Category: MARKETING

Ep 21: How To Produce A Winning Infomercial with Kevin Harrington | Recap Episode

On today’s recap episode, we break down the core lessons and extract the golden nuggets from our interview with the original “shark,” Kevin Harrington. Kevin is a true American legend in the world of business, investing, marketing and sales. He is the original “shark” on the hit TV show Shark Tank, the creator of the […]

Ep 20: How To Produce A Winning Infomercial with Kevin Harrington

Speaker 1: (00:01)
I am so excited to introduce you to this is one of those people where it’s like if you ever sat next to him on the airplane, you would have hit the Jackpot and the lottery and you, you might not realize you were sitting next to. But Kevin Harrington is a man that people literally try to strategize how they can get close to, um, he has become a celebrity in the world of entrepreneurs and inventors. You probably recognize him. He was one of the original sharks, the original shark, the first shark. Uh, I believe that was selected to shark tank, which has now been super successful. He is also one of the founders of, of infomercials and as seen on TV, like he’s one of the pioneers of that whole movement. He actually is the cofounder of entrepreneurs organization, which my wife and I are members of.

Speaker 1: (00:50)
I’ve spoken at several of their events, um, around the, uh, around the globe, around the country in my case. But it’s an international organization. And, uh, he has seen over 50,000 pitches, um, launched more than 500 products, generating $5 billion in sales. Um, he also is the creator of the secrets of closing the sale masterclass, which is inspired by Zig Ziglar. So He, uh, Zig Ziglar wrote a book, secrets of closing the sale. It’s just been rereleased with him and Kevin Harrington. Um, obviously zig has been passed away for seven, eight years now, but a was a mentor to me personally and also, um, to Kevin. So Kevin, thanks for being here. Uh, thanks for making time, Rory. Thank you. Great. Great to be here and thanks. It was a very nice introduction. I appreciate that. Thank you. What man? Like, you know, it’s one thing to talk about personal branding and brand builders group.

Speaker 1: (01:46)
That’s what we do, right? We help people build and monetize their personal brand. But really what we study is reputation and reputation as is. How do you build a reputation, how do you become trusted? And of all the people that I know that know the most people, I think you’re near the top, like of, of every like super influential person that I know you already know them and I know that your Rolodex goes far, far beyond that. So, and yet, you know, you’ve been in the world of sales and marketing for years and years and years and sometimes reputations go south in those industries. Uh, when you’re an investor and an entrepreneur, you know, those, sometimes those deals go south. There’s a lot of conflict and there’s fallout and you know, when you get to be your level of celebrity and notoriety, I know that, you know, people sue you for no reason and you know, so what is your philosophy on reputation in general? Like if we just start there, like you have been able to keep such a solid reputation over the years, how do you think you’ve been able to do that? I appreciate that. I think, and I’m going to go all the way back to the beginning because

Speaker 2: (02:59)
I think you need a foundation of, um, of, first of all, I think my foundation that I built my business on is, is respect for entrepreneurs, number one. And so, um, when you watch shark tank, there’s Mr. Wonderful. Uh, and, and I, and I always ask people, do you know why he calls himself Mr Wonderful? Because nobody else will. Okay. He calls himself that because nobody else feels that he may be. Mr. Wonderful. And actually I joke this, this is all kind of joking about O’Leary, Kevin O’Leary, but we used to on the show, we’d say he was the bad Kevin. I’m the good Kevin now. Like why, you know, I’ll take that they, you know, I wasn’t the one that came up with that the rest of the sharks were and, and it’s because when somebody would come out and make a pit, I wasn’t there to tear them down and rip them apart and tell them how stupid their idea was.

Speaker 2: (04:02)
I wanted to empower them even if I wasn’t going to invest. Because entrepreneurs are in a delicate situation. They, they’re fighting against coming home to their family, to their wives, to friends and talking about how they’re giving up their job. They’re investing their life savings into their idea. This is not an easy task. This is, this is a tough situation and you know, to, to have a full time job but be spending money on patents and on this and on that and going on shark tank to try to get, you know, an investment from a shark. This is what it’s all about. And I think today there’s more places to go to get funding. You can do crowd funding and yeah, you can go on shark tank, but that’s very difficult to get on. But I think going back to day one, when I got started, I was knocking on doors when I was 15 years old driving a bicycle cause I didn’t even have a drivers license getting the door slammed in my face.

Speaker 2: (05:01)
And, and so I learned the hard way. I learned my father was a bartender, saved up enough money to open up his first bar, Harrington’s Irish pub. And I started working in his bars and restaurants when I was 11 years old, 40 hours a week. So I, I, you know, worked hard, had to prove myself, had to pay my own way through high school, through college. So I looked at entrepreneurs as people like myself. I was in the trenches building and hustling to become successful. So when they come to me now asking for help and advice, I put myself on their level saying, what would I have to do if I were in their shoes pitching me now the investor that is risen above the, the, the ashes sometimes because that’s, you know, in the 500 products plus that I’ve done more than 300 of them bombed and they lost all my money. So, uh, you know, it’s, it’s not so easy every day. And I, and I say Winston Churchill had, it’s a great Chang success is being able to go from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm. Okay. So, uh, you know, it took me awhile to figure out, hey, I just failed. I’ve got to learn from that and, and, and go to the next step. But that’s what I do.

Speaker 1: (06:28)
I’ve gotten to know you. Uh, you know, we spent a bit of time together here the last couple of years, which has been awesome. And I think when I look at you as an investor, as a shark, I remember thinking after the first time I spent, you know, like a full day with you, it occurred to me, yet you’re not a, you’re not a shark at all. I remember you saying that you, you don’t even try to negotiate for a good deal. You negotiate for a deal that’s good for you and for your other partner because your, I remember you saying that, you know, your philosophy was not, where can I get the best deal? It’s one where everybody has a fair deal and everyone is motivated, um, you know, to, to, to win. And that spoke a lot to me. It was a very profound thing where I was like, wow, what, what a different way to approach negotiating. And I think, you know, in terms of your reputation and you know, over time, I think that’s what people are probably drawn to because they know that you’re, you’re fair. You, you’re, you’re fair.

Speaker 2: (07:29)
And I think I appreciate that. I think, um, when I go back to the early days, I met a gentleman named Arnold Morris. At the Philadelphia home show and he was slicing through Coca-Cola cans with the Ginsu knife and mufflers and things. And I cut a deal with him and put him on TV. Now Arnold said to me, Kevin, um, and he had his signed contract for the good shoe and the, and the knife sales, but he said, I’ve got other people that this is amazing what we’re doing. If I bring you other deals, can I get compensated? I said, absolutely. We put an addendum to the contract. He brought Billy Mays and he brought Sandy Mason and Wally Nash of some of those you may recognize and some you might not, but we did hundreds of millions and billions in sales that came from these projects that Arnold Morris brought. But he got compensated on all of it.

Speaker 2: (08:23)
And so on his, literally his deathbed, the week that he was passing away, he kind of knew it was coming close and he reached out and his wife said, Arnold needs to talk to you. And I said, oh my God. And she says, Yap, he’s getting very close. She’s, he had a stroke and this and that. And she’s, and I said, well, what does he want to talk to me about? And I’m absolutely, I’d love to talk to him. She said, he’s got a deal. He wants to pitch you. Okay. I’m like, you know, here is, I mean this amazing because he had to get this last feel out of his system before he could pass. I mean it was unbelievable that the, the way it went down, but you know, Arnold was an amazing man, did great things for many people, but these insults, so people say to me, you know, how do you keep getting all these new products?

Speaker 2: (09:18)
I said, I’m getting these products from people I’ve been dealing with for 30 35 years in 2025 years, 10 and 15 years. And people I dealt with two months ago. So it’s, it’s the roll of decks factor. As you mentioned, Rory, this is what creates a lot of magic for all of us. As you know, I call it the Golden Rolodex. And this is part of becoming, you know, it as you’re branding yourself and you know, get back to the concept of personal branding and things. Creating a golden Rolodex is, is, is an important step in that process.

Speaker 1: (09:52)
Yeah. Well, and, and so one of the other things I wanted to ask you about just, you know, as I think about what can I ask Kevin that I can’t ask anyone else is you’ve sold more on TV than anybody. I mean, I don’t know anyone. It would be only a few people in the world that you could even say has been involved with selling as much on TV. So I’m interested

Speaker 2: (10:14)
a couple that are up there in the same ranks, but I, I know, I never want to say I’m the top guy because there’s some pretty successful guys out there, but I’m right there in the top five for sure on a global basis.

Speaker 1: (10:28)
Moved a lot of product on TV. So one, I’m interested in understanding TV, like in terms of, you know, a lot of people that are building a personal brand. TV is like this holy grail of like, oh my gosh, if I could get on TV, it’s like Tony Robbins is on TV and Dean Grasiozi is on TV. You know, like you said, like Billy Mays and, and all of these like people who become these celebrity workout people, they, they do infomercials. So one is how does that business work? Like how does that happen? How does someone get their clothing line on QVC? Or how do they get their, you know, Dean Grasiozi has a book, right? He does an infomart. Like how would a person go about doing that if they said, you know what, I think I’ve got a program I could sell on TV. Like how do you do that?

Speaker 2: (11:17)
So, so let’s, let’s, I’ll step back a second. Cause it, it’s there, there’s a couple of different angles there. You said, how do you get on QVC? How do you get on TV like infomercial? So two different scenarios. But the bottom line is this TV has been very powerful for many, many years. For me. I started back in the early eighties when I was watching a just got cable TV and I’m watching discovery channel. It was actually channel 30 of the 30 channel package. And so I went to all the channels, ESPN and 24 hours sports and movies and HBO and MTV Music. I got to ESPN sports, I think I mentioned. Um, I got to discovery channel and there was nothing on the channel. There was actually just bars on the screen. So I called the cable company and they said, we as a cable company delivered to you what we get from discovery and they only deliver us an 18 hour a day block.

Speaker 2: (12:17)
Six hours a day is nothing cause they’re a startup channel. They can’t program 24 hours a day. So I went down how to deal bought that six hour block from discovery, not only locally, but I did an international deal. And so for a number of years I had exclusive rights to discovery channel a six hours a day. Okay. Now I was putting in my, I was putting Tony Little Jacqueline Lane, George Foreman, you know, all these different types of products, fitness juicers, you know, kitchen gadgets, whatever, right? And so we had an amazing success for many years putting people on TV. But the way it works is this, there’s all this sort of like downtime with all the TV networks and cable networks. There’s only a handful of places that won’t sell infomercial time, CNN, and, and I think, let’s see, CNN and ESPN, those are the two that you will never see a 30 minute infomercial on.

Speaker 2: (13:20)
But Discovery Channel lifetime, all the other channels of Bravo, we buy tons of time from all of them. So what you do is you buy a block, a 30 minutes slot, maybe you pay 5,000 for it, two thousand ten thousand whatever the number is. In the early days I watched it isn’t maybe 2000 to 10,000 is that a reasonable number for, that’s for cable broadcast. You can buy, for example, in Nashville, Tennessee, you could buy 30 minutes on broadcast television. On Saturday morning, we’ll probably gave $100, right? 30 minutes on Nash on, on, uh, that would hit all of Nashville. Okay. I’m in Tampa, Florida. I can buy time here for as little as $500 for 30 minutes slot. And, and you can even go to cable. The cable guys have some of their own local cable options for even less, maybe $200. So, so now you, by that time you produce the video that sells the product and now that when that airs, it’s, it’s got to generate more than the cost of the time in sales to make money, obviously.

Speaker 2: (14:36)
So you mentioned Dean Grasiozi, he goes, he goes into Tampa, Florida and says to his media buyers buy $20,000 worth of ads. And he’s expecting, now he’s selling his book, but he’s also driving people to a seminar. So his is a little bit different. Hey, buy my book, come to the seminar there. You know, his liquidation comes when people show up at the seminar and he sees how much, you know, sales he’s making from there. But that’s, that is his model is buy infomercial time, drive people to a seminar, upsell them into masterminds. But the fitness people that you see, like the Tony Little’s, when we’re selling the gazelle, for example, we spend 10,000 and media, we want to sell 20 to $30,000 worth of puzzles during that slot. That’s, that’s how it works. You look for at least a two time multiple of sales to the cost of the media. So if you spend 10 grand the media, you want to see 20 plus thousand in sales coming from that time. By

Speaker 1: (15:48)
amazing though, I am all over the country. Now. When you say the media, is that like buying the commercials to promote the show or that’s just buying like the 30 minutes?

Speaker 2: (15:57)
That’s just fine. The 30 minute block, you don’t need commercials to promote an infomercial. It’s a standalone sales piece. So yeah. So Saturday morning, let’s say we, we bought that $800 slot in Nashville on a broadcast station on Saturday morning. People are up there just going from channel to channel to channel on their cable box or the TV and they, oh, wait a minute, let me see what this guy, Dean Grasiozi Phil was talking about. Oh yeah. Well that’s pretty interesting. So they tune in, they get hooked, and this is why you need a good pitch or you need a good presentation in that infomercial because you’ve got to be able to hook them, grab them, and now they’re listening and now they’re going to take action. Hopefully. So you bought that time for $800 in Nashville. You’re hoping to get 1600 to $2,400 in credit card orders from that time. Bye.

Speaker 1: (16:53)
That is so amazing. I mean, it’s so interesting to me because it’s like this is the original webinar funnel. It’s just like buy traffic, drive people to a a one hour Webinar, do a presentation, deliver some value, make an offer, get it to buy. It also blows my mind where he’d go, why are infomercials always late at night? The reason infomercials are always late at night is because one night Kevin Harrington was sitting in his hotel looking at the discovery channel and found out that there were six hours in the middle of the night that nobody else bought and you went and bought it and that that became the homicide. That was the downtime. So can you talk about the, the, um, talk about the pitch a little bit for like, because you know what, there’s, there’s a difference between like selling to a person. You know, in our former life that was something that we used to do.

Speaker 1: (17:44)
We used to teach people to, you know, our, the, our former company used to do like one-on-one sales coaching. That’s very different than selling on a Webinar or selling from a stage or selling on an infomercial where you’re selling one to many. Um, so what do you think are some of the key principles there? Because the other thing, particularly with TV is I have to think like people are flipping their coming and going, so they may not be sitting watching the 30 minute block. They may only be there for like two or three or five minutes. I mean so exactly how do you construct that? Like what? Let’s say you went and bought the $800 cause that’s reasonable. Yeah. So now I have $800 how much do I need to spend on producing the show? Like the 30 minutes and, and what, what I put in that 30 minutes that I can use to like, you know, market my, my book or my Info, my video course or my seminar.

Speaker 2: (18:41)
So great question. Now you have to understand that you’re, you’re, when we talk about producing the show, you’re not producing it just for that $800 by you’re producing it to build a media schedule that might be two three, 400,000 a week in media. That’s generating. See that’s if you’re, let’s say you’re spending 200,000 a week on $800 time slots like Nashville time slot, right? So now you’re, you’re running hundreds of spots that each one is monitored and needs to perform at a two to three to one ratio, sales to media costs. Okay. So, so you say upfront, Dean, I talked to Dean about his show that he did with Larry King for example. I said to Dean, how long did it take you to shoot that show? And he said, Kevin, he said, you won’t believe this, but I shot that show live in 30 minutes.

Speaker 2: (19:44)
And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I sat down, I, you know, I, I, Larry King is a professional, he’s been doing interviews all his life. I’m a professional. We talked a little bit first before we rolled the whole day. I gave him a couple of questions if he wanted to ask, but we just went live and boom, we got it. He said, we did some more footage just to have some more, but I mean that was sort of a live to tape. Turn the cameras on and film it now he had to do editing because he had testimonials. So he had the one day shoot filming with Larry. Then he had testimonials, then he had editing, but then he also had one other big costs. What was it? A fee? The Larry King. Okay. So Larry King, he’s probably, and this isn’t coming from Dean, so I don’t want to make, I don’t want to say, oh, Dean told me this, but if I had to guess, Larry probably gets anywhere from 75,000 to 100 grand to shoot that show.

Speaker 2: (20:44)
Plus he gets a percentage of you show. So what do you note now? What did Dean’s spend? He shot one day at Larry’s office. He shot a dozen testimonials. He shot, he had to do the editing. You have to pay Larry some money. He probably spent all in somewhere between 150 and $200,000 to shoot that infomercial. And that was a pretty easy one to shoot. So, uh, but he, he knows that the credible Biddle credibility of Larry is going to take this thing to a pretty good point. And, and so he’s now crushing it. He’s, I mean, I’ve seen his schedules in my local market where he’s running on three simultaneously at the same time, at two o’clock in the morning. Now let’s see, what am I doing watching it two o’clock in the morning. I as a business, I’m in the business I have to tune in.

Speaker 2: (21:44)
But I get logs from monitoring services of when these are errands. So I don’t have to actually be there live at 2:00 AM. But I get along from a company that says, okay, dean ran his show 122 times last week and here’s where it ran. I can get that information so I know where he’s running about how much he’s spending. Cause I know what those slots are worth. So if I can do a report and say, okay, Dean ran 122 times, he spent 350,000 in media last week. Okay. I mean that tells sophisticated the industry is and, and by the way, this is how people then decide whether they’re going to knock somebody off. Okay. They, they cheat somebody out there running a lot of media. They know what’s working because it’s bringing in, nobody’s running 350,000 in media. If it isn’t bringing back a return on investment, you don’t mean you find out on 10,080 or whether it’s working, you don’t roll it out to three 50 unless you’re getting that return on investment. Uh Huh.

Speaker 1: (22:51)
So, and, and, and this is like, who are you? Oh, you said you’re, you’re either calling a media buyer and you know, at that scale, but if you’re doing local, you’re just going to go to your like local cable channel or like you just,

Speaker 2: (23:04)
yes. Yeah. I mean, so like it, it’s, it’s no problem. Me Or you like I could call my local Tampa TV stations, you can call your local national stations, whatever. Um, you know, we can, we can all make a couple of phone calls. It’s on the rollout when like when I said Dean’s doing three 50 a week. When we did the Gazelle with Tony Little, that was a over a million a week in media span, generating over 2 million in sales a week. But that was hundreds and hundreds of slots. If you’re spending $1 million at 8,000 for some 800 for others, somebody has to monitor that and they have to buy it. Then there’s a traffic department that it goes through because you’ve got to, you buy it, then you send the tape, you’ve got to have an 800 number that’s tagged to that specific station so that when the sales come in, you know what 800 numbers tracked to that station. There’s all kinds of things happening behind the scenes, so there are media agencies that are in the business of buying media to the tune of if it’s 300,000 a week, 500,000 a week, $1 million a week, whatever it may be. Right? So that’s the important thing.

Speaker 1: (24:24)
The essence is really fascinating. I, I’ve never understood like the monetary, but even even going, okay at two to one ad spend, basically on revenue. You could do the same thing with Google ads or Facebook ads and you know, whatever is say, okay if I’m going to, I’m going to put $50 in in terms of Facebook ads, I need to make sure that $100 comes out before I go and spend 10 grand on Facebook ads. And so you’re looking for a two to one to three to one ratio. Um, so what about the content itself? Okay, so what needs to happen in that 30 minutes? Because again, I don’t the medium of that different, I mean it did TV. Yeah, maybe it’s not TV, maybe it’s a Webinar, maybe it’s on stage, but like what goes into the content?

Speaker 2: (25:08)
So, so now in the old days, and I, and I, cause there have been a few changes in the industry for 35 years. Infomercials worked pretty well, but there’s been a little bit of a disruption because there’s a lot of people that have cut the cord from cable and aren’t, you know, aren’t watching TV. There’s been a decline in DVD viewership has been pretty substantial. It’s a 50% decline in TV viewership in the last 10 years. And so the question is, where did these viewers go? Well, you just mentioned it. Facebook, Instagram, they’re, they’d gone to digital outlets, right? Google, youtube, et cetera. So, so now [inaudible] and there’s also another issue. 30 minutes is, is a long time. And let me explain the structure of a 30 minute show. There’s three 10 minute pods in a 30 minute show. Each one of the pods has a three step selling system that I’m going to call the teas, the please and the seeds all within each 10 minutes he’s police sees he’s police sees these please seat you, tease them with an attention getting problem. You please them with solutions to the problem, benefits to the product or service, magical transformations, some kind of demonstration maybe. But magical transformation is a very powerful please. You see a before and an after, right? And then you see like by having a irresistible offer, so t’s with attention getting problem please by solving the problem with magical transformations and cs creating an irresistible offer. And you do that three times in each 10 minute segment of the 30 minute show. So that’s kind of the blueprint for producing an infomercial.

Speaker 1: (27:07)
Wow, I love that. And so it’s really just a 10 minute it really, all you’re doing is creating a 10 minute and then you’re just repeating

Speaker 2: (27:14)
the same. You don’t actually, you, there are some people that actually just do one 10 minute repeated three times. I don’t like to do that because if people sense that, but the formula, yeah, so I mean what we’ll do is you can tease please and seeds, but you just use different testimonials and you know, it might be the, it’s going to be the same seeds, the same irresistible offer in all three closes, but you don’t necessarily have the same content teasing and pleasing along the way.

Speaker 1: (27:49)
Wow. That is so interesting. I mean, that’s such a simple process, but it also very sophisticated in terms of knowing the, knowing the dollars in which markets are producing. And, and it just, it blows my mind though, how like this is, even though people might not say it, this was the genesis of webinar funnels a and video. Any, you know, any, any modality of selling on camera? Like this was where that started.

Speaker 2: (28:16)
I’m going to give you a good example of something that we learned quite a bit on. Uh, a guy came in my office one day to do a, he had a fishing lure and he’d been watching Tony Little and George Foreman and Jacqueline Lane and all these great things we’re doing. And he, he puts this lawyer in front of me. He says, Hey, this is the most amazing lure you’re gonna want to do this. And I said, why is it so amazing? And he said, I have a pad and said, all the words hit the water drop straight down. Mine hits the water and it’s reverse rig to swim away like a wounded fish. And so I said, I’d love to see that in operation. We went out and showed how it was swimming away and fish were attacking this floor. We had this big hog draw, 20 foot long fish paint that we cast the lure in and saw some amazing demonstrations, catching fish that lures, we’re going straight down regular lawyers dish when just watching them drop, the flying lore went in and they’re chasing it around and biting it and catching fish.

Speaker 2: (29:14)
So, um, when we first tested the show, we ran on a lot of cable networks and the media buyers called back and said, the show didn’t work. I don’t think fishing’s going to be a good category. Um, it’s not successful. And I said, let me get some demographics. I want to see where the orders came from. You know, fishing is, you know, may be, it’s not some universal, we found La and New York, it didn’t have any traction, but in Missouri, in Ohio and Michigan and various areas where there was lakes, it was crushing it. So people aren’t in New York City going out and fishing every weekend. But in Kansas City, they would love to go fishing on the weekends, the lakes and places around. So now we stopped running cable. We went back in. So our cable for, you know, 10 grand in media is generating 5,000 in sales.

Speaker 2: (30:09)
But when we went and targeted local markets like Nashville, Cincinnati, Duluth, Minnesota, we were doing five to one on our buys because we were crushing it in these local markets. So we decided we’ve got to stay away from the coastal communities. This is not fishing lore because first of all, this young lords are generally kind of fresh water and, and, and in the, in, in New York and La, they’re on the ocean. We don’t even have a product yet for that. But in the central parts of the United States, we crushed it. This product went on to do 500 million lures at a dollar a piece, 20 to a pack, 20 bucks for 20 lures, $500 million in sales because we tracked it and focused on buying time where it works.

Speaker 1: (31:02)
Wow. Um, Kevin, I could talk to you all day about lots of stuff. Uh, we are out of time. Uh, where did, should people go? I know you have, you know, the secrets of closing the sale book was Zig Ziglar just came out. Uh, you have your secrets of closing the sale master class, which, you know, maybe we’ll put a link to or we’ll, you know, we’ll audience when you open that class up where else, but where should people go to connect with you and you know, if they want to stay in touch.

Speaker 2: (31:28)
Yeah. My, my website’s a great place because we have some free reports and some free books and chapters and things. It’s Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV and Harrington spelled h a. R. R. I. N. G. T. O. N. So Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV is my website and I’m got a lot of good content there and you can see some videos and see some things we’ve done over the years. But we also, I’m actively still looking for great products, great relationships. I sit on several, uh, board of directors of public companies and, um, I love doing that and, and helping, uh, you know, I invest money, I help raise money. Definitely am available for, for entrepreneurs looking to take their business, their idea, their service to the next level. It’s a good place to start. Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV.

Speaker 1: (32:20)
I love it. So last little thing. At some point in your journey, uh, you must’ve bumped up against some walls. I, I know that it’s been several times, right? Uh, and it’s, uh, it’s a long way between the guy who was on shark tank and you know, that kid that was knocking on doors and there were gotta be several setbacks. And, and my guess is there’s somebody listening

Speaker 2: (32:40)
right now who is trying to build a reputation either as an entrepreneur or an influencer, and they’re probably in one of those darker times. What would you, what would you say to that person right now? So it’s a great question. 25 years ago, I was sitting with $100 million business. We’re doing 2 million a week in sales. We had 10 products. And one day I was thought I was on top of the world, walked into my office on a Monday morning and my CFO said, I got terrible news. The bank just grabbed $2 million out of our account to apply as a reserve against future returns and chargebacks. Um, and, and I said they allowed to do that and said in the contract they have every right to increase the reserve and just grabbed the money out of our account. Okay. I’m like, wow, I can’t believe that actually signed that.

Speaker 2: (33:33)
But when you get those big thick documents, when you get a merchant account somewhere in there, it, you know, they basically tell you no more and grab the monies that are coming through for processing. And so we were technically out of business at that point. I went from, you know, being the king of, of infomercials, you know, to potentially being at the bottom of the barrel. And because that 2 million was my working capital, I didn’t have 10 million sitting in the bank. Okay. I was a young entrepreneur. I had, that was my cashflow. That was my payroll. That was my media dollars, my inventory dollars. Basically, we couldn’t make payroll that week then. And the bank, you know, whether they knew what they were doing or not, they didn’t care at the time. Now we figured out a way to get around some of this. We, we, we, we, we, we pulled a lot of great advisors to the table because they technically put us out of business and it was a very demoralizing time of my life and we had to do some massive things, you know, to make that all happen and save the company.

Speaker 2: (34:39)
But we ended up pulling out of it, coming out smelling like a rose. But the only thing I can say is this, is that I all my life, um, have looked to mentors and folks to be part of my team. And because in the early, early days, I tried to do it all myself. I realized I can’t do it all with Michelle. I, I’m not the operations guy, the finance guy, the guru of finance. But I brought in Gurus of finance. So, um, one of my guys went up against the bank and knew how to kind of get them to come to the table. We ended up getting 1.6 million of that 2 million back. So we did give him 400,000 but we saved the day, got some money back. We’re eight, but took 30 days to pull all this off. So, uh, the bottom line is, is that this is kind of what I do now for entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2: (35:37)
I’m a mentor, I’m a coach, I’m a consultant, I’m an advisor, I joined boards, I joined advisory boards that the right kind of opportunities. I’m out there looking for great companies to be an advisor to because sometimes I’ve seen people make the same mistakes with things that I was confronted with in the past. And I can show people, entrepreneurs how to deal with these things without letting it take you down. So bottom line is you, you’re not, you know, Kinda need to know that there’s a good group of people out there that may be available for you to be mentors in your business. And I, you know, just like I started off talking about how Zig Ziglar was a mentor to you, Rory, to me. Um, absolutely. I’ve had Richard Branson helped me with some digital things. At one point, I went to Necker island, hung out with him for a couple of days. My father mentored me. Mark Burnett mentors me. Yes, I’m, I’m a successful entrepreneur. I’m an original shark from shark tank, but I’m a product of many other mentors that have helped me become what I am. And I think that’s, uh, I’m the first to say that I couldn’t have done it all my on my own. And I, and I, I look to outside resources to help me manage my entities and my businesses and hopefully folks that are out there can, can learn from that too.

Speaker 1: (37:03)
I love that. That is so cool. I think, uh, that’s been the big surprise for a j and I with brand builders group. It’s turned into such a community of people supporting each other and getting to learn from people like you. It’s just incredible. So thank you for your inspiration and your story and your friendship and, uh, we wish you the best.

Speaker 2: (37:23)
You Bet. Take care of buddy. Good being here today. Thanks.

Ep 19: Managing the Beast That is Social Media and Making it Work for You with Jon Acuff | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand. We’re breaking down the interview today with our longtime friend, Dan Miller, who I absolutely just love. I just love his energy, him and Joanne are awesome. And we met them on a cruise a few years ago and I’ve just been, been friends. So we got your top three takeaways from AJ and from me. So, get us going. AJV: (00:32) Yeah, I think the first thing he said this like really close to the beginning of the interview and I loved it. And he said if somebody or three different people ask me the same question more than three times, I’ll just make a product for it. I think the whole concept of what should I make a product about or where do I find content is really simply answered when you just figure out what do people already come to you for? And so instead of repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again, why not turn it into a product, a course or a video series or a book or a coaching program or certification or all the things that he has done and is doing really, he said most of that comes from just, you know, if I get asked the same question more than three times, then I really consider turning that into a product. RV: (01:24) Yep. I love that. I was one of my takeaways too, is just, you know, the power of listening to your audience. And I think one of the, one of the techniques or strategies that you can use is to ask your audience. So in his case, he’s just listening. But the other thing you can do, like if you need content ideas or you need product ideas, or if you need copy for like your sales page, send a survey to your audience, ask them some questions about what they want and what they’re struggling with, and then take their words that they write back to you and use some of their language in CRE in actually marketing what you’re doing and create a product for them. So that was one of my takeaways too. I just love that. It’s such a simple, a simple, practical, actionable thing that any of us can do, you know, right away. So that was good. So what was your second one AJV: (02:17) Second one was this concept of not doing the new and trendy thing that everyone is doing. And he said, I’ll try to recap it here. He said, but I, I resist the temptation to do every single new and trendy thing that is out there. And he talked about, he said, could I be missing out on lots of money? Maybe do I care? Not really. And I think that’s really just really powerful. It’s like, if what you’re doing is working, why would you derail? What’s working to do just what everyone else is doing. That’s new and trendy. And one of the things that I thought was really insightful and something that you don’t hear a lot about, he said, now I’m not saying anything is wrong with funnels or webinars or with anything he said, but you hear all these people all over social media promoting, I made six figures, seven figures in this launch. AJV: (03:10) He said, what you don’t hear about is how much money they had to give back and refunds. And I thought that was really interesting because you hear a ton of people. You see a ton of ads. It’s like how I made six figures in this funnel, or there’s this one out. And I don’t, I won’t say what it’s called, but it’s how do you have a seven figure funnel? And then he talks about how he came up with this whole thing. And yeah, probably you could do that. I’m sure people are doing that all the time every day. And Dan said, but what you don’t hear about is how much of that they’re actually giving back in refunds because a buyer’s remorse or they didn’t get what they thought it was, or it was a little bit misleading or a little bit of a bait and switch. And I’m not saying everyone is but I do think there’s some accuracy in the fact that you hear a lot of the revenue promoted and that a lot of the backend of what was it even profitable and how much did you actually give back and refunds? And I thought that was just very insightful. RV: (04:09) Yeah. I mean, you got the refunds, you also have affiliate fees and, you know, Facebook ads and paying your graphic designer. And, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like, how, how much do you really keep in? Which is but I think his thing into your point is more about the reputation and like the, AJV: (04:26) Oh yeah, no, I love when he said, he said it, he said, I’m way more about building a consistent audience than having huge infusions of cash said, I’m way more about the consistency time, over time, over time, that will last me 20 years than I am about this one time, big infusion of of cash. And everyone is different. Perhaps you are someone who’s looking for that big infusion of cash and like go for it, do it. But I loved what he said. It’s about playing the long game and making this a, a true, a true business versus this one time push. RV: (05:00) Yeah. So for me, the other thing that I thought was fascinating you know, we teach something to our brand new members that we call the fast cash formula, which is how do you, if you need to make money quickly. And we talk about how coaching a lot of times is the fastest way. If you need to replace an income is to offer coaching. And when he was telling his story, that was how he started. And still to this day, he does one day a month of one-on-one coaching work. And I love that because he was a real life example of what we talk about that, you know, coaching is the fastest path to cash in terms of replacing a large you know, income need, but it’s the least scalable longterm. And, and yet, so he sort of toward the story about how he started with that. RV: (05:51) And then after he had done enough coaching, he created a course for the people who couldn’t afford coaching. And, and so he was teaching this course and then people invited him to come speak because there were people seeing him teach the course. And that, you know, basically out of that coaching work came his content which became also his business model. And I just think that’s a really great way to do it is to do the work, to kind of get your hands in there. And obviously we love coaching. We, we believe in coaching in the power of one-on-one and I just, I just thought that was really encouraging. And, and, you know, he, he does have multiple streams of income, but it’s been developed over years and it’s, it really started from one great body of work, you know, that he flushed out with coaching and real life scenarios then applied it to a course, you know, then applied it to live events and speaking. So I thought that was just a great, a great example. AJV: (06:51) Yeah. There’s a great evolution of evolution. That’s a great one. And I think that’s somewhat similar to my third and final point, which is which I thought is very indicative of what you hear a lot. But yet there’s this mystery around it. He said, but I don’t count on any income from my books. And, you know, in his book is super successful and has been out there, just did a 20 year edition, right? 20Th year, RV: (07:18) 20Th or 25th. AJV: (07:20) Yeah. But a long time, right on. He said, but here’s what I have found. He said, it’s not the book itself that makes all the income, it’s the actual content within the book. So the book is the calling card. It’s the credibility source. Then not to say that you won’t make income. He just doesn’t count on that in his forecast or his budget. But it’s the content of that book that he then takes that and turns it into all these different curriculums. It’s a coaching curriculum. It’s a certification curriculum. It’s a course, it’s a video series, it’s a live event. It’s all these different things that are all circulated around the content of the book. And the book is at the center, but probably isn’t, what’s bringing in the most income for him. However, from that, there is just this entire huge circle of all these things that are moving to make this very successful, a very healthy business, even though most of the income is not from the center of it, which is the book it’s from all these other ancillary income streams that have become his primary revenue. RV: (08:27) Yeah. That’s good, good perspective on the book. For me, my third takeaway, which he talked a little bit about, but it’s more of, of what we know about him and Joanne behind the scenes. And I don’t know that he said this directly, but every time I’m with Dan and Joanne, it always occurs to me how they build their life or, or they build work around their life. They don’t build their life around their work. And so it’s, it’s one of the great possibilities of a personal brand is to be able to like fit work in and around your life. And it’s hard to do cause when you’re an entrepreneur, especially early on, it’s like a lot of times, you know, we’re kind of his life, but you, you want to get out of that and you can get out of that. And AJV: (09:14) I think that goes to a lot of what he talked about, where he resists the temptation to do all of the new and trendy things. Because, well, for what reason, it’s like, are you living to work? Are you working to live? And he talked a lot about his time and his schedule, but I think that is a part of it is resisting the temptation to do. RV: (09:34) Yeah. And I, and I hope for you, like, w w I wonder, I would bet if we could take all the podcast listeners and ask if you’ve heard of Dan Miller, I bet less than half of you have actually heard of him. You’ve probably heard of some of our other guests yet. He has one of the biggest businesses of everyone we’ve ever had on the podcast. And, and his example speaks to the power of steady consistency and just trust and playing the long game and plodding along. He’s the tortoise man. That’s a, that’s such a great that’s a great metaphor. And, and, and we mean that AJV: (10:14) It was his, he said, he said, I’m the tortoise. RV: (10:18) Yeah. That’s. And, and that is, you know, and we say that in the most honoring way, AJV: (10:23) He said it so we can say it. RV: (10:26) But even to that extent, it doesn’t mean you have to be slow. It’s just, it’s the idea of consistency. You don’t have to be the person with a million followers. And, and you know, this, these huge extravagant launches and given away cars, and like, you can do those things like, but, but you don’t have to be that person in order to be successful. Like you can just do the right thing for a really long time, and it will work out like you can’t fail if you just pour back into people’s lives. So I’m as encouraged by that. AJV: (11:01) Yeah. Well, I think it just, in general, there are a million different ways to build your personal brand. And Dan gives a one, one really great perspective of how to do it. And there are many other different perspectives that you will hear from other guests, but to what Roy is saying, it’s like, it’s, it’s all about. And what we talk about a lot, it’s playing the long game and Dan is a great example of the long game. RV: (11:26) Yeah. So there you have it. So hopefully you’re playing the long game and you’ll keep coming back here. We’re going to keep working to provide amazing guests for you and hopefully useful insights. We’re so glad that you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 18: Managing the Beast That is Social Media and Making it Work for You with Jon Acuff

Speaker 1: (00:00)
So excited to introduce you to I feel like, I mean I’m known for a long time now and I feel like John Acuff and I met kind of when we were both like semi on the rise, just kind of starting out our careers and it’s been amazing to just watch him build a huge platform, a huge following and a fantastic speaking career. He is one of the most dynamic and hilarious presenters that you’ll ever see and I especially feel like in recent years he’s, he’s also, you know, added a level of content that is really, really top notch and it’s just, it shows in every way. And I’m jealous of him because he’s so fricking funny and it’s unfair and there’s not anything he can do about that, but he doesn’t do a lot of this stuff. I called it in a personal favor to him and I said, man, would you come and just sort of like share the story of how John Acuff became Johnny cuffs. So brother, thanks for being here.

Speaker 1: (01:00)
Yeah, thanks for having me Rory. I’m looking forward to it.

Speaker 2: (01:03)
So buddy our new Gig is reputation, right? So we’re, we study reputation, we look at what creates reputation. So just like off, you know, off the top of your head, what is your definition of reputation? What are your philosophies about how to build a rock solid one? Are there, is there anything like just just free flow on that concept for a little bit and what do you think of when you hear that word?

Speaker 1: (01:28)
Yeah, I think I think it was John Morgan who said, your brand, your reputation is a story other people tell about you. It’s not always just the story you tell. And so I think there’s a combination of those two. So I think there’s understanding, okay, where do I fit in a space? You already brought up humor for me. I realized a few years ago that humor was a differentiator for me in our space. Like you and I are in the same space and there’s a lot of people that are amazing at research and there’s a lot of people that are like super intense and they’re gonna swear and like, and there’s a lot of people that do a lot of different things, but I realize there’s not a lot of people that are genuinely funny. They might use humor as like a, you know, like a hammer in a speech, like a tool, but they, they don’t use it.

Speaker 1: (02:16)
They don’t thread it throughout. They’re not studying it. And so I said, okay, I want part of my reputation to include humor. Like, so I think I look at reputation. I go, okay, what are the two to three words you’re going to own? Or the two to three elements you’re going to say when people think of me like, this is going to fit in my reputation. My favorite idea kind of about reputation. When I worked for Home Depot, I was, before I started my own company I spent time in a lot of big corporate brands and brands that had spent years and millions and billions of dollars building their own reputations. I remember somebody at Home Depot said, you’ve gotta do the thumb test. And I said, what’s that? And they said, can you put your thumb on over the logo? And it still feel like it’s something from us.

Speaker 1: (03:03)
So a great example of that is you put your thumb over a Nike swoosh mark on any ad. They do a print piece, digital piece, whatever the rest of it screams Nike. The headline does the runner, like they had a photo of a runner throwing up and the copy and every element speaks to it. So I think a reputation like that, you’ve gotta be able to put your foam over elements and go, it’s still me. It still has my feel and I’ve been deliberate to go, here’s what I care about. Here’s where there’s a hole in space and here’s where I can kind of combine all of that. That’s what I think about with reputation.

Speaker 2: (03:37)
I love that. I’ve never, I’ve never heard that before. The thumb test. I think that’s super, super cool. So, so take us back to the beginning. Okay. So you talked about being corporate and you left.

Speaker 1: (03:49)
How did this all start

Speaker 2: (03:51)
For you? And, and what did that look like, like, and, and how did you make money early on? Cause I think that’s one thing, like if I remember right, you know, you started to build a pretty good following with like stuff Christians like pretty much right away. But there’s a big difference between, you know, like we say a lot of times there’s a lot of people that are Twitter rich and dollar broke. Like you can have a big following and not make money. So like how did you get started with like building the following and then also how did you finance your way there?

Speaker 1: (04:21)
Yes. I mean the following good start. 2008, I had a blog called stuff Christians. Like that was a satire of kind of faith, which again, I saw market and I was like, nobody’s really having that conversation. Like very few people have been like, I’m not a Christian, but Christians are whole areas. Like there’s not a lot of words we assigned to Christians, but like hilarious is not usually one of them. And I’m a pastor’s kid, so I grew up in the church and I was like, well, I think there’s a niche there. So I started this site. I started to get a following and get a following. I mean, the very first way I had money tied to that was I got a book deal. Zondervan published the stuff, Christians like book. And at the time it felt like $1 million. I got paid $30,000 in an advance. Which you go, oh my gosh, it’s amazing. And people would go, are you going to quit your job? And what was funny is after agent after taxes, after everything, I got like 13 grand. And if somebody who worked with one a $13,000 lottery, you wouldn’t be like,

Speaker 2: (05:19)
Yes, you’re moving to Mexico,

Speaker 1: (05:22)
Dan cone. And so like that was the first, and then from there I started out people say, Hey, do you want to come speak at our event? Come speak at our conference. And so that was where this world started opening up of wow, there’s all these opportunities and if I’m willing to invest in them, if I’m willing to be brave, if I’m willing to be creative while maintaining my reputation. Like that’s where it’s key. Like you can’t, like you have to know this is what I’m willing to do, this is what I’m not. For instance, I’m not willing to grow my Instagram account using cheesy quotes that I know that I know they didn’t say like I know that you know what’s an example? Like I know Michelangelo didn’t say that cause it sounds exactly like Pinterest and that’s not how a 14th century Italian painter spoke.

Speaker 1: (06:09)
And so like you have to go, okay, this fits my reputation, this is worth it. But you also have to be brave enough to kind of step out of your comfort zone because you don’t get to grow or expand unless you go, okay, I’m gonna try this. And so for me it’s been this process of going, okay, here’s what I’m doing. Well, how do I get a little uncomfortable and grow it a little bit and say, okay, people are interested in my book recommendations. I’m going to do that as an affiliate, not just do that. Okay, well what does that look like? Or here’s somebody I could partner with. Like I don’t do a lot of these, but I do ones with friends that I think do awesome stuff. So when you’re like, Hey, I’m doing this thing, like that was an easy yes for me because you’ve been incredibly generous to me.

Speaker 1: (06:50)
And so I think a big part of it is going, here’s who I’m aligned with, here’s what I want to do. But really the money started with a publishing deal. I started public speaking. I was never great at doing ads on my blog. Like I just wasn’t good at monetizing that. I wasn’t interested in monetizing it. The money, like there’s other blogs that had a great run at that. It just wasn’t what I was interested in. So I think you have to kind of figure out these are the faucets I care about and I’m going to try this one and I’m going to be patient with it and I’m going to be interested in it and see, you know where it goes from here. Okay.

Speaker 2: (07:25)
Yeah I love that. It’s interesting, you know one of the concepts that we talk about is she hands wall and people you know are more likely to break through the wall by being known for one thing and then once you break through the wall then you can expand and do lots of other stuff. And I’ve never thought about you as an example of that but it occurred to me in this conversation, gosh that really was because stuff Christians like was huge. Like if you were a Christian at that time and you were online like you knew about it and that led to your first book deal. Is Your Business model today still like primarily speaking and books? Is that like primarily and I’ve tried a bunch of different

Speaker 1: (08:02)
Thanks. I tried courses. And I have a lot of friends that they do really well with courses and they’re great at those. But for me I didn’t, I didn’t love doing them as much as I want it to. And I love public speaking. I can’t believe I get to do it for a living. I can’t believe I get to stand on a stage. What I do best is share ideas that inspire action. And so public speaking is so much fun for me on that. So yeah, primarily I’ll do consulting. So there’ll be a client that’ll say, hey, we want to put you on retainer and we’re going to have a one year contract and we want you to come in. Like, what I’m really good at is kind of being an idea swat team. So a company will say, we’re stuck on this thing.

Speaker 1: (08:43)
We want you to, you know, swing through the window, give us 150 ideas and then swing out. Or they’ll say, hey, we want you to talk and go to these nine meetings of groups you might not have met yet and give them ideas. And so like I consider myself kind of a, an idea merchant where I’m able to say, hey, here’s something you should try. And so yeah, I would say consulting as part of it. I’m starting to do coaching single session coaching because you know, if, if you think about my fee for speaking to a thousand people and I can do a portion of that just one-on-one, then I feel like I’ve extended value. And then there’s been times where I’ve paid for a single session coaching. It’s been wildly helpful. Or then just going, hey, I learned something that costs me x amount of dollars over a 10 year period that I can tell you in 10 minutes and it’ll change your whole perspective about your speaking business, your career transition, your publishing.

Speaker 1: (09:36)
So yeah, I think for what we do, and like I’m in the reputation business, you’re always saying, here’s my four main things and here’s another thing I’m adding. Here’s something else I’m adding. And it takes time. It’s people come up to me and go, hey, I want to do what you do. And I have to say, well, it’s taking me like a Levon years on top of a 15 year marketing career. Like it’s taken me a long time to go. And I was, I was trained as a copywriter. I W I majored in advertising. And so when somebody says you’re good at headlines, I go, well it’s just cause I’ve been doing it like I graduated in 98 so I’ve been doing headlines for 21 years and I think of a lot of this as headlines. It’s not that I was I was a farmer and then decided I’m going to. So I think I try to paint a realistic picture of like, I think great stuff takes great time.

Speaker 2: (10:26)
So let’s talk about the time a little bit. Particularly with your social following. That is something that like you just built, I feel like you’ve had a net natural strength for just building a huge social media following and it’s something you’ve done for consistent for a long period of time. What is your, like just again, like your philosophy, your attitude towards social, like you use that example of what you won’t post. How do you, how do you think about social media in general and then do you delineate how you use it? Like between channels? And you know, just like anything you could share of just like the way that you approach it as cause you’re not making money from that. It’s like you’re making money from books and from speaking and then maybe consulting and coaching. But like,

Speaker 1: (11:16)
Well I, I’m still making like you can still do like affiliate stuff like Instagram with swipe up with stories. That’s a whole other or sponsorships. And I’m just, I’m just kind of on the edges of that so I don’t consider myself an expert there. But an example of that, I originally hired a social media intern because I had kind of a convicting moment where I spoke to a company, 1300 people sales team. It was awesome. I loved speaking of sales teams. I mean, cause you get that like they’re already in motion. You don’t have to convince them to get emotion and their emotion. And I stepped off stage and this woman said, I love following you on Instagram. You’re one of our favorite falls. You’re funny. And then she said, I didn’t even know you wrote a book and I’ve written six books.

Speaker 1: (11:57)
So that’s a huge reflection of reputation failure on my part because what it means is she’s been along for the ride for who knows how long and I haven’t been clear enough or obvious enough or consistent enough about doing a book. And then she said, you are our favorite Insta Dad, which is not the reputation I’m trying to build. Like, and so I talked to my 15 year old daughter and I was like, am I good at Instagram? And she was like, you use it like an old man. And so I hired for the summer to help me with some things and now I just hired a social media intern and so we came up with, okay, here’s the categories of photos we’re going to post, we’re going to post funny, we’re going to coast encouraging, we’re going to post like interaction. Okay. So the goal of this is to generate interactions.

Speaker 1: (12:43)
So for instance, somebody did this photo where it showed 15 different styles of like roasted marshmallow and now like at that to me does it like nobody’s going to go, you’re so wise. Thanks for sharing the roasted marshmallow. But they will interact on that and I’ll get to engage with people. So when I say which one are you, it starts conversation and that’s an interaction post where if I show a speaking clip, I know I would say 80% of the clients that booked me to speak will say, I followed you online or we checked out your socials or we look. So if they’re looking there and I haven’t put any clips of speaking, I haven’t done my job like they don’t like, why would you book me? If you come into my Instagram account and all you see are like 50 funny caiso jokes, like that’s fine if I’m just wanted to be my personal account but it’s also my business account and that’s kind of the balance I try to strike.

Speaker 1: (13:35)
So I also realized I hadn’t put up a picture of myself on there in like three months and that wasn’t out of humility. It was out of like the fear of like, I’m like I’m an introvert, extrovert. Like so there’s this tension there. And so I knew like I have to be deliberate to go like, hey here I am or here I am with a friend. Like, cause when people go to your account, they want to see you, they want to know you. And so I’m learning how to be really deliberate with that. Twitter I go, you know what? It doesn’t have like, it’s an Instagram post is a, is something I want to be deliberate about. The story is less off the cuff. It’s, it disappears. Like it’s more casual. Twitter’s more casual too because there’s a thousand tweets going. Facebook, I kind of consider like Instagram a Mulligan a posted.

Speaker 1: (14:20)
They’re deliberately, the thing I’m loving lately is linkedin. Like I think linkedin is amazing. Like it’s always been kind of the one people think about last. But when you’re trying to do something business related, I mean I, my, my last book a fit or the one before my last book do over was a career book. I should be Joe Linkedin. Like why am I not being more deliberate? So I think part of it is going, which of these platforms I don’t do much on Pinterest because it’s not, it doesn’t completely overlap with what I’m doing. But I look at it and go, I think Instagram matters a lot right now. It kind of feels like the king. I think linkedin for a certain verticals is really important. You Go, okay, what am I going to put on Linkedin? And then Twitter. Twitter feels really angry right now.

Speaker 1: (15:03)
Like to me, like a lot of it feels really angry. So I’m kind of trying to be deliberate about, I don’t want to get sucked in too much. I want to create content, but like man, it’s just, especially as we head to an election year, like it’s gonna be crazy town. Right? And so I would say it’s fluid, but the more I can say these are the six buckets I always try to fill, the more deliberate. I think the hard hard part is when you’ve got a passion, you turn into a reputation. It’s hard to then put systems on top of it. And systems, especially if it’s like a passion system sometimes feel like they’re restricting passion. They’re not like they’re expanding it. Like the best systems give such life to, to real passion. And so I’m now going, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, 12 years, whatever.

Speaker 1: (15:50)
What are the systems I need to make sure I’m really creating good content? And not only that, reusing content, 1% of people saw like one of the things that’s kind of a weakness of mine is the minute after an idea has been shared. It’s a thousand years old in my head. Like the minute. And then like, it’s not like there’s so much fear and ego wrapped up in that like narcissism, like everybody saw it and remembers it like, are you kidding me? Like, no, they don’t. They’re doing their own life and like if it’s good, it’s good to bring it back up and say, hey, here’s this thing. Another thing was how are you serving people? I took ’em a look at my top 15 most popular Instagram posts in the last year based on engagement. 12 of the 15 were screenshots of tweets, screenshots of tweets, 12 of my 15 where my most popular on a photo image based site.

Speaker 1: (16:42)
Why I’m a better writer than I am a photographer, so if that’s what the people are responding to, I’m not going to feel shame that I don’t have dope photos. I’m going to use deliberate tweets more often because people have gone, that’s what we come here for. That’s what we really like where some people go, you’re not used an Instagram the right way. It should only be photos like no, like you worry about that on your end. I’m going to crush it on my end. We’ll be fine. Hmm. Yeah, that is, that’s wild. What an interesting statistic in terms of, I mean that’s very, very unexpected. You see people doing that all the time. There’s something, there is something the reason they’re doing it, or at least like the reason I’m doing it because it works like crazy. So like I’m not gonna bend to these fake rules people come up with for Instagram, like we’re all trying to figure out, it’s all new.

Speaker 1: (17:28)
Like we like to act like social media as a hundred years old. It’s not, it’s a toddler. And so when somebody goes, do you want to grow your Instagram account? You got to do these 33 things. These are the rules. No, they’re not like, no, they’re not. And there’s very few rules you have to, with your reputation go, these are the things I’m going to do. Here’s how I’m going to do it and I’m going to be consistent it. The problem with building a reputation is that it’s really boring in the middle, super duper boring and like you have to stay consistent. Consistency is so boring to me. Certain personality types. It’s like, this is amazing. I’ve got my checkbox, great, but for me it’s boring and I have to push through the boredom and go, none of them know. Here’s some, I’m putting, you know, putting a penny into this, but opinions of this and putting a penny into this. And then over time you look up and people go, you’ve been public speaking for x amount of years and your reputation or you’ve built your brand this way. Like that’s what matters.

Speaker 2: (18:21)
Yeah. I, I was reminded of this, we went and saw Michael Bublé concert last week and I was sitting there and I was just like, he played all the songs that I didn’t know. And the only time I got excited was when he played the songs that I knew. Oh yeah. And I was like, that’s so weird. I’ve heard it’s the song I’ve heard and do a thousand times. That’s the one I want to hear. Yet. I feel that same pressure on like Instagram or something or like take the stairs. A book’s been out since 2012 now. I would never think to share a quote that’s from, from that book from 2012 yet a lot of people, it’s like that’s the thing that they want to see. Like that’s what they, they love the musicians play the same songs for 31 days mad at Bono for singing one, right. God, Geez, Joshua tree again. Like nobody, if anything, it’s the reverse. So yeah, and the other thing, and I think

Speaker 1: (19:14)
John Gordon’s really good at that. I know he’s a mutual friend. Like yeah, he’s really good at surfacing books and going, hey, here’s an idea. So one, if they saw it and they liked it, they’ll like it a second time too. They might not have been part of the conversation then. And so you can get the, you know, you get to bring it back up and go, hey, and the problem is we feel, I mean, at least for me, I can’t speak for you. I feel lazy in that moment. I think only new ideas count. And I think that’s something that I have to consciously remind myself. That’s not true. Whoever is the inner critic that’s saying that isn’t being honest and let you know, let’s do it. Like let’s share that. I’m never mad when I hear like, like Gary Goldman, one of my favorite comedians does this bit on the state capitols and how they got abbreviated and I could listen to that for 10 years and 10 years from now if he does it again, I’m going to be like, it’s genius. Like I think it’s, I think it’s awesome. I’m not disappointed. I’m excited.

Speaker 2: (20:07)
Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s, that is, is interesting that inner critic. So I want to talk about the humor stuff for a little bit cause I think that is, that is one of the book on it. I, I did, you can’t find it anywhere and it’s, it’s been banished from the earth and in the hidden only in certain places. But I did a lot of people don’t know that that was like my very first work was a self published book. I remember. Yeah. You remember like, I forget you that we’ve known each other for that long man. Like we’ve been, we’ve been around a minute. Isn’t that crazy? So, and part of that is because I feel like you’re so naturally funny. I mean, one of the reasons I wrote that buckets cause I was like, I really struggled with humor. And now I’m very, very funny on stage, but it’s, it’s all, you know, I work at it. Do you, do you feel like, like how do you be funny or like, do you study it? Do you work at it or is it just like a gift you feel like you have and, and that’s it. Or you know, like how did you get to,

Speaker 1: (21:09)
I mean, I do study it. I think my dad’s really funny. I’m the, I’m not the funniest person. My family, my youngest brother who’s a lawyer is the funniest by far. And so I think I grew up around it. My Dad used to take me to comedy clubs when I was in high school. Like we’d go see Brian Regan. And so like, I grew up around like that album is such classic. And so like I grew up around it. I really appreciate it. And then I started realizing like, the great comedians are our great social commentators, like the great, you know, like I’m not a big like dark comedy fan where like, Ugh, I feel gross after hearing it. Like I like, I like to be challenged by an idea or see something that I hadn’t seen before and go, wow, that was really smart.

Speaker 1: (21:51)
That’s, that’s, you know, I’ve never looked at it that way. So I studied people, like I mentioned earlier, Gary Gulman, Nate Barr, Gutsy Maria Bamford I think is amazing. And so I study it and then I also like if I’m in situations where I’m riffing with somebody, I’m kind of practicing it, if you will. And then like I do work at it where I write it down and I’m going, okay, that, that was funny, that wasn’t funny. And then I’m, I’m listening to the jokes I find in, in the audience like I’ll, I’ll probably do it a practice like 90%, and then there’s 10% on leaving it open for the moment. And that’s often the best stuff. And so you’re always finding new jokes even in material you feel like you’ve done 20 times, 30 times. But then I wrote, I wrote a 50,000 word essay book that’ll probably never see the light of day that was just comical.

Speaker 1: (22:43)
Looks at things. I did this like six months ago and it was stuff like, I’m like what would be an example? Oh Hey like yeti coolers. Like how, how crazy? Like how just the idea that you had put a sticker on your car to let other people know how you keep things cold. Like, like, like in 1990 nobody had an Igloo sticker and I was like, I love any blue. I want you to feel how I keep ice like that. So like, or the idea that you need a cooler though, keeping meat cold for nine days for your kids, three hours soccer game. Like how much room for error do you need? Like even soccer games, eight days in 24 hours of margin of error in case it goes over time. Like just or like that they sold the handle as an accessory. Like the mud there.

Speaker 1: (23:31)
The handle is an accessory, like the idea of like, oh you want to be able to hold it easily, that’s extra you like, so just like taking a look at your life and going, okay that’s a weird thing. I’m like, why is that? And then I, but I would say my writing process is, I write the idea first. Whether this is an Instagram post, any sort of reputation thing. I create speech book, Instagram posts, I write the idea down. I don’t try and get the words right. I just try to get the idea, what’s the general idea. And then I do a pass where I try to get the words closer to right and then I make it positive cause I sometimes like my inner voice is like the counting crows. Like it sounds like the song round here you’re like, oh that’s kind of mopey.

Speaker 1: (24:14)
And then I get a positive and then I make it funny. And so those are kind of like, I’m constantly kind of trying to layer this and going, okay, here’s a point I want to make. What’s the way to say it? What’s the way to say it where it’s funny and you remember it and what’s the hook like? Okay, well then let’s say like regardless of I’m speaking at a company or a college, I’m going, where’s it funny? And then I did, I finally did like a for a comedy, a comedy set at Xannys last fall. I’m a 60 minute set. Took me like three months to write. Learned a lot about comedy there. So, yeah, I just, I don’t know. I love it. I respect it. I love people who are great at it.

Speaker 2: (24:54)
What does that mean? That, so when you say social commentators, like do it, how do you like the Yeti is a good example. I mean the Yeti thing is a great example like that, but, but what, what do you do to make your brain recognize it and then how do you go from recognizing it to making it funny or is it just pointing it out? That is what’s funny.

Speaker 1: (25:18)
No, I think, I mean, I think there’s a pointing that out. Like I think you’re trying to say stuff that everybody’s thinking, but nobody is saying. And to see it from a different angle. So for me, like this is my, I write down five to 10 ideas every day in this notebook and I’ll, you know, I’ll kind of, and there’s no quality, it’s just like I’m trying to capture, I’m trying to capture and go, okay, so here’s an example. So like I saw a sticker in a parking lot. I did, I’ve seen a million times and it was, it said my, I don’t know, my, my Weimer Reiner is smarter than your honor student. I thought that’s an interesting sticker. And I thought, well, what does that really mean? Like I like, and then I thought like, I’ve never like dogs when like they throw up well eat their own, throw up.

Speaker 1: (26:02)
Like I’ve never known an honor student to do that. So like I’ve never had like somebody go, our honors students are great, but like when it funders, we have to put thunder shirts on them real quick or they freak out. Like at pep rallies they lose it. Or like Kyle is great at calculus, but if he gets a problem you really liked, he urinates everywhere. So excited like for the idea at like, so then I, so then I back up and I go, the funny thing there is when I see that sticker I thing where did you go to high school? Like how bad was your honors program? Like a dog will eat a dead chipmunk on purpose. Like that’s a weight or the sticker that says who rescued who about rescue dogs? And I want to go, well, I mean it’d weird if like a dog just showed up in your cubicle at work.

Speaker 1: (26:46)
And I was like, come on, we’re going home. Like I think you probably went somewhere and got him. Like that’s a weird, like to look at that and go, what does that mean? And so I think you look at that, seeing it from a different, that seeing it from a different way, different angle and going, what does it mean? Why is that funny to me? Is it funnier to more people than just me? Cause there’s some things where I’m like, that’s ridiculous and maybe two people think it’s funny. And then there’s other things where you go, Oh wow, that, you know, like that’s something that I could see a lot of people finding humorous and then you just kind of shape it. And I think a lot of it is the right word is going okay. Like Jerry, you know like Seinfeld talks about that all the time, like the right word.

Speaker 1: (27:27)
Like he has a joke about somebody’s name looked like a periodic, you know, an element from the periodic table. And it said like, and his name was Boron and Boron was the right element there. And he went through like 20 elements. So it’s, you know, you’re kind of trying to find, okay, this is the word that’s going to be interesting. This is the element that’s going to catch them off guard. This is the thing that’s going to kind of stop somebody. How do I, you know, how do I communicate it? And that’s what I mean, that’s what I think is really funny to me is when it’s a situation and it often, it’s where everybody’s thought through it. Like so. So for instance, I did a joke about being on an airplane and how weird it is to be sitting next to somebody in a business suit that’s probably going to fly to negotiate a $10 million deal and they have to beg for the whole Canton Ginger Ale.

Speaker 1: (28:19)
Like they have to ask the flight attendant like can I, can I have the whole kit? And it’s such a power play because the flight attendant can be like, no, you get two inches of soda, three cubes. And then like the guy gets into and he’s like, I can handle my drink. I’m on earth all the time. Like we’ll look at that. Or like when you’re on a plane and you’re talking to a stranger next to you and then you reach that awkward moment where you just decide, yeah, this is over. And you slowly put on your headphones, which is like this, oh we’re, you’re like enjoy the rest of your life. This is over. Like you can’t do that. And on the ground, like if you were in an office somewhere and somebody who is talking to you and you just, all of a sudden we’re like, Yay, that would be weird.

Speaker 1: (28:56)
But we do that on airplanes all the time. And so finding stuff that a bunch of people relate to and then going, what’s the twist? What’s the, you know, what’s the small difference? Like what’s the little bit thing that makes it really, really funny and it’s gonna make people go like, oh, like I get that like Gary Goldman, who I keep mentioning, but I think he’s one of the best comedians out there right now. He’s doing a whole series on how to write great material on Twitter free series. He’s up to 200 points now, but I saw him do a joke. He said, essentially, I’m going to butcher it. But he essentially said in the 70s he realized he wasn’t a real man because he saw star wars. And when Princess Leia said to Han Solo, I love you. He said, I know. And he said, every time a woman’s told me, I love you, I’ve said y.

Speaker 1: (29:46)
Show your work and the phrase show your work is genius because what he’s taken this phrase from a math problem that a little kid would do and applied it to like a deep emotional, relational truth of like, I feel inadequate, but he’s done it in a way that it’s funny, but if you’ve ever felt inadequate, the idea of somebody saying I love you. And you’d saying why like that is there’s so much wrapped up in that and he’s taking you into a place you might not have gone if you weren’t laughing. And that to me is brilliant.

Speaker 2: (30:14)
Yeah. That, I mean it is, it is such an art form, but there is, there’s a certain amount of like systemization

Speaker 1: (30:23)
Oh 100%. But there’s also, I’ve asked you this, do you think you can teach likability?

Speaker 2: (30:31)
I think you can. I know you can teach people, you can teach how to make people laugh. And I think that does help with likability, but like true, authentic likability. I Dunno

Speaker 1: (30:43)
About that. It’s tough, dude. That’s tough because I think that’s a, that’s an intro like for me, when a speaker has good content but they’re not likable and they might not even want to be likable. Like it’s just weird. Like if, if you said like, Hey, the reason they didn’t listen to that example is like, it came from a place of like you are a superstar and were amazing like that. Like it didn’t, I don’t know. Likability is one of those as you explore reputation. I can’t wait to see y’alls thoughts on that.

Speaker 2: (31:13)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s, it really is interesting. I mean you could definitely make people laugh and I think laughing helps a lot with like ability in some of it. Some of it is natural, but even you as funny as naturally funny as you are, it’s like you can, you can still see how you’ve trained your brain to like look for things and then shape them away and then have like a process for it.

Speaker 1: (31:37)
Oh yeah, like my favorite like one of my funniest moments where it was just, I was speaking to 300 people and you have to like, I would say crew like talent is being able to respond to the moment craft is being able to hone it and make it feel like the first time every time. So this like this woman, 300 people really quiet auditorium, I’m almost done and I’m like three minutes from being done. I take one last Q and a question and this lady like in the second row scrunches up a water bottle like so loud it stops the whole room and I’m like, you were so close to being done. Like you waited this entire speech or like I can’t wait a second longer and she’s crushed it and like the crowd lost it. She was laughing and it was just one of those where like themed it.

Speaker 1: (32:20)
Like there is the practice, practice, practice and then there’s the being able to react to it and see if it’s funny like how do you, you know, how do you do this? What is it like I spoke a in Portugal at an EO event that we both done and I followed the world record holder for the tallest ever surfed. This guy from Brazil was like 82 foot wave crazy. And so right after I followed him and I was like, I mean like it’s fun to follow him cause we both done brave things like he surfed the world, saw us wave. I felt like the hotel pool was a little cold, like a cup like degrees too. And like it’s just in the moment but it makes the crowd go, okay, we’re all in this together. So like no, I’m a, I could talk about that for hours. I’m a geek at that.

Speaker 2: (33:04)
I think there’s something, there’s, there’s definitely something magic about that that spartan spontaneity in the crowd is much more forgiving. It doesn’t have to be as genius if it is taught, if that, if it’s that timely and it has an even bigger effect than if it, if it was a genius. Well planned line is sometime not as effective as just a spontaneous like in the moment line. You experienced it

Speaker 1: (33:28)
Together for the first time and that feels genuine and that’s fun like we had. It’s, it’s kind of creating an inside joke moment in the moment.

Speaker 2: (33:36)
Yeah. Yeah, totally. So where do you want people to go to connect with you if they don’t, if they don’t know about you and they want to follow along, where would you direct people?

Speaker 1: (33:46)
Definitely Instagram. I’m just John a cuff. J. O n a. C. U. F. F. I’m on Twitter, same thing. John a cuff. My website is [inaudible] dot me. And then my latest book is called Finish and it’s about finishing the goals you care about because people have a really easy time starting in a really hard time finishing.

Speaker 2: (34:06)
Yeah. Yeah. I remember you said you wrote the wrong book cause you wrote start first and then the brewer came back and wrote, wrote, finish after. That really stuck with me. So the, I guess the last little thing I would just leave you with John was, so let’s say somebody is out there, you know, and they’re, they’re listening to this right now and they’re going, yeah, Gosh, I wanna I want to speak in front of people. I want to, you know, inspire a lot of people on social, I want to write books and, and for whatever reason they’re feeling blocked or they’re feeling trapped, you know, like they have to stay in a certain job or they’re not sure that they can do it. And they’re kind of in that moment of where, you know, they’re deciding about stepping out. What would you say to, to that, to that person that’s kind of like, yeah, I don’t know if it work. I don’t know if I could make money at this. I don’t know if I can, you know, break through all the noise of everybody else. You know, I know, you know what it’s like to be in that moment and not be sure if you’re gonna be able to make it, you know, on your own.

Speaker 1: (35:06)
Yeah, I would say one be really kind to yourself. The super, super kind because if feeling that doubt isn’t failure, like that’s appropriate. Like I feel that anytime a new, you know, I launch a new thing, there’s that feeling. And we always, you know, we always think other people don’t feel it, but I want 100% seal that the stress, the, you know, the comparison, oh that person had this huge moment and blew up. Like I’ve had to mute people I know, cause like it lead me to a good place to just get this steady stream of their amazingness. And I’d love to say like, no, I’m on the sidelines just cheering. Like, but there’s times where I’m, I’m trying to work on something and all that insecurity is loud. So I’d say be kind to yourself. You’re not the only one who thinks that.

Speaker 1: (35:52)
And then just be small with it. Like go, go and build it in small ways. Like, I think sometimes I, you know, I talked to the owner of fleet feet the other day, she’s brilliant and she fleet feet is this running store in Nashville and she was saying how she trains people to kind of chunk up marathons and she says, I never want somebody to run a 26.2 marathon like as their goal because it’s so large. What I say is run the first 10 k okay and get it to 10 k which is 6.2 miles. And then she said, run to a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. She said then run to 20 miles, which is you’ve already got, you’ve got 20, that’s a huge milestone. And then run to where you only have a five k left, which is you’ve only got 3.1 left.

Speaker 1: (36:37)
And she said, chunk it up so that mentally you can actually do it. So if you were going to say, I want to be a speaker, I want to write a book, I want to have a platform like awesome, but find a really small, where you say, okay, I want to have a hundred subscribers on youtube. Like and that’s it. Like a hundred would be amazing. And then get there and go, okay that’s awesome. And then I want to get to a thousand or then I want to get to 200 like for me, if I set the sites too big, I get discouraged and I missed the good stuff that I’m actually working on. And then my, you know, the, the thing I always say like if you want to do something you love, like the way I kinda think about it, it’s only two things. Find something you love so much, you’d do it for free.

Speaker 1: (37:18)
We’ve all heard that. But the second part we don’t hear often and they can get so good at it that people pay you a lot of money to do it. Like those are the two elements. Like find something you’d like. For me, writing books, sharing ideas. Like, I love that. Like nobody loves a delayed flight, but I’ll, I’ll put up with a thousand delayed flights because I got to be on stage for an hour. Like that hour was crazy fun to me. It’s worth like, oh, I just spent the night in Baltimore unexpectedly. Yeah. It’s not my favorite thing, but I’m willing to pay that tax because what’s on the other side of that is so amazing. So find something you love so much that you do it for free, but then as you think about your reputation, add that second element. It’s so good at it that people pay you a lot of money to do it. That’s to me where it gets really magical.

Speaker 2: (38:02)
I love it. John ACOF my friends, this is someone who has built from scratch, been a huge influence in my life, made a huge impact in the world. Brother, thank you for your inspiration, for your encouragement, and to helping us laugh all along the way. A really good appreciate

Speaker 1: (38:19)
You, man. Yeah, thanks for, I appreciate it.

Ep 15: Different is Better Than Better with Sally Hogshead | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand. We’re breaking down the interview today with our longtime friend, Dan Miller, who I absolutely just love. I just love his energy, him and Joanne are awesome. And we met them on a cruise a few years ago and I’ve just been, been friends. So we got your top three takeaways from AJ and from me. So, get us going. AJV: (00:32) Yeah, I think the first thing he said this like really close to the beginning of the interview and I loved it. And he said if somebody or three different people ask me the same question more than three times, I’ll just make a product for it. I think the whole concept of what should I make a product about or where do I find content is really simply answered when you just figure out what do people already come to you for? And so instead of repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again, why not turn it into a product, a course or a video series or a book or a coaching program or certification or all the things that he has done and is doing really, he said most of that comes from just, you know, if I get asked the same question more than three times, then I really consider turning that into a product. RV: (01:24) Yep. I love that. I was one of my takeaways too, is just, you know, the power of listening to your audience. And I think one of the, one of the techniques or strategies that you can use is to ask your audience. So in his case, he’s just listening. But the other thing you can do, like if you need content ideas or you need product ideas, or if you need copy for like your sales page, send a survey to your audience, ask them some questions about what they want and what they’re struggling with, and then take their words that they write back to you and use some of their language in CRE in actually marketing what you’re doing and create a product for them. So that was one of my takeaways too. I just love that. It’s such a simple, a simple, practical, actionable thing that any of us can do, you know, right away. So that was good. So what was your second one AJV: (02:17) Second one was this concept of not doing the new and trendy thing that everyone is doing. And he said, I’ll try to recap it here. He said, but I, I resist the temptation to do every single new and trendy thing that is out there. And he talked about, he said, could I be missing out on lots of money? Maybe do I care? Not really. And I think that’s really just really powerful. It’s like, if what you’re doing is working, why would you derail? What’s working to do just what everyone else is doing. That’s new and trendy. And one of the things that I thought was really insightful and something that you don’t hear a lot about, he said, now I’m not saying anything is wrong with funnels or webinars or with anything he said, but you hear all these people all over social media promoting, I made six figures, seven figures in this launch. AJV: (03:10) He said, what you don’t hear about is how much money they had to give back and refunds. And I thought that was really interesting because you hear a ton of people. You see a ton of ads. It’s like how I made six figures in this funnel, or there’s this one out. And I don’t, I won’t say what it’s called, but it’s how do you have a seven figure funnel? And then he talks about how he came up with this whole thing. And yeah, probably you could do that. I’m sure people are doing that all the time every day. And Dan said, but what you don’t hear about is how much of that they’re actually giving back in refunds because a buyer’s remorse or they didn’t get what they thought it was, or it was a little bit misleading or a little bit of a bait and switch. And I’m not saying everyone is but I do think there’s some accuracy in the fact that you hear a lot of the revenue promoted and that a lot of the backend of what was it even profitable and how much did you actually give back and refunds? And I thought that was just very insightful. RV: (04:09) Yeah. I mean, you got the refunds, you also have affiliate fees and, you know, Facebook ads and paying your graphic designer. And, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like, how, how much do you really keep in? Which is but I think his thing into your point is more about the reputation and like the, AJV: (04:26) Oh yeah, no, I love when he said, he said it, he said, I’m way more about building a consistent audience than having huge infusions of cash said, I’m way more about the consistency time, over time, over time, that will last me 20 years than I am about this one time, big infusion of of cash. And everyone is different. Perhaps you are someone who’s looking for that big infusion of cash and like go for it, do it. But I loved what he said. It’s about playing the long game and making this a, a true, a true business versus this one time push. RV: (05:00) Yeah. So for me, the other thing that I thought was fascinating you know, we teach something to our brand new members that we call the fast cash formula, which is how do you, if you need to make money quickly. And we talk about how coaching a lot of times is the fastest way. If you need to replace an income is to offer coaching. And when he was telling his story, that was how he started. And still to this day, he does one day a month of one-on-one coaching work. And I love that because he was a real life example of what we talk about that, you know, coaching is the fastest path to cash in terms of replacing a large you know, income need, but it’s the least scalable longterm. And, and yet, so he sort of toward the story about how he started with that. RV: (05:51) And then after he had done enough coaching, he created a course for the people who couldn’t afford coaching. And, and so he was teaching this course and then people invited him to come speak because there were people seeing him teach the course. And that, you know, basically out of that coaching work came his content which became also his business model. And I just think that’s a really great way to do it is to do the work, to kind of get your hands in there. And obviously we love coaching. We, we believe in coaching in the power of one-on-one and I just, I just thought that was really encouraging. And, and, you know, he, he does have multiple streams of income, but it’s been developed over years and it’s, it really started from one great body of work, you know, that he flushed out with coaching and real life scenarios then applied it to a course, you know, then applied it to live events and speaking. So I thought that was just a great, a great example. AJV: (06:51) Yeah. There’s a great evolution of evolution. That’s a great one. And I think that’s somewhat similar to my third and final point, which is which I thought is very indicative of what you hear a lot. But yet there’s this mystery around it. He said, but I don’t count on any income from my books. And, you know, in his book is super successful and has been out there, just did a 20 year edition, right? 20Th year, RV: (07:18) 20Th or 25th. AJV: (07:20) Yeah. But a long time, right on. He said, but here’s what I have found. He said, it’s not the book itself that makes all the income, it’s the actual content within the book. So the book is the calling card. It’s the credibility source. Then not to say that you won’t make income. He just doesn’t count on that in his forecast or his budget. But it’s the content of that book that he then takes that and turns it into all these different curriculums. It’s a coaching curriculum. It’s a certification curriculum. It’s a course, it’s a video series, it’s a live event. It’s all these different things that are all circulated around the content of the book. And the book is at the center, but probably isn’t, what’s bringing in the most income for him. However, from that, there is just this entire huge circle of all these things that are moving to make this very successful, a very healthy business, even though most of the income is not from the center of it, which is the book it’s from all these other ancillary income streams that have become his primary revenue. RV: (08:27) Yeah. That’s good, good perspective on the book. For me, my third takeaway, which he talked a little bit about, but it’s more of, of what we know about him and Joanne behind the scenes. And I don’t know that he said this directly, but every time I’m with Dan and Joanne, it always occurs to me how they build their life or, or they build work around their life. They don’t build their life around their work. And so it’s, it’s one of the great possibilities of a personal brand is to be able to like fit work in and around your life. And it’s hard to do cause when you’re an entrepreneur, especially early on, it’s like a lot of times, you know, we’re kind of his life, but you, you want to get out of that and you can get out of that. And AJV: (09:14) I think that goes to a lot of what he talked about, where he resists the temptation to do all of the new and trendy things. Because, well, for what reason, it’s like, are you living to work? Are you working to live? And he talked a lot about his time and his schedule, but I think that is a part of it is resisting the temptation to do. RV: (09:34) Yeah. And I, and I hope for you, like, w w I wonder, I would bet if we could take all the podcast listeners and ask if you’ve heard of Dan Miller, I bet less than half of you have actually heard of him. You’ve probably heard of some of our other guests yet. He has one of the biggest businesses of everyone we’ve ever had on the podcast. And, and his example speaks to the power of steady consistency and just trust and playing the long game and plodding along. He’s the tortoise man. That’s a, that’s such a great that’s a great metaphor. And, and, and we mean that AJV: (10:14) It was his, he said, he said, I’m the tortoise. RV: (10:18) Yeah. That’s. And, and that is, you know, and we say that in the most honoring way, AJV: (10:23) He said it so we can say it. RV: (10:26) But even to that extent, it doesn’t mean you have to be slow. It’s just, it’s the idea of consistency. You don’t have to be the person with a million followers. And, and you know, this, these huge extravagant launches and given away cars, and like, you can do those things like, but, but you don’t have to be that person in order to be successful. Like you can just do the right thing for a really long time, and it will work out like you can’t fail if you just pour back into people’s lives. So I’m as encouraged by that. AJV: (11:01) Yeah. Well, I think it just, in general, there are a million different ways to build your personal brand. And Dan gives a one, one really great perspective of how to do it. And there are many other different perspectives that you will hear from other guests, but to what Roy is saying, it’s like, it’s, it’s all about. And what we talk about a lot, it’s playing the long game and Dan is a great example of the long game. RV: (11:26) Yeah. So there you have it. So hopefully you’re playing the long game and you’ll keep coming back here. We’re going to keep working to provide amazing guests for you and hopefully useful insights. We’re so glad that you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 14: Different is Better Than Better with Sally Hogshead

Speaker 1: (00:01)
I am about to introduce you to, if you don’t already know her, maybe the smartest woman in the world other than my wife, like and Sally is just one of my dearest friends and colleagues in this space. You know, on the surface, Sally is a New York Times best selling author. She’s a hall of fame speaker. I mean, she literally speaks on the biggest and most prolific stages in the world. She has been on the today show, right? She’s done campaigns for mini Cooper and Nike and get dive in Coca-Cola. And you know, she is somebody that’s been in branding and marketing her entire career. She has built a monstrous personal brand and Sally is just someone who does it the right way and she’s a true thought leader. She has carved out,ua very unique expertise and just shifted the way that the world thinks about,uyou know, her, you know, her first book,ufascinate on recent book, how to make brand your brand impossible to resist. Uso she’s the creator of the fascination advantage assessment, which you all are gonna get for free. Just spoil spoiler, but you got to stick around code. Ubut she’s going to give it to y’all for free. And,ubut more than that, she’s just a dear friend and somebody that I go to when I Bison and learn from. So Sally, thank you.

Speaker 2: (01:27)
And, and likewise, I mean the conversations that you and I have, it seems like every three to six months we have an opportunity to sit down and really get into a meeting, have so much trust between us that we don’t have to sit there and do it. The caveats and the preamble. So I really appreciate that too.

Speaker 1: (01:40)
Yeah, well it’s, it’s an honor. So I want to picture you from the outside. I feel like had a very meteoric rise to success in the speaking world. Like you kind of came in a lot of speakers, you know, it’s like, you know, they’d say, Oh, I spent 2025 years before I was in the hall of that. But there’s, you know, you were working at this for a long time and I just want you to sort of think about, you know, that person that’s out there that wants to be where you are. Like can you just give us the, the, a story, tell us like how did it happen? Like how did you become the speaker, you know, creator of the assessment, New York Times best selling author. Like what was the journey like at a high level?

Speaker 2: (02:24)
It was it, it, it, you know, it looks from the outside, like it’s meteoric only took 10 years in the making. Just cause I was totally not on the radar. No, cause I didn’t want to be, but because I just didn’t really know how to crack into it. And you’re a couple of things that were massively formative for me is as a very dark times that turned into Epiphanes. One of them was when when, when I really wanted it to be a speaker and I actually had tried to make that shift from, Hey, I’m good in presentations to let me share a message with your audience for a fee. I I didn’t have a bestselling book yet and I didn’t have any context. I had no reputation in the, in the speaking world. And I I didn’t have a lot of the things that make it easy to take for granted.

Speaker 2: (03:08)
And so I took a step back and and I realized that, first of all, I was trying so hard to take other speakers and mimic them. I want to be as polished. This speaker, I want to have everything memorized that I had kind of out of fear become locked up. And I think that’s an easy trap to fall in is if we don’t know who we are, we can’t expect anyone else to know who we are. And so I was trying to outdo people at their own game. So I took a step back in 2012 and I thought, w what is it that I can bring to the party that other speakers can’t? And I realized there’s only one time that you have complete control of how other people are going to perceive you. There’s only one time when your brand is is in control.

Speaker 2: (03:53)
And that’s the first few seconds when somebody interacts with you or with your materials for the first time. And so so I created the most fascinating possible mailer that I, that I could, that showed up on people’s doorsteps. And the cool thing about the mailer, it was a, here’s what, so I mailed it out and blue suitcases that look like this. They were grew to be little suitcases. And then I had inside of the case I did an exploration of not me, but this, the recipient. Hey Roy, here’s is what makes you fascinating. You are consistently respected, you are classically admired, you are best in class. And then if you’d like to talk more about how I might be able to bring this in a speech, feel free to reach out to me. Here’s my private cell. So that, so, so that takes looking at that what I was doing was taking a little expertise that I have, which was branding and understanding that you need to instantly differentiate yourself. But applying it in a fresh way and this is something anybody can do. Whatever your background is, find find something in your history, a skillset, an aspect of your network and then find a way to apply it. Not to everything. You don’t have to have great website, great hold music, great team, great office space. You just have to have one highly different,

Speaker 1: (05:16)
I have to disagree with you. I have found that hold music is the single greatest key to get fees is good. Hold music while you’re on the phone. If you don’t have good hold music, you are going to epically fail.

Speaker 2: (05:29)
Well my favorite was my old client Buka devito where it was Italian opera playing in the bathrooms. So so another thing that I did was when I, when I created my business card, since the name of the company is fascinate, I had to do something fascinating. And so when I similarly to the blue suitcase idea, telling them about them, I created a business card that shows them it’s all about them. Hey, how do you fascinate? So then when I meet somebody, I can say, here’s what makes you fascinating worry. I happened to know yours. You, you build loyalty and you set the standard. So if I were to give this to you and I will, I’m just say if I were to give this to you, you fascinate with prestige and trust. Your archetype is the blue chip. What we found was a business card costs $2, but on average we made $64 in returns from every business card I gave out because people kept it. And it was a treasure. I didn’t have the money to pay for everything else extravagantly. But you don’t have to have the most business cards. You have to have the best one. And so I’m applying things from my own background. That was one way that I realized I don’t have to be better, but I do have to be different.

Speaker 1: (06:41)
Yeah, and you have a great quote. We might as well get it out there cause I say it all the time and I do cite you, but it’s, this is like a game changing paradigm. Shifting quote on this. Can you just like go ahead and drop the mic for us with your, your different and better your your asa fee on that.

Speaker 2: (06:58)
It’s good to be better, but it’s better to be different. Different is better than better. And this dates back to when I worked with challenge or underdog brands like mini Cooper trying to compete against VW. If you try to outdo somebody else at their own gate by being better than you, you will always win because somebody else can out outcompete you. But if you try to differentiate yourself, it makes it much easier for you to build a brand, build a company and empire around who you already are so that your personality isn’t a Bolt-on. Your personality is the main driver of your business. That’s how we, especially as entrepreneurs, we can show up and be focused and in the flow and competent and enlivened because we’re understanding the different is better than better.

Speaker 1: (07:42)
Yeah. And I think that that is such a powerful idea again of just like if you, if you become like you say this, the key to becoming fascinating is to, is to become more of who you already are.

Speaker 2: (07:56)
Yeah. Don’t change who you are, become more of who you are. Dan Kennedy also said it another way. He said the higher the income, the the more the person is paid for who they are and the less the person has paid for what they do. Who you are is highly differentiated. What you do is a commodity. So a dentist you do fillings, I do fillings, but what’s the value that you’re bringing there? That is the differentiator for your personal brand. And that’s always been helpful because if you focus on just trying to do what you do better then you’ll never really be able to scale and achieve the massive growth that I know anybody who’s listening to this wants. Even if it’s just having a message that makes a bigger difference in the world, don’t focus on what you do. Focus on who you are.

Speaker 1: (08:43)
Yeah. And do you think that this applies, you know, like obviously a lot of our audience are people who want to monetize their personal brand so they want to be speakers and authors and that, but it’s, it’s interesting to me that you, you go out and you speak in corporations about how to be more fascinating and why it matters. So this, this applies to corporate executives and people like climbing the ladder and like even if you’re working inside of a big company, you, you still feel like cause cause I think there’s, there is a, there is a strong overlap between reputation that we talk about and making it more fascinating. I think it’s like there’s a lot of overlap there. You feel like this applies in the corporate world even if someone’s not gonna build a social media following or whatever.

Speaker 2: (09:27)
Yeah. Well, here’s what I see is that the venn diagram overlap between reputation and what makes you fascinating. Reputation is a clearly established set of principles and beliefs and attributes that are clearly linked to you. So if somebody in the office says, you know what, we really need somebody with a specialty for details. If you have a reputation for being exceptional in the area of details, then that is your ideal project. If you’re a salesperson and you have a competitive advantage in being passionately, emotionally connective, your ideal client is going to be somebody who needs a salesperson who is passionately emotionally connected. So what, what the fascination advantage does is that it helps you pinpoint exactly what your differentiator is. Why should an ideal client work with you and not somebody else? How do you define a personal what we know we need a personal brand, but what is your personal brand and your personal brand? It’s as, as I know, you know, it’s not just the meetings you go into the presentations you go in, it’s who you are and how you move through life so that you can have the best connections you can because you’re making a bigger difference based on how you are different.

Speaker 1: (10:44)
Hmm. Yeah. I absolutely, I absolutely, I love that. And we’re going to talk about the fascination advantage here so that y’all can get this because Sally’s going to give you this assessment that you go through and it actually tells you, you know, like the, the, the phrase that we use is find your uniqueness, which is something I learned from Larry Winget years ago to find your uniqueness and explored the service of others. And so we do the work at brand owners group of just like all day, everyday trying to like dive in and figure out what is the uniqueness of each client. And your assessment really cuts to the heart of that and gives people some language. Yeah. Right up, right up front. So let me ask you that. So before, before we come back to that, when you, what do you feel like was your big breakthrough in terms of a personal brand? So like you mentioned before, you weren’t on off the radar for awhile and then all of a sudden you, you were, you were everywhere and do you feel like there was, you know, what was that big, what was that big moment like for you and how did that kind of happen?

Speaker 2: (11:52)
And in February of 2010, it was a really crappy time to release a high concept business book, which is exactly when my book fascinate came out. So I was sweating bullets cause it was the recession, nobody was spending money on this high concept Malcolm Gladwell type book. And so there were, you know how this goes, there’s, there’s about three months from the time that you’ve turned in the manuscript and you cannot touch it because it is being printed somewhere in a warehouse and then ships or large trucks are taking it out to the world. So I was, you know, just like gouging my eyeballs out with mechanical pencils. So I said, well, if the book is about fascinating, I know what makes brand fascinating. What if we created a way to measure what makes an individual fascinating? So I Kinda, I started, I took the research and I started looking at it and I realized that personality tests are based on psychology and psychology is great, but it shows you how you see the world.

Speaker 2: (12:51)
What it lacks is the ability to show you how does the world see you? In other words, how do people perceive you at your most valuable, your most exceptional? So I went back into my, my, my branding mindset. And brands have focus groups. Coke doesn’t care how coke sees the company. Coke only cares consumer coke only cares. How does the consumer see coke? So if you take the principles of a focus group and you apply it to a personal brand, you can actually measure that. And so I thought, well, when the book comes out in February, we’re where like there were, you know, crickets out there. When the book comes out, what if I had this assessment simply as a social media tool to get people to talk about this and sort of as like a launch buzz vehicle. So the assessment came out and within about three months we had like 30,000 people do it.

Speaker 2: (13:44)
I mean, this is before Facebook advertising. This was just organically, it was getting shared and it continued to live as there was no opt in, there was it, there was no click, we weren’t collecting any email addresses because we had no idea what an email list was. And then finally when we decided that this is really something that needs to have a bigger place in the world. So we started charging for it and turned it into an actual full report. And it was, it was, it was nerve racking that the first, the first couple of days I would get an email. Every time we made a sale and it was the first 12 hours, there was no sale and then a lonely ding. And the next day it was ding Ding until pretty soon my kids called it the dinner bell and a dignity naming thing. And so that, that was kind of a trajectory of realizing that the little weird experiments that you do are the most valuable part of your personal brand. Because if all you do is have one plodding strategy but you haven’t gotten feedback of how other people are going to respond to you that it, it’s crucial to have these little flares of of testing something. And that’s, that’s, I think that’s a great also part of what a brand builders group is doing that you’re actually giving people, not just the why, but the how.

Speaker 1: (14:59)
So can we talk about the assessment for a second? Like it’s, it’s amazing. And I know now it’s like extremely scientific and so many people, how many takes, how many people have taken this assessment

Speaker 2: (15:10)
Over a million. We stopped counting at a million. But yeah,

Speaker 1: (15:14)
That’s incredible. So I think, you know, assessments are really powerful because I just, people just like assessments in general and I think you know, the way that you did yours and positioned it also was powerful versus like Meyers brakes or strength finders or something where it’s like, you know, how you see the world versus how the world sees you. Yeah. Really Genius and, and, and, and very cool. How if somebody is out there and they have an idea for an assessment like they go, Gosh, there, there is something I would want to measure it. How do you go from the idea for an assessment to lay like this is a thing that people can take and how do you know if it’s like validated or you know, it’s legitimate or you know, like talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2: (16:01)
Sure. Well the first thing that in creating an assessment is what do you want to measure? And I think this is a mistake that I see people make a lot is they’re like, I want an assessment, but they don’t really have anything they don’t have. They’re not, they don’t know what to measure. So they don’t have an outcome because they can’t help people move forward in an area. The second thing that I, that I see people make is once they figure out what they want to measure, like how likely are you to be successful in opening a small business or how likable are you with your team? Then they, they, it’s not just about measuring something, it’s about there has to be an experience that your personal brand is adding to why somebody should do this assessment. Let me say that another way.

Speaker 2: (16:40)
If somebody could take the assessment that you’re thinking about doing, take your name off, put their name on. You don’t have a branded assessment. So it’s, it has nothing to do with you, your business. It, it has to be that if you, if you took my name off the fascination advantage, it’s not like somebody else can put it on. And that was done very much on purpose that the experience of going through it. We had, we had a very clear creative brief and it was super geeky design experts who are voracious about helping you decide, helping you see who you are at your best. So everything we did was kind of like, like everything feels kind of Geeky and highly branded and scientific in making sure that we were using all the research that we had all the iconography and this is what I mean by the experience like having, if you, if you can provide an analytics of some kind, then it makes your assessment much more valuable because it’s not just going on your say so you can actually prove something.

Speaker 2: (17:46)
If you, if you describe, don’t just describe who they are, describe who they are not. So if you’re, if you’re giving somebody feedback, you are likely to be really exceptional in this area. Like in this case, somebody who’s massively forward thinking you are not going to be great in this area. Another thing that I did to differentiate the fascination advantage is I at no point I, I, I positioned it against other competing assessments. And this is a, this is a great key. As your assessment grows, you can’t say, I’m like Myers Briggs, just not as famous. We took the opposite stance and say, great, you have Myers Briggs, you have strengths finder. You don’t need to know any more about that. You don’t need to know how you see the world. You don’t need to know your strengths. You need to know your differences. And then that gives you a foil.

Speaker 2: (18:32)
And this is true for anything in your personal brand, just it’s just as important, just as it’s important to know who you are. It’s almost even more important to know who you’re not and why that matters for your ideal client. So our messaging, our positioning is if you want to know your strengths, there are a lot of other assessments out there. If you want to know your differences and not evaluate people on the basis of strengths and weaknesses and competition then then we’re the only assessment that can offer that. And so, so that can map onto anybody’s personal brand. If you are very much not this kind of thought leader you don’t have to dis them. It’s just you have this, but now let’s into why is what you have to say needed right now for the person that’s gonna buy you, hire you, sign up for you.

Speaker 1: (19:19)
Yeah. And I think this, this concept is something that is one of your superpowers. You have many, but I think one of your superpowers is like differential positioning, but it’s kind of like, I think you described it to me is one time, I think we were talking about maybe speaker fees or, or speaker and you, you’re like, you need to clean this up cause I probably not going to say it right. But it was, it was like you said, you need to be able to put yourself inside of a box that people understand, but then you need to be able to differentiate yourself from everyone else in that box.

Speaker 2: (19:55)
Yes. Yeah. That, that was an interesting interpretation. Where that came from was when I, I did a lot of research trying to understand why was I not getting hired and other people were making 20,000, $30,000 a speech. And so I started looking at what the most successful speakers were doing and I went on to all the speaker bureau websites and I started correlating those dropdown menu of topics. So education’s a topic, politics, economics, psychology, those are all topics. And I, and I measured that against the fee they could charge. I mean, the higher the fee, not just the more demand but more specialized they are. And I saw that people who were using the word innovation on average to describe their topic, made $5,000 more per speech than the people who are using the word creativity. Even though creativity and innovation are essentially the same topic, is just simply how you position it.

Speaker 2: (20:47)
Marketing, totally overused, branding, less used, but still really used fascination. Why are we fascinated by some brands and people? So, so I was still operating in the marketing box, but drilling down more deeply so that it can be very clear. I am not this, but I, I am this another thing, Roy, that you and I talked about one time that I think that was a really interesting conversation we had is that every time you’re putting yourself out there, especially if you’re, if you want a certain job or project or client there four people you’re competing against. Oh yeah. The first one, the first one is, is more of an expert. So they have that they’re more specialized than you. The next one is more famous. The third one is cheaper than you. Definitely don’t want to compete against that person. And the fourth one is the pet who’s, you know, we love Bob, we always work with Bob, the person who’s entrenched in some way.

Speaker 2: (21:44)
So the the specialists, the one is more famous, the one who is cheaper and the one is the pet. So when we think about our personal brand, we have to, we have to be able to buffer all of those. By you definitely don’t want to be the cheapest, but people will only pay you as much as they perceive you’re adding value. And ultimately you have to get somebody to sit their butt down and write a check for you and not for all of your competition. So the more that you can articulate and make it easy for people to know, why should they hire you right now versus hiring the cast of thousands that are out there the, the easier it is for you to attract your ideal client and your ideal client leads to more of the exact work that you want.

Speaker 1: (22:27)
Yeah. So there’s, yeah, I remember that there’s always someone smarter than you, more famous than you, cheaper than you, and more favorite than you. Hopefully not better looking than you. And that’s a good thing. But so, so where do you look for that differentiation then? Is it just in the words you use? Like how do you, how do you figure out, you go, okay, I’m a motivational speaker but I am not this, or I’m a sales speaker but I’m not this or I’m a business author. But I’m not this or I’m a spiritual author, but I’m not this, right. Is that just kind of like, is that kind of like take the assessment, start from where you are, like figure out, you know, what is really unique about you and, and, and build from there.

Speaker 2: (23:14)
A key lesson from worldclass brands, especially ones that are feistier that don’t have the biggest marketing budgets, is they don’t try to compete with the bigger budget or being better. It’s that you have to know how you’re different. But, and that’s how I, when I created the fascination advantage assessment that the key to the whole system is you have to be able to have one word that sums up exactly how you are different and why they should care. So when you took, when you took the fascination advantage assessment, we learned here you’re, you’re a blue chip, you are classic, established and best in class. So the light, this is the language that you had in your report. So where are you might say if you want to work with a brand builder who is classic, established and best in class, then I’m the best option for you.

Speaker 2: (24:00)
If you want to work with a brand builder who is bold, artistic and unorthodox, there are plenty of people that you could work with. But if you want somebody classic, established and best in class, then let’s talk. You could also say you don’t need, you don’t need a brand builder that is bold, artistic and unorthodox. The world is changing too quickly. Branding hasn’t evolved that much. We have to make sure that you can be classic, established and best in class. So think of it like that. Those are words that you plug into your marketing or you simply have it as a positioning. I am this, make a list, I am not this, make a list. A, and then your job is to be as much not this as possible.

Speaker 1: (24:48)
Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. One of the things that we do. So when we do our strategy days or when people come come through you know, like one of our events is we take up your brand characteristics less than we say come up with a list of adjectives you want people to use to describe your brand. But what we haven’t done is say come up with a list of adjectives you never want people to use when describing your brand, which is what I’m hearing you say is like equally as powerful

Speaker 2: (25:13)
Is there. So I would say there’s a third category. Cause what you said is what you said is great. You, you would never want them to use this to describe your brand. What I was saying was slightly different, but I think as a third category, which is other people are this and that’s fine, but that’s not me. And I’ll never be this. And if a client hires me to be perfectionistic, meticulous on target, a redundant, practical, they shouldn’t work with me, but I can refer them to somebody else. On the other hand, what I would never be. So there’s your second column. What I would never be is the double trouble is like, I’d never want to be dominant, overbearing, dogmatic, startling, chaotic, arrogant, called superior. So here’s who you are, here’s who you would never want to be, but it’s kind of like the shadow of this [inaudible]. And then here’s what other people are other competitors that you can counterpoint yourself again.

Speaker 1: (26:10)
Yeah. Casa. So it’s so, it’s so good. Like it’s, and it’s crazy how much of this I’d say you and then one of my minor, my best buddies, Jason Dorsey.

Speaker 2: (26:21)
Yeah.

Speaker 1: (26:22)
I have both made such an impact on my speaking career just by helping me understand the value of positioning, where it’s like, oh yeah, innovation is worth twice what creativity is worth. Yeah. Same exact content, same space, same bios, everything. And that is about positioning, which is his, what is his so another thing I want to ask you, I don’t want to like, we’re running out of time. I’m trying to think of like, it’s crazy. I’ve got, I don’t even realize this until this interview. I have like a list of like the 25 top lessons I’ve learned from Sally Hogshead like I could write a book on these are like the key, like things that have helped me. There’s another phrase that you say and I think people need to hear this. And I don’t think you teach this formally, but this was like an a side conversation. You said raise the stakes or you have to learn how to raise the stakes that mean and how does that apply to like our personal brand? Yeah.

Speaker 2: (27:23)
Your personal brand is not valuable unless it solves a problem. Fascination. Everybody thought it was a frivolous term. Nobody saw, why do I need to be fascinating if I’m not at a cocktail party? And the answer is in a crowded, distracted, commoditized world, if you don’t fascinate, you will fail. You’ll lose clients, you’ll lose money, you’ll die cold in a lot. And really making the problem as painful as possible. So if you don’t know the problem that you’re solving that people, then you’re not worth the bigger check. The bigger the problem you can solve, the more, the more deeply scary. The problem is the better. I learned this from my original speaking coach, Nick Morgan of public words, and he back in like 2006 when I was trying to be a speaker in the old days. And he said, you’re trying to be liked. The more that you can make somebody uncomfortable about a problem, that they’re already nervous about something that’s already keeping them up at night, the more urgently they’ll want to work with you and the more they will pay you to alleviate that problem.

Speaker 2: (28:24)
So at the beginning of a book or at the beginning of a speech, at the beginning of the presentation, you know, you can greet everybody, but say here’s, here are the threats. These are the threats that you’ve faced. The three threats that I solve are distraction, competition, and commoditization. People aren’t listening to you. Your competition is getting better and nobody knows how you’re different than everybody else. So I recommend that you have three, what do I call them? Deadly threats. What are the three deadly threats that if they don’t have a solution to that problem, then like things are going to hit the fan and then, and then when you explain how you solve that problem, they already have an appetite. The way that the phrase Nick Morgan used was what is their problem for which you are the perfect solution? And when you define that, to me that was, that was, that was hugely transformational because I was doing fascination. Like what kinds of things are fascinating? Why do we pay more for this bottled water than that bottled water? And that’s a $5,000 speech. But when you say your company will go out of business, if you don’t understand how each person on your team has a unique competitive advantage that allows them to be hyper over achievers because they have a specialty that they can double down on one specific area that where they are very likely to over deliver. That’s a different, yeah, same topic.

Speaker 1: (29:43)
All right. Same topic. Yeah. You, CJ effectively you’re teaching the same content but the, the wrapper that you’re doing, it will change the context of which you’re presenting. And also like the awareness of which the audience is receiving that messages

Speaker 2: (29:59)
Much more heightened because they made it, you’ve made it more relevant. You’ve made it uncomfortable, you want people to be itchy, you want people to almost put the book down or walk out of the speech because they’re like, holy crap. One last phase of research of this ties into that I think is relevant to what we’re talking about is of the million people that we’ve measured, we looked at the high performers in every industry at every level, both genders, all geographies. And we said, what are the high performers doing differently about it was going to be linked to skills or network or education. And it wasn’t, it was not what the high performers did differently was two things. A, they delivered a very specific benefit. They did not try to be all things to all people. So first was specific benefit. In my case, a specific benefit would be different, different than yours.

Speaker 2: (30:46)
But is there a specific benefit that you’re meticulous or is it that you’re entrepreneurial and so on? The second thing that high performers did differently is they did it on purpose. They purposely tried to do step away from projects where they couldn’t over deliver. So the detail person wasn’t trying to be the cheerleader for projects. So so that’s that’s kind of the overlap with reputation is that you have to have a reputation for one specific area of specialty and you get to choose it because it’s a personal brand. But make sure it’s something that you want to live into for the rest of your career. Otherwise you won’t be confident and authentic and you’ll be wearing a very expensive masquerade [inaudible].

Speaker 1: (31:31)
Yeah, I think about brand builders group, right? Like we, we made a decided, you know, several decisions early on, like one of them was we do exclusive personal branding. We do not work with companies. We only work with people. That was a very deliberate decision to go, we know that we can do this well for a person. We could probably do it for companies. A lot of our methodologies would apply to companies, but it’s like, that’s just not, you know who we’re going to be. I think

Speaker 2: (31:59)
So that a, so you’re doing with a company that’s highly specialized and you have your word, which is reputation. Yeah, yeah. The word is in the positioning. That repeat, if reputation is your business, then that informs who your clients are and even what your hold music is.

Speaker 1: (32:14)
Yes, it does. Well, and then you know, so like the way, the way we’re positioned right now, although it’s more of like internal moniker, so to speak, is that a obscurity is the problem we solve, which is to be unclear on trusted or unknown. So we say look, like if you don’t have the reputation, it’s either because you’re unclear. You’re, yeah, you can’t, when someone says, what do you do? You fumble like a, you’re untrusted. So they know you, but they don’t trust you or they just don’t know you. You’re flat out and visible. And so when I was thinking about your, your three, three deadly threats was sort of thinking about this. So, yeah, for all of you watching, this is really just a free coaching call for me. I’m glad that you’re all here, but this was just really a way to hook Sally and to be like, okay, what can I do to like get a free coaching for Sally? I know, I’m so seriously Sally, where, where do you want people to go to connect with you? And I know we’ve been teasing the fascination advantage they have to take it. Cause this is what we do. We help them find their uniqueness and it’s like they all should come to us with their word in hand, directly from you. So do you want to tell them where to go or do you want me,

Speaker 2: (33:25)
Yeah, I can tell it’s how to fascinate.com forward slash u y o u how to fascinate.com forward slash you. And then you put in your special code and your special code is BBG 19. All it does, it’s not case sensitive, but BBG 19 all one word. And then when I encourage you to do is after you take the assessment, have people around you take the assessments and you can start having the conversation of understanding, having a word to understand who somebody else is at their best, and then come back to BBG and, and up post in the comments what your result is so that so that we can start to learn more about you and you can start to learn more about other people in your world.

Speaker 1: (34:12)
Yeah, I absolutely, absolutely love it. I think the last thing I want you to just leave, leave people with Sally is you know, this thought about it, you are the way you become fascinating is that more of yourself? Why do you believe that and, and why do you think that matters? Eh, you know, and, and, and does it matter? I mean, there’s like a bazillion people on the planet. Why should anyone care to listen to me or my message or follow my social media when they can follow a bazillion other people?

Speaker 2: (34:47)
Well, growing up with the last name Hogshead, as you can imagine, that’s like a competitive disadvantage on the playground. And and I, I literally remember going in and crying to my mom, Mrs Hogshead saying, why can’t we have a name like Smith or Jones? And My mother said to me, it’s the thing about our name that makes it different, that will one day make you love it. Thing about you that makes you different is what makes people love you. And if we, you know, now my family, we have hogger fest twice a year to celebrate the birthdays of the grandkids and October is Homme Tober fest. But using that as an example, you don’t have to change who you are. You have to become more of who you are, specifically at your best. And that when you do that, it allows you to not not be beaten down by the mediocrity of trying to pretend that you’re something that you’re not, the world isn’t changed by people who sort of care the world.

Speaker 2: (35:47)
The world isn’t changed by people who aren’t passionate and who aren’t almost irrationally dedicated. The world is changed by people who understand who they are so they can help the world exist at its best. And that’s why I’m excited that you have maybe BBG on their eyes and I’m so proud of you. Like we talked about this over a year ago and it was a, it was this concept that you and Aja had had really thought through but really spent time thinking about what, not just what’s the positioning but the purpose, what’s the meaning of your brand? So I am, I’m psyched. Feel like Kinda like a, like a, like a little grandmother coming in and seeing how you’re doing.

Speaker 1: (36:30)
Well that is awesome Sally. Like thank you so much for your encouragement and your wisdom. There’s about 75 tweetable moments in this little interview that we are going to have to boil down to five, but we’ll put links so people can follow you. We’re certainly going to put a direct link for the fascination assessment and the code and everything so people can take it. And thank you for being fascinating, seeing the teaching all of us, how to be more fascinating by being more of ourself. We appreciate you so much.

Speaker 2: (36:59)
Thank you. Wonderful. Thanks Rory

Ep 11: Influencer Hacks From a Seasoned Pro with Chalene Johnson | Recap Episode

This episode serves as a recap of the ground which renowned influencer Chalene Johnson covered in her recent conversation with AJ. If you want to learn how to be unique, visible and disruptive as an influencer, you should definitely tune into that episode. Today, AJ and Rory highlight the main points they felt Chalene made. […]

Ep 10: Influencer Hacks From a Seasoned Pro with Chalene Johnson

So Chalene is one of my newer friends and I love this woman and I love her husband. And I love that they work together and of everybody in this whole space. I feel like in many ways me and AJ like their relationship and dynamic is really similar to me. And AJ, we’re, we’re partners. We’re best friends. We both work in the business and I mean, I don’t even know where to start to, to describe Shalene. She’s a New York Times bestselling author. She’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for being in the most fitness videos. She sold millions of videos, have millions of followers, her and Brett have sold multiple companies. They know everybody and she has a huge online following and she’s just awesome. And I think you’re gonna, you’re gonna get to see that. But she’s, she’s also very versatile, I think. You know, so she just had a new book come out called the one 31 method. She had a New York Times bestseller called push. She has a conference actually that I spoke at, which is how the first time we met was I spoke at her event for marketing impact academy. And so anyways, I think you’re gonna love her and Chalene thanks for making some time for us. We’re so honored that you’re here.

Heck yeah, I would miss that. And I love the topic, so I’m excited.

Yeah. So, so first of all, foundational question, you know, brand builders group is about reputation. That’s, you know, what we say we study reputation, where does it come from? How do you build one? What makes them fall apart? And just, you know, to start off the conversation, what, what are, what do you know, when you hear the word reputation, what does that make you think? What, what are your philosophies about how you’ve built one? Yeah. And you know, just kind of free flow on that concept a little bit.

Yeah, well, a couple of things. When I think about reputation, I think about integrity. I think about the things that I look for in terms of a reputation. So I think there’s always like kind of a public reputation that a lot of people have. And then there are, because we’re, we’re so savvy and because with social media you can dig deeper and you can actually look at our political candidates, you can dig deeper and figure out if a person’s if what they’re putting out there is legitimately who they are. So your reputation, the way I view it is how do people know you? Like what are you good for? You know, like if somebody is looking for a particular solution to a problem, who’s the person they’re thinking of first? You know, and, and that’s the person usually has got the best reputation and or top of mind, right? So reputation is also how, how well known are you? Cause there may be someone who’s better at solving this problem, but people don’t know that person. So they don’t have quite the reputation. For me personally, I’m, when I think about my reputation, I’m always thinking about integrity. Hmm.

Hmm. I love that. And that, that that’s probably one of the big Epiphanes for us was realizing that reputation is not just being great at, I mean, it’s being great at what you do. It’s having integrity, but it’s also having people know you because if they don’t know you, they can’t, they can’t do business with you. And you have a lot of people who know you. I mean, you’ve done so much stuff. I mean, you’ve like infomercials, infomercials. You have millions of social media followers. Like your podcast has had like north of 20 million downloads. I mean

What,

What do you think you do that makes so many people want to connect with you and to know you and not just like hear about you, but engage with you for the longterm and then, you know, how, how does someone else build that?

Well, see, it’s a two part answer. I think when you said so many people, how do you get so many people? That’s time. And I wish there were a shortcut to that. It’s time in doing the right things along the journey. But I am today who I was for the most part, you know, 20 years ago. But I didn’t have a lot of people looking at me because time, right? So it does take time. It takes persistence, takes consistency. It takes, you know, being good for it. Again, when people shoot like every single time they know what to expect. And then aside from that, it’s realizing that the more you try to be like somebody else in your industry, the less unique you’ll be. For me, I, I think it’s really important that you, you look at people who are successful, who maybe there’s something about their identity or their brand that you relate to, but I don’t think that should be somebody in your industry.

I think that’s when you get August. A great example of this is for me, when I got to a place in my career where I was trying to be known for like 20 different things, I really desperately wanted to create workshops for women to learn how to start their own small businesses from home and be able to stay on with their kids. And I was a new mom. My son was like two years old and I was trying to hold these, I was trying to hold events in hotels because that’s what I saw like you know, other business leaders doing. But I wasn’t known for that and no one was showing up and I was spending a fortune, this is kind of even before social media is spending a fortune trying to promote these through direct mailers and advertising and you know, you name it other than social media and it just, it wasn’t working me and I realized, okay, there’s all these different things I’m trying to do and trying to do fitness and I’m trying to be a paralegal and I’m trying to write an ebook and I’m trying to start a personal training franchise business and I want to teach these seminars to women and I also want to create workouts for health clubs.

And at a certain point I realized like I just have to focus on one, I need to be known for one of these things. And I didn’t pick the one that I was the most passionate about. Interesting. I think the one I know and, and so I don’t know, I think that advice kind of varies based on your situation. But for me, we broke and so I needed to go with the one that provided me the quickest opportunity to be known. And at that moment it was fitness. And so I decided I was going to go. I was going to, I wasn’t going to get rid of everything, but I was going to scoot you to the side of my plate for a little while until I could be known for fitness. And once I was known for fitness, then I felt I had permission and the eyeballs I had the ability to, a platform to reach other people with these other things.

I wanted to do one at a time, by the way, two, you can’t do them all at once. That’s another lesson I learned the hard way. But you know, once I, once I started realizing, okay, I’m going to do fitness full time, when I, what I did wrong, Rory, is I, I bought every exercise person’s videos you could think of and studied them and was not myself. I was trying to be them. It’s like, okay, so, so this is what it looks like to be successful in this industry. So that’s how I need to be in. And that just wasn’t working. And so my question is to, to really look outside of your industry at personalities or brands that you relate

And what was your big cause? Cause you, you know, I’d like you heard me talk about she hands wall at the event and like focusing and breakthrough and you’d be someone that I think of is a great example of that. Like you broke through in the fitness space and then, you know, since you, you have, yeah, there’s motivational speaking you do, you do teach women now, you know and other, you know, not just women, but people had at run their own business marketing impact academy and you know, like that course in terms of like, what you teach is incredible. Like I’m still working my way through it, but it was, it was so powerful that I was like, this is incredible. And I do want to talk about some of your social media strategy, but when did you feel like you actually broke through?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. For me, the way I would define that is it’s able to kind of sustain itself. Meaning I’m, I’m making some money from it. I have a certain amount of notoriety and not that you can ever set it and forget it on any part of your business, but it’s to a place where it, it’s not losing money. It’s making money. It’s making decent money. I have, I have systems and strategies in place so I don’t have to be in it every day. And that’s when we started expanding. So we first started in health just serving health clubs and fitness instructors. And then once I felt like, okay we, we’ve, we’ve got a system in place, we’ve got trainers in other states, we have programs in hundreds of thousands of instructors now or 60,000 instructors at the time. We’re teaching this particular program before we branched off and decided, okay now let’s dabble in fitness apparel, which was, you know, kind of an offshoot of a branch and then, but we didn’t feel like we had the ability to do that until we were known for producing really great fitness content to the fitness community, not consumers.

How did you do it later?

So how did you, like how did you let’s say, cause I know there’s, I know we have some clients and brand builders and we have, you know, lots of people that are probably watching who were kind of in that fitness space and they’re like, yeah, maybe they have a few thousand followers on Instagram or something. And they’re going, how do I turn this into money? Yeah. cause it’s a long way from going, okay, I have some people following me and I’m like cheering fitness tips too. I’m doing infomercials, I’m launching programs. I have a fitness, I have an apparel line, I’ve got 60,000 trainers. So like she was like high level over view what that

It looks like I can but with a big asterisk next to it because I think it’s really important for people to realize when you’re looking at success, right? Success leaves tracks. But if those tracks are 20 years old, they’re not going to do any good. You know what we did? Let’s see. When we started that company in 1990 I think officially 1998 maybe 99, you know, and what we did back then is, I mean it’s almost 20 years ago is completely different from what I would tell people to do today. But yet I still see people studying the success of someone from 10 even 15 years ago when it’s outdated. It’s just, it’s not going to serve you today. Like, even starting a podcast, like today, I always tell people, you know, if you’re looking at so-and-so and they’ve got all this notoriety because they’re a podcast or, well, they started their podcast eight years ago, you know, so you’ve got to look at like, what do I need to do today?

And if I were a fitness person today, oh, I’d be so excited because it’s so much easier. It’s so much easy. You don’t have to have an infomercial. You can create your own. You don’t have to. As we did at the time, social media wasn’t even a thing. My space where I don’t even know what year my space came out, but many years after we started our business, so it was traveling, it was going to locations, it was finding the right kind of people and then placing them in different states and, and hiring people based on their reputation, not their bodies, not their knowledge of fitness, but their reputation and and know. So I think that’s still pretty true. Like, who you surround yourself with is a representation of your brand. It’s a reflection of your brand. So that’s what we did back in the day.

But today I would say for anyone who’s watching who’s, who’s in fitness, the things that remain true are to be consistent, to be 1000%. You not to look at what every, the worst thing you can do is look at what everyone else in your industry is doing because it will confuse you and it will water down your unique message, look outside of your industry. And that’s how you can become a disruptor. That’s how you can do things that feel unique. Not to mention the fact that it’s always depressing, I think, and discouraging to always be with like watching your competition. You just, you just, then you’re always going to be doing a comparison. But if you’re looking at somebody who you know, is, is someone that you like, but they’re not in your industry, there’s no envy. You know, there’s just admiration.

I love that. I love that. So let’s talk about the social media for a second. And the two things, I mean, I’m just amazed like your engagement and your realness is, is Eh, I assume they go hand in hand, but the, the two things systematically I’m wondering about, number one is your budget and two is your schedule because you produce so much content. Yeah. And Yeah. And you can, maybe you can pick which order you talk about the men, but it’s like how much money do you allocate towards creating content, promoting content, et cetera. So that’s like the budget and then the schedule piece of it of just like, how do you go? Okay. I mean you have over a million on Facebook. I think you have over a half million on Instagram. You’ve got six fingers on Twitter and like how do you keep up with all of this? I know you have a team, but at the strategy level, what’s your, yeah, you do. So

The most important piece probably is to understand that we have a lot of social media that doesn’t have my name attached to it that we manage. So on Instagram, we currently manage about 2 million. In terms of like my account and then other accounts that we own that relate to something that we promote, but they may not be, they may not be a reflection meat. For example. I call these things and this is something anyone can do and you can start without a budget, right? So let’s assume that most people watching don’t have a social media budget, but what they do have as a budget of time and one of the fastest, quickest ways to build an account today. Again, you don’t know if you look at what I did when I started on Instagram, that will not serve you because everything’s different. What we’re looking for on Instagram and how much time we have all everything’s different.

The quickest and fastest way to grow an account today is to create an account that is themed or what I like to call a feature account. So an example of this would be home workouts underscore the number four, the letter u homework outs underscore for you. That’s an account that we own. I think it’s like 400,000 followers and all that we do there is post repost other people’s content. So somebody posts up a a carousel video showing like five different exercise ideas that you could do at home. We repost it. So anyone who’s looking for, you know, creative ways to get fit at home, we’ll follow that account. They don’t have no has anything to do with me or that my team manage it per se. It’s just content that serves them. It’s the kind of stuff that they’re looking for. So now why would we do that?

Well, number one, people are less likely today to follow an individual personal brand on Instagram because we don’t have time. I’m not even, I’m following my sister and I, I haven’t even seen her posts and like two weeks, you know, there’s so many people that we really know and we really like. We don’t even see their stuff because frankly, I hate to say this, but it’s just not that interesting. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t serve us and we’re looking for things on Instagram, on Facebook, on Pinterest that serve us. Either they entertain us, motivate us, educate us, inspire us. And if it’s not one of those things, we don’t look at it. And the algorithm is determined by your activity on the app. So if you look at your explore page, you’re going to see, it’s going to be very obvious for your interests are, you know, sometimes embarrassingly obvious what your interests are.

But so we grow and spend a lot of time, we spend a lot more time growing those other accounts than we do. My personal account. So let me give you an example. So Rory, if, if I were a, let’s say a a therapist, I’m someone who does, you know, normal talk therapy, it’s going to be next to impossible for you to grow a personal brand on Instagram next to impossible because how does that serve anyone? Right? Like it’s, it’s a person. We just don’t do that as much anymore. It happens, but not as much. However, if you know, okay, someone who’s looking for an online therapist is like they’re dealing with things like Ma and maybe you specialize with people who deal with post traumatic stress or anxiety and depression. Well then I would start an account that’s got really relatable, either funny videos or means or like really moving posts to kind of post to go viral and I would repost those so that this whole page would be devoted to either uplifting or intel.

You know, the types of posts that are very enlightening, the types of posts that someone who’s dealing with anxiety and depression or post traumatic stress, they’re going to see these posts and go like, that’s what I needed today and I would grow one of those accounts. Now your next question might be, well then how does that therefore then build your own brand? Well, what are the allows you to do is you control that. That’s your, you own that media outlet. You own it, which means you can do stories and it’s in the stories where we go deep. It’s in the stories where we want to know like, okay, well who’s behind this? You know, it our, our know at the moment, and this will all change a year from now, but at the moment your, your profile or your, your page where you’re posting let’s say again on Instagram is, you know, it’s a little bit curated.

It looks nice. There’s some thought process to it. Some people they really curated, but when you want to know who someone really freaking is, you watch their stories. So when someone’s like curious, like who’s behind the stage, that’s when they’ll watch their stories. That’s when they’ll look at your story highlights. And that’s where you have the opportunity to promote a, an opt in to build your email list, to promote a Webinar, to promote a free resource to promote your business, whatever it is. So think about for everyone watching, if you’re trying to build, continue building your own personal account. Go as I do. Continue building your own personal account, but start another Instagram account of what you can. Almost outsource all of it and think about, okay, the person who I’m trying to reach, what are they looking for? Like what’s serving them today on Instagram? And repost that type of content and it’ll grow so fast. We had two accounts in the last six months that we did from zero to 10,000 with this exact strategy.

Ah Wow. So, and then so talk to me about the outsourcing part. Cause that’s Kinda the overwhelming part, right? Is like oh my gosh, I don’t even have time up with Instagram and just the schedule in general. Like how frequently should you go live, how frequently should you do a story? How frequently should you post on your feed? And like, you know, four different accounts like

Yeah. And I, I don’t know if that’s going to be useful to your audience because most people don’t have four or five different accounts. So even our calendar and our schedule is like [inaudible]. Like it would overwhelm you, but please know this, it didn’t happen overnight. It started with one part-time temporary person when we didn’t have the money to hire anyone, but we couldn’t afford not to have help. You know, people always say I, I can’t outsource because I can’t afford to. And I always say, you can’t afford to, cause you haven’t had faith in others. Like when you have faith in others, you have to believe that when you invest and empower other people, that’s what allows you to grow right now that the ceiling is directly above your head. And, and I it because I was there for, I don’t know how many years I just refused.

I felt like it was, I felt like it was lazy of me. If I could do it myself, why would I outsource someone to do that? I felt like it would take more time for me to explain it to somebody else. A, B, we can’t afford, we’re not making any money. How could I hire someone to help us when we’re not making any money that does. But we will when we met, we will when we’re, we’re making money. But at a certain point, I just realized I’ve got so much stress and we ain’t gonna make money until I hire someone and have the faith. I have to have the faith in God and the faith in someone else that this is what we need. And that’s why I say part time temporary. So I think the place that you start is by giving yourself permission to give this a temporary try. Look for someone just part time just to help you with social media and create a long list of all the things that they can do and understand that even if you hire like the best person on the planet, they’re going to be able to do half of it.

Okay.

[Inaudible]

Okay.

You still there shoving this of the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with, the ones who come back year after year to our live event, the marketing impact academy, and still have a brilliant idea, still have everything they need, but they’re still baroque are the people who can’t accept that mindset and the ones that come back and like I like dude, all my, we met our first million this year. It is crazy and I’m actually living a life. And those are the people who while they were broke, because that’s when you need it made their first hire. No, it’s mindset when it comes to outsourcing, you know? So I could go into detail about our calendar. But I think that would overwhelm people because, and I also don’t think that’s the right step. I’m, I’m a big believer in not giving people steps that aren’t useful to them in this season.

And I think most people watching this season that you’re in is either making your first hire your outsourcing or, or doing additional outsourcing, going to the next level. Like now maybe you needed a strategist or someone who’s really good at web development or marketing or copywriting, like who is your next hire? If you’ve already, you’ve already wrapped your head around that mindset. Who is it you need next to take you to the next level without it diminishing your life? Like I’m all about like, you know, it’s not about money for me, it’s about life. I don’t want, I don’t want to work hard. I want to do what I love and live more. And that means I’ve got to empower people. That was that. That is so true. And that I think our

Lives changed the day a j said this out loud one time. I don’t remember when it was, but she was like, she was like, I don’t need more money. I just need more time. And like when we just embraced where it’s like we just want less stress, we want less complexity, we want [inaudible]. It’s just like, but we want to still impact people and all these dreams. And you, it’s like you always have to have that face first. And then the rewards for taking that risk is that you grow, you grow like just enough and a little bit more to cover that person. And then you take another risk and you grow just enough and a little bit more. And then one day you look around and go like, I actually have a team and we have a, we have a real business here that operates.

Yeah. Makes real money. So for those people that are looking for a specific strategy for Instagram, like how often to post, how often to go to stories, how often to do ige TV, how often to go live because it’s a beast. Like let’s, let’s talk about it. Instagram has turned it into, oh look, she only has one hearing on look good. Look at that. I wonder where the other one, I didn’t even notice it. You know. Well, we should put it on this year because this year is hidden. Standby everybody. We have a fashion photo. The, all of that, like Instagram has become a beast in a good way, but it can be really, really, really overwhelming for people. But the potential there is amazing. So we, my team, I’ve got a team, right? Like I can’t say that I do all this. I’ve got an amazing team and every quarter they release all of the research that we do about Instagram because it changes that often. And we were released a free report. It’s called Ige hacks, or it’s our free report that we do. Once a quarter. You can go to shaleen.com forward slash Igg hacks and it’s a free download.

It’s awesome. Just like yeah, I was going through it about like to how much the carousels matter and things like that. And I was like, Gosh, I had no, like, carousels weren’t even on my freaking radar. And I think, I think there was something in there that was like the only comments that count have to have at least three characters and more like there was all this stuff in there that I saw that I was like, oh my gosh, this is so helpful. So we’ll put a link.

Simple things, little simple things like how often to post. What, just by putting one little sentence in your caption turns the, the engagement boost it by 70 to 80%. And even how do you use Ige TV? That’s a relatively, it’s not a new feature, but how the, the latest release from Instagram where they allow a, a snapshot of that just show on your profile. Like that’s a game changer and how to do that. Like how to tweak the caption instead of titling the video using that to ask a question. So you get engagement. Like little things like that make a huge difference.

Yeah, that is awesome. So Shalene johnson.com/ige hacks, right? That’s where we go for the report. Okay. Is that where people should go to connect with you or is there anywhere else additionally

Swam? Yeah. Yeah. Good Instagram. Follow me on Instagram because I, you know, I, I’m obviously not gonna have a real life conversation from my website. But if you send me a DM on Instagram, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll see it. So, and I, I really, I outsource all of my other accounts. So you know, we’ve got a bunch of different, as they called them themed accounts on Instagram and they’re all handled by a team of amazing social media experts here at team Johnson. But my personal account, I handle, and it’s really important to me because that’s how I connect with the girl I’m serving the guy I’m serving like that I can get their feedback, I understand their language. If you look at those conversations, that’s when you can, that’s when people will tell you what program they want next for you. They will tell you about your reputation. They will tell you about your brand. They will tell you what people think about you. And, and I can’t think of anything that’s more PR. It’s priceless. You don’t have to pay for our focus group in, you know, 15, 20 years ago we would’ve had to pay for a focus group and send out surveys. Now just asked, do a survey on Instagram. You’ll have your information five minutes later.

I love that. And, and so here’s the last thing I want for you to talk about because I think it’s easy for someone to look at you and like, oh, I have this great family and all these followers and look at this. But there was a, there was a real lifetime where you and Brett almost in make it as entrepreneurs. And I remember hearing some of those stories that you guys have been through. Some you’ve been through some tough times and you’ve been through some background of backup against the wall times. And I, I’m always, you know, whenever I do this, I’m always thinking about the person that you know is listening to this cause this is free. And maybe that’s like, this is their last, this is the last thing they’re listening to before they just like throw it in and you throw the towel in and wind it down. And you know, if somebody is in that place right now where they’re feeling that discouragement or despair or feeling like, you know, I don’t, I don’t know that I have what it takes. Can you just talk a little bit quickly about, you know, how, how have you been through some of that and, and what did you learn kind of, what would you say to that?

Hmm, that’s a really good question because I always fear that somebody does need to throw in the towel on an idea that isn’t working and it’s really clear to everyone else and they just don’t want to be a quitter. You know what I mean? Like I worry about that person a little bit. So I’m not of the mindset that you never quit but make an informed decision. Right. Like, if you know you have what it takes or your idea has what takes and it’s just a matter of time or the right people or the right knowledge of the right resources, well then don’t give up. But, but seek wise counsel, I mean the two things that have helped our business the most are investing in coaching people who will tell it to you like it is that I’m paying you to help me be better, better in business, better in therapy, whatever, better as a person, better as a parent, whatever it is I’m paying when I’m paying somebody and it’s the, they have a vested interest to help me do better.

I know I’m going to get really good advice and probably honest advice that your friends and family members may not be qualified to give you. I would say coaching and then number two. So I guess these both relate to people and that is hiring, you know, and, and again, one temporary part time, person at a time and sometimes that first person doesn’t work out, keep going, you know, pick the thing that’s giving you, that’s taking up the most time, that really doesn’t need you as much as cause I know you think everything has to be you. Rory, when Brett and I were at our very lowest we were own $460,000 in debt, I know. Tell me about it. And that’s how I discovered it. Like I literally stuck my head in the sand when it came to our finances. We were really disconnected.

You handle all that, I’ll handle all this, I’ll make the money. You manage the money. And then, and I, I knew that we were struggling, but then when I wasn’t getting the answers I needed, I started doing some investigating and you know, knock the wind out of my sails to find out. My husband had a really serious gambling addiction and needed treatment and we were looking at bankruptcy, you know, I went and met with a couple of extras. So like, you know, you need to file for bankruptcy and then we have to figure out how to take out some personal loans to pay back some of these characters. And we just decided together, I mean I’m really giving you like the shortcut version, but it was ugly and nasty. And there are times where I’m like, okay, well if he doesn’t do this, I’m gone.

Like, you know, literally even with two small children, I just, I, when I say integrity, this is what I mean by that. I don’t worry about anything because I know what I’ll do. I don’t know what’s going to happen. No matter what does happen. I know who I am and therefore I know what I will do. I don’t have to worry about what everyone else is going to do or how they’re going to react because no matter what happens, I know who I am. And in that moment I had to remember that it could go a lot of different ways and I just had to re go like, okay, if it goes this way, I go here. If it, if this happens, I’ll do this. And they’re all consistent with who I am and who we are. As a couple, long story short ended up being the greatest blessed thing to our marriage because then my husband got into therapy, I got into therapy, I finally, I finally knew who my husband was and you know, we could have thrown in the towel then we could have both gone back to our full time jobs.

But I was positive, positive. We could make it work if we, if we could get on the same page. So I would say if you just, you really know in your heart of hearts that you can make this work. If you just have the right people, resources or skills, then go get those things. Go get those things. But don’t be afraid to invest in wise counsel because you know, I’ve had great ideas, I’ve had great ideas, I’ve had businesses that were kind of making it and have hired coaches are like, all right, this has to go. I know you love this lean, but it has to go. And then when they lay it out, like here’s how much stress it’s causing you, here’s how much money, it’s not making you. Here’s the potential even for where to work. And then when you look at it in black and white, you’re like, you’re right. It has to go. And sometimes the people closest to you either don’t want to be honest, don’t want to dim your light, don’t want to hurt your feelings. But in the long run, if you’re able to separate yourself, like it’s not a reflection on you, it doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. Doesn’t mean you don’t work. It means this idea isn’t consistent with the life that you want.

I love that. And it got so powerful to be able to separate your ideas from your identity and to just, you know, manage ideas on their own merit. And, you know, meanwhile know that your identity is rooted in integrity and you’ll make it. And if you really know that, I mean, that speaks to me. It’s just like go get the people, like it’s, you go, go get the teams, you know, do the, you know, do the ads, do the videos, like hire the copywriters, like get the coaches cause you and that’s, yeah, it’s all face. So. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I know that that’s, yeah. Intimate story of, of a time long ago. That was a very, very real challenge though. And thank you for your inspiration and for making time here, Shelly. I know it’s really, really hard to catch you these days and we appreciate you so, so much.

Oh, I’m excited. It was great to be here.

You are awesome. And J and I, you know, appreciate you and Brett and your encouragement and support of us so much and we just, we wish you, we wish you the best.

Alright. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for serving so many people in my community. I just, I hear such amazing things about you and your team and how much you guys really care and the personal touch. And you know, we’re in an age where most people, myself included the way that we work with people is through online courses. You know, people kind of go through that themselves, but you guys have something really special. It’s really unique what you guys do. And I think it’s part of why your reputation proceeds you like you are the guy when it comes to personal branding. And we sure do appreciate what you guys do over there. Thank you so much.

Ep 09: Becoming a Bestselling Author and Successful Speaker with Jon Gordon | Recap Episode

This episode serves as a recap of the wonderful recent conversation we had with bestselling author, Jon Gordon. If you haven’t yet listened to that full interview, do yourself a favor and go do that! In this recap, AJ and Rory each highlight three points that stood out to them from Jon’s words. We cover […]

Ep 08: Becoming a Bestselling Author and Successful Speaker with Jon Gordon

I have to see how you, this man has become one of my friends over the last couple of years and really a mentor at first from afar and then a colleague and now somebody that we consider a close brother in Christ and a brother in many ways. In terms of what we do. Jon Gordon is a bestselling author, like a real bestselling author, like the kind of best selling author that sells thousands and thousands of copies of books every single week, not just like once every couple of years. And, uh, he is also one of the busiest speakers in the world. Uh, we’ve shared the stage several times, you know, he’s the author of the energy bus, the carpenter training camp power, positive leadership. Uh, the power positive team is one of his newer books and he’s been featured in pretty much every major media. The today show, CNN, CNBC, and you know, he speaks on amazing stages, works with lots of professional sports teams, the Dodgers, the Falcons, um, big companies, southwest airlines, the clippers, Miami Heat. So He’s just awesome. He also graduated from Cornell University. You know, he has all these like impressive accolades, but I think he has a great story that we’re going to enjoy hearing in terms of how he got his whole start as an author, speaker and just the reality of what that looked like. So Jon, welcome. But it’s thanks for being here.

All right, great to be with you. And now I get to ask you for advice all the time.

Well, so when I really want to hear how you got started in this, cause I think like you are when I say, you know, a real best selling author, I say that kind of jokingly, but it’s, it’s also very true. Even even, you know, people who are New York Times bestsellers, they might be on the list for, you know, a few weeks or a couple of weeks. But I mean you’ve got books that have been on there like weekend and week out in the top 10 for years. And I think, you know, when someone looks at you and you speak on these big stages and you know you’re featured in all this media, how did you get started? Like what are the early days look like and can you just give us like a high level overview of the timeline between who John Borden is today and how long did it really take for that to all happen?

2002 I said I wanted to write and speak. I knew that this was my calling. I was miserable, negative, unhappy. My wife honestly almost left me. I knew I needed to change. I asked what I was born to do, writing and speaking came to me. I said, all right, I’m going to start doing this. And I literally just started writing a weekly positive tip in 2002 I want it to be more positive. So I started writing [inaudible] research and ways that I could be more positive and that sort of sharing that with others. And that led me to then get a following started with my mother, my brother, my best friend from college, Sears. So we had five subscribers to the newsletter initially and that became our primary source. Now everyone has a blog, social media. Back then there was no blogs there, there weren’t any social media accounts.

And so I was sending out this weekly positive tip that I started with the facts and then we moved to an e newsletter. Constant contact was our, our first a provider of that early on. And that’s what started this journey of just sending out these weekly positive tips. And then I would reach out to people and say, Hey, I want to write and speak. And I tell everyone, create an overview of the talk you want to give. Create a brand around that talk, you know, something that is memorable and then share that overview with various people where you want to speak. And I would send this one page out and I would literally tell friends, Hey, I’d love to come speak to your company. I would tell sports teams, I’d love to come speak to you. You name it. I was sharing that I wanted to go speak and I did about 80 free talks when I first

so tell me about that like part of it. So you, you kinda like whipped together this one sheet, you know you don’t have like a lot of people don’t have a lot of money when they’re starting. So it, was it super fancy or was it kind of just like a word doc? Like did you have someone design it up for you and make it,

I had a designed, it was a one pager that started as a word doc and then I, I had it designed by a graphic designer to make it look nice and I even created a website with everything I wanted to be in do. So I had events even though I had no events, I had media. If I had media section, even though I didn’t have a media, you have to start acting as if, so I put up this website as myself as a speaker and then I initially became internationally known because I had one friend in London, so I was internationally known. And

so you are selling like you were selling it, like you were selling it but you were so were you, you were just like sending out emails, stuff like you just be like, y’all want to go speak to the Atlanta Falcons and so you just go to their like, I mean at that time they didn’t have websites but you would just like find an email and just send it and hey, I want to come talk to your team

number and email, phone calls, a ton of ton of emails and there were websites back then so you would, you would contact them via their website of their marketing person or the event planner for this event. But that didn’t really lead to a lot of events, you know, doing the outreach like that really didn’t lead you too much. I have hundreds and hundreds of emails still in a folder that I have saved of emails that I sent out. Hey, I’m John Gordon and I’d love to come speak at your event or to your company. But a lot of it came through friends. I had a friend who worked for the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was in charge of sales. So I spoke to the sales team and now the Jaguars was, was now a client. Then I had a friend at Cingular wireless. I spoke at a sales meeting. I now had Cingular as a client.

That’s how long ago it was. There was a company called Cingular wireless that um, I think it’s not Verizon, but, but I did that. And so one thing led to another and then I went on a tour. I went on the tour, one of my first book came out and that allowed me to go around and start sharing a message and I, through the newsletter would say, Hey, I’m going to be in these cities. And five people showed up and 10 people showed up in 20 showed up. We never, a lot of people that showed up, but some shows,

what can you this, what year is this?

2005 2006 at the time. And then [inaudible]

five years later, it’s just like they still like four still like three, four years later you’re going out speaking for free and five, 10, 15 people are showing up.

Yes. But I did have a restaurant at the time. I opened up a Moe’s southwest grill, second mortgage, second mortgaged our home, $20,000 in credit card in order to try to pay the bills that would then allow me to write and speak. And at first it didn’t go well, but then the restaurant started making money. So I had this restaurant making money and now I’m doing events here and there, maybe two or three a month was what I was doing, but I’m building the brand. I’m speaking as much as possible. I’m doing the newsletter that’s growing, but I sold the restaurants in 2005 knowing that I needed to do this full time, but I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time, but I knew I needed to do it. So I gave up the restaurant business and I was making a few hundred thousand dollars a year off the restaurants. They were doing pretty well, but I knew I needed to sell them. So I sold the restaurants and said, okay, I’m now going to focus on this. And that’s where it wasn’t going well. But I then had a lot of time and energy to start thinking and

your item, I’ve found that to be true. It’s like you either have time or you have money and so it’s like if you don’t have time it’s because you have money and you can hire people to do stuff or you have money but you don’t have, or yeah, you have money but you don’t have time. So you hire people or you have no freaking money and that’s because you have all day to like sit around and do some stuff and get some stuff done. And that sounds kind of like where you’re at then

and exactly. And my wife said, what happens if this doesn’t work? Like when I wanted to sell the restaurant, we cannot sell these restaurants. I said, there, there are no other options. We have to go for it. There are no other options. I have to do this. This is my calling. I have to do it. And I wrote the energy bus in 2006 after selling the restaurants, about six months, seven months later, walking and praying. The idea for the energy bus came to me and when I wrote that book, I knew I had something that I was going to really focus on is this book now brought me to the corporate business market. And my goal was to start speaking on leadership and to businesses in a bigger way. And this was the book that I felt would propel me forward. So, so did

you write the book first? Did you do an a book proposal? Did you have an agent? Did you like what, what, how, how did that, how did that happen? Right. Like I want to write a book. You’re walking on the street and you know, God goes, Hey, here’s your book. You know? Okay, great. I have an idea. There’s a long way from that moment to a book that sells 2000 copies every single week.

Yup. I started writing the book right away. Okay. I wasn’t waiting, I wasn’t writing a proposal. I wrote the book first. I tell people this all the time, don’t think about the proposal. Don’t think about who’s going to publish it. Actually write the book first when you have some that you can hand to a publisher and say, here is something I wrote and then you add a proposal to that. It’s so much more powerful to have something concrete and so I wrote it first and about three and a half weeks I have to give God credit. There was a lot of divine inspiration writing that book and then we pitched it out though I found an agent, we pitch it out to a bunch of publishers and got rejected by almost all of them except one. John Wiley and sons agreed to publish this book, but it wasn’t right away. I was getting rejection after rejection, after rejection being told my dreams not going to happen full of fear, anxiety. What happens if does doesn’t work? What about our future? I told my wife, sell the restaurants, which we did and now I was betting on this and it’s not going well and I’m getting rejected. I remember those were some of the scariest times in my life.

So then what now and I as a first time author, did they, I don’t imagine they came and gave you like this monster advance and said, hey, you know, here’s a half a million bucks. Like we think this is gonna end. All your problems are solved. It, it, it, I mean, I’m, I’m guessing it was still, you know, they gave you a deal. You, you took it and then you just like went all in to make it work on, Huh?

Yeah. Well we have to back up a second. I did do two other books before that, but these were books that were more self development books, more mental, physical, emotional energy kind of books. One was called energy addict. I don’t even really talk about those anymore. In other words, 10 minutes energy solution. A small publisher out of Atlanta Along Street press publish this book because he got my newsletter and said, I think this would be a great idea. I want to get behind it. He winded up not doing a good job, had a lot of issues there. I got the rights back. Next thing you know a penguin parish g agreed to take it on cause I was getting on the today show. So they took one book on and then said, all right, let’s do the other one. We did those two. The second one I did a failed miserably and that’s when I made the transition to, alright I know I’m here to talk more about business.

I’m moving away from self development away from the self-improvement mode. I changed at the time I got, I became a follower of Jesus. And so for me I was, I was really more in a different state of mind. I really in a many ways was a different person. And so the energy bus represented this different person, this, this, this platform. And I was going out that I knew that this was the work I was going to do for the rest of my life and the other two are my past. So, so I had the failure of the second one. And so it made publishers weary to want to take me on. But John Wiley and sons said, you want to take it on but we can’t give you much money. But we wanted to do it. And so Shannon Vargo agreed to take me on for boss said, if it doesn’t go well, it could be your career. She said, no, I want to do it. And so I said, let’s go. And so it was pretty much all in in terms of I’ll take whatever you got. I don’t really care about the money, I just want this book out there.

And then when that happened, like we till you finally get this deal and you know, we have a similar story about how we got the deal for take the stairs and uh, it was, it was a long, long road. But what did you do for that first launch? Cause that books still sell. I mean it’s been 15 it’s coming up on 15 years. That book still sells. Like did you, what did you do back then when you were just starting out to like get the word out about that?

Yeah, we were, the energy bus was number 10 last week in the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. It came out in 2007

that is so awesome. I love, I love, I see it every like every time I look I’m like, gosh, it’s still there. Like just crushing it.

It sells several thousand copies a week. It sells more every year than the year before I think about it. I’m now 48 I wrote that book when I was 35 and I now am speaking still all over on a book that I wrote when I was 35 yet with so much more knowledge and wisdom and things I’ve learned over the years, which is what my new books represent, but it really is cool for that book to still do what it’s doing and it’s a special special book. People really connect with it. I have to say one thing, it’s funny that a lot of people say to me, you know, I’ve heard that before, or oh yeah, that’s just, you know, that’s, that’s accepted. I had a friend of the, they said, yeah, it’s accepted. And they heard it before because it’s been out for 13 years. So they don’t know that the energy bus has been that long.

That’s why you’ve heard of before. And again, it’s sold 2 million copies. So in the United States, so a lot of people have have, have understood this. So when it first came out though what I do, I went on a 20 city tour, paid for myself, our good friend who you know as well, Daniel Decker was selling into advertising at the time. I had the most restaurant and he was telling me into our advertising for my restaurant. We became friends and I was going this tour and I said, Hey, I’m going to this tour. I need someone to help you PR, do you want to do it? I can pay you this much a month. He said, yeah, because I really loved the whole book thing and author world. And now as you know, Daniel is one of the top book launch people in the world. And so he basically helped me launch this verse book and I was going from city to city again, just sharing the message, getting on some local TV shows of you radio shows. Everywhere I went we were doing an events in libraries or a coffee shops, some universities, but it wasn’t very promising. The most people we have were a hundred people in Des Moines, Iowa, and they thought Jeff Gordon was coming. That’s why they showed up.

Well, I mean, we’ll take it, we’ll take it if you buy some books, like give me a car.

So I get home from that and that’s when you know, again, I put everything I had and it was exhausting and I was tired and I didn’t know if the book was going to do well or not, but I knew that I just went out there and I gave everything. I had to share the message in this book. And that’s what began this journey. That was now 2007 next thing you know, Jack del Rio gets a copy. The coach of the Jaguars, he reads it. I get a call from him out of the blue, he wants me to come meet with him. I go meet with him. He asked me to speak to his team. I was fired up. I said, I’ll speak to your team if you get everyone a copy of the book. I was really bold. I just said it like that. He said, I’ll get everyone a copy. But you got it. He did spoke to the team and that began this journey of all these sports team started to read the book and use it with their team.

Wow. So I mean a lot of this stories interesting like a lot of these early speaking gigs and even Daniel, it’s people close to you. Like you were, you were leveraged, like people close to you or helping you. You were hustling, you were sending out messages like you were doing. All that stuff is. Um, so, so when you, so you went and spoke. So was that, would you say that was like your big break or did you, did you have a moment that was like, let me, cause that’s a lot of hustle. Like in your story, very, very similar to two hours and and to a lot of people, I think you know this, this, we’re interviewing lots of people in a similar story. Was there a moment where you had like a big break, like a big breakthrough?

It wasn’t one moment. It was a series of moments because a TV show or radio show would lead to a speaking engagement. We’re a school district reaching out from that tour. I went on principal, a principal saw me and invited me to speak to their school. A business person saw me. Next thing you know, I’m speaking Adele. So it was one thing after another of people seeing you in one place. I tell people all the time, you gotta get out there and do it. I called the big guy years ago before they were great summits like this and I said, hey, I want to be a speaker. What should I do? His name was ed foreman. Ed Foreman said, speak, speak everywhere and anywhere. The more you do it, the better you get, the more people will hear your message and it will spread from there.

If it’s good. And so I knew I just needed to get out there and speak and I want to tell people that’s what you gotta do. Don’t worry about making a lot of money early on. Don’t worry about your wall. I have this value. Go do everything you can early on because you need exposure. Yeah, people need to hear your words and your message. And the way people get booked is through people seeing them or hearing about them or hearing them on a TV show or radio. That’s how it happens. Now with social media, it’s about people seeing you on social media. You know you’re a speaker, you put a video up, you share, hey, I’m interested in doing speaking engagements. Let me know if, if you like to have come speak. There’s a lot of ways to do that now, but you have to put yourself out there and just get out there. As you create the demand, your price will go up as more and more people want to book.

So can you, so talk to me about social media a little bit because I think there’s a lot of speakers who you kind of come from the old school and, and, and this, you know, it’s a lot of, uh, like they’re speaking a lot. They’re kind of hall of Famers, they’ve had solid careers and it seems like now the big trend is a lot of the people who are getting the big speaking engagements are the ones with the big social media following. And, and you do both, like you have a, you have a very large social media following. Um, which clearly is something that you kinda like built along the way. But what, what is your attitude about social media or your mindset or like how do you use it? How do you use it to get speeches to sell books? Like do you not really ever mention that and you just try to provide value or like what’s your whole overall philosophy or strategy with how to use it?

Yeah, I think you’ve got to use every medium possible to promote yourself and what you do. And so I don’t have a huge following on Instagram. Only say 40,000 people. And some might say that’s pretty good, but not compared to a lot of people who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There’s a lot of big Instagram names out there that maybe they’re getting some gigs, I don’t know. But I believe that the more you can build your platform with sharing value, providing value to people, sharing tips, sharing advice, really sharing the message that you know you want to share an and and creating bite sized chunks so that people can digest it so that you can give them little tips here and there. A lot of people who are doing this in a, in a, in a great way, Lewis Howes, right Bey Dros is doing a great job with this other people in social media doing a great job.

And so you’re just sharing a lot of good tips and a lot of value. People naturally gravitate towards you, but those people may not necessarily go to events, they may not hire speakers. So there’s a combination that has to happen here of the social media. But then also you have to be seen as someone who can be brought into these corporate events, to these business events, which I know you do a lot of, and I did 86 events last year. I did probably 90 something the year before. I make over $1 million every year in speaking, and I’m not saying that to brag on myself, but over the years of being heard and being hired and then people reading my books and then see on social media, it all contributes to it. Some people seem me on social media and they see a clip, they get interested. Some people now read a book and they want me to come speak.

So again, there’s going to be a lot of of ways that you’re brought to the event, but by providing yourself, by putting yourself out there, by providing value, that’s how you’re going to get gigs. I’m a big believer in showing clips of you speaking and Keith Johnson does a great job of this. I show a lot of clips, little clips where you providing value, you’re sharing a message and people can see that on social media. I believe you should say, hey, just spoke to so-and-so today and you show a picture of you speaking to so and so. So people know this person is a speaker. Cause a lot of times you may be a social media personality, you may have a great book, but people don’t even know that you speak. I get that all the time. People say like you do speaking engagements, I, I cracked up when I get that this book or Hey, um, can you do this event? We have $500 Oh you know, I’m not $500 anymore but I can provide you with a $500 speaker who is part of my team. And now I have some younger people who I’m mentoring and I am helping them get out there sharing their message.

Is that probably that the primary way you monetize? I mean, so you, you, you like your business model. Just it, if you look at the various revenue streams, cause you know, some people are probably watching a thing going, yeah, you know what? Like I don’t think I want to be a speaker. You know, I got really young kids. I don’t want to be on the road or or whatever. But it, is that the primary way that you generate revenue?

For me it is. For me it’s speaking. It’s also writing books and my royalties, which I get a significant amount of royalties. I’ve been fortunate that way where that’s a revenue stream for me. I didn’t start writing books to make money. I didn’t think I would make as much as I’m making over the years with writing books. It’s a blessing. But the speaking is what I’ll do no matter what. Like I just love doing it. I’m building a training that we have consulting. There’ll be a point where I don’t need to speak up. I don’t want to, I actually don’t need to do. I could probably do half of the event. So if I ever have that I do. But why do I do more? Cause this is what I’m called to do because I love to do this. If you’re not called to do it, maybe you just love the social media part.

Well good. And then you’re more of a media type personality. And then what you’ll do as a mastermind where you’ll provide an online university, an online school, some other way to monetize a podcast that makes money. There’s different revenue streams down for people. This just happens to be mine where you’re like, we have positive university as a podcast, which I can’t wait to have you on. But in terms of of that, we’re not looking to monetize with that. We’re looking to provide value with that. If something comes from it. Great. Our newsletter over 200,000 subscribers now started with five. We never monetize that in terms of sponsorships or anything like that. But we share my books in it. We share their trainings where we have upcoming. So in a way it is monetized. But again, the goal was to always provide value and now you look back and go, Oh wow, we were doing something smart and didn’t even know we were doing that. But that’s, we were doing.

Yeah, I that so, well that’s interesting to see how it’s all sort of grown. Is, is so, so talk to me about, you know, we, we study reputation, right? Like that’s what we have now set at brand builders group is like it’s really reputation strategy and I think, you know, building a personal brand as sort of somebody who wants to monetize their reputation. How do you think this, this kind of this work of like developing your speaking skills and your writing skills, how do you think that applies to the corporate world? Like indeed, do you think it’s important for like corporate executives and people that sort of have a social media presence this day? Like even if they don’t want to be an author or speaker or, or do you think now it’s not really, you know, if you’re like a corporate person, they’re not really doing it. I mean just this more of just, I’m just interested in your opinion about how you know, social media clearly as a part of our profession and our industry, do you feel like it is trickling in a significant way into like the regular corporate career and that like a corporate career person should be building their sort of personal brand and following? Or do you think it’s really just for the person who says like, you know, I want to spend my life like being a messenger sort of a thing?

Great question. You know, I believe we all have a presence now online and it’s about wherever you want to take that presence and share that presence. So some people won’t go on Twitter, they have no interest in Twitter, but maybe they’ll post on Instagram or linkedin. Everyone’s on Linkedin in the corporate world now. So in a way you develop a presence that way. So I really do think it depends on what you want to do. I know a lot of football coaches who are in the media all the time, but they don’t have social media presence, social media presence. Sean McVey, who’s 33 doesn’t have a social media private presence online. He’s not into it. And so it just depends for each person. I don’t think it’s necessary, but it just depends on what you want to build and what you’re here to create an and what you want to share.

Pete Carroll is very big on social media, always engaging with the fans that way. Some people do not want to do that in the corporate world. You have to be careful, right? Because what you share on social media, you can come back to bite you. So you want to make sure whatever it is you’re doing on social media, why am I on here? What message do I want to share? Like what’s the medium in terms of that that I’m going to use and, and then what message you want to share with that medium. And I think it’s important to understand like the purpose of why you’re on the first place. Would you want to do with it? Who Do you want to reach and the impact that you want to have. But I don’t believe it can hurt you if you’d do it the right way. I believe that can only help you if you build a presence and a reputation. Your social media shouldn’t be a conduit for your reputation to reach the world.

Hm. Yeah. Amen. So, um, alright, so, so w w w one, one little thing. I got one last sort of question before I asked you that though. What do you, um, like is there any, any where should people go to connect with you to like learn more about John Gordon and you know, what’s the best way for them to hook up with you?

John gordon.com is probably the best way. My website junk. We’re not Khan, but Instagram and Twitter, I need more followers on Instagram. So at Jon Gordon 11 at j o n Gord 11 Twitter is the same thing at Jon Gordon 11.

Okay. And so here’s the last, my last little thing, John is, so going, going back to let’s say like 2005, like some of those dark moment where you’re like, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to build this brand. I’m not sure if this is really, you know, your wife is like, oh my gosh, what are we doing it w w what piece of advice would you give to somebody who is like in that moment right now, sort of experiencing that self doubt or not having the win or just, you know, they feel the calling, but like the results aren’t there yet. And is there anything that you kind of either wish you would’ve known then that you know now or anything that you would say directly to that person out there with, with the dream who’s like walking through that valley right now?

First and foremost, it’s gotta be driven by your purpose. We don’t get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it. So you have to have a why in this. Your purpose must be greater than your challenges. So what is your vision? What is it that you want to create and why do you want to create? What is your purpose for doing this? It can’t be, I just want to have a great brand. I want to be famous because that doesn’t last. You will face adversity, you will face negativity and setbacks, but your belief, your positive energy, your faith and your purpose must be greater than all the challenges. Again, this is stuff that I share with everyone, but especially if you truly believe you have something to share and you know that you can make a difference, I believe you have an obligation to get out there and share it because people can benefit if they don’t hear it from you because you will say it in a unique way that hasn’t been said like that before.

They haven’t been, they haven’t heard it in that way before. You know, Rory, your message may be similar to mine, but the way you say it, the way you convey it, there’ll be people who resonate more with you than with me and vice versa. That’s the way it is. That’s why there’s a lot of different stations on the radio. It’s about sharing it in the way that you feel called the share it and people receive it. So I believe that you just have to persevere, fight through it, and understand that it’s going to take a lot of grit. And what is grit? It is driven by love. It is fueled by optimism and belief. It’s inspired by vision and purpose, right? And ultimately there are times when you want to give up, but it’s also revived by resilience and kept alive by good old fashioned stubbornness and a desire to prove oneself and also a fear of failure that continues to drive you. So if you’re afraid, let that be a good fear that continues to propel you forward. So you don’t want to fail, but don’t allow the fear to consume. You know that the love of what you’re doing and the love and the purpose that you have for sharing it and making a difference, that’s really the greater energy that will take you forward.

I love it. Well, John Gordon, my friend, my brother, I’m so glad you made the journey and thank you for sharing Sharon, a little bit of the history here and we just, we appreciate you and your work. Um, so much so. Thank you for the encouragement,

Roy. Thanks for having me. And you know what? It’s easy to talk about this now, right? I always try to put myself into position of what was I thinking then? What was it like then? Because you look at us now, we’ve had successful books. I’ve sold 4 million copies, I think over a million a year speaking. I never thought I’d beat to this. Wait, but to that person that’s starting out, you have to have the vision, the belief that it’s possible. So I was trying to think about, did I ever expect this? No. And that’s the thing. You don’t expect it. You just gotta show up every day and do the work.