Category: BUSINESS

Ep 160: Building a Trusted Personal Brand with David Horsager

RV: (00:07)

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

DH: (01:28)

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

RV: (01:41)

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

DH: (02:00)

I think at least something like

RV: (02:01)

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

DH: (02:16)

I was, I think, yeah.

RV: (02:19)

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

DH: (02:47)

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

DH: (03:35)

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

RV: (04:53)

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

DH: (04:58)

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

RV: (05:36)

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

DH: (06:07)

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

DH: (06:47)

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

DH: (07:29)

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

DH: (08:14)

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

RV: (09:33)

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

DH: (10:14)

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

DH: (11:00)

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

DH: (11:49)

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

RV: (13:03)

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

DH: (13:15)

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

RV: (13:35)

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

DH: (14:09)

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

RV: (14:57)

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

DH: (15:08)

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

RV: (15:58)

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

DH: (16:26)

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

RV: (16:47)

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

DH: (16:50)

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

DH: (17:39)

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

DH: (18:26)

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

RV: (19:26)

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

DH: (20:31)

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

DH: (21:16)

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

DH: (22:07)

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

RV: (23:17)

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

DH: (23:33)

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

RV: (24:01)

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

DH: (24:07)

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

RV: (24:21)

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

DH: (24:38)

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

RV: (25:35)

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

DH: (25:46)

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

RV: (25:59)

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

DH: (27:30)

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

RV: (27:54)

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

Ep 151: How Billionaire Entrepreneurs Overcome Self-Doubt and Learn to Believe in Themselves with Jamie Kern Lima | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06)

Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap, special edition with our friend, Jamie Kern Lima. AJ is here with me today. She’s back. Where are you, man? Woman? You’ve been working. You’ve been mommin’

AJV: (00:22)

It was a three-week podcast.

RV: (00:27)

It’s a great episode to be back. Jamie is a friend of ours. She was last time that we talked to her. She was, she was here in Nashville and so excited to see her book coming out. And yeah, we’re breaking down our top three takeaways, which I’m going to it only seems fitting to let one female CEO entrepreneur that I ex I respect so much kick off the the recap with to another. So what did you take away from from her?

AJV: (00:59)

So I, this was probably my biggest, not just my first, but my biggest takeaway from the podcast, which I thought was really great for on so many different levels, but here’s the first thing doing what hasn’t been done before. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means it hasn’t been done. I think so often we hear our clients talk about, well, this is what our competitors are doing. This is what the market is doing. This is what, you know, competitor research says this blah, blah, blah. And that’s what I say. Because I think it’s so often it’s why are you looking to find your uniqueness and something or someone else, and that is just counter intuitive to every single thing. That’s at the core of what makes you, you, which is no one else is you. And I love what Jamie said. And she was like, just because it hasn’t been done before. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means it hasn’t been done before. So why not? You, why not your company? Why not your personal brand? And she’s the best case study of that, that there is a, in the beauty industry. And I love, I love that message so much.

RV: (02:16)

I got goosies Vaden. That was good. That was strong,

AJV: (02:20)

But it’s, I it’s, we, we suffer from this challenge all the time of we say, well, everyone’s doing funnel challenges. Well, everyone’s doing courses and everyone’s doing Instagram ads. And it’s like, why do you care what anyone else is doing? So that was my biggest takeaway. Do what you do, do what you do and build it into a nine figure business. I mean, it’s kind of, well, almost 10.

RV: (02:49)

Yeah. I guess nine figures would be a hundred million. It’s hard to know

AJV: (02:55)

199 million

RV: (02:56)

Sold it for a billion, which would be 10 figures. I mean, it’s hard to even count anyways. It’s a lot of zeros. It’s a lot of zeros and you know, kind of related to that, I think my big takeaway, which I think is like the, one of the central parts of her whole book, I’ve read the whole book cover to cover. It’s awesome. That’s funny. It’s, it’s inspiring. I, yeah. And I read slow it’s so I don’t read that many books every year. I try to, but it’s that doesn’t help either or I don’t stay awake very long, but it is you know, and, and she basically saying that like learn to listen to your gut, which is like, kind of what you’re talking about, your instinct. Right. And versus just what people say, Oh, it has to be this way. No one would ever buy a beauty product from someone that looks like you. What? I mean, that was crazy. Like, I can’t believe somebody said that to her

AJV: (03:57)

Because you’re a man women hear stuff like that all day, every day. Don’t make me go on a tangent.

RV: (04:04)

I believe I am. I’m not saying I, I just, I can believe that someone said it. I just saying it’s so stupid that somebody would say that it’s so mean that somebody would say that is, is, is what I’m saying, but, but anyway.

AJV: (04:19)

Yeah.

RV: (04:19)

Well, I clearly right. W tack up rack up the points for Jamie Kern, Lima. I think she got the best of that battle. But it, you know, it, it reminds me of when we met our literary agent Nina, and it was just like, you know, I just, I just felt drawn to this idea of like, this is who we’re supposed to have represent us because they had such a track record of rep representing new young business authors. And it was like, I know we’re not qualified to be with them yet. I know that, you know, like we’re not big enough or whatever, but this is, this is how I’ve, I’ve just felt so drawn to that. And over the course of our career, I feel like so many times.

AJV: (05:05)

But that mean to your point is that you felt this internal knowing similar to what Jamie talks about, even though that we were rejected two years and it did not make logical logical sense, but deep down you’re like, Nope, I know this is it. I know my external surroundings do not line up with what my gut is saying, but that’s what it’s saying.

RV: (05:28)

I feel like you do that so well, it’s one of the things I love about you is you, you have such a strong instinct about this is good. This is bad. This is fair. This is not, this will work. We can’t do this. Like I believe in this, I don’t believe in that. And you have such a clear instinct. I always tell AJC, sees the world in black and white. It helps me. Cause I always am like living in this world of gray and, and she’s like, boom, boom. And that’s that’s instinct. And you just don’t hear enough about that. Anyways. That was my first big takeaway is, you know, follow the gut, follow the gut.

AJV: (06:02)

Yeah, I am. And I think it’s not just follow your gut. It’s follow it. Even when the surroundings around you don’t line up and it’s, it’s being in touch with your instincts,

RV: (06:13)

If it’s strong enough. Like if it’s that strong. Yeah.

AJV: (06:16)

Yeah. Okay. My second one that was very long. So my second one,

RV: (06:21)

You interrupted me. So that doesn’t count

AJV: (06:24)

Is I love this. She said you cannot fake authenticity, authenticity doesn’t guarantee success, but in authenticity guarantees, failure might drop. That is so good. That is such a reminder to all of us where it’s like, no one said authenticity is going to make you successful. But what you can guarantee is that inauthenticity being fake, bending the truth that will guarantee failure at some point. And that is just so solid and so good. And just to that, it’s like, it’s why fake authenticity specifically to building a personal brand, right? You’re, you’re, you’re building your entire business off of you, your uniqueness, what you believe in, why wouldn’t it be authentically true and authentically you, this is your opportunity to share your thoughts and your mission and your values with the world to share your unique message, to help people all around the world.

AJV: (07:32)

Why wouldn’t you want it to be authentically you? Why do you think you need to have certain clothes or certain photo shoots? And, you know, just all of those things that I think are just so amazing. And I love Jamie story. And although she didn’t share tons of this on the podcast interview, but it’s like, it was her authenticity on QVC that sold out the products, right? She probably could have gone up there with the exact same product and not did what she did and had models come in and dah, dah, dah, and it may not have sold out. We don’t know it was her authenticity, her truth that sold a billion dollar business. That, and I love that because it would’ve been really easy to do it the way the industry does it the way her competitors did it, the way that even people like QVC were suggesting that she should do it.

RV: (08:25)

And I think, I think that authenticity is going to translate into a lot of book sales. Like she’s she does the same thing. It’s just part of what she does is just, she just shares her heart. And that is so powerful and it’s exhausting to not be used. So I, I love that too. That’s a big, a big takeaways. Even if you win, you’re going to burn out. If you’re, if you’re in authentic, you can’t really, when you, you, you, you can, it guarantees failure. So my second takeaway was that when she, the, she drew a line in the sand where she said, I would rather have women not buy anything, but see someone who looks like them, then I would have them buy a bunch of stuff from, from women who are, are unattainable, that unattainable aspiration of, of beauty and what she did right there in that story was she drew a line in the sand that said, I am about mission over money.

RV: (09:27)

And that is something that we’re always talking about. It’s in our mantra, we have a thing called a mantra at brand builders group that we read about, we read every month internally. And we say, we are about mission over money, just because something will make money. Doesn’t mean you should do it. Like, it’s it. Money is just one scorecard. It’s not bad. There’s not anything wrong with money, but it’s like, it takes so much passion and heart and belief and conviction to say, it’s about mission. And I’m going to, I’m going to follow that. And that was that’s what broke through the noise. That’s how she broke through the wall. That was huge for me. Yeah.

AJV: (10:04)

And second that, I second that and so here’s my third one is I love this so much because it speaks to what I think we all should be doing is she was, she said that, listen, I’m going to use myself as the case study for my own products. I ha I stand behind my product so much. I will be the case study. I will go out there with no makeup on, because I know my product works. I stay in behind what I have created and I stayed behind what it does a hundred percent. So I’m not going to use all these people who already have perfect skin and perfect complexions because they’re 19 years old. I know I’m going out there. I’m going to go out there raw with no makeup. And I don’t want to show what my product does. And it’s like, you should be able to stand behind your product and your services, a hundred percent conviction, and that it doesn’t make your product or service.

AJV: (10:58)

Perfect. Nobody’s trying to attain perfection here. But what I’m saying is that you should believe in it a hundred percent if you’re dedicating your life and your career to it. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It doesn’t mean your business is perfect. We all have flaws. We all have ears. That’s not what I’m saying here is that you believe in it so much that you’re like, Nope, me, I’ll be the case study. I know this works because it changed my life. It changed in her case her complexion, which improved self confidence and all these other things. But you’ve gotta be able to stand up and say, Nope, I’ll be the case study. That is how much I believe in this. Not saying that it’s perfect and without flaw, but you just have that much conviction in it. Yep.

RV: (11:43)

That’s so good. That’s so good. For me, the, the, the last takeaway is, you know, the book is called, believe it. And her whole thing is about believing yourself. And how do you believe in yourself? And, and, and, and I love it. It’s upstairs. We got to both upstairs. I think yours is in your bathroom and the mindset and the bed, the the but, but, but here’s the thing, what I love is she talks about belief and authenticity and passion. And then she also talks about work. Not just, I sat in a room and, and I didn’t manifest this by like, it wasn’t like, you know, just sit around and think good thoughts. She did a thousand live shows 1000. She, she had one year, I think, where she said she did like 300 shows in a year. That’s like almost every single day, she sleeping at QVC.

RV: (12:44)

They were doing 90 hour work weeks for 10 years. Like, I just, I love that because it’s both right. Is it like, is it mindset or is it work ethic? Yes, it is both. It is belief. It is passionate. It’s vulnerability, it’s authenticity, and it is freaking work. And, and you just don’t hear that enough about like, it’s work a thousand live show. I mean, that is a thousand. We, you know, we always heard from Eric Chester or one of my mentors, the difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is 1000 presentations. She’s done a thousand. She has been hustling and pitching and fighting. And so it’s like, while you’re, while you’re waiting to believe in yourself, work like you, you may or may not believe in yourself, but you can start working right away. Like you can start taking action, no matter how you feel like you can just go. And if you do that, you build this momentum and then you get some wins and you start to believe and you go, gosh, maybe this could work or Whoa, that didn’t work. But I think I could try this. And then it’s like the, the, the work leads to the belief, right? And the belief leads to the work. But if, if you don’t have the belief, it’s not going to stop you from doing the work. So just work, just go, just follow that instance.

AJV: (14:09)

But yeah, to that is, you’ve got to have something that you believe in enough where it no longer even feels like work. It’s just what you do. It’s who you are. It’s a part of your mission. It’s that mission. And it’s like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a 90 hour work week, to be honest, I don’t want one. I’m not citizen,

RV: (14:31)

But

AJV: (14:31)

I think it comes back to it’s like, but is it because it feels like work? Or is it because you’re so tied to the mission of it? It no longer feels like work. It feels like your calling. It feels like your purpose, your mission. And I think that’s, that’s an important distinction of this too. This just work. Wasn’t just building a company. This was a mission. This one is a changed in industry. And I think that too is really important to recognize where definitely I definitely can’t sit here and say, I encourage you to work 90 hours, but I could definitely sit here and say, but if it doesn’t feel like work, if it’s a part of who you are and what you feel called to do, you should do it 24 hours a day.

RV: (15:09)

And you’re not going to just believe your way there. That’s that’s my thing is like, believe it is the part of it, but work, it is work. It is the other part of it. Right? You can’t just believe it and not work. In fact, the fact that you do the work is evidence of the belief you’re working in the direction of the thing that you say you care about. Like, you can sit and go, Oh, I really care about this thing. But if there’s no effort behind it, it’s like, you don’t really, if you believe it, and it’s your mission, then you’re, you’re, you’re going behind it. Who cares? How many hours? There’s action. There’s action to support that belief. And yeah. So I just love it. Super power.

AJV: (15:51)

Yeah, it was. It’s a great interview. You should listen to the whole thing. You should go buy the book, read the book and give her some love.

RV: (15:57)

Check it out. Jamie Kern, Lima, everybody on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s the recap edition. We’ll catch you next time. Stick around.

Ep 150: How Billionaire Entrepreneurs Overcome Self-Doubt and Learn to Believe in Themselves with Jamie Kern Lima

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

You know, it’s not every day that you get to sit down and learn from a billionaire especially somebody who is according to Forbes, one of the richest self-made female billionaires, or, you know, self-made richest females in the world. And you’re about to meet Jamie Kern Lima, who is a new friend of mine. And she is most known for being the co-founder of it cosmetics, which was a company that had millions of customers. They sold it to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion a few years ago. And she became the first female CEO and L’Oreal’s hundred and eight year history. She also has been in lots of media. She actually started her career as an award winning TV news journalist, and then her story has been featured on good morning, America. The today show CVS this morning, ABC Nightline and in the last really year.

So she’s been building her own personal brand as she’s working towards her new book, which is called believe it, how to go from underestimated to unstoppable which if you’re listening to this live comes out two day. The book is out right now at you know, if you’re listening to this, as soon as this is published and you know, building her brand has happened very her personal brand has happened very fast. She spoken for Tony Robbins. She spoken for Dave Ramsey’s team. She’s worked with a lot of very influential people, but her story and her book is really about how to overcome self doubt and achieve your wildest dreams. And so she’s here to tell us a little bit about that story and how that applies to all of us building our personal brand. So Jamie Kern, Lima, welcome to the show, Lori.

Thank you so much. It’s so, so great to be here.

Well so, you know, when you look at, can you just give us the, tell us the story, right, so that, you know, obviously the, the, the book you go walk us through, but you went from being a Denny’s waitress to having an idea to start a company to 10 years later, selling that company for $1.2 billion. I mean, that all happened in 10 years, like real in real life. Yeah.

Yes, that is true. And you know, what I kind of realized is, is, you know, over the years and just hearing from so many people all the time who maybe you see like a headline on my story or something like that, that, you know, I’ll get messages on Instagram and people will say, Oh, you know, did you get lucky or how did it happen? Or, you know, I wish I could do that, but I’m just facing so much rejection. And what I realized worry was that so many people, you know, they, they see sort of like the highlight reel out there. And what I wanted to do is, is for the first time ever, like share the story behind the story of everything the one I hope has everyone out there in their own journey of building their personal brand or any other dream they’re going after helps them feel less alone. And and, and more connected also in the struggles we all go through and cause really, you know, believe it it’s the first time ever, I think like 85 or 90% of the stories in the book I’ve never shared before, but it’s really

Share some personal stories in there. Like some very intimate, like when you were on a reality TV show and you share some stuff about that, like in your younger days, like you really, it’s really honest,

It’s super honest. And it’s really the heart and soul of this book. It’s a story about a girl who goes from not believing in herself to believing in herself and not trusting herself to like learning how to, you know, hear my own inner knowing and then trust myself and going from doubting I’m enough to knowing I’m enough. And the reason I really wrote it as I think it’s the story of so many people out there right now, probably so many of your listeners and people in your community on their own journey of, of learning to believe in themselves and trust themselves and, and know they’re enough. And

Let me, I want to, I want to ask you about this because one of my favorite stories is the story of, I think it was the first time that you were pitching to one of these companies, all tower, maybe it was an investor and this investor said something to you and, and you know, if you’re not familiar, it, cosmetics is now like the, the leading luxury brand of cosmetics in, in the United States. And, and, but where this started, there was an executive who said something directly to your face. Can you, are you, are you comfortable sharing with everybody with that?

Yeah, I, you know, we I had this dream and this vision, you know, to create a makeup company cause I had a skin condition and, and in the process of, of realizing that I couldn’t find a product that worked for me, I’d also realized that all the images I’d seen a beauty in my whole life never showed women that had problematic skin or women of different ages or sizes or shapes or skin tones or skin challenges. And I kind of had this big aha moment when I launched my company that, Oh, if I can really create a product that works for people that have skin challenges like me, it’s going to help so many people. But at the same time I had this like deeper, deeper, deeper why, but I had identified really early on, which was, you know, my entire life, you know, seeing all these images of, of kind of like flawless airbrush models on, in ads, on TV or in magazines.

Like I growing up, I always aspire to look like those, but they also always like made me feel deep down inside. Like I wasn’t enough. And I had this huge moment creating my, my company where I realized, Oh, it’s not just going to be about a great product that works. If I can get this thing off the ground, if I can create this, this beauty company, when I know nothing about the industry, by the way if I can do this, I’m going to use models and calm and beautiful and mean it that are every age and shape and size and skin tone and skin challenge. So I had this whole vision of something that meant more, that was bigger than myself because I wanted to do it, not just to create a product, not just to, but like to try and shift culture in the beauty industry for every little girl out there who was about to start doubting herself and every grown person who still does.

So I had this deep mission, meanwhile, to, to get to the investor story you’re talking about you know, the first several years of launching my company was really hard and I love that you share like, Oh, you know, it, cosmetics now is the largest luxury makeup company in the country, which is crazy and amazing. But, but the first three years was packed with no after no after no and rejection and down to no money. And, you know, after hearing no from all the department stores and even QVC and so forth we finally got what I thought was going to be a life-changing meeting that this potential investor, and this was a private equity company. And they had invested in tons of, of consumer product companies. A lot of them pre-revenue in their small and then they built them. They helped build them into these companies that like we all shop at grocery store for, and they’re they’re household names.

And I thought, wow, they love our product. Like this is going to be huge. And so we took meetings with them and started the diligence phase, which is when you hire you know you just show your financial projections. Sometimes you end up hiring bankers and lawyers. We got pretty far along thinking they were going to invest in our company. And I thought two things were going to happen. I thought, Oh my gosh, if they invest then a I’m not going to go bankrupt and maybe they can use all of their leverage to try and get us into these stores that I’ll keep saying no to us. Right. Because QVC said to us, you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. So for us and no, all the department stores. So I’m like, okay, no, one’s believing in this vision.

And when I keep checking in with my gut, I keep feeling like I’m on the right track and that people need this product and we need a new definition of beauty, but everyone’s saying no. So I thought like it, like this investor is going to change my life and I’ll never forget I was with my husband actually. And we went to the final meeting where I thought, okay, this is going to be, yes, this is going to be huge. And I was standing about three feet from the head guy and, you know, he thanked us. He said, we really don’t. We think your product is really great. And all that, but you know, it’s going to be a no, we’re gonna pass on investing in a cosmetics. And I was like, okay. And by this point I’m super used to hearing, no, right.

So I’m like, okay, can you share why? Like, can you, can you share why? Because feedback is always a gift. At least usually it’s a gift. And I said, can you share why? And he goes, well, do you want me to be really honest with you? And I’m like, yes, please. And he was literally like about three feet from me. And my husband was right next to me. And then he looked at me and he said, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you, you know, with your body and your weight. And I remember like, it almost felt like his mouth was moving in slow motion. I remember the words coming out and you know, anyone who’s dealt with with body doubt, self doubt, which for me had been my whole life. At that point, I remember feeling like my whole body flood with this like self, like a lifetime of body doubt and self doubt.

And it, when, as I was watching him say these words to me, it was almost like I was staring my own fears straight in the eye. And I, I knew in that moment, two things, okay, I’ve got to figure out how to keep my faith bigger than this. I’d also hurt really bad, but he was saying, but one thing happened in that moment. That would be a defining moment. That would happen to me many more times, which is, as he was saying, these words to me, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. I got this like deep feeling in my gut that he was raw. It was like this deep knowing that he was wrong and I felt it. But I also knew like if I was ever going to prove that it would come down to me, learning how to believe it for myself.

And the other thing was, even though it hurt my feelings, like I didn’t, I didn’t get mad at him. I actually felt no ill will toward him. One thing that happened was I was like, Oh wow. It, this whole beauty industry, isn’t just about making me as a little girl feel like I’m not enough. Like he’s actually making a business decision to not invest in my company because guess what? He’s been impacted by it too. He’s using his best judgment to say, Oh, I think you have to look a certain way for people to buy from you. Right. He’s making a business decision based on my weight. And so he’s as much of a by-product of evidence me. And so for me, while it hurt, I also, I also used it as fuel to go, wow, why I’m doing what I’m doing is really big. It needs to change. Not, you know, not just because it impacted me growing up, but there are so many people out there that are in this kind of, you know, that, that it needs to change for. So yeah, I mean,

I mean, it’s like they’re living this whole industry is living with this paradigm that they don’t realize, like there’s this set of beliefs that beauty can only be sold. And you talk about how they literally used to say things like you have to show them what, what, what was the language and impossible level of beauty or a flawless. There was like a term that they used to always say. And if you, if you don’t show them that people won’t buy, it’s amazing how pervasive a limiting belief can be on an entire industry now. So that’s a big part of your story. So you you’re, you’re at Danny’s you have this idea, you start in your living room, you’re working hundred hour weeks. You’re being told, no, you get this meeting with the investor. This guy tells you that. And then you fast forward to, you finally get a chance to be on QVC. And one of the parts that I I love, well, we’ll talk about how many presentations you did. Cause I think that’s really important for personal brands, but the very first time you were on QVC, I want you to walk us through that moment, that story of your thoughts going into it. And then what happened when you were live on the air and how you were feeling, and then just like tell us that story. Yeah. So it

Had been, gosh, three years of nos, we even Rory had QVC, you know, I had, at one point I had gotten their head of hot beauty there who was like, he’s literally a visionary in the industry. I’m responsible for building this multi-billion dollar division of beauty there. And I got him on a phone and I thought, Oh my gosh, if he’s going to bless me with his time, it’s, it’s going to be a yes. And, and I remember getting him on the phone and him telling me I’ve met with all the buyers at KVC and it’s unanimous that you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. And I remember crying myself to sleep three nights in a row. Not knowing what we’re going to do, but every time I would, I would check in with my gut.

I had this, like this, knowing like this feeling, you’re going to be on QVC. You’re going to sell your product. Can you see? And sometimes we have these gut feelings, but then like nothing around us, how’s us we’re right, right. And we start to doubt our own intuition. And every time I would send my product to them, it was always a no. And you know, a lot of times when we have these dreams on our heart or these feelings, it’s so easy to let self doubt creep in. It’s so easy to second guess ourselves. It’s easy to think that our gut is wrong when we still don’t see the proof around us, that it’s right. And even in the hardest times of QVC, I just kept feeling like we’re going to be on there. Like we’re supposed to be on there, but it was three years of them saying, no, I just share that.

Because I think a lot of times people let things hold them back or they just get stuck or they just give up because they feel like, well, I think I’m just wrong. I have this feeling, but like I tried and it didn’t work or they keep, you know, in this case they literally said, you’re not you the word, because you are not the right fit. Which when someone says you’re not the right fit for us, obviously it feels like rejection. But it also, it feels like these, these statements of you’re not enough, you don’t belong here. All those things. Right. And, and the one thing that really truly kept me going, and for some people, this is how they hear God and their faith. And it’s every time I would get still, I would just hear that voice saying, no, no you’re supposed to, you’re supposed to be there.

So so we eventually, after three years, we’re at this big beauty show, demonstrating our product in it and a really amazing moment. And a bunch of other stuff happened that I share in the book, but we eventually got a meeting and one shot on QVC. So, so, and, and we were down to under a thousand dollars in our bank account. I didn’t know how we were going to make it. We were only selling two to three orders a day on our website pack them up in our office, which was our living room. And we get this one shot. And what it meant though, was we had this 10 minute airing where you’re going to go live. Right? So QVC a live TV shopping channel for anyone who hasn’t seen it before, it’s, it’s a live TV shopping channel, your broadcast live to a hundred million homes and there’s no script, no teleprompter, nothing you’re, you’re live.

And in homes, yeah. A hundred million homes shot big shot. And it was, it was 10 minutes, but Rory, what it meant was, so even though we were selling just two to three orders a day down to our last thousand dollars as well breast to say yes, to this one opportunity, this one chance, this one shot we had to actually, it was a consignment deal. And we had to sell over 6,000 units of our product in a 10 minute window in order to hit their sales goal. Why not come back? And so we had to apply for SBA loans and 22 banks said no. And the last bank, the 23rd bank gave us an SBA loan that covered just that inventory to be able to do that 10 minutes segment. And so but it was consignment. And what that, what that means for anyone who’s unfamiliar with that word is, is we had to pay for everything ourselves we, to pay, to make all the 6,000 units pay to ship them in, pass all the clinical testing regularly, all the steps

Like you got to have the physical product sitting. You have to have 6,000 all the money to PR to create 6,000 units sitting there so that if they sell them, they can actually ship them. And you weren’t selling, you were selling two or three a day. So you basically leveraged your whole life on this one moment, like all your financial on this one moment,

And you should never do this. Like, like in the business world, they say, never take a purchase order. You can’t afford to lose. This was a decision we made because at this point it was like, we didn’t even know what we’re going to do. We were about to go out of business. Anyway. It was like, okay, we have one shot. Let’s just go all in. And so we got the loan manufactured is over 6,000 units, got them into the QVC warehouses. And I’m sitting there with one shot and 10 minutes and it was so stressful. And, and here’s why and, and, you know, when I talk about that, this is a book about learning to believe in yourself and trust yourself. Because to me, that’s everything, right? Not everyone’s going to want to go create a product company or build a billion dollar company or whatever, but I think every single one of us, no matter where we’re at in our own personal brand or why we’re doing what we’re doing, I think all of us are on the journey of learning, how to hear ourselves, our inner knowing and learn how to actually like step into all of who we are and all of who we’re created to be.

And, and in this moment on QVC was really this big defining moments. I get this 10 minute window. And I we had hired these third-party experts consultants, which are amazing. They help so many people sell their products on TV and in stores. And but in my case, I wanted to do something really different. I wanted to not use the traditional type of models with perfect skin. I wanted to sh to show like, like Rory, I kept imagining, I know, I know from so many people who love being your clients, and they talk about the amazing work they’ve done with you and AIG, and they talk about like their customer avatar and things like that. Right? So this is a real life example of that. I was sitting in my car. I flew out a week before this 10 minute airing, okay. This one shot, I fled a week before I sat in this rental car, in the parking lot of QVC staring at the front door, watching people walk in and out knowing the next time I walked in that building, I was either going to be out of business or a whole new world was going to open up.

But here’s where here’s here was the big challenge. And the big dilemma I faced, we worked with these third party experts who are amazing with amazing track records. And when I had explained to them, well, the reason I’m doing this company is like, you know, I would imagine my customer avatar to use your words. Like I would imagine that women sitting at home and let’s just say I’m 70 years old. But if I’m only seeing models that look like they’re 12, how I know the product’s going to work for me, or, you know, I have a, you know, a skin challenge or, you know, a different, you know, skin tone skin issues. If I don’t see someone live on TV, show him in this, how do I know it’s going to work for me? And I would argue with them, I’m like, in fact, let me just show my bright red rosacea national television. Let me prove to everyone live that like why I created this product.

Yeah. So pause right there. If y’all didn’t catch this. So Jamie’s got her whole life on the line and you make the decision that not only are you not going to use models, you’re going to go on there personally with out makeup. You’re going to show the world rosacea, which was what your, your skin situation was all about. And you’re going to like show people your real skin on TV, which at the time was crazy. I mean, crazy. Unheard of. And your height, the people you hired told you, this is stupid, that they, the people almost never let you on because you want it to do this. And yet you believed in it and you’re going to do it anyway.

Well, I, and I think it comes down to like, do we learn how to listen to what our guts telling us to do? Even when other people are telling us to do the, and you know, QVC was supportive. QVC was like, you do, whatever’s authentic to you. But I knew I had one shot. And so it was the, you know, third, third party experts are so good. And I said, yeah, I want to show my bright red rosacea. And I said, and you know what, because you need to, you need to use models to show the product. I’m like, Lemmy actually put models that are ages and shapes and sizes and skin tones. And I S I remember but, but here’s the thing. They, they are all, they all thought I was crazy. And they’re like but they wanted me to when they had the best intentions of at heart, but sometimes even people that are, that are visionaries still can’t imagine something working.

If it hasn’t been done before. And if I learned that lesson earlier, I would have saved myself. So many nights, cry myself to sleep. When so many people did it believe in this, this vision I had or what I was trying to do. And, and so, you know, it felt heavy. I knew this was going to come down to this 10 minute moment. And I sat in that rental car in the parking lot. And I imagined who my customer was like, I imagined who I was talking to because honestly, worry self-doubt did enter my head. I thought thoughts like, well, what if your gut is wrong? What if there’s no proof around you now for three years, that what you’re trying to do, you is going to gain any traction. Right? You have all those thoughts. You have friends and family that love you so much, but they’re like, you know, are you sure, sure.

This is how you should be doing it. Like, didn’t, you want to be a talk show, host your whole life. Are you sure you want to stay in this makeup industry? Like, you know, all those things, you hear everyone who loves you. They mean so well, but all of it can turn into this noise of self doubt. And I just remember this moment sitting in that rental car going, who is, who is my customer. And I imagined her sitting at home like watching this 10 minutes and who is she? I imagine all different types of women. And I imagine like, you know, women that maybe had never seen someone who looked like them on TV as a model, and I wanted to show real women, call them beautiful and mean it, you know, literally. And, and, and I, I had this moment where I realized, you know, if I was going to get one shot, I would rather have women turn their television on and not buy anything, but see someone that looked like them, someone that I am authentically saying is beautiful, but that, that makes them, or reminds them that they matter that they’re enough and have them by nothing.

I’d rather do that than sell a ton of product and stand for nothing. And it was this, this moment where I knew what I had to do, but sometimes we know it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. And you know, when, when I walked into the building so, so for all the everyone building a personal brand and, and, and doing all kinds of stuff right now share this, this part of the story. I thought I had my 10 minutes, like produced in my mind, right. I had a whole script of what I was going to do and what demonstration I was going to show and how the flow was going to go. And so you get like a two minute meeting with the host right before the show. And they meet with all the different presenters from all the different companies. And and in that two minute meeting, I was explaining to the host that I wanted to do in my one big shot.

And she’s like, well, thank you, but that, but here’s what we’re going to do. And she basically threw everything out the window that I wanted to do. And at that point, you have to just trust. You have to trust. Cause the last thing in the world you want to try to do is become the expert of something. You’re, you know what I mean? That when someone else is the, I had to trust and, and, and I prayed like crazy, but we went out there and I remember that, that there’s this big 10 minute clock and there’s cameras everywhere in the studio. And here’s the thing when the, I knew once the clock boom went live and it was nine 58, nine 57, I knew everything was on the line. I knew I couldn’t do it both ways. But I also knew that you can’t fake authenticity.

And in that moment, there is so many thoughts going through my head thoughts about, Oh, if, if this doesn’t go well, you’re not guaranteed 10 minutes to sell your product. If it doesn’t go, well, your clock gets cut live. You can go from, you know, maybe you’re at nine minutes and it’s not going well, boom, you’re down to two minutes like that because they’re wrapping up and they’re onto like Dyson vacuum or vitamin X or whatever, right? Like it’s no one messes around. They’re like, it’s high pressure. And, and so, you know, I had to kind of like get thoughts like that out of my head and focus on like, why am I doing what I’m doing and how it’s bigger than myself? And I remember little moments where you know, things I’ve never shared before, but I remember being live on air and being like, Oh, my dress feels a little tight or, Oh, I feel sweat, literally dripping down my back.

And I hope that’s inspiring where you’re like, this is the biggest moment of my life. I can feel sweat trickling on me. Yes. But, you know, I, I knew I knew it enough to know and something I share, but then I learned it. I share a lot about authenticity and trust and belief in this book for everybody, regardless of what journey they’re going on, lessons I’ve learned in that. But one of the lessons is like authenticity alone. Doesn’t guarantee success, but in authenticity guarantees failure. And I knew in that moment, I could not show up as somebody else or as this, this version of a brand that works for everyone else that wasn’t authentic to why I was doing what I was doing. And I also couldn’t stand up there on live television and, you know, be all about inspiring women to know they’re enough, but then stand there in my own head about my own stuff.

Right. So I knew it had to, it had to be bigger than myself. It had to be about the woman watching at home. And that’s the only way that I was able to get through those 10 minutes because the pressure was so heavy. I remember, you know, I had practiced this demonstration on my wrist a million times, but when we went live, my hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t even show this demonstration properly on how our concealer didn’t crease like the other two departments are concealers. So the host had to kind of like put my hand under the pedestal. I remember the moment, my bright red rosacea, my bare face before shot came up on national television and then walking over to the models. And I remember there was about a minute left and the host was like, the, the deep shade is almost sold out the tan shade. We’re down to 200 units. And I was like, and then I remember it was like at the 10 minute Mark, the sold outside came up across the screen. It was like this big diagonal sold outside. And I literally Rory started crying. Like I, it was just, it was, the pressure was so much and I just started crying and I remember they cut the segment and my husband came rushing through the double doors of the studio and like sobbing. And I’m like, real women have spoken.

He’s like, we’re not going pay crops. And it was this whole thing. One airing turned into five that year and then 101 the next year on QVC, eventually 250 airings a year. I’ve done over a thousand live QVC shows myself and we grew to be the largest beauty brand and QVC is history and right. In many, did you say a thousand worth over a thousand live shows? Yeah. and, and right now at this moment that we’re talking it cosmetics is, is still the largest beauty branding in QVC history. And I only share that because for three years it wasn’t just like, no, or, Oh, can you come back later? It was like, you’re not the right fit. Right. And that wasn’t just QVC. It was everybody. It was, it was all the retailers, all the stores. It was, it was everyone. And I just think that for me, one of the biggest lessons is a, no one can tell you you’re not the right fit.

That’s the first thing. And the second thing is when you check in with your, your knowing, right? And by the way, I hear so many people just saying, Oh, just don’t quit or just don’t give up or whatever. I don’t agree with that. I think, check in with your gut, check in with your, your, your internal knowing, because sometimes letting go of a dream, knowing when to let go of a dream is as important as knowing when to go after one. And, you know, I thought it was gonna be a talk show, host my whole life. And it was working as a TV journalist and thought that’s what I was going to do. And when I got rosacea and I felt this, knowing that I’m supposed to let go of that dream and actually start this makeup company, even though I knew nothing about it, you could see it as quitting or as like the victory of knowing what you’re, what you’re feeling in your, in your own intuition and then deciding to trust it.

And I think that, I think that for me, that’s one of the greatest, the greatest lessons. Cause when I look back now, you know, it cosmetics, we eventually gotten to all of the stores that said, no. L’oreal said no for three years and then they eventually acquired us. But you know, in that whole journey, when I look back all the times a I, most of the times I made mistakes, which I talk a lot about the stuff I did wrong in the book too, as well as like lessons personally and professionally. But when, when I didn’t, when I trusted either other, you know, other people’s opinions or whatever, when they, when they differed from what my gut said, when I didn’t trust myself, that’s usually when I made the wrong choices and, and the wrong decisions. And, and similarly during all the years when there was no proof around me that we were onto something or no traction, or when it didn’t make sense to keep going, like, like getting still.

And, and, you know, for me, just praying and trying to hear that, that gut feeling that still small voice, when it would say to keep going, like I made the decision to trust it, even when it was hard, even when we had no money, even when you know what I mean. And, and I think, I think that that that’s the greatest journey, not, Oh, are you going to build a personal brand that has millions of followers? It’s Oh, on your journey of building a personal brand, are you listening? Are you learning to believe in yourself? Are you learning to trust yourself? Are you learning to stay authentic to who you are? Are you learning that you’re not here to compete with anyone else you’re literally just here to compete with who God made you capable of becoming like, like all these lessons, like to me, that’s the victory, that’s the success, the journey of stepping into all of who you are and all of who you’re created to be is is the success not any types of other outcomes.

Yeah. Well, my friends, if you go to believe it.com right now, you can order the book. There is a little, there’s a special for the moment that if you go right now, believe it, dot com you get a couple bonuses, right. Jamie. So what do they get if they go order right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I’m so excited to share it, share with everyone at brand builders group, too, that everyone in the community yeah, if you get, believe it the book anywhere, you can get it anywhere at sold, which has all the retailers like Amazon Barnes and noble, independent bookstores target, you pick it up anywhere. And then you go to believe it.com. So the book’s called, believe it. And then the websites, believe it. Dot com. If you go there for, it’s a big, big launch celebration, you’re going to get a bunch of free stuff. It’s all free. So you’re going to get this action plan I put together. So it’s like a 90 page action plan, which is how to implement all the lessons from the book into your real life. You’d get that for free plus yeah, I, I’m so excited.

I’m so excited for this worry. But, and then also my first ever course called becoming unstoppable how to overcome the things holding you back. You’ll get that for free as well as a, as a book launch bonus. And and I’m just excited for all of this, you know, I’m donating a hundred percent of the proceeds of the book. I’m literally just doing this because I believe that we’re all in this together. I believe that when we share, like really share the stories behind the stories, that’s how we all, you know, rise. That’s how we all grow. It’s how, you know, w we’re really all in this together. And I think every one of us has a powerful story and it’s, it’s been a crazy journey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes personally and professionally, and I’ve, I’ve also learned how to accomplish some of my, my biggest dreams. And, and now it’s like my greatest joy is helping other people on their own journeys of accomplishing their, so it’s an honor and I’m, I’m super grateful and I’m grateful for you and AIG, by the way yeah, grateful for your friendship. And just so many people I know have their businesses and also just who they are, has been impacted by the two of you. So I just want to say thank you for that as well.

Of course. Well I’ve read, believe it. It’s awesome. It is not every day. Again, you just get to hear a story like this, and you, you do such an, a good, just such an honest job of walking us through the self doubt over and over the rejection, but systematically just continuing to follow that intuition and overcoming it and learning to believe in yourself. And then, you know, you’ve got, there’s so many great lessons and takeaways, so go to believe it, dot com. You can get all of our pre-order bonuses, which you all know, we teach you how to do book launches, right? Like, so there’s, Jamie’s have some killer ones, the course, and the workbook are legit way massive. Over-Delivers just for, for ordering the book during her launch, but check it out and I’m telling you, you’ll love the book. It’s really entertaining and inspiring.

It’s funny. I laughed out loud several times. I cried a few times. Like I’ve never, I’ve never heard the story of how a billionaire sold a company. So that was fascinating. And her husband Palo and adopted not, not adopting, excuse me. But you had surrogacy as a mom and also you were adopted, I mean, there you’ve had the craziest story. Y’all, it’s, it’s like a movie. It probably will be a movie at some point. So go to believe it, dot com check out the book, plug into what Jamie’s doing. We’ll link to her social media, of course, on our website so that you can follow her. And Jamie has thanks for the gift of, of changing an entire industry of challenging the status quo of believing that there’s a better way to do it a more uplifting way to do it. And following that intuition. And then also, I would say caring enough that it’s like it wasn’t about money. That it’s been about mission for you over money the entire time, which goes to show why you would write a book when you don’t need money. Like you don’t need the money. You did this because of mission. And we think that’s a great gift to the world. So we wish you the best. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Ep 139: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold | Recap Episode

Cameron Herold my friend breaking down this interview. Welcome to the special recap edition just me by myself today. And I love this conversation with Cameron. Here’s one of the things that I love about Cameron. There are certain people that I have in my life that I would say I would go to when I need to expand my thinking. When I need to look at a situation or a problem in a completely different way than I am seeing it. And that is to me, one of the amazing things about Cameron, and I think that’s a part of the magic of what he does and also the magic of the growth and the success of his personal brand. You know, the other thing is when I think about, you know, we talk about reputation, your reputation, precedes revenue, it’s it is what are you known for?

What do people trust you with? And I think, you know, when, if you’re a, a real CEO or a real entrepreneur or a real COO, you it’s like, Oh, at some point in your career, you’re going to come across Cameron, Herold. He has the reputation in that space, in that vertical, and it is so great. So I just want to break down my three specific biggest takeaways from him. And, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna classify this this recording for sure, as a sitting under our face for eight figure entrepreneurs. So one of the things that we’re doing, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash podcast, we are, you know, organizing all of these episodes now in alignment with our, our curriculum. So at brand builders group, we’ve got one curriculum, but our curriculum is divided into four phases.

And then each of our four phases is divided into three courses. So our core curriculum is 12 courses, four phases. And our phase four is the, we, we, we it’s the scaling phase and we, we kind of, our flagship course in phase four is called eight figure entrepreneur. And that’s definitely where this conversation lives. So if you haven’t yet listened to it, I would say, you know, this conversation with Cameron. I mean, if you’re brand new, it’s probably not that relevant to you, except for the idea of going these. This is the way you need to be thinking. And if you can structure your business on the front end you know, it’s going to set up for scale, but his, his real expertise. And, and I think, you know, creative genius is around helping businesses scale. And that leads to my first big takeaway is the concept of ones and threes.

And I, I was so excited to hear that this was, you know, Cameron’s Cameron’s concept because I, I have had heard this quoted by people who’ve said, I once heard someone say, I once heard someone say, and I’ve never known the original source of this. And he’s claiming ownership. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna say it was him. And this is a big idea of the ones and threes. In fact, we teach this at a figure entrepreneur is that, you know, it’s, it’s very much like what Marshall Goldsmith says, what got you here? Won’t get you there. And when you’re growing your business, it’s not that you just kind of do more of the same thing. That’s not really how you grow a business. It’s sort of like there is a range, there is a window where you can do more of what you’re already doing.

And if you become efficient at that, that will get you up to another level. But then as a wise author, once wrote in this amazing book called procrastinate on purpose, which if you haven’t bought it, go by procrastinate on purpose. Like that book will change your life. Of course, that’s my second book. But one of the things I wrote in there is that the next level of results always requires the next level of thinking. And the levels as an entrepreneur, I think are measured in ones and threes. And that’s what Cameron’s talking about. So these are revenue markers at ones and threes, which means the first marker in any business is can I get it to a hundred thousand in annual revenue? The next marker is 300,000. And going from a hundred thousand to 300,000, you don’t have to learn a lot of new skill sets.

You just have to do the skill sets that you have better than you were doing them before. But to go from 300,000 to a million is a different jump. It requires a new way of thinking, a new set of operating principles and practices to get to a million. Now, once you hit a million, getting to 3 million, a lot of times, it’s just doing more efficiently that which you’re already doing, and that one to 3 million, by the way we call this the swamp. There’s a lot, a lot of personal brands that get to that 1 million, but they get stuck in that one to 3 million and it’s, it’s hard to break free. And that is because there’s a big jump between going from 3 million to 10 million and annual revenue. Right. And that is a hard leap, which is what if you look at the brand builders group phases, I would say that like our goal with phase one, it’s like you know, we’re, we’re, we’re teaching you the fundamentals of like getting, what do you need to be clear on in order to get to six figures?

And then I, I think of phase two is really like, Oh, an okay. And now in phase two, we’re going to go, how do we get a hundred thousand to 300,000? And then in phase three, we’re going to go, how do we get from that 300,000 to that one to 3 million? And then in phase four, we’re going, how do you get from 3 million to 10 million all the way up to 30 million, which is phase four. And then honestly, once you got to 30 million in revenue, I would send you off. I would say, we’ve done our job. We would pass you off probably to someone like Cameron actually. Cause that’s really, his specialty is more of that, like you know, 10, 20 million up to a hundred million. And that’s, that’s what the ones and threes are, right? So the difference between 10 million and 30 million, isn’t that different.

It’s like a lot of what you’re already doing, but doing it more efficiently and just, you know, kind of smarter and more well-organized, but to go from 30 million to a hundred million is a big leap and go from a hundred million to 300 million kind of the same, but to go from 300 million to a billion, totally different. And so those are the ones and threes, and I think that applies for our operational practices. Well you know, we, we talk about the nine departments and how every company is laid out. That’s one of the things that we teach in phase four, but you know, like just to, to, to pragmatically speaking, the marketing that you do, we’ll work from one to threes, but till I go from 300,000 to a million, you can’t really just do more of the marketing you’ve been doing. You have to create some other new marketing stream, some other new sales stream, some other new practices, same with your operating, right?

So your, the, the operations department to go from 300,000 to a million, you probably need an operations apartment, right? Like to get to 300,000, you probably just have a couple people and freelancers, but then to make that jump, it’s like, we need to improve our marketing. We’d increase, improve our sales. We need to improve our operations. We need to increase, increase our financial disciplines. A lot of times you have to increase your it, right? So to go from 300,000 to a million is a big is, is usually technological infrastructure. And I would say specifically to go from, from 3 million to 10 million is an it infrastructure issue. That is one of the, one of the big things that needs to happen there. So ones and threes, ones and threes, and just kind of be knowing like, okay, where are you at? If you’re at a hundred thousand, the good news is you could probably get to 300,000 without changing much.

If you’re at 300,000, guess what? You’re probably going to stay stuck there until you have some big time breakthroughs. Now, if you’re coming through the brand builder journey, our formal curriculum, we’re going to, we’re going to take you there. We’re going to step you through these ones and threes, but super powerful concept. It stuck with me for years. I think it’s so true also with personnel, right? So just your marketing tactics and your operations and your it and your sales, but also your people, right? A lot of times people can grow with you. They can go through like up to two of those leaps, but after that, they’re either going to have to significantly up-level their skills, or they are not going to be able to take you to that next level. And so you’re going to have to like bring someone else in who, you know, is used to operating at that level.

And, you know, I found this to be true. So it’s not, it’s not written in stone, but one’s in threes. That’s where the big leaps are. And you got to have a systematic change in your, in your operating system in order to make that leap. The second big take takeaway, which I think is so important is that many people write a book based on an idea they have for a book. And they say, Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book on this. Or I’d love to write a book about that. But I feel like this is something Cameron said, and I agree with him that the best books are not based on an idea you have for a book, the best books are based on the needs of your real life clients. I would think of this as, are you writing books in forwards or in rears, right?

So if you think about paying your bills, some bills you pay and forwards, you, you pay them in advance of receiving the service. That’s called paying and forwards, and some bills you pay and rear, which is after you’ve received the service. Now, you know, if you’re running a business, you always want people to be paying in forwards. That’s one of the things that we’ll teach you in phase four, also for cashflow management. But when you write your book, we write our books in rears, meaning we don’t write a book as like a hypothesis of some ideas we think could be true. We write it as the conclusion of things that we have found to be true. This is why brand builders group hasn’t released a book yet, right? So we’re two and a half years, or, you know, like just over two years and some change into the start of our company.

And we don’t have a book out. Why not? Well, we certainly could write a book. We actually have 12 books. Every course that we teach in our formal curriculum could be a book, but we’re, we’re, we’re dialing it in, right? We, we create what, what our content is led by what our clients need. Those make the best books. And I think that is super duper powerful is just serving your client in a deeper way, figure out what they need in real life. And then test it, work it, refine it. And then the book is the final conclusion of that rather than the hypothesis. I think your book will last longer. People will read it. It’ll, it’ll have more depth to it. You’ll have better case studies and anecdotes and illustrations because you’ve done it. I think worse author sometimes get into deep water is when you sign like a multi book deal and you commit to writing so many books in some frequency of time, but you haven’t really learned that much new and you haven’t really had that much growth in your business or clients.

And it’s like, you’re trying to write in forwards rather than an in rears big idea. The third big idea that I think Cameron, you know, talked about, but also really to me, his personal brand is a great example of this. And this is such a simple question, like such an important question is to simply ask yourself, where is there a gap in the market? Where is there a gap in the marketplace that is an opportunity to build a great business as you go, where is there an underserved market? This is part of, this is exactly what, what Cameron has done with COO’s right? A lot of people do stuff for CEOs and and founders and owners, but almost nobody does stuff for COO’s training and developing the second in command. And, and Cameron noticed that and he said, Oh, I’m going to go serve that community.

I’m going to dominate that space brand builders group, I feel is doing something very similar. This is why we serve personal brands, right? We don’t work with companies. If Google calls and they say, Hey, will you consult with us on our branding? The answer is no, we don’t do that. We will work with one of your executives and help them become more influential. But we brand people, we don’t brand companies. Now just so happens. Google did call for me to do a keynote. I just did do a keynote for them, but that was based on take the stairs. It was more of my personal development content. It’s not what we do as a team, right? So that is a market that we said, you know, there’s a lot of people teach in webinars and podcasts and book publishing and video courses and membership sites and Facebook, traffic and funnels and copywriting, and you know, getting media interviews.

But nobody that sits on top of it and says, how do we orchid organize all of this and orchestrate it for personal brands? How do we create a strategy where all of these things fit together in a specific order in sequence that aligned with your uniqueness in your direction? We said, we’re going to come in and we’re going to serve. We’re going to serve that space. There’s a gap in the market. So that’s a good question for you to ask, right? It’s it’s and specifically, if you can go, where is there a gap in there in the market that aligns with your uniqueness? Like your passion, your experience, your results, your education that you can step in and serve? I think Cameron is just is a really, really great example of that. And I want to give you a little bit of a, a quick tip here on uniqueness and differentiation as well, because I’ve thought a lot about this, but I don’t think we’ve ever shared it on the podcast.

And we don’t even share this in our formal curriculum at brand builders group. So this is this is a, this is a great one, is that when I think of differentiation. Okay. and, and by the way, to me, uniqueness and differentiation are not the same thing. Differentiation is how do I decidedly draw a line that separates me from everybody else. Uniqueness is more of an exploration of who am I, who was I designed to be? Who am I called to be? Who does the world need me to be? What position do I uniquely serve in the world? It’s more intrinsic. It’s kind of from the internal out, differentiation is more of an external, like is from the outside in going, okay, how can I position myself in the market? So this is a tactic specifically for differentiation, which is rare.

Most of what we teach at brand builders group is finding your uniqueness like our flagship phase one course is called finding your brand DNA. It’s all about our process for finding your uniqueness. So this is a little bit different because I think what Cameron is talking about is more about differentiation than it is about uniqueness. Now we believe in uniqueness, right? We believe in become who you are, become, who you were created to be, become your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were and speak from that truth. And who cares what your competition is doing. That’s what we believe, but we also have an eye towards differentiation because anytime we can differentiate ourselves, that’s good. You know, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from a, another dear friend of mine, Sally Hogshead, who says you want to be able to position yourself clearly inside of a box that people understand, but then simultaneously to immediately differentiate yourself from everyone else who’s inside that box.

And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. So here’s a little tip. This is the, this is called the M three M three method or M three tip for a differentiation. So I think there’s three different places to look for. Differentiate differentiation, differentiate your first of all, your a market. Is there an opportunity to have differentiation in the market you serve? That is what Cameron was talking about, right? Like where is there an underserved audience? So for brand builders group, part of our, our uniqueness and part of what we’ve done to differentiate ourselves is to say, we survey specific market, a narrow market. This is a market as a type of person, right? For us, it’s personal brands. The second is your model. And by that, I mean your, your business model, which is how do you make money? So again, if you look at brand builders group, our model is one-on-one coaching.

Our pro we are primarily in the business model of one-on-one coaching, which is a differentiator of business model. Most people who teach to personal brands, they sell video courses, they sell membership sites, they sell masterminds, right? They sell one to many experiences, but our, our business model is one-on-one. If you want a one, if you want a private coach to help you apply the concepts and strategies and techniques and philosophies and principles of personal branding to your specific life and business, you need us. I don’t even know anyone else who does it at scale. There are some independent people out there, but there we do this. Cause we, we do one-on-one coaching really, really well. That’s a differentiation, not in the market we’re serving, but in the business model, the, the way we do it, how are we charging? Right. So the market is who are you serving?

Okay. The, the, the, the, the model I would say is how are you making money serving them? Right. So one-on-one coaching is a model. And then the third M is the method, which is what are you teaching them? Right? What are you teaching them that, or, you know, or teaching them for personal brands or in general, what are you providing you know, to them. So when I think of like the method, right? The method is more of like your unique intellectual property, your unique methodology, your IP, your framework, your body of work, all the things that in our, in our phase one course, two, which is called captivating content. That’s what we do is we help people extrapolate their unique SIS system or methodology, or we help people create their frameworks. We help them write their books, write their Ted talks all out of a, a unique set of IP.

That’s birthed from their own brain by way of taking them through our process. That is their method. That’s different from their business model, which is how do they make money, right? So the market is who are you serving? The model is how are you making money? The method is what are you providing to them? And, and are you differentiating it somehow based on what you, what you’re providing. So like, when I think of the like Uber, right? Like the Uber and taxis, it’s kind of the same business model. They’re charging for a ride, but the method is different. The delivery mechanism is different instead of a taxi, it’s an independent driver. They’re serving the same taxis and Uber. They both serve the same market. Pretty much people looking for a ride. They both charge the same way, which is how, you know, how far is the distance or time in the car, whatever.

But the method is different. The, the, the, the modality is different. One is, you know theoretically a professional driver was a taxi cab driver versus, you know, just a home driver. I think of Airbnb being similar, right? They’re looking, they’re serving the same market and they charge on the same model as hotels, which is like an overnight rate, but it’s a different method. It’s a different it’s a, it’s a whole different place and vehicle for establishing and providing that service. So the market is who the model is, how are you charging? And the method is what are you providing to them? So that is a little bit of a Diddy and distinction on uniqueness and differentiation, and kind of a rare lesson on how to differentiate yourself from the competition. That’s what we got. That was what I was inspired by, among other things from Cameron, Harold, a big time speaker, a complex thinker, someone very good at breaking paradigms, which is what you would want from someone helping you create these explosive growth opportunities between the ones and threes. So I hope you enjoyed it. Keep coming back, stay tuned, listen to the interviews, listen to these recaps, stay plugged in our free content should be enough to help you start making money. And then at some point we hope that you’ll consider investing some of that money into letting us, coach you to get to the next level with your personal brand. That’s it for now. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal

Bye. Bye

Ep 138: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold

RV: (00:07)

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

RV: (01:03)

So much fun to introduce you to Cameron, Herold this Cameron and I have been friends for years, we’ve shared the stage at events together. One of the things I love about Cameron is his pedigree of track record of success as a, not just an expert teacher, but an expert Dewar. So a huge part of his story was that he was a CEO, the COO of a company called one 800, got junk. And in six years he helped that company go from 2 million in revenue to 106 million in revenue. Eventually he left that business and became a personal brand. He’s a best-selling author of a book called double double how to double your revenue and profit in three years or less. He’s got other books. He’s also a great example of somebody that we think of as like has developed a real strong niche expertise around specifically serving a specific audience.

RV: (02:03)

COO’s the COO Alliance is something that he started, which is like the world’s largest community for number twos in companies, not the CEO, the COO, which is often a very underserved community that he identified and you know, found his uniqueness there and, and built that into something extraordinary. And he’s going to tell us all the secrets about how he did it, and he’s going to tell us for free, and that’s why he’s here. Welcome Cameron, Herold.

CH: (02:32)

Rory. Thanks for having me, but I appreciate it. Yeah, man. So my first chronic question for you is you know, we’ve got a lot of people in our community who are like coaches, consultants, et cetera, but I love your story of like, you kind of came out of, I don’t know if you call it the corporate world more of the entrepreneur world, but that’s gotta gotta be a shift from going. I’m a COO, I’m an employee that has a job every day, too. I’m going to build a personal brand, teaching people my expertise. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened, when did it happen? How did, like, how did that transition start for you?

CH: (03:14)

It’s interesting. So it’s an interesting, you mentioned coaches, I’ve been coaching entrepreneurs for 31 years. Wow. Since before coaching was a thing I had coached 120 entrepreneurs by 1993. All of the, all of these companies that I was coaching all had real, real businesses with real employees and, and we’re actually in two countries as well. So I’d coached a lot of entrepreneurs 30 years ago. And I also, I started to build one 800, got junk with my best friend who was the CEO. It was then going to be the fourth company that I’d helped build. But the other three, I was very much behind the scenes as a second and Columbia command or a very, very senior leader in one of the two. I was a very senior leader. The other two, I was second in command. And in all three, I was very behind the scenes.

CH: (04:03)

So my name was never really affiliated or attached to the brand. And I decided when I joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I was the 14th employee walking in the door. When I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees system wide, but I knew on day one, the only way I was going to do it was either to have equity or to have brand equity. And I needed my aim to be attached to the brand because I wasn’t going to do it for the fourth time and have nobody know what I did so very, very early on. Yeah. So it was very much by design that I knew my equity play was going to be more valuable having my name attached to what I’d done versus having equity in the company.

RV: (04:43)

See, that’s awesome. Like I’ve never even thought about that as like, like when I think about personal branding, what we do, I always think about it as like, Hey, you know, either start your own business or did you do it to grow a business, but even inside of a company, it’s like the value of building your own brand and reputation and being associated with that company is equity value. Yeah.

CH: (05:06)

And then it got to the point where it actually became embarrassing last year where the founder had written a book called WTF. Brian was always one of my best friends. And in the book beat you up, willing to fail. When I started reading it, I was like, I just hope he mentions me. I hope he says, thank you to Cameron somewhere in the book. And, and then like on page three, he mentioned me. And then on page six, he mentions me and then on page 12 and I’m like, okay, good. You mentioned me were awesome. Thanks so much. And we get to the end of the book and I’ve been in there like seven or eight times, but no one else on the leadership team had been mentioned with the exception of the new COO who I’ve known for 34 years. Cause we started a fraternity together and he mentioned Eric, but I realized that the others who had helped build the company had fallen into the shadows much.

CH: (05:55)

Like I had fallen into the shadows and Gerber auto collision and Boyd auto body and college pro painters. And you bartered.com. And I just didn’t want that to happen again. So I was pleased that that was, but it was by design, right? So the way that I did it was making sure that I did the speaking events for the company, but I was very outward facing much like Harley Finkelstein is today as the second command for Shopify, a very outward facing COO or Sheryl Sandberg, very outward facing CEO for Facebook versus a lot of CEOs are very inward facing and they’re only known inside the company. I wanted the outward brand as well. So it was, it was a lot of speaking events for the company in the early days. And as we scaled, and then it was a lot of press interviews and generating press interviews. We had 5,000, 200 stories written about our company in six years, independent stories. And this was all before social media existed. So it was how do you build a brand with speaking and with PR coverage was how we did it.

RV: (06:53)

Interesting. So even as an employee, there’s just that value to building the personal brand, being out there, being in the public eye. So then

CH: (07:05)

Certainly being the one taking credit for things, but just being the one, explaining how we as a team were doing it, you know, I didn’t have to be taking credit for what my team was doing, but I could explain how we were doing what we were doing. Right. So very much like your guy Kawasaki did with Apple, you know, that he has described himself as technical evangelist for Apple. But what most people don’t know is there was a meeting that Steve jobs had that’s the guy Kawasaki was sitting in and Steve said, as of today, all of you, every single one of you employees, your title is technical evangelist. Like go talk about the brand. So guys like, it. I’m getting business cards that say technical evangelist. And he built his entire brand off of becoming a spokesperson for the company when the reality is every employee is a spokesperson for what you’re doing most just don’t stand up and talk about it.

RV: (07:57)

Awesome. Love that. Okay. So you guys, so you exit the business and then by my best friend, awesome.

CH: (08:07)

Yeah, my, my best friend fired me one morning after six and a half years on good terms, but he’s just like, look, you’re the guy that took us from 2 million to a hundred million. You’re not the guy to take us from a hundred million to a billion. So I left the company and took four months off. And, and for four months I just journaled and wrote lists and mind maps and tried to figure out what I love doing and what did I not like doing and what was I good at and what do I suck out and what gives me the energy and what drains me of energy and what I came up with that was, I love speaking and I love networking and masterminding and I love coaching. And outside of that, I’m great in a lot of stuff, but I don’t love it.

RV: (08:50)

And so that led you to go and Hey, I should, I should take this personal brand, like make it my income generator.

CH: (08:58)

Yeah. And I really started to look at, you know, I love being the person who helps the entrepreneurs make their dreams up and you know, even why am I on your podcast is to help you and your listeners, why I built one 800, got junk, was to help Brian. He was my best friend. He was my best man at my wedding. Three months before I joined him, I joined him to help him grow his company. Coaching entrepreneurs has always been, I love coaching them and helping them. So I just wanted to build a brand around us and build my name around being that CEO whisper, you know, the one who was just whispering and every CEO’s ear and giving them the shortcuts to scale their companies.

RV: (09:34)

Yeah. And that’s interesting because, you know, I hear people refer to you as like the CEO whisper specifically in that like entrepreneurial environment. You and I shared the stage at EO events. I think that’s every time we’ve shared the stage, which I think has only been twice, has been at an EO event. And but you’re yet your audience, you kind of, you kind of, you know, exploited this vertical of the seat. Oh, Whoa. So was that, was that deliberate or like, how do you, how do you reconcile those

CH: (10:08)

Very deliberate? See, I hadn’t played the COO four times, right? So I was in the COO role and I kept showing up at EO events and YPO events and Vistage events and genius network events and Maverick events and all these amazing events for entrepreneurs. But I didn’t fit in. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty and talk about the operations of the businesses I was building. So I realized that there were a hundred groups for entrepreneurs, but there, there were groups for marketers and lawyers and engineers and doctors, lots of association, but there was no association or organization or a mastermind group for the second command. So I started one for the COO. It was called the COO Alliance. But if I grow the CEO’s skills and if I grow the CEO’s capacity, they’ll grow their own entrepreneurs company. So it’s completely consistent with my core purpose. And it was just a need that wasn’t happening. But I was listening to my customers. I was coaching Bob glacier from acceleration partners and his COO. And then I was coaching Tucker max, and his COO. And I was coaching. Then like all these CEOs with their CEOs that I was coaching and I realized their CEOs were the ones doing it. I needed to really coach them on how to do it. I needed to coach the CEO on what needed to happen. Right.

RV: (11:23)

Huh. But that’s just like one of the things we say at brand builders all the time is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And you’re such a great example of that, of going, I was a CEO, a COO, I understand their world. I am that person. Holy moly, nobody is servicing this group. I’m going to do it. I’m going to start it. And that is that.

CH: (11:46)

It was also because I listened to my customer and I gave them what they needed instead of me trying to create something and market it to a group that doesn’t exist. They were all wanting and starving for more information and starving to talk to each other. So I just, I actually got 10 of my second in commands together from companies that I coached, pulled them together for two and a half day weekend. And they all wanted to keep meetings. So I’m like, let’s just start this thing. It’s like my books, I’ve written five books, but none of them, I didn’t have this desire to be an author desired, but my clients wanted more information. Like how do I get more press coverage? You landed 5,000 stories. How do I get it? So I just wrote a book and here there’s the content. Like I gave them the how to guide in every book.

RV: (12:29)

So it was more like it wasn’t going, Hey, I’ve got an idea for a book. It was more going, Hey, my clients have a need for information. And that was the Genesis of the book.

CH: (12:39)

That’s it? Like I have two others that I’m working on right now. One is on the highs and lows and CEOs and why most entrepreneurs ride this manic bipolar rollercoaster. And how do we, how do we ride that in a better way? And then the second is about building that CEO, COO relationship, that real two in a box model. And it’s, again, I don’t want to be a writer. I don’t like writing, but I like sharing my ideas because it helps so many people.

RV: (13:04)

And can you tell us a little bit like your, about your business model now? Okay. So you, you know, we know that you’re a speaker and you get paid a speaking fee. Okay. You know, you know, you get your, your rights and books and make some money from that. But like as a personal brand, what’s the, what’s the primary revenue model. Is it the COO Alliance?

CH: (13:23)

It’s a few. So if I, if I was to take you through what my funnel might look like, my revenue funnel, the top of my funnel is all the press that I generate for myself. So it’s podcasts, you know, speaking events it’s and sometimes being paid to speak, but all of that is, is press right. So all of the press coverage and then being paid to get press coverage is one, all of my books and selling, you know, tens of thousands of copies of each of my five books gets more revenue, but more brand building as well. And then my coaching of CEOs and their teams, because I’m paid, my coaching rate is $2,700 an hour. So I’m paid a good rate for the year to coach these people. And then I have the COO Alliance, which is really a business in and of itself that is, you know, already really revenue, positive and scaling. And then I have referral income. So I have, you know, I spent 14 years knowing who the best M and a firms are the best executive search firms, best copywriting firms, PR firms, fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs. And I refer companies to these groups. And then I just get checks in the mail from those relationships and those introductions.

RV: (14:27)

Yeah, yeah. Essentially that’s the whole, the whole brand builder model is, you know, we have a bunch of affiliates that we pay them a lifetime referral fee just to basically come on in and talk to their audience and do a free thing. And then anyone that comes from it, I mean, it’s incredible. It’s crazy how powerful that is.

CH: (14:45)

I’m going to number one, referral source to describe, you know, for booking the box Lewis, Howes is one of your clients is he’s the number two referral source in the book in a box right now it’s called scribe. I’ve got four of my coaching. Clients are working with this one, that one M and a firm to help them exit and they’ll get huge exits. And then I get nice referral fees. And then the last thing that I do is all of my coaching clients three years after their coaching ends, they have to write me a bonus check for what coaching was really worth when I was coaching them. So, yeah. So it’s based on, on an idea that the true value that they generate doesn’t generate during coaching. It generates in the years following coaching, when they actually implement all the ideas they’ve learned. So three years after we finish our coaching engagement, they have to cut me a bonus check for what they feel the value of the coaching really was.

RV: (15:38)

Wow. And it’s not, not set. It’s just, it’s based on what they feel like it was worth.

CH: (15:43)

Yeah. I have a guy right now who like, every time I talked to him, he goes, that was just a McLaren. He goes, that was a Ferrari. Thank you like this. He’s like, I know I’m writing some big checks here. You know, one of my clients went from 4 million to 52 million in four years. Another one of my coaching clients that I coached for six years, three years ago, he raised $255 million from Warburg Pincus. One of the top investment banks, I’ve helped four companies sell for 150 million or more. So there’s, there’s really nice income there when I focus on their needs and not worry about the check, the check comes later.

RV: (16:21)

So and that’s, that’s one of the other things I wanted to ask you about. So one was just a little bit about your story as a personal brand. I think that’s really fascinating to go that you’re getting like referral income as a percentage of just these introductions you’re making to these high value connections and what that is worth and that’s worth a lot. And but the other thing was, I actually wanted to talk about scaling a business. Okay. Because personal branding is, is interesting. You know, a lot of times people get into it and it’s like, Oh yeah, I’m gonna make some money. And then they start making money. And then it’s like, okay, they’re, they’re building their notoriety. And then they hit like this one to $3 million threshold like this ceiling. And they go crap, I’ll never get past this, this level.

RV: (17:08)

If it’s all about me and then it’s going, okay, how do I get from 3 million to 10 million or that eight figures? And I think it’s like, when I think of you just as my friend, it’s like, you are someone I put in that category of going okay. If I need to talk to someone about shifting my mindset from that, you know, seven figure to the eight figure nine figure mindset. You’re like the guy. So what do personal brands need to do if they want to make that leap? Not everybody does, but if they do want to go, I want to turn my personal brand into a real business. What switches do we have to flip?

CH: (17:47)

So I can give you, I can give you four been chomping at the bits. I, I, they both, all four of them came to me really, really quickly. So it’s interesting that you said from 1 million to 3 million, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me talk about the ones and the threes, but the ones in the threes, the natural hurdle points in the company. When you go from one employee to three, everything’s different, and then you go to 10 employees. Now you have like a manager somewhere and you go to 30 employees. You might have a few managers. You go to a hundred employees. You don’t know the names of everybody. You go to 300 employees, you’ve got internal politics. You’ve got to like, and then from the, on the dollar side, a hundred thousand to 300,000, okay. Now you’ve actually got a real business. You’ve replaced a wage. Then you go to a million. Well, now all of a sudden you’ve got taxes to take care of. And you’re trying to figure out ways to Mont, like to minimize tax. And you’ve probably got employees and issues. Then 3 million, you’re dealing with banks and credit facilities and then 10 million and 30 million, a hundred million. So there’s these natural inflection points that happen. So the key is to get over.

RV: (18:42)

So one thing on that, can I stop you on this? Because I’ve never heard you say that, but I’ve heard other people quote that, but they they’ve always said, I heard somebody wants talk about, so are you, can I officially start citing you as the, the originator of the ones and threes? Because I love that. We talk about that.

CH: (19:02)

I’ve been talking about the ones and threes for ages, because it’s just this natural. I visualize everything. As a series of hurdles, I used to run hurdles. When I was in high school, I ran 400 meter hurdles. And I pictured myself as having to go over these hurdles. But the hurdles keep getting bigger. Right? As, as we were building 1-800-GOT-JUNK, you know, we had six consecutive years of 100% revenue growth, six years in a row. We D we doubled the size of the company. Every, it was like pushing a snowball up a Hill with one hand, like you had to climb your way up the mountain and the snowball kept getting bigger. So the hurdles keep getting bigger and you need to anticipate what happens at each hurdle point to scale your company, or you get stuck at the hurdle, right? So I’ll give you a couple of the core lessons I would give are the first one.

CH: (19:47)

If you don’t have an executive assistant, you are one. So every single person, who’s a thought leader or a brand that one of the very first roles you need to hire as an executive assistant or a fractional or part-time executive assistant to get all the stuff off your plate that has less than a $25 an hour job, $50 an hour job. Why do you think that my effective hourly coaching rate is 2,700 an hour. My speaking events are 30,000 or 5,000 for zoom. So I shouldn’t be doing anything that’s less than 2,500 bucks an hour. Like nothing. I should delegate everything except the stuff that is in my hourly rate. So executive assistants that first one second one is recognizing the ones in the threes and the tens and the hurdle points. The third is to delegate everything except genius, right? And to really look, to get stuff off your plate, just because you couldn’t do it just because you’re capable of doing it, just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean that it fills you with energy and the more of your day that you can filling up with energy as you’re working in your business, the more that positive energy just continues to spiral upwards.

CH: (20:53)

So it’s about getting stuff off your plate. It needs to get done, but not by us, right? So that’s, it’s kind of like, can you be that lazy entrepreneur and delegate everything except genius is huge. And then the fourth one, and this is a really powerful number that people need to understand when you’re running your own business. When you go from being a solo preneur to, to, to building it into a business, you’re only going to get paid a third of the time. Like only a third of my time. Am I going to get paid for speaking or paid for coaching? Another third of the time I’m dealing with stuff with my clients. I’m getting prepped for an event I’m prepping for coaching. I’m thinking about my clients. I’m making referrals, whatever, but I’m doing some unpaid work. And then maybe 30% of my time, I’m actually doing sales and marketing, trying to find more clients.

CH: (21:40)

So if I’m only going to get paid a third of the time, I need to charge three times what I think I’m going to charge to end up at the end of the year with what I want to make. So here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you want to earn a hundred thousand dollars a year just for easy math. Let’s say a million dollars a year. If you want to earn a million dollars a year, that means your hourly rate. If you worked 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you would be getting paid $500 an hour for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year generates a million dollars in income.

RV: (22:09)

Okay. Slow down here. Just a little bit on the math cause I’m, I’m gone. Okay. So a million dollars a year is how much

CH: (22:17)

Is $500 an hour. So you can do the very quick math $500 times 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks generates a million dollars. Okay. Got it. But if you’re only getting paid 30% of the time and 30% of the time you’re working on the business and not getting paid for it. And 30% of the time you’re at finding new clients. That means you need to charge $1,500 an hour because you’re only really going to be billing out at about 14 hours a week. To end up with a million dollars a year. The reason most consultants never make enough money is they charge the hourly rate. They used to get paid. And then they realized that the end of the year, they don’t get paid for 40 hours a week. When they’re still trying to find work, you’re not charging enough. You got to charge more. One of the very, very first things I did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK was raised our prices by 40%. One of the, one of the first two weeks I was there. You know, like, what’s your speaking fee. I know you’re going to tell me, and I’m going to have to raise mine again. But what do you charge for your speaking?

RV: (23:16)

25 grand for a, for a one for a one hour. It’s 25 grand. And we’re doing, we’re doing 7,500 for a virtual.

CH: (23:24)

Okay. There you go. I need to change my virtual keynote. Cause five grand. I’m underpricing myself. Every time you think about it, you can raise your bar a little bit. And what I can do with that extra money is like, yeah,

RV: (23:33)

Well, our friend Dorsey Wright, every time I talked to Dorsey, I have to go crap. I got to tell my fees.

CH: (23:40)

I helped Dorsey with some time that guy used to check his suitcase at the airport. I’m like, dude, you can’t your suitcase and do 130 speaking events a year. But yeah, he’s, he’s doing like 136 speaking events a year at 50 grand each.

RV: (23:54)

Yeah.

CH: (23:55)

When you charge more than you can spend more on your website, you can spend more on your coaching. You can spend more in the masterminds, you’re in, you can spend more on your brand and you can spend more on your marketing. But if you don’t charge enough, you don’t have enough to spend on everything and you’re not making it up.

RV: (24:09)

So what about when you first start though? Like how do you, cause that’s hard, right? Like if, if you first start, if you’re just beginning, do you go set my price based on what I think I’m worth? Or do I take what I can get or do I just figure out mathematically here’s how much I need to make at the end of the year. I know I’m only going to get paid a certain, like, how do you calculate that in the beginning?

CH: (24:31)

I never negotiate price. I always add value. So my speaking event is 30,000. Oh, you can’t pay me 30,000. Well, my speaking event is still 30,000 for me to fly to you. But the night before I’ll do a dinner with you and some of your CEO friends, it’s 33,000. Okay. Well that was 30,000 plus a dinner. I’ll give you some books as well. Like I’m going to, I’m going to add some value, but the price is going to stay at 30,000. What most of the rookies do is they tend to negotiate their fee down too quickly. And they just, what they haven’t learned is that entrepreneurs negotiate. It’s just, they do it for sport, for entrepreneurs, negotiate for fun. It’s like being a Mexican and negotiating for the trinket on the beach. You just know that you don’t pay the first price. Right?

RV: (25:15)

I mean, yeah, it’s interesting. I’m trying to just go, you know, some of these are just like literally mental switches that you have to flick in, like in your brain in order to scale and to move. And

CH: (25:32)

These are the mental switches that I learned as a young child. So I had, I did a Ted talk or a TEDx talk it’s on the main Ted websites. If you go to ted.com, you look up raising entrepreneurial kids. I did a talk 10 years ago about all these different businesses that I ran before. I was 18 years old and all the business lessons I learned. So I learned how to negotiate when I was eight years old, selling licensed protectors door to door. I learned how to hire my first employee when I was nine. And I hired a neighbor to do deliveries for me, for the newspapers. So I would like the tips, but he didn’t deliver them during the week. You know, I learned all these lessons. So for me, the mental switches have always been there. Cause I was groomed as an entrepreneur at a very young age.

RV: (26:16)

W w w w one last little question here, which is not something I was planning on asking, but when you look ahead at the future of personal branding, right? Like you, you, you hang in a lot of these circles, you know, we hang in some of the same circles. You mentioned something that like masterminds and you know, a lot of these best-selling authors, you know, a lot of these high dollar speakers specifically on the valuation, this is totally, totally out of left field. One of the things I’ve been trying to wrestle with and think about is I’m just going, like, you know, there’s such a market for buying and selling companies, but I think there is an emergence of a market of buying and selling email lists and members and subscribers and podcasts downloads. Is there anything that you see related to the future of the valuation of certain assets, of personal brands being bought and sold like values of email lists or just anything really in general, like your mind on the future of PR PR personal branding

CH: (27:22)

Flip side of that actually, which is that most of the people trying to build personal brands, unless they’ve actually done what they are saying they can do are going to get filtered out because of AI or because of, it’s almost like if you go on Twitter today and you see a post that Donald Trump did in 30% of them are getting flagged by this is not true. I think we’re going to start seeing filters built into our AI or built into our social platforms that allow us to scan for who the frauds are really quickly. Like we’re going to just know that Roy vaping is the real deal. He’s running a real consulting company. You know, Jason Dorsey is the real deal. Like I’ve known Louis House for 14 years. I had lunch with, with us before he could afford to buy lunch in New York. It’s 13, 14 years ago.

CH: (28:04)

He’s the real deal with like what he built off LinkedIn with Sean malarkey, his old partner, like you’ll Victoria Lubbock is the real deal. Like you’ll know who these real business people are that are also the thought leaders. And then you’ll know the ones that have just become good marketers, but don’t have the content and they’re marketing somebody else’s content. So I think you’re going to have to be really 60 minutes per week. You have to be able to have people scratch the surface to know you’ve done what you say you can do. You’re not just out there quoting somebody else’s quotes or selling somebody else’s stuff. So I think there’s going to be a lot less of the good marketers selling somebody else to stuff. And there’s going to be a lot more or a better truer brands of people that have actually done it before.

RV: (28:51)

Interesting love that. We you know, I would welcome that both for us and our clients and just do it the right way. Play the long game don’t take advantage of people think hard, work hard, come up with meaningful stuff. And it’s like, it’s, it’s no, that that will pay off. And in the future, AI may be a part of that. It’s filtering people out.

CH: (29:14)

Well, that could be a really killer app right now that could be created that the, a layer or an API that ties in with like Facebook. Imagine if I go on somebody’s Facebook and then this little app that it’s like, Oh, you’re on Rory Vaden site. Oh, fraud, Rory has never done it before, or he’s amazing. And it gives us a score. But instead of me needing to load your name in and checking to see what your Instagram followers are real, like there’s apps right now where you can do it, but you have to do it manually. Imagine if it was a layer that oversaw everything right now, for us almost like a, like one of the coupon codes, like, Hey, a coupons available. Imagine if every single person’s profile you clicked on it overlayed and showed you what their real brand value actually was. So you knew who the frauds were and who the others. Weren’t

RV: (29:57)

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think about that this, I don’t know if this is still around, but there was a thing called the clout score, the K O U T I. And that was actually kind of like that, where it was like when you had to go into cloud to see it. Right.

CH: (30:13)

Imagine if I go click on John ruins profile and, you know, from Giftology and Facebook and it’s like, Whoa, cloud score 98. I didn’t even think to look, but it shows me his cloud score and his factor in his swearing value or whatever. It’s like, well, that’s an interesting,

RV: (30:30)

Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting too. And somebody like John Ruhlin is interesting because if you look at, if you looked at like his number of followers, you might not be that impressed. But if you saw the guy’s personal Rolodex, not just the Rolodex, but like the people who he actually knows and who he actually is

CH: (30:51)

Brick walls for him. Like the people that I just introduced John to a major, major, major player three hours ago, like a major player. Right. And if you think about who that guy knows, yeah. That can be some pretty powerful stuff.

RV: (31:05)

Yeah. It’d be interesting. Interesting to see. Well, I love that you know, Cameron, where should people go if they want to learn more about you? I mean, certainly anyone listening that has a second in command, which all of us should, if we’re building a real personal brand you know where to learn about COO Alliance and the stuff that you’re up to.

CH: (31:22)

Yeah. Check out the second command podcast for shirts and amazing podcasts where we have amazing guests. We will never interview the CEO. We only interview the second in command, the COO Alliance, for sure. And then all five of my books are available on Amazon, audible and iTunes. And then I guess my personal brand website, just go to Cameron, harold.com. You’ll see everything wrapped up there.

RV: (31:44)

Awesome. Well brother, thanks for challenging. My thinking, I feel like every time I talk to you, there’s something that’s like, it really stretches, stretches me to think in a new way and appreciate you making some time for us, man. And we just as always wish you the best.

CH: (32:00)

Thank you. The feeling is mutual. I get stressed every time as well. Appreciate it.

Ep 135: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff | Recap Episode

Welcome back to the influential personal brand recap. It’s your man, Rory Vaden. I am rolling solo today. AJ Vaden is out and I am breaking down the Lisa Woodruff interview that we did, which was awesome. I mean, hopefully you hear in my voice or heard in my voice how proud I am of her. Like she is one of our star students. She is somebody that it’s just amazing that we got our hands on in terms of working with her system and her teams or with her systems and her team several years ago. And we’ve known her and she’s been like a student of our philosophies. And over the last, I mean, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a long journey for her, but

The last, I guess, six, five or six years that we, we have known her and doing the various work that of ours that she has been introduced to. She has gone from a six figure business to now becoming a seven figure business, which is just awesome. A real life case study of a, of a massively successful person in a, in a very specific niche, right? With home organization and everything she’s doing to organize three 65. And it’s just it’s, it’s so exciting for us, right? Like when our clients succeed, we can’t take credit for it. Like they, they have to do all the work, everything we teach you on this show, like you have to be the one to do the work. And ultimately your success is, is about you and it’s up to you, but it does show that there’s a lot of people doing the same types of things as the things that we talk about and teach on the show and obviously to our members.

And so it’s just great to see that in in, in Lisa and she’s a rolling stone man. She’s a rocket, a rocket ship. I think she’s just getting started. So she came through our eight figure entrepreneur event recently which is our event that we it’s a phase four events. So if you, if you haven’t figured this out from listening to brain builders group, you know, we have one curriculum, but that curriculum is divided up into four different phases and each phase has three topics. So overall our, our flagship curriculum is, is 12 topics. You know, our, our full curriculum is is, is 12, 12 topics. And so anyways in phase four one of the topics is called eight figure entrepreneur, where we teach someone how to turn a personal brand into a fully operationalized business and how to scale and, and not just scale your reach, but scale all of your systems and your people and your processes, and build a company that has real value.

And anyway, she’s got some really big goals, which you got to hear a little bit about on the interview, but in terms of me being the student for you know, in and learning from her that so fun here’s my three biggest takeaways from the interview. And, and the first one is so profound and it’s so simple, but what she said, and I, and I wrote this down, she said, the only thing that you will ever have with you, the rest of your life is your own mind. Like that is the one thing that, you know, like, even if you didn’t have clothes, right, like even if you didn’t have food or a house or, you know, friends or anything like the one, the one thing that you will have everywhere you go for the rest of your life is your mind. It will last longer than like the basic necessities. And so personal development is the investment into the one thing that follows you everywhere into the one thing that is a part of every decision into the one thing that is a part of every single day, your mind is with you all the time. In every moment, every situation, every relationship, every single decision, like it’s this asset, it’s the one thing that you can invest into. And yet, how many of us do not?

How many of us think, Oh, that’s silly or, or, or the last time that we invested money into ourselves was when we were in college or we invest a little bit into it. It’s, it’s really scary because I heard Brian, Tracy say one time, I don’t know how statistically valid this is, but I heard him say this years ago, where he said, you know, the, the average person will spend more on car maintenance every year than they will investing into their own self-development and education, which is, which is crazy, right? Like you should spend more on your self-development than you do on your mortgage. Like your brain is the thing that follows you everywhere. And after college, most of us stop investing into it, probably because you’re still paying back. College loans are so long as a, you need to invest in some things that actually teach you how to make some money.

And so that was just so edifying for me of just the and, and she is a living example of it, right? Like, you know, I said earlier, like, we can’t take credit for what she’s done. I mean, I hope she gives us some credit and she pays, you know, she’s super polite and respectful and, and yeah, that works so grateful for the things that she says about us, but she has invested in lots of programs. She’s been through lots of courses. Like, she’s a great example, as am I, as am, as is AIJ like as, is the richest people that I know, like literally the richest people that I know. And there are, there are two billionaires that have suddenly come into my life here recently in our life recently to two different billionaire clients that we have, who I’ve been spending a lot of time with.

And both of them are, dudents massive students of personal development. Both of them have gone through, you know, courses and, and, and read books and, and spent, you know, years learning and studying their trait in their craft. And it’s like, this is the thing that separates people. It’s, it’s not the needy people, the broke people, the, the ignorant people who are at all the conferences, it’s the smartest, sharpest hard work, hardest working, most entrepreneurial, most creative people that are all the events. And and Lisa, just a great example of that. And I just, I want you to think about that, right? Like how much are you investing into your personal development? And Hey, we would love if you did it with us. Of course, we would write, like, we, we happen to think that we are the best among the best in the world at what we do.

I’m really convicted that we are, but whether it’s on your personal brand or whether it’s with us or someone else, or if it’s some area, other area of your life, right. Like, you know Dave Ramsey was a, who was a huge part of our journey personally. We’ve been through things like landmark forum that changed our life, obviously, you know, spiritually AIJ. And I study the Bible every single day. But in terms of, you know, going to marriage conferences and, and going to retreats and summits and video courses in an events, the most successful wealthiest people in the world do these things. So are you doing it are, I mean, are you doing it? Are you investing the money? Are you investing the time? And are you, are you after it? Like, are you investing into your own brain because it’s the one thing that follows you everywhere?

And man, there was just something about the way that Lisa said that that just hit me hard, that hasn’t just, hasn’t just like hit me that hard before. So yeah, invest in your brain and Hey, keep listening to the podcast, right? We, we have so much free stuff that we put out at brain builders group Rory Vaden, blog.com at, at our obviously we’ve got the podcast, we’ve got a bunch of free resources on our website. I think we’ve got like five or six free different trainings now at brand builders, group.com that are totally free, that are amazing. Like we should be charging for this stuff. And we don’t because we just, we want to build trust and provide value and help you make enough money so that, you know, you feel like you have some money to reinvest and, and you know, be willing to do that, be willing to do that and spend more on your brain than you do on your car.

And, and you know, maybe not more than your house, right? You gotta have a place to live, but you know, anyways, make that investment. The second thing. And the second, the thing that Lisa said, and this hit me, I thought this was super interesting. I had never thought about this is she said, think of brand builders group as your college degree for your business. And I thought that was really fascinating. And it, part of it is, is ironic because we have four phases. And we have our phases have three topics. So we typically tell people, it takes about three to four months to, to, to, to go through a topic. So if you went through our three topics, I mean, we teach them as in two day events, we have two day experiences. So it only takes two days to learn each topic, but then it takes about four months to deploy each topic.

And if you did that three times, that would be a year, which would be a phase. So our four phases represent, I mean, it’s crazy like what she said, it lines up so directly with this idea of like a four year journey with brand builders group. Now I, I think it’s, you know, if, if you’re looking to build an, a personal brand or an online business or, or a marketing machine or a marketing engine for your business, I think it’s, it’s extremely tactical. What we do is extremely tactical far more tactical than you would, you would learn in college, which is more about, you know, kind of like abstract thought and problem solving and conceptual learning. Brand builders group is very direct, like do this in this order, in this way, follow this process, follow this checklist. And if you, if you follow the roadmap, we’ll take something that would have taken you 20 years and we’ll help you get there in five.

But anyways, I thought that was interesting about education and, and that is a good way, I think, to look at, at brand builders group. And, and again, just kind of on tying back to what we were just talking about, what are you doing for education? Like, where are you learning? Like, who are you learning from? What are you learning? What are you doing? Like Charlie, tremendous Jones, who I got to meet several times. He was an, a legend in the national speakers association. He died a few years ago, but what was amazing, amazing, just one of the most incredible humans I’ve literally ever been in the presence of, but he used to say five years from now, five years from now, you’ll be the same as you are today, except for the books you read and the people you meet. And you know, that is, that is true.

And I would extend it from books. You read to the courses, you take the seminars you attend, you know, the, basically the education you receive and apply, which is true, right? Like some people say, Oh, I have five years of experience. And they really don’t have five years of experience. They have one year of experience repeated five times. They’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, which is, you know, the definition of insanity. If you’re expecting different results is, is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. So what are you learning? Like where are you learning? Who are you learning from? And, and are you learning about the things you need to grow your business? Obviously I’m, I’m, I’m preaching to the choir here, since you’re listening to this show. The only way you’d be hearing this as if, if you are listening and following along.

So I know I’m probably preaching to the choir, but just to Edify the time you’re investing here in another places to, to, to grow your brain and think of it, you know, you could think of brand builders group for those of you that are our clients, that our members you can think of our, our brand builder journey, our four-phase process as your college education. And then the third thing, the, the, the, the big highlight for me was, you know, she, she said this in the interview, it’s, it is just these, these four words that you, you can’t be reminded of enough. I can’t be reminded of this enough. And, and these four words are so important for your personal brand. In fact, they might be the foremost important, I would say definitely four of the most important words that you can remind yourself of on a daily basis.

It just takes time. It just takes time. It just takes a little bit of time. It just takes some time to build, right? Like when you know, I know some, some of our clients are in phase two, which is when we get into like the nitty gritty of building funnels and this thing, you know, the content diamond and managing your social media and all that. And it’s like, you know, we’re learning all these checklists and processes. And then it’s like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, how do I do this? And it’s like, well, if you only have to do it once, and it just takes a little time, but once you do it once you’ll have it forever. And then in general, right? Like when Lisa was saying, you know, I’m, I’m basically doing the same stuff I was doing 10 years ago.

The difference is I’ve been doing it for 10 years. A lot of people I’ve come across. A lot of people, a lot of people know me, a lot of people, I’ve got a lot more clients, a lot more testimonials, a lot more fans, a lot more reach, a lot more systems just from the course of time. So, you know, if you can add education and time, you know, and obviously taking action, those are the, those are the critical ingredients to your success. So just do it right, and just keep doing it. Like, just keep going and remind yourself when you don’t have as many followers as you want, when you didn’t, you didn’t convert as many customers as you want it in your last launch. When, when you’re not seeing the conversion percentages in your funnels, when you’re not seeing the engagement rates that you want on your social, when you’re not getting as many keynote leads, when you get turned down for the book deal, right? When you, when you launch something and it breaks when you’re, when, when you put up a website and nobody comes when you, when you do a video and nobody watches

And all of those moments, and you will have those moments. Every one of us does me, a J our team, our biggest clients, Lisa Woodruff, and you like, you will have those moments. It’s not about if you will have them, you will have those moments. And in those moments, you have to remind yourself of those four words. It just takes time. So keep going, keep coming back here, stay inspired, keep getting education and stay focused on the person out there who you’re trying to serve, because sooner or later you will find them. It just takes time. That’s all we got for today. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 134: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff

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

This is going to be really fun for me to introduce to you someone who has become a good friend over the years. Lisa Woodruff and I admire her business. I very much think of her as a classic example of someone who has a very specific expertise who serves an audience very well. She’s built a great personal brand. I think a lot of you will love what she does in her business. One of the other things that’s awesome is I guess, I hope you don’t mind me saying this. Lisa, I would consider you one of our star students of brand builders group and just we’ve worked together for years. So you’re both like a mentor and a colleague and a student at the same time. And that’s why it was like, Hey, we got to have you on the show. You all got to meet the powerhouse.

That is Lisa Woodruff. And I want you to know, so she’s the founder and CEO of Organized 365, which is really what you know, is like her, her, that is what her brand is all about and what her main business is. She has a podcast that’s called the same thing. That’s been featured as women’s day podcasts of the month. She appears in online media, a bunch, she writes for Huffington post regularly. She’s been on like more than 50 TV segments. And basically I think, you know, her expertise is just sharing strategies for reducing the overwhelm and kind of clearing the mental clutter that specifically women face, although it doesn’t only apply to women, but just helping them to live a more productive and organized life. She’s the author of several Amazon bestselling books their newest one, the paper solution, which I had an advanced copy of. And anyways, Lisa, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks Rory. As a former teacher and a lifeline learner, you calling me a plus student like that is the thing that I remember everything you just said. All I heard was, Hey, that’s all I heard.

I mean, in all seriousness, you know, brand brand builders groups, we have, we, we are, our official curriculum is 12 topics, but you know, as of right now, we only, only formally eight of them are available to the public. And he went through and I think you’re the only person there’s maybe two others that have completed all eight, but you did it in what the whole thing was like next month you lasted through which is not something we normally recommend, but for you, it was okay because you have the team to help you implement. I mean, number one, you got a team and number two, you’re the most organized person I know. And so you’re able, it’s, it’s crazy how you are able to learn information and immediately incorporate it into your business, your processes your structure. And so anyways, it’s, it’s worth celebrating, but you’re, you’re definitely one of our star students.

Yeah, well the whole brand builder curriculum. And as a teacher, I just look at curriculum. I love curriculum. I’ve built my business as a teacher first because that’s my formal training is as a teacher. And so I approach business differently. And I used to think that was a detriment. And now with the business coaches that I’m meeting with, who have grown these companies and sold them and everything, I realized that because I’ve created a company as almost like a teacher of the company and then a teacher of the community, I am able to implement things really fast in my team because I look at my team as students and they all have different learning styles. And I look at whatever we’re implementing as courses that need to be taught with a deadline and I’m able to break them down. And yeah, I think being a teacher actually is helping me win at business.

Yeah, it definitely is. And, and yeah, you, you’ve got the teaching background and then, you know, one of the things that we say around here a lot is, you know, in order to be a great teacher, you gotta be a great student first. And of course, you know, I’m promoting what you’ve done with brand builders group, but you, you know, one of the secrets, I feel like to you growing your personal brand so fast and so strong is that you are a major investor into personal development yourself. Like you play the role of student. Can you just talk a little bit about your philosophy there? Cause you’re, you are definitely the teacher of your community, but again, it’s as much as anyone I know, you’re always like the first person to sign up, to be in coaching programs, yourself and stuff. And I love that about you.

Yes. So when you take strengths finder, my number one strength is learning. Like I just, I’m a natural learner. I love to learn. I consume a ridiculous amount of content, anybody who I’m not good at telling you where I remember the content from, so that’s bad, but I consume a lot of content, diverse content, and I’m just filling my brain with a whole bunch of ideas all the time. And I listened to podcasts and I follow other entrepreneurs that are successful. And so many people say that the only thing you have control over is yourself. I say that when you’re getting your home organized, or when you’re getting your control of your life and moving from reactive to proactive mode, you have to focus on yourself, getting your mindset, right? And so when you’re growing your business, the only thing that you will have with you for the rest of your life is any investment that you make in yourself in your learning and your mindset and your connections and your relationship, the business they’re in now, maybe a different business.

But you all the, all of the resources you put into yourself will grow. And then I would say in the last three years as organized three 65 has started to gain some traction. And now I know that it’s going to be a company five years from now. It’s not going to go out of business. Like I’m more confident in the fact that we kind of know what we’re doing and that we’re going to stand the test of time now. And instead of investing in me and getting over my imposter syndrome, it has been more in investing in me and becoming a better leader and staying six months to a year ahead of my team, because now my team is growing because I’m a good teacher. Like I provide them with coaches and resources and courses. And honestly we did brand builders, not because I needed a brand builders, but because everything that brand builders teaches, I had learned in eight years on my own.

And it was time where I needed to disseminate all of that information into my team. I need to make sure that I had ticked off all of the boxes, dotted the I’s crossed the T’s so that we’re ready for scale because we are perfectly positioned to be a company that is going to scale soon. I overhired. So I hired people just so I could train them the way I want them to be trained so that we will scale with ease and with grace versus at a breakneck speed. That is fun, but stressful, especially for the women that I employ.

I love that, you know, and I, I have become, you know, more convicted on that, like brand builders is become is, has become such a curriculum, you know, and we’ve got resident experts who teach it that I think you know, a lot of personal brands come to us for like their education, their strategy. But I think in the future more and more people are going to look at us more like you did, which is get your assistant trained, get your team trained, get your CMO trained to where it’s like, you don’t have the time to unload all this information, let us catch them up in, in and also like you said, dot the I’s cross the T’s make sure you’ve got all the cracks sealed. So I love that. So let’s talk about your business a little bit. Can you walk us through a little bit of what your journey has been with organized three, five from when you started as a personal brand? You know, and you don’t have to tell us exact numbers, but any, anything you can, that that is empirical, that you feel comfortable sharing. You know, how many people did you start with? How many people do you have now? How many years did it take? How did your revenue, you know, roughly grow? You know, how many clients did you service in the beginning and, and how many now? Because I just, you know, I I love, I love this story.

I do. I love listening to it. So I know your audience is just like me. So I’m just going to get down to what I wish I was hearing. If I was an entrepreneur growing my own brand, we’re about to celebrate our ninth anniversary. And in hindsight, I now realized that I make leaps about every three years. So the first three years, January, 2012 to 2015, I was a blogger. I was doing in-home professional organization consultations as a service-based business. I represented a direct sales company that first year. And then I realized that products weren’t really what I was going to sell. And I was just getting a lot of boots on the ground, meeting with other people in their homes, men, women, children, old, young, different socioecono economics and realizing what are the true holes in organization? What is, why is it with organization books?

People are still not getting organized. And that’s when I learned some of the basic things I teach today, like organization is a learnable skill. I’m a teacher. I could figure out how to teach you this online. You have different organization in different phases of life. It’s roughly every 20 years, it’s, you’re a child then twenties and thirties, you accumulate forties and fifties. You’re in survival. And then 60 plus, if you stay in your house the same during all of those phases, you’re going to need to reorganize it. And the organization looks different. So all of that like mindset work and I was blogging and I was figuring out that this was the thing I was going to do forever.

And that’s almost like it’s kind of like field, like you’re in the field, just in the nitty gritty, like talking to clients in their homes and they’re going, this is why I can’t do this. And this is what I struggle with. And that’s a part of where your content really went from hypothesis to curriculum. Cause you’re like, Oh, everybody struggles with this.

And what is my unique spin on it? So my unique spin on it is I’m a teacher. I can teach you how to do this. This is a learnable skill up until that point, professional organizers always said, I have the answers. I can fix your problem for you. Let me come in and do it for you. You are not capable. You are important, organized, sorry. And that’s the message that we had as women. So then it was, how do you get that message out? The next three years, I hired a couple of contractors. I hired my first executive assistant. I started producing the Amazon bestselling books. I came out with two Amazon bestselling books. I moved into podcasting from doing the blog and slowly started to move that over. I was taking these concepts that I was learning in person. We still had in-person organization. That’s where all of the money came from for the first six years, I had grown a team. They were doing the organizing for me. And I was really formalizing that thought leadership into books and building my experience. So the first six years really, I mean, I was making a hundred thousand dollars or less a year. I was paying people on credit cards. I was just building up my body of work and figuring out what is it that is unique to me.

And you were, most of the revenue was service-based business, 85%. And when you say a hundred thousand a year, that you’re saying, that’s your ingrown, not your rev. Oh, grandma’s gross. Oh yeah. Okay. It’s taken a minute. Yeah. You laugh now, somebody out there listening it, ain’t funny. At least they’re saying it. Ain’t funny.

Yeah. Six years. I know when I was listening to all these podcasts, they’d be like, it takes seven years. It takes for you. I was like, I’ll do it faster. I’ll work. And I was working 100 hour weeks. Like I was clocking my time 80 to 100 hour weeks. You cannot outpaced time. Like there is a time factor to growing your expertise and learning and developing. I mean, you just can’t shortcut it.

Yup. Yup. Yup. Zig Ziglar used to say, well, no elevator to success. You’ve got to take the stairs, baby. Okay. So that’s year three through six. Is that about when we met the first time? Cause the very, the very first time we met, we were working on your infusion soft. That was when

We had Pat. Yep. And we were doing that. So that was going into 2017 in 2017 was like a landmark year for me in betting on myself and just saying, you know what? This is good, but it’s, there’s more here. It’s going to be great. More people need this message. Women need to hear about grace. They need to understand this is a learnable skill. Like this is a problem that no one else is going to solve. So I’m going to go all in and I’m going to solve it. So that was a year that I paid $10,000 to go to New York for one weekend and learn about how to get a professional book launch. I hired seven people in seven weeks at the end of 2017. Now all of them, except for one were contractors and they’re like three to five hours a week. So it wasn’t like I was hiring full-time people.

But I did this, I wrote my mission, vision and values. I moved from an LLC to a C Corp. I got a patent pending on my Sunday basket. I got a manufacturer to make the Sunday basket. At that point, we had no physical products. I just been talking about these on the podcast, but there was nothing people could buy to actually get their, to do list, eliminated, organize all of their tasks and ditch their filing cabinet. And I knew I had one course, the 100 day program was an active course. It was only sold in the launch model. Yeah, that’s all I had.

It started with an information product. Was the first sort of scalable offering that you had.

Yes, I did have that. And we had just added in 2017, the basic first planner that went along with that. So once I hired all those people, that was to get everything out of my head in the physical products created and to develop what you see today with the warehouse and fulfillment and all of that.

Yeah. So how many, so, so from, from zero, from your zero to three, it’s basically just you from years three to six, it’s like you one full timer and a bunch of contractors. And then years six through nine, it was like, okay. We, we kind of took some contractors, made them, full-time brought on a bunch more part-time contractors. And then where are you at now with like your staff size and, and you know, like how many customers you serve and like, give us a sense of the scale now, nine years in.

Yep. So in year six, seven when I hired all of these people are we ended that year at $441,000 in revenue. And we ended our last fiscal year. So at the end of that three years at 1.3 million in revenue. And I knew at that point that I had taken the company as far as I could, without a physical product and without a team to help me and I could stay at the level I was at, but in order to make the impact that I wanted to make, I had to take all of my profit and put it in people and products in order to then make the ultimate impact that I wanted to make.

Yeah. So that 1.3 million in revenue was, was that like,

Yeah, our year end is June 30th. So,

But that was like your ninth year.

Yep. Eighth year and third year. And it was three years after I hired all those people. So it’s yeah, the numbers are weird because I changed how I end my year.

When did w when, so when did we incorporate infusion soft into the mix? That was like 2015?

Yeah, it was right before I hired all of those people. So it was, it was that 2017 year. I believe it was in January that Pat and I got into that coaching with you to do that for the entire year, by the time we were done that’s when I was hiring all of the people.

Got it. Yes. Okay. So yeah. So then you had so there you go. So that was basically three years from that kind of point that you turned on the, what we would call phase four eight, figure entrepreneur. Like you turned on the like, okay, now I’m I’m turning my personal brand to a business, vision values team systems go. And then, and now here you are making sure.

Yeah, so we have seven full-time employees, one part-time employee, and then four part-time contractors that are still part of our team that all come to all of our all team meetings and then a whole bunch of other contractors, you know, just like you wouldn’t regular. Yeah.

I love, I mean, I just love this and, and you probably made more in income in the last two years than the first eight years combined. Is it something like that?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s, this is part of why I wanted people to thank you for sharing this because it’s like, when we tell people, you know, I know, you know, this I’m kind of talking to the listener right now is we’re always saying we’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. If you follow the fundamentals, do the systems build, you know, build the processes, do this. And it’s like, ah, it’s like this slog Fest for the first four or five years, you particularly for the first two or three, but then it, all of a sudden, it’s like it started to catch you in all in you developed as a leader. And I don’t know. I’m just so freaking proud of you. I’m going to, it’s weird to say, but

The other thing I would say about that, well, thank you. Or the other thing I would say about that is when I became a C Corp in that summer, I put myself on payroll and I became an employee of the company. And until that point I had just been pulling money, Willy nilly. So when I became an employee of the company at year, whatever, five and a half six I then had a paycheck and I made my paycheck be the opposite week of my husband. So now we have money coming in our family every single week that is predictable after I’d been doing this about 18 months I realized that everybody in the company was kind of making the same amount. And so then I wasn’t giving raises. And I finally realized, Oh, give yourself a race. I’ve raised my own salary. And then I didn’t feel like I had to hold everybody else’s salaries down.

I was able to give raises there as well. And now that we’re going into year nine I hired a fractional CFO last year and we made profit last year. And he’s like, this is where you take a distribution. I was like, no, no, no, no. Put it back in the company, put it back in inventory, which is what we did. Cause we were in the middle of the pandemic and he says, you have to realize Lisa, you’re also an owner. Like you get paid as an owner. And so I’ve been wrestling for the last six months about how much should I get paid as an owner? How much do you take out as an owner? And I’m finally to the point where that will be a conversation we have next summer is like, okay, now what is your owner pay? In addition to your employee? I’m just so thrilled to have a paycheck now and know what my income is going to be. It’s hard to think about the fact that I’ve also built an asset in addition to a job for myself.

Yeah. And the, in the eight figure entrepreneur event, which you were, you were in, I think we did it in June Aja and I had to figure that out too. And we actually have three different sources of pay. We pay ourselves as you know, like a salary as a, as a, as a manager, we have profits that we draw from the company and then we actually pay ourselves for doing service-based work on the exact same pay plan that we would pay anyone on our team on. And it’s like, you really are wearing different hats. And you got to almost think about like, I am playing different roles, paid in different ways. The owner hat is the one that you don’t get paid on forever. And then one day you do. So I want to talk about your business model now a little bit because I feel like you are more rare. One thing I love about you is you’re the seven figure business. Is it, is it fair to say that products like physical products is now the core or more of a, is it the primary business model or secondary still?

So I will share with you as entrepreneurs when I came up with this idea and I think it is the thing that saved us in the pandemic. And I think it’s the thing that’s going to save us going forward. We’re not a product company and we are not a course company. It is a blend and it is hard for a consumer to figure out what am I paying for the course? What am I paying for the product? Because there’s so much integration and everything I sell has a lifetime value to it. So I’m not selling an MMR monthly recurring revenue. I have a couple of little offerings like that for people who want to go deeper. But the basic customer journey is you buy a Sunday basket, which you see behind me, which is a box and a set of slash bucket. So there is a physical cost to that.

But in addition to that, you get into a Facebook group where we do coworking spaces. Every single Sunday, you have on-demand training, you have extra printables that come out, I’ll come out with extra things that are bonuses for people who have a Sunday basket, like at tax time, I’ll do a tax training and give you some tax printables. There’s no cost. We just add that in there. So you’re kind of like in that level. And then once you do the Sunday basket and you have eliminated your, your to-do list and have five extra hours every week, you usually go into the 100 day home organization program. Again, lifetime membership. We have a on on-demand videos for all 100 days. There’s a planner you get when you purchase and then you can purchase additional ones. You can upgrade and do your planner with me every quarter.

How much is the Sunday best Sunday basket. Basket’s $97. So that’s the, that’s like the entry point. It’s just the 97 come into the community. And it’s like a lifetime access though, to this community which includes like, you know, effectively a course that walks them through what to do

Coworking like every week of the year. Like,

Yeah. And what’s the a hundred, the a hundred day program is the next step up. Yep.

That’s $500. Or you can do six payments of $96. If you want to stay in that $100 a month investment in your home organization, that has a whole bunch of extra things. We’re working on an app. We have extra blog posts, like all kinds of freebies are given into that group as well. And then after that, you go to all access, which is where you ditch your filing cabinet. You get the four binders that replace your filing cabinet planning day. And then you can add on the kid’s course or the photo course. And once you get all that done, then you usually jump into our work box in our work from home offerings.

So an all access. So 97, 500, and then all access is 500, another 500, but those are one time. Those are one time deals. So, so when you do in seven figures, part of what’s amazing about this to me is it’s not recurring, like everything brand builders do. We’re a slow snowball that builds and builds and builds and you’re, you’re new. These are new people coming in. Yep. That’s amazing. It’s extremely difficult to do. I mean, so what, how are you doing it? Like, what are you, what is your primary mechanism for attracting? And hopefully y’all are picking this up, right? Just home organization, expert, extremely clear vertical, you know, clutter in and disorganization, a clear problem, a clear need, a true expert, serving one audience with an entry point that you then, you know, rise up. So you’re like, you’re a perfect example of that. Like breaking through the wall, picking the riches in the niches. So how do you keep getting new customers all the time? Like what’s the acquisition model?

So something I had to realize, which we had a VIP day in addition to going through brand builders. I also did a VIP day with you. And we kind of talked about how I have sold a thousand people into this work box system. And we’ve never really advertised it. Like I don’t talk about it very much. And all of those people have come from the Sunday basket. So when you really look at what is your customer journey, 99% of people in organize three 65, start with this $97 Sunday basket, or they try to make one on their own. Like they get the idea of, I need to plan my week on Sunday. There’s a certain way to do this. It’s not it’s unavoidable. I need to get the time so I can get more time back during my week if they do the Sunday basket, which we advertise on the podcast. And now we have Facebook ads and I do webinars that we advertise through Facebook. If they do the Sunday basket, 60% of them will do the 100 day program. I think it’s 40%. We’ll do the 108 program. And 60% of those will go all access. And 15% of those will go into our certification program. And 30% of those will upgrade in our certification.

Okay. Hold on a second.

I know my numbers,

No. And your digital dashboards and the Facebook ads and stuff. I mean, this is what you would, what you would expect from an organization expert, but it’s, it’s like, it’s why I love teaching you. It’s like you get the stuff we teach implemented faster. Probably that our team does. Like you guys are so fast. Okay. So 60% of them will upgrade. You said to the hundred day, and then you said 60% of those will upgrade.

Yeah. It’s like, it’s like 45. One of them is 41 60. I’m not good with details. But basically if I can get people into the Sunday basket, if the system works because I’m a teacher, like it works. If you are a detail oriented person or a big picture person, it works. If you have ADHD, if you don’t like, because I’m a teacher, I built in all the learning modalities. The Sunday basket works. If we can get people to get it and then get into our community, they have success. And what happens is it’s nothing to do with the Sunday basket. It’s the internal realization that I’ll be darned organization is a learnable skill. She taught it to me. I learned it. Well, if I can learn that, can I actually get my it’s a confidence builder. It’s a quick win within six weeks to realize, Oh my gosh, I have more time than I used to have.

My brain is not talking back to me anymore. I don’t have an unending to-do list. If that worked, I, I can have my home organized women for years have thought they can never have their home organized. And the Sunday basket has to come first because it proves to them that they can. And then when they start believing in themselves and they get in that group, we just shower them with love. We have the most positive Facebook group ever. There’s no negativity in it whatsoever. Everyone is supporting everyone. And then once you have that success, then you get addicted to organizing. And then you’re like, fine. I’ll do the pit. Everybody says they don’t have papers. So as they do the 100 day program, they’re like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much paper in this house. And then they just go right through the customer journey.

But it’s all about believing that you can do it. And the reason I am not monthly recurring revenue is because my target market is women and women invest in themselves last and they need to feel successful. So when they have the Sunday basket successful, I mean, if their child falls down to needs stitches at the ER, Rory, they stopped doing their Sunday basket happened to us three times, maybe those unexpected events derail them. And if it is a monthly recurring revenue, then it’s guilt. Every time that money comes out, if it is a limited time, you only have 90 days to implement it. There’s this pressure on women that they already have so much pressure. I don’t want any pressure. I don’t want any guilt. I just want to love on you and give you the solution.

And I think, you know, you’ve always been so encouraging of my procrastinate on purpose book. And one of the things I think one of the things we tried to do with that book, which it occurred it’s occurred to me. Why one of the reasons why I think it is so aligned with you is we tried to, in that book talk about the emotional side of time management, not just the logical stuff. And I feel like you do the same thing with home organizing it’s, it’s, it’s tactical, but it’s also the emotional components. It’s the guilt and the stress and the anxiety and the worry and your own story of changing your life when you were 40 years old. And like just all of the mental health aspects that having an organized that come along with having an organized home which I, which I, which I just, you know, I really love so, so I hear you on the customer journey.

Basically give them something small that they can have a win, get a result, build community, and then accelerate them up, especially like, you know, I know with your infusion soft, you, you’ve got it all tracked in a, in a process to move them from one to the next, to the next to the next. The, you mentioned the Facebook ads you, we, we teach people not to do it until they get to phase three. Like most people do it way early, but you’re a great example of, like you said, you just started introducing that. And is that so, so are, have you kind of acquiesced to the idea of going okay now that I know what my lifetime value is? I can justify spending ads, driving people directly to Sunday basket. Is that, is that how you do it? You try to, you, you move them deliberately into the front of the, of the journey.

Yes. So we started Facebook ads two weeks before our customer locked in. You know, we all went into lockdown for the pandemic and we’ve been ramping up the spend as you told us to do. So we advertise to our current customers, new products that are coming out. We advertise to people to start in the Sunday basket. We advertise podcast episodes, and here’s something unique to us. And I’ve done Facebook ads in the past with little money. Now I’m doing it with bigger money. Our ads always convert because women are always looking for organization solutions. And there aren’t a lot of people in that industry. And our ads are always not very expensive because they’re not competitive. I’m not in the entrepreneurial space. I’m not in the political space. So I’m able to get a good return on our investment. And we usually have three to four times return on our investment every single week. And sometimes up to seven times return on our investment, which I know is unusual.

So then on that first customer one, do you do drive people to a free training? Like let’s just take Sunday basket, not, not your existing customers, but is it just basically an ad to a free training or do you do a challenge or do you do a video funnel? Like what is that ad driving people to, or do you just take them directly to the sales page to buy the basket?

We’ve been taking them directly to the sales page to buy the basket and, you know, over the course of the year

It’s 97 bucks. It’s also not like it’s,

We redid our website. So all of June, I think we drove like 30,000 people to the website and they all bounced off because the website was broken. So we’re trying it’s, it’s lovely. It’s great. But we still made money on our ads. I don’t know what to tell you. So now we’re retargeting those people for webinars and I’m, I’m doing another webinar. We’re trying that for a while. So we’re taking 90 days and driving people to a webinar that only Facebook ads is getting that webinar and then seeing what the conversion is. So we’re testing. Okay,

Well, I’ve got I did a, I did a training last week on this specific thing I need, I’m going to send it to you. So, because you know, I just, w you are, you’ve done these things, not just the right things, but in the right order at the right time. And it’s, it’s moving, it’s moving along. So I have one more question for you before that. I mean, where should people go Lisa, to learn about you, you know, if they want to connect. And I mean, I’ll also, there’s a huge part of being a personal brand, which is just keeping your crap organized. And so, like the actual skill that you’re teaching here, I think really helps accelerate the success of any, any entrepreneur and, you know, not, not just, you know, you’re saying women and like the home and, and, and that, but it’s any business owner trying to like keep parts of their life organized. So where should they go to find you?

I often say that men are not holding women back your houses. And that’s why I speak to women because the emotional components that you’re talking about do not impact men the way they do women. And so many women have something they’re uniquely created to do, but they’re waiting until the laundry and the dishes are done. And so that is the person that I’m trying to reach. Like I want to free you from your home, so you can go bless the world with what you’re uniquely created to do the best way I do that is through my podcast. So if you’ve liked this interview, go check out the podcast, which is organized three 65. We have over 9 million downloads on that podcast. So it’s pretty popular. I love it. I love, I have a lot of episodes every week. I love talking on the podcast. And then if you just want to know more about the products, go to organize three 60 five.com. You can click on the shop, you can learn about the work boxes, learn about the Sunday basket.

Huh. We got it. We got the sun. We have, we’ve got, we’ve got the Sunday basket. We have the a hundred day program. I mean just really, really great stuff. So, you know, since you know exactly what it is like to be a brand builders group, client, and you know, you know, three years ago, I mean, you had already been at it five or six years by the time we had met. And then, you know, coming, reconnecting with brand builders group here recently, what would you say to that person? Who’s like, you know, in year two and they’re just like, Oh my gosh, like I do it all this stuff and I’m not making any money. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s listening. It’s, I’m frustrated. Like I can’t get crap done. I can’t afford vendors. I don’t know how to do it myself. Like, you know, I don’t have time. Like, what would be your, your advice to that person?

I love that bill Gates quote, when he says we underestimate what we can do in 10 years and we overestimate what we can do in one year. And I think that’s true too. Like you just have to realize that you are in a marathon and it is a self-development and blessing of the world, like whatever you’re uniquely gifted and created to give the world, like is amazing, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but you need to take the next step, take the next step, take the next step. And if you’re in brand builders are looking to join brand builders, look at it as like your college education. So there are four different phases and look at each phase as a year of college education. Now, if you’re like, I was, when you came in and you’re in your eight, then yeah, you can get the whole thing done in a year.

It’s extremely rare. I was over ready. If you’re in year two, then I would look at that for those four phases is like, if I get these four phases done in the next four years, I will be six years in. That’s where you naturally are going to be this, you know, businesses growing. I find it so interesting. So many podcasts that I followed for years and years and years, female podcasts. So many of them in the last two years have become seven figure businesses and moving quickly to eight figure businesses. And it’s just time. It’s not that they found something out that you don’t know, or they have a secret or it’s the super special funnel or whatever. It’s just time. It takes 10 years to grow to a million dollar business. Like it just takes time.

Love it. Lisa Woodruff, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll link up to organize three 65, man, keep going, Lisa. So proud. It’s been such an honor to work with you and we just continue to wish you the best in your journey and thanks for all your encouragement. Thanks, Rory.

Ep 127: How to Build a 9-Figure Personal Brand with Dr. Josh Axe | Recap Episode

Dr. Josh Axe perfectly embodies our strategic approach to building a personal brand. For Josh, this approach has been incredibly lucrative — he’s converted his personal brand into a 9-figure business.
Today we reflect on our previous episode with Josh, highlighting our top takeaways from the conversation. For our first takeaway, we discuss the importance of forming your brand around one core message that you’re passionate about.
While chatting about how Josh’s business evolved from a newsletter, we talk about why you should start creating your brand as soon as you can. After sharing the power of consistently adding value and having a desire to serve, we touch on why reaching only one audience member can still significantly impact your success.
Near the end of the episode, we dive into why you should build a strong website and why having a data dashboard allows you to better market your products. A master of following the formula, tune in to hear more takeaways from our fascinating and informative conversation with Dr. Josh Axe.

Ep 126: How to Build a 9-Figure Personal Brand with Dr. Josh Axe

Wow. It is an honor to introduce to you someone who’s become a friend of mine, Dr. Josh Axe. And we kind of live in different worlds in some regard, like we’ve built our companies and our brands in different worlds, but in some of the similar fashion and through, you know, we’ve got to share network, I got to meet, I got to really become friends with him at a dinner a few years ago with Michael Hyatt and Lewis Howes and Donald Miller, and, you know, it’s called Nashville mafia crew that came out of it and he’s extraordinary. And his team is extraordinary. So he is he’s the author of several different books, eat dirt, essential oils, a keto, diet. But he operates the number one natural health website in the world dr. Axe.Com. And I know he wouldn’t share these numbers, but I’m going to share them because it’ll give you a reference for the, the magnitude of what we’re talking about here.

RV: (02:05)

And I’m pretty sure this, this hasn’t been updated in a while, but 17 million unique visitors every single month to their website, 17 million they’ve got about two and a half million people on fate followers on Facebook, over half a million on Instagram, almost 2 million on YouTube. They are a nine figure business. So Josh represents one of the few nine figure. That’s North of a hundred million personal brands that started as a personal brand that he has scaled to this amazing team they’ve got over a hundred full-time employees. And it’s just incredible. So the, you know, the company is called ancient nutrition and his whole personal brand has been built around health and strength and vitality really based on whole food and the healthiest, whole food nutrients in and bringing that to the modern world. So anyways, I wanted to brag on you brother, cause I knew you wouldn’t say it. And I think it’s like, people don’t understand. There’s very few people that have been able to build what you all have built, which is it’s inspiring. It’s awesome.

Speaker 3: (03:14)

Well, thanks, Rory. You know, I think you know, for me, it’s, it’s really great to be able to do what I love every day. And also, you know, I have a great team, you know, they say teamwork makes the dream work. So yeah. Excited to chat today. I know it was, you know, it was great connecting with you recent. Cause I know we hadn’t seen each other, we ran into each other at true food kitchen and we have probably in the best place at our homes,

RV: (03:36)

I’ll find you, Oh yeah. The turf for our house. Yeah.

Speaker 3: (03:38)

Yeah. And so but man, yeah, it was so good to reconnect. And remember that dinner at Michael Hyatt’s house. That was a, that was a blast.

RV: (03:46)

It’s been years. It’s been years since that 0.5 years. Yeah. Although I think pretty much every time I see you is it’s either whole foods or true food kitchen. Like those are the two places. So man, I want to start with, where do you start? How did you start? I mean, I think the, the, the concept of a hundred full-time employees and, you know, nine figures, there’s very few people. I mean, you’re talking about the Dave, Ramsey’s the Tony Robbins, the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world, but you know, going back to, how did this start? Where did you start from? Can you just like paint a picture of those early days because you know, you’re a long way from there now.

Speaker 3: (04:30)

Yeah. I think it started with number one when I feel really passionate about. And so, and that’s that’s health, you know, for myself and I’m not going to go into the whole story. Somebody, somebody could search us online if they want dr. Ax and his mom, like, but my mom had a cancer growing up was very sick and we actually use natural protocols to help her heal. And so we started, you know, we, we, when I was even young, we had her start juicing vegetables and doing supplements. People had never heard of like reishi mushroom and frankincense essential oil and doing you know, meditation and visualization and prayer and all these things. And my mom beat cancer naturally. And she overcome came a number of health conditions. She lost about 30 pounds. She beat hypothyroidism, improved her gut health and also got off anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications.

Speaker 3: (05:25)

And so, you know, that that’s, so for myself, you know, anyone that has a family member that they just love dealing like their mom, for me in seeing her heal using these natural health protocols, there’s just sort of solidified in me that, you know what, like I want to make a difference in people’s lives in this way. So I think for almost anybody, you really have to align whatever you do. Number one with your passion. And number two, I know this is basic stuff, but the number two is what can you, what are you great at? And so I looked at what I’m great at. And I was, I felt like I had a gift to be able to communicate, speak to people, move people. And so early on, I started doing nutrition workshops and teaching people how to get healthy. And then I looked at what I w and then the next thing was I started building out a strategy of, okay, if I was going to really impact the world in a big way, what do I need to do?

Speaker 3: (06:17)

Well, one, I need to educate them. Number two, I need to be able to give them what they need in order to get healthy. And so in doing that, I started saying, okay, well, supplements, help supplement people. So I’m going to teach people how to eat healthy, but then also I’m going to create super foods like collagen and probiotics and herbs, like tumeric. And I’m going to create the best in the world and then educate people on diet and then, and then offer them these supplements as well. And so I mapped out the strategy of, okay, how do I go from here to here over the period of five years, and then 10 years. And then I said, okay, I can do this part, but I’m not good at all these other things. And so then I started hiring other people and partnering with other people to help us achieve and reach those goals.

Speaker 3: (07:04)

Now that that might seem pretty simplistic. One other thing I’ll mention is I modeled other businesses that were successful. I looked at people in the nutrition industry, like a garden of life and my business partner now, Jordan Rubin, who actually founded that company. I, I looked at other companies in this space who are doing well and said, what was their recipe for success? And so a lot of it was reverse engineering and saying, okay, I want to go from here to here in 10 years, you know, number one, who do I need to partner with, or who do I need on my team in order to accomplish this? And I could go on and on, but again, that’s, I think those were some of the key pieces.

RV: (07:43)

Well, I love the, I love that. I mean, I, I think no matter how many times we tell somebody that like building a personal brand, like it’s these basic fundamentals, it’s like, all of us just think there’s some secret that we’re missing. That there’s some like, you know, magic thing or some advanced Ninja trick that, that people like, you know, that, that the rest of us don’t know. And yet it’s never that story. Like, it is never that story. It is always the fundamentals. And, and one thing that you said that I really love is that basically you started with your passion and then you kind of said, how could I serve these people in a deeper way? Which wasn’t just education, but providing them the stuff to get healthy. But at some point you, you must run into the mental block of going. Yeah. But I’m not a formulator. Like, I don’t know how to create ingredients. I’ve never, I’ve never made a supplement. I don’t, I don’t know how to bottle a vitamin. I don’t know how to ship. I’ve never, I don’t run a warehouse. Like you had to have run into all that stuff.

Speaker 3: (08:46)

I did. Absolutely. And so then from that point, I said, okay, but who do I know? And that’s what I started thinking through is who do I know? And so, and honestly, if that person didn’t know, I said, do you know a person? Do you know, a person? Do you know a person? And eventually over time I found that person and you and I both see this Rory it’s like, I think a lot of times people let that keep them from succeeding, or they’ll say, Oh, I asked one person. They didn’t know, it’s time to give up. Now, now I’ve found like in order to find somebody to manufacture, and then also like we source now ingredients from all over the world. We source organic herbs from Asia. We yeah. Yeah. Like it’s not, that was not easy, you know, but we found somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, we developed a relationship there, and now we get these certified organic herbs from Asia. We get a lot from the United States as well. And, you know, we develop these partnerships over time, but, but you know, the thing is you just gotta keep keep keep seeking and knocking and going after it, you know, it’s just you, you have to do that. And I think almost any business though, if you’re going to scale it to you know, to, to, to a certain degree.

RV: (09:55)

Well, and I, I think it’s interesting because the, the nature of a personal brand, we all think of, Oh, it’s about me. And yet your whole mindset here is who do I know? Who do I know? Who do I know it’s like these other people that you, that you can pull, pull around thinking about scale. Okay. Can you just give us a rough, a rough journey of like, when did you start and like, how did the growth happen and, and how many years? And like, where were the big tipping points? Cause it’s like to go from, you know, if someone’s listening right now, like they might just literally be thinking, you know, they may not even be on social media or something going, okay. I, you know, I see the need for this and the next generation, but having millions of followers, there’s a lot between there. So map that out a bit.

Speaker 3: (10:44)

Yeah. So, you know, I started dr. Axe.Com a little over 10 years ago. And that’s the website. Now. I started off in a clinical practice. I ran it more of a functional medicine practice. We did nutrition, consult, blood work. We did some chiropractic, we did physical therapy, all that sort of stuff. And so I started there and about a year or so into practice, I started putting out a health newsletter and then I had a patient say, Hey, I’d love to send this to my, my aunt North Carolina, can you post it online? So I just started posting it online newsletter. And and that was probably about 11, a little over 11 years ago. I started doing that. And then after about five years in practice that just kept growing. Like I started a F one day, like a, a four hour work week on my website and the rest I worked, you know, my full-time business.

Speaker 3: (11:33)

So I took sort of Fridays for four hours and I would work on this dr. Axe.Com website business. And I would write an article and record a video. And I just started putting out, you know, those two pieces of content every single week. And then I got to the point where that kept growing. And then I had a friend of mine, Jordan Rubin, or a new friend who said, Hey, I’m starting a company. We are going to create the world’s healthiest food, grass, fed beef probiotic, rich foods, kale chips, kombucha. And so I said, so I actually had my associate at the time he bought my practice and I invested in this business with with Jordan Rubin. And so we started this, this company, it was called beyond organic, well, the company was not set up to succeed because our margins were too small shipping, frozen beef across the country in July and having it melt. And then the returns, like we were losing our shirts. So I did that for a couple years and ended up losing everything I invested in the company, which was pretty much everything. And so Chelsea and I were at a point, my wife and I, and I’m like, and we actually had at this point less than $10,000, like left in the bank. And like, and I just left that company because it was going under essentially. And I in dr. X.Com was actually losing money every month. And and so, yeah,

RV: (13:01)

The on all fronts, like it’s just going out, it’s not coming in.

Speaker 3: (13:05)

It was, the ship was sinking. And the first thing we didn’t listen, I know everybody isn’t religious, but Chelsea and I just, we got down on our hands and knees, we just prayed. And we said, God, would you just give us wisdom and direction and what we should do? And I really felt like I remembered a meeting I had with bill Hampton, you know, bell and with him six months before, and he said, Josh, what do you really want to do? He said, cause it seems like you’ve got a couple, you know, a few different businesses going on. And he said, I think you just need to focus fully on one thing. And I said, you know, I really want to build the world’s number one, natural health website. And I want to help people heal using food as medicine. And he said, well do just that.

Speaker 3: (13:40)

And I literally had those words sort of ring back into my head. And I literally then the next day started working on putting out a health program. Six weeks later, later I launched a health program. I called it the secret detox program. And it was essentially just my way of saying, Hey, we got to cleanse our, our diet cleanse. Our bodies launched it online and it became our best-selling product. And it was just a program somebody would buy for, let’s say like a, you know, $200 online all content and launched that a year later, we launched our first supplement. And by the way, this is only like seven little over seven years ago. I had less than $10,000 in the bank. We were like, what are we going to do? So focused on that,

RV: (14:24)

Launching a course here at two, you’re talking about a $200 course informational educational product. That’s what you started with.

Speaker 3: (14:32)

Right? And then I had an email list of about 30,000 people. And around this time I had a friend of mine. I do, you know, Isaac Jones. I don’t, okay. He’d be a good person. Cause he’s a great guy. And so we were doing lunch and he said, Hey, how’s your online business going? I said, well, it’s going okay. I have a cookbook out and a fitness, but I said, it’s really, I’m losing a few thousand dollars a month, not making it. And he said, I heard that. He said, I just came over from a seminar. And I heard that for every email you have, that’s what you should be making in dollars a month, a month. So he said, if you have an email list of 30,000, he said, I heard that you can maybe be making up to $30,000 a month. And I was like, man, I’m like spending 10 and making like seven.

Speaker 3: (15:19)

And I’m like, I’m must not be doing something right. And so I said, Hey, who do you? Who do, you know, who’s good at this? And so he’s like, Hey, I’m going to a seminar. In a few weeks, I went to the seminar and learned how to launch an online program. Brendan Bouchard was there and heard his whole thing. And then literally went back and I said, okay, I am launching a program as fast as I can to put all this content together. We launched it. And we ended up making more in that single launch that I had in the, in the three previous years combined. And me, you know, just doing, making up stuff as I go, you know? And so in any ways from there, I ended up partnering with my business partner now, Jordan Rubin. So we grew that business to probably, you know, just online just content to probably about 47 million and that we ended up merging comp companies and my company at the time, anyways, all that being said in emerging companies, AI was

RV: (16:13)

[Inaudible] up to that. So up to 47 million was, was information products that you were doing classic, like launches. Were you doing like a V? Is this like a, like a video style, like a three video launch kind of a thing, or just,

Speaker 3: (16:27)

But Jeff Walker launch formula, like, but, but, but by that time we launched supplements as well. I only had like six supplements. But that was probably doing still about 70% of the revenue where content was about 30% at that point in time. And then we launched in retail. This was about four, four and a half years ago. And that my company now is called ancient nutrition. I’ve co-founded that with Jordan and yeah, that company, we have an over a few hundred employees over a hundred employees and you know, continuing to scale and grow and it’s it’s been a lot of fun.

RV: (17:04)

Wow. Wild. So that was four years ago. So w so retail has been a big part of the growth in the revenue and the revenue numbers has been from getting your supplements distributed through retail.

Speaker 3: (17:16)

Yes, that’s correct. And I’ll say this, I mean, it’s actually almost it’s retail, but a lot of it’s online sales. I mean, our, our direct to consumer business, if you include Amazon with that, well, if you don’t include Amazon, it’s, it’s about 50% of our revenue. I mean, it’s still a significant portion.

RV: (17:34)

Wow. Oh, so this is just like, from the people coming to your site, reading your blogs, watching your videos, and then clicking on the shop button and then go into your, your store, your online store and saying, I want to buy some supplements. Boom. And then, and then that, that, that’s still about half of the revenue. That’s right. Amazing. That is so freaking cool. So you, you start with this passion. So the email was a big deal, I guess. So, so that was like a big, a big turning point. Was there, was there a specific lesson that you learned there related to email that you were like, Oh, once, once I realized this, that opened it, that that helped me go from losing three grand a month to like actually making some money.

Speaker 3: (18:22)

Yeah. I think one is just having a process in place and understanding people typically don’t buy with the first offer, people buy with multiple offers. And so, you know, w and the other thing is, you know, don’t try and make it up yourself, get coaching, or, or, or read a book like Jeff Walker’s launch formula and, and follow the formula. You know, so for me, like I always try and be as coachable as possible. So when I’ve had business cultures like Dan Sullivan or those sorts of people over the years and their coaching, they like, I just, I try and be as humble and as coachable as I can be. And so we did that essentially. It was like a 10 day to two week formula of, we did three training videos where I went through the benefits of detoxification, your top detox food, your top detox supplements, people opted in then to that email list where we then offered the program over to a two week period of time, I did a webinar.

Speaker 3: (19:12)

And on that webinar webinar, we would pitch a product and I would let them know, Hey, if you buy this program today, we’re also going to give you, you know, all of these free interviews for free or something like that, you know? And so that’s really what we followed is that formula and had a lot of success with it, but it wasn’t, you know, I, I think the biggest moments were a few things. One do it with excellence, but don’t take forever, okay. Do it with excellence, but don’t take forever. So again, when you’re putting out a piece of content, don’t ramble on and on, like I knew, Hey, in video one, I’m going to hit on these three topics, video two, these three topics. And I would go and watch other people doing webinars and say, what made this webinar great. And I would break it down and say, Oh, you know what? They did pay, they did testimonials. That was one of the key ingredients. Oh, they had additional officer offices and offers and bonuses at the end. And Hey, there’s a Q and a where you’re having, you know, hitting these key questions and doing a second close, you know? So I just, my number one moment was, Hey, if you follow the formula, you’re going to get better results. And if you make it up yourself. Yeah,

RV: (20:20)

Yeah. I love that. I mean, and, and it’s fun. Like, I mean, we’ve made a whole business out of just learning all these formulas. Right. And like pulling them together and testing them. And and I actually, so I wanted to ask you about data real quick because you know, I feel like one of the things that you guys do really well, that a lot of personal brands don’t do is data. Now that’s completely anecdotal and theoretical from where stand, but that’s kind of what I’ve just picked up from watching a far. Is that true? Is that something

Speaker 3: (20:54)

Game changer? Huge, huge. And so, you know, I can tell you, we’ve had sort of two times in our business where one was when we started getting into Facebook ads and doing that and email list, like I started realizing, okay, we’ve got to do beta testing and testing what works better than others. And so we started really looking a lot at data and analytics. When I moved into retail, I realized if you don’t have data, you are flying completely blind and you can not succeed, period. You won’t be able to succeed for a year, but you will eventually run out of cash at some point, if you ever have a downturn. And so if you want to succeed again, I can not overstate this. If you do not have good data in a retail business, you will not succeed. Long-Term there is no chance of it.

Speaker 3: (21:39)

You have to know, you ha you have to be able to forecast. And if you ever run into a point where, how you have a downturn, if not people just lose their shirts. And a lot of times, so for us, like we have a, we have a chief strategy officer, chief data officer, who’s one of the four like heads of our entire business, because data is so important. Her name is Kat, Katherine, and we were lying on her and she’s a wizard. She’s amazing. And like now when we go into a place like whole foods market or target, or some of our biggest, our biggest you know, clients that we, we retailers that we work with, you know, we go in there and we say, Hey, here’s the, we call it spins data. They, Hey, here’s the 52 weeks of spins or the last quarter of spins.

Speaker 3: (22:24)

And look at how our college in protein is increasing in beating these three other brands. When you go in there and you can show the retailer like, Hey, look on Amazon, online in this competitor of yours, we’re outperforming all of them. It’s kind of like, there’s PR there’s absolute proof. We’re going to bring you in now. And we’re going to, you know, w w we’re gonna work with you in this business when you have that absolute proof in data. So data. Yeah. I mean, data is a huge deal. The other thing is, if you want to scale, you asked that earlier, how do you like scaling data is crucial to scaling a business because you need to know what lever to pull, what not to pull and just being aware of, you know, all of those things. And so, yeah. Data, data is a big deal.

RV: (23:13)

And did you, did you did you like, is this all stuff that’s happening on spreadsheets? Did you have like one tool? Did you mind, have you used different tools along the way? Like, as the business has grown? Yeah,

Speaker 3: (23:25)

Exactly. I mean, that’s the one thing that I can tell you too, from going from, you know, we did 2 million, one year, then we went to 12 million, the following year, then 47, then a hundred and then, you know, other numbers. But that being said, like every year in the stage of growth, like a lot of times you, you, you have to move on to a new platform. You have to, you to do data differently. You have to do the business differently. You know, I think once you, here’s, the other thing, once you get up to a certain size people by law, I mean, and this is true, even at smaller brands, but people buy the brand, not just the product, right? It’s like, there are a thousand different brands of tumeric out there. Why is someone going to buy our tumeric? Or there are over about a hundred brands of college and why is somebody going to buy our college?

Speaker 3: (24:11)

And it’s because of our brand name and people knowing they can trust us that we own our own manufacturing facilities that we source almost exclusively, like loads of organic products is that we show you photos from our farms. It’s like, you know, building that brand. That’s what I love about what you guys do, brand builders. You know, it is so crucial that you’re building a brand that’s known for excellence and being trustworthy. You know, I think those are the two key elements we really try and focus on is, are, do people see us as being the top brand, the premier brand in terms of quality? And then do they trust us? I think those are really important aspects of building the brand as well. Wow.

RV: (24:52)

I mean, this has gone by fast. I knew that it would, and it’s like trying to like get this story, but it’s, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s just really, really, really cool. So dr. Axe, where, where would you tell people to go if they want to connect with you or, you know, to kind of like follow your journey? Yeah. So if you want to learn

Speaker 3: (25:11)

A lot of what I teach in business, you can go to my my leadership website, that’s leader leaders.com, L E a D E R S. So leaders.com. Also if you want to learn more about art, so nutrition, the stuff I’m doing there, you can follow me on Instagram at dr. Josh Axe or Facebook at dr. Josh Axe, or, Hey, if you’ve got a health condition, you’re looking to heal your body naturally, you can just Google search my name, dr. Axe hypothyroidism, dr. Axe, you know, low testosterone or whatever health problem you have. You can look up, I’ve got a plan for it. And I’m also, I got a new book coming out soon. It’s called ancient remedies where I go over the top remedies used throughout history to heal the body in different conditions and that sort of thing. But and then my nutritional companies, ancient nutrition, which you can find at whole foods, market and health food stores around the country. I know there’s a lot of places. Those are some of the, some of the different places.

RV: (26:07)

It’s awesome, man. Well, so cool. Thank you for sharing. So transparently so much of your journey, like what the end to end and you know, really 10 years, but it’s really a short amount of time for such a dramatic growth, but there’s been some ups and downs and man, we just really appreciate you being open booking and sharing all that with us.

Speaker 3: (26:28)

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me Rory love what you do, love brand builders and yeah, always, always excited to to share

Ep 123: Becoming a Profit First Personal Brand with Mike Michalowicz | Recap Episode

Welcome to the recap edition of the Mike Michalowicz interview on the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden here. Breaking it down for you. I’m rolling solo tonight. We have had craziness. We our three-year-old went to the emergency room to get stitches for the second time, I think in like six weeks. And we also had power without power for a few hours today. So it’s been a wild day, so momma’s not here and I’m rolling solo. And this interview with Mike, I I loved, and I’ll tell you, tell you right up, right up front. Oh, okay. Actually I have an important announcement. So before we dive into this with Mike, I want to let you know those of you that listen religiously every single week. Next week we’re not going to have episodes. All right.

RV: (01:03)

So we’re not disappearing, but just next week we are gone. And we’re not gonna publish an episode, but then we’ll pick up the schedule. So I wanted to let you know that in advance. Okay. So back to the topic at hand, which is the brilliant Mike Michalowicz, and I wanted to say right upfront that if, if you follow brand builders methodology, okay. If you’ve seen our various trainings been to one of our events, if you’re one of our clients, if you’re familiar with, you know, our overall structure we divide our training into four phases. Okay. And each phase has three different sections. Each, so we basically have 12 different sections of our curriculum. They all represent each of the 12 sections is a different two-day experience. So you, you know, people come to it as an event or they get it through one-on-one coaching or our private strategy sessions.

RV: (02:01)

But anyways, so our whole body of knowledge is organized into these four phases. And phase four is what we call eight figure entrepreneur. So that is where we talk about scaling a personal brand into a real business, which almost nobody does, and almost nobody has ever done. There’s so few people who have ever scaled something, you know, to eight figures, scaled a personal brand, eight figures, and then very few who have ever actually been able to sell that or exit that business. And that’s something that we love talking about because we’ve got a lot of entrepreneur, friends, and we, we love understanding like the real nature of small business. And it’s something that we have actually done grown a business to eight figures and then had an exit. Well, this interview with Mike, and then the another interview we did with Jim combi a while back, I would say are the two interviews of all the guests that we’ve had that have focused the most on phase four, which is, you know, eight figure entrepreneur, the concepts and ideas around how to build a truly scalable enterprise, something with, with equity value beyond just the income that it brings to the personal brand.

RV: (03:23)

So I just wanted to kind of give a quick shout out to that other interview with Jim Comey, that if you loved this and you love this concept of like, you know, building a real business as a real entrepreneur, then you should go back also and listened to the Jim combi interview where we talk about business valuation. And also the recap of course. So just a quick mention for that. All right. So my big, my three biggest takeaways here from Mike we’re just so good and so important and so relevant specifically to this concept of scaling a real business. And I, and I honestly think this episode transcends far beyond personal branding as, as a lot of them do, but, but this one definitely applies to, you know, all entrepreneurs in general. And so the first takeaway was sending that, here’s what he said. He said, the big fallacy

Speaker 3: (04:20)

Is top line thinking. The big, big fallacy is top-line thinking, and this is such, this

RV: (04:30)

Is such an important concept because It’s the wrong way of thinking. But it’s like the thing that people brag about is how much revenue do they do. And it’s really like, okay, it’s, it’s one thing to, to measure. But the real question is how much drops to the bottom line, what really shows up in your bank account, right? And it’s like, would you rather be the company that generated 5 million a year in revenue and you kept a hundred thousand or would you rather be the company that generated 1 million in revenue and you kept 500,000 and, and, and the, the, the obvious is the second, right. Specifically for personal brands where it’s like, usually a personal brand is not going to have much equity value because it’s built around the personality and thus, it makes it difficult to actually scale and not to scale necessarily, but to sell to someone else.

RV: (05:30)

Because if you pull that personality out of the business, it’s like, what is left? That’s, that’s challenging, which we’ll talk about, but this, just this concept of focusing on profit, right? And like, you hear this all the time too, of like, Oh, they did a seven figure launch and immediately we go, Whoa, seven figure launch, right? It’s not that seven figure launches are bad. Seven figure launches are great, but in your mind, it’s like this thing that brag about, and you go, well, okay, well, wait a minute. So if you did a seven figure launch and you had affiliates and you paid 50% to your affiliates, now you’re down automatically to half a million, and then you go, all right. And you look at all the vendors, you had to hire to pull it off. And maybe you had copywriters and video editors and video production crew and staging, and, you know, depends on everything that went into it.

RV: (06:18)

And it’s like, I don’t know, maybe, maybe you spent a hundred thousand dollars to make it, and then you go, all right, how much did you run in and paid traffic? Right. And so you go, well, I had to run a quarter million dollars in ads. And so now I got 250,000 there and a hundred thousand. And so it’s like, well, my million dollar launch, really one, I mean, it’s a million dollars in revenue, but 500,000 out the door to affiliates a quarter million out the door to Facebook, another a hundred thousand expenses. What I really had was $150,000. And then after I pay my team and, and my staff and my, all of my overhead, it’s like, what’s really left. So, you know, it just, it’s just a good reminder to, don’t be impressed by external sort of frivolous numbers. And don’t be intimidated by them.

RV: (07:14)

You know, I, I think it’s, it’s kind of similar to social media followers is we can be so infatuated with how many followers that somebody has, right. And you go, Oh my gosh, they got, let’s just say a hundred thousand and go, they have a hundred thousand followers. That’s amazing. But when they post something on social, because of the algorithms, that hundred thousand followers might actually legitimately get viewed by two or 3000 people. So it’s not that that’s bad. Right. It’s w that’s why wouldn’t you want to have more, you, you, you would, I’m not saying that it’s, it’s not, I’m not saying that it’s bad at all, but I’m saying if you had a choice between a hundred thousand social media followers, followers of which two or 3000 of those might actually see your post versus building an email list of 20,000 followers, where you send an email and you get, let’s say a 20% open rate.

RV: (08:18)

So that means you’re reaching 4,000 people. Every time you send an email to 20,000 and you only quote, unquote only have 20,000 on your email list. So it’s like, what really matters at the end of the day, right? Is what’s the real impact we’re making? What, what is the, is the net result? The net gain, not just the, you know, fancy super superfluous kind of numbers. And, and, you know, the other thing is that I think personal brands are a lot like golfers, which is they lie about their score all the time. I mean, personal brands are, I mean, I, I, I don’t mean to like harp on our space too much, but I say this delicately, but man, there’s a lot of dishonesty in what people report. Right. People say crazy stuff. I mean, they they’ll say crazy things like, Oh yeah, I’ve sold a hundred thousand copies of my book.

RV: (09:20)

And it’s like, well, you know, and it’s like, Oh, I sold them in the back of the room. And it’s like, well, you know, by my count, that means, you know, even if you’re doing really great, you’ve gotta be in front of about a half, a million people in audiences to sell that much in the back of the room. So, you know, it’s maybe not that likely. And I, and I’m not harping on anybody. I’m just saying for you, don’t be impressed by fake numbers. Don’t be impressed by things that don’t matter. Focus on the things that really matter. It’s not revenue, it’s profit, it’s not followers, it’s engagement, right. It’s, it’s, it’s not like any of these, there’s so many of these, these indicators, it’s not what people are saying is what they’re actually doing. And be focused on real impact and real reach.

RV: (10:13)

And don’t, don’t be intimidated or impressed you know, too much by the external and don’t allow yourself to be caught up in like, Oh, we made a lot of revenue. And at the end of the day, it’s like I had no money left over. All right. So that’s the first thing, the big fallacy of top-line thinking, the second thing, which is very much related to an eight figure entrepreneur concept is he said, the number one driver of a healthy business is the removal of the dependency of that business on the founder. And this is true. This is the whole crux of our eight figure entrepreneur event, which is the, the problem is dependency. Now for if you’re early in your brand journey, you might want to just skip past this because it’s so advanced. It’s, it’s, it’s not like relevant to most people until much later, but it’s also not a bad thing to kind of be, be thinking about. You know, always kind of having the end in mind is as dr. Stephen Covey said, which is that, You know, you, if you want us, there’s two

RV: (11:23)

Things happening here with your business. One is the ability of the business to generate income, right? Income is super valuable. Income is super useful. It’s like the money that comes to you to pay your bills and do stuff with. And you know, there’s a lot of ways to do that. We talk about the five ways to earn income, what we call the paids. And then we help people look for the dares, D a R E S things that are digital automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable, the digital automated, recurring evergreen and scalable. That’s a brand builders group, original concept about driving income, but income is different than equity. Income is, you know, like income value is different from equity value. Income is like how much money you bring in home at the end of the day, equity value is what does this business generate an income or, you know, or in profit, let’s just use the word profit, not to confuse things.

RV: (12:25)

What does this business generate and profit without you? If you are gone, if you went on vacation for a year, what would happen to that business? And if the revenues and the, and or the profit would, would go way down, then you don’t have much equity value, which can be okay, right. It’s not necessarily to say that OU equity value is better now in a true entrepreneurial sense. It is. If you’re a quote unquote, a real entrepreneur, and you’re trying to grow a business, then that business would operate without you. But when you’re building a personal brand, you’re not necessarily growing a business, you’re growing an income stream. Now it’s possible to do both. And if you, you know, if you work long-term with brand builders, we’ll talk about that. And we’ll show you how how we do it and what we do and how we delineate between a personal brand and a business.

RV: (13:28)

But they’re both good when they’re both important. And, and, and sometimes they compete against each other because sometimes the way that you build the equity value is to give up income and to reinvest money into the business, into hiring more staff and training and operations and policies and procedures and people, right. But if you, if you want income, it’s like, no, I’m just trying to throw off as much income as I can. So it’s not that one is better than the other. What matters is that, you know, the difference between the two and most of all that, you know, which one is most important to you. And that gets back to why we do one-on-one coaching, because there’s not a right answer. There is a right way and a wrong way to execute certain skills involved in running a business and in PR building a personal brand.

RV: (14:23)

But which skills you need, which strategy you deploy D is dependent entirely upon you. So you can’t necessarily just take blanket advice that is out there for everybody and apply it directly to you. If the answer is, it depends. Should you have a podcast? It depends. Should you launch a book? It depends. Should it be self published or commercially published? It depends. Now, do we know how to do all those? Yes. But path you take is dependent upon everything in your life. What you care about, what you love doing, how much money you have in the bank, how much money you need to make, what are your longterm goals? Like, what do you want to happen with the business one day when you die? I mean, all of those are, are individual factors, but you need to understand the difference of the two. And when you, when we take off the personal brand hat, which is really about income, most personal brands drive income.

RV: (15:20)

And we put on the true entrepreneur business hat, which is what Mike McCalla talks about and is really known for. And it’s what phase four of brand builders group is all about, which is building true equity value, not just income value, but equity value. Those are two different conversations. And when you talk about building equity value, it’s ironic that what got you here as a PR successful personal brand, won’t get you there as a thriving, scaling a business with true equity value, because the more the business is dependent upon you being there, the less equity value it has. Now there’s lots of things you can do to mitigate that, or, or, you know, or to maximize that. But you need to know the difference between income value and equity value. And when you’re talking equity value, it’s all about if it’s dependent on you, you don’t have equity value.

RV: (16:18)

So that was really a clear point for me, a reminder, a refresher and just something that was salient that I thought, you know, we need to make sure that that’s clear for everyone including myself, right. Just talking this out and going, yeah. Let’s, you know, let’s always be reminded of, of this long-term impact. And then the third thing that Mike said, which I’ve never heard him say, because it sounds like this is a subject of his, of his new book, but really hit me hard. And it hit AIG hard as well, even though AIG is not here during the debrief, she, she listened to the interview and she loved it. And here’s what he said. He said the biggest challenge that entrepreneurs face is knowing what the biggest challenge is that needs to be fixed. The biggest challenge that entrepreneurs face is knowing what the biggest challenge is that needs to be fixed.

RV: (17:16)

And I think that is fascinating. Right. I, I, and I think that as super, super interesting thought the, and, and I’m, I’m, I’m really interested to see what my, you know, Mike, how he lays this out in his, in his new book. And I think it is super important because if you don’t know, what is the next biggest challenge in your business, then what you do is you dilute all of your resources and your energy and your focus, trying to solve a lot of different things. A lot of insignificant things, a lot of trivial things. And this is where I think the focus funnel from my Ted talk, how to multiply time in my second book, procrastinate on purpose, where we, where we invented the focus funnel, and we presented it, the focus funnel is meant to help people figure out what is my next, most significant thing.

RV: (18:16)

What is the, the most important use of my time today? What is the thing that multiplies my time? And how do you multiply time? It’s very simple. And we invented this concept. Well, we, we, yeah, we invented the concept. We, we articulated it as you, and you multiply time by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. That’s it, that’s the subject of my whole second book, procrastinate on purpose. And, and the Ted talk had a multiply time, which, you know, are both based on this concept. So the focus funnel, which is the tool that we introduced in my Ted talk helps you identify what that is. And I haven’t read Mike’s new book. I’m really interested to see it. But, but I really think that that insight that he shared is super important, super powerful of going, not just solving every problem that exists in your business, but asking which problem is the most significant to solve, which is the next most significant thing, which problem do I need to solve that by solving that problem?

RV: (19:31)

I solve several others. Now I think for most people it has to do with, you know, lead generation and revenue generation. I mean, for most small businesses, that is their problem is their revenue isn’t high enough. They don’t know enough about marketing and sales, which, you know, I would say marketing sales and leadership influence is, is our area of expertise. It’s been our whole career. And that’s why we, we talk a lot about it, but you got to have some system in place now, for some of you, that’s not the case. Some of you have lots of revenue, right. But it’s, you’ve got more of that. The thing we talked about earlier, the top line thinking fallacy. And so your real problem is, is figuring out how do I keep it? And so it’s more about expense reduction and system systemization and, and optimization and reducing waste and things like that.

RV: (20:24)

But all of us need to have some process that we go through, even if it’s just thinking about what is the next most significant problem in my business to solve now inside of marketing specifically. And we’re not gonna have time to go through all this right now, but, but when we teach eight figure entrepreneur, we talk about the eight departments that every single business has, no matter how big or how small eight functions of every single business. And the reason it’s so hard to be a solo preneurs, cause you’re doing all eight of them by yourself, but in the marketing department specifically, which is one of the eight and really in all the departments, data is one of the best ways to know. And so for those of you that have funnels and you have traffic, but you’re not making profit, or you’re not keeping it, or you’re, you’re spending it all into ad spend.

RV: (21:30)

You need to become really, really good at tracking it and using data in what we use is digital dashboards that we set up to report on not only just our funnels, but all of our online traffic, all of our different traffic sources, including free traffic and paid traffic. And by the way, there’s a great interview. You can go listen to that we did with Aja Jaeger and Megan canal from Praxis metrics. We did an awesome interview, just talking about data, but, you know, I would say in terms of tools for you to use, to identify what is your next biggest challenge one, you know, it would just be thinking the second would be the focus funnel. So go watch my Ted talk. If you’ve never, if you’ve never watched it seriously, go watch it. Like it’s 18 minutes. It will. I mean, as humbly as I can say, this it’ll change your freaking life.

RV: (22:28)

I mean, it is, it’s, it is that powerful of a concept. And, and, you know, even though we kind of coined the term, we learned it from studying and profiling, lots of hype ultra performers, but go watch that. So the focus funnel would be your second tool. And then the third tool that ultimately you want to get to long term in every department of your business is using data to tell you what is broken and what needs to be fixed. And you know, so in our phase three experience, we have a phase three topic. One is called high traffic strategies. And that is where we teach digital dashboards. And we talk about breaking down every stage in the, in the funnel to identify where is the breakdown? You, we do a similar thing in that’s in the marketing department. We do a similar thing in the sales department when you create sales pipelines. And the reason you have to create a sales pipeline is again,

RV: (23:27)

So you have these stages, you have these, these checkpoints that you are measuring against and optimizing for. So that’s a lot, those were three, just big takeaways. You know, don’t get sucked into the fallacy of top-line thinking, make sure you, if you’re trying to build income or equity value. And if you’re trying to build equity value, that means that the business can’t be dependent upon you. And then number three, have a process and method for identifying what is your next biggest challenge that needs to be solved? Mike is a I’m in truly, I think one of the smartest guys that I’ve, I’ve met in this space, fabulous interview, make sure you listen to it. Of course, check out his new book that we talk about as well as, you know, profit first that is, is kind of his perennial long tail bestseller. And you can check out more with Mike. Thanks for being here as always keep going. We want to, we want to continue to support you. Thank you for tuning in we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.