Ep 587: Who First Strategy | Vincent Phamvan Recap
[00:00:00] AJ: It’s what, not who, in a world [00:00:05] where marketing strategists and marketing agencies [00:00:10] are talking about where to spend on time online and where do you put your paid [00:00:15] traffic behind, and what ads should you be doing? And, you know, how quickly you should be [00:00:20] cutting your camera and how many minutes it should be and what are the initial statements.[00:00:25]
[00:00:25] That you should stay and how many CTA should you have in a world [00:00:30] full of that? That’s a lot of the, what What I am encouraging you to [00:00:35] do as you build your personal brand is to have a who first [00:00:40] strategy, not a where first strategy and not a what First strategy. See a [00:00:45] what? First strategy is what should I be doing?
[00:00:49] What should [00:00:50] I be posting? What, you know, different [00:00:55] medium. Should I be on? What platform should I be on? It’s a what focused [00:01:00] strategy. And then there’s the where, right? There’s, Hey, where should I spend my [00:01:05] time online? Where should I invest my time, money, and re resources? [00:01:10] Right? Where should I go to find, you know, x, y, and z [00:01:15] content or audiences or offers?
[00:01:16] Where should I go to learn? There’s a lot of what. [00:01:20] And there’s a lot of wear. In the world of marketing, digital marketing today, [00:01:25] and as you build your personal brand, what I’m encouraging you to do is to not ignore those things. [00:01:30] They just come second or third to the most [00:01:35] important strategy, which is who.
[00:01:38] So let’s talk about the who for a second. [00:01:40] What is a who first strategy? A who First strategy. [00:01:45] Is, who are you trying to reach? Who is the person [00:01:50] that you feel called to serve in this world with your message? Because that’s what you’re doing this [00:01:55] for after all, right? You’re not doing all of this content creation.
[00:01:58] You’re not sitting in a [00:02:00] chair behind a camera on a day like today, as I am right now, just so I can [00:02:05] work the algorithm. I’m not doing it just to get likes and comments. I’m not doing it [00:02:10] just for conversion purposes. I’m doing it because I believe. That there are [00:02:15] messages that need to be shared because there are messages that need to be heard [00:02:20] and they can only be shared by certain individuals and they can only be heard by certain individuals [00:02:25] to help them change their life.
[00:02:27] I believe that people [00:02:30] not platforms have the ability to change lives. And [00:02:35] sometimes it’s a, a, a simple act of kindness. Sometimes it’s a [00:02:40] quote that you just needed to hear in that right moment. Sometimes it’s you showing up and being [00:02:45] vulnerable and sharing the hard parts of your story so that other people know that they’re not alone, [00:02:50] that there are other people like them who have felt that way, been through what they’ve been through, and that there [00:02:55] is light at the end of the tunnel.
[00:02:57] Right. There is joy on the other side [00:03:00] that that. Is a who first strategy that is going, Hey, I [00:03:05] have this calling on my heart for a reason. And we believe that that reason is [00:03:10] because there is someone else out there who needs you. That [00:03:15] is the who that I’m talking about. And if you get the who right in a who for [00:03:20] strategy, the what and the where, become increasingly more clear.[00:03:25]
[00:03:25] Because here’s what I’m telling you, if you know. Exactly [00:03:30] who you’re trying to reach. Then you know what they need to hear. [00:03:35] You know, what questions they need answered, you know, what titles would [00:03:40] attract them, you know, what ads they would click on, right? So all those other [00:03:45] things, I’m not saying they’re not important, and the digital ecosystem that we live in today, I, I think they’re [00:03:50] vital.
[00:03:50] I think they’re necessary. They’re just not first. It’s a who [00:03:55] strategy first to go. Who needs this message and [00:04:00] how do they need to hear it, and what platform do they need to hear it on? [00:04:05] And where do I need to be so they can hear it? What and where are [00:04:10] subservient to the who, but the more clear that you get on the who, such [00:04:15] as what gender are they?
[00:04:16] What age are they? What socioeconomic status are [00:04:20] they? What geography do they live in? What are their dreams? What are their fears? What [00:04:25] are their goals? What questions? Keep them up at night? What are their fears? Right? What? What are [00:04:30] their limiting beliefs? Right. What are they trying to achieve? What have they been through that [00:04:35] they’re too afraid to tell anyone?
[00:04:36] What are the dreams that feel so big and so impossible that they’re embarrassed to [00:04:40] admit them? What questions do they have that they never ask because they’re afraid they’ll look stupid, [00:04:45] right? That is your who. It’s not just how much money [00:04:50] do they make and what titles do they have. Demographics are important.
[00:04:52] They’re necessary, but the [00:04:55] psychographics of your who are equally as important. And I’ll tell you this, [00:05:00] a who first strategy should be where you spend the most time. Because if [00:05:05] you spend the most foundational time on building out this perfect avatar, this [00:05:10] ideal person, not persons, not people, but person, if [00:05:15] you build that out, if there’s one, there’s likely more than one.
[00:05:19] But the [00:05:20] more that you know the heart and the mind behind the person, the who that you’re going [00:05:25] after, everything else comes into focus, I. The other things are [00:05:30] unclear when your who is unclear. But the more [00:05:35] clarity you have on the who, the easier it is to answer all of the what [00:05:40] questions and the where questions.
[00:05:41] Because you know where they spend on time, time online, you know [00:05:45] what platforms they visit, you know how often they visit those platforms and how long they stay on their [00:05:50] platforms that you know, if they like to read versus watch, you know, if they like to watch versus [00:05:55] listen, you know, if they’re more into podcasts versus short form content.
[00:05:59] You know, all those [00:06:00] things when you spend the time necessary, I. To get intimately [00:06:05] acquainted with the who, and here’s the good news for you. Most [00:06:10] of us, we already know the who intimately because the who is the [00:06:15] person that we used to be. And it’s the reason why that you are most [00:06:20] powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
[00:06:23] Because you know what it’s like to be [00:06:25] you. You know what it’s like to have those questions, those fears, those dreams, [00:06:30] and. You know what it’s like on the other side, right? You didn’t get [00:06:35] to where you are today and you don’t have this calling on your life, and you don’t have this message in your heart for [00:06:40] yourself.
[00:06:40] You have it so that you can go back and share it with all the people that [00:06:45] need to hear it where they are today, where you were a year ago, or five years ago, or 10 years, or even 20 [00:06:50] years ago, or maybe even the person that you were yesterday. You [00:06:55] have that calling. Right that pull in your heart because there is someone else who is [00:07:00] calling to you.
[00:07:01] That is a hoofer strategy and it’s the part that we [00:07:05] often wanna skip over. We wanna answer the fill in the blanks and we wanna move on, [00:07:10] but everything else is dependent on a hoofer strategy. So if you spend the [00:07:15] right time figuring out who, who is my audience? Who is my avatar, who is my [00:07:20] person? The what comes into focus and the where becomes obvious, but the [00:07:25] who has to come first.
Ep 575: 3 Traits of Successful People | Shawn Lemon Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started.
RV (00:34):
Three things that make successful people successful that I don’t know that we hear enough about, or that we maybe we take for granted, or we’re not sure that they, they are really there. And so, as I was listening to Carrie’s story and also thinking back on my own life, and then thinking about so many of our successful clients and where also where we’re going, these, these three things really jumped out to me to go, you know, if you wanna be a successful person, these are three things that I think you really need to commit to, and you need to ask yourself on the front end, am I willing to commit to these things? Because if you’re not, no matter how skilled you are, no matter how talented you are, no how much, no matter how much head knowledge you have, I think these are the things that are, are more invisible, they’re more hidden, that really hold people back from success.
RV (01:28):
And so the first one is to crush it where you are at. And this is one we definitely don’t hear enough about when it comes to success. Everybody talks about like, Hey, start the side hustle. Hey, do the next thing. Hey, you, you know, figure out what your vision is. And all of those things are good. But I think too many times we overlook the importance of being successful. Not just successful, but being very successful at the thing that is right in front of us. Meaning the best way to set yourself up for success in the next thing is to be successful doing the thing that you’re doing right now. Lemme say that again. The best way to set yourself up for being successful at the next thing is to be successful at doing the thing that you’re doing right now. And I think that many of us embrace this lie.
RV (02:31):
We live in this fantasy land that once I’m doing the thing I want to do, then I will suddenly make the sacrifices it takes to be successful. Once it’s my business, then I would, then I would pay the price, then I would put in the work. Or once, once we get past, you know, once I get this certification or that certification or, or once I got a new boss, or once I got promoted, or once I made this much money, or, or once I had kids, or once I didn’t have kids, you know, like once they were grown and outta the house, like we so often convince ourselves that we will really turn it on. We’ll really pay the price. We’ll really put in the work. Like we’ll really show up and do what it takes to be successful when the external circumstances change. And that is a lie.
RV (03:24):
I mean, if you can’t turn it on now, if you can’t pay the price, if you can’t make a sacrifice, if you can’t endure some short-term pain to be successful at the thing you’re doing now, why do you suddenly think you would be willing to in a different situation? And I guess there’s times where maybe that is true, right? Where you go, man, I hate my job. I hate my boss. I’m not giving this company one lick of more effort. You know, I’m gonna work just hard enough not to get fired. And maybe that is true, that if it was your own thing, maybe, maybe you would. But I think we overestimate how easy that is. The reality is that, like Vince Lombardi said, winning is a habit.
RV (04:05):
Being a winner is something in your character, right? People who are winners win at everything. Like they win at all the things they pursue, not just winning on the scoreboard, or not just beating other people, but, but creating excellence, doing excellent work, showing up powerfully, serving people, making a difference, making an impact, right? Making contributions to the teams they are a part of. That’s not something you do once in a while. That is not something you do when the conditions are perfect. That is a character trait that you have to decide and commit to embracing that I am a winner because I’m always a winner and I’m gonna succeed because I, I, that’s what I do. I succeed. We’re gonna be excellent. ’cause That’s what we do around here. We, we make excellent things. And yeah, it’s hard at times. Yeah, it’s inconvenient. Yeah, it’s painful.
RV (04:59):
But that is the price of admission to being excellent. That is the price of admission for being great. That’s the price of admission for doing anything that matters. And so if you wanna be successful at your next thing, don’t wait to start developing the success habits until you’re doing those things. Start developing them now. And in my life, you know, there, there’s been a couple times where my life direction has abruptly changed very, and, and, and, and a couple times very unexpectedly. And I think the reason why we were able to pivot so quickly to the next thing was because we had done everything in our power to make the current thing succeed. And it’s sort of like, you know, it’s like jumping from the top of one mountain to the top of another mountain versus having like to be on the, if you’re on the, if you’re, if you’re halfway up a mountain or you’re on the bottom of a mountain, you have to like, go down that mountain and then go up the bottom of the next mountain.
RV (05:58):
But if you’re on the top of a mountain, you just jump from the top of one mountain to the top of the next, to the top of the next, you know, maybe not from top to top, but you know, near the top. And then you climb back up to the top. And this is what successful people do, right? They’re successful in everything. So don’t convince yourself, don’t lie to yourself that, oh, I would really be successful, you know, if I had a different this or that or whatever. Maybe that’s true. But, but the reality is that most of success comes down to you making that decision to be successful regardless of your circumstances. So do that now. Crush it where you are at. And that is concept right out of take the stairs, you know, from years and years ago. Hasn’t changed. Second thing, second thing that I don’t think people talk enough about when it comes to being successful, specifically at generating revenue, right?
RV (06:52):
So when specifically at, you know, building your personal brand or selling your course, or selling your keynote, or getting a promotion or, you know, let’s, let’s just say sales in general, generating revenue. I think what we don’t hear enough about is that when somebody succeeds at something, a lot of times, like most of the time it’s because they have banked up all of this trust first, right? So when, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll use this. I think this is a great example. You know, we, we were fortunate to, to be a, a very significant part of Ed Mylet book launch in 2022. And we made a major contribution. We did a lot, we worked very closely with Ed, and we brought the best that we had to offer in terms of strategy and relationships, and you know, we did what we did. But, you know, and we helped Ed pre-sell 117,000 copies of his book.
RV (07:52):
You know, and just recently, we, we, we helped Lewis Howes and Amy Porterfield both, and, and they both became New York Times bestsellers. All in all, we’ve now helped 13 different clients become New York Times, wall Street Journal, USA to that bestsellers. But with Ed, you know, he pre-sold 117,000 copies of his book. Did we have a lot to do with it? Sure, we had a lot, we had something to do with it, right? We, we helped Ed, we helped Ed. The reality is we get far more credit than we deserve. The reality is, ed had banked up so much trust with his audience, so much reputation, right? Did some of our stuff help? I, I hope so. I like to think so. Ed is very gracious in saying that it did. But the reality is that we taught Ed the same thing. We teach all of our clients, right?
RV (08:40):
It wasn’t like we gave him some secret that we didn’t give anybody else the difference in his results, right? The difference in what Ed, ed Mylet experience was not because we did a better job with him, or because we taught him something, we don’t teach everybody else. It’s it’s case in point that what happened was it was his trust that was banked with his audience before he asked them to buy. Trust must always take place before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. When Ed did his book launch, he had years and years of trust banked up. Now we showed up, we were lucky enough to get introduced to him. We were one part of a team of people that were all working together to support him. And we might have helped him maybe, you know, optimize efficiently the, the, the quote unquote extraction of that trust in the form of book sales.
RV (09:29):
But he was the one that banked the trust. And so when we get extraordinary results with clients, you know, I don’t think we could take, like, we cannot take all the credit for it by any means. Even when they follow our formulas, even when they use our exec stuff. And similarly, when clients don’t succeed, it’s not because of us. It’s because of them, right? We know our formulas work. They’ve worked for us. They’re working for lots of other clients, the biggest personal brands in the world, all the way down to intermediate and novice people who are just starting out getting extraordinary results. We know what we do works. The difference is you, the difference is how much are you willing? How hard are you willing to work? And how much trust have you banked with your audience? Trust must take place before there’s a transaction.
RV (10:16):
And too many people want to come out and just sell right away. Too many people wanna come out and just like, oh, I’m gonna launch something and go, I just wanna sell to a bunch of random strangers on the internet. Well, it’s not bad to do that. It’s not necessarily wrong to do that. But I think the reason that people struggle to succeed right away is because they think, oh, there’s some technique that I need to develop. There is, there’s some strategy. And if it didn’t work, it’s ’cause Oh, I got bad advice from, you know, this person or that person, or brand builders group, or this course didn’t teach me. And the reality is, is because you didn’t have enough trust banked up with your audience, you have to build trust before people are willing to buy. You have to build trust with people.
RV (10:58):
You have to add value, you have to give first. You have to help them. You have to pour into them. And so if your launch failed, it doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you got horrible advice. It doesn’t mean that the thing that you’re doing is bad. It doesn’t mean that people won’t ever buy it. It probably means more often, it means that you’re just too early, meaning you are trying to extract revenue before you have deposited trust. So I don’t think we hear enough about that. And I think, you know, I think people like us, you know, wanna take credit because we do. We, we wanna, we wanna have a part of people’s success. We work really, really hard for it. And you know, sometimes you’re hard on yourself when you don’t succeed, or you’re hard on the people around you. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of success has to do with trust.
RV (11:48):
And trust comes from adding value to people in your life that they see you, they learn from you, they know you. You’re giving to them, you’re teaching them. And that’s why our entire content marketing strategy, right? Everything we teach, which, you know, can get very sophisticated, but it all boils down to like our entire content marketing strategy is this simple, teach everything you know, for free, but in small bite-sized chunks and all random miscellaneous order. That’s how we do our whole, our whole content strategy for podcasting, for YouTube, for social media, right? Like, I mean, we’re teaching everything we know for free, but in small bite-sized chunks, in all random order, because we, there’s two things we believe. First of all, we believe that people don’t pay for information. People pay for application. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization, and they pay for application.
RV (12:41):
So even if you teach everything, you know, what they’re gonna hire you to do is they’re not gonna hire you for the knowledge. They’re gonna help, they’re gonna hire you to help them apply the knowledge to their own life and their own business and their own situation. But the second reason why we do that is because we’re automating trust. What are we doing here on this podcast? We’re automating trust. That’s what we’re trying to do. What are we doing on my blog? We’re, you know, rory vaden blog.com. I, I mean, I feel like I’ve given away a master’s degree in free content on my blog, like for free. Like if you actually sat and went and read all the hundreds of articles, it’s like equivalent to a master’s degree, like probably better in some ways in terms of the ability to help you generate more income for your life immediately.
RV (13:27):
And it’s all there for free because we’re automating trust. We want, we want to add value to people before we need something, right? We we’re, you know, we don’t particularly need anything. Now, what we do hope you do at some point is you, is you go to free brand call.com/podcast and you say, you know what? I like these guys. I like what they’re about. I like their style. I like their guests, I like their information, I like their knowledge, and I think they could help me take my small business to the next level. I think they could help me grow my reach, grow my revenue, increase my sales build my personal brand, build my audience, build my impact, and I wanna talk to them, right? So that’s why we do the podcast for free. That’s why we work so hard at it. We’re automating trust.
RV (14:10):
That’s what we’re trying to do. You can do the same thing. That’s what we’re doing on social automating trust, teach everything you know, for free, but in one small bite-sized chunk, in an all random miscellaneous order, all right? That accounts for a lot of your success, like more than you realize. So if your last launch failed, give yourself a break, right? Like, if your revenue’s not climbing as fast as you want it, welcome to the club, right? If your audience isn’t taking off and you’re not getting the kind of reach that you want, welcome to the club, right? That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, it means you’re just early on the journey. That’s it. And that leads me to the third thing. The third thing that I don’t think we hear enough about when it comes to success. I mean, you do hear about this some, but I don’t think that we index it enough.
RV (15:03):
I don’t think we appropriately weight this enough. And that is simply that you have to make a decision to stick with it, most of succeeding in the personal brand space. Okay? So if you wanna become a, a bestselling author, a world renowned speaker, if you wanna become a world renowned coach, a high paid consultant, if you wanna just make it in this space, in this business, a huge part. Like most of it, probably 80% of it, it’s just sticking around
RV (15:55):
And so they give up, or you know, sometimes they have to, right? Something changes and they, they run out of, you know, money or somebody gets hurt in their life, they gotta take care of ’em, or you know, whatever, whatever. Like, there’s life situation, but they, but they ultimately, they just, they, they quit. They, they, because either they choose to or they have to, they stop pursuing the dream. And I think 80% of achieving a dream is just not giving up on it. Like 80% of you achieving your wildest dream is just not giving up on it. It’s just pursuing it is sticking with it. And, and the reason why I think this matters, especially for small business owners, especially for entrepreneurs, and especially for personal brands, but I think this, I would round this out and say that this applies to all small business owners, right?
RV (16:39):
Because this is, here’s what it means to be an entrepreneur. Like, ultimately people think what are, what’s the criteria that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur? We think, oh, we gotta have a great product, or we gotta be good at sales, or we gotta have the gift of gab. We gotta be good with people, or we gotta have, you know, good time management, or we have to have, you know, good systems or good at marketing, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that. I mean, all of those things help. None of them are the predominant criteria for a success. Successful entrepreneur. You wanna know what the number one most predominant criteria for a successful entrepreneur is? I’ll tell you, I’m a hundred percent convicted that this is the number one most important criteria for being a successful entrepreneur.
RV (17:23):
You have to be willing to get kicked in the face over and over and over every day and keep coming back for more. That’s it. Like, you have to get punched, you have to get kicked, you have to get hit, you have to get beat down and be willing to come back for more. If you wanna be a successful entrepreneur, that’s the job. That’s the job. It’s not secret strategies, it’s not mentorship, it’s not this personal development book, that coaching program, the perfect product, customer experience sales. It is that it is going, what is your appetite? What is, what is your threshold for getting kicked in the face, for getting beat down, for having problem after problem, rejection after rejection, setback after setback in your personal life, your professional life, people quitting on you, losing clients, thought you had the gig and you didn’t. Getting zing with a, a tax bill from the government.
RV (18:19):
You weren’t expecting the product breaking down that you thought was perfect. The marketing thing busted. Having people run off with your money. Like it’s, it’s, and then it’s, it’s managing all that, right? While in your personal life, you have chaos going on. This is the story of our life, like in the last few weeks, right? We’ve had unexpected surgeries. We have kids throwing up in the middle of the night, someone drove into our fence, right? On accident, we, we knocked over our fence. We’ve had people bump into the car. We have had gas leaks in our house where we had to tear open the walls. We have so many things, kids writing on the walls with markers like the, the kids’ teachers getting sick, and now the kids are home. Like, all of that is normal. That’s the job, right? So you go, can you manage all of that simultaneously while getting kicked in the face simultaneously, while trying to like, make an impact in the world? That is what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. What is your threshold for getting beat up? What is your threshold for, for getting hit? How hard can you get hit and keep coming back for more? How many times can you be told no? How many times can someone let you down? How many times can you be taken advantage of? How, how many times do you have to fail, but, and, but you’re willing to iterate and keep coming back? That is what it takes.
RV (19:50):
That’s what it takes. So if you’re going, if you’re having a hard day, if you’re having a hard day, don’t, I, I feel for you, right? I don’t mean to be too hard on you. I know it’s freaking hard. It’s hard. And if you have kids, you have young kids, it’s freaking hard. And if you have a team and you’re managing people and you’re dealing with the gossip and the relationships and their personal life and their, you know, traveling and this and what, and they let somebody down and they didn’t show up, right? I, it’s hard. And I know you don’t have the, you don’t have as much money to hire the vendors and you hire and then you hire a vendor and they let you down, or they don’t do a good job, or they ghost on you. We had a vendor ghost on us recently. $6,000. We paid them. They disappeared. $6,000 gone disappeared. I know it’s hard.
RV (20:48):
That’s the job. Like, that’s the price of admission for success in this business, in this game of entrepreneurship, of being a small business owner, of being a world changer. Do you think things were easy for Martin Luther King Jr? Do you think things were easy for Mother Teresa? Like, do you think things are easy for the people who change the world? Like, if you wanna change the world, that’s the job. You wanna own your own business. That’s the job you wanna make. Unlimited income, that’s the job you want freedom. That’s the job. You wanna be well known. That’s the job. You wanna make more money than anyone in your family has ever made. That is the job. What is your appetite for getting kicked in the face?
RV (21:34):
I’m not saying I like it, I’m just saying that’s the job. So if today’s a hard day, welcome to the club. You’re on the right track, right? These are the things we don’t hear enough about, but they are the truth. In order for you to succeed at launching your next thing, you need to crush it. Where you’re crush it with the thing you’re doing now, crush it where you’re at. In order to succeed and make money and generate sales, you have to bank trust first. Trust must take place before a transaction. And if you’re gonna succeed as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, as a personal brand, or as anything else, you just gotta increase your threshold for getting kicked in the face and keep coming back for more, because that’s what it takes. But if you’re here listening now, if you’re still listening by this point, if you found your way here to us and you found your way to this episode, and you’ve found your way to this moment, and you’re still here, here’s what I believe.
RV (22:50):
I believe you have what it takes. I believe you have what it takes. I believe that there’s a calling on your life to do something so big in the world that that calling will outweigh the, the, the pain that you have to go through. That, that long-term calling that purpose for your life is to make such a positive impact for other people, that you will be willing to endure the pain. So you’re on the right track. It’s okay to have hard days. Just realize that’s the job. Keep going and keep coming back for more. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 574: Creating more Digital Organization with Shawn Lemon
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Well, earlier this morning, I spent about three hours trying to get AJ’s computer updated with patches and the most recent versions, and backing up file storage and just getting things operating. And it was a fresh reminder and ironic timing because our guest today is Shawn Lemon. Shawn is a friend of the family because he’s part of my good friend Michael Hyatt’s family. He’s married to one of Michael’s daughters, and that’s how I got to meet Shawn.
RV (01:07):
But Shawn has built an incredible business with a very specific expertise. He is the founder of the digital organizer, and so for the last 17 years, he’s been helping individuals get better at using technology. So the heart of it all is trying to keep up with how technology changes, but I would describe it as basically getting rid of your digital clutter, your digital dis if you have digital clutter, if you have digital disorganization, if you have digital chaos, if things are, if you can’t find files, they’re not named properly, you don’t know who has the most recent version, you lose the passwords. You don’t have naming conventions and syntax. All of these kinds of things that are little micro cuts of slowing you down and making your organization bleed from an efficiency perspective. Those are the kinds of things that Shawn.
New Speaker (02:01):
is an expert at talking about. And we’re gonna talk about some of them today. So, Shawn, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you.
SL (02:07):
Good to be here. Thank you so much.
RV (02:10):
This stuff frustrates me. There is nothing that makes me more angry. I don’t get angry at politics. I don’t get angry when people say mean things. I don’t get angry when someone cuts me off in traffic. I get angry when I lose time ’cause I cannot find something on my computer. I get the stupid spinny ball of death. I have to spend 30 minutes looking for something. Or something is not working, something is broken. That’s when I get furious when things are not working. So can you help us with that?
SL (02:50):
Absolutely. I would love to
RV (03:11):
So I was gonna ask you why does this happen? Yeah. But I think I know why it happens. Yeah. It happens because we’re all moving too fast. We’re too fast to stop and think about how to name things, where to store ’em, having a file structure, you know, and it’s just like, I just don’t have time for it. I never have time for it. And so it just gets w worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And then one day it just like explodes. Yeah. so the so how do we prevent that? Like you, you mentioned before there’s four main areas that you support people with. Yeah. Can you walk us through what those four areas are? Yeah.
SL (03:52):
So everyone has three components of their digital world. We’re only four. We’ll focus on the third one first, and then we’ll hit the fourth. And that’s communicating. I mean, we’re using our technology to communicate to create and store files. So managing assets and keeping track of tasks and projects. And all three of those things are intrinsically connected. We get an email that has a file that needs to go into file storage, but instead of putting it in file storage, you’re trying to organize your email, or we get an email that’s part of a larger project and we need that critical piece of information or that deadline. And so we leave it in our inbox instead of grabbing it and putting into project management. So we’ve got tons of overlap between them. So really we’ve chosen to focus on those three things. And then the fourth one, which gets everyone irate, which is passwords and not being able to get into an account. Oh my gosh. Or you’ve hired someone else to do something. No,
RV (04:50):
You annoyed the passwords, dude. Like 70 bazillion passwords. Yeah. They want me to update it. Don’t use the same one. It’s like, dude. Yeah. And then you use, like, we use OnePass, which is mm-hmm
SL (05:22):
Yep. And then passwords to, to bring it all together, because the fact is, it’s just extremely important. You can get away with using fluffy 1, 2, 3 and variations of that until you can’t. And then, like one of our clients, he had, he brought home $500,000 a year in profit from a partnership for his marketing company. The whole thing imploded because his developer was using some simple password. The account got hacked, they got into all of their client stuff and then and started buying ads with their company’s, their clients’ company, credit cards. Whoa. I mean, it is just insanity you know, to try and operate remotely with other people if you’re not using a good password manager. So that’s the piece that really kind of pulls it all together.
RV (06:08):
Okay. So where do we start with managing all this chaos? And, and I’ll speak for my audience here and say, we don’t have time to deal with this. We don’t really want to talk about this. So how can we do this efficiently?
SL (06:22):
Well, to do it the most efficiently, you can hire someone to help you
RV (06:27):
That’s not, that’s that. I, I, that’s a good option. Many of us would like to do that. So consider, consider, consider yourself interviewing for the job
SL (06:36):
Yeah. Okay. So really there’s a few different ways to approach this. You can go with a course, you know, the school of YouTube, you can find somebody who’s got a course. You know, I’ve got materials on this that you can buy. There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. The fact is, you know, it’s single digits of people who actually finish courses. And then you could also hire somebody to do this for you. They’re promising that they’re gonna go in, you just tell ’em what your stuff is and how you want it organized. Then they’ll go in and do it, but they’re really creating their system and not one for you. And so, almost always, those people will have to keep going back to the organizer over and over again. Or you could choose a hybrid approach where you’re working with someone to co-create.
SL (07:18):
So basically, and that’s what we do, is we’ve got our resource library, you know, basically the course and the framework that we take our people through. And then we do it together. And so, you know, we want a very systematic approach incorporating, you know, how we’re communicating how we’re storing files and task management all in our, our master plan so that we have clear demarcation lines between each one of ’em. And that’s really designing from the front end. What tools do I want to use and what part of those tools should I not be using? And I think that’s a really big part of the process, is understanding what you shouldn’t be using in some of these apps. So
RV (08:00):
Where do you start? Do you start with storage? You start with passwords? Do you start with project management system? Do you start with communicating and email inbox? Like
SL (08:09):
Where
RV (08:10):
Do you, what’s the starting point?
SL (08:12):
Most of the time, the starting point is email. Okay. Because the majority of people are drowning in email. And, and while some people recognize how much anxiety and stress it causes them, some people don’t because it’s ubiquitous. Everyone’s dealing with email overload and marketers hammering their inbox and, you know, and trying to just stay organized with that. So if we can actually start with email and calm down the noise and be really strategic about how we approach emails so that we’re not having an open all day and reacting and be more strategic, that gives us so much more time and mental energy to start strategically tackling how we’re approaching project management or how we’re even planning the work we do, and how are we going to do our folder structures and things like that. So that’s a great starting point. So
RV (09:08):
Let’s start there. So let’s dive in mm-hmm
SL (09:22):
Yep. Yep.
RV (09:23):
I, I, I like that a lot. So what are the principles that we need to know or follow mm-hmm
SL (09:32):
Yeah. So the first thing is you should do so much less organization and email than you think you need to. Huh? if, if I had my way, you’re not organizing any email. Email should be a communication platform. We send a message, we receive a message. Now we may send someone a file or receive a file, but it does not belong in email. We take that file, download it, and put it into our folder structure so that we can find it. When we’re looking for a file as a part of a project, we should never have to go to our email to find that it should be where we’re working on that project. And that’s where we need to store things. So it’s not necessarily we’re keeping all presentations together. It’s, are we doing a presentation for a pitch for this company and we’ve got all of their logos, the research that we’ve done for that, et cetera.
SL (10:25):
Well, the file for that presentation goes together. So stop organizing in email. We, you can use some automation tools. I like Sandbox and Sandbox allows me to create a couple of folders. I only use two smart folders later for newsletters that I truly read. And if I find that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been deleting a few newsletters, it’s time to unsubscribe. And then I got another folder for financial and shipping. And why I like using this tool is when I get an email from Amazon, I drop it into financial and, and Sandbox will make sure that anything sent from that specific address gets to my receipts folder or my financial folder. So everything skips my inbox, and I have a focused inbox that just has communication from people by ruthlessly, unsubscribing, getting rid of these newsletters, coupons, and lists that you’re on. We’ll really help. And then we can start filter out other things that we need that really shouldn’t hit the inbox that we do want to keep. And then we start triaging. So that’s really the starting point. And then you can go deeper into how do you approach processing the emails from real people?
RV (11:38):
Love that. I, I, I will tell you, you know, I’ve, I’ve hired so many assistants over the years Yeah. And every new one comes with a new way to want to organize the inbox. Yep. And I have always pushed back on it because I’m like mm-hmm
SL (12:13):
To, to We wanna do it manually. We do it manually if possible. We want to do it mainly if we get pushback from that. Sandbox has a feature called the Black Hole. And anything that you put in that folder from that sender, they’re automatically gonna be put in black hole marked as red and it purges itself after seven days automatically. Mm-Hmm. So if you don’t want to go through the trouble of unsubscribing, stick ’em in the black hole, that’ll take care of it for you. And I, my preference would be to manually unsubscribe, because you don’t know how many lists that that company has added you to. It might be 20 different lists. If you, you know, sign up for under buy something from Under Armour, you’re gonna be on 10 different, 10 different brands lists that could be 50 subscriptions just from one simple signup. So if we go in and unsubscribe it, then we know we’re not gonna get it into a future. And if I want to get rid of Sandbox later I can get rid of it and my inbox isn’t gonna be overflowed.
RV (13:10):
Yeah. There’s also something, there’s a mental purging that happens there where you go, I’m, it does, I’m deliberately choosing, I don’t want this to come into my world anymore. I think that’s powerful. Mm-Hmm
SL (13:42):
So we want to get rid of things that are older than 30 days. So if you got 20,000 emails in your inbox, what are they doing there? Like, they shouldn’t be there anymore to They’re
RV (13:52):
Storage. That’s what they’re doing. Like, I, I could answer that question. Yeah. They’re, we’re storing things there that are like old emails of like, I might need this one day. Right.
SL (14:00):
Right. And that’s fine. You can keep it, it just doesn’t belong in the inbox anymore. Like Gmail, when you hit archive, it just takes it outta the inbox, but it’s still searchable and you’re not gonna browse through 20,000 emails. So why leave it in the inbox? Let’s clear it out. So and if you sign up for this file organization guide that I’m gonna tell you about at the end, I’m gonna send you a couple of videos on how to actually do the purging, unsubscribing, and setting up sandbox. So all of this stuff that I’m talking about, I’m gonna send you videos of how to actually do this practically. So you don’t have to memorize this process from the podcast, but we want to get rid of those everything older than 30 days. We need to purge the newsletters. And 30 days is a good starting point.
SL (14:44):
And then you keep up with it from there. And then after that, let’s archive the things that are taken care of. Let’s delete what we never need to see again. And now what we’re left with are things that we need to deal with. And it’s time to take a look at how do we do these tasks? Like what are we getting and when should we be doing them? Because we’ve got stuff that needs to be dealt with right away. We have things that need to be dealt with. Just we maybe a group them together ’cause we have a number of bills to pay, for example. Well, maybe we can snooze all of those for Thursday morning when we have time set aside to do that. Yes. And then we’ve got items that are part of a larger project that shouldn’t really belong and, and email anymore. Let’s get, let’s copy the information, let’s put it into Asana where we’re keeping track of those tasks so that I can archive the email and move on and have the information that I need when that task comes up for a due date in my project management system.
RV (15:43):
Okay. So I love this because that’s, that’s the other reason why items are in the inbox, is I’m using it as my to-do list. Yep. Right. So I’m going, crap, I need that email. ’cause That’s, that’s my reminder to do. Mm-Hmm. The thing, and you’re saying if you’re doing that, you should maybe not do that. You should take that out of there and put that onto your task management or project management management system mm-hmm
SL (16:26):
Yeah. How do you, and when do you do one versus the other? Right. Right.
RV (16:28):
Yeah.
SL (16:29):
Yeah. So if, if it’s a communication thing and that you just, you need information to come back at a certain point, something along those lines. I like to snooze emails. I don’t wanna put it all in Asana to check Asana to then go back an email. So I will snooze an email to pop back up at the time that I have set aside to actually do that thing. And if I snooze it multiple times, then that’s a trigger for me of, okay, am I actually going to do this? Do I need to knuckle down or do I just need to say, Hey, this isn’t getting done, I’m sorry. Or just, you know, delete it and move on and let go of the thing. So if it has to do with communication and it’s not really part of a larger project, I don’t want you to have to store that somewhere else just to come back to email, snooze it for the time that either later in the day or or for next week or even next month. Or if you, you know, said, Hey, I need to hear back by Thursday, you know, at three and it’s Thursday at at noon and you haven’t gotten, you know, you wanna give them some time. Maybe it comes back Thursday at noon in your inbox to let you know, Hey, the deadline’s coming. You might wanna ping them one more time.
RV (17:43):
Okay. So now I’m moving files. We’re getting rid of spam stuff. Mm-Hmm
SL (18:05):
Out of the inbox. It’s still, still still searchable in email. ’cause That’s really where you’re gonna wanna look. You need to leave them there. We’re not gonna turn emails into files.
RV (18:14):
Is okay. So then are we kind of done with the inbox? Like does that kind of go pretty much now, now everything that makes sense to me. So now everything is sort of where it belongs.
SL (18:29):
Yeah.
RV (18:30):
My new problem is now I have, what was a hundred emails. I now have 76 tasks to complete in my, in my project management tool. And is, would you consider calendar calendaring as part of project management? Or how do those overlap?
SL (18:47):
Yeah, so a lot of people want to say incorporate their project management into their calendar. So if they create a task there, then it shows up on their calendar. Or they’ll use their calendar for task management to, to show them what items they’re supposed to be doing. I like to chunk it and say, this is the time for this type of work on Thursday mornings. And so then I open up Asana and I’m looking at either that project that I know I’m supposed to be working on, or I’m looking at my, my tasks for the day to start knocking out things that are really all, all scheduled for that day. So I’ve got the time set aside for it. So my calendar tells me where I’m supposed to be working, and then I’m primarily working in Asana to process that stuff. And maybe I’m doing some documenting. Maybe I am gonna send a quick email or something along those lines. But that’s the place where that’s really directing the work for that period of time.
RV (19:45):
Okay. So you’re using, you’re using your project management tool in your case, Asana mm-hmm
RV (19:51):
As your to-do list and the like to direct your work every day.
SL (19:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And I clear out my inbox and get to inbox zero by snoozing because it’s just not practical for us to deal with every single message as they come in. And we can’t answer every email in a day, every single day. So snoozing has to happen for when we actually have the information. It’s
RV (20:16):
Just funny ’cause when you’re saying workload is snoozing mm-hmm
SL (20:51):
Right? Because if you are caught in a, in a dopamine loop of email of you’re sitting there, you’re solving problems, you’re answering things, then you find yourself kind of chained to email and that’s what makes you actually feel productive. And then it makes, and because the email is a to-do list and there’s constantly things coming in, then you stay in that spot. And it’s hard to let it go and truly focus on the important thing that needs to get done that you’ve been procrastinating on if we’ve got this big list. But if you go in and clear those things out, because it’s really not, not necessary to do this item right now, and I have more important things to do, and you snooze it, it’s not in your view anymore and it’s a heck of a lot easier to go move on and do the things that are actually important to you.
SL (21:45):
And yeah. And if you snooze things multiple times and you don’t get it done, you pr procrastinate multiple times and it’s not done, then that’s your red flag. Should you even be doing it in the first place. This is in my drudgery zone. I need to delegate this because I just don’t want to do it. Or I need to stop doing this task. So
RV (22:02):
Talk to me about project management. This is good. This is good. Good. Shawn I’m follow, I’m following you so far when I get into the project management mm-hmm
RV (22:14):
How do you think about an approach that list? ’cause Now you just, you have a list. Is, is there, is there anything big there that changes in our thinking about how we tackle the projects or how we organize them or label them or name them or code them or like mm-hmm
SL (22:35):
Yeah. So I would say the biggest mistake that most people make when doing project management is they do big list dumps and they get this new app and they take all of the things that they think that they need to do and consolidate a bunch of lists and just create this massive task dump. And it feels really good and you get a massive sense of satisfaction for it and can, can start some momentum, but then it’s just this big dumping ground of a lot of possibilities and things that really aren’t strategically placed there. So I like to kind of flip this around and say, I actually wanna do my list dump in a document and I’ll call this the back burner list. And that’s actually what ours is called. It’s a Google doc called Back Burner. And so it’s very easy to search and pull up and that’s all of the things that I would like to do and that need to get done and everything in between.
SL (23:33):
And then we strategically look at that list quarterly. And sometimes when we finish something early, then we go back to the, to the the back burner list and we decide what is the most important thing that needs to get done. And we turn those into projects and build out our system and our schedule around what we really, truly intentionally need to get done. And that creates so much more focus in your project management tools so that you’re not exposed to a lot of other things. And and that alone can really help create a lot more focus and make project management less overwhelming.
RV (24:15):
Okay. So you’re, if you’re using your project management tool, you’re, it’s like you’re only using your project management tool to, to have tasks that are related to big projects, not just random one-off tasks.
SL (24:26):
So you use it. And well, also recurring things too, like your taxes, you got quarterly taxes due multiples at the beginning of the year, you know, different deadlines for that. That happens recurring. So we gotta, we’ll factor that into, there’s recurring stuff and then there are also projects.
RV (24:43):
Okay. And then what about, so you’ve got recurring things and projects on there mm-hmm
SL (25:09):
Yeah. So it really depends. I kind of a approach those individually on where it’s at. So if I got the RSVP in my inbox, so if they emailed me an an R rsvp, it’s quick enough
RV (25:21):
To just do it.
SL (25:23):
It’s quicker to do it. Or we’ll say, well add a complication, I gotta check my wife’s schedule first and we need to discuss if we even can go in the first place and who’s gonna watch our child and, you know, all of those other things. So I can’t RSVP right now. Well, what do I do? I, I tell my phone, remind me at six 30 to talk to Madeline about the birthday party. And then I snooze that email for tomorrow morning so we can have the discussion tonight, come to a conclusion, and then tomorrow when I open up my email, then I can go ahead and RSVP for that. So I’m gonna snooze that for tomorrow and it’s gonna pop back in at you know, at 9:00 AM.
RV (26:01):
Gotcha. anything else in the project management space? I mean, is it basically like blocking time to get stuff done? A
SL (26:09):
Lot of it’s blocking time, but another huge mistake people make are they create tasks out of projects. So they think, oh, you know, put the Christmas lights up is a project or it’s a task, you know, and that’s just one thing. Well, like if you just moved into a new house, putting the Christmas lights up is not a single task. You gotta figure out a lot of stuff. Do you have everything? There’s a, a number of pieces involved in that. So, so often we really need to break down a task and think, what are all of the steps that I need to take in order to complete this task? And you might find you’ve actually got a project on your hands. There’s a lot going on in this. And so by creating a task that’s impossible to get done in one sitting, it really sets you up for failure because you’re like, God, I didn’t, I didn’t even make any progress on my to-do list because you couldn’t check that item off. We need to break things up into bite-sized chunks with due dates attached to them so that when we actually make progress on it, we can check it off and get that sense of accomplishment and see I am moving in the right direction. And that can really help to create a lot more momentum instead of feeling like you’re never making progress.
RV (27:34):
So I, I like that. What’s the difference between a task and a project?
SL (27:41):
A project is a whole lot of tasks.
RV (27:44):
Yeah. And, and just, just like, basically if it’s more than five or something, then it’s really a project.
SL (27:50):
Yeah. And you can use a milestone or, or really, so Asana is broken up into, I like Asana ’cause it’s on Rails versus Clickup. It’s, you know, it’s totally loosey goosey. It’s choose your own adventure and you create it. So if you really know what you want, that’s a great platform. So Asana’s broken up in teams and then teams have projects, then projects have milestones and then tasks or sections, milestones, tasks, and then subtasks. So if your project is huge, that’s why project management is really different than task management. You’ve got a lot more layers to it to be able to manage all of it. So if I’ve got a task that has five things to that go along with it, then I might just create five subtasks. So create the tasks and then add the subtask of that’s gonna consist of these five actions. But if they’re all being done on different days, I’d rather them not be subtasks. I’d rather them actually be tasks. Just visually it’s different. And I wish I could show
RV (28:59):
You, but you’re saying projects, so teams, projects, sections, milestones, tasks and subtasks.
SL (29:04):
Yep.
RV (29:05):
Gotcha. Mm-hmm
SL (29:09):
Yep.
RV (29:12):
In a, in bird’s eye, bird’s eye view of a week
SL (29:16):
Mm-Hmm
RV (29:17):
How much time should I be spending in meetings versus communicating versus doing work versus like, you know, and then, you know, marginal time to like place wherever. ’cause ’cause I’ve, I’ve realized it’s just like it takes time to answer an inbox. It takes time. Mm-Hmm
SL (30:15):
RV (30:16):
Any thoughts high level on that? Or like for a of a, of a week, how much, is there like a limit or rule to how many meetings you should be in? Or do you not really do it that way? You just kind of let your inbox drive to your project management, which drives to your tasks?
SL (30:31):
It’s more intentional, but there’s no rules. So each person has to approach this from a, a little bit differently because we all have different roles and sometimes those roles fluctuate and we are having more what Michael Hyatt would describe front stage work, meaning actually like this would be front stage work. We’re both having a conversation for the public. This is, this is part of what we do of delivering our stuff. And, and then we’ve got backstage work, which would be downloading the file, renaming it, doing all of those things. So there are times where we are doing more front stage work or our role requires that of us and then more backstage. And then we also have off stage work, which would be free time, time with family re recharge and things like that. So kind of thinking of it from the high level of do I have enough backstage work to support me for, to do my front stage?
SL (31:39):
‘Cause We can’t just only do meetings and never have any processing time. So it’s just recognizing what your needs are. And this is what’s really nice about having an ideal week where you take a look at your calendar and say, ideally I wanna spend Monday catching up, planning, doing administrative work, and really setting me up for the week. And if I need to, I can slip some meetings in, in the second half of Monday, but the be, but the first half of Monday is sacred and I’m not letting anyone in on that. So that’s all backstage work. Whereas Tuesday and Thursday and then the second half of Friday, I just need a lot of time for meetings. Right now my job is podcasts, sales calls, and occasionally some really technical work. So I need to make sure that there’s plenty of time for that. But then I still have other administrative stuff.
SL (32:35):
So that’s where in the middle of the week, Wednesday is primarily deep work, really trying to make a lot of progress on projects and I’m trying to protect that from meetings. And then Friday morning, kind of same thing, get focused before wrapping up at the end of the day. And maybe I’ve got some meetings on the second half so you can see I’m chunking and having kind of overarching ideas of when I’m doing things. And then that can flex as needed. But I have kind of a starting point of plenty of time for front stage, plenty of time for backstage, and I will flex those as needed.
RV (33:15):
Mm-Hmm
SL (33:37):
Yeah. Okay. So when we’re in business, there are certain things that you really do not want to cheap out on. And that’s gonna be business file storage. Mm-Hmm. So when we’re working in Google accounts you know, you can bootstrap with Google Drive in, in a Gmail account, but as soon as possible you’ve got to get set up with Google Workspace. Or if you’re a big Dropbox user, you need to get on Dropbox business When you start collaborating with other people, because these business subscriptions give us a different type of folder. We’ll take Google Drive for example, in Google Drive, we have my drive and that’s how everything started where I can create a folder and Rory, I can invite you to my folder so that we can collaborate anything that you put in my folder, you still own. So if you decide you’re done with this account, maybe you were freelancing for me and you were doing this same thing and you created a Gmail specifically for that freelancing gig, you delivered your stuff to me and you decide this isn’t for me anymore, and you delete that Google account, it deletes all of the files you created for me and put in my folder from my folder because you don’t own it.
RV (34:53):
You lost me.
SL (34:54):
Okay. You lost
RV (34:55):
Me. You’re, you’re basically, you’re saying if you’re using personal accounts to do business, then who, if you hire like a
SL (35:02):
Vendor, whoever created the folder or whoever created the file owns it. Not wheres it at, but who created it? Owns the file.
RV (35:13):
Gotcha.
SL (35:14):
So you hire someone from the Philippines to start creating documents for you, managing different things, creating some spreadsheets, keeping track of all of this stuff, and then they don’t work for you anymore and you’re not using the right folder and they delete their account. Everything they created for you goes, bye bye.
RV (35:31):
Yeah. That’s happened to me. It happened with about 165 blog videos that I recorded that we turned into blog posts. Okay. And they just literally vanished out of Dropbox on, and everyone’s like, where did they go? Yeah. How come we don’t have them? It was this exact thing. There was a overseas VA that was handling stuff and apparently they, you know, cleaned out their Dropbox to save money on their account or whatever. And I mean, is that what you’re talking about? Where basically Exactly.
SL (36:05):
They,
RV (36:05):
They, they had, they had, they had, that’s
SL (36:07):
Exactly it. And how much money, how much time, like all of those resources. And this is because we didn’t upgrade to business and or we didn’t use the right type of folder. If you use Dropbox for business and you created a team folder and invited that VA to the team folder, anything that they put in your folder you own. And on Google it’s called shared drive. So we have to be on the level that as of today is $14 a month, or T 12 or 1440 depending on if you’re paying yearly. And
RV (36:40):
When you say own it,
SL (36:41):
You’re saying able to get access, full
RV (36:43):
Access to it. They can’t delete it because it’s your business folder.
SL (36:47):
Well, what happens is, but it’s not
RV (36:48):
Like IP ownership or is it both? Yeah.
SL (36:51):
Or it’s, it’s file ownership, not ip. Okay. So it’s just purely technical. Right. So the
RV (36:58):
First, right. But it’s like what good is IP ownership? If you hire a graphic designer to hire file and you own the ip, but then they delete the file because Exactly. You don’t have the file. It’s like, oh, I own IP on something that doesn’t exist. Yeah.
SL (37:08):
Yeah. So if you use the right folder, they put the file in your folder, ownership transfers to you mm-hmm
RV (37:31):
Yeah. And so you’re saying that’s called Dropbox Business. If you use Dropbox or Google
SL (37:37):
Shared drives in Google workspace, shared drives instead of my drive. So a lot of people confuse those ’cause they think, oh, I shared that folder with someone else. It’s a shared folder, but it’s not a technical shared drive. And then, you know, and then we can choose what level of permissions this VA has, can they add but they can’t delete. So we get to set those permissions,
RV (37:59):
Uhhuh,
SL (38:18):
So you’d have to download all of that stuff and then put it into your drive so that you actually maintain ownership. So when working with somebody, you wanna create the folder. And this is where you’ve said you’ve hired multiple VAs over the years and they all had their own systems. That’s why it’s important for us to create our own system. I’ve got somebody in another country dealing with, or you know, handling all of my social media, creating stuff for me, all of the rest. But I said, when you work with me, you’re not gonna create a folder. I’m going to create a folder for you and I’m gonna send you a video of how I want you to use it. This is where you’re gonna put posts in that you’ve created for my approval. You let me know. And then I put it in a folder called approved posts, approved reels. Or I comment on it to say, you need to change this. You missed the point, change the graphic, whatever it is that gets done. And then I can move it into approved. So I’m creating the system and they can use whatever Gmail account they want. And I maintain all control.
RV (39:21):
Mm-Hmm
SL (39:35):
It is,
RV (39:36):
They don’t make that ridiculously clear. At least
SL (39:39):
It’s no. And the thing is,
RV (39:40):
They haven’t made it idiot proof enough for me to figure out the difference between like a shared folder and a shared drive. Like that’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal.
SL (39:48):
This is the frog in the pot, you know, all of this technology is, is we’re building the plane while we’re flying it. So Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, all of these services started as consumer products and then these problems appeared and then they created business level subscriptions and started solving the problems. But are they marketing? This is what you need to do and here’s the technical answer and all this stuff. No, they’re just pitching the solution, trying to get the next subscription, not choosing to educate the
RV (40:21):
People on how this works when they’re, you wanna pay $99 a month to be able to share your folders. I’m like, I already can share my folders. I don’t think I wanna pay $99 a month. Right.
SL (40:30):
Right.
RV (40:31):
And then all your files disappear one day and you go, what happened to my files? Those were my file. Mm-Hmm. Like yeah. Anything real quick on passwords?
SL (40:43):
Yeah. So use a password manager. I love one password. You gotta set it up fully. Yeah.
RV (40:50):
It’s not set up fully.
SL (40:52):
You gotta set it up fully. You know, when you set it up on your iPhone, you install the app, you gotta inst you gotta go into the password section and, and turn that on. You want to turn off Safari so those aren’t competing, then you need to turn the extension on. In Safari you have three distinct things that you need to make sure that you get done on every iPhone that’s logging into that account or or iPad. You know, the Mac, you gotta set up the extension on all of your browsers so that it really works. And then in Safari you gotta tell it turn off Safari Auto Save. So those two aren’t competing. Chrome just does it automatically, but for some reason they don’t with Safari. So it’s those sorts of considerations we really need to put in place is when you do the password management, you gotta go all the way and then it’s phenomenal. And nobody has to bug me for two step verification text messages ever because I integrate that two step login into the login itself in one password. So if I’m sharing the password with you, you also have the two step verification code that’s automatically generating in that login. So that completely solves the problem.
RV (42:02):
So you’re saying you can share the two step validate validation code
SL (42:07):
Part mm-hmm
RV (42:13):
Hmm. That’s pretty cool if you have other people logging into certain accounts.
SL (42:17):
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. ’cause You want your social media accounts super locked down. I think Shalene Johnson had her Instagram account hacked. They started posting hardcore porn on her account. She lost a third of her audience, cost her quarter million dollars, all in all to get everything under control, do all of this stuff, and then had to rebuild her following again, because of a stupid account password being hacked. We cannot afford to not use strong passwords on our social media accounts. Especially if you have an influential personal brand, you need a strong password and you need two step verification set up.
RV (42:56):
Uhhuh. Yeah. I got a call this week from a client who had their Instagram hacked. It’s the second, second time this year. We’ve had a client that was like, my Instagram account is gone, like, just disappear. Oh my. Because someone hacked the password. Yeah. what they really do is they hack into your email and then they email the password and then they get it and then they reset your password and they lock you out. And then they hold you ransom for your, your your, yeah. It’s terrible.
SL (43:24):
There’s like 30, I think it’s 34% of ex-employees have the login accounts for their previous employers, even after they’ve left the company because they’re sharing this spreadsheet with variations of fluffy 1, 2, 3 for all of their accounts. And then sharing that in amongst the company and someone leaves, they just know what that password is.
RV (43:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So to go all the way, you’re saying you need to download the app on your phone, you need to install the extensions on the browsers, and then you need to go into your phone settings and disable safari and turn on the, somewhere in the security settings of the phone.
SL (44:11):
Yeah. And you, you should also import the lists. So Chrome’s probably been saved in login. Safari’s been saved in logins. You can export that list and import it into one password. It is very easy to do. They have guides to do the whole thing and they’ve made it very simple and then clean up the logins and, and go through it from there. So it’s not really tough to to get things up and going. You just wanna approach it as a project set time aside to do it and make it happen.
RV (44:39):
Mm-Hmm
SL (44:54):
It’s truly the, the ROI is massive, but it’s just, it’s those tiny little minutes and the frustrations and the things that we don’t think about. This creates capacity for you. It’s not generating revenue, but it creates more capacity you know, more creativity, all of the different things and in a better working environment. Just, it’s like if we were to make our digital workplaces physical, you would never tolerate that. You know? And that’s what people are, are struggling in and dealing with day in and day out. They’re working in a super messy house. It’s hard to get things done. It’s not very fun. And and so if we can make that super easy, approach it as a project, yeah. It’s gonna take you some time to do maybe some money to get some help to, to get it done. But when you do, I mean, it’s just so nice having this dealt with.
RV (45:45):
Hmm. Brother, where should people go to learn more about you and what you’re up to? Yeah.
SL (45:51):
The best thing to do is go to the digital organizer.com/ipb. This is the infin influential personal brand podcast ipb. So go to the digital organizer.com/ipb and you can download my file organization guide. So if you want to get your files organized, you want to consolidate things from a bunch of different areas, I’ve got a step-by-step process to take you through it with videos, examples of the whole thing. When you do that, you get added to my newsletter and I’m gonna send you a few emails of getting your email organized and other things like that. So there’s a whole path for you to go down and I’m gonna give you so many resources you know, just on the front end. And then if you wanna stick along for the newsletter we’d love to see you there and you can reach out. If you wanna talk to me, you know, you can have a discovery call with me.
RV (46:39):
Really Cool. We’ll put that link in the show notes. Of course. So you can hit those. Check out, Shaw. n go find him on social and leave him a comment if you’re listening so that he knows you’re there and say hello and thanks. So generous Shawn. Really, really helpful. And my friend, we just, we continue to wish you all the best and I’m sure we’ll, we’ll talk to you again soon.
SL (47:01):
Same to you. Thanks so much.
Ep 551: How to Add Thousands of Followers in Just Weeks | Sarah Maslowski Episode Recap
RV (00:00):
Here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in three weeks. It was actually five simple ideas that I just wanna share with you. The first thing was to focus on starters. Another term for this would be the hook, but it’s really paying attention to the opening first few seconds of your videos. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but everyone throws that word around, like, you gotta have a great hook. It’s all about the hook. Start with hook. And I’m like, what exactly is a hook? Because nobody seems to be able to explain what that means. I’ve heard that term for years, but something finally clicked in the last few weeks, and I’m gonna share now what I’m using as my definition of a hook to see if it helps you. And a hook is simply this. Tell people what you’re about to tell them.
RV (00:49):
Tell them what you’re about to tell them, right? Think about how they advertise the news. They say, A new study reveals a food that causing cancer will tell you what it is tonight at nine, right? Like they tell you what they’re gonna, they they tell you what they’re gonna tell you. And in Toastmasters, where I started my professional speaking career, Toastmasters used to have a phrase where they said, tell the audience what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em. And now I’m realizing, oh, that’s the same opening formula for a great video. Tell ’em what you’re about to tell ’em. You’ll notice that I started this video saying, here’s how I grew my followers by here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in the last three weeks. I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you. I don’t launch in to telling you how to do it.
RV (01:38):
I’m telling you about what I’m about to tell you. And that’s what the key to a hook is. It’s super duper simple. So focus on your starters. Focus on the opening first three seconds of your videos. Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, and I think you’ll see an immediate improvement. The second thing is screen quality. And by screen quality, I just mean production value. We got my main man, Chris, over here. We finally invested to get a good camera and get a a, a, a decent, decent microphone. And I think that’s made a really big difference. If you go look at some of my old videos, they’re just not as visually capturing because they’re not as quality in terms of the resolution. The content, I would argue, is just as good as it has ever been. But the production value is definitely up a notch. And I think at this point, if you’re trying to compete online, you need to make that investment. Why? Because all the other people who are doing it are doing that. And so you’re not, you’re competing not just on the quality of your ideas, but you’re competing also on the quality of your production value. And so it’s time to make that investment if you’re ready to really get serious. So that’s the screen quality. The third thing is stimulus stimuli. We have increased the cuts in our video
RV (02:58):
Editing dramatically. Again, my man, Chris, over here rocking the camera is doing cuts every one or two seconds. And when I mean cut, if you just watch a video and count how many seconds go between each time the screen changes, something moves, right? A talking head video is just me here talking. The camera is not cutting. It’s the same view for an extended period of time. But adding stimulus means you’re adding cuts. You’re showing other pictures, other you know, it can be captions. It can be moving things around on the screen. It can be having pullout quotes. It can be dropping in emojis. It can be dropping in B-roll footage. It can be dropping in stock footage of other things. You can be referencing news media articles, but the camera is cutting every couple seconds. And again, this is just a tactic to hold people’s attention, which is a huge part of what growing your followers is all about.
RV (03:57):
The algorithms reward people who hold people’s attention on the platform. The fourth thing is stories. Tell stories. Stories from your life are an automatic great format and formula for capturing attention. There is something about the human brain that we are drawn to stories. So for example, I spoke at the Keller Williams National Convention. There were 17,000 people there, and I had an opportunity to share the stage with Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, and several other speakers. Well, I told the story when I came back of how I watched Mel Robbins speak. And I stayed two days longer in Vegas than I planned to, just so I could get to see her. And I just shared the story of what I thought of her presentation. Well, unbeknownst to me or unplanned by me, she saw the post and she reshared it. So part of the, the value was certainly the size of her audience.
RV (04:56):
But what really was powerful was the story. It was, it was sharing a story of what did I do and what did I learn? And that’s really the simple format for a story is what happened to you and what did you learn? And I’ve got other videos that talk about the four parts of telling a great story. But every picture in your phone is a story. If you just kind of go through your phone, camera roll, every single photo is a story. Tell the story of who was there, what were you doing, what happened, what did you learn? And how does that apply to the people who are in your audience tell great stories because they automatically serve as great hooks and great lessons and great attention grabbers and attention keepers. And finally, number five is stages. Getting on stages. As I mentioned, I was at a very large event, and to this day, the fastest way that I have ever seen to grow my email list, my social media following
RV (05:56):
My customers or just new friends and fans, is to be out speaking on stages. This is one of our expertise at Brand Builders Group. This is one of the things I’ve spent my life learning and that our team specializes in teaching you how to do, is to get on stages. Now, they don’t have to be thousands of people. You don’t even have to be paid to be on ’em. But the shortest distance between someone who is a complete stranger, becoming a lifelong fan is a world class one hour presentation after seeing you on stage. And by the way, if you’d like to talk to someone on our team about some of the strategies we use to help personal brands get on more stages, just click the link that is somewhere around this video and we’ll set you up with a free call. But there you have it. The five strategies that I’ve used to grow my followers more than 3000 in the last three weeks. It starts with the starts have great hooks, then it’s all about screen quality up your production game. Third, have more stimulus, more jump cuts, and more advanced editing happening inside of your videos. Fourth, tell more stories. And fifth, get on more stages. If you do those five things, I promise, you’ll see your followers grow.
Ep 550: How Professional Service Providers Can Drive Leads from YouTube with Sarah Maslowski
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. One of the things I become more and more enamored with as time goes on is people who are executing one tactic or a few, a small number of tactics really, really well in a way that actually grows their business. I’m less impressed by the hype of millions of followers and a lot of that stuff, which a lot of it is just not real. But I’m super excited about people who are doing something really well, serving a small audience, and turning that into a lot of impact and a lot of income.
RV (01:06):
And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So I have a new friend her name is Sarah Maslowski, and she’s actually a real estate agent from Keller Williams. So I’ve spoke twice recently. I spoke at Keller Williams National event called Family Reunion, and then I spoke at another huge event that they do every year called Mega Agent Camp. And I’ve gotten to know them really well. Of course, I’ve known Jay Papasan, the co-author of the One Thing for years and years and years. And so I’ve got a lot of respect for their company and their organization, their culture. And Jason who’s one of the other senior executives, he was telling me about Sarah and how she’s generating leads for her business. And I was like, oh my gosh, we gotta hear the story because Sarah just, you know, shortly after a great recession, you know, she got laid off after, you know, she had a degree in marketing, got laid off was living in South Georgia, didn’t have really any job opportunities.
RV (02:00):
She found a job as a teacher and, you know, spent seven years as like a special ed teacher. And then was moving around with her husband. And then in 2018, she got into real estate and she got licensed. And here’s what’s super impressive. She became a millionaire real estate agent in just five years. Five years. And how she, how is she doing that? She’s doing it through YouTube. 80% of her business has up to 80% has been coming from YouTube, from her YouTube channel. And she doesn’t have millions and millions of subscribers. She’s got a dedicated audience serving a very specific niche. And so when I heard this, I was like, we’ve got to have Sarah on to talk about this. So Sarah, welcome to the show.
SM (02:45):
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
RV (02:47):
So it was all that accurate backstory?
SM (02:50):
A hundred percent accurate, yes.
RV (02:52):
Okay. And then so you got into real estate, and how did you get into YouTube for real estate? Like, what, what was it that made you go, oh, I think I’ll start using a YouTube channel to drive leads? Because, you know, it’s a professional service and I think there’s a lot of people, we have a lot of clientele who are doctors and lawyers and chiropractors and, and CPAs. And I don’t think a lot of ’em, they, their first thought is not, Hey, I’ll grab for YouTube as like a, a way of leads. And traditionally, I mean, that’s not really how real estate, I mean, that’s not how I think of real estate transactions being done, but somehow you got into this.
SM (03:30):
Yeah, so when I first got licensed as a real estate agent, you are here in the north metro Atlanta area, and we were somewhat new to the area. So I did not have a lot of people that I knew, or a big database that I could call upon saying, Hey, are you thinking about buying or selling? So my first year and a half in real estate was a lot of hustle and grind of getting leads and clients to work with any way I could. So it was a lot of cold calling and open houses and your traditional methods of, you know, pounding the pavement in real estate. And in 20 19, 20 20, I kept hearing from marketing professionals, video is the wave of the future. You gotta be incorporating video into your marketing. And having a marketing background. I bought into this and was trying various different methods of incorporating video making videos and putting them on Facebook. And, and you have to remember back in 2020, Instagram reels and TikTok wasn’t quite a thing. So really the two options was Facebook and YouTube. And so I was taking those same informational videos that I was making on Facebook and putting them on YouTube, and I was not having much success at all
RV (04:43):
That’s good that you share that because I think a lot of people hear YouTube and then they go on there and it’s like, it doesn’t take off right away.
SM (04:51):
Yes. Yeah. So I was still committed to trying to figure out what does work, and I came across a group of other real estate agents that were having success with YouTube. And so of course I hopped over to their page to kind of see what magic sauce were they doing, or what looked different from, from my videos. And it was very apparent that their content they were making was very drastically different than what I was making. Mm-Hmm
RV (06:20):
So I, I love this. How big of an area, so like the is it based on like population? Is it just a geographic radius? Is it just like, roughly, how did you just go about that conversation of like, you know, you could go, you know, I live in, I, I live in Nashville, so it’s like, okay, so it’s a Nashville greater metro area. Is it just like, you know, Brentwood or is it like a neighborhood, like Green Hills or like that, that kind of a thing? How do you think through that?
SM (06:48):
So in the beginning when we started making content, it was more so about the town that I lived in, which is Gainesville, Georgia. And then it was like, okay, well we can’t just make, you know, 52 videos a year about Gainesville, Georgia. So we need to compare and contrast the other towns that are nearby that someone may also have the option of living in. So we started branching out and covering other towns, and then within those towns, you have certain neighborhoods that people like to be in. So some content videos are niched down a little bit more to, you know, master planned communities or golf course communities so that you’re kind of appealing to a broader audience although still staying within a niche. And another way that we started making content as well was that as people were watching our videos and then reaching out to us we started getting more retirees asking about retirement communities.
SM (07:48):
And so then it’s like, okay, well that’s another topic that we can make content on is around the retirement communities in our area. And so we started making content to serve that type of audience. And I think you said something really great at the beginning of this, which is as business owners trying to do social media, we can get really caught up in these vanity metrics of how many views are we getting, how many people are following us? But at the end of the day, if those views and those people following us aren’t translating into actual sales, it’s just for our own ego. And at the beginning when we were making content, those subscriber accounts and view counts were really low, but we were getting phone calls from people saying, Hey, I just watched your video and we’re thinking about making a move to area. We want you to help us. And so that was the big light bulb moment for me is, is that it doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re reaching a ton of people, you just have to reach the right people.
RV (08:48):
Totally. And I, and I would say that like, you know, we, we we’re behind the scenes as several of our clients are the biggest podcasters in the world, and top YouTubers. And many times the, the secret to growing a wide audience is to talk about general topics that are relevant to everybody, right? It’s like money, relationships, spirituality, health, and they’re very broad. But if you did that, you would probably not have a whole lot of people caring to show up who go, I’m looking to move to a town in gain around Gainesville, Georgia. Like, you would not target that group. So, so the way that you’re reaching that, and, and so I wanna talk about how other, other professional service providers could also apply this, because I go for sure, anyone who’s in real estate anywhere in the country could, could do this. And you go, you know, there’s lots of stuff to talk about, and I do want to dive deeper on, like, how do you select the topics in your team and all that kind of stuff.
RV (09:49):
But if someone’s listening who’s not in real estate, I would love to, to hear, I want to hear, I want to hear how you’re selecting your topics, I guess is it just kind of like top of mind? Because I think if I’m a financial planner, you know, or if I’m a doctor, I also could probably do some geographic related content or maybe it would just be to specific types of, you know, surgeries or questions. But anyways, walk me through how you select your topics. Do you do any sort of scientific process? Do you just come up off the top of your head? Or like, where do the ideas come from and, and where did they come from when you started and where do they come from now?
SM (10:35):
So a lot of it was looking at what other agents were doing across the country and having success with, and, and using that as a jumping off point to kind of mimic and copy. And over time,
SM (11:34):
So for example, you know, we have a lot of basement houses here in north Georgia. Well, basements here in North Georgia are very different than basements in the north or in the Midwest. And we have daylight basements. That was something that I had no clue of, but it becomes a great informational talking piece. And so that as you are serving clients and you’re providing this information, you’re answering their questions before they even have an opportunity to ask them to you. And you just seem like such a wealth of knowledge to your clients. So you’re building that relationship and trust with them before you even have an opportunity to talk with them in a two-way conversation. And I think to translate this type of content into other professions, I think people are missing out if you’re not providing and being that resource to answer the questions that you’re most common type of client or the people that you wanna serve have. And YouTube is a great way to do that and a long form content. But there are so many great professionals providing this type of information on TikTok that is just a world of information and, and nobody else is doing it. And so I think if you can provide, you can be the provider of that information, you know, you’re going to attract your business clientele that are going to use you.
RV (12:56):
Yeah. And I, I, when I hear that, you know, I essentially calculate that as answer questions that your prospects have. And like, that’s the content you’re making is just going, whatever, whatever industry you’re in, you make you figure out what are the most what, and, and you know what questions they have. Because if you’re doing this every day, you’re answering the same questions over and over and over for people. And it’s like if you have to answer the question more than once, make a video about it. Or even once, like if they ask you a question, it’s like every time you get asked a question, make a video about it and then put it up on YouTube. How I’d love to know about some of the logistics in terms of like, how long are these videos? How long does it take you to plan them? How many of them do you shoot at once? How long does it take you to edit them? How frequently do you post them? How long were you doing that before you really started to see actual, like legitimate business leads coming in? So
SM (14:02):
What I learned if you’re going to be successful on YouTube, you have to post on a consistent schedule and commit to that schedule every single week. Ideally one video a week is a good starting point. Long form takes a little bit more time and effort into, you know, creating engaging content. So one video a week post at the same time every single week, you can schedule that on the back end so you don’t have to be like at your computer on a Sunday at five o’clock kit and publish. But just find whatever day you can commit to. We have found that the ideal sweet spot for our videos are between eight to 10 minutes in length. You at least want them to make eight minutes long because YouTube rewards the number of minutes watched, not necessarily the percentage watched.
SM (14:50):
And so that’s also a sweet spot of where YouTube’s algorithm gets ad revenue and stuff like that on the backend to satisfy
RV (15:31):
Is the moving to Georgia is the YouTube like right, youtube.com/moving to Georgia. Mm-Hmm
SM (15:36):
Yes. and so, you know, those first videos were just a process of failing forward and trying to figure this out. You’re always gonna hate how you sound and look on video, just get over it. Uhhuh
RV (16:18):
You were just doing like one a week to start
SM (16:20):
One a week and, you know, watching those videos like a hawk to see how many people were watching. And it was very disappointing and, and discouraging because at the time, you know, some of those videos only had like 18 views. And, but you have to keep putting out content and you have to keep going in order to teach the algorithm that you’re a channel that they can trust to push out the content. Because ultimately with YouTube, you’re going to have people that search for your content, but then you’re also going to show up to people who are acting in a similar way that the algorithm is learning that might be a good viewer for your content. And so by putting out regular content, it, you know, serves the algorithm of what they wanna do. So
RV (17:13):
So tell me, tell me about this. ’cause This is a place where people get hung up, like, yeah, and do, and, and also I’d wanted know like, how did you shoot it? Were you shooting it on your phone? Were you using something else? And then like, what’s a little bit of that process for where it goes from the recording and then how it actually, the steps to get it on YouTube?
SM (17:32):
So I found out that a lot of YouTube creators use their, their iPhone, and I had one of those that didn’t require me to go out and buy anything new other than like a tripod, a good external microphone and some lighting. And so that were, was the three pieces of equipment that I needed in order to get started. And so I, you know, filmed in that terrible background that you can see in the first videos on my channel. Over time I learned like, oh, we should probably try to make a little bit better lighting in the background. But those things came with time after learning, you know failing your way forward, right? So after learning that, I’m not an editor, I found an editor that is essentially virtual. We upload the video into a Google Drive link and send it off to him along with some supporting clips that we want to go along with it.
SM (18:25):
You can use third party websites to get video stock footage or you can provide your own. Again, it’s like one of those things, you can’t really overthink it a whole lot, even though you’re going to want to overthink it a ton. But it’s just more important to get a finished product out there and get going. So we send it off to our editor, he edits it gets it back to us. And my rule of thumb is, is that once it’s like 90% good, we go with it. Because I don’t wanna spend hours going back and forth, back and forth perfecting something when you know, you I need to be doing other things. So the expectation is, is that our editor’s going to learn from, from that feedback and make the next video even better. So you how you
RV (19:10):
Find editor
SM (19:13):
Through word of mouth, but also through websites that offer virtual video editing services and you know, you’re not gonna get it right the first time, usually with the editor that you pick. And again, it’s like one of those things where you have to fail forward and say, okay, well, you know, we use this person for a couple of months. I now know what I’m looking for and let’s go try to find, you know, somebody else to do that. And
RV (19:40):
Are these websites that are like, like Upwork or Fiverr or LinkedIn, just like that kind of thing? Yeah. Like you just post in a, you know, or a top toll is another one that you just post a job description and people start submitting Yeah. And then you’re reviewing their portfolio.
SM (19:55):
Yep. That, that’s one way. There’s also using virtual assistants in the Philippines online jobs.ph is a great website where there’s tons of talented editors overseas that can do a lot of great work. There are video editing companies that you could pay a flat fee to per month and they’ll, you know, edit however many videos you can give them during that time period. So there’s lots of different great websites and you just have to keep trying one, you might have a great local person that you can hire or a teenager or college student that’s really well skilled in this. It just needs to not be you doing the editing uhhuh
RV (20:31):
SM (21:04):
So the title and thumbnail are way more important than what you think. And there’s just a, a few basic things to know about that. You, your, your thumbnail is like the book cover of your video. And so oftentimes that’s the first thing that someone’s seeing. And so if you’re thumbnail and your title aren’t catchy enough, then you could have the greatest content in the world. But if someone’s not clicking on it to even get to your content, they’re never watching you. So you do wanna spend some time and effort on the thumbnail and title. A good thumbnail usually has no more than three to four elements. The words, if you’re gonna have words on your thumbnail, it needs to compliment the title, but not repeat the title. That’s oftentimes a mistake I see a lot of people make, is that they just take whatever the title and put it on the thumbnail.
SM (21:53):
So you wanna have kinda like complimentary goods there. And the title, you, at least for me, I, I don’t feel like on a very clickbaity or salesy type personality, and on YouTube you do kind of wanna lean into that clickbaity title. So negative titles work really, really well. Pay attention to headlines or things that you may see like on Buzzfeed articles, stuff like that. Those types of headlines translate really well into those to deliver what you want the message that you wanna deliver. And that thumbnail and title just kinda gets them in the door.
RV (22:30):
Yeah, so basically you’re just like paying attention to headlines and you have, you have to play a little bit of that headline game. That’s a good, that’s a good tip too about the, like, not repeating the title. I see people do a lot of that, which is interesting ’cause you go, I have these two pieces of digital real estate to use. Like, I might as well use both of them to communicate a different message. And then, and then in terms of the leads, okay, so let’s say you do all this stuff. How do, like where do you point people to come back to you? Do you put it in the video itself? Do you do it at the end of the video? Do you like, stop the video and interrupt and tell people to go to your website? Do you like put it in the, the video notes or the caption or whatever? Like, where do you actually make that call to action? And then like, what is the call to action that you make?
SM (23:21):
So the call to action is, is very simple. It’s, you know, if you’re thinking about making a move and you know, I would love to be a real estate agent, you can find that information below this video, click the link. And so that link takes them to scheduling simply like a discovery phone call with our team. And you wanna get very, very easy and simple and not, you know, overcomplicate with a bunch of offers or lead magnets. One thing that I’ve learned is you don’t want to put any phone numbers or anything like hard copy edited into your video. And the reason is, is that, you know, these videos are gonna live out there forever. So your branding may change, your phone number may change. So you can always go back and edit the description of videos, but you can never go back and actually edit the video itself on YouTube. So you always wanna make sure that you’re doing that call to action and pointing them to the description of the video. Another unique thing about YouTube is that you can put a pinned comment underneath all of your videos as well, so that it’s always the first comment that people see. So we often kind of repeat our call to action or how someone can get in contact with us there as well.
RV (24:29):
Mm-Hmm
SM (25:23):
So I’ve had other agents and, and other practitioners do this, and they have success in as little as a few weeks. And then, you know, for some it also takes months. The one great thing though is that you’re creating this evergreen content that is, that is there and people are watching during all hours of the day, all hours of the night. And it’s free. It’s not something that you’re, you know, essentially paying for or running ad behind, and there’s no greater marketing tool that can do that for you and, and help provide information to potential clients while you are out doing other things. And just to touch on not liking yourself on camera and that sort of thing, one of the things that was very inspiring to me whenever I started this was seeing the other types of people that were having success with this. They were from all walks of life, all different types of personalities, all different looks and ages and camera personas and how they showed up. And some were very boring. And that was really though encouraging. ’cause I was like, oh, well if it’s working for that person, I can, I, I know I can at least match that energy on camera and I can be that. So that was super encouraging for me. And I I, I see all kinds of people having success with this.
RV (26:35):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s really cool. You just, you’re being, you’re being useful to people and automating trust as we, we like to say is just, you know, they’re sitting there learning from you going, well, who, who are they gonna call? I mean, they’re gonna call the person. They’ve been like watching your videos and you’ve been adding value to their life. I love it. So where do you want people to go if they wanna like link up with you or learn more about what you’re doing? I know that we, we will, we will link to the actual YouTube channel itself, just so people can get a sense of what you’re doing. Moving to Georgia is the, again, the handle for YouTube, but anywhere else you’d point people.
SM (27:06):
Yeah. If you wanna connect on Instagram, my name is Sarah Maslowski. That’s my handle over there. And I look forward to connecting and sharing more.
RV (27:13):
Awesome. Well thanks for this, Sarah. This was super generous and tactical and practical, practical and actionable
SM (27:28):
Thank you.
Ep 546: Secrets of Securing Brand Deals with Jamie Hess
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Whoever says you don’t make real friends on social media is lying to you because I do occasionally, not that often, but occasionally I do make real friends online, and that is the case with the woman You’re about to meet Jamie Hess. Technically we met on Instagram and it’s because we have lots of mutual friends already, right? And as soon as I came across her profile, or she came across mine, I’m not exactly sure.
RV (00:58):
We just started messaging and I was like, oh man, she’s so cool. She has such a fascinating background and such an important specific skillset that we’re gonna talk about today. So, first of all, so Jamie is a wellness entrepreneur. She’s a mindset coach and a media personality. And she’s the host of a podcast called The Gratitude Ology Podcast which has been featured on the Today Show. She created a, a, a very popular Instagram account, which we’ll talk about in her story, and that led her to really becoming like a content creator. So before that, she worked in media pr she was a marketing expert, did a lot of brand stuff, which is, you know, obviously what we have in common. But she was working in more like the corporate environment with McDonald’s and GM and LinkedIn and Barry’s Bootcamp and, and the W Hotel, which is one of my favorite hotel chains.
RV (01:49):
And then as she moved into becoming a content creator, she, one of the things that she talks about is securing brand deals and high paying like ambassador deals, which is part of what we’re gonna talk about. So she’s also the face of Zuta active wear on QVC. She has been on shows like Good Morning America, the View and Beyond. She’s also a TEDx speaker and just really understands this space. And so I was like, this is a no-brainer. Let’s just meet in person, so to speak on the podcast. So Jamie, welcome to the show you
JH (02:24):
So much for having me.
RV (02:25):
Yeah. So so I wanna talk brand deals. You know, our audience is Mission-driven messengers, and, and specifically we tend to serve like experts and entrepreneurs. So most of our audience actually makes money selling services, either like professional services of some kind or it might be like coaching and consulting and speaking if it’s, if it’s not like, you know, if it’s not like accounting or doctors and that kind of thing. But more and more we have a growing audience of people who are kind of either lifestyle influencers or micro influencers or just people who are growing their, their profiles in general. And now all of a sudden they might be getting approached by brands or they’re thinking about working with brands. So I wanna get into that, but before we get into all that, tell me a little bit, a high level of your story of how you got into teaching what you teach now.
JH (03:25):
Thank you so much for that great setup. And by the way, I just have to say like, incidentally, my people, the people I like to work with to teach brand deals, they’re not wannabe influencers, right? Because I hate that. Like, I never wanted to teach a course on how to be an influencer. It is your people, Rory. It is people who are already entrepreneurs, keynote speakers, podcasters, authors, lifestyle entrepreneurs, just people that have A-P-O-V-A thing or two to say an expertise and some platform to amplify that on. But they don’t realize that they’re leaving money on the table because brands might like to be a part of that message. So I’m actually teaching your pe like these, this is my audience, your people who don’t even realize that brand deals could be a thing. ’cause They’re like, I don’t wanna be an influencer. Throw that word out the window, right?
JH (04:11):
Brand deals are for everyone. So I’ll just say, I’ll, I’ll start with that. So for 17 years I was actually a PR executive, and I worked through every different vertical of public relations. So I started with movies and music and hospitality. I was a big nightlife girl, big nightclub girl actually now sober for over 20 years. So that’s a big part of my story. But the nightlife PR world chewed me up and spit me out. But I learned a lot through that process. And then I went into like the bigger corporate stuff. So I was the SVP of an agency called The Narrative Group, and I represented brands, like you mentioned McDonald’s and, and General Motors. I actually got engaged on a treadmill at Barry’s Bootcamp Fund
RV (04:50):
JH (04:51):
But what ended up happening, Rory, was because of that engagement. So my mom, who is TV journalist, Joan London, happened to be at the engagement as, as a mom would, right? And because she was there, it ended up on page six and in all the gossip columns. And it gave my husband and I this kind of random launch as this public facing fit couple. Interesting. Yeah. It launched our public persona. Like we were already fitness geeks. We just love wellness. It’s our thing, you know, we love to work out, but we kind of played around with sharing our fitness journey on social media, but not really seriously. But after this moment where all of a sudden there was a little bit of a spark, and we had some new followers we’re like, Hey, should we go with this? Like, let’s have some fun. So we started this Instagram account called NYC FitFam Uhhuh.
JH (05:39):
And at that time, hashtag FitFam was like a moniker. It meant like getting your fit family together, your IRL buddies at the gym. And so we started NYC FitFam and we started doing all this content. We also have a may December romance, you know, we’re 20 years apart. So all of this content around me being a, you know, kind of young mom and him being, you know, at his age, like how does he stay fit? How does he stay energetic for our kids? And it sparked what ended up happening from there was I started doing on the side deals with brands. You know, as one does, as their Instagram starts growing, I started representing like supplements and energy drinks because I was a fitness influencer. Sure. And eventually, after about 18 months of doing both, meaning my full-time job and my side hustle, my side hustle, started out pacing my full hustle Uhhuh. And I was like, you know what? I love being a publicist. I didn’t leave my my agency job because I didn’t like it. I just saw how much more was possible for me as an entrepreneur. And I gave notice and it was the best thing i I ever did. Never looked back.
RV (06:43):
Wow. So your first brand deals as a creator, they just kind of, how did they show up? Like what? And, and, and tell me about like, how long had you been creating content and how many followers did you have? Which platforms? And then how did the first kind of brand deals show up in your, in your universe?
JH (07:06):
So I’m an Instagram creator that is my platform. And I’ll give you this. So I had a little bit, I’m a little bit uniquely positioned because I was the one hiring the influencers for McDonald’s and General Motors. And so I was writing the influencer briefs and I was lucky enough to be on the forefront of like the data and the white papers on how consumer behavior is being influenced and what are the new trends in influencer marketing and how does this all work and does it really work? And I was able to say categorically, yes it does, and this is the future. And also this is the way it works best. Meaning like, as a publicist, I know what I would wanna be pitched from a, from an influencer, from a creator. I know how my creators work best with me. Meaning they, they understand there’s a consumer at the end of the rainbow.
JH (07:52):
They understand about like showing up and working in the spirit of partnership. They understand about showing up and bringing best in class work and, and meeting deadlines and being an amazing partner and creative and helping me do my job. And so I wanted to show up as a creator like that. Now, in the beginning, I didn’t have that much leeway in the beginning. I did what everyone does. I hopped on a few of the influencer platforms and I signed up and I said, Hey, what could I do? And I did my first brand deal for $200. Nice. It was with that, that sugar-free soda brand called Zia. And I took a picture of me,
RV (08:24):
Oh yeah, I drink Zevia, we
JH (08:25):
Delicious. I love Zia. And it was, I, I took a picture of me and my family, me and my 3-year-old son, and my husband having a, a picnic in Central Park and got paid $200 for posting it on my Instagram. And I was like, that was very cool. Like that, that rocked. And I was like, you know, if find me $200, maybe you could $300. And I just started inching it up. Here’s the thing. At that point, I only had a couple thousand followers. Fine. What I did have was that best in class spirit, meaning I brought to every campaign that I did the same energy and preparation that I would bring to a seven figure campaign with McDonald’s. Like I just insisted on showing up as if I was a creator with a million followers. And what happened was, a lot of my people who I coach now to get brand deals, because they’re your audience, right?
JH (09:20):
They’re people that already have a professional acumen. They’re, they’re important. They’re, they’re, they’re people who have created credibility and they’re worried oftentimes that doing brand deals is gonna water them down. Oh, I don’t wanna look like I’m selling out. I don’t want, that’s embarrassing. I don’t wanna do brand deals because that’s like, you know, that’s what like cheesy influencers do. I promise you my social media grew as a byproduct of doing brand deals because I showed up to them with integrity and because people saw brands taking a chance on me saying, I believe in this girl. This girl can amplify my product. She has credibility, she has integrity. People started to then listen to me and follow me. And so I fully believe because my account grew rather quickly, I started doing brand deals around the 5,000 follower count
RV (10:10):
Before
JH (10:21):
A hundred percent. It was great. And you have to start somewhere. So I got to practice, and before you knew it, we were, you know, my husband and I were holding Mylar balloons with a three zero K, you know, to celebrate 30,000 followers as one did in the, in the, you know, that time period. Everyone had Mylar balloons. But we were celebrating those milestones. It was like 30,000, then it was 50,000. And then I started putting together little groups of brands, Hey, we’re about to hit a 50,000 follower marker. Hey, these five brands, do you wanna get together and help us celebrate? And I started putting together little programs and growing my scope and scale of how I worked with brands. And so as I started learning how to do this on a bigger scale, this is now what I teach today, how do you think bigger with regards to brand deals? Because I’ll tell you this, that the jump to the end of the story is when I left my corporate job, which is a multi six figure a year paycheck with health insurance, a lot of people, including my own mom, said, I was completely crazy by the way, I was pregnant and left a job with health insurance. And I said, with all due respect, I, I think you’re wrong. And within 18 months, I had five x my, my income.
RV (11:22):
So how much can someone expect to make from a brand deal? Like, so if you start out getting a couple hundred dollars maybe for a post, if you really pursue this, and you go, okay, I’m gonna make it a focus, I’m gonna make myself attractive to brands, I’m gonna become good at creating creative that serves an audience and also advocates for a brand. Like how much does one make for, you know, doing this kind of like per post or per company or per engagement? Like, I mean, I’m, I know it’s probably all over the place, but like, give us an idea.
JH (12:03):
I’m gonna do that. So I’ll take you through, for instance, the lifecycle of some of my work with a brand, because keep in mind and what I teach, so I, I teach a course called Brand Ninja because I believe that like, you know, to have like ninja status of working with brands, you should be able to think social media plus, plus. What I mean by that is, I don’t live and die by a transactional post. I don’t like to say I charge this much for one Instagram post and then we call it a day and we go our separate ways. I like to think, how can I really get under the hood with a brand because I geek out on my brands Rory like that. And this is also why I think people, why I come with integrity and authenticity, right? Like influencers have a bad name because a lot of influencers do cheap brand deals, meaning they hold up a toothpaste that they never used and they say, buy this toothpaste.
JH (12:49):
And they take the check and they walk away. And that’s a cheap, silly brand deal. But when you really care and you really sign on to work with a brand because you, you’ve tried the brand, you think it’s great and you wanna grow with the brand and help them, I’ll, I’ll give you an example of what’s possible. So one brand for instance, I had reached out to them ’cause I had a genuine problem. People love this story ’cause it’s, this is also an example of where I’m willing to be vulnerable and where I’m willing to upcharge for my vulnerability. I believe that after having children running a half marathon should be called peeing your pants for 13.1 miles. Uhhuh,
JH (13:32):
And it’s super common, and I’m super not embarrassed by it because I had two beautiful babies that I brought into this world. And like it happens, get over it, right? But that’s, but for most women, by the way, this is like devastatingly embarrassing and it’s something that you usually don’t even talk to their doctors about. So I said, you know what, there’s gotta be a brand or two out there that could address this, and I wonder if they could help me. And then I in turn could help them by amplifying, maybe they could help me fix the problem and then I could share my experience. So I, I connected with this brand and I said to them, I have this issue. I’d love to try your product. Maybe we could do some content together. It started off where they engaged me to do one or two Instagram posts.
JH (14:13):
At that time, I think I was charging $5,000 a post. My rates are higher now. They started around 7,500 a post given my, you know, I have around 220,000 followers. So that’s pretty standard. And I did a couple Instagram posts for them and then we, I said, okay, great. That went really well. My audience, I’ve never gotten more dms than those posts. ’cause People were saying, oh my God, does this really work? I’ve never even talked to my doctor about this. I’ve been so embarrassed. Please help. And then I went back to them, I showed them the screen grabs of the dms. I said, here, this is what I’m hearing from my audience. Let’s talk about what else we can do together. I started doing some more stuff. I hosted an event for them in New York City with other influencers. I wrote a couple blog posts for them.
JH (14:54):
Then I, I was having my second baby. I said, what if you guys kind of signed on as the hero of my getting back in shape after baby story, right? Like, I wanna run a half marathon, the Hamptons half, it’s about six months after I have the second baby. What if you guys helped me get back out on the pavement? So I, I enga they engaged me, I pitched something and they bought into it for a longer cadence of a storytelling frame, right? So I had multiple pulse points deliverables. So that was maybe going from like a $5,000 marker to like a $25,000 marker. Where now we’re doing a six month deal the following year they said, we now need somebody on a larger scale to do 360 media for us. We’re gonna do some integrations on bigger television shows. We wanna get this word out to a bigger audience.
JH (15:41):
That turned into a multi six figure a year deal because I was now their on air ambassador. So my point in telling you that story is by watering the flowers of that relationship, by first of all, reaching out to a brand that authentically meant something to me that I wanted to share with my audience. How they were genuinely helping me solve a problem. And then by growing within the context of that relationship, I grew up from a $5,000 opportunity to what became a multi-six figure a year opportunity for two years in a row. I was their ambassador for two years and made about half a million dollars with them.
RV (16:14):
Yeah. And that’s, so I, I love that story. It’s such a great story. And I, I think, like I’ve had friends who also sell like sponsorships, which is kind of closely related. And, and the, one of the things that I learned from them was, it’s like you package things together. Just like you’re saying, it’s like, I’ll, it’s not just an Instagram post. It’s, I’ll write blogs. I’ll show up at your event, I’ll be your spokesperson. I’ll appear on a media interview, I’ll send an email blast to, you know, to my list. I’ll, I’ll include, I’ll include your logo on my website. Like, there’s all these other things that you kind of bundle together long term, which have more value to the brand, and then that creates more value, more value for you, which I love. And then I think one of, probably the other biggest thing I’ve learned from people in kind of this space, like you who teach this is exactly what you said is, is go look around at the products that you actually use every day and that you really believe in that you would maybe tell people about for free and actually contact those brands and tell them, like, would you, would you agree with that strategy?
JH (17:22):
A hundred percent. It’s the first thing I tell people to do. People really tend to overcomplicate it. So, you know, in my course, I break it down, I have like an eight week curriculum and one week is literally, and it’s this simple, I’m gonna give, I’m gonna give this away right now. This is one whole week of my course. I’m gonna give it to you guys right now. And of course I take an hour to really go through it. But I’m gonna, here’s the TLDR as the kids say, right? Okay, open up a spreadsheet, make three you know, three sheets, three, you know, you’re gonna make three buckets. One, this is three categories of products that you might use. So for me, maybe it’s beverages, right? And that could be broad too. It could be waters non-alcoholic cocktail brands, kombucha, functional beverages.
JH (18:04):
Or it could just be things I like to drink. Another thing could be fitness or energy drinks, right? Supplements. And maybe the third one is biohacking or sleep wellness. Something else that interests you. Right now, write down seven to 10 brands that you use in each of those categories. Mm-Hmm,
RV (19:03):
And you just go. And I think, thank you, Jamie, because that’s super powerful. This is very similar to how we teach keynote speakers, right? So people, people see me speak on these huge, you know, last week I was in front of 5,000 people at Keller Williams and they’re like, oh, that’s amazing how you do that. I’m like, I researched the company, created a spreadsheet, we reached out to them, we sent them emails, we bugged them, we built a relationship. And five years later they’re like, we should have you at our event. Like it’s, it, it, it’s, it is this, but there’s this intimidation factor, I think, right? Specifically. It’s funny ’cause it’s like, you know, like I’ve got my like this is one. So, so my, my son while we were talking, which is amazing made me a cava smoothie. I dunno if you’ve ever heard of the brand Cava, but like, I drink cava like almost every day, like, literally almost every day.
RV (19:54):
But I think a lot of people go, well, one, it’s intimidating to approach a brand of like they’re, they’re, they’re a big brand, right? You know, like McDonald’s, like they’re not gonna talk to me, they’re talking to LeBron James. Like, and, and then that’s the other thing. So one is it’s intimidating to go approach a brand. And then the other one is I think the like imposter syndrome of like, I’ve got 5,000 followers, or I’ve got y you know, 7,000 followers. Like, they don’t care about me. So like, talk to us about, I know one of the things in your bio is like a mental, like you, you talk about like being a mindset coach. ’cause I, this has to be a huge part of it is just like getting past the emotional barrier of like those two things.
JH (20:39):
Well, the reality is I’m 90% of mindset coach because the rest of this, I, I know people don’t wanna hear it, but it actually ain’t rocket science. Okay? Like it is, it is elbow grease. It’s rolling up your sleeves and writing some emails and sending some emails and figuring out what your like core competencies are. What are the deliverables I’d be willing to do? Maybe it’s an Instagram post. Maybe you’re, you know, an expert. You can lend, you know, your whatever, whatever is your thing. You write it up and you send some emails. But it is a mindset shift. Mm-Hmm. Now what I want people to understand are two things. That’s good. Number one, people need to understand this. It’s all about, this is a sales conversation, but it’s about showing up in the spirit of service. It’s not about like having a pick me attitude.
JH (21:21):
Oh, I don’t, I don’t know if they’d want me. I don’t know why would they want me, they could hire anybody. What about what you have to bring to the table? And like, they either want it or they don’t. And by the way, if they don’t, no hard feelings, it might just not align with their marketing priorities. It’s like not that deep and not that personal, right? Like these, this, at the end of the day, it’s business, but you have something to offer. You have a special skillset. I don’t care if your audience is 5,000, there’s 5,000 active people on the other side of that screen waiting to hear what you’re waiting to pick up what you’re putting down. So that’s number one. Number two, in every round, almost every round of my brand Ninja coaching cohort I have influencer marketing experts that take my course almost every time because they just wanna hear from the other side.
JH (22:05):
They wanna like, they wanna get it and they wanna hear how I pitch ’cause they know it’s a little bit different or unique or they’ve worked with me before and they’re like, you do it different. I’d love to like hear your special sauce. So we could better work with influencers from our side of things. Every single time somebody stops me at some point in my talk and says, Hey Jamie, can I just jump in and say to the group, what we are seeing in, in our businesses is we are spending so much more money in the mid-tier and micro influencer categories every single time. Hmm. Someone makes sure to mention it because they want people to not think, oh, I don’t wanna have a million followers. I’m not worthy. And what I can tell you this is true as well, having represented brands like McDonald’s, this is a good example.
JH (22:49):
So say that we’re McDonald’s, right? And we hire like a big celebrity mom to, to represent then something new coming out with a Happy meal. By and large, the comments underneath her post. So we’ve engaged her to do a post and she posted about the thing and the Happy Meal and the kids, there’s gonna be so many trolls and haters out there saying, you feed your kids McDonald’s and judging her, and then all suddenly it gets into like a vaccine conversation. All of this stuff that you’re like, I did not sign up for that. I was just trying to show people that we have minions and a happy meal. You know, like, mm-Hmm,
JH (23:31):
Nothing or worse yet can have a negative impact with a mid-tier or even micro influencer. You have a lot more creative control. These are people who are willing to work with you more, who are willing to really massage the nuances of the messaging. And so brands increasingly are really wanting to work with mid-tier and micro influencers and people who just have a more engaged audience who aren’t looking at something like that as, ugh, it’s a commercial moving on. They’re really listening because that’s that elusive third party endorsement. So don’t underestimate the power you have as a smaller influencer.
RV (24:05):
Yeah, that’s a good point about like, you know, like I follow the Rock and I probably see like one out of every 25 posts and I’ll kind of quickly glance at something and usually it’s like, it’s like, oh, here’s an, he’s doing an ad for something and I move on. There’s a few creators that are like in my space where it’s like I go back and watch every video that they have posted because I’ve learned from them. And it’s like, if one of them were to say something, it’s like I would see it and I would pay attention to it. Like that, that, that makes sense to me. The audiences are super engaged. And it’s not, it’s also not such a mass audience of a bunch of people from all different demographics. It’s like the, the, to me, the niche influencer makes so much sense because it’s like this creator has a small audience, but a small audience of our perfect customer. So then you, you when you say, just to give a a sense, what, what would you classify as mid-tier and micro influencer?
JH (25:13):
The older, like benchmark is 10 thou, like, once you’re kind of over 10,000, you’re like, you know, a micro influencer. And that used to have a little more to do with like, the functionality of the app. Instagram specifically, you would get the swipe up feature, which is now a, a a sticker. Everything changes so quickly with the algorithm and the app that I would say, when you’re around the 10,000 mark you, your, technically you have your, you get your influencer, you know, badge, Uhhuh
JH (26:07):
That is one of my topics I speak about on stage. So this directly kind of ladders into what I speak about on stage. So I created this podcast to support that message. Now, the podcast I wanted to do in person everything. I, I had done a podcast for four years. Virtually I was bored. I wanted to go talk to people. ’cause It’s like I do a lot of celebrities and it’s like, what’s the point if you’re not gonna go sit with them? And I, I wanted to fly out and, and sit with them, which is expensive. So I took a look at my budget for my first quarter of, of guests I was gonna be interviewing and it was gonna cost me about $40,000. And I was like, okay, I gotta raise $50,000 working capital to get this thing off the ground. So I turned around and I sold it to five brands for $10,000 each.
JH (26:44):
And I put together a little package to get these brands, essentially product placement, to get this show on the road. So I shared that in this room full of keynote speakers. And everybody’s like, I’m sorry, you did what? Like, what do you mean you just turned around and sold $50,000 of brand sponsorships? Like, that’s crazy. Like, how would you do that? Because keep in mind, Rory, like I had no, there was no, oh, well what’s your number of downloads? The podcast didn’t exist yet. Mm-Hmm.
JH (27:29):
Let me tell you how I’m gonna do it. And I brought these five brands on the road with me and I, I brought them onto set with each of these interviews, and I did a moment of discovery and education with each of my guests and we videoed it. And I have a whole framework of how I do that. But I realized that all of these people sitting in this room with me, who they might not have a huge following, some of them do, but some of them have 5, 6, 7, 8,000 followers. But they’re ballers, right? They’re experts, they’re leaders in creativity and innovation. They have books. But, but they’re bootstrapping their own podcasts and their own book tours. And I said, why? I guarantee you there is a brand that gets it there. Not every brand, right? Because you may, maybe you have five, six, 7,000 followers, maybe not McDonald’s, but there is a brand out there that will understand the value that you bring and they wanna be a part of your journey. And I said, I can teach these people how to do this. And that’s literally why I created Brand Ninja for people that were in that pocket. So either they have a smaller following, but they’ve got something going on that’s marketable or have a big bigger following and they just haven’t figured out how to monetize it yet.
RV (28:37):
Hmm. Yeah. And so you, you basically, you’re just approaching these people and it’s just a sales conversation. Who, who’s the, what are the job titles of the people you’re trying to get to? Would you say
JH (28:47):
Such a great question. I literally have a whole couple slides on that in like my curriculum, because it’s such a great question. People are like, who would I even be talking to? So it can be people on a marketing team. They could have titles like at a smaller company, you know, CMO, marketing director, marketing manager, and obviously at a bigger company you’re gonna be talking to somebody with the title social media director, digital director, influencer marketing lead talent manager. I mean, they, you know, and I show, I show a bunch of different LinkedIn headers, which gives some of the examples, like, you might not think it, but like for instance, Anheuser Busch, their head of influencer relations, his title is I think it’s like Manager comma Talent, which you might be like, is he an hr? So it’s not always exactly evident right off the bat.
JH (29:34):
However, there’s other kind of nuances and keywords you can look for. At the end of the day, there are a lot of different ways to find these people. And I, I share a lot of them in my, in my curriculum, but I’m gonna give you that, that little like, you know like life hack, once again, if you are trying to pitch yourself on a platform like Instagram, like that’s where you want to do your content from, there is no harm in sliding into their dms from that platform because it gives them one less button they have to click, right? All they have to do is click on your profile and say, okay, I can look at this person. In this day and age. That’s what it’s there for, right? So it’s really actually very interesting how much you can get done on the native platform that you’re trying to pitch in.
RV (30:15):
Yeah. I love that. Well this has been awesome, Jamie. So, so helpful. And I think, you know, inspiring hopefully for people to see that just, it’s a process. It’s, it’s a, it’s a sale, it’s a pitch. There’s a value proposition for you and them, and you’re exchanging value together. And there’s always business to be just done in that way if you’re just confident and creative and and service centered about it. I, I think that’s super, super duper powerful. So obviously you’ve mentioned your Instagram. Is that the best place for people to go follow you and connect with you?
JH (30:47):
People can follow me at Jamie Hess, J-A-M-I-E-H-E-S-S. They can also, I was just making sure I had my thing right. They can also text the word ninja to 3 3 7, 7 7. And that’ll get you some information about my course, which is also [email protected]. And then for my keynote speaking and all things otherwise I am meet jamie hess.com.
RV (31:08):
Awesome. well thank you for the time. Thank you for the tips. Really, really powerful and inspiring. So y’all go check out Jamie, follow her, say hello. Let her know that you heard heard her on our podcast. And Jamie, wish you all the best.
JH (31:24):
Thank you, my friend.
Ep 522: How to Get Your Own TV Show with Ryan Serhant
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. You are about to get backstage access to one of the biggest personal brands in the world. Not only one of the biggest personal brands, but somebody who I admire and respect for how he’s turned his personal brand into an actual scalable business with enterprise value. Something extremely rare that we see. And this is my pal a a brambles group client. Now, Ryan Serhant. And if you don’t know Ryan, you will he’s, he’s quite possibly the most famous real estate agent in the world.
RV (01:07):
So he became really popular while selling some of the \most expensive properties in Manhattan and, you know, New York and other areas, two celebrities. And he was the TV star of the two time Emmy nominated series, million Dollar Listing on Bravo. He since has had multiple TV shows, and he has another one coming out soon on Netflix. But he’s also, more importantly the CEO of Serhant, which is a tech forward real estate brokerage known for really cutting edge innovation. Extravagant listing listings, a full service media production company. And also he has basically like a whole nother half, which does digital education which is a, is a platform that has more than 14,000 members in 110 countries. And all of these things together have led to Ryan accumulating a personal brand with more than three, 4 million plus followers on social media. He’s the bestselling author of multiple books. And you know, he writes columns for Forbes and other places and has just really done a phenomenal job of turning a personal brand into a huge business. And so we invited him on the show to say, Hey, could we hear some of those secrets? So, Ryan, welcome to the show, man.
RS (02:28):
Thank you. I appreciate it. I was, was like, man, when is it? When’s the intro gonna end? We have so much to talk about
RV (02:33):
RS (02:34):
Intro, so much
RV (02:35):
Information. Well, you’ve done a lot of, you’ve done so many things like that. Doesn’t even scratch the surface of, of it. But let’s start by the most recent thing, which is what brought us together was your book brand. It like Sirhan. Tell us about brand it like Sirhan, why did you write that book? It’s the third book in a trilogy. So let’s start there and then we can kind of go backwards.
RS (02:58):
Sure. You know, the book yeah. Just came out it and thank you for all your help, by the way. Really appreciate it. It definitely stands alone, you know, for people who want to go and build a brand in 20, 24 and beyond, right? It is, it is very, very tactical. No fluff. You wanna build a brand from scratch that’s personal. So a personal brand, or you wanna build a product brand and it has everything you need to know from, you know, social channels to working with pr. It has our whole, what we call our Sir Amp brand strategy system, which I can get into. But it’s, it’s really, really great. And I, you know, I wrote it because I couldn’t, I, again, I couldn’t find something like it, you know, there’s, there’s branding books that are old, you know, that talk a lot about newspapers and radio.
RS (03:44):
But it’s just a, it’s a different world now, right? And everything moves incredibly, incredibly fast as part of a, a trilogy, right? I wrote my, my first book in 2018 called Sell It Like Sirhan. We did a TV show about it for Bravo where I was like helping people sell wine and sell body and bikini waxing memberships and all this kind of stuff,
RV (04:20):
Sell it. Do
RS (04:21):
Super exciting com. Sell it.com. That, so that’s been super exciting. So that was just, that was sales tools, right? That’s what was that book? Was the sales tool belt. Like, if you’ve never sold anything, you don’t classify yourself as a salesperson. You hate salespeople, you hate selling, whatever. If you wanna control your own life, you wanna be an entrepreneur, a gig worker, you wanted to have a side hustle. You wanna sell real estate, sell cars, sell software, whatever. Read this, it is your, it’s your Bible. And I followed that up with my second book, big Money Energy, which, which really was, Hey, okay, I gave you all the tools. But if you don’t have the confidence to use them, then it’s gonna be a great tool belt that sits in your closet. So how can you start acting and carrying yourself, like the you of the future, you know, where you want to get to two years from today.
RS (05:08):
So be that person today. And so how do you do that? And so I looked at those two books and it was the sales skills, you need the confidence to use them. But then if no one knows what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter how confident you are, it doesn’t matter how many tools you have in your Jewel belt, you’re never gonna sell anything to anybody. So how do you, how do you create awareness? How do you cut through attention? How do you, how do you really build right, a brand both for yourself or for a product. And that’s where branded like Shanz comes into play. Yep. Spent the last two years writing it and putting it together.
RV (05:43):
So one, one of the things, I mean, you’ve done masterfully is PR and specifically, I, I can, can you share with us the story of like, how did, how did you get on tv? How does it work? Like, how does it even work to get a show with Bravo or Netflix? Because you’ve done that not just once, multiple times. You got your new Netflix show coming out in June. Yeah. And like, that’s, very few people have been able to do that. So like, did you just call them or like send a submission or show up to a casting call or what?
RS (06:22):
Well, the first time I was ever on TV was on a soap opera. So I, I trained to be an actor for a long time my whole life. Like, I was terrible at sports, but I liked being on stage. And so I did theater since I was a little kid and made like little home movies and all that. I went to college, I was a double major in English literature, so writing books and and theater, right? So, so performance. And I moved to New York City in 2006 to do theater. My dream was Broadway. That was my dream to be on stage or Broadway. You know, if TV or film worked out, that would be awesome. But I didn’t wanna move to California. It was the other end of the country. I’d never even been there before. And so I was like, you know, I’ve been to New York City before. I know people in New York, I’ll go make that happen. And I promptly ran out of all my money. And because when you go to theater school, they, which
RV (07:12):
Probably took a few days, right? Like in New York, you anyone can burn through like a lot of money pretty quickly,
RS (07:17):
All of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had like, I had what I thought was like five years of savings, and I was out of it in less than two years. And I made some money along the way, like I did some regional theater and made some money. I did a soap opera called As The World Turns, which isn’t Around anymore. And Oh, nice. Yeah. Made some money from that and for a while. And then, and then it just basically was down to my last couple thousand dollars. And, you know, the classic, how am I gonna eat? How am I gonna pay rent? Do I go become a bartender, a waiter? What do I do? And a friend said, get into real estate is the same thing. You know, I was great at improv, so I would do improv classes and you know, your acting classes really are about breathing, right?
RS (07:55):
They’re about listening. They’re about, you know, morphing into this conversation and that conversation. It’s about using your voice. And selling is the same exact thing. Memorize information. You meet strangers and you play an improv game, right? And so he’s like, listen, get your real estate license. Rent Apartments. New York City is tens of thousands of rental apartments and rental agents. You can make, you can make, you know, you can make a thousand dollars a day, you can make a hundred grand a year. You know, no one knows what to do. The city is all upside down. It’s crazy. So do that. So I got my license the day Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy in 2008, and everyone gets outta the business, but I already had no money. So I was like par for the course. I just thought the business was really, really hard.
RS (08:44):
And I, I kind of, you know, it was real estate was my survi survival job. I had no intention of being a real estate agent or a broker or salesman. I had all the intention of buying time. It’s like all if I rent an apartment a month, and if I can make my rent and pay for food and incidentals, which was about $2,000 a month, I could stay in New York and not have to move home to Colorado where my parents were at the time. And so what, you’re from Colorado? I didn’t know that. I’m from Colorado. I’m from, well, I’m from Texas. I grew up outside Boston. We moved a lot as a little kid, but when I, when I graduated high school, my parents sold our house in Boston and moved to Colorado. So if I were to go home, you know, at that time, I would’ve moved home to Colorado to live with my parents.
RS (09:29):
Gotcha. And so I, you know, I did my first rental deal. It was like, huh, wow, okay, so if I just work, I can make money
RS (10:10):
And so a lot of salespeople get into sales and they, you know, 90% of them churn out because the rejection is just too hard and they just don’t wanna deal with it. For me, like my whole life had been rejection. So I was, I was kind of fine with it. I didn’t bank on anybody or anything ever. I just knew I was gonna bet on myself. ’cause That’s why I moved to New York in the first place. And so then I started doing sales, and I got my first sales commission check of like a couple thousand dollars. It was like, holy moly. And I actually liked it. I liked touching base with people. I liked seeing apartments all day. I liked running around, and I was totally fine working for free. Amazing. Because, you know, in, in, in sales, your, your success is your client’s success, right?
RS (10:48):
Amen. And so I then I built, and a little over a year later, there was a casting call that got put out for the New York version of a show called A Million Dollar Listing, which had been on the air for a couple years in Los Angeles on Bravo. And so I saw that and was like, oh, that’d be so weird,
RS (11:38):
And then a couple months later, they called me back and they were like, Hey, we’re doing a Skype interview. We wanna get to know you better. And they whittled it down to a couple hundred at that point, and then, then they whittled it down to 16 people to, to find the final agents that would be on that show. And they, they, they flew a, a whole production crew in from Los Angeles and said, we’re gonna follow all 16 of you around New York City for half a day. Show us what your day’s like. Show us how you operate, what do you do? And I made sure that that half day was the craziest half day in the history of real estate in New York City. Nice. Because I had just got into the business. I was like, a half day in my life, I’ll post some ads on the internet, I’ll get a bagel.
RS (12:19):
And so I didn’t want it to be that. And so I made sure it was, it was worth watching. And then they cast us, you know? Wow. And so out of obscurity. So then we did Million Dollar Listing. It premiered in 2012 and ran for 10 years. And from that we did spinoff shows. I did a, my wedding was a spinoff show. My, my renovation of my home was a spinoff show Sell, like Sirhan was a spinoff show. And then, you know, I saw the world change during that experience, right? Like we, when we started listing first came out like two to 3 million people would tune in live every week, right? There was no Netflix, Netflix was DVDs. There was no video, there was no Instagram in 2012, right? There was no Instagram. There was, YouTube was like reruns of Kevin Bacon’s movies and scenes, like, it was, it was just a different, different world
RS (13:06):
And then Instagram comes out, right? So social becomes a thing. The heyday of reality TV kind of really kicks off 2013 to like 2016, Netflix moves to streaming, house of Cards comes out, reality TV explodes everywhere. And people’s attention starts being grabbed, you know? And I saw that like 20 16, 17 really 17, 18, 19 ratings started going down for all TV shows because YouTube became a real thing, right? The next generation didn’t need, didn’t, they weren’t watching TV anymore. Everyone was just watching. So as you had wifi, they had all the entertainment they need. And then TikTok hit and everything really changed. So it’s like, okay, so one day cable TV isn’t gonna exist anymore. And so I need to plan for my next, my next step. I built a whole career and a whole business on the back of a reality TV show.
RS (13:56):
What’s next for me? So I started my own company in 2020 called Sirhan. We do real estate brokerage services, education services, and we have a production company. So we do media services. And I created a pitch reel, right? Where I took a couple of my camera guys and we created a reel, and I pitched it around, and we took it to Netflix, we took it to HBO Max, we took it to Peacock, we took it to Amazon Prime, we took it to Hulu. And we got offers from almost all of them. But Netflix was, was the strongest. And they already had a, a world built, right? They already had a viewership that understood reality real estate. And they had the biggest global audience. And so for my business, even though those other networks are fun, and they’re cool, like, I wanna make sure that someone in India, Japan, Brazil, you know globally would have the opportunity to come in, into contact with our brand. And so we chose Netflix. We shot it all last year, and it comes out in a couple months.
RV (14:56):
Dude,
RS (14:56):
That, that’s a really long answer to your super
RV (14:58):
Simple. Yeah. That, but that, I mean, that’s, that’s so powerful. I mean, I love how God uses your, you know, backstory and pulls it all together, right? Like one, one of the things that we always say is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And like, there you are not making it as an actor, starting with real estate. And then all of a sudden with a casting call of 3000 people who is more qualified to know exactly what those people need and, and to make, you know, something worth watching. When, when you say you pitched it, okay, like in, in 2020, you say, we, we created a pitch reel, and then we took it around to Yeah. Peacock, et cetera. What does that mean exactly? Who are you taking it to? How do you take it to them? What, like, how do you find these people? I mean, I assume it’s somewhat of a referrals and prospecting game, like anything, but is it basically like, yeah. Do you hire a showrunner and they like, take your pitch deck and show it to producers? Or how does that work? The
RS (15:57):
Show, the showrunner came later once the show got picked up, because there was no show to run prior to that, that was a whole separate process. You know, I had been on TV previously. Yeah. So I had the, the, the, I was in a fortunate position where, you know, I had a great agent at UTA, you know, agents are are good people, right? They can get business done. So I had a great agent at UTA that I kind of brainstormed with for a bit. The production company that I worked with World of Wonder based in LA that did Million Dollar Listing and all my spinoff shows with me on Bravo. Were down to try something new with me. So it’s like, this is gonna be different. I’m not, I don’t wanna make million dollar listing again for the new world.
RS (16:35):
Like, I wanna do something that kind of redefines the genre a bit, and it’s gonna be weird. Maybe it won’t, maybe it won’t work. I have no idea. And they said, okay, well, so we made, we made our first reel, like on our own, so that we weren’t really spending tons of money and wasting it. And then my agent and World of Wonder, the production company, set up the meetings because that’s all they do, right? That’s what their jobs are. It’s like, if you’re like, all right, how do I go buy a house in New York? You find a good agent and you say, this is what I want. The agent has all the relationships and has doing, been doing this for 10 years, and they set up those appointments, they know exactly who to talk to, and they don’t waste any time. So we did our Zoom, or it was like our Zoom tour, right?
RS (17:11):
Where we would send our little reel over and they would watch it, and then we would, we would talk about it on those, on those pitches. Like, Hey, here’s the vision. So you just saw five minutes of kind of like a taste of what we’re looking at, which was our company in New York, our building in soho that I’m standing in right now. Kind of our crazy cast of characters and, and really helping define what the universe would look like, because I think the most successful TV shows create, create a World, right? They create a universe that really grabs the viewer, and then you have to hook and release, right? So how are you hooking people and then giving them a cliffhanger and then releasing them, and then giving them a hook, giving ’em a cliffhanger, and then releasing them. And so there’s, there’s kind of an algorithm that you look at when you’re telling story long form.
RS (17:58):
I mean, short form too, for sure, but also long form. And so then we walked the Netflix executives, the HOO Max executives, Hulu Peacock, Amazon Prime. Amazon gave us a great offer, a great one. And they were super, super bullish. And the only reason I didn’t go with Amazon, and that was a tough, I remember that, like that summer which was summer of 22, when, when we kind of got the green light. These, these things take forever, by the way. I remember like going back and forth and just saying, what do we do? Who do we go with? Like, how do I, like, it’s such a big decision. How do I choose? And the way we did it was like, all right, well why, why am I doing this? I don’t, I don’t care about being famous. I don’t care about selling toasters. Like we, our business is the most important. What’s gonna be the most entertaining? ’cause We’re gonna make the same show regardless of the network. But what’s gonna be best for business? And we just looked, we’re like, all right, so we got a client. Did you
RV (18:57):
Say you, you do want it to be most entertaining, or you’re saying you didn’t care about?
RS (19:01):
No, we want it to, we just two, you want it to be entertaining, but we know what’s gonna be entertaining. ’cause We know how to make great tv, but we also want it to be great for the business, otherwise it’s a waste of time. Right? So like, like, I don’t wanna spend all this time, all this effort, effort and go make a TV show and have it sit in a box, right? Would sure. Super entertaining in that box. Or it’s,
RV (19:18):
Or it’s a distraction that pulls you away from the business. But if you can make them aligned, all of a sudden one is like jet fuel for the other.
RS (19:25):
Yeah. So, exactly. So we really, we looked at it, and so then we, I was like, okay, well where are our clients right now coming from, you know, that are using us? You know, and they were across Asia, south America, India, different parts of Europe. Like we had a buyer in Croatia. And I just went to all of them and I said, Hey, do you watch Netflix, Amazon, or where do you see tv? Every single one of them said they had Netflix. Whoa. And it just, that was just the differentiator. I was like, I, I gotta be in front of people in Croatia, Sao Paulo, Patagonia, you know, India, et cetera. And New York is a big, it’s, it’s a very New York show. It’s gritty, you know, it’s tough. It feels very New York and, and around the world. New York’s an interesting place for people to see, like, it’s just a wild, it’s wild little island that we have here.
RV (20:18):
But you’re deliberately going after, I mean, multiple times, just this, you’ve said about the importance of the international audience. Mm-Hmm.
RS (20:40):
So New York is where we dominate in real estate. So, you know, I’m based in New York City. I live in New York. There’s enough real estate here to go around. It’s a big part of our business. But our brand has, has grown pretty globally now. And so we want to take as much advantage of it, of it as we possibly can. So sell it.com right now has, we have members in 128 countries, you know, most of which I’ve never even been to. And so if we’re gonna create a TV show and spend two years making it like it is a significant amount of work and really put the time and effort behind it, then I wanna make sure that it has the biggest opportunity possible. You know? And, and that’s why really, like what’s the best platform to be on? Like when it was cable TV only, then you’re like, you, you really run the risk of, okay, well a lot of people are gonna see it, but if it’s not any good, it’ll go off the air pretty quickly. Streaming’s actually kind of worse, because if it’s not good, that thumbnail goes away real fast, right? That algorithm just starts showing you more things to keep you in the platform. Like Netflix is just, you know, is a social media app, basically, right? They wanna keep you in there, hook you in. Don’t, don’t leave us, don’t go to Amazon. Don’t go to Hulu. Right. Stay, stay.
RV (21:57):
Yeah. It’s, but it’s amazing just to even hear your brain of how far ahead you’re thinking, like the patience it takes to pursue a TV show, knowing it could take two years to get a deal, two years to film it, then it finally gets out and at any moment they could drop you. Right? They can pull the thumbnail down. That’s super, super powerful. So, so like talk to me about, now a lot of reality TV shows, stars, we, we actually have a lot of brand builders, clients, like a fair number who were on the Bachelor or were an NFL player or like, yeah. You know, a lot of people have been on TV or they’ve had their minute of fame and then the moment the thing goes away, they struggle to monetize, they struggle to keep the momentum going. You didn’t do that. Like, you have gotten bigger and bigger. Like everything has sort of snowballed and even, even small business owners. I think that’s the thing is going, how do you turn your personal brand into a business? How do you scale it past you? What are the things that you’ve done internally? How do you think strategically about sort of scale and enterprise value and making it extend beyond the person of Ryan?
RS (23:13):
So I’m always thinking at minimum 12 months out, all the work that I’m doing today is not to the benefit of Ryan tomorrow. It’s to the benefit of Ryan in April of 2025. Like, that’s all the work we’re doing today. Like March was across our businesses. March was our biggest revenue month in company history, right? And it’s because of the work that we did a year ago, you know, and it’s really important for me always to remind our employees of that because they’re like, oh, oh, we can take time off. I’m like, well, well, no, no, because all the work you’ve done from the past year got us to today. Now imagine what could happen if we even dialed that down even further, where we’re gonna be a year from for now. So you’re always working for future. You like that is, that’s my world.
RS (24:00):
That’s the world I live in. Nothing is for me today, like I go to the gym this morning, it has no effect on my body today. Right? Am I more mentally aware? Sure. Right. But I’m doing it for my long-term health so that Ryan, next year, two years from now, Ryan, who’s 80, can look back and say, Hey, thanks
RS (24:46):
They were assistants on the business. It was like, so how do I, how do I scale sales when I’m the, when I’m, when I’m, when I’m kind of selling is myself, right? Because the apartments are there, the houses are there, but I’m really selling is using Ryan to go to those houses or to sell those houses. Totally. Like what is, what’s scalable that way? So lemme build a brand. Let me focus a lot on talking about Serhant and not just Ryan Serhant. I have a funky last name. It is check. And so not a lot of people have it so I could use it, right? Because it’s every time someone mispronounces it and says Sirhan or Ser Ann or Seacrest, it’s great. Right? It just means they’re thinking. And so, and that was a big part of creating early on, because I didn’t start, so I didn’t start Serhant until 2020, but I knew I was going to eventually, which is why I wrote sell it like Serhant in 2018.
RS (25:36):
I mean, we started writing it in 2016, so like, kind of four years ahead of time. And then with the brand, right? Our brand strategy system, that brand it, like Serhant the book really goes into is three phases. So it’s core identity, consistent content, and then amplification or, or shouting it from the mountaintop. And so I did those exercises, like what is the core identity of, of, of Sirhan in, in as much as how it’s different from Ryan, right? So like, what’s Ryan? And then what is Sirhan? Now let’s create consistent content around Sirhan being separate from Ryan. Let’s build a production arm that is just pushing out the product brand and focusing on those product successes in that kind of third period, which is the, the amplification. So let’s make sure that there are, there are publications that are just pushing the brand, and then let’s align ourselves with other successful people under the Samp brand so that they have their own personal brands, but they’re using Sirhan to power them.
RS (26:36):
That’s gonna help us over time, slowly build that brand away from just me. And the first year, it definitely didn’t work. Killed me. Second year, it definitely didn’t work. Still killed me. Third year, it was like, huh, all right, so it’s working. And we started expanding. So it was like, what is, what, what do I do in North Carolina? Like, what is sur in these different states and markets? Like, I’m not there. How does this work? And so it started working and then this year we’re really kind of off to the, off to the races. That’s kind of high level. Fifth year. Fifth year
RV (27:09):
In
RS (27:10):
The fifth, well, 2020, we didn’t start, we weren’t legal until like January, 2021. So all 21, 22, 23. So it took a three fiscal years. And so we’re at the beginning of 2024, so we’re like into our fourth year.
RV (27:21):
Yeah. And I would say like that, that, it’s so interesting to hear that it’s, it’s great to have that on a story because that’s what it we see for a new personal brand. Like if they don’t have a TV show or something pop, like even just a business in general, like the first two years suck. The third year you kind of start to see momentum year four and five, it starts to take off and you can see the light, and then it’s like by year 10 you’re going, I am unfairly paid. I’m getting unfair rewards for all the work as you said that you put in. Yeah. So I wanna point y’all back. So brand like Sirhan, there’s this three part system. It’s all in the book brand. It like Sirhan, so you guys can go get it. Ryan, where do you want people to go to learn? Obviously they can buy brand it like Sirhan anywhere, but like where should people go if they want to connect you with you and follow up? And
RS (28:10):
At, at Ryan Sirhan, anywhere the book is brand it like Sirhan, you can get that anywhere. Books are sold. You go to the website brand it like serhant.com to check it out for sales training, you can go to sell it.com. As of 46 minutes ago,
RV (28:32):
Really, really cool. The, the last question I have for you, man, is I, I know that there’s had to have been some, some dark nights and some heavy moments. You, you do have a lot of jobs, a lot of pressure, a lot of things weighing on you. You got family, right? You got daughter, you got married. And in those moments where inevitably you come across a little bit of feeling overwhelmed, a little bit of feeling that pressure days when things fall apart, people quit, you know, customer’s unhappy. The dream you thought was gonna happen starts to look like it’s falling apart. Like, what do you do to keep yourself going in those, those moments specifically in case someone listening right now happens to be in one of those?
RS (29:17):
So I tell myself always right? Because it nothing is bad forever. Time heals all wounds. You have great days, you have awful days. The greatest day I’ve ever had, I haven’t even lived it yet, you know, and reminding myself of that is a, is a kick in the butt to get outta bed and to actually go and do the thing. Because maybe that’s today. Like maybe today is the greatest day I’ve ever had. Like, that could be awesome on the sales side, you know, I am, I am, you know, I sell lots of things all day long. You know, the greatest deal I’ve ever done. I haven’t even done it yet. Hmm. You know, like I remember when we started the company and it was summer 2020 in New York City. Lockdown not allowed to go outside. There’s swat, there’s bodies in Central Park.
RS (30:10):
You turn on the tv, there’s a death clicker, okay? The George Floyd riots happen in June. It’s a really, really bad time for our country. It was really, really tough. Everything, all sales stopped for me. All real estate sales in New York City were dead. Every deal I had went into immediate litigation, it was the worst. I, any, any money I had that was like in the stock market, the stock market sold off 10,000 points, right? It was just brutal. And I’m like, I’m going to start my own company right now. I was also in the middle of renovating my house right at that point, which is a cash heavy operation. And I just had my first baby. So it, you know, it was a lot. And I was like, man, all I gotta do is just every day’s a new day. Like every day’s a new day.
RS (30:57):
The greatest day I’ve ever lived, I haven’t even lived it yet. The greatest deal I’ve ever done. I haven’t even done it yet. I just got, I just gotta push forward. And you know what? Everything’s gonna be okay eventually. It always is no matter what, unless we get hit by a comet and we’re the dinosaurs and it’s over forever. And then if that happens, then again, who cares? I just gotta keep it moving. And when things are bad, this is when you should build, because you can’t get these moments back. Like when things are great, of course you’re gonna start your own company like every other idiot, right? When things are bad, everyone’s so scared. So go, go do it. Go build. And so we just buckled down and I looked at it with a glass half full. It’s like, all right, so covid happened.
RS (31:38):
Everything sucks. Well, it looks like I just got the spring and summer markets for free. Like, when am I ever gonna get all this time that I don’t have to work? Like, I don’t, I’m not showing because I’m not on pod. Like I wasn’t do we know everything was shut down. Filming was shut down, everything was shut down. This is insane. Like, if I wanted to go start a business today, I’d be like, I need six months of quiet. I just gotta buckle down and just go do it. I’m never gonna get that again. So boom, glass half full. Awesome. You know, what else? Awesome. Everyone’s expectations are gonna be so low. I don’t have to go that crazy.
RS (32:27):
And they’re like, are you crazy? Are you sick? Do you have long covid? You know? And they were like, you should do a test. Are you wearing gloves right now? I’m like, no, we’re building for the future that everything’s gonna be okay. It’s like, man, if I could do one deal, if I did like a $20 million sale when we kicked off the company, that would just be like the greatest thing ever. And we started the company a couple months later, I sold a house in Palm Beach for $140 million. Whoa. And the whole world changed. The market changed overnight, right? And it’s been a rocket ship ever since. And so the greatest day you’ve ever had, you haven’t even lived it yet, you know,
RV (33:12):
Man. I love that. I love that. Well, brother, thank you for making a little bit of time for us. We’ll link to of course, book and everything. And it’s been, it’s been an honor to get to know you a little bit. I love the way that your mind works and and the heart and, and the energy. I mean, big money, energy, like, talk about the enthusiasm that you have all day, every day and you bring to so much stuff. I mean, it’s legendary. And so to have some insight into what you’re doing behind the scenes with these three books and just to get to meet you a little bit, I really, really appreciate it, brother. And we’ll be following you. Thanks ma’am. We, we wish you the best.
Ep 519: Our Entire Digital Marketing Strategy | Sean Cannell Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Yeah. I can teach you my entire content marketing strategy in five minutes. So it starts really simple. My entire philosophy is teach everything you know for free in small bite-sized chunks and all random miscellaneous order. And the reason why you can do this, and people don’t believe this, and they’re scared about it, right as they go, well, Rory, why would I teach everything I know for free?
RV (01:01):
Then why would anybody pay me for something? Like if the point of my personal brand or the point of content is to get people to hire me and I just teach everything for free, then why would they do that? And the answer is because you gotta understand something is people don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. What they actually are hiring you to do is not to teach them the information, it’s to help them apply it to their life, to apply it to their business. So you can teach everything you know, for free. Like literally give it away. Now, we usually do it in random order because part of what people pay for is organization. That’s part of what helps them apply it to their life, is just going like, here’s everything, you know, in sequence. And that’s what they usually have to pay for.
RV (01:50):
But you can, that’s, that’s the whole strategy. Now, when you look at tactically, how does that roll out or functionally, how do you, how do you translate that into what we actually do every day? Well, when we make content, pretty much every piece of content, we just ask about the, the three Es. We call ’em the three s. And you just gotta decide which of these three E’s do you really focus on, or at least are you focusing on for like that specific piece of content. So the three E’s, super simple, entertainment, encouragement or education, entertainment, encouragement or education. So you go, is this content meant to entertain people to, you know, make them laugh, to make them, make them cry to, uh, you know, just entertain them and keep them occupied? That if you are funny or if you are very charismatic or dramatic, then maybe it is entertainment.
RV (02:48):
And maybe you’re good at that, right? And these are like all the viral videos, the pranks and the, and the sweet puppy dogs and the, you know, penguins playing with each other. Like whatever. It’s, it’s entertaining stuff. And that stuff tends to go viral, right? Or it’s really, really funny. So if you’ve got personality, then bring that into what you’re doing. For me, I tend to live in the other two E’s, which are encouragement and education. So what is encouragement? It’s, it’s exactly that. It’s, it’s, you turn on the camera, push record and encourage the people who are on the other side, right? Like, pretend, don’t, don’t think of it as like you’re looking at a camera, talking to a camera. Pretend. And think about it as if you’re talking to a person who’s on the other side of that camera and just talking to that person.
RV (03:36):
If they were discouraged, what do they need to hear, right? If they’re beat up emotionally, if they’re struggling in their mental health, if, if they’re, you know, wanting to quit, if they’re frustrated, if they’re upset, if they’re mad, if they’re sad, what would you tell them? Whatever you would say to that person, say it to the camera. And that is encouraging and that is some of the best content. And, and it’s that simple. And then the last one is probably the, the most straightforward and universally applicable to all of us, which is educate, you know, education. So teach me something. So what do you, what knowledge do you have that about something that you can teach people? Whatever that is, is what you should share. That’s why we, we say all the time, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Why?
RV (04:30):
Because you know exactly what that person is going through on the other end. You know exactly what they need to learn, and you have learned it. That’s how you got to where you are. So reach back and talk to them, teach them, show them the way, share, share with them everything you know, and that’s a great content marketing strategy. So in terms of the philosophy, it’s simple. I teach everything I know for free, small bite-sized chunks. In all random order. In terms of the content marketing strategy, it’s one of the three E’s. Is this entertaining? Is it encouraging or is it educational? Probably some combination of the three. And then in terms of how we like functionally produce and distribute the content, that’s a process that we use called the content diamond, which is really simple. You start with one main asset, which is typically a video, usually five to 10 minutes.
RV (05:28):
And then we’re just gonna take that main asset and we’re gonna break it apart into a bunch of mini or micro assets. And the reason we call it a diamond is ’cause we think we’re gonna, we’re gonna create a bunch of assets that are like text and imagery, and then a bunch of assets that are video and audio. So when you create the text and imagery assets, what you do is you start with the video, you get it transcribed, and there’s all these tools you can use to, to do that. You get it transcribed, and then you have someone edit the transcription of your actual words and they turn it into a full length article. They’re then gonna post that full length article on like, you know, LinkedIn pulse, their blogging platform. You can post it on medium, you can post it anywhere their other full length articles appear.
RV (06:16):
You can have you or your editor just go through and highlight like two or three catch phrases, like two of your most powerful points. We call ’em pillar points. And just highlight those and turn them into image quotes. Or you can turn it into a carousel or you can, you know, put some animation behind it, some nature and a little music. And now you have a reel. Um, you can also post those images on Pinterest. And so now you’re, you have all these image assets that are coming from the text simultaneously while that’s happening, you take the video and you are going to edit it for YouTube, right? You, you put some B roll in there, you put some royalty free music underneath, have some onscreen texts, right? Like things flying in and popping up, um, a little bit of lower thirds to introduce yourself.
RV (07:02):
Maybe you have a, a little fancy sizzle reel. You drop that in there. And now you have this nice full length edited video for YouTube. Also jump cuts right in and outside, inside back. Um, just to split up the visual appeal. Now you’ve got that video on YouTube, strip that audio, that final edited audio, strip that audio off of that, and you’re gonna post that as a short form podcast. And now you’re a podcaster and didn’t even know it, right? So now you’re podcasting. And then take that, that nice, you know, full length YouTube video and cut it down into some 62nd clips. And that’s what you’re gonna put on. You’re gonna throw it on TikTok and reels and Instagram and YouTube shorts and um, wherever else. And so those are all your video and audio assets. And then you take all your text and imagery assets that we all created from this main video.
RV (07:56):
And now we have all these mini, mini assets or these micro assets. And then you just pull them together and you throw ’em up on your blog. And if you go to rory veda blog.com, you can see we do this every single week. So the one place, if you wanna get all things Rory Vaden, and you want to get it first and you want to get it for free, and you want to get it in all formats, the video, the audio, the, the carousel post, the short, the short, you know, reels, and then the full length article text so that you can scan. And if you wanna be able to ask me questions, you drop ’em right there in the comments. You drop all of that on your blog. And then we’re just using all the mini assets to, to redirect people back to that location to where we can communicate and have that conversation. But then my blog is the home, the home base of my personal brand where I can meet people and I’m just giving away content for free, for free, for free until they trust us enough to hire me. And that’s it. That’s the, that’s the whole strategy. That’s, that’s the whole big picture. That’s all you gotta do.
Ep 495: Trademarks. Do I Really Need One? | Autumn Witt Boyd Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So wanna know how to protect your personal brand. I just got off of an awesome conversation with a friend of mine, autumn Witt Boyd, who is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which is kind of a unique law firm in the personal brand space that she really caters to people who have personal brands, courses, books, keynotes, podcasts but anyone who would consider themselves a content creator. So if you’re listening to this going, I don’t know if I’m a content creator, I’m an entrepreneur or a small business owner. If you have a methodology or a framework to your business, this applies to you. You are a content creator. If you have a robust website or our blogs or you put out a bunch of free content, guess what? You’re a content creator even if you don’t think you are.
AJV (00:50):
And so we had this amazing conversation on the influential personal brand podcast, and I thought it was worthy enough to recap it in a shorter conversation of just how do you protect your personal brand? And one of the first things that we should really consider is how do we do that in a proactive manner, right? So there’s things to do on the backend. Those are always more time consuming and more expensive. So what are some of the things that we can, as we’re getting started, or even before we get started to protect our personal brands? So, couple of quick things that I thought were just worthwhile to share with you guys. Number one, make sure that you’re starting from a clean slate, right? So if you’re in the very beginning phases of your business and you haven’t come up with even a name for your business or your personal brand, or a title for a book, a keynote, a course, a, a curriculum, a framework, a methodology, whatever it is, right?
AJV (01:43):
This is the best place to start, is make sure that you’re starting on, you know, solid ground. And there’s, there’s nothing else in the marketplace that’s already being actively used, right? And there’s some nuance to that, but I just thought this was a good, healthy checklist is as you’re, as you’re coming up with the name or the title for your things, right? So again, those are variety of things, right? Could be company name, brand name book title, course title, keynote title, podcast title. Just think titles, right? Names brands, right? Brands have names. So these, these are some things you wanna just do to make sure you’re just
AJV (02:59):
That that’s a first round filter as you’re kind of going through what we call the title tests. This is what we call the availability test, right? So if you’re a part of the Brand Builders Group community we talk about this and finding your brand DNA, which we did trademark. So on that note this is one of the five title tests. And one of the things is going, is it available? Don’t take something that’s not available. So that’s the first round filter. Is it trademark, right? Is it already active and in use by someone else with a, with a legal trademark? Number two do a thorough Google search, right? These are DIY things. You don’t have to have an attorney to do these things, which means it costs your time, but it’s saving you dollars. So do a thorough Google search.
AJV (03:42):
What do I mean by thorough? Go at least to pages 5, 6, 7 on Google to see if anything pops up. And for all intents and purposes, screenshot all of the work so that you have proof. Make sure that when you’re screenshotting things, it shows the date on your calendar of like, Hey, on this date, right? Screenshots, also share dates. Don’t delete that, right? Label it with the date. But it’s better if it can share. Show your calendar for proof. But those are really important. Same thing with the US Office of Patent and trademarks. Whatever you can do to have proof that on this date, this is what I took, this is my proof, my documentation. Same thing with Google. Because to today, it might not be there, but a week from now it might, right? So it’s always good when you came up with something to make sure that you’re, you’re just taking the one extra step of documentation for proof and just wanna put those in your archive files.
AJV (04:39):
Save ’em for a rainy day, hopefully you’ll never need ’em. Third thing is check social media platforms for that title, right? So, you know, I use the brand title better than ever, so I’ll just use that, right? Not in use on anything with Google. It was not trademarked. It was there’s no podcasts, there’s no books, there’s, you know, there’s all the things, right? So that’d be the next thing. Do an Amazon search and just see if it’s in use. One of the things that we talk about on the podcast interview with Autumn Whit Void is just because it’s a book title does not mean you can’t use it. Doesn’t mean you should, but you cannot trademark a book title by itself. You have to have an entire series of things for it to actually get trademarked. So it cannot just be a book title. So if you have a book title and a keynote title and a course title all with the same title, now that’s a brand, but a book is not a brand. So you cannot trademark a book title. So just because it pops up doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just doesn’t mean you should, right? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should always. So you just wanna go and, and do the, the due diligence, right? If it was an Amazon book that was released 10 years ago
AJV (05:57):
And five people bought it and there’s no reviews, but the, you know, just use your common sense knowledge there of like what you should and shouldn’t do. But, you know, those are things that you wanna check, right? So check for book titles just to go, like if you find it there, then pull up the website, right? Is it in use? Is there anything else in there? Even if they don’t have a trademark, is it in use elsewhere? Because you don’t wanna be competing about what someone else already has claim over. There’s enough ideas and enough other titles that we can come up with. So those are just things to pay attention to. Next one is do a podcast search, right? So go through the iTunes library or wherever you listen to your podcast and do some title searches. And go, Hey, is this title being used here?
AJV (06:42):
Right? So you wanna be doing you know, clearly the US patent and trademark search. You wanna do Amazon search a good thorough five to six page deep Google search do a podcast search and then you know, the social media, right? And then do it for anything that would be on handles on the primary platforms that you would be using, right? So if you’re gonna have a YouTube channel, make sure it’s not in use on anything else’s, right? Make sure this isn’t someone’s handle on Instagram or make sure this isn’t a title actively in use on LinkedIn. So those are some of the key places that will just help you make sure that when you come up with something before you get emotionally invested in it do these availability tests and make sure that it’s available. ’cause Starting with a clean slate is one of the most important things you can do to have a good secure brand.
AJV (07:35):
And then it also gives you proof when you do all this documentation that you were first in use, right? So there is this idea of there is a race to use. In other words, there is a race to who’s gonna use it first, be the first. And if you’re gonna do it, then last but not least, take the necessary steps to get what you can trademarked or copyright, right? That doesn’t mean everything needs to be, but if you’re gonna have an entire brand bill around something, take the few hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars even and protect that. If that’s gonna be something that is gonna make you money, it’s gonna stay in the test of time. In other words, you’re gonna be using it for a while and you have an emotional investment in it, then it is worth the time and the money ’cause it’s gonna take time to do it and some money.
AJV (08:24):
But if this is your business title, your brand title, it is worth it. So once you find that it is clear, it’s available, it’s in use, take that next step. Do the due diligence, get an attorney and file your trademark and protect your brand, right? The more you do it on the front end, the less expensive it’s gonna be later on. So how do you protect your brand, make sure it’s really yours, and then take the next step to legally protect it, to make sure that you get to keep that brand and nobody else can take it from you.
Ep 494: How To Protect Your Personal Brand with Autumn Witt Boyd
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. So excited to get to interview a newer friend of mine, autumn Whit Boyd. And although we are just getting to know each other over the last several months we actually have a long history in common that we discovered at a Christmas party where her husband and I grew up in the same hometown, which Dalton, Georgia is a pretty small hometown, very small, so
AJV (00:52):
So we’re gonna be talking about different things you need to know in terms of maybe trademarks, copyrights, just intellectual property in general, but then also it’s in the litigious environment that we tend to live in here in the United States of America. What do, what do you need to know that you don’t know? And so, again, this is kind of one of those episodes that doesn’t matter where you’re at in your journey, this is going to be helpful for you. It does not matter if you are a beginner or you are super established. I promise you, there is something that you’re like, oh, I’m so glad I listened today. I had no idea. So this is one of those episodes you wanna stick around for. So let’s me formally introduce you to Ms. Autumn with Boyd. So Autumn is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which in my opinion is really a law firm really built for personal brands.
AJV (01:47):
Now I’ll let you define that in a second, but I think that’s really important because I think that you have a really cr you have created a really unique niche in the market that you cater to the individual, the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the small business owner who also has some sort of, you know, personal brand as a part of their business. And anything from contract templates to custom built contracts, to just even strategy on your ip, which is one of the things we’re gonna talk about today. This is a really unique business model that you have created to cater to people like me and everyone listening today. So to help them get to know you a little bit, I would love to hear from you, how did you create this niche in the marketplace? Because it is different than most other attorneys and other firms that we have met, that we have talked to over the years, because you have a deep knowledge in the personal brand space. So how did that happen?
AWB (02:50):
Absolutely. By accident. It was not a grand plan. I quit my last job, hopefully we’ll never have another one. And started this firm in 2015. And I tried a couple different things. I tried working with startups. I tried working with creative, more creative entrepreneurs service providers. And what I found is I tried lots of different things, was that my favorite people to work with were these personal brands, mostly folks selling either education products, doing speaking a lot of coaches. So all of them had a deep mission at the kind of core of their business. So they wanted to build something bigger than themselves. They wanted to have an impact. And they were just energetic and creative and fun to work with. My background was as a copyright litigator, so I used to go to court and mostly worked with photographers and stock photo agencies.
AWB (03:42):
So I have a deep knowledge of copyright. And what I found was for these personal brands, you know, I ended up building a team that we can really do everything they need. The good news is the business model is fairly simple, even as it scales now, as it scales, the complexity of some of the legal needs becomes more significant. But you know, in the beginning there’s not a lot of revenue streams, there’s not a lot of moving parts and pieces. So it’s easy for us to come in and really make a big impact with not a huge amount of, you know, legal spend or a lot of you know, complex legal protections.
AJV (04:19):
Yeah. So that’s a great opening to this conversation, and I love that you went to, like, you were in litigation for different copyright. Like yeah, that’s one of the biggest things that I think our audience, it’s just unaware about. And I think it’s, ’cause it’s one of those things where there’s just a lot of nuance to what can you copyright, what do you trademark, but what should you copyright? Yes. Or what should you trademark? So can you just like, define it, like what’s the difference between a copyright and a trademark?
AWB (04:51):
Yes. So we’ll dig in. So when we think about copyrights, think about content. So if you have a curriculum or a framework, things that you teach, a signature talk that you give all of that is going to be protected by copyright. Also, things that you think of more as like true art. So photos, sculptures, paintings, movies, music, all of that is covered by copyright. When we think about a, a trademark, think about a brand. So it could be your name if you are the personal brand, we certainly have helped some of our clients register their names as trademarks. Often it is the name of a signature concept, or it could be the name of a business. If you have a signature course or offering, it could be that name, it could be a podcast name. Anything you think of that is attached to your company. So the purpose of a trademark is to help customers find you basically, and to know that when they find you, you are the thing they were looking for. So in a more traditional corporate sense, think of like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. Like those are big, big brand names. So you know, when you get a Coke off the shelf, you know what you’re getting because it has that Coke branding on it.
AJV (05:56):
Oh, that’s a really great distinguishing factor. And I love how simple that is. It’s just like copyright is content, right? Yeah. And I think, and I love too, it’s like it’s, it’s, it’s art is considered into like photos and anything like that, but it’s the, the creation, right? So it’s what have you created, whereas trademarks or anything associated with the brand, so your name, company name, curriculum names, so titles, yeah. And ultimately helping define that you are who you say you are and helping other people find you.
AWB (06:29):
Yeah. There’s a little bit of overlap when it comes to logos. So think of like, Mickey Mouse is my favorite example here. You know, that is a creative work, but it also signifies the Walt Disney brand. But for most of the people in our space, you’re not really gonna have a lot of overlap. Logos are
AJV (06:46):
So it’s interesting. So then with all of the people that you have worked with, like what do you think people should be like in our space? Right? So most of the people listening to this are in some sort of content creation Yeah. World, whether it’s you’re writing books or creating speeches, or you have coaching programs, consulting programs, or you’re just trying to come up with methodologies and frameworks for your existing business, right? So what should we be thinking about when it comes to, well, what should I go and get, you know, a trademark for what should I try to get a copyright for?
AWB (07:20):
Yeah. And I forgot to give my standard disclaimer, aj, which is, I’m a lawyer, but this is not legal advice, so I’ll plug that in. And I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to trademarks. So I really think for personal brands, the folks who are listening probably don’t need a lot of registered trademarks in their business. So what we usually recommend, we’ll kind of take an inventory when we start working with a new client, you know, what are the different brands you’re using in your business? And we’ll look at them and we try to prioritize what is making you money
AWB (08:04):
But usually there’s one or two that bubble to the top of like, oh, if someone copied this, you know, it would really confuse my audience. Or like, I would definitely lose sales. So we kind of prioritize it that way. Is it making you money? Number two, are you going to stick with it for a while? Because in the United States, the trademark registration process is expensive and it takes forever
AWB (08:53):
So I wanna make sure that you’re gonna stick with it long enough that waiting that time, spending a couple thousand dollars, usually if you’re working with a lawyer on a trademark registration, it’s not cheap. And you wanna do it the right way, very easy to mess up on your own. So I wanna make sure you’re gonna stick with it long enough to see some benefit from having that r in a circle. And then the last thing I always ask is, you know, would you be upset if it were copied? So sometimes there are things that aren’t necessarily a money maker, but they’re just very personal or you feel really attached to them. And so maybe it is, you know, if you do have the you know, extra funds in your business, it may make sense to register that just because you would be, you would feel very violated if someone else copied it.
AWB (09:36):
Mm. And what a trademark registration does for you, it gives you an easier way to enforce your rights. So if you’re not willing to send a cease and desist letter, if you’re not, if you don’t want to kind of become a little bit combative, now you don’t have to file a lawsuit, but to maintain a trademark registration, you have to enforce it. That’s one of the requirements. Or it will just basically become worthless. So you have to be monitoring the mar marketplace, seeing if anybody else out there is starting something similar. You gotta keep your eyes out. And then, and we do that for a lot of our clients and then you know, take appropriate action. So send a cease and assist letter or try and figure out, you know, can we coexist in this marketplace? Can you stay in your lane and I’ll stay in my lane? So the getting the registration is really just step one of a much longer process of protecting that brand. Yeah.
AJV (10:25):
So that’s a really good conversation. So registration is step one. ’cause You may not even get it right. Right. You may apply for it and be denied, but assuming you do get it, that’s really step one because then you have to have things in place to monitor the marketplace to see if any else is using it. And then you actually have to be willing, right. Both in emotion and in dollars Yes. To actually enforce it. So, and I love those questions. You said it’s like, Hey, is it making you money? Are you gonna stick with it? And would you be upset if somebody else was using it? And if the answer is yes to all of this, it’s gonna be a couple thousand dollars and a year and that stuff, or
AWB (11:02):
More, it could be two or three years depending on kind of some of the speed bumps that you may come across.
AJV (11:07):
Yeah. But they approve based on date of application date of when it was in use. How does that work?
AWB (11:14):
So there’s two ways you can file an application in the United States. One is you’re actually using the trademark. So that’s called an in use application. Those go the fastest. But you can also file an application if you’ve got an idea or something you’re planning to launch in the near future. And that’s called intent to use. So you go through the process and then you kind of hit a speed bump and you still do have to show you’re using it. So you can’t get to the finish line, but it will put you ahead of the line of somebody who comes after you to try and apply. But in the US it, the, the rights are all based on use. So we have what’s called a race system. So it’s a race to be the first to actually use your trademark in connection with selling something. So it’s not enough to just have a landing page up or a coming soon. You have to actually be using it in commerce.
AJV (12:01):
Yeah. So this is so
AWB (12:02):
Interesting. So it can get tricky.
AJV (12:04):
This is so interesting. So I have a question. So what about ’cause you mentioned slogans, but like, what about quotes? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (12:15):
It can be. If it’s something now it has to be used in commerce and you have to prove that to the US patent and trademark office. And they have specific ways they wanna see you using it. So it has to be used kind of near where you’re selling something. So you’d have to use it on a sales page or you know, in a brochure that has a way that you can call and buy something. There’s different ways, but they’re always looking for you to use it in like an advertising or marketing way. It can’t just be, I say this thing on my podcast a lot.
AJV (12:43):
What if it was something that makes sense? What if it was something in your book?
AWB (12:47):
Yeah. So you’d have to show that you’re using that quote, not just in the book. It would have to be featured in, you know, again, like a pull quote on a sales page or something. Yeah.
AJV (12:58):
Interesting.
AWB (12:58):
It’s very strict. They’re very stringent. This is why a lot of applications get denied. And that’s why I always say, you wanna work with a trademark lawyer who knows what they’re doing
AJV (13:06):
To have it in the right and necessary places, but really they wanna see it. How is it being used for commerce?
AWB (13:12):
Yeah, exactly. That’s what trademarks are all about. Copyright, you know, it could absolutely be in the book and be protected, but it has to be you know, a a quote would be too short to be protected by copyright. It has to be considered a, a work.
AJV (13:26):
Fascinating. Does that
AWB (13:27):
Make sense? Yeah.
AJV (13:28):
So what, what do you see are the biggest mistakes that people are making when it comes to copyright and trademark?
AWB (13:35):
So, on the trademark side, since we’ve been talking about that, the biggest one is choosing a brand and then not checking to see if anyone else is already using it. Because again, we’re a race system. So if somebody else, you know, you come up with this really great slogan or brand idea, someone else is already using it. It doesn’t matter if they stay very tiny and you, you know, achieve this great success and huge exposure, they would still have what’s called priority. So they, they win the race, they could come after you, you know, years later after you’ve really built that brand invested time and money into promoting it. Okay. So, so we always wanna start with a nice, fresh, clean brand that is really just yours that you can own.
AJV (14:19):
Agreed. So what should people be doing to go, oh shoot, is my stuff already being used out there? Like, where’s like the safest place to check? How would we do that?
AWB (14:29):
Yeah, so I usually recommend a couple. You can do these on your own. Now we have a paid tool that we use at the law firm. So if you wanna register your trademark, we’ll do a deeper search. But you can absolutely do it on your own. I always start with a Google, but go to like page five or six, like do a deep Google check any social media platforms that you may be using. So if you plan to be on LinkedIn, go check LinkedIn and see if that brand pops up when you search. Same if you intend to start a podcast, go check the podcast players, type in the brand, see what pops up. And then also the US Patent and Trademark office. But there are so many unregistered marks that could still cause you problems because in the US you can have what’s called common law rights, even if you never register your trademark.
AJV (15:12):
What’s that?
AWB (15:14):
So it just, it, you can file a lawsuit, you can take action to protect your brand, even if it’s not registered. It’s a state law, right? So it’s not quite as strong as, you know, the federal rights that you get when you register your trademark. There’s definitely advantages to registering. But there are people out there with common law rights that can cause you problems. So again, that’s why we wanna make sure we search and we see it’s not just the registered ones that could cause us problems.
AJV (15:41):
Yeah. So back to this litigious environment where anyone can file a lawsuit for anything for any reason.
AWB (15:48):
Correct.
AJV (15:49):
Yeah. That’s, thanks Americans that is that is definitely something to be on the lookout for pros
AWB (15:56):
And cons for sure.
AJV (15:57):
Yeah. And I, and I love that it’s like, do a Google search, you know, go through podcasts, right? Search, you know, apple, iTunes clearly the US Patent and Trademark office social media platforms what about Amazon? Like, should we be searching like Amazon for book titles, or does that really matter?
AWB (16:16):
So a single book title is never a trademark. Okay. But if you’re doing a series of books that can, because book titles are generally, you know, not really a brand when you think about if you’re looking for something Sure. Yeah. But if you have a book and a course that goes with it, or if you have a book and you know, a workbook or a series of things okay. That can’t, now there there is confusion among book titles, but I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed if you search up a book title, there may be five different books with the same title. That’s pretty frequent.
AJV (16:45):
Yes. Or I usually don’t just like one word different. Yes. Yeah.
AWB (16:48):
I usually don’t worry too much about that if the plan is just to make it a book. Okay. Now, if you’re planning on making it a, a big brand, you may wanna consider choosing a different title ’cause you don’t want that confusion.
AJV (16:58):
So I wanna be clear really quickly. So using my husband as an example, who has his first book Take The Stairs, which was a, a New York Times bestselling book. So you’re telling me right now if some other person today decided they wanted to write a book called Take the Stairs? They could. And it’s not a big, like,
AWB (17:18):
It’s not a violation of any rights. Yes, I know.
AJV (17:22):
But we have
AWB (17:23):
Authors don’t like that
AJV (17:24):
AWB (17:34):
Not for a book title. Book titles are, are generally never a trait. But if he has other things connected to it that could be become a brand. Like does he have a signature talk or like handouts or, yeah, so usually there’s like a, a universe that grows a, around something when it’s
AJV (17:53):
Fascinating
AWB (17:53):
A slash like that.
AJV (17:54):
I think this is a really unique and important topic for our, the brain
AWB (17:58):
Vendor for sure.
AJV (17:59):
Right.
AWB (18:06):
Like a freebie. And a lot of people do this in publishing now. You know, you buy the, you buy the book early, you get some sort of online resource. Yeah.
AJV (18:14):
I
AWB (18:15):
You’re very familiar with that, aj.
AJV (18:16):
I know that and that’s why I’m asking. ’cause I just like, out of all the things, like this is something, it’s like, hey, it’s like if you’re gonna write a book, then you need to make sure you have, you know, the coordinated keynote speech to it. You wanna have some sort of like, Hey, free download it, you can get ahead. Yeah. And they, and they all need to have the same title. Correct. And then in that regard, if you had your, now it’s
AWB (18:34):
A
AJV (18:34):
Brand. Now it’s a brand. So now we can go and try to trademark trademark it. Yes.
AWB (18:38):
Exactly. Yep.
AJV (18:40):
Y’all deal. And this is always
AWB (18:41):
Something, a big deal, and this is always something I negotiate when my clients get book deals, is making sure that they own the trademark to the title. Because that is not something that most publishing companies think about.
AJV (18:51):
Yeah. But that is a huge deal.
AWB (18:53):
It’s a valuable asset for sure.
AJV (18:55):
Yeah. If you’re gonna publish this book, then we need you to at least publish this free workbook that’s three pages that goes with it and have your keynote title the same thing. Now we have a brand, now we can go trademark it. And that’s a really
AWB (19:09):
Important thing. And now you can exclude other people. Yeah. Yeah.
AJV (19:12):
That’s so nuanced, but so vitally valuable for every single person who has listened to this, who goes, one day I wanna write a book. ’cause We do this thing. So we have what we call the five title tests. And a part of those tests is, one of them is the availability test
AWB (19:47):
I Yeah, no, I agree. I would avoid it. Yeah.
AJV (19:49):
Find, find a new title. But ultimately if it’s just that somebody else could go, no, I’m gonna go for it, I’m taking it. It’s true.
AWB (19:57):
Yeah. If you’re really connected to it. Yeah.
AJV (20:01):
But that’s a big deal. Yeah. You know, our whole thing is like, Hey, if they’re already taken, let’s find something that can be unique. No,
AWB (20:08):
I agree.
AJV (20:09):
I agree. For sure. But somebody could on their own go, wow, they don’t even have a website, they don’t have a podcast, they don’t have a thing, they don’t have anything else. I’m going for it and I’m gonna take it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (20:55):
Yeah. So when we think about most of those things, they’re gonna be protected by copyright, not trademark. And we, we’ve all probably heard you have automatic copyright protection as soon as you create a work. If you haven’t, good news, you have automatic copyright protection. As soon as it’s out of your brain, it has to be in a computer document or written or something. But in the United States, you cannot file a lawsuit until it’s registered. So it’s kind of the, the opposite of with trademark, you don’t have those common law rights. So if you have something, again, that’s a really key asset in the business, a signature course, a signature talk, something that would really have an impact. If someone copied it, we highly recommend registering that with the US Copyright Office. And it doesn’t mean you’re ever gonna file a lawsuit, but if you did have to send that cease and desist letter, you know, if I get a cease and desist letter and I check and it’s not registered, I’m like, I’m not really worried about it because I know they can’t really do anything. They, you know, it’s kind of an empty threat. Yeah.
AJV (21:51):
So that’s interesting.
AWB (21:52):
The good news is the copyright process is much simpler than the trademark process. So, and it’s really it’s almost the opposite. So with trademarks, they’re giving you a monopoly on that brand. So they’re very, they make it very difficult. It’s very hard to get through that process on copyrights. They want to encourage creativity. So the process is much simpler. I would still recommend working with an attorney, but if you want to try and DIY it, it’s pretty forgiving if you make mistakes.
AJV (22:18):
So what are some examples of things that people should get a copyright for?
AWB (22:23):
So an online course or curriculum? I have seen people do keynotes. Podcasts are hard to do because it’s episode by episode and that’s just a slog. It’s a lot of work and time and money books for sure. And if you’re working with a publisher, they may take care of that for you. They may not. That’s something to check your contract on whose job that is. But definitely, definitely a book. I’ve registered the copyrights to entire websites, especially if they have a, you know, a rich, you know, history of blog posts or really good content. Wow. so again, the analysis is, is it valuable to your business? Would it impact you if it was copied?
AJV (23:04):
That’s fascinating. So again, everyone who’s listening courses, books, yeah.
AWB (23:10):
We register a lot of courses. Yes.
AJV (23:12):
Yeah. And, and that’s a lot. The thing that,
AWB (23:14):
Yeah. The thing I will say, though kind of on the the flip side of this, people often ask, you know, how can I stop someone from copying my course? You can’t, you can’t actually stop someone. You can set yourself in a good position so that if and when it happens, you know, you can take action. But I usually tell people, don’t worry too much about it being copied. You know, go ahead and put some protections in place and then kind of put your blinders on. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:48):
That’s right.
AWB (23:48):
It’s not just that they wanna learn about Facebook ads or they wanna learn how to garden or whatever the thing is that, you know, you’re teaching about. So it’s very hard for a competitor to just copy your content and have any kind of impact. Yeah.
AJV (24:00):
And I love that you said that. ’cause That is so true. It’s like they could go learn this anywhere else. They’re coming to you because they wanna learn it from you. Right. Right. And I love that you said that there’s a time and a place to go, Hey, let’s, let’s be wise and protect the things that are valuable assets that make you money, that have meaning to you, that, you know, whatever. But at the same token, remember at the end of the day, they’re coming to you because it’s you. And No, I love that. I think that’s a really good checkpoint of not creating panic
AWB (24:35):
Can be, it can be a huge energy drain. I’m sure you’ve seen this. Oh yeah. And it can be very dis very distracting and very upsetting when you find that you’ve been copied so it doesn’t feel
AJV (24:45):
Good. So, so on that note, so what do you do if you discover that you have, right? Like if somebody has copied your work, like what do you do? What should you, yes.
AWB (24:56):
Yeah. So step one is always create a record
AWB (25:39):
And then step two, once you’ve got all that collected and organized depending on kind of how important it is and who it is, this may differ a little bit, but I like the idea of reaching out to the person before you involve lawyers and before you get really mean and strict about it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (26:21):
Like whatever in your eyes would make that feel okay. And I would say 99% of the time they’re super embarrassed. Mm-Hmm. And they will comply right away. They’ll either take it down, they’ll apologize. And then that 1% of times, you know, they may get their backup and say like, no, I created this. Or they’ll deny it. And sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s a little more of a gray area, like they’ve copied your ideas, but they haven’t copied your exact words. And that’s where it becomes a little harder. But then sometimes we do have verbatim copying where they say, no, I’m not gonna take it down. And that’s when you probably wanna get a lawyer involved if it is something that is, again, valuable to you because lawyers are expensive. Yeah. so not everything is worth, you know, spending thousands of dollars on hiring a lawyer to help you with. But if it is something essential to your business, then that would be the next step to kind of ratchet things up. Yeah. Is get a lawyer involved who can help you. You know, sometimes people can say things accidentally that they don’t know could hurt them later. Uhhuh,
AJV (27:22):
Anything you say can, will be
AWB (27:24):
Used, can and will be used against you. Yes.
AJV (27:26):
But I think that, I love that where it’s like, you don’t have to go right to level 10 immediately send a cease and desist. It’s like, Hey, make the person aware. Ask them to take it down. Make sure you take the proof. Then it’s like there’s a system of escalation. Yeah. Yeah. To
AWB (27:43):
AJV (27:45):
Which is good because nobody really wins in a lawsuit. The only, you know, I had, we were in a lawsuit once trying to get our IP back and you know, the lawyers were really upfront and they just said, I just wanna be upfront with you day one. You do not win here. The only people who win here are your attorneys, the lawyers.
AWB (28:05):
Yes.
AJV (28:05):
We just want you to know you. Even if we win, you’re not winning. We are winning. Right? Yes. And they were so correct and I was so appreciative of like, oh yeah, like, you won big time. You know? Yeah. Because it’s, it’s, it’s an emotional drain. It’s a financial drain. It’s a time drain, and it’s like, you better really be sure. Right. And, and also that should on the other side, people don’t wanna be involved in that on the other side too. Right. So I love your approach of most people are gonna be embarrassed and they’re, they’re gonna want to avoid that as well. So start with doing that before you involve attorneys. Now I do have a a, a personal question, and I’ll leave any names out of it, but in my husband’s first book, there’s a very famous quote Right. That he uses in, in his speeches in, in our courses and the book, it was just kinda like one of those signature pullout quotes. We call it the rent axiom, which is, you know, the rent is always due. And people really like that and took that. And
AWB (29:10):
This is his original Right. He didn’t borrow it from anyone else. Yeah,
AJV (29:14):
Yeah, yeah. And they took it and used it and quoted it and put it on t-shirts and put it on posters, shared it on national television and never cited it. Yeah. Now, I believe that some of these very well-known famous people probably didn’t know where it originally came from. They just heard it Right. From a, from a whomever. From a whomever, from a whomever. So what do you do in those cases where you’re like, Hey, like you are saying this and not giving yourself credit, but taking credit for it. What do you do in those cases?
AWB (29:46):
Yeah, I think again, you have to decide, like, is that impacting your business enough to spend the time and energy chasing it? And maybe it is, maybe this is something that’s really personal and means a lot to him, and that he wants to be attributed. I mean, I think if you see like memes and quotes, they are misattributed all the time. Totally. And so you’re definitely playing whack-a-mole at a certain point, trying to go after all the places that have, you know, cited that incorrectly. But there may be a couple, you know, if it’s Oprah, that you try and get in touch with their people
AJV (30:38):
Yeah. That’s interesting. So you’re kind of just SOL kind of
AWB (30:42):
A little bit. Yeah. Again, we all have limited time and resources, so even though I’m a lawyer, like you could spend all of your time and energy chasing after this stuff, and most of the time it’s not really having an impact on your business. So I’d rather see you focus on growing the business, being proactive.
AJV (30:58):
Yeah. And I, and I love that because what it is having an impact on is your banking account with all that money coming out. Yes. Yes. So back to be selective, be protective, but be selective. Yeah. Right. I love that.
AWB (31:10):
Yeah. You don’t, not every battle is one you have to fight.
AJV (31:12):
Amen. I love that. So, okay. What else do we need to know to protect our brand?
AWB (31:18):
Okay. This is the one that nobody talks about. ’cause Trademarks and copyrights are sexier. But contracts are
AJV (31:24):
Really Yes.
AWB (31:25):
The biggest, most important. Yes. Like legal foundation. This is really, even though we’re IP lawyers here at the A WB firm, we spend almost all day, every day working on contracts that may touch IPN may not. Mm. So tell me how you see contracts coming up with your clients. Like where are, because I can, I can think of a couple, but I’m curious what you’ve see.
AJV (31:47):
You know what’s so interesting? I feel like most people wonder if they need them
AWB (32:20):
I was about to say. Yeah. It’s, it’s
AJV (32:21):
In flux. It’s except for, except for right. Executives for X amount of periods. So there’s these nuances to it. And if you don’t live in the legal industry, which I do not, but I’m in the EO group with you, right? Yes. Entrepreneurs organization. And that’s just a really added bonus that people are always talking about these things. And I catch ’em really in the peripheral. Yeah. But for those of you who don’t, so like, this is a great example with this new non-compete walk. Does that mean that all of us as business owners need to go update all of our contracts today? Do we need to go and, you know, have previous signed assigned employment agreements refreshed? Like what do these laws mean? One thing that they passed, but then what are we expected to do? And if we don’t know because we’re not attorneys and we do have ’em in there, and then someone’s like, that’s illegal. Like, you know, so I think those are the nuances where I hear, I’m like, well, I didn’t know that. It feels
AWB (33:19):
Very overwhelming, best to
AJV (33:21):
Know that. And so I think it’s one, do I need a contract? But then two, it’s like, what do I need in the contract? And I’ll tell you the number one thing that people I hear from, at least our audience, is I don’t wanna 13 page contract and I want, I don’t want it to sound like some attorney wrote it. ’cause No one can understand that junk. Like, how do I get a normal everyday language agreement that I can understand and my clients can understand? Yeah. So, and that’s kind of hard to do.
AWB (33:48):
It is. So going back to the first question, a contract is better than no contract, even if it’s not perfect. So I will take an imperfect contract all day long. All a contract is doing is setting expectations between two people or two companies about what’s gonna happen, value that’s being exchanged, you know, if there’s money being exchanged services if you’re selling a course or curriculum or licensing your content to somebody else to use. So there’s still gonna be a lot of good stuff in there, even if you mess up some of the specifics. So, and most things will not go to court. So that’s the good news. Most of the time you’re negotiating with the other person if something goes wrong. So using a contract is better than not, even if it’s not perfect. Mm-Hmm. As far as keeping up with all of the changing things, I understand that is overwhelming. I have a resource to recommend, which is the a WB firm firm newsletter. So we send out a newsletter every week or so with these kinds of updates. So if you are in this industry you know, I can’t promise we’re gonna cover every single thing. But it’s a nice way to just get little, you know, snippets about things that could impact your business. And you’re not getting a bunch of junk that applies to like a giant corporation. It’s really focused.
AJV (35:03):
I give online business, I’m gonna give you a plug for this because I subscribed to this and the one that came out I think last week was are you mandatorily required to hand over sales recordings to your clients if they ask? Right. And I literally sent that to our VP of sales. I’m like, I need you to listen to this. Right. And it’s like, but it’s like, those are like things that wasn’t even on my radar, right? Yeah. And it’s like just subscribing to this newsletter. And just so you guys know, I’ll put this in the show notes. I’ll have all of the links for everything that you need and want and sh should do, even if you don’t think you do. But this one, if you go to awb firm.com/newsletter, a wb firm.com/newsletter, you can sign up for it. It’s free. But like, this is a great example of like, this is like things that I’m busy doing other stuff with. I’m like,
AWB (35:58):
Right, you’re not a lawyer, it’s not your job.
AJV (36:00):
Do we have to send these sales recordings and what are they gonna do with it? You know, so yeah. Little things like that I think are really, really valuable. Just a plug. Yeah.
AWB (36:09):
And the other thing I would mention is the way we approach legal protections and keeping up with all this stuff is proportional to the size of your business and to the risk of your business. So if you are just starting out, if you are getting your brand, your personal brand up and going, a lot of this stuff really doesn’t matter because you don’t have a lot of money in the business. You don’t have a lot to lose if you mess something up and you’re unlikely to be a target, frankly, for someone to sue you report you, you
AJV (36:36):
Know, bonus being a beginner. That’s
AWB (36:38):
Right. You’re, you’re, you know, little business, little problems
AJV (36:58):
Yeah. And I think that’s, so that’s so why so on some of these specifics, like just because these are things that I know have come up in our community a lot, like non-disparagement can’t do it. So at the same time though,
AWB (37:12):
In some scenarios,
AJV (37:13):
AWB (37:42):
Yeah.
AJV (37:42):
So is that in line? Is that okay?
AWB (37:45):
Yes. And that was our, sorry, that was already illegal. Like that’s liable or slander saying things that are false. So what defamation clause is really out, if you have a defamation clause in a contract, what it prohibits is saying things that are true
AJV (38:05):
That’s, but that’s you know, one of the things that’s come up in my eo, it’s a
AWB (38:08):
Fine line. Uhhuh.
AJV (38:09):
AWB (38:22):
Yeah. So if you were gonna sue someone for liable or slander for defamation, it can’t be a feeling. It has to be a fact. So it has to, it has to be a false, you know, statement that you could test or verify. And it has to have a negative impact on your business, succeed.
AJV (38:38):
So succeed, lemme give you an example, succeed. Yeah. this was something that came up in like one of the like forum chat groups I’m in and they took a screenshot and somebody had put on like Yelp or Google reviews or something, worst business ever. Worst money I’ve ever spent. And it’s like really was is it really the worst business ever of all time? Is that truly accurate? Is it really the worst money that Right. Spent really? It’s like, have you eaten at, you know, the gas station? I don’t know, like Right. You know, it’s like really? Right. So what do you do with stuff like that?
AWB (39:14):
I mean, that stuff is just part of being in business. You gotta let it roll off your back. You can try and respond, you know, I mean, I, I don’t know about you. I’ve had some clients get canceled and it’s often over like really silly things and it’s very painful, it’s very hurtful. Awful. But often the best advice is just to ignore it. Like, just to move on. Yeah. Go do something positive to kind of shut out the negative noise. But I understand a lot of them are like, well, I wanna sue them. And I’m like, that is a
AJV (39:43):
Waste of your time.
AWB (39:45):
Kind of the worst thing you could possibly do. ’cause Now your answer just attention.
AJV (39:48):
It’s just attention. It’s just attention. Yes.
AWB (39:50):
And I’ll often say, this is not a legal problem, this is a PR problem.
AJV (39:54):
Yeah. That’s good.
AWB (39:54):
So some of it you have to kind of handle that way.
AJV (39:57):
So what, so why did so what was the basis for getting rid of these non-disparagement clauses? Just
AWB (40:04):
They’ve been legal for a while, but no one was talking about them. Yeah,
AJV (40:07):
So I this is, I don’t know why it is like it’s, this has been in the last two years and
AWB (40:12):
People, it’s, yeah, it’s been talked about more. So it’s a federal trade commission rule and it’s consumer protection. So it’s meant to protect customers from being able to speak truthfully about their interactions with a business. So you can’t, it’s kind of like a gag on them being able to, which is why a lot of people want to include non-disparagement in their contracts with their customers. So it’s, it’s still legal in other scenarios. It is becoming a little more iffy in the employment scenario. And I’m not an employment lawyer, so Yeah. I’m not gonna misspeak about that. But it, it is nuanced there. I do know. Yeah. so if you are wanting to include a non-disparagement clause in a, like a severance agreement or a termination agreement, talk with your lawyer because first mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:04):
But I think just everyone, as you’re paying attention to that, just make sure that you are looking at your contracts to make sure they do say things that people are aware of. It’s like you cannot falsely exaggerate or make false claims. And I do contract reviews for some of our clients on occasion. Anyone listening, do not email me.
AWB (41:28):
You’re delighted to review your attorney, your
AJV (41:30):
Contract. Correct. In passing, like, Hey, can you look at this, this? And it’s like, and you don’t have anything in there about cannots. And I think that’s back to setting proper expectations of Yeah. However common sense at things. Sometimes it’s good to have common sense in writing. So that would be one. And then since you’ve kind of like, this kind of came up for both of us, like this new non-compete bill that has passed. Yes. Which will be nationwide.
AWB (41:53):
Yeah. And so that is actually a regulation from the Department of Labor. So it’s not a law, it’s a regulation, but it has just come out. It has not been, you know, they have a publication period where people can comment. So it has not gone into effect yet. And actually we’re sending out a client alert, I think it’s like on my desk to review
AWB (42:39):
But just kind of like, this is a great time to just see if this even matters to you. If you’re drafting new agreements, you might consider leaving it out because it may or may not be valid. One thing in the rule is it, it says if you include a non-compete after the rule goes into effect or maybe if you have one, I can’t remember exactly, but you have to actually send a notice to the person who signed that contract. Like, Hey, that non-compete you signed is no longer valid. Oh. So I think most pe most people don’t want to have to do that.
AJV (43:08):
Interesting. So, so what about preexisting signed contracts? Those stand, it’s just anything new?
AWB (43:14):
No, the non-compete would not be enforceable,
AJV (43:17):
But, but you wouldn’t have to send out something to previously signed yeah.
AWB (43:20):
Don’t quote me on this because it is detailed and nuanced, but read our client alert,
AJV (43:25):
AWB (43:28):
We had a Slack conversation that was like very long about all the nuances,
AJV (43:34):
It’s not simple. This is kind of back to the conversation at hand. It’s like, what do you need to know? And if you don’t know, how do you stay in the know? Right. Yeah. So that’s my last question for today. Other than signing up for this newsletter as a very entry level basic, have some sort of source of information. Yeah. Yeah. If people don’t have an attorney on demand or they don’t have a legal counsel, or they don’t, you know, that’s most people, right? Yeah, absolutely. How on God’s screen earth are we supposed to stay up to date with this stuff?
AWB (44:04):
You’re gonna do the best you can. And that is, you know, again, proportional to the size of your business and the risk. You know, this is something a lot of people start taking more seriously around half a million, a million, several million in revenue. So if you’re there and you still are not really up to date on all this like judgment free zone, do not beat yourself up. But you can always do better tomorrow.
AJV (44:27):
But
AWB (44:30):
Yeah. I mean, just the bigger your business gets, the, you know, some of my clients come to us saying, I feel like I’ve got a target on my back now. Mm-Hmm. And like, I’ve really gotta make sure I’m all buttoned up and that if somebody comes at me that I’m like ready to go. Yeah. So there, there will hit, you will hit a point in your business where it becomes more important. And I’m not saying ignore it, but
AJV (44:47):
Once you’re doing like seven figures and annual revenue, would you say, Hey, like this is,
AWB (44:51):
You definitely need a lawyer. Yes. Yes.
AJV (44:53):
So that’s everyone who’s listening.
AWB (44:55):
I would, I would say probably like half a million to a million is a great, that’s a great entry point for us. ’cause There’s enough to do you Mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:10):
You know, and I, you know, I say this lovingly because we’re friends, but not everyone really wants to pay attorneys. Like people don’t really want.
AWB (45:17):
I understand. It is not the most fun money to spend. I know. Oh.
AJV (45:20):
But I think that’s a good benchmark for everyone listening. It’s like, even if it’s, sometimes you just have to spend money even when you don’t want to, but
AWB (45:27):
In your budget, it’s like, it should be in your budget just like marketing or just like working with a bookkeeper or a CPA. Like, it really is a cost of doing business. You cannot ignore it.
AJV (45:37):
And I would just say from our experiences, it’s much cheaper when you’re proactive. It’s cheaper, it’s always cheaper when there isn’t anything pending. Right? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (46:07):
Information, not advice.
AJV (46:08):
Thank you,
AWB (46:11):
I’ll plug one other thing. Yeah. I’ll plug one other thing before we go, which is we have our own podcast, the Legal Roadmap podcast, which I have stopped publishing new episodes, but there is a ton of evergreen content. So if you’re looking for like the latest and greatest, it will not be there. But if you’re looking to learn some basics about copyrights, trademarks, employment law, all these things that you need in a personal brand business, go check out the legal roadmap.
AJV (46:34):
Yes. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well. Autumn, this is so helpful, so, so knowledgeable and helpful. And y’all just all got at least $650 worth of free legal information. That advice. Just information. That’s right. So thank you. This was so, so helpful. And again, I just wanna do one more plug for the newsletter because I subscribed to it and it is super helpful and I’m constantly telling people on our team, listen to this one, go watch this. Like, read this. It’s a wb firm.com/newsletter. And then also if you wanna just stay in touch with Autumn, get additional tips, learn stuff, and also the a WB firm, check them out on Instagram. A w firm is their handle. Again, I’ll put all of that in the show notes. And last but not least check out the podcast even though that they’re not posting new episodes you can go and get some evergreen content, which is the Legal Roadmap Podcast. Autumn, thank you so much. This was so helpful. Thank you hj, for asking great questions. This is a fun conversation. And for everybody else, check out the recap version that we will pose shortly. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. Bye everybody.