Category: MARKETING

Ep 37: The Marriage of Music and Business with Brett Kissel | Recap Episode

RV:00:00 Hey brand builder. Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m joined here by my wife and business partner and CEO, AJ Vaden of brand builders group. And we’re just breaking and breaking down for you are our three and three today of Brett Kissel, which I love because Brett introduced us into the music space and was really our first client, like well known client in the music space. And so this was a super, super interesting interview. Really great to see how these strategies and techniques and things apply over in the music business. So this is our top three and three. So AJ, why don’t you kick us off? 

AJV:00:45Yeah, so my first one I think applies to all of the creatives out there and I loved his entire interview. And if you are in any sort of naturally deemed creative space, so anything in the artistry world, you should really be really listened to this cause. I think one of the high highlights or insights for me that I gathered from this is he talks about how so many people who are creatives ignore the business side of what they do. And he said, that’s just a really big mistake because you’re, you’re depending on somebody else to build, run and grow your business. And that’s a problem. Right? And at the same time, if you had to pick what’s more important, the creative side or the business side, he says, well, you know what comes first, the chicken or the egg? He said, well, in this case it’s probably the creative side because the business doesn’t really work if you’re not any good. 

AJV:01:32So you have to be really good. You’ve got to be rather, it’s a great musician or writer or whatever. Your creative space is a screenplay writer, any of the things. But I think it was really interesting. He said, once you’ve got the creative side them though you have to have business acumen, you have to know how to grow a following, build a following, how to handle your finances, how to get brand deals, how to find the right management team, the right agent, how to get yourself booked. I E be a sales person. He said at the end of the day, so much of what I do is basic salesmanship. He goes, I was in sales, but not technically right, but considering himself as an artist, I have a guide to sell myself and my work to the small deals to the big deals that he’s gotten. I loved his story that he shares about when he was 16, he went down to the car dealership and negotiated himself a free truck and he was willing to do for that free truck. That was his first brand deal and he was 16. And just getting started and, but he knew how to negotiate and how to craft himself, how to craft himself as a barter asset in terms of getting other people to do things or expose your product or services to things. And I think this all comes around this whole idea of like your brand is a business. It’s a business. It’s not just about beautiful messages and pretty pictures and that, well it is, but so much more. It’s so much more. 

RV:03:00Yeah. I mean, any, any company, any business has a product, right? And like the product is super important. You got to have a, a beautiful whatever, a a very well functioning whatever. And it’s very important. But there’s all these other components. There’s marketing the thing, they’re selling the thing, there’s accounting, there’s HR. This makes me think of eight figure entrepreneurs. So if our phase four of that brand builders group, we divide things into phases and phase four is called eight figure entrepreneur. It’s all of the non artistry parts of the business. It’s basically, you know, teaching how to run a business entrepreneurship. Yeah. And that’s, that’s really, really important. And I think I also picked up on the brand deal thing and him starting really young. That was one of my highlights. There’s another interview that will be coming out with Julie Solomon. 

RV:03:48She talks specifically about how to get brand deals and the details you’re gonna want to listen to that as well. But the thing that Brett said that was, was really powerful and I think is important is he said your brand deals are going to win if you can talk about products that, that, that you authentically and genuinely are excited about. So. Right. So he went and got like this truck which, you know, I wouldn’t want a brand deal for truck. I would want some other type of car or getting a truck all the time. Well, I would like very off brand, but I know, but I would like to have an F-150 so you know, if anyone’s out there or you know, any company you want to do a brand deal with me for a truck. 

RV:04:32No, there’s a whole market for this because it could be the truck for the non manly man. 

RV:04:37Nobody said anything about not being manly. I don’t, that was another level there. Babe Anyways. Anyways, let’s carry on here. Not the non manly. I mean it is true. I probably, I’m probably more of like an Escalade truck or something with massaging seats. Anyways, let’s carry on. The people are interested in our, in our issues. So but, but, but what could you be excited about, right? Like what are the things, what are the products you actually use and just approach those people and say, Hey, you know, I’ve got a platform. And, and I this, you know, Julie talks more about this too, but, and also when Brett was really young, it’s, you don’t have to have millions of followers. Like micro influencers are a big part of the day. It’s like if you’re reaching a dedicated audience and you’re truly passionate about the product and you use it, you can help that brand when you can make some money from them and you can introduce products to your customers that you really believe in. Yeah. 

AJV:05:32Kind of enough set on the brand deals part, but I wasn’t really just, 

RV:05:35I can’t focus, I’m still thinking about the non manly man comment from my wife. It’s okay. I’m still married. Yes, that’s true. Okay. Well that’s I think a big part of 

AJV:05:45This interview is also around talks a lot about online engagement and the social media component of as an artist or as anyone. Like how do you really do that? And he said, I thought this was really interesting, that record label at the time gave him a strategy that he was going to follow. And I said, Hey, listen, you’re young, you’re in your 20s. You don’t wear a wedding ring. So I’m, let’s really position you as available and single and really trying to help people in their twenties, figure out who they are and where they’re going. And the problem was 

AJV:06:15He was married. 

RV:06:17big problem 

AJV:06:18And very proudly married and happily married and knew where he was going. And you know, he’s married and has got kids and he was like, yeah, no, 

RV:06:28He’s the coolest family guy too. That’s just Brett. 

AJV:06:31It’s not who I am. I’m going to be me online. And that includes my awesome wife who’s also an influencer in her own right. And it’s gonna include my awesome kids. And if that doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work. And he said, here’s what I have found out is that because I am my authentic self, which means covered in cookie dough batter or pancake batter, he said, I will get two to three times more likes on being my normal dad husband self than I will on F on a stage with Garth Brooks, 30,000 fans. It’s incredible. The engagement and the authenticity and the realness of me just being me is three times more popular than the, Hey, let me position myself as this single available guy traveling the world, playing on stages. I said three times more just being me. 

RV:07:25I love that. 

New Speaker:07:25Yeah, I love that. I dunno if I would get more likes if I didn’t wear a wedding ring. I’m not going to find that though. Boy, you’re not to know. I would never do it. I would never do it. And that’s kind of disheartening, you know, some of that, some of that stuff exists, but just, you know, being, being yourself is super, super powerful. I, you know, I, I noted the exact same thing. So that was one of my big takeaways is just real life social media posts. And it’s the same way. Like when Jasper, I mean fortunately like our kids are so entertaining, Jasper and Liam and we get the same thing, like lots of posts, engagement. It’s that real, that realness, that everyday life I think that people can relate to. So just do that. And you know, that’s a, Sam, not sorry to be referencing these other interviews, but we have these other podcasts interviews. 

RV:08:13He dives in deep, deep, deep, deep on technically like where to post your real personal stuff and then where to post your motor businessy stuff. And he’s got a really good strategy. So stay tuned for that interview as well. The last one for me, my third takeaway, which was just really huge and inspiring, and I didn’t say this earlier, but I, I love Brett. Like he is a guy that is just nice and everything about his brand to me represents like genuine and authentic and sort of like, you know, almost like the little engine that could story of he’s the true authentic musician. Yeah. That’s country people are just good people. Well, and here’s the word and you know, he is a client, so we’ve actually worked, worked with him and his manager jam, they came over and we worked with them. But this idea of the long shot is, is everything is like he was just a normal kid from like a small town. 

RV:09:07Right. That wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t make it as a country star. And you know, people see him, he literally, if you didn’t listen to the interview, I mean, he literally opens for Garth Brooks. So he’s a huge, like one of the huge Canadian act Canadian country music, male vocalist of the year on and on and on in Canada and, and he’s really just getting known in, in the U S but he’s touring with Garth Brooks. And what he talks about is he remembers when he first started, he was doing small customer appreciation events. He was doing rodeos like when nobody was paying attention to car dealerships, like these tiny, tiny events. And I, when he said that, I’m like, man, I used to speak at a Perkins restaurant for Toastmaster groups for like three people on a Friday night in a Perkins restaurant. I still remember what that feels like. 

RV:09:57And, and you just don’t, you can never hear that story enough because you see the glamour and the glitz and you think, Oh my gosh, it’s so far away. I can never be that. And yet when you meet these people and you hear their stories, it’s the same freaking story every time. It was the person that was willing to play the rodeo, play the Perkins, like do the small gig and do it over and over and over. It’s, it wasn’t a big break or some, some lucky find. It was that discipline regimented. Like this is my dream and I’m going after it and I will start so small and I’ll get better and better and better. And now just like, I mean we, we went and we went with Brett to, to with his team to see Michael bublé. Like he, he gave us tickets. It is like, yeah, I know Michael bublé and Garth Brooks and it’s like, what? Like, who are you? You’re like a real life celebrity. And yet he’s this, this country boy married man, dad, just like living on a prayer. Ah, I just, I love that his story, we can tell it makes me cry. 

AJV:11:02So my last point would be similar to that, but in a different respect of if, when you listen to this interview, he started when he was ven yyears old and someone in his family, I think he said it was his grandmother said, I just, I see music in you. And I think for so many of us we won’t be where we want to be without a support system. So maybe it’s your family, maybe it’s friends, maybe it’s mentors, whatever. But having a support group of literally a group of people who are supporting what you do, advocating for what you do, believing in you is vital to any success. Imagine if no e iin his family would have said, I see something in you. So we’re going to foster it. We’re going to buy you the, and we’re going to buy you the instruments. We’re going to get you the lessons. We’re going to take you to all these road shows and rodeos and, and country fairs. And 

RV:11:53Now they’re driving and someone’s driving you. 

AJV:11:55Oh, the things right. We’re going to dedicate time and give you our basement or garage to practice in. We’re going to allow you to start this band. And more than that, we’re going to take you down to those car dealerships and help negotiate and barter deals for you because that’s what we want to do for you. And I think as a parent even though my, my babies are really little, they’re o aand a half and set and ven mmonths now, it’s like this concept of like e oof my jobs as a parent, I E supporter and advocate for my kids as well as people around me that I love and believe in. It’s, it’s to let them know that they can do it. And then not just to say, you can do it, go do it. It’s to actually help advocate and support the process. 

AJV:12:36And if you don’t have, and you don’t have people like that, you need to find them. And is that they don’t have to be paid. People, friends, family, mentors, church, maybe they’re paid coaches are paid consultants, whatever. I feel like that’s what we are for a lot of our clients is we are this community. We are this network, the support system, because we truly do believe in sharing good. And the more that we can share, good, the better that the good guys win. But at the same time, there are people that are in your life that you need to share what you want to do so they can actually help support you along the way. And for him, it happened really, really young and it was fostered and it was really pushed. And that we need that too. Does it matter if we were ven oor venteen oor irty seven? It’s like we still need that push. 

RV:13:22We need someone to say, no, it’s worth it. Go for it. Yeah, it’s going to be hard, but it’s also going to be the most amazing ride of your life. Yeah. Maybe it’s not the road more traveled. But it’s gonna be the road that’s yours. And so I think all of that is to say is like you’ve got to have community behind you to make sure that you don’t give up or get frustrated or think that, wow, this is just as pipe dream. I, I’m from this small town and I don’t have these resources. I don’t have these connections. Who cares what I have to say because they do. And you’ve got to have people that are willing to say it matters. You matter, your message matters. So don’t give up. And I just think that was just a really good moment. As, and as a reminder, as a parent of like, that’s my job as a parent is to not just say I believe in you, but to help foster the development of their passions. 

RV:14:14Love it. All this just wonderful, wonderful guy. So check out the interview with Brett Kissel, Canadian country, male vocalist of the year, a whole host of other awards, great music. By the way, my favorite Brett Kissel song is called ree to oe tree, o, e. I’m counting down the hours. Anyways, Rory doesn’t sing as you can tell. But check, check out some of his music, listen to the interview, and just stay tuned. We’re so grateful that you’re here and we want to want you to know that we believe in you and you can do it. So stay the course and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 36: The Marriage of Music and Business with Brett Kissel

RV: (01:04)
It is a wonderful honor to introduce you to one of my newer friends. Brett Kissel is an amazing young man. He actually was recently named male artist of the year by the Canadian country music awards. And he is in his twenties, in his late twenties and is just a rising superstar internationally. He actually won an award from the worldwide radio summit in Hollywood that named him international artist of the year, which was previously given to people like Adele and ed Sheeran and Drake. He has won two Junos. He’s won 12 CCMS Canadian country music awards. He’s got an honor from the from Canada’s walk of fame six times Western Canadian music awards and he’s just amazing. He’s toured with Garth Brooks. He’s the only Canadian to ever do that. He’s a fifth generation Albertan and he just is a total family guy, has built his following from nothing when he was a kid. And I thought it would just be awesome to kinda hear some of his stories and philosophies about how he’s done that. So Brett, welcome to the show.

BK: (02:16)
Well, thank you very much Rory for for having me. What a glowing introduction. I don’t think there’s any way I can actually live up to all that stuff because open the awards, well the circuit and the awards season, a lot of that even has to do with, you know, some, some luck and, and stuff like that. But I’m very thankful that I get an opportunity to chat with you and learn from.

RV: (02:41)
Yeah. Well I’d love to hear early on, how did you start? Like at what age did you start performing and start doing concerts and just I mean I think you’re still very, very much on the rise, but you are certainly have broken through the mainstream in Canada now moving into the U S you know, we met you live here in Nashville, we got a chance to work with you cause we do, you know, you some of your management team, but like you’ve been at this for a while and I would love for people just to kind of hear the story of how you got started doing music and, and you know more than that just building your fan base.

BK: (03:22)
Well, well yeah of course. I mean, my, my, my journey in, in country music I think is very similar to a lot of others, but I’ve always related my career to that of athletes and, and guys in sports. You know what, I, I got my guitar when I was young. It’s like a kid hockey stick or a baseball bat, you know, when you’re five or six years old and you really take a liking to it. I was playing hockey as a little kid up in Canada. Every idiot my grandmother, she said that she saw music in me and so she got me a guitar. That guitar was a big, big thing to get because I immediately stopped sports and I just focused on music and nobody else in my family ever played music. Nobody’s saying nobody did anything. So the fact that this was really unique, I think to my family and to my extended family too.

BK: (04:15)
So I had that great support system and it was a thing led to enough. I started playing around family and then, you know, one family member, maybe they know somebody who’s got a customer appreciation at the local Ford dealer in town. So I go and I sing a couple songs as a seven year old there. I mean I didn’t know what I was doing, I just didn’t ever have fear of the stage, I guess then you know, somebody’s need there and and says, why don’t you come and play this rodeo in the nearby town and play a couple songs there. So I’m nine years old and I’m playing songs there and now I’m 11 and people are skewed, make a recording because we buy it. So I made my first cassette tape locally with a guy who’s a producer and we made like 500 copies and my parents and I thought we will never be able to give away 500 copies and yellow eggs at them.

BK: (05:11)
So we sold them. I mean people were buying it cause I was a little kid, like every grandma and grandpa was supporting this little boy and a cowboy hat, but I’ve a hundred cassettes, new record. And then, and then before we knew it, we’re opening up a savings account and a checking account and a business account for me because I’m making 500 bucks, 1000 bucks. And, and, and from there, you know, I really just started to learn how to, how to save money and reinvest into myself. And at that time, I’m like 12 years old and I got nominated for a Canadian country music award. And that, that took me from kind of a regional act to an act. And to get that national exposure on TV up in Canada was very special. And from there into my teens, the minute I graduated high school, I knew this was all I’d ever wanted to do.

BK: (06:02)
And this is all I thought I ever really could do. And it’s all I needed to do. So I’m true. We built a business and weren’t necessarily country artists or performers, but were businessmen, business women who would teach me a lot of those great things. And so you know, I, this a a business music was my business and I’m very thankful that I was able to then take those lessons that I learned as a kid and as a teenage bring that energy down to Nashville, which I’ve done for the past 10 years or about eight years living in music city and it’s been a hell of awry.

RV: (06:41)
[Inaudible] Well, and so, so talk to me about like reputation in general and I’m just curious about what your thoughts are on, on the word reputation. Like what is your definition of it? What are your philosophies about one, why do you think it matters sort of in the music business and beyond that just sorta like how do you go about establishing one

BK: (07:05)
Man that, that is such a great question, Rory. And, and reputation is everything in business no matter what. And, and I’ve seen it firsthand for myself because I know I’m not the best singer on the best songwriter or guitar player or entertainer, but I try my very best to develop a brand that’s based on reputation, a good buy. And the thing about it is that people, the fans, and I’m one of them to first and foremost, I’m a fan of country music. I’m a fan of certain brands and if you’ve got a good reputation, you want to see those people or those brands when, now Garth Brooks for an example has won everything. Like Garth Brooks is like, Elvis is like the Beatles. It’s like, I mean he will go down in history as if people were, we’ll use them like, you know, talk about it like you talk about shed spear or Beethoven or for stuff like that.

BK: (08:02)
It because he’s got an incredible reputation whether you love it, go, not have his voice or not, you know, there is an amazing guy and you want to see guys like that win. And it’s interesting because as good of a reputation on can, one hopes to build, if you’ve got a bad reputation that that even spreads like wildfire even further. So it’s important thing that you, a bad rap because it’s so hard to come back from that. I don’t know. I don’t know. Some of these celebrities and their stories are as to why, you know, things went up for them. I’m not, I’m not here to judge. All I’m here is to state the facts that a celebrity with an incredible reputation is few and far between the, you know, to find but a celebrity with a bad reputation or bad press or bad things. I isn’t it crazy how we hear about those stories even more so, so, and they, if that said, protecting your reputation and working to make sure that you’ve got a good one and something that’s very solid so that people will continue to support you and want to see you win, that’s kind of the name of the game.

RV: (09:14)
[Inaudible] Yeah, I, well, I love that and I think Garth is a great example of that. Of course. Aja is a huge Garth fan. We got to see him about a year ago and that was, that was incredible. I think he lives up to all the things that you’re talking about. Now. I want to talk about social media for a second and, and just kind of nurturing a fan base. And how have you done that or are there, are there, are there things that you’ve done that you feel like have worked for building your reputation off the stage? Cause clearly it’s like, you know, performing when you’re on stage is what it’s all about. You’re an amazing singer, amazing songwriter. We’ve, we’ve had your music playing around the house a lot lately and just you know, that is certainly one part of it, right? Is, is the performance. But what are some of the things that you do behind the scenes that maybe people either don’t know about or don’t see or they sh they should be doing if they’re wanting to try to like build the kind of engaged fan base that you’ve been able to create?

BK: (10:23)
Well, you know what the, the first thing that I’ll say, Rory, is that everybody has a different perspective on social media. And you know what? Well, what works for me may work for a, I dunno, this artist or that person and what works for Gary V. May not work for Joe Rogan. What works for Joe doesn’t work for you. And we’ve all got our different paths. But for me, I’ve found great success in being very real in showing vulnerable parts of, of my life. And I’ve honestly found it to be therapeutic, to not have to put on a show for my fans or on in Facebook or Twitter. When people follow me, they’re truly getting a real life inside look at I am and what I’m doing. And if that’s interesting, if you don’t find it interesting, that’s fine. You don’t, you don’t need to engage or anything.

BK: (11:19)
But I’m really happy that I can be myself and that’s where I post happiness and social media because like I said, it can be therapeutic to, to vent and to get things out and maybe get some advice from other people or from others. But you know what, I’m, I’m a performer on the stage and that’s for 90 minutes of my day. The other 22 and a half hours. I’m a husband. I’ve got three beautiful kids, two daughters and a and a and a son, Mila. My oldest daughter, she’s three. Aria is next in line. She’s two. And then Leo, our son, he’s six months old. So we’re in the heart of the chaos. And I think it’s very relatable because I’m no, every other family who’s going through the ups and the downs of balancing career and life and the beautiful chaos that is being a father and a young parent.

BK: (12:15)
When I show that side, I mean, you know it to Rory. I mean, it’s like that’s, that’s real life and people, people want to see real life. So that’s where I get the most engagement is, you know what’s interesting is that my, my record label early on said, Hey, you know what? This is our strategy with you. And I said, okay, hit me. What is it? Think you don’t wear the wedding ring so you can look available. Let’s not talk about your family too much. You pop your 19. Everybody’s really trying to discover themselves in their twenties into their thirties. So let’s, let’s keep you that way so that you’re relatable. And honestly, I, from the, from the minute one ice and I, we said, and I’m going to swear here, but I said bullshit. Like no way. This is who I am. This is what I do. I’m proudly married and everything like that. And if you want to go on just analytics, I will get twice or three times the likes of a picture of me as a stressed out dad with pancake batter all over my tee shirt hanging upside down on my shoulders. Then I will in front of 30,000 people opening for Garth Brooks at a, at, at a festival. People are like, okay, that’s cool, but this is relatable. So that’s kind of my stance on how I do my socials.

RV: (13:32)
I love that. I think that’s that and that it’s very fitting with your brand. I mean you’re, you are just very relatable and real and, and, and real life. So one of the things that I think you’ve also done really well, and I think, you know, we have a brand builders group. We don’t work with a ton of musicians, but it seems like more and more we’re getting into the space and we really have a heart for musicians because it’s, it can, it can, it’s such a, can be such a tough road financially. And even when you make it, it’s like you’re gone all the time performing. And so we have a real passion to try to help musicians create some monetary streams that don’t require them to like be out on the road all the time. Right. And you guys have done a a good job of this and I know, I know you’re working on other, other revenue streams and things, but I think you guys are very forward thinking in terms of how you do it.

RV: (14:27)
And one of the things that I think you’ve done really well so far is just like these brand deals and you’ve been able to kind of get some brand deals. You’ve been able to create longterm relationships there. And I wondered if you could just share a little bit about how, what is like, what exactly is a brand deal? How do you get them? Like, how do you find people, how do you charge, you know, what do you do? What do you deliver? Like just all of that cause that, that feels like a very immediate, immediately monetized double stream, if you will, for, for musicians.

BK: (15:11)
Well, yeah, I mean [inaudible] it really is and it’s such a, an interesting world we live in right now where social media is the new King now. It’s been King for a while, but a lot of companies are really are really figuring that out and allocating their investment dollars, fitting in public lists, city influencers and people on social media as opposed to the return on TV, which is ever changing a radio, which in a lot of ways is you know, is, is a fat that’s, you know, trying real hard to rebrand. And it’s still very important in country music. But in some areas it’s, it’s dying. In print, we all know is dead. So with all people are living on their phones, okay, we know this. So what does that mean for me? I’m very passionate about a number of products. And I remember my wife and I, we sat down and we thought to ourselves, what kind of things do we use in our lives that make our lives easier?

BK: (16:06)
Is it this is it this? What, what, what do you like to drink? What do we like to eat? Where do we like to go? What do we like to wear? It’s all of these things. And we, we took an approach because she’s a, an influencer in her own right. And we took an approach about genuinely wanting to talk about brands that we love. That was, that was priority number one because there’s authenticity there. That I would say if I, if I stopped and this conversation ended right now, if you are associated with brands that you’re authentically connected to, that’s a win win for both. That’s where we can extract money as the influencer and as the spokespeople for that brand. And that’s where the brand is going to win because you talking about something that they’re not reading from a script and they’re able to craft a message that is unique and doesn’t look like a sales job because that’s today’s.

BK: (17:01)
You can see, of course we need hashtag ad on everything for, you know, the whatever, whatever rules we got to follow. But if I’m talking thing, I don’t know anything about people are going to see through that and it’s going to look bad. So authenticity is number one and when you’ve got something off authentic, you can take it to step two, which is truly try to monetize and extract as much value as you can from the company because we know that we’re going to be more effort and a bigger return on their investment of sponsorship into us. Everything that I do, Rory isn’t cut and paste. It, it’s, every company has different needs and different wants. Some of them are a lot more about social media, some of them a lot more about what I’m going to say from the stage.

BK: (17:52)
And some of them are a lot more about the return is what they’re going to get from clients and entertaining important customers. For example, it’s very difficult for me to craft a message for an oil company in Northern Alberta. You know, on social media, they’re, they don’t care about that. But what they do want to do is they want to wine and dine certain clients to get the next big project or, or something like that to, to come here. Sometimes they need to educate me on their big environmental you know, changes that they’re making and they need somebody like myself to craft a message because energy in Alberta is such a hot topic for the rest of the world. And then sometimes you’ve got a juice company, Oasis juice who just want to be associated with families and we’re a great growing family.

BK: (18:38)
Then you’ve got a company like Mark two or exclusively intrude other denim company there. You know, they’re like a, they’re a store of everything from boots. It’s an apparel company and they want somebody who grew up on a farm and somebody who’s a busy douse, we can wear these on stage. It all fits. So what I do for this company is different from what I do with the vehicle company. And you truly make it unique. It’s, and then you can kind of craft a dollar amount to get from them at that point once you have that meeting.

RV: (19:10)
And so do you, how do you, like what, okay, so I love that. So I’d love the authenticity element. I love the idea of, of promoting the stuff that you actually use every day and you can speak intelligently about, right. What do you, how do you get them? Do you just like email the company website or call them or like go to their headquarters and walk in the door? Like what, what do you do to kind of open that conversation? I mean, you’re, I guess, you know, your stage, your name carries a lot of weight and your reputation, particularly in like Canada in certain circles, but, but did they find, did they all reach out to you or do you find them,

BK: (19:54)
So there’s a bunch of different ways that, that this happens. You know, what before my name had had any relevance in Canada, it was cold call and it was a, it was a meeting. It’s all about connections. You try to find someone who knows somebody. It’s basic sales. I mean, you can watch that on, on YouTube. You can see a fit, you know, it’s literally, it’s just basic salesmanship. So when I was 16, I got my driver’s license in my home province and I felt that there was a market of new drivers like me that were going to be buying their first vehicle. So who were they going to buy it from? Were they going to get a used vehicle where they’re going to buy brand new? Well, I found a company that had ills and you, it was called driving and it was based in Edmonton.

BK: (20:50)
My, my, our Capitol city two hours away, so I’d cold called them. Oh, 16 years old, asked if I could speak with the CEO. He wasn’t available. So I spoke with the marketing director and I asked if I could have a meeting, went in with my dad. I drove to town or into the city. You know, the next week, and I had this, like this presentation lined up. I, I, I remember doing it in school. Figuring out how to do a presentation. It was like a special project. So a beautiful do a Tang and everything I was going to do. And I said, if you give me a deal on a vehicle, I’ll be able to take this to my network of friends and other people like me. This is in 2006. So this was before Facebook was big, but before anything, and I said, if, if, if you’ll do this, I will try my very best to give as many vehicles and at least give them make make driving force be their first call.

BK: (21:46)
And it’s up to your sales people to deliver. I cannot guarantee you I’m going to sell vehicles, but I will do my very best. Well, it may or something, but he’s like, I’ll tell you what Chad, we’re just going to give you a truck. Like, Oh my God. He’s like, you believe in me. This is great. If, and then you know, you’re an artist. So if you can do a couple of gigs for us a year, how much do you or do you charge for your gigs? I’m like, well, if it’s me and my guitar, it’s $2,500 if it’s me and my band, it’s 7,000 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, well, I need three shows at 7,000 that’s $21,000 all ours. And then I wasn’t dollars back and value and basically then we’re going to give you this brand new 2006 GMC three quarter time. So I drove

BK: (22:37)
And now they send me into the city of Edmonton to meet with the mayor and as well as the CEO of the company to get higher releasing of, you know, 250 citywide vehicles. They’re the ones who send me up to Fort McMurray, Alberta to Suncor or this whatever oil company that need no 290 lease vehicles. So instead of the CEO brokering the deal, they send me in for, I don’t know, they call it razzle-dazzle. Like, seriously, I love that stuff. And now I’m a paid employee of the company and I’ve been with them. I’m 29. I’ve been with them for 13 years and I started as a phone call when you’re sick, who says you can’t do it? Blah, blah blah. Yeah, you can’t. Now my name carries weight. So now my manager or my assistant can just call up juice company and say, Hey, we’d like to make this work. Let’s sit down, let’s meet, you know, next time Brett’s in Montreal, we’re going to try and figure out a time to meet. So now it’s easier. But anybody says that it’s so tough. It is tough. I get it. But you can do it. I love that. Anyone who says it’s tough, it is tough but can do it. That’s a debt.

RV: (23:46)
That is so true. And so I want to hear about like so did you have a definitive moment where that, where that pivot happened? You know, we call it breaking through the wall or we have specifically she hands wall of where you’re like bouncing off the wall and being absorbed in the noise of the mainstream. But then you know, you sort of find your uniqueness and you create velocity and clarity and you, you break through the wall and then your life as a personal brand shifts from push to pull. And so now you know, like your story that you just shared a cold calling, that’s very much like a classic push story. Like you’re out there hustling, you know, networking cold call and talk in like doing whatever you’re doing, but then at some point it’s, it flips to pole, which is where it seems like you’re at now, right? Your manager or your assistant can kind of make the call. When did that moment happen for you? Or, or, or was there a specific moment or you know, like talk about that kind of like breakthrough point and you know, how did you notice it or how or, or, or, or when did you notice, or when did you notice it? Like I’d love to just kinda hear, like your perspective on that.

BK: (25:01)
Wilson and Rory at first, I honestly, I want to compliment you and to everybody who’s listening to this, I remember vividly one of my favorite parts of getting together with you to talk about the growth of my brand was when we talked about Shan’s wall, when we talked about that I was able to go back home and look, not physically look through my calendar, but remember important meetings and important times of my life where it was push, push, push and hustle and no return. And, and it was just, it was like I was beating my head up against the wall truly until you finally break through. And there were definitive moments. There wasn’t just one because there’s so many different aspects of my career. There’s even a way that you can put that into perspective for your own personal relationships where you’re working so hard to try and get something.

BK: (25:53)
But finally you make it through, you know, with your spouse or with your children. But when it comes to business and music, there were some really, really, really great times driving force. And that deal with me was a big moment on the entrepreneurial side for me and the sponsorships spoke to person side. I am kind of like the NASCAR guy of Canadian country music. I’ve got logos everywhere. I couldn’t be more proud of that. We know we can deliver, we know and we know the weekend we can give back to the communities and have so many things. It’s not conceded your worry. It’s not that like, Oh well I don’t want to pay for cowboy boots, let’s get them sponsor. It’s a lot deeper than that for me. But if you do want to think about it simply, well yeah, I mean why pay for this when someone can, you know, we can strike a deal.

BK: (26:45)
We can work together on this. So all I’m saying is that driving force moment was big for me on the spokesperson side. I realized I can do that at 16 and I’ve never stopped and I get turned down more times than people say yes. That’s the thing. You have a thick skin. Like I don’t care when people say no because I know I can go to somebody else. And somebody’s going to say yes one way or another real sudden. The spokesperson side that that breakthrough was in 2006 what May 27th I turned 16. I had a truck the first few, like literally five, six days later. So that was a big thing on the music side of things. It was the day that I finally got a legitimate manager in business. I was 20 years old and I’ve been doing everything locally by myself or it was me and my wife.

BK: (27:40)
We had local managers who were great. He didn’t have the connections nationally or internationally or specially in Nashville. I mean they could help book gigs for me, but that was just that the local rodeo in Calgary or Northern Alberta or Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that wasn’t the NFR that I wanted to play. That wasn’t PBR, that wasn’t the big stuff. So I needed a real manager and I cold called a bunch of managers, but I called this one guy and I loved him the most based on seeing him at award shows. Louis O’Reilly was his, he was from Saskatchewan. He was a small town guy. He grew up on a farm. He was starting to work with a guy who was an agent named Jim Cressman, who is also a small town doc. Grew up on a farm. I’m like, these are my people. They’re going to get my story.

BK: (28:28)
And they’re building up their own businesses respectively and working with some of the biggest names in Canadian Adian country. So I cold called them, flew them out to a show. I saved up money so I could pay for their flights and even put them up first class and everything like that. Put them in the nicest hotel in town so I could really like wheel and deal them. And I got a great manager after that gig in Louie for agent, shortly after in Jim Cressman who you know. And those were the guys. Now my team went from one person to three and I’m talking three pitbulls and we could go and full world out to reviewers. We had a record deal, which was another big thing in Canada. Within a number of years we had awards, we had tours, we had everything. We stripped the team in place. So go, I’m sorry, I’m talking so, so much for right here. I’m just passionate about it. But I just love the path that I was able to,

RV: (29:26)
And I mean this is, this is great. This is exactly what I want. I wanted people to hear, because I think, you know, even like becoming an international music star is that for most people it’s like such a farfetched dream. They’re like, I don’t even know how to start. And you think, Oh well, you know, you come to Nashville and you play in the Bluebird cafe and you get discovered and then you’re Taylor Swift. And it’s like, that is such the wrong way to do it. Like, it’s like that maybe happens one in a million, but, but what I love is just your story of just relentless discipline, you know, taking the stairs to use our phrase from our first book and just doing the things that people weren’t willing to do and like, you know, playing the stages and doing the business side of it and then finding your way to the managers and, and, and that opening doors and just like one thing leading to the next, to the next to the next.

RV: (30:15)
And I love it right now because I think, you know, in the U S like you’re still breaking through and I think it’s, it’s, it’s going to be awesome, like 10 years from now for people to come back and listen to this interview and hear like your mentality and approach and you know, when you break through in the U S will be like, Whoa, where’d this guy come from? And yet it’s like you’ve been doing this since you’re 12 years old, like plan local car dealerships and rodeos and then kind of kind of working your way up. So one, one question. I do want to have, I, I got one last little question. In terms of music specifically, how important do you think it is for musicians to really build the business side of it and the business acumen? Like you know, you’ve been really focused on not only getting brand deals but also helping you, you know, you’re, even the way you talk, it’s like how can I get the most for my sponsors and how can I help them? Do you think that that’s, that’s like a necessary skill set for musicians to really make it this day or do you think you know, no, that’s more of just like an ancillary benefit that, you know, if you have it good. If not, it’s okay.

BK: (31:29)
Well, you know, it’s, it’s a very interesting thing because of course, I mean all I can really, you know, go on is my opinion on, on the matter in, for me, the business side, while you’re developing the artistic side, I believe it’s a very important marriage and it’s something that everybody needs to think about and work towards on a daily because you can’t have one without the other. If is there one that’s more important? I will say yes, it’s the art side. It’s that you can have marketing ideas in the world and try to reach out to for dealers that have $1 million sponsorship deal, it ain’t going to happen. If you’re not good or it ain’t gonna happen to hit song. So you need that side. But if you haven’t developed the business side to be ready for when the art happens in something, then truly you’re missing out on a great opportunity to have longevity in the business. And longevity comes from financial security on Jevity comes from a sponsorship and connections and you know, and, and great people that you can connect with around the world. So you got to develop your, that’s what matters. But I think it’s very, very important to have the beef side ready to go.

RV: (32:46)
[Inaudible] I love that. Well, and I know that’s why, you know, originally when Jim, cause we were working with Jim Cressman and he introduced this to you and like, even the fact that you’re working with us, it’s sort of like very much outside the norm of, of what musicians would would be doing. And it’s like, that’s why you’re doing it. It’s like you’re, you’re always forward thinking to, to be set up to sort of like to prepare yourself to receive, you know, as, as the future unfolds. And I just I really, really love that. Brett, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more, either about your story or your music and just kinda like connect up with you?

BK: (33:26)
Well, thanks man. Well, I mean my favorite platform is, is Instagram. So you can just follow me, Brett Kissel. I can see if you want even a little bit more personal side of what life is really like following my wife to Cecelia. And then one of the greatest things is that, you know what, just come and see me at a show, visit my tour page on Brett kissel.com and I mean that’s kind of a really, really great way to see what I’m like on the stage. And then social media will show you exactly what I’m like off the stage. It’s a great life that we live traveling around playing music. And I, I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you orient and not talk as much about music, but to talk truly about well the entrepreneurial spirit that us artists, a lot of us, so truly do have. So I thank you very much.

RV: (34:16)
Yeah. I mean this is, this has been wonderful man. I thank you so much for sharing your story. I just, I think it’s so inspiring as well as instructional and informative to hear. And I think the last thing I want to invite you to share with people’s, if there’s someone out there listening right now and let’s say that they, you know, they kind of have the big dream, whether it’s in music or not, but they are, they’re at that moment where they’re like hitting their head against the wall, kind of like you have been and they’re bumping up against that roadblock and they’re, you know, feeling like no one’s listening. No one’s paying attention. What would you, what would you say to that person right now?

BK: (34:58)
Well, I think the first thing is, is you got to look inside and you haven’t, if what you’re selling, what you’ve created, what you’re working towards and what you’re working on, whether that’s an invention, whether that’s your song writing, whether that’s you know, any type of entrepreneurial idea. Do you genuinely believe that it’s gonna that it’s gonna work? Cause if you do and you’ve got that heart and soul invested into it, well then that’s great. Then you can go to step two. Now you can always rework step one and make sure that what you’re doing is refined and unbeatable because then when you go out to step two, it’s just about continuing to work hard, hard work, pays off. It always has. It always will. You know what? Two of my biggest influences are people that I’ve never met, but I really hope to.

BK: (35:49)
One day one is dwarf Johnson with his drank and his perseverance, his incredible gratitude. But his work ethic and the other one is one of the softest entrepreneurs. She’s fierce and fiery, and that’s Dolly Parton who’s developed and built that in music and, and, and Edmond and parks. And so Dolly and, and the rock couldn’t be further from each other, like look at them. They couldn’t be further from each other. But do you know what they have in common? Work ethic? They are workers in the room. And I truly respect that because hard work pays off. And it’s something that you and I talked about, Rory, that has been neat for me out work, everyone. I know I’m not the most talented, but I know that I’ve got that farming background and it’s in my blood. The rock did it. Dolly Parton did it. I want to do it to outwork everybody. So that’s what everyone else needs to do. Well, someone else has been out or taken a bit of time off or a holiday or something like that. Work your way in and take that meeting and work till midnight. Do what you need to do out everybody if that.

RV: (37:08)
Well, there you have it. We’ll end on that note. Brett Kissel, ladies and gentlemen, go follow them on Instagram. We’ll put a link to his website, Brett kissel.com Brett, we wish you the very best my friend. We’re honored to be in your fan base and part of your truth. And we’re just, we’re committed to, to see you break through in here in the U S as you have in Canada and around the world. We know it’s coming brothers, so, so keep at it.

BK: (37:33)
Oh buddy. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Hi to your family. We’ll see you back in music city very soon.

Ep 33: You Are Your Audience’s Fiduciary with Jordan Harbinger | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00)
Hey brand builder and welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast, joined by my wife, CEO brand builders group, J Vaden here to bring you our top three, three and three. Today we have the same three, so we’re going to share,

AJV: (00:15)
Well, not entirely the same.

RV: (00:18)
We never see anything exactly the same. That’s part of the fun of doing a show with your spouse.

AJV: (00:22)
Maybe the same three categories but they’re quite different points on the categories.

RV: (00:27)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I’m like always go listen to the episode. It’s, it’s

AJV: (00:31)
Especially if you think you want to have a podcast, be a podcast host, grow your podcast, monetize your podcast, or do anything with a podcast, you should listen to this one.

RV: (00:43)
There’s not many people bigger than Jordan in the podcast world, and I mean that’s the first thing that jumped out about too is you’ll see that even as a guest, he’s extremely direct. He’s very pointy and sharp. They used to teach when I was in radio coaching, they used to say that all the time. You need to be sharp.

You need to be pointy. And you need to be opinionated and he does a really good job of that and all these other things that we’ll talk about. But I think if I had to classify one big overall theme to his success, and Agee and I talked about this, we both listened to it separately and came to the same conclusion. UI think it’s the way he thinks about his audience. Yeah.

AJV: (01:21)
And his guests.

RV: (01:22)
Yeah. So, so the mindset that he has, you know, the word that he used that really resonated with me as fiduciary. To be a fiduciary of your audience’s interest, meaning that the whole point is you put the audience first, not the guest, and that means you do whatever it takes to provide value to the audience, even if it means you’re asking tough, difficult questions, which I felt, I was kind of surprised by that. I think a lot of hosts don’t actually do that. They don’t, they don’t necessarily think I’m going to challenge the guests for the benefit of the audience.

AJV: (01:59)
Yeah. It’s really interesting because we went to go see this amazing movie that I highly recommend too, anyone to go see, but especially women. We went to go see Bombshell and Charlise Theron and Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie, they were just phenomenal. It was incredible. But here’s what it really made me think about is that Jordan has this legal background and it really comes through in the way that he is so pointed and he is so direct and he does feel like he has this fiduciary responsibility.

And the whole concept of, Hey, having guest on isn’t to make them like you more. It’s not just to, you know, boost their ego so that you can get closer to people that they know, whether it be politicians or high level CEOs or people in Hollywood. It’s no, it’s to provide a good interview and to provide the answers to the questions that your audience wants to know.

AJV: (02:53)
And I felt like that’s really a unique take on what an attorney does. An attorney has a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to the person they’re representing. In this case, he’s saying, the person you represent is your audience, is not the guest. It is not the guest. And as I was listening to his interview, it made me think about Megan Kelly and specifically Charlise thereon who plays Megan Kelly and this movie bombshell. And they talk about this big, you know, Republican convention where she got a lot of hate.

You’ve got a lot of haters. But she was committed to asking the hard questions. It wasn’t about rubbing shoulders with the presidential nominee. And It wasn’t about getting more people and more viewers for a show. It wasn’t about making people like her more or her being seen side by side with a potential future president. It was about asking the hard questions and providing the answers.

Her audience wants to know and she got a lot of hate for it, but you know what? She got an amazing interview and ask the hard questions and didn’t back down. And she provided information to her audience, which is what Jordan is. His whole message is about as a podcast host, it’s to provide the necessary information to your audience and your audience are the listeners. It is not about rubbing shoulders with the guests and that is a really different perspective.

RV: (04:15)
Well, and I think, too, it also shares, that’s where courage comes in as a podcast host because you go, well, I mean that’s a lot. It takes a lot of courage, especially if you’re interviewing influential people to to ask the difficult questions so that that’s an interesting parallel with Megan Kelly. It’s great. Yeah. I didn’t know you were going to say that. We didn’t talk about that and event spontaneous stuff going on in Wifey’s brain.

AJV: (04:39)
I really love that. I think it’s really interesting for this whole concept of the fiduciary responsibility to the people you serve and in this case it’s your audience and it’s not just to have people on the show to highlight your show or try to be famous or whatever it was. No, it’s verified, interesting and relevant information that your audience wants. And I love that.

RV: (05:02)
The next thing that he, that he said that I think is truly different from a lot of podcast hosts was his level of preparation. Oh my gosh, it’s insane. It’s crazy. Like he actually reads the books of the people he’s interviewing. Like, thank you Jordan. That is tremendously difficult. It’s awesome. I mean it’s awesome, but, but the thing that really hit me hard about that was that he said, look, if you’re not doing that level of preparation, then there’s nothing unique about your interview of that guest.

Meaning that if you’re asking the same surface level questions that every interviewer is asking, there’s no reason for them to listen to your show versus to listen to any of the other hundred interviews they have done. It’s the preparation that you’ve done that allows you to know very specific, pinpointed things you can ask that are of interest to you, which he also said, which I think is important, is have people on that are interesting to you, but also that you you’re able to know this is what my audience would want to know specifically from this person. Not just the general stuff that this person says all the time to everybody.

AJV: (06:10)
Yeah. Well I love, I loved all of that cause I think it really provides a lot of insight. It’s like if you’re going to ask the same old questions, why listen to your interview, I could get this from anyone. But it’s doing that deep research and deep dive into that individual, their life, their content, whatever, that gives you the insights.

But that’s not what I loved about that particular section of this interview. What I loved is about why he did it. And he said, listen, I’m not exceptionally funny. Like Conan O’Brien was his, his example. Ellen DeGeneres would have been my example. And he said, I’m not exceptionally funny, like even somewhere on the list.

But he goes, I’m not exceptionally famous. I’m not this, I’m not that. And he said, so what was going to be my competitive advantage? He said, I needed a competitive advantage that set me apart from all the other podcast hosts. And I love too as as many successful people say the real genius behind that was his girlfriend.

RV: (07:09)
Yeah. Now his wife. Yeah. And, and he has a new baby.

AJV: (07:13)
I had a new patient, but I love that he said, I’ve got to find my competitive advantage in the podcast space and this is his competitive advantage. And I think that’s really relevant for all of you listening. It’s, you can’t just have guests on and interview them today and expect you’d be any different than all the other thousands and hundreds of thousands.

RV: (07:31)
I think a lot of guests, a lot of podcast hosts don’t even think about that. They don’t even think about the question, how is my interview with this guest different from all the other, the interviews that this person has done. Yeah.

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AJV: (07:43)
I just think it’s like, it just made me think, it’s like what is your competitive advantage? And this was his chosen path of, Hey, no one else is doing this. That’s for sure. Spending 10 to 20 to 30 hours of research per guest. Yeah, that’s crazy. But that’s his competitive advantage. So what’s yours? I love that.

RV: (08:04)
Yeah. And, and you might be sitting there asking the question, how in the world does he have that much time to spend preparing for the guests? Well, it’s because podcasting specifically ads and affiliates. For those of you that have been through phase one where we talk about the five ways to monetize a brand ads and affiliates is his primary business model. So this is his one way that he makes money.

Like it’s the primary thing that all of the things point to and that’s why it’s one of the four things you have to get clear on in phase one is what is your primary business model. Now specifically if you’re looking at hosting, whether it’s podcasting, but I think this would also apply to hosting a YouTube show or a Facebook watch page or a TV show, any type of show hosting of the day. This is really great because he talks about there’s really only two effective to monetize, and this really clarified for me because I’ve heard people talk about both, but they presented as there’s only one way.

RV: (09:03)
It’s either this or this and he’s saying, no, it’s, it’s one of these two. There are two. And so I’ll talk about the first one because the first one I think is more representative of the, of the podcast, like the, the, the former podcast I used to host. And I guess we can drop a little bit of a hint here. It looks like we’re going to have a future podcast coming that I’m going to be hosting that’ll be in this vein.

And here’s what it is, a general mass audience appeal show. So, so that’s the first way is like if you’re going to sell ads and affiliates, if that’s going to be the way you monetize your following, then you, it’s all based on how many people are listening, which means you need to talk about the topics. That’s a huge, yeah, everybody is interested or there’s a huge total addressable market so that you are attracting a bunch of bunch of people and you’ve got to have a strategy for constantly growing your reach because the more people listen, that is the more money.

And I think that’s what we all think of, which historically has been sort of the broadcasting and media model, right? It’s like all the major CELT, television, cable television networks. It’s like you need to have something that gets the most amount of people watching. But then the other way to monetize I think is actually more representative of what this podcast that you’re listening to is an example of. So I thought it’d be good for you to hit that right.

AJV: (10:28)
Narrowed niche topic in which you only talk about and try to promote your products and services. So it’s like you’ve got to monetizing ways of, you know, making sure your podcast makes money. You’ve got selling ads and affiliates, which is that mass broad general appeal podcast which Rory just talked about, yeah.

And then you’ve got this very specific narrowed niche audience appeal, which is more like the influential personal brand podcast and which we’re not trying to get tons of ads and affiliates even though we’ll take them. So spread the word, but it’s more about introducing people to what we do. It’s our products and services and how to grow and monetize. Your personal brand. So this is very representative of a very niche audience with a very niche service that we offer versus appeals to all humans or at least the majority and which you can sell tons of ads and affiliate.

RV: (11:20)
And I think this is really important for you to be clear on because people who have podcasts struggle with this because they’re constantly going back and forth between the two. It’s like, Oh my gosh, I need to get more listeners for my show. I should talk about these topics. I have these guests. Oh, but I, I’m not big enough that I have advertisers. And so I really need to focus on selling my services, which are really very narrow and niche and they don’t apply.

And so you’re like stuck in this conundrum and you never become effective at either strategy. You need to kind of say, all right, this is a mass appeal like mass market audience or this is a narrow niche. And, and this is if it’s narrow and niche though, you better have a product or service to offer for sure, which is a ton of what we run into with a lot of our clients.

RV: (12:06)
They haven’t quite got that far or they’re not clear on, they’re not clear on what their offer is and they’re not, they’re still not clear on who their audience is. And that’s, you know, those are the four parts of phase one. It’s what problem do you solve? Who do you solve before, how do you solve it and how do you make money solving it like that.

Those are really key. But the other last little thing on this is, is hopefully a little bit of permission for those of you that are in more of a narrow niche, which I think as time goes on, that’s more of what happens because, because as a medium has been out a longer and longer time, most of the mass market stuff, it becomes harder to kind of enter into that space because you’re competing against people like Jordan or Megan Kelly or you know, huge, huge, huge brands and huge companies.

RV: (12:48)
But you don’t necessarily need to have 5 million downloads a month. You don’t necessarily like your worth in. Your value as a host isn’t tied up. And how many downloads do I have? It’s in what love to what level of value and, and knowledge and depth am I servicing my audience and their specific need. And the better you are at doing that, than likely there’s more money showing up in your bank account, even though you may not have tons and tons of followers.

And I think that’s really important in your mind to get clear on and understand, just so you even know what metrics to be caring about and looking at and which ones not to. I agree. So there you have it. Anyone that is a host, go listen to the show. That’s what we’ve got for you today. We’re so glad that you’re here. We hope that you’ve enjoyed it. We’ll catch you next time on the three and three recap on the influential personal brand podcast. Bye. Bye.

Ep 32: You Are Your Audience’s Fiduciary with Jordan Harbinger

RV: (00:06)
Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit.

So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brandbuildersgroup.com/podcall We hope to talk to you soon, called into personal favor to bring you guys.

Jordan Harbinger. Jordan is really become one of the podcasts celebrities of the day. And it’s been so inspiring to me because he has hosted a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 12 years, and he didn’t just do it once. He did it twice, he had a show then he switched and started over. And now he’s the host of the Jordan harbinger show, which gets 5 million downloads a month.

So, you know, he’s been a talk show host, he’s a former wall street lawyer and he’s just really an expert on social dynamics and just kind of communication in general. And I just, I am just amazed at what this guy does and he’s been a friend and a supporter of me over the year. I’ve learned a ton just from watching him. And so I called in a favor to see if he would share some of the secrets to just some of the truth about what it takes to build a monster podcast.

RV: (01:50) So Jordan, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. And I gotta say, I love that shirt. I’m going to forget one of those. Yeah. Well we’ll, we’ll see. This is, this is a dad shirt. I know you have baby coming here soon, so it’s perfect. I’m about to become a dad. Let me know where to sign up.

I call this the dad pocket cause this is like the pocket you never use until you become a dad and then all of a sudden like you use this pocket all the time for just like bottles and wipes and all sorts of stuff that you get to look forward to the pacifier pocket. Yeah, I’m in. So well you to me are just like one of the models and the great success stories I think of the age that we live in.

RV: (02:36)
And you know, seeing your rise in the podcast world, but especially what’s inspiring is seeing you rebuild. And that’s something that we know something about. We’re, we’re rebuilding Brand Builders Group is now, you know, really just hitting our first year and you know, so we’re in a reinvention stage ourself.

And one of the things that we learned is that building a reputation is more than building a business because you can rebuild quickly if you have reputation. And so I wanted to just hear, you know, since we study reputation, like what is your definition of reputation or when you think about reputation, like what are your philosophies about it? How do you build one

RV: (03:17)
What have you done to create just the overall reputation that Jordan harbinger has?

JH: (03:23)
So that’s a really good question because I never spent a ton of time consciously thinking about reputation. You know, I originally thought, well, I’m teaching people how to network. I should probably walk the walk because otherwise it’s disingenuous. And I also thought about, well it’s the internet and I’ve seen people who do shady things and word travels really fast. Or if you do something that’s not so good, but you’ve done a hundred things that are good, what do you get known for?

You know, you get known for the shady thing and especially if whatever it is that you’ve done that’s negative is in direct opposition to what you’ve been doing, that’s positive. It tends to massively override that stuff. We all know the story of like Tony Robbins bullied someone

JH: (04:15)
It’s like the overriding thing that you think of when and it’s what everyone talks about. So instead of just thinking, avoid doing bad things and stick to doing good things to build reputation, what you really need to do is start thinking about how do I best advocate for people around me and for me as a podcast or as an interviewer, that means be an advocate for the audience of the show. So it becomes really easy to turn down dirty money, so to speak from, let’s say there’s an advertiser that wants to come on the Jordan harbinger show and they want to do like gambling ads, right?

Or there’s a company that’s like, Hey, we sell these hair loss pills. We don’t have a clinical study, but we’re going to pay you 35 bucks CPM. You if you’re not, if you don’t have an overriding principle, you start going, Hmm, that’s, I could use that money.

JH: (05:02)
And then, but on the other hand, it looks like this, but on the other hand, it’s only a short run. But on the other hand, you know, you start doing that. But if you just think, what would I do if I had a fiduciary duty to my listener or my customer as I would if I was a lawyer, I have a client attorney, client relationship, you can’t go, well, I really need the money, so I’m going to advise my client to do something against their interest.

Did you can’t do that? So I just start thinking, what if I had, what if the listener was my brother or something like that. What if I had a fiduciary duty, which is literally what fiduciary means, you know it comes from, it’s probably a Latin thing there. What would you, how would you behave? So then it becomes really easy to turn down stupid stuff that’s shortsighted because you go, Oh well I would ruin that relationship if I did that. And that’s the most important thing in the business. So I just want to do that. So I love that.

RV: (05:49)
That’s a great, that’s such a powerful parallel. And con just you as the post, you literally view your role as a duty

JH: (05:58)
To the audience, not to the people you’re interviewing to the audience listening. That’s a huge difference. Actually. It’s funny cause I, I tried to make it more general for our conversation here, but I see this mistake happening a lot among among influencers, but especially among podcast interviewers because they go, Ooh, I want to be famous. That’s their number one sort of priority. So they start interviewing like boring you tubers that nobody cares about. A singer that was popular in the 90s that they’re not even interested in. They have this really sort of aha gee, that’s cool conversation.

And then they pushed it out to their list and they’re like, look, here’s me standing next to some TV star from the 90s and it’s like, look, I’m famous to it. It’s totally self serving. Your audience eventually get sick of that. Or you have someone on who is a celebrity and you start soft balling them because you’re like, Ooh, if I do a good enough job, soft balling them, then we’ll, I’ll be friends with this person and then they’ll connect me to their friends.

JH: (06:53)
Dot dot. Dot. I’ll become more well known in Hollywood. I don’t care about that stuff at all. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t care at all. I should take that back. I care this much, this tiny little piece. Sure. Everybody wants to be liked. Wouldn’t it be great if I became friends with Corey Booker or Howard shields or Elizabeth Warren or fair trade, whatever, or you know, you can put in any name of any celebrity or politician that you want. Wouldn’t it be great if they like me?

Yes. But what would be even better is if my audience still trusted me, so I have to again, take that fiduciary responsibility and if it’s a question of shoot, well, if I ask her about his DNA thing that she did that was really embarrassing, she’ll like me less, but the audience will respect it because they’re wondering the same thing.

JH: (07:41)
The calculation is really easy when you say, I have a fiduciary duty to the listener because otherwise you go, Hmm, they won’t like me as much. Do I want to do this? Well, if you only think about the listener and you forget the rest, then you actually create a better show. Your audience trusts you more and you know what people respect you when you ask them questions that they know you want to hear and that you don’t soft ball.

Then like, yeah, cool. If you’re interviewing Quintin Tarantino, he’s going to have a temper tantrum if you ask him about gun violence. But if you have on somebody who wants to generate trust with your audience as well, which is kind of the point of doing an interview, if you’re selling a book or running for office, then you should be welcoming tough questions and you have to do it in a way that’s fair.

JH: (08:21)
Of course you have to do in a way that’s well researched, but your responsibility is to the listener, not to yourself and becoming more well known online and not to the guest and trying to get them to like you. That’s short game. Let’s talk about that. So so in terms of being the host, right, cause that’s, I think one of the things, you know, one of the overriding questions is how do I get people to listen to my show? Yeah.

That starts with having a great show, which is a great host. And what do you think makes a great conversation? Okay. So we have the backdrop of fiduciary responsibility to your audience, but how do choose which questions to ask? How do you determine which guests come on when you’re just like in the heat of the moment doing the interview? Like is there anything in your brain internally, Jordan that that makes you go, Ooh, I want to, I want to know more about that or these are the questions I’m going to do or not do?

JH: (09:12)
Like can you, can you just walk us through like your mindset on that? Sure. So when I’m, when I’m looking at guests booking, I don’t look at which guest has a higher public profile. I mean there’s some of that for sure. But usually it’s like what book did I read that I’m interested in? And I try to pick things that I’m interested in because I know I’ll do a good interview based on that.

Then secondarily I look for things that the audience will be interested in. The reason that that’s secondary is because I can’t really fake being interested in something. Also trying to predict what your audience is going to be interested in is kind of like a dice roll. And so if I’m thinking, Oh, I really want to have on this pop star because they’re really hot right now, my audience will love that.

JH: (09:58)
They can definitely tell. I don’t care because I’m sort of, it’s hard. Again, it’s hard for me to fake enthusiasm and I think other people who do, they think they’re doing a great job, but the audience still can smell it. I mean humans are smart whether they’re listening or watching, and if I’m thinking about what I’m interested in, there’s always going to be some sort of decent overlap in what the audience is also interested in.

Right? Cause I’m, I’m more or less a geeky, normal guy and so if I interview somebody who got kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Syria, which is one of my recent episodes, there’s going to be like 70% of the audience that goes, all right, I’ll listen to this. Especially if they know that I only do really interesting stuff. Most of the time they’ll give it a shot. Even if they’re thinking photographer, that kid kidnapped by Al Qaeda, I’m not.

JH: (10:45)
Why? What do I care that doesn’t affect my life? People will go, well Jordan only interviews people that are interesting. So I’ll get that person on my enthusiasm then becomes contagious. The audience really gets involved in the story and then they like it after all. So I routine what you want and what I routinely shoot for is I’ll have, like I routinely had somebody on Chelsea handler, she’s kind of a very controversial comedian. Some people hated her and I thought she had an interesting backstory.

I don’t really care for her necessarily her current political views or whatever. But I, I liked her backstory cause she grew up in this very unique way and made something of herself really early on. She’s very driven. So I’m looking for the audience saying things like, and this is kind of a little goal saying things like, I don’t like her but I’m going to listen to this.

JH: (11:30)
And then after the show going, I still don’t really like her but great interview or I like her a lot more now than I did before because you want to make somebody appealing. And the way that you do that is by being interested. So you have to be interested in them first. You can’t predict where the audience is gonna go unless you’ve done some sort of crazy internet targeting, and again, you’re still going to be wrong.

You know, I just, people always go, how did you decide where to pivot and where to take your interviews? And the answer is my own curiosity within limitations. You know, if I could talk about North Korea all the time, I probably would do too many episodes on that and people would go, okay, this guy just talks about North Korea all the time. Who cares? So I have to have like some railings around the edges of the arena, if you will, some boundaries.

JH: (12:15)
But I’m not always trying to push the envelope on those things. Or I should, I, sorry. I am always trying to push the envelope on those things and do shows that might be a little bit outside my comfort zone or the audience’s comfort zone. But I’m not going for shock value. I’m not going for the Supreme amount of celebrity in limelight.

Because when you do that, especially if you have a new show, you’re commoditizing yourself. Like if you go, all right, I want to interview entrepreneurs, and then you interview all of the same people that every other host has had. You’re not interested. You just feel like you need to check them off your list. Your audience is going to cue your, you just phoning it in and you’ve become a commodity. You’re another podcast or another influencer, another interviewer that’s doing the same thing as everybody else.

JH: (13:00)
There’s no, there’s nothing about it that makes it more interesting, right? I’m not sure if you’re a comedian, you have your own brand of humor, but if you’re a journalist and you get, there’s a reason journalists always want to be first because as soon as somebody else gets a story, nobody really cares about the other.

The second and third version of the same thing. So you have to bring something unique to the table and usually that’s your personality, but when you’re first starting, I mean, I’ve been doing this for 12 years. For the first eight years, my personality was not that freaking interesting. All right. It’s still a work in progress. So like for the first few years when you’re learning to be a performer, if you’re, let’s say you’re a singer, you probably sound a lot like your voice teacher. You probably sound a lot like other people in the choir, you know, if you’re a guitarist, you asked that.

JH: (13:47)
So like how’d you get past that time? So time, just time, time and practice, right? Like, look, I’m sure there’s somebody like Jim Morrison who’s played the guitar and then for the first few years they sound like everyone else and then really quickly they branch off and they’re doing their own thing or like a David Bowie type figure.

But if you can really dig to the bottom of everyone’s talent, like any musician, just to relate it to that, there’s definitely a five to 10 year period for most musicians where they sound exactly like everyone else who plays the guitar because they’re learning the chords, they’re learning all the different techniques. They’re learning the notes, learning the risks, they’re learning how to play standing up, sitting down. They are singing along to their favorite songs. They’re not writing that much new stuff, man. You know, like it was a Vici who’s an electronic music artist that has since passed away.

JH: (14:32)
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him. Super well known electronic artists, his, and in the documentary they talk with him and they say, I mean, he says something along the lines of, yeah, I just spent years remaking other people’s music. I made a new track every day and I just remade all the stuff that I could.

And then when I was finished, I’d remade everything. Then I started making new stuff and I thought, that’s a really interesting creative process. And I bet you it’s not that far away from a kid who picks up a guitar at age 12, starts playing stairway to heaven and then graduates to whatever sort of new rock he’s playing. And then one day goes, what if there was a song like this and then starts playing? It’s like, I should write this down. But that’s like five to 10 years into the game.

JH: (15:15)
They don’t pick up a guitar and go, let me write a new song right now. They’re trying to figure out how to hold their hand this way and hold their other hand this way and not mess it all up. Well on one thing that even comes out of that, that that may be like obvious to you, but I actually think is not that obvious to people, is that you as the host are a performer. Like you are a part.

You’re not just, you’re not just ahead regurgitating questions like your personalities and active part of of it. And that’s what people are, even though it’s like you have guests every week, they, their listeners really become bonded to you more than anybody. They do. Yeah. Your Larry King told me, Hey man, don’t talk too much during your show because you’re there every week. So I went through this curve that was good and bad advice, right?

JH: (16:01)
Because of course, back in his day, he might’ve been one of the three interview shows that was on the radio. So of course, you know, let the guest have their moment in the sun and I still do that, you know, I still want them to do that. I think a lot of hosts, most hosts in fact talk too much, but you have to play a part in it because again, if you’re not preparing a lot and you don’t have a unique perspective, there is no reason for anyone to listen to you because you’re a commodity.

You’ve commoditized yourself. So me not being hilarious and funny or anything like that, me having a normal sort of no BS personality, I’ll crack a joke here and there, but I have to outwork everyone. That’s how I became a lawyer. I’m not talented or as any kind of genius.

JH: (16:43)
I had to outwork everyone and that’s what I do on the show. I’ll prepare 10 or 20 hours for an interview, sometimes 30 if it’s a really big guest that has a lot of material in a long career. Wow. In 10 to 38 hours doing the prep and people can’t even believe that, but it’s like, what other competitive advantage do I have? I don’t have a James Earl Jones voice. I’m not Conan O’Brien. Funny. I don’t have Howard Stern’s pull when it comes to guests and a huge audience and a staff of 20 people in the back room typing funny jokes to say to me that pop up on a monitor. Right. I don’t have that.

What I have is the, the work ethic that says, you know a Jordan, you got Daniel Goldman, you know the founder or the creator, the idea of emotional intelligence. He’s got three books, read those three books, read those three books and then when he shows up, I want him to say, wow, you know this stuff better than I do cause it’s been awhile and that’s exactly what happened.

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JH: (17:35)
You know, he goes, can we took a break? And he goes, I think you know my work better than I do. Cause it’s been so long now. Granted it’s been a decade of change since he wrote that. So you don’t expect him to remember it, but that’s what you want. You don’t want them going, well that’s really how this works. That’s not really how that works. Thanks for reading the Wikipedia and or the back of the book and then showing up. You want to show up with so many notes that are so well organized that you barely have to look at them and you want to tell them something.

Let me put it this way. I have a little checkbox in the back of my brain where I light up when the guest says, I’ve never thought about this that way, but now that you mention it, that’s a good point. I’m going to use that or some variation of that. I want to have this content down in my head so well that I’m plugging in something to something else that they have that they didn’t even see that connection. Or I use a metaphor that they’d never thought of

RV: (18:28)
And I love this cause that’s just like what you’re talking about, you know, to use the take the stairs metaphor. You know, that was my first book, which has been out a while now, but it’s like the real story of the work you’re doing behind the scenes that nobody sees. They just assume, Oh well I got on a podcast network or I had a bazillion Twitter followers or whatever. And it’s just like that right there is, is the difference. And nobody wants to hear it. But that is so I think that’s so powerful.

JH: (18:58)
Hey, you know it’s funny you said nobody wants to hear it. It’s so true. There was a eight year period. I’m a slow learner. There was an eight year period where, or seven I think where I didn’t read the book or do that amount of prep. And I remember my wife, she, my girlfriend at the time, she goes yeah, I mean are you prepared? Are you ready?

And I’m like, man, I’m fine. And then I had Robert Green who wrote the S the laws of human nature or 48 laws of power, like really, really prolific, amazing author wrote mastery. Just a really genius level creator. There aren’t that many authors like him now who write 800 page books and you know, you could read it, it could have been twice as long. And I had him coming on for the seventh anniversary episode of the show and I thought, okay, I better not screw this one up.

JH: (19:46)
He said, why did it take so long to schedule this? And I remember going, well, I thought it would be a waste of time for you. I wanted to do it really well. And he said, well, I’ve done a lot of media. This was really well prepared. You did a good job. And I was so lit up and stoked.  I said, okay, what’s the difference between the way I did this one and the way I did the other ones? And the answer was, I read the book recently and I thought, okay, well I can’t just read the book for every interview. My wife goes, why not? And I go, well, it’s too much work.

And she goes, yeah, but you want the show to be really good. That’s like your number one priority. Why don’t you just figure out how to read the book? And I went, Oh yeah, I guess I should probably do that. So then I started figuring out ways to read faster, you know, get the Kindle and the highlighter. And then it was like audio books and then it was like the audio player. Get a customized one, it goes really fast and pause is real, you know, that kind of thing. So I have this whole system where I can read really, really fast and it’s not speed reading. It’s like audio listening. I just you, you have to work up to it and there’s all

RV: (20:42)
Or whatever. Yeah.

JH: (20:43)
Yeah. But like silences are removed by this other app that’s not the audible app cause the audible app can’t do that. And like it’s really, it’s like 1.9 X and not two cause two’s too fast. But 1.75 is too slow. There’s a whole thing that I got right that I do and it depends on the narrator and all this stuff. So I take the notes though on another device so I don’t have to pause. There’s all kinds of stuff that I’m doing so that I can do that work. But there’s just no shortcut for doing the work.

And I see other hosts and they’re like, Oh I don’t even read the book. I have my assistant read it and then they send me talking points and I’m like, they’re missing the good stuff because the good stuff is not summarized. Rorys book take the stairs, the good stuff is this little between the lines sometimes literally details that other people ignore.

JH: (21:27)
So one case in point, I read a book a long time ago, I can’t remember the author and she was like an infectious disease specialist and she was African American literally, you know, and she had been adopted from Africa but I didn’t know that. I just knew she was a specialist in this field of medicine.

I read the book and I’ve read, I’ve read the dedication and it says like to mom and dad, my life would’ve been the same. I’m like okay, nothing special there. And then the back, the epilogue, not even like the thing at the end that’s not even written by the author was like her bio and it was like her extended bio, sorry. It’s like she was born in Africa and then her family to give her up and then she worked at, she was at this icon convent. Then a white family came and brought her to Canada.

JH: (22:07)
And so she grew up with this really unique, multi-racial kind of background and is now an infectious disease doctor in Africa. And she’s like, but for this amazing opportunity, I wouldn’t have had the chance to like leave this place, go there, get a medical education, now I’m giving back. That’s the whole story. Not Ebola or whatever.

That’s a, that is a prop. The real story is her life leaving this, this place, going to the Western world, realizing how much she had and then giving back. That’s the story. But you don’t get that when you read frickin Blinkist and you get a five bullet point summary or you have your VA read it for 20 bucks and then send you a one sheet. You don’t get the story, you get the data. Let me ask you a practical question. So, so I, I love this. I love the work.

JH: (22:56)
I’m sure what people are going, it’s like, well if I spend all my time preparing for the interview, how do I make any money? Right? Like that’s a lot of time to prepare. If I do an interview every week or two a month or something. So, and I think that’s kind of a question Mark for people is how do you make like how do you actually make money?

Like yeah, so podcasting is not a good way to make money and when people try to like, I’m going to throw that out there, you know a lot of people will sell you the idea that all you have to do is start a podcast and watch the dollars roll in. And that was never the case. It’s not like, Oh you can’t do it now. It was never the case. And you can do that in addition to other personal branding things that you’re doing.

JH: (23:44)
Like I know you talk about like books, you talk about other methods of influence. Doing a podcast is a really tough way to make money. Let’s, can we talk like real numbers here? I’ll just do something that the average podcast has 149 downloads per episode. That’s a fat act from libs in which as a hosting company, you don’t have to write that number down because if you have 149 downloads, no advertiser will touch you. Let’s say that you are so good that you get 50 times 50 times.

That’s a huge multiple. You get 50 times the average audience. Now you’ve got 74 50 that’s probably backwards. Very one, you get 74 50 per episode. Okay, well you’re paid and CPM, which is dollars per thousand downloads. So let’s say you have two ads in a show and you’re getting a really good CPM of 25 bucks for each of those ads.

JH: (24:39)
That’s a pretty darn good CPM. So now you’re really getting 50 CPM again cause you’ve got two ads in your show. Congratulations. Let’s assume you sold those ads yourself cause otherwise you got to give your ad sales agent a cut, which could be up to 50% but let’s assume you use them yourself. You get 100% of that. Okay, great. So now you’re getting 50 times 7,450 so you’re really, let’s round up to 8,000 cause you’re so good. I’m going to be generous and that’s how many downloads an episode you’re getting. So you’re getting 8,000 so you’re getting eight times $50 per episode.

You’re getting 400 bucks per episode. That’s when you have 50 times plus maybe more like 55 times the average audience and you sold two ads yourself, add a generous CPM, you’re getting 400 bucks. That’s the high end of what you are going to get after doing a show for several years, most people will get less than half of that. What is that going to pay for if you don’t live in sub Saharan Africa and not a whole lot, right? You are not

RV: (25:38)
In a week. If at one a week at that level you’re talking about 1600 bucks a month, so you’re talking, you’re like, you’re not even at, it’s like 20 grand a year.

JH: (25:48)
Yeah, you’re paying your mortgage if you’re lucky and you don’t live in a big city and you don’t live on the coast. If you’re lucky, and that’s after year, you’re going to have to build up to that. You’re not going to launch with 74 50 you’re going to get that after maybe a couple of years or something like that.

RV: (26:04)
Now if you now on the flip side, like, like all media companies, it’s very scalable. So for you, if you get to, you know, if you’re getting 5 million downloads a month that you’re talking about a million downloads an episode it depends cause that’s historical. That’s right. That’s historical. But maybe a hundred, a couple hundred thousand downloads an episode, right?

JH: (26:29)
So, so if you’re to, again, to put numbers to it, if you are in the top 1% of all active podcasts in any, anywhere in podcast land, you have 35,000 per episode. That’s the top 1%. So think about that. Let’s say you got $35,000 per episode. Let’s say you still got two ads. You still sold them yourself.

You get to keep 100%, it’s 35 times 50 that’s 1750 per episode. And you do that times four, 7,000 bucks a month, that’s real money. But that’s after you get in the top 1% of all podcasts. You can’t really, you probably aren’t going to get rich on that either. Okay. So this takes me to my original question.

RV: (27:14)
Clearly advertising is not the fast path to cashier. So how do you make money doing this?

JH: (27:21)
So you end up with this interesting dichotomy, right? If you, or a sort of conundrum. Maybe if you don’t want add money, then you have to talk to a very specific audience. So let’s say you’re the guy, my friend Clint, he teaches dance studio owners, how to cleanse salt, salt, salt, salt to Saltzman. What is his last name? He’s from Australia.

RV: (27:45)
Australia. Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Like, and it’s funny because even as you say it, I’m like, I know one guy that teaches dance studios, owners like how to get clients and it’s Clint and he’s from Australia, right?

JH: (27:56)
Yeah. And he’s like a super lovely guy. Okay. So he’s the right man for the job. So if you are that guy and you’re talking to dance studio owners, then cool, good. It looks like I’m out of focus here. Let me fix that. If possible. How do we fix that? So breaking bad is really weird. I’m just going to go ahead and ignore that and see if it fixes itself. So you’re, let’s say you’re that guy.

Now, your entire audience, maybe you’ve only got like 800 people listening to each episode of your show, but all 800 are dance studio owners somewhere in let’s say North America. Well, wherever globally that are on your email list, they’re interested in generating clients. Those people might pay $5,000 or $1,000 or $500 for your product. That’s a system of let’s say, generating leads for dance studios online. You know, you’ve got a customer base, so that’s a really good way to start making money. But you have to have a unique niche if you’re just, you know, this is driving me freaking Oh you got it.

JH: (28:58)
I think that was a little schmutz over the lens and I just wiped it. So if, if you are in, if you’re, if that’s your audience, then great, right? You’ve got to be the leader. But if you’re like, Oh, this guy Pat Flynn, who is a really good friend of mine, you probably know him too. If I’m like, Oh, this guy Pat Flynn teaches people how to make money online doing X, Y, Z, you’re not going to want to join that niche because it’s you and eight bajillion other people. And Pat’s going to like dominate that and you’re going to have a hard time collaborating with other people because you’re stepping on their toes and you have no experience. So you’ve got to find a unique niche. Talk to them in a way where they’d know, like, and trust you. And then you’ve got to have products and services to help them.

JH: (29:37)
But then podcasting’s not your business. It’s lead gen for your book. For me, podcasting is my business. I’m depending on scale, but I have a quarter million downloads per episode. That didn’t happen overnight. It happened and over 13 stinking years.

Okay. So like to get that level of advertising and then put four ads in each show, cause my show’s over an hour long and that’s, you can get away with that. And I do three a week now it’s a BI. Now it’s more than a full time job. It’s more than just me working here and the scale works. But generally it’s not going to happen. But here’s the, here’s the problem, here’s the conundrum. You can’t go, Oh well I’m going to talk to the specific dance studio owners or like landscapers for people that live near a forest like Rory, right in the background there, your jungle.

JH: (30:27)
Like if you want to talk to that audience, you’re not going to get a broad audience. That’s really huge because there’s one in a hundred or one in a thousand people care about that niche. One in a thousand people own a dance studio and want to get new clients or karate dojo and want to get new clients. That is not everyone.

So you can either appeal to a specific nation, create products and services for that niche or you can try to appeal to everyone. And do something that’s more general and is going to scale, but you’re never going to be in a situation where you appeal to gym owners in North America and everyone else. You’re not going to be able to do both. Well, so you have to choose because if you choose to scale, you got a long road ahead of you. If you choose products and services in a specific niche, you might get there faster, but you will never get to the point at which you are scaling. [inaudible]

RV: (31:20)
But that’s not your business. That’s a, it’s just a, it’s just a marketing medium, podcast marketing medium for the business, which is how that’s historically how we’ve, we have, we have used it.

JH: (31:32)
Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. And so people need to be aware of that. Like people don’t really seem to get that. They’re like, I want to make it huge. Why? Well, I want to get leads from my coaching business. Okay. Then those are two di almost diametrically opposing forces, right? Like, yes, you want to be recognizable all over the place. But also I want to appeal to pet store owners.

And the East coast like, whoa, whoa, who are you talking to? Because if you start talking to quote unquote everyone or like one of your episodes is generally interesting and then one of your other episodes each week is only in that niche, you’re just going to piss off everyone, right? Like the people who want to hear about comedy are going to get annoyed with the people who want to hear about how to make a pet profitable dance studio. So you have to choose. You cannot try to be both. And everybody that I know who starts to show that they’re consistently trying to do this and they’re failing.

RV: (32:21)
Well Jordan, thank you for the honesty and the transparency of just what this takes. I could talk to you forever, like there is so much here. Obviously people can, can find you on the show. Where Dell is there. Where do you want people to go to connect with you if they want to learn more and they want to hear about all your,

JH: (32:40)
Your wild and interesting guests that you have. Share Jordan harbinger.com. It’s the Jordan harbinger show. You can find it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. And of course I teach people networking. It’s not a business. It’s a free thing that I do cause I, most of my business that I get is corporate. I’m, I teach security personnel and special forces and stuff. I teach them like relationship development and nonverbal communication skills and spy stuff generally so that I give away some of that to [email protected] and you can see the course at the top there.

It’s all, everything I do is free for the end user. It’s, it’s, it’s an ad model, but I don’t put in too many ads cause I don’t have to anymore. But I look anybody who’s interested in topics that are going to affect your life in some way. I do worksheets for every episode because I want people to apply something from every show. So it’s not just like fluff, it’s like take this, plug it into your brain and use it. So hopefully people are interested in that. And I think your audience seems pretty smart, so I’m excited to hear from them. Yeah.

RV: (33:41)
Well, buddy, thank you so much. Thank you for being a fiduciary for your audience. I think that’s, that’s going to be like the big thing that resonates with me was just at the end of the day, it’s like there’s not a ton of money here for a long time, and there’s a lot of wrong ways to do it, and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of ways to get absorbed into the crowd and into the noise, but if you do what is interesting and you do what serves your audience, it sounds like that’s, that’s your, your special formula. So I love it.

JH: (34:09)
Thank you very much, man. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Ep 31: The Most Important Relationship with Nick Santonastasso | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00)

Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s Rory Vaden here today all by myself. Normally joined by my wife and business partner, AJ Vaden who is also the CEO of Brand Builders group. And she is also the CEO of the Vaden Villa household, which has no shortage of things going on. So I’m rolling solo on this episode, which is great and fine by me actually because I loved this episode with Nick Santonastasso and I’m telling you, if you didn’t listen to the episode, first of all, if you just need a pick me up. Like go listen to this. Like listen to this guy. I mean this is a guy that was born with no legs, one arm and yet he’s a bodybuilder.

Like he is amazing. His attitude, his story, like so inspiring, so touching, so moving, so compelling. This is the kind of thing where I, I just, I love getting to do what I do because I go like beyond the learning that happens from interviewing the guests just to, to know somebody like Nick.

RV: (01:17)
And it really just puts things in perspective for me to go, you know what? Like I just, man, I’m a whiner about stuff. Like I have it so easy and I lose perspective so much on just trivial things. You know, to hear some of the challenges that he has had and that he has gone through and, and to just, you know, think about what does life look like and feel like every day.

With, you know, for someone that has no legs and, and, and yet, you know, in his eyes and, and many ways as evidenced by his life. It’s, it’s not something that holds him back whatsoever. He has, he has like all people have greatness turned this circumstance into confidence. And that was really the first thing I wanted to share with you. Right. So there’s recap editions. We give you the three, the three highlights, like our three main takeaways.

RV: (02:14)
And that was the first one was actually just to talk about confidence because even though that, yeah. And, and I think confidence is powerful because it’s, when you think of personal brand strategy, right, that’s what we do at Brand Builders Group. It’s like we teach you how to build and monetize your personal brand. People think of the tactical stuff, you know getting clear on your messaging, getting clear on your positioning, getting clear on your market can come clear on your model and I’m talking about yo copy and colors and your key note and your books and your content.

Like all these tactical things that we teach and we love teaching and we’re good at teaching but you can’t ever overlook or you can’t ever forget the fact that at the end of the day people are buying you and so your own personal growth, your own personal development, these decidedly soft skills like are things that I talk about in my first book.

RV: (03:12)
Take the stairs or procrastinating on purpose or like what Nick is talking about here with just getting your mind right like just because you are a personal brand doesn’t mean that you are somehow exempt from learning and practicing all of the very things that you teach and that that we teach in the industry of personal development. In fact, one of the reasons why I’m in this industry is because I know I need it more than anybody. I have to be reminded of it.

And Nick was talking about that with, with confidence and clearly confidence is an important skill of any trusted brand or messenger. And I think I appreciated what he said about confidence cause here’s what he said. He said confidence is a skill that we build my keeping our promises with ourselves and following through on them. So in other words, confidence isn’t like just this trait that you’re, you’re born with like swagger, right?

RV: (04:13)
Or you know, like some people just sort of have some swagger. Maybe we think about that, but he say, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what real confidence is. What real confidence is, is integrity, right? Like it comes from following through on the things that you said you were going to do. Not for the world around you, but to yourself.

Can you make a commitment? Can you say you’re going to do something and then can you show up and do that thing? Like that is what creates confidence because it’s based on this track record of being an amazing person. It’s, it’s a, it’s a track record of being trustworthy and, and that is confidence. It is also reputation, right? It’s confidence to yourself. It’s reputation to your market but no matter what you, what you call it, it comes from living out your commitments from integrity, from following through.

RV: (05:13)
And so I think that we wouldn’t always naturally draw a clear, like a straight line to saying, okay, what can I do today that would build and monetize my personal brand? We might think, Oh, I could send an email or I could do a social media post or I could write a book or I could. But it’s like, you know what builds your personal brand just as much as those things is practicing your integrity, building your own personal character, like shaping your attitude, like getting your mind right is as important a part of all of this as anything. It’s just like any profession, right?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a leader or a salesperson or an accountant. There is the skill part of this. And then there is, there’s the mindset piece and I think, you know, this is an interview that was, had a lot of those, those softer sides, the inspirational part, the mindset, the personal development and then, you know, even making confidence, somewhat tactical.

RV: (06:10)
I really appreciated that. Now to the more tactical things. So one of the other big tech takeaways I think for me from this interview with Nick, of course go listen to the full interview. But you know, basically he just came out and, and directly said to build a fan base that cares about you, you have to be open about your struggles, right? You have to be open about your struggles.

And I’ve heard this kind of before, right? Like you hear, Oh, you know, be authentic, be transparent, be vulnerable. Those are like buzzwords of the day, which is great. I don’t, I’m not demeaning those in any way. I think it’s really great. But there was, there was something about the way that Nick said it that really hit me deeply like it, it just really, it really clicked.

It really resonated because there’s something about when you, when you stand in front of a camera or when you get behind a microphone or when you launch a website or when you communicate through a social media post or through a blog or through a book, there’s like, there’s something about communicating through that medium, like putting a medium between me and you.

RV: (07:23)
Like if we were communicating face to face in real life, it’s just like raw. But then when you insert like this medium, some type of a screen you know, typically there’s something where it’s like we feel like we have to pretend or modify or, or mask or [inaudible] or cover up or like just like, just pretend that things are maybe better than they are or not.

And yet, you know, if for the people who care about you in real life and the people that you care about, like the people who you have the deepest relationships with in real life, like not on social media, not in your email list, like not your podcast followers and real life face to face are the people who you walk through struggles with. Right? Like it’s your best friend that was there in the toughest time of your life.

RV: (08:15)
It’s, it’s your family member who you were there for when they were going through a tough time. It’s a teacher who believed in you when you didn’t have faith. It’s, it’s the struggles that create the relationships that create the bonds. And so what Nick said, and again, I guess this should be obvious, but it really just hit me in a different way, was that if you want your audience to care about you, you have to have that kind of a relationship with them, which means it’s not like posting pictures of like your fancy vacation and your rolls Royce in your private jet and like all that stuff all the time.

Like those things are fine, you know, I suppose to whatever extent they, they, they, they fit with your brand messaging. But it’s the, it’s the struggles. It’s the like the weaknesses, it’s the breakdowns.

RV: (09:05)
It’s the hard times. It’s the difficulty that you’re having that makes people care about you and, and, and it shows that you care about them, that you care enough about them that like, Hey, this is a real relationship. I’m trusting you with these intimate parts of my life. Like I’m trusting that sort of sacred piece of me with you. And that is how highly I value this relationship. And that can be done through a medium.

Like that can be done through a podcast or through a video broadcast or it can be done through a book or it can be done through a blog post. It can be done through a medium just the same way as it’s done face to face. But you have to remove that like filter that for whatever reason we fake stuff and we pretend like we go into presentation mode that people, we know a lot of times we work, we’re coaching speakers on this all the time.

RV: (10:06)
Like you’re, you’re talking to this perfectly normal human and then all of a sudden they stand on stage. Like their voice changes and they, their, their, their posture changes. And like they’re this, this confident person and somehow they stand on stage and it’s like we’re in the same room that we were in 30 seconds ago. But now that you’re on stage, you’re like this totally different being.

And you know, that just takes practice. That’s natural. It takes time. And I think that’s, that’s true as well. But one of the ways you can practice it, what Nick was saying is just be vulnerable. Like, just share your struggles, whatever that is. It doesn’t, and I don’t think it, I don’t think he’s talking about like, it doesn’t have to be grandiose things like, Oh, I’m struggling with depression or suicide or you know, divorce or like whatever.

RV: (10:54)
I don’t think it has to be these major things. I think it’s the little things like, man, I was pissed off today because I was waiting in line and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People connect with that and they care about you. A

nd I think for me, this is, this is something that I, maybe I could do a better job of. I could, I could definitely do a better job of it. So that I thought was really, really good. And then I think, you know, somewhat related to that, my third take away which was big is that he said as an influencer it’s important to engage with the followers that you have now before more will show up in the future. Right. That is a big, that is a big idea.

RV: (11:43)
That is an important, like that is a powerful concept that so many of us are going, gosh, I wish I had more followers. I wish I had more followers. I wish I had followers. I wish I had more subscribers. I wish I had more, you know, more people in my database. And yet we don’t value the ones that we have now with like the sanctity and the reverence that really deserves or attracts more people into that space.

Right. Like if we don’t value the things that we have now, cause we’re constantly just chasing the next thing. Like why would anyone else want to show up just to be one of the numbers? No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not how it works, right? Like what makes people want to show up? Is that like mean when people feel like they’re getting you? And then when, when, when they feel cared about, they come back.

RV: (12:36)
When people feel cared about, they come back and they tune in. Why? Because in the world we live in today, nobody feels cared about. Everybody feels like a number. Everybody ironically feels more disconnected than we ever have been before in history because we don’t have the genuine, meaningful, deep relationships. And communication happens in such short spurts. And it’s often through texts like, like written Mo modalities that we’re craving the human to human connection.

And so when you give that to people, when you do that through a podcast or through a book, like through the spoken word or the written word, or through a keynote speech, like all of these different mediums that we use to build a personal brand, when you show people that you care, when you talk about them with reverence and, and when you engage with them, when you actually take the time to, you know, answer their questions and comment back to them and respond, you know, back and forth in their DMS, et cetera, et cetera, like that engagement causes like that, that that causes you to develop.

RV: (13:51)
I think the mindset and mentality of, of the proper care of your audience, that is the same mindset and mentality and attitude that attracts more people just showing up. So if you’re not valuing and engaging with and caring for the audience that you have now, I wouldn’t expect a bigger audience to show up for you.

And this reminds me like in a, in another very literal way. Like when I started out speaking, you know, people see me now. Yeah. This isn’t always like, I still do, I still do small gigs. In fact, there’s, you know, some clients will pay my full fee and have me in front of 10 people. That’s rare. But you know, like there’s probably, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a fair number of events that I speak at now that are big. Let’s say, you know, more than 300, 500 people, you know, up into the thousands.

RV: (14:47)
I’m speaking at an event later this year that’ll have 10,000 people live. And so people see that and they go, wow, like if I were in front of 10,000 people live, like I would deliver that keynote with like huge energy. But what they never saw was when I was speaking to two people in the back of a Perkins restaurant on university Boulevard in the South of downtown Denver, Colorado. Like, and I did that hundreds of times, like speaking to tiny groups for free of less than 10 people, 304 times.

I did that. Like, nobody was there. And I wasn’t getting, I mean, there were people there, but there weren’t many people there. But, but that’s the thing is nobody wants to do the work of showing up and nobody wants to care for the small audience in a way that prepares them and develops them and cultivates them into the person they need to be to attract the big audience.

RV: (15:48)
And that’s what Nick is talking about here. So that was a really, really great a reminder. So this interview is, I said, inspiring in many more ways than one. Go check it out if you’re not following you know, his name is Nick Santonastasso which is, you know, long took me a minute to learn how to say. But his handle is @NickSanto534 on most of the socials,

Of course, if you go to our blog, we will put links up to Nick’s profile in the show notes and everything, just like we do with every episode. But Mmm. You know, that is what it comes down to. And I think ultimately it’s like caring enough about yourself that so that you can learn to care for your audience. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 30: The Most Important Relationship with Nick Santonastasso

RV:                   So I want to let you know right up front that you are meeting this next gentleman at the same time that I am Nick Santonastasso is who you’re about to hear from. And pretty much everyone else on this summit is someone I’ve known for years. We’ve helped them with book launches, we’ve helped them do podcast interviews, you know, they’ve helped me, whatever.

But Nick and I just crossed paths actually a few weeks ago and this guy is absolutely incredible. He’s just an amazing human with an amazing message. And he also has turned it into quite an amazing brand. So he was born with something called Hanhardt syndrome only at the time that he was born. I think only he was the 12th case of Hanhardt syndrome that was diagnosed in the world. And he’s really, I think only like one to four people with it that is living.

RV:                   And it basically is a rare birth defect that has left him with no legs and undeveloped right arm and a left arm with only one finger, but he was a wrestler in high school a singer. And musician. He’s been a bodybuilder. Like there’s pictures of him with the Rock. He speaks all over. I watched some of his videos. He was so inspiring. He actually has the word ‘inspired’, tattooed on his torso.

And I’ve just been blown away with this guy. And one of my friends, you know, one of our clients and friends, John Ruhlin introduced us. And then one of my other good friends, said that Nick is the most inspiring person he’s ever met. So Nick, thanks for making some time for us, man. Hey brother, I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m glad we crossed paths and have a lot of mutual friends that are also really amazing people.

RV:                   So shout out to them. Yeah, yeah. Amen. Those are, those are really good people. And you know, I think Brand Builders Group is all about reputation, right? Like that’s what we study – reputation. We try to like understand what creates it. I think the people that you surround yourself is probably a, probably a part of that.

Just before we dive into like your personal story, I’m curious, when you hear the word reputation, what do you think about, like do you, what have been your philosophies on reputation? Why does it matter? Is there anything like in terms of how you would define it, like just what’s your, what’s your kind of free flow thought on, on what reputations? All of them.

NS:                   Yeah, that’s a great question. Reputation, what comes to mind is you know, how do people, how do people know how you show up or how do people view you or what is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of your name? Or is there a certain slogan or is there a certain picture that they get painted in their head for that reputation?

What I’ve realized is that, you know, one of my core values, not only in a personal life but in business life is his longevity. And so, you know, I think that a lot of people are trying to get quick fixes. And so it’s like, what can I get out of this collaboration? Or what can I get out of this person or what can I get at this post, whatever it may be. But for me, I am more interested in longevity relationships.

NS:                   So I’m here to continuously provide value to someone that I want to be in my inner circle. I continuously want to nurture that relationship. And so with reputation, it’s just like who do you, who do you show up as and do you show up at the same person each and every day or it, or is it not congruent? Is it not congruent to who you are behind the camper? I mean, you know, reputation to me is just like what do people think and what do people remember you when you showed up? Like who are you? And, and my thing is not really longevity, but authenticity and transparency.

You want to know how to build a brand. It’s being authentic and it’s being transparent, especially in a world where there’s not many authentic, transparent people nowadays, especially with social media. I mean we see highlights grow, we see, we see all the good stuff and you know, everybody’s just, you know, hosting or highlights. But how you build a real fan base and you know, a fan base that really cares for you is you open up about this, the stuff that you struggle with because we all struggle with something.

RV:                   So I wanted to talk to you about that. Cause you know, like you’ve been featured in all this major media, you’ve met celebrities, traveled the world, you speak. I mean some people might look at some of that as pretty glamorous, but I have to think that, you know, growing up and along the way, just having the condition that you have there had to have been some times that were pretty dark and pretty challenging.

And why did you choose to come become so public, you know, with something that was, you know, had to have a share of difficulties what caused you to like, just kinda like become such a public figure with that?

NS:                   Absolutely. So, yeah, it wasn’t always always like this. You know, in my middle school and high school days, I, I struggled, you know, I struggled with that victim mentality of the why me, you know, why do I have to be born like this? It pissed me off. I didn’t get it. I was always focused on all the negative, all the things. And you know, even with girls, I always tell people girls were my biggest suicidal trigger.

You know, as humans we crave energy, whether that’s masculine energy or whether that’s feminine energy. And for me, I didn’t get that feminine energy that I wanted or that I craved. And you know, there was, you know, comments that girl said to me that really stuck with me and just made me feel like I was just this disgusting person. Right? And so the one thing I realized is that man, you only get one body mic and you don’t like feeling this way.

NS:                   So what are you going to do to get out of that? You know, what are you going to do to, you know, get out of this slump you’re in. And I was, I’ve had suicidal thoughts, but I never followed through in them. I knew, you know, the negative, what a negative wave that would lead my parents and my family and everyone if I took my life. And so that was, it was, it was a thought, but it wasn’t something that I was going to do.

And so, you know, I was trying, I was working on building this person. I needed to start, you know, building my confidence. I needed to start building my mindset in the things that I thought about and focused on. Right? Like we’re focused those energy flows. And so, you know, when I got into high school, I was looking for a way out.

NS:                   I was looking for know, a coping mechanism per se or you know, a sport or an extracurricular activity. And that was when, you know, I got into bowling at first, one of my best friends, he wrestled his whole entire life, but he decided to bowl his freshman year and we’ll still, I just texted him like, we’re still best friends to this day. And I did bowling and I realized that it wasn’t for me and I wanted something that was going to push me physically, you know, much more physically and mentally.

And my older brother was a wrestler and you know, Dan went back to wrestling his sophomore year and all my best friends are wrestlers. And so I wanted to become a wrestler. And at the time, this arm, this right limb was about five inches longer than it is now. My bone was going faster than my skin, so it was like your finger, but super sensitive and I couldn’t really touch it on anything.

NS:                   And so, you know, I told my friends I can’t, I can’t lose my arm. You know, I can’t, if I hit my arm hard enough, my bone is going to come through my skin, you know, I can’t wrestle. And then you can always tell people we have ideas and sometimes we blow ideas off. And then we started marinating on those ideas, right? Like figuring out, you know, how am I gonna accomplish this?

You know, what’s in my way. And so, you know, I presented the, the decision to my parents. I said, you know, can we cut? Can we amputate my arm? Can we cut some of my arm off so I can rest wrestle? And you know, they were like, dude, are you serious? And I’m like, yeah, you know, this is something that I really want to do. It’s only going to better the quality of my life anyway.

NS:                   I’ll be able to do more physical activities with it. And so my sophomore year, my parents went ahead and scheduled my amputation to amputate my arm. And you know, that was just for a chance to Russel, it wasn’t even like a definite chance. That was just a chance to wrestle. So it was two things. It was to better the quality of my life, but to be, but to have the chance to becoming a wrestler.

And so, you know, the question that we can all self reflect on real quick and I’ll get more into it, is, you know, what, what are the things that we need to cut off, you know, to be successful. Hopefully it’s not a limb like me, but what are the limiting beliefs? What are the stories we replay ourselves? What are the things that we focused on that we need to cut off?

NS:                   What are the people we need to cut out of our life that are holding us back? And so that’s something that the viewers can, you know, self reflect on. But wrestling started my journey in the building who I am now and, and that built my confidence. You know, because I was a kid that thought you’re either born with confidence so you didn’t have it.

But I realized that confidence was a skill. And so, you know, how we build confidence is, is keeping our promise within ourselves. So every time that we commit to something, every time we commit to a goal or commit to something that we want to accomplish, and we don’t do it, we, we lower the wa, we lower our value, we lower our R, we diminish our self value, the way we view ourselves, the relationship we have within ourselves. Because we said we were going to do something and we didn’t do it.

NS:                   And so how to build confidence is simply making these little promises to yourself, making these little, these little micro challenges to yourself. And when you hit them, you’re not only physically applaud yourself but you mentally applaud yourself. And so when you continuously do that and you build that muscle up, you’re confident, you’re confident in your ability, you know when you say you’re going to do something, it gets done.

You know your work ethic, you know that your self integrity. And so wrestling from going from a JB wrestler to a varsity wrestler too, you know, beating two kids my my senior year from zero these are the things that started building my confidence and allowed me to put myself out on the internet.

RV:                   Yeah. That I loved that idea that I was just, I, I know we don’t have much time so I was trying to cover as much as no, that’s good. No, I mean we haven’t, we have, we have some time. We have a little bit of time, but I love what you were saying about the confidence piece of that, of that, you know, it’s just keeping comes from keeping promises to ourselves. And I don’t think, I mean I think people think of continence, like you said, as either something you have or you don’t.

And that’s such a great way to be able to, to develop it. So so why do you think you have such a great, like such an engaged following? And, and I mean, I, I mean clearly, you know, you look different from many people, but there’s, there’s a lot of people that have some type of, you know, something that they’re dealing with and people you know, support you and they cheer for you rabidly. You know, w what do you think it is about how you interact with people that’s kind of created that.

NS:                   So first and foremost, I want to thank you for that compliment because actually, you know, in my head I’m like, it’s not good enough. You know, like, my fan base isn’t good enough and they aren’t loyal enough and they’re not, you know, supporting me. Not in a bad way. I’m not saying this in a bad way, I’m just saying that I know like, and I want to be like, put this out there to be transparent in the way that I think, you know, I have, I have a friend, I’m a won’t mention her name.

I have a friend and she has like probably half of my following and her fan base is just like Colt man. Like she, anything she does, it sells out. Like, like I look up to her and so, you know so thank you for the compliment. But internally I’m like, man, it could be greater.

NS:                   It could be a greater bond. But I think that, you know, from early on how I started was doing zombie primes. Like, so when I was a senior in high school the app vine came out and everybody was like, dude, you know, vine is amazing. And I got to the point where I was like, man, I’m just going to put myself on the internet and you know, maybe I can make people laugh, but I want to inspire them to [inaudible] everything with my content is always, I have an intense, like I, I want to inspire people in a certain way.

I want to talk to them in a certain way or they a message in a certain way. And so I posted my first zombie prank where basically my goal was to just dress up as the zombies here, someone and then have someone look on the phone when they watched it and go, wow, look how comfortable Nick is in his body.

NS:                   Maybe I could be a little bit more comfortable mind and also take an approach that no one’s ever did before. No one’s ever done this zombie pranks like me. Right? And so I was the pioneer. And so when I did that, the [inaudible] like it blew up like it was, it was one of the biggest videos people I’ve ever seen on vine. I gained 50,000 followers in a day.

You know, over 80,000 likes and reposts on the video in under a day. Like it was crazy and it was the combination of using my, you know, my unique body, my unicorn body and doing something that has never been done but you know, in an inspiring way. And you know, I literally, it was, it was just crazy. I labeled the video just zombie prime. There was like, vine was just very like, just no descriptive, just Oh, zombie praying.

NS:                   And so I labeled it that and I caught on and I saw, you know how, how viral it went. But the one thing I want to touch on is it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The majority of those, those comments were bad. Like they were negative. Like the, the, the demographic of vine was children.

And so me being a child myself, 18, 17 years old, you know, I had to build the muscle up of either not reading comments or not letting them affect me. And I hated when my parents read comments too because there were negative, there was so negative comments. And so, you know, the evolution of me, it was, you know, used to go back at these people, right? I used to focus on the negative and focus on the negative comments. And then I built, I built my social media in under a year I gained a million follower.

NS:                   I’m doing these cranks and that was at the same time where, you know, vine was going downhill and everyone was transferring the YouTube. And to be fully honest, I wasn’t ready to transfer to YouTube. Like I was just like, man, I’m good at posting six second videos. But then people started importing their vines and editing ’em and I was like, I can’t keep up with that. And so I kind of fell off the track.

And so, you know, after vine collapsed and after vine was no more I kind of was at a place in my life. I was like, okay, Nick, like, what’s next? You know, you can’t just, you know, you made this name for yourself and people love you for your pranks. Like, what are you going to do now? And you know, I made an announcement. I said, guys, guys and girls, that doesn’t fulfill me anymore.

NS:                   You know, doing the pranks, it doesn’t fulfill me anymore. I want to be fulfilled. You know, Tony Robbins says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. Like you can have all the money in the world, but if we don’t do something that makes us feel good inside, it makes us feel fulfilled. What was the empty? And so I made the decision, you know, I, I took a step back from the pranking the industry because I also realized that people were just viewing me as a joke.

You know, like I didn’t just want to be viewed as like not serious, you know, I wanted something next level. And so I went to LA, I went broke in LA trying to do pranks and stuff, and I moved back home and I, and I was like, analyzing industries. I was like, all right, what’s next? And so I was analyzing industries and I looked at, I looked at the fitness industry and I said, well, there’s no guy with no legs and one arm a bodybuilder.

NS:                   You know, if I get in and I wasn’t in good shape, like that’s the thing I sold the vision way ahead. That’s what the one of my strengths is. Like I can paint a vision in my head and see it so clearly and people may not see it, but I’m like, I’ll get there. Like I’ll figure it out. Like these are the steps. And so, you know, I started, I told everyone, I said, I’m going to become a body builder.

I’m going to become a model and I’m going to become a keynote speaker and I don’t know how I’m going to do these things, but these are the things I’m going to set out to do. And so, you know, I started fitness videos and people to follow me and they were like, dude, you were like, what are you doing? Like how are you to become a bodybuilder?

NS:                   Like this is stupid, you know, we followed you for your pranks, all this stuff. But remember that it didn’t fulfill me. I was, I wanted to do something that fulfilled me. And so my knowledge and training got better. My knowledge of nutrition got better and my disease, those people go like, like that was like, cause that’s a pretty big, like some of our clients that we talked to are more in what we would call, like someone starting out, we call it brand identification, but then we have some clients that it’s brand reinvention. It’s more like they’re trying to make a pivot.

And that was a, that’s a pretty big pivot from zombie prankster to fitness model. And so you just like one day, like went cold Turkey and just started posted, posted fitness and health advice. Is that what happened? Yeah, so basically when I, I went to LA and I was I was supposed to be a prankster of a core cast show that they were coming out with.

NS:                   And I moved to LA and two weeks after I signed my lease, they canceled the show. So I went home in LA and so I moved home and it was kinda like, now I don’t view it as that, but it was like a failure for me. And so I came home and it was just like recalibrating. I was like, all right, what is something else that I can take over that people would take me a little bit more serious?

And I always end, I always looked up the people that were in shape. And so my thought process was, well, you can’t buy a fit body. You can’t, you can’t buy a fit body and you can’t wake up with it one day. So if people see, if I, if I commit so long to getting in good shape, people would be like, Oh my God.

NS:                   Like how, like I wanted to get to the point where I took my shirt off at the pool instead of feeling unconfident, people were like, how the hell does that kid look like that? You know? And you know, I pictured myself, I was like, man, you know, if I could be on a fitness magazine, how inspiring is that? If I can land covers and maybe I can land supplement sponsors and make money like that and do photo shoots, like that was my vision.

And I knew that it was more inspiring and it also went handed down with speaking. I was like, man, I can tie that into motivational speaking. But the speaking thing was even on my radar. And so, you know, I told my parents about that, that pivot and you know, like I said with fitness, like I can’t just be Jack one day or can’t just be stranded like one day it takes some time.

NS:                   And so I had to like fully commit and believe in myself and like really just like keep that vision in mind. And so, you know, I, I lost a lot of followers and I remember I was starting my Instagram off with 25,000 followers and I was posting these fitness videos and known people were like, dude, this is stupid. Like, I don’t like your fitness videos. Like, what are you doing? But I just kept going.

I was persistent and then, you know, maybe I finally got a video where it looked cool and I was lifting like good amount of weight. And so I would pay the biggest Instagram bodybuilding account, $400 a post. I didn’t have $400 to spend, but I was finding $400 to post. So people can, so I can get a bigger outreach. And so I was PR, I was paying these accounts to post me, I was gaining followers.

NS:                   And then it got to the point where I didn’t need them anymore because when I posted something, there was so many eyes that, you know, it would get shared and it would get shared all overnight, gain more followers. And maybe I had leverage with my followers to do cross collaborations where I didn’t have to pay as much anymore. And so I grinded my way up. Like I grinded my way up in the bodybuilding world. Like people aren’t following me. I paid for people to see me. I paid me for my videos again in front of people. Wow.

RV:                   So I appreciate you sharing. That’s very honest. Like you, I mean, I think there’s so many elements,

NS:                   But I paint. Yeah, I paint.

RV:                   Yeah, but just the exposure. You didn’t pay for fun. You didn’t buy followers, but you bought exposure. That’s something that we tell people don’t, you know, don’t buy followers, but by exposure, that’s what everybody does. And that’s what every media, movie, TV show, every Superbowl commercial. I mean, they’re, they, they’re paying for exposure. And how bold of you and I think it’s fascinating to me, Nick, of just how number one, you know, your whole philosophy is built on longevity.

Yet, you know, the, the, the health situation that you’ve been battling, like you’ve taken that and said, you know, like, screw that, I’m, I’m going to be about longevity. And then you also said, you know, I’m not fit like, but if I could do that, it’s like you took the thing that you should have been able to do and you went after that thing and said, because it’s the thing I’m not supposed to be able to do. I’m gonna make that my thing. And if I do, people will pay attention. And that’s inspiring and it fricking worked.

NS:                   Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, you know,

NS:                   Even, even now, brother, I’m, I have a lot of plans. Like speaking isn’t just it, right? Like you’ll see here and you know, a couple of months, like I’m, I’m dabbling in different things because I look at the industry and I go, well, how can I bring my uniqueness to the industry? And for people to say, people probably listening like, Oh well it’s easy for him to say he has no legs of an arm. I mean he stands out. But like there is something in you that makes you stand out and that something and don’t, and don’t compare my story to your story. All of our stories are amazing.

The things that people need to realize that we all need to realize is like all the things that you don’t want to talk about on social media. You don’t want to shine the light on. When you do, when you open it up about those stories, that’s when you’ll get your people to connect with you on a deeper level because you’ve been through the same stuff that they’ve been through.

NS:                   You know, there’s so many people who are holding back and they don’t want to go through the things that they struggle with or their darkest demons. But when you open up in an authentic, transparent way and you show people what you’ve struggled with and how you come at that site, you build a following. And so for me, like now that the way that I view my life is like.

if I share this story or if I get on this podcast or if I get on this interview and share this and this and this has the ability to help someone, then I’m in because there’s going to be someone that resonates with that message. Someone that’s out there that never thought you went through some stuff and you open up about it and they’re like, man, I connect with the sign a totally deeper level where that girl and they trust you more and right. Building your brand is all about having people trust you. And how you get people to assess you is you need to show up authentic and transparent and people will call you out on your BS if you slip up.

RV:                   I think that that is so powerful and so true that the more that you open up about that, it’s, it’s like the more visceral the connection is between people. So I think if, if you, you know, looking back like you said, you know, you started your Instagram account with 25,000, is there anything that you would’ve done differently to grow your following either faster or differently or more engaged? Like, like going back and doing it over again?

NS:                   Yeah, I would, would’ve, I would’ve been more proactive on commenting back to every single person. I would’ve commented back to every single person. I’m more engaged in my DMS. So, you know, people don’t expect, you know, influencers or people to reply back. And so when you do, you’re not only standing apart, but that person will remember that. Like, whether you think it or not, like whether you don’t think you’re cool or not. Like when you reply to someone in the time and if something they remember that maybe they might go post it on their story or maybe it’s a hard post cause they’re just such a big fan of you.

But I would be more proactive in replying to everyone. Everyone’s the M and, and for the influence out there that may or may be on a bigger scale, maybe that’s something that you need to outsource or have people pick up on your lingo and start replying for you just so you’re more engaged with your followers because it gets to the point where there’s not enough time in the day.

NS:                   No way. There’s not enough time in the day, but you know, getting someone that knows how you talk that, you know, you only say a certain thing. So it’s not deviating from what you would say and making sure that you’re commenting back to everyone. Regardless of if the Tate or not like throw a little heart on a hate comment. Like who cares? You know, like and so just being more proactive on that and also just collaborating, you know, collaborating is still key.

You know, right now, I mean, I could be doing more collaborations and, you know, you can always be doing more collaborations and there’s always someone with less followers that’s inclined to more inclined to, you know, collaborate with you. And there’s someone that is, you know, maybe at the same level in a collaborate with you. And then there’s people that are higher up and maybe up to do a little bit more for that collaboration. But I’m always seeking out people in your industry or in your niche or whatever it may be that are congruent with what you put out and collaborate with people because everybody, everybody loves cross pollination of followers.

RV:                   And what, when you meet, collaborating, like, can you expand on that, on that, that

NS:                   I’m saying, Hey, you know, let’s do a video together or, you know, maybe I don’t, I don’t, I don’t do much of this, but Hey, like can you throw this up on your story and offer something up on my story? Or you know, shout, shout out for shout. I mean unbind it was, it was the evolution of, of vine for Irvine, right? So you can repose vine so someone repost your vine and you’d repost their vine.

On Instagram maybe it’s collaborating or also there’s engagement groups. So I engage in groups within you know, just reach out and see if those engraves engagement groups. So what that is is there’s group chats in DM, so when you post a piece, you put it in his group and you have a bunch of people commented on it right away because within the first 45 minutes of that post as much engagement as you get is going to spike the algorithm and get you to possibly the discovery page.

But within that first minute to 45 minutes, I think it’s very crucial that you apply to every comment that you’re super engaged and like in the engagement groups have, have other people comment on your stuff. But like, like I said, if I start all over, I would be more proactive in replying to all the comments. And I’m not only does that build a relationship with your supporters, but when people see that there’s 500 comments rather than two 50, because of your $5 to 50, it makes it look better.

RV:                   Yeah. Interesting. Commenting and collaborating. Those are, those are, those are, those are, those are pretty cool tips. So man, this has been inspiring to hear your story. Informative to like understand some of your process. Where do you want people to go if they want to, if they want to stay connected to you and like follow your journey and see how and even just watch like what you’re doing.

NS:                   Yeah. So my S I’m on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn at Santa Ana Sasso. And then my website also is you know, book make santo.com you can go there or a, my mind of a victor.com. And so basically this is where people can follow me. But like I said, I’m, I’m the guy with the really long last name, not just in a leg. So,

RV:                   Well I think, you know, it’s one of the things I love about you is, is there, I feel like there’s been several reasons and several opportunities to disappear quietly and sort of like retreat back and you’ve done the opposite. You’ve come forward. Whether it’s as a public figure or sharing things, you know, if there’s somebody out there right now, Nick that’s watching this and you know, maybe they have, they have the desire, they have that dream too.

They want to impact millions of people and what they want to speak, they want to influence, but they’re dealing with some of those demons, you know, maybe they’re in kind of that stage that you were when you were in like high school. What would you, what would you say to that person now having been through what you’ve been through?

NS:                   Yeah. You know, so many people are trying to do seek validation or significance from other people, you know, other relationships or looking at other things. When the biggest relationship, the most important relationship we should be working on is within ourselves. And so that’s working on ourselves. That’s building confidence, that’s making promises with ourselves and following through on them. That’s bettering our foundation, which is our body, our health, you know, health as well. Health is number one. And you can’t build an empire.

You can’t build some amazing thing if you don’t have the health, if you don’t have the foundation. And so it’s working on yourself and once you feel confident enough to put yourself out there, then you, then you do it. But you know, share the things that you know, people don’t know or share the things that you’re comfortable with that you struggle with and how you overcame them because that’s how you’re going to connect to the audience

RV:                   Or whoever you’re speaking to. Because like I said, you know, in the world we live in nowadays, there are not many transparent, authentic people. And so if you can show up on social media, if you can show up on the videos and share, you know, authentically about what you’ve been through, that’s how you really connect with people. And those people will, will follow you and, and ride or die with you regardless of what you post.

They’ll just love you for you because you show up authentic and transparent. I love it. Man, thank you so much for your story and for your persistence and just your, just your perspective on everything we are. We’re cheering you on and we’re learning from you and following you and I hope, I hope we get a chance to meet in person sometime soon. Mr. Sounds good, brother. Grateful for the opportunity. Thanks for having me.

Ep 29: Expanding Your Brand Beyond Your Wildest Dreams with Michael Stelzner | Recap Episode

RV:                   Hey Brand Builder. Welcome to this special recap edition of the Influential Personal Brand. We are talking about our top three takeaways from this interview with my very good friend Michael Stelzner from social media marketing world and which I will be speaking at. If you’ve missed that in the interview. It’s an amazing, really amazing event and so I’ll let AGA kick us off. We’re, we, we had the same kind of three big takeaways, so we’re just gonna we’re going to really nail those for you.

AJV:                  Yeah. So, and a lot of our different interviews, I, you will hear much discussion around social media as it pertains to your personal brand. And one of the most fascinating things that I really thought was, well, fascinating interview with Michael Stelzner and how he talked about how organic reach on social media is dead.

RV:                   Oh boy.

AJV:                  But I thought it was really just really cool how he talked about how most people don’t associate YouTube as a traditional social media site. And that YouTube actually offers really unique algorithms to play your videos based on who clicks on it, who actually watches it, how long they watch it, and then what they do after they watch it. And then we’ll actually promote your video to more of people on YouTube based on those things. Whereas other social media sites, we’ll not do that.

And that was a really interesting thing how he talked about. You’re going to go all in like don’t forget YouTube is still a thing and since it’s been video-based and everything else is going video base, they were kind of way ahead of the curve there. And then just the whole concept of all these different things that people are talking about constantly to grow your organic reach and he’s there going, well, good luck.

RV:                   Yeah. Although I thought that was a good, yeah, like YouTube is interesting. It’s not really kind of classically social media,

AJV:                  But it is.

RV:                   Yeah. And, and it, it’s, I, I never really put that together that YouTube is the only platform that really shows your content aggressively to people who aren’t your subscribers. And I think, you know, a big part of his message there was just extending your reach outside of social media. So you gotta be getting people off social media, which we’ve been talking about always.

You cannot be dependent upon social media. You’ve got to get those people off of social media and onto your email list, onto your podcast, which she talked a lot about was focusing on his, on his podcast and then also text message. Now, you know, you see a lot of the big players moving aggressively with into the text message opt in space as well. So you got, it’s like you can’t not be on social media but don’t, don’t depend on it.

AJV:                  I don’t think that, well we say we say this quite a bit is you know, you can be Twitter rich and dollar poor. And I think that’s a lot of what he was saying. It’s like it’s not that you shouldn’t do it. Just don’t think that most of your sales and conversions are going to happen because of your social media reach. And this is a kind of something that you brought up just very quickly there, but he talks about his email list.

RV:                   Yeah. So this is the second. The second thing in addition to your organic reach, basically being dead was how important email still – still to this day, how important email is to classified information about his own “classified” private, just between him and us and several millions of you.

AJV:                  But I love this because you hear from marketers all the time that email is dead, email is dead. Well, not so much at me. He said that’s how much 60 to 70% of his sales come from email marketing. Crazy. That is a lot. And then he was like, but we don’t send one or two emails. We have six months of promotion with a team of 20 that are leading up to his big event, which is his primary business model, which is coming up in just a few months. But we’re talking about 60 to 70% of a very healthy multimillion dollar business coming from email marketing. Which a lot of those leads best came from their podcast and all these other arenas.

But I think that is just something that, at least with our clients, we hear a lot about. It’s like when we ask them about their email list, it’s a, it’s not very big and it doesn’t get a lot of attention and a lot of focus on how do you capture emails. It’s more about how do you get followers and how do you get engagement on social media?

And we forget the real way of monetizing all of those people that you’re spending all this time, money and resource to attracting them on social, is actually getting their email so that you can market to them. Regardless of what these independent platforms are doing and when their algorithm changes, your contacts don’t. So it’s just the power of email and email marketing, which we promote. But it was so good to hear some real numbers and real results from somebody

Watch the Interview with  Michael Stelzner here

RV:                   Was so big. Yeah. Forced to be reckoned with in this space. And I think one of the big, the big light bulbs that came on for me that right had never really thought about was that he sends 60 to 70 emails just promoting this one event. And in my mind I go, well, I could never send, I would never want to send that many emails to my list. They’d get burned out. Like they get sick of hearing it and he said, no, no, no, no. You don’t just promote the event 60 or 70 times. You take one aspect of the event and you highlight it and you, you teach something about that one little aspect.

And I was thinking about our events, how, you know, most of our events are divided into six main sections over two days. It’s like we could send one email for each of those six sections and talk about, here’s one great tip and then here’s all the things you’ll learn about this section at the event. And if people don’t feel like they’re just getting bombarded because they’re not just getting bombarded, they’re, they’re getting educational information as a way of also learning about why they should buy and why they should come to me.

AJV:                  Good news for all of you and thanks to Michael Stelzner, all of our clients will now be getting 10 times the amount of emails that they’re currently getting. Prepare yourself. Set up a rule to put us all in a folder. The emails are coming, but yeah, I know that’s such a great point. It’s not that they’re all promotional, but it’s breaking down each speaker, each segment, each takeaway, each special events, it’s being useful and educational, but 60 to 70 compared to our six or seven.

AJV:                  Yeah, we got some email writing to do.

RV:                   Yeah, for sure. So, and then the last thing to me was just his whole mindset about how we thought about events and Aja really highlighted a share the big takeaway that you had from that. Cause I, I liked the parallel that you, that he said that you really latched onto about the book.

AJV:                  Oh yeah. He said that a live event is kind of like having a book. You don’t really make money at it, but it’s all the spin off that you get from that book or from that live event that you make money on. Like we say a lot, a book is just a really big business card and you’re not going to make, well most aren’t going to make your entire fortune from, or a living even from your book. But what you will do is it will raise your cache and your credibility and your awareness to a level that you can charge more.

So you get more speaking or training or consulting, you get booked more to do this. You get the sponsorships and the ads and you get all the things that come along with having a book and especially a bestselling book. But it may be, it’s not the book that’s gonna make you money. He’s saying the exact same thing happens with a big event.

RV:                   This is a good way of thinking about it. And I’ve never really thought about it that way. Are you? You know, I think I’m, you know, you can, I think a book is a good parallel because you can make money. It’s not that you can’t make money, it’s just that you’re probably not going to make your riches from events. There they are a step on the path. And then where he said you actually make the money was from the recordings with things you sell at the event

AJV:                  Recordings was an option. But it’s a, you know, like I’ve gone to several Tony Robbins events to even have the mindset of how much money you spend to go into an event. It’s not bad. It’s you, they’re selling coaching, right? They’re selling their training program, they’re selling their mastermind. It’s all the things you sell.

RV:                   Yeah. And in our case, you know our primary model, like our primary service offering includes events, and we actually give, we include the recordings for our monthly members that come with it. So I thought, you know, it’s interesting. I think we’re doing events very different from everybody too, is we’re not just because we’re not trying to make money, we’re not trying to make, yeah, we’re just very much proves this point. Yeah.

Well, you know, there’s always, there’s always, there’s always next steps for people and stuff, but anyways, the last little thing I wanted to highlight that was on this event topic was that he said that having a big name speaker won’t make your event unless it’s Rory Vaden that you hired to come keynote, other than Rory Vaden as your keynote speaker, a big, a big name is not going to make the event. I think a lot of people don’t really, I think a lot of people don’t understand that they would think differently.

AJV:                  I agree. And I want, I think it’s, I think there’s a couple of things. If you are in the business of hosting live events or you think you want to host live events, even if they’re small workshops, this is a must listen to interview. And then if you think that if you get this big name and they will come, he is saying, not really. It maybe a small percentage, he said, but not enough to pay for the expense of it.

And we actually know other people who have spent really big money and they ended up losing a lot of money on their event because that name didn’t attract as much as it needed to for the expense. But in general, it’s not like you don’t want to not have big name. People just don’t think that’s going to be what makes your bed, that’s not going to save you. That’s a good way of saying it was a great interview. And if you’re in the live event business in any capacity, you’ve got to listen

RV:                   Absolute must, must and podcasting and social and you know, you can check out the event. We’ll put links to that. I am speaking and social media marketing world this year, which is is great. And so yeah, there’s a lot of insights from a very big powerhouse. One of the godfathers of the industry. Check out the full interview, and as always, stay tuned here for your top three and three from myself and AJ, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 28: Expanding Your Brand Beyond Your Wildest Dreams with Michael Stelzner

RV:                   I am so excited to introduce to you someone that maybe you’ve been influenced by, but you may not realize it. Michael Stelzner is one of the biggest personal brands in the space, truly like one of the godfathers of this whole industry of, of influencers and social media and digital marketing. And it’s really interesting because we’ll talk about this. He always put the brand first of the, of, of the company. So social media examiner is the company. He’s the founder of it. They have a massive platform which we’re going to talk about. They run, well, one of the biggest, if not the biggest events in the space, social media marketing world. I’m actually going to be speaking at that. Next year in 2020.

So depending on when you hear this [inaudible] also, they have a tremendous podcast that he is hosted for 10 years. Again, one of, one of the first in the originals. And so this is somebody who has done it as scaled a company, has scaled a brand and I know you’re going to absolutely love him. If somebody that I’ve just gotten to know personally, he’s been a big help to me as an advisor and a friend and a mentor behind the scenes. And so it was like you guys, you’ve got, you’ve got to hear from Michael directly, so thanks for agreeing to come on the show.

MS:                  Hey, it’s my pleasure Rory.

RV:                   Yeah. So just can you give us an like a, a background on the platform of social media examiner? Like how big, I mean, cause you guys have huge blog, huge social, huge podcasts, huge events, a huge email list. Like how many people do you reach every month?

MS:                  Ah, well I can tell you that our social media examiner, the blog has been around for 10 years. We just had our 10 year birthday 85 million unique people. I’ve hit that blog since we launched it, that’s about 12 million probably in the last 12 months. And then the podcast is at 20 million downloads on it over seven years. And you know, the monthly metrics when you go beyond things that are easy to measure, like podcasting and blogging are a lot more fuzzy. Right.

We’ve got half a million fans on Facebook and a half a million fans on Twitter and nobody really knows what the reach metrics are. They’re not as good as they used to, but I would arguably say at least a million people a month, probably more for sure are consuming our stuff. And then we have 360,000 people that get emails from us three days a week. Linking out to our YouTube channel, our podcasts, our live show, our blog, and all the other crazy stuff we’ve got going on.

RV:                   Wow. That is just, that’s amazing. Thank you for being willing to share those numbers with us. I think, you know, a lot of the people here, you know, aspire to have a platform. I aspire to have a platform that’s that big for sure. And I think it also, it helps to have the perspective of time, like seven years, 20 million downloads, but it’s been seven years. Like it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen overnight. Like you’ve been at this a long time.

MS:                  Right? Yeah. And you know, that’s kind of the key I think for anyone who wants to be known is to be consistent and to be working it. Because there was a day when I started where I was a nobody. I didn’t know darn thing when I started, you know, I didn’t know anything about social media marketing when I started social media examiner. It was just relentless work, interviewing experts, bringing their knowledge to my tribe.

Then eventually people started looking to me as a leader and before you know, it all of a sudden they were calling me though leader. And it just took a lot of time. Along the way a lot of people dropped off, started focusing on other things and I just kept going and eventually you can say I became kind of the leader.

RV:                   Yeah. I mean that is interesting. You know you know, when I was on your podcast, we talk about she hands wall and the focus and breaking through and being known for one thing, like you have stayed really true to social media specifically. And, and you became, you know, like you said, I, that’s the way you just described that was perfect. It was like I went from interviewing leaders to a leader, to the leader. And so

MS:                  I suppose by the way, let’s just be clear, right? Because I don’t necessarily call myself that perception. I’m a marketer. Let’s be honest. Perception is reality in the eye of the beholder, right? So very important lesson that I’m,

RV:                   I would say that about you. Yeah,

MS:                  You said that and I appreciate that. And that’s all that really matters, right? In the end is what other people think. And

RV:                   Yes, what Rory Vaden says, that’s what matters in the end is what’s as, right. So one of the things that I have always loved about you because I, what you just said about perception is so true. Like it’s, you know, we have a joke around Brand Builders Groups that we say at least half of what we teach you is actual substance is about producing actual substance because there’s unfortunately or fortunately so much of it is perception driven, but you are data-driven. And over the years I’ve seen you, you know, put out like the social media, this annual report, the annual report that you do. It’s like people should pay $10,000 and you just give it away. It’s, it’s insane. You’re so data-driven and I, and I love that about you. Well, you always that way or like did you like

MS:                  Pretty much, I mean I have a master’s in communications. I publish stuff in journals. You know, like, ah, that was based on research studies and stuff. It’s just, I think, I think I’m one of those rare people that’s creative and analytical and there are some people that are super analytical and some people that are super creative. I’ve got this weird mix of both. And I think that’s what makes me kind of unique in my space because I can get super creative and I can get super and I can flop back and forth.

RV:                   Yeah. Well, so let’s talk about the analytical piece for a second. Just cause I know you’re like watching the trends, you’re watching the numbers. Is there, what are some of the most compelling statistics that you’ve seen maybe like in the last 12 months or so that you think people really need to know about where it’s like if you, if you don’t know this, like you’re in trouble because th there’s some, these are the data. This is a dumb data points that are like there.

MS:                  Yeah, I’ll tell you a qualitative and quantitatively. Okay, here’s the deal. Video is everything. Qualitatively, you all know this because Apple invested billions in launch and Apple plus Disney invent, invent invested billions in launching Disney. Plus there is a war going on in the video streaming war because everyone knows that what people watch video as their primary consumption vehicle now over anything else, they will bend watch hours and hours of video. They won’t necessarily do that with reading anymore. They’re just not reading.

People are not reading as much as they used to. They will listen for sure with podcasts and stuff, but the only do that typically when they’re in a in motion, you know, or they’re doing something, but when they’re home and they’ve got nothing to do, they’re going to be watching video. And that is a signal that’s qualitatively saying something. Now, when I, when I add that with the quantitative data, we have research from our industry report that people can find it.

MS:                  Social media examiner.com that shows that marketers are all in on video and video is becoming very, very important. Mark Zuckerberg a couple of years ago, predicted that video would be the primary vehicle of communication on the Facebook platform. We’re already seeing this happen on Instagram. Half a billion people are watching Instagram stories every single day. So when you have the 15 second vertical video on Instagram stories and you have live video and you have LinkedIn native video and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. You just realize everything is moving towards video consumption. And if you want to influence people, you need to create video because that is a mega trend.

RV:                   It’s overwhelming to create video on all these PLA like it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit daunting to be like I gotta do a freaking Facebook live and a YouTube live and an Instagram story and I got to do it at LinkedIn and like they all are holding you hostage to like being on their actual platform doing it. Like is there any, anything that we can do to like just manage the, like the workflow and the production of all of that?

MS:                  Start somewhere first and just get started today or tomorrow and decide where it’s going to be. Maybe it should be Instagram if that’s where you know your audience is hanging out. Maybe it should be, LinkedIn does not need to be alive. I would start with stories because the easiest thing to start with, you pick your phone out of your pocket, you pull up Instagram stories. You don’t need to look pretty or well manicured. You just record something and you call it done and you see if you get a reaction and then if you get a reaction, you do it some more and you do it some more until it starts serving a purpose. And once you decide what that purpose is and you achieve that purpose, then you can start diversifying. Right?

So for example, at social media examiner, we do a million different things, but we’re a media company and we have tons of employees and we’re filming and creating content all over the place. But it took us years to get here. We started somewhere and then we eventually moved somewhere else by expansion and then move somewhere else and move somewhere else until you get to the point where it’s really obvious where you should be.

RV:                   Can you, are you comfortable sharing how many employees you have?

MS:                  Yeah, I have 20 full time employees. I have 39 contractors that are regular. And then I have another 30 seasonal contractors. And then I have 200 more volunteers that participate in social media marketing world that does not count vendors that are on location at our conference. And stuff, but it’s a pretty good sized team.

RV:                   Wow. yeah, so videos, everything is interesting. I remember seeing that coming, you know, you’ve been talking about this for a while. It wasn’t like it just came out this year, like you were way, way ahead. And one of the things that we did when we were looking through your, through the report was we moved to a full video profile on Instagram where even our quotes are videos, they come across as video texts because it’s plus, it’s just like nobody sees it if it’s not, like, if it’s not that, it’s like they’re not showing it to anybody.

MS:                  Well that’s thumb stopping, right? Because it’s moving instead of still. Right. And there’s just something special to video. But in particular story in video I think is the magical side of it really. If we’re intellectually honest, you don’t just use video for the sake of video, use it for the sake of telling some sort of a story.

RV:                   Yeah. well, so that’s good to know. I mean, it’s like you have to get on it. Like you just have to figure, I’ve noticed you’re coming more in front of the camera personally, which we’ll talk about probably here in a little bit too. So I want to pause the video piece. I want to come to the audio piece because the Social media marketing podcast UMaine it is like always like number three in all marketing podcast in iTunes.

Like you go in there, you see there’s all these huge podcasts and it’s like consistently right there in the top three. What do you think you do differently when it comes to podcasting that has, has caused it to have such like staying power?

MS:                  First of all, I vet my guests and I make sure that I don’t just let anybody on my podcast, I have a lot of friends that have a lot of books and they all want to be on my podcast. A lot of times I just tell them it’s not a fit because I’m curating for my audience. So the first thing is I want to make sure that I’m getting the right people on the show to maintain that level of quality. The second thing is I always have a half an hour pre-call, you know this Rory will meet with the guest and I will negotiate the topic.

That way when they show up for the interview, I know them better and we know exactly what we’re talking about. Even though it doesn’t sound like that at all. Like my daughter is like what? You know, like this stuff is not just coming off the cuff. I’m all, no it’s not. It’s prepared and that is what leads to a higher quality show. The last thing is I always put myself in the position of the listener and if they say something, the guest that’s like an acronym that nobody knows or they went by it really fast. I say what? Hold on a second and I don’t let them go. And you know this firsthand?

RV:                   Yeah, they really well like you stop and dig and halt and challenge and question.

MS:                  Yeah. And it’s not like I’m trying to challenge the question. I just want to understand. Right? Because I know that my audience wants to understand, and I’m doing both you, the gusta service and the audience a service because a lot of them tell me, you literally asked the question that I had in my brain.

And and that I think is part of what my audience really, really loves about the show and it’s just an interview show, but it’s very much focused on tactical, tactical stuff. And I think that’s just been my tried and true rested P from the beginning rather than just bringing a bunch of people on and shooting the crap. That’s just not how I roll. You know, we’re here to, to learn something. And I think that’s what people love about the show.

RV:                   Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, the, the prep that you do. I mean, I’ve done hundreds of podcast interviews and it’s just like between the prep that you do on the front end and then the, the way that you hold that line of quality and you know, both leading up to and during the episode is, it’s like there’s, there’s less than a handful of people that actually do that.

MS:                  Thank you. I think that’s probably why it’s survived as strong and as long as it has.

RV:                   Yeah. Well one of the things about you also, it’s interesting like usually when I interview somebody for our audience, I’m picking them because they do one thing really, really well. And that’s something that we teach people to do, right, is just like have focus, focus, focus. You know, you, you do podcasting while you social while you’re doing this reports really well, but your, your primary business model, like the way that you actually make money is mostly from the event, right?

MS:                  Correct. Okay. So like more than half is from the conference and the rest of it is from online training stuff that we do or our professional organization that people belong to.

RV:                   Gotcha. So social media marketing world is this event and, and y’all, if you’ve never been there, it’s, it’s amazing. Like there are so many people, there’s so much knowledge. Like it’s a buzz. It’s, it’s, it’s not even like a community. It’s, it’s like I dunno. It’s like an empire. And, and, and the, the, the thing that’s crazy too about your event is usually the people who are teaching are the ones like sitting in the audience. So, so a lot of the people, if you go to other events and it’s like you’ll see, you know, somebody teaching on this or that or whatever, those people are in the audience at your event. Which is

MS:                  And just period behind the curtain. Is that what you mean?

RV:                   Right, yeah. Like the speakers stay, they hang out, they’re there, they’re all networking. There’s all these like private meetups that are happening. And yeah,

MS:                  We designed it to be very social because obviously it’s called social media marketing world. And we knew that people that are in this space are by their very nature wanting to interact with each other. Cause they often sit behind the computer by themselves and they don’t get a chance to hang out with people that are like minded. And I had been going to other conferences and I just noticed this was missing.

The only thing they would do is they’d go into a club and that would be the only chance to get together and you couldn’t talk to anybody because the music was so darn loud. So I’m like, Hey, let’s build opportunities for people to connect and let’s build this in such a way that we highly encourage the speakers to hang out, you know?

And we don’t really have a green room like other events do, so the speakers can’t retreat to it. We engineered it that way. But what ends up happening is these speakers walk out into the hall afterwards and they’re, they’re surrounded by 30 people and they just go for another half an hour and they love it, you know? And it’s like the audience loves it. They love it because it’s accessible. They can get to people and it’s just something unusual. And I’m, I never could have imagined it could’ve gotten this big. It’s really, really kind of one of my big accomplishments.

RV:                   How many people are you expecting?

MS:                  Well, we had 4,700 people there last year.

RV:                   Wow. I think last time I was there it was like 2300 or something.

MS:                  So we don’t know exactly cause it’s still too early. We’re still a couple of months away, but we’ll probably be at least 4,000. I mean it could be more, you can never tell what the event space, you know. But we’ve always grown every year. So it’ll be at least 4,000, maybe 5,000. I honestly don’t know, but it sounds like a lot, but it is still got this intimate flair to it. So we try very hard to make sure even though it feels huge to not make it feel that way when you’re actually there.

RV:                   So when it comes to events, yeah, this is another thing. Our, our team knows this when we started this is our back with our, our former company. But you know, when I kind of started as a professional in this industry, we started by doing events. We were putting on public seminars and you know, we did that. We traveled to a new city every month, every four months for like five years.

And I got to the point where I was like so burnt out on hosting events and doing events and I call it name tags. It’s like anytime you got to print name tag it’s like, I don’t want to print name tags. Like but I feel like events are making you know, in some ways I’m a comeback or, or, or whatever. What do you think that people should know if they want to put on their own event? And you know, some of our clients do. Lewis puts on one big event every year. I feel like that’s kind of becoming more of a theme where it’s like there’s one big event. How do you make an event profitable? Cause you could spend a lot of money.

MS:                  It’s not easy to do. We spend many, many, many millions of dollars to put on our event. But the key to, first of all, you have to acknowledge and understand that people want experiences. It’s like the, the thing that everybody craves now because they’re all stuck on their devices. They want to be together. It’s, it’s especially in millennials, they pay a lot of money for an experience, you know, that’s, that’s like kind of the center of what they want.

So to put on a good event, you need to ask yourself, what can you model that has a really good experience. We modeled Disneyland and we look at the experience of the people at Disneyland and how there’s people greeting you and that everything is clean and taken care of and polished. So that’s what we do. But what, what somebody else needs to do is just ask themselves, okay, how can we create an experience that people will talk about?

MS:                  Take pictures, want to be part of next year? And as far as making it profitable one of the best ways to make an event profitable is to sell the recordings to the event. Because the actual event itself is, it’s very hard to be profitable. You need to have big scale for it to be profitable. But you could have an upsell on the recordings of the video or you could sell the recordings of the video to the people that couldn’t make it to the event. We have many, many thousands every year that buy the recordings from social media marketing world and that is a big source of profit for us.

RV:                   Gotcha. And how do you price it relative to the price of admission?

MS:                  The price. Okay. So the vert, we call it the virtual ticket and it sells between 300 and $700 depending on when they buy it. The physical ticket sells between a thousand and $1,600 when they buy it. So the idea is, you know, it should be a maybe 25% to 35% of the cost because the whole reason typically people go to events where there is teaching is for the content. Right?

But there is obviously that experience that they’re truly paying for, right? That chance to meet you face to face, all that kind of stuff. And if you do really good with the recordings, you can still get lots and lots of people. We do not broadcast it live. It’s just about 10 days after the event. We email everyone and all the recordings are available for them to watch.

RV:                   Yeah. I mean, you guys have so many breakout rooms and stuff. That’d be crazy to try it.

MS:                  I’m simultaneous things going on.

RV:                   Yeah. so that’s interesting. So promoting the event, right? So I think it was like if you have a video course or you have a membership program, it’s like, okay, you know, you’re going to do a podcast or you’re going to build a funnel. You know, people are going to be nurtured through a sequence and they’re going to buy. I don’t feel like you see that as much with events. Events are very hard to sell. So how do you, how do you sell an event particularly like you know, at this point your events are there. It’s not a cheap, it’s nothing to go

MS:                  Hotel and flights. You’re talking $3,000. Right? So the key thing is going to be to sell an event is to figure out a price point. And to figure out where your audience is. If it’s a local audience and it probably could be obviously a few hundred dollars, you know, if it’s a smaller event, you have to have enough, you have to charge enough to obviously cover, cover your expenses.

In an ideal world, an event you treat like a book, right, where you’re not going to make money on the event, but the event will lead to other opportunities. That’s how you have to think about it, right? Like a lot of things we’re going to make money on books either, right? But it leads to other opportunities. So I’m promoting the event is just all about getting the right people to the event. And w we do it for like six months straight, you know what I mean?

MS:                  So for us it’s a massive undertaking to promote it and we use all of our own media to promote it, but it’s the primary source of revenue for our company. I don’t think a lot of other people have that kind of opportunity. So you might want to just, you know, set your goals a little lower than what you think because it’s really, really hard.

So if you want a thousand, maybe go with 300 for the first one, and then if you need more and then you’re sold out and then boom, you’ve got a sold out event. But no matter what, it’s going to be harder than you realize to sell out an event because it’s really hard for people to commit cause it’s a complex sale. They got to, they got to check the dates, they gotta check the flights, they gotta check the hotels. There’s

RV:                   Just so much to it, you know this, right? Yeah. I mean it’s, it is, it is. So, I mean it’s, it’s crazy. So, and when you say promote it, okay, does that just mean you’re telling people, Hey, we have an event, here’s the website that you go to. I mean, what, what, what, what is it, what is that? What are the details of, you know, cause like one of the reasons I like things like courses or whatever, it’s like, okay, there’s a registration page and then there’s a, there’s a video and then there’s a sales page and you buy a, events are much more complex. Just like you said.

So I have five full time marketers on my team working for six months straight. Just to give you some perspective. Okay. They’re doing everything from email marketing and we probably send 50 to 100 emails. They’re doing Facebook advertising, they’re doing organic social media posts. They’re doing ads on our existing media properties that we have. They might be doing, bringing speakers on live video to

MS:                  Do stuff. I’m bringing on speakers that are going to be speaking at the event, you know, and I might plant in what are you gonna be talking about the event, like we integrate all the media into kind of the purpose of driving people to go to that event. And then we also have to get affiliates lined up and get them to promote the event and to get the fans excited about the events we have to do contest and promotions.

Like we just did share your story kind of thing where people created videos and it was my story from social media marketing world and then the winner got an all expenses paid trip. There’s stuff, I mean like I’m just scratching the surface man. It’s deep and it’s wide, but it’s our core business model.

RV:                   I mean that part is that, that last part is not one that I really have heard that much. So you did a, you did a deal where you invited people who were your last year’s attendees to walk? Walk me through that exactly

MS:                  Called, it was called my S M M w story. And it was a promotional contest that we encourage people to either in writing or in video create like a two minute video or a written thing that shared their story. And we were going to pick a grand prize winner, which was a give them a free ticket travel and hotel. We refund their ticket if they already bought one. And the second prize was just a ticket. And we w the grand winner was a guy named Roger who’s a plumber.

He told the story about how he came to social media marketing world and his business was about to go under and now he’s like the leading plumber in the world and he’s speaking on stages over the world about plumbing, you know, and and he met the people at my conference, like Daryl ease from YouTube and others and that led him down the path to YouTube. Now he’s got this huge following and it was really awesome. And it was, he had the hashtag on it, but the goal was to get people to talk about our event, use the hashtag so that it looked as if they were evangelizing for us, which they were, and then we were going to pick the best one and reward them with a prize.

RV:                   Well, I love that. Did you do that every year just to [inaudible]

MS:                  Oh, that’s a new idea this year. Did it work? Well it didn’t because we unfortunately promoted it the week of Thanksgiving. So an idea of where we would have gotten started a little earlier and we also found it was hard to get people to create videos. So we’ll probably give it a little more promotion earlier next year.

We had, we only had like four videos and two writtens and it costs us thousands. You can imagine just in prizes. So we didn’t actually see ROI on that. But we, interesting hermit, you try stuff and if it works you keep doing it. If it doesn’t, you try something different.

RV:                   So what, so what do you think really moves the needle? Like what actual like what

MS:                  Email? 70% 70% of all of our sales for the conference that we can track come from email. The rest is word of mouth, which is just good old fashioned people telling people.

RV:                   Now when you say email is that I’m sending you an email to say, Hey, there’s an event coming up. Click here to buy it. That’s it. Except we do it.

MS:                  Do you know 70 times and each one’s a little different. Like, like here at one email might be like, Hey, you know, you need to do more with Instagram marketing and here’s some interesting statistics and you know, the best way to learn about Instagram marketing is to go learn from the people that are doing it well, here’s who’s doing it. Come learn at their feet link. You know what I mean? That kind of stuff.

So we just come up with a thousand different angles and we write different messages. You know, another one might be a keynote announcement. Right? You get the idea. So the idea is any, anything that we can tell a story or talk about, that’s part of our sequence that happens every single week over the entire six month promotional campaign and multiple times a week sometimes.

RV:                   Yeah. So that’s, so that’s really powerful cause, so basically you’re just taking like one little sliver of what someone’s gonna learn and building one email around that. Yeah. Flushing some content around it and then leading, tying it towards buying the event. So you’re not like, you’re, you’re not just, you’re not just sending 50 emails that say, come to San Diego on these dates.

MS:                  Now they all kind of are part of a theme and build the story. And then the ones that really perform well, we turn them into Facebook ads or turn them into organic content that dah dah, dah, dah.

RV:                   And do you think like how is having the big name speakers, is that still like a pretty big part of why people are coming is like the big keynote speaker or whatever.

MS:                  It’s not the keynote speaker. Cause as you know, most of our speakers are keynoters, you know, like we had other events like yourself.

RV:                   Yeah, you got me, you got me, you got me stowed away in the breakout in the breakout room somewhere. I don’t want to workshop. We’re diving in.

MS:                  Yeah. So it is definitely the the key to it all really is my podcast because people listen to these people every week on my show and then they realize that they’re all there together. You know what I mean? So, and they realize, wow, I’ve actually sampled some of Rory and some of these other people. And it’s like, I want to learn more from them and this is their chance to come and learn from those people. So it’s all kind of intertwined.

RV:                   And then the ads that you’re running. Okay, so, so same thing as like, is it just an ad for [inaudible]?

MS:                  It’ll be more like a remarketing ad. Like, Hey, you need to convince your boss, we’ve written a letter for you. Go here. You know, so somebody who didn’t buy, we’ll send them an ad that says, here’s something we wrote to convince your boss, or we’ll send them another ad that says, not sure the content will be good. Go here and watch the sample.

RV:                   Interesting. And then those, you’re driving those back to your website just on like hidden yeah. Special pages. Yeah, exactly. Aha. So they’re not available. It’s like public pages

MS:                  Public. You just don’t, it’s not necessarily there. You know, the, the website is, you just got for the event, it’s got lots of pages, so they might’ve missed it.

RV:                   Yeah. interesting. And then you have a, and then and then affiliates. So you’ve got, you’ve got people out there send an email blast to their lists and stuff. A lot of them are the speakers to be honest

MS:                  With you. You know, they’re the ones that have the skin in the game and a lot of them just, you know, cause we do not pay our speakers. Which is another surprise surprise. But they come because they really do find a lot of value in what happened, what they get out of it. You know, they get, they get the right kind of audience out of this event that helps their business. So a lot of them choose to be affiliates and a lot of them let their list know about it on whatever method they choose to do it, like their podcast or whatever else.

RV:                   Oh, you’re not paying giving keynote speakers. Like even we’ve never paid a speaker ever. Really not even like the big headliner person. They’re coming because of the value.

MS:                  You’ve never paid guy Kawasaki, we’ve never paid, you know, all the big names that we’ve had. No, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll cover their flight. And their, their hotel and stuff. But we’ve never paid a speaking fee ever. And it’s really kind of our secret sauce because the moment we do it, we’ve got to pay everybody.

RV:                   Well yeah. And that’s, and that’s where it’s like, it really is hard to run the event and the, if the profit goes upside down is speakers

MS:                  And she can get away with that. It’s a lot harder when you’re a small event,

RV:                   Right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Cause it’s like the reason the reason you come is because everyone’s going to be there and you know, when you’re smaller red, it’s just, it’s just really, really, really hard. But I think even before our former company, the way that I originally started was just doing a free, I just did a free training. I invited people to come and then it was just like in the knee, sell, sell, whatever you have to sell. Or

MS:                  There are, there are keynoters out there where their whole business model is just keynotes and that’s how they make money. And those keynoters like Sally Hogshead for example, will sometimes take one on paid gig a year, you know? Yeah.

RV:                   Or if that’s like me, that’s me. Yeah.

MS:                  Or you know, and, and it, but it’s gotta be really a perfect match for their business model. Right. So, so, and it’s really like you’ve got to have a good relationship with those people. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But there are, there are bazillions of speakers out there whose business model is to get in front of crowds, are willing to do it for free because they make their money by selling consulting, you know? And that’s really where the bulk of the speakers come from, is that the ones that are, you’re getting a sample of their value and then the hope is that you become a customer.

RV:                   Yeah. Well I think that’s a good way, you know, for our audience listening is you gotta be thinking about what speakers would be interested in speaking to my audience because it’s a, it’s a win win. It’s a win, win, win for everybody.

MS:                  Gotta be a win win. If they don’t want to be there, you don’t want them. And that’s it. You know? And, and, and let me tell you the idea that a one speaker is going to make your event, it’s just not true. You know, even Gary Vaynerchuk who spoken at my event, who never does free events has done free events for me. You know, so, but, but the reality is even him alone, there are not, they’re not really have a material impact one way or the other on my business. And he is really the biggest guy in our world. Yeah.

RV:                   I mean, that’s interesting to hear. Like that’s just that, that, that, that name. Well, and in some ways it’s just [inaudible]

MS:                  No, as I’m a big event, if you’re a small event, it could be a huge thing for you. But if you’re a big event, you know, yeah, maybe a couple hundred people might come more, but that’s probably, it’s really hard to measure. You know, you can’t just pin it on one person and that’s where a lot of people get it wrong. They just say, if I could only have Seth Goden or if I only have Gary Vaynerchuk and it’s just not how it works.

RV:                   Yeah. Well that’s, I think that’s actually encouraging is just to go like create an experience. Right. You know, don’t build it, don’t build it just around one personality or speaker or whatever and pin all your hopes to that. Cause there’s a lot of people who do that. They’ll go pay 50 grand to get a speaker and then it’s like, crap, that didn’t help me sell more tickets at all and now I’m broke. You know, like I spent all my money on that, that, that thing for public of PR, particularly for public events. It’s like corporates, a little bit of it.

MS:                  That might be true with musicians and athletes and comedians and all that kind of stuff. But definitely not with your everyday kind of speaker, you know.

RV:                   So speaking about personalities, I want to talk about, open this conversation with you because you know, I think it’s like people heard of social media marketing world and social media examiner and social media marketing podcast, but it’s like the, you have your, you have your little icons and your graphics and your visual identity. None of it is built around Michael Stelzner his face.

You’re not even, I mean, you’re the voice of the podcast, but my face is not on the cover art. That’s true. Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, it’s, it wasn’t built around your face. Why did you do so? So why did you do that originally? And do you think that that has made your enterprise more valuable or less valuable? And do you plan to keep doing that in the future? Like that, that whole conversation is a big one.

MS:                  All right. First and foremost, I was very well known before I started social media examiner in the world of writing. And it was all about me and my name and my name was everywhere. This was before my face logically made sense because this is when blogging was around and people didn’t put their face. It was before social. And I had that fame and I decided I didn’t want any more of it.

So when I started social media examiner, I knew it was never intended to be about me. It was to create a movement. And you can’t create a movement with a face. You create a movement with a concept. Right? So the idea that social media that I could create a movement of people that wanted to understand how social media works was far more important than Michael Stelzner because people want to be part of a movement.

MS:                  They don’t want to be part of a person, you know? So I was creating something that transcended the individual. Now that did hurt me a little bit in the beginning after I got to a certain level of fame, because when I came out with my second book launch at first people were like, who the heck is Michael Stelzner?

They know social media examiner. But that turned out to not be a problem because my audience didn’t know who I was because my name was on every email that went out from the beginning. And but over time, you know, I just didn’t want to make it about me and I knew that if I made it about someone else, it would grow faster. So what was the second part of the question?

RV:                   Well, so that’s what you did early on. Has it helped you or hurt you and do you plan on doing it going forward? And why or why not?

MS:                  So. So at this point, about two years ago, I started putting my face out there a little bit more when I started a documentary called the journey, which has been retired. We did that for two seasons and it turned out people really actually liked hearing from me and seeing me and my quirky nature on camera. But I decided I’m done with that. My, I’m doing something brand new as of right.

Today I just launched something brand new, which you saw. I only put my face out there with an intent and with a purpose. So me, it’s like I don’t want to be more famous than I already am. I feel like I, I, I, that’s not going to service me. I’m not selling me. There’s nothing, there’s no advantage to the business to necessarily having my face out there more because we’re already so quite successful.

MS:                  But I’ve got something new that I’m going to be launching a course. So I strategically decided that I was going to create a series of videos to show the world that there’s some knowledge that I have that they may not be aware of. And I launched that very first video today and it was very well received. I was shocked actually. I published it on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn and the comments were like, Whoa.

And I’m getting text messages from friends and like it’s just a four minute video showcasing some of my knowledge and I’m going to be doing it for a couple of months here just to kind of set my audience, set the message to my audience that Hey, I have something to teach you and then when I’m ready to sell the course they will hopefully say, okay, I’ve learned so much from Mike for free. Maybe I’ll go check out his course.

RV:                   So how do you think, how do you, if somebody who’s just starting out, yeah, right. You know, you said there are certain advantages to building it around your face. That’s the thing about a face too, is it, it’s your face. It’s, it simplifies the sale cause it’s like if I like you, I buy from you. If I don’t like you, I don’t. But if it’s a company, it’s like there’s a little more exploration of like, do I really trust this brand? Right? But if somebody’s just starting out, how do they know if they should lead with their face or if they should build it around a brand?

MS:                  It depends on what you’re selling. If you’re selling your knowledge, lead with your face, if you’re selling a product, then you might want to go either way, right? So if you’re selling a widget, then you just have to ask yourself, do I want to build a brand that will help me accelerate the widget? Or do I want to build a personal brand that’ll accelerate through the widget?

Because maybe my story about the, you know, look at all the shark tank stories, right? It’s about the person, right? And some of those persons are naturals, right? Where it’s like, Hey, you need to come on QVC. You need to be the one to sell it. Right? But not everyone’s like that. So that’s Jeff. If you’re a natural communicator and you have that energy and you can bring that content and it comes naturally, then use your face. If it doesn’t, then create a brand that’s a brand that doesn’t involve your face.

RV:                   All right, so let me ask you if the entrepreneurial side, cause I was actually surprised to hear this really. So I was surprised. I was surprised to hear this. I want to from the entrepreneurial perspective, because even though I’m like a personal brand guy, I mean it’s our whole business, right? Is helping people build brands around their face. I’m also an entrepreneurial guy and so I’m interested in equity value. I’m interested in, in resellable value and I feel like, you know, there are things like trafficking conversion that were sold that have high values. To me, social media examiner has a lot of value because there’s less of a question about whether or not this enterprise will succeed without you, which means it’s a sellable asset versus if it’s built around your face.

MS:                  Well that’s a huge upside to having a brand that’s not your face. Absolutely. Yeah. So I, I just, so that was my intent in building the thing. I mean, honestly, I didn’t, first I didn’t feel comfortable cause they didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. And secondly, I thought I could build a brand and I could get out of it if I wanted to and it would still potentially live on.

RV:                   Right. And I feel that’s true, right? Like I think it’s, I mean if you, I mean other than a different voice on the podcast, I think it’s like somebody very much could by social media examiner and there’s like this machine that produces events

MS:                  Every year. We’re not for sale, but it’s true. That is a huge advantage. And you just have to ask yourself like, what do you, you can go either way. You can start with a personal brand and you can spin off a product which a lot of people have done, right. Lots of people have done that.

RV:                   Lots of people, celebrities do that all the time. I mean, that’s what [inaudible]

MS:                  They did. And that the advantage of the personal brand is it can be a huge accelerant because you become the influencer that builds that product. The flip side of it is you could be a company that spins off a personal brand. You see this with CEOs all the time, Richard Branson, right? And all these other CEOs, Steve jobs, formerly, you know, of Apple. And you know, the, the soak can go either direction. You could be, you could come out from behind the brand like I did or you could be the brand.

RV:                   Yeah. So, well that’s interesting cause that’s, that’s, that’s what we would say too is like, it all depends on what is your long term objective and you know, what are your, what are your strengths and your weaknesses and stuff. So it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a black and white answer for everybody. It totally depends on your situation. Okay. Well very cool.

So I have one more little question I want to ask you before I do that. Where should people go if they want to, you know, learn more about Mike Stelzner and you know, social media marketing world. And, and

MS:                  So first of all, if you have room for on your listening podcast for more podcasts, check out the social media marketing podcast. If you go to social media examiner.com you’ll find everything you’ll find social media marketing world, you’ll find our YouTube channel social media examiner.com. Okay. All right.

RV:                   We’ll put links to that. Of course I’ll go into the show notes and everything and I’ll be at the event which I’m excited aside about and looking forward to seeing you again in person, my friend. The coming back to the data. Yes. Okay. One of the things that’s painful for everybody is that the organic reaches is dying on social media. I feel, I mean, true, it is dying and it is really, really frustrating cause people have invested a lot of time and energy at the same time. It’s hard to complain. It’s like it’s free. What are the kind of big trends on the horizon that you think personal brands should be paying attention to in order to maximize their organic reach on social, you know, beyond video or is there anything else? Is it just like, you know, video is the answer.

MS:                  The idea of maximizing your organic reach is kind of a dead idea. So instead of what you need to do is you need to figure out on social, because it’s just, it’s gone and it’s not coming back. You can pay, which is if you’re willing to put a little bit of money behind some of those organic posts you can pay to get those in front of people, which might be smart depending on what your objective is. So do not be shy about putting money behind your organic posts and turning them into an ad. Beyond organic.

I really feel it’s important to diversify beyond social obvious social, like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn into other platforms like podcasting, like YouTube, which a lot of people don’t think of when they think of social and also the written word. So there are still people that read email, there are still, and there’s a lot of people that just send emails like Chris Brogan’s a great example of that, right? He puts out a weekly email w w and he doesn’t publish that content anywhere else. So those are things that you can do to nurture and grow an audience that kind of are your own. So you don’t have to be at the mercy of an algorithm

RV:                   And you don’t think you, YouTube doesn’t count as social media because it’s not an algorithm. Meaning they’re, they’re going to show it, right?

MS:                  Can it have an algorithm? But most people don’t think of YouTube when they think of social. They think of YouTube as a distribution vehicle. Okay? So you can link to your YouTube videos through all these other mediums, right? So you can say, Hey, go watch the video here on YouTube.

And if you’re lucky, some of those videos will take off in search or suggested video. But I, in the same way, podcasts, you could argue, have a search function inside the Apple podcast directory. You got to promote the podcast, right? Everybody knows that who has a podcast, you’ve got to promote the podcast. You do the same thing with your YouTube videos. You treat it as a, as a source, you know, not at the destination. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just where the video lives is what I’m,

RV:                   But but, but basically like you post something on Facebook, less than 1% of whoever follows you is going to even that you post something on iTunes, a podcast, all of your subscribers get that. If they are subscribed, it shows up in their feed. And you’re saying YouTube is more like that and less like Facebook your subscribers,

MS:                  Right? But the key thing is to, yes, to grow the subscribers. But the difference between YouTube and podcasting is that not all of your subscribers will see the video. Youtube will reveal the video to your subscribers selectively. And then they’ll look at how many people click on it. And then what they do after they click on it. So what YouTube will do is if you can get them to click on it, which is a good thumbnail, and then they’ll watch it cause YouTube is looking for retention time, then they’ll show it to more of your subscribers and then they’ll show it to non-subscribers.

So there’s a huge distribution upside on YouTube that you do not have on any other platform. Also, remember YouTube videos can work for years. That does not happen on any other social platform. You’re lucky for 24 hours on everything else. So there is that big upside and you can email, you know, that link to YouTube in the same way you might tell everybody to go listen to your podcast with links to Apple and Google play and Spotify. So it’s just one of those things you got to promote.

But, but the upside to YouTube video can be huge because if you can get a video optimized, then it could deliver

RV:                   For years. I love it. Well there you have it. Some of the biggest ideas from one of the biggest brands in the space, Michael Stelzner, everybody check out social media marketing world. The event, I will be there. If you’re listening to this before that time for this year, and any year in the future, I can tell you for sure. It will be amazing. So follow Michael, check them out. This is one of the, the, the, the native sources that I learned from social media examiner. So, Michael, thanks so much for your friendship and your counsel and for all your wisdom and, and ideas today, my friend.

Ep 27: Capturing a State with Lewis Howes | Recap Episode

RV – Hey Brand Builder welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast I am joined by my wife and business partner CEO Brand Builders Group, AJ Vaden to give you our famous three and three recap and this is a special interview for us because Lewis

Howes is someone who has become a business partner, a client and a truly dear friend.

I thought AJ might start by just sharing a little bit of a behind-the-scenes clip of why he’s so important to us personally.

Well as our boys call him, Uncle Lou Lou.  For anyone in business or who’s in life for that matter, need someone who pushes them and believes in them and myths of chaos and that is exactly what Lewis did for us. There was a very sudden departure between us and our former business partners and our former business.

Divine intervention God placed Lewis in our lap during a very unique time a very challenging time for us and it was just a really interesting thing where it’s like you don’t really know what your next move is but someone says I do and this is it and literally he said those words this is your new thing and he pushed us towards it he believed in us he was like this has got to be it and then on top of that he was like I believe in this so much I’m gonna help you I’m gonna have you on my podcast I’m gonna email my list I’m gonna introduce you to my top level mastermind I’m gonna tell people they need to do this and between losing to very high figure incomes overnight starting over from scratch losing our social media not sure about an IP a lot of other things that happen over a six-week span Lewis single-handedly helped us launch our new business.

I can very confidently say if it hadn’t have been for Lewis I don’t know where we would be today yeah I don’t know if Brand Builders Group would be it I don’t know this company

I don’t I really don’t know and it was I really believe it was divine intervention I believe that God put him in our path at that very unique time and said we knew him but not in the way that we do now and he needed our help and we wouldn’t have had the capacity to help him

I’m will  forever be endeared and grateful and appreciative to Lewis and to Matt for their help in helping us launch Brand Builders Group but more than that what I’m so really eternally grateful for is someone who believed in us when we were kind of at the bottom of the bottom feeling a little lost a little unsure and they were like so sure of this is what you have to be doing this is your next job this is your business.

And if you don’t believe in you the way that I do then let me help you let me prove it. Let me promote this let me bring you on the podcast and let me let me help you and that’s really what he did and he was a huge part of the launch and the success that Brand Builders has had so expeditiously because of him

Yeah and the time that this interviews is coming out , like those of you that are keeping up with this in the life, Lewis just had us back on the podcast again recently so you should go listen to that I believe it’s episode 670 and I think the other episodes maybe 883 but so it was cool to reverse roles and get a chance to interview him.

I think one of the big points that segues is very much from what AJ the story that AJ was just kind of sharing is that one of the things that he said in this interview was he said you have to build meaningful offline relationships in order to build a large online following and that really hit me in a very real way and he wasn’t really talking about us specifically but even as he said that it was like wow had we not had this offline relationship that we had developed for years and we never wanted anything from Lewis we were just there to help him and support him and then all of a sudden that offline relationship it became a pivotal a pitiful thing for us that’s a really great point and Lewis.

I think is one of those unique people that spends a lot of time and his DMS he spends a lot of time engaging and interacting and commenting and he’s like he’s truly looking at what people are saying and how to engage and like he’s truly working to build a relationship which i think is also why he has a strong following he’s got millions of downloads a month in his podcast it’s it work right it’s not magically happening because he’s posting bunches of cool pictures even though he is and we’ll talk about that yeah um but he’s working like he’s building relations working at building the relationship like that takes a lot of time and intention and effort and he’s doing it and it doesn’t just happen because you make a lot of posts it happens because you engage in what he’s saying is offline and online

I would say that is Lewis’s true superpower he didn’t say that here but you know we’ve had that conversation with him we work very closely if you can’t tell with him and Matt and have for the last couple of years behind the scenes and he talks about that on the interview where he interviewed me recently of how much we’ve you know made a difference with them but I think his superpowers these offline relationships.

Another thing that he does really well you just talked about AJ was the photography so share some of your thoughts about the highlights of what he was saying related to using photography not just to showcase pictures of yourself but to really create an emotion that people fall in love with that people want to feel and it’s using photography to really a moat the feelings of your personal brand so it’s like if you think about your personal brand what emotion should people associate with it right and I think if you look at his a lot of it and this is just my interpretation but if I just go through and scroll through all his pictures a lot of it is adventure and freedom and aspiration and inspiration and motivation and success and victory and overcoming the odds and I think too there’s just there’s an element of intrigue and curiosity and inquisitive nature of seeing different things and doing unique things and I think those in itself kind of just to me

It’s like it’s a little bit of adventure both for yourself and actually experiencing new parts of the world as well as learning new parts of yourself which he talks a lot about and I just love that and never really associated the importance of high quality photography with the amount of impact that that has but clearly it’s a prime example of how that has really made an extraordinary difference in his personal brand and it’s probably not something that we have done well and

I know this would be at least for me I would say this is something I have never even thought about like this is the for him to describe it as such a major part of his strategy for someone of his level and for him for me to go I’ve never even thought about the power of photography it’s like something I do once every couple years to like update a headshot but for him to say this is this is the primary mechanism that I use to convey the emotion that is my brand that when people look at this imagery that they enter into the state that I want them to be in when they think of greatness

It just blew my mind and because of the value they place on it you know him and just let you use lots of different photographers but Nick OnKen who’s another Brand Builders client and someone that is one of our kind of recommended vendors and I have some imagery that Nick has shot for me which I absolutely love but they literally planned trips around the world to capture three images like they will go travel for a week and orchestrate all the stuff you know to get a couple shots and that is just amazing general to the importance with all of your marketing that you’re you’re conveying an emotion and just being intentional and being intentional about it the next best headshot and throwing some text overlay on it

That’s not it it’s about what do you want people to feel when they think about your personal brand that’s it does your imagery and photography actually align with that and I think that is the essence of something that was really unique and you won’t hear from any other interview yeah never it’s very distinct and so the other thing that Lewis said in this interview which was crazy to me I’d never heard him say this and all the interviews we’ve done the backstage the work he’s been to her house several times and we’ve been to his place working on like we work pretty closely with him and Matt and their team

I’ve never heard him say this until this interview that one of the most important things that a personal brand can do is every year create one or two big moments and as soon as he said that I thought oh my gosh that is so key and in the big years where we’ve had big jumps in our speaking fees and big jumps in social media following and like just sort of big jumps and media or whatever it’s because we have had these moments but we just sort of stumble upon them as they show up and this is something that yeah I mean I mean you know you plan a book launch but you don’t plan to go it’s gonna be my thing this year and I’m gonna have another one next year and one the year after and Lewis is going every every year there’s got to be a moment.

What do you think he meant well like how did you interpret the concept of a moment what do you think he’s talking about there to me I just think it’s something that people can associate with you in that year right it’s like if you’re constantly being associated with something that you did one year to year five years ten years ago which is very in line with my personal brand I’m a little bit you become irrelevant right

At some point your content is a little dated right your photography is dated you’re dated you can’t be banking the future on what you did in the past and it’s that importance of reinventing and staying relevant and being forward-thinking and to me it’s like as soon as I heard that I was like yeah this is a concept of constant reinvention which is what I’m really passionate about and it’s focusing on like the best I have to give is ahead not behind me and it’s also taking time to celebrate the moments that you have in those years and saying and this is the best made today and next time it’s gonna be the best me now not well my glory days were behind me you know high school football college football or whatever it was in the past it’s like no no no my glory days are still to come so you just wait to see what happens next.

Love it those are some those are some tweetable bombs right there from wifey I think you captured personal brand summit yeah like this is one of our moments one of our launches for this year as it turns out we have at least one thank gosh well we did launch a company but the summit the summit which then became this podcast that you’re listening to now yeah it was our big moment for 2019 yeah oh yeah I guess we launched the company in 2018 yeah I think again it’s just having those things where it’s like the whole team rallies around like this is a big launch and this is a defining moment of who we are in this year but I agree it’s like you do need to have those otherwise you look back and it’s like man you’re kind of just doing the same ol same ol, you’re not reinventing and you slowly become irrelevant as technology is just moving everyone at the speed of light

yeah you got to kind of keep up yeah and I think in in the in our take the stairs book we talk about a concept called the harvest principle that you have to have these seasons of intensity to create the next breakthrough and that’s like what this is it’s like you have to a book launch or a new podcast or a new product or you know a new funnel like our summit funnel which wasn’t really selling anything was just giving away a ton of value but it’s like this moment where all of the resources align and there’s a reason to talk to the media and you create this like big boom and that’s literally how you break through and the level so anyways you know.

Lewis we love you we’re so grateful for you and I hope you listening that you got so much out of the interview of just seeing his heart and also you know some not I would say not so commonly heard strategies that that are obviously things that he does really

Well I agree and I would also say this entire debrief, this recap all I could focus on was how much shorter Rory is than me and why do I look enormous like Amazon woman

Sorry, I shrunk my chair all the way down so that we were …

Amazon you’re statuesque baby tall that’s us my beauty. That’s what we have for you today Brand Builder go out make a difference. Your message matters we believe in you we’ll catch you next time.

Ep 26: Capturing a State with Lewis Howes

RV:                   Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.

RV:                   I am honored today to introduce you to someone who’s become a really close friend of mine over the last couple of years. We’ve now known each other for several years, which is wild to say. And surely if you’re watching this, then you’ve heard of Lewis house. He is the New York times bestselling author of school of greatness, the host of one of the top 50 podcasts in the world for iTunes on many weeks, usually almost always in the top hundred recently crossed over a hundred million downloads.

Lewis has been featured on Ellen, good morning America, the today show. And it was not that long ago when Lewis was broke living on his sister’s couch and he, you know, it’s something you should know is he almost never does interviews like this. He did this as a personal favor to me and I really wanted you all to get to hear this, the true behind the scenes story of how Louis got to be Louis. Because I know many of you, you know, dream of having to kind of influence some reach that he has. So Lewis, welcome brother. Thank you for making the time for us.

LH:                   Oh man, I’m pumped to be here. You know, the reason why I never do online summit interviews is because you had me go through on our coaching day, which I’ve done many with you on my own brand and personal brand. You had me create a list of yeses and nos of what brings me joy, what supports my business and brand and what doesn’t bring me joy doesn’t support my business brand and online summits for me cause I got requests to do so many of them for summer to somebody years. I did so many of them. They just always stress me out and they never brought any benefits to my brand or business. Once I crossed through a certain threshold of my brand, this is always a know automatically sense. So I had to make an exception on my yes, no list for you. So happy to be here man.

RV:                   Well thank you buddy. And, and you know, there’s a lot of surprising things about you. I think when people really get to know you that there’s a lot of like surprising things. And one of the things that always stuck out from me also is one of your students, not just your friend and not just an advisor to you at times, but as one of your students was, I remember hearing you speak one time and somebody asked you, I think there was an a Q and a and they said, you know, what’s the like, what’s the most important thing about your personal brand? And I was like, Oh, surely he’s going to say like networking or like consistency or advertising.

And you said photography. And that freaking blew my mind. I had never, I had never thought about that. So I guess my question for you, that was like three years ago, is that still one of the things you would say is the top thing, you know, but even if it’s not, why did you say that at that time? Or what do you feel like is the role of photography has played in building your personal brand? Because that’s, that was something not on my radar at all.

LH:                   Yeah. I’m just writing down the biggest things. And so yeah, so I would say photography is one I’m thinking of four or five key things that I think about all that. Just off the top of my head. Photography is always one of the top and it has, here’s the reason why when you’re in a store picking up groceries or at whole foods or CVS or wherever you’re going to, there’s always something you see right before you check out.

And this is a long row of magazines or there’s always a row of magazines almost at every grocery store or place that you go for. Sure. And the image is on the cover of those magazines, whether it’s GQ, Cosmo or, or some of the type of magazine life that for men and women, you know, in the more high end type of magazines or more classy style magazines, the photography always makes the people on the cover like elevated, right?

Their brand is elevated based on the photography. It’s not just like any random photo of them on the cover of a magazine. It’s always very intentional for the message they’re trying to put out there. Whether it’s this beauty and elegance or this passion and a lower, there’s always something or ministry. There’s always something that defines the human being on the cover of the magazine of these more well-known class years. Job magazines, same thing. True.

The same thing is true for the magazines that are the, you know, gossip related magazines where that’s like the big belly of the person on the beach or somebody that looks bad or that’s got a frumpy face. It’s like we remember the images that we see the most and they impact us emotionally and we associate the images we see of other people on magazines or on social media or on their websites.

LH:                   You know, it all kind of trickles down from there. We were member images at the highest level. We may not be able to recall like I remember this magazine seven years ago where so-and-so was on it, but the more you see the image of that person in that state, you think of them as that state. So for me, photography is always something that I just kind of felt like I needed to dive into. Probably like 70 years ago because I’d never had good photography. And I always see these other people that were more influential. Celebrities has great photography. So I started investing in that probably seven years ago and it’s something I do all the time. I’m really intentional about the photos that I post. And that is portrayed on my website and branding.

RV:                   See that’s really even, even that word that you used state is interesting. It’s like a captured, it’s not just an image of you. What I hear you saying is it’s like it’s a captured state, like a state of being.

LH:                   It’s an energy that reflects to the other person and you’re either attracted to it or you’re repelled to it by it or you’re neutral. You know it, whatever state it is, you, you’re putting that energy out in someone’s mind that is then a snapshot that they have and more. Yeah. The more of those, the more of those images, they get a view that is empowering, inspirational or wealthy or attractive or integrity, whatever it is, the branding you’re trying to portray. The more they see of that, that you, the more they just say this person is that I need to go, I need to send people that way if they want to learn that thing. And yeah.

RV:                   So let me ask you this, I’m just done. I want to hear some of your others for sure. But so is there anything that you do during the photo shoot or in terms of the photographer you select? I mean I know you use Nick on can a lock isn’t, is amazing and that’s, you know, one, one easier solution is to find someone amazing, invest the money because it’s worth it and do it. But like is there anything you do during the shoot to like,

LH:                   I mean it’s taken me a long time to get comfortable in front of a camera. The first three, four years I would say I was very awkward. It’s not like a natural thing for me to be like posing as a model or something or know what looks good. I would always just kind of stand with my like hands in my pockets in the first few years cause I had no clue what I was doing. So I actually study. I should probably go take like classes since I do more and more photography on just postures and poses that look inspiring and masculine and you know, trustworthy.

RV:                   My care personality has really come through like you do jumping, are you with your arms wide or like you’re, you’re actually going after this phone call to Turkey for four days to do a photo.

LH:                   Just going, I’m bringing a photographer, bring a videographer, flying them to Turkey. I’m renting a helicopter. I’m renting a driver all day to take us to the spots. We’ve been planning it for six weeks. I have outfits from a stylist for the last three weeks. I’ve been doing fittings once a week

RV:                   And these are just photos for like social media and whatever

LH:                   Book my,

RV:                   I’m redesigning my website so I want to have the most inspirational photos for my website. It’s for my website redesign, but it’s also like you gotta be from my summit of greatness. A program’s going to be for social media for the next six months. It’s going to be, I’ll save some just for book covers. I mean just for magazine covers because magazines were asked to do interviews and I’ll say, I’ve got the same age that I haven’t used yet.

It’s fricking Epic, you know, do you want to use this? So I’m trying to make it, I’m trying to portray the image that I want, that press and media are going to use for me as opposed to them taking photos of me. Here’s the image I want you to use. I want you to be intentional about it. So the state that I’ll think about is really now after many years of not being that good at it, it’s like passion and joy.

RV:                   I just think of passion and joy. How can I be joyful? How can I be passionate? I’ll do some like just GQ, like normal non-smiling photos as well to try to mix it up. But it’s really like how can I bring the passion? How can I bring the joy and just have fun? So I just try to play music. I try to just like crack jokes so I’m not nervous or thinking too much about how I look because I don’t want it to be me obsessing over the way I look and making sure like everything is perfect in my face. Yes, I want to look good, but I want to be organic and I want to follow and I want to have fun because when we have fun, we know people can feel that when it’s forced, people feel that. So I really just try to like shake it out a lot. Just have fun. Just like dance, move and get. Yeah. And so this is less of, this is less of like, Oh, I want to post a bunch of pictures of me and myself. He’s on Instagram because of how cool I am. And it’s more of, I’m trying to portray an energy and a lifestyle and a state of being. That is how I want other people to feel. I’m just trying to portray that.

LH:                   Yeah. What’s the energy you want people to feel [inaudible] feel attracted to, you know, without photography. How is someone to know who you are, you know they’re going to have, they’re going to make up their own image. So you might think of someone like some famous author, I’m trying to think of like a fiction writer that I don’t even know who they look like, but some big fiction writer. What’s like,

RV:                   Like Stephen King? Yeah. A lot of people don’t know what Stephen King even looks like.

LH:                   I don’t know. This guy looks like, so we are, his personal brand is like, okay, I don’t know, maybe like a professor looking or maybe some wild crazy artist or something. But yeah, unless we know an image of who it is, we make up our own image. And so I would rather just dictate the images. I want people to think about of me and make them positive.

RV:                   So, other than other than photography, what else do you have? Like cars and just so y’all that you are watching. We did, we did not script this at all, which is I did not want it. I wanted to hear like Lewis unprepared. Random. Like when you think of taking your brand to the next level, what’s on your mind?

LH:                   Yeah, I just wrote down five quick things. Photography has never won. I’ve got one more. Six. the second thing is branding and design. So design for me is huge and I’m very intentional about it. To where I’ll, this I kind of obsess over a little more because I think you can really study the science of design of what, and it’s just another layer of making you feel something. So what are the colors that make you feel that you want them to feel as well? Based on the photography you have, the colors, the style of the layout, all those things.

How the images are placed, you know, the, where the font is out on your website, all these different things. The graphics, the, is it updated looking, is it 1990s or 1980s looking like you want to make sure you’re forward-thinking and innovative with your, your, your design and branding or at least just a clean aesthetic like medium.com is minimalist, but it’s almost, it’s so minimal that it’s like, okay, I appreciate the design intentionality of a minimal site as well. So I’m not saying you need to have all these flashy colors and swoosh marks on your website or on your graphics when you’re posting something out there, but being intentional about what your design says about you, your message and your personal brand. So

RV:                   I’m always on that one. So for somebody, how do you know what is good design and what isn’t? Like, I think a lot of people are going, okay, I need to get a website, but, and I know you can spend 50 grand on a website, you can spend $50 on a website and I’ve seen people spend 20 grand and it looks like crap. And I’ve seen people spend five grand. It looks amazing. A lot of it is knowing and a lot of us don’t know. Like I think a lot of us underestimate the importance of this. But then even when we do it’s like, but I don’t, I don’t know what to look for. Or is there something that you

LH:                   Yeah, it’s an a for me it’s it’s a feeling. It all comes back to a feeling for me. It’s, I’m not a designer. I’m not, I’m not been trained in this or studied this. I know what looks good and feels good for me based on other designs from brands, sides, personalities that I like. And then I’ll just reflect on why do I like this, why does it feel good? And I’ll talk to a designer and say, here are three different sites or three different products that I like to have amazing branding. I don’t know why I like it, but I like it. Can you help me reflect on this? What is it about this, I don’t know with the color make me feel a certain way.

RV:                   When you, when you do that, is it like, cause other people do that too and they’re always like, okay, it’s, it’s Tesla and Virgin and Nike, right? Like everyone goes, you know, make me that. Is there, is it those same ones for you or is it like you go, no, there’s, there’s different ones that I have found.

LH:                   I try to, I try to look at music, fashion and sports brands and bring into my brand. So I don’t try to look with in the industry and copy Gary Vaynerchuk or copy, I don’t know, Richard Brown, whatever it is. Some other person in my space, Tim Ferris. I try to look at other influences in sports, fashion and music that I think are innovative, that are that bring out an energy. Cause these are a lot of like the, these create feelings for people. Fashion, music, sports. They’re like this, it’s like a religion for people. And so what’s the feeling that these create that make me feel so connected to a community, our tribe or a message or a mission that I want to create in my business as well. And my personal brand so that people feel like they’re a part of a mission that they want to support. So I’m just trying to find things like I’m doing like for the branding from a, my event, I really liked this campaign more than an athlete like LeBron James had it.

RV:                   This is the summit you’re talking about the summit of greatness for those people that don’t know you do once a year?

LH:                   Yeah, some of the greatest and so I’m like focusing on rebranding every year we kind of update the design and so I was doing an hour-long call with my designer and I was like, I really liked this more than an athlete energy and feeling of the branding of this like one campaign that LeBron James did and I really like just like the innovation of like air Jordan, all these new shoes that air Jordan has been doing. I was like here, like three different shoes that I really like. I don’t know why I like it, but they just make me feel like fresh, innovative and clean and air Jordan is just like this timeless brand. It’s been around for 20 or 30 years. It just continues to grow. And you know, I was like, I really like what Jay Baldwin is doing. He’s a middle lad pop world reg a tone. Like he’s always innovating and pushing the boundaries on his fashion. And I was just like, like something around these three things. What can we do?

RV:                   And so you don’t even know what it is. You just say there’s an energy about these. And do you just say do something with that? Like make me,

LH:                   Yeah. I mean listen, I’m not a designer so I’m working with a designer and I’m trying to be the creative director with that person to be like, okay,

RV:                   But you do all that. Yeah. Just have a creative, you don’t have a creative yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just don’t know how to execute it personally. So okay. What else that’s on your list? Cause I wanna make sure we at least hear him.

LH:                   So I put big moments, I feel like big moments. Define your personal brand. So when I decided to launch a book, I wrote a whole, I did like a year and a half of research on how to be a New York time bestseller cause I was like this is a big moment opportunity and it could define a whole leveling up for my brand if I reached the New York Times bestseller list.

RV:                   No, that’s what you and I met was I was on your podcast right after my first book hit New York times and we chatted after and I was like, well I’ll tell you everything I know and that I feel like is when you and I really bonded.

LH:                   That’s it. Yeah. That was like two one was that, I don’t know,

RV:                   Like 2014 or 13 yeah, while ago.

LH:                   So I think big moment opportunities every year, I try to do at least one big moment that is like, here’s a big announcement, here’s a big thing. People do this with like a big merger or they’ll buy a company and it’s like a big boom. We just bought this company, boom, we just sold this. It elevates your personal brand and your kind of energy. And image in the world. So I did that with my first book. I feel like I did that with my second book, masking masculinity. I did that with a live event when everyone was getting away from advance. I was like, I want to innovate the space with events. I did that with the first talk show on Facebook watch last year. Also. First talk show is like a big moment for a number of months. I just fell my first documentary, it’s not out yet, but I feel like that’ll be a big a moment to be like, Whoa, okay, he’s doing a movie now. Like I have to pay attention.

RV:                   It’s fricking awesome too. It’s free. I’ve seen it is freaking awesome. It’s so inspiring. Thank you. Thank you. Really well done.

LH:                   I feel like it’s investing in big moment opportunities that differentiate you from everyone else. As you know, our friend saw Sally Hogshead said different is better than better. And so I just think of what’s going to be different for me this year than last year and what’s going to be different from everyone else in my kind of space. So big moments, you know, my book, my VAT, my talk show, my documentary, it’s just like, okay, what are the things that we can do? Big moment opportunities. If you could do one every year, I think that’d be powerful for your personal brand to level it up. The press. So it would be the next thing. This will be the fourth thing is be pressed. One, two, three, four. Yeah. So when you have big moment opportunities, leveraging the press to get that. So my bookyou know, today America and LLN all these things, you use these big moments to then leverage it with press, mainstream press to support more attention and attraction to your personal brand.

LH:                   So press would be number four. I would say. The fifth one would probably be number three. Your messaging, you know, that would probably go to photography branding, design and messaging kind of in the first three. But the communication, how you communicate, whether you’re audio, video or written word, how are you communicating your message? What is the energy you’re going to share with your words no matter what format they’re in. So your messaging is important. And I think being intentional about your messaging and then one, two, three or four, five. So this would be the sixth thing would be your association with other people who you’re associated with, elevates your brand or brings it back. So, you know, I’ve been in the, for example, I’ve been in the internet marketing space for many, many years, but I, one of the reasons I said no to online marketing summits is that they’re all kind of like these internet marketing type of events typically.

LH:                   And I just said, I don’t want to be associated as an internet marketer anymore. I want to be, be associated more as a mainstream individual that can attract mainstream press and opportunities. And every time you do something that is with your few past identity, you stay in a past identity more or it’s harder to grow into the next identity. And so I’m always trying to associate with people that are out of my reach at the time. That’s why I have a podcast where I interview people and I have a wall of people that I’ve associated with who, who have all these people to come to my show. And each person is a representation of my brand as well.

So when I have someone on who’s maybe not credible or in a space that isn’t positive or was controversial, it also reflects to my personnel brand as well. Like I’ve had certain just individuals who are very controversial, people hate them or love them and then I get a lot of flack for that in a Hertz, my personal brand at times, if I did too much of that, people would be like, Oh, Louis just associates with all these people are controversial. So he’s controversial. But if I’m associating with billionaires and world-class athletes and leaders in the world, then it makes me more in association with that community. So

RV:                   I would, and I would say, you know, like I believe this is one of your superpowers. Like truly like you know, photography. You don’t take the pictures design, you don’t do it messaging. I feel like it’s one of the things you’ve come to us like at brand builders group, that’s one of the things big moments you do a great job of. I think press you do, you do a great job of, but like if I had to, it was like one of your pals go, what is one Louis the supers powers. It is, it is, it is networking and it is building meaningful relationships quickly with a lot of people and then connecting people and then all these like, like you said, getting in touch with people that are out of your reach.

Do you let me ask you an honest question about that. Because you’ve heard the phrase, social climber, like you know, some people will say that like, Oh well that, yeah, she’s a social primer. He just social climber and like, Oh well you’re too good to talk to. So and so. How do you reconcile like either a fear of, or do you not even put any value in that or like have you ever like,

LH:                   Yeah, I just think, I think now I’ve thought about a time from time to time cause I’m on, sometimes it’d be like, am I just going to this event to meet someone that I could like help me in the future? You know what I mean? It’s crossed my mind momentarily a few moments in the last 10 years. But it’s not like something I think about too often. Cause all I do is add value to people. All I do is I never asked for anything and I just say, how can I support and how can I promote what you care about the most? So if I was always meeting someone and saying, Hey, by the way, can you invest in this? Hey can you do this for me? Hey, you don’t want to show, I want to pitch you something. I hate when people do that to me. So I never do that to other people. Especially when people who are very influential are busy and have a lot going on. I just feel like it’s the wrong way to build a relationship.

RV:                   But, so that’s, that’s part of the difference as a social climber, as someone who’s trying to get, climb their way to the top so that they can take things from people versus someone who’s just giving to everybody.

LH:                   I think you make a big impact. You make a big you stand out when you just add a lot of value and you never asked for anything and you just try to be a good person. And that’s all I’ve tried to do for the last 10 years is meet people, find how I can add as much dye to their life as quickly as possible and not ask for anything until there’s a big moment. Like once a year, I might have a big thing that I might ask some of them to support with if it makes sense because I know it’s in their kind of realm, but not ever, I’m not asking people for stuff all the time. So it’s just trying to build quality relationships with quality people and helping people because I know it’ll come back around eventually somehow. And it feels good to help people, you know, I get validated when I help someone or solve a big problem who’s you know, got a lot of influence. It’s like, okay. Yeah, it feels good.

RV:                   Other things that I would share, you know, just from, for people that don’t know is, even though I do think you, you have a super power of like meeting new people that are, you know, at like a higher cache or profile or whatever you want to say in real life. When you meet, you’re one of the most approachable people in real life. Like, it’s never, Oh, he’s not good enough, or she’s not worth my time. Like you’re always like dishing out hugs and loving on people. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve never gotten that sense at all about watching you with other people.

LH:                   Yeah, I think you know, it’s cause I remember being a nobody 10 years ago that no one knew who I was. I was broke and there were people that were willing to give me 10, 20 minutes from time to time just to be able to ask questions to or, or support me in different ways. And I think I brought value to them through bringing passion and curiosity and taking action on whatever they said quickly. So they saw that I was getting results and it was good for them as well. So I didn’t feel like I wasted people’s time. I was like committed to getting results and adding value even then and I go, I go back and forth cause I take a lot of meetings sometimes and I feel like sometimes I’m just wasting so much time just meeting people, meeting people. So it’s part of the super power I guess.

LH:                   But also it kind of holds me back when I’ll have six meetings in a day and I’m like, okay, I still have to start work at 7:00 PM cause I haven’t done anything today and the work needs to be done. So it’s a, it’s a constant battle of managing the energy of meeting people and making sure that when I’m with someone in PR present, I’d give them the time, but I don’t over commit on time later. So if I’m around someone in person, I will give them a moment. I will be present and I will, you know, be affectionate, loving, whatever it may be. But if they’re like, Oh, can you come on and do my podcast that I haven’t launched yet and I was zero following, I have to decline just to like save myself energy. Otherwise, if I said yes to everyone, I’d be suffocating as well.

RV:                   I know that’s a struggle for everybody. Like, and it’s hard to, as you develop more notoriety, you can’t help. But you know, some people are going to say certain things, but he’s like, you can’t take, take them all. So anyway, I have one, one last question for you before I do that. Is there anywhere where do you want people to go to, to connect with you and follow up and like, you know, tune in?

LH:                   Yeah. Lewis Howes.com or summitofgreatness podcast.

RV:                   [Inaudible] Check it out. And beyond tune, he’s got big moments come in. The documentary is one I know that’s coming, coming at some point here soon. Last thing for you Lewis. This, I think it’s been inspiring to watch how quickly you have risen through the ranks of all of these different things. And then, you know, I remember when you got on Ellen, you know that like, I, I’ve, I’ve been kind of with you for some of these big moments and just like hitting the New York times list that first time. And then I remember the shot of you in times square when your second book was amazing. And then being on Ellen and then getting the Facebook watch. If, if there’s one thing that you wish you could have known when you first started and if you could tell yourself like go back and you say, if I, I wish I would’ve known this, it would have helped me get there faster. When you very first started out or if there’s just one thing that you feel like you did latch onto that you feel like this, this really has made all the difference, what do you think that would be?

Speaker 3:        I think building a team faster, you know, having the right people in my team to support me with things that were taking up too much time so that I can do the things that I did best early on in my career. That would have been probably more beneficial because I just spent a lot of time and energy doing everything as opposed to focusing on a few key things that I should be doing. So learning to say no to things that don’t need to do and hiring the people to do those things earlier would have been, would have been G I think.

RV:                   Yeah. Well, I love it, buddy. I appreciate so much that, that hopefully people see the intention of the energy and the emotion that you’re trying to create and put out there in the world through photography, design, messaging, moments, the press, your association. It’s all about inspiring people and helping them feel this, this energy, which is everything that is Lewis house. So

Speaker 3:        People…what is the quote? People don’t remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

RV:                   Maya Angelou, that’s right, she said, that’s all right. Well, thanks buddy. You keep inspiring and we’ll keep following. We appreciate you.