Category: BRANDING

Ep 184: 4 Keys to Reinventing Your Career and Your Personal Brand with Pete Wilson

RV (00:06):
Hey, Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon. Pete Wilson is our former pastor.
RV (00:57):
We love Pete Wilson. He was the founder and senior pastor of our church that we still go to in Nashville. It’s called cross point. It was one of the fastest growing churches in America and to reach 10,000 people each weekend. During that time, Pete published four books with Thomas Nelson, including his bestseller plan B, which we have read through together. And then in 2019 he started good vibes management, which is an organization that kind of pairs up celebrities with court with like corporate brands. So this is people like Kane brown and Tim McGraw with, with brands like boys and girls club of America and the MBA to do these inspiring press grabbing projects while also giving renewed purpose to the celebrities platform, which is super cool. And today he also hosts a new podcast called the good talk podcast with his wife where they inspire people to be healthier and happier and more purpose-driven versions of themselves. We’ve been friends for years. I mean, a decade a decade at this point, Pete was one of the first people we met when we moved to Nashville. And anyways, we just love this guy. And you’ll notice AJ is sitting here with me because she hijacked this episode because she was like, I want Pete to come and I’m coming too.
AJV (00:57):

New Speaker (02:23):
Very rare that I do a co-hosted interview. And it’s not to just say, I wouldn’t want to be on all the episodes that typically our schedules don’t align, but since I scheduled this one, I made it work
RV (02:37):
Anyways, buddy, welcome to the show. It’s great to see you.
PW (02:40):
Thank you. It’s an honor. It really is. I’ve been looking forward to this for so long as you know, I’m a huge fan of both of you. I’m a huge fan of this podcast. So it it’s, it’s great to be here.
RV (02:52):
Yeah, well, I, and, and I think one of the reasons that, you know, obviously our relationship with you, but, but AJ has a knack for reinvention.
AJV (03:03):
No, honestly, what it was is I know so much of our audience or is going through this phase of their business or their life where there’s this concept of reinvention and it’s for so many of our clients who have been very business minded. So they’d been entrepreneurs or in corporate or in sales, and now they’re going, but there’s something else out there for me that I feel called to do. And a part of that has this personal brand. And I just, we hear all the time that people are going through this. Like this is, you know, the next phase of my life or I’m in, you know, this is my life version 2.0. And, and so I follow you on social and clearly I know you a bit, it’s you have gone through like this massive reinvention and I love what you’re doing and all the things you’re talking about and all of your posts. And so one day I reached out and I was like, Hey, do you think that you would want to come on our show? Because I just feel like this, this whole conversation around re-invention affects every single piece, every single person that we work with. And so it’s going to be applicable to everyone.
PW (04:07):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people going through reinvention and for a host of reasons, right? I mean, sometimes you have to go through a reinvention because it’s forced upon you either you made some serious mistakes or you work for someone who thinks you made some serious mistakes, or you just find your line of work to reach the people you really want to reach, you got to do something completely different. And so there’s a host of reasons, but you know, the, the process of reinvention for everyone is pretty similar. And I think there’s some things that you can do to help prepare yourself to do that in a successful kind of way.
AJV (04:46):
I love it. I’m so excited to get, to hear all about it too. You know, I
RV (04:50):
Think all the way back, you know, plan B probably feels like years and years. I mean, it was years and years ago, but it probably feels like a lifetime ago for you, but you know, that whole book and, and story about just like, what happens when the thing you thought was going to happen, doesn’t happen. How do you think that applies to this in terms of like, what’s the right mindset that you think you go in, you, you should go into a re-invention with, or that just that you, that you’ve gone through. I mean, you’ve gone from being this very well known senior pastor in this space and then, you know, have moved to a whole different space in some, in some ways what’s the mindset there, you know, and just to start with,
PW (05:42):
Yeah, it’s, it’s very humbling to write a best-selling book about, you know, what do you do in life? Doesn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to turn out when I wrote that book. And at that point in my life, to be honest with you, everything had turned out the way I wanted it to out. Like, if you go back and read that book, it’s full of everybody else’s stories. Cause I had to pull from all the people around me whose life hadn’t turned out the way they thought. And then years later, you know, I live out my own plan B and my own life feels like it kind of imploded in some ways. And I’m like, wow, I really need to rewrite that book now because there’s some things I would say much different having lived through it personally. But I think there can be, you know, you, you look at these opportunities that you have in life reinvention.
PW (06:28):
Like I said, sometimes they’re kind of forced on you. And then in, in my case to some degree, it’s not a path I would have chosen, but I had the opportunity to either go one direction, which is just to be bitter the rest of my life, to wallow in mistakes that I’d made to say, you know what, I’ve, I’ve made the biggest, greatest impact I’m ever gonna make. It’s never going to be that good again. I’ll never have that kind of audience again. And to be honest with you, I had that season, I needed that season. I needed to hold on to that pain long enough until I’ve learned all the lessons that I needed to learn. But there came that day of saying, all right, enough’s enough. I’ve learned what I’ve needed to learn from that pain. And now it’s time to build back.
PW (07:15):
Now it’s time to reinvent. And the beauty, the gift I’d been given was a blank slate. And so all the patterns of overworking the patterns of being a people pleaser and finding my identity through the validation of others. I had an opportunity to build everything back, but do it in a healthier way. And I just got to answer the question that some people never get to really ask themselves, which is what do I really want to do with my life now? And I started building from that, that, that, that point forward. But one of the first things I always say to people is, number one, I’d say commit to the process like reinvention as you guys know is not easy. And it is a process. Sometimes it’s a painful process, but you’re not going to go to bed, a successful CEO and necessarily wake up a New York times bestselling author, right? There’s a process there. There’s going to be some work there and you got to embrace that process. Have you guys seen that to be true?
AJV (08:20):
That’s an understatement statement. No. And I think one of the things that we see a lot, even in our own lives and our own business, because I think one of the reasons I so wanted to have this conversation, our podcast is brand builders group is the product of reinvention, right? This was not our life as a full-time business five years ago. Right? In fact, brain builders group, we’ll celebrate three years in business officially next month, next month. And so this, I think for, even for us, it’s like, it was a very, again, not a process we would have chosen probably wasn’t planned, wasn’t chosen, but oh my gosh, the fruitfulness and the blessings that have poured out because we got that second opportunity to reinvent. I’ve been so incredible, but there’s something that you said earlier that I really resonate with. And I know a ton of people in our audience with is that process of, well, how do you go from, well, F this isn’t what I planned.
AJV (09:24):
Cause I felt like a lot of people are in that. Okay. You know, the last, roughly 18 months of rocked, my world turned my business upside down. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to the business I had. So what’s next. How do you go from that O F moment to no, actually this, this is, this is a blessing and this is an opportunity to reshape and reshift, even though it’s going to be hard work, but I’m getting a second chance to do life and a whole new way. How, how do you do that?
PW (09:54):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. And you know, I think for me, I’ll tell you a big part of the process for me was changing my mind shift towards gratitude because there’s a season that I wanted to focus on everything I had lost. Right. And honestly, that, that, that kinda came from the spirit of my life of entitlement. Like I was owed that I, you know, I did this, I did that, our target, you know, I really felt like I had earned all of that. It was all owed to me. I had to shift my mindset to one of gratitude. It’s become one of the most important practices in my life to just in that gratitude journal, every morning list of things that I’m just grateful for. And the more I started to see all of life as a gift, as I started to see even my, my skills, my abilities, those were gifts that were giving them, given to me.
PW (10:49):
It wasn’t owed to me when I started to see everything through that, that, that perspective. It really allowed me to stop looking at things as if they were obstacles and start looking at them as if they were opportunities. And I started to that whole mind shift of, oh my gosh, all these obstacles that I’m looking at, they’re not blocking the path. They are the path, right. This is the way I need to walk down this road because all of this is forming and shaping me, not only what I’m going to do next, but it’s forming and shaping who I am as a human being. But I took a while to get there again, that wasn’t an overnight thing.
AJV (11:28):
No, but that’s so good. It’s these things aren’t blocking their path. They are the path that’s really, really well. And
RV (11:37):
You talk about entitlement. And I think that it’s really weird because when you have been successful at something, I mean the word re-invention, yo basically, no matter how you slice it as starting over, and that is it’s, it’s a painful part about going well, I already, I already fought this battle. Once I already did this war, like I already ran this race. I shouldn’t have to do it again. And that is so frustrating. It can be frustrating and maddening. How do you get yourself past that? Because you’re like, you know, one day, as you said, you’re a CEO or you’re you have this big business you’ve started, you’ve got this huge team of people until just like crank stuff out. And then the next day you’re gone, it’s all gone. And here I have this beautiful blank slate, but it’s also like, do I really have to do this again?
PW (12:43):
Yeah. That’s why I say, I’d say the second step is you’ve got to embrace humility. It takes a tremendous amount of humility because you’re right. When you’ve had tremendous amount of success and a particular season of your life, or in a particular industry, right. That you’ve been working in. And then all of a sudden you find yourself having to either leave that industry and start something completely new, or maybe you’re, maybe you’re staying in the same job, but to really get the results you want. Now you’re having to learn a completely new skill. Right. it’s humbling. You know, we were joking around a little bit before this podcast started, as we were both fumbling around with some it issues that, you know, there was a time in my life that I had a video team of four or five full-time people. I had an it department of three or four people, you know, I really got to just show up and do the part I love the most and walk away.
PW (13:37):
And somebody made magic out of that and made me look good. You know, these days you know, I am the video team. My wife is the it department. Right. And you know, we’re, and she’s only in the it department cause she knows a little bit more than I do. And when stuff doesn’t work, I tend to throw it. It gets expensive, replacing stuff. So you know, it’s humbling, right? And again, you could look at that in one or two ways. And, and to be honest are times I’ll look at it and I’m so frustrated because I can’t get this cord to work or this program, the work, or I can’t figure out how to do lights. And then there are other times I sit back and say, you know what, though, like again, part of this process is it’s, it’s leading towards what you wanted and you started with a blank slate.
PW (14:24):
One of the things that was of value for me was flexibility. There was a time in my life that I worked 80 hours a week. And in that process, I wasn’t focusing on some of the things that were most important to me in life, such as family. And so, and part of that was, you know, I, I had a staff from over a hundred people that I was trying to manage and lead. And so again, my ultimate goal, these days of wanting some more flexibility means I don’t have a staff of a hundred people that I’m leading day in and day out. It also means I don’t have three separate offices anymore. I have a two foot wide desk in my laundry room. Right. So there’s, yeah, there’s, there’s humility that comes with it, but I have to keep that long range goal.
PW (15:11):
And there’s some, also some values kind of started with that blank slate. And I said, what is it that I ultimately want? And for me, flexibility was one of those things. So, but yes, the humility it’s huge. In fact, you said something recently on your podcast. I wrote it down. I have it here on my desk because you were talking about Jim Cohen, who you had had on there and you guys had helped her. And so she had had tremendous success right. In one area, but now she’s wanting to do this TEDx talk and she comes to you guys to help her organize that and create, you know the possibility but viral Ted talk. And you guys did that for her, but that only happened because she was willing to be humble. Right. And to kind of go through that process. So you said this, what you said, be humble enough to learn a process and follow the process.
PW (16:03):
And so that’s been in the back of my head ever since I heard you say that is, you know, you again, just because you had success before, doesn’t mean that’s going to be ODU again. And so you gotta to read, if you need to hire a coach, hire a coach needed, send a online webinar, attend the webinar, you know, but become a sponge, commit to that process, get rid of the pride that makes you want to think that you’re too good to start over and you’ll automatically greatly increase your chances to be successful at your re-invention. Whatever that reinvention might be.
AJV (16:37):
This is so good. Cause I know you’re going to talk about something in a second, so I won’t give it away, but I think this is a really nice transition into that because we hear a ton of people come to us going, well, I should just be here by now. I should just have been making this much money by now. I should have gotten this by now. And I’m like, why, why and what is buying now? And I think a lot of it is what you said is like you get entitled to this previous idea of success or your role without going, Nope, I’m actually going to clean the slate and I’ve got to humble myself and realize I may not get there in the timeline that I want, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get there. But also I think what you said, I think is so powerful it’s to redefine, like, what is it that you want?
AJV (17:25):
Like, do you want to just go back to what you did to do it in a different industry or a different avenue? Or do you really take the time to sit back and go? No. What, what is this opportunity to reinvent really mean in my life? And I just don’t know if a lot of people sit back and take that time. They kind of go from, you know, to use your example. I was working 80 hours a week as a corporate CEO, a CEO. Now I’m going to work 80 hours a week to be a New York times bestselling author. I’m going, but is that what you really want or is that just a conditioned part of your life that you’ve gotten used to?
PW (17:57):
Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s it leads right into that third thing, which is, I think you have to redefine your success and the temptation is to take whatever metric you were using before and just apply that right. To whatever it is that you’re going through to, you know, in the midst of this reinvention. And it just rarely works that way, especially if you’re going to pivot industries like I did. So I went from being a full-time pasture speaker for over 20 years. That’s all I had really ever done in my adult life. And now all of a sudden I’m doing something a little different, right? And so these days, you know, I have the podcast, a good talk podcast, you know, we have this good Bob’s manner management that we’ve started, where we’re partnering, you know, celebrities and entertainers with nonprofits and corporations. And then I have my personal coaching, all three of those things were quite different in many ways. And what I was doing before I pivoted along with that, you know, the, the reality was I had an audience that I had gained over 20 years of working in ministry. And some of that audience translated over to what I do now, but many of them did. And so it was, you know, I had to redefine success because, you know, I started with maybe 30,000 Instagram followers and every time I’d post about the new things I was doing, you know, I’d lose a thousand and gain 50. And
RV (19:25):
I find that to be a motivating experience when I post something in my followers, not only do not grow, but when it goes in reverse, that really drives me to continue in the perseverance passion.
PW (19:40):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I had some choice words for Instagram. I get it. You know, it’s like what they had originally signed up for. It had changed. It was different. The content was different. I had a little different angle. I had a different feel to it. And so I had to redefine what is success? Then success is gaining those 50. And I had to focus on that because those are 50 now who are signing up for what it is I’m doing. And I had to be okay with losing that a thousand at that time, you know, it’s the same thing. It’s like, I used to get paid pretty good money to stand in our arena full of, you know, 20,000 people and talk for 30 minutes. Well now, like I love the opportunity for free to stand in a room full of a handful of executives and talk to them about how I can help them go to the next level level and their business and their life and to redefine what success looked like and all those different offerings that I was able to provide.
RV (20:41):
I love that about the metrics. I mean, that is so true. Cause it’s, it’s funny, like, you know, you’ve heard that you were saying this before you hear that, don’t compare your step one to someone else, step 100. But when we reinvent in our own lives, we do it to ourselves against ourselves where it’s like, I’m comparing my new step one to my former step 100 and carrying the metrics over, man. It just creates pressure and like anxiety. And it brings a whole bunch of negative habits
AJV (21:11):
With it. Yeah. I think one of the things you said, I was like that I think out of everything, it’s like, that’s where you have to humble yourself the most, even comparing yourself to yourself because it’s not going to be the same in the beginning, nor should it be, nor should it be.
PW (21:28):
If you can get that early on, it really sets you up because you guys know this you’ve had seasons in your life where you got the awards, you know, you had the New York times and
RV (21:39):
AIG got the awards. She got so many awards. You had a box full of awards from our former life. But the only one she kept, this is funny. This is anecdote. Most of you don’t know. AIJ literally was the top producer, top leader, top revenue, earner, top everything. And, and when, when we started brambles group, we left, right. We had re-invention she left all those awards except for one which was corn hole tournament.
AJV (22:17):
Yeah. I still have it in my office. And it’s like in the shape of a little corn and every time somebody comes in, I’m like, I want that that’s right.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I want to love,
PW (22:28):
I’m not surprised by all the other awards, but that one, that kind of surprised. I know you would not
AJV (22:34):
Think I’m so talented in the skills.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Let me just I’ll leave it at that.
AJV (22:40):
But that’s like, I think that’s so important is redefining success because when we, you know, departed from our former company and former partnership, you know, I really struggled when we started brand builders group and settling into my new role because I settled in as the role of CEO and wasn’t so client facing anymore and I wasn’t getting all of the accolades, right. So I was very, very client facing before and got a lot of praise and a lot of you’re so awesome. This was amazing. And now I get, is this sucks.
RV (23:15):
I use for problems. It was a very humbling
AJV (23:20):
Experience that I appreciate, but it was really challenging to go no longer am I the one who people want to see or want to work with or nor do I even get really paid for it. And it was a very challenging first 18 months of me settling in that my worth does not come with the amount of revenue that I produced. And it was a real challenge. And it wasn’t really until I had our second child, which was in the midst of our startup with this, but I said, I didn’t want the life I had before. So why do I miss it now? And it was a very poignant moment that I remember when Liam are now almost two year old was just an infant of X. I remember at that first with Jasper, I only took a three week maternity because I was so afraid that if I wasn’t working that I wouldn’t be significant.
AJV (24:11):
And with Liam, I took a three month maternity leave. And I just remember sitting in that moment, I’m like, why do I miss a life that I didn’t even want? Yeah. And it was so tied to this. I really had to really look at my pride and my ego of, I cared way too much about the way I looked and the way I seemed, I cared more about that than my own happiness. Yeah. And it was a very humbling experience to settle in and go, I’m going to have to really redefine what success looks like in order for me to step into this new role in our new company and, and actually seek happiness. Yeah. And it was, it was that right there, it was redefined success. And that it was, it wasn’t until that moment that I really was like, okay, I don’t have to be the one to have my name everywhere or be the one on stage or get the huge contracts. Like that’s no longer success to me, but being able to take my kids to school that I, you know, just like those little things, it was, it was a very humbling, important process that was redefining success. So I just, I know when not you sent this outline over, I was like, we’re going to have to talk about that because I know so many people who listen to this podcast, they’re dis their success is being defined, but what’s happening around them, not what they actually want.
PW (25:40):
Yeah. That’s so true. And you know, for me, one of the things was, you know, you ma in ministry, you’ve measured things. And the number of people in almost every category is kind of one of the things that gets measured. And so when you’re speaking in front of large groups, as you guys know, it feels good. It’s momentum somewhere along the way, though, for me, I had bought into a lie and the lie I bought into was because I’m so good with large groups of people. It means I’m not good one-on-one. And I repeated that for years. I repeated that to people, people would compliment me on a wow. I mean, you can stand on that stage. And just, and I had always say, well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I’m, you know, I can’t do what you do. Like I’m not good, like one-on-one with people or with small groups of people.
PW (26:26):
What I discovered that wasn’t true at all now what it required the one-on-one, that’s why I love coaching these days, but it, it requires a level of connection with people that I didn’t have to have with 20,000 people. And so it’s that I wasn’t good with people one-on-one it was, I wasn’t prepared to have that level of emotional connection with them that are required to go there. And so that’s really helped me again and just redefining what that success looks like. And success for me these days is loving what it is that I do, which ultimately is so much more important than any kind of accolade. You could get any kind of awards you can get. Cause those things, again, they, they feel great for about a day. And then it’s, if you don’t love what you do, you’re going to be miserable because all those awards, all that stuff, except for the corn hole, they’re going to end up in a box somewhere. Right.
AJV (27:28):
But it’s true. And I land, I love that. And I think too, it’s like so much for our audience. And this is a shout out to everyone to remember. It’s like, you are not defined by your followers and the number of likes that you get, or it’s like, it is not about that. And we had a guest on the show several months back, he’s also a personal friend, John Ruhlin. And I love what John Ruhlin said. And you, something you just said made me think about it is like, you do not have to have millions of followers to make impacts impact in millions of lives or even to make millions of dollars. And so often in the world of personal branding, we look at our followers and go, oh, the, you know, if you have a lot of followers, that means you’re successful. And it’s like, no, you can have 10 followers and be incredibly successful. It’s just, what, what is that success for you? I love that. I think that’s so important
RV (28:17):
When one of the things, when we were kind of talking about reinvention and, and, and how we might frame the conversation, you know, so much of this is like humbling yourself, re you know, changing, redefining success sort of like letting go of the past. But there’s also a little bit of a nuance to this that you thought that you brought up that I thought was really fascinating, which is that there’s actually, some of it does come with you. That is healthy. Can you talk about that?
PW (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I think, I think the reality is you’re never actually completely starting over, you know, the reality is whatever work it is that you’ve been doing, like, wow, you know, you’ve got, you know, for me to 20 years in ministry, it didn’t like just completely disappear. You know, I spent 20 years working on this skill of speaking and communicating, right. I had 20 years worth of relationships that I had built. All those didn’t disappear the day that I started to kind of reinvent and kind of shift or pivot. And so for me, I had to look back and say, okay, you, you have a certain set of skills. Cause I started with this. I started with the mentality of all you’ve ever done in your life is be a pastor, which is true. I mean, it was true. That’s all I had ever done as far as an actual title.
PW (29:41):
But the reality is I had 20 years of skills that I could dig back into 20 years worth of relationships. I could go back into. That would be helpful. So I’ll give you a great example of this. And it’s one I think you guys will identify with when I started decided to launch good vibes management, and I just had this idea because as a pastor, over the years, our church being in Nashville and being a large church, we had over the years, many celebrities who had kind of come through with huge hearts, we definitely
RV (30:11):
Relate with this. We know lots of celebrities. I mean, we can keep on parts. They’re always trying to come over and call us and bug us. I mean, I mean, we definitely relate to you
Speaker 4 (30:20):
On this, but they had great hearts. They wanted to do good
PW (30:25):
Things, but often they’re so busy. They didn’t even know where to start. Right. And so sometimes as a church, we we’d help them. Hey, here’s three or four amazing things going on in our community that you could be a huge help to not only with your resources, but with your platform. And so I just had this idea of what if we launched good Bob’s management and we do this with artists and athletes. We part, we paired them with nonprofits and really add purpose right. To their platform. But I knew like let’s take music business. For instance, I don’t know anything about music business. I knew that managers of these artists would be kind of the gatekeepers. So I literally got on my Instagram feed and I started going through my followers, looking for followers who had something to do with music management. And I saw this girl, her name’s Nikki Boone.
PW (31:13):
I’m like it said a music management. So I clicked on her profile. She happened to be like the day-to-day manager for a guy by then McCain brown, who was this really up and coming country music artists who had had some crossover hits. I literally just like reached out to her and said, Nikki, I don’t need you follow me, but I don’t even know if you know who I am, but I would love to pick your brain. And we sat down and she told me everything there was to know about music management. I told her about my idea. She was like, I think that’s a great idea. In fact, I think like you could really help me with some stuff with Kane, six months later, I’m putting a deal together between the world’s largest nonprofit and one of the world’s largest blowing up country music artists.
PW (32:01):
And they were doing incredible work together and lives were getting transformed. And it was all because I thought for just a minute may be there’s some people in relationships from my past that could help me with my future. And so I know that in the process of your reinvention, whatever it is, there’s some people you’ve worked with. There’s some relationships that are formed. There’s some skills that you used and you honed that can come over and you can use those in whatever new endeavor you have going on. And I said that you guys would be able to identify that because I recently saw you with Lewis house. And I tell story on Instagram, about how, when you guys went through your reinvention, he was one of the first people that you guys kind of reached out to, and he was incredibly generous and really helped you guys out. And I just think there’s more people like that out there in the world than we realize who want to help us. If we’re willing to ask
AJV (32:56):
And to, to what you said, it’s you already possessed this unique skillset from your past. You were just doing it in a different way. It’s like people were coming to the church of going, Hey, how can I help? And you’re going well, what if I went to them instead and said, Hey, let me part you. Or it’s like, I think that’s too, it’s really a powerful to remind everyone. It’s like so much of what your future holds. You’ve already developed those skills and your past. You just need to learn how to apply them in new and different ways towards your future goals. And we definitely relate to that in so many different ways in our business, but then also the, the people too. It’s like, just because you’re, re-inventing doesn’t mean that people of your past the, you know, the things that you did, clients even don’t they, they come with you. Yeah. Some do some don’t. I mean, to
RV (33:41):
The way that you said, you know, one of the things that you just said P which was a light bulb for me, I guess this is kind of a random anecdote, but w we have a good friend, a guy named Ron marks and, and he used this metaphor one time. It has stuck with me my whole life. And when you were talking, it’s sunk in with me that, wow, we have a little bit of this in common with you, between what we used to do and what we’re doing now and what you used to do and what you’re doing now. And Ron here’s here was the illustration. He said, you know, one of the great things about becoming a leader is you go from being in the spotlight to becoming the spotlight operator. And that I think is something that we both have in common, which is where we used to be more in the spotlight.
RV (34:26):
And now both you and us, we are more the spotlight operator. We’re trying to like facilitate other people who have, you know, to grow their platforms and to do meaningful things with them. And you know, what an amazing what an amazing and beautiful unexpected part of the way that God’s plan works and rolls out that the pain we’re going through, isn’t about the pain at all. It’s about him preparing us for the work that he always originally designed us to do. And I, I can’t let you get out of here without asking you I know you’re not officially a pastor anymore, but like, how has your relationship with God? Like, how has that affected or the plate into reinvention and, and how much do you think that that shows up or, you know, matters or has changed, or just like, yeah. Talk to us a little bit about that specifically, you know, going from a, to, you know, what you’re doing now
Speaker 4 (35:39):
I’m just, I’m fascinated about that.
PW (35:41):
That’s great. And, and your illustration, what you just said is huge that idea of being in the spotlight and now facilitating people who are in the spotlight and what that moment does for you is it helps you understand, okay, what is it that I really love that I love being in the spotlight spotlight, or did I love the impact that was being made? And if you love the impact more than you love the spotlight, then you’re going to be just fine and sliding into that new role of allowing other people. One of the things for me to just continue on with that illustration is I’m stepping out of the spotlight for a season, really helped me kind of redefine my relationship with God. You know, I I’ve found it in this all pastors wouldn’t feel this way, but I kind of felt this way.
PW (36:29):
There’s kind of this line this, this feeling of working for God, right? Instead of kind of working with God. And I think for me, I got up, I got caught up in a season where I just started, I was working for God, which also meant, I felt like I was working for God’s love. And one of the beautiful things that I’ve discovered over the past five years is, is truly God’s unconditional love. And for me, what that means and what that represents might look a little different than what it means and represents for some other people, but for a big part of my ministry, the driving force behind it, and you guys were a part of the church long enough to know this. I used to say all the time, it’s okay to not be okay. I used to talk about this idea that there’s no perfect people.
PW (37:19):
You know, everyone’s welcome because nobody’s perfect was kind of that tagline. And I remember when I was going through my reinvention part of it for me was some therapy. Right. And I remember my therapist asking me about kind of my life message and me saying, yeah, part of my life message is I believe everyone’s welcome because nobody’s perfect. And he said, you believe that for everybody else, but for yourself. And that was a turning point for me. He was right. I didn’t believe that for myself. I believed in God’s unconditional love for everybody, but for me, I thought I still had to earn that. Right. And so he said on the other side of all this, I believe you’re probably going to still have the same kind of life mission he said, but it’s going to sound a little different this time, because this time you’re going to believe that for yourself. And I do. And I feel like it’s the same message I’ve always had. It’s coming out in different ways to personal coaching and through good vibes management and through a podcast. Now with my wife life looks a lot different than it did 5, 6, 7 years ago. But it’s still the same message. And it sounds a little different because I’m embracing it for myself for the first time. And that’s been a beautiful thing.
PW (38:35):
Wow. I love that, buddy.
RV (38:37):
We love you. We’re so grateful for you.
AJV (38:40):
I’ve heard the record. We will always consider you one of our pastors. Thank you. Thank
PW (38:46):
God. I still get to do some ministry. I work for a church up in Detroit, outside of Detroit, actually in Plymouth that I get to speak at quite a bit and love serving there. So it’s still, it’s still a part of my life which is awesome. And that’s another thing about reinvention is sometimes you don’t have to walk away from all of it, or maybe you walk away from it for a season and somehow it kind of comes back around. But yeah, it’s a, it’s a beautiful thing. And that means the world. You guys, I mean, the world, this podcast, what you guys do is huge and you give really practical tools. I listened to it every week. It’s been so helpful to me, to Jordan. And I hope you guys will just keep doing what you’re doing cause you are, you’re making a big difference. Well, thank
RV (39:28):
You, Pete. And, and the you know, one of the other hallmarks I’ve always heard of a great leadership is that, you know, that the great leaderships will build something that eventually outlasts them. And you know, we still go to cross point where you know, I, we’re still involved with the leaders.

Ep 179: Accessing Your Creativity with Todd Henry | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06)

Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview with my time friend, Todd Henry. I’m all about accessing your creativity, which I think is just super relevant. Right. And, and I guess it’s funny, cause I’ve known about Todd’s work for years, but now more than any other time, I think in my career, how do I feel like we’re playing in this space of creativity on a regular basis? And, and I would say even feeling like creativity is a core component of succeeding in the workplace today. And I would say probably my first biggest takeaway from the interview with Todd was even just kind of reframing what is creativity and what, what should we think about and what does he think about, or as someone who’s spent spent a lifetime studying this which is that creativity is just problem solving.

RV: (01:09)

That’s it? Creativity is problem solving and there’s constant problems. I mean, this is the story of being an entrepreneur. It’s the story of being a leader? It’s the story of being a parent? It’s the story of building a personal brand or building an empire it’s like life is basically just a series of one problem after the next, after the next, after the next and the problems just get bigger and different and more complex, the more successful you get and a lot of the most fundamental problems, you never, you never resolve completely, right? Like what are we eating for dinner and how do we keep the house clean? And you know, what are we wearing? And like, there’s just this, this rhythm of life that is a steady stream of problems. And so if you don’t have creativity or if you’re not developing that, then I think you’re going to really struggle.

RV: (01:59)

And I’m realizing that, oh my gosh, this is, this is an essential skill that isn’t just relevant to artists, but relevant to all of us. And you know, so I think this first takeaway there’s two big definitions that are in this. So one is what is the definition of creativity? I think Todd defines it as problem solving, which will, will stick with me. The other was what’s the definition of art. And I think the way that Todd said it was, he said that art is an expression of values, right? So it is your values, the things that you care most about the things that you believe in the things that you buy into, the ideals that you hold, the, the principles that you know, to be true, it is those things codified, manifested, extrapolated transformed into some expression, whether it’s, you know, a painting, a song a movie a, a book, a speech, a course like a business.

RV: (03:20)

I mean, I think business is art. Like creating a business is, is nothing other than expression of values. I think it’s like, I love that definition because if you go, okay, well, core values are to a business. What personal philosophies are to an artist. So your personal viewpoints and philosophies come out as the expression of art. Well, if you’re an entrepreneur, your business basically is that, I mean, it is that, that an entrepreneur being an entrepreneur is our chance to create a reflection in the world of the things that we believe, the things that we hold value to the things that we, we most trust and we believe to be true and that we want to see more of in the world. And so I think that is a really fascinating way of seeing it is that art is this expression of values, businesses and expression of values.

RV: (04:16)

You know, and, and I think when you, you know, that it’s art, when it moves people emotionally, we talk about that in world-class presentation craft which is, you know, our course, our, our course on teaching people how to speak from stage and the mastery level, stage mechanics of what, what set mechanically, what separates the greatest speakers in the world from everyone else. And it is all about, can you move the audience emotionally? Do they have some type of visceral response in their body to the things that you are saying? And you know, some of those are techniques, but that you can do, you know, there’s, there’s things that you can practice and we teach a lot of those, but a lot of it is more of it is aligning your art, your presentation, your, your masterpiece, your creation, being in alignment with your uniqueness, the things that you believe.

RV: (05:11)

So that was really beautiful. And I, I really loved that. And, and I loved the practical application of that also with kind of like this artistic juxtaposition was, was really good. Now, the second big takeaway that I want to highlight is w w w how do you find, like what art you should create? I mean, a brand builders group, right? We would call this finding your uniqueness. It is always the first thing that we do with every client as we help them identify their uniqueness. It’s the thing that so many people struggle with. It’s, it’s almost a thing where it’s like, it’s, it’s kind of impossible to like, figure it out yourself. You need help doing it. It’s really, really difficult to nail this, but if you nail this, I mean, it changes everything. It changes everything because you’re being the person that only you can be.

RV: (05:57)

And I love what Todd said here, which is another way, or I would say a hint or a clue or a suggestion. You could say, I guess a shortcut, probably not a shortcut, but, but maybe corroborating evidence for you to find your uniqueness. Here’s what he said. This is my second takeaway. The thing that you’re most equipped to put into the world is the thing that feels most obvious to you. The thing that you’re most equipped to put into the world is the thing that feels most obvious to you. It’s, it’s parallels kind of what we say a lot, which is that your most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. And that’s because, you know, in full integrated detail, what it’s like to be that person. So it is obvious. Yes. Do you, because that’s what you have done.

RV: (06:52)

It’s what you have lived and not just what you have learned about. And I think the way that he comes at it here in, in the way he says it is, is kind of like you know, a different presentation of the same core concept, which is what’s most to you. What is the thing that you do without, you know, trying, what is the thing that you do naturally? What is the thing that you’re gifted at? What is the, what are you like? What have you become? What super powers do you have you naturally developed over the course of your life. These things that you don’t think are special, there’s a huge need out in the world because other people have not gone through what you’ve gone through. They haven’t walked the path that you have walked down. And so you’re super equipped to help those people, which is amazing.

RV: (07:37)

It’s amazing when you tap into this, because this is a gift like this is, this is such a great blessing that your personal brand is built, not on having to create something out of scratch, not on, not on having to manufacture ideas out of thin air, but rather to express things you already are to, to convey things that you’ve already been doing to, to translate the very persona in history and experience that you have lived, the more that we can access that the faster and the shorter, the distance to you breaking through with your personal brand. And it’s in a lot of times, it is the thing that’s, it’s so obvious to you that you don’t even notice it. I would say that a lot, like a lot of our clients, like it’s it’s, so it’s such an ingrained part of them. Like their uniqueness is such an ingrained part of them that they can’t see it.

RV: (08:39)

Cause they’re so close to it that they’re, it’s almost like they questioned like, well, why would this have any value in the world? Like surely no one would care about that. They have the curse of knowledge, right? They, they automatically, we assume and believe that everyone else out there in the world knows the same things that they know. And they don’t because they haven’t studied. They haven’t researched to use the, the brain DNA helix term. They haven’t researched the same things that you have researched. They don’t have results doing the same things that you’re doing. They don’t have the same passions. They haven’t tried to solve the same problem. And and so it’s like, it’s hard to see. So that’s really, really important. And even though it’s hard to see, it’s a place to start with is, you know, what is most obvious to you?

RV: (09:22)

Like, what is the problem you have most overcome? What is the path that you have walked down? Or as Todd said, it you’re most equipped to put into the world. The thing that feels most obvious to you, which by way of the curse of knowledge, you probably think has no value in the world because you assume that everybody knows it just because you do. And they do not. My third takeaway. And I would say this one was my, my favorite part of that entire conversation is the difference of pursuing a craft Haft versus pursuing stardom. This is the difference between pursuing a craft versus personal, doing the stardom. And it actually reminds me you know, so one of our, one of our longtime pals is John ACOF and we saw John at church a few weeks ago, and we were just having this conversation.

RV: (10:16)

We hadn’t seen each other in a while. And, you know, he said something, something about how far we’ve come over all these years. And, you know, I told him, I said, yeah, honestly, I think it, it has more to do with the fact that you and I have just stuck around than anything else. Like we have weathered so many storms. Like we’ve just been, we’ve been in this space now for 15 years. I mean, I met John AIG and I met John 12 years ago now. And so it’s, it’s like, we’ve known him for 12. He was already, you know, just like us. He had been around in awhile and it’s like, I think what we’ve both been doing is, is like we’re pursuing a craft, right? We want to get really good at what we do, which is we want to get really good at helping people.

RV: (11:01)

We want to get really good at providing solutions, really good at providing answers. And when you do that, you have true staying power. I mean, it’s, it’s so powerful because you’re not constantly tied to the results of your last post, right? Like you’re not constantly consumed with how many video views did I get, how many podcast downloads or even your last book. Right. It’s it’s like, yeah. If the book sells or not, I mean, it’s, it’s one part of this lifelong journey that is the, your craft. But you’ll see a lot of times when people are like, oh, I just, you know, like, I feel like I need to just like, do this one, one thing. Or if they’re just pursuing stardom, like they just want to have a lot of followers, like you’re going to burn out, you’re going to burn out, or you’re going to look for shortcuts, or you’re just, you’re going to make a lot of sacrifices because you’re ultimately serving something that isn’t that significant in terms of its, its staying power.

RV: (11:58)

And it’s, it’s, it’s lasting power. And it’s trick, it’s a little bit of a trick because look at like at brand builders group, right, we win when our clients win. Like we love when our clients get hundreds of thousands of followers or millions of Ted talk views, are they, you know, hit the New York times bestseller list or they land, you know, six figure consulting, deals, all, all things that happen, you know? And, and recently they’ve been on a pretty regular basis. But even those things, it’s like, we want those things to happen for our clients, but they’re not what we measure success by because it’s like, first of all, certain parts of those things can kind of be like manufactured, right. And the, the, the reality is going, but, but it’s not these external achievements or these vanity metrics that change anyone else’s life, nor do they provide side the kind of meaning and deep satisfaction that a true mission driven a true mission driven messenger seeks in their own life.

RV: (13:03)

They’re certainly not bad. They’re great things. We want them to happen. It’s just not how we measure success at brand builders group. Because, you know, we focus on, on reputation, over revenue. We want revenue, we want wins. We want money. We want likes, we want followers. We want views. We want all that stuff. But at the end of the day, we’re more focused on helping people figure out what are you called to do, do that. Nobody else can do. Like what problem were you put here on this earth to solve, solve that nobody else can solve. And, you know, focusing and, and standing your identity, grounding your identity more in that is much more significant and long lasting. And it’s going to be a greater source of fulfillment and satisfaction. Even if for some reason it wasn’t going to bring more money. And over the long term, we are convinced that it absolutely does.

RV: (14:04)

But there are certain things that do create more results. Short-Term I mean, there are certain topics and there’s certain things you can do. Like, I mean, anything sexual, anything outrageous anything to do with money like there are certain topics that just naturally draw more attention, anything that’s based on celebrities, there’s things that you can do to kind of manufacture short-term attention. But if that’s, if, if that topic or that thing, isn’t what you want to spend your life doing. It’s like you can’t chase that because you’ll, you’ll eventually be running from an empty tank. So pursue mastery of craft laughs don’t pursue stardom, pursue figuring out how can I help versus how can I known? And if you do that, you likely will grow your influence and you will have all of these amazing things happen to you. And that really, really was powerful to hear Todd talk about that.

RV: (15:07)

Especially since he’s spent a life around. So many creatives is, is, is to just really pursue that, that craft. And don’t get caught up, resist the temptation to be caught up in the fame and the vanity metrics and the stardom and you know, whatever word you want to call it. Cause it’s not ultimately what changes lives and it’s not, what’s going to bring you satisfaction, but find what’s the message you could spend your life sharing. What’s the problem you could dedicate your life to solving who is the audience and you can dedicate your life to survey

Ep 178: Accessing Your Creativity with Todd Henry

RV (01:01):
One of my favorite things is when I meet somebody, who’s kind of starting out on their journey and then I lose touch with them. And then I come back and we reconnect and they have like exploded and become huge and influential. And just even, you know, as awesome as they were. But now the whole world knows that. And that’s how I kind of feel about Todd Henry because we’ve known each other for years. And I feel like I was around as a guest, maybe on, on one of his early podcasts. And now his podcast, if you haven’t heard of, it’s called the accidental creative. It has over 10 million downloads and he is one of the world’s leading thinkers on creativity leadership and passion, and just kind of like bringing out your everyday brilliance. And he describes himself as an arms dealer for the creative revolution.

RV (01:54):
He’s written five books. His most recent is called the motivation code. And I just think he’s amazing at helping people access their creativity and helping leaders learn how to pull out the creativity and the ingenuity and the innovation of their teams. And so he’s one of my favorite people in the space. I love his podcasts. I was on his podcast again recently, and we shared the stage on different years at a, at a very large speaking event called the global leadership summit. And that was how we reconnected. And man, it’s just great to see you and I love what you’re up to. So thanks for making some time for us

TH (02:32):
Rory. It’s great to see you as well and always a pleasure to chat with you. I, I always walk away with a combination of like ins inspiration and challenge. Every time I talk with you challenged to up my game, but inspiration that I can actually pull it off. So thanks for all that you’re putting into the world as well.

RV (02:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, likewise and I, you know, I think as you know, we’ve known each other as colleagues, but as like a consumer I’m very interested about the stuff that you teach and at about accessing creativity. And I find you know, as I get further, along in my career, there’s a li there’s even more focus on and more, more flexibility for me to go. I want to dive deeper and I really want to even, you know, understand my passion and speak my passion and access some of my truth.
So Rory when we have that conversation, whether it’s an, a new, younger, personal brand, or, you know, someone who’s more experienced like URI, what do you think are some of the roadblocks there to accessing that creativity, whether it’s writing a book or starting a podcast or a course, or being a speaker? I think it’s like when I think about being creative, it almost seems like it’s less of a, maybe this isn’t right. Less of something we have to learn, and it’s more of roadblocks that we have to remove. So that, that naturally shows up. So what are some of your thoughts around those roadblocks and how to get past them?

TH (04:05):
Yeah, I think one of the big challenges for anybody who wants to put something into the world is that the very thing that you’re probably most equipped to put into the world and probably most motivated to put into the world is the thing that seems most obvious to you. It’s something that you’ve been thinking about for a very long time. Maybe the other people don’t think about quite as much as you do. And so for a lot of people, when they start thinking about putting an idea out into the world in some capacity, they think, well, that’s not going to fly. I mean, everybody knows that, or that’s obvious to everybody. And the reality is though it’s obvious to you. It’s not obvious to everybody. I mean, I felt that way with the back in 2005, when I first launched the accidental creative podcast you know, I was talking about things like creating on demand and how do you quell uncertainty in the workplace and how do you create an infrastructure for your team and how do you build rhythms and practices and disciplines to help you have ideas when you need the most?

TH (05:05):
And I thought all of that stuff was obvious. You know, of course every creative professional is doing these things, but, you know, Hey, I wanted to talk about this. And all of a sudden the podcast just gained thousands of listeners. I mean, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, by the way, was not trying to start anything. I just wanted to have a conversation about these things. And I thought, Hey, there’s this great thing called podcasting, where you put audio out into the world and people can listen to it. It’s like my own radio. That’s really cool. I had no desire to like start a business or do anything. And I was a creative director in an organization, had a team of like three dozen people. I was leading, like I was in a good place, you know, and it just kind of took off. And the reason is I was putting something into the world that was scratching an itch that I had something that I was needing and also something that I was maybe in a lot of ways uniquely positioned to be, to talk about because of my purview at that time.

TH (05:59):
But frankly, a lot of that stuff felt kind of obvious to me until I put it out there and realized, oh, people don’t sit around thinking about how they do their work. You know, people are so busy doing their work. They don’t think about how they’re doing their work. And so there’s room for that conversation to happen. So I think you, the one thing I would really encourage people to consider if they’re thinking about trying to carve out some space in the marketplace for themselves is the place where you’re probably most well positioned to occupy space is probably an area that you have already discarded because you think it’s too obvious or it’s something that it’s too familiar to you. And just realize that it’s probably not nearly as familiar or obvious to other people. It’s just that you’ve spent a lot of your time honing that expertise to the point where you’re ready to present it to other people.

RV (06:55):
I love that. I mean, I think, you know, our very first book take the stairs, which still is like, to this day, the best selling thing that we’ve done is just all about self-discipline. And I, you know, that very much felt that way. Like, doesn’t everybody do this? Like, doesn’t everybody think about this. And then when we started brand builders group, it was the same thing. It’s like, well, everybody knows like how to build funnels and how to do book launches. And you know how to like get speaking deals and tell jokes. And it’s like, oh, actually they, they don’t. And I think, you know, what’s interesting about that too, is it doesn’t feel creative to me. Like when you’re saying not only is it the obvious thing, so you go, well, you know, people aren’t, you know, people maybe wouldn’t buy that or wouldn’t consume that content because it’s obvious. Everybody knows that the other thing is in a weird way. It’s like, well, that doesn’t feel creative to me because it’s the thing that I do naturally. I do it all the time. But would you say that that’s where the magic happens is just really diving, diving deeper and deeper into that, like leaning, pressing into that space more?

TH (08:07):
Yeah, absolutely. At the heart, creativity is problem-solving, that’s all it is. If you are an entrepreneur and you’re creating a new product that scratches an itch in the marketplace, you’re being creative. Obviously, if you are an engineer solving a problem for your organization, you’re being creative, or if you’re an artist out there making art, you’re, you’re being creative. Obviously I think we tend to conflate creativity and art. We tend to think that creativity means that I’m one of those like mystical singer, magical unicorn people who can go out and just, you know, a little pixie dust in something amazing appears. Those who are really in the trenches is creative professionals and emphasis on the professional part, know that a lot of the stuff that you produce that ends up being really successful there isn’t that magic moment that magic, oh, this is going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.

TH (09:05):
Right. Instead it just feels like the logical next thing. Okay, I’m going to make the next thing. And now I’m going to make the next thing or okay, now I’m going to tweak it this way or tweak it that way. But you’ve been working on it for so long that by the time you get to the place where it starts gaining some recognition in the marketplace, it just feels like the next thing. I mean, success, I believe comes in layers and you’ve experienced this. I’m sure you have. Most people think that there’s going to be some defining moment where all of a sudden you can say, okay, now I’m successful. Right. It doesn’t work that way. And frankly, when you finally get those moments, I mean, they’re very special moments for sure, but they just kind of feel like a data point along a journey. You know, that you’re on. I mean, you mentioned the global leadership summit. That was a, I mean, anybody who’s spoken that or bend to that knows it’s a phenomenal experience to be on stage in front of 400 and something thousand people around the world. Like that’s a really cool, like 10,000 or something in the room. Like that’s really unique or zero in the room. If you happen to

RV (10:05):
Do it the year that Rory does it, which is the COVID the year of COVID where you just talked to the camera. I’m sorry. Yes, I know it was actually, I mean, it was, it was awesome.

TH (10:16):
The event where it was a huge event, so experiencing it, and that was a, that was a remarkable experience. And frankly, the reason that you or I, or anybody else who can step on that stage feels comfortable doing that is because we’ve spoken in the holiday in your conference room for 20 people. Most of whom are only there because their boss told them they had to be there that day. Right? Like we’ve had years of speaking to groups of people, of all different sizes, honing our skills. We’ve done. I’ve done at this point, you know, probably two or 3000 podcast episodes where I’m communicating my ideas. We’ve written multiple books. We’ve been out doing these things for years and years and years. So yes, it’s a very cool, special moment to step on a stage like that, but it kind of feels like the next thing you go and you do that. And then, you know, then the next day or a week later, again, you’re like speaking in a conference room to accompany with a hundred people or whatever it is. Right. Which is still a really cool experience. But these are just like data points along the way. So I think one of the things we have to sort of demystify for people is what this journey of success looks like as you’re building something or as you’re focused on building the personal brand. I mean, there’s a great scene from,
RV (11:43):
Oh, movie scene alert here comes, okay. Sorry about that. And now we’re going the
TH (11:47):
Other way to the sea. It’s a movie a, that was made back in the nineties, called the comedian with Jerry.
RV (11:56):
Oh, it’s Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve seen it. Yeah. You’ll love it. Phenomenal.
TH (11:59):
It’s just a phenomenal, phenomenal film. And there’s a scene where this young comedian and I can’t remember his name, frankly, there’s this young comedian who has been working and working and working. And he like is starting to kind of feel like maybe this isn’t going to happen. And I don’t know if I’m going to break through and he’s talking to Jerry Seinfeld, he says, but you know, like what, what, what about my parents? What are my parents gonna think? And Jerry Simon was like, your, your parents. He’s like, yeah, my friends are like, you’re getting cars and buying houses and having kids. He’s like, you’re what, like, you know, Jerry Seinfeld is just like a gas at this. Guy’s like worried about what other people think or about other people getting ahead of him or whatever. And there’s a scene where that young comedian gets the call that he’s going to be on the tonight show right in the midst of all this.
TH (12:52):
And he calls like five people he knows. And the very next thing that happens is he’s sitting there on the corner and he’s like, that’s it like, that was the moment I’ve been working for was to tell everybody that I was going to be on the tonight show. And now like, that’s it. And the whole, the whole premise of that film, at least as far as I can see is contrasting Jerry Seinfeld’s mindset of like, listen, if there are 10 people in a hole in the wall bar, somewhere in a basement in New York who will listen to me, do comedy, I’m going to show up and I’m going to do comedy because comedians, right. And comedians make jokes and comedians go in front of audiences and share their work. That’s what they do versus the mindset of like, I want to be a star, right?
TH (13:39):
I want to, I want to be somebody who is known for doing my comedy versus somebody who does my comedy, all of us. And I spent time in my early twenties. I jokingly call it with my kids, my misguided twenties, because I was a musician. And I kind of don’t want them following that same path through. But I spent a lot of time opening for big, big, big acts, right? These huge name acts. Some of them were the most lovely people in the world. Some of them were people who quite frankly, like they would, they would stare you into non-existence. You know, if you w if you took a step in the wrong direction, like don’t even come close to my drum kit, like don’t even, don’t look at my guitar, right? Like, like that kind of thing, the really weird thing was there is no correlation between success and attitude.
TH (14:29):
Like some of the most successful people that we encountered were the most unbelievably generous people. They were helping. They were, they would offer advice. They would stand in the wings and cheer us on. They would talk about us when they went on stage, like unbelievably generous people. And some of the people who had just started to kind of break through where the most miserable, selfish, you know, argumentative, frustrating people. And I think what I learned Rory in that moment was the people who were the most generous were the people who were in it because they love to make music. And every single night they showed up and they walked on stage. After spending three days in a metal tube with a bunch of sweaty guys traveling across the country, they would walk out on stage. And they, every night, they just had this mindset of, I can’t believe I get to make music with my friends tonight.
TH (15:18):
This is unbelievable. And the miserable people were the people who thought they were doing it, not because of the music, not because of the craft, but because of what they would get out of the craft, they were chasing the fame or the money or the, of being a star or whatever. And so when they realized, oh, this is actually about doing the work, this isn’t about all those other things. This is about doing the work. They were a little bit disillusioned. So what I always tell young professionals, young creative professionals is you have to fall in love with the work that you do. You have to fall in love with the craft, with the process. You have to fall in love with your message. If you’re out there trying to put the message into the world, you have to be a person who is in love with the process of what you do. Because at the end of the day, if you’re looking for the outcome for the product, for the recognition, for the aura to fill some void in you, you’re going to end up miserable, frustrated, depressed, sitting on a corner in New York city with your cell phone and say, I can’t believe that’s it. That’s all it is. Right. You have to fall in love with the value creating in the process of what you do with the craft.
RV (16:23):
Yeah. That is so powerful. And, and, and moving of just, it’s like, if you really love the craft, whether or not the crowd’s there, the money’s there, the credentials are there, you show up because you’re, you’re there to make art versus to, to be a star. That’s really good. You know, you, you meant, so you mentioned earlier, there’s a difference between creativity and art. Yeah. Can you touch a little bit more on the dis the distinction between those two? Because when I hear you talk about lot, like creativity, even you’re you’re you even used the word logical or sequential several times. Like, when I think of art, I almost think of it as like obscure or abstract or kind of like a, I don’t know, esoteric or a theorial like and yeah. So just, what do you think is the difference between creativity and art
TH (17:20):
Creativity at the, at the base of it is problem solving. We are creative beings by nature. That’s what we do. We solve problems. Your mind is wired to do projects. Your mind is wired to solve problems. And you know, and so as human beings, biologically, you know, me hungry me, need food, right? Not me hungry need to build restaurant. Like that’s not what he’s thinking. Like I need to find a source of sustenance. And creativity is the same thing. Creativity at the, at the root of it is there’s. I need, there’s something that needs to be solved. And I need to find a solution. I need to be resourceful. I need to find a solution. Now you might apply your skills, your artistic skills, even in solving that problem. So a designer designs, something designers by the way, are not necessarily people who are great at drawing or graded at necessarily at the technical skill of bringing something visual into the world.
TH (18:14):
They see things differently. You’re great. Visual artists see things differently, great artists who are great writers think differently that their minds function differently. They see different combinations, different patterns, different systems at work, right in their mind, when they’re going about their writing, they’re trying to solve a puzzle is what they’re doing. How, how can we use all of this experience and connect some dots that maybe other people can’t quite Intuit, but I can Intuit. I can make that intuitive leap. That’s what great writers do they write? Something that feels so familiar to you that you think why couldn’t I have thought of that? It seems like you should have thought of it, or maybe you have thought of it a million times. They just put it into words that you didn’t how to, how to use, right. And the same with great visual art or great music.
TH (19:01):
Great music feels familiar the first time you hear it. Very creative art feels familiar. The first time you hear it. The reason I like to differentiate between creativity and art is because I think sometimes people say, well, I’m not creative. You know, I’m just, I’m just an engineer. I’m just a sales person. I’m just an executive assistant, right? I’m not creative. And yet, and yet I’ve known many executive assistants for C-suite executives and organizations who are some of the most ingenious, creative, resourceful people I’ve ever met, who can on a, just on a dime can turn around and deliver results because they’re so stinking creative in terms of how they use the resources. They have to solve the problems in front of them. So the reason I say that is because when I say creativity, a lot of people think, well, that’s for those people.
TH (19:59):
When I talk about the disciplines that are required in your life, or the practices that are required to prepare you to be creative at the moment’s notice, sometimes people think, well, that’s for those people. That’s for the designers and the writers and the musicians and the unicorns. No that’s for anybody who has to solve problems every day. So if you’re in a position where you have to solve problems, you need to have some practices in your life to prepare you, to be able to connect dots at the moment’s notice to prepare you, to be able to bring those resources, to bear, to hone your skills so that you’re prepared to deliver when it matters most. So if you solve problems, which by the way, surprise, surprise, most of us do these days for our job. That’s what we pay people for, for the value they produce. You are a creative, which means you have to be prepared to deliver the moment’s notice, which means you have to start building practices into your life to get you to a place where you’re prepared to do that.
RV (20:49):
So what is art then? So I love that. And that is totally I’m guilty of going, oh yeah. Creative. I mean, I literally spent the first 15 years of my career speaking out loud to people I’m not creative. Like, you know, and it’s like, I’m not, I, you know, I’m just a speaker. Like, and, and then it was like, I create content. I’m like, I’m not creative. I’m, you know, I’m only writing a book because I have to, to be a speaker. And it’s like, I’m not a creative, I only build websites. Yeah. I’m only like build a website because I have to have something up there. And then it was like, oh my gosh, like, I’m totally creative. Like I am an artist. I just don’t, you know, my, my, my can like the, the, my canvas is different and my brush is different. It’s like words are my paint. And you know, like the canvas is different. So, so if creativity is problem solving, then what is art? Yeah.
TH (21:45):
So I think the best way to think about this is to think about it in terms of, and this is maybe a worn out comparison, but think about the, you know, the Greek computer wars of the early 1980s, right? You, you basically had IBM and sort of this more sort of engineering mindset where we wanted all of our hardware to be infinitely expandable. We wanted the people to be able to tinker with it, people to be able to do what they want, insert chips, if they want insert memory, however they want to basically it’s an open system, an open box. And then you had apple being led by Steve jobs in his first incarnation at apple saying no we’re ticking open our computers. Absolutely not like everything about this is going to be beautiful. Everything about what we make is going to be exactly the way we meant it to be.
TH (22:39):
And it’s going to be an expression of who we are and what we value as an organization. You could argue that they were both solving the same problem, you know, IBM was producing hardware that would crunch numbers and do whatever right. Apple was doing the same thing. The difference was the apple product was an expression of values. Brought into the world into physical form. In some capacity, I would argue that all arts has to be creative, but not all creativity is necessarily art. Say that again, say that again, art is creative by nature, but not all creativity is necessarily art. I can be creative without putting my personal values into what I’m making without spending the extra care to craft it in such a way that I feel like it is refined and honed. So that it’s an expression of who I am in the world in some capacity.
TH (23:40):
And really, I think that’s what art at the end of the day, that’s really what art is. And its essence is an expression of the point of creator in some capacity expression of values. Yeah. And expression of values or an expression of my point of view in the world. I can make things. And I do that all the time. I make things that are creative, but I wouldn’t call them art necessarily. I mean, I don’t think every podcast interview I do is necessarily a work of art. I wouldn’t say that every post blog, post or Twitter posts that I created this early, a work of art, I would say there certainly are some that I’ve put blood, sweat and tears into where I’ve really tried to create an expression of something that is putting my value into it, where I’m spending myself on behalf of the work.
TH (24:24):
And I’m being a little bit vulnerable in how I’m presenting it. I’m taking a bit of a risk because at the end of the day, I believe all art requires risk. In order to be effective, you have to risk something in order to produce art that is going to resonate with other people. And so that’s really probably the cleanest Dylan Lane delineation I can make is like the apple Macintosh was a work of art. Whereas, you know, something else is just kind of utilitarian, right? And another computer might just be kind of utilitarian because the apple Macintosh expressed the point of view. And it was something that was created to make a statement to say, no, this is the way that computers should be. And so it’s going to be exactly what even had Steve jobs even had. I think engineers autograph, the inside, like the circuit boards of some of the, some of the computers, because they saw it as a work of art. Right. and so that’s probably the cleanest delineation I can make is when you’re making art, you’re putting yourself into the world, your values into the world in a way that requires you to risk and be vulnerable. Whereas you can be creative and come up with a creative solution that isn’t necessarily a risking much, or isn’t necessarily expressing your values. It’s not, well, I
RV (25:38):
Liked the problem solving thing is very clear, right? It’s like, you know, we live on a hill, we live on a hill, a very steep hill. We have to figure out a way to get the grass mowed. It is a problem. It’s not as easy as hiring a landscaping company. We’ve had to like solve this problem with different tools in different ways. It’s creative, but it’s not an expression of art. Versus if I plant a garden and I manicure like hand select what flowers are in there, it’s a, it’s almost like as an ex, an external manifestation of like my identity, then that garden would be art. And I liked that a lot. I, I was pressing you on it because I, I struggled to delineate between those two. And I think that’s really, really good and really, really clear of that. You know, creativity is problem solving, which we all do.
RV (26:32):
And sometimes it is also art because we we have put our heart and soul into this kind of like, you know, personal communication almost of like what we believe in into that. So I have one last question for you before I let you go. So before that, where, where should people go? Obviously you’ve got the accidental creative podcast, which is, is some way that, you know, people are probably tuning into a lot of our audiences, probably already listening to it. Where else should people go if they want, if they want to connect with Todd Henry and learn more?
TH (27:04):
So my personal website is Todd henry.com T O D D H and R y.com. And you can access the podcast, my writing, and my books. And anything else you want to access there? The website for the axle creative podcast is accidental creative.com. And then I’m on all of the socials at just Todd Henry, T O D D H E N R Y. That’s the benefit of being old and getting in early is you get [inaudible] handles with just your full name,
RV (27:30):
Everything. All right. So last little thought for you here is if somebody is trying to write something, an article, a blog, post, an ebook, a book, or they’re trying to create, you know, a piece of, of, of art, a speech, or, you know, a Ted talk or something like that. And they’re struggling because they don’t feel like what they’re saying is creative. What advice would you give to that person? You know, what do you think they should know? What do you think they should do to kind of access the, their, their deepest levels of creativity and art?
TH (28:11):
Yeah. So a couple of things, first of all, recognize that everything in the moment of creation is either going to be the greatest thing you’ve ever done or the worst thing you’ve ever done. Like there’s very, very rarely is it like I do I write something and think like, that’s okay. That’s all right. Like it’s either, oh, this is great. Or, oh, that’s complete garbage. Neither. The reality is that somewhere in the middle, we are the worst judge of our own work. Because we have context. So we’re comparing it against what we did yesterday and what we plan to do tomorrow, and maybe the best thing we’ve ever done. You know, that’s, that’s one of the challenges. That’s why, and you’ve written several books. I’ve written several books this way into editor is so critical. I’ve had editors in, well, I’ll give you an example for herding tigers.
TH (28:57):
My editor Niki Papadopoulos said, yeah, we’re going to lose chapter six. Like in other words, we’re going to cut 6,000 words out of your manuscript. By the way, 6,000 words represents, I write about 500 boards a day, every single day, when I’m writing a book, that’s my discipline. He has 500 words before nine 30 in the morning is my discipline. When I’m writing a book that represents weeks of work that I put into working on that chapter and my response wasn’t, you know, how dare you cut an entire chapter out of my book and it wasn’t, you know, why is it not good enough? Like maybe I’m not a good writer. My, my response was, I’m really glad that you’re my editor, because I probably would have kept it in there. And you’re, you’re exactly right. It actually doesn’t belong. We can use it in other ways.
TH (29:44):
It’s not bad writing. It just doesn’t belong in the flow of the book. I totally get it right. We need other people in our life to speak truth to us. And the reality is some of us, maybe some of us, our writing, isn’t where it needs to be. Maybe it doesn’t move people in the way we need it to move. Maybe we work on our craft for sure. They be selfless, really great writers, but we haven’t refined our point of view to the point where there’s an idea set that’s compelling. And so we need to work on honing that idea set, which is where an editor really comes into play in that, in that situation. So my advice to people is, listen, you have to have one or two at the, at the minimum trusted people in your life that you can bounce things off of.
TH (30:25):
You can share things with who will not be afraid to speak truth to you, but also will really encourage you when you need to be encouraged. I’ve shared things with people before and said, I don’t think this is very good. What do you think of like, what are you talking about? This is like maybe one of the best things I’ve ever read that you’ve written, you know, but those are also the same people who will bring me back down to earth. When I think I’ve written something really great. So we need those people in our lives. My wife reads all of my manuscripts when I’m finished with them and she marks them up. And you know why? Because a, my wife’s going to speak truth to me, B my wife has skin in the game. She is, wipes
RV (31:00):
Are really good at that. Oh, absolutely invested
TH (31:04):
In me succeeding. And she’s going to give me really good advice, right? About whether something works or doesn’t work. And nine times out of 10, when she’s given me advice, it’s been the right advice because
RV (31:16):
That’s such a great relationship because the spouse is so emotionally invested spiritually, financially invested like reputationally invested. And they want it to be honest, but they want it to be supportive. I mean, any spouse is, is, you know I’ve made a trusted spouse. A good, healthy relationship is a great, you know, that’s a great one.
TH (31:37):
It is. And you know, you have to hold your work very loosely in your hands. And that’s really difficult for a lot of people, especially younger people. You have to hold your work very loosely in your hands, because you’re about to put it into the world and it’s going to belong to other people. And so if you hold on too tightly to your work and you don’t let other people shape it, you’re going to, you’re going to strangle it. You have to let other people help, help you, help it become what it needs to be. And really at the end of the day, it’s not about you. It’s not about you and your voice and all that. It’s about the other people you’re going to impact. And so that’s why it’s so important to have other people in your, in your world. The other, the final thing I’ll say about all of this, sorry, there’s a long answer is whenever I create something, I create it for one person, not an avatar, not a group, not like I, I conjure up.
TH (32:28):
I could tell you the specific person that the axon creative is written to the specific person die empty. It was written to the specific person, that lot of the words, hurting tigers, motivation code. I wrote each of my books specifically with one person in mind and as if that person was sitting across the table from me. And that the funny thing is because I’ve done that people come up to me at conferences or wherever I’m speaking. And they’ll be like, I feel like you wrote this book just for me. And the reason is I wasn’t writing to an audience of is writing to a person. And I was writing as if I’m speaking to that person. So when you read the book, you feel like I’m speaking directly to you. So no matter what kind of art you’re making, or whether it kind of creative problem solving you’re doing, or what kind of brand you’re building, I encourage you don’t think about your avatar. Don’t think about your audience. Think about the person that you’re trying to communicate with. If you do that, you’re going to come across as far more authentic to that person, and far more useful to that person.

RV (33:20):
I love it. Todd Henry a friend is so great to have you so inspiring and deep and just insightful on how do you, how do you, how do we bring the breasts the best out of ourselves? How do we create everyday brilliance? Check him [email protected]. We’ll put links over there. And my friend, we wish you all. We wish you all the best. Thanks so much for being here.

TH (33:44):
Thanks, man. It’s great to be part of it. Thanks for all the great work.

Ep 167: How to Create a Viral TEDx Talk with Jennifer Cohen | Recap Episode

Without a doubt. This episode that we’re breaking down here. As a recap with of the interview I did with Jennifer Cohen is one of my top favorite interviews and episodes of all time. Why? Well probably because this is one of our clients celebrating such a huge, huge win, and it fires me up and makes me so excited and so proud and so honored to be associated with what she has done. This is why we started brand builders group. Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden talking about that interview with Jen. And I mean, this is why we started this company, like like seeing our clients win, makes me so freaking happy. And we just are in terms of that right now, we are on a roll. I mean, we, we have two clients on the New York times bestseller list right now.

We had another client hit number four on the wall street journal bestseller list. We’ve had like three clients hit number one in their category on Amazon with their, those are specific to book launches. We have two clients that have gotten over a hundred thousand TikToK followers in less than a month. We have another long-time client who closed a $300,000 consulting deal. You, which he says is a lot based on his personal brand. I mean, we’ve got clients doing 30, $50,000 a month consistently. These are the clients we’ve been working with for a couple of years. And it’s like, it’s so amazing to see this happening for them. You know, because it takes time. I mean, we tell people it takes time. And now that we’ve been around as a company for couple of years, we’re starting to see all the, all of these managers, these early manifestations of work that these people have been doing for a couple years, like a year or two now it’s starting to hit and it started to get so exciting.

And, and this interview with Jen, you know, really represents that. And if you miss the interview, okay, what am I talking about? This is one of our clients who followed our PR hired us for very specific reason, followed our process, which is my first takeaway. Okay. So just, you know, to get to my three biggest highlights and takeaways, this is the first one, follow the process. Because she hired us specifically, she got an opportunity to do a Ted talk. She had watched us do work with one of her friends. She, she sat in on a private brand strategy session with one of her friends, Darren, shout out to Darren Prince, love you, buddy. And then, you know, hired us to help her with her Ted talk. And she followed the process, went out, did exactly what we, we laid out in terms of a strategy and she executed it brilliantly.

And now she has a Ted talk a year later with 2 million views like viral Ted talk. And so when you, when you break this down on top of just being like over the moon, proud and excited for her and just feeling honored to have had some part in this, when I think about for you brand builder, like what’s the takeaway is to trust the process, like the stuff that we’re teaching you. And I know not everyone who listens to this podcast is a client of ours yet, but, but even the stuff that we teach on the podcast, the things that were drawn out of our guests, they’re, they’re proven like the people we bring on the show, the reason we bring them on is because they have proven results in a certain area. And that is why we bring them on. Right? And that’s why if you go, Hmm, how come some, every once in a while, Rory will bring on like a stranger.

And sometimes it’s a client. And sometimes it’s like a friend of his from a long time ago. And, and sometimes it’s like a new it’s because we’re bringing them because each of our guests has a superpower that is proven. And if you follow the things they do and you invest in the long-term and you have faith, and you, you, you have the discipline to execute in the short term and the faith to persevere for a while. And, and this is what’s so exciting is like, it’s not even five or 10 years. We’re talking about a couple years, like a year or two down the road. In Jen’s case, it was a year. It was like one year from the date. She hired us to where she had 2 million views on her Ted talk. The whole window was less than a year was, was, well, it was about a year.

I was actually just over a year and her life has changed. I mean, listening to the interview, she’s talking about her life has changed. She’s gotten these flood of inquiries in her email. This is growing and she’s getting business opportunities because she followed the process and she was faithful to that and humble, right? I mean, she, and this is the tricky thing about, you know, Jen and a lot of our clients is, you know, how we can’t really take, you know, a ton of credit because the clients, a lot of the clients come to every client that we work with comes to us with like this raw material. And in some cases it’s, it’s pretty well polished. You know, some of our clients are, are very well known and Jen is already a, you know, a rock star, like she’s already a bad mama JAMA, like, but that’s part of the power is going.

She humbled herself to go, you know what, in this specific area, I think I could, you know, maybe use some help, you know, hired us, invested the time and then actually follow the process. And I think, you know, that level of is, is really important. It’s the people who succeed are the ones who are like humble enough to learn something and humble enough to follow the process and, and not think they’ve got it all figured out. And this is, you know, me included the reason I host this show, right. In addition to wanting to serve you is if you can’t hear is like, I’m learning like the, basically the Wolf, my plan as a host for the show is I’m trying to draw out all of the things that I want to know and that I want to learn so that we can learn together because there’s so many things that we don’t do that well or that we just know a little bit about or some things, I mean, we’ve got, we’ve got an episode coming up here about chat bots. You’ll, you’ll see when we get there, like, we have no clue what we’re doing. Like we, we just know enough to know we’re completely missing the boat on this. And, and that’s a characteristic and an attribute that I hope you embody.

Not because we want you to hire us, although we’d love that or not, because we’re saying you need to go hire someone else. But because that’s the, that’s an attribute of successful people that they’re humble enough to learn a process and follow the process. And, and Jen is a great, this is a great example of that. And, and it, it, you know, she deserves all the credit because she did it, she, but, but, but she followed this. And I just love that. And I, I wish the same for you. And, and by the way, those of you who are clients of brand builders, Kay. If you’ve been through our world-class presentation, craft training, okay. Whether you did that as a private brand strategy session, or if you came through that event or if you’ve gone through it in your one-on-one calls with our strategists, or if you’re, if you’re if you’re one of our clients and you haven’t been through it yet, but you have access to the recordings.

If you watch that world-class presentation, craft training, or if you’ve been through it, you can literally go watch Jen’s Ted talk, which we will put a link to her Ted talk. Well, we’ll, we’ll talk about the title in a second. You can go watch that training, like watch her Ted doc and literally reverse engineer and dissect, and you will see her applying to a T the modular content method and the message and the uniqueness and the problem and the framework and the S the S the, you know, the four parts of a story and the character development like, and the psychology of humor. Like, you’ll, you’ll see her literally following this. And that is one thing that is so exciting about her successes. It’s such a public display of you know, something that you can see. So clearly, like kind of like, you know, our fingerprints are our formula on it.

And so I’d encourage you to do that. If you’ve been through world-class presentation, craft is, is to actually go watch her talk and dissect it. You know, you probably should just go watch it anyways, cause it’s an awesome talk, but you know, no matter how good we are, if someone does involve the process, it doesn’t matter. And no matter, you know, how good we are, if somebody, if, if we can’t, you know, we can’t do anything like our help is worthless. If someone isn’t willing to be awesome and do the work. So it’s, it’s a weird thing where it’s like, we can’t really take any of the credit because they’re the ones willing to do it. And, and Jen, is this a great example of that, but it sure is fun to see the wins. And, you know, like I said, not just with her Ted talk, we’ve got some other massive client winds going on right now that are very public, which is awesome.

Follow the process. Okay. Second takeaway, which is something that if you’ve been through brand DNA, or if you hang around brand builders group at all, you know, we talk about all the time. One message, one message, one message. You have to have one message that cuts through with precise, like precision level clarity. You have to have one message, not if you have three points, the three points should be subservient to one message. One message. What do you want the audience to, to, to do differently as a result of hearing your Ted talk or your keynote, or going through your video course or your coaching program or your book, most people cannot, will not boil their work down to one instruction, one command, one, like the order, like deliver an order, deliver a command and make it one. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results, but the more you boil it down and you hit people directly with it, this is my message.

Then they can hear it. They hear it multiple times. They remember it, they process it and then they’re likely to do it. And then the best marketing of all is a transformed life. So they’re actually going to go out and tell other people about that thing. And that is what you want. So one message that cuts through with precise clarity. Again, when you go listen to Jen’s talk, you will hear she is giving one specific repeatable command. And it’s super clear with my Ted talk, same thing. You know, my entire Ted talk is one message. Spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. That’s it one simple idea. And specifically with Ted, you know, remember with Ted talks that the Genesis of Ted is ideas worth spreading ideas worth spreading. That’s the Genesis of the platform. So you’re, you’re looking for an idea, one idea to express, and it’s much better to spend 18 minutes developing one idea then, then to deliver 18 ideas and spending one minute on each, which is what a lot of people do, or they’ll do three or five or seven.

And it’s like, especially in a Ted talk one, you only have time for one, but, you know, we would say the same thing about a book and a keynote, of course. And she just executed that. So brilliant brilliantly. So you have to have precision level clarity. If you are not clear, if you are not clear in one sentence, what you want, your reader or your participant or your audience member to do after they’re done listening to you, how are they ever going to be clear themselves? Like if you aren’t clear on exactly what you want them to do, how are they going to be clear? And that boggles my mind, how authors and content creators can spend four hours talking about something and not be clear on the one thing they want people to go do. What’s the one thing you want them to do take the stairs, was do the things you don’t feel like doing.

That’s the whole book, the whole premise, the whole goal, the whole movement is around encouraging, empowering, challenging, inspiring people to do things they don’t want to do procrastinate on purpose or how to multiply time is spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. It’s a, it’s a smaller idea expanded in a bigger way, not a bunch of ideas expanded upon in little ways as my mentor, one of my main mentors, Eric Chester used to say, Rory, it’s always better to say a lot about a little than to say a little about a lot, say a lot about a little than a little about a lot. So that’s key. And then the third, third big takeaway, which I wanted to actually color in a little bit for you because you wouldn’t have seen this, but, and again, this is just another shout out to Jen for her humility and her coachability and her adaptability and flexibility, which is kind of ironic for a woman whose whole Ted talk is about being bold.

Cause she’s all about it. And that is her life. And that is her story. And, and yet being bold doesn’t mean not being humble. And she just lived this perfectly is your title should be about the destination, not the vehicle, the title, the titles you use should be destinations, not vehicles. And, and this is what I wanted to color in for you because when we were working with Jen and we were talking about the title of her talk, there were several different renditions or concepts that came up that she was kind of presenting as like potential titles. And they were all around boldness, which is what her uniqueness is. For those of you that speak brand Miller speak from brand DNA, her uniqueness is his boldness. And it’s all about being bold. Well, the, the, what she did, the very natural thing, which is what so many people do, which is the mistake that, that I’ve made those of you that have heard me tell the story with procrastinating on purpose.

Procrastinating on purpose is a vehicle. It’s not a destination. It’s, it’s not a good title. It’s a bad title. It’s not a bad concept. It’s just a bad title because it’s a, it’s a vehicle. The vehicle takes you to a place, but your titles should be destinations. Multiply. Your time is a destination. That’s a result. That is that is a great title, which is why the Ted talk called how to multiply your time. Went viral, even though my book called procrastinate on purpose, which is exactly the same content that book doesn’t sell very well. Because of a bad title, we know the content is great because the Ted talk proves it. People love it. It’s not just good. It’s amazing. It’s it’s worth going viral. How come the book doesn’t sell? Because the cover isn’t clear, the cover, the title is marketing a vehicle instead of marketing a destination, you and, and, and the natural instinct of content creators of which I am.

The number one, like this is how we learned this. This was my greatest marketing mistake of my career is that I marketed the vehicle because I’m passionate about the vehicle. I’m passionate about the solution, but you don’t want to market the solution. You want to market the payoff of the solution, the result of the solution, you don’t market, the how to you teach the, how to you market. What shows up as the result of the, how to, you know, we say the destination, the results, the payoff, those are the things that you market as the title. And here’s several of her initial titles were like bold is the new healthy. That was one of the things that she wanted to call it. Well, healthy is a destination. So the word healthy could have fit as a potential title, but bold is not a destination like bold is a vehicle.

Bold is her is her mechanism though, the way to change your life is to be more bold, bold. His, her, how to, that is the thing you have to do to change your life. But when you do marketing, you don’t market. The thing you have to do to change your life, you Mark it. What shows up as a result of having done the thing you have to do. In other words, what, when you are bold, what happens? That’s what the title is. When you are bold, what shows up, what occurs, what change happens. That is what is the title? And you know, so she had a lot of titles around bold. The other thing that she wanted to do was potentially call the speech the 10% target, the 10% target. Now, when you listen to the speech, you’ll hear that the 10% target is her framework.

That was something we helped her come up with. We teach people how to create their own frameworks, right? Well, 10% target is a great name for a framework. It’s a terrible name for a title. Why? Because the 10% target isn’t clear. I don’t know what that is. And remember, and if you haven’t heard this before, or even if you’ve had write this down, right, like etched in stone from Rory Vaden, clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. The 10% target works for the name of a framework because you’re only talking about it to people who know what it is as you’re explaining it, but it doesn’t work as a title because it’s not clear. I don’t know what that is. I mean, when you hear the 10% target, your first thought is what is that?

That’s how, you know, a title sucks is if people hear the title and they go, what is that? That’s not what you want people to say. When they hear your title, whether it’s a Ted talk, a video course, a subject line of an email sequence or a book title. You don’t want them to say, what is that? You want them to say, how do I get that? Right? You, you don’t want a title to be confusing. You don’t want it to be curiosity invoking you want it to be enticing. And so the 10% target isn’t clear. So what did she call her? Her Ted talk. Right? So, okay. If it’s not bold and, and it’s, it’s not healthy. And the reason we eventually went from healthy, even though her background was like a fitness person, that’s like part of her past, but that’s not who she wants to be in the future.

Like, so the reason we, we went away from healthy wasn’t because the concept of healthy works as a potential title, healthy is a destination. It is something that shows it’s a result. You know, you eat like a healthy as a, as a, as like a, as a by-product of, you know, being disciplined. Discipline is a vehicle healthy is the destination. So healthy could have worked, but we’re trying to take repivoting her brand away from health, which is where she has been known historically. And we’re wanting to position her more as like a personal development kind of kind of a person, right? So that is why we went away from that. But the, the, so that’s, that’s why we didn’t choose healthy. And so what did she go with the secret to getting anything you want in life? That’s it, that’s the name of her talk, the secret to getting anything you want in life.

Doesn’t say anything about it. Doesn’t say anything about the 10% target, but it’s because that is, if you follow her formula of being bold and using the technique she teaches called the 10% target, what happens according to Jennifer? Anything you want, like, that’s what she is saying is you can get anything you want by being more bold. And by using the 10% target, which has asked for what you want 10 times more or less, I forget her actual, the exact verbatim of her message, but it’s been over a year and I can still remember off the top of my head, a big part of what it is, the secret to getting anything you want in life is not a fancy title. It almost feels like boring. It almost feels like you would go well, that’s been done. That’s an original, that’s generic. Doesn’t matter. It’s clear, clear is greater than clever.

I don’t want the 10% target and I don’t want boldness. I want to get anything I want. And I want the secret to getting anything I want. I mean, that is why it’s a great title. It’s just, again, like she was willing to surrender her predispositions about what she liked and what she kind of thought for the, for the, for the kind of proven structure behind going. This is why we do it without surrendering her identity without surrendering. You know, she’s not just blindly saying, Oh, I’m going to do everything you say to do. She weighed it though. Right? She, she weighed it proportionately and, and that really, really, really worked. So kudos to you, Jennifer Cohen. We’re so proud of you. We learned a ton from watching you and the talk is great. And you know, your story about Keanu Reeves is so memorable. And you know, you are now etched in Ted talk history as one of the the few, few viral talks. So thank you for letting us be a part of your journey and keep going, girl, we’re going to keep tabs on you. It will be exciting to see where it goes from here. That’s all we got for this edition of the influential personal brand podcast recap.

We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 166: How to Create a Viral TEDx Talk with Jennifer Cohen

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

You know, nothing fires me up more than when somebody that we know that is a friend. And then also someone who is a client succeeds in a really big way. I mean, that is why we started brand builders group is we just, there’s no amount of money. There’s no amount of recognition that gives you the satisfaction that you get when you watch someone else succeed and you help them. And that’s why I’m excited for you to hear the story of Jennifer Cohen. Now, Jennifer is a, here’s why we’re on the show. What we’re going to talk about is she hired us about a year and some change ago to help her create a vision that she had for a Ted talk that Ted talk has now gone viral. It has millions of views. It is actually featured on ted.com, which is incredible and very rare.

And so we’re going to talk about how did she do that? What was the story? But you know, she is a very successful personal brand really, and, and was long before she met us. I mean, she’s been featured on good morning, America and entrepreneur. She, in fact, she hosts a podcast called habits and hustle all in partnership with entrepreneur and she’s interviewing Dr. Oz and Matthew McConaughey and Tony Robbins. And she’s also an author. She has several books. One of my favorite titles that she’s got is called strong as the new skinny which she released a few years ago. But she’s also a successful entrepreneur and she’s done a lot of things in the digital space. She is most proud of launching the good human foundation and some of her non profit work, which hosts an annual it’s called babes for boobs bachelor auction, supporting breast cancer research and treatment. So she’s just super cool. And we want to hear the story of what she’d been up to over the last year, because, and, and this is a bone I have to pick with you, Jennifer. You didn’t tell me how well the Ted talk went. I saw it on YouTube and I was like, what the, what? Like what, like, how did you not tell us? So anyways, welcome to the show.

You’re right. You have a boat to pick and, and a well-deserved bone to pick. Actually I have to say you know, why I was so busy that I didn’t have the everyday of, I told you, when you texted me, I was like, Oh my God. Like, thank God. Because for like Mo like for like five weeks, probably I was like, Oh my God, I got it. I got a contact. Or I got a text where I got a call Rory. And like, I just one day bled into another. And I, I know I’m I was,

And you are a ma I mean, you’re, you’re momming. You got, you know, kids. So that’s, that’s also like a whole thing that you’re doing all that.

Exactly. I’m trying to do everything. And like, with two kids it’s not easy. And they’re also unschool virtually right now. So that whole layer of stuff as well, right. With the pandemic. So my apologies though, for sure.

Yeah. Well, anyways, you’re forgiven because this is such a, such a great thing. And you know, and obviously you are an author and you’re a speaker and stuff, but it’s, it’s also like, you know, there’s always a part of you. That’s like, is the stuff we’re teaching, does it actually work? Like, would it actually help? And, you know, to see someone that you work with have, have the kind of result that you did. And so I, it’s just really, really exciting. We’re so proud of you, which you are already know. So what, tell us the story, like, how did it ha how did you get the Ted talk? How did it all happen?

Okay, so really, I mean, you know, I’ll just start from the fact that I, so they actually approached me. So a Ted person reached out to me and they asked me if I’d be interested in like doing a Ted talk, which of course I jumped at the chance then of course, you know, how I met you is through a friend of mine who hired you to do something for his stuff. And I was, you know, my friend wanted me to come along to Nashville and, you know, sit there and like hear and listen to everything. And quite frankly, I was really blown away by how you kind of your, your approach and how good you are at what you do that that’s when I asked you afterwards, I’m like, can you help me carve out? So this is thing, like I wanted you to help me carve out or kind of take the ideas and the nuggets of information that was in my brain, and then create something and execute on those messages in a, in a way that would resonate.

And that was streamlined. So like, I think a lot of times people have a lot of good content. They have great ideas, but they don’t know how to like put them in a place or they don’t know how to like display it in a way that is succinct and organized. So you helped me with that. Like, you guys helped me, you especially helped me with that organization, creating, you know, taking what I had and creating soundbites that like really landed on people really well. And what’s really funny is what you don’t know. Cause I haven’t spoken to you about this is that, you know, when I did this, when I did the talk so many, like so many, like other things were happening that first of all, there was a baby crying, which then threw me off, which then, you know, which made me kind of, I ended up like what we actually created together.

I thought was even way better than what I actually executed because right away that baby threw me off. And so I like missed a chunk of really good information at the beginning. And then towards like the middle towards the end, I had another really big chunk that really like drove my messages home and the guy working the slides made a mistake and didn’t put the right slides up. So it threw me off again. So I missed it check. Yes. So I missed another chunk and I was like, Oh my God. Because when I practiced, it was like really strong. It was tight. It was strong. I was like, Oh my God, this was really good. I was really, I was really proud of us. Let me say, and then when those things out of my control that was complete, like external forces that I really had nothing to do with, through my, you know, cause I’m also, by the way, I was super nervous. Like let’s like not, I mean, it’s a very,

Of course. I mean, yeah, like it’s a big opportunity and they’ll know like, so my Ted talk, I was turned down by 27 different Ted organizations. I think I told you that I was actively prospecting to try to get one. And then I finally got one Douglasville who only took me because they were so small and it was their first year. I don’t even think they wanted me, but they’re like fine. We need somebody and, and contrast this with your experience. But either way, like when you get that opportunity, I mean the Ted stages at this point, it’s sacred. It’s like, this can change your life. This can change your life. So I did not know this. So, so this is a big moment. You’ve prepared all of this. Like you spent time and money working up to this and then a baby’s crying. And then the dude in the back messed up your slides, freaking out.

The other part that you don’t know also why I was like, I was even extra freaked out about the baby was when I went out. I said, like I said, the first sentence. And then they’re like, Oh wait can you go back? Something was wrong with the sound we can’t really in the back. We got, I started again. So I was like, are you serious? So like I had to go and do that again. So I was like, Oh my gosh. So when I got off the stage, my husband was with me, whatever. And I was like really kind of upset. Like I was like, Oh my God. Like that was something that I spent a lot of time on money on. And it was really good. Like there, the chunks that I didn’t talk about were like, I thought really good. And I was really bummed.

So then when all of this happened, like I think out of the gate, it did fairly well, like right off the bat, I got like a hundred thousand views maybe. And then like, did you promote it? Like, no, I did nothing. Like, nah, I still haven’t done a thing, not a thing. So we should talk about that. Cause we could throw fuel on the fire know, trust me. I know. Cause like, I’ll tell you about that after. So like not, and then I’m like, Oh, this isn’t true. But then it kind of stagnated at like a hundred thousand. I was like, all right, whatever. And then like, I don’t know, like a few months ago or four months ago or whatever, is that a one 50? And I was like, all right, whatever then. And I forgot to check it. Like I was just not really paying attention.

And then one day, like three months ago, maybe four months ago it went to 200. And then I started noticing that at 200, I started to get a lot of like DMS and like different emails. People were sending me to info at Jennifer Cohen. Right. And then from 200, it jumped to like every day it was like climbing 20,000 more, 20,000 more, 20,000 more. And then next thing you know, I was like at the million and then it went to a million, one, a million, two, and millions. And like, I was like, I had no idea like how this happened because everyone was like, are you promoting this? What are you doing? I’m like, honestly I have no idea even how to promote this thing. And like, like the amount of incoming, thousands of DMS, thousands of emails, like, so now it’s, it’s hitting like I think on YouTube alone, I think it’s going to, it’s going to be at 2 million problems, like looking at my wife, like probably in a week maybe cause it’s at one nine ish or something like that. But like, yeah, you’re going to pass me, which me off.

That’s like, not even a question. I mean, let’s just say it right now. It’s going to happen. I mean also the engagement, if you look at the engagement or the comments crazy like, hi. So I think what ha what I find interesting is that I think people are what they liked about. It were all the things that I wasn’t so crazy for, which was the fact that there was like a a rawness to it. It wasn’t perfect. It was kinda like disheveled a little bit. And like, you know, it was like, it wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. So polished was, I think that people actually were like, you know what, she’s, it’s it kind of like makes them feel there’s like, I’m less intimidated that like resonated a little bit. And the messaging, I think overall the content people really were inspired by what the content was. And so, yeah. So thank you for letting like helping me put it together and you know, you’re you’re, you guys are really good at what you do. So,

You know, th thank you for that. I mean, that it’s, it really is just fulfilling and exciting by the way. So we need to tell people that the, the name, the name of the talk is how to get anything you want. Is that

The secret to getting anything you want?

Yeah. The secret to getting anything you want. So at the time of this recording, it’s just like South of 2 million and climbing it in less than a year. And it’s, you know, this is changing, you’re changing. This is changing your life. And I think to what you said, many of the people who come to us struggle with exactly what you were struggling with, which is like, I have all these things I want to say and all these different facets. And it was just about focusing it and finding this, you know, the uniqueness, finding the through line all the way down to boldness and then turning, you know, figuring out what problem does that solve? What is your message in one sentence, and then building a technique around it this, this framework. So the, are you tell, tell us about, tell us about that process. Like how much, like, how did that help you or what do you, what do you remember about doing that work? Cause that’s, that was hard work that that’s harder work than even coming up with the word,

Not for you. It’s not, I mean, you’re just good at that stuff. Like what, you know, what it is. I find that everyone has some, a skill and something that they’re good at. Right. And that’s just so happens to be what you’re really good at. You’re able to take a lot of like jumbled information and like really, really, really organize it and streamline it to make, to be succinct. So the process was quite easy actually. I mean, like I said, I think that you’re just naturally gifted at this. I said this to you too. Like, I think you’re just naturally gifted at like, hearing all the verbal, you know, diarrhea and blahblahblahblahblah and then making and like, and then making it, like making it into something that’s actually coherent. Right. Cause I knew that it, I knew what my key points were and I think what view I said, I want, I knew that it was about asking for what you want being fooled going after it, all, all of that stuff. And like, and the key story, which was like a big story. I don’t know if you want to ruin it or talk about it here, but you know of that being a pivotal moment in my life. Yeah.

You talking about the Keanu Reeves store. Yeah. We’re not going to tell the whole story, but they can go watch the talk if you want to see. But I think, you know, like the process that we take people through, which, which, you know, and you also had the benefit of going through with Darren, like big shout out to Darren Prince, like much love to you, buddy, miss you connect, connect us. You had the benefit of going through that experience with him. And so you got to like work it on someone else and then apply it to yourself. But

Why saw what you did with him and this not to him. I wanted to interject because you know, it’s very hard. I think when it’s a very saturated and very claustrophobic environment right now with social media and everybody trying to build a brand, I feel that’s become like a very big thing right now. And it’s very hard to like stand out right when everyone’s kind of saying generally the same thing. So it’s super important. I think now even more than ever is to like really find that like little niche, that little nugget that sets you apart from everybody else. And when I sat with you in that room with dare and doing it, but a bunch of other people with all those pieces of paper on the wall and like really like that whole I don’t, what do you call that when you,

Yeah. So, so that’s called a brand strategy day, which is, you know, it’s the most expensive way for people to do business with us to do that. But we, but we, we take people through that same day for that, obviously. Well, yeah, that was, we were working on Darren’s stuff that day, but the, the same, we take people through the same process in our events and through one-on-one coaching, like the same questions, the brand DNA helix and all this stuff. But anyways, so what we did with you is a brand strategy day. Most of our clients experience that through one of our events, which are like 20, 30 people. And we take, we take them through all the same exercises and all the same stuff. It’s just not one-on-one.

Yeah. And it’s, and like I said, like, I, I, what I saw was you took all this information that was generally just good ideas or ideas. And then you like created like some type of like meat on the bone to kind of disseminate it. Right. Which people I think over underestimate how hard that is. I mean, it’s very hard to do it. That’s what I’m saying. That I think that there’s like very much a skill in that. Right. Cause you know, it’s that being able to take an idea in your brain someone’s brain and then figuring out a way to create a brand and structure around that is very difficult. And so I sat there for it the whole day and I was like, wow, I could not believe where we were from walking in to when we left. Like it was a massive difference in messaging.

Well I love hearing that. Thank you. And I, you know, for you, we identified your uniqueness as boldness and that’s the first thing is to really what we call find your unique uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others, which is a quote from Larry. Winget one of, one of my mentors that I had heard. And once we narrow that down for you, was that boldness was, it was what it was about. And then the message, the one sentence statement or command and instruction you want people to do, which for you was chase what you want or ask for what you want. Don’t just take what you can get. And so when I saw your Ted talk and I was like, what a Whoa, and then I and then I watched it and I was like, gosh, I wonder how closely you delivered it.

And I was like, you followed it to a T and it was so clear. And and so we, we create that uniqueness. And then, like you say, we, we take people through in captivating content, the modular content method of building it into a story and points these, you know, the catchphrases or the sound bites, as you say, and extrapolating the signature story, but you stayed so on point and to what you’re talking about, the problem is noise. And what cuts through the noise is that precision level of clarity of knowing in one sentence and then building the framework around it with the 10%. So, so we’ve you, then we, we created that little formula, which was which is something you do in your real life called the 10% target. Can you, can you like walk us through the 10% target? Cause this is like good for everybody.

Well, the 10% target is making 10 attempts at what you want in life. Right. So and what we talk about not to give away the whole Ted talk, but

We’ll watch it. We’ll put a link to it too, like in the show notes so people can go, go click on it. Yeah,

Absolutely. But I mean, the truth of the matter is, and this is actually true. Most people don’t even go after what they want. One time, let alone two or three times. So the idea behind the 10% target is making 10 attempts and failing 90% of the time. And again, you know, what’s funny. It’s like, it’s what you it’s, it’s not so much like what you say, it’s how you say it. That makes it resonate and hit somebody in a certain way. And what I found so interesting is the way that we said it really hit people in a way that wanted them to take action, which you know why, which is why I think that it became very sharable, right? Repeat viral, right. People started sharing it with their friends call. You know, I can’t tell you how many times people like are calling me or what not calling, but DM-ing and emailing me that calls people don’t get nobody calls anyway, nobody calls. But like, Oh my God, because of this, I did X or because of this, I’m going to do X, right. That actionable item that makes people actually go from watching something passively to actually doing which I think I’m very, I’m very proud of it actually for that reason.

I mean, it’s so good. And that’s where, you know, and that’s where it’s like, you know, we, we always have to step back and go, we can’t take credit for that. Like that was, those are your ideas. All we’re helping do is pull it out of you and sharpen it and package it and like position it. But you know, when we try to teach people how to do this, you know, we’re always telling them the best marketing in the world is a changed life. It’s not a fancy graphic. It’s not the perfect words on a page. It’s not beautifully edit video. The best marketing in the world is a changed life. When you have a clear message and you deliver a clear behavior, then someone can hear it because it’s so clear and then they do it and then it changes their life. And then they tell everybody and their actions tell everyone because their life changes and people go, what are you doing?

Why did you do that? How did you do that? And they go, Oh, you know, I watched this talk to help, you know, help me just be more confident asking for what I want. And it’s, it’s, you know, like you said too, it’s, it’s simple truths. It’s, it’s like, we’re all saying variations of the same thing, but the way you say it with such precision and clarity and it just like it just so much, it made me so happy. And then, you know, even for me as a, as a viewer, I’m just delighted, even though I, you know, I know what’s coming, but for me to sit, like, I’m like, Oh yeah, here’s the Keanu Reeves story. And here she’s introducing the problem. And here comes your uniqueness and here comes your message and your framework and, and you, it was delightful to see you execute, but then it was just so wonderful as the receiver to just be like, I get sucked away into your message of going, man, I need to be, I need to be more bold. Like I need to do this. And it’s just so, so, so clear and simple.

Well, thank you. I mean, and yes, I, I agree and I appreciate it and I, I thank you for that, but I think that you’re right. The clarity is what, how it hits on, right. That’s the difference between being a success or, or not being right. A success, right. Because it’s the clarity of how you’re able to bridge your message to other people.

Yeah. That’s a great way of, of, of saying it, it, that is like the bridge, that connection between you and other people is kind of how, how clear can you say? Well all right, well, I, this has flown by, like I knew I knew it would, but we had to share this story. Where do you want people to go? If you want them to learn about you and we’ll put a link to the Ted talk again, so that they can, that they can get at the secret to getting anything you want in life is the name of the talk. And which, by the way, passes our title tests, where we, we are very, we have very structured formulas for titles, which you also, you know, we’re so humble and malleable to learning, especially being as successful as you were, you know, doing lots of things in life before we ever found you, you were such a great, you know, willing to just take input. So we’ll put a link to the Ted talk, but anyways, where else do you want people to go to, to learn about you connect up?

You can go to Instagram, which is the real Jen cohen.com. One N J E N C O H T N. The real Jen Cohen. They can go to my website, Jennifer cohen.com, I think that’s.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, and, and this is, so would you say this has really changed your life? I mean, have you, you’ve seen, you know, like change your business, change your business.

It’s given, it’s giving me more work if that’s what you’re asking in the sense that like, you know, I was not really focusing so much on my own brand is much beef at all, but now this is kind of kicking me in the butt and I have like a lot of different opportunities when it comes to my own personal ground. And I’m also, I didn’t, I’m writing a book right now based on the talk.

Did you get, did you, do you already have a publisher for it?

Well, no. I have like a couple, I’m not, I’m going to be using a difference. I’m actually just signed with an agent actually a couple of weeks ago. And I don’t have a deal yet. I’m not, I had a deal to be honest with you, but now I’m redoing it. So yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll report back in about three weeks or a month.

Yeah. Well, let’s wait. We need to talk more both about what you can do to throw fuel on this organic fire. And then also talk about leveraging this into a book. So be on the lookout for that y’all, but we’ll put a link to Jennifer cohen.com. You could check out the real Jed co and on the Insta. And Jen is just, I mean, congratulations, I it’s inspiring. And I, and I hope that people listening are inspired because it shows that it’s like, it’s real. And if you, if you do it and you’re humble and you work hard and you do the right things and you give value, like it, it pays off and you’re, you’re, you’re literally impacting millions of lives and just job well done.

Thank you. And a job well done to you. If anyone’s listening to this and you know, they’re, they’re on the fence about you guys for you or the company to help them this should be a huge, a huge push in that direction because quite, and I will say this quite frankly, and I meet a lot of people. I live in Los Angeles and you know, everybody and their dog are, are, are pitching and approaching me and everyone around who say they do this. And you really are very talented and I wouldn’t hire anyone except you.

Well, thanks, Jim. We wish you all the best stay tuned. And we’ll, we’ll, we’ll look forward to following your journey be well, thank you.

Ep 162: How to Produce and Promote Your Self Published Book with Honorée Corder

RV: (00:09)

Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show

RV: (01:06)

Writing and getting books published and written and distributed and marketed properly is one of the biggest pain points that so many of you have. We know that and over the years, I’ve had an opportunity to interface with a number of different people who have different, you know, magical superpowers in the book, writing and publishing space. And today I’m going to introduce you to one of my favorites. She’s a longtime friend of mine. Her name is honoree a quarter and honoree, a first of all, she is worked very closely with one of my dear, dear friend, two of my dear, dear friends of Hal Elrod which many of you probably know she helped Hal turn the miracle morning into a whole book series. Honoree has written more than 50 books and not just with Hal, but lots of people, Phil Hellmuth, who was the world series of poker champion.

RV: (02:00)

Also one of our other dear friends, John Ruhlin and his book Giftology who we just absolutely adore John we’ve had him of course, on the show. And she just works as a strategic book coach to writers. And also, I would say a publishing specialist specifically for people who want to self publish and maintain all the ownership and the control and, and the rights, but to do it in a way that it looks and acts and feels and operates like a traditionally published book. So anyway, she just recently moved to Nashville. Well, not that recently, but a little bit recently and we reconnected and had to bring her to you. You’re going to love her honor, a welcome to the show. Hey, Hey, good to be with you. All right. My friend. So I want to start with the question of the, the, the writing process. Okay. So you’ve written 50 books. You’ve coached people through this. You’re teaching lots of people on, on the writing process. I feel like people get stuck at the blank page. Like they go, I want to write a book. I know I got a book in me. I probably got five books in me, but then they like sit down and it’s like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t come.

HC: (03:24)

What’s that Netflix I’ll do it later.

RV: (03:29)

So what do you, what do you, think’s going on there? What do we need to know about that stage in that moment and how do we kind of get ourselves past there?

HC: (03:39)

That’s a, that’s a great question. Thank you. And there’s a lot to unpack there. I think what people get stuck on is what goes in a book. Why am I the person to write a book? Other people have already written a book like the book I’m thinking of writing. Why should I write a book? And then how am I going to write it? How did I, how am I going to know it’s any good? And then once I’m done with it, what the heck do I do with it? Who’s going to read it. What if nobody buys it? So there’s a lot of static and a lot of head noise going on and, and without a process to follow. And without some clarity that they will stand to get stuck, even if they get past that blank page.

RV: (04:21)

Yeah. So let’s talk about the mental part of it then first, because I do think that that is that sort of self limiting belief of, you know, one I’m not smart enough, I’m not good enough or more of the imposter syndrome, which is like, well, someone already wrote that book. Like, you know, I already read that book. I mean, do you find that that’s a pretty big, a pretty big part of this and how do you, how do we get ourselves beyond that moment?

HC: (04:48)

Sure. So yes, someone has probably written a book about what you have knowledge and expertise around semi-colon however, comma, right? They, there is no book written in your words, from your perspective, with your additional experience and you are the messenger that only some people can hear. And I love to use the example of like Brene Brown versus Tony Robbins in the motivational space for the people. Lots of people stand at the, at the the stage and watch Tony Robbins and think that he’s the best thing ever. And other people think he’s too big. He else’s teeth are too big, right? He’s it’s too much for me. And other people think Brene Brown is just the most wonderful thing in the world. And other people think she’s too quiet and she’s not commanding enough. Their messages are not the same. They’re similar.

(05:48)

And you could say, well, it’s motivational, I’ve been motivated. I’m done, that’s it. And yet there is that other option, which is what you bring to the table, your experience, your expertise, your knowledge, and your words, your approach, your philosophy, how you connect with people. And that is not in a book if you haven’t written it. So I like to get people past that, well, who am I to write a book I’m not experienced enough or who cares, or there’s already a book out there contextualizing them and saying, hold on, you have something to offer. You must write a book. Right. And then helping them to figure out what goes in the book and where and why, and getting started on that process because, and let’s go to all the way to the end and you’ve been there and I’ve been there. You get that book for the first time and holding it in your hands. And you’re an author. It’s kind of the coolest thing ever. It’s worth all of the trouble.

RV: (06:45)

Yeah. Well, and, and you get the first comment from a reader or Amazon review that are like, you know, that’s, it’s so powerful. And, and I, you know, I, I do use myself as an example on this. Cause I go look, take the stairs more or less as a book that about hard work. There’s not many more on original topics that, or messages than hard work. And, and as a 20 something year old kid, when I wrote the book, I was like, you know, I, I felt like, well, what am I saying? That’s different. But it was totally from my lens. And I think the beauty of me being so young was I knew nothing else other than to write it from my lens. And I wasn’t old enough to have as much self-doubt I think as sometimes people get in their thirties and yeah, it’s you bringing you to the table, contextualizing you, no one else can do that.

HC: (07:36)

Right? No one else has your voice, your perspective, and all of the other things that make you, you, no one else can write your book. And so I think you owe it to people. I’m just going to throw it out there. You owe it to people to write your book. And I read, take the stairs. And I sent you a screenshot of all the tabs and notes and highlights of re reading the book. And I had read every other book on hard work. Yeah. Hard work is not a new philosophy, but your perspective and that phrase, Oh, I’ll take the stairs. I’ll, I’ll do the harder thing. I can do hard things. I do this hard thing. And it builds that muscle and builds on top of that. Some of that book has never left me. It’s stayed with me. So if you hadn’t been that 20 something year old kid going, all right, I’m going to write a book and you did it.

HC: (08:29)

Then all the people who benefited from it would have missed out. And so now I’m just, I’m not talking to you, right. I’m talking to your audience and the people that are listening and are thinking well, but what would I say that would be any different. It’s not necessarily that you would say something different it’s that you would say something different that you would say it in your way. And the person who would have said, why am I going to take the stairs? Why would you take the stairs when you were taking the elevator? Might hear another message, your message in a way that actually moves out and transforms their life. And you’re right. Then the thing that is even better than receiving that first book is receiving that first letter in the mail, or that first email where someone says, I read your book and it changed my life. It inspired me. I am behaving differently. I’m doing something differently. I’m believing more in myself. There, there are very few things that are more fulfilling than that.

RV: (09:22)

Yeah. That’s, that is incredible. And I, and I think another part of the fear, like, just since we’re talking about the emotional side of this, I do think there is this fear of like, well, I could pour my life into this thing and nobody’s gonna read it right. Or no, one’s gonna buy it. And then it’s almost like I have this, it’s almost like I have this public declaration that I’ve put out there that I want something to be successful. And if it’s not successful, then somehow it’s like this public reflection that, you know, my book wasn’t good enough and or something like that. And, and ironically, I think it’s, it’s it, when a book doesn’t sell, well, it is less often to do with what is written in the book and more to do with the promotional plan. And I want, you know, I know that that’s a part that you really kind of specialize in, is going okay, what are the things? So let’s say, if we get past the self doubt, we’re operating in what we would call our uniqueness, we’ll help people find their uniqueness. They create a great outline. They work with you or some, you know, somebody like you that helps them really like flush out and write it out. And, you know, we’ve got lots of people that we love to help. You’re one of them they get this book written, then what, what do they do to make sure that people find it

HC: (10:47)

Connecting the book with the reader is the $60 million question, right? How do you connect the reader to the book? And most importantly, the author and it starts actually with that blank page, with the questions that you’re going to ask yourself, when you’re putting pen to paper, the first one would be something like, where does the book fit into my business? And what is the purpose of the book in my business? What do I want the reader to do as a result of reading my book with taking the stairs, you want people to work harder, right? With you must write a book, which is my book. I want everyone to write a book. I want the right person to call me and say, I want you to help me with this process that they’re figuring out, where does the book fits into the business and where the book fits in with the author.

HC: (11:38)

And then everything else that you do actually is informed and influenced by the answers to those questions. How do people connect with you and how do they connect with you in their journey of reading the book? Do they like you more, as the book goes on and are you adding value to them? Are you helping them to solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity or both? And then how do they, how do they come to understand if they’re the person that you could help beyond the book? And all of that is linked into the marketing

RV: (12:11)

Surgically. Even thinking beyond the book to going, let’s say I write an amazing book. I market it, I get someone to buy it. I, they actually read it. They get to the end then what? So it’s kind of like thinking about how does this direct and fit into your overall kind of business plan and like, not just your business plan, but how can you service that person at a deeper level once they’ve been through the book and how are you pointing them in that direction?

HC: (12:39)

Right? So the, the, the trick is, and there’s no trick, but the trick is right. The question that you want to answer is how do I serve the person? So they feel like in exchange for their time and money, right? The time they’re reading the book and the money they’ve spent on the book, that they are getting value, that the question of the book has been answered because you buy a non-fiction book. I read limitless by Jim quick, because I want to be limitless. So Jim had a big Hill to climb with me. I had a lot of questions about how to be limitless, and those questions were answered in the book. But at the end of the book, there were a lot of other ways for me to take my limitlessness to be even more unlimited, right. There were ways that I could connect with him.

HC: (13:27)

And those had to be built into the book too. So there were resources in the book and options for connecting with the author before someone puts pen to paper, or even while they are thinking about what those things would be, how am I going to connect with my reader? How can my reader connect with me after they’ve finished the meat of the book? What’s the next thing for them to do? What’s the next stage in our relationship? And what does that look like? And how do we connect those dots? I think we live in a great time when it used to be that an author was a person that you didn’t know where they were. You’d never, you would never hear them interviewed or talked to unless it was on the mic MacNeil, Lehrer report or something. Right. and now or Charles Cronkite, right?

HC: (14:15)

Like authors were unicorns that were inaccessible and now authors are accessible people and have to think of themselves as accessible and readers love to know their authors, authors that you like, we want to know who you are and we want to connect with you right. As readers. And so thinking about that as an author, as an aspiring authors, how can I make sure that my readers know that I’m not inaccessible or not a unicorn? And I want to be connected with, and here is who the, who the person is that I want to connect with the most.

RV: (14:47)

So let’s, let’s talk about Amazon specifically for a minute. Cause you know, I, I know most of, most of your experiences, like really kind of dominating this, the self-published world and, and helping people promote, what do people need to know about Amazon that they, like, what do authors need to know about Amazon? That we don’t know? Like what, what as a first time author is not obvious to us about Amazon, that it’s like, well, you really need to know this. Like, in order since Amazon represents, I don’t know what it is. Something like 50, 60% of all sales. I mean, maybe even more than that whatever the number is. It’s it’s a, it’s a massive percentage. What are the things you think most authors go? Oh, I didn’t realize that. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know I needed to do that. I didn’t know. I needed an update that I didn’t know. I had to like do this or that for Amazon specifically.

HC: (15:42)

Sure. Well, not UN find-able information, not information that you can’t find if you’re looking for it, but understanding how to engage Amazon as a retail partner when launching your book and marketing your book is very important. And understanding that if you know how to engage Amazon as a retailer, as a retail partner, they will serve up your book forever. If you can prove to Amazon that your book is profitable, Amazon wants to sell profitable things. If you’ve ever opened your email, or like maybe 12 times today, you’ve opened your email. And there’s a name something from Amazon that says, well, are you done reading this book? Because when you’re done reading this book, you should read this book over here. Oh, did you buy this thing? Well, people who bought this also bought that right. There is a way to engage Amazon as a retail partner so that you can have them serve up your book.

HC: (16:44)

And it’s not with ads it’s free. It’s just knowing the process, right. Of engaging Amazon in such a way that they say, well, take the stairs is a profitable book. And so we’re just going to keep selling, take the stairs. We’re just going to keep recommending, take the stairs. Honorary, read the book. And honoree is like these 1 million other people. And so we’re going to send this email to these 1 million other people that are just like honoring, because they’ve read all the same books that Andre has, but not take the stairs. So they’re going to email those people on your behalf.

RV: (17:15)

And you’re saying, you can do something, you can do something proactively as an author. What are, what are like, what’s an example? Or like, what are, what are some of those things that we go, Oh, I didn’t even realize I was supposed to do that. Or I could do that. Amazon seems like this ginormous, like faceless enterprise, like that I think is something I didn’t even think. Like, I don’t even feel that way that it was like, Oh, I can, I should be doing these steps.

HC: (17:42)

Yes. So there is three things. One is having an advanced reader team that consists only of your ideal reader. So assembling an advanced reader team of of the right size and the right consistency, right? Having the right people that are the ideal reader for your book, as opposed to I’ll, I’ll give you the thing not to do too, which is don’t launch your book to everybody for 99 cents because that will kill your book. So specifically launching your book to the exact type of person who would read your book. So not telling everyone about your book, telling a specific group of people about your book and engaging them in such a way that it tells Amazon, Ooh, people are going to like this book. And these are the type of people that are going to like this book. And then the two other things are cheating.

RV: (18:36)

So I want, I want to get the other two, but before we do this, so when, when you go like find the ideal, right? I mean, that’s really powerful. So number one, don’t try to just go. I want to sell a million copies that are 99 cents. And just like, you know, set the market. Like, this is what my book is, where it’s 99 cents. You do get, you know, some people do that for the bestseller thing. And you know, there’s some value, I guess, to some of that, but the w how do you find these people? Is that just like, go look on other books in your category and see who’s reviewing those and reach out and try to like, reach out to those people.

HC: (19:11)

That is a strategy, but that is that’s pain and suffering. And I try to avoid pain and suffering. So there’s, I’m anti pain and suffering in every, in every situation. Your ideal client, your past clients, people, you know, who read books like those books. I bet you could tell me five books that are like, take the stairs. I can tell you five books that are like the miracle morning for entrepreneurs with Cameron, Harold. Right? So we went and looked for who are the other books that are like this book, who’s read those books. And those are the people that I want. The people who are the ideal reader for the book are who I want to talk to about the book,

RV: (19:51)

Which if you have an email list and like you do a lot of the things that we teach at brand builders group, what we call the relationship engine and all this stuff. So you’re basically saying it is those people. I mean, those, it is those people, okay. They’re not, they’re not hidden. Yeah. And then it’s other, other podcasts like yours and other authors like yours and other social media people like, you know, posting similar content.

HC: (20:14)

Yes. If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one, you know, this better than anyone, right? Identify who your avatar is, your ideal reader, your ideal client, they’re all the same thing. And put a group of those people together to be your advanced reader team and curate them and help them to help you engage Amazon and other retailers as your partner in your book marketing.

RV: (20:35)

When you say advanced reader team, you’re saying, give them a copy of the book before it comes out. Why is that? So that they can leave reviews early on, as soon as the book comes out. So I have a

HC: (20:48)

Process that I have authors walk with. Like, this is the day that you do this, and this is the day you do this. And this is the day you do that. So that you’re engaging the, the algorithm of the engine, right. Of the retail engine in advance so that they know who to market it to as well. So it’s, it’s, it’s a little Ninja, you know, behind the curtain under wraps, keep it quiet. Don’t talk to anybody about it. I say that a lot. Sip it. Dot com. Don’t tell anyone you’re engaging the exact rate and perfect reader. I know, I know this from experience and I have to say it a lot. You got to keep it quiet, even though this is probably the thing, one of the top five things, you’re the most excited about, right? You have a new kid, your book, and you want to tell everybody about your new kid, but you just can’t for a little while. You’ve got to keep it under wraps and only talk to people about the book who are your avatar, your ideal reader, your ideal client.

RV: (21:44)

And if you get those, those people that go leave reviews, and they’re very either whatever, a verified purchase, those really help. So, okay. So that’s awesome. So I don’t need a million people to read it. I need to find like a core group of a hundred or 50 or whatever, like, and just get them to actually read it, co foster that audience, get them to support it, to leave, you know, share it with whatever start small. All right. What’s you said there were three things we’re running out of time.

HC: (22:12)

Yeah. The other two are quick. The other two are quick keywords. What are the keywords that people search to find your book? Identify, identify your keywords. And it’s not a word. So brand builders would be a key word. So if someone were saying, how do I build my brand? What’s the best way to build my brand. Each of those is a key word. So you identify the keywords that people would use to find a book like yours. And those become your keywords.

RV: (22:42)

You’re talking about, this is similar to search engine optimization for like Google, but you’re, you’re talking specifically in Amazon, correct? You need to select your keywords, but then, but like for SEL, I can. Yeah. Where do you put them on Amazon? That

HC: (22:57)

In, in the backend, in, in when you’re, when you’re publishing your book or when I’m publishing your book, I identify the keywords and I, I put them in the, in the, I do the publishing piece. But there is a, the dashboard, right. Where you would go to upload the book cover and the book files, they ask you, what are your keywords? And you put in the keywords and then the keywords match.

RV: (23:19)

Yeah. And that, see what’s wild about that is when you traditionally publish, you have less control over things like that. I mean, this is, yeah, you do. As you know, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s so many great things about traditionally publishing and self-publishing, it’s like one of these, these balances, but, you know, procrastinate on purpose mist, the wall street bestseller list. Not because we didn’t sell enough units because the book wasn’t categorized in the proper category that the, that BookScan and Nielsen and that the wall street journal picks up. And it was like, what, like where, who was supposed to tell us that like

HC: (24:05)

Who’s gonna lose their job today. Yeah. So that’s actually, the third thing is, are the categories your book has to

RV: (24:12)

Look at

HC: (24:13)

That is the third one. Look at you being all star student and everything category is the next ones are key. So advanced reader team in the algorithms getting, you know, the team and teaching the team and, and teaching the author gotta do everything. And you know, at the right time, right, you got to, you got to marinate the meat before you make them put it on the grill, right. The right thing at the right time, then you have to understand what are the keywords and what are the categories and how to change them, how to see if they’re working and how to make sure that you’re making the moves and how to make the moves at the right time. So, like I said, it’s a little bit art, a little bit science.

RV: (24:55)

Where does the CA is the categories of backend dashboard? I mean, I know it’s like monitoring categories. This is one thing. And there’s different ways to do that in different tools in your, hopefully your publisher kind of knows some of that helps you figure that out or, or, you know, but like once you, you’re saying that it’s actually like monitoring it and then going, let’s change the category of this book to put it somewhere else. You can just log in and do that.

HC: (25:22)

You can ask, you can actually send an email to Amazon and ask them to put you in certain categories. Otherwise, they’re just going to put you in categories. If you’ve ever looked at a book and it’s like, this is a book on dog-walking and it’s in the kitten legwarmers category, just because it happens all the time. It’s just because somewhere in, in, in the, the computer, somewhere in there, something got off and it went in the wrong, it went in the wrong. Okay.

RV: (25:54)

So basically you just need a note notify Amazon, say, Hey, can you move this? My, can you list my book in this other category? If you’re self published, if you’re traditionally published, your publisher has to do that.

HC: (26:09)

One would help. Yes.

RV: (26:10)

Yeah. Okay. And then keywords is the same thing, basically like there’s some, there’s a backend part of Amazon where you basically re similar to how you would do with like meta-tags and H you know, like H one H two tags on a website. There’s a, there’s somewhere in Amazon in the backend where you, this dashboard, is it called a dashboard? Is that what you’re

HC: (26:33)

I called the dashboard. Yeah. Let’s see. It’s, you’re just logging in. So it’s Kendall digital publishing, kdp.amazon.com is the, is the login is where you create your account. And so you create an account and you upload all the files and the information it’s where you put in the title and the subtitle and all, and the, and the book description. And you’re right. You have to have HTML and a call to action and making sure that the font sizes right in the spacing is right. Otherwise it just looks a little jeopar walkie on the, on the retail page. And all of those things factor into whether your book appears professionally published.

RV: (27:12)

I know, I mean, again, with procrastinating on purpose, for some way are tight. Our original book cover got uploaded, and it had this like weird glitchy thing on the cover. And there was like a weird splotchy looking thing. And it was like, how does this happen? Like, how does that happen? And it’s just like, somebody uploads a file that’s wonky or something, and yeah.

HC: (27:34)

Wonky or, or corrupt or something. And, and then you have to change it and you have to get to the right person to make the change and all, all the things there’s, my checklist has 487 things on it.

RV: (27:47)

Yeah. Well, 487 steps to success. You know, but you, you, there are small specific things like this, that Matt that really, really make a difference. That’s, that’s, that’s wild. I didn’t even know that about, I mean, I guess I, it made sense, but as a traditionally published author, I don’t actually have control of my keywords and categories. I have to go through with the publisher because it’s all in there. They control the dashboard for it. Right. I presume, although I’m going to ask, I’m going to have this based on,

HC: (28:23)

They have access to the same. They have access to the same. There’s this, there there’s might be a little more robust than what they let you know, the common folk have. The traditional publishers probably have something that’s a little more robust, but they definitely have keywords and categories. But the thing is, yeah,

RV: (28:38)

I got to I’m depending on someone else to do the work of updating it, versus I can’t just log in and do it myself, which is one nice thing about self publishing is you can like log in and update the thing. Yeah. So that’s, that’s, that’s part of the partnership of publishing. Really interesting. So all right. Well honor. So, so I got one more question for you before I ask you that, where do you, where should people go if they, if they want to connect with you? I mean, you’ve worked with Hal, rod, John Roland, Cameron, Harold. These are all these, those three people specifically are close, personal friends of mine. I know you’ve done a ton with Hal and you know, we want, if someone wants help, like actually writing a book and, and I mean, I know you teach people to do it, but you also will do it with them. Where should they go, go find you and say, Hey, I found you on brand builders podcast, or like, where do you want them to go,

HC: (29:42)

Go, just go to my website, honorary quarter.com and send me an email, send me honorary honorary, quarter.com or go to my website and do a, a form and send it over. I get those. And Megan is my assistant and she will, she will get you on my calendar to discuss if this would be a good fit. I love it. I love it. And when you get your rights back on your books, call me you talking to me. Yeah. I’m talking to you.

RV: (30:14)

Oh, well, we should talk. We should talk off, we should talk offline about some things. But the okay, so Andre quarter.com. We’ll put a link to their honorary honorary quarter.com if you just want to email or and then, so the last little thing that I just I have for you here is you know, coming back to this mental side of things. Yeah. The fear that it won’t be good. The self doubt that I’m not smart enough, the imposter syndrome that someone else has already done it I guess, is there any last thought you would have as it relates to this emotional block? Because over time I’d become more convinced that the disk, the barrier between a mission-driven messenger, which is we call our audience mission-driven messengers. The primary barrier between a mission-driven messenger and actual published book in their hand is a whole set of emotional challenges that are much greater than the logistical challenges. So is there anything you would, you would say to that person who knows they should write a book, but they’re struggling to get their own, you know, pass some of their own beliefs?

HC: (31:37)

Probably a hundred things. So I’ll try to come up with a few that are impactful for right now. The first one is you have done something difficult in the past that you were unsure, you could succeed. So go back to those wins that you’ve had in the past and revisit them go to the people who know you the best, your encouragers, your coach, your mom, your therapist, your best friend, and ask them what they think. And when they encourage you, listen to them, they are right. Right. They know they have a line of sight to something that you cannot see. And also you do not publish a book by yourself. I mean, unless you crazy.

HC: (32:19)

And I must be crazy because I’ve done it myself a number of times, but for yourself and by yourself are different. And I have not ever published a book where I didn’t use a graphic designer to give me a good cover and the editor, or more than one editor to go through and make sure that my message was strong, right? So you’re going to need a proofreader and you’re gonna need a copy writer, and you’re gonna need this advanced reader team of people who are gonna read your book and tell you that what you have done is, is a beautiful thing. And writing a book really is a team sport. And so engage the right team of people, make sure that you do use an editor and make sure you do use a graphic designer who does understand book covers and that sort of thing.

HC: (33:05)

And once you have your team around you, you will feel less fear and less reticence that you might be running a marathon for the first time, but you got a coach, right? How many miles do I run today? Do I do strength training? Do I do yoga? Like, what are the other things I need to do? Listen to the other people that you have around you. And then also find some other people that have written books and have gone through the process who can give you some words of wisdom and say, Oh yeah, I felt fear too. And I’m going to add one more thing. And that’s what you touched on it before, when you said I was a twenty-something kid and I wrote, take the stairs. When I wrote my first book, it was kind of like, okay, I’m going to write my first book. I didn’t have that monkey mind either. I didn’t have those self doubts because I honestly didn’t think anybody was ever going to read it. So who cares?

HC: (33:57)

Right? So if you put the pressure on yourself of like, I have to write a book and it has to be a New York times best-selling book and, and, and ad, right. If you make it really hard to feel good about the success of your book and really easy to feel like a failure, you’re already starting behind the eight ball. So just give yourself easy wins. Oh, I’m going to, I’m going to sit down and come up with an idea for a book. Okay. I have an idea. I wonder if I could flush it out with an outline, let me come up with an outline. Okay. That’s a win, like, make it easy for yourself to feel good and make it really hard for yourself to feel bad, not just in book writing, but in life. But in this instance, let’s focus on the book writing so that the fear side and recognize that you’re not doing it alone. And there are a lot of books out there. There are a lot of inferior books in there, a lot of superior books and it’s okay, this is your book. And you get one spin around the rock, right? You better leave something for people to remember you by

RV: (34:58)

There. It is some, some Ninja secret, undercover, whatever you said, confidential tips just, just between me and you and a few tens of thousands of listeners on the podcast podcast. But it’s all about, who’s going to take action on it. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s it. So Honoree, so good to reconnect with you, my friend. And thanks for sharing some of your wisdom. We wish you the best. I know we’ll be staying in touch, especially now. You are a Nashville neighbor, so all the best to you.

HC: (35:36)

All right. Thank you so much.

Ep 161: Building a Trusted Personal Brand with David Horsager | Recap Episode

And we are back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition. Today. We are breaking down the interview that we did with our good friend and struggle member, my personal mastermind, speaking mastermind member, David Horsesager talking all about the trusted leader. And here we go. AJ is with us. Why are you laughing at me? We just started struggling. It’s a verb, it’s a verb. And a noun. The struggle is our group. It’s be a Jason Dorsey and Jay Baer. I’m telling them. And it’s awesome. It’s awesome. And you can’t know because it’s confidential, what we struggle about.

Yes. Okay. My first point and, and, you know, this is very similar to several different interviews that we’ve had over the last few months, but noteworthy, nonetheless is using data, using information, using research as a competitive advantage, a core differentiator of what really sets you apart because it’s no longer I think, or this is my opinion. It’s validated, it’s nationally research. It’s proven, it’s statistical, it’s all these big fancy words to the U S census. It’s all those things. But I think it just adds a whole level of clout and credibility and insight when it’s not just your ideas, but it’s your ideas and your thoughts that are then validated in the marketplace and then to take those statistics and then to use those insights, to further the information, to further the education, to help people see the things that they can’t see that’s right in front of them.

And I think that’s a huge part of, what’s just missing with so many thought leaders today is it’s just that it’s just their thoughts. And it’s like, well, is there really any credibility or validity to what you’re saying? And this, this really creates this layer of trustworthiness hence his brand is all it really does. It really does create this enhanced echelon of credibility and makes you be like, okay, so this is statistically valid. Let me see what it says versus just another inspirational motivational leadership thought.Um and I just, I, I, I’m a data nerd. I love statistics and I love information that’s proven. So maybe that’s a huge part of why I’m, I just love that. But as data as your competitive advantage, loved it. Yeah, I think that’s

Cool. I, I noted the data point too it’s and just so you know, like this, these interviews really affect us. We, we actually just conducted a national research study based on stay tuned. But based on, you know, just some of the things that our guests are saying and kind of how we want to position our, our company and that have really had an impact. But one of the things that I loved that, that we kind of got into on that data, on the differentiation part was that that David said thanking your past clients is a point of differentiation. You know? So it’s like, there’s all of these things that you can differentiate by your, your content, your experience, the audiences you serve data, things like that. But, but even your, your client experience and as a speaker specifically, which, you know, his, his business models, mostly like speaking plus training.

And I think, I just thought it was cool to hear him kind of talk about and emphasize how far he goes to thank his past clients. And I think for all of us, whether you’re a doctor or a financial advisor or real estate agent, or, you know, an influencer of some kind, it’s so easy to make the sale and move on and never even go back and talk to your past clients, let alone stop and just say, thank you. And I really love that. And it was a good reminder. So for those of you brand builder clients that are listening, thank you for being awesome. We love you, and we appreciate you and we, we better be doing a good job of thanking you. Yeah,

That’s good. I love that. All right. So my, my second one is Abby first in the space and he talked a lot about this, and this is a very similar to another recent podcast interview that we did where I was all up on this topic. And it was so interesting that he said it to, you said, you know, 20 years ago, no one was talking about trust and leadership and trust in sales. He goes, that, wasn’t a thing is that today you hear about it all the time. But when I started in this space, it really owning the word trust. I was kind of the only one talking about it. And it goes back to again, what are you talking about? That’s truly unique and a way that no one else can compete with it. And if they do, they’re only second to you.

And I just, I, again, just kind of want to harp on that one more time. And it’s not just being first in. It’s like really using your unique perspective and your uniqueness and not looking around at what are your competitors doing and what is the market say? It’s like, who cares what your competitors are doing, what the market says, what do you say? And that’s a huge part of like how they get started in this. And he owned that space. And that has really propelled his career of just being first in the space of living into his uniqueness that no one else was talking about, but it was,

Yeah, I think you and I have, have developed a lot of clarity about the idea that we care less about what competitors are doing and all we’re all in on an individual’s uniqueness and just doing what they were designed to do. And David’s a great example of that. I think my second takeaway was really about the getting speaking gigs. I remember when we had Dave Avar and another one of our long-time mentors on, he said, you know, for those of you interested in speaking, you have to realize, speaking is not the business, getting the gig is the business. And when we got in such a great line yeah. And I’d never heard him say that before that interview, but, but when we talked here with David and it was like, okay, how do you get the gig? And he said, well, it’s a mix of three things, great content, great delivery and great marketing.

And I loved that and I was mapping it to the brand builder journey. And when we take people through captivating content that is creating great content, which is what is your unique body of work, your unique philosophies, great delivery is what we would call world-class presentation craft. And it is exclusively dedicated to the art of presentation skills and then great marketing, which is full keynote calendar, which is the, the, the, the actual business mechanics of getting the gig. But if you’re not getting more gigs it’s because one of those three things is off and probably more it’s either great content, great delivery or great marketing. And I think that applies even beyond speaking, it would be the same for like writing, right? You have to write a great book. The premise, the ideas have to be good. The writing has to be good and the marketing has to be good. Like you need all three of those. So just kind of ask yourself, which of those three are breaking down for me and which ones am I doing really well, that was, that was super practical to take away from me.

I had to contain myself so strongly not to pipe in and be like, Oh, I know what that one was. That was cultivate content.

You were going to be like, Oh, your calendar. I know it. I know it.

I love when I know the answers to questions, but yeah, it’s so true. It’s just, I think that, that’s a great point. It’s like, which one of these is your weak point

And yeah. Yeah. Just to, and just to say directly to Edify what we’re talking about once you identify which one is, is your weakness reach out to us for a call because we have separate dedicated courses and curriculum that nail each of these, these three things specifically.

Oh, okay. My next one, my last one is expand your business model off of your existing body of content. We work with so many clients at brand builders group where they think they have to have 15 different sets of curriculums in order to have different business models. And they’ve got a leadership thing and a sales thing, and a diversity thing in a, at a customer service thing. It’s like, you don’t need all those things. You can actually take one body of content and multiply it exponentially. And David talks a lot about this. And it’s a lot of what we do at brand builders group, but it’s, I think it’s just a really amazing cause like you take the same curriculum, that would be a book and a keynote, turn it into a consulting program, turn it into a training program and then turn it into a certification program.

It’s not new content. Y’all, it’s taking the same content and just creating different delivery mediums that expand your business models, expand your revenue streams. But with way less work on you trying to create brand new content and topics and curriculum that aren’t necessary. It’s like, why are you getting a book is different than a keynote, different than a half day training, different in a consulting retainer different in a certification program, but you can have all of those things, plus a course plus a podcast plus more stuff off the same body of content, the same exact curriculum that you began with. And I think that’s just really, really important for anyone who is out there going, how do I diversify my income streams? How do I grow revenues without having to start over with like a whole new topic or a whole new book? It’s like, well, you don’t, you can take the exact same content you’ve had for five, 10, 20, 50 years, and just expand the different ways that you deliver that content and grow your business. And he’s David’s business is a great example of how he’s built three very diverse revenue streams off the same car.

Yeah. That’s so that’s so good. And you think about Dave Ramsey, you know, most of it comes back to the seven baby steps, which is one book you got. I think a Verne Harnish basically has has two books that are very much in the same vein and some of the biggest personal brands in the world. It’s just taking one book and extrapolating it. It’s kind of like when we say people don’t pay for information, they pay for application, you know, organization and application help them. That’s the different business model is just applying the stuff you’ve already created. Well, related to that, you know, one of the things I really admire about David’s business mom, and he’s amazing on stage. I love the trust edge book. I think it’s, it should be mandatory reading for every high schooler. I really do. I just think it’s great.

I, I will make our kids read it. I think it’s just, it’s a great universal, you know, kind of success principles book, but the, in his business model, I love how he does the like the certifications and it’s not just a volume game of like, how can I get more and more people paying to be certified. But it’s really asking the question, how can I support people better? How can I make each person that is certified on my content, more likely to succeed? How can I make, how can I help them make more money? How can I make it easier for them? How can I make them look good? And that is something that, you know, we, we’ve never really done training per se, we’ve done training, but that we’ve always had like strategists and consultants not train the trainer model. So we’re brand builders, a little bit of a hybrid, I guess, of, of a train the trainer model.

But most of, most of what we do is one-on-one work with clients, not with corporations. So typically train the trainer is like a B2B model, but we’ve worked with coaches, strategists, people. We would even call trainers and we’ve always, you, you have to stay locked in on that question. How can we help them make more money? How can we help them succeed faster? How can we help them help the clients get faster results and not just how do we get more and more and more and more people certified. And I just, I thought that was a good reminder and he does a really great job of, of supporting his, his strategists

His trainers. So

That’s it. That’s a wrap. So go out, check out trusted leader and trust ed, your friend, David, horse soccer. Dave, we love you, man. Thanks for, thanks for showing up and thank you for being here and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 160: Building a Trusted Personal Brand with David Horsager

RV: (00:07)

We say around Brand Builders Group a lot that reputation precedes revenue and reputation effectively is an unconscious calculation of how much people trust you. Do they trust you? Do they trust your brand? Do they trust what you are saying? And it only made sense that I would bring to you one of my very best friends David Horsager for an interview, and I’ve purposely been waiting for you to meet him. He is one of my most trusted friends. We are super close and he is the guy on trust. He owns the topic of trust. He is the CEO of the trust edge leadership Institute. He wrote a national bestseller called the trust edge. He also every year puts out a study called the trust outlook. And then he invented something called the ETI, the enterprise trust index, which kind of measures trust inside of organizations and things. And he is a hall of fame speaker. He works with companies like the New York Yankees, FedEx Toyota, global governments, department of Homeland security and just really, really world renowned. And so he’s here to share a little bit of his story about how he became the guy on trust and how he built the business he’s got today. So brother, thanks for being here.

DH: (01:28)

Hey, Rory, it is a treat to be with the brand builders and just playing with you and what a journey, great to be in a friend group and mastermind group and just doing life. So yeah,

RV: (01:41)

Thanks. We should mention, we should mention that, right? That you and I, and Jay Baer and Jason Dorsey are in a, a true peer colleague, unpaid friend, friend, supported mastermind. We call it the struggle. We have been together five or six years,

DH: (02:00)

I think at least something like

RV: (02:01)

That. We’ve had all, we, we, what people don’t know, every single one of us, we for back-to-back-to-back years were inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame and where you first or was Jay.

DH: (02:16)

I was, I think, yeah.

RV: (02:19)

And then me and then Dorsey. That’s right. So the power of surrounding yourself with amazing people, but I want to hear your, I want you to share the story of how you started, right? Because somebody’s listening out there right now are going, gosh, I’d love to speak. I would love to work with the New York Yankees. I’d love to have a, you know, a multi seven figure business. I’d love to do these things. How did you start?

DH: (02:47)

Yep. So I, it goes back, you know, I grew up on a farm in the poorest County in Minnesota and, you know I was a youngest of six kids and I, I definitely had kind of vision for great things, grateful for my parents to be the great leaders they were. And mom and dad are still 91 now and still run the farm. And actually just sold about 750 acres. So they’re thinking about how they can give away money these days. But I basically, after after college, I went to be on staff with the youth and faith and the organization. And after that, I, I later became director and I built a little bit of leadership curriculum for kind of college students do youth, whatever, move back to Minnesota. And this is how it started. We put every penny we had into that first organization.

DH: (03:35)

I have to tell my kids, this is back in the 19 hundreds, you know? But we moved back to Minnesota. I had one booking for $500. One thing I’d booked. I moved back, moved everything from living on a golf course, down in Arkansas to back to Minnesota. I, and so we jumped in and, and I, I thought, how are we going to save money? How are we going to do this? So we found not, not really an apartment, the basement of 86 year old Clara. Miller’s no windows, no bathroom, no kitchen, black mold on the walls. And that’s where we started this. And we lived there for two years and actually we we started with nothing. And by that October, I don’t everything we had into marketing and videos, all this stuff. And we add a dollar 40 to our name, 60 cents in the business account, 80 cents in the home account after paying her urgent bills, that’s all we had. And at the time we figured if we could just make 700 bucks a month, I could pay my urgent bills. And I think my, I think my, I think my statement that year from the IRS was that I made $2,000 or something. So for the, for the year. So anyway, that, that was the start. And I’ll tell you, it’s not

RV: (04:53)

Fast start a dollar 42,000 bucks your first year.

DH: (04:58)

Yup. 2000 in profit, 2000 in profit, not revenue. Okay. So and that was half a year in, you know, so all we had was a half a year to work with her, but basically we started with call, call, call, call, call, and working till 11 at night. And making calls people that say that phone calls don’t work anymore. I just don’t where we we still make calls. But anyway that was, that was how we started. And we’ve shifted things, you know, several times the grad work was a big launch pad. Obviously all my work around trust became interesting to people, more famous than me. The book.

RV: (05:36)

Yeah. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about trust, right? Because you, you know, that we, we talk about she hands wall with our community and being known for one thing and breaking through the wall. You are one of the best examples of that. Of just, just owning one thing, one topic, one issue, one problem of trust. How did you decide that? How did you land on that? How did you choose it? Did it choose you kind of a thing? Like what was that?

DH: (06:07)

It was a mix. And I think I was, I had been kind of sharing this leadership work, got asked to speak to the us coast guard Academy, a few other things. And basically I still remember where I was. I was at it was not that it was some big spiritual epiphany, but I was, it was before we had the four kids and all that. And Lisa and I were traveling together and we’re at an event down in, I think it was Tucson, Arizona. I just remember it was probably the most expensive place we’d stayed at till that point. It was the Lowe’s resort. After a day of this, at this business conference, I just turned thinking the problem they think they’re having. I don’t think it’s real problem. It’s not a leadership problem. The reason people don’t follow that leader is trust. I think that’s the problem.

DH: (06:47)

They think they’re having a sales. It’s not a sales issue. The reason people don’t buy as trucks and, and, and it kept going, and this was just intuitive. This was not grad work. This wasn’t research basis. It was just, Oh, that’s a trust problem. That’s a trust issue. That’s just me now. Fast forward. I believe everything genuinely is a trust. I believe you. I believe most people are not solving the root issue. It’s always a trust issue at the core. It’s not a leadership issue. It’s not a sales issue. It’s not an innovation issue. The only way to increase learning issue is increase trust in the content that the teacher or the psychologic saving the environment. It’s not a diversity issue. The only way that, that biggest Harvard study shows diversity on its own pitch to people against each other, the only way to get the benefits of it is increased trust, which is our many with trust.

DH: (07:29)

So, so, but back then, so I press into it a little bit. I started thinking about it, more sort of reading. There was, by the way, Rory back then there was nothing written on trust and leadership. There was no research. I mean, a lot of people are talking about trust the last decade to deck over two decades ago. Nobody, almost nobody in business and leadership was nursing psychology stuff. So I decided at the time now speaking some already, I kind of had enough going on that way. It wasn’t like I had to, but I thought I just had gone away for this one weekend. I thought, I think it was just to get my bachelor’s degree. So I just look at colleges and turn up the one that I graduated from. Usually you want variety in your grad work, but I just decided, Oh, I can get right in.

DH: (08:14)

And they have my transcripts and they had this organizational leadership degree and I put every bit of my research and my final dissertation, everything on trust. And that became interesting to some people. And that led to my passion, that then led to us using that framework in organizations. And it worked, we saw tripling of sales. We saw retention reduce. We actually had something real. So I think one thing that I will differentiate on the two people that are just brand builders is I’m big on, and I know many of your people are, but I’m just saying I was, it was real for me. It was, I was genuinely passionate. This work changed me. So I would just argue with people, find one thing, but something that is and true to them because now my work has been used on six continents. We just had an outside university triangulated, revalidation, revalidated, the work as the framework that builds trust globally. So I mean the research added passion, the books added passion, the scene change in people and organizations that passion. I just, I should walk over to the other side of my desk. There’s I just got a postcard from a guy that said five years ago, you were here and helped us with this. And it changed our organization. And here’s how and whatever. So, you know, that was the, some of, you know, there’s a long, there’s 20 years in there, right.

RV: (09:33)

But it’s connected to your personal passion, personal belief system. And then you mentioned the grad work, and this is something I wanted to talk about. You know, we’ve had, we’ve had Dorsey on Jason Dorsey came on you know, the, our, our audiences, you know, a little bit familiar with that. But one thing that you, you do, he does, and Jay Baer does, and we’ve not really done, which we are in the middle of is really doing more data driven research. So you started it in PR in grad school, and now you do an annual study. And so talk to us about why data, how data, how does, how does that happen?

DH: (10:14)

I remember at the core, I love story. I love keynote speaking, but I thought was different. I saw speakers that were kind of motivational with no depth or value. And, and we said, instead of putting money into marketing, we’re going to give value. And really our research study became a way of showing value. That was a marketing play. We didn’t mean it to be, but that’s, that’s kind of what happened. So so the, we do the annual study to be on just the cutting edge of thought leadership around trust. You know, we call the trust outlook. That’s what it’s called. Trust, outlook.com. You can see our last several years, we had done one way back, you know, called trust trends in 2014 big study, I had done a course, my grad work, we put out some different studies over time that weren’t so deep.

DH: (11:00)

Like w w I remember we did one at the Obama Romney election to judge trust between those two at the time. So we, we did some other studies, but basically, and now we even had a tr revalidated by an outside university that, and they said, this is the framework for building trust globally. So it’s, it’s costs. It can be costly, but it’s the way of being authentic thought leaders in your space. And so we do use that data. Of course, it gets out on social media. You know, the trust outlook out of the trust edge leadership Institute puts this out and, and all that. And then, you know, I can start, you know, whether it’s in a boardroom or, or with 5,000 people in front of me with something very fresh and relevant to them. And even my, I know you have certified folks, my certified certified trust ed coaches around the world.

DH: (11:49)

There’s a whole part of the platform that we offer that has research slides. So you have trust and leadership slides. You have trust in sales, trust, and culture trust in policing. We have people dealing with our trustworthy for corruption issues and needs to Africa, you know, so, so it gives them grit and beef, and it serves them well, to be able to start with research, I’ll give you a one in one research I’m finding last year, the number one reason people wanted to work for an organization ahead of being paid more ahead of more autonomy ahead of a more fun work environment with the pink bunk table. Number one, they wanted to, they wanted trusted leadership. And really that just points to our whole, the whole new book, trusted leader. Like people either want to be a trusted leader, or they want to follow leaders. They trust and more than anything else. So that just backed up. You did take that one piece of data that can show 92% of people said this or that or whatever. And all of a sudden it backs up what we’ve been saying, and it gives grit to it. And people people want more depth than ever before. If you’re going to build a brand, you know, they want to feel like you genuinely do. It’s not just some idea pulled out of your head, you know?

RV: (13:03)

So when you, you mentioned the money part of this, and it also, you know, kind of makes sense. Like if you’re the trust guy you’re doing research and pulling data and all that stuff, it helps, it helps it be trusted. That’s very aligned,

DH: (13:15)

Huge differentiator by the way, huge. Because if you know who else in my space, that is a big, big name and whole family has a big name for years. The difference between us as I as far as trust goes, our book, our first books came out about the same time, but we have done all this, you know, proprietor

RV: (13:35)

Anybody, right? Like, like, yeah. I mean, just anybody do you know this data, which, you know, if you didn’t listen to the interview that we did with Jason Dorsey, you should go listen to that interview about how data is the differentiator. Now you mentioned the cost, right? So I thought that was interesting that you said, instead of putting it all into marketing, we put it into this and it kind of ends up also be marketing. Are these, you know, to pull off a study, are you talking thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Like, I mean, what’s the,

DH: (14:09)

No, it depends. So for us, I can remember the first time I did study for maybe it was only, I don’t know. Well, not the first time, the first time I did the trust, outlook way of doing a study, it was, I don’t know you know, I don’t know, 30,000 or something, we’ve done them 10 hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands. And I did it only on the us side. And then I’m sharing the data. I’m at a massive conference up in Toronto and I’m like, Oh my goodness. Each piece of research says us the worst. I was so embarrassed that I said never again. And we went to global and global it’s much more expensive generally, but now we do it in house. So we do it in numbers that aren’t aren’t figure like those, like one year we were up toward almost, you know, a six-figure study there

RV: (14:57)

Just a field, the study. Then you got to like, produce the assets and like do the infographics and it’s, and the time, I mean, there’s a bunch of time to write the questions and all this stuff. Huh.

DH: (15:08)

But we, but nowadays it’s, it’s so worth it. I mean, we make, it’s such a differentiator that in an hour, you many people could do a study for, you know, that 20 to 30,000. That was actually quite, you know, I don’t know. It depends on how much of the globe you’re going to reach, but we, you know, one year we took the top, top GDP, peak country on every continent. So it wasn’t like every, every country, but then you have seven or whatever countries that we decided to, to go after. So you had some relevant, you know global data, but we’ve done them different sizes. But I think today you better do global, not just us generally unless you’re doing a specific area, like we did a specific executive edition. That was just us. And we also added interviews of those CEOs.

RV: (15:58)

Do you think this is part of what leads to this has led to speaking engagements is basically just publishing this kind of thought leadership. You know, we all hear, you know, we hear YouTube, LinkedIn podcast, blog, you know, book. We hear that pretty often. And then this is another whole piece is like, Oh, the study. And then is that the, I mean, are those the things that drive your speaking or is there some other like secret formula to getting speaking engagements?

DH: (16:26)

Well, the secret formula in speaking is in the mix, but I will tell you something I can tell you you know, when we make beautiful, real magazines, like I could grab one and show you across the room actually. So, you know, just trust, outlook that, you know, the whatever and, and you can see it

RV: (16:47)

And you print it, you make it as a magazine and print it. Okay. Okay.

DH: (16:50)

Yeah. And you can see the data in here if you’re watching, or I just said, you know, pie charts and whatever, that’s makes it interesting and fun to read and this many of this or whatever. So I’ve had someone hire me for a tens of tens of tens of thousands of dollars by opening up the page and saying, building trust in crisis or building trust in the midst of change. I’m like, Oh my gosh, it was this article right here. And that person hired me for a, you know, tens, tens, tens, tens of thousands of dollars a day. Because they’re like, this is what we need. Come spend a day with our executive team. We need to build trust in the midst of this change so that that’s not always you know, I’ve had, I mean, you go to the book and you go, you’ve written some amazing books that I love.

DH: (17:39)

I mean, that is another part of it. I had someone pick up the book of high powered, you know, Senator to pick up the book in the Denver airport. And that’s why I spoke to Congress twice. I had the president of Procter and gamble pick up the book in a, on a Sunday with his, when he’s with his daughter at a Barnes and noble. And that’s why I spoke to Procter and gamble. So th th there’s, there’s some kind of anomaly type things that, that, but th the, the book, the research for us, as far as speaking it is, you know, doing a great job and by the way, and you’ve done so well at this from back to your Toastmasters data, everything, you know, but I’ve had mentors on like I’ve hired comedy, I’ve hired, you know comedians to look at myself.

DH: (18:26)

I had helped me. I’ve had, I’ve hired speech coaches. I’ve hired improv. I’ve heard all these things. I’ve had you look at my speech before I gave my hall of fame speech. If you remember, because I’m like all of the mentors on being great on stage the book piece, the research piece you know, there’s social media pieces that we’ve gone more all in on than we ever were before too. But I would say something about the speaking piece, a big differentiator for us by the way is how we think people, huh? That’s, it’s, we’re just better at thinking everybody. And then many, like, I can’t even believe all the people that say, you know, the other 25, 35, 45, $55,000 speakers. I never got anything for having them at our conference. I couldn’t believe how you followed up and thanked us, and we send a big package and all this stuff. So I think, you know, there’s all, all kinds of little things that can make it, you know, build your brand

RV: (19:26)

Well. And, you know, I’d take that in investing into your business and investing into your trade, both the, both the message part of it and the depth of the thought leadership, and then as well as the presentation of it, you onstage, which seems like all the way back to those very early days, you’ve always been investing into it and growing. So, so you started in 1999. I’d love to hear just a, kind of just a couple minutes on your business model today, right? So this is 20, over 20 years later. Now you’ve got a team, you’ve got these great websites, these great demo videos like you, you, you, you can see how over years it has built up. And, and I’d love specifically for you to talk a little bit about like the train, the trainer model and the certification business model, because I think you do a really great job of, of taking your curriculum and having other people be able to teach it, you know, and that’s, I think that’s a scalable model for what, you know, a lot of people can learn from.

DH: (20:31)

So it sounded the research, the ways we fulfill the mission of developing trusted leaders and organizations around the world, remember we think that’s helping to deal with the root cause. So we’re, we’re training, leading leadership events, sales events, all these kinds of things, but are all these different problems, but there’s three business units. One is speaking and training from us. That’s me speaking a hundred events a year. Now we have a five camera studio right here, 20 yards from rehab producer. Full-Time I mean, we’re doing that. Whether that’s onstage live or virtually, we’re doing, you know, that’s, that’s a kind of, that’s a one and done though, right. Then there’s, then we have the consulting piece. And that is, you know, I had built several assessments in my grad work and was overseen by the, the guy that wrote the book on three 60 gap analysis.

DH: (21:16)

So we have an enterprise trust index it’s built on 50 years of Accenture data and, and, and my grad work and its way of measuring trust in big organizations and closing gaps. That’s consulting. I have consultants subcontracted on my team to do big. Those are big, significant issues. We’re working with the global pharmaceutical that you all would know right now, trying to pill trust globally with the vaccines going on all this stuff. Okay. So that’s, that’s really customized part, our biggest push right now. And the love is this certification part. And that is we certify independent coaches and corporate trainers inside of companies to use our content, but we don’t just certify them. We support them. So they pay monthly or annually. And we heard a lot of people say, well, I’ve got this one. We, you know, I got certified and then I never got support, or I got certified.

DH: (22:07)

And I just got these five, you know, 20 videos and worksheets. We give them everyday, my 21 years, we took and built ourselves and coded and created a beautiful platform that has everything that we heard they wanted. So it has, you know, research-based content and courses they can use on their people. It has assessments unlimited. They can use these assessments. They can see the cool, beautiful pie charts and everything, and how they can close gaps. They CA it has community. So I’ve got, you know, I’ve had the Dean of Penn state and the Dean of university of Nebraska that are certified the police to the seat, Las Vegas, and the, you know, people in Uganda, Kenya, Quebec answering them one of the former heads of, you know Nike is one. So you have this group really cool group of learning pros, whether the inside of companies or independence that then monthly, we support, they, they have the online community built kind of a, you could say a Facebook, whatever, right. In our site. And then we have monthly calls where they get to share ideas and sharpen each other. And, and yeah,

RV: (23:17)

So they pay up, they basically pay a fee to get certified. And part of that includes access to this library of stuff they’re in this community. And then they have the ability to like, reteach your content, effectively

DH: (23:33)

Assessments on limit. They can make so much money, you know, to using our content and having our support. And they get real people in my company when they need help. And they get these monthly calls and they get our annual event with it. So they pay an onboarding fee and then they pay monthly or annually, whichever way they choose on the support and ongoing we’re updating the site all the time. It’s we had some, we’ve had some big companies come and look at it. Like they heard about what we’re doing. Like, what are you doing? This is, you know,

RV: (24:01)

I mean, they pay, they pay a one-time fee at the beginning, and then monthly after that is basically how it works

DH: (24:07)

Or they pay the one-time fee plus annual, and then they can use it for you. But they pay either, either they pay that one time fee, plus they’re paying monthly, or they play the one-time fee and an annual, and then it doesn’t get again until another year.

RV: (24:21)

I gotcha. But, but, but, and so that is, that’s a model that you guys are doing, where basically you can certify and train and support other people to go out and teach your content, which you make money from. They can make money from, and it helps you spread the mission.

DH: (24:38)

And, and it’s so fun. Like I had a, I was at a banquet with John Maxwell and I got seated up, you know, I didn’t necessarily do it over. I just got to be seated with him. Anyway, we you know, he said he said, David, you’ve got to stop just letting corporate dudes. Cause I used to do train the trainer only like you buy this big pack, you know, three ring binder, and then you can you buy the workbooks? And the annuity is in buying the workbooks. And the thing is today, people want it flexible. They want to teach one-on-one one on a thousand. They want to be able to do all these things. So we said, well, if we can support them, I mean, it’s cool. What’s happening. This one, one of our corporate trainers, our trainers in Indonesia, she’s using our work on banking and oil executives. And she’s using our work in this foundation with girls that are coming out of sex trafficking to rebuild trust. I mean, how fun is it to see the mix of use of, of, of these coaches that are making money with it and making a difference with it?

RV: (25:35)

Yeah, really, really cool stuff. It’s a long way from your dollar 40 11 in the basement with no windows.

DH: (25:46)

There’s a lot of people like you, like, you know, mentors, God’s grace, my wife, I mean, this has been a journey. And you know, thankfully it’s been amazing

RV: (25:59)

Well and influential leader that the trust edge, if you will, you’ll want to, one of your first books is to me a book that is, I, I think of it, like take the stairs. It’s a book that every single person should read. No matter your age, your position, your title, like you should read the trust edge. I fully plan on having our boys read it. Like as soon as they can. It’s, it’s, it’s just like a solid staple that everybody should read.
We have the trusted leader, the brand new book coming out about how to apply this inside of organizations and to apply it to your own life, to develop a culture of trust. Where should people go if they want to get trusted leader, you know, right now I know you’ve got bonuses and all that stuff at the time, this is coming out. So where should people go to connect with you?

DH: (27:30)

The best place where we have some special guests for all your listeners is trusted leader, book.com/rory, R O R Y. So trusted leader, book.com/rory. Otherwise you can find everything at trust, edge.com and all kinds of things, but you get a bunch of free resources. If you just go to trusted leader, book.com/rory,

RV: (27:54)

I love it. So go there trusted later. Book.Com/Rory pick up the book. I’m telling you this is quality stuff. Not, not just the, you know, the watching clearly the way that they do what they do is super valuable for you as a, as a, you know, someone as a personal brand, but also the actual substance of the content that David and the team they teach is absolutely extraordinary. Incredible. It’s made such a difference in my life, our marriage, our kids, how we run business, we are just huge, huge fans of the trust edge. And so excited about the trusted leader. Now, applying this and helping our leaders go through it. So go to trusted leader, book.com/rory. David, thank you for being here, brother. We wish you all the best. Thank you.

Ep 157: How to Unlock Your Hidden Genius with Victoria Labalme | Recap Episode

Forward from my good friend mentor, buddy client Colleague Victoria Labalme

You know, Victoria, I have to tell you, I remember, gosh, I remember being at like some of my very first NSA national speakers association meetings when I was 20 years old, maybe 22 years old watching Victoria onstage or watching videos of her and just being like, Oh my gosh, this, this woman is a whole nother level. And she really is. I mean, her performance it’s, you know, it’s one of those things on a podcast that you go, gosh, I wish you could, how do I, how do I showcase this? But you know, if you go to Victorialabalme.com, you can check it out, you know, see some of, some of her stuff on stage, but you know, this book for her is really interesting. I mean, risk forward is unlocking your hidden genius. What a great concept of unlocking your hidden genius. And, you know, she kinda marries this idea of, of her past, which is performance and not just like presentation skills, like speech, mechanics, but everything presentation, the art of the stage and the gesture and the facial expressions and, and just how to, how to use every asset.

You have to communicate from any type of platform. And so she’s taking that performance and she’s also she’s also combining that and wrapping that with her business expertise and personal development and leadership. And I just, I just love this, the idea that conversation that she was, where she was talking about her mentor, Marcel Marceau. And I, I forget how you say and, and French, but, you know, he said, well, and, and let me, I guess, just jump in and clearly, you know, I’m, it’s just me, it’s just me on this recap is not here with us, but my number one takeaway is I think, what is the central message of her entire book, which is take creative risk, take creative risk. And I mean, that’s such a simple message. It speaks to, by the way, like so many of our clients, this is what we help them with in phase one brand DNA, which is kind of our flagship, which is one of the events that Victoria has been through.

And, you know, it’s funny like walking a client through that, but then interviewing her as a receiver going, Oh my gosh, what a powerful message. These, these three words, like take creative risk. It’s, it’s so important. And Marcel Marceau was telling her, I think, you know, the, the actual French translation of what he said was go forward with your heart open, right? Like leaning, leaning forward with your heart open. And, you know, I think this, this hit me personally, because so much of what we do at brand builders group is we try to make it a science. And those of you that have actually been through some of our events and courses and things like, you know, this, we try to turn what is a fairly abstract and OBS skier concept of personal branding which has like a thousand different parts, all these different topics, no random, no order or sequence.

And we try to use data and experience and corroboration from successful clients and friends and colleagues to, to create straightforward systematic frameworks and, and checklists and step-by-steps and exercises and templates that people can follow. And I think that’s one of the things that frankly we do really well. I would, I would go so far to say, we do that as good, if not better than anyone in the world. I mean, that’s all we do. And, and yet I think the, one of the reasons that I loved her message is it’s such a good reminder to not get so caught up in the science in the system and the structure that you forget to take creative risks. One of the things, and we actually tell our clients this in world-class presentation craft, which is our it’s a phase one event. It’s, it’s the third course in phase one for us.

And at the very end, you know, we teach all these mechanics of the psychology of laughter and how to tell a story and how to develop characters and how to create a plot in conflict and how to sell from stage without feeling salesy and how to, you know, what’s the, what’s the structure and the outline of a, of a world-class presentation that, that separates it, you know, and, and gets higher fees than most presentations and all these things that we do, which are really awesome. And then at the very end, we say, remember, but, but here’s the thing, never let the science get in the way of the art, never let the science get in the way of the art at the end of the day, personal branding, leadership, just being a messenger in influencer, changing the world, it’s art. It is art and like all forms of art painting music, which I happen to not know much about, but I know enough to say this.

They all have rules and systems and structure that you must learn and operate within. But then at some point, once you’ve mastered those, the art is about transcending that, and, and that is part of what I was really inspired by for me personally, and for our clients at brand builders to just go, gosh, that’s so great. We’re, we’re kind of creating the science and the systematic structure. And the real goal is to get people to that point and then to have them transcend it, to do their own creative things and be, and be willing to take those risks. And I, and it actually left me wondering, frankly, as I assess my own personal brand going, I wonder if I’m not taking enough creative risk personally. Like I wonder if I’m coloring too much inside the lines, just being that that’s what we do and what we preach and what we teach and go, and where, where can I step up and step out and, and, and take a risk.

So, and there’s definitely things that we’ve done with that. I mean, when I think about when we launched the take the stairs book, you know, and one of the things that AIJ and R and I, and our team did was we did, we did a bus tour. We like got a tour bus, which you don’t see happen that often, anymore, even, even back in those days. And, you know, that was super creative, but we, we made it into a fundraiser and, and looking back, it was so powerful. We did 23 events in 31 days, went from all the way from New York to Washington and to San Diego and everywhere in between, and traveled the country and met and shook hands and met bookstore owners and connected with our fans. And it was just, there wasn’t like a playbook for it that we were following at that time.

We just did it. And it was, it was so powerful. So that’s one of my takeaways. And I would turn that to you to go, where have you kind of mastered the fundamentals that you could afford to take some creative risk? And I don’t think it’s impossible to take creative risk in from the very beginning, but I do think it’s kind of like, at least my personal experience has been one where it’s like, learn the rules before you break them, master the game, and then change the game. And is most of, I guess the paradigm of how I’ve operated, but that’s not to say that’s the only way to do it, but either way, whether you’re just like a wild gunslinger and you’re going to take creative risks early on, go for it. But to me, the part that really, what really spoke to me is once you have the systems, the structure, the fundamentals, the basics, you know, in place, and then going, okay now, like how can I add to it?

So take creative risks, lean into something you feel called to do, especially if it’s different from what other people do. This reminds me of one of my all time, favorite quotes from one of my all time, favorite people, Sally Hogshead, who Victoria also knows, and she’s she’s at NSA or so we, you know, the NSA crew, eventually, if you hang around NSA long enough, you’re going to meet all a bunch of these people. And particularly in the, in the speaking world, the legends of speaking, so to say but, but anyways, Sally Hogshead says different is better than better. Different is better than better. And that is so powerful. It makes me, makes me think about this. So that was my first takeaway. My second takeaway from this interview, which is not something Victoria said, it was something that the concept of risk forward and, and it was something, it was catalyzed by what she said, but I don’t think I’ve ever had this thought so directly and succinctly, as I did in the moments following this interview and kind of digesting the conversation.

And here’s, here’s what my premise is. This is what I realized. Being an entrepreneur is being an artist, being an entrepreneur is being an artist. Business is art. It’s not just numbers and financials and projections and, you know, sales talks and, and policies and procedures and systems. All of that put together is art. And I would say that, you know, the starving artist is, is, is a really unfortunate term. One of one of my good friends, Jeff goings wrote a book called real artists. Don’t starve, which I just loved the premise of that because, you know, the indulgent artists says my art is so good. People should have to find me, right. And who am I to tell you? You shouldn’t have that belief. But what I would say is experience tells me that’s not a very profitable belief to have, right? You can say that, but you’re probably not going to end up with much money.

There’s a lot of people that are amazing artists, amazing writers, amazing, amazing singers, dancers, speakers of like just authors comedians that I’ve met in my journey that you have never heard of. And that the world will never hear of because they have this belief that if my art is so good, people will find it. And what they’re missing is the realization that marketing is art. Marketing is artistry. There is art just like there is the art in the creation of the work. There is art in the promotion of the work. We have so many friends in book launches right now, Victoria being one of them John Lee Dumas being one of them, the Jamie Kern, Lima Luvvie Ajayi. Both of them just hit the new times bestseller list and, and their, their work is art, but the marketing is also art. So there’s two parts of the, of the artist and two parts of the business owner.

There’s the, the logic and the structure and the processes and the systems and the policies. And then there is the creative. There is the innovation. There is the new thinking. Being an entrepreneur is being an artist. Marketing is artistry. Customer experience is artistry. The one place there’s probably not room for much artistry is in your financial in your don’t, don’t take this too. We don’t want creative accounting practices. So I w I wouldn’t translate it there, but I would definitely say the way that a conductor orchestrates a symphony is the way that the entrepreneur conducts the company is the way that the leader or the executive conducts the huge organization that is art and leadership. And you have to realize that the art is not just in creating the work, but also promoting the work and, and helping the work flourish and, and having that work, see life and make an impact.

And a difference in the world being an entrepreneur is being an artist. That was my second takeaway, inspired that one inspired by Victoria. And then my third takeaway, which was directly from her, which is funny, because I’ve never heard her say this, and I’ve, I’ve never really realized the power of this quite the way that she said it. And basically what she said is don’t be afraid of uncertainty specifically in your decision-making, right? She said, what a lot of people do is we’re so uncomfortable with uncertainty that we rushed to make a decision, just so that we can have clarity and not have to live in the discomfort of uncertainty and what there’s a beautiful part of that. I think of where she’s saying, you know, kind of allow yourself to navigate that window for a moment, allow yourself to sit in that space to go.

I need to neither go forward or backwards. I can just kind of sit here for a minute and digest. I can allow for things to matriculate or to propagate. I can just kind of process on things for a minute, and that that’s a beautiful space to live in too. It’s almost to allow for a breath to allow for a moment of creativity or innovation to show up by not just rushing immediately into the next thing and moving from one thing to the next, but to actually to, yeah, just, just kind of I guess, digest and, and process, and you know, like have a gestation period of which you sit in uncertainty and that beautiful art can come out of that. And that, I think as another thing, this was eye opening for me, because I think I am a, I’m a driver, I’m a straight shooter, I’m ambitious, I’m focused, right?

And so it’s always like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, you know, like next, next, next X, X, what’s the next thing. And go, and Hey, is there a spot? Are there opportunities in my life that I am skipping past an opportunity for brilliance for the sake of rushing into clarity versus, I mean, this would be one place where procrastinate on purpose. I mean, you know, my book title that I wish I would have called how to multiply your time. But if, because the premise, the procrastinator purpose book is really about how to multiply time. That’s what the book is about. But that one, that one section, which is about procrastinating on purpose procrastinating, strategically, that actually isn’t what most of the book is about, but that’s kind of it’s that concept is relevant here to what she’s saying is like, wait, like sit for a moment and just kind of allow yourself to feel that uncertainty, because brilliance can come out of that.

And that was like, Whoa. So just powerful, powerful stuff. And I, I think unlocking your hidden genius is such a, such a great concept. I think it’s such a beautiful concept for her. Of course, the the title of her book is risk forward. And then she dropped that into the subtitle, embrace the unknown and unlock your hidden genius. And I th I just think that unlock your hidden genius is such a great concept and take creative risk is such a clear message. It’s profound. It’s going to be something that sticks with me. I hope that it sticks with you. Thanks for being here. Keep coming back. Lots of great, great insights coming from our guests. I’m so inspired by them. I hope that you’re inspired by them. I also am inspired. Our team is inspired most of all by you and who you are becoming and what you are being prepared to do. So keep coming back, we’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.

Ep 156: How to Unlock Your Hidden Genius with Victoria Labalme

RV: (00:00)

Hey, brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.

RV: (01:04)

I love when I get to introduce you to some of my oldest friends and mentors and people that I’ve looked up to for years. And that is the case with Victoria Labalme. She is a hall of fame speaker, which is how I know her from the national speakers association. Someone that I admired for years and somebody that I would say is truly one of the best platform presenters on the planet. And it all speaks to what she does. I mean, she was a performing artist who was originally trained directly under the world, renowned Marcel, Marceau. She is magnificent in keynotes. She, she has she’s the creator of programs that help people with this. But the reason that she’s on the show now is because she is releasing her first official, traditionally published book is called risk forward, embrace the unknown and unlock your hidden genius. And so we’re going to talk about building your personal brand in a world of uncertainty, accessing your energy genius, and just hearing her story about how she has built this extraordinary reputation and personal brand. So Victoria, welcome to the show.

RV: (02:13)

Hello, Rory. And hello everyone. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

RV: (02:18)

Yeah, of course. Well, you know, we’ve got so many interconnectivity points you’ve been to our events before, right? So I it’s, it’s, it’s the people in our community should know about you and should meet you. And, and so I, I wanted to, I wanted to just kinda like start off with a little bit about your, your, your personal brand and the, the unlocking your energy genius or unlocking your hidden genius. Which is, I think one of your, one of your taglines of subtitle of the book. And I want to talk about the presentation part of things, because that, to me is like, you know, part of where you came from you and I have that shared interest in, and a lot of people listening, they’re either doing, you know, virtual webinars, virtual keynotes and stuff like that. And I think when it comes to making that pivot from onstage live in front of humans, to now virtual keynotes and webinars and things, how do you, how do you make that transition and what are some of the things that we can do to just kind of like still over deliver as presenters, even though a lot of what we’re doing these days is virtual.

Speaker 3: (03:32)

So great question. It’s really, how do we create the virtual experience to have some of the pizazz that we are used to? Well, it all begins with taking creative risks. I have a session I do call risking forward on camera. And, you know, if you think about what you can do on stage, what can be translated and there are all kinds of ways, you know, those are a lot of technology out there. The people are using E cam and green screen and different camera angles and different mikes and music and instruments. And part of what I like to help people do as well though, is really take what’s within them, their hidden genius and bring that out. So that’s your content and your creative expression that only you do in the way that you do that distinguishes your brand. That’s part of what risking forward is.

Speaker 3: (04:21)

How can you create and communicate with the unexpected twist, the unexpected twist that distinguishes your brand. And that’s a core tagline of mine because, you know, everyone can put up a green screen, but what can only you do and how can you do it in your own way? So that starts with your personality, your past your passion. I call it the prison effect in each of us is a full spectrum of colors. So one of the things that make you distinct and different, you know, what stories, what props, what examples, what physicality, what expressions, how do you pull? So you don’t look from it, look, look like everyone else from everyone else’s perspective.

RV: (04:59)

Yeah. And I, you know, that’s interesting in terms of, it’s not so much an external thing of like a camera angle or lighting, or, you know, something fancy I’m doing on the screen, but you’re talking about accessing the internal uniqueness or you know, one of the terms we use around brand builders group all the time, which I originally got from you is through line. And this, this idea of the through line of your, of your message. We usually talk about that term related to your content. But like when you say a take take that, you know, take a creative risk, what is the thing that only I can do? How do I find that? Or is it just asking, okay, what stories can I tell that are unique to me? What props can I use? What physicality does it basically just come by asking myself those questions and then base it, then, then just giving myself permission to just go, yeah. Let’s act on that crazy idea. I mean, is it as simple as that?

Speaker 3: (05:58)

Well, yeah. I mean, part of it is trusting that the, the things that are different and weird about you are often valuable. I mean, Sally hogs had our good friend has a whole phrase called you know, different is better, you know?

RV: (06:14)

It is better than better. I love, I love that. Yeah, that is such a great line. Different is better.

Speaker 3: (06:19)

Oh, you meant different as being better for a long time. And it’s just, it’s true. Not, you know, not in a terrible way, but it there’s so much value. And what happens is, and I talk about this in the book risk forward. And I talk about this in my program, rock the room is we shave off parts of who we are to fit into a mold. So for me, I’m extremely physical and, you know, they’re all kinds of things I can do with my body, but other people are more visual, you know, and some people have instrumental skills and some people have comedic skills. So it’s really access to what’s unique and different to you. And bringing that out in terms of taking those creative risks. I always encourage people to do what I call is a micro risk, because you don’t want to go out in front of a thousand people on a zoom or on a video recording or a webcam and try something new for the first time.

RV: (07:05)

Oh, this I’m glad you’re saying this. Cause I was going to ask you about this. So you’re, you’re, you’re not testing it out in front of like, you know, the largest audience you’ve ever been in front of them.

Speaker 3: (07:15)

Right? I mean, any comedian will tell you two things. Number one, and this is my background is a performing artist, a comedian and a movement artist is that, you know, you’re either going to do one of two things. You’re either putting new content between two time-tested pieces of material. So that if it sags, if you tank your out quickly, so you put it in there and then you recover. But more importantly than that, the first time you do it should not be in front of your biggest, most important audience comedians tour their work across the country, in small clubs before they bring it to Broadway, same thing with shows. And it’s the same for us as presenters. What we do is we try it out with a few friends. We tried it with a couple of colleagues. Is it working? We refine it over time and we increased the size of that audience.

RV: (07:59)

Yeah. I mean, it’s funny cause I, I literally my, my original Toastmasters club, which is where, you know, like my speaking journey started cherry Creek Toastmasters. They last night I sent them a video. They asked, they asked if I would do a video of what, 15 years later, how it shaped my life. And I told them that my best jokes today are the ones that I originally wrote. The first renditions are versions for my icebreaker speech in front of eight people at my, like my local Toastmaster club. And you know, I think that’s interesting. I mean, you’re, you’re saying that as like every comedian knows, but I that’s a good reminder even for me. And I’m sure some people listening have never heard that, like don’t put new content, like put it in between two things so that you can recover and don’t test it out, like on, on the world’s biggest stage.

RV: (08:54)

So think that’s, I think that’s handy now on the topic of risk in general, risking is risky. And so I think, no matter if it’s even just writing a book or even doing a virtual presentation or maybe talking about a different topic or going live, like is a big thing right now, like it’s risky to go live on social because you don’t know it. You can’t add it. Talk to me about the emotional side of dealing with risk or managing risk. Even it could be in a business like, Hey, I wanna, I want to launch a new funnel or do something I’ve never done paid advertising. All of these concepts are, there is a fear of uncertainty, which I know is more about what risk forward is kind of about. So like how do I navigate the emotional side of, of uncertainty?

Speaker 3: (09:48)

Right? Well, I’ll start by explaining where the term risk forward was born. Years ago, as you benched in my introduction, I studied with the French mime, Marcel Marceau, and people love to joke, Oh, you’re a speaker, but you studied mine, which is a stupid joke. You want

RV: (10:08)

It actually took me a second to get it. I was like, what? Oh, Oh, okay. Okay. Now I see now I see.

Speaker 3: (10:14)

Yeah. I always tell people, be careful not to say the obvious because you lower your status. It’s like, if someone’s laughing,

RV: (10:21)

Right. That is so funny. I’ve never heard that. I love that. That’s funny.

Speaker 3: (10:27)

Yeah, no, it’s true. If someone’s really tan, don’t say you’re really tan. If someone’s last name is hamburger, don’t make a joke about it. Like, cause they’ve, they’ve guaranteed. They’ve heard it. So have I heard mom jokes? Yes. Do I need to hear them? No, because when I do, I’m like, okay, you’re now in the category of a certain

RV: (10:45)

Type. You’re that guy. You’re

Speaker 3: (10:46)

That guy. So you don’t want to be that guy. In any event. I studied with Marcel Marceau and there was a type of movement. He called he scab, they schema. And it was, it was a way of being almost like the sale of a boat. You know, you were arched open with the wind, your body. And for those of you listening, who can’t see me, I’m my body is arched open, like the wind. And it was, it felt very exposed, a little scary. And I’ve come to think of that as a philosophy for how we approach our work in our life. And I returned it risk forward and trademarked it years ago. And it’s really how do we go forward heart open, even if we’re a little off balance because the mistake that we each make and part of what I address in the book is that we think we should always be clear.

Speaker 3: (11:35)

We think we should always have a plan. We think we must have a goal if we’re going to succeed. And having worked with so many people from top executives at Starbucks and PayPal, these are my clients, the C-suite at these companies like Microsoft Starbucks, PayPal entrepreneurs, running multi-million dollar brand. Speaking on Oprah’s stage artists from Hollywood. I’ve learned that many of them didn’t always have clarity or a plan. And so while it’s good to have some idea, sometimes you can meet with great success without always knowing where you’re heading and we all have that experience in our lives. And that’s what risking forward is about. And it’s lots of stories and examples and tools and principles from the arts to help you navigate through that. Not knowing through that period of uncomfortable near miss discomfort to find your best way forward. And so whether it’s to your point, you know, you’re launching a new funnel or you’re putting together a new blog or podcast, there’s a ton of unknown. And what we do is often as we grasped for like the, the, the simplest the most convenient way out or what everyone else is doing instead of finding what’s original to us, even if it’s not been done before.

RV: (12:52)

Hmm. I love that. And the, the, that con that was re re is the translation of what Marcel used to say, is it, does it translate directly as risk forward or is it not really the direction?

Speaker 3: (13:11)

Not really. I mean, it was my interpretation of it. I mean, this is obviously risk and Evonne means in front of

RV: (13:17)

Huh. Huh. Yeah. But that’s,

Speaker 3: (13:20)

If all means before or in front of, so huh.

RV: (13:24)

So, but that, that concept of, of, of even just applying these principles of the arts to the way that we live and the way we make business decisions is to kind of like, be willing to almost like listen to the way you feel pulled in the direction and not necessarily just what is clear because it’s of what has been done before. And that’s why, I mean, in a COVID like in a world of COVID, I mean, this is our life. I mean, our, everything, like in this moment, at the time of this recording, which is before your book is coming out, we are living in a complete world of uncertainty. Like nobody knows what’s going to happen next month or in the next six months, it’s just like, this is the world that we, that we live in. And so it seems like somehow, and I would say this about you as a friend that you you’ve been able to give yourself that permission to just kind of like explore the wonder of that rather than to fight against it. Is that yeah. Would that be accurate to say

Speaker 3: (14:30)

It is accurate to say, and my life is I I’m pleased and humbled to say that my life has been extraordinary. The career I’ve had, the successes I’ve had, the personal successes I’ve had have led so many people to say to me, how’d you get to where you are? What was your plan? And I always say, I didn’t have a plan. You know, I did what was next. And I learned that in my life for my parents. And I’m here to tell you, I am living proof. And the people in the book are living proof that there are all kinds of other ways forward and it’s freeing to people it’s freeing. And I think it also depends on what you value, because if, if you know, if what you’re after is status you might not take as many risks and it oddly it’s the risk taking.

Speaker 3: (15:20)

That’s going to get you there. You know, and same thing with finance. You know, if, if you’re trying certain mechanisms to generate a ton of sales, but the word, my word back to the, your through line is not pure. It’s not going to last long. And so we’re always coming back to what’s, what’s truthful, what’s that inner current, and this may sound woo, but I have worked with the top executives, as I mentioned, and this translates and it is redirected companies. It is redirected teams, it’s redirected entrepreneurs and artists of all kinds to come back to that because it’s the pure path forward.

RV: (16:02)

You know, I would, I would second that, yeah, there is one of my friends here in Nashville is a guy named Jerry Jeremy coward, who is he is an artist. He is one of the best photographers in the world and shoots Taylor Swift. He shot the Pope. I mean, just amazing. And I remember one time you know, he liked did this, there were some fires in Tennessee and he went and took pictures of the houses that burned down and just to like showcase to the world, like how devastating this was. And I asked him, I was like, dude, where did you come up with the idea to do it? And he said, he said, I just felt it. I just had it. And he said that everybody has those crazy ideas. The difference between me and everyone is I actually listened to them. That’s right. And, and Jeremy is an artist. And I would say, right right now I have two personal friends that are billionaires which is a recent thing. I’ve, I’ve interviewed several of them, but there’s actually two that I now know personally and interact with on a fairly regular basis. And I would say these are business billionaires, like business. And I would say, this is true about them. Yes. They

Speaker 3: (17:12)

Literally, in both

RV: (17:14)

Cases, they were both told that what they were doing was stupid. It made no sense. It was ridiculous. It would never ever work. And so it’s like, there’s not that much different know. I think being an entrepreneur is being an artist.

Speaker 3: (17:31)

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the argument I make in the book and exactly that the successes we’ve each had. And I think anyone listening can think back on their lives, some of the most extraordinary successes that you’ve had happened when you were following that. And there are many, many stories of that when you took that creative risk, even though you didn’t know where it was going to lead, but it felt like the right thing to do either morally ethically, or just creatively curiosity wise. And that, as I always say to my clients, one of three things will happen when you risk forward. And they’re all good either. You’ll discover the ideas. Terrific. And it’ll come out to be something like your friend with the photographs. Yeah. Number two, it will be the step that leads to the next one. And so you’ll realize that wasn’t quite it, but it took you down the right path and you wouldn’t have seen the right path.

Speaker 3: (18:22)

Had you not taken that step. For my case, it was doing standup comedy. I thought, Oh, this is my thing. This is many, many years ago. I took that step forward and I realized that wasn’t it. But it was actually my trying to get into a comedy club show. It was, I was trying to audition for the HBO Aspen comedy festival. And I was in a comedy clubs thinking that was my path. And someone from the speaking world saw me and said, Victoria, you should come and be a speaker who would have thought, so it’s following that steps. That’s the second thing. And the third possibly the most important of all is that they say the number one regret of the dying is that they didn’t take more risks. People say, I lived life on other people’s terms. I didn’t take the risk I want, and I never tried X or Y or Z. And you don’t want to die. Wishing you taken more risks. So risking forward is all about finding what’s ahead by stepping forward into it. Even if you don’t know.

RV: (19:21)

Mm. How do you balance this idea of having a plan? Cause that’s something we do. I do this in my life. We teach people to do it as like we do set targets. We do have goals. We do, you know, we have a budget for our company that we have to operate by. Like, you know, there’s, there are KPIs and there are, you know, new initiatives and we have project management and you know, these are things we do that have helped us scale at least to where we have been. How do you balance the idea of goals and planning, but also what you’re saying, which is more of, of risk-taking. And I, I, you know, I, I think an intuition or creativity, like how do you reconcile these two? Or do you, do you think one is right and one is wrong? Or do you, do you think there’s some type of a balance and how do you, how do you find your way there?

Speaker 3: (20:17)

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s a, it’s a both and type of scenario. I’m all for goals and plans and clarity. And I have that with this book. I have this with projects in my business and in my personal life, what I’m addressing is the in-between when we’re between moments of clarity. So let’s say you’re coming up with the plan for your year, or you’re coming up with how you want to approach your new podcast. Are you new speaker demo or your new blog as you’re in what I call in the book, the fog of not knowing it’s how you embrace that fog embrace the unknown. As I say, in the subtitle of the book that will determine your success. And most people are so uncomfortable with not knowing that they want to make a plan as quickly as possible. And that’s where we screw up.

Speaker 3: (21:07)

So in a personal life, it’d be like the woman who’s 29, who says she has to get married by the time she’s 30 looks around, sees her two viable candidates and picks one, even though it’s not right, that’s you see that happen all the time. I have many friends who got married because they were scared and they wanted something in place. And 10 years later they’re divorced and it’s messy. The same thing in our work. We don’t want to be in the phase of not knowing people are afraid. So they make a decision really quickly. I’m going to go this direction or we’re going to do that. And when we make that commitment, the potential for loss opportunity, cost stress, money, time, creative expression that goes down the tubes. And we’ve all had those moments in our lives where we’ve committed to something out of fear, because we want to look clear and everyone else is doing it.

Speaker 3: (21:55)

And then two years later, or two months later, we realize what was propelling us forward was not something from within and something that lit us up, but something that we thought we should do from the outside. And that’s what I want to help people save themselves from, because I have seen it around the world and I’ve spoken around the world and Japan and Brazil and France, there’s so much that’s lost and there’s so much sameness homogeneity and you see it in all industries and this is risky for it is all about breaking through that and doing it the way only you can.

RV: (22:29)

Yeah. I mean, I think this message of taking creative risk is going to stick with me. And gosh, there’s just so many examples of this in, in my life. And it it’s such a relevant time for this conversation. Cause we like are living in such uncertainty right now. And yet that’s why like there’s more millionaires made in down markets than ever before, is all these opportunities emerge. And if you just kind of like listen to it and step in that direction. So I wanna, I want to tell everybody this, all right now this won’t apply to all of you because we’re releasing this episode before Victoria’s book comes out. And if you happen to hear this in this, this little window, so your book, your book comes out on March 16th. And if you, if you go now either way, you’re going to get some good things.

RV: (23:24)

But if you go before March 16th if you go to risk forward.com forward slash book, there are some incredible bonuses that she is giving away. Both here on the emotional side related to, you know, like working through uncertainty, but also there’s some real practical things related to some of her in terms of being a physical performer, which are just extraordinary. So if you go to risk forward.com forward slash book, by the way, if you’re international, you can also order, which is rare. She’s got an international thing set up. If it’s after that date, it’s totally fine. You could still go there. You’re going to get some bonuses and some extra resources that she has included. But if you get this before, you’ve got a little window to go to go check it out. So risk forward.com forward slash book is where we will, we will put it.

RV: (24:16)

I am, I’m giving a shameless plug here for my friend that I’ve known for years who you can see just her, her wisdom and, and how graceful and in touch she is with exploring this artistic side. And I believe that it will help you unlock your hidden genius. And that’s why I want to encourage you to at least go check it out. Right. plus it’s a great opportunity as always to go see how someone is executing her pre-launch and doing her launch and how she does her book website. So other than that, Victoria, is there anywhere you would point people to or anything you want to leave us with?

Speaker 3: (24:53)

Yeah. Well, that’s it, that’s the website. We have an amazing video up there. That’s one minute and 40 seconds, which shows a bit more of what the book looks like, because here’s the thing. This is not a typical book. It breaks the mold of what a book is. It’s an experience. Every page is different. You can read the book in any order. Each chapter is unique unto itself. There isn’t a book like this that I’ve seen. It is my ability of bringing through. And this is what I want you each do for yourself. Take your different sides. I took my background in arts and in performance and in poetry and in business and an entrepreneurship. And I put it all together into a book experience. That’s my style. What’s your style? How do you do it? Not like me, but like you. And so check out the book, not to copy it because that would be a bummer.

Speaker 3: (25:42)

Cause it wouldn’t be you, but to do what you do in the way only you can and that’s, what’s going to distinguish you. So this is all about, as I say, in the book at the edge of not knowing, cause I didn’t know how I was going to do this book in the beginning, but then it became clear as I stepped into it. So at the edge of not knowing is the beginning of the extraordinary. So trust yourself, risk forward, put those ideas out there. I have tons of tools in the book for how to do that. I’m so excited if you’re ordering this before the book launches, we have a book team that you can be part of you get inside behind the scenes of what’s happening. But thank you worry for having me. I’m so happy to be here. You’re a stellar human being. Love it.

RV: (26:25)

Thank you, Victoria. We wish you all the best with your launch and far, far beyond. And you know, we’ll be, we’ll be watching closely. So good luck. Thank you.