Category: MARKETING

Ep 79: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, it’s time for the influential personal brand at recap of the Angie Lee episode. And I’m going solo on this one with AJ out and wanted to share my thoughts on the interview. I did with my, my good friend, Angie Lee, and you know, first thing in terms of the recap that I hope you hear when you, when you listened to the interview is the part where she says it took two and a half to three years to really even get started. Right? So two and a half to three years to even get started, like, but before she even started to see traction, and I hope you don’t skip over that, I hope you don’t miss that because, cause this is, this is the real deal. Like no matter how many of these techniques, and there’s a couple of great ones that we’re going to talk about here that we share that we, you know, that we teach you, you know, those of you that like, if you’re one of our clients, we, you know, we teach you the best of the best that we can. RV: (01:05) And on these interviews, like we try to draw out the most that we can from our, our network and our friends and the people who are actually making stuff happen. But the reality is just, you gotta, at some point commit to just be in here. Like you got to just commit to going the distance. And if you can’t be here for five years, like if you’re not in this for five years, then just go home. Now. I mean, like if, if you’re not willing and prepared to pursue this dream for at least five years, then just stop now because it takes three years to even get going, like to even just get out of the Gates of, of just hustle and work before people even understand it. And I think, you know, our pod, this podcast, a good example, like I’ve already hosted a podcast that had millions of downloads and starting over. RV: (01:57) We’re just now getting to about 50,000 downloads. And we’ve almost been doing this for already like another year and a half. And that it’s like, that’s a slow build for someone who’s been there before, but we’re walking this journey with you. And I don’t mean that to be, you know, discouraging. I mean that, to be encouraging, to throw the gauntlet down, to help you realize that this takes time, right? So like if your first email blast, didn’t generate millions of dollars for you. Like, you know, you sometimes see on social media and people over promise, like don’t be discouraged, stay committed to your mission, to your vision, to the dream of making an impact, be focused on impact and influence and income will come. It will come. Like the stuff that we teach at brand builders, it absolutely works. Like it works, it works, it works, but it takes time. RV: (02:50) There’s not a way to do it with no time. And anyone who tells you otherwise, they’re just, they didn’t really do it. And it’s not sustainable like that. You, you, you, we bring on people who are doing it, have done. It are the real ones making it happen day in, day out. And you know, so that’s just hopefully encouragement to you. Don’t be discouraged if you know, it’s not all happening right away. Like you just came here. That message enough. So beyond that a couple takeaways for me from my my pal. So I think that was, you know, that’s, that’s a big one, but a simple nuance. The Angie didn’t say so directly, but it, it, it kind of inspired me or it was something she said that reminded me of this idea that it’s, it’s important. It’s really important to lock this in your brain. RV: (03:43) And this is an important sales, marketing strategy, technique, mindset, whatever you want to call it, don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Like when people ask you, what do you do? Don’t say I’m a real estate agent say, aye, how people sell their homes, right? Like don’t, I don’t tell people I’m a personal brand strategist. I tell people I help people build and monetize their personal brand. And that is a simple and important and clear demarcation line. Don’t tell people what you do tell people what you can do for them. And that just really stuck out to me was something to remind myself of and to make sure that you just nailed home, that you, you think about that always. Cause that’s the mistake is we tell people what we do. RV: (04:53) We tell people like this, this is, this is what I spend my time doing. And they don’t really care about that. They care about what you can do for them. So make sure you make that change mentally. And, and also literally in your copy in your videos and you know, anytime you’re communicating in various forms, the next thing and I think I love this was something I really did take away from me and G in terms of, you know, selling and marketing, I think it’s like a lot of times we see people when they, they feel almost like they love putting out content, but then they have to go into like sales mode and that’s where they freak out or, you know, they love teaching. But then when it goes into like asking people to buy or something, they, they freak out because they have like this, like a gear shift, like there’s this mode where they think about, okay, I’m being myself normally. RV: (05:50) And then there’s this moment where I go into marketing. And when Angie was saying is like, don’t do that. Just, just be the same person talking passionately about what you believe in like the, the, the tools that you use, the products that you buy. And they don’t even just have to be your products. Like she, she was saying, you know, she, a lot of times she tells people about tools that she doesn’t get an affiliate fee for. She just, she just in that mode because she doesn’t delineate between like, okay, I’m in sales mode versus I’m in like teaching mode, it’s just learn to, to be genuine. And, you know, like a verbatim thing that she said, which I thought was interesting was she said, integrate your ads into what you’re doing. So, right. Like you think of ads. It’s like, okay, I’m going to create my ad. RV: (06:37) And then I, and then I have content, but in Corp, if you think about it more as incorporating your ad into your content or that your content is an ad, you know, it’s teaching, but it’s also an ad for something that’s sort of representative of this mindset shift here of, it’s not like, there’s you as a, as a mid, as a messenger. And then there’s you as a marketer, it’s like, it’s the same thing and do them together. And just talk about it that way. What really, really helped you. Or another thing that she said was, don’t think of how can I sell more, but think about how can I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic about telling people what I believe in, Oh, I love that. I love, I love that idea. And, and, you know, I think of it as being more of like a promoter I’ve talked about this a lot is, is just, if you were going to tell your friends about a great movie you saw, or a great restaurant, you went to you, wouldn’t like put on your sales mode and become like robo salesperson. RV: (07:45) You know, you wouldn’t write out a script and be like, let me memorize the script. You would, you would just tell your friends all my gosh, like this movie is amazing. You have to see this movie or you have to listen to this song, or, you know, like you have to go to this city that I visited, the way that you promote to your friends, the things that you love and believe in is the same way that you should promote your own products. And you should have the same level of conviction in your own products that you’ve created as you do in the products that you use that are created by other people. And if you don’t, then there’s some disconnect. Like you need to work on your product. More like there’s something about your product that you’re insecure about that you don’t love it, or you don’t believe in it, or you didn’t design it in a way that it feels authentic. RV: (08:31) And, and the more you can do that, the more comfortable you’ll be the more persuasive you’ll be. And the less salesy you’ll be, because it’s, it’s like, you won’t be just, you know, regurgitating this, this, this script. So, so don’t do that, like just promote and speak and teach from the heart and be intimate and vulnerable and authentic about what you believe in. And that’s a important tip. That’s one of the things that I love about Angie. I think, you know, she’s always encouraging people to market and promote, but to like, not in ’em, you know, just, just in an honest way, like being congruent with who you are. And I love that. And she’s also telling the story, which was my point number one, about how long it really takes and the work it really takes. So those were my top two takeaways. RV: (09:17) My, my third takeaway, which is another tactical point, which has kind of come up before. But another thing you can’t hear too often is that remember, or just know in your mind that Instagram is not an SEO friendly growth platform, because social media in general is the opposite effect of, of search engine optimization. Like when you put content out on the web and, and, and, and so, so it’s almost like I think about it this way, your website, I E your blog specifically. Okay. So your blog, your YouTube channel and your podcast, those get better over time. The longer the content has been out, the more reach you have, the more traffic, the more valuable it is, the more new subscribers, like it’s like a fine wine. It gets better with age and those assets. That’s one of the reasons why those assets are so important and really, probably in many ways, the most important, I mean, yeah, your blog, your website, your YouTube channel, they get better over time. RV: (10:24) Social media is like she said, it’s better for, it’s just a nurturing platform. It’s a way to just keep in touch with people. But over time, the value of social media goes down w a piece of content on social media over time, goes down a piece of content on, you know, basically call it Google. Well, I mean, is there a podcast, your YouTube, or your website, your blog, it goes, the value of that goes up. And so they’re more SEO. They’re more SEO, friendly, and older pieces of content carry a lot of weight and they get, you know, they get more traffic and more reach over time. So you just need to understand that. Particularly if you’re someone who has a huge following on social media, but you have no email list, you have no, no blog traffic. You have no podcasts. You have no YouTube channel. RV: (11:12) It’s like, you are, you are one algorithm change away from your whole brand disappearing overnight. And all of the work that you’ve done to build an audience on social media, basically becoming worthless. So you better be migrating those over to these other platforms, YouTube podcasting, and your blog quickly, which is what, you know, we, we teach that in our relationship engine, our whole phase two is all about building your digital platform, your digital ecosystem. So make sure that you’re doing that, make sure you’re always doing those things. Social media is important. It’s a great way to get a lot of reach quickly. You know, you can go viral, you can nurture people. It’s like but it’s not the center piece of your personal brand strategy. It’s more of an, an outlet or redirect. It’s a tributary to your stream, which really should be your blog. RV: (12:08) And then, you know, you’re dropping your podcast and your videos from YouTube on there as well. All things that if you follow the brand builders group way, like if you’ve come to our phase two event, you know, if you’ve been through phase one, you come to phase two or you’re, you’re in our monthly and more, we’re teaching you the relationship engine. And you’re just, you’re building that out. We’re doing these things organically, but every time I do one of these interviews, I’d become more and more convicted of like, yeah, the process we’re teaching incorporates. So many of these things, these real, the real influencers are doing. So I hope you’re doing that and pulling that away as a tip, most of all, you just got to stay in the game. You just got to stay in the game. You just gotta keep going. You gotta keep pushing. RV: (12:48) You gotta know that every single day, there’s someone out there waiting to hear from you. And that most of this game is a matter of staying power. And it’s the person who’s committed to being here for the long term, that’s going to win. So I want to encourage you and invite you and challenge you to commit, to be here for the longterm, commit that this is your craft. This is your mission. What you’re doing with your personal brand is going to be the rest of your life. And when you do that, you’ll you’ll quickly go, right? So there’s a bunch of steps I need to take, but I got the rest of my life, you know, to work towards it. So we’ll just, we’ll just start plugging away. And that’s what we want to help encourage you to do. Whether we get a chance to call, hopefully you’ll do a free call with us. If you haven’t. At some point, we want to talk to you. Hopefully we get to see you at one of our events, or, you know, if for right now, just stay plugged into the podcast and follow me on social at Rory Vaden on Instagram and most of my other platforms and just, just stay connected so we can encourage you along your journey. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.

Ep 78: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee

RV: (00:00) I am so excited to introduce to you to someone who is a newer friend of mine who I really, really respect. Angie Lee is, she has millions of podcasts, downloads. She has one of the best personal develop events for female entrepreneurs. It’s called, pays to be brave. She’s releasing a book called ready as a lie. She’s built hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And she is someone that was just told, Hey, you couldn’t do this. You shouldn’t do this. It’s not going to work. It’s a waste of time. You’re crazy. And yet here she is in her young years just crushing it. And I want, I wanted to invite her on to tell her, tell for her to tell us and tell you exactly how the heck that she does all that and give us all of her marketing secrets. So here she is, Angie Lee. AL: (00:51) I’m so excited to be here. Let’s do it. I love geeking out on all things, branding and marketing. So, RV: (00:57) Yeah. Well and I feel like you’re like one of the case studies of like, Hey, like you’re someone who’s just done it through. So, so tell us first of all, like how did you kind of get into building a personal brand and like how did all that, you know, how did you even start? And then we’ll talk about why you think it’s gone well and how to do it. AL: (01:17) Yeah. When I started this, I was 19 years old, 10 11 years ago, I didn’t know I was building a personal brand. I didn’t, I didn’t know what creating content was and I really was someone who just genuinely loved to share my life with people. I genuinely love to give tips. And at the time it was health and wellness. And so I was on campus in school and my first year of college and I hated college. I hated school. Typical entrepreneur selling lemonade on the corner since I was little and school was a cage for me, it was jail. So instead of going to class, what do you do? You start videoing yourself working out and you posted on my space and you share with your friends or you, you I was creating recipes and, and smoothie recipes and health tips and I went all in and I became obsessed with creating content. AL: (02:04) And what happened is through that I realized that there was this whole world of digital marketing and I became obsessed with how do I take this passion that I have for wellness online and get women to purchase eBooks or have ad space or do coaching programs. And so it kind of all evolved from me starting this blog. And then what started with three to four readers, one of them being my mom that eventually became women telling their friends and their friends’ friends. And I just stayed really consistent. And this is crazy to say, but I think in 10 years of creating content, I’ve maybe taken 10 to 20 days off in a sense of creating some sort of piece of content, whether that’s written, visual, auditory. I’ve just been obsessed with connecting with people every day and sharing with them. And then when I realized I could turn this into a business instead of becoming a dietician and making $20,000 a year working 80 hours a week in Buffalo, Idaho, which is what I was going to school to do, I realized that there was, there was something here, and I can still remember the day that a woman paid me $60 for a wellness ebook. AL: (03:05) And I remember thinking I was loaded. I was like, I’m rich. I have $60 I, I’ve made it mom, don’t worry about me. I’ve got it, I’m good. I got a woman paid me $60 from across the country for an ebook and then a day later this company paid me 40 bucks for ad space on the blog. And again, you know, I was 19 you’re broke, you’re broken college. A hundred dollars is like you are set for life. And so I remember being like, this is it. I’m going to make it. But I do remember that moment and I think every entrepreneur remembers their first digital sale because it’s such a beautiful moment of if I can get one stranger on the internet to find value in what I do, who lives all the way across the world or country, I can get thousands of people to do this. AL: (03:52) And once I realized that it’s been game over, and that’s what I’ve been committed to, showing up, creating content and finding all of these different ways to be, Hey, to be a coach, a teacher, an educator, influencer, and it’s evolved. You know what started as health and wellness then evolved into marketing coaching because women started to ask me, how did you turn this into a business? How have you made this a full time gig? And through that I found out, which probably isn’t one of your steps of your process, that my biggest passion really is, is marketing. I love marketing because as you know, marketing is communication. It’s the most beautiful form of communication. And I think if you understand humans and you love understanding humans, you can become a phenomenal marketer. So man was started as a blog about pushups is now this crazy career. RV: (04:36) Well, and I just, I love that idea that it’s like if you can just get one person, it’s like once you get that one person and you go, gosh, I can recreate this and I can scale this. One of the things that I love about your posts and Mmm, you know, I actually, I don’t follow a ton of people and I actually follow you a particular on Instagram is, is because you don’t sell the dream that it’s easy. You sell the dream that it’s possible and you talk about consistency and you lay out like you just did. Like it’s not the, Hey, I’m going to throw up a website and run some Facebook ads and be a millionaire overnight, which you see a lot of. And I’ve never figured out a way to do that. And none of our clients have ever figured out a way to do that. RV: (05:20) And none of my friends who are very successful, I figured out how to do that. I feel like it’s that true story of consistency. And so can you just help us understand like what was the timeline like how long from the time that you were like, ah, I’m a thrown up some weird blog. I’m just basically trying to avoid being in class in college too. When it was like, okay, I’m really going to do this seriously, and then what was the timeline between that moment and then the moment where it was like, Hey, I’m actually starting to make real money and then it’s like, Hey, this is full time and like, Hey, this is awesome and like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m being paid as much as I’m being paid do this. So like what’s that horizon look like? AL: (06:00) Yeah, I would say 19 to 2122 was, I have no idea really what I’m doing, but I’m going to keep showing up and making side money here and there and other jobs. Of course I was still in school until I dropped out because I hated college. But RV: (06:16) Years you worked. This was like a just a total like side hobby kind of a thing? AL: (06:21) Yeah, I would do it in between classes late at night instead of going to class. I remember being in chemistry tests, which are very intense. You guys are very dense answering to my blog readers because I was just obsessed. I was like, Oh my God, I need to talk to these people because they have questions and I didn’t really know yet if I could monetize it, but I won’t lie to people. I’ve always been a business woman. I’ve always seen the world through the lenses of a marketer and a business woman and I’m always thinking of ways to create something and sell something, share something. And so within about two years I started Googling what is digital marketing and sort of watching these corny videos from probably caught who was like the big digital marketer. Then I don’t remember who it was. I would watch these videos up late at night and I remember I would tell my roommate, Oh my God, look at this. AL: (07:05) You can set up a funnel and people will opt into it and then they’ll buy your shit. Like this is crazy. She’s like, okay, whatever. Just go get a job. That sounds really weird. People aren’t going to do that. Nobody’s going to pay for space on a blog. No one’s going to pay you to podcast like I don’t think you really should because this is right before social media really built. And it was almost as if I anticipated what was going to happen and this huge economic shift of the technological revolution as you call it. And so I started to get these ideas of like, no, this is how people are going to learn fitness and business and this is how people are going to buy stuff. So maybe I can position myself as someone who could teach fitness, but do it online so that I don’t have to work at a gym or go to go to a dietetics office, right. Or a hospital. And so it really became this obsession with digital marketing. But it did take probably two and a half, two, three years until I was making a part time income enough where I could actually see that this could be a real thing. Like wow, I have real steady clients. Whether it was group coaching, one on one coaching, ad space eBooks, downloads, that RV: (08:11) We were also doing it part time then as well, like it took, so it, it took you two and a half to three years to get there to a part time income. But you were also doing it part time as well. It wasn’t like you were doing it 80 hours a week and then it took three years. It was like you were kind of dabbling and doing different stuff, but like once you, once you said like, okay, so I’m going to go after this. So was that like right after basically you dropped out of school and said, okay, I’m going to do this as my job? AL: (08:42) [Inaudible] Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. It was a burn the boat situation because I didn’t want to go work in corporate and whatever I did, I always felt like I was lost and I felt like I didn’t belong there and my ideas were too creative and I wanted to make own hours and I was getting clear signals from the universe and God that it was not meant to be an employee of a large company. And so that’s when I really doubled down. And you guys know listening when you are against the wall, that’s when you make it happen. And I think that’s what’s really beautiful about the time we’re in right now. I think when you know you have to do it, that’s when you do. And I realized, Hey, I’m a hundred thousand dollars in debt from college that I didn’t really go to. I’m passionate about digital marketing, digital marketing. I’ve made 30 to $40,000 here and there. If I can make that, I could go full blown and make this a full time business. And that’s what I became obsessed. Like I tell you with studying digital marketing and figuring out how do I take something I love and make money from it online and and I studied revenue streams and man, once you open up a business woman to digital marketing who wants to work from home and not have a boss, it’s game over. RV: (09:48) So how long did it take? So how long did it take then to go from, okay, first two or three years it’s like it’s, it’s a hobby and I’m making hobby income and then you go, okay, my back’s up against the wall. Either need to get a real job or I’m going to do this and say, okay, I’m going to do this. How long does it take to like make real money, make six figures, that kind of a thing. AL: (10:08) Yeah, I was 25 I would say when it became really real, so five years ago, so bright in the middle, five years, hardcore. That’s what I realized. Okay, six figures, multiple six figure launches really started to double down on my organic funnels, my marketing affiliate marketing. That’s when things started to get a little bit more smooth. But still ups and downs on every launch was amazing. And then 25 to 28 still flustering my ass. I mean, the whole process was busting my butt and it wasn’t actually until to answer your other question, it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I’ve had one of those moments of, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that this is my job. I’m paid to speak on stages. I’m paid to host a party as you’d like to call it. I’m host to share about other people’s cool products and make multiple six figures from these launches. AL: (10:55) I mean, last year was insane to know that I was paid to be an affiliate marketer. Like it’s also really surreal to me, but it all comes back down to brand. It comes back down to that very first post I made when I was 19 years old and it was about burpees and pushups and green juice. Like that’s where it started if you think about it. But now eight, nine years later, I really feel like, Oh my gosh, I feel safe in this. I feel like I, for the rest of my life, I’ll have a personal brand and we’ll be able to play in a few different spaces. Jesus. But that was not a fun eight, nine years. A lot of it, you know, ups downs I had done in the beginning, I was confused. I didn’t have a lot of coaches. I should have hired more coaches. I kind of just Googled a lot. I Googled a lot of stuff because you know, I was nervous to invest in myself, which wasn’t always smart and now building a bigger team. And so it’s crazy that now I feel like it’s finally all in all came to fruition. RV: (11:46) Huh. So let’s talk about the digital marketing for for a second. What is, what are some of the things that you, you know now that are very clear that like you didn’t know then. So you know, you’re coming out of college and you’re kind of like, okay, I’m going to do this. And then you start Googling stuff and you go, dammit. Like, if this took me like I can think of in my life, I can think of, there’s like two or three lessons that were, they took me a few years to learn and it’s like I can teach them in five minutes, but it took me a few years. What are some of those big moments for you? It’s specifically like, I think a lot of people listening here, there’s probably less people listening that are, you know, in college going, Oh I want to do a side hustle. But a lot of people go on, Hey, I just got laid off from my job, or my income got cut, or my husband or my wife’s income got cut. Or you know, and it’s like, I need to like figure something out. And I don’t really know anything about digital marketing. So what are some of those big, big lessons do you think? AL: (12:42) Yeah, you guys are gonna love me and hate me for saying this, but there are rules, but there are no rules. And what I mean by that is AL: (12:52) Beating to my own drum is that the saying, beating my own drum, doing things a little bit different than most marketers do has actually been a benefit. And so in the beginning I tried to follow all the scripts, all the funnels, scripts, all the downloads, all the sales call scripts, and I think I was obsessed with following someone else’s blueprint and that actually hindered my authenticity. And as corny as it sounds, it’s, it’s the truth when it comes to building a personal brand. The more you are you, and maybe sometimes that’s weird, maybe that is your emails have some spelling errors. Maybe it’s you, you want to craft your email the way you want to craft it. You don’t want to follow the rules you learned in one specific webinar. I believe that that is going to shine and stand out more than anything. I think that the world right now is creating real and authentic and I wish I would’ve started being that way sooner because the moment I was authentic was the moment this brand built, this brand grew and I built super fans. AL: (13:45) Like I have fans that are not just, Oh I’ll buy from you there, I’ll buy from you for life and whatever it is. And the w the reason I was able to do that is because I woke up one day and realized I have to, I have to fully be me. And sometimes that’s imperfect and it’s weird and, and they’re noticing that when they read my emails where they consume my content, it’s a little bit different than what most girls in the space are doing and it’s one day cause I blinders on and two, it’s because I made the, I finally stopped doing what I did in the past, which was I don’t follow specific scripts. Even as an affiliate marketer, I don’t follow the copy swipes and you can, I’m not to say these things, not to say these things don’t work for some people, but I excelled as an affiliate marketer last year with a few different people in their launches and they all wanted to know what was the system, what was the strategy, what was the thing? AL: (14:28) I’m like, guys, there wasn’t a thing. The thing was I show up on video, I talked to my people like they’re my best friend. I give them value and they feel like they know me and they trust me. And that one, it wasn’t a specific email sequence. There wasn’t one swipe copy I sent and Ooh, it got them in. It’s just at the end of the day that stuff can work. But nothing can replace being a human and speaking to another human and just being real with them. And you know, as all of this is growing, consumers are becoming smarter. So they know when they see an ad, they know when they hear an ad, they know what you’re doing. So the more that you can be genuine and the more that you can integrate in your ads or your sale into what you’re doing, the better it. That’s been my saving grace. I tell women that all the time. I’m like, I, I haven’t been as scripted as most people and I think that’s actually been a benefit. So for you guys listening, follow your own damn rules. If it feels like the right thing to send or right thing to say. RV: (15:22) Oh, so that is awesome. I love that. So what you just said there is you said you know, if it feels like the right thing to send, that reminded me of something that emotionally there, you know, there’s a big fear here, particularly if there’s people who have been successful in something, but they’re newer to digital marketing and it’s like, Oh man. Or just marketing in general. And this is another thing that I really love that, cause you talk about it so much as I think some people have that psychological barrier too. I don’t want to be seen as a marketer. I don’t want to be seen as a spammer. How do you overcome some of those feelings of like, well, if I send emails to a bunch of people, doesn’t that make me a spammer? And like, you know, like the, the mindset I guess of the balance of serving the audience but also generating revenue to provide for yourself and your staff. AL: (16:21) Yeah, there’s longterm. And then there’s short term, right? And sometimes you have to do what you have to do for the short term. But I believe if you hold out a little bit in your patients and you focus on the long term of having a personal brand that can last you, I mean I’ll probably be doing this in my sixties you know, I’ll just be on those live videos, chatting with people, writing books, speaking on stages. I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I’ll be doing something fun. But I’m in this for the long haul and I’ve known that since the beginning when it started to get real as you asked, like when I really started to make money and realize this was a thing and starting to get people, we’ll say it, Oh my God, I love your work. And getting that first email back from the blog saying, Oh my gosh, I need to hear from you. When I realized it was real is when I realized that I have something valuable in front of me and if I am the asset of this company in this business, I cannot burn out and fizzle out AL: (17:09) Immediately. Or this is going to crash and burn. So I am very delicate of when do I directly sell and then when am I simply just brand, building or nurturing. So I do have a flow, I guess you could say that in the beginning it was more structured and now I organically can feel it and I feel like as a female and we’re very intuitive with a lot of the things we do in business. So I’ll feel out the push and the pole and that’s what marketing and sales is, right. Push and pull. And so I’ll feel out, okay, am I in a season of, I’m spending the next six to eight weeks of pure value of no pitch, no strings attached and just throwing value at them. And then am I or am I in a season of, okay, I’m making more asks, but when I’m delivering, so value for months on end or as a majority or for the majority of the time when I do make the ask, it’s not a big deal and they’re not weirded out by it. AL: (17:56) So I think one, it’s knowing what season are you in? And knowing their seasons of push and their seasons of pole and there needs to be that nice balance of you showing up for them with no strings attached. Like one of my best tips for people on Instagram stories is, you know, as someone who’s also an influencer and paid by ads to to do work, there’s a lot of times I’ll share a resource or content or books or podcasts that I have no affiliation to. There’s no dollar amount, I’m not connected to it. Maybe I wish I was a little bit, but I just share it to share it, to show, Hey, you guys are my friends and I’m going to share things when I’m not paid obviously. And by building that trust, then when I do make a sale, they know it’s genuine because it’s coming from a place of, listen, I’m not trying to always sell you. AL: (18:34) So I do think there is a delicate balance, but I also believe that’s again, you got, you have to be obsessed with what you’re selling. So for me, I won’t share something or create something that I don’t genuinely love from the face wash to a book, to a course, to an affiliate thing. I just, I can’t, it’s just not in me to not be genuine. And I believe that that genuineness is what leads to sales. And that genuine passion for something is what leads to sales. So I would really encourage you guys listening. You gotta love what you do. You’ve got to be obsessed with it because listen, if you’re not obsessed with the pencil, you can’t sell it to someone else. You know, I see women being like, buy this. It’s great. I’m like, you’re not excited. I’m excited. So I think it [inaudible] can go a long way, but it has to be genuine. RV: (19:17) Yeah, I think that’s awesome. And I think that’s a really cool illustrations you’re using there of like, make sure it’s not the only things you’re promoting are the things you’re getting paid to do. Like, make sure you’re promoting things that it’s like, Hey, this is what I actually use every day. I think that’s, I think that’s awesome. So I want to actually talk about Instagram cause you’re, you, you’ve, you’ve built a really wonderful Instagram following is super engaged. As I mentioned. I follow you personally. And Mmm. What do you, what do you think, what do you think creates growth on Instagram platform specifically? Mmm. And I’m also interested in what do you think creates growth on your podcast specifically and sort of like what’s the difference between kind of those two platforms in terms of like what types of content and frequency and that kind of stuff? AL: (20:07) Yeah. Whew. I’ll keep this as short as possible. So this isn’t a 10 hour webinar, but I geek out on this stuff so I could go forever. But growing, here’s the deal. You guys, Instagram is not SEO friendly growth platform. Youtube is, podcasts are a little bit more so because of keywords and search. Instagram is a nurture platform. It’s a place where you have already, yep. It’s a place where it’s a place where you’re nurturing your current people. And I’ll give you a hack on how you can grow on there. But it’s more of a place to nurture and go deep with your current people. And then places like YouTube or podcasts or more of the funnel to get to Instagram. I believe Instagram is your party. And then you know, to get to the party first have to hear about the party from YouTube, from YouTube or podcasts. AL: (20:51) So it’s really about those two places being more SEO friendly to drive the traffic then to Instagram. So when it comes to Instagram growth, shareable content is everything. And what I mean by this is a piece of content. An infographic and educational posts are really heartfelt. Post a funny video, something that someone else will read or consume and say, Oh my gosh, this is funny. Entertaining gave me some sort of value. I’m going to comment because you asked me to engage. It’s so valuable. I need to share this onto my wall. I’m going to tag three of my friends in this because this is so funny. Or this is so educational or this is so interesting. Or it’s a, it’s a belief system that I also share. So by me sharing it, I look smart because I shared the quote knowing human psychology and why people share things. AL: (21:38) It usually comes down to a few reasons. It was funny, it was interesting, it was valuable, or they have the same shared belief as you, so they felt the need to share it. So for me, I have this nice balance of what I call intimate content or storytelling. So I’ll just have a picture of me and then I’ll infuse the story. And then what I’m infusing a lot in 2020 is growth related content, which is shareable content. So today I’m doing an infographic and then another day, maybe I’ll do an IGTG ITT. These are great for growth right now because people reshare them or comments. So the best way to grow is to get someone to comment their friends in the comments or for them to share it onto their stories. And then people say, Oh my God, what’s that video? That video looks so interesting. Bob just gave the top five tips to blah, blah, blah. I should go check it out. I need to learn more about that. So that’s the only way to truly grow on Instagram as it’s a platform that doesn’t have SEO capabilities to it. Now RV: (22:28) Typically speaking there, just to, to pause on that for a second, cause you go like from a tactical standpoint, the best way to grow there is for someone to share your post to their story. They can’t share it to their feed, which is sometimes annoying, but they could share it to their story, which is going to be where their most engaged audiences. So now all of their most engaged people are going to see that. And or to actually physically get your followers to comment on your post and tag one of their friends or followers in that post. AL: (23:04) Yes, yes. So before I’ll post, I’ll know is this a nurture intimate storytelling piece of content or is this to bring in new people and it’s a growth piece of content. So I’ll do a nice 50 50 blend on there. And when I’m creating a growth piece of content, like a quote or an infographic or an interesting ID TV, I’m created with the intention of Susan commenting, Sarah and Becky. So then her friends see it and maybe they share with their friends. They share with their network marketing team and that’s how it’s grown organically. And that’s honestly how the podcast grew organically. Because I’m, I’m again a marketer, I don’t run ads. So for me I really have to focus on shareable content. What would be so good or so valuable that a girl would say, Oh my God, this is so sometimes it’s funny, I just like being weird. AL: (23:43) So I’ll say what’s so funny that she’s to tag her friend or what was so educational that she felt the need to share this with her network marketing team or her friends who are also entrepreneurs and business and small business owners. So for me it’s like education and humor. If I, if I constantly vacillate between those two, I’ve seen that my growth we’ll do really, really well. So again, it’s, it’s more about not creating always what I want to create, but what they would find interesting and then they would post. So that’s how you grow on a platform that’s not SEO friendly yet. I hope it is one day, but it’s really smart as well to have a podcast and a YouTube and mentioned Instagram in those two places. So you can then drive the traffic from those SEO friendly places back to the podcast, which is, or back to Instagram, which is your home to nurture them and really get to know people. Because as you know, stories is like such an awesome place to convert to the sales for a lot of people because it is so intimate. RV: (24:35) Yeah. So I will talk, I want to talk about stories in a second, but so I actually want to share. So this is one of my things that I struggle with. I feel cheap asking people to comment below. I so, so when I was in comedy training I was, one of the people that I was coach was a guy named Eddie Brill who was the talent Booker for the tonight show. And he used to call that pandering where comedians would be like, Hey, how’s everybody doing tonight? And it’s so weird because it was like I took this one class from this guy years and years ago and for some reason that’s like the one thing that sticks with me is like, and I feel like I’m pandering when I do that. Yet everybody that grows does this. I mean, Trent Shelton does it all the time. Jay Shetty does it all the time. Gary V does all the time. Grant Cardone, like these people, these monster followings that are not celebrities, but they’re like personal brands and they’ve kind of become celebrity personal brands. They’re always doing it. So do you, have you ever had that reluctance or like where do you, like what do you, what would you, is that just stupid? You just go, well, who cares? Like just do it anyways. Or like what, what would you coach coach me on this? AL: (25:46) Yeah, it does feel a little corny and weird because everyone’s doing it and it’s like, eh, comment below. So what I’ll do is I’ll say to myself, okay, I do need to ask them to engage because if I don’t ask them, they may not do it. So it is smart to tell you and train them, but I’ll, I’ll try to make it a more interesting question or something that I actually think is funny or, or, or quirky or weird or who would you choose? A or B or you know, make it something where it’s a little bit more interesting for me versus just comment because they’re like, what do you want me to say? I make it easier for them and say this is what you should comment. Like do you like this or that or do you, but you know what I’ve noticed if something’s good because this is how I am and I think, okay, if my girl is a lot like me on social, then she’ll do the same thing. If something is funny or interesting or educational or valuable, I will tag a friend because I want her to see it or I will or I will and or I will share it on my wall. So I actually don’t think you need to always ask them to. I think if it’s good shit it will spread. Like good shit always spread. So I think it’s really smart. You can be the signature. AL: (26:53) It just does. I’m so committed to creating such good content that Susan can’t not tell their friend, go check it out because she’s the only girl. I know. Teaching marketing like this, like that has been my commitment and my obsession. So when I create something and I’m like, I’m going to teach it in a way where this live IETV, which guys get on ITB, it’s so good for engagement right now. It’s amazing. It’s the favorite child of Instagram. I don’t even say comment in it. They’re just like, Oh my gosh, I shared this with my team. It was so good. So I think if you’re a smart content creator and if you’re someone who’s valuable and has value like you do, I think it’s easy for you to pump out things that people would say, Oh my goodness, this is good stuff. Like I needed that tip today. So guys would always go, it comes back to good quality content and giving away value or entertainment. So people want, you know, and so I do, I don’t like these super corny like, yeah, you could tell they just posted it. RV: (27:40) No, but that helps. Like Timmy, it’s to me different where it’s like tag, it’s different between just kind of going like tag a friend who needs to see this and more going like, who do you know that is struggling with this thing in your life? Shared this with that person. Like just like what would be interesting to me or, or, or to go, you know, who’s somebody, you know, that’s a leader, tag them so that they can see this like, or, or who is someone, you know, that’s really good at this versus just saying, Hey, tag a friend so that I get more, more views. Like making it more meaningful. That’s actually really helpful to me. I like that. AL: (28:14) Yeah. Being selfless with it will always pay off. You know, it might take a little bit longer, but it’s so worth it. RV: (28:20) Yeah, totally. So all right. So I do want to ask you about the stories, but before we do that, we’re running, run low on time. I knew we would go fast, which, which we have here, the where should people go if they want to learn more about Angie Lee and follow you. And also, you know, kind of who is, share a little bit about who your perfect person is so that they know they know who they’re going to, who you’re looking for. AL: (28:45) Yeah. I mostly help female small business owners, so online coaches, online network marketers, wellness coaches, life coaches, beauty coaches, fitness coaches, women who have a small DTC brand. So it’s women who essentially want to tap into the personal, the personal brand space. And you guys can check me [email protected] or listen to the Angie Lee show on iTunes and I’m hanging out a lot on IgE stories and on my podcast. RV: (29:10) Yeah, so actually, and I want to ask you about the podcast just really quickly too before stories, a top tip for growing the podcast. Just cause that’s been a monster for you. Like you have millions and millions of downloads of all your platforms. Like, if you look at web traffic, social, YouTube, blah, blah, blah, your podcast is really like the thing that feels like it’s jamming. What do you, what do you think that comes from? AL: (29:36) I love that. I don’t have like one strategic answer. So cause as you get it was intentional but not intentional. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes that’s the way it works when you really, really love it. But here’s what I’ve been good at. I’ve been good at creating hype and excitement around it. Going back to the passion or the obsession, I’ve been good at building sub-tribes in my community who cheer for me and tell their friends about me so that I don’t have to spread the word. And that’s the epitome of sub-tribes, right? Is creating your subculture in your personal brand. So your people are telling their people to go listen to you because Susan can tell her Becky’s to go listen to me better than I can tell the Becky’s because they’re two away from me. So two steps away from me. AL: (30:14) So the way that I’ve done it is one creating the sub-tribes and the excitement too. I’ve done a good job at teasing pre and post show, and I haven’t done this in the last year as much and I may start to do this again, but I treat each episode like an event. So for an example is I used to get on Facebook live and I would tease the topic and say, guys, if you want to hear the other three tips, you have to go listen to this episode. Go check it out on iTunes. And it was almost like I had a pre party or an after party to the show and then they wanted to go listen to the rest. So that has been a really awesome way for me to spread it. And then I treat it like I’m affiliate marketing in a sense where I find tribe leaders, so women who have a community or women who have a network marketing team and they share the podcast to their women. AL: (31:00) So for me it’s been interesting to see how it’s spread really through other people spreading it to their networks. Right. And as an organic marketer, literally, I don’t run ads. I’ve had to rely on almost my community being the outreach. So one, get your people to cheer you guys on more than anyone to create hype and excitement around it. Whether this is getting online or stories, pretty graphics and exciting things to get people excited to listen. And I think making sure the topic and the name is niche specific. In the beginning, you know now it’s my name, but I think in the beginning, let’s say you guys have a show on beauty or wellness. I think having it be something specific so people know what it’s going to be about and you teach on this definitely down getting focused on something, becoming the best at something. It’s like Dave Ramsey, the reason his show blows up is because people were searching for the word finances or debt. So have a searchable term, know what the problem is you solve, create a show around that and then as your brand grows, you can teach on whatever you want and have a little bit more flexibility. But I think it’s really important in the beginning to have it be a niche specific show. So then there is more searchability to it on, on iTunes. I mean it’s all good. RV: (32:01) Well sure. I mean it all. Is it all? Is that something that you do? Alright, so one last one last thing. I’m going to steal one more tip. Using IgG stories to promote. How important is it? What do you do? How do they fit in or why are they so critical to the overall like monetization strategy? AL: (32:22) Yeah, to give you guys some real life data here, I used IgE stories, which is a completely free platform and obviously I was very consistent on it. They’re on there for a few years, as soon as it came out, but I used it to sell out my last live event of 1500 women, zero paid ads. That was all I did. I a bunch of ID stories everyday just talking about how exciting it’s going to be, how amazing it’s going to be. You need to be there. We had affiliates sharing it on their ID story. So in addition to my stories, they were sharing it as well. We had a whole affiliate system of tried leaders and you guys, the power of video is irreplaceable. The way that someone can feel within 15 to 30 seconds of seeing you on video, just speaking from your heart saying, Hey, go check this out, or you need to be there. AL: (33:03) It’s irreplaceable. You know what I mean? You can have the most beautiful sales page in the world, but if people have not seen your face, your mannerisms, or heard your voice, I don’t feel like they’re as pulled to buy or to work with you cause they don’t know you yet. People need to hear you and or see you. It’s just so important for the sales process. So for me, I’m all about the intimacy game. My question isn’t how can I sell more? It’s how can I get more intimate with my people, which maybe sounds creepy, but I’m always asking myself, how could I be a little more intimate? How could I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic? Well, how could I be more intimate, vulnerable and authentic and especially serving women. The more I focus on that, the more my business lows up, which just shows they wanted to get to know me and trust me before they made the decision to buy for me. AL: (33:42) And there’s no better way to do that than video and guys, 15 second video that keeps you engaged. There’s engagement features, there’s music, just weird stuff. I mean game over, it’s like YouTube but you don’t have to do all the crazy editing. So man, it’s my favorite thing. I think it’s the most fun and it’s a nice way where you can have this, it’s a place where you could have this beautiful blend of teacher and friend, friend, Hey this is my life. I’m farting around and being weird. This is my dog, this is my cat, whatever. And then I can also show that I’m an expert and have a level of expertise and say, Hey, this is what I also know and then here’s what I’m going to teach you. And I think that that blend does really, really well on ID stories of friend and teacher. RV: (34:20) I love it. Angie Lee, my friends, check her out, check out her podcast. We’ll put links to that in the show notes. Angie, thanks for your consistency. Thanks for your honesty. And I think it’s just inspiring to me and empowering to hear you not selling that the dream is easy, but selling that the dream is possible. So we wish you the best. AL: (34:43) Oh, I think, sorry. This is amazing.

Ep 73: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix | Recap Episode

Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible]. AJV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down the interview with as well. What I was going to say, I was gonna say legendary influencers because you think I forgot their names now. AJV: (00:24) I think you forgot their names. I thought you forgot what we were doing. AJV: (00:28) Well that is possible, but I was thinking like legendary, like you know, mega online influencers, massive reputation, early adopters, freaking awesome people freaking awesome and, and not the least of which this isn’t part of my top three, but it frustrates me that there are people as cool and as funny as them. Like Stevie is not funny, which it’s like, I hate people like that. AJV: (01:02) So is Sazan, AJV: (01:02) I know, like, and super fashionable, genuinely funny. It’s like we like you, but you also, you guys kind of sucked too. Like I like jealous and angry that you’re just naturally awesome. Anyway, separate of that. We actually have some useful constructive takeaways from truly an awesome interview. And we do, we love them. We work closely with them. We know them. Everybody that we know that works with them loves them, they’re just awesome. AJV: (01:34) It’s just a recap of how awesome Stevie and Sazan are, so we’ll talk about that for a few minutes. AJV: (01:37) But so my, in terms of my big three takeaways, so my first one was just be early and that was something that, yeah, you know, Saz talked about in terms of like, just knowing, you know, that weird connection with her friend who was dating the founder of Instagram back in the day and you know, basically one of the things where they were talking about like the early you are, the less good you have to be and that right now is tic toc, right? AJV: (02:07) Like that is the world that’s happening. And so I’m going, okay, I don’t understand tick-tock, I don’t like it like it. Well, there’s, there actually are some funny videos on there that. AJV: (02:16) Donald Trump impersonations AJV: (02:19) Yeah, AJ loves the Donald Trump impersonations, but it’s like, man, the earlier you are, the less good you have to be. It’s because that, that was that first one AJV: (02:29) In general. Just the whole concept of you gotta be early to the game. You really can’t be the late adopter and the social media game. You’ve gotta be on that forefront. You gotta be in the early adoption stage. And I’m gonna just figure it out as you go. But to that point, I think that’s really, that’s really good. One of the things that I love, so a minor in any specific order per se, but I love to hear about how they’re killing it on YouTube. I just feel like a lot of our interviews here lately have been like this reemergence of YouTube activities. Yeah. And I love that. And she said, you know, it’s like people find us from Google actually find us searching on Google and find their YouTube videos more than anything else that says something. So just knowing how to title your videos, how to use the descriptions of your videos, I think that’s really a big deal on YouTube. And then the other thing she said, you know, I was like, YouTube is the second highest ranked search engine. So outside of Google it is YouTube and people are really going there for education. So if you’re in more of the how to world, you better be on YouTube. Yeah. That was a really good just aha. Like very straightforward. AJV: (03:42) Yep. Yeah. And we talk about at the phase three event, we talk a lot about the search traffic and on Google and YouTube and you know, I think that that lends to my second one, which was to be trendy, like to be on trend. And they actually talked about, you know, this tool trends.google.com which I was like, gosh, I’ve heard about that. I’ve never once looked at it or paid any attention to it. And to hear them be like, yeah, this is, this is the source of where we figure out what we’re going to make videos on. Which just, it’s like, it’s so simple that it’s so easy to miss, but it’s obvious, right? Like pay attention to what the world is asking for and talking about. And it’s like you don’t even have to be good. You just have to, it’s the difference between like trying to pave a road on some back country highway and get people to come or just go where the interstate is, where all the traffic just is. And so anyways, I thought that was a handy little tool. Trends.Google.Com like I’m going to get into that and pay attention to what people are doing. And then I think relatedly on the trends was like hashtags and realizing that, you know, hashtags, are to social media, what keywords are to search engine optimization. If that light bulb hasn’t clicked for you, AJV: (05:01) You know, make sure you pay attention to that on the interview because that is really, really important to connect those concepts and understand, Oh, this is how people find my on social media is from hashtags. So those are follow trends. AJV: (05:17) Yeah. My second one is this, they spent a few minutes talking about this, but how they have been really afraid to redo content. And then I had this aha moment and Stevie talked about and he was like, Saz, your most, most visited, most viewed videos of all time are beginner makeup tutorials. Why wouldn’t you make more of those? And they had this fear for a long time. Well, I’ve already done that. But if that’s the number one thing that people are finding you for and coming to you for, why not do more of them instead of this concept? Well, I already talked about that this one time. Why not say, actually I’m going to talk about that every time and just increase that exposure. And I think so many of you have this fear of, well, I, I just did a video on self-development a couple months ago and you think you can’t do it again. Where the truth is is you could probably do one every single day and it would only enhance your followers and your engagement versus detract from it. So just a really great reminder of your most visited, most viewed, most downloaded, most commented, most lagged, most whatever videos or posts are the ones that you should do more of. AJV: (06:33) And even just tension to that, like, do you, do you know, do you know what your most viewed visit videos are? Do you know what’s causing people to find you? I mean obviously they’re, they’re super in touch with that stuff. AJV: (06:47) That was just really just, it’s really good information as well as you know, the how to do it. In terms of like the more softer like who you are approach, but it’s also a very tactical approach and I love that. So what’s your last one? RV: (07:01) So my last one, which you might find boring, but it’s like you can’t hear this enough and, and I hope that it sticks when you hear it from people like Sazan and Stevie is be consistent, right? Like I know you probably get sick of us saying it, but it’s like half the battle here is just sticking around. It’s just continuing to hit publish and staying there weekend and week out and day in and day out. And it’s like, on the one hand, I could see how that can be like, you know, discouraging or annoying and be like, yeah, we’ve heard it. On the other hand, it should be super empowering to go. Like all I have to do is keep publishing. I don’t have to, I don’t have to create Nobel prize books, you know, like I don’t have to or ideas or Pulitzer prize books or Nobel prize ideas. RV: (07:48) Like I just have to show up and be there all the time consistently. And if you are late, right? Like if you miss the early train, which I have typically missed the early train on all these platforms just because, you know, I’m like, social media isn’t my favorite thing to do. And I’m trying to not be that with tech talk. I’m trying to just at least be there. But it’s just like show up consistently and just stay there. Social media is not going anywhere. Like this is a part of the rest of our life. It, it’s a part of our life for the rest of our life. It’s changed the world. It’s so ubiquitous. It’s like this is how people consume media. And so you gotta be there and the best time to start up the plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time was today. Same as social media. Like the best time to start a profile would have been 15 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So get on with it and and stay consistent and don’t miss the schedule. AJV: (08:50) That was really long, long winded. RV: (08:52) That was not, that was not long. Three minutes, AJV: (08:56) Not three minutes. Was that three right. And more testing. And the last one I have, and I’ll make mine very short and succinct since mr. Verbose over here took up all my time. But the last one for me is something that stevie said at the very, very, very end, which I thought was so insightful. Did you hear people all the time going, well, I’m just too old for that. I’m just too old for that. I can’t be on tictoc. That’s for kids. And it’s like, well those kids will age those 18 year olds will be 21 year olds and then 25 year olds. And I just thought that was really interesting. It’s like, Hey, you have to go where the people are and if you want to get in and make a difference without all the algorithms coming into play, the time is now, and this is a nurturing environment. AJV: (09:42) It’s not where you come in and you just start selling from day one, just like you wouldn’t in any sort of relationship. Right? You don’t come in and you don’t talk about yourself, you don’t ask them questions there. There’s a process to it. The same thing happens online. It just takes a little longer. There’s this nurturing that happens and the people that you don’t think are your customers today, will be one day, right? So as they evolve, their needs will evolve. And I just thought that was a really good reminder for anyone who was like, Oh, well I’ve already missed that train or I’m too old for this and no, you’re not. No, this is, this isn’t going away. This is only increasing in how we do things. So you better get on it. And then I also loved how he said, if you really feel like you’re just too old, a really great place to start is YouTube. AJV: (10:28) I just think that too is really just a good for God. Can’t be on tick-tock, what am I going to do and tictoc. But it’s just figuring out what the place is for you. But just a great reminder to all of us. It’s like the people on any platform they will grow and evolve and age and their needs will evolve. So were you there in the beginning and are you growing with them? I loved it, but it was really just insightful. RV: (10:53) Yep. And if you’re on YouTube, you can be on tictoc, right? I mean if you follow our content diamond, we’re just going to repurpose. That’s what, that’s what we’re doing, right. our tictoc is just a shortened repurpose part of the video. So my tick talk is right. I don’t know what AJ’s tictok will be all like Trump impersonations and funny dances, but probably something with my toddler for sure. Yes. so you can do it. And here’s the thing, like if you didn’t listen to the interview and you’ve ever wondered, how do you build these huge social media empires, these, these, to have millions of followers on multiple different platforms, sharing their secrets, go listen to the interview and get like, and follow them on Instagram. Yeah, they’re super entertaining. RV: (11:35) But then you’ll know why they have yes, cause they’re more funnier and fashionable than I am naturally. So you can follow that and find out for yourself, but check it out. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 72: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix

Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue. [inaudible]. I’m your lead host, Rory Vaden builder’s group, hall of fame speaker and New York times bestselling author of take the stairs. Speaker 3: (00:36) Hi, it’s Rory Vaden, and thanks for listening to the influential personal brand podcast. Did you know that the ideas we share on the show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you want to raise your public profile and turn your reputation into revenue, please visit free. Call that brain builders group.com to sign up for a free brand strategy call with one of our personal brand strategist. Again, that’s free. Call dot brand builders group.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you RV: (01:21) Oh my gosh, you are so lucky to be listening to this podcast today. Let me tell you why you’re about to meet one of the coolest couples ever, Suzanne in Stevie Hendrix. These guys have become friends of ours, their clients, a brand builders group. I consider them mentors like I’m learning so much from watching what they do. They have built a following of millions and millions of people on social media. Their podcast has over 9 million downloads. They get 15 million monthly impressions. They have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. Design has over a million Instagram followers. Stevie’s got hundreds of thousands of followers. They’re the coolest people ever. Suzanne is just fashionable and Stevie is so funny and I’m a little bit jealous of how young they are and you’re like the cool kids that I always wanted to be friends with that I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with and anyways, thanks for being here guys. Speaker 4: (02:19) That’s like the best intro I think we’ve ever received. Thank you. We take that soundbite from this show and just put it on our website. We’re going to transcribe that on our content diamond, their content diamond, your words. That was, that was amazing. We’re so stoked to be here. Obviously we had you on our show as well and I mean those two shows were packed full of great information. So we’re happy to be here. We consider you a friend and a mentor and a leader for us in an answer prayer. So thanks for having us party. So Speaker 2: (02:54) I mean this seriously, like I am one of those people that I’d like, I feel like I don’t really get social media still. Like obviously we use it for business and stuff, but like I’ve just not been naturally good at it and I’m not super like social anyways. And you guys have built this monster following. How did that happen? Like how did it start? Which platform? How did it grow? How long did it take? Right. Like some people right now are just starting out and they’re going like, okay, like millions of people seems like so far away. Yeah. And just kind of give us a little bit of the journey piece. Speaker 5: (03:26) Yeah. You know, this journey started for me back in 2010 2011 when I was in college and at the time Instagram had been around. And what’s really interesting about Instagram was that, you know, we were studying radio, television, film, and I remember in our news department, one of the producer girls there, her sister or her cousin was dating at that time, the cofounder of Instagram. His name was Mike Krieger. And I remember because we were doing, we had a little commercial talk show that we did that she produced. She was like, I’m going to get him on as a guest. And I hosted this show and I just at the time probably had a thousand followers on Instagram at that time. I mean that was kind of like, I was like, okay, great. But he came onto our show at that time and I’m in just in college and I got to interview him about this platform that really hadn’t taken off. Speaker 5: (04:20) This is when those filters, all you had that was really available to you, where like the Calvin filter and all of those little filters and that was it with the borders and people were just sharing pictures of their dog, their food. It wasn’t really seen as a space where brands were tapping into marketing agencies were looking at, and I just got to ask him some questions. And I think from that interview there was something in me that was really intrigued by social media and I decided to just kind of keep an on with like Instagram. I didn’t know exactly what my brand was per se, but I was just so fascinated by this new way of connecting with people through social media. And I just saw a little bit of that. And so I had a blog at the time, it was a very small blog, but it was my website and I started just practicing some of my copy on there, talking about the trends in beauty and the things that I was passionate about. Speaker 5: (05:16) And then when you fast forward to, you know, after I graduated college and you to Stevie, we decided to move to LA. And that’s where I really realized the potential and the power of social media because I met a lot of local bloggers in LA, which I did not really have that in Dallas and in LA man. I realized these girls are actually making these little side jobs and hustled and it was like a side hustle business and then I got really fascinated by it all and thought if I can start figuring out ways to monetize my blog, this really could become my own virtual business. I just didn’t know the model. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just saw the resources in front of me, which were social media did have an Instagram page that was growing pretty quickly at that time because there wasn’t the algorithm and all of that you see today on Instagram and so I think a lot of it was the timing, you know, being on that platform at the right time, having my blog to actually push some credibility out to like check out my trends, things like that. Speaker 5: (06:18) People started latching on to it and the rest is history. We started our YouTube channel shortly after that and YouTube was really great because I love creating or Instagram. Yeah, it started after my blog and after Instagram. And so I just fell in love with YouTube because we both knew how to edit video. We both knew how to shoot video and the framing when we learned that in college, that’s what we were studying. So I thought, let me take a lot of that knowledge and put it into what I’m trying to create online instead of waiting around for like the NBC to come and hire me to work for them and their company and their platform. And so I just saw that there was this potential, but I just knew I couldn’t do it alone. So Stevie is where, you know, that was kind of the turning point was when like Stevie came on board and we both realized, Hey, if we take this seriously, this could really be our full time job Speaker 4: (07:12) to give you the credit. Because I didn’t take it seriously at first. I remember I was working, I was doing a marketing job where I was kind of traveling the West part of the United States and I was trying to do the acting thing in Los Angeles. And I remember she called me one day and this is in 2014 and she said, Hey, you know, at this point I think you had maybe 150 maybe 200,000 followers on Instagram. And you said, Hey, some of the girls that you know, I’ve met in the blogging space. She said, you know, they’re starting to make real money. And I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, they are making money, you know, from linking outfits from posting brands X, Y, Z. She said, and they’re making a lot of money. I said, Speaker 5: (07:49) yeah, I remember that. She said, Speaker 4: (07:51) girls are making tens of thousand a month. I said, no, they’re not. She said, yeah, they are. Speaker 5: (07:56) I even told him, I said, there’s one girl making $50,000 a month off of her. At the time it was like, Whoa. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Speaker 4: (08:06) Pool of bloggers who were linking and linking a ton, right? So if you think about how many girls were just going clicking on their links, it makes a lot of sense. But you know, she convinced me, basically you should come back, help me run this social media business full time and let’s see what we can do with this thing. And I have to give her credit because of her foresight, because now the landscape has changed. I mean tech talk is here and people are ready. They are, they have been waiting for that new platform to arise before the algorithm gets super complex and it’s hard to get your face out in front of millions of people. You know, Instagram was a place where people didn’t expect it to have that much power. I think there were a select few and they’ve capitalized early, but even forces on, you know, she had the foresight to realize she needed to continue building her brand and growing these numbers even when we didn’t see any monetary value in it yet. And you know, when I came on and started managing her and helping her with her social media, you know, little jobs began to trickle in, you know, like $300 from target, $500 from so-and-so. And then it started to grow from there. And that’s how it all started. And then we obviously you started Speaker 5: (09:13) and then I will never forget Rory, when Stevie and I, we created our own little tiered package that we would go and target little mom and pop shops on Etsy because at the time these small brands wanted social media exposure and a lot of the times just some high res images of their products. And so we created this little business model, you know, where it was like, Hey, we can offer you the platinum package, the silver package, the gold package, which you’re going to get all of these assets if you do that. And I remember the most expensive one, we were charging like $500 and we thought, Oh my God, no one’s gonna like buy that. And we were thinking, Oh my God, that is so expensive. Like let’s just hope and pray. And all these brands just kept coming back. We’ll do the $500 we’ll do the $500. So we were constantly readjusting our rates and learning as we grew and as we sharpened up our skills. So that’s where it all started. Yeah. And it’s just evolved and changed so much. Speaker 2: (10:10) So right there. And I love that. You know, that’s so similar. Like people ask me about my speaking fee these days, right. And like, you know, it’s tens of thousands of dollars. It’s, it’s up there. But like my first gig was 50 bucks, my second was 500 and it was like, you just get so good at what you’re doing and it starts small. And what I love is, you know, like people always talk about charge what you’re worth. And I always tell them, don’t charge what you’re worth. Charge what you can get and like charge something that’s such a no brainer for people to buy from you. And then as the demand increases, then you can raise just like let the price raise itself. And I didn’t realize that part of your story. That is so, so cool. We had people literally Speaker 4: (10:51) that would, you know, email us because when I came on board, you know, it was like size had four hands basically. And another, another mind on her working on her business. So, you know, I was now the gateway between her and the brands. I was emailing the brands back. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, I’m going to manage her. And I said, how much should I charge? You know? And literally I had to figure this thing out from scratch. You know, I started emailing brands back and like you said, trying not to be greedy or pushy and you know what I mean, but also standing firm and what we felt like our value was based off of the demand. Right? So it’s like so-and-so gave us a thousand dollars to do the same thing. You know, and you’re asking for just as much or more. Speaker 4: (11:28) So you know, that’s fair. And I would have brands that would email me six months later and be like, want to work with SAS again at the same rate? And I go, she has 150,000 more followers now than she did then. And it’s different because, you know, I remember talking to a friend who was a mentor at the time and has a really great mind for business and managing clients and he said, you’re not charging for your time. You’re charging for your audience. He said, and so it doesn’t matter how much it takes you. You said how many more followers do you have now? And you need to based on that information, the engagement, et cetera. Speaker 2: (12:00) Yeah, so I love that. I mean that’s like the super bowl commercial, right? It’s 30 seconds, but you paid 5 million bucks because you’re in front of such a huge number. I love that. So how do you get a lot of followers, right? Like I know that’s just such an obscure question, but like you guys have done it consistently. You got 9 million podcast downloads, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook now tick talk, which I want to talk about here in a little bit, but like you’re doing it so consistently across all these platforms. Why do you think that is? Like there’s millions of people they could be following. Why are they following you? No offense. Speaker 4: (12:41) We both have our own angle to answer that question. And I actually want to talk about this earlier, so I’m glad you brought it up. So right now, and I know we want to talk about tech talk, I’m just gonna bring the tech talk is here, right? Tech talk is happening right now and it has been happening for awhile now. I remember somebody told me about it a year and a half ago on a trip in Europe we were at, she was like, you know she’s a foreign girl. She’s like, you should try the cheek talk. It’s very good. Not a lot of Americans doing it, but they’re paying lots of people on the platform. You need to try. And I was like, thank you. What’s your accent? I can’t remember where it was from. But anyways, I remember at the time thinking, what is this tick tock jibberish she’s talking about, I wish I had listened and you who are listening now listen to this, jump on this platform now. Speaker 4: (13:22) And I want to say that because to gain followers, and I told this, this is on the tech talk platform is very young. I think there’s a lot of 18 year olds on there who are, you know, even from our age being just 30 they think so differently than we do. Her little brother’s 19 they just think they react differently to humor and things like that. But I said to Sam, I said, we need to get on this platform. And I said, and we need to follow the trends. And we didn’t really do this on Instagram. I think Instagram was a lot of vulnerability, blood, sweat and tears, effort, effort, effort. I said with tech talk, I said, this platform is so young, it’s so fun. It’s so trendy. And so it kind of goes against the idea of like staying true 100% to your brand. Speaker 4: (14:10) And I told, as I said, I said, I think what we need to do is both, I said, we need to follow the trends, but we also need to present like our brand and our mission statements people, right? So it’s like we’ll have a video where people would do a ton of dances on tech talk, we’ll do dances or we’ll do you know, members, women, you know, common things that one person is going to see and be like, I relate with that 10 people are going see to be like, I relate with that a hundred people. Everyone relates with that. So do common things. I would say if you want to start growing things that people can commonly relate to, don’t be a hipster. Don’t be somebody who’s like, I have my own way of thinking because people, me too hear common languages common, you know what I mean? Speaker 4: (14:52) Things they can understand. Because if you are too, too niche or, or the way in which you present things is too outside the box and not easy to digest. I don’t think you’re going to gain a lot of followers. You might gain it a niche of strong followers, but in some ways you have to water down, right? Like even if it’s comedy is your thing. Make your comedy digestible for everyone in middle America because then you will start to gain followers. But like you say, Rory, you know the she hands wall, it’s like you’re going to gain gain, gain followers. Once you get them to love you in a sense on social media, then you present your mission, what you’re really about. And I think you do it along the way. I think people will pick up, Hey, he’s a pretty nice person. Like he’s talked about this or that or I know they do a lot of humor, but there’s something sweet and down to earth about them. Right? Once you get them to love you, you gain a bunch of followers. You present them like Speaker 5: (15:45) and was like, this is what you need now. Like I’m going to deliver you something that you need that you didn’t realize that you needed. You know? And that’s where social media can be a really powerful tool. I’m just gonna piggyback off of everything you’re saying cause I completely agree. I think part of it is timing, but the other part of consistently growing with your audience is the consistency of what you’re putting out there. And a lot of people have that instant rise, right? With social media. And Instagram and we see them grow really fast at the beginning and then it goes down like this because they’re not able to keep their audience and that’s what’s tough too is sometimes when you grow so quickly you will reach a point where you’re just like, okay, I’m plateauing. It’s like I need to keep this audience and that’s really when it becomes a priority to center everything that you do really around what your audience does need and catering to their needs. Speaker 5: (16:40) Because for us, we say that everything that we do, we do it because we love connecting with people and that all the things that we put out, we try to put it out with purpose. Even a silly video that we do, we put it out in hopes that yeah, we hope that it brightened up your day a little more. We hope that it made you laugh. We hope that this video was a sweet escape from maybe your harsh reality you’re in and all of that to say we constantly think about something we learned in college, which is the idea of like what’s in it for them. Everything we put out, we have to think about that. It’s not about us. Even though we’re on the social media stage, you, if you can always point back to your audience and make them feel a part of the community, you’re going to continue to grow. And it may not be as fast once you reach a really increased pace, but then it’s about keeping that audience that you have built. And I think that’s the age that we’re living in right now in social media. It’s not about how quickly can I hit a million followers. It’s about how can I engage the community that I already have and keep that community. And then over time you will see growth. Speaker 4: (17:44) And I just want to add one final point, like to that connectivity that you talked about, you know, really with your audience, you know, it’s so important, but also, Oh gosh, I just lost it. Wow. I just lost it. I had a really good, Speaker 2: (17:57) that’s all right. It’ll come back. It will come. It’ll come back to me. Yeah. That’s an interesting concept there about like, you know, get the followers first, you know, kind of have a broader net to get them Pharrell and then you know, kind of work into telling them more about what you do. That’s just a really high level strategy is, is super interesting. So I want to talk about video for a second specifically because I mean at this point hopefully everybody knows like video is pretty much the thing that matters. It’s like where the whole internet is going. Everything is video, video, video, video. And we did an interview with Michael Stelsner, the founder of social media examiner and he just totally hammered on all the data and trends pointing so aggressively and heavily towards video. And y’all edit your own videos still, right? Speaker 4: (18:49) Yeah. Yes. Okay. That actually kind of goes back. That reminds me, what I was going to say is that connectivity is so important connecting with people. But I think also people really recognize service like when you’re doing a service or when you are serving or when you were putting effort in. So one part of that is connecting. It’s the effort that you put into connect with people, right? But a lot of the times like you’ll see people that bust through because they just put the effort in the work into putting up their videos. There’s guys who have millions of followers on Instagram and tick tock who are not funny at all. They’re not funny at all. But guess what? They edit three videos a day and they make it very simple and very common and they’re getting comments and they’re getting shared and they are pumping out content and they are serving and people see their effort. Speaker 4: (19:42) And like I said, it’s digestible, it’s simple. It relates to the every person, every man, every woman, and they’re getting tons of followers. Whereas the person who’s putting in mediocre effort, mediocre service and a little bit of connectivity, they’re not going as far. And so you really, I think when it comes to editing your videos to breeze in it, we still edit our own videos is because there’s an understanding that we have of our content that no one else you can quite get except for us. And we can train somebody to get it close. But there is something when you edit your own video, the timing, the understanding of the content and how it should splice together, that is so important. It’s almost like a comedic actor. You can have a great, if you’ve ever been on set or if you’ve ever been, you know in the movie business you can do a really funny scene, but the editor is the one who decides which cut he’s going to take and how he’s going to cut it and the timing of that. And that has so much to do with how funny that scene is. Right? And so that’s why we edit our own videos because we know like we’re going to maximize our connectivity by editing our own videos. Yeah. So, and I want to hear about that. Like what does the video editing process like? What do you think is the key to a good video? You know, like what are just some of the more fundamental things I guess that Speaker 4: (20:57) people need to know. Like you know when you’re putting together your plan, you need to make sure these five things are in place. Speaker 5: (21:05) Yeah, I think the first thing we can do this together. I think the first thing is know the platform that you’re posting it on. You know, this is similar to even your content diamond. You know that a YouTube video is going to be different than a quick one minute video you’re creating for the Instagram audience, which attention spans even shorter than the YouTube audience. We already know that the internet in general is going to be a very distracted community because even on YouTube, that person watching you, they may have five tabs open already on their computer. So you have to even think about how am I going to grasp their attention on this platform? And then on the other platforms you have to run that same question through your mind. Tic talk is even quicker than Instagram for that generation who just graphs that information super quickly and they want it sliced and diced a certain way. But you can take one video and you can do all of those different effects but for catered for that specific platform? Speaker 4: (22:07) No, I agree 100% I think it totally depends because you know obviously you have one minute videos on Instagram and TechTalk and then you have TV and then you also have you know YouTube which can go as long as you want it to go. But even on YouTube, I mean specifically YouTube is a platform that I really feel like is for somebody who is, they feel a little bit old for social media maybe, but they still want to tap into it. YouTube I feel like is still a great place to tap into the social media market and a place I think you still can grow. Like I said, tech talk as well. Obviously it’s a very young platform but YouTube I think because it’s the number two search engine behind Google. So when people are searching for things, they’re searching for expertise. How to YouTube is so popular and also too YouTube still rewards people who post consistently. Speaker 4: (22:56) So if you are posting consistently, you know, two videos a week is kind of the recommended. If you want to grow, you need to be posting two videos a week. You can still grow on YouTube. So I think you know, when you’re editing for YouTube, what I would recommend is three to eight minutes, maybe 10 at the max. There’s a creator named David doebrick and he does a ton of videos blogs and he is huge, but his videos are all very, very short. And I think what he’s done is just hack the algorithm as far as I’m going to put up videos that are short, people are going to watch the full thing. I’m going to be rewarded on YouTube behind the scenes because it’s going to show that my watch time is a hundred percent right. And then they’re just going to roll onto my next video. So you could be creating a three part video, you know where it’s two minute, two minute, two minute, and they’re just rolling one video to the next. And YouTube is seeing, Oh my gosh, they put up three videos and they have a hundred percent watch time on all of them. Speaker 5: (23:50) Yeah. We just actually went on, we went on my YouTube analytics, which that wasn’t around like you know, several years ago when I started, but YouTube has built this back end page for creators to really see how their videos are performing on various levels from at what point do people click out of your video, a specific video they left at this marker and I look at that and like, yeah, I started going off on a tangent there. I mean they really do help you refine and kind of figure out what that perfect video is for your audience on the platform. But something that I saw recently was the people that are coming to my YouTube channel, the number one place that they’re coming from is Google. They are actually finding my content and discovering me from Google now Instagram and miscellaneous is what they call it, which is usually social media. Speaker 5: (24:39) That was like number six or seven and I push a lot of my content on Instagram and drive it to YouTube a lot thinking that that’s where I’m getting a lot of that attraction. But the truth is, is when you upload a video on YouTube from your title to the description, you treat that as if it’s a blog post, because those key words are going to be transferred and related onto the Google platform for SEO. And so when you create a content, a video like for me how to do makeup for beginners, there’s actually a site that I use. I go on trends.google.com I can specifically search what people are looking for on YouTube. I type in the keyword makeup and I can now see across the world people are Googling makeup for beginners. So all of a sudden I just got a really great video idea. Speaker 5: (25:28) I’ve been doing this for the past year, working closely with the trends as well as the content I want to create, but I package it in a very SEO friendly way and I have seen incredible results and it’s no wonder why number one is coming from this outside world and they’re now discovering who says on is and now they’re following my Instagram and they’re following our podcast, but they came from Google, which is an unknown platform for us that we don’t always tap into, but this new audience is now coming from YouTube. So YouTube, like Stevie said, is definitely powerful. Speaker 4: (26:03) Well also too, don’t be afraid, and this is a big thing that we’re still trying to learn how to get over. Don’t be afraid to repackage content because just like she said, beginner makeup on YouTube, it has been at the top of the trend search. It just sits there. It stays there, but it stays there. All of your videos have performed super well and you’re like, should I do another beginner’s makeup? The answer is yes, because guess what? You’re getting a ton of views on it. Speaker 5: (26:31) People want to learn on YouTube, they want how to, yes, Speaker 4: (26:34) easy makeup, beginner’s makeup, simple glam, like just continue to do some of that content that does super well, that evergreen stuff. Just repackage it, retool it a little bit and represent it in a different way. And don’t be scared to do that. Be thinking I have to come up with something super unique every time when if it’s working for you and the algorithm is rewarding you for it. I would say keep going with it. Speaker 2: (26:58) Yeah, and I think that’s an interesting thing about Google and search engine optimization in general is it’s like what usually performs well is the really simple concept. The really simple question. It’s like what you were saying earlier, Stevie about it’s the thing that everybody is searching for and it’s like, it’s not rocket science stuff. It’s like the common everyday person. So I want to talk about hashtags for a second because I never have really understood hashtags. And then I accidentally said this to somebody a couple of days ago and I was like, actually I think maybe that’s it, but I don’t know cause I don’t, I don’t actually follow them closely enough. As I said, hashtags are to social media. What key words are to search engine optimization. Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with that? And then just like how in the heck do we use hashtags? Like without Ben an hours and hours? Like figuring them out? Speaker 5: (27:56) Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, yeah, like you said, hashtags are the key words I think on every platform. You know YouTube, they call it something different like alternate tags. But YouTube has a tic talk has it, Instagram has it and it’s a great way to get your content exposed to a particular audience. It’s more niche. So you have to be kind of specific and selective with your hashtags. I’ve learned that more is not more, in fact, you should just do less is more. But just be very specific with it. And also when you’re looking at the hashtags, see how that hashtag in itself is performing. So if I know that there’s a better hashtag I could be using, Speaker 2: (28:36) how do you know how it’s performing? Speaker 5: (28:38) So like for example on tick-tock, if me and Stevie did a video cooking and I’m beginning to type in the hashtag and I type in hashtag healthy when you click healthy it’s going to pop up immediately. It’s going to have a drop down box of all of the hashtags right now that are trending with the word healthy in it. And so some of them don’t make sense. Like let’s say it was like healthy body or let’s say it was like, and our specific thing was a recipe and it said like healthy dog, like that wouldn’t make sense but it’s healthy recipes is getting 250 million people under that hashtag. Then I’m like for sure let’s go with that one. So tick talk that’s, Speaker 2: (29:16) so this is just the search tool, like whatever the basic search tool is natively in the platform, type in whatever you kind of think and then just pay attention. It’s like typing into Google search bar, how it makes suggested like search terms based on volume, Speaker 4: (29:33) right? What I’ve heard with tech talk so far is that tech talk is a little bit different than Instagram to where if you hashtag your hashtags will directly Speaker 2: (29:42) put you into a pool, a select pool of say like 150 people, right? So you post a video, you have 10 followers on tech talk, right? You post a video. Well, I have 52 followers on [inaudible] and they’re Hendricks is our one of my tick-tock followers. So yeah, no, I, dude, Hey, when I said to you, I didn’t mean to you, I was talking to you, not you Speaker 4: (30:08) followers on tick-tock, right? And you have a hilarious video with your daughter. You’re not going to hashtag basketball, you’re going to hashtag daddy daughter another one that’s popular or maybe even a trending hashtag. There’s trending hashtags on tech talk that you can see. But basically maybe you could say cute girl or something or cute baby and you put that out there, right? And people that are interested in cute babies on tick tock, 150 of them are going to see it. And then if those 150 it performs well out of them, it’s going to send that to a larger pool. And if it performs there, it’ll send that to a larger pool. Speaker 5: (30:41) And it all depends on what that person was already interested in. So tick tock has, you know its own and Instagram had their own algorithms, like if my homepage is going to look different than yours on Instagram because maybe on mine I’ve just been engaging with tons of recipe accounts. So Instagram automatically is going to try to appeal those specific accounts to me and take talk is doing the same thing. So if you’re engaging in liking funny videos right now, they’re going to bring you more and put you in those specific pools. And then if you’re the creator, they see how well you do in that pool. And if you do well you go to a bigger pool and a bigger pool and a bigger pool. So the hashtags are actually very important. I wouldn’t overlook them. I would definitely utilize them for each platform. Speaker 4: (31:25) I want to go make a point, worry about kind of what we talked about on our podcast earlier with you about procrastination. I think a lot of people, they neglect social media. Just, it’s almost kind of like they procrastinate on social media. We all know that we could be using social media, whether you get a thousand followers or you get 10 million followers. I just told my parents, you know, they started their Instagram, I don’t know, six months ago and it’s been performing really, really well. They’re getting good engagement now and I told them years ago to start it Speaker 5: (31:53) and they have a flooring store. It’s a foreign store. Yeah, right, right Speaker 4: (31:56) there in round rock, Texas and they have a flooring store and they were like, we don’t need that. That’s, Oh yeah. And I said, you need to start one. I said, it’s important. Even if it doesn’t bring you new business, it can basically for you where people can go on your Instagram and go, wow, they have really good taste. Actually we want to work with them. And maybe they found you another way. I said, but it is such an important tool. So whether you have 500 or 5 million, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s so important to start, you know, the biggest advice we can give to people who are sitting here like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do all this and all these hashtags and all of this kind of stuff. Get content up. Don’t worry about how funny. I mean you would be surprised how many low, I would say more quality videos go viral than high quality videos. Speaker 4: (32:42) I mean, have you ever noticed how many terrible quality videos from webcams and stuff like that go viral? I mean it’s, it’s amazing. So I just want to encourage anyone out there who’s like, okay, I need to get on this social media thing. It’s almost like what you talked about with procrastination. That’s fear, right? That fear is actually the thing that keeps us from starting. And that’s the same for so many of us. And I’m, I’m even talking to myself because years ago when the algorithm for Instagram was favorable, when I had maybe a couple thousand followers, aye, you started posting a couple videos that Sal’s encouraged me to do. She was like, you need to post more funny videos. I posted these videos and one of them has like 500 comments. If I got 500 comments now and I have about 128,000 followers back then, I probably didn’t even have 10,000 if I get 500 comments down, I’m like, Oh my gosh, that was my best video ever. Speaker 4: (33:35) You see what I’m saying? And so the point I’m trying to make is that if I could go back to earlier, you are, the less good you have to be is kind of like what it feels like a hundred percent because the platform is so fresh. It’s so new. People are excited. They’re ready to just discover and be a part of it and they’re excited about that. Whereas now, you know with Instagram it’s like when Instagram started it was like beautiful coffee photos, photos of where I am. You know, full little photos and now it’s like what is that? Speaker 5: (34:05) Right? I think nowadays people are also really hard on themselves. Everybody thinks they need to figure out like their personal brand and aesthetic before they start in sign up on a social media platform. But the goal should be not that you have to know exactly what content you’re posting and how you’re going to do it, but the goal should be, I’m on social media and the purpose is because I need to connect with people. I need to grow an audience because I ultimately want to cater to that audience with this genius product that I want to develop or whatever. The goal is to get people connected to you, to get them in front of you and however you have to do that in the beginning, I guarantee you no matter what, that’s going to change and evolve as your audience grows and changes and evolves. Speaker 5: (34:51) So even if you think you have it all figured out and you start out and you’re like, I’m just going to do this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, I’m putting out this content that no matter what, I’ll tell you right now, social media, every day it grows and it changes and you got to kind of jump with the next wave. Not to let that scare you, but for that to encourage you that you don’t need to have all the answers, whether you’re an expert or not at social media, you just need to be on it and you need to be present and your goal should be, I just need an audience to connect with because then I can actually sell to them. Ultimately, whatever it is you’re trying to package and sell. So that’s the thing with social media that’s different than a lot of other traditional things where yeah, you could do a speaking engagement, you could go do something, a keynote somewhere, and now you’re on a stage, hundreds of people listening to you. Speaker 5: (35:39) But that’s a different audience. The social media world, their attention spans, they’re already doing a bunch of things. You just need to get them to do this. Like you need to get them to stop and just notice you however that needs to be. Let it be authentic to who you are. Don’t try to do comedy if that’s really not your thing, but just get their attention and once you get that attention going, man, then you can start getting more strategic as time goes on and really cater and package to them. You know, whatever you’re trying to sell. Speaker 2: (36:09) I love it. There’s so much here. I think it’s just awesome to kind of get behind the scenes of the way that y’all, you just even how you think about it and approach. It is so cool and insightful. I do have one more question for you before that. Where do you want people to go if they want to connect with the is, see how you do your thing and learn about your family. Of course, you know, says like Stevie, your videos are hilarious as you’ve got all sorts of lifestyle, makeup and fashion and you know stuff. Where would you point them? Speaker 5: (36:42) Well, we’re currently working on our joint website, which we’re really excited about. sun.com you know, we’re working on that, creating that Hendrix home online, but in the meantime you can obviously go to our Instagram pages. Like if you go to my Instagram at Suzanne, you’re going to see in my bio pretty much our whole life spilled out. In a nutshell, you’re going to see our podcast, you’re going to see a link to my YouTube channel. You’re going to see a link to his page on Instagram as well as our family page. So Instagram is probably a good place to start. And then we’ll let you kind of branch out depending on whatever you guys like to go listen to our podcast or go on my YouTube channel for tips and all of that. But Speaker 2: (37:18) I always call it tell people, I say, go to Suzanne’s Instagram, you’ll see everything there. Even me, I’ll be tagged in many ways. Speaker 5: (37:24) Yes. And then our, our newest platform that we just dipped into, which we’ve been talking a lot about is tick-tock. So if you want to check that out, that’s our joint page. We’re just doing one page and it’s been really fun. So that’s our family account at the Hendrix’s and you can check that out. But brace yourself cause this guy here does some hilarious, crazy videos. Speaker 2: (37:43) The best thing the has brought is a time to do. Speaker 5: (37:47) It’s in us. Yeah. Speaker 2: (37:49) So my last little question for you is just where do you see all this going? What are the trends you’re paying attention to? I mean obviously we’ve talked a lot about Tech-Talk that’s like our chance to get in right now while it’s still relatively early. But in general, are there any other like major trends you would highlight and you know, do you think social media is always going to be here? Do you think Facebook’s going to disappear one day? Do you think like it’s only going to be videos and images will disappear or like anything at all? Like just in your head space, like you guys are in this all the time. What are you thinking about and paying attention to related to the future of social media? Personally, I feel like just just as humans, I mean even in, you know, go back through the history, we’ve Speaker 4: (38:35) gone through so many ups and downs and so many different trends and styles and lifestyle types that I think that all things have a place and just in different time, you know, whereas images now are less sacred than they used to be. In my opinion. Images used to be so much more sacred, you know, powerful pictures. You know, you go on Instagram now and the beautiful thing about Instagram is that it empowered everyone to become their own photographer and to do their best and to put it out there for the world to see, which at the same time kind of devalued. You know what I mean? Truly beautiful pictures. Even though there are those that stand, I think in the upper echelon, you know, that’s really hard to reach. At the same time, we’ve been numb to that, you know? But I believe that at some point the beauty of photography and the appreciation for true great photography will come back. Speaker 4: (39:24) But I don’t know when. My thought right now though with TechTalk, you know, is that you’re connecting with a super young audience who is super fun and they want to laugh. You know what I mean? They want those quick, gratifying giggles, you know what I mean? And so what we’re doing is we’re jumping on the platform and we are riding that way. And you even said to me the other day, baby, you said, you know, this just makes me feel really young. And I think what people love about social media and like tech talk right now, is that everyone around the world has the same feeling about it without even talking to each other. There’s this buzz, there’s this fun, there’s this hype of like there’s a new platform. Everyone’s jumping on. We’re figuring it out. There’s this buzz around it right now, but I believe that social media in some way will always continue because of the connectivity to that brings the world. Speaker 5: (40:15) Yeah. We’ve seen that during this time right now with the Corona and the crisis, you know, social media is the one place that’s bringing people together. In a sense it has become home for a lot of people who weren’t even active on social media prior to this crisis. But people are looking for connection and now is the time to really rise and to use your voice and your platforms in any way that you can. And like with anything in life, you don’t know what the future holds. You only know who holds the future. And I just believe that social media is a space where I feel like God has allowed us to not only share our life and the beautiful photos that we take of our daughter and our of our content, but it’s also been a stage for us where we can actually share our voice. Speaker 5: (41:05) And I don’t think social media is going to ever just disappear. It’s going to continue to grow and evolve, but so are we as humans. And I think we’re going to be able to handle that change when it comes. So I’m excited for the future of social media, but I’m also excited for our future to not only be on rented real estate, Rory as you’ve trained us and to actually build the Stevens is on home that we are right now virtually and to actually bring our online into this virtual home and we’re doing it alongside brand builders group, which has been awesome and we just can’t wait to see what that future holds. Speaker 4: (41:42) One quick point babe, that I do want to say is that we have seen this on Instagram, right? It’s the only thing you can really compare to tech talk the audience and what they want will mature. So right now it’s super young, super funny, super goofy, right? Instagram is not what it was before. So what people want and what they’re looking for will mature. Just like the age, the average age of a tech talker, right? Say if it’s like 19 years old, five years from now, their desires at 25 year old is looking for is different than a 19 year old what they’re looking for. So if you’re somebody who’s like, I’m too old for this. If you gather 15,000 followers and you have a thousand followers that are super loyal to you in five years from now, they’re going to be 25 30 years old, what are they going to be looking for that you can provide them at that time? And so that’s why it’s important. Speaker 2: (42:36) I love that. Well you guys, you are so awesome. As I say, it’s like I feel honored to work with you and to be your friends and to be a part of what you guys are doing. I think God has a huge plan for your life and already making such an impact. And I love how you’re using these tools to bring the good life, which is the name of the podcast and you know, to people and, and really use it for encouragement and stuff. And so anyways, we just want to encourage you and thank you and we wish you all the best. Speaker 5: (43:05) Thanks Rory. Tell AIG we said hi. Speaker 2: (43:09) That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the influential personal brand podcast. But here’s some great news, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us. And other new potential listeners to find. Our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected]. We will give you free lifetime access to 25 of our most popular interviews on video in your own private members only area. Speaker 4: (43:49) So go right now, rate us, review us, and then send a screenshot of it into [email protected] and we will get you set up with free lifetime access to our most popular video interviews all in one place. Also, please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. And until next time, remember that building a business isn’t nearly as valuable as building a reputation

Ep 67: Gratitude with John O’Leary | Recap Episode

AJV: (00:00) Welcome friend to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Man, did we need to hear from John O’Leary right now! AJV: (00:10) Seriously. He’s so awesome. He’s just the best guy. AJV: (00:15) I mean his attitude, his mindset if you haven’t listened to the purpose. So yeah, I mean his story is incredible. We’ve been friends for years. One of the most successful speakers in the world, truly. And just an amazing guy, but to hear, to hear his story, you know, it’s like you can’t, we were talking to him about how he’s built his career and everything, but you can’t, his career is built on gratitude and love. Like his secret is not some business process or something. And that, that was my first big takeaway and I had never heard him say this, but he said, you know, there is an ROI on love. And when he was telling the story about loving on the AV guys that are like backstage at a keynote that you know, nobody talks to and if they do talk to them, it’s like, Hey, get this done for me or get this put in. AJV: (01:02) Or, you know, why doesn’t this work or whatever. And having those guys refer him, I just like that is the epitome of him. And I just thought that was a good reminder for all of us. Especially now when things are difficult and things are hard. Like you’re never too busy to love on people. You’re never, you’re never too broke to love on people. You’re never too important to love on people. And the world is starving for that right now. And I teared up in the interview like I, I just needed it so badly. He’s so amazing. AJV: (01:35) And you’re a big seller AJV: (01:36) And I am a softie. It’s true. It’s true. AJV: (01:39) We might take on John like outside of the interview is that anyone who can capture the heart of a three-year-old as an inspirational speaker has got my vote. Our child, our oldest child, Jasper talks about John O’Leary. Every day and I don’t mean some days, every single day he said, daddy friend, mr John, I want to watch the video daddy’s friend, mr John. And I just, to me there’s something about like what is it about him that has captured this curiosity in even a three year old and there is this uniqueness about John, I really do help you watch the interview. But actually it’s very rare that I take notes but I have a lot of notes. It’s very rare. But there were just like so many good one liners and nuggets and just like you said, it’s really an era of needing messages like this. And this is kind of in line with what you just said. It wasn’t my first point. My points are kind of out of order cause I had so many. But I loved this and he said there is no such thing as a little job. AJV: (02:49) And I love that and I, you know, it’s like we very much have the attitude, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO, the business owner, the entrepreneur, you are also the trash taker, the cleaner, the window washer. It’s like at one point do you think that you have elevated among the above the jobs that need to be done? And I just really believe that a servant’s heart and a true leader never rises above that. If there is trash on the floor, you pick it up, right. If there is something that needs to be cleaned, you do it. There is never this concept of rising above. And I loved it. He talked about this story about Lavelle, the janitor, janitor, the janitor in his hospital room when he was in the hospital bed for six months after he had this horrific accident. Yeah, truly fighting for his life. AJV: (03:39) And he said, he said, I believe that Lavelle saved my life many times because I was so succeptible to the tiny viruses. A little cold or anything could have been what ended his life. And he said, but because Lavelle was in there cleaning his room and making it sanitary every day, that was a part of what saved his life. AJV: (03:58) There’s no little jobs. AJV: (04:01) I’m just even reading this and it’s like I’m going to have to like hold the tears back because he said that today in the midst of covert 19 he said there is never been a greater reminder in our country of how every job matters. AJV: (04:16) Yes, like the grocery store when he said delivery truck AJV: (04:22) Tricity internet. I mean imagine if we didn’t have internet right now, like that AJV: (04:28) Be a big deal. It would be interesting. That would be a big deal. Or just people who are willing to get up and go to the grocery stores and keep those open and people who are willing to get up and put their lives at risk to keep a coffee shop open or the restaurants open. AJV: (04:43) The nurses right to, Oh my gosh, of course the doctors, gosh, our first responders and all the people who you know, you just never realize like what I mean how critical that just delivering, getting mail delivered is like keeping the country running. Being able to get things at your house. The person who picks up a side job running to the grocery store to grab groceries that an elderly person can get groceries delivered to their house. Amazing. AJV: (05:11) So many things. I just love that in the midst of this and then just also talking about that story of lavel just putting a name and a face to, it’s like some people may see it as a janitor. He said, no, this man kept me alive. It’s just such a powerful perspective. AJV: (05:30) That’s powerful. Yeah. And you know, kind of playing off of what you just said, I think when he was actually telling the story of how they got started and, and you know when he went out and started speaking and it was totally by accident and then you know, he ended up going, okay, this ha, this is our full time thing. We have to make it work and we have to do whatever it takes. And I feel like you and I have been there in our relationship, like with our business where it’s like both, both times. Yeah. We didn’t have a choice. Like we had to make it, we had to make it work and okay, AJV: (06:03) But we did have a choice. We chose to make it work. AJV: (06:06) Yeah, well we, we chose to do whatever it took to make it work. Like you always have a choice. You can take, you can take a safer route. But to that point of like there’s no small jobs. I remember a couple of weeks ago this is a little sort of side note, but Mmm, there, there was chaos in our house and there’s chaos every once in a while cause we have two little kids and everything. And I was overwhelmed and I just scooted out of the room like, and I just went upstairs and, and then later that morning AJ was like, I could tell she was upset and not upset, but just like she was quiet and I was, you know, she kind of brought up like, Hey, you bailed on me. And I felt so bad in that moment because it’s like you have to be willing to dig the ditches. AJV: (06:56) Like you got to do the work of digging the ditches and whether it’s your spouse or your business partner or the people next to you, everybody has to be willing to dig the ditches together. And I think, you know, people use that analogy like who you’re going to be in the foxhole with and a fight, which I think is, you know, inspiring and if you’re a war person or whatever, but the reality is for most of us, the daily life isn’t a foxhole. It’s not a matter of life and death, but it is a matter of digging ditches. It’s a matter of who’s doing the work and are you staying in the fight? Are you staying in the battle? And Mmm, just doing the work it takes to make it work. And so I took that. That was one of my big takeaways was when he was talking about doing whatever it takes to make it work, which also ties to what you were saying about there is no small job. Yeah, you got to hang in there and you gotta you gotta dig the ditches AJV: (07:46) And just appreciate like I don’t rise above the small jobs like yeah, I just, I love that. So yeah, so I guess that would be my first point. I will, I’ll claim that as my first point. My second point, which I think is kind of connected to that a little bit, but I just thought it was worthwhile sharing is don’t be so had to read this so I get it right. Don’t be so arrogant to think you should get paid in year one. AJV: (08:12) Wow. AJV: (08:13) I was like, I am right. Because I think so many people are like, what should I charge? What should I charge? And like part of like what we do at Brand Builders Group is helping people set their pricing schedules and their fee schedules. And it’s a really hard sketch. A hard question. But I love to, the attitude of like, if you really went back and you said, okay, well how did we get started and what did we do? It’s like, okay, well we spoke a lot for free. AJV: (08:37) Yep. AJV: (08:38) I lot like, I mean for eight years I was still speaking for free. Like I was still getting paid to speak, but I was still speaking for free. And it’s like, remember AJV: (08:46) Still speak for free at certain events, like still to this day, AJV: (08:50) But it’s like really before your speaking career took off, you know, I was like, you spoke over 300 times for free. And it’s like that very first year that we really launched our first business. You know, I spoke something like 220 times for free that year. AJV: (09:04) Can we tell him how much you made? The first year we had this, this is, this is not in Brand Builders Group. You’re making even less than brand builders group AJV: (09:15) [Inaudible] everyone gets paid before. AJV: (09:16) Yes. but in our first, our first year in business, you made like in our first business, 30, 20, 40,000, 24,000, $24,500 rolling in it. That, and then, you know, by the end of our, I mean, okay, a few years later they were making that every month. And then, you know, a few years later you’re making that more like every week. AJV: (09:36) Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s really is amazing and I think that’s, you know, not to like broadcast, you know, what we make or anything. But in year one I was making $24,500 of speaking for free. AJV: (09:49) A ton, AJV: (09:49) Like every day. But then it was by year 10 you know? Yeah. I mean it was more like I was making that a week. I was making it that a week AJV: (09:58) And to put things back in context. Okay. So brand builders, we’re now about a couple of years into the business. So year one you made AJV: (10:07) $600 I think it was technically, I think I made 13 AJV: (10:11) Oh yeah, for delivery work. Cause you assisted on some delivery work but AJ is the CEO of brand builders group and she gets paid last. She only gets paid if there’s anything like leftover and it’s been AJV: (10:23) Virtually zero now for virtually zero other than the delivery work. Yeah, I do. Some clients do some of that, but I just, I thought that was so important and I guess it hit me because we get asked that so much and I think 12 years later into our professional lives and personal lives, it’s we forget that the reality is, is when we started speaking, we didn’t charge. We said yes to everything and that’s so much of what John was saying. He said, my business group has, has said yes. I just said yes. He said we were yes, led and mission driven. And he said, and don’t be so arrogant to think that you should get paid the first time you do it or the first year because we did it for years. We still do it like, like we are, you know, after the sell of an eight fair bit, eight figure business and all the stuff that we’ve done, it’s like we still don’t get paid and we’re digging, AJV: (11:19) We’re digging ditches right now. We’re, we’re brand builders. Even though the, you know, the clients are doing well and our T, you know, like we’ve been able to get our team up to good levels of pay. AJV: (11:28) But there’s just, I just loved what he said. There’s like this, this attitude of people get entitled. I was like, I deserve to make this money. My time is worth this says you says who? And I just loved his attitude of like, don’t be so arrogant doing that work. Yeah. I love that. I just thought it was such a good reminder of when you’re asking yourself, what should I get paid and what should I charge? Maybe the question is like, well, just how many times can I do this before someone says, can I pay you? AJV: (12:00) Great. Gosh, that’s such a, such a great reminder. Yeah. It’s again, just so powerful to hear this inspiration and, and here’s the thing. You may be there right now, right? Like, maybe you were a speaker or you were an employee or you were someone making a lot of money and all of a sudden, boom, covid hits, you know, some crazy things happens in China with a bat. And here we go. Like all of us have to just do whatever it takes and you rebuild by serving, figure out a new problem and start serving it and start solving it and start helping and don’t be above it. And then the money always follows, like the money will come back around. Mmm. Way more important than the money. And this is what he’s all about. And this was my third takeaway was just being reminded of how much life is a miracle. Yeah. Towards the end. And he was just talking about you know, like one and there’s like a one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is of your, of your DNA coming together the way that it is. AJV: (12:59) And just like the fact that you’re here and, and then talking to somebody like John who’s so grateful for everything and go, go, you know what? Imagine if you didn’t have your hands right, like imagine if you didn’t have your hands or if you didn’t have your eyesight or if you didn’t have, like there’s so many people that are, you know, living with a lot of fear right now because their immune system is really weak and just really dangerous time for the vast majority of, of us. And, and perhaps you, we have so much to be grateful for. It’s, it’s so beautiful that we’re even here. We you know, as, as crazy as the current situation is of the quarantined world. It’s also pretty incredible how we’re able to connect and do business virtually and have our basic needs met and food delivered to our house. AJV: (13:50) And there’s, if this was, if there was ever a time in history to have this, it would be right now, like this has to have been the easiest time, the most medically advanced to ever have something like this. And it’s all about that perspective. I remember seeing something on Instagram about Covid where it said your grandparents were called to war. You’re being called to sit on the couch. You can do this. I posted, that’s right. I saw it somewhere and I’m always sealing AJ’s lines and but it’s true, but it’s true. You know, like we’re, we’re alive. We’re here and just don’t forget the miracle of, of that. The miracle of life. There’s so much to be to be grateful for. AJV: (14:32) Yeah, mine is probably my third point is similar to that and I think it was, it was probably towards the last half of the interview when we were talking to John about just how has this affected your business? What’s your attitude? What’s the plan on the go forward? And I just, I love that he said, I’m just so grateful for the season and I think it’s really hard for a lot of us to admit that openly because there are so many people who are struggling. There are so many people who’ve lost their businesses, they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their lives, they’ve lost family members. You know, you’ve, you will look at New York and you’re going like, how can I publicly say I am grateful for this season when people are every single day on the front lines risking their lives, people are dying, people like they are suffering. AJV: (15:17) And at the same token, there is this amazing privilege that has been given to so many of us to be at home. To refocus and reprioritize. And I, I really honed in on what he said and he kind of like took this and two parts in the beginning he said, you know, in year one I speaking my speaking career started because our little girl scout asked me to speak at her girl scout troop and then a parent in the audience was a part of the rotary club. And then some was there was a part of Kawanna. So his first year he spoke three times all for free year two, he spoke eight times, all for all for free. Year three though, he started charging and making money. He spoke 60 times. But yeah, 14 years later he has spoken more than 2000 times to millions of people. AJV: (16:07) And many different continents. And he said, he said over the last, you know, two months, he goes, I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve been able to tuck my kids into bed. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve gotten to make them lunch. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 day, you know, and he’s kind of goes on and on and you’re like, it’s interesting because the first half of our interview is very much about how did you get your speaking career started and what you can expect. And it’s like, it goes from girl Scouts to like literally millions of people being impacted by John’s story on multiple continents in 2000 times. And, but yet, but the the amazing part of this interview is like, I’m so grateful for the things that I never knew I was missing. Like being home for 41 days. AJV: (16:57) And you also, in the context, if y’all don’t understand, like for John, somebody who’s primarily a keynote speaker and their primary revenue, like the keynote speaking business, he’s gone all the time. But this pandemic is impacting speakers radically. I mean, our entire keynote business is basically on the course of three weeks. Over the course of three weeks. Lost every event. Yeah. You know, indefinitely disappeared. You know, some of them will come back at some point maybe, but it’s okay. AJV: (17:28) But for him to, to have that attitude, it’s not like he just has it all hunky Dory right now. Like it’s entire business bookings for the rest of this year AJV: (17:40) Just went out the door. AJV: (17:42) They’re like, this isn’t like, Oh, it’s this one thing. It’s like, no, that’s his entire business went poof. And yet he is still choosing to be grateful, AJV: (17:50) Choosing to consciously be thankful for the things you do have versus unconsciously complaining about the things that you don’t, or being entitled and thinking that you’re above facing the challenges that are in front of you and. AJV: (18:04) Or that you’ve somehow earned or deserved to not have to deal with difficulty. RV: (18:09) Or to not that you’re above, above the work. Just really, really great, great reminders. Loved it, man. We needed this. And go listen to it. There’s a good chance you need it. Even if you don’t need it, you need it. Go listen to John O’Leary and be grateful. Know that your work matters. There is no job too small. There’s, there’s no audience to serve. That’s too small. There’s no message that’s too small. The work is important. The world needs you. Go find them now. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 66: Gratitude with John O’Leary

Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible] RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Hey, you’re about to meet one of my very dear friends and a man that I absolutely love. His name is John O’Leary, and he’s also one of the busiest professional speakers you know, in the world today. Although the world of professional speaking is changing dynamically, which we’ll talk some about, but if you don’t know John, he was in a very serious explosion with a five gallon gas tank when he was nine years old and he was burned on a hundred percent of his body. Over 80% of those burns were third degree. And now he is one of the most booked inspirational keynote speakers in the world. He’s the bestselling author of a book called on fire, seven choices to ignite a radically inspired life. He has a new book that is called in awe, which is a followup to that. And we just were sitting around chatting and it was like, man, we gotta get you back on the show to some talk, some shop and talk through a building a keynote business. So John, welcome to the influential personal brand. JO: (02:11) Rory Vaden. Thanks for being my friend. And on most podcasts when I hit record, we started going right away. You and I had 49 minutes before we hit record just to talk. So we really are friends first and foremost. But I’m glad to be on the podcast. RV: (02:26) Yeah, well that that is for sure. And you know this, cause I sent you the video that Jasper has been learning all about fire and every night he’s like I watched John, I watched John and so your, your, your story’s inspiring. Even to our little three year old man and just helping him, you know, learn about fire and gratitude and all that. So I, you know, I love you man. JO: (02:49) Well I love him. He’s a cute little guy and I think you learn about fire, you learn me something, you stay away from when you’re a kid, but as you get older you got to figure out how to harness fire. And that’s what I’m excited about talking with you during this podcast. Like how do you go from being repulsed by something or being driven by fear to being inspired and motivated to do something bigger in your life. And that’s everyone of your listeners. That’s what they’re striving to do in their own words. RV: (03:18) Yeah. Well, and so tell me about your, tell me about the, your, your keynote career. Like how did you go from, okay, so this burns happens when you’re a kid and a lot of people that are listening, you know, they, they, they want, you know, that that’s part of what they aspire to is go and, Hey, I want to stand on stages and, and inspire people. And so you’re, you’re one of those stories that just, you have an incredible story and You know, tell us how did you kind of move officially into professional speaking JO: (03:54) Haltingly awkwardly and painstakingly slowly. So that’s the truth. And I think it’s most of our truth for those of us who had at some point or another, made it in front of the stadiums and the auditoriums and the Rotarian clubs. It takes a while to elevate from where you are to where you want to go next. But what you need to know is it’s possible. It is absolutely utterly possible. There’s been many who’ve done it. So the best way to achieve success is to follow those who’ve done it before you. And for me, Rory, I got burned at age nine. The great goal of my life was not to be an international speaker, but to be ordinary. So my desire from age nine until about 28 was to fit in, which meant at age 11 I was playing soccer at age 16 I was trying to find a six pack of beer to split it with my friends. JO: (04:44) I was trying to be funny, I was trying to be cool. I was trying to fit in like everybody else, which meant also I was trying to be who I really wasn’t. And I did that for the majority of my young life. And then at age 28 a third grade girl scout asked, mr John. That’s me. If I would speak to her troop and man I, I’d never spoken before publicly, I had never told anybody how I got burned. I had no idea how to string a couple of sentences together or how to build a database of potential clients. This was not the goal, but in life, when an opportunity knocks, I’ve always said yes, whatever that thing is. Even if it’s helping a friend move on a weekend, my answer is yes. I just try to live in yes. And so I said yes to this little girl. I planned this talk for probably, I’m not exaggerating, 40 hours to deliver a talk to three third grade girl Scouts. JO: (05:40) And when I delivered, I bet you will be so underwhelmed by this. I looked down at several note cards. I never looked up and that’s my first talk. One of the fathers in the room was a Rotarian. He asked if I would speak to his group and I said yes. And then one of the members from that group was a Kiwanis club. So in year one I spoke a grand total of three times was not even paid with a box of Samoa. So I got no cash. You know. You did get some MOAs or no, I got nothing. No Do-sey Doe’s no Thin Mints, nothing. I got maybe a free lunch at a rotary club and then year two happened. I spoken maybe eight times, Nope, no cash, maybe a gift card to a shell gas station when I was still open. And then year three, it started to become a business. JO: (06:29) It always had been mission led. It had always been yes, led, but it all of a sudden began to take on the underpinnings of an actual business. I hired my first employee, I borrowed against our home actually to pay her salary. And this woman named Deanna and I started building this thing up from the ground floor and we delivered 60 keynotes in year three in the 14 years that have followed. I’ve spoken two thousand times, 50 States, a couple dozen countries, a couple of million people live. And a couple of cool things have grown out of that. But it has been a wild whirlwind of just saying yes to the next audience in front of you and showing up with everything that we had to inspire the people in the room, not to realize how great I am. Cause there’ll be bored by that, that message, but by how great they are. JO: (07:20) So how did you go and I wanna I want to talk about covert and how that’s affected your business and the like what your mindset is going in into some of this and a little bit but, but I mean to go from eight to 60, that’s a lot in that was really like your first year going after this. So, so what did you guys do then and how much were you charging and like how did that, like that, that, that, that was a real business, which you took a real risk. You took the loan, you got a heat lock. It sounds like you got all he lock and started the business. A hired your first person. Was she just out there emailing people and calling them or what was happening? Yes, to both. So I brought her on after already probably booked about 20 that year, add about averaging $1,500 a keynote or something like that. JO: (08:16) And so there was a little bit of cash coming in the door, but she was asking for more than I’d booked in the entire year. And by the way, I’m married, I have a mortgage, I have one child and another one on the way. And so this is not like, well, it was my part time gig and I was independently wealthy. Neither of those things were true. I had to make this thing work, which is also one of the reasons I think, in fact, it did work. We had to make a go of this thing. We better figure this thing out. And we were motivated not only to stay out of the broke house, but to keep people alive, keep people moving forward, make them recognize how beautiful their life is and their calling to do more for others. So we started off speaking for free. JO: (08:56) I’m begging you guys, if you’re just beginning and you’re just listening to Rory Vaden today for the first time and you’re thinking you want to deliver a message on a platform someday, don’t be so arrogant enough to think that you’re, you need to be paid right off the bat. There is a benefit to going into school houses and synagogues and churches and rotary clubs and serving. Many of these people that you serve on the front side will become your advocates downstream. And so even when we were just kind of showing up to love, I’d still walk out with everybody’s business card in the room and I would still Rory Vaden following your, your process man, I would still follow up with emails. We would still begin sending out a monthly at that time newsletter to encourage them to keep moving forward, but also to remind them that there’s a guy named John O’Leary who alive and well and ready to serve when they are ready. JO: (09:40) So even in the early stages of this business, when there was not a business model, so to speak, there was the beginning of a database, there was the beginning of a followup and there was the beginning of a long term dream of what it could look like. RV: (09:54) And, and, and is that, I mean, over the next 14 years, has that changed much? I mean does it basically just the same thing, build a database, go out and speak, contact people get like what? How has that change and were there any big breaks? Like were there any big moments where you said, Oh, when this happened. That really catapulted my career. RV: (10:16) So it’s a great question because you live this every day, your life. What I’ve always found at least in the first 15 years maybe I’ll find something very different than the next 15 is that the idea of big breaks is, is sometimes exaggerated. I’ll book a huge event in front of tens and tens of thousands of people and the right people in that room thinking now I’ve made it and the following day I wake up and I’m really not that changed. I’ll book a huge huge radio show or television show or podcast boom baby now we got it. I’ll create a book that is worthy enough to be a New York times bestseller, becomes a number one New York times bestseller and still I haven’t made it. And so you have a beautiful quote about when the rent is due. It’s like it’s due everyday man, get up and pay it again cause it is due every single day. We’ve had a lot of breaks but but none of them that have actually made us overnight successes. What have made us in quotes, overnight successes is showing up and going to work the following day. JO: (11:18) And so some of the things that have grown in the last 1415 years is the database. When you collect information over the course of years, we now have a couple of hundred thousand people that we we’ll get to love on every single week. Another thing that has happened is we started getting into social media. So now we have I think 300,000 or so followers online and then you ask yourself, well how can I serve them better? What if they had a really cool life giving book? And so I wrote a book called on fire. It became a number one national bestseller. It’s still selling now four years after it’s released at a high level because it’s about reminding people not only that they matter, but here are the next steps that you can take to impact. Even more lives through yours. After that release, we said, how do you touch more lives? JO: (12:02) We created the live inspire podcast. Rory Vaden has been a guest on this thing. We have a hundred thousand plus listeners every single month that checked out the millions of downloads. Now 2 million over 2 million downloads of a million downloads, and it’s awesome. It’s a cool way to get in front of people, not only the mass audiences, but it allows you to reconnect with a guy like Rory Vaden or a guy like John Gordon or a lady like Renee Brown or you. You name the person and now you get to meet these people one-to-one here, their stories. But my kids and I, cool story. We were watching Apollo 13 and they wanted to know when the guy died. This guy played by Tom Hanks when he died at the movies in the sixties so when did he die? It turns out commander Jim Lavelle lives in Chicago. JO: (12:45) He’s 94 years old. He’s been married for 70 years. He’s the world’s greatest failure just about everything he did in life. He failed except for the fact that he kept moving forward. And so he even failed to go into the moon except for the fact that they figured out how to Slingshot around the moon and come back safely. So one of the great stories I think of our society bringing this guy back with technology foreign figure to a cell phone and yet commander Jim Lavelle is alive and well in Chicago today through the efforts, not only of him and his two person crew, but through what we were doing in Houston. Yes, they had a problem with they redeem the problem. RV: (13:23) That’s amazing. That’s such a cool, that’s such a cool story. And I, I I mean one of the things that has always just blown me away, and this is, I guess part of what I would hope for people to capture from you is just like, you have such a genuine heart to serve. And we were, we were talking about some of the Covid stuff going on and how it’s affected your business and you were just, you were telling me that, you know, I don’t want to have the big high price thing because like my guy is the ups guy and the nurse and the teacher and the stay at home mom. Like your, your, your people are the people like just the, the, the people and how have you always had that heart to serve? Cause I have no doubt whatsoever that that is a huge reason why you have built such a successful keynote career. But I just, I guess I have a hard time understanding how do you go from almost dying just trying to just barely survive and just be normal yourself. Right. How do you go from that to where it’s like I can barely live. I don’t, you know, you lost, you know, a big portion of your hands. Right? And to, all I do in life is care about other people. Like that’s a big leap. JO: (14:39) So let me begin answer the question by starting with the end in mind. For the listeners that just want to grow their business. I can’t tell you how many speeches that have been referred to me through the AV guys. These are the folks who wear black shirts and black pants in the back of the room. That big time speakers like myself ignore because they’re unimportant. They’re only there to get the video up on the screen and the sound of the room, and besides that, they’re useless except for the fact I really love these guys. I like, I love them. And so I hang out with them. I’ll launch with them, I’ll hug them on the front side, hug them afterwards, thank them for their work. Stay in touch longterm, they refer me speeches because I don’t do this on purpose, but those guys then go on to the next venue the following day and if someone sinks, they’re like, by the way, you should meet a guy named John O’Leary. JO: (15:26) Mike, he’s so genuine. He blows away the audience. He gave me his card. In fact, I was texting them last time. Here’s this, here’s the number. And so we get, we get referrals all the time from AV guys. I received three referrals from guys driving town cars. These are the guys like why would you ever talk to a guy driving you, cause they’re completely unimportant except for the fact that I believe in the dignity of human life. And I see the guy in front of me having a far better story than the one I’m going to share from a stage later on. And so I’ve heard so many amazing stories, exchange cell phone numbers with these guys and then have been referred to future clients because of the chauffeur. And so is there an ROI in love? Yes. Okay. Yes. But your real question is why, why do you like people? JO: (16:10) Number one is I recognize that my life is a miracle and that’s not because I got burned and survived the unsurvivable, the likelihood of us being in the room, if you just look at the biology and we’ll have an after hours with Rory Vaden and chattel there if you want to get into the functioning of how we were reproduced into this position. But here’s, here’s the biology man. When you add up your mom and your dad and the likelihood of their DNA becoming one turn into Rory Vaden, the math is less than one in 400 trillion. So the very fact that Rory Vaden is in the room is one in 400 trillion just from mom and dad coming together. We were miracles and we get, we get bored by life and we act like COVID. 19 will be the end of us or recession’s going to break our back or losing a third of our portfolio has ruined what we wanted to do later on in life. JO: (17:01) And what I need you guys to do, listening, ladies listening, is to recognize that you’re made for so much more than this. Like you are a gift. You are miracle. You need to act like it. And once you can act like you can also recognize that the dignity of those around you. So Rory, I’m here because a whole lot of people showed up for me, but maybe the most important person in my story was the janitor. And this is the guy who came into my room as a kid when I was nine. He did his job, he did it for about minimum wage, and he did his job for the next five and a half months while I was treated in burn care. And if he had not done his job at a high level, there’s a high likelihood that I get some small little infection. JO: (17:43) COVID 19 as a reminder, it doesn’t need to be a missile that claims your life. It can be something you can barely see under a microscope that can claim your life. This guy’s job is to protect a little boy from that. His name was Lavelle. I believe he saved my life in the hospital. And I’ve never forgotten the fact that there’s no such thing as little jobs like that. They all matter and an epidemic. And now a pandemic like COVID 19 reminds us of the profound value of grocery store workers and truck drivers and nurses and custodians like their work matters. We just for too long have overlooked it. JO: (18:20) Wow. what a perspective. So, so what is going on with your business? How has [inaudible] affected you and what are you doing about it? And how are you thinking about it? Awesome. Gosh, there’s a lot of questions right there. So from a societal aspect, it’s breaking my heart because I recognize that people’s portfolios have been wiped out to a degree that many of us have become unemployed, that many of us have lost their lives and lost lost loved ones. And that help. The healthcare system itself is incredibly taxed during this time. So just as a citizen of the world I ache, I really hate it. It makes me sad thinking about it. But I also remember a conversation that I had with my grandfather, and this will get me emotional too, cause he’s my hero. My grandfather served in world war II. He was in the Navy for three years, came all married sweetheart, built an incredible life. JO: (19:19) And after September 11th we had lunch together on the 17th and I’m writing this story about this right now. So in September 17th grandpa and I met at a little pasta place down the street from his office. He’s near the end of his life. He’s certainly near the end of his working life. And I learned over lunch that he had just invested a large chunk of his savings into American airlines and United airlines, right as the market has come back online. And everyone who’s got any savvy at all knows what’s going to happen to the airlines after the bell rings and we get to sell or by no one’s going to be buying these two airlines. They’re the ones that collided into buildings and into th th th they’re gonna fall dramatically. And grandpa Bobby bought them heavily. So I say grandma, grandpa, I think he kind of made a mistake man. JO: (20:11) And he took a bite of his pasta then a sip of his tea in front of them and he said, John, do you know that they refer to our generation as the greatest generation? I just said, yeah, I’ve read that book Gramps. And he said, you know why? I’m like, tell me. He goes, it’s not because we survived the great depression and it’s not because we went off and we fought in world war II. And it’s not because we were the most productive group of all time for humanity. They built the nations. He’s like, let me tell you what it was. We never forgot the lessons that we learned along the way. And I think that’s really important to remember during this COVID 19 pandemic. What made the greatest generation, the greatest generation, I think back then and still today, is not what they did. JO: (20:53) It’s that they were made better because of what they endured. They were made better because of the depression. They were made better because of world war II. They were made better because of their great productivity. And so when this crisis happened on nine 11 six days later, when the markets reopened, he’d still remembered what his, what he’d lost, but also was taught during the depression, during the war and during the decades that followed. And so it’s why my grandfather, as a citizen was making an investment into organizations that he wanted to be around longterm. So what am I thinking about right now during COVID 19 I’m thinking about the lessons that I can learn right now that we can apply longterm. I don’t want to forget man, what I know to be true, Rory, this too shall pass. I don’t know if it’s next month or in 16 months, but sometime the pandemic passes, sometimes we’re back at work sometime the markets return and my, my great concern is we’re going to forget what we’re learning right now and I want to be like my grandpa. JO: (21:48) I want to be part of the next greatest generation that did not forget the lessons being taught during COVID 19 so what I’m remembering right now is I’ve had 41 dinners at home with my wife. That’s never happened since we’ve been married ever. Wow. 41 nights in a row, tucking my, my, my little girl, my three boys. And it never happened. Since I’ve been born, I’ve had 41 lunches. When you and I finished this podcast, I’m going to hang up race home and make them lunch again. 41 peanut butter jellies in a row, man, 42 tomorrow. But man, rather than cursing the fact that I can’t get on flights, personally, I’m extraordinarily grateful for this season because I know it will pass. I know it will pass. So that’s what I’m doing personally, professionally, I’m trying to pivot into the storm. I’m trying to raise the sail high and figure out what we can do digitally through the profound blessing, the technology to influence clients and influence last longterm starting today. And so this big ship of ours here at live inspired are pivoting into what we can become. And by the way, we would not have done this had everything in life gone perfectly the way we planned, but, but now we have this beautiful opportunity to become so much more significant and life giving than what we would’ve done if John O’Leary was on a plane today speaking to only a couple hundred or only a couple thousand. Now we believe we can influence millions of lives starting right now. Why wait? RV: (23:16) I love it man. I absolutely love it. Well John, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you more and just kind of follow your journey and see what you’re up to. Of course, in all that book, that book is out like you all. Can you, can he, you can just feel this man’s heart and it comes through in his writing and so excited for y’all to get your hands on this new book. But where else did you direct people, John to connect with you? JO: (23:43) So thank you for your compliment. Like it is all hard. I haven’t been through media training. I probably said the wrong thing all the time, but it is heartled man. So where they can go to learn more about the book and about who John is as good a readinawe.com. So that’s read in awe.com you’ll learn about the book, you’ll learn about John, you’ll have the links to social media and the podcast. But the reason really I’m driving folks there is when this whole thing broke out, we recognize that there would be some collateral damage. And last year, Rory, 1.5 million Americans attempted suicide. And this was one life was awesome. You got nothing to complain about, no pandemics, no reset, nothing man. One and a half million. So on the front side of this, our team got together and said, how do we invest in people? And so we built a 21 day campaign. So just love them and encourage them and to remind them that they’re not alone and that there is a next step. So there’s a cool 21 day challenge somewhere on that website. sign up for it. You’ll benefit from it. You’ll realize you’re not alone. And you’ll also realize your best days remain in front of you. RV: (24:54) Yeah. John, buddy, I just, I can’t thank you enough for your, your attitude and your mindset and your heart. I mean, I’m sitting here almost in tears myself, just like being encouraged, being reminded of the importance of gratitude and then also just experiencing you living it through your life and through your lens. It’s, it’s so impactful to me and to, to everybody. So thank you for what you’re doing. I hope you are relishing the time with the family and you know, the world is, the world is still very much, very much a need of John O’Leary. So I hope you keep, keep inspiring virtually and digitally through this time. And we just love you and we wish you the best. JO: (25:43) Let me say one thing, man. I twice now, the publisher of my books have sent me back the first edition with my picture on the front of it and what I’ve always sent back to them as a reminder, read the book and then redo the artwork of the, of the book because that’s not it. And so on the first one on fire, there’s mirrored letters of flames that if you look at it just right, you actually see your picture of Rory Vaden and whoever else is reading on fire. They’re going to see their little image in the letters. And if you read on in awe, there’s this big brilliant blue sky with clouds floating past with a red kite flying high, reminding us what it was like once when we were kids and how we can return to that to day to day. And so you said the world needs more John O’Leary? I don’t. Thank you. I think the world needs more people who are fully alive. And do your exhibit a of that. So Rory Vaden keeps shining the light, keep living it out. And thanks for being my friend. Of course, brother, much love God bless you. Feel likewise. God bless. See you buddy.

Ep 65: Everything You Need to Know to Make Brilliant Online Courses with D’Arcy Benincosa | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. We’re breaking down our episode with D’Arcy, Beninicosa who I feel like is one of our new favorite friends. AJV: (00:11) Yes, we love D’Arcy D’Arcy. D’Arcy is so cool. She’s so cool. And she’s so interesting. It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t on this interview because I’d have been like, so tell me about your favorite place you’ve ever traveled. Tell me more about this upcoming book. So tell me more about your fabulous self. RV: (00:29) Yeah, we were focused and down to business on video courses, which it’s kind of funny. We haven’t had anyone actually come talk about this directly, even though so many of us and so many of our clients do them. And what happened was D’Arcy, so she’s one of our clients, she was in one of our events. She was in, I think it was our captivating content AJV: (00:50) and everyone wanted to learn from her, RV: (00:51) everyone was like, I want to tell us you stealing the show. And so they were, you know, she was like spending time with people and she was like, well, why don’t I just come on? AJV: (01:00) we were so excited about it. RV: (01:02) So if you’ve ever been curious about video courses, how much they cost, how to do ’em, how long they have to be, this is a really, really key interview. And I think that was my first takeaway was it’s not about the number of videos that determines the pricing. You know, she has a $50 course, which is like 15 videos and then she has a $1,500 course, which I think was like 24 videos. It’s not about the length of the, or the duration of it. So much as it is about the monetary value of what your teaching, in other words, how is what you’re teaching going to directly or indirectly affects the person’s income. And if the skills that you’re teaching directly affect somebody’s income, then you can charge more for those. Which like is the definition of value, right? It is. What is the value of the expertise that you’re providing? Not the quantity of information that you’re providing. And that was my first one. AJV: (02:02) Yeah. Which is interesting because that’s how everything should be priced. But so many people are like, well, it’s only one call a month. And I’m like, well what are you covering on that one call a month? RV: (02:12) If you get one idea that saves you from making a hundred thousand dollar mistake, which a Brand Builders I think is a lot of what we do is where we’re not only teaching people things that help them make a lot more money, I mean, but to prevent a lot of stupid money AJV: (02:28) and also just wasted time. But I just think that’s a good lesson in general. It’s not how many videos or how many calls are necessarily what’s included. It’s the price is more indicative of the content in which you’re teaching and you know from someone has in their life. Yeah. So from people like us who have a background of selling things that were as little as $20 for a book or seven figure consulting deals, I just realize it’s so much of application and content, not just what’s included in terms of how many hours. And anyways, that is a great one and mine isn’t all that off for my first one, which is I thought this was just a really important aha for anyone who is creating a webinar or video course. And it’s that the bonuses are almost as important as the course itself. Yeah, that was a good one. So what you include as your bonuses to get people to move to action are many times equally as important and need the necessary thinking and consideration and planning as the actual course itself. RV: (03:35) Yeah. And, and, and when you think about the, the pricing and the offer structures, so for those of you that are, uh, you know, come to our stuff in phase two and we talk about offer structure in getting people to actually pull out their credit card and make a purchase. You know, we talk a lot about how the total retail value should be maybe usually three to 10 times the cost of what you’re actually asking for in charging for. And driving up the real retail value has a lot to do with the bonuses. So the creating quality bonuses that are legitimately valuable and, and spending time to make them polished so that they have a high dollar value, not only does it help them implement the course more effectively, it also is going to help you sell more. So that was, that was really good. RV: (04:20) Um, on the, on the topic of marketing, I was blown away at the funnel even though this was for her $50 course and about how simple a funnel can be. I mean, we overcomplicate, you know, it’s such an intimidating concept sometimes the funnel of like, Oh well what technology do you use and how many emails? And like, how do you know, how far are they watching the video? And a lot of that stuff we teach cause that stuff really works and we believe in it. But for her to just go, no, I just took the first video in my course and listed it for free on YouTube with a link to say, if you want the rest of the videos, click here and there are for sale. And you know, she’s not, she’s not buying Maserati’s with that money, but I loved what she even said, AJV: (05:03) buying groceries every week. RV: (05:05) I’ve been paying for my groceries for since 2017 like that is totally meaningful. That’s totally valuable. So that was, mine is just that a funnel doesn’t have to be complex, complicated architecture. It doesn’t have to be long. It’s just a thoughtful process about how you can give value for free, create the law of reciprocity, and then offer people a chance for how to get more. And it’s that simple. AJV: (05:33) Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s my big second takeaway was the importance of prepping your audience before a launch. And she’s, she talks a lot about her methodology and she’s got a very scientific, like, this is what I do, this is when I do it. Which I think for anyone who is just starting out, that’s exactly what you need. Oh, this is like the weeks leading up. Yeah. Just give me the formula and let me execute it. Right. It’s like baking. Tell me how many scoops, how many drops, how many eggs? Like that’s all I need and I can do it. And that’s really what she’s outlining for you in this interview. And she said that, you know, I know that the six to eight weeks before I launch of a new video course or a webinar that, um, all of my content is going to be circulated around that exact launch. So people know that, Hey, this is all she’s talking about. This is, this is new, this is what I’m going to find on her feed, this is what she’s going live about. And then pop there goes her new course, there, goes her lunch, but she’s prepping the audience weeks in advance with a soft content, soft content, providing value, providing value before she comes out and offers the course. RV: (06:40) Yeah, there’s a, that makes me think of a book that’s out by Robert Cialdini who wrote the book influence, which sold like 6 million copies. Right. But he wrote a new book called Pre-Suasion and it’s all about setting the context in advance. And when she was talking about that, uh, I was thinking about that book and also just like, it just makes so much sense to kind of prepare people’s minds for like, this is the direction that we’re heading and tee them up. So, AJV: (07:07) but then also just makes your life easy. Like if you know, these are the launches I’m going to do this year, this is the content I’m going to launch. Or relaunch. Yeah. It just makes your life easy. Okay. Well I know that January, February, and part of March, this is what I do for my content. Okay, great. Now we launch. Okay, now in April, this is what I do. That it actually makes your life easy if you have a plan. RV: (07:27) Yeah. And it also prevents you what she said, that mistake, one of the biggest mistakes was I was launching too many things at once. But it’s like if you plan out the calendar, you don’t, you don’t find yourself in that spot because you go, Oh Hey, there’s a conflict here. So, um, that was really good. My last one was, it was just getting on live with your audience. And I don’t know why this was such a light bulb for me, but AJV: (07:51) probably cause you’re an introvert who works in a dungeon in the basement and never likes to see the light of day. RV: (07:56) No. Well that’s just, that is, that is, that is true. I don’t, I don’t, um, what do you mean I have to talk to people? Yeah, I mean I, that is absolutely true, but, but the, the idea of, I think at least the way most people seem to process like a webinar is they process it as like a one time event. And it is, it is an either or. It is either you do it live, uh, or you do it as a recording. But the live part of it, I think people process as like you only could do it live once and where she said do it live six weeks in a row of just doing it over and over again so you don’t feel like, Oh my gosh, all my eggs are in this one basket, this one hour. Like get everybody there. And if the tech goes down like, Oh, it’s so risky, but to just go, no, you’re going to, you’re going to do this live consistently, which is the best practice, right. RV: (08:50) Do it live and do it live for a while and then take whatever was the highest, uh, video and turn that, make that the recording that you make into your evergreen. Um, of course we just, we build a lot evergreen from the beginning, but just take the pressure off of you of going, I got, I got multiple shots and, and just be with your people. Like just say it’s, it’s not like, Oh my gosh, everything has to go perfect. It’s like, no, just hang out with your people. Like these are your friends, these are your friends, your fans. Like, hang out with them and give them a chance to like talk to you and just share with them what you have. And I think that it’s easy to get scared and intimidated by, you know, the webinars. AJV: (09:33) Oh, very scary there. So my last one was just something she brought up just kind of casually, but I really launched, latched on to it was the importance of not launching too soon. And so many people out there have this Jones’s mentality of, well, everyone has a course and everyone’s doing a webinar and everyone is this and every I gotta I gotta I gotta and it’s like, yeah, maybe, but not too soon. There is a huge danger of doing it too soon when your audience isn’t ready for it. And she talked about how she spent two years providing value to her audience before she came out with a course. And then her first course was 49 bucks and it was very niche and it was very specific. But there’s, there’s immense value of not rushing to do this when you haven’t primed your audience to be ready to buy from you. AJV: (10:22) And we have a recent customer from Brand Builders group that this really resonated with me and it was a, I’m an a gentleman who heard about us from Lewis Howes. Okay. What I’m talking about and my friend that this is like really resonated with me because he, he requested a free call with Brand Builders Group about building his personal brand. He heard about us on Lewis’s podcast and then he said, you know, I’ve been listening to Lewis for 10 years. And to me that just is like so much to what Darcy said, it’s, you know, Louis had been nurturing and building this relationship, this online relationship. Well this person for 10 years before he was ready to click and buy something and there’s so much value into not rushing it and just providing value. Like if you’re truly, truly trying to build a personal brand and it’s all about money, then you’re already not going to win. AJV: (11:18) People can smell it. You’re already not going to succeed if it’s just about that, you know, we always talk about mission over money. Yeah. But it’s, you know, if you’re on the mission of serving and providing value with real expertise that you have, which I think is what Darcy talked about in this tire and entire interview, it was if you have something worthy of sharing with the world than just do it. Like what are you the expert at? Where’s your real expertise and experience? What do you have results in that you could actually help someone else improve their life, their business, their systems or their mindset and actually get out there and do it. And it’s amazing how many people need that and are willing to spend money $49 or $1,400 for someone to be their guide to show them how to do it. And I love that. Um, I have a bonus topic that, RV: (12:06) so before you bonus your topic, just on that note, because one thing that she also said was she was like, and if you’re struggling with that, you should go back through phase one. And that was as a seven figure earner who has a lot of experience for her to say, I had to go back to phase one for my new thing and how like how challenging it still was and how important it is. That was, that was, AJV: (12:30) yeah, so make sure you go back and listen to the full interview specifically the last five minutes when she talks about how everyone needs to work with Brand Builders group [Laughing]. RV: (12:38) Yes, for sure. Now we have a bonus tip, AJV: (12:42) so I’d have a bonus topic where I really need everyone to figure out how do we go back through this process of getting remarried so that Darcy can come shoot our wedding. RV: (12:54) Oh yeah, AJV: (12:56) yeah. If you’re not following Darcy, you need to, in addition to being an amazing photographer, and here’s one of the things that I love most about her. What you guys did not talk about at all is at Darcy’s not one of those photographers who does all the filters and she comes back and she fixes everything. It’s like, no, like help me capture you and your natural beauty. Let me capture the essence that is you not let me bring it back to my photo studio and do all the airbrushing and fix every blemish. It’s like, no, like, let me capture the real you. So I want to know how do we get remarried so I can have Darcy come do my photo. RV: (13:33) Honey, will you marry me on the podcast? How romantic was that? How much romantic? A spontaneous reproposal right here on the podcast. I had confidence, I would say not because we have undying love, but because we want additional wedding photography from Darcy bidding process to go with our already amazing wedding [inaudible] AJV: (13:58) like, no. Oh my gosh. They’re incredible. They’re incredible. But what I was going to say is like in addition to that, her authenticity and her fun vibe and her personality and her confidence are just absolutely contagious. So if you are just listening to the recap, you are truly missing the best part, which is the interview of Darcy. So go check it out.

Ep 64: Everything You Need to Know to Make Brilliant Online Courses with D’Arcy Benincosa

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Oh my gosh, I love D’Arcy Benincosa. You’re gonna love this woman. She is so fun and so cool and so intelligent and a true professional. So she is, has been, I think one of the most sought after destination luxury wedding photographers in the world. But out of that, she’s also become a very well renowned business coach, specifically for creatives. And that’s part of why we brought her on here today. So she and I met through a mastermind that she was involved with and then she became a client of brand builders group and I’m always kind of like, why are you a client? You’re so amazing. But she’s so humble and she’s such a student that way. And then she was in one of our events and everyone started asking her all these questions and it was like, Oh my gosh, we have to just get D’Arcy in front of all of you so that you can learn because she’s done a ton. RV: (02:00) Okay. So she’s as a photographer, I mean, she’s been featured in so many different things and as, and as kind of a a business coach or teacher she’s been featured in HuffPo, ABC, NBC, the view, Upworthy, I mean, her photography has been in every major wedding publication like Martha Stewart. And Harper’s Bazaar and style me pretty like so she’s got a master’s degree, so she has that interesting balance of like classic education. Like me, I have a master’s degree but also really am more of an entrepreneur. And anyways, I’m just excited for you to, to meet the energy that is D’Arcy, Benincosa. So welcome to the show. Oh my gosh. It’s such a privilege to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for that introduction. I’ve done a lot in 40 years. Well you don’t look forward to at all. RV: (02:57) And so I guess there’s so many things I want to ask you about, but I, I think that the place that we should start just to like get right to what is probably most relevant for our audiences is I think that of all of our clients, you’re one of the people that is really well experienced with video courses, creating them, pricing them, launching them, promoting them. And so like, I think maybe we just dive in with that. So, so how many courses, like is it w give me an idea of what percentage of your business come from courses and how many courses do you have? And like just give us like the overview of what courses mean in D’Arcy’s world. DB: (03:41) Yeah. So for a long time I was just shooting weddings. I think a lot of us just offer a service, right? I was out shooting weddings, doing brand shoots. I was so good at storytelling. And of course is always happens when you get really good at some thing. People who want to be good at it start inquiring, Hey, can you teach me how to do that? Can you teach me how to do that? And I realized as a business person, yes I was tied to photography, but I knew I didn’t want to be shooting weddings when I was 70 so I thought this is a great new Avenue of another client I can serve. So I started creating the education and creating ways of helping photographers, book clients. So at first it was about 0%. Then I would say the year I finally decided to launch a course, it became a third. DB: (04:37) I launched a course audience. If I had a six figure launch my first time launching something because I really didn’t launch until I had served my audience for a couple of years. And that launch was huge for me. I didn’t do any paid advertising either. That was my mind. So all my clients were just ready to buy what I had to offer because I had been serving them. And I think making sure you don’t launch too soon before you’ve served them enough before they want, you know, there’s so many laws to marketing. Talked about the law of reciprocity is a big one. Make sure you’ve given so much to them, but that by the time you launch something, they are just ready to buy from you because you’ve served them so well. And I think that’s what happened with my first course. And then I got really zealous and right after that I created another one. And I think I did that a little too soon. But then I started listening to what they were asking and I, I started creating things that I did really well that I didn’t realize people would pay me to learn. Like I thought, Oh this isn’t a big deal. And then it turned out to be something everybody needed help with. So I have a lot of courses, I’ll be honest, I have probably more than a lot of people recommend, but they do really well. RV: (06:04) Interesting. Okay. So so that when people hear course like how many videos, I know this is such a basic question, but like how many videos are in a course, how long do they have to be? How professional? Like how professionally shot do they have to be like, you know, do you have to rent a studio and go do it with like full lighting? Can you do it on your phone? Like just give us a sense of of that. And maybe maybe correlated with price points. Cause I’m sure it’s like the answer is, it depends. It can be all those different things. But just since you’ve actually had so much different experience, like how would you kind of price, you know, different modalities and volumes and that kind of thing. DB: (06:50) So let me tell you my lowest price course than my highest price course. So my lowest price is $49. It includes 15 videos that are each about six to 12 minutes long. RV: (07:03) Say that again. How many DB: (07:04) 15 videos that are each six to 12 minutes long. Okay. And it’s a very niche course. It’s teaching photographers how to shoot a meter film. Do you remember film? RV: (07:19) I do remember film, but I don’t know what meaner film is. Is that like filming? DB: (07:24) Yeah, most people shoot digital, but film is making a comeback, especially with hipsters. I’ve always, I’ve always shot it. So I’m teaching people how to meet her light for their camera to shoot film. Okay. I do it really quickly, really succinctly. And it’s a $49 course. I put it cheaper because it’s really easy. It’s quick to get through and I wanted them to have an experience with me so they could see how I was as a teacher. And that one, I just have one video from the course on YouTube. It’s the most searched YouTube term by photographers. You guys might not get it so don’t get lost in the language but it just says how to shoot a meter film and that’s exactly what they type into the search bar and I don’t know RV: (08:14) The title of your video. Okay. DB: (08:16) That’s the title of one of the videos in the in the course that I put on YouTube and then I have a link to buy the $50 course and that, and I sell a couple of those a week. They’ve paid for my groceries. That course has paid for my groceries since I put it up in 2017 and the awesome thing about that content is it never changes. Shooting film is a thing that is always the same. How to do it is always the same, which is awesome to have as a course. RV: (08:46) So your whole funnel, there is one of the videos in the course you made publicly available and then you have a link in the description and like a card that comes that slides out. DB: (09:00) If you want to learn more in depth, this is what I cover. Click here to buy the course because there are a lot of other videos on YouTube like that, but mine is the best. I’m a really good teacher and I did my research well and I made sure I was very clear. And and so it’s a, it’s a 12 minute video. It has almost a hundred thousand views and people are watching it every single day and it, it goes. Yeah. And that’s one of the, RV: (09:29) One of the funnels. And so it’s not even like, it’s not even really a marketing, it’s the actual video in the course itself. And then if you want more boom and you click and you go to a sales page that tells what’s in the course or do you go straight to your shopping cart? DB: (09:42) Yeah, pretty much too. I think a landing page, it could Jobie that then tells what’s in the course and they can just buy it. RV: (09:49) Got it. And did you shoot it on your iPhone or, I mean you’re a photographer so you have a little bit of an advantage with the production quality. DB: (09:59) So I used to make a ton of YouTube videos and I would rent out a studio for like 300 bucks and pay my friend 300 bucks and he would come in and we would shoot all day long, 12 hours a day. We were in a studio that had light and then he would go and edit all of the, all the videos. So I created that course in about two hours. I just wrote down everything people need to learn. I got up, I taught it. I didn’t need a lot of cue cards for that one. I had my meter, I had my camera and that one was really easy and I could run paid ads to that if I wanted. I just have other things that I run ads to. So that one I had just, I love seeing how it performs on YouTube. RV: (10:43) Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So what’s your most expensive one? So my most DB: (10:47) Expensive one is a, the one without me. So I do coaching with me, but without me, it’s 1495. It’s 1,495 it’s called the marketing map. And it’s basically how to market yourself as a creative with really tried and true services. If you are just a service because so many of these things that teach you are like, you have to have a product or a course or anything like this. And this is basically like I have a service if I was a photographer, you know, so these are photographers, different kinds of creatives that have one service to offer. How do you market them? And it goes through very in depth how to market that. And that I launched I did RV: (11:30) So hold on. So one thing just for y’all listening, cause this is interesting because in our phase one event, we talk about five ways to monetize a personal brand and we call them the paids PA IDs. But then you know, the S is services and we talk about how the fastest path to cash is a service is your time for money, but it’s the least scalable. And I think that’s really, really unique because you’re right, everyone teaches you how to sell one of the other ones, but to actually get more gigs if you’re a senior or get more bookings if you’re a photographer. So that’s really specific. So how many, so what’s, what, how many videos are in it and how long is it and all that. DB: (12:10) Yeah, and I will say really quickly, most people come to me with only knowing how to sell their services. And what I teach in the marketing map is, yes, here’s how to sell your service. But then I also give them a lot of ideas for how to eventually bring in passive income. Because the way I serve my clients is let’s monetize your service. Let’s get you making six figures at least because everybody’s working way too hard to not least be making six figures. And then let’s open up your mind and let that creative genius flow for how you can eventually change your business model to not be so service-based so you can not work so hard and you know, but a lot of people at the beginning of their businesses service-based. I think that’s where we all kind of start. And then we learn what our gifts are. So that one is six maps. So it’s six, I call them maps instead of modules cause I’m a destination wedding photographer, travel all of that stuff through it’s six maps. And in each map there are four videos. And then I update that with very good masterclasses about every quarter. So I have genius SEO people come in genius, you know, Google analytics, people come in, blogging people things like that where I’m always serving that audience by, by recording new masterclasses as well. RV: (13:33) Oh, okay. So that’s kind of you, you include them in like a growing archive of just specialty classes. How many, so, but, but then the set part of it is for, you said it’s six modules or videos. So it’s 24 videos. How long are they? DB: (13:52) You know, I know most people say only do like 10 minute videos. I think you need to know how compelling you are. And I happened to be a really good storyteller so some of my videos are up to 25 minutes long, maybe 30 I didn’t plan them that way, I just had so much to share on that. But I try not to overwhelm. So they’re very well organized. They’re very much by topic and they very much lead on a journey. Now I could have included another 40 videos of content, but you want to make sure you don’t overwhelm your audience. And one thing you really want to make sure with courses is that people can finish it because they feel successful when they finish it. And I have a very big mission to help people finish their courses with me because how many of us buy a million courses and don’t finish them? I have been guilty of that. And so I like to make my clients feel very successful. So very much like I led them on a very targeted journey that all over the place. RV: (14:53) Well. Well I think the thing that’s interesting to me as you go that one is 24 videos, right? Your other one, the $49 one is 15 videos. So it’s not really about, it’s not really about the quantity of videos, it’s more is it’s priced more upon the value of the information to the person about what, how, how translatable this information is into helping someone make money from what you’re teaching them. DB: (15:20) Yeah, I think so. Cause with the, how does she meet her film? I’m TA, I’m teaching them one basic skill. That skill could or could not bring them in, come into their business. It’s more like this could be a hobby, this could be something. I just want to learn for fun. The marketing map, if they follow what’s in there that teaches them how to have a half a million dollar photography business, which is, and, and they could scale it to even more. But that’s basically where I’m coming at it from because you can’t make more than half a million if you, if you only offer services. That’s my opinion in photography because you’d be shooting all the time and you wouldn’t have enough time to edit and all of these things. So it’s basically how to scale to that with the idea of, Hey, if you want to, then after the services bring in passive income and stuff, it hints at that, but it doesn’t niche to that. RV: (16:13) Okay. So then the, so the four, so for this one, let’s talk about the marketing map or just the one that’s 1497. So how do you market it? And you said you had a six figure launch, your first launch, like, so part of this, I guess as you go, okay, what, what skill set do I have that I can teach people your outline, the course. I mean, this is what we do in captivating content, right? In our event, we’re kind of like, okay, let’s outline it. Let’s block it all out. Then you come into a studio, you’re going to shoot, you’re going to shoot it, you’re going to have to edit the videos and eventually you’re gonna have to upload them somewhere, whether it’s Kajabi or Thinkific or it could be YouTube, unlisted if even if it was like your first, your very first course. But like once you have the course done, how do you sell the actual course? Like what are all the things that you, well, let’s talk about what you did in that first one and then what you do now because you didn’t do any paid acquisition before. DB: (17:10) And I will say in the marketing map, you only see me during the welcome video. The rest of the time it’s PowerPoint presentations with my voice because I created it all at home and my neighbor’s dog barks a lot. So I had to create these videos at like 1:00 AM so I was in my room, which hoarding with my voice, I would mess up. So if with ScreenFlow you can record your whole screen, I would have a PowerPoint. If I didn’t like how something sounded, I’d stop, rerecord it. And then you can edit everything out, you can edit out your ums, your mistakes, you know, you get really close to a microphone. Suddenly every breath you intake sounds so loud so you can edit all of that stuff out. So the way that I did it is I did webinar, a webinar funnel first, and I had read everything, Jeff Walker’s launch book, everything that said like do a 10 day, 14 day launch. And I just knew that wasn’t enough time for my audience. So I actually launched for six weeks and every week I would teach a live webinar because I’m really good live and I wanted to serve them out, answer all their questions. And so I would Mark it the live webinar on Instagram, which is where most of my following is. And to my email list. And every week I got on and did a live webinar and I closed some of those webinars at $40,000 at the end of it with people buying the product. RV: (18:40) And so that was it. That was, you’re saying that’s the same webinar repeated six times or six different? Yeah. DB: (18:47) Okay. Nope. Same webinar and I just got people on there live. And here’s the crazy thing, you guys, I didn’t have the course created at the time I started selling it because I think all of us have a course or something inside of us, but it is always takes the back the back, you know, we just always put it off in terms of other work and I knew if I had sold it, I would make it. So I not only sold the course for six weeks, it, I took six weeks to make it. RV: (19:20) Oh, so you were making it during that time that you were selling it? Yeah. DB: (19:22) Yeah. And I got their questions like I had it outlined, I knew what I was doing, but with more of their questions, I was like, Oh, I should add that in. Oh, that needs to be added in. And then I would just create videos and content every night. Like it was crazy. It was crazy. RV: (19:36) And your webinar. Okay, so your, so your webinar, so this is like classics and this is classic phase two brand builder stuff too, right? It’s like we’re all about the webinar funnel. You’ve got some traffic sources, you drive them to a webinar, you rock their world, like give, give, give, and then you tell them what you have available. Like it’s not rocket science. If you know something and you serve people and you create reciprocity, like you’re going to sell some of these. If you, if, if you’re, if you’re teaching on something that you should be teaching on, like something that you know something about, but the webinar itself, did you create like fancy slides for it and all of that stuff? Did you, so you take the time to create like a nice webinar slide deck. DB: (20:23) Yeah. Here’s the thing about photographers and knowing your audience is so helpful. Photographers are very much about aesthetic, so I don’t do like these masculine click funnel type things. Mine are very beautiful. They’re very much photography heavy. They all have a strong brand. From the way I present my fonts, like I feel like the visual identity of my brand is of the top that I have seen and it’s very consistent. So my slides are gorgeous and they show compelling images. I talk about, you know, how I took these images, you know, working with Harper’s Bazaar and Thailand and all of these things that people, you know, not to brag but to show this is what you can do when you build your business in this way. So yes, I had beautiful slides and I really taught something in the webinar that wasn’t in the course but very much served them and made them want more. And it really gave them the experience of, Oh my gosh, if I just got this much information off of D’Arcy off 60 minutes, what could I get from an entire course? And that’s the way I’ve always wanted my run my webinars is I want people to feel like what they got off my webinar. They would have literally paid at least $300 of information for RV: (21:45) Yeah, that we feel the same way. Like it’s, our philosophy has never been teased them, don’t give them anything and make them buy. It’s the inverse. It’s, it’s like over-deliver. And in fact, we, you know, for us, you know, grant Cardone has his 10 X rule for us, the 10 X rule that I think about is deliver 10 times the amount of value in advance of what you’re asking them to pay. And then, you know, it’s like exactly what you’re saying when they’re gone, man, I’ve gotten so much already. Like how could I, how could I not buy from this person? So, so I love that. But that, that was it. It wasn’t, there weren’t Facebook ads. Like in your case, you had an organic audience between Instagram and email that you had built up and you just said, Hey, come check this out. So you, the, the, the only thing you really designed was like that first slide deck. And then you had the outline of the course clearly. But, and then you were designing the course on the fly as you went along. DB: (22:43) And I think, I use my sense of humor in Instagram stories. So I called it magic marketing and I photo-shopped myself in the pitcher of magic mic, which, right. We did not know this movie, but I know that with a lot of my, I was, I was almost cast for it as I could see that they weren’t willing to pay me enough money for my abs. So I was like, so I think I use my hands humor, I use my, my compelling newness. You know, I, I went online and invited people there, made sure that they won’t want to miss it. And that’s the one thing about my audience. You know, everybody can create a course, but I think once you sell a course and people do not give good feedback and you kind of missed your boat or you didn’t know over-deliver or you sold the course, you had no business teaching and you didn’t have enough experience. DB: (23:34) There are a lot of people in the industry and when people buy from you, they’re like, Oh I’ve been burned before. You know, and I, I really think having a high standard, if you’re going to become, like you said, your reputation. So I make sure every course, I don’t make sure it’s perfect cause then I never put it out. But I make sure that like it is what I know. I can teach that I’m very good at it. I’m organized. Organizing the information is huge for people as you teach. And I’ve learned from you making sure you have organized information that is easily obtained, you know, and ingested by people so they can take it away and change a behavior that I learned that changed behavior from you at your captivating content. I have been doing it. I just didn’t realize I was changing a behavior. And that’s really key for courses. You want people to come away transformed. RV: (24:30) Yeah, I love that. I mean it’s, it’s kind of like the best marketing ever is when your students actually change their, their actual behavior because then they’re thinking about you and they’re doing things in there telling people. So I really, really love that. So, so, so that was how you launched the first one. Now what happens after that? Like how do you, how often have you launched, do you, you know, do you do paid traffic now? And I mean, yeah, I mean 1500 bucks. Like you don’t have to sell too many of those things, you know, most people to in order to quit their job kind of a thing. You, you could, if you’re good at building an audience and doing it consistently, like so, so what happens after that first launch? DB: (25:15) Yeah, so I think what’s really important after that first launch is to understand your content calendar. So at the beginning of each year, I map out my exact sell dates, like what am I selling so that I can preplan the content that I’m putting out that goes along with it. So for example, my next big course that I’m launching, it’s a new course. I’m launching it in may. That means everything from March and April is content that helps people see, Oh my gosh, I will eventually need this course. So I think planning out your content, selling three to four times a year, not being afraid to sell. I was on a coaching call with actually some people that we know about courses and somebody said I don’t want to be annoying when I sell. And you know, women are the only ones who asked me that question. DB: (26:10) No man is ever like, I don’t want to be annoying when I sell. And I think, you know, if you’re really offering a service then selling is part of that. So I make sure I sell about four times a year and a mistake that I made was trying to sell too many things at once. I remember I had a course, I was launching a group coaching program I was launching and an in person retreat and I needed to sell them all at the same time. That was a horrible thing. It was really hard to sell any of them. Well, and I did that last year. I was like, Oh my gosh, we plan too many launches at once. So this year we’re very careful. I have exactly the dates where I’m selling things. So from that you can keep selling one signature course if you want. DB: (26:58) Like Marie Forleo’s model, she sells B school every March. She then does live calls with it for six weeks and the rest of the year she’s putting out free content that drives people to trust her to then join B school. I love teaching, so I have a lot of courses. I put out one that was cheaper. It was one 49 and it answered a very niche question. It was how to prepare proposals. I do custom proposals for all my luxury clients, how to prepare those to make sure that you book that client, how to give them like you call a compelling offer to make sure you book that client and how to make sure that proposal speaks to them. And that course has been really, really powerful. And so yeah. RV: (27:52) Okay. Are most of your courses towards that lower or are most of your courses like South of a couple of hundred bucks or is it just kind of like all over the place? DB: (28:00) Yeah, I have. So with my product value ladder, which is how do your courses rank? I have one 49 I have two one 40 nines and then I have the 1400 so now I’m creating the four 97 and I think a four 97 course is a really sweet spot because people, we’ll be willing to spend that much. It’s not a thousand, right? So many people talk them selves out of selling a thousand. But it is enough that you can make a really good launch out of it. And those are, that’s the one I’m putting a lot of paid ads. I haven’t put paid ads behind the 49 and I haven’t put paid ads behind the one 49 when we relaunched the marketing map, I had hands-off did nothing. One funnel with Facebook ads and launched it again, RV: (28:50) The 40 this is the 1497 one you’re talking about. So and then give us a sense of that. Right. So, so yeah, and one reason, you know, like we would tell people it’s, it’s kinda hard to run like an evergreen paid ad campaign on a course that’s South of maybe 200 bucks because the cost per acquisition, the price is so low. You know, it’s hard to break even now when you look at the lifetime value of that customer, if you’ve got that kind of sophisticated tracking on the back end, it could still make sense cause you’ll escalate them over time. But just on that one funnel alone, which is really what we want to do with paid paid acquisition is if we can at least make money on that very first buy, then everything from that point in the future is gravy. And and you know, it’s like you can spend as much you as fast as you can to acquire new email addresses and stuff. So, but the 1497 one, that one is super valuable. You’ve proven that you’ve got a webinar that will sell that. So give us an idea of like, what do you expect from like a closing percentage? Like, how many people register form one of these webinars? How many show up, how many actually buy, how long does it take? And then, you know, like at the end of the day, what percentage of people might actually buy something at that price point? DB: (30:15) Yeah. So the rule of thumb is that you will sell from eight to 12% of the people who are on the webinar. I, I remember, I think it was Russell Brunson said if you sell over 12%, email me right away cause I need to know what you’re doing. And he sells a lot of things. So I have a really high close rate. So I have had a few webinars. I know why when I do live I sell better. That’s why I like to do six, five or six lives because then I choose the one where I really nailed it. And that’s the one I put for the replay. So when we relaunched the marketing map a year later, well actually we did it six months later. I think we needed to do a year because my audience hadn’t grown enough. But we relaunched it for 10 days and it made 60 K in 10 days and I only put a thousand dollars behind the ads. DB: (31:07) So that’s not too bad. That was like, you know, a nice 10 day thing and I did nothing for that one. But I closed it about 12% I would say I’ve had one webinar and I CA, I think it was just a really engaged audience where I closed at 15 and then I had one webinar where I closed I think it eight and that felt like the biggest failure. It’s really hard to feel like you know how to pick yourself back up after a webinar because you do put so much into it. So you have to give yourself RV: (31:41) Now was this eight out of a hundred people or is this 80 out of a thousand people? DB: (31:46) Yeah, I usually have about 500 people on the webinars. RV: (31:49) So that means like a thousand of registering. DB: (31:52) Yeah. Yeah. I thought I was going to 1400 and then they’ll, and then they’ll rewatch about about 20% rewatch, maybe 15. Not rewatch, but watch it. They don’t come on live, you know, they, I don’t sell as well on the replays. Because you know, you want to give those bonuses live. So when they’re watching it live or the first time they see it, give them access to bonuses. And I’ve heard that the bonuses are almost as important as the course. So making sure you have bonuses that truly are what your absolute ideal client wants and cannot say no to. RV: (32:38) Yeah, for sure. And I think yeah, so just so you have like 1400 register, 500 show up, and then so 10% would be 50 people. So you might sign up somewhere around 50 people out of that live. Then you’ll have another 20%, so maybe another 200 people watched the replay and then you’ll get like some smaller, DB: (33:01) Like 10% of them as well. Yeah, eight to 10. Yeah. RV: (33:06) And then did that, and these aren’t evergreen, so these aren’t always running. You’ve always done like a couple of launches a year and you’ve done like a launch model. DB: (33:16) Yeah, the profitable portfolio, which I’m creating now, that one will be my first evergreen because it’s the perfect formula for evergreen. It doesn’t need a big emotional hit to buy. It’s a very tech technique based course. And I think sometimes we have these technique based courses that sell really easily. Like I’m teaching editing, I’m teaching this. Whereas some people try and sell mindset or grand ideas or these bigger kind of things and that I think you really do need that one to one connection with your client. So the profitable portfolio, you could know me or not know my reputation and still understand the value that’s being led here. Just from seeing my work and my accolades. You know, my list of publications already show this woman is qualified to teach this. When you get up into 1500, 2000 my group coaching is 4,500 a person. They really need to have that experience with you. And most of my coaching clients have been following me for a while and really know and trust me. RV: (34:24) Yeah. and then Facebook ads and stuff. So are you doing a lot of that now or is that more like you’re learning, you’re learning that space in terms of driving? DB: (34:33) Yeah, I’m really good at Facebook ads. I know when to launch them. I haven’t run them full time, but we did recently starting in January start a lead magnet that’s really great. It’s for teaching people how to have an Epic website, 10 things to have 10 things not to get rid of immediately. And that’s my website. I relaunch it every single year. It’s a launch that, you know, having launches in your business that people look forward to I think is something that can really build your brand and get people who may not have bought from you previously to buy from you because they get really drawn into the story of your business and how it serves them. So we do that as a lead magnet that we’ve started since January. And and then with the profitable portfolio, I have a budget usually around three to five grand a month for where my business is and how I want to scale it that I’ll be doing ads for. And this one, I’m going to do the launch and everything straight off the bat with ads. RV: (35:35) And that’ll be so like for six weeks, just like three to five grand over the course of six weeks maybe. I would say three to five grand a month. Yeah. So if I go into six weeks, I was planning on doing it for a month and then I’m taking it into the, into the evergreen funnel and see how that does. Gotcha. yeah. Well I know I’m excited. Cause you haven’t been through our phase three event yet. I don’t think I need to sign up for that one. That’s the one. That’s the one where we get into all of Facebook ads and Google and.

Ep 63: Putting A Stake Through The Sacred Cows of Your Industry with Mike Dillard | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Mike Dillard, a real life entrepreneur, network marketer, information marketer, doer of many, many things, investor, and really a breath of knowledge and wisdom to, to learn from. So we got our, our top three and three were both aligned in what our big takeaways were and we just want to summarize them and give you the, give you the highlights. So, babe, why don’t you AJV: (00:29) Yeah. My first one is really short and simple, but is the utter importance of copy. Knowing how to write it, knowing what to say, knowing how often to say it, knowing in what formats to say. I just think that hitting that was no doubt, an ongoing aha moments for anyone who is trying to build a personal brand. And I love the way that he put it. And he said, it’s, it’s your sale and writing. It’s the conversation you would have in writing. And I love how he talked about how he was an introvert and direct sales, very similar. He said, but he became a millionaire, right? Like making millions of dollars every year, not over many years, every year. Learning how to write really amazing copy because to some degree he was a little too shy to do it in person, which I thought was really fascinating. So he was forced to learn how to do it, but boy did he, he learned. RV: (01:24) Yeah, copywriting was the big thing for me. And you know, he used that illustration, which is been around for a while in direct marketing, which is you don’t sell the drill, you sell the hole, you sell the finish the finish product. We sometimes say, don’t sell the journey. Sell the destination. Right? No, she says it’s the climb. That’s totally different. That’s not what we’re talking about. Well then listening to Hannah Montana, well, I’m not saying that I haven’t been listening to Hannah Montana, but that’s not the lesson here. Is, is just, you know, sell, sell the white sand beaches and the, mai tais in this beautiful sunset, not the, Hey, we get up and we loved to the airport and we stuffed our suitcase and we paid baggage fees and we wait in line. And so you know how many modules it is and how many lessons now many courses, like that’s not what people are buying. They’re buying, they’re buying the result. AJV: (02:19) Financial freedom, security, flexibility RV: (02:23) Case, its reputation, it’s reach, its influence, its impact, its income. The fact that we put you through a nine phase process, this with detailed exercises and tons of education, you’ve got to learn. It’s like that’s, that’s the hardware. So don’t, don’t sell that car. Don’t tell him that part. Tell him, tell him what the results. AJV: (02:41) Yeah, but I just, I, I just know for us at brand builders groups, so many of our clients really struggle with how to write copy. What should I be saying? Just even getting the process started and it’s one of the one probably singular main reasons outside of design that we even started our brands implementation services that we do for our clients is it’s, it’s a real challenge for people to learn how to write. Sales copy is a challenge. So that was my big first takeaway. Yeah. RV: (03:08) Marketing copy copy. Copy. Copy. All right. The second one for both of us was, it’s funny cause the AJ is a big believer in this about where does thought leadership come from and well against the grain is that a lot of, a lot of times you know it’s like, you know, if, if to be remarkable as Seth Godin says, is, is being worth re worth being remarked about than what is remarkable. It’s the things that you don’t often hear it either in a captivated content in that whole event and area we talk about what can you say that either forwards the thinking or is sharpens the thinking or is somehow different from what has been said. And Mike was a great example of that. I mean it sounds like he was disrupting, you know, early on he was disrupting the industry that he was in in terms of network marketing. He was one of the early people to go, Hey, you can do this digitally and that positions you as a thought leader that that makes you outstanding. It makes you remarkable is what can I say that’s, you know, counterintuitive or different or unique or advancing somehow what’s been done or what’s been said? AJV: (04:23) No. Yeah, and I, I think for me, I think you’ve probably heard this for years, the whole concept of look around, see what everyone else is doing and then do the opposite. Like we probably hear that. I don’t think many people let it sink in and then actually do it because it’s so easy to look around and see what everyone else is doing and be like, Oh, I gotta do that. I had to do that too. Everyone has a course. I need a course. Everyone has email marketing. I need to do that. Everyone’s on Instagram, I need to be on Instagram. And all of a sudden you look around and it’s like you’re doing all this stuff and none of it is really true to you. Yeah. Because you did it just because other ones were. And he really said that, you know, he took a look inside and said, I wanted to see what everyone else was doing and then just be like, but you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be that way. And he found ways of really doing what worked for him and his own uniqueness and then made it really apply to the business. And you know, it’s interesting cause Roy and I were even been watching the series with Andy Stanley who is one of our favorite pastors of all time in Atlanta. And Buckhead church is the church, if you ever want a two nets RV: (05:27) Bible for grownups is the name is the name of this. AJV: (05:29) Yeah. And I just, I think this is an amazing parallel as one of the things that Andy Stanley was talking about. He said the Bible itself is only in existence because something outstanding happened that was noteworthy, right? The, the Bible is not this chronological documentation of everything that happened. That’s not, that’s not what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of personal letters and proof that was passed down from person to person for years and years documenting and outstanding event that happened. Not all that different than how we would document something today. Right? There is no doubt that the Corona virus, which is very prevalent and all of 2020 I will be documented in a variety of different ways. When I think about this all the time when Sully landed on the Hudson, it was documented in a way because it was something that was unique and outstanding and noteworthy. And I just, I liken that to this RV: (06:31) Being remarkable, doing something remarkable. And you know what Andy was saying is if just if Jesus died, there’d be nothing to write about that happened, but that people saw him in the resurrection and all that. You know, whether you believe that or not isn’t necessarily the point right here, but it’s going. So many people saw him. It was something that happened. So many people wrote about it and that later became a collection of documents. But it’s like something big happens and it’s outside of the ordinary and that’s part of how you break through is like it’s, it’s, again, I think it’s in our context, it’s about what are you doing that is unique to you and how is your message, how does it separate itself from the crowd? How does it stand out? What is unique about it in one easy place to say is, can I be counterintuitive? That’s one place to look. In addition to, into some others. AJV: (07:27) Well, I think too, just on that, and I’ll make this really short, it’s, it’s truly looking at does it have to be the way that it is, right? If this doesn’t feel right to me, if this isn’t the way that I like to do things, it isn’t easy for me. Do you have a new and better way? And if so, why not employ it? You know, why not teach it? Why not instruct it? Which is exactly what he did. RV: (07:50) Yeah. So the critical, the critical thinking of not just accepting what is. Yeah, I like that. So then the other part I think was ads was talking about how do you do the ad spend and you know, running, running ads and that was a big part of the conversation. And the thing that was edifying for me to hear because this is, you know, Mike and I have met a couple times, but this was the first time that we’re really like we’re talking shop in detail was the way that he was talking about one of the strategies that we teach at phase three, which is when you get into paid ads, everybody thinks about just like buying an a lead for an ad that will convert. And really you almost, you want to almost separate that in, split that into and say, I want to buy an ad that helps me build an audience that helps me build trust that that first I know this is someone who’s interested in my content because they’ve looked, they’ve watched, they’ve liked, they’ve commented, they have engaged and then I will serve up the ads or the things that convert those people only to those people rather just walking up. RV: (08:56) You know, the, the equivalent would be selling to a stranger. And so going, no, I’m gonna use, there’s a two part two pieces here to how we use paid ads, build the audience, build a trust first with no real call to action other than engage with my content and then come behind it and create the conversion. And you know, that’s, that’s how you lower the ad costs and you know, spend less money and have more results. AJV: (09:20) Yeah. And also not look completely salesy to the external world cause that’s all you’re doing is your reputation. Cause I feel like that’s a huge concern that a lot of our network has as well. I don’t want to look like that person. And that’s just a strategy behind it. I also loved on this and we were somewhat aligned when this, and you know, you hear so many people talking about Instagram and Facebook, but I, I have heard this more and more over the last few months and I don’t know what it is. Maybe you have insight. I don’t. But Mike brought it up again and he said, yeah, well we’ve been doing the Facebook, Instagram thing, but our focus is shifting towards a Google and YouTube. And I know that we’ve learned some really cool things from our ad partner lie and spa about some unique YouTube strategy. So you want to share some of those? RV: (10:04) Well, yeah. Well, and also we have, we have an interview coming out with Rick steel here in a couple of weeks. That is freaking mind blowing around Google and, and paid ads. But yeah, I mean there’s a lot of cool things you can do on YouTube as an example, one of the things that we didn’t really know is that you can run an ad on a specific video, even if it isn’t your video. So like my Ted talk that has millions of views, we’ve never run an ad on that video, which is dumb. There’s millions of people who are literally watching me that we never have a way to connect with. And knowing that we can run an ad on that video, even if it’s not our video, is a game changer. AJV: (10:44) Or even at running ads on our own videos. RV: (10:46) Yeah. To our own stuff. Just to say someone, just somebody sitting here watching this video right now to introduce them to some things go and say, Hey, how can we, how can we move them off of this video into one of the funnels? Because you can target so specifically down to each individual AJV: (11:04) And YouTube advertising right now is so much less expensive. Yes. The wild, wild West. I just think those were just really interesting things that we keep hearing and popping up. And he brought that up. He also shares tons of really interesting investing ideas and he, as we were, he said is it’s a wealth of knowledge and there’s a lot of different things covered on this interview, so, well worth checking out, RV: (11:27) Check it out. But you know, look, there’s a sign to this. There’s a, there’s a structure and you hear people like Mike who clearly has been a student of the game for years and years and years. He’s learning, he’s getting coaching, he is reading and then he’s testing and he’s executing and he’s experimenting. He’s trying it out. And it adds up over the course of time. So we’re glad that you’re here. We feel lucky to be a part of your personal development and business development journey specifically around helping you build and monetize your personal brand. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 62: Putting A Stake Through The Sacred Cows of Your Industry with Mike Dillard

RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) Well, I’m excited to introduce you to somebody that I’ve known about for years, but it’s been some of those like at a distance, at a distance. And then finally we had a close friend that we both share a mutual friend connect us and be like, you two got to know each other. And I have to say as I’ve gotten to know more and more about Mike Dillard and has spent some time really learning about him online and I was, had a chance to be on his show. And I just really, really love this guy and I love what he’s about and I love in many ways the diversity of his knowledge, but also his central thesis thesis of being focused on helping entrepreneurs succeed, which is a story that he has lived several times, which you all know is of highest value and importance to me. RV: (01:48) Somebody teaching what they’ve actually done. And that is who we bring to you. So, as a personal brand though, so he’s had several successful companies and he started in network marketing. He’s done investing, he’s done online marketing all sorts of different membership and kind of training programs. He has a thing called ever grow, which I really, really love. We’ll probably talk about that. But in terms of a personal brand, you know, he’s had over 5 million downloads of his podcasts. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, hundreds of thousands of you know, online followers. And anyways, he’s, he’s gonna [inaudible] tell us how he did all that in 20 minutes. Appreciate it. Yeah, man, I I was so excited. So I wanted to start with the network marketing thing because I started in network marketing. My mom was a network marketing. I was raised by a single mom who sold Mary Kay. And so, now. I consider that, you know, an important part of my journey. And then I got into network marketing. So was it, it was in, you were at Texas a and. M, what was it? What company was a MD: (03:00) One of a dozen. Okay. You did a bunch of them. Well, you know, you, I’m in, I’m in college. It’s 1996 to 2000. So it’s a web 1.0 days where there was no social media. It was crazy to see a video online back then. Yeah. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and really the only option at that time it was network marketing. If you want to start an entrepreneur and start a business and become an entrepreneur for, you know, two or 300 bucks, which is all I could afford as a college student. That was basically the only gig in town. And so that’s where I got my start. Unfortunately, I failed at it miserably for five years. I jumped from business to business to business trying to figure out, figure out what I was doing wrong never succeeded in tell a very smart mentor of mine. MD: (03:44) Finally kind of slap me across the head, if you will, and gave me a piece of advice that changed my life. And he said, Hey man, this hasn’t been working for you for 12 different companies over five years now and do you want to know why? And I said, absolutely. He said, because if you want to get [inaudible], Hey, you’d like a professional like myself. And he was making about 50 grand a month at the time, which for me it was just [inaudible] this massive lifelong goal [inaudible] you have to become a professional. And for me, I hadn’t done that. I just gone from opportunity to opportunity thinking that that’s what was going to allow me to achieve success and make money. And that was a life changing light bulb moment for me where I was like, okay, yeah, everybody who’s walking across the stage and getting a check has mastered a specific skill when it comes to this industry and they are a true professional with that they have value to offer. MD: (04:31) I was like, I don’t have any of that. All I have is an opportunity that 20 other distributors have in the same company. Okay. And so at that point I dove in, forgot about the business and just started honing my craft, which specifically became copywriting and essentially salesmanship in print. I was the worst salesman on the planet. So I needed to figure out how to sell something without actually talking to people. I was super shy at that point in my life. And so I spent about a year and a half reading every book I could on copywriting and ended up learning how to essentially apply attraction marketing to the network marketing industry. I ended up writing a book called magnetic sponsoring that transformed that world. I became a public hero in a public villain overnight. Half the industry loved me and half the industry hated me because I was challenging an old paradigm. Right? Nonetheless, I became one of the biggest personal brands in that industry. I put attraction marketing on the map. I introduced that world to internet marketing and within 18 months I went from waiting tables to making my first million dollars at the age of 27 built a list of, you know, hundreds of thousands of email subscribers that turned into a multiple eight figure company and then left that business about four years later. Wow. Are you well able to share the company or no, it’s called magnetic. Yeah. RV: (05:58) Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today. So that wasn’t it. It was an education company that served the network marketing or the direct sales like industry. And I taught myself MD: (06:07) How to generate leads and how to sell my business through a sales page and a capture page and emails. I ended up building the largest download in my next company. So I went from zero to the number one residual income or in that business I wrote magnetic sponsoring as the training manual for my team. It kinda got circulated around other groups and they’re like, Hey, can we thr [inaudible]? And I was like, yeah, let me make a generic version of it. So I started selling copies of that online for $39 a piece. And within, you know, two years I was selling $6 million worth of essentially marketing courses to that industry. Mmm. And then had the, the distributor ship and the primary company. And after doing that for about four years, I’d really accomplished everything that I [inaudible] could ever have, possibly imagined in that industry and kind of lost my excitement for it and decided to move on to a new challenge. RV: (07:00) Huh. So that skill set you know, writing copy, yeah. As you described it, basically, you know, selling on paper. Is it still as relevant today as ever or less relevant or MD: (07:16) More? For sure. I mean, you know, if you think about it, everything we do is basically online today. And so we’re, we’re not communicating one-on-one unless it’s a rare occasion like this when it’s live. But 99.9% of our communication is what we’re saying on Instagram or YouTube or a blog or email list. And so copywriting a to me is the language of the internet. And if your business is on the internet and you don’t understand copywriting, then you really don’t know how to talk to anybody in your audience. So if your message is getting ignored, if nobody’s buying your product, if nobody is paying attention to your calls to action, it’s because you have not learned how to communicate effectively through a one to many type of format. And that’s essentially what the skill of copywriting is. RV: (08:00) Interesting. So if you [inaudible], is there something, was there like a big light bulb? Like a, I love what you talked about. If you wanted to be paid like a professional, you need to act like one. Was there a big moment, like you had like that in your copywriting career as well, where it was like a big light bulb that said, Oh my gosh, this is the, this is the key to copywriting that I have missed, know well, over the years of learning this and doing it, MD: (08:26) If I could sum it up into one sentence, the one thing that when I first went down the copyrighting rabbit hole, that was just a massive light bulb and turning point for me. A lot of people have probably heard of this, but it was a quote that says, nobody wants to buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole. And what I had always done is whenever I would try to sell something, I would sell it on, Hey, here’s how cool it is. Here’s the price or the discount or the features RV: (08:56) Or the, you know, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, nobody’s ever buying your product cause they want that product. They’re buying your product because they want the result that is going to come from that product. And unfortunately, unless you’ve had this kind of training or epiphany, that’s counterintuitive. And so if you want to sell a drill to me, you’re talking about how easy it’s going to make your life, how fast it’s going to drill a hole, how much time it’s going to save you, how it’s going to save you from injury and all of these other things instead of, you know, talking about the drill itself. So that to me was the big was the really big light bulb. Yeah. [inaudible] well I love that. So, so now fast forward to here a little bit into entrepreneurship. So you know, brain builders, we have these phases, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four and our phase four section we call eight figure entrepreneurs. RV: (09:49) So it’s really about, yeah, phase one is brand identification and figuring out what your brand is all about. Phase two is creating all the assets. Phase three is optimizing and starting to run paid traffic and looking at data, et cetera. And then phase four is really scaling that, that, that brand to a real business, which is one of the things that I feel like you’ve done really well, that a lot of [inaudible] have it. And, and I think you’ve also had some failures along the way. So. Mmm. When you think about scaling, what do you think is the, is the, the difference between the personal brands that scale and you’ve done this with different brands, right? And the ones that don’t, which to me, it’s also, it’s not so much that they fail, like a lot of personal brands to me don’t, it’s like they fail and go bankrupt. RV: (10:39) It’s like they just get lost in this sea of noise. They, they can’t ever make it their main thing. They never get totally clear. So what do you think is the difference there going against the grain? Both of my most successful businesses were built on initial ideas or concepts is that when, again, the socially accepted norm. And so with magnetic sponsoring, one of the first headlines that I wrote for Google ads when I was promoting that and headlines on the product was only suckers buy leads. Okay. And if you were in the network marketing industry, you have to ways you build your business, you go to your warm market and then if you burn through that you buy leads. And so for me to come out and say, only soccer’s buy leads, Mmm. Planting a really firm flag in that ground, in that industry, that’s going to be quite controversial. And so my thing was, you’re a sucker if you’re buying leads, when, when you can attract them to you, when you can reposition yourself as the expert and as a value provider instead of running after people, chasing them, twisting their arm, trying to convince them to join your business, RV: (11:53) When instead MD: (11:54) You can provide value first, position yourself as an expert and just have the world’s come to your doorstep. And the challenge with that is that in that industry, things had been done the F the F previous way for 50 years. Oh. Like, yeah, longer. I mean that, that the direct sales industry and the, and the whole thing relied upon, do follow the follow the plan, like follow the system, do not buck the system. So I came out and I said there was no such thing as duplication and I, and I said, you’re an idiot if you go after your warm market. Like you want to go after people who are buying opportunities, you want to go after people and sponsor people who have already built a successful network marketing business. That’s how you would treat this as a real company. You’re not going to go after. Yeah. You know you know, vegans and try to sell a mistake and convince them that steak’s healthy for them, which is what a network marketer would typically do, you know, for three hours until the person capitulated or left. MD: (12:50) And so all of those were sacred cows, if you will, in Seth Goden words. Yeah. That I put a stake through and that’s what put me on the map. Robert Kiyosaki did this as well with real estate. That’s what put him on the map. Okay. When it came to my second business the elevation group, I launched that after the crash of 2008 I was fascinated by investing. I just watched everybody get burned in that crash and I was like, okay, I don’t know what to do with my money. I’m certainly not going to go do that and I’m not going to listen to those people, but what do I do? And so I was like, let me go interview and learn from successful entrepreneurs who’ve made tens, hundreds of millions of dollars that have also turned that into real wealth and passive income and who got rich during the last economic crashes. MD: (13:37) I’m going to go learn from those people, listen to those people. So that was the core concept behind that business. The tagline was learn how to invest like the rich, and this is after the crash of Oh eight. So you have to imagine where people’s heads, where they’d just gotten burned. They don’t know who to trust anymore. And for me, I went out and I bought and studied every existing financial education product out there. The Motley fools, the Agoras, the Stansberry research is all of them. And I basically said, I’m going to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing. So they’re all focused on stocks and they’re all in a written newsletter and they’re all using these technical, technical terms. I’m not going to talk about stocks at all. It’s not going to be a written those later. It’s all going to be in video and it’s all going to be using language that your next door neighbor would understand. So, so before you go on, are you going against the grain just because you think that’s a great way to attract a lot of attention or are you going against the grain because you feel like there is some real secret truth to doing that, that you know, if everyone’s going one direction, then there, there has to be an opportunity over here, both both of those businesses were inspired by my own personal problems that I could find a solution RV: (14:52) To [inaudible]. And so I’m like, Hey, the stuff that’s out here is not working. At least for me, I need to figure out a way to make this work for me. And that in involves some new ideas and new approaches that were counter intuitive to what you know, currently existed at the same time. Yeah. You have to think of ways to break through the noise and the best way to break through the noise is to go against what is typically held as a commonly held belief or what’s always been talked about as a given and go against that. And again, Kiyosaki’s just such a great, a great way to do that. Yeah, his friend [inaudible] and my buddy Tom real ride who does his tax stuff [inaudible] his book is tax free wealth. It’s a pretty interesting concept. Tim Ferriss, same thing. Put him on the map before our work week. RV: (15:47) Yeah. That goes against the grain, right? So these are all examples of challenging the conventionally held wisdom and by doing so, people just plant themselves on the map. To me that’s the ultimate nuclear bomb, if you will, if you want to build your personal brand is if you can find that counter intuitive approach at the right time. It’s a guaranteed just rocket ship. Yeah. It’s interesting. I remember with my Ted talk, you know everyone had been talking about managing time, managing time, managing time and [inaudible] we said, Hey, there’s a way to multiply time, which is to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Yeah, it did play well. I mean it has done, it’s done really well. I mean the talk went viral, the book w we call them [inaudible] procrastinate on purpose, which unfortunately we should have called it multiply your time. RV: (16:36) But what came out at the time about the same time as my book was essential ism and the one thing and those books have done much better than procrastinating on purpose cause they’re even like a degree, like [inaudible]. I feel like multiplying time was more accelerating the direction people were going in versus the one thing in essential as, I’m like Wenthe opposite direction. They went the opposite direction. It wasn’t like accelerating productivity at the highest level. It was like do the opposite. Yeah, yeah. We’ll figure out condo. Right? Yeah. So Marie condo though the, the life changing magic of, of tidying up, tidying up [inaudible] so is that your stuff? Yeah. Yeah. You know, stop buying stuff, which is American typical American cheeseburger. It’s the opposite of that. And, and, and, and just to I, I’m not necessarily, I’m not, I’m not a I, I’ve, I don’t not like Robert Kiyosaki, but I don’t know his stuff that well. RV: (17:36) You know, I’ve read rich dad, poor dad, but I think that’s it. I have read tax free wealth interesting enough. And I thought in that book was really, really interesting. You’re saying he redefined the real estate space, how his, yeah, his original came out and he was, he was the first person to say, your house is not an asset. It’s a liability. Ah, yes. For sure. Yeah. Okay. That just got him vilified on every economic news show you could imagine, but it’s what put him on the map and it’s true. So for him to come out and challenge that status quo is what built his career. Yeah. Yeah. So that specific kind of concept. Yeah. That’s cause it doesn’t put cash in your pocket. It takes cash out of your pocket. So all right. I’m following you. I’m following you. So I’m interested in some of the investing stuff given the state of the world, but both before we go down that, that path, cause I also see an interesting connection between investing in entrepreneurship. RV: (18:29) I wanted to talk to you about reach a little bit for a second because one of the things that I, when I S as a, as someone who doesn’t know you all that well look back at your career, I go ah, you were ahead of the curve on copywriting and on web based business and then you were ahead of the curve on video courses and you were like one of the first, you have huge video courses and membership sites and then you are one of the early podcasters like [inaudible] some way you have been able to kind of like always be out there in the front. [inaudible] [inaudible] RV: (19:06) One of the things that has happened to me which I can’t go into too much, but I’m in a situation where I’m having to rebuild all of my social media from scratch, which is what a lot of our clients are doing. And I am going, wow, it is really different and much harder today because like when I did, when I did the first go round. So what are some of the things that you’re kind of looking at or seeing about the, I’m in the same boat. I’m in the same boat and that’s a big priority for me. But I let my, well, one, I’m an introvert so I’ve never really enjoyed social media or made that a priority for me too. I’ve always relied 100% on paid advertising to build all of my companies. Interesting. And I like that because I can control it and I can scale it. RV: (19:54) And I don’t, you know, I’m not at the mercy of Facebook or Google’s algorithms and I’ve always looked at building up the social media. If you are, in some ways whoever spends the most gets the most traffic. So that’s a simple, a very simple algorithm, but at least I have like there’s, I know, yeah, I made facetious cause it’s, it’s like you totally control the algorithm by how much money you’re putting in the machine. Yes. And so I’ve always avoided it, but now, now I don’t think you can’t avoid it anymore. I think you have to be on there. So now the question is, okay, how do you strategically grow it as quickly as possible? And so for me, this year I’m focused on, you know, really putting out a consistent, I think consistency is very important. A consistent amount of content on a weekly basis. My goal is three, you know, let’s just say 10 minute training videos a week with the pod, the podcast being MD: (20:48) At least one of those doing the podcast and everything else in video moving forward. Just finished a YouTube studio in the house and the house across from me last night. Oh. And then it’s just systematic distribution, right? So how do we take that 10 minute video, splice it up for all of the different platforms, format it, but the footers, the captions, the headlines, everything else, and just really systematize that process and just turn it into a machine. And luckily there’s a ton of great resources and companies and agencies that’ll do that for you quite easily. So that’s taken care of. And then at that point, I think it’s just a matter of time when you combine that with paid advertising and you can use retargeting to put a conversion based advertisement or offer in front of the people who are consuming your consuming your organic content, will then your cost to acquire that customer comes down dramatically. MD: (21:41) 80, 90%, versus going super wide with a broad message to a very broad audience. And so that’s the approach that I’m taking moving forward this year. And in many ways it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s catching back up to, you know, what’s been working. I’ve, I’ve been kind of working on the hydroponic system and some other big ventures over the last three to four years. So I’ve really been out of the spotlight for the past couple of years and, and now my goal this year is to kind of reestablish myself in the, in this space, if you will. So RV: (22:14) [Inaudible] yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. For those of you listening so that, you know, we, we have a thing called a content diamond, which is our process for taking that content repurposing basically across all the platforms from that one video. And I think but one of the things that I think you do also Mike, that is rare because we know a lot of the big influencers and social influencers and a lot of them have, they have, they caught the early wave of organic reach. Hmm. But they don’t do the paid stuff. And over time it’s like you get in the habit of going, yeah, I don’t want to learn to do paid if I can’t do for free. But to what you’re saying, it’s like the, the, the key to predictable revenue is [inaudible] the paid version. So you’re marrying the two with basically like retargeting. So you’re just going to build custom audiences with free content and then come back and retarget those people on. Are you going to, and are you, are you focused more on like Facebook, Instagram or more like Google, YouTube or a little bit of both? MD: (23:19) Both. Yeah. Previously we’ve been Facebook and Instagram only for like the last seven years, eight years. But now we’re going to move to Google and YouTube cause Facebook just got too expensive two years ago. Like our cost to acquire a customer to use ago like tripled. And so, you know, a $300, we used to sell a $1,500 course so it would cost us three to $400 to acquire a customer. And then all the way it’s shot up to a thousand. MD: (23:42) And so the, the retargeting of the organic audience has been the solution to that problem, right? But at your organic content and build rapport, build a relationship. And the way I look at it is it takes about an hour. You have to spend about an hour with someone in any capacity. That can be a podcast, a video, Instagram feed, whatever it may be for them to feel safe enough to buy, I spend about a thousand dollars with you. So we often see that on a webinar. If I have a 90 minute webinar, I know that I can sell a $1,500 product. If I have a two hour webinar, I know I can sell a $2,000 product. And so let’s just equate an hour of quality time and content with an $1,000 purchase. Mmm. And so if you’re doing that 10 minutes at a time through YouTube videos, by the time you, you’re ready to make that offer, they know you, they like you, they trust you, they’re ready to buy. And so the sales pitch doesn’t require an hour and a half long webinar anymore. It just requires a 10 to 1520 minute video. Here’s what it is, you know here’s what it’s going to do for you. Here’s how to get it. And so the, the selling becomes much easier, frankly, once you put that process in place. RV: (24:56) Yeah. And that’s that, that, that is awesome. I’ve not thought about it so clearly. I like that. But you know, kind of our standard thing is we’re going to, we’re going to have everyone set up for each product one video funnel, which is going to be basically three short videos and then a sales video, right? So you add that time up, that’s going to be somewhere around 80 60 to 80 minutes or one long video webinar funnel, 60 to 90 minutes. And it’s like, you know, $2,000 would be the high end, but typically it’s like around a thousand dollars. But it’s interesting to think about breaking that up into 10 minutes chunks on social for an impression, which you could buy for much cheaper and then drive him. So are you thinking that [inaudible] are you going to focus on building that audience on social first before you move them over or are you going to try to move them directly into a, you know, it’s your environment. So it’s all [inaudible] MD: (25:51) Both. So the way that we’re going to do it is the cheapest paid to traffic you can get today is let’s just say Facebook and Instagram is views and engagement. So I’m going to set my ad, you know, campaigns to convert for views and engagement and I just want my content consumed. So we just put a brand new video out this week that’s kind of seven lessons that I’ve learned after going through economic crises like this, right? And so it’s about a 25 minute long video. It’s just value. There’s no, there’s nothing for sale in it. And I want that video consumed by as many people as possible. So we’re going to pay to get people to watch that video on Facebook and Instagram. Anybody who watches a certain amount of that video, let’s just say you know, half of it, 30% of that, and we’ll go and retarget with another content video. And then anybody who watches that will great. Now we’re going to put a call action ad that’s going to RV: (26:44) Send them to a capture page and a sales pitch. And so the only people who will ever see our offers are the ones who have gone through at least one or two levels of engagement, which also helps protect your offer from being, you know, from burning out, which is one of the biggest challenges that I’ve experienced or lessons learned that I’ve experienced. Cause I’ve had offers that have gone, let’s just say global, but offers that or I’m everywhere all over the internet and you know, we’re doing eight figures a year in sales of one single product and I’m being recognized everywhere I go. The more successful your offer is, the faster you’re going to burn through that target audience and then your cost to acquire goes up and eventually it’s not going to be profitable anymore. And I would say if your offer offers super, super just, it’s just taken off like a rocket. RV: (27:38) It’s shelf life is about 24 months at the most. And so, unfortunately a lot of people in the education space are having to reinvent and find a new offer to replace that every two years. And a lot of times you can’t find you want or come up with one that’s going to be just as successful as that lightning in a bottle offer that you previously had and then you’re in real trouble. And so a way to get around that is to just show content at the top. If I’m releasing three videos a week, I’ve got three brand new ads and brand new pieces of content that are, I’ve never been seen before to show my audience and to continue to build it. And then the product that I do have, I’m only showing it to the people who are really engaged. It’s never going to burn it through the marketplace. RV: (28:22) And so it really becomes a, a much longer shelf life at that point, which is you know, critical to building a business. I love it. That’s, I mean we’re spending more of our budget every month on just that top part of the funnel. Just getting the content out there and less on a percentage on a percentage basis must much less actually showing the offer to the people cause it’s a more, a more qualified group. One thing to share with everybody. You, you may already know this Mike, but we spent a couple thousand dollars boosting a video, a couple of series of videos on Facebook to build this audience. And I can’t remember if it was auto placement or I think it’s called extended network where we, we we ran it, the video to the extended network. I don’t think it’s auto-placement I think there’s something else. RV: (29:14) But anywheres it’s somewhere in were you in, where did the ad set where you’re determining who you’re going to show it to and it was just like a checkbox. It was like, okay, let’s do that. And it, it screwed up the whole strategy because on the extended network of Facebook, they can’t actually track how long people watch and so they don’t allow you to retarget that audience based on other percentage video views like you’re talking about. And I was just like, I mean it was literally like, it was basically like we took $2,000 and threw it away because then at that point it was just vanity views. We didn’t actually build the audience, which is the whole point is warm up an audience, basically build an audience of people to show an ad to. And anyways, that was a painful lesson. Just, you know, forever isn’t it? RV: (30:02) Yup. It’s crazy how one thing like that can be, can cost you a couple grand. Well at least it was only two grand and not 20. Right. You know? Yes. It’s all I found it and didn’t say, Oh my God, nothing’s working anymore and pivoted some way. You know, and then you don’t really know. Yeah. Why? Because, well, and, and the way we found it was, cause we were, we were, we were showing ads that were supposed to be to that audience and the cost for the per acquisition to that audience was, was showing less. It was, it was costing more money to convert them dent to convert a cold person. And it was like, something doesn’t make sense here. Yep. So anyways in the spirit of opportunity and challenging times and stuff, I, I don’t want to let you go without stealing some free investment advice for you. RV: (30:50) Given the state of the world as, as we’re recording this, you know, Corona virus is, is out there. I know you know a lot about investing [inaudible] Mmm. I’m interested to hear what you kind of think about investing, but the part that I really wanted to highlight is why do you, what do you think investing has to do with entrepreneurship in general? Like why is investing a skill? Because investing, if you’re a big company, you have a finance department and they’re investing in, they’re doing that stuff. But if you’re a small company, it’s like, I’m busy running my business all day. Why do I need to also be learning about investing and what do I need to be learning about investing in? So that [inaudible] is something, again, you seem to have always Ben passionate about and had an eye on and an affinity for. Yeah, he, I mean the, the, the affinity for that was you know, it was making millions of dollars in my late twenties and I was buying cars and houses and toys with it and frankly flushing it down the toilet. RV: (31:47) And I realized by the time I had 30, I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. And so yeah you know, it was a, it was kind of hitting that new chapter in life that really inspired me to to go down that rabbit hole. But yeah. There’s a couple of valuable lessons that I’ve learned and that is that the, the concepts of making money and keeping money or completely the opposite. Hmm. Personality traits that are going to allow you as an entrepreneur to make a bunch of money, are they complete? Are they, are the same personality traits that will have you blow all of that money when you try to invest it? Because we typically have high tolerance for risk. Entrepreneurs are very comfortable with risk and so we’re like, Oh, okay, I’ll put all those chips in there and yeah, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just go make more money. Yeah. MD: (32:38) That work after a while. You know, I’ve, I’ve gone through that phase and it’s not very fine. And so for me, investing when it comes to entrepreneurs is MD: (32:49) Really learning about money management and becoming aware of your own personal personality traits and your emotions and how you’re wired to handle money. You know, for me, I noticed whenever I had a ton of money in the bank, I would immediately go find something to do with it. I’d invent a new product, I’d start a new company, I would invest it in a new and new place, but I would always deploy it somewhere. Sometimes that worked out a lot of times that didn’t. And so for me it’s been more of a journey or more of a, an emotional lesson than, than a financial lesson. Mmm. Yeah. So I think, I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned. Profit first, Mike McCalley was, his book is fantastic when it comes to this. This is a problem Ryan Deiss has talked about. Mike talks about, I talk about, and so it’s a very common issue with people with our personality types as far as investing goes. Now RV: (33:47) It’s one of the absolute, so hold, hold, hold on, hold on. On that part. So before you transitioned into that one, I think that’s super fascinating, but that sounds like a great book that’s in there. Sorta like the emotional, like almost like the person, you know, how there’s like the five love languages and you have like disc and stuff. It’d be like what are the personality types of money, you know, would be something like I’m seeing a quadrant and something that could be super duper powerful. The emotion Ambler. Yeah. Like personnel assessment and quiz and you know, $100 million business right there if you need it, if you need any other ideas. I think that’s really a cool concept. But Mmm. The other thing that I was going to say here is I just was curious. Okay. So it’s interesting. I’m a Dave Ramsey, not like Dave Ramsey. I came up with Dame JMZ also follow grant Cardone and I, I see them on like two ends of the, on the of the spectrum, right? Like absolutely no debt, you know, paid off home mortgage. Right. And then grant Cardone, like mortgage is the worst. You know, owning a house is the dumbest thing you could ever do. Have all of your money deployed rent where you live? RV: (35:05) Do you follow in the middle or do you like MD: (35:08) To understand why each of them are saying what they’re saying? And grant is saying that because that’s what his truth is and what works for him. So he’s trying to be an integrity and tell people, Hey, this is what works. Same thing with Kiyosaki. He says the same stuff. And then you’ve got Dave who probably understands that nine out of 10 people did not have the financial intelligence or emotional intelligence EEQ RV: (35:38) Okay to make investments like that and they will just end up losing everything. So Dave is like, no, we’re going to keep people out of trouble and just give them security and go that path. And so I see the benefits of both and it really just depends on on the audience member and which one they’re attracted to and what their education level is to what you were saying about emotion. But Dave Ramsey even says that like, I know it would make more sense to pay off your highest interest credit card first, mathematically or logically. The problem is we’re not logical, we’re emotional, right? And so we don’t pay off the highest interest rate. We pay off the lowest balance first so that we get momentum and feel like we’re winning. Which is, you know, in align with what you’re saying. So okay, well that’s just interesting. RV: (36:26) So, yeah. So before, before I let you run off, I’ve kept you, kept you way too long here, but the right now, you know, Corona virus at the time of this recording is like everywhere on the news, you know, in the house and, and, and all that sort of stuff. And do you know, do you have kind of any general sort of thoughts towards investing? Is it, is it one of those things where it’s like, you know, what, what is, what do you, what do you think about that? Yeah. entrepreneurs specifically. Well, I mean, I mean, I would say this to anyone. You know, be greedy when people are fearful. Okay. You know, I mean that’s, that’s it. And so for me, I have like been, I’ve been a big investor in crypto since 2013 I bought Bitcoin when it was $70. RV: (37:15) Right? So that’s a really high risk category. You know, it’s very speculative, but I put a small amount of money in that and every time there’s a huge dip in crypto, I buy more. Right? When it dropped down to $3,000 last year after hitting 20 K, I was telling my audience, Hey, if you’re in a crypto, he might want to buy some right now. I’m buying some right now. And then it went up to 12 grand again. Right? And so whether you’re in the stock market or real estate or whatever, we’re going to see and any and every kind of asset on sale now. And I think in that sales going to get even better here in the coming months. So this is the time to buy, whether it’s again, your, your, your favorite flavor of investment. If it’s on sale, buy it when it’s on sale. RV: (38:04) This will go away, this will pass. At some point, things will go back to normal there throwing literally trillions of dollars into the economy right now just like they did after Oh eight. And all that’s going to do is in flight. The stock market. Yeah. And everything else you know, it, the, the dollars devalued. So that’s my biggest piece of advice is get greedy when people are scared and people are scared right now. It’s time to get greedy. Yeah. It’s an interesting, interesting crazy times. Hopefully you can tell the, the both, the width, the breadth of Mike Dillard’s expertise here and experience as an entrepreneur from everything from the, the nitty gritty of copywriting and digital marketing to the high level concepts of investing and managing a business. That’s why we, we had them on Mike, where do you want people to go if they want to follow you connect up with you and see what you’re doing. RV: (38:55) You know, the best thing that I’d recommend right now is just Mike, excuse me, Mike Dillard to help.com and we threw this site up literally this morning and it’s just a little survey where people can go specifically during this time and answer a few questions so I know where you’re at and what your problems are, what you need help with, and then we’ll have some specific resources based on exactly where you’re at, whether it’s sales are going down because of the virus deal or [inaudible] you know, general preparedness or security, whatever it may be. We’ve got some great resources for everybody. So that would be it. Yeah. And not to mention a great course on, on actual physical preparedness that you did with a Navy seal, which is [inaudible] apropos timing for that. So we’ll put a link to Mike Dillard, health.com. Y’all can check that out. Mike, thanks for encouragement, man. RV: (39:42) You’re encouraging literally millions of entrepreneurs as you have, you know, did done all of these experiments and adventures in and out of different types of business models. And it’s, it’s like I’ve had so many people that are just like longtime friends come to me like, Hey man, I heard you on Dillard’s podcast. That’s pretty cool. And what was impressive to me was like the reverence in which they spoke about you as if they had known you and they had followed you for a long time and that they trusted you. And you know, that’s not the kind of thing that you build with an ad overnight. That’s the kind of thing that you build with a reputation over years. So that’s great to hear. Appreciate it man. And we wish you all the best. Thank you brother. Thanks for having me.