna be publishers there and literary agents.
AL (00:36:07):
And I’ll just make this a quick story. But this goes back to how you treat people. I thought, well, you know, it was, the ticket was only like I think 50 bucks to go. I’m like, how good can this conference be? Like, you know, but that’s what was my thought? How can it be that good? It’s only $50, you know? So we go, it’s in LA and we get there and I’m getting in the elevator and I see this guy running to the elevator. So I hold the door open for him and he’s in a suit and he’s kind of got a sweaty brow and he goes, oh, thank you so much. I’m running late. And I’m like, sure. And we start talking in the elevator. So I get up to the conference, he’s got a table, he’s a publisher. So I walk up and I’m like, oh, he goes, thanks for holding the door for me.
AL (00:36:57):
And I said, you’re welcome. I said, you’re a publisher. He said, are you an author? I said, well I have a manuscript. He goes, well, let me see what it is. So I got my foot in the door by holding the elevator door. I love that story so much. And you know, I, at the end of this conference, you know, if you’re, if you’re writing a book, you can either do a book proposal. You can have a literary agent, you can self-publish and you get your book out there a lot faster. But they had these booths set up and it was like speed dating for authors. And we would go sit in the booth and we would have like a minute to pitch our book. Well, I didn’t even have a title to my manuscript yet. I just, I had some stuff typed out that I had with me, no title.
AL (00:37:45):
So it was a long day, 12 hours in, I hadn’t had anything to eat and I’m going to try to pitch this. I’m like, I’m doing it, man. I’m get in front of every publisher. I’m get in front of these literary agents. I’m gonna pitch this thing. Even though I don’t have a title, I get to the very end. It’s that publisher. And I sit down in front of him and I just, I collapse and I’m I’m I got tears in my eyes and he, he said, well, did you bring me something I can read? And I said, no. He said, well, why not? And I said, well, I don’t have a title yet. I don’t feel like it’s good enough. Like I just opened up to him. He said, you know what? Here’s a book. How to write a proposal. He gave me a book on how to write a proposal.
AL (00:38:27):
He sent me on his way with his business card. So I had his number and I gave him my business card. My phone rings about a week later. He’s like Amberly. And I see it’s a New York city area code. I’m like, Ooh, this is New York city. I better answer this. That’s awesome. Like hello? And I had told him if he was ever in LA, please let me know. I’d love to have him and his wife over to dinner. So he calls it’s him and I’m like, Hey Terry. I said, oh, I said, are you in town? I said, I I’d love to have you and your wife over for dinner. He said, no Amberly. I wanna read your manuscript. Like, he’s like, no, duh, I inviting him over for dinner. He’s like, no, I wanna read your manuscript. So I ended up sending it to him.
AL (00:39:15):
I got the book deal. They weren’t a huge publisher. So I know I knew I needed. Thankfully one of my clients was a, a really, she was an editor, a successful editor. And she said, Amber, you don’t have a great publisher. So you need a really good publicist to vet your book. So there’s two ways of doing it. You can self, I think you can self-publish and you can get your book out in a month. I mean, it’s quick. Get it on Amazon. If you’ve got a huge following on social media with a connected audience, and they’re just waiting for the day that you publish that book, self-publish, you know, you could hire, invest in a publicist and get connected who knows to major media, whether it’s TV show, big podcasts like AJS or you know, or you can do the traditional publishing as or hybrid.
AL (00:40:12):
I did hybrid publishing. And it takes longer. I mean, it took a year, but for me that was a good fit. I think we’re all different. And you have to go with, whatever’s a good fit for you for me, because I was so brand new. I, I had not built up my platform at all. And I had one goal. I had a year of the publishing process to when it was like they had the manuscript where it was edited, cover designed and all of that. And a year I thought, well, that was back when you know, you could do a swipe up. And I thought, well, I wanna build my audience on Instagram to like 10,000 so I can do a swipe up. So for one year I did not ask for anything. I provided value, value value, as much as I could. I gave, I created free playbooks workbooks, a free gratitude journal.
AL (00:41:08):
I was doing whatever, you know, a resilience challenge, a free webinar, seriously for free for a year. Then when it came time for my book to launch, I was like, I, I took my audience on that journey with me. Yeah. So it wasn’t like they didn’t see the behind the scenes of how freaked out I was or the struggle or whatever. Like they were with me when I opened my box of books for the first time my daughter videoed it and I wasn’t expecting, but I started crying when you’ve worked so hard on the book and you see it for the first time I cried and that’s on video. And so my audience was there with me. And to me it doesn’t feel like audience, to me, it feels like family. Like there are people that I literally connect with every single day. And you know, a lot of people didn’t understand why I was on social media.
AL (00:42:02):
They’re like, why are you on social media? Why is it so important? And I had this plan and my big vision was yes, I wanted to be able to swipe up. But I also, and I don’t know really how I thought this out or knew this, but I thought I wanted to build genuine relationships through social media because when it came time to planning my book tour, I wanted to be able to actually meet the people that I connected with in person. And that’s what happened. And it wasn’t until my husband saw that and he saw somebody, I was at the LA conference center and this girl comes running across the conference center with her suitcase, her roll on her carry-on suitcase. And she’s got tears coming down her face. She had read my book. She flew from Australia to come me at this conference. And that was the first time that my husband was like, wow, I guess that whole connecting through social media actually works. And I’m like, yeah, I’ve built some amazing relationships. So that’s when he kind of got it.
AJV (00:43:10):
But you know what you said there, and you’ve said this a couple of times that I, I think this is like a really good point to like bring up is, I mean, you’ve said earlier, it’s like ask who you can serve. Then you said, when that gentleman said, who does your marketing? You said, no, I just, you need to listen to your audience. And then you just said, my audience is more like family. I connect with them every day. So much of everything that you talk about is about the who. And so, you know, as, as we’re kind of rounding up here and I’m, I’m sensitive to the time, but how did you find your audience? Like how did you know? Cause I think that’s something people really struggle with. And quite honestly, I think people ultimately focus on the, what should I be doing and how do I get more followers? And you know, how do I do this versus going, who do I wanna serve? Who is the ideal audience for my message? Who should I be reaching? And so one, how did you figure out the who for you? And then how would you say other people can do that?
AL (00:44:12):
Well, I think that’s such a great question. And for me, I started just, I think that it’s really important to stay true to who you are and not try to be like somebody else that you might see on social media or, or, you know, your neighbor next door, whoever you have to be true to you. And I started just sharing like really, like, I don’t have a lot of things planned out. Like I share what’s actually going on with me, what I’m working through. I, I share the struggles along the way and how I got through it. So maybe it’ll help somebody else. And so on social media, I, I mean, I’ve shared things that my husband’s like, oh my God, like actually when I wrote my book and he read the back of the jacket, he said, oh my God, they wrote on here survivor of sexual abuse. Did you see that? And I’m like, yeah, I write about sexual overcoming sexual abuse in the book. You might wanna read it. Like, sorry I talk about it. So I talk about things and again, sharing from a scar,
AJV (00:45:22):
Read the book, read the book. Yeah. Yeah.
AL (00:45:25):
But you know, sharing from a scar and not an open wound. Yeah. But I think sharing what you know mm.
AJV (00:45:34):
I think that that’s worth just pausing and let people soak in, share what, you know, anyone who suffers from imposter syndrome, in my opinion, is sharing from a place of where they don’t feel like they know anything. And they feel like you feel like you’re an imposter, cuz you’re sharing from a place that’s not authentic to you. And it’s like share what, you know,
AL (00:45:57):
You always go back to your truth. Yeah. If you feel stuck, always go back to your truth. And I mean, that’s something actually my friend when I was, I was feeling like I got this big speaking gig and my friend Henry Amar, I was like, oh man, Henry, do you ever get nervous? And he is like, he goes, yes. You know, but you know what? The best advice I could give you is always go back to your truth. So if you’re ever stuck, you’re ever like, I don’t know what to say. Or even if you’re on stage speak, like always go back to your truth. You know the truth. I always heard that saying the truth will set you free. Well, it’s easy when you’re just honest, then you don’t have to overthink stuff cuz you’re just being you.
AJV (00:46:41):
Yeah. I love that. And it’s I yeah. And I think too, all of that, it’s like when you share what, you know, it’s like a part of that is you’re finding your audience, but they’re also finding you. Right. Mm-hmm but that’s when you share what you know, and you are authentic to yourself, I think there’s a part of that where you naturally start attracting people. We talk about this a lot. It’s be a magnet, not a megaphone, right? Yeah. And it’s like, or the more authentic you can be, you, you know, it’s like, it’s sometimes it’s good to be a little polarizing. Right. It’s like you attract the right people and you repel the wrong ones at at least the wrong ones for you. Right. Mm-hmm
AL (00:47:25):
I was gonna say, yeah, you don’t have to be everybody’s cup of tea, you know, which is kinda hard for, you know, I’m an overcoming people pleaser and I just want, oh, I want everybody to be happy. Well, you, you can’t do, you don’t have to be everybody’s cup of tea. You can be somebody’s, you know, I don’t know, shot of whiskey. I don’t know.
AJV (00:47:48):
But you know, that’s true. It’s I, I think that it, again, it’s like there’s an audience for anyone and anything, but it’s really hard to attract an authentic audience if you’re not being authentic and that’s really, and
AL (00:48:03):
I think you can feel that with, I know I can’t like you can sense when something’s not quite right.
AJV (00:48:09):
Yeah. I love that. So, so what would you say is like, what’s the one thing that you would suggest for someone to do? Who’s going all right. Well, how do I know who this audience is? Like I don’t, I don’t know. It’s like I, what I hear from people all the time is, well it’s everybody, my message pertains to everybody.
AL (00:48:28):
No, you know what I think I focus on, like for, I would say, and I mean, I’m no expert in this, but what I did to really start attracting, you know, my people, my friends is I focus. I’m not all over the place. You know, I focus on, you know, fitness mindset overcoming pain being a mom, like some things like things that other people relate to, maybe when you’re as big as somebody like, you know, Jay Shetty or Mel Robbins, that you can talk about everything under the sun. And I think that’s what a lot of people look to is people that already have millions of followers and yeah, they’ve been doing it for a long time. Yeah. And they have big teams and they may be able to talk about more things. And, but I think that when you get known for one thing, then you can kind open it out and focus on other things. But I think it’s really important to be known for one thing and start getting some traction there that’s at least what I did anyway. I was like, I started getting known for being that girl who you know, was the grit girl. I, then I started paying attention. People were hashing me, resilience queen and grit girl and stuff like that. And I’m like, oh, resilience queen. I kinda like that. You know, grit girl
AJV (00:49:59):
AL (00:50:01):
I’ll I’ll take it. You know? And I started paying attention to like what, what people were were saying in meantime, I’m just focusing on sharing what I know, not going too off topic, like sticking to what my truth is being completely authentic. Sometimes my husband’s like, you are way, you’re say like, you’re saying way too much. Like really do you have to share all of that? But
AJV (00:51:25):
Not your audience.
AL (00:51:27):
They were not, I was not their cup of tea.
AJV (00:51:30):
AL (00:51:54):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:52:07):
But it’s a sign of being truly authentic. And I think there’s, I think we all need a little bit more of that. I bet one of the biggest conversations that I have with people who who have been really successful in business, but don’t have really big followings and now they really wanna transition into doing something more about sharing a message. They’re like, wow, just, I wanna make sure that, you know, I don’t rub anyone the wrong way. And I’m like, well then you’re not gonna be able to tell 95% of your story. Mm-Hmm
AL (00:52:51):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:52:56):
Alright. Well, okay. So I know that we’re a little bit over, but I have just two, two quick, last things. And before we wrap up, I wanna make sure everyone knows how to connect with you. So for everyone listening, if you love this conversation, I would just highly, highly encourage you guys. You need to get the true grit, grace book. You guys need to check out this podcast. Amber Lee just launched a mastermind called the unstoppable life mastermind. You can find all of those things plus all of her, you know, online platforms that she’s a part [email protected]. Right? So Amber Lee lago.com. I’ll put that in the show notes, we’ll put links for the book. We’ll put links for all the things you can just access ’em really quickly. But just to wrap this up, and this has nothing to do with like a conversation in general, but I just love to ask people just some questions for one to help us get to know you. But also I just find if these things are helpful to me then most definitely they’re gonna be helpful to someone else. So three quick questions, right? And these, I
AL (00:53:55):
Love it
AJV (00:53:56):
As shorter, as long as you want, what’s one book that you would recommend universally to any human on the planet,
AL (00:54:04):
The four agreements,
AJV (00:54:06):
The four agreements. Love it. Okay.
AL (00:54:09):
That’s a great gift book too. It’s just, yeah. Simple. Good. Yeah.
AJV (00:54:14):
Okay. Then my next question would be, if there was one lesson that you have learned since really building your personal brand, being an author, podcaster speaker, you know, all the things, what’s the one lesson that you hold closest to your heart.
AL (00:54:34):
Mm. I would say to, to really listen to your gut I know that’s probably so weird and you’ve probably not had anybody say that before, like, but to listen to your gut, because I think, you know, as my brand kind of grew a lot of distractions come along with that and a lot of amazing opportunities come sometimes and some that are not so amazing, some that they really want to use your brand to build their audience, which is, which is normal, you know, like that, that happens. And there’s one thing that I did like early on that I started getting some traction and, you know, getting some followers and I had this, this brand of like teeth whitening thing that they sent me the teeth whitening and they wanted me to advertise it on my Instagram. And I was like, oh, never done that, but send me the kit and I’ll try it.
AL (00:55:33):
If it works, you know, I’ll share about it. And it wasn’t something that I did a lot and I wasn’t known for like promoting things ever. Like I don’t, I was not known. I mean, it took a year for me to promote my book. Like I was just, not that I wasn’t like that typical like person that was just like, buy this, buy that that’s just not me. And so I advertised the teeth whitening, but I tried to play it all into like, you know, how important smile is? I don’t know, blah, blah, blah. I lost so many followers that day. Like people were just like, oh God really she’s gonna do that. Now she’s getting paid to, so that was a very valuable lesson to me because now even like with my podcast, I committed to like going all in for like, gosh, almost two years with no advertisements.
AL (00:56:30):
I was like, I just, I’m gonna add value. So people start to listen and they know I’m serious about showing up and giving ’em value. And I just had somebody reach out for a sponsorship and I was like you know, I have to try this and I have to really love the products. And if I really love it, then we’ll talk about a sponsorship. Well, I really love the product, but I’m still kind of like, I did the advertisement and I genuinely love the products, but is that the route I want to go? So I think it’s important to listen to your gut and know that you
AJV (00:57:07):
Can know your audience,
AL (00:57:08):
Know your audience. Yeah. And, and how important it is to like stick to, you know, like your brand and your audience and not be distracted by some shiny object, or this would be good. It’s like it’s for the long haul, like think of it for the long haul. And so that’s what I think about is like, listen to my gut and think of it for the long
AJV (00:57:31):
Haul. Yeah. It’s like, don’t get distracted by the shiny things that you can take you off the path. That’s good. Love that last one. Amber, do you want to be known for,
AL (00:57:47):
I want to be known really as someone who is I, this, the first thing that came to mind is like you know, compassionate and a connector. I love connecting people. I think that sometimes we don’t kind of know sometimes that we have a gift at doing something until it keeps showing up in our life. And for some reason I love connecting people. Like I have an eye for going, oh my gosh, you would be awesome meeting this person. And so I’ve whether it’s, you know, a group of sober sisters or a group of badass, you know, female entrepreneurs, that’s one of the reasons I started my mastermind is cuz I love connecting people. And I think that when we connect with one another, that’s how we both, we all grow, you know, when we do things to together. And so I believe in abundance and there’s so much for us to, to have, you know, such a life of success and that we can all thrive. And so I guess I would like to be known as the kind connector how’s that
AJV (00:59:03):
Take it. I love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for being on the show. This has been such a delight. There’s so many nuggets. Like I literally wrote down like 10 different like one liners and just little nuggets.
AL (00:59:18):
This is okay. I have to ask you a quick question. Just a quick question. When I talk to you, like y’all I love talking to AJ, but when I see you online, it’s like your eyes are these piercing. Like it’s so much fun to look at you online. Are you looking at the, this is a branding question, like an event question. Are you looking through the camera or are you looking in the screen
AJV (00:59:42):
At the camera?
AL (00:59:45):
AJV (00:59:53):
Gonna take,
AL (00:59:54):
I’m gonna take a sticky note and I’m gonna put it on my computer that I need to okay. See the difference.
AJV (01:00:00):
How are you? And I do, and this is a little tip for anyone who’s does a lot of camera where it’s like, it can be really annoying sometimes to look at this little dot when I see like your face, like kind of off to the side. So I make your picture really small and I put it right underneath the camera.
AL (01:00:15):
Oh.
AJV (01:00:16):
And so it’s like, I’m I can always see you and your facial expressions right below. And so, although I’m, it’s so good exactly. At the camera. You’re right in my peripheral. So I can see your facial expressions. I can see you move. But that’s always really important to me because I wanna make sure that I’m making eye contact with whoever’s be block’s
AL (01:00:38):
So good. Okay. I’m looking at you now. And I have to say you were incredible when you came to speak at, at the mastermind, people are still talking about all you shared. That was the best presentation by far I’ve ever had in the mastermind. You’re slides, everything. You’re just such a pro and I’m so grateful for you and even doing this podcast interview, I’m like, okay, Ambery I’m doing a virtual event tonight. And thank goodness we did this interview cuz I’m looking at the camera now
AJV (01:01:13):
So I love that. Cause that’s cause it’s a really important thing. It’s like I noticed too when other people it’s like, I know that they’re not looking at me. And when you know, I watch videos, I wanted to feel like you’re looking at me.
AL (01:01:24):
Yeah, yeah. I
AJV (01:01:25):
Have that connection. But it’s it can be really distracting. And I was also like, why does she look so good? Why is her hair and makeup so good today? So you’re doing a virtual event tonight. It’s like part of it is like, I can’t look at myself cause I’m like, oh God, like she looks like she’s all like dressed up. You look. So you look so good. Thank you.
AL (01:01:42):
I have on my workout pants on the bottom.
AJV (01:01:45):
AL (01:01:56):
It’s so sweet. Oh my
AJV (01:01:57):
Gosh. We love you. We are such a fan of you and y’all if this is your first introduction to Amber Lee Lago, y’all need to go follow her. Subscribe to this podcast again. Amber Lee lago.com. Check her out, check out the book. It is just it’s nonstop. Awesome. So we’re so grateful for you on this show. Thank you so much. And for everyone listening, we love you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. We’ll see you later.
Ep 327: First Steps to Launching Your Expert Business with Chris Ducker | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you find your niche and how do you find your first customers? That was the topic of conversation primarily with my good friend Chris Ducker. Welcome to this recap edition. I’m gonna be highlighting you know, some of my three top takeaways from that conversation with Chris, sharing some of my own thoughts here. And just hopefully helping you put this into practice because you know, as I shared Christa something very similar to what we do at Brand Builders Group. He focuses on helping experts build their personal brand, does it in a different way. He’s in the uk, we’re in the us He does mostly membership sites and, and group virtual trainings. We do mostly one-on-one coaching with people, but I’ve known him for years and love dialoging and just sort of like sharpening each other’s saw, diving in on personal brand strategy and online marketing and nicheing and all of those things.
RV (00:56):
So I’m gonna share with you my top, my top three, I’ll, I’ll say take aways. They were things that either Chris shared or things that it, it inspired me to talk to you about. And specifically I wanna, I’m gonna share with you three ways to find your niche, like, to help you actually niche down. But the first, my first takeaway was one of the things that Chris said early on, which is just going, How do you become someone’s favorite? Right? Like, become someone’s favorite. That’s what we’re trying to do. Like that is, that is what I want to do, right? Like, and, and, and I don’t know who needs to, I don’t know if you need to hear this, somebody listening needs to hear this. You don’t need to have millions of followers. You don’t need to have millions of downloads. You don’t have to have hundreds of employees.
RV (01:50):
You, you don’t have to, like, you don’t need those things. And in, in many cases, the chasing of those things, I think is what holds us back from actually receiving and achieving and accomplishing the things that are meant for us. Because we’re like caught in this distant facade and dream of like, Oh, we have to change the whole world that we’re missing out on. Like, we can change the lives of the people that are right in front of us. We can be someone’s favorite, and that’s what I wanna be, right? Like of course I wanna have, you know, reach more people and have more people buy, buy our books and our listen to this podcast and follow us on social media and join our email list. Yeah. You know, we’re, we’re generally speaking, we’re moving in the direction of, of more of those people, but getting consumed with that is really risky business. It’s really dangerous because it, it pulls you away from, you know, what I think Chris was talking about, or at least what it made me think about when he said, How can you become someone’s favorite, Right? Like, you go, maybe you won’t have millions of podcast listeners, but you’re have hundreds of
RV (03:00):
People that your show is their Favorite show,
RV (03:04):
Right? Your book is their favorite book. Like listening to you speak or watching your reels, or you know, your talks or your YouTube shorts or your, your, your YouTube videos or reading your blog, your, their favorite. How do you become their favorite? It, it’s, it’s actually way easier than people think. It’s easier to become somebody’s favorite by
RV (03:26):
Serving a More narrow group of people. Be because
RV (03:32):
There’s a couple reasons why, and I asked Chris this question and I liked the answer that he gave and, and I’ve got another answer that I wanted to share with you is I said, Why do you think that is? I said, Why, why is it that that the more you niche down the, the more you know the quicker you have success and like the more financial success you experience quickly? And he said, Well, I think a lot of it is language, right? And and I think that’s a part of it for sure. Like, it’s, it’s, we, we use the term native tongue. Like you’re able to use terminology that your audience relates with, and they go, Oh, you serve me
RV (04:06):
Like I’m your Person. And when and when your audience can show up and they, and they know, Oh,
RV (04:14):
Talk to me like I’m your Person,
RV (04:16):
Then it just creates this really quick intimate bond because you’re, you’re sharing their language that they understand and, and, and that’s super powerful. But, but the other thing, you know, as I was thinking about the question I asked him, which is
RV (04:31):
Why does it work
RV (04:33):
So much better to, to niche down rather than to go like, you know, broad market? Like what is it about that? What I realized,
RV (04:44):
What I realized is that I think the, the real, the real thing
RV (04:48):
That’s happening there
RV (04:49):
Is when you serve a smaller market, you have more opportunity and more availability and more specificity in being able to serve them in a deeper way. When you serve a narrow market, you can serve them in a deeper way. Because when you, when you serve a small group of people and you, you just ask, what’s the next thing they need? What’s the next thing they need? Then all of a sudden you can fully like, like own it and step into it and be a part of it and, and go, Oh, this is what they
RV (05:26):
Need. And, and part
RV (05:27):
Of what’s making me think
RV (05:28):
About this is the
RV (05:31):
Is the,
RV (05:33):
The, the, the book tool the book launch tool, right? So we are
RV (05:39):
Doing,
RV (05:40):
You know, book launches. One of the things we’ve been helping people with, and we’ve been doing it so much that it’s like, Oh, they need a template for this, and they need a template for this, and they need a template for this. And it’s like,
RV (05:49):
Through the process of
RV (05:51):
Coaching people on such a
RV (05:52):
Narrow specific part of their business, we’ve been able to create these incredible
RV (05:56):
Tools that we never would’ve thought to create if we were just sort of like serving the whole world. But it’s like the more we get specific on going, yeah, you know, like, I mean, if somebody’s launching a book like Brand Builders Group, I mean, we might be the best in the world at this, and we’ve just done it so much. And you know, I mean, just this year, I mean, we’ve had four clients, Ed Mylet, Eric Thomas, Tom and Lisa biu and Lovey Ajai Jones. We had four clients just this year that we’ve helped hit to New York Times, Wall Street Journal and or USA Today bestseller list. So it’s like, we’ve just been living in this, you know, for this season, especially recently, that it’s like, golly, for whatever reason, those have come to us and we’ve been, and, and we’re developing this depth, this real depth of knowledge.
RV (06:44):
You can’t do that when you’re trying to serve all different types of people and cater to all different types of businesses because you have to sort of stay super high level because, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this, this plane of there is, there’s principles that you can teach and then there’s practices and, you know, the, the, the principles of success are general. They apply universally. Like my book, Take the Stairs, a great example of that or my TED Talk, How to Multiply time, their principles. They, we, we teach at the principal level, and so they apply universally, which, you know, like people will watch a free TED talk, but I don’t make many money when they watch a free TED Talk. I do from the few of the groups that hire me to speak, which is a very small percentage of the people who watch it and, you know, take the serious book.
RV (07:30):
A lot of people read it, but it’s a $20 book, and which, you know, my royalty is 15% or whatever the number is, It’s not a huge amount. Versus when, when we’re serving people in, in the practices way, like we’re giving people verbatim scripts of what they can sell, what they can say to generate free calls and how to sell high dollar offers and exactly how to structure their sales pages. And these are the steps to do a book launch. And here’s how you, here’s how you get your first speaking engagements and, and here’s how you train your sales people, how to do free calls. And here’s what you say to ask for referrals, and here’s what you change to add humor into your presentations, and here’s how you better construct your funnels, and here’s how you optimize your offer structures, and here’s how you create more urgency.
RV (08:12):
And here’s how you, you know, like write your email copy and like, we can do it with such specificity because we’re, we’re, we’re serving experts and, and, and personal brands on really marketing and sales, how to generate more leads. And so who is that for you? Like, who can you be their favorite? Who can you be their favorite? So that’s the, that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is how to niche down. Okay? And this is where I wanna share you three specific questions. There’s three different ways of nicheing down, and I call this the M three model, okay? This is the M three model. This is part of our, this is one of our curriculum elements for our, our paying members at Brand Builders Group. Okay? So when you look at differentiating, how do you differentiate yourself from others in the market?
RV (09:05):
The first m is the, the market is the who. Okay? So here’s the three M’s. Market model and method, market model and method, Okay? So the, the first one is to say, can I differentiate in the market that I serve? Meaning in who do I serve? So market is the who model is the how. Method is the, what market is the who model is the how, Method is the what. So who do I serve? If I serve a very specific type of person, then that you’re automatically nicheing down and creating differentiation. Now look, you know, even like brand builders group, if you go, Okay, who do we serve at a high level, it’s, it’s probably entrepreneurs. Then you go, there’s a level down from that, and it’s like, okay, it’s anyone who does professional services. You do the level down from that and you go, Okay, it’s really experts.
RV (09:56):
And you go really down to the core. It’s like coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, professional service advisors, right? Like they’re, they’re experts. But then we narrow down to say we serve mission driven messengers. So they’re not just experts, They’re experts who care more about service than they they do about sales. They’re people who care about money, but the money is subservient to the mission. Our audience are people who wanna make a bigger impact. They wanna make the world a better place. Yes, if they make more money as a byproduct of that, that’s a great thing. And they need money in order to do that, cuz it takes money to, to make impact and, and do big things. But it’s like the mission is first. So that’s a part of how we have quickly differentiated and delineated and defined who we serve. So that’s who you serve.
RV (10:47):
It can be a demographic, like an age and a geography and, and, but it also can be a psychographic like mission driven messengers, which is their mentality. So who do you serve? Next is model, right? So the business model is, that’s when we say model, that’s like what is your business model? How do you service those people? You know, this came up on the show with Chris, which is like, he serves people through online courses primarily, right? We have a different business model. We are a, a one-on-one coaching model. Now we have courses, we have membership site, but that’s mostly just to help people have an affordable way to step in. Our goal is to work with people at our live events and one-on-one because man, when we get a chance to like talk to you and deep dive with you and, and help you not just teach it to you, but do it with you, it’s life changing.
RV (11:43):
I mean, we, we have, we can improve. Like there’s certain techniques we teach that can help people make six figures in 60 seconds. Like changing what you say on stage. I was using this example this morning with our internal team where we changed what one speaker said on stage and made a hundred thousand dollars in just adding a, a little 62nd pivot in what they said from stage versus when they hadn’t done it. And, and a hundred thousand dollars difference, like a hundred thousand dollars in this one pivot. We can’t do that though, unless we’re working with you one on one. So that’s our model. So, you know, Uber changed the model. Taxis had a business model, which was you go stand in the taxi line and, and you waited for them. Uber said, We come to you wherever you are, right? And instead of standing in a line, you push a phone a button on your app, and they come to you iTunes and, and Napster.
RV (12:40):
They, they changed the model. It was the same method in terms of the, what it was still music, but the model was different. It wasn’t by a physical CD or a cassette tape. It, it was, you know, go online and download a file or, or you know, basically plug into this, this platform that, that, that plays files. That is a change in model. Airbnb is, is a model. It’s like instead of staying at hotels, you know, people are renting out their homes. That’s a change in business model and it’s a way to differentiate. And then the third m m three is method. The method is what you actually do. So that’s like what you actually teach. So again, just using Chris as an example, since we kind of do something similar, you know, we both have frameworks and we both have a map. We both have, you know, like a roadmap.
RV (13:30):
We call ours the brand builder journey. And we both have techniques and, and exercises. We take people to help them clarify their audience you know, grow their audience, manage their, manage the different parts of their business, et cetera. But what we do is actually different. The models that he teaches are, are ones that he’s come up with that have worked for him and his clients. The ones that we teach are different. We have the 15 piece of copywriting. We have your content diamond for managing social media. We have the modular content method for writing your whole book in like two days. We have the something, something that we call pillar point formulas, which is like how to make your TED talk go viral. And we have our, our bestseller launch plan for launching books. And, and we have all of these different frameworks where it’s like the, what we’re teaching is actually different.
RV (14:18):
You can’t get what we’re doing from anyone else. You could get something similar, right? There’s lots of people who do something similar to what you do, but they can’t do exactly what you do if you’re creating your own unique methodology. And that’s part of what we teach people to do in captivating content is we teach you, we help you, we facilitate the creation of your own thought leadership, of your own original ip, of, of your own unique methodologies and frameworks and diagrams and charts and tables that they can’t, they can’t, no one can get it anywhere else in the world except from you, because that’s different differentiating your method. And that automatically creates differentiation and distinction. So that’s how you, you niche down, I would say focus on those three. You know, the market. Who, who am I serving? Who can I serve specifically the, the model.
RV (15:10):
How am I serving them? How can that be different? And then the method, what am I, what am I actually teaching or doing for them? That’ll help you niche down. And then the, the last, my last takeaway this was directly from Chris, just, you know, the way he said it was, you know, I said, What’s the best way to get your first customer? And I listed off all these different marketing method methods, and I loved his answer. He said, he said, Choose your weapon. Choose your weapon. And, and here’s, here’s how I internalized that. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing, because you’ll do it really well. Like, but the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing. But the formula for, for the, but the formula for failure, the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing.
RV (16:04):
Meaning if you do all of them, none of them are gonna, you’re not gonna do any of them well. So you can take any of them and, and focus on them and do them really well, and it will work, right? Like you can become a master of cold calling. You can become a master of, of sending direct messages of email marketing, of social, of podcasting, of YouTube, of LinkedIn, of whatever. But if you try to do all of them at the same time, they’re not, it’s not gonna work. Like it’s, it’s just, you’re, you’re, you’re not optimizing for, for your resources. Like, especially if you’re a small business. So the formula for success is to do any type of marketing. The formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. So choose your weapon, choose one form of marketing, choose one platform, one technique, one strategy.
RV (16:51):
Learn it, do it really, really well. And if you come to Brand Builder’s Group, we’re gonna teach you, we’re gonna teach you how to get referrals and we’re gonna teach you how to go out and do presentations. Cuz we know that that is the fastest path to cash for high dollar offers, is referrals from friends and family. And we’re gonna teach you exactly what to say, when to say it, how to say it, who to say it to verbatim, right? In our Pressure Free Persuasion course. And we’re gonna teach you how to create world class presentations that drive massive trust and leads immediately into your business using our, our world class presentation, craft training which is based on brand dna. So but whatever it is, choose your weapon and, and just do, do one really, really well and you will succeed. The riches are in the niches.
RV (17:38):
This is, this is counterintuitive that by narrowing down your focus, you will make more impact, more money and, and just more of a difference in the world. So don’t be afraid to just let go and say you have permission to not need or chase millions of followers. Just become the favorite of a few people. And the better job you do at doing that, the more impact, the more income and the more influence you will create. Share this podcast if you wouldn’t mind with somebody who you think will benefit from it. And keep coming back here week after week on the influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 326: First Steps to Launching Your Expert Business with Chris Ducker
RV (00:02):
Well, some people might say you should never, you should never promote competitors or people who do something similar to what you would do. And to that, I would say, let me introduce you to my good friend Chris Ducker, who does something in the vein, the similar vein to what we do at Brand Builders Group O, honestly, and he’s one of the best in the world at it, and I’ve known him for years. And I have always been someone who just rejects scarcity and believes in abundance. And if people can learn from me or him or both of us, all the better. Chris is one of the entrepreneurs, one of the pioneers of this space, of sort of online experts in helping them become more well known. He’s written couple different books that were sort of flagship to the space, so Virtual Freedom.
RV (00:49):
And then more recently, Rise of the Preneur. He’s got a program called The Preneur Incubator, which takes people who are just starting out as sort of experts in trying to like find their way as a year long program to help them make six figures. And he’s running a, an event coming up, a free experience where you can check this out. It’s called The Elevated Entre, the Elevated Entrepreneur Experience. And it’s coming up and he messaged me about it and I was like, Yeah, man, we wanna tell people about it. So we want you to sign up to check out the free experience. You can do [email protected] slash elevated. But obviously you’re gonna get a chance to meet him and learn about him here. I’ve had him on the show before. I really admire him. He’s a real entrepreneur. He’s built businesses in the Philippines, in the US and the uk. He operates out of the UK right now and has just truly built virtual businesses. Has a great reputation. We’ve got lots of of very similar friends that we, or friends that we share with one another. And anyways, he’s just a stud. So, Chris, welcome to the show, man.
CD (01:55):
Yep. This is so good. You called me a stud right at the end of the introduction. stud.
RV (02:01):
Yes,
CD (02:01):
I’m down with this. This is good. Can we end the chat now on that very eye?
RV (02:06):
I stud real,
CD (02:07):
Very real
RV (02:08):
Note. That’s, We’ll cut that for Instagram. Chris Ducker’s a stud. Yeah, we’ll just, and we’ll just push it, but
CD (02:16):
Good to be back on the show, dude. Thanks again for having me back. Appreciate
RV (02:19):
It. Yeah. I, I, and I, I, I, you know, I think the easiest way to describe to people what you do is that in, in some ways it’s similar to us. I mean, in many ways, you, you help them build launch, build scale expert businesses. You help them figure out what they should be known for. And I love talking about it, and your stuff is super affordable. It’s super good. It’s totally legit and trustworthy, and I think people should know about it. So, you know you, before the show, we were just kind of talking a little bit about like, what’s the starting point for somebody and how figuring out what you want to be known for is like a big thing. And there’s, I think with, you know, obviously the pandemic, I don’t think we’ve had you on since Covid, right? So the world is
CD (03:08):
Maybe right at the beginning. I think I might maybe
RV (03:10):
Right at the beginning. But like you know, how, where does somebody start? Like what’s the, what’s the first step here of going, okay, maybe they just got let go from their job. Mm-Hmm.
CD (03:34):
Well, the first step is a little selfish actually. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The first step to figuring out how or what kind of expert business you’re gonna build is honestly to figure out what, what it is you wanna be known for. And I think a lot of people try to go too broad, too kind of wide, the beginning of it all. And they don’t understand the entire kind of process of nicheing down or nicheing down to our brothers and sisters from the other side of the pond there,
CD (04:21):
That’s what we want. We want to ultimately become somebody’s favorite. That’s what we wanna do. And we will never become somebody’s favorite by being too broad, by being, by casting that net too wide. So, as an example, if I can share an example, like if you think health coach, there are a gazillion health coaches out there, it’s very vanilla nowadays to say that you’re a health coach, right? But if you say, I’m a health coach that works with men, now we’re starting to get somewhere. Now we’re starting to niche down a little bit. But if you’re a health coach that works with men in their forties and beyond, now we’ve niched down one step further, but let’s try one more step to really nail in here. You’re a health coach that works with men who are 40 plus who are recovering from major surgery. Boom, there’s your niche, right?
CD (05:13):
There’s your niche right there. Now, it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna have a thousand prospects visiting your website every single week, but what it does mean is that whenever anybody does visit your website, you and the language that you’re using in the marketing, the copy that you’re using, the imagery, everything, it’ll all sing to them. And they’re very quickly turn around and say, Yes, Rory’s my guy. I wanna learn how to be able to get back in the shape, how to get my strength back, how to start eating healthier again, and really give myself a new lease of life following my surgery. I’m gonna give this guy a call. Mm-Hmm.
RV (05:51):
Well, okay, so I I love that. Concur with that. The when you said, when you said you may not have thousands of people coming to your website, but the people who come, you’re gonna be speaking right to them and they’re gonna say, Where have you been all my life? We use the term native tongue so that we say like, you’re speaking in their native tongue. Like there you go. They, they, they get you and they get that you, that you get, they get that, you get them. And it’s like, okay, what I have found, Chris, that holds people back is the emotional. In order to do that, which is wonderful and brilliant, you have to sort of separate and let go of this. Like, I’m gonna have 5 million followers and I’m gonna have 60 million people on YouTube, and I’m gonna be the person who’s on billboards.
RV (06:46):
And like, there’s like a, when you talk about nicheing down, it’s like you are at the same time, it feels like there’s almost like you have to do this emotional release of the desire to be known by everybody. Yeah. And instead say, I’m going to deliberately and intentionally choose to be known deeper by the few than a little bit by everybody. How do you overcome that hurdle? Like, what would you say to somebody go, and like, cuz I think that’s what people struggle with. They go, But I wanna help everybody. Right? And you gotta almost wave byebye to that. Or do you think, how do you think about that? Well,
CD (07:24):
You do. You gotta wave. Bye bye. You know, without a doubt. Like I say, like you gotta market like a magnet, right? That’s my thing. Like, you market like a magnet. So at the same time that you’re attracting the right people into your ecosystem at the exact same time, just like a magnet, you’re repelling away the wrong people, right? Like, we don’t want the people that don’t, you know, they don’t kind of jive with our vibe, right? Like if, if they don’t understand where we coming
RV (07:49):
From, Yeah, you can’t be here if you can’t jive with my vibe.
CD (07:52):
If you, if you’re not jiving with my vibe, baby, I don’t, I just don’t want you around. Simple as that. So like, I’m, I’m just a big believer that, you know, you put more of you into what it is that you’re doing, you will attract more likewise people into your world. So for example I practice boni. I like to drink fine single malt whiskey and American bourbon. I like to build Lego with my children. All these things make up part of me and my personality. So I’ll talk about those things when I’m coaching people, as you know, I’ll use examples of, you know, when you get a, a raw piece of material that will eventually become a beautiful bon eye one day, the branches are all leggy, and the scr in this foliage missing, and you know, all this, the roots might, might not be very strong.
CD (08:43):
And all these, you’re building up this tree from scratch, fundamentally by pruning back, by wiring, by feeding, by watering, by repoting, using different types of soils for different types of trees and all these types of things. All that, what I’ve just said, just there, that’s building a business too. We use different types of soil in different types of industry. In other words, we say and do things differently in one industry than would do in another one, and so on and so on and so on. The branches, the foliage, that’s staff, customer suppliers, product services, experiences, whatever it is, right? So when I talk about those things, people who get it get me, and therefore, you know, they, they, they just naturally gravitate towards me. So I think you have to kiss goodbye to a certain amount of the population. You could, You sh you can’t please all the people all the time.
CD (09:33):
And quite frankly, if you try and do it, it’s just exhausting. Plain and simple. It’s burnout is inevitable as far as I’m concerned in that scenario. And so I’m all about, like you say, I would rather have a hundred people on my email list that open every single email, buy everything that I put out, read every book that I write and talk about me when they’re at the dinner parties, the conferences, the coffee meetings, right? Rather than 10,000 people on the email list that do didly squat. Yeah. So I think by nicheing down, narrowing down that message, and also the big thing is the language that you use becomes that much more attractive to that person because you’re speaking directly to them based on wants, needs, pain points, et cetera, et cetera.
RV (10:23):
Yeah. Uhhuh when you talk about nicheing down, like, so in your example, you used you know, health coach for men over 40 who recovered from surgery. The, who is a big part of that example, men, the, the, it’s, it’s, you’re nicheing down by who you’re serving. So it’s sort of like the, what that you’re doing is health coaching, but in your example where you were nicheing down was by the who you’re doing it for. Correct. So it was like, it wasn’t what you were doing, it was who you were doing it for. Is, is that most of where nicheing comes from? Does nicheing come from, not so much nicheing what you do, but who you do it for? Or are there other types of nicheing or like is that sort of like the primary vehicle or like the most practical thing that people can do if they’re going, okay, how, how do I niche down, Right? Like, I’m an accountant, I’ve spent my whole life being accountant and so you go, okay, who are you going to be an accountant for? I mean, that’s clearly one way. Is that, is that the best way? Is that the only way? Is that kind of the most practical way or what do you think? I
CD (11:40):
Don’t, I don’t know whether it’s the only way or whatever, but I mean, like, I think it’s probably the most practical when you think about building a business. It’s hard enough as it is to build a business, right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:52):
Similar who,
CD (12:53):
Very similar,
RV (12:54):
Very similar who, but the way that we do it is very different.
CD (12:57):
Couldn’t be any different. It couldn’t be any different. You go one on one all the way, I don’t wanna work with people one on one, It doesn’t fire me up. I wanna work
RV (13:06):
With people. That’s a great, that’s a great distinction cuz that is exactly, That’s exactly it. Yeah.
CD (13:13):
Yeah. I see. And like I said, right out the gate, you can be a little selfish. Like, it’s okay, this is your business, right? Just because I don’t help or work with people one on one doesn’t mean that I couldn’t do it, but I don’t want to do it. That’s the, you know, that’s the, the definition of why I don’t do it. It’s because I don’t want to do it. I want to pe I wanna work with groups, I don’t wanna work one on one. And so just because we can do all these different things doesn’t mean that we should do them all. I’m often, when I say that I, I instantly get a flashback to when I was learning how to drive my driving instructor. Her name was Vanessa and here in the UK around built up areas. The speeding limit is 30 miles per hour. And I just kept going right up to that 30 number look 29, 30, 29, 30, 31, 29, 30 29 30. And she pulled me over after about my third of my fourth lesson. She said to me, Chris, I wanna just clarify something real quick. It’s a speed limit. It’s not a speed target. Just because you can hit it doesn’t mean that you should be hitting it all the time. And that’s never left me that lesson. That’s
RV (14:30):
Good.
CD (14:31):
It’s just like the way that we monetize our personal brands. Let’s count ’em off books, coaching, high level consulting advisories on boards online courses, speaking. There’s so many different ways that we could end up ultimately monetizing our expertise. But just because we can do all those things doesn’t mean mean that we actually should do
RV (14:52):
Them. Well, for some it’s a speed limit. For some it’s a speed target. For others it’s a speed suggestion or a speed minimum. A speed, a speed, minimum speed suggestion. I have to tell you buddy. So, so we just got back from Australia and I rented a car and I totally forgot that they drive on the other side of the road from, we drive on in the US and I drove, I drove an eight passenger van for 10 days on the other side of the road. We had some like one time must
CD (15:24):
Have been in the middle of nowhere,
RV (15:25):
CD (16:09):
Mean, you know, the, you know, the, the what and the why’s and everything. I mean that, I think that can probably all be pretty much, you know, integrated into those two
RV (16:17):
Major
CD (16:17):
Well focus. Yeah, I mean, you know, it really comes down to this, the type of person that I want to work with. That’s the who, you know, the why is because I feel called, because I’ve been in that position before. I want to help them out. Now I know what to do. You know, the, the, how well I’m gonna do it via these types of programs or this type of thing. You know, the when, well, I’m gonna do it, you know, the second and third quarter of each year, I’m gonna take the rest of the time off. You know, again, your business, you get to call the shots, you can be a little bit selfish but obviously at first you gotta pull back on the thro and tick some boxes and make sure that you’re doing things in the right way for the right reasons. And for me, that all centers around the person that you’re working with.
RV (16:57):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (17:49):
It work? Yeah, I
RV (17:50):
Why does it work, Right? Why does it work? Because I think if people really understand why, I, I really, I really think people are hung up on this emotional release of going, Okay, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna have millions of millions of followers. I’m gonna find a small group and I’m gonna serve them really, really well. And if we can get them to kind of latch onto why it works and that it really is the way, I think more people will let go of that more quickly and, and kind of follow the path.
CD (18:18):
Yeah. Well I think, I mean, you know, again, I think it comes back to the language that you use. I think people, consumers are, clients are prospects. They wanna be made a fuss of, they wanna feel special. Who doesn’t wanna feel special? Who doesn’t wanna feel as if somebody’s talking directly to them, rather than just a whole bunch of folks, right? And I just, I I, I think that’s one of the reason why it works so well from a marketing standpoint. When you’re talking to somebody, an avatar specifically, and that avatar has a specific set of problems that you have a specific set of skills to help them with, you know, Liam Nielsen taken style, right?
RV (19:01):
Nice.
CD (19:01):
It, when, when, when you are doing that, you are going to be more successful than you were if you were, again, here’s, here’s me using the same term, casting the net too wide. And that’s the reason why it works so well. Because people wanna feel special. They want to be made of fuss of
RV (19:20):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (19:36):
Example, I, I’ve got an accountant friend of mine who could be an accountant for any company on the planet. However he specializes, specializes in working with angel investors and corporations that invest in startup companies. Here in the uk there’s a whole bunch of government schemes in that regards. I’m sure it’s probably the same in the United States as well, but he works specifically with people who invests in and advise startup companies, right? He could work with anybody as an accountant, but that’s what he does. That’s his niche and he’s very, very, very successful. So I think it’s about picking one thing and just, and just, you know, running for the wheels
RV (20:18):
On, but in like, in that example, you go, Okay, everyone has an accountant, but if I’m that type of person, an angel investor, I need a specialized accountant, which means I can have two, I can have my general one, but now I can have my other one. So I don’t have to be the only accountant they ever hire because they’re hiring me for this specific thing. Like if I am a surgeon on this specific thing, you might have multiple surgeons in your life, but you’re gonna be like, I, I, I I need this one. Yeah. Alright. Well I love that. I think that’s really important. So I, I wanna shift the rest of our time to how do you get the first customer, because this is the other big roadblock I think people struggle with. You know, first of all, it’s like they gotta sort of let go of the, I’m gonna be all things to all people with all in all places on all platforms all the time.
RV (21:05):
You know, when it’s like you’re a solo entrepreneur or you have a few people, it’s like you can’t do all of these things all the time really well. The other big roadblock I think people really get hung up on is the first customers. Like the first sales are like, if you are doing this as a side hustle, you know, and you don’t like your job and you wanna do your own thing and you’re going, but I’m scared to make enough income to, you know, create a exit ramp, so to speak from my job. What, like, is it, is it social media? Is it going live? Is it sending emails? Is it blogging? Is it speaking? Is it, you know, knocking on doors? Is it like printing out flyers? Like what the heck? Like how do you get your first customers?
CD (21:51):
Well, it’s all of those things, but you can’t do them all, you know, So it, it’s, it’s choosing your weapon. The when I say that phrase, as you know, I’m basketball head. So as a hoop guy, I think back to the eighties commercials with Converse, where you had magic and you had Larry, both MVPs both won their championships, both had exactly the same pair of sneakers from Converse. Magics was white and purple and gold and Larry’s was black and white identical shoes. The two of them back to back muskets at dawn, holding the shoes, like guns with the phrase choose your weapon,
RV (22:39):
They
CD (22:39):
Both fit your foot exactly the same, but you’re either a Larry fan or you’re a magic fan, so you’re gonna buy the shoe that relates to that, to that person, right? Same sort of type of situation. Finding your first kind of customers is about, well, okay, I can, I can record a podcast and start publishing that every week, or I can do a YouTube channel, or I can be on Instagram all day long, or I can dance on TikTok. You know, I can do all these different things. But again, just cuz you can doesn’t mean you should. Not only that, but also if you go all in on one particular platform with one particular offer, you’re way more likely to get a sale happening sooner rather than later than you would do if you had a whole bunch of different offers and you were focusing on a whole bunch of different platforms.
CD (23:23):
So my advice really for anybody that wants to get kind of going with things, the lowest hanging in monetization fruit, when it comes to monetizing your expertise is your time. It’s you, it’s working with people one on one. Fundamentally, it doesn’t need to be done forever, but it is, it, it’s the easiest sale to make because you’ve got all this experience in your memory bank. Somebody else wants to download it into their memory bank. They’re happy to invest X amount of dollars per hour to sit with you and learn from you because you’ve been there, done that and you’ve been wearing the t-shirt for years. The only issue with that particular monetization strategy is it’s not super scalable, right? There’s only so many hours in the day, which means you can only work with so many people. Now, you could end up ultimately working with a smaller amount of number double triple called Dr all your fee and end up making more money that way.
CD (24:14):
But even then, your time is gonna get maxed out sooner or later. And so that’s when you have other monetization vehicles, like digital courses, group coaching, and that’s all the type of thing coming into play, Masterminds, things like that where you can ultimately make more with less effort, but straight outta the gate, it comes down to really just charging for your time. You know? And, and you know, I did this exercise maybe three years ago with one particular client of mine who was just getting started. It was in the branding and, and design world graphic design, that sort of type of stuff. And he had a good following on his on his blog, but it was kind of not really doing anything. And he was feeling a little bit down heartened about it because he’s got all these people on his email list.
CD (25:01):
I think at the time he had maybe a 1500 or so people on his list and he just wasn’t making any money. You know, you try, he was trying to throw a whole bunch of stuff out to see what people would bite at. And I just said to him, Look, Phil, the next time you send out an email, put a little PS note. I call this the power Ps put a little Ps at the end of your email that says, I never do this, but next month I’m opening up five spots on my calendar for five 60 minute consultation sessions. If you’ve been reading my emails for a while or visiting my blog for a while, you’ll know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. If you think I can help you and you’re willing to pay, I think it was like 500 bucks for the hour, then click this link first five people to sign up. We’ll get the time. 24 hours, all, all five slots gone, two and a half grand off one email sent to a list that’s been emailed over and over and over again. Never bought anything because he wasn’t selling anything of value. So ultimately it really comes down to just choosing that weapon and choosing that vehicle, that platform. For him, it was email for you, it might be podcasting or for something else, and just sticking to that for a little while until you get some hits.
RV (26:08):
Yep, yep, yep. I love that. I mean, that’s, that’s great. So basically it’s just like any tool, any of those marketing methods will work as long as you mm-hmm.
CD (26:48):
Yeah, cool. So this is, I’ve never done this before, actually. It’s the first time I’ve done it. What I’ve done is I’ve taken all of the best stuff that I’ve taught my paying clients over the 18 months from basically now going backwards, and I’ve put it into a three day cycle. So we’re gonna meet up three days in a row for about 60 to 90 minutes each day, Okay? On day number one, we’re doing what we call our diagnosis snapshot. And we’re kind of looking at auditing our business, what’s working, what’s not, what have we got, what have we not got, what’s missing? And even if you’re just starting out, this is a great way to be able to kind of really start to ascertain exactly what you wanna do and what you don’t wanna do. So we’re gonna be doing that as well as a whole bunch of marketing staff and platform building and stuff like that on day one, Day number two, we’re gonna switch gears a little bit and start talking about actually conversions.
CD (27:42):
So I’m a big believer that conversations lead to conversions. Like I genuinely believe that. And so one of the things that we do as a company every single day is we try and start as many new con conversations every day as possible because, you know, leads generated today end up being a client signed up this week or next week. That’s the way I look at it. And so what I’m gonna do on day two is I’m gonna teach a proprietary system that we use ourself, that I teach to all of my paying clients, that basically allows you to create a nice, steady, consistent stream of warm leads coming into your business every single day, every week, every month of the year, without even spending a single dollar an advert in a way that is simple to easy really easy to execute and understand.
CD (28:32):
And that will get genuine results for you. So we’re gonna do that on day two. And in day three, I’m gonna be walking everybody through what I call my six figure up and roadmap, which will show everybody step by step exactly what they need to do, and most importantly, when they need to do it in their journey, in order to get up to six figures and beyond as quickly as possible. Some people to go through this training will get up in over six figures or prorated, thereabouts within three months. Some people take a year, some people 18 months, but follow the system, follow the roadmap, you know, the hint is in the word, it’s a map. Follow it and you’ll get to your explanation.
RV (29:10):
Mm-Hmm.
CD (29:44):
Sequence, you know, it’s some things you should do, some things you should not do. And the things that you don’t need to do, don’t even look at doing them. Don’t even think about doing them. You just stay in your lane. Remember the movie American Wear Wolf in London? Do you ever
RV (29:59):
See that photo? I never saw itm. I remember it being around, but
CD (30:03):
It’s such a good movie. There’s a part at the beginning of the film where the two backpackers, the American backpackers are in Scotland or somewhere in the uk and they’re in an old pub one night, an old countryside pub. And this old scabby, crunchy looking old dude walks up to them and says, Stay on the path. Don’t drive off into the mos, stay on the path kind of thing. And what do you think happens? They go off the path, they go into the mos and one of them gets turned into a wol. So just follow the map and you won’t get turned into a Wol symbol. I don’t d you got, I dunno where I was going with that analogy, but I think you
RV (30:43):
Follow the map. It did. Follow the map. Stay on, stay on the course. Stay, stay on the on, on the, on the plan. So again, you can help head over to brand builders group.com/elevated if you wanna check this out. I recommend Chris. I trust Chris. You know, he’s a real entrepreneur. He’s built real businesses online and offline, which is very rare these days. So you can check that, check that out. Three free days with him getting a chance to, to sample some of this work. And buddy, I just I miss you. It’s good to see you. Thank you for making some time. I hope everything goes well and make sure you look us up when you, when you come back over to the, to the us the US of America.
CD (31:23):
Without a doubt. Without a doubt, man. I, I can’t, can’t wait to come hang out with you guys again and it’ll be nice to see AJ again. It’s too, it’s been too long that we’ve been hung out in person. I think the last time we saw each other was beginning of 2020 just before everybody went. Covid crazy, right? That that was the last time I saw you in San Diego.
RV (31:43):
Crazy. Yeah, it’s, it’s goes by fast that way. Well, we wish you the best brother. Thank you for being here.
CD (31:50):
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ep 295: Keys to Powerful Presentations from My Favorite Hollywood Actress Stephanie Szostak | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all, welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Stephanie Szostak, who is my favorite Hollywood actress
AJV (01:48):
And it was a very non-traditional route and it was a great reminder to me. And what I wanna share on this recap episode is that it’s never too late. It’s never too late to start something new, to find your calling and be the best at it that you can possibly be. And I love this because Stephanie started her modeling and her acting to career in her late twenties. Y’all most people are starting their modeling careers in their late teens, not their late twenties. So in theory, she was a decade behind the ball. And also this isn’t recent, right? This was now almost 20 years ago. So this wasn’t common for that time period for her to be doing this in her late twenties, but she did. And then she started acting and it’s like, she got at her start quote unquote late, but I don’t think it was late.
AJV (02:35):
I think it was perfectly time for exactly where she was doing, what she was meant to do at that time of her life. That’s true for you too. It’s true for me. It was true for her. And it’s true for you. You are not too old. You are not too young. It is not too early. It is not too late to do what you feel like you were called to do, to do what you’re passionate about doing the time is right now. And it’s the best time. It’s the best time, right. Frigging now. So I love that and I loved her story. I just love her story in general of, it’s never too late to reinvent and to be something new and to be somebody new and not being afraid to do that. And yeah, it will cause new learning curves and changes, but that’s okay because if that’s what you’re called to do, it’s all worth it.
AJV (03:26):
I love this quote and I’m, I don’t have the, the name of the person who quoted this, but I’m gonna share it anyways, even though I cannot give credit where credit is due, this is not my quote, do not quote me on this. But it’s like, it’s going to be hard, but cause you’re passionate about it. It’ll all be worth it. I will find the author of that quote and put it in the show notes, but I love that quote. It’s like, yeah, it’s gonna be hard, but because you’re passionate about it, it will all be worth it. And that is a great reminder of one of big takeaways I took from this episode of just accounting, her story of how she got into acting and modeling. And today she has been in so many amazing movies and shows and is incredible at what she does.
AJV (04:14):
But started in her late twenties seemingly too late, but actually perfectly timed for exactly where she should be and what she should be doing. Okay. That was the first thing. The next two things do have to do with some presentation tips and I love this and I, I think these are really important for anyone who gives presentations. And let me just be clear. School teachers give presentations, parents give presentations, employees, employers, speakers, authors, consultants, podcasters. Yes. We all give presentations. Like if you are in a job of communicating to another human person, you give presentations, you just don’t view it that way, but you do. And that is a communication change that we all need to have in terms of public speaking and presentations. And I think it’s so interesting that, you know, the number one fear of people is public speaking, even above death.
AJV (05:06):
Like that’s just fascinating, but yet we all speak in public all the time. Like when do you not speak in public? Like you’re talking to strangers all the time when you order your coffee or you order food. And yes, I know they’re not like formal presentations, but are we afraid to do those things or is it just the idea of being in front of a group of people and being stared at and potentially judged and not knowing how they’re gonna perceive you? Is that what we’re really afraid of? Not the speaking itself, but really the fear of being judged. And I think that’s a better thing of what people are really afraid of. It’s not public speaking. It’s what if I don’t bring any value? Right? What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like me? What if somebody records, it puts on the internet and I become a meme, right?
AJV (05:54):
That’s what we’re afraid of. Not public speaking, we’re not afraid of that. We’re afraid of all the things that come with public speaking. So I think that was in really good context of you gotta get really clear on like, what are you trying to convey and what emotion do you wanna convey when you’re doing it? And it can’t be a, an emotion of fear. That’s for dang sure. And so I think the first thing I’ve loved about this is she really gets in the mindset of you have to be in tune with what emotion are you trying to create before you go out and try to create it so simple, but yet still freaking hard to like really tap into it’s like, how do I wanna tell this story? How do I wanna deliver this message? How do I want the audience to feel?
AJV (06:43):
And in her case, you know, of viewers around the world, how do I want them to feel in this moment? And I think that comes back to again, something else that’s really important is we’re afraid when we make it all about us. But if we were to change our mindset on what it means to public speak or present or communicate, and we were less focused on how are we gonna sound? How are we gonna look? How are people gonna view us? And we were more concerned with how do I help them get this information in a way that’s gonna be impactful to them? How do I share this information in a way that they will receive it? Or how do I give it to them in a way that they will enjoy it, have fun with it, use it right? But if we make it about them, not us, it changes the landscape of how we create our presentations and how we communicate in general.
AJV (07:35):
But you gotta go with it with what do I want them to feel? Not how do I wanna feel? How do I want them to feel and start your presentation, start your plan for communication from there. So good. So, so good. Loved that. Third thing, last thing I’m gonna share, I’m trying to keep these under 10 minutes always for your listening convenience. But here’s the last thing that I would share that I thought was a really good takeaway is just how you get yourself in the mindset before you communicate or present. And that could be again to your family to a video camera like I’m doing right now. I’m not talking to anyone right now. I’m talking to myself on zoom, but I have all of you in mind. Right? So it’s like, I need to know. It’s like, what do I really want you to get from this?
AJV (08:22):
So it’s like, I’m not presenting to a group of people right now, but yet I am, I am presenting to a group of people because I have you all in mind. So how are you getting yourself in the right mind space, the right head space before you go in and present, right? So she gives ideas around like, do you have music that you listen to? Do you have affirmations that you read, right? Is there like some sort of body movement that you do? Do you have notes that you wanna look over, but what are you doing to get yourself in the right space to make sure that you bring your best self to that presentation or communication or video or whatever it is that encounter that it’s like, what are you doing to put yourself in like game mode? Right?
AJV (09:15):
So I don’t know why that came to mind, but it’s like, I’m pretty sure I’d have an idea of what I would do. I’d probably have some warm up rounds. I’d have my playlist prepared and ready to go. I would have my affirmations. Are we doing the same thing when we turn on that camera and hit record? Or are we doing that same thing before we address our team? Or are we doing that same thing before we have that one-on-one conversation? Or before we step on stage, before we hit go on a podcast interview, right? Are we, are we getting in game mode before we go and do it? So yeah, this was such a solid interview. So many applicable tips. And what I loved, it’s not just about being a presenter, IE, a speaker or an actress is about how to be a communicator. We all communicate. And this is, this applies to all of us. So how do we get in the mode of being good communicators? And just realizing like it’s about them. Not us is about them. Not us. Go listen to this episode, go check out the full thing, go look up Stephanie, show stack, coolest girl ever love her. Go check her out. Go listen to the episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. We’ll see. Y’all.