Ep 496: Build Your Money Machine with Mel Abraham
RV (00:03):
Anytime we can talk about money and financial freedom and being more rich and abundant and helping you grow your business, it is a powerful conversation. And today is especially going to be that because we have my good friend Mel Abraham on the show. Mel and I have known each other for several years now, and he is one of the most genuine amazing nice individuals that I’ve ever met. And everybody who knows him in real life will say the same thing by trade though, he is a CPA and he is a deep, deep expert on, on the subject of all things money. He is a globally recognized thought leader. He shares the stages with shares the stage with 400 Fortune 500 companies. He speaks at some of the biggest public events in the world. He is friends with a lot of the most influential people in this space, and he understands online business, understands offline business. He’s also a cancer survivor, which was something that he endured like in and around the, the pandemic and went through some of his own financial, you know, kind of issues dealing with that. And he’s just an amazing, amazing, genuine human. So he understands our space and he understands specifically, you know, he’s an expert in, in finance and all things money. So, without further ado, Mel, welcome to the show, buddy.
MA (01:25):
Rory, it is so good to be here. Thank you for having me, man.
RV (01:29):
Man, I’m so excited about your new book. So, building Your Mon Build Your Money Machine, which I love the title, build Your Money Machine. This book is fantastic. It is. It has diagrams and tools and charts and tables. You do such a brilliant job of making it clear and simple, you know just helping people understand money. So I’m excited to talk to you. I I, I wanted to ask you, where did your whole journey start? Like, how did you get into money and like, what, what happened early? I know you, you talk in the book a little bit about some of your earliest, like money memories and how that impacted you and has really like, set the trajectory of your life. So I’d love to hear that.
MA (02:16):
Oh my God, thank you. So, yeah, I look, most of our money lessons are caught not taught. And, and I was no different. I, I remember my, one of my earliest money lessons was was seeing my dad cry for the first time. Now, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My dad came here at 17 years old with nothing. He came here to go to school and, and he fought to get here and built a life, you know, he was an engineer, you know, aerospace engineer. But in my life, I looked at him as this tower of power and everything. And here he was in tears for the first time that I’d ever seen him in tears. And I didn’t know the specifics. I just knew it had to do with money. It was my mom and him having a conversation.
MA (03:07):
And I hear my dad say, I just feel like I’m letting down and disappointing the people I love. And I, I, and that hit me. And I didn’t realize how much it hit me, but I ended up carrying this idea that if I don’t make enough money, you’re gonna disappoint the people you love. Hmm. And I’m, it, it became this, this chase for me, the, the challenge was obviously I was wrong,
MA (04:02):
And Jeremy, at six years old comes running in and says, daddy, daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And so I kneeled down to grab this picture and look at it, and there I am, and blue felt tip pen, a stick figure with two computer screens and a phone in each ear, and the one on the desk ringing. And that was a mirror into my soul. He, he in a moment looked at me and said, dad, you know, you, you may want the profits because it pays the bills, but I don’t want the profits. I just want your presence. And that’s, it was in that moment where I ki I kind of looked at things and said, how, how is it and is it possible for the dream to be an entrepreneur, the dream to, to build and impact lives, to coexist with the gift of being a parent, giving, being, being a dad.
MA (05:01):
Because I knew that no matter what my financial success was, if I screwed up and messed up the parenting part, then I was a, I failed. I failed. Mm-Hmm.
RV (05:46):
Yeah. I love that. Well, so, so let’s talk about that specifically in the context of entrepreneurs, because there’s a part of being an entrepreneur that is like, when, when I think of it financially, there’s like these different buckets, right? So first of all, it’s like I have to make a lot of money. Like I have to generate revenue. That’s a, that’s an important part of being an entrepreneur. Then there is I have to manage expenses and I need to not spend more than I’m making. Then there is whatever past I had, like the debt I came in with to being an entrepreneur in the first place. And so I have to like, resolve that. But then it’s like, I’m also planning, I also have to plan for the future, right? For like retirement. And, and then I have like my personal finances. So if, if I just think about like, the businesses, okay, we gotta make money.
RV (06:43):
We have to spend money wisely. We have to pay off debt that exists. We have to plan for the future, and then we have to like pay our expenses now. And like, it is freaking hard. Like just, just even saying that out loud is overwhelming. It’s going like, yeah, I do feel like I need to get back to work. Like to do those five things really well is incredibly difficult. And then you go, how do I do that in some reasonable amount of hours inside of a week where I can still be a present dad and, you know, mom and friend and not, not work all the time? ’cause It’s scary going, how the heck am I gonna do those five things? So where do you think is the, is the, is most often the first place to focus? So like you look at those buckets, there’s making money, they’re spending money wisely. There’s paying off the past planning for the future and then like, you know, managing our personal, our personal lives. If, if, if, if that’s sort of overwhelming to me, where do I start first or just, you know, in those various areas, what are some things that we can do to kind of get more control Yeah. Financially.
MA (07:53):
So before we get there, I think the first thing that we wanna make sure we have clarity on is our direction. And that’s why everything I think starts with life. What is that life vision? What do we want for the business? What do we, you know, are we trying to, like I look at the stage of, I, I’m at my desire is to impact people as much as possible and have as much reach. My desire isn’t to build this huge organization. And so, so we, we need to be clear that we’re running our race first, because the tendency, and I watched, I watched a dear friend of mine start hiring a bunch of people because everyone else around him was hiring a bunch of people, and he felt it was the thing to do. He was miserable until he skinnied it back down to a small team to do the things that he really wanted to do. And, and so, so I think the very first thing, whether it’s in the personal or the business, is to ask ourselves, what’s my race look like? What’s my finish line look like? Where am I trying to go and why am I trying to get there? Mm-Hmm. Because then we allow that. So that will inform the plan. The vision will inform the plan. The plan will determine the strategy. The strategy will dictate the tactics. And then there.
RV (09:09):
That’s so good. That’s so good too. Because like, if you don’t, if you don’t do that, you literally, you scroll on social media and you see Lamborghinis and Ferrari’s and private jets, and you’re like, oh, my whole life needs to be about this. And then one day you wake up, you go, I don’t even care about that crap. Like, I don’t want five houses, five houses sounds like a fricking nightmare to me. Like all the, all, you know, mowing five yards and cleaning, having five, even if you’re not doing any of it, it’s like managing the contractors. It’s like, what a nightmare. But yet, if you don’t do this deliberately, you get like swallowed up into this current, like this, this mainstream current of like, more is better, bigger is better, nicer house, nicer car, bigger, nicer vacation. And, and you’re like consumed chasing something you literally don’t even want.
MA (10:01):
It’s, it’s so true. Patrick Beda, I saw an interview with him and he made a comment, he said, when we were growing up, and he grew up not far from, from where I grew up. And he says, when we were growing up, we would see a kid with a new bike. And that became our comparison set where we’re looking at new bike, I kind of want the new bike, but now because of social media, the comparison set is the Kardashian’s new jet and starts to create this, this need, this desire. And that that’s the definition of success. But the reality is, is that your definition of success might be a tent in Montana. And, and that’s okay as long as it’s of your own hands, of your own doing. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that came out of the drawing that Jeremy made was because I had so many people saying, Mel, you have to get work-life balance.
MA (10:54):
But balance is a myth. This idea of a weight on one side, a counterweight on the other side, playing tug of war. And on average you’re balanced. And it’s like what we really needed was harmony. And harmony comes from intent. And I think when we become intentional with our life, with our time and our money, now we can direct it in a focused way to, to achieve the things that we’re trying to achieve. But too often we’re diluted in our, in our focus because we’re getting all, we’re getting barraged with all these messages, and we haven’t taken the time to define really what our lane is and what our race is
RV (11:31):
Gonna look. So when you define it, when you define it, like what, what does that mean? Does it mean like, I need to say exactly how much I money I wanna retire with, I need to describe exactly the kind of house I wanna live in, how many cars I want to have, what kind of college I wanna send my kids to, if I wanna send ’em to college? Like, what are the elements of going, this is what it means to be clear on the race that you’re running.
MA (11:58):
Yeah, so, so I look at it and I say, we’re gonna look at all the domains of life. So we’re not just gonna, so, ’cause it’s, it’s how we wanna live our life that matters. And then we put the price tag on it. So relationships, what do we want our relationships to be like? What do we want our family to look like? Where do we wanna live? What does our career look like? What is our health? So we, we define that and say, okay, what does it take to get there? Now let’s just be really clear. We can get as specific as we want, but we’re not gonna be exact. Because if I had that kind of crystal ball, then I’d be in a totally different business. I don’t have that crystal ball. So I look at things and say, where do I want to be in a decade?
MA (12:41):
Let’s just use a decade to start, because then a decade I can break to a five year milestone to a one year milestone, to 90 day increments, to action steps and projects. And it allows me to look at things through those eyes knowing that life’s gonna change. When, when my son was born, life changed. When I met my wife, life changed and things changed. And we have to revisit it. When my granddaughters were born, things changed. When I got cancer, things changed. So, so what we’re doing is setting a trajectory for a horizon to get us going the right direction and give us the boundaries that we want to operate within. And then as we start to live our life and we get closer to that time, we’ll refine it. And a lot of that refinement is realizing, I actually don’t like that, so I’m gonna put it away and I’m gonna just focus on this.
MA (13:38):
Like you said, I, I don’t own a ton of real estate directly, and part of it is I don’t want that lifestyle. I, the, the thought of having a bunch of properties and to manage it, even with a management company just stresses the hell out of me. I don’t want it. And so we tend to, to not do that. So the first thing is, is this is, let’s just figure out an idea of where we’re going. Let’s put a price tag a an estimated estimated price tag on it. So we kn we have something to go towards. Because the risk is if we don’t do that, we have no idea what the finish line is. And we don’t know how close we are, how far we are, and we have nothing to judge. So I just want to have something there. And every year, every couple years, you’re gonna revisit it and get more precise.
MA (14:28):
Then we can look at it and say, okay, great. Now I have an idea of where I’m going. Let’s look at where I really am. Because once I have those two points, my current reality, my desired future, we know the gap in between. Now we know the work we have to do. Mm-Hmm,
MA (15:19):
We gotta get a bigger shovel. We gotta get more income. And I think one of the biggest things, especially in a personal brand type of environment is that, is to ask ourselves, do I actually value myself? Do I actually own the value with conviction that I bring to the table because, and am I getting paid for it? Because that we grew up in this, the industrial age thinking of time clocks and time sheets and hourly rates and, and, and billable hours and all that stuff. Commoditize everything and, and cheapens it. And that’s the risk we create when we start to think in terms of a math equation, especially if we’re talking about expertise and personal brands and that kind of thing that we have to get away from that math equation. So one of the biggest, so how
RV (16:15):
Would you price it instead of that, right? Like how would you think of it instead of using like the math equation and is there a different way to think about it?
MA (16:24):
I look at, so part of it is, is looking at the, the value of the solutions you create. So for instance, in my world, what I originally started doing was I was A-C-P-C-P-M, still a CPA, I was valuing businesses to buy and sell, but I was also valuing businesses for purposes to fight, you know, tax, tax situations and litigation. Well, someone brings me in to do a valuation for an estate that’s gonna pay an estate tax at 40%, and I have the ability to create a value, you know, to come up with a valuation that supports a reduction of that, that tax by a million dollars. Me sending them a bill for a hundred grand is a drop in the bucket. And so I look at it, I started look at my business and say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna price it based on the solution that I’m providing more so than the hours it takes to do it.
MA (17:29):
Now, in some cases I got burned. In other cases, if you reduced it to an hourly eight rate, I got paid $10,000 an hour. You know, but I’m trying to, because the other thing is, I think it’s important for us to have the conversations with the potential clients. And, and in, in, in the frame of, of value, we don’t talk price without the context of value. It just, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t play well. And in the, the, the risk, I had a, a, one of the top tax attorneys, he, he since passed away in Beverly Hills. He brought me into to meet with a client, have the conversation, see if I was gonna be the one that they would hire. And then when the client says, how much is this gonna cost, I hemmed and hawed and I didn’t. And I, I hesitated.
MA (18:19):
And once the client left that the attorney Elliot looked at me, he says, if you ever do that again, I’ll never bring you another client. He says, you need to understand that you have a specific set of skills and expertise that you bring to the table, and you have to own them. The reason you hemmed and hawed is because, one, you didn’t own it. Two, you believe that it is your job to justify your price and your value to the client. He says, no, it’s your job to own your value. Put it on the table and sit there quietly. And the client is the client’s job to deal with it. And either they will or they won’t and, and leave it. Leave it that way. And so all of my pricing, other than government contracts, which required an hourly rate that I did all of my pricing was, was project pricing based upon what I saw the value of the solution was. And either they, they decided to hire me or they didn’t, and I was okay with it.
RV (19:16):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (19:23):
Yeah. And then, you know, and with, you know, post-cancer and all that stuff, you start to value time and, and, and your life. So I start looking at things and saying, how much of my life force is this gonna take away from me? Do I really want to get on the plane? Do I really want to do that? So, so I start to price things out saying, that makes it worthwhile for me. Now, is there a math equation behind it? Likely not. It’s, it’s me sitting back saying, I’m, I’m okay, this is the value of what, what I, what I can create for you and I’m willing to, to, to, to own it.
RV (19:59):
What if it’s not an empirical thing, right? Like it’s one thing to go, I can save you X percent on your taxes, or I can help you grow your revenue. You know, I can help you double your revenue, but what if it’s more you know, I can say, help you save your marriage or, you know, or like, I can help you get in better shape. I can, I can, it, it, it’s more per I can restore your relationship with your kids. Yeah. I, I get, you know, some of these like non non empirical types of scenarios. Is there a way to still do that, do you think? Or do you, is it, does it only work in certain environments?
MA (20:37):
You know, it’s, it’s harder to do it in there because it’s, it’s, it’s not as easy to quantify in, in that perspective. But I look at it and I go, the first doctor I went and saw for my, when they, they found the tumor was very flippant when we went in, he says, ah, it’s my bread and butter. And he just kind of, and, but he sat on the, on the original CT scan for 11 days. And I thought, and now he says, I need you in surgery right now. And I said, how is it that now it’s an emergency, but you sat on the CT scan for 11 days and I, so we made calls to different doctors and this, this one doctor came up three times and called his office sitting in the parking lot of the original doctor before we left. We called this doctor’s office. He says, we have an opening tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM do you wanna come in? And I said, yes. I didn’t ask the price,
MA (21:32):
I didn’t care. Now I was for, I’m fortunately in a financial position to not worry about it. But, but the solution was because I looked at it and go, this could be the death of me. You know, this could mean losing my life. And so I don’t know how to put a price tag on that. And so I didn’t ask the price, I didn’t look at it from that perspective. I just said, give me the best and I’ll figure out a way to make this work. Because the pain of losing life, not being here to live with my wife and my kids and the grandkids and all that stuff was too great. And so there was still a, a transactional analysis, even though it wasn’t monetary. It was, it was, it was still something. I looked at it and said, I, I can’t put a price on it other than the fact that I wanna be here.
RV (22:26):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (23:30):
It’s like, I’m, for my business to work, typically I have to be all in on the business. And it, it, it’s like having a baby, right? Especially the first five years. It’s like, it consumes all of your attention. So how should we, as entrepreneurs be thinking about retirement and, and are there any sort of retirement strategies specific to personal brands that you think that, that really lend themselves well to like experts, right? Yeah. Speakers, authors, coaches, financial advisors accountants, doctors, lawyers, like professional service providers, you know, people like that, direct sales, et cetera.
MA (24:38):
All right. I thought he would, I thought he wouldn’t bark, but
RV (24:41):
It’s all good. It’s all good. All good. We’ll edit it out. I made a note.
MA (24:47):
So this is a, this is a really important question to, to look at and to answer. The first thing that I, I’d like everyone to understand is that wealth creation is a muscle group. It’s, it’s a, it’s a behavior. Our ability to build that wealth is more about our, our actions and behaviors than it is about our money. So I’m not as concerned at the beginning, especially when you’re first starting out with how much you’re putting away. What I am concerned about is that we’re getting into the habit of putting something away. So, so no matter who or where you are, I just want you to put a little bit away and we’ll talk about where in a moment. But I, but I want you exercising the muscle. And so that’s, that’s one piece of it. The second, and I hear this all the time with entrepreneurs saying, I can make more money if I just reinvest in my business.
MA (25:42):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (26:46):
And so, so, but we set, we tend to just look at it and say, I can make more in the business by putting all my money back in the business. And the answer’s yes, as long as you can run the business and it can continue to run. But if that, if either one of those is not true, then you would’ve been better served to have a little bit put aside somewhere else to give you some cushion. And so that’s, that’s the, the foundational just philosophy behind it. I also look at things and say, I wanna build safety first, growth second. So my job is to keep, keep people safe. The way you keep ’em safe is, is to, to have some diversification, but also keep simplicity in it. You know, you mentioned all kinds of things, crypto and real estate and all that stuff. And you’re right, you’re trying to run a business.
MA (27:39):
You can’t learn about all that other stuff. And if you don’t have a passion for it, it’s gonna be hard to learn about it. So keep it simple. If all I had was 50,000, $10,000 to invest, you’re not going to buy a piece of real estate. At least you shouldn’t. Because again, we come back to risk. I can ba buy one property. If I have a bad tenant, a tenant that doesn’t pay someone I have to evict long-term, vacancy, bad repairs, all those things. I can’t carry it because I got into it and I don’t have safety first, growth second. And so I tell people when you first start out, let’s just keep it easy. I want you to put it in a diversified ETF or index fund. Buy 500 companies, 3000 companies. Make it easy. We know long term, 94% of the time in over 10 years or more, that that market’s gonna go up.
MA (28:38):
We’ll make eight to 10% in it. You have diversification, you have liquidity, and you’re in the game and you’re doing it simply. And if you’re not sure what to go into, you go into either an s and p 500 fund, a total stock market index fund, or you just turn around and do something called a target target date index fund. Say you don’t need the money for 30 years. You pick a 2055 fund with Vanguard or something and, and you just park it there and let it roll. There’s no, there’s not a lot of thought, there’s not a lot of analysis, there isn’t a lot of management, there isn’t a lot of fees, there isn’t a lot of expenses, but you’re in the game and the money’s starting to work for you. But it has to be long-term money to do it that way. And so that’s, and
RV (29:24):
That you can park that it started inside of an IRA, right?
MA (29:27):
Yeah. So I was just gonna go there so you can, you can park it inside of an IIRA. Now in the book, I talk about the wealth priority ladder, and I literally break down where you put each dollar, depending on where you are in that ladder. And, and so, so one of the things that we might do is early on, early on, if you’re not making a lot of income, we might have you put it into a Roth IRA first, because that’s gonna grow 100% tax free forever. You know, so, so early on, I wanna take the, the, the, the tax advantaged kinds of things, especially if I’m a low income bracket, low tax bracket. The tax deduction doesn’t mean a lot this year. Put it in, I’ve got a kid, 16 and a half year old kid who joined one of my programs. We had a conversation, 17 years old.
MA (30:23):
He says, he got, I got a job, what do I do? I said, open a Roth. I said, great. So three weeks ago we’re on a call and he says, I funded my Roth. I said, he says, I don’t know how to invest it, what do I do? I said, how much do you fund it with? I said, you’re still 17? He says, no, I just turned 18. So he’s 18 years old. He funded a Roth. And, and so I’m thinking he’s 18 years old. What did you put in it? 500 bucks, a thousand? And I said, how much you put in? He says, well, I fully funded 2023 and I already funded 2024. I go, hold on a second. You’re 18. You’re telling me you put 6,500 in for 2023 and 7,000 already for 2024? And he said, yeah, he says it helps because I’m living at home. But here’s what happens. If he just put it in an s and p 500 fund, let’s just say it grows at 8%, it will go up 107 times before he, before he ever get, you know, is at, at retirement age. That means that he’ll have $1.2 million or more without doing a thing. It’s in a Roth. He put 13,000 in, he gets 1.2 million out. He never pays a diamond tax.
MA (31:35):
And, and so at the very beginning, if I have low income and I’m eligible, ’cause there’s income limits for Roth, I’m probably gonna tell you to put it in a Roth. Take the tax advantage, have it tax free down the road, then you’re not not worried about it. Then as the income grows and we do, we have more income in the business, we might put a solo 401k in to get more because the Roth is limited to 7,000 bucks. Now but if I put a solo 401k in, I can put 23,000 and if I put a profit sharing piece to it, I can put up to 69,000 or so in there and more if I’m over age 50. So the, there is a, just like a recipe, you need to know the ingredients, the amount of the ingredients, and the timing in which to do it. So there is a hierarchy that I break down that literally says, if you’re here, this is what you do. If you’re here, this is what you do every step of the way. Because every dollar that comes into our life must have a job description before we earn it. If we want it to do the things intentionally, like we talked about the way to, to get us to the goal, we want
RV (32:45):
IEA budget and a plan or just a plan for that dollar. It’s a plan where, where it’s going. Yeah. A, a, a plan. Well, so that is, that’s why you need this book. You also building your money, build your money machine. And like I told you, like Mel has a knack for making it simple, breaking it down, the visuals, the ladder, the, this kind of stuff is super duper helpful and straightforward. So where should we, where do we want people go, Mel, to buy copy of the book and connect up with you?
MA (33:15):
I’ll go to your money machine book.com and you can, you can, you’ll see the, the links there to different booksellers in the uk in Australia, Canada, us You can buy the book, come back, give, give us the receipt and we’ll, I’ll give you some, some other wealth resources and gifts to help accelerate your path to financial freedom. And some additional trainings around, around that and resources. So, so yeah, that’s, that’s where they do
RV (33:44):
It. I love it. Your money Machine book.com. Mel is also a brand builders group client. So if even if you don’t wanna buy the book, you should go to your money machine book.com to see how he’s got his page structured and he’s given away some killer incentives for pre-ordering his book which are super duper valuable. And Mel, I’m so grateful for you, man. I, I, I’m grateful for your friendship and just for your partnership and, and letting us speak a little bit into your life and you speaking into ours today. Brother. We’re praying for you and your family and all the clients you help and, and we just wish you all the best.
MA (34:19):
I appreciate you, my friend. It is, it has been a journey and it’s good to have you on, on the journey with me.
RV (34:24):
Thanks, buddy.
Ep 489: How to Move From Your Current Gig to Your New Gig | Kelly Roach Episode Recap
RV (00:17):
I wanna share with you a four step process for exactly how to leave your job and start a side hustle. Welcome back to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. I am recapping the addition of the interview I just did with Kelly Roach. And one of the things that we were talking in there was about how did she start her own business? And I thought, gosh, I get this question so often, which is, how do I know and how do I orchestrate leaving my job and starting my personal project or my side business or even leaving the, the current thing you’re doing with your, your personal brand and then starting something new. And so I’ve got a four part process for this that I think will really help you. And these are kind of four principles and tactics and strategies for how to think about transitioning from the thing that you’re doing now into the thing that maybe you want to do.
RV (01:17):
And this could apply to, even if you already have your own business and you’re trying to pivot, you’re trying to maybe rebrand, you’re trying to move into a different space. But specifically I want to talk to those of you who are maybe working at like a corporate job or something and you want to try to leave. The first thing I want you to know, and I believe this firmly, this principle is actually in my take the stairs book towards the back of the book, there is a principle that I call crush It where you’re at, crush It where you’re at. And I don’t think that we hear enough about this in the world today. So many people just say, ah, you know, your job sucks. Quit your job and just start your side hustle. Like that’s gonna be a dream. Let, let me tell you something.
RV (02:01):
Being an entrepreneur is far from a cakewalk. It is grueling hours, it is rejection, it is fear. It is often years of brokeness. It is very challenging. It, it can be con, it creates a lot of conflict on a marriage. It makes it really hard to have a family. Like the on the entrepreneurial dream is also got lots of nightmare components of it. Now, I love being an entrepreneur and I love working with entrepreneurs, but I think it is far over glamorized. And not every person is a great fit to be an entrepreneur. And even many people who could be entrepreneurs, I think make really great intrapreneurs. What’s an intrapreneur? And an intrapreneur is someone who can be a mover and shaker inside of a company who can innovate and create and can, can cause change and make new things happen inside of the right culture.
RV (02:55):
So this first principle, crush it where you’re at is really important. And even though it’s not popular, and even though you may not want to hear it, ’cause perhaps you’ve already made up your mind, no, I hate my job. I wanna leave it. Or I, I don’t like my current business or my current business model, I wanna leave it. And just before you do, I just want to encourage you to crush it where you’re at. What does that mean? That means be excellent at what you’re doing now, whatever it is that you’re doing. Now, why do I say that for two very specific reasons? Okay? The first reason is because when you’re doing something excellently, it often looks different and feels different than when you’re doing it in a mediocre fashion, right? I mean, the, if you’re hiking up a mountain and it’s a really big mountain, you might get tired and that might not seem awesome, but once you’re at the top of the mountain, it can totally be worth it.
RV (03:58):
And too many people give up while they’re on the climb and they haven’t yet experienced the, the fruits and the benefit of everything that their current thing has to offer, right? And you go, maybe you hate your job because you’re not good at it. Maybe you hate your job ’cause you’re not doing enough. Now maybe you hate your job ’cause your boss is a jerk and it sucks and it’s negative and it’s not fun. And you go, great, go ahead and quit the job. But many times I think people have an opportunity to sort of excel at the thing they’re doing before they just abandon ship. And that, that leads me to the other reason why I think crush it. Where you’re at is, is really important. It’s really important because how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
RV (04:46):
That’s the age old quote. And I have found that to be really, really true. And too often people think, oh, if I just abandoned my corporate job and I start my own business, it’s gonna be a cakewalk. And you go, well, if you’re not putting everything you have into the thing you’re doing now, you might find that you won’t do it on your own either. And now you don’t have any of the guarantee or stability or the things that, that come with a corporate job. So I just want you to really think about that and go, am I crushing it where I’m at? Am I doing the best I know how to do? Have I experienced all there is to experience here? Am I squeezing all the juice out of the thing that’s in front of me? Now, if it’s just your dream and you’re a hundred percent sure and you just want to go, fine, go, or if, if, if you just live in a, if you’re working in a place that is just terrible and they treat you like crap and you want to go, go, but I would even, so I would still say, gosh, be really, really good at what you’re doing.
RV (05:44):
Be the best at what you do. Be be performing at your personal best, the the best you’ve ever done in your role before you decide to leave. Because what you might find is that once you’re performing at your personal best, you might decide you wanna stay, you might figure out, actually this isn’t so bad. Actually, there’s more opportunity. Actually, once I started performing at my best, they gave me more money, they opened new doors, they gave me more responsibility, they, they put me in charge of new initiatives. And so that’s really, really important because sometimes we think the grass isn’t, is always greener. And the reason the grass looks greener is ’cause you’re not watering your own grass, okay? So crush it where you’re at, and then even if you’re gonna leave, carry that momentum into the thing that you’re gonna do. Now, the second part of leaving your job and starting your own business or starting your side hustle, or again, it could be that you maybe have a current business model, and it’s like, I wanna just transition from what I’m doing is a rule that I like to call the 70 30 rule.
RV (06:45):
The 70 30 rule. How does the 70 30 rule work is simple. It means that there, in order to succeed at something and really blow it up, it takes a lot of focus, right? In order to win anything, you really have to crush it. As we sort of, you know, religiously say around Bram Builder’s group, if you have diluted focus, you will get diluted results. If you have diluted focus, you will get diluted results. So how then do you transition between two things? How do you go how do I do a good job, you know, at my corporate thing, but I really wanna like start my own business or my side hustle and I wanna go full time and when’s the right time to do that? Or how do I serve my current clients that I have and my current model, but then transition to my new model or my new dream or my new message or my new audience?
RV (07:38):
And that’s a really important tactical question, and I’ve got a functional answer that we’ve used and I think we’ve seen a lot of clients do this successfully. And it’s the 70 30 rule. And the 70 30 rule says, start your new thing, okay? And take your old thing and expend the minimum amount of resources that you can to maintain the level of performance of the old thing, right? So basically put it on autopilot, but not in a way that it’s, it’s autopilot. Like it’s going down. Put it in autopilot that it’s like, okay, I’m gonna maintain this level of performance over here and then dedicate 100% of your excess energy into the new thing and build the new thing, right? This is probably the nights and the weekends and the late hours and the early mornings, and you’re studying and you’re reading and you’re, you’re probably getting coaching and you’re investing money and you’re not making much money, but you’re building the thing.
RV (08:39):
You’re building the thing and you’re starting, you’re starting that thing and keep building that thing until your income reaches a 70 30 split to where you go, 30% of my income is coming from the new line of business, or it’s coming from the new side hustle, or the new project or the new audience. And what happens is you are earning a hundred percent of your income from the first thing, and now your income is starting to balance out to where you get to 70 30. It’s about that time that I would recommend that is when you make the leap, you rip off the bandaid, you jump into the deep end of the pool you, you, you wisely are reducing your risk. If you can get your income to about 30% on the new thing. Do you have to do this? Of course not. You don’t have to do anything that I say.
RV (09:30):
This is just an idea and an observation. But what I would say is a lot of entrepreneurs live by the seat of their pants and it’s kind of like, you know, there’s this phrase in the entrepreneur community that says, you know, you build the plane, you jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down. And in some ways that’s always true, but in other ways that’s downright stupid. And keep in mind that 95% of businesses fail. So just because a lot of entrepreneurs say it’s a good idea, 95% of those people don’t turn out to be successful. So I’m not taking advice from a group of people where 95% of ’em failed the class. So the smarter thing to do is to do calculated risk. And that’s what the 70 30 rule is all about. The 70 30 rule instead says, man, if 30% of my income is coming from the new thing, first of all, you get a sense of whether or not you really like it and you really want to do it.
RV (10:25):
Second, you really get to determine is there product market fit? Is is there an audience for what I want to do? And do I have the ability to sell it to them? Because if you just pull the ripcord and jump ship and start something from scratch, you might find nobody wants to buy that thing. Or you might find you don’t really love the thing, or you’re not as good at it as you thought, or that you don’t have a great marketing plan for it or a great sales strategy for it. And you need to try to figure out some of those kinks on the side and before you kind of jump full time, at least that’s how the 70 30 rule works. And that’s, that’s what we advise. So that’s the 70 30 rule. The third thing, and this is super practical, important, is to be debt free.
RV (11:10):
Be debt free. To the extent possible, the more that you can lower your personal debt, the more likely you are to succeed as an entrepreneur. Why? Because of something called Financial Runway, right? And this term, financial runway refers to, you know, a plane taking off. And if you think of like, planes don’t just suddenly take off like a helicopter, right? They need runway. It takes velocity, it takes speed. In order for them to catch the tra you know, trajectory and be able to climb that is runway. Well, cash is the runway. And if you run outta cash, you run out of runway and the plane stops, right? So you could start something and you could kind of get it going, but if you don’t generate enough cash or you don’t generate cash fast enough, or you’re burning cash, you’re generating cash in the business, but it’s, it’s less than what you’re burning in your personal life, the runway ends, the plane stops, and the business never takes off.
RV (12:12):
That’s what financial runway means. So the, the, the more disciplined you are about your personal expenses, the longer the runway you give yourself. It also means the lower the stress you have, right? When I’m in debt, if, if I’m in debt, suddenly I’m more desperate for a sale, right? Like, the more in debt you are, the more desperate you are to make a sale. The more in debt you are, the more desperate you are to make a sale. Why not? ’cause You’re a bad person, but because you have external pressure, you’ve got mouths to feed, you’ve got bills to pay. So the more you can lower those bills, the more you extend the runway of having a chance to sort of pursue your dreams. When you’re debt free, you’re, you, you’re beholden to fewer masters, and this is biblical, right? The borrower, slave to the lender, but literally and pragmatically and functionally going, I’m not as dependent on my job.
RV (13:13):
I’m not as dependent on, you know, the where my income is coming from. I’m not as dependent on my current customers because I don’t have other financial obligations. So staying debt free creates freedom in your life, freedom to pursue your dream, and, and it creates more runway, it creates a longer timeline for you to figure it out and make it successful. So it’s a really important part I think, of launching a successful business as an entrepreneur. Unless you’re raising a bunch of money and generating millions of dollars or, you know, you just hit the jackpot, but that’s few and far between.
RV (14:01):
The fourth key to breaking free from your corporate job, if you hate it or if you just have a dream that just is, it is time for you to pursue is to start first with what you know best. Start first with what you know best. What I mean by that is your best chance of making money is doing more of the thing that you already know how to do. Now that may not be the most exciting thing for you, right? That may not be what your dream is, but it is almost always the fastest path to cash, right? The fastest path to cash is to do more of the thing you’ve already been doing, to do better at the, the, the thing you already know. And so you might be doing it on your own. You might be, you know, s starting your own business or your own side hustle, but serve the people that you have access to.
RV (14:57):
So a real, if you need money right now, if you have lots of money, this thing changes. If you have lots of money, you have lots of runway, you can build a whole brand new business, you can dream up anything you want. But in the practical reality for most of us is you’re gonna have to make money fairly quickly. And, and so you have to do what you have to do in order to get, in order to earn the right to do what you want to do. You have to do what you have to do in order to earn the right to do what you want to do. And so you’re going to have to pay a price for a while, and part of that price you would pay is just offering your expertise maybe in, in a very, in a way that accesses the, the people who are closest to you.
RV (15:42):
Now, I’ll give you the an example. When I first wanted to leave the corporate job that I had while I was in graduate school and I wanted to become a professional speaker, I was in the Toastmasters world championship of public speaking. And I spent a couple years just studying the psychology of laughter and learning how to be funny on stage because I wasn’t funny in real life, even though I am hilarious in real life now. But I had to learn to be funny on stage. And so I studied humor. And even though I didn’t wanna teach humor for a living in that season of life, the most tactical, practical skill that I had was teaching humor. And so, a lot of people don’t know this, take the stairs. It was not actually my first book, it was my first traditionally published book. My first book was actually called No laughs, NO to no laughs, KNOW How to Be Funny to Make More Money, no laughs to No Laughs, how to Be Funny to Make More Money.
RV (16:43):
And the first income I actually ever earned as a speaker was I was hosting classes where people could, could they could buy a ticket to a class where I could teach them everything that I had learned about comedy, and then I would sell my books at the back of the room. And that was how I started. Even though I knew I wasn’t gonna do that forever. I started first with what I knew best. And if you really want a, a chance to escape, you know, something that you, a situation that you’re in now, right now professionally, that you don’t love, or if you’re really, really just passionate about having your own thing and you really want to pursue that, I would encourage you to start first with what you know best as a stepping stone to getting to do the thing that you really want to do later.
RV (17:28):
Because you have to do what you have to do in order to earn the right to get to do what you want to do. So there’s four key principles that I think we don’t hear enough about for strategies, concepts that I think if you are trying to make a pivot, if you’re trying to make an escape, if you’re trying to start something new, those are some modalities of thinking that I hope will really, really help you because we want you to succeed and we want you to be able to pursue your passion. We believe that the world is a better place when you’re listening to the calling on your heart and serving the people that you were meant to serve. So in the meantime, while you’re figuring it out, keep coming back to the influential personal Brand podcast and share this episode with someone in your life that you know is in this professional dilemma right now. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 488: Creating Operational Infrastructure with Kelly Roach
RV (00:01):
Well, Kelly Roach is a new friend of mine and who says You don’t make real friends on social media because we met on social media and now are becoming real life friends. And I think she’s just delightful and really intelligent and very successful, which you’re, you’re gonna hear this story, which when I saw the arc of her kind of career journey and path, it really impressed me because she started out as it didn’t start out, but she was a former NFL cheerleader. Mm-Hmm.
RV (00:54):
We’re gonna talk about that. She also is a, a, a multi-time bestselling author. She has been featured in A, B, C and Fox and Forbes and Inc. 5,000. She’s been on Inc. 5,000 list. And one of the other things that I love about her is she’s done, she’s built this business with no debt, no investors or outside funding, which is also what we believe in how we operate. And it’s, it’s pretty unusual for a company to get to eight figures in annual revenue without those things. So I was like, yeah, let’s, let’s talk to Kelly and let’s see what she’s about. So Kelly, welcome to the show.
KR (01:31):
Well, thank you. Thank you for the intro, and I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
RV (01:35):
Yeah. So tell me how, first of all, so you were NFL cheerleader, so I want to hear about all these leaps because Yeah. You know, a lot of the people we talk, I mean, we do personal brand strategy. Yeah. So a lot of people are going through a pivot of some type Mm-Hmm.
KR (02:07):
Absolutely. So I, it, it all started one day on the free lunch line. So I was on the free lunch line. There was five kids in my family. My dad worked for a nonprofit. He decided that he wanted to give his life to that work. My mom was a stay at home mom. You can do the math. Okay. Five kids, right. Stay at home mom, dad worked for the nonprofit. I’m on the free lunch line. No one knows. I’m on the free lunch line holding it all together. One day there’s a, a fill-in cafeteria lady, and she rips open my envelope in front of everyone and there’s no money in it. And that moment was a turning point for my life because in that moment I was just, so, I call it naked in the lunch line, like vulnerable. And I was like, I’m not gonna live that life.
KR (02:52):
And so I was, you know, early in middle school. And at that moment I was like, I’m gonna do every possible thing that I can to change my circumstances, to live a different life, to make my life what I believe it can be, and I don’t wanna be naked on the lunch line again. Right. And so you said, how did I go up an NFL cheerleader? Well, I cleaned the dance studio floors after school almost every day for seven years, so that I could go to the best dance school in the area. I would go, oh,
RV (03:22):
That’s like how you paid for your,
KR (03:24):
That’s how I paid for my lessons. I would go after school, I would eat my dinner in the car, I would go clean the dance studio, and then I would stay for lessons. And I was able to go to the best dance school in the area. It was a very competitive dance school that produced professional dancers that went on to have careers. And so I did that for seven years. Loved it. I loved performing, I loved entertaining all of those things. Got into high school and college, and I was like, you know, I, I think I had five jobs in college. Being an NFL cheerleader was one of them. So I was the youngest NFL cheerleader
RV (03:58):
People. People don’t often realize that the cheerleaders don’t make what the players make.
KR (04:04):
I mean, and, and yeah. And I completely did it because it was, it was an ability to continue my craft, right? Sure. Because I went to the college where I was gonna be in the least amount of debt they had like a D three dance team, D three cheerleading team. I was like, all right, I don’t think I can do this. So I was like, I’m either going to shrink back to my circumstances, or I’m gonna leap forward and just go for it and audition for the NFL. And I was like, F it, let’s do this. So I auditioned for the NFLI made the team my freshman year. So I was teaching aerobics. I was cheering for the NFLI was a cocktail server. I was babysitting all the things. And it was great because I always had money. I was able to have these amazing experiences, all of that. And, you know, as I was progressing through college, I had been on the, the cheerleading team for a couple years and I was like, okay, it’s time to get really serious about my career. And I was going to school for communications because I was like, I have no idea what I wanna do with my life. I just didn’t wanna sit in spreadsheet
RV (05:00):
All day. You’re using your, of all the people who went to college, I feel like you’re actually using your degree, isn’t
KR (05:06):
It wild? So I picked a communications degree. ’cause I was like, I just don’t wanna sit in a spreadsheet, like in a cubicle. I won’t interact with the world. I had no idea what that was gonna look like. So I got the most entry level job in the Fortune 500. ’cause I was like, if nothing else, this girl knows how to put in the work. I was willing to do the work. And I was like, I can get promoted here. I can grow here. I can become financially free, I can learn business. So I was the first one in, last one out basically every day for a decade. I was promoted seven times in eight years. I went from being a single producer in the most entry level job in the company to becoming a senior vice president. I was managing a $50 million portfolio.
KR (05:43):
I built a team from one to a hundred, interviewing, recruiting, hearing, training, and I was managing 17 locations. And so over the course of this journey, I got this amazing business education. Like I fell in love with sales and marketing and teaching people and coaching. And I was like, this is unbelievable. Like, I just was like, I need to share this with others. But when I got to the top of that, you know, ladder corporate, I was traveling all over the place. I mean, I had branches from New York City down into the Carolinas, and I was like, I had been dating my husband at that time. We’ve been together for 18 years now. And, you know, I was starting thinking about, well, what do I want for my actual life? And I was like, it’s not this, right? I don’t wanna be on planes and trains and buses and be away.
KR (06:32):
I wanna have a family. I wanna have a life. And I, I loved the work, but I did not feel that I was making the kind of impact in the world that I felt that I was intended to with those skills. And so I said, well, who can I help? Like, who can I share these, these principles, these lessons with? And I was like, I know small business owners because small business owners start a business. ’cause They’re graded a think necessarily. Have the operations and the sales and the leadership and the management, which is why 85% of businesses, you know, go outta business. So I started this side hustle. I actually went to my employer and I said, I’m doing this. You can fire me if you want, but I’m doing this. And, and I I said, if you see my performance drop, you can also come back and fire me. And they didn’t. They let me because this performing person in my role. So they let me build my business on the side. Even even, you know, while I was working full-time, build it to seven figures, became a full-time entrepreneur, took it to eight. I have six companies now in the portfolio that I’m growing. And here we are now I’m interviewing with you, Rory Uhhuh
RV (07:43):
KR (08:21):
Yeah. That’s a really good question. Let me answer both sides of it because I think it’s, it’s pertinent to the conversation that we’re having. First and foremost I focused on building and mentoring teams. So over a 10 year period, not only did I coach and hire and manage the entry level people that were gonna be the ground floor producers on my team, but I promoted internally managers, senior managers, pre vice presidents, senior vice presidents. And so what I was doing was I was building autonomy and I was building this very high performance, very systematic high growth team instead of leaders. And so I went from being the manager where I had my hands in everything and I was part of everything day to day. And I needed to be active on the floor, you know, hip to hip coaching producers every day to getting to the point where over, you know, a period of years I was able to elevate leaders.
KR (09:18):
They had worked with me. There was a cadence, there was predictable performance. We had metrics and KPIs and structure to what we were doing. And it got to the point where they really only needed me in a much more consultative capacity day to day versus like the kind of the, the fire, the flames that you have to be in. And so I had breathing room intellectually, and I actually built my business on the side, basically doing an hour before work in the morning. I would go outside and sit in my car on my break, and I would take an hour on my lunch break, and then I would basically service my clients in the evening, like seven, eight o’clock at night. So that’s, that’s kind of how I got it off the ground in terms of how did I get customers? That’s such a great question.
KR (10:03):
I started running ads from literally almost day one, really my business. Wow. Yes. One of the best things I ever did. I, there’s three things that I did that I feel fundamentally changed and formed my ability to be where I am today and to do what I’ve done. One, I hired my first coach before I had my first client. Two, I, I started building a team from day one. So I had, I had support in the business before I had a client and I had a coach before. I had a client, number one and number two. And number three, I started running ads right away. And the simple ads that I started running were for people to book a free consultation. And I would take consultations either on my lunch break or in the evenings. And I started off by selling high ticket one-to-one services until I got to the point where I was like, okay, I can’t do that anymore. And then I obviously pivoted into a group program. But running the ads allowed me, when I was at work during the day, I had an automated machine that was building my email list, building my audience, booking consultations for me. So that gave me this duality of, I’m at, I’m at work, I’m managing my team, I’m running the business, but I have ads over here that are working all day, even when I’m not available. What
RV (11:20):
Year was this?
KR (11:23):
Okay, so 20. We’re talking 20 12, 20 13. Yeah.
RV (11:28):
Okay. Yeah. So you were running like digital Facebook ads kind of a thing?
KR (11:33):
Yeah, I wasn’t running them, but I paid someone to run them. Yes,
RV (11:36):
Sure, sure, sure. Yes. Yes. But yeah, I mean, that was like the heyday of ads, right? Where they were just coming on. Oh, it
KR (11:42):
Was so different. It was
RV (11:43):
So
KR (11:45):
Do you even remember those days?
RV (11:47):
I mean, did you, did you even, so were you driving, were you driving ads directly to a free consultation? I mean, you mentioned building your email list. I was, were you trying to drive right your
KR (11:56):
Email first? I was both doing both. It’s so funny. I wish I had it. So I had like the cd Did you have the CDs? Did
RV (12:02):
Cds
KR (12:02):
Nice. Of course. Oh yeah. We had couple loads of CDs. So yes. So I had
RV (12:05):
Secret and then we went to SB b thumb drive secret, like mail the thumb drive. We did that for a hot minute. Yep. Secret. Yes,
KR (12:10):
Yes. So I did both, right? So I was always running the opt-in ads where they could get the digital thing and then they could also add a, an address and we would physically ship them. I still remember them with the little sleeves. But yeah, then I also simultaneously was running ads direct to consult. And that’s how I got like the majority of my customers in those beginning years was, you know, email list, audience building ads and then running ads directly to consultation. And that kind of was like my salesperson until I was ready to hire my first salesperson. Uhhuh
RV (12:46):
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. Like the one-on-one coaching model is what we tell almost everybody. Like, if you’re trying to build an escape path from your corporate career, it’s like one-on-one coaching is the thing. ’cause Consulting takes absolutely. Time to build. Speaking takes time to build writing books takes time to build. And then a lot of the things like the courses in the eBooks, it’s like you can’t make enough money selling a $99 widget to, to really leave until you have a monster audience. Yes. You’re not making enough. So it’s interesting that that’s like your exact path
KR (13:19):
And that story. I mean, that’s exactly it. And, and that’s exactly what I tell people today. Everyone wants to go right to like the digital product, the course, the, the low ticket thing, but they don’t realize the size and scope of the brand and audience that you have to build. So I do those things now, but I’ve had 10 years of audience building behind me to do that. Right. You’re absolutely right. I mean, for anyone that’s early stage, whether you’re working job or whether your business just isn’t at the point yet where you can support your family. Like that one-to-one coaching model is beautiful. And the thing that’s so powerful about it is you become so so well versed in the exact trends and language and, and break points and all of that, that it’s so easy to sell group coaching. When you’ve done one-on-one, I find people that try to go straight to group coaching really have trouble selling it because they haven’t been in the trenches and gotten to the point where it’s like they could look at someone’s, you know, situation in three seconds, they can pinpoint exactly what the person needs.
KR (14:22):
‘Cause They’ve been there, done that. It’s like they can do it in their sleep. And it’s so much easier to sell and to scale a product when you understand your avatar to that degree versus trying to do it in theory. Right?
RV (14:34):
Mm-Hmm.
KR (15:11):
Yeah. It it’s, it absolutely is. And it’s so funny because I’m sure you get this question from people all the time, and so do I, because like I pump out a ton of content. You do too. Right? And, and people are like, how do you think of your content? How do you know what to create? How do you, how are you always create, I’m like, if you’re having conversations with your people, you are never creating, in theory, you’re always creating to answer questions and to solve problems Yeah. That people are already pushing to you Anyway. So I think that’s kind of the danger of, you know, in today’s market, there’s so much focus on like automation and digitizing things and all of that. And listen, I have a Black Belt six Sigma operations manager that help like automate and digitize things and like get stuff dialed in. But the human element is so essential to sell with ease. Because when there’s connection there and there’s congruency and you’re not trying to take an idea and force it on the market, but instead you are like in cohesion right. With your people. That’s where it is. Like it’s fun and it’s easy because what you’re producing is is what they’re already craving. They’re just waiting for it. Right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (16:24):
Well, and it’s interesting how simple, like, you know, the other thing about running ads to a consult, which is really great, is we call it chicken on a Stick in the Brand Builders group community, which is, I love, like giving people that sample, right? Is just going like, how do they sell chicken in the food court? They don’t say, we’ve got the best chicken in the world. Yeah. They hand you a piece of chicken on a stick and you eat it and you’re like, wow, that was amazing. Like, I think I will have a chicken sandwich. That’s
KR (16:48):
So good.
RV (16:49):
Like doing a free coaching call. Even if you don’t sell them, you get all these other benefits that you’re talking about.
KR (16:55):
For sure. They
RV (16:56):
Get to trust you. They become a referral source, they become a fan, and hopefully they become a client. But even if not, like you get all these other things but it’s, you’re so right. Like everybody wants to jump to the like, scalable digital empire of reaching millions of people and then they, they, they don’t give themself enough financial runway to ever get the plane off off the ground
KR (17:19):
That that’s a thousand percent in. And I mean, I go off on my like soapbox about this all the time because, you know, you can, you can do a quick Google search. It, you know, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and, and you can look up the fact that, you know, the average business is not profitable for two years. If you go into a business and your only focus is, let me extract every single dollar out of this business as fast as I possibly can, the chances are it’s gonna fail. Because you need to be able to love and nurture and invest in that business building a foundation that is gonna be sustainable, that’s gonna last a profitable foundation for growth. So number one, I feel like so many people are starting and growing businesses from a place of financial, like dire straits, right?
KR (18:02):
And, and, and then how do you make good strategic decisions? How can you be a visionary if you’re making decisions you know, in financial dire straits? But, but also I think people are very quick. Like, I know the whole like, mindset is burn, burn the boat and, you know, don’t give yourself any other option. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, if you have a job, like find a way to get your business off the ground on the side before you quit, because you need to fund getting that thing off the ground and you’re gonna be a much better CEO if you’re making strategic decisions and not very transactional ones because you’re trying to survive. Like, it’s, it’s not a great place to build a company from, you know? Yeah.
RV (18:41):
I mean, it’s just desperation. Like very few things are good to do. Like from desperation, specifically financial ones
RV (18:52):
I love that. So I wanna come back to something you said a few minutes ago, which was that before you had your first customer, you hired your first person. Mm-Hmm. That’s the other thing that I think small business owners really struggled to go, well, I can’t afford to hire somebody. And it, and it, and it’s, it’s not just the first person. It typically stays with them for like many years where they’re constantly going, I can’t afford to hire. I’m not making enough money to hire somebody. Yeah. How did you flip your mindset there and how, how did you, how did you get yourself to do that?
KR (19:22):
Well, I think there’s a couple things. And one I got so off about exactly what you just said, that I wrote a book about it. Because no one is teaching entrepreneurs how to build teams. And this is why entrepreneurs are, are so burnout and overwhelmed and frustrated and stressed in their businesses because they don’t have the appropriate support. To answer your question specifically,
RV (19:41):
What’s that book called?
KR (19:41):
Oh, it’s called Bigger.
RV (19:42):
You have 11. You have 11 books. So
KR (19:44):
What’s that one? It’s bigger than You. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Building an Unstoppable Dream Team. And it literally walks you through step by step by step, the strategy, the thinking, the mindset, and the tactical action plan of how to go through building a team that will be profitable. So to answer your question, almost any role that you hire for, especially in the beginning of your business, you know, you’re, you should hire, basically there’s a front of the house and a back of the house, right? We, let’s just make it really, really simple for people. Front of the house is sales and marketing. Back of the house is operations and client support. One is driving new customer acquisition and one is making sure you get paid. You service the people that are already paying you, you keep them and you grow them. Almost any role that you hire for in your company can be monetized.
KR (20:32):
So when I hired, when I brought on my first person, they had a element of their role that was already built into it that was going to monetize. They were helping me to get referrals. They were helping me to do upsells. They were helping me to do contract renewals. So I knew before I hired this person that yes, they’re gonna cost me this amount each month, but this is what I’m gonna do to monetize their roles. That instead of this being an expense, this is gonna be an investment. And that’s how I look at any person that I’m hiring in any one of my companies today, before I go and bring someone on board, I’m saying, how is this role gonna be sustainable in my organization? Because as the CEO, your plan is the survival, your responsibility is the survival of the business. It’s how does this business stay in business?
KR (21:22):
How does this business stay profitable? How does this business keep growing? And if you start building a team with either a, the mindset that this team is gonna cost me money, then you have a scarcity mindset, and you’re probably not gonna hire the right people or the best people, or any people at all. To your point, rari or on the flip side, we have people that go out and they hire all these people, but there’s, there’s no plan, right? And when you hire people without a plan to monetize their roles, it it’s, it’s a heavy burden. So now you end up working to pay their payroll instead of them working for you. But I think the beautiful thing, and this is what I remind my clients all the time, is this is all decisions we have free will
RV (22:14):
Wanna, I wanna, I wanna zoom in on that because Yeah. You know, you, you mentioned like, there’s certain roles where you go like, hey, referrals or repeat customers or renewals or you know, collecting cash or like outstanding payments even. Yep. What are some of the, how do you, so, so I I’m curious to know, like you mentioned front of the house, back of the house, sales, marketing, operations, delivery. Have you seen a consistent pattern in who you should hire first versus who you should hire second, who you should hire third? Or is that different? Yeah. For every business, yes. And then, and then also what I really am also curious about is how do you tie operational roles like assistance and, you know, people like that. How do you tie those to a metric to where both, like you can feel like, oh, I’m getting the business is getting the money back for this person.
KR (23:09):
Yeah. These are really good questions. Thank you for asking these questions. I think these can change people’s lives that are listening here today. So listening. Totally,
RV (23:16):
Totally.
KR (23:17):
Okay, so, so let’s start with the first question that you asked, which is, is there an order of hiring? And this is what I’ll say. Obviously there’s nuance to every situation, so it’s not gonna be like, yes, it’s the same for every person, but let’s just talk about like, the trend, the pattern of, of what I see with the thousands of clients that I’ve worked with, right? First things first, you need to buy back your time period, right? Because as the CEO of the company, you need to be doing things that are forward market facing, creating content, getting on podcasts, generating leads, having consultation called, doing launches, right? Which means that the first thing that you need to do is to get your time back on admin operations. Just all that transactional stuff that takes your time during the day that keeps you, I say like, behind the scenes instead of out front.
KR (24:05):
So the first thing to think about is how much of your time is actually being spent out front driving the business forward, versus how much of your time is being spent behind the scenes, basically just maintaining the tasks that have to get done. So that tends to be the very first role. And it doesn’t need to be a full-time person. It could be a, a fractional admin, it could be a part-time person. You know, there’s all different ways you can slice that, you know, equation. But that’s number one. Then number two is you need someone whose only role is gonna be to generate cash. So someone who’s gonna probably be a hybrid of sales and marketing with a goal of taking the leads that you’re generating, building relationships with them, nurturing them, getting them into consultations or getting them on your calendar for consultations. That tends to be the second one, which then puts you the business and puts you in a position to be able to afford to hire the third person, which is now, oh my gosh, I have more clients than I can service well myself.
KR (25:01):
How do I make this business scalable? Point number three is, okay, now we need someone that can actually do client servicing, that can take your methodology, that can take your, your, you know, scientific approach to what you do and can empower other people to go through that process. It doesn’t mean you’re totally removed from it, but it means you can elevate your role and then you can have support roles, right? That are taking the nuances and, and helping the application of them. So that tends to be the most effective order. And I’m not saying it’s like that with everyone, but I’m saying that is a pattern that tends to work very, very well because first person gives you back time so you can sell more. Second person is selling more directly or indirectly, and then third person is able to then help you to make sure that you retain, upsell, get renewals, get referrals from the people that you’ve now brought in. Mm-Hmm,
RV (25:54):
KR (26:56):
Yeah. It’s such a good question. And, and the answer is that it changes as the business grows very dramatically. So like, I’ll give an example of like, here’s what this looks like. I have, I have some companies right now that are only 1-year-old. I have my original company that’s now 12 years old. So let’s talk about the difference between an operations person in a baby company versus an operations person in a a established company. ’cause It’s so different, right? Totally. In a baby company that’s just getting started, your operations person is very much gonna be in like a hybrid role, okay? So this person is gonna be doing tasks related to scheduling your customers, renewing their contracts. They’re gonna be kind of interacting and engaging. They’re not servicing your customers, but they are going to be kind of that, that touch point, right? They’re doing all of your scheduling, they’re coordinating with customers on all different things that come up.
KR (27:46):
They’re, you know, managing billing to make sure that, you know, all, all things go in order. All of those things, right? And, and many times, the first time that you hire for any role in your company, when your company’s very small, the role is gonna be a hybrid role. Meaning they’re gonna be doing a lot of kind of different things because you don’t need a full-time person that’s gonna sit there all day long to do operations for a little baby business, right? When I was fi first building this role, and I still do this with my newer companies now, I tend to have kind of someone in an operational, hybrid, hybrid role that in many ways, even though they may not be the person that is servicing the customer, they are almost like the customer care person for all intents and purposes, which means that they’re getting referrals, right?
KR (28:33):
When I first started doing this, I literally had my ops person send thank you notes and, and touch points for our referral program, and she would generate new referrals every single month. She was a brand new college kid. I hired her as an intern. She had no sales experience, she had no marketing experience, and I was literally training her from the ground up on operations. But I said, what’s something that is systematic and can produce profits that someone that’s brand new can do well? Anyone can build relationships by caring anyone, right? Sure. And so I said, I’m gonna have this person, I’m gonna look at my client base and I’m gonna say, who are the right people that I could be generating consistent referrals from? And I simply had her manage the monthly touch points for referrals. And we consistently saw that we got sales coming in and introductions coming in because of her just doing these kind of thoughtful monthly touch points to our own customers.
KR (29:30):
And a lot of people think, well, I’m a small business, you know, I’m just getting started. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a referral program. If you have one customer and you get one referral, you just double the size of your business. Amen. If you have five customers and you get five referrals, you just double the size of your business. So you can do this on a really small scale, or you can do this on a really large scale. But when I was starting at the very beginning, that was how I monetized that first role. They got us referrals. They got people to renew their contracts and do upsells. Let’s say someone was in my group program, they could add a VIP day with me. At the time I was still doing a lot, like, you know it looks different for everyone now when I look at, you know, our operations manager, you know, in my coaching company that’s 12 years old, right?
KR (30:18):
He’s a black Belt six Sigma, and his job is helping us buy back the time of every other person in the organization by finding efficiencies in the business systematically. And then getting them to work like a well-oiled machine so that every other person in the company’s productivity is lifted up so that they can actually open up their bandwidth, open up their productivity to sell more, to serve more clients, to get more leads to, to close more whatever it’s gonna be. So it looks, it looks really, really different. It’s kind of much more scientific over here ’cause it’s like deep dive, like systems efficiencies, you know, process orientation. Whereas in the beginning stages it’s just like, well, what are the things that most small businesses don’t do? And, and Rory, this is what, if I can just take one minute on this. Most small businesses, they do not consistently reach out to their customers for referrals.
KR (31:14):
They do not consistently reach out to their past customers. This was the other thing I had my operations manager do. Whenever someone rolled off a contract, she would stay with in touch with them every month. And then we would consistently see them come back and they would come back and they would come back. So that was the other thing. It was just she wasn’t selling, she was just literally staying in touch with them. Right. We would put together mailers or a handwritten note or whatever the case. So I’ll just pause there. I know that was kind of a lot.
RV (31:41):
No, that’s great. I I was actually gonna ask you what are these monthly touchpoints that you’re systematizing for referrals? Yeah. Like what are, what are they doing? ’cause Like you say you is intern fresh outta college, like not the sales and marketing wizard. Yes. But clearly you’ve developed some type of process or system that they’re able to run.
KR (31:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So we do everything digitally now because we run much larger scale programs. But back then, and even I would say if you’re running a small business and you’re just getting off this off the ground and you’re not talking about you know, hundreds of people that you’re reaching out to you know, we sent handwritten notes. You know, we might share an interesting article with them and say, you know, I thought of you this, you know, I thought you would enjoy this. She might share a resource with them. We did send out gifts, we sent physical gifts. So I mean, again, I’m in the high ticket world, primarily that this business that I’m talking about is in the coaching consulting world. So when someone works with you, you, and, you know, the equivalent of a relationship is a hundred, $200,000 over the lifetime of the business, it makes sense to spend 50 bucks on a gift for someone, right?
KR (32:49):
So we did gifting, we did thank you notes, we sent out articles we would make connections if there was someone that we thought that it would be relevant and meaningful for them to, you know, have a connection with you know, she would answer questions here and there. So it, it was nothing genius. It was just literally the consistency of doing it at all. And that’s kind of what my point was. Most small businesses never follow up with their past customers. Your past customers know you. They like you, they trust you, and they’ve gotten a result working for you. But if you don’t care enough to reach back out to them and say, Hey Rory, I saw we haven’t worked together for two years. What have you been up to? I’d love to see you back in our world again. Why would you come back to us?
KR (33:32):
Right. You’re gonna go to someone who’s pursuing you and saying, I’d really like to work with you. Right? So that’s one of the easiest money makers that sit in every single business that most small businesses, they don’t have any cadence to how they’re going after that business. And that’s free money. That’s free money because most people buy things cyclically and habitually, meaning they’re gonna buy in that category for life, but they’re not gonna buy every day for forever. And people buy from top of mind awareness, which means they’re gonna buy from one of the last three people that they interfaced with. So if you put those two things together, people buy habitually, meaning they buy typically in a category for life. If you’re a person that believes in coaching, you’re probably gonna keep investing in some way, shape or form in expanding your education and growing and whatever. Right? So we know that people, when they buy in a category, tend to buy in that category long term. We also know that people’s lives go like this. They’re, they’re not ups and down, they’re not
RV (34:33):
Ups and downs. Yeah.
KR (34:34):
There’s constant ups and downs and season
RV (34:37):
Have kids, you go to college, you move da, you get a new job, you start a new company, whatever, Uhhuh,
KR (34:43):
That’s exactly it. So where someone might be your best customer spending 50 grand, a hundred grand, $200,000 with you for three years straight, something might happen in their life where they don’t work with you for three or four years. I’ve actually had this happen. And, and then, and then when it’s time because we maintained a relationship, they’ll come back again. Right? And it’s not to say that people never will if you don’t maintain a relationship, it’s saying that you’ll 10 x 20 x 50 x the amount of people that will if you focus on just maintaining a relationship, right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (35:14):
KR (35:33):
Amazing. Uhhuh And, and you know what’s so funny, Rory, to your point, people will come back to us all the time now and they will literally say, thank you so much for following up with me. Like, I’m, I’m just here ’cause you followed up with me. And like, they’ll come back and they’ll buy again and they’re, they’re just simply there because we like reminded them. Mm-Hmm.
KR (36:28):
Most people focus singularity on customer acquisition and the bottom of their business is like a funnel and it’s just pouring out the bottom. And so they’re just on this constant hamster wheel of they have to sell just to maintain. There’s no continuity of building the brand because they’re only focused on customer acquisition. They’re not focused on retention, renewals, referrals, upsells the lifetime value that creates really nice stability in the business. And no one’s selling you that course. No one’s selling you that methodology because it’s not like the bright, shiny Right. You know, exciting thing. No one’s
RV (37:04):
You to like how to be successful eventually one day through Exactly. Long-Term relationships and long-term strategy, you know? No, exactly. I’ll teach you how to quadruple your revenue over the next 10 years
KR (37:17):
No, it’s not exciting. But the thing is, it’s what it, it’s what will keep you in business and it’s what will make you a multi, multi multimillionaire. I mean, it’s, it’s, it, it, listen, it’s very hard to retain really high level performance in a company if you don’t get the backend right. Totally. Most will never scale because they figure out the front end, but they never figure out the backend. So it falls out the bottom as fast as it comes in the top. Mm-Hmm.
RV (38:06):
Absolutely. Well you know, I’m sitting here thinking to go you know, I’ve interviewed so many different people on this show, amazing, amazing thought leaders. But if like someone asks me to say, Hey, who’s a, who’s a business coach you would recommend, like, there’s not somebody that I really go like, ah, this people share same philosophies and similar things. And I think so much of what you shared is so similar in our philosophy and what we’ve, our experience more than our philosophy, just our, our experience. So I love that. So Kelly, where do you want people to go if they wanna connect with you learn about you, obviously you’ve got your podcast, which I know is really important to you and, and is a great show. We’ve had so many of our, our clients on there. So many of my friends have have been on there. So you got the podcast. Is that the best place or where else should they go?
KR (38:53):
Yeah, I mean, definitely come listen to the Kelly Roach show. I bring it, you know, there’s a thousand episodes you can literally grow your business for free. Just come and listening to the show or connect with me on Instagram, Kelly Roach official come DM me. My team’s in there all the time, but I pop in too. And, and they’re there as themselves. So if it comes from Kelly, it’s coming from me and I love to meet you. So come say hello.
RV (39:13):
I love it. Well, we will link up to all that. Thank you so much for this. It just never amazes me. You know, I can, I can always tell when I meet a real eight figure entrepreneur because they’re not talking about the flashy tactics and trending things. They’re talking about the principles that have always worked and will always work that are not sexy. But they are simple and they’re not, they’re not easy, but you can execute on ’em and they will make a big difference. And that’s what I think today has been all about. So we really appreciate it, Kelly and so great to connect and we wish you all the best.
KR (39:49):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Ep 477: Entrepreneur Mindset | AJ Vaden Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
We’re gonna talk about mindset today. And specifically we’re gonna talk about the entrepreneur mindset. And I’ve got five quick things that I wanna hit on to help you develop a rock solid entrepreneur mindset. And even if you are not a, you know, definitive entrepreneur, I wanna create an entrepreneurial mindset that no matter what you do, what role you have or title you possess, that these five characteristics can go with you anywhere you go. Because having an entrepreneurial mindset really just means you have an ownership mindset. And I don’t mean ownership of a business, I mean ownership over a task, ownership over a person, right? In terms of like owning, like what you’re gonna do in order to develop, develop, and lead that person, it’s over a project, or it could be over a business, but it is an ownership mindset. That’s what I need mean by an entrepreneur mindset.
AJV (00:59):
So number one, build as you go. That’s the first thing. Don’t wait until it’s perfect. It’s not going to be, so you must build it as you go. There’s this great analogy, actually, I saw a picture of this on Instagram so, so many years ago, and it was a picture of an individual who had jumped off a cliff and they were building the airplane as they fell. And the, the caption read below the life of an entrepreneur, right? Building the airplane after you jump off the cliff. And that’s a little bit of the ownership mindset of like, no matter how it goes, I’m gonna own it. I’m gonna own the successes, own the failures, but I, most importantly, I’m going to own the process of building it as we go and knowing that it’s always going to have opportunity to improve and be better.
AJV (01:44):
And we will do so as we go. But I’m not going to wait to launch. I’m gonna own what I’ve got and I’m gonna go and I’ll make it better as we continue. Number two, be a salesperson first. The ownership mindset is the, the key to all business is to make more than you spend
AJV (02:59):
Companies. ’cause Other companies have said, my gosh, they’re better at selling this than we are. They have more influence than we do. They have become great salespeople. So in an ownership and an entrepreneur mindset, you have got to, to own and take on the abilities and the responsibilities of being a great salesperson for your company, your products and your services. Number three, grow only as fast as you can. Serve your community. IE your clients and your employees. Grow only as fast as you can. Serve your community. Some of the greatest stories of all time about companies who have had enormous growth in unbelievable timeframes and in a devastatingly sad story of how they imploded that’s most of the docuseries out right now are about that. And I won’t list any of them specifically, but there are story after story after story about this monumental mind blowing growth.
AJV (03:57):
Only to watch it come to a tumbling disaster. A pile of rubble in the end because they outgrew their ability to serve their customers in a good and decent way. Right? Now, that’s not just their own customers, that’s also your employees. Don’t outgrow your capacity to take care of your people. So if that means you need to slow growth down, slow it down so that you can do it right? You don’t have to grow fast. There’s no accolades and fast growth, although seemingly that’s what people talk about in the market often fast growth is worrisome to me of going, do you have the infrastructure in place? Like if you’ve grown that fast in that short amount of time, like, do you really have all the systems in place? Like, can I see a little bit more into the, you know, under the cover now, under the hood, grow only as fast as you can serve your people, your community.
AJV (04:51):
That’s your employees and your customers. Number four, hire a players only if they are not an A player, don’t hire ’em. You gotta have a players in every single role of your company. This whole idea of the weakest link, why do you have weak links? Why? Why do you have those? I have no idea. I’m not saying that we haven’t had weak links. I’m just saying like, be cognizant of hire a players. An A player can do the job of three C players. So hire one phenomenal person. Pay ’em every single thing that they’re worth and it will save you three other positions. Hire top talent. Hire A players. Don’t settle. Hire the person that can help you grow, help you take it to the next level. Hire top talent. Hire A players. I cannot say that enough on repeat. And then number five, focus on being better over bigger. This is one of my favorite stories to tell right now. And it’s funny ’cause I don’t even remember the book that I read this in last year but I, that’s
AJV (05:57):
Not true. I think it was called To Create, it was a book called, called to Create. And they were telling this amazing story about Truitt Kathy, who’s the founder of Chick-fil-A And it was in the late mid or mid to late 1990s. And there was apparently this, you know, once of kind of like once of a lifetime boardroom meeting with Truit Kathy, who I, I did not know personally clearly, but was known to be a very calm executive. But in this particular meeting they were meeting about a competitor company called Boston Market, who had come on the scene and was growing at an expedient rate, taking up massive market share. And they were on the track to being a a billion dollar company at this point. I think Chick-fil-A was maybe like $400 million. Don’t quote me on the facts here, I’m recalling from memory.
AJV (06:46):
But they were in this conversation about how all these other Chick-fil-A executives were wanting to talk about, well, how do we grow market share? We need to open more stores. We need to do this and do this. And uncharacteristically of Truitt Kathy, he bangs his fist on the table and he said, we’ll have no more talk of this. The only thing that we need to talk about is how do we become better? We don’t need to become bigger. We need to become better and let our audience demand that we become bigger. And this saying has become a mantra at Brand Builders Group because who says you need to be bigger? Who says scale is better? That’s not necessarily the case. And I love this story with Truitt Kathy, because less than a decade later, Boston Market had filed bankruptcy. But Chick-fil-A was now a billion dollar company.
AJV (07:41):
When you focus on becoming better at what you do, you force your customers to talk about you more in the best way. Better quality products, better quality team members, better quality experiences. That’s how you grow. That’s how you become bigger, better, makes you bigger. Bigger does not always make you better, but better, almost always makes you bigger. So focus on being better at what you do, not just being bigger. Focus on better teammates, better training, better experiences, better service, better programs, better products, better services, better, better, better. And then let your audience demand that you get bigger because they want so much of it.
Ep 476: How to Go From 0 to 8 Figures in 5 Years with AJ Vaden
AJV (00:02):
How do you go from zero to eight figures in five years or less? That’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. And I gotta be transparent. I gotta be honest. I was actually in the shower this morning and I was brainstorming, what am I gonna do for this solo episode for our podcast today? And I, I looked over at my husband, Rory, and I said, Hey babe, what do you think would be worthy of doing a solo podcast episode, which is what we’re doing right now? And he said, babe, you gotta talk about the growth trajectory of Brain Builders Group. Because what’s what’s been done is something that has happened organically and the lessons that we have learned are extraordinary for entrepreneurs. And mainly because of all the things that we’ve done wrong. But luckily over the last five years, there’s been a few things that we’ve been blessed to do right through the grace of God and good coaches and mentors and amazing community.
AJV (00:54):
And in a fantastically awesome team at Brand Builders Group, we’ve been able to pull some pretty cool things off. And so we’re gonna talk about that. It’s what are eight things that you should know to help you go from zero to eight figures and five things and five years or less, right? So number one, focus on sales and revenue first. And don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying don’t focus on people or service. What I am saying is you have to know how to sell your product and service as the first thing you do. You have got to have a sales oriented mindset, a revenue focused effort before you start thinking of things that are ancillary, which I’m gonna throw out there would be marketing, right? And this will hear, hear more about this over our story, but it was sales first. It was like, we have to bring revenue in the door. If we’re going to make it, we’ll figure the rest out later. We’ll get better as we go, but we have to figure out how to sell this first. So it was figuring out what problem we solve, who we solve it for, the unique way in which we solve it. It’s what at Brand Builders Group, we call your brand positioning statement. It’s what are the offerings that
AJV (02:03):
We have and the price points, which will inevitably change. They will evolve. They must evolve. They must change as you grow as a company. But first and foremost, you have to know how to sell what you offer products or services alike. So, sales mindset first, revenue focused first. Not in lieu of service, but you’ve gotta bring clients in the door. You gotta bring money in the door in order to serve them well. So that was number one. Number two,
AJV (02:35):
Make more than you’re spending, right? Simple Law of Economics. Spend less than what
AJV (02:43):
You’re earning, right? In our case, it was like we, we were focused on making more than we were spending. And that means that us as the business owners were the, honestly, the, the lease paid people in the company for a minute. ’cause We could afford it. We had lots of savings. But
AJV (02:58):
We were not getting big office spaces. We still work from home. Still don’t have a permanent office space. We still use coworking spaces. We’ve decided that’s not the right capital investment for our company. We are investing in other things first. Website. We, we had, we full launched as a company way before we had a website. We didn’t even have a website until we were almost a full eight months in to Brand Builders group. So yeah, it’s a little bit amazing that this thing took off the ground, but it did. And we’ll talk about why. But just focus on spending less than you’re making, right? Be wise with the money. We did not take loans. This was all self-funded. I’m not saying don’t take a loan, I’m just saying we didn’t. ’cause We were sales focused first and we were focused on making more than we were spending, right?
AJV (03:43):
That was number two. Number three, build and adjust as you go. We were not tied to, it has to be this way. In fact, we were tied to the fact that we don’t know how it’s supposed to be. That we’re very open and very quick to adapt. And I think that’s one of the, the great blessings of our team and our company at Brain Builders Group is we are quick to pivot and rather everyone that is a part of our team is naturally this way, or they have adapted and adjusted to be this way. Our team has an incredibly high tolerance for change. Myself and my business partner, my husband, Rory, have an incredibly high tolerance for change because we know that in a startup, that we know in order to survive, in order to succeed, things have to change. And they, we have to be able to change them quickly.
AJV (04:27):
There can be no bureaucracy. We have to see a problem, fix a problem, right? See something, say something. Airport policies, we gotta be able to quick to pivot, right? And as a smaller, more nimble company we’re able to do those things. So we have been very willing to build and adjust as we go knowing that what we build today very likely won’t be a fit for even a year from now. And we’ve bought into the idea that that means we’re growing. That means we’re succeeding. So we’re buying into that. That’s a choice. It’s not a choice everyone wants to make, but it’s a choice that is necessary to make. And that with a changing market, a changing economy, changing technologies, as you have to be willing to build and adjust as you go, you cannot build it to be perfect and wait till it’s perfect to sell it.
AJV (05:13):
‘Cause That date never comes, right? It’s never gonna be perfect. It’s never gonna be exactly the way that you want it. There are 1,000,001 things I could list out right now that I wish were different, that I wish were better, that I wish were X, Y, and Z. But that doesn’t mean we don’t launch. That doesn’t mean that we don’t continue as is because what we have is good. And that’s how you know that it’s ready to sell. ’cause You know that it works. You know that it can help people. And we work to make it better every day, every week, every month. But it’s not the best. It’s better. And that’s okay. So build and adjust as you go. Number four, hire, right? Hire for the long term and set the vision for the people hiring, right? You’re gonna probably hear me mention the importance of team members again, in just a, a second.
AJV (05:55):
But hire right means hiring for the long term. And what I mean by that is like, when we bring on somebody literally on our first interview, I tell people and I think that’s something that I would just, I would like to mention, I’m a part of every single interview process. I do not hire anyone for any position in our company without also getting to meet them and interview them. This is a family. This is not just a business to us. This is our ministry. This is our calling. This is what we feel like we were put on this planet to do. And we wanna do it with people who share those values and beliefs and who are in it for the right reasons and who are in it for the long term. So on the very first interview, I say, I’m not asking you to sign a 50 year contract, although I would if I could.
AJV (06:37):
But I am asking you to don’t take this position. Don’t continue this interview if you don’t think this is a company that you could be with in 10 years, right? And I think that says something because we want to hire top talent. That doesn’t mean we can’t afford all top talent, but it means we want to hire the top talent so that we can afford top talent. And you do that with having a long-term in mind of like, Hey, we see the potential in you and in this company, and we want you to be here when we can afford to pay the top, the top pay for the top talent. We don’t want to grow and replace, grow and replace. We want to grow and promote, grow and promote, grow and promote the team that is here today. I would love to say that we hired so well, and so, right?
AJV (07:21):
It’s almost the same team that you’re gonna see in five years or 10 years, knowing that of course there’s gonna be turnover. We have had turnover. We have made not ideal hiring decisions based on fit and skills, but that doesn’t mean that’s not what we aim for, right? It is not hire just a body or hire the lowest, you know, paid person I can find it’s no, I hire the right person and I see if we can, we can make it work. And as we grow, their income’s gonna grow along with us. But that means you’ve got to sell the long term. You’ve gotta know the vision and sell the vision. Being a great recruiter is one of the most important assets of a leader. And as a CEO and an entrepreneur, recruiting is one of my number one jobs as the owner of Brand Builders Group.
AJV (08:07):
And it needs to be one of the number one jobs of our team recruiting, IE selling, right? But recruiting great talent is a skill that can be developed and honed. But a part of that is knowing where you’re going so that you can sell the vision and bring people along with you and actually fulfill the vision and the process, right? Number five, ask clients for feedback and then actually act on that feedback. It’s one thing to get feedback, and I think that’s humbling enough to, to constantly ask your clients like, what are the things we’re doing not so well? As well as what’s, what’s, what’s going well? What can we do more of? It’s a whole nother thing to go, I hear you and I’m gonna do something about it because I want the clients that we have today, just like my team to be the clients we have 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 year, 10 years from now.
AJV (08:52):
I want them to feel like they’re a part of building this company because honestly, our community at Brand Builders Group has been, they are the people who come up with the ideas. They are the ones who give us the feedback. And sometimes it’s not awesome feedback to hear that often is the feedback that is necessary to make that next move to growth. I can give you countless examples of things that I’ve just grabbed off of a survey of going, yeah, why aren’t we doing that? Or a conversation that someone said, Hey, would you be willing to hear me on this? And it created a whole new event or a product line or a service line. It’s ask for it. Genuinely, genuinely ask for it and then actually act on it. Help your community be a part of what makes you great. Because they know, they know where your weaknesses are.
AJV (09:39):
They know where your strengths are. And if you’re humble enough to ask for it and to listen to it and to act on it, it will make you a better company, a stronger company, and it will create more loyal customers. Okay? Number six, dev or sorry, give 10 times the value of what you charge. That’s a core philosophy of brand builders group. Every single time that we look at our, our suite of offerings for each of our product products or programs, we go, do we feel like they’re getting 10 times the value of what they’re paying for? And if not, how do we add more? It’s not, how do we constantly increase prices, although we’re in business at some point, we have to do price increases with the rate of inflation and the, the, you know, just cost of economies. Like, yes, those are things that we have to do to adjust with the rest of the world and the markets, but we are going to add more as we do that.
AJV (10:28):
Why? Because retention matters. Our customers matter. Our team matters. We don’t wanna be a revolving door. We want the, we want lifetime customers just like, and to some degree, I want lifetime employees, right? Again, but it’s, are you giving 10 times the value for what you’re charging for? So instead of thinking, what should you be charging, just be like, how much value can I give? And how can I make it such a no-brainer that it’s impossible to say no. Like I would be so dumb to leave. I would be so dumb not to do this. Like, I’m getting what? Like, is there a catch? Is there a trick? Like you want people to be like, this is extraordinary. How do you afford doing this? In fact, one of the most often questions I get from other people I know in our space is, why aren’t you charging more?
AJV (11:12):
Like, you know, you should be charging more, right? And I’m like, I mean, I know we could be charging more, but I don’t know that we should because we are aiming to do a very specific thing for a very certain group of people. Not to say that our prices won’t increase over time, they will, but always subservient to the value that we’re providing. So give 10 times the value than what you charge. Number seven, care. I’m just gonna pause for dramatic effect. Care, care about your team. Care about what you’re doing. Care about the numbers. Care about the details, care about your clients. Care about how things are done. Care. And I don’t mean you should be involved in every minute detail, that’s not what I’m saying. But in order to care, that does mean you need to stay on the front lines. You need to have contact with your customers.
AJV (12:06):
What we call our community. They’re way more than customers to us. They are our community, they are our friends, they’re our family. These are the dreams that we’re, we are working to empower, to come to life. These are not clients. This is our community. These are people that we care deeply about serving and helping. That’s why we’re doing this. And back to, it’s like we treat this as our ministry, not just our business. This is, these are friends and family. These are relationships, not clients. Customers and employees care. Stay on the front lines. Know your people. Know your community. Know what they’re about. Know what their brands are doing. Know what they’re up to on social media. Now, if you’ve got thousands and thousands of clients, I know that gets harder, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay on the front lines. You read the surveys, you show up at the events, you get on customer service calls.
AJV (12:59):
You meet with the sales team, you meet with your team of people who deliver your products and services. You stay on the front lines. That’s how you show that you care, right? There’s places that you can care and there’s people that you can care. And what I mean by that is that there are some places that you need to be. And then there are some people that you need to be with. Know the places and know the people, the care, stay on the front lines. And number eight, develop your team so you can trust your team. And that has a lot to do with the mindset of no one is going to step into any role perfectly. It doesn’t matter what their experience is. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been with you. There are nuances to every day, every role, every market, every year.
AJV (13:52):
They need developing just like you do as the business owner or as the leader. Develop your team. Provide them books to read, classes to go to courses to part, to participate, to participate in events, to go to coaches, develop your team so that you can trust your team. If you are a leader right now who questions your team, then I would question how much time you have spent developing your team. When you develop your team, it grows trust in your team because you know that they are getting equipped with the skills that they need. And they don’t all need to come from you. They cannot all come from you. They should not all come from you. They need to learn things outside of you so that they bring new things to the table. And that means they need developing. And that means you need developing.
AJV (14:44):
So who is your coach? How are you growing? What conferences are you going to? What classes are you attending? What courses are you participating in? Develop your team so that you can trust your team. And if you can’t do it together, right? Have a book of the month, have a book of the quarter, go to events together atti, you know, participate in courses together, whatever it is. Like, do things together so that trust grows at the same time, in the same ways, in the same places. But develop your team so that you can trust your team. Now I have probably like 88 more things that I could have listed, but when I reflect over the last five years of brand builders group, these are the eight things that we have done to go from zero to eight figures in the last five years. Now, there is one overriding thing that I would be remiss if I did not mention, and it is the fact that more so than anything else over the last five years, we have had open hands and we have said, God, this is yours.
AJV (15:46):
Do with it what you will and equip us to do what you want. Now, regardless of what your religious beliefs are and your affiliation with any sort of faith or religion, I would just encourage you that there is power and surrender of holding your business with open hands of going, this is not me. This is not my identity. This is something I do. It’s something I’ve been entrusted with. There are people here that I care about and that I have the opportunity to grow, trust, and develop. I have been entrusted with them. That is a responsibility I carry. It is not a burden. It is a responsibility. It is an honor, it is a privilege. And I hold it loosely knowing that this is not mine. There is no way that we could have done what has been done in the last five years on our own.
AJV (16:42):
And I don’t just mean our team and our community. I mean, this was a, God did it company, it is a God did it company. And it is because that we have been obedient and disciplined and we have listened. We have made lots of mistakes. But you know what? We didn’t stop. But it is holding it with faith of going, whatever is happening, I believe it’s for a reason. I believe there is a lesson for me to learn. I believe there, there is something to garner out of every bad situation that’s going to make us better. And for every ounce of faith that it has taken to do this. When we had to sell our car to make payroll, we said, okay when we had to you know, battle a lawsuit in order to start the company, we said, okay, when we gave up our life savings to start this, okay when it required us taking no pay so that we could pay our team, okay, there is an element of faith.
AJV (17:39):
IE trust that what you’re doing is significant enough that it’s worth the risk. But that doesn’t mean you don’t work. You must work. We, we work, we work hard, and at the same time, we do what we can while letting God do it. Only he can. And that’s where the trust and the faith has to come in. And again, regardless of your religious beliefs, I would just encourage you holding it loosely of knowing your business is not who you are and it is not your identity. It is something that you’ve been given. It is something that you’ve been entrusted with. You have skills that align well with you being successful at this, but it is not who you are. It’s not your identity. And if you hold it loosely there, the success has come a little easier and with a little less ego, but the failures come a little less hard. So five years, eight lessons to go from zero to eight. Hope this was helpful and I can’t wait to hear your story in the next five years.
Ep 475: 6 Tips to Scale the Profits of Your Personal Brand | Jeremie Kubicek Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help Mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started.
RV (00:34):
I want to share with you one powerful principle and six key questions that you can use to scale your personal brand revenue right away. And this is really what I more and more as time goes on, I really believe that this is the secret to making more money. And it’s not something that most people are doing, it’s just the thing that I see the people who are making a lot of money are doing. And what this concept is all based upon is the idea that most people are pursuing width rather than depth. They’re concerned about the width of their reach, they’re trying to get more followers and more subscribers and, and that kind of thing. But the people who are making money are focused not on the width of their reach as much as they’re focused on the depth of their impact, and they’re utilizing something that we have created or coined as fractal math.
RV (01:30):
That’s the, the, the fractal Math method as what we call it. And we didn’t create the concept necessarily, but we’ve kind of branded it as that. And we are teaching it formally in our Brand Builders Group membership to all of our members. And so this is the big idea, this is the big concept that I will share with you. Fractal Math is a principle that says that 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times what they have already invested in. So 10% of your customers will buy something that’s 10 times more than what they’ve already invested in, right? So the the simple math example or illustration that I used for this is, let’s say that you had a $30 offer. Okay? You had a a $30 product, a $30 book, let’s say and you got a thousand people to buy it.
RV (02:20):
If a thousand people buy a $30 offer, that’s $30,000. When most people think about doubling their revenue, they think about adding more customers, right? To go, okay, if I wanna add another, if I wanna add another 30,000 revenue, I need to add another thousand customers. But a new customer is the most expensive type of customer there is acquiring, you’ve probably heard the term CAC or cac, the cost customer acquisition cost. It’s how much does it cost to acquire a new customer? Because new customers are the most expensive thing. The most profitable customers are existing customers when they buy repeat business, that is the most profitable because you get to have new revenue without any of the CAC. So the concept here, fractal Math, says to focus on serving your existing customers. And instead of getting a thousand new customers, the, the fractal math says that 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times higher than what they’ve already invested.
RV (03:21):
So if you have a thousand people who bought a $30 product, then that means 10 per, that means a hundred people, which is 10% of the thousand, a thousand customers, 10% of those is a hundred, a hundred people would invest in a $300 product. So 10, you know, 10 times what they’ve already invested, they already bought 30 times 10 is 300. So one 10th of the audience will spend 10 times more than what they just spent. And now you have a hundred customers who are already in your database, who invested at $300 rather than 30. And $300 times a hundred is also 30 grand. So you doubled your revenue without adding a single new customer. And it continues, right? So you go, if a hundred people would buy a $300 offer, then that means that 10 people, 10% of a hundred is 10, 10 people would buy a $3,000 offer.
RV (04:13):
And that’s another 30 grand because $3,000 offer times 10 people is $30,000. And then that means that one person, ’cause 10% of 10 is one, one person would invest at $30,000 with you potentially. So that’s another 30,000. So that’s three sets of $30,000, a thousand people buying a $30 product, a hundred people buying a $300 product, 10 people buying a $3,000 product, and one person buying a $30,000 product, 30,000, 30,000, 30,000, 30,000. That’s $120,000. That means you have not just doubled your revenue, you’ve quadrupled your revenue, and you’ve quadrupled your revenue without adding a single new customer. And that is the most profitable way to do it. And so this is, this is one example When we say that we teach monetization strategy inside a brand builders group, right? Part of our spiritual gifting is making money. We are good at it, we are good at teaching people to do it, and it’s through helping them understand principles and concepts of money that are like this, that a lot of people don’t know.
RV (05:21):
So that’s the concept. The concept here is fractal math. 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times higher than what they’ve already invested with you. And another way of saying it at a principle is to say, focus not just on the width of your reach, but the depth of your impact. And so now I’m gonna give you the six key questions that we ask for to, to increase our monetization at Brand Builders Group by increasing our, our level of service to our clients. And there’s six of the same questions that we ask, you know, my private clients who, who you know, either come invest to spend two days with me, one-on-one, or they come to one of my Brand Mastery events, which are very, very small events that I host now that are just like five or 10 people.
RV (06:07):
And we spend two days together. And basically I fractionalize the cost of two days with me, one-on-one across like five to 10 people. And so it becomes much more affordable. And these are the kind of concepts that I’m helping walk them through, okay? So here are the six questions that will help you extract more revenue from your current customers. But I don’t wanna don’t just think about it like that. And this is what question number one is. Question number one is, how can I help my clients succeed faster? How can I help my clients succeed faster? That is something that you should be asking. This is not just how do I get more money out of people, right? That’s not it. It’s thinking in a service centered way. And that’s what these six questions are. These are six service centered questions that lead to scale, that lead to more profitability for your personal brand and really for any business.
RV (07:02):
Although we only focus on working with personal brands. So when you ask that question, the quality of your answers is determined by the quality of your questions. And so if you want different answers, you gotta ask different questions. And if you ask better questions, you’ll get better answers. And that’s why these questions are so important. How can I help my clients succeed faster? Remember, money follows speed. That’s a principle of money. The faster you can, you can get a result for somebody, the more they’re willing to pay you for that result. And the more people there are who are willing to pay you that money. So that’s a question you should be asking. How can I help my clients succeed faster? Number two, what can I offer to help my clients succeed in a deeper way? Right? So how do I, how, how can I serve them in a deeper way?
RV (08:01):
How can I give them more access to me? There’s a, a, a principle and a, a framework that we teach in monetization strategy in our, in our formal curriculum that’s called the services spectrum, which is basically this idea that as, as intimacy goes up, as, as, you know, proximity to the messenger goes up, the price goes up because you’re able to serve people in a deeper way, right? Like the most expensive thing someone can buy from brand builders group is two days with me, one-on-one that’s expensive, but that’s also the most value that I’m able to give. I can completely customize everything I’ve spent my life learning to one person’s business or one person’s strategy. And that’s what, you know, most of my big private clients, the Louis Howes, the Ed millet, the, you know, the, the Eric Thomas’, the, the, the Amy Porterfield, the Jasmine Stars, the Jim Quicks, right?
RV (08:47):
These are people that are private clients of mine where I’m able to work with them one-on-one, and I can help them create massive value. Some because of who they are and what they have. And, and, and some just because, you know, they’re massive action takers and they, they, they execute and they’re coachable. So how can you serve your clients in a deeper way? How can you give them more access to you? More access to you requires more of your time. If it requires more of your time, then you should, you should. It’s justifiable to collect more money for that. It’s also worth more money to people because you’re able to shorten the learning curve because they’ve got more custom solutions coming directly from you. As they get closer to you, the solutions become more custom to their unique situation and more applied to their specific questions.
RV (09:34):
And so it’s worth more, and it also is worth more because it takes more of your time. So there’s more opportunity cost to your time. So how can you help your clients? How can you serve your clients in a deeper way? How can you give them more intimate access to you? Number three, what tools can I create that make it easier for my clients to implement? What tools can I create that make it easier for my clients to implement? Right? So especially if you are some type of educator or you, you’re an expert, right? We, we serve mission-driven messengers. A lot of our clients are experts. They don’t all sell information like courses and eBooks. A lot of ’em are professional service providers, right? They’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re accountants, they’re chiropractors, their financial advisors, their real estate agents. But what tool can you create where the tool can help your clients succeed without you having to be there?
RV (10:30):
Especially what tools can you create that help them implement the things that you teach or implement the things that you ask them to do? The more that you can create those tools, the higher value you, you, you are providing because you’re moving them from just education to application. And remember, that’s another one of our principles that we say is that people don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application and tools accelerate the time, you know, it takes to, to implement it. You know, they, it compresses the amount of time that it takes to, to execute related lead. Number four, what vendor partnerships or vendor relationships can I form that I can refer my clients to that will help them execute, right? So maybe you can’t execute everything for all your clients we’re that way, right? Like we have over 800 clients in our, in our flagship membership program now, right?
RV (11:23):
Like, we’re serving 800 people. Our vision when we started the company was a thousand messengers. We’re getting really close to that. And we have like another 1500 private clients that just do, you know, private two day sessions with us. Well, the, the question is, is to go, well, we can’t write the copy for all, you know, 2000 of our clients. We can’t build every funnel for 2000 clients. We can’t ever, every video, you know, launch every podcast, manage every speaking career, do every single book launch write every single speech, write every joke. We can’t do that for all 2000 clients. And so we are going, what tools can we create to make it more accessible? And then also, where are their strategic vendor relationships? And I think one of the most valuable parts of our community when someone becomes a, a, a paying member of Brand Builders group is we curate a community of vendors, right?
RV (12:13):
So it’s like you need people to write copy, graphic design, do video editing, do websites, you know, build funnels like, you know, do research studies. Be a literary agent, book you for speaking like what all, you know, PR services, all of the things that personal brands need that we can’t provide. We’re just not that big, at least not yet. We go, well, let’s, let’s let’s curate vendors to introduce you to. And we do referral fees with the vendors, right? We pay them when they refer people to us, and they pay us when we refer people to them. So it’s a win-win win for everybody. Number five, big question. Where do my clients most often get stuck when they’re trying to implement the things that I teach? Right? So that’s a big question. Where do my clients most often get stuck when they’re trying to implement the things that, that you teach to them, right?
RV (13:06):
So you know what to do, you know how to do it. You’ve been doing it your whole life, your whole career, or some big chunk of it, right? And so what you gotta identify and your current clients well, and your past clients can help you do this, is go where do they fall apart, right? Where does, where does everything fall off the tracks? Where do they, it’s like they, they get excited and inspired, but then when they get to, you know, blank, it all just disintegrates and they lose all their momentum. You have to identify those roadblocks, those bottlenecks, and then you have to provide support to them. And then question number six, what problem can I solve for my clients? That never goes away. What, what problem can I solve for my clients that never goes away? And I give you example of some of the ones that we do at Brand Builders Group.
RV (13:51):
People come for our content, right? They come for our expertise, they come for our principles. They come because we give them a world class education that, in my opinion, exceeds the practical value by a long shot of what you would get from, you know, a a hundred thousand six, multi six figure MBA. And we teach them how to apply things quickly and make money for an a, a, a fraction of what something like that would cost. They come for the content, but they stay for the community. See, people leave college, they get their degree and they leave here. They stay because there’s, there’s community, there’s relationships, there’s joint ventures there’s friendships that are formed, right? There’s accountability that’s developed. They’ve got access not just to me and aj, but to our strategists and, and to the other clients. We also provide a lot around data and trends.
RV (14:41):
So our clients get insider access to like, what’s working right now. Not what worked five years ago, or just what worked five years ago, but what worked right now. Another thing that we have started doing for our members is pr. Our members need pr. They need publicity. They need to get in front of more stages. They need to get on more podcasts. They need to be on more YouTube shows. They need to be doing more Instagram lives. They need to be doing more, you know, onstage speaking breakouts, virtual summits, et cetera. Well, we are not a PR service, so you can’t hire us to book you for pr. We don’t do that. But what we figured out is, wow, we have 2000 clients. Almost every one of our clients, e every one of our clients has some type of a platform. They have podcasts, YouTube channel, they have events, they do stages, they do summits.
RV (15:27):
And so what we, we hired a full-time person to do nothing but connect our members to one another. So it’s an internal PR service inside our own community. And so people are going, wow, I’m paying for education, but I’m getting community and I’m getting these tremendous PR opportunities because I’m sitting next to people at your events who write for Forbes and do big summits and have huge podcasts. And all of them have social media followings, like is PR and then related is gigs. This is the next thing that we’re, we’re moving towards is helping our clients actually get paid gigs. And that’s like the new emerging area for us. So those are problems we can solve that never go away. So there you have it, one key principle, fractal math, and six key questions to ask to help you scale the revenues of your personal brand much faster.
RV (16:20):
Don’t be so consumed with the width of your reach that you ignore the depth of your impact. If you want more strategies like this, and you’re serious about taking your personal brand to the next level, make sure you go to free brand call.com/podcast to request a call with our team. If you’re not ready for that, that’s all right. Hang on here. Stay tuned next week, share this episode with someone who you think it would be valuable for. Come talk to me on social media and we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 474: How to Build a Personal Brand that has Enterprise Value with Jeremie Kubicek
RV (00:02):
One of my favorite sayings that we’ve been talking about recently with our community is that, you know, in golf, you drive for show and you put for dough, and we’ve been talking about how email or social media is for show, and email lists are for dough, and that’s really where you make money inside of that same vein of that concept, a lot of the personal, the biggest personal brands in the world that you meet and you follow and you hear of often don’t have that big of businesses on the back end. And that’s usually because they’re really built around one person and one person can only do so much, they can only be available so many days in so many ways and so many places. And so there’s a very different conversation that happens around building a personal brand versus turning a personal brand into something that has enterprise value, basically a, a business or a revenue stream or set of revenue streams that you can sell.
RV (00:59):
And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about how to turn your personal brand into a business that you could actually sell one day, or just that has enterprise value, that it would live beyond you if you died, or that could be transferred to your kids or your employees you know, after you die. And to talk about that, we’re gonna bring one of the people who is truly the best in this space of anyone in the industry, of any, anyone that I’ve ever met in the personal development industry. So his name is Jeremy Kubek. I’ve known about Jeremy for years probably over a decade. We’re gonna, you’re gonna hear some of his background. But this person, like this man has had a lot to do with being a part of John Maxwell and helping build the Maxwell companies and some of the things they’ve done.
RV (01:47):
If you’ve ever heard of Chick-fil-A leader cast Jeremy was a huge part of that. These are, you know, huge catalyst catalyst conferences. This is a man who was very involved in a significant way behind the scenes. Now today he’s a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He’s a speaker. He talks, he’s a thought leader and he is a serial entrepreneur, and he, you know, generally works in this space of kind of corporate leadership. And we’ll talk about some of his model today. But I really brought him on the show to talk about his newest book, the Communication Code. So, we’ll, we’ll touch on that a little bit, and also to really talk about how do you turn your personal brand into something with enterprise value. So Jeremy, welcome to the show,
JK (02:32):
Or good to be with you. Thank you, man. I’m, I appreciate all that you do. You have such a good reputation and just fun to be here.
RV (02:38):
Well, thank you, man. I, I, so you too. And, and I think specifically when I, the brands, the, the, the, the brands, the movements, the conferences, the companies that you’ve been a part of are ones where it’s like, you know, they have very, very strong reputation. So knowing that the context of this conversation is kind of around building a scalable enterprise can you just give us sort of like a brief history? I know you’ve done so many things, but like some of the high points of the big personal development brands that you’ve been a part of, of building.
JK (03:15):
Yeah. And so much of what I’ve done in the past, you know, which was, and I’ll tell you why I shifted to where I’m going and where I’m now, but we were a part of helping John Maxwell. We bought John Maxwell’s assets years ago inside Enjoy Maximum Impact. We bought inside of that was Catalyst. We stripped out and built the Catalyst conferences. We created Leadercast as a brand and started that as well. And then we partnered with people like Henry Cloud, pat Lencioni, Craig Rochelle, Andy Stanley you know, these thought leaders that were just doing amazing things and, and still are. But at the time that was, you know, that was back in the day, right? It’s like, yeah, I’m the good old days. And it was at the height of the conference world, and I, I saw the writing on the wall.
RV (04:08):
What year is this? What year is this? This is
JK (04:10):
2007 to 2015 that timeframe. And up to, I sold it all in 2011 and then 17 in parcels. And these
RV (04:23):
Were all on my vision board. FYI like Leadercast funny. I’m speaking at Leadercast this year. That’s, that’s still going. I’m actually speaking there in April. But like Leadercast and Catalyst, like these, these were events that were on my vision board as like an, as a up and coming speaker. So that’s, that’s awesome.
JK (04:39):
Yeah. And so, and you know, catalyst was so fun because Brad Lanik and I I was CEO he was exec director. He, he did such a good job, but we built an unbelievable experiential event. I don’t think there’s anything like Catalyst today. And, but the problem was, is that I, I was looking at it going, okay, this is a 20th century model. We are one pandemic away from going outta business. We’re one terrorist attack. And I was trying to figure out how to scale, how do we scale content? And most all the content was speakers having books, and what do you do from here? Right? And that led me on this journey of like, man, I wanna, I wanna actually go and look at how do you actually scale. So I moved to London, sold all of that, and people thought it was crazy. But we started over because I was trying to look at the 21st century, how do adults learn? How do you actually work inside B2B and actually make it stick and last? And that’s what we’ve done since that time.
RV (05:46):
Uhhuh
JK (06:06):
Yeah, that’s right.
RV (06:07):
Is that like, and how do you, how do you get a title sponsor? How did you even think to go to them? Like how did that come about? And like, if somebody has a big event, like what, what do they do to land sponsors like that?
JK (06:18):
Okay. It was, it was unbelievable how this happened. This is an epic story. So I my, I have a phrase like, who says we can, right? And so I had built a relationship through Chick-fil-A through David ERs, and he was over marketing and a good friend of mine, JT Robinson at Chick-fil-A and they connected me to Dan Cathy, and then we started becoming friends. And, you know, they loved the Catalyst conference. We were in Atlanta, so they already knew all about us because of that, right? So we already had these great relationships. But I invited, we were, we had Tony Blair, we as the speaker with Leadercast, and I invited David to come with me, Sawers and Dan, Kathy and I had Henry Cloud do the interview. So we’re in Tony Blair’s office, which was the home of John and Abigail Adams that shows you how old it was.
JK (07:08):
Wow. And we did the interview there, and it was, I have funny side stories with Henry Cloud and, and Tony Blair’s socks. But anyway funny things that happened. And then Dan, Kathy was with us and he saw the gravitas of it. He saw it. And on the way home David Sawers we took another trip to Paris and let, let’s get a couple of days and just, you know, process a partnership. What would a partnership look like? We’re on the way to the airport in a taxi, and David throws out a number, he’s in the front seat. I’m right behind him. He goes, Hey, how about X? And I go, how about Y? And then he goes, well, how about Z? And we shook hands at the, at the airport as we’re both flying back, and that’s how it took place. And we created the title sponsorship with a vision of the Chick-fil-A leader cast. Unfortunately, I had sold down by the time we were finished, I had sold down. And the other owners, they made different moves and didn’t value that partnership. I think it was fear of political positions of Chick-fil-A and things like that, that I think they overthought it. And now Chick-fil-A’s at 22 billion and Leader cast missed out on it. But I had already sold at that point in time.
RV (08:30):
Yeah, that is, that’s just wild. And so, like,
JK (09:21):
Well, so let’s take Leader Cap. I meant Catalyst is pretty simple. You have an arena, it has a cost. You build an amazing experience and amazing brand. And we actually, we, we did Catalyst. We said you had to be over 40 to come under under 40 to come. And we, we carted people at the door. So we created Scarcity with the idea, and then we produced the ticket price, and we said it’s for volunteers inside churches. So it’s not just church leaders, it’s the entire volunteers of a church. So they would use it as their annual retreat. And so Catalyst became kind of a mecca, probably the wrong word to use, but from that, the, a mecca of that, that that world. And then for Leadercast, it was different. I had already done the Maximum Impact simulcast, we own that. And then I sold that with John Maxwell and I sold it back to him.
JK (10:11):
So I built the leader cast brand. And we just took a brand that we had, we had done before, but we hadn’t used it. And I basically thought of Jake at State Farm. This is State Farm Insurance around the, the United States, like small town insurance agents, small town chambers, small town bank presidents. They want to gather and have events, but they can’t afford to bring Tony Blair in. They can’t afford to bring John Maxwell in or pick a thought leader. So really, there was a simulcast for small towns. And then you get them to, to host it, and they pay a host fee. And I can’t remember what we charged at the time the fees, but we basically, there’s different levels. They sold tickets and it was different. You know, if you bring X people, if you bring under 50, it’s this price, 50 to a hundred, a hundred to, and then you just sell the host fees. So we’d have, I think the highest I had was 184,000 people at 874 host sites. And that was the highest that we had ever gotten. I
RV (11:21):
Said 184,000 people watching live from how many host
JK (11:25):
Sites? The simulcast at 874 sites.
RV (11:30):
8 74.
JK (11:32):
Yep.
RV (11:32):
Wow. And so each of those sites, they basically pay a fee to be able to host it, but then they go resell the tickets and they keep the profit from it, some of
JK (11:40):
It that’s right. Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:08):
A break in the agenda for like a local person to get up and speak.
JK (12:12):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:13):
Oh, that is brilliant.
JK (12:16):
So, so now that became a massive business year over year. And then we would do live, well then Chick-fil-A sponsorship basically helped me pay for the live location, because that’s where all the expense is. You have the technology back in the day, this is, this was before the modern streaming, but you had a lot more broadcast, literally broadcast trucks, you know, and, and so it was just, but it was a lot of risk, man, a lot of expense. Just to pull it all off, you work 360 4 days for one day, and it was just, it was intense.
RV (12:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh
JK (13:03):
We had, we had we had, we got hacked. The group that we bought got hacked, and we had Aramaic on the bottom screen for 45 minutes one year. You know, this is little spooked out after nine 11, things like that. I mean, it was just, we had some hard stuff that took place, but we did it from 2000, whatever, all the way to you know, it’s still going, you know, I sold it and now it’s become a lot smaller. But it’s, it’s the concept. Anyone could do it. I mean, it’s, if you have vision for it, yeah. But what was the problem was this, the group that I sold to, they started going to larger companies. Larger companies. They get to see Tony Blair, they get, and they took, I think they took their eye off the ball of Jake at State Farm. It’s small town America, small town, you know other countries that, that’s where the, the, the opportunity is. But how do
RV (14:01):
You reach those people? Did you have local reps or do were you just do an advertising and stuff like that? You have an inside phone sales team? All,
JK (14:08):
All, yeah, we had a sales team. And so the sales team, then we had leads, and we’d have, when I, what I had at the time, we had regional connectors and, you know, people who would be one city leader. Hey, I know 10 churches, three chambers, you know, and you kind of build it that way.
RV (14:28):
Amazing, amazing. So you, but then you thought, you saw going, man, we’re one pandemic away here from live events or something. So you saw that in 2017 and bounced out. That was, that was about as perfect autonomy as you could have gotten. And, and you basically thought, okay, adults are gonna be learning virtually, and how do we deploy this to companies? And that’s so, so, so catch us up now to what you’re doing now.
JK (14:55):
Yeah. So Steve Cocker and I my business partner in England, we started to, like, honestly, here’s how we did it. We’re like, who’s scaled better than anyone in the world? And we’re like, Jesus
JK (15:11):
How did he do it? So we dissected the Jesus model, and this, I’m not even religious when I say this. Just how did he do it? And we’re like, oh my goodness. He used parables. So we use visual tools and we figured out that most adults, they, they’re cynical know-it-alls, and they don’t read much anymore. And they have short attention spans, and everything they do is on video and short video. And so we’re like, okay, where we go. So we took all of these concepts and we built 75 visual tools, and we made the tools so scalable that they help people get healthy relational, intelligent, but we teach them to multiply. So they have to teach it to other people. ’cause When you teach, you learn. So we started packaging these programs and we started certifying people. And eventually, now we just, we’re just a wholesaler. We just certify our content for coaches and consultants, and anyone in the world can use it. And so now we’ve got a, a system. So the Five Voices is probably what we’re best known for. Okay.
RV (16:13):
So hold on a second. Let me just, let me back up and pause there to make sure I understand. Because, because you’re saying we’re just a wholesaler, basically, you’re a, you’re a wholesaler, a wholesaler of your own product. Like you basically created ip and then you allow coaches to resell that IP wherever they are at, to whoever they want. So then how do you, how do you make money? And how does the coach make money? So
JK (16:41):
Here’s how, here’s what we figured out. It’s a win type of, of proposition. And it’s really interesting. We to set in 2019 we were more traditional in our certification process, 2019. I’m like, we have to be in technology. We have to be ready to scale. Don’t, didn’t like our business model. So we shifted and we launched in January of 2020 into a SaaS business. Wow. So we moved in January with the pandemic in March. We had no idea, but we, we turned and we started selling to coaches, in essence. I don’t know why that does that. But we started selling to coaches for 2 99 a month. So $299 a month. They get to be certified in our content. They take our content, and then they become a partner with us. And we built a community and we help them build their business.
JK (17:37):
And then they take our content of the Five Voices, 100 x our toolkit, and they sell that inside companies. And then we have an operating system, it’s called Giant os pro. And they take five Voices assessments, team performance assessments, and it’s a recurring revenue machine. It’s basically a SaaS business for them. We, we help coaches have a SaaS company. And if you don’t know what SaaS is for those listing, it’s software as a subscription. So it’s, it’s technology at $10 a month. So we have now they sell price points and products inside companies, but they get to keep a hundred percent of their workshops, of their keynotes, any of the content. They keep a hundred percent of that. They pay us 2 99 a month. And then they sell products, technology products inside companies. And then we do a rev share with them.
JK (18:33):
So it’s brilliant. They have direct work. They have directed work because now we have a community and they help each other around the world. They get pulled in to each other to help each other at Google or Pfizer or Biogen or wherever. And then they have a recurring revenue, a SaaS model. Well, here’s the beauty. If you think about us from enterprise, our evaluation of our company in 2018, we had a hundred coaches at 2018, and we did rev share splits. When you take their gross margin and all the way down to our ebitda, we maybe would’ve gotten three times our ebitda, which was really low. And we’re like, we’re gonna work this hard for that. It’s not sellable. We have content that everyone loves. We have this coaching community. It’s kumbaya, people love Giant, but it, the economics weren’t working. We flipped it, went to a SaaS model.
JK (19:31):
We’ve spent the last three years really, really pushing hard to get it established. Now we’re at scale, but now we’re being traded off of revenue. And Rory, this is the craziest part, you know, this, but SaaS businesses are traded off of revenue because our growth rate is so high. Our gross margins are so high, but now we’re probably worth on the minimum of six times revenue up to 12 times revenue, depending on our growth rate. Growth rate, not of ebitda, off of revenue. So a, a business that was worth maybe 900,000 in an EBITDA model is now worth 30 to 40 million in a SaaS model. And that’s the beauty of it.
RV (20:18):
Yeah. And let me just, just to walk y’all through like some rough math on this. If you’re not familiar with valuations, right? So let’s, let’s say you have a company that does just for easy math, 10 million in revenue and 1 million in profit or ebitda, right? Earnings before interest, tax risk, depreciation and amortization, that’s basically profit. So most companies are valued at a multiple of profit. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Jeremy is saying. A, a service-based business would be valued at a multiple of profit. So if you had a, a three x multiple on profit, that’d be three times your ebitda. So in this case, three times $1 million would be a $3 million company. But if you’re a SaaS company, you’re valued off of revenue. And instead of three times a million, which is, you know, the multiple times the profit, it’s, it’s maybe something like, let’s say five for easy math, five times the revenue.
RV (21:09):
So five times 10, which is 50 million, right? So that’s by, by repositioning the company. For, for those of you, that’s just like a quick little math, like lesson in how this works. And so anyways, so, so come back. So, so it’s blowing my mind here is now you said the coaches are creating a recurring revenue, you’re creating a recurring revenue model for them. So I see how you’re creating a, a recurring revenue model for yourself because they’re paying you 299 a month. Got it. They get to use all your content. They get to keep all a hundred percent of their training and speaking, which is cool. ’cause That’s always a rub, right? Is who gets to, you know, who gets to keep the percentage, but then you have these IT products you’re talking about that they’re then selling into companies. And so are those basically subscription products and that that’s what your revenue sharing? Yeah.
JK (21:58):
So they’re selling the operating system inside companies. So when they do Five Voices, for instance, five Voices is we think the most innovative personality driven growth tools. So you understand your personality and wiring. Well, people take the assessment through the operating system and it’s $10 a month per employee. And then they, they find or
RV (22:20):
Limited access to the test,
JK (22:22):
To the operating system. Mm-Hmm.
RV (22:24):
Whole operating system,
JK (22:25):
They get everything. So the employee, they get, and, and it’s robust, they get team performance assessments, they have peace index assessment, communication code assessment, all of our books and tools, they get access to all of it. So, and employees now can build their team leaders. They can run their teams through Giant, but we’re partnering with a coach, a consultant. So each of them are then bringing on, like today I showed you that list that wins channel. Becky in England, she brought on 45 people at $10 a month. Well, that’s $450 a month, so it’s really low for the client. But that adds up because our churn rate is super low. It’s less than 3%. So people stay with us a long time because they’re using it as an ongoing basis. So now we’re in the software model. So now we’re helping coaches and consultants actually have a software business because they couldn’t afford to build what we’ve built.
JK (23:27):
So now we’re partnering with them. They’re selling five Voices, pro or Giant inside the company. They’re adding people onto the software and technology, and they’re running their systems off of it. The coach and consultants working with the company to do that. So now you have your direct income. So the, the direct income would be if you do a workshop or speaking, that’s a hundred percent yours. If you are so full and you need help, you can pull from any of the other giant community and ask, Hey, can you do this work for me, Rory, I can’t do it. But you keep a percentage of it. So you get a percentage of you directing work to people, and then you have recurring revenue. So we have one group, and it’s the largest group. So be be mindful of this, we have one group that’s making 49,000, or they have 49,000 a month in recurring revenue, and they’re making 25% of that. So 25, 30% that they’re making of 49,000 a month. We have other people making 9,000 a month. We have other people making 1000 a month. But it’s the idea that as a coach or consultant, you can actually have recurring revenues. You can actually be in the SaaS model itself. And that’s the partnership that we’ve, we’ve figured out.
RV (24:43):
Amazing. So, so basically they get a hundred percent of the speaking, you get a hundred percent of the coach’s monthly fee, and then they get 25 to 30% of the recurring. But then they also have a, they’re also vested in making sure people are logging in and using it and using the tools and all that sort of stuff. Yeah.
JK (25:00):
And it’s a frequent
RV (25:00):
That is so brilliant. That is so magnificent. I love that so much.
JK (25:05):
JK (25:59):
We’re doing different businesses, but Giant has now got five voices, but we are building certifications around five voices for other things. There’ll be a future of five Voices for healthcare, five voices for cells. And so now we’ve got this community that wants to take it in different directions than they can, but it’s just a different way to think than the other alternative, which was, I go speak, I sell books, and then maybe I get a certification product that I can sell to people. There we go. I’ve, I’ve already sold it. Maybe they do renewals. Well, in this case, it’s like we’re trying to, we we’re, we’re, our churn is so low. We’re trying to get to 3000 consultants. We’re at a thousand right now. We’re trying to get to 3000 consultants minimum that we think that will be the kind of next level for us. So, and we made it where it’s just very inexpensive. It’s 2 99 a month in that regard. So,
RV (26:56):
Yeah. Interesting. Well, that, I mean, that is so fascinating, and it’s just part of what I wanted to, to, to show in the interview is like, there’s different, there’s different ways to do this. And sometimes a shift in your thinking sometimes a minor shift in your thinking, create an exponential difference in the outcome of, of what it’s worth. And I think, you know, there, there’s a lot of people chasing like big speaking fees and, you know, wanna be the bestselling author and want to have lots of followers and like the celebrity, which is not bad or wrong. I mean, there’s, we, we do a lot of that, right? And we, we understand that world, but it’s also like there’s a way to be filthy rich and totally obscure at the same time.
RV (27:42):
You can get your content out. You can change the world. You can, you can multiply through other people. You can leverage. I, I also love how in both the story of Leadercast and in this model, you are really like reaching like the small town people and the, you know, the independent coaches. And, but, but, but pulling all those people together becomes a really powerful force. So I think that’s just really, really fascinating. So all right. Well, I, I, I, I, I, we, we gotta wrap up here soon. I, I wanna make sure that you get a chance to talk about the communication code. And maybe you can, you, you can just do a brief mention of how does that book tie into what you’re doing and, and you know, why did you write it and all that? ’cause I know that’s your, your most reset.
JK (28:24):
Yeah. So real fast. So I create content. The content then goes into our operating system and it goes into our consulting pool. They use that content for marketing. So we have the five gears, five voices, a hundred x leader, peace index, communication code, so on and so forth. So the communication code is one of our powerful tools in the giant community. They love it. And you can check it out giant worldwide.com if you want to find out more of what that community looks like. But communication code was really a tool. The idea is this, that Rory when we communicate, we have communication has expectation attached to it. Every communication is an expectation. And every expectation has a code word attached to it. If you understand and learn the code word, then you’ll unlock the expectation or the relationship. If you miss the code word, then you’re gonna miscommunicate.
JK (29:17):
And when you miscommunicate walls go up and then relationship sour, that’s the summary. So the five code words are, there’s care, there’s celebrate or celebration, care, clar, clarify, collaborate, and critique. Those are the five things that people are wanting when you understand what it is, and specifically how, and you customize it. ’cause Your care might look different than my care. But once you figure it out, then you actually use code language. Hey Roy, all right, we’re working today. Hey, what are you wanting today? Well, I want you to clarify first, and then I want you to collaborate. Awesome. You gave me the code words. I, I probably won’t miscommunicate, but if, if you come to me with desiring care and I start critiquing and then you pull back and I’m like, dude, what’s up with him? And most relationships are strained because we’ve missed the code words of communication. So it’s a, it’s one of the tools in our communication sec or section of Giant. We have communication, we have a relationship alignment, execution, and capacity tools. And that’s one of the key tools for that.
RV (30:28):
Very, very cool. So Jeremy, where do you want people to go if they wanna learn more about you and be connected with what you’re, what you’re up to? Yeah,
JK (30:36):
So jeremy ache.com. It’s not the easiest spell. Maybe that can be in the show notes. Giant.
RV (30:41):
We’ll put it in the show notes.
JK (30:43):
Yeah. And giant worldwide.com. Those are two that are very easy. You can also find our books on Amazon.
RV (30:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you reach out, make sure you just let ’em know that you heard ’em with Brand Builders Group and Influential Personal brand and show ’em some love online to some of his social counsel stuff. Jeremy, thanks for that story, man. What, what an amazing trip kind of down memory line and just the evolution of the industry and, and kudos to you for making a lot of impact. I mean, separate of money and all that stuff is like, I just think about all the people who came to Leader, leader ca have come to Leader, cast and Catalyst, and, you know, Maxwell and all the stuff that you guys are doing, you’re doing now at Giant. Like, it’s really, really cool to add all that up and go, you know, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere somebody’s lives been vastly improved by the sacrifices and the work that you’ve put in. So kudos to that. Man. We wish you the best. Thanks for being here. And we’ll continue to follow your journey.
JK (31:38):
Thanks Rory. Appreciate you
Ep 447: 5 Keys to Being Financially Secure as an Entrepreneur | Rob Luna Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Well, I always love a good chat around tax strategy and investing in financial stuff and just learning about money in general, because I don’t think there’s enough conversation and enough knowledge that is transferred around making money, saving money, keeping money, investing money, spending money wisely, and just in overall generating more, more money. And so I’m always looking forward to those opportunities. And I enjoyed that chat with Rob Luna. I wanted to share with you as part of that go, I just wanted to off the top of my head, grab five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. So as I look back over like my career and mine and AJ’s journey as entrepreneurs to go, what are some things that have, have really led to our financial security, at least to the level that we have at now? And I just thought, man, let’s rattle these off ’cause these are good.
RV (01:01):
And, and, and I would’ve wanted to have known these or, or heard them over and over again as an entrepreneur. So here they are, five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. Number one, get debt free to own your freedom. Get debt free to own your freedom. And this is one that I just, I will be forever grateful to Dave Ramsey because he has the program that teaches people how to get debt free. And we followed that thing to a t Now, I don’t know, it was coming up on 20 years ago when I went through financial piece, but those principles became a part of my financial psyche that I adapted and adopted that are ingrained still to me today that have, I think, set me up in a completely different financial capacity from several of my friends and colleagues and clients and, you know, even mentors and people I look up to.
RV (02:00):
And a huge part of it is just being debt free, because people try to make mathematical arguments for why maybe you shouldn’t be debt free, right? They try to make mathemat mathematical arguments for like, well, think of all the money you have tied up in your house, right? And going, if you took that money out of your house and instead had a, you know, debt on your house, you could be investing that money in other places and making more money. And sometimes, and in some markets, that’s sometimes true. But here’s what’s always true. When you don’t have debt, you are free. I mean, the Bible says this, right? The borrower is slave to the lender. And what’s, what is more powerful in your life than having millions of dollars is just being free to do whatever you want to do. And
RV (02:58):
That comes, that’s a mental thing. And it’s a spirit that’s a spiritual condition. And that has more to do with not owing people money than it does to do with how much you make. And one of the things that you’ll realize as you make more money, and hopefully you realize this, this is one of the things that AJ and I learned over the years, is that we don’t need more money. We need less stress. We don’t need more money. We need less, less complexity. Peace is the new profit. It’s not about going, oh, I have some number in my account. And then that number’s bigger and bigger and bigger. Like it’s just a number in an account. What really matters is your peace of mind. How do, how are you feeling? How secure are you? How stable are you? Versus how worried are you that if a change in the interest rates in the are, are gonna completely, you know, tank your business?
RV (03:55):
Or are you worried that if you don’t get a customer to pay in time, you’re not gonna have a chance to pay your vendor and you won’t make payroll. And like all of the stress that comes from leverage, which is like basically playing arbitrage with money, that is risky business. And it’s not that it can’t ever work, sometimes it does, but more often than not, it all nets out to be about the same as just doing it the simple way anyways. And regardless of it, it’s just when you come to a decision to go, I don’t need more money, I just need less stress, that is powerful. And that’s buying your own freedom. When you, when you’re debt free to go, once you’re debt free, you can buy whatever you want as long as you can pay cash for it. Like it, everything becomes simple.
RV (04:42):
But when you’ve got multiple investments and multiple, you, you know, loans from different people at different rates and some are variable and some are fixed, and like, it’s all of this stress to manage, even if you’re healthy, it’s like you have to keep an eye on all of these different things. It’s stressful. So get debt free and buy your own freedom. And I just go start small. Be willing to go start small and be willing to go slow. And over time, it adds up to be something that’ll be far more than you ever need and you won’t have the stress along the way. So that’s number one. Number two is invest in yourself First. Invest in yourself first. If there are, when, when you, when people think of investments, what they, they tend to think of like, ooh, buy real estate or invest in the market, or maybe do non-traditional investments, right?
RV (05:32):
Like, you know, artwork or crypto or you know, wine or like whatever. There’s all these different things. You, you, you know, currencies, there’s all these things you can invest your money into, but the number one thing you should invest your money into is yourself, your own mind, your own personal development. The, the, the greatest return on your money that you will ever get is strengthening your mind, your education, your knowledge, your, your mental capacity, and just you’re building your own confidence and your own strength and your ability to create wealth and create opportunity for yourself and those around you. And we just don’t hear about it. And people don’t think about investing in themself in enough of a literal way of like, if I could put money into the stock market that might grow at, you know, maybe 7%, maybe 8%, maybe 10% over years.
RV (06:25):
But if I put that money into myself, I go, I could grow my income exponentially over time, like in a, in a short order. If, if I learn how to do it and I learn and I’m, and I’m, I get in environments where I’m around other successful people. So invest in yourself first. Then the second thing I would invest in is invest in your business, right? Before I’d be looking at investing in the markets and all these things that you may or may not understand, and maybe you understand it better than I do. Like, you know, I consider myself reasonably smart, but there’s a whole lot of investment stuff that I don’t understand. I don’t understand all these fancy terms. And I have an MBA, like I have a, I have an MBA from a private university like I was a millionaire by the time I was 30 years old.
RV (07:08):
I have, I have, you know, been the, an entrepreneur now for a couple decades and there’s a whole bunch of this like speak this, this financial speak, I don’t understand. And all these, you know, you know, just weird terms. And I go, when I look around the people who have a lot of wealth and a lot of security, the big, the best investment is into yourself and then into your business. Because if you think about, like, you know, even trying to find, try to find a company that is gonna give you a 20% return, would, would be outrageous. It’d be so difficult. But if you can grow your profit margin as a business to 20% of profits a year, then that means every dollar you invest in that business is gonna give you back 20 cents. So if you can build your own business, that can, that can, can, can grow over time.
RV (07:54):
And maybe it’s, you know, it’s not a lot at first. You might, you know, break even, hopefully and make a little bit of money, 1%, 3%, 5%. But that business starts to grow. You inch it up and you’re gonna start, you build a business that clocks 15% a year, 20% a year, every single year for the rest of your life. Like you’ve built the greatest investment machine you have for yourself. Now, you don’t wanna have all your wealth tied up in your business ’cause then you don’t have diversity. ’cause If something happens and you get sick or you lose key employees or customers or vendors, or the market changes or regulation or competitor kills you, like, there’s, there’s risk right there. But, but a lot of that risk is a much more in your control than investing in some other asset that you have nothing to do with its performance.
RV (08:38):
So I always, you know, think, invest in yourself, invest in your business, then invest in your retirement. So that’s how I would think about investing. And I would go, okay, I wanna get debt free first. That’s simple. Then I wanna invest, but I wanna invest in myself and then I wanna invest in my own business, the things that I’m controlling. Like if I have, if I have a choice between place and money with some outside person or entity, or a real estate investment or some project or investing into the business that I run and operate and control every day, I’m gonna invest in that one, the one that I have control over, the one that I understand, the one that I can influence, the one that I can shape. And so we just don’t think of investing enough with just invest in yourself, invest in your own business.
RV (09:21):
So that’s investment number three. Okay, so talking about real investments. I’m gonna just say this and, and you know, maybe some of y’all will disagree. Have a boring investment strategy, have a boring investment strategy. You know, you heard Rob talk about buy, buy boring businesses. You know, Cody Sanchez is one of my favorite people to follow online. I’ve developed a little relationship with her recently and that she talks about buying boring businesses all the time. Like, your investment strategy should be boring. And I don’t, I think buying businesses is not boring. I think buying businesses is like scary and risky. And half the time that go, more than half the time that investment probably goes to zero. You know, just doing single, like, you know, investing in startups and stuff is that is not for the faint of heart. That is, that is, you know, typically very risky.
RV (10:12):
I’m talking about growth stock mutual funds like the, the, the s and p 500 in here in the us. These are, you know, the, the big large, stable enterprises that they’re not gonna make you millionaire overnight, but they’re gonna grow steady and consistently. And if something happens to those, if those all go under, that means the world is like, the world is in such dire straits. It doesn’t matter what your money is because you’re probably like you, you know, fighting for candles and, and water and stuff. Like these companies, the big companies, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’ve been around a long time. They’re stable. They’re not typically going anywhere. Y you know, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon or easily, right? And so it’s a boring investment strategy if you, if you don’t understand the investments, don’t make them. And, and if it feels like a lot of work to understand what it is, again, I would say don’t make it if it, if it, if it seems complicated or complex.
RV (11:12):
Like if you can’t explain what it is to someone else, don’t do it. And you know, if, if you’re doing it just because you saw someone on the internet telling you it was a good idea, man, be careful. I mean, just be careful. The, the people that I know that are the most happy, right? If peace is the new profit, that’s something I’ve been saying so much lately. Peace is the new profit. The people who are peaceful are not the people I know that make a a the most money. I know lots of people who make lots of money that aren’t peaceful, they’re constantly stressed because they’re constantly managing chaos. The people who I know are the most peaceful have simple plans, simple strategies, simple savings is they do simple things that they can understand and explain and, and that make sense to them. And they don’t do things because they wanna look smart or look sophisticated or to feel like they’re caught up at the crowd.
RV (12:12):
They, they do things that they actually understand. So have a boring investment strategy. Number four, choose abundance over scarcity. Choose abundance over scarcity. I think one of the most costly things that we have in the world today is a scarcity mentality. Simply stated. I think a scarcity mentality is, is often like an is is an an an either or thing. Either you can win or I can win. Abundance is going, we can both win, right? Abundance is going, there’s a, there’s a way to figure it out where everybody wins. Scarcity make feels like, well, if, if I help this person, that’s gonna take, if I help this person succeed, it’s gonna take something away from me. Abundance is thinking as I, if I help this person succeed, it’s gonna come back to me. And I think that too many people hold on too tightly to their money because they have scarcity.
RV (13:17):
They’re afraid that if they let that money go, it won’t come back to ’em. And so they don’t invest it, right? So what they do is they just hang on to it and, and they go, I don’t want anyone to steal it. I don’t wanna do anything with it. I just have to hold onto it. ’cause I’m not, I’m afraid if I let it go, it won’t ever come back. Well, one of the things that wealthy people do is, is they’re using their money. See, ironically, I think a lot of times people think that rich people have, are, are, are overly focused on money, or they’re like overly like, consumed with money and they go, oh, that’s why they have money, is because they just, all, they, they must love money. And that’s like their whole life. It’s their whole focus. That’s what people think.
RV (13:57):
That’s what I used to think, right? Coming up from, you know, a lower class family financially and, and not having much financial education until I self-educated. And in like my, you know, late teens and early twenties, what I have actually learned is that wealthy people, not all of ’em, right? Some wealthy people are not this way, but most of the wealthy people I know, they actually have the most healthy detachment from money because they know if they lose it, they’ll get it back. They’re not, they, they’re, they’re not hanging onto it for their, their own survival. They’re not so scared that going, oh, all of my security is in money. They’re going, no, I’m gonna invest in myself. I’m gonna invest in my business. I’m gonna invest in growth. I’m, I’m willing to take risks. I’m, I’m willing to. And, and I’m willing to invest in investments, whether it be real estate or it be the stock market or, you know, I I there’s not that many non-traditional investments that I am a fan of, at least unless you’re, unless you’re like a professional investor and investing’s all you do all the time and it’s all you think about and talk about.
RV (14:57):
But you, you have to be willing to think of money as a tool, right? The, the analogy I use is don’t think of your money as like a shield. Think of it as a tool. Like, like, don’t, don’t, don’t think of it as like, don’t depend on it, just for your safety. Think of it as like something you use to build something with. And that’s abundance is going. No, I, I, I I use money to, to make money. I mean, one of the things that we’ve done our whole life, we hire people to do everything. Like the number, probably the number one thing we spend money on even more than ourselves per se, is hiring other people around us to help us. We have lots of work that we need done. We need lots of help and going, part of why we do that is we don’t even make a lot of money, but we get more peace back because all the stuff there is to do, we hire, help people to help us do it.
RV (15:50):
And so even if we make no money, we go, well, at least we have help and we don’t have stress. And that’s the idea is, is is being willing to choose abundance over scarcity and, and be willing to invest. And, and by the way, that’s the risk of being an entrepreneur, right? Is you pay yourself last, right? The, the potential upside is one day you would make a lot of money, but it’s, it’s like we always pay ourselves last. Everyone else on our team gets paid whether there’s a good month or not. Like we have to pay them. That’s the commitment. And so that’s the risk. But you go, gosh, if we have, you know, there’s good months and bad months, and even if there’s bad months, I trust that like over time it’s gonna work out. That’s abundance, right? And it’s, it’s, it’s thinking long term.
RV (16:32):
And then number five this is another thing that I think this is related to abundance, and I don’t think enough people talk about this. And I think this is something that’s like maybe is kind of rare about me and aj. And I think this is something, I think part of what, how God blesses people with money. And part of how I think part of how other people bless people with their money and they wanna see people succeed is because of this. So number five is become great at helping other people make money, become great at helping other people make money. If you become great at helping other people make money, you will make a lot of money because people love being around people who help them make a lot of money. Like, and this is just something we do like, again, in the abundance mindset, our goal is to, is our goal is never to pay people the least amount possible.
RV (17:30):
Our goal is to pay people as much as we can. We wanna always pay at the top of the market. We don’t always have the money to do that, especially when we’re starting something new, right? So Brand Builder’s group is still only five years old. Like we’ve, we’re still, you know, we just coming outta startup mode. But like over time, we want to pay more money. We wanna pay our, our team the most we want. We wanna help make money for our clients. We wanna help our clients succeed. Why? Not because we need their money, but because we want to help them make money. We know if we help them make money, they’ll return it, they’ll help us make money. We, we really focus on trying to help our affiliates make more money to go, ah, how can we help our affiliates make more money?
RV (18:08):
If our affiliates make more money, they’re gonna wanna help us make more money. But I think if you focus on just going, how can I make more money for myself and all I care about is how do I make more money, then it’s like you’re taking money from other people. And so other people close off to you. But if you figure out how can I help the people around me make more money, then you’re opening a, you’re like opening the door, you’re opening a relationship, a connection between people to help you make more money. And you know, a lot of the people who are around who have been around us, they make more money because it’s a rising tide raises all ships, is we try to help them make more money. They’re working hard to take stuff off of our plate and make us free us up to be more productive and more efficient.
RV (18:55):
As we’re more productive and more efficient, we make more money and then we share that back with them. So this is, this is, again, is, is a difference and mentality. Most people are thinking just about themselves. How do I make more money? You know, who could I find that would just pay me the most? Versus going, what can I do to help the people around me make more money or help them have more time so that they can be more efficient, so that they can make more money trusting that it will flow back to them. And that’s what happens is I think money cascades down to the people who, who help. And, and that always happens. You know, and they say proximity is power. I would also say proximity is profit. I’m sure you’ve heard that before, right? Proximity is power. I, I think Tony Robbins said that.
RV (19:35):
I mean, I, that’s who I heard say it. I that lots of people have said it, but I, that’s who I think it was like the original source of it. I don’t know if it was him or not, but that proximity is power. But I would, I would adapt that to say proximity isn’t just power. Proximity is profit, right? And if you’re around, if you are literally in proximity to people who have the ability to create income and create revenue and build businesses, I promise you, if you help those people succeed, it will cascade back to you. We always want to reward the people who are helping us grow, right? And, and I’m saying that we like in a general sense and in a and in a literal sense of like me and aj, I mean, wouldn’t you right where you go, aren’t you going to reward the people who are most critical to like helping you grow?
RV (20:24):
Yes. If, if they’re really helping you and they really, you really have that mindset of like, it’s an effort, it’s a partnership, it’s a collaboration. We’re growing together. And so I’m constantly trying to find my, I’m constantly trying to find ways to add value to the people around me. I mean, just today, so I was on a call, I was on two different calls today with Ed Millet, some of you know, ed Millet you know, he’s, he’s one of our, our more well-known clients. And we’ve gotten know Ed a lot over the last few years ’cause we helped him with his book launch and we’ve done a number of things together. He’s one of our top affiliates. And I’m trying to figure out ways to make Ed more money, not just with us, but this other deal. And, and I brought Ed an opportunity that this is a, is an equity opportunity.
RV (21:06):
And I’m going, I mean, ed makes lots of money, right? But I’m going, how can I help him make more money knowing that if I can add value to Ed’s life, there’s a good chance that some of that value rolls back to me somehow. And I don’t always have to know how. I just have to trust that if, if I become great at helping other people make money, they’re gonna want to help me make money, they’re gonna want to reward me back. And, and, and that is true. I have found that to be true. And you, you align with people who are that way. And I know that’s true about me. If there’s, if there’s people around me who are helping me make money, I want to return and go as I make more money, I want to return it back to them. It’s a rising tide raises all ships.
RV (21:49):
And so proximity isn’t just power, proximity is profit. So pay attention to the people you’re around in your life to go, who, who has a capacity here to make a lot of money and how can I support them and, you know, be around them and partner with them and, and, you know, serve them and align with them and add value to their life. You’re likely going to win because of that. I mean, I have been the, the, the, the beneficiary of that, the recipient of that, and the benefactor of that also to other people. So there you have it. Five keys to being financially secure as an entrepreneur. First of all, get debt free to buy your own freedom. Number two, invest in yourself and your business first before you invest in other stuff. Number three, when it comes to inve outside investments, have a boring investment strategy.
RV (22:37):
Number four, choose abundance over scarcity. And number five, become great at helping other people make money. And you will make money with all of that. Just remember, peace is the new profit. You don’t need more money. You need less stress. You don’t need more money. You need as much as you need less complexity. I mean, we do want more money. You do, you, you should go for more money. You’re creating wealth for the people around you. But in reality, for most of us, we don’t need more money as much as we need less stress. And as we don’t need more money, as much as we need less complexity. So go out and create value in the world and watch the money flow back to you. Hopefully we’re helping you do that every time you listen to this show. So thanks for being here. Share this episode with someone who needs it. Keep coming back. If you haven’t yet, please go leave a rating for us on iTunes so that other people can see what our show is all about. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 443: Using Speed as a Competitive Advantage | Jay Baer Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Growing up with very little money. I’ve spent a decent part of my professional career studying money and learning about money. And one of the principles that I’ve heard consistently from different places about how do you make money and who makes a lot of money, is this principle. There’s, there’s a principle about making money that says money loves speed. Money loves speed, money follows speed. And, and I have really found that to be true, right? I mean, people are paying, they’re willing to pay for results faster. That’s what people are, are, are willing to pay for. And you know, this interview with Jay Baer blew my mind as it always does. And I, you know, Jay’s one of my best buddies and mentor and a friend, and like we’ve, we’ve helped him through the years. He’s helped us a ton. And every time this guy writes a book, it’s a paradigm shifting book.
RV (01:06):
It’s one of the things I love about Jay Baer books. And, and you know, he’s written on some different subjects over the years, but it’s like every time it’s like a new big idea every single time. And this I think is brilliant, right? His whole premise is speed as a competitive advantage. Speed as a competitive advantage going, I am not, what if you focus just on being faster? And I think that this is one of the most powerful questions that you can ask for, to make more money and to get more referrals and to break through Sheehan’s Wall and become more well known. It’s to say, how can I help my customers succeed faster? How can I help my customers succeed faster? That is like the whole mission of Brand Builders group that we’re on right now, right? Like when we first started the company, it was sort of like survival mode, getting it off the ground.
RV (02:06):
Then it was sort of like, you know, scaling up our, our operations and infrastructure. Then it was streamlining and, and really clarifying and, and distilling down what it is that we do. And, and you know, we had a one year that was basically like creating all the curriculum. And now we’re, we’re entering this era where all we’re doing everything that we’re focused on is how do we help our clients succeed faster? And I didn’t really think of that as a competitive advantage ’cause we don’t really compete with people. Like, we don’t make strategic decisions based on like, what other people in the market are doing, but just as an advantage, right? Or just, just, just as a, you know, as a, as a differentiator, right? Speed as a differentiator, or speed as a reason for people to choose you. And that the, the, the stat that blew my mind was when Jay said, two
RV (02:58):
Thirds of people say that speed is as important as price, right? So this is from Jay’s book, the Time to Win, which is obviously what we were talking about. Get it, it’s a great little book. I mean, it’s super quick read. And two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. Like we live in this era. You know, this is where, what he said, where people interpret speed as caring and responsiveness as respect. That’s so good. And that that is so true. Like that aj you know, there’s the, there’s the five love languages, whatever it is, like gifts of the heart and acts of service and all that. AJ’s love language is responsiveness.
RV (03:54):
What’s the delay? When’s it gonna be finished? What, you know, what’s the deadline? What do you need? Who’s the bottleneck? Da dah, dah, dah, dah. Like, what’s the, what’s the plan? And when she sends a message, it’s like she wants an answer immediately. And, you know, for, for A-C-E-O-I think she’s, she’s insanely responsive. Like most CEOs are not all that responsive. You know, they’re pulled in all these directions, but she just values it so much. And she interprets responsiveness as respect. If you’re, if you don’t respond to her quickly, it’s a sign of disrespect. And I, I’m, I’m starting to see this, right? This whole conversation with Jay opened up my eyes because I go, this is me. I care more about, as a consumer, I care more about speed than price. I go, yeah, I’m, I’m willing to pay more, to move faster.
RV (04:43):
And, and that’s part of what, you know, the era we’re in at Brand Builders Group is like, we’ve always, you know, we’ve been a, we are a strategy firm. Like at our core, we’re a strategy firm. We’re not an agency. But we, we are creating more tools and templates to help clients succeed faster and to always create better strategies, more customized strategies to help them access what they need so that they can get results faster and faster and faster to get things deployed. And here’s a, here’s another line that I love from Jay. When he said this, he said, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast. And, and many times, you know, you think of like search engine optimization, like demand driven marketing.
RV (05:31):
When people are searching a term, it’s like they want something, they want it. Now, a huge part of whether or not you make that sale is like, who can get to that person first? Who can return their phone call first? And so I just, I thought this was really, really cool. One of the tactical things that I just wanted to come back and underscore and highlight to the, you know, for everybody is, is the idea of a fast pass, right? The idea of a fast pass is that people will pay to be able to skip the line to people will pay, people will pay, people will always pay to be able to go to the front of the queue, right? I mean, this is like the VIP line. This is any anything VIP or, or you know, Disney has the, the fast pass or all the amusement parks, right?
RV (06:20):
If, if you go to Universal Studios or whatever. And that’s one of the things that we have started offering, right? Is, is we have created opportunities for people to coach with me directly. And it’s, it’s a higher investment because I can help people get to results faster. Just ’cause I got the most experience doing this personally and the most experienced coaching other people to do it, right? So historically, I’ve, I’ve never been available like formally to do private coaching with our clients, right? I, I mean, I, and, and I coach everybody. I’m at, I’m at our events and I do two group coaching calls a month. So like, we have different tiers in our membership, right? And so there’s, depending on what tier you’re in you know, you get to come to our live events. Well, we do, I think we’re doing 32 live events next year.
RV (07:13):
And so four of ’em that are two days, I’m, I’m at and AJ’s at personally, those are, so in-person event not all of our events are in person. And then twice a month for all of our members, I lead group coaching where people can ask me questions and, you know, we do like rapid fire, but doing private one-on-one coaching is, is not something that historically that we have offered until recently. We, we have created something called Brand mastery, which is when people can work with me directly in a, in a very small group, right? It’s still a small, a small group, but they can work with me directly as their strategist. And there’s a higher level of investment. And that’s ’cause we go really fast, right? And we have an, we have an annual pass of that where people are able to spend up to 10 days with me a year and we can crank.
RV (08:01):
I mean, if I get 10 days in a room with someone, I can, we typically, like we can transform their personal brand quickly. So that’s an example of a fast pass. We’re also working on a for years we’ve been developing something that we’re just, just now rolling out called Instant Automation Toolkit. Instant Automation Toolkit is something that’s only available for brand builders members, right? So you have to be one of our strategy clients. ’cause You have to have the education, you have to understand how it all works together. You have to know what a brand positioning statement and, and the 15 Ps and the content diamond and webinar funnels. And like you, you know how all of these, the, the, the modular content method, like how it all fits together. But then we, we took all of our six core campaigns for our, our web, our, our high converting webinar funnels, selling high dollar offers, booking keynotes, doing book launches, building websites, the six most important core campaigns.
RV (08:57):
And we templatized all of them. And now we make it available to members. They can either buy ’em and own ’em out outright, or they can just rent them for like a much lower fee so that we can get them live quickly. That’s why instant automation toolkit is everything about going, okay, now you’ve learned the strategy. The next era of Brand Builders group is going, how can we help you execute faster and, and cheaper? Because if you have to go source and hire all these people, whether they’re employees or vendors, it’s slow, it’s painstaking, it’s expensive, and you’re likely to make mistakes that cost you money because you don’t really know how to coach them. Well, instant automation toolkit is going, what if we just give you ours? And so we’ve been developing this for years and it’s, it’s amazing. We’re, we’re just about to roll it out.
RV (09:43):
We just, we’ve already rolled out our copywriting templates. So half of it is copywriting templates. The other half is the actual technology where we build the, we build the funnels and build the websites for you using our, using our actual one. So we take our exact funnels and then we swap out our stuff, put your stuff in there. So the copywriting templates have been available and it’s like we’ve got people cranking out entire pipelines in a few hours or a few days. Like it’s, it’s amazing. And going, yeah, people will pay for that because there’s, there’s value to that. ’cause, ’cause Money loves speed. You know, the other thing is, is when you think about money in relation to time, time multiplies money, right? Compounding interest. If I, if I take money and I invest it today, you know, it, it money invested over time is it grows and grows and grows.
RV (10:34):
So the earlier I can, the earlier I can have access to money, the earlier I have access to cashflow, the longer amount of time I get to benefit from interest, right? From compounding interest. So it, there’s value to having money today versus having money in the future. This is another thing that we do. We, we started in Brand Builders group about a year and a half ago we rolled out a pay in full feature. And so what happens is, you know, we have our, our programs are annual memberships, and we’ve got, you know, now, now counting brand mastery, we’ve got three different levels of, of membership. Well, there’s a, there’s a discount for paying in full where we give, we give people two months free if they pay in full today, because even though it costs us money, right? We lose money on that.
RV (11:26):
And we still have all the costs of delivering those last two months of service. But there’s value to having all the cash in hand now because we can deploy, we can reinvest that cash into growing the business versus having to wait for it and not seeing it for 10 months. There’s also value in the certainty of collecting it, right? And so we, we share in that with our customers to go, Hey, if you’re willing to, if you’re willing to commit for 12 months and pay us now and go, we’re in this together, we’ll give you a discount. And so that’s the first time we’ve, we, we don’t, other than that we don’t discount, we never discount, we don’t change our prices. You know, people can buy a lower thing and get a lesser price, but we don’t sell the same thing to two people for lesser prices.
RV (12:07):
We, we just, we don’t discount. So, but, but we have offered this fast pass and it’s been massive. C clients love it. They also get to accelerate the deduction on their taxes, right? So like right now, as an example or, or when you get to the end of the year or the end of a fiscal year, you know, they, they can pay us for a year in full and they can accelerate that deduction on like this year’s taxes. So we see a lot of that happen at the, at the end of the people’s calendar year, the end of their fiscal year. So think about how can you incorporate a fast pass concept into your business model? Because this really, I think this really, really is true. My third big idea or takeaway from Jay in this interview was when he said, give your customers a clue of what to expect as it relates to time, absence of any guidance.
RV (13:01):
They’ll expect it instantly. And I thought, wow, that, that, that really is powerful. And so make a time promise the way he said it was, make a time, pro promise, but make one that you can overdeliver on. And I think that’s really key, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, if you don’t tell me when I’m gonna get it, my brain defaults to, oh, I want it tomorrow, right? Even if it’s like building a website, right? You go, okay, well I’m hiring you to build me a website. Like why can’t I have it tomorrow? Like, why can’t I have it next week? Like, what’s the big deal? Right? Part of the reason, and and I think that’s a natural default that people have because part of the reason why they’re hiring someone else is they don’t have the wherewithal to do it themselves. So they often aren’t knowledgeable about all of the details and the steps and the processes and the things that go into doing something, and that’s why they’re hiring someone in the first place.
RV (13:51):
So we tend to, we tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. We tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. And that’s because we don’t know how to do them. And so we’re not aware of all of the steps, and absent that, absent that awareness, we don’t have the ability to calculate the time or really appreciate even sometimes everything that they’re doing. So what happens is, if someone communicates though and they say, oh, no problem, we’ll have your, we’ll have your website done in two months. Well, I don’t love that, but it’s better than them not saying anything. And like, after the end of month one, I’m going, well, I was thinking this would take a week. Like, why is it taking four weeks? Like, what, what’s the deal here? And now I’m annoyed. Versus if you say, oh, it’s gonna take three months and you actually deliver it in eight to 10 weeks.
RV (14:44):
Now I’m ecstatic. ’cause I go, oh, you know, while I would love for it to be done tomorrow, you set the expectation for me that it wasn’t gonna be done for three months. And then you, and then you over-delivered and you beat that. So now I’m ecstatic. So this is a really important conceptual point to understand that it’s not really how long something takes that annoys people or makes them happy, it’s how long it takes in proportion to their expectation of how long they thought it would take, right? So if it takes six months, that’s neither long or short. It’s only relative. So this is very similar to how we teach we teach our members when they’re selling high dollar offers, there’s no such thing, there’s no such thing as expensive or inexpensive. There’s only such a thing as relative, right? So if somebody’s gonna pay me a hundred thousand dollars to spend two days with me, you go, well, that feels expensive.
RV (15:44):
And it’s not nothing. But I go, well, yeah, but if I can help someone land a half a million dollar book advance, if I can help someone become a New York Times bestseller, if I can help them get speaking engagements where they’re gonna, they’re gonna do, you know, half a million to a million dollars a year in speaking fees for the rest of their career. If I can help them save a hundred thousand dollars on their taxes every year for the rest of their life, if I can teach them, you know, how to build a sales team that will grow millions of dollars. Like, it’s, it’s not, it’s not much relative to that. So, so it’s always relative, right? Well, this is the same thing. Time is never really long or short. It’s always relative. And, and in this case, it’s the, for your customers, it’s relative to their expectation of how long it was gonna take, right?
RV (16:27):
So give them a time promise and, and make it one that you can overdeliver on. Because if you tell me it’s gonna take four months and it takes six months, now I’m upset. But if you tell me it’s gonna take eight months or 10 months or a year, and you’re done in six months, man, now, now I’m ecstatic. It still took six months, it took the same amount of time, right? Like, it, it, it takes whatever time it takes to do something. So of course, hopefully you can operate more efficiently. But, but I think what you wanna do is you wanna, what people don’t allow for the, and part of the reason why we underestimate how long everything takes is because what people never allow for, they never account for is they never account for unplanned expenses of time or money. They ne they never account for emergencies.
RV (17:15):
They never account for extraordinary items, unforeseen thing, unforeseen delays. I, I remember early in my career as an entrepreneur, I had a, a financial mentor, you know, and I, and and I, we were looking at financial statements and I was saying, well, gosh, you know, I feel like we’re being punished because there’s this one unusual item that, you know, we didn’t have in the budget. And I go, well, how is that our fault? Like, none of us saw it coming. It’s not like it was poor management of the company. And and his response to me was, he says, well, you have to create a budget that always has margin in it for things like that. Because while it’s unexpected, you can always expect the unexpected. You can always plan for the unplanned. You can always assume that something is gonna happen that you weren’t assuming was gonna happen.
RV (18:06):
And that is a radical mind shift as it relates to your personal finances, right? And not spending every dollar you have, but saving to go, I can’t spend every dollar because what happens when my, I get a flat tire or when the, you know, the water heater breaks or, or, you know, I have to take a sudden flight somewhere that I wasn’t planning on. You know, like you have to be able to, to do that. You wanna, you wanna have margin, margin, you wanna have margin in your planning margin, in your budgeting, budgeting of money and budgeting of time. And so understanding all of this and, and realizing that time is, I mean, in this case, according to Jay’s research, right, this is empirically validated. Now, two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. And I’m in that two thirds, right?
RV (18:54):
I go, man, if one person you know is gonna charge me 10% more, but they can get it to me, you know, 30% faster, I’m in every time, every time. So minding people’s time, treating it as sacred you know, making a time promise overdelivering on it, giving them an opportunity for a fast pass to pay extra to, to, to move things faster. And, and just realizing that, that people interpret this is right from Jay speed as caring and responsiveness, as respect. That is from a man, Jay Bearer, his new book the Time to Win. Go by the book, y’all. It’s not even a full-size book. It’s a little tiny book. Like you could, you can read it in an hour. And it is life changing, paradigm altering, you know this idea of using speed as a competitive advantage. So thanks for tuning in.
RV (19:53):
Hopefully listening to this podcast is helping you accelerate on your journey. And I hope we get a chance to move you at some point from being you know, a, a free consumer of our content to working with us and watching how we can accelerate your dream, coming true faster and faster, faster, to help you drive more leads to your business, launch a new revenue stream, you know, write books, be a speaker, grow your audience, grow your impact. Whatever your dream is for building your personal brand, hopefully we get a chance to partner with you to make that dream come true faster. That’s a big part of our wish. Until next time, we will you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll sign off for now. Have a great one. We’ll catch you here. Next episode, influential Personal Brand podcast. Share this with someone who needs it. See you then.
Ep 442: The Time to Win with Jay Baer
RV (00:02):
Well, I am excited and honored to introduce you once again to one of my very best friends, one of my favorite mentors someone who I legitimately think is one of the smartest people on the planet. We’ve had him on the podcast before. His name is Jay Baer, Utruly one of my best friends in real life. And I’m so grateful for this man. And he has a new book out. And every time Jay writes a new book, it completely like changes the way I think about whatever the topic is. And we’re gonna talk about speed as a competitive advantage today. Uif you’re just meeting Jay, he is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books. He is a hall of fame speaker. He has worked with over 700 different brands. He speaks on some of the biggest stages in the world.
RV (00:48):
He’s worked for companies like Nike and Oracle and I b m and United Nations. And another thing we’ll probably talk about, which we’ve never talked about on this show before with Jay, but something fun happening is he has blown up on TikTok and Instagram, this personal brand. He is now the second, the world’s second largest influencer on tequila, which is something he does in his personal life. And it has become a huge explosive personal brand. So that’s kind of like a, a side project we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about, but mostly we’re gonna be talking about his new book. It’s called The Time to Win. Without further ado, my brother, welcome back.
JB (01:33):
Thank you very much. Great to be with you, my friend. I gotta tell you, I’ve been a business strategist and author and speaker for like 30 years, and there’s been some degree of, of notoriety as a result of my behaviors and activities in that category. But now that I have a tequila education channel, I get recognized in hotels and airports, literally every week,
RV (02:22):
Yeah. So hold on a second there, buddy. So you cut out, I think I cut out. So just you were saying, I get recognized in airports every week.
JB (02:32):
Yeah. Every week for, for, and it’s always like, oh, you’re Tequila J Bear. I watch all of your videos. Like, nobody caress that I’ve written books. Nobody cares that I’ve ever given a presentation, but they are locked and loaded on the personal brand of tequila educators. So I think there’s a lesson there for, for you and your audience,
RV (02:51):
Man. Well, I do, I do. I I do want to hear about that because I, I, I, I’m curious, and it’s part of that is I have a side project, I’ve got like a personal side project going on right now. Yeah. That’s very similar.
JB (03:01):
I know. It’s exciting.
RV (03:02):
It has nothing to do with like our business, but it’s like, I have to do this. Yeah. But let’s talk about the time to win.
JB (03:10):
Yeah.
RV (03:11):
‘Cause this was something that I was like, it’s another one of those things where when you started talking about it, I was like, oh my gosh, how have I missed this? And you just blew it up. Like, oh, this is such a big idea, such a simple idea. So, so tell us, what’s the premise here? What’s going on? Yeah. And then the research that started it,
JB (03:28):
My, my observation coming outta the pandemic Rory, was that it changed the way we think about time and, and reshuffled how important it is in our lives. Time’s always been important, of course, but the pandemic made us remember a simple truth, an important truth, an often overlooked truth, which is that all of us only have and will ever only have 1,440 minutes a day. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, what you are, you get 1,440. You can’t make more. You can’t buy more. I’ll tell you this, I think now that I’ve been studying this for a while, I, I think time is the only resource that we actually share equally on this planet. The only one.
JB (04:13):
And a lot of the trends that we talk about now, things like the great resignation or people wanting to work from home don’t wanna come back from the office because they don’t wanna commute, or people spending more time with their kids or, or bleisure travel, which is the combination of business and leisure travel. That’s when you bring your kids to the conference and double dip the trip. Even baseball games are 25 minutes a night shorter now, right? Because they got a pitch clock. Like, all of these trends are the same trend, which is that we care about our time and how we spend it more than ever. So that was the, the premise. But as always, as you mentioned, when I, when I write a book, I first validate it with really deep research. ’cause I’m not gonna go on stages and pages and tell people to change their business unless I’ve got it proven other than just Jay says to do this. So it turns out that in the research we found that two thirds of people say that speed is now as important as price.
RV (05:09):
Wow. But
JB (05:10):
There’s not very many businesses that behave as if that were the case. And you should.
RV (05:16):
Yeah. I mean, that makes, I mean, you know, when you shared that with me, it was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. As a consumer, I go, I, I just want it fast. Like, I don’t, you know, I think about the hotel thing. It’s like, I don’t wanna tell you my life story. I just want my key and get to the room. And like, I just wanna be like, it’s a long day of travel. It’s not that I wanna be rude, but it’s just like, I just want as fast as possible to get from the car into my hotel room to just chill out. Right? And then I go, but as a, as a business, how much are we really thinking about doing things shorter? We’re trying to go, maybe we make it better, better. Maybe we can charge more money, but not going, how do we do this faster?
JB (06:02):
That’s the mystery. That’s why this book, the Time to Win exists. What I tell people is you’ve gotta elevate speed and responsiveness on the priority list in your business because your customers already have.
RV (06:19):
Hmm. Like
JB (06:19):
Most businesses think they’re fast enough, but then when they look at the world through their own eyes as a consumer, they realize that they’re not fast enough. Partially because speed expectations never go backwards. Right? What was, what was fast five years ago is very slow today. And that will always continue. And I’ve been doing this a long time, as you know, I’ve never, in my whole life, under any circumstances whatsoever, heard a customer say, Hey, you know what? Next time it’d be cool if you guys just did that more slowly.
RV (07:03):
Yeah. And
JB (07:03):
I got, and the key, the key thing to this real quick, is that the reason why this book is so important now is that everything contained in this book is going to happen three years from now. We’re gonna have to delete this episode because it will be pointless. Everything we talk about will have been done by every business because your customers will simply require it of you. But this is your opportunity. This is why the book is called The Time to Win. This is your time to use responsiveness as a competitive advantage before other people in your category start to do it. You’ve got, in my estimation, a 24 to 30 month headstart where if you lean into speed, now you can eat your competitor’s lunch until they realize what’s going on and are forced to catch up.
RV (07:53):
Yeah. And I just on this, on this note of not priorit, prioritizing speed as a competitive, like not thinking of speed as a, as like a value to the customer. We had Amy Porterfield on, on this show a while back. You, she’s one of our clients and she’s sort of like the queen of courses, right? I know. You know, Amy and I, I asked her, I said, I said, you know, what’s the right price to charge for a course? And I said, I said, basically like, if, you know, if I have six modules or 10 modules, like how many modules do I have to have in there in order to charge $2,000? And she said, the price has nothing to do with how many modules are in there. She said, everyone thinks that having more modules makes it more expensive. She said, it’s the opposite. If you can deliver the result to the customer with less time and less modules, it’s more valuable to be able to get your customer from point A to point B. And I was just like, I literally have been thinking about this backwards in the pricing, you know, game. And then, and then you’re going, oh, you need to do this for every part of the business.
JB (09:08):
It, you go back to the 16 hundreds blaze, Pascal, a famous writer from, you know, those days said, I, I would’ve
JB (10:04):
And here’s when I can come give you an estimate. And here’s when I can come do the job. Second painter got back to me in two days. Third painter got back to me in 11 days. At which point I’d already painted the house
RV (10:50):
Dude, whoa. That this, not just in your business life. This is one of the central marriage issues between me and aj. Responsiveness is her love language. And her, one of her frustrations is she’s like, you take forever to respond to my work emails ’cause we work together. But she’s like, you are so slow to respond to like, project deadlines and that stuff. And it’s like, she, she treats it as like, I’m disrespecting her. And I’m like, I’m busy. And she’s like, I don’t care. It’s, it is disrespecting. Like that is absolutely true. Responsiveness is, is a form of respect. Well, so, so you have this, you, so the time to win, which is, that’s the, the url, right? The time to win.com is where you’ll go to get the book. And y’all, just fyi, this book, Amazon, this book is a small book. You can read the entire book in an hour, like the entire book in an hour. It’s also, which
JB (11:53):
Is obviously intentional because I sat down to write a book and I’ve written six full length books in the past. And I started to work on this. And I’m like, wait, I, I cannot ask people to spend five or six hours reading a book about speed and just like, just like did. I’m like, wait a second. This is the exact opposite of the advice in the book. So it’s like, alright. And look, the reality is, and I, I’m not ashamed to admit it, the reality is most people don’t read business books. They skimm them,
RV (12:22):
Right? Because
JB (12:23):
Most business books say a thing, then they say that thing six different ways. And I’m like, you know what? I’m just gonna cut out the middleman here. No, no fat only meet all the key pieces that you need to implement. It’s a six piece framework for, for winning with responsiveness. And that’s all that’s in the book. There’s, you know, and boom, in and out. And people love it.
RV (12:43):
Yeah. And so, and so speed, like, okay, so, so now when you go, let’s apply, apply speed to business
JB (12:50):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:50):
You know, like the example that I used that construct is deliver the result for the client in less time. And we, we are super focused about on this right now. Yeah. Of now, now we’re going, we’re embracing this, right? And going, how do we get our client the result faster? How do we teach them the information in less time? How do we give them tools to help them implement, you know, like cheaper, faster. So there’s that construct of like con condensing the time for them to have the experience. But then it’s almost like there’s another half of this, which is responsiveness. So yeah. Which side is it? Is it both of those things? Or is it more one side than the other? Like
JB (13:35):
It’s both. We actually tested that in the research. So we asked people, and I, and I will say, this is very comprehensive research. This isn’t, Jay did a SurveyMonkey. This is many, many, many, many, many tens of thousands of dollars university level research. And we found when we asked people, okay, where is responsiveness most important to you? Early stages when you’re just trying to get information. Late stages. If you need help in the middle where somebody’s actually delivering whatever it is they’re delivering out, always
RV (14:47):
Well,
JB (14:47):
How can that be? Well, remember if we interpret responsiveness as respect, at some point, every customer has to revalidate the buy. It could be a week later, it could be a month later, it could be a year later, it could be a decade later. But at some point in every customer and client relationship, they’ve gotta say, do I wanna sign on again? And so, yes, it’s important to be quick at the beginning of the relationship, but it’s also important to be quick throughout the totality of the relationship, because that’s going to ultimately impact whether or not they rebuy, which has of course, huge implications for your conversion rate, your churn rate, your lifetime customer value probably,
RV (15:28):
And
JB (15:28):
Everything else
RV (15:29):
That builds great
JB (15:30):
Business. All of it. Yeah.
RV (15:31):
All the things. So I wanna ask you about ai, ’cause I haven’t asked you about, about, about, mm-hmm. This, right? So the part that’s scary about this to me is to go absent ai, this is ha I think this is happening anyway, right? Absent, we’re just going like, I need an answer. I need it yesterday. I need it immediately. I want my food immediately. I want, you know, my show immediately. I want to be on the airplane immediately. I wanna be in my hotel room immediately. Like it’s, everything is speeding up. The part that freaks me out is you go, you add AI into this conversation. And now it’s like, dude, it’s just gotta be an exponential multiplier of this. Yep. Entitled, I need it immediately thing. Yeah,
JB (16:20):
Yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah. And look, I, I’m not suggesting that this is a net societal positive that that’s not my job in the world. My job is to tell you how to beat your competition. And that’s contained in the book. Now, whether
RV (17:01):
Right? So
JB (17:02):
I think you were there one time when our, our mutual friend, Jason Dorsey was talking about Lemonade, which I use as an example. Now in the stage presentation of this material, lemonade is an insurance company. They primarily work in rental insurance, but others as well. They’re the number one rated rental insurance company in the country. Highest average revenue per employee as well. I mean, every success metric there at the top of the table. Here’s how it works. They were built for speed from the beginning. This guy, Paul has like a $979 Canada Goose, like Parka, super nice jacket, lives in Manhattan, goes to a bar in Manhattan. Someone steals the jacket. Oh man, my jacket got stolen. I gotta get a insurance claim. So he goes on the Lemonade app on his phone, presses, opens the app, presses file a claim, makes a 25 second video into his phone.
JB (17:56):
Hey, it’s Paul, I’ve had this Canada Goose jacket. It was $979 that got stolen at the bar. Submit after he hits, submit Lemonade, runs a bunch of fraud algorithms. Not only on the, on the video itself, but on Paul, his case history, the location, his age, a bunch of other stuff. They already have access to his bank account ’cause he did it. When he set it up, they decide to approve the claim. They wire $929 into his account because he is a $250 deductible. All of that happens, right? Assess the claim, approve the claim, wire him the cash. All of that happens in three seconds.
RV (18:36):
Holy smack.
JB (18:38):
Three seconds. So if you’re Allstate,
RV (18:42):
Yeah. Now
JB (18:43):
What? Now what?
RV (18:46):
I mean you don’t even, you’re trying to set an appointment to talk to the person and then the paperwork, and then you file the thing and take all the pictures and you fill out a police report. I mean
JB (18:57):
Yep. So now obviously, does Lemonade have a higher ratio of fraud than the alternative where like, you know, sitting down with somebody Of course. But one of the lessons in this book that I think is really applicable, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast.
RV (19:17):
Ooh, that’s good. Yeah, it reminds me of like John De Julius says, you know, don’t punish 98% of your customers for what the 2% take advantage of.
JB (19:31):
Yeah. It’s an edge case.
RV (19:33):
Yeah. That’s so good about being a lot of, bit a, a lot, a bit fast. Well, so
JB (19:42):
Do you think, here’s something I wanna mention if I can. It’s a really important technique, especially for this audience that I wanna make sure we get to, is one of the key recommendations in this book. And it’s to offer a fast pass. So the idea of offering a fast pass is that in the research we found that one in four customers will pay as much as 50% more to not wait. You should give them that opportunity. Now, there are increasingly FastPasses all around us ’cause people are figuring out how powerful this technique is. TSA pre is a fast pass. You pay more. Wait list clear is a fast pass. Disney has one now, I think it’s called Genie Plus, we pay more. You don’t have to wait in line to go on Space Mountain or whatever,
RV (20:27):
Right?
JB (20:29):
You should do that in your business. Everybody should do it in their business. So when people come to me and say, will you review my new tequila? And I say, well sure, but we’ve got a 10 week waiting list. Or you can pay us this amount and you can be the next tequila we rate. All you’re doing is offering them a fast pass. Every sort of, every business in the world has a sequence, has an onboarding, has a customer list. You just charge them more to jump the line. Now, I was at an event and a guy came up to me and said, well Jay, what do I do about the person who was the next customer I was gonna help? And now they get bumped back one, aren’t they gonna be mad? Here’s how you do it. You say to the customer, who doesn’t wanna wait? Who wants to be the next, okay, it’s gonna cost you 20% more to be next. Then you talk to the person who was next and you say, I’m really sorry, something came up. We gotta bump you back. It’s gonna be an extra week. Now you’re second, but we’re gonna give you a 5% discount. ’cause We feel bad about it. You just kept 15% for doing nothing other than shuffling your customer sequence.
RV (21:31):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (21:33):
It’s free money.
RV (21:35):
Yeah. I mean, I’m that guy. I mean, I’m that guy. Like, it’s like I, I will pay. I do not wanna wait in long. You’re
JB (21:41):
Literally that guy. I
RV (21:42):
Will not, I will pay so much more to not wait in line. It’s the most frustrating thing that I experience is waiting. Like if my computer is loading, my internet is down, loading a webpage, you know, waiting in line at the grocery store, like waiting in line is probably the most frustrating thing in my life where I get angry. Like I am losing time. So, and I think probably that’s true. Like people who, the people who have, it’s
JB (22:11):
Not true for everybody. It’s not
RV (22:13):
True for everybody. It’s not true for everybody.
JB (22:14):
But for those who it is true for it’s manifestly true for like you,
RV (22:18):
And they will pay more money for it.
JB (22:20):
Absolutely.
RV (22:21):
They’ll pay more money. Won’t
JB (22:22):
Even bat an eye
RV (22:23):
Won’t even bad an eye. Yeah. No way. And it’s like, I don’t care if
JB (22:26):
You give ’em the choice,
RV (22:27):
The same experience as someone else, but I can just not have to, to have the weight. That’s so good, Jay. Like, that’s so simple. You know,
JB (22:34):
You’ll make so much money for, for free. Like, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a consultant, an author, a chiropractor, you’d run a preschool, you’ve got a landscape business, you’re doing plastic surgery, it does not matter.
RV (22:47):
Oh yeah, the country club,
JB (22:48):
What business you’re in club or getting into, it doesn’t matter.
RV (22:50):
Private, the private school, oh my gosh, like this is I’m trying to think about how we would apply this to brand builders group. We need to have a conversation about what, what can do, what we would, what we would do. So what else should I be asking you about this that I haven’t asked you about as it relates to speed as a competitive advantage?
JB (23:10):
The, I’ll tell you what the first piece that you’ve gotta do on this. Okay. lemme two, two quick things. One, I don’t want people to think that the takeaway here is Jay says, be as fast as possible all the time. That’s not true. And it’s also too simple. Yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time because your customers will reward you for it. If you give your customers time, they will give you money. If you cost your customers time, it will cost you money. So yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time. But there are scenarios when you can be too fast. When you are too fast, it decays trust. So if somebody came to you, Rory, and said, Hey I’ve got a book I’m writing, can you help me with a bestseller campaign? And you said, sure. Can you start in an hour? That would probably feel less trustworthy because if you’re that available,
RV (24:12):
Right?
JB (24:13):
Like, how could, could you be? Right? So what you want in your business is not necessarily to just be as fast as you can. What you want in every customer interaction is to adhere to the right now, the right now, the right now is the perfect amount of elapsed time. It’s not too fast and it’s not too slow. It’s the Goldilocks zone for speed. And you’ve gotta figure out what that is in your own business, right? There’s no standard for that. But for every business there is a, right now it’s the perfect amount of time. So the first assignment that you’ve gotta do as a business leader is to figure out what the right now is in your business.
RV (24:57):
Well, and the subtitle of your book, okay, so the book’s called The Time to Win. The subtitle is How to Exceed Customer’s Need for Speed. And the way that I go is part of what we know about the right now is it is at least a little bit faster than whatever their expectation is. That’s right. If, if we are, if we’re faster than their expectation than we’re winning, and then probably you know, the, then, then, then, then we’re ahead. So we probably need to look at what’s their expectation. But, but similar to how I remember like one the things
JB (25:32):
And how to set that expectation too. Like how to, how to actually manage that expectation. It’s one of the thing that, that a lot of businesses are terrible at this, they’re really bad at, at giving customers any sort of cue or clue as to what to expect. And one thing I’ve learned since I started down this, this research path is absent of any guidance, customers will expect everything to happen instantly.
RV (25:59):
Yeah. So
JB (25:59):
You’ve gotta tell them the thing that you want or need is going to take this long. And crucially, especially for younger consumers, here’s why it takes that long.
RV (26:14):
Uhhuh
JB (26:15):
You’ve gotta connect the dots for them. Because if you don’t, they will always think it should be faster. We learned this in the first day in business that you should always under promise and
RV (26:31):
Overdeliver,
JB (26:32):
Overdeliver. But you can’t do that if people don’t know what the promise is. So if you know it’s gonna take 10, 10 days, you always tell them it’s 12 days always. Because then you are slightly faster than they expect. And that’s the, right now
RV (26:53):
Uhhuh
JB (28:02):
Yeah. I mean, you think about the world we live in, technology and big enterprise companies have changed everybody’s perspective on what is quote unquote fast. Like if Uber and Lyft didn’t exist, we would have a totally different perspective on transportation. But it does exist. And that experience of being able to press a button and a car shows up naturally leaches into your expectations for other things that you need in your life. And, and that’s just the way it is, right? So yeah. Does the fact that Amazon can bring something next day put a lot of pressure on a mom and pop business who doesn’t have that kind of warehouse? Heck yeah, it does. Freaking does. But but then, but them’s the breaks, like what, you know, sorry, that genie’s not going back in the bottle, right? Mm-Hmm. You know, well
RV (28:53):
That’s why I think about the AI thing, right? You know, it’s like in and bb in brand builders group. We don’t have like a queue, right? People can come, but where our, where our delay is, is helping our customers implement faster, right? Getting their funnels built, getting their website built, getting, and, and, and that’s where it’s like AI is going to compress that even more. Like you’re saying is just AI applied to every, you know, rising customer expec expectation, growing, you know, speeding up technology, adding in ai like you’re saying three years from now, five years from now, this is, this game is over. Like it all, we’re all gonna have to be instant. Yeah. And
JB (29:29):
That’s why you’ve got this chance now, right? If you lean into it sooner. If you don’t wait for your customers to pull you kicking and screaming and you lead them, you’ve got two, three years where you can dominate your category. You’ve just gotta get started.
RV (29:44):
I think this is so brilliant. This is like, you, you, you were, you were so ahead of the curve on content marketing, right? And it’s like, if I would’ve done then what you were saying about that, I would’ve caught that wave. We’d miss that wave. But like nobody else is talking about this. I mean, it’s like we talk about speed, but no one is going speed as a competitive advantage until you said that. And the moment you said it, I was like, that is so freaking brilliant. So the time to win.com is where to go to get the book
JB (30:13):
Yeah. Or Amazon or anywhere else that you get books at the time to win.com. There’s also the full research paper that powers the book. It’s like 30 pages and you can have, don’t we don’t even ask for email address, you can just have it. I just want you to have it. Cool.
RV (30:26):
That’s awesome. So that we can go download the research there. So we’ll put a link to the time to wind.com. Okay. I don’t wanna let you go without talking about Tequila J ’cause this is such a phenomenon. You spent 30 years of your life becoming one of the most respected consultants. You know, you after that you’ve amassed, I don’t know, a whopping 10,000 or followers or something on Instagram or something. And then you start Tequila Jay, this side project, give us a sense of the magnitude that this total, like my personal passion, hobby, give, give me a sense of the magnitude of how long you spent on it and what, what your reach has come with your, it’s truly like your personal, personal brand.
JB (31:10):
Well, first I, I’ll acknowledge that none of this would’ve happened without you, you know, your premise that, that your ideal audience is the person that you used to be
RV (31:19):
Is
JB (31:20):
The north star for my work in the tequila space. Because when I started this project which is just 18 months ago, there were a number of people creating content for advanced tequila fans, right? So there’s nerds talking to nerds, and I like that content. ’cause I’ve been a tequila fan for a long time. I like the kind of deep dive nerdy content, but I realized that there’s just not that many people in that category. There’s a lot more people who are just getting into tequila or have a margarita here and now, or have a Paloma here, and now that’s the much larger addressable audience. And so I always try and keep in mind what it was like to be a person who didn’t know much at all about tequila. And I was that person. It was a while ago, but, but I was that person. And so the content that we create is very intentionally pegged to the novice and intermediate tequila
JB (32:13):
Fan. And that’s been the lift underneath the whole project, right? That’s why it’s so popular because we’re not talking over people’s heads. Mm-Hmm. And it’s been a really interesting journey. We did it on Instagram reels and TikTok mostly because I don’t have a lot of experience historically with short form content. I’ve always done long form content. And I was like, well, let’s just see what this is. Like, let’s learn how this algorithm works, et cetera. And, and it’s been great. You know, five videos a week is a big lift. It’s a heavy lift you know, to do it every single week. But, but we love it. And now we’re really monetizing it across a bunch of different dimensions, right? We’ve got brand sponsors and tequila sponsors and a, a merch store and our own tequilas and a a and events business and private tastings. So there’s a bunch of different revenue streams that all kind of funnel into are in the business. And I’m not ready to quit my day job as a speaker and consultant yet, but, but it’s it’s definitely a real business, right? And considering my only goal was to be able to buy tequila on a business card instead of a personal card. I have, I have very much past, past the goals.
RV (33:19):
Well, the other thing is what’s gnarly is like you have pretty major celebrities reaching out to you.
JB (33:24):
Yeah, yeah.
RV (33:25):
Like, I mean Yeah. And you just built this huge audience. What, so it’s a couple hundred thousand followers, right? On TikTok? Yeah.
JB (33:31):
Between, yeah, between Instagram and TikTok. It’s a couple hundred thousand. Last month I think we reached 400,000 accounts. Wow.
RV (33:39):
So it’s,
JB (33:39):
It’s pretty, it’s pretty good group. Yeah.
RV (33:41):
And then you’re getting, you’re getting all these celebrities who are launching their tequila lines going, will you please review my
JB (33:47):
Absolutely. Yeah. And my house is just full of tequila. Allison is so mad
RV (34:05):
Oh man. Yeah.
JB (34:06):
I mean, if I move this camera like six inches, you would be flabbergasted how much tequila I have in this office.
RV (34:12):
That’s awesome. So is there, is there any other lessons that you think for personal brands, like specifically? I mean, that’s super powerful. I didn’t, I didn’t, I never even realized to put that together that, you know, ’cause we you that that you, that’s what you were doing was specif specifically creating content for the person that you once were, you know?
JB (34:30):
Yeah. And I talk about that in a lot of podcasts and people ask me about tequila and I always give you credit as I should. And how powerful that that premise is. And it’s really, really effective. You know, look, we all have the curse of knowledge and the curse of expertise. And if you don’t constantly disvalue yourself of that notion, you are truncating your addressable audience. The other thing that we do in the tequila space that I think you’ll appreciate and your audience will appreciate is we are the only tequila educator that de anonymizes the audience. So there are a number of other people, four or five that do Instagram, TikTok stuff like me. There’s a handful of kind of YouTube tequila educators. There’s a couple of podcasts, et cetera. But we are the only ones who have a list. So I produce a list every quarter of my recommended tequila brands.
JB (35:19):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (36:25):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (36:33):
It’s,
RV (36:33):
It’s a game changer. It’s al it’s also amazing to me how it’s like, you have social media and you have lives and all this stuff, but like building the email list, it’s just like, it always just re still the, it’s still the holy grail. Like Yeah,
JB (36:46):
I mean, I I, I mean, it’s great to do lives and social media and everything else, but, but you know, if all of a sudden you know, meta decides that they’re not gonna do any alcohol content on the platform.
RV (36:59):
Yeah. You’re hosted
JB (37:01):
Business is over close up shop. Right. and that could ha I mean, that’s not a, that’s not that far fetched. Like that could definitely happen, right? So you know, you gotta un you know, you’ve gotta build reliable reach, not, not unreliable reach.
RV (37:17):
I love it. I love it. Well so j tequila.com is where people can go get that list if they’re, if they’re
JB (37:24):
Yeah. J tequila dot com is for the list. The merch store is tequila j bearer.com and yeah, we got, we got a lot of web properties. Now all of a sudden,
RV (37:33):
I mean, if you’re, and if you’re a tequila person, which I’m not, I don’t drink, but like, you just, like, you’ve gotta go see this, right? You gotta, and and even if you’re not a tequila person, I would go, go check this out because you’ll see, I’m
JB (37:45):
Still gonna send you a hat though ’cause the hats are pretty great.
RV (37:48):
Well, I’m a hat person, so I could do, I could just, I know you’re, I can wear hats to soccer practice for the kids. So it’s really awesome, dude. But, but anyways, this speed as a competitive advantage blows my mind and scares the crap. It scares the crap outta me. And go, and I go, you know, this idea of going, how do we build brand builders group from the ground up from here for speed is like really has, has rocked my world and it’s, it’s affected us, right? So you know, I’ve been talking to you about instant automation toolkit, like this has been in development luckily for the last couple years, and we’re, we’re, we’re finally hitting, we’re finally about ready to release because it’s just like, that is the whole thing. Instant automation. It’s like we have to help people get this stuff deployed faster. So powerful stuff. Y’all. The time, the time to win is the book like it, this thing is, it’s so, it it fits in the palm of your hand. You read it an hour, get the, get the good stuff. So check it out. And it’s
JB (38:49):
Like nine bucks too. The book’s like $9. So if you don’t like it, let know. I’ll send you $9 back.
RV (38:54):
JB (38:59):
More than $9. Yeah. Private.
RV (39:01):
We’ll figure private stash at the house. Like when you start emptying those out. Well,
JB (39:04):
Because, because I, because as you know you know, we live right by campus in Indiana University, so all of our neighbors are university students. And so I get sent a lot of tequila that I don’t want to keep because it’s not very good. So I’m just like, I’m, I’m like, I’m like
RV (39:16):
Dishing it out, walking
JB (39:17):
Through the neighborhood, like who wants a bottle of tequila and all. Yeah. The college students love me. That movie neighbors. Like I’m the Seth Rogan character in that movie. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah.
RV (39:27):
I love it. Well brother, thanks for sharing your wisdom. We wish you the best and it’s a pleasure. You, you, you are, you are stud, my man. I’m so grateful for you and my life and for having you share your wisdom here.
JB (39:38):
You too. Say hi to AJ.