Category: PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Ep 82: Unlock Loyalty and Strengthen Your Network with John Ruhlin, the Guru of Giftology

RV: (00:01) John Ruhlin is one of my favorite dudes. He’s one of my favorite guys. I would like a real life friend. And there’s several things that I love about John, which I’ll tell you about. So I’ll give you the officials first. So he’s the founder and the author of Giftology. He’s been featured in tons of major news outlets, Fox news, Forbes, fast company, and he is also the, the number one performer historically all time out over one and a half million sales reps for one of the world’s most recognizable brands and direct sales companies. And you’ll hear, you’ll hear a little bit about that as we talk. And so he speaks at big corporate events really about customer loyalty, about referrals without asking about just kind of like creating connections and relationships and trust. And the reason I’ve asked him to come talk about it is one because his expertise is really brilliant and it’s unique and it’s very different from something you would hear someone talk about. But the other thing is homeboy drinks his own Koolaid and he has built a massive personal brand and continues to be like this rising star, I think among influencers because he does what he actually teaches people to do, which is always like my number one litmus test. And so anyways, John, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. JR: (01:31) Rory, thanks for having me, man. I wish we were hanging out in your place in in Tennessee, but this is the second best right now. RV: (01:38) Totally, totally. So yeah, tell, tell me first of all, what is Giftology? All right, so let’s start, let’s start there with like your normal expertise and, and, and why does it matter? And, and then we’ll talk about how do we incorporate this as a part of our strategy to building, you know, an influential brand. JR: (01:58) Yeah. Well people necessarily care about gifting like nobody, like wakes up in the morning and says, man, I gotta become a better gift or, but everybody cares about relationships. Everybody, every business rises and falls. Every brand rises and falls on relationships with clients and employees, partners, joint venture event planners. You name it. And most people, if they’re honest with themselves, they suck at showing gratitude and appreciation and a very meaningful way to those important people, whether it’s at home to your significant other. Most people just aren’t very good at that. And so the core of Giftology is really just a systematic marketing process. Makes it sound very calculated. But there are, it’s a recipe on how to stand out, be memorable. So if you want to drive access with people, if you want to drive referrals, there is a formula to it that’s been really followed for thousands of years. And I think in our transactional Western culture, we forgot what those triggers are, what those things are. And, and you know, there’s been a lot of people that have done studies on it, Robert Cialdini with influence and we’re just tapping into the psychology of things and do it in a way that’s not manipulative that in a way that really honors relationships and plays relationships for everybody says they play the long game, but most people it’s days and we play the relationship game for decades. RV: (03:16) Yeah. And so just to jump right in on this, like to give people a real life example of how serious you are about this. Hopefully you don’t mind me sharing. And if you do, I’m going to share it anyways. You, you, you, you’re a brand builders group clients. So we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re proud to have had opportunity to team up with you cause we believe in you. But the thing that you did that nobody has ever done or asked to do since you was, you, you know, you came to our house, you were one of our early clients and you know, we are doing stuff here, you know, in the, in the, in the work room at Vaden Villa and you threw a party. You were like, Hey, can I throw a party while I’m at your house? And so you invited, you invited. RV: (04:00) So, so tell people about this party and tell like, I’m convinced that you spent, you had to have spent more on the party than you spent with us, or close like close to it for a one night party as you did on the actual strategy. And now what I realize is you weren’t really interested in our strategy. You were really just trying to rent our house. And I got two for one deal out of it, but now I understand. So like tell us, tell us like, just as that night as an example, you know, I was just, it was so powerful to me. JR: (04:36) Yeah, well I think that there’s so much noise right there and, and, and a lot of times people will, you know, they do the same dinners, ball games, rounds of golf, like everybody re builds relationships the same way. And for us, like I would rather do a once in a lifetime experience for a group of five people than to do a mediocre experience for 5,000 people. And that’s what most people do. But they, they, they’re like, Hey, we throw a big party. The more the merrier. And it’s like mid tier, you know, wine, mid tier alcohol, low tier food, you know, like trinkets and, you know, a low tier band. And, and so when I was, I was like, man, I’m going to be with you. There’s a lot of, you know, this is kind of like the Nashville mafia and your area, like all these great influencers and people that are either friends or people that I would love to hang out with. Not with an agenda just to hang out with. And even people outside, they’re just looking for an excuse to to hang out in Nashville. And I wanted to connect them to you cause I wanted to, RV: (05:32) Yeah, we got great relationships out of it. I mean there were really awesome people there. JR: (05:37) Yeah. So most people would have their dinner at Morton’s or someplace like that and you know, they’re like, Oh, $150 a ahead. And I’m like, what if I’m going to throw an event? I want it to be something that people are talking about a decade later. Cause now like the story starts to transfer. Like if you want to become known, you have to do a once in a lifetime or I call it like a love bomb. Like something that’s like, it has RV: (05:57) Love bomb. JR: (05:59) Yeah. Like most people that shoot bullets, like I want to shoot, I want to, I want it to be an atomic bomb. And, and I was like, you have a beautiful house. What can we do that would be amazing. I’m like, everybody loves wine. And one of my friends is the first master SAMO yay ever in the U S there’s only like 220 of these guys globally. And it’s harder to get this certification than it is to become a doctor and a lawyer together. [inaudible] It’s crazy. And so Eddie Australis teaches people how to use food and wine as a competitive advantage. He calls it power entertainer. That’s what his book is. And to get them to come in and speak normally, like American express will pay 25 grand for him to come in and orchestrate a food and wine experience. And then that’s on top of the wine that you need to have that’s unique and the food that needs to pair with it. JR: (06:42) And so I’m like, Eddie is a good friend. I’ve opened up a bunch of doors for him. He’s a client. And and so we flew Eddie out to your house. We coordinated with the top caterer. We had Eddie reach out to his wholesale wine relationships to get some wine that nobody else would have access to. And because of that, Tucker max and guys from Texas and other places said I want to, I’ll fly in just for 24 hours Mark Tim just to hang out and be a part of this, this gathering. And so rather than opening it up for 200 people and have it just be okay, it was like what 22 people you know in the house. Like it was a very small group of people. But I would rather my, here’s my thing, I’d rather spend 20,000 hours on one relationship that is like a Cameron Harold who you know is literally like hit the 20 grand I’ve invested in him, which sounds crazy. Over 10 years that’s not at one time has turned into seven figures. So it was a 50 X ROI. People are ER, like brag about their three X ROI on Facebook, which is fine on ads. But I’m like the return on relationship. If you’re willing to do it the right way, played the long game for decades and do it with no strings attached. So there’s no manipulation. Like Jeff [inaudible] asked me afterwards, he’s like, dude, RV: (07:53) You didn’t ask me. There’s no pitch. You just did that just because you didn’t, you didn’t haven’t said this. And I just want to make sure people don’t understand. So first of all, RV: (08:01) Okay, so is that our house, which you didn’t have to rent, but you did pay us, you know, our normal handsome fee for private strategy session. So again, it was either rental free and it was worth it. And you flew this us, this master Somali AAN from catwalk, California bought all this wine, which was crazy, like amazing wine paid for this, you know, incredible like caterer, like all this like great food renting ch tables and chairs, like renting all the stuff and people to come and clean up and all this. And you didn’t see, nobody got charged. You didn’t like this was just a handful of people that you invited and no, you didn’t ask anyone to share. There wasn’t like pass a basket. There wasn’t like, Hey, can you have me on my podcast? You’re just going like, when I want people to really grasp what’s here. RV: (08:55) Cause it was like 20 grand. Is that, I mean it was maybe 10 grand. I mean it was, it was probably, it was at least five grand, probably 10, maybe even more than that. It was more than half. Yeah. So Mmm. And, and it wasn’t like, Hey, who can I be on their podcast or how, it was just like dinner. It was a love bomb. There was not, there wasn’t even, people didn’t even know who you were. Like some of the people didn’t even know you were the one throwing the party. There were people I invited and they thought I threw the party, which was awesome. And I was like, yeah, we, we, we spent, we spent for you, but so it is the thing that blows my mind is to go like, it’s one thing to go, yeah, you should do this. But to witness it with my own eyes of like, you going, this is like a big swing for the fence, but yet you’re not actually swinging. There’s no ask. It was like, it wasn’t like, Hey, I’ve got a business opportunity for y’all. It was just loving and friends and people flew in for it. It was nuts. Yeah. That was how I met Tucker max. I never met him. I mean there were some people there that were incredible. JR: (10:05) Yeah, well I think that’s the thing. I think in general, everybody says their first class best in class, world-class. Everybody says they’re, you know, they’re a plus this or their, their, you know, their bestseller of that. And I think that, you know, look, look at your calendar and look at your pocketbook and they’ll tell you what your priorities are. And you know, for us, you know, we make it, you know, like if you’re a person of faith, you reinvest 10% you know, as a tied back into your faith, into the church because that’s what God has called us to do, to multiply and to trust him. And, and I think that for me, like you should be doing that with your relationship. You should be reinvesting a percentage of your profits because if you’re not, you’re not reinvesting back into the people that allowed you to have a business. JR: (10:46) We’re a opportunity anyway. And that’s just silly. Like why would you not take 10% of your profits to reinvest back into clients and employees and partners and to keep them as a relationship to grow them. And hopefully the secret sauce is, is that I’ve done this with enough people, people like John, how many sales reps do you have? And I’m like, I have thousands. And they’re like, how do you afford thousands of sales reps? And I’m like, well, I take a percentage of my profits. I reinvest them back into guys like you or Cameron Harold or other guys that I couldn’t, I couldn’t afford you as a sales rep for a million dollars. And yet with being strategic, with my generosity and my gratitude and being thoughtful with it and doing it the right way, I get a thousand X ROI over time on the backend because I have people like you and others that I could never afford advocating for me in the corners of the world I would never get access to. And that’s, you know, we’ve been doing that for 20 years. I started when I was 20, I just turned 40 last month. And the people like, where did you come from? Like your overnight success. And I’m like, dude, I’ve been, yeah, I’ve been modeling this for 20 years and now some of the seeds I planted a decade ago are fruit. RV: (11:54) Yeah. I mean you were just on this virtual summit with Sarah Blakely and Dean Grasiozi and Daymond John that Pete Vargas put on and it’s like your face is right there with like all of these incredible people and it’s just awesome. It’s that concept. Return on relationship is such a, it’s such a cool idea. But yeah, like talk to me about the manipulation factor cause it’s, it’s like I really liked the power of that, but it also, not to misconstrue what you’re saying, you’re not actually measuring it. You’re not actually tracking the referrals that come from somebody. You’re, you’re not, you know, it’s not like a Facebook ad where you’re actually going, yeah. How many leads came directly from this ad or that ad? This is like by faith. JR: (12:48) Yes. Yeah. Well there is strategy to it. What I would say is that I will you find out over time who’s a giver? Who’s a taker, who’s a Matrixx. So Adam Grant’s concept of there’s givers, takers and matchers. I tend to surround myself with guys like John Hall and you and John Rampton and Bob Glazer and Pete Vargas, guys that are givers. Because I don’t have to keep like those types of people. I call it the light, the out-give effect. Like everybody’s trying to one up each other. But with generosity and when you hang out and surround yourself with and pour most of your generosity into others that you know, or whether they pay it back to you or they pay it forward, you know, like there’s going to be a positive ripple effect from that. And so I do think that there are times where I’m like, you give a few times, you’re like, gosh, that person’s yeah taking and they’re not generous and they’re kind of a douchebag. I will pull back in certain areas because I’m not tracking referrals, but I’m seeing well who they are as a person. I’m seeing what they’re up to. I’m seeing how they’re resigned to people. And so it’s not that you’re just like shooting shotguns of Willy nilly. Like we invited, you know, 22 people to your house. RV: (14:00) Yeah. You’re not going to the bar and man like drinks for everybody. Hey, come on over you. JR: (14:05) You know, you’ve got a boss. So there is thought put into it. But the thing is is that you’re not like when you put strings attached or you have expectations after that that somebody better have you on the show or better do this or do that. Like I think Robert Cialdini has proven it with enough research over 30 years that if you do nice things for people, like God’s woven it into our DNA to want to reciprocate. Now sometimes that plays out. Now, sometimes they’re in a position of power or timing a decade from now and you don’t know how that’s gonna play out. My original mentor, Paul, who is like this Rainmaker of an attorney, he was incredible because he like, he did this for 40 years. I saw him when he was 60 and I’m like, I want to be him when I’m 60 and he just did things naturally because that’s who he was. JR: (14:49) And as a poor farm kid was like, I want to be Paul when I’m 60 and I’m 20 at the time. So I got 40 years to get there. And so there is strategy to it. It’s not, you know, their strategy on the amount. They’re reinvesting in their strategy and who you’re, you know, who you’re targeting. But the, the, the kicker, the most people ruined it is with expectation and trying to give and then get give and then immediately ask and Vaynerchuck’s talked about it for decades. You know, it’s, it’s jab, jab, jab, right hook. It’s not jab, right hook. It’s, it’s give over and over again. Maybe you earn the right to ask after you’ve done it over and over and over again. But most people, they, they, they shortchange themselves and ruin the relationship by asking too quickly or, or with expectations. RV: (15:38) I want to talk about time of when to give actually. Because I think this is one of the things that you know, like you’ve taken this concept and built a whole career out of it. The book is like the book, the concepts, your keynote is fantastic, right? You’re, you’re, I always joke on this show that you’re one of the people I actually referred it to to clients and stuff and tell people, Hey, you should, because it’s really, really quality. Like of just your story. One of the things that jumps out to me is the concept of when to gift. And you really opened my eyes to this. And so can you talk about like when’s the raw, I mean, call it the wrong time or just like when, when do you recommend gifting and when do you not? JR: (16:26) Yeah, so when we walk people through our process and step-by-step, most people want to start with what they’re giving. And that’s like the seventh step in the process. Timing. Timing is just as important, if not more important than what you’re giving. And so most people, their whole focus is on what’s cool and sexy. And why I tell people is, you know, the timing, it has to be no ABC gifting. So no anniversaries, no birthdays, no Christmas. And really what that means is you’re not giving gifts out of obligation or expectation. So if you take your wife, for example, if you only did gifts on AOL Valentine’s day anniversary, you know, birthday, Christmas, like those are table stakes. Like that’s just gets you an even. RV: (17:06) Yeah, that’s what you do to not get fired for your marriage. You’re not getting promoted. That’s what you’re doing to not get fired. Exactly. JR: (17:16) So with clients or referral centers or joint venture partners, like most people, it’s like, Hey, I have a, I have a launch coming up. I better send a gift a week before that’s, that’s a tit for tat. Oh, I just closed a big deal. I better give a gift. Well, they give you a million dollars, here’s your $250 Starbucks gift card. Like it feels very transactional. And most people, if they’re honest with themselves, they consider themselves a relationship person. Not a transactional person. But most of the gifting that they do is, it’s Christmas, I need to send a gift. So I tell people it should be planned. Randomness. You should send gifts for two reasons. One is just because in wa when you do that, you set, you pick a time like you know the middle of July and you send out gifts to your top, say 20 relationships or top 200 relationships because you didn’t tie it to any sort of transaction or deal or trigger. JR: (18:02) You send it just because the other person. That’s how people are like, Johnny, you send all these knives. How do people not like, how does it not get old? And I’m like, well, when I, our clients send out knives to people, it’s not tied to Christmas or holiday or birthday. It’s sent out. Hey, I was just thinking of you. We’d love to carve out some time to be with you, blah, blah blah. So the person who receives it, even though there might be 200 of the same gift that went out, the person who gets it, it’s like, I can’t believe Roy was thinking about me. And it’s so there’s a, the timing makes it a surprise and delight. And so we, when we walk people through our process and lay out a plan, a relationship plan, everybody has a financial plan, a marketing plan, a health plan, an eating plan, workout plan. JR: (18:40) Nobody has a relationship plan. One of the things is I’m like, here, you need to have one to four times a year that the other person you’re sending the gift to is never that expecting it. And you’re not asking them for anything. You’re just sending it out as just because the only other time I’ll say that a gift makes sense is that asset. And the commodity that we’ll never get back is when you take somebody’s time. Like that’s the most precious asset. And yet most people were like, I want to pick your brain. Hey, I want to do this. I wanna do that. It’s like you want to waste my time and I, and that could be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour. So if somebody gives me five minutes of their time, I’ll send them sometimes a $500 gifts and the other person, even a billionaire, I’ve had billionaires reach back out and say, John, your note, your thoughtful note and your gift after you, I gave you five minutes was nicer than what some of my relationships that I do $10 million deals with has ever sent me. JR: (19:30) And now guess whose phone call they will take six months, six years from now? Mine because I appreciated their time, their most valuable asset that most people waste. So the timing of surprising and delighting people. Like when we did the thing at your house, it wasn’t Christmas, it wasn’t our anniversary, it was theirs. I’m in town, I’m with my buddy, Rory. Let’s do something fun. Like it wasn’t tied to anything other than let’s do something cool. Let’s be generous. I’m grateful that Roy is pouring into my team. We’re all together. Why? Why don’t we celebrate? And I think that’s where people are like, Hey, I gotta wait till a 50th anniversary before I throw a party, before I got to wait until somebody leaves my company after 20 years to throw a party. Think that’s so old school and idiotic. It makes no sense. Like let’s, let’s be more proactive and find reasons out of the blue to love on people. And that’s where people are like, I can’t believe you did that. Yeah. That is wild. That, that, that is, that that is the part. And it’s like the timing is a lot of times it’s like whether it’s a $5 gift or a $5,000 gift like Mary Kay used to have, you know, my mom sold Mary Kay and they used to have this saying they were like a $5 gift but a $50. And RV: (20:48) They would say that as just like, it was a $5 gas card, but they would present it in this bag with like glitter on it and stand in front of the room and it made people feel special. It was like, it’s all about making them feel appreciated. Like you’re saying. So how do you use this as like a business? Like you’re using this to get keynotes or only as thank you gifts, like in a business setting, what are you doing? You know? Yeah. Like how does this, how does this play out in a, like you’re trying to get clients or you know, when clients are JR: (21:24) Whatever. Yeah. So, so we have clients of all sizes and shapes and we have half a million dollar authors, you know, too fortune 500 companies. But at the end of the day, people, you know, when we spoke at Google, they’re like, John does this work in technology? And I laughed. I’m like, are there human beings here? And they’re like, well, yeah. And I’m like, well then it works. I don’t care if you’re a solopreneur that you did a hundred grand last year or whether you’re Google, like if it involves human beings, it works. So, so one of the things that we take all of our clients, whether it’s professional service firms, financial advisors, speakers, ma, you know, widget manufacturers, I’m like, let’s do a 360 degree view of all of your relationships, your suppliers, your clients, your joint venture partners, your investors, your mentors, your board of directors, anybody that has allows you to either have a business or that you need to build a relationship with in order to grow your business. JR: (22:16) So from a speaking perspective, most people when they get hired to do a keynote, you know, seven years ago I was begging to speak for free and we just did a deal in and Australia with books and travel was an 85,000 our keynote. So seven years, we went from free too with guys like you pouring into us and understanding things. But part of that reason that that happened was I built relationships and poured into I gift other speakers I love on other speakers and people like, aren’t those your competitors? I’m like, no. Those are other people that are interacting with amazing stages. And if I do a great job and I love on those people and they bring me up in conversation, they become a sales rep for me. They have their tight, tight relationship. The other people that we’ve done gifts for for a long time, most people are like all of the CEO of the company that I’m speaking for. I got to send him or her a gift and I spend as much, if not more on the assistant and the event planner. I call it the inner circle. Why? Because the event planner oftentimes gets only the accredit if the event goes bad, you know, it’s oftentimes a person who is working their butt off and yeah, RV: (23:22) Yeah. They’re the one doing all the work they’re actually doing. So, so JR: (23:27) The event I speak on, I do these I surprised the event planner with this thousand dollar mug, like a thousand dollars per mug. I’m like, it tells, it’s, it’s, it’s like tells a person’s whole life story. And I just gave one to a group called forum 400, which is like all these top insurance brokers and I gave it to the event planner. I’d never met her before, but I heard she was amazing person, person of faith, and did the research to find out about her. And from the stage I gave her this mug and her name is Amy and she came up, I ugly crying in front of everybody, gave me a hug and I didn’t realize she actually works for an association management company and they literally represent a thousand associations and she’s become my biggest cheerleader and advocate because she was so blown away by how I treat her now. JR: (24:10) I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t even know she worked for an association management company. I just knew she was working her butt off for this group and I thought she was employed by the group. And so what I would say is that if you can take an inventory of all the people that are important to you and then go out another layer deeper into their inner circle, you know, I started out when I was in college investing $500 a month in gifting and that was a lot for a college kid at 20. That’s six grand a year. This year our gifting budget will approach 600,000 for the year personally, RV: (24:42) 80%. I think we should throw a half million dollar party at Vaden Villa. If that’s the budget. Do I have a half million dollar party at Vaden Villa? Just putting that out there. Rounding error leave a hundred grand. 500 grand for JR: (24:57) Yeah, we could do a, yeah, I mean we could do a heck of a bash there. RV: (25:00) We got to get past that JR: (25:01) [Inaudible] 19 though because we yeah, we got to have bunch of people. Yeah. I’m, I’m not, I’m not afraid to push the envelope there, but we, that’s another conversation. So, so, so what I’d say what I’d say is 80% of of your relationship building budget or your marketing budget, your business debt budget. Think about the people that are important to you through review though more important than what you’re giving. So identify those people and then who’s their spouse? Who’s their assistant or chief of staff? Who’s the event planner? Who are the kids who are pets? Yeah. That’s okay. That’s where when people are like, dude, you still send stupid knives. And I’m like, as last time I checked, most people are married or have a significant other. Most people have a kitchen. Most people are foodies or cook or entertain. We’re sending more knives than we ever have. JR: (25:42) Like when the New York times interviewed us, they thought I was joking when I said the knives are our number one gifts. And they’re like, that was your college thing, right? And I’m like, we sell millions of dollars knives, because people still crave that practical, unique out of the blue. Something that includes their family. And so what I would say is focus on the event planners. Focus on the people that are lower in stature because oftentimes they’re treated like crap. And if you can honor them and treat them with respect and treat them like a peer, that’s how we landed the Orlando magic is a big client was not because of the CEO. He made the decision to sign off on the first order, but it was the assistant Cheyenne who became my internal sales rep and helped us land our first six figure deal with an NBA team. It was not, it was the person below that. I love Don for years and not in a weird manipulative way. It was just honoring the relationship. And she went and became my internal sales advocate. So I would say, do you want to build a personal, realize that there’s the influencer CEO’s, those are great, but take care of the people around them in a way that’s not weird or manipulative. And if you can do that consistently over time, those people will start to look out for you and start to open doors that you can. RV: (26:58) I mean, and this is just, this is so, this is just so true because like if somebody is nice to AAJ like they’re in, they will like if they’re, if they’re mean to Aja or worse, if they don’t, it’s like, it’s worse to not acknowledge her. I mean, she’s the CEO of arc, like she’s the CEO of brand builders group, but it’s like she decides where we go, what we do, who we spend time with, where I go like [inaudible] and and she’s a softie. Right. So you’re, you’re just, that’s just so true. It’s like that is, I is, is taking, taking care of their inner circle makes them feel special and it’s also in a weird way like, you know, if it was like the CEO and assistant, I think it actually makes the CEO feel good that somebody else is loving on their person. JR: (27:49) It makes them feel like the hero. They’re the King, they’re the queen and because of their hard work, other people around them are benefiting. Like any leader loves to see the people that they care about. Yeah. Kids, their spouse. Because oftentimes you feel guilty when, you know, like I travel away from my family and I’m at like pebble beach drinking, no nice bottles of wine and my, my wife is taking care of our little ones and they like the flu and yeah, anytime somebody can honor my wife or my assistant or my team or my kids, like I win too. So it’s, it’s such a simple concept, but yeah, RV: (28:22) So again, if we got, we have, we have to wrap up here, but like this is, this has worked so well for you. Like even, and I’ve known you now for, I dunno how many years, but it’s been many years and to see how you’re like, this is, you know, advanced your own personal brand. Like you’ve always been great at business. You’ve always been moving tons of knives and like building relationships with people. But some years ago you were like, I’m going to become an author and like I’m going to become in this community. And like now here, here you are sharing the virtual stage with Daymond John and Sarah Blakely and you know, all these crazy people. Because of your relationship with Pete and how much Pete, you know, adores you and loves you. How much money, how do you figure out, like if you were going to it, you said it’s a system, which is one of the things I also liked that even though you’re not like measuring the ROI, there is a system here. So, you know, you mentioned you had a budget. How do you figure out what the budget should the, like is it roughly a percentage of profit or percentage of sales or like just just as a starting point? JR: (29:30) Yeah, so what I’d say is we’ve perfected it over almost 20 years now and it, you know, starting with the who, the relationships, the, when, the while that kind of stuff like you to map out and identify the pool of people first of who that is. And every business, some people, it’s 10 people, some people, 7,000 people. But it’s still just human beings. We charted a lot of money to walk people through that process. Cause that’s the, you don’t get the foundation right, of who you’re going after budgeting properly. Like what you’re going to send and all the other stuff like is meaningless. And so if your tribe wants to go download the entire process of what we charge thousands to do, if they, if we do it, walk them through it personally and then go to Giftology system.com and download our entire ecology system.com Giftology system.com. JR: (30:18) All one word, all one word Giftology system. But the budgeting question, every company is different as far as what their margins are in general. I don’t care what somebody’s revenue is, I care what profit is. And so, you know, sometimes these companies, mortgage companies where it was like, Oh, we did 40 billion in revenue last year, but we did 4 million in profit. I’m like, okay, let’s work with a $4 million number, not the $40 billion. And so for us it’s a percentage of net profit or a percentage of gross profit, but we’re in the 15 to 20% realm. I think a good baseline is 10% of whatever your, your net profit is. So if you make a thousand dollars on a relationship, you know, reinvesting a hundred dollars back into them to say, to show them near that, Hey, you know, you were thinking of them, obviously you’re never going to send something to somebody that’s a high level person that they couldn’t go buy for themselves. JR: (31:07) So it’s not about the item, it’s about the thoughtfulness that goes into it. That’s why the engraving of the personalization, that’s why the handwritten note, that’s why all the details around it. People will say, John, I’ve done Giftology and it doesn’t work. And I’m like, what did you follow the recipe? And they’re like, why kind of did? And I’m like, it’s like baking bread either. If you don’t put yeast in, you don’t get bread. And so people forget the little details around it and they think they’re doing what we’re doing. But really they’re sending stuff from Amazon with a type letter and they’re like, the person didn’t even respond. I’m like, well, do you think you can automate relationships? Do you think something showing up from Amazon is going to work like that feels different than if it came from one human sent to another human. JR: (31:46) So the budgeting, so that’s not in the plan. Don’t send it from Amazon, from Amazon, send it to your house and then package it and then send it. And people are like, well that’s a lot. I’m like, why? Why do you think our agency exists? Like if it was easy, everybody would do it. If it was like, yeah, they’re there. It’s not that people don’t know what to do when they hear the recipe, they’re like, that’s it. And I’m like, yeah, that’s, that’s all we do. Like we do this, this, this, and this was like, well that doesn’t sound that hard. And I’m like, if you do it for one human, it’s not, but if you want to do it for a dozen humans consistently or for two dozen, and so the budgeting, figuring that out and saying, Hey, I make a thousand dollars, I’m going to reinvest a hundred or 10% of net profit is a rough, like, yeah, you can go higher than that. JR: (32:32) Like some of our clients were like, John, I’ll invest 20% like I invest 18% in, in revenue and expenses. Like if I can invest a percentage of profit back into my relationships and turn them into a referral source. So like, you know, like these speakers are like, man, my, my average stages, you’ll $12,000 like I would gladly do a grand or two if it ain’t even turned into three years from now another speaking deal or another consulting deal or another whatever. And so I think that’s where people don’t understand is they, they want the immediate, I invest the dollar, I immediately have to make the money and they’re not willing to, to build the re, you know, they’re not willing to plant the acorn that becomes this massive Oak tree over the course of five or 10 or 15 or 20 years. Like they want to put the money in. JR: (33:18) And so the budgeting, I tell him like, you don’t have to spend all of your marketing dollars with gift allergy, but if you take your entire pool of money of what you spend on building your business, just take a sliver of it and redirect it towards coring back into all of your people and do it for three years and do it with following the recipe and come back to me and tell me it didn’t pay. The biggest dividends of anything that you’ve ever invested into is to me the relationships are where like, especially in a Valley, we find out who has our back. We find out when we’re backed into a corner, you know, I know when I went through 2008 and almost lost the business, it was a handful of people that allowed me to survive. And I think that people forget that. Like you don’t need a thousand. It’s like, you know, Tim Ferriss has concept like you don’t need 10 million people. You need a thousand true fans. And I think you even need less than that. Like if you need, if you have 10 or 20 or 30 people that are raving true fans, like actively loyal you get those kinds of people behind you. Like it’s amazing what we can accomplish with a small handful of of people that are in our army and really willing to go to bat for us. RV: (34:26) There you have it. Friends Giftology system.com. This is John Ruhlin, author of Giftology. You can check out the book, follow him online, or go to Giftology system.com. John, thank you for being here. Thank you for this fresh perspective. And thank you for making me feel like crap for how bad I am at gifting as always. See, yeah.

Ep 77: Getting Your Slice of the Personal Brand Pie with Chris Harder | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder. Welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am joined by my wife and CEO and business partner. AJ Vaden, we’re breaking down the Chris harder, which Chris and Lori have that in common with us, that they work and do business together. It’s pretty rare. It’s pretty rare. So we’re sharing our top three highlights three and three. AJ you go first, babe? Well, this isn’t necessarily whatever AJV: (00:36) My highlights, but one of the things that I think is really important one of the things we talk about a ton at brand builders group is the importance of identifying what is your primary business model. And I think that’s one of the things that really makes brain builders group really unique in the marketplace is we’re not just a strategy firm in terms of what is your personal brand. And what’s your message. I think one of our real uniqueness lies in the fact that we focus a ton on the business side that’s our background RV: (01:07) Making money is AJ spiritual gifts. AJV: (01:10) But I think there’s so much that so many people talk about social media and websites and the visual identity and without a plan, none of that really makes you money. And that’s a real core competency of ours is how do you actually turn your brand into a business? And what I loved about what Chris talked about kind of throughout the entire interview is how they’ve leveraged direct sales you know, kind of just whole concept of how do you, how do you find what your primary business model is? And we talk a lot about that. We have an acronym for that page. We have a lot of acronyms here. But what I loved is he talked about how direct sales has the lowest point of entry, the lowest barrier to entry, but also has some of the biggest upsides. And if you’re not really sure what your primary boss business model is, or maybe you don’t have a secondary or ancillary, this could be a really great option for you to leverage because how I see a personal brand, as it relates to direct sales is really more of like attraction marketing. AJV: (02:15) It’s the fuel that happens on your blog and your podcast and social media is really attraction marketing as you as the face, but yet you’ve got this really great product and you’ve got the fulfillment, you’ve got the shipping, you’ve got the backend business, the infrastructure, the technology with that direct sales company. So it’s a really interesting component and I kind of will tie this into my first point. I changed my mind mid thought, but I just love that. And I think for anyone who is in direct sales, you need to listen to this interview and anyone who isn’t completely confident that their current primary secondary ancillary business model is going to make this a full time gig. You should consider direct sales and see what’s out there and see how that fits into your business model. That could be a really great one. And I just, I love that. AJV: (03:04) So my first point how that kind of connects is the difference between a personal brand and what he calls a media brand. And I loved this as it relates to a podcast and he shared this example that I thought was really kind of aha. It’s like, are you building your audience to be big enough so that you can sell just your coaching program or your consulting or your speaking, or your course, or are you trying to make it big enough that you can get ads and sponsors and brand deals. And that to some degree is the difference between a personal brand and a media brand. And I thought that was very insightful because we have clients on both ends of the spectrum and they have a really solid like, Hey, I want to build a coaching business. I want to build a mastermind. I want to build a course. I want to do live events. And for that, you don’t need millions and millions and millions of followers, right? RV: (03:57) In particular was the permission to say, you don’t have to have millions of followers. You can make money from a brand, from a personal brand. And to think about the media brand AJV: (04:08) A totally separate. Now, if you’re trying to get ads in sponsors and brand deals, different story, but is that really your business model? And I think that just even having that filter as you’re making these decisions to help, you know, like, what am I doing this for really makes an extraordinary difference of what I know one of yours is not comparing yourself to the person who has millions, because you don’t have to, because you don’t have to mail. You don’t have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. RV: (04:41) That’s my point. Oh, I love that. Well, yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go right off of that, because that, that was part of the conversation about the comparison game. And I think, you know, it’s easy to be like, well, I don’t want to start a podcast cause I don’t think I can get millions of people or go, well, my podcast is an important cause I only get a few thousand downloads a month and, and the point is like, no, millions of downloads does not equal success. It all depends on what the strategy and the purpose is. You may only want a thousand people listening and it’s like, but it’s the right thousand people that are listening and he’s extremely targeted. And I would say that there’s a lot of people who make more money from a targeted podcast. That’s like the right thousand than just a broad one that reaches a ton of people, but there’s no clear monetization strategy. And you know, what w what he was saying specifically on the comparison game that spoke to me was if you’re gonna play the comparison game, play the full comparison, meaning you can’t just look and, and you mentioned. Yeah. And, and him and Laurie, I also thought it was interesting to your point about the direct sales that they still to this day draw a lot of income from their, their direct sales business, which really was years and years. AJV: (05:57) And it’s been the launching pad for all the other, RV: (05:59) For everything. Yeah. And, and, you know, I got, I got a big part of my start in direct sales and, and, you know, my mom was in direct sales. I’ve grown up in the whole direct sales world and we speak a lot to direct sales companies and just, just love the love of the business and the people. But if you’re gonna play the comparison game, just keep in mind that when you see somebody that has a million followers, there’s hours and hours and hours of work that they have done to get there, that you don’t see. And I think a lot of our clients, when they become brand builders group clients, and they see us breaking down the content diamond and the relationship engine and the funnels and all of the things that we teach about how to do it, they go, wow, there’s a lot of work here. And it’s like, yeah, it doesn’t just happen by accident. And you should give yourself permission to just like, be like, to be okay with where you’re at and don’t compare your, your step one to someone else’s step 77. AJV: (06:56) Yeah. I love that. So my second point was something that we talk a lot about Cod the fastest path to cash, but Chris also kind of referenced that. And he said, I know, I know dozens, if not hundreds of people who have launched their personal brand and made six figures in the first year. And I also know people that it’s taken them five years to make six figures in just their personal brand. And I thought it was really interesting. And I think a lot of it has to do with what is your primary business model? What are you selling? Because if what you are selling is a $10,000 membership program that lasts a year, you don’t need a ton of clients. You just need the right ones. You need a targeted audience with a very clear offering to the right people at the right time at the right price. AJV: (07:46) And if you sell 10, you’re kind of at six figures versus if you are launching a hundred dollar, of course, it’s a volume business. So what is it that you’re selling? And if you’re going all in and launching your personal brand, it’s keep that in mind. It’s what are you selling? Doesn’t have to be the long game or the, the, the end of it. Doesn’t have to be what you do for the long term. It’s just, what are you doing now to play the long game, knowing that your business model may shift over the course of time. And there may be things that you have to do right now that you don’t want to do a year or two or five years from now. But you know that you’ve got to kind of pays the path to get there. You’ve got to build your audience. AJV: (08:31) You’ve got to build your content. You’ve got to build your platform. And I just thought that was really interesting of well, but two people could be both launching a personal brand, have the exact same platform, the exact same number of followers, but just because their offering is different, one is going to make a lot more money quicker than the other. And I think all of those things, and I don’t think building a personal brand is about money. However for many of you you do have to make money. So I think that’s important to talk about and to reference. And I just really thought that was a very interesting concept. And one to keep in mind as you’re making these decisions of what should I launch and how should I launch it, and when should I launch it and what do I want to do short term, and what do I do longterm? And RV: (09:18) That reminds me of a time. One time I shared the stage with Jesse Itzler Sarah Blakely’s husband. And he was, you know, they’re both super wealthy and successful independently. And he was telling the story, I forget the name of the company is maybe net jets, but as a private jet, it was a private jet company. And he said, the reason that I got into that business, as I figured out, it would take me the same amount of work to sell like a hundred customers, a a hundred thousand dollar product, as it would take to sell a hundred customers, a $10 million product. And so I realized that if I could just go get a hundred customers, I might as well just get the higher price point and just go for a few customers. And I didn’t, I didn’t have to be the guy that had 10,000 customers or a million customers. I only needed like a hundred to turn this thing into a billion dollar business. And you know, that’s, to what you’re saying, the price point selections is important. And that’s a big part. I think, of phase one that a lot of our clients do struggle with. Cause they don’t think so much about the money part or look at it at scale, like you’re talking about of what is it like the longterm? AJV: (10:25) Yeah. I think so many people see a personal brand just of what you see on social media. And that’s such a teeny tiny, very last thing you do part and there’s so much work and thought and strategy that goes in beforehand. And that’s why I loved Chris’s interview is it talks a lot about the things, not just the podcast and the, and the brand deals and social media, it’s all the other infrastructure that has to be in place. RV: (10:47) So the biggest takeaway for me, which was my second with Chris, which I loved was he said, ego is your greatest overhead. I just loved that. And that is tweetable moment. That’s a pillar point as we would teach and that concept y’all have that ego is the thing that holds you back because it’s the thing that keeps you scared and keeps you worried and like keeps you stuck is because you’re afraid it won’t be good enough. And it will, you know, whatever you’ll face criticism. It’s also the thing that keeps us from scaling because we’re so focused on ourselves and we’re, we’re not just serving our audience and helping them. And I just thought that was super powerful. And if you’re stuck in any, in any form or fashion, as it relates to the business, it’s like, God, ask the ego question. Who am I thinking about? And who am I producing content for? And how am I making decisions every day? Is it for me? Or is it for the best interests of are our customer? And that’s just, that was strong. Ego is the greatest overhead AJV: (11:54) That is strong. Alright. My third point, I’ll make it short and sweet of just this whole concept of, you have to know where the trends are heading and if you’re not creating them, you need to at least know where they are, because they’re all relevant to you. If you’re building a personal brand and he used the example of social media and he said it, you know, it kind of, if you look at the evolution of where people are going and what people are doing, it went from MySpace to Facebook and Facebook to Instagram and Instagram now to take top. And we were just having this debate before we started the interview. And I’m like, yeah, just, I started really like Ted talks on my thing and does it really have to be my thing to have a presence on there? And is that where the trends are going and what’s it going to look like in one to five years, but to just say, that’s not my thing, I’m going to ignore it really. It’s probably a little bit negligent. If your business is in the business of personal branding, so it was a good aha moment for me. RV: (12:51) We did ignore Snapchat though. We made a conscious decision to ignore Snapchat and that worked out well. But what we didn’t do was go all in on stories yeah. At the time, which is what we should have done, which was like, okay, AJV: (13:04) Again, it’s all about just, you gotta be in the know, and that takes time and research. And just knowing what’s out there, it’s like, if this is your business model, make it your business and it’s your business to know what’s going on. Yeah. RV: (13:17) Be where the people are on that note. So one thing our team shared with us this morning is, is they saw something that apparently Instagram is about to start on rolling ads on IgE TV posts. So that’s a new thing that’s coming. That’s more of a, what we would call a phase three conversation about paid traffic. But if you’re listening and you know, you, you know, our lingo and phase three, and you’re in that paid traffic section, that’s a big time, big time win because if someone’s watching HGTV, that’s a super fan. And so the idea to be able to run ads to those people is yes, powerful, powerful. So be on the lookout for that. My last thing you know, is what Chris was all about is this thing is all about generosity and just giving. And he’s such a giver him and Lori, they’re always doing sponsor your, to like contests and sponsoring small businesses and giving them money to help them start. RV: (14:09) And they’re just really awesome about that. But I think he, you know, he said, it’s the key to everything. One it’s good for your heart. But the other thing is, as a business strategy, it creates massive reciprocity. And even it doesn’t mean you have to be given away a thousand dollars sweepstakes every week, but you’re giving away your ideas. You’re giving away your knowledge. You’re giving way education, encouragement, insight information. And that creates the law of reciprocity when you give to people. And that’s the power of podcasting and YouTube and all social media and email is that you can give, give, give, give, give, give, and it’s like, you can’t lose you. You can’t, outgive, you can’t, outgive the universe. If you just focus on giving away an amazing experience and everything, you know, it’ll come back to you. And we call this the rule of 10. RV: (15:04) When we talk about pricing in phase two, when we work on your offer structure, and the rule of 10 is, is when, when you’re setting your price, set the price at a rate where you feel confident that you’ve already given away 10 times the value for free as what you’re asking them to pay right now. So by the time they even see a price from you, if it’s a hundred dollar product, the person is literally going, I’ve already gotten a thousand dollars worth of value. And we shared this on a webinar a couple of weeks ago, the rule of 10 and somebody in the comments wrote, and I love this. They said the rule of 10 takes all the slime out of internet marketing. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about is just generosity. Create the law of reciprocity, like test it, try to give away everything. RV: (15:56) You’re not, you know, and see if it doesn’t just come pouring back in to your business. And so Chris just nailed that on the head for me. So that was, that was it’s great interview. God, listen, SP you know, if you’re, if you’re in any kind of network marketing, direct sales, for sure. These guys are superstars, they turned it into a whole media empire. An awesome, awesome couple, although Laurie’s not there. We’ll get Laurie we’ll we’ll, we’ll rope her in to come and do an interview too. So thanks for being here and we’ll catch you next time. Bye.

Ep 76: Getting Your Slice of the Personal Brand Pie with Chris Harder

RV: (00:00) Man, I have to tell you that I have been so impressed with the man you’re about to meet, Chris Harder. And it’s the generosity of this guy’s heart that blows me away. I would say it’s his generosity and then it’s his humility in terms of how much he still to this day invests in his own personal development. I met him in a very high-level mastermind. He runs masterminds though. I mean, this is a great example of the guy that is usually teaching is still also always learning. And him and his wife, Lori, are just incredible individuals. We, we’ve gotten to spend some time with them. AJ adores them. And this is someone who’s just built a personal brand. Him and his wife both have monster personal brands. They built it from the ground up. They’ve done it right. RV: (00:47) And he offered to come on and, and, and share. I, and I asked him to come on and be like, Hey, can you share some of those secrets? So his podcast is called for the love of money. That is, you know, probably his, his biggest platform he’s got like a quarter million people on Instagram at the time of this recording as well as a lot of lot of people. And I think, you know, but beyond that, it’s just entrepreneurship and success in general and really more of the heart of, you know, what it takes to succeed as both a personal brain and an entrepreneur. So Chris, my brother, welcome to the show. CH: (01:23) Hey Rory. Heck of an introduction. Thank you for that. And let me just say I echo all of those kinds of thoughts right back to you and AJ and just think the world of you guys. RV: (01:32) Well, thanks brother. I yeah, it’s been, it’s been fun for us to kind of, as we’ve shifted more from like the corporate world into more of the entrepreneurial world the last couple years and then also starting my personal brand over, like really getting into the space and seeing what people have been doing. And you were one of the first people that kind of popped up on my radar and in my feet and I was seeing around. And I would love to just, so being that you are a money guy and you talk about money and gratitude and generosity and giving and accumulating and, and, and, and investing from a personal brand perspective, are you open to just share with us? Like how do you actually make money? Cause I think that’s just a question people still have. It’s just like there’s so many different ways to make money. What actually pays your bills every day, CH: (02:19) Every week. Yeah. What a great question. Okay. So this, and I love that you’re all about personal branding because what I’m about to share all comes from one central piece and that is the personal brand, right? So as of today, when we record this, we have sole ownership or partial ownership in seven, I’m sorry, eight different seven and eight figure businesses. So some of the obvious ones for us where the revenue streams come from is my brand with the podcast underneath that, I call that a coaching brand. So there’s a media brand or there’s a coaching brand, right? So even though the podcast is a form of media underneath that we monetize it through e-courses, through two different masterminds, through one on one coaching and through events that we throw. Then under Lori’s brand I would say is more of a media brand because she’s monetizing her podcast through sponsorships and affiliate deals and things that are a little bit more traditional. CH: (03:14) When you build up things with the intention of media behind it, and we can get into that later. The difference between a media brand and a personal brand, I mean that’s a great like and it’s important for people to understand that distinction because podcasting is one of those things that people go, well, my business model is podcasting. And it’s like, well no, podcasting for most people is a traffic source. Your real business model, like what you’re saying is courses, masterminds, coaching events. In the case of Laurie or Lewis house or you know, people like that, Jordan harbinger, their business model actually is podcasting cause they’re doing brand deals. They’re monetizing the podcast itself. That’s cool. That’s an important distinction. So I love that. Well, it’s a, it’s a very important distinction for this reason. When you’re building something, even though we’re all doing it, let’s say through a podcast, it really helps you decide, do I need to build a large enough podcast in order to sell the number of coaching programs I need, whatever fashion it is, or do I need to build this podcast to the size and attraction to sell brand sponsorship deals? CH: (04:17) And those are two very different sets of mechanics behind the scenes, right? So what we’ve done is we’ve built these personal brands and think top of funnel. So pop two large podcasts feeding into Instagrams and Facebooks and mailing lists. And then we’re able to leverage those large brands to do things like investor deals in outstanding foods and investor deals in a tech company and investor deals in a vegan what do you call it? Coffee creamer company. And we’re able to also leverage it into, we built a huge network marketing team because of it was easier with personal brands. We’re able to pivot into an alcohol company that Lori has started all because we have audience. And when you think personal brand worry, you really got to think constant audience acquisition and interaction because if you master that you can pivot and build whatever you want. CH: (05:14) Mm. And, and the, so which came first? Like did you have the audience first or did you build a business first and then you took that money and use it to build the personal brand? Like what was the sequencing of how, you know, and now it’s, it’s sort of like, you know, we talk about she has wall, I know you’ve heard us talk about that. Most of our paying clients will know what that is, is like you guys are on the other side of the wall. And, and I think of ’em, you know, you’re focused in terms of what you spend your time on, but when you move to investing, it’s different. You’re not spending your time on it as much. It’s more of just you’re putting your money there. So what was this one? Do you agree with that last part and is that how you think about it? CH: (05:54) And then what was the order of how it kind of happened? Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly how it happened is you need to really go deep and specific in one category first until you break through that she hands wall to use your example and then you’ve kind of earned the right to expand off of that. So where our first large audience came from was Lori’s fitness brand. It’s really funny that we’re recording this while we’re kind of facing this pandemic crisis economy because I was thrown into entrepreneurship, which by the way, I always wanted to be in any ways during the last financial crisis, 2000 interesting. I came from banking and of course that was a banking crisis and Lori and I were young and arrogant and ignorant. We thought that it was going to last forever. And so we did not take care of our money. CH: (06:38) And when the music stopped, Rory, we had to get rid of it. Everything. And I don’t mean like kind of getting rid of everything. I mean we had to short sell the home that we had just finished building. We had to get rid of the cars, the investment properties. And the most humiliating part was this. We had to put every possession on Craigslist and watch his car after car pulled up in front of the house and person after person walked into the home and they would bargain for the couch and bargain for the chairs and bargain for the TVs and the grills, whatever they wanted. And they would walk out while the neighbors looked on in judgment with our possessions. But do you know what that did? Worry that moment that felt so horrible while it was going on? I felt so humiliating while it was going on. CH: (07:26) That was the moment that actually allowed us to downsize into a tiny little 900 square foot apartment and decide again, choose again, pivot and reinvent again. And so without that back against the wall moment, we went to started building personal brands. Now here’s why I share that story. I don’t care where you’re starting from. What do you already have a brand or whether you feel like you are below zero right now? The very first thing we did was Laurie had a gym at the time and she really had no career up to this moment. She said, I’m never going to let this happen again. So that’s when Lori rolled up her sleeves. And so she had a small gym, one on one studio that we built out on the weekends on her own, and she created the beginning of a monthly plan and she started competing in fitness and build a Facebook following. CH: (08:15) Now keep in mind we’re talking 12, no, 2009. I mean this is before everyone’s doing it, right? Yeah. And the minute it caught fire her, her Facebook started to grow quickly. She made an effort to put herself in magazines and I’ll, I’ll, I tell you what that has to do with today’s brand building in a little bit here. She made an effort to get herself in magazines, which at that time drove her Facebook and driving that Facebook drove her online workout program, which they were not a dime a dozen back then, like they are now. Right. And it was building that very intentional building of a Facebook audience and building an online revenue stream in addition to that gym that made us really take off and realize that this is what we wanted to do from here on out. And at the time Roy, I was a partner in a mortgage bank. Yeah, you’re right. So I left the bank that laid me off and I took a partnership in a mortgage bank and I took for the wrong reasons. I took it cause I was scared and, and I didn’t have a lot of other options. But when I saw what Lori was doing, I sold out my partnership because I said that’s what I want to be doing. I came home and I helped her grow that brand and we’ve never looked back ever since. RV: (09:28) Wow. Interesting. Yes. So you mentioned something there about not everybody was doing it right. And so to that your back against the wall, that’s an, that’s a powerful story. Cause I know for sure there’s, there’s somebody is listening right now that’s going through something similar to what you went through. CH: (09:50) Do you think it’s too late RV: (09:52) To build the personal brand? Like, like you said, workout programs are a dime a dozen. You have Facebook? Yeah. Is, you know, now it’s really Instagram and it’s even Instagram is like on the later part of its maturity cycle. Yeah. Like what do you think? It’s too late, do you think? Is there, is there a next thing? Do you think it’s just the same old tools and just kind of starting from ground zero? Like what, what’s your opinion on the life cycle? CH: (10:17) Cool opportunity here. I’m so glad you asked this. It’s never too late. Number one opportunity never goes away. It just changes shape, form and location. So it might change from Facebook. Actually, let’s be honest, if I changed from my space to Facebook and Facebook to Instagram and Instagram to tick tock now and but it’s always just changing shape and location and it’s our job as we’re building personal brands to always be aware of looking for how it’s changing and where it’s changing into and to go that direction. And so if you’re just starting a brand right now, you can not have thoughts of it’s too saturated or everybody’s already doing it because you’re going to do it differently. You’re going to have a little different swagger, a little different spin, a little different set of beliefs, a little bit different energy behind what you teach. CH: (11:06) And so even if someone has already started a similar podcast, even if they started a similar brand, even if they started a similar membership or similar mastermind, yours is going to be different and it’s going to speak to the people that don’t yet resonate with the ones that are out there. And here’s the most important point. If people are afraid that it’s too saturated, all you have to do is reel yourself back in and say, what is my financial goal? Great. Let’s pretend it’s, you know, a million dollars. Okay, how many customers do I need at blank dollars to make a million dollars? So we’ll say your program was a thousand bucks. Okay, you need a thousand customers at a thousand dollars to make that million. Okay, great. How many months do I have to do that? 12 months, so what do I really need to go out and get out of that gigantic slice of pie of potential customers? CH: (11:56) It’s something that is so minuscule to meet your financial goal that even if other people are doing it, there’s still more than enough to go around and that should be what makes you excited to go out there and just carve out your tiny slice of the pie. Yeah, I mean if you get a hundred customers a month, that’d be 1200 a year, but if it was a hundred a month, that’s 25 a week. So do you get 25 people a week? That’s five a day. You get five, five people a day. You’ve made an at a thousand bucks, you’re making a million dollars. Yeah, and there’s some, if you do a 10th of that, like if you do a 10th of that, for many people, you’re probably still landing in an okay place. Exactly. Yeah. I don’t want people to get caught up in a million dollar example. CH: (12:38) You want to make a hundred grand, then it’s just a hundred customers at a thousand or maybe a thousand customers at a hundred dollars there’s so many different routes to your goal, but the point is this, there, the number of customers required. It’s such a tiny percentage out of the whole pie out there. Then even if you’re starting today, there’s still more than enough to go around. You’re going to find enough customers that will resonate with your style and your teaching. Yeah, I mean a thousand. Yeah. You’re talking about a thousand customers. There’s however many 8 billion people on the planet. Like you only need a thousand. Exactly. Exactly. The other thing that’s crazy is like your thousand or probably, you know they’re already, they already, even though they don’t know about you, they are all gathered somewhere. Right? They’re all following somebody that’s like you and that because of digital marketing, like you can actually go get in front of those people fairly directly. CH: (13:32) Yeah, and Roy, I’ll also add this, it’s not like all consumer only chooses one brand or one person and ignores all the other ones. I always say people are junkies and I don’t mean like drug junkies. I mean it in a fun, positive way. People are junky. So the same person that loves Lewis house also wants to consume Jay Shetty and they also want to consume Tom, bill you and they also want to consume, you know, just the list goes on and on. So they don’t stop at one person. They consume as much as they possibly can. That’s what I mean by they’re a junkie self-development. A junkie is going to go get all the self development they can and entrepreneurial junkie is going to go get all the entrepreneurial guidance they can. And so if you are starting today and you’re bringing a fresh voice and a fresh spin and a fresh facade, it’s actually, you’d be welcomed. CH: (14:21) Bye. Probably millions of people who are saying, boy, I wish somebody fresh would come onto the scene because I’m already, let’s say a use to following these, these individuals I’ve already found. So you used the term junkie. So I want to talk about that because one of the things that I think it’s interesting like that we have a family member who refers to what AIG and I do as a Hocus Pocus. That’s what it’s, it’s not like in a negative thing. It’s more, it’s not like a demeaning thing. It’s more of like a, I don’t understand it. It’s just like this Hocus Pocus. And I, you know, like personal development and like the idea of a junkie I think over years is like I had somewhat of a negative connotation, but as my life has gone on, I go, gosh, the only thing that’s really different from where I am today and where I started raised by a single mother is I am a total junkie. CH: (15:17) I am the self-help junkie. Like I am the conference junkie. I’m the coaching junkie. And I don’t know if you would agree with this, but one of the things I feel like you and I have in common is I think you are too. I think you’re a junkie for sure. I mean, listen, I wake up in the morning and I have a rule that I must consume a book or I must consume, not a whole book, but I must consume pages of a book or I must consume a podcast as the first in first experience in my day. Right, and it’s because during the day, every single one of us, we’re going to consume a ton of propaganda. Yeah, and a regular individual who’s not a self development junkie, they’re just going to consume whatever propaganda falls in their lap. And let’s be honest, there’s a lot of negativity out there at all times. CH: (16:05) What if you are a quote, self-development junkie? Then that means instead of consuming any propaganda that falls in your lap, you are selectively choosing and seeking what I call positive propaganda, podcasts, books, YouTube channels. I’ll make you better courses, whatever it might be, and that positive propaganda, when that outweighs the negative propaganda and you’re able to consume, consume, consume. What it does is a couple things. One, it kind of chooses what colored lenses you’re going to see the day through, right? Number two, it kicks you back in the game quicker. Okay. A bad circumstance happens during your day. You’re not going to unwrap it if you know what to turn to or if you just got off a great podcast or something motivating, you now have the tools to handle that rock circumstance in a better way. And that means the outcome turns out more in your favor. CH: (16:56) And so I will take the label of being assaulted, self-development junkie all day long because it’s better than just consuming what happens to fall in my lap by circumstance out there. [inaudible] Yeah, I love that. So I want to tie this back to network marketing and direct sales a little bit cause that’s another kind of thing that we have a shared background of it at different companies. But a lot of our clients, that brand builders group and I, and I know some of the people in your masterminds, our indirect sales, how, how does, how do you use social media and personal branding and digital marketing? How have you guys used that? Cause you still draw some fair, some fairly significant income, right? From a direct sales company that you earn a residual residual income of over seven figures of a team. We started building 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah. RV: (17:51) So how do you, do you still, do you still actively kind of promote that using the tools of digital or is it more just like the fact that you’re out there and you, people meet you and they ask and they’re looking for opportunity and it just kind of comes up in conversation? CH: (18:06) At this point? It just falls in our lap. You know, people just see us or hear of us and by proximity, a lot of times they’ll just go sign up on our team. So we’re not very active in it anymore. But we spent a lot of years being wildly active in it. And I’ll tell you what, one of my favorite things about network marketing is this, and I want to talk about a quick, it gets a bad neck, right? Right. So, and this is coming from somebody who, number one used to totally judge it. I thought I would never do that in my life. Number two, we have so many different types of companies and so many different arenas that I’m not sharing what I’m about to share from being. This is my number one income source. I’m sharing this from the standpoint of in all the samples I’ve been a part of, I really stand behind this one opportunity and here’s why. CH: (18:52) So in my opinion, it is the greatest set of training wheels in order for entrepreneurship that you could ever like earn your coupon that you could ever learn that. And here’s what I mean. The barrier of entry in almost any kind of company is always very low. It’s something you’re consuming anyways, something you’d spend money on anyways, right? But the upside is limitless. You know, I know probably at least 200 different people from different companies that have made over seven figures, some eight figures in network marketing, right? So the upside is limitless. The barrier of entry is very low. And the entire journey from start to finish is one of self-development. It’s one, I’m learning sales, it’s one of learning marketing, it’s one of learning brand building and how to leverage it. It’s one of learning team building and money management all slowly and all in a way that you really don’t have anything to risk other than a little bit of self esteem and a couple of friends sometimes because that is probably the highest the biggest cost of entry is a few people will judge you in the beginning and if you can let your ego go, it’s a great set of training wheels to truly learn real entrepreneurship. RV: (20:08) Man, I’ve never heard that quite like that and I totally believe in what you’re saying. And the, the other in terms of the training wheels, the part that’s so cool. And you know, at this point we made it, we were out of all direct sales because I speak to so many of the different companies that I, I, we actually got it had to kind of move, move out of that. But I still believe that my mom, we just actively helped get my mom back into a direct sales company and she was at Mary Kay years ago when I was younger. But the other thing is you don’t have to build the product. Like, and even in a personal brand, like half the battle CH: (20:48) Is creating an amazing product. The other half is making sure a whole bunch of people know about it. Like in network marketing or direct sales. A lot of times the products are awesome. Like a lot of times you, you have this great shake or oil or makeup or you know, whatever the thing is, your workout program and you don’t have to do any of the product development, you just gotta go tell a bunch of people about it. How’s this for a real life example? I was like to lift the curtain and use ourselves, right? So if I were to add up all the money, we’ve made a network marketing over the years, it’s over 10 million bucks. Wow. We started for probably $200 worth of shakes that we tried back when we were saying I would never do this now for comparison, this drink, this beverage company that Lori is starting, we have over a quarter million dollars into lawyers, IP formulations, sampling trademarks, you name it. CH: (21:40) And we don’t even have a run of product yet. So how was that for like a comparison of barrier of entry compared to payoff if you are just joining a network marketing team in a very safe way to learn entrepreneurship as opposed to what it really costs to develop and launch any other physical product? Yeah, and, and I think, you know, this isn’t meant to be a commercial for network marketing by any means, but I, the thing that to me speaks so consistently about your story is one of humility of being, of being willing to do the things you know, to take the stairs is the metaphor that we use all the time of doing the things that no one else wanted to do and not being afraid of judgment and having your back against the wall and selling all your stuff off and then doing direct sales. CH: (22:30) And then I know for sure because this is true about every personal brand that you started a podcast, nobody was freaking listening. You were doing Facebook. Nobody was there like it’s easier now because you know that you’re actually impacting lives. But when you first start it’s like, well this happened to me. I shared this with somebody this week, so I just relaunched. I had to start over and I have a brand new YouTube channel. My video from this week has three views. Oh my God. One of them is mine. I’m pretty sure the other one is like the person on my team who posted the video. I’ll go watch it. You’ll have four dice. Yes. and as you listen, but it’s you and I are willing to do that. We are willing to have zero followers. We are willing to have three views. We are willing to take the stairs. CH: (23:22) We are willing. Two how other people look and say, Oh boy that looks like it’s failing because we know that we are in it for the long game and I think that’s where people go wrong. Well and back to network marketing or whether it’s traditional business or any other form of business. People dip their toes in and when they don’t have a a quick hit right away they say, see it didn’t work. If you know that you are in it for the long game. And listen, I had to teach myself years ago when we were losing everything. That Eagle will cost you more than anything else in life. Right? I’ve got a saying. It’s ego is your greatest overhead because ego will will cost you by speaking up when you shouldn’t. It’ll also stop you from speaking up when you should because you’re afraid you might look dumb. CH: (24:08) Eagle will burn bridges, it’ll burn relationships, it’ll make you miss opportunities and ego will stop you from building that YouTube channel or that podcast or that Instagram or that tic TAC because you’re so afraid that people are going to look and see that you have three views, which is such a silly, a silly thing too. It’s like even if you have three views, it’s like you say you want to make a difference in someone’s life. There’s three people you know too. Not counting yourself even as like you’re making a difference. Like so, so I want to talk about the time, cause you bring up the time horizon and that’s good. I think that’s important for people to understand too. So realistically here, how long does this take take to start? Like, and let’s talk about the personal brand specifically, right? Like podcasting, putting content on social, like whatever you want to call it, blogging, doing videos on YouTube, whatever. CH: (25:06) Like how long does somebody have to be willing to do it for before they go, yeah, it’s not working. I should pull the cord on this thing. Or you know, like give us in today’s world, cause I know, I know you have a lot of your students are kind of like brand builders group. A lot of ours are kind of starting in there earlier in their journey. So I’ve got a two part answer to this. The first part is don’t start anything that you don’t see yourself still doing and enjoying in three years. So don’t start that podcast, not started that YouTube channel. Don’t start that Instagram account unless you see yourself enjoying it three years from now and continuing to build it. And then the second part of that answer is you can monetize a small audience very quickly, but you shouldn’t hang your hopes on monetizing it in a large way. CH: (25:57) Very quickly and saying, if it didn’t work at first, I’m out. Right? Is it possible? Yes. Should you quit? If you don’t do it right away, Nope. You gotta have that longterm commitment. So I’ll give the example. I’ve seen people with a very small following, find 10 clients at $10,000, whether it’s a coaching or a mastermind and make a hundred grand in their first few months of business. That’s a very realistic scenario. I’ve also seen people work five years before they hit six figures, and there’s a lot of factors that go into it. How much effort are you putting into it? Are you willing to reinvest your revenue into hypergrowth or are you starting to use it as a paycheck? Are you good at collaborating and mixing it up with other people out there that can point their audiences back to you? Or do you feel like you’re going at it solo? I mean, these are all very important things that will affect how quickly you get to grow and how quickly you get to monetize. RV: (26:55) Yeah. That’s so, so good. And is so, so important. I think yeah, I mean, you just, you, you nailed it. And that’s the thing too. It’s like, it’s not how long have you been doing it? It’s also how much have you been doing it, right? It’s like there’s plenty of people say I’ve been podcasting for a year and it’s like you’ve released six episodes. That’s not podcasting for a year. That’s podcasting for a week, spread out over a year. That’s exactly, that is exactly. It’s like, for example, Laurie’s show like caught fire and is X exponentially larger than mine right now? I could get jealous or I could say, huh, guess it’s not made for me. CH: (27:42) Or I could look at where her hockey stick moment happened and say, mine is right down the road. I just gotta stay the course until my hockey stick moment happens as well. Because if you continue to, and I love what you said, not just do it for a long time, but how often, how much do you put into it while you’re doing it? If you continue to say I’m committed to both of those components, your hockey stick moment will happen, right? It will shoot up at some point. You get the right break, you’ll get the right follow where you get the right share, you get the right you know, episode that goes viral. But don’t stop short of that hockey stick moment just because somebody else has gotten there as, and you haven’t reached yours yet. RV: (28:21) Yeah, that’s good. That comparison thing is a real, I mean, that’s a real, that’s a real struggle to like, it’s just you’re always looking at how many followers do they have and how many downloads do they have? And that’s, yeah, that can be a discouraging moment. Yeah, I think it’s important to, if you’re gonna play the game of comparison and say, look how good someone else is doing, then you need to play the full game of comparison CH: (28:44) And look the other direction and say, wow, look at all the people that wish that there where I’m at. And by the way, I’m not an advocate of playing the comparison game, stay far, far away from it. But if you’re going to play it, you need to play both sides of the field. RV: (28:56) If you’re gonna look at this end zone and say, CH: (28:58) Not fair, look what they’re doing, look where they are. Then you also have to look behind you at the other end zone and say, Oh wow, people wish that they were at the 40 yard line at the 50 yard line like I am right now. RV: (29:08) Yeah, I love that. And I would also, I would also say that too, to that point of the full comparison, it’s like you can’t look at where Laurie is at today and go, okay, where am I compared to her? You have to go, how many total hours has she put in? How much heartbreak has she had? What is everything that she has been? What is everything that she has been through? And it’s like, I’ve done six episodes so far. Right, and you don’t, you don’t factor in that because you don’t see that part. It’s but, but it’s like, again, if you’re going to play the comparison game, play the game CH: (29:42) And remind yourself like there’s a whole story here. You can’t compare their chapter 20 to your chapter one, you’re, you’re so spot on because if you’re going to do that, you must seek out all the facts. So if I was looking at Lori compared to me some additional facts or this, she had a great big Facebook following that she worked hard to build long before I decided I wanted to build a brand. And then she had been kicking out three episodes a week while I was only kicking out two. And when I went to three, she went to four. Right. So she has been doing more longer and that is why she has exponential more growth than me. I can’t look at a timeline and say, Oh boy, at the three year Mark, you know, she was higher than I was. That’s not fair. CH: (30:29) Yeah. That’s one reason why she’s doing better than you. The other reason is because you and I both share the same problem with our wives are actually better than us and we have more charisma. We just got you know, we just have to live, we have to live with that every day. But sugar mama. I mean, that’s all I’m saying. Sugar, sugar, mama. You know what’s really funny? I do want to talk about that. When you find the right partner, when you find that right ride or die, that lifts you up when you’re down and you lift them up when they’re down. When you guys have complimentary skillsets, right? So my strengths are her weaknesses, her weaknesses are, and I should say her strengths are my weaknesses. When you can decide to make that work, Oh look out, you can accomplish anything at any level that you want. CH: (31:18) Right? And by the way, if you don’t have a partner, this is not an excuse. This doesn’t mean, Oh, see, that’s why it’s working for, for Rory and Chris is because they found great partners. So I guess I’m screwed. No, that’s not what the message is. The message is by yourself. You could do absolutely extraordinary. And when you find that right partner have been, it’s just like everything you’re trying to do amplified. Yeah, it can. Yeah. It can be right. I mean when you’re by yourself. And this was something for me that, you know, it was like I worked till midnight when I was single every night, like all the time, other than Thursdays and Fridays, like when I was in college and you know, like Thursday and Friday nights and maybe Saturday nights, but it was like four nights a week I was working like crazy because I didn’t have a responsibility to somebody else. CH: (32:08) And then when you get a partner, you know that can work for, you can also work against you. You get the wrong partner, you get the wrong business partner, you get the wrong relational partner, you know, that can also, you get the wrong vendor. Partnerships can accelerate or decelerate, but you know, like what you said, you’ll know you have the right partner if they lift you up when you’re down and you can pick them up when they’re down. And when you decide to work together, it’s like one plus one can equal four. Absolutely. Without a doubt. It’s, it’s, it’s just such a magical thing to find. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. So Chris, buddy, where obviously you’ve got the podcast, if people aren’t listening for the love of money where else would you direct people if they want to kind of connect up with you and see more about what you’re, what you’re up to. Make sure you follow Chris, not Lori because he needs the followers. She does. CH: (33:04) Here’s two great places to find me. I’ll find all my [email protected] and Instagram is a platform that I hang out on the most right now and I’ve made a commitment to answer every single business question that comes in. And sometimes it’s a daunting task, but, but I stick to it. So go find me there at Chris w harder. Yeah. alright buddy. So last little thing here. Right. Do you think that generosity is a necessity for a successful personal brand or do you think it’s an act, an accessory? Do you think it’s a necessity or is it an accessory to the success of a personal brand? What a great question. Absolute necessity. Here’s why. When you are generous in your relationships, then they’re going to using law of reciprocity, give you things back that will help you grow your brand. When you’re generous to your customers, then law of reciprocity is going to kick in and they’re gonna be more loyal and give you things back that helped your business grow. CH: (34:09) When you are generous to strangers, when you’re generous with your time, when you’re generous with your knowledge. For example, if you create incredible opt-ins, you’re generous with your knowledge for free. If you do amazing webinars for no charge and you’re being generous with your knowledge and your time, then those have exponential returns on growing your business. And here’s a real live a example. I do live webinars right now while we’re going through this crazy economy. I wanted a platform for people to be able to ask questions about their pivots. Right now it costs me, in other words, I’m investing two hours a night, three nights a week, so six hours of my life. Wow. I mean, that’s big. At the time that we’re recording this, I charge $4,000 an hour for my coaching. So, I mean it’s a big commitment, but what happens every time I hang up, when I’m done serving, when I’m done adding value, when I’m done, I’m like answering the questions and I’m on that great high cause I just got to help people, their businesses. CH: (35:07) I open up my Instagram and there are always, you know, when you click on your notifications, there’s the mentions by the way, this is what everybody should always be. Measuring on their Instagram is shares and mentions, not likes and comments, but the thing that says, mentioned the caps out at 99, every single time I’m done with the webinar, it’s capped out at 99 mentions, right? Screenshot. Wow. I just learned that screenshot. Wow. He just said this. Then your followers grow exponentially faster, exponentially higher because of all those mentions. And so that is a perfect example of if you are generous with your knowledge, if you’re generous with your time, if you’re generous with everything that you can be, then law of reciprocity kicks in in a real tangible way. Gosh, I love that. The whole freaking personal brand business is built on the law of reciprocity. CH: (36:01) It’s like you can’t outgive people like you. You can’t, you can’t give away. Everyone’s like, well, I can’t give that away cause then what do I sell them? And it’s like, it’s not how it works. It’s like you, you, you just, you give it away and it always comes back. It’s the craziest thing. Like this whole, this whole space who is invented and built upon and thrives because of that one single law, Roy giving is the secret to everything you want in every aspect of life. And listen, it’s counterintuitive. People think if I want to make more money or if I want to accumulate money, I need to save. But the answer is giving is a secret to everything you want. And here’s how I learned that. I’ve always actually had a generous spirit ever since I was a kid. You know, my parents grew up teaching me how to tip extra as a kid and they let me figure out the tip and they’d explain why we tip extra because that’s someone who left their family to serve our family. CH: (36:55) And then at church they would give us boys, my brother and I, the money to put into the offering plate and explain, here’s why we put a little bit more in than other people that you might see. And we weren’t rich growing up. It was just they wanted to teach us generosity. So I always had the spirit. But here’s where it really hit home for me. About five years ago, I read 30 books in 30 days. Laurie was on a rocket ship. I was just treading water in the good, good land of good. And I wanted to catch up the Lord. So I’m like, you know what, I’m gonna read 30 books in 30 days and halfway through those books, and by the way, all the books had different agendas. They were spiritual books. They were seven steps to this. They were autobiographies is how to do this. Didn’t matter. Do you only agenda was it had to T improve me in some way and had to be less than 300 pages so I could finish it? CH: (37:46) Exactly. So at the two week Mark, I remember being in bed, finishing a book I rolled over to Lorina said maybe you’re not going to believe this, but two weeks in so far, 14 out of 14 books, no matter what they’re trying to sell me, giving is the common thread through these things like giving us the secret to what they’re trying to sell me. And then I watched for that common thread and it held true through all 30 out of 30 books and of all the gifts that I got from taking on that little personal challenge, the number one gift was confirmation of what I kind of had a hunch up. And that is the more you give law of reciprocity will kick in and the more wonderful blessings you’re going to get back in different ways in life. Wow. Wow. My friends Chris, harder. RV: (38:36) This is the story behind the story that you see. We’ll have to see if we can get Lori on here sometime to get her part of this. Without doubt. I mean this is a, it’s just so awesome brother and I, I appreciate you sharing so transparently. You know, your mistakes, the failures, your insecurities, like your journey and and just kind of be at being a champion in the world for believing in people and encourage them to be generous and, and just modeling that generosity over and over and over again. Man, we just, we, we pray for you guys and we wish you the best. Well, well, thank you so much. I know how much your audience means to you, and so I really appreciate you giving me this platform to share those stories and share those mistakes and share those insecurities like the more people that, that do, that it gives other people permission to take that first step. So thank you.

Ep 75: Responding Versus Reacting to Injustice with Anton Gunn | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey there. Brand builder. Excited to bring you really a special edition here of the influential personal brand podcasts, a very unplanned, spontaneous we want to introduce you to a good friend of ours. I’m a client of ours, somebody who believes in us, somebody who we believe in tremendously. Somebody who we look up to. His name is Anton Gunn and he is a former senior advisor to president Barack Obama. And Anton is one of the world’s leading authorities on socially conscious leadership. So he has a master’s degree in social work from USC and was a resident fellow at Harvard. He is the bestselling author of the presidential principles and he’s been featured in time magazine, the wall street journal, BBC, NPR, and on good morning America. And as an international speaker and consultant, he’s worked with organizations like Microsoft, Sedexo, KPMG, Verizon, Aetna, Vanderbilt health and Boeing on and on and on. RV: (00:58) And so from playing sec football and being the first African American in history elected to the South Carolina legislature from his from his district early in his career to now working as a C level executive for an academic health system and serving on multiple boards. He has spent his life building or help helping people build diverse high performing teams and world-class leadership culture. And was this on our heart for you to hear from him about some of the things going on in the world and specifically how to use your personal brand to influence real change? And I’m going to let AJ say something cause she, I can, I can tell she’s bubbling. And you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know that AJ does not often conduct the interviews. She does all the debriefs, AJV: (01:53) But since then RV: (01:54) This was, this one was right from AJs heart. So AJV: (01:57) Well they’ll say yes, Amazon has this really nice, fancy bio with all of this amazing accomplishments. But the real reason that I felt led to forced Anton to get on this call of us, which he was so happy to oblige so quickly, it’s honestly, he’s so representative of what we believe in as people and as a part of our, our community at brand builders group, we just believe like Anton comes from a place of real experience. So do you also comes from a place that he really believes in justice but also doing it in a way that actually creates change by using real influence because he’s doing things the right way. And that’s not easy. That’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline to do things the the long way and that, but I just feel like you’re such a extension of what we believe in. And so thanks for, thanks for popping. AG: (02:53) Thank you for saying that. AIJ and I love you both. You are awesome. So happy to be a client. Happy to be your friend and happy to help you and all of your listeners and supporters understand that this is an important time for all of us to use our influence in authentic ways, in ways that we feel comfortable with, most importantly to help bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. And it already bends that way, but it requires each of us to do something in a way that helps to make things better. That’s what our responsibility to our leaders is to work, to make things right and every chance that we get. So I appreciate you creating the space for that and doing that and living up to who you are as individuals and as a business. RV: (03:39) Well, I love that Anton, and honestly we’ve struggled with what to say. I mean there’s a lot of things that I could say and kind of want to say, but don’t necessarily feel like they’re appropriate or you know, right on pace. I think that’s a lot of a lot of people. And, and, and like you said, as. AJV: (03:58) I feel like it’s so sensitive right now and being twisted and turned, and even with the best of intentions, it comes across as you’re ignorant. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand. Yeah, no, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. RV: (04:14) And, and I, I think, you know, when we reached out to you, we said, Hey, we don’t want to make this like a news media commentary on anything specific that’s happening in the news. But okay. You know, you’ve got a moral compass for fairness and justice. RV: (04:27) And I think one of the things that I struggle with, and I just wanted to ask you as your friend is, you know, there’s been a lot of stuff that says, Hey, you know, being silent as part of the problem, you know, silence, you know, basically if you’re silent, you’re racist. I don’t necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily connect with me. I don’t necessarily think that being silent means you’re racist any more than I think making a post will change the world. But what I am very interested in is what are the things productively that we can do? And that we should do like not just, not just using our voice, but what are the things that we can do. And you have such an interesting perspective from working in the white house to being, you know, a division one athlete to leading it in the healthcare world there. Yeah. AJV: (05:23) They’re all of these things, right? AG: (05:26) Yeah. So let me just say AG: (05:30) Know you gotta you gotta remember a leader’s responsibility is to respond and not react. And what do I mean by respond and not react? You know, whenever you’re in the heat of any kind of difficult circumstance, any kind of crisis, your emotions will get the best of you immediately. And what you see some people doing on social media are there emotional responses to what’s going on? And it’s not understandable for people to have an emotional response. Some people’s emotional response is to or emotional reaction is to lash out and scream at you for not saying anything. Cause if you’re not saying anything, then that means you must agree with the bad people who are doing bad things. Right. That’s a, that’s really a reaction. That’s not really a thoughtful prepared response. That’s a reaction. Some people’s reaction is because they’re so shocked by what they see. AG: (06:28) They freeze and they don’t want to say anything. I mean, we’ve all seen in circumstances you’re going to do three things. If you’re confronted in a crisis, you’re going to freeze, you’re going to fight, where are you going to flight any other direction? And I think what we have in the middle of any kind of crisis is that people freeze. Some people fight and others flight, and so I think the people who are fighting are the ones who are screaming out on social media. Some people are so distraught about what they see that they freeze and so that is sometimes silent. You’re when you freeze your assignment and some people could immediately assume because you’re not fighting like me. Oh, because you’re not running like me. Then that means you must agree with those who are doing bad things. That is not the case, but what you should do is be thoughtful about how you can have a positive point in the specs. AG: (07:23) How can you add to the construction of a solution and not to further destruction of the problem? And so what I tell people to do is first of all remain yeah. In your lane. And when I say remaining your lane is, you know, for the first 12 years of my career I actually was a community organizer. So I’ve organized protests, I’ve organized marches, I’ve done sit ins, I’ve actually hold politicians accountable for not doing the right thing. And that’s actually why I got into politics, because I got tired of politicians telling me one thing, but then doing the complete opposite. And I say, well, why am I asking you to do something that you clearly don’t have the capacity to do? Why don’t I just run for office and take your place? And literally that was my goal. But that’s not everybody. It’s not everybody’s name. AG: (08:15) Some people’s learning to say, Anton, you’re better to be out there on the front lines, but here’s what I can do. I have a hundred dollars and I’ll put it in a bail fund. So if you get arrested and go to jail, you can get out and go home to be with your family. Or maybe I’ll support your education campaign to teach people about what good policing policies are or what good environmental policy. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this current crisis or there’s other, some kind of injustice that exists. I will tell you this, we’ve had injustice in wrongdoing as long as we’ve had challenges in this country and around the world. I’ll give you an example of that is unfair and, but it’s something that everybody can relate to. The two of you decided to go out to dinner and you go to your favorite restaurant in Nashville and you’ve been waiting 90 minutes for a table and then my wife and I walk in five minutes in a manner of these sets us down at the best table in the house. AG: (09:16) But you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes now already. You know that that was wrong, that that was not right for me to be able to walk right in and sit down at a table where you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you like the restaurant anymore because you felt that you were treated unfair. So the question is, what am I going to do if I learned that you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes, do I just keep my table and keep eating and say, you know what? Too bad, Roy and AGA, you had the weight, 90 minutes. What do I say to the maitre D? That’s wrong. I’m going to get up and I’m going to give them this table because they’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. And if you saw me sit down at a table, do you decide to storm out of the restaurant or do you just stand there and do nothing? AG: (10:05) You just accept that you know you lost the table. Or do you walk over to the maitre D and says, you know what? I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair that we’ve been waiting for 90 minutes and we didn’t get the table that we asked for and you let somebody else have the table. Now the maitre D also has a choice and an option at that point. He can say, well, you’re just going to have to wait a little longer. Well, he can say, you know what, Roy J I’m sorry. As soon as our next table come available, I’m going to put you at the top of the list in all appetizers and a bottle of wine is on me. So in that situation, we all have the opportunity to respond or we could react, but the key is whatever it is, you want to be authentic to yourself. AG: (10:50) Where do you feel comfortable? And also when you have some expertise, because what I try to remind people is that we all have personal experiences in our lives that we can connect the dots to something else that’s going on. So you may not know what it’s like to be a black man living in America. I can count seven particular instances that I could have ended up like George Ford or Tamir rice or Eric Garner. All of them happened before the age of 27 Hmm. I did nothing wrong. I was a college athlete. I went to a gas station with my uncle to go in to just, he went to go get a bottle of Boone’s farm. Just tell you how long ago it was and I went in to play the lottery. You just connected with AGA. You might have more in common with Aja than you think. AG: (11:39) As it turns out, as it turns out you love boons Romney J yes, we all did. So we were leaving the gas station and out of nowhere, five police cars pulls up. They draw guns on us, they drag us out of the car, they throw us on the ground, he puts his knee in my back in accuses us of being a part of a game and doing a drive by shooting. We didn’t even live on that side of town, but my uncle worked at a restaurant over there and I caught the bus to his job. We got in his car and we’re driving home. We stopped by the gas station and this happened to me. So this is real for me, but it may not be real for you. You may never have experienced anything like that. But I would say you might know someone who has. AG: (12:28) And so in this time, I would say the first thing people can do if you’re trying to figure out how to use your influence, if you have people in your spear network, your friends with those people who you have in your cell phone, who you know might be feeling some kind of way about what’s going on, it’s okay to send them a text. We’ll make a phone call and say, Hey, listen, I don’t fully understand all of this going on. I don’t fully know what to do about any of this. But no, I’m thinking about you. And if you have people who follow you on social media, who you know fit that demographic, you can easily say, listen, Hey, I know you guys watch my pocket. You listen to my podcasts, you follow my feed. You’re on my list. I just want you to know for the interview who are affected by the current circumstances. I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. And I’m not sure what to do yet, but I’m trying to find out. [inaudible] AG: (13:19) We’re all going to be better because of this. And that’s the approach that you have to take is to say something, but you don’t have to have all of the answers because you don’t, you’re not an expert in that. This is about how to build a brand for a movement. Then they should definitely be talking to you, particularly if there’s a person leading the movement. But if this is just unrest or this is just community up uptick and outrage about things, you don’t necessarily have the lead dog role in this, but you can play a role. But first empathizing with people who might be experiencing it. And that’s what we all want. We all want someone to understand our pain, to understand what we’re going through. And you guys have done that just by creating the space and the opportunity. Second thing I was telling people, you are good at something. AG: (14:06) So some of us are great writers, some of us are great speakers, some of us are great at teaching people how to manage and deal with stress. So there are ways you can say, Hey, in the middle of the most stressful time that we might’ve seen in our lifetimes, here are three things. Things that you can do to lower your stress. That message becomes universal. No matter what your race, gender background is, that’s a universal way that you can help him make it. You provide people a way to say, listen, I want to create an outlet for people to be able to express themselves and let me provide feedback on how I can help you to channel that into something positive. Those are simple things or you can really start to do a little bit of research and say, who is working to make sure that injustice and unfairness no longer exists and how can I offer some free advice or some free counsel or free coaching session to help them through it. AG: (15:02) Now, that doesn’t have to be public at all. That can be very private, but it’s something that you can do too to add value and to be comfortable in your space. But speak to the times that we’re in because I do think Roy, there is a fear about the silence if, if it’s, if the silence goes on too long and people will assume silence is complicity. And so I don’t expect anybody in a emotional moment to react in aggressiveness or to jump right out and be a part of anything. Cause that’s what I’m not doing. I haven’t left my house. I still remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. And so I’m concerned about my health and my family’s health. So as bad as I might want to go out and Mmm, be a participant in some civil disobedience, I’m not doing it because one, that’s not my role right now. Number two, I don’t think it would be in my best interest for my health and my wife’s health and my daughter’s health. So I’m going to stay home. But what I am doing is reading everything that I could get my hands on about who’s trying to find a solution and rather than be a part of the problem and what can I offer in terms of expertise and support and help to do that. RV: (16:16) So can I, I have a question too. You should have scheduled your own interview, Anton. We need to have you. We’re going to do multiple. That’s right. All right. This is, AJV: (16:26) So what other questions I have, because I think this is just really pertinent and I think it’s a part of your expertise is there just seems to be a lack of leadership and all of this and a lack of a real coherent and consistent message of what do we want to see happen. And you know what’s like w where does that leave everybody? If there isn’t true leadership and there isn’t a true cause and a true message of like, let’s make this clear. AG: (16:54) Yes. AJV: (16:55) What needs to happen. So, RV: (16:56) Right. Like lighting a church on fire doesn’t signal a real clear message about what we want to see happen. In fact, it’s a very conflicting message to respond to violence with violence. At least that’s how it feels to me. AG: (17:09) Yes. So you’re exactly right. So I literally did a Facebook live about this last night for about an hour. And I hearkened back onto successful change efforts in America. I mean, you can go as far back from women’s sufferage to the civil rights movement. We’ve had a lot of successful change efforts in all of those efforts. You have to know what you want. Yeah. And not only know what you want, be able to clearly articulated in a way that everybody presents. You know, when you talk about building a brand, you gotta have clarity, right? You’re on problem and clear on the solution. AG: (17:51) Exactly. You have to be clear on a problem and clear on the solution. And the problem that we have in this current environment is there, there’s no clarity about this. There’s zero clarity from my vantage point around what do we want? I know what I want, but the solution to that is not clear because again, if you’ve got, you know, multiple things happening in multiple cities, the problem in Charleston, South Carolina is completely different than the problem in Nashville, which is completely different than the problem in Minnesota, which is completely different than the problem in New York city. And so because those problems looks similar on the surface, people are trying to apply a solution to fix all problems and there’s not one solution. This is a, a local by local problem and solution framework. And so when you, when you don’t have good leadership, the problem stays. AG: (18:49) I, I, I give people this kind of advice and I’ve given it to president Obama. So I just tell you anything I’m saying here is stuff that I say all the time to leaders at every level, from the dog catcher to the mayor, to even the president of United States. And the first is whenever you had a crisis, the first thing you must do is remain calm. The second thing you must do is you got to tell the truth. And when I say tell the truth, you have to be honest with people about where you sit and where things are cause people in a time of uncertainty, in a time of fear in a time of the unknown, people are looking for a beacon of hope. And so you got to tell them the truth and you got to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. The thing with so many people forget. AG: (19:35) They want to tell you the rosy truth and they want to tell you the happy true. But they don’t want to tell you the unpleasant truth. So the unpleasant tree is difficult, but it’s grounding. And I, and I say this all the time, the truth doesn’t hurt. It heals. So if we can begin to say, AJ, you are a Rory, you have skin cancer. So I can lie to you and say, Oh, you just got a blemish on your face and telling you you have a blemish on your face is cool and nice and, and you, you don’t feel bad about it. But if you find out that that blemishes cancer, then you can begin to do something about it. Because some people may say, Oh, I got a blemish. I’m just going to accept the blemish and be okay with it. But if you know a skin cancer, then you have to respond. AG: (20:20) So we got to tell people the truth and we got to tell it to them in a heartfelt way. You don’t need to be angry with the truth. You don’t have to be screaming about the truth. You can empathize with people and be heartfelt about telling the truth. But then the third step after that to me is you got to seek out expertise who can help you to find a solution. Yeah, that’s the problem is that we, Einstein said this one time, that many spend 95% of their time trying to solve the problem but only spent 5% understanding the problem. Well, we need to spend 95% understanding the problem and 5% of the time on the solution and you got to have experts to help you to solve the problem. And that’s what leadership does, is that they remain calm. They tell the truth, they tell it in a heartfelt way, and then they find experts to help them to solve the problem. And that’s what we don’t have in this kind of environment. The people who I know have expertise on not being sought out, they’re being questioned, they’re being antagonized, they’re actually being accused of being complicit in the problem when they actually have real ideas around a solution. RV: (21:32) Well, that’s an you know, that’s something that I’ve struggled with with this personally. You know, you talk about leaders, just leadership in general. You respond, you don’t react. You know, I’m seeing a lot of message and I’ve had some people messaged me about like, Hey, why haven’t you shared? Or why don’t you share something? And as a leader, my, one of my first thing is I’ve been afraid to say this, one of my very first things is I need to find the facts in any situation. It’s like as a leader, not civil rights, just leadership training is going, I need to understand the facts. And there are, as you said, and I, I love that you pointed out, I believe that it’s different in every city too. And I believe that every instance of this is different. RV: (22:17) Any type of silence is not condoning something. It’s going, I don’t have the full context of what happened in Minneapolis or in Atlanta or like, and, and until, I know I’m afraid to come out and judge anybody in any, you know, cause I just, I just don’t know. But I think it’s, it almost becomes popular that people want you to just lash out and rage. They want you to just throw fire. They be because they want you to be mad. And it’s like I am mad. Like I’m, I’m heartbroken. And there are, there are parts of these things that you go, they’re undisputable, they’re worth being mad about just like looking at it. But then there’s, there’s context around every situation, every social interaction, every communication with a spouse, a child, a teacher, a colleague. And that context really matters. And it, and it shapes a lot. And I’ve been actually afraid to say that cause I’m afraid of people just being pissed off at me for not being pissed off right away. Like, like you know, publicly. AG: (23:19) Yeah. So, so I will tell you this, and this is one of the things that I, I’ve gotten very comfortable and as a leader is recognizing that somebody is always going to be pissed off at you. And if, if nobody’s pissed off at you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the main point. And I know as an influencer you want to grow your brand and you want everybody to like you and everybody to on your team. But you know what? The happiest thing that I get every day in my inbox is the number of people who unsubscribed from my list. You know what? I’m happy about that. Yeah. Because I know what I’m offering is not for you, you, you, you’re not invested in what I’m invested in and, and you don’t like it. And that’s okay because I want the people who do like it, the people who do get the value, the people who do want to build, adjust organization. AG: (24:14) An organization full of ethical, inspiring and empowering leaders who worked in the unfairness in the workplace. That’s who I want to talk to you. Okay? I don’t want to talk to the people who want to carry it on or the people who are indifferent to it. And I think the thing that a lot of people are probably most frustrated with but people that don’t speak out is the indifference. And so my context would be you want to have the facts, you definitely want to have the facts. But for many of us, particularly me, that what happened in Minnesota is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back was broken on March 3rd, 1991 when I saw Rodney King get beat 56 times by LA police officers and they all got off Scott free. So for me it was a a moment as a teenager that said that I thought this was over. AG: (25:09) I thought this happened, you know, during the civil rights movement. I thought this happened in the 18 hundreds where you know, you could get pulled over and never be seen again. But here I am in the midst of getting ready to go to college and this is what’s happening. So some people would say, we’ve known this all along. There’s no additional facts for you to gather in this situation. But I think the, the burning and the riots and in the burning down buildings and kicking in Apple stores and all these other kinds of things, this is what I also have learned doing this work. Everybody who is with you is not for you. Your body does for you is not going to be with you. And there are some agent provocateurs who are using this yeah. Crisis or this opportunity to advance an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with justice in equity and fairness in the right thing. They have some of them. RV: (26:09) Yeah. And Anton, I just wanted to make sure that you said everyone who is with you is not for you and everyone who is for you is not with you. AG: (26:17) That is correct. Everyone who is with you is not for you. And everyone who is for you is now with you. So let me break it down. So you understand when I say everyone that is with you is not for you. There are people who are showing up and turning peaceful protest into violent protest, right? There are people who will show up at your events that are not really there to support your business there to copy and steal what you do. So everyone that is with you is not for you. The people who follow you on social media, they might be your followers, but they’re not for you. They’re for themselves. And we all have to understand that that’s always been the case. And secondarily, the people who are with you, sometimes they can’t be there for you. They’re with you in spirit. They may be with you in dollars, they may be with you in some other kind of way, but they’re not always going to be there side by side with you. AG: (27:16) So I’m with a lot of people that I can’t be side by side because I want to be here longterm. I want to be a person who lives a long time. And so for me, knowing that I work in healthcare, 90%, knowing that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I know it’s not cool to go back out and socialize right now. I get reports on how many new positive coded cases are showing up every day and we’re not in a clear, so I’m with a lot of people for a lot of people, but I’m not going to be there all the time. So you got to understand that you gotta be able to figure out who is with you and who is for you and what are they doing to help you and who are those that are not really for you. AG: (27:59) And again, I go back to some years of go work when I was being trained into the seat. So to be honest with you, I was trained at a place called Highlander in Tennessee. Tennessee’s where actually Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Rosa parks, all of them got their training on community organizing. Like some people thought Rosa parks sitting down on a bus and refusing to go to the back was a spur of the moment off the cuff event. It wasn’t not, they plan this for months in advance and they have five different people and Rosa parks actually was the one that was chosen to stay on the front of the bus. So most people think this is big civil rights broke protests started with a seminal event of someone just deciding not to get up anymore when she was a trained, a prepared leader who knew what to do and when to do it. AG: (28:54) So in my training, I learned then whenever we do things like this, there are people who are not really with us who are going to see what we’re doing and want to jump in. We got to control that because they could destroy the message, they could cloudy the message that we’re trying to send here. Then it can turn into something that is not. And that’s what I think we, we are seeing right now that there’s some people who are clouding the message that is not really about, you know, police violence. It’s about anarchy or it’s about I hate the government or it’s about, I hate rich people. It’s about I hate America. Because I do believe there’s some form foreign people who are involved in some of these efforts. And so we don’t know which is which at this point. We don’t know the enemy, our friend, because we haven’t taken a time to, to develop the right structure and strategy to move for change. AG: (29:51) And, and to give a quick plug to my former boss Barack Obama, his foundation has been trying to do his best job of this stealing information around what’s a right way for you to get involved. He posted the article on medium recently about, I know everybody’s upset. Protest is a part of, of making change. And we’ve always used protest in America from the Boston tea party onto present day. So he’s not saying not to protest, but he’s saying is getting involved in a way that can make sure that the positive change is lasting and that we actually do the right thing. And so he provided resources at the Obama foundation website. And so I would encourage people to figure out what you can do. But I think the main thing is we got to separate the wheat from the shaft and know that everybody that is with you is not for you and everybody that is for you. Sometimes it’s not with, AJV: (30:45) That’s so wise. That’s so good. One of the, one of the interviews that I saw online here recently was the son of an Atlanta, a city police officer. I’m a black man and he was, he did this really great speech, super emotional, but the thing that has stuck with me and I can’t get out of my head, he said, you don’t fight the enemy by burning down your own house. AG: (31:08) Correct. AJV: (31:08) And you said people were burning down our own house. Wait, that doesn’t work. AG: (31:14) It’s not smart. And that was killer Mike. He’s a hip hop artist, activist. I’m one degree separated and kill Mike because one of my mentees actually used to make beads for him. And I’m trying to get him to be a brand builder client too, by the way. So so yeah, I was willing to help, but that’s a point that, that everybody should understand that if you’re trying to solve a problem, go to where the problem is. Don’t go to where the problems now. So here’s how I explained it to him, the friends of mine and a conference call. If, if I have a nail in my foot five a nail in my foot, it doesn’t make sense for you to put a bandaid on my shoulder. Yeah, that doesn’t, that’s not solving the problem. Why don’t you haven’t taken the nail out of my foot and you haven’t stopped the bleeding on my foot. And so if the nail is in Minneapolis, well, if the nail is in Louisville, Kentucky, why are you burning down in Atlanta, Georgia, right? While you’re riding in Charleston, South Carolina. And again, my point is there are problems in every one of those cities. Atlanta is not perfect. Nashville’s not perfect Charleston, that there’s no perfect utopian city in the United States of America. But those problems require a specific and clear solution to those problems. AG: (32:37) If there’s a nail in your foot, it doesn’t mean there’s RV: (32:40) A nail in every foot. Like the problem isn’t even as a city necessarily. It is a person, a few people, a set of people. And if you can understand who it is, you can proactively handle the problem, which is the truth about any problem in business or our personal life or anything. You can’t. But if you’re blinded by just rage, it’s like you can’t see the problem. All you know is you’re in pain and so you start bandaging yourself and shooting other people and it’s like, Hey, there’s a nail in your foot. Get the nail out. AG: (33:14) Yes. And that’s exactly right. And in problems have levels to them. So, so I, I, you know, my training is social work. When I got my MSW was understanding systems in organizations where you have individual problems, you have group problems, you have family problems, you have organizational problems. And so like when I work with a healthcare organization, I want to understand the problem across the organization. You might have a problem in this department or you might have a problem with this person, right? But is it representative of a systemic problem of how you hire people and who you hire and how you train them and what you allow them to do and what don’t you allow them to do? And what I find more times than not is that people want to solve problems, but they feel paralyzed because they’re going to be punished by a largest system for trying to solve the problem. AG: (34:09) So it requires us to have some level of depth and understanding around what problems are, what our role is, and to solving those problems and going right to the source. As I told my group last night, I said, listen, Mmm. If, if you have police officers who are committing bad acts, okay. Then RDC that the person who can specifically do something about that problem is the police chief that hired them. And if the police chief doesn’t see the problem and doesn’t understand the problem where there’s a specific person who can do something about that person. And that’s the mayor of city manager that hired a police chief. Yeah. And if the mayor and the police chief doesn’t see that problem and doesn’t understand that problem, there’s a specific group of people who can do something about the mayor. And those are the voters who live in that city. AG: (35:07) But if you don’t live in that city, you don’t have the ability to get rid of the mayor. You don’t have the ability to affect the chief of police and you don’t have the ability to affect those officers. Now you can contribute in ways to influence their problems. So going back to the word influence, there are a few things that each of us can control. There are other things that we can influence if we can’t control and if we can’t control it or influence it, our responsibility is to lead. And we, we, we lead by being the example of what we want to see in the world. So if there’s injustice be just, if there’s unfairness, be more fair, if there’s inequity being more equitable. So it’s about what you can control, what you can influence it, where you can leave, but you got to understand the problem. AG: (35:56) And I think so many people haven’t taken the time in this situation to just understand the problem from a societal problem of law enforcement, police and communities, particularly communities of color, two. Our response to when those things happen because I think the main thing, and I’ll say this last point about what happened in, in any of these specific events, it’s not just that we see a bad cop do a bad thing because in every industry there is a bad person that does a bad thing. So you got a bad doctor who does a bad thing. You might have a bad hairdresser that does a bad thing, bad speakers, every industry you can’t fix bad things that individuals do. We can’t control in police individual behavior. The question is when that individual does a bad thing, is there any accountability for that individual? And I think what people are so outraged by is the continued bad things done by certain officers. AG: (37:06) And they rarely get in trouble. They rarely go to jail. The worst thing that happens to them is they lose their job. I mean, think about it. If you murdered somebody and the worst thing that happened to you is that you lost your job. Yep. That’s where is w where the outrage reviews until the conflict. How do we make sure that when bad things happen that we improve the process so they don’t ever have to happen again? Like if you take the airline industry, I’ll give you this, this example. Mmm. We rarely have plane crashes in the United States of America now 35 40 years ago we had a lot of plane crashes, but every time a plane crashes, the entire airline industry works like crazy to find out what happened, to make sure that it never happens again. Like we have four hijackers who crashed planes into buildings, into the Pentagon and nine 11 and there was nobody that was a Homeland security expert on September 10 2011 there was no Homeland security experts, not one. AG: (38:16) But after that day, the entire country, the entire government, every single person began to find a way to make sure this would never happen again. It doesn’t matter why it happened, how we let it happen, we want to investigate that and understand the facts of what led to it. But we’re going to do everything in our power and spend ungodly amounts of money and ungodly amounts of training and hiring new people and changing our processes so that it never happens again. And if we’re going to be good at solving problems when bad things happen or bad people happen, we got to figure out how do we prevent them from ever happening again. And when we don’t see that happening, that speaks to a larger challenge. RV: (39:03) I love that. That, and so, and I need to ask you this question specifically that that parallel is so good. Anton and I, I certainly, you know, even though I’m saying like, Hey, we got to find the facts and things are different in every city, I also very much empathize with when you see Rodney King all the way to where we are now and you see example after example, it’s like, Hey there, there certainly is evidence that there is, there are some systemic problems that need to be dealt with and people need to rally. But even to just know what you shared here of like go to the police chief, go to the mayor and also, you know what I’ve never seen as an article that recounts all of these instances. Yeah. What were the facts afterwards and then what happened to all the officers? RV: (39:50) Right. Like all in one place. You know, I’m thinking to myself like maybe that’s an article I should write is to go show people because once the facts have been revealed, justice should be served and it should be clear and Swift. But, but so anyways, that was so awesome. So much. This is so good. But hold on. I got it. Okay. So I have to ask you this question specifically as it relates to our audience and this, the theme of this podcast being personal branding. You, you’ve mentioned several times, examples of staying in your lane. You spent a part of your life as, as an activist and organizer and being on the streets. But now you’re saying you’re making an intentional choice to stay at home because of various, you know, considerations. Mmm. Do you feel like personal brands should be using their platform? RV: (40:42) Like if I teach yoga, should I be telling them, should I be taking my audience and telling them why racism is wrong? Should I be connecting? It should buy, should I be saying, Hey, that doesn’t, that’s not what my expertise is about. Like how do you balance? Yeah, because a platform is a sacred thing and audience is a sacred thing and the audience that you have didn’t necessarily show up for your opinion on everything that you’re not an expert on. But at the same time, we’re all people, we all have beliefs and as humans we are all in this together. And this, you know, Martin Luther King’s in an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, which I fully believe and support. Well, finding that balance between, so do you go, yeah. Tell people what you believe and even if it’s outside of your lane, but you’ve used that term stay in your lane. How do you, how do you find the line? AG: (41:33) Yeah, so, so I think the, the, the summary of how I would explain it and when, I mean stay in your lane is that Mmm, the best brands, the best personal brands are the people who are the most authentic that people connect to intimately. They just don’t know, Oh, what you want to teach them. They know who you are. Like I know who you two are. Okay, I don’t, you might teach me everything I want to know about being a personal brand, but I know who you are. I know how you met and how your relationship started and what you did before you were building a personal brand and your, your, your life story so to speak. So you can’t divorce yourself from who you are if you’re really building a strong personal brand. So my point is staying in your lane, if it’s something that is connected to who you are and what you do, then they find a way to connect it to what’s relevant. AG: (42:26) Because I think one of the things that you teach in personal branding is how do you, how do you take what you do as a personal brand and connected to what’s going on in the world and what people need. And so if you teach yoga, you don’t necessarily have to say racism is bad and that, you know, you know, police brutality is bad. You can say, I know everybody is stressed out right now and the world is stressed and we’re seeing bad things happen all around us. But yoga is a solution to get personal alignment in yourself so you can help get personal alignment in the work. So again, you’ve given some money to say, you know what, I never done yoga in my life, but if something can help me to get this tightness out of my neck because I’m angry at what happened in Minnesota or I’m angry about what happened last month and what happened last year, maybe this is a way that I should try that I haven’t tried before. So if I’m a yoga teacher, that might work, but not, maybe I don’t do anything related to yoga or I don’t run a fitness gym or maybe I teach karate or RV: (43:36) So, but to stick with the, to stick with the yoga thing, if I’m going to follow a yoga instructor. Do you think it’s important that the yoga instructor I’m following is sharing their personal viewpoints on abortion, women’s rights, politics, racism AJV: (43:52) For both of you here, like this is actually something we teach. We say once you know what your problem is, you answered all of the things, all of the questions that are happening in the world through the lens of the problem that you solved. AG: (44:04) Yes. AJV: (44:05) What is your unique lens on whatever the problem is that you saw? Like for me, my personal brain problem is irrelevant, right? I don’t speak on racism or discrimination. I don’t speak on gender equality. I don’t speak on those. But that doesn’t mean that my problem of irrelevance, it can’t be seen through the lens of all these things happening. Not to go out and say, here’s my opinions for the world to hear. But that doesn’t mean it’s not connected to who I am as a human being. Because the problem that I solve is connected to all of these things. It’s just how do you take what’s happening through the lens in which you see things as a personal brand. AG: (44:45) Yeah. So, so you agent you hit is something, and definitely Roy, I’m going to connect to that point. If you’re, if the problem you solve is irrelevance. There’s a lot of people who are feeling very irrelevant right now. Okay? Mmm. Women in the workplace feel irrelevant every day. So, so there, and that’s a problem. And so you can find a way to connect to it. But to Roy’s point about my views on abortion are my views on, you know, X, Y, and Z. My opinion is you don’t have to go there to go there. So like if, if I’m living my truth, if I’m being completely authentic, then it only takes one word or two words in Google, Google, gun and Obama. So you’d Google my name of Barack Obama’s name, then you know my position on healthcare issues, you know my position, well healthcare reform, you might know my position on how do we rebuild the economy, but you don’t know where I stand on abortion. AG: (45:47) You don’t know where I stand on gay marriage, you know where I stand on any of these issues. And those things are personal to me, but they haven’t been the full scope and scale of what I’ve done in my life. But again, if it’s connected to what you’ve done. So if you’re a yoga instructor who had an abortion and it caused you to go down this spiral dark hole in your life and the only thing that pulled you out was that you learned how to do yoga, then maybe it’s okay to connect the dots in that way. But that doesn’t mean you showing up at every abortion rally and trying to give keynote speeches around abortion in America because that’s not your lane. Your lane is yoga. Okay? But your personal story gives you a way to connect to what’s real. So I tell people to be authentic. AG: (46:39) And then the last piece of every influencer that if you got 50,000 Instagram followers or 150,000 or 5 million Instagram followers, I’m pretty sure your local elected official knows who you are. And if they don’t, they should know who you are. So if nothing else, you use your influence to say, Hey listen, I would like to meet with the mayor to understand what’s going on in our community and how it’s similar or different than what’s going on in another community. And so if you can get an education, just say, you know what, we haven’t had a case of police brutality in this city since the mid 1980s well that’s a good thing to say. You know what, this is happening in America and is wrong. But I’m very proud of my city because it’s not happening here. But you should never make that statement unless you know, never, ever, ever talk about what you don’t know because it will make people ask you questions that you can’t answer beyond the surface level. AG: (47:47) So to your point, Rory, doing some research around, you know, the last 25 years or 30 years of police encounters that ended in a death of a person of color and understanding how many it is because it’s, it’s much more than we got on video. I will tell you that much cause I’ve done that level of research. So, but no the answer and then say, Hey, this statistically is a problem and we should be doing something about it and I can’t fix the whole world. I can solve every other problem, but I can talk to the mayor of Nashville. Well I can talk to my city council member or my state legislator and understand what are we doing to prevent this from happening here? And if they give you an answer, be happy and be proud about that. That’s the main point. AJV: (48:36) Yeah. I so agree. And what are the, there was two things that happened over the weekend that prompted me to bring up this interview with Rory cause I really, I really like, I prayed about it hard because we had both been kind of like, okay, yep. What’s our role? Like what’s our role in this? And there was two things that happened over the weekend that I just felt like I thought literally was like, and this is the path for you [inaudible] stuff. The first thing was Whitney Hawthorne, who’s one of our brand builders clients, right? She’s awesome. She’s amazing. And she recently had her son, her second son. And you know, we have two boys and there really close in age. Like our boys are only a few months apart. Both of them. Yeah. [inaudible] She posted something really simple on social media about this newborn baby and however she drafted it, it made me think I will never [inaudible] [inaudible] the fear because she has, AG: (49:36) Do you want I just lost it. Yeah. I saw that post too. And know I think God every day that I had a daughter and a son, and it’s hard to, to, to fathom that to say, you know, you know, God gives you to get the children you want, whatever God gives you. Right. But when I had a daughter, there was an extra sense of relief in me that I didn’t have a son because I know what me and my brothers have gone through with our encounters with law enforcement. And I know that even as a 40 something year old man who’s lives in a suburban nice neighborhood, you know, professional got multiple degrees, I got a great career. Everything is going the way that I wanted to go. The moment I get in my car and just drive to the grocery store, if a cop pulls behind me, my entire physiology changes. AG: (50:44) I break out on a full sweat. I wonder, do I have my driver’s license? I wonder where’s my driver’s license? I don’t put it in my glove compartment. I literally keep it on the visor above my head because I don’t want to reach down or reach into the console and make it think that I’m doing something. I’ll throw my phone on the passenger seat because I don’t want him to think that I have anything in my hands. And so I don’t want to teach my daughter those kinds of things. Yeah. But unfortunately, there’ve been enough cases with women that I’m also having to teach my daughter because it’s happened to black girls too. It happened to Sandra bland. And so, so I don’t want any of this. And I know that there are a lot of people who will never understand this. And, and I, and I’ve been selling into a lot of my friends who I’m not black and no share my experience. AG: (51:36) I’ve been getting text messages from them and they literally have been, Mmm. I don’t know what to say. I want to help. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you and my response to them is that I appreciate you think it about me. I appreciate you caring about me and I appreciate you empathizing with my situation and [inaudible] and that’s all that I can ask you to do. And then if they ask me further, what is there anything I can do to help? I said that the one thing that I believe that you can do to help is you can talk about this because, and talk about this in a way that is, talk about this in places that I can’t go to talk about it. Okay. Mmm. You know, my pastor, I go to an a interracial church and my pastor is white and he is the founder of the church, is a massive church with more than 25,000 members. AG: (52:30) And when he was retiring and handing over the ministry to his son, he says, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in ministry, tearing down the walls of race in America, and particularly in church because Sunday is the most segregated day in America. And so I’m going to use my platform. I’m going to use my influence. I’m going to use my brand power to make sure that we tat on a Rosa wall’s race. And that didn’t mean doing anything visceral and violent. You know what that meant? That meant every time we invited a guest speaker to church, it was a speaker of color. And, and let them come in and preach to the congregation. It means standing up a diversity group and asking Anton to chair to diversity group, it meant going down to the city and asking the mayor, what are you doing to bring people together of color? AG: (53:23) And the mayor is going to respond to him because he’s the of a church with 25,000 people. So again, he didn’t step outside of his lane. He just started asking questions and talking about this in places that I couldn’t talk about it to people who wouldn’t give me the audience to talk about. So it doesn’t have to be big. It could just really be a conversation. No, to be clear, there’s some of us that got to give beyond the conversation because you can talk to somebody and they can continue to do the same behaviors over and over again. And then that means you got to move to the next level of how we change. And, and I think that is warranted where we are right now. But again, there’s so many people who are not talking about it. As I, as I teach the people who live in oblivion. AG: (54:06) Mmm. You know, I, I teach that in the social conscious construct, you got about half of people who are living in oblivion that they didn’t see anything that you saw that pricked your heart and mind and want to have this conversation. They never got a text or a message from their friends saying, why you aren’t saying anything. They just kind of, you know, a happy go lucky move in. And leave it to Beaver land or whatever, and they don’t see anything that’s 50% okay. Yeah. The 35% of them who sees something’s wrong, but they either don’t know what to say or they thank you, somebody else to this problem to solve or they say, little low me can’t do anything about it. And that’s understandable for time, but because you know better, you should know that there’s always something that you can do. The small baby steps lead to the bigger steps, but then there’s a smaller group of people about 10% who literally believe that they benefit emotionally, morally economically, politically from being, staying the way they are. AG: (55:17) Yeah. And we have to find a way to deal with those people, but those people are in the minority. Right. I listened to your podcast religiously, and so when you did the interview with Andy Andrews, and he talked a little bit about his book, how do you kill 11 million people? He pointed out in the book that at the height of the Nazi party, they were only eight and a half million of them when there were 80 million people in Germany. So you had this 10% minority that had control of an 80 million minority. So we got to stop the 10% wherever they are in business, in the world and wherever. But it’s so many more of us on the other side who can do the right thing, it should do the right thing. And that’s what I’m trying to teach is how to become a 5% leader. AG: (56:13) The admired leader who stands up for justice and there’s a laundry list of people, Dr. King Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, mother. These are people who says, you know what? I’m going to figure out what this problem is and I’m going to use my pulpit, my brand, my platform to figure out what I can do and what mother Teresa could do is not what Dr. King could do. So we’re all different. Well we got to stay in our lane and figure out what we can do to make a difference. And that’s what building the best brand is all about. RV: (56:46) Well you are a 5% leader and this has probably been one of the most enlightening conversations that I’ve had. Amen. And a really, really long that, and it’s just so helpful. I mean, just as a, as a friend Anton, to just hear your voice and hear your perspective on it. And I think it’s such a, a balance of what’s right and not who’s right and just doing what you can and not overstepping your bounds but standing for what is right. I’m just really, really graceful. We love you. We believe in you. Where should people go if they want to connect with you? I mean your, your brand is about leadership and like you, your, your voice man, like this is, this is why you’ve been through everything you’ve been through is like this time in the world right now I think lends itself to somebody just like you at just this moment. AG: (57:42) Well I really appreciate it and I agree. And if people want to connect with me, you can go to Anton Gunn. Com. That’s the home for all things. Anton, I’m on all social media platforms. I love Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I do the most dialogue around helping leaders be better leaders. So please follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But this is a time for all of us to learn how to grow as a leader and to have a greater impact and be the person who is the difference maker that makes the biggest difference. That’s what we all can do. RV: (58:17) Thank you, Anton. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.

Ep 74: Responding Versus Reacting to Injustice with Anton Gunn

RV: (00:00) Hey there. Brand builder. Excited to bring you really a special edition here of the influential personal brand podcasts, a very unplanned, spontaneous we want to introduce you to a good friend of ours. I’m a client of ours, somebody who believes in us, somebody who we believe in tremendously. Somebody who we look up to. His name is Anton Gunn and he is a former senior advisor to president Barack Obama. And Anton is one of the world’s leading authorities on socially conscious leadership. So he has a master’s degree in social work from USC and was a resident fellow at Harvard. He is the bestselling author of the presidential principles and he’s been featured in time magazine, the wall street journal, BBC, NPR, and on good morning America. And as an international speaker and consultant, he’s worked with organizations like Microsoft, Sedexo, KPMG, Verizon, Aetna, Vanderbilt health and Boeing on and on and on. RV: (00:58) And so from playing sec football and being the first African American in history elected to the South Carolina legislature from his from his district early in his career to now working as a C level executive for an academic health system and serving on multiple boards. He has spent his life building or help helping people build diverse high performing teams and world-class leadership culture. And was this on our heart for you to hear from him about some of the things going on in the world and specifically how to use your personal brand to influence real change? And I’m going to let AJ say something cause she, I can, I can tell she’s bubbling. And you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know that AJ does not often conduct the interviews. She does all the debriefs, AJV: (01:53) But since then RV: (01:54) This was, this one was right from AJs heart. So AJV: (01:57) Well they’ll say yes, Amazon has this really nice, fancy bio with all of this amazing accomplishments. But the real reason that I felt led to forced Anton to get on this call of us, which he was so happy to oblige so quickly, it’s honestly, he’s so representative of what we believe in as people and as a part of our, our community at brand builders group, we just believe like Anton comes from a place of real experience. So do you also comes from a place that he really believes in justice but also doing it in a way that actually creates change by using real influence because he’s doing things the right way. And that’s not easy. That’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline to do things the the long way and that, but I just feel like you’re such a extension of what we believe in. And so thanks for, thanks for popping. AG: (02:53) Thank you for saying that. AIJ and I love you both. You are awesome. So happy to be a client. Happy to be your friend and happy to help you and all of your listeners and supporters understand that this is an important time for all of us to use our influence in authentic ways, in ways that we feel comfortable with, most importantly to help bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. And it already bends that way, but it requires each of us to do something in a way that helps to make things better. That’s what our responsibility to our leaders is to work, to make things right and every chance that we get. So I appreciate you creating the space for that and doing that and living up to who you are as individuals and as a business. RV: (03:39) Well, I love that Anton, and honestly we’ve struggled with what to say. I mean there’s a lot of things that I could say and kind of want to say, but don’t necessarily feel like they’re appropriate or you know, right on pace. I think that’s a lot of a lot of people. And, and, and like you said, as. AJV: (03:58) I feel like it’s so sensitive right now and being twisted and turned, and even with the best of intentions, it comes across as you’re ignorant. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand. Yeah, no, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. RV: (04:14) And, and I, I think, you know, when we reached out to you, we said, Hey, we don’t want to make this like a news media commentary on anything specific that’s happening in the news. But okay. You know, you’ve got a moral compass for fairness and justice. RV: (04:27) And I think one of the things that I struggle with, and I just wanted to ask you as your friend is, you know, there’s been a lot of stuff that says, Hey, you know, being silent as part of the problem, you know, silence, you know, basically if you’re silent, you’re racist. I don’t necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily connect with me. I don’t necessarily think that being silent means you’re racist any more than I think making a post will change the world. But what I am very interested in is what are the things productively that we can do? And that we should do like not just, not just using our voice, but what are the things that we can do. And you have such an interesting perspective from working in the white house to being, you know, a division one athlete to leading it in the healthcare world there. Yeah. AJV: (05:23) They’re all of these things, right? AG: (05:26) Yeah. So let me just say AG: (05:30) Know you gotta you gotta remember a leader’s responsibility is to respond and not react. And what do I mean by respond and not react? You know, whenever you’re in the heat of any kind of difficult circumstance, any kind of crisis, your emotions will get the best of you immediately. And what you see some people doing on social media are there emotional responses to what’s going on? And it’s not understandable for people to have an emotional response. Some people’s emotional response is to or emotional reaction is to lash out and scream at you for not saying anything. Cause if you’re not saying anything, then that means you must agree with the bad people who are doing bad things. Right. That’s a, that’s really a reaction. That’s not really a thoughtful prepared response. That’s a reaction. Some people’s reaction is because they’re so shocked by what they see. AG: (06:28) They freeze and they don’t want to say anything. I mean, we’ve all seen in circumstances you’re going to do three things. If you’re confronted in a crisis, you’re going to freeze, you’re going to fight, where are you going to flight any other direction? And I think what we have in the middle of any kind of crisis is that people freeze. Some people fight and others flight, and so I think the people who are fighting are the ones who are screaming out on social media. Some people are so distraught about what they see that they freeze and so that is sometimes silent. You’re when you freeze your assignment and some people could immediately assume because you’re not fighting like me. Oh, because you’re not running like me. Then that means you must agree with those who are doing bad things. That is not the case, but what you should do is be thoughtful about how you can have a positive point in the specs. AG: (07:23) How can you add to the construction of a solution and not to further destruction of the problem? And so what I tell people to do is first of all remain yeah. In your lane. And when I say remaining your lane is, you know, for the first 12 years of my career I actually was a community organizer. So I’ve organized protests, I’ve organized marches, I’ve done sit ins, I’ve actually hold politicians accountable for not doing the right thing. And that’s actually why I got into politics, because I got tired of politicians telling me one thing, but then doing the complete opposite. And I say, well, why am I asking you to do something that you clearly don’t have the capacity to do? Why don’t I just run for office and take your place? And literally that was my goal. But that’s not everybody. It’s not everybody’s name. AG: (08:15) Some people’s learning to say, Anton, you’re better to be out there on the front lines, but here’s what I can do. I have a hundred dollars and I’ll put it in a bail fund. So if you get arrested and go to jail, you can get out and go home to be with your family. Or maybe I’ll support your education campaign to teach people about what good policing policies are or what good environmental policy. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this current crisis or there’s other, some kind of injustice that exists. I will tell you this, we’ve had injustice in wrongdoing as long as we’ve had challenges in this country and around the world. I’ll give you an example of that is unfair and, but it’s something that everybody can relate to. The two of you decided to go out to dinner and you go to your favorite restaurant in Nashville and you’ve been waiting 90 minutes for a table and then my wife and I walk in five minutes in a manner of these sets us down at the best table in the house. AG: (09:16) But you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes now already. You know that that was wrong, that that was not right for me to be able to walk right in and sit down at a table where you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you like the restaurant anymore because you felt that you were treated unfair. So the question is, what am I going to do if I learned that you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes, do I just keep my table and keep eating and say, you know what? Too bad, Roy and AGA, you had the weight, 90 minutes. What do I say to the maitre D? That’s wrong. I’m going to get up and I’m going to give them this table because they’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. And if you saw me sit down at a table, do you decide to storm out of the restaurant or do you just stand there and do nothing? AG: (10:05) You just accept that you know you lost the table. Or do you walk over to the maitre D and says, you know what? I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair that we’ve been waiting for 90 minutes and we didn’t get the table that we asked for and you let somebody else have the table. Now the maitre D also has a choice and an option at that point. He can say, well, you’re just going to have to wait a little longer. Well, he can say, you know what, Roy J I’m sorry. As soon as our next table come available, I’m going to put you at the top of the list in all appetizers and a bottle of wine is on me. So in that situation, we all have the opportunity to respond or we could react, but the key is whatever it is, you want to be authentic to yourself. AG: (10:50) Where do you feel comfortable? And also when you have some expertise, because what I try to remind people is that we all have personal experiences in our lives that we can connect the dots to something else that’s going on. So you may not know what it’s like to be a black man living in America. I can count seven particular instances that I could have ended up like George Ford or Tamir rice or Eric Garner. All of them happened before the age of 27 Hmm. I did nothing wrong. I was a college athlete. I went to a gas station with my uncle to go in to just, he went to go get a bottle of Boone’s farm. Just tell you how long ago it was and I went in to play the lottery. You just connected with AGA. You might have more in common with Aja than you think. AG: (11:39) As it turns out, as it turns out you love boons Romney J yes, we all did. So we were leaving the gas station and out of nowhere, five police cars pulls up. They draw guns on us, they drag us out of the car, they throw us on the ground, he puts his knee in my back in accuses us of being a part of a game and doing a drive by shooting. We didn’t even live on that side of town, but my uncle worked at a restaurant over there and I caught the bus to his job. We got in his car and we’re driving home. We stopped by the gas station and this happened to me. So this is real for me, but it may not be real for you. You may never have experienced anything like that. But I would say you might know someone who has. AG: (12:28) And so in this time, I would say the first thing people can do if you’re trying to figure out how to use your influence, if you have people in your spear network, your friends with those people who you have in your cell phone, who you know might be feeling some kind of way about what’s going on, it’s okay to send them a text. We’ll make a phone call and say, Hey, listen, I don’t fully understand all of this going on. I don’t fully know what to do about any of this. But no, I’m thinking about you. And if you have people who follow you on social media, who you know fit that demographic, you can easily say, listen, Hey, I know you guys watch my pocket. You listen to my podcasts, you follow my feed. You’re on my list. I just want you to know for the interview who are affected by the current circumstances. I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. And I’m not sure what to do yet, but I’m trying to find out. [inaudible] AG: (13:19) We’re all going to be better because of this. And that’s the approach that you have to take is to say something, but you don’t have to have all of the answers because you don’t, you’re not an expert in that. This is about how to build a brand for a movement. Then they should definitely be talking to you, particularly if there’s a person leading the movement. But if this is just unrest or this is just community up uptick and outrage about things, you don’t necessarily have the lead dog role in this, but you can play a role. But first empathizing with people who might be experiencing it. And that’s what we all want. We all want someone to understand our pain, to understand what we’re going through. And you guys have done that just by creating the space and the opportunity. Second thing I was telling people, you are good at something. AG: (14:06) So some of us are great writers, some of us are great speakers, some of us are great at teaching people how to manage and deal with stress. So there are ways you can say, Hey, in the middle of the most stressful time that we might’ve seen in our lifetimes, here are three things. Things that you can do to lower your stress. That message becomes universal. No matter what your race, gender background is, that’s a universal way that you can help him make it. You provide people a way to say, listen, I want to create an outlet for people to be able to express themselves and let me provide feedback on how I can help you to channel that into something positive. Those are simple things or you can really start to do a little bit of research and say, who is working to make sure that injustice and unfairness no longer exists and how can I offer some free advice or some free counsel or free coaching session to help them through it. AG: (15:02) Now, that doesn’t have to be public at all. That can be very private, but it’s something that you can do too to add value and to be comfortable in your space. But speak to the times that we’re in because I do think Roy, there is a fear about the silence if, if it’s, if the silence goes on too long and people will assume silence is complicity. And so I don’t expect anybody in a emotional moment to react in aggressiveness or to jump right out and be a part of anything. Cause that’s what I’m not doing. I haven’t left my house. I still remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. And so I’m concerned about my health and my family’s health. So as bad as I might want to go out and Mmm, be a participant in some civil disobedience, I’m not doing it because one, that’s not my role right now. Number two, I don’t think it would be in my best interest for my health and my wife’s health and my daughter’s health. So I’m going to stay home. But what I am doing is reading everything that I could get my hands on about who’s trying to find a solution and rather than be a part of the problem and what can I offer in terms of expertise and support and help to do that. RV: (16:16) So can I, I have a question too. You should have scheduled your own interview, Anton. We need to have you. We’re going to do multiple. That’s right. All right. This is, AJV: (16:26) So what other questions I have, because I think this is just really pertinent and I think it’s a part of your expertise is there just seems to be a lack of leadership and all of this and a lack of a real coherent and consistent message of what do we want to see happen. And you know what’s like w where does that leave everybody? If there isn’t true leadership and there isn’t a true cause and a true message of like, let’s make this clear. AG: (16:54) Yes. AJV: (16:55) What needs to happen. So, RV: (16:56) Right. Like lighting a church on fire doesn’t signal a real clear message about what we want to see happen. In fact, it’s a very conflicting message to respond to violence with violence. At least that’s how it feels to me. AG: (17:09) Yes. So you’re exactly right. So I literally did a Facebook live about this last night for about an hour. And I hearkened back onto successful change efforts in America. I mean, you can go as far back from women’s sufferage to the civil rights movement. We’ve had a lot of successful change efforts in all of those efforts. You have to know what you want. Yeah. And not only know what you want, be able to clearly articulated in a way that everybody presents. You know, when you talk about building a brand, you gotta have clarity, right? You’re on problem and clear on the solution. AG: (17:51) Exactly. You have to be clear on a problem and clear on the solution. And the problem that we have in this current environment is there, there’s no clarity about this. There’s zero clarity from my vantage point around what do we want? I know what I want, but the solution to that is not clear because again, if you’ve got, you know, multiple things happening in multiple cities, the problem in Charleston, South Carolina is completely different than the problem in Nashville, which is completely different than the problem in Minnesota, which is completely different than the problem in New York city. And so because those problems looks similar on the surface, people are trying to apply a solution to fix all problems and there’s not one solution. This is a, a local by local problem and solution framework. And so when you, when you don’t have good leadership, the problem stays. AG: (18:49) I, I, I give people this kind of advice and I’ve given it to president Obama. So I just tell you anything I’m saying here is stuff that I say all the time to leaders at every level, from the dog catcher to the mayor, to even the president of United States. And the first is whenever you had a crisis, the first thing you must do is remain calm. The second thing you must do is you got to tell the truth. And when I say tell the truth, you have to be honest with people about where you sit and where things are cause people in a time of uncertainty, in a time of fear in a time of the unknown, people are looking for a beacon of hope. And so you got to tell them the truth and you got to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. The thing with so many people forget. AG: (19:35) They want to tell you the rosy truth and they want to tell you the happy true. But they don’t want to tell you the unpleasant truth. So the unpleasant tree is difficult, but it’s grounding. And I, and I say this all the time, the truth doesn’t hurt. It heals. So if we can begin to say, AJ, you are a Rory, you have skin cancer. So I can lie to you and say, Oh, you just got a blemish on your face and telling you you have a blemish on your face is cool and nice and, and you, you don’t feel bad about it. But if you find out that that blemishes cancer, then you can begin to do something about it. Because some people may say, Oh, I got a blemish. I’m just going to accept the blemish and be okay with it. But if you know a skin cancer, then you have to respond. AG: (20:20) So we got to tell people the truth and we got to tell it to them in a heartfelt way. You don’t need to be angry with the truth. You don’t have to be screaming about the truth. You can empathize with people and be heartfelt about telling the truth. But then the third step after that to me is you got to seek out expertise who can help you to find a solution. Yeah, that’s the problem is that we, Einstein said this one time, that many spend 95% of their time trying to solve the problem but only spent 5% understanding the problem. Well, we need to spend 95% understanding the problem and 5% of the time on the solution and you got to have experts to help you to solve the problem. And that’s what leadership does, is that they remain calm. They tell the truth, they tell it in a heartfelt way, and then they find experts to help them to solve the problem. And that’s what we don’t have in this kind of environment. The people who I know have expertise on not being sought out, they’re being questioned, they’re being antagonized, they’re actually being accused of being complicit in the problem when they actually have real ideas around a solution. RV: (21:32) Well, that’s an you know, that’s something that I’ve struggled with with this personally. You know, you talk about leaders, just leadership in general. You respond, you don’t react. You know, I’m seeing a lot of message and I’ve had some people messaged me about like, Hey, why haven’t you shared? Or why don’t you share something? And as a leader, my, one of my first thing is I’ve been afraid to say this, one of my very first things is I need to find the facts in any situation. It’s like as a leader, not civil rights, just leadership training is going, I need to understand the facts. And there are, as you said, and I, I love that you pointed out, I believe that it’s different in every city too. And I believe that every instance of this is different. RV: (22:17) Any type of silence is not condoning something. It’s going, I don’t have the full context of what happened in Minneapolis or in Atlanta or like, and, and until, I know I’m afraid to come out and judge anybody in any, you know, cause I just, I just don’t know. But I think it’s, it almost becomes popular that people want you to just lash out and rage. They want you to just throw fire. They be because they want you to be mad. And it’s like I am mad. Like I’m, I’m heartbroken. And there are, there are parts of these things that you go, they’re undisputable, they’re worth being mad about just like looking at it. But then there’s, there’s context around every situation, every social interaction, every communication with a spouse, a child, a teacher, a colleague. And that context really matters. And it, and it shapes a lot. And I’ve been actually afraid to say that cause I’m afraid of people just being pissed off at me for not being pissed off right away. Like, like you know, publicly. AG: (23:19) Yeah. So, so I will tell you this, and this is one of the things that I, I’ve gotten very comfortable and as a leader is recognizing that somebody is always going to be pissed off at you. And if, if nobody’s pissed off at you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the main point. And I know as an influencer you want to grow your brand and you want everybody to like you and everybody to on your team. But you know what? The happiest thing that I get every day in my inbox is the number of people who unsubscribed from my list. You know what? I’m happy about that. Yeah. Because I know what I’m offering is not for you, you, you, you’re not invested in what I’m invested in and, and you don’t like it. And that’s okay because I want the people who do like it, the people who do get the value, the people who do want to build, adjust organization. AG: (24:14) An organization full of ethical, inspiring and empowering leaders who worked in the unfairness in the workplace. That’s who I want to talk to you. Okay? I don’t want to talk to the people who want to carry it on or the people who are indifferent to it. And I think the thing that a lot of people are probably most frustrated with but people that don’t speak out is the indifference. And so my context would be you want to have the facts, you definitely want to have the facts. But for many of us, particularly me, that what happened in Minnesota is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back was broken on March 3rd, 1991 when I saw Rodney King get beat 56 times by LA police officers and they all got off Scott free. So for me it was a a moment as a teenager that said that I thought this was over. AG: (25:09) I thought this happened, you know, during the civil rights movement. I thought this happened in the 18 hundreds where you know, you could get pulled over and never be seen again. But here I am in the midst of getting ready to go to college and this is what’s happening. So some people would say, we’ve known this all along. There’s no additional facts for you to gather in this situation. But I think the, the burning and the riots and in the burning down buildings and kicking in Apple stores and all these other kinds of things, this is what I also have learned doing this work. Everybody who is with you is not for you. Your body does for you is not going to be with you. And there are some agent provocateurs who are using this yeah. Crisis or this opportunity to advance an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with justice in equity and fairness in the right thing. They have some of them. RV: (26:09) Yeah. And Anton, I just wanted to make sure that you said everyone who is with you is not for you and everyone who is for you is not with you. AG: (26:17) That is correct. Everyone who is with you is not for you. And everyone who is for you is now with you. So let me break it down. So you understand when I say everyone that is with you is not for you. There are people who are showing up and turning peaceful protest into violent protest, right? There are people who will show up at your events that are not really there to support your business there to copy and steal what you do. So everyone that is with you is not for you. The people who follow you on social media, they might be your followers, but they’re not for you. They’re for themselves. And we all have to understand that that’s always been the case. And secondarily, the people who are with you, sometimes they can’t be there for you. They’re with you in spirit. They may be with you in dollars, they may be with you in some other kind of way, but they’re not always going to be there side by side with you. AG: (27:16) So I’m with a lot of people that I can’t be side by side because I want to be here longterm. I want to be a person who lives a long time. And so for me, knowing that I work in healthcare, 90%, knowing that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I know it’s not cool to go back out and socialize right now. I get reports on how many new positive coded cases are showing up every day and we’re not in a clear, so I’m with a lot of people for a lot of people, but I’m not going to be there all the time. So you got to understand that you gotta be able to figure out who is with you and who is for you and what are they doing to help you and who are those that are not really for you. AG: (27:59) And again, I go back to some years of go work when I was being trained into the seat. So to be honest with you, I was trained at a place called Highlander in Tennessee. Tennessee’s where actually Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Rosa parks, all of them got their training on community organizing. Like some people thought Rosa parks sitting down on a bus and refusing to go to the back was a spur of the moment off the cuff event. It wasn’t not, they plan this for months in advance and they have five different people and Rosa parks actually was the one that was chosen to stay on the front of the bus. So most people think this is big civil rights broke protests started with a seminal event of someone just deciding not to get up anymore when she was a trained, a prepared leader who knew what to do and when to do it. AG: (28:54) So in my training, I learned then whenever we do things like this, there are people who are not really with us who are going to see what we’re doing and want to jump in. We got to control that because they could destroy the message, they could cloudy the message that we’re trying to send here. Then it can turn into something that is not. And that’s what I think we, we are seeing right now that there’s some people who are clouding the message that is not really about, you know, police violence. It’s about anarchy or it’s about I hate the government or it’s about, I hate rich people. It’s about I hate America. Because I do believe there’s some form foreign people who are involved in some of these efforts. And so we don’t know which is which at this point. We don’t know the enemy, our friend, because we haven’t taken a time to, to develop the right structure and strategy to move for change. AG: (29:51) And, and to give a quick plug to my former boss Barack Obama, his foundation has been trying to do his best job of this stealing information around what’s a right way for you to get involved. He posted the article on medium recently about, I know everybody’s upset. Protest is a part of, of making change. And we’ve always used protest in America from the Boston tea party onto present day. So he’s not saying not to protest, but he’s saying is getting involved in a way that can make sure that the positive change is lasting and that we actually do the right thing. And so he provided resources at the Obama foundation website. And so I would encourage people to figure out what you can do. But I think the main thing is we got to separate the wheat from the shaft and know that everybody that is with you is not for you and everybody that is for you. Sometimes it’s not with, AJV: (30:45) That’s so wise. That’s so good. One of the, one of the interviews that I saw online here recently was the son of an Atlanta, a city police officer. I’m a black man and he was, he did this really great speech, super emotional, but the thing that has stuck with me and I can’t get out of my head, he said, you don’t fight the enemy by burning down your own house. AG: (31:08) Correct. AJV: (31:08) And you said people were burning down our own house. Wait, that doesn’t work. AG: (31:14) It’s not smart. And that was killer Mike. He’s a hip hop artist, activist. I’m one degree separated and kill Mike because one of my mentees actually used to make beads for him. And I’m trying to get him to be a brand builder client too, by the way. So so yeah, I was willing to help, but that’s a point that, that everybody should understand that if you’re trying to solve a problem, go to where the problem is. Don’t go to where the problems now. So here’s how I explained it to him, the friends of mine and a conference call. If, if I have a nail in my foot five a nail in my foot, it doesn’t make sense for you to put a bandaid on my shoulder. Yeah, that doesn’t, that’s not solving the problem. Why don’t you haven’t taken the nail out of my foot and you haven’t stopped the bleeding on my foot. And so if the nail is in Minneapolis, well, if the nail is in Louisville, Kentucky, why are you burning down in Atlanta, Georgia, right? While you’re riding in Charleston, South Carolina. And again, my point is there are problems in every one of those cities. Atlanta is not perfect. Nashville’s not perfect Charleston, that there’s no perfect utopian city in the United States of America. But those problems require a specific and clear solution to those problems. AG: (32:37) If there’s a nail in your foot, it doesn’t mean there’s RV: (32:40) A nail in every foot. Like the problem isn’t even as a city necessarily. It is a person, a few people, a set of people. And if you can understand who it is, you can proactively handle the problem, which is the truth about any problem in business or our personal life or anything. You can’t. But if you’re blinded by just rage, it’s like you can’t see the problem. All you know is you’re in pain and so you start bandaging yourself and shooting other people and it’s like, Hey, there’s a nail in your foot. Get the nail out. AG: (33:14) Yes. And that’s exactly right. And in problems have levels to them. So, so I, I, you know, my training is social work. When I got my MSW was understanding systems in organizations where you have individual problems, you have group problems, you have family problems, you have organizational problems. And so like when I work with a healthcare organization, I want to understand the problem across the organization. You might have a problem in this department or you might have a problem with this person, right? But is it representative of a systemic problem of how you hire people and who you hire and how you train them and what you allow them to do and what don’t you allow them to do? And what I find more times than not is that people want to solve problems, but they feel paralyzed because they’re going to be punished by a largest system for trying to solve the problem. AG: (34:09) So it requires us to have some level of depth and understanding around what problems are, what our role is, and to solving those problems and going right to the source. As I told my group last night, I said, listen, Mmm. If, if you have police officers who are committing bad acts, okay. Then RDC that the person who can specifically do something about that problem is the police chief that hired them. And if the police chief doesn’t see the problem and doesn’t understand the problem where there’s a specific person who can do something about that person. And that’s the mayor of city manager that hired a police chief. Yeah. And if the mayor and the police chief doesn’t see that problem and doesn’t understand that problem, there’s a specific group of people who can do something about the mayor. And those are the voters who live in that city. AG: (35:07) But if you don’t live in that city, you don’t have the ability to get rid of the mayor. You don’t have the ability to affect the chief of police and you don’t have the ability to affect those officers. Now you can contribute in ways to influence their problems. So going back to the word influence, there are a few things that each of us can control. There are other things that we can influence if we can’t control and if we can’t control it or influence it, our responsibility is to lead. And we, we, we lead by being the example of what we want to see in the world. So if there’s injustice be just, if there’s unfairness, be more fair, if there’s inequity being more equitable. So it’s about what you can control, what you can influence it, where you can leave, but you got to understand the problem. AG: (35:56) And I think so many people haven’t taken the time in this situation to just understand the problem from a societal problem of law enforcement, police and communities, particularly communities of color, two. Our response to when those things happen because I think the main thing, and I’ll say this last point about what happened in, in any of these specific events, it’s not just that we see a bad cop do a bad thing because in every industry there is a bad person that does a bad thing. So you got a bad doctor who does a bad thing. You might have a bad hairdresser that does a bad thing, bad speakers, every industry you can’t fix bad things that individuals do. We can’t control in police individual behavior. The question is when that individual does a bad thing, is there any accountability for that individual? And I think what people are so outraged by is the continued bad things done by certain officers. AG: (37:06) And they rarely get in trouble. They rarely go to jail. The worst thing that happens to them is they lose their job. I mean, think about it. If you murdered somebody and the worst thing that happened to you is that you lost your job. Yep. That’s where is w where the outrage reviews until the conflict. How do we make sure that when bad things happen that we improve the process so they don’t ever have to happen again? Like if you take the airline industry, I’ll give you this, this example. Mmm. We rarely have plane crashes in the United States of America now 35 40 years ago we had a lot of plane crashes, but every time a plane crashes, the entire airline industry works like crazy to find out what happened, to make sure that it never happens again. Like we have four hijackers who crashed planes into buildings, into the Pentagon and nine 11 and there was nobody that was a Homeland security expert on September 10 2011 there was no Homeland security experts, not one. AG: (38:16) But after that day, the entire country, the entire government, every single person began to find a way to make sure this would never happen again. It doesn’t matter why it happened, how we let it happen, we want to investigate that and understand the facts of what led to it. But we’re going to do everything in our power and spend ungodly amounts of money and ungodly amounts of training and hiring new people and changing our processes so that it never happens again. And if we’re going to be good at solving problems when bad things happen or bad people happen, we got to figure out how do we prevent them from ever happening again. And when we don’t see that happening, that speaks to a larger challenge. RV: (39:03) I love that. That, and so, and I need to ask you this question specifically that that parallel is so good. Anton and I, I certainly, you know, even though I’m saying like, Hey, we got to find the facts and things are different in every city, I also very much empathize with when you see Rodney King all the way to where we are now and you see example after example, it’s like, Hey there, there certainly is evidence that there is, there are some systemic problems that need to be dealt with and people need to rally. But even to just know what you shared here of like go to the police chief, go to the mayor and also, you know what I’ve never seen as an article that recounts all of these instances. Yeah. What were the facts afterwards and then what happened to all the officers? RV: (39:50) Right. Like all in one place. You know, I’m thinking to myself like maybe that’s an article I should write is to go show people because once the facts have been revealed, justice should be served and it should be clear and Swift. But, but so anyways, that was so awesome. So much. This is so good. But hold on. I got it. Okay. So I have to ask you this question specifically as it relates to our audience and this, the theme of this podcast being personal branding. You, you’ve mentioned several times, examples of staying in your lane. You spent a part of your life as, as an activist and organizer and being on the streets. But now you’re saying you’re making an intentional choice to stay at home because of various, you know, considerations. Mmm. Do you feel like personal brands should be using their platform? RV: (40:42) Like if I teach yoga, should I be telling them, should I be taking my audience and telling them why racism is wrong? Should I be connecting? It should buy, should I be saying, Hey, that doesn’t, that’s not what my expertise is about. Like how do you balance? Yeah, because a platform is a sacred thing and audience is a sacred thing and the audience that you have didn’t necessarily show up for your opinion on everything that you’re not an expert on. But at the same time, we’re all people, we all have beliefs and as humans we are all in this together. And this, you know, Martin Luther King’s in an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, which I fully believe and support. Well, finding that balance between, so do you go, yeah. Tell people what you believe and even if it’s outside of your lane, but you’ve used that term stay in your lane. How do you, how do you find the line? AG: (41:33) Yeah, so, so I think the, the, the summary of how I would explain it and when, I mean stay in your lane is that Mmm, the best brands, the best personal brands are the people who are the most authentic that people connect to intimately. They just don’t know, Oh, what you want to teach them. They know who you are. Like I know who you two are. Okay, I don’t, you might teach me everything I want to know about being a personal brand, but I know who you are. I know how you met and how your relationship started and what you did before you were building a personal brand and your, your, your life story so to speak. So you can’t divorce yourself from who you are if you’re really building a strong personal brand. So my point is staying in your lane, if it’s something that is connected to who you are and what you do, then they find a way to connect it to what’s relevant. AG: (42:26) Because I think one of the things that you teach in personal branding is how do you, how do you take what you do as a personal brand and connected to what’s going on in the world and what people need. And so if you teach yoga, you don’t necessarily have to say racism is bad and that, you know, you know, police brutality is bad. You can say, I know everybody is stressed out right now and the world is stressed and we’re seeing bad things happen all around us. But yoga is a solution to get personal alignment in yourself so you can help get personal alignment in the work. So again, you’ve given some money to say, you know what, I never done yoga in my life, but if something can help me to get this tightness out of my neck because I’m angry at what happened in Minnesota or I’m angry about what happened last month and what happened last year, maybe this is a way that I should try that I haven’t tried before. So if I’m a yoga teacher, that might work, but not, maybe I don’t do anything related to yoga or I don’t run a fitness gym or maybe I teach karate or RV: (43:36) So, but to stick with the, to stick with the yoga thing, if I’m going to follow a yoga instructor. Do you think it’s important that the yoga instructor I’m following is sharing their personal viewpoints on abortion, women’s rights, politics, racism AJV: (43:52) For both of you here, like this is actually something we teach. We say once you know what your problem is, you answered all of the things, all of the questions that are happening in the world through the lens of the problem that you solved. AG: (44:04) Yes. AJV: (44:05) What is your unique lens on whatever the problem is that you saw? Like for me, my personal brain problem is irrelevant, right? I don’t speak on racism or discrimination. I don’t speak on gender equality. I don’t speak on those. But that doesn’t mean that my problem of irrelevance, it can’t be seen through the lens of all these things happening. Not to go out and say, here’s my opinions for the world to hear. But that doesn’t mean it’s not connected to who I am as a human being. Because the problem that I solve is connected to all of these things. It’s just how do you take what’s happening through the lens in which you see things as a personal brand. AG: (44:45) Yeah. So, so you agent you hit is something, and definitely Roy, I’m going to connect to that point. If you’re, if the problem you solve is irrelevance. There’s a lot of people who are feeling very irrelevant right now. Okay? Mmm. Women in the workplace feel irrelevant every day. So, so there, and that’s a problem. And so you can find a way to connect to it. But to Roy’s point about my views on abortion are my views on, you know, X, Y, and Z. My opinion is you don’t have to go there to go there. So like if, if I’m living my truth, if I’m being completely authentic, then it only takes one word or two words in Google, Google, gun and Obama. So you’d Google my name of Barack Obama’s name, then you know my position on healthcare issues, you know my position, well healthcare reform, you might know my position on how do we rebuild the economy, but you don’t know where I stand on abortion. AG: (45:47) You don’t know where I stand on gay marriage, you know where I stand on any of these issues. And those things are personal to me, but they haven’t been the full scope and scale of what I’ve done in my life. But again, if it’s connected to what you’ve done. So if you’re a yoga instructor who had an abortion and it caused you to go down this spiral dark hole in your life and the only thing that pulled you out was that you learned how to do yoga, then maybe it’s okay to connect the dots in that way. But that doesn’t mean you showing up at every abortion rally and trying to give keynote speeches around abortion in America because that’s not your lane. Your lane is yoga. Okay? But your personal story gives you a way to connect to what’s real. So I tell people to be authentic. AG: (46:39) And then the last piece of every influencer that if you got 50,000 Instagram followers or 150,000 or 5 million Instagram followers, I’m pretty sure your local elected official knows who you are. And if they don’t, they should know who you are. So if nothing else, you use your influence to say, Hey listen, I would like to meet with the mayor to understand what’s going on in our community and how it’s similar or different than what’s going on in another community. And so if you can get an education, just say, you know what, we haven’t had a case of police brutality in this city since the mid 1980s well that’s a good thing to say. You know what, this is happening in America and is wrong. But I’m very proud of my city because it’s not happening here. But you should never make that statement unless you know, never, ever, ever talk about what you don’t know because it will make people ask you questions that you can’t answer beyond the surface level. AG: (47:47) So to your point, Rory, doing some research around, you know, the last 25 years or 30 years of police encounters that ended in a death of a person of color and understanding how many it is because it’s, it’s much more than we got on video. I will tell you that much cause I’ve done that level of research. So, but no the answer and then say, Hey, this statistically is a problem and we should be doing something about it and I can’t fix the whole world. I can solve every other problem, but I can talk to the mayor of Nashville. Well I can talk to my city council member or my state legislator and understand what are we doing to prevent this from happening here? And if they give you an answer, be happy and be proud about that. That’s the main point. AJV: (48:36) Yeah. I so agree. And what are the, there was two things that happened over the weekend that prompted me to bring up this interview with Rory cause I really, I really like, I prayed about it hard because we had both been kind of like, okay, yep. What’s our role? Like what’s our role in this? And there was two things that happened over the weekend that I just felt like I thought literally was like, and this is the path for you [inaudible] stuff. The first thing was Whitney Hawthorne, who’s one of our brand builders clients, right? She’s awesome. She’s amazing. And she recently had her son, her second son. And you know, we have two boys and there really close in age. Like our boys are only a few months apart. Both of them. Yeah. [inaudible] She posted something really simple on social media about this newborn baby and however she drafted it, it made me think I will never [inaudible] [inaudible] the fear because she has, AG: (49:36) Do you want I just lost it. Yeah. I saw that post too. And know I think God every day that I had a daughter and a son, and it’s hard to, to, to fathom that to say, you know, you know, God gives you to get the children you want, whatever God gives you. Right. But when I had a daughter, there was an extra sense of relief in me that I didn’t have a son because I know what me and my brothers have gone through with our encounters with law enforcement. And I know that even as a 40 something year old man who’s lives in a suburban nice neighborhood, you know, professional got multiple degrees, I got a great career. Everything is going the way that I wanted to go. The moment I get in my car and just drive to the grocery store, if a cop pulls behind me, my entire physiology changes. AG: (50:44) I break out on a full sweat. I wonder, do I have my driver’s license? I wonder where’s my driver’s license? I don’t put it in my glove compartment. I literally keep it on the visor above my head because I don’t want to reach down or reach into the console and make it think that I’m doing something. I’ll throw my phone on the passenger seat because I don’t want him to think that I have anything in my hands. And so I don’t want to teach my daughter those kinds of things. Yeah. But unfortunately, there’ve been enough cases with women that I’m also having to teach my daughter because it’s happened to black girls too. It happened to Sandra bland. And so, so I don’t want any of this. And I know that there are a lot of people who will never understand this. And, and I, and I’ve been selling into a lot of my friends who I’m not black and no share my experience. AG: (51:36) I’ve been getting text messages from them and they literally have been, Mmm. I don’t know what to say. I want to help. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you and my response to them is that I appreciate you think it about me. I appreciate you caring about me and I appreciate you empathizing with my situation and [inaudible] and that’s all that I can ask you to do. And then if they ask me further, what is there anything I can do to help? I said that the one thing that I believe that you can do to help is you can talk about this because, and talk about this in a way that is, talk about this in places that I can’t go to talk about it. Okay. Mmm. You know, my pastor, I go to an a interracial church and my pastor is white and he is the founder of the church, is a massive church with more than 25,000 members. AG: (52:30) And when he was retiring and handing over the ministry to his son, he says, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in ministry, tearing down the walls of race in America, and particularly in church because Sunday is the most segregated day in America. And so I’m going to use my platform. I’m going to use my influence. I’m going to use my brand power to make sure that we tat on a Rosa wall’s race. And that didn’t mean doing anything visceral and violent. You know what that meant? That meant every time we invited a guest speaker to church, it was a speaker of color. And, and let them come in and preach to the congregation. It means standing up a diversity group and asking Anton to chair to diversity group, it meant going down to the city and asking the mayor, what are you doing to bring people together of color? AG: (53:23) And the mayor is going to respond to him because he’s the of a church with 25,000 people. So again, he didn’t step outside of his lane. He just started asking questions and talking about this in places that I couldn’t talk about it to people who wouldn’t give me the audience to talk about. So it doesn’t have to be big. It could just really be a conversation. No, to be clear, there’s some of us that got to give beyond the conversation because you can talk to somebody and they can continue to do the same behaviors over and over again. And then that means you got to move to the next level of how we change. And, and I think that is warranted where we are right now. But again, there’s so many people who are not talking about it. As I, as I teach the people who live in oblivion. AG: (54:06) Mmm. You know, I, I teach that in the social conscious construct, you got about half of people who are living in oblivion that they didn’t see anything that you saw that pricked your heart and mind and want to have this conversation. They never got a text or a message from their friends saying, why you aren’t saying anything. They just kind of, you know, a happy go lucky move in. And leave it to Beaver land or whatever, and they don’t see anything that’s 50% okay. Yeah. The 35% of them who sees something’s wrong, but they either don’t know what to say or they thank you, somebody else to this problem to solve or they say, little low me can’t do anything about it. And that’s understandable for time, but because you know better, you should know that there’s always something that you can do. The small baby steps lead to the bigger steps, but then there’s a smaller group of people about 10% who literally believe that they benefit emotionally, morally economically, politically from being, staying the way they are. AG: (55:17) Yeah. And we have to find a way to deal with those people, but those people are in the minority. Right. I listened to your podcast religiously, and so when you did the interview with Andy Andrews, and he talked a little bit about his book, how do you kill 11 million people? He pointed out in the book that at the height of the Nazi party, they were only eight and a half million of them when there were 80 million people in Germany. So you had this 10% minority that had control of an 80 million minority. So we got to stop the 10% wherever they are in business, in the world and wherever. But it’s so many more of us on the other side who can do the right thing, it should do the right thing. And that’s what I’m trying to teach is how to become a 5% leader. AG: (56:13) The admired leader who stands up for justice and there’s a laundry list of people, Dr. King Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, mother. These are people who says, you know what? I’m going to figure out what this problem is and I’m going to use my pulpit, my brand, my platform to figure out what I can do and what mother Teresa could do is not what Dr. King could do. So we’re all different. Well we got to stay in our lane and figure out what we can do to make a difference. And that’s what building the best brand is all about. RV: (56:46) Well you are a 5% leader and this has probably been one of the most enlightening conversations that I’ve had. Amen. And a really, really long that, and it’s just so helpful. I mean, just as a, as a friend Anton, to just hear your voice and hear your perspective on it. And I think it’s such a, a balance of what’s right and not who’s right and just doing what you can and not overstepping your bounds but standing for what is right. I’m just really, really graceful. We love you. We believe in you. Where should people go if they want to connect with you? I mean your, your brand is about leadership and like you, your, your voice man, like this is, this is why you’ve been through everything you’ve been through is like this time in the world right now I think lends itself to somebody just like you at just this moment. AG: (57:42) Well I really appreciate it and I agree. And if people want to connect with me, you can go to Anton Gunn. Com. That’s the home for all things. Anton, I’m on all social media platforms. I love Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I do the most dialogue around helping leaders be better leaders. So please follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But this is a time for all of us to learn how to grow as a leader and to have a greater impact and be the person who is the difference maker that makes the biggest difference. That’s what we all can do. RV: (58:17) Thank you, Anton. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.

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

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

Ep 66: Gratitude with John O’Leary

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

Ep 41: Following Your Life’s Calling in the Face of Persistent Fear with Luvvie Ajayi | Recap Episode

RV:    00:00     Hey Brand Builder. Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m joined by my wife and business partner, CEO brand builders group, AJ Vaden. Hello. And today we’re breaking down the interview with Luvvie Ajayi who I absolutely love and she is a brand builders group client and is somebody that we just got to meet really over like the past two years and I’ve gotten to know a little bit and work with her and also learn from her. I think she’s definitely one of those, one of those clients. And I think when I think of that interview and when I think of Luvvie in general, I think the most clear, consistent thing that she says and does in terms of her strategy for building her brand is it’s just incredibly authentic. And she talks about the way to break through the noise is to just kind of passionately own what you believe and to come out right and just say it and don’t be afraid. The fallback, which I think takes a tremendous amount of, of courage. But that’s, I think, you know, her book is, I’m judging you, right? So she’s like putting it right out there. Like that is a part of her brand is, is to really just like lay it out there on the line. So I, and I think she does that. I think she, that’s what her brand is all about. And I think that’s, that’s one of the biggest things that I, I took away from her.

AJV:     01:24  Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that she says in the interview is it’s not always about finding your voice, it’s about following your voice. And I think, and as that relates to building our, growing your personal brand, it’s just how confident are you in being your authentic self? Because I think you will, you’ll find in Luvvie is she, the girl’s got confidence and she’s got boldness. She’s very bold. But that’s because she truly believes in what she’s saying. And I think for any of us, if we’re afraid that people are going to be judging us, then perhaps the message that you’re trying to share isn’t the real one. If you’re so concerned about what everyone else is going to say and what everyone else is thinking, is that your real truth? I think that’s set there. Deep root of Luvvie as she goes.

AJV:   02:10  No, this is my truth. And to some degree, who cares if you like it, right? Cause this is my truth. And you don’t have to like it because it’s my truth. And there’s a whole group of people out there who need to hear what my truth is. And that’s who, I’m speaking to. And for you a quote unquote haters. It’s just not for you. So don’t follow me. Don’t like it. Don’t read my book, don’t listen to my podcasts, don’t read my blog, don’t read it and then get so offended. Just don’t follow me. But how passionate are you about your message? Like is it your truth to the point where you’re like, not trying to offend anyone but if they get offended. So we it, I think that’s just a really good kind of place of going, is this my truth? Is this my core message to the point of, wow, so what, what you think?

RV:   03:03 Yeah. Well, and I, I love that. Like conceptually, if it is your truth, it’s like what other option do you have to really just come out and say it and you don’t want to water down your truth. You don’t want to Dodge. Yeah. Sugarcoat the truth. It’s like, if this is your truth, it’s what you really believe, then you have to just kind of come out and own it and dominate it. And she’s a good example of someone who does. Although I would also throw in there, you know, she’s a great real life story of somebody that was, you know, 15 years to an overnight success.

AJV:   03:32  Consistent. Yeah. And you said like

RV:   03:35   10 years on the blogging plus. Yeah. She was like one of the, the O G bloggers, like she’s been blogging for a long time.

AJV:  03:43                That’s so true. But again, it’s like [inaudible] I think the most consistent thing that you will hear through all of these interviews is consistency. There’s, there is no way around, there is no like, Hey, start tomorrow and you know, get whatever 6 million fans or like our followers on Instagram, unless you’re Jennifer Aniston who started her Instagram account and then like in 24 hours, that’s six

RV:   04:06                And spent decades building up her personal brand and becoming Jennifer Aniston.

AJV: 04:10                So I think all of those things I think are important. It’s consistency is the game. But what I really loved about that kind of point is it’s more about what’s your real truth and if it really was your truth, and I didn’t be so offended

RV:   04:23                I wasn’t thinking about this before, but, but something about the way that yours saying it, babe, about there’s some quote, and I’m probably gonna mess this up, some stuff off the top of my head, but something, a quote from a Mont Mcgon D that was like, I’m not interested in being right. I’m only interested in truth. And I also took that away away from her because even though her, her book is like, I’m judging you. And she’s very, you know, forward and bold. Bold is a great word, I think for Luvvie. And I totally admire that about her. It wasn’t just like being judgy. That’s not what her thing is about. Right. She has these three questions that I thought were super powerful, which was do I really mean it? So again, is it truth? Can I defend it? Which also is, is it truth and am I saying this out of love, which is also truth, right? It’s like I’m not saying it to just be right. I’m not saying it to offend you. I’m not saying it to just get my opinion across

AJV:  05:19   To get attention or to be controversial. Is this just just who I am?

RV:  05:25     Yeah. And if, and if, if it passes those three tests, then I think what she is saying is it can be sharp. It can be pointy, it can be penetrating like [inaudible] because, because it’s not about just being right. It’s not about just having some flagrant opinion. It’s that you really mean it. You’ve thought through it, you can defend it and you’re saying it out of love. And to me, one thing that didn’t really come up in the interview, but where I would say this applies directly for personal brands is in media training. If you’re going to be on TV, you have to have an opinion and it needs to be sharp and pointy and powerful, right? Like what makes TV is drama. Doesn’t mean you have to be mean. It means you have to be clear and you have to be opinionated. And that’s what often creates drama on TV, which is [inaudible] two opposing opinions. But the, you know, that’s why the people you see on TV are never the really like level-headed, you know, key even keel people. Cause it doesn’t make, nobody wants to watch a TV show for a bunch of people getting along. It’s, it’s just not interesting generally speaking. And so having an opinion and knowing what that is I think is,

AJV:   06:34                Is it important? Yeah. Agreed. That’s great.

RV:  06:37                The other thing she talked about, and maybe you can talk about this baby is probably the third thing is about the audience because that was very aligned with some of the stuff that we teach.

AJV:   06:46                Totally. She said that, you know, when you’re speaking, when you’re writing, when you’re just talking in general, do it through the lens of who is my single target? Who was that single individual? Like what are their demographics, what are their psychographics? So demographics is like, how old are they? What gender are they? Where are they from? You know, what is their socioeconomic status? And the psychographics are, you know, what do they care about? What do they believe in? What do they value? What are they struggling in? What questions do they have? Ha, you know, like where do they need to be met? Those are the things that you want to be thinking about as you’re writing and speaking your message. It’s who are you directing this to? Who is that single individual that you were talking too? And I love that because you know, you talk a lot about how when you were riding take the stairs that you really felt like the first chapter that this even worthwhile was when you really concentrated.

AJV:  07:44                Like I am not writing to people, I am writing to person one person. You had one person in mind. And you know, I think too, even with me it’s like when I think about like my message in my keynote and what I do, it’s like when I think about this is the exact person that I am speaking to, it is so much easier for the content to flow cause I’m not trying to make it general. It’s not general. It’s do I very specific unique individual. And that makes a world of difference in the uniqueness and in your stories and in the message and in the endearment and then the true sincerity that’s coming across because you’ve got this, this one person in the back of your mind. I’m going, this is you, this is for, this is the message that will change your life.

AJV:   Not Hey, someone out there who might be listening. No, it’s no, I know you’re listening. I know who you are. This message is for you. I think I just totally changes the whole ball game and and if you listen, if you follow Luvvie that is how she talks. That is how she writes. And I think it’s really, it really like if you’ve ever been in church and I have this, I have this moment, all the, I’m like somebody tell him like that’s what I’m going through right now. Like it’s like what’s what’s happening? But it’s like you’re sitting there in the audience and you’re like, man, that was for me today. That was for me. I needed that. Like that message was speaking to the heart of what is going on in my life. That is how people need to feel about your message.

RV:  09:16                Yeah. And that it’s so powerful and passionate and punchy when you visualize that one person in your head like this is who I’m talking to versus let me sit down and write my, you know, my memoir for the world. The other thing about that, the avatar thing, cause that was another big takeaway from me that [inaudible] for those of you that are listening, if you’re, if you’re a client already of ours, you know we, we T you know we’ve got these, this four phase process that we talk about a brand builders group and when we get to phase three we talk about high traffic strategies. And when you get into that phase, the technical, it becomes all, there’s some technical components of advertising and when you get into the backend of Facebook or you get into the back end of Google and YouTube and you literally the world is your playground to reach hundreds of millions of people and it actually becomes an exercise to go, wow, who am I really trying to reach? Yeah. The more, the more well versed you are in who your avatar is, the, the faster that process is going to go, the smoother that process is going to go. And the less money you’re going to spend because you know exactly the person you are.

AJV: 10:24                Hopefully the higher conversion because that person will, you know, it’s like whatever that mess that you say this. Sometimes it’s like, I’m like, you have a radar.

RV:   10:36                Oh, a signal. A signal. Yeah. It’s a good that you pay such close attention.

AJV:  10:42                Sonar radar signal. You’re sending out a signal and they’re picking it up. Yup. Same will happen in the advertising and ad spend if you have that very targeted perspective. I think that’s such a good point because we know so many people who were like, I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in Facebook ads or ad words or whatever, and it’s like, it doesn’t work. And it’s like, well, we also know people who’ve spent millions of dollars and say it’s worth every single penny. So what’s the difference? Do you know who you’re targeting? Do you know where to find them

RV:  11:16                And are you watching the data of what converts? I mean, that’s the other thing that happens in phase three is phase three from a data perspective will teach you a lot about who your avatar is versus who you think it is. Because you might, you know, you start phase one, learning your identity, phase two, brand creation. You start putting all this content out, but then you get to phase three and you’re running ads and you’re seeing this type of person is engaging and this person is not, and this person is buying in. This person is not as like, wow, my voice really appeals to a different audience than I ever anticipated. That’s one of the most exciting and fun things is to go. You really start to fine tune it. So anyways, you can’t do that without aiming at somewhere first. So pick out that avatar. Be bold, be passionate, be unapologetic. That was the word as we were talking about this to me, what, what I love about Luvvie is she is bold and unapologetic and unfiltered, unfiltered, and she’s just living her truth and she’s not trying to be mean. She’s just being direct about her truth and it’s winning for her and it’ll win for you. So go out, do that today and we’ll catch you on the next episode of the influential personal brand.

Ep 40: Following Your Life’s Calling in the Face of Persistent Fear with Luvvie Ajayi

RV: (00:07)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon so I have to share with you all.

RV: (00:56)
I’m so excited for you to meet our next guest. This woman, was somebody that I met actually through Brand Builders Group and somebody that we started to talk about her brand strategy and all that kind of stuff. And I wasn’t personally familiar with her before and she is a rockstar and a total firecracker. And I don’t know how we had crossed paths before, but I’m telling you, you are, you’re going to, you’re going to love this woman. Her name is Luvvie Ajayi. She is a New York times bestselling author, speaker and digital strategist who really kind of lives at the intersection of like comedy technology and then activism. So her, her first book was called, I’m Judging You. The do better manual was an instant New York Times Bestseller. She also has a Ted Talk that has like 4 million views, which of course I’m very jealous of because her Ted talk has more views than mine, but that’s okay.

RV: (01:59)
And she has a podcast called ransom and randomness where she shares a lot of her, you know, raves and faves. And so she kind of like, you know, she interviews, she’s interviewed people like Oprah Winfrey and Gina Davis and Shonda Rhimes and she just like is she critiques pop culture. And then it’s also like using her voice for gender and racial justice. She has, she has a course a school called the do better Academy, which teaches people how to thrive in their business and their careers. And anyways, I’m telling you, she’s just, she’s just awesome. So Luvvie, thank you for making time for us.

LA: (02:33)
Thank you for having me Rory.

(02:35)
So you’ve been blogging for 16 years. I didn’t even know the word blog had been around for 16 years. Right?

(02:44)
Right. Yeah, I started blogging in 2003 when I was a freshman in college and I was peer pressured into doing it because I’m very pure, impressionable. Like my friends were like, we’re going to start web blogs. You should tune. I was like, okay. And

LA: (03:00)
I started blogging about my undergrad life and back then my major, cause I thought I was going to be a doctor. My major was psychology, premed and then I got a D in chemistry, chemistry that semester. I blogged about that too and I was like, fuck, you know what I’ll do. I’m going to be a doctor anymore so that’s not going to work for me. So as that dream died, the blogging thing kind of took over and I looked at it very casually. For me, it was just this thing that I’d like to do after, after I went to class or maybe I didn’t go to class that day and it took on a life of its own. Like basically people, more people started reading, reading it. Back then there wasn’t like a career as a blogger. It wasn’t considered a thing. It was just this thing that you did. It was like your online diary. When I graduated from college in 2006, I actually deleted my college blogs. I was like, Whoa, kind of feel like I finished a phase. I don’t have the material that I have before. I’m going to start a new blog where I’m talking less about me and my life and talking more about the world. And I started awesomely luvvie.com August, actually, August 8th, 2006 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

RV: (04:15)
That is so rent wild. So, so it’s interesting cause you know, like if someone goes and sees you now they’re like, Oh, it’s just got hundreds of thousands of followers and then blah blah blah. But how do you stick with something for, for 16 years? Like there’s gotta be times when you’re like, I’m freaking sick of this. Or like I don’t have anything to say or I mean is there, or has it always just been like you always got stuff to say and

LA: (04:41)
Like, well I think the power of blogging and the gift of blogging back then because there were no expectations of it being a career was that we were able to, a lot of us who started that early and we didn’t, didn’t continue. So that’s why you don’t know their names. I always say that I wasn’t necessarily the one who threw the best party. I was the one who threw many parties and just kept on throwing them. And writing was a practice. So I didn’t realize that I was actually practicing this craft. For me it was just something that felt like a hobby, something that was low stress, which funny enough, made it more fun. So I did it over and over. I kept on doing it. I didn’t feel like something that I was obligated to do. And I think that was a gift in that it allowed me to build that right in practice. But also it allowed me to build the voice that was authentically me because it wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t like I was thinking, huh, I should cover this today because that’ll get me some Google hits or clicks. Back then you were writing for the love of writing and it crafted and I really didn’t realize that it was something that had big, become increasingly important to me until I realized that when I didn’t write it felt wrong.

LA: (05:56)
So what do you think?

RV: (05:58)
So let’s talk about the writing thing. Cause cause I know you’re a speaker also. I don’t want to, I want to talk about that. Like you and I kind of share that. But I, I came at it backwards. I wanted to be a speaker. Like I spent my, my whole college was like doing the world championship of public speaking and I wanted to be a speaker. And then it was like, Oh, if you really want to make it as a speaker, you gotta, you gotta have a book and you know, if you can write a bestseller, then it sounds like, okay. So then I stumbled into writing and then I’ve since like fallen in love with the idea. What do you think are some of the secrets of great writing particularly today? Right. Cause there’s so much noise. Like it’s just like, and it’s not just, it’s like there’s books and there’s eBooks and there’s podcasts and there’s your, you know, random social, and that was video and like your feed, you know, like Jay bear, he’s another friend, he’s one of the other faculty members. He always says like, you’re, you’re not just competing with other writers. You’re competing with everything that competes for attention to puppy dogs and fantasy football. And so like, yeah, and babies. Right. how do you compete with babies? How do you write to compete with babies

LA: (07:06)
Knowing that you are not competing with babies, that you can exist in the same space with the cute baby. I think what customer, the noise now, what cuts, what elevates content is content that feels really authentic and thoughtful and does not feel contrived because I think all of the media that we consume now has actually gotten us slightly better and picking out what’s contrived and what’s not. And now when you are right or what makes you stand out honestly is the voice and the perspective that you bring. Because let’s be clear, none of us are talking about something that nobody else was talking about. There’s a million people talking about the same thing you’re talking about. You will not be the singular person covering a topic and you have to be fine with that. What people want to hear and what makes people come back is they’re like, I see myself and I see my thoughts in what this person is saying or they just gave me perspective.

LA: (08:00)
I didn’t have, I always say that content needs to be either funny or useful or interesting or timely, as many of those as you can be as possible best if you’re not funny, don’t, don’t try to be funny. But if you can be useful and timely be that, you know, so I’m, I just say take the pressure off trying to compete with the baby cause you’re not gonna win that battle. The cuteness is too much. That’s not your lane. You’re not even one in the same stadium, let alone race. Your job is to create the best content that you can. That the barometer I use for myself is if I’m not the person who wrote this, if I’m not the person who created this, would I still find this interesting or good?

Speaker 3: (08:42)
[Inaudible]

RV: (08:43)
Interesting. Yeah. Just so kind of like, Oh, if I was a random person, what would this, would this either be funny, useful, interesting or timely for me if it wasn’t me? So I like I liked that a lot. You’ve talked, you, you’ve used already the word a couple of times, authenticity and like your own voice. And that kind of a thing.

LA: (09:04)
How do you,

RV: (09:05)
How do you find the line of going, I want to be real and I want to be transparent. I want to be authentic because that cuts through the noise and it’s me and I don’t want to be fake, but I don’t want to share, you know, so much like that. It’s too personal and you know, and also it’s like there’s a risk of being judged, right? There’s this risk of people like you got haters and trolls and yada yada yada. So like how do you find that line of the right amount of yourself to share with the public?

LA: (09:39)
Yeah, that’s a great question. For me, one of my separate spaces, I, I, I compartmentalize my work in that I’m a public figure, but not my whole life is public. I don’t feel like I owe people access to every piece of my life. And I think some people feel pressure of being like, yeah, how do I figure it out? No, what your lines and your boundaries are. And for me a big line in a boundary for me is my relationship. You know, like me and my, my fiance, like you won’t see him and I post pictures of [inaudible].

RV: (10:12)
Congratulations by the way, because now you said Beyonce and only on on the influence of personal brand. Would you ever hear such a personal detail?

LA: (10:22)
I’ve already got the team, but yeah, I think knowing that the personal boundaries and why, right? Because you have to know the pieces of yourself that you must protect from people no matter how much and how large and how deep information you share elsewhere. So that’s a big second piece is being clear that building community, the community that you’re telling this information to needs to not just be the larger public, even though the larger public can have access to it. Because be clear that no information that you share online is really private. So also operating off that. But I think about my audience as a single person. Like you made us do the avatar exercise and you’re saying that every brand needs to have that one person that you’re thinking of that you’re using to serve. So I think about that person whenever I’m giving information out.

LA: (11:13)
Like, if she’s listening to this, if they’re listening to this information, will this be helpful to them? Even if I’m being vulnerable. And it’s with the idea that vulnerability comes with risks. Authenticity comes with risks. At no point is the information that you’re releasing guaranteed to land perfectly well with everybody, which is why I use three questions to ask myself whenever I’m sharing any information, anytime I’m talking about something, even when it’s difficult, it’s the, it’s a checklist for myself in these moments to kind of tell me either yes or no. Don’t do it, go for it. And mine is, can I do, I mean can I defend it? Am I saying it with love or thoughtfully? And I use that as a checklist because in the moments that I want to be really authentic, really real, really vulnerable, it can be scary cause you’ll be like, am I sure I want to say this?

LA: (12:07)
Could this, see the thing is we can’t use the idea of could this face backlash as a criteria because we’d say nothing. You can say the sky is blue and somebody is going to disagree with you. So that can’t be the barometer that you’re using to say yes or no to saying something that you think is important. So I think everyone should come with their own checklist of things that kind of serve as your own. Like, okay, so I’m not being impulsive, I’m not just going on a social media rent just for the sake of the fact that I’m angry or sad. Have I thought this through? Is this something that is worth my time to do?

RV: (12:41)
Hmm. I love that. Do I mean it? Can I defend it and am I saying it thoughtfully or with love? So I’m going to talk about that last one a little bit because I mean your books comes right out and says right on the cover. I’m judging you. You make no qualms about it. You are commenting on top

LA: (13:01)
Culture. It’s, it’s really interesting cause I think

RV: (13:08)
Of all like my friends and you know, various like people we interface with and clients and stuff. You have, you kind of walked this very unique space of being both like a speaker and like a thought leader, but also an activist. How do you, how do you kind of find that space or like, you know, is that just something you decided to do? Did you stumble into it? And I guess I don’t even really know what my question is here. I’m mostly interested in just your perspective on,

LA: (13:38)
Okay.

RV: (13:38)
Why and how you view the written word as both your right and your responsibility to kind of speak your truths and how do you kind of reconcile with,

LA: (13:50)
You know, the various challenges that come with that. Yeah, so I called my book. I’m judging you because I feel like it’s a phrase that feels accusatory, but really at the bottom of it, it’s not because we try to tell each other, Oh, we don’t judge anybody. We don’t try to judge each other. We absolutely do. And my thing is we judge each other for the wrong things. We spend so much time judging each other for, you know what we’re looking like, you know who we love, you know what God we practice or who, you know what God, we don’t believe in that. The things that we’re supposed to actually be judging each other on are the values that we bring to the table. How good we’re treating each other and other people. How we are leaving this world better than we found it. That’s what we need to be judging each other on.

LA: (14:37)
You know, we just judge each other on like, how are you just being a good person who cares about other people around you? So I called my book that because I wanted to hold a mirror to all of us, you know, have been like, yes, we’re absolutely something that’s fine, but let’s probably shift some of the things that we’re judging each other about and how we’re walking through this world. And for me, I stumbled upon all my, all my titles that I go by today. I stumbled upon all of them, speaker, writer, whatever, activists this person. Like I feel like life got me there because I was just doing the things I was compelled to do. And no, I love that you had clarity at 17. You’re like, I’m going to be a speaker at 17. I really thought I was going to be a doctor.

LA: (15:20)
So literally that I am today is opposite of what I thought I would be. And it’s because I ultimately kind of followed the path of doing the thing that felt like doing. So if it felt like speaking up about this issue I did. If it was about getting on the stage and talking about this thing I did, if it was about writing this book I did. So I don’t necessarily take myself seriously and that I was like, yeah, manifested all the sums, all strategy. None of it was strategy. Funny enough it was, I think my story of my journey is kind of a Testament of what happens when you kind of just follow your own like your own voice without necessarily doubting it. You know what I mean? Like you follow the things that you feel like doing without expectation, without any type of like plan and things just kinda came together.

LA: (16:10)
One question I get all the times when people say something like, well how do you find your voice? Or like how do you find that thing? It was less about finding it and more about not doubting when it’s in front of your face. We spent so much time but low hanging fruit thing like that thing that you wake up thinking about doing that thing that you always like, I should try that non, I’m not going to, that is probably the thing that you should be spending more time on. And because we’ve been told we’re supposed to be the doctors and the lawyers because everything else kind of has no blueprint. We’ll talk ourselves out of doing a lot of things that we want to do. So I think I just didn’t talk myself out of it and when I tried to talk myself out of it, it didn’t work.

RV: (16:52)
Yeah. So that’s, that’s the part that I love. I love that. I think it’s like, I think that’s super profound is it’s, it’s, it’s less about sort of finding your own voice and just following your voice without doubting it. The hard part is the without doubting it. Do you think that inherently you’re just like a rebel or you’re just that courageous or like why do you think that you didn’t stop yourself? Cause it sounds like maybe you did have some of those thoughts. It wasn’t just like love. He’s going to tell the world what she cares what she thinks and she doesn’t care that that’s not really what it is. It’s more like, well this is what I think. There could be some negative things about doing this but I’m going to do it cause I feel like I have to or I feel like I should or like walk us through that part and not outing.

LA: (17:45)
Yeah. I think for me the moments when I wanted to not do the thing that I wanted to do, I paused and I acknowledged that moment and I was like, yeah, I’m totally frightened. This is frightening. I shouldn’t do this. There’s, it makes no sense. Like you’re not a writer. Anytime I would try to talk myself out of that moment, it will stick with me where I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s like when I walk out of a room and I knew I was supposed to have said something and I did it, it kind of sit with me. I’d be like, ah, I should’ve just done it. So I hated feeling like that. I had it feeling like I didn’t do something I was supposed to do. So I was like, you know what? Okay, I’m just going to do it. Even if it’s scary, I’m just going to do it and close my eyes and run away if I need to, but I’m just going to do it.

LA: (18:30)
Cause I didn’t like the feeling of you should have done something where you didn’t eat. So I kind of operated from that idea is at the end of the day, I have to be okay with me. I have to be able to sit with me. It’s not as, it’s less about people’s ideas. It’s more about will I be sitting here for three hours obsessing about the fact that I didn’t say that thing or do that day. And if I will, you know what? No, just do it. Do it, whatever fall happens. But at least you won’t have the moments of so it’s one of those like having a life of Oh well instead of what if yeah, the writing thing and, and I, I started realizing that a lot of my, the best thing that I’ve done with the best since I’ve happened for me have been things that I’ve done in the middle of being afraid of saying that thing that felt scary.

LA: (19:24)
Choosing to not apply for a job cause I was like, I think I should make this writer’s thing work. All the things that I’ve done that have paid off by dividends, the Ted talk that you’re talking about that has like four, 4 million views. I was afraid of that talk, turned it down twice because I was afraid I wasn’t ready for it. One of my friends ended up being like, Hey, you’re not everybody get this done. You can, you can write this Ted talk in two weeks and kill it. And I was like, okay. So in those moments too, it helps when you have people who can reflect those backs to us and be like, you don’t have the courage right now. I’m going to give you the courage that you should have.

RV: (20:01)
Let’s talk about speaking for a second cause that that’s become a big part of your current primary business model.

LA: (20:07)
Yeah.

RV: (20:09)
If somebody wants to be a speaker, like how did that start happening for you? Cause it sounds like, you know, this was a casual blog and then it was like okay, now I’m writing and suddenly I’m a writer. And then how does that become speaking? Like where do you start getting speaking engagements? Do people come to you? Did you go to the [inaudible]

LA: (20:29)
Yeah. How did all that start to happen? Funny enough, 95% of speaking engagements that I’ve had, people came to me today. Yeah. Not even back then. My first speaking engagement was because somebody came to me. So my professional background after I graduated from college and I was like doctor is not it. I really fell in love with marketing communications cause I had an internship during college. So when I graduated I ended up getting a marketing internship for a nonprofit in Chicago, a journalism nonprofit. And I was like, this is where I belong. I was usually the person who introduced the organizations I worked for to social media cause I’m an early adopter of all of these platforms. Facebook I’ve been on since July, 2004. So marketing was big. And then I had a full time job working for another organization that actually taught nonprofits how to tell their stories using social media. And April, 2010 I got laid off that job but a month later they hired me to come do us a workshop, a Twitter strategy workshop. Wow. First ever paid speaking engagement

RV: (21:37)
From the people that fired you? Yes, I do. As a consultant, like as a trainer. I love that. That is a great story.

LA: (21:46)
First ever speaking engagement. And it’s funny because I have no clue. What was I thinking? Oh I am a speaker out. They literally was like, we want you to come lead this Twitter strategy training. All right, great. And I did that and then I got speaking engagements. I got invited to do a panel at blogger, which was the large, at that point was the largest community of women writers in the world. And they have your moderate a panel with Lizz Winstead who’s co-founder co-creator of the daily show. So like I felt like I was Forrest Gump, like Forrest Gump just stumbled upon these major moments. That was me. People were like, and then people saw me in that room. I got my next speaking engagement out of that room. So it was basically kind of organically grew. And then the more I spoke, the better I got and here we are.

RV: (22:36)
So a lot of it was just, it’s been a journey. It sounds like a lot of consistency and then a lot of courage to just be vulnerable and say what you feel like you’re supposed to say, even if you are scared to say it at certain times.

LA: (22:54)
Yeah. I, I called myself a 16 year overnight success. People see the hockey, the hockey stick success and think it just happened. I’m like, it was 16 years of consistency and I’m the person who stayed at the party and you couldn’t forget me because I was there the whole time. And I continue to be there. That hard work, that consistency. And my, I’m a, I’m a forever student. At no point do I think all right, I have made it. I am here. There’s no, there’s nothing left to do. I’m always evolving and what I’m doing, what I’m speaking on, what I’m teaching, I’m who I am and my audience has been able to grow with me and see all of that, which is why my book instantly hit the times list without like a lot of, shoot, I didn’t do any morning national, I wasn’t on the today show, I wasn’t on good morning America.

LA: (23:48)
But my, my book end up number five because my audience has seen that consistency. They’ve been along on the journey, they’ve seen the story and the transparency and they also see the courage. And I think sometimes we think courage is the big moments of maybe you go March or you know, you sign a big check. Or I think courage is in the tiny moments every day that the times that we tell ourselves, okay, this piece of doubt that I have, I’m going to move it to the side and do that thing anyway. That thing that I’m afraid of, I’m just going to do it anyway. Like I don’t believe fearlessness means lack of lack of fear. I think fearlessness means you are acutely afraid of that thing are you fear it, but you say, you know what, I’m going to do it anyway. So that fearlessness also carries me through.

RV: (24:37)
Yeah. That is so good. One other question. Well I actually have two other questions, but just in terms of the early adapter, cause I see that, I see that very much in you. Like you’ve been early adapter. Is there anything that you’re paying attention to right now, whether it’s like a social media platform or a topic or a trend or like is there anything that just kind of like has Luvvie’s attention that you’re going, this is coming and you all should be ready for it?

LA: (25:07)
Ooh, that’s good. People always talk about like video is the next frontier of content, which of course because people love that. But I think the people who are really doing well right now are creating content that does not feel like it’s attached to any larger strategy, if that makes sense. It feels very organic. It feels like you’re getting a glimpse to somebody’s life. Like the influencers who are doing very well right now are the ones who are telling you about their day. Even when they’re not sitting in front of a computer screen doing the work. They’re the ones who are able to move units and sell books. The ones who people feel personally attached to. I think now people are less people. You might have a million followers and you get a lot of likes, but if you drop a tee shirt and you can’t sell 30, then you really see that right now people are putting a lot of stock into feeling like they know somebody and whether it’s video or in written word, that’s huge. That’s huge and will continue to be huge. But in terms of platform, I’m seeing how all the platforms are mimicking each other’s content. I really think Instagram is currently the space that people are spending a lot of their time in. Yeah.

RV: (26:28)
Are you on TiKTok? Just curious

LA: (26:31)
Know what’s funny? I was thinking about TikToc. I’m not on TikTok. It used to be called what Musically? I feel like my job is not to be on every platform. TikTok, I’m gonna leave, I’m gonna leave to the demographic that is at right now, which kind of like what teenagers. I’m not on TikTok yet because my audience is also not on TikTok, so we actually wouldn’t even make sense. You don’t TikTok right now.

RV: (26:55)
Yeah. Yep. No, that’s an interesting thing. I, you know, we made that decision with Snapchat long time ago. Just a conscious decision, I’m not going to do it. I don’t regret that. I don’t regret that one. There’s a few that there’s, there’s a few that we’ve missed. We were super late to the party with Instagram and like, you know, well that there was some other stuff going on there, but I had to, I’m, I’m re had to restart my Instagram profile here recently. I’m restarted it from scratch. So but I think anyways, it’s just, it’s, I think it’s fascinating to see people like you and go, like, what are you thinking about? So Instagram is really like the place.

LA: (27:30)
I love what it’s changed considerably in terms of where I spend my most of my social media time. It used to be Facebook and then Twitter, and then Instagram. It’s completely switched. Instagram and then Facebook and Twitter less

RV: (27:44)
[Inaudible]. But like you’re saying, it’s, it’s the idea of people feeling like they know you, like they actually know you that is really working.

LA: (27:53)
And I think that’s, I think that’s super cool. So, yeah.

RV: (27:56)
Where do you want people to go lovey? If they want to get to know you, they want to follow you and like check you out and see what you’re up to.

LA: (28:03)
So I am all on all the platforms besides Snapchat and ticktock. [inaudible] I also have the benefit of being a one name social user person so you can find me on all the platforms. But just my first name, L U E and fun fact love. He’s actually a a British slang that really kind of means darlin nice. I do Googled lovey 15 years ago, the D the definition in Marion website would’ve come, come up number one, you to Google. Love you. Now it’s all me.

RV: (28:41)
That’s bad. That’s good. That’s a good thing. You own it. Pretty soon you can be like Oprah and you could be down to one letter. You’ll just be hell. Oh,

LA: (28:53)
That is a power right there.

RV: (28:55)
And yeah, just, Oh and like you will haveL magazine and you know, like

LA: (29:02)
That’s just saying, listen, Oprah has crowned me and her one of her lists. I was like, you know, I would not mind being the heir apparent, but yeah, push the envelope a little bit more. I’m, I’m slightly edgier, but she’s amazing. She’s, she’s actually goals in terms of the evolution of career. She didn’t just stick to being the person who was doing one thing and she was a Chicago girl and made everybody come to her. I’m in Chicago also and I love my city. So I was like, there’s already a model for that.

RV: (29:33)
Yeah. Yes, there’s, there’s certainly is lovey, I want to just thank and I think I get a lot of, I draw a lot of courage from watching you and just seeing, you know, looking at your body of work and what you’ve done and just, you know, willing to use your voice to do good in the world and do what you believe is right and all of that. And I think that’s really, really tremendous. And I just, I, I’m so thankful that you made some time to share with us. And I also want to applaud your consistency, girl. I mean you’ve been doing it for a long time and just like it’s, it really, you know, it’s just, it’s just a really, you’re a really great story and I think people can can learn a lot from just watching you and following your steps.

LA: (30:20)
Thank you. And I, and I’m really proud of my book. I’m judging you because I like is the manifesto my thoughts like my larger thoughts but on paper. So I hope you can go get it and yeah, follow me on all social. I’m on Instagram specifically also lovey. Rory, you are incredible because when I saw the podcast you did with Lewis, two and a half pages of notes, I sent it to all my friends and I was like you have got to watch this because it was like a masterclass and that’s what I became obsessed with brand builders group now and I believe I like posted all over Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and I was like y’all have to see this and then you DMD me. It’s incredible. I I respect the work that you’re doing. I think it’s amazing and glad you exist because this work is necessary.

RV: (31:07)
Yeah. Well thank you. That makes me, that makes me feel good. Well, let’s rise together, my friend and inspire, inspire people. So we wish you all the best. We’ll definitely stay in touch. This won’t be the last time lovey. I gie everybody. She is fantastic. Make sure that you go follow her and get the book. I am judging you. And there it is. All right, my friend. Take care. Thanks Laurie.

Ep 39: The Professional Noticer with Andy Andrews | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00)
Hey, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We are back, Rory and Aja Vaden, husband and wife, best friends, business partners, and your partners and guides and mentors and roles and leaders. Hopefully for you as a support coach on your journey to build and monetize your personal brand. We are breaking down our top three and three from the Andy Andrews interview. And I’ve known Andy for a lot of years. We’ve known Andy for a lot of years.

AJV: (00:31)
I was a reader of his work way before anything else.

RV: (00:35)
Yeah. And he was one of our big mentors. If it wouldn’t, if it weren’t for him and his work, we probably would have never become authors, probably never would become New York times bestselling author for sure. And so he’s made a big impact on us. And so it was really cool to get to bring you to him or bring him to you so you could hear so AGL, I’ll give you the, why don’t you take it away? Give us, give us what was your number one takeaway?

AJV: (01:00)
Yeah. I think my number one takeaway is this whole idea that your learning has to come before your writing. It’s a, you can’t think that you can just say the same thing over and over and over in five, six, 10, 15 different books and people aren’t gonna realize like, Hey, this is just regurgory regurgitated, repackaged information.

RV: (01:24)
You don’t want regurge [inaudible] nobody wants for their surgery.

AJV: (01:29)
But I loved how he said, he said, listen, I’m not going to be one of those guys who just says the same thing and then have my editors and publishers spin it and repackage it and sell the audience the same old thing that just looks slightly different. He goes, I really want to provide different and unique messages that mean something that I really provide value based on my own personal life experiences or those that I have come in contact with. And I love that. So just the whole concept of you can’t be continually writing a proof prolific information or valuable information or even at its most basic element worthwhile information if you’re not continually out there learning ahead of your writing.

RV: (02:11)
That’s my number one. Yeah. That was my number, my number one too. And I just, I think as an author it’s a, it’s an important thing that you see a part of your job is learning a part of your job is learning. Like it’s, it’s, it’s not separate from the writing process. It’s the first step in the writing process is to be learning. And I think, you know, part of how you create a different angle on the world or a different, a different view is because you’re assimilating all of this information from a number of a number of different sources. And I think so is this your number one as well? Well, that was my number one as well. And, and my number two is where he talks about also I love what he said. This, I want to say the quote exactly.

RV: (02:58)
He said that part of the role of a great author is to dedicate yourself to seeing the details that will be valuable to other people that most people overlook. And so I think in addition to learning, there’s, there’s learning and then there’s paying attention to and there’s zooming in on and there’s highlighting. And that’s a really important skillset. Also a great comedians. You know, he talked about talks about that as well, about what makes things funny. But as for you to, you know, grab one little point out of everyday life or one little point out of a book or a show or something and be able to zoom in on it and, and teach that as a learning point for everybody. Everybody. So that was my number two thing is just kind of the skill of learning is number one. And then the skill of zooming in and noticing is number two.

AJV: (03:46)
Yeah, it’s the notice the notice. So and I don’t really know how this connects, and this isn’t really a point, but it’s a side comment. So I’m going on a tangent, but on this concept of honing in and really focusing on one point, I think one of my biggest pet peeves in the professional workplace, both as a leader, as a student all of the above wrapped up into one is when people read for the sake of reading and not for the sake of learning. And I think as a leader in our former life and I, you know, I had, you know, over whatever, 75, 80 direct reports for many years and I would give away books often. I still give away books often. And I would have people come back to me all the time say, yeah, I love that book. And they’d show it to me and it’s underlined and it’s highlighted, but I would never see notes.

AJV: (04:38)
And I would say, so what have you applied? Like what was your biggest takeaway? And they would give me some sort of general synopsis and I said, no, no, no. What did you do after reading this? What did you learn? How did it change your thinking? How did it change your actions? How did it change your conversations? And so often I realize like they just read it for the sake of reading, but not for the sake of noticing something that was very unique and intentional that they could then apply in their life or in their work. And I, what I love about Andy is he is so intentional on the little details as well as the big overarching, you know, message or concept. But it’s like you’ve got to notice the little things and you’ve got to implement the little things in order for it to work.

AJV: (05:25)
You don’t have to make huge big changes to see big huge differences. Little ones can many times be, all it takes is a little tweak here and a little tweak there. But gosh man, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves in the workplace is when people don’t notice the things that need to be fixed. It’s like you walk away, you lucky walk away, you walk around all day with like blinders on. I attended sunglasses that I don’t, I don’t enable you to see the whole picture. And I’m like, you’ve been doing this for years. How have you never noticed this and because you’re not actually trying to, I love that about Andy and his whole, and I think the reason, okay, so I’m going to tie this together so it actually makes sense of why I’m going on a tangent here. I think one of the things that he speaks about writes about and that he just is about is what are the things that make a really big difference even if you don’t feel things that you have done, things that could make a difference.

AJV: (06:21)
So he said that for him, for example he hasn’t won five super bowls and he hasn’t been the owner or CEO of some big company and he doesn’t have like these big huge championships, these one or these like crazy life stories. Like he didn’t, he was, he didn’t land a plane on the Hudson and he didn’t do all these things. He said, my supernatural gift has been to notice, to notice the things that no one else takes the time to notice and then to write about them and to talk about them and to build that. One thing that I noticed and to add whole collection of work. And I think that should give everyone a lot of confidence of going like you too can be a noticer. You two can pay attention to the things that are happening in your surroundings, in the news or on social media.

RV: (07:07)
If you’re any type of a speaker, an author, I mean that’s what people are paying for you to do is to help distill the world around you and make it directly applicable. And I think that that is a part of, you know, to what you’re saying about the reading and the absorbing is that it’s almost like real learning is evidenced by the fact that action takes place afterwards and people rely on you as a thought leader to, to distill the information down, to communicate efficiently, concepts that they can then go, Oh wow, I didn’t see all of that. But you took all of that in and then you gave me the nugget and now I can make a change in my life.

AJV: (07:45)
Yeah. So I think, I guess my point number two is be a noticer. Like be a noticer. Pay attention and then share your unique twist on whatever it is that catches your attention. Well, whatever it is that notices or whatever you notice and actually be a noticer.

RV: (08:02)
Yeah, love that. So that’s worth it’s worth striving for. For me, the third one was actually pretty simple. It’s is something that I think I, I share as a personal philosophy with Andy is he says, you know, I strive to write books that will last a hundred years because they’re based on time tested principles. And I think it’s sort of like, you know, in, in any, anything that you’re teaching, any type of information or marketing or or knowledge based transfer. There’s, I almost think of like these two, there’s like two planes, there is, there’s practices and then there’s principals. So principals are the timeless truths that never change. And then there’s the practices which are like the really specific tactical things. And a lot of times those do change. And so it’s a little bit of a balance of both. But you just have to at least be aware that if your writing or teaching or you’re creating a video course, that’s all practices is very specific.

RV: (09:00)
It can change over time. You know, think about teaching practices of social media. Those would change frequently. You’d have to update with new screenshots at least once a year most likely. But the principles of, you know, social marketing or word of mouth marketing, those have been true forever and they would apply even regardless of if the medium is social media or word of mouth or you know, whatever. And so I just thought that was interesting that he noticed that and that was something that he does deliberately. And you know, I tried to strive to do that too is I really want to peg the principal so that you know, when Jasper Liam or reading something 20 years from now they would go, wow, this is still, this is still true today.

AJV: (09:44)
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. That wasn’t my third point, but I’m going to borrow yours and make it my third point, which is, you know, it’s so funny because I had to go to the dentist this morning and my dentist has like these huge TVs like right above you. So I guess you don’t have to talk to the hygienist is they clean your teeth. I don’t know why they do it, but they always have the same show on. It’s the only time of the year. I watch it for 20 minutes, twice a year as the what’s her name? Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest. Right. So it’s their show. And it was so funny because today they had a Harry Potter on, don’t know what his real name, Harry Potter, I have no idea. But Kelly was talking about how Halloween this year, 2019 that she had a ton of Harry Potter costumes and she was like, I mean, Harry Potter has been out now 15 years, 15 years.

AJV: (10:35)
And they were talking about how there’s an art of performing timeless stories. And that’s very much what Andy was actually talking about in the interview today is how do you write something that’s not trendy that regardless if it was now or in 30 years, you’d be like, wait, when was this written? And then as I was thinking about it as you were talking over the weekend who were in, I watched a masterclass by Sarah Blakely on entrepreneurship. That was awesome. But here’s the thing that was amazing. I mean first female, self-made billionaire ever. She could have talked about so many things to do with what it means to be an entrepreneur and take your concept to product and then to market and then to go from a million to 10 to hundred to billion. That’s not what she did. Her masterclass is about mindset and what I loved most.

AJV: (11:28)
I think the biggest thing that I remembered is she was like my dad when I was young. I gave me a Wayne Dyer cassette tape or whatever it was, whatever. And that didn’t make me thinking it’s like, cause people still listen to you and read Wayne Dyer today. And it’s like, and it was already old when she got it. It is that timeless thing about the way you think and the way you view things and mentality and mindset and philosophies and principles, not just the tactical practices of what you do. And I think too that if you’re trying to appeal to the masses, if you’re really trying to enhance and grow your personal brand in a way that really does set you off on a trajectory to be known and to break through what we call she hands wall. Some of that has got to be a little less tactical, a little less practice and a little more philosophy and principle, principle and mindset and the way you think.

AJV: (12:29)
And I think those are a lot of the timeless principles that we tend to get away from because we think people don’t want those. We think people need to know how do you do this and what do you do and how do you go from here to there where many times the real key of even doing that is the more soft skills as you would say, and how you think and how you view things and [inaudible] and I love that it’s like between this Harry Potter reminder this morning and the Andy, Andy’s Andy Andrews interview and Sarah Blakely, like those are three people all in the same weight from completely totally entrepreneurship, Hollywood movie author, but are all saying the exact same thing. And it’s how to be timeless. Like what are the timeless principles that really do withstand the trends and what’s just happening right now? So I love that.

RV: (13:19)
Yeah. So that’s your role, right? That’s a part of what you’re doing. Somebody out there, right need right now needs for you to help them interpret the world around them. They need you to help them distil all of this information down in, into actions and mindsets that they can apply directly into their life as such an important role. And what a gift to be able to go out and do that on every given day. So go ahead, go forward, do that, and we will catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Okay.