Category: BRANDING

Ep 278: Building an Empire with Life Changing Content with Cary Jack

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden. Here I am. One of your co-hosts as well as the CEO and one of the co-founders of brand builders group, along with my partner in crime, Rory Vaden, who is not here with me today, this is my solo episode, but my good friend, Cary Jack, whom I’m so excited to have on the show. And I know Cary personally, I got to be on his podcast a few months ago, which was probably one of the funnest podcasts that I’ve ever been on. And so total shout out to the happy hustle podcast. You should definitely go check it out. It was so fun and I love all the things that you do with that. But before we get started and I turn it over to Cary and help you guys learn a little bit about Cary, I do have a professional bio, but I will read because undoubtedly, I will forget some of these really awesome accolades, but I think are also fascinating about Cary.
AJV (00:58):
So, all right, I’m gonna give you kind of like what to me sticks out that you should really know listening to this, why you should stick around and why this is a really important episode for you. So Cary Jack is a lifestyle entrepreneur. He’s an author, he’s a podcast host. He’s also a professional actor and model. He’s a biohacker eco warrior, martial artist, humanitarian. I mean, it’s like, what aren’t you do? So there’s so many things going up, but when I say like he is doing really extraordinary things, he’s also worked with extraordinary brands. I mean, I’m talking about like he’s represented international brands like Burberry EZ top man, Corona Marriott Royal Caribbean Cadillac, Vogue home Depot, like the list goes on and on and on. So with all of that said, we literally could talk about just interesting things for the next 40 minutes, but in an effort to keep this call very focused, we’re gonna talk about some really unique things that I think are gonna help our listeners. So Cary, welcome. I’m doing the show,
CJ (02:05):
AJ, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here and yep. We definitely could go down many rabbit holes, but I’m all about adding value to the audience and ID. I have, you know, a really great insight to building and growing and izing your personal brand. And I really am excited to share. So some of the wisdom that I’ve acquired and the mistakes that I’ve learned from along the journey,
AJV (02:28):
Oh my gosh, this is gonna be such a great episode one, because I know your background and I know your story. And I’ve seen so much of it firsthand over the last few years, but also just because you’re so humble and you’re just such a, a joyful human being. I’m so excited for this. So all right. So I know a ton about you, our listeners do not so help everyone kinda get to know, like, how did you get to where you are? And then tell us a little bit about where are you, right? Like what are you doing? And how’d you get there?
CJ (02:59):
Oh yeah. So I grew up half in Sarasota, Florida surfing the beaches and you know, enjoying that, that Florida lifestyle and then half in the mountains of red lodge, Montana camp and fishing, hunting, hiking. And, you know, that’s where I first realized the importance of balance, you know, both balance with my environment, but also just balance, you know, professionally and personally, my, my childhood, wasn’t the easiest. Everyone has a story, but you know, I, I actually was dropped on my head as a child. I don’t even know if you know that AJ, but I had a very severe stutter. I couldn’t speak I was very angry. I a very angry kid because I couldn’t articulate myself. And my mom actually cured me with chiropractic and she would adjust my cranial SAC bones and I can speak okay now. And I, but due to that, I, I was very angry. I went to many years of anger management, which is odd because I run a company called the happy hustle now. And
AJV (04:00):
You’re so joyful. I said that,
CJ (04:04):
Yeah, well, I wasn’t always and then I got into some trouble when I was young, you know, there was a gut wrenching divorce mixed in and, and mental and physical and emotional abuse. And I actually ended up moving 24 times before the age of 18. So I was on the move a lot got into some, some crime. I’ll, I’ll leave a lot of that out, but I ended up in jail that’s for a
AJV (04:27):
Happy hour conversation.
CJ (04:28):
Yeah. That’s for drinks. And and you know, one on one where I can’t incriminate myself, but I learned the hard way basically. And I’ve always been a, a hustler I’ll say, but I ever, I, wasn’t always a happy hustler. You know, always been an entrepreneur at heart. Fast forward, you know, I changed my ways. I operate now with a hundred percent integrity and I really, you know, like I just completely did a 180 because I saw that path and where I was headed and I just didn’t want to go that direction. And I actually launched a company in New York city with my brother business partner in friend grant. And, you know, we were grinding AJ. I mean, we were working our, our tails off just a hundred plus hour weeks, you know, getting less than five hours of sleep and you know, all for what, for profit success, ego, you know, title.
CJ (05:15):
And I feel like a lot of people out there can resonate with, you know, grinding, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Yeah. You know, and, and I was no different. We had this big tech company that we were soliciting, these seven figure VC funding deals. And we actually ended up getting the seven figure VC funding deals. We inked partnerships with Microsoft and IBM. And we had everything for this like grandiose tech company that could have had a five year exit and multiple millions of dollars come with. And I just realized, right, when we were sitting down to sign the contract, that I couldn’t take the money, like my brother and I were just so unhappy, we were so burnt out and I just feel, now there’s an epidemic going on. Sure. There’s a pandemic, but there’s an epidemic and it’s this entrepreneurial burnout. Yeah.
CJ (06:00):
And I just made up my mission to solve that problem for myself. And I had to make a choice. I, I said no to the money, my brother and I folded the company in 18 months of hard work scrapped, you know, completely, I, I then moved to ANCO Thailand for 10 months and I just figured out a better way to work and live over there a, a way to truly be happy within the hustle. And that’s where the happy hustle was born. And that’s kind of where I’m at now is, you know, running this, this company that helps entrepreneurs mainly, but really anyone who’s struggling with balance imbalances. My one word, if you know, BBG, you know, your one word problem imbalance is the one word problem that I solve for people. And I do that in a multitude of ways, but that’s really kind of the journey in a nutshell.
AJV (06:48):
Wow. You know what I love so much about almost every single person who comes on this show and really anyone who has really ingrained themselves in the BG community is they all have done it over this like mission focused of, I wanted to make a difference for myself, for someone else. It’s like, it’s like money has always been the byproduct of it, not at the forefront. And I love that. It’s like I turned down the money because I wasn’t happy and I had to figure out a better way to live. And so I’m so curious what happened in Thailand? Like what did you discover in Thailand?
CJ (07:26):
Well, a lot of things happened in Thailand. You know, I traveled around a bunch went to all sorts of really cool places from Vietnam to Singapore, to Bali and everywhere in between. But what really had happened was I made my first dollars online, you know, and I was like, I rented this amazing penthouse apartment for like 400 us dollars, you know, and I was working from a laptop and I just realized that you don’t have to like sell your soul to make a living. You could actually make money and a difference, you know, if you get clear on who you wanna help. And so it kind of just came full circle when I was over there, like, okay, I want, I really want to enjoy my everyday, you know, journey. And I, I think what happens with a lot of people especially type a driven individuals is, you know, lack there of a better cliche. They get to the top of the mountain and they realize they’re the only one there. And they isolated everyone. And then they gotta go all the way back down and then climb a different mountain. And that’s kind of how it happened to me. And, you know, I just, when I was over there, I realized I can enjoy every single day. I can enjoy the journey, not just the destination, you know, as a happy hustle life that I actually love.
AJV (08:44):
Ah, I love that. And I’ve been there too. I felt like I, I spent 10 years basically putting myself in this like tiny little corner where I missed every wedding, every birthday party, every baby shower, all in the sake of revenue and profit ambition. And I’ve been there. I know that feeling. And so, okay. So you kinda like figured out, like, this is my life cannot be about money. If there there’s gotta be this balance here, I have to figure this out. You go to Thailand, you travel around, you start money online, right? Yep. So walk us through that for everyone’s listening, because we have a ton of people who listen that they are in the grind and they’ve got a full time, you know, corporate job and maybe they plan on leaving, maybe they don’t, but how did it all start? Like what did you start doing online? How did you generate that first dollar? Like what did that look like?
CJ (09:35):
Yeah. Well, for me, you know, I kind of evolved my, my brand and my messaging, which I think a lot of people out there will end up doing as well. You know, what you start as, will not be what you finish as, or even in the middle where you end up it’s, it’s honestly getting clear on like who you want to help first and foremost, and what problem you actually wanna help them solve? Just like, you know, the brand builders group, like core three questions is what’s the one word problem that you wanna solve for people who do you wanna solve it for exactly. Right. Customer, demographics and psychographics. And then what’s your uniqueness. And like, although I didn’t do it that specific, you know, with that specific terminology, although I am a BG client, as well as a BG evangelist, you know, I’m going back to Thailand. I wasn’t in that mindset. I just said, you know what? I can help these people just through a webinar. I just sold a webinar. And I just started, you know, open with like accountability and mindset. And it was just really like basic stuff, you know, but I, I just, it was, and it was a very low price point, but it, it gave me social proof that, wow, I can, I can do this. I
AJV (10:53):
Can do this. So for anyone out there, who’s going, would anyone actually want what I have to say? Would anyone sign up? Would anyone pay for this? Like, what would you tell for that person who just is hesitant to take that first step of saying, I’m gonna do a webinar, I’m gonna do it for free. I’m gonna charge for it. I’m just gonna start. Like, what would you say to them?
CJ (11:15):
I would say 100%. Don’t let the fear hold you back. You know, we all have that, that little voice inside our head. We all have the self-limiting beliefs and the compare and despair, who am I to share this message, you know, X so and so is so much more qualified. And as soon as you he R’s advice, which I love, you know, when the mission to serve is clear, there is no fear. And so I think if you can just get out of your own head and start to focus on service and realize that you have a message, you have a gift and the world needs it. Then you, you can push past that fear and, and really just start and, and that, and you nailed it, AJ. That’s what it is. It started like you have to take action and, and just start.
AJV (12:00):
Hmm. That’s so good. I’ve never actually heard it. Say I’ve never heard anyone say it that way. Compare and despair because that’s what happens when you compare, you immediately like self isolate and go, well, I can’t do this, this person’s already doing this. It’s like, the more that you compare, it’s like that fear just like takes over and tells you no, you can’t.
CJ (12:19):
Yep. Yep.
AJV (12:20):
That’s so good. I love that. Right. So that’s amazing. So clearly you don’t live in Thailand anymore. You’re back in the states. You’re in good. All of Montana. So tell us a little bit about like, what are you doing right now? Because you just recently had a major accomplishment with your first book. Right? I already talked about your podcast. So how did you go from, I think I’m gonna do this one thing online to now you’re a published author. You’re a speaker. You’re got this amazing podcast. Like, how did that happen?
CJ (12:54):
Yeah. Well, I do have to give credit to BBG. I, I went to finding your brand DNA and that was the catalyst. Like, it’s always easier to reverse engineer, you know, the process looking backwards and say, oh, that’s what the step was. And then the next step. Yeah. But truly when I look at my journey, you know, I was thrown to spaghetti on the walls for like the three years, you know, I was like, oh, I can help this person. And I can help this person. Oh, you need help. And fitness coaching, oh, you need business or entrepreneur, you know, and I wasn’t clear. And you know, when you try to be everything to everyone, you actually become nothing to know one. And so you have to get clear. And, and when I went to the finding your brand DNA event in Nashville, you and R you know, this was like, this was like, oh, G B B G, just when it started, it was like
AJV (13:37):
Very in the earlys.
CJ (13:38):
Yes, it was. And, and that, you know, that event really helped me crystallize my message. And it just helped me clarify the, the vision. And I’ve always been big into goal setting. However, when you actually go through and get someone like AJ or Rory, or the BBG personal brand strategist to help give you perspective, you know, sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. And that is really what happened. It gave me perspective. It helped me identify, who’s my perfect target, avatar. Who, where do they hang out? You know, how do I reach them? What problem am I actually gonna solve for them? And I actually gonna solve a forum so fast forward, you know, I’ve, I’ve run high level masterminds for my perfect avatar of, you know, imbalanced entrepreneurs. I’ve I’ve done, you know, all sorts of online courses. I’ve done books and, and speaking and events right now, what I’m focused on is my podcast, which, you know, that’s been a great tool to build the know like, and trust with my tribe.
CJ (14:42):
Yeah. However, it’s also a great tool to network. And I know you and Roy talk about the power of networking through a podcast. I, so I essentially use my podcast to add as much value as possible. And then I have my free plus shipping book funnel, which my book acts as a lead magnet. And then it transitions into my online course. And I have this blisful bouncer whiteboard, fridge magnet that then par lays into a reoccurring membership model. And then I have a high level, a mastermind, epic camping adventure, where I actually take high level entrepreneurs into the back country, Montana wilderness for five days. And we, we camp out we hike in about 10 miles and we bring in a primitive survival expert, a fly fishing expert. You know, we have a back country chef and we have a business mastermind in the wilderness, completely connected.
AJV (15:30):
I’m gonna right here. Cuz I think this is really significant to anyone who is out there trying to build their personal brand, trying to monetize it. I’m just realizing it’s like, you really have one set of curriculum, but with that you have a podcast, you have a course, you have a book, you have a lead magnet. You have speaking, you have this membership program, you have this high level mastermind, but it’s all centered around one set of curriculum. And I think that’s a really significant thing of going. You don’t have to have tons and tons of tons of content. You need one set of life changing content that actually makes a difference. And then you just create it in a variety of, to meet people where they are.
CJ (16:15):
You nailed it. So how did,
AJV (16:16):
How did you determine which formats were best for you and your audience? Cause I think that’s a really important thing is people are trying to figure out with so many things that I could do. How do I know what I should do?
CJ (16:29):
Yeah. Well again, just echoing your point. You’ve really want to get crystal clear on your framework, your content, how you solve the problem. You should know who you solve the problem for, but how you solve. The problem is going to determine where you are going to solve the problem in terms of medium, right? Someone potentially who listens to my podcast, maybe isn’t ready to invest in the Montana mastermind, camping adventure. So I need to meet them where they’re at with free content, a free lead magnet, you know, all sorts of valuable things that build that no like, and trust. Then when they’re ready, I can nurture them to potentially joining my online course. You know, that’s a scalable offer that can really add a ton of value, but further nurture that relationship. Then when they’re ready for more, then they could, you know, ascend themselves or through my marketing to an online membership model. And I just think anyone out there listening, who’s struggling, you know, in, in terms of where to start, you have to think who is your perfect avatar? Like, you know, if you’re, if you’re working with busy entre who are, you know, maybe 40 to 50 years of, of age, well, they’re probably not gonna be on TikTok. Okay. They’re probably gonna be on LinkedIn. Right. Maybe they’ll be on TikTok. I feel like who knows these days? Who knows?
CJ (17:50):
I don’t, I don’t know. My team handles all that. I, I, I just can’t do the dancing as I love dancing, but that’s with my fiance and at the, you know, at the dance hall anyway, the point is, you gotta think about like, they’re not gonna think of where your avatar is and then serve them there where they’re already at. Like again, like BBG does these high level strategy days, you know, some people aren’t like, aren’t going to sit in front of a course. They’re just not gonna watch a video on their laptop on a Saturday. They, they want one on one hand holding, you know? So you have to think about where your perfect avatar is. And then where is going to be best to connect with them, to be relatable for them to share your story and your, your process and your message so that you can make a positive impact in their life.
AJV (18:37):
Oh man, I’ll tell you what I took away from that, that I think is so significant is stop looking around at what everyone else is doing and look directly at the people you need to serve, that you are meant to serve and go, what do they need need? How can they consume this? Yep. And stop trying to do the next trendy thing just because someone else is doing it, they may not have your audience. So focus on your audience, focus on the person that you’re trying to serve and build it for them.
CJ (19:05):
Yep. And into that,
AJV (19:07):
I love that. That’s so good. Now, speaking of this curriculum one of the things that I, I do wanna talk about, cause we mentioned this earlier is you don’t need five different sets of curriculum or all this content and five different keynotes. Like that’s not necessary to build an empire worthy business. You need one life changing set of content. So let’s talk about content from in it because yours is really good. And it’s, it’s really awesome. And I just want two things out of this kind of like last piece of our conversation. I know we’re almost out of time. So I think the first thing is how did you come up with this content? Like how did you actually go, this is a book, right? This needs to be in a book and in a course, and here’s what I’m gonna do. And then two, what is it like give us some of the fruits of all of your labor.
CJ (19:59):
Yes. Well, again, it starts by just, it started for me at least by scratching my own it, you know, I was outta balance. I needed to get back to flow in, in a, in alignment, you know? And so I just broke my life into these 10 different areas. I’m now calling them 10 alignments. And this was basically, you know, me just determining how I can get back to this state of blissful balance. And for me, I broke it down into an acronym. It didn’t start as an acronym. Obviously it evolves, you know, we
AJV (20:29):
Love an acronym, Cary.
CJ (20:30):
I know you love an acronym. Yep. And that’s really, you know, one of the things that I realized is acronyms and frameworks for everyone listening are so imperative because people have a lot going on. And if they can’t remember your content, well, chances are, it’s not going to positively impact their life. You know? So you have to think through this and you wanna make it so easy to consume and so easy to implement, but not necessarily, you know, repetitive, you don’t wanna like be a copycat. So for me, my framework’s not rocket science. I’ll be the first one to tell you, it’s not rocket science. It’s just, I broke my life down to these 10 different areas. It’s called the soul mapping, you know, framework it, it’s essentially your soul’s mapped to the blissfully bounce promise land. And you know, AJ, I’ll, I’ll run through this real quick for the audience, but I want everyone out there to actually quantify where they’re at in each of these 10 different areas, these 10 different alignments and AJ, if you wanna get put on the spot, I’ll if you’re feeling brave, I’ll ask you where you’re, where you’re at in these.
CJ (21:39):
But basically I want you to think about five is like an a you’re crushing it. You know, you’re, you’re really happy hustling in this alignment, like an F you’re failing. And as you know, what you measure you can manage. So it’s really important to measure yourself in each of these 10 alignments. And I do it every Sunday. I take my own medicine every Sunday and I look at where I am lacking in the week, you know, prior and where I need to prioritize change in the week ahead. And so it’s this cons ebb and flow of adjustments. Now S stands for selfless service. Are you living for yourself and your own personal gain or are you giving back to others, your, your expertise, your time, your money, think right now where you’re at in the last, just give yourself in the last seven days where you’re at in selfless service five as an a, as an F, write it down.
CJ (22:30):
Okay. And everyone out there listening, be an active participant here. I get the most outta podcasts like this. When I take action, I actually, you know, implement, but also do the work O stands for optimized health. Are you, you know, optimize mentally, physically, and emotionally or not so much, I are you, you know, shoving garbage down the, your pie hole at, you know, feeling sluggish and just not, you know, not nearly optimized and, and be honest with yourself. One to five, five’s an a, one’s an F you unplugged digitally. Are you constantly plugged in connected to your devices? Like looking at social media, watching Netflix and Amazon prime and all these other things that we’re inundated with, or are you being diligent and having barriers and using your tech, not letting it use you L loving relationships, are you, you know, having love in your life? I mean, what’s it all for, if you don’t have love in your life, right. AJ, I mean, you, you want to make sure that you’re connected with your personal relationships, your family, your friends, but also your lover, you know, making sure that that relationship doesn’t, you know, get sacrificed in the process of your Ascension. Right. So this is the sole part. Okay. In AJ, do you wanna run through yours for the so part real quick?
AJV (23:51):
Yeah. I have no shame in this. So and the Fs, I’m a four. I feel like I’m, I’m pretty good with that. On the O I’m a four to feel pretty good about that. Yeah. On the U I’m a one I fail. It’s a major, your F terrible I need help. And on the L I’ll give us a five, I got lots of love. I feel lots of love it’s all around so that I feel really good about.
CJ (24:14):
Yep, exactly. And that’s, and here’s the thing, guys, just give yourself grace, you know, right now this is just your baseline and you have to be honest with yourself, but you also wanna give yourself grace. Now we get to the map and part M stands for mindful spirituality, you know, are you connected to a higher power? Are you, you know, meditating and praying and, and, you know, practicing breath work, like, are you believing in something bigger than yourself, right. That’s, that’s an M rank five is an, a, one is an F a, a above financially, you know, are you living paycheck the paycheck, or are you doing what you want when you want with who you want? You know, are, are you abundant? And, you know, oftentimes many people think this is the most important alignment, but it’s not rank where you’re at. It is important, but it’s not the most important.
CJ (25:03):
They’re all equally important. First P personal development, are you growing every day? You know, learning and reading and, you know, listening to a podcast like this and watching inspiring and educational shows or not so much, you know, decide where you’re at in personal development. The second P which I find a lot of driven, you know, entrepreneurs and, and type a high performers lack is this one passion hobbies, you know, are you doing fun things for yourself? Are you like getting out there and actually enjoying things that you used to really enjoy? Maybe it’s a martial art or fly fishing or horseback lighting like me, or maybe it’s painting or singing or whatever it is for you rank where you’re at in passionate hobbies. And then you got eye impactful work, you know, are you getting up every day and really excited about what you’re doing infused in your passion, which is, you know, that, that inward calling on your heart strengths with your purpose, just that outward serving mission to make a positive impact, right?
CJ (26:11):
Like, what’s it all for, if you don’t make a positive impact, you know, so rank where you’re at, maybe you’re, maybe you’re not, you know, feeling very fulfilled by your work and that’s okay. But just, you know, recognizing it awareness is the first step to change rank where you’re at one to five in that alignment and then N nature connection. Are you actually connected to nature? Are you getting outside and, you know, tapping into Pacha mama, our beautiful planet and, oh, by the way, are you protecting it? You know, like this is where being a conscious consumer actually plays. Like, are you voting with your dollar and supporting B corporations? And I have a whole nother company with my brother and business partner and best friend, you know, called eco breakthroughs. And, and we’re fighting the plastic pollution epidemic. And we’re up to some very big things in this realm. And I’m really excited about this, but it’s so important now more than ever that we take care planet. So this all falls in nature connection. So, Hey, Jay, you should have your mapping scores. Let’s hear it.
AJV (27:10):
These are good. I love this. I love this kind of stuff too, because I think it’s so important to have that gut check. Yeah. And again, like back to what you said, what I love about this, and then I promise, I’ll tell you, my scores is that this came from knowing where you were out of a line. It’s like, if you know, you are, there’s a likelihood, someone else is too. So it’s solve the problem that you have, knowing that it’s simultaneously gonna solve problems for other people. And I love that. I think this is so clever on the M mindfulness. I gave it spirituality connection to God. Like I gave that a five. Like, that’s probably the strongest for me that, and love, I feel good about really a, I gave it a four, right. So pretty good. The first P I gave it a four feel pretty good about that. The second one I said at first I said, this was like the hobbies, right? Passions. Yes. I said one, but then I remembered not my goal for this year is half more fun. And then I was like, actually, I’ve been, I’ve been doing some new things. It’s like, went surfing.
CJ (28:09):
Oh
AJV (28:10):
Yeah, hiking. We’re in a little bike gang that my five year old has named whirlwinds where the whirlwinds we go biking. So I feel maybe I gave myself a two. And then on the eye of four, and then on the end a two.
CJ (28:25):
Mm, yes. Well, I will say you’re crushing it in many regards, but those ones, the unplugged digitally, you know, the nature connection and the passion of hobbies, you know, these are all very important areas of your life. If you want to achieve that blisful balance. And you know, right now, if you tally your scores up, everyone listening and, and you’re above a 37, congratulations, you’re happy hustling. If you’re a 36 or below, well, you got some work to do. And so this is again, a, a tool, a system and assessment will you, that I do every single week and the happy hustlers in my community do every single week be cuz balance. Isn’t this finite destination.
AJV (29:09):
You said 37 is a happy hustler. Yep. Oh, I fell short. I’m a 34. I got work to
CJ (29:15):
Do. Yep. You do. Hey,
AJV (29:17):
What I tell you about, for everyone listening to this too, like who doesn’t like to do stuff like this? It’s like, am I hustling, happy hustling? I don’t know. I need to take this quiz. So in things like this into your content, make it so engaging.
CJ (29:29):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it’s so important be that you do it regular because I’m gonna give ultimately one of the, the biggest, happy hustling principles that I could ever bestow upon the BBG community and anyone listening. And that is, you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time. Hmm that’s right. So you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time I’m on this podcast with AJ, I’m all here. Hundred, 10%. When I go on my date night with my lover later, I’m gonna be a hundred percent there. When I go to my martial arts karate class, I’m a hundred percent there. You know, it’s like people, I feel like where the, the disconnect is, is when they’re at work, they’re thinking about their family. And when they’re with their family, they’re thinking about work. And so we’re not doing anything to our a hundred percent capability or effectiveness. So it’s really important that you give of equal importance to each of these 10 different alignments, but you must focus on one at a time.
AJV (30:25):
Okay. So I have a question for you about that, because I think that’s that really plagues, most human beings is, you know, we’re at work, but we’re thinking about this problem at home, or we’re at home and we’re consumed with checking our emails. And so I’m curious, right? Just in your opinion, why, why, why are we such a distracted community right now? And it’s like, why can’t we put one thing down to focus on the thing right in front of us. And then two, any tips on how to do that? Better?
CJ (30:54):
Why one, I would say is because our human brains are not necessarily built to encounter thousands of notifications in one day or thousands of pieces of information. We were, you know, we were cave men and women, you know, for millennia. And here, we now have little smartphones that have more capabilities than, you know, like hundreds of thousands of years prior in our pocket. And so we’re just inundated constantly by these dopamine dumps. And we become addicted because the people who are designing them are, you know, these are that’s, their sole job is to help make sure that their product and services are addicting for you. So we’re, we’re outgunned, we’re outgunned as human beings. And so you have to create barriers, stance to, to parlay into the second part of this question. You have to create barriers. You have to have discipline. You know, I have rules in my life that I adhere to the majority of the time, you know, 60 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes before bed, no devices, right? Just Sundays, you know, 24 hour digital detox. For the most part, I just did a seven day dopa meeting detox where no social media, no you know, YouTube or like movies or stream shows or any of that stuff. And I’d made more money and was more effective than I have been in. I don’t even know how long, you know, and it’s like, we’re so distracted. So the, the answer is create barriers, have discipline to adhere to them and have consequences if you don’t.
AJV (32:24):
Those are good. Those are really good. Any specific examples, just one tip of like, what’s one barrier that you’ve said in your PLA in your life that you feel like has really made a significant difference.
CJ (32:37):
One barrier would be, I, I would say time blocking, you know, just in terms of work, we’re all trying to build, grow and monetize our personal brand and, and really spread our message and make a positive impact specifically, in terms of work, I have a be focused timer on my computer and I’ll, I’ll airplane mode, my phone, and I’ll do a 30 minute block and then I’ll do a five minute break, you know, and then I jump on my rebound as a break which I think is really important to shake out the lymphatic drainage system, going back to my biohacking days, you know, I used to run a biohacking company where for the top, you know, 1% highest performers. And I took a lot of those little biohacks and that, that one barrier, that one time block, I can be ultra productive and I work 20 hours per week. Like, that’s my, that’s like my sweet spot. And, you know, I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur, you know, so I’m not looking to like run this massive conglomerate, but I will tell you, you know, the reason I can work so little and still be where I’m at is because I time block and I, and I’m disciplined in those time blocks.
AJV (33:38):
Hmm. So all right. Last question. I’m just genuinely curious when you’re doing all the other things and the other 20 hours of your week, how are for, for all of us aspiring to one day, have a 20 hour work week and still be where we are. How are you spending the rest of your time?
CJ (33:56):
Well as I mentioned to you pre ATT, I was just at that hot Springs here, and I was soaking in thermal natural, hot water. And then I went and I, I do a hot and cold thermogenesis, so there’s a cold pool and a hot pool. And I, I, you know, get a workout in. And then I have you know, the ski mountain here in Montana where I go snowboarding regularly. And, you know, I IM training to get my black belt in Eastern Ru KA with my fiance. And, you know, I go fly fishing and horseback riding, and I stay busy. I volunteer with a, a bunch of organizations here. And yeah, so I find, I find things to do,
AJV (34:37):
But here’s what I know. It’s like, that is not a pipe. Your that’s a created intentional life.
CJ (34:44):
Exactly.
AJV (34:45):
Anyone can have it if that’s actually what you try to create for yourself. I believe truly that most of us are living a default life that we’ve just set into whatever has been around us. And we keep moving and going, actually that’s not the life I want.
CJ (35:00):
Yeah.
AJV (35:00):
And you’re living a super intense created life. I love it. You live your content, which is why it’s so successful. You can, it just exudes out of you. I love this soul mapping. I’m a 34. By the time we talk again, I’m gonna be a 37, Cary. I’m on it. Hit a
CJ (35:15):
Girl, get a girl. It’s
AJV (35:16):
So good. Right. My last question. And then we’re gonna wrap this and I’m so grateful. Thank you so much. So I would just want you’ve been building your personal brand for several years. You’ve also built and scaled companies like you’ve done so many successful things. I wanna know, like, what is one lesson that you think has made the most dramatic change or impact in your life that you think all of our listeners should hear
CJ (35:43):
The compound effect? Darren Hardy, great book. I know you guys know him, but that book really resonated with me little actions consistently. Over time, I live by this, this phrase, persistent consistency every single day, getting better than who you were yesterday. Don’t look at other people in compare and despair, look at who you were yesterday. And I know it’s cliche again, but I’m gonna hit you with the truth that persistent consistency every single day has that compound effect. And I wanna leave one question with everyone listening. And this is what allowed me to create this lifestyle. And it is what does success act actually look like for you? Because a lot of people chase other, you know, versions of success, society deems this successful. So we chase it. But truly that’s not what success looks like for you. So you end up achieving it and then you’re unhappy and unfulfilled. So you have to answer that question. What does success look like for you?
AJV (36:37):
Ah, so good. And it’s true in every area of your life small, consistent step taken over an ongoing amount of times. You hear this all the time. It’s like, what’s the key to content creation, consistency. What’s the key to growing your online, following consistency. What’s the key to staying outta debt, being consistent, right? It’s don’t spend money. It’s like be consistent with what we’re doing. What’s the key to staying in love. Be consistent with time with each other. It’s consistency, consistency, consistency. We can talk about that every single area of your life. And most specifically for this podcast, how it relates to your personal brand it, you have got to be consistent with what you do. It doesn’t happen overnight. This is a marathon, not a sprint Cary Jack. Yes. So good to have you on this show. Thank you so much. This was awesome. Yeah. So, so good. Love it. For everyone else please follow Cary Jack. We’re gonna put these links and the show notes, but we want you to go to the happy hustle book.com. You can get the free ebook. You can do his free plus shipping. You can check out his membership. You can come camping with him this summer in Montana. Whatever it is, check out his podcast, that the happy hustle book.com. We’ll put that in the show notes, Cary, we love you so grateful for this. So good.
CJ (37:56):
Let me give one, one special give to the BBG community, cuz I’m a, I’m a part of it. And I, I love this community, AJ, and I wanna do something special as you know, time is our most precious commodity. I very diligent with mine. I want to give anyone who does pick up a copy of the happy hustle book. If you read it and you send me a DM on Instagram with your biggest takeaway, I’ll have my team send you my Calendarly link and we’ll get on the 20 minute happy hustle huddle. I’m gonna help you happy hustle your dream reality, whatever that looks like. It’s there’s no ulterior motive except me to just give value to you. So take action. If you wanna connect with me and I I’d love to serve however I can. Oh,
AJV (38:31):
I love that. That should be another incentive. Go to the happy hustle book.com. Get it, read it, get that Kaly link. Schedule some call what they wanna only Cary Jack. Y’all so good. Catch us next time on the influential personal brand.
CJ (38:46):
Peace and love y’all.

Ep 271: Building Your Personal Brand as a Small Business Owner with Jill Flodstrom | Recap Episode

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden. I am here with your recap episode, from my conversation with Jill Flodstrom. And I love Jill she’s a longtime friend. She is a, a client of brand builders group, which is so cool that she’s a fellow entrepreneur has a thriving, personal brand and also really pull insurance business and real estate business. Anyways, we wanna know more about that. Don’t listen to the full episode but here is my quick recap and I promise to keep this short and sweet. And I always say that sometimes I will actually do today, but there were two really important things that I pulled from my conversation with Jill that I wanna share with you guys today. And both of those really hit true to me because as an entrepreneur and a small business owner and someone who is trying to build and grow right, their personal brand, in addition to helping others do that she said a couple of things that I think are just truly universal and applicable, no matter where you are and what you you’re doing.
AJV (01:04):
And the first thing is that there are, there are things that you can be doing that you are not doing that would make your life better. All right. And that’s really what I heard. And I think so many of us live in the day to day of just doing things because that’s what we’ve always done. And there is the easier way and many times a better way, but the pain of going through the change to actually make it easier or better seems like more work than it’s worth to do. So we keep doing it the way we’ve always done and we keep being stressed out, overwhelmed, overworked and ultimately not happy. And that was like a really important thing, was like, how many things am I doing right now? That one I just shouldn’t be doing at all, but because of a scarcity mentality I won’t outsource them or delegate them or I’ve convinced myself that I’m the only one who could possibly do this, which is just not true.
AJV (02:05):
That are some things that maybe you should be doing, but you’re definitely not the only one who can do many, most things in your business. So what are those things to you? And she gave some really tangible tactical tips on how to get your email in order. And I love this. I still don’t know what it is in terms of how to use it with office 365, which is what I use for email, but this idea of templated responses of how do you minimize the repetitive work that you’re doing. And there’s so many things as business owners, entrepreneurs, just humans that we do that are repetitive, that we need to find systematic with ways of improving to get back the minutes, because those minutes turn into hours and hours mean a lot, right? Like my kids don’t need to be with me eight hours a day.
AJV (02:57):
They need a little bit of really intentional time with me, right? They’re in school, I’m working. They don’t need all day with me, with me being distracted. They need my pure focused intentional time. So if I can get one hour back every single day that I can repurpose for my husband and my kids, I will change my life. And so minutes turn into hours. So what are you doing to help a accumulate those minutes? And I just, I loved this concept of todo lists and it’s like, you shouldn’t do everything on your to-do list when something are on there to remind you, they should not be on your to-do list, but you should always start with the things that turn into revenue that make you money. Because that’s, that’s the orientation that we’ve should be viewing these things when it comes to work.
AJV (03:41):
Right. and I think those were just amazing tips around how do we get more time back in our very busy days? That was huge. Second thing. And I’ll leave you with this. And I swear, y’all she has been talking to Rory Vaden. This is a message that Rory Vaden hits me with the time, and I’m not exaggerating. I’m reading this new book right now. That is incredible called nothing to prove. And it’s by Jenny Allen. I recommend it to any single person on the planet. It’s a must read. It’s extraordinary. It’s so good. But one of the questions that was in the end of one of my chapters was last night. This is literally a conversation we had last night, right before my interview with Jill Flodstrom today at serendipitous. But the question was, if you knew nothing could hold you back and if nothing was holding you back, what’s the number one thing that you would go out and do.
AJV (04:36):
And I asked Roy this last night and he literally said it would be one of two things I’d go all in on paid traffic is another topic for another day, but I’d go all in on paid traffic or I would completely stack up our team. And I was like, those are the two things that you would do if nothing was holding you back. Mine could not be further from that in the whole world. But it was interesting. And I was like, you would staff up our whole team. What do you mean? He goes, babe, it’s like, I would get you every single bit of help that you need. I would, I would just pull the trigger and I would hire this person and I would hire this person. And I would staff up so that you don’t feel burdened, or I don’t feel burdened to do the things that are pulling us away from time with each other time, with God time with our kids. And I was like, okay, well, those weren’t mine, but okay. That was good. And it just, I kind of like forgot about it. And then literally in this conversation with Jill today, I asked her at the very, very end. I said, Jill, from all the businesses that you’ve started scaled, sold, dismantled building a personal brand, like what’s one main life lesson as an entrepreneur that you would give to other entre entrepreneurs. And without hesitation, she said, hire before you’re ready.
AJV (05:50):
I was like, I’m sorry, what? And she said, hire before you’re ready. It’s like, sometimes you just know that there is
AJV (05:56):
A message that someone has to deliver just for you. That interview is for me today. And I think that’s the beauty and the power of having common community and listening to podcasts and listening and learning to other people is sometimes you know it, but you need someone else to speak it to you to speak it into you. And man I’m needed that today. And so maybe someone else needs that too, but hirer before you’re ready because I’ve been procrastinating on hiring some positions, cuz I don’t think that we have enough cash to do it or that would put too much financial strain on the business. Or if we hire people, what if we can’t give bonuses and raises and I’ve been putting it off. But guess what guess who’s taking on the brunt of that workload? Me, me and me again. And it’s like, why am I doing that? Like make us ready, get us ready, but hire before you’re ready. All so good. Love this interview. Go check it out. Come back again. Stay connected, make sure you like comment, share subscribe but stay in stay in tune with us on the influential personal brand. This is Aden and we’ll.

Ep 270: Building Your Personal Brand as A Small Business Owner with Jill Flodstrom

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. Today I have a good friend and a BBG client as my special guest. Before I formally turn it over and let you guys meet the one and only Jill Flodstrom let me give you just a little bit of her what I’m gonna call professional bio and then I’ll help fill in the gaps with all the things that are not on here, which should be, which I think are a really impressive part of who Jill is and what she’s done. But here are some things that might be relevant to you specifically, if you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, right? Because Jill is a serial entrepreneur, she has created and built five separate businesses in three separate industries. And so she is no stranger to jumping off the cliff without a parachute and trying to figure out how do we make this all work as she’s a flying down the mountain which I think is a unique component of deciding to take that leap and be an entrepreneur and build a small business.
AJV (01:09):
But I would say when it comes to her personal brand, separate of all these businesses that she’s created and runs, she really specializes in helping her clients mitigate feelings of overwhelming chaos when it comes to growing their businesses. And as an entrepreneur and a small business owner, there is a lot of chaos and a lot of overwhelm. And I also know that Jill is not just passionate, but also just very skilled at efficiency and organization. And so she has really I would say made that leap from not just entrepreneur and small business owner, but also a thriving personal brand. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Jill,
JF (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
AJV (01:53):
Yes, we are too. I love it. When we get to feature our clients and you’re not just a client, like you’re one of like the OG clients. You’ve been a part of our community for three years. We’re so honored and blessed to have, get to be a small part of your journey and to see all the amazing stuff that you’ve built over the last three years. But I know all this, but the people listening do not. So to help everyone get to know you a little bit, just to tell us how you got to where you are what are these businesses that you’ve been building? And that was just a little bit about all the things that are Jill
JF (02:27):
They’re. They are all so different. I, I think a lot of people probably tried to create businesses within the same industry. Not me. I’m just like, you know what, I wanna try that let’s go for it. But my career started in banking, which led to financial services because I used to work at the coroners office. I used to meet a ton of people that were not prepared for retirement, not prepared for the bad things that can happen to us. And I just thought, you know what, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be people that we can talk to that really understand, you know, what’s kind of working, using my medical background to, so it just kind of was a natural evolution. And then with the way that the reform has come about with healthcare and financial services, just thought, you know, what it need to create a personal brand, something that I can control. And it’s just kind of led to where we’re at today and it’s been a natural evolution and it’s just, it’s been an awesome, awesome journey.
AJV (03:25):
Oh, I love that. And I love how you just, so always casually mentioned this, this brief stint of your life in the coroner’s office and the Morgue I think it’s so fascinating knowing you and you were like the most bubbly, bright, friendly person on the planet. Like how that ever worked. I don’t know. Maybe it’s like the perfect just juxtaposition of roles and positions in that. But so I, I want everyone to know, it’s like, kinda give like people, like when you talk about building and scaling small businesses and all these different industries, it’s like you have a real estate entity, you’ve got your financial service services and insurance practice like you’re really all across the board. And so I’m curious for you knowing that when it comes to like your personal brand and this personal passion of yours around organization and efficiency, it’s like, like, how do you, like, I even know, like right now, as you sit right here, like you’re sitting in Las Vegas, you do not live in Las Vegas, you live in Washington, but you’re flipping a house for your real estate business. It’s like, how do you keep all these different businesses, like siloed and centered and organized and efficient and running all at the same time, because that’s a lot going on.
JF (04:36):
It is. I always tell people, it’s like, kind of like a marathon. Like you have to make sure that all these businesses are running at the same pace as each other, which is kind of a juggling, you know, situation. But I think the most important thing is we try to complicate things so much as human beings and really just keeping things super simple, allows me to do all these different and keeping these businesses running is quite the adventure, but keeping it simple has really, really helped me.
AJV (05:08):
Okay. So this is an amazing topic to talk about because I doesn’t, I do not care what it is that you do. It’s like we do overcomplicate it. Like we try to make it as complicated as possible. Even if it’s emotionally, it’s like, it’s not that big of a deal, but yet we build it up as some catastrophic event that’s gonna happen. And so as an entrepreneur, small business owner, this thriving, personal brand with this awesome reputation for doing great work, it’s what are the things that you find other small business owners, entrepreneurs overcomplicate, and, and wanna know personally too. It’s like, how would you help someone to simplify things?
JF (05:48):
I think the first one, because we all are suffering from overwhelm in our email. And so I love to focus with my clients first on the email, like let’s tame the email monster, and then we can kind of move on to some other things. But there’s a way that I organize my inboxes within my email inbox, which makes it so much easier to just manage that flow of emails, because I think there’s so many more people that are, are just, they look at their inbox and they’re like, oof, I’m not even gonna deal with it today. I’m just gonna set it aside. And if somebody really needs me, they’ll email me again and it’ll move to the top of the stack because I used to be one of those people that when you would look at my phone, it said like 50,000 messages, like I was that person and now I am reformed and I am inbox zero. Like that’s the team I’m on. And let me tell you, if you are suffering with email overwhelm, that inbox zero is like, it it’ll change your life.
AJV (06:47):
How is that even possible?
JF (06:50):
Right.
AJV (06:51):
What I know. So, okay. So when it comes to email, like give us one tip from the Jill floods from book of how do you, I don’t know if this is a word decom, simplify, let’s go simplify. How do you simplify email? Like how do you make progress towards this concept of zero inbox?
JF (07:10):
Well, I think the main thing is using templated responses. That is huge because when you think about, you know, all the emails that you get in every day, you might be typing the exact same words
AJV (07:23):
All the time,
JF (07:23):
A bunch of different people over and over and over again. And when you think about creating a templated response for that, it just makes it so easy to just click one button versus having to type that whole string. And if you’re somebody that uses your own for email, like you’re not a desktop or a laptop person, you can use the hot keys inside your phone to do the same thing. So instead of having to type all that out and use up all that extra time and energy, you just couple key strokes and you’re done. I mean, it’s, it’s been a huge game changer.
AJV (07:55):
Okay. Well, I’m gonna sound really uneducated right now. What is the templated response of, how do I get one? What is this?
JF (08:02):
Well, depending on what
AJV (08:04):
Email. Okay. I use office 365.
JF (08:07):
Okay. So mine’s probably gonna look a little bit different than yours because I am a Gmail person for business. So basically what it is is you just go into your settings and there’s different things, very similar to how you set up your S line in your email. So it’s similar to that and it’s probably in a very similar spot in your settings. So you go in there and you type like Hey, thanks so much for your email. I’ll get back to you in a couple hours with it. That’s just an easy one. Well, you can create that templated response and then just use certain keys. You know, I usually set them as like weird key strokes, like X, you know, Y, Z something like that, that you wouldn’t normally type, like don’t use ha S or something like that, cuz you type that all the time, but then it just automatically populates it in your email inbox, inside that message that you’ve opened and you just click send and it’s gone. And same thing with your phone. There are, if you’re an apple user, it’s probably probably something similar for Android, but for apple people you can literally type like just one letter like Z and then that responsible pop send and off you go
AJV (09:17):
Fascinating. Well, I know what I will be doing when I get off this interview with you. Okay. So this concept of like templated responses. Yeah. Can you have lots of them?
JF (09:29):
Oh, heck yeah.
AJV (09:30):
Okay. You have
JF (09:31):
Lots and lots and lots of them. And so I always encourage people to look through your sent file and see what you’re sending to people because what you probably don’t realize is that you’re sending the same thing pretty consistently. And so that’s what you can use to turn into a template and response and it just makes it so much easier. So that way you’re not sitting at your computer going, okay, I know I wanna do this, but I have no idea what I would use for just go look through your sense and you’ll be able to see it.
AJV (09:58):
That’s great. So what’s one thing that you use it for to give us some context.
JF (10:02):
I use it. I mean, I use it for a response to a general email. Like let’s say I’m in the car or I’m traveling and I really want this person to know that I receive their email and that I’m aware of it. I’ll send a templated response for that. That’s probably the easiest, but a lot of times for specific business, like for health insurance, like we are sending the same response that says, Hey, I would love to help you with that. Here’s my scheduling link. Schedule an appointment when it’s a great time for you. That’s a templated response. I don’t need to type that out every time, just
AJV (10:34):
Right.
JF (10:35):
Strokes. And off I go.
AJV (10:37):
Mm y’all that’s huge like little things of like even using it internally. Like if you have team members of, Hey, everyone’s like, Hey, can I get to this? It’s like, Hey, here’s my calendar link. Instead of having to type that up or try to coordinate. But that’s the thing that I love too about working and talking with other entrepreneurs. There’s these little hacks, right? It’s all these like little things. It’s nothing Mo which I also dunno if that’s a word, but it’s like just enough making up words today. It’s just enough to like free up a little bit of that mental space of going. It’s one less thing that I have to like type out think about and get to it also probably makes it easier to respond quicker of, you know, just like template, response, go template, response, go
JF (11:22):
Well. And I always tell people too, like when we sit down and we talk about, you know, we have this massive project that we wanna do and we, a lot of us don’t have a full half a day or two hours to carve out to dedicate to just this one thing, but we have two minutes. And so using those little templated responses, you’ll be shocked at how much time you get back into your schedule. And it’s like anything, you know, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you do, you will be to the point where I’m like, I can’t live without it. Like I’m sending templated responses all the time.
AJV (11:54):
Oh, that’s so true because it’s like, how many times are we just trying to like, like we’re in Starbucks line or we’re sitting out of red lights, definitely not driving right safety first, but maybe sitting at the red light, going out two minutes and it’s like, you can maybe get through three or four things versus one thing. Just trying to type this out. I love that. I love this little hacks. I love, I love everything about just trying to be more efficient. And this is also a part of your personal brand, right? Yes. So it’s like in addition to your insurance business and your real estate business and everything else we have going on, it was really this passion for efficiencies and little tips and tricks of the trade that you kind of leaned into your personal brand. So I kind of wanna know as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, it’s like, what was that trigger point for you of going, I have a lot going on, I’m managing a lot. I’m growing and leading multiple companies like this isn’t ne necessarily something you had to do. You wanted to do it. So why make the choice to lean in to building your personal brand as a small business owner?
JF (13:00):
Well, you know, it kind of started as something that kind of surprised me to be honest, because I thought everybody was doing it. Like, I think we just kind of get into our own zones and we don’t realize that not everybody is doing the same things. So I would go to these events and I would talk about these random things that I do and people would be like, why are you keeping that to yourself? Like you need to tell people about that. People need to know because everybody needs more time. Right. I mean, that’s the one thing that we cannot get back. And so I just kind of was like, what, like, people really don’t know that. And so when I started about the email organization or like how to categorize your to-do list or all these different things, people were just like, say what, I I’ve never heard of that before.
JF (13:43):
So it was kind of that, but also knowing that with the way that things are changing in the financial services world and the health insurance world and the government becoming more involved in that, I really like the idea of being able to control more of the business than giving that to someone else to control. And so it just kind of was this Mary of two things that I loved, you know, all these random things that I do every day, I thought everybody did. And then also creating this business around it because I think as we, as entrepreneurs, when we stick together and we help each other, it is like the growth of that is just massive. And so if I can help other people with these little random things, I feel like it can really, really change their life.
AJV (14:31):
Oh, I love that so much. And that’s so true. It’s like every really great business idea truly should stem from this could really help someone else. So really, as an entrepreneur, a small business owner, it’s like, you were at these events with other small business owners and they’re like, Hey, why are you keeping all these secrets to yourself? How do we like build this? And so you really started building your personal brand to help people just like you.
JF (14:57):
Absolutely. Yep. Because I think you get to a certain point in your business where if you don’t control it, it will start to control you. And you’ve gotta kind of like take the reins and be like, okay, I don’t have all this mass amount, amount of time, but I do have two minutes. I have 30 seconds. I have these random little pockets of time that I can be doing things. So that way, at the end of the day, I can actually go be with my family and not be working until midnight or three o’clock in the morning. Like so many of us do a really capturing back that family time, which I think is so important and sometimes kind of gets lost when you become an entrepreneur, because you’re so focused on building this business and getting clients and earning money and doing all the things that, that stuff kind of gets pushed to the side. But I think we need to bring that back because there’s nothing more important than our families.
AJV (15:49):
Great. All about that message. Yeah. It’s like if we had a happier home life, we would naturally have a happier work life, all of us. Okay. So about three years ago, then you started leaning in and building your personal brand, which is how I got to be connected with you. And this, a beautiful relationship with brand builders group and you started to emerge. And so I’m so super curious and for everyone listening, what has this process been like for you as a small business owner of going all right, I’m gonna lean in and do this thing that I feel really called to do because unlike many of our clients who are building their personal brands for their actual businesses, yours is a little bit of a delineation from that. And it’s like, this is naturally having positive byproduct, but it’s almost like a whole new business. And so you’ve really built out this entire like productivity for entrepreneurs and small business, those owners owners course, which does, and doesn’t necessarily really connect to your other businesses. So I would love to hear your journey about it’s ultimately creating a new business, but why did you go the course route? And how has this process been for you as both the face of your business and also this kind of like growing personal brand?
JF (17:12):
I think the main thing is that this started many years before I even had found brand builders because it was something that I knew that I wanted to do, but it’s like, where do you start? And so I know, I mean, because my whole high school career, I loved sports and you know, in sports you always have a coach, someone who’s pushing you, someone who’s making you better, someone who’s guiding you. And I really found that when you have an idea, but you don’t really know what else is around that idea. You know, I can build a business. That’s not a problem. But when you take this idea, this little tiny baby, and you’re like, how do I make this grow? Like what could this become? I really think that the course route and having the coaching is huge. And I always tell people that there’s no way that we could have created what we’ve created without brand builders, because there’s so many people that I meet throughout this journey that are like, Hey, I’ve already got this book.
JF (18:17):
I’ve already got this thing. And I really came here with just an idea and like a calling. And like, I know that I can make a difference in someone’s life. I don’t really know how I’m gonna do that, but I’m gonna figure it out and you guys are gonna help me. So it was just really this journey that looking back, it’s like, holy smokes, we’ve accomplished a lot in the last couple years. It’s kind of crazy when you look back. But I think the, the main thing that I wanna tell everyone listening is that if you have an idea, do not give up on that. I idea find the person that supports you, find whatever you need to make that idea a reality, because you don’t wanna let those ideas just sit in a notebook or stay on the shelf. You’ve gotta get them out there because they really truly can change other entrepreneurs lives.
AJV (19:07):
Oh, that’s such wisdom from your mouth right now. It’s so good. I think one of the things I love about that, and we’ll just stay here for just a second is it’s like, if the idea is in you, there’s a reason, right? Whether you see a need or you feel the need, or it’s a need, that’s finally been fulfilled for you or it’s something you see people around you struggling with. And like, I wouldn’t even say like today, it’s like in our short conversation already, it’s like templated responses. Like I already know like three different ways of like, this could really help me, like may not change every part about my business, but I don’t need a hundred new ideas. I need a couple that just help me move a little faster. And I think it’s such a great reminder to all of us. It’s like, if that idea has been placed on your heart, if you feel like you have this calling, like it’s for a reason, it’s like somebody out there needs it. They need you, but they also need you to step out of this place of fear or uncertainty and go, I I’ll tape a leap, a leap of faith and we’re gonna see what happens.
JF (20:12):
Absolutely.
AJV (20:13):
All right. So tell us a little bit more
JF (20:15):
Part
AJV (20:15):
Too. Oh, definitely. The scariest part into the unknown. My favorite song from frozen is like all the things, right. So I wanna know more about like what you’ve been working on when it comes to this personal brand of yours and a huge part of it. I know that you are launching a new course, right? It’s a huge part. We’re so excited to get to help you with that. And so it really is a course about helping people get their time back. Right. So we talked a little bit about this email and templated responses, but give us a sneak peek. And then for everyone listening we’re also gonna include a link in the show notes of where you can go and get Jill’s free productivity guide for entrepreneurs. In fact, I’ll go ahead and give you like a little sneak peek of where you can go to get that.
AJV (21:06):
And you will go to scale scale your small business.org/clear, right? We’ll also put that in the show notes. That’s a really awesome place to go with this free guide that Jill has teed up for everyone listening today. But all right, Jill, so in this course of building this out, like there’s a whole process to figuring out, like, how do I take all of this knowledge and all of these things that I’ve been doing. And also what I think would actually help someone else and put that together in a way that other people can digest it. So if you were to tell everyone listening, here are the three things that you are gonna come away within this course. And like, here’s why people need help with productivity. They need help with becoming more efficient or just doing less. Like what would those three things be?
JF (21:56):
I think the main thing is we’ve divided it up into nine pillars, but there is so much in each one, but I think the most important thing that makes this course different is each one is short and sweet. So you literally can take what we talk about and go do it very similar to how my podcast is and the fact that it’s like these short, actionable things that you can do right away. So we’ll start off with what’s in the productivity guide is about your to-do list, the different steps that I go through, that the different from what other people do, and just even organizing your to-do list, focusing on certain things, getting those knocked out first. So they don’t turn into the big, ugly, scary monsters, and just working through that list every single day. But there’s stuff in there from working with your team, how do you organize your organiz
JF (22:51):
Bills in your organization? Like all sort like it runs the gamut because there are so many things that I have learned from running all these businesses and of course, feedback from other business owners that I’ve helped. But I mean, there’s a calendar in there that just talks about what to do on the 10th, the 25th, once a year, once a quarter. And I feel like that has been a huge help for people because when you’ve got a checklist, just print it out, you pin it up on your board and you’re just like, oh, that’s the day. Gotta get that done today.
AJV (23:20):
Oh, that’s so good. So I have to add three questions about that and kind of like back to these three things that you should do. So I think you said a couple of things there I’m gonna like tee in of like knowing you and knowing your content, like three things. So the first one is this to do list. Yes. So if you were to say, if I was just gonna give you one tip right now to everyone listening of like, here’s one thing you should do to better maximize your to-do list or however it is that you would say, it’s like, what’s the one thing on the to-do list that we need to know.
JF (23:48):
Definitely do the stuff that makes you money. First. I think sometimes we get lost in the busyness and the easy stuff, but really you’ve gotta make sure that stuff that has the firm date deadline and the stuff that makes you money has to get done first. But sometimes that’s the stuff that we per procrastinate the most. So that’s huge do those things
AJV (24:08):
First. So do the things that make you money first. Everything else is second to that short sweet, but that’s super helpful. Just being able to look at every single thing that you have to do on a day in a week, in a month and go, which ones of these things actually co correlate to dollars sense. Absolutely that first. Okay, awesome. Super, super tangible. And again, it’s just a mental processing of when there’s so much to do, where do I start? We start with what makes you money? That’s good. Okay. Now you mentioned something else that I laughed out loud about organizing your organization. What, what is that?
JF (24:47):
So that is, you know, a lot of people are still like a sole proprietor and it’s like, should you be something else? Should you be a different entity? What, what should you even be? So we go over a little bit of that. And I also talk about, you’ve gotta create your of people. You’ve gotta get your accountant. You’ve gotta get your attorney. You’ve gotta get these people because you are gonna be talking with them a lot. And we don’t know what we don’t know. So you need a good team of people to protect you because you’re gonna make some mistakes and they can prevent you from making some costly ones.
AJV (25:25):
Oh yeah. So it’s just like making sure it doesn’t matter if you’re a, a one person show or you have a team of a hundred, it’s like, like these are all the people that touch all the parts. It’s my attorney, it’s my financial person. It’s my CPA. It’s, you know, whatever. Right. We’re walking through it. Okay. So it’s getting everything organized in a way and in a place where it’s like, this is who I go to for what?
JF (25:51):
Exactly. Okay. Yep. And knowing who those who those people are, what roles do they fill?
AJV (25:56):
Okay. That’s awesome. But yeah. And I think that’s really good. It’s like that also helps you uncover any gaps.
JF (26:02):
Absolutely.
AJV (26:03):
Yeah. Like as an entrepreneur I’m a part of EO entrepreneurs organization here in Nashville and I still find it so amazing how I’ll be in like these small group discussions with other entrepreneurs and people don’t have an actual attorney. Like people don’t have a formalized tax person and they have multi seven figure businesses and they’re still kind of just winging it. I’m I personally am way too OCD for that. So but it, it is amazing to me. It’s like, for so many of us, it’s like, we’ve been successful in spite of ourselves. And there’s a certain point where it’s like, okay, I actually have to create some formality to what I’m doing in case of X, Y, and Z. So organizing your organization, making sure you’ve got the right people in place to take care of the things when and if needed. Okay. Second awesome thing. Okay. Third thing. And I’m just like super curious about, is you talk a lot about email in terms of time saving tips, other than email, what do you think is the other next biggest thing that people need to work on? Who are entrepreneurs our small business owners to get their life back in check?
JF (27:17):
Well, I think the most important thing is finding some sort of software to keep track of everything because cause we, a lot of us keep so much stuff in our head and then we wonder why we’re so stressed out, why we forget things, why people are like, you’re never listening to me. And so being able to put all that stuff somewhere, whether that’s a calendar, you know, some sort of, you know, con bond, board, whatever that looks for you, having a holding place where you can put all those ideas. So that way, you know, when you’re ready to come back to them, you haven’t forgotten them. And I think it’s something there’s so many things that are just, it’s simple and you’re like that can’t work because it’s so simple, but that’s what does work,
AJV (28:01):
Do you have some favorite softwares?
JF (28:03):
I do. I do. I love Asana, but I’m testing out a new one that is called click up and I’m very intrigued. So I’m kind of, I’m kind of looking at it dabbling a bit to see if it’s a better match to, you know, bring all these things, you know, and all of our team together to see if it’s a better fit.
AJV (28:23):
Okay. So Asana’s the one that you’ve been using, but you’re kind of like testing with click up. Would you say that click up would be like super comparable to Asana?
JF (28:33):
It’s very similar, but there’s different things about it, which I think kind of make it even cooler is that you can import like all this stuff. Like I’m always on the hunt for like, what’s a hub that my team can use where everything comes into that and goes out of it. And I think that that software might be it now. It might not once we, you know, get into it and see, but I’m always on the hunt to see, you know, what people are creating. I mean, it is fascinating what people are coming up with. I agree. Cause I’m excited to test it out and see if it works for us.
AJV (29:06):
That’s awesome. We use at brand builders group internally, we use monday.com. Yes. Very similar. Yeah. So super similar. But we integrated monday.com into our daily operations, maybe a year and some change ago, it has revolutionized our lives. It’s like, we literally, like we run every single meeting now off of our Monday boards. Awesome. And its like, but it’s to that point, it’s like, it’s like even we a year and a half ago as a multi seven figure business were running all of our project management out of email.
JF (29:42):
I know it’s and there’s so many
AJV (29:44):
Crazy that
JF (29:44):
Too,
AJV (29:45):
It’s crazy. Crazy, bad, not crazy good. And so we totally shifted everything to the goal of 2021 for us was get organized right. As an entity. And it took a whole year to get everyone re acclimated, had situated, getting all the boards loaded. But now I literally look at these and I’m like, how are we functioning? Like, like how are we actually functioning as a company? Even as me for an individual like I, like one of the things that I do is I have Monday boards with my EA. So I have visibility into what she’s doing. And so of saying, Hey Maggie, what are you doing today? Hey, Maggie, are you doing today? It’s like, go look for yourself on the Monday board. So, so much of that is about creating transparency and work activity and communication. So. All right, well I’m super interested to hear what you find with click up.
AJV (30:37):
So make a personal note to let me know what you find click up. So all right. Well I know we just have a couple of more minutes here together. And so I’m curious with just one or two other quick things for our listeners that I think would be so super cool. And again, as a reminder to everyone Jill’s offered up this really cool free guide, go to scale your small business.org Ford slash clear. We’ll put that in the show notes, her course goes live on April 7th, April 7th, April 7th which is just a few days from the launch of this episode. So you can learn more about that too, at scale, your small business.org. You can check that out if you’re so inclined. But okay. So as we kinda wrap up here, Jill, so I’m really curious for the everyday small business owner, an entrepreneur who does not think they need a personal brand, what’s your thoughts on that?
JF (31:35):
Well, you probably already are. You just don’t realize it. And so you’ve really gotta shift your perspective and that you are, and everything that you’re doing or not doing is affecting your reputation, even though you don’t realize it. And so really getting a handle on that whole idea will shift the way that you do things, the way that you respond to things and making sure that you really have all your stuff organized and together, because if you’re a disorganized mess, people know it. They can see,
AJV (32:14):
Even
JF (32:15):
Though you don’t realize they can,
AJV (32:17):
But you know, what’s so funny is like too, that for the person who’s going, like, I don’t need a personal brand. You’re saying, no, you already have one. You already are a personal brand. And if you’re a disorganized mess, maybe that is your brand. So, and
JF (32:31):
You probably wanna change it. You should wanna change it for
AJV (32:34):
Sure. Don’t that be your brand? But I think that’s a great point. I know that was a part of our conversations of it’s not whether or not you need one. It’s like, no, you already have one. It’s just, are you the one creating it or is it being created for you by other people’s perceptions? Absolutely. That’s good. All right. Last question of the day for you, and this is back this like concept of entrepreneurship and running and scaling small businesses. So it, this is, this does not have to do with productivity or time management or anything, but if you were to give just one piece of advice from all the businesses that you’ve started scaled sold, dismantled, like, what would you say is the number one lesson that you have learned that you will carry forward into the future when it comes to being an entrepreneur
JF (33:25):
Hire before you’re ready?
AJV (33:27):
Oh, that’s good. So tell, tell me more about that.
JF (33:31):
So a lot of times when I visit with people, they’re like, oh, I don’t have the money. Oh, I’m not ready. And I think by hiring someone that really pushes you forward and you, it takes a lot of things off your plate and allows you to really focus on your business. But for so many people, it’s just something that they’re like, oh, I can do it all myself. I got it, I got it. But you don’t got it. And by having someone, bringing someone in which, which has a fr fresh perspective on your business, the way that you’re doing things and by using software or, you know, whatever it is to empower them, your business can grow exponentially. But a lot of times like most things you gotta do it before you’re ready.
AJV (34:17):
Oh my gosh. Have you been talking to my husband? I have to feel like that that was planted in this conversation. Yeah. We literally had this talk last night. Advice heard if not for anyone else for me, I hear you. I’m with you, Jill. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited for this episode to go live. It, if you guys if, once you check this out, go get her free guide, go check out her course. Also check out the recap episode. That’ll be just sharing my top points and highlights from this Jill. So honored to have you in my life. So happy you’re on the show. Thank you so much. And to everyone else we will catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 267: How To Leverage Business Experience to Build Your Personal Brand with Tiffany Taylor & Leon Chen | Recap Episode

AJV (00:02):
All right. Welcome to a recap episode on the influential personal brands. One of your co-host AJ Vaden here, and I’m doing my recap conversation on my conversation with Tiffany and Leon from Tiff’s treats. They are the founders and owners of Tiff’s treats, which is a $5 million business. They started it in college together, have grown it to incredible success, but they are also launching their very first book together which comes out on April 5th. So what did I learn from these two incredible entrepreneurs and now published authors? So he, here are my three key takeaways as we often share on our recap conversation. So number one this was probably the number one thing that I took away and something that I’m absolutely gonna turn around and instill at brand builders group is the idea that as the owner, as the founder and maybe no, not even that, but someone in the company has to be the brand protector.
AJV (01:08):
There has to be someone looking out for the reputation of you and your company’s brand. Most often that probably makes more sense for it to be the founder or owner, but there are people who look out for the finances. There are people who look out for revenues. There needs to be someone who says this is not in line with the brand. So the answer is no. Even if it costs you money, even if it costs you time, there has got to be someone who is the brand protector of going. There are things we say yes to. There are things that we say no to, but at the end of the day my job is to protect the brand and the, of this organization or for yourself. Right. how often do we, as individuals who are building our own personal brands, say yes to everything, then all of a sudden what we stand for and our own business becomes diluted because we talk about everything.
AJV (02:01):
We have different business models, different ideas. We, we could speak on anything. We write about everything and simultaneously we’re not clear on anything. And I thought that was really good. It’s like be willing to say no to protect the brand, loved that. I can think of like three instances in our own company right now where it’s like, no, I just need to put my foot down and go, that’s not in line with who we are. My job is the brand protect protector. So the answer is no, it may cost us money, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it in the long run. So good. So, so, so good. Second thing that I thought was really good and also I have a little insider Intel on this one, cuz I got a gal copy of the book. But I just love the concept of you don’t have to have a lot to get started, but we all think we do.
AJV (02:52):
We think we need all this technology. We think we need huge followings. We think we need investment money. We think we need all these things per perfected. And the truth is we don’t, we just need to get started. Right. I, I loved hearing the story of how they started. They were 19 in college, started with 20 bucks, a cell phone with her skill set that baking cookies and you using his college apartment. That’s not much right. And there’s beauty in the naivety of all of that. So you know, that old saying ignorance is bliss. And as we get older we just become less ignorant to things and simultaneously become a little jaded. But what if we stop doing that? What if we looked for real opportunities to do things that we were passionate about and we opened up our eyes to every single opportunity right around us.
AJV (03:49):
We don’t do that as much anymore. And I so want to bring that back into it’s like, there’s no reason this couldn’t work, except for us believing that it could work. But what if we just said, no, I believe it can work. And so that we will find a way that it will work. Right. I don’t remember who said this. But I’m gonna quote it, even though I can’t give credit to the person that the credit is due to, but there is evidence and whatever you wanna find, right? It’s like, whatever is the truth that you, you will find evidence for. Just that. So why don’t we choose to go? There is, there is a way and then we find ways to support that it’s possible. And this is how we’re gonna get there. Such an inspirational reminder to me of going whatever we believe is true, but if we could just believe that it would work, believe that there’s an opportunity.
AJV (04:43):
That doesn’t mean it’s gonna make it easy or simple. But it does make it possible. It does make it possible. But starting with 20 bucks on a cell phone you can’t really have more bare minimum requirements than that. And I would just say it’s like a great reminder from this conversation is you don’t have to have much to get started. You just have to be willing. I think that’s a really great reminder for all of us who find plenty of opportunities and excuses to not do what that calling is on our heart, what we feel called to do what we’re passionate about, because we think we can’t now the answer is you can, you just, won’t great, great moment in this interview today. For me, it’s like, whatever you believe you’ll find evidence for just that last thing. And I love this, nothing.
AJV (05:33):
This is really important is making time and space to learn why your customers use your brand so wise and also sometimes so overlooked. We look for, how do we find our target audience? How do we grow revenues, grow our client base, retain ’em. How about spending just as much time of going, why do they use us? Like, what is it about us that sticks out to them? So creating those opportunities for conversations and feedback and stories whatever those may be of actually digging in and saying like, here’s a place where you can submit your stories. Here’s where you can give us our feedback. Like we actually wanna talk to you, tell us, what’s go going on. How’d you find us? Why are you using us? And then creating elements every step of the way of going, why do you use us?
AJV (06:24):
Why did you buy from us? Why do you continue to use us? And that creates your own ammunition for how you should market and who your audience is and what your audience wants from you and what you should keep and what maybe doesn’t matter you think does, I love feedback. I love customer feedback. But it’s like, even in this conversation, I’m going so much of the feedback is not asking, why did you pick us? Ugh, like such an aha moment. I’m going, Ugh, geez. Still so much to learn still so much to do. But such a great, just remind from people who have been so successful in business started with an idea and a dream and has grown it to a half billion dollars in revenue launching their first book and just wanna give the behind the scenes, look at what it likes to be married. Be in business, grow a family, grow a company and all the details in between. So again, I said it go check out this book. So excited to support just fellow entrepreneurs and fellow authors. So go to cookie delivery.com/bain, our last name, you’ll get a discount code and a link to pick up the book. So stick around, come back, catch another episode at the influential personal brand.

Ep 266: How To Leverage Business Experience to Build Your Personal Brand with Tiffany Taylor & Leon Chen

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is one of your co-host AJ Vaden here. I am so excited to have two newer friends on the show today that are about to head into a very se, a very busy season of launching their first book together. But I’ll, before I formally introduce these individuals, here’s a couple of things that you need to know and why you need to stick around to the very end of the show today. First thing is that this is a married couple in business, and as we all know, that brings lots of wonderful benefits and lots of challenges. And so we’re gonna get to learn a little bit about that, but this particular couple their business idea started from an accidental nohow on a first date. So we’re gonna talk about how a business opportunity can really come from anywhere.
AJV (00:56):
If your eyes are open to it and then not last, but definitely not least. They are writing their first book. They have been insanely successful well into the nine figures with their business, which started with some warm cookies because of a no-show on a date to a healthy nine figure business. Now they’re building their personal brands, launching their first book. So we’re gonna learn about how do you go from being these incredible entrepreneurs, being married together, raising a together, and now also writing a book and starting this new journey of their lives, sot and Leon, welcome to the show.
TT (01:30):
Thank you. Thanks
LC (01:31):
An intro. Yeah. Thanks for having us. We gotta have you introduce us everywhere.
AJV (01:36):
Well, I we’re so excited and I was such a treat to learn that we had some mutual friends in common behind the scenes, and I love learning your story. And I loved also getting to like peruse through the book. And I think you guys have really done it uniquely well in the way that you’ve like outlined these business practices and cookie recipes and all these things that you’ve intertwined. That’s just really true to who you guys are. But before we get into the book, we wanna talk a little bit of business, right? So for everyone who does not know you, so you guys are the owners and founders of Tiff’s treats, which is now a incredibly successful business. You guys have almost 70 locations across the United States. I was telling Leon right before we started that there’s one right down the street from our house here in Nashville, Tennessee, we get Tiff’s treats deliveries all the time. The cookies are spectacular, highly recommend them. My kids love ’em. My husband loves ’em way too much. But you guys have done all these amazing things, but the way you started is quite unique. And so towel everyone actually, how did this business come about?
LC (02:43):
Yeah, it’s quite simple. She was not super nice and stood me up on a date is how it really started.
TT (02:49):
Well, we were sophomores at the university of Texas in Austin, and I did stand him up on a date. But I did apologize. And the way I did that was to bake him a set of cookies. And I drove him over to his house and they just so happened to be warm when I got there, the cookies and he took one bite and immediately thought, Hey, we should do this as a business. Now keep in mind. We were 19 years old and we were going to college
LC (03:12):
And, and this was
TT (03:15):
19 99, 19 99. And so he said, we should, you know, instead of pizza delivery, it’ll be warm cookie delivery. We’ll bake the cookies when people order them and deliver them to their houses. And so I immediately didn’t wanna do that. And I said, no, thank you. But then we got to talking the rest of that afternoon and he convinced me to at least think about it. And I ended up at the grocery store pricing out. What, what do we, how much does it cost to make cookies? And what other kinds of cookies besides chocolate chip could we offer? And we spent the next couple weeks just researching the basics, you know, what, what would be the basics that we would do? And then two weeks later, we opened right out of his college apartment
LC (03:52):
And, and waited three days and didn’t get a single order for three days too. So right off the bat, I already felt like it was gonna be a failure and maybe even the relationship too.
AJV (04:02):
So I think part of this is so fascinating to me because how many people honestly get stood up on a date and one even have the courage to go and apologize much less, bring some sort of consolation gift. But then more than that, who has the idea after this no-show date to go, you know what? We should go in business together. This is an amazing idea. So I’m really fascinated to go to know, how did you guys go from, sorry, I no-showed you, I I’m really, I feel bad about this. I’ve brought you some cookies to actually, I think there’s a business here and here’s why this is so interesting to me, because to me it proves the point that there is an idea in every single situation, there’s an opportunity to be creative and to do something. And no matter what happens, good, bad or whatever, and think most of us don’t see it, but you guys did. So how did that happen?
LC (05:00):
You, you know, I think the easy answer for that is we were 19 and you need to be a little bit naive. We call our, we call it, we call it young, dumb and naive. You know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think as we age that the 25 year old version of ourselves, would’ve said, no, like that’s too insane of an idea, but when you’re that naive, you just have no idea the hardships and the difficulty. And you don’t think in terms of why we shouldn’t do something, you, you, you’re just thinking the world is your oyster. And I think that that was weirdly our biggest advantage is that you, we just were just naive.
AJV (05:41):
I love that. So I’m curious Tiffany, why did you take him cookies? Like why even go back and apologize? Like you could have just easily been like, oh, I’ll probably never run into him again up.
TT (05:54):
So I should clarify. We were dating at the time.
AJV (05:58):
There
TT (05:58):
Wasn’t a random, because that would be bizarre to just nohow and then apologize and then go into business. So we were dating and cookies was my thing. So I used to all through high school, I would, and even junior high before then it was just my hobby to bake cookies. And so when I needed to apologize, it came naturally, this is something nice I can do for him to say, I’m sorry about this. And I certainly always expected to see him after that. I did not think we would be going into business together or
LC (06:27):
Getting married
TT (06:28):
Or that happens way later. So yeah.
AJV (06:32):
Well that does make a lot more sense reading this. Cause it did say an accent, dental nohow in your bio. And I was thinking, I dunno what accidental means, but I do know what nohow means. So I’m curious though, just something that you said now, you guys have two kids. How old are they?
TT (06:50):
Seven
AJV (06:50):
They’re seven. So I have a two and a four year old. Oh
LC (06:53):
Yeah, you’re
AJV (06:54):
In. And so, yeah, we’re in the thick of it. But I’m curious new knowing this about yourselves of going, Hey, when we were 19 thinking that the world is our oyster and it’s more about what we can do, not what we can’t do. And even saying that maybe our 25 year old selves would’ve said, no, I’m curious to know. It’s like hindsight 20/20 with all the success that you guys have had and all that you challenges that you’ve overcome. What would you want to instill in your kids about keeping this kind of, what is possible mentality versus can’t do it mentality?
LC (07:29):
It’s funny cuz when it comes to our kids, we’d probably be like, just be in accountant, just go into something safe. Like we, you know, we, you
TT (07:38):
Can definitely, I see why parents do that. Yeah. Right. Cause the looking back on it, the odds of it going poorly were so much more in favor than the odds of it going the way it did ultimately go. And there’s so many chances along the way, one tiny tweak and it wouldn’t have gone this way at all. And so I think as an older person, you see that you can see the whole playing field for your kids. So it’s scary for you to even want them to have their eyes quite open. Yeah. But you should. I mean, yes you, I think you’re right. You, we should absolutely in, in instill that in them to, to have that dream. And I think that’s that’s to us to knowing better not to crush in anyway.
LC (08:16):
Yeah. And it might even be harder for us to, to say, go ahead, do it because we know what that really means. We know the hard we used to, we used to joke about the things that we had to go through to make this business work. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, you know, it’s that stressful. It’s that intense. And so it is hard to hard to think that man, our kids might go through this, but again, you definitely want them to realize their dreams that’s for sure.
AJV (08:43):
Yeah. Well I would say it’s being on the entrepreneurial journey in our own business, that’s like, yeah, there’s lots of ups and downs. And I can’t remember who said this, but someone said being an entrepreneur is like jumping off of a cliff and building the parachute as you plummet down to the ground. Right. That’s exactly it. And you guys clearly have figured this out. You guys are 500 million. You’ve got famous people all across, you know, you’ve mark Cuban, you’ve got Brooklyn, Decker, Kendra, Scott, all these people advocating what you guys are doing. You built an incredible brand and for those of you who don’t know, it’s like T streets have cookies. They deliver them warm, they’re cooked and delivered within an hour of them being baked. We get them as appreciation gifts all the time from vendors and clients. And I’m, I’m curious to know, it’s like at what point did you guys go, okay, I think this is gonna work. Like, was there a moment that you’re like, I think we’re gonna make it here.
LC (09:44):
Well, before I answer that, I, I need to clarify. I don’t, I do not believe mark Cuban is an investor. We have Navitzky of the Mavericks. Mark has been gracious to give us some good advice and everything that we have Derek and Kendra and, and rod Brooklyn Decker. But yeah, maybe mark, you shouldn’t invest if you’re listening to this,
AJV (10:02):
Your chance.
LC (10:03):
Yes. but to, to answer your question, I don’t feel like we still feel like we have it, I think, and you know, that maybe part of I’m I’m, maybe we’re afraid to feel that way because for the longest time that kind of is what kept us going. And so you know, we need a, we do need to stop the smell of roses, so to speak more often.
TT (10:26):
Yeah. I mean, when your goals are bigger than where you are, then you never feel like I’ve done it or it’s going to work or certainly never we’ve made it. We’ve never won once for one second, felt that the whole way through, I think there were times when we could see that perhaps one store was viable in the beginning. It took a while, but I would say five years in what we had always said is we were busy in certain chunks of the day. And then we were not busy in other chunks of the day. And we had said, if we can just get this busy during this time period, then we’ll know we’ve done it. And eventually we did that. And I, I think that was the starting point of thinking, well, okay, at least th this would work. I mean, they, but we always had dreams of expansion.
TT (11:12):
And so I think we go into it in the book a little bit that as soon as we got some, our footing under us a little bit, then we would take a next bite, which would then make what we had done now completely at risk. So we never were in a position where, okay, great. We could buy a house and pay those payments and we’d be fine because we always have this, whatever, because whatever next step we did completely could have put out of business already, what we, but that’s kind of the only way to grow.
LC (11:40):
Yeah. The, the, the margin is in the risk. Right. And so that’s the way we look at it. Now we are trying to keep things in perspective on really stressful days. I, I do, I do think back and say like, look, we’re so fortunate to be where we are today. And if, if you know, you told 19 year old me, we’d be at this stage. And I would just say, okay, I take it. You know, but when you’re in the moment, it’s hard to keep things in perspective.
AJV (12:06):
What would you guys tell someone who is wants to venture out and start their own BI business, whatever kind of business it is. Like if there was one entrepreneurial lesson that you would wanna impart on someone else just getting started. Do you guys have any idea of what it would be?
TT (12:24):
My, what comes to mind for me is don’t do it unless it can be your number one priority or your number one focus, because if it’s purely a side gig and there are several other things that are legitimately more important to you, it’s not that you can’t do that, but it’s gonna be very, very difficult to make that a smashing success.
LC (12:44):
Yeah. Now you could start as a side gig, but know that if you want to make that next step, it, it might mean making some really difficult life choices. For me, when it comes to tactical strategic of the business, it’s along the lines of focus to one of the mistakes that we probably were best at not making that it’s harder to make the bigger we grow. And we see a lot of businesses of all different sizes make, is focusing on being absolutely great at a very narrow niche. And especially as you become more successful as a business, there’s more and more opportunities and different opportunities. And I I’ve, we’ve seen businesses really falter by trying to get into doing too much instead of focusing on that niche.
AJV (13:31):
Oh my gosh. I’m so happy that you guys said that, cuz that’s like one of the things that we talk about all the time to our audience here at brand builders group is you know, my husband has this saying the more specific, the more terrific, right. It’s like that is right. But it’s like there’s power and being known for one thing. Yep. And then doing that exceptionally well, which to your point, Tiffany, it takes a lot of focus and intention and you can’t often achieve excellence if you have divided attention. Right. But it’s really focusing in on what is it that we really wanna be known for. And so for you guys, what do you guys wanna be known for when you think about T’s treats and then your own personal as individuals, what do you guys wanna be known for?
TT (14:19):
Well, it started and, and still is being best in the world at, on demand, warm cookie delivery. And we feel that, you know, we have been able to do that. And then we’re sort of opening up now a little bit to being best in the world at, on demand gifting know with, with warm cookie as the base. But what we realized it’s really about that giftable moment, that moment of connection between people more so than it is really just about the cookie, but we started with the cookie.
LC (14:47):
Yeah. Well, we’re what we realized on a, almost on accident that we’re very good at is making sure that there’s this incredible moment, the intended moment, whether it’s you’re at the office and you just need some downtime and you and your coworkers order some cookies. And for that brief 10 minutes of your day, it’s awesome. And you’re talking or across the country and your best friend have a tra has a tragedy or something or they’re sick or something’s going on. And you’re able to go online and send them a box of warm cookies with a message that’s super meaningful. We’re very good at making sure that those moments are, are intact. And that’s what we want to be known for what we call it, connecting people through warm moments.
AJV (15:36):
Yeah. I love that. And I think the, to me, it’s like the ultimate uniqueness in all of that is this on demand component. Right? It’s, it’s so easy to have great intentions with really poor execution cuz you miss this window of opportunity. And you guys provide this real, really unique opportunity to do it in the moment. And it’s, to me, it’s like with the cookies at least, right? It’s like, it really means something to have warm, fresh cookies come and it’s like, oh man, like these are fresh. Right. It’s like, yes. And it makes you wanna eat them right then. Right.
LC (16:10):
And for the like, I’ll give you you an example that we put in the book, just a quick story. We started to realize how powerful these moments could mean when early on we had someone from a downtown office, an admin call to place an order. And she was talking to our manager who was taking the order manager was like, oh, what’s going on? How are you doing today? And she’s like, oh, you know what? We’re ordering these for my boss. And it’s raining today outside. And whenever it rained, my boss always loved to tell us a story about when he was a little kid, his mom would bake him cookies every time it was raining at school. So he knew when he came home from school, there’d be a batch of warm cookies on a rainy day. And she went on to say, well, this is the first day. It’s rained since his mother passed away. And so we’re here in the office, we’re all gonna celebrate and order some cookies. And so we realized right then and there in the, on demand nature, we were able to get cookies to the office while it was still raining and the whole company had a moment together for their boss. And so that’s the kind of power we see in these moments.
AJV (17:11):
Oh, I love that. Y’all and I think some of, of this what I love is like the, the way speaking of the book, right? The way that you’ve outlined this book I think is so interesting. As you look at all the chapters, clearly there’s business principles and there’s all these things, but then also you have incorporated recipes for every chapter. So this has been on my mind ever since I was fortunate enough to get a gal copy of your upcoming book, are the recipes somehow directly connected to all the lessons in each chapter?
TT (17:44):
Not directly, we started with chocolate chip because that’s the base. And that’s, you know, you gotta have chocolate chip. So we knew we had to have that one first. And then we sort of grouped them based on cookie. And then we’ve got kind of a grouping of bars. We’ve got some truffles. And so they’re kind of grouped based on category a little bit more than, than story related.
AJV (18:05):
Oh my gosh, this is so funny cuz in my mind I’m like, what’s this secret message behind yeah. For each of these chapters. And so OK. Well there’s one chapter in particular that I think is going to be really relevant to our audience as we kind of talk about building a business, building a brand and you guys have a chapter chapter four called building a brand and I would love to know like what, what is your philosophy on building a brand?
TT (18:34):
Yeah, I think gosh, building a brand is so delicate and I think that’s the biggest takeaway for us is that when we started, we were building a service and we weren’t considering building a brand and kind of what that afforded us was the ability for some breath space to let customers tell us what was meaningful to them. And we were able to sort of shape the brand in reverse. Not us saying here’s what we are. I hope you like it. But we sort of started with the service and then shaped along the way. And then some of the things that happened during that were really, you know, the warm was the, was the biggest shaping piece, realizing why people were using us not just what they were buying or when they were buying, but what it was meaning to them. And that’s the piece of the brand puzzle.
TT (19:25):
I think that’s so important to us and we’re the two ambassadors of the brand. We’re the protectors of the brand. And there’s tons of other people here that are as well. But then there’s always gonna be a along your journey, other people that are protectors of the bottom line, other people that are protectors of the expenses, people that are protectors of, you know, are the legal yeah. And some of that can be at odds with what you want for the brand. And so sometimes it can be challenging, especially if you get to, let’s say the board of directors level because they’re not there every day and really that that’s not their role, but it is your role because to us, at least without the brand, you have nothing. And so sometimes you have to really fiercely protect, say, listen, I know by doing whatever this program, if you wanna put in place, we will make more money or we will save more money or we will, whatever it is. But I’m also telling you that that is not right for the brand. It’s either not right for the customer experience. It’s not right for the overall our connection with our customers. It doesn’t speak to us and what we believe in and you have to stand up and say, we’re gonna make choices that sometimes don’t make financial sense, but that do make sense for, for our brand.
LC (20:35):
Yeah. We always think of it opposite from financially, but cash and revenue today is less important than cash and revenue tomorrow next week, next month, next year, that’s not true when it comes to financial world, but when it comes to building a brand, your, the, the more important cash is what is gonna come in later. And so we delay a lot of revenue. We delay a lot of sales. We could, you know, we’re at 75 locations. Now we could be at 200 locations right now, if all we cared about was revenue, but it’s equality experience that we care about. And that makes our brand special is the white glove service. And so for us, that’s delaying a lot of things that a lot of businesses, it takes a lot of what am I trying to say, willpower willpower. Yeah. To, to go at the pace that is best for the brand. And so that’s really something that we have to remind ourselves the, the kind of the bigger we get.
AJV (21:34):
Well, yeah. And I would say that’s quite rare, right? It’s easy to be tempted into grow quickly, right? Double revenues, double locations. Yes. But growth doesn’t always mean scale. But I think that’s good. So I, I have three follow up questions to this. So Tiffany, you mentioned we really let our clients kind of tell us, so for anyone out there, who’s listening to this episode going, well, how do you do that? So how did you get that information from your clients?
TT (22:07):
So in the, the beginning, you know, we were taking all of our orders by phone. So you actually have a phone conversation with people. So, you know, that’s not relevant today, but truly you could hear why they were ordering. And especially, let’s say when we started, we were focusing on the university. And so we had a lot of parents calling in and I’ll tell you, they want to tell you everything about why they’re are ordering. You’ll be on the phone 15 minutes because they’re ordering it for their college age child. And there’s nothing more exciting and, and more fun for them to chat with you about. So a lot of times customers do want to chat, but in a more modern way it’s social media comments and, and people are very free about emailing in. They will email you, they will live chat.
TT (22:47):
You, they will put comments on social media. You just have to read them and listen to them. And, you know, I don’t know if this is surprising or not, but we get so many positive stories coming in out of the blue and just say, Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I, I did an order and this is why. And it was so meaningful me to me because of X, Y, and Z. And we get that a lot. It’s, it’s a fun place to, to see all this neat humanity, right. That’s there. And sometimes you, not, everybody gets to see it,
LC (23:16):
Especially these days. Right. We get to,
AJV (23:19):
I mean, that’s the good stuff, right? It’s like but I love that. And it’s, I think for everyone listening, like the takeaway is create opportunities to actually hear the stories of your customers, right. If thing is, how quick can we do it? How can we get you in and get you out? It’s like, you’re gonna miss the humanity, the actual reasons why you’re doing this. And let those help shape and form how the business grows. And I love that. The second thing that you kind of both alluded to a little bit is this idea of being protectors of the brand. And I love that so much because I like one of the things that we believe in really strongly at our company brand builders group, is that the individuals, right? The owners of the company, it’s like your reputation is the most important thing.
AJV (24:04):
Same thing as a company, it’s like the reputation is the most important thing that you can have. And so to consider yourselves as the brand protectors is a really incredible concept. And so I’m curious, what would you tell other business owners out there when it comes to, Hey, it’s like many people will have different roles, but there needs to be a brand protector, someone who’s going to, you know, create garner, establish, and then protect the reputation that you’ve worked so hard to build and other people’s opinions start to come into play. Any tips, insights, advice you would give to someone on how to do that.
TT (24:44):
Yeah. I’m gonna start really quickly. Then I’ll hand it off to Leon. But one of our values that we have up on the wall is we protect the brand. Hmm. And so I think part of it too, is it doesn’t have to be just the two of us. So we’ve got an army of people that believe in what we’re doing and believe in those values on the wall and know that we protect the brand is one of them and are there to help catch you when you are tempted or you are making, you know, if, if you have an environment where you’ve got people close to you, that can do things like that. We recently, well, a couple of years ago had a big decision to make. And we had people come to us and say, look, the answer is we protect the brand. And there’s only one choice between these choices. There’s only one of these two things that protects the brand. So while it’s gonna cost us $20,000, how are you gonna make any other decision besides that? And so it’s really helpful to have people buy
LC (25:37):
Into it. Yeah. When you set your own, when you set values for your brand, that you truly believe in and your team believes in, they hold you accountable, as much as you hold them accountable. And specifically what she’s talking about is on our milk bottles, we have brand new, beautiful milk packaging. Somehow some way we let it slip. And the word pasteurized was misspelled very small somewhere there. And it was so tempting. We’re like, oh, we could just send it out and let someone call us. And, and, and we, you know, we know, and our team was like adamant, no, I know it’s $20,000, but you know, we protect the brand. We protect the brand and, and, and part of that, you have to get really good at being okay with saying no to a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts distinguishing, just because an idea is good. Doesn’t mean that it deserves a yes. Oh, that’s good. You say saying no to good ideas all day long. And that’s really hard for a lot of people to, to, to understand because they’ll they’ll think, man, my idea was good. I don’t understand. But if you say no to every good, I there’s millions of good ideas, you gotta really hold out for those monumental great ideas.
AJV (26:50):
Oh man. I think that is such a good reminder and lesson for not just people in business, just humans, it’s a learning what to say yes to and what you need to say. No. Oh, to that’s really good. Y’all, I’m so excited for this book to come out. This is your first book together. What on God’s green earth made you guys decide to write a book and do it together? I’m so curious, like what instigated all of this?
LC (27:19):
Well, what
TT (27:20):
Instigated, I mean, we’ve been part of it is just kind of getting our story down because we’ve been doing this for a long time. Now this is our 23rd year of business. And so we have a lot of stories and at a certain point we wanted to kind of get those on paper. We, yeah,
LC (27:37):
We do. From time to time, we do speaking events, corporate speaking events, and we go speak to some university classes and stuff and we get a lot of interest. So every chapter in the book is based on what do we get asked the most people wanna know? And that’s why it ranges the, you know, from business to building a brand, to working together with your spouse and having kids and raising kids it’s because people are the most curious about that. So we kind of just said, let’s put in one book what everyone is most curious about. And so it’s from our experience in talking to people really what we wanted to write about.
AJV (28:13):
Mm that’s good. How has it been? So so many of the people in our audience are on the journey of publishing a book, want to publish a book, how’s it been?
TT (28:23):
It’s, you know, it’s so interesting because it’s a totally new industry and you’re learning it. And there’s so many facets to it that I feel like if there were a second book, then you kind of know everything. Yes. And there’s just so many small things that I would do differently only because I didn’t understand the process. You know, and I’m like, don’t hard. Well, it’s too late now. I can’t change X, Y, or Z, but if we ever wrote another book, then now I know here, you know, here are the things I, I would’ve, I would tweak. But it’s fun. And, you know, it’s fun to, to do something.
AJV (28:59):
If there was one thing that you could go back and do differently for you, what would it be?
TT (29:05):
You know, the thing that comes to mind to me is understanding the editing process better and sort of curating that initial draft in a different way than, than what we did and what we ended up doing was turning in something more rough than I would’ve. And, and then kind of the editing process got sort of squished to the end and then in a rush because it had to go to print at a certain time. Yeah. So I would maybe almost like do an internal editing, more internal editing before turning a draft.
LC (29:38):
Cause our editor was awesome, but we misunderstood that process, how it would run and,
TT (29:45):
And the timing of it too. Yeah. The timing, you know, so yeah. We misunderstood sort of the timing of when do those edits happen at what cadence do they happen? And so it ended up being more truncated in terms of timeline than I thought it would be, but you know, all came out great. It just wasn’t wasn’t I didn’t realize the, the, the timing.
AJV (30:05):
Oh yeah. I remember when we wrote our first book, which we celebrated 10 years ago in February. So just last month. I remember we turned in, I don’t remember how, like how many thousand words it was like, you know, 80,000 and like they came back and gave us like 50 and we’re like, that’s like a third of the book. Like you read a third of the book and it was like such a aha moment of you just never know. And it’s like, we wrote it as if like this is going to print.
LC (30:36):
Right, right.
AJV (30:37):
Yeah. It’s like, indeed, no, like a third of that is going to print. We will help rewrite the other half. And we did
TT (30:45):
The opposite opposite. Yeah. Where we turned in, what we thought we knew our, our word limit. So we turned in about 10,000 extra words to that, that way we’ve got buffer cuz we knew stuff was gonna get cut. And we thought it was just gonna get torn apart, ripped to shreds, put back together and we were ready for that. And then didn’t and so that’s the thing that we were like, oh shoot, we should have turned in something a little bit more ready to go.
AJV (31:09):
Oh interesting. Yeah. We went through reverse. And it was a very eye opening experience.
TT (31:14):
That would be tough. That what we
AJV (31:17):
Very and very wordy and we needed to
TT (31:23):
Yeah, you gotta yeah. Truncate what your, you don’t need 10 words to say one thing. Yeah.
LC (31:27):
That’s my problem. I, I, I went too crazy with the extra words and comas and run ons and stuff.
AJV (31:34):
So since so many people in our audience are on this path to publishing a book, I’m curious if you guys were to write another book and you could have different answers on this. My husband and I often disagree. It’s a beautiful part of being married. Lots of disagreements. Would you guys self-publish, would you want to traditionally publish again or do something in the middle and why?
LC (31:57):
You know, I, since we don’t know what self-publishing entails, it’s hard to kind of say we liked having are handheld a little bit for sure. Yeah. With, with the publisher I, I really wouldn’t be able to know.
TT (32:12):
Yeah. And also since we haven’t really, yeah. We haven’t gone through the full cycle, but I think I would go publish again to Leon’s point to have somebody to handhold. And, and, you know, especially, even from the printing end and all of
AJV (32:23):
That. Oh yeah. Just a guide through the process. Right. I love that. All right. Well, I know that we are approaching the end of our time here. But I want for you guys to have a chance to tell everyone who’s listening, what this book is all about, who it was really written for and why everyone needs to go grab a copy.
TT (32:44):
Well, the book is all about our story, our journey, and I would say number one, our failures we’re pretty open about the failures that we’ve had along the way, and some of the mishaps and hoping to give other people some not tips, but just inspiration and, and get a little bit out of that of, of maybe what not to do or, or maybe just inspiration that it happens to other people too. And then of course, gosh, the recipes are really fun and they’re very easy. So you don’t need to be a baker to pick this up and get some really great results out of the book. And anybody’s, who’s a also interested in sort of peeking behind the curtain of what a husband and wife team looks like. We tried to be as honest as possible. So
LC (33:25):
I too honest,
TT (33:27):
Too honest,
LC (33:28):
And it’s a beautiful, full color book. It’s a great coffee table book. The pictures are the, the baked goods, pictures are beautiful in there. So it makes a great gift as well. We wanted to have just something that people would be proud to have sitting on their coffee table. But also with substance beyond just pictures.
AJV (33:47):
Ah, I love that. Who do you think is the ideal target for this book?
TT (33:53):
I think anybody who ha I don’t think you have to have a strong interest in business, but anybody who’s a little bit curious about business and really just wants to see sort of the honest side of what goes on behind the curtain.
AJV (34:08):
I love that. Well, I know from even just spending the little bit of time getting to know you both and then even in the interview today, I think one of the reasons that everyone should go and check out this book is the fact that you guys created an entire business off of an apology effort and creating those opportunities in everyday life to go, there is an opportunity in everything that happens if we are just willing to keep an eye out for it. And then I think the best part of all of this is that you guys are so transparent and honest to about, it’s not easy, let’s not kid ourselves. But at the end of the day, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Yeah. Yeah. We’re so excited. This book comes out. What’s the official launch date,
TT (34:55):
April 5th,
AJV (34:56):
April 5th. So I mean, we’re here. It’s like right now. So I, I would encourage everyone. We’ll put this in the show notes, but go to cookie delivery.com/vaden. That’s our last name? V a D E N. So cookie delivery.com/vaden. They have given us some awesome discount codes. You can get 20% off actually ordering some tips treats. There’s also a link right there to go and buy the a book y’all need to do it. Learn some, learn from people who have been on this journey, who are doing the thing. They’re building their business, growing a family. Now they’re launching a book Tiffany, Leon, thank you guys so much for being on the show. This was awesome.
TT (35:36):
Thank you so much, AJ.
LC (35:37):
Thanks for having us. This is awesome.
AJV (35:39):
All right, everyone, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 265: Finding an Aligned Business Model with Jesse Terranova | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
What a blast getting to talk to Jesse Terranova, one of our very own brand builders. You know, we actually have a lot of our clients come on the show. And you know, this one was interesting a lot of times cuz we knew them before, you know, and were aware of their work before. And then, you know, they become a client because we’re helping them on some piece of their business, something. But with Jesse, you know, specifically he won the chance to come on, which was really fun. We gave us away. You know, we did this as a, as a drawing AJ, it was AJ’s idea for the 12 days of Christmas that you could win a chance to come up here on the episode and to get to hear Jesse and see, you know, his powerful, personal story. Such a great example of someone who’s taking their own pain and, you know, turning it into something beautiful for other people.
RV (00:51):
And, and just a living example of everything that we talk about, like with, with someone who’s a brand builder is realizing you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. We say that all the time and see story is a great example of that. And so to see that happening and get to talk to someone who’s like earlier in their stage, but also when he was on his retreat, getting his, his, his first customers, you know, delivering to his first customers. So, so wonderful. And it reminded me, you know, we got a chance to also do some live coaching. This is something that we’ve thought about. A few times is going, I wonder if we should do more live coaching on these for our podcast so that you get a chance to sort of like listen to us, coach you know, people who have questions about, about their personal brand.
RV (01:44):
So, you know, let us know what you think about that. It’s just, you know, send me a leave me a comment on my Instagram or shoot me a DM. You could always write in info brand builders, group.com or something, but like, I would love to hear your feedback on on that if, if, if to say, would you like to hear more that were live coaching where we just did like live coaching with guests. So in this case, Jesse is already a client. So there’s already a little bit of a background, a lot of, bit of background of, you know, some of our framework and content. But anyways, that’s what we’re thinking about. So all right. My biggest takeaways here. So first of all, with, with Jesse and for, in something we are often referencing and telling people all the time is once you figure out the, the, who, everything becomes clearer, like once you know, who is the actual other person that’s listening on the other side of your microphone or on the other side of the camera, if, if you’re talking about social media, the other side of the pen, if you’re a book things really become clear.
RV (02:51):
And yet a lot of our, our members, a lot of our clients struggle to narrow down exactly who they wanna talk to. Right? And they go, I wanna help everybody. Well, it’s not only, it’s not only a bad strategy from a marketing standpoint, but it also, it, it makes your content very weak. It dilutes your content because you can’t, you can’t speak directly and powerfully in, in a deep. And so, you know, here’s, here’s the, the big lesson that I think is a, is a good reminder and takeaway. And I think, you know, Jesse in many ways is doing this well, is choose the audience that you can serve in the deepest way, choose the audience you can serve in the deepest way. That is the, the fastest place to start. That’s the most obvious place to start. It’s the, the best place to start.
RV (03:40):
It ties in with what we’re always saying. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once work, right? So if you don’t know what, where should I start? Like that is a place to start because that’s where you can get traction and you can get momentum and leverage, you know, unless for some reason you just really, really don’t wanna do it. Then there’s, there’s maybe some tertiary or tangent, tangential you know, topic that we would pursue, but it’s, you’re always going to, to be able to speak most directly to that person. So think about that. The, the, the second big takeaway, which is related to that is design your, your business model around the, the actual needs of your clients, design your business model around the actual needs of your business clients. So, or of your actual clients. So what a lot of people do is they say, you know, they kind of come up with a, a medium like mechanism.
RV (04:42):
They’re like, oh, I wanna write a, I wanna write a book or I wanna release a speech, or I wanna have a video course or a membership site. And that’s fine. Like it’s not bad or wrong to like, pursue that. But even in the context of pursuing that, or in the, especially in the absence of clarity about how you should structure your offer or how you should structure your program, or like what you should include, make it less about what do other people do, like other people in your space, or just other personal brands in general and orient it. And, and, and also, I would say less even about what you think it should be like, what you just do and orient it more specifically around what do my clients actually need in order to succeed. Like, what is the, the best way to organize the delivery of the information, the continuity of the experience, the, the connection in the collaboration, the feedback, the accountability like between, and, and, and really make that the primary focal point.
RV (05:53):
And because if you can orient to that, they’re gonna succeed faster and you’re gonna succeed faster because they’re gonna get results. And they’re gonna tell people, and you’re gonna have great case studies and testimonials. And so too often, we just go, you know, like we’re scrolling on Facebook and we see an ad that says, yeah, you know, how do I make a million dollars coaching people? Or how, you know, how, how do I make a million dollars doing Facebook groups? What, like, whatever the thing is. And, and they’re not, they’re not bad. They’re all, they’re all good. They’re all workable. They’re all, they all can contribute, but it’s, it’s more, it’s less of that. And it’s more of just orienting yourself based upon the person you’re trying to serve, orienting your entire brand, your entire perspective, your, your consideration of the type of content you create, the, the amount of money you charge, the, the deliverables, the frequency in which you communicate with them, the, the, the environment of, in which you communicate with them, you know, can it, some of it be virtual or all of it be virtual, or can it be in person?
RV (06:54):
Does it need to be live? Can it just be broadcast? How much of it needs to be communal, like all of these decisions go into a business model. It’s not just like, oh, wanna launch a podcast. So that’s what we’re gonna do. You know, it’s more about actually assessing what is the what is the best and highest use of your time for your clients? Again, it goes back to what we were saying earlier, choose the audience that you can serve in the deepest way. That’s where you’re gonna get the most momentum, because you know that person, how do you know that person? Because you were that person. So nobody is gonna be better suited to serve that person than you, because you were them, you know exactly what it is. This is why brand builders group exists. Right. We know what it’s like to be an aspiring author or right.
RV (07:44):
And go how do you go from, I don’t even know what the difference is between a self-published book and a New York times bestselling book to, to being a New York times bestselling author. I know what it’s like to sit in an audience and go, how do you get to be the person on stage in front of 10,000 people? And then getting to do that. We know what it’s like to go, am I capable of creating a coaching program and then turning that into an eight figure business? Like, so that is just, these are the things that we know about, or building a, you know, the building, a personal brand in general, that’s, you know, a social media following the podcast and all these things that we’ve done. It’s because we know you, like, if that is you, like, we know you, we know exactly what you need and people go, oh my gosh, your curriculum is amazing.
RV (08:27):
Like, it’s exactly what I needed. Yeah, of course it is why, cause it’s what we needed. Like, it’s what we wished we had. So that’s the same way that you would wanna design things for your pro aspects and for your clients. And you’re, you’re, you’re most able to do that. And it’s most efficient for you to do that around and in the cases of people that are the people who you once were, or people who, you know, really, really, really, really well. So design your business model around the needs of your clients. And, and the question is not so much, what’s the easiest way to make a lot of money. This is another distinction here, right? People go, oh, what’s the easiest way to make a lot of money. That’s the wrong question. The right question is to how can I serve my audience in the most meaningful way? Not how can I make money the fastest? How can I serve my audience in the most meaningful way?
RV (09:25):
It’s not wrong to also consider what would be profitable. And, and it’s definitely not wrong to structure. How do I need to structure this in order for it to profitable? Because if you’re not profitable, then there’s not gonna be any sustainability to your business, which means you’re not gonna be able to serve anyone. So it’s, it’s not that we’re against money or profit by any means. It’s just going the lead decision shapes, the trajectory like of the whole future. If your business is just going, like, how can I make a lot of money that sets you on a course of a whole series of decisions that we believe are going to lead you off track it, it, because you’re gonna burn out or people are gonna sense it, or you’re gonna get tired or bored. That’s totally different than going. Who do I wanna dedicate my life to serving?
RV (10:17):
What are they really struggling with and what do they need? And how could I put that together for them that send you on a completely different path? It it’s a whole, it’s a, it’s, it’s two different trajectories. Ironically, that is the one that will lead to the most scalable long-term income. The problem. Sometimes it’s not always the most immediate short term income. And so you sometimes have to balance some of that and do some things in the short term to make it all work. But if you just chase the money, it’s gonna break down, you’re gonna break down. You’re gonna burn out. You’re gonna go. Like, you’re gonna look up in three years, maybe sooner, maybe a little bit longer and just go, like, I don’t even enjoy what I’m doing anymore because it’s not aligned. It’s not aligned, right? This is about finding an aligned business model.
RV (11:06):
And it’s, it’s not the same as what the person next to you would do, or the other person in the industry or what the legends have done. It is all about your uniqueness. When we say exploit your uniqueness in the service of others, a huge part of that is, and selecting, and then deploying the proper business model strategy that is life giving to you, life giving to your clients and profitable enough that it is sustainable. For every, for you to continue doing that work and to continue providing careers for other people and advancement for them and to support them and their families. But it’s not just going, how do I get my hands into people’s pockets? How do I get money out of them? What’s the fastest way to just like, take their cash. And, and I think, you know, Jesse’s a great example of somebody that’s that, right?
RV (11:53):
He’s going, what’s the problem. He solves loneliness. He had such clarity about that. And it was so powerful when, you know, when he said loneliness is a greater killer than stress or obesity. Like, I mean, that really rings powerful right now that, you know, I don’t know if it’s statistically true or not. How would you measure it? But in a COVID world where people are isolated and the mental health is, is just like at all time, like really devastating level, you go, yeah. Loneliness is a big deal. So, so how did Jesse construct his business model? It’s about bringing people together. That makes sense, right? It makes sense that he would do that and not go, let’s launch a video core about how to overcome loneliness, that you’re gonna sit and watch, you know, in your room late at night, when you’re all by yourself, like, what do they need?
RV (12:41):
And, and, and if you’ve been that person, you’re gonna know what they need, and you’re gonna know because you’re gonna, it’s gonna be what you wish you would’ve had. And then finally, the, the last little, you know, thing or big thing that we talked about there with Jesse, which I find this becoming more and more, a part of our regular conversation with our brand builders members like your next client. Like if you’re earlier in your brand, your personal brand journey. And again, we, we define personal brand is the digitization of reputation, the digitization of reputation. So you have a reputation, but your personal brand might be early, meaning you don’t have a lot of online strategy or digital representation of your reputation going on. So if you’re, if you’re earlier in your personal brand journey, let me talk to you specific. But I would say early could be 10 years.
RV (13:40):
Like it could certainly be three to five years, but if you are in that mode, there’s something that you wanna realize, because this is different from the facade that you see in the world. And from what most of the people who are online, who have established personal brands will teach you. And, and that is this, your next client is not going to come from strangers on the internet. Your next client is much more likely to come out of the cell phone of your current customer. Your next client is not likely to be a stranger from the internet. Are next clients live in the cell phones of your current clients. Let me break that down. What am I talking about there? I’m saying that we’re all so consumed with finding strangers on the internet to like us follow us, share us and buy from us.
RV (14:33):
But that’s like walking down the street, like being in New York city and, and to it’s like walking in times square and just yelling out like with a megaphone and thinking that people are gonna gravitate to you and buy. It’s not that it can’t happen. And over time you end up owning your own little kind of corner of the street. And you’ve got a lot of people there listening. And so people do come and buy. But, but in the beginning, it’s gonna happen through relationships, right? You revenue happens through relationships, revenue, customers, transactions are about trust and trust often takes time or trust is transferred from other relationships. So your, your, your fastest path to cash, like if we wanna talk about that and go, what is the fastest way to make money? It’s likely not posting on social media and starting a blog and a podcast.
RV (15:30):
And, you know, building funnels and doing all of those things. That’s probably not the fastest path to short term cash. Now, long term, those are very scalable things. Those are things that push personal brands to a whole nother stratosphere. Those things can completely change your life. They can change everything, but they take a long time to develop some. They take a long time to build. They take a long time to develop. They take a long time to develop trust and, and for money to actually start to show up. So start on those as soon as you can. I mean, if you’re a brand builder, you’re going through our process, we’ll teach you exactly the order and the sequence of, of when this should happen. But like, it’s, it’s a little bit different for everybody. So you wanna start building those things. Those are good things, but they’re not the things that are gonna make you millions of dollars overnight.
RV (16:22):
I mean, it’s the law of AJ, right? AJ Vaden, you don’t need millions of D millions of followers to make millions of dollars. You don’t, you only need a couple. I mean, for most of us, we only need like a thousand customer and that would be a huge amount of money, right? You might not even be able to handle a thousand customers. You might not even be able hundred 50 customers, like depends on what your, what your business model is. But like, those people are, are likely to come faster through referrals and recommendations and introductions and, and relationships of people, you know? And so don’t step over all of your past client. I mean, here’s a question when’s the last time you talked to all your past clients, like how often do you talk to your past clients? How often do you touch base with them?
RV (17:08):
How often do you ask ’em what’s going on? You say hi. And if you don’t, if today is your first day in the company and you go, I don’t have any past clients. Great. How long has it been since you you’ve talked to all of your past friends and your past family members and your relationships, the people who trust you, cuz that’s where you’re gonna start. Like you don’t try to sell to the people who know you, you ask the people who know you for referrals and introductions, and that’s how you start. And you, you build the snowball, you build, you know, you build out from there. So I just want to make sure that if you’re anywhere early in your journey and honestly, even later, I mean, most of our clients right now come from either our current clients or they come from longtime friends and longtime colleagues, right.
RV (17:58):
They, they, they do, do we get clients who have never heard of us and stumble across this podcast? Of course we do, but it’s way less than you would think. And it, it usually takes a really long time, right? Like they have to listen to, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what the number is. It’s different for everybody, but often they gotta listen to 10, 20, maybe 50 episodes before they really develop that trust. Right. Or they have to like go to YouTube and watch all our YouTube videos or go to Roy vain, blog.com. And they, they watch, you know, these tra these in depth trainings. And at some point they cross the threshold that go, okay, I trust you. Now. It takes a long time though, because they’ve never met us in real life. And they don’t, they don’t really know anybody who has met us.
RV (18:45):
If they, if, if you found us as a stranger on the internet, right. It doesn’t mean you’re or less valuable to us by any means. We, we love everybody, but it’s, it, it typically means it takes you longer to buy from us because you’re still getting to know us. Versus if we go on a podcast like, you know, whoever Lewis, how Sean Cannel Shalene Johnson, Donald Miller, any of these, you know, a lot of our top affiliates are our friends and relationships, right? Because we go on there. And when those people say, here’s the experience that I had with brand builders group, you’ve spent time trusting them. And then that trust transfers to us. Or if your, you know, your friend, your sister, your brother-in-law, your best friend said, Hey, you gotta check out brand builders group. And they said, you know, go to free brand call.com/podcast request a free call.
RV (19:39):
If your friend was like, dude, you have to do this right now. These people are incredible. Go to free brand call.com/podcast, which is our, our real URL, right. Go there and do a call with these people because you wanna build your platform. You’re trying to become more well known. You wanna make more impact in the world. You you’re trying to figure out what the system is to, to you know, manage all of your content and social media and technology and, and books and speaking, and using all of those things to drive your business. And these guys are the math, right? Like if someone told you that, that, you know, you would do it in a heartbeat and, or, or, you know, and so that’s what happens. And that’s part of why you go, we, you know, you go do interviews on other, other places, but even now those clients come from existing relationships that we have.
RV (20:29):
And a lot of those relationships are developed offline. Even if it’s a podcast we’re on. Most of that relationship happens in real life, not through comments and DMS and shares it. It happens through real life conversations, real life work we’re doing with people, or we’re doing work with someone they know, or, or, or someone they respect is one of our clients. Your next client is not likely to come from strangers on the internet. It is way more likely to come from the cell phones of your current customers. They’re the people who already trust you. So are you talking to ’em? Are you, and are you asked and are you letting them know what you do and that you’re available? And then you’d love to be introduced to some of their friends or friends of their friends. Anyways, couple big ideas applicable, you know, good reminders for myself, hopefully for you, hopefully most for Jesse, right?
RV (21:26):
And, and a great is to talk through and, and thank you Jesse, for coming on and letting us dig in a little bit to your business model and seeing where you’re at on your journey. We look forward to following you and continuing to pour into you and to see where you end up here over the next few years. It is our honor to work with you as all of our brand builders members and our honor to have you listening to our show every single week. If you do wanna request a call, go to free brand call.com/podcast, talk to one of our strategists, let us earn your trust. I promise we are really, really good at what we do. And what that is, is helping you find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others as Larry Wingett says. So keep coming back in the meantime, we’ll be here. We can week out on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 264: Finding an Aligned Business Model with Jesse Terranova

RV (00:02):
Well, if you’ve listened to this show for a while, you’ve probably picked up the theme that the influential personal brand podcast is all about sharing the stories of people who are influential personal brands and how they got that way. And so, you know, we interview New York times bestselling authors and seven figure entrepreneurs and people with millions of followers. And I, and, and then we’re trying to glean the wisdom that we can. Well, one of the things that my wife, my co-host, our CEO, my business partner, AJ did over Christmas was she did this thing called the 12 days of BBG Christmas. And it was filled with lots of bad singing for me and her. And, you know, some mediocre prize is of brand builders, group swag. But one of the things that we thought would be cool was to highlight one of our real life clients who is on the journey right now of building their personal brand.
RV (00:56):
Since, you know, so many times you hear the story of somebody who like, you know, made it so to speak, but, but we Don have that many folks that are going I’m, I’m living it, I’m working it right now. And so that’s how we got to meet Jesse Terranova, who you’re about to meet. He’s an awesome guy. We’ve been working together for a few months at this point, I guess several months you could say, and we’re just gonna talk to Jesse. You’re going to hear a little bit about his story. And I think my hope is that you’ll be encouraged as you hear the, the path that Jesse has been on and maybe it will help highlight some things for yourself on your own path. So Jesse, welcome to the show, man.
JT (01:40):
R it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me here.
RV (01:43):
So I wanna start with how you, you heard about us because that I’m always, you know, the marketing person in me is always like, okay, what are we doing? That’s working. How are people finding out about us? And, and then, you know, I just love the, almost like the spiritual side of me loves looking at how our intersect with people and what relationships that we have bring us to, to, to people. So how did you first, how did you first find brand builder’s group?
JT (02:16):
Yeah, that’s great. Well, actually from Louis, which I know Louis House which I know is a big big kind of yours, a good friend of yours. And so, yeah, I believe it was back to in 2017. I first was introduced to Lewis, listening to his podcast, reading a couple of his books and he absolutely transformed my life.
RV (02:36):
Wow. So you, you were, you had never heard of him before that. And then what does a friend send you like his podcast or a book, or do you even remember?
JT (02:45):
Yeah, well, I’ve always, I’ve been a very curious person by nature. And so I’ve, I’m big into self betterment and improving my life and, and I’ve always kind of been that way. And so when I started looking into podcasts Lewis’ came up pretty much at the top. At that time. He was he’s he’s, you know, been, been the game since the beginning, as you know. And so I started listening to it and, you know, he was always inspiring, but it’s always the guests that he brings on that, that really helped to you know, bring it all together and, and helped to transform a lot of people’s lives. I know I’m not the only one.
RV (03:20):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, so yeah, so I was one of those guests, I guess. Okay. You
JT (03:25):
Were, you, you were,
RV (03:26):
You had, so had you, you had never heard, like never had heard of me or brand builders group, like just, you were listening to Lewis’ show and then you’re just like, whatever, whatever one’s next in the playlist. And, and up by up, I come, right.
JT (03:39):
You, yeah, I had not. You, you just came up and a lot of the things that you had said at the time really resonated with me because I think, you know, for me personally it, it’s interesting because you, you help people turn their reputation into revenue, right. And so that’s why I think it was a great match, but, you know, I had, without even knowing it in the past five years had been creating a personal brand on my social media, you know, without a call to action without a monetization strategy. And that’s why you came into my life at a really good time. Cause I said, well, I have all of this these amazing people in my life, these amazing connections, but I guess I just needed more of a direct path to get me to where I wanted to go. And I’m a big believer in proponent in coaching and mentoring. So this was just a relationship way to happen.
RV (04:25):
Yeah. It’s, it’s funny that you mentioned that because one of the things that AJ talks about all the time is how, you know, people think of personal brand as like, oh, it’s social media, or it’s a course, or it’s like, you know, followers, et cetera, but really the way that we define it, it is the digitization and the monetization of reputation that it, all of us have a reputation and, you know, personal branding is basically just digitizing that it becomes visible and then making the conscious choice to say, I wanna, I wanna monetize this. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna do something. So, so you said that there was like five years that you were basically just on social giving, giving out stuff. The you know, like just, were you, were you sharing advice of any kind or were you just sort of like sharing your life?
JT (05:18):
Yeah, I was sharing my life. I, I was sharing my experiences with, with individuals. I mean, I feel like your experiences are deeply etched into your being and your soul. And so it depends on what you do with those experiences. Right. And so I’ve lived a very adventurous life. I’ve traveled to over 40 countries you know, over five continents. And so I’ve just wanted to share what’s possible for people in terms of my story. And I just found it difficult, I guess, with all the noise around us, these days with wanting to do too many different things and, and, you know, understanding now that you need to break through the wall with one niche, with one specific you know, path before you can go ahead and do multiple things,
RV (06:03):
You know, you’re, you’re, you’re spoken like a true brand builder’s member with like the focus and breaking through the wall. Is that, is that, what is that, what jumped out at you most? And that, and that kind of first interview was just how, you know, we always talk about, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results and, or, or what were, what were some of the things that kind of like you IME you kind of latched onto that was like, ah, I, I think maybe there’s something here for me.
JT (06:31):
Well, man. Yeah, definitely that, but it was more to that. I think, you know, when you hear people speak the words they use sometimes, you know God speaks through other people to you directly. And so I felt at that time, for me personally, you know, you were kind of speaking to me and directly to me on the podcast on a lot of things you were saying in terms of the impact and the meaning. And so, you know, I, I I’ve felt this for a long time. I, I, I believe the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it. And so, you know, it’s interesting how, you know, you are leading a group of mission driven messengers essentially on that path to, to greatness and, you know, that’s, Lewis’s uniqueness, that’s who it resonates with me so much, but you know, that is Lewis asked on this podcast after every, you know, episode is how do you define greatness? Right. And so that is the ultimate goal for me. And that’s kind of been, and that’s why I Lewis has changed my life.
RV (07:32):
Yeah. That’s awesome. So what, when you first came, okay, so when we start working together, so you kind gonna have this, you know, realization of going, ah, I’ve been sharing my experiences, my travels, you know, these adventures I’ve been on, I think there’s an opportunity to maybe turn this into a business or like make this a more formal kind of part of my, my life, my career. And then what, what were some of the things that you were still struggling with early on in, in, in terms of where you said, Hey, I think, I think brand builders can maybe help me.
JT (08:07):
Yeah. You know, I was going through a really difficult time when I was introduced to Louis originally. I believe it was, it was back 2017, 2018. I had been living in San Diego, I’m originally from the Northeast New Jersey. And, you know, I just, I just think that was lost RO I think that you know, I was just lonely because I had made that relocation out to the other side of the country and I deprived myself, you know, I deprived myself because I, I didn’t create connection in the relationship with myself, others in the world around me. And so I had to learn the hard way, you know? It’s, it’s interesting. It, it took me you know, for, for an evening when I was driving and, and, you know, came to a red light and I was lost.
JT (08:52):
I was confused. I look up and I see you know, a, a big sign right above me near the red light. And it says, you know, Terranova drive. And, and so I’m like, okay, like, that’s interesting. I, I looked to the right and looked to the left and there’s a road that leads up to the left and sure enough, I’m like, okay, I’ll play along. So I drive up the road and then I look on my GPS and as Terranova park. And so, you know, I make a left into this development that leads me to Terranova park. I’m like, this is really interesting. This place is really familiar and uncanny. Like, I feel like I’ve been here before. Right. It was just this really interesting moment. And as I got to the park, R I, I parked there, looked around, it looked very familiar.
JT (09:36):
It was something that I’ve, that I’ve seen before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And I looked to my left across the park. That’s a development. And it says Parkside port, and for your audience that is, you know, where I grew up. That’s my parents still live in the development Parkside. And so, you know, in, in the madness you know, there’s meaning. And so you’re, you know, through the breakdowns, you know, that creates breakthroughs. And it took me to hit rock bottom in this time of my life to really understand how important connection is. I was robbing people from the opportunity of helping me. And so part of what I’m doing now is, is trying to cure my loneliness through the years. And I know that’s a problem for a lot of people, you know, and so connection is the cure. And so that’s how, that’s why I feel that what I’m doing right now in the work that I’m in is impactful and is meaningful. Cause it it’s a big problem in, in the world right now.
RV (10:38):
So to, so to use brand builders speak. And for those of you that aren’t aren’t members or aren’t yet members like the, the you know, we, the brand positioning statement is sort of like the, the core foundational work of our first you know, event of we’ve got 14 events, like at 14 parts to our whole journey, but the brand positioning statement is just getting super clear on what is your uniqueness and what problem were you uniquely created to solve in the world. So is loneliness the, the problem of your brand positioning statement?
JT (11:15):
It is.
RV (11:17):
I love that. So, so interesting to hear you talk this out in a, in a public format, you know, like usually when we’re working with clients, it’s very private and going, I love the connect. Like the, I love the alignment of that between, you know, your life and your story of what you’re talking about is like, in this moment, and, and we are always talk, we are always saying how you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so there you are in San Diego feeling totally alone, isolated. And now several years later looking back, realizing there’s a lot of people that feel that way. And so, and then is connection your uniqueness. That’s kind of like what you you’re called to, to bring to the world.
JT (12:00):
Exactly. Yes. The brand is the connection creation.
RV (12:07):
So I got it. So, and, and you said that Parkside court was like the name of the street you grew up up on, back in the Northeast,
JT (12:16):
Roy, it’s the entire development that I grew up in. Oh, it’s an unexplainable event in my life. I love asking people this question, you know, is there something that’s unexplainable that has happened to you? And for me, that is the most unexplainable thing cuz it’s just it doesn’t make much sense that that would happen, but it did, you know, all the way across the country.
RV (12:37):
Yeah. So then talk to us about, so you got clear on your positioning, the brand positioning statement. You go, this is the problem I wanna dedicate my life to, to helping people solve loneliness. Connection is my vehicle or my mechanism or the term we use. My uniqueness are helping them solve the problem. And then how did you talk to me about the monetization strategy that you came up with or, or have come up with is still fairly early, right? Because you’ve only, you’ve only been with us for what? A few months. Six months it’s
JT (13:08):
Yeah, it’s been about six months now, Roy. Yeah.
RV (13:10):
Okay. So then what’s the monetization strategy that you started with or, or are doing like, has it, have you, has it pivoted, has it like, are you still trying to figure it out?
JT (13:21):
No, I, I have a pretty good grasp on it, but it’s funny to individuals who are interested in BBG brand builders group or who are going through the journey right now as you say, in a lot of the, the speakings and recordings, it’s, you know, what we’re trying to do is a lifetime’s work. And so it’s, you know, condensing maybe 15, 20 years for some into, you know, a couple sentences. And so it’s really difficult. And so, you know, when you go through that journey, just have patience with yourself and, you know, it’s, it’s similar to really any journey you go on. It’s just to have patience with yourself and kind break it down. But, you know, in terms of our monetization strategy what I’ve really noticed in the marketplace is obviously, you know, the problem of loneliness, but you know, through all of my travels the main problem that I’ve, that I’ve, that I’ve noticed is, you know, when we are traveling, we’re, you know, more inclined to take, to step to our comfort zone, to meet new people, to try new things, to live our true, authentic selves.
JT (14:22):
And then unfortunately we come home, we gain all this amazing momentum and we take our experiences and we sometimes put them in the closet. We shove ’em away and we don’t integrate anything that we learned into our everyday life. We kind of go back into that rut. And so something that it is we’re looking to create and that we are creating is an experience for individuals in a group travel style, where we bring people together and we show them what’s possible. And it’s really interesting and unique because we’re actually on our first experience right now. It’s interesting as the, the podcast date lined up with, with where we are now, we’re right now, that’s
RV (14:59):
Crazy right now, where, where are, where are so, so you’re so wait a minute. So this is, I just wanna make sure I understand this. So you sign up with us, you join, you decide you’re are gonna lead these kind of like small group experiences, these destination experiences. And then you are at your first one with your first group of clients today, which is the time of this is the recording, right? This will air, but like you’re actually recording from a, the destination.
JT (15:28):
You can’t make it up. I am literally here with eight clients. Wow. and so it’s, it’s a really incredible moment and a really amazing experience for all of us. And like right now, like I chartered a yacht for them. We’re we’re on St. John and the Caribbean the us Virgin islands. And so they’re out on the boat right now. I’m gonna pick them up in a little while, but so it’s, it’s it’s interesting that, wait a
RV (15:51):
Minute, you pat a step on a, a yacht trip
JT (15:53):
To
RV (15:53):
Record a, to record a short podcast. What are you thinking? You’re
JT (15:58):
Crazy. Well, something about me is I also, I worked on a 18 million super yacht for a year and a half, so I I’ve had enough full time. So I’ve done that. I’ve been there, done that, but I just want everybody to enjoy their experience. Of course, someone like yourself, I’m just so excited to be here and chat with you. So, you know, it’s hard to pass up.
RV (16:18):
Well, so well, I can’t resist the opportunity to, to, to you know, work with you on like, so, so what are you, what are you working? Like, what are you working on right now? Like, is there anything that I can help or like we can sort of talk through cuz so you seem like you have a very clear brand positioning statement. So I love, I love, I mean, the problem of loneliness is very clear. It’s widespread. There’s a lot of people out there who are struggling with that. You have an aligned business model that aligned with your brand positioning statement. So if connection is the uniqueness, you know, and for those of you that are listening, one of the, like the way that we do monetization is not like what’s the easiest way to make money. That is that’s not how we teach it the way we teach it is going what does your audience need from you the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way?
RV (17:18):
What does your audience need the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way? So instead of going like, oh, I wanna, you know, I wanna create this or that. You get really, really clear on who you’re trying to serve. And as you get clear on who they are, you get clear on what they need. And as you get clear on what they need, that helps you, that informs your decision to instruct and architect an offering for them. And, and so a lot of times when people don’t make money, it’s, it’s because there’s this breakdown of like, they wanna sell this thing, but it’s not actually the format or the modality that sort of serves the people that they’re with. And, and you gotta, you know, the magic is sort of syncing that up. Well, when I think of Jesse here. So when I think about you, Jesse, you’ve actually got a great alignment there that your, your business model is literally pulling people together in these groups, creating connection, which helps, you know, remove loneliness. It also does all the things that you believe. And clearly you spent a ton of time traveling, whatever you said, 40 countries like, and, and so it aligns with your uniqueness and you’re, you’re teaching people to do things that you’ve done. So, so I love all that. So that feels totally aligned to me.
JT (18:33):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and my message is to create meaning in the relationships with yourself, others, and the world around you. And so this, the journey that I’ve been on, I want to share with others, and that’s why I’m very vocal and open with my story. I feel like it’s transformed my life and, and it is a bit of a testimonial when I do share it with people. They’re impacted by it. And so, you know, it’s not, it’s not about, you know, for me, per se the monetization strategy in terms of Mo monetizing monetizing it. I know that’s very important component of it, but for me, it’s impacting lives and touching lives and serving people and, you know, helping individuals. Cause I know, like I said, after these past two years, you know, I miss the smiling faces of people. I miss the laughter. I miss the connection. I miss the, the experiences that people have and what I’d like to do is, and you know, in the past five years I have worked in travel and, and Toros and design. And so I have design experiences for people itineraries, things like this, and, you know, people, people are looking for something like this. I think that the demand is there. I just think the awareness is missing. I think people aren’t really aware that this is something that is possible for them.
RV (19:47):
So what do you think is the biggest challenge that you’re like struggling with right now in your personal brand, where you go, like, I, I got this clear brand positioning statement, you know, it aligns with my uniqueness, I’ve got a business model you got here, you are in real life in the flesh, like living it, it came true six months, you know, later this dream is a reality, you’re on your first experience, which I love. And you know, I’m proud of you. It’s kind of a weird thing to say, but like, I’m, I’m so proud to like
JT (20:16):
Thank you or living
RV (20:17):
That. So what’s the biggest challenge you think you’re having with your personal brand right now?
JT (20:23):
Well, I think going forward now in, in terms of scalability it’s something that I’ve been putting a lot of thought in, cuz there’s a lot of directions I can go. And for me personally, when I, you know, know joined BBG and this journey I like to, you know, incorporate my own thoughtfulness into the experience that I want to create for others. And so when people arrive, they will receive two books. One is a, a book by Sarah Samuel called mindful traveling. Another book is a journal that people will, will write in and you know, kind of capture their experiences. So when they go home and they’re feeling a little off one day, they can kind of go back and revisit that. But to answer your question, the problem is like I had said a awareness and, and showing people that, you know, Roy, I just think there’s so much fear right now in the world.
JT (21:13):
You know, whether it be people who are, who are not in traveling because of the COVID restrictions because of, they they’ve been, you know, trapped, stuck in their house, you know, loneliness is a bigger killer than obesity and smoking, you know, so it’s interesting how a lot of people are feeling stagnation and, and limited in where they want to go and, and who they want to be. And so, you know, travel can be used in that fashion, in that manner to help people transform their lives. And you know, when people arrive home there’s, you know, this incredible amount of value that I want to add to their lives in terms of courses, in terms of blogs in terms of coaching programs, I mean, that’s kind of why this took a little longer than I wanted it to cause I wanted to, you know, build out a coaching program for myself, but I also wanted to do these experiences and I said, well, which one can I do first? And so I broke it down through your process in the S Asian strategy of which one, not made more sense, but you know, where is, you know, your uniqueness lies at the intersection of who you were me to be, who you, your intersection lies, your uniqueness, lies the intersection of who you were designed to be and who the world needs you to be. And once you find that out,
RV (22:30):
I love it. Jesse. You’re like a, you’re like a, you’re like a brand builder’s fortune cookie, dude. I, you, I love it. Like you, you, I could tell you’re like watching the stuff and you’re doing it. Yes. So I’ll, I’ll I love that. So, so the yeah, if you, if y’all didn’t catch that, so you’re unique to, at the intersection of who you were created to be and who the world needs you to be like the, so, so is it just awareness, like, is that the biggest problem that you’re having is sort of you, you mentioned scalability and then also just like awareness, like drawing more people to it.
JT (23:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I think when people see the word retreat it can means something different for everyone. I like to use the word experience. And so it’s just, you know, depending on how I build it out in terms of the experiences, do I have entrepreneurs come on the experience, do I have people who are really struggling who, you know, may not be able or willing to take that leap and book the flight tomorrow, you know, for the experiences to start now, I, I have, you know, eight people who I shared the experience and they booked their flight in a day. And so those are the people that I like, those people who are spontaneous, who see the vision, who see the value in what it is that I’m trying to create. And, and, and they see the alignment there that I do. But yeah, I think, you know, just, you know, as the, the COVID restrictions start to dwindle away and people get back out there I think it’s a really good time right now to launch this type of business and this type of model because I think it’s very desirable.
JT (23:59):
But it’s just proof of concept and getting the experiences under my belt, leading them, learning you know, as I’m leading them, I’m also, you know, bringing people together. And so that’s basically all I’m really doing other than leading orchestrating and facilitating these experiences with the questions I ask with the different activities that we do. You know, but I think at the end of the day, it will be a bit of a challenge to to show that in the beginning. But, you know, we have some amazing content creators right now on the experience with us. Like they got their drones up in the air and they’re doing some really cool stuff, Roy. So we’re excited to see these promotional videos that we’ll create and all the amazing content that, that we’re creating. So I think we’re gonna be in good shape.
RV (24:43):
Well, yeah, so that’s, that’s great. Well, so one thing that just sort of like pop, pop, pops up for me as you, as you were talking about this, because there are, there are a lot of our members who, you know, when you go through, so phase one, so we, yeah, I mentioned we’ve got these like 14 part processes broken up into four phases. Phase one is really about your branding and positioning. It’s really understanding your identity, who are you defining your uniqueness, clarifying your business model, creating your content, your intellectual IP. And then when you get to phase two, you, we that’s like the marketing phase, which is kind of going out and telling the world that you’re there, which is sort of like where you’re at Jesse. So one, I, I feel compelled to sort of share with you and with you listening and I’ve been talking a lot about this is that for some reason, the default that everybody has right now is thinking that their next customer is go, gonna come from social media, they think, or they think that like their next customer is gonna come from, you know, online or something like that.
RV (26:02):
In reality, almost always when you’re a small business, your next customer doesn’t come from being online, it comes from offline. It comes from the relationships of the people, you know, in real life. Like we spend too much time being consumed with trying to make strangers fall in love, like strangers on the internet. We want strangers on the internet to fall in love with us and follow us. And then like, like all of our stuff and then pull out their credit card and give us five grand or 10 or 20 grand, or like whatever the number is. Meanwhile, the, the, the common misconception, the, the common thing that people overlook is that they’re, they ignore a lifetime full of real life, meaningful, trusted relationships that they have developed with people offline. And so, you know, I’m sharing this to Jesse just because he’s here.
RV (27:10):
But I’m really talking to, to everybody that if I am Jesse, the first place I am looking for my next eight clients is from my current eight clients. It is not strangers on the internet. It is. So, and this is, we actually teach this in pressure free persuasion, which technically is a phase three event, but it’s, it is how we do one-on-one selling. And it is the referrals from the people who have actually experienced the thing that you have done. They are, they are the best forms of marketing, like a changed life. The best form of marketing is a changed life, a transformed life. You know, like we talked about Lewis house, cuz that’s how you, how we met you, right Jesse. But like that was an all offline relationship I met, I met Lewis in real life. We became friends. I helped him.
RV (28:11):
We helped him with some offline stuff that was going on. And then he reached out to us a few years later, asked if we could help. We said we could, he came, we had an in-person experience, you know, here at our house. And then we had a transformed life and, and then he went and told a bunch of people, right. And he just happened to have access to a lot of people. So, you know sure. That’s the other, the other tip is, you know, have Lewis house as your first client, if you can, is a good, a good thing, but it’s well,
JT (28:44):
There you go. RO, there you go. I know that, I know, I know the residual you’re earning is, is off the charts from him. So congratulations there.
RV (28:51):
Well, yeah, no, it’s the, it’s the opposite. It’s the residual that he is earning. But there is you know, the, the point is it was a real life convers, a real life thing. And so it is the, your next customer, the contact information for your next customer is not owned by Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and TikTok the, the contact information for your next customer lives in the cell phone of your current customer. The contact information for your next customer does not, is not owned by Facebook or Instagram or social media. It lives inside the cell phone of your current customer. Your current customers know who your next customers should be. They know better than anyone, including you, your current customers know who’s a, who’s a better fit for your program, even then you, because they are that person. You are not that person.
RV (30:01):
You know, you might have been that person five years ago. But so I, I just wanna make sure that everybody knows that, you know, we call it the law of AJ because she’s, she’s the one always talking about this. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars, your, it, it comes from your real life relationship. So anyways, don’t know what your plan is, Jesse. But like, when I think about if I were in your spot and I was, I was, you know, doing this business model the way that you were doing it. And I, and I go, okay, I need to, I need to increase my awareness. And you know, and my, my scalability, I would start with the people who are there. And I would, you know, at some point like before they leave, may maybe even before they leave, I would say, you know, you just, I go around the room and just say, what has been your favorite highlight from the last three days?
RV (31:00):
Right. And people will say it was this, and it was this and was this. And then you just kind of simply say, you know, this has been amazing for me. And you share what your highlight is. And you say, if there’s anybody in your life that you think would benefit from having an experience, like the one that we just had, would you be open to introducing them to me? And I would love to just get to know them. If they’re a friend of yours, I’d love to just do a call with them and get to know them. And when you couch it in that way, which is really how it is, they’re going, it’s not, can you refer someone to me so I can sell them? Like, so you can do the work of selling them for me and I can close them and take their money.
RV (31:49):
It’s going, if you truly believe that what you just experienced was amazing. If it Tru, if you truly believe it was incredible, is there someone else in your life you would like to, you know, give, give that, that same gift to, and, and that is one of the things that I think is really missing from the marketplace. And so I know you haven’t been through pressure free persuasion yet because you haven’t, you haven’t, you haven’t been in the program long enough, but that’s, that’s where we’re taking you and that, but, but since you’re in that moment right now, so
JT (32:26):
Precursor, thank you,
RV (32:28):
Pre sure. I would be thinking, I would be thinking about that if you’re, if you’re not sure.
JT (32:32):
Sure.
RV (32:34):
Absolutely. So the, the other thing, so that in terms of awareness, so the other thing, like one of the other things that we have people do is we call it the fast 50 is you know, we, we tell ’em to make a list of 50 people they know in real life, right? So 50 people, you know, in real life. And then what you do is you just call ’em and you just, you, we call it the check in method. But you, you just calling, you check in with them and you say, Hey, how’s, how’s it going? What’s going on? And then you tell ’em what you’re doing. You say, Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I wanna let you know an update. And the update is that I am now doing blank. And the, the, the little elevator pitch formula that we teach is I help blank to blank.
RV (33:24):
I help blank to blank. So I help insert your avatar to insert your payoff. So you, you know, let’s say Jesse and I were friends, I’d say, Hey, Jesse, I know we have, you know, I know we haven’t talked a while. I wanted to give you a little bit of an update. Like my wife and I started this new business and we are now helping experts to become more well known. And then this is the key don’t try to sell to the person you’re talking to, because these are 50 people that are like, you know, ’em in real life. These are your friends, this is your family. This is like, you know, your, your, your, your roommate from college, don’t try to sell to the people that, you know, that will feel weird for you. You’ll find yourself reluctant to do it. And they will feel reluctant.
RV (34:07):
They, they, they can sometimes feel weird too. So the key is don’t sell to the people, you know, ask the people, you know, for referrals. So what you would do is you say, you know, Jesse my wife and I now started a business. We’re helping experts to become more well known. Is there anybody, you know, who is trying to, you know, anybody, you know, who is a coach? Is there anyone, you know, who is a speaker or an aspiring speaker? And then you ask them and, and another little key is don’t ask to be introduced to people who need what you have ask to be introduced to the type of people you do it for, right? For us, it’s coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, trainers, professional service providers, anybody whose face is attached with their business. Right. But it’s like, we’re actually not typically trying to meet fortune 500 CEOs.
RV (34:57):
We’re typically trying to meet more like small business owners. So you say, is there anyone that you, who is a coach and Jesse would, would immediately go, he wouldn’t have a hundred people. He knows, but he might have three, which is even better. Actually, it’s better for them to not have an overwhelming number. They just go, oh, there’s one specific person that I know. And you go awesome. If I sent you a little note that you could copy and paste, would you be in minded to introducing us? And that’s it. And for most of us, that is, it, it, that is where your first revenue is gonna come from, not from launching a huge podcast or getting a book deal or, you know, going viral on, on social media.
JT (35:43):
Worry. That’s, that’s something that really resonates with me. And, and it’s been coming into my life more. So in terms of my intuition, like, look for the answers from within, right? And it also can branch off and say, look for the answers within your own network and the people that you do know, and the relationships that you have cultivated over time. Cause that’s where, that’s where the value is. Those are the people who know you best. Like you said, people, those people know you better than you know yourself sometimes. And it’s definitely interesting to hear you say that, cuz you know, when you lean into that people will come to your aid and I’ve experienced that in the last couple weeks and months, you know, people have been, I’ve been sharing my story and people are coming, coming to help me out and, and helping to inspire me and to, to, to help propel me forward. And it’s, it’s been a really great journey thus far.
RV (36:27):
Yeah. I love that. And it’s like lean on the people who already trust you versus trying to create trust with strangers on the internet, 60 seconds at a time when only 1% of ’em are gonna see the thing that you’re putting up anyways. So I think, you know, that’s where awareness for everybody. The, the other thing about scalability so scale scalability is also something that we’ve always spent a lot, a lot of time thinking about and studying. And it’s, it’s, it’s actually something that we’ve, we’ve been fairly successful at. You know, that’s one of the, of things, a lot of personal brand struggle is to get to, you know, seven, especially multi seven figures and very few ever get to eight figures. But you know, whenever you think in terms of scalability, the key there is just realizing that custom custom fails standard scales, custom fails standard fails.
RV (37:21):
It’s not so much that custom fails, but custom fails to scale any. And if you just think like conceptually the more customized something is and has to be the less, it is able to be, you know, routine and rhythmic and process oriented. I mean, if you think about manufacturing plot, the they’re they’re mass producing, how are they mass producing they’re mass producing because they do everything the same way every time. So if you wanna, if you want to scale your business and, and scaling your business, isn’t always a good answer. You know, sometimes people think growth just for the sake of growth, but oftentimes it’s like, no, how, what do you, how much do you really, they need to be happy, but if you do wanna scale, you gotta think in terms of, okay, custom fails, but standard scales. So when I think of like your business, Jesse, and I go, okay, what does standardization look like in my business?
RV (38:12):
That’s basically, you know, the way a, a more narrow question of scale is not so much, how do I scale as much as what does standardization look like in my business? So, you know, to me, it’s going, you would either, you would either take kind of like the same group of people you already have. And so you already have the customers taken care of and you go, let me design a new experience for them because then, you know, there’s, there’s like two parts. There’s getting the customers and then delivering the thing. And if you can standardize one part of it, it automatically is gonna scale faster. So you go, okay, well, if I already have the customers, let me rate a new experience. And that thing is for them. The other thing would be to go, let me keep the experience exactly the same and then bring in new people where it gets dicey is if you’re a small, if you’re small and you’re trying to scale is to go, I wanna get a whole new group of people and do a whole different experience. That is just, it’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s gonna be difficult because you have, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. So yeah, you know, and if you have a great, if you have a great location and you have a yacht contr, like if you have, you know, where all the restaurants are and you go, we can just keep running trips back here. You, you have the perfect agenda. Now you can train someone else to facilitate and, you know, et cetera, et cetera,
JT (39:39):
You got it. That’s the idea, you know, over time in, in terms of scaling it out, something that I have in my mind, and I don’t know if it will come to fruition, but it is a vision of mine is to hire other trip, experience leaders around me to go ahead and lead their own experiences. And so once I have each destination one, my, my favorite parts of creating an itinerary, putting, putting experience together is, you know, speaking with the people on site and putting it together, the people at the Villa or the hotel, the torque company, the cars, like all of
RV (40:09):
Design, you used that term early. Yeah. That’s
JT (40:11):
So good. That’s me. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, you know, I’ve worked in design, I’ve worked in design, traveling tourisms and design the last five years and it’s been amazing. And all of my experiences that I have in the past have brought me to this place that I’m at right now. I’ve worked you know, as, as a recruiter for a couple years. And I don’t know if you, I don’t know if you attest to this, but in my opinion, you know, recruiting is one of the most difficult sales jobs in the world because you’re selling people and what’s more, what’s more, you know, what’s, people are more unpredictable than the stock market. And so it’s really difficult, you know, in those relationships. And, you know, I, I actually have a similar similar beginning point similar origin. I, I was an accountant as well. I wasn’t as great in in Excel as you were, but
RV (40:55):
Well, I I’m decent at Excel, but I, I was not a great accountant. It was actually the worst grade that I ever got in school was accounting in college. So, but that’s funny. So you, you, but, but that the you’re like an architect. I mean, you are designing this experiential, this experience for people and, you know, know, and I, I think, I, I think that’s, I think that’s awesome, Jesse, and I would go getting other people to lead. It becomes even easier once you’ve done it five times, and this is the agenda, here’s the exercises. And here, it’s just, you can run that. You can run on a autopilot. It’s,
JT (41:35):
It’s a proof of concept. Exactly. It’s, you know, hiring those individuals and having a built out framework with my values with the things that I want to spread, you know, in, in my experiences. And so once we have that all figured out people will go ahead and, and run those experiences under my philosophy under my framework, under my values. And, you know, for example, this is called experience St. John. And so I’ve, I lived on St. John 2019 and 2020. I know the islands really well. I have some amazing contacts here. And then, you know, who’s to say in, in, you know, a couple years, you know, I can’t be running it for my laptop. Right. Or, you know, I want to year, but there are other destinations that I wanna also build out. Like I live in Portugal now. I moved there last November, so there’s gonna be an experience Portugal. And so it’s just really exciting to see how things are, are going.
RV (42:27):
Yeah, that’s great, man. I, I, I love that. I, and I love that for you. And it’s like, I think if you’re, if you’re drawing in a energy from that, and that’s what you’re passionate about, that’s totally unique. Like how many people are there in the world that do tourism design, you know, in this kind of way, like versus, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of courses. Like there’s a lot of people that make courses, for sure. I think this, this can really be magical and unique. And if you make it unique, right? Like if you focus on this thing and you go, how can I make this extraordinary? How can I make it life changing? Mm. What, what can, how can I serve my audience in the deepest way? They will have a transformed life and then they will go do the marketing for you, right?
RV (43:14):
Like they will help tell people, versus if you’re always having to create new things, you’re it, you’re when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Like you become spread across so much stuff versus just going, what would make this over the top life changing transformational to where they went back and they had to tell everybody, I just had the most unbelievable three days of my life. That’s what Tony Robbins did when people walked on fire, that’s exactly what he did with the whole fire walking thing. It was like, it was remarkable, worth remarking about it. And you, and if you, you dedicate some time, you know, to that, by having, you know, fewer, fewer things, then you, it it’ll, it’ll spread and do everything you need, man. So I love it. I love, I love this idea, tourism design. I think, I mean, Jesse, you’re so warm and, and humble and uplifting and encouraging. And man, I, I, I feel like there’s, there’s no doubt, like you’re on such a great path. Congratulations on your first experience that you’re leading. Although I, the only thing I don’t understand is why you would miss out on the yacht just to talk to us,
JT (44:28):
But we,
RV (44:30):
We are, we’re so grateful for you, man. We’re so grateful.
JT (44:34):
Thank you, Ru it’s a, it’s a pleasure to be here and it’s been amazing connecting with you and and thanks for all of the tips and advice. I I appreciate it and I value it.
RV (44:44):
Yeah, well we, we we’re excited to continue following your journey and being a part of your journey and, and you know, if somebody is out there right now, Jesse, and they’ve kind of been listening to the podcast and they’re going, eh, I don’t know about if BBG is for me, like, is there anything that you would say that you would go, ah, here’s, here’s how, you know, this is for you, or like, here’s, here’s, you’re looking to get blank. This is what I’ve really, that I think would help.
JT (45:14):
Yeah. I think, like I had mentioned with travel we find that travel is an accelerator in the connection process. You’re more inclined to take those risks to step outside your comfort zone and live your true, authentic self while you’re traveling. And so, you know, it’s, it’s difficult to hop on a plane for the first time, eight hours across the world, not be terrified. Cause of course I was when I first did that. Right. So you can always start out you know, going to the city that you live in right now over the weekend doing a quick trip to walk around in different restaurants, different areas that you’ve never been to, you know, taking advantage of the weekends. But you know, it’s interesting because people are scared right now and they’re fearful. So all I say is, you know, for me personally, it’s been really difficult in terms of my journey. But there’s a reason why planes take off against the wind and not with the wind. So I’m excited to continue to take off and, and thanks for all your help and, and with BBG, I’m just so blessed to be a part of it.
RV (46:10):
Yeah. All right. My friend, well, we wish you the best and we’ll stay in touch. We’ll talk to you soon.
JT (46:18):
Worry. Thank you again. Talk soon.

Ep 256: How to Build Your Own Audience with Dr. John DeMartini

RV (00:00:08):
Hey, my, my new friend, mark, Victor Hansen introduced me to somebody that you are about to meet Dr. John Demartini and mark and crystal who we had on the show several months ago, said you gotta have Dr. De martini on. He is incredible. They’ve known each other for 38 years. But Dr. Demartini is one of a, a world renowned specialist in human behavior. So he’s a researcher, he’s an author. He studied over 30,000 books, which I was pretty amazing. That’s just a, a wide on, on a number of topics, but that’s a bunch of books. He’s been on Larry King live, he regularly contributes to magazine and I’ve been just following him online here, recently tuning into to what he’s up to and getting to know one another. So anyways, Dr. Demartini, welcome to the show.
JD (00:01:04):
Well, thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to it. Thank you.
RV (00:01:07):
Yeah. So, so tell us a little bit about how you got started. I mean, you and I were just kind of rapping that you’ve known mark Victor Hansen for 38 years. So you you’ve been around the industry for a while. Would love to just kinda hear how you get started and then kind of like, what is your business model? How, and how is your business model, you know, did it begin and how has it evolved over the years in terms of like, you know, the different revenue streams that you focused on?
JD (00:01:39):
Okay. I had an arm and leg deformity when I was a child and speech impediment and went to a speech pathologist and specialist for that in first grade, I was told that I would never be able to read or write or communicate effectively, probably wouldn’t go very far in life for amount to much had to wear a dunk cap back in 19 0 59 60. I made it through elementary school by asking kids questions. What did they learn from the book? What did they learn from the class? And if they told me stuff, I would get enough to kind of, sort of pass.
JD (00:02:25):
When I turned 12, my parents moved from Houston, Texas to Richmond, Texas. We went to a low socioeconomic country area. They weren’t a bunch of smart scholarly kids. I didn’t have a team to help me. I failed, I dropped outta school and I lived on the streets, but I was okay in standing on a surfboard. I started doing that at nine, but Texas was not the surf capital. I didn’t wait for a hurricane to get new waves. So I made my way out. 14. I hitchhiked out to California and lived in Huntington beach for part of the summer, and then hitchhiked down to New Mexico and surfed California in Mexico. At 15, I left there and got enough money panhandling to go and fly to Hawaii. I lived under a command may highway, sunset bridge. Then I lived in EAI beach park under a park bench, then in a bathroom abandoned car. And finally a tent kept social climbing. I was riding waves and got pretty good at it. Got to hang out with some of the top surfers, got in a few magazines and me movies and books. And then I nearly dock at 17.
JD (00:03:45):
At 17, I was in the recovery of that. I was led to a little health food store and then eventually to a yoga class to try to overcome my neuromuscular problem that I had there. One night I met Paul Bragg and one night, one hour, this man who was inspired and a very enthusiastic man spoke and talked about what we can do with our lives. He talked about, we had a body of mind and a soul and a body must be directed by the mind. And mind must be guided by the soul in order to maximize our, our life.
JD (00:04:21):
When you spoke that night, he said that we need to set goals for ourself, our family, our community, our city, our date, our nation, our world, for and beyond for a hundred, 120 years, nobody ever talked to me like this and I could understand. And he was simple. And he, and he said that what you think about what you visualize, what you affirm, what you feel, what you, what you do and what you write, determines your destiny. And so that night was the first time in my life. I thought maybe I could overcome my learning problems. And I thought I could someday become intelligent.
JD (00:05:02):
And that with his inspiration at night, I set out on a quest to try to overcome my learning problems. I, I eventually left to Hawaii and I flew to LA and I hitchhiked back, Texas. And I prepared for a G E D and passed GEDs, a high school equivalency. I passed that and I tried to go back to college and I failed and I was distraught sitting on my living room floor and my mom and dad, you know, we’re encouraging. But my mom said to me that morning, that, that day when I failed son, whether you become a great teacher, like you dream about cuz at night I met Paul Bragg. I had a vision that I would overcome my learning and learn how to speak properly and be able to teach.
JD (00:05:51):
He said, whether you become a great teacher and travel the world, like you dream, whether you return to Hawaiian ride giant waves, or whether you go to the streets again, just wanna let you know that your father and I are gonna love you. No matter what. When she said that my hand went into a fist, I looked up and I said to myself, I’m gonna mass this thing called reading and studying and learning. I’m gonna master this thing called teaching, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes. I’m gonna travel, whatever it is since I’m gonna pay, whatever price to give sort was love across the plant. I’m not gonna let any human being or myself stop me now. And I got up and hugged my mom and went in my room and I got a dictionary out and I started memorizing 30 words a day and she would test me on 30 words a day until my vocabulary was strong enough to learn and pass school.
JD (00:06:40):
And I, I did and I eventually started to Excel and I’m now 18 and slowly but surely people started asking me questions, cuz I started to Excel in school and I started to have students asking me questions, mentoring. And it went from one to two to about 15. By the time I finished my first little two years in school, I went to the university of Houston. I started having a hundred, 150, sometimes 400 people a day under the trees and I would do my yoga and they would ask questions and I’d have a, a following of students. Wow. When I went on to professional school, I started doing classes seven nights a week. I would speed read books of by then. I was learning how speed reading it. But I was speed reading, read four to four to seven books in the morning and then do a presentation that night.
JD (00:07:33):
And that’s how I had paid my way through college in professional school. When I got outta school and I still opened up my practice. I was teaching every single night and I generated patience from doing talks and everywhere and anywhere I could find a place from breakfast clubs, luncheon clubs, you name it anywhere where there was a speaker might be used. I went to go and offered my speaking services and I generated patients from that. That led me to have a TV show on channel 20 on health, Dr. De Martinez health ends. And then I started doing that in my office. They’d film it live for my audience and we would talk about patients and care. And then I started doing more. And then I, and I figured out how to grow. My practice went from a little 970 square foot office to 5,000 square foot office from one assistant to five doctors and 12 a and people want to know what the heck did you do?
JD (00:08:34):
And all I did is I prioritized things and delegated things and stuck to what I did best, which was being a man on a mission with a message and speaking, and then engaging people. And then doing clinical work. And I prioritized my patients and got the doctors to do certain ones. And I did the most info and 10 folded my income. And then in different professions, they started asking me to speak on clinical practice and growing practices and things and mindset. And I was studying everything and anything I could get my hands on any possible thing that might help maximize human awareness potential. I was devouring and that reading, you know, sometimes 20 books a weekend, I was just devouring and devouring and devouring and learning everything I could. And speaking as every single time I could. Cause when you’re told, you’ll never be able to read and write or speak and then you find out you can, it’s pretty inspiring.
RV (00:09:34):
And what was your practice? So you, your Clear clinical psychologist.
JD (00:09:37):
I, I was a car. I, I was a chiropractor. I was a chiropractor.
RV (00:09:40):
Ah,
JD (00:09:41):
That’s where I met. That’s where I met mark Victor Hanson at a chiropractic convention in Las Vegas. There were about, I don’t know, 6,000 doctors there and I was a speaker there and that’s where he and I hooked up. And then we end up doing some things together. We created a, an Al them of what they called audio cassette album back in those days, how to build a, your practice. And that led me to speak into other health professionals and then other businesses. And then and I was, I started writing books at 23. So my first book was at age 23, I’ve written over, I don’t know, 200 book books now. And I call it, most of ’em are big textbooks that are going to different specialties, but a lot of ’em are, I got probably four of ’em. They’re about to do 10 more new books that are coming out. Publisher just did a 10 book deal. And so I write, I research, I teach every day of my life and you know, I, I just, it started to grow and I started to go from United States throughout all the states, all but two states I’ve gotten to speak in and then it went into Canada. Then it went into France and Spain and Italy and it started going to Europe and it just kept growing. And I, I, I kept getting opportunities and I
RV (00:10:56):
In the beginning. So in the beginning you were, you were, you started speaking, but you were making money from being a chiropractor. So you were speaking for free.
JD (00:11:05):
No, I, I, I, no, no, no. I, I, my first money that came from speaking started at the university of Houston. Okay. I started doing tutoring and I got paid very small amount. And then when I went to professional, I started to, I, I tried this love donation bit, you know, you put a bowl out and whatever you wanna pay kind of thing. Nobody loved me. So I, I decided to pay 20, make ’em pay $20. And the second I valued myself, so did the group and it grew, I started charging $20 for little evening talk and that kept growing. I just spread the throughout the city. And
RV (00:11:44):
So you’re
JD (00:11:44):
Over a hundred,
RV (00:11:45):
A public seminar model at that point. You’re like in professional school selling tickets.
JD (00:11:50):
Yeah. And I did I did over a hundred thousand dollars a year at 23 years old doing talks, which is pretty good back then and paid my school and I didn’t have debt and I could buy all the books I wanted cuz I just, all I cared about is buying books. I wanted to catch up and read and, and study. I wanted to study the greatest teachings on the planet. And so that I, my teaching model, I was paid from 23 on and I, I, I got paid even when I was in practice, I got paid to speak and then I got generated patients from it. So I got double paid and then I, they buy books and they buy, I made audio cassette tapes. I, I had, I had 900 audio cassette tapes by the time I was 20, probably about 29 30.
JD (00:12:32):
I had 900 to audio cassette tapes on different topics of health and and, and growth and personal development and made albums out of it. So I had tons of albums and things that was going on. And I just, every time I talk, I recorded it and people wanted a copy of it. I had a Mira recorder and I had a duplicating machine, two of them. So I could create six duplicating machines at the back of the room and they would get a live presentation. And then that was my advertisement. As I spoke, they would get copies of that. They’d tell it and I’d give ’em to the friends. And then I had the backlogs of all these other talks and they’d buy a bunch of those. So I had a, a revenue model and then they were coming in as a patient. So I had a good revenue model
RV (00:13:15):
And then
JD (00:13:16):
Expression.
RV (00:13:17):
So you were selling tickets to come to the event event, and then you are selling tapes at the back of the room and then you’re getting clients out of there for your practice.
JD (00:13:27):
And then I was doing consulting too
RV (00:13:29):
For
JD (00:13:30):
Companies. I was getting clients from that to consulting. Yeah, I was doing, I did a lot of the, you know, oil companies in Houston, Texas where we started and I did presentations to them on ergonomics and health, health, reducing healthcare costs and things. And then that was generating business too. Plus they buy products cuz I had I had a bunch of books by then and tapes and they were buying those and they didn’t have to pay me if I could sell. They had to, had to pay or they’d do a product sale, either one, I was prepared and that I never stopped that I still did that. And then in those days, you know, there was no internet and there’s no fax and all that stuff. And we just did, we, we sent out these little cards to notify these little mail cards.
JD (00:14:16):
We’d stamp these little mass mailing cards out and the people would come, we’d have, you know, hundreds of people coming to programs. And then I, I had other conferences once I had products, conferences could have me come on and speak cuz then they could do a revenue share and they didn’t the fees. They could afford the fees, cuz I’d have a fees and then they would split the revenues on the product and they’d get their feedback. So they, they liked me because I could, I could you know, make it cost effective. They didn’t really have to pay anything and they made money off me. So they, they didn’t mind me speaking. And I just kept those opportunities growing. I didn’t have any slick marketing. I just, I just made sure my dad said if I, if I deliver more than people expect, I, I won’t worry about business.
JD (00:15:02):
And I found that to be true. If I, if I deliver something that’s unique and present something that’s inspiring and meaningful and practical that they can use immediately to generate opportunities or money or a business or more fulfillment, then there’s always business. So I, I just found that that I’ve never been a slick marketer. I don’t really know all that stuff. I’ve hired people. I, all I do is research, write, travel, teach to this day. I, I live on my ship and I basically research write, travel, teach and do podcast all day webinars and write books so, and travel. So I, I never stopped that model. I just kept doing it. And I’ve spoken in 163 countries now and millions and millions of people. So I, I, I had a dream to travel and step foot in every country on the face of the earth. I still got a few more countries to reach and I I’ve held a vision of that since for 49 years, I’m going on my 50th year. This will be the 50th year of speaking.
RV (00:16:00):
I mean, this is just so, so wonderful. And it’s, it’s amazing to see so much of the path cause this would be so I’m in like, I mean the first time I got paid for a speech was like 2005. That’s kind of crazy to think. I’m not even in year 20. I, I started speaking for free when I was in high school, right. Coming outta high school, which was like 2000, 2000 2001. But the first time I got $5,000 for speech like really paid I think was 2004, 2005, something like that in. And you know, so I I’ve been in 15 years coming on 20. And so many of these concepts apply exactly the same. You’re speaking for free. And then you are selling at the back of the room and then you, you know, you know, people are hearing about you and I think it’s, it’s really amazing.
RV (00:16:53):
So talk to us a little bit about your business changed. I do wanna hear about the boat, cause I think that’s super interesting. You’re on a boat right now. If y’all, didn’t pick that up. Dr. D Martinez’s been on a boat for a long time, actually here the last couple years. So I wanna hear about that, but how did your business change or not change? So, so that happens, you know, in the eighties, the nineties, and then 2000 hits, the web comes out 2005, social media podcasting starts to come on the scene. Did you basically just like transition what you were doing to those platforms? And you know, it’s kinda like, oh, I was doing tapes and then I did CDs and then I didn’t B three downloads. And then I did learning management system or like tell us a little bit about how life evolved at post 2000.
JD (00:17:46):
Well, CDs in the nineties, CDs came in, audio cassettes, still sold. I still had some audio cassettes, but the CDs started coming in and then we converted to CDs. But you know, I learned at age 27, not to do anything, but what my core competence is, which is research, right. Travel teach. So I don’t do anything else. I haven’t driven a car in 32 years. I haven’t cooked since I was 24. I haven’t done administrator written checks or done any, you know, hiring or firing or managing, or I, I learned it to age 27 after reading the time trap by Ella McKinsey, not to do anything other than what is absolutely most inspiring to you if you want inspiring life. So I delegate everything and I’ll hire people that know what, what they’re doing to do that. And so if it’s time to go to CDs, I find somebody that takes care of all that.
JD (00:18:35):
And I just put them in place and I, to this day, still stick to that model. I don’t, I, so I haven’t really done anything except teach research right. And travel since 27, I’m 67 now 68 going on 68. So, so 40 years, that’s all I’ve done. I don’t do the other, I, I, my day consists of reading, writing, teaching, or doing interviews or movies or something. That’s, that’s it. I don’t do the, I don’t do anything else. I don’t make those other decisions. I learn that from Warren buffet and I, I don’t, I don’t, I do what I do my core competent. I know what it is. I stick to it. I don’t waiver from it. And but I surrounded myself with people. So if somebody, if we, if we need to go to CDs, we get some of the packages and organizes and does that.
JD (00:19:23):
If we’re going now to internet marketing, and then I get somebody to do that, but I don’t sit there and try to do my learning curve and do all that. I, I just hire people around me to do that. So to this day, I couldn’t tell you how it’s all being done behind the scenes. I just know I have competent people that take care of that for me. And my objective is to do as many podcasts and do as many webinars and do as many speakings and as many as many books and share as many insights as I can on this planet. That’s, that’s all I, I care about and travel the world.
RV (00:19:54):
I love it. So you’re now you’re living on a boat though, so you’re not, you’re clearly not doing in-person speaking events. You’re
JD (00:20:02):
Well, I, I did until I, I I’ve been living on this ship for 20 years, so I, I, I got this in 2001. So oh, so I, I, after nine 11, I was living in truck tower in New York, right underneath the Donald there. And we were up in the top of the building and, and but when nine 11 occurred, my wife said, no, this I don’t wanna be here in New York. Right now. We had some homes in Australia also. So we, she got a helicopter in the street and got out of there real quick. And and we, we got to Australia, but I told her, I said, look, I’m not scheduled to be in Australia, but four times, if you’re gonna live there, we need to come up with plan B. So I found out about the, the world, the ship called the world and which is a private condominium luxury condominium that, that sails around the world to all the countries.
JD (00:20:51):
And I, that matched my belief system, cuz I’ve said, the universe is my playground. The world is my home. Every country’s a room house. Every city’s a platform to sharer my heart and soul since I was 20, I’ve been internal dialogue. So it matched. So I, I bought that as an anniversary presence. We lived on here until she passed and I’ve been on here, but I’ve been traveling by, by flights. I still did 350 plus speeches a year by still flying and shipping. So if I’m on my ship, then I will go places. If not, I fly. So I’ll get on and off. But since COVID the flying has, and so I’m now just full time on the ship, just going place to place and doing much of it on zoom. So, or on these other mediums.
RV (00:21:36):
Well, and you’re not, but you’re not seeing you’re. I mean, clearly at some point the chiropractor patients stopped. And
JD (00:21:44):
Well, I sold, I sold the practice. I sold the first practice to two of my docs at the five. Gotcha. And I became financially independent at that time. And then I opened up another part-time consulting and practice. I did only for very special patients. I still did a little bit of practice by 1990 I, 89. I was not time practice. I was full-time speaking and consulting. And still to this day, I still consult. I still do consulting as it comes in. I don’t go out promoting it. Don’t do any marketing for it. Really. I just, it it’s on the website if people want to do it, but I still do coaching consulting. I don’t like to call it coaching, but just consulting with executives and various types of people, entrepreneurs, students. But I don’t, I don’t drive that. It just happens. You know, I I’ve done, I can do 300 in a year or I can do 200 a year something maybe, maybe more. But I, I don’t, that’s not my main business. I may do it and a half to that, on that,
RV (00:22:47):
On consulting.
JD (00:22:50):
But
RV (00:22:50):
Your, so your revenue streams now from, from the, you know, the ship for the last couple years is people will hire you to speak. You do virtual keynotes, you, you have private coaching slash consulting clients and then are, and then, and then what else? Like book deal like you, you know,
JD (00:23:10):
Web webinars, I have webinars. Most of my income still webinars. I have 80 different courses that I teach that I do pretty regularly. The one the break to experience, which is my CIG program. I’ve done 1,140 times. So I, I do that consistently. Donald told me that he says you, if you’re gonna do something brand and do it, build momentum, incremental momentum by doing it and over and over and over again until the people recognize it. So I’ve done that one. That’s my signature program. But I have a series of programs that are multi-day programs that I still do. That’s primary generation. I definitely have book royalties, but they’re not, that’s not, you know, major it’s, that’s secondary, that’s just added, but I I’m getting ready to do 10 more books. That’re in the making now. And then but most of it’s webinars, you know, the live webinars that I do or live. And that when yous that I do
RV (00:24:04):
Think is so is, so this is just so fascinating. So when you say a webinar, you’re saying people are buying an individual seat at a virtual event that you’re hosting and leading.
JD (00:24:19):
Yes. Yes.
RV (00:24:20):
So it, the same thing you were doing at the university of Houston under tree, people were paying money to come get tutored. They’re just paying 20 bucks per whatever. You’re still doing that more or less, just virtually someone buys a ticket comes to your event.
JD (00:24:36):
Yeah. But they’re not $20 anymore.
RV (00:24:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that, that’s the awesome part is the price just keeps going. It just goes up over time. But, but the, the part that’s fascinating to me is that, like you basically said, I’m gonna do these four things. And for the most part, your core model, it sounds like has been public seminar. What I would call public seminars. It’s it’s anybody from the public can buy a ticket and come, you know, you started doing it for free. You are mentoring a couple students. Then it comes to, into, you know, hundreds of people. Then it’s 20 bucks ahead. And now it’s whatever it is a price for, but, but your people are buying a ticket and then they’re coming to an event and anyone can pay their own admission to come and, and just learn from what you, you have learned. And that, that hasn’t really changed. That’s been the core through your whole career. And then out of that, you’ve gotten keynotes and consulting and you’ve sold some products. And you also had your practice that you sold off, but like just basically hosting public educational events. You basically, it’s been your main business, the whole career.
JD (00:25:43):
Yeah. I think I’ve made about a quarter of a billion dollars doing that. So I think that that’s been a good model, but I think
RV (00:25:51):
I would say, so you, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s not nothing a quarter of a million dollars is that’s a pretty good bit of coin.
JD (00:26:00):
Yeah. The, the thing is the, the speaking, you know, I, because I had a speech impediment speaking is probably the most inspiring thing I get to do. And because I had learning problem learning and delivering something that’s novel and unique to people, you know, it’s original information. It’s not something that’s canned from somebody else. I don’t copy people. I create original ideas that serve people and and synthesize and Ize information. So I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of reading to try to make, distinguish that from just anybody out there it’s solid information. So that, that’s my core thing. I just do it every single day so that you, you, somebody, I have people sometimes coming back to a program multiple times because they, they want, they know there’s something new every time that’s that’s part of my model is just to continue. Even if I do the same program, it’s I keep refining and adding and building and, and educating myself. That’s my responsibility.
RV (00:27:03):
Huh. Yeah. I’ve always kind of thought of myself as almost like a Civ, right? Like as the reason people pay me is not for the time with me, they’re paying me for the time I’ve spent condensing information from other places and, and, and exactly. It seems very much like how, how, how you view yourself, how do you get people to come? I mean, at this point, I guess you’ve had the email list and social media for years and word of mouth, but like, but like literally, how do you get people to come? Do you just have a team that says, Hey, you know, create an online page and we send email blasts and drive ads to
JD (00:27:38):
It. I don’t, I don’t, I have no idea. I don’t say that I don’t do that. I just research right. Travel, teach their job is to help me spread my message across the world. That’s their, I hire people whose vision and mission are congruent with what I’m intending. And I tell them, and I inspire them to what my vision is and help me do it. Let’s go, go make it happen. So I couldn’t tell you everything that goes behind the scenes on social media. I know we’re in all those things, but I don’t do all that. I, I, all I do is if they want me to do a message on some sort of social media, they send me a link on a zoom and they tell me this is the topic or whatever. And I just do a dissertation on it. And then they take care of all that I don’t. No, I couldn’t tell you I’m I didn’t even have a cell phone till last year. I don’t deal with that.
RV (00:28:31):
I love it. Are these people, employees or contracts, like vendors that you hire or does it matter?
JD (00:28:38):
There are some that I guess you would classify as contract. I think there’s a little of all that, cuz there’s somebody that’s kind of does management and does things and they hire people and I don’t even know all the people cause I have a south African office and I’ve got for a while there, we had people in Tokyo and Sydney and South Africa and the states and London and, and so I don’t even know all the different people until I get there. And then I recognize them and I say hi to ’em, but I don’t, I don’t, I Don manage. So I don’t do all that. All I’m all I do is write, travel, teach depend. Yeah. I don’t know all the different prices.
RV (00:29:16):
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s okay. But I, I, I, I, I just, I paused the recording here. Y’all for a second. Cuz I wanted to ask, ask Dr. D Martin, if he’s comfortable sharing the prices, cuz I wondered, you know, how much char these and you know, it’s, it’s really, you’ve stayed so true to just doing your thing. But it’s fascinating because you know, identifying that through line is that you’re a teacher you’re doing exactly what you said you would, but you’re the teacher in your own classroom, you created your own school, your own events, people used to pay or they started out paying $20 per seat to come. How much do they pay now?
JD (00:29:54):
It depends. I mean, sometimes there’s just little webinars, a little simple webinar, they still pay small amounts. And then there’s sometimes one and two and three and five and 10 day seminars, two week seminars. It depends on what we do. And each of those go up in price, they could range from oh $1,200. I’d say a thousand to $1,200 up to $7,000. It depends on what we’re doing. And the, and the things now, since zoom has come down, we’ve been able to bring prices down because we don’t have the logistics of the flights and the venues and all that. So we’ve been able to keep those prices down. But so some of the higher prices are down a bit closer to the five, 5,006,000. But, but that’s, you know, it depends on the logistics and what we, we, we just take what I, what I have is my fee. And then we find out all the cost and we put those together and we calculate that and we pass that on.
RV (00:30:47):
Interesting. So that’s a interesting way of figuring out the pricing. So you basically take your speaking fee. Plus you take the cost of the event. You add ’em together. You figure out how many seats are available, divide it, take the total cost divided by the number of seats. And there’s your, there’s your price. But with zoom, you’re able to bring, bring that. And I just, I, I, I, I, I love this. There’s so many reasons that I love this, but your whole story is one of just being told you, you know, you can’t do it. You’re not gonna be able to do it. You’re not good enough to do it. And, and then you basically take into your own hands and completely defy that. And I know a lot of people that are listening to this show, Dr. D martini, they feel that way in the industry, right?
RV (00:31:32):
Somebody, they, they maybe aren’t struggling with a speech impediment or you know, the, the kinds of things that you were, but somebody is saying, you know, you’ll never be a great speaker. Like you’ll never get booked to speak on a stage. You’ll get a book deal. Like my company will never hire someone like you. And I think there’s so much of this industry that people go, Ooh, I got a book deal from a publisher. Or I got a company that hired me to do a consulting engagement, or I got a speaker’s bureau that decided I was good enough to pitch me to their client. And I got a, a speaking engagement through the, these third parties. We forget how much of the world is available to us directly. And when you look at mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, my personal mentor was one of ’em was Zig Ziegler.
RV (00:32:18):
You look at Dave Ramsey, you look, you look at Tony Robbins, you look at Tom Hopkins and Brian, Tracy, and, and, and it, all of these people and your story syncs up with that is going, you can find your own clients. You can hire yourself for your own speeches. You can, you can be your own publisher just by adding value to people’s lives. And whether it’s on a cassette tape or it’s in a venue or it’s on zoom, I just it’s, it’s inspiring to me as, you know, at least in this case, usually I’m starting to be the older guy in the room, but you’ve got many years on me in this industry inspiring to go that has worked. And it will always, it will always work
JD (00:33:00):
Well when the whys big enough, the house take care of themselves. As the old proverb says, when you have a big enough reason to get a message out into the planet. If the publisher I got rejected by publishers, I got night and gal KOAC rejected me three times. Now, they’re, they’re putting in products out. You know, that that rejection just means refinement. It doesn’t mean anything else. It just means, you know, they’re either not resonant or it’s time to refine what you’re doing, or just keep going and publish yourself. So I published many books on my own before I did the others. I didn’t let any of that. Stop me from my mission. My mission was to, I wanted to reach billions of people on the planet. And so we do so that’s we, but that means I may do find podcasts 10 podcast in a day, or, or go sit at the BBC and do 21 radio shows in a day.
JD (00:33:46):
I mean, I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t care what it takes. I just on a mission to get it done. That’s that’s, if you, if you have a, an attitude that there’s no option, we’re going forward, we’re making this thing happen. How do we do? And you’ll, you’ll, you’ll find the way you’ll find the people, the people, places, things, ideas and events will synchronize in your life and show up in your life. If you’re just committed to the outcome. All I wanted to do is study the greatest teachings on the face of the earth, by the greatest minds I ever lived, summarize synthesize Ize that gather that information devour, synthesize it, come up with something original out of it by the, a transcend awareness and deliver that in such a way that inspired people to go out and do exactly what they would love to do and show them how they can do it. I, I was told I couldn’t, I, I found out I could and they, they may think they can. And if they, if they all of a sudden follow some basic principles, they absolutely can. I, I, I, there’s no doubt in my mind that people can do something extraordinary their life. If they decide to do, it’s just, I’m just gonna pass the torch from what I’ve learned. That’s all.
RV (00:34:52):
I love it. That is so inspiring. Dr. D martini, where do you want people to go to connect with you? If they wanna like, stay in touch with what you’re up to or find out, find out more about your work.
JD (00:35:03):
All they have to do is go to Dr. D martini.com, D R D E M a R T I i.com Dr. D martin.com. They could spend the rest of their life on that, that website, cuz there’s so many interviews and YouTubes and things to read. And it’s an educational website. You know, people always said, you know, this is how you make it a sales website and stuff. And people buy stuff on there. But that wasn’t my intention. My intention was an educational website. So I get told that’s not how you’re supposed to do it. And I said, you don’t understand your mission is a sales before content I’m as content before sales, sales comes, take takes care of itself. If I do something that’s a value. So it’s an education and you’d almost have to believe in Buddhist reincarnation, cuz you’re gonna need a bunch of lives to probably be able to absorb what’s on there. There’s a lot of on there. So you’re gonna have to come back again.
RV (00:35:54):
Well I know, I know you are, but then it’s it’s like what your dad said, right? I mean, it was that idea. If your dad said it, basically if you over deliver, you’ll never have to worry about business. And that’s
JD (00:36:08):
My dad was correct. And I thank him for that. I had a, you know, my dad was an engineer and he had background in philosophy and he, he always, he’d never figured out how he could make a living on philosophy. And he said, but son, you figured out how to study the sciences and religions and philosophies of the world and psychologies and stuff. And you, you were able to do it. So he kind of, he used to come to my class and both, both my, the whole family used to come to the class and it was inspiring to see my dad and mom there. It was just lovely.
RV (00:36:37):
That’s so cool. Well thanks for sharing your, your, some of your personal story and your family and the background. It, it really is inspiring. And but your,
JD (00:36:48):
Can I share one more story? Can I say one more thing?
RV (00:36:51):
Yeah. I, I know
JD (00:36:52):
Where to go. When met Paul, when I met Paul brag in 1972, he had daughter named Patricia brag, a controversial background on that, but there’s, but that’s his daughter that took on and she took over the business when he passed. Well, it was interesting. I was speaking in Honolulu at Waikiki, the Hyat and I was doing my breakthrough experience program and in the back of the room in walks, Patricia brag. And after I, I, I took a break and, and at the break, she came up to me and she’s four foot seven. She comes up to me with this pink outfit on this hat and she comes up to me and she says, that was inspiring. And I said, thank you. And I knew who she was because I, I recognized her from Paul Bragg’s books and her books. And she said, you remind me of my father.
RV (00:37:46):
Amazing.
JD (00:37:46):
That meant a lot. And she then with my daughter, she sat with my daughter and she said, if you ever have an opportunity and you have an inspiration and it feels natural for you to want to carry on the work that your father’s doing. Just know it was inspiring for me to be able to do that with my dad. Well, my daughter is now teaching and doing insulting and doing this and doing and taking over. So she says, step aside, pop on taking over. So I’m still gonna be around for another 10,000 years, but I’m gonna be doing program. I’m gonna doing seminars with Wei boards in the afterlife. So that’s okay. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be selling Wei de Martin Wei boards probably that they can tap into. That’s
RV (00:38:27):
A joke. That’s that’s funny.
JD (00:38:29):
My daughter, my daughter is definitely up and coming and she’s, she’s on the, on the ball now.
RV (00:38:36):
Yeah, well that is, that is so cool. And you know, I, I, I feel very much connected to that lineage of just all the personal development teachers that have come before. And it’s, it’s, it almost just feels like an honor to sit, sit in that stream and that, that stream of consciousness as it flows from one generation to the next. And obviously at brand builders group, we serve mission driven messengers. And so we very much feel like this podcast is mentoring. Those who, you know, are, are where I was 20 years ago going, how do you become a New York times best seller. And how do you get in the hall of fame of public speaking and how do you make this your full-time business and how do you speak in front of thousands of people? And it’s just like, it just passes from one generation to the next and it’s, it’s, it’s an honor to just be able to carry some, some small part of that torch for some number of years was really, really, really great.
JD (00:39:33):
It, it’s a, it’s a great industry and there’s some, you know, some great people in there that have left great marks. I was chatting, we did a little thing with Dennis Waitley recently, you know, we did a, his I dunno you saw, I saw pictures or two ago when
RV (00:39:48):
I did, because Darren Hardy, I think Darren wasn’t Darren Hardy there too.
JD (00:39:52):
I don’t remember who all was there, cuz I just did an hour with him and and that’s fantastic. I think he may be trying to meet us up in, in Tahiti next week, this coming week. So I don’t know. I’m gonna see if I he’s gonna come on, try to hang on out on
RV (00:40:05):
This. Well, I saw pictures of an event and I recognized of course I recognized Dennis Waitley and then I recognized several people that were in the room and it was like, wow, that, that was a, was, it was a room full of legends. So that’s really cool. Yeah.
JD (00:40:20):
Well, I, I went to, I went to zigs class when I was 20 and I went and I went to Dennis Wheatley’s class back when I was about that age. So I, I remember him, I, we met way back then we, I spoke with Dennis Waitley in 1984 together in Chicago and also Wayne Dyer and you know, Deepak and all the characters.
RV (00:40:40):
Yeah.
JD (00:40:41):
And so I got, I had, I be, I’ve been blessed to meet a lot of great people along the way and yeah, they all add a little piece to the puzzle along the way we all do. Yeah.
RV (00:40:48):
Yeah. You know, that’s the other thing about this industry that’s really amazing is just, I mean, I guess it’s probably true for most industries, but it’s like, if you hang around long enough, you end up meeting all these people like it, there it’s, you know, you end up being at the parties, you’re sharing the stage with them. You’re in the green room. You’re, you’re on the TV shows you have book launches at the same time. You, you know, you’re on each other’s podcast these days or whatever. It’s it’s really fulfilling. Well, thank you for sharing part of that legacy and, and that history with us today and such, such an inspiring story. And I, I, I know that there are people listening right now who will go, yeah, I can just do this. I can just find people to help and love on and I can be in charge of my own destiny and put on my own events and just pour into their lives. And if I over deliver, I I’ll never have to worry about business. So we wish you the best Dr. John, and you know, make sure you hit Dr. D martini.com. If you get him, if you get a chance and, and go over there and check out some more about him and what he’s up to and, and his, and we just, we look forward to staying in touch and, and all the best.
JD (00:41:57):
Thank you so much for having me on your show and for asking questions and appreciate it very much. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:42:03):
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 in interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:42:50):
I had no idea that I was going to love the interview that I did with Dr. John D martini. As much as I did that interview was inspiring. It was informative. It was instructional. Like I thought that was so cool and awesome. And I mean, there are so many great lessons from that, and I’m gonna draw out just, just like always, I’m gonna share with you sort of like my, my top takeaways, my top highlights for you and how I’m gonna apply them to my life and how I think you might be able to apply them to yours and to your business. But the, the very first one here is the story of how he started his business. What was it? 40 years ago? 40 years ago, he spoke for free to generate clients for his practice. He spoke for free. Then he started charging $20 a seat.
RV (00:43:48):
And now today he charges $7,000 per seat. This is always the model like this is the model. And it’s like from 40 years ago to, to 30 years ago, to 10 years ago, to five years ago to two years ago, you gotta speak for free. You gotta you’re you’re you gotta get out there. I mean, we call this chicken on a stick in inside of our, our membership community. It’s like, you’re walking through whole foods and they give you chicken on a stick, or you go through the food court. They give you chicken on a stick. Why? Because people need to sample. They need to get a taste of what you’re about. They need to get an opportunity to know a little bit about who you are and to experience a little bit of benefit enough to where they go. That was fabulous. I want more.
RV (00:44:33):
And so that, that principle has never changed and it never will change, right? Like it’s the fastest way to take someone from a stranger, right? Why do they spend money giving out samples and stores? Because you know, I don’t know your brand. And, and it’s like, you rarely see it with big brands, right? Like if Doritos launches some new chip, they’re not given away tons of samples across the nation, typically because it’s Doritos. Everyone is like, yeah, I know Doritos. I’ll try it. Like I like, if you like Doritos, I don’t. But like, if you like Doritos, you go, okay, I’m gonna try this. Cuz I recognize the brand. But especially the newer brand, the younger, the brand, the, the, the more lesser known the brand is the more important it is for the sample. Right? And you go, I’ve never heard of this type of chicken, but you know, or this season, but you put it in your mouth and you go, oh my gosh, that’s incredible.
RV (00:45:25):
And in that case, it’s like, the product is selling itself, not the brand. And, and when you, when you’re just starting out as a personal brand, your product, your expertise, your content, like it is your content that people are buying. They’re buying the solution to per, to their problem. They’re buying your methodology. They’re, they’re buying the idea that you are an expert later, when you break through Shehan, while they’re buying you, they’re buying you because it’s you, right. That’s what everybody did with Gary. Vaynerchuck’s NFT thing with V friends, right? Half the people who bought it didn’t even understand it. They don’t even know what the heck it is. Like they still probably don’t understand it, cuz it’s like new and pretty complicated. But you go, why did they buy it? Because it’s Gary V because they trust him. But in the, but, but, but millions of people are sampling him every day and have been for 15 years.
RV (00:46:17):
What are you doing for people to sample you? They have to sample you. They have to have a free chapter, a free download a podcast, a a, a video of you, several videos on social, your blog, right? Like everything that we do in the relationship engine ecosystem is about creating these little mini assets where people can sample you. They are basically chicken on a stick and they occur as tweets and LinkedIn pulse and blog posts and medium posts and YouTube videos and Instagram videos. Of course, we use the content diamond, which ties that all together from, from just one main video a week that we repurpose. There’s a video on my blog, by the way, if you have, if you’re not familiar with the content diamond, if you’ve never heard me talk about that term, just go to Roy vain, blog.com and then search for content diamond.
RV (00:47:08):
And it will, it’ll, it’ll pop up. But like the point is you have to put self out there, not even yourself. Like you have to put your content out there, your expertise out there in a way that people can sample it because they’ve never heard of you. But if they like your content, it’ll override it, right? Like just cuz I’ve never heard of this type of seasoning. If, if I taste it and put it in my mouth and go, that was amazing. Like, or I’ve never eaten at this restaurant. If I taste it, I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna eat at this spot in the food court. That that’s how it’s done. And, and Dr. Demar has been doing this for years and it’s just another example of this timeless principle. And so, you know, don’t get lost in the tactics and the like, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if this is working and I don’t like this platform and I’m not like it doesn’t even matter really where it happens.
RV (00:47:58):
It can be a speech, it can be a podcast, it can be a video, it can be an article. It can be a tweet. It can be any of these things, but you’ve gotta put your expertise out there. You’ve got to add value and solve problems for people and answer questions for them so that they can sample you and build trust. That is why we do. I mean, that’s our whole content marketing strategy. That’s it. The second takeaway from Dr. D martini, which was interesting, cuz I’ve done this and heard a lot of this, but never thought about it quite in this way, which I, it was super sharp was he said, you know, I started speaking for free and then I had a fee and people would pay me. And then as my fee got higher, less and less people could afford me. But what several of the audiences did is they would do a revenue share with me.
RV (00:48:49):
And, and that is how the conference could afford me. That was how I could get my speaker fee. And, and that’s a really important way to think about it. I mean, especially if you’re beginning, you should be taking every gig you get, like you should be taking every opportunity to practice and hone your craft and, and get out there and, and, you know, rehearse your content, do that and build your email list and all those things. But the other thing is going, if you can make an offer from stage and you can sell something. And typically what we’re gonna say is, I mean, in world class presentation craft, which is our phase one course, three of our curriculum, we teach about the mechanics of what to say you to sell from on stage. And we talk about firm offers like our not firm offers, sorry full offers and soft offers a full offers.
RV (00:49:42):
When you’re asking for a credit card, a soft offers, when you’re just like offering people a free call or a free download when you’re first starting out, you, if you’re making a full offer, you, I would, I would say you probably wanna keep it under $200. Because it, it takes quite a bit of skill to sell to a room full of people, something north of $200 and not like, you know, turn a bunch of people off. But most of what our clients do and what we do is when we speak, we do soft offers. We don’t sell anything. We give away free calls. And then we do one on one calls and we do the selling there. And that, that is the way to do it. And, and even to this day, there are some events that I will speak at because they don’t have my fee, but they will allow me to do an, an offer.
RV (00:50:26):
And they will allow me to follow up after the event and get emails and do all this stuff. And we can, we can make our feedback in, in other ways, if it’s the right audience, if they’re, you know, perfect for us. So the revenue share from the sales that come at the events is another way that, that you can get your fee or maybe you don’t even have to do a revenue share with the event. Host. Maybe the deal is you go speak for free, but you get to keep, you get to make an offer and you get to keep all the money at the back. I mean, all of that is kind of like part of the normal negotiation, but don’t just turn away an event because they don’t have your fee, especially if they really want you, like, if they’re really your fans, they’re really your people.
RV (00:51:05):
They love your stuff. Hopefully, you know, and if you’ve been in our community, hopefully you’re learning ways to monetize. I mean, I know you’re learning the ways cuz we teach ’em to you, but like you have other ways to monetize other than just your speaking fee. And that also opens up a lot more opportunity for places that you can speak. Because even if you don’t get your speaking fee, you can, you can make the same or more by what comes at the back of the room or from free calls after or from getting people on your email list. And then you, you sell, you know, after the event is over and that’s huge. And, and again, part of why I love this conversation is one that’s sharp and kind of like a new way of, you know, just a really clear way of thinking about it, but the other is it shows you that this idea, this is a principle that has been around since the beginning of personal brands like that, that you speak for free, and then you’re selling at the back, and that is how you make your living.
RV (00:52:02):
And that is how I made my first dollars as a personal brand. I spoke for free and I sold myself published book at the back of the room. And then after that, I spoke for free and I sold tickets to a half day event at the back of the room. And then, you know, from there it evolved and evolved. And then, you know, one, we sold, we sold CD sets for a while, and then we sold courses and then we sold the expensive live event tickets. And then we sold coaching programs. And then you nowadays, we just drive free calls and then we talk to people and then we sell ’em whatever they need. And some of the stuff we sell is 99 bucks. We have, we have stuff that’s 25 bucks, 99 bucks. Most of the stuff we do is obviously our membership program. And we’ve got different tiers of that, that fit sort of every budget. So you can do it. People have done it. Dr. John D. Martinez has built this whole. We are doing it. It has worked, it does work. It will work revenue share from the back of the room. And then the third thing was something was when he was talking about what his dad said, and this is so simple, right? But it’s just so good. He said, son, if you always over deliver, you’ll never have to worry about having enough business.
RV (00:53:18):
If you always over deliver, you will never have to worry about having enough business that is so strong and clear and simple and profound and true and was true, is true and will be true to come. Like if you always over deliver, if you always give people more than they are expecting, if you always give people more than what they paid for, if you always deliver above and beyond what they need or what they deserve, like what, whatever the transaction is, if you exceed that, you’re never gonna have to worry about business because you’re gonna have advocates out there. I did. I did a reel on this, on my Instagram my handles at Rory Vaden. And I did a reel on this, about how to, how to select the right price. And, you know, my whole, my whole point is going. It doesn’t so matter.
RV (00:54:16):
It doesn’t so much matter what you charge. It doesn’t so matter. It doesn’t so much matter what your price is. What matters is that you always deliver more than the price that you’re charging for, right? You always deliver more than the price you’re charging for. So it could be a hundred million and you, as long as you’re delivering a billion dollars of value, it’s worth it, right? If it’s $10. And so we use the something that we call the rule of 10, which is price it at one 10th of what it’s actually worth, right? So, you know, if, if our goal, if we’re gonna, you know, let’s say it was $10,000, we wanna deliver a hundred thousand dollars of value that we go. Like, we really believe this is worth a hundred thousand dollars. This will, you will make a hundred thousand dollars from what you’ve learned here.
RV (00:55:02):
And we’re gonna charge 10,000. That gives you a lot of conviction that gives you a, a lot of strength that gives you a lot of enthusiasm when you’re sharing the price and talking about your program. And you don’t have fear because you’re going, this is, you’d be crazy not to do this, which is how I feel about brand builders. I’m just like, y’all, we are the cheapest, most insanely valuable education. There is. I mean, what we give to our members for what they pay is are tens of millions of dollars. Like we have proven it. Like we have made millions of dollars from these things that we’ve had to learn from 7,900 different sources and pull it together and give it to you step by step. And just going, if you haven’t requested a call with our team, like request a call, like go, go to free brand.
RV (00:55:54):
What do we say? Pod, pod call, whatever, whatever the advertisement is, you can go to free call.ro vain.com. I know that one works or whatever the ad is that we place on here. But like, if you’re liking this and you’ve been listening to this for a minute, you should request a call, right? Like it costs some money to do, to work with us, but it is extraordinary what people get and the experience and the results that people are having. And the, and the other people in the community alone. Like if you learn nothing, just being around the other members of our community is insane. Like our community is epic. I mean, you’re at an event sitting next to New York times, wrestling, authors and hall of fame speakers, and eight figure entrepreneurs and billionaires and people who’ve sold their, their companies for hundreds of millions dollars and people who are multi seven figure, you know, direct sales or network marketing people.
RV (00:56:46):
And you know, the top of their profession or their industry. And maybe you’ve never heard of ’em, but they just crush their industry. Like they’re the most well known in their thing. And they’re all just sitting. We’re like all in the same space. It blows me away. Like our members, our clients are the most amazing people, actors and actresses on TV. Obviously the, the author thing, there’s former pro athletes, tons of people with like hundreds of thousands of followers or tens of thousands of followers. And there’s like sitting right next to you at, I mean, our, our events are crazy. So, and that’s how we design it. Right. And it’s, it’s because of exactly what Dr. DM, our teen’s dad told him. And then he did. And so many, you know, Zig Ziegler was one of our mentors and he did it. And like overdeliver, overdeliver give people more than they expect more than they deserve more than they paid for.
RV (00:57:37):
And watch it come back to you, watch it, change your life, watch it, change your business, watch it radically flood your bank account. Like just do it for a while. Go, how can, what are people expecting? And how can I give ’em more than that? How can I constantly be pushing the envelope of adding value, adding value? And our team is doing this. Like our team is awesome. You know, I’ll, I’ll log into like our members portal and be like, oh my gosh, that’s so cool. Like, where did that feature come from? Because our, our team is just doing it and you wanna create that culture. And even if it didn’t pay off somehow in money, it, it, I mean, it always does, but like, it, it, it pays off an impact. It, it, it pays off in purpose. It, it pays off in this feeling that you’re contributing to the world and that what you’re doing is good and that you’re adding value to people’s lives.
RV (00:58:28):
And it gives you the conviction that other people should buy from you. And that is worth a lot. It’s worth a lot to you, especially if you have call reluctance and sales reluctance, like I’ve had for so much of my career, cuz I don’t wanna annoy people and I don’t wanna be pushy and I don’t wanna be aggressive. And so you gotta be convicted the value of, of what you do. And, and so use the rule of 10, use the rule of 10. It’s just make sure that the, the value you deliver far exceeds the price that you charge. That’s it make sure the value you deliver far exceeds the price that you charge. Because as Dr D Martin’s dad says, if you, you over deliver, if you always over deliver, you will never have to worry about having enough business. And I hope that you feel loved on as a listener of this show.
RV (00:59:19):
We would love to talk to you. So hopefully you, at some point, you know, request a call with our team or just keep tuning in like, and, and just keep tuning in or just keep tuning in. We’re here for you. It literally fills us up to know that you are on the other end every week, listening to this show. Like even if we never ever have any financial exchange, it is the greatest like honor and privilege to know that you’re gifting us your attention and your time, and you’re willing to allow us and our guests to be an influence in your life. And it’s just an honor. I mean, and we absolutely love it. So I hope we get to meet you in person at some point. But thank you for tuning in. Thank you for sharing this with your friends. Thank you for leaving your comments and your reviews on iTunes and telling people about this. And just please keep coming back and know that our heart is to overdeliver. And Hey, if you don’t think we’re overdelivering or if you have ideas about how we could leave that as a comment on iTunes, let us know because that’s, that’s the desire of our heart is to, is to really serve you in that way. That’s it for this version of the influential personal brand podcast, Roy Vaden out.

Ep 251: Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study by Brand Builders Group | 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 pitcor 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/podcall, brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Welcome to a very special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am about you break down the interview that just happened between me and AJ Vaden, who at this point you probably know is the CEO and co-founder my co-founder at brand builders group. She’s our CEO. She’s also my wife and has been my business partner for a long time. My best friend, just the, the most brilliant woman, like I just love being in business with AJ, obviously doing life together and raising a family and all that, but I, I love being in business with her. And so I’m gonna break down the recap of, of some of the things that I just learned from this interview. And I’m gonna give you my top three takeaways from from, from the inner view with AJ and the first, I mean, the first kind of key takeaway, just to make sure you got it is that this moment is the demarcation line for a change in the format of this podcast.
RV (01:58):
So I don’t know how long you’ve been listening, but what we have been doing is typically. I will do an interview every week, and that is like the first episode that comes out in a week. And then AJ and I do a recap, basically sharing our takeaways from that interview as the second episode every week. And we are changing that. So as of, of now going forward, what is happening is that every week I will do an interview and then I will do the debrief recap of that interview all as one episode, and then AJ will conduct an interview and she will do the debrief, recap, all of that interview or, or that episode. And so it’ll be, you know, more content, although we’re publishing at the same frequency every single week. So that is part of why we did this very special edition with me and her together as a way to, you know, draw attention also to the change in format.
RV (02:56):
And this podcast is growing tremendously. We are regularly in the top two hundreds of all podcasts in the careers category and across all iTunes and, and in the us and in several countries around the globe. And so we’re just excited about it. We’re putting more resources into this show and into the content that comes, you know, comes out and, and the prep for it and getting guests for it and just working really, really hard to make it more and more valuable to you. So that’s that, you know, related to that, obviously we talked about this a couple times, but this interview was based on a national research study that we can called the trends in personal branding, national research study. And this took us over a year. All in, it was, it was tens of thousands of dollars that we invested into it.
RV (03:49):
It’s been well over a year in the planning phases and the execution, and then creating this and we are giving it away for free right now. If you go to brand builder, group.com/podtrends, brandbuildersgroup.com/podtrends, you can download this entire study, which we believe is changing. The Fu that the future of marketing is personal branding. And that there is this transference, this tip happening where it’s less about companies and products, and it is shifting more towards people in the future, at least, you know, that’s what we’re banking on and, and, and we love, and, and we’re excited to be a part of it. So make sure that you go download that brand builders group.com/pod trends. You want to get your hands on this study. It’s beautiful. It’s really easy to flip through it’s 70 pages or something, but you can flip through the whole thing in probably 10 or 12 minutes, and there’s some extremely powerful insights that come right out of it.
RV (04:50):
So go, go make sure you grab a copy now in terms of the interview that happened. And it’s, it’s fun. I love interviewing my wife. I love learning from my wife. I love learning from her as my wife and my friend, but as our CEO, I mean, she is just extraordinary in her ability to run an organization and understand what an organization needs. You know, she has a lot of experience doing corporate consulting in the life that we used to come from at our former company that we, we started together her back in 2006, and then we exited in 2018 when we sold that company, a huge part of what she did was just do consulting with organizations. And so she understands, you know, big trends and, and how to move, you know, big ships and, and, and, and, and see what’s coming and see the way that things really should be.
RV (05:41):
And so I of learning from her and these are, you know, some of, some of, some of my biggest highlights from, from the from the whole interview. Okay. So the first one is that personal branding and, and this, this is something that you’re gonna wanna understand, and if it wasn’t super clear, make sure you, you grasp this personal branding. Isn’t really something new, personal branding is simply the digital of reputation, the digitization of reputation. And, and we also sometimes say the monetization of reputation. We talk about this as a hypothesis. This is something we tested in our national research report, and that this trends report, this national research study that we did, which is that personal branding is all about reputation. It’s just do people have, what do people know you for? And do they trust you? And what are the behaviors that you can engage in that will build you more trust that will help you become more well known that will help you have a greater impact in the world world.
RV (06:58):
That is reputation. And I love the way that AJ described this. When she talked about her small town, how even in the small town, everybody had a reputation. And it made me think about the, the small town where I grew up in Frederick. It’s not a small these days, but when I went to high school in Frederick, it was so small. We, we, I mean, we, we didn’t have a stoplight and it was like, everybody knew everybody and everybody had a reputation, they were all known for something. They all had certain characteristics. And it was just kind of like you learned the reputations as you went along and, and then you go, well, that’s just a tiny, small kind of farm community. And that is blown up to become what the, the world is is and what the, in like what the internet is and what will one day become the metaverse, which is just this digitization of your reputation is what are you known for?
RV (07:48):
How well are you known? Are you trusted? What do we look to you for? What do we look to you as the, the go to source for blank? And that’s what brand builders group is, is all about. We don’t brand companies, we brand people, we, because a, a, a person is, is, is simple and clear of like, this is you. And what do you want to be known for? What do you believe? What, what are you the expert in? And of course, one of our biggest philosophies that we teach is that you are most power positioned to serve the person you once were, you are most powerfully positioned to solve the problem for someone else that you have already solved for yourself. It’s the digitization of reputation. And so we are here as a company to help you become more well known and seeing the data a have been 74% of Americans are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand.
RV (08:45):
Of course they are, because it’s just a new word for reputation, personal branding, reputation. They’re the same thing. Personal branding does not mean social media and video courses and bestselling books and podcasts, and, you know, websites and da, da, da, da. Those are just extensions of a reputation. It’s about you, your values, your beliefs what you wanna be known for your expertise, the path that you’ve walked, the lives that you serve, the, the mission that you’ve dedicated yourself to, and your, your, your track record of being able to help people do that. And, and your track record of being able to do that for yourself, that is reputation. All these other things are just extensions of that into sort of a, a digital world, which you know, right now is mostly websites and social media and content. And, you know, something that we see in the future, you know, now be eventually becoming the metaverse, but your reputation will follow you everywhere.
RV (09:45):
Whether you’re in a small town like Frederick, whether you’re in a big corporate company, a big global company, whether you’re online or social media on your website, or one day into the metaverse, your reputation will follow you. And so you have to build it and, and, and manicure it deliberately and professionally and intelligently and, and intentionally, and that is something that we’re here to help you do. So that was just huge, personal branding is the digitization of reputation. The second of thing, which is one of, one of my favorite things that AJ has ever said, and one of my favorite things that she’s ever taught me and one of my favorite things about her that she has done is she believes and has proven that it does not take millions of followers to make millions of dollars. It doesn’t take millions of followers to make millions of dollars.
RV (10:42):
And I think too often, we go, oh, well, you know, I, I can’t monetize my personal brand or personal branding. Doesn’t apply to me cuz I don’t have millions of followers or I don’t care to have millions of followers. I don’t wanna be famous, but that I think is an err in judgment because we all want to be more well known. I mean, we, if, if we wanna make an impact in the world, if we wanna make a difference in the world, if we want our life to count for something, if, if we want to be on our deathbed, looking back and saying, my life mattered, why did my life matter? Because I made a lot of money because I had a lot of followers. No, because I impacted a lot of people because the, the, the, the way I spent my hours in life will have an impact after my death, that, that my life stood for something, it counted for something, because it affected someone.
RV (11:32):
It helped someone, it helped many someones. It helped thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people to live a better life, a more enriched life, a healthier life, a more meaningful life, whatever your mission is, but that is why it, it matters. And that the, you don’t have to have millions of followers to, to make money from doing that. The, the, the look, the brand builders, we say that we serve mission driven messengers. The reason we say that is not because we don’t care about money. We do care about money, but it is subservient to the mission. The mission requires money. Money is a, is necessity of growing the mission. It, it takes a lot of people and, and resources and skill sets, and it takes a team to accomplish anything. Great. And so those people typically aren’t available to, to work for free. So you gotta have money.
RV (12:26):
And so money is a, a necessary component that we have to be able to deal with and generate in order to a, a good steward in fiduciary to grow a business and to accelerate our message, but the, but making money, isn’t the number one priority. It’s not the highest focus. The highest focus is, is the mission. It is making an impact. It’s making a difference in the world and you can make a difference in the world without having millions of fun followers. You can look the, the, sometimes you’ll hear people complain about the algorithms, right? Oh, you know, the algorithms is you, you, I, I can’t get enough reach cuz the algorithms are blocking me. Well, yeah. Sometimes that’s frustrating, right? Like if you catch the algorithm, right, it’s gonna expose you to new people. What a blessing, what a, what a tremendous opportunity. But regard, you know what the algorithm can’t stop.
RV (13:16):
It can’t stop you from making a deeper impact with the people that are in front of you right now, whether that’s one or five or 10 or a hundred or a hundred million people, the algorithm doesn’t stop. The impact that you have with the people who do see your content. It might, I prevent you from reaching more people. But here’s the thing. If you focus on serving the people who are seeing your content right now in a deeper way, the algorithm will push you to more people. So if you focus on serving the people in front of you like serve the person you have now serve the one view that you’re getting on your or video, like go all in on going, how can I help these 13 people that are following me? What value can I add to their life? How can I support them?
RV (14:04):
How can I lift them up? And, and what you will find is if you do that, you know, those dozens of followers will become hundreds and thousands. And before you know it, you don’t need million of followers to make millions of dollars. Like the money actually trails much faster than you would think. Like you might think, oh, I gotta have a million or several hundred thousand followers to make money. You don’t like some of the wealthiest people inside of the brand builders group, community. I mean, I’m talking about the people who sell their company for hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, or they’re, you know, multi seven figure businesses or multi eight figure businesses. Every single year, they’re making real money. They don’t have a ton of followers cuz they’ve spent their life building, building a, a, a, a company building a machine that actually makes money.
RV (14:49):
And they haven’t spent much time building, building their personal brand. So, you know, you, don’t the followers and dollars. It’s not a direct equation. Now we want lots of followers cause we wanna make impact, but you don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. You also don’t need millions of followers to make an impact. Every single person is an opportunity for impact every single click, every single view, every single, you know, share like comment, every person who subscribes, like instead of always being consumed and concerned with how many do I have? What if you became all in consumed infatuated, like just totally concerned with the idea of how do I impact the people that I do have in a deeper way, how do I become more valuable to them? How do I educate them better? How do I inspire them better? How do I coach them better? How do I love on them better? What do they need? How can I help? How can I be of value? How can I be of use to them?
RV (15:55):
And if you do that, you will make millions of dollars, even if you don’t have millions of followers. And so I just love when AJ goes off on that because it’s, it’s such a good reminder that the, the, the thing that we think we need is not the thing that we actually need and it’s not even worth. It’s not even the thing worth chasing. It’s not chasing I, our, our advice to you would be don’t chase followers and don’t chase dollars, chase impact, right? Chase making a difference. Chase mission, mission driven messengers means mission over money. Mission is greater than money. Money is subservient to the mission. Impact is what we’re after. And we believe not just believe we know we’ve lived. It we’ve experienced it. It’s it’s happened in our life over and over again in our friends’ lives. In our clients’ lives. We know 100% without a shadow of a doubt. If you chase impact, the money will come.
RV (17:01):
If you focus on making a difference, you will make money. If you focus on creating fans, you will create customers, chase impact. And so, anyways, that is huge. Inspires me when she talks about it. It, it just lights me up cuz that’s, that’s why we started the company like brand builders group is not even focused on, I mean, we have revenue targets and things, cuz they’re necessary to run the business and like, you know, pay people, a living wage and hopefully create exciting opportunities and incomes for them. But it’s like we’re after impact, we’re chasing impact. We’re not chasing dollars. And that’s how, you know, if you belong here, I mean, seriously, that’s how, you know, if you belong in this community is if you’re someone who goes, yep. I buy in, I will chase. I am chasing impact. I wanna make a difference. I, I, I feel like my life is meant to be used for something.
RV (17:54):
I feel like there is a calling inside of me, a message inside of me that I am supposed to deliver some message to the world, not how do I make, how do I double my income in 60 days? I mean, doesn’t mean we don’t wanna do that. We do wanna do that, but that’s not the focus. That’s the byproduct. That’s the byproduct money is the byproduct of mission. At least that’s our philosophy. And then the last thing, and this is just a quick one, but oh, it was so good when she was talking about the data of which industries do personal brands matter the most. Right? And it’s like, oh, of course. It’s of course it’s like, you would think it’s oh, it’s influencers and it’s authors and it’s musicians and it’s artists like you would think this is who we think of when we think of personal brands.
RV (18:39):
And yet the data says it’s doctors, it’s lawyers, it’s financial advisors, right? It’s it’s accountants, it’s service providers and it is coaches and consultants, but it’s it’s and, and here’s, here’s what the takeaway was. She said the higher level of trust that is required to do your job. The more value having an established personal brand becomes the higher level of trust that is required to do your job. The more having an established personal brand becomes that is so powerful. Right? And, and you go on the one hand, that’s a really interesting statistic. On the other hand, I go, well, no, duh, like of course I have to trust my doctor. Like if this is the person that potentially is gonna take a knife and cut me open, like if my heart’s on the line, like hopefully I, I trust them. Or, you know, the person that I’m taking advice and counsel from for my overall health and wellbeing, it’s like, of course I have to trust that person.
RV (19:41):
If it’s my accountant, it’s like, I have to trust that they know what they’re doing, but also trust that they have my best interest in mind, my financial advisor, I have to trust them, not just their competency, but the fact that they care about me. And that is where the, this differentiation is, is happening. It’s not just about demonstrating that you have competency. It’s about demonstrating that you have compassion. It’s about demonstrating that you care, not just that you’re able, but that you care. And that is why seeing your face on social media or a website or, you know, having a chance to access you is really important. Not just, you know, here’s our company, here’s who we are. There’s power in that too. But the, the evolution is going. I wanna know you, I wanna know the person, the other side of this desk on the other side of this camera, on the other side of this operating table, on the other side of, you know, filling out my taxes, like, who are you?
RV (20:44):
And do I do I believe in you, do we believe the same things? And do you know what you’re doing, but, but do you care about me? Do you understand me? Do you know what I’m struggling with? And can you help me? And that is personal branding. And the more that, the more trust that is required there, the more that the personal brand matters, right? Like the more intimate our relationship is gonna be. The more trust that is necessary, the more having a personal brand matters, not millions of followers, but just this, this authentic, this authentic connection between us, this, this transparent visibility into who you are and what you believe. And, oh, I just, this, having the data to back all of this up is just, I mean, it’s edifying and it is it’s convicting even, even more than we were before. So I hope you love the interview with AJ.
RV (21:37):
You’re gonna love the episodes, right? Like I, I know you’ve probably gotten to hear some of her on the debrief, but hearing more, I mean, she’s so astute and sharp and just the way she sees the world. And so we’re just, I’m personally excited for you to get to know her and really like hear more of her heart and, and see it come out in these interviews that she’s doing. I know you’re just, you’re just, you’re gonna love her more and more and more, the more you get to know her. And, and we wanna get to know you more, right? So I hope we’re seeing you like I mean, we love doing this podcast, love it. The trick is we never see you, right? We, we don’t even get much feedback other than, you know, if you can leave us a review, leave us a review, cuz we see those.
RV (22:17):
But if you follow us on social, you know, I’m most active on Instagram, AJ’s most active on LinkedIn. We’re also picking up our social media presence and, and trying like as more of the company gets more people in place AJ and are trying to like spend more time getting to know you and interacting with you. You know, come leave us comments and, and, and share with us what you’re thinking and what you’re struggling with and, you know, download the study. And also our team wants to get to know you. Like if you think, if you’re wanting to become more well known and make more of an impact request, a free call you know, come over and check us out free brand call dot com. What is it? I don’t know. It’s on every ad I should know off the top of my head, but just go download the study for now brand builders, group.com/pod trends. And if you do that, you’ll get a chance to request a call with us. But keep coming back here. Thanks for your belief. Thanks for your trust. Thanks for the opportunity to, to shape your life. Go check out this data, let the data speak for itself. Just know that we love you. We believe in you, and we’re gonna keep coming back to serve you in a deeper way so that you can go out and serve your audience in a deeper way. We’ll catch you next time. Bye bye.

Ep 250: Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study by Brand Builders Group

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 while 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, call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/podcast brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Oh man, I’m so excited. I cannot, I cannot wait for you to meet Tori Gordon. Tori is someone who has become just one of my favorite people that I met in the last couple years. We met her through brand builders. So she is, she’s a brand builder. She’s one of our clients, but she is extraordinary and she’s been doing huge things long before we ever got a chance to get to know her. In 2021, she actually has been one of tos, top 100 female creators. She has over 800,000 followers on TikTok. She has transitioned that into a fantastic coaching business. Speaking, she’s doing brand deals. There’s a number of things that she’s doing. And her content is really around helping people overcome their suffering and find perspective. And it’s just super inspiring. She is also a trauma informed breathwork facilitator.
RV (01:54):
She’s been featured in outlets like NBC and Fox news and CBSs and Yahoo business insider. And she hosts a podcast called the coachable podcast, which is in the top one and a half percent of all podcasts globally. And it’s fun to see that taking off for her and just so many different things that she’s working on. And obviously she’s an influencer. So she’s, she’s doing brand deals with big companies like can bud and better help, et cetera. And just inspiring a lot of people more than that. We just think she’s cool. And and she’s someone even like so many of our clients, even though she’s a client, it’s like somebody that we look up to and we learn from and just felt like you gotta meet Tori Gordon. And she’s got some awesome stuff to share with us. So anyways, Tori, welcome to the show.
TG (02:41):
Thank you so much for having me that was such a warm intro. And it’s just fun to be here and have this conversation with you. You’re somebody that I very much you and AJ are somebody people that I look up to admire and have learned so much from. So it’s, it’s fun to have this come full circle and get to chat while we record. So I’m excited for the conversation.
RV (03:03):
Yeah. Thank you, buddy. I mean we, we totally believe in you. You’re easy to believe in. I mean you have just built, you know, a, a such a phenomenal and loyal following which we would describe as quickly only because we’ve been around for 20 years. And you know, it’s taken you less time than that, but tell us the story a little bit. I, I mean, I wanna hear, I wanna hear about TikTok and how you’ve built that, but, but before that, tell us a little bit about your personal story. And you, you know, how you got started and how you figured out what, you know, I know that led to how you figured out what type of content you were gonna start producing.
TG (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great place to start. I think for me, I never would’ve anticipated that I would be having this type of conversation or be doing the work that do with clients or online ever if you’d asked me, you know, what, what would my future look like a couple years ago? You know, I’ve, I’ve been doing this full time for less than two and a half years. And before that I was in corporate sales, outside sales, and then I was leading a sales team of about a hundred people in five countries teaching and training them in sales training and onboarding and performance management, and was really kind of growing my, my career in that, that traditional way. And for me, I grew up in Alabama in Tuscaloosa. And so and I grew up in a family of educators and teachers, my mom and dad were both professors at the university level.
TG (04:47):
And so it was really always instilled in me the value of education and learning and being a student of life. And you know, I never really had a clear idea though, growing up of what I wanted to do. And so fell into sales. Like I fell into a lot of things early in my life, looking for other people to tell me who to be and what to do. I got my degree in social work at the time because a friend of mine said, Hey, it’s easy and it’s interesting. Come get this, you know, this degree, it’s an easy a and it was in college that my sister was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She’s 21 at the time. So I was for the first time experiencing a lot of upheaval in my life and just felt kind of lost at that season about who I was and what I wanted and felt like I needed to stay close to home to cuz of everything that was going on.
TG (05:43):
And over a couple of years, you know, I lost my sister, lost her battle with cancer. We lived through a massive F four tornado that came through our hometown in Tuscaloosa. And then my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and wow, those losses just kind of piled up on each other to the point where after my mom passed away, 10 days after my 27th birthday, I kind of looked at my life and I looked around this beautiful house that I owned at 26 and the money that I had had made and all of the things, all of the boxes that I had checked that I thought were gonna make me happy and I felt alone. I felt empty. And I didn’t know what if I were to have been the one to, to have died genuinely like would I have left behind?
TG (06:39):
Would anybody care? Like, did I make an impact? Did I, did I have a powerful influence on people in a positive way? And obviously my, my mother and sister did in so many ways, not just on my life, but so many other people. And it put, set me on this path of really trying to figure out what my legacy would be. What did I wanna be remembered for and how did I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. And so that required me to do a lot of personal healing and get to know myself in a whole new way and give myself permission to do things I’d never done before. And so my journey really started from a selfish place of, of really trying to, to figure out my life path and purpose and what I needed. And it, it began with starting a podcast just to talk about the things that I was learning personally in my journey and that evolved very quickly. I actually got a call from my corporate boss and her boss right after I launched my podcast back in 2019 saying the first thing they said was we saw that you launched a podcast and were disappointed.
RV (07:45):
Really.
TG (07:46):
Yeah. And they told me, you know, we, this looks like it takes a lot of time. How do we know you’re not, you know, doing this on the side, we want you to be fully committed to this company and nothing else. And it was very clear that they hadn’t listened to the show because they had no idea what I was talking about on it. And they made a lot of accusations. And so it was clear then I think my life started to open up this natural path of saying, if, if you really want to pursue this, you’re gonna have to have a deep commitment and current to do something new, but you need to learn how to trust yourself. And so after that conversation, I put in my two weeks notice and I started on this entrepreneurial journey that I’ve been doing the last two and a half years, but had no idea was one of those jump out of the plane and build the parachute on the way down kind of thing. Wow.
RV (08:37):
I mean, so I, I wanted to share that story for so many reasons cuz it’s just, it’s such a powerful story. And there’s, I think when people think of like, you know, oh, TikTok or they’re a talker, you know, it’s easy to go, oh, it’s somebody who, you know, just wants fame or just, just, you know, waste their life away in video. Or like we have all these really stupid preconceived notions of like what that means. And we, I think specifically for brand builders and our community of mission driven messengers, I mean obviously we of the things that we say all the time is you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, your story is such a beautiful, one of going, you’re just using the tools of the day to help people walk through pain that you have already experienced. And I think it’s really important for people to catch that it’s like, it’s not vanity it’s, it’s not, it’s not even entertainment. It is. You’re, you’re just using a vehicle to reach a lot of people to, to try to help those who are going through something like what you’ve been through. I mean, to lose your mom and your, and have a, a tornado that magnitude all within a few years. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s, that’s crazy Tory.
TG (10:03):
Yeah, it was a lot. And I didn’t, you know, mention the three grandparents and the uncle and all the other people who passed in that time. So there was a lot that was going on. And, and to your point, I think a lot of people do we have these, these ideas in our head about what it means to be on social media. It’s funny. I was having a conversation in a discord channel the other day with a venture capitalist who was asking me about TikTok. And I was saying it would be an amazing opportunity for him to, to get global exposure and just to become kind of known as an expert in his space. Even if you’re not, you’re not selling, you know, your services on, on the platform, you’re just letting people know who you are. And it’s funny that no matter where people are in their journey, there’s all of these ideas that people have about, oh, people would think of me, what he said is people immediately think I’m phony.
TG (10:59):
People would think what he is really saying is people would judge me and I’m afraid of that. And the other piece is how many of us don’t think our, our ideal client is out there. And for me it was really, you know, before I was even thinking about selling to an audience or converting people that watch my content into clients or anything like that, it was just, I have a story and a message that I feel like can help somebody. And if I had had somebody, there were people in my life that I listened to that really encouraged me to, to do the work on myself that I needed at the time. And my, my goal was just to be a voice, you know, that would encourage people to to live a life that they were proud of and to, to stop avoiding things that they were, they were trying to run from.
TG (11:52):
And I think, yeah, practically, it’s just a, a smart strategic move because there’s millions upon millions upon millions of people that are on this platform. And the funny thing is when I got on TikTok, it wasn’t really strategic. It TikTok actually reached out to me and they said, Hey, it was in the middle of the pandemic. It was traditionally known as a young kid’s platform with that. A lot of kids were on dancing and doing trends like that. And they noticed a need in the market that there are so many people that are at home that can’t go anywhere and we wanna educate and inspire people through our platform. So can we bring content creators to create educat inspirational content across all these different industries? And I was one of ’em and then I just, for the first 30 to 40 videos was completely doing something I’d never done before, but it, there was this huge permission slip there because no one I knew was on TikTok at the time. So I just was doing something that was a little bit new and I a little bit fresh and ultimately resonated with people. Mm-Hmm
RV (12:59):
so, so let’s do talk about TikTok a a a, a little bit in terms of why do you think you grew so quickly? What can people learn from that? What do they need to know about it? I mean, obviously, yeah. I mean that, it started as a dance thing that there it’s, it’s still very dance driven. Mm-Hmm there. Music is still very musically driven in, in a lot of cases. And so one of the reasons that I love highlighting your story is you, you don’t do anything close to that. You, your, your videos are moving and profound and deep. Like they, they are, they are, I mean, you’re talking about deep issues to trauma and mental health and like these, these kinds of things. And so, you know, you, your, your profile is evidence of proof that it doesn’t have to be a certain type of content. Right. yet I know that you’ve also put a lot of thought and work into it and probably made a mistake here and there. So can you just like walk us through that a little bit?
TG (14:03):
Yeah. I think definitely early on, I was trying to figure out what my voice was gonna be on this platform, because the thing about TikTok, if you’re coming from Instagram or any other social media platform TikTok at the time, really required me to think differently about how I was gonna share my message. And what I knew was my sweet spot was, was really just talking authentically to the camera. And so I started doing that like on my daily walks during COVID, I would have no makeup on, and I would just like be telling, you know, sharing a, a snippet of, of my day or something that you know, had just listened to in a podcast or something that inspired me. And I think the thing about TikTok is it feels really relatable and raw and real, the it’s built in such a way that you can create content on the fly and really document your real life, as opposed to what we had been traditionally kind of conditioned into, which is perfect feeds and perfect photos.
TG (15:03):
And this highlight real. So people were really hungry for authenticity and, and something that genuine. And so regardless of, of the type of content, I think the thing that helped me was just pulling, allowing myself to like put down any mask I wore on any other platform and just show up as me. The thing that really, really does well with, with audiences on TikTok is feeling like they know the person that they’re watching that you’re part of their life, or you’re part of this journey that they’re going on. And, and just telling a story is of one way to really engage an audience and take them on, you know, that journey. But yeah, we talk about deep topics and, and the thing that I’ve realized is that trauma doesn’t discriminate. You know, everybody has experienced something hard in their life and they’re all seasons that, that we need support in and can relate to.
TG (16:07):
And that’s the kind of content that moves people. It’s either funny, it’s emotional in some way, whether it, it causes you to laugh or to cry or to, to feel something think about all the, the videos you’ve seen of dogs or, or the, you know, pet of the week. And it just like makes you wanna cry. But I just talk about, you know, personal stories. And I, that’s what I encourage other people to do is let people get to know you on a deeper level that they might not see on other platforms.
RV (16:39):
So I, I have that question for you. So clearly that has been your strategy on TikTok. That’s worked really, really well for you. The, you know, and, and if y’all, don’t already follow her, if you don’t know. So if you it’s coach, coach Tory, Gordon is her TikTok handle. You’ve got videos of you crying and on camera and stuff. So do you think that other, do you think that that approach doesn’t work on other platforms? You know, just kind of like the raw authenticity thing, do you think it just especially works on TikTok? Do you think that other platforms are migrating that way now, or they’re not did it, did it really just work cuz you were early to the platform mm-hmm like, do you know just like I guess subjectively what’s your sense of that?
TG (17:34):
Well, I’d say since Instagram has rolled out reels a lot of the, the things that you see do really well on TikTok are starting to do well on Instagram several months later. So I think there’s part, I don’t think it’s necessarily only on TikTok, but for those who’ve been on Instagram for a really long time, there has been a way that we’ve been conditioning used to seeing feeds and content there. So TikTok was for me, the first platform that kind of was this permission slip to be more vulnerable on social media. But I think that’s the way it’s trending in general, across platforms. People want realness. They want to see that they’re, we’re tired of that kind of fabricated airbrushed look all the time. And I think that showing up on Instagram different ways, whether it’s through video content or through other types of posts, but ultimately when, what I’ve experienced in trying to build a personal brand is people want to know you and TikTok makes it super easy to just post you can post a large quantity of content so that people can get to know you quickly as opposed to feeling like I can only post one post a day on Instagram.
TG (18:57):
Right? it it’s sort of like taking your Instagram stories and actually posting it. So it doesn’t go away after 24 hours. So those little snippets into your life that you might post on your, your story, people actually can go back and kind of track your history and see the things that you’ve done or the things that you’ve talked about. And, and there gets to be kind of this, this theme of what is this person’s content about? Is it, am I gonna go there and I’m gonna learn something, am I gonna go there gonna be entertained? Am I gonna go there? And I’m gonna be inspired. Am I gonna laugh? And people start to, to go to your profile cuz they’re looking for a certain type of content. And so the thing I love about TikTok is very quickly O the audience will tell you the, the kind of content that they wanna see more of. That’s just how the algorithm is built. There is so that anybody starting out, even if you have zero followers, you can get organic reach and the TikTok audience will tell you if they like it. And then you can do more create more of, of that kind of content, which is invaluable feedback to get
RV (20:14):
Mm-Hmm . And so the do you think that, like, in terms of the mechanics of the platform, the way the videos are edited, the, you know, like you’re talking a lot about the kind of content and sort of the overall feel mm-hmm in terms of the mechanics of what, you know, functions you need to be using, are there certain things that you would recommend for that? Or is it really just about posting consistently staying, you know, kind of like on a topic, let people see you and, and that, or is, is there also some technical things or strategic things that you go actually, like if you’re gonna do it, here’s some things about how you wanna do it. Mm-Hmm functionally speaking.
TG (21:03):
Yeah. Definitely record in the app. That’s make it native to the platform. It’s a something that they really, really like when it comes to the algorithm, they they’ve built the platform in such a way that it’s easy to record right there in the TikTok app, as opposed to recording you know, with your HD camera and then uploading it. And having this perfectly curated video. It’s, it’s almost better if it’s not a lot of my content has been terribly lit, you know, when I’m walking my dog in the middle of the night or sitting in my car before going to meet a girlfriend for dinner, and it’s just like, I just whipped out my phone and I press record record, and I just started talking. So I wouldn’t over it’s it doesn’t need to be overproduced. The other thing I’ll say practically is, is definitely use the, the text overlay feature because the TikTok algorithm picks up on the text.
TG (22:02):
That’s written through the app and those key words show up show the algorithm who to show that piece of content to. So that’s really helpful. So if you have keywords such as success or motivation or mental health or anxiety that that’s gonna dictate kind of who gets to see your piece of content first, and if they like it and they watch it for a significant amount of time, that population gonna grow getting people’s attention early is another thing. So just practically doing something that kind of hooks people in. And, and this is something that’s talked about on a lot of PR platforms, but especially on TikTok, if you’re just a user of the platform, you’re gonna start to notice the types of that really gets your attention. There’s something that happens in the first couple seconds that makes you intrigued. And that can even just be a shift of, of the camera, like the camera angle that you have or a sound that you make.
TG (23:05):
So using the, the video, like for feature within the app, using the text overlay and using keywords and now I think actually it’s becoming sort of SEO driven and keyword driven. So it’s actually, your videos will show up in Google if you search for certain keywords. So it’s similar to what YouTube has done. When you’re thinking about titles or, or kind of click baby word choices, that’s gonna help people to, to click on your your content. So that’s one thing you can be thinking about, but ultimately I say people really like to be taken on a journey. So if you’re thinking about the type of content, think about either something you can teach or steps to a process something like that even, and it can be around just anything and everything. Whether it’s, Hey here, 10, 10 best things to do on a date or the 10 things you don’t wanna do on a date that can be 10 pieces of content right there, and people will come back for more. Do
RV (24:16):
You, how long does it take you to make a TikTok video?
TG (24:20):
I, the be the shorter, the better traditionally so around, I would say five minutes if you’re editing and everything that I would tell people to do 15 seconds or less, less for a TikTok, if you’re just getting started. But there’s a three minute feature now and I sometimes use that and those have done extremely well, two but ultimately I don’t overproduce my content. I really I try to make it as raw as possible because that’s kind of my, my thing and how people know me, the more edited, the more transitions there are. It actually just doesn’t do as well with my audience. They, they know me for just sitting there and talking to the camera spilling my heart out and then you know, letting that be that be it, I don’t really overthink it when I, oh, it comes to producing the content itself.
RV (25:22):
How do you make money from this? Okay. So this, that, this is a question I think that people have, right? Like you know, you start doing this, you’re incorporating it into your rhythm, even if it only takes five minutes. And of course, when you’re first learning how to use the app, like, what are all the buttons do? It’s there’s, you know, learning curve. Sure. The it’s a lot of time, there’s some risk. I mean, you’re putting yourself out there. I mean, I think to the, to, to the fear of to, to the fear of you know, that VC, that person that you were talking about earlier being judged, I think you will be judged. I mean, you will have haters. Like you will have some people who, who show up, but like, so you, you do all of this. How does it turn into money? So talk to us about that.
TG (26:11):
There’s several ways. One is just creating content on the platform. Once you have reached, I believe it’s still 10,000 followers. You can join the creators fund, which will pay you based on the number of views that you get. And you just get paid simply for creating content that gets viewed. That’s one way you can also
RV (26:39):
That’s really cool by the way, cuz that no one else has none of the other platforms have that. I don’t think of just like mm-hmm we just pay you money based on views alone without an ad running on your video or something. Yep.
TG (26:52):
So that’s and that’s available for any and everybody. So that’s one super easy way. The second is if you have a thousand followers, you can start to use their go live feature. That’s one of the best ways to create a real community, having some kind of cadence and consistency around going live so that you’re really building relationships with people and on your lives, people can pay you so they can pay you through coins. They can tip you just on your videos, on your channel in general, there is an option to add tips. And so people will just, if they like your content, they’ll, it’s basically like being able to support an artist or something that you like, but you can support a creator through tips. So
RV (27:37):
It’s like a band, like a band playing at a bar or something and you just like drop the money into the tip chart.
TG (27:44):
Yep. And it will interesting surprise you the other day. I just actually added that feature and I never thought, you know, anybody would, would do it. And then I looked the other day, somebody had tipped me a hundred dollars and I was like, wow, that’s so amazing. So I really felt compelled to reach out to that person and start a relationship with that person. Just thank them for their generosity. But you’ll be surprised. You know, I think especially as content creators, we forget how much of an impact we really do make on people and how one piece of content can be the thing that inspires someone to quit a job or leave a relationship or start a business or ask for help or whatever it it is. And people feel indebted to you when, when you’ve been kind of that voice, that, that was guiding them in a time that they really needed it and they want to give back and they want to say, thank you in the ways that they can.
TG (28:39):
So whether that’s through lives or tips that’s one way that you can monetize it. Then as you grow, there are so many brands that want to collaborate with content creators on TikTok. It really is. Video is the next, the next thing that’s, that’s really being pushed on social media. We moved from, from photos to, to video and now into whatever the metaverse will be in the future . But right now TikTok is, is the best place for, for small businesses to really grow their audience and their business, but also bigger brands to, to connect and collaborate with, with content creators. So there’s lots of ways you can monetize as a person or as a small business. Just by promoting and talking about your product. If you are a small business, I’ve seen so many people just completely blow up to the point that they can’t fill orders because they started to share about the story behind their business, why they started it, you know, the, the struggles that they were facing, the process of, of creating something as unique as, you know, glass blown ornaments or, or metal work or just whatever your uniqueness is, you get to really show that off and people wanna support what, the types of content that they, they enjoy watching.
RV (30:11):
I love that. That’s, I mean, that’s simple, but that’s, that’s, that’s a lot of different things. I mean, you’ve got the creator fund, you have the tip function, you’ve brand deals, and then you have basically just driving your audience to buy your thing, which is kind of the world that we live in mm-hmm at brand builders group is going like build an audience, add value, develop trust, and then show ’em how you can go to the next level. Right. The to that point. So just real quick, how did you find brand builders group? Like how did you find us? Why did you reach out to us? Like tell us a little bit about that, about that journey?
TG (30:51):
Yeah, well, like, like I said there are people in our lives that kind of point the way and show us, I always look to people who are, are doing the thing I wanted be doing. And as many listeners of the show know like Lewis houses is probably one of those people for many of us who we’ve watched and admired and, and listened to. And I remember hearing you on Lewis’s show and seeing all the things that he has built. I, I wanted to work with somebody who could guide me in terms of all of these opportunities. I was kind of naturally getting anyway. I didn’t know where to focus my attention or my time or my energy. And it had felt like in, in a year and a half or two years of doing this, I had been piece it all together and trying to hire somebody for, you know, a website and hire a branding person and hire somebody to help me with ads or whatever it was.
TG (31:55):
And what I really needed was a mentor. What I really needed was somebody who could, who had done it before and then could provide me with the advice and the, the guidance and the, the network that I needed. And when I heard Lewis talk about it, obviously, I, I checked you guys out, got on a call and it was an immediate yes, for me. I didn’t know any other business model or company like brand builders existed before. And I really don’t think that there are many out there that do that, do it at the level that you guys do it. But it was one of those things. I was like, how quickly can I get involved and start to, to get in be part of this community, because I could see the, the value in it from the start. And it’s only allowed me to accelerate the growth that, that I’d already built up into that point and see a longer term vision for how is this gonna be sustainable over time?
RV (32:59):
Yeah. I love that cuz I think that’s one of the, you know, some people we work with are like brand new in their journey and it’s like, help me get clear on all this. Somebody like Lewis is obviously way far down the path and it’s more of like help me sort out my options. But I think with everybody, we’re always trying to play that long game and go like, how do you make this substantive? Not just viral or, you know, a flash, but like a true sustainable career. You know, when meeting people like you and hearing your story is just, it’s like you, you should be, I mean, there’s such a need for, for what you’re doing. And it’s been, I think, you know, aging, a heart and, and, and mine in our teams like has been the first couple years of brand builders group, I think have been a lot about the, the curriculum.
RV (33:48):
You know, we’re just trying to formalize, like you’re saying like how have we built what we’ve built and helped the people that we have and like turning it into a process that I think the next generation of brand builders is really about . And it, I love when I was chatting with you just before we started. And you’re like, I just saw Hillary and I just saw Anton and like I was trying to connect with you. I was like, I missed you when I was in Atlanta. But like I think that that is potentially, you know, gonna be a big, you know, really where the power is going, going forward. So I think it’s awesome that you’re humble enough to wanna be a part of that. And then to see you reaching out to people, Tori, and like building relationships with the other members has been, has been awesome.
TG (34:32):
Yeah. I mean, when I think about investing now, as opposed to when I was initially investing in coaches or, or mentors or programs early on on the motivation has definitely shifted a bit. Now, obviously I care about the curriculum, but I really care about the people that are in, in the community. Who am I networking with? Who, who can I learn from? Who can I support and how can I collaborate with them? That’s really so much value that you guys bring on top of everything else that you teach is just attracting really powerful purpose driven leaders together. And that when you get people like that together, there’s just synergy. And so many idea is that, that form and how can we do this? And and that’s really exciting for me because as a entrepreneur that has built an online business, it can feel super isolating. And like you’re the only one. And you only get to connect with people, you know, via the internet. And that’s great. And sometimes you, you wanna go deeper and that’s what we get to get to do and what I’ve, I’ve had the opportunity to do with other brand builders, which has been really amazing. I love
RV (35:51):
That. Yeah, that’s that, that fill just fills me up and you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gotten no doubt. Like, you know, if I could buy stock in somebody, I would buy stock in Tory Gordon, because it’s just like the trajectory of where you’re going and, and the people that you’re hanging out with inside our community. It’s like, you, you can, you quickly spot the ones who are willing to do the work and willing to spend the time and get to know each other, speaking of the future, just while I have you. I do wanna, I know we got way over time, but, but you mentioned the metaverse, this is something I’ve started paying attention to a little bit. You know, I was late to the game with Facebook. Definitely missed the boat on Instagram, missed the boat on TikTok. Podcasting was the one thing that I kind of caught the wave early, but then we ended up selling the podcast when we sold the company.
RV (36:39):
And so that disappeared, you know? And so mm-hmm, , we haven’t been in position to kind of catch a wave in a while. And one of the things I’m starting to look at is the metaverse and as much as I’m like, oh, I don’t know if I like this. I don’t, I don’t know if I understand it. I can’t help, but go. I feel like this might be something we need to pay attention to less. We missed the boat again. And so just mm-hmm because you’ve been riding that wave out there. Yeah. Like what do you have any thoughts on what’s ahead and what you think’s coming like a little bit about that?
TG (37:14):
Like you, I have my, my hesitations and my fears around what, what the future holds, but I am also, I have learned to follow where the young people go and I’m not I’m I know I’m still young, but the, the kids are kind of on that cusp of what’s coming and what’s new and it’s, they it’s to crypto and it’s the metaverse and it’s NFTs. And I actually heard an interview that you did with, I think Tom bile talking about NFTs on success of successes page on Instagram. And that kind of got my, my wheels turning. And so I started to do my research and we just invested in our first NFT. And metaverse project over the weekend. I’m really excited about because the truth is I, I do think that’s where we are headed. And like you said, it it’s about getting in early and really adopting the, the technology and just accepting that this is kind of where the future is headed.
TG (38:20):
That the sooner I can accept that and get on board with it, the sooner I can also help to shape it and what that’s gonna look like. And so if we’re gonna be, you know, meeting virtually in the future, then that means I can help to create a safe space for people to do that and to, to connect and engage in a way that is nourishing and is supportive. And that, that’s the things that really excite me is being part of something that’s being built so that I, I can have a hand in part of that conversation. And, and what, what does that look like in the future? And typically in my experience, the, the kids are the ones that are leading the charge on that. And so I’m gonna kind of keep my eye out for where they’re headed and what they’re, what they’re into and do my research. Like everybody else. We, none of us really know, but I’m, I’m learning along with everybody. Just like you
RV (39:21):
Love it. I love it. Well, Tori, that is that’s enlightening and, and just yeah, I mean, that’s how I feel. It’s like, I, I used just for so long, I’ve been, I was always the youngest, the young guy, the young kid, the youngest one in the room and, and, and I look back and go, wow, I’m not that guy anymore. And pretty soon I’m gonna start being the old guy and the oldest person in the room. And and so I just admire how you’re learning and growing and just like, even what you’re saying, looking to the, looking to the young people. And yeah. So thank you for, thank you for your trust. Thanks for the chance of, of an, the opportunity for letting us shape, you know, some of the direction of what you’re up to. We know it’s gonna be huge, huge, even huge than it is . And you know, where do you want people to go to connect with you if they wanna like follow you and say in touch with you and see what you’re up to? Yeah.
TG (40:14):
I’d love to connect with you guys. I’m on social Instagram, TikTok I’m coach Tory Gordon. You can also go to my website, Tory gordon.com. Find out all about me. And we’d love to give you guys access. We’ve been talking about a lot about success and how to get there, but one of the things I really teach a lot about is, is how to make that sustainable long term. And so I’ve got a free training if you guys are in should you can grab that on my site and we’ll, I’m sure we’ll put it in the show notes or something, so you can guys can get access, but to gordon.com is the best way to learn more.
RV (40:48):
I love it. Yeah, we will. We’ll link up. We’ll link up to all of that. We’ll be following you on the TikTok. And maybe looking out for you in the metaverse here at some point hopefully seeing you at a brain builders group event live, we, we got about half our events live in person next year, so that’s good. And we just, no matter what, we’re just know, we’re, we’re, we’re polling for you and praying for you and wish you the best. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Thanks
TG (41:13):
For having me, Rory