Ep 74: Responding Versus Reacting to Injustice with Anton Gunn
RV: (00:00) Hey there. Brand builder. Excited to bring you really a special edition here of the influential personal brand podcasts, a very unplanned, spontaneous we want to introduce you to a good friend of ours. I’m a client of ours, somebody who believes in us, somebody who we believe in tremendously. Somebody who we look up to. His name is Anton Gunn and he is a former senior advisor to president Barack Obama. And Anton is one of the world’s leading authorities on socially conscious leadership. So he has a master’s degree in social work from USC and was a resident fellow at Harvard. He is the bestselling author of the presidential principles and he’s been featured in time magazine, the wall street journal, BBC, NPR, and on good morning America. And as an international speaker and consultant, he’s worked with organizations like Microsoft, Sedexo, KPMG, Verizon, Aetna, Vanderbilt health and Boeing on and on and on. RV: (00:58) And so from playing sec football and being the first African American in history elected to the South Carolina legislature from his from his district early in his career to now working as a C level executive for an academic health system and serving on multiple boards. He has spent his life building or help helping people build diverse high performing teams and world-class leadership culture. And was this on our heart for you to hear from him about some of the things going on in the world and specifically how to use your personal brand to influence real change? And I’m going to let AJ say something cause she, I can, I can tell she’s bubbling. And you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know that AJ does not often conduct the interviews. She does all the debriefs, AJV: (01:53) But since then RV: (01:54) This was, this one was right from AJs heart. So AJV: (01:57) Well they’ll say yes, Amazon has this really nice, fancy bio with all of this amazing accomplishments. But the real reason that I felt led to forced Anton to get on this call of us, which he was so happy to oblige so quickly, it’s honestly, he’s so representative of what we believe in as people and as a part of our, our community at brand builders group, we just believe like Anton comes from a place of real experience. So do you also comes from a place that he really believes in justice but also doing it in a way that actually creates change by using real influence because he’s doing things the right way. And that’s not easy. That’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline to do things the the long way and that, but I just feel like you’re such a extension of what we believe in. And so thanks for, thanks for popping. AG: (02:53) Thank you for saying that. AIJ and I love you both. You are awesome. So happy to be a client. Happy to be your friend and happy to help you and all of your listeners and supporters understand that this is an important time for all of us to use our influence in authentic ways, in ways that we feel comfortable with, most importantly to help bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. And it already bends that way, but it requires each of us to do something in a way that helps to make things better. That’s what our responsibility to our leaders is to work, to make things right and every chance that we get. So I appreciate you creating the space for that and doing that and living up to who you are as individuals and as a business. RV: (03:39) Well, I love that Anton, and honestly we’ve struggled with what to say. I mean there’s a lot of things that I could say and kind of want to say, but don’t necessarily feel like they’re appropriate or you know, right on pace. I think that’s a lot of a lot of people. And, and, and like you said, as. AJV: (03:58) I feel like it’s so sensitive right now and being twisted and turned, and even with the best of intentions, it comes across as you’re ignorant. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand. Yeah, no, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. RV: (04:14) And, and I, I think, you know, when we reached out to you, we said, Hey, we don’t want to make this like a news media commentary on anything specific that’s happening in the news. But okay. You know, you’ve got a moral compass for fairness and justice. RV: (04:27) And I think one of the things that I struggle with, and I just wanted to ask you as your friend is, you know, there’s been a lot of stuff that says, Hey, you know, being silent as part of the problem, you know, silence, you know, basically if you’re silent, you’re racist. I don’t necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily connect with me. I don’t necessarily think that being silent means you’re racist any more than I think making a post will change the world. But what I am very interested in is what are the things productively that we can do? And that we should do like not just, not just using our voice, but what are the things that we can do. And you have such an interesting perspective from working in the white house to being, you know, a division one athlete to leading it in the healthcare world there. Yeah. AJV: (05:23) They’re all of these things, right? AG: (05:26) Yeah. So let me just say AG: (05:30) Know you gotta you gotta remember a leader’s responsibility is to respond and not react. And what do I mean by respond and not react? You know, whenever you’re in the heat of any kind of difficult circumstance, any kind of crisis, your emotions will get the best of you immediately. And what you see some people doing on social media are there emotional responses to what’s going on? And it’s not understandable for people to have an emotional response. Some people’s emotional response is to or emotional reaction is to lash out and scream at you for not saying anything. Cause if you’re not saying anything, then that means you must agree with the bad people who are doing bad things. Right. That’s a, that’s really a reaction. That’s not really a thoughtful prepared response. That’s a reaction. Some people’s reaction is because they’re so shocked by what they see. AG: (06:28) They freeze and they don’t want to say anything. I mean, we’ve all seen in circumstances you’re going to do three things. If you’re confronted in a crisis, you’re going to freeze, you’re going to fight, where are you going to flight any other direction? And I think what we have in the middle of any kind of crisis is that people freeze. Some people fight and others flight, and so I think the people who are fighting are the ones who are screaming out on social media. Some people are so distraught about what they see that they freeze and so that is sometimes silent. You’re when you freeze your assignment and some people could immediately assume because you’re not fighting like me. Oh, because you’re not running like me. Then that means you must agree with those who are doing bad things. That is not the case, but what you should do is be thoughtful about how you can have a positive point in the specs. AG: (07:23) How can you add to the construction of a solution and not to further destruction of the problem? And so what I tell people to do is first of all remain yeah. In your lane. And when I say remaining your lane is, you know, for the first 12 years of my career I actually was a community organizer. So I’ve organized protests, I’ve organized marches, I’ve done sit ins, I’ve actually hold politicians accountable for not doing the right thing. And that’s actually why I got into politics, because I got tired of politicians telling me one thing, but then doing the complete opposite. And I say, well, why am I asking you to do something that you clearly don’t have the capacity to do? Why don’t I just run for office and take your place? And literally that was my goal. But that’s not everybody. It’s not everybody’s name. AG: (08:15) Some people’s learning to say, Anton, you’re better to be out there on the front lines, but here’s what I can do. I have a hundred dollars and I’ll put it in a bail fund. So if you get arrested and go to jail, you can get out and go home to be with your family. Or maybe I’ll support your education campaign to teach people about what good policing policies are or what good environmental policy. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this current crisis or there’s other, some kind of injustice that exists. I will tell you this, we’ve had injustice in wrongdoing as long as we’ve had challenges in this country and around the world. I’ll give you an example of that is unfair and, but it’s something that everybody can relate to. The two of you decided to go out to dinner and you go to your favorite restaurant in Nashville and you’ve been waiting 90 minutes for a table and then my wife and I walk in five minutes in a manner of these sets us down at the best table in the house. AG: (09:16) But you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes now already. You know that that was wrong, that that was not right for me to be able to walk right in and sit down at a table where you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you like the restaurant anymore because you felt that you were treated unfair. So the question is, what am I going to do if I learned that you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes, do I just keep my table and keep eating and say, you know what? Too bad, Roy and AGA, you had the weight, 90 minutes. What do I say to the maitre D? That’s wrong. I’m going to get up and I’m going to give them this table because they’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. And if you saw me sit down at a table, do you decide to storm out of the restaurant or do you just stand there and do nothing? AG: (10:05) You just accept that you know you lost the table. Or do you walk over to the maitre D and says, you know what? I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair that we’ve been waiting for 90 minutes and we didn’t get the table that we asked for and you let somebody else have the table. Now the maitre D also has a choice and an option at that point. He can say, well, you’re just going to have to wait a little longer. Well, he can say, you know what, Roy J I’m sorry. As soon as our next table come available, I’m going to put you at the top of the list in all appetizers and a bottle of wine is on me. So in that situation, we all have the opportunity to respond or we could react, but the key is whatever it is, you want to be authentic to yourself. AG: (10:50) Where do you feel comfortable? And also when you have some expertise, because what I try to remind people is that we all have personal experiences in our lives that we can connect the dots to something else that’s going on. So you may not know what it’s like to be a black man living in America. I can count seven particular instances that I could have ended up like George Ford or Tamir rice or Eric Garner. All of them happened before the age of 27 Hmm. I did nothing wrong. I was a college athlete. I went to a gas station with my uncle to go in to just, he went to go get a bottle of Boone’s farm. Just tell you how long ago it was and I went in to play the lottery. You just connected with AGA. You might have more in common with Aja than you think. AG: (11:39) As it turns out, as it turns out you love boons Romney J yes, we all did. So we were leaving the gas station and out of nowhere, five police cars pulls up. They draw guns on us, they drag us out of the car, they throw us on the ground, he puts his knee in my back in accuses us of being a part of a game and doing a drive by shooting. We didn’t even live on that side of town, but my uncle worked at a restaurant over there and I caught the bus to his job. We got in his car and we’re driving home. We stopped by the gas station and this happened to me. So this is real for me, but it may not be real for you. You may never have experienced anything like that. But I would say you might know someone who has. AG: (12:28) And so in this time, I would say the first thing people can do if you’re trying to figure out how to use your influence, if you have people in your spear network, your friends with those people who you have in your cell phone, who you know might be feeling some kind of way about what’s going on, it’s okay to send them a text. We’ll make a phone call and say, Hey, listen, I don’t fully understand all of this going on. I don’t fully know what to do about any of this. But no, I’m thinking about you. And if you have people who follow you on social media, who you know fit that demographic, you can easily say, listen, Hey, I know you guys watch my pocket. You listen to my podcasts, you follow my feed. You’re on my list. I just want you to know for the interview who are affected by the current circumstances. I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. And I’m not sure what to do yet, but I’m trying to find out. [inaudible] AG: (13:19) We’re all going to be better because of this. And that’s the approach that you have to take is to say something, but you don’t have to have all of the answers because you don’t, you’re not an expert in that. This is about how to build a brand for a movement. Then they should definitely be talking to you, particularly if there’s a person leading the movement. But if this is just unrest or this is just community up uptick and outrage about things, you don’t necessarily have the lead dog role in this, but you can play a role. But first empathizing with people who might be experiencing it. And that’s what we all want. We all want someone to understand our pain, to understand what we’re going through. And you guys have done that just by creating the space and the opportunity. Second thing I was telling people, you are good at something. AG: (14:06) So some of us are great writers, some of us are great speakers, some of us are great at teaching people how to manage and deal with stress. So there are ways you can say, Hey, in the middle of the most stressful time that we might’ve seen in our lifetimes, here are three things. Things that you can do to lower your stress. That message becomes universal. No matter what your race, gender background is, that’s a universal way that you can help him make it. You provide people a way to say, listen, I want to create an outlet for people to be able to express themselves and let me provide feedback on how I can help you to channel that into something positive. Those are simple things or you can really start to do a little bit of research and say, who is working to make sure that injustice and unfairness no longer exists and how can I offer some free advice or some free counsel or free coaching session to help them through it. AG: (15:02) Now, that doesn’t have to be public at all. That can be very private, but it’s something that you can do too to add value and to be comfortable in your space. But speak to the times that we’re in because I do think Roy, there is a fear about the silence if, if it’s, if the silence goes on too long and people will assume silence is complicity. And so I don’t expect anybody in a emotional moment to react in aggressiveness or to jump right out and be a part of anything. Cause that’s what I’m not doing. I haven’t left my house. I still remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. And so I’m concerned about my health and my family’s health. So as bad as I might want to go out and Mmm, be a participant in some civil disobedience, I’m not doing it because one, that’s not my role right now. Number two, I don’t think it would be in my best interest for my health and my wife’s health and my daughter’s health. So I’m going to stay home. But what I am doing is reading everything that I could get my hands on about who’s trying to find a solution and rather than be a part of the problem and what can I offer in terms of expertise and support and help to do that. RV: (16:16) So can I, I have a question too. You should have scheduled your own interview, Anton. We need to have you. We’re going to do multiple. That’s right. All right. This is, AJV: (16:26) So what other questions I have, because I think this is just really pertinent and I think it’s a part of your expertise is there just seems to be a lack of leadership and all of this and a lack of a real coherent and consistent message of what do we want to see happen. And you know what’s like w where does that leave everybody? If there isn’t true leadership and there isn’t a true cause and a true message of like, let’s make this clear. AG: (16:54) Yes. AJV: (16:55) What needs to happen. So, RV: (16:56) Right. Like lighting a church on fire doesn’t signal a real clear message about what we want to see happen. In fact, it’s a very conflicting message to respond to violence with violence. At least that’s how it feels to me. AG: (17:09) Yes. So you’re exactly right. So I literally did a Facebook live about this last night for about an hour. And I hearkened back onto successful change efforts in America. I mean, you can go as far back from women’s sufferage to the civil rights movement. We’ve had a lot of successful change efforts in all of those efforts. You have to know what you want. Yeah. And not only know what you want, be able to clearly articulated in a way that everybody presents. You know, when you talk about building a brand, you gotta have clarity, right? You’re on problem and clear on the solution. AG: (17:51) Exactly. You have to be clear on a problem and clear on the solution. And the problem that we have in this current environment is there, there’s no clarity about this. There’s zero clarity from my vantage point around what do we want? I know what I want, but the solution to that is not clear because again, if you’ve got, you know, multiple things happening in multiple cities, the problem in Charleston, South Carolina is completely different than the problem in Nashville, which is completely different than the problem in Minnesota, which is completely different than the problem in New York city. And so because those problems looks similar on the surface, people are trying to apply a solution to fix all problems and there’s not one solution. This is a, a local by local problem and solution framework. And so when you, when you don’t have good leadership, the problem stays. AG: (18:49) I, I, I give people this kind of advice and I’ve given it to president Obama. So I just tell you anything I’m saying here is stuff that I say all the time to leaders at every level, from the dog catcher to the mayor, to even the president of United States. And the first is whenever you had a crisis, the first thing you must do is remain calm. The second thing you must do is you got to tell the truth. And when I say tell the truth, you have to be honest with people about where you sit and where things are cause people in a time of uncertainty, in a time of fear in a time of the unknown, people are looking for a beacon of hope. And so you got to tell them the truth and you got to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. The thing with so many people forget. AG: (19:35) They want to tell you the rosy truth and they want to tell you the happy true. But they don’t want to tell you the unpleasant truth. So the unpleasant tree is difficult, but it’s grounding. And I, and I say this all the time, the truth doesn’t hurt. It heals. So if we can begin to say, AJ, you are a Rory, you have skin cancer. So I can lie to you and say, Oh, you just got a blemish on your face and telling you you have a blemish on your face is cool and nice and, and you, you don’t feel bad about it. But if you find out that that blemishes cancer, then you can begin to do something about it. Because some people may say, Oh, I got a blemish. I’m just going to accept the blemish and be okay with it. But if you know a skin cancer, then you have to respond. AG: (20:20) So we got to tell people the truth and we got to tell it to them in a heartfelt way. You don’t need to be angry with the truth. You don’t have to be screaming about the truth. You can empathize with people and be heartfelt about telling the truth. But then the third step after that to me is you got to seek out expertise who can help you to find a solution. Yeah, that’s the problem is that we, Einstein said this one time, that many spend 95% of their time trying to solve the problem but only spent 5% understanding the problem. Well, we need to spend 95% understanding the problem and 5% of the time on the solution and you got to have experts to help you to solve the problem. And that’s what leadership does, is that they remain calm. They tell the truth, they tell it in a heartfelt way, and then they find experts to help them to solve the problem. And that’s what we don’t have in this kind of environment. The people who I know have expertise on not being sought out, they’re being questioned, they’re being antagonized, they’re actually being accused of being complicit in the problem when they actually have real ideas around a solution. RV: (21:32) Well, that’s an you know, that’s something that I’ve struggled with with this personally. You know, you talk about leaders, just leadership in general. You respond, you don’t react. You know, I’m seeing a lot of message and I’ve had some people messaged me about like, Hey, why haven’t you shared? Or why don’t you share something? And as a leader, my, one of my first thing is I’ve been afraid to say this, one of my very first things is I need to find the facts in any situation. It’s like as a leader, not civil rights, just leadership training is going, I need to understand the facts. And there are, as you said, and I, I love that you pointed out, I believe that it’s different in every city too. And I believe that every instance of this is different. RV: (22:17) Any type of silence is not condoning something. It’s going, I don’t have the full context of what happened in Minneapolis or in Atlanta or like, and, and until, I know I’m afraid to come out and judge anybody in any, you know, cause I just, I just don’t know. But I think it’s, it almost becomes popular that people want you to just lash out and rage. They want you to just throw fire. They be because they want you to be mad. And it’s like I am mad. Like I’m, I’m heartbroken. And there are, there are parts of these things that you go, they’re undisputable, they’re worth being mad about just like looking at it. But then there’s, there’s context around every situation, every social interaction, every communication with a spouse, a child, a teacher, a colleague. And that context really matters. And it, and it shapes a lot. And I’ve been actually afraid to say that cause I’m afraid of people just being pissed off at me for not being pissed off right away. Like, like you know, publicly. AG: (23:19) Yeah. So, so I will tell you this, and this is one of the things that I, I’ve gotten very comfortable and as a leader is recognizing that somebody is always going to be pissed off at you. And if, if nobody’s pissed off at you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the main point. And I know as an influencer you want to grow your brand and you want everybody to like you and everybody to on your team. But you know what? The happiest thing that I get every day in my inbox is the number of people who unsubscribed from my list. You know what? I’m happy about that. Yeah. Because I know what I’m offering is not for you, you, you, you’re not invested in what I’m invested in and, and you don’t like it. And that’s okay because I want the people who do like it, the people who do get the value, the people who do want to build, adjust organization. AG: (24:14) An organization full of ethical, inspiring and empowering leaders who worked in the unfairness in the workplace. That’s who I want to talk to you. Okay? I don’t want to talk to the people who want to carry it on or the people who are indifferent to it. And I think the thing that a lot of people are probably most frustrated with but people that don’t speak out is the indifference. And so my context would be you want to have the facts, you definitely want to have the facts. But for many of us, particularly me, that what happened in Minnesota is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back was broken on March 3rd, 1991 when I saw Rodney King get beat 56 times by LA police officers and they all got off Scott free. So for me it was a a moment as a teenager that said that I thought this was over. AG: (25:09) I thought this happened, you know, during the civil rights movement. I thought this happened in the 18 hundreds where you know, you could get pulled over and never be seen again. But here I am in the midst of getting ready to go to college and this is what’s happening. So some people would say, we’ve known this all along. There’s no additional facts for you to gather in this situation. But I think the, the burning and the riots and in the burning down buildings and kicking in Apple stores and all these other kinds of things, this is what I also have learned doing this work. Everybody who is with you is not for you. Your body does for you is not going to be with you. And there are some agent provocateurs who are using this yeah. Crisis or this opportunity to advance an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with justice in equity and fairness in the right thing. They have some of them. RV: (26:09) Yeah. And Anton, I just wanted to make sure that you said everyone who is with you is not for you and everyone who is for you is not with you. AG: (26:17) That is correct. Everyone who is with you is not for you. And everyone who is for you is now with you. So let me break it down. So you understand when I say everyone that is with you is not for you. There are people who are showing up and turning peaceful protest into violent protest, right? There are people who will show up at your events that are not really there to support your business there to copy and steal what you do. So everyone that is with you is not for you. The people who follow you on social media, they might be your followers, but they’re not for you. They’re for themselves. And we all have to understand that that’s always been the case. And secondarily, the people who are with you, sometimes they can’t be there for you. They’re with you in spirit. They may be with you in dollars, they may be with you in some other kind of way, but they’re not always going to be there side by side with you. AG: (27:16) So I’m with a lot of people that I can’t be side by side because I want to be here longterm. I want to be a person who lives a long time. And so for me, knowing that I work in healthcare, 90%, knowing that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I know it’s not cool to go back out and socialize right now. I get reports on how many new positive coded cases are showing up every day and we’re not in a clear, so I’m with a lot of people for a lot of people, but I’m not going to be there all the time. So you got to understand that you gotta be able to figure out who is with you and who is for you and what are they doing to help you and who are those that are not really for you. AG: (27:59) And again, I go back to some years of go work when I was being trained into the seat. So to be honest with you, I was trained at a place called Highlander in Tennessee. Tennessee’s where actually Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Rosa parks, all of them got their training on community organizing. Like some people thought Rosa parks sitting down on a bus and refusing to go to the back was a spur of the moment off the cuff event. It wasn’t not, they plan this for months in advance and they have five different people and Rosa parks actually was the one that was chosen to stay on the front of the bus. So most people think this is big civil rights broke protests started with a seminal event of someone just deciding not to get up anymore when she was a trained, a prepared leader who knew what to do and when to do it. AG: (28:54) So in my training, I learned then whenever we do things like this, there are people who are not really with us who are going to see what we’re doing and want to jump in. We got to control that because they could destroy the message, they could cloudy the message that we’re trying to send here. Then it can turn into something that is not. And that’s what I think we, we are seeing right now that there’s some people who are clouding the message that is not really about, you know, police violence. It’s about anarchy or it’s about I hate the government or it’s about, I hate rich people. It’s about I hate America. Because I do believe there’s some form foreign people who are involved in some of these efforts. And so we don’t know which is which at this point. We don’t know the enemy, our friend, because we haven’t taken a time to, to develop the right structure and strategy to move for change. AG: (29:51) And, and to give a quick plug to my former boss Barack Obama, his foundation has been trying to do his best job of this stealing information around what’s a right way for you to get involved. He posted the article on medium recently about, I know everybody’s upset. Protest is a part of, of making change. And we’ve always used protest in America from the Boston tea party onto present day. So he’s not saying not to protest, but he’s saying is getting involved in a way that can make sure that the positive change is lasting and that we actually do the right thing. And so he provided resources at the Obama foundation website. And so I would encourage people to figure out what you can do. But I think the main thing is we got to separate the wheat from the shaft and know that everybody that is with you is not for you and everybody that is for you. Sometimes it’s not with, AJV: (30:45) That’s so wise. That’s so good. One of the, one of the interviews that I saw online here recently was the son of an Atlanta, a city police officer. I’m a black man and he was, he did this really great speech, super emotional, but the thing that has stuck with me and I can’t get out of my head, he said, you don’t fight the enemy by burning down your own house. AG: (31:08) Correct. AJV: (31:08) And you said people were burning down our own house. Wait, that doesn’t work. AG: (31:14) It’s not smart. And that was killer Mike. He’s a hip hop artist, activist. I’m one degree separated and kill Mike because one of my mentees actually used to make beads for him. And I’m trying to get him to be a brand builder client too, by the way. So so yeah, I was willing to help, but that’s a point that, that everybody should understand that if you’re trying to solve a problem, go to where the problem is. Don’t go to where the problems now. So here’s how I explained it to him, the friends of mine and a conference call. If, if I have a nail in my foot five a nail in my foot, it doesn’t make sense for you to put a bandaid on my shoulder. Yeah, that doesn’t, that’s not solving the problem. Why don’t you haven’t taken the nail out of my foot and you haven’t stopped the bleeding on my foot. And so if the nail is in Minneapolis, well, if the nail is in Louisville, Kentucky, why are you burning down in Atlanta, Georgia, right? While you’re riding in Charleston, South Carolina. And again, my point is there are problems in every one of those cities. Atlanta is not perfect. Nashville’s not perfect Charleston, that there’s no perfect utopian city in the United States of America. But those problems require a specific and clear solution to those problems. AG: (32:37) If there’s a nail in your foot, it doesn’t mean there’s RV: (32:40) A nail in every foot. Like the problem isn’t even as a city necessarily. It is a person, a few people, a set of people. And if you can understand who it is, you can proactively handle the problem, which is the truth about any problem in business or our personal life or anything. You can’t. But if you’re blinded by just rage, it’s like you can’t see the problem. All you know is you’re in pain and so you start bandaging yourself and shooting other people and it’s like, Hey, there’s a nail in your foot. Get the nail out. AG: (33:14) Yes. And that’s exactly right. And in problems have levels to them. So, so I, I, you know, my training is social work. When I got my MSW was understanding systems in organizations where you have individual problems, you have group problems, you have family problems, you have organizational problems. And so like when I work with a healthcare organization, I want to understand the problem across the organization. You might have a problem in this department or you might have a problem with this person, right? But is it representative of a systemic problem of how you hire people and who you hire and how you train them and what you allow them to do and what don’t you allow them to do? And what I find more times than not is that people want to solve problems, but they feel paralyzed because they’re going to be punished by a largest system for trying to solve the problem. AG: (34:09) So it requires us to have some level of depth and understanding around what problems are, what our role is, and to solving those problems and going right to the source. As I told my group last night, I said, listen, Mmm. If, if you have police officers who are committing bad acts, okay. Then RDC that the person who can specifically do something about that problem is the police chief that hired them. And if the police chief doesn’t see the problem and doesn’t understand the problem where there’s a specific person who can do something about that person. And that’s the mayor of city manager that hired a police chief. Yeah. And if the mayor and the police chief doesn’t see that problem and doesn’t understand that problem, there’s a specific group of people who can do something about the mayor. And those are the voters who live in that city. AG: (35:07) But if you don’t live in that city, you don’t have the ability to get rid of the mayor. You don’t have the ability to affect the chief of police and you don’t have the ability to affect those officers. Now you can contribute in ways to influence their problems. So going back to the word influence, there are a few things that each of us can control. There are other things that we can influence if we can’t control and if we can’t control it or influence it, our responsibility is to lead. And we, we, we lead by being the example of what we want to see in the world. So if there’s injustice be just, if there’s unfairness, be more fair, if there’s inequity being more equitable. So it’s about what you can control, what you can influence it, where you can leave, but you got to understand the problem. AG: (35:56) And I think so many people haven’t taken the time in this situation to just understand the problem from a societal problem of law enforcement, police and communities, particularly communities of color, two. Our response to when those things happen because I think the main thing, and I’ll say this last point about what happened in, in any of these specific events, it’s not just that we see a bad cop do a bad thing because in every industry there is a bad person that does a bad thing. So you got a bad doctor who does a bad thing. You might have a bad hairdresser that does a bad thing, bad speakers, every industry you can’t fix bad things that individuals do. We can’t control in police individual behavior. The question is when that individual does a bad thing, is there any accountability for that individual? And I think what people are so outraged by is the continued bad things done by certain officers. AG: (37:06) And they rarely get in trouble. They rarely go to jail. The worst thing that happens to them is they lose their job. I mean, think about it. If you murdered somebody and the worst thing that happened to you is that you lost your job. Yep. That’s where is w where the outrage reviews until the conflict. How do we make sure that when bad things happen that we improve the process so they don’t ever have to happen again? Like if you take the airline industry, I’ll give you this, this example. Mmm. We rarely have plane crashes in the United States of America now 35 40 years ago we had a lot of plane crashes, but every time a plane crashes, the entire airline industry works like crazy to find out what happened, to make sure that it never happens again. Like we have four hijackers who crashed planes into buildings, into the Pentagon and nine 11 and there was nobody that was a Homeland security expert on September 10 2011 there was no Homeland security experts, not one. AG: (38:16) But after that day, the entire country, the entire government, every single person began to find a way to make sure this would never happen again. It doesn’t matter why it happened, how we let it happen, we want to investigate that and understand the facts of what led to it. But we’re going to do everything in our power and spend ungodly amounts of money and ungodly amounts of training and hiring new people and changing our processes so that it never happens again. And if we’re going to be good at solving problems when bad things happen or bad people happen, we got to figure out how do we prevent them from ever happening again. And when we don’t see that happening, that speaks to a larger challenge. RV: (39:03) I love that. That, and so, and I need to ask you this question specifically that that parallel is so good. Anton and I, I certainly, you know, even though I’m saying like, Hey, we got to find the facts and things are different in every city, I also very much empathize with when you see Rodney King all the way to where we are now and you see example after example, it’s like, Hey there, there certainly is evidence that there is, there are some systemic problems that need to be dealt with and people need to rally. But even to just know what you shared here of like go to the police chief, go to the mayor and also, you know what I’ve never seen as an article that recounts all of these instances. Yeah. What were the facts afterwards and then what happened to all the officers? RV: (39:50) Right. Like all in one place. You know, I’m thinking to myself like maybe that’s an article I should write is to go show people because once the facts have been revealed, justice should be served and it should be clear and Swift. But, but so anyways, that was so awesome. So much. This is so good. But hold on. I got it. Okay. So I have to ask you this question specifically as it relates to our audience and this, the theme of this podcast being personal branding. You, you’ve mentioned several times, examples of staying in your lane. You spent a part of your life as, as an activist and organizer and being on the streets. But now you’re saying you’re making an intentional choice to stay at home because of various, you know, considerations. Mmm. Do you feel like personal brands should be using their platform? RV: (40:42) Like if I teach yoga, should I be telling them, should I be taking my audience and telling them why racism is wrong? Should I be connecting? It should buy, should I be saying, Hey, that doesn’t, that’s not what my expertise is about. Like how do you balance? Yeah, because a platform is a sacred thing and audience is a sacred thing and the audience that you have didn’t necessarily show up for your opinion on everything that you’re not an expert on. But at the same time, we’re all people, we all have beliefs and as humans we are all in this together. And this, you know, Martin Luther King’s in an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, which I fully believe and support. Well, finding that balance between, so do you go, yeah. Tell people what you believe and even if it’s outside of your lane, but you’ve used that term stay in your lane. How do you, how do you find the line? AG: (41:33) Yeah, so, so I think the, the, the summary of how I would explain it and when, I mean stay in your lane is that Mmm, the best brands, the best personal brands are the people who are the most authentic that people connect to intimately. They just don’t know, Oh, what you want to teach them. They know who you are. Like I know who you two are. Okay, I don’t, you might teach me everything I want to know about being a personal brand, but I know who you are. I know how you met and how your relationship started and what you did before you were building a personal brand and your, your, your life story so to speak. So you can’t divorce yourself from who you are if you’re really building a strong personal brand. So my point is staying in your lane, if it’s something that is connected to who you are and what you do, then they find a way to connect it to what’s relevant. AG: (42:26) Because I think one of the things that you teach in personal branding is how do you, how do you take what you do as a personal brand and connected to what’s going on in the world and what people need. And so if you teach yoga, you don’t necessarily have to say racism is bad and that, you know, you know, police brutality is bad. You can say, I know everybody is stressed out right now and the world is stressed and we’re seeing bad things happen all around us. But yoga is a solution to get personal alignment in yourself so you can help get personal alignment in the work. So again, you’ve given some money to say, you know what, I never done yoga in my life, but if something can help me to get this tightness out of my neck because I’m angry at what happened in Minnesota or I’m angry about what happened last month and what happened last year, maybe this is a way that I should try that I haven’t tried before. So if I’m a yoga teacher, that might work, but not, maybe I don’t do anything related to yoga or I don’t run a fitness gym or maybe I teach karate or RV: (43:36) So, but to stick with the, to stick with the yoga thing, if I’m going to follow a yoga instructor. Do you think it’s important that the yoga instructor I’m following is sharing their personal viewpoints on abortion, women’s rights, politics, racism AJV: (43:52) For both of you here, like this is actually something we teach. We say once you know what your problem is, you answered all of the things, all of the questions that are happening in the world through the lens of the problem that you solved. AG: (44:04) Yes. AJV: (44:05) What is your unique lens on whatever the problem is that you saw? Like for me, my personal brain problem is irrelevant, right? I don’t speak on racism or discrimination. I don’t speak on gender equality. I don’t speak on those. But that doesn’t mean that my problem of irrelevance, it can’t be seen through the lens of all these things happening. Not to go out and say, here’s my opinions for the world to hear. But that doesn’t mean it’s not connected to who I am as a human being. Because the problem that I solve is connected to all of these things. It’s just how do you take what’s happening through the lens in which you see things as a personal brand. AG: (44:45) Yeah. So, so you agent you hit is something, and definitely Roy, I’m going to connect to that point. If you’re, if the problem you solve is irrelevance. There’s a lot of people who are feeling very irrelevant right now. Okay? Mmm. Women in the workplace feel irrelevant every day. So, so there, and that’s a problem. And so you can find a way to connect to it. But to Roy’s point about my views on abortion are my views on, you know, X, Y, and Z. My opinion is you don’t have to go there to go there. So like if, if I’m living my truth, if I’m being completely authentic, then it only takes one word or two words in Google, Google, gun and Obama. So you’d Google my name of Barack Obama’s name, then you know my position on healthcare issues, you know my position, well healthcare reform, you might know my position on how do we rebuild the economy, but you don’t know where I stand on abortion. AG: (45:47) You don’t know where I stand on gay marriage, you know where I stand on any of these issues. And those things are personal to me, but they haven’t been the full scope and scale of what I’ve done in my life. But again, if it’s connected to what you’ve done. So if you’re a yoga instructor who had an abortion and it caused you to go down this spiral dark hole in your life and the only thing that pulled you out was that you learned how to do yoga, then maybe it’s okay to connect the dots in that way. But that doesn’t mean you showing up at every abortion rally and trying to give keynote speeches around abortion in America because that’s not your lane. Your lane is yoga. Okay? But your personal story gives you a way to connect to what’s real. So I tell people to be authentic. AG: (46:39) And then the last piece of every influencer that if you got 50,000 Instagram followers or 150,000 or 5 million Instagram followers, I’m pretty sure your local elected official knows who you are. And if they don’t, they should know who you are. So if nothing else, you use your influence to say, Hey listen, I would like to meet with the mayor to understand what’s going on in our community and how it’s similar or different than what’s going on in another community. And so if you can get an education, just say, you know what, we haven’t had a case of police brutality in this city since the mid 1980s well that’s a good thing to say. You know what, this is happening in America and is wrong. But I’m very proud of my city because it’s not happening here. But you should never make that statement unless you know, never, ever, ever talk about what you don’t know because it will make people ask you questions that you can’t answer beyond the surface level. AG: (47:47) So to your point, Rory, doing some research around, you know, the last 25 years or 30 years of police encounters that ended in a death of a person of color and understanding how many it is because it’s, it’s much more than we got on video. I will tell you that much cause I’ve done that level of research. So, but no the answer and then say, Hey, this statistically is a problem and we should be doing something about it and I can’t fix the whole world. I can solve every other problem, but I can talk to the mayor of Nashville. Well I can talk to my city council member or my state legislator and understand what are we doing to prevent this from happening here? And if they give you an answer, be happy and be proud about that. That’s the main point. AJV: (48:36) Yeah. I so agree. And what are the, there was two things that happened over the weekend that prompted me to bring up this interview with Rory cause I really, I really like, I prayed about it hard because we had both been kind of like, okay, yep. What’s our role? Like what’s our role in this? And there was two things that happened over the weekend that I just felt like I thought literally was like, and this is the path for you [inaudible] stuff. The first thing was Whitney Hawthorne, who’s one of our brand builders clients, right? She’s awesome. She’s amazing. And she recently had her son, her second son. And you know, we have two boys and there really close in age. Like our boys are only a few months apart. Both of them. Yeah. [inaudible] She posted something really simple on social media about this newborn baby and however she drafted it, it made me think I will never [inaudible] [inaudible] the fear because she has, AG: (49:36) Do you want I just lost it. Yeah. I saw that post too. And know I think God every day that I had a daughter and a son, and it’s hard to, to, to fathom that to say, you know, you know, God gives you to get the children you want, whatever God gives you. Right. But when I had a daughter, there was an extra sense of relief in me that I didn’t have a son because I know what me and my brothers have gone through with our encounters with law enforcement. And I know that even as a 40 something year old man who’s lives in a suburban nice neighborhood, you know, professional got multiple degrees, I got a great career. Everything is going the way that I wanted to go. The moment I get in my car and just drive to the grocery store, if a cop pulls behind me, my entire physiology changes. AG: (50:44) I break out on a full sweat. I wonder, do I have my driver’s license? I wonder where’s my driver’s license? I don’t put it in my glove compartment. I literally keep it on the visor above my head because I don’t want to reach down or reach into the console and make it think that I’m doing something. I’ll throw my phone on the passenger seat because I don’t want him to think that I have anything in my hands. And so I don’t want to teach my daughter those kinds of things. Yeah. But unfortunately, there’ve been enough cases with women that I’m also having to teach my daughter because it’s happened to black girls too. It happened to Sandra bland. And so, so I don’t want any of this. And I know that there are a lot of people who will never understand this. And, and I, and I’ve been selling into a lot of my friends who I’m not black and no share my experience. AG: (51:36) I’ve been getting text messages from them and they literally have been, Mmm. I don’t know what to say. I want to help. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you and my response to them is that I appreciate you think it about me. I appreciate you caring about me and I appreciate you empathizing with my situation and [inaudible] and that’s all that I can ask you to do. And then if they ask me further, what is there anything I can do to help? I said that the one thing that I believe that you can do to help is you can talk about this because, and talk about this in a way that is, talk about this in places that I can’t go to talk about it. Okay. Mmm. You know, my pastor, I go to an a interracial church and my pastor is white and he is the founder of the church, is a massive church with more than 25,000 members. AG: (52:30) And when he was retiring and handing over the ministry to his son, he says, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in ministry, tearing down the walls of race in America, and particularly in church because Sunday is the most segregated day in America. And so I’m going to use my platform. I’m going to use my influence. I’m going to use my brand power to make sure that we tat on a Rosa wall’s race. And that didn’t mean doing anything visceral and violent. You know what that meant? That meant every time we invited a guest speaker to church, it was a speaker of color. And, and let them come in and preach to the congregation. It means standing up a diversity group and asking Anton to chair to diversity group, it meant going down to the city and asking the mayor, what are you doing to bring people together of color? AG: (53:23) And the mayor is going to respond to him because he’s the of a church with 25,000 people. So again, he didn’t step outside of his lane. He just started asking questions and talking about this in places that I couldn’t talk about it to people who wouldn’t give me the audience to talk about. So it doesn’t have to be big. It could just really be a conversation. No, to be clear, there’s some of us that got to give beyond the conversation because you can talk to somebody and they can continue to do the same behaviors over and over again. And then that means you got to move to the next level of how we change. And, and I think that is warranted where we are right now. But again, there’s so many people who are not talking about it. As I, as I teach the people who live in oblivion. AG: (54:06) Mmm. You know, I, I teach that in the social conscious construct, you got about half of people who are living in oblivion that they didn’t see anything that you saw that pricked your heart and mind and want to have this conversation. They never got a text or a message from their friends saying, why you aren’t saying anything. They just kind of, you know, a happy go lucky move in. And leave it to Beaver land or whatever, and they don’t see anything that’s 50% okay. Yeah. The 35% of them who sees something’s wrong, but they either don’t know what to say or they thank you, somebody else to this problem to solve or they say, little low me can’t do anything about it. And that’s understandable for time, but because you know better, you should know that there’s always something that you can do. The small baby steps lead to the bigger steps, but then there’s a smaller group of people about 10% who literally believe that they benefit emotionally, morally economically, politically from being, staying the way they are. AG: (55:17) Yeah. And we have to find a way to deal with those people, but those people are in the minority. Right. I listened to your podcast religiously, and so when you did the interview with Andy Andrews, and he talked a little bit about his book, how do you kill 11 million people? He pointed out in the book that at the height of the Nazi party, they were only eight and a half million of them when there were 80 million people in Germany. So you had this 10% minority that had control of an 80 million minority. So we got to stop the 10% wherever they are in business, in the world and wherever. But it’s so many more of us on the other side who can do the right thing, it should do the right thing. And that’s what I’m trying to teach is how to become a 5% leader. AG: (56:13) The admired leader who stands up for justice and there’s a laundry list of people, Dr. King Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, mother. These are people who says, you know what? I’m going to figure out what this problem is and I’m going to use my pulpit, my brand, my platform to figure out what I can do and what mother Teresa could do is not what Dr. King could do. So we’re all different. Well we got to stay in our lane and figure out what we can do to make a difference. And that’s what building the best brand is all about. RV: (56:46) Well you are a 5% leader and this has probably been one of the most enlightening conversations that I’ve had. Amen. And a really, really long that, and it’s just so helpful. I mean, just as a, as a friend Anton, to just hear your voice and hear your perspective on it. And I think it’s such a, a balance of what’s right and not who’s right and just doing what you can and not overstepping your bounds but standing for what is right. I’m just really, really graceful. We love you. We believe in you. Where should people go if they want to connect with you? I mean your, your brand is about leadership and like you, your, your voice man, like this is, this is why you’ve been through everything you’ve been through is like this time in the world right now I think lends itself to somebody just like you at just this moment. AG: (57:42) Well I really appreciate it and I agree. And if people want to connect with me, you can go to Anton Gunn. Com. That’s the home for all things. Anton, I’m on all social media platforms. I love Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I do the most dialogue around helping leaders be better leaders. So please follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But this is a time for all of us to learn how to grow as a leader and to have a greater impact and be the person who is the difference maker that makes the biggest difference. That’s what we all can do. RV: (58:17) Thank you, Anton. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.
Ep 69: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele | Recap Episode
RV: (00:08) well, um, that was amazing. Uh, that interview with Rick Steele, I’m telling you like that is, could be seen as more valuable than like an entire degree or program that you could, you could invest tens of thousands of dollars into and, and listen, right? Like when it comes to learning, uh, how to do it. RV: (00:36) Paid advertising, I’m going to go with the guy who spent $94 million, $94 million in Google paid ads, right? Like amazing. And he’s turned it into billions with a B, multiple companies doing billions of dollars. There’s something to be learned there. And it’s one of the things I have to S you know, I love about brand builders is it’s just when you come to our events, you know, whether they’re the virtual events or there are physical events, you know, our events are small. Like our events are capped at 50 people and most of them are like 25 30 people. And you’re literally sitting next to somebody like Rick Steele who is spend $94 million in ads, ran seven marathons in seven days, is built all these huge companies, you’re sitting next to these podcasters that reach millions of people or people have million social media followers. Like our community just fires me up. RV: (01:35) And so I hope you enjoyed and if you didn’t like go listen to this interview with Rick steel. He’s not like, he doesn’t teach what, like his personal brand is not about the stuff I was interviewing him. He did that as a favor to me cause he’s one of our clients and our friends [inaudible] okay. Him giving away his secrets about how to run, uh, paid ads through Google is just insane. So I’m going to give you the recap here. Um, AAJ wasn’t able to make it today. So I’m rolling so low of course this, this is this, this concept or this topic was square in the center of all things nerdy. And so it’s probably a proposed that I’m doing this recap by myself cause I just love this stuff and I want to try to simplify it and try to organize it for myself and mostly for you know, for you and for my, mostly for myself really just to like make sure I’m understanding things. RV: (02:33) That’s why we do these recaps and learn alongside of you. But here’s the first big idea I think from that interview is that intent based search. It is a huge part of the future for personal brands and that’s a big difference is understanding intent based search, which is Google. Somebody comes and they type in a term like nobody tight. When you go to Google and you type in broken water heater, you’re not typing it in just to learn about water heaters like you’re typing it in because you need that thing at that moment. And that’s the power of intent based search is it is somebody saying I need this thing at this moment versus traditional advertising. Even Facebook is more of awareness advertising. It’s, it’s, yeah. Inserting yourself in front of somebody and saying, Hey, check out this thing that I have, you should be interested. RV: (03:27) So you’re, it’s the difference between creating interest and, uh, drafting off of interest, right? Capitalizing on existing interest in which is what intent-based search is all about. And I, I want to make sure you caught what he said because he’s built huge companies and he said in the interview he said, I only have these two rules. They said, make sure there’s a big enough market for you to make a Denton. So there’s gotta be enough volume that you don’t have to be the only option that, that, that there’s room for you plus competitors. That’s really smart, right? Like it’s to go, there’s a, there’s a big enough market here that you can have at least a few, you know, really, really key players and as long as you’re one of the key players, like you can make a lot of money. So that was interesting to hear him say that. RV: (04:18) And then he said the second rules that don’t create a product that you’re going to be in competition with Amazon, which I thought was interesting. That’s more for you e-commerce people. Um, you know, selling, selling physical goods. But Mmm. You know, for personal brands, most of, most of you, most of us are selling video courses, membership sites, coaching programs, consulting, speaking, you know, like you’re selling, you’re selling more of a, a service or or knowledge, you know, information. And so I think it’s, it’s, you know, that’s a handy advantage that you have that you’re not really competing with Amazon. So, um, anyways, that was super powerful. The other kind of tip in this, in this space cause cause here’s the, you know, here’s the big idea I think in general. And, and, and by the way, so our phase three event, we have an entire event that is called high traffic strategies and it is a hundred percent dedicated to this kind of stuff. RV: (05:14) Now it’s all, it’s, we consider it more advanced because unless you have gone through phase one and captivating content and phase two and you have your funnels built and your visual identity done and your website and all of your copy is in place and all of your tracking, right? Like there’s all of these things that you need to do to build the house first. But then when you come to phase three like, um, this is where we really light it up and, and it’s doing this kind of stuff and, and you know, like the big idea here, it’s very straightforward. It’s in phase two, we’re going to teach you how to build organic traffic, right? It’s all about, you know, we teach this thing called the content diamond and there’s a 50 plus page document that we walk you through step by step, exactly what to do every single week with your social media plan and your email marketing. RV: (06:01) And it’s all organic. It’s all free organic traffic, but you’re building an audience. The difference here in phase three, which is the big idea is going find an existing audience and that the people that you want to do business with, they’re already aggregated somewhere. You just got to go find them. And that’s what the power of Google and intent based search platforms do is like literally someone is typing in a term at a specific and moment in time when they need a problem solved. And if you know what that problem is and you own and dominate that term and you’re willing to pay for it, you can force the traffic because these people already exist out there. And so I think this is something that I think personal brands are way behind on. I think, you know, personal brands in general, like there’s a lot of people doing Facebook ads. RV: (06:52) There’s not a lot of people doing YouTube and [inaudible] the Google ad network, right? Which is really Google and YouTube. Um, a lot of, a lot of you of that do personal brands, you know, like we’re using Facebook and Instagram, which is fine. That’s great. You know, that serves a PR that works too, can work. Um, and, but it’s, you know, it’s totally different. They’re two different universes. The other thing with the YouTube thing, which is, you know, as a handy little tip, if you didn’t pick this up from what he was saying was that in YouTube you don’t even get charged for the ad if somebody skips it. But you know, like if they watch less than five seconds, you don’t even get charged for the ad. So that’s like a free impression, a free show of like, yeah, you got, you got five seconds to do a free five second ad or say your name, your company name, and boom, like I get that impression out there that is super powerful. RV: (07:49) Like free advertising on the biggest ad network in the world. Mmm. Pretty incredible. So intent-based search I think is, is a big future for personal brands. We dive into it completely at our phase three event and it’s just decide all based upon the premise of that your audience has already collected, they’re already aggregated in many places. So while you’re building your own audience, go be in front of the existing audience. And that’s really important. The second thing that is more of a concept, I just want to make sure y’all understand is this concept of re retargeting and it’s important that you get this right because you know I didn’t really understand it and it it’s, it’s something you can hear and not recognize the power of of what it is. And what it means is that, you know, when somebody comes to your website, you’re probably familiar with the concept of lead capture and that’s something we teach in phase two is build a lead magnet. RV: (08:49) Yeah. Which is offer something of value for free in exchange for lead capture. You’re going to capture somebody’s name, typically their name and email at first, but what about the person who comes to your site and either you don’t have a lead capture setup or you know, they come to your site somehow they’re on there, they found their way there from something, but they don’t ever, they never fill out the lead capture. Right. They never contact you. They never say they want more information, but some they’re interested it somehow, some way they ended up there. Well that’s what retargeting does. It’s basically taking this person who would otherwise be invisible. You would have no way to track them. And it’s, it’s almost like you put a beacon on them and, and now it’s like a digital beacon that you can see wherever that person goes throughout the web and you can re target them, you can show them additional ads to try to drive them back to your website for specific products or specific offers. RV: (09:53) That is huge. That, I mean that is insanely powerful is to go imagine if in the real world you can know everyone who ever had a thought about, Hmm, your, your company or your product or service. And you could literally know everyone who had ever had that thought and then you could show an ad just to those people. That’s like what retargeting does. I mean it’s extremely powerful and they never have to give you their email. They never have to give you their phone number. All they do is show up on your site and that is how you get that. And so you know, there’s some technicality parts of that that we cover at the event in terms of how to set them up. But you know, your web person can set it up and Google, Google and YouTube and then Facebook and Instagram, you know those go together. RV: (10:38) They’ll give you what’s called the pixel, which is what you need. It’s a piece of code that you install on your site. LinkedIn also has one. So you know, if we’re managing your brand or or somebody else’s managing your brand, you just need to tell your web person like, I need you to install my Facebook pixel pixel or my Google pixel on my site and you’ll immediately start tracking that stuff. That’s part of what we do in phase two. We don’t teach people about pixels and retargeting, but we do. We do tell them you need to, you need to just do this. Like just, just listen to us and do this. We’ll teach you why later. It’s kind of wax on, wax off type of thing. But you gotta be retargeting, like at least be showing ads to people who are already saying they’re interested in what you do by virtue of them coming to your sites and to your registration pages for your funnels and to your sales pages for your products. RV: (11:30) Mmm, really, really important. And then the third big idea here I think is just optimization, optimization. You know, when he was telling this the, the, his story about, uh, you know, how, how he started his company and, and you know, they’ve done a couple, they were in the mortgage space and now they’re, now they’re in, um, you know, they’re doing blinds. But yeah, I think w when he talking about this idea of the very first ad they ran was for pho blinds and he was saying like, you start with 50 bucks and you just, you put $50 into it and you see what happens and you, you, you measure and you watch to see, do, do people click on the ad and then if they click on their ad, do they come to your site? And you can run different ads. And so even somebody who’s spending $94 million in ads, it’s starting with the $50 ad spend. RV: (12:26) Right. You know, you, you probably go, I don’t have $94 million. Well I don’t either. But you know, you could probably scrape together 50 bucks or a hundred bucks and get some data, get some testing and these tools that he mentioned, uh, I had heard of the first, I had not actually heard of the second, which I’m excited about. So these are some nerdy tools for, you know, either your digital marketing team or your tech person or you. And we’re certainly going to be, you know, getting into the details of these and introducing them to our, our team and our community when we get to phase three, um, is heat mapping. Okay. So that’s a crazy egg was the tool. There’s some other ones, but crazy egg is the one that I’ve always heard of. So heat mapping shows you, it’s, it’s kind of like, you know, when you see an ad for like an acid or Mmm, yeah, somebody is sick and they have, they show like a FA, a figure of a human body. RV: (13:20) And then there’s like flashing red where the pain is like, Ooh, heartburn. Um, that’s like what heat mapping is. It’s just, it shows your website and then it shows these flashing red areas of where people are hovering with their mouse. Right? So that’s one of the things people do is they wherever they usually point with their mouse, the mouse to where they’re reading. Okay. Or to, you know, clearly to what they’re going to click on. And so you can follow the journey that a new visitor coming to your site for the first time who doesn’t know who you are or an experienced person. Just anyone come into your site and, and you can go, you know, is my copy effective? You know, are my, are my lead magnets working? You know, are these buttons effective? And you can see like what are they passing over and what are they spending time looking at? RV: (14:13) And what are they clicking on because of the heat map. Tell you again, without even knowing who the people are, you don’t even have to have their email. It’s just the people who come to your site is tracking it. And then this is the new one, which is awesome. And this is next level. Uh, um, he said the company or the tools called full story, which I had never heard of. So I’m, I’m, I’m jacked about this full story, which is a video experience. So not just heat mapping, which kind of shows like these are the hotspots that people go to, but full story literally records the entire journey of someone on your site. So where do they down and where do they stop and, and, and how does their mouse move across the page. I mean, that is huge. Like what an unfair advantage of the digital world. RV: (15:01) And this is where it’s like, if you’re not doing this stuff, you’re, you’re, you’re behind. And if you’re not doing this stuff in five years, you’re, you’re out of business, right? Like, like right now, if you’re not doing it, you’re just behind. But if you’re not doing this in five years, you’re out of business. But here’s the problem. You don’t, you don’t start with this stuff. This is domino number 76 you got to lay the first 70 Domino’s in the right order, which is what phase one and phase two is all about. And you got to get busy and I got to get busy, right? Like I freak out here some of this stuff cause I’m like, man, somebody is going to figure this out. They’re going to come crush. They’re going to come dominate. So if you’re not doing it right now, you’re just behind. RV: (15:44) But if you’re not doing this in a couple of years, you’re out of business. So this is a big deal y’all like this is, this is happening, it’s been happening and we need to get on board and, and you perhaps need to get on board or your team needs to get on board. We need to up the sophistication here because we’re competing with people who do this, right? You’re, your website isn’t just competing with other people who do what you do. You’re competing with Amazon, you’re competing with Rick steel, you’re competing with Ninja level digital marketers and cutting edge tools and intelligence and data and tracking. And it’s like if you’re not doing any of that, it’s time to pick up your game. You better get going. Um, because there’s only probably a little window here of, you know, a couple of years where you can establish yourself as the authority in your space. RV: (16:35) And then after that it’s going to be hard to come and dethrone the King. I mean, think about if you were launching a store right now that was like, okay, home Depot and if you were going to try to build a brand and to go, you know what, I have an idea for a hardware store and you would be competing against Lowe’s and home Depot and ACE hardware and true value and, and, and Menards and then, yeah, and be like, yeah, I’m going to start a new one. Think of how hard that would be to dethrone these huge national brands with millions and millions of dollars. It would be difficult to do it. It’s not that it couldn’t be done, but it would be difficult. There would have to be something very disruptive. Well, that’s how it’s going to be in the personal branding space. RV: (17:23) I think in five years there’s going to be people who own the verticals. They’re already are right there already are these giants in the space, like, you know, you already have Tony Robbins than you, you’ve got Mmm. Yeah. You know, like Rachel Hall is, you’ve got Mel Robbins, you’ve, you’ve got Brendon Burchard, you have Marie Forleo, you’ve got, uh, you know, Lewis house. So some of our clients have these huge spaces that they own and, and there’s a little gold rush going on, right? And if you’re not in the game, you’re in trouble. Like, you gotta get going now, like move this is, this is it, you’re, you’re living in a time where you have an opportunity to change the world with your message, but there’s a closing window of, of how much opportunity there is there. And, and you know, talking to somebody like Rick in this interview just makes me go, Holy moly. Like I, I’m, I need to pick up my game and I consider myself, you know, towards the leading edge of, of, of thinkers and leaders and teachers and people in this space. But knowing that Rick steel’s out there, whew. Like it’s a new level and it’s a new day, but also massive, massive opportunity. So it’s exciting and it’s fun. And I’m so glad you’re here because you’re learning it now and you’re not learning it before it’s too late. So thank you for being here and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 68: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele
RV: (00:00) Okay. So you are about to meet one of the, the world’s most interesting men. Okay. So Rick Steele I want to let you know upfront, he’s a little bit different from the kind of people that we would normally have on this who are sort of like personal brand experts. You know, they’ve built a personal brand. Here’s what Rick has done. He’s the founder of multiple, multiple billion with a B billion dollar businesses. He’s a celebrated philanthropist. He’s a bestselling author, but he’s really an ambassador of effective altruist. So he has been twice featured on the inc 500, not 5,000, inc 500 list. He was named humanitarian of the year by Harvard business school. He’s been listed among fast company’s, most innovative companies and he has been helping growth minded entrepreneurs create more social impact. And that whole movement has gotten him featured in the Washington post, Forbes entrepreneur, ESPN HuffPo and Fox news. RV: (01:05) And right now he is kind of, you know, he is, he is the founder of select blinds, which we will talk about. That is like his current main business that he is, is operating. And but you know, like he, he really is organizing a movement of high net worth business leaders to bring them together to solve immediate humanitarian and environmental concerns by not only lending their talents, but contributing a significant part of their estate to kind of nonprofit causes. So he is sitting in his garage right now, his, his car dirt with his car collection. And if you’re watching this on video, he also has his gym upstairs. And that is because he has also a 13 time iron man. And the reason we are what we’re talking about on this, cause he’s done a lot, but we’re going to be talking about paid traffic acquisition, search engine optimization, pay-per-click strategies, which is what he, he’s also one of our brand builders group clients. RV: (02:06) And so we’ve had the opportunity to get to know him and he has this ridiculous level of expertise that nobody has. And we’re going to talk about that. But he also just completed in his spare time something that he called the world marathon challenge. He did not kidding. Listen to this. Seven marathons in seven consecutive days in on seven different continents, seven marathons in seven consecutive days on seven continents. And when we started working with him yeah, he was actually one of our private clients. He came to Vaden Villa. He worked with us at the house and he was planning this. And I was like, bro, this seems like a little bit of a logistical challenge, like even, and so we haven’t really talked, so I need to hear just like for a minute, how in the hell did you do seven marathons on seven continents in seven days? That’s insane. RS: (03:07) Well, you, you know, you first have a really really good travel person and the guy that put this together for us, a guy by the name of Richard Donovan done this a few times for small groups. I think you can only do it with a small group because it was chaos, you know, getting, you know, we still had to go through security and had to go through customs at every continent and, you know, make planes and all that stuff. But you know, it, it, it’s a logistical nightmare. Yes. But it’s a, the idea of, you know, picking up and training in the training for it was, was really, I think, harder than the marathons itself. Once we got on, you know, you’re thrust into this group of, there was 35 of us, you’re thrusting this group of people that like 34 of your friends now are not going to let you not do this. RS: (03:54) Right. So you are doing this. And the first one is, Aaron has got a big smile on their face and by the third or fourth, you know, everybody has blisters and shaping and hurting somewhere and you know, so you, but you have, you know, you can go far by yourself. You know, you’ve heard this before, but you can go a lot further with the team. And you know, we had a team of people we didn’t know the minute before we met him and it was a brotherhood, sisterhood. I mean, it was, it was amazing. A group of people that just helped everybody get through this thing. We started in Cape town, we went to Antarctica, almost died in Antarctica. I mean, we literally were in a hundred mile an hour winds in Antarctica. We got delayed there and it came back and went to Australia, Dubai, Madrid for, to Liza Brazil and in Miami where we were met by all of our family members friends or a few hundred people there. It was just, it was amazing, RV: (04:47) Man, bro. Like, we’re going to have to do a separate podcast for, for my, like our leadership podcast of just the mindset and the mentality of training for that, because that is just, well, congratulations like ed to the whole crew. I mean, you’re also depending that nobody in the 35 gets seriously injured and sick and you know, like, RS: (05:10) Yeah, that it was incredible. You know, Kobe had just started in China and in fact there were six members that couldn’t make the trip because they were flying from Beijing and all the flights have been shut down. So they couldn’t participate in it because we had, you know, this was just the beginning. You know, time where the world started shutting down and really China shut down at this point. When we got back, we were about two weeks away from, you know, what we’re going through now, which is kind of a U S shutdown starting in Washington. And you know, it was I believe it was just incredible that we were able to pull it off. It was just the timing of doing it. You know, had we been a few weeks later, it wouldn’t have happened, which would have been okay too. You know, we live in a different world today, so we just have to and get used to what’s happening. RV: (05:59) Yeah. Well I think that gives good backdrop for people a little bit, just kind of about your mindset and your mentality. Mmm. You’re also a nine figure entrepreneur. You’ve built companies that do over a hundred million dollars in revenue a year. Mmm. And you know, there’s just so many amazing things that you have done that has been inspired me. But you and I started geeking out about some stuff and I was like, wow, Rick really knows this stuff. So can you just tell everybody a little bit about select blinds specifically and what you do and how you and your team, I know you have an amazing team. How have you guys built it and kind of what makes select blinds different, you know, from like most blind shops, so to speak. RS: (06:51) Yeah. You know, w we started blinds in Oh three, you know, before that I was doing mortgage, how had an internet mortgage company that we exited and blinds was a, you know, I didn’t want to create something so new, I had to go create an audience for it. So the idea of going into blinds was what can we sell differentiate ourselves a little bit from the market. But w you, you know, basically sell online in a marketplace that already has traffic. The traffic’s there, there’s already intent based buyers typing searches in. All we have to do is find a better way and sell them a better product. And it was easy for us to do back in 2003, you know, this whole I was reading an article the other day, talked about, you know, Warby Parker, you know, kind of pioneered this space of DTC in 2010 and I was like, wait a minute. No, no, me and my buddies, we were all doing this in 2003 it but it’s a RV: (07:48) In DTC, just clarify DTC, RS: (07:51) See direct to consumer, meaning that you are selling only your brand, right? And you are sending it right to the consumer. There’s no store, there’s no middleman, there’s no wholesale. It is drop ship right from you to the consumer. Which allows you to have an intimate relationship conversation, narrative with the customer. It’s so hard to do when you add one component in there. When you start adding that component in, now you’re forcing a sales person, distributor, somebody to share your message with the consumer. So DTC just means I have a direct line right to the customer. They get to know exactly what I’m about. So we had done that mortgage. We’d had that relationship. So we, we didn’t, you know, we weren’t no Nostradamus Domus or anything, but we did kind of see that there was some silly stuff going on in mortgage. RS: (08:37) Pretty much everybody could get approved for a loan. We decided to say, listen, let’s insulate ourselves from, you know, we didn’t know anything about mortgage backed securities or what was going to happen, but we just knew that the fact that home values continue to go up, everybody could get approved for a loan that wasn’t right. So we wanted to insulate ourselves, our team, our company from that impending crash. So the idea was what could we sell? Like what is something we can do that’s fundamentally different than taking a lead online and that was sell a product. And if we sell a product direct to consumer, we can have a little bit more of the control. So that was 2003 we started that thing in our bedroom. And you know, really started building the site, not knowing exactly what products we were going to sell and not knowing all the details about how we were going to sell it but just with enough passion to go out and figure it out over the course of like the next 30 days. RV: (09:28) And this is, this is select blinds that you’re talking about. So, but, but in some ways this is insane. Like you chose blinds to sell on the internet. Like there couldn’t be a more necessary like come into your home, measure it and if anyone’s ever installed blinds, like it’s a, there’s a lot to it. It’s not the, the, the simplest process and there’s lots of different tastes and styles. But to me the, the probably the first major lesson that you’ve already shared here is you went and saw intent-based traffic. Like you made a decision, a business decision based upon there is an existing audience who is looking for something and rather than, rather than starting and saying, I have something and I want to sell it, you said, what is there a market for? How do you do, like how would you do that today? Or like how does somebody determine that, what, what the, the appetite is or what intent there is out there in the market? RS: (10:39) I mean, it’s real simple in Google ad words. I mean, you can go set up a Google ad words account, put no money on it and Google gives you a keyword tool that lets you basically go in and in any region S only worldwide, you know, somewhere in between start inputting keywords. And for instance, if I wanted to start a blinds company today, I would go tell Google, show me how many people are Googling the word blinds. And Google will show me how many words how many keywords there are, what the cost per click would be if I were in the number one position. But then also start recommending a lot of other words that are also pretty accurate. You know, this wasn’t the case five years ago, but today, but man, they have nailed it with the AI. I mean, they know what I’m bidding on, they know what my competitors are bidding on. RS: (11:22) So therefore when somebody new comes in and says, Hey, show me blinds, they can pretty much tell you what the bucket of keywords are to about 99% accuracy from there. You know, really, you just, you gotta become a mathematician, you gotta start working the numbers. You’ve got to start making some assumptions on what the average order value would be. You know, you can get pretty close to that. What’s your expected click through rate would be and what your conversion rate would be. And when you can figure those things out, you can very quickly come up with, it’s a little bit of a guesstimate, but you can come up with what your average cost per order would be to actually close the sale, close an order. So much of that though gets refined when you get into the battle. A lot of it is just, it’s inspiration enough to know. RS: (12:07) For me it would be to say, listen, there’s a market here, and I don’t know exactly how big, but I know it’s a big market. It’s a mantra market. There’s a million words a month for the word blinds. I’m just making stuff up here. There’s a million intentions every month. Somebody type in the word blinds in, I’m going to go figure this out. And then it’s just get on the battlefield and figure it out. Right. Start taking people’s guns, start figuring out where to fire, you know, start figuring out where you need to hide. When your competitors have launched missile attacks at you start, you know, when those missiles miss and you know, they don’t blow up, you go pick one up and keep it for yourself. I mean, it is truly a battle that you have to figure out. But you know, for me, I’ve got so many friends in this in this space where they go out and create audiences like on Facebook and they create new demand for them. RV: (12:59) Yes. And I want to talk about that. Like, can you, can you, can you delineate here like what is the biggest difference between Facebook ads and let’s just say Google. I mean, you really, it’s, it’s really Facebook and Instagram and then it’s really Google and YouTube. So what’s the, what is the thing that separates those two categories? RS: (13:21) I think when somebody comes to Google, they have said inherently when they’re searching for a product, and that’s what we’ll, we’ll, we’ll relate this to when they’re searching for a product. They are saying, I am ready to buy for product based. You know, sometimes that is, I’m ready to just do some window shopping and research, but most of the times it’s, I’m ready to buy on Facebook as an example with running ad campaigns and setting demographics, you know, not talking about retargeting, but in Facebook it’s more I’m going to go put an advertisement in front of somebody that is likely to buy this product. They’re not right now in the market for blinds, but you know, I know them to be a homeowner. They just bought a new home. You know, there’s a lot of different, you know, kind of triggers I can put in Facebook ads that would say get me in front of an audience that is ripe for, for new blinds. Google is these people type the word blinds in. I mean it is somebody literally just walked through the threshold of a store and stood there and said, you know, I’m here to buy. Sure, put me in the right direction. RV: (14:23) Nobody is searching blinds for fun. They are searching, RS: (14:27) They don’t want to see pictures of blinds. Right. I mean say there’s a small small piece that would, you know, be looking for some inspiration because I think they can do it themselves or whatever it is. But dying, you know somebody types in guns and roses t-shirt like their, their intent right now is to buy a guns and roses T shirt right now. RV: (14:47) And that is what we so so the phrase you dropped it in earlier and I don’t think is aware of it would be intent based search. Right. And that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the technical term is they’re typing in something because they are hot, ready to buy or ready to look. You know, they’re seriously interested. And that is the power of what happens with Google. What would you call it on Facebook? Is that just like an awareness campaign? Is that like, is there a term you would use for the, that kind of, RS: (15:18) It would be awareness. I mean we, we run the retargeting and we run retargeting campaigns on Facebook, meaning somebody, RV: (15:24) So hold on on retargeting, let’s talk, let’s, I don’t want to get, I don’t want to get everybody lost on the retargeting just yet. But, but not counting retargeting. Facebook is just like, it’s just kind of like a general marketing campaign. Like if it’s like just kind of a broadcast campaign of awareness, the difference is that you’re able to really narrow down the who versus just buying a billboard on the interstate. You’re able to say, I’m going to show it to certain types of people. RS: (15:54) Correct. And, and, and even with a billboard on the interstate, there’s, there’s some targeting, right? Cause you’re choosing where you want to put your ad on what, but Facebook is a is a is it, it’s a, an exploded view of that. So let’s, you be very specific about who you want that ad to go in front of. I don’t, I have friends have such success with this. I don’t know how they get it to work. It feels like so much effort to me. I’d rather I’d rather work backwards and say, you know, put me where there’s a bunch of intent, a bunch of people looking to buy a bunch of things already saying it and then let me figure out the product. Let me figure out how to improve the experience, improve the product and and be a better company for the customers that on that landscape today. RV: (16:41) And I think, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because I think that the personal brand influencer market has just, you know, completely crushed Facebook ads. And it’s not that they don’t work, they do work, but I think that the intent based search for the most part in the personal brand world, nobody is doing it. And they, they, they, they don’t know how, and they don’t understand it because they don’t, people use Facebook as a user. The average person has never used ad words or done keyword research. And I think there’s a huge frontier here, particularly with Google and YouTube that I think personal brands are sort of missing, missing the boat on. So so you’ve got intent-based search happening. I want to back up a little bit. You threw out some terms about the, the average order value you threw out, like click through rate, cost per order. These are important terms that somebody, somebody needs to understand. So how do you, how do you make a prediction, like RS: (17:50) You’re saying effectively you look for, there’s a lot of demand here and then you’re going to use these kind of key terms to go, how do I make a prediction, an estimated guess of what I think I could, how I could turn that search into money and how much it would be worth it to me. So can you kind of like slow walk us through that, that, that thinking, let’s use, let’s use like the guns and roses t-shirt as an example of that. Let me do some simple math, right? So let’s say it’s a $50, and this is a, this will be a millennial hipster guns and roses t-shirt, right? Probably the guy wearing it doesn’t even know who guns and roses is, right? RS: (18:30) I love giving millennials shit. But they, so it’s a $50 t-shirt. It’s a Mmm. And you understand that you can buy that t-shirt for 25 bucks. So I own the tee shirt for 25. I’m selling it for 50. I’ve got 25 bucks in margin. That’s what I’m going to make, right? And we’re going to start talking about shipping or I’m going to make $25. So now I get to go to Google and say, how many people are typing in guns and roses t-shirts? They’re going to give me a number. And that number comes with a couple of figures. They’re going to say 300,000 people per month. Type this term in, in the average number one position is a dollar 40, which means you would need to spend a dollar 40 to get someone to your site. If you wanted to own the first spot in Google, Google estimates this, but it’s pretty close. RS: (19:17) You would pay less if you want to own the second, third, fourth spot, right? So let’s talk about the number one spot. I want to own it and it costs me a dollar 40 so when I get somebody to the site at a dollar 40 I’ve got two I estimate some conversion rate. I’ve got to be able to know that I have to close. Well, let’s see if I close 5% that’s one in 20 that would cost me $28 it would cost me, so for 20 clicks it would cost me $28 that’s 5% closing, right? Okay. So you’re saying a dollar 40 a click dollar 40 a click, 20 clicks are going to cost me $28 now I need to close more than one per 20 clicks. Right? 5% to get that as those numbers to work out just mathematically based on what the, you know what the profit margin is on the tee shirt I’m selling. RS: (20:09) So let’s let’s say 10 let’s say 10% and that’s, that’s a high conversion rate, but it’s not unheard of with really good skew based products that are quick to buy. You can get in and out of the cart quickly. So let’s say 10% conversion rate at a dollar 40 meaning that it costs me $14 to get 10 people to the site. Once I had the 10 people, there are one person purchased, so I made $25 so my costs per click was was $14 for the 10 people. One person purchased, I made 25 bucks, my profit margin was $9 right on my $50 products. Let me just make sure I got it. So there’s a, RV: (20:47) There is a $50 t-shirt sale, you got $25 wrapped up in your cost of goods to buy the tee shirt that or make the tee shirt that you’re selling to the person and then you just paid an additional $14 to get 10 clicks on that term of which one of those people bought. So you got, you’ve got $25 in the cost of the shirt, $14 in the advertising cost to get the customer and so that leaves you a net profit on a $50 sale of nine bucks. RS: (21:19) Sure. And then you’ve got some fixed costs, you know, your rent, your employees. Like of course you know you have all that stuff you have to fig, you have to factor in. And that’s why it’s good to just kind of get a spreadsheet out and start factoring this in. These numbers start becoming pretty easy to figure out if you’ve got a big enough market to go after. So if I, if I went to, if I typed in Joe Jones yet, right? Let’s say I only wanted to sell Joan Jett merchandise, well I need to first understand is there a market, like is there a big enough market for me to start my own Joan jet website? Right. Very quickly. If I go to Google and Google tells me there are 580 searches every month for Joan Jett t-shirts, I can pretty quickly say that’s not a big enough market for me to start a company on this, but let me look at starting a rock concert t-shirt or you know, picking the top 20 whatever RV: (22:07) Broaden. So basically like if there’s not enough search volume on it on a narrow term, you’d have to broaden it in order to accomplish the same thing. RS: (22:15) Correct. You know, I have two rules. You got to make sure there’s a big enough market and understand that there’s a big enough market for you to make a dent in where you can you can have success whether there’s competition or not. Meaning that if there’s six or seven competitors, you’re just going to make each other better. It’s gotta to be big enough that you can have that success. The second thing I think is just as important, maybe more important, but it’s definitely just as important is you cannot be a product that you’re competing with if you just can’t compete with Amazon. Like, if you are trying to sell something that Amazon is shipping to customers in 20 of their warehouses, same day, good luck. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s almost impossible. I don’t like to tell people you can’t do that or it’s impossible because I don’t believe really anything’s impossible. But RV: (23:06) You also have been kind of the guy who ran seven marathons in seven, seven days. You have to know what you’re up to, RS: (23:11) Right? So it would, you know, it would be silly to go out and try to build a model on competing, and I’ve done this before. We own mean we own a company called betting.com we sold sheets, comforters, blankets. We owned the number one domain name in that space. So how could it not work? I mean, how could we not crush it? And we failed because we started selling products that we were drop shipping. We own an inventory, but we were drop shipping from the vendors and they were getting there. You know, we would have to tell people three to five days, sometimes seven days shipping in Amazon. Zappos, a lot of our competitors have these products in stock. They were shipping same day. Amazon had some of the products they were shipping two hour delivery. So it’s like, how do you compete with that? So you’ve got to, you know, you gotta know what you’re up against and you also got to no, that if you are on a level playing field on shipping, how do you differentiate yourself? How do you make, how do you create a better product RV: (24:07) Now? And, and, and this is part of what I wanted. And just for those of you listening, like most of our audience is not in true e-commerce where it is products and logistics and drop shipping and vendors. Most of our, most of our product base you know, personal brands are selling informational type of products, membership sites, video courses, these things that don’t have the costs. But [inaudible] you need to apply the same type of rigor and thinking it’s all the same concepts that would apply here is to still go figure out what are people searching for. What is there a market for that I’m well suited to serve? I mean, would you agree with that? The same rigor could apply here RS: (24:50) A hundred percent and I think also, you know, when I, when I saw your company out Rory, I didn’t Google Rory Vaden, I Googled a term, I’m trying to remember what it would have been, but I’m pretty sure I was searching for the number one, like who would I work with when I want to work with, with my personal brand that’s going to crush it for me, that’s going to help me crush it. So my search term was probably, you know personal branding, a mastermind or something, right. There was some search, and I don’t know if you know, I found you guys via a paid ad, but I would say what you can do, no matter what you’re selling, even if it’s just informational and you’re using Facebook ads, you know, what is w what are the physical products that you that somebody could search on Google that are somewhat relevant to what you’re also selling in your informational business coaching, whatever it may be that are relatable to, you know, to, to that product. Because then if you can buy those clicks and you can sell a product cheap, you know, that’s a, that’s an easy and cheap way to list build too, right? So you can then sell them a product you make a little money on. Maybe it’s a loss leader. RV: (25:58) Well, that’s what a lot of people do with the book. That’s what the free plus, the free plus shipping model is with the book. But you know, so here’s what’s interesting. We are number one for the term personal branding, but it’s not our website. It was, I was interviewed on social media examiner, which is a monster website, but they did an interview with me and that it, the interview did so well. Plus their audience is so big in general and there’s such a high authority site that when you search personal branding, at least at the time of this interview that comes up. And so I think that’s probably what happened. Cause I know you found like you, you listen to that podcast with Michael Stelzner and then, and then we meet you. But, but okay. Yeah. So, so, so basically you’re going to make a prediction here, right? RV: (26:48) You’re going to, you’re going to have some forecast, you’re gonna throw out some numbers. You’re going to look at go, where’s the demand? How much is it going to cost for the click? That’s a good tidbit. I didn’t realize that the number that Google publishes is the number is the number one position for the click. So what about, so at that point then, basically you just start putting some money into the machine. You’re driving people to a website and you start monitoring how many people visit that page versus how many buy is that basically it, RS: (27:20) Yes. I mean you, you know, you want to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success and having, you know, when somebody lands the page has got to be good, right? You got a good product that’s got an easy way to check out. You know, I’ll equate this to, you know, our first product, full wood blinds there, which are fake wood, you know, they’re like a poly blind. We had this product live the very first day we turned it on to pay-per-click. I mean we probably put 50 bucks in there or something. And we said at an immature, it was like a dollar per click that at that time, you know, bring people to this page for full wood blinds. And we just, we watched it, you know, we sat there, this is before Google analytics, but Google and there was a, there was a competing product before Google analytics where we’ve been watching the traffic. We would see what they were doing. W how much time and RV: (28:11) Okay, so, so what, let me just make sure, so you’re saying that when you first started that it was like a page for pho blinds and you just basically threw 50 bucks in there to sort of test it. Like is that basically what you were doing was to watch to see what happened? RS: (28:26) Sure. You know, we said let’s put 50 bucks on and that’ll give us 50 people to the site. Let’s see if anybody buys. And if somebody does, it’s going to be amazing. We’re all going to jump up and down and cheers that we actually have something that will, you know, that works. And they did. We actually sold to a couple of customers, I’ll never forget it because it was a it was this moment where it was just like this. We knew it was going to work, but we didn’t, we didn’t know conversion rates. We didn’t know, you know, how much it was going to take. We didn’t know what we would need to adjust pricing to be, you know, because you know, you, you could only, you know, if we sold one out of 50 people and that’s a 2% conversion rate. If we sell two out of 50 people, it’s a 4% conversion rate. So we’re able to make better economics at 4% conversion rate of course. But a lot of it was just, you know, today the capabilities are just, I mean, I can’t even imagine having these capabilities 15 year, 18 years ago, whatever it’s been in looking at Google analytics and watching customers come to a page, see how they interact. How long do they stay? What buttons are they clicking, where are they hung up? I mean, you can physically see their mouse scrolls and you can see, you know, kind of RV: (29:36) Google analytics show you hate map. Does it show you heat mapping? RS: (29:40) They don’t. They’re, they’re heat mapping tools RV: (29:42) That you can add in, which is, which we have in and there’s several of them out there right now, like crazy egg. And we use a company called FullStory. Fullstory. Just watch, let’s you literally watch via like a video recording session, the customer’s journey. So you can see like if they’re on their phone, they’re scrolling, pinching and zooming where they pick up on something. It’s so you can really understand their interactions beyond a click or beyond a patient. Wow. That is incredible. I’ve never heard of that RS: (30:14) In this. I liken this to if, if you were a store, like best buy and you had a bunch of people come through the front door and then a lot of people go to, let’s say the TV aisle and then everybody just stood there and looked at this one TV but then walked away and didn’t buy. You would want to know specifically what’s wrong with this one TV and why they didn’t buy. So you can start asking questions. You could start, you know, really looking at that page and saying, what’s wrong with this? And almost always you will find an error on the page. You’ll, it’s priced too high. It’s like, you know, you’re saying something that doesn’t really give them the information they need. So, you know, these tools are truly just unfair competition to like traditional retail. I mean traditional retail really, unless we live in, in like this minority report world where you see where Tom cruise walks in and they start, you know, doing the eyeball tracking and identifying stuff. We are like dozens of years away from that. This is the world we get to live in, in e-commerce when using tools like Google analytics and crazy egg and full story to see a customer’s intentions and behaviors. RV: (31:20) Wow. So, so then basically, I mean, at a high level you’re going to do a little research to figure out what is their intent for. Then you’re going to look at some numbers, you’re going to make some hypotheses about how much it’s going to cost. Then you’re going to build a page and you know, a product and you’re going to put a little money into the machine and then you’re going to watch how it performs. And then after that, it’s basically just this perpetual tweaking and updating and optimizing. I guess would be would be the word. And and then is that, is that more or less what it is just and it’s just that over and over again. RS: (31:57) It is. I mean, and then in one day, you know, you find yourself spending a hundred thousand dollars a day on Google and managing tens of thousands of keywords and you know a lot of time a lot of growth. But that’s it’s, it’s exactly what it is. I mean it is, you know, the direct to consumer brand with millions of customers. Like we are had to start with a couple of people in one sale and then you know, evolve to a dozen sales and then hundreds of sales. RV: (32:22) Can you share how much you’ve spent on Google or like give us like any sort of idea of like how like just how much has your, have you spent on like pumped money into the app? The Google ad machine, me and my, RS: (32:34) Me and my Google, I spoke, I spoke at Google about this a couple of years ago and it’s funny, they asked me to talk about, you know, why we, how we have such good conversion rates and what are we doing? Like what is the thing that gets us to, to move the needle. And I kind of put a joke on my PowerPoint, which was the formula. It’s a three step formula. Formula one is I give Google my credit card, step two is Google charges my credit card. And then step three is I find a way to make all that work as a marker. But my rep and I, every now and then we will w well I will do a screenshot on the account and I think the last time we screenshotted it between our two accounts were just under a hundred million. Right now, $9 million in spend. RS: (33:13) Yeah, $94 million. $4 million. But it is, I mean, every single dollar has been worth it because they have all, you know, it has all been intent-based traffic. I mean, so it is a, I mean, it feels unfair, but I mean, this is where, when you look at Google, I mean these, this multiple, almost trillion dollar company gets almost all of its revenue, right? So just let that sink in for a second. All of its revenue from pay-per-click ads and those pay-per-click ads are dominantly intent-based. You know, customers, I’m looking for this right now. Sell this to me. So it is a you know, it doesn’t have to be blind. I mean, it could be duct tape, it could be a variant of a new product that’s out there. You know, Shopify, some of these platforms give you the ability to spin up a site and have tools that are really even greater than what we architect with. RS: (34:14) I’m so much greater than what, how, what we built in the early days from day one for like 30 bucks a month. It’s, it’s truly insane. The platforms that are out there and that’ll let you spin up a, a really good eCommerce platform. And so does this also, is everything that we’re talking about with Google, does this also apply to YouTube? It does. You know, we do, we do some advertising on YouTube with video ads that are both intent based video ads and then also, you know, retargeting video ads as well. So we have a, a couple of really good high production videos we’ve done that are commercial quality where somebody, when they come into our site, they leave. I mean the best use of YouTube is, is a being there in a retargeting narrative that shares a little different message than what you were sharing on the front end. RS: (35:04) So, you know, if somebody came to your site and they left and didn’t buy your, your ads probably didn’t work. I mean, that’s kind of what the assumption should be is my ad was wrong. So I need to deliver a different narrative, different story on the on the back end. And so it’s the retargeting on YouTube. We get the opportunity to do that in those, you know, if you’ve seen the ads that are, you know, they make you play for five seconds and then skip. Yep. There’s, there’s ways to gain that. Just make sure you get verbally your name and audibly audible, your name and digitally your name in the first five seconds so they hear your brand’s name and, and see your logo in the first five seconds. And if somebody does skip, you actually get that brand impression for free because Google doesn’t charge you for it. So and a lot of people skip, a lot of people get through these and it is, again, it feels like cheating the system, but it’s, it’s best practices with what we get to do. And I’m delivering an impression to somebody that’s not watching the full 32nd ad. RV: (36:00) Yeah. And you’re saying you only pay if they watch more than five seconds? RS: (36:04) Yeah, I think we, we start paying, there’s some level that we start paying at. But, and they don’t have to watch the whole video, but if they skip at the five second Mark, we don’t pay. RV: (36:14) Yeah. And so then you’re literally telling people about what you do for free. Like the Google machine is pushing you out there. RS: (36:24) I mean the first five seconds of our ads has select blinds verbally in it. I mean our logos in the bottom right of the screen, it is you, you will have known what that commercial was about if you skip it. RV: (36:36) Yeah. Well I mean this is so fun. Like we didn’t even get into retargeting like there’s so much here. And it just for everyone to know transparently, I, when I was polishing up our, we have our, you know, we have our, our nine different events. When I was working on our phase three high traffic strategies event, I called Rick because I was like, Hey, I want to bounce a couple ideas off you, make sure I got this right. Like and it’s just, you know, like you were someone that I tapped personally to go help me try to get my mind wrapped around this. And it’s in some ways it’s really complex, but mostly it’s very logical. It’s very systematic. I do have one more question for you, but before that, where, where should people go? You know, Rick, if, if they, if they want to, they want to connect with you and follow you. RV: (37:27) I know your, your personal brand and just so everyone knows, like Rick is not in the business of teaching people this, his personal brand is really about effective altruism. He’s, he’s really driven by making a dent in the world in a positive way. And you know, building a, a network of you know, more or less high net worth individuals who, who have a real desire for humanitarian and environmental concern and help. So if you’re one of those people, I’m sure he’d love to connect with you, but just in general, people want to like follow up and know who you are. Like, where would you direct them? RS: (38:02) Yeah, I would say, you know, best channel is Instagram and that’s a Rick Steele official on Instagram. You know, you’re going to see you know, a brand there that if you hold my Instagram up to select blinds, you’re going to say, wow, this guy’s crushing it and blinds. Where’s this guy going with this personal brand? What’s a personal brand? Right, exactly. I feel, you know, the game of building a personal brand. That’s why we need really great leaders like you and helping us out with this because this is, for me, it feels very hard. I mean, it feels very hard. The, the game of e-commerce direct to consumer, it feels easy, right? Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing that longer and I’ve been immersed in that game for some time, but yeah, Rick still official will be the place to go see, you know, just a guy that I think is, you know, I’m living a hard charging life, trying to be a good dad, good husband, good business guy and and good athlete all at the same time. RV: (38:58) Yeah. And you’ve got a very entertaining, you’ve got tens of thousands of followers, a hundred, hundred over a hundred thousand followers. So you got, you got some good stuff going. And you’re just like, yeah. And like most interesting man in the world, maybe it’s the most interesting man in the digital world. Like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. So here’s our last little question for you. Where do you think the future is going as it relates to paid traffic acquisition into and intent based search? RS: (39:32) Listen, if you would have asked me four weeks ago, I would’ve, I would’ve given you the same answer, but with maybe a little bit less enthusiasm. You know, I feel very lucky to be in this game of direct to consumer where somebody orders online. Listen, I don’t know about you Rory, but I’m doing stuff around my house now that I didn’t think I would ever do. Like again, maybe which is, you know, landscaping my entire house. Not that I’m bored, but I just like, you know, I’ve got some extra time. I’m doing some stuff around the house. I would say if you’ve thought about building a DTC direct to consumer e-commerce, this is the time is now, you know, this, this Corona virus coven 19 has, I believe is going to leave a generational Dennis and, and I think it’s gonna be positive. RS: (40:21) I do, but I believe that we are going to be more grateful when we do get to spend time with people that is going to be more quality time. But I also believe on the flip side of that, people are going to be doing more of their own stuff, buying and securing, procuring their things. We’ve already seen this as an immediate pop in direct to consumer and just online search in general across everything. I’ve got friends in different, you know, spaces online. All their searches are up. I think people, this, this has given people the ability to have a little bit of empowerment and say, Hey, maybe this is something I can do myself now and, or, or by myself and have shipped to me. So, yeah, I don’t, you know, I’m a, I’m a small business too, so I still, for me, I want to support small business as much as possible, but I also believe that we’re living in we’re going to come out of this with a little bit different behavioral change then when we came into it with, and a lot of that is do I need to walk into a store? RS: (41:21) Do I need to have a sales person in my home? I mean, there’s just a, it’s a, it’s a real interesting time we’re living in now. So I think the you know, with enthusiasm for me and, and the type of business that ran, love it, but it’s still yet to be seen. I believe the behavioral changes is going to be here to last. I don’t believe this is a, you know, something that we forget very soon. So, RV: (41:44) Yeah. Well, RS: (41:45) If we ever get out of quarantine, if we ever get, I’m in my garage right now. I mean, this is where I’m doing all my stuff is in my garage, so, but I like it. RV: (41:55) I love it. I love it. Well doing business from home, it’s it’s, it’s I think it’s a trend that, you know, clearly was a trend that was happening. I think this has accelerated it. It’s only accelerated it. And given that that’s the case, the insight and the wisdom and the experience that you have just so generously shared with us is, is truly priceless. I think that understanding these basic concepts can literally be worth millions of dollars. They have been to us just understanding intent based search and you know, where is demand and getting in front of it and hypothesizing with some basic ratios and then testing and optimizing like this is, it’s, it’s interesting to see at your scale that, that that’s how you get there. It’s this, it’s the same process. So brother just thank you so much and we wish you the best. I know, you know, some, some of us will get a chance to meet you at one of our brand builders group events in person when we resume our in person events, maybe virtually for the time being. So all the best man. RS: (43:02) Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks.
Ep 57: Dominating the Customer Service Vertical with John DiJulius | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. John DiJulius is somebody that I love that I trust, that I know that I have watched build an amazing business. And there’s people who have very public reputations, right? And some of our clients, some of our friends have very public figures, very high profiles. And you know, there’s something to be said about that, right? That’s very valuable. But I think what’s even more valuable is the private reputation of, of what do people say about someone behind their back. What do people say when nobody is around, you know, and it’s just the one on one conversations and everybody that I know that knows John de Julius fellow speakers industry, you know, Bureau’s agents, his customers, his team, they all say amazing things about him. And I love that. I love that about him because that is what reputation I think is, is really, really all about. RV: (01:05) So, you know, first and foremost, I just wanted to say that and make sure that, you know, and if you’re, you know, if you’re looking to improve your customer experience in any way, man, he’s, he is one of the guys. There’s a, you know, one of the, one of the people, there’s, there’s a handful of people who do that really well. But he’s, he’s certainly the top or one of the top. So so I thought it was cool to get a little behind the scenes look at how he became that way. And, and these were my three biggest takeaways two of which he didn’t even say. So one of which he did say, but two of them that he did not even really talk about. So my number one takeaway from John D Julius is practice what you preach, practice what you preach. RV: (01:54) See one of the things that I think is most compelling about him and it’s most amazing about him, it’s also something that a J and I aspire to and have always aspired to, is this idea that we’re not teaching, we’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned as much as we’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned. We’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re teaching people to do the things that we actually do. Right. And I think that’s why in the personal brand community, brand builders group has grown so fast because so many of the people who advise brands haven’t actually built one that for themselves. And that’s not a, I’m not, that’s not a strike necessarily against them. I think it’s, it’s hard. It’s extremely hard to teach people how to do something and do it yourself at the same time. RV: (02:56) Like it’s extremely difficult. And, and so I think, you know, in many ways it is, it’s, it’s, it’s okay and it’s right for an agency to go, well, don’t look at me, look at my clients. But I think what John has done, which is unique and this is something that we aspire to, is to actually, in addition to teaching people to do it, to, to do it and to continue doing it ourselves because it also keeps you relevant, right? Like the fact that you are building a company yourself gives you ideas and lessons and struggles and stories and pain that you’re experiencing every day that you pull into your personal brand. I think where the risk of becoming irrelevant happens is where it’s like, okay, I’m teaching all the stuff that I used to do or that used to work, but because I’m not actively in it anymore [inaudible] nobody, nobody knows, including me, nobody, nobody knows if these things actually work. RV: (03:56) So [inaudible] I love that about him and that is something that we, you know, always aspire to bring to you. And, and everybody that we bring on our show, we look at them in some way. They’re a practitioner of, of what they’re teaching. And that’s, you know, if you, if you want a little interview tip about how I do the interviews is I’m always asking myself, what does this person, I don’t even really care about what the person teaches. I really ask, what does this person actually do in their real life that I want to learn? I want to understand the behind the scenes truth, not of what they teach or how they present themselves, but of the things that I look at their life. And I go, man, I really admire this specific piece of, of their life. And I think I think it was Mark Twain who said, every man is my superior in some way. RV: (04:54) And so I’m always, I’m not asking myself ever, can I learn from this person about anybody, about every single person I meet? I’m never asking myself can I learn something from this person. I’m always asking myself, what can I learn from this person? And there are people who I think I have despicable personal track records or polarized opposite philosophies on things that I have that I still go, Oh, I can learn a lot about something from this person. To me it’s not, it’s not an all or none, but anyways, I say all that to say, practice what you preach and maybe a better way of saying this is preach what you practice. That’s probably that, that’s, that’s actually as I’m talking this out, that’s what the big, the big idea is, is preach what you practice, teach what you do and then you will know there’s always substance and support and evidence and and data and real experience behind what you’re doing and I think John does that as good as anyone preach what you practice. RV: (06:04) The second thing is, I mean, gosh, I’ve heard John say this a hundred times. It’s like one of his signature things is making price irrelevant, but specifically the thing that he said in this interview, which I’ve never heard him clarify or it never sunk in with me until just now was he said, making price irrelevant. Does it mean you can double your fees and not lose your customers. So he’s not saying, Oh, you can just charge whatever you want. What he’s saying is you’re so good and your, your, your prices are fair enough for what people are getting that even if they are premium prices, your customers never stop to check what your competitors are charging. So be so good that your competitors never stopped to check. Well who your competitors are like they never stopped to to ask that could someone else because you’re servicing them so well. RV: (07:03) You’re over-delivering, you’re, you’re exceeding their expectations, you’re giving them what you said and more and, and that’s, it’s been, it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to do that. Like one of the reasons that we have gotten into the agency side of the business at PR, at brand builders group and started helping people build websites and build funnels and write copies and do video editing and manage their social media is because we have found it so incredibly difficult to find reliable vendors and agencies who will over deliver. And I’ll tell you now that we’re in the business, it’s really hard. Like it’s really hard. It’s a thin margin business. Yeah, people have high expectations and you know, if they want to spend the least amount of money and get the best product, it’s, it’s just like the nature of it is really, really challenging, but you have to aspire and push and, and, and even if you can’t do it on day one, you want to always be going, how can we make price irrelevant? RV: (08:02) How can we over deliver so that our customers never even stopped to go, ‘You know, I wonder if somebody else could do this better. I wonder if someone else could do this cheaper. I wonder if someone else could do this faster.’ That’s making price irrelevant. And really what it’s like making competitors irrelevant and it’s just keeping people locked in. So you’ve got to be that good. You have to be that good and always be, be striving in that direction. So that’s super, I think powerful and just a good reinforcement. The third takeaway for me from John is also something he did not say explicitly. And the way I’m going to summarize this as this follows one message, multiple modality modalities, one message, multiple modalities. Yeah. John has one expertise, one focus, customer experience that his entire career is built upon as an entrepreneur and the spas that he runs and owns and operates. RV: (09:08) It’s about customer experience. And then you know, as a personal brand, as a speaker, author, influencer, whatever term you want to use, it’s all about customer experience. It’s one message. And yet he has built this multimillion dollar business based upon multiple modalities, right? So he’s doing consulting, he’s doing keynote speaking. He is also has his own conference that people are buying tickets to come to. And then he has, you know, the customer experience executive Academy. So he’s got these four different like verticals, if you will, but all on the same, all on the same message, in the same market. It’s just, it’s a great example of what we call the services spectrum. And those of you that are members of ours, you know that we, when we talk about, I’m like phase three and phase four, we look at the services spectrum, which is exactly that. RV: (10:07) It’s, it’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And that is what I think John has done really well. It’s going, I’m providing the same information but in multiple mediums and our event, you know, our, we have an event specifically captivating content where we talk about this, where we help somebody create their body of work for their, for their next book or their next course or their next thing. And it’s all the same thing. It is, you know, the way we design our content both internally at brand builders group as we teach personal brands to build and monetize their personal brand. And as the Rory Vaden personal brand, which is all about helping people, helping leaders overcome procrastination and move people to action. Those are, you know, how I designed my personal content is all around this thing we call the modular content method. And when you build it out this way, the book is, the co is a video course. RV: (11:09) It is a two day event. It can’t, it’s a half day training. It’s a keynote, it’s a coaching curriculum. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a consulting program and you just build a body of work, a body of knowledge that then gets subdivided and broken a ProCon apart into a Ted talk, a keynote, a half day training, a full day training, a two day training, a public event, a coach, a six month coaching, yeah. Program. And it’s organizing your content. It’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And John is just a really great example of doing that. It’s not creating a different product for a different business model for every different market. It’s kind of dominating one vertical and then servicing them and multiple, which is, you know, a simple idea. It’s just vertical integration. But it’s something that I think most personal brands don’t do very well. RV: (12:00) And I think we’re quick to launch different types of business models that serve different audiences instead of going, how can I serve this one audience fully? Which is a lot of what we [inaudible], you know, we talk about here and every, you know, you hear the guests come on and talk about that so consistently. Cause it’s like that is the discipline and that is what works. And that’s part of why we bring you all these different guests from different backgrounds is because you can see how these people have built, you know, high six-figure, multi seven-figure. Occasionally we get the eight-figure entrepreneurs on here that have just built [inaudible] deeply in one vertical. And that’s what we want you to do, is to go, you know, who can I serve most powerfully? Who can I help in the most profound [inaudible] in meaningful and impactful way? Because that is like the foundation and the heart of a mission driven messenger, which is who we’re honored to serve. And so I’m honored that you’re here. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 56: Dominating the Customer Service Vertical with John DiJulius
Speaker 1: (00:06) RV: (00:06) 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@brandbuildersgroupdotcomslashsummitcallbrandbuildersgroup.com slash summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) It is my honor and distinct pleasure and privilege to introduce you to somebody who is really interesting. I admire this guy as a mentor. Also value his friendship. But in addition to all that, this is someone that I have actually learned so much from in terms of how to run a great business. So John DiJulius is his name and it’s hard to refer. It’s hard for me to refer anyone else in the customer service or customer experience space that’s like, this is the man that I learned it from that I follow. He’s written all the books on the subject. Several books customer service customers, [inaudible] secret service. What’s the secret customer service rep revolution. He ha hosts every year. The customer service revolution conference. I’ve spoken there twice. AGA has spoken there. And John is just an amazing guy who has totally dominated a vertical, is a real expert. And I asked him to just come and share the true story of how he built his personal brand in such a dedicated, consistent way. And so here he is. John de Julius, welcome to the show. JD: (02:15) Thanks Rory. It is such an honor to be here and the best and only piece that I care about in that introduction is that our friendship, that that means the world to me. RV: (02:25) Yeah. I you really do live that, you know, brother and the relationships and, and I, I’ve always admired that about you and I’ve looked up to you and I think, you know, when I think about your business you’re a great example of one of the things that we talk about brand builders group. It’s just, you know, breaking through the wall by becoming known for one thing and in your space it’s just like you’re one of only a few people really that are even at that top tier, top caliber. Tell us a little bit about how you got started. You know, cause you used to be a truly like a, you know, tell us about spas and then tell us like, how did you, how did you move into where you were teaching customer service? JD: (03:12) Yeah. you know, all on accident. I wish I could tell you I had this great plan. And and you know, I like sharing this even with kids, you know, kids be in, you know, college age, just cause, you know, I feel like kids of today have so much pressure on them to figure out what they have to be. And I think it’s crazy for a 21 year old nobody wants to do for the next you know, 50 years. And so when I graduated from college, first I was a horrible student all the way through, really bad, you know flunked out of college, but eventually went back and finished. I was working at UPS and I was driving a truck. And only because it was a significantly better pay than anything I can get back in the late eighties. JD: (04:01) I was making $45,000 as a driver, which might’ve been wet, might as well been $1 million to me. And, and coming out with the marketing degree, it was like 18 to 22,000. So my plan was, you know, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and, and I was gonna own my own business, so I wanted to put as much weight as I can for the next five years as a ups driver, then quit and open my, and I couldn’t think of anything what that would look like. There was only, you know, two things. I was passionate about owning my own business and sports. And so the only thing I could put two and two together was I was gonna open a sporting goods store. Like that’s really, you know, the only logic I can come up with. And thank God I didn’t end up doing that, but meet my future wife. JD: (04:49) We get married, she’s just fantastic hairdresser. And you know, the, the challenge with, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties was the hair salons and, and, and hair dressers weren’t thought of as a professional place. A lot of great hairdressers quit. While they loved it, they had to get real jobs, right? Jobs that paid vacation and benefits and 401ks and all that training. And so, you know, good hairdressers should be equipment or friends and at work would be quitting. And so, you know, that’s where we got the idea, let’s, let’s open a salon at, offered something different to customers. Unlike not, we didn’t want to be known as the best customer service hair salon. We want to be, you know, anywhere, you know, you went that day paled in comparison, right? I’m kind of like, you know, when you take your kids to Disney you know, every business you visit after that is just disappointing because Disney just blew your mind in the way they take care of it. JD: (05:52) So I’m taking care of employees and then give back to the community, and so my initial plan was if if that took off, I get quit this golden handcuff job that I had at UPS and start my own business. Well, you know, as, as luck, fate would have it, we we almost went out of business the first four weeks. It was my wife and three of her closest friends from cosmetology school you know, for several years earlier. And you know, our, our, our business plan was really a sophisticated back then. It was made of a three or four cocktail napkins. That’s when we’d be out at a bar and talking about opening this Lao, we’d say, Oh yeah, write that down. And we lived there. I have them framed you know, treat customers really well and treat employees really well. JD: (06:42) But we were passionate about it, but the, the three others didn’t want anything to do with that. So it was back to my wife. We’re open a month. I really thought we were going to go out of business, but that’s where I jumped in at full time, a little bit more kicking and screaming cause I didn’t want to be in the industry initially. And then between her artistic and my customer service we just started blowing the doors off. And so we had a 900 square foot salon and, , and it knocked down you know, the doors and expanded at 1200 to 2000. And then we vacated, built, you know, one of the largest in the countries. And then you know, they have open evermore, so 27 years later still have them. But it’s, it’s not what I do. I, you know, I, I don’t have anything to do with it. [inaudible] RV: (07:27) How many are there? How many, how many? You still have JD: (07:31) Four. RV: (07:31) Okay. so you still have these and then at some point you, you go, Kay, I want to move and I want to start teaching this. Did somebody ask you or did you say, was it like a definitive, like I want to go teach customer experience? JD: (07:47) I wish I could say, you know, Rory, I had this plan and it just like going into the salon and distribute, kicking and screaming. I didn’t want to, at first I was so glad I did because we saw the opportunity. You know, while there was a salon at every corner, none of them operated at a high level. Today is a different story. But back then you know, professionalism, all that customer service. So, so we started growing really, really fast and making a lot of noise in Cleveland and they’re all in Cleveland and in the salon industry. So now it’s the mid nineties. We’ve opened up three, four years and people in Cleveland and the salon industry would ask if I’d speak because they were like, you know, what do you guys do here? You’re growing really fast. Your reputation’s X off for customer service. So at first you know, it probably like you, like a lot of people, a total accident. JD: (08:37) I was flattered, you know, that someone wanted to hear my story when I did it locally. I was like, this is cool cause that now I can promote the salons to the local chamber of commerce or whoever at the time when it was asking me. And then what happened was it never thought it would, you know, materialize to you know, two or three people, two or three people come up to me after speak and say, you know, you do this for companies. And I kind of like yeah, what do you charge and I’m like, know charge for what? Like, you know, I didn’t know that there was, you know, you could do this all, you know, on the fly, I’m like, shoot $150. And, you know, they were, you know, shocked. But that, that’s all I’m like, Oh God, I should have asked her more. JD: (09:21) So, but every time I spoke, two or three leads came from that. And so it, you know, and so I was a salon owner that, that spoke a little bit. And then in 2002 I wrote my first book, Secret Service. So you know, again, I know you, you went through this when I started getting a bigger conventions, I was a, the breakout speaker in the basement. They had the map and a flashlight defined and that’s where I belonged. But yeah, the world beaters, you know, Michael Gerber, Tom Peters, Jim Gilmore on main stage, and I watched them, I’d be like, Holy cow. So I’d wait in line without all the 500 attendees when I finally get up there and say, hi, I’m John, I’m a speaker too, and get it. And you know, they, they, they were all so generous and slow down and they gave me their number and, or you know, it may have email, but they said, you know, Hey, I, I’d be happy to help you. JD: (10:17) I couldn’t believe how generous they were. So, you know, I reach out, they said, here’s what you gotta do. You know how to create a website, you got to get demo, you got to write a book. And you know, so I, I listened to them and you know, so my first book comes out and a 2002 secret service and overnight basically that in the next 12 months it took me from a salon and it spoke to a speaker that owned salons. And then since you know, 2003 I haven’t been active in the salons. And then, you know, the salon, the speaking consulting business just exploded from that. RV: (10:53) So then So that’s interesting. So you started as a speaker. Now today, your primary business model, like if you have to go like w you, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got customer service revolution, the conference, you’ve got keynote fees, you’ve got book sales, you’ve got consulting, you’ve got other trainers. What is like, where does most of the revenue come from today? JD: (11:19) Those streams, number one, probably at 50, a little bit more than 50 is customer service consulting. You know, working with Starbucks and Lexus and Pricewaterhouse and you know, all those great companies, the Chick-Filet A’s of the world. And, and we have our consultants and that’s just ongoing in there every month, every quarter. The, the second revenue stream is, you know, keynotes and I primarily do that, but that’s where we get our leads from for our consulting. And then, you know, the, the customer service revolution conference. And then we also have the customer experience executive Academy, which is something that people come to Cleveland for a, for a whole year. They come four times a year. And, and you know, it’s like a, a master’s degree in customer experience. RV: (12:08) Interesting. So they come for four times a year. Like, like how long do they come? JD: (12:13) Three days. January, April, July, October. So next week literally is to 20, 20 class start. So it’s sold out. And so now the, you know, if you want to take the next one, you have to wait until January 20, 21, because you can’t come midstream. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it builds a pipe. We do have an online version, but, but the, the physical class, it’s, you know, 20 to 25 of the tops chief experience officers from all over. You know, they get together and learn our methodology. RV: (12:46) Man. So that is awesome. So then so
Ep 49: Orchestrating a Career Pivot by Owning The New You with Donald Miller | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00)
Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand. Such an honor to be breaking down our interview with Donald Miller. And I just have to say up front, like we have learned so much from Donald. We love StoryBrand, we love the SB7 framework. And we love this dude. Like he is such a quality guy and, and just, just frigging smart, smart, smart, smart. So if you haven’t listened to the interview, go listen to the interview, read the StoryBrand book, like do the StoryBrand stuff. They are amazing. And I thought some of the things that he shared on this interview, because we’ve interviewed him before and we know him so well, it was actually quite unique, not things from his book and necessarily and, and not things that I, I had heard him say, you know, so many times.
AJ: (00:46)
Yeah, and I would just say this was actually one of my favorite interviews on all of our episodes so far. And I think the reason why is it wasn’t about his book, it wasn’t about the framework and it wasn’t about the business. It was about his personal brand and his take on what it takes to make it and the benefits and the risks and the pains and the rewards along the process. That’s why I loved it.
RV: (01:11)
Well, and he made a big jump, and you may not all realize the massive shift in personal brand. Not many people at his level make such a dramatic shift,
AJ: (01:21)
Which is funny because I was a Donald Miller follower way before Rory, because I was, I was hooked on blue light jazz, which is an amazing book. Oh my God. Well, it had to be over a decade ago. Well, it had to be before that. It was before we were together, the app out a long time ago. Make me feel so old right now. So yeah, no, I love that. I love this. I love this interview and I’m looking at my notes right now because I actually took a lot of notes and I think this is really amazing. I think the biggest thing, or not the biggest thing, but my first thing I would say is this concept of what does it take to reinvent yourself at that level when you have become so well known for one thing and his case, it was Christian memoirs, how do you go from that to being a branding business strategist,
RV: (02:15)
Millions of copies, millions of copies he had.
AJ: (02:17)
So it’s a big job. That’s a very big jump to go from this very niche Christian market to, no, I’m now I’m a I business branding expert. How do you do that and how does that whole process work? And here’s what I love because I’m not one who likes to ease into things. So I think maybe this resonated with me because this is very much my style. It’s like, Hey, if you’re going to do it, you got to do it. He goes, here’s the thing, and I, this is my paraphrasing of what he said, but this is how I interpreted it anyway. He said, people are going to really, it’s going to take time for people to relearn the new view, right? They’re going to have to reassociate themselves with the new new you. And so why would you confuse them in the process by trying to blend your past in your future for any amount of time? And that just made a lot of sense to me. It’s like, well, yeah, it’s like, in I past I was a sales and leadership consultant. Why would I confuse my audience for months or years? Trying to ease them away from this and into my future, which is a personal branding strategist. Why would I do that? It confuses me. It confuses them. It dilutes the message 100%. That made a lot of sense to me. You’re looking at me like deer in headlights glazed over.
RV: (03:42)
No, I’m just, I’m not, I just, I’m this listening to you.
AJ: (03:46)
And I just thought that’s so true. And it’s actually what we did, not necessarily by choice, but it went from one thing to the next overnight. Yeah. It was very stark. It was very stark. And we’ve seen the benefits of how helpful that was to be still black and white. So stark. So from this to this. There’s nothing in the middle.
RV: (04:06)
And to this day, people call us, Hey, can you come do sales training? Nope. Sorry. Not interested. And we’re really not genuinely not interested
AJ: (04:16)
And it’s actually very liberating to be able to go, that’s not who I am anymore.
RV: (04:21)
That’s a great word. It is. It is liberating. Yeah.
AJ: (04:25)
And the freedom that it like it gives me inside to go, I don’t do that anymore. And I just, the clearness and the clarity of Nope, I’m making a pivot. That’s not what I do and I’m not going to confuse anyone in the process including myself.
RV: (04:42)
So to tie that together with, with one of my top things, which is, is very much connected to that, as he said, be known for one thing and be disciplined to only do that thing. And so what, what clicked for me was we talk about, you know, like a large percentage of the clients that we work with at brand builders group I would say are, are novice to intermediate. They’re kind of earlier in their journey and we take them through phase one, which is brand identification, but we’re getting, we get all these calls from like pretty well known celebrity type influencers that have been in the industry a long time because they’re not really in phase one. They’re, they’re really in, you know, we have four phases. They’re really in phase five they’re circling back around, they’re in reinvention and they’re having to get clear on what is my one thing for the next chapter.
RV: (05:30)
Like I’ve been this one thing and now I’m not. I know I’m not that thing anymore. I need help getting clear on what my, my next one thing is going to be. And it’s, it’s funny to see, like you can tell from the people who are more intermediate in their journey. You go, wow, this person really has a chance to succeed because they’re disciplined about sticking to one thing. And then the experienced people, you go, wow, they’re going to break through to even bigger level because they’re still, they’re still committed to that process of just, I am going to be known for this and I’m going to make sure that I shaped the world’s perception of, of, of me in this way. So that was a big one. That was a big one for me, which also tied to something that I know you want to talk about with the
AJ: (06:20)
Oh yeah, yeah. This was God. Can you believe it was four years crazy? Same election year. Oh Lord. Watch out. So yeah, so I thought this was really interesting and a lot of the concept was it’s not, it’s not that the best message wins always and it’s really not. Sometimes it’s the easiest message, the clearest message. But I loved the way he said it. It’s, it’s the message that’s easiest to memorize. And I was like, yeah. And here’s the analogy, and it doesn’t matter if your left, your right blue, red, whatever. The point is, there’s a really great analogy if you look back at the last election, really in the primaries before election Republican thing. But what was the message of Jeb Bush?
RV: (07:12)
I have no idea. I have no idea. And you know, and this is the United States election. We’re talking about the primaries from 2016 in the U S
AJ: (07:21)
Yeah. So, but what was Donald Trump’s campaign? Again? Nobody can deny that. They don’t know what that is. It’s great to get that thing. And I think that’s, it’s not that it was the best per se, but it was the clearest, it was the easiest to memorize, but more importantly, it was the one that you heard over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It was the one that was the most repeated. He had it on hats. He had it on tee shirts, he had it on bumper stickers. He had it all over Twitter. Of course, you know that he had it all over his messaging. It was everywhere. And that is what we have to do and is like, it doesn’t matter how good it is if no one hears it. And part of that is your job to share it. And that kind of ties in with a little bit of what I kind of, I’ve really picked up and it’s a little bit of a nuance here. And he said that he works with a ton of artists and one of the [inaudible]
RV: (08:18)
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Say that one. Cause you’re going to go into the promotion was
AJ: (08:21)
No, Oh no, I’m tagging this in. I know what I’m gonna say. And I thought this was really good because as he’s talking about, you’ve got to have the clearest message, the one that’s easiest to memorize, but you also gotta be the one who’s willing to repeat it the most. And he said, and there’s a real challenge with that with a lot of people in our space and to, what I was gonna say with artists is that he works with a lot of artists. And he said, and you know it’s not the most talented that always gets to be the most famous either. That’s not always what happens. He said the ones that are willing to work and hustle and promote and brand and get themselves out there and do it over and over and over again. As soon as he was talking, I was like, that’s bright. Kissell that’s one of my clients and his interview is in the influential personal brand summit. Yeah, dude. That dude was hustling from age 16 on, he was a salesman. He was selling his music and he said the real challenge though with a lot of artists types, this also could be entrepreneurs who are waiting around on investors or whatever. This is me. I struggle with what you’re about to say. You know what I’m going to say? Talked about it before because you never put someone on the air.
AJ: (09:32)
Sardine. Yes, but now he said it’s like, here’s the thing, there’s a real arrogance to people who are not willing to promote themselves and does that and it’s, it’s counterculture. Cause really you think, Oh, the people who are promoting themselves are all self-promotional and it’s me, me, me. And he said, no, there’s an equal amount of arrogance to the person who goes, you know what? I’m so good. I deserve to be found. My business idea is so good. I deserve that investment money. You know, I’m so talented, I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I should have somebody catering to me. I should have some body getting my stuff out there. I’ve got the talent.
RV: (10:09)
Yeah. It’s a form of indulgence and arrogance. People should find me and I don’t want to do the work of promoting.
AJ: (10:16)
Yeah. And I thought, let me know. And again, regardless of your political affiliation, I loved his, his kind of tying that into this you know, Jeb Bush, Trump thing. He goes, man, Trump was hustling and we all remember the message regardless of how you feel about the outcome. We all were member the message. And I just thought that was really good. In terms of are you willing to promote yourself? Are you willing to share your message and do it again? And again, and again, I loved it. I thought it was really solid.
RV: (10:46)
Yeah. I had never heard Donald say so directly as he did in the interview that that branding and marketing is an exercise in memorization. Like I, you know, I’ve heard him talk about clarity and being clear. I’ve, I’ve heard him talk about how to find, you know, like the way to tell your story of course, but just saying it’s really an exercise in saying the same thing over and over and over and over again. It’s not just clarity, it’s repetitiveness, it’s memorization. So that really hit me hard. It also is when we teach about titles, we have this thing called the five title tests and we talk about why most titles are terrible. And some of the mistakes that we’ve made around titles, one of the title tests is called the memorability test. And that half the battle is just being remembered. And if you look at take the stairs to take the stairs book, that book fails four of our five title tests, but it is a 1000% on the memorability test because people remember take the stairs, they see the escalator in the stairs and just they remembered it.
RV: (11:54)
And so that has always been such a mainstay part of you know, my personal brand journey. And that was just by dumb luck. But yeah, so I think memorization, that was a huge, huge takeaway for me is as well. My third takeaway, I’m just going to jump to it and then I’ll let you do yours, is they, he said this, he said, if your goal is to help someone make money, you will never have to worry about job security. What a great truth as so simple and profound that if you are just trying to help people make money, then you’re, you’ll never have to worry about a job. Like if you get good at helping other people succeed. And this it really, I think part of why it hit me as I’ve been working on our our workbook for our, we have phase three, we have our phase three event is called high traffic strategies and, and one of the, it’s like a lot of the more advanced strategy traffic strategies and one of them is affiliate marketing.
RV: (12:55)
And there’s this part in the phase three workbook where I say, look, you know that you’re doing affiliate marketing, right? When you wake up and you’re consumed with, how do I make my affiliates a whole bunch of massive passive mailbox money? I want it to be massive passive mailbox money. When you’re have that mindset, you’re going to attract a lot of affiliates and you’re going to make them a lot of money. And guess what happens is a byproduct. Like you’re probably gonna make some money out of that too. So if your affiliates are making money, you’re making, you’re making money, right? But it’s kind of like, how can I make this easy for them? How can I make this a no brainer for them and for their audience? Like what actually moves the needle and could make them real money. And when you lend yourself in a direction like that, not just with affiliate marketing mode, anything, right?
RV: (13:46)
You could be just an employee, an employee. I don’t, I don’t mean to say just an employee. I mean, you could be an employee, you could be a business owner, you could be a personal brand, you could be a corporate executive. You, you can be anybody in the world seeking to add value to anybody else. That’s a great life. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna make money. That’s the point. And I, I just, I love that. I’d never heard him say that again so clearly. Yeah. And there’s no just in front of anything. Yeah. I didn’t mean I’ve learned that hard lesson because I write with just, and almost every sentence, like just a minute or justice. I’m like, somebody wants to tell me there’s never a, just before anything. It is what it is. Thank you for calling me out and for making me feel completely inadequate in front of everybody. I know this is going to be as long as the interview I recap is a third one I really love. He said, and I think this is really relevant, what I’m going to bring this back. I said it’s so many of our clients and brand builders group are in that stage of making a pivot, right?
AJ: (14:52)
They were this and now they’re wanting to do this and it doesn’t matter if they’re going like so many of our people have these huge online social followings and they’ve been this huge digital influencer, but now it’s like they want to take that and they actually want to do something and make a more solidified message and write a book or be a speaker or create a product or they want to solidify all this stuff they’ve been saying into one unified message. And it goes from that or it goes from the person who just exited their business or just exited a job and now they want to work on this next phase of their life. Or we have actually a ton of people who have been a full time mommy’s, which is a full time job. So five jobs, like I used to say, say, Oh mom.
AJ: (15:33)
I’m like, no. Like what? What? Yeah, you’re at home, but you’re not studying there. You’re, you’re on the, I’m exhausted the days I’m home with my kids anyways, but they go from like, they’ve been a full time mom and he’s two now. They’re doing a side hustle. And it’s like, how do I make this pivot? And I just, I love this. He said, anytime you make a pivot, any, any process of reinvention is going to come with a fair share of haters. And it’s just to be expected. And he said, but you will lose some, but you will gain more. I said, you will lose some in this pivot. People are going to be mad that you’re doing this. They’re going to hate on you for doing this because they haven’t, or they can’t, or they think they can’t. He said, you’re gonna have some haters.
AJ: (16:19)
And he gave this really unique example that was really personal as something that happened online with him here recently when he left this, you know, Christian focused wife see this business strategy life. And and he, he gave this biblical reference of, you know, as we all know, Jesus, you know, one of the parables in the Bible is the story of turning the other cheek. And there was something in the way that he said that, that just immediately I made me remember the sermon at church. Here in Nashville. We go to cross point major props to Kevin queen. He did this amazing sermon series. Maybe it was last year, I don’t remember, but I remember the message and actually, no, it wasn’t. It was no, it was Chris Nichols. It was Chris Nichols cause it was a Martin Luther King holiday. So the whole point of this is he’s a, people get this whole parable of turn the other cheek, very confused in the Bible. He said, because back in Jewish times and in a way for you to turn your cheek this way, and I may get the directions mixed up, not my strong suit, but you would have to have smacked somebody with the left hand
RV: (17:42)
If somebody was going to smack you in those times. They would have backhanded you so they would, they would have hit you up from your right to left. But anyways, turn the other cheek meant punch me directly. No,
AJ: (17:55)
There was a whole nother connotation to that. And how I remember it, he said there was one thing because in order to do that is that you wouldn’t have been able to like do like this. You would have had to do it like this. He said an if to go with your left hand. He said that was a hand in which everyone wiped with because I didn’t have toilet paper back then and he said there was a, there was a sign of like just the absolute disgrace and nobody would have done that. And he said, so to turn the other cheek says, no, you’re going to have to use your other hand and you’re going to have to treat me with the equal respect that I deserve. And he said there was a connotation in the, not just the direction but the actual hand that you were using and this idea of turning the other cheek. It isn’t a fight back, but it also isn’t a cower down and just be belittled. It’s not that you just stay in there and take it and you don’t stand up for yourself, but you do it in a way that has kindness. You do it in a way that says, I’m not going to stand for this, but I’m also not going to attack you back.
RV: (18:52)
No, it was different. It was an act of defiance. It wasn’t an act of acquiescing. It’s not retaliating, but it’s saying, if you’re going to hit me, hit me like a man. Like I’m not beneath you. If you’re gonna hit me, you’re gonna hit me like you’re eating.
AJ: (19:06)
That’s right. And I thought that was really good because the way that he shared their response on social media just immediately made me think about that. He said, it’s not that you don’t respond, it’s just you don’t respond with the equal intensity and hatred in what you’re receiving. And he said, no, at some point, feel free to take it down. He said, but it’s not that you just let the haters go and you don’t, you don’t argue it. And he said, you’ll just let it go and ignore it. And he said, Ben, at the same time, you don’t have to do it with the intensity and hatred that’s out there. He said, because it’s just part of life. You’re going to have haters. People aren’t gonna like you. They’re not going to like what you do and what you have to say. And if you work this and you’re going do this, people are going to not like that.
AJ: (19:47)
Or they’re going to be jealous or confused or whatever they are. And that’s just part of it. But those people will fall off and you will gain more. You will take who the key part of who you had and you will add on to it. So don’t be afraid to make that pivot. Don’t be afraid to make the change and don’t, don’t be afraid of the haters. Just stand your ground and be rooted in your message. Which is why something that we promote at brand builders all the time is it’s like you have to have a message that you are willing to go to the grave with and that no one can tarnish that message because of what they think. It’s your truth. It has to be your truth. And if it is, then let the haters come. Yup.
RV: (20:30)
Standard ground be or be clear, be direct, be disciplined repeated often. Just powerful, powerful stuff on, on like the way of being, of being a, of a, of a big, a big personal brand. So thank you for that Donald Miller. Totally inspired us and hopefully inspired all of you. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 48: Orchestrating a Career Pivot by Owning The New You with Donald Miller
RV: (00:01)
Donald Miller is someone that I have grown to respect a tremendous, tremendous amount. I feel lucky to have been able to see StoryBrand in terms of the framework and develop as he started building the company. And I was honored to give him an endorsement. We did the Book Launch Party at our house. And I absolutely love the elegance of what him and his team have done with StoryBrand and the SB seven framework. Now, if you’re not familiar with StoryBrand every year about 3000 business leaders go through StoryBrand and various forms, really their workshop and they help people clarify their brand message companies and individuals alike. But dawn is a New York Times best selling author of several books. So Blue Light, jazz, scary, close, a million miles in a thousand years. And then building a StoryBrand is his most recent book, which was a number one Wall Street Journal Bestseller. And so he’s just incredible business guy, incredible man of faith.
RV: (01:06)
I’ve gotten to know him a little bit more personally over the last few years. We’re going to be neighbors year within a couple months. And it’s just just so excited to have him and make sure you guys get a chance to, to see a little bit behind the scenes of Donald Miller. So, Donald, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me Roy. So one of the things that I wanted to take a little bit of you know, just friend, a liberal friend I guess privilege that maybe you don’t always get to talk about that I thought would be interesting is this hardcore pivot. Cause I do want to talk about StoryBrand cause it’s super applicable for everybody watching. But behind the scenes is something that I don’t know that everyone is aware of is you made a massive pivot. I w what I would consider a fairly massive pivot.
RV: (01:54)
I mean you had sold millions of copies as, as you know, writing Christian memoirs and being really big in that space and then you pivoted and then have built an equally, if not, I mean I don’t know how you would measure it, but to a huge presence very quickly in the business nonfiction space with StoryBrand. And certainly, you know, a large business. I think a larger business enterprise was with StoryBrand. And that reinvention to me is really interesting. And it’s something that people don’t talk a lot about. And, and in my mind, I don’t know this for sure, so I just wanna kind of like hear your thoughts on it, but I have to think that, you know, maybe there were some haters, right? Like maybe there were some people who were upset that you kind of like went from the Christian world to like the business world. And maybe there were people who were super supportive and some people followed you and some people lost. But like, I just want to hear a little bit of your journey and your philosophy about how to do that. Cause I think a lot of people watching this, they’ve been doing something and now they’re pivoting to their, you know, personal brand and, you know, so you mind sharing a little bit about that? Yeah, I will.
DM: (03:00)
You’re right, there were some haters at the beginning. You know, I, I built a reputation and based on books, based on who I really was. I wrote memoirs and my memoir voice is really sort of this stumbling through life and discovering deep truths and then kind of sharing them and applying them and that sort of thing. And probably heavy emphasis on the stumbling through life part. But the reality is, as you know, Rory you know, if you sell millions of books and you, and you have some success, you’re not really stumbling through life. You’ve actually, you’ve gotten some discipline there and some good work habits and you know, a little bit about branding and you show up when they’re supposed to speak. And so I meet a lot of artists who they want to kind of be this, this true artists where all they do is create art and they’re desperate for people.
DM: (03:49)
They want people to discover them, but they don’t want to look desperate for people to discover them. And those kinds of things, those brands tend to fail. The brands that tend to succeed are artists who act like that, but in reality, they’re really good business people. They know how to negotiate a deal. They show up on time. They, you know, they, they play a role that is truly them, but they, but they hide the rest. And so, you know, if you think about Taylor swift and you know, she’s singing about, you know, her boyfriend broke up with her and you know, she’s going to get him back when, when her real life is about private jets and, you know, dating supermodels and sharp like, and from everything I’ve heard so many sharp and generous and all that kind of stuff. So you know, so you have to understand that as an artist that I have, I have friends who do both.
DM: (04:42)
They’re the true artists but they won’t promote themselves cause they want. And if you really think about that, there’s a little bit of arrogance to that, that I am so great that I don’t need to go out and tell people who I am. That almost never succeeds. Wow. what succeeds is really you know, I really liked my stuff. I hope you like it too. And I’m not going to stop promoting it until I’m heard because it’s a really, it’s a really noisy world. That honest truth out there, that humble work ethic is Chris Martin of Coldplay. You know, Mick Jagger and the rolling stones that, you know, it’s just, you got to see it as a job. So if you really want to build a personal brand, you can’t wait for the world to come to you. You can’t throw a message in a bottle and hope that people get it.
DM: (05:26)
You have to actually get in a boat and go to the other shore and start handing out business cards. Now at some point that there’s the, the returns come in were enough people. You’ve created such momentum that you, you have to do that a little bit less. But in my opinion, in my council, I would never stop. I would keep going. So, you know, there’s a lot of hustle involved in building a personal brand. For me, you know, being a Christian memoirist, you know, I worked hard building that and, and the reality is that before I ever wrote my first book, I was president of a company. So I knew about business, I understood it. I didn’t write about it. Some people didn’t know that I understood it, but I did understand it. And then even running my own personal speaking and writing business, you’re running a business.
DM: (06:10)
And so when I started pivoting into how to create messages and and build your business both with a clear message, all that was completely natural to me and it just seemed like the obvious next step. But on the outside looking in people, that was a huge chasm. So there was a big difference between what I was experiencing, what other people were experiencing. But you know, I noticed something whenever you’re driving in traffic and you, you kinda change lanes into the faster lane, you sometimes get people honking at you and they shoot the finger or whatever and people like you to stay in your lane. And so I experienced the kind of like go, well, we, we missed the don who wrote these books. You know, we kind of missed the lovable loser and and, you know, I, I, that just wasn’t who I was anymore.
DM: (07:01)
That was, that was not a big part of my personality. So in order to be myself, I had to change lanes, but I was smart enough to know, you know, they only honk for a minute and then they go away and they accept you in the lane that you’re in. And a lot of people stay in their lane for all of life because one guy’s going to honk at them when they could really be moving much faster through life. So because they’re a little bit conflict avoidant, they don’t let you know it’s important. Sometimes all of us have probably run into an old friend who we haven’t seen in 15 years and they tease us about something that we’ve already conquered and overcome. And sometimes it’s important to sit them down and say, Hey, oh, you need to know that’s not who I am anymore. And I changed.
DM: (07:46)
You know, let’s say you’re married and you’ve got an old friend that used to run around with and go to bars and they want you to be that old friend. And it’s important to sit them down and say, hey, I made a sacrifice and I’m a different person now and this is who I am. And I live in the joy of that sacrifice every day. And so, you know, you have to actually explain to people you’re different and a lot of people in order to not create conflict will play their old role for the rest of their lives when and they never allow themselves to actually change.
RV: (08:17)
So do you think a graph that is so powerful, I love the part about like people will stay in their line cause one person is honking that it’s ridiculous. So true is to make that kind of reinvention. The other thing that I heard, which was interesting there was about that you weren’t, it wasn’t like you said, oh I’m going to create a new endeavor cause I need to make more money. It was more of like this is who I really am now and I’ve changed the years and I just need to be that person. So That’s interesting. But now when you come out, like with this whole new persona and brand, do you think the way to make a pivot like that, is it gradual or is it emphatic and flamboyant and do you, do you try to sort of coddle your old audience or do you just kind of go one day you wake up and boom, like this is who I am and you just start being that person and whoever comes along comes along like, you know, I have, we have clients that are like, you know, they’ve been a fitness personality and that’s who they were in their twenties but now they are like, you know, this woman who runs all of these multimillion dollar enterprises and businesses and they need to pivot.
RV: (09:23)
But it’s like some people still think of them as like the Bikini model and those are the posts that she gets a lot of engagement on. But it’s like, it’s not who she is anymore. Do you think you just make the hard turn or do you
DM: (09:35)
I do. I think you can do it both ways. My, my personality is leave the past behind and create a new brand. And so being true to my personality, I’m very comfortable with, with, you know, repeating, this is who I am now. This is who I am now. There’s alumni and I think you’d be surprised. It, it takes about three years of telling people who you are before they even forget who you used to be. And so, you know, I still have people, it took about three years. People still come up sometimes and say, I love your old books and but your new books are really changing my life. It took a long time for them to step me as a business kind of personality and but that at the same time, that’s who I was. And so I felt it felt completely genuine.
DM: (10:19)
And you know, I, I also think people love and respond to your energy and your competence of saying, this is who I am. Now, you know, this just happened recently with a friend of mine. His wife, actually Kyle Reed are graphic artists here in house. His wife is a, is a yoga instructor and I think she still a yoga instructor, but she fell in love with photography. She started taking very good pictures. Her name is Mandy, Mandy Reed. And you can follow her at Mandy. Read photography on Instagram. Her, her photography is excellent, very good. And somebody on staff recently said, Oh, you know, we should hire Mandy for that. She’s a photographer because her Instagram is Mandy read photography and she’s showing all her photography. And Kyle just turned to me and said, isn’t that amazing? She changed her brand in one year from Yoga instruction to photography. And the reason is she said, Mandy, read photography, not Mandy read Yoga. And I also have the hobby of doing photographs. Right. and she started submitting her photos on Instagram and showing people her work. And even I was like, oh my gosh. Wow, that happened quick. Cause I only think of her as a photographer. So you’re actually programming people’s minds. And I think if you do that passively or slowly you are not programming very hard.
RV: (11:39)
Yeah. So that kind of leads us, I think, to what you do at StoryBrand. And I think we’re huge fans of it. I think a lot of people here, I mean, you know, have the book, have read the book or follow the podcast in of applying StoryBrand
DM: (11:54)
To the personal brand. And maybe, you know, there’s probably a lot of people who still aren’t yet some million with it. What, what do you think StoryBrand, like the SB seven framework, what do you think that is? Like if you had to explain this is what it is and what problem does that solve specifically for people with personal brands, do you think? Well, the StoryBrand framework is a message clarification framework. So, you know, we all have to, you know, if you’ve ever branded a cow a, and I have once a buddy of mine took me out to his ranch and I, you lay across the back of that calf and you’d punch it with the brand and they actually don’t feel pain to the degree that you and I feel pain. So they kind of were like, Hey, what’s going on? Which was kind of weird.
DM: (12:39)
Oh well that’s good to know. It’s very good to know. And but you know, if you took that, that ranches brand and you branded that, that calf and then you took a different ranchers brand, you bring to that calf, you took a different one, you brand it over the top of that and another one over the top of that. You’d have an irreconcilable brand before long. And the reality is people in their mind are going to categorize you. They’re just going to do it. And you have got to you’ve got to control how you’re thought of. And the way that you do that is you come up with a very simple message and you repeat it over and over and over and over and over again. You brand and bring just like a cattle brand, it has to be fixed. It has to be the same language.
DM: (13:24)
You have to repeat it and you have to brand yourself in somebody’s mind. So your friend who was the bikini model, who’s become the business guru, you know, she, she needs to be known as the business expert who came out of the fitness world. And she needs to say that over and over. But people will think of her as a business expert and, and then they can make that bridge from, and as you know, you say that to somebody three times and that’s they finally just think of you as a business expert. So I think I don’t think moving passively serves us at all. The actual StoryBrand framework is based on 2000 years plus of, of, of, of screenwriting and well, it’s a hundred years of screenwriting, but storytelling ever since the days of of really Aristotle who wrote a book called poetics, it’s just an old, old formula that we have shaped and adapted for businesses and they give you, it gives you seven different categories the brain responds to so that you leave with seven messages that you repeat over and over and you begin to make an enormous amount of sense to people.
DM: (14:30)
And it’s, the stakes are very high. You know, I’ve gone around the country asking, what did Jeb Bush want to do with America when he ran for president? And nobody knows. But if I ask what a Donald Trump want to do, everybody knows that’s branding. So did the best candidate win. You know, that’s, that’s up for debate. But the best branding age of the best person on messaging did win. And it’s, they almost always win.
RV: (14:54)
Well, nothing that I, one of the things that I took from you and this a great example is it’s not even necessarily the best branding. That one, it was the clearest, most consistent. It was the most repeated. Make America great again over and over and over and over and over again.
DM: (15:13)
What you’re doing when you’re doing marketing and branding, the exercise really is a, an exercise in memorization. You are trying to guide people through an exercise and memorization so they memorize what you have to offer.
RV: (15:26)
Yeah, that’s so wild. You know, we, we often share the story about the success of take the stairs and then the failure of procrastinating on purpose. Our second book and one of the simple differences is just take the stairs is so was so memorable. People see stairs and escalator and they would think about it and procrastinate on purpose, just needed explanation. And it was like, what does that mean? And don’t really know how to explain it. That in is so clarifying it just what marketing is in general I think is, is, is memorization.
DM: (15:57)
Yup. That’s what it is. Yeah. And you know what’s interesting is something like I’m procrastinating on purpose. It’s pretty easy to memorize, but it’s actually confusing to know what it is, where take the stairs is obvious. You’re going to use more effort. You’re going to, you’re going to do things, you’re going to hustle, you’re going to have a strong work ethic. You know, it’s all kind of implied. But you know, you’ve done a great job in your pivot and it’s not much of a pivot. You’ve gone from sort of sales coaching to personal branding. But I already think of you in this, this time you’ve been doing this as the guy to go to. If anybody needs a personal branding coach or needs help with personal branding and really, you know, you’re an ex, you’ve done an excellent job of just saying Rory Vaden, personal branding, Rory Vaden, personal brand new work, and personally because you want to lock people in. Right?
RV: (16:45)
Yeah. Well, and in our case it was, you know, it’s interesting because like there are certain things we couldn’t teach, we can’t teach anymore for a while. And so it’s like we had to make that pivot, but I also danced, I think I was doing one of the mistakes of like, well, I want to do reputation, which is like kind of personal development and kind of, and I think that that is a thing that’s like, one of the mistakes that we probably make is we try to like straddle the line of two things and it’s unclear. It’s, it’s unmemorable, it’s it. And, and, and like you said, it’s just like going all in and just saying, this is who I am and everybody knows, and over and over and over again. Right, right. So I want to ask you something else related to marketing, which I think is really, again, more of a behind the scenes thing, but the, the, if you guys the SB seven framework, like if you haven’t read the book, Go get the book, go to the workshop, like don’t be silly.
RV: (17:41)
This is, this is the best thing you can do for clarifying your, your messaging and like the, what I think of StoryBrand is helping you find the words you need to describe what you do. And it is such a practical application. So you know more on that to come you know, by following don, which, you know, we’ll talk about that in a minute. But behind the scenes, one of the things that I love about StoryBrand is you guys do a lot of the digital marketing, online marketing info, marketing sort of principles and tactics, things like lead magnets and funnels and email marketing and social and webinars and free downloads and sales pages. But yet there’s somehow, when you guys do it, it doesn’t feel slimy at all. It doesn’t feel manipulative at all. Like, it doesn’t feel cheesy. It just feels elegant and clear and direct. How do you do that? And, and, and it’s been a really good case study because it shows you that you can do those things, which are really powerful, really powerful psychologically without cheapening the brand in any way. So I, I’d love to just Kinda hear some of your philosophy about how you think you’ve been able to do that.
DM: (19:01)
Well, I, I wish I had a formula for it. I, I think part of it is you know, it’s, it’s never been a thing with us in our, in our shop to try to trick anybody into doing anything. And, you know, I just spoke at a big conference about 2100 people in Las Vegas paid about 10 grand each to be there. I mean, you know, and they the thing that I got after I left the stage was, well, you were the only speaker who didn’t try to upsell us anything. And it was, it just never would have occurred to me to try to upsell you anything. Right, right. Because I’m there. You’ve already paid an enormous amount of money and, and so we really don’t try to upsell anything. I think that’s part of it. And then I think genuinely when we create something we are trying to help you solve a problem.
DM: (19:52)
And I think when you go into it saying, how can I help this person solve a problem rather than how can I help? How can I get this person to buy my product? The tone changes. Now there, there is a product involved. I mean, we want you to come to a workshop, we want you to do these things. But I, I think the tone changes and you get to kind of keep your reputation. And so I think, you know, Roy, the reality is, you know, we could probably be 50% bigger and be making 50% more money. It’s just not who we are. And, you know, we, we, we we really just want to help everybody win whether they pay us or not. Now we’ve got, you know, I’ve got a staff, 20 people, we got bills to pay, we’ve got, you know a lot of bill is six, $600,000 a month we have to come up with in order to keep the shop open.
DM: (20:44)
So, you know, I have to sell something. And and so but but at the same time, I think part of that is isn’t so much a strategy or tactic. It’s really a state of your heart. And, and I’ve always said, especially in business to business, if your goal is to help somebody else make money, you will never suffer for job security. I mean, you’re always going to have it [inaudible] because you know, other people are trying to figure out how to do this and you can help them do it. So yeah, I think that’s part of it. And then the other part of it is, you know, the people that I hire are just they’re great content creators, but they’re not sort of slick at tricking anybody into doing anything. And that’s actually been sometimes a point of contention where it’s like, Hey, wait a second.
DM: (21:32)
You know, we, I, we did this thing called business made simple daily. So you’ve got a business made simple.com you can get me giving you a piece of business advice every day, right? We’ve done that. I think we’d launched it three months ago. Maybe we have 43,000 people getting a daily email from me with a video. Wow. We realized really quickly sales were starting to trickle down, but we’ve had better, we have more leads than ever. And then we realize four, eight, none of the videos were selling anybody anything. There was no comments, no commercial applications at all. So this is completely unsustainable. I mean, we will, we will literally, the generosity of this offer will put us out of business. So we actually are now coming along and every second or third one and we say, hey, by the way, you know, we do a workshop, we’d love to have you. And and you know, sometimes you can take what you’re complementing me for too far.
RV: (22:24)
Yeah. Well that’s right. Like every strength is a weakness. But I that’s right. I love and want to highlight, you know, and make sure it’s a salient point for people of what you said, like don’t have to be as a snake oil salesman. No. Well, and it’s like your goal is to solve a problem not to sell them something. And even though the way to solve that problem may involve a purchase, the mindset, you know what it is to the finish line is different. If my goal is to sell you something, it stops when the sale is made. But if my goal is
DM: (22:59)
[Inaudible] seen is you getting the money, that’s not the climactic scene. The climactic scene has to be them get solving their problem.
RV: (23:05)
Yeah. And that is a huge mindset shift and strategy shift and heart change. I love that. Okay, so one other last little thing here. And I know I’m not like asking you about all your normal content stuff, which it’s, yeah. So, but your business model is also something that is extremely clear, extremely simple. And this is another thing that a lot of the people that we help struggle with. So we take them through all these exercises called primary business model and figuring out what is their short term primary business model, what is their longterm primary business model? And we’re like really, really huge ongoing. What is the one way you’re gonna make money? Because one the things that I think people fall victim to in this space all the time is it’s video courses, it’s membership sites, it’s masterminds, it’s coaching, it’s one on one coaching, it’s consulting, it’s, it’s an agency. It’s you know, like our own events. Like there’s so many things that they’re doing and StoryBrand, you know, has built a massively successful business, particularly in the space of people doing things, you know, kind of around a personal brand. And you guys pretty much do like one main thing. Can you do it over and over and over? So can you explain what the one main thing is, how you got there and why don’t you do a thousand other things, even though you do do a couple other things?
DM: (24:28)
Yeah. Well, I learned from a guy who he had a $10 million consulting business and he consulted on six sigma, which is a framework and industrial framework of productivity framework. And he told me, you know, my father actually invented six sigma. And I said, wait a second, you have a $10 million company, but your father invented it, six sigma bills for over a billion dollars a year. Where’s the other 990 million that don, you won’t believe it. My father did not protect the IP, so his father never legally protected it. So other people started using it. Well, we created the StoryBrand frame or DSP seven framework and it is a, a, you know, it’s the six sigma of messaging. And, and I knew that there’s potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in this and, but if we kind of did this and we did this and we did this, I would never be able to grow that framework so that it was institutionalized in global business culture.
DM: (25:32)
So it was very important to only do one thing for a long time. And now we’re, we’re doing something we launched in November called business made simple university and business made simple university. We’ll have a finance track that Mike McCalla is, is going to help us with. Nancy Duarte. Hopefully it’s going to do something on speak, giving speeches. It’s basically it, you can develop your whole team and, and in finance and human resources will StoryBrand and the StoryBrand framework will become the marketing track of that. So it will, so the mother company will actually be business made simple and StoryBrand will be a subsidiary of that. But it took us a very long time to figure out how to do that without confusing people. And, and who knows? We may fail at that, but, but I don’t think we’re going to and, and so, but it was, it was four to five years of, of people saying, well, can you do my website?
DM: (26:27)
No, we don’t do that. Can you do this? No, we don’t do that. We literally teach these the seven part framework and an online workshop and a live workshop. And then we can send facilitators you to teach it. And that’s gotten us to where we are. We’ve got a 12 or $13 million company only selling one in three different deliverables. And then, but that’s what works for about 3000 companies a year. They clarify their message and their, their company grows, you know, and I learn, here’s a great lesson for you and all your audience. I had a manager one, she was really amazing. He was, he, and he’s still a very close friend. And any speaking offer that I got for about $5,000, he would, he would accept and I’d be getting on planes going around speaking $5,000 is not a small amount of money.
DM: (27:11)
I mean, that’s, that pays my mortgage for a few months. And but I noticed that I was on planes all the time and I couldn’t get another book written. And because I couldn’t get another book written, the tail end of my career was coming in closer and closer and the longevity of my career was done. So I finally had to sit down and say, hey, let’s not chase five grand anymore. Let’s chase 25 grand. Let’s do less opportunities and let’s, let’s, you know, be more disciplined about what we’re doing. That was a huge moment for me in my career because I could speak less and make the same amount of money and still write a book. I think when it w where that overlaps is, you know, you’ve got to pick your lane, I’m going to be an expert in this and then there’s going to be this opportunity to go over here and make five grand being an expert in something else.
DM: (27:59)
Yeah. I would suggest that you don’t do it that, that you actually say, no, I’m only going to take money for this because I cannot be made. I cannot be known for too many things. I want to be known for this one thing and it’s, it’s, it’s tough for a minute, but if you can really carve in and be known for that, the longevity of your career is, it’s great and then you get to do what you want and you’re not always chasing money. And so to just be known for one thing and be disciplined and only do that.
RV: (28:33)
Yeah. I, I think that that whole little shiny objects syndrome assistance, that dead downfall is, there’s a hundred ways. Some, there’s like, there’s like a thousand ways to make 20 grand. But there’s only a few ways to, to, you know, to make 13 million a year or whatever. And it’s, it’s like, well, it’s, it’s actually, it’s like, it could be any of those thousand ways, but it’s choosing one of them and just doing that one thing over and over and over. Like that’s how you get to the 13 million.
DM: (29:00)
And that’s what’s so interesting about when people come through the workshop, they’re working on their external message. How do I talk to customers? They ended up getting that. But what’s even more valuable as they leave having talked to themselves. Oh yeah, that’s what I do. And that’s why I matter. And then we would say, just like if you are writing a book and you’ve written some terrific books, you gotta leave everything else out. The, the key to a great writer is not what they say. It’s what they don’t say. MMM. And the same is true with our careers. And building our personal brands. You’ve got to discipline yourself to not present yourself in certain ways so that people can only remember. They’re only gonna remember what you’re actually [inaudible] say in a focused and way. And so you’ve got to come back and say, yeah, I used to be a swimsuit model. Now I’m a business expert. Now I’m a business expert. Now I’m a business expert now at business experts. So we, you know, we, we’d said if you confuse, you lose for five years. Now we repeat it every day. And we’re here to help you clarify your message. That’s kind of the one, two punch of our messaging and just like a brand on the back of a cow, we keep punching it and it’s paid off for us in the long run.
RV: (30:07)
I love it. I love it. Love it, love it. If you guys can’t tell already you need to be following Donald, do you need to go to the workshop like it is powerful, powerful stuff. The SB seven framework I think is going to be one of those things institutionalized here. You know, in business culture, if it’s not already, Donald, where do you want people to go? If they want to like check out the workshop like online or come and see you and, or you know, follow you, what’s the best place to check that out?
DM: (30:35)
I’d love everybody to just go to business made simple.com and you can get a daily coaching video from me. I actually put on a suit and a tie and we use a welded studio. I’m telling you, I show respect. I learned from Rory Vaden. You got to look good
RV: (30:48)
Now. I don’t wear suits anymore. I used to wear them every day and now I’m just like, okay,
DM: (30:52)
You still look better than me. I don’t know what it is.
RV: (30:54)
Well
DM: (30:55)
Yeah, go there. Go to business made simple.com. I’d love to send you a daily video for free.
RV: (31:00)
Yeah, check that. So check that out. We’ll put a link up to business made simple. Dawn, last little question. I think you know, if you have somebody out there watching right now, when they’re dealing with some haters, you know, they’re, they’re dealing with either people in their personal life or sometimes it’s like the random troll on Instagram that I’ve, you know, I’ve always been shocked in my life and how much that person used to get to me, you know, or a random review on Amazon or maybe its themselves, right? Like if there’s somebody that is just dealing with the voices of you can’t do this, you can’t be this person. Like you are better. The old Jew was better, you know, what, what would you kind of say to that person that is like on the precipice of leaving behind the old in search of something new. But it’s kind of like, you know, feeling the heat of the Naysayer.
DM: (31:49)
Yeah. Two things. One is people are going to be incredibly inspired and impressed with you if you are comfortable being yourself. And so you gotta ask yourself, who am I really and, and I’m I, and I’m not gonna apologize for that and I’m not going to disappear. And the second thing, and my batting average is about 300, which would get me into the hall of fame, but my batting average on turning the other cheek is about 300. So about 30% of the tough. I’m hoping to get that up to 40%. But to take somebody who has insulted you and show them love and kindness and forgiveness is, is literally one of the best things you can do for your personal brand because everybody walks away believing you’re the stronger person when you do it. And, and I know that’s a selfish motivation. We also really want to be kind to those people.
DM: (32:38)
But if you can get done you know, Jesus taught us that right? Turn the other cheek and if you can turn the other cheek, he get to sleep well at night. People think you’re the better person. It’s very hard not to seek vengeance or wanna throw a punch or say something snarky and but that’s, you know, yeah. You know, I just had somebody on Instagram recently actually deleted the post because I thought it was going too far, but somebody said something like, you know, we missed the old don, nobody needs another business guru. And if they made a little bit of an insulting comment by saying, you’ve really thrown away all the gifts that God has given you which basically says you’re ruining your life with the, with the way that you’ve taken things. And I just wrote back in a Kai, posted that on my Instagram and then put a comment that just said a look.
DM: (33:26)
You know, I wrote eight memoirs. I’m s the world does not need a ninth from Donald Miller. Since I’ve gone this route, I’ve lost almost 200 pounds. I’ve married the woman I love and I became a multimillionaire. And so I know you’ve got your wounds and I’ve got my wounds, but I think I’m, I’m turning out okay. And I mean, probably 600 comments, lighting that guy up. I finally deleted it cause I thought they were being a little mean to him, but just having an understanding. But if I would’ve said, hey, you’re a jerk, what an asshole. I probably wouldn’t have gotten any comments except for people defending him. Right. And so he was coming off as a bully and I need to come off as, as Fred Rogers. And that’s the best way to deal with that kind of stuff. If you can turn the other cheek, I think you’re going to be okay.
RV: (34:16)
Well, I love it. There’s a lot of discipline themes in your, in your message, like in, in the things you talk about turning the other cheek, choosing a business model, choosing a message like maybe that’s, maybe that’s part of how we’ve become friends is, you know, good old, take the stairs, like go take the stairs, classic discipline. Clearly you believe in it. Well, for whatever it’s worth, man, thank you for being yourself and for reinventing and forgiven SB seven because I think it has solved the real problem in the world of just helping people explain clearly what they do. And that enables the good people to be found, I think. And I think that makes a real big difference. So we wish you the very best. Donald Miller, author StoryBrand, CEO, founder of StoryBrand. Go check it out. Don, all the best.
DM: (35:06)
I love it, Rory. Thank you.
Ep 23: Understanding the Seasons of Business Models and Personal Brands with Michael Hyatt | Recap Episode
RV: Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting-edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue.
I’m your lead host, Rory Vaden, head founder of Brand Builders Group, Hall of Fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs. Welcome to the special recap addition of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
In just a minute, you’re going to hear myself and my wife and business partner, AJ, do a debrief, recap, and summary of our most recent interview with our big takeaways. But before we dive into that, I just wanted to let you know that people often ask us what is the first step to building a personal brand. If that is you or someone you know, then you have come to the right place, because we have put together for you a free video short course to help you get started. Just visit firststep.brandbuildersgroup.com to get access.
In it, we’re going to walk you through what exactly is the genesis of a personal brand and the six key questions that every personal brand must be able to answer but that almost none ever do. So go ahead and visit, again, firststep.brandbuildersgroup.com to get started, and we’ll see you there. Now, on with the recap.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:52] RV: Hey! Welcome to the special recap edition of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. This is Rory Vaden, joined by my wife and my beauty and my business partner, AJ Vaden. We’re breaking down the Michael Hyatt interview, which is just tremendous. To get a chance to learn from somebody with this depth of experience is absolutely extraordinary. We’ve talked about a lot of things author, but the first thing that jumped out to me was when he said that you need to be willing to let go of different revenue streams in order to grow one. That was somewhat a little bit maybe surprising to hear from Michael. I thought that was really key, because in our phase one experience we talk about what we call your PBM, your primary business model. We help people get clear, both in the short-term and the long-term. What is the number one revenue driver of your business? The one thing which all others should point towards? I don’t think most people know about it and most people certainly don’t do that. So it was edifying to me to hear Michael talk about that.
[00:02:58] AJV: Yeah. We call this our three and three, the top three tips that Rory got and the top three tips that I got. I think in conjunction with what you said in terms of you have to be willing to let things go, I think the very first thing that I got from Michael is the fact that you should treat every endeavor like an experiment. I love that because as you listen to the interview, which you should, it is chock-full of really important industry tips if you’re a speaker, author, podcaster, influencer, or whatever. But he’s done a lot.
[00:03:30] RV: A lot.
[00:03:30] AJV: He’s done live events. He’s done coaching. He has done online courses. He’s done physical products, speaking.
[00:03:36] RV: Keynotes, books, the planners. His number one thing is planners now, the physical planners.
[00:03:42] AJV: This is my turn.
[00:03:43] RV: Sorry.
[00:03:44] AJV: My turn. I loved what he talked about in terms of his approach, because he said, “Our team looks at this as we might do what we may not. It may make money. It may not. It may succeed. It may fail. But we’re going to treat every single one of these new business models as an experiment to figure out where should we land, what makes the most sense for my brand and what we want to be doing.” I love that, because having so many people go all in and be like, “This is what I have to do or this is the only thing,” and that’s not the case. Sometimes, you have to do something to realize it’s not your thing. I think a lot of us have to go through the pains of that, because you see what everyone else is doing, and we think you have to do it. Then when it doesn’t work, you think it just wasn’t meant to be. The truth is your message was meant to be the vehicle to share it. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be –
[00:04:36] RV: That’s a great way of saying it.
[00:04:38] AJV: I think that’s really important. So this whole idea of experimentation and experimenting was really powerful. Don’t get so attached to just thing. If that doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean your brand isn’t going to work. It just means that wasn’t that one tiny part of it, so now on to the next thing.
[00:04:55] RV: I love that. It could be the right message, the wrong vehicle, which is really great. So another thing that he talked about, you hear content is king, content is king. We definitely agree with that. I mean, you have to be putting out valuable content. But he said, content is king, but platform is queen.
[00:05:14] AJV: And you have to have both to rule the kingdom.
[00:05:16] RV: Yes. You have to have reach in the reputation formula. We say that reputation, results times reach equals reputation. Well, reach is the platform, and that word platform – I remember the first time that we were trying to get our very first book deal and the literary agent said, “We could never work with you. You don’t have a big enough platform.” I didn’t even understand what the term meant, but just think about it as your direct access. What is the vehicle that you have that directly accesses your audience and how many people can you directly get a message to that you are in control of getting a message to? That is your platform, and there’s a lot of different avenues for platform, but you have to have a platform. It’s got to be as big as possible, and it needs to be growing, growing, growing, growing, and you need to focus on your reach as much as you’re focusing on your content. That was a pro tip for sure.
[00:06:10] AJV: Yeah. I love that and I loved how he said it. It’s not one or the other. It’s both, and they rule together. But you have to have content and you have to have a platform, which is such a good segue into my second point. It’s almost like we planned this or actually talked about what we were going to say, which we did not. So my next one was is he talked a lot about the publishing industry, which from someone who is a CEO of a very successful publishing company –
[00:06:38] RV: Huge publisher.
[00:06:39] AJV: And then as an author, it’s really fascinating to get the internal and the external perspective from the same person who’s done both rules. He talked a lot about – He gets asked all the time. Should you traditionally publish? Should you self-publish? Now, you have all these hybrid models. What’s the best way? He talked about the traditional publishing path, the self-publishing path. They kind of have gone back and forth. What’s the best? What’s the best? They’ve really settled on, which is a lot of what we talked about, it depends on what you want to do it for.
[00:07:11] RV: Yeah.
[00:07:12] AJV: He still says, “If you still are trying to hit the list, the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. But if you’re trying to hit the list, a traditional commercial publisher is still probably the best way to go.
[00:07:24] RV: It’s the way to go.
[00:07:25] AJV: Here’s what I loved about what he said that most people don’t talk about when it comes to self-publishing. It’s a lot of work.
[00:07:33] RV: Tons.
[00:07:34] AJV: It’s expensive.
[00:07:36] RV: Especially if it’s not going to look like chintzy. If you’re going to do it right, it takes a lot of work.
[00:07:42] AJV: So I think one of the questions that we usually don’t propose to people but I’m going to start is, yeah, it totally depends on what you want to do it for. Is it to make money? Usually, when people say that, I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.” Is it for notoriety and credibility or do you actually just need to get your ideas out there and make money? Usually, that really – I propel that into commercial, traditional, or self-publish. But now, I’m going to add in another question, which is do you have a lot of money to spend on it? Because if you don’t, self-publishing probably isn’t the way to go. Or if that’s still what you want to do, you need to start saving those dollar bills.
But as you said, but if when you think about it from the time that it’s going to take you to write it, then you need to get an editor, then you actually have to have graphics design, and you actually have to have it printed, and then you have to have inventory, then you have to have distribution, it’s like, “Oh!”
[00:08:30] RV: Writing the book is like 25% of the whole project.
[00:08:34] AJV: That’s a lot of money. If you’re not a great writer and you actually need a ghostwriter, then you’ve got content editors, copy editors, graphics people. Then you’ve got the print and the layout and the inventory. It’s like, “Yeah. Those are things that most traditional publishing people were thinking.” Like, “Oh! I don’t want to go with a traditional publisher. They’re going to take all my money.” They don’t realize, well, so does self-publishing. It still takes all your money. It’s just are they going to take it in the beginning or over time?
I think that’s just a really interesting perspective and view that is completely separate of why do you want to do it. It’s the actual money behind it. It’s do you have the upfront investment to make it worthwhile or do you want to forego that upfront investment and then just make less long term? But it was really, really insightful from an insider.
[00:09:26] RV: Love that. Yeah, you can make money doing both models, but both models are also going to cost you money. So it’s just about like what do you need.
[00:09:33] AJV: Where are you going to give it up?
[00:09:34] RV: Over time as this question has come up, I have thought more and more. It’s like when you traditionally publish, it’s like the rule of thumb I use is when you feel confident you can sell 20,000 units. Like when you can move 20,000 units of your book, that’s when it’s like you can go to New York, get a great agent, get a great book deal. What do you need to do that? You need a platform. You need a big reach, which is what we were talking about.
How do you build a great platform? That leads to my third point, which is just creating amazing content that serves your audience. I wouldn’t say that this was an original idea from Michael Hyatt. It’s not original when you hear it from us. It’s not original when Jay Baer talks about it. But it’s important that you hear how consistent every bestselling author in every huge personal brand talks about this and what Michael said, which was super practical. Ask yourself every day, what does my audience need to learn? What does my audience need help with? Then answer that question for them and do it over and over and over and over.
That is the content strategy. There’s nothing more than that. You just have to do it consistently and as loudly and as many places as you can for as target of a niche as possible. Then hopefully, it’s aligned with what your primary business model is. But how can I serve my audience? How can I serve my audience? How can I serve my audience all day every day? Brand builder, that’s what you should be thinking about.
[00:10:58] AJV: All right. That leads to my third point, which actually has nothing to do with that. So completely separate of that but this was such a good reminder to me about perseverance and persistence. The reason it was such an aha isn’t just because he was a first-time author. But this was the CEO of a publishing house.
[00:11:18] RV: After he was the CEO.
[00:11:20] AJV: After. Again, my turn.
[00:11:23] RV: Hey! Sorry. Team, marriage. Marriage is a team, babe.
[00:11:28] AJV: But, yeah. This is so fascinating. I’m not going to get the number as exactly right. So I may be lowballing. I may be totally exaggerating. But it was something like when his first book, he was launching it. He got turned down like 24 times. So 24, 27 times. Y’all, this is somebody who had been turning down people for decades. That was like what he did was, “Nope, nope, nope.” He knew all of the other publishing houses. They all knew who he was, and he got turned down like 20 something times for his first book.
Then it went on to be a raging success, because his literary agent didn’t let him give up. They kept going. They finally got someone to agree that it was a good idea. Then it turned into a bestselling book with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. Now, that was interesting and inspiring enough. But then four books later, after he was already a New York Times bestselling book, after he already had a huge platform, after he had already done all of these amazing things and written three previous books, same thing. Got tuned down like 27 times, and it was like this last ditch effort to get this one book deal. Then it sold 200, 000 copies.
[00:12:46] RV: Boom!
[00:12:47] AJV: Just because some one weenie.
[00:12:50] RV: Person.
[00:12:51] AJV: Didn’t like your idea doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Just because one person said no one’s going to buy it doesn’t mean they’re right. Just because one person said you don’t have a big enough platform or that message isn’t exactly what people want to hear today or that book won’t sell or whatever nonsense people are saying, that means nothing. If you’re convicted in your message, then you need to stay the path. Do not veer from the path, because no one’s going to believe in it more than you do. So you’ve got to be the one that stand up and say, “No. This is going to happen.” Now, I just have to find the person to go on that journey with me.” It may take 20, 22, 25, 27, 29 times, but the point is somewhere amongst between 20 and 30, there’s a winner. You just got to find the right person who believes in your message as much as you do. It doesn’t always happen right off the bat. But it’s your job to persevere and to keep going, as if don’t get off the path.
I think that’s where most people fail is they give up too soon. They let one person dictate the validity of the power of their message and that’s not up to them. That’s up to you.
[00:14:04] RV: Yup. Many personal brands die on that road of patience and perseverance. It’s just follow through. Absolutely love it. So there you have. That’s our three and three recap from Michael Hyatt interview. Go listen to it.
[00:14:16] AJV: It’s really good.
[00:14:17] RV: It’s really phenomenal. Leave us a review. Share this with your friends, and we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. Thanks, everybody.
Here’s some great news. One of the most valuable things you can do to help us and other new potential listeners to find our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected]. We will give you free 30-day access to 25 of our most popular interviews on video in your own private members-only area. So go right now. Rate us, review us, and then send a screenshot of it to [email protected]. We’ll get you set up with free access to our most popular video interviews all in one place. Also, just please share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. Until next time, remember that building a business isn’t nearly as valuable as building a reputation.
Ep 22: Understanding the Seasons of Business Models and Personal Brands with Michael Hyatt
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock-solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue.
[0:00:27.2] RV: I’m your lead host Rory Vaden. Co-founder of Brand Builders Group, Hall of Fame speaker and New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs.
There are certain people in my life that I just feel honored to be associated with, just lucky to know. Michael Hyatt is certainly one of those people. I happened to speak at an event on a cruise ship and he was trapped there with me for six days and he couldn’t get away and I managed to get to know him and build a little relationship several years ago and I certainly consider him a mentor. If you haven’t heard of him, I don’t really know how you could be in the personal branding space and not know who he is.
But he is the former CEO of Thomas Nelson. He is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestselling author of several books, one of which was Platform which made a huge personal impact in me and my direction. He’s written several others, Living Forward, Your Best Year Ever, Free to Focus, most recently.
He is both a tremendous personal brand, but also a real leader. He scaled a company, a 250-million-dollar publishing company with 700 employees, that’s Thomas Nelson. The Michael Hyatt team, like their company, now is on the Inc. 5,000 list. He’s a real leader, real CEO, real businessman, also real family man, he’s been married for over 40 years to Gale who – she’s awesome so it’s understandable.
He’s got five amazing daughters, nine grandchildren and he volunteered to come help me out as a personal favor. It’s not easy to get his time these days, he’s so busy so Michael, thank you for the honor of being here, my friend.
[0:02:09.6] MH: Absolutely Rory, thank you for those kind words, amazing.
[0:02:13.2] RV: You know, if you say publishing, it’s hard to create a list of people that would be more experienced in all different angles than you and I think so many of the people watching, I mean, I think almost every one of our clients like a book enters into the conversation at some point and so my first question for you, I figured was an easy one. Can you just tell us the secret of writing a bestselling book?
[0:02:40.6] MH: Well, take about 80% luck, and you know, have the right idea at the right time. No, seriously, I think part of it can certainly enhance your chances of writing a bestselling book but I think the most important thing on writing a bestselling book or creating a platform or a brand that has significance in the world is having something important and helpful to say.
I think you know, Zig Ziglar said, you know, if you help enough people, then you can get what you want and I think it’s the same thing with writing a book. Just write the most helpful, useful book you can. Be authentic, be transparent, be encouraging and that’s basically all I’ve tried to do and I’ve tried to find a topic that was hot and something that I could with integrity speak out of my experience but that’s pretty much what I’ve done.
[0:03:28.0] RV: Talk to me a little bit about the – you have the platform, like that’s – a part of the factor here is you have like the integrity of the idea but then you have the size of the author’s platform. Which one matters more? Do they matter the same? Can you do it with – do you have to have both, one not the other? What’s the balance there between platform and you know, premise.
[0:03:50.5] MH: Yeah, the way I say it is that content is king but platform is queen. It really takes both of those together, you know, if you want to create a kingdom and rule well. The reason I wrote the book Platform initially was because for years, in the publishing business, I had bene on the publishing side of turning away authors with great ideas, sometimes even fully written manuscripts that were fantastic but because they didn’t have a platform, there was very little for us as a publishing company to leverage.
But, when an author came to us with a great idea, great content, and they had some platform, didn’t have to be best but they had to at least proof of concept that there was an audience that was buying into their content and their framework and to whatever it is that they were selling, that was something we could leverage and kind of take to the next level. I think they’re equally important
[0:04:43.2] RV: Do you think that traditional publishing like, you know, that’s kind of the question today is years ago, was like traditional publishing was the way to go and then self-publishing and now I feel like it kind of teeters kind of back and forth.
A lot of our clients ask this question. How do I know if I should use a traditional publisher, you know? Do I really need one? Should I self-publish? Like what’s your take on that in the current day era?
[0:05:05.3] MH: Well, my opinion has vacillated over the years. In the initial – I mean, I was in the publishing business for 35 years. Initially, there was only traditional publishing, then there was self-publishing or we, you know, call it in those days, vanity publishing, which is kind of pejorative but that’s how we looked at it and it wasn’t very well respected because the books looked terrible. They usually weren’t well written or well edited and you could just tell it’s a self-published book. All that changed, started changing about 10 years ago and so self-publishing got more sophisticated, there were these hybrid publishers that would help you do some of it.
Now you’ve got all kinds of options out there but I’ve kind of come full circle. Here’s my theory right now. If you want to write a book, just the credential yourself and there’s no better way to credential yourself or to get authority in a space than to write a book. I personally think, it’s more important than a PHD, it’s more important than tons of experience. If you have a published book, that, in this culture, that kind of says you’ve arrived and you’re an expert in your category. If that’s all you’re trying to do then I think self-publishing is fine.
It becomes kind of a glorified, very nice business card that could pave the way as you go out and try to do other things whether it’s booking speaking or writing additional books or whatever.
If on the other hand you want to take a run at the bestseller list, and if publishing books is not your primary thing, like let’s just say that you’re primarily a speaker or you’re a consultant or you got some other gig that’s the main thing, your main revenue model, then I would absolutely use a traditional publisher because self-publishing is a ton, and I mean a ton, of work.
Now, Michael Hyatt and Company today, we do one traditional publishing published book every year, so I write one book every year but then we also do a couple of self-published books just for our tribe. I can tell you from looking on the inside in, having to do it on myself, it’s a ton of work.
If I didn’t have the platform I do that I could sell to, man, it would be – I don’t know that it would be worth it.
[0:07:14.6] RV: That’s super insightful. On the business model question, that’s a good one, that’s another thing I wanted to ask you about is, of all my friends and colleagues, I think you’ve tried more business models than anyone. I think, you know, you’ve done live events, you’ve done speaking, you’ve done consulting, you’ve done coaching, you’ve had memberships, you’ve done video courses, you’ve done affiliate launches like you’ve done online summits like this.
Is there a favorite business model that you have or you know, I think a lot of people kind of, it’s like, “Oh masterminds is the thing,” or, “No, a membership is the thing.” Or, “Really, it should be video courses are where it’s at.” Can you just give us just maybe some of the highs and lows of each of those and maybe like the ones you like or maybe what were some of the most surprising things you learned from the various different business models that you’ve tried?
[0:08:06.5] MH: Well, you know, I never really thought of myself as having tried so many but you’re right. Frankly, a lot of them haven’t worked. So I’ve done stuff that’s worked and stuff that hasn’t worked but one of the things I’ve always tried to cultivate is sort of an experimental mindset. Whenever I approach anything, a business launch or whatever. I approach it as an experiment, you know, “Hey, let’s just try it and see if it works.”
One of my colossal failures is that after we launched Best Year Ever, Five Days to Your Best Year Ever, that was a huge success, we had like 35,000 people go through that course over five years and it was a big revenue engine for our company.
We said, “Hey, let’s create Best Year Ever for leaders.” Because we thought, leaders are going to eat this up. I literally recorded all the videos and they were killer, you know? I was even impressed with them. These were amazing. We built a beautiful sales page and so we got all the emails written, everything. We launched it and it was crickets, we literally on the first 24 hours after the launch, we had one order. I was pulling my hair out.
I said to my team, “What’s wrong with the tech? This has got to be a technological failure. There’s no way that we could just get one order. We could have come up with that if we had a strategy.” Sure enough, that was it, nobody wanted the course.
So we try stuff and the stuff that that works you hear about, the stuff that doesn’t work, you know, we don’t typically publicize that. You don’t hear about that, but I would say that one business model that I’ve had that I’ve believed in for a long time is multiple streams of income.
You know, whatever horse you’re on right now, eventually probably is going to – you’re going to reach a saturation point or you’re going to – you’re going to get all the low hanging fruit and then it’s going to get more expensive and more difficult and so we’ve just tried to be in a lot of different things, kind of all in the same vertical space now and the goal setting and productivity space. But part of the reason, I’m kid of rambling here, so stop me.
But one of the things we’ve realized is that kind of when the market’s zigging, we want to zag. We got into online courses I think pretty early, we certainly weren’t the first but we were among the first people that got in to online courses and that was huge. It was ginormous margins. Then all of a sudden, people started doing courses on courses. How to create courses and then everybody and their brother created online courses and the market was very dense, very saturated.
We said, “We think that people are desperate for live experiences that even though they’ve got all this virtual capability, people want to be face to face and have real human encounters.” So we started our live events and that went crazy. Then we created our paper planners, the Full Focus Planner. That thing is –
[0:10:59.1] RV: I forgot about that one, I didn’t mention. There was that one and then also, you had the book, like the box, you were shipping boxes for a while.
[0:11:06.2] MH: Yeah. The planner business is actually our biggest business, that’s like, you know, almost an eight figure business now, all by itself. And the cool thing about that is it doesn’t really depend so much on my brand so it’s kind of got some autonomy and independence but again, you know, everybody was saying – in fact, people still say to me on Facebook, they say “Hey, we’ve got digital cast management, we got digital counters, why do we need a paper planner?”
As it turns out, people are very distracted in the digital environment, the thing that paper planner does is give them focus. Again,just kind of multiple streams of income and how can we best serve our audience? What does our audience need and how can we best serve them?
[0:11:48.2] RV: Year, I love that experimental approach and you certainly have to be like willing to lose some money here and there in the spirit of learning it out, lose some hours.
[0:12:00.5] MH: I’ll tell you the other thing too, you have to be willing to kill stuff when it needs to die. I mean, in my view, everything has a season but I’ll tell you a funny story. We had all these brands, you know, Best Year Ever, Free to Focus, Full Focus Planner, Leaderbox, all this stuff. Last December, we’re all sitting in a strategic planning and we brought in outside consultant.
He asked us this question that ultimately rocked our world. He said, could you explain to me the customer journey? Where do people start with you and then what’s the first step? Where do they go from there and how they go all the way through your product suite?
We kind of all looked at each other and we said, “We don’t know. We don’t have a clue. Here’s some ways you can get into it but we don’t really know.” We went through an unbelievable 24 hour periods where we killed or sunsetted Best Year Ever and Free to Focus and said, “They’re too confusing,” and so we mapped out a customer journey but we had to be willing to – it’s kind of like cleaning your closet. If you want new clothes, sometimes the first thing you have to do is get rid of the old clothes.
We had to clear out the old to make room for the new and that I think as a business owner, a lot of times it takes courage because those were – represented multimillion dollar businesses but we also realized that we couldn’t go to the next level unless we’re willing to kind of retire those and make room for the new things.
[0:13:24.2] RV: Yeah, it’s like killing the sacred cows kind of a thing. That’s not easy, especially like you have so much invested into those to just kind of go, “Okay, we’re done with that, we’re going to move on.” Like, not an easy decision I can imagine.
[0:13:39.0] MH: It’s not and it’s – I think one of the values of having a team is you know having other smart people in the room and people with wisdom that can kind of check and keep me from doing frankly as a business owner, something impulsive, but we can kind of check one another and ask if that’s the course in that kind of scenario play it and make sure it’s going to work.
[0:14:00.7] RV: All right, I apologize for bouncing around on all these different topics, although I’m not really sorry –
[0:14:06.8] MH: Sorry, not sorry.
[0:14:08.3] RV: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is paid traffic versus organic traffic. You have built a huge platform and your community is so loyal. How much – should it be all organic? Is a real audience won that is built organic, you know? Is it paid, just like, “Hey, you got to pay the money to get in front of eye balls.” What’s the balance of paid versus organic?
[0:14:33.5] MH: If you had asked me about when Platform came out in 2012, if you’d asked me that question then, I would say, “I never pay for traffic.” Everything I had up until that point was organic. I built it from 2004 when I started to blog and I had about 100,000 unique visitors at that time on my blog and I thought, “You know, that’s enough,” you know?
It had a mailing list of about the same size of about 100,000, I thought that’s enough. Frankly, it would have been but in today’s environment, particularly when social media is really restricting the access that you get to for free, I don’t think it could be done without paid. Having said that, I think you got to have a very clear model of what you’re buying when you’re paying for traffic because I ultimately want to get them to the same place that I’m going to get organic traffic to and that is that I want it to be self-perpetuating, ongoing traffic that I can retain because they get exposed to the content and then they’re locked in because they enjoyed the content and feel like it’s helpful.
So, you know, I was telling you before we came on that last year, we spent about a million two on Facebook ads and believe me, we watched the return on investment like that, I wouldn’t be spending that kind of money if I wasn’t getting a huge return on that investment but it’s totally worth it. You just got to be smart about it.
[0:16:02.0] RV: Yeah, I feel like more and more, it’s like – it’s not necessarily the person with the best content that wins, but it’s the one with the most sophisticated systems of knowing what dollars they’re spending, what audiences they’re going after, what’s the lifetime, what are the conversions, the lifetime value of that customer. It’s interesting, one of my favorite interview questions I used to ask people was what is something you’ve changed your mind on recently and it seems like both this and the traditional self-publishing, it seems like you kind of have teetered a little bit so that’s interesting to see that perspective.
[0:16:36.1] MH: Yeah, I really believe in paid advertising now and just you know, to quickly kind of outline our strategy, I’m happy to share it. Typically, we run ads for free opt ins. You know, it’s usually an assessment or an ebook or a summit like this. Assessments have been very good for us because people seem to have unbelievable curiosity to find out more about themselves. It’s their favorite topic, right? We offer a lot of assessments and in those assessments, we typically try to convert them after the assessment to a webinar and a webinar is where I can begin to have a relationship with somebody but they get to kind of sample the brew. So for an hour on my webinars, I typically give them a good solid content and then I pivot. And it depends on the product. We are either pivoting trying to close to a discovery call like our high end coaching programs or actually trying to sell the product.
So we have done both of those very successfully. So that is how we think of paid advertising. We want to slowly escalate it where people get more involved with this after they tried that free thing and had a good experience.
[0:17:39.3] RV: Yeah and what would you consider, like on that kind of a thing, that kind of webinar, if it was a free call, what kind of percentages would somebody roughly estimate to go – if I am doing a good – if I have a great webinar and a good clear process for inviting a free call like 10%, 5%, 20%?
[0:17:59.9] MH: Yeah, I would say for us it usually runs – 10% would be on the low side especially for a free call but up to 35 sometimes 50%, but we usually offer something that we call a discovery call but people are wise to that. You know people don’t want to just call to get sold. So there has to be the promise of something else. So typically for us, I could tell you on our high end program business accelerator, which is like a coaching program, we do a discovery call there. But we invite them to take an assessment there.
We don’t usually use an assessment to get those people into the webinar but we use something called the Business Health Assessment. So we invite them to take the Business Health Assessment, get on the discovery call, and we will identify for them the three top priorities that as a business they need to focus on if they want to scale as rapidly as possible.
[0:18:48.4] RV: Got you, okay and then, you know if you are doing like a course, a thousand, two thousand dollars is more like if you can get five or 10% out of it then that’s pretty fine.
[0:18:56.4] MH: Yeah, totally.
[0:18:56.9] RV: Yeah, so on that note, again, this is like a bunch of pepper questions, automated webinars versus live webinars, is there a dramatic difference always to sometimes one you’d prefer more than the other?
[0:19:11.7] MH: I have done them both. I have to say that live webinars for us are always more effective and you know the biggest challenge today because there has been a proliferation of webinars too is to get for people to show up because the replays don’t convert like the live thing does even if it is on automated webinar. When they show up, they are much more likely to buy than if they’re just going to watch the replay. They have good intentions I mean I do it all the time myself.
You know to get somebody’s information, I sign up and then I get busy and I never go watch them. Yeah, I say you have to do both but I feel strongly about what am I about to say. I think you’ve got to be honest. I don’t think you have to trumpet the fact that it is an automated webinar, that it is not live, but I think you’ve got to be very careful with your language so that you don’t misrepresent it as live
And I remember several years ago, I stumbled upon some webinar software. I can mention the name but I won’t but that basically simulates a live webinar including feeding fake questions into the chat and to me that just lacks integrity and even if people don’t quite know what is going on they know something is off.
[0:20:23.5] RV: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that I agree a 100%. Do you think that a live webinar is going to covert twice as good as a recorded version of it or is it even less than that?
[0:20:35.3] MH: You know I don’t track that data in my role like I used to but all I can say is that I know it records – that it does better but here is the thing, there is no reason why you can’t do both. So do the live webinar and record it. Again, be careful with your language so that you are not implying that it is live. So when it is in the automated format, you don’t want to give the wrong impression but yeah, I mean that is what we do.
And a lot of times what we’ll do is that when we begin – like any kind of launch that we do, we’ll do live webinars for a week and I will typically do five, one day after another and – but we will also, and this is a good dress rehearsal for me, we’ll do the recorded one first and the great thing about that is putting in the recorded one in the can and having it almost perfect is then if there is a technical glitch in one of the live webinars, we’ve got that one that we can just shove in and run in its place and that’s happened to us before.
[0:21:31.9] RV: Oh wow that is interesting. Usually I only hear about the opposite like run it live several times and then take that but that is cool plus you get to have the practice run through with that like all of the live jitters and stuff. Okay, next one: email frequency. Too much versus too little. How much is too much and how little is too little? Is like the people that want to hear from you are going to stay tuned and you send them as much as you can? Do you have a thought on that? Has it changed over the years? I am very, very curious.
[0:22:08.0] MH: Let me just say I have overdone it. You know I have mailed way too much and of course, all the experts and I am not one, but all the experts would tell you that you can’t mail too much and the more you mail, the more people will buy, but I think at some point if you are not adding value I just think you got to listen to your audience and you’re going to get complacent. I mean if you mail it once a week there are going to be some people in your audience are going to think it’s too much, right?
[0:22:36.0] RV: That is a really good perspective. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you send like you are going to get complaints.
[0:22:42.0] MH: That is right but there is a point in which you reach critical mass where you are getting complaints from longtime customers and they saying, “Look, I love your stuff. I bought everything but you are killing me, you know, dial it back.” So I just subscribed to an email list about two weeks ago. The guy was literally mailing twice a day. Twice and sometimes three times a day and I just said, “Look, I love you but I don’t even see my kids three times a day” you know? So I don’t want to hear from you –
[0:23:10.8] RV: I’m sorry about all of those emails Michael. I didn’t realize there were three coming to you every day.
[0:23:18.1] MH: I just think if there is one guy that I never get tired of hearing from and maybe it is just me but it is Jeff Walker. Now Jeff mails a lot but he is so good with his copy that I almost always read them and I have never been tempted to unsubscribe but he is like the one exemption that probably proves the rule. You know unless you are super ninja copywriter, just be very careful
And I think one of the things that we’ve moved to in our business now is that we are sending out an email that has content that only appears in the newsletter but it is content driven not marketing driven and we feel like if we are adding value and I talk about this actually in my book Platform, I call it the 20 to one rule, which is pretty funny in retrospect because what I said is you got to make 20 deposits before you could make a withdrawal. Well today, I would probably say it is more like three to one. If you could make three deposits before you make an ask that is probably a good ratio but the point is you got to make more deposits than withdrawals otherwise, you over draw the account, does that make sense?
[0:24:21.8] RV: Yeah that is like the jab-jab-jab right hook, right? I guess that is like three to one but really it sounds like the rule is just listen to your audience and just respect the audience, listen, take their feedback. I mean that is another good one. That wasn’t on my list here to ask you but just like writing your own copy versus having someone else write your copy. When do you make that transition? How do you do that?
[0:24:48.6] MH: I think as a business owner or as a brand builder, you got to ask yourself what is the best and highest use of you? And so at the very beginning I did everything. You know, I wrote the sales pages, I edited the podcast, I posted it. I created all the content for the courses, everything, but at some point, I say, “Okay, what is the best and highest use of me?”
And in Free to Focus I talk about this being your desires on activities and the things that you are passionate about, things that you are particularly good at. So I don’t write any email copy. In fact this might be shocking but I don’t even review it today. What we have done is we trained a small group of writers to write in my voice, to kind of deconstruct how I speak. We literally have a written style guide on this, how I speak, things that I typically say, things I would never say, just the elements and style with regard to my voice and so yeah, where I spend my time these days is I am writing, every morning creating new content.
That is best and highest use of me. So at least for an hour a day I am writing 500 to 750 words a day and that becomes the pantry from which my team draws for all kinds of stuff, whether it be products or books or whatever.
[0:26:05.0] RV: How much do you read?
[0:26:07.0] MH: Less than I used to but still a fair amount. I read probably two or three books a month. The reason that I read less than I used to is because I listen to so many podcasts today and I find that unfortunately, this is the dirty little secret of publishing is that so many books should have been an essay and in order to give it enough bulk to be able to sell at retail they fill it up with a lot of filler.
And so the thing that I like about podcasts, not all podcasts, like some of the most popular podcast make me crazy because they take forever to get to the point. They just talk and talk and talk and they ramble and there is no takeaway but having said that, I generally can get out of a podcast content that really rocks my world much faster than I can most books. There is definitely some exemptions to that.
[0:27:00.2] RV: Okay, I know we are running up on our time here. I got one more question but before I do that, where should people go if they are not yet following you? If they want to follow you, htey want to catch up with Michael Hyatt and see how you’re doing, what you are doing in like the new era of the Michael Hyatt personal brand?
[0:27:18.6] MH: Yeah, well you can find everything at michaelhyatt.com. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you will find all of our other brands. So there is everything from our store there to the Full Focus Planner to the Business Accelerator Program, Leader Books which is our monthly book club for leaders. All of this stuff has links there and I would encourage people to listen to the podcast. That is still the thing that I think is the best effort that we make.
And in terms of branding and in terms of reach, I just think there is no return like what you get on the podcast and our podcast I do with my oldest daughter, Megan Hyatt-Miller who is our COO of our company and it is called Lead to Win. That is on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts but you can find the links on michaelhyatt.com.
[0:28:00.4] RV: Okay, so last one for you Michael. As you said, this is maybe going back to some of your earlier days certainly as a publisher, you had to turn down a lot of authors, you turned down a lot of dreamers. In recent years, it’s been more like you have been coaching them. And you have seen people trying to struggle and trying to battle the fight and then you comment to where today, it is like there is so much noise. There is a lot of competition in webinars and podcast and books and everything.
I think that there is a part of this these days that is just dealing with heartbreak and just dealing with some of that setback. What would be your advice is there is somebody out there that is just feeling like, “Oh my gosh, you know I can’t get a publisher. I can’t get an agent. No one is listening to my podcast. No one is reading my articles. No one is opening my emails.” What would you say to that person?
[0:28:50.5] MH: Congratulations, you’re normal. You know, I really think and I think this is important for people to hear. I think that’s in a way, God’s way of testing us to see if we are really committed to this thing that we said we are committed to. So my first book was rejected by 29 publishers before the 30th one said yes. I was ready to throw in the towel by my agent wouldn’t let me. My book Living Forward, which is about four books back was rejected by about the same number of publishers.
I already had a New York Times bestseller. I already had a huge platform and that book, nobody believed in it. Everybody rejected it. And now it’s gone on to sell about almost 200,000 copies. But nobody wanted to touch it for reasons I still don’t understand. I get that that gets discouraging and I almost gave up there too. I thought, “Geez, maybe there is a better use of my time, maybe God, the universe, whatever is trying to say something to me this isn’t the right timing or its the wrong message.”
And I think it is one of the most important books I have ever written, I am glad I persevered it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Gail cheering me on I think I would have given up but I think that’s normal. And I think – I have bad days every week where I want to quit, you know? And for some reason, I just keep chugging along and trying to believe the best of what is happening but it is just normal. Rejection, the world doesn’t owe me a living and the marketplace doesn’t owe me anything.
And so it is up to me to create enough value that people can see it and want to participate in it. So I think the best advice I’ve ever gotten, the thing that I try to practice when I get discouraged is forget about the platform, forget about trying to write a bestseller, forget about trying to be famous. How can I help my clients? What are their needs? How can I encourage them? How can I be useful to them? And if you do that consistently enough I really think it would come back.
[0:30:50.8] RV: Amen. There you have words of wisdom from one of the most experienced people in several different aspects and components of the space. Michael, thank you so much for making time for all of us and for putting out as much amazing content as you do. I mean, your team is amazing, your family. We love you, we believe in you and we are honored to know you.
[0:31:13.4] MH: Thanks Rory, I appreciate you and AJ too.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:31:15.8] RV: That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast but here is some great news, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us and other new potential listeners to find our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected].
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