Ep 191: How To Accelerate Your Personal Brand Through Strong Visual Identity with Stephen Scoggins | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the recap edition of the interview that you probably just heard recently with Stephen Scoggins, who is very unique. He is one of our clients. He then became a certified strategist, and now he is one of our implementation partners. And you got to hear his story and his own personal brand journey. And then we got into talking about visual identity and also doing an overview of, of what he provides. So AJ is here with me. Hi, AJ we’re going to do just our three biggest takeaways. And from, from the episode, obviously the episode was a little bit of an introduction, especially towards the end of what brand amplifiers is. But before we got to that point, when Stephen was telling the story about why he built a personal brand, this despite already having many successful entrepreneurial ventures, and he was telling the story about how he actually didn’t want to build a personal brand, or he wasn’t sure. And his friend asked him this question or, or made this observation. He said, what you’re really struggling with Stephen is not whether or not you should build a personal brand. What you’re really struggling with is an internal battle, an internal battle of answering the question. Am I worthy enough to have a voice? And that, I mean, I got goosies w when, when he said that, and I think, I think everyone struggles with that. I still feel that I still feel that from time to time. And so that was my first takeaway.
AJV (01:50):
No, I think that’s a really good point. And just knowing Stephen, and also probably so similar for all of you, it’s you question like, well, there’s already someone else who talks about this in my space, or there’s already a company that does this well, you know, it’s, Bernay brown talks about shame. So I can’t talk about that. And it’s like, millions of people talk about it, but it really does come down to that inner level of clarity of am. I meant to do this. Like, it’s like, why am I doing this? And I think that’s really important. And just knowing Stephen it’s like building his personal brand has so nothing to do with money. I he’s like all his financial endeavors and successes have paid him well enough. And this really is an impact thing for him. And it really is. I was like, no, I want, I want to be a beacon for people who’ve been where I’ve been and know that there’s another way there.
AJV (02:45):
And so for all of us, it’s going, when we have those feelings of, am I worthy enough? Am I good enough? Or is someone else better than me? And it’s, you know, this comparison battle that we’re all in going well, am I doing what I feel like I was called to do hi, is this like the calling on my life to talk about this, to speak about this, to share about this. And I think not always, but in many ways, it’s, it really does help subside some of those feelings of inadequacy or comparison of just knowing it’s like, I may not be the best, but this is what I was called to do at this time for these people at this place. So I love that. I think that was really significant. I think one of the things for me, this kind of like 0.1 and 0.2 is a lot of what he talked about was like, what is the most frustrating part about building a personal brand?
AJV (03:33):
All right. It’s just like, we all start with this. Like, I want to talk about this and I want to share this and I have this message and this calling, and I want to help people. And it gets clouded by the monstrosity of complexities that potentially can be there. Okay. We’ll have to figure out what I’m doing and who I’m doing it for and where I’m going to do it. And then what is my offer? And then how do I actually collect the money? And then what different platforms do I need? And it’s like, okay, well now I need a designer. Now I need a website developer. And, oh my gosh, now I need this technology. And it’s like, our mission gets clouded by the complexities that we add to it. And one of the things that I love about this is he said, do what you can with what you have.
AJV (04:16):
You don’t have to do all the things right now, but do what you can with what you have. And he talked a lot about how he’s a, he’s a bootstrapping counting guy and it’s like, it’s like, you do what you can with what you have. It’s like, we still, one of our primary funnels was shot within a 24 hour time span, changing outfits in our backyard using our iPhone and a ring light. That’s it? Like we launched our whole company brand builders group without a website. In fact, we didn’t have any website for the first six months. And it was like, so it was like, do what you can with what you have knowing it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be pristine, but do what you can with what you have. And, you know, as it leads into why I think this is so relevant and why I love him so much is a huge part of him becoming a client and then a certified strategist.
AJV (05:11):
And now one of our primary implementation partners, like our preferred implementation partner is he knows how to bootleg Leggett, but do it in a high class way where it’s like, it does not look bootlegged. And that’s because he’s been through the process of doing it on his own and then hiring people and finding what works and creating the packages that, you know, you’ll hear about in the interview. And we’ll talk a little bit about here. It really is built to help the person who’s going, oh, why is this so frustrating? Why is this so difficult? All I want to do is get my message out there. Really figuring out a way to have these consolidated vendors and a consolidated process to get things done is a huge part of making this not only less frustrating, but also making it more successful in the process. So I just, I love this whole concept. Do, do what you can with what you have.
RV (06:07):
Yeah. And just dovetailing off that. I think my, so my second point was, you know, he talked, we were talking about how people have to be able to sample you. They have to be able to see what you do. And that’s why video is just, is so important. And you know, there’s a lot of people that shoot video, but being able to go and knock out a video for your sales page and video funnel for your lead magnet and your demo video in your full link keynote video all at once is that you can really be proud of it. And, and like you said, it’s just, it’s hard to find quality vendors. It’s hard to find quality employees. Like it’s hard to hire good, to, good to help. It’s really hard. And so
AJV (06:55):
I was so baffled, like why it’s so hard to give people money, how are you making it so hard for me to give you my money? But to your point, yes, it’s challenging.
RV (07:06):
And that’s why we put this together. So, you know, we mentioned that link brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers. You know, and there’s, they customize the package for each person, depending on what you need, but just go there and check it out. And if it feels like a thing that might be good for you request a call, but yeah. Do what you can with what you have and then level up level up when you can so that people can sample you and they can, they can get a level of production value that matches your level of expertise. That’s obviously why we put this together. I think people should, should go check that out.
AJV (07:39):
Absolutely. okay. I’ll get my, my third point, my third point, my third point was I thought this was interesting and he kind of talked about it in a side note, but just being in the industry and in the business, it’s such a problem as, you know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg. And when he talks about that getting a speaker reel for his demo video to get booked as a speaker, I immediately thought, oh my gosh, this is something that everyone is really challenged with because it’s like in order to get booked to speak, you really need a good demo. Cause people need to see you speak. But if you’ve never really gotten booked to speak before, how do you get a demo? Then
RV (08:21):
I
AJV (08:21):
Need to get a demo video. But in order to get a quality demo video, I need to be on stage speaking. And in order to get booked to be on stage, I need this demo video. And it’s like, wait, what, what and I, and it’s, it’s a challenge for so many of our clients. And just top of mind for me, cause at brain builders group, we recently had one of our two day events called full keynote calendar. When we talk about what are the four assets you need to get booked as a speaker. And one of them is a quality demo video. And it’s not just a clip of seeing you speak like that’s old school. That’s like, no people actually need to be your demo. Video is not just a clip of you speaking. It is a selling of who you are, what you bring to the audience, what problem you solve, how you’re going to enthrall the audience, why you’re different than other speakers and it seeing you speak.
AJV (09:08):
So there is production value. That’s really important in demo videos. And that means you gotta have not just a great stage. You need to have multiple great stages and voiceover and B roll and you, and that takes a great videographer and then a great video editor. And I can’t tell you how many speaking engagements that Rory you and I both have been at separately where we spent thousands of dollars bringing in a high professional film crew. And then I get the video back and it’s a camera in the middle of the room, looking at me, waist up the whole time, no stage, no audience, no movement. And you cannot use any of the footage at all. If you were in this boat, you know how hard it is sometimes to get a big audience on a high production space stage with great audio. Like those don’t happen all the time.
AJV (10:02):
And most everyday people’s lives who are trying to build a speaking business. And so I know not to like harp on this, but I, one of the things that I love so much about what Stephen is doing is like, he’s like, I’m going to fix that problem for myself and for everyone else. I love that he built a huge warehouse and a huge stage for this huge led like 50 foot screen and Milton audience. It’s beautiful. And he goes like F that I’m not waiting around on this stuff anymore. It’s like, I’m going to build my own high, get my own film crew, my own cameras. And it’s like a five camera set up on this huge stage with this huge led screen, with a built in audience.
RV (10:47):
You can’t get that anywhere. You cannot cannot like you can’t get it.
AJV (10:52):
You can’t even get it from a client, much less on demand. And I think, you know, one of the things that I loved about that is like, if you can’t find it, then it’s like, how do you go and build it? Right? And then how do you find the resources to get what you need when you need it? And to me, that just so resonated because we work with so many people who are speakers are speaking as a part of their career, a part of their business, but you need a fit, you need video. And it’s hard to find really good video. So I just, I just loved the whole concept of, well, I couldn’t find it. So I built it.
RV (11:23):
Yeah. That’s that’s that’s bootstrapping again. That URL. One more time is brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers. My last little takeaway, you know, I highlighted it in the interview because when he said it, I thought it was so powerful. He said, I realized that in my striving to be like other, the more I strive to be like other people, the more I diluted myself and the more disconnected I became with my audience. And so it’s like find your uniqueness and center in that. Don’t worry about what other people are doing be you, and then capture that on video, like so that people can see you. Like you don’t have to pretend you don’t have to be something you’re not like just center in and be you and the right people will find you and fall in love with you. And so anyways, thank you for listening. We’re always so grateful for you. Hopefully you found that inspiring instructional and maybe you even get a great vendor partner out of it. We certainly recommend them keep coming back here every week on the influential personal brand. We’ll see you next time. Bye. Bye
Ep 190: How To Accelerate Your Personal Brand Through Strong Visual Identity with Stephen Scoggins
RV (00:00:10):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would lovph to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:00:54):
We love Stephen Scoggins. We love him for a number of reasons. Mostly just out of a pure respect and genuine admiration for his heart and his desire to serve, but we also very much admire what he has done. He is a serial entrepreneur, not just a personal brand, but he has several other businesses in homes and siting and all sorts of real estate and different things that he does. And he’s a, he’s a true entrepreneur and there’s not really another term other than serial entrepreneur that describes him, but w our lives intersected with his a handful of years ago. And since that time he’s become a best-selling author, he’s the podcast host his, his thought leadership has been featured in major media outlets. I mean, several of the big ones, Forbes, entrepreneur thrive, global NBC ABC. Several others he’s been on our pal, John Lee Dumas podcast to entrepreneur on fire.
RV (00:01:56):
And so basically Stephen has helped fortune 500 leaders, professional athletes, entertainers, pretty much anyone with a dream with with a plan and a set of principles to help them exceed their wildest expectations for all that life has to offer. And so he offers education and inspiration and encouragement for anyone looking to make their dreams a reality. And we also have a very unique relationship with Stephen from a professional standpoint that he was a client, is a client is still an active client who became one of our strategists at brand builders group. So he is also certified in teaching stuff at brand builders. And then he is a
New Speaker (00:02:40):
lso one of our brand implementation partners where he does execution for some of our clients, which we don’t do internally. And so we refer that out to him. And so I think he’s like one of the only people ever that we’ve had that relationship. And anyways, that’s, that’s a lot, but there’s, there’s a lot to you brother. So welcome to the show.
SS (00:02:59):
It’s my pleasure. No, I was gonna, I was fixing to say, did I get kicked out of the group? You’re gonna get fired as a client. No, man, I love you guys. You guys, has it been a, a major influence and a major impact or in my own personal brand and we’re changing lives because of it. So I’m grateful to you guys big time.
RV (00:03:13):
Yeah. Well thank you for that. And our team loves you and, and, you know, AIG loves you and AJ doesn’t love everybody, but once she finds someone that is like truly authentic and all about integrity and doing the right thing, like she latches on and, and, you know, I want to talk about how you’ve built your personal brand as an entrepreneur, like in addition to being an entrepreneur. Because I think, you know, a lot of our clients kind of set on the path to go, I’m going to be a coach, a consultant, you know, whatever thought leader expert, and they do that, or they’re in professional services and they’re like, okay, I’m going to X, I’m going to accelerate myself as an accountant, or they’re an executive, you know, kind of, you know, on the path of trying to get promoted or you maybe just create more visibility for their company, but you’re an entrepreneur who has quote unquote real businesses like businesses, separate of not personal and team members and employees. And, and actually let’s start with that. How many employees do you have and give us, like, give us a bit of a sense of the scope of your non-personal brand businesses.
SS (00:04:24):
Yeah, I think the easiest way to do that is to basically say that I’ve been at this game for almost 22 years. I started my first business CHG, where it’s known as custom home exterior siding business, not super sexy, unless you need siding on your house, then it’s super sexy.
RV (00:04:39):
Awesome. I mean, you guys like your house that you just, you did, it was just awesome. Like you guys do some awesome stuff.
SS (00:04:45):
Thanks, man. No, you know, it’s you know, I started that company sleeping car roughly 22 years ago. I grew up but grew up in a very difficult situation growing up was very fortunate to have a mentor that believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, what kind of got me going began to kind of change my mindset a little bit, and then quickly grew that business wise, it quickly 20 years, it took me 20 plus years to get that company to be self-sufficient where, you know, I could spend time with you today and kind of share and whatnot and focus on some other business endeavors. But that company is now in three states, I employ about 400 people. Company-Wide on that, on that side of things. And we do with that one business do really high eight figures in revenue in that one business, which then led me to real estate, which then led me to other things.
SS (00:05:26):
And then, you know, I discovered that when I would get up and share my heart at, you know, HBA functions, which is, you know, homeowners association, it’s not, again, not super sexy to the, to the average listener, but it was, you know, it was my industry, right. They would be really drawn in by the simple fact that I had this, the story of overcoming. And then as that resonated, they would come up to me and say, Hey, you know, my, my son is really having a difficult time. If I got him on speaker phone, would you call it? What’d you talk to him? I said, yeah, sure, absolutely. And then over the course of 20 or 30 minutes, you, you would hear tears. She would hear laughter and then that person would then exhibit change. And then, you know, that, that word began to get out a little bit more.
SS (00:06:04):
And I was joking around with you before we hopped on air, but you know, our friend, John ACOF, I just told him recently that it’s all his fault that I even got on this journey because I w my friends and family would say, Hey, you should write a book. You should write a book. You should write a book. Now my ADHD dyslexic kid, right. Writing a book was not something I was concerned about. Right. And you know, and I remember him sitting down, we were, we were at an event together and we were going through some things and he was, and I was like, man, I didn’t pick the telling me to write a book. He like, I dunno, man, it’s really hard. You’ve got editing, you’ve got pillar. You know what we, we call it brand builders group. What you taught us is pillar point points, which I knew nothing about at that time.
SS (00:06:44):
And, you know, and all these different things. And he’s I tell you what, just tell me what one of the stories and, you know, I, and I proceeded to tell him the story of me you know, attempted to become a Navy seal and, and how that almost led to my suicide attempt and some other, just, just some very difficult things to kind of the transitions. And lo and behold, he runs out the door cause he was 30 minutes late for another meeting, slaps the wall and says, you should totally write a book and do it seven a month. I met you for the first time when you guys were training us on infusion soft and that’s how our friendship began.
RV (00:07:12):
Yeah. I mean, what a story, I mean, just to you, you breeze through a lot of those things, but you were sleeping in a car like living in a car, started a business that now has 400 employees, high eight figures. You know, you’ve turned that into generational wealth through real estate. And this is after being ADHD and dyslexic and, you know, for a moment being suicidal in your life, also your wife your FA your personal life, you’ve, you, you, you’ve had a number of health issues that you guys have had to, to navigate. And so I guess, why did you decide to start a personal brand? I mean, you kind of started to touch on it there, it sounds like it was really about the impacts because you clearly, you, you, you, you, you have the money. The other thing that you didn’t say is that you, you recently bought a building or you, what you have, you have several buildings, but you just bought a conference, a live event center is, is part of, as part of what we’ll talk about later. But, but also there’s a church that operates out of there on the weekends, right? And like, you got all this stuff going on and then you decide I needed, I need you to build a personal brand. Why
SS (00:08:31):
Can, can I be honest with you? I was one of the last
RV (00:08:33):
Ones I actually prefer when people lie and tell us the fake dishonest in authentic story. But if that, if you’d rather just tell us the real story, that’s cool, too.
SS (00:08:49):
Awesome. Awesome. Well, the real story is I didn’t want to build a personal brand. I didn’t, I have fought against that for the last five. You know, Casey, who was, who was with the team, you’re one of your senior strategist flew here to work with me specifically. She probably spent the first entire day of phase one die, dude, you’ve got to be the personal brand. You can’t just folk. You can’t just let the, like, it’s all connected together. And it took me a long time. And then a buddy of mine asked me a very interesting question. He said, Stephen, I don’t think it’s about whether or not you want to be a personal brand or whether or not it should be a business entity or whatever he goes. I think the question you’re really trying to solve is am I worthy of having a voice? Whoa.
SS (00:09:28):
And I started to cry, man. He goes, Stephen you’ve, you’ve overcome, you know, suicide, depression, anxiety dyslexia, ADHD, homelessness, you’ve built a major organization. You have all these different team members that you, that you pour into consistently on a weekly basis. He goes, dude, you’re worthy of having a voice and people gravitate to you because people hope and want more. And it dawned on me to answer your question, Rory, that my first mentor, Steve mark, that gave me the second chance. He’s my father’s employer. You know, I want to be Steve mark to somebody else. I want, I want to be able to give hope and inspiration and a framework and a process and a learning method. And if you look at all the businesses that I own, all of them, you know, from the real estate side to the construction side, to the thought leadership side, to the now the live event side, all of them have one thing in common. All of them, they’re all trying to make people better than they were yesterday, all of them. So I think at the end of the day, the reason I do what I do is not because of money, not because of wealth, not because of things. It’s because I want to be someone who creates a legacy that outlives myself. And the only way you can do that is by making an impact.
RV (00:10:44):
Yeah. That’s power. Am I am I worthy enough to have a voice? What an astute observation from your friend, cause that’s really the issue and you know, what’s so cool about that is going. It’s not about whether or not you’re worthy. It’s about whether or not other people out there can benefit from what you know. And when you shift to that conversation, the legacy conversation, and I know journey principles was part, part of your, your first book and partly of what your courses and stuff are about is when you make that shift off of yourself onto other people, then it’s all about making people better than they were yesterday. It’s not about making Stephen famous or liked or popular lots of followers. It’s about making people better than they were yesterday. I, I love that. So that makes sense to me. And also let that be a lesson for all of us that it’s like, there’s not really amount of money that will ever satisfy you.
RV (00:11:47):
It’s if we ultimately are all drawn to that impact, which is something you can do now with, with little to no, but you have built a personal brand very quickly. Your Instagram, like you, you went, you, you basically grew to a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and like the last 12 months, I know that you guys just crossed 2 million views or you’ve just crossed 2 million views on YouTube. You know, you’re I had a conversation with a very famous seminar promoter Peter Lowe, which he used to promote Zig Ziglar, Zig Ziglar’s to speak at his events. And then it was like, oh, Stephen Scoggins is speaking at my event. And I was like, what? Like, this is amazing. Like you’re growing so fast. So how have you built a personal brand quickly? I mean, you, you, this has happened fast or maybe it hasn’t
SS (00:12:43):
Well, I think it is, you know, for me it doesn’t feel very fast, right. Cause you know, it’s, it’s like that whole bamboo thing where you’re underground, you’re underground, you’re underground, you’re underground. All of a sudden you start to bust to the ground. And I was like, Hey, let’s get Scott to come out of nowhere. You know, I think I actually owe a lot of credit to brand builders group, just being straight up honest. And here’s why when I first went out to go create my first personal brand you know, I tried to mimic all the people that I know and respect that, you know, I had a an acquaintance style relationship with Dave Ramsey and knew Lou Maxwell a little bit and, and all these different people early on, I was like, well, I’m just going to do what they do. Right. I’m going to copy what they copy. And then I, and then I realized there’s this this veil, if you will, of stuff that you can see. And there’s also this, this hard work that goes in behind the scenes, you know, and as a result, I started focusing on getting, well, how do I get through here to here so I can get the information I need to, you know, to then level up. And what I ran into was my lack of clarity was causing a lack of connection.
SS (00:13:42):
So my striving to try to mimic everything that I saw was pushing me away from my authentic self and what brand builder is. One of the things that our brand builders did for me is they helped me get crystal clear, crystal, clear on what it is that I am here to serve who I am, who I’m called to serve what I’m supposed to be doing. And once I did that, I began to say things differently. I began to write things differently. I began to do things differently on camera. And as a result, I think that’s a direct reflection of your authentic self is ultimately your connected self, meaning that’s the self that people are going to connect to. You know, I, for the life, you know, when my team has been on my heinie for the last year about doing more Instagram stories and live, I’m like, dude, you’re really people care that I get up at 5:00 AM.
SS (00:14:28):
I pour myself some pre-workout and I head to the gym and they’re like, yes, I’m like, there’s no way like try it. I’m like fine. So I’ve been getting up and screenshot on my phone and whatever, and doing my stories and heading off to the gym. And lo and behold people identify with it and it blew my mind. And what I realized was people are looking for a beacon of inspiration so they can take a chance on themselves. And I think that’s at the core of what’s caused the rapid growth, but I could not have done it without the clarity that was forged through brand builders, groups, processes,
RV (00:15:01):
Not sure say that, say that again, people are looking for a beacon of inspiration
SS (00:15:07):
To prove to them that they can do it themselves.
RV (00:15:12):
That is so powerful. The other thing you said a little bit ago was you said my lack of clarity was causing a lack of connection. And then you follow that up with, you said my striving, something about my striving to be like other people was preventing me from
SS (00:15:30):
Yeah. So my S my striving to be like other people, right? So the mimicking of other people I’m mimicking Ramsey’s organization. So my first live event that I’ve tried to put on was like not, it wasn’t entree leadership, but it had elements of like, what I learned from entree leaders. Not, not the content, because I know I don’t steal content from anybody, but like the, the flow, the feeling kind of thing. Right. Well, I wasn’t being authentic to myself. So when we went to go do it the first time, and this was a few years back, you know, I, I didn’t intentionally do some key things that are in our live events now that are uniquely us. Right. I try to say things how Ramsey would say, well, that Dave’s Dave, like I’m bold, but I’m not, I’m not Dave’s Dave. Right? The more I tried to be like Dave, or the more I tried to be like, John, and the more I tried to be like or ACOF or gosh, any of the people that are in this industry, the more I diluted myself and the more I diluted myself, the more I broke connection with the audience that I was ultimately called to serve.
SS (00:16:27):
And that dilution process, that disconnection, that that unintentional focus on being connected was a major shift with me when I began studying all the content at brand builders, which is another reasons why I was like, AAJ, Rory, let me help, man. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a window of time, let me, let me help. I gotta help other mission-driven messengers, make it to make it to the market. Like all of these things I learned from you guys, you know? So when you say, how does your brand grow so rapidly? Well, brand builders was the first step for me. Otherwise I was like shooting a shotgun when I should be shooting a sniper rifle. You guys helped me ane the scope.
RV (00:17:05):
Yeah. I love that. And, and, you know, I like to think that we pay our strategists very well, you know, like they, they, they make about a hundred bucks an hour, like which is annualized is, I don’t know if some, some six-figure number. And and yet when I look at how much you make on an hour, I’m like, this makes no financial sense for you whatsoever to be to be a brand builders strategists. And I think that, again, as part of why we were drawn to you is this, like, it wasn’t a financial calculation for you. It was a give back. It was a give back of going, you know, I’ve never actually heard you say this about that, that, that the, the clarity that you got from our process, cause I didn’t work with you directly. You worked with Casey, you worked with our team.
RV (00:17:56):
I worked with the AGA you and I haven’t had all that many touch points as a client. You and I have been more friends and stuff. And that’s, that is so, so powerful. So I want to, so those are some of the things that’s so huge. I mean, that, that part about the more I strive to be like other people, the more I diluted myself and the more disconnection I created with my audience, I mean, that is really profound. And totally true. And so that speaks to what we believe in and teach and promote. And Europe, you’re a great living example of the success that comes when someone becomes more of who they are. But there’s been a lot of frustrating parts of building your personal brand as well. And I’d, I’d, I’d love to hear about that, you know, all sides included and, and that was originally how we met you as we were specifically helping you with building your, your Infusionsoft application, which is now called keep cause that’s, that’s one of the things that we do really, really well.
RV (00:19:02):
It’s an extraordinary internal competency of ours. So what are some of the, the, the most frustrating parts, because you’ve built a lot of these businesses, you’re used to handling problems and challenges, but there’s been some unique ones. I feel like in the, in the journey of personal branding, that even if you’ve built other companies before I mean, obviously clarity is one of them, but, but I, I’m talking more about the mechanics of building a personal brand. What about that has been frustrating or difficult compared to maybe like other stuff that you’ve done?
SS (00:19:36):
Oh gosh there’s a bunch you know, the first one that comes to mind is this problem of creating enough content with the limited time that I have. And that was long before I understood the content diamond. That’s made things so much easier, so much easier, but so that’s, that’s a huge one. The second one content content
RV (00:19:54):
Diamond y’all is where we’re using a little bit of our internal speak that our customers and stuff understand. But the content diamond is is the, the process that we teach clients for taking basically one video and disassembling it into repurposing that all across the web. And it fills one five minute video fills your entire content calendar on every, on every online platform throughout the week. And your team does all of it. And it’s like, basically you do it for five minutes and you’re done and you’re everywhere online. So anyway, sorry to interrupt, but I, we don’t have too, too much internal jargon, but so that’s cool. So content diamond, what else? Yeah.
SS (00:20:34):
Well, I think the other thing too is, you know, when you, when you step out to begin to build your personal brand, I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing, doing what you can with what you have. Like I’m a, I’m a big bootstrap guy clearly, right? Every, every business I’ve, it’s a bootstrap that kind of scenario. And as a result, I learned the hard way that there comes a point in time where you can’t do things by yourself, meaning you can’t necessarily go out and hire all these various subcontractors all over the place and expect them to know your brand, to the essence that you know at yourself and expect them to have consistency across your brand with them. So for example, I had three different website providers, all of them, none of them worked out. I had four different media companies that I tried to partner with to do personal branding for myself, to try to create visual assets and things that I had.
SS (00:21:27):
The, the one biggest problem I had, especially, and in trying to cut through the clutter as becoming a speaker specifically, was I had this essence of not being able to get the speaker footage. I need to create the demo reel that I needed to then sell me more speaker footage. Right. So it was like this, okay, well, I’m a speaker. I know I can speak like I’ve, I’ve been working on this craft and working on it and I’ll continue to work on the rest of my life, but you know, I’ve been doing it, but I can’t really showcase it. And I can’t showcase it because I don’t have an audience. And when I do have an audience, you know, it might be a couple of hundred people and there’s no cameras around there or the there’s cameras around, but the lighting sucks. Or if the lighting sucks, the bike sucks, you know, and it’s just like this combination of problematic behaviors are problematic consistency that comes from a strong visual identity, you know? So when you asked earlier, you know, what do you attribute some of the success of recent success of some of your growth to, you know, on top of the clarity, it’s going to be coming down to consistency. Right? We started doing some things in house. I started, I got so frightened. I don’t recommend this for everybody. I got so frustrated. Right. I just started investing in, building out, building out an organization myself to make it work.
RV (00:22:36):
It’s fine. You couldn’t find reliable vendors to do this stuff. So you’re like, it. I’m just going to buy them. I’m just going to hide it. I’m just going to build my own. I’m going to build a company. I’m going to hire them. And, and, and I’m going to have their full-time attention basically, and make sure that they care about my brand. And you’re, you’re in a very rare and unique position to be able to do that. Like, Hey, let’s buy a building. Let’s buy. I mean, you bought some led screens that were what? A quarter million dollars. Oh
SS (00:23:07):
Yeah. I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got a half a million bucks in the stage alone.
RV (00:23:11):
Yeah. So you bought it, you bought it, you actually bought an auditorium. Like you bought a venue, built out an auditorium. I mean we, we were there recently and it was like, I want to say it was, it was like a six camera shoot. So that means you buy six cameras, all the switchers, all the lighting these beautiful, I mean, those LEDs, these led screens are just huge and you know, all the chairs and yada yada yada. So you got, you bought a half million dollar venue. You dumped a half million dollars just into the venue piece alone. Yes. yeah. And it’s interesting. This is an interesting point to me. And, and one of the things that we realized that brand builders group, because about a year, maybe 18 months ago, we started dipping our toe into the idea of helping with the execution for our clients of actually doing the stuff for them.
RV (00:24:05):
And what we’ve found is there’s so much, we couldn’t, we can’t keep up with it. And that our real, our real uniquenesses is personal brand strategy. It is sitting, we’re like the CMO for a personal brand. We guide the overall big picture and we know the right things that need to happen in the right sequence, you know, in the right way. But we don’t have the, we don’t have, I mean, we don’t have a building, we don’t have a hundreds of employees. We don’t have a lot of these things. And so, but we noticed both for ourselves, we’ve had this same story, our entire career can’t get a reliable web designer. Can’t get a consistent graphic designer. They ghost you. They’re, they’re outrageously expensive. They build something within, in some stupid code language that nobody else on the planet earth understands. You, and you know, like you’re saying with the event production, either the lighting is bad or the, they don’t know the video angles that you need, or the microphone sucks, or this, the, the slides look weird in the background.
RV (00:25:17):
And there’s so many X factors. And so we started for those of you that don’t know what we did was we deliberately got out of the execution business at brand builders group. And we said, no, our real magic is, is specialty. And specialty is strategy. It’s helping people get clear on who they are, what they can do that no one else can do. And, and the high level orchestration of all of the vast amount of moving parts. And then we created a vendor network. And I mentioned this earlier in your bio. I said that Stephen has become, which was never part of the vision for either of us, one of our vendor partners, because we have, we realized we have to build a network. So even the, we can’t do the execution. We’re not staffed at the level. We need to support our hundreds and hundreds of clients. We have to find partners to help them do certain things. And so that’s how we solve the problem for our clients. Even though we can’t do it ourselves, we created, okay, here’s a, basically our trusted vendor partner network. And one of the biggest challenges is the speaking footage. Like you, you talk
SS (00:26:28):
To this, it is impossible to get on a stage unless you have proven footage, even TEDx now wants you to have a, some kind of footage of you speaking, just to get, it’s such a, it’s
RV (00:26:37):
Such a chicken and the egg thing. It’s like, yeah, I need, I need to have a video. I need to have a, a demo video of me speaking in order for someone to book me to speak, but I have to get booked to speak, to get enough footage that I need to put together a demo video. It is, it’s like the ultimate frustrating, most painful. This is how do you get around this until you solve this one thing? Your speaking career is zero. Like you, yeah, you can’t. Yeah,
SS (00:27:08):
You can’t do it. I mean, I mean, until I started getting some demo reels and some sizzle reels and speaking footage, I mean, I think I took as many free speaking events as I could get my hands on earlier. Went from that to getting one demo reel was able to go from zero to almost 2,500 bucks in one shot, got an updated version to some other speaking footage. Cause I, you know, obviously I host my own live events here that we do for my brand. And as a result, you know, very quickly
RV (00:27:35):
Again, I just want to say is really unfair. It is really unfair that you just bought a building and like built all this out, but you’re doing something really special with it, which we’re going to talk about here in just a second. But yeah, so, so anyway, so you, you, you reinvested and you upgraded. Cause that’s how I did it too. Was I went and spoke 304 times for free, but here’s something I noticed, even events that you speak at that you have to speak out for free. They usually don’t have a lot of high production value. It’s not as it’s camera shoot. It’s not led screens. It’s not uplighting and, and multiple angles. And it’s usually, I mean, it’s like the back of a Perkins restaurant. I mean, that was my career.
SS (00:28:20):
Yeah. You haven’t even seen the new relation lighting we just put in,
RV (00:28:23):
I don’t even know elation lighting is, but it sounds really cool and awesome. And it isn’t all, all those points. So, so this is a big problem. Getting this, this demo video footage, it is one of the number one problems I faced in my career. When AIJ you know, in our former life, AJ built a speakers bureau, not everybody knows this. One of the, one of the businesses that we sold as part of you know, our roll up of the last company that we sold. There was a speakers bureau inside of that, that AIG built from scratch. One of the biggest problems she always had was getting her, her younger speakers, new video footage, and hard to get the new, the newest, the newest speakers are the hardest to get booked just because nobody knows who they are. And you can’t prove that you’re good because no one can see you because of this whole chicken and the egg thing. And so there used to be a company that did this, that they T tell us about this company. Cause you actually hired them. There was a company that, that did this thing where they, they put on an event and speakers could come and you, they, they had people from the public or how, how did it, how did it work? I never was a customer, but we many of our brand builders customers, including you were a customer. So like what was the, what was the concept of this, of this company? Yeah,
SS (00:29:47):
So, you know, it was a, the original plan for the event was for, to solve the chicken and the egg problem we’ve been talking about for the last couple of minutes. And that was to get aspiring speakers, the video, the video keynote footage they need, you know, so you would do it and do a very short keynote, five to seven minutes, something like that. And as a result, you would get the speaker footage you need. They had people in the audience that were alive event attendees. Some of them were speakers like myself because you’re, you’re watching the other speakers as well. And then you would sit down and you would also have other folks on the audits. And that was folks would go, as soon as you’re done, go do your testimonials. So you had an arc of, you have basket of testimonials from your speaking that you could use. And then that company
RV (00:30:24):
Would then right into your demo video. So people say how awesome you are and it was so inspiring or funny or whatever. Exactly.
SS (00:30:32):
And then, you know, and then, so you had, you know, basically you dealt with three products, so a testimonial, a speaker demo reel, and a keynote footage. However, it was
RV (00:30:40):
Now, now hold on. It was also in front of a real life audience. It wasn’t a fake that, that was the thing that always got me was, and I’ve I’ve, I have done this several times in my career where I will record early versions of my demo video in a room where no one is actually in the room except me. Like, that’s the, that’s the only thing I could think to do to create a video, a demo, to get video footage, if I couldn’t get it in front of a live audience. And so, you know, I either would like you know, borrow a room or whatever, and go speak somewhere and you just record it. But this was an, this is a real life audience. So they invited, I mean, obviously all the speakers were there at this, but then they open it up to the public and people come, yeah, they
SS (00:31:21):
Have like a, they have like an outreach that they kind of do like an outreach and you know, so in doing so I’ll a friend of the owner, the original creator of that program really, really well. And it just so happens. He decided to come to my venue and shoot a video in the studio. I’m actually in right now doing we have the class whiteboard thing that we can do, like neon markers. And, you know, I said, man, you know, ha ha you know how things go on? When’s the, when’s the next event? And he’s like, man, I, I had to shut it down. And I’m like, well, why like, well, you know, COVID, I’m like, well, dude, you, you know, if you need some help get back on your feet, I’ll be glad to help you with that. He goes, man, I’ve I’ve, I’ve had to pivot my entire business away from it. And he gave me like three key factors that I don’t have permission to share. But the dude had a huge heart and he said, the number one driving factor, preventing him from like relaunching that is simply the the cost of actually putting on a live event. And I got to talking to him. I said, well, I said, dude, I’m standing in a live event center. What if, what about using my place? Like
RV (00:32:20):
You haven’t.
SS (00:32:21):
Yeah. And I was like, dude, I’ll I’ll I won’t charge you a thing. Just like, let’s go. Right. And he said, man, he said, I’d love to, but you know, I’ve already launched this other thing. I’m going to focus my attention over here. I said, well, dude, this is a major problem. Like I, you know, that’s the reason I came to you in the first place. This is a major problem for a lot of people. And it just is a, and it’s just exactly, and I just happened to be doing a live event. AIJ was actually teaching it. I briefly covered that little conversation with AIJ and age. And I was like, I, you know, I’ve got this event. She’s like, dude, so many of my, our clients need like this, you know? And then, so we went from like just really brainstorming really fast. And then a good friend of mine have Carmichael. Who’s been really helping us on, on with, with a lot of our YouTube stuff specifically. He said, he goes, man, I know people that need that. And then I know people that need that. And then I know people that need that. And I’m like, well, the, the building sits, the auditorium sits empty half of the week.
RV (00:33:18):
Right. It’s only there for Stephen to shoot his videos and nobody else is selfish it’s so, so, so anyways, the short of this is, you said I’ve got the space, I’ve got the capacity, I’ve got the team. The other thing that you have, which is really unique is it’s when you have 400 employees, it’s actually quite easy to assemble a real life audience because you go, Hey, guess what? Today it’s personal development day, everyone funnel into the auditorium. And so, so, so what happened? He basically just said, take this business and do it.
SS (00:34:00):
Yeah. I mean, I called him right back after AJ and I had a quick conversation and I was like, dude, can I, are you cool if I do this? He said, man, it would mean a lot to me. If you actually ran with it, to be honest, he said, I always felt bad for the fact that I had to close it. And I said, well, dude, I got you. If any point in time you want to reengage, just let me know. And then that’s how it started and ended. And as a result, we began thinking, okay, well, how do we take now? This is going to sound kind of weird given the fact that we haven’t really told everybody about what’s going on. But I said, well, how do we take that event and amplify it? That was like the question that we were having at our, at our little team
RV (00:34:32):
Meeting. Well, how could you, if you’re going to take it over, how do you, up-level it like, how do you make this even more valuable? Like, you know, what, what could you do to make it better? Sure. So
SS (00:34:42):
I asked Aja, I said, Hey Jay, I’m just curious, what are, what are all the things that you think?
RV (00:34:48):
And sorry, just to clarify, when he says, Hey Jay, he’s talking about our AIG, my AJJ the CEO of this group and the, and the woman I sleep with, right. My wife, she’s my business partner. This is art. So he’s used an ADJ. Cause again, it’s, you know, he, he’s one of our team members, but it’s our AIG that you hear do the recaps. So you two are having a conversation by the way, completely unbeknownst to me, strategizing and scheming and planning and never did either of you think, Hey, we should talk to Rory about this. You guys, you guys plotted this whole thing and then told me, Hey, this is what we’re doing. And by the way, by the way, you’re flying to Raleigh.
SS (00:35:28):
Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, it was, it was one of the situations where I was like, what, what did brands need? And she just rattled off just off the top of her head, the sales letter demo, video, mini courses, webinars, sequences all these different photography. [inaudible]. I said, we can do all of that here. Like all of it. I have, you know, quite a bit of income invested in rhino sliders and jibs and Gimbels and all these different camera devices.
RV (00:35:53):
These are all equipment jargon terms he’s using for fancy equipment stuff. And not only do you have the live event center, which is, that’s probably the hardest, the hardest thing to recreate is that beautiful stage live event experience. It’s like, even if you want to do it, it takes so much money. Like, like this guy was saying, he, it was his full-time business and you can barely, barely do it cause it’s expensive. But then you also have the podcast studio, by the way, I know this because I went there. And I’m going to tell you about my personal experience here in just a second, but, but the podcast studio that you’re sitting in right now, you can see that if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see or go watch on our YouTube channel. You’ll see this, the beautiful lighting, a soundproof studio that’s there. You’ve got like what, four or five? There’s like five whiteboards. There’s
SS (00:36:47):
All right. So in this one room, so this is the magic of camera, right? If everybody’s watching from home or on YouTube or whatever, they’re going to say, well, he’s in a podcast studio because they see all the podcasting equipment. Okay. What they don’t know is over to my left hand side is another set over the truck and my caddy quarters, another set over there against the walls, another set, and in three other rooms, I’ve got other sets and I’m building two more sets.
RV (00:37:10):
And by the way, if you’re listening, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers, we took a video of this. So there’s a video of all these different sets and layouts that you can, that you can, you can see. And that’s, you know, part of, part of what we’re we’re we, we did is we went on site to understand exactly what Scoggins the visual went on here. Yeah. And we were, we became clients. We went through the whole process ourselves personally. But one of the things that we did was we got a video of all these different sets so that you can see and we also recorded a video course cause that’s another thing that we teach all of our clients is, Hey, you need to build a video funnel, something that is just like sh a mini video course that you give away for free.
RV (00:37:59):
That adds value. That is kind of your first introduction to people. And so me and Elizabeth Stephens our, you know, our director of events and then Jeremy Webber we went and we’ve filmed. We did, we did the, we did the full experience. We, I recorded a keynote, a new keynote that I’ve been working on my team in front of your team, personal development day with, with Rory Vaden, which, you know, we’re stay loved by the way, which, which they were forced to be at against their will, but I was grateful for it. And then, and then while we were there, so we, we, we, we shot the keynote and then we shot a video course and we shot each video in a different set. And you can see that also, if you go to Bramble, there’s group.com/brand amplifiers, you can actually see what those sets look like.
RV (00:38:52):
And you see screenshots of, of me and Jeremy and Elizabeth. And then we also did a photo shoot. So it was like we were there less than a full day. No, in our case, how much, how much time was it? I think you were four and a half hours. Yeah. Now we had the whole place to ourselves. You didn’t have other other clients there, but we in four hours shot a full video. Course. We shot a keynote demo video. I think I spoke on stage for like 25 minutes. Yeah. And then you guys produced a five minute demo video for me, which again, you can see this demo video, if at that URL, I mentioned brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers. And, and one of the things that we did with this demo video, which is cool is we didn’t use any of my other footage.
RV (00:39:45):
We didn’t use any of my like TV appearances and yada yada, yada, like other stuff we have, we did this as if this was the only footage I had ever had so that anybody who’s brand new can see what you, your team can create. Even if you have zero assets before arrival and the actual full length, it’s like a six minute demo video, five minute demo video is up at the, at that URL. So sorry to interrupt. So I just thought that was the place to interject, like what we did and what happened. But, but basically you’ve got this keynote experience, which is impossible to recreate. You’ve got all these video studios, which lots of people do that they’re not easily accessible, but the cool thing is if you’re there, why not knock it all out at once? And then the other thing was wa again, if you’re there and you’re all in makeup and dressed up and hair dead and like teeth whitened and whatever, you might as well do a photo shoot. And so you, you do all of this in one, one shot, right? Like how does it work? Like in your words?
SS (00:40:57):
Yeah, no, I mean, so, all right. So first of all, everybody’s a little bit different on their journey. So some folks may already have keynote, but then they may need updated photo shoots for social images or for a website, you know, your header bars, your transparent images. Like there’s a lot of color
RV (00:41:11):
Ads, Facebook ads, like all stuff like that. Yeah. Lifestyle shots and yada, yada back book covers for the back cover of your book or whatever.
SS (00:41:20):
Yeah. I mean, all of that. So there’s, there’s so many different places that these assets can be deployed. But one of the things that I feel is really important is that people are, have definitely gone through certain phases of the brand owner process. So they don’t come here and waste time. They come here and they can knock it out and it’s super duper important. Right. but when it comes down to it, we’re going to book off a whole week. Right. We’re only going to allow 20 people. We just, because it, it, when you see the movement of all the people that we’ve got working behind cameras and sound equipment,
RV (00:41:48):
Stuff like that coordination. Yeah. It’s,
SS (00:41:50):
It’s, it’s a, it’s a symphony. I mean, it really is. And as a result, we can only have a max of 20 people on, unfortunately, you know, in a week’s timeframe. And so we’re gonna book off a week. Yeah. Well,
RV (00:42:00):
You guys must have had like 20 people there, just, just taking care of the four of us, three of us, there were three of us for four hours. And you, you guys you, your team, which your team was incredible, you literally rolled out the red carpet for us. And they were young and savvy and sharp and professional and, and, and intelligent and service minded and catering, and just helpful and, and brilliant. And it was like, I, I have been around so many different production teams and this, this was probably the single best experience I’ve ever had. And just being directed, go here, go here, go here. Now this, now this, Hey, change that, tilt your head this way. Look over here. Let’s get, let’s move this camera. And like, I mean, it makes you feel like a celebrity, like you guys directed from the minute we got out of the car door until the minute we left back to the airport, you guys directed this with like first class a first-class experience. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
SS (00:43:06):
And again, it all comes down to treating people how I want to be treated. Right. When I went through this experience that most of my major frustrations came from the fact that everything was disjointed. No one took me seriously. No one really cared about my end product that I was then trying to use to impact other people. Yep. That is a major underlying problem that we have worked really, really hard to solve. We want everybody that comes through those doors to feel like the million dollar brands that they’ll soon be. Hm. That’s what we want. Right. Because we’ve learned that a healthy visual identity is to a personal brand like emotional health is to mind a mental mindset, right? Those you can’t separate your visual identity from the personal brand that you are ultimately trying to become. Right. And there is a time to do it yourself. There is absolutely a time to do it yourself, but there’s also a time to say, enough’s enough. I’m going to make an impact. And I need the assets to get me there.
RV (00:44:03):
And that’s, you know, that is true. I mean, if there is one thing that I wish I would have done sooner, as I wish I would have invested sooner in high quality production of, of these things. We’re talking about video assets, speaking, speaking, real footage and photography. But frankly, you know, the more I’ve thought about that, cause I told you that whatever it was a couple of months ago when I was at your place or when it was like a month ago, a month ago, or two months ago, what I realized, even as I said, you know what? I actually would have made this investment. If I had confidence in the vendor, like if I would have found somebody who I was like these people, first of all, they care like first and foremost, they give a crap. It’s, I’m not just a number they’re cranking through a system.
RV (00:44:49):
And they’re only touching one little piece of my brand. And they’re trying to like spin me out, you know, as, as profitably and as efficiently as possible. So they have to care. And then they have to be extremely con like competent. They have to know what they’re doing. And then they have to be like reliable and, and responsive. And that has been the experience with you, by the way. So brand amplifiers is the name of this, that we’re, we’re, we’re talking about a, and w we’re not going to ask anybody for a credit card or anything today, but if you, if you go to brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers, you can read a little bit about this and you can see the different services that these guys offer. The Quito, you know, demo video experience, the video course experience the photography. And you can just request a call with their team.
RV (00:45:42):
And they’ve got, I mean, I’ll say this, I don’t have all your prices memorized, but they’re extremely reasonable. They are for what you get, especially, but it’s like, you’re getting a top tier experience, like a top, top tier experience for what I would consider a very low to reasonable price range, which, you know, it costs something because you can’t do all this for nothing, but it’s much less than what you could, you could be charging. The other thing is at that URL brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers. Again, you can see this cause you can cause we went through the experience. So you can see samples of the pictures that your photographers took. You can see the demo video that y’all produce just from that one visit. You can see the video of course, that we knocked out in a couple hours. And, and so anyways, the way that this happens for you guys is you have the venue, but you got to get all the staff there. And so it all happens inside of a week. And so you’re saying there’s there’s room for 20 people. They, they have to fly to Raleigh. So, so they, they, they got to pay their expenses and on top of whatever, they invest with you, they fly to Raleigh and there they’re there for how many, how many days. Yeah.
SS (00:47:04):
So it depends on what product they need. The reason we coordinated a full week is because with 20 folks, we’re going to have keynote day. So we’re going to do all the keynotes in one single day. But then on the other days, most people can get most of what they need done filmed within a two day window, possibly a three-day window, because we’re going to put the keynote day in the center. That way you have time to get your mini courses, sales letters, all the photography and everything else. You,
RV (00:47:30):
The other thing we’d even talk about the sales videos. We, we, we actually recorded one of those, which is also on that page, that the brand builders group.com/brain fires at the top is a, is an example of a sales video that we recorded. So you can see that as well. I totally forgot about that one. That’s a huge one. Yeah.
SS (00:47:48):
I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s so much, they’re going to get from a content and strategy side of things. You guys did a wonderful job in, in creating the strategy environment. You got to have the assets to deploy it. You know, one of the things that common questions I used to get as a strategist repeatedly is how come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? And I’m like, take it from me. I literally wasted millions of dollars, millions of dollars in the last five years, because I was unclear and I was deploying capital at a rate that was just straight up foolish, get clear and then put the assets together. And when you actually have those to deploy on a regular basis, literally you could turn on the faucet, you call it the revenue engine. You, you turn on the revenue. Right. But you can, you can’t scale what you don’t have to sale. Right. You got to get it filmed.
RV (00:48:37):
Yeah. So one of the other things that’s really awesome about this y’all and, and, you know, we want you to at least look at it and it’s, it’s like you said, it’s, if you’re, if you’re flat, flat broke and you have no choice, you might be where I was, where it’s like your first demo video, you’re recording in the public library in some back room with a, with a camera. You just start there, but you, at some point you got to go, I’m going to level up. Because I was embarrassed about my visual identity for years, for years in my career, I was like, you know, I have to do this, but I kind of don’t want anyone to see it because I don’t think the production level matches my expertise level. And there was always this gap. But you know, when you’re ready to level up and go, I need to get my first true set of quality assets.
RV (00:49:28):
And I’m actually going to hire you guys to do my next full production demo video, where I give you all of my assets and we do a real one. Cause I want to see what your team can do. If we like go all in on, like, let’s create something awesome. That’s going to be a project. But you got to do this. I mean, it’s super affordable. You knock it out all at once. You guys know what you’re doing, it’s a real life audience. It’s not a fake, it’s not like a fake simulated thing. It’s it’s a real experience. You meet other speakers and personal brands. And then the other thing is, you know, Stephen, you mentioned this, this has basically become, even though this is not technically a brand builders group offering, this is basically become a brand builders group guided experience because we created some tools exclusively for this that are available for our clients and anybody who finds out about this.
RV (00:50:21):
You know, even if you’re not yet one of our brand builders group clients, but you, you, you think you could use Stephen services. If you, if you come through our, our page brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers we will give you some tools. We have a tool called the demo video template. We also have the brand builders group guide to photo shoots specifically for personal brands, all the different looks that you need. And we’re giving you these tools to make sure, in addition to what you guys provide, anyone who comes from us that comes to you is going to be dialed in. They’re going to know I’m coming to knock out this and this and this and this. I know where I’m going, what I’m doing, it’s aligned with my brand positioning statement. So, you know, and by the way that that URL that I keep mentioning, it’s just a free call.
RV (00:51:10):
So if you, if you go there, you’re just going to see samples of these assets, and then you request a free call with Stephen’s team. So this is, this is not a brand builder group offering officially, but you, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the show, because of your journey, because of our relationship with you as, as a customer, a strategist, you also, now through brand amplifiers have become one of our preferred vendor partners. Frankly, we don’t even know anyone else like after 25 years of being in this business. Well, how long? No, I guess more like 20 years we’ve been in the business for 20 years. I don’t even know anyone else who does what you, what you guys have put together here.
SS (00:51:56):
Yeah. It comes down to, what did I need to get to where I’m at today? What did I learn from that experience? What are the problems that we can solve? Which is something that is very clearly taught at brand builders. And as a result, we have tried to think through every facet of not only the experience for the personal brand, that’s going through the experience, but everything that they could possibly need to launch, right? You can’t, you’ve got to launch, excuse me, you’ve got to launch you’ve you’ve, you’ve got out there, you’ve got to get yourself out there. And you know, and we simply want to treat people how we want to be treated. We’ve kept that as close to cost as possible, because I knew how expensive it was to kind of get stuff going and it’s even more expensive and stuff’s disjointed. So we we’ve done everything in our power to put together a, a process and a program that helps messenger. Mission-Driven messengers, man, get to get to market. Right. That’s what you call a mission-driven messenger. So I’m happy to be one of them.
RV (00:52:47):
Yeah, absolutely. So anyways, the, I hope you’ve gotten, you know, just value from this conversation in general. I mean, Stephen did this because it’s a cautionary tale as well, that you can spend so much money. So fast trying to piece together, different things from different places. That’s why brain builders group we’ve created our, our what we call them, our brand implementation partners. It’s our trusted vendor network, which you’re one of because we just see our clients spending money left and right with people that have no idea, really what they’re doing, it’s totally disjointed. It’s, it’s, it’s falling down, but also going, even if it’s not with, with brand amplifiers and Stephen’s team, at some point you have to do this, you have to one of my favorite pieces of advice that I received from a mentor was a guy named Randy gage.
RV (00:53:39):
And he told me this early in my career, he said, Rory, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream. Yep. Like at some point you have to be the one that says I’m going to, I’m not going to put my money on a, on a house or a car or into someone else’s business or into like via stock or angel investment. Like at some point I’m going to take my money and I’m going to place a bet on me. And I’m going to say, I feel called to do this. And there are certain tools and assets that I need to do this. And I’m going to invest that money as a bet on who I am and what I feel called to do. And, you know, if you trust brand builders group we’re extending that trust to Stephen’s team and brand amplifiers because he, even though brand amplifiers, technically is not a brand builders group offering.
RV (00:54:37):
It is one of our trusted vendors. And Stephen is a strategist of ours. Like he is in this all the time. Like he knows the stuff that we teach and we know him. And if something goes wrong here, this is our reputation at stake too. And we care about this cause we want to see this work. Not, not so much because we love Stephen, not so much because we get a small referral fee from this, if you do do it. But because we know you need this to succeed that sooner or later, you’re going to have to solve this problem of photography and, and video funnels and sales videos, and, and most rare and difficult of all that speaker demo video. And we think this is a rare opportunity in a, in a very rare chance. Like I said, I don’t even know anyone else who does do this.
RV (00:55:26):
And so we need this to work. We want this to work because we care about Stephen, but, but more because we care about you and because we’ve been there before, and Stephen has been there before we’ve experienced this, this problem, this massive frustration that I can’t get new subscribers because I don’t have a quality video funnel. I can’t get conversions on my sales page because I don’t have a great sales sales letter video. I can’t get hired to speak because I don’t have a demo video that shows people what I can do for them. And we’re working together to try to solve this problem for you in as fast as a way as possible. So, so the, the net, the net result of that question was, you said, this is like two to three days.
SS (00:56:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Give me, you know, give us, give us three days. If you need everything, go ahead and come for the week. Be part of the experience, share in it. You know, that way you can hopefully go home and tell your friends and family about the experience that you had, you know, but more importantly, come get, you need, let us serve. You, let us help you, let us help, help you make you the million dollar brand that you are.
RV (00:56:29):
Yeah. And you feel that way when you go. So anyways I hope this episode was valuable for you. I mean, just hearing Stephen’s story and how, you know, he’s become an entrepreneur and the power of clarity first, right? Like I hear that as a, as a consistent theme here is don’t start producing assets until you’re clear, right. And if you’re not clear, come to brand builders group and get clear, then go to Stephen and produce, produce these, these visual assets. So I, I hear that you know, I hear very powerfully this idea of that. You gotta be a beacon of inspiration for other people because that proves to themselves that they can do it. And just believing that you’re worthy of a voice and then B, and then being willing to invest in your own dream. But if you are interested in this, then go to brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers.
RV (00:57:19):
It’s, there’s, there’s nothing, there’s no credit card or anything there. You’re just going to see samples of the work of the experience that we actually went through. You’ll see me there, our team there, you can read about it. And then if you’re more interested, then you can request a call with someone on Stephen’s team and they will help customize, customize a package for people you’ll help them. And it depends on what you need. Not everybody needs a photo shoot. Not everybody needs a demo video. Not everybody needs a video funnel, but those are things that you will need at some point. And you might be able to knock them all at once or upgrade what you have or just, you know, make contact with these guys. So we’ll link up to that, obviously in the show notes, brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers Stephen, you have such a great story. We feel so lucky to attract people like you as clients and strategists. Again, like, you know, I think we pay our strategies really well, and we strive to always like, be able to pay them more. But you know, clearly for you, it’s, it’s not about the money. It’s just about this desire and this whole business of brand amplifiers, basically as, I mean, not basically it legitimately came out of a frustration, a problem you struggled to solve for yourself that you said, Hey, I, I I’m in a position. I can help other people solve this.
SS (00:58:34):
Yeah. I mean, I, you know what, it’s one of the greatest things that you guys have taught me and I’ve heard of repeatedly is if you see a problem in the world and you have the capacity to solve it, don’t let a night go by until you try something, you know? And that’s at the heart of everything we’re doing. A lot of the folks that I’ve worked with as a, as a strategist they had the same, the same concerns, the same means, okay, well, I got my clarity down now, what do I do? You know? And, and, and they’re in my heart and my mind, as we were thinking through this thing, man, it’s going to be special. I firmly believe it.
RV (00:59:03):
Yeah. I mean, I’m excited about it. We have total confidence in you. And you know, the other thing was is that this episode, you know, whether you’re interested in doing this now or later with Stephen’s team or not is just going at some point, people have to be able to sample you. Like they have to be able to see you. I call it chicken on a stick. I’ve been using that phrase a lot chicken on a stick. Cause like when you go to the whole foods or Costco or the food court, they give you a free piece of chicken on a stick because they know once you taste it, you’re going to go, Ooh, that was awesome. I want to buy the whole, I want to buy a bag of that. We’re the same way as personal brands. We’re like basically our marketing assets is just chicken on a stick.
RV (00:59:44):
It’s like, here’s a chance to sample me. And if people aren’t buying from you, there’s a good chance. It’s because you haven’t, you either don’t have a sample available or you haven’t spent enough time in care crafting and preparing that sample in the same way that you would craft and prepare an entire meal. And, and so you need to, you need to give them a chance to sample. You need to put out something that you’re proud of. You need, you need for the viewer of that video to get to S to experience a small taste of what it’s like to do business with you. This is a chance to do it. And whether you do it with brand amplifiers, or you do it on your own, you, you need to do this at some point and be willing to invest in your own dream. Stephen, thanks for sharing your story. So much of this. I think emulates our story. And so many of our, our values are aligned. And so anyways, man, I hope that a few of our people will take you up on it. We’re going to take you up on it again. I’m going to be investing money with y’all to, to produce my next demo video. I want to see what you could do at full, full strength. And we just, we just wish you all the best for your continued inspiration,
SS (01:00:56):
Dude. I, I, I firmly enjoyed law or love being part of this community. And so grateful. You gave me a chance to share my heart today. Thank you, Man!
Ep 175: How to Write a Great Book with Allison Fallon | Recap Episode
Welcome back to the influential personal brand recap. I am joined today by my wife and CEO. AJ Vaden she’s back back with us. She’s been, she’s been gone for a couple of weeks, but great to have her back. We’re talking about Alison Fallon and breaking down the interview that we had, and we’re just going to share our kind of top three and three. So since you’ve been gone awhile, I’ll, I’ll extend you the floor for.
Okay, good. So my first, my first kind of recap, takeaway or highlight that I jotted down was this a comment that she made very early in the interview and it kind of set the tone for the rest of the interview, in my opinion, which is great writing comes from great thinking. And I thought it was really good cause she was like, great writing is not about great grammatical structure and commas and periods. And she goes, that’s what editors are for great writing is about great thinking. And I love that because it really tied in to a couple of other things that popped up that I’m sure we’ll discuss later. She said, but the challenge is, is that most great thinking never turns into great published books because of our own writer’s block. And I thought that was really well connected because I think so often we don’t think, well, we’re not good writers.
And we think about being a good writer is in the grammatical sense, not in the thinking sense. And so we go, well, I’m just not a great writer. I, you know, I don’t know where all the commas go or I don’t know how to get my thoughts on paper. And I just love it. It’s like, well, it’s not about any of that. It’s that great writing comes down to great thinking. And then you work with editors to take care of the rest and what an amazing relief of going. Oh, there is a way for me to get my thoughts into a book and create this established thought pattern that I so believe in and get it out into the world, but it doesn’t require me being such a writer and the, in the, I dunno, traditional sense. So I just thought that was pretty revolutionary in my opinion. Yeah.
I had never heard anyone say that. That was my first takeaway too. I thought that was so profound. I wasn’t even copying off your paper. I came up with that legitimately as it may take away. And there were, there’s a couple things that stuck out to me cause you know, people ask us all the time to say, Hey, this brand builders group helped people write books. And the answer is yes. And they’ll say, well, do you publish books? And it’s like, no. And we do edit them. No, I think what we help with the thinking we help with the organization.
That’s why I like it so much. Cause it’s, it’s related to what our skill are. Right.
We actually farm out the editing and the publishing to our implementation
Partners. Yeah. And
We also are not the pros on how to design the book and how to get it distributed and warehouse and all that stuff. We’re good at. We’re good at the, and then we’re good at the selling, but all the actors outsource the production part. We have to outsource the rest of the rest of it. But yeah, that’s super powerful. The other thing that I think is, is a worthwhile you know, lesson here that I’ve learned over the years is there’s a lot of different types of writers, writing and writers and editors. There are content editors, which like, you know, I think of Marianne who is via my content editor, our content editor for the books.
There’s a lot of hands going around right now.
Yeah. Hands, but they’re just listening. So they can’t, they can’t, they can’t all, not everybody can see, see that. But you’ve got content editing, which is really about the thinking and the organization. And then you’ve got more of like copy editing, which is like the commas and the periods. And then, then you have copywriting, which is different. That’s more of like the marketing and sales copy that would go on the jacket. And those are a couple of different types of skillsets and different types of people. If you’re thinking about launching a book or doing a book that, you know, just to kind of think about that. So we both have the same first one. What was your second?
My second one I’m kind of connected to that was around this writer’s block kind of concept and idea. And I’ll kind of say this again, but I wrote it down and the way that I translated what Allie said Alison, this year that Allie or Alison goes by Allie, Allie, I’ve got her in my mind is Allie. So Alison alley, but most great ideas never get published due to your own inability to get your great thoughts onto paper and most great ideas. Never turn into great books because of your own writer’s block. So in order to get past that, it’s really somewhat simple is that great content comes from trying to simply provide value to the end reader. So instead of thinking about yourself all the time of, well, what if no one likes this? Or what if it, no one buys this? Or what if me, me, me, you just stop that and you go, what would provide value to the person I’m trying to reach?
What lesson have I learned that could, that could provide impact for someone else? What is something that I have done that I hope no one else ever does? So if I can share this and save you some time, heartache, trouble money, or this is something that I did do. So instead of just thinking about, well, what if it doesn’t hit the list? Or what if no one buys it? Or what if it’s not any good? What if no one likes it? What if people hate it, stop all that nonsense and just go, how do I provide great value? And one of the ways that you can start providing great value is just to start answering valuable questions that your audience has just go through. What are the questions that you wish you would have had the answers to back when, and start answering those and develop your content from there. And she goes just a simple way of getting out of writer’s block as you start answering questions. Thought that was brilliant. We talk a lot about that. But, and the context of a book about it was so helpful and simple, which is so important to all of you who are listening.
You know, it’s funny, cause I think of myself more as a writer today, but so many people don’t think of themselves as a writer. And I never thought of myself as a writer and I was worried like, are they going to like my writing style into what you’re saying? The best writing style is just something that’s valuable to the reader, like who they don’t really care about the others. So I think that’s so good. My second takeaway was this a super quick little nugget that she said, which was, she said, think about what’s your favorite book and then who published it? And none of us would actually know the name
Unless you’re a publisher, unless you’re a publisher. But even though I bet a lot of publishers yeah.
They didn’t publish. And so I think, you know, we get caught up a lot of times and like who’s the publisher and you know that, and it’s like at the end of the day, it’s just what you’re saying. It’s how do I create a valuable book? I mean, the there’s there’s value. Each publisher has different values and there’s, you know, there’s pros and cons of, of different things. But at the end of the day, as, as the author, it’s your ideas that matter. And don’t get so hung up on whether it was self published, traditionally published, you know, vanity publishers, just like in between just create an awesome book and help help some people. So that was a great reminder.
Yeah. Well that actually has a really good transition into my third and last point, which is when it comes to asking yourself, should I try to go the traditional route and try to get a traditional publisher to publish my book? Should I self publish it? Should I do this hybrid model? Like what’s more important, right. But which one should I really go for? And I loved what she said. She goes, well, it’s a really simple question. And remember to ask yourself this, what’s your favorite book. Okay. Now who published it? And if you don’t know, there’s your answer because it doesn’t really matter. And I think that’s really just kind of so awesome. I think we do get so hung up on that. And she said, the truth is, is that most great books. You never know who the publisher was because it doesn’t matter.
It’s about the great content and truly what’s way more important than the type of publisher you have is your own ability to distribute the book. It’s your own personal distribution plan, which comes down to your platform, which is, well, how many people can you get it in front of, on your own without, depending on a publisher, because publishers don’t sell books, let’s just call that what it is. They’re publishers, they’re not marketers and they’re not sellers per se. They’re publishers. It’s going to be up to you anyways. So why not focus on that in the first place of going, how am I reaching people on my email list? Who am I speaking in front of? Who’s like, who subscribed to my podcast? Or how many podcasts am I on what’s my social media reach, but what, what platform do I have? What distribution do I have with that platform? And that’s the much more important question to ask versus who’s going to publish them.
That’s such a, such a good reminder. Cause you think about it. You know, when you start on the journey, you think that the quality of the book determines the sales success of the book. And it’s not really that it, I mean, that’s a part of it, but it’s like the quality of the book is directly and in proportion to the number of people, the audience, the author can get in front of. Yeah. So that’s really good. But the, for me, the third takeaway was, was just kind of a different way of thinking about it. And she said, if you’ve got an idea that’s been gifted to you, you feel this prompting on your heart, this calling, the word that she used really stuck with me. She said, you are the steward of that idea. Like if you’ve been gifted, this, it now means that you are the steward of it.
You, it is your responsibility. It’s your obligation. It’s your, it’s your duty, it’s your privilege to carry this idea and sort of, you know, birth it into the world. And that was just really powerful for me to go, okay, you know, you want to be a, a big author and you want to impact lives. But just the idea itself is something that you’re, you’re stewarding. And that, that means that somebody else out there needs that idea and you gotta be accountable for delivering that. So I love that beautiful stuff. Make sure that you’re listening, go back and listen to the episode. If you haven’t. Allie drops a lot of little nuggets and tidbits. And we really love her and recommend her for a couple of different things that we introduced clients to. But that’s all we’ve got for this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Keep coming back. We’re here for you, cheering you on, see you next time.
Ep 174: How to Write a Great Book with Allison Fallon
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call to talk to you soon on with the show.
I trust people who my good friend, Donald Miller trust and Donald was how I originally found out about the woman you are meeting about. Alison Fallon comes it turns out we’ve got several mutual friends, several mutual clients that we share. Allison was living at Donald’s house for a minute here as she, she moved in her family moved to Nashville, but Allison Fallon is an award-winning author. She’s got this new book that just came out. It’s called the power of writing it down a simple habit to unlock your brain and re-imagine your life. So she’s a speaker but she’s most well known for being a a writing coach. In the past she’s ghost written very successful books. She’s worked with New York times bestselling authors. She’s worked with newbies and really her company finds your voice specializes in helping people to basically complete their manuscript more or less to get the ideas out of your head onto paper, into a book proposal, into a manuscript, you know, and or manuscript and then get them out into the world, which is important if you are building a personal brand.
And that is why she’s here. So, Allie, thanks for Coming on.
Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
You are so cool. And I’ve known you for years. I mean, I guess I knew you because you used to work with Don official. Like
I did. Yeah. I was on full-time staff for maybe a couple of months until I realized that I didn’t, I just worked better as a contractor and a freelancer and whatever, but we, I’ve worked very closely with their team for a long time teaching workshops and traveling and teaching keynotes and that sort of thing. So
I know, and you know, we know several of the same literary agents and you just, you’ve got such a great reputation in this, in this space of writing. And I, you know, I’m probably AJ and I probably get, I would say at least two pitches a month from people who are writing coaches that want to come on to this show and, and, you know, so there’s very, very rare where we bring someone on and it’s because writing is such an intimate process and it’s, we really, really trust people who have, have really, really done it. What do you think is the biggest kind of hurdle here for people? And, you know, I know you talk about in the book about the blank page and getting started, and can you kind of just set the, the stage of like, what are the mental roadblocks to writing? Because I think that’s, that’s as big of an issue to overcome as the actual, like writing itself
A hundred percent. Yeah. Well first let me say, I’m honored that you are having me on the show, hearing. You say that you get requests and you’re having me just, I don’t take that lightly. So I hope I can do justice to this conversation because there’s definitely a lot to talk about, but I think you’re making the point here that I would make, which is that the biggest obstacles to actually writing our book are mostly mental. In fact, the number one obstacle that I see most people face when it comes to writing their book is just feeling like they aren’t a writer or a lot of people will say to me, well, I’m not a real writer. I’m not a writer. I’m not really supposed to be doing this. What they don’t realize is that this is a conversation that I’ve had with almost every client that I’ve ever worked with, regardless of how many books they’ve ever sold, whether or not they’ve ever been on the New York times bestsellers list you know, whether or not they make a full-time living from their writing, I will hear people whose names you would recognize and whose books you’ve read.
Say to me, I’m not really a writer. I’m not a real writer. I wasn’t ever supposed to do this. A publisher came to me and asked me if I would write this book. My field is really this other field, but I just got sort of sucked into this idea of writing a book. And here I am, and I have this book out in the world. So I think it’s helpful for people to know here, understand that they’re not the only ones who are facing this. It’s like the, it’s like a different version of imposter syndrome specifically in the field of publishing where people feel like, because I don’t necessarily call myself a writer. That means that I don’t have the chops to get this finished. And it’s just simply not the case. I mean, the biggest predicting factors to whether or not someone will ever publish their book have far more to do with how passionate do you feel about the topic or subject matter? How important does it feel to you to have this book out in the world? How much do you want to be considered a reputable source when it comes to this topic? And those are really the things that drive people to get to the finish line far more than whether or not they have any training or background in the specific field of writing.
So once you get past that hurdle what do you think really makes a great writer? And I think like, and I want to just talk about the pure form of writing here, right? So there’s a whole different conversation, which is, you know, half the battle probably, which is the marketing, but yeah, just the purity of the written word. Yes. What do I need to know about that? That makes, would make me a better writer.
I’m so glad you’re asking this question, because I say to writers all the time that great writing is really great thinking and we get confused. We think that great writing is great grammar, and this is no knock on great grammar. We need good grammar and we need good editors to fix our grammar and edit our grammar because you know, the you’ve heard like all the jokes about how, if you get one piece of grammar wrong, it changes the whole meaning of the sentence. It’s like, let’s eat grandma, let’s eat comma, grandma. You you’ve heard that example. So, okay.
I haven’t heard that. Exactly. It’s funny. It shows you how original, like you take things like assume everyone has heard it, but if you’re not in the same space, even yeah, it’s true.
So grammar is important. It matters because you know, changing the grammar can change the meaning of the sentence, but when it comes to really creating a great book idea, it’s much more about how can we think about this idea versus how can we execute it perfectly. So I teach writers that great books start with great questions. And so if you’re not happy with where your book idea is, let’s ask some better questions. So so that’s a lot of the work that I do with writers is, is helping them dig a little bit deeper, ask better questions, really get to thinking about this idea in a multilayered way, in a multi-faceted way to think about it from a lot of different perspectives. And then to think about how this idea is really going to impact your reader. I teach authors outline books based on the transformation that you want to take place in the end reader. And so that’s, that’s sort of the path that I take writers on, but I think the biggest paradigm shift is really moving away from feeling like, well, if I don’t know exactly where the commas go, then this isn’t going to be written well, and that’s just not true.
Yeah. And, and when you go to the go to the written part, so, I mean, I love this distinction that great writing is really great thinking fully believe that and support that. When I think of the concept of great thinking, my mind kind of goes to logical right. It’s like I’m, I’m presenting some logical arguments, some logical structure. I mean, let’s table fiction for a section for for for a minute. Most of our audience are, are non would be nonfiction. We do have, we do have some fiction clients and stuff, but you know, when I think of non-fiction there, you know, that even my mind kind of goes to the logical, how do we find the balance? Or how much does the balance of logic and emotion matter? Does it depend completely on the book? Is it like some books are all, you know, they’re all heartstrings and emotion. Some books are all logical. Should we always have a balance of both? How do we find it? Is it more one than the other? And, and then, you know, if I’m an emotional person, how do I access more of that logical, if I’m a logical person, how do I access more of the emotional? So can you just like touch on that balance for a second?
Yeah, I totally. So we divide books into two categories. This is connected. I promise, but we divide books into two categories, either story-driven books or content driven books. And I think of content driven books, the content driven books are driven by the content. So this a really great example of a content driven book would be a how to book or some sort of educational resource. That would be like a really clear cut content driven book I’m picking up
Storybrand or take the territory, ran from Donald Miller, even take the stairs from, from like our first book. Those are con content books,
Content driven books. It doesn’t mean that they won’t include stories, but they’re much, they’re usually much more logical, rational, reasonable, analytical, linear. And then there are story-driven books, which are driven by the story. So when you pick up a story driven book, you’re not wondering, you know, how do I like cook chili? You’re picking up a straighter and book because you’re wondering like, will this person survive this obstacle that’s in front of them, will they be able to overcome the obstacle? What’s going to happen to them next, who they meet? Who do they meet tomorrow? You know, wild by Cheryl strayed is the most common example that I give with a story-driven book, because you’re not wondering, you know, the book is about a lot of things. It’s not just about hiking, the Pacific crest trail, it’s about grief and it’s about drug use. And it’s about, you know, a coming of age and all kinds of things.
But you don’t pick up the book because you’re wanting to know more about illicit drug use. You pick up the book because you’re wanting to know what happens to this woman and does she make it to the end of the trail? And that’s what a story-driven book would do. So that those two categories don’t exactly match up with what you’re talking about, about like, you know, some writing being more logical and something more emotional. But I think there, there are some parallels there. And a lot of times people will say to me, I don’t know if my book is content driven or story driven, because I definitely want to tell a lot of stories and I’m going to tell some personal stories, but, but there’s still some content that I want to teach. And there’s a lot of gray area. There’s some books like wild that are obviously story-driven and then some books like, you know, business made simple that are obviously content driven, but then there’s this middle ground where like an author, like Bernay Brown for example, is a great example of an author who tells a lot of stories.
And there’s a lot of emotion in what she talks about, but the book is really content driven. It’s focused on delivering information and sometimes the medium that you use to deliver that information is a personal story. And sometimes in order to deliver that information to the reader, you need to sort of tug at their heartstrings or get them to feel a little bit emotional, or even be a little bit vulnerable as an author. So the question I don’t think is about like, how analytical should we be, or how emotional should we be? It’s more like, who is the end user? Who’s the reader that’s going to pick up this book. What kind of transformation do you want to create inside of the reader? And then what are the tools at our disposal in order to create that transformation that I’m trying to create. And then these two categories that we use of content driven and story driven are more just helping us think through, you know, like what’s the frame, what’s the structure that we’re going to use to deliver the message.
I mean, one thing I love about those questions is, you know, who’s the end user, what kind of transformation in the reader is that they are audience centered questions. And the biggest mistake that I think first-time authors make is they’re all self-centered questions. Like, am I smart enough? Is this good? Will anybody like this? Like, are they going to know I’m not really a writer? And it’s like, they’re so caught up in their own self centered questions. They’re not even thinking about the actual, like, how do I make this valuable for the reader? And if you kind of scent sit and center on that, it’s like, whether it’s logical or emotional, it’s going to be good.
I mean, think about a book like five love languages. And this is not meant to be a negative statement about this book at all, but the book is so simple and it has sold better. I don’t know the exact current stats on the book, but I just, I I’ve heard a lot of statistics on the book because publish I, the same publisher who published my first book, that book is still a hundred percent funding that publisher still to this day, it’s been translated into more languages than almost any other book. It’s I think at one point it was selling more copies than the Bible. So to think about the kind of reach that that book has had, and then the way that the, the five love languages themselves have become totally ubiquitous to the point where I can say, like, what’s your love language, and you know exactly what I’m talking about, regardless of who you are. It just is a good reminder to us that your, your idea doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be very intelligent. And I’m not saying that that idea isn’t intelligent, I’m saying it doesn’t have to be like some really complex way of thinking about the world. All it has to be is helpful for people and it will land.
Yeah. I, I love that and I, I think that’s so true. In fact, I think it’s, you know, like I think back, so like my second book procrastinate on purpose five permissions to multiply your time, you know, it’s based on how to multiply time and there’s this focus funnel. I think the ideas are so much more eloquent and forward thinking and advance that book. Doesn’t sell a fraction as well as take the stairs, which is basically like, you know, more or less it’s do, do hard things. Like it’s a kind of a motivational, but I, you know, I was reading a book here about social media strategy recently, and it was kind of saying the number one thing that matters more than anything is not how advanced the idea it is. That how advanced the idea is it’s how shareable is the idea, how transmittable is the idea, something like five love languages. It’s so transmittable because it’s so freaking simple and applicable. Whereas, you know, sometimes I think some of the stuff that I’ve written is like, it’s too complex to be easily transmitted. And so people like it, but they can’t transmit it
A hundred percent. Yeah. It also feels important to say that there are a lot of different reasons to write a book. And sometimes we write a book because we’re trying to understand a very complicated topic. Or sometimes we write a book because, you know, we, we feel this like creative work coming through us and we kind of can’t, can’t not do it. I would imagine in your audience, those reasons to write a book or maybe more secondary, and the reason I would recommend most people in your community write a book is because it will establish you as a credible expert in your field. It basically tells people, this is the thing that I want you to know me for us. This is the thing I want you to remember me for. And when you’re, when that’s the end goal for your publishing life, it actually makes the act of writing a book much simpler because it doesn’t have to be like this complicated or like really, it doesn’t have to be like this, like masterpiece, you know, like
You’re not trying to win. You’re not trying to win a Nobel prize. You’re just trying to like, make sure that people know, you know what you’re talking about
A hundred percent. So it actually makes the process of writing the book a little bit easier. And you know, like I said, all of those reasons are great reasons to write books, but I work with authors on establishing at the beginning. What’s what does success look like for you? What is the reason that you’re writing this book? Because, because there are so many different reasons to write a book. If you set out trying to achieve them all, you’re probably achieved none of them. Whereas if you set out to write a book so that people remember you as the guy, who’s the expert on commercial real estate, you’ll write a very different book than if you’re trying to channel some great piece of art, you know?
Yeah. I love that. And I I mean, I think that’s so good at even, even determining up front with like your whole publishing strategy, what kind of publisher do I need? And all of that is, is like just being clear on why, why are you writing the book? And it kind of, it kind of points to one of the things I wanted to ask you about in terms of the New York times bestseller list. So brand builders, I’m letting the out of the bag a little bit, depending on when this comes out. So we conducted an independent nationwide research study, weighted to the U S census. We had an independent firm conduct this study about the importance of different factors when it comes to hiring somebody. And we asked them things like, how much does it matter to have a Ted talk? How much does it matter that they have a blog?
How much does it matter that they have a YouTube channel or a podcast or a large social media following? And one of the things we asked them was how much does it matter that they have a New York times bestselling book or a wall street journal, bestselling book. And only 36% of people said that they would, that they would be more likely to hire someone because they have a wall street journal, bestselling book, but 62% of people said they would be more likely to hire someone if they have testimonials on their websites from real people who have experienced an actual transformation. And so it’s like in the industry, we all think of like, I gotta be a best-selling author, but our study literally proved that people don’t give a crap. Like they don’t care about that only you care and authors care, but I do think it matters.
Cause I do think it’s like, sure, you know, in the industry it matters, right? Cause it’s like, if you’re going to get on someone’s podcast, it matters. If you’re going to get on good morning, America, it matters to that. But it doesn’t matter to the end user. So when it comes to the New York times or wall street journal, or just when it comes to the bestseller lists, how much do you think the writing of the book matters as it relates to hitting those lists? Getting on them? Cause I know you’ve worked with authors, you’ve probably ghost written books that have actually hit the New York times. How much does the writing matter when it comes to hitting those lists? Do you feel like,
I mean, I wish I had more like verifiable data, but just from Ali’s brain, it matters very little if at all. Yeah, I mean, I would say there are books that have been in the New York times list that are the kind of books you would save forever and you would underline and that could really transform a reader’s life for the long haul. And there are also books that have been on the New York times list that I don’t think are all that good. Now that’s subjective. It’s my it’s it’s Allie’s opinion. But I would imagine probably if you went through the, the, you know, hundreds of thousands of books, I don’t know how many books have been on the New York times list over the decades, but you would probably find some books on the list that you don’t think are that good either you don’t even think are that interesting.
You think like why would anyone ever pick up this book? So I think that’s good and helpful for authors to remember, because there are a lot of things that you can do if one of your publishing goals is to get your book on the New York times list. But I think it’s helpful for people to remember that there are only certain people who consider that a requirement, they consider it a benefit. They see the sort of value in it and those people, most of them are inside of the industry. So these are the people who you mentioned, it’s national media outlets that care about New York times bestseller it’s other publishers or agents who care about New York times bestseller it’s other authors who, you know, you may be sort of like, they might be colleagues of yours who might see that you hit the New York times bestseller list.
And they might think like, Oh, that gives you extra credibility in my mind. But for the most part, the end user, the consumer doesn’t pick up a book like blue, like jazz by Donald Miller or the shack by William Paul Young, because it was on the New York times list. They pick up a book like that because someone handed it to them and said, you have to read this book. So that’s social proof is far more valuable than the, the tag or the, you know, the title of New York times bestselling author. Although I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with striving for that, that title either. I mean,
So in this study, because we asked, you know, New York times bestselling author versus wall street, journal, bestselling author versus self published, author people, more people said that they value a self published book than a wall street journal bestseller. Like the average person doesn’t even delineate between the two.
Yeah. When people get really caught up about whether they should self-publish or traditionally publish, I will ask them like, what’s your favorite book? And they’ll tell me, and I’ll say who published it? And the fact of the matter is most consumers don’t have any clue who published the book. Wow. People, unless you work in the industry, because I work in the industry, I pick up a book off of the shelf and I go, who published this? And I flipped it, flipped open to the title page and I’ll find out who published it. Most people don’t have any clue who publishes books. So the only way that you can know that a traditional publisher published the book is because it’s sitting in a Barnes and noble, and that’s the biggest that’s the biggest obstacle that currently exists in 2021 for self-published authors is distribution. That if you choose to self-publish your book, it means your book. Won’t sit in a Barnes and noble. It’s not going to sit in and books and books a million, but also the fact of the matter is in-person retail is down significantly since COVID happened far fewer books than ever have been sold in in-person retail stores. The internet happened. Yeah. I mean, truly. So like even my book is my book is traditionally published. It’s in all of the brick and mortar stores, but 90% of my book sales are coming from Amazon.
Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s like getting in the store is not the thing that’s going to make you sell millions of copies. It’s it’s your platform will drive millions of copies. And like, man, they’re going to buy it off of Amazon or wherever anyways, like that’s a really, that is a really, really great insight Allie, in terms of like who nobody even knows who published it. I love that. And it’s yeah, you read it. Cause your friend, like, you know, really it’s like you had three friends tell you, that’s how I do it. I’m like my mine is minus the three friend rule when I’ve had three people who I respect that are like, dude, you have to read this. I’m like, okay, let me like, look at what this is really about. And, and you know, so many books sell thousands and thousands of copies never even hit the New York times. They sell hundreds of thousands of copies, never hit the list. And to your point too, like, why are you doing it? If you’re doing it to help you get clients for your business, your clients literally don’t care if you’re doing it because you’re trying to build respect and notoriety and credibility among your peers and like the industry. That’s a little bit of a different story. Yeah.
This is actually an interesting story along those lines that I heard from a colleague of mine the other day, who, where he helps in book marketing. And he was telling me about a book that I know and love. And probably many of your listeners have heard of called boundaries, Dr. Henry cloud. And he told me that, that book, when it first came out, it didn’t hit the list. And it, for a long time, it didn’t hit the list. And it wasn’t until years later that the, with some marketing help, they pulled that list out of, or they pulled that book out of a backlist and got it to hit the list. So now it does have that title of New York times bestseller. But it’s just a great example. There’s very few people in our space who wouldn’t have heard of the boundaries empire, you know, like boundaries and boundaries in dating and boundaries and business and boundaries and leadership and whatever. And it’s been a very influential book in so many people’s lives. And to think that it wasn’t immediately, you know, like number one on the New York times bestsellers list is kind of helpful because of what we’re trying to do is create positive transformation in our reader to know that we can do that without necessarily hitting a New York times bestsellers list.
That’s a Dave Ramsey is the same way. That’s the same. That that’s also true about total money makeover was out, I think for like nine or 10 years before it hit the list. And that’s where it’s like, those are the books where it was well, in his case, he also built a huge platform in those 10 years and that made a difference. But you know, it’s also great writing, but Dave Ramsey is also, I think he’d be the first to say my ideas are very simple. Like by design, they are transmittable, but the, they are very simple. He’s, he’s not trying to have the most complex investment strategy out there. It’s the opposite. It’s like the simplest plan they like get debt free. So this has been super fascinating, Allie. I I want everybody to know. Okay. So if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash publish brand builders, group.com forward slash publish you can learn about Allie she’s.
She has a course that several of our clients have been through called prepare to prepare to publish. But if you just go to brand builders, group.com forward slash publish, there’s different, there’s different ways you can do at different investment levels. And you can kind of check it out, but I’m telling you, we, we have it. I mean, I can think of five clients off the top of my head, that brand builders group works with that also work with Allie. And these are people that you would recognize. There are people that we feature on our website and stuff. So yeah, she’s doing a great work. Obviously we share a lot of the same philosophies. Is there anything else, Allie, that you would want to leave people with? I mean, just, you know, someone that’s debating out there, should I write, should I not, or they’re kind of struggling with some of that self doubt or does my story even matter? What would you, what would you leave them with?
I would just leave them with the encouragement that if you have a book idea, I believe that book idea has been gifted to you and that you are the steward of that book idea. So nobody else is going to get that book idea. It’s yours alone. You’re the only one who can, can communicate it in exactly the way that you could communicate it. And I feel like that that gives us hearing that gives us a little bit of like responsibility and accountability over this idea and delivering it to our readers in our particular way. The, the voices in your head that tell you, someone else has already done this. I’m not a real writer. I don’t know if I have the time to do this well, what if I put in all the time and no one ever reads it just know that those voices are happening in the heads of your favorite authors, whose books you’ve read and who you keep on your shelf and who have changed your life too. So you’re in good company.
I love it. Alison Fallon, ladies and gentlemen, go follow her on Insta and tag her on Facebook and say hi and give her a shout out and hello, Alison. We’re so grateful for you, and we’re glad you’re living in Nashville now. And we wish you the best. Thanks for thanks for having me.
Ep 159: How to Launch a Powerful Podcast with John Lee Dumas | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. AJ is back.
So enthusiastic
You’ve been mom and hard and working hard and all the things she’s been CEOing and momming, but she’s back for John Lee Dumas, but which is great because she’s going to share with us her top three highlights from the interview as am I. And why don’t you go first my dear?
I will gladly go first. So my first take away from the podcast episode with John Lee Dumas is the whole concept of the first mover advantage. And I think that is so interesting because nobody really talks about that. That often in terms of being first in the space means a great deal. And I love he talks about this later, so it’s one of my points down the line. So I won’t get too much into it, but you don’t have to be the best if you’re the only one. I think there’s a lot of merit to just really thinking through it’s like, what’s really missing out there. Like what, what is the space people aren’t filling and fulfilling that people need. And that’s what John did. And he looked around, he said, there is no one who is giving daily content to the everyday entrepreneur. It’s just not there. And so he filled that space. He was the only one and he self-proclaimed that he sucked for a long time. I don’t know if that’s accurate. But he’s been out of our long time. And I think the biggest point there is that it means a great deal if your first, right, it’s that early adopter syndrome, you’re filling a space that no one else is filling. So you don’t have a lot of competition. It’s just you. So you don’t have to be the best if you’re first.
That’s good. Yeah. It’s worth it. It’s worth, it’s worth a look of, of, of knowing that. And there’s, there’s places, you know, like clubhouses happening right now. And there’s a lot, it’d be like, you know, you see certain people going all in on clubhouse trying to like take advantage of the first, first mover thing. So well that’s really good. I, you know, you pointed out the fact that he went to a daily podcast, which really was the first person and still to this day, I think the only person that I could say that I know personally that has consistently done a daily podcast. And you know, that was my first takeaway was just getting the raps. Like he’s done 3000 episodes and the, the reps count for a lot. I mean, I love, you know, I did martial arts when I was younger and there’s a famous Bruce Lee quote that says, I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. Once I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. And it’s like, well, yeah, you’re going to get good at hosting. Yeah. You’re going to have a good process at booking guests and promoting when you’ve done it so much. Yeah. So that was just a good, whether you’re a speaker, you’re a writer or you’re a video editor or you’re, you know, whatever it is, you’re trying to get good at that the volume, you know, counts, counts for a lot. So that was a good reminder. Yeah.
Yeah. And honestly, that is a great intro into my second point. And I’ve loved this. I’m totally gonna steal this example, this story from this interview, and it was this pottery examples. If you haven’t listened to them, I won’t do it justice. They go back and listen to it if for no worries, a reason to just like steal the story and use it. And I loved it. But the short, the short of it is there was a a class and a professor divided the class. And he said for the first half of the class, I’m going to solely grade you on the best piece of pottery that you can create over the semester. That’s it? I don’t care how many you make, just the best one. Then the second half of the class had nothing to do about the quality of it. But it had everything to do with I’m solely going to grade you on how many pieces that you make quantity, quantity. And at the very end there was no surprise that the people who had done the most actually had the best. And I love it because you had asked the question like, okay, like, let’s talk about it. Like what’s really more important quantity or quality. And I loved his response. And he said, it’s both because quantity always leads to quality,
Like drop. And that was my takeaway.
And it was like very similar to like the first mover advantage. It’s like, if you’re the first and you just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, like you will be the best. And it’s you know, back to the Bruce Lee example, it’s like, it’s about getting your reps in and quantity leads to quality, but you’ve got to get those reps in and there’s, that’d be that consistency and you just gotta be out there constantly and it will make you better. And I love that. So that was my second.
It’s great. It’s great. I, for me, the second, the second thing is funny. Cause I’m going to, I’m going to quote some Gandhi and Bruce Lee in the same episode. But you know, Gandhi said be the change you want to see in the world. And you were kind of talking about this earlier, where it was like John created a podcast that he thought the world needed, but also that he wanted, that he would have wanted. And I feel like brand builders group is a lot of that way for, for us. I mean, at least, yeah. It was like, why isn’t there someone who can just spell out how all of the steps building a personal brand fit together, podcasting and speaking and writing books and digital marketing and you know, and media, and, you know, I had a paid advertising and like, why is nobody coordinating a strategy?
And I think that is what brand builders has been for us. And when, when you hear us say you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, that’s kind of what we’re talking about is, is going, what is the thing that you would have helped? What is the thing that would have helped you succeed faster? What is the thing that you would have wanted more of, or that you would’ve wanted to discover sooner? If you can create that, not only is it going to, you know, serve a market that you understand, but you’re going to do a really great job. You’re going to have a strong, visceral connection to those people because you’re just, you’re just living it. So, so create the thing that you want to see. And, and we cannot tell you what this is, but Aja and I have been dreaming up a TV show for,
I think it’s more, Rory has been
Driven up with TV show for
A while. I have been entertaining ideas.
Yeah. But that’s not that dissimilar from lots of our relationship. I’m always like throwing out all these crazy dream ideas, but, you know, anyways, if that ever happens, it will be because it’s like, man, I can’t believe that nobody has done this show yet. Like this is the show that I want to see. And
You might be the only person who wants to see that,
But even if, so that is a great reason to do it. Like if you go, I, I would love this. I would watch it. Then somebody else probably would too probably. And that’s what D you know, that’s kind of what he did. So anyways, that speaks to your uniqueness more than like a hole in the market. More of like what you’re passionate about moving onto my third. Okay. With that let’s transition to AJC.
And this was very, very much towards the end of the interview and completely separate from my first two points, but just, I loved the realness of him walking through his offer for his new book, which I love just uncommon success. I think that’s such a cool like concept. And but just, I love it was Vic so simple as you guys were actually talking through what he’s doing and how compelling it was to just be direct, honest and personal. I think that it says a lot of like the honest truth is I want to move a lot of books. And if you buy lots of copies of the book, I will have higher results on Amazon. And it’s like, thanks for just being transparent. And it kind of makes it easier to be like, yeah, I feel, yeah, I want to help you out versus like, Oh, he’s only doing this because he wants to, it’s a good, so much better and easier to be like, Oh yeah, he’s coming right out with it. Like no shame, no beating around the Bush. It’s like, this is what it is. It’s honest, it’s direct, but it’s also personal. And that’s what every offer should be because it doesn’t make anyone be like, Oh, well, wonder why they’re doing that. Or I wonder what that’s really about, or is that really authentic? And it’s really hard to argue with just honesty.
Yeah. That was my third takeaway too actually was w it wasn’t even related to what he said on the interview where she did it. He did a direct ask, like, Hey, go, you know, it really would help me out if you go buy my book. And I love what you’re saying, that it’s like an offer. Doesn’t have to be this like crazy thing. That’s all intimidating. And that you like spend years preparing for you just go, Hey, here’s what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. And here’s how you can help me. And it’s short and clear, but he also did the same thing behind the scenes when he asked us, Hey, can I come on the, can I come on the show? Will you, will you help promote, promote the book during its launch? And that’s, it was, he sent a video. It was like a, it was like a 92nd video. And it was super, it was personalized. He like, he used our name and he just said, here’s what I’m looking to do between these dates, will you help? And it was like, it was so clear and it was easy to say yes. So just tell people what you’re doing and, and, and offer them a chance to help and do it honestly. And clearly just exactly, exactly. As you said. So we had this here, look at that. We do have, we have things in common.
Well,
That is awesome. Our friend, John Lee Dumas said, Hey, support his book, check it out. I think you’ll get lots of, of, of worthwhile timeless principles and nuggets. And he’s just one of the masters of, of this space. And he’s built a really great personal brand and helped a ton of ton of people. And hopefully that in story, that story inspires you to go out and do the same. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Buh-Bye
Ep 158: How to Launch a Powerful Podcast with John Lee Dumas
RV: (00:07)
Hey brand builder Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show.
RV: (01:05)
Well, you can’t really have a conversation about building a personal brand and specifically about podcasting without talking to and about my man, John Lee Dumas, I mean, EO fire entrepreneur on fire is a podcast that is like, he’s like the godfather of podcasting. Certainly one of them his show now has over a hundred million total downloads. He gets like a million monthly listens. He’s interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, Seth Godden, all these other legends. And I’m excited because you probably know, or if you don’t know, you need to know him for his work and what he does at EO fire. But he also has a book really his first official book just coming out right now called the common path to uncommon success. John and I have known each other for years. I feel like it’s amazing to see everything that he has done.
RV: (02:02)
And you know, I was lucky to be, I’ve been on his show several times, three times, I think, and now honored to have him on mine. And he’s just a solid dude. So John, thank you for being here. Rory, whenever I get to hang out with you, whether it’s on entrepreneurs, on fire, your show, wherever that might be in the world, it’s a good day, man. So I’m excited to be here. Yeah. Well, and I appreciate you doing this. I know you’ve got a passion for the, for the entrepreneurs and specifically you understand our mission driven messengers, you know, that is our audience. And you know, I think when I, when I think of the common path to uncommon success, I feel a little bit, and maybe you can tell me whether or not this is true, but when you look at your success as a personal brand, in a podcaster, it’s pretty much been that it’s been a, a straight forward path. But you’ve had uncommon success because you’ve stuck to some core fundamentals. And so I’d love you just to take us back to in the beginning, launching the show and from there to a hundred million downloads, what are the most important principles that we need to know to be growing our brand?
JLD: (03:25)
So, I mean, Your brands is really building your life. I mean, how are you building your life? I mean, I’m from Maine, very small, tiny town spent the first 18 years there went to college and an army scholarship. So post army, you know, I did a 13 month tour of duty in Iraq actually while I was deployed. So I kinda got like the real deal, Holy field army stuff, not just like I’m playing army. And I went through six years of struggle. Post my military experience from 26 years old until I was 32. I knew nothing about building a brand. I knew nothing about building a business. And I tried a bunch of things. Law school dropped out corporate finance, commercial real estate. Like none of it works. One thing I finally did right towards like my fifth and six year during that six years of struggle, the sort of listening to great content, reading, great contents, you know, the right business books, the right podcasts.
JLD: (04:20)
And that led me to, to find these podcasts, you know, many that you’ve been a guest on Rory that, you know, interview entrepreneurs. And there were some great shows that were out there. Unfortunately they thought it was the right move to have one episode per month or two episodes per you know, per month that were going live on their feeds. And I was just, just voraciously consuming these content, this content with, you know, interviewing entrepreneurs and their stories. I was learning so much from them, but there were so few of them. And so I remember saying to myself, I’m just going to go find that daily podcast, that interviews entrepreneurs. So I can just have a fresh episode waiting from each day. So I went home, loaded up the Apple iTunes back in 2012, searched all the way through it. And the show did not exist.
JLD: (05:09)
And it was literally like, like Paul McCartney waking up and being like, wait, the song yesterday doesn’t exist. Like I just, I had a dream about it and it doesn’t exist. I can just make this hit song from a dream. I was like, this is like a dream. I can’t believe a daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs doesn’t exist. Cause that’s like, that’s the show that I want, that’s show that I need. And so I said, Hey, let’s follow Gandhi’s advice. I read about it somewhere. Like be the change you want to see in the world. And I said, I’m going to create the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. So the day I launched Rory back in 2012, entrepreneurs on fire was the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the only, and so like I built this brand entrepreneurs on fire that one because I was the only game in town delivering a daily podcast, interviewing entrepreneurs, it’s called the first mover advantage.
JLD: (06:07)
I had the first mover advantage I won as a result. Was I good? No. Was my interview style good? No. Did I bring on good guests? Yes. Thankfully like they made the show good, like listened to ball. And then I put in the wraps and I got a little bit better. Every single time I did that. And like, that’s the story of entrepreneurs on fire. So I challenged people who are building their brain right now. We can take this in any direction you want. But I challenged people to like, look in the mirror and say like, how am I being the best at one thing that I’m doing? Like, how am I being the only, like the quote that I love is the higher, the barrier, the lower the competition, a daily podcast is a flip and high barrier. I had no competition. I built a moat around my business and I won as a result. I’m the quote unquote godfather of podcasting. Not because it was the first, but because I was the first person to go all in daily, seven days a week. Now you and I are talking, as you mentioned, the intro 3000 episodes, a hundred million listens, 1.4 million listens every single month, eight years in a row of a multiple millions in net profits, all from that one big idea.
RV: (07:19)
Well, and you know what I love about one of the things. I mean, there’s so many things I’ve always, always loved about you. Not the least of which is you being a military man, which I always have much love and respect for, but I is, and, and I don’t mean this to sound bad at all is to go. You didn’t try to even compete so much on my quality. You just went for quantity and that’s that you don’t hear about that as a strategic decision that much, but to go well. Yeah. Where else were people gonna go? You know, like that, I think you hear so, so do you believe in quality over quantity? Or do you think it’s quantity over quality or is it both
JLD: (08:04)
Question? Cause there’s, there’s different circumstances. There are absolutely times when quality is going to win. Period. End of story. The highest quality product is going to win a lot of the times. Then there are times you look in the mirror and you say, well, I can’t be highest quality because I’ve never podcasted before. I’ve never interviewed somebody before I am going to period. End of story. Stink as a podcast host for the foreseeable future. So I’ve got a win some other way. I’m going to win on quantity. Do you think the person that just went actually there’s actually, I’m gonna back up. There’s a, there’s a fantastic, fantastic, like real case that I’ve read. And one amazing book. Maybe, honestly it was even years. I was like this, this pottery class and the professor divided them into two separate sides of the room.
JLD: (08:52)
He said the left side. I’m only you on your best pot, just one single best pot. That’s all it means. So just take the whole semester, but only present me one pot and give you a grade on that one pot. He goes to the second half of the class. I don’t, I’m not going to grade you on any quality whatsoever. I’m only gonna grade you on the amount of pots you finish. That’s it just the quantity. And guess what? At the end of that semester, not only were the best pots, all from the people who did the highest quantity, but the people who just had to do one good pot, none of them were good because they was just trying to get one good pot. They weren’t putting in the reps, they weren’t actually doing the work. So I was a really bad podcast hosts for like 480 episodes.
JLD: (09:39)
Like that’s really the number that I look back at. I was like, okay, four 81. I was kind of good that episode. It took a year and a half of daily podcasting to put in the reps to become a quote unquote decent podcast, or just like it took those students 50 pots of just cranking it out. Cause they could care less. It’s like, I’m only getting graded on the quantity, but then they started getting good almost despite themselves. Cause they already even trying to get good. It didn’t matter if they were good, but they became good because they put in those flipping reps and this one person trying to create the best pot ever. It was just one they stunk. They never put in those wraps. So as both sides of the equation, listen, I buy the best products because I love the best, the highest quality. But if you, as an individual, can’t be the best, the highest quality step day one, step one. How are you going to get there? You’re going to put in the raps, you’re going to put in the quantity and you’re going to get it.
RV: (10:36)
Yeah, yeah. I mean that is, that is my story of, of professional speaking was like, I was in my twenties, I spoke 304 times for free, like back of a Perkins restaurant, two people in the restaurant, me on a Friday night, like doing my speech and, and you know, and now people see me on stage in front of thousands and thousands of people and they’re like, Whoa, you know? And it’s like, no, you don’t understand. Like it was quantity like quantity is so underrated. It is so underrated. Now. What’s interesting. One of the things I love about podcasting sometimes, like I actually think I enjoy being a podcast host more than I like being a podcast guest. I actually like the role of being the student and the interviewer more than the teacher. And you know, it’s interesting about podcasting is the nature of it is someone else can be the star. Like you can be the host and, and it’s like, you’re bringing in the stars and you did that right away from day one. You always had great guests, like from the very, very beginning. So you also kind of had a both situation going. Yeah. So that’s
JLD: (11:54)
Exactly my mentality. I said, Hey, if the spotlight’s on me, this podcast is going to fail because I’m not good. But if I can bring a guest on, I can ask them four or five really meaningful questions, quickly turn the spotlight on them and just step back and shut up. They’ll make this podcast listen to bowl. So Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, you know, Tony Robbins, Barbara Corcoran. Like I brought them on. I ask a question, I step out of the way and I shut up and boom, they took it off and they crushed it. And that’s what they do. They were great. They had put in the reps for years. I knew how to ask a question and I stepped out of the way. And so that’s how I got my feet wet. That’s how I put in my reps. That’s how I put in the work. So would you,
RV: (12:40)
When you talk about quantity, so of course, you know, your book is just coming out and this is your first book, common path to uncommon success. Do you feel like quantity and reps? Is that a part of that story? That it’s just, it, no matter what you’re doing, that, that ties in
JLD: (13:00)
100%. So this book, the common path to uncommon success, it is a combination of these 3000 interviews I’ve done over the past nine years of again, interviewing people like Rory, Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, and just sitting down. And this was in late 2019. I sat down and I literally like wrote down, like, what are the core foundational principles that Rory has that Tony has that Tim have that these successful entrepreneurs have, that they possess? What are the similar touchpoints that they’ve all gone through on their journey to uncommon success? And I wrote them all down. You know, I matched up the ones that were identical and I got rid of the ones that didn’t make any sense. And I was left with just 17 core principles that every one of us and by us, I mean successful entrepreneurs that we have as foundational core principles, I put them in chronological order, step one to step 17.
JLD: (14:00)
And then I sat my butt down in 2020 and for two hours every day for eight months, I wrote this book 71,000 words, 273 pages is my first traditionally published book. It very well could be my last, I mean, I’m not saying I want to write books for a living. I wrote, I needed to write this book because it needed to get out there. This book is the book that people need in their hands. And they’re looking for financial freedom and fulfillment. But man, I put everything in there. I got nothing left. I don’t have any illusions of grand jury. Like, this is what you need. If you have a question, there’s the answer crashing.
RV: (14:38)
Keep your energy up. I mean like 3000 is a flipping ton. 3000 of anything is a ton. Like I don’t know that I’ve been on stage 3000 times. I definitely I’ve done close to a thousand interviews. But like every time I listened to one of your interviews I’ve been interviewed, like I know that you’re doing a ton of interviews now as a guest, like somehow you have this energy that is always turned on. Like where does that come from? How do we do that? And is, is that a part of, of this you think like, is that a part of the 17 principles here?
JLD: (15:24)
Absolutely. It is a part of the 17 principles. In fact, it is principal numero UNO. When you see Rory Vaden onstage, guess what he is living in his zone of fire. He is living in that zone of fire. When you hear me in a podcast, whether I’m being interviewed or interviewing somebody else, I am living in my zone of fire. That is it. So guess what? Step one chapter, one of this book, identify your big idea. So few people have identified their big idea. They don’t know what their zone of genius is, what theirs on a fire is, and they’re not living it every single day. That’s why I have so much energy because I feed off of this. I’m an extrovert. I love having these conversations. I thrive in them. This is my big idea. It’s not everybody who’s watching. This is not your big idea. What I’m doing, what Roy does, this is not. But your big idea is out there. It’s up to you now to find it. So that’s step one, chapter one. And Roy is my video coming in. Okay.
RV: (16:30)
Yeah. So I think you are a great example of like living your truth there and being the zone of fire and you feel it. I mean, it’s it that conveys it transfers through, through the interviews. One of the other things that I’ve always admired about you personally, I actually don’t even think I’ve ever told you this. I’m gonna use the word transparency. He is it, it is a couple examples of this. You have always posted your income your income statements, your Mo what’s it called the Mo it’s a monthly, monthly reports, monthly income reports, right? You you’ve always been so trans a trans parent with how you’re making money and what’s going on. The other thing is, is with your, just this launch that you’re doing for this book you know, you sent me a video and I know you sent it out to some others of just a very direct two minutes.
RV: (17:28)
Like, Hey, this is what I’m doing here. Here’s, here’s a few ways you can help me. I’m just asking for your help. And it was amazing as the recipient, you know, I’ve always like been in launch mode. How powerful, the just clear, open, honest ask it. Wasn’t like buried within something there wasn’t like some like, you know, Hey, help me and I’ll help you in there. No, it was, it wasn’t pushy though. W at all, it was, it was just very like, and so I feel like there is some strength about you that you’re willing to just like, be open about your intentions in what you’re doing. How did you get to be that way? How do you think it helps you? And then how do we get to be more like that?
JLD: (18:20)
I think life is short. Life is short. We’re here on this earth for a blip of time. And I’m here to have fun, to make an impact, to add value to this world. And when I write a book like this, where my heart, my soul, my blood, my sweat, my tears, I poured into it. And I know with a hundred percent certainty, and this comes to confidence, and this is something we can talk about later, cause this is a huge part of it. But when I know the a hundred percent certainty, a hundred percent confidence that this book is going to help. So many people, basically every single person that reads this book and genuinely falls the principles and takes action is going to have a massive impact positively on their life. I’m not going to be shy or I’m not going to, you know, kind of come at things in that.
JLD: (19:07)
Half-Ass kind of way. Like I want to be direct and honest, and I’m gonna say, Rory, you have a great platform. I’ve had, I have a great platform. I’ve had you on my show. You’ve rocked the mic. I’ve helped you, you know, promote I’ve helped grow your brands and build your audience. Now it’s time to flip the tables. I would love to come on your show. I would love to share with your audience, the value this book will bring to their life. By the way I want you to, pre-order not just one but multiple copies of this book.
RV: (19:34)
Well, and you did.
JLD: (19:38)
Why? Because Amazon bases their bulk order off of my pre-order. So pre-orders are so, so importance. And that even went forth. And I said, Hey, I actually want you to consider a bulk order because I have amazing bulk orders starting at 12 books, going up to 1200 in a bulk order will help me cause that’s how HarperCollins basis their print run off of bulk orders. And lastly, and then that was the last part was all about. I’d love to find a way to get on your platform and your show in front of your audience, because you built an amazing audience. And it was a personal video. I recorded only for Rory. You know, I started by obviously saying his name and giving a couple of personal examples of, you know, things that we’ve done in the past together.
RV: (20:15)
I literally was, I was like, what technology is he using to do this? Cause I was like, it was, so it was called sit down and record a personal video for your personal friends, doing a personal ask. And I was so blown away as, as just the recipient of it, John, I forwarded it to some of our clients and I was like, this is how this should be done. Correct? Honest, confident, not arrogant. And like a personal ask. Like it
JLD: (20:48)
Was so powerful. Did you say, and by his book, that’s my point though, is that like, I literally was just like, Hey, this is what I’m asking of you. And I gave the reasons why though, too, like, I didn’t say, can you prepare some copies? Like, I think it’s important to give people reasons and clarification. Like why, you know, you tell the story, like the story’s huge. It’s like Amazon will base their pre-orders of my book based off of pre-orders. Roy knows that he’s a very successful author. And when I say that, he’s like, Oh, I get why John’s asking for not just one order. He’s not like being greedy because he knows I’m not making money from these books. You know, sales. I mean, I’m with Harper Collins, you know what? It’s not this isn’t a money play. This is, I want to get this book out, ranked high, as many sales as possible so that I can help as many people as possible. And in fact, we can talk in a second about a way that I’m losing a ton of money on every pre-order literally, but that’s not the point like this, isn’t a financial play. Like I’ve made my money in other ways, over nine years, this is, get this flipping book into your hands. Yeah.
RV: (21:52)
And you, you know, this concept of give value, you know, give you build relationships like before you ever need something, you’re doing that with the book. You’re I know that you’re, you’re giving away like hard cover bonuses. Like isn’t it. Three, is it? It’s all three of your journals.
JLD: (22:10)
My mastery journal. I am shipping you my freedom journal and my podcast journal. These are $150 of journal value that I’m shipping to everybody’s door. Who pre-orders one copy. Like most people like order. Pre-Order 10, 10 copies of my book and get all three of my journals. Pre-Order one because I just want you to get one and read it. If you want to get two and three, I’m not going to stop you of course, but I want you to get one of these books, read it because you’re going to love it. And you’re going to tell your friends about it and it will spread organically that way. And by the way, these are fantastic journals. So I’m going to ship them to you, to your door with one single pre-order. And I hope you love them. And it’s going to cost me a lot of money to do so, but that’s not the point.
JLD: (22:52)
The point is, how do I make this a no brainer for people that I know need my book? Cause I know there’s a lot of people out there that are like, like this is $16. This is $28 a hard cover. This is a $17 audio book. That’s not insignificant money for a lot of people. And I don’t take that lightly. So I want to make this a no brainer value for you. So that’s just one bonus. I have four other bonuses. I won’t bore you now, but well let me, yeah. Yeah. Here’s what I want y’all to do. Go to where
RV: (23:20)
We go to uncommon success, book.com and here’s the thing one you should buy the book. Like I, I believe in John, I love him and love what he’s doing. Th you know, he’s done all of these interviews. He’s put this together. The bonuses are incredible. The other reason why every single one of you listening to this specifically should go is because you should go to uncommon success, book.com and look at how launch is done.
JLD: (23:46)
This is a great example of the bulk bonuses that are laid out. You’ve got links off the, Oh, it’s very clear. It’s very simple buying in bulk a personal message from you. It’s just a simple clean website. And it’s like, this is how a book launch should be done. So even if you’re not going to buy the book, you should go to uncommon success, book.com to see a real life example of someone who has spent years developing an audience, thousands of episodes, hours and hours of reps living in a zone of fire, pouring into people’s lives, being transparent. And now that culminating with a, with a traditional book launch, which is exactly to a formulate T what we teach, build the audience and then release, release the book. And I just, man, I’m, I am so proud of you brother. And I’m just grateful for you.
JLD: (24:42)
And I hope this book just crushes it and that you just keep doing what you’re doing. Well, listen, I don’t take this lightly. I, I really appreciate, you know, our friendship and, you know, your kind words, they mean a lot. And, and you know, this is one thing that I hope people that are watching and listening really take note of is when you’re building your brands, like your network is your net worth. Like you got to find ways to connect with the right people. Like there’s a reason when, why, when Roy is on my show, I end each episode by saying, Hey, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with Rory and JLD, so let’s keep up the heat. Cause I want you to realize that’s how I went from this 2012 law school dropout kind of loser to, you know, a year later making a hundred thousand dollars a month.
JLD: (25:29)
And now I just crossed my 89th month in a row of net profit, a hundred thousand dollars a month. And I’m not saying it’s all about the money and all about this and all about that, but it is about financial freedom. It is about fulfillment. It is about living in your zone of fire. And those are all the things that Rory’s achieved that I’ve achieved, that other people have achieved. The you can too. And why not make it easy on yourself by learning from others in the common path to uncommon success. It is the book that will get you there. I’ve bought and read every one of Rory’s books because they’re awesome. And I know if you’re watching this, you likely have as well. That’s smart. Keep educating yourself, keep investing in yourself. And that’s not just money. I’m much saying like invest enough and buy this book. It’s the time it takes time to sit down and read a book and really, you know, apply its principles. But that’s what winners do. That’s what I did in 2012. And I was struggling. This is what you can do today. The common path, the uncommon success is the name of the book. Uncommon success book.com is the URL. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, buddy. We wish you the best. Keep kicking butt and stay on fire brother. Thanks Rory.
Ep 149: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Rory Vaden is here, Roland solo. Again, we’ve had some weather challenges around town and we’ve had a crazy time trying to get coverage for the babies. And so mama CEO, AJ is off helping manage a million things. And so I’m solo on this recap edition, but this is an important one. Bob Glazer is the episode that we’re breaking down. If you didn’t go listen to that, make sure that you do, because Bob tells the story and talks about the story that we know we should do. We, we hear about it.
We kind of know intuitively off. I’m going to build my personal brand. I should write more and I need to write, and I’m not writing enough and I’m writing, but I don’t like it and it’s not working. And he tells that story about why it matters. And you can’t hear it. You just, you can’t hear it enough. I mean, it’s, it’s just about impossible. I think, to build a personal brand without having to, at some point master the written word. I mean, even if you are a video personality, like even if you’re a TV personality, there is something there is, at some point comes along in your journey where it’s like, you have to write a book. People want the book that you’re writing articles, you’re writing copy, of course, for your emails and for your website and marketing copy. But I think this, the idea of writing articles and just the power of the written word is so important because one reason is because of Google because of search engine optimization, the written word can be indexed and searched and shared and reviewed quickly and highlighted.
And you can go to specific points like you can’t, you can’t do that with videos. It’s, it’s really hard, you know, without going, Hey, go watch this video at minute one, you know, 10 minute, seven seconds, 38 seconds in, right? Like people don’t do it. And, and, and Google and the search engines, don’t, don’t yet fully index and you know, track. And it’s just not the, not the, the way of the digital world. So the written word is really important. It always has been important. I think it will always be important. And, and Robert is talking about how you can use the written word to grow your personal brand. It is free traffic. It is trustworthy reputation building. I mean, to this day, when people say, Rory, how do I become a speaker? Like, how do I get hired to speak? Like how, how do you get these gigs where you’re standing on stage in front of all of these people.
I want to do that. How do you do it? It’s very simple. I always tell them that the, it has never changed. The number one reason that people hire you to speak is because they have seen you speak. That is number one, right? We talk about all of that in world-class presentation craft in that course, and then also full keynote calendar. Those are our two courses. One is the artist speaking, the other’s, the businesses speaking our events, our courses that we teach, but the other, the number two reason, which is why I’m bringing it up here. The number two reason why or how you get booked to speak is because someone has read something that you have written, right? So number one is they saw you speak. They said, Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I need you to come do that for my people, for my audience.
But number two is they read it and they said, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like, this is what I need. My, my people, my audience, my, my fans, my customers, they all need to see this. Like, can you come and do it? And, and so the written word is powerful and, and the written word is the currency and the backbone and the spine of search engine optimization, which is, is like the core of, of digital marketing, right? And, and, and, and content marketing in the written word. And so this is just an important to hear about someone who has built their personal brand, mostly from the written word. And, and it’s, it’s really powerful. So anyways, here’s my top three, my top three takeaways for you and for myself, just as, as a recap, right?
So the first one, which
Is not unique, it’s not unique to this interview, and it’s not unique to Bob or to me, but you need to hear it. I’m going to say it because we need to hear it all the time is that it starts by asking, how can I deliver value for my eyes?
Like
That is the Genesis y’all
Of how this works is if you are not
Sitting and soaking and praying and meditating and focusing on how can I create more value for my audience,
Your brand,
Isn’t going to make it, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to get consumed with all the noise you’re going to get frustrated. Like, because if it’s all about you and your vanity metrics and your growth and your money and your, you know, your sense of fame or importance, like it’s going to burn out and, and re the written word, especially, you know, I loved, I loved what, what Robert said, where he said, look, I’ve been doing this for five years. And I figured out writing rewards the long game. It rewards the long game that, that search engine optimization as a hockey stick, right? Like it’s slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow spike. And that’s just, that’s the name of this game. Like, and it’s not just writing that, it’s all this stuff. It’s, it’s producing your videos on YouTube with eight views and 12 views and 20 views and 30 views.
And it’s like, the reason that more people don’t make it is not because their content is bad. It’s because they give up. Right. It’s because it’s discouraging. When you look at the numbers, it’s discouraging. When you go, gosh, I’ve been doing this for a year. I’ve been doing this for two years. I feel like nobody’s watching, nobody’s paying attention. And, and you know, that is, that is the path. But, but like, everybody dies on that path. And the first one or two years, there’s few people left when you get to your four and five and six and 10. And, and those are the ones you see and you go, Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. I want to be you. But it’s like the 10 years before, you know, at least five, I mean, don’t get discouraged in year one or two. And people, some of, some of us, like some of y’all get discouraged after three months.
And you’re like, ah, I’ve been posting videos every day on social media for three months. And now I, you know, I’ve got a hundred followers and it’s like, don’t even look, don’t even look until a year has gone by. And this is why being serviced centered matters, matters so much. Because if you’re, if you’re self centered in this pursuit, if, if your personal brand is really about you, it’s really about your ego. It’s really about your followers. It’s really about your money. It’s really about you feeling important and dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, if it is self centered, you’re going to burn out because you’re either going to hack your way there. And it’s going to be fake by doing all sorts of crazy stuff, or it’s going to be a slow build, and you’re going to go, man, I’ve been doing this for two years.
I’m not sure it’s working. And it’s like, if you feel that way, guess what it’s working because for everyone else who’s been on this journey, they tell the story, you listen to every single episode we do. Like all, all of us have the same story. And, and, and even for me, like, it’s so frustrating. Cause I already paid my dues once. Like I already, I already went on this journey and then started over. Right? So I mean, we, we exited a company and there were a number of things that went along with that. But, but the net impact is I had to start over. Like I just started my social media from scratch. I just start my blog from scratch, how to start my website from scratch, like start over. It is painful. And, and, and here’s what Robert said that I loved. He said, you know, I’ve been doing this for five years.
I’ve still never found a hack. And gosh, that’s so important to hear because I feel the same way I’ve been doing this for so long. I haven’t found a hack, right? The hack is provide a lot of value for a really, really long time. Like, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you need to hear it and you need to hear it every single week. And I don’t care if that’s, it. It’s like one of the top three takeaways from every single episode that you hear, we’re going to bring it up every time because we know how frustrating it is and how discouraging and how lonely and how empty and how hopeless it can feel and how you can be overwhelmed. And, and just beaten down that like, Oh, I’m putting in all this work. I’m spending this all this time. I’m putting in all this money.
Does it matter? And, and, and you have to be centered in service. You have to go, yes, it matters if only to one person, right? Like you have to stay grounded in that. And if you do it catches, it’s a snowball. It’s exponential. It’s a hockey stick. You know, like it is all of those things, but it starts by saying, and, and staying centered in how can I deliver value for my audience? You gotta live in that. You gotta, you gotta remind yourself of that. You can never forget that. It, it, it’s just, that’s the nature of the beast here. And, and it’s good. It’s good for our, it’s good for our ego. Like, it’s, it’s good to be reminded. Like, it’s not about your views and your comments and your likes and your engagement and your followers and your money and your duh. It’s like, it’s good to be reminded of like, no, I’m focusing on the one person who’s gonna read this.
I don’t care if one person watches this video, or one person reads this article. Like I’m doing it for that one person. And I am, I am doing it because I feel called in my life that, that there is some message inside of me that I feel called to share. And it is irrespective and independent of how many millions of people or how many zeroes of people ever see it. Because I feel called, which means there is one person out there that needs to see this. And that is why I do it. Not for vanity, not for likes, not for followers, not for comments, not for money, not for any false sense of importance or influence, but because I feel in my heart that there is a message that I was put on this earth to deliver, and I’m going to follow that prompting. And I will do it for as long as it takes, even if no one shows up that is the commitment that you gotta make.
And you gotta make it as a writer, as a speaker, as a content creator, as a podcast, host and producer at like, as a, as a, as a video producer, like whatever form of content it is that you just got to make it. And I’m telling you like, that is the battle. We have all of these amazing techniques and strategies that we teach and they frigging work. Like they’re really, really good, but nothing replaces that. So make sure you stay centered in that. Okay. Very good. My second takeaway this one, I don’t like as much, this one I don’t like as much was that sensationalism isn’t clickbait. Ah, I don’t like this one as much, but it’s a takeaway because it’s true. This one is also true this Sox, but it’s like, man, there is just a part of this that there’s just a game that you have to play to, to get ahold of people’s attention.
Like it’s, it’s weird, right? To say in this almost in the same breath, as you gotta be focused on your audience, which is, is still a hundred percent true, but it’s like to say that the vanity stuff doesn’t matter. And then to turn around and go, you know what? You have to not be afraid of a little bit of sensationalism. I don’t like it, but gosh, it’s true. It’s true. The data is true. It’s indisputable. People respond to all that crap. They, they, they do it’s it’s it’s it’s and, and here’s the way that I wrap my mind around, around being okay, to embrace a little sensationalism. Cause, cause y’all, I’m resistant to this, like this is not me. Like this is not the, this is not the way we play it at brand builders group, we’re playing the long game. We’re bringing value.
Our strategy is reputation. Our strategy is trust. Our strategy is, is ethical and honest and, and integrity. Like it is all of those things. And part of that is just going like, look, I mean, I think the way Robert said it, which hit me hard was he’s like people don’t click on the warm cup of tea titles. They don’t like, they just don’t. And, and the hard part is going, okay. We need to be willing to put out our content regardless of how many people are watching it. But at the same time, it’s like, we also have to be doing everything in our power at the marketing game. Like we have to do everything in our power to like communicate truth and honesty and integrity. But we also have to do everything in our power on the marketing game, because there’s a bunch of scam artists out there that we’re competing against a bunch of, there’s a bunch of negative images.
I mean, I would go so far as to say the devil is out there using every tool in his power to, to communicate false lies and propaganda and trash and, and negativity. And it’s like part of we got up, we got to stand up and go, you know what? I’m going to master marketing. Like I’m going to learn marketing. I’m going to do it because not because of the vanity for me, but because it’s like, if I’m going to, if I’m going to change lives, if I’m going to reach souls, if I’m going to impact people, I gotta be in front of people. Like if no, one’s reading the article, it’s not, it’s not doing any good. If nobody’s seeing it now I should be willing to do it. Whether there’s one person seeing it or a thousand, that’s what I just got to saying.
But at the same time, it’s like, I also want you to fight and scratch and claw and hustle and go, all right, how do we, how do we get in front of more people? Remember the reputation, formula results times reach equals reputation. Reach matters, reach matters. So there’s no, there’s no replacing the long game there there’s there there’s. We don’t want to be flash in the pan. We don’t want to be gimmicky. We don’t want to be empty promises. We don’t want to be over promise under deliver. We want to be substance. We want to be truth. We want to be valued. We want to be solid. We want to be honest. We want to be content, but we also need to have good packaging and a good wrapper and good marketing strategy and good and good tactics and good promotion because people, people got to find us.
And so when he was saying sensationalism, we’re talking about titles specifically where he said, sensationalism, isn’t the same as clickbait. And here’s how I processed. Here’s how I made sense of this because clickbait here’s, here’s what I, when I think of clickbait, what I think of clickbait as clickbait is bait and switch. So what is bait and switch bait and switch says, you know, click here to see a picture of, you know, Brad Pitt’s abs, and then you click here and it’s, it’s not a picture of Brad. Pitt’s abs it’s a, it’s a picture of, you know, it’s, it’s an article for how to buy my, you know, something that that’s, that is clickbait it’s bait and switch. It’s I Lou, are you here with one thing? And then I give you something that is other than that thing. It is not that thing to me, that is really when people say clickbait it’s bait and switch.
I do want to give people bait. I want to, I want to set a hook. I want to give them an appetizer. You know, the way that I think about it is like, when you go through the food court at the mall, they give you a bite of chicken, you know, honest toothpick, and they hand it to you and they go here, you know, it’s a sample, right? So they, they, they, they get you to salivate. They get you, your wedding, their appetite, your, your, your drawing, their interests. You do have to do that. And some of that is, I mean, he uses the word sensationalism. I, I, I hesitate, you know, for me, I’m just so reluctant to take it all the way that far, but, but maybe, maybe I need to be more aggressive. I mean, frankly, maybe this is why my brands my, you know, have grown slower than, than they could have is cause I haven’t embraced this.
Cause it’s like, I’ll tell you this, for sure. There is some other person out there that is not providing as much value who doesn’t have the depth of expertise, who is a lot more slimy and shady and unethical and they’re getting clicks, right? Like they’re getting the attention because they’re, they’re unafraid to just bait people in. And so that’s part of what you’re competing against. Right? And so the good people we got to learn to compete here a little bit. Like we gotta be willing to, to, to play the game, not in bait and switch, but in bait and deliver. Right? So that would be my theme here is rather than bait and switch bait and deliver. But I want you to bait, you got to set the bait, right? Like you, you got to hook them in there’s you can’t just throw a hook in the water and have no bait on it.
Like the fish aren’t biting. There’s God, there’s got to be bait there, but it’s not bait and switch it’s bait and deliver. In fact, it’s really bait and over deliver, right? That’s what we want. Not bait and switch bait and over deliver. That is what it’s after. But you gotta, you gotta, you gotta bait. You gotta be good at the bait. Like it’s just an, it’s a necessary part of this. And I wouldn’t even say it’s a necessary evil it’s it is just simply necessary that we are, we are battling for attention span. Like there is a battle that the especially the digital world is, is, is a, is a, is a 24, seven, three 65 battle for attention span. And, and, and we are in a battle. We are competing for people’s attention. And if you have valuable ideas, if you have good ideas, if you have worthwhile products, if, if you have substance, if you have truth, if you have integrity, if you have honesty, then you also be it.
You have to be willing to fight that battle, to get those people over there. What good is it? If you have the cure for cancer and nobody knows about it, not good, you gotta, you gotta be willing, but bait and deliver, not bait and switch. So sensationalism me. I mean, I might not, I might not sign off on that and give that the official brand builders stamp or Rory Vaden stamp, but I, I would sign off on, on bait and deliver. All right. So do what you have to do to get the viewers and the readers w you know, within reason, but you need to learn how to create better subject lines. You need to work to create better titles, which is my third takeaway. Okay. So my third takeaway was I actually went back through all my notes from this interview and just, you know, was, was trying to create a a list of great article titles.
Now, if you’ve been through our brand DNA event, our course, or our first course, or you’ve been through captivating content in both of those courses, we teach something called the five title tests, which is how to title your, your products okay. That you know, is kind of similar. But this list, this list is different. This list is for articles specifically, this is titling your blog articles and stuff, which, you know, I also think you can afford to be a little more Beatty with articles because they’re not as permanent as a book title or a coaching program title, or a course title. Right. That’s something like you’re going to live with for awhile. So but here’s, here’s some of the things that, that, that, that Robert threw out.
Ep 148: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer
Hey brand builder Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show.
A while back, I was in a mastermind, a true mastermind of colleagues of best-selling authors who got together to spend some time to share some of our secrets with one another. And Bob Glazer is somebody who was there, who I got a chance to meet, who I really have enjoyed following and learning from and watching here ever since, you know, he is like me a practitioner. One of the things I really love is he teaches not so much from theory, but from experience. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s the CEO of a global marketing agency called acceleration partners. And you know, he, he has they’ve won a lot of different awards for his actual business. The reason I invited him a lot of people come talk about, which is really through writing.
He is a regular columnist for Forbes, for Inc., for Entrepreneur. He really started his brand with something called Friday Forward, which was very simple. It’s a weekly inspirational newsletter that now reaches over a hundred thousand people. He is a podcaster, but also as a writer, he has written several books. He’s a wall street journal and USA today bestselling author of four, four books. And I just think he’s a really great example of somebody using writing to leverage his personal brand. So anyways, welcome to the show, Bob Glazer, thanks, Rory excited to be here. So, you know what I just shared about you? I don’t even know how much, you know, that that’s how I kind of view you as an outsider. When I look and go, this is what I see about what you have done. Would you say that’s an accurate assessment or, or would you say that you’ve built your personal brand based on something else or other other things?
I mean, it was no, I think totally accurate sort of by accident, you know, it started, it started within our industry. You know, I, I always felt like I could communicate clearly in writing and our industry is just devoid of thought leadership. And I started writing stuff that was a little controversial, a little different you know, people really resonated, you know, with people in our business was strong and I realized it really set us apart within our industry. And then I kind of followed the cam. Harold was a coach and, and Tucker and we, you know, there was no industry book. So we said, look, we’re going to, we’re going to write the definitive book about our industry and how to use it and, and really lean into that. And then along the way, like how we were growing our business, in those words that you were saying around culture and stuff, I, I B sort of became passionate about how we were.
I thought we had figured out some things and leadership and culture and, and, and started to then take that writing and share it outside. And, and, and, you know, in articles, getting, getting, you know, byline articles, getting columns, you know, related to the books. And then as you mentioned, the big thing that sort of blew up really unintentionally was a note that I just started sending to my team every week that was getting, that was just about getting better. Just about sort of some of the core things I believed in and pushing them to this notion of build their capacity. And basically it started getting shared outside the company to the point where I then opened it up. And when I opened it up, all these people were interested in it and it, and it kind of exploded and then turned into two books later on. So it w it wasn’t an, it, it wasn’t
When you say, when you say industry, you’re talking about like marketing agencies,
Partner, marketing, affiliate marketing, like really about like the opportunity within our industry. But, but we always were trying to do our industry better, but part of the way we did that was build a company that focused on development and leadership and people. And so it became almost these two separate trees of topic. And, you know, one of the things that I always say, I, because we work in affiliate marketing, I see people write a lot of stuff to try to make money. Right. I, I never, for me Friday, I actually got a lot of questions. I, I, I never was clear how it was going to help my business, whether it was going to make any money. I was getting really great feedback from people. And it made me the next week to say, how can I deliver value to this audience that, that, cause I’m making a difference for them and not worry about what I was going to get out of it. And, and probably the best thing I ever did for myself or my business or otherwise, but because, but I didn’t have a goal other than to add value to, to the readers every week.
How, how long did it take you? Like, so at you’re at over a hundred thousand subscribers on this, this week?
Yeah. Probably reaches about 200 now across LinkedIn and a variety of channels each week across in about 60 countries.
Okay. And, and how long, like when did you start it? Like how long has it taken you to ramp to five
Of years? And I think like anything I’ve heard, you’ve probably heard James clear, like we were, writing’s like, it rewards the long game. Like I think, you know, it it’s a hockey stick of both SEO and stuff, getting out, you know, it was probably, you know, w w you know, year three to four, I probably added more people than year, you know, w one to three. So this is the thing, whenever I see anyone looking for the outcome before they put in the work, I kind of think you have to put in the work and then hopefully hope for the outcome. I, I, I’ve never found a hack to, to doing that.
Yeah. I love that. You know, the hack thing is like, sure, little tips and tricks here are always good, but I’ve felt the same way. It’s like, no one, no one’s significant ever hacked their way there. It was value over the, over the long haul. Now, when did so writing for like Forbes and entrepreneur and E Inc, right. Those are things that I think really helped with credibility and all that. And also search engine optimization, and also just reach, like, there’s just flat out people who will find you there that would never find your own blog. So how do you, how did you get that? And when did you add that to the mix and like, how do you even go about getting one of those
Posts? Yeah. You know, a lot of times a book or something, or it’s just a reason to connect with people. And, and I think I had done some work with John Hall and you probably know him in his team, and I think they were able to help me. I was actually at a conference when I met the guy he had been on Friday for, we talked for an hour and he, he handled some of the Forbes columns, was able to get me that column. And then it was when I launched I think my elevate book, that part of the outreach and some of the PR connected with the leadership writers, they saw what I was writing about offered, offered a column, and then, you know, it’s like anything, once you have one or two, it’s much easier to go to the third and say, you know, I, I, I do X and Y I think one of the things that, that the mistakes that I made I’ve learned is, is I think sometimes you just try to create too much new stuff.
Right. I, I could adapt the Friday forward into an Inc article and do different angle. I learned to take the articles and put them on medium and put them on LinkedIn. And I really, in the last year or two, try to, you know, cause some of the commitments on those things that used to be pretty high, you know, in quantity to write weekly and, and, and for free, which is so, so it’s a lot to do. So I focused on syndication more. I focused on bringing something back from years ago and redoing it again and reaching a new audience. There’s always the desire, something new and shiny, but I, I I’ll bring back like one of my tried and true, you know, new York’s posts you know, into, into one of my things every two years. And I will do just as well or better than the first time.
So, yeah. Would you mind sharing with us a little bit about like, do you have a system for how you sequence that? And then also like, you know, are you, I know you’re saying now that you’ll repurpose on more like social, like you’ll,
Unless something like the LinkedIn or medium, right. You can bring stuff back as much as you want.
Now, were you having to write unique articles for each of these Forbes and entrepreneur and Inc like, like, were those when you first started, were those all new, new proprietary? Like, you’re only see this post here.
Yeah. Those have to be new, but then after two weeks you can take them to LinkedIn. You can take them to medium, you can take them to other places. Right. And they’re even in other places that will syndicate them. So you write new for them. But I would also have something where Friday Ford was a certain storytelling format, but I could take just the core essence of that and make a eight ink article about it. That was different, but on the same topic. Right. So just in terms of trying to leverage, and a lot of times, I know I knew the topic resonated, right. But, but Friday Ford is a storytelling and Forbes and anchor like a one, two, three, so you need to take it. And, you know, you’ve got to shift the format a little bit, but yeah, I, I think there are a couple of places, right. That require that it be new, but, but I was in the LinkedIn pulse program earlier, early you know, I have a 305,000 followers on the newsletter system there. I think it’s the number two newsletter. And so obviously that built a little flywheel around, you know, publishing on LinkedIn is as well.
Hm. Hm. Yeah. I, I love that. So, so what is your rhythm now? Like how frequently do you think I have to write a new article? Is it still once a week for Friday forward and then everything kind of emanates from that or, yeah.
I slowed down the new creation, so I read it on Friday forward. I syndicated on LinkedIn. I will then, you know, if I’m doing an article for ink or Forbes that is timely or something I want to write about I’ll then do that. I’ll wait the two weeks and I’ll, I’ll put it somewhere else as well. But I I’ve actually slowed down the new because it, it became, it became a lot. And, and, and that was easy to do actually, because it got complicated last year to write about things at certain times, just from April to may, to June you just certain topics you couldn’t write about. And, you know, didn’t want to write about COVID stories every, every week. So also, you know, you start looking at the data and, and, and what works and where do you see impact and where do you see, you know, the flip side of this sometimes is you can get caught up with, you might have a column somewhere or whatever, and it does nothing for you. Right? You got to kind of look after a year to say, look for the hundred hours I put into this. Should I have put them out? Where should I have created a course or written a book or, or otherwise. So I, I’ve tried to really look at the data and what worked and where are people hearing me from it. And I’m always sort of calling something every time I add something. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that’s true about anything, right. You could spend that time creating Tik TOK videos, or creating YouTube videos or creating whatever. But so at your peak, would you say you were writing like three new articles a week, five new articles a week,
But two, three a week. And it was, it was a lot of work. How long
Did that go on for
At least a year or two.
Okay. So, so you’re doing like two at the peak. You’re doing two to three new articles a week. And how for how long were you writing at that frequency?
I think about 12 to 18 months just to see if it made a difference, but I, but I had sort of an assembly line. Like I had the ideas, I do the drafts. I have some really good editors behind me and we’d have kind of a bunch in, in, in motion. Like I can write really quickly, but editing takes me forever. So that’s something I have people that can edit really fast. So I, you know, you need, you need a system, I think, behind that in order to do something like that.
So, yeah. So I agree. So the ideas thing is interesting cause I, I have yeah, I basically write on for kind of four topics, all influence. I think of my areas just influence, but I’ve got four different topics in each of them. I have a sheet with ideas for posts in each of those categories. How do you do your drafts? Do you sit in front of a computer and like, just type it, do you talk it out? Do you shoot a video and then transcribe it like
I I’ve had two getters I’ve worked with for years that, you know, at this point, understand me and my race. I have actually tried everything except for the video I’ve done recording and memos. I will do like a really deep outline where I’ll write a couple of the things and I’ll say, what we need right here is a study or a reference to this point, you know? And then I have some they’ll research it and grab it for me. So I I’ve tried a bunch of different ways, honestly, as long as you’re comfortable with it, like, like for me to like, I can get it done fast, it’s messy as typos, but I’ll just sort of say, look here, I, I got this all out. This is a thing. Can you just, can you clean it up? You know, for me
Are these editors like contractors? Are they staff or are they PR like, were they provided by somebody like else or did you just like find it person?
Well, I I’ve used outside. I think it takes three to six months to get to somewhere where like someone’s editing or stuff and they think it’s you, I I’ve worked with outside, but these were staff. So we had a head of content for our business. And then eventually I brought someone on who handled a lot of my personal stuff and writing, you know, it was a big part of that. So I think there’s two people I’ve reached that level too. I always, I always joke with her if he could write something and send it back to me and I would think I wrote it because one of the things that I, that I do when I’m getting to work with that editor is I make a lot of comments around their edits. So like, one of my things is I never used things. I have a thing about sort of super motives, like always or never things that big can be disproven. So if they ever edit without word, I will say, I wouldn’t use this word. Right. Like I I’ll never use always. I don’t use never. So I, I actually will try to comment to them and give them some of my like isms so that as we edit, you know, it gets, it gets better.
Yeah. We’ve we do a similar thing. Like we’ve been doing something very similar with videos where, you know, a video editor will be editing and then it’s like, I’ll make a comment specific to something I want them to change, but then I’ll make a second comment that says why this is, and then we add it to a style guide that it’s like a list of just if you’re going to edit for me, these things should always be there. I mean, that’s interesting, just like the super-light sieves and you go, don’t ever send me something with a superlative in it. If it, if you are, then that means
Something that says never, never
Send me something
Explained. I explained it to, I said, because again, in my writing, I think if, if, if you’re trying to get to the reader and you say this never happens, and if someone can think of an example where it happens, then you’re sort of discredited. Right. So I it’s, I’m conscious to never, never say that. Okay.
So, so, so that you have this process, you kind of idea that you just sort of like puke it out there in whatever format, and then you let the editors do it. And you’re just kind of like always running that production cycle. Why that’s what you did for like 12 to 18 months. Yeah.
We have one in early, early development, middle development, like late development. Right. And they’d be coming back and forth.
Yeah. But if you do 12, I mean, if you’re doing three articles a week, let’s just say, so that means you’re doing, you’re doing 12 a month. You do that for 12 months, you got 144 articles. Then basically from that point, you can repurpose and backlog again, switch things around and brush it up. And now you’ve got a stable plus anything.
And then you go to write a book or something eventually, and you’d realize that four or five of those articles are key concepts in the chapters of your book. In fact, I’m, I’m doing that for my next book. Now I did the outline and I was like, I’ve talked about this concept before I’ve talked about this concept before. So, so we’ll be able to pull in some of that stuff.
Yeah. Plus the data, like what you’re saying is going on the readers are really responding to this. It’s like this needs to be in the book and know, you know, the book’s going to be a hit before you publish it because you already have the data out there of going, I know people love this. Right.
I know they love this unless you blow the title, which is, you know what, I learned a lot from you on that, on that map.
Yeah. That’s pain. That is, that is the pain. I mean, it’s funny because procrastinating on purpose, that that is a lot of what ended up in those, that book was they were, those articles appeared on my blog and there, you know, like the 30 X role is this, the section that I wrote and it’s like, I never wondered if my Ted talk was going to be a hit because there, it had all been proven before, you know, we, we messed up the title, which was super painful, but
And by, and by the way, in writing and in articles and Inc and Forbes push this, the title might matter five times more than what you write. So you get, you spend a lot of time on the title. And I saw this in ink, it’s a B test, every title. And you cannot guess sometimes which title will do better. But what they did was they would send out the top 10 articles every month. And there’s this travel guy and he’s number one, two, three every month. And it’s his formula. It’s just really clear. So this is where you have to use, you know, Ben, Hardy’s big on this. You gotta use data. And I know for people who are really good writers and purists, they don’t like getting into the sort of title and they think it’s clickbait. But I always say to people do want, you could write the same article and 10 times the amount of people will read it. Everything’s going by people really quickly. And they need a reason to read that article that day, that hour, because once it passes, they’re not going back to it.
Yeah. So let’s talk about that because you know, you’re referencing the story that I shared with you all about titles and we’ve, you know, my second book, which is painful, which we share a lot of our, like a lot of our members know that story, but let’s talk about titles. Like, is there anything that you can share that you go, man, this, this works like, these are general rule of thumbs, actually. Can you tell us what should we always do? And never do as it relates to our titles.
Look, I think you got to get uncomfortable with making it a little sensational. If I look at all, every time they send out the top lists, you know, the formula tended to be, you referenced a well-known company or name or something. And you said, this is the top reason or what they do, or the single thing. Like you see that a lot. But every time I get a list of the top performing articles, those titles are already on top of it. So this is, you know, this is the one thing Michael Jordan did to get ready for games. And here’s how it can help you like those title or, or those titles work. It’s coming by your desk. You’re like, Oh, what’s the one thing. And you’re not going to get to the one thing until halfway down. Now, I, I don’t consider that clickbait at all.
I consider clickbait when, what you get them into the article is not what the article is about or not. And it’s a bait and switch switch. Yeah. I don’t consider a clickbait like something that’s a little sexy in terms of, you know, bringing someone to the topic. But I, but when I get the list and again, if you’re ever an ink, it’s fascinating. They send out the top performers, this travel guy every month, it’s like, you won’t believe the one policy change Delta just made their customers love it. Right? His title is always something like that. Or United airlines just made this huge blunder and their customers revolted. And, and you know what, I even go through that list. I’m like, what was it? I wanna, I wanna, I wanna learn what it was. So it’s very clear that there’s some formulas that, that work.
So, you know, I really resonate with this though, because it’s like, I hate feeling like I’m pandering. Right? Like I hate feel like I’m just, you know, it’s, it’s like, I don’t want to,
You’re like, I wrote a good article. I wrote it
And cheap what feels like cheap wrapping paper.
Correct. But when somebody, if you get to the why someone said, what’s the point, I want people to read the article. Cause I think it’s, I think it’s good. It’s not true. And I think it can help them. Well, if you can tell me that one approach, we’ll get 10 times the people reading it than the other, then, then I can get comfortable with, you know, why I want to do that warm. As I, as I said to my editor, sometimes when we’re debating titles, this, this is something that someone at my company said to me, like warm cup of tea, titles, like don’t work. They just don’t things that sound like, you know, could check it out. Like, so-so that travel thing, right? The Delta airlines made this policy and their customers freaked out. You know, if I said like, you know, this is why it’s never good for an airline to change, you know, its policies on its customers without notice. Like, it’s kind of like the warm cup of tea Virgin. I got, I got, I see it. Come on. I don’t really need to read that. It, it is, it is interesting. Yeah.
If it’s not a warm cup of tea, what is it like, what’s the, what would you say it is? Is it like the extreme or the like, like what
I think that formula is like is ER urgent and simplicity, right? That’s what that formula is. Like. You want to it’s news. You want to read it now and by the way, there’s a, there’s a quick, not a quick, but there’s a simple takeaway for you. It’s always better to have the one thing than the seven things right here are the seven keys to success in life versus bill Gates said, this is the one thing that made him successful in life. Like which one are you more likely to read quickly or think you’re going to read quickly because you’re just curious. You might just be like, well, what’s that bill Gates? One thing I can look at that quickly, but then I get pulled into the article.
Hmm. Yeah. So you’re saying quality article, be okay with a little sensationalism or you’re just saying that’s what works, which I agree with. It’s like, whether you like it or not, that is what is, that is what people respond.
Sorry. I had to, I had to get comfortable with it because the data is clear and you’re in this, you know, if you ever watched a 16 year old these days, their phone, you have three seconds to like, you know, get someone’s attention as they’re going through. I mean, you know this from books, I always say to you with books, you can have a great launch and a book, or you can have a great launch and a great book. You can, you can pump a crappy book up at launch and then it will kind of crash afterwards, right? Or, or if you have great content or like how L rod, it’s not about the launch, it’ll come back. But if you have really great book, you will do better. If you have a great launch and you get the flywheel going, right. And it’s it’s, you shouldn’t feel bad about trying to sell your great book. If you wrote a piece of crap, you know, infomercial bug, then you might feel a little dirty about trying, you know, it up in the book. So this is predicated on that you wrote a good and meaningful article that has value to people.
Huh. So as long as it’s good and meaningful, then wrapping it in a trashy title is no problem, no biggie.
Again, you said it best. You can not do it, but, but the data will show that you’ll get maybe a third of the amount of people on it. And then the algorithmic world, you know, the more people that click and read it earlier, the more it gets shown
It’s it is such a heart it’s Russia, but it’s the same thing, right? It’s like, what good is if I have the cure for cancer, what good is it? If nobody knows that I haven’t. Right. But I feel they’re there. It’s like an artist struggle. You know, this is like a, this is like an art.
I struggle with it. And then the data became so clear to me that I became released.
What’s what convinced you. You’re just like, it doesn’t matter just that the data tells this is clear. It’s a strategic decision. I just got to make.
Yeah. I want people to read my content and get value from it. So if the title, it makes them more likely to read it, then I’m going to do that. As long as I don’t, I, again, I’m not, I don’t feel like I’m beading and switching them or trying to go with them into something. I think that’s where it gets a bad name. You know, ones that get you into these 25 clicks or whatever, but just talking about an article on ink, that’s been edited. Like it’s not, it’s not selling you, you know, potion or anything. Like it’s, it’s just content for someone to read.
Yeah. Well, I I like this. This is good stuff. I mean, this is, thank you so much for just kind of sharing, you know, like your, your process, Bob, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you or learn more about you and kind of like follow, follow up with your work?
I sure I I’ve got ever everything finally integrated which I’m sure you’ll appreciate at Robert glazer.com. So you can get the podcast Friday forward books courses, all this stuff is, is right on that page. It’s a GLA Z E r.com.
That is awesome. Well, you won’t get warm cup of tea titles. You won’t, you won’t get super Latinx, but you will get awesome insight and practical stuff. This has been so great, man. I really appreciate you opening up to let us see a little bit behind, behind the curtain of how you’ve been using the written word to just really build and grow your personal brand.
Great. Thanks for having me. It was great discussion.
Ep 145: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview and the recap with Eric Dahan and I’m rolling solo, no wifey and CEO. AJ on this one. She’s out traveling, but I am fascinated with this interview with Eric, because if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, I mean, this is guy who has an agency and also developing software that is specifically sourcing influencers to pair them up with his corporate clients. These companies who have money to spend on advertising and they are recognizing the power of micro influencers. And in his case, they’re not all micro-influencers. There, there are lots of bigger ones. But this is amazing. I mean, this is, I like the first thing that jumps out to me about this interview, which is not part of like what my takeaway is, but it’s, it’s just something for you to realize and was something for me to realize is like, this is really incredible.
That big brands and big companies are looking to for the most part every day, average normal people. I mean influencers, but micro influencers and paying money. They’ve got budgets, they’re hiring companies like Eric’s to go out and do the research and source people to say, this person is reaching our audience and showing up with real money to pay you, not, not the radio stations, not the people who own the billboards, not the people who own the TV commercials. You know, not the people with the who own the magazines, but that you, an individual person quote unquote an influencer, whether or not you think of yourself that way, but just you as a messenger and someone serving and cultivating an audience that you have the power to monetize that audience by way of the, the most classic. And this is what’s fascinating is in the one way, this is so new is it’s just the idea of micro influencers in two other ways.
It’s as old as time one is paying for celebrity endorsements, right? So we all understand that we would expect, you know, Brad Pitt to get paid a ton of money to be in a commercial. So we understand the concept of celebrity endorsements, both what’s new is it’s like it’s the local celebrity, the super local hyper niche, like micro influencer celebrity. So we kind of understand the concept, but it’s at a much more granular level, which is powerful, but then you also have the dichotomy of the, the age old, most pure form of advertising. There is companies paying to put their brand, their message, their, their commercial, their product placement in front of viewers in front of listeners in front of eyes and ears to get the message out. And that vehicle, that model has existed ever since there was media, right? Like pretty much ever, ever since there has been the, the modality of TV or radio or newspaper or print or magazine, like, and, and even probably before that, right, is just the idea that companies will pay and they have budgets to pay.
They, they have advertising as a part of the way that they function and they grow their business and they’ve got money to spend and they’re willing to spend that money in whatever vehicle gets their brand in front of their people and these micro influencers, which is you and it’s me. I mean, it could be at which, which is amazing to think of that even though you don’t, you know, you might not be a huge media company and you might not have hundreds of thousands of followers or even tens of thousands of followers, but that you can do a better job of reaching their core market in some ways, then like a national TV commercial, because they are captive. And I found, you know, this is powerful for me as an author. And as you know, somebody who is is an influencer, like being on other people’s podcasts, we see more direct response from that than we do from national TV and from major national hits.
Not, not always, sometimes, you know, the major national hits are huge. They have major, major impact, but sometimes, you know, I can think of one time specifically where I was on a major national morning TV show. And it was like, I literally don’t know that a single person saw it. I mean, I know they did, but we got like zero response, zero, like speaking leads, zero customer coaching requests, zero, you know, book us for this podcast, appearance, zero like tweets and comments. It was other than friends and family being like, Oh, Hey, I saw you. And no notable increase in book sales. And so brands and companies are waking up to this idea that, that the local person has influence, which is what has always been word of mouth, but now it is you and it is measurable and it’s trackable and it’s repeatable and scalable and predictable.
And that is fascinating to me. And somebody like Eric is out there living on the, you know, on the bleeding edge of this emerging space. So I just thought that was amazing in general, just to kind of realize and contextualize this interview with Eric of, of what this means. And, and if you’re new to this, if you’ve never heard of this, this concept is called influencer marketing and it is about getting brand deals. And that is what this is all about. So if you want brand deals, let’s talk about my three biggest takeaways from Eric, somebody who’s living in this all day every day. So number one, biggest takeaway of all don’t fake it, right? Don’t fake it. Don’t, don’t take the followers. Don’t fake the engagement, like the data is out there. The algorithms are out there, there’s the apps are out there.
Artificial intelligence is out there. Like if you want to have a legitimate shot at monetizing your personal brand through brand deals, which you may not. Right. And, and frankly, for me personally, and for brand builders group, the likelihood that we will ever care about this is, is very little we are much less likely to do a brand deal, like where a company’s paying to access us because we, it’s not worth it probably to us for that one time payment, when it cannibalizes our own offerings of our own coaching program, you know, like, which is our primary business is one-on-one coaching. So we, we would be more likely to do more of like an affiliate arrangement or something more long-term. So I don’t personally know that this will ever come into play for me, although it could, particularly as we kind of like focus more on my personal brand, now that brain builders group is kind of like up and running and starting to scale.
And, you know, we turn some attention maybe back to my personal brand, but anyways, regardless, don’t fake it even for yourself. Like if, if you’re faking it, the problem is you don’t know how you’re doing. Like you don’t get an honest assessment of what is there, which means you can’t make a strategic decision about what to do and how to move, to grow it. Because everything you do is like kinda clouded by this, this group of people who aren’t really followers. You know, now there’s a case to be made. And some people do this to just like nobody cares. I don’t care about audience engagement. All I make doing is a credibility play. I just need people to come out and see, I’ve got a lot of followers and they’re not check-in. And I don’t care about brand deals. And I literally just want, you know, whatever my clients are, members of the media to go, yeah, you know, you look credible because you got a lot of followers, you know, that’s a choice for you to make that’s a strategic decision that you gotta make.
A lot, this is perception. And so it’s, that’s something to consider. But if you want brand deals is the point, like if you want brand deals. And I would say, even if you don’t want brand deals, if you actually want to use the vehicle of social media and use the vehicle of audience building to drive real revenue growth for your company, don’t fake it, do the hard work and do the slow work. And don’t be embarrassed about how slow you’re growing or how small your following is. I mean, look, this is what he’s saying is going, you know, they don’t care. They’ve, they’ve got a budget based on how many impressions and they’ll pay you for whatever that is. But, you know, 10 qualified impressions is 10 qualified impressions. And, and I think some of these companies are realizing and waking up to the idea that we’re paying all this money for mass market media advertising.
And we’re not, we’re not even sure we’re reaching our right people. We could spend a lot less money in more targeted ways with influencers that are much easier to get ahold of and have, you know, probably a much smaller legal department and it’s easier and it’s faster and it’s more fun and it’s more organic. And it’s like, they’re supporting individual people and not you know, these huge enterprises. So just, I really loved what he said. Don’t fake it. The algorithm will pick it up and just, you need to know, like you gotta know, is my content working? Are we growing? Who are the people who are my followers? Like one of the most valuable parts of social media is not even just who you sell to. It’s being able to pull the analytics and go, this is the age. These are the geographic locations.
This is the gender. This is the income range. These are the industries. These are the job titles of the people I’m reaching. And these are the topics that my audience response to based on data. If I have a bunch of fake followers in there, then it’s like, I don’t really know what’s working in the data is constantly skewed. So, you know, just, just be really, really I guess, critical or cautious about doing the fake fake follower thing. And if you’re going to do it, you know, make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and just know it’s probably, you know, you’re, you’re missing out on some, some other things here, which, you know, might be a decision that you make, and those are just decisions you make. But that was the first thing. And I really believe, you know, clearly with artificial intelligence, that’s going to get smarter and smarter over time that, you know, at some point people like Eric are going to automate this whole, this whole space, this and, and companies are just going to literally go to some platform and say, I want to reach, you know, personal brands and, you know, some software or tool or AI will go scrape the web.
And it will say, ah, here’s the top 500 profiles that reach personal brands. And it’s like, Oh, brand builders group is on there and they’ll just email us and say, Hey, we got some money. This is what we think you’re reaching this number of people. Do you want it so fascinating, fascinating. Don’t fake it, pay attention to the data or, you know, think critically before you just kind of do the fake follower thing. Number two, simple it’s about supply and demand. This was a good reminder for me. I think this is a theme, as I’m even just talking this out of how there’s like a new thing going on here, a new movement that’s kind of fresh and fun and exciting. And at the same time, these are old principles, the principle of supply and demand, how many people are out there who do what you do, right?
And this is where the, the, the whole niching down thing is really powerful. If I have, you know, if I have, I mean, it can work for you and against you. If I have the world’s number one website on, you know, hand niche, Paul shoes for cats and kittens, then I probably have a very dedicated, loyal audience of cat owners who follow me, which means that pet smart is gonna, it’s going pay me a lot of money. Cause they know my entire platform, whether it’s a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand, like they know I’m reaching their audience. There’s not really any question about it. And so that is super powerful. Now, at the same time you go, you got to pay attention and be mindful of what is the demand for it, right? So like how many, how many brands are interested in marketing to cat owners?
Well, probably a huge number. It’s a huge market. But if it’s, if it’s something else that’s like super specific, there may not be brands interested in that. So if you’re playing the brand deal game, which by the way is a dedicated business model. And it’s a difference in positioning. If you come through finding your brand DNA, which is our phase one course, one event curriculum experience, one of the things we help you get clear on in addition to what audience do you serve? What is your uniqueness? What is your unique solution? Your unique message is what is your, your perfect business model that is suited for you? The reason why is because when you, when you make a strategic decision, if you’re going after keynotes, that’s different than going after brand deals. The business model you’re in drives a lot of these, you know, practical on the ground decisions that you make every single day.
So you need to be mindful of what is my primary business model. That’s what we call it in brand DNA. It’s finding your primary business model. And we, we take people through something called the golden grid, where we look at what your short-term primary business model and your longterm. And then we look at secondary business models, ancillary revenue streams, and you know, all, all these different, different ways to the five ways to monetize your personal brand, et cetera, but know what business you’re in, make strategic decisions accordingly. Don’t just like wing it by the, you know, fly by the seat of your pants. And if you’re playing the brand deal game, it’s simple. How many other people are out there that do what you do? How many other people, and more specifically I think is going, how many other people out there have the same defined audiences you, and if you are clear on what that is, you know, just be, be aware of it.
Because if there are a lot of people out there who do what you do, or more specifically, as it relates to brand deals who reach the same people you reach, then that means supply is high. When supply is high, that drives the price down, meaning the money coming to you. So you got to that’s, that’s, that’s a factor for you to consider how many other people out there are, are doing what I do or what I’m thinking about doing. And if there’s a bunch of them, right. You know, like if it’s general interest motivation, there’s a ton of them, right? Like a ton of people are doing that. If it’s leadership, there’s a ton of, you know, you know, tie to people now, good ones, maybe, maybe less, but what’s how many people are reaching your audience. And then the other part is the demand calculation.
And look, I’m I’m I know this is like basic freshmen, econ from college, but a lot of people don’t understand supply and demand, even though super simple. So if supply goes up, the price goes down because that means I can, I don’t need to buy from you because I can buy from there’s a hundred other people that do what you do. So I’m paying attention to supply how many other people are out there, have an audience like mine have as a result of having a topic like mine. Then the other thing is what is the demand for what is the demand for it? How many companies or entities or enterprises or organizations want to reach this market using something like pets. As an example, there’s a lot of companies with a lot of big budgets who know that pet owners spend money on their pets and they’re willing to pay money to get access to those people.
There’s high demand for that. Versus, you know, if you teach tennis lessons, how many companies are interested in the game of tennis? There’s plenty, but it’s probably not as many. There’s not as many people who play tennis in the world as there are people who have pets, right? So you’re, you’re paying attention to that. And then in terms of the pricing, it’s just knowing how many impressions can you get, right? So part of when you’re selecting your topic and, and your positioning in the marketplace, which is really like what we do as good, if not better than anyone else in the world is help you determine your positioning in the market. What is your uniqueness? What should you be offering? What are the words you should use to say it? How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? And anyways, once you nail that, then it’s just a function of how many of those people can you reach?
How many impressions can you get for the brand? And by the way, you don’t need to wait for the brand to show up to you. When you know this, if you, if you select brand deals as your primary business model, you just simply go, ah, I’m reaching cat owners. And, and, and you’re clear on that, which should come from your data, which should come from your dashboards, which we talk about at our high traffic strategies event. You could also listen to the interview that we did with Praxis metrics Aja grin, and Megan canal Connell about digital dashboard tracking. Or you could come to us through our high traffic strategies course that will pull and tell you who you’re reaching. And then you can actually go approach brands. And you can say to them, look, I believe like PetSmart, I believe PetSmart, I am reaching your target audience.
Here’s the data on the audience I’m reaching. And that is a sales job. Like, you know, just like generating any business. Any revenue is a sales job. And if you’re, you know, if you’re in this game of brand deals, I think understanding brand deals, this is a great episode. The other great episode that we did on this was our, our friend and client and fan, and one of our close Nashvillian neighbors who we love and believe in and support. And she supports us is Julie Solomon. She’s one of the masters at brand deals. She’s got a course on this, that we are an affiliate for, but she did an interview like a free interview with us, or back in one of the early episodes that was just killer. Also Kevin Harrington, the interview we did with Kevin Harrington, which is, you know, he was the, basically the founder of the infomercial.
One of the, one of the godfathers of this whole movement, which is now digital, Mark has evolved to digital marketing. And just talking about the way that he thinks about, you know, pairing up brands and ad spend. So check it out. But it’s supply and demand, simple supply and demand as supply goes up, price goes down, okay. As demand goes up, price goes up, okay. Because if there’s high demand and low supply, that means a lot of people want it. And there’s not many places they can it from. So price goes up if supply goes down and yeah, demand goes up. That drives the price up. If supply goes up, okay, meaning I can get it from anywhere. And demand goes down, price goes down. Because there’s not that many people who want it and they can get it from anywhere, right?
Like that is how, how it works. So toilet paper, you can get anywhere. I mean, demand is stable, but it’s not like super high until when COVID hit. And there was a run on toilet paper. Everyone was afraid of running on toilet paper. And so demand, even though supply was high demand skyrocketed. And so that drove up the price, the price K follows demand as demand goes up, price goes up as demand goes down, price goes down, prices, inversely related. So price is directly correlated to demand, but prices, inversely correlated, or indirectly correlated to supply as supply goes up, price goes down. A lot of people make it well, it’s available. Price goes down. If supply goes down, few people make it. Or few people have it price that causes the price to go up. So price and demand are directly correlated. Price and supply are inversely correlated.
So there’s your freshmen, economics class brought to you by Rory Vaden. All right. Third takeaway for me here, which is, is, is probably the biggest. One of all was the attitude of how you got to think about these people as your customers. These, these companies are your partners. Like even, it’s like, even though they’re paying you for the ad, spend your working for them, your, they are your client, they are your customer. And I think too often influencers and people going specifically after brand deals, it’s almost kinda like this game of like, how can I, how can I trick a company into paying the most amount of money I can get out of them? I’m all for, you know, being paid fairly and being paid well for the work you’ve put in, but you’re not. You don’t want to game the system here. You want to find a good match.
You’re looking for a partner. You’re looking for a relationship. You want to be able to provide results to this person, to your advertisers. And this applies to podcasting too, right? Like you don’t want to just sell your ads to anybody. I mean, at some point you might need to for cashflow or whatever, but it’s like, that’s not really what we’re after. We’re trying to find mutually beneficial relationships. We want them to advertise. Not just once, like, Hey, I’ll pay you and your posts. You want to be able to deliver results. So it’s like, Hey, I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. That’s a mutually beneficial relationship. And it’s just a great reminder that this business is about reputation. It’s about relationships. It’s about trust. If people aren’t buying from you, they don’t trust you. If they’re not coming back, they don’t trust you.
If they’re not following you, they don’t trust you. Like this is a game of trust. And you have to make sure you are always working to earn your client’s trust. To adapt something that I wrote about and take the stairs called the rent. Axiom that says success is never owned. It is only rented. And the rent is due every day. Trust is never owned. Trust is rented and the rent is due every day. You have to be out there servicing your customers, working to make their life better, not just taking money from them and disappearing. Be constantly thinking whether you’re doing brand deals or not. This goes for all your clients. How can I make my life better for my clients? How can I make it easier for them? How can I make them more money? This is what we are constantly thinking about at brand builders group.
I’m going, how can we make our, how can we make our affiliates more money? I want, I want them to get massive passive mailbox, money. How can we create more income for our clients and our referral partners? How can we help our clients be more successful in making money for themselves? How can we help our strategists make more money? How can we make our team members make more money? Like when you adopt that service centered attitude of how can I help everyone else win quickly, man, it’s like, it’s like the old psych. My man Zig Ziglar used to say, like, if you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want. So view these people as your partners, help them succeed and you will succeed. That’s all we’ve got for this recap edition. Thanks for tuning in. Keep coming back. We’re going to help you build and monetize your personal brand right here on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 144: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan
Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. Ufrom anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.
Now, y’all know, I don’t very often bring someone on to this show that I don’t personally know or haven’t seen speak or something like that. And occasionally we get those cold pitches and they make it through our team because of how relevant they are for you. And this is one of those I’m excited to introduce to you and really meet along with you for the first time. A gentleman named Eric Dahan and Eric is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Open Influence. And he’s a graduate from Pepperdine University and I’ll tell you what they do in just a second. But he was on the Forbes 30, under 30 list in 2017. And his company’s clients include people like Disney, Google, Amazon, Facebook into it Unilever P and G Coca Cola, Pepsi L’Oreal Under Armour and a whole bunch of others.
And so what he does is, is he’s basically an ad agency. His client is the company, but what open influence does is they source influencers to help place ad spend to help their clients accomplish their ad advertising goals. So he’s looking for people like you probably that are listening to say, who has the audience that my client is trying to reach and helps to identify them, contact them, negotiate the deal, create the strategy, and just kind of oversee the whole campaign so that his clients spend their advertising dollars well through influencer marketing. So with that, Eric, welcome to the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Is that a pretty accurate description of what y’all do? I could not have said it better myself. You nailed it. Well, awesome. So, so that is, that is so great. I’m so excited about it because I feel like this is coming up a lot for our clients.
You know, some of our clients have really explosive growth where they’ll, you know, like I think of one of our clients who went from zero to half a million followers on Tik TOK within 60 days. And now all of a sudden she is like in this world of brand deals and trying to navigate it. And so I guess what I, I would love like if, if, if I put my influencer, if I put myself in the shoe of the influencer, what I really want to know is what do I need to know to help your clients be successful? What are you looking for? You know, when you identify influencers kind of, how do you go about it? And, you know, let’s just start with that.
Yeah. Yeah. So you know, like you mentioned, we represent the advertisers and when we start off the process, it’s really all about finding the right influencer for that campaign. And you know, typically we’ll work with, you know, dozens to sometimes even hundreds of influencers on a given project. But we, we use the data first and foremost really find out who’s the right match. And so we look at you know, we look at things like our size. We look at audience metrics, we’ll look at impression rates as well. But also like just what you talk about and how does your audience engage, which is really the first and foremost most important thing is when we’re working with a brand, we want to find influencers and creators that you know, really just having an audience that will be very receptive to that kind of messaging to that kind of branded content.
And so we’re looking at things like past sponsorships, we’re looking at how your audience reacts to different subjects and different pieces of content. And so if you’re an influencer, for example, we’re running your videos and images through image recognition or seeing what’s actually in the content itself, we’re looking at keywords that you may be using such as hashtags or mentions. We’re looking at freeform text and all this comes together to let us know. You know, how does your audience react when you talk about a certain thing, do they engage in lean forward or do they kind of tune out? And one example, it could be like, you might describe yourself as a fitness influencer, but you know, when you talk about yoga, your audiences are really engaged, but when you talk about boxing, they really engage in lean forward and they, and they really engage in that kind of content. And, and that tells us you’re going to be a much better, a much better match for a brand looking to talk about boxing, maybe like an Everlast, as opposed to an aloe yoga or Lu lemon. And so, you know, that that’s sort of first and just really looking at the data and understanding that, and then in terms of what can influencers do or creators do to make,
So hold on for a second. So I want to stick on the data, cause we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re huge data people, and we love data dashboards and we love doing studies and all that. So how the heck do you know my audience metrics? Like, clearly you can tell audience size, but how do you know how whether or not they’re engaging and what the impressions are like, how do you see that as an, as an outsider?
Yeah. So some data we can’t get as an outsider and we only get, once we start working with influencers, but we work with thousands of influencers a month. And so that gives us access to more of those lower funnel metrics, but at a high level you know, we’re, we’re pulling a lot of data from a lot of different sources from a lot of different platforms. We’re marrying that with with other data that we get from different data providers and really most importantly, most basically, you know, you post a picture on the beach, we’re looking at how your audience is, you know, engaging, how are they liking that? Are they commenting? What are they commenting? So we’re taking all that public information. We’re putting that side by side. So we can say, you know, when Rory talk, you know, post about, you know you know, going surfing his content does really, really well. His audience really engages on average, as opposed to when he talks about, you know cooking. Right. And so, you know, and, and so these are just random examples, but
Not very often that Rory Vaden talks about cooking. I mean, let’s be, let’s be, let’s be honest. I, I, outside of like, geez, I’m not, I’m not adding much value to the community there.
Well, you know, and maybe it could be entertaining if you do start talking about cooking, you know? I, I’m a terrible chef. But my girlfriend gets, gets a laugh out of me trying to cook. So, so clearly there’s something entertaining that
You’re saying that you’ve got data sources like these kind of like aggregators or whatever, you’re pulling those in, you know, to your company. And then at some point when you research, you literally just go to the person’s profile and like, look and see, do they have comments? Do they have lots of likes and views and saved? Well, I guess you can’t see saves. But is that what you’re saying? Like part of it is just looking at their profile.
Well, I actually a lot more sophisticated than that. So, so we’re pulling information directly from the platforms we’re pulling information that’s publicly available on the web. We’re then marrying that with, with other data sources that, that we might be able to pull. And we’re, you know, we built a proprietary system. That’s bringing this all in. And so rather than someone just looking at your profile and saying, Oh, here’s what you tend to post about. You know, we’re, we’re running this through our machine learning and AI, and we have hundreds, millions of posts that we’re analyzing. And so I could actually look and say, here are all the different keywords you talk about here, all the different, you know, here’s how many times you had a wine bottle included every one of your posts here’s the average performance when you do it, here’s how you perform.
You know, here’s how your audience engages when you do sponsored content versus not sponsored content. Here are the 20 brands you, you, you mentioned in the past 180 days, so we can get really in-depth with that. And then we could use that to surface. So I could say I wanted to find an influencer. You know, coming back to the yoga example, I want to find an influencer that performs really well with their audience when they talk about yoga on, you know, on YouTube and Instagram. And, and I could type that in I’ll, I’ll find that people, I could sort that by engagement rate, I could sort that by number of posts, if we have the data, we can look at impression rate and, you know, our video views. And then we could say, okay, here are the people that are going to perform the best. And these might not be the people that are, you know, when you think about yoga, they’re not maybe the first names that come to mind, but these are the people who have a lot of influence in that category that you’re not necessarily thinking of as a brand.
Interesting. So do you ever furnish that kind of data back to the, to the influencers or only when you contact them and say, Hey, did you know that when you post about boxing, you’re, it’s like some of you, you know, your engagement rate is super, super high, or is that not really, that you’re just, you really only bring it up when you get into actively kind of, you know, I guess, recruiting an influencer for a campaign.
Yes. So it’s funny, actually, we like, all that data is, is pretty much brand facing. Like we don’t, you know, we’re not, we’re not necessarily going back to the influencers, giving them reports on their own accounts or on what we’re finding. You know, we’re definitely letting them know like, Hey, you know, we’re working with you because of these different things or, you know, here’s why we’re engaging with your, you know but you know, one of the things we kind of talked about, it’s like, we’re sitting on this mountain of information and it’s been pretty much exclusively, exclusively used to be brand facing. We said, you know, maybe there’s something we can do. That’s influencer facing. Also, we’re playing around with some ideas now, but you know, whether it be to help influencers, you know, proactively find the right brands to partner with, or just see what different brands are doing are there similar influencers that a brand is working with to them, which could be a good signal to say, okay, I should reach out to that brand. I could be a good match. So these are sort of the ideas we’re playing with. But to be honest, we haven’t really delved into that too much.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well that, you know, that is interesting as a, you know, as a business idea because it’s like, you know, I think there’s whatever there’s, well, there’s a thousand fortune 1000 brands, but there’s 2 billion people all trying to figure out what is their audience respond to, which is like the part that you really figured out. So it’d be interesting to see if that flips at some point to where you, you, you offer that. But so then, so now let’s talk about, so that’s really cool. So you’ve got some different data sources you’re pulling from, you’re aggregating it in your own tool and you’re basically going, okay, Everlast hired us to do a campaign. We need to find all the people who have audiences that respond when it comes to boxing, you plug that in, and then if I am an influencer, do I just randomly get a message one day from, you know, Eric or someone on your team at open influence that says, Hey, we’re doing a campaign for Everlast, you’ve been identified as someone in an influencer in this area. Like, is that how it works?
Yeah, yeah, correct. So, so we in our network you know, we have a lot of influencers that we’ve worked with before. And, and yeah, if you’re a new influencer or someone from our account management team, we’ll shoot you a note outlining the opportunity. That part is automated in our system actually. So, you know, account manager would say, okay, you’re a good fit based on the data, I’m going to add you a reach out, we’ll go out. And then from there, we’ll, you know, we’ll negotiate a rate and, and, and the terms of the deal. And you know, we’re, you know, we’ve gotten this down to a science where we know, you know, w we essentially know what the ask for and what the outline, and, and also eliminate surprises on both sides, because for us, you know, we, we don’t want to, you know, we want to avoid reshoots. We want to avoid surprises. This is definitely a business where you want to be very, very clear. And so, yeah, so essentially when we reach out, we outline the full scope of work for that influencer. And, you know, they’re able to, you know, to say yes or no, and we’re not a talent agency. So, you know, we’re not asking to represent you. We’re not asking for any exclusivity is just like, Hey, here’s the deal if you want to do it. Great. And if not a well,
Yeah. So you’re, and does that usually happen like through a DM or something? I mean, do you, or do you, are you scraping their emails somehow offline? Or is it like, Hey, it’s most likely that it’s going to show up in my, my DMS because your software scraped that information and then followed me and then automatically sent me a message to say, Hey, we think you’re a candidate for this, for this campaign.
Yeah. Typically it’s through email, right. We’re, you know, a lot of, almost every influencer has some sort of contact detail, whether it’s on their Instagram account or their YouTube account, or on their own website, our blog. And so you know, that, that information is there and we just send them an inquiry to that, you know, essentially to that, that information provided and you know, and if they choose, they could, they could provide us with, with, you know the ability to contact them through, through text message as well. But you know, initial reach out is always done through, through email.
Okay. All right. So I’m just, you know, I’m trying to help people identify if they get one of these, like, how do you, how do you vet as an influencer? How do you vet the legitimate ones from the, from the, the, you know, the scammy ones, but before we do that, tell me what your, so I get the engagement. Well, I guess here’s a specific question. How much does followers matter? Like how many followers do I need to have before I might get one of these opportunities? Do I need to have millions, hundreds of thousands, 10,000, 50,000? Like how, how does that factor in here?
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think from a, from just a visibility and kind of vanity standpoint, I think when you start looking at like 20 to 30,000, it starts to become interesting. You know, you, it really depends on what your niche is as an influencer as well, and what you’re talking about. So like you’re talking about something really specialized or you’re doing something really unique, like stop motion, animation, having a huge following is not really as important if someone’s looking to access that niche, they’re going to come to you because, you know, you’re an expert in, in that. You know, if you’re talking about teen fashion, you know, there are people with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers in that category. So you really have to look at it from the lens of supply and demand. But yeah, I would say that 20 or 30,000 is arranged now from an advertiser standpoint followers size doesn’t really matter at all.
What really matters are how many impressions we’re getting, what kind of click-throughs are you getting? Can you really drive and move your audience? And, and, you know, sometimes that process is hit or miss where, you know, you, you might think your audience will be a good fit for a certain product, but they end up not, or, you know, or a product you thought they wouldn’t be a good fit for ends up, you know, you ended up converting really well. So it just really depends. But you know, I, I think the key is to really just look at how many people are actually consuming that content and legitimately engaging with it, as opposed to just looking at follower count, because that could easily lead you to optimize for the wrong sort of things.
Right. Okay. So, yeah, so I, it’s interesting, you bring up the impressions where it’s like at the end of the day in advertisers paying either for impressions or some type of a conversion. So it’s, they don’t really care how many followers you have, but the number of impressions and conversions you drive is going to be related to, you know, to the number of followers you have and what your audience is interested in. So talk to me about the money for a second. Like, you know, you hear stories of, you know, people making $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars, millions of dollars, but realist like, realistically, like what’s the real, like, what’s the real world on this and what’s a baseline and you go cause, cause you know, the other thing that I hear a lot is it’s like influencers, a lot of influencers end up doing deals for just like merchandiser product. Right. And so they’re getting free and they’re not getting any money and they’re missing out on realizing, Oh, actually my audience is worth something. How do you kind of like cost justify? How does the brand cost justify? Is there like a, you know, any type of rough standard or baseline you’re looking for?
Yeah. So there are a lot of variables involved with it, right? So you have to look at one like the influencer size and just the amount of impressions they get. You have to look at the market that they talk to in the audience they have. So, you know, if you’re looking for like again, like teen fashion verse, like if you’re looking at like Sonic high performance, mountain biking equipment you know, an influencer in that category can definitely command a premium because they’re so specialized. That’s the platform
And like the niche, the niche ones command a premium because of supply and demand. There’s not a million people talking about high-performance mountain biking equipment.
Exactly. And they’re really focused, so they could really convert. And so brands know that if they want to engage with influencers, these are the ones that are really right to talking to that audience. And so and then you have to look at like platforms, content, formats, usage, rights exclusivity scope. So there are a lot of different factors to consider. And then also like bundling it, like, it’s, it’s very rare that, you know, you’ll just pay an influencer for a one-off post. Typically, you know, these are more involved activations. And so you know, and it, it just depends out what, what we’ve seen is it’s actually very rare in, in our world to, to have, you know, working with the brands we work with to have those engagements just pay like for merchandise or free, I guess the trade-off is, it makes it works when you’re working as a brand working micro-influencers, but the trade off there is, you know, those influencers are in your favor for you, right.
They can’t pay their bills with merchandise. Like it’s nice, but you lose the ability as an advertiser to really, you know, essentially, you know, set a schedule, set the terms, outline what you want from a content perspective. You know, you, you can’t really dictate and say, Hey, I want the post to go live on Tuesday at 2:00 PM. You know, you’re not paying for that post. You’re not paying that influence or they’re, they’re doing a favor for you. And so, you know, what ends up, hold on. I’m just going to pause my Slack notifications, right. So, you know, you end up, you know, it ends up just not making a whole lot of sense. Now when you, you know, when you’re an influencer, you know, you, you might, you might do that because you have a relationship with the brand or someone, but ultimately you know, th this is definitely a paid model.
You know, brands are going to want to hedge, you know, from our experience, like some brands want to pay influencers on the back end of the deal with like some sort of rev share, but you know, that, that, you know, a lot of influencers aren’t really receptive to that because they’ve gotten burnt with small brands and like, you know, like startups just, you know, kind of, you know, not having their business model, figure it out to where they’re not able to drive conversions. And so you know, so typically I, you know, I think there’s some upfront amount what those dollar amounts look like can change, but, you know, you could look at, you know, a thousand dollars, couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the influencer size you know, and, and the activation type, and also you know, how good you are for that Cuban brand.
Yeah. So if you, you know, let’s say if you’re, you got 30,000 followers, and maybe you are a fitness person and it’s like, Hey, there’s a, there’s a yoga campaign. And they want you to do, you know, like if T for a $5,000, let’s say like a $5,000 deal. How many posts is that usually? Is it, are you, is it is a brand typically going to be looking for like three posts, five posts, 20 posts. I mean, I’m sure the larger, the fee, obviously the more posts they want and the more control they want and, you know, that kind of thing.
Yeah. Look, they could be looking for three to five. You know, they’ll look at like some stories typically, because stories are sort of your, your most transactional and cheapest form of a posts, right. If it’s, you know, Tik TOK is a little bit of the wild West right now, it’s pretty new. So you know, that that’s a little bit all over the map. If it’s on YouTube, that might be part of it, right. Where you’d like saying, okay, I, you know, 30,000 followers or 30,000 subscribers, you know, from a story standpoint might not be a lot, but if I’m creating a YouTube video, that’s really focused and it’s a dedicated video you know, then, then a bulk of whatever fee I’m charging would go towards that. And, and, you know, and, and then brands will run the assessment and say, okay, well, if you’re working like a DD brand, they’re going to look and see how that converted, right.
If you’re a smaller influencer, you’re, you’re going to tend to fall in the realm of you know, more direct to consumer type businesses that are looking for like a direct response to whatever you’re doing. And so they’re going to look at that say, okay, well, we generated X amount of sales from that post, you know, they might not break even, but they might be really happy with that because they understand that, you know, as an influencer, one part of it’s branding and, you know, prospecting a new audience and the other part is converting. Right.
Huh. And, and would you like if you’re dealing with a real brand deal kind of a thing, do you typically deal in almost like, kind of like a set type of cost per impression, where if you show up and you come to me, you basically have a budget in mind because you have the data and you go, okay. I think if Rory runs a post with a surf board, we’re going to get about this many impressions, and I know my client’s willing to pay on average around, you know, this much for a CPM or whatever. And so you kind of have a number that you’re coming to me with to say, Hey, Roy, this is what we feel like we want you to do for this many posts.
Exactly. Yeah. So, so like, we, we have, you know, and we have a pricing model based on, you know, tens of thousands of transactions per year that we run. And so, you know, we’re looking at that and we’re saying, okay, like, based on all these metrics, here’s what we’re willing to pay for based on all these different variables. And, you know, we know this is competitive. And we also look at, instead of, if everyone’s saying yes you know, then it probably means worth pie. And if everyone’s saying, no, it probably, it means we’re too low. Right. So you know, we want to find a rate that’s competitive for, for the advertiser you know, our, our clients, but, you know, makes sense for the talent as well.
Interesting stuff. It’s so interesting, Eric, just that, you know, this kinda, I mean, I don’t know, five, 10 years ago, this was like only available to the biggest media companies in the world. And now it’s just like, this is becoming an everyday occurrence for anybody with any kind of reasonable following. Like if you’ve been, if you’ve been dedicated to building an audience for a few years, you know, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna be in this space you know, if you’re doing it well and you’re doing it consistently. I think it’s, I think it’s fascinating stuff. Is there anything that you would say this is kind of like a last question in terms of mistakes that you see let’s say that influencers making consistently that either kind of ruin their reputation or immediately kind of like throw them out of your pool to either where you would never contact them or, you know, they say something to you early on and you go, I definitely know. I mean, this, person’s not a, I obviously, if they’re a total jerk, but like beyond, beyond that, are there any kind of like red flags or common mistakes you see that you go, man, this influencer just lost five grand because they didn’t do blank.
Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, you know, the metrics are the metrics, right? So we, like, we know that upfront, we don’t get hung up on that. What tends to really, you know, kind of screw up a relationship would be things like just, you know, being unreliable and unprofessional you know, changing scope midway through as an influencer or like, you know, not following through you know, or just in general being difficult to work with. Like ultimately you know, this is you know, it is a people’s business. You know, we are working on a piece of content gathering it’s collaborative and someone that’s going to be combative and difficult and unreliable will just automatically, you know, get put on our, do not use lists or do not work with lists. And you know, we have a whole system internally for rating influencers and on, on things like from responsiveness to professionalism.
So, you know, I, I really think, you know, going into it as an influencer with the right attitude, really treating the brands you’re working with, whether it’s us or a brand directly as your partner, right. And as a customer you know, that’s, that’s really what goes along this way because ultimately brands and agencies want to work with, with people that they can trust and that they enjoy working with. Because they know that, you know, they can come to something reasonable and that’s going to make sense, but, you know, no one wants to work with someone that’s going to be difficult to throw a tantrum or, or, you know, not follow through.
I love it. Really good stuff, Eric, I think fascinating, you know, just your business, even the existence of your business. Again, I think you’re, I mean, you guys have done a lot. You’ve got a great, a great thing going on, open influenced.com. We’ll link up to that, of course, in the show notes and y’all can see know just a really interesting space, something that, again, didn’t, we wouldn’t have existed as an opportunity even maybe a few years ago. And it seems like you guys are early to the space and you’ve got some big brands on your roster and you’re doing great stuff. Is there anything that you anywhere else that you want to point people to, if they want to like connect up with you or learn more about what you guys are up to?
Yeah. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can just follow me there and connect with me there and same with, you know, open influence. You could, you know, I, we have a great content marketing team. That’s, that’s pumping out you know, latest trends and insights and, and white papers on the influencer industry. So you know, follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter on our website and you know, stay tuned with, you know, with everything, especially from a brand perspective.
Love it. Eric Dohan is his name open influence? Y’all hopefully you have learned a lot. I know. I certainly have Eric. Thank you for being here, man. We wish you the best. Awesome. Thanks for, I appreciate it.