BRANDING Archives - Page 7 of 17 - Brand Builders Group

Ep 243: Building Million Dollar Membership Sites with Alison Lumbatis | Recap Episode

RV (00:01):
Let’s talk about how to build million dollar membership sites. What an interview, Allison Lobas. She was dropping so much bombs, like so many nuggets, so much inspiration, so much tactical information, empirical information about how she has built this seven figure business. And I just feel lucky to have her as a friend and, you know, proud to call her a client. And I just, this lady’s amazing. She’s awesome. And it’s funny, cuz I remember very specifically the first time I met her she impressed me from the moment I saw her. I was like she’s she’s got the gift and uman, just to see what she is doing and uhow she’s growing. She’s awesome. So,uwelcome to the recap edition, influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory vaden breaking down that interview and you know, normally I share like my top three highlights. UI had to, I couldn’t boil it down to less than four. I had, I had so many,uand I, I got four here for you that are just the things that really stuck out to me that I hope stick out to you. And uthe first one is, man, this is so, so flagship like, so cornerstone, so foundational of what we believe at brand builders. And to hear her say these words verbatim, she said it all started because I created the program that I needed at the time.
RV (01:40):
Bam like that is it. If, if you’ve been around here at all, you’ve heard to say this over and over again, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. There is no other avatar in the world that you will understand in a more intimate way than the person that you once were. You are equipped, you are designed, you are prepared, you are educated. You, you, you are, are, are mission driven to serve that person. And to hear her just say that like, so clearly she’s just going. I tried to solve this problem in my own life. And then, you know, I realize other people had this problem. And so I look back and I created something for that. That’s it like that’s that is the shortest path to uniqueness. That’s the fastest way to momentum. Like that’s the, the clearest line to the distinction that is available for a personal brand.
RV (02:41):
And just, you know, to see her doing it and, and all the community that has it has become and people around it. And then her recent book launch and all that, that we, you know, we were excited to be a part of. I mean, it’s just awesome. Just awesome. So who, who were you, right? Like when you’re trying to, when you’re creating your plans for the future and for your business and your personal brand and your content, you go, who was I, what was I struggling with? What did I need that didn’t exist? Or I couldn’t find at the time, what do I know now that I wish I knew then and make that available to people that that’s gonna be visceral going to be real. It’s going to be emotional, compelling. It’s gonna have connection and power and it’s gonna be profound because you’ve been there and you have locked a mile in those shoes, speak to that person, right.
RV (03:33):
Speak to that person. And you’ll, you’ll go far. And Allison great example of this number or two. Okay. Number two, takeaway. So simple. She said in between launches, we were working aggressively on capturing leads and building our newsletter list, right? So she was saying our newsletter list converts at about 10%, just from a, a weekly newsletter, the it she sends. And the, she said, we run a lot of Facebook ads to our freebies. It doesn’t get more simple than that. It doesn’t get like easier than that. It more straightforward than that. And if you’ve been through our relationship engine training, tho those of you that are members of ours, when we take you through the relationship engine, we, we teach you the architecture, the, the infrastructure of a funnel, you know, it starts with something free. Like that’s the lead magnet is what can you give value?
RV (04:31):
How can you give value first, save the best for first? What can you give away for free teach the best of what, you know, package it up in something that is small and concise. The, that is a major quick win and, and deliver the goods right up front. Those become your lead magnets. And then she runs ad to those lead magnets and people download them. And to this day, this is what we do go on brand builders, group.com. And look, you’re gonna see that we are pushing our, our trends and personal branding, national re search study. We spent tens of thousands of dollars on that. Like it, it’s, it’s a beautiful lead magnet. It took us a year to develop over a year, all in to like plan it and put the whole thing together. We give it away for free. And it is this incredibly, it’s just this packed.
RV (05:18):
You know, it’s a PDF though. Like it’s a PDF document. People can scroll the thing in five minutes. And, and now we go out and we do media interviews and we drive people to that and we run YouTube Ads and we drive people to that and we do press releases and, and we drive people to that. It’s the same, same thing, right? She’s doing the same thing. Brandon Bouchard does the same thing. Like it mean, go down, pick your list, pick your influencer. This is how it, it works. And it doesn’t have to be new. The part that makes it special is it’s your stuff. And it’s, it’s whatever you would do and who you would, who, who you would provide that for. So you know, it’s that simple, like drive people to down a freebie, get them on your newsletter list, talk to them once a week and then tell them when you have something available to buy, like you’re building trust, build value, build relationships before you need them.
RV (06:12):
Like that is what you have to do, build relationships before you need them. We talk about out this in pressure, free persuasion with your list. It’s the same thing you have to give value first. And then they will trust you. And then when you have something they’re there, they’re sitting there ready to buy what, whatever your thing is number three, and this was really big for me hearing what she was saying. This is, I think an area of learning for my, myself. This is somewhere where I go, Ooh, I’ve, I’ve missed the boat here. AJ is super passionate about, about this. And, and so she’s moving the company in this direction, thankfully, because this is huge. And it was very edifying when Allison was talking about it is she said, build the community around the program. Know it’s more than just the clothes, right?
RV (07:00):
So, you know, she’s selling outfit formulas, and that’s what her, you know, her membership is all about. And she’s like selling clothes and helping people helping women specifically figure out what to wear. Like that’s the problem that she’s solving, but the, the power becomes the community, the community around found the program. And, you know, ultimately the knowledge is replaceable. You know, or at least kind of has like an expiration date just from the standpoint of like, look, if someone’s in your membership, like look at our, our brand builders, right? So if you’re a member, if you sign up for our, our flagship coaching, like, you know, main coaching program pro quarterly, we immediately give you access to everything to the, to the whole curriculum. Like from day one, you can go through everything as fast as you, as fast as you can consume it.
RV (07:49):
Well, once you’ve learned it, you know, it’s kind of like, well, what’s the reason to pay? Well, you know, there’s a couple things there. It’s like another thing that we talk about all the time, people don’t pay for information, they pay for organization and application, people pay for organization and application. So, you know, they need the information and then they need help applying it. And then, but then the thing that like you can, you never break free of is community. You it’s the communities, the people you’re around our brand builders members are freaking amazing. I mean, Allison is one of our clients. She’s one of the members, right? Like she’s the kind of person that comes to our events and you sit next to her. And then, you know, we’ve got lovey Ajai Jones and she comes to the events and she’s a multi New York times bestselling author, and she’s got a viral Ted talk and we have two, we have two billionaires become clients.
RV (08:40):
This last year. We got, you know, people who are time magazine person of the year, we’ve got lots of 10 millionaires and a hundred millionaires. You know, all these people with millions of followers and hundreds of millions of video views. I mean, our community is insane. Actresses actors like major famous like TV actors, musicians. I mean the brand builders group community is just nuts. You know, we’ve had several clients on the podcast, you know, so you’ve gotten to, to learn from some of them, but the point there is going, you know, from my perspective, and we still started brand builders group. And like, you know, here comes RO like thinking about, you know, content and information and my like nerdy brain, I’m going, we gotta create the world’s greatest curriculum. Right. And, and I think that’s what we did or one of the world’s greatest curriculums.
RV (09:29):
I, I definitely feel confident saying that our content is incredible. And yet the content is like, probably the biggest complaint that we hear from people is like, it’s so much, like there’s so much here. And it’s like, yeah, you know, it, it’s, there’s a lot to learn. It’s a, it’s a college degree that we give people. I mean, legitimately it takes four years for most people to complete the, the full training, like of all of our program. But, but people aren’t staying for the content. They come, maybe for the content, they learn the content, they come for coaching. They, you know, they get the training, they, they, but what they’re really staying for years and years now that have gone by we’re in year four already, holy buckets, we’re in year four already. It’s for the community, it’s for the relationships it’s for the people they’re meeting and the business deals they’re doing and the, you know, the friendships they’re forming and the, the stuff they’re doing outside, but they’re meeting them at our events.
RV (10:25):
And that’s exactly what Allison was saying. And, you know, she obviously saw the light on that much earlier than I did of for our community. But what for your community? How can you, how you facilitate your community coming together without you? One of the features that we just rolled out in our member portal is is an example, just an example of this. So we created this technology in our portal where every member registers themself and there’s a map. And when it shows a pin on a map for where you live, and then you can click on the other pins that are close to you, or if you’re traveling like wherever you’re going so that you can see who the other brand builders are like, where are the other members of the community? I’m so jacked about it, even for me, because I, you know, at this point we have, we have over 500 clients.
RV (11:15):
So like, you know, I’m, I don’t know all of ’em anymore by by name. I know a lot of ’em, but like when I go traveling, I can like see them and meet them and, and you know, get them together and, and they’ll get together. And I just, I’m excited about that. And that’s what Allison is talking about is going, that’s not like a nice to do long term that like becomes the core, like it, the, the, the, the unbreakable bond. And I think you, you move from that role of being like, okay, I’m a teacher to, to more of just like, you know, I’m the, I’m just hosting a, whatever I’m hosting a Bible study, or I’m hosting an event, or I’m, you know, I’m, I’m just, I’m just the, the, the, the gathering spot for people to come to. So that was huge for me.
RV (12:02):
And again, our team and AJ they’ve been working in that direction, which I’m just, I’m just pumped about, cuz our community is incredible. So how can you do that for your community? How can you bring them together? Was huge. And then the fourth thing, which was just another takeaway, which is another thing that I go, this is just such a good reminder. Here’s what she said. She said, my philosophy has always been about continually investing into myself on entrepreneurship really is personal development. I mean, direct sales really is personal development. Professional services really is personal development. Any type of leadership really is personal development. Like that is the job like, and that’s what you’re supposed to do. And it boggles my mind, like literally blows me away. How you know, yeah. AJ and I are junkies about, I mean, we go to the conferences, we go to the groups, we go to the events and I always kind of would assume that it’s like, the person who’s struggling is the person who should be the person who should be in that room.
RV (13:07):
The most is the person who’s struggling the most, right? Like the person who needs the most help, the person who is not making enough money and they need help. And they need someone to coach them and show them what to do. But ironically, that’s never, who’s in the room. The people who are in the room or people like Allison is the people who are crushing it, they’re killing it. It’s like the last people who really need to be, there are always the ones that are the first to sign and they’re on the front row, you know, at the event, they’re the first in, inside the mastermind. They’re, they’re the, the first to buy the book and read it. And that’s why they are crushing. It is because they’re the person doing that. And it, it just took me years to realize that. And, oh my gosh, like Allison is such a bad mam jam.
RV (13:54):
I mean, like you, you heard her story, like what a bad ma pajama this woman is. And her and her team, you know, like always nobody does it alone, but she’s a bad ma pajama. And yet she’s signing up for coaching from us. And from, you know, I met her at an, I met her at another mastermind, like she’s investing into herself and that is why she’s winning. It’s one of the biggest reasons why she’s winning and, and not just investing in herself, but like FA executing, executing. There were actually two parts in the interview. I really, really love. So I love when she said she said we had cold leads in our email list who suddenly started up again for our stuff because of the 15 PS. Now, if you’re not one of our, our members yet you may not have picked up on that.
RV (14:45):
And what are the 15 PS? The 15 PS is our framework that we teach for how to write, how to write sales copy, like on a sales page. So what she was saying there is she has all these old leads that were cold. And, you know, she always, you know, does a broadcast, sends people to a page to sign up? Well, when she came through the training and ha had her team redo the sales page with the 15 piece, all of these old people started signing up that had never signed up. And that was her saying, I learned something. I executed on it and it worked well, of course it works. That’s why we teach it. It, we teach what we do. We teach what our clients do, like what we have learned. So of course it works. The question is, number one, will you learn it?
RV (15:34):
And number two, will you do it? And, and so you gotta be willing to invest in yourself and then you gotta be willing to execute on the thing that you learn. And so she said that, and then she said another one, right after that, she said I followed every single step of the brand builder’s bestseller launch plan. And it worked right. Like she sold thousands of copies of her book on opening week. And she followed a formula. It’s, it’s a formula that we’ve learned. It’s a formula that we teach. It’s a formula that we do. I mean, go back and listen to the like, you know, so that’s part of our curriculum bestseller launch plan. But if you go if you go watch our influential personal brand summit or if you listen to the interview that I did with Gretchen Rubin, Gretchen Rubin talks about how she built her email list and doing lead magnets, right?
RV (16:23):
Allison talks about that. If you, if you go listen to John Gordon, they interview that I did with John Gordon and he talks about how he built a speaking career, going out and speak for free. Like, I, these are all things that, that we teach a formal part of our curriculum, but it’s like, until you hear one of these legends tell you, that’s how they did it. And that’s how they started you. You kind of think there’s some secret maybe that you’re, that you’re missing or you know, that, that, that it, it is like, there’s gotta be more to it than that. And it it’s like, there’s not, it’s just a matter of knowing it and, and executing it. But part of that is being humble enough to go, gosh, I got something to learn. Like I need some, I need to learn from someone who’s done this.
RV (17:05):
I need to learn from somebody who has already accomplished the thing that I’m trying to do. And and, and even, and go, like, in the case of someone like Allison, she’s already crushing it going, yeah, I wanna keep learning. I wanna keep up level, even though I’m, I’m already doing great. And that inspires me. I, I love that. Like that makes me so fired up. And, and, and so many of, of my friends who I’ve kind of grown up in the industry, I they’re the same way. I mean, John, John ACU reads a bunch of books, Lewis house is interviewing all these people like I mean, there’s I mean, Jason Dorsey does all of this research. I mean, so many of my friends are in a, in a mode where they’re constantly learning, are you right? Are you learning? Are you, are you doing it?
RV (17:54):
Are you humble enough to say, you know what, I wanna get help. I wanna get coaching. I’m, I’m willing to take, take a chance to invest in myself and then I’m gonna execute. And if you think we can help you, man, like if you’re trying to do anything around building your personal brand, your speaking career, podcasting, you know, information products, social media, launching courses, membership sites or just using digital marketing to drive awareness for whatever your, your practice is or your, you know, your service based business. Like we can help you. We know a lot this and, and you should, you should go request a call, go to, go to go to free call dot R vain.com free call dot Roy vain.com. Lemme make sure that’s live. I haven’t checked that in a minute. Go to check that out and and request a call with our team and let’s see for, we can help you, but whether it’s us or somebody else, you know, it’s just inspiring to hear people like Allison going, this is how I got there.
RV (18:58):
This is what I do. I, I believe in personal development and I practice it. So you should too. And you know, if nothing else keep coming back to the podcast, right? Like we do this for free. I’m learning a ton. I hope you’re learning a ton. We’re, we’re, we’re trying to give you the goods and, and teach you the best of what our, our friends in our community have to offer. And so, you know, I’m preaching to the choir there a little bit since you’re already here tuning in and listening, but if you haven’t yet taking it to the next level, come with us, right. Like go back and listen. I mean, we have had a bunch of brand builders group clients on, on here, go back and listen to Darcy, Ben and Koa about how she sells her courses, listen to lovey Aja E listen to Louis hows.
RV (19:46):
Like, you know, we’ve had a bunch of clients that have come on here and they’re amazing people. And they’re, these are the people that are hanging around. So if you wanna be like those people you know, you become who your friends are. We’d love to hang out with you. We’d love to have you part of the community. So go to go to free call dot Roy vaden.com. You can request a free call with our team. And let’s talk. Other than that, I hope you’re inspired to just invest in your personal development, that you are willing to create a community around the thing that you’re doing and realize that the community is inherently as valuable as anything else. Especially, and at least as much as the content, building your list, building your new, you know, communicating to your list with a newsletter. And then most of all create the program, create the content that you needed back then your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. We’re here to
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Serve you. Thank you for that opportunity and privilege. We love you. Leave us a review if you can, on iTunes, if you haven’t done that yet, share this podcast with somebody and just keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 242: Building Million Dollar Membership Sites with Alison Lumbatis

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, you know, there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/podcast, brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Well, I am honored to introduce you to a friend of mine and AJ’s Allison. Lumbatis, who we have now known for a few years. And I remember meeting her for the very first time I was actually teaching at Lewis Howes mastermind. And I specifically remember when Allison walked in the room and I could immediately tell, I was like, oh, she’s, she’s got the it factor. She’s got it. She’s sharp. She’s funny. She’s social. She’s just awesome. And the more I’ve gotten to know her, the more that I have continued to like her. And you might know her, you, you, you may have seen her online. She runs a very large blog lifestyle blog around fashion called get your pretty on. Her website is highly trafficked. And she has a membership program that’s built around that too. That has had a, to over 100,000 paying members, which is what we’re gonna talk about is how the heck did she do that? And she also just recently released a book the ultimate book of outfit formulas, the ultimate book of outfit formulas became number one on Amazon. And so we just adore her what she’s up to and felt like you need to hear Allison’s story. Plus she’s awesome. So Allison, welcome to the show.
AL (02:09):
Thanks. Rory. The feeling is mutual
RV (02:12):
. So tell us about how you get started. You were, you were an engineer. Yeah. And then suddenly you get into fashion and blogging and it becomes this membership. And now you’ve got this book and like you know, tell us about the early stages of your kind of personal brand journey.
AL (02:33):
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, how do you get from engineering to stylist and entrepreneur? It’s, it’s a huge leap, but I basically created the program that I needed at the time. And I had been working from home. I was in corporate America for 14 years, got the opportunity to work from home, which was an amazing blessing, but I realized very quickly within about three months of working from home, but I was never getting out of my yoga pants. I was not fixing my hair. I was not putting on makeup. I think a lot of people can relate to that during the pandemic. A lot of us were working from home for the first time and realized just how quickly things can spiral downhill when you don’t have that built in accountability for getting ready in the morning or having to keep hours or be in an office.
AL (03:15):
So I really started blogging from a place of this. Doesn’t feel good. I’m not motivated to get dressed every day. And it’s affecting not just the way I feel about myself, but so many things in my environment, too. Like the house is getting messier. I’m not doing laundry as much. I don’t feel like going on date nights anymore. I mean, it was literally affecting so many things. And when I sat down and thought about it, the first thing that popped in my head was can get dressed again. Like that’s a super easy, really tangible step I can take in the right direction. And sometimes it’s just about that one small thing that makes a huge difference in every other part of your life. So that’s why I started blogging. I wanted to start sharing what I was learning and blogging felt like an accountability partner to me when I did not have one at the time, I didn’t have that office to go into.
AL (04:00):
So even though I was only getting dressed for me and to feel better about myself and to get into a routine, what ended up happening is that a lot of women found me and the blog grew organically to around 50,000 page views within six months, which was crazy. And I was still working in corporate America at the time, blogging on this side, really to just enjoying this creative outlet that I had. And I really didn’t start out thinking this was gonna be a business at all. I had done little things on the side in the past, I’d done some life in business coaching. I had run a personalized gifts business. So I had dipped a toe into some entrepreneurial ventures, but nothing like this, where it was just true, really a passion project and something that I was doing because I was loving sharing what I was learning throughout the process.
AL (04:48):
It didn’t become a business until about two years later, I took a severance package from corporate and I decided to just really go all in on it and, and throw everything I had into just serving and serving and serving the commute. But what happened is I ended up with three months left in my bank account of my severance oh, wow. We had cut that back drastically. We were a two income family. So my husband and I just really made sacrifices and, and cut back for me to be able to do this. But I finally got to a point where I thought I’ve built this huge audience. I have this community around what I’m doing. I’m not really making any money. And that’s when the idea for outfit formulas was born. I went to my readers, I went to my followers and I said, if I could do something for you that would make your life easier.
AL (05:32):
What would that look like? And there was all of this overlap on those responses that came back to me. My reader said, please just give us a shopping list, tell us what to go out and buy each season and tell me what to friends to add to my closet and then show me ways to pair it up. So I inadvertently created a capsule wardrobe, which I didn’t even know what it was at the time. I’m not a trained stylist. I’ve just learned as I’ve gone on through this process and journey. And I was thinking, I’ll be really excited if 50 women signed up this first time out, the gate 500 women signed up. And I knew right then and there with that first launch that this was going to work and I was going to be able to replace my income. And the rest is history. We’ve, we’ve grown in season over season.
RV (06:13):
Like the first, the first, the first launch, like, you know, because I, I think I mean, obviously you’re familiar with our brand builder community and, you know, personal brands you bump into ’em a lot. And I think, you know, people see whoever Dean Graziosi, Tony Robbins, Jeff Walker, Brandon Behar, they see people launch these huge high dollar offers. Yes. And kind of go, oh, that’s you? That, that’s what it looks like that. But how much was your first, how much were you charging?
AL (06:43):
My very first program was a whopping $10. Bam.
RV (06:47):
10 bucks.
AL (06:48):
yes.
RV (06:49):
Uhhuh, but you had 500 people sign up.
AL (06:53):
I did, yes. And then I think I went to $19 shortly thereafter. I, we played around a bit with pricing between 29 and 39. And I’ve ended at $39, which is where we’re at right now and seems to be that sweet spot. But from the beginning I knew I wanted to democratize personal style and I knew I could look at this membership. One of two ways, either we’re doing the high dollar, you know, appealing to a much smaller niche, or I’m doing something at a lower amount that I’m gonna be able to reach, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of women. And that’s the path and the route that I decided to go with my pricing. So while we’re at 39, now that seems like such a huge difference between, you know, my $10 launch that I did back in 2014
RV (07:35):
Uhhuh . But that is really huge. And one of the, one of the things that we’re big believers in is that when you’re first starting out with your personal brand, you need customers more than you need revenue. Like you have to have that win. And like you, you had that 500 people bought something. I mean, it was 10 bucks, but they, they bought something. They said, I trust you. I want to take this deeper. I wanna, I want to, I wanna give it another shot. Now at the same time, it kind of freaks me out to go, well, you gotta sell a lot of $10 somethings to replace any type of corporate income that you, you once had. So, so 500 times tens five. And so you did $5,000 in your first launch. How long did it take you to get to where, you know, you you’re making enough money consistently that you could like support yourself on it.
AL (08:31):
In that first launch, I realized a few things, number one, that this was going to be a seasonal launch. So I knew that I was gonna have recurring revenue and I would be able to, you know, basically have new product to sell to the same customers four times per year. Along with that, I also started to play around with creating evergreen programs in the business and, and realizing that, you know, I could upsell them into other programs and have other offerings available to them. And on the back end of that launch, it was actually around a $25,000 launch because the program sales weren’t the only way that we were getting rev or that I was getting revenue at the time. Oh, I was also doing affiliate sales on the back end of that. So every piece of clothing that they purchased through this shopping list in this caps wardrobe, I was earning affiliate commissions from all of the retailers that were on the list too.
AL (09:20):
So that’s always been a really big part of my business model is get, is getting those affiliate sales on the back end. So really just thinking about ways that once you get that customer and you’ve earned their trust, you know, what are some other ways that you can offer, you know, of what they want and be able to continue to bring revenue in, not just from the membership income, although now, you know, nine years down the road that has absolutely overshadowed everything else. But back then I had to get really, really creative when I didn’t have as many customers.
RV (09:52):
Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. So even like a brand builders group, you know, we’re are helping people set their strategy and then they ultimately go, I need execution. I need someone to edit my videos, do my social media posting, like, you know, do my Facebook ads, blah, blah, blah. And we started to step down the path of trying to do it and quickly realize there’s so much here for so many people. And we did the same thing. We said, let’s spend our time curating a vendor list of trusted providers that the whole community can use. And if somebody doesn’t do a good job, like we’ll just stop using them and, and do affiliate fees that way. And that’s been super powerful for us is, is just answering that question. How can I serve my current audience in a deeper way? You know, and it, and it brings business to you. So, all right, so that’s 2014. So today you have a $39. It’s not 39 a month. It’s $39 a season. So it’s really like correct $13 a month, but they pay for a season, a season it’s worth. So like, where are you at? Give us a sense of the scope of where you’re at today?
AL (11:02):
Well, it’s, honestly, you know, we’re, it’s a seven figure brand now, and it’s amazing to think about that. And, and where I came from 2014 to today and, and I have a team of 10 people supporting this and it just keeps growing season over season, year of after year, we grew during a pandemic, you know, it’s, it’s something where I’m able to really meet women where they are, those who are in transition or rebuilding a wardrobe, or just don’t know where to start, or just don’t want the decision fatigue of deciding what to buy each season or, or how to get dressed every day, they get an email or they get a notification on their phone that tells them exactly pair up and how to put it together. So I think that the best part of it though, is
RV (11:43):
Every day for a whole season.
AL (11:44):
Yes, yes. Every day for a whole season.
RV (11:46):
And it’s for three months, you tell ’em what to wear.
AL (11:49):
Yes. And it’s created from pieces on that shopping list and they’re able to shop their closets and, and find items that are on there, check them off and then go out to the stores to fill in the blanks. And the beauty of that is they can either shop my links, which they’re more than welcome to do, or they can shop in their favorite stores. Some women shop exclusively in thrift stores and find everything that they need for the list. Others are going to Neiman’s and finding the things that they need for the list. And as is, they’re able to follow the formula, which is really just a framework of bottoms. Anything you wear on your lower half tops, topper, shoes, and accessories. Those are the five variables. And we mix and match them in different ways to create different looks every single day. That is
RV (12:27):
So cool. And you just had a, so you had a hundred thousand, you’ve recently crossed us a hundred thousand people who have purchased at least one season and they’re all women, right? Yes.
AL (12:38):
Well, we have a men’s wear program as well, but , the women are buying it for the men. So that goes to show you, like, I think for the most part we’re dressing our guys. ,
RV (12:49):
That’s definitely true in the Vaden household. Yeah, that’s so cool. I, I mean to go in, in basically a five year, I mean, five years from zero to a hundred thousand customers, and I just think it’s cool because you, you, you know, you hear always about, oh, the million dollar launch and a multimillion dollar launch, da da, but like to say a hundred thousand customers. Now you have a hundred thousand people that trust you, which will be whatever, you know, that number grows and grows and rose. I think we don’t, we, we underestimate the importance of a customer and we often overestimate the value of just revenue by itself and be like, mm. Having a lot of people buy from you is, is super valuable. So, so let’s talk about the membership model for a second. So you do a I think memberships are one of those things that I, I kind of feel like, especially for personal brands, like so many things, it’s almost like this holy grail of, you know, it’s like this facade of going well, gosh, if, if I had a thousand members that were paying me a thousand dollars a month, that’d be a million dollars, a like, that’d be 12 million a year, but I don’t think people realize how hard it it is for the membership program and like just what it takes.
RV (14:06):
And, and, and that now, do you, do people pay monthly or they only do a, they buy a season at a time.
AL (14:15):
So we have two you different ways that they can sign up. They can either subscribe seasonally by purchasing, purchasing them one off, or we have an annual membership. So at the end of the year, I open up memberships from November through March of the following year for the next year’s membership. And with the annual membership, we offer a lot of perks, bonuses, early access because I really wanna front load the year and get as many people as possible to sign up for that annual membership so that they are locked in that they’re with us for the entire year. We have around an 85% customer retention rate, which is insane and amazing, but I also involve my customers in the process every single season. I allow them to give their input on what I’m creating. What pieces would you like to see repeated in this capsule?
AL (15:01):
What trends are exciting you the most? What did you like the most about the pieces that we had in our capsules this past year? What stores would you like to see? All of, of that data comes back in my team, boils it down, and then we incorporate as much as we possibly can into the next season. And when you’re launching four times a year, you have that ability to just course correct and easily add things in, especially if it’s not gonna be a huge investment, but just really make the program more valuable and keep your customers excited about it. When they’re involved in that process, you better believe when that cart opens. They are the first ones there, ready to sign up. They literally wait up until midnight the night before the people that aren’t annual members and even our annual members, when we open the memberships up, they wait until midnight and they are right there signing up and ready to go. It’s I love
RV (15:50):
It. Like black, black, Friday, Walmart, like knocking people, knocking each other over to say, like, get into your membership. And I’m glad it’s
AL (15:59):
Virtual.
RV (16:00):
I mean, the outfit formula,
AL (16:02):
I want my shopping list.
RV (16:04):
So so you mentioned that you launch, okay, so you, you have the annual, so they don’t really pay monthly. You have, you can basically buy a season at a time or you just pay for the pay for the year. Correct. But you,
AL (16:19):
We do a payment plan option too, for the annual membership. So if they do wanna break it out into payments, they can do that.
RV (16:24):
I gotcha. Okay. And then the four times a year, when you go through a launch, what do you do? Like how do you, you launch this thing and, and, and maybe talk a little bit about how you, how you used to do it. Like when you were first starting and you didn’t, you know, I mean, now you’ve got a hundred thousand of people in your database that are, are buyers. You gotta, you must have way more than that in your, in, you know, just in the, the database. But like, if you have, what are all the steps you would do to, of like sell a season or launch a season? Sure.
AL (16:57):
So our launch cycle is about six weeks. From beginning to our cart opening in the beginning, R it was, it was me I was, I was doing it all. I cobbled together the systems on the back end, I was like copying PayPal code buttons into my browser and, and creating password protected, you know, WordPress pages. It was so rudimentary, but over the course of the second year, that’s when I really invested in technology and learning, you know, what it would take to really just get in a space of being scalable and starting with the end in mind, and being able to say, I wanna be able to serve hundreds of thousands of members. What does that look like? And how can I build a technology now in order to allow that to happen? So I think that was one of the best decisions that I made early on was really just investing in doing that.
AL (17:42):
And then, you know, we work in as sauna. Everything is in a seasonal launch project. So every season, my business manager and I sit down and we look through all of the tasks that are in that project and everything that gets assigned out from tech support to customer support and graphic design, to marketing. And we take a look at it to make sure that everything still makes sense, and we wanna continue doing all of these steps, or if we need to add something else in or, or take something out again, because we’re launching so frequently, we are able to just really course correct and, and fix things as they come up or add things in so that we can be super nimble and, and, and change at the drop of a dime, which we had to do last year. We had, we had to shift and pivot in all those good things.
AL (18:26):
But it takes about six weeks. From the time I start gathering the Intel from our existing customers of what they would like to see included in the capsule to me, really just heading out and doing trend spotting. I go into the malls, I go into stores, I look at items. I go online, I do tons of, you know, online shopping window, shopping to choose items that I feel would work well in the capsule. Then I do my creative part, which is actually creating the capsule. Once that’s done. I hand that off to my team and then everything from that point forward, I’m not necessarily involved in it’s all the downstream stuff from creating the PDFs and the graphic design to loading everything into the membership site, to, you know, really going out and sourcing links from forever, everyone from petites to plus sizes and, and everything in between from budget friendly to higher ends. It’s like everything. We, we try to cover it all just to truly make this as easy of a process for our customers as possible. And then, you know, once all of that is done loaded into the membership site, then the very last thing we do is launch our sales pages, open our cart and, and they sign up it sounds so magical. Right?
RV (19:35):
well, yeah. So when you, you, you launch a sales page, so you say whatever, it’s the fall season, you know, 20, 22, 21 or whatever is this winter season, summer season. And then do you just email your live us? Do you run ads? Do you do webinars? Do you do podcast tours? Do you try to get on TV? Do you like, is it a little bit of all the above?
AL (20:01):
Yes. It’s a little bit of all of the above, but I’ll tell you what works the best. So between launches, we’re really working on capturing as many leads as possible and growing our list because our newsletter list can it’s at about 10%, which is crazy, but that’s the place where I really am able to nurture any of our new leads that come in to really explain the program to them, to give them value. I send them a newsletter on a weekly basis with tons of freestyle resources and advice. And I think that that’s really the key to that really high conversion numbers. So we work really hard on the list. I do, you know, podcasts perform extremely well. So it’s, it’s a lot of different things that are going on in between those launches to really ensure the success whenever we do launch and, and really focusing on those repeat customers too, and getting them into the seasonal programs and then ultimately selling them into the annual memberships at the end of the year as well.
RV (20:55):
So it’s really building the list and sort of building the trust. And then when the launch happens, you basically have just emailing and saying, Hey, it’s, it’s live, it’s open sign up for yes. You know, the, the new season. Exactly. And, and then in terms of, you’re just using whatever lead magnets, PDF downloads, maybe a video training, like whatever you’re using, just normal stuff to get people onto your email list. And then it’s the value every week through the newsletter building the trust in advance. And then just letting ’em know the cart is open.
AL (21:24):
Yes, definitely. We run a lot of Facebook ads to our or freebies too. So that shows us right away, like what’s performing well. And we actually make money on our lead gen, which is crazy, but how, for the most part, they sign up for freebies and then they end up purchasing something from me either, you know, an evergreen program or they end up enrolling into the seasonal program. So although it is really done as a lead magnet, we’re converting on all of those leads that are coming in and making, making money on our ad spend, which is crazy Uhhuh
RV (21:56):
. How do you get 85% customer retention? So what, what does that number mean first of all, and how do you, how do you make that happen?
AL (22:08):
So the 85% customer retention is really our customers that end up continuing to purchase from us and coming back year after year, I have some women who have been with me since 2014 and have done every single season, every single annual membership. I would say the majority of our customers have been here for at least four years. And the beauty of the program is at while some people don’t, they don’t technically graduate out. Sometimes they’ll take a break and take a year off or take a season off or whatever, if they feel like they have enough clothes or, you know, they’re in a good place right now, and they don’t need as much guidance or advice, but then they can jump back in at any time. So that’s why I decided I did want to offer the option that people can sign up on a seasonal basis instead of just getting locked in for the full year.
AL (22:51):
So again, I think that a lot of this has to do with involving the customer in the process, but also building the community around the program. We have an extremely active community. Our Facebook group has hundreds of posts per day. It’s a little bit overwhelming sometimes for the members, but it’s really a space for women into explore style where they feel supported. They don’t feel like they’re intimidated by anything. There are a lot of women in there on this journey that have never felt stylish in their lives that have never just gotten a compliment from a stranger on an outfit that are experiencing this for the first time, or that have a particular body shape. And they’re able to come into the group with thousands of other members and say, I’m struggling to find, you know, a pair of HighEd jeans, that’s flattering for my body type.
AL (23:34):
What are you finding? And, and then there’s tons of immediate feedback that’s coming in through that group. Or they snap selfies in the fitting room and say, which one would you choose this one or this one? And they’re getting that immediate response from people in the community. We’ve had women from Germany and Finland that have flown to the us, like we’ve built up this huge community. They have girls nights out in certain cities around the us. And, and it’s about so much more than the clothes it’s about really just supporting one another and the beauty of female friendships and support and the way that it can be done in the right way. We see so much, you know, so much negativity online and it’s just a space that is so opposite of that. That is truly special, especially in this day and age. And I think that that’s really the secret sauce, something that I never expected to happen. Did you create
RV (24:23):
That on purpose or did that, like, did, did, did it happen just sort of organically or like, how did that happen?
AL (24:30):
I think, you know, I was really intentional about this from day one. I wanted it to be a place where it was kind of a mean girls free zone, where women were giving their opinions, but delivering them with love where honesty was appreciated, but in a way that, you know, it wasn’t critical or hurt anybody’s feelings. And it was really about setting the tone. You know, I was very involved in the Facebook group early on and was in there, you know, trying to get people to engage in setting the tone in so many different ways of this is how we treat each other. This is how we’re kind of supportive to one another. And then it just took off on its own. And kindness spreads just as quickly as negativity does. And we really, in the past, you know, however many years of doing this, I can count on one hand the amount of members that we’ve even had to go to and say, Hey, we can’t, you can’t say that, or that’s not appropriate for this group or whatever, like moderation in this group of thousands of women is not a big deal simply because we do set that tone.
AL (25:29):
And we do have them agree to guidelines for behavior in the group. And I think we just kind of attract that more of that coming in, that when people get in that group and they’re like, oh, wait, this operates differently. This is either a good fit for me or this isn’t a good fit for me, then they stay or they leave and that’s, that’s perfectly fine
RV (25:46):
Is the only, the only the active members are in the, in the Facebook group.
AL (25:51):
Yes. So we start a new Facebook group every season, which is another reason why we feed them into this new group and everybody wants to be in that group with their friends. So I think that this is another key to success for the program is, is closing down the previous seasons group and then starting fresh and new each time we launch a program.
RV (26:09):
Interesting, fascinating. Is there anything that you’ve learned about a membership that like now that you’ve been doing this, you know, cuz cuz you know, like at brand builders group, you know how we talk about the, the paids P I D S and the five ways to make money and there’s, there are information pro is one of ’em and inside of that eye is there’s video courses, assessments, certification programs, membership sites. And I feel like membership sites were really hot for a while. People got to, they, they caught a taste of wow, recurring revenue is a really amazing thing and the community like you’re talking about. But you know, then sometimes it’s like back to the video course because it’s like, well, if I could sell a video course for $500 versus offered as a membership site for 40 bucks a month and they only stay for four months, then I’m not, you I’m losing money. Like what have you learned about membership sites and making them successful that you kind of go, if you’re thinking about starting a membership site, now this is what you should know. Or like, this is what I didn’t know then that I do now.
AL (27:18):
Yeah. So I think, you know, one of the keys to this is really creating something that’s sticky me, meaning you keep them coming back for more. Right. So with a seasonal program, you’re automatically, you’ve got that stickiness built in that keeps them coming back because there are new trends. Every season, there are new ways to wear things, you know, where our wardrobes change seasonally. So that is sort of built into my program and, you know, back early on when I was evaluating this, do I wanna evergreen programs to where I’m just selling people into figuring out, you know, your closet staples or building your wardrobe, or do I wanna do something that I’m going to be launching four times a year because it is a lot, it is a lot of work. It’s a lot for me, it’s a lot for my team. I’ve kept coming back to the stickiness of doing the seasonal model.
AL (28:02):
So if you have something where you can keep people coming back, then absolutely. You’re not, you know, I do have to keep the funnel full. I do have to do all the lead gen. I have to do things between our launches, but I think that this worked out really, really well. You know, stickiness works out well for a membership type model. You also have to generate a little bit of scarcity and that’s sometimes difficult to do when you are working in a membership model. Like how do you create scarcity of something that, you know, people have the opportunity to pay for on a monthly basis? And so I had to look at ways that we could build that into. So, you know, some of the things that I do is we release our shopping list, you know, on the day that it opens to the public, our annual members get the shopping list early.
AL (28:45):
What happens is that we sell out the pieces on that list at almost all of the retailers on there. So say we put a sweater on there from Nordstrom within 24 hours, that sweater usually sells out if that’s the pictured item and the capsule, most of the women want that. So there’s that scarcity there of, I’ve got a sign up early. I wanna get my shopping list to you as possible, cuz I don’t want the pieces on this list to sell out. I wanna be the first one in line. So really just kind of getting creative with ways that we could create a little bit of scarcity with that, especially in something that if you’re not closing cart and you’re keeping it open, which I do, we allow people to sign up throughout the entire season. We eventually discount the seasonal program toward the end.
AL (29:27):
But you know, really just kind of thinking through ways that we can create that little bit of FOMO for, for our customer base has been important. And then again, you know, I always go back to the surveys and the feedback and you know, collecting that information. If you have an audience now, if you have followers, if you’re, if you are out there anywhere on social media or you’re blogging or, or doing whatever, you’d be amazed at how much you, how much you can get from that feedback. If you’re thinking about launching a membership model, you know, it’s great for passive income and a lot of ways, if there’s something that you teach or a course that you do, that you could put into that you can do in a video series or something that you can make sticky or release new content on a regular basis. That’s really what it’s all about. Like how often are you willing to release new content, then you might wanna look at a membership model
RV (30:21):
Mm-Hmm and, and one of the other things that I I, I love about you is you, you are, you invest into yourself a ton, like obviously I met you at Lewis’s mastermind and then through brand builders and everything, like how important has that been along the way? Like, have you always done that? I mean, here you go from starting this kind of random blog about stuff that you not random, but like, it was just kind of like a project, like a hobby. It was like a hobby about, Hey, I’m I’m, I should be dressing up. I don’t have a reason to dress up. And then it turns into like an accountability system for yourself. And then it turns into, you know, this business and then it turns into this whole community and this whole movement that you have now. And so you have really become, I mean, a true powerhouse entrepreneur, like have you always done a lot of personal development and business development or really just in recent years or like it’s, how important has that been in your journey?
AL (31:26):
Honestly, it’s been the thing that’s moved the needle more than anything else, you know, just really continually investing in myself. My, my second year of doing this, I joined my first mastermind, which was on course development. And that’s when I learned about that technology, you know, that I would need for this membership. I, I didn’t know what I was doing and I wanted to get involved in something that would shortcut that process for me. So that was really my first experience in a mastermind. And I’ve enrolled in something every single year since then. And honestly like whenever I feel stuck, that’s when I know I need personal development. I need to be investing in myself. I need to get involved in something and just being a member of brand builders, you know, I’ve, I shared this not too long ago with a friend of mine.
AL (32:08):
I feel almost like everything that I learn in brand builders. It’s about a six month lead time until I’m applying it in my business in some way. Like, I feel like I’m already equipped and I have that knowledge. And even though at the moment, maybe I’m not implementing it immediately, but I’ll be go through the trainings and I’ll, I’ll learn something that’s just completely eye opening in six months down the road, low and behold, I’m implementing it. And just the 15 PS last year in our annual memberships for the first time ever, we had cold leads that had no idea what the program was that were signing up immediately without knowing much about outfit formulas at all. Because we used the 15 piece to do our annual membership sales page, my team, and I sat down and we hammered it out and it was so incredibly effective that we suddenly had a problem we hadn’t prepared for before. And that was when cold leads come in and they don’t really truly understand the program and the education process that we needed to do on the backend of that, cuz they didn’t have that nurture that was happening, that other people were having. So I just am totally a proponent for investing in yourself and continuing entrepreneurship is really a personal development journey, honestly. Like that’s what it is. And that’s what I’ve learned more than anything. And honestly it’s what I enjoy more than anything too.
RV (33:25):
I love that. That’s so cool. Yeah. You know I know Hillary is your strategy. She mentioned that to me about the 15 piece, but I had forgotten about I had totally forgotten about that that I copywriting for those of you just listening, it’s we’re using that we’re using, we’re using jargon 15 pieces, our little like copywriting formula. Well I, I think so one of the things that happened was to that point, you went through our bestseller launch plan. So I re I very much remember like, okay, like here comes Allison through through best on our launch plan. And then you did it like you did this launch and you hit number one on Amazon. Like, so tell us about the book and the book launch and like what worked for you there since it’s just like fresh. I think, you know, for, for that piece of it specifically so if those of you, if you miss said early on, we said, it’s the ultimate book of outfit formulas, the ultimate book of outfit formulas. So get your pretty on is the membership community and, and the kind of like brand, but the ultimate book of outfit formulas was the book. So can you take, tell us about like the launch and like what did, what happened? What did you learn? How did it go? Like what worked, what didn’t work?
AL (34:42):
Honestly, Roy, I just followed every single step of be seller launch plan. And I think, I , I don’t know if it was you or Hillary, but somebody, I, I remember texting and saying it worked like it worked, we hit number one, like immediately we hit, we were instantly number one and in a competitive category, it was in fashion design on Amazon. So honestly the, just implementing every single bit of that strategy and planning at least six months in advance and looking at, okay, what’s the timeline for this launch. If you wait until the very end, you’re not gonna get everything done and it’s gonna be extremely difficult to have everything in place that you need to for the pre-orders and, and getting those pre-order bonuses in place. And all of the, everything that I learned in bestseller launch plan my team and I were able to take that, put it into an Asana project, assign things out as we needed to.
AL (35:32):
I brought on somebody who handled my street team for me, which was a huge weight off my shoulders and it just worked. It, it, it was, it was amazing. I mean, I was not entirely surprised that everything just came together the way that it did, but, you know, just taking those strategies. And I, I think that instantly what we wanna do is push it for our audience first and that’s not necessarily the best thing to do. So I learned like that there is a particular order that we need to do this in and following all of those steps was really key to it hitting that, that bestseller status. And that’s something that we’re always gonna have. So yeah, I’m, I’m really pleased with the way that this book launch went. It was traditionally published book. So I learned a ton this time around that I’m gonna take into, you know, I’m almost done with my second manuscript and I’m already, you know, I’ve got pages of debrief notes and I’m ready to go. I’m I just feel like it’s gonna be even that much more successful this time around.
RV (36:32):
I love that. And you’ve got the, the, you’ve got an asada project already built for it. Like you, yes. Run this
AL (36:39):
Rinse and repeat right. Make it easy, work smarter, not harder.
RV (36:44):
I, I, I love, I, I love this so much. Alison, like you mentioned the your street launch team. Yeah. So this is one of the things that we talk about, you know, a lot of people do this. It’s, it’s basically getting a team of why didn’t you tell us, so what is a street launch team? And then what did you have, how did you find those people? And then what did you have them do?
AL (37:09):
So a street launch team is essentially the people on the street, the word of mouth that are out there sharing about your book, but they’re doing this in a very coordinated and organized way. So you’re providing them with the graph ethics, with the quotes, with all of the assets, to be able to easily share on social media and to talk about your book and generate buzz about it so that when the time comes and, and you’re, I’m sure that anybody who’s kind of observed a launch from the outside has seen all of these big influencers doing this, where it seems like, oh my gosh, everybody’s talking about this book right now. Like what’s going on? Like, I’m excited. I wanna know about this book, right? So this is what your street team is doing for you. They’re creating that buzz in a way. That’s not necessarily these huge influencers that are doing this for you.
AL (37:49):
So so that’s exactly what it is. And I hired somebody to come in and do that for me, who managed my street team for me, who, you know, we had a Facebook group or we were doing contests and having them, you know, submit their, their reviews. I mean, they got early access to the book. They got, you know, a digital preprint of it. So they were able to read the book and really give honest reviews on multiple outlets for it. So it really just creates all of that prework before the book even comes out so that when it does launch, people are able to read reviews on good reads and target and Amazon and all the places and see what this book is all about in the words of people who have actually read it. So I highly recommend it. And if you’re able to have somebody else handle that for you, it takes a lot off the shoulders of the author because you are gonna be involved in so many other things. I did a podcast tour leading up to my launch as well. And that was, you know, that was taking so much of my bandwidth, that I was just really happy that I could turn this over to someone else to handle.
RV (38:52):
I love it. I mean, just so cool. I mean, you execute all this stuff. I mean, you, you execute and that’s what it’s like. So much of it is simple. I mean, people don’t realize it’s like on the one hand, it’s really freaking hard. On the other hand, it’s a pretty straight line. It’s like, okay, you have a lead magnet, you give somebody something of value, add ’em to your email list, give them value every week. You, you know, let ’em know something’s available, have a, have a sales page with the 15, P’s have, have a few bonuses on there. Like, and I just, I just, I love this story so much and it makes me so happy to, to, to see when people like you are, are winning Allison. And if y’all, you know, check out the book, so it’s the ultimate book fit formulas and you know, get your pretty on, obviously is the community and everything. So Alice, Allison, where do you want people to go to learn about you or stay, stay plugged in connected to what you’re doing?
AL (39:49):
Yes, definitely. So you can check me out at Allison Loba on Instagram. If you wanna see all the personal life stuff, my horses in my little mini farm, I live on or you can go to alpha formulas.com if you’re interested in learning more about the program.
RV (40:03):
So cool. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, as they say. And Allison, thank you for being here. Thank you for just sharing your story. It’s such a great journey. It’s it’s just beautiful, I think, to, to see where it’s gone and you’re just your heart for serving people and helping people with something that you once struggled with. I mean, it, it, it just captures the essence of, you know, we, how we always are talking about your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Yes. And that’s what you start doing. And then you go, how can I serve my audience in a deeper way? How can I add more value? How can I make this easier? How can I make it easier for them to buy and and then just continue investing in yourself and just, I mean, we feel so lucky to know you and just be your friend and just excited and honored to like see you winning and knowing that you’re like, just getting started. I mean, I it’s, it’s hard to imagine where way you’re gonna be in five or 10 years. So thank you for, for all of this and we wish you all the best. Thank
AL (41:04):
You, Roy. I totally appreciate the influence that you’ve had on my business and, and personal life. I appreciate it.

Ep 229: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman | Recap Episode

Ep 228: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:55):
Well, my journey to become a speaker has been a, a fun one through lots of different twists and turns. And one of those things was having to learn how to be funny because I was not funny. And one of the people that I learned from in that journey is the man that you’re about to meet his name is David Glickman. I first attended one of his trainings. Oh gosh, I was in my twenties. And it was one of the most transformative pieces of my entire career. David and I now are kind of colleagues and we’ve known each other for years. He’s in the professional speaking hall of fame and he is kind of known for corporate customized comedy. But before he was in the speaking business, he was in show business and he worked with Steve Martin, Ellen degenerate. He appeared on evening at the improv.
RV (01:47):
He owned a chain of comedy clubs. And he’s just a funny dude and I’ve learned so much from him. And I actually recently we hired him because one of the things that he does is he owns a company that helps people write funnier speeches. And so I had a new bit that I was working on for a new audience. So it was a brand new piece of material and I wanted to get David’s eyes on it in his input. So he is continues even to this day to be one of my personal speech coaches, specifically in the realm of comedy. So I figured you got to meet David, we got to have him on, so welcome to the show.
DG (02:24):
Well, Rory, thanks so much. It’s oh, and again, you and I have known each other for probably close to two decades here, but but it’s great to see you evolve and you know, your humor has grown. I watch you now and I just go, ah, you got it. You, you know, you understand how important humor is to, to what we do for success here.
RV (02:44):
Totally. And, and it’s amazing. I, I I’ll say like, I, sometimes I’m genuinely amazed at how much of a skill this is and looking back at where I started to go, you know, if someone hires me do a speech, now they’re laughing their butts off. And I go, man, that is not who I was like, I did not know how to do that. And I think that’s, you know, the first thing I wanted to talk about is you really believe that humor can be learned to some extent, right? I mean, do you, do you, do you still feel that way? Do you feel more that way than you did 15 years ago? Or do you
DG (03:23):
No, I, I, no, I, I truly believe it’s a skill that can be learned. It can be refined. And it’s funny when we talk about humor, it, it, it’s almost like a dissecting a frog while they still alive. It’s just, you know, it’s, it’s people will listen and say, oh, well, that sounds very, very cut and dry. Well, the science of humor is cut and dry. It is, but yes, absolutely. You can learn it. And and as you’ve experienced, as you learn some of these tricks and techniques, you’ve just learned how to think. Funny.
RV (03:58):
Yeah. So w what does that mean? All right. So let’s, let’s dive into that for a second. So what does it mean to think funny? Like, why do we laugh? Or, or like, what are there’s different techniques here that apply, but like fundamentally, what do you, what are you trying to do that causes someone to laugh?
DG (04:21):
You’re trying to do something. That’s a surprise, something they’re not expecting. I’ll give you an example here. So I’m going to go back about 10 years, Rory that’s when you wrote your New York times bestselling book which was take the stairs. Everybody remembers
DG (04:38):
Copying seven steps to a trading, true success, but, okay. So let’s fast forward 10 years. You’ve learned through many of your clients. Not everybody has the same work ethic as Rory Vaden. So your new book for 2021 would be take the escalator seven less steps to achieving true success. Now, those who are just listening to the podcast on the video version of this, we’re actually showing a book. That’s a parody of Rory’s original book. So what we’ve done is just we’ve taken something that was already existing, and we’ve tweaked a word we’ve tweaked something by tweaking the original of something just a little bit, whether it’s a rhyme, whether it’s a letter I once spoke at a conference where the theme was together we’re better, but it was for the American wastewater association. And I said, oh, the original theme was supposed to be together. We’re wetter. You know, I just changed one word and it became funny. So to, to your question, it’s looking at words, looking at themes and how can we adjust, adapt them?
RV (05:51):
Hmm. Yeah, the surprise. I mean, I guess in one word you could say surprised that you’ll hear misdirection or, you know, you’re saying tweak, but like take the stairs, you know, as established as a theme. And then, you know, you kind of do that, that play and you’re it. And you think that’s basically what all of, all of humor comes down to is sort of this like element of surprise.
DG (06:13):
Right. But there there’s surprises. Step two, step one is observation. It’s looking it’s, it’s, it’s seeing. And again, I know this sounds kind of cut and dry, but the research that’s involved in any kind of, of, of making something funny is, is important. You have to kind of know the bigger picture, if that makes sense to, to be able to switch and adapt and adjust. Now, again, we’re talking primarily on customized humor, Rory for evergreen humor, you don’t need as much research. What I worked on for you was evergreen. That story will work anywhere anytime, hopefully for the next 10 years. Do you know what I’m saying? So there’s two types of humor, evergreen humor, and customized humor.
RV (07:04):
What’s the difference? What are,
DG (07:07):
Yeah. Evergreen should work all the time. There are comedians out there who have an act who they haven’t changed one word of it in 20 years. That’s evergreen. That means that humor. And again, for most speakers, professional speakers or professional business folks, if they create a presentation, they don’t have to necessarily change it. The humor that’s in there that’s crafted will work forever, but the customized humor is often funnier. If, if that makes sense, because it’s of the moment people are hearing it just about them in that moment. And it’s like, we’re all in on the secret together. We’re all in on this because only we know what that particular joke.
RV (07:55):
It’s like a inside. It’s like a big inside joke basically,
DG (07:58):
Right? Exactly.
RV (08:00):
A whole audience. Well, and I think what what’s super powerful is going so like for most of our clients and most not all of our clients are trying to be professional speakers. In fact, I would say even most of our members and clients, they’re just speaking as a marketing vehicle to like, to, you know, to, for people to find out about their service or their product or whatever it is that they offer. And it’s wonderful when you can have evergreen humor, because you have like signature stories about your life and your, whatever that you tell all the time. And once you have that down, then you kind of have like this sort of baseline of entertainment. And then the customized stuff is kind of like where you can have more fun and you can experiment. And I do think that’s part of what your magic like your secret sauce is customized. So talk, let’s dive in on the customized humor a bit. How do you even approach this? Because writing a joke is frigging scary by itself, but then going, okay, how do I write a new joke? Like a new thing that I’ve never tried out before. And I may never do again and go, but I’m going to try this because I think it’ll be funny this one time for this one audience, how do you, like, how do you even start with that?
DG (09:24):
And first of all, I want, I want to just, I’m going to back up to one thing you said there were, you saved, try it one time. If it’s a line you can use multiple times, one time is not always enough to get the reaction you want to test its efficacy. If it’s going to be funny now, if it’s the American wastewater association and that’s the only time you’re in front of them, then yeah. The, the water joke might be the only time. But to your, to your question, how do you figure out what’s funny, again, it goes back to the research. I always ask the same exact questions and looking at who the audience are. And again, for your clients, maybe who their prospects are, what are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are their frustrations?
DG (10:10):
And then you, you look at that and see, okay, how can I possibly find something about them that twists it? I call it the comment on the comment. If you ever look at a football game, you’ve got, you typically have two people broadcasting the game, the play by play guy and the color commentary guy. The play by play guy is the guy doing the content. The colored commentary is the funny line. In other words, here, I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example. I just wrote this for a client last week, he had a line in his presentation where he said by a show of hands who here is a multi-tasker and people would raise their hand. And then he’d go on to talk about multitasking. Well, the funny comment on the comment that I added was he says, by show of hands who hears a multi-tasker well, a really good multi-tasker could raise both hands and still be texting.
DG (11:08):
So that was the funny line. And it got a big laugh. He said, he told me later, you know, comment on the comment. It again, if your, if your audience Rory goes in, trying to be funny first, they’re going to be frustrated. They need to come up with their content. First, their sales presentation, first, their website. First don’t put the pressure of trying to be funny first, then look at it for how could we tweak this? What could we comment? What’s funny, what word could we change? What word is in our name of our company that could now be a funny acronym?
RV (11:46):
Yeah. Well, and so we, and we would, we would tell them, like, you know, we kind of think of it as baking a cake and you first got to get like the core ingredients in place, which is your content. And then you put the icing on, which is kind of like your stories. And then when you get to like the fancy frosting and the sprinkles, that’s more of like what the, what the, what the humor is. But what’s really cool about what you’re saying is even though, even though it’s kind of scary the idea of writing a joke and then writing a custom joke, that is this one time, what feels pretty safe and predictable to me is the idea of going, yeah, but if they’re frustrated about it, if this annoys them, if they’re angry about this, or if this is the thing, driving everyone nuts, it’s pretty safe.
RV (12:34):
It’s a pretty safe bet to go. Even if I can just find a creative way to bring it up, they’re going to laugh. And even if they don’t laugh, they’re going to feel special. They’re going to be like, oh, look at, look at what you, what you, what, you know, but it’s, it’s just the frustrations. So that’s, that’s weird to me. Like, why is it that things that are frustrating make us laugh? It’s kind of seems almost opposite. Like you go, if, if this is the thing that frustrates us, I wouldn’t want to bring that up.
DG (13:05):
Knowledging it you’re, you’re, you’re talking about what everybody is experiencing and the same thing works for a sales call, or, you know, if there’s a dentist and, and he, or she has prospective patients, you know, you, you, you then make, do you make note of the tooth pain and then you come up with something clever in your marketing materials to that. The way I look at it is, you know, we, we do business with people that we like. We like people that make us laugh. It’s this natural progression. So every opportunity you can have to add, the humor is going to just build your brand that much better.
RV (13:49):
Yeah. And, and the growing, just like to use the dentist example, you know, is to put yourself. So it’s one thing, if I’m a speaker and I am coming to speak at an event, and I’m sending them a pre-program questionnaire, I’m doing, going to their website, or I’m doing interviews, and I’m saying, Hey, what are the things that frustrate you? But if I’m a dentist, I don’t have to ask. I know I already know, because I hear it every day. It’s just kind of thinking, like, I think this is huge. That step one is observation. As you’re going ask yourself, what are they scared of? What are they afraid of? What is annoying to them? And then, and then basically just find it, find a clever way to, to bring it up. Is that, is that
DG (14:33):
Yeah. Okay. So your, your example there of the, of the dentist I did a punch up for a gentleman who consults in the dental industry not too long ago. And I don’t know how we got to it. He had something in his original content that drove my idea because I was thinking of, well, what frustrates your prospects and their eventual clients. And we came up with something where it says on the website the tooth, you can handle the tooth. And we had the picture from a few good not a few good men, the the Jack Nicholson one. So by doing, instead of the truth, the tooth, you know, this becomes now something very funny on the website. You can handle the tooth and tooth is italicized. Again, as you and I sit here, maybe not hilarious, but for the person looking at it, who’s thinking about their tooth. That hurts. Bam. We, you know, we’ve, we’ve hit, we’ve hit a nerve, no pun intended.
RV (15:32):
Well, and yeah, just for everyone to know, like the reason why it’s not funny to hear two people talking about comedy is because there’s no surprise. Surprise is the whole element of laughter. And when you, when you’re sitting here listening to it, that’s what makes comedians so amazing is like, it’s one thing when you’re in a business presentation, like for all of us, we actually don’t have to be that good because no, one’s expecting us to be funny. Like you come in as a, as a speaker, as a financial advisor, as an accountant and attorney as like, like no one expects you to be funny. It’s different. When you tell people you’re a comedian, they they’re sitting there expecting you to make them laugh, which is way harder. So it’s a, we have a little bit of it easier. This is like you know, almost like just a little covert operation for, for most of us. And people will laugh because they’re not expecting it. And so the bar is set a little bit lower. Okay. So you first observed, so I liked that. I get that, that feels doable. And, and by observe and research, I’m just going, like, what are their pains? What are their annoyances? What are their frustrations? And then what’s, and then what’s next.
DG (16:45):
Well, the, and you, you look at it. There, I mean, again, there are certain tricks and techniques the rule of three, I mean, that’s an old comedy route, a rule where you, you list three things in a row, the first two normal. And the third one is the surprise. It’s the, you know, the, the derailment, the, you know, the one you’re not expecting again, most of your listeners are just listening to this. They can’t see I don’t have a lot of hair, so my three might be. I remember when I first started, I had dreams, I had hopes I had hair, you know, boom, boom, switch like that. So that’s a rule of three. Here’s a stupid one, but it works. Odd numbers are funnier than even numbers. Rory, I have no idea why, but I have tested this. I have road tested. This a seven is funnier than a six. I don’t know. I don’t know why planned mispronunciations, if there’s a word in your, you know, your audience’s a vernacular in their, in their industry that is hard to pronounce, perhaps you pretend to mispronounce it twice. And then the third time you give a synonym. So you might say something like, they know there’s an old colloquium, there’s an old colloquium. There’s an old saying that sometimes would it be okay, so you, boom, boom, switch like that.
RV (18:16):
Yep. Well, and even that is kind of, it comes back to that frustration concept is it’s like, it’s this annoyance the of saying the word colloquialism is so difficult, it’s so difficult. And you’re, you’re like commenting on the thing that frustrates them, which is exactly what comedians, that’s, what stand up c’mon comedians do. And it’s nonstop, right? They’re telling jokes about being married. They’re telling jokes about their kids, about going to the airport, about paying their taxes about like, and all they’re doing is commenting on the things that frustrate us somehow, which is it’s amazing how simple that is.
DG (18:53):
It really is. And I have yet to come across an industry. I mean, I I’ve either spoken to or punched up, you know presentations in a myriad of industries. And I’m yet to find one industry that doesn’t have at least top 10 frustrations. I mean, I’m, I’m on a, I’m on a call tonight with a group of pharmacy students to get my research done for a presentation for pharmacy. So I’m gonna you know, just ask them, you know, tell me everything that’s frustrating too. I’ll, I’ll get 40 things and I will then turn those, what we should do is do a part two. I should come in, you know, in another podcast and tell you here’s where the 40 things that were frustrating. And here’s what I found funny in them or how we made it funny.
RV (19:41):
And, but the, the essence of that is going, what is sort of a surprising way I can bring that up or like a natural way to kind of bring it into the presentation? Yeah,
DG (19:51):
Yeah. I mean, and again, it’s hard to explain it without you know, without a concrete examples. So again, if for argument’s sake like going back to the customization, if you’re in a venue, if you’re doing a sales pitch or a speech in a room that is freezing, you know, like you know, there’s just, you know, the, everybody is sweaters and this and that. You’d acknowledge it by saying something like, I’m not sure if the folks at this hotel know, but there is a brand new invention it’s called a thermostat or something like that. Again, you kind of soft and then boom hit. Now. We’re not trying to make people comedians, you know, that’s, that’s not sure that that is not the goal here at all. It is just to find those moments of levity and the way I always look at humor, it’s like an EKG. In other words, you’re talking, you know, normal, normal content laugh, normal, normal content laugh. And that these moments of humor should be as, as much as possible throughout your entire, you know whether it be your website, your pitch, your, your speech, your presentation, whatever that might be.
RV (21:07):
So other than frustration. So I get that one. And, and again, like, even though you’re saying it helps to have a specific example, but it would be like, okay, let’s pretend for a second. If you were a standup comedian and you were going to write a set or a bit on marriage, the very first thing you would do is go, what frustrates people about marriage, right. And it’s like, whatever my wife is telling me, always what to do, or my husband is in spends forever in the bathroom. Or is that the, is that the best place to look or are there, are there other places additionally, that you look or do you kind of focus on frustrations as like that’s the, that’s the, the safe, go-to
DG (21:47):
Easiest thing, because it’s the commonality of everyone. If you were doing something on marriage and you, and again, you just give the example, let’s say of the bathroom. And again, this, this isn’t anything like I would say for a corporate audience necessarily, but and again, I’m just riffing here, but something like you know, my, my wife says you know put the seat down. But you know, she only has to remind me about 117 times per day. You know, it’s exaggerates exaggeration, you know, normally it’s a once or twice, you know, but the, it’s the exaggeration of that watched comics, study comics, all those books, but your, your listeners can’t see it, but there’s hundreds of books behind me. Every single one of them is either a biography or an autobiography of a comic or a textbook on humor. And you learn, you observe, you watch.
RV (22:42):
Yeah. Exaggeration is is is a core part of this, but like, even on social media there you know, th there was one that is like you know, all these mommy blogs, like mommy accounts and stuff. And there was one that I saw that was like this, that said, I birthed a baby and less time than it takes my husband to take a poop. Right. And it’s like, so they’re, they’re taking a frustration, then they’re acknowledging it, and then they’re exaggerating it. And it it’s almost like you observe it, you acknowledge it, and then you exaggerate it.
DG (23:18):
Yeah. That’s, I mean, you, you kind of nailed it on the, on the head there. I mean, that is, that’s really it, but at one word of caution, though, especially for folks who are not used to using humor, you do have to just make sure that your humor is appropriate and relevant. That’s where some newbies get into trouble sometimes. My mantra is when in doubt, leave it out. You know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re the least hesitant, oh, good. This offend somebody, you know, and that, and that, that bar keeps, you know, changing on what, what might be appropriate and what might not be. So I, I wanna make sure we put that in the podcast today that when in doubt do leave it out.
RV (24:04):
Yeah. I mean, that, that’s really huge because that’s the one time it can backfire is, which is one of the reasons why self-deprecating humor is so wonderful because you’re just like, you’re less likely to offend someone you’re less likely to like, run into a I mean, they just, they tend to be a little bit more forgiving when you’re, when you’re talking about yourself, like your hair joke, right. If you call someone else bald, that’s more dangerous than if you you know, use it. You’re like on yourself.
DG (24:36):
And also there’s, there’s a misconception out there that that humor, that tragedy plus time equals humor. People always, oh, you can’t talk about something bad now, you know, in the news, but you can talk about it later tragedy plus time equals humor. That’s not always true. There are certain things that are topical that just you know, I speak a lot in the healthcare world and I’m yet to write one joke about COVID, you know, I’ll write things on the periphery of it, but the disease itself, you, you, you know, you can’t poke fun at it. So again, again, watching your subject matter it just, you know, you just wanted to be very careful.
RV (25:21):
So news topics is another great place to look, right? Cause you know, like when you say observe it, there’s a couple things that jump out to me, you know, the safe one is like self-deprecating stuff, which has also ever evergreen as you describe it. But it’s like if I come out in shorts, which I don’t, but if I did, everybody would notice that I have skinny legs. That’d be like every single person would notice it. And so I could acknowledge it, exaggerate it. Like if I just go, what are people thinking? When they look at me, that’s observe it. Then I come out and acknowledge it. And I say, you may notice that, you know, my legs are, you know, make, make flamingos jealous or something like that. Right. So the, the, so you’ve got that, then you’ve got sort of the customized just frustrations, but then another place to, it seems like to pick up some good humor is in inside of pop culture. Now you you’re talking about COVID is like a bad example, which I would agree, right? Like that’s not a laughing matter and it, you know, it, it, it certainly wouldn’t be for at least a very long while. But, but there’s certain things in pop culture that you can get away with you.
DG (26:32):
Oh, absolutely. Pop culture. I, I subscribed to entertainment weekly, not so much because I want to, you know you know, read, you know, all, all the nuances. I want to go big picture. I want to see what shows are the most popular, what movies, what podcasts. So I can drop in a reference to Ted lasso. And 80% of my audience is going to know if I say, well, I’m not going to go all Ted lasso on you here with some homespun wisdom dropping in just a pop culture, reference, you know, the audience. He said, Ted lasso like that. And to your point earlier, it doesn’t have to be as funny because you’re perceived as in the know. And a lot of times when I would hit a town I would look in the local news. You know, whether it’s online or some, some towns even still have hard copies of newspapers. It’s pretty cool. But I’d look at the local news and see, you know, okay, let’s say there’s a restaurant that’s closing. So let’s say it’s called the spaghetti barn. So everyone knows the spaghetti barn closed in, you know, Cincinnati. So I might open by saying, well, your, your, your meeting planners have been so, so kind to me, they gave me a free dinner for 10 at the spaghetti bar and everybody
RV (28:03):
Goes nuts.
DG (28:04):
Yeah. They gave me something of no value. So again, that little bit of research have you ever had Sam Richter on as a guest on your podcast? I don’t know if you’ve had,
RV (28:14):
Oh man. I don’t know that. I don’t think we have, but I, we should, because he’s a genius. He’s a great speaker, but he’s got some great systems and stuff I’ve learned. I’ve learned some cool stuff from him over the years.
DG (28:25):
Yeah. Cause he’s the master at learning research of research you know finding stuff that you can then, you know, make funny. I use a questionnaire and I’m great at interviewing. I look at my own programs. I do probably 80% of my time is spent researching you know, and, and tweaking and writing and then presenting it’s the easy part.
RV (28:53):
Gosh. Yeah. And when you’re, when you’re back to the pop culture things, you’re really just looking at headlines cause it’s gotta be a big enough, which makes it easier for you research wise, because if it’s not a major headline, not enough of the people in the audience will know it. But if it’s a, if it’s a major headline, it’s pretty safe to think that like everybody’s going to know it. And it almost feels like the more recent something is and the more relevant or like customized it is. The more forgiving the audience will be in terms of how funny it has to be. But it’s like, if you’re talking about the spaghetti barn, if that just happened, you know, last week and everybody knows about it and it’s hyper specific to town, that’s even funnier somehow than what’s going on in the political election that everybody knows about.
DG (29:49):
Absolutely. And, and just, just again, another little caveat there I never do political humor or write political humor. It it’s just become, unfortunately, just too risky. Because in any given audience or any given prospects 50 up potential, 50% of that prospects, you know, or, or audience will not agree with whatever that humor might be. So, you know, the late night talk show guys, you know, th th you know, they certainly show, you know, what their thinking is, but for those of us in business, my opinion is that you can’t show it. For, for the purposes of humor, you, you just
RV (30:35):
It’s a mixed, a mixed audience,
DG (30:38):
Right. So I do look for current things, pop culture things, but I’m very cautious to steer clear of the you know, there’s, and there’s great political humor that you could use, but it’s, it’s risky.
RV (30:52):
Yeah. So I guess you’d say any, anything that’s super controversial or emotionally charged is best to just kind of stay away from it. It’s more, but it’s, but it’s more like the lighthearted things like Ted last was a great, a great example. Our pastor this last Sunday made a reference to Ted lasso. And everybody went nuts just because he said Ted lasso in church.
DG (31:13):
Yeah, exactly. That. Or if you just look at again entertainment weekly or in any kind of pop culture kind of thing, you know, we’ll just give you those high level things. My point on it is you don’t have to necessarily know it, let, let the you know, the, the other, you know, pop culture writers do all the heavy lifting for you. Although I started watching Ted lasso and it is funny and it is,
RV (31:39):
Yeah, it’s great. It’s super, it’s, it’s, it’s super cute. We, we love it because J doesn’t like to watch any shows that have violence or drama or sickness or anything, she only like shows that make her laugh. So we’ve been, we’ve been all into.
DG (31:55):
And, and that’s a great example. So something like the Ted lasso, the dialogue in there, what you’re laughing at most of the time are those comments on the comment, you know, it’s, it’s the storylines being driven. We’ll call that the content, or, you know, in your listeners world, that might be their sales presentation. But what you laugh at are those comments on the common Ted lasso, we’ll make some remark that is hilarious based on what just happened or what just was said, if that makes
RV (32:27):
It’s kind of that, like, that analogy used earlier of like, you’re basically a commentator, like I’m comedian is basically a giant commentator on life. It’s like, here’s everything we all go through and they’re like, just commenting on it. Right.
DG (32:42):
And then another thing, if, if your listeners can find something that works in a humor vein and can put it early on in their presentation, there’s a thing called a callback. And I think you you’ve talked about that before in other podcasts, a callback is where you bring back that thing that got the laugh again for you. No more lamps.
RV (33:04):
Yeah. So yeah, we, we haven’t talked, we haven’t we teach callbacks in our in our world-class presentation crafted event, but we actually haven’t talked about it on the podcast. So take a sec. Cause, cause here’s, you know, part of what I’m hoping people see, and this is something that I’ve learned from you and others is like, you don’t have to just like sit down and think of a joke. It’s there’s these places that it comes from and you go, what are self-deprecating things I could bring up? What are frustrations that people have what’s going on in pop culture. And then callbacks is another easy place to look for for humor. And it’s like, it’s a lay-down right.
DG (33:46):
So there there’s a piece I do in my own presentation about I use a funny prop it’s a, it’s a restaurant pager, like where you’re waiting for a table. And again, your listeners won’t see this, but anyone watching the video it’s hard to see because of the lighting there, but I have a little one it’s actually an ad specialty, put my name on it. So early on in the program, I get a huge laugh on my tables, ready, my tables, ready to go. The, the premise is that I carry my own with me, you know, my own restaurant pager. And it gets a huge, huge lamp. Well, what I do Rory is, and then I put the blinking one in my pocket. And then later on, you know, there, there are, I think, three other moments in the speech where I got my tables ready, my tables ready. And again, out of context right now, it’s not that funny in the moment. It’s hilarious. Cause we’ve called back to a laugh again. That they’re all kind of in, on, in, on the secret there.
RV (34:47):
Yeah. All you have to do, what’s amazing about callbacks is it literally doesn’t even have to be a, a setup or a punchline or any, like, all you have to do is say the thing that made people laugh earlier. The other thing that’s really clever for using callbacks is it, it doesn’t have to be a callback to your own stuff. It can be a callback to the speaker who was right before you, or earlier that morning, people go bananas over that.
DG (35:11):
They think you’re so much more clever than you might have snarly.
RV (35:17):
That’s why I’m in it. That’s why I’m interested in. That’s why I like, I like it. We’ll lose her.
DG (35:22):
Those are all tricks and techniques that will work. If I’m, if I’m speaking in a morning program, if there’s a general session speakers before me, I always go in the day before, you know, assuming my schedule can, can make that happen, to watch every other general session speaker. I do a, you know, a wrap-up of every other one who’s gone on before me. And again, it’s just acknowledging certain things they said. And then I comment on their comment, not my comment, like you said, I comment on their comment. So even if you have a business professional who might be following other sales presentations, you know, you, you know what your competitors are selling, what their bullet parts are, bullet points, excuse me, are, you can chew, you can gently make fun of your competitors. You know if I’m working for a T-Mobile and I, and I’m pitching against Verizon, you know, Verizon says they have great coverage, you know? Yeah. In, in zip code 3 7, 9 1 9, you know, again, I mean, again, I’m just riffing here, but you know, poking fun, gentle fun at your competitor and the prospects will laugh. Hmm.
RV (36:33):
Yeah. That’s and hecklers actually I’ve noticed are another place that you can get call backs to. Sometimes someone will say something out funny from the audience, some of the best lines I’ve ever written came from something I said, and a heckler said something and everybody laughed and I wrote it down and I’m like, thanks for that gift. I’ll I’ll add that myself next time. Because if it, if it worked in that moment, it’ll it’ll work again. Well this is awesome, David, and, and, and a couple of things you all, so you can tell by listening there, there’s, there’s, there’s a science to this and an art. There is there’s skill. A lot of this is experience. And I would tell you listening that w if you can have some evergreen content, like, for example, your backstory and almost every presentation you give at some point, you’re going to tell people about who you are, where you came from.
RV (37:31):
I think having your own little mini kind of semi stand-up comedy routine about your backstory. If you could work on that one little bit, you can use it in pretty much every presentation you give for the rest of your life. And it doesn’t have to be Ellen degenerate kind of funny. It can be two or three little chuckles that just give you confidence and break the ice and, and, you know, help you feel comfortable before you move into your speech or your podcast interview, or your sales presentation, or your internal company meeting. And if you struggle with this, David David can help you. So he’s, he’s one of our trusted vendor partners. So if you email us, if you go, Hey, I want some help writing this, just send an email to info at brand builders, group.com and put funnier speeches in the subject line. So email info at brand builders, group.com put funnier speeches in the subject line. And then we’ll connect you with David. Of course you can go find him, you know, on your own, but we’ll, we’ll connect you with him. And you know, he’ll talk with you to see if, if, if you’re someone he can help and hopefully he can help you because if David can’t help, you know, but
DG (38:46):
I think I can, I have worked with, with other business professionals, who’ve dealt with counting law and, and some of the most, you know, you would think dry subject. I believe that every topic, every industry has room for humor. I really do
RV (39:06):
Totally. And I like, I really am taking away. One of the big things from this conversation is don’t, don’t do it in a mean way. Don’t, don’t do it in a risky way. Don’t offend people. You don’t have to there’s enough light, safe, common frustrations that we all have. There’s enough pop culture references. There’s enough callbacks. There’s a there’s enough little quirks of everyday life that you can just observe it, acknowledge it, exaggerate it, and, you know, get a chuckle and have a great day for everybody. So David is thanks so much for coming on the show, man, and as always, thanks for your, for your mentorship and counsel and yeah.
DG (39:46):
Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much. It was a great to be with you today.

Ep 227: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Holy moly. Jeff goings blew my mind. It blew my mind. Obviously say AJ this where we’re, this was, this was one of my favorite interviews as it relates to content, like your big idea, like how do you find like the kind of idea that can build a career off of? What’s really good, really clean. And anyways, I’m talking to AJ our CEO, my business partner, my woman just we’re here breaking down. We’re about to break down the interview with Jeff Goins and it’s good stuff from Jeff Goins.
AJV (00:45):
Yes, really, because it’s really, really good. I’m guessing that was my transition. You want me,
RV (00:51):
That’s a transition. That was my casual toss over to my cohost. Well, you, but you invited him to do, to come and talk to our members.
AJV (01:00):
So excited about this. I think this is going to be awesome. In terms of like, just like really leaning into what are you creating content about. And, and this is like really about, you know, book content, but you could really take this and apply it to any sort of content that you’re building, which is what I love about interviews like this is there a universal, even if they have a targeted emphasis on the actual interview. But here’s the thing. I love this. I love this because it reminds me of my celebrity crush J-Lo. And so my first takeaway is that good ideas make bad books, reason being, is that a good idea is just that it’s a good idea and that’s not good enough. Good ideas are average. And I love this. And lo if you guys have ever watched the show world of dance, it did not renew.
AJV (01:46):
I don’t know how that happened, but three seasons, four seasons can’t remember, it’s really, really good, but I loved one of the things that Jlo said. I think it was season two and she was like, it’s not good enough just to be good. You have to be different. It has to be unique. It has to be original. There’s just too many people who are good at something, but what is it that is unique and eye catching and scroll stopping what goes, wow. I never thought about it that way, or I’ve never heard it that way, or it’s never been explained that way, or that is a novel idea in terms of how we’re approaching something that maybe we had a construct in our brain that was very set in stone, and then someone comes along and goes, no, it’s not about how you calendar stuff. It’s about how you think about stuff, right. To tee up to my man.
AJV (02:42):
But I think that’s really good. And that’s a really important it’s like, you don’t have to create new stuff. You just have to go, how do you rearrange this and put your spin and your take on it. Right. And I love that because I think so often we think we have to come up with this brand new idea and it’s like, are there any new brand new, new ideas? I don’t think so, but it’s the way that you rearrange it. It’s the way that you, we explain it. It’s your interpretation that makes it so original and unique. And it’s not good enough just to be good. It’s gotta be different. It’s gotta be original. It’s gotta be your take on it. And so I think that’s just a great place for us all to start. The more you can just leave live into your uniqueness in that the better it’s going to be.
RV (03:26):
Hey man. I mean, that was there, there were a couple of lines. That was my, my first takeaway is very much related to this. Like you’ve picked up that one where you said good ideas, make bad books. Another line that he said that was kind of in that same vein was ordinary ideas get forgotten. And that really hit me as like kind of a sobering thing. And then the other thing I loved about the interview, so that was very kind of like alarming and guide, oh, man, it really grabbed me to go, what, what is different? Like what, what are we doing? That’s different and unique. And then he kind of gave two really tactical formulas kind of all throughout. But, but you know, I, as I went back and reflected on the interview, there was sort of like two tactical formulas for how to not be forgotten and for how to not just be, you know, consumed.
RV (04:16):
And the first one was, he said, an interesting idea is something that is 80% the same as what we’ve always heard, but then 20% different. And so that was really powerful to be like, it’s gotta be close enough that it’s familiar to people and we can go, oh, I like that. I get it. That is true. But then 20% different to go, oh, but I’ve never thought of that. I’ve never heard it like that. And so I thought that was a super tactical way to like position the same, but different. And then the other thing he said, which is something actually we’ve, we’ve taught our members about specifically with Ted talks is that you think X, but really why that’s a really great formula for a big idea is you think X, but really why. And it kind of also lends to that sort of like 20%, 20% different rule. And I mean, I could see this 20% different role becoming something that we use a lot. We might have to like coin it after Jeff to be like the goin’s the goins rule of 20% or, well, maybe we’ll have to come up with something. So anyways, I had the same, I had the same takeaway as you, as you have the first one.
AJV (05:28):
Yeah. Well, I would just like tag on one little quote that I would add in there. And I thought he was really good. It says, you, you change the world by changing people’s minds. And that’s like very much like a tag, what you just said. And it’s like, that’s what people fall in love with is like this idea, right? It’s like you change the world by changing people’s minds. So I just thought that I would add that in there. So that’s kind of like a transition it’s I just flew my earphones out of my ear almost. So here’s my second one is that people buy the idea of the book before they buy the book. And I think that’s really important because they’re not buying the words on the pages, that’s what they get after they buy it. They’re buying the idea of the book.
AJV (06:21):
And I think we get consumed with the words on the pages and going then, and then the note, why are people going to buy this? It’s the idea that the book represents, not just the words on the pages, because they’re never going to get there. If they do not pick up that book or put, turn, play on audio to listen to it. And it’s like, how much have you spent going, what is the idea of this book? Like, what am I trying to change someone’s mind about what am I trying to make better or easier, but what is the idea of the book? And I think to me, the reason that’s so important because that’s the sales strategy, right? That’s the marketing strategy. I love one of the things that he said, at some point in this really good interview, he goes, once the book is written, basically your marketing hopes are over, right?
AJV (07:14):
And it’s like, you’ve got to have the hook of why are people going to buy this before you write the book? Right. And I think there’s some real, real power in that I’m going, it’s like, what are people going to buy in terms of the idea? Because I think that that is the sales and marketing strategy of the hopes. Even if the book ends up being a real let down. So I think there’s a lot of power in that is like, what is the idea of it? Because that’s what people are really going to buy into. That’s also a huge part of the sales and marketing concept.
RV (07:47):
Yep. That, that stuck with me too. And I think we, when we teach one of the things we help with our members, a lot of times is helping them come up with titles. And we talk about, you have to learn to separate the truth from the title. The truth is inside the book. Like it’s the thing, that’ll change their life, but the title is the transformation. It’s the promise of what the book provides. And that’s what you’re really selling. It reminds me of a couple of the metaphors that we use where it’s like, you know, if you need to get a dog to take medicine, you put the medicine inside a peanut butter. And so it’s like the title of the book, the marketing of the book is the peanut butter. And then the text, the words on the page is, as you say, J that’s the medicine, but so it’s so difficult for an author to separate those two because we’re so attached to the medicine where we’re so attached to the truth, to the, to the concepts that we’re writing about.
RV (08:45):
It’s hard to kind of separate ourselves and go, okay, this is the thing I’m teaching, but what’s the bigger idea that I’m selling. What’s the, what’s the payoff that I’m promising? What is the destination that I’m, I’m taking people to. And, and so I think you gotta be able to separate those and then even think about, okay, how do I package this idea so that they, people will buy the idea? And that’s really what they’re buying is, is the idea. But if you can’t, if you can’t separate in your mind, those two things, then you’re going to have a hard time. And, and frankly, most of us, like most, most authors don’t separate them because you’re not trained to, and publishers don’t teach you to, cause they’re, they’re focused on the book itself. Unless you really have somebody who understands marketing, who’s coaching you and guiding through the process. You’re, you’re not going to think of it in that way. So that’s yeah, so that’s good. Separate got a separate the, the title from the truth, the cover, the cover from the content and the idea of the book versus what’s in the book. So what was your third one?
AJV (09:57):
Yep. So my third one kind of similar, but just a little bit different and it’s really just how you actually put the book together. So thinking through chapters and the words on the pages. So I kind of thought to like big idea to like the tangible, like, how do you outline a book and how do you get in process? That process started. And I loved what he said on that. That was really, really good. It’s like, front-load the book with the big idea, like the entire front part of the book to be just front-loaded with the idea of the idea. And then the rest of the book should just illustrate that idea. But it’s like, front-load that book with those big ideas that are, I’m not going to say controversial in a negative way, but that are thought provoking that are different. That would go, I thought it was X, but he’s saying it’s Y but not how or why or what. It’s just the idea to get people going. I got to know where this is going to go, then use the rest of the book to illustrate that big idea. And I loved that. It’s like, you’ve got to sell the idea, then you can illustrate the idea. And that’s kind of like a way of outlining the book. I thought it was really good, simple
RV (11:07):
Save, save the best for first that’s one of our mantras around a brand builders group always saved the best for first, push it up front, you know, capture their attention. For me, a part of why I love this interview is because you could just see, Jeff’s like, you could hear, Jeff’s love for the art of writing and not just his love for it in the way that like, oh, he’s good at it. And he really likes it, but he, he places a value on it that, of, of the importance of it. And you, you know, Asia, you actually said this earlier, which was what my third takeaway was, which is that you can change the world by changing people’s minds. And for him, it was like, he really cares about helping people write better ideas, not just to sell more books, but because better ideas make a better world.
RV (11:59):
Like he actually said that like better ideas make a better world. And I really felt aligned with him on that as this kind of like, just like for us, it’s like, we’re not trying to just help people grow their, their reach or their platform for like vanities. Cause we’re, we’re trying to make a difference in the world. And I really felt that heart from him of like, don’t forget, don’t forget to work on the book. And I think, I think so many authors are like, oh, they think about writing the book. And then they come to brown doodlers and we’re like, Hey, you got to build the audience before you build the book. And you know, it’s not New York times bestselling author it’s New York times or not New York times best writing author. It’s New York times bestselling author. And we teach a lot of the authors how to do it.
RV (12:39):
But, but I think this was a good like reminder of like the return to good create good content, like original like create, create great ideas because they’re interesting because they’re fascinating because they’re new, but because they make the world a better place, like put together, put in the energy to come up with ideas that make the world a better place. And so we want to do both. We want to help you create amazing ideas. And then we want to help you tell the whole world that there, there is that you can make a lot of impact and a lot of money doing it. So I just loved it. Great episode, definitely a top one, go back, listen to the Jeff Goins interview and keep coming back here. I mean, th the interviews are just incredible. We learned so much hope. We hope and trust that you are too. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 226: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Real artists don’t starve. That is a philosophy that I believe in that is the title of my good friend, Jeff Goins book. One of his books, he’s written five books. I believe he also wrote the art of work and he is a true writer, a pure love, amazing, talented, gifted writer, which I admire because I write because it’s necessary to speak and do the other things we do. But he is he [email protected]. He’s been featured in psychology today, entrepreneur Forbes. He lives here in Nashville, so I’ve known him for years now. At this point, we just kind of like grew up in the, in the business together. And he’s just one of the coolest dudes and he spends a lot of time with manuscripts, ones that he’s writing. He’s helping a lot of other people write their own manuscripts these days. And one of the things that he told me recently was we don’t let people write bad books and I love that. And that’s what we’re talking about. So we have Jeff Goins here, who I brought on for free consulting and writing advice for me. I’m going to take advantage of it. You’re welcome to listen in to the conversation. Jeff, welcome to the show, buddy.
JG (02:11):
Rory, happy to be here. I am looking at your backyard, which looks like a painting. And I’m remembering a time when you had a dinner party when I didn’t know where the door to your house was. And I came through that backdrop. I’m like, is this where we go anyway? Happy to be here. Love that house. Yeah.
RV (02:30):
You been to the real, you’ve been to the real Veda and Villa. You’ve been to the real. You’ve been to the real spot, man. Is that the name? Vaden Villa. Yeah. We call it Vaden Villa and that cause if we ever put it on the market in Nashville, it’s like, I think we could probably sell it for like 10 times over asking price,
JG (02:48):
Right? Yeah. Dave Ramsey’s house is on the market. You could probably get something similar.
RV (02:52):
Yeah. We can sell ours and buy one of Dave’s garage bays. Exactly. Well, buddy. So I want to talk about writing an awesome book. And first of all, like let’s talk about the, the, the, the ideation process. You said, you said something. We were G jibber, John, before we got started here. And you said that good ideas make bad books. Why do you say that? What does that mean?
JG (03:28):
Everybody’s got an idea for a book and they think that idea is pretty good and I wouldn’t disagree with them. And the problem is that a good idea is not good enough. Good ideas are average. They are taken for granted. What most people call a good idea is a somewhat obvious observation about something true in the world. That thing could be your story. This is where a lot of people get stuck. They have something significant happened to them. They beat cancer, they lost 200 pounds. They you know built a business, whatever. And, and they think the story in itself because it’s so significant to them. And they talk to a handful of friends. I go, yeah, like they can see that it’s significant to the person that it happened to. And so their friends often encourage them. Right? If you have friends who are not professional writers, encouraging you to write a book, which is what I hear, 90% of all my friends say, you know, I need to do this.
JG (04:23):
90% of people are saying that they’ve got a good idea and their friends are telling them that’s not enough. And I’m not here to dissuade anybody. I’m here to challenge you to write something that people would pay attention to. And you can go do that. That this is what most people do is they have a good idea. Their friends were not professional writers, right? Who are unqualified. Right. Think about this for a second. Nobody thinks about this, but just because your friends. Yeah. All my friends, I’m pretty good at swimming. So I should become an Olympian Olympians. Do they know what it takes? Writing a book is as you know, Rory Vaden and a limpic act, it’s hard. Lots of people want to do it. Most people who start don’t finish it. And I want to help people finish their books. But I also have a commitment to the book itself, to the world of books, to the Pantheon of literature, that we’re not gonna let more bad books go out into the world because it’s easy to put a book into the world that is relatively easy.
JG (05:17):
I could write something on Microsoft word today, upload it to kdp.amazon.com and it would be published in a day or two. And so the fact that that opportunity exists is one amazing. And two, it should feel, we should feel a burden of responsibility. Any time something becomes dramatically easier. We should take a moment and stop and go. Just because I can do this doesn’t mean I should. And if I’m going to do this, I want to do it well. So everybody starts with a good idea and good ideas are average. They’re ordinary and ordinary ideas get forgotten. The book itself could be great. You know, they often are good books, but that is not enough to get people talking in the way that you so, like what makes that an idea? Yeah.
RV (06:08):
I thought I love this. Like what you just said, ordinary ideas get forgotten. Like that’s very sobering. And you know, like, I mean, you can see that just on any social media posts, right. You post it and it just immediately buried, like buried, gone disappears. So like if good ideas make bad books. Yes. What are the ideas that make great books? How the, how the heck do we find them or make them
JG (06:32):
The idea is not to be better than good it’s to find your interesting edge. So the opposite of good is not great. It’s interesting. Ordinary ideas, good ideas. What I call a good ideas, an ordinary idea, really the sky is blue. People should be nice. You know, littering causes pollution, right? These are obvious ideas. They’re not untrue. They’re not even bad ideas. They’re just boring. And the way that you change people’s minds that you change the world as you change people’s minds. And the way that you change people’s minds is you introduce enough novelty to them that they remember it. So consider a spectrum on one end of the spectrum, you have ordinary, that’s boring, ordinary ideas get forgotten. And the other end of the spectrum, you have absurd, absurd ideas, get rejected somewhere in between ordinary and absurd, as interesting and interesting is always more like towards absurd than you think it should be.
JG (07:33):
Right? And so one of the things that I experienced in my own writing and in working with other people on their book ideas, and we have to start at the idea because as Ryan holiday told me years ago, when I hired him to help me market real artists, don’t starve. He said, as soon he goes, I’ve got to work on the book while you’re writing it. I said, what? No, no, no marketing happens after you write the book. And he talks more about this in perennial seller. If you want, if those listening along what to read more about it, but he said something I never forgot. He said, once the book is written, the marketing is over. And there’s some truth to that. I would imagine in the work that you guys do where, you know, you can’t you can’t put lipstick on a pig, right?
JG (08:12):
There’s that’s Ogilvy quote, good marketing makes a bad product fail faster. You’ve got to be able to innovate the thing. So we want to do stuff that’s interesting and interesting. I define as 80%, same, 20% different, you know, this, this, that Don Miller StoryBrand same but different concepts. You want, you want it to be something that people go, oh yeah, a business book or a memoir. I know how those are, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But here’s the 20% difference. Here’s the thing, because we know it works like books are a 500 plus year old technology and they really haven’t changed that much. They they’re they’re words on a page, that’s it. Right. And instead of using paper, sometimes we use screens, but it’s still the same thing. Or you read it into a microphone, but it’s just words. Right. And so the technology hasn’t really changed that much. So you don’t want to mess with it too much. You know, I remember when people want to do like video books and all kinds of crazy, crazy multimedia things, and it didn’t really work. And here we are 30 plus years into the internet and books still are books. And so 80%, same, 20% different find something that everybody’s saying and then add some novelty to it, make it interesting. Change it up.
RV (09:29):
How do you do that? Right. Cause that’s like a, there’s like a delicate balance that you’re talking about here. There is. If it’s too unfamiliar, I can’t understand it. I can’t get my mind wrapped around it. I don’t know, word that
JG (09:43):
We call that absurd.
RV (09:44):
Okay. If it’s too much the same, it’s like, okay, I’ve already heard it. This is nothing new. This is same old thing, regurgitated. This sounds like this person or that person or whatever. So how do you, you know, I almost kind of visualize this as like, I’m, I’m looking for, I’m looking for the goldmine. Like where do I dig? Like where do I go on? This is the, this is the part where I can nuance it.
JG (10:11):
Yep. It’s like cooking and interesting newness. Novelty is like salt. And, and if you’ve ever cooked, insulted your own food or, or gotten a meal, you know, at a restaurant or that somebody cooked for you and, and, and added a little bit of salt, I was like, this is, this is kind of better. Right. And added a little intro. This is kind of better. And then he had too much in there. Like now, now all I taste is the salt. Novelty is like salt. As soon as you can taste, it there’s too much. Right. So it is like, it is kind of an intuitive feeling thing. It is a thing that as somebody who’s been doing online marketing for 20 plus years, it’s a thing that I have a knack for, which is why people hire me to do it. But anybody can do it.
JG (10:59):
If, if you can become aware enough of what that line is. And the way I do that is I start with category. What is this thing? Right. You have to start with category. If people tell me nobody’s ever written a book like this before I go, well, that’s a problem, right? Nobody, nobody can, we can’t wrap your head around it. Right. And, and so the phrase is, it’s like this, but different like that. Right. Same but different. So take the hunger games. For example, you know, the hunger games is like the running man which was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the eighties. And it was turned into a movie with Arnold Schwartzenegger classic, amazing, terrible eighties movie that you should definitely go watch. And it’s awesome. Yeah. The running man is a story about a bunch of convicts in the future who fight have a battle to the death on public television and people watch them do this.
JG (11:59):
And of course that’s a rehash of the gladiator story, not just the movie, but the actual, the people who lived in fought, you know, 2000 years ago in the, in the Roman Coliseum. Right? And so there’s a historian that says nothing is new will. Duran says nothing is new except arrangement and real artists. Don’t start by talking about the concept of borrowing ideas, stealing like an artist as Austin Kleon would say, how do you, how do you take an idea that’s already been done before and do it better? You take something old and you make it new. So you start with category. That’s 80%. If you’re going to write a business book, 80% of what you do is going to be kind of what everybody has done. It’s probably going to be about 200 to 250 pages. You’re going to have some success quotes in there. It’s going to have like easy approachable language, some illustrations these days that might have some science backed studies. Cause that’s really popular now that’s, that’s the boring, you’ve got to be boring before you can be interesting. Cause you’ve got to meet people’s expectations. Yeah.
RV (13:04):
As you, as you talk this out, like as I just think about myself, cause you know, one of the things that we tell our members all the time is this quote that I love from Larry Winget, which is find your uniqueness and exploited in the service of others. And we really love this concept of find your uniqueness. But then when I tell the story of take the stairs, I say, well, you know, the take the stairs book more or less as a book about hard work, which is like the most unoriginal on unique, it’s normal. I mean, classically right in the 80% now we call it discipline. We call it overcoming procrastination. So we, we, we try to take it through that lens. And then, you know, the metaphor of doing things you don’t want to do is a subtle distinction versus just doing something that’s hard. Is that kind of like what you’re talking about?
JG (13:52):
I was thinking to take the stairs and my my belief, my contention is that before someone buys the book, the idea has to spread people by the idea of the book before they buy the book itself, they have to, because they’re hearing people talk, you can’t read a book, you can’t test drive. You can’t really test drive a book, you read a sample or something, but most people hear enough. People talk about a book that they go, oh, well, I guess I’m going to check out that book everybody’s talking about. Right. and you had it baked into the title. Right? You’ve got the, that, that classic you know, success quote, is that your record? Is that somebody else’s quote, right? Like you know, you’ve got a,
RV (14:39):
About the rent is due every day. Yeah. I popularized it. It’s a, it’s a twist on something I heard in college, but I, I definitely popularized that made it public.
JG (14:51):
What’s the vote against I don’t, but
RV (14:53):
Success is never owned. It’s rented. And the rent is due every
JG (14:56):
Day. Yeah. And then you’ve got the metaphor of like, I’m going to go out of my way to do something hard every day I take the stairs versus the elevator. So the metaphor is baked into the title and that’s the obstacle is the way is another example of that. It doesn’t, it doesn’t always happen that way. But if you can bake the big idea, that’s, that’s an 80, 20 same, but different shifts people go. Wow. That’s amazing. And so you start with a category. So what I would recommend if, if you’re writing, take the stairs today. Okay. Right. Go find at least five best-selling popular business books.
RV (15:32):
Abbott’s yeah. Like just habits. There’s, there’s been, there’s been a bunch. In fact, there’s a bunch that is sell way better than take the stairs. And I’m like, crap. What is different is because they nailed, they nailed it. And somehow we missed
JG (15:47):
And it’s, and it’s basically the same idea, a different approach, right? Like atomic habits, once it’s that’s tiny habits, it’s one small change. A 1% change. Every single day is better than massive change, you know, infrequently. So read five popular business books, see what they all agree with too. What they all say, ah, they all say, you’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Okay, cool. Got it. Say that. Cause that’s, that’s what works. So it’s not like you can say like we’re not going to work hard cause people won’t believe that that’ll seem absurd and then find a 20% difference. That’s your uniqueness, something unique, some flare that you can add to it. Ryan holiday has done this really well with the subject of stoicism. He’s taken something old and made it new again.
JG (16:34):
But he’s using modern stories, not just a bunch of like 2000 year old Roman dead guys. Right. And so that’s, that’s how it works. Category. Start with a category, find out what they all have in common, intentionally break, a rule or two to kind of stand out. Right. There’s a scene in Braveheart where the Nobles finally join William Wallace and, and he goes, all right, let’s go. You know? And he tells the, he tells the Nobles, cause they’re on horses. Nobody else on horses. Cause they have horses. Right. And he says, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go. I want you to go, go hard. Right. Go out and like go into the, the, the, the forest over there. We’re gonna, we’re gonna go this way. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna meet the English and you go that way. And they don’t, they’re confused.
JG (17:20):
And then one of them goes, oh, they think we run away. And he goes, exactly. And then I want you to flank them. Right? Come in on the side, like a flank is when somebody comes out and then you come in on the side, you attack them on the side. Completely takes them off guard. So they do that and they win the battle. That’s what a big idea is. It’s going, you think I’m going here then fly, right? Like I hit your heart and you go, whoa. And the brain loves a little bit of cognitive dissonance, a little bit of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That can’t be true. Is true. That might be true. And there’s 80% safety. There’s like, yeah, it’s packaged in a lot of safety cause too much novelty. A friend of mine is a neuroscientist says, you know, you really throw anything more than a three to 5% daily change in terms of habits, attitudes, et cetera, is too much in your brain. Your soul, your whole nervous system actually shut down. If you try to change too quickly, which is a whole other conversation. But the point is enough change just like enough little change, enough knowledge. It’s like inception, right? Where you inject a little tiny idea that changes everything. That’s a big idea.
RV (18:29):
And then you’re finding that you’re you’re you’re so that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that 20% twists, novelty change, adaptation, flank, whatever you want to call it, but does it have to be true? And is it making it better or is it just different or can it be
JG (18:58):
It’s different? It doesn’t have to be true. You know, have to be honest, you can lie and get a lot of people to believe you and you will be interesting for awhile and false ideas eventually get found out. So I don’t recommend it, but the truth is that I, that an idea doesn’t have to be true for it to be interesting. It just doesn’t, you know, there, there are plenty of memes and urban tales or been fables that spread that are not true. Right. But they spread for awhile. And, and so we liked them. I think it was that book by the Heath brothers made to stick with the opening story is about that like internet story of the like guy going on a date and waking up in a bathtub full of ice. And his liver has been removed. Remember that story forever ago. And they said, this story is not true, but it spread like crazy Y and they kind of break it down. So I would say it’s like a good idea as a true idea. And most people think like the truth will set you free and it may set you free, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great marketing. You know, if, if people can pardon my saying that what makes for great marketing and let’s just go to Jesus for a second, because Jesus said the truth will set you free is
RV (20:12):
For you to burst into flames right now. Just keep going. Well, Jesus,
JG (20:16):
He’s this, didn’t this and all great political religious and thought leaders do this. They go, everybody thinks X, but what I, but what’s actually true is Y you have heard this. Now I tell you this, you have heard eye for eye tooth for tooth. Now I tell you love your enemy. Those are big ideas. Those are interesting ideas. What does he do starts with the familiar, familiar, and then add some novelty to it. So if you don’t remember anything else, remember the phrase everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is why everybody thinks that success is just something that happens to lucky people or everybody thinks that you know, like once you get to a certain level of success, you don’t have to keep trying. But the truth is it’s a daily battle or, you know, whatever that would be the big idea of take the stairs. And then the last thing that I would add is there are tropes that you can use to do this better. And that’s a trope. There’s a literary trope is like, bring it,
RV (21:18):
Bring it down and not a trope. Definitely.
JG (21:23):
Trope a trope is something that just works. It’s a, it’s a tactic. So for example writers talk about tropes in writing fiction telling stories because, because fiction stories are, are formulaic. You know, if you’ve ever read Robert McKee’s book story or save the cat that’s a trope, save the cat as a trope. And, and the, the trope is if you want people to like your hero, you have to get them to do something noble within the first 20 minutes of the movie. So, you know, Rocky is just kind of this, like, you know kind of dumb, you know, Italian guy in Philadelphia and you see him like doing nice things for his neighbors saying hello to the nice guy, et cetera. This works even with like antihero stories, like you know, the godfather or like breaking bad, Walter White in the first episode you see, he’s this hardworking science teacher, who’s got a disabled son and you like him.
JG (22:29):
Cause he’s, he’s kinda, he’s just trying really hard. And that’s the, that’s the excruciating thing about that show is this guy gets progressively worse and worse. He is a villain and there’s part of you that still rooting for him. So that’s a trope. And when we think about big ideas, things that just work there are, there are just the formulas. Everyone thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and then some skins that you can put on that would be like old, as new, old is new is stoicism. Old is new, is any like I dunno, church that says Hey, we’re doing things the way they did in the new Testament 2000 years ago. And we assume that just because something’s old, it’s authoritative, right. But you see this all the time. Ah, th this is you know, I paleo, right?
JG (23:18):
Like this is how the caveman ate. Well, like didn’t, they live to like age 40. Why are we doing caveman? Did it? It’s good. Right. We just, it, it doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t need to. It’s interesting. So oldest new, good is bad or bad is good. Would be another one. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books do this, but David and Goliath is about why strength is weakness and weaknesses. Strength. That’s good as bad, bad as good. We think strength is good. Well, sometimes it’s not good. And the ketogenic diet would be an example of that. You know, you and I are roughly the same age, I think. And I remember growing up in the eighties and nineties being told that fat was bad, low fat diet, no fat. Like you were reading the labels, looking for fat, don’t eat fat.
JG (24:00):
Now you have, it’s actually old as new cause it’s, it’s a version of Atkins, right? But a different take on it. And it’s like, Hey, this thing that you were told was bad fat. We want you to eat as much of that as you possibly can. And so the ketogenic diet became popular, not just not because of the science, but because an entire generation of people were told something was bad. And now they’re being told it’s good. And this, the backing of it, this is, this is being predictably. Irrational. People are predictably irrational, the quote, Dan Arielli the, the, the rationale behind it, the science convinces you of something you already emotionally want to be true. So good is bad. Bad is good, biggest, small, smallest, big, anything that appears to be one way and as some. And there’s another way these are, these are tactics and books that work well. Another one would be chaos is organized, right? Chaos disorder. What appears to be frenetic and crazy and chaotic actually has a hidden organizational structure to it. That is the, that is the plot to every mystery movie. Every ocean’s 11 movie you know, like w what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen. There’s the plan that goes completely wrong. And by the end of it, you realize this was George Clooney’s plan all along. And so these are, these are tactics that, that work well. So, you know,
RV (25:20):
That’s how you’re digging in. And that’s what you’re looking for. You’re just kind of going like, okay, where is the, where is the repositioning or the, the re-imagining of the 80%? Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like a punchline. I mean, in comedy, right? That’s how I teach to teach the psychology of laughter is your, you want to get the audience thinking something, and then you twist. And that’s where the that’s where the laugh happens.
JG (25:46):
That’s this, that’s the same thing. The science of comedy is interesting because it’s about surprising people, but when you delightfully surprised somebody, they laugh. When, when the surprise goes in another direction, they cry, right? So comedy and tragedy are the same thing. The result is just different. Ken Davis, a comedian, I think, you know, Ken told me one time, here’s how you tell a joke. You you get a table and you put a tablecloth on the table and, and you set the table, you put plates and some silverware and a napkin and a glass and another glass. And then you pull the table cloth. Right? That’s I tell a joke. That’s how you get an idea to spread a joke is actually just an idea. That’s, that’s a funny idea. That’s spreading, right? Like a really good joke. You remember, and you tell other people and they laugh too, if you told it. Right. And so a big idea is that you set the table, that’s 80%, and then you pull the tablecloth, you change the game. And so then one of the ways that you changed the game is you just say, what you think is big as actually small, or what you think is small is actually big. That’s the idea of the tipping point. People think that big things lead to big change. No, no, no little things lead to big change. Oh, wow. Right. Good. As bad, bad as good chaos has order orders, chaos and so on.
RV (27:02):
Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Okay. So so now that, so what I hear you saying here is that, you know, writing a great book, much of writing a great book is, is nailing this core premise, this, this big idea, this, this twist. And then after that, like, I guess once you’re clear about that, then you’re just kind of like extrapolating that out into a, like a fairly systematic presentation of that.
JG (27:33):
Yeah. And, and to be fair, I mean, this is probably not all books. It’s a lot of books, I think, but the kind of books that I’m interested in working on the kind of books that I want to write, and I want to work on with other people are big idea. Non-Fiction books that can be memoir, personal, develop business, whatever, but they’re going to change the way people think about something. Because if you change the way people think about a given topic, you, you change the world. I’m not trying to like change the world, but I want to add, you know, something good to it. And this is, this is where we’re trying to do that. So yeah, you would come up with the big idea because without the big idea your book dies, it just does. That’s, that’s, that’s the thing that we’re dealing with these days is nobody’s going to the library or Barnes and noble and pulling your book off of a shelf and buying it out of curiosity.
JG (28:21):
And if, and if they do, that’s like maybe one to 2% of your sales. And so you want it to have some backbone. You want it to have some gravitas and S and some umph to it. And so you’ve got to start with the idea, and then you, front-load the book with the big idea. You don’t, you don’t get to page 204 and go, oh, here’s the thing that I want everybody to remember. And I want you to write a good book, and I want the whole thing to be good, and I don’t want it to be fluff, but you front-load with the big idea. And then the rest of the book should illustrate that idea. And you can illustrate it narratively through an arc format. Meaning every idea is building on itself. And you’re telling a story, or even like a Malcolm Gladwell story.
JG (29:01):
These are or Malcolm Gladwell book. These are, there’s a narrative arc to the book itself. And there’s some big payoff at the end. There’s an initial big idea. Then there’s a bunch of little stories. And then there’s like, it feels like it feels theatrical, or it’s like a movie and you go, oh, wow. That’s, that’s what all this means. Or it’s modular start with the big idea and then module by module by module illustrate it. So if I, if I’m writing the tipping point you know, little things lead to big change and I’m writing it modularly, every chapter is a module in that as if you were almost like teaching a course on it. So, okay. Little thing, number one, looks this little thing. Number two, looks like this little thing. Number three, looks like that. And that’s how you would do that.
RV (29:48):
That’s fascinating. I, this is so cool and interesting. And like the formula that we used for my Ted talk you know, we did this big ordeal about why my second book title sucked. Cause we called it procrastinating on purpose, but we call it the Ted talk, how to multiply time. And my talk went viral. And is this twist that you, you know, you don’t manage time, you multiply that you multiply time.
JG (30:19):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. And can I pick on that idea from it? Yeah. So we’re everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y so everybody thinks you manage time. And the truth is you blank time. This is where most people get stuck, because the way that you come up with an interesting idea is you don’t just come up with the opposite of the thing that you just said. So everybody thinks you manage time, but you don’t. Well that’s what do you mean you don’t? Why not? That’s, that’s an interesting enough. The interesting, the 20% has to sound absurd. Right. But it’s just a little piece of it. So it can sound absurd because it’s been in case in a lot of normalcy, if that makes sense. And so everybody actually managed time, but the truth is like, I’ve heard you manage energy, right? Like, I’ve heard that before, but you took that one step farther into the stratosphere and you go, you multiply time. Well, that’s absurd where you can’t multiply time. Time is time. And that’s what makes it so interesting is it’s absurd.
RV (31:13):
The next part is actually not that you manage time, the X is you think you can’t create time. Oh my God, actually you can multiply time. And the way that we say is that as you go, well, you can’t create time inside of one day, but that’s why the way you multiply time is by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. And it is possible to multiply time if you think out into the future. So it fits that for me. But anyways, it’s like
JG (31:40):
And I would say to your credit, cause I read that book you’re not just, it’s not just some vague esoteric idea that you’re trying to get people to agree with you. It’s, it’s a kind of absurd idea, at least in theory. And then you have all these. I remember still, like you said something, he said something like, you know, most people think it takes like, like twice as much time to train somebody to do something for you. And the fact is it takes how much
RV (32:06):
30, 30 X, we call it the third, the 30 eggs. But if you spend, but even if you spend 30 times, the amount of time it took you to do at once is what you should spend training someone to do it. But then even over the course of a year, it’s like a 733% return on that
JG (32:24):
Time. So what I found interesting about the book is you had all these super practical research, like you’ve done all this stuff, research, backed ideas. You’re like, Hey, here’s how this works. That’s how that works. You start with an absurd idea and then it’s in case then a lot of practicality, like you have to prove your idea. And if you can’t prove your idea, then you just have some crazy idea. And what we want is a big idea that has some grounding to it. You go, no, no, no. See, this is how this works. Then you’ve got something that will spread. Hmm.
RV (32:52):
Yeah. well my friend where this is, this is so stimulated Jeff, like it’s so cool. And a fascinating and fun. Where should people go if they want to learn about you? You’re obviously one of our preferred vendors at brand builders group that we recommend for folks. And so if you’re one of our members, you can just go in your portal and request an introduction to Jeff. We’ll make it happen for you. But like in terms of people following you and staying connected, like what’s the best way to do that.
JG (33:23):
Sure. You mentioned my website, [inaudible] dot com. You can go there and find stuff about me if this is stimulating to you. And, and you think you have a big idea for a book feel free to email me and send me your big idea. And it shouldn’t be eight paragraphs long. It should be a sentence or two. And I would challenge you to think, what is the category? Where are you starting? How are you going to add some novelty? And if you’d like feedback on your idea, I do this on every podcast these days. Cause I really do care about better ideas going out into the world because better ideas make a better world. And I want the ideas to be true and good, but I also want them to be interesting because most good ideas die before they have the chance to make the impact that they want.
JG (34:05):
So if you want to share your idea, feel free to email me [email protected] and the formula that I would encourage you to use is everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and use Rory’s example of you know, everybody thinks that you can’t create time, but the truth is you can multiply it like you want to get like that’s what makes it such a good idea? Such an interesting idea is that the second part is surprising. Wait, like multiply, like you can’t just create time. You can actually multiply it. You can get more of this thing that we all kind of feel is a finite resource. That’s powerful. And I want everybody to have a big idea like that and to not start writing until they do, because otherwise it’s a slog and you need the energy of a powerful idea that you think is going to change the world in order to get, to get through the really difficult parts and process of writing a book. So feel free to email that to me, Jeff, at Goins writer.com, G O I N S writer.com.
RV (35:04):
I love that better ideas make a better world. I’m grateful that there’s people like you, that care about the quality of the ideas and the shaping them. And in a weird way, I feel like the more, no more noise that’s out there and the easier that it is, it’s, it’s starting to get a point where everything looks like noise. That if you have a really sharp idea, people are keen to notice it quickly. And so we appreciate your work. Brother we’ll stay connected. We wish you
JG (35:31):
All the best. Sounds good. Thanks for sharing.

Ep 217: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
And we are here influential, personal brand podcasts, recap. I love it. When AJs here, life is better when wifey is here, she of course is our CEO Xtrordinair. And we are breaking down the interview with Craig Valentine, which was a blast from the past, for me, someone who had a major shaping on my life and career early on. And so anyways, this was a chance to AJ got to listen into our interview. And we’re gonna, we’re going to share with you are our top three takeaways each and bay. Why don’t you go first?
AJV (00:38):
Okay. so formal these podcasts recaps, babe wifey. So formal and professional. Are we so my first one is actually something you said in the very beginning, which I then thought it was hilarious that he then talked about it later on. And he said this comment in the beginning, he said, what I realized really early on, I said, it’s not good enough to get ready. You have to stay ready. And then he used that exact same thing, like five minutes later when talking about creating statements that people don’t just remember that they can repeat. So my first two takeaways are kind of like a combo deal. And the first one is this concept of getting ready versus staying ready. And I think this is really, really important for the audience that we really want to serve. Because when you think about storytelling is not about just telling stories in a keynote, and that’s so much of what people prepare for.
AJV (01:37):
It’s like, I have to think about these stories for a book that I’m writing or a course I’m creating or a keynote. And those were very singular activities. And it’s like, what about the stories that you tell in everyday interviews or your content creation on social media or a podcast or TV or radio or whatever. And I think that’s really important. I’ve just being able to stay ready. So at any minute, if a reporter tweets you at 9:00 PM at night, that you could be ready to go for an interview at 11:00 PM, which is exactly what happened to us just a couple of months ago. And because we were ready, it landed on good morning, America, totally unexpected, but we were ready. Didn’t need to get ready. We were ready. And I think that’s just a really great story is if you get ready and you stay ready, then it’s easy to accept the opportunities as they fly by, because it would have been equally as easy for someone to go. I don’t know what I’m going to say for that and turn down I mega opportunity just because you weren’t ready. And so that was my first big takeaway. And also gave you a teaser to my second one that I’ll share in just a minute.
RV (02:47):
Well, that’s good. I mean, that is just as like being in that mindset of like, I can go at any moment. It reminds me what you said reminded me of our friend Navy seal Joe. And one time I asked him, you know, why don’t, why don’t you drink? And he just said, well, cause at any, any given moment, you know, I might have to defend somebody. I might have to do something
AJV (03:07):
That’s a different
RV (03:08):
Kind of stay ready. Right. But it’s like that when you’re a Navy seal, it’s like, you’re always
AJV (03:14):
Ready,
RV (03:14):
Always ready. So one of the things for me, I mean, Craig is I think one of the masters of teaching storytelling, and I think it’s part of the impact he’s had on my life has helped me tell a great story. And even after all these years, as I was listening to him, I realized I don’t always have a clear conflict in my stories and you need to have a clear conflict. And that was my takeaway, which I’ve, I’ve been reminded of by him before, but somehow still forget. And, and in any story like the story is in the struggle, the story is not what happens at the end. The story is this one step forward, two step back of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And the moment that the conflict gets established is the moment that something gets in the way of your goal.
RV (04:09):
And so you have to have a character who wants something who has a block. You know, we, we refer in our a world-class presentation craft. We talk about how you have, you have the main character and then you have the enemy. You, you have to have a main character. Who’s trying to achieve something. Who’s being blocked by an enemy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a person, but often it is. But if your stories are falling flat, it’s because you don’t have a clear conflict, which means you either don’t you, you don’t have a clear picture of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And there’s not clarity about what is standing in that main characters way. And if you don’t have those two things, you don’t have a story. You’re just, you’re just sharing words. And that is so simple, so simple, but just really hit me as profound. And it’s like, gosh, I should know this. I should know better, but I just don’t. And I, and you just forget that the fundamental, so that you got to have a clear conflict. That was my first big one.
AJV (05:12):
Yeah. Well, on that note Craig talks a lot about this in the interview is the importance of both conflict, but then also character dialogue. And those were equal parts of a great story is like, yeah, the story needs conflict, but there also has to be some character development I E through dialogue. And so it’s helping get to know each point of the characters in the story, even if it’s only one character that conflict and dialogue are of equal importance. And I think that was a really unique part because often sometimes the heart of the story is missed because you only get a one-sided character perspective.
RV (05:52):
Yeah. That was that your second takeaway was dialogue.
AJV (05:57):
That was a side tangent.
RV (06:00):
Since you, since you went there, I’ll just do my second one. Cause that was, that was my second one was that dialogue was my big second takeaway because of exactly what you said is you flesh out the characters, you get to know them by knowing what they’re thinking and what they’re saying to each other, which again, you don’t always think about. So anyways, that was my second one. I did two in a row. Okay. Back to you.
AJV (06:22):
Yeah. So my second one was something that I said at the very beginning, because I thought they were, they were very much connected, but it’s this whole concept of, you know, don’t tell stories just to be remembered, but tell them in a way that can be repeated. So it’s creating statements little taglines but easily remembered, but also easily repeated statements that actually carry through conversations. And that’s a huge part of a brand recognition it’s that people don’t just remember that, you know, you talk about, you know, overcoming self-doubt or you talk about in our case, personal branding, but it’s like, we’ve got these statements that are defining part of our personal brand and it’s easy for people to repeat them because they’re catchy, they’re easy to remember, but they’re also easily repeated. And I thought that was really good. And so it’s like, what are the conversation centerpieces that you have in your personal brand and in your stories, but in your content that allow people to go YAG tweet that I’d retweet that it’s like, I post that on my social.
AJV (07:26):
It’s like, I would, I would talk about this. Like, this is a, this is a good conversation starter. And it even, it doesn’t even have to be all that catchy. Sometimes it just has to be somewhat controversial in terms of like, this is different. Like one of the things that caught my attention when listening to this podcast with Kregg is this whole concept of, you know, in our opinion, that personal branding is the future of marketing and that’s somewhat controversial. I’m going like really like really it’s the future of marketing. And it’s like, that allows someone to go. It’s like, Hey, there’s this firm out there that did this study. And they’re saying that personal branding is the future of marketing. It’s like that personal branding is the way to build trust. And so again, it’s, it doesn’t even have to be like a tagline for it to be catchy, but it’s gotta be interesting enough that people can remember it and repeat it and that they would want to. And I thought that was a really huge part of stories are there to get people engaged. But then what’s the point, what’s the takeaway of the story. And are you giving it and little snippets that people can remember and want to repeat?
RV (08:37):
Yeah. Amen. It’s like, what’s the story, but what’s the, what’s the point? What’s the takeaway? The story is like the entertaining part, but then the point is like the educational part or the inspirational, the part that adds real value to our life. And you know, we call them pillar points internally, obviously like those, those catchy, those catchy phrases, and that kind of points to my third takeaway, which is which was, was actually nothing about the technical stuff of what Craig was teaching related to how to tell a great story. It was his kind of catchy pillar point from his wife. Your dream is not for sale. And I have heard him tell that story so many times about you know, him trying to quit his job to go pursue his dream and, and his, his boss offering him more money and him almost taking it.
RV (09:29):
And then his wife saying your dream is not for sale. And that has stuck with me that has stuck with me for almost 20 years now, from the first time that I heard that. And that is so powerful as a concept that like, you know, if you have a dream and there’s something that you’re dreaming about, like you literally want, and, and it is placed on your heart, that this is the thing that you’re supposed to pursue. Don’t let anything distract you from it. Don’t let anything pull you off of it. Don’t let anything convince you that you’re not worthy of it or that you can’t have it. And certainly don’t go chasing money in as a, as a way of avoiding chasing the thing, you know, that you’re called to. And even though, you know, that wasn’t a technique that he was there to teach, you know, he’s teaching us secrets of storytelling to hear that story risk recounted over and over is just such a powerful reminder for me in my own life to just go, yeah, your dream is there for a reason, your dream is there because you’re supposed to pursue it.
RV (10:33):
You’re supposed to move in that direction. There’s other people that you inspire by doing it. There’s other people that you help by chasing after it just don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked with other stuff.
AJV (10:45):
That’s good. That’s good. All right. Well, I’m at this up my third one. And I find a line and I, again, this wasn’t necessarily new, but it was a great reminder for every single person who is listening to this podcast is that it is not about selling a product it’s about selling results. And the best way you can do that is in storytelling. And it’s like, if all you do is talk about your product. It’s like, people get burned out. It’s like, you can only talk about it so much, but it’s like, what are the results that you will achieve or experience because of your product or your service. And he goes, you know, he gets that great story about when he was buying his first car several decades ago. And the first dealership he went to, they talked all about the car right here are the features of the car.
AJV (11:34):
Here’s the gas mileage. Here’s the rates that it at a desk, second place. He went and said, why are you buying a new car? And he said, oh, you’re going to look good in this car. Just think about all the ladies you’re going to get in this car. But it was, it was the results, but it was also the story. Like when you tell story, you’re able to put yourself in the character, see and experience it. Like when you talk about, oh, in this car, you’re going to look so good. I just want you to imagine, like, for me, it’s like how clean and organized a new car would be with your two toddlers. And if you owed, you had that captain seat, you wouldn’t have to climb over the seat to get in the back, or you’re going to have this extra space.
AJV (12:13):
Like you can tell I’m a mom of two small kids right now, because that’s what appeals to me like that if you put me as the character in the seat of the car, it’s like, oh yeah, I want that. I want clean carpets again. Yeah. I want seats where my kid’s little legs, can’t kick the back of them. That, how do you get me bad versus just telling me about just safety features and just the components of a car, but it’s like, how do you use a story to put your audience as the character in the seat to help them actually experience what your product or service is without making it all about just the facts and features and components of what you do, but it’s, what is it going to give them in peace or happiness or in my case organization. Right? So it was like, what are those things? And how do you use stories to help sell results? Because at the end of the day, people aren’t buying your product, they’re buying what your product or service is going to do for them.
RV (13:13):
So good. So good. And just storytelling. I think it’s, it’s easy to underestimate the power of stories because they’re so simple. It’s easy to forget the fundamental parts of that should be in a story because you just overlook them. And, and, and certainly just easy to forget, to use stories in your selling, your writing, your emails, obviously your presentation. So listen to this episode, go back. If you didn’t and listened to the episode with Craig Valentine, it is fantastic. He is a gifted speaker and also extremely gifted at teaching the art of story, which will help you and make a difference as does every guest. At least that is our hope every week here on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s all for this one comeback soon. We’ll see you then bye-bye.

Ep 216: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Well, it is time that you meet one of my legendary mentors. One of my personal coaches up as I kinda came up through the speaking ranks was this man Craig Valentine. He’s one of my favorite people ever as you’re about to learn, he is a wealth of knowledge and just a really, really cool dude. So I met him because he was, he is the 1999 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters international. That was a contest that I came in second in 2007. He was one of my coaches for that. And it’s a worldwide competition where 25,000 contestants compete from, you know, over a dozen countries to be called world champion. He won that when he was still in his twenties. He also has an MBA from Johns Hopkins university. He’s the author of a book called the nuts and bolts of public speaking and the co-author of a number one, Amazon bestseller called world-class speaking in action. And so he’s built a career largely out of presentation skills coaching, and he’s also a speaker. He speaks on some different things, but in my mind, he was one of my speaker original speaker coaches still to this day, he runs something called the speak and prosper academy and he has a coaching certification program. That’s also called world-class speaking and a piece, just one of my go-to trusted authorities on, on all things presentations. So Craig, my man is so good to see you. It’s been way too long, brother
CV (02:21):
And way too long. It’s great to see you. I remember those days when we were working up to the world championship, you had a lot, I still believe if you had used the Jessica Simpson line, you would have won the world championship, but you took it out, but that’s okay. I thought I saved face for her, but that’s that a lot about you that you were, you were willing to take that out and, and be the type of person that wouldn’t be remembered for that type of thing. So you were a champion in my eyes. Always. I can tell you that when I won the world championship, Rory, I’m telling you like two days later, I realized it was a blessing and a curse, a blessing and a curse. Yeah, because if you have been walking towards me in the Chicago two days after I won the world championship, you would’ve seen my wife on one side of me and me carrying is right there. This gigantic crystal trophy, right. Just walking through the Chicago airport, everybody’s looking at me like, well, who is that? Yeah, right. I thought, Rory, I thought I heard a lady say, is that Denzel Washington? Right? But this is what I realized my life would never be the same. This petite lady in a pink dress runs up to me in the middle of the airport and everybody’s watching. And she starts reading the bottom of my trophy and she says, Hmm, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Wow. Say some things.
CV (03:40):
And Rory, I was speechless, but that’s when I realized no matter where I go in life, people are going to say, would you mind saying some things? Right? So I came to a fundamental understanding about my life as a speaker and really about your life and anybody listening, I can no longer get ready to speak. I have to stay ready to speak. Yeah. That’s my new, my motto is don’t get ready, stay ready. Because then you can take advantage of all the opportunities that exist. And so what I help people do nowadays is stay ready to speak and learn how to craft and deliver and sell their message. So people take the exact next step. They want them to take you know, and also get them to present in such a way that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and makes them glad they came. And speaking of that, I’m very, very glad that I’m here.
RV (04:25):
Well, man, you know, it’s interesting to me because my, my dream originally was like, I wanted to be a speaker. And then I kind of learned, oh, you gotta be, you, you know, it helps if you’re an author and I became an author. And then now it’s like these days, I viewed myself probably more as an entrepreneur business-wise then than anything. But it’s amazing how much, those skills presentation skills, they apply to everything. Podcasts, interviews, webinars speaking in front of an arena or five, 10 people, or you’re at your, your leadership meeting or doing a prayer at the family dinner table. I mean, this stuff is everywhere. And you just, you don’t like, if you, if you didn’t go through Toastmasters, you might’ve had a class in college that teaches this stuff.
CV (05:13):
Exactly. It’s almost like personal financial management. You usually go through college without even knowing that, and you get out there to make this money. You don’t know what to do with it. Right? So to me, it, it’s always interesting because of what happened with you is what happens with a lot of people, including me, which is you get on this road. People say, stay in your lane, but they don’t realize that sometimes the road curves, right? And sometimes the market tells you what to do next. So for an example, for me, I got a call like maybe two months after I won the world championship from a guy who said, Craig, this is Wade Randolph. And I’d like you to coach me on my speaking. And I’m Rory. I’m like, I’m not a speech coach. I’m just a speaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And he said, I’ll pay you. I said, that’s a good place to start.
RV (06:01):
As I said, I must be.
CV (06:05):
And I’ll never forget. We met in the Martin Luther king library in Washington, DC. He drove up from Virginia and I started coaching him, but I had no idea what I was doing, but he kept coming back and I kept learning more and more ways to, to help Wade. And then I started getting other clients and other clients. And it wasn’t until Darren LaCroix, a buddy of both of ours said, Craig, once you realize you’re also a speech coach, you’ll be much better off because I was like, no, no, that’s not what I am. Once I embraced it. And I do what I call a jump into what you fall into. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. And I’ve been living in it ever since.
RV (06:41):
So, you know, present on that note presentation skills is one thing that’s universal underneath that, or maybe next to that is another skill, which in my mind, I’ve always thought of you as a master of, and this is something that I’ve always struggled with. And even in this interview, I don’t know, it’s probably been 10 years since we’ve talked, I am reminded of how good you are at storytelling. You are a master. You you’ve already told at least two stories in the first like five minutes here where I’ve just been captivated. Like I got this whole laundry list of questions I was gonna ask you and I am drawn in to your stories. And that was one of the things you helped me with. And I’m also reminded like, man, I still have a lot to learn in this area. And it, because that applies even more universally than speaking does is just the art of storytelling. So what can you talk about what makes a good story? Like why are stories important? And like, you know, just for the average person out there, that’s doing lives on Facebook or running webinars, or maybe they’re speaking and they’re hosting a podcast. Like what should we be thinking of when it comes to how to tell a good story and why do most of our stories suck?
CV (08:06):
Well, I think the first part is the why is not, why do they suck? But why do we tell stories is because you want to be remembered. But not only that worry, I’ll learn this a little bit later in my career, you don’t speak to be remembered. You don’t tell stories to be remembered. You speak to be repeated, right? If you get repeated, then your brand grows and people can talk about, like, for example, people will go around right now and say, Craig, Craig Valentine says, don’t get ready, stay ready. Right. Just from the message I told you earlier. So I think to make a good story, you want to have a story and a foundational phrase. That’s a phrase that’s repeatable. That’s you focused meaning focused on your audience. And that’s fewer than 10 words, right? Give you a quick example. One of my foundational phrases is don’t sell the product, sell the result, never a product sell the result case.
CV (08:57):
In point decades ago, I went to buy my first car ever in life, went to the dealership. Salesperson came up to me. He says, are you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, great. Let me tell you about it. This car has these types of Mo this type of motor, this type of window, this type of engine, this type, what was he trying to sell them? The car, right? I just said, never sell a product. Always sell the result. So I said, no, thank you. I’m not interested. And Rory, I went to a different dealership on the same day, different salesperson, same car. Now I gotta be honest, bro. He must’ve anticipated where I was mentally and emotionally at my life. In that time, you know, I was, I was young and single and looking to mingle. And so he walks up to me. He says, you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, you’re going to look good in that one. He said, you’re going to be flying down the road. The winds gonna be blowing through your hair and the girls. Let me tell you, the girls will be all over you, Roy, what do you think I did sign
RV (09:53):
Me up. I said, where do
CV (09:54):
I sign? See he made the sale. Not because he sold me the car, but he sold me the results. And he lied. I was lonely in that car. I’m telling you, but do you see what I’m saying? Or I tell the story, I make the point and then I’ll give them the foundational phrase. So never sell a product. Always sell the result. Now what goes into a good story is having some kind of conflict. What goes into
RV (10:19):
On a positive right there before you do so. So this is kind of age old, you know, national speakers association, classic Toastmasters, tell a story, make a point. And what you’re saying is like nail that point. First we call them pillar points, the foundational phrase, just like that tweetable moment, that, that catch phrase, that like one liner don’t sell the product, sell the result. And then
CV (10:42):
No matter what, no matter when it comes up, it could come up at the beginning. I could come up at the end, but it has to come up at some time so that they can walk away repeating it. And not just remembering, you want to be remembered, repeated, re, posted, retweeted, all of that. That’s going to help build your brand. Okay.
RV (10:57):
And do you come up with the point first and then the back, the story into that? Or do you just go like, okay, here’s a great story. And then I figure out some point to make out of it.
CV (11:08):
The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Both, both. Like, I’ll give you an example. He’s probably over there listening right now, but when it was 2012, the, the summer Olympics, the oldest participant in the summer Olympics was a 74 year old equestrian from Japan. Right? 74 year old, a question from Japan. So my seven year old son and I are watching this on TV and Roy on, unfortunately all the commentators kept harping on was the guy’s age. And they just kept saying, he’s 74. Can you believe he’s 74 by golly, he’s 74. And finally my seven-year-old son looked up and said, well, how old is the horse? Right. And I could not stop laughing. I could not stop laughing. So then at that point, I said, I’ve got to make a point out of this. I got to make a point out of this.
CV (11:51):
And so maybe a couple of months later, I realized, you know what? My son asked questions about everything, about everything, and yet he’s going out there. My son is going out there and winning national championships and track and field missing. How is he doing? And then I realized, never stop asking questions, never stop it. So I turned that into that point, not the most original point, but it’s an a, it’s a point that allows me to slide into questions. I can ask my audience. So I tell that story. I make the point, never stop asking questions, and then we move on to something else. So in that case, the story came first and I said, I got to find a point to make with this. But sometimes it works the other way around.
RV (12:31):
So, all right. Yeah. So it can be either way, right? You can have a great story and go, okay, what’s the point? Let me translate that. But or you go, all right, this is a great point that I need to make. And then let me back it into the story. Yeah. I think a lot of people can’t tell a good story and they don’t understand conflict. So, so talk about what you were just saying. Cause I said, what’s the most important thing and you immediately said conflict.
CV (13:01):
Yeah, I’ll go to conflict. And then I’ll go to dialogue, hearing what the other characters say to each other, hearing what you say to yourself. But conflict is the most important part. I’ll give you just the beginning of this story, Rory. So you can get a sense for what the conflict is. But I mean, let me ask you, cause you’ve been around. What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people live in their dreams? What do you think that is?
RV (13:23):
Self doubt.
CV (13:24):
Self doubt. Yeah. And a lot of people will say fear and the fear of change and this and that. And those are all great answers. But the number one thing is not what you think. See, I used to work for an internet company and I wanted to go full-time into professional speaking. That was my goal. That was my dream. Right, right. I was asked Molly, raise your hand. If you have a goal, raise your hand. If you want to do anything in life. Right. Me too. So I went to the vice president of this company. His name was Steve John. I said, look, John, I’m going to be leaving because there’s always been my dream to be a full time professional speaker. He said, that’s your dream, Craig? I said, yes. He said, well, that’s great. I really admire you for having one, but you can’t leave. I said, hold on now, what do you mean? I can’t leave? He said, well, Craig, we’ve been thinking about it. And we’re going to raise your salary up to this. Now Rory salary means the same thing in Nashville right
RV (14:13):
Now. We’re talking
CV (14:14):
Now you see my dilemma. I said, John, this is not a financial decision. This is about my dream. In fact, I call this a dream decision. He said, okay, I understand. I really do. How about if we raised a salary up to this? I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. You know, he raised it four times. I kid you not. I kept him going to raise the salary up to this. I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. He said, okay, Craig, how about if we raised your salary to well above six figures? I said, dreams are overrated. Now that’s a funny line. But let’s look back at the conflict. Let’s look at the conflict. The conflict in that story, the reason had people’s interest is because I set the conflict up for him to say, you can’t leave.
CV (14:57):
Boom. That’s when the conflict was established, that’s when the Titanic hit the iceberg. But Rory, the thing that makes a great story is not just the establishment of the conflict. You got to escalate it. You got to escalate it. Think about the movie, the Titanic, the Titanic hit the iceberg, but how did it escalate? The water started to rise on the Titanic, right? If the water never rose on the Titanic, I’m telling you right now that would have been a terrible movie. So what I’m saying is how do you raise the water on the Titanic in your own story? If you look at mine, it was, he kept offering me more money to stay. I kept getting more frustrated, more flattered, more frustrated, more flattered until something had to give. And so if you get your audience to that point, they’re like, well, what did he do? What did she do? How did they get over it? And the reason why conflict is the hook to your story is because your audience wants to know, did you overcome the conflict? If so, how, what tools did you use? Can I use them? Can I use them? And that’s why conflict is so important. But the other part that’s so important is dialogue. You’ve got to hear what the other characters say to each other.
RV (16:03):
Yeah. So I want to talk about dialogue in a set in a second, by the way, one of the things that I have quoted you for is the rest of this story, which is a dialogue from your wife, which is his amazing line, which is not just as, is a great line, but it’s actually had a meaningful impact in my life personally. But so is conflict. Like what is conflict exactly. Like, like, especially if I’m architecting a story, like to the point of, you know, let’s say, I, you know, like I’m actually working on this right now. I have a presentation. I have a presentation tomorrow. And I’m working on kind of a new story and I’m sitting kind of trying to craft it to make it sharper and more sort of state stage. Ready? What are you doing there? Like what are you looking for? Like, I, that I really love escalate the conflict. I don’t recall you saying that. You probably did say that to me a long time ago, but that’s a new thing for me is just raising the stakes, intensifying it. But when you establish conflict, how do you establish it?
CV (17:02):
Yeah. You have to recognize where, where it’s established and what happened. So when I ask people the question in that story, where is the conflict established? A lot of times they’ll say something like when you wanted to leave or when he was giving you more money. No, the moment the conflict is established is the moment something gets in the way of your dream or your goal. So it’s not when I wanted to leave nothing’s wrong yet. It’s when he said you can’t leave home, that’s it. So what you would look for in your story, Rory is the conflict is the moment where something gets in the way or someone gets in the way of what you’re looking to accomplish. Okay.
RV (17:40):
By definition means you have to have a goal. And that has to be clear. There it is. And then there’s gotta be something that gets in the way in order for there to be conflict.
CV (17:52):
I remember Darren LaCroix used to talk about Charlie Chaplin. He had, he had Charlie Chaplin had broken it down really well. I think he had like a, there was a bench and there was a girl and he was trying to get to the girl. And then it was something that got in the way. And that was in a nutshell what conflict is. Right? And that’s what a good story will do. You will establish the conflict. And here’s the, here’s the other thing about the story, Rory to many people, pre ramble, they pre ramble. What I mean by that is they take too long to get to the story in the first place. And then once they get to the story, they take way too long to get to the conflict. You should get to the conflict as early as possible. Because the earlier you get the conflict, the earlier you have them hooked in right away.
CV (18:34):
And a lot of times I try to get to the conflict in the question like I’ll tap into my audience’s world before I transport them into my story. I’ll tap into their world by saying, what do you think is the number one thing that stands in the way of most people live in their drinks, some already starting to establish some of the conflict in their own life. I learned this from Charlie, tremendous Jones, about a year before he passed away. One of the greatest speakers we had, he said to me, Craig, don’t get people to listen and memorize, get them to think and realize. So that made me become a master of asking questions at the beginning of my story in the middle of my story at the end of my story, to make sure that even though the story is about me, the message is certainly about them, them being the audience.
RV (19:18):
Yeah. I’m just thinking about my story. The problem is I don’t have a goal. The problem is the goal. Isn’t clear in my story. The conflict is the thing I’m struggling with is clear, but what’s clear is not, I don’t have the goal clear.
CV (19:31):
It’s almost like that old saying that, that, that if you, if you don’t, what’s the old saying, you don’t know where you’re going. Any road will take you there. Right. So we need to have,
RV (19:42):
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta know. So, okay. So let’s talk about dialogue and I don’t want to leave our audience with an unanswered question about this brilliant line that your wife delivers that changed my life and clearly changed your life. So let’s get back and talk about, okay. The F the most important part of a story is conflict. The second or a close second is dialogue. Why? And what do you mean?
CV (20:06):
Well, let, let, let’s give an example. Let’s give a reference. I’ll get right back into that story right after I say you dreams are overrated, right. And I’m laughing. And I say, I looked at the John said, look, John, I got to talk to my wife about this before I go, before I say, yeah. So I went home to my wife. I said, honey, I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do? What should I do? And my wife looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, take the money fool.
CV (20:34):
And then I’ll go into another part of the story. But here’s the thing about dialogue. I always ask people, raise your hand. If you’d like to add humor to a speech. And of course they all raised their hand. I said, add humor to a speech, uncover humor within it. How do you do that? You uncover humor within the story, within the characters, within the characters dialogue, and within the spaces and faces in between the lines. So if you think about my story, you only heard about half of it. Think about the funny lives. Dreams are overrated. Funny line dialogue, take the money, full, funny line dialogue. And then later on in the story, my wife says to me, I don’t care how much they try to compensate you. Your dream is not for sale. Your dream is not presented. So even the poignant lines, it’s dialogue, but guess what?
CV (21:23):
Rory, here’s the secret to storytelling in the story. She said it to me, but in reality, she said it to you, right? Anybody listening in that audience right there will hear it the same way. I heard it feel it the same way I felt it. And she speaking directly into their hearts and minds. And I know this because people have come up to me years later and said, you know, I was looking at leaving this company and doing my own thing. And, and your, your wife’s words popped into my mind. Your dream is not for sale. It made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. So dialogue. Yes.
RV (21:57):
So Nan, so, and you’re saying uncover humor, because humor is one of the things that we teach. I know you talk about it. I’ve learned a ton from Darren on it and other other people, and you go, it’s, you know, adding humor. There’s a, there’s a lot to it. But one of the easiest, fastest ways to add humor is to just uncover humor. And you said, uncover it. What did you, you kind of breezed through that you said uncovered
CV (22:22):
From it. First thing you want to do is look inside of your story because the only thing worse than no humor is forced humor, right? That makes the audience cringe that that’s going to disconnect. You I’d rather have no humor, but you look inside your story. You look at your characters and you look at your characters, dialogue, what they say to each other and what they say to themselves as well. You know, I have a story. I say, raise your hand. If w if you feel like sometimes the reality hurts. Now, be honest. Do you ever step on a scale and been forced to face reality? Not, I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about stepping on a scale? I mean, look at you. You’re obviously built, like, I don’t know some sort of Greek statue.
CV (23:07):
So if we just take it right there, there, there are different types of dialogue, right? In that story. And one of my favorite lines of dialogue or uses of dialogue is what I call projected dialogue. And I know this is a little bit advanced, but it’s when you project dialogue onto somebody based on how they’re looking at you. So my audience didn’t say that, but I can look at my audiences that I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about boom? So I’m projecting dialogue onto them to uncover some humor. So I have usually five different types of dialogue that I like to use. It’s character to character dialogue, what they say to other it’s inner dialogue. What you say to yourself, because that’s very funny. Often it’s projected dialogue. What you project onto them based on how they’re looking at you.
CV (23:56):
Like right now, if I was teaching this in a class, somebody, I would say, John is looking at me like, Craig, I have no idea what, this is, what this means. Right? I’m projecting dialogue onto them. And then of course there’s actual audience dialogue. There are things that will your audience members will say while you’re in a story. Like, even in that story, I’ll say, raise your hand. If you have kids, then you know, the doctor is always going to measure their length and their, and Rory, inevitably, somebody is going to say height, and I’m going to say somebody say hi, let me explain the length. When you turn them, that actually becomes the hot, right. But so I can use actual audience dialogue. And then I can use quotations that are from outside of the story that pertain to the story. Right? For, for a quick example, when I was in prison visiting an inmate came up after one of my presentations, he said, Craig, I’m getting outta here in a few months. I’m feeling good about life. And I’m back on the right track. I said, well, there’s a quote by will Rogers who says you might be on the right track. But if you just stand there, you’ll be run over. So I can bring in quotations like that. That might uncover some humor as well.
RV (25:06):
I heard about it. The internal dot, the inner dialogue is inner dialogue is a gift because you can make up whatever you want. Like, and as long as it’s like exact, you know, it’s an exaggerated, there’s like no rules. They inner dialogue could be anything.
CV (25:24):
And here’s the key, Roy, if I thought it, then I can say it. Now, all I have to do is use a stem, like, and I was thinking, boom. And I thought, boom. And at that moment I thought, boom. And I promise you, the line of dialogue will land just as hard as if you had actually said it. So yeah, it really is a gift. But guess what? So as per the dial, because based on how they’re looking at you, they might not be thinking that it’s like when I went to share the stage with my, with my speaking hero and I said, oh my gosh, I’m Craig Valentine. I get to introduce you today. You’re the man who made me want to get into this business in the first place. Thank you so much for being here. Nothing. He just looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stage.
CV (26:09):
So it doesn’t have to just be humor. It can be poignant moments like that, but he didn’t say it. He looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stick and worried. That is the look he gave me, make no mistake about it. And I feel like I interpreted that look correctly, but it still gives me the freedom. And I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s a gift because it gives you the freedom, freedom to say, now what you thought then, or to say what he looked like he wanted to say. And those are two very important ways to use dialogue. And, and, and there are, I like the way you put that.
RV (26:44):
Yeah. I mean, those are, yeah, that, that, it’s just like, all bets are off. You can, you can do so many things with that.
CV (26:52):
You see how I brought, I was able to bring in quotation from will Rogers to help push that story forward. It’s actually a Patricia Fripp story that I was going to, it’s my story, but it’s about Patricia Fripp. So anyway, that’s, those are the types of quotations types of dialogue that I like to use. And so if I was to really break it down, conflict is the hook dialogue is the heart because dialogue is what really pumps blood and pumps life into your story. If you’re ever watching a story. And I say to you, when did that story really come to life for you? You’re going to say when so-and-so said something to so-and-so right in that story, but dialogue is what makes it breathe and brings it to life. Mm.
RV (27:33):
Yeah. That’s that is interesting and powerful. And you know, to the, to the point of what you were talking about earlier as you, we call pillar points. I think you said you call them foundational phrases. One of the other lines that you, you said, and we quote you on this, like, I believe with a picture of you and as well as your name is you tell an eye focused story with a, you focused message that stuck with me for 15 years, man. Wow. can you talk about what that means?
CV (28:06):
Yeah. It’s kind of like what I was saying when it comes to Charlie, tremendous Jones, that the story is about me. Right? But the point needs to be about you. So even yelling back to the audience, you, the audience, even going back to the story about my son and me watching the Olympics, right? That story is about us. We laughed. We had fun. When I got to bring the point around to be about you never stop asking questions. The moment you stop asking questions is the moment you stop growing. The moment you stop growing we know from nature is the moment you fall, never stop asking questions. But what I also like to do is do what I call you focused. Check-Ins just like you heard me do in, in, in the one story where I, that I started to tell, I said, now raise your hand.
CV (28:52):
If you have kids, boom, that’s another check-in with them. Or now be honest, you ever stepped on a scale and been forced to face that’s another check-in with them. So I like to check in throughout the entire story so that they keep understanding, oh yeah, the stories about Craig. But this point in this message is about, is about me, the audience member, and I can use it. And that’s one of the things I just came out with a product about four months ago with Les brown called legendary speaking course. And that’s one of the things we’ve talked about all, all the time is info bites. He called them info bites. I call them foundational phrases, but they should be three things in my mind, foundational phrases, fewer than 10 words, you focused meaning focused on the audience and rhythmic. Now I don’t mean they need the rhyme.
CV (29:38):
I mean, they need to be easy to say and they need to roll off the tongue. Your dream is not for sale. Don’t get ready, stay ready. What got you here? Won’t get you there. I know that’s Marshall silver, but I had been talking about it for like five years before he wrote that book. But what got you here? Won’t get you there. Never stop asking questions. Average speakers placed blame, average leaders, place, blame, exceptional leaders. Take it. If you make, if you, if you make them visible, they’ll make you valuable. These are all of these foundational phrases that I have. And they’re all you focus. So I focus story message about me. I’m sorry. Stories about me. You focus point where the point in the message and the application is for you.
RV (30:18):
Yeah. You know, and this is so powerful. I mean, you can see why, like, what what’s amazing about this is, you know, when I stepped into speaking in the world championship and started learning from you guys, to me, it was like this very unattainable, almost like mythical skill of how to captivate an audience. And the more I studied this, the more I realized there’s so many techniques like dialogue and conflict that, you know, and using a foundational phrase that exponentially improve the impact in the experience for the audience. And it’s, it’s, it’s not that you’re, it’s not that you’re not amazing and charismatic as an individual, but everyone can be charismatic. But these mechanics, these are, these are practical things you can learn to do. And Craig is one of the masters, as you could tell, just by how these little tweaks make such a huge, huge difference. And Craig, that’s why I was like, I gotta have you on, got to introduce you to everybody. Where do you want people to go? If they, they want to learn more about, you know, this kind of stuff.
CV (31:31):
Remember we talked about never selling the product, always selling the result. This is what I would say to my audiences. I, if I’m in front of an SRO, raise your hand if a year from now, you’d like to be at least three times better than the speaker or presenter you are today. All hands go up. I said, well then great. You can go to one of my websites for free 52 speaking tips.com. That’s five, two speaking tips.com. And every week for a year, you’re going to get an audio lesson for me. And at the end of that year, you will be at least three times better than the speaker presenter you are today. So Roy that’s where I would have them go. But also if we just broke that down for a second, what was the result? Three times better? What was the resource? The website 52.
CV (32:12):
Speaking to which one that I mentioned first in an audience, somebody will say free. They will always say, but it’s the result. And that’s what I like to get across to people never sell the product, always sell the result, but always put the result before the resource, always as a leader, find a way to state the result before the request. Because if I did it the way most people do it, Rory, even people who are marketing people, it would have sounded like this. Raise your hand. If you’d like to receive 52 emails from yeah. And I don’t think my opt-in rate would be as high. So you go to 52 speaking tips.com and you’re going to be three times better than the speaker you are today within one year.
RV (32:50):
Yeah. This is Craig Greg Valentine. This is one of the people who coached me and still coaching me. I mean, this, this conversation is powerful and sharp. There are so many things you can listen to my recap with Aja here in a couple of days, we’ll break it down for you. What our big highlights were in the meantime, go follow Craig. You know, give him some comments, share some social media. Love, let them know that you’re listening. Say hi, check out the 52 speaking tips.com. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, Craig dude, thank you for your impact on my life. I mean you and Darren and ed and mark and Dave, like, you know, David Brooks, I’m referring to like you guys helped shape me in a lot of ways that I can look back and go a lot of, a lot of what we have done in our career and what the people we’ve been able to help points back to. A lot of these things that we’ve learned from you.
CV (33:42):
The Royal, I just want to tell you, you, you were a champion on the day that we met and you still are, and I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing and keep touching lives.
RV (33:51):
Thanks brother.

Ep 213: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Well, not every interview on the influential personal brand podcast turns out to be exactly what we thought it was going to be. And I would say this is one of them in a very delightful way. At least for me personally, I thought this interview with Celinne Da Costa was really a treat and different than what I expected. I thought it would be more in the area of sort of like branding and marketing, but it was really a level, a level deeper than that. It was really about the limiting beliefs that we all have, which then show up in our marketing. And so AJ and I are going to break this interview down for you. We’re going to share with you our top three takeaways. AJ is here with me. She is the CEO of brand builders group, my wife, best friend business partner and baby mama all at the same time. So babe, what what did, what did you think of this? Cause you, you haven’t interacted with saline really until this, this episode,
AJV (00:59):
Just through listening to the podcast. So I like all of you, it’s just a listener along with all of you. So I, here’s the first thing that I took away, and I think it’s really important because I think it’s also something that maybe just connects to even what we do at brand builders group. So my number one takeaway is that when it comes to building your brand really first and foremost, you have to know what your uniqueness’s like, what’s your X factor. What’s that one thing what we say is your uniqueness or your super power, like, what is it about you? That is a God-given gift to the world and to those around you and owning that. And one, you have to figure out what it is. And two, you have to figure out how to harness that. And then three it’s like, how do you get it out into the world?
AJV (01:50):
And so that’s kind of like the biggest thing, because I think so many people struggle with this and I can speak for all of our clients. Not all of them. A lot of our clients at brand builders group is I really struggle with owning. What’s already naturally amazing about them is that they downplay their accomplishments. They downplay all of their accolades, they downplay their education or their experience or their client roster, whatever it is, but they downplay it and they just think of, oh, well, that’s just what everyone else does. And it’s like, no, it is not. And sometimes I think for yourself, it’s really hard to even identify sometimes what is your natural super power, because you are so used to it that you don’t see it as all that unique or that powerful even. But it’s like all of us have that one thing, we all have something and many of us just haven’t taken the time to explore and ask the right questions and really try to figure out what is that thing that is really unique to me.
AJV (02:55):
And how do I use it to service the world and service humanity, but you do have it and it is within you somewhere. And so I think the first thing, and I love this because it’s also where we start is just figuring out, like, what is your uniqueness, your super power, that X factor, whatever you want to call it, but what is that about you? And that’s just where you start of telling your story. It’s what is that uniqueness? So I think that just resonated with me off the get go, because that’s a lot of what we talk about at brand builders group.
RV (03:27):
Yeah. Yeah. There’s, there’s, there were some themes there with you know, what we do at brand builders group of kind of that deep dive sort of internal work. And I’d say that was my number one takeaway too. Is there, I don’t know if she said this or this, I wrote this down. I’m not sure if she said it or if it was an adaptation of something she said, but this was one of my takeaways. And it’s, it’s right to what you were talking about, where the big journey here is coming into yourself and revealing and remembering who you already are. And it makes me think about AJ you know, like one of the things that people always get a tremendous amount of value from, from the work that we do. And our team does is when we write their expert bio, we take people through this exercise, right?
RV (04:14):
Of like, we go through this brainstorm of all these things that they’ve accomplished. And almost every one of our clients is like, oh my gosh, you made me sound amazing. You guys are so good at this. Like, this is incredible. This, this one little thing you did is worth the price of the whole program. And yet all we’re doing there is reflecting back to them. Exactly what you said, everything they already are. We’re just packaging it in a way that they wouldn’t package it because they don’t, they don’t see it. And they don’t think about it. And in a way it’s kind of sad that we, you know, we don’t see how, how awesome we are. And so this idea of revealing and remembering who you already are, is, you know, like where the uniqueness lies and that’s good. Yeah. So that was, that was, that was my, my first big takeaway. What was your second?
AJV (05:09):
And it’s kind of similar to that too. I think because I, you know as a mom as you are also a dad, but as a mom of two young boys, like I’m constantly terrified of screwing them up, right? It’s like, I’m constantly terrified of changing them into something that they are not. And all I want to do as a parent is channel their uniqueness, channel their greatness and not try to amend it to what’s convenient to me, but to help them explore, like, what are they naturally gifted at and interested in and how do I channel that into greatness and whatever greatness may mean for them. But it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, cover up or muddy up what is their super power, but I want to help them bring that out. And I think it’s like, if we’re not really intentional about as human beings that you know for yourself.
AJV (06:02):
And I even think about this with my kids, it’s like all this beauty that lives out there just gets muddied up over the years because we, what is truly your gift is seen as an inconvenience or a seen as the opposite of a gift, right. It’s seen as what needs to be fixed or what’s broken. And, and I think it really starts at a really young age. And then we get to adulthood and our, you know, in my case, in my late thirties, and it’s like, oh man, I’m trying to like wash off the mud. I’m like 30 years of trying to really reveal to what you said, what is already so awesome about who you are. And so I just think about my kids and they’re at this like really pure state I’m in existence at two and four. And it’s like, how do I not keep them pure?
AJV (06:50):
But how do I make sure that this, this brightness that is within them, doesn’t get covered with mud. And then it’s, how do we do that for ourselves? Right. And I think in a lot of cases, you can’t, I think you need someone else to come and help you wash that mud off. I don’t think that you’re able to do it all by yourself sometimes. And you, you really do need someone to walk along with you. And rather that is someone like Celinne or someone like brand builders group or somebody else. It’s like, you really need someone sometimes to remind you of who you are, because we can’t do it for ourselves. It’s amazing to me because I often get to help people craft their expert bios to what you were just saying, Rory and I often will, you know, they’ll do a draft and I’ll send it to me and I’ll make a few edits and I make a few suggestions and send it back.
AJV (07:39):
And here’s the number one response that I get when I, what I would say is I just pretty it up a little bit as I go, wow. Like, I feel like an imposter and it’s so interesting to me. And I’m like, okay, well, let me just make sure that I didn’t make anything up in here. You did this, right? Yeah. You were featured in this, right? Yeah. Okay. You worked with this kind of company or person. Yeah. Okay. You were awarded this award, correct. And it’s like, I go through the checklist. Yes, yes, yes. What part of this makes you feel like an imposter and it’s somewhere along the lines. We, we have told ourselves what we do, isn’t good enough, or someone else is better than, and it’s like, then you take a step back and you actually bring all of this amazingness to the surface and you put it on paper and it doesn’t even feel like you, and that’s because we don’t even take the time to celebrate our own greatness.
AJV (08:37):
And that isn’t about being prideful or full of ego. That’s about just acknowledging that you are worthy and good, and there is greatness within you and you were born with it. And those are the things that we forget. And so I just think I’m at my second takeaway was a lot about like, how do we like uncover the layers that we’ve spent so many years or someone else’s spent covering up that bright shining light within us. And how do we get back to what is that X factor or that uniqueness to begin with? And I think a lot of the times, it’s just, you need someone to do it with you, not for you, but you need someone to walk along and help you clean off that mud and remind you that you are worthy and good and special and unique and all the things, right. It’s like sometimes we just need to allow someone to come into our life and, and speak good. And to our ears and into our heart.
RV (09:35):
That’s so powerful. I mean Hey man, who rah like that is that is it. So in my second takeaway, what I wrote down was were we are all still looking for external solutions for internal problems and know
AJV (09:54):
A much more succinct way of saying,
RV (09:58):
Well, I think it, I think it’s really related to what you were saying, right. Is cause we, we, we have like we think we need to hire some perfect vendor to like solve some expert problem like this, this, this external problem, or that there’s like some skill set that we have to acquire. And really it’s this internal struggle of feeling like we’re good enough, that’s the real issue. And I would say that we’re even seeing this in brand builders group a lot right now, because we teach so many, I mean, we have 14 different today experiences like there’s 14 parts of our whole curriculum. We have all of these tactics and strategies and information and people, I think, love that, but more and more it’s becoming about the community and the comradery and the belief that they get from being around our team and each other, because the real thing that’s holding them back is their own limiting beliefs that they’re not good enough or that they haven’t done enough or they don’t deserve it.
RV (11:01):
And then, you know, you sit in a room with other people and you realize, oh my gosh, we all feel this way. And yet we look at each other, like we’re all superheroes, but we don’t look at ourselves. And, and out of that comes tremendous power. I know these application events that, that you you’ve basically invented for brand builders group AGA that you’ve been running where we now have a 15th type of event, which is is we call them application events because we don’t teach anything like our other 14 events are all like we’re teaching stuff. And these new application events are nothing but getting feedback and live coaching and instruction and, and community and networking. And, you know, we just happened to have one. So it’s fresh on my mind. And I think that, that these application events you created, they really speak to the internal struggles that people have and that the real power of brand builders group is moving away from our content and our education. And it’s really becoming the power of the community and the people they’re helping each other believe in themselves.
AJV (12:07):
Yeah. Well, both are needed. This one, one becomes more relevant at a certain time than another. But yes. Okay. So my last takeaway would be is that the vision has to be bigger than the fear, right? And I love this conversation and this isn’t necessarily brand new. I, man, it was a really good reminder of if the vision isn’t big enough, the fear will always win the fear of, well, what if it doesn’t work? Or what if, what the killer is? What if right? That’s just, it just whatever, whatever is after that, that’s the bad part. What if but it’s, it’s truly, it’s like the vision has to be bigger than the fear and whatever comes after. What if this vision this purpose has to be bigger than anything that comes after. What if, and that takes some work and conversation and brainstorming and thought.
AJV (13:07):
And in my case, a lot of prayer it’s like it, but it’s gotta be bigger than that. Otherwise, the, what if is going to be always the thing that holds you back, it will always hold you back. But the vision has got to be bigger than the fear. And that was such a great comment. It’s such a great reminder, no matter where you are in your business or in your personal life, wherever you are in your life journey, your personal brand journey, the purpose and the vision must always be bigger than whatever comes after. What if
RV (13:33):
That’s so powerful? And that points to my, what my third takeaway was, you know, my third takeaway was actually a quote that saline shared from somebody else, which after she said this, I was like, wow, this is so powerful. I cannot believe I’ve never heard anyone say this. Oh my goodness. It was, it was so huge. And so it’s from Carl Young. And he said until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.
AJV (14:08):
Mm that’s so good. Yes. I remember this now. That’s so good.
RV (14:11):
It’s so powerful. Right? Cause it’s like, we, we have these habits, these, these deep rooted beliefs, this, these years of conditioning, like you were talking about earlier age, where of, of things that we tell ourselves of other things that other people have said about us, that we accept as truth. And we allow them to live there in the unconscious. And then we, our life turns out a certain way and we think that’s our fate, ours, it’s our destiny. And it’s really just the by-product of these beliefs. It’s the by-product of these habits that we never questioned that we never challenged that we never see. They just live there in, in the unconscious, the subconscious, and yet they dictate our life. And and then we can transform our life. We can break through, by moving those doubts into the conscious, challenging them, changing them, rewriting them. And then those become the new programming for in a future that is wildly beyond anything that we imagined until you make the unconscious conscious. It will rule your life and you will call it fate. I hit me hard. Hit me hard.
AJV (15:21):
You should print that out, tape it up somewhere and read it every day.
RV (15:26):
Yeah, absolutely. Or you could come back and listen to the influential personal brand podcast on repeat over and over. You could listen to the episode, the interview that we did with saline, you could listen to this recap. You could just keep coming back. If you, if you get value out of these, please share them with your friends. Please tag us on social. Let us know what your favorite parts are of these interviews. And you know, leave comments on AIG’s profile or mine or the company is we want to know what parts are connecting with you and what is landing with you and what you’d like to hear more of, because all of that for us is unconscious. We don’t know what it is that you like unless you tell us. So bring it into our conscious so that we can rule over it and create a bigger future for all of us. Thank you for being here. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 209: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition joined by my wife, my business partner, my beauty, my favorite person in the whole wide world. AJ Vaden also our CEO at brand builders group. Today, we are breaking down the interview that I did with Darren LaCroix, who is the 2001 world champion of public speaking from Toastmasters. One of my OJI mentors. And really, I would say without a shadow of a doubt, Darren has taught me more about being funnier than anyone else. And it’s been a huge part in my career and just just a point of learning. So AJ and I are breaking it down. AJ welcome. Good to see you.
AJV (00:47):
Glad to be here. Ready to give you all my opinions.
RV (00:52):
I like it. I like it. Well I’ll go first with my first takeaway. You know, we’re sharing our top three takeaways each. I think one of the biggest things about humor is just realizing and, and identifying where are there opportunities for natural humor and not trying to force natural jokes, like not, not trying to force unnatural jokes, but just identifying these opportunities. And Darren talks about four ways to identify humorous opportunities, which I thought were so straightforward and clear. And these are, these are F’s, they’re all F’s. So what are your flaws? That’s an opportunity. What are your failures and talking about your failures, people love hearing about your failures. What are your first, like the first time you ever blanked and what are your frustrations? What are your flaws, your failures, your first and your frustrations. And, and I think the only other thing I would add to this is that not only are these great opportunities for humor, even if they’re not funny, these are great opportunities for stories. So AJ that I think is going to stick with me as a, as a big highlight from this episode.
AJV (02:04):
Yeah. And I know in his interview he gave some really great examples of how to do that. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me as he talked about this, and it was similar to this because he was talking about, you know, the frustrations failures first and flaws, but then he said learning how to do it in the moment. So it’s and so one of the things that I wrote down that it, it’s kind of similar to what you said, but I wrote down is that learn how to create humor for specific audiences, locations, industries, or companies. And then from there, it feels really custom and in the moment, and he tells this really funny story about, you know, this example is what I remember is the Hussey and G right? You’re at this big convention, everyone is frustrated about not being able to find this one ballroom HASI ended G so he found the frustration, but then he also did it in the moment and real time, which made it way funnier.
AJV (03:07):
Right. And so I think it’s one it’s figuring out what is the frustration of the moment. And I think that’s really easy because we all have them. I think one of the biggest things that I just kind of jotted down as a great reminders to myself and I used to do this and I haven’t done it in a really long time. I know if you’re listening, you can’t see what I’m doing, but if you’re watching, it’s like I used to have this little notebook and I would carry it around and I would write down stories. Right. It’s like when my kids say the most hilarious thing, it’s like as much as I think I’m going to remember that by that night, when I’m trying to tell, you know, you worry about this story. I’m like, wait, what did he say? And it’s like, really conditioning yourself to like, jot this down and be like, I don’t know where I’m going to use this or where I’m going to tell this, but this is just too good not to include somewhere. So I don’t forget it. And I think the same thing happens in just everyday life and then being able to filter it through those four apps. But then also really focusing on, you know, to me it’s about a location, an industry, a company or even like a specific audience of a type of people. And I just thought that was a really good way to make it super neat. And also relevant to the people that you’re talking to.
RV (04:27):
Yeah, yeah, that actually was, so my second takeaway is very much related to that. I wrote down, convey the emotion of the moment and I think just like what you said, what’s amazing is when you write spontaneous humor like that, it doesn’t have to be nearly as well written. Yeah. cause it just like, it’s just, you know, it’s so in the moment and it’s so special that that people, you know, are just completely unexpecting that. And and so, you know, I think identifying those frustrations and then also just conveying whatever the emotions are of, of any of those moments. So if you’re talking about your flaws, like you have to talk about how did you feel when you made this mistake or like when you had this failure, if you’re talking about your first and you’re telling the story you got to share with the audience, what was your emotion in that moment?
RV (05:26):
And because that’s what we really relate to. That’s the human, the human experience is emotional. And I think one of the, one of the hallmarks of a great presenter is that you can move the audience emotionally. You can take them on this rollercoaster ride of emotions. And part of the way you do that is just by sharing all these stories from these different parts of your life and just sharing the true real emotions that were there. Even if it’s not funnier, it’s more engaging. And it, it just kind of breaks up this monotonous of information that your presentation might otherwise be. So I, that was, that was a big thing for me. That was my second takeaway.
AJV (06:05):
Yeah. So my next one would be, is kind of on the same lines. And I’ll try to make these at congruent points when we can, but it’s that humor is probably more about the delivery than it is the words. And I think that’s a huge part of it. And I loved in the interview, he was sharing that example of some guy who had memorized all of these Robin Williams jokes, but they didn’t land because of the delivery. And it’s like words, aren’t what necessarily engage people when it comes to stories and humor. It’s the emoting, right? It’s the vocal quadrants. It’s the hand motions. It’s the facial expressions is everything that goes into the delivery and something that really isn’t that funny. If you just say it, when you add in the necessary hand gestures or facial expressions or vocal variety, all of a sudden, it’s hilarious. And then, so it’s like, it’s not just about figuring out what to say. It’s how do you deliver this in a way that’s authentic, but it also really creates this light-hearted emotional feel around the entire experience. So I thought that was this important because we talk so much about what to say, but really that’s just a teeny part of it. It’s also how you say it.
RV (07:27):
Yeah, for sure. It’s amazing how adding one little gesture or facial expression, you know, an eyebrow raise or something like that, just like completely enhances the, the whole story and the joke that’s I love that. That’s a good reminder. So on that note, you know, you’re talking about delivery, which is huge. One of the other takeaways for me, which was something that I’ve heard Darren say before, I’ve heard lots of comedians say this before, but it is such a great reminder is that great lines aren’t written they’re rewritten. And so when you do think about the writing, you got to realize like, nobody, like almost nobody, even Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen degenerate, they don’t just sit down and just like write a perfect line. They identify an opportunity for humor. They apply some of the basic kind of principles of the psychology of what causes people to laugh.
RV (08:23):
They write it, then they go deliver it. Like you were saying, they enhance it, they test it, they tweak it, they edit it. And by the time we ever hear it in like a stand-up comedy set in front of an arena full of people or on HBO, or, you know, some nighttime late night television show, they’ve delivered that line hundreds of times, it’s totally polished, totally dialed in. And so, you know, if you think, well, I don’t know how to write jokes. Yeah. Welcome to the club. Even the people who do it as they don’t do it, it’s a craft. It’s a skill. It’s something that can be practiced, just like any sport or artistry, you know, humor is, is a form of artistry. And a lot of it is, you know, there’s certainly some that is talent and gifting and that, but a lot of it is just discipline and practice and regimen, which for someone like me who was not born naturally funny, that’s really, really great news.
AJV (09:22):
Yeah. Well, I think if you just kind of go back to that though, it’s like for the people who are going, I don’t want to have hundreds and thousands of hours to go and practice how to do this. It’s go back to the whole point of it’s about looking around your real life. Real life is the best place to tell humor. And without having to write any jokes, you can be incredibly humorous by just capturing the ridiculousness of life. Right? It’s like we have two young toddlers. There is at least an incident or a shenanigan every single day that it’s like, I cannot believe this just happened. And it’s like, there’s no writing to that. It’s capturing the essence of life in the moments that you remember to do it. So a little hope for all of those who are like, I don’t, I don’t know how I’m going to learn how to write jokes.
AJV (10:12):
It’s like, don’t remember to write down the funny stories that already happened. You don’t have to create anything. You just have to remember the things that actually happened to you that are funny. And my last thing, and I, this is a little quote that he said somewhere, but it really stuck out to me. And it said a comedy cuts down, humor lifts up. And this isn’t about comedy. This is about humor. This is about lifting up. This is about lightening, the mood. This is about giving that mental break to a serious subject or creating that break where the audience needs a little relief from this. Isn’t about making fun. This isn’t about cutting anyone down. This is about lifting up and using the humorous parts of life and situations in order to lighten the mood, not cut anyone down. And I really loved that.
RV (11:03):
Hmm, amen. Just a little levity to the whole conversation. Well fantastic. Always love getting A’s thoughts. Go back. Make sure you listen to the full episode. The interview with Darren, you hear from prince own mouth, what he’s talking about and make sure that you share this recap and both Darren’s episode with anyone out there, you know, who might want to learn how to be funnier,
AJV (11:25):
Basically, anyone, you know, who’s not funny that listen to this, you need help with your stories. That’s who this is for.
RV (11:33):
Yes. And don’t send it to me. I will be personally offended if you do that. So don’t send it back to me, but we’re so glad to have you keep coming back here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

we help you turn your reputation into revenue

Category: BRANDING

Ep 243: Building Million Dollar Membership Sites with Alison Lumbatis | Recap Episode

Ep 242: Building Million Dollar Membership Sites with Alison Lumbatis

Ep 229: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman | Recap Episode

Ep 228: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman

Ep 227: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins | Recap Episode

Ep 226: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins

Ep 217: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine | Recap Episode

Ep 216: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine

Ep 213: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta | Recap Episode

Ep 209: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix | Recap Episode

tune in to the podcast!

© copyright 2025 brand builders group

earnings disclaimer

privacy policy

terms & conditions