Category: BUSINESS

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.

Ep 122: Becoming a Profit First Personal Brand with Mike Michalowicz

MM: (00:06)
[Inaudible]

RV: (00:09)
Hey, Brand Builder 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)
Mike Michalowicz is a new friend of mine, and he is a friend of friends. I actually met him at a mastermind group here in Nashville, and ever since we’ve, we’ve kind of been circling a couple different groups of, of authors and some mutual friends, Donald Miller, John Gordon, but he is the author of a huge best-selling book called profit first. And it is a long what we would call and referred to as a long tail bestseller, which are the books that I really, really respect the most. He also wrote a book called clockwork surge, the pumpkin plan, and then his newest books newest book is called fix this next. So he’s a writer, he’s a personal brand, but he also by age 35 had built and sold two companies. So one to private equity and another to a fortune 500.

RV: (01:59)
So he has the experience of being an entrepreneur and being a personal brand and writing about it. He used to also write for the wall street journal. He’s done a lot with business make-over special as a, as a business makeover specialist on MSNBC. And he’s just a great guy. So anyways, Mike, welcome to the show, Rory, thank you for doing this mask. It’s good to be here with you. So can I ask you about profit first because you know, I kind of, you know, tongue and cheek referred to myself as, as you know, a best-selling author, but I’m always been jealous of the people who sell, who have the books that sell week-in and week-out hundreds of thousands of copies every single week and profit first. It just, it is that book in, in the space of entrepreneurs. How did you, how did that happen?

MM: (02:54)
So, yeah, it’s a great question. I think what, how it happened. So first of all, let me qualify. You know, sellers become so bastardized. Like that’s the one thing I avoid. I got, well, I like now is a perennial popularity. Like, can you have something that’s perennially popular? And to do that when I was running profit first,uI wrote the book and I have this actually on my wall. I asked certain questions to myself. The first question is, will this concept be relevant 100 years from now? And because it’s for longevity, meaning if I wrote a book on like, you know how to advertise on Facebook, the longevity can be six months before they changed the engine again. And that would not qualify for what I’m looking to do. Uand then I put this, does this where on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is this so financial security is, is right there at the base level, needs up there with a breathing air and drinking water and eating food.

MM: (03:49)
So I determined where it is on there. And then probably the most important thing is, do I have a concept that is as fresh or new and perspective? So it’s this it’s this, maybe it’s the same old story, but told in a way that hasn’t been told before, or maybe it’s a new application, something that’s established and profit first is the pay yourself first system. So it’s not a new concept, but that’s always been in personal finance. I think it’s the first book that translated to business finance. So what I saw as it had life address a core foundational need for humanity, and it was, it was something that was was foundational in its execution. It was something that would work and that I think contributes to why it continues to sell.

RV: (04:34)
So that, did you, so talking about that, so one of the things that we described as thought leadership is kind of forwarding the thinking that has been done now advancing the conversation, not just regurgitating it. And what you just said was interesting. You said, it’s the pay yourself first concept, which is a concept that’s existed in personal finance, but you kind of brought it to the entrepreneurial community. Did you do that deliberately? Like, did you actually have that thought of like, Oh, this is a great concept over here that I should bring over here or was there,

MM: (05:07)
You know, what’s so funny in hindsight, so clear it’s like, of course that’s I saw that and I didn’t think about it. Maybe. I didn’t, I’ll say I conceived it was, I needed it for myself. So I was an entrepreneur. You should, you know, you share all the highlights. Really there’s more low lights than highlights and that’s true forever entrepreneurial story. It was in the low lights. I’m like, I was so frustrated. I couldn’t consistently make money. I couldn’t retain it. And I built and sold a couple companies. Yeah, fine. But those companies were never fiscally healthy. I did a really job running those. I was lucky in hindsight to sell those companies really? Yeah. Oh totally. I’m right place, right. Time. Right. Need from the acquirers. But not that they’re like, Oh my God, this guy is a genius. Uthat, that, and other things woke me up to my gosh.

MM: (05:54)
I’ve got to figure this out for myself. So once I had it figured out, I for myself, I said, Oh, this may translate to serving other people. I base it for myself on the payer self source system. Like, you know, how do you make money? How do you save money? And all these methods came up with think and grow rich richest, man in Babylon, you know, books and concepts from hundreds of years ago. And I was like, Oh, I need this personally. But by income sources, my business, let me apply to my business. I started doing it there. Once it started becoming, once it start getting traction for myself, I wrote an article in the wall street journal. And that’s when people started saying, Oh my gosh, I’m doing this. Where’s the book. So that brought about the book. It wasn’t such a deliberate, Oh my gosh, I’m taking an idea here. I’m moving here. I get this kind of, kind of to forming clay. It became that.

RV: (06:43)
So talking about the company. So this is important too. So how do you think the profit first? So not, not the book, but the actual concepts in the book. How do you think those apply to personal brands? Or can you talk about that? Because you know, a personal brand is interesting. It’s like you are both a personal brand and you are an entrepreneur. And so that I think is something that, you know, it’s amazing people talk about how many followers they have or how much revenue they do in launches, how much their speaking fee is. But in reality, how much are they actually keeping can be very, very little shockingly little. Yeah.

MM: (07:18)
Yeah. And it does it, does it add stuff matter? I remember when Twitter was getting popular, a, a, a person of influence in the Twitter realm was bragging effectively about the number of followers they had. And this person said just referenced your Twitter handle. You’re about to get X number of followers dot, dot, dot you’re welcome or die. You’re welcome. And does it really matter? I think at the end of the day, when it comes to financial viability, it’s how much money you’re retaining. So I would say profit first absolutely applies, listen, you may have one follower on your Twitter handle and they send, they spend $50 million with you. Here are the winner

RV: (08:02)
Winner, the winner.

MM: (08:04)
So I don’t know if those numbers matter. I listen and I try to get over my big fat ego constantly. It gets to my eye. And so if I have X number of followers, I’m like I only got mad at God and I’m comparing myself. I fought that same stupid game by realize at the end of the day, only thing that matters is for my business to continue, it needs to be financially viable. And the only, the only factor for that is profitability. If there is no money to live by and the businesses done, it’s all done. So profit first applies. It’s a system of as all these different sources of influence you have, as it becomes monetized, how much are you retaining, which then supports the longterm viability of the company. And also by the way, financial freedom for ourselves, like a profitable company, supports a profitable lifestyle, a lifestyle where you don’t have to worry about bills and you can be very comfortable. And then, you know, when you have that confidence, you can be even of greater service to your clients and followers.

RV: (09:03)
And so what do you think are some of the big mistakes that, that entrepreneurs make, if you can specify them to personal brands like you know, but this is also financial advisors, professional services, direct sales, like these kind of like very micro entrepreneurs and solo preneurs. What are some of the financial mistakes they make that compromise that, that viability or that financial health?

MM: (09:28)
I think, I think the, the lead bait concept is, is misunderstood, are MIS poorly executed. I should say. I think people go too far with it. So I’m very biased toward books, you know, you and I, and a group of authors had a call yesterday, actually just exploring how books work and stuff. And like, that’s, I thirst to understand that stuff. And I think some people publish books as lead bait, but a book, at least from my purview is, is something that has a permanent as permanent as it sticks as a historical document. That for whatever reason, when you say something in the spoken word versus the written word, the written word is seen as gospel. And the spoken word is seen as, as you know, flighting or fleeting. And I think some people put books out there and say, this is my lead bank, you know, free bucks spend $7 for shipping and you get my book.

MM: (10:22)
And I don’t realize, I don’t know if they really appreciate that, that book when someone receives it, it’s going to sit on the shelf for a lifetime. And if it isn’t the best, if you didn’t put your, every blood, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears and soul into it, you’re compromising your brand on the longterm. So it’s a short-term window. I can plop a book on a table and say, look how knowledgeable I am. But when people start to consume this, you actually maybe compromise your brand longterm, short financial gain for long-term financial agony. Then you, then you gotta just keep on kind of popping. Like what’s the new lead bait I can do. I think we give away when we give away free stuff, we’re giving it.

Ep 109: Why Research is Your Competitive Advantage with Jason Dorsey | Recap Episode

AJV: (00:06) RV: (00:07) Hey, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down the interview with one of our best friends, Jason Dorsey about him and his wife and business partner, Denise, via dr. Denise via and their new book Z conomy about generation Z and how they’re going to affect the future of the world of business and all things, personal brands. So babe, what were some of your big takeaways from listen to our friend, Jason, in the professional setting that we do? AJV: (00:40) Now, it’s always so great to get a chance to listen to friends. Cause you forget. Wow. Really smart friend. Wow. You’re so smart. Like you have all these amazing skillsets. So I think that one for anyone who has a cause it’s so fun to get to interview people that you’re actually really close to in life, because as friends, you don’t really get to know all the intimate details of their professional lives sometimes. And this is just such a great chance to be like, wow, like I’m so honored to like get to be in your life because you’re so good at what you do. So anyways, that’s just a major kudos to Denise and Jason for just for being so smart. So cool. We love you guys. So here’s one of the things that I wrote looking at my notes here is that I thought this was so fascinating and I knew this, but it had never really clicked before. AJV: (01:35) Jason talked a lot about, he said the more research that we did over the course of time the more data we collected the more just information that we gathered, the more in demand we became. And I thought that was really fascinating. And he said that what they started to realize is that research, it was their uniqueness. It was what really differentiated them in the marketplace and really set them apart and thought leadership. It wasn’t just a motivational speaker or a funny speaker or a really great speaker. It was like, no, this is founded in data. It’s founded in research. That that means something to how you recruit and hire and lead and train. And in his case, millennials now moving on to gen Z, but that research was their uniqueness. It’s what set them apart. It’s what got them on TV and all these national media spots. It’s what helped them increase their fees is they became true thought leaders in the millennial, the generational conversation that has really been really big for the last 20 years. And now they’re changing that ever so slightly to be on gen Z, which will keep them very busy for the next 20 years. RV: (02:51) Yeah. And you mentioned research it’s, it’s interesting. I don’t think their expertise is so much on millennials. I’m just thinking, Speaker 3: (03:00) Thinking not so much on millennials, but it’s on research, which means that it makes them timeless in terms of it. And, and a Z economy of course, is the new book that is all about this next era and this wave. So that was my big takeaway too, is just the power of research. And it was, I felt a little bit of a permission to when they said that there’s, there’s different levels of research. And so you can start with something basic and then kind of like work your, your, your way up. But I loved this quote when he said success is when competitors have to cite your study because your data is, is so good. So that’s something for us to aspire, aspire to. Yeah. So that was the same takeaway for me. AJV: (03:45) Yeah. I thought it was just so good. And I just, I thought this was good to just kind of sum up that point. And he said that research is what separated them in a crowded market. Right. So for those of you who feel like you’re in a crowded market, looking at research and data as a competitive advantage, I think is is really unique. Okay. Why don’t you go ahead and do your second one? Speaker 3: (04:06) My second one was really just understanding this was more of a generational thing than it was you know, how they built their business, but related to where they were saying, well, Jason said a generation isn’t changing. They’re just bringing who they are into the marketplace. And so you need to know them and that’s that’s just a quick like pivot you need to make in your, in your brain. And as a personal brand, you gotta go, okay, who are these people? I have to know who generation Z is and I need to adapt to them. It’s not that they’re changing for me. It’s just, they grew up in a different world with a different set of belief systems and, you know, politics and technology. And so knowing really who they are and, and not being frustrated, like there’s somehow changing from you, but also realizing, gosh, in order to stay relevant in the next generation, I have to adapt some of the things that I do, some of my content, some of the ways I deliver content to reach that generation. And that was just a, AJV: (05:09) Yeah. Can you talk specifically around video? These people are so used to absorbing information through video that if you really want to reach them, it’s gotta be in video. It’s not photographs, it’s not static post it’s video. I think that was, there was a great discussion around video. So if you’re, you know, a little video shy to talk about who is your demographic and here are you reaching. And if it’s in this younger, you know, at this point, you know, gen Z is all the way up to age 24, right? So they’re in your consumer market to some degree. So yeah, I thought that was great. I’m going to read this a little bit. Cause when I listened to it, I took some really tedious notes. AJV: (05:51) So a couple of other things that I put down here if say this is, I thought this was really smart. The data isn’t quite good enough, you have to be able to translate the data into a story that connects with your audience. And I thought that was really smart. And I think so, so often you think, okay, I need data. I need research. It’s like, I need numbers and I need charts and diagrams. And that’s what you think about with data. And he’s going, no data alone is no good. Nobody just, nobody emotionally connects to numbers. And he didn’t say this, or this is what I heard, but you need an emotional story tied to the data that people can connect with, that they can relate to, that they can see themselves or their company or their audience in. And he said that, you know, just even a media, right? They don’t want you to talk about numbers. It’s what are the numbers mean? Like who are the people? What are they buying? Right? What, what, how does that change? How you do business, that those are emotional things. So the data alone isn’t good enough. It’s how do you take that data and turn it into real life stories that have an emotional connection. That is what will differentiate you. That is true thought leadership. It’s not just getting numbers on a piece of paper. It’s translating those things into real stories with real emotion. Speaker 3: (07:19) Yeah. That’s cool. Thought that data is the starting point of the story and really what people are after is the story. So my third takeaway you actually already mentioned was that gen Z specifically was their language. Their native tongue is video. And I was thinking about those of you that are writers going, okay, well, what does that mean for you? If maybe you’re, you don’t want to be on the camera, you know, or you don’t like to be kind of front and center, but it’s going okay, how can I still adapt? And this came up actually in one of our events, somebody asked this question specifically and there’s some really good collaborative discussion. And what came out of that discussion was going okay, well, if you’re a writer and you don’t like to be on video, you can write and then read your writing and overlay it on top of still images or stock Royal, you know, royalty, free footage. And if you don’t want to read it, you can get a voiceover, you know, like you can get someone to voiceover it, but you can still take the written form of content and produce it into video, which if you’re going to connect with gen Z, that’s probably something you should look at doing so that, you know, hit me. It was like, we gotta go video. Everything has got to find a way to be on video because that’s, that’s who they are. AJV: (08:38) That means more showers or having to do Speaker 3: (08:45) More hairspray. Yes. More hair. AJV: (08:49) Okay. My third one you kinda mentioned it earlier, but I’m just going to touch on a little bit more. I said, you don’t have to hire a research firm to start getting data rich, right? You don’t have to go out and spend thousands of dollars to have your own data to have data. He said, one of the first things that you can do is just start compiling all of the research studies that have already been done in your space. Third parties citing them. But then talking about that as you know, one of your core differences is like, Hey, you base it on this research, you base it on the studies, you base it on this data, you base it on this X, Y, and Z. And that you don’t have to be the one to foot the bill to do all of the research that other people are doing research. AJV: (09:34) Just so other people like you we’ll use it, we’ll cite it and we’ll give them credit for it, which is fine. I just think that was really also insightful of going, Hey, have your trying to create real thought leadership. It has to be more than just a personal story, right? It’s got to be a personal story, tied to data. That’s been connected back to a story and that’s really forwarding the message where it’s really concrete and substance, but you don’t have to pay for it. There’s plenty of research studies and data out there go and compile the most credible ones. He talks a lot about how do you know which ones are credible? It’s, it’s definitely an interview you want to listen to not just to learn about gen Z, which is fascinating. But also just like, okay, well, how do I get in this research game? And what does that mean? And what does that look like? And how can you start dipping your toes in it without spinning? RV: (10:34) Yep. So there’s at least two reasons to go buy the Zee economy. Book one is so you can learn about gen Z and know who the heck they are and how you can reach them. And two is to watch one of the best in the business in terms of Jason and dr. Denise via Jason Dorsey and dr. Denise via who’s his wife and business partner and how they make data, become a part of their brand and learn about it. So that’s what we got for you. Thanks for tuning in buys economy, and we’ll see you next time. Bye. Bye [inaudible].

Ep 108: Why Research is Your Competitive Advantage with Jason Dorsey

Speaker 1: (00:05) [Inaudible] 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: (01:02) You’re about to meet one of the smartest people that I know, one of my best personal friends, someone that I learn a ton from, and I admire tremendously. Jason Dorsey is truly one of the, I think, most respected, true thought leaders in the world. Somebody who’s work defines our world and helps us redefine our world. So he is the leading generational researcher. I think in the world he’s been on 60 minutes. He’s been on the today show. He’s been on the early show. He’s been on over 200 shows. I mean, he’s on national TV on almost a weekly basis and him and his wife. Okay. So Denise via is the CEO of gen HQ and they are a research firm that helps huge companies conduct data driven, you know, empirical analysis on the trends of how generations are buying, selling, working. And they have a brand new book that’s coming out called Z economy. RV: (02:09) How gen Z is going to change the future of business and what to do about it. So this affects you as a personal brand. We’re going to talk a little bit about how Jason and Denise have built their careers up to where they are at now. And Jason was recently inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame. He’s had over 1000 standing ovations and there’s also one of the most dynamic onstage presenters that I have ever, ever seen. So Jason, welcome to the show, buddy. Thank you. Just thrilled and honored to be with you. And I just want to say thank you for all that I’ve learned from you about brand building and developing a platform and really being able to leverage ideas and to influence. So thank you so much for having me on and for your friendship. It’s truly an honor to be with you today. JD: (03:00) Of course, brother. So I think hopefully don’t mind me sharing this. You’re one of the highest paid speakers in the world and specifically among speakers who are paid a lot of money who are no offense I would put in the non-celebrity Speaker 4: (03:16) Non-Celebrity yes, definitely a non-celebrity over here reminded about that, JD: (03:20) But my nine year old daughter every day that I’m not a celebrity. And when I think about why, okay, we talked about a lot of the reasons why, you know, being amazing on stage, you have been in this industry a long time, but I think that your super power is probably research. And of course, Jen HQ you, you the center for generational kinetics is actually the name of the firm, right? So you guys do real research and so can you just talk about like, what do you, what do you do there as a research firm and how do you think that that shapes, you know, or has shaped your speaking career in terms of what separates you from other speakers, authors, thought leaders, you know, et cetera. Yeah, it’s a great question. And so I think maybe to go back a little bit, I got into this when I was 18 years old and I didn’t have a resource like you or, or other groups that could sort of help me to figure out what my path would be to become an author and speaker and a consultant and eventually a board member and so forth. JD: (04:22) So I had to sort of stumble my way through as many of us do. I ended up sleeping on the floor of a garage apartment when I was 18. I was $50,000 in debt. I had 5,000 books that I had self printed and no idea what I was doing, which is probably a good thing. Cause I may not have gotten that if I do what I was doing, but, but out of that, I sort of took the traditional path of in order to be an expert, I should write a book, which I still believe is one of the absolute best ways to get out there. It’s not the only way, but it’s a great way to do it. It shows depth of understanding and, and sort of a body of work or around a question or strategy or topic or something. So I wrote this first book and then eventually I started speaking for free. JD: (04:58) And then eventually I started getting paid a few hundred dollars and then more, and then I guess it was two or three years later, I was keynoting event. It was me and Barbara Bush, 5,000 people in arena, fireworks, going off. And, and to some degree I sort of thought I’d made it, you know, my mom was there. So that was really helpful. So that was my mini celebrity moment. And then after that, I realized that people would pay me to speak and that there was actually a business here to be a brand at that particular time talking about my generation, which we eventually called the millennials. But back then we did, and it was just young adults. And so I would go when I would speak and write and do all that. And I did that for many years, wrote a bunch more books. And then I ended up on 60 minutes and it was sort of one of those watershed moments, certainly for me in my career, but also around the topic of generations. JD: (05:46) Because until then it wasn’t nearly as hot of a topic, but that 60 minute episode really got the attention, particularly of executives, entrepreneurs, baby boomers, frankly, people that had money and influence and were makers. They then called me up and said, you know, we’ve hired your generation, Jason, they’re terrible. Their pants are falling off. You know, their moms here, they won’t work on their birthday. Like, you know, what’s wrong with you. And so I sort of became the flak jacket if you will, for my generation. And in doing that, I’m speaking at all these corporate board events and just, you know, doing what I do. And I’ll remember distinctly, I was at this one boardroom and I was, I was meeting with the board and the CEO of this public company. So it’s publicly held company trades on the New York stock exchange at the time basically said that millennials were terrible and head and they just had all these problems with it. JD: (06:34) So I not knowing any better when afterwards. And I asked their head of HR, I said, would you mind sending me the data so I could understand the problem that we just heard about because I want to make sure I can contextualize it. Cause then maybe I can try to, to solve for, to come up with some ideas. So they sent me the data and I looked at the data. I’ll never forget it. And the data didn’t match what the CEO had just said. And that was a huge deal because I, you know, I’ve served on the board of a public company. I serve on lots of private company boards right now it’s unusual that a CEO would make such a bold claim that isn’t grounded in their own data. Right? And so I went through the niece, my wife, who has a PhD, and I said, Denise, this is the strangest thing. JD: (07:16) You know, it just was with this company. They’re amazing. The CEO said this, I got the data set. And then the data does not match what the CEO just said. I said, what do you think we should do? And she said, we should start a research company. She said, because then we can give people great data, accurate data, and then they can make better decisions. And if we control the data, if we, if it’s our data, then we’re the people that they’re going to keep coming back to in order to help them grow their business or whatever the problem is you’re trying to solve. So that was how we created the center for generational kinetics. And Diddy’s being a professional researcher, became the CEO, ran up all of our research. And then we started doing more and more research. And we started doing research in the U S and then we started doing research outside the U S multiple languages and what ultimately happens. JD: (08:00) And I think this is so important for people who want to build their brand is the more data that we collected that was our own. The more people came to us for that information, for that context, for that insight. And so when you want to separate yourself in a market, one of the things I’ve learned to do is to be unique or different from everybody else that now I may not be better. I happen to think in most cases, our solutions are better, but I’m certainly different because we’ve now done more than 65 generational studies around the world. We’ve worked with over 700 clients, including many of the biggest brands in the world. And every time we work with clients, we get their data. And you can imagine now when somebody comes to me from, I don’t know, pick an industry life insurance and says, Jason, you know, can you help us think about the generational impact on the life insurance category and what our sales professionals need to know? JD: (08:46) I can say absolutely. In fact, I know exactly what works to sell life insurance, to millennials, gen X and boomers, and why one generation tries one technique to sell and that work with this generation of customers and vice versa. But then I can take that and apply it to automotive. I can apply it to physicians and healthcare. I can apply that to technology B2B enterprise company. So all of a sudden what we did, and it was not intentional. What we did is the more data that we created, the more research we did, the more we stood out in the market and you asked, you know, how do we charge the fees that we get that we receive? It’s because people are hiring me because we bring this data. This research has insights to everything that we do. So even if I don’t do a study for someone, the fact is I’ve already done 15 studies in automotive. JD: (09:28) I don’t have to do that. So they already know what it was, and I’m still getting data from all these different sources. And so for me, like when we wrote this economy book, what I think makes it so powerful. So we have all this data about gen Z. Who’s now 24 years old, as they relate to, let’s say millennials and gen X and baby boomers. And so for people out there, let’s just use the book as an example that wanted to let’s say, recruit or motivate or retain gen Z. They don’t have time managers out there to go try a whole bunch of stuff and see what works. They want to know what works. So we’re able to give them that, cause we’ve already proven it same with marketing or sales or building trust or driving influence. And that’s what people pay us for. They pay us to bring context and data driven insights and help them solve a specific problem. Right? I’m not a raw speaker. I’m not, you know, I, wasn’t a coach of a professional football team. I don’t do that. I help people understand how to solve tough generational challenges. And right now, like in our case, gen Z and millennials are upending. Every major industry, huge issues being created and they need to be solved so that leaders can move forward, grow their own personal brand, but also move their business forward. And so that’s how we got into this. And what was left RV: (10:33) You think for you that they’re all causing ruckus. Cause that’s key that keeps you in high demand, screwing everything up JD: (10:40) For everybody. Well, and that, so let’s take that comment. Cause I think it’s a really good one. So, so the perception we hear from executives all the time is, you know, Jen’s Dean, they’re driving all this change or just all of this change. They’re creating all this problems. And argument is no, they’re not. They’re just doing what they’ve always done. It’s all they’ve ever known for them. This isn’t changed. This isn’t new. This is indifferent. This is purely all they’ve ever known in terms of how to communicate what their work styles are, what their motivations are. What’s important to them. And they’re bringing that into an environment. The environment sees it as change, but gen Z and even millennials, they don’t see it as change. It’s all they’ve ever known. Why are you calling me, send me a text. You want me to do bring a checkbook? JD: (11:23) I don’t have one. You know, like these sorts of things are real deal. And so in the book in particular, we try to humanize with a bunch of Jensey stories, but also have managers who are sharing their personal stories, working with Genti marketers, talking about how they’re using social media and why certain things work and certain things don’t. And I think that’s the biggest issue for me. So we’ve sort of built our brain on the idea that we separate generational myth from truth. That’s really the key, right? We separate myths from truth and that’s what most people want are smart. If they can just get the truth, they’ll make a great decision, but they don’t know who to trust, where to go for the information so forth. And so we can bring that to them. So as a brand, you know, my brand evolved originally. JD: (12:04) I was a writer, writer wrote my first book and then I became a speaker. I didn’t become a speaker out of strategy. I became a speaker cause nobody bought the book, but I could eventually I got offered a free lunch to speak. And then I got offered dinner to speak. And then I got paid on a hundred dollars, whatever. And so, so all of that. So I went from author, really being passionate about a subject to being a speaker and then trying to figure out how to communicate well, right? 3000 talks around the world to all kinds of audiences. I mean the same kind of big stages you speak on. And then from that going into research and every time I’ve done that our fees have gone up, demand has gone up, influence has gone up the media, calls us all the time because we have the data. And so for me, when I think about building a brand, for example, this economy book is the way we’re going to base our brand for the next 10 years, gen Z is not going away. So do this and put it out and build on it. RV: (12:53) I want to talk about gen Z specifically in a second, because I think it’s, it’s you know, they are a massive force in the world, which is going to affect all of our businesses before we do that though, in terms of research. Okay. So, so let’s say that I’m, you know, I’m not a generational speaker, but I speak on something marriages or health or money or something. JD: (13:20) What, what does research, what does research mean? RV: (13:23) Like really mean and how can I, how can I do something semi substantive at lease and semi, you know, like I think there’s gotta be different levels of research, right? Like one thing is like, Hey, I did an Instagram poll to my followers. Another might be, Hey, I actually conducted a survey and I found some audience, another level might be, I hired some research from, and then maybe the next level is I hired an actual researcher that was on my team. Like, can you just walk us through like the varying levels of like what counts as research? And, and, and to what extent we really need to be able to do it in order to kind of cite it as fact and truth and not just like, you know, my Instagram poll. JD: (14:07) Yeah, absolutely. So I think there’s a, a pretty big difference between data and research. And so a lot of people confuse the two. And so for let’s take your Instagram poll. I actually think social media polls are great way to drive engagement, but they don’t represent really anything other than the people who happen to follow you more than likely or you’re advertising to, and then sub some subgroup of those that happen to be so entice that without being paid any money and they have nothing else to do that they’re actually going to complete the poll. Right. And so if you think about who it represents, I would argue probably doesn’t even represent your followers. It represents some subgroup that at that moment was interested enough and didn’t have something else going on that they wanted to participate and receive nothing in return for it. JD: (14:47) Right. So it’s helpful. It’s interesting. You want to share it and it’s a great data point, right? It’s, it’s really interesting. And you’ll probably find a lot of things that will help to inform future things. We wouldn’t consider that research, but we will consider it interesting. And I wouldn’t say that it’s wrong or bad. It’s just one source of data. But I think the problem is people do an Instagram poll or a Facebook poll, or they email their list and then they put it out as infantry search. And that I think is where you, you can, it’s a very slippery slope for us, generally speaking quantitative research, which is primarily what we do. We’re always looking to have a very low margin of error usually plus, or minus 3.1 19 out of 20 times. And so if somebody comes to me and says, Jason, I want to know your methodology. JD: (15:29) I want to know your sample. Then I absolutely want to be able to share that with them, help them to understand it. And I always say in my talks, if people are citing data, but they don’t tell you where they got it from, or they don’t tell you the methodology and sample be very leery because they could have just pulled their friends. They could have just asked their family. They could have asked a group that they knew was going to answer in a very specific way. So sort of on your, your hierarchy, if you will, of what you provided. So, you know, polls and things to your friends, which by the way, that’s a great way to understand your list and a great way to understand your followers. There’s probably even, Speaker 5: (16:00) Yeah. There’s other uses there’s other uses for that data point. JD: (16:04) Absolutely. And if it’s for internal insights in particular, I think that’s fabulous. What you don’t want to do is go start publishing that as if it’s research because anybody who’s an actual researcher, we’ll, we’ll fight, we’ll poke holes in it and that’s it like somebody like us, we have to be careful. We have PhD researchers because other PhD researchers are looking at our research. Right. And so we know that that’s sort of the, just the way it works. So you have the poles like you talked about, and then you could say go up. Like, here’s what I would do. If somebody came to me, cause we work with lots of big name celebrities and we do this for lots of companies that the easiest way to understand what’s going on in an industry that you want to be an expert in is to go and aggregate third party research. JD: (16:43) What I mean by that is you go from find research from all different sources where they did actual studies and then you put it together. And now you sort of have your one page five page, 10 page, 50 page source document of all this great research that other people have paid for, but they’ve released it publicly. Like for us, most of our research, we never released publicly because our clients want to use it as a competitive advantage in the marketplace. And then we have some that want to be really positioned as thought leaders. And so they want to release the research and bring something different to that conversation. And we help them get tons of media and get on TV shows and all this kind of jazz. But, but if we’re going back to the personal brand side, then what I would say is you want to start with this sort of landscape research where you take whatever you can find out there. JD: (17:27) And if you have no budget, you just find all the free stuff and you sort of synthesize it together, you cite it correctly. And now you’ve got this foundational piece of information, right? That you can then refer to going like a step up from that. You could join, let’s say a syndicated study or some other study where there’s a whole bunch of people chipping in, in order to do a really great study. That’s pretty common. And then you can jump up if a mortar, which is to what we do, which is customer. And we do quantitative research, qualitative research, we do mixed method, all kinds of things. But the key there is I like on the quant side, we’re doing pretty large studies, a thousand completes 2000 completes 5,000 complaints. We’re doing it around the world. We’re waiting it to something like the, let’s say the us census for age, gender, geography, and ethnicity or whatever it is. JD: (18:07) And then we’ll do like maybe I just want to find out about people who I don’t know started college, but didn’t finish or people who are small business owners that are millennials and female, right? Whatever those are, I would do studies built around those. And so, as you want to, frankly, as yet to spend more money, you can do much more complex studies. You can do more complex analytics with the data and so forth. But fundamentally what I would say to somebody can mean said, look, Jason, I got no money. Where would I start? I would say, great. What I would do is I go find all the publicly available research. You can put it together in some source documents, cite everything correctly, which is really the key. And then you can start to talk about it, cause it doesn’t have to be your data as long as it’s released publicly and you cite them appropriately. JD: (18:48) I mean, our research gets quoted all the time and that’s how we get so much media. It’s shocking how many other people use our research and their work. I mean, part of the reason we even did this economy book is because we do this study called the state of gen Z. We do it every year and have done it for many years. And that’s really sort of the source study for people trying to understand gen Z. And it was getting so much publicity that we ended up doing this economy book in many ways, because we wanted to go really deep around those core questions and strategy. So I personally believe that research is one of the best ways to separate yourself, particularly in a crowded market. And like there’s, there’s competition everywhere. It doesn’t matter what your topic is, motivation, strategy, generations, leadership, whatever. Right. And so anything you can do to distinguish yourself in a credible way, particularly through research, I think is very valuable. And I believe that if you want to work with executives and entrepreneurs and people that are making big bets, the more data and research that you can bring, the more you’re going to have trust with them because they will know that you know what you’re talking about. And I think that’s really important, even more so where do you RV: (19:50) Nine? I mean, that’s really a powerful, that’s so practical and powerful is just to like, even for your own confidence that you’re not just sharing random thoughts off your head, but it’s like, Hey, this is based. Okay. JD: (20:02) Some, some statistically valid RV: (20:05) Work, even if I, if, even if it’s not my original work, where do you find third party research? You just go to like Google and type it in or is there JD: (20:14) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What I always suggest to people. So we do customer research. We do custom research for brands who do it for companies who do it for lots of big institutional investment groups. We do it for tons of people. So that’s our core business, but if somebody wanted to not use us, so let’s say, I, you know, they say, I don’t want to work for the center for generational kinetics. I’m not interested in, you know, whatever the topics are, where we specialize. I want to go hire somebody else. I would just go on Google and would always tell people is get three bids. You’ll be stunned, how different the pricing will be for the same exact thing, dramatically different pricing. If you’ve got five, you have five. And so then you sort of got to work through and say, okay, what’s going to get me what I want. JD: (20:56) What would I have confidence in the deliverables they’re going to provide? Are they going to help me to understand it? Or do they just write a survey and send me the answers? Then I got to go figure it out. Like our specialty is we write really great questions, but that’s what, that’s what we have so much business. And then we turn it into really powerful deliverables. And so what happens is you can do a great study, but if you can’t tell a good story based on the data, then it doesn’t matter how great the study is because people won’t be engaged to it. So you really got to be able to write great questions, have the right sample do all the things that you do and sort of good research hygiene. And then from there, the next step is turning it into that story based in the data that connects with the people you’re trying to reach. JD: (21:36) Maybe those are executives. Maybe those are entrepreneurs. Maybe they’re meeting planners, whoever it is they are, but they need to be able to understand why that, that research is important to them. Why do they need to take action on it? Why should they engage with you? And that I think is where it starts to get very powerful. I think people very often go cheap on research because they think, Oh, I just need to do a study. And I’m going to throw a few thousand dollars at it or something. And then they’re frequently disappointed. They say research doesn’t work, but it’s sorta like you. And I joke about, well, if you pay for, you know, an inexpensive speaker and you’re not happy with them, you probably got what you paid for. You know, that there’s not always a direct correlation, but oftentimes there’s enough, particularly if they’ve been around for a long time, but then RV: (22:15) Aggregating third party stuff. Like you’re saying that you can just search like the state of gen Z. You guys make that available just on your website and stuff like, so you’re saying you can find credible third party research just to help you understand your own space just by basically searching around and then looking for in their citation. What’s their margin of error and their sample size and that kind of stuff to make sure you’re looking at a valid JD: (22:40) Peace. Yeah. All great research will share their methodology. So if you go on our website, which is gen hq.com, GE and hq.com, you can click on state of gen Z. You’ll see our state of gen Z research studies there for those who are still sort of unsure what this looks like. You can see lots of research done for other clients. And so anytime something’s publicly available on the web, it usually says, you know, here’s our methodology, but also says, here’s how this can be used. If you want to use it, make sure you cite us. You know, if you’re going to publish it, make sure you link back that kind of thing. And by the way, you want to do that because that’s the right way to do it. And so yeah, I would go with the third party research first. I think that that’s statistically valid, put it together and provide it to people in a way that’s very helpful for them to understand something. JD: (23:20) A lot of times people think that research is about solving problems. Like we happen to use it for solving problems, but it may just be understanding a situation. Sure. If you don’t have understanding, you can’t drive towards that resolution, you can’t innovate. And so it brings a different perspective. You know, I’ll use millennials or gen Z as an example, lots of our clients say they know gen Z or millennials, and then they start to describe them. I’m like, well, that’s your kid or your grandkid, but that’s not the 80 other millennials, you know, in the U S or RV: (23:51) That’s not a statistically valid sample. It’s not, JD: (23:54) It’s a sample of one that, you know, you happen to have a lot of emotional tie to. And so we always joke that, that a lot of our clients have a proxy for the generation and that representative of the generation is their child or grandchildren. And usually the one that’s most frustrating for them. And so they’re stunned when we say, you know, gen Z is the fastest growing generation in the workforce. Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce, millennials outspend every other generation last year, millennials were the number one generation to refer their friends, gen Z or the key group of trendsetters right now for the first time, the youngest, which is gen Z. RV: (24:29) So let me, let me stop there. Cause I wanna, I want to officially transition here to the, to the, to the Z economy book and to gen Z, because I, I think that, you know, this expertise and the data you’re talking about. So if you put your hat on, so let’s just steal a little bit of free consulting from Jason Dorsey as personal brands that are, you know, communicating about a variety of topics, but we’re kind of like establishing thought leadership and things. What are, what are the things that we need to know about gen Z, that the data is telling you that you go okay, if you’re trying to reach this audience and why we either should or should not care about reaching the audience, but just like, what are some of the macro trends? I mean, obviously that’s what Z economy book is all about is like in the state of gen Z report. But I think if, as you apply that to personal brands, what are some of the things you think we could be on the lookout for? JD: (25:25) Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll show you, I’ll share with you some things that you should do and what to avoid. So in terms of things to absolutely do, like for us, we know a gen Z, they’re very values driven in terms of how they engage with brands and they don’t just engage. They join a brand. And so if you’re going to go out and you’re going to promote whatever it is that you’re, you know, is your personal brand or your larger brand, it’s very important. You share the why behind what you do. And I don’t mean like the Simon Sinek, why, I mean the, you know, how are you going to make the world a better place? How are you helping your local community? How are you working to combat some of these social challenges that gen Z is very much connected to this and we’ve seen it over and over and over in our research around the world. JD: (26:04) So it’s very important to have that mission, that thing that you’re owning, that you’re saying you’re tied to, it’s not just about making money. In fact, gen Z is more frugal than millennials. Gen Z has a higher savings rate. They’re looking for coupons and discounts are entering the workforce later than ever before. They’re going to graduate college there than ever before. 12% of them were already saving for retirement at age 22. Like, I mean some pretty staggering numbers for a generation so young. So if you want to message to them, and again, this is 24 and under you want to be very thoughtful that you’re in alignment with their values, whichever ones, you know, obviously they gotta be your values, but you want to make sure that they’re in alignment and you’re talking about things that are going to resonate with them. And then you to walk the talk on that, you can’t just say it. We saw so many brands over the last 12 months get completely blown up on social media because they said one thing and then they didn’t do it, or, you know, and so that lack of alignment gen Z will call you out so fast for that. So I think that’s really important. The second is RV: (26:59) They socially aware, is that like you would say, they’re kind of like socially aware, JD: (27:04) Well, they’re, they’re aware of social causes, right? They want, they want to know that you’re about more than just making money. And so much of personal branding unfortunately, is like, here’s how to make money or get rich or do this. And then people turn around and try to sell that. Like that’s interesting for gen Z. In fact, we would argue that gen Z would prefer to a side hustle versus trying to Steven start their own business. There’s a bunch of reasons for that tied around risk and money. But, but the idea here is you want to be really clear what you stand for so they can understand and decide if they, if it resonates with them. The second we know is they are very much into video and not into reading. That doesn’t mean they don’t read because they do read. But in terms of them taking the effort to engage with the brand videos where they start, that’s where we see things like ticktock doing so incredibly well or Snapchat and even Instagram. And obviously you’re the expert on videos. So that the video is what pulls them in and drives that sense of engagement reading for many young people is work doesn’t mean they don’t like to do it. It’s just work. And they’re used to just getting so much content through video that if you’re not providing a video, you’re missing them, all the posts with photos and all this stuff. Interesting. But you really want to pull them in. RV: (28:08) Oh, so not even phone, not even photos, you’re saying like donate, don’t think of photo and video is the same video is different. JD: (28:16) Definitely. Yeah, absolutely great distinction video. We find much more effective than photo or an image. They don’t like Photoshop things that are fake things that are perfected. That’s why you see brands like Arie who’s in this economy book doing so well with gen Z, where they’re showing like real images of real women, these kinds of things. So that a real desire for sort of rawness, I think is very strong with them. But we also see when we look at gen Z is if you are trying to sell them something, they need to know they’re getting a good deal. Now that’s important because they are very fiscally conservative or practical with their money. We see that they use coupons, they have this high savings rate, they get money for their birthday. They put it away and then ask their parents for money to go buy stuff. JD: (28:54) They really there’s a lot of that in the book. Does that mean that it reflects all gen Z? No, because our belief is generations or clues and not a box, but they’re powerful clues that do three things. They allow you to connect with build trust and drive influence. And if you can do that at a high level, you can grow your brand faster, but we also see what gen Z, if you want to engage with them, you have to understand their life stage. Remember they’re doing everything later than previous generations. That’s getting their driver’s license later in any other generation and into the workforce later RV: (29:22) Boggles my mind, my, my niece, like she waited like a year to get her driver’s license. And I’m like, everyone I know. Was there the day JD: (29:33) That you were eligible for a driver’s life RV: (29:35) That blew my mind? JD: (29:37) Yeah. Well, th that the concept of freedom, which is underlying that the, that for other generations, your driver’s license was your passport to freedom. Lose your ability to leave your home. Well, gen Z, we find don’t need that for a variety of reasons. We could go into all those take the rest of the time, but, but fundamentally they don’t attach the same thing to a driver’s license. And so if you have a different view of it, then you’re engaging with is different. Even owning a car, sounds like work and expense, but you don’t have to do it in a lot of places. So all of that, that’s why I say, you know what? Work with millennials. Tell brands this all the time, but we’re moving millennials. Doesn’t work with gen Z because they’re not millennials 2.0, I mean, they are completely different. They don’t remember a time before social media. JD: (30:16) They’ve always been able to do everything through, by sliding a finger on a screen. I mean, it’s fascinating. They’ll never write a check. They’ll never have a landline at home. All this stuff that’s sort of millennials started and was new and different gen Z doesn’t remember anything, but that in fact, gen Z does not remember nine 11. And that was one of our biggest discoveries. And that’s when he got here. So yeah, I mean, this generation is so different, more diverse than millennials. So in the book, a NC economy, we talk about this because if you can bring this accurate context, then you can figure out what to do. But the problem is so often we start with our own and then we apply it to them. And that’s where we misspeak. RV: (30:55) That is fascinating. I mean, yeah, just some of those things that you just said, like nine 11 and driver’s license. I mean, those are, you know, these like capstone moments in our life that don’t even, they’re not even on their register. So the way that we live and think is completely different from how they live and think, and it’s not that they have changed. I love what you said early on about they’re stepping into our environment. They’re not changing. It’s who they is, who they have been. Awesome. So Jason, this was like, man, I have to have been listened to this, like several times, just to pull out the part about how to do research and think about that. And then also gen Z, where do you want people to go to connect with? You obviously does economy book is coming out, you know, about this time. And so you can go find that and learn more about how we can take our personal brand and connect it to the trends that are coming with gen Z. But where should people go if they want to connect with you personally? JD: (31:56) Yeah, sure. Definitely. If you want to go check out the book, if you buy it on Amazon and you email us at [inaudible] dot com, we’ll send you all the free video courses that we put together. Denise, neither really, really good in terms of connecting with us personally, you could find me easiest way to find me is on Twitter. You can also just join our newsletter. That’s when we share all of our best research every month, you can sign up for [email protected]. And if you want to read more about the book and different things, you can go to Z economy, Z C O N O M y.com. I really look forward to connecting with everybody. You know, if people are part of your tribe, Rory you know, I I’d love to connect with them. So please feel free to reach out. RV: (32:36) Yeah, well there you have it friends. That, that is what it sounds like. And looks like when you have real data backed insights as research. Jason, thank you so much for, for this. And Kurt, you all go follow Jason, check him and Denise’s books, economy. We’ll link up to that in the show notes. Jason, we wish you the best. Thanks for being here. My man. Thank you, Rory. Congrats.

Ep 107: From Mentors to Millions with Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06) Hey, we’re back with the recap edition of the influential personal brand, breaking down this interview that we did with our good friends, Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm about their new book, which I’m excited. It’s coming out right now this week. If you’re listening to this live as this episode airs, so let’s get right into it, babe. Why don’t you kick us off with your, your three takeaways? Well, one, and then I’ll do one and you know, AJV: (00:34) I know how it works. Yeah. So my first and biggest takeaway is that your personal brand is a business. And if you don’t treat it like a business, it will never be one. And I think so many people, at least that we interact with come into this, that they have this passion, I’m going to have a message and they want to build a personal brand, or they want to grow their personal brand. Without the context of that is a business like you are now entering into the world of entrepreneurship, which means you have to know how to acquire business. I E sales and marketing. You have to know how to collect payments. You’re going to have to know how to outsource staff. You’re going to have to know how to create content. You’re going to have to have a backend system, which means you’re going to have to have technology. I’m not to mention there’s going to be an investment, right? There are all of these things to create the infrastructure of how a business runs. And that is the same thing as building and monetizing your personal brand. And I loved how they talked about it. And they’re like, they’re, they’re the same, a personal brand is a business. So you must treat it like one. RV: (01:44) Yeah, that’s good. And, and it’s interesting to see someone so successful at business, Kevin now investing so much into his personal life for his own personal brand. And I mean, my first big takeaway, clearly, obviously the whole discussion about their book is about the power of mentors. And I think specifically, I thought it was so cool. You know, when Kevin listed off these mentors, it was listing off big ones, but then, you know, he talks about us and he talks about Russell Brunson. We’re both younger than him. And so I thought that was so cool. Just his open humility about the idea of having a doesn’t have an a and I mean, I feel honored to do it cause he’s, he’s incredible. And then also, also Mark, Mark is also a client of ours and also somebody that I would view as a, as a, as a mentor, but who is mentoring you like who’s pouring into your life right now. Who’s teaching you that is outside of your spouse. Somebody that’s like helping guide you AJV: (02:52) And believing in you RV: (02:55) And challenging you and, and warning you about things to look ahead and inspiring, you know, part of your vision. So you got to have a mentor and I, I actually think, you know, that’s kind of like what our business is in a way. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s coaching and strategy, but so anyways, I just, I love that. And I thought that was super humble. AJV: (03:15) Yeah. That’d probably stuck out to you because you have tons of mentors. RV: (03:19) Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I’ve my whole life has been since you were little. Yeah. I mean just mentor, always multiple mentors at any given point. That’s a good, that’s a good point. Yeah. I mean, I am who I am because I’ve had so many mentors. AJV: (03:35) I think it’s really hard to find mentors. Right. I Rory talks about having mentors all the time and I am when I turned 37 this year 37, just a couple of months ago, RV: (03:48) Chicken you’re my young spring chicken. AJV: (03:50) Yeah. Well that was for as long as possible. And I thought it was really interesting too, because I knew that you were going to say that because you’ve had so many mentors, but I gotta be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever had one solidified mentor in my life. And I’ve had a really hard time about finding people that I want to be mentored by. And maybe that’s just because I have a mental block about it, or I haven’t tried hard enough, which is probably part of it, but I’ve instead invested so much more into like conferences and courses. And it’s like, I’m at the point in my life where it’s like, I really want a mentor. I was like, I’ve gone to the conferences and seminars and courses. And I love those. I actually really, really enjoy that. But I also, I know that I need a mentor. AJV: (04:33) So I’m actually really genuinely excited about this book and some of the resources that they’ve offered, because it’s like, actually I’m going to investigate that. And I think that takes really intentional effort because I don’t think you can just find one. I think there is a process to finding something and some one that is worth investing your time into, because it’s not just your mentor’s time, it’s your time as a mentee as well. It’s both people’s times. And I think so often we talk about the mentor, but Hey, the mentee is also has to be committed into investing all this time and energy into it. And perhaps, maybe that’s why admin, I haven’t had enough time or been willing to give enough time into it. But I think that’s something that you do really, really well side note, RV: (05:20) But that’s good. Yeah. That’s interesting to have, I would say we’re on opposite ends of the spectrum and how number of mentors that we have had like yeah, AJV: (05:30) Yeah, yeah, totally, totally separate there. Which is interesting because my second point was the value of having a mentor, but what to look for in one. And that is really what I picked up on. And I loved what he said, and I had never heard this exact color quote before, and I loved it and I wrote it down and it, he says, Ziglar said this, and I think it was Mark. He mentioned this on the interview. He said, you do not by falling in water, you drown by staying in the water. And I thought that was just really, really good. And he said, he said, that is really important that you find a mentor who has experienced failure. That was awesome. And I love that because I think so often we searched for the people who’ve always done it. Right? And it’s like, well, one that’s impossible. AJV: (06:22) You can’t have, you cannot be Uber successful and have always done it. Right. And if so, I would just caution that. And I just, I am more interested in learning from the person who’s been to hell and back. I’m more interested in going, what happened? How can I make sure I don’t do that? So tell me what tips and tools and techniques and mindsets and tell me what to do to make sure that doesn’t happen as well as what to do, but then to also have the emotional and mental capacity of resilience and of just grace and fortitude and all the things that come with struggle and hardship and failure. And also by someone who lets you fail, I’m going fail. Failing is a part of the process and it’s okay. And in fact, I encourage you to fail do it more and do it often and then learn from it. AJV: (07:12) What do you do with a failure? But I feel like you can really only do that. If you are learning from people who are willing to say, I failed, I fail all the time. It’s a daily occurrence for me in some arena of my life and that’s okay. And it’s okay if you fail too, it doesn’t have to be perfect and right, the very first time that you do it. And I love just that whole concept of you need mentors who have failed that have not always gotten it right, but who have figured it out along the way, because you will not get it right every single time. And that’s okay. I just thought that was right. RV: (07:48) That’s great. Yeah. I mean, having someone there to give you perspective to help you pick yourself back up when something goes wrong, cause you know, it will. And that was really, really cool. So my, my second takeaway which I, I actually talked a little bit about in the interview is, is from Mark, Tim of, of just, you know, he actually incorporated his family, which I thought was interesting that it’s this mindset that you run your home like a business, because here’s the truth. Anyone who runs a household runs a business like running a household is running a business. There’s a constant, never close. Yes. Just a daily flow of things that happen in cyclical nature over and over. And it needs strategy and it needs systems and it needs money and it needs, it needs resources. It needs time and planning and, and some of y’all out there like, you know, mostly me, I’m gonna say mostly, I’m going to say mostly you mom’s like, you’re running, you’re running at least two businesses. RV: (08:51) Like if you’re managing a personal brand and you’re managing a, and you have a job, like you got three businesses going on, like you, you have to get help and, and think about it in that way and have permission. I think, to think about it that way. Because sometimes we think, Oh, it’s just like my home life, but it’s like, no, it does take so many people and resources. And, and to have them say it directly like run this like a business, do what you would do the way you would organize a business, do that with your family. And I just thought that was powerful and really a good reminder and just clear permission. AJV: (09:32) Yeah. Well, I feel like if husbands and wives, or even if you’re a single parent, but if you guys treated it like that, I feel like maybe that would incline more men to step into what are the functioning roles of running a household. Maybe if you were able to relate to it more. And that’s what Mark talks about. He goes, I was having a hard time. I was giving my best to work until I realized no, it’s like, my family is like running a business. My household is like a business. So how can I take what I learned at work, what I do at work and bring it home to better improve our home life and family life and all the things. And I thought that was really good. I love that. I knew. Yeah. I knew like way back when that was something that he talked about, that we were just in awe of then, and still now. RV: (10:19) And I think there’s a lot of men that would go, ah, run a family kids. Like I don’t know what to do, but if you go, Oh, run a business and just apply those things at home, you go, Oh, okay. I see that. I could do that. Yeah, he did. He’s looking at him here. I’m sitting here realizing I’m like, crap. I have a bunch more stuff I could. AJV: (10:39) Yeah, no, no. Not at all. Keep going. Yeah. So my third one is the concept of collaboration is this as something that Kevin talked about, kind of close to the end of the interview. And he, I think you asked him like, what’s one thing that you would tell to aspiring personal brands. And he said, collaborate, like, don’t forget the power of a borrowed audience. Don’t get, don’t forget the power of the indirect connections that you get. Don’t forget that the power of two is better than one and five is better than two. And I, he talks about all these collaboration projects that he has been on and is on RV: (11:18) This whole career is basically one giant AJV: (11:21) Collaborations. He is the prime example of what that looks like. And I think that hit it home to me because collaboration is one of the core six values that we have here at brain builders group. And I hope our team doesn’t mind me sharing this publicly, but over the summer with our core team, we did these what we call core value check-ins and they rate themselves and we rate them and we say, all right, well, how are we doing on our core values? And collaboration was fifth out of six, was down on the list. And everyone self identified, like I’m not good at collaborating. Like I’m not, I’m not good. I’m a doer. I’m a, you know, I’m a high D task-driven a Thai person get stuff done. And it was like, I’m just a, let me Mark it off Melissa, go, go, go. And it was a very big aha moment to us to be like, Whoa, we have a, we got to slow down and create the space and time for synergy and collaboration and conversation and brainstorming and strategizing because that is what it is. AJV: (12:28) And it’s the concept of somebody else seeing something that you can’t see. And quite honestly, that is why Brett brand builders group exists, why we exist. It is the whole reason that we exist. And yeah, we can act like mentors and coaches, but really we’re collaborators on your personal brand. And it is time to step back and go, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? Or how do I do more of this? Or how does someone else do it? Or why does it feel like there’s some secret out there that everyone else knows that I don’t know, like who hasn’t filled me in on this. And I just feel like that is what we do, but yet our own team would be like, yeah, we suck at this. We need to do so much better. And I just kind of feel like for everyone, like if you’re not collaborating with someone, why not? And what are you missing? Because you’re not. RV: (13:23) Yeah, that, that is so huge. And it kind of comes back again to the power of mentorship and partnership. And that was my thing too, was, was partnership because it’s interesting. You’re talking about it from clients at brand builders, like as part of what we do is collaborate with you, but also brand builders exist because of our collaborations with our affiliate partners, like a huge percentage of our revenue, like 60% or 60% of our revenue is 50 to 60, 50 to 60 comes from someone else introducing clients to us. Like we go on their podcast or they do an email blast or some other campaign that we do. And because we offer one on one coaching, most of our affiliate partners, don’t like, they’re not in the business of one-on-one. And so we’re able to bring something to them and their audience that they can’t provide. RV: (14:14) And because we started the company from scratch, we didn’t have an audience, we have we’re, we’re rebuilding our audience. So they’re bringing the audience. And I think this is Kevin’s whole thing, which is always stuck with me is he said, the keynote negotiation is a win, win, and he will actually turn down deals because people are giving him too much of a percentage because he’s going, if you’re wanting me to take that much percentage, you’re expecting me to do more than I can do, and you’re not getting enough reward for what you have to do to make this successful. What I mean, that is a, like just a different way of thinking. And that’s why he’s like, you know, he’s, he’s not really a shark. I mean, it’s ironic that he was on the shark tank because he’s, he’s a collaborator. He’s not really like a shark in terms of where that term comes from. He’s he’s going, how can we partner to create something bigger together where we both win and what a simple philosophy that has AJV: (15:14) This concept of, you know, being equally yoked in the sense of, Hey, we have equal risk and equal responsibility and equal reward or relevant risk to are not equal per se. And yeah, but it’s like equal in the terms of, we’ve got both. We have something to win or lose here. We’re in it together. Yeah. It’s fair. I love that RV: (15:35) Anyways. I mean, it’s not every day you get to talk to someone who’s like sold billions of dollars of stuff and been on shark tank. AJV: (15:42) I’ve been a part of hundreds of companies hundreds. RV: (15:46) Yes. And then Mark, talk to me upon so listen to the interview, really, you know, some great wisdom in there, you know, you can tell how much we endear them or are in yeah. Endure them. AJV: (16:03) We’re talking about my life. And so I’m like, I’m personally so excited about this new book mentor to millions. They’ve got awesome resources. So make sure you check out all the links and just, you know, go, go get a mentor, RV: (16:20) Go get a mentor. Thanks for being here. Catch you next time. [inaudible].

Ep 106: From Mentors to Millions with Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm

Speaker 1: (00:04) [Inaudible] 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 honored and excited to bring back to you to have people that I would consider mentors and to friends, to people that we have worked with. Kevin Harrington, most of you probably know because we had him on, when we originally did our influential personal brand summit, he was the original shark on the show shark tank. He is a co founding board member of EO entrepreneurs organization, and really the inventor of the infomercial, which has led to him selling over $5 billion in global sales. You know, these are products like Billy Mays and Jacqueline, Elaine, and Kim Kardashians and 50 cent and George Foreman. And he’s just amazing. And then my other friend, Mark, Tim, who you’ll, you’ll hear his story right now, we’ve Mark is someone that we met through the Ziglar family, and I know that’s how him and Kevin met and he is a serial entrepreneur himself. RV: (02:01) He has started more than a dozen companies. Several of them have grown and been sold. He has spoken professionally for more than 25 years. And I consider Mark a personal mentor because of the way that he runs his family life and the way that him and his wife and just, you know treat their family like a business. And that’s probably the biggest thing that I have taken from Mark over the years. So the two of them have teamed up to write a book here that is called mentor to millions, which has we already know has pre-sold thousands and thousands of copies. It’s a fantastic book from two amazing people. So guys, welcome to the show. Hey Rory, thanks for having us. It’s great to be here. Thanks buddy. So let’s talk about how y’all met because obviously, you know, this book is really interesting. You write it from you know, about the power of having a mentor. And I think in this relationship, Mark plays like the mentee, Kevin plays the mentor. But how did you guys meet? Because the three of us all share sort of a, an unusual, Cool and unique bond MT: (03:07) Yeah. So I’ll jump in and do that because we actually met through our mutual mentor. So I had Zig Ziglar as a mentor when I was a young man and Kevin had Zig Ziglar as a mentor, as a young man in guests who else had [inaudible] better than you Roy. So so this is the, the book wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for zigs mentorship. So we, we, we owe a lot to him and Tom Ziglar wrote the forward, but that’s the why we had to write this book because the, the, the book’s title is mentor to millions. That’s not millions of dollars. That’s millions of people impacted. So I didn’t know, I didn’t know Kevin. Okay. I didn’t know you, but because of our mentorship of Zig Ziglar, even after his passing from the earth, we all knew the children Zig Ziglar. MT: (04:00) And it was the children of Zig Ziglar that introduced me to Kevin, that introduced me to you. They introduced Kevin to you. And so you see impact of zigs legacy is now rippling on, you know, way past his passing on the earth. So that is how impact, that’s the kind of impact that we’re talking about, the exponential impact of mentorship. And that’s why we had to write this book because that’s the secret that crazy awesome successful people have is they had mentors in their lives. And would you say that, so, so Kevin for you who were RV: (04:34) Of your other mentors. So like, I know Zig you talk about cause secrets of closing the sale and you, you know, you guys have done a lot with that, you know, who are some of your other mentors in addition to Zig? And did you have a lot of mentors growing up? I know you’ve been a mentor to so many. KH: (04:50) Yeah, good question. And I think I go all the way back. I kind of joke a little bit, but it’s it’s for real, that I had my first mentor when I was 11 years old happened to be my father Charlie, because my, my father was, was a bartender. I’m one of six kids and there wasn’t a lot of money and, and great surplus as I was growing up. And, but my dad said, Hey, I’ve saved up enough money. I’m opening up my own restaurant. Harrington’s Irish pub. So I was in there at 11 years old, not just washing dishes and serving trays of food. I was in the back with him counting the money at the end of the day and looking at the suppliers. And it was pretty amazing how he brought me shoulder to shoulder with him. We’d go out and pick up supplies. And, and, and of course I was going to school also, but grade school at the time, but make a long story short. My dad was, he mentored me to start my own businesses when I was young. So I started a business when I was in high school and then another one in college and, and et cetera. But so as I KH: (05:58) Got out of, out of getting into the, the TV business and sold some of the businesses I started during high school, one of the first big mentors for me was, was somebody that I needed desperately. Cause I built a business in this SMTP space. I had a lot of orders that were sitting, but I couldn’t fulfill them because I didn’t have the inventory. So I needed capital to have inventories. And I went to bank after bank people say, Oh, go to the bank and get lines of credit, get financing. Right. Well, there was no assets for them to lend against. I was a young entrepreneur. This is 35 years ago, but I got a former bank president who was retired that came in and said, let me tell you the deal I’m going to do. You got five banks that turned you down. KH: (06:48) I’ll get you financing probably from one of those banks that turned you down. I’m going to get you a $3 million line of credit, which is what you need. And then after that’s all done, there’s no cost. That’s straight mentoring me, helping you because you deserve it. You need it. I want to help you. And then at that point, if you want to do some business with me, we can sit down and talk about it, but I’m going to have brought you an amazing gift in the process. 90 days later, 3 million bucks in my account, we took that and grew the business. I mean, we went 10 fold from there and it was just unbelievable because I was a great marketing guy, but I needed cash. I needed capital and inventory. So this, this was an amazing step for me. And of course, beyond that, people don’t know that before Russell Brunson ever started ClickFunnels, I was in this as seen a TV business. KH: (07:41) And I said, I’m losing all my viewers TV viewership is dropping. So I reached out to Russell and Russell gave me some great tips on digital marketing. And I, I actually came out of that meeting with Russell and sold a bunch of my at semen TV assets. Cause I realized the handwriting is on the wall. This is a business I’m on TV today. But now I say today, that was 10 years ago today. It’s digital, it’s Facebook, it’s Instagram, LinkedIn it’s you know, so I’ve had some great transitions from Russell Brunson to Zig Ziglar to my father, to the banker that was retired to even getting a, a couple of days with Richard Branson down at the famous Necker Island. He gave me some really powerful advice. So mentors have been near and dear to me. And to this day I still have quite a few in my life. So RV: (08:35) Let me ask you about this, Kevin, cause this is interesting. You mentioned Russell Brunson you know, and he’s younger than you and he’s much younger than you and you also came to Veda years, I think that’s right. Well, you and your son and your team and Mark came to Vaden Villa for a day of strategy stuff with us and you know, amazed me was, which is, and it amazes me to hear you say it now that you’ve not been afraid to have mentors younger than you. So, you know, how do you pick a good mentor? Cause I know this is part of the book, the book, again, mentor to millions. What are some of the things that you guys use to, to pick mentors? Cause age obviously is not necessarily the key criteria. And I’d love to hear from both of you on that. KH: (09:24) Mark, go ahead and I’ll give you my thoughts from, from my perspective, MT: (09:28) you know, when, when I looked at Kevin, he, it doesn’t matter. The age matters. Do they have wisdom and experience in an area that you need? And, and more than anything, Kevin can speak a lot on the mentor side, I can speak a lot on the mentee side as well, because you know, Kevin is my mentor and that’s the journey we take in the book. But one of the things that you should be looking for in a mentor is number one, have they failed? You know, because it’s hard to learn from somebody that hasn’t had some failure in their life. Wow. And that’s big. We talk a lot in the book about failure and how you respond to failure and you need mentors that know and have failed because you’re going to fail, but you need to know you can lean on them and they’ll pick you up and they’ll help you learn from that process. MT: (10:13) It’s not about failure. It’s about how you respond to that failure. You know, our mutual mentor Zig said, nobody drowns from falling in water. They only drown. If they stay in the water, you know, he knew you’re going to fall down, stay there. And so you need mentors to pull you up. So you’re looking for someone that isn’t a one hit wonder that doesn’t just have one way. And the other thing you look for in a mentor is do they listen because you need them to hear you out. What are you trying to accomplish in this world? What’s your unique gift to the world and let them listen long enough to then know how to really pour into you. And so when that happens, again, it doesn’t matter if they’re younger than you or older than you. I have to tell you right now, I’ve got younger mentors that are mentoring me in technology. MT: (10:56) I mean, I, you know, I just, I can out myself right now and say, I didn’t have a cell phone at 25 years old. I was in my late twenties. I got a cell phone. So the things that are happening in technology are just intuitive auto Metronic for these young people. And so I have young people that are mentoring me to be able to use technology in a much more robust way to get the message out there. So it’s really do they know something. And one of the other things that people look for in mentors are getting a lot of phone calls right now from folks that are building up a little business. They’re getting some sales on Amazon and some places, and now they’re like, Oh, okay, we need capital. Or maybe we should exit. So finding a mentor, that’s been through a few exits because too many people would come on shark tank and they just want a lot of money for this teeny little percentage of their company. Right now I own equity and a private may never KH: (11:54) Be able to get my money back. Right. So finding an exit or a way to, you know, to monetize your investment is an important thing in today’s world. So and there’s a lot of roll-up companies that are buying up the Amazon type entities and things like this. So there’s a lot of good folks out there that, I mean, I, I know a neighbor bought a house and came in and found out, Oh, he’s a lawyer and he’s 35 years old. And he, and he used to work for major league baseball, but he’s selling, he’s starting Amazon businesses, buying Amazon businesses and crushing it. So he’s in his fifth or sixth acquisition right now. So there’s a very smart, young mentor that could help a lot of companies that are out there in the marketplace of, of monetizing an exit strategy. Well, and so most of them RV: (12:48) People listening here are our entrepreneurs in some sense, right. It might be their side hustle or something, but do you think mentorship applies directly to like personal brands and people specifically that are like in this space? Cause a lot of, I think a lot of personal brands are like both of you in that they achieved something and now they’re kind of moving into more of like a teaching role. So do you, do you think that this message still applies directly to them? Or, or how, or is it, is it different from how you would mentor someone in a corporate environment or just in a classic kind of entrepreneur entrepreneurial setting at all? KH: (13:30) Well, you know, I think certainly personal brands, it is a personal brand is still it’s a business. It has, it needs customer acquisition you know, metrics. So you’re building funnels, you’re acquiring followers customers. Yes. So and, and again, you, you mentioned my age, so, you know, it, it Russell Brunson’s way younger than me, but here a lot of the, the younger generation has tuned into the world of digital and much more powerful way. So, so yeah, I do believe that even on the branding, I mean there, there are, what are the outlets that personal brand should go after me now there’s something new with LinkedIn, LinkedIn live and there’s obviously Facebook live came and was very powerful for, for quite a bit and still is so you know, so one of the questions for personal brands is where is the best place to spend your time focus your energies? And if you do have some dollars to invest to invest. So you know, it, I try to keep myself on the cutting edge of what’s happening out there in the world. And I, you know, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality type things, I’m already KH: (14:52) Starting to explore ventures like this that will you know, maybe be a little bit pioneering where you get your legs, blood running down your ankles kind of thing from, from being too early in the market. But I like experimenting with things like this and I think sometimes mentors can help steer you in certain directions. RV: (15:15) Yeah. Yeah. And so Mark for you specifically, you know, in terms of mentoring, personal brands, like it’s interesting cause being a personal brand, it often happens like in the cracks of time, in your day, like in between meetings, you’re checking social media or you’re like, you know, you don’t often have like blocks of just days at a time unless you’re writing a book. But outside of that I find that there’s this real temptation to have it creep into taking over your whole personal life. And one of the things that both of you have done is not just scale businesses, but you know, like I know Mark specifically for you, you study this a lot about scaling your, your, your life and running your household like a business. Can you just share with us, that’s been a one way, I think that you’ve mentored me directly. Can you share a few thoughts on that? And you know, if it’s specific to personal brands or not, but just that we have this temptation to always be like on social media, doing DMS, doing comments, doing posts during dinner, you know, and after hours and in bed and like, how do you, how do you deal with some of that? MT: (16:26) Yeah, it’s a challenge. And so, and I gotta tell ya, just to be candid with everybody listening, I got it wrong longer than I got it. Right. I can only share what it feels like to get it right, because I know what it feels like to get it wrong. And I was there building the brand of company, a personal brand, 24, seven, always on my family saw me and you know what they did, they resented what I did. The book starts out with me at the end of my driveway, having one of the most pivotal moments of my life, a driveway moment where I realized I had everything upside down, that I was giving my family and my last and my lease instead of my first and my best. And I didn’t know what to do about it. I just knew it was wrong. And I was always searching like all these entrepreneurs and brands for this perfect work life balance. MT: (17:10) And then I figured out it’s a myth. There’s no such thing as work life balance. You’re never in complete balance of work and life, but you can integrate. And that’s what we talk about in the book. What if your family becomes your most valuable business? What if the business you’re going home to is the most valuable business you’ll ever own ever operate everything and be a part of what is the most valuable brand is your family. Okay. Then versus the one you’re going to. And by the way, I took it to the next level. That day in that driveway, I came home, I incorporated my family. I actually created a brand out of my family. We have a logo, we have a mission statement. We had meetings on Sunday nights. And what I did was I started taking everything I knew to do in business and started applying it at home. MT: (17:56) So if you’ve got a great personal brand, create a family brand, one of the coolest things we ever did was do a family logo cost is $99 on 99 designs. And we had 185 designers submit designs for our little family logo. It was Epic. And we were sending surveys out to aunts and uncles and cousins and friends, and they were voting on it. And the family was so proud when it was done and we had this common ground. And so the bottom line is if you’re building a family brand and it’s all consuming, integrate your family, involve them in that family brand involve them in your personal brand, tell them what they’re doing, what you’re doing, integrate what’s happening. Let them be a part of it, be transparent with it. And they’ll not resent. It they’ll want to dive in and help you do it. And that’s a huge difference. And that’s where we want to be as moms and dads, husbands, fathers, wives. We want our family to embrace us as a business and brand not resent it. Wow. RV: (18:59) I love that. And I mean, being at the book is about being a mentor. You’re actually mentoring your family first. Like by the, by the, by the work of doing that is, here’s a real, this is funny. So a few nights ago, AJ and I are putting Jasper down for bed, you know, Jasper has now so Jasper’s three, like three and a half. He was baby last, basically the last time when you guys got to meet him. And he said you know, basically he was like, what are we doing tomorrow is tomorrow family day. And we said, no, tomorrow is Workday. And he said, Oh, okay. I go to work. And AJ said, do you think you want to work with MT: (19:39) Best in the business one day Jasper? RV: (19:41) And he says, yeah, but I’m going to need a cell phone for that. RV: (19:48) So he’s negotiating his package already, which I love. Kevin, last, last little question just for you. What are some RV: (19:59) Things that you, you know, advice that you would give to personal brands? I mean, you’ve been on TV, you, you like, you’ve played this, you know, such a big role in the world, 30 last kind of parting thoughts that you’d have for anyone that kind of aspires to have the kind of worldwide impact and reach that you’ve been able to have. KH: (20:16) Yeah. So let me get this pandemic has shown a lot of interesting developments and what happened at the very beginning, I started getting a lot of phone calls, people wanting to collaborate and, and because time to challenge you hunker down, but reach out, talk to your mentors, talk to folks. And I, I believe that collaboration is good, venturing together, doing things together. So I’ve been, we’ve been doing Mark and I outside of the book. We we’ve been doing KH: (20:48) A lot of things together, but I’m also with other organizations with Roland Frasier war room with Joe Polish’s genius network and Mike Calhoun at board of advisers, you know, these collaborative efforts and even writing books. I mean, Zig Ziglar created amazing content, you know 30 some books and dozens of languages. I collaborated with the family to relaunch some of those books in, in partnership. So so in fact, with, with this one, Rory, but this was a book that was rereleased secrets sale with Kevin Harrington shell. And by the way, Zig has 4.7 or 4.9 million followers on Facebook. So you know, when you collaborate, you tie in to the network of the followers of the collaborator that you’re collaborating with. So if I just, I believe in, in creating lots of content, putting it out there, joining groups, LinkedIn groups writing books, writing lead magnets, and, and just continuing to push and build the brand. But this is a great opportunity to be able to reach and collaborate into some really powerful networks followers with other folks. I love it. RV: (22:09) A mentor to millions is the name of the book. Where do you guys want people to go? You have some amazing bonuses and stuff. MT: (22:16) Yeah. We have a lot of amazing bonuses and stuff that they can do as well. But the biggest thing we want to share, if they go to Kevin mentor.com, Kevin, and I want everybody to develop the habit of mentorship. So we’re giving away 30 days of mentorship and that’s above and beyond. The other bonus is just something Kevin and I came up with and said after 30 days of seeing what it’s like to have mentorship, and some of that will be library. And so, you know, so we’re 30 different areas of mentorship in their life. We know after those 30 days, they’re going to want to raise their hand and say, I need a mentor in my life always. And so Kevin mentor.com go there. That’s where your mentorship journey. RV: (22:56) Well, I love it. Collaboration, mentorship. I’ll never forget Kevin. One time told me that the secret to negotiating is to make sure it’s a win for everybody. That’s how you know, it’s going to be a healthy partnership. And we appreciate you guys so much. We’ll put links to all that. The book has mentor to millions. Y’all go get it. Let us know on social. What you thought about these guys, guys. We wish you the best. KH: (23:19) Thanks, Rory. Always a pleasure

Ep 101: The Battle Against Reactive Busyness with Juliet Funt | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, good news. You just listened to the 100th episode of the influential personal brand podcast. HOOORAYYY pretty amazing to start a brand new podcast and get to a hundred episodes, it’s exciting for us. Hopefully you enjoyed it. So the interview was with Juliet Funt one of our good friends and like always, we’re going to be breaking it down for you here, give you the recap kind of cliff notes and just our takeaways of, of what it meant for us. So why don’t you kick us off first, babe? AJ: (00:43) I think my biggest thing was more on her personal brand, which is just the importance of having white space. I think all of us are plagued by the life of busy-ness and what’s next. And how much can I fit in versus providing a little time to think process brainstorm, strategize, and I love what she talked about. It’s just like how many of us have time in our calendars to think, just to think me with nothing to do no emails, no podcasts, no projects, no calls, no meetings, just white space. And I think that’s amazing because so much of our creative time happens during just blank space. Right. I just, that’s such a great term. And I just, I think out of everything, I love that the most of just making sure that every single day your calendar has white space to just think, to create, to imagine, to just be in what you’re doing. And I think that that’s hard that actually takes quite a bit of discipline to do that versus, okay, great. I’ve got five minutes. How many emails can I check off? Or how many of this can I do? And I’m totally guilty of that. And just building in white space. I love that. That was my, that was by far my biggest thing. RV: (02:05) Yeah. I mean, that’s a big takeaway of mine too. It is, you know, the way she describes it, like it could even just be this interstitial sip of space. It doesn’t have to be like a 30 minute or a 60 minute block necessarily, but I think the interstitial, yeah. AJ: (02:24) And he knew I was going to ask that didn’t you? Right. So even when she was saying it, I was like, interstitial RV: (02:32) Fancy. AJ: (02:33) I need to figure out how to work this into conversation RV: (02:38) The day here, Brand Builders Group interstitial. Not really, but I kind of, I’m kind of guessing, but AJ: (02:46) Taking it and being like, Oh, I can repeat this. RV: (02:51) Here’s the, here was the thing in terms of, you know, like for me, I think I, I almost feel like a slacker if I stop and pause and just like have nothing. I’m like, well, you’re not being like I’m not being productive. And the way that she described it was like, if you’re busy every second of the day, you’re not allowing yourself to catch the brilliant innovations. Like you’re not allowing yourself to catch the big ideas and the big creative moments. And so it’s almost like having that white space, if you’re a personal brand, it’s essential, like it’s a part of the creative process. And so having that permission, I just, I just thought that was powerful, powerful as well. So my second big takeaway was really about her lifestyle and I thought it was interesting to me that, you know, she’s almost been two years. RV: (03:47) Her family have been gone from the United States for two years, living on the road, providing, you know, a whole income funding, their team, and being able to do everything virtually. And, you know, even if that’s not your dream or my dream or our dream, like the idea of saying, of having that as an option in your life, like having your business set up in a way that it can be flexible and virtual like that, and still be able to finance a great living. I, I thought that was really cool. And, and also a great example of her living out her uniqueness and actually doing the things that she talks. AJ: (04:29) Yeah. You know, it’s so funny because I was listening to this podcast and for like a whole minute, I was like, Oh, that sounds so good. And then I remembered that my kids are one and three, and then I had hot flashes. I was like, Oh no, no one had this idea. Maybe when they’re older. Yeah. But it was like one of those moments, I’m like, Oh, this is awesome. And then I was like, Oh, not, not for one and three year olds. Yeah. I love that too. And I just, I think that’s the power of where we kind of are in today’s world and creating a business that allows you to do whatever you want to do. So even if it’s not traveling, just the concept of creating a business that fits your lifestyle. My second one I thought was just a very kind of like high level takeaway, but I loved how she talks about how she was so far along. AJ: (05:23) She is so far along in her career and is just now launching her first book. And that people just assumed she had one because she is a successful speaker and has this business. And of course you have a book. And I just think that’s really hopeful and introspective for so many things of you can be so established as a personal brand, without a book. You can also be super established with one, but you don’t have to have one to make your Mark. And I just think that’s really great for all of you who are like, Oh my gosh, the thought doing that just seems daunting. Well, don’t do it. There are so many other ways like she has been incredibly successful up until now and now is just doing the book. So I just, RV: (06:09) Yeah, again, that’s interesting, an interesting permission that it’s like, there’s multiple ways to do this. Like there’s not just one way to be successful as a personal brand, as a speaker, as a whatever you influence or whatever you want to call it. So I like that. The other thing that I actually liked was one of my takeaways, which is kind of similar to this which is sort of different than what we preach a little bit at brand builders group. Not really, but she said you have permission to be iterative and speak on lots of things as a way of finding it. Right. And so that’s for those of you that if you’ve been to our, our kind of our flagship first event is called finding your brand DNA or strategy day, that is where we help people find their uniqueness and figure out like, what were you uniquely designed to deliver? RV: (07:01) Which I think is still powerful. But I also think what she’s saying is powerful that, you know, absent that kind of clarity, you can learn by trying and by testing some things out, hold on, hold on, hold on. I know you’re like dying to like get in here, but and, and even, I’m not so sure that I love, like I personally kind of follow the idea of speak about lots of things at, at one time, but I do like the idea of being iterative and going, Hey, I’m going to do something and I’m going to be great on that. And then I’m going to reinvent it and then I’m going to reinvent it. And then I remember, so I really liked the iterative idea that even if you’re, even if you’re going after you, you, your uniqueness, it doesn’t have, you don’t have to sign a stone tablet that says, this is what I’m going to talk about the rest of my life, which were a great example of that. We are in a new season, AJ: (07:50) Cause you kind of started with this is contrary a little bit to what we say, but it’s really not. Because she said it’s like speak on many things, but once that, but one at a time, one at a time, and I think that’s the key it’s like, you cannot be a wellness and nutrition speaker and a leadership speaker and a sales speaker and an economist at the same time. That just makes no sense. It’s like, maybe you could speak on fitness and wellness and nutrition, but those are all like lumped together. But I just think now over time, maybe you start as this and then it evolves into this and then into this. And that’s what I think you were saying and what she came around to saying too, it’s wasn’t like, you’re, you’re speaking on a body image and marketing at the same time. That’s, that’s not what happened. It evolved into that. And then into another thing, and I think that’s a natural process of just finding your niche and then reinventing I think that’s all really natural. I knew you were going to say that. RV: (08:53) And, and the other thing about that that made me think of is just like, you know, what brand builders group, we don’t teach people to only talk about one thing. We teach people to have a very clear message and that message can be applied to multiple different, multiple different things and angles. So anyways, that, that, but again, that was kind of a different perspective. So what was your third takeaway? AJ: (09:12) I think my third takeaway was just the general conversation of how you grow into your personal brand. I just think that, so for so many people you just have to get started, right? And it’s such a great reminder that many times, your first speaking engagement or your first 100 sometimes will be free, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do it. And hers, you know, she was doing this a lot until she got paid $750 whoop right. Big paycheck that it’s like, this is all a part of the journey. It’s all a part of the mission. And she’s been doing this for a very long time and it’s just now doing her book. And I love what she said about that component, which is if she had written this five, 10 years ago, it wouldn’t be the book that it deserved to be that you needed to wait until this moment for her. AJ: (10:01) And I just, I think that’s so important for us all to like, not feel pressured by what everyone else is doing. And if we can just like stop the comparison game and go, well, I have to have a book or I’m going to no, no, no, no, you don’t. You do it, as soon as you feel called to and not until and I think just like listening to your own internal guide on that is so important because there is, there is no secret recipe for so many of us. It’s just, what do you want to do and do it at the right time and at the right pace. And I just thought that was a good reminder of just the growth pattern of how she started her personal brand and her career. RV: (10:39) I love that. And I, I, she, I know that she wouldn’t mind me saying this roughly, but the other thing is she got a very large, the largest book advance. I know of, for, of like a first time, a first time author, because she, she did it right. And she built it and she waited until she felt like now is the time. And she, now she has a huge platform. And so there you have it, there’s, there’s multiple ways to do this. You can figure it out. It can be done. Don’t compare yourself to what other people are doing. AJ: (11:09) Yeah. I love this all the time about, it’s like, don’t compare your step one to someone else’s step 1000 and it’s so easy to do. And maybe you thinking, Oh, first time author, but she is not a newbie. She is not a beginner. I think those are all in context of like, Oh, first time, like, okay, well that, that’s very broad and context of like first time author, but that does not mean newbie. Right. So I just think all those things are RV: (11:37) Bama was a first time author too. I think Speaker 3: (11:41) Oland content content, AJ: (11:43) I think again, just don’t compare your step one to someone else’s stuff. RV: (11:47) And hopefully you’ll stay here as a source of encouragement and education. We’re so excited. Hey, thank you for all the reviews. I was checking out the reviews. Thanks for sticking with us a hundred episodes. We’re just getting started. We’ve got so many great people for you to hear from, but we’re glad you’re here. We want to follow you and continue encouraging you on your journey. We’ll get you next time. Speaker 4: (12:13) [Inaudible].

Ep 100: The Battle Against Reactive Busyness with Juliet Funt

RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that 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) I’m so excited to introduce you to one of the coolest people ever here. Juliet funds a story just as a first of all, I’ve known her for years. I met her in the national speakers association years ago when I was this little runt kid, she’s an amazing performer. She has spoken at the global leadership summit, which is like the largest speaking event in the world multiple times. She’s the CEO of a very successful company. And she works with a lot of the fortune 500. So her expertise is around something called white space, which you’re gonna, you’re gonna hear about and we’re going to talk about it and the company is white space at work. But you’re gonna tell us a little bit about her story. So one thing to know, she just got I don’t know how to say this. RV: (01:50) A very awesome, awesome book deal with Harper Collins, juicy, juicy. Yeah. So it’s coming out. Yeah. So we’ll maybe talk a little bit about that. The other thing is she has the last couple years, or several times in her career, she has built her business while living abroad with her family. And she has lived that dream of being able to speak and write and let you know, travel with her family and see the world. So she’s just incredible and had to bring her on. And so Juliet it’s, it’s good to chat with you. I have been called different things, but JF: (02:26) The coolest, so infrequently one of them and I’ve always wanted to be cool. So I’m really, I’m super excited about this one. RV: (02:32) Well, yeah, so I mean, you are cool. I mean, you do cool stuff. You’re your content is fantastic. I think that’s super relevant. I want to, I do want to hear about that, but I, I want to start by your story about how you got into the industry. I think a lot of, a lot of people listening, you know, they want to be a speaker. They want to speak at big events. They want to be an author. They want to travel the world. They want to maybe work with the fortune 500. Some of our clients are more on that, like kind of corporate track, some are more entrepreneurial, but you’ve been able to do so many of those things. And can you just like, give us a little bit of behind the scenes of how did you get started and then how did you end up there and then like, how do you see the world now in terms of your personal brand? JF: (03:23) Yeah, so I started, I really started my speaking career when I decided to be a theater student because the performance elements that I learned when I went to Northwestern and thought that I was going to spend my life with pinner and Shakespeare and Shaw have actually been the secret sauce of everything else that I did in my career. So I tell people constantly whatever you’re about to do to build your career in any aspect, go take acting and theater and improv and voice lessons first, because there’s something about creating a performer self that then follows you around and amplifies everything else that you do for your entire career. And I was just lucky that I accidentally ended up thinking I wanted to be in theater and learning all of those things in college. And, and I did it for a little while. It wasn’t a right match for me, but then those skills sort of became part of my kit bag that I took with me everywhere else. JF: (04:16) And I was really lost in my twenties. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn’t one of those people that found it early, I did catering. I was what’s called a food stylist, which is when you take a little tiny tweezer and you make food beautiful for photo shoots. I’ve always been really into that. And along the way, I started volunteering because I had an eating disorder in my twenties and I spoke on some panels. So, sorry, where’s that off? It’s not even going off now. So sorry. I spoke on some panels. People asked me if I would speak on panels for eating disorders and it was just me with three or four other people, personal testimonial. How did you get better? What did it look like? I was very young and something happened when I was on those panels at those little folding chairs and folding tables at high schools and colleges, where I realized that people leaned in when I was talking in a way that seemed different than other people. JF: (05:18) And it seemed like I enjoyed putting together the arc of thought the stories connecting with the audience. There was something there and it was different from acting because it was getting to be myself and it wasn’t being another person. It wasn’t having to pretend that I was another person. It was me, but still in front of an audience, there was something kind of magical. I just got a little tiny goosebumps of just that feeling of I get to be me, but I still get to perform. And so speaking became an Avenue for that. Now I put it back aside for years and years and years, and I was still doing some volunteer work. I did some talks in colleges and high schools, and that was the beginning of my paid career, but I was working my job as sorry, when you first RV: (05:59) Is this, like how many people are in a room here? Like when you’re first starting. I mean, I have to assume, you know, like some of the events you speak at now or 7,000 people in an arena, and you’re like up there doing your performance when you started, I’m guessing it was quite a bit different than that. 12 people JF: (06:19) For $750. I remember this one eating disorder talk. When I first started getting booked to be paid, to go up and talk about body image and women and media. I was writing content and I was expanding beyond personal testimonial and this little kind of funky high school way up in the mountains in Colorado that paid me $750. Cause a friend of mine, Scott Greenberg, who’s another speaker. We were volunteering at the same place. And he said, come up and got me my first gig. And that was, that was that one. And then I very quickly evolved out of youth and education evolved out of the topic of food, started talking about media, started talking about over-scheduling of teenagers, which was the crossover topic because these kids were so busy, they were busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and Hey, their parents were busy and their administrators were busy and everybody was busy. And that became the very, very early seeds of whitespace was looking at why are we so overloaded? Why do we keep moving this way? Why don’t we have time to think and pause and breathe and appreciate. And that really quickly took over everything, all the food related body related image stuff dropped completely away. And that became my topic, which became the seeds of white space. And then, yeah, RV: (07:33) That Peter’s early, like the early, like you cry. That was pretty much like your first pivot became the foundation, which you’ve pretty much stuck with of just like, over-scheduling just that concept of being overloaded, you know, just busy over-scheduled. JF: (07:50) But I tell speakers any, and people creating a brand. It actually took me years to get to the point where you’re describing this as a fast pivot. So when people come to me and they say, I don’t know my topic yet. I say, speak on everything in the sun for five years and don’t even worry about it. Don’t even worry about finding the lane cause you might want to be in the lane for a while. Don’t don’t marry the first guy, a kiss, you know, just that get, stay in their play, try different topics, commit to something and then know that it’s going to be iterative and give yourself permission to tell everybody you’re one thing. And then be another thing two days later, this is just so important. I think. RV: (08:29) Interesting. so then over the course of time, like why do you think like a lot of speakers kind of come and go and I’m using speakers just cause that’s kind of the way that we kind of interfaced and met. Do you, do you see yourself as more of a speaker, a consultant, a trainer like an entrepreneur? Like how has that evolved? Cause it does sound like you started as a speaker. JF: (08:57) Yeah. The first, the first 15 years was a speaker. Now the last 10 years has been as an entrepreneur. And I actually had sort of a victory of sorts last year where I spent 14 months in a row where I made no money from speaking. And for me, that victory is that I I’m ready. It’s been 20 years. I love speaking. I’m enjoying different things. Now I’m enjoying writing. I’m enjoying running a company I’m enjoying figuring out where our philanthropic dreams are going to go. And so I feel like I don’t need so much of that anymore. And it was a, it was just a victory in terms of business to be able to sustain ourselves 14 months, no speaking, because speaking is a very lucrative part of our revenue model. And it’s also the most lucrative part of our lead generation model for the things that we sell as a company. So you pull out speaking, you realize, Oh my gosh, all other lead sources suck compared to speaking because there’s something about being up there. The people that you meet are already enthralled with what you’re talking about by the time you even move into a conversation of, can we help you? So you take all of that out for over a year. It’s way more lost than just the revenue loss. RV: (10:10) Yeah. I mean, that’s a, I guess those are the blessings and the curses of a great have a great have a great speaking business. And so so let’s talk about that a little bit because you, you, so it’s interesting that you did that 14 months ago, like for 14 months, a couple of years ago, and now in a COVID world, everybody’s doing that JF: (10:35) Speaking disappeared, RV: (10:37) You know, as a model, it kind of disappeared and you were already traveling and I know, you know, travel, you know, we’ve talked about this. This is kind of a sensitive thing. JF: (10:47) Yeah. Let me actually, I’m just before you get to travel, let me just, I feel like we left our well, we left our friends a little bit disjointed in the middle of a story because we’re having so much fun jumping around, but let me just finish. So youth and education led to talking on overload, which led to about 15 years, speaking on this concept called white space. We can talk more about that in a minute. And then at some point a client said, can you scale this? And we built a company with models that could be taught and digitized and shared, and that’s what we do now. So what allowed me to take that 14 month period was that we sell a lot of other things that are not now involving me speaking for a check. And so that’s just to finish a little bit of that story before we flip to travel, which is so interesting. I just wanted to let them understand the last chapters there. RV: (11:39) No, actually I’m glad that I’m glad that you closed close that loop cause that’s really important. And that’s, that’s I think that’s a rare position that a lot of personal brands never get to the point where they transitioned from a personal brand to a real business where they, they are scaling how many people are, are in like the whole white space at work team. JF: (11:58) It’s small, we’re tiny boutique. We have 11 people including our part time people. And you know, just so you know, it’s still a struggle every day to separate the brand from me. I have branding conversations, people all the time. You’ve been one of the people that I’ve come to for help in a lot of areas that, that there’s something about the looping in of my personality with the brand personally, we’ve tried pulling pictures off the website. We’ve tried pushing the content instead of pushing the person. But it’s really tough when you grow a tree, it’s like those two trees, you see that grow up on a, on a side of a wall in Cuba or Guatemala or something where they’re just, they grew into each other and it’s very hard to unwind them. I definitely have not cracked that secret sauce yet of extricating myself. RV: (12:49) Yeah. Although you have been able to create the lifestyle that we were talking about here, which is where, you know, you’ve lived the dream for years at a time of being able to take your kids and your family and go on the road. You’ve got three kids, right? JF: (13:07) I have three boys, 10, 12, and 14. Now we left on this trip that you’re talking about two years ago. Next week on our anniversary, August 28th is going to be two years on the road. And it has been a dreamy combination of the world of white space. It’s the ultimate white space application really? And it came out of, I was having do you know, David Covey, but one of the Covey brothers RV: (13:38) I’ve met David Covey. I haven’t, I actually he’s been at my he’s been to my house one time. The only time I met him. JF: (13:44) So I had, I was having Indian food with David Covey and salt Lake city about four years ago. And he told me that he lived in different countries with his children when they were growing up. But, but he did a year at a time and he ran his businesses and lived in different countries. And it just fascinated me and it captured my attention and it percolated and percolated and percolated. And then we met these people that were doing something called a world schooling, which had a name in which had an association. And they had conferences about people who had decided that travel was a better education for their children than school. And we left, it took me about four months to convince my husband. And then one day he left a map. I get up about five 36. He gets up around nine and stays up till a billion o’clock in the morning. JF: (14:32) So we have very different schedules and he left a little map in the shape of a heart on my desk. One morning for my 6:00 AM walk in and said, let’s go. And he finally went over the line and decided, and then we left and we went to, we stayed domestic for the first months only because of speaking. I would have been international immediately, but I couldn’t be far away. Cause I was flying away from the trip to go finish the gigs that had already been booked. And then once that concluded and we were able to say, no more gigs after a certain date, then we went international. We’ve been in Europe, Asia, Bali, Thailand. And we are now in New Zealand where we were supposed to be for two months before going to China. And then obviously didn’t go to China. And then we waited and waited. And now we’ve been here six months and we just applied for another six months. Cause honestly we don’t really know where to go. So COVID has stopped the trip where we’re very dedicated to one more location on our way home. So that the story is not that we went on this beautiful trip and then COVID killed it. And we’d like there to be one more different final chapter to go. We’re thinking about going back to Hawaii, which is where we started at the very end RV: (15:48) And, and you’ve been able to do that. So, so the business you mind sharing with us a little bit, how have you operated? JF: (15:54) No, I’m trans transparent to the point of you have to stop me and then I get myself in trouble. So that’s not, that’s not hard to share. We have not sold a house or gone on savings or anything for any portion of this trip. We have earned as we’ve traveled with the one exception that I have quite a lot of miles. So miles have helped for sure with the international, but I work, I live on a laptop. I go into coffee houses all over the world. And in Bali I watched the ducks and in, you know Croatia, I was on my laptop in a hotel above these fighting Russian tourists. Every time I would go work and I pull out the laptop and I, I work in the time zones, kick my butt. And in Bali, I’m up till two in the morning and here I’m up at four 30 and you get used to it and we have a remote team. So we sell, we sell an online product now and actually COVID inversed what you just said, which is that I went back to live presenting because of COVID because so many people wanted immediate help with work from home efficiency, which is a subset of our work. So I actually did more presentations in the last four months than I did in the previous two years. RV: (17:13) But they’ve all been virtual. Yeah. JF: (17:14) Correct? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I’m just talking about speaking for money came back after. Yeah. RV: (17:22) Well, and I think that’s it. I think that’s really interesting because you know, if you hang around the speaker crowd, you know, there’s a lot of like, Oh my gosh, you know, all the gigs are postponing and et cetera, et cetera. And it’s like at the same time, every company in America is having meetings every single day that are virtual and they need outside voices. And it’s like, in some ways there’s more opportunity than ever. No one has to rent a ballroom, they just need a link. And like you can be in front of their entire company from anywhere in the world. Like you’re, you’re stuck in quote unquote stuck in New Zealand. JF: (17:58) Yeah. It’s a bad word for wouldn’t being here, but yes. RV: (18:01) Yeah. well I think that’s, I think that’s, that’s, that’s amazing. Now you also have this book deal. How did the book deal come about? Cause that happened over that same time period, right? JF: (18:14) The book deal had been so that my, my, the comic secret of my professional career is that everybody already thinks I’ve written a book because of where I am in the circuit. So if you’re on stage between you and Marcus Buckingham and then Laszlo Bock comes up, there’s no way that that lady in the middle hasn’t written a book. So everybody always thinks that this is my second or third book. So it’s just a funny thing, but it’s not because I had a lot of trouble writing a book and I had trouble getting quiet enough. I’m super interpersonal. I’m great graded all the parts of business that are interpersonal and the lonely quiet work of the chair. And the laptop is very hard for me, but I also was doing other things and I had three children in six years and I was building this business and I made a decision not to be a mom. JF: (19:01) Who’d never saw my kids. And there was a lot of other things. And so the book just kept getting pushed, but there was an agent who adored my work and tracked me through ups and downs of that process. And he became my agent and he’s the best agent in the universe. And when we wrote the proposal, the time was right and we had six offers and it was wonderful. It was a wonderful experience. Wow. And I got the offer. I got the final offer from Harper on a porch in Gatlinburg where we’re looking out at these kinds of Misty. I think I want to say smokey mountains, but I can’t remember if that’s Gatlinburg. My God, it was, I have locked in memory the moment that we got that phone call and, and it’s been a really wonderful experience. I’m preparing for the ups and downs of an actual book launch, especially post COVID. We have a lot of things we’re going through, but it’s been wonderful and I’ve really enjoyed the writing more than I would have guessed. RV: (20:02) I love that story. So, I mean, and you got, I mean, you’re technically a first time author, but you’re not, they’re not treating you like a first time author and that’s something I think that’s good for people to know is like, if for whatever reason you don’t write the book, you don’t write the book, then it’s like, Hey, all of your hard work will catch up with you at some point. JF: (20:22) Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. Cause I, if I could have had someone I trusted relieve the pressure the 10, 15 years in NSA of write the book, write the book, write the book, write the book. If I had written the book at any of those times, it wouldn’t have been this book and it wouldn’t have been as fully cooked and it wouldn’t have been as perfect as it is now to write this book. And so I’m glad I didn’t write the book. I’m glad I didn’t use my content and my brand and the name Widespace on a book that was so much more juvenile than this book will be. Cause I couldn’t have done it twice. And so that I wish that I could have taken that out of my psychological equation. Maybe I can do it for one other person. RV: (21:05) Yeah. Well, and it’s like, you can do it both. Like you can, you can do it both ways. You can be successful either way. Like, you know, some people say, Hey, the book changed my life and here you’re going, look, I was able to do it without it. And now I can write the book and you know, it was like, the book is going to change your life. Again, and it’s like a whole, you know, but it’s not, it’s not a, it’s not as a straightforward formula that you must follow one way or the other. Right. so I love that. Okay. So I want to, I want to spend a few minutes actually talking about this. So, you know your story, I wanted everyone to hear your story about kind of the sequence of how things have gone and, and, and what that’s looked like. JF: (21:50) What is it, RV: (21:50) White space? Can we talk about white space for a second and specifically what is white space? Why does it matter? And then what I’d like to do is be able to get into the, you know, a conversation of how does that apply to personal brands, which is something that even though you don’t traditionally teach that you are, you are one and you know that, you know, you haven’t been and you know, that space really well. So I’d, I’d love to get like a, a once and only Juliet Funt white space for personal brands in the only place you could get it right here in influential personal brand podcast. JF: (22:26) Cause it’s never been done. So here we go. So white space is we define white space as a strategic pause taken between activities. It’s, it’s the open fluid, flexible unscheduled time that used to be in between things in life and now has gotten filled by busy-ness and cell phones and tech addiction and all the things that we cram in. And one way to think about it is if you imagine the periodic table of the elements, and if you imagine what would happen, if one of the elements just fell out and all of a sudden there was no salt or all of a sudden there was no nitrogen systems would collapse. And we believe that this is the case in a sense with white space, that there is this element that is supposed to be present, weaving in and out of our days for breath, recuperation, stepping back, all sorts of things that this element of white space is supposed to give us permission to have that have now just gone away. And the mission of the book is to reinstate that into the lives of working people everywhere. And that’s my mission as well. RV: (23:39) So it’s like going extinct. It’s this thing that’s sort of disappearing from, from the earth because there’s always JF: (23:46) Something to do. So if you have a second and you can think of it really, really tactically, the name white space came from a couple of different places, but the main place came from coaching executives 20 years ago. And we would look at there then paper day planners and we would look for white is the white, just Penn and Penn and Penn and Penn and Penn. And where is the white space here in this day where somebody could think strategize, prepare for a call, step back, reflect on their own behavior. Where, where is the white deer executives? And that’s where the white spaces coming from. The white space is literally on the calendar came from. So we don’t have it because now when there is a pause, our nervous systems are so wired. Usually it’s just the phone is the simplest first insertion. But if you were to, let’s say you were to finish this podcast and you look at your calendar and you realize that you have seven minutes before the next thing, the chances of you leaving any of those minutes open would be very rare. JF: (24:50) You probably get up and get a cup of coffee and do those things, but then you’d come back and you’d realize you had 40 minutes left. You would probably check your email or check a social feed or do something tactical or manual like unplugged desk or pack a bag or get ready for the, the chances of you leaving even a minute where you just looked up and went, Hmm, how’s my life. How’s my work. How am I? Am I okay? It’s been a lot lately. The chances that you would use that time to leave it open and see what happens is very, very rare. And that’s what we want to change. And for personal brands and entrepreneurs, work is never over the, to do list is never over. So if you have five minutes between calls, you have to jam something in there and get one more thing done and check off one more box. JF: (25:42) And the chances that you would use that time to remain open are light, even when it furthers your business goal. So let’s say you’re an athlete and you have a call in six minutes, that’s going to be with a promoter. Who’s going to do something fantastic for your career. Most people would work right up to a minute before, especially if they’re very experienced salespeople or presenters, they just swing around in their Herman Miller and dial right in. They’re fine. But what if you had white space before that call for five minutes and you sat there and thought, who is this person? How were they last time? What were they into? How do I want to come off? What is it? What could this really mean to me? And you really used thinking as a business tool to change the outcome of what came next, everything would be magically and completely different. And so that is part of the goal. It’s not only personal white space or reflective white space or recuperative white space. It’s also a tactical use of white space to further the thing that comes next. RV: (26:48) Yeah. So it’s, it’s not necessarily, you know, I saw one of your videos one time that said like white spaces, not meditation. JF: (26:55) Yeah. Not meditation, mindfulness nine. My wandering, we go through all the things that it’s not, RV: (27:01) But you’re saying it’s like for entrepreneur or a personal brand, that it, it actually that minute to pause, to think, even though it feels like slowing down, you’re saying that that actually could enhance the overall business versus just doing constantly JF: (27:17) Must enhance it. How can you know where you’re heading? Would it be a tragedy if you were on full steam for seven years heading in a direction and you never even took some time to say, is this the right direction that I’m heading full steam for seven years? Or is this the right way? I want my data flow or how, who am I bringing to this business? How am I treating the people that work with me? And for me, these are contemplative questions that great leaders ask, but they must have white space to do that. RV: (27:48) Is there a, is there a amount or a percentage, right. You know, and I, I think this is so relevant, personal, personal brand, right? It’s like, and then onto any entrepreneur, let us, like, you could be shooting a video, writing a blog, preparing a presentation, building a funnel, like answering your emails, writing a book, like customer service. JF: (28:13) And that could all be like within a couple hours. I know. Is there like a proportion of RV: (28:18) Time? Like, how do I know what’s the right? Like, how do I actually practice? You know? JF: (28:26) Yes. And that’s that question is the perfect litmus test of our entire personality. Isn’t it? Like, you want to know, you want to know the formula, right? So that’s yes. RV: (28:38) Block it on my digital calendar and you know how you could color code it. I’m going to color code at white in honor. JF: (28:44) Yeah. Juliette actual white space. So the people that like that more regimented approach, you can just start with two minutes, a couple of times a day, it’ll feel like the longest two minutes of your entire life, just begin to experience stopping the machine and restarting the machine. So for those of us that are more fluid and less structured, it’s just about an interstitial pausing. 10 seconds here. A minute there, 30 seconds here, this incremental and interstitial use of white space is extremely powerful. It’s also the majority of the way that I personally use this tool as an overbusy Energizer bunny, kind of a person. So that interstitial use can be amazingly. It can be you’re finishing work and your kid needs you. And you say just a minute and you spend 30 seconds transitioning from business hat to daddy hat. And that’s all it is now longer stretches of white space, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes with a legal pad, deeper white space away from your technology to think deeply about your business or brainstorm or vision. Beautiful, beautiful, and important. But the life saving element of white space is the interstitial sip. That’s what makes us learn that mechanism again, of stop the machine, start the machine. That’s all we want to do is step off for a period of time. RV: (30:20) Yeah. I mean, I liked that idea of a sip. Just like a sip of water, like water. I feel like there’s a fear that is underneath this. That’s driving that leg. If I’m not maximizing every single second, like it’s all gonna come crashing down. JF: (30:37) Yep. And it is come. I mean, that philosophy is crashing down all around us. Now five months post the novel coronavirus because teams are now working 12 to 14 hours a day because they can. So when the office is in your bedroom, there’s no off switch and there wasn’t an off switch before. So actually one way of thinking about it is all of our corporate pals have now joined the entrepreneurial pain that we’ve all lived with for a very long time, which is work can be all the time where can be all the time. And there’s mental health challenges and focus, challenges and creativity, challenges, and sustainability challenges to that. The corporate people are starting to see it. It’s harder for us to see it because we have that bravado of I’m an entrepreneur. I just have to keep going. RV: (31:22) And if you’re a chronic like, you know, checklist or the idea is not that you have to retreat, you know, you’re not retreating into meditation. It’s just thinking as a business tool about going like, Hey, before I dive into my email, like, let me just process what’s going on? Where am I at? What’s the next most, you know, best use of my time. And JF: (31:48) It can be. So the whole purpose of white space is that it is an open container. Now your saying one possible application of it, thoughtfulness as a business tool, another possible application, I’ll just rifle through a whole bunch of them is daydreaming, which has been proven to lead us to wonderful creative places, appreciation time to combat some of the pain and challenge by looking at what’s wonderful recuperation, literally just doing nothing, letting your body come back during that a little bit of open recuperate. It better be, it better be, you know, we have, we have the dopamine from our devices. We have caffeine, we have energy. We have passion. We have a lot of different ways that we can goose up adrenaline to keep going, but the price paid at some point will arrive for never turning it off. And the, you know, the deep white space that I, one place I’m really, really good at deep white space, even though I tend to take my sips incrementally, is that on those vacations, when I take a vacation, the cell phone is in the bottom of the suitcase. JF: (33:01) It is dead and it is off and there is no email. And it’s the only way that I can come back after the kind of exertion I put into my work month. So I’m a big advocate of when you do disconnect, really disconnect. I think a vacation kind of like driving from New York to LA and you want to get to a different destination, but every time you touch base with work, even once in the morning, you have to drive back to New York. So you never get farther and farther and farther away to have perspective and look back. And that’s why people who do take disconnected vacations, even if they have to be staycations, that’s why they do come back with innovations for the business and great new creative ideas. Cause they’ve gone away. You can’t really go away. If you go back for a visit every 12 hours. RV: (33:52) Fascinating, fascinating. And I could, that would totally apply to any creative work, writing a book. You know, it just, just makes sense to like, to be away from all the busy-ness to just kind of sit and think, or, you know, recoup or daydream JF: (34:11) And writing the book has been a great example. If I take these book day retreats where I’ll do 12 hours in a shot on and off with my white space breaks, but, but a lot for me, and it is so tempting to spend all of the working minutes of that period, working to spend all the working minutes of that period in a document editing, writing on book related phone calls, interviews. But if I’m willing to really just close it all down and think about what do I want to make sure that I don’t not say in this book and what do I want to really make sure that what part of my heart and my willing to be a little shockingly authentic with so that in a business book, you’re crossing a line to realness in a way that people aren’t anticipating those kinds of thoughts can only happen in white space. And they can only happen when you create separation between you and your product. And that can’t happen while you’re in it. RV: (35:11) I love that. I love that. So Juliet, where, where do people go to connect with you and stay plugged in and, you know, be on the list to be notified when the book out and all that JF: (35:24) [email protected] we would love to hear from you. And you’re welcome to reach me personally, a [email protected]. RV: (35:31) Love that. So we’ll link. We will link that up. We’ll keep you all posted. When the book comes out, clearly you can see the application. Y’all I know you’re listening going. Yes. I need white space in my life. Well, we wish you and your family the best be safe while you’re out there traveling and then have your one big adventure Juliet, and then hopefully we’ll get to see you in person soon.

Ep 99: Seven Principles To Make Your Company Irresistible with Jim Cumbee | Recap Episode

RV: (00:07) Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down the interview episode with our good friend Jim Cumbee, and this was a different interview for us. AJV: (00:19) Yeah, it was awesome. And Jim is just such a wealth of knowledge, truly one of the smartest people we know truly. RV: (00:25) Absolutely. And I, I think you know, if I had to boil the whole interview down to, you know, one big takeaway for me, which would be the thing that I’ve always learned from Jim was that it’s really simple, like as an entrepreneur, whether you’re a personal brand or you’re building any real business, the ultimate objective is to build a business that operates without you. And that is AJV: (00:49) Also, it’s kind of interesting because I think it’s such a dichotomy of, if it’s a business worth selling, then it’s also a business worth keeping. And if you can keep a business without it needing you, why would you ever sell it? RV: (01:03) Yeah. I mean, that’s how valuation basically works. Right. And, and you know, by the way, I just want to make a shameless plug that if you loved that conversation and the topics of that conversation, you should come to our event, that’s called eight figure entrepreneur. Cause it’s the whole event is about that kind of thing. Buying you’re evaluating your, your company. But so yeah. What was, what were some of your big takeaways? AJV: (01:24) Yeah, so I think this is for everyone. If I think for a lot of you listening, you have a personal brand, but then you also have another company, right. A personal brand and everything you do within that courses and speaking, and coaching and consulting they also lead into something else that you may do. And this is both for those, with a personal brand and those without a personal brand. But I think one of the, it’s kind of to what you said, one of the big questions you have to ask yourself is can the business continue without me? And I think that’s just a great question, a great gut check for those of you who are going like, can my business continue without me? And if the answer is no, it’s probably not very sellable. RV: (02:07) Yeah. And I think so what was interesting for me as a personal brand and someone who thinks in that framework. So that was a takeaway, which is something that I always get when I talk to Jim. And then I think my second kind of big takeaway was I’ve always kind of thought, okay, well, if you’re a personal brand, like if your business is built around a personal brand, this is a struggle that is really unique to you. Like, because you’re the personality and you’re the face or whatever. And then Jim said, every founder struggles with this problem. And so it’s not actually a problem that is specific to personal brands. It’s specific to every small business, which is that if you take out the owner or the founder or the original person, like my whole thing starts to break down. Yeah. And so that was enlightening in a weird way to go, Oh, well, it’s not just, it’s not just us and our clients, you know, that our personal brand people. So AJV: (03:04) Yeah. Just can the business continue without you. Right. And I think that that’s for any business, not my second one was around this concept of recurring revenue and just the simple fact that, you know, we talk a lot about this at brain builders group and an acronym that we call dayers, which is how, how many of these can you check, right? Can you make your business digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scare scalable, right. And this is all about this recurring component, which is just by the pure fact of how businesses are sold and purchased that I recurring business well, typically sell for more because it’s less risky. And I think that’s just a great for all of you who are trying to figure out your business model, like, do I do a course or do I do a membership program where they pay monthly? And then you’ve got to ask yourself, do I think I would ever sell this one day? And I think having that longterm perspective will help you make those short term decisions of going typically recurring businesses will sell for more and are more likely to sell because they are less risky thing. That was just a great aha and good takeaway for anyone who thinks maybe one day I’d like to sell this. RV: (04:17) Yeah. And I, I would say on the note of the recurring revenue, if it’s less risky to someone else, it’s probably also less risky to you, right? So there’s some real value to that recurring revenue model. At the same time, you got to sort of ask yourself, all right, do you do, I think people would only stay, let’s say it’s a hundred bucks a month. If they’re only going to stay three months on average, it’s like, well, if I sold it as a thousand dollar course, I might be able to get a thousand dollars versus, you know, a hundred a month for three months. And those are all the kinds of questions you gotta answer. And it’s not like there’s a right answer. There’s only a right answer for you. There’s a right answer for you. AJV: (04:54) Well, it’s also leveraging that question with a question of, do I want to sell, or do I want to keep this as a lifestyle business? Because I think those are also two very, very important. RV: (05:03) And that was my third takeaway, which was, you don’t have to build the company to sell it. Right? Like you, you could just build it to operate. Exactly. Like you said, is, is a business worth selling looks a whole lot, like a business worth keeping. If you can get that thing running on autopilot and it’s fun and it’s not burning you out, you know, hate it. You know that it’s like, why say why? At least on most days, why would you sell it? Why, why not do it? And I think that was super powerful. It’s like, you don’t have to be the person who does an IPO or like sells your company for a ton of money. You can fly a private jet to be successful. It’s like it pays your bills. You have fun. You make a difference. And you make some money along the way. What, what a great thing to aspire to? AJV: (05:52) Yup. My third one was not, that was completely office it, which is, I think this was a great aha for again, to me, I don’t, I have never built our business in the mode of one day. We’ll sell it. Right? So some of this is just like really great, more for purchasing and acquisition, not for selling. And I think that’s something too, for all of you who are listening, it’s not just whatever, sell my business, but what is a thought process that I would, would want to go through if I was to purchase or acquire someone else’s business. And that was how I process interview because I don’t ever foresee selling this business, but I do foresee potentially growing it, expanding it through acquisitions and mergers and buying other businesses. So you can also filter this through that lens. And one of the things that caught my eye as I was watching this and listening to it was this whole concept of now, not that you would tell somebody this per se on the, on the buyer side, but sometimes it’s not the product or the services that you’re buying. AJV: (06:53) It’s just the contact base. And if you have, so some of you are going okay, well, I don’t like what program or subscription or course would I ever have. That would be worth selling. That’s not it for all of you. Some of you it’s because you’re going to build an enormous list that somebody else will want access to. And that has to do with an enormous list that has a proven track record of success. And people will be likely to buy that for the same reason as they would your recurring business model or anything else. So I think that was just a, Hey don’t discount. The power of just contacts, right? Instagram back in the day, sold for a billion dollars to Facebook before $1 of revenue was generated. They were buying access to contacts. You can do the same thing. RV: (07:44) Love that. Yeah. I mean, it’s like these days, instead of buying a real estate building, you might just be buying a database of emails and contacts. So listen to the interview. It’s not everyday. You get to talk to a Harvard MBA about buying and selling companies. Go check it out. Stay encouraged, stay focused. We’re playing the long game, always at brand builders group. And we’re happy to be alongside of you. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. [inaudible].