Ep 521: How To Be Rich | Matt Fornito Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you wanna know how to be rich? Well, I’m gonna tell you a story that I recently heard, and here’s how the story goes. Regardless to what amount of truth is to this story I think it’s a great example of something that we all need to hear and learn if you truly want to be rich. Now, I say that with bunny ear quotations because rich is a really relative term. If you live in the United States, then statistically speaking, you are already richer than most human beings on planet Earth. And if you make more than $50,000 a year, then you make more than most people worldwide. So there’s a relative term there. But if you wanna learn how to be successful, right, which I think is a part of what rich means, then this story should mean something to you. And this is a story about Warren Buffet and a conversation that he had with his pilot.
AJV (00:55):
And his pilot asked him, he said, Warren, will you teach me how to be rich? Will you teach me how to be successful like you and I think anyone in that your surroundings would’ve said, yes, teach me too. How did you do what you have done? And he said, okay, here’s what you wanna do. Get out a piece of paper and write down the 50 things that you want to accomplish. So he got out a piece of paper and he wrote down, here are 50 things that I wanna do, I wanna accomplish, right? He said, okay, now cut that down to 25. So narrow it down to what are the 25 most important things on that list. So he did. And then Warren said, okay, now cut that list down to 10. And the pilot did. He said, okay, well, I’m gonna cross this out and cross this out and cross this out.
AJV (01:46):
So he went from 50 to 25 to 10, and then Warren came back and he goes, all right, now I want you to cut that list of 10 in half. Again, I want you to narrow it down to what are the five things that are most important on that list. And the pilot at this point says, whoa, we started with 50. Now you’re all the way down to five. Like, that’s hard. These are all important, these are all significant. And then Warren said, but you asked, how do you be successful? How do you be rich? And if you’ve got more than five things that you’re chasing after that you’re doing, that you’re spending your time on, then it’s too many, right? And I, I, this is something we say at Brand Builders Group a lot, that diluted focus gets diluted results. And I think this is a great story that exemplifies what we’re talking about.
AJV (02:40):
And it’s like, you only have so much attention, right? We only have so many minutes in an hour, so many hours in a day, so many days in a year, and so many years in our life. And if we make this, you know, I hear people talk about this all the time. Here’s my bucket list item of things, right? And it’s like, then we’re kind of just like checking off whatever comes our way without a lot of intentionality. But if we want to really be quote unquote rich or really be successful, then what we need to do is have extreme focus, extreme intentionality into what are the five things, or are the three things. I’m not saying it has to be five, but what are the few things that you could go after with all of your focus, all of your might, all of your intention, all of your attention, all of your passion, all of your time, because that’s where you have success.
AJV (03:31):
You have success in the areas in which you spend the most time. You have the most expertise in the areas in which you spend the most time. You have the best relationships in the areas where you spend the most time, right? And that’s how you become rich,
AJV (04:28):
And if you think about the way you’re going about your day this doesn’t not apply to that, right? I look at my calendar right now somewhat sheepishly. I’m going, I need to take my own advice here because on any given day I might be doing 10, 12, 15 different types of tasks. And let me tell you how I end those days. I end them completely exhausted, completely overwhelmed, not enough energy to go and give my kids and my husband the love time energy that they deserve. Why? Because I’ve expended too much in too many different areas, doing too many different things. Not a an ounce to breathe and ounce to go to the bathroom without being on a phone call, eating lunch while I’m multitasking lunch sometimes, like, what is lunch? Right? That’s my chew, that’s my choosing. No one did that to me.
AJV (05:16):
I did that to myself and I did it because I had a lack of priority. But when I have priorities and I enter and I put all of my energy into those, I have better days, I have more energy left over I, I am more fulfilled and I get more done because I was able to go deeper in the areas that got the best of me. And that is true for life too, right? And it’s like, there’s just so many things that we can do, so many relationships that we can invest in so many tasks that we can complete so many, so many opportunities that we can say yes to. There is a limit.
AJV (05:56):
And, and I say there’s a limit if you wanna do them well, right? So how do you be rich? You narrow down where you’re investing your time, energy, focus, learning, expertise and you pick a few that you can be exceptional at, and that’s how you become rich.
Ep 520: Using AI to Increase Human Connection with Matt Fornito
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And today I have a friend and a fellow BBG member that is our guest on the show today. And I’m so excited to introduce you guys to Matt Ferdo. We actually just had Matt come speak to our internal group at Brand Builders Group, all on the topic of ai, which, you know, that’s what we’re talking about today if you clicked on this episode. But before we get into this conversation of ai, I wanted to let you know why I invited Matt on the show, because we’ve had several other people in and out the last two years talking about ai. But I think one of the things that’s really interesting is, you know, Matt’s the founder of the AI Advisory Group. But one of the things that I recently learned is like, I think one of the things that our team, and I, and I had Matt on the show, because I know if our team struggles with it, and if we struggle with it, you likely struggle with it, which means your team struggle with it is they hear lots about it, they know lots about it, they test different things, but it really hasn’t become a routine way of creating efficiencies in the business, right?
AJV (01:14):
And so the conversation that I wanna have today is like, well, one, we’re gonna talk about what does the future look like with this? And not in a, a job scarcity mindset. That’s not what we’re talking about, how everyone’s jobs are being eliminated, because I don’t really believe that. But it’s more of like, Hey, how can we use these, these tools that are at our disposal to create efficiencies in the lives of our team members and our lives and daily routine tasks that seem to overwhelm us? Because if I hear one more entrepreneur tell me, there’s just not enough hours in the day, right? We, we’ve all said it. I’ve said it, I probably said it last week. And at the same token, it’s like, are we using the things all around us to help improve our schedules and daily lives? And so in having a conversation with Matt a few months ago, I was like, you know what?
AJV (02:01):
It’s time to bring this conversation back to the table, not on just what is the future gonna look like and sales and marketing, but more of like, how can we use this to better our daily lives, right? How do we become more efficient, thus more effective without having to add three, four, or five more working hours to our day every day? So if you were listening to this, that’s the conversation around AI that we’re gonna have today. Now I mentioned this earlier. Matt is the founder of the AI Advisory Group. He’s also been speaking and acting little known fact for more than three decades, 30 years. He’s also led leadership thought leadership C two o round tables different events. He’s on podcasts. He’s had new out news outlets like the CIO and CDO magazines. And I know him personally. So I know that the value that he’s gonna bring today is gonna be so helpful for anyone who is in business, no matter what your role is, entrepreneur, business owner, salesperson in marketing, operations or those, someone aspiring to do any of those things. So without further ado, Matt, welcome to the show,
MF (03:12):
And thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the, the kind words. And it was you know, an honor to have you approach me because when you actually said, you know, we would love to have you come speak internally, that’s the most important thing, right? That transformative mindset of how do we actually start moving the needle and how do we get to a place where we can create a competitive mode and be people first, AI driven to enable everyone in the organization to be more effective, more efficient, and spend more time doing the things they love.
AJV (03:42):
Yeah. And that’s really the conversation around this that I love. ’cause I, I love because I, I, you know, I’m just not one of those people who’s gonna look at anything as the, you know, glass is half empty, gloom and doom. This is gonna, you know, take over the need for humans. It’s like, nah, I don’t, I just, I just don’t believe that, right? I think that as a human species, we’re also, we’re always gonna be needed. So I think there is, if we, if we just can all agree on that for a second, then there’s a lot of power and how we can use some of these tools. So here’s my first question for you and I wanna help our audience get to know you a little bit. But before we talk about how you got into AI in the first place, what I would really love to hear from you, for everyone who’s listening, is when it comes to personal branding, right? This is a podcast all about building an influential personal brand. A lot of that is tied to, you know, the mi the mindset of entrepreneurship. But how does AI benefit you when you consider all the different things of building a personal brand and being an entrepreneur? Like, how, how does AI benefit you if you’re that person?
MF (04:47):
Well, and we, we can get into my, my backstory as to why this even came to fruition. But I think the, the reality is I wanted to create a lifestyle brand where everyone that’s a part of the team could actually have good and strong work-life balance. And that meant how do we do more with less? How do we use technology to our benefit? And so there’s me and one other person that are running the organization, and then we have former Fortune 500 CDOs on the team. And for us, it’s let’s eat our own dog food. What do we need to do? Where do we spend so much time? Where do we waste time where we could be having more efficient productivity, or we could be having more meaningful relationships? And so for, and like two examples on that of what we’ve built out.
MF (05:34):
One is a just an inbound prospecting engine. For those that reach out to me, we have an entire automation process that determines where does someone fit in the lifecycle in their maturity as well as are they an ideal customer? Because if they’re an ideal customer, then we wanna get a meeting set. And getting to that point has now all been automated, and that saves us about 30 hours per week just with that, just for one person, right? So if you have a sales team if you have a marketing team that’s highly multiplicative, and the same token in regards to me talking with a lot of boards of directors and c-suite, you need to do a lot of research to be prepared for those types of meetings, right? You can’t just wing it. And so we’ve created a, using LLMs, we’ve created a sales brief, like that goes right next to the calendar event. So we know everything that’s going on with the company in the news, based on their website the person that I’m meeting with, or the groups of people that I’m meeting with, and they’re likely pain points so that I can build a stronger, more trusting relationship faster. And I used AI to help augment doing that, but it was AI as a enablement tool, not AI as a replacement tool.
AJV (06:46):
Yeah, I, I, I love that term. It’s an enablement tool, not an a replacement tool, but those are two really good tangible things for everyone listening, if you didn’t pick up on that, is just, I mean, I’ve had these conversations with people, even in the brand builders group membership community of going, I just don’t have enough time to take all these calls myself anymore. And it’s like, well, tell me about the calls that you’re taking. It’s like every single discovery call. And what I hear you saying, it’s like, Nope, there’s opportunities for, you know, technology automation and some AI integration of, well, how do we help expedite that process so that every discovery call has actually already been qualified so that you’re actually taking the calls that you should be taking, routing the other ones in different directions. And then also research, right? The amounts of information that’s required to help keep you up to date that is exhaustive
AJV (07:41):
And so you know, just, I think those, those are really helpful tangible ways of like, in everyday interactions, both on a sales front and just like an operational front of like, man, like kind of need to be in the know to some degree of what’s happening in my space, in the market, in the economy. It’s like, to what degree everyone is different. But if you don’t wanna get consumed in the deep, dark, black hole that is news and media, then how can we use this to gimme the things I need to know that are pertinent to my role, my industry, my space without getting consumed in the masses? So I think those are two really great things right there.
MF (08:19):
Yeah. And that’s a great point, is that there’s so much noise in the industry today that people wonder where the heck do I start? And, and how do I actually create meaningful impact? And, you know, I spoke as to what we’re personally doing because we want to eat our own dog food so that we can evangelize that out as proof that you can use ai. The reality is that especially for entrepreneurs, unless you’re going for VC or PE funding, you have a lot of things on your plate. You have a lot of manual things that you do day in and day out, and it’s time consuming. My calendar’s booked in 15 minute blocks with task and I shouldn’t maybe use technology pitches. But reclaim AI is one I do use because it automates putting the task into empty slots on your calendar in regards to what needs to be done, right? But what we look to do, what was that
AJV (09:09):
Again? Say that one for so they can hear it.
MF (09:11):
Sure. It’s reclaim.ai, and so they’re a, they do task inhabit automation. So if we have a meeting set some or, or a meeting after this somebody wants to book, they can book that and the task will automatically get moved. So that way you’re not trying to figure out what to do, which takes a lot of cognitive load, right? Of trying to figure out like, what’s important, what should I focus on? What fires do I need to put out? Instead, you can go, okay, I know what’s important because I’ve already put it into my calendar and I can focus on the things that matter.
AJV (09:42):
Yeah. And I think those are like the, the subtle tools that we all should just, even if you choose not to use ’em, be aware of ’em, because right now it’s whether you’re doing it or you’re paying for someone else to do it, regardless of how that’s happening, this is an idea of something you could automate and repurpose that person’s time into something that’s more significant. Yeah. Right. Not, you know, what you said, not replace them but replace the task, right? Yep. What else could they be doing if they weren’t doing this very simple thing, right? A hundred
MF (10:14):
Percent.
AJV (10:15):
How did you get into this? Right? And I know we kind of, you know, jumped right in, but I, I do think it’s important for people to understand, you know, regardless of what you may think, it’s like AI isn’t entirely brand spanking new, right? Sure. It’s been an evolution process. And so how long did you, how long ago did you start using a AI in your life? How’d you get into it? What led you to here?
MF (10:40):
Yeah, I mean, so AI started the, we’ll say the majority of models started in the 1950s, right? And there’s been two winters that were general only due to compute, and I’m nerdy now, it’s not too much, but I, I love this space. And when I was in school, took through regular elementary, middle high school, through university, and even into my PhD, I took every, like, quantitative course because math had a, a, a beauty, a pattern, right? The same way that as a musician, I could look at that. And when I was finishing my master’s about to start my PhD my advisor and I actually had we’ll say difference of opinions because I was doing a lot of work with the, the Office of International Research Education Development, working with Third World like NGOs to help third world countries be more efficient and productive.
MF (11:32):
And one of the things that we found out in doing that research was that when looking at really small villages, the entire population only trusted the village chief. And so if they didn’t actually get the buy-in those NGOs, didn’t get the buy-in from the village chief, and nobody was going to do anything that was said. And, and so looking at, like, this was called social network analysis, but looking at these types of things was really, really important to me because it’s like the internal mechanisms of our attitudes, behaviors, cognitions and values are at least supported or proxied by data. And so it means that we can use data to help enable and improve behavioral change. And there’s so many ways that we can do that. We’re talking on the organizational level, but there’s also the, the personal level. There’s also the, the coaching level, there’s the therapy level.
MF (12:22):
And so when I was in my PhD, I left after my master’s was actually recruited out as a data scientist. I think it was one of the first data science titles out there. ’cause That came into fruition in 20 10, 20 11 officially. And and so I went to now Defunct Sports Authority and basically rolled up to the CEO and CMO and and then was a data scientist for quite a few years building important models. And sometimes like that impetus of feeling or thinking you’re important ’cause you’re helping drive change wasn’t always true either. Like the CEO of Dish had me build out all of these models for this 15 do billion dollars of spend that he had. And and it was for and FCC spectrum auction. And then the day of, he told me he’s just gonna go on his gut and that that hurts, right?
MF (13:13):
To hear like, you’ve spent months and months working on this, you know, it’s good. You’re proud of your work, and it wasn’t leveraged. And that painted a picture to me that we’re seeing in industry today, that 80 to 90% of AI models never make it into production. And a lot of that had to do with the tools and technologies of the past. But as I moved further, I had a, a data science consulting firm. I was very, very fortunate that some Nvidia leaders had seen me keynote and event back in 2015. And they brought my firm on one of seven service delivery partners worldwide for them. And then after a few years of running that, where I was working a hundred, 120 hours a week and killing myself and losing friends and family I, I knew I needed to back out of that.
MF (13:57):
And fortunately, they actually asked if I would join what’s called the VAR solution Integrator space. And so for those guys, they sell hardware, they sell software, and they have like implementation and managed services. And they asked me to build an AI practice for their top partner. And I thought, this is actually great because we can look at this at a system level of like, what is going on with the organization? And instead of focusing on like one little use case, what are we actually trying to do here holistically? And then figure out what you actually need from hardware, from software and from services. And so the, the company I was at as well as the next company, we ended up being number one and number three globally in sales worldwide with Nvidia top five, with like Dell, HPE, Cisco, along with a lot of the SaaS software companies.
MF (14:40):
And because for me it was about how do we enable people to have a strategic roadmap on where they want to go and how do we help drive and implement change? Because what I was really seeing was that people are still stuck in the mindset of the past of let’s be transactional, let’s focus on one small thing and let’s focus on technology. But the reality is, the gaps today are really in regards to people and processes. If you don’t have people that trust ai, that trust data, that want to leverage it to improve their lives, they’re never going to use it. And the same thing with processes. If you’re not assessing your ecosystem and identifying where are the gaps? Where are we spending so much time today that we could potentially automate a workflow or use AI for then what are we doing? And so, you know, we did a great job at those two companies.
MF (15:33):
The sales teams were absolutely phenomenal. And I still had a, a, a small last hint of an ego and and I said, I want to have a chief data officer role. So I took a role at a Goldman Sachs back company, and after six months the CEO and I decided to part ways. And it wasn’t that like either of us was wrong or that we didn’t respect one another or trust one another. It was that they wanted to build a platform with lots of dashboards and lots of data that people could try to like decipher. And I wanted to minimize everything so that we could actually implement behavior change. Because if you have a hundred metrics, yeah, nothing’s going to change. But if you have three things that you know are your weaknesses that you focus on, you’re going to exponentially improve those and see exponential growth within your company. And so that’s what really ultimately led to me creating the AI advisory group. We have fractional Yeah, go ahead.
AJV (16:31):
Because I think that’s, that what you just said is, I think, so valuable because I think so many times people go, they hear things like, data is your, is the new competitive advantage, or, you know, there there’s so many sayings like that, and I don’t disagree with that. Like I think data is vitally important. In fact, if you looked at our dashboards you’d throw up, they’re overwhelming. We have so many. And I think that’s sometimes the challenge. It’s like to even sit and review all of the dashboards could easily take hours daily. Mm-Hmm,
MF (17:17):
Well first you have to assess where your company is and where you think the weaknesses or gaps are, right? And so like if let’s just pick the, the sales side example, the, the BDRs SDRs make phone calls for, right? And and so you could potentially measure the number of phone calls, but that’s a proxy for everything because ultimately you’re just trying to get to conversions, right? You want customers to buy. And so maybe increasing phone calls will lead to that and, and very likely it will with diminishing returns. But what if marketing could better target the ICP and drive the right customers already into that funnel? Then you’re gonna see higher conversion rates. And then if you have processes for your sales reps that are systematic, so you can identify, do some people have weaknesses in a demo or do they not ask the right question?
MF (18:10):
Then you should see higher conversions on a per person level. And so being able to just like wonder where you’re struggling or where you have inefficiencies, where the gaps are, where you think that there’s problems, you as a subject matter expert, that’s what’s really important, right? It’s kind of the same thing. Whether you heard this in high school or college or not, was that ice cream and murders are highly correlated. So if you buy ice cream, you’re more likely to murder. But that’s correlational, not causational. It’s that summertime increases the likelihood that people are outdoors and increases the heat, which increases like frustration and angst. And so people buy more ice cream in the summer but there’s also a higher propensity for murders. And so like, if you’re not a subject matter expert and you just look at data and say, oh, these things are connected, then you could really be making uninformed decisions. But if you bring subject matter experts in that really understand sales, understand marketing, understand product or operations, finance, et cetera then you can identify like, where can we use data to help identify if our perspective is correct or if we have gaps in our thinking,
AJV (19:21):
Okay, this is so good, so we’re just gonna use me as a case study, for example. ’cause I think this is a really great tangible way that I haven’t even thought of how to use AI and data. And so I’d love to hear your thoughts as, you know, as people are listening to this going, wait, what? So one of the things that I heard you say is, and I, and I agree, it’s like, you know, I come from a sales background, which is why my ears pricked up. When you use that example of, you know, I was always told from, from the very beginnings of my sales career make more, make more calls, make more calls, work the numbers, work the numbers. And it’s like, and to some degree, yeah, like, you know, the numbers work themselves out. The more calls you make, naturally more sales you make, but not necessarily in a percentage base, right?
AJV (20:08):
Mm-Hmm.
MF (20:47):
With sales and marketing? Yeah. Well, so I, I think that what we’re seeing today, especially around the and I guess let’s clarify real quick for the audience on ai. AI has been created as this umbrella term now, right? Generally people use it now in regards to gen ai, gener generative AI like chat, GBT but there’s also the computer vision, deep learning, like self-driving cars. There’s machine learning, like what is the value of my house based on, you know, location, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and but then there’s also even like basic things like rule base, right? Like if then statements. And and so when thinking about it for marketing, that’s been the we’ll say inflection area that people are using chat, GPT and or, or, or any of them, right? I, I, I have all of them.
MF (21:40):
And so I don’t just want say that chat, GP t’s the one because I love perplexity ai Claude’s very good emini is moving up. And so it, it doesn’t matter what flavor you choose, and you should probably play around with different ones to see what really resonates. But what’s really, really important is that and then I’ll get into your que actual question, is that the majority of material has been scraped from the web, right? And people tend to have, you know, repeat other people’s thinking. And so if you just use the base version of chat, GBT or any of the LLMs, then you’re going to get a very basic output, right? It’s not going to reflect your identity, your company’s brand identity. And so what’s really, really important is that you have to basically create an agent or a bot or an input prompt that really specifies on like who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish and how you want that done.
MF (22:36):
It’s my create framework, which we won’t go into today, and that will ultimately lead into better outputs. And so from the marketing side, we’re certainly seeing that as help me create an email campaign or help me with SEO optimization of my website. And we’re not really seeing it in regards to how do we increase more of the machine learning structure data? How do we increase conversion rates? How do we make sure we’re targeting the right ICP? So our cost per dollar cost per acquisition is much lower, right? And that’s where we need to go is augmenting the gen AI aspects of those campaigns with like feeding that language in into structured data model to say, oh, okay, when we use these terms, we get much higher conversions, right? And that’s like the nuance that we aren’t really tackling or organizations aren’t tackling today.
MF (23:28):
From the sales side, you can start rudimentarily at let’s look at all of our historic conversations, right? And say, what do I need to say next to progress this deal along? Because we want, you may not be able to read through, you know, tens, hundreds, thousands of emails and texts and brand scripts over the co over the course of a prospect, but it’s very, very easy for a large language model to do that. And so, because the, we’ll say foundationally, what you really want is to have these models help make decisions based on large chunks of data that you can’t really leverage. And so because that way you get faster time to value, you get more we’ll say a higher propensity or likelihood that you get to spend more time with that prospect, and Lord knows that you definitely increase conversion rates, the more time you actually spend talking with someone and messaging back and forth.
AJV (24:32):
Hmm. Yeah. That’s, so I think that’s so good. ’cause That’s like, yeah, it’s like, I think tons of people talk about, you know, chat GTP, chat GPT in terms of writing email copy or marketing copy or a landing page, but I haven’t heard anyone really talk about how are we using it to make sure that we increase conversion, that we’re targeting the right people in the right way, that allow us to have more targeted conversations, better conversations, longer conversations with our ideal prospect. So I think that’s really insightful for anyone who’s listening of going like, Hey, it’s one thing to generate a lot of calls or any calls. Yeah, it’s a whole nother thing to generate calls with your ideal prospect, right? And I think that’s a very big deal of, Hey, if we’re gonna be on the call, let’s make sure it’s with the right person talking about the right thing.
AJV (25:25):
So how can we be more targeted upfront? I think that’s really helpful. The other thing as you were talking made me think about is in terms of using like large chunks of data, like one of the things that we ask, you know, our, you know, sales director is, Hey, I want you auditing calls every month as spot checks. Yeah. And it’s a very time consuming, lengthy commitment, but I’m always like, where’s your report? Where’s your report? What’d you do? What’d you do? Right?
AJV (26:10):
And it’s like, I’m constantly kind of battling like, where, where are we supposed to find time to do that with everything else we’re doing? And what I also hear is like, well, there’s the potential of using, you know, recording transcripts, uploading those and using the right prompts in GPT to give initial rounds of evaluations that just shortens maybe perhaps the time in review so that there’s highlights that are pulled out so then I can spend more time in conversation training versus, versus all the time just listening. So I think about it when I used to have a team, it’s like I would spend an hour listening to the call in order to only get like 10 to 15 minutes of feedback. Whereas if I have 10 to 15 minutes of review and 45 minutes on training and feedback, how different would the outcome be?
MF (26:58):
Well, and, and when I was at revenue io was where I was the chief data officer, right? And that’s what we were doing was it had embedded sales coaching from a botter agent that says, okay, you’re monologuing too long, or you’re talking too fast. But those transcripts would also populate into the platform. And so, you know, it was really just at the time, it was the video and the transcript, right? Like Fathom has, right? But where I think we can go in the market is twofold. One is a, an individual can say, how did I do on this call? Maybe that’s according to medic or med pick framework or Challenger, whatever the heck you’re using. But is there anything I could have done better? Right? And it’s the same thing even for your, your team, right? Are they are they coaching effectively? But then you can also look long. So a, a sales coach then could like go in and see, you know, the weaknesses or strengths of that individual call, but then we could take that further and go, let’s look on a individual level across all of their calls and feed all of that in at one time and say, what patterns does this individual need work on? Right? What are, what are the problems that they consistently have because we know that’s going to move the needle if they fix those major problems.
AJV (28:14):
How would you do that?
MF (28:17):
You just feed all of the transcripts in from all of their calls
AJV (28:20):
All at the same time. Mm-Hmm.
MF (28:21):
AJV (28:22):
Say, this is why I’m just going mind blown
MF (28:25):
And mind, mind, mind you, like like chat GPT, they have something called token limits. So chat, GPT can’t do all of them, but there’s other ones that can
AJV (28:35):
Like, so what would be some, so that’s another great question is let’s talk about some of the, the tools and platforms that you have found that are highly helpful, effective and, and just user friendly, I would say. So or the novice out there, right? Who’s listening, who’s going like, okay, okay, like, maybe I could see some really good value. It’s like, and I think about the number of, you know, not to harp on this topic, sales teams that I’ve been a part of training where it’s like, part of my job was to just sit in call centers all day long doing call audits and reviews. And it’s like, I know my time could have been more efficient if there had been tools like this, you know, 10 years ago, and that was my job. But so what are some of these platforms and tools that you highly recommend?
MF (29:22):
So I guess we’ll start in a few different areas, and I might have to pull up a tab on mine, that’s the other ones that I use. So on, on that sales side, you have like revenue io, chorus.ai, and gong, and all of those are like rev ops sales type coaching, right? So if you have a team, those are all very valid, useful tools to leverage in that playground. When we talk about like task automation, we use you know, Asana as our project manager and task manager, and then we feed those into reclaim AI so that we don’t have to make decisions on what the heck we’re doing each day. It’s automatically prioritized and scheduled into our calendar. Outside of that, you know, I think there’s, there’s also like the, the we’ll say crawl, walk, run approach with technology. And so beautiful AI is a phenomenal like PowerPoint type creator.
MF (30:17):
And and so very intuitive, very easy to use. If you’re better with technology, I’d say go to Canva. If you’re very, very good with technology, then you go to like the Adobe suite, right? And so, you know, there’s, there’s more of a threshold to learn those types of things. The PowerPoint creators today are not good
MF (31:03):
And so we’re not there yet in regards to that. In regards to art creation, mid journey is probably the defacto standard. There’s also stable diffusion, and they are not good at creating like frameworks, right? And so if we’re talking about brand builders clients you’re going to have to manually create those, sorry. Canva has tons of great designs and Vato element has lots of great designs. So you can use those and then fill out your own process or framework. But in regards to automatically creating those, we’re not there yet either. But in regards to, you want, you want a picture of a, a monkey astronaut eating a banana on top of a spaceship, it can do that, right? And so if, like, if you want something like that for a blog post, it’s, it’s phenomenal, right? If you want something to really resonate visually, you can do that.
MF (31:56):
And I, I have pheno like art, I could have never created, I was a musician and a singer growing up, but you know, I could doodle but I could not go further than that. And so to see things come to life that, like you envision in your head, and maybe it’s not quite the vision you have, but like to see that come to fruition is so invigorating because the same thing with there’s there’s two music creator studios out there right now for generative music, and they’re getting better and better every single day. And like, they can’t, I can’t extract it. I don’t know if this shows up, but my like soundboard like, like I can’t extract it into Ableton, which is another not AI tool. It’s a sound mixing tool. I can’t extract it into there and have all the different instruments, right? But we’re likely going to get there in the next year. And that means that if you are a producer or want to be a musician, but maybe you can never play an instrument or you couldn’t mix now, you’ll be able to do that. And that, like, that really resonates with me that people will be able to like really help build up their own creative side as opposed to us just trying to say, rewrite this email for me.
AJV (33:07):
Yeah. You know what’s so interesting is like, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, so clearly I have at least a couple of friends that are singer songwriters. But one of my friends is a very good singer songwriter, and I was having lunch with her the other day, and she was talking about how there’s several artists now that only wanna hear songs and their voices. So she’s able to take all of her songs that she’s writing, use ai to use their voices. So when they hear the song, they’re like, this is how it would sound if I was singing it. And she goes, the effectiveness of that is mind blowingly successful when they go, man, I like the way I sound singing that
AJV (34:06):
So I thought that was like a very cool use case of something that’s not taking anything away from what she’s not replacing. It’s enabling her to enhance what she’s doing for someone else. And, and as you were talking about like mid journey and stuff, like, one of the things that we toyed around with, and this is just like a, a tangible customer service or customer experience case study for anyone who’s like, well, how do I use some of these if like, it’s not gonna do graphics for me, or it’s not gonna do PowerPoints? And it’s like, no, but so if you think about it in a customer experience environment, like one of the things that we’re trying to do is, you know, during different life moments and these could be personal professional, but you know, we help a lot of people with book launches.
AJV (34:50):
And so, you know, it’s like, well, we’ll use different AI tools of them holding their own book that hasn’t even been created yet. Yeah. You know, or like somebody’s going through a really, you know, hard personal times and we’ll put them in what they would look like as a superhero, right? With like an encouraging note and message. So upload their picture and say, turn this into a superhero. And just you, you know, those are just like little, little ways that you could use some of this in a customer experience way where it takes minutes, minutes, literally minutes, no money of going, you said you joined Brand elders group ’cause you wanted to write that book. We’re so excited to be a part of the journey, and then we include the picture of them with their book. That hasn’t even happened yet, right? So I think it’s like part of, of it, it’s gonna require all of us to use our human brain to go, how do I use this to make it work for whatever I do? And I think a lot of people struggle with a lot of what I struggle with, which is, okay, I don’t have a lot of time to go learn all of these different platforms. ’cause Already it’s like I jotted down, you listed like nine, I’m like, already, that’s like, I don’t have time to learn all those, right? And so I would be,
MF (36:03):
Which which, which we could say like a simplified way of approaching that is going to any of the chat GBT or LLMs and saying, I’m trying to use generative AI to accomplish X task. Are there any tools or name the tools that can do that? Right? And then you at least have a short list of like, what you’re trying to accomplish. Because the, the biggest issue with technology today outside of nothing talking to one another, is that people are trying to round peg square hole. Yeah. But it’s like, you should figure out what your problem is first instead of trying to find a cool tool that maybe can solve one or two of your problems. Oh.
AJV (36:33):
So that’s good. So just use these generative AI tools to figure out what generative AI tools you should use
MF (36:42):
And with what you said too, you know, thinking about I’ve known Gigi since I think oh 6, 0 7. And and, and you know, he was always so keen on wow experiences and I think he was only at a hundred countries instead of every country in the world when we first met. And, and that wow experience thing really resonated with me because I worked at Disney, I worked at Target, which emulated Disney and that aspect of caring about the customer, putting them first, but delivering something that’s a little more impactful than anyone else would do, really, really stands out. Right? And I had a a client of mine who one of their sales reps, this was 15, 20 years ago now, but he would take somebody’s LinkedIn headshot, he would send it to Japan, they would make a bobblehead, he would get it sent to the, like the CEO’s office and ask for a meeting. And he had about a 95% conversion rate in regards to getting a meeting scheduled. And it’s because nobody does that, right? They just send out these campaigns to 40,000 people and hope that they get some hits. But people are tired of that. They really want, like, I wanna feel special, I want people I work with who feel special and we treat them special.
AJV (37:59):
Hmm. Yeah. And this is a way you can do it in a really short amount of time without a lot of cost because that’s so prohibitive in some ways. But it’s like, man, you could do the similar things that really do make that impact without, you know, all the added costs with just using some creativity. The other, the other thing that I think would be, you know, really interesting, and you mentioned this earlier, and I wanna kind of come back to it. ’cause I think collectively what I, I wanna have this conversation be around is things that are universally applicable. And I think that universally everyone struggles with time management. I don’t care who you are, right? It’s like we struggle with the amount of things that we add to our plate, whether that’s our fault or whatever. I hear people say stuff like, you know, the the B word, right?
AJV (38:44):
I, I try not to say it the busy word. I think that a lot of people go, there’s just not enough hours in the day. And it’s like, well, yeah, I can see that, except for maybe you’re just doing too many tasks that you shouldn’t be doing
MF (39:39):
Ai. Yep.
AJV (39:40):
Oh, ai, right? See, that’s why I’m asking
MF (40:05):
Yeah, I mean, I, I think I almost want to take a step back, right? Because with what we do with the AI advisor group is most people go right to tactics and they don’t take a step back and start at strategy, right? And so then you’re always putting out fires, you’re always chasing shiny objects, and it becomes really problematic and it happens with executives along with everyone down the line. And so for me, just so
AJV (40:30):
You know, I completely understand because everyone comes to us and wants to build the funnel, build the website, and I’m like, you don’t even know what your business is. We, we, we can’t do that
MF (40:42):
And so coming from that perspective is like, you know, to the point of that my calendar’s fully booked with tasks this week from like 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM But if I just said and, and go back to like Pareto’s principle of the, the 20% rule leading to 80% of outputs and that’s largely due to a severe concussion I had that lasted 10 months. I could take away my task manager and just go, these are the five things that are most important. And it goes back to a story on Warren Buffett talking to his pilot, whether it’s real or false. And Pilot said, I want to be rich like you. Can you teach me how to be rich and be successful? Warren Buffett says, sure, write a list of the, the 50 things that you’re trying to accomplish. And he writes 50 things down and he goes, okay cut that down to 20 and he cuts it down to 20.
MF (41:39):
He goes, okay, cut it down to 10. And he cuts it down again. He says, okay, cut it down to five. And he goes, this is hard. Like, I don’t know what’s important. He goes, you gotta cut it down to five. And he cuts it down to five. And he says, if you focus on anything outside of this, it’s a distraction and noise. It’s not leading to the outcomes that you want. And so one of the things that I want to push or sh share with the audience is that don’t be busy for busy’s sake. Make sure you are doing things that actually move the needle that lead to the life that you want to have that lead to the company you want to have. And so these tools are going to either be an enabler of that and make sure we’re more efficient and productive, or you’re going to be an additional noise that just makes us check off more checklist, but we don’t actually drive innovation or success.
MF (42:36):
And I want to ensure that people are thinking of this in the right way because it’s not just AI and automation are great and amazing, and I, and I strongly believe it’s true, I’m already at 50 hours saved per week. Personally, we’re likely going to have 120 to 200 hours per employee saved, right? Which is a three to five x multiplier. But that means we’re doing that because we wanna focus on the things that are important. And if you’re filling your calendar with things that aren’t just to stay busy or appear busy, then you’re not approaching it the right way.
AJV (43:09):
Well, that is such a better answer than the question that I ask
MF (44:06):
And I just read a report yesterday that said 90% of all executives, not just entrepreneurs 90% of executives spend an hour or less on strategy a month. And that’s mind blowing to me, right? To not take the time to ensure that you’re going in the right direction and focusing on what’s important. It’s why so many companies struggle. Like they, they don’t do that. They don’t look at product market fit. They don’t identify an ICP, like all the things that actually matter. And brand builders covers all of it. So thank you guys on top. But if you’re not doing the basics, then you don’t know who your customer is, you don’t know their pains, needs and wants, then who are you selling to and why are you trying to create a product or service offering or someone that you’ve never even talked to or don’t understand?
AJV (44:49):
Mm-Hmm.
MF (45:23):
Well, and, and I think it’s a great point. I, I know I shared it with your team, but the, like PRCV of pain, repetition, cost, and value, it’s like, yes. So you need to identify what are pains, right? Not what’s interesting or cool ’cause that’s the shiny object syndrome, but what are actual pains and is it repetitive? Right? The, I mean, I talked with my COO yesterday and I’m like, oh, this kind of stinks. And he goes, oh, well we could automate that. But it’s probably gonna be really complex. And I go, yeah, let’s not, it, it takes me, it was literally in regards to actually just putting task into Asana, right? We actually built it out so you could just do it in Slack. So it’s really technically easier. I was looking for an, I was considering an easier way to do it, but I’m like, if I map out the actual task that I might need to do for the day at the end of the day or whatever I need to accomplish, it takes me maybe two to five minutes, right?
MF (46:15):
Like, we don’t need to automate that. That’s not a big pain. But if we talk about 30 to 60 minutes of researching each prospect and we look at that over the course of a year, that’s hundreds of hours saved, right? That’s, that’s meaningful. And that’s where I want people to look at, like what does it actually cost to build this? And what’s the actual value? And then you can really ascertain is this worthwhile to pursue? Is it just something that, okay, I’ll do it, whatever. It’s obnoxious. And ensuring too that we don’t end up filling that extra time with more noise and more just ask. But we focus on what’s actually meaningful, which usually means a better product, a better service, more customer engagement and interactions, more engagements with your team to build a strong culture that’s aligned. All of those things are what really create a fantastic business and everything else is noise.
AJV (47:07):
Mm. So, so good. Matt, this has been so helpful, so awesome in so many different ways. If people wanna stay in touch with you, get to know about more about you and your company, where should they go?
MF (47:19):
We can do two ways. We’ll do, my email is Matt for Nito, F-O-R-N-I-T-O, at the a i a g.com. And and otherwise if you want to reach me on LinkedIn I certainly post a ton of content on psychology, ai, business and leadership. And so feel free to connect with me on there, happy to chat with anyone.
AJV (47:41):
And we will put those as just Matt for Nito as the LinkedIn name. We’ll put that in the show notes and the fact that you gave out your email address email address, I’m flabbergasted
MF (47:56):
That we have a little bit of that
AJV (48:00):
Thank you so much. And the fact that you would even give your email addresses super kind and generous. So if you’ve got questions curious about what he does, how he integrates into companies, how he helps them streamline operations with AI and strategy email him. He just gave it to you so clearly he’s got a plan for handling all that. But then check him out on LinkedIn posting all kinds of good content. Matt, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate you so much. And everybody else, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next on the influential personal brand.
MF (48:35):
Thanks, AJ
Ep 513: On the Other Side of Fear | Victoria Jackson Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. I actually just got off of the amazing privilege to interview a friend of mine on our podcast, the influential personal brand. And her name is Victoria Jackson, and she’s the founder and CEO of Victoria Jackson Cosmetics. She is the founder of No Makeup Makeup, which is, if you’re watching this makeup I’m wearing right now, I’m a super fan of No Makeup Makeup. She’s the author of five books. She’s half of the duo of the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation, where they have personally donated over $80 million of their own money to help fund cures for rare autoimmune diseases. She was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame by Gloria Steinem. She was awarded an advocacy person of the year by the Pope at the Vatican. Like she has done so many things, and there’s been incredible highs in her life, but there have also been some tremendous lows from a really stable, unstable upbringing to she was the victim of the Pillowcase Rapist when she was a teenager in California to her daughter was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called NMO in 2008.
AJV (01:23):
And so there’s, it’s this amazing interview of really high highs and really low lows, which all, at the end of the day, make up life, right? And I think that’s one of the things that is hard to understand is I, I hear people ask all the time, like, why do bad things happen to good people? And, but I don’t hear as much of like, why do good things happen to good people? Right? And it’s, I think Victoria is an amazing example of, there has been so much goodness, so much blessing in her life, but there’s also been a lot of heartache and tragedy and, and loss. And this interview was about her new book that’s coming out called We All Worry Now, what? And as we were talking, it got me thinking about what I worry about and as a, a business owner and who feels Uber responsible for what?
AJV (02:19):
42 employees. And as, as a wife to a husband who I love and adore and cannot imagine my life without, and as a mom to two incredible little boys, that even the thought of not having them literally brings me to my knees and to my family, who I love, my dad, my brothers, my my sisters in-laws, and my nieces and nephews, and my, my close friends. And, you know, even to the material things that like I love and hold dear, like our home. It just got me thinking. It’s like, whoa, it’s not, what do
AJV (02:58):
I worry about? What don’t I worry about? But one of the things that came up in the conversation is, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s always relief and joy on the other side of fear. And so how do you go from worry and fear to this other place of, of joy and peace and almost a, a calmness, right? And, and the answer is, is action. It’s action. And what, what does that give us? And ’cause sometimes not only is there joy and peace and calmness on the other side of fear, there’s also success and there’s, there’s blessing. And one of the things that I wanted to share is, and I don’t talk about this often, but well, one thing I do talk about often is I’m a devout believer. I have a very strong faith. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus.
AJV (04:02):
I believe that he was crucified and raised from the dead. I believe he is my savior. I believe that the words in the Bible are true. I believe those things, and not everyone does, and that’s okay. But these, these are things that I believe in ’cause I’ve seen the work of God in my life. I have seen what salvation has done for me. I, I, I’ve seen the changes that knowing Jesus Christ have made in my life. I have seen it physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’m a believer because I’ve witnessed it. And with that said, I was raised a believer, raised in a Christian home. There were lots of highs and lows in our family. We were in a really horrific car accident. When I was seven years old with we were the first car hit in a 13 car pile up by a tractor trailer.
AJV (04:55):
I don’t talk about this often. Both my brothers were pronounced dead on the scene. Hell, you know, hell evaced to the children’s hospital. Both my parents were severely injured, unconscious. Both of them admitted to the hospital. And then there was me who was sitting in the bo back of the car. And I was pulled out by the jaws of life and set in a police car while I watched limp Bodies pulled from this car. And I watched miraculously with no medical explanation. Both of my brothers healed, both of my parents healed. And we toured the country for years with the Children’s Miracle Network, telethon, telling the story of the miracle. That was my brother’s. I’ve seen God’s work and highs and lows in that. And when I was 13, my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and she died when I was 15.
AJV (05:56):
I deeply believe she would recover. She deeply believed she would recover but she didn’t. And I saw God at work in that too. And that took, that took a while to come full circle. But there was, there was God’s grace and and love in that time. But there were highs and lows in that, right? I have chosen to focus on what I was given, not was taken. But those were choices that took a long time to come to. So I share that to go, I have seen God’s work in my life since I was a really young child. And it hasn’t been until here recently that I decided to share that. And I think the reason why is I was worried, like back to the conversation with Victoria. Look, we all worry now. What are you gonna do about it?
AJV (06:54):
And I was worried about sharing my faith. I was worried in college, but I wouldn’t be cool. So I didn’t, in fact, I did the opposite. I just went with what everyone else was doing. I was worried in my young twenties that if I came a, you know, if I talked about that too much or I’d be a, you know, a goodie two shoes, which I most certainly was not. But I, I was worried that if I shared that I would be ostracized or I wouldn’t fit in. Or in my later years, I was worried that I didn’t wanna come across as judgmental or I didn’t wanna make anyone uncomfortable. And so I didn’t share it. I was, I was afraid. I, I was afraid. I was really worried of what everyone else would think about me if I opened up about my faith.
AJV (07:42):
And so we, we didn’t, I didn’t share my faith for a really long time because I was worried. And then in 2022, something changed in my life and my heart and my soul of going, I’m gonna be worried about anything in this world. It cannot be about what people think about what I believe. And I think a lot of that transformation happened because I started reading the Bible again as an adult. In fact, as a 37-year-old lifelong believer in Christian. I read the Bible for the first time, cover to cover. It’s kind of embarrassing for me to admit that. But that’s true. It was the first time that I had picked up the word of God and said, I’m gonna read it. I’m gonna read every word and I’m gonna try to understand it. I’m still trying to understand a lot of it.
AJV (08:36):
But I’m gonna read it because I need to. And so I did. And that’s also when I hired a life coach. And it’s when I started reading books by Jenny Allen and Craig Rochelle and John Mark Comer. And I really said like this, this worry, this, these, these fears. And not just about what people think about me, but fear of my business, fear of my children, fear of losing my husband. Like it’s, it’s consuming me fear of not being able to make payroll, fear of, is this gonna work? Fear, am I, am I making the wrong decisions as a leader? Like worry and fear were consuming me. And I was becoming a dreadful person at the end of 2020. One was probably like least I least ideal, aj, let’s just say that. And in 2022, I was like, something’s gotta change.
AJV (09:29):
Like, God, show me something. And through that process, I started talking about God publicly in my speeches, on Instagram, on podcasts, on videos like this. ’cause I realized that that was a real worry. It was a real fear. And on the other side of that, there had to be something better. And what I really needed to do is take action, right? Is, is do the thing that would like, kind of holding me up, which is, I, I’m not being authentically me. I’m not letting people get to know me. I am, I’m not speaking up for the thing that I believe in more than anything else in this world. I’m not speaking up when I know that God is prompting me too. And I got that’s a problem. And y’all, I share that to go with this. When this interview talks about like on the other side of fear, there is something beautiful.
AJV (10:29):
Here’s what I can tell you is that the moment that I just started sharing of going like, it’s okay if you don’t believe what I believe, it’s okay if I don’t believe what you believe. We can believe different things and coexist and have mutual respect for each other. But I can’t this not share this part of me. It’s that ingrained in who I am. I’ve seen it, I’ve witnessed it. I have to share it. Our entire business changed. My marriage changed, I changed. I believe that taking action in the areas where you have worry and you have fear that not only is there something beautiful on the other side of it what you do is you’re, you’re, you’re giving others the confidence to do the same thing. And I think that’s an a really powerful and empowering gift of going, even if they don’t agree with what you said, by going, man, I really appreciate, appreciate the courage.
AJV (11:29):
‘Cause I know there can be a lot of hate coming your way for that, and you’re doing it anyways. And it’s like, if we’re not willing to stand up for the things that we believe in, what are we doing? Like what are we doing? And there’s a way to do it with kindness and respect. There’s definitely a way to do it not that way. But I believe there’s, there’s a way to, to overcome the worry that we have by, by facing it. And for me, a huge worry was what would people think if I let them know that, you know, Jesus Christ is my savior here? Like, what, what, what would people think if, like, I talked about God and faith and Bible verses and everywhere I went, like, like that was a worry. And here’s what’s happened. The more that I talk about it, the more that people are asking of, why are you doing that?
AJV (12:20):
Why do you believe that? It’s inviting conversations that I had never got to be a part of before. ’cause I didn’t share. It’s, it’s also allowing us to be authentically who we are designed to be. It’s, it’s giving us the strength and the power to do stuff that we probably wouldn’t have done before. And that’s what’s on the other side of fear that that’s what it looks like to overcome worry and overcome fear is to do things. Be things, experience things that you never thought possible. Because they were on the opposite side, right? They were on the side pre pre overcoming fear. And I just felt compelled to share this particular thing because it was the thing that was plaguing me. It, it was, man, I’m a, I’m afraid to do something that I feel called to do. And the moment that I stepped into that calling, my whole life has changed, our business has changed my relationships, my marriage my family, it has changed on the other side of fear.
AJV (13:20):
And so my question to you is like, what is that saying that you know that you should do, but you’re not because of worry or fear? Like, what are you worried about to the point where you’re not doing something that you know that you’re supposed to do or say or be, right? Like, what, what’s that thing for you and what’s the action that you know you need to take to overcome it? Even if it’s this first step in overcoming it. And it’s like, so what’s the worry that’s consuming you? What’s the fear inside of you? And what’s the action that next step that you need to take to start the path to the other side? So highlight of the conversation. If you wanna learn more, check out the book. We all worry now What? By Victoria Jackson. You can get your pre-sale orders now on Amazon Book comes out September 3rd.
Ep 512: From Income to Impact: How to Make the Most Out of Your Gifts with Victoria Jackson
AJV (00:01):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Influential Personal Brand, and that is the perfect title of a podcast for the interview that I get to do today with the one and only Victoria Jackson. When we talk about influence, this is a woman who has immense influence, and I am so honored to get to know you personally and to get to know your story. And I also, to get to be the one to interview today, I snatched this away from Rory so that I got to lead the interview today. But before I launch into this episode, for everyone who is listening who maybe is new to the name Victoria Jackson, let me give you a little bit of the background. And if I were to read all of her accomplishments and accolades, it would take up the entire podcast. So I’m going to give you some of what I consider the biggest highlights that stand out to me.
AJV (00:57):
So here are some of the things that you need to know about Victoria Jackson. First and foremost, I think this is first and foremost to me. She is the mother of three awesome kids and her and her husband, bill, how long have you guys been married? 32 years. So to me, like those are some of the best and biggest accomplishments. But she is also the founder and CEO of the global brand and infomercial giant Victoria Jackson Cosmetics. And I think this is phenomenal because Victoria was a part of revolutionizing and dominating the entire beauty industry with her no makeup, makeup, which is just relaunched. And I wanna talk about this later. It’s actually, if you’re watching the video today, I am wearing no makeup makeup, and I love it, and I could go on and on about it. But as a huge part of this entire way that she launched this makeup, she was a really, truly a pioneer with being the first to market a cosmetics line on TV with more than 11 international infomercials.
AJV (02:03):
And so she had a 10 year run on QVC with Victoria Jackson’s cosmetic, with more than 600 beauty products, generating a billion dollars in sales. That’s a BA billion dollars in sales, and I love that story, but I think some of the things that, that make up who you are are just as significant as, as, as a teen Victoria survived a sexual assault, and she has gone on to reach out and empower women of in so many different ways around the world. And then in 2008 her daughter was diagnosed with N mo Neuromyelitis Optica and was shared that they, she only had four years to live. And so Victoria, along with her husband, bill, went on to found the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation which has raised an unbelievable amount of money to fund research to help find a cure for this disease.
AJV (03:04):
She was nominated as the National Women into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for this work. And then she was also at the Vatican, at the Vatican accepted as the Pontifical Key Advocacy Award for her personal work in trying to overcome and understand the rare autoimmune autoimmune diseases that are in the world. She has funded a series of documentaries. She’s the author of five books. She has a brand new book coming up that we’re gonna talk about later. And she has relaunching this makeup line Woman. I do not know how you have time to do all of these things. So without further ado, everyone and Victoria, thank you so much for being on the show. We’re so excited to have you. So welcome.
VJ (03:48):
Thank you for having me, aj. Yeah, it’s definitely, I, I like to keep myself busy and, you know, I think I was just, you know, born ready. I, I don’t know, a friend of mine said, I’m born ready. Like, I feel like I was just born ready to, ready to go and take on all the challenges, and then just be a doer, you know, and always really there to help and support women and people. I’ve been a Goodwill ambassador in so many different ways.
AJV (04:16):
Ryan, what I love too, is like, you truly are so humble about all of it, and it, it’s, it would be easy for you not to be humble about all of it, but you are. And so I kind of wanna just help the audience get to know you just a little bit. And so can you just tell everyone a little bit of the story of how did you get into the world of makeup? And I mean, I know the backstory, and so just pull out some of the highlights, because I think it’s a really phenomenal story because I think a lot of the people who are listening to this are trying to figure out like, what’s my next thing and how do I go from where I am to where I wanna be? And you have done that exceptionally well.
VJ (04:57):
Well, there, you know, it’s, I think my least favorite question always was when people would go, well, what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or What are you thinking about doing? And I actually, I didn’t know. I didn’t as you mentioned, you know, I had an unfortunate kind of start in life in a, in a few different ways, but one in which really prevented me from graduating high school, from going to college. I was a victim of the Pillowcase Rapist in California when I was 17. And up to that point, I was always a little bit of a, of a nervous Nelly and had anxiety. And, you know I don’t know that I knew where I was going in life. I had a very tumultuous, unstable upbringing, parents kind of getting divorced and, you know, just really not kind of always being able to find my feet.
VJ (05:47):
But one thing I did find my feet with and my hands was I liked doing makeup. I liked taking, having my friends come over and doing makeovers on them. And even though my technique really was something that I had to perfect over time, it was just something that I liked doing. I liked, you know, I, I’ve always had a good eye and wanted to work to, you know, show people how they could look better. And I realized through many, many years of doing this that when you look better, you feel better. And when you feel better, it allows you to go on in life to have more success, or, you know, just feeling good about yourself opens up the door to so many things. So I just started one foot in front of the other, started doing makeovers for friends and put together a makeup kit. And that was the beginning
AJV (06:37):
Mean, but to go from doing makeovers on friends Mm-Hmm.
VJ (07:00):
Well, I think for me, it’s all about perseverance. I, in one of my books, I, I wrote and I opened up in The Power of Rare, which is a book I wrote on Cure and, and helping find cure for disease, and how to put a blueprint together for that. But I write that perseverance is where the God swell. I think that what I can do, and what I will always do is stay the course that I persevere, that even though everybody told me, you know, nobody’s gonna be able to buy your, your products. I sold them on television that nobody was gonna buy makeup on tv. That women need to see them and touch them and feel them in person. I’ve always taken the No and turned that around and said, well, I don’t know about that. You know, I, I, I think I can do it, and here’s how.
VJ (07:45):
So it’s just that sense of perseverance, of this constant, this resilience that just makes me move forward no matter what. And I think that’s the takeaway most people get when they look at, you know, the breadth and the depth of, of my career. And what I’ve done is that I just, I never give up as all the people that, you know, you talk to and your listeners, all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, you just have to keep going. You. so even though I’m saying, oh, I started by putting a kit together and doing my friends, it really was, everything was one step to the next step, to the next step. And even the book that I’ve written now, we all worry now what Ta-da. It’s really the, it’s the step by step of how to zoom out, how to get perspective, how to just take that next step. And a lot of it, you know, we think of, oh, you know, it’s so basic, but it’s, the basics really are the stepping stones that get you there. It’s just doing it, you know, it’s doing the work, and it’s not easy, and you gotta just keep moving forward. Even when everybody tells you, you know, it may not lead to that pot of gold. Everybody’s pot of gold is different.
AJV (09:04):
Hmm. I love that. Curious, I don’t know if I know this timeline from the first day that you started, like professionally doing makeup, so we’ll say beyond just doing makeovers, but like, when you were actually doing professional makeup to when you actually had, like, success with these infomercials, how long was that timeline?
VJ (09:28):
Oh, that was 13 years. So people think, oh, overnight success. Yeah. I was doing I was doing makeovers for 13 years. I was working in the, you know, editorial space, so I was doing everything, A lot of the ads that you see a lot of at the time magazine covers, album covers. I did about 200 album covers. I would do people magazine covers. So many kind of, and that time is invaluable because during those 13 years, I could see, well, what kind of products do women respond to? I came up with during that time what I became known for, and still to this day, hence product number two, no makeup, makeup. That was really something that I came up with in the eighties. And think about that in the eighties, everybody’s wearing like the shoulder pads and like, you know, heavy glam makeup. I’m doing no makeup makeup. So I was completely going contrary to what was happening at the time. But it was very much, and you see how timeless things can be still holds true to this day. I mean, you have it on, you look beautiful. I want women to just not look like they have a lot of makeup on, but just feel like themselves, not use it as a mask or war paint. And so that 13 years gave me that chance to perfect my, really became my signature of no makeup makeup.
AJV (10:52):
You know, I love that because I think most people listening, no offense to anyone, don’t get offended. We’re trying to skip all that time. Yeah. We’re, we’re trying to skip the hard work. We’re trying to skip the hard years, the research years, and we’re going, why isn’t this working? And the truth is, is you’ve been doing it six months or a year. I saw this quote on Instagram a few days ago, and it just really stuck out to me, and it said, you don’t have the patience to build your business in three years, but somehow you found the patience to work for somebody else for 40.
VJ (11:26):
Yeah.
AJV (11:27):
And I think that kind of sums it up. It’s like, good take time and nothing is wasted,
VJ (11:34):
You know? And I mean, honestly, it, those are the kinds of things you have to think about. You know, being an entrepreneur and being in that, there is a little bit in that secret sauce is you have to be somebody. There are some people that they, they want that security and that comfort of working for somebody else for 40 years. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Because when you’re kind of, you know, cutting that tie and you’re going out solo and you’re doing your thing and you’re, you’re, you’re flying on your own, that’s scary. And that’s not easy to do. So you really have to have those hard talks with yourself to see, I’m the first to encourage it, but I never shame anyone for deciding, Hey, yeah, you know what, I’ve got the good job that I like, or the comfort or the things that I’m familiar with, and no, that’s okay.
VJ (12:22):
But that’s, that isn’t my, you know, spirit. I am that little warrior that is always sort of from the beginning, gotta explore and do, and, you know, figure it out. And sure, it’s a lot easier now at this point in my life as I’m getting ready to wait for it, I turned 70 you know, I’ve had a lot of life experience and all of that has really led me to where I am now to be able to tell my story and try to encourage people and look back at all the things that I’ve done and, and, you know, pay it forward.
AJV (13:00):
Yeah. And, and first of all, I hope I look like you do when I turn 70. You look amazing. But I think also one of the things that you just said is one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on the show, because this is about, you know, building an influential personal brand, and not for the sake of fame or notoriety, but for, for doing good and making a positive impact in the world. And in many cases, you can do that without money. And in some cases there are opportunities for people in, in your case, like you had this a abundant mental abundance mentality of going, I have the money. How can I do good with it? And one of the things that I love is this idea of like taking your income and turning it into impact. And I think that’s one of the things that you’ve done so extraordinarily well with the success of all that you’ve done in business, you were able to take that and also do some really amazing things with you know, this charitable funding, trying to find cures for rare disease.
AJV (14:05):
So here, here are the questions I have, because a lot of people in our community, in our audience impact is really what they’re after. They, they have good sustainable businesses and they’re going, but I, I just, I know there’s more from me than just, you know, the revenue and p and l statements. Like, I, there is something in me that wants to do good. And I know that there was, you know, kind of this life altering moment in your, you know, life in 2008 when your daughter got diagnosed, but there was also something else in you that goes, no, I have the funds. I’m gonna do something about it. Because I think a lot of us have funds that we’re not doing something with. So can you talk a little bit about like, what’s the path of turning your, your income into impact?
VJ (14:50):
Well, I think you have to start earlier on the path. When I did that, as I was even in my makeup career, I was going to the jails, right? So even when I didn’t have money, I was thinking, what ev what else, what other skillset do I have that can feel like I can add value, that I can do something when I didn’t have money? So I went to the jails for 20 years, and I had a look better, feel better program for women that were in jail. So I was already thinking about and wanting to give back. And even in my makeup skillset, I was doing makeovers at the hospital for patients. So, you know, I was always already thinking and geared that way. So when my daughter was diagnosed in 2008, it was really, okay, I’m gonna, you know, as a mom, I’m gonna find a cure for my daughter.
VJ (15:42):
I don’t know what that’s gonna look like. As I said, I didn’t graduate high school, I didn’t go to college, and now I’m in the world of a very complex autoimmune disease, NMO neuromyelitis optica, which really manifests in very much looks like in misdiagnosis and ms. People think it’s ms, they’re very similar. And so how am I gonna learn about this, do this? And I started from that place. And then very quickly as my daughter and I were going through this very, very difficult time, she said to me like, you know, this isn’t just about us anymore. And then I realized it wasn’t for, and we, fortunately due to our business and my husband’s success and business, we put in $80 million of our own money. We never raised money. We actually put in our own money. And that was something, you know, and, and we’re still doing that 15 years later, we’re still putting in money for a foundation that is now changed the entire landscape.
VJ (16:44):
And I recommend for anybody out there who’s suffering with, you know, any kind of a, whether it’s a, a tough diagnosis or how to go about looking at what we did, our story Ally and I, is called saving each other. And it’s what I call my momi, really our story. And then the Power of Rare, which is the blueprint of how did we actually take this money and get drugs made, because now we have four therapies and my daughter is, you know, is stable at this point in time. So it’s kind of, I took that same thinking from my makeup days because it was very much about, here’s the makeup and then here’s how to, it’s very much like, here’s the foundation, here’s our story, and then here’s how to, how to do it. So really from like almost foundation to, to foundation. So it’s always been for me about giving back an impact and purpose and taking a lot of leaps of faith along the way.
AJV (17:45):
Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s probably where I think a lot, lot of people are struggling of finding the balance of like, okay, I want this to be about impact, and I need it to be about income. I have to make money at the same time. But, and I love what you said, it’s like there’s, and there’s a million ways to get back with your gifts and talents. It doesn’t require money, but how do you figure out what those gifts and talents are and put them to good use?
VJ (18:14):
Yeah. You just gotta get scrappy and think about it, you know, like, what’s going on in your local community and what, and what can you do? I think the world being as nutty as it is now, and as you know, divisive and polarizing, all the things that are going on, I, it’s so important to get back to community and to thinking about what can we do to support each other? You know, where is that kindness that we can really can put into every day something that we’re thinking not just about ourselves, but others? I think that, and, and that just, you never know when you’re doing that, what doors open where that leads you because so much of it is you, you just don’t know. Like, if somebody would’ve told me while I was doing makeup and trying to figure that whole part of my life out, that cut to the next part of my life, I’d be actually working to cure rare autoimmune disease. I would’ve never believed it. Or that I’d be at the Vatican receiving an award from the Pope, or that Gloria Steinem would be inducting me into the hall of, like, all those things would’ve never even entered into my consciousness. And yet, they’ve all, they’ve all been a, an amazing part of my life that I’ll always, you know, look back on and go, wow, how did that all happen? But life unfolds in a way, and if we just keep doing the work and showing up.
AJV (19:37):
Yeah. And I, I mean, I think that’s like the heart of so much of your message. It’s like, show up, do the work, keep going. What’s the best next step? Yeah. And I think a huge part of how you’ve been able to give back a lot of, you know, you’ve written five books. Mm-Hmm,
VJ (20:27):
You know what, it’s also, it’s all part of that sharing. There’s that, I just have this very, if I can do it, you know, because I come from a place of low self-esteem, I still am constantly working on that, which people go, really? But yes. So it’s always the, well, oh, look, if I could do it, you can do it. And here’s how, like, I, I did this, so you can do this too, and here’s how I’m gonna just show you what I did, and you, you know, take what works for you and, you know, leave the rest. And so that’s always been it. The first book was a, it was called redefining Beauty. It was a beauty book. The second book was Make Up Your Life. So again, it was the, the how to of the book, redefining beauty and then Make Up Your Life was, why does it all matter?
VJ (21:12):
How does looking better feeling better change? Then, you know, the third book was saving Each Other, which was really when my life changed and our story. And then the fourth book was, and here again, is the how to and now this book is really all about, you know, I’ve been, at this point in my life, as I said, I’ve always been filled with anxiety and a warrior, and, but I’ve also been a, a warrior. So the book originally was Warrior to Warrior, but I’ve, there was a few titles with that. But I also liked the universality of like, we all worry, you know, worry is, we talk about stress and anxiety, but you kind of start with worry. Worry is what you like water. And it, all of a sudden now it has become the stress, the anxiety. So I think you’re gonna hear a lot more about worry.
VJ (22:02):
And it’s kind of, now what do we do about that? So it was important to me to share my experiences. What do you worry about? I worry about everything. I’m a black belt warrior,
VJ (22:54):
And men, I have Jay Shetty in there as well. But Maria Shriver, Chris Jenner, okay. We think about the Kardashians. So what are, you know, what are they worrying about or what’s going on? Chris Jenner, you know, very religious, you know, what, how does she start her day with, you know, faith every day? You know, how does she bring her family together? Gloria Steiner, Jane Fonda, what does she worry about? There’s so many interesting things that I was learning from what women, not only worry about, but how they navigate it. So I wanted to put all that together. And again, it’s my offering to people out there on how in a, in a world of a time where there’s so much we worry about just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean you don’t worry, you know? I, my life is fantastic. I mean, I am so blessed and so lucky, and at the same time, we’ve worked really hard and I make sure to give back, but there’s still worry, you know?
AJV (23:59):
Yeah, I know. I mean, I think, I, I agree with you. It’s a universal, doesn’t matter how much or how little you have there is worry, right? Yeah, yeah. Whatever it is, right? The, the magnitude of the worries are different with each stage of life, but we all, we all do that. So I’m curious to know a little bit about your writing process, because so many people who are listening to this podcast, they do have a calling on their life like you have where it’s like, I, I feel called to put this on paper and, and turn it into a book. And so I would love to hear from you. It’s like, how did you go about deciding what the book should be about? And I think if I recall, you hand write, right?
VJ (24:47):
I hand write. I mean, I’m so old school that is part of being, being old. I’m old school. I like, you know, I have my little pad of paper and I just write stream of consciousness thought I talk I’ll talk it out into a, you know, a recorder. And I just did the audio version. This is the first time on this book that I actually did the audio version. And I have to say that was an experience in itself as well, reading it all back to yourself. Because a lot of times when I’m writing, you know, you’re not, I’m not always reading it back as much as I, as I think I am, until I’ve really finished the book. And I was like, wow. But you know, it’s just a very, it’s, I think writing a book is really tough. It’s really frustrating for me at times.
VJ (25:34):
I, I struggle with it. I’m lucky. I’ve had, I can never take full credit. I have people that have helped me in my writing because I’m very insecure in that I grammatically will think, oh wait, do I need to put a a period here at the end of this sentence? Or should that be a comma? Or, you know, I can get so stuck on the stupid little things. That it’s been helpful for me when I’ve been able to sit with somebody and go like, okay, these are the big points of what I really wanna say and get across. And again, it’s just doing it. It’s just doing it. Like, I could use, I could have used that as an excuse. Well, you know, I’m not really good at writing dah dah, dah. You have people that support you or help you, or, you know, it takes me longer than most people to write a book, but I still manage to put out five of them. Versus there’s a lot of people that talk about it, think about it, never do it. Yeah. You just gotta,
AJV (26:31):
Yeah. And I love that. ’cause It’s like, and I love that you hand write, like, I think that’s incredible. And I think that’s just a testament for everyone listening. It’s like, there’s no right way to write a book, talk it out on audio hand, write it in a notebook, work with a coach, have a ghost writer, hire an editor. Like whatever it is, just do it.
VJ (26:53):
Just do it. And then make sure it’s true to you. You know? I mean, that’s when I felt really good was when I was reading back the book and I went, this is absolutely true to me. This is, this is honest, this is true. This is real, this is helpful. This is what I want to impart to people. So that’s really important. ’cause I genuinely care.
AJV (27:16):
Yeah, I know you do. Why, why a book on worry. So what was it about this particular topic that compelled you to write a whole book about it?
VJ (27:27):
Because that’s been the theme of my life.
AJV (28:55):
That’s good. Who would you say for everyone’s listening, like who would you say this book is really for?
VJ (29:03):
I think it’s for everybody. I really do. You know, you look at these books now that are out like the anxious generation and with where we are in social media, I mean, everybody’s affected one way or another. I mean, young people are, are worrying about everything to do with their friends and how they look and you know, there’s so much that young people now, and it, because of social media, which I didn’t grow up with the way it is now, I think it’s just, there’s so much more anxiety and stress. So even if they’re not sitting down and reading every page of my book you know, there’s something that they’ll be able to take away from, like, something that’s actually doable. So is do we really know too many people that are, you know, short of like little kids that are not worried or stressed or anxious these days?
VJ (29:53):
Sadly, I, I don’t, you know, I’ve got little grandkids. So at six and eight, I hope they’re not dealing with too much anxiety. But when you read this, these books now that are so much, it starts pretty early. So I, I write something just like I do my makeup. You know, people always say, well, who’s your, what’s your makeup geared for? What? It’s a, oh, you’ve got skin. I am, this is your makeup. You know, I mean, I’m, I’m not putting it at a over 40 person. I’m not, you know, I like the idea of no makeup makeup for everybody to just look natural and look like themselves. So I think more universally, I guess is what I’m saying, ultimately.
AJV (30:35):
Well, I do believe, you know, worry is a universal problem. We all struggle with. Like, I could probably make a list of at least 10 things that I’ve worried about today Yeah. Since I woke up just a few hours ago. And so one quick thing about the book, and then I would like to talk about no makeup makeup in the last few minutes that we have. But if you were to say, if you consider yourself somebody who really struggles from worry, like if there was one thing from the book that you’re like, I don’t care if you don’t get anything else from this book, if you just left with this one thing I know it would help you, what would it be?
VJ (31:09):
It’s taking action that even in the face of worry, even in the face of your massive anxiety, that you still have to do something to take that next step. So to me, you know, yes, it’s okay to fall apart and be stressed out and have that moment, but you have to then like not sit in that. You have to take that walk in nature or make that phone call. You’re afraid of, you know, everything that, there’s that saying, you know, everything is amazing. That’s on the other side of fear. It’s, it’s really working to get to that other side of fear and to get anywhere close to that other side of those amazing things that can be on the other side, you’ve gotta just take the next step. So it’s just doing something, whatever it is, when you’re in that moment of like paralysis and you’re worried to the point of not being able to do that, you’ve gotta just do something. And sometimes that’s just walking outside and, you know, going around the block, something to shake it up. I know it sounds so basic. You’re like, that’s it, Victoria. It’s like, yeah, sometimes that’s it. Because in that moment you clear your head enough to sort of let the next thing in and the next thing and the next
AJV (32:28):
Thing. Hmm. That’s good. Quick personal question. Is there anything that you can say like, Hey, this is something that I fear, fear that I haven’t yet done that I know I need to do to take action on?
VJ (32:44):
Yeah, I mean, for me, travel has always been sort of my like little bugaboo. Like I don’t love a lot of movement. And I say this as a person who’s moving all the time, probably like going to some exotic traveling will be what I’ve gotta sort of go, okay, you can do it. I didn’t fly for so many years 35 years, I didn’t, I didn’t fly as a result of claustrophobia. And I still struggle with that. So I think for me, that will be my continued kind of, you know, eat, love, pray moment of going out, you know, in the wild and, and just wherever that is, just out of my comfort zone.
AJV (33:30):
Hmm. Yeah, I asked because I, you know, I was just sitting here thinking as you were talking about like, what are the things that I know I need to take action on, but there’s some amount of worry or fear that is preventing me to move forward. And I just know that if you struggle with that, if I struggle with that, everyone’s listening, we all struggle with something like that. And, you know, Rory and I have had these conversations in our house a lot here lately. And I think one of the things that we fear is like, man, like how much of what we really think should we share? You know? And I think there’s a real fear of not wanting to come across as judgmental, but also feeling compelled to, to share an alternative view or one that maybe isn’t as popular or as common. And I think there’s a lot of that fear of cancel culture, which has a lot of people who have thoughts and opinions afraid to talk.
VJ (34:31):
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s very, it’s very real. It’s all part of what creates the, the stress and the anxiety is ’cause people are afraid to just be themselves. But I think that there’s a way to do it if you do it with kindness, where the problem is there’s so many people that are doing it you know, with so much hate or bitterness or, you know, anger and, you know, that’s always hard. And then, so then other people are afraid to just say anything because of the afraid of the judgment. You know, I’ve always tried to be as authentic and real and you know, I’ll, I may have opinions that other people don’t like and they’re just mine and it’s like, take it or leave it. And I’m very, you know, if people are not like doing harm to somebody else, and some people politically believe this and some people believe that, and somebody was pro-abortion, somebody’s pro-life, like, you know you know, I just take it all in and, you know, you try to have conversations as civilly as you can and listen to other people. You know, there’s that level of respect at times that we’ve all lost a little bit. And I think you just have to get back to that and and not worry so much about not being able to just have conversation and be yourself. I think that’s important. You hate to lose that because that’s kind of really where the magic is because that’s where we’re authentic to who we are.
AJV (35:57):
Totally agree. And, and back to, it’s like we all have worry at some level. So what are we gonna do about it? So again, we all worry now what coming to a bookshelf near you very, very soon. Again, I’ll put the show notes or the link in the show notes, but you can pre-order it now on Amazon. Pick up a copy, buy one for yourself, buy one for a friend. And before we go, I also wanna talk about this relaunch of Yeah, no makeup, makeup. And as I mentioned earlier, I am wearing it today and I love it. I think it’s amazing. One, I love that it’s in a little compact and it’s so creamy. ’cause I’m usually putting my makeup on, on the go
VJ (36:45):
You know, for me, I mean, I love look at being, I was always in a, in the lab creating product. As I said, I made about 600 and it’s really fun working with color and pigments and coming up with a great product. So I am a formulator at heart. I love it. And my foundation, when I first launched No makeup makeup many years ago, was my hero product, my number one product. And so I wanted to bring it back, but bring it back in a new clean vegan, like, just an amazing formula. I was not gonna launch anything until I had like, what I thought is the perfect foundation. That’s what this is. It comes in 13 shades. And I, I love it. I mean, it’s so easy for me to sell it because I’m like, I love it. I think since I’ve launched, just in the last month, we’ve had two returns. I mean, like, people love it. So that’s what I wanted to just get back into kind of back where I started the whole no makeup makeup and I own the trademark. I trademarked that in the eighties. So it’s just a message that’s still true. It’s timeless. So I wanted to make a, just a fantastic product and I’ve done that and it’s no makeup makeup.com and people can check it out and yeah, I love it.
AJV (38:00):
Well, you know, that’s the thing about building something that’s evergreen and timeless, and now it’s getting introduced to a whole new generation of people like me who wasn’t wearing makeup in the eighties. And and a again, I think one of the things that I love is just a great reminder for all of us is that, you know, it’s never too late to start and it’s never too late to restart. And that’s so much of what I love about you. It’s like, I mean, if I can do it, why not? We can figure it out.
VJ (38:36):
Why not? And I mean, even in makeup, you know, it’s sort of like, it’s, it’s pretty easy. Like this comes with a brush and it’s start at your jawline, match your color. You’re, you’re in, it’s, it’s makeup. If you don’t like how something looks, you wash it off. Like I, I try to get women off the, the hurdle of, you know, they get so in their head sometimes, not just women. And we get stuck that even when I was doing my makeup for so many years, which with this how to, it was just like, here’s, here’s how you do it. And it doesn’t matter. Like, people go, well what if, do I need to start with my eyes first? And then my lips, I’m like, at the end of the day, we just care how it looks like when it’s all done. So I just wanna create products that make you feel good and look good and look like yourself and not wear a mask. So there’ll be other products that follow this, but right now it’s no makeup, makeup, just the foundation for beautiful skin. Well,
AJV (39:29):
I can attest. It’s feels good on, looks good on, I think the feel of makeup is really important to me. And this, it doesn’t feel like I have anything on. I really love it. And I, what I love too is that, you know, this whole idea of like, people think all the time I have to create something new. Yeah. And it’s like, no, you don’t. Yeah. You can just take something that already had and just make it better. Make
VJ (39:57):
Better, improve it. Yeah. That’s the good thing. You know, technology’s changed and I took what was an original formula and I just improved it, you know, manyfold. So, and you look beautiful.
AJV (40:09):
Thank you. And I think for everyone listening, it’s like when you think, oh, I have to write this whole new book, or I have to build this whole thing. No, you don’t. You just, you can take what you have and revise it and it’s taking
VJ (40:21):
That next step. It’s just, it’s just, it’s just doing it. You know? It’s, there’s talking about it’s great, but then you just gotta, you just gotta do it. And it’s always work. So you gotta just be ready to do the work. And and that’s honestly, like I said, it’s, it’s simple, it’s basic, but and people are, are listening, trying to always find what are the magic words you’re gonna say? Sometimes it’s just, you gotta get uncomfortable. You gotta do it. And you gotta work to find what’s on that other side of, for me, fear. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (40:59):
All right. Last question. And I know that we’re running out of time here, but you mentioned this earlier, that you’re about to turn 70. Yes. And so I wanna know what’s next for you. Like,
VJ (41:12):
You know what, that’s the great part. I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe you, and I’ll be talking in five years, 10 years, and you’ll go, you did what
AJV (42:15):
And I love the, the mystery and the adventure and all of that. ’cause The truth is, if we had never put out what we were doing, our paths would’ve never crossed. Yeah. And you just, you just never know. But you gotta put it out there. You gotta do the work. And I love too of going just enjoy the beautiful mystery of just not knowing, but do the work, keep moving and enjoy the ride.
VJ (42:39):
Yeah, exactly.
AJV (42:41):
Victoria, thank you so much for coming on. And everyone just one more time. Her book is coming out very soon, September 3rd, pre-order now on Amazon. We all worry now what? And her makeup as relaunched now available [email protected] and at Victoria. If anyone wants to just follow you personally, where’s the best place to send them?
VJ (43:07):
Oh my gosh. Probably Instagram. You can, you know, the original original Victoria Jackson, I believe is where we’re, I’m so not in the world of social media. You’ll all help me as we go along on this journey. But yes, you’ll be able to follow me. Okay,
AJV (43:23):
Well that’s what’s next for Victoria Social Media. That’s it.
VJ (43:28):
AJV (43:31):
I’ll put the handle the official Victoria Jackson. I’ll put that in the show notes. Thank you so much. Loved having you on today. Love getting to see you and talk to you and everyone else. Stay tuned for the recap, which will be coming up next. And we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 511: 4 Painful Lessons I Wish I Knew Before Becoming An Entrepreneur | Clate Mask Episode Recap
RV (00:00):
Here’s four business lessons I wish I knew sooner as an entrepreneur. Number one, perseverance matters more than pedigree. Perseverance matters more than pedigree. If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t be impressed by people who have fancy degrees or letters after their name. When it comes to starting a business, it’s all about who has the fight, who has the hustle, and who has the ability to solve problems too early and too often in my career, I surrender to people just ’cause they were older than me or I thought they were smarter than me because they had more experience. It’s nothing like what it means to be an entrepreneur when you’re starting something outta nothing. What matters is not the size of the dog in the fight, the size of fight in the dog. Number two, when it comes to starting a great company, most of it comes down to three things.
RV (00:50):
Sales systems and superstars. I’m telling you, 99% of building a great business is being great at making sales. It’s being great at building systems, and is being great at recruiting superstars. I don’t even care what businesses is. I don’t care what industry, and I don’t care what geographic region. We have coached people all over the globe. I’ve spoken all over the globe, and these three things are true. If you can make sales, the business is gonna stay alive. But sales doesn’t solve all your problems. ’cause if you make a lot of sales, but you have crappy systems and you don’t have superstars, sales is actually gonna create more problems. But sales keeps you alive. Sales is the lifeline of the business. If you wanna make your business awesome, then you need great systems and you need superstars. You need amazing people. So that’s what you’re after.
RV (01:41):
But you don’t need a master’s degree. You don’t need to have 40 years of experience. You have to have that perseverance. And then you have to stay focused on growing sales, always keeping revenue coming in the door, strengthening your systems, right? Having great processes and always recruiting, attracting, and keeping, and creating great opportunities for really great people. Which brings me to number three. And I’ll say this is the scariest thing that I have learned in all of business. This is one of my least favorite things that I have learned, and I almost don’t even want to tell you what this lesson is because it pains me to say it. And that is that loyalty is just a paycheck away. Loyalty is just a paycheck away. I heard that early in my career and when I first heard it, I rejected it. And I thought, no, no, no. Like that’s not it. And it’s certainly not that for everybody. Some people are loyal because they’re loyal. Some people really believe in the mission. Some people really believe in the company. But in many cases, loyalty is a paycheck away. The moment someone shows up and offers to pay your people more money to go do it, they’re likely to leave. So the way that I internalize that is to say, you should strive to pay your people
RV (02:58):
As well as you can, as fast as you can without sinking yourself and without sinking the company. But you need to be aware to go. Nothing is guaranteed. The people on your team are not guaranteed to be there. They’re not automatically locked in. And this isn’t like it was 50 years ago where people stayed at one company their whole career. You can be pretty sure that the people on your team are thinking about starting their own thing, starting their own thing, doing a side hustle, being recruited, and loyalty is just a paycheck away. Even beyond that, in personal cases, people will betray you in business. They will, even if it’s not taking another job, it’s, it’s doing things internally. I’ve seen this in the corporate world. I’ve seen it in the entrepreneur world. Just be aware that the people that you think are your best friends.
RV (03:44):
When push comes to shove and money’s on the table, people do crazy things. So nothing is guaranteed and do your best to pay people. Well, that brings me to lesson number four, which is all that matters is what’s in the contract. All that matters is what’s in the contract. Now, I’ll tell you, I heard a piece of advice that is true, and it’s the opposite of what I’m telling you. A, a mentor of mine, someone that I, I very much respect, shared with me early in my career. He said, if you can’t trust the person’s handshake, then what’s in the contract doesn’t matter. And that is true. If you can’t trust their handshake, then what’s in the in the contract doesn’t matter. But even if you can trust the person’s handshake, if you ever get into a situation where there is a legal battle, where there is some discrepancy where push comes to shove and there is an argument, it will be settled by what is on the paper.
RV (04:39):
So whatever it is, get it documented. And if you come to an agreement with somebody and they’re really on board with that agreement, they shouldn’t be resistant to documenting it. If they’re resistant to documenting it, let me tell you something, they don’t actually mean it. They might say it because they’re trying to get you to do something, but if somebody really means it, they’ll want it on paper. If they don’t, I’m skeptical. So there you have it, four business lessons that I wish I knew earlier as an entrepreneur. Take those four things, put ’em into practice in your business. I promise it’ll help you be successful much faster than we’ve been able to.
Ep 510: Conquer the Chaos with Clate Mask
RV (00:02):
Well, today you’re gonna hear from someone who is a dear friend of mine. His name is Clate Mask and Clate’s product, his company, his life mission, has radically changed my life, our lives, our business. He is a huge part of what has made Brand Builders Group successful, although many of you don’t realize the role that he has because it’s so behind the scenes but it is so critical to everything we do, and you’re gonna hear about that. How is that possible? Well, clay is the CEO and the co-founder of Keep, which is the world’s leading business automation software. It is round a hundred million dollar company. It’s a SA software as a service, a SaaS company. And it is the business automation tool that AJ and I have used to now build six different multimillion dollar businesses, two of which have become eight figures including Brand Builders Group, which has gone from zero to eight figures in five years.
RV (01:00):
The reason why that has happened, a huge part of why that has happened is because we have built our businesses on kes platform. We use Keap to automate our marketing, to automate our sales pipeline, to automate our customer experience, to automate our customer service, to automate our onboarding, our recruiting, our hiring, our our interviewing. We automate our payments, we automate our collections. We automate so many parts of our business. We automate so many parts of our content marketing and our podcast production, and virtually all of them are, can connected back through this software. And so much so that we have been building a custom version of that software called Instant Automation Toolkit, which has been over coming up on five years in development. And we’re just about to release it. And so I thought, Hey, you need to meet this man. The man that was you know, one of the original visionaries of the whole marketing and business automation space. And Clay is also a New York Times bestselling author. He is a multi Inc. 5,000, you know, CEO. He is an award-winning entrepreneur. And he has a book that just came out called Conquer the Chaos. And we’re gonna talk about exactly what that means. And part of what Clate has done is build an amazing personal life in addition to an amazing business. And so we’re gonna talk about how to not only automate your business, but also win in your personal life at the same time. So Clate, welcome to the show, my brother.
CM (02:33):
Hey, thank you Roy. That was a heck of an intro. I appreciate you
RV (02:36):
CM (03:32):
You bet. You know, we, we’ve worked with entrepreneurs for over 20 years helping them to achieve their, their goals and dreams. And, you know, when everybody gets into business, they have this, this dream of freedom. They’ve got this view of what things are gonna be like
RV (04:37):
No one, no one, no one puts on their vision board systems
CM (04:45):
Exactly. Exactly. And, and frankly, you know, we, as you know, we built up Infusionsoft as the leader in marketing automation that was about doing all of the marketing and sales stuff. But what we, what we learned over the over time was, it’s one thing to grow your top line revenue. It’s a very different thing to have your bottom line take home pay bank account, and more importantly, totally your time and the sense of control and the freedom that you actually feel in the business. I mean, you, you and I both know this, I’m sure a lot of listeners are hearing this, it is crazy how many people get to a certain revenue mark in their business. Seven figures is a real, is a real common one. People think, man, I’m gonna get to that seven figure mark and now, you know, think I’m gonna have, there’s this sense of what they’re going to have in terms of bottom line, take home pay, time, freedom, control. Mm-Hmm.
RV (06:04):
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s funny, I, I love the pivot that you guys made from Infusionsoft is marketing automation to keep, is business automation. ’cause That really is true about us. Like, even our stories, like we are not, honestly, we, we’ve never really been the best marketers in the world. Like we’ve never had millions of followers. We’ve just made millions of dollars. Mm-Hmm.
RV (06:58):
Like, you’re just Right. You’re the, you’re adding more customers, more disorganization, more problems, more complexity, more challenges. It’s like you really need to have the backend tight and, and, and cleaned up. So I love where you guys made that pivot from marketing automation as Infusionsoft to business automation is key. ’cause It really is, I think your, your, your bread and butter now, you talk about six keys in the book. Okay. Yeah. So, so, so conquer the chaos. WW walk us through a couple of those. Yeah. Because I, I think, you know, to me your message is really clear, how do I conquer chaos and achieve freedom through business automation? Right. Right.
CM (07:45):
That’s it in a nutshell. Yep. So, so
RV (07:47):
Walk us through then, like kind of the six, you know, kind of keys of, of how to actually execute that.
CM (07:53):
Yeah, you bet. The, the keys are actually, so the, the book is Conquer Cast, the Six Keys to Success for Entrepreneurs. And the first three keys are actually personal. And the second three are business with automation being, you know, the crucial show. You know, kind of the crux of it. But the reason I wrote it that way is because after more than two decades of working with entrepreneurs very closely and seeing, seeing what their lives look like as they, and
RV (08:16):
How many customers have you guys had?
CM (08:18):
We, we’ve got over 200,000 users of our software. We’ve got over 20,000 businesses using the software. And over the years we’ve probably worked with 50,000, you know, so, so we’ve
RV (08:29):
Worked 50,000 entrepreneurs. Like you, when you say I’ve worked with entrepreneurs, it’s not like, oh, I’ve spent time around a couple of ’em. Like it’s
CM (08:35):
No, and it’s working closely with them, seeing very closely their business, getting to know them. I mean, the number of mastermind groups and, and conferences and coaching, coaching meetings. I mean, you, I’ve, I’ve worked so closely with entrepreneurs and what I see over and over and over is something that just compelled me to write the personal part of the book. Because what I see is the business becomes so dominant that, that their, their lives get out of whack. And they, over time, they subtly and gradually make trade-offs in favor of the business that cost them what they care about the most in the end. And so, you know, when you see people’s financial family health, you know, when you see those things really melt down and, and some of the most, you know, very, very well known entrepreneurs that, you know, I, you know, people would know if I said their names and I see them closely, and I see them as clients and friends, and, and then I see it over and over and over with small businesses everywhere.
CM (09:38):
And I’ve, I’ve experienced it, I call it the dark side of entrepreneurship. And it is that it’s not just the, the, the struggles of entrepreneurship, it’s actually also when the business is very successful and the way that it dominates the life of the individual. So the first three keys are the personal keys, and they are actually about conquering the chaos inside getting your, getting your per getting personal life. Right. Because when I say the six keys to success for entrepreneurs, I define success right at the beginning of the book, let’s get on the same page what we mean by, by entrepreneurial success. And I say it’s balanced growth in your business and personal life that produces freedom. And if you’re, if you don’t get that balanced part, right you know, I’ve seen a lot of people who are really excited about their business goals and achieving them, and, and then they end up having great regrets. And I just think that’s a travesty. And I don’t
RV (10:30):
I think, I think a really good point that people probably don’t realize is that even if your business is successful, it can be a catalyst for your personal life failing. Yes. Like, I don’t, I don’t think people equate that. Right. So just to sort of underscore that point is to go, man, it’s hard to make a business successful. And even if you pull that off, like it could, that it could, it could work against you in your personal life and, and they don’t have to though.
CM (11:00):
That’s right. If you’re intentional about it and you set it up. So the three, the three, the first three keys are personal and it’s mindset, vision for your life and rhythm of execution, mindset, vision, rhythm. When you put the, when you get the mindset right from the beginning, get the vision straight. Now the business fits into your life vision. I’m not talking about the business vision here. I’m talking about the life vision. Now the business fits into the vision. And then a, you know, how do you execute that in a way that works for your business, your life, your, your personal life in all areas? So that’s, I feel very passionate about that because I’ve spent so much time working with entrepreneurs and seeing the pitfalls of it and experience it personally, real, you know, recognizing and kind of flirting with that dark side and understanding how challenging that can be.
CM (11:42):
And when you get the, the business keys, right? The business keys are strategy, automation, and leadership. When you get the business keys right, it dramatically improves the personal side and fuels your life vision. And when you get the life vision right, and you have your rhythm of execution going, it dramatically improves your business so that you’re not getting burned out, overwhelmed, redlining at work. So that’s, those are the six keys. You know, the, you said it really well. The, the summary of it though is how do you go from chaos to freedom through automation? And, you know, I I start with the personal side to make sure we’re not automating and making a business successful that doesn’t fit into the bigger picture of the entrepreneur’s life.
RV (12:20):
Yeah. Well, and I, I mean, I, you know, I, I can appreciate, ’cause you know, you’re the CEO of, of, of, of, of a, a company that sells automation software, which by the way, I am on the board of, you all should know that. Right? So this is, this is something that I, I have joined the board of, and I’m, I am a proud member of it, and I feel honored and lucky to, to, to be a part of it because I do believe in it. But I really appreciate that you don’t just go like, oh, automation is the only thing. Like the book’s not about automation. It’s going no, there’s the mindset, there’s the whole personal life, there’s strategy leadership. Like, and, and also, you know, there’s other, like, there’s other parts of this, and I think sometimes people, sometimes people probably errantly go, Ooh, I bought the automation tool, now my business is just gonna work on magic.
RV (13:05):
And it’s like, no, like, get the strategy right. Like
CM (14:17):
You bet. Well, there was the early days when you know, the, when, when we were just trying to get the business going. And then there was a season where I, I I talk about the dark side, where we had kinda lost control investors, board members, you know, lot, lots of things had happened and I was considering leaving at that point. So, which, which of those two do you want me to tell is
RV (14:37):
That Well, I, I, I want, I want, it could be the, it could be the first one too, but, but I wanted, the startup story is powerful, but it’s, it’s really the second one that I, I, I wanted to hear because, and this is to to you, to the thing you said earlier. You guys were very successful. You were very big. You brought on, you know, a lot of money from really smart people and, and you had a lot of things going. And even then you had a challenging season. And when you were, you were, you were thinking about leaving the company and your wife said something to you, and it always stuck with me. And I’m going like, oh my gosh, every entrepreneur needs to hear, hear this story. ’cause I, I think what she said was so wise.
CM (15:17):
Yeah. So here’s, here’s what happened. I’ll give the, the, the background for people to understand. And those who know Infusionsoft and know keep may, may appreciate this, but you know, we built Infusionsoft as the leader in marketing automation, and we got to a point where we, we really wanted to go down market. You know, we heard, we heard the cries of Confusionsoft from people who, you know, like, oh, it’s too complicated for me. And a lot of that came from solopreneurs. You know, 90% of the small business market is solopreneurs who they really don’t have the problem of chaos the way that we solve it. You know, they don’t, they don’t have a lot going on yet where things are slipping through the cracks. Instead, they’re trying to kind of figure out, well, what should their marketing be? And they’re trying to figure out who, who is their customer?
CM (16:00):
What is their offering? And that’s a different thing. If you don’t, you don’t necessarily need automation when you don’t yet have a business that’s bringing in customers. So we mistakenly tried to go down market to appease those folks. Now, by the way, in all, in all fairness, we also needed to do some things to simplify the user experience of our software. And we’ve done that. And, you know, that that was a, a, that was the fruitful part of what we did. But the, the, the not so fruitful part of what we did is we tried to go down market to serve those solopreneurs, and it really hurt the business. We were really struggling like crazy. And so we, we tried to bring in some people from the outside that could help lead, lead the, the operations. These were, you know, smart Silicon Valley folks, and the board became enamored with them. And shoot, I was too initially. And, and after some time I recognized, well, this isn’t working. And the board said, no, no, no, let them keep doing their thing. And I became sort of a figurehead of the company, but the whole company was being operated by the COO and I wasn’t allowed to make any changes. And it was incredibly frustrating. And it went on for almost four years.
RV (17:09):
Wow. Because this is your baby. This is your blood sweat. Yeah. You bootstrapped it. I mean, you guys bootstrapped like the first seven, 8 million in revenue, right?
CM (17:16):
That’s exactly right. Bootstrapped seven or 8 million. Then we brought on investors and, and I, and I appreciate, you know, I appreciate the investors and I appreciate all the learnings and, but we got to a point where I was very, very frustrated and, and frankly, you know, just to be candid, I was bitter and I was angry, and I wasn’t taking accountability for where we were. I was, I was pretty upset. And about three years into that ordeal I told Charise, I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t, I I can’t keep doing this, watching the company struggle like crazy and not being able to do what I think needs to be done, and I’m just done. And she said, you know, and I was, and I was angry with the board. I was angry with the, the, the new management team that had come in and she said, look, if you wanna quit, quit, but don’t do it when you’re mad. And I, boom,
RV (18:09):
There,
CM (18:10):
RV (18:10):
Boom. I mean, that is a, that is a wisdom bomb right there. You can say it again. Say it again.
CM (18:19):
If you wanna quit, quit. But don’t do it when you’re mad.
RV (18:22):
Oh, man, that’s so good.
CM (18:24):
And what it did, was it, you know, I, the, the, the funny thing was, I, I kind of, and I’d been, I’d been kind of living in this place where half the time I felt like quitting and half the time I was being threatened to be fired by the board. And so it was just such a tricky place to be. It’s so hard to describe it. But what happened when she said that to me was that I began to really be conscious of how I was showing up and how, you know, how my, how my emotions about the situation were affecting things. And then I went to work on that, and I went and I started working with my coach again. And he helped me see my part in the whole situation and helped me to take accountability for things. He helped me to be grateful, you know, because most situ, and, and I, I, when he first said, you gotta get, you gotta start, get, becoming more grateful for your board.
CM (19:15):
Mm-Hmm. And I looked at him like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, do you realize what I’m going through
RV (20:23):
I mean, that’s just so good. I mean, that’s when you go like, man, you know, God, God put a strong, faithful, wise woman in your life. And, and I think that’s the other thing is like, people don’t realize, like to this conversation, it’s like your personal life and your, and your own mindset. Like to, to the chapter, the, the first of your six keys, like your mindset, it matters. It matters tremendously. Yes. I want to ask you a little bit about rhythm. Okay. Because to me, automation sort of naturally follows rhythm. Yeah. If it’s like, if, if I can figure out a rhythm, then I can automate it, and then it’s like, then it’s magic. ’cause Now, now there’s a tool in place. Yeah. How do you, how do you find your rhythm? Especially when it’s like, you know, it’s clunky in the early years, it’s totally clunky. And, and then, I mean, you got six, six kids, is it six,
CM (21:17):
Six kids and six, six grandkids.
RV (21:19):
I mean, you got six kids, six grandkids. You’re like build, building this company. Like you’re also building, you’re a personal brand and writing books and stuff. You go, how do you find that rhythm in both the business and your personal life?
CM (21:33):
Yeah. You know what this is, this is one of the things that I’m most passionate about because I discovered it on the bus, on the business side first. And we, you know, if you’re familiar with the concepts in mastering the Rockefeller habits that Vern Harnish, Vern Harnish teaches some of the other some of the other great thought leaders that helped us learn these things were people like Jim Collins e even some of the things from Michael Gerber early on, we, we, we basically used a number of different consultants and thought leaders to create a rhythm of how we set our strategy and execute our strategy in the business. And in, in a nutshell, it was getting the, the strategy plan clear, and then having a daily, monthly, weekly, quarterly, annual, three year long-term approach. So you get the long-term vision, and then you work it all the way back to where what you’re doing each day ladders into your goals for the long-term.
CM (22:33):
And we, we started doing that 20 years ago you know, from near like like in year one of the business. And I loved it. And then I started learning some similar principles on the personal side and began doing coaching with, with personal coaches Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach devouring all kinds of things from different people like like Michael Hyatt and others that you, that, that speak and teach on this stuff. And I started to put a personal rhythm in place that sort of mirrored my business rhythm. And, and as I began to execute that many years ago, I found that it was, it was magic, you know, especially for entrepreneurs who tend to be a little A DHD, if you don’t create some kind of a rhythm, it can become, you know, just the game of the latest distraction, you know, this shiny object.
CM (23:28):
And so getting that rhythm in place. But, but the real art of it though, and the reason why I call it the rhythm of execution, is that it’s not a rut. It’s not a fixed routine. Sometimes those, those words can get, get, you know, routine can get used interchangeably, but rhythm has, it’s got magic to it. It’s got, it’s got art to it, it’s got joy to it. And so the rhythm of execution is about setting up your life vision and then executing it to a, a, a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual long-term sort of execution cadence. But it’s not rote. It’s not it’s not you know, if you just turn it into complete ha habitual autopilot, that doesn’t quite work. So rhythm is the right way to think of it. And you know, in a nutshell, I have a very beautiful morning experience. You know, I call it my Morning mastery. And I have a weekly evaluation process and a quarterly retreat. And those three, I call those three things, the three, the three transformative habits. You look at any, any person’s morning routine, weekly evaluation, planning, intentionality approach, and a quarterly rhythm that connects their short term to their long term. You look at someone’s practices around those three things, and I believe it’s almost as good as a crystal ball to their future.
RV (24:51):
Man. I love it. I love it. Well, y’all, I, I, you know, this just a, a sample of clay. He’s, you could tell he’s such a brilliant guy, and I, I’m, I’m so inspired by him and what he stands for, the way they run the company, obviously him and his personal life, and his wife. I’m a huge fan of his wife, even though we’ve never met just because, but because of her, her counsel. We’re gonna be telling y’all more about Instant Automation Toolkit. If you wanna, if you want to get a preview of that or you wanna learn about that, you can go to brand builders group.com/automation, brand builders group.com/automation. On, in terms of Clay’s book, the book is called Conquer the Chaos, right? Six Keys to Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed or, or, sorry, six keys to Success for Entrepreneurs. You got it. Is there anything else, you know, clay, that you would, would direct people or that you wanna leave people with?
CM (25:46):
Yeah, you can go to conquer the Chaos book.com, and there’s a bunch of free resources on there. And then obviously, you know, if you’re interested in getting through the chaos, the real trick is you’ve gotta understand your strategy behind it. And you can either do a consulting session, you know, with someone who can help you map your business and strategize and do that. You know, we do that at Keap, or in a better scenario, you work with someone like Rory who’s got the strategy all set up for you, and you can go implement that. That’s a, a, a better way than having to sort of recreate it yourself. So, you know, I love what you guys have created with Instant Automation Toolkit. I think it’s a great place for people to go to get resources to learn more about how to automate their business. And then the book conquer the cast book.com.
RV (26:32):
I love it. Well, clay man, thank you for what you do. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting to hear the hard parts of some of your, your story, and I think that’s so encouraging for all the entrepreneurs who are, are listening because look at, look at the difference that Clay has made, and his wife and his family, and the, the fact that they’ve been able to survive it, the tool that they’ve created in the world and their team, and all the sacrifices their team has made. And, and there’s tens of thousands of business owners like me and aj who have had our lives transformed by the sacrifices that they have made. And so, your work matters. Your small business matters, and it, it, it, it, it cascades and makes an impact in clay. That’s certainly true for you, man. So we love you. We’re praying for you. We believe in you. And thanks for being here. Thanks, Roy. Great to be with you.
Ep 509: 10 Books You Need to Read with AJ Vaden
AJV (00:02):
All right. This is a, a super sweet, quick highlight of what I would call my entrepreneur bookshelf. What are the 10 books that you should read if you are an entrepreneur or consider yourself an entrepreneur at heart, right? So you could be a solopreneur, small business owner indirect sales, real estate agent, whatever it is. But you have that entrepreneurial spirit about you. So here you go. Here are my top 10 picks for what I believe that you should know or that you should read if you are an entrepreneur to help you grow in your business. So, number one, these are in no particular order, the Psychology of Money by Morgan Hausel. Number two, nothing to prove by Jenny Allen. Number three, hidden Potential by Adam Grant. Number four, on reasonable hospitality Will Guidara one of my top three books of all time. Number five, extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
AJV (01:06):
Number six, the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. I would say this is one of the books that I would reread every single year, ’cause you need it that much. Number seven procrastinate on Purpose by the one and only my husband, Rory Vaden. It’s not in here because he’s my husband. It’s in here ’cause it’s that good. Number nine, buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. And number 10, leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. And I also have a, a bonus one for the Bookshelf, which is Take the Stairs also by Rory Vaden. And it didn’t make the top 10 because I’m calling it a bonus because I think it should be a mandatory read. Regardless if you’re an entrepreneur or not, take the stairs is universal in nature and should be read by every human being.
AJV (01:55):
It doesn’t matter if you’re 10 years old or a hundred years old, you’re in business or you’re a homemaker. It doesn’t matter. That’s universally important. It’s the only reason it wasn’t on my top 10 as an entrepreneur bookshelf. It would be on my top 10 for life. Everyone needs it. Now really quickly, why these top 10 books? There are, there’s three different themes on all of these books. The first theme is money. And if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s just something you’re gonna talk about. And I think learning both the tactical and financial side as well as the emotional side of money is a really important part of what we must do as business owners so that we can rule over the money and not let the money rule us, right? That’s the first theme in these books. The second theme in these books is time, right? So money and time, those are not in order, per se. Time is the only limited resource that we all have. We all have 60 minutes in an hour. We all have 60 seconds in a minute. We all only get 24 hours in a day. We all only get 365
AJV (02:58):
Days in a year. That’s not different for any of us. Money changes. Time does not. And so what are we gonna do with the time that we’ve been given? What are we gonna do with the time that we have with the, you know, I’m gonna call it nine hours that you work every day, 40 hours that you work every week. I know that’s not true for everybody, but, you know, status quo, what do you do with the time that you have? How do you make those decisions? How do you decide what is for you? What is not for you? What is a priority? What happens now? What happens later? And who gets it? Right? Who gets your time? That is why that is the second biggest theme in this. So you’ve got money and you’ve got time. And the third, I would say the third category is people, right?
AJV (03:40):
And that includes you. So the three categories we’re talking about in these, you know, 11 books are time, money, and people, and it’s people including yourself, right? How you view yourself as an entrepreneur, where you put your worth your identity. Where does that lie? As well as how do you cur curate culture with your team? How do you love your team? Well, how do you, how do you be unreasonably, unreasonably hospitable to your customers or prospective customers? How do you just love people really? Well? How do you build an an amazing team and cultivate culture and, and, and build strong team players and hire, recruit, retain? Like, how do you do all of this with people? Those are the three themes that I think every entrepreneur needs to learn, master and spend time in time, money and people. And those are the hearts and the themes behind each of these books that I just shared with you. So those are my top 10 books. And they all have to do with time, money, and people. So if you’re an entrepreneur or consider yourself an entrepreneurial spirit, these will resonate you. These, these books were built for you. So check ’em out, give ’em a read and let me know what you think.
Ep 508: My Entrepreneur Bookshelf with AJ Vaden
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to a special summer edition of the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. And today we’re gonna be doing something a little bit different and unique. And instead of having a guest on the show, I am going to have a solo episode highlighting not just my summer reads, but what I would consider my top 10 books that you should read if you are in business for yourself. So, whether you call yourself an entrepreneur, solopreneur, a small business owner, perhaps you’re in direct sales, or you just want to aspire to grow into a, a time in your life where you are doing your own thing, or perhaps you just want to be better at being a leader or your own professional development, wherever it is. I am, I’m kind of calling this episode the Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf, and it’s not just for entrepreneurs, but really for someone who has that entrepreneurial mindset, that’s really who it’s for.
AJV (01:08):
It’s for the person who was looking to grow in business and in leadership. And a lot of this is widespread in Universal, regardless of what you do. But over the last 20 years, which it’s kind of hard to say that out loud, I cannot believe that I have actually been in business for 20 years. But there, there’s a collection of books, some oldies but goodies some newer ones, some that you will likely know, have heard of or even have read, and, and maybe a few that are brand new to you. And what I have found is that over the last 20 years, there are 10 books that stand out to me that I refer to constantly. I recommend constantly. And also it’s like even when I was going through all of my books, these are the ones that look more like workbooks than they did like books.
AJV (02:00):
These are the ones that had dozens and dozens of dog years highlights, stars, underlying circles notes. And even looking through my phone where I keep a lot of my like, kind of like recap notes these are the ones that stand out to me. These are the ones that I remember. They are memorable. I have used them, and some of them have transformed me as a person, as a leader, and some of them very uniquely and specifically have transformed how we do business at Brand Builders Group. So, without further ado I’m going to jump right in as a summer special edition of what I would consider the top 10 books that you should read or you should know about if you are an entrepreneur. And these are in no particular order. Some of them I have the hard copies and some of them I’m just going to have to refer to the audio book version that I did. But these are
AJV (02:59):
My top 10 and what I would consider books that you should read, that you should know about. Number one, it’s The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. So if you’re watching this I’m holding a, a picture of the book. This is one of the ones that I actually read, not listened to. And one of the things that I love about going back through these is like, how much of them are highlighted and everything. And here’s what I would say of why I think this book is so important. It’s the subtitle is Timeless Lessons on Wealth, greed and Happiness. And what I love this what I love about this book is it is not about the tactical aspects of how to make money, save money, or invest money. It’s about the emotional side of money, of what grit does it have in your life, and how does that emotional side actually dictate how you make it, save it, and spend it and invest it.
AJV (03:59):
And what I love when I look back about this book and the particular lessons that it taught me is that nothing should be done in extremes, right? And I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs or business owners and or just as humans, we get all kinds of tips and information on, you know, how do you get rich fast? How do you make money while you sleep? How do you, you know, build a million or a hundred million or billion dollar empire with the least amount of work possible? And or the other thing that we hear all the time is, you know, work hard, save lots, retire early. And there’s just something to every single one of those sayings that I fundamentally don’t agree with, and I don’t believe in. I personally don’t for myself believe in retirement. I believe that way beyond retirement age that I will continue to work because one, I love it, but because I believe that there is purpose in what I do.
AJV (05:04):
And the whole concept of retirement is somewhat a phenomenon. And only really did it start to exist in the last, what, 75 years. Like prior to that, there was no such thing as retirement. And not saying that people should enjoy their golden years, but why not enjoy them with the utmost wisdom and the utmost life experiences. And it’s kind of like at the peak of our learning we look back and go, okay, we’ve done all this work, we’ve saved all this money, and now we’re, we’re going to leave the workforce. And it’s like you’re kind of at your peak opportunity to mentor people to share your wisdom. And this book isn’t just about retirement but it’s about the way that we make, save, spend and invest to get to this point of life where we are no longer contributing in a way that we have maximum potential to contribute.
AJV (06:03):
What I also love is the way that it talks about this concept of, of richness and, and wealth and redefining really what that is in terms of money, but more importantly outside of money. And that is really the heart. And why I love this book is that money clearly is necessary to live. And there’s nothing wrong with having it. There’s nothing wrong with spending it. But it cannot have a hold on your life. It cannot be the number one reason of why we make decisions. It it cannot be the ruler of our life. We have to rule over it not the other way around. And so the psychology of money really helped me let go of some of the false beliefs that I had about money and investing and spending and saving. Because it, it is a book about like all the things, it talks about investing and spending and saving and making.
AJV (07:00):
So don’t get me wrong, it is not anti any of that. But at the core, it’s making sure that the decisions we make when it comes to money are not making money King of our life over family, God or, you know, just even yourself, right? And I think that is why I think this is so important, knowing that money is a tool and it is not a ruler, it’s a tool and we have to rule over it. So psychology of Money, number one. Number two is Traction by Gina Wickman. And I would say this is a entrepreneur’s guide to getting organized in your business. The subtitle of this book is Get a Grip On Your Business. And here’s what I love, and this is definitely one of those books you can even like look at this if you can, if you’re watching this versus listening like every other page is dogeared.
AJV (07:56):
I’ve got bookmarks and every, and here’s what I would say about this, is this really outlines how to start the operational side of your business. And this is just kind of one of those things. This is the opposite of the psychology of money. This is extraordinarily tactical with lots of step one, two, and three. This is how you outline your meeting. This is how you do an org chart. These are how you do job descriptions. These are how you run your meetings. These are how you set goals. This is how you get the team on the same page. It’s extremely tactical, extremely framework oriented and it really works more like a, a workbook than it does a book. And it goes through financial strategy, marketing strategy, operational strategy. And I really do believe this is one of the fundamental things that has helped us in terms of operations at Brand Builders Group.
AJV (08:54):
I picked this book up probably six or seven years ago when I joined eo, which is the ENT Entrepreneurs Organization. And a ton of people follow EOS which is kind of like the guide tool of traction. But I really started putting it into place at Brain Builders Group about five years ago when I realized like we got a whole bunch of people running in different directions, and we all have different priorities, and there’s not an overarching priority of where is everyone running, right? And instead of having some people go left, some go right, some going forward, some going backward, it’s like we needed to pull all of that together so that everyone was running in the same direction. And we run hard and we run fast, but we were not running in the same direction, right? And it, it felt like you were like, you know, being drug between four horses being quartered.
AJV (09:47):
And when we started doing traction, not that it has worked perfectly, but it has given us a a format. It has given us a tool where we can all speak the same language. We all talk about rocks, right? We have quarterly rocks. We all decide on those together. We then subdivide them by department and role. And we know that once we make these decisions, and this is the most important part, if we all agree on the decisions we make together, then we know what always takes precedent, what always is a priority amongst the other priorities, right? And if you’re in a fast growing company or a startup per se, then everything can feel like a priority until you say, no, this is the priority. And everything else sub is subservient to this priority. And I think that’s one of the things that I will mention in my next book that I’m gonna talk about which is procrastinate on purpose.
AJV (10:45):
You cannot have priorities, you can only have priority, right? That’s singular. And that’s what I think traction really helps you do as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, is go, what are the task, the priorities that make up the primary priority that we’re all running towards? And how does everything else fit in its place? How do we talk about it? How do we operationalize it? How do we have meetings about it? How do we get everyone on the same page? So it is a very tactical workbook for anyone who needs a little organization in their business, right? So Traction, Gino Wickman which would lead me to my third, which is Procrastinate on purpose. Shameless plug, this is my husband’s book, Rory Vaden. And it is similar to the Psychology of Money in terms of what so many so many time management books talk about are the, the tacticals and the tips and techniques, which I do have another book that we’re gonna talk about that talks about that when it comes to productivity and time management.
AJV (11:53):
But what I love about Rory’s book, procrastinate on Purpose, you know, five permissions to Multiply Your Time, is it’s about the emotional side of time management. And I, I love the psychology part, the emotional side of a lot of these books, because that’s usually what we’re not tapped into, right? We’re we’re being taught all these new technologies and all these tools and all these tips and these tricks, and to-do lists and schedules and apps and all the things. And at the end of the day, those things only work. They only work. Same thing with the money, books, psychology, money, like all the investing strategies only work once you understand the emotional drivers of how you spend your money in that book. But in this book, procrastinating on Purpose, it’s the emotional drivers of how you spend your time. And both of these book made my top 10 because time and money are pretty much most commonly talked about things in business.
AJV (12:52):
At least in our business. It’s what do we have time for and what do we have money for, right? It’s what do we wanna spend our time on? What do we wanna spend our money on? It’s where do we need to save time? Where do we need to save money? Where do we need to invest time? Where do we need to invest money? It’s time and money. Time and money are also the two most common objections in sales, right? Time and money show up everywhere. And that should tell us if it is everywhere personally and professionally, we need to invest adequate amounts of time and understanding both the, you know, tactical side, but just as importantly, the emotional side, right? There is a logic to money and time. There is an emotion component though, to time and money. And what I love about Rory’s book is one, he’s, he’s so gifted a god give and talent and consolidating lots of ideas and thoughts into simple processes and frameworks that visualize how things go together.
AJV (13:51):
And so his focus funnel is one of the most probably talked about things. He has a very widespread Ted talk called How to Multiply Your Time on this. If you wanna get the highlighted version, even though I do recommend reading the book. But the focus funnel is a simple way of processing where you need to spend time. And I’ll, I’ll go through it really quickly. It’s like, you know, step one, when a task comes onto my plate at the first decision I need to make is, can this be eliminated? Right? And if it can’t be eliminated, then can it be automated? And if it can’t be automated, then can it be delegated? Okay? And if it can’t be delegated, can it be procrastinated on or does it become a priority? Right? And a priority means it has to be done. Now, procrastinate means it does need to be done, it just doesn’t need to be done now.
AJV (14:45):
But just walking through all the tasks in my life of what are the things that I’m spending time on that I should not be spending time on one because it shouldn’t be done at all, but I’m doing it for some reason, or it needs to be done. But there is a system that can be, it can automate it, or it, it does need to be done and it can’t be automated, but there is someone else who can and should be doing it. And that’s probably where I struggle, right? I struggle from the, I can do it better syndrome, or I can do it faster syndrome. It’s the curse of knowledge because I’ve been in the business a long time. Many business owners have this. And the truth is that’s actually only true for a short amount of time because once someone else is hired and trained and efficient in it, they actually can do it better than you and faster than you because they do it more than you, right?
AJV (15:34):
But that does take time, money and energy resources to pull that off. But it’s all about investing time into something now that will give you more time later. And that is the heart and the essence of the book is helping you understand when you say the words, I don’t have time or I’m so busy understanding why, where does that come from? Because those are all choices that we are making. So what are the choices that are causing responses or feelings like that? And then what can we do about it? One of my favorite books of all time, not just because my husband wrote it, but because we all struggle with those two words. I’m busy. And this will help eliminate those from your vernacular. Maybe not immediately, but if you follow it, eventually, eventually those start to fade and going, it’s, no, I’m not busy.
AJV (16:29):
These are choices I made. This is a priority, or I’m gonna do something about it. Right? okay, moving right along. On the same kind of topic of time management, there’s Rory’s book, procrastinate on Purpose, which is more of the emotional side. That is more of our choices that we make and what do we do about that. But then there’s another book by Dan Martel, don’t have a copy of it to share to show a picture of, because it was an audio book for me, but it’s called Buy Back Your Time. And to me as an entrepreneur, this is one of the best tactical books of systems and processes of how to do things like automate and delegate and prioritize. This is so, so helpful. Buy back your time. If you are in a place where you are actually ready to start delegating where you can afford staff and you have the time and energy, or even if you don’t have the time and energy, but you can afford it, and you have to make the time and energy, it is an amazing tool of working with a team and getting things off of your plate and how to get it on their plates.
AJV (17:39):
And I’m not talking about just an executive assistant or chief of staff, even though it does go into great detail about finding the person, hiring the person, training the person, getting them up to speed, how to meet with them. I love it. I use it with my chief of staff. It is a very important tactical tool in how I run my personal and professional life. But also, more importantly, how do you just get your team members up to speed, right? And this is a really great book about operationalizing systems, specifically SOPs, right? And you should only have to teach something one time. Let me repeat that. Dan talks about how you should only have to teach something one time, because if you do it the right way, you only have to do it one time. And the right way isn’t training a person, it’s building a process.
AJV (18:22):
It’s documenting an SOP. And he gives an amazing formula of how to build SOPs that are quick, efficient, and what the people will actually use using video tutorials and keeping all of your SOPs two pages or shorter. That’s right, two pages. We actually have some SOPs that are 56 pages at Brand Builders Group, and we are working our tails off on how do we get those down to two or three pages with bullet points and video tutorials. And that is a huge part of, it’s one thing to spend all this time into building SOPs and training people, but if the people leave and nobody will use the SOPs, that was time wasted. So how do you get it right the first time? And you only have to train something once because when you train it, you’re actually building the SOP, you’re building the video tutorial, so you never have to do it again.
AJV (19:10):
Such an amazingly tactical book and how to buy your time back, right? And that is buying it back through processes and SOPs and also people, so people and processes buy back your time. Dan Martel, such a good book. All right. I am staying on this kind of time management train for a second because it’s not just that important to me. It’s that important to all of us. This next book is one of the most life changing and business changing books of my entire life, and is also by one of my favorite authors. And this book is called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, by John Mark Comer. And I have read almost every book he has written, but this was the first one. This is when I fell in love with his writing. And I fell in love with it because it changed my life.
AJV (20:00):
This is, this is a book that I can literally point back to and go based on the changes that I made in my life. I am a new and better person. I am a new and better mom, a new and better wife, a new and better leader, a new and better business owner. And I can also trace back the quarter that I read this book in 2022, which was Spring of 2022, quarter two. I read this book and had an epiphany that we were just doing too much. ’cause At the end of the day, a a hurry is a byproduct of being over committed, of trying to do too much. And I had this epiphany of I was feeling burnout and going, I don’t know if I can continue running at this speed. I, I don’t know if I have it in me.
AJV (20:49):
I don’t, I don’t know if I want to have it in me. And after reading this book, I sat down and created a brand new business plan for Brand Builders Group. This was four years after being in business. And we were addicted to saying Yes, yes, we can do that. Yes, we’ll figure that out. Yes, we’ll add that. Yes, we can try to do that for you. Yes, yes, yes. Because one, we love ideas. We’re little idea factories, but we also, we, we wanna be a place of innovation and change and listening to our customers. And we were really plagued with saying yes to every opportunity. And I rewrote a business plan for Brand Builders Group and the business plan, including cutting half of our offerings. And that was scary. It included changing our pricing structure, how we priced it, what we offered how we did things. And we went from seven service offerings down to three in the matter of three months. And over the next year, we doubled our business.
AJV (21:59):
Not only did our business double in terms of revenue, but our business actually doubled in terms of client count and employee size. And that was pretty extreme growth for us. ’cause We were experiencing 10% growth, 15% growth year over year. And from 2022 to 2023, we doubled in business, doubled in size, both clients employees and in revenue. And I can trace, trace that change back to implementing some of the things that were ahas for me from reading this book. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, of How More is not better always. There is not this incessant need of always doing more, but there needs to be an incessant need of always doing better, right? Better is better, not more is better. And I’m not saying less is better. In this case, less was better. It was better for us. ’cause It allowed us to focus in on our expertise, focus in on our avatar, focus in on our service offerings and double down.
AJV (23:03):
But what it really allowed us to do is by doing less, we were allowed to do those things exceptionally better, right? And that’s what it’s about. It’s not about doing more or less per se, but it’s about choosing less so you can do it better and have it be more enjoyable and less stressful, and actually enjoy the other components of life and business. And that all stemmed from the ruthless elimination of Hurry. And I was, I was ruthless in 2022 about removing stress, anxiety, busyness, and hurry from my life. It’s probably one of the books I need to go back and read at the beginning of every year. This is, this is a reread. Like I would say this is one of those books that I would encourage a, a read every year because these are the things that we forget so often and we get caught up in the rat race once again.
AJV (23:56):
But this is one of the most impactful and significant books of my life. The Ruthless Elimination of Harry by John Mark Comer. So if that is not a testimonial, I don’t know what is. Okay, next books are kind of taking a slightly different turn. Talked about money, talked about time and now we’re gonna talk about some other things that I think are really important. So I’ll start with leadership, right? Clearly it’s an entrepreneur bookshelf. We should have that. This is one of my favorite books on leadership. It’s Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. I love this. It’s like the subtitle is why some teams pull together and others don’t. And this is an oldie. I probably read this 15 years ago, but still reference it, remember it. And you know, what I remember the most is the actual title.
AJV (24:51):
And I remember shortly after reading this book my, the first company that I was a part of went on an incentive trip. This is not Brand Builders Group, this was pre-and Builders Group. And we went to Belize and I was the part of the executive team organizing this trip for our top producers. And we just happened to go to Belize during this tropical storm
AJV (25:39):
And I heard them tell this top producer of ours who is, you know, a guest on the trip, Hey, we are out of King Beds. Not the most convenient thing to hear as you’re checking in with your wife. We only have two double beds left. And I just saw the look that they had on each other’s faces. And I am not the hero of this story. The book is the hero of this story. And I remember reading this book and going, leaders Eat Last. And in that particular case, what it meant is leaders get the two double beds, the team gets the king bed. And I walked up and I just said, Hey, can you please swap our rooms? And it wasn’t a big deal to me at the time. It really wasn’t. It was a, a conscious decision to go, you first, me last.
AJV (26:33):
And it was a conscious decision to go, I will be the first one to step forward. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna take the bullet on this one. We can manage four nights and two double beds so that you can enjoy a trip that you earned. And again, I am not the hero in the, in the story of the book is. But doing that, what it did for the producer was probably one of the most impactful things in my life that I didn’t even expect of the gratitude and the, the, the loyalty and the thankfulness of going, you didn’t have to do that. It’s like, yeah, but I did because I, I chose to be the leader. Here I am choosing to raise my hand first to forge into battle first, to take the first risk. And that’s what you’re doing as an entrepreneur, right?
AJV (27:22):
I actually, I, I love, like on the back it says, leaders are the ones who run headfirst into the unknown. They are the ones to rush into the danger. They put their own interests aside to protect the team or to pull us into the future. Leaders would soon sacrifice what is theirs to save, what is ours. And they would never sacrifice what is ours to save what is theirs. That is what it means to be a leader. It means to choose first to go into danger headfirst into the unknown, right? And that’s just on the back of the book, right? Like, like who’s not inspired to read that? A little bit of okay, what, what does it really mean to be a leader? And in this regard, it’s, it’s choosing to put others first. And how do you do that, right? How do you do that in business?
AJV (28:09):
How do you do that in your team when there is a, a, a self-centered self nature to all of us? I, I promise you it was not my heart’s desire to give up that king bed on that trip. And at the same time, it wasn’t also the ultimate sacrifice, right? It, it was a choice of going, no, I made the decision to step into this leadership role. So I have to make the choice to also put others first. That’s what I’m choosing as a leader. And I can think of countless other times through my life, even though I may not remember all the words on the pages of this book, however, like many others, it’s dogeared throughout. And I still have bookmarks highlighting the pages that I refer back to constantly. What it, what it really is, is the reminder that as a leader, I am choosing last, I am choosing to put the team first.
AJV (29:03):
I am choosing to put others ahead of me. I’m choosing to serve them above myself, right? And not serve anyone person over the whole, that’s not what I’m saying. It actually talks a lot about that. But what are the, the micro decisions we can make every day? And what are the macro decisions that we can make that affect a whole lifespan of a business or a team or a person? And I think that’s why I love this book, and I can just, I, I, I think I probably even said, remember, leaders eat last hundreds of times over the last 15 years. And without any explanation, the team gets it, right? Other leaders get it. They’re like, yes, I understand this is a decision I made, I step into this. But reading this book helps you understand what are those micro decisions to make?
AJV (29:54):
How do you step into it and how do you do it on a daily basis, but also on a, a much larger scale. So one of my favorite leadership books, leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek. I could go on and on about it. All right, in that same vein, I know, right? I’m, I’m trying to make up some time here. Another one that I would, I would, I would call this for me, a leadership book, extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Le Babin. And I don’t have a physical copy because it was an audio book. And if you have read the book and haven’t listened to the audio, I would highly encourage you to do that, because I think the storytelling component of Jocko and Le and this book is so powerful, and it’s kind of like a, an audio page turner.
AJV (30:38):
Like, I remember going like, okay, I need to go on a walk, or, or I need to go on a drive so I can put this in and listen to it. It, it’s one of those things that it’s just really enjoyable to listen to the storytelling components of it, the emotional side. So, hey, wife, if you haven’t listened to it, highly encouraged, but Extreme Ownership was actually a mandatory read two years ago at Brand Builders Group. Every quarter we put a book that the entire company reads together. And Q1 of 2023 was a mandatory read of extreme ownership. And it was one of the best decisions that we ever made as a, as a company to go. One, we’re going to read books together, mandatory. And two, this book. And I think one of the things that I love about this book is, well, one, I do have mad respect for our military and Navy Seals and the stories and the lessons of leadership that come out of that.
AJV (31:35):
Because like, when I think about my daily battles in leadership, they are microscopic to the significance of the ones that these people are making in our military. And just, it puts it in perspective of when I’m stressed out about a formula on a spreadsheet of the stress that carries, and knowing that you carry someone’s life in your hands, a true life or death. And it’s a really good book on perspective of what we call stress and anxiety and where we worry in the scheme of things, right? And it’s been a great reminder to me of like, this is not a life and death situation, aj, it is okay if there was a, a, a spelling error on the PowerPoint, chill out. And at the same time, knowing that there is a power and ownership of stepping in and as a, as a leader, right?
AJV (32:31):
This is a leadership book of going, at the end of the day, someone’s gotta own it. And I’m not saying that as the entrepreneur, you own all of it, but at the end of the day you’re the business owner. It comes to you, right? You own the discipline of your team. You own the structure and the operational excellence. You own it by creating a culture of ownership. And I think this is a pH phenomenal book, both in storytelling and anecdotes and stories and examples, but also the emotional and the tactical side, which I really love. There are lots of strategic components to this paired with real life stories and examples both military speaking, but also business case studies. And I think it’s a really powerful thing to step into any business of going the end of the day, whether we succeed or fail, I’m gonna own it.
AJV (33:26):
And again, that’s for everyone in the company to have that attitude. It’s going, Hey, if this didn’t go right, I own the mistake. And if it did, I get a part of owning some of the win. Not all of it. ’cause You know, it never happens alone. But also having someone who steps in and who can quickly go, my bad, that was my mistake. I won’t have, I won’t make it again. It won’t happen again. Versus the person who’s going to, you know, pass blame, not own it, not tell, try to cover it up. This is about transparency. This is about teamwork. This is about honesty, integrity, and it’s about ownership of how do we, how do we create ownership in a task, in a project so that no one is looking around going, so who’s to blame here? And instead, everyone is going like, my part, my part got done.
AJV (34:19):
But at the end of the day, what matters most is did the thing get done? And that’s what I would recommend about this book. If you feel like you have a team where people are going, Hey, I did my part, but yet somehow the whole project didn’t get done, then we gotta, we got an ownership problem because someone’s gotta own all pieces of it. And that’s where I think teams really come together or fall apart, is for the person going, oh, no, I did my part Uhuh, that was not my department. That was not my role of going. We need a team of going, it didn’t have to be my job. I ensured it got done. It didn’t have to be my department. I’m gonna be a part of making sure it gets done right. And that’s what I love about Extreme ownership. So extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Le Babin, amazing book.
AJV (34:59):
And I think just really important on a cultural standpoint of do you have a team who comes together and gets stuff done, or does it fall apart? And the projects linger and deadlines extend. And if that’s it, you got an ownership problem. And this is a great book to read in that vein. Now, on that note, there’s another audio book that I love. This is a new read. I actually just read this book this year in 2024. It’s called Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. And one, i, I would say it is also to me in the leadership vein because it’s about seeking and searching for the potential within your team, right? And I actually am gonna pull up some of the quick notes that I took on this. And just to kind of give you some highlights of what I love what one person can learn proves that almost anyone can learn it if provided with the right learning opportunities and environment, right?
AJV (36:03):
And I think that’s kind of the first thing. It’s like what one person can learn proves that almost anyone can learn that too, if provided with the right learning opportunities and environment. And I think therein lies the heart of hidden potential of going, they may not believe it, you may not believe it, but if somebody else has done it, then someone else can do it. But the opportunity and the environment have to be structured in a way that allows that potential to emerge. And a part of our job as leaders is to provide those opportunities and environment, right? And I, I love that as I look at my team here at Brand Builders Group of going like, where are there opportunities of hidden potential in every single person and every role in every department? And where am I not providing the right opportunities for those things to emerge?
AJV (36:54):
And maybe that opportunity is an invitation. Maybe it’s training maybe it’s a conversation, whatever it may be, but it has opened my eyes to seeing our team and the roles we have and the gaps we have in completely new, in different ways. The second thing I would just say this is I think really important in general for someone like me who’s a little bit type A high D likes to get things done, eight on the Enneagram this is a really important one for me, is potential is not about where you start, but how far you travel. And that’s one of the things that I’ve looked back and I’m going, wow. It, it’s, it’s not about where we started, it’s about how far we’ve come. And if someone can go, you know, completely from, you know, left to right in terms of growth and change, it’s like there is potential of going, there is more to be done, right?
AJV (37:53):
And looking at the span of what people have overcome, have learned that is an enormous thing that I now pay attention to in interviews of what were they able to overcome, how far have they come from where they started? And that shows so much about work ethic and personal growth and determination and endurance and perseverance. And those are things, those are the things that I wanna build a team around, right? I also loved this whole thing. It’s like, if you’re comfortable, you’re doing it wrong to Ted Lasso quote and Hidden Potential. And I love that, and I love that as a reminder for me, for my own hidden potential. And I think one of the reasons I loved Hidden Potential so much is it wasn’t about just our team, it was about me too. It’s like, where am I comfortable? Like, where do I still have potential to grow, change and evolve as a human, as a leader, as a business owner, as a mom, as wife?
AJV (38:55):
And so Adam Grant Hidden Potential, I think this is also in line with a, it’s a, it’s a people book. It’s a leadership book. It’s about looking for intentionally and finding ways to see the hidden potential all around you and the people on your team and the people that you’re interviewing. And I think this is about exploration into how do we help people tap into what they were meant to become. And just because they aren’t, that doesn’t mean they can’t be that. And just kind of going back to that first thing, it’s like what one person has learned proves that almost anyone can learn it, provided that we create, and that there is, you know, a created opportunity and environment that allows for it. So what can we do to cultivate such an environment? I love the book. I thought it was so good.
AJV (39:44):
Okay, moving right along here, unreasonable Hospitality. This is also a newer read for me, unreasonable Hospitality, will Gera is now on my permanent, probably top three books of all time that I’ve ever read. And I would also encourage if you do listen to audio to read this, because I think Will is an amazing storyteller, and he’s so animated and it, the whole thing feels like an adventure. It, it feels like you’re on this journey with him. From, you know, being a restaurateur to having the top rated restaurant in the entire world 11 Madison Park, to building a team and building a culture and to be one of the top restaurateur and not be a chef, right? To be from the operation side. And knowing that like he actually did what he went to school for and had a passion for it as a young person.
AJV (40:41):
And then to make the decision to leave that for the betterment of the business and for the team. There is so much in here about creativity and a service and hospitality that I feel like has been lost and unreasonable. Hospitality is really, how do you love people? Well, how do you love your team? Well, how do you love your customers? Well how do you just love people? And in this particular book, it’s through the Art of hospitality, of making people feel welcome and cared for, paying attention to the little details. And they don’t have to be expensive. But they do need to be personal. They need to be curated and unique so that people don’t feel like they’re a, a number, they feel like a person. And, and also providing your team with just enough opportunity to make decisions on their own, right?
AJV (41:41):
Nothing that’s gonna financially break the bank, right? We all have to have ownership back to extreme ownership of the health of, of the business, but also just enough, you know, bandwidth to be creative and unique, to do something on the spot. Or you don’t get caught up in a bunch of bureaucracy and red tape, and you, goodness, you can’t even buy someone a, a thank you card without getting higher approval. Right? And I think this is a beautiful story and a tangible book on how do you love people really well through hospitality, through gifting, through experiences, through words, through food, which I loved, right? Through food. But how do you care? How do you serve people and unique ways through the, the gift and the art of unreasonable hospitality unreasonable amounts sometimes to go. It is not always about a dollar.
AJV (42:37):
And I might lose on this one, but it’s worth it because I know that at some point it’ll come back. It you just love and serve people really well. That is the best marketing you can have, right? We say this all the time at Brand Builders Group, is that the best thing in the world is to turn your customer force into your sales force. How do you do that? You serve your customers undeniably well, and if you love them well and serve them well and provide for them well, they will become your sales force. And that is word of mouth marketing, right? That’s referral marketing. That is why 11 Madison Park had unbelievable reservation wait lists,
AJV (43:29):
And also one of the things that got them to be rated one, not be one of the best, the best restaurant in the world. And I think Will’s story of creativity, of leadership, of culture is unfounded in this book through the Art of Loving People really Well, one of my favorite books of all time. This was also a mandatory read at Brand Builders Group. If that tells you anything unreasonable Hospitality Will Guera. So, so good. Okay. ninth book it’s called Nothing to Prove, Jenny Allen. And subtitle is why we Can’t Stop Trying So Hard. And out of all the books that I’ve recommended this is probably the one that is most personally associated because this book is really tailored, catered to the person who finds their worth in their work. And that was me. I, it, it’s still me.
AJV (44:28):
I, I’m overcoming this, right? But this was specifically designed for, I believe, entrepreneurs who find their identity into what they do. Or, you know, it could be the stay at home mom who finds her identity and her kids. And one day those kids grow up and leave. And as a mom, we look in the mirror and we go, who am I? And as entrepreneurs, sometimes we sell our businesses, we retire or the business doesn’t work out, and we look in the mirror and we go, who am I? Like if I don’t have this, who am I? And I know so many friends who have built wonderfully successful businesses that went on to have wonderful exits, only to find that they now felt lost, lonely, empty, and without purpose. And that happens when we have made our work, our identity, when we have found our worth and what we do versus who we are.
AJV (45:32):
And I love this book. This is author, the second book that I would say in my list that has radically changed my life. People will look back at me and be like, man, you’re, you’re different. You, you sound different. You seem different. Like your energy is different. And I will trace it back and go, if you think. So, it’s because of this book. Nothing To Prove by Jenny Allen. She’s also one of my favorite authors that I have gone on to read almost every other book that she has written. And it’s because I’m her avatar. I am the person who struggles with finding my worth and what I do, and my productivity and my accomplishments and my ambition. And I am the person who struggles with finding my identity in work. And that is a conscious thing that I’m working through to overcome.
AJV (46:20):
But if, if that is you, this book was written for you. It was written for your heart, it was written for your soul, and if you allow it to, it will change your life. So Jenny Allen, nothing to prove one of the most life changing books I’ve ever read. And it has changed the way I approach work and how and how I work, because now I know that is not who I am. That is not my worth. I’m so much more than that. And it is no longer my identity. My identity expands way beyond that. And even though we know that when you’re faced with it being gone it’s a whole different reality. And might as well be proactive. Let’s get ahead of that. And this is a book that will really help you do that.
AJV (47:07):
Nothing to prove. Okay? actually that was number 10. But I had a, I had a bonus one sitting over here, so I forgot. So those were my top 10 books. So I, psychology of Money, Morgan Housel, nothing to Prove Jenny Allen, hidden Potential. Adam Grant, unreasonable Hospitality Will Guera Extreme Ownership. Jocko Willink and Le Babin, the ruthless elimination of her. John Mark Comer, procrastinate on purpose. Mother of One and only Ry Vaden, my awesome husband. Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martel Traction. Gina Wickman and Leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek. And then I have an 11th bonus one. Because I, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention take The Stairs but also my amazing husband, Rory Vaden. And this was his first book released in 2010. And here we are 14 years later, and this is still probably like the most requested keynote that he gets.
AJV (48:07):
This book has been out for 14 years. It’s still, it, it still, it, it’s, it’s a, it’s an evergreen classic of, you know, what are the things that you need to know about business and life and yourself to achieve true success? And defining what true success is. And take the Stairs is, it’s really a, a metaphor for just because you don’t want to doesn’t mean you should, right? And I think there’s a, a lot of truth in going, like, man, there are things that we don’t want to do, but they are good for us. And they produce character and endurance in ways that nothing else can. And it’s not that we should only want to do hard things, but it’s, it’s facing the challenges and facing the hard things are what build character. Nobody looks back on the easy days and go, man, that really defined me.
AJV (49:01):
That doesn’t happen. Nobody looks back on all the victories and successes and, and, and said, man, that, that success is what made me who I am today. We don’t do that. We actually look back and go, man, that valley that I was living in a really long time that defeat, that failure, that loss, that’s where I found my strength. That’s where I found who I am. And I think a lot of what I love about this book, take The Stairs, is it’s embracing hard things and it, it’s choosing to do things even when you don’t feel like doing them because you know they’re good for you, right? And it’s determining what those things are. How do you make those choices? That was my bonus pick for my entrepreneur bookshelf. Take the Stairs by Rory Baden, seven Steps to Achieving True Success. Y’all, there you go. This is our, my solo, summer solo episode, the Entrepreneur Bookshelf 10 books with a bonus, 11 of what I believe every entrepreneur should know and read and embrace to not only do work that you love but to actually do good in the world. So check ’em out, let me know what you think, catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 501: 3 Insights to Build More Mental Toughness | Dean Stott Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
Let’s talk about how to be more mentally tough. I’m gonna share with you three insights that I think are a requirement for anyone to understand. Who wants to be stronger mentally, right? And when I say mental toughness, what I’m talking about, I, I’m talking about the, the, the, the, the process of training your brain to think in a way that allows you to continue in the face of adversity. Everyone who has ever been successful has faced adversity. You’re going to face adversity again and again and again. Your ability to overcome adversity is completely connected and tied to your mental toughness. The way that your brain processes rejection, the way that your brain processes pain, failure, setbacks, tragedies, challenges, however your brain responds to those elements will determine whether or not you are successful in this life. It will determine whether or not you have or achieve, or gain or acquire the things that you desire.
RV (01:20):
Because
RV (02:21):
Now, the first one I’m actually gonna take directly from Dean from this interview, ’cause I had never heard anybody say it this way. I’ve heard lots of people talk about this concept. So I know this is a truth because I’ve experienced it and I’ve heard lots of other successful people talk about it in, in our research, in our coaching, and working with people. But I’ve never heard anybody say it the way that Dean said it. And this is so powerful. He said, anticipation is always worse, almost always worse than participation. Anticipation is worse than participation. What is he
RV (02:58):
Saying there? He’s saying that whenever you are going to set out to conquer something meaningful, whenever you’re gonna set out to do something significant, whenever you’re chasing a new dream, going after a new goal, attempting a new endeavor, the anticipation is worse than the participation. Our minds make things up to be much more difficult than they really are. And by the way, if your brain does this, which I know it does, this doesn’t mean that you are someone who’s doomed for failure. When your brain does this, this is what the brain is supposed to do. Your brain is designed to keep you safe. So when your brain is doing this, it means that you have a perfectly normal, healthy, functioning human brain. Why? Because the brain is designed to keep you alive. Survival is the first and foremost function of the human brain. And the way that you keep somebody alive is by keeping them safe, which means doing things that are comfortable, which means preventing you from doing things that are new and unfamiliar and un uncomfortable and uncertain.
RV (04:14):
So the brain holds you towards certainty, safety and repeated behavior where you already know the outcomes. And so fear is the tactic that your brain uses to keep you safe, right? That’s why my favorite definition of fear is the old acronym FEAR for fear, false evidence appearing real. So what does your brain do? Your brain by design biologically goes into mental mushrooming. It goes into forecasting the worst possible scenario. That’s what the brain, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It is forecasting all the negative things that could happen might happen. What if you know, like, what if there’s things you don’t know? What if you fail? What if you go broke? What if you die? And that’s the brain’s mechanism for keeping you from pursuing new things which are risky and keeping you doing the things you’ve always done, which is safe, which keeps you alive.
RV (05:15):
However, if you’re gonna be a successful person, you gotta overcome that. If you’re going to do something that nobody else has done, you’ve got to think in a way that nobody else thinks. If you’re going to achieve things that you’ve never had, you have to do things you’ve never done. You have to become a different person than you are. You have to set out on a trail that you’ve never been down before. And so it doesn’t mean that your, your brain is somehow faulty when fear shows up, but it also doesn’t mean that that’s the truth about what’s gonna happen. In fact, it’s almost never the truth. And what Dean is saying is the anticipation is worse than the participation. It’s thinking about it and thinking about how hard it could be and how hard it might be. Much more that is much more difficult than the actual doing the things.
RV (06:09):
And so you have to just know that in order for you to be mentally tough, you have to know a little bit about neuroscience. You have to know a little bit about psychology. You have to know a little bit about how your brain works so that you can go, ah,
RV (07:06):
People who are mentally tough have resolved to say, if I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail to something that’s real. If I’m gonna endure setbacks, I’m gonna endure setbacks to things that really showed up. What I am not okay with is I am not gonna allow myself to never achieve and to never even attempt or pursue because I am going to enable myself to be a victim of a figment of my imagination. I am not gonna lose to what is fake. I am not gonna lose to what is made up. I am not gonna lose to what is not real. You have to make that resolution. You have to decide that if you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose to a real opponent. You’re not gonna lose because you were too afraid to step onto the field. And 95% of people, probably 99% of people can’t get past that one hurdle.
RV (07:59):
You get past that one hurdle, you’re on your way because you realize that anticipation is often worse than participation. The second insight that you need to know to build your mental toughness is that you have to build a great plan and put your confidence in the plan, and then simply execute the plan, right? So what you don’t wanna do is be dependent on you having courage in every given any given moment, on any given day, in any given circumstance. What you don’t wanna do is be completely reliant on your gut instinct all the time. What you don’t wanna do is say, woo, you know, I’ll just fly by the seat of my pants and hope I figure this out. What you don’t wanna do is just run blindly into a fire. Like you want to have a plan, and you want that plan to be based on reality, data, experience, logic, rationale, other people’s experience, interviews, coaching, education.
RV (09:08):
You want to create a plan based on pragmatic logic. And what you do, and this is what all like peak performers do, right, is they create a plan and then they focus on executing the plan. Every professional athlete, professional coach, this is what they do. They create the plan. This is what the military does in life and death situations. What do they do? They create the plan. Do they sometimes have to deviate from the plan? Sure, they do, but they have a plan and they work the plan. They put time into creating the plan, and then they execute the plan, right? That’s what a budget does. A good entrepreneur creates a budget. Why? What is a budget? It’s a plan. It’s to go, look, if we have these financial goals, these are the things that need to happen. These are the inputs that need to happen to drive the revenue to this number.
RV (09:57):
And out of the revenue that comes in, we will plan to spend this amount on each of these things, and we will reinvest this amount to, to grow the revenue again. And then we’ll plan to spend X percentage of, of the revenue on each of these line items. It’s a plan. You create a plan and then you execute the plan. Now, greatness sometimes requires that you deviate from the plan, but you have to have a plan first. And you, you put, you put your self-esteem. This is something that I said and take the stairs all the way back in 2012. You put your self-esteem, you put your in your work habits, not into your production. You put your energy, you put your focus, you put your faith, you put your conviction. You, you, you, you put your discipline, you, you put, you put your, your, your faith into your work habits, into the things you control into the plan, executing the plan that you’ve laid out, doing the things that are pragmatic and functional and actionable, not in the results.
RV (10:54):
Because there’s things that show up that you can’t control. And you can’t always control the, you can’t always control the result. You can’t only, I can’t always control the circumstances, but you can control whether or not you set a plan and then you just work the plan. And part of how you overcome your fear of failure, part of how you overcome the fear of failing is, is to say, if I fail at something, my self-worth and my identity is not gonna be wrapped up in the fact that I failed at something. ’cause It wasn’t that I failed, it was that my plan failed. It’s not Rory as a person failed. It’s, I took the time to create a plan. I thought the plan was gonna deliver an outcome. I thought the plan was gonna deliver a result, and then my plan failed to deliver that result.
RV (11:44):
I didn’t fail. The plan failed. I only fail if I didn’t execute the plan. But that, or if I don’t have a plan, but I create a plan and then I execute the plan. Sometimes the plan works, sometimes the plan doesn’t. But if the plan didn’t work, you go, oh, I need to modify my plan. That’s it. It’s not, I’m a failure. I’m horrible. I’ll never be successful. I’m not spiraling down into some sort of de depression, and I’m not, my, my, my confidence, my self-confidence isn’t affected by the fact that I fail. See, people who are not mentally tough have fluctuating confidence when things are going well. They have confidence when things aren’t going well, they don’t have confidence. But people who are mentally tough constantly have confidence even when they’re failing. Why? Because their confidence isn’t based on the outcome. Their confidence isn’t based on result.
RV (12:37):
Their confident is based on their work habits. Their confidence is based on the plan. Their confidence is based on their effort, their discipline, their energy, their confidence comes from controlling what they can control. And if they’re controlling what they can control and they’re failing, there’s nothing to be upset about because you can’t control whether or not you succeed or fail. You can only control what you could control. So if you stay focused on that, you go, I don’t have confidence that fluctuates. Even when I fail, it wasn’t that I failed, it’s that my plan failed. I need, I needed a better plan. The plan was the issue, not me. Now, if I failed to execute the plan, that’s more of something that I have to face accountability for, and I have to take self accountability for, or I have to have accountability with a boss or a, you know, spouse or coworkers or colleagues or partners to say, yeah, we created this plan. I didn’t execute my part of the plan. I gotta own that. That is a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a personal failure, right? That’s a character failure. That’s a, my me not executing. But that’s why you create the plan, put your confidence in the plan, and then you work the plan and you put your self-esteem and your self-confidence and your self-worth in your work habits, not in your results, not in your outcomes. Mentally tough people do that. Number three. Number three, this is big secret, big secret of successful people.
RV (14:01):
It’s not that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. You just have to be willing to do the right things for however long it takes, right? A lot of people talk about doing whatever it takes. Eh, I don’t know about that, right? If it requires me to kill someone, if it requires me to steal, if it requires me to, you know, compromise my own personal health ever, if it requires me to like, turn my back on my family or not be available, right? It’s like, nah, I don’t know. What, what, what I will do though is I will say, if I want something bad enough, I will do the right activities for as long as it takes. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a decade. But if I really, really want it and I still want it, I will continue on course until the mission is complete.
RV (14:58):
You know, I love the, the old sort of tongue in cheek saying that says, I’ve never lost. I’ve only been behind when the, when the clock ran out.
RV (15:44):
But here’s the thing, if you stay focused on that goal, I promise, like if you stay focused on the goal and you really focus on it, you will get the goal. Don’t be discouraged by the deadline. That’s a big part of the point here is don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet the deadline. I think deadlines are important. Deadlines drive stress. That’s what deadlines do. They create stress. Some amount of stress is healthy. A deadline goes, man, we are gonna prioritize this to be completed by this date. And part of that stress creates, you know, it moves you from the inertia of standing still, and it gets you moving and you go, Hey, you better start moving because there’s a deadline. That to me, is healthy. The unhealthy part of deadlines is to go, man, I’m doing everything I freaking can. I’m working the, the most I possibly can.
RV (16:33):
I’m doing everything I know how to do. I’m laying it on the line. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m doing the best I can do, and I’m just not gonna get there by the deadline. Well, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be stressed and you shouldn’t be beaten up. You certainly shouldn’t be beating yourself up. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-confidence. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-worth. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-esteem. You can’t control those things. If you go, man, I am control. I’m working as fast as I can, and I haven’t been able to get there by this deadline, that’s okay.
RV (17:05):
The question is, are you doing everything you can do? Are you doing the best that you can do? And are you willing to do it? If it’s a goal that really matters to you, are you willing to do it? Are you willing to pursue it for however long it takes? Right? And you go, I always thought this, this is gonna sound arrogant, this is gonna sound arrogant. I don’t mean for it to sound arrogant. This is just the straight up truth. The first time I went to the National Speakers Association meeting, I think I was 22 years old, and they were you know, they do this awards banquet every year where they induct up to, I think it’s up to five, maybe six. They up the induct up to five or six people every year into the professional speaking hall of fame. And I’m telling you, I was 22 years old, and I decided, I sat there, right there, and I was like, I’m gonna be a, I’m gonna be the Hall of Fame speaker one day I will be inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame.
RV (18:00):
I made that decision at 22, and it didn’t feel like a big gamble at 22 because a lot of the people who were getting inducted were in their fifties and sixties, and they didn’t start speaking until they were in their forties. And I was like, well, gosh, if I’m, if I’m half as good as these people and I do it, you know, like for twice as long I’m gonna get there. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Now, what I didn’t say is I didn’t have the pressure to go, I’m gonna be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame in five years, or 10 years or 20 years. It was just like, no, this, I’m gonna do this. This is gonna, one day, I’m, this is gonna be me. And I was inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame when I was 37.
RV (18:35):
So was that a success or a failure? Well, on the one hand, you could say that was pretty successful. I’m the youngest American in history to be inducted into the professional speaking Hall of Fame. 37 years old. That’s pretty, that’s pretty amazing. But on the other hand, you go, it took me 15 years. Like, that’s not any faster than it took anybody else. Like, that’s not some child protege. That just means, I started earlier, like straight up somebody who gets inducted in their late fifties if they started speaking in their forties, like I didn’t do it any faster than them. I just did it earlier, right? I did it sooner in my lifespan, but like, I didn’t get there any faster than anybody else, even though I was the youngest person in history. So that’s what I’m talking about is I’m saying like, if you want something, if there’s something that you want bad enough and you go, I’m gonna freaking get this.
RV (19:33):
I’ll tell you, one of mine right now is I’m gonna get a house in 30 a, there’s an area in Florida that I love. It’s just, it is the perfect, to me, it has everything that I dream of when I think of relaxation and God’s creation and what family life should look like and what a community should be like, and assuming that that community doesn’t change sooner or later, we’re going to be there, right? Like, we’re gonna have a place in this one particular area. Why? Because I’m committed to it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. It might take the rest of my life, like, or I’ll die trying, but like, it’s gonna happen and there’s a good chance it’ll happen sooner than that, which would be great if it does. But if it doesn’t, like this is gonna happen. Now, my goal might change at some point, and you know, that that area might become run down or whatever, and I go, oh, I wanna do a different area. But like, the point is, you have to be willing to say, I will do this for however long it takes.
RV (20:37):
And I think people go, I’m a failure. Like I launched a podcast and I didn’t get a million downloads. I, I started posting on Instagram and I don’t have a million followers. I wrote a book and I didn’t sell a million copies. Like I wanted to be a speaker, and I haven’t been on a thousand stages. And you go, well, you failed. By whose timeline? Like, is the clock? Did the clock run out? Like, who’s the person that said the time has expired? You only, you extend your horizon, extend the timeline, be willing to do it for however long it takes to get there. You say, I’ll do it. That person is mentally tough because that person isn’t looking for the shortcut and that person can’t be beat. You go, you go, even if I go slow, I’m not stopping. Even if I take one step, I’m going forward.
RV (21:24):
Even if I fail, I’m failing forward. You, I cannot be stopped from achieving this goal when I decide I will pursue it for however long it takes. And that’s tremendously freeing and it’s tremendously confidence boosting to go like, oh yeah, I’m 22 years old. Like, yeah, I’m a hall of fame speaker. I, I mean, I may not be today, but one day I will be, but like, I already, I already know I will be, I just don’t know when. And then when it happened, it was like, yeah, awesome. I was so excited about it. But it, like, it wasn’t a surprise. It was like, of course. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m so grateful. I’m so happy. I’m happy it happened when it did. I’m kind of bummed it didn’t happen earlier, but I knew it was gonna happen eventually. And it happened, it happened sooner than later.
RV (22:05):
So I’m happy about that. This is like, this is something that I’m gonna do. And then you get to live your life as operating. Like, yeah, this is gonna be me. I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a top salesperson. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great spouse. I, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna gonna be a great, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a great CEO. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great author. Like, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not the year after. But like, if something matters to you and you go, yeah, I wanna change the world. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna start a podcast that changes the world. Can you do that in a year? Me? That might be difficult that you do it in three years, still pretty hard. Can you do it in five years? My guess is if you podcast for five years, even with as many millions of podcasts are out there, I bet five years from now, you start today, you’ll have one of them, you’ll have a very significant podcast that will make a difference in the world.
RV (22:52):
You do it for 10 years. I can virtually guarantee it. Why? Because most people die and they give out, like all you have to do is outlast most people, like straight up. The strategy for success in many ways is you just gotta outlast most people. And it’s the tortoise in the hare, right? This is the old story of the tortoise in the hare. And you’re just like, I’m just gonna keep trucking along. I’m not worried about speed, like whatever. I’ll get there when I get there. So this is what mental toughness looks like. You go, you can’t mess with that person. You can’t stop them because they, they, they’re un mess with a bull because it’s like, I’ve already given up on pressuring myself to do something by a certain time. I just know I’m gonna get there. So it’s like, you can’t stop me. You, you, you can’t, you can’t distract me. I’m on target and I’m committed to be like however long it takes and I’m going, you know, I’m already taking action because I know anticipation
RV (23:45):
Is worse than participation. And my identity is not gonna be thrown astray. I’m not gonna feel sorry for myself or beat up myself or be too arrogant, egotistical if I do achieve it or if I don’t. ’cause My self-esteem is in my work habits. My self-esteem is in the plan, right? If I get success, that means the plan worked. If I don’t get success, that means the plan didn’t work. I gotta modify the plan. But it’s not about me as a person. It’s about the plan and it’s about my habits. And I will show up and do what I said I’m going to do. You do these three things, you’ll be unstoppable, literally unstoppable. You will be mentally tough, and I promise you do these three things. You will be different than 99% of people. So just outlast everyone. Build these into your psyche, decide however long it’s gonna take. Put your self-esteem into your work habits, work to plan, and it will come true for you. I promise.
Ep 500: The Mindset of Relentlessly Pursuing Excellence with Dean Stott
RV (00:02):
Every single month, we probably get about a hundred cold pitches for people to be on our podcast. And we say no to at least 99% of them. We usually only meet guests by people that we know personally, but every once in a while, there’s one that will grab me and I’m like, this is a no brainer. And this is one of ’em. And I am, so I’m just meeting Dean Stott, who you’re about to meet. We’re just meeting for the first time ourselves. But when you hear this guy’s story, it’s gonna blow you away. So he started out in the British Special Forces rose to the ranks to be in, you know, the, the kind of the, the premier in that whole world, right? He was in Special Boat Services. And then what happened is, after that, he got into private security.
RV (00:48):
He has evacuated people from Israel and Benghazi and like, I mean, this guy has been in the middle of like the craziest war scenes you can imagine. So he also is a world record setting cyclist. So fast forward here to a couple years ago and he rode, I want to get this right. So he began training to cycle the longest Motorable road in the world, the Pan-American Highway. He completed a 14,000 mile route from Argentina to Alaska. In May of 2018, he achieved two world records. He raised 1.4 million US dollars for mental health awareness charities. In the process, he passed through 14 different countries on this expedition, crossing some of the most dangerous passages in the world. And in the very final stretch, he continued for 17 hours and covered 340 miles on his longest day. So he then recently released a book called Relentless, just kind of sharing this experience, this inspiration, and I think the overall mindset of unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
RV (02:02):
And so I was blown away by a story. Plus I like having a lot of personal friends who are in special forces. And, and so with that, welcome Dean. I’m so honored to meet you, man. Thank you for being here. Morning, Roy. Thank you for having me. So I wanna start with what your dad told you Yeah. Early in your life because I am someone who I pretty much do everything to avoid physical pain. And so whenever I meet people who do the extraordinary physical feats, I’m just blown away. And you’ve, you, what part of what amazes me about you is you’ve become, like the number one in the world in three completely different, at least three completely different areas that are very competitive areas. But it started, the first one was this British Special Forces journey, and it started, and it didn’t sound like your dad was so much behind what you were doing there in the beginning.
DS (02:59):
Yeah, no, my, my father, he was in the military himself, which was quite shocking when I, I know, I, I always wanted to be a fireman. And I went through school went to college, and I decided that I didn’t really want to go through college. And I, I, I’ve always surfed since a young boy. So I went on a surfing holiday, which was supposed to be for two weeks, and it turned out to be six months. And this was long before the mobile phone. In 1994, my father found me working in a surf shop and sort of highlighted to me that I’d, I’d wasted my education and what was I now gonna do in my life. And so to silence him, I said, well, I will join the military. You know, I’d always wanted to be a fireman, but at the time, I think there was 2000 applicants for one job.
DS (03:37):
There was a huge recession in the uk. So I was not gonna get that, that job straight away. So my mindset was join the Army, do three years, get get what I can from the military, get some discipline, and also build up in the way I wasn’t the physique that you, you see nowadays, I was about five foot seven and weighed about 130 pounds. But my father told me I would last two minutes. It wasn’t the, the comfort and words of motivation I expected. And so for me, I was like, well, I can argue with my father all the way back home now for the next five hours, or I could just be silent. And the best course of action was action itself. So the Monday morning, I walked into the careers office and I joined the Army. But then my father, once he saw that I was being serious, he then started to get, get behind me.
DS (04:22):
But I never had aspirations of doing the Special Forces. My father was the the Ted Lasso of the of the British Army. He was the Army soccer manager and coach. So his career was very sports driven and not like special forces driven. So I didn’t really have an insight into that world. And in a very short period of time, within three years, I’d done every arduous course you could do in the military. I was a para airborne, I was a commando. I was a diver. And already in the tier two special forces. And then the next, the next option for me was tier one Special forces. And as you touched on in the opening dress, I joined the Special Boat Service which is your, your, the equivalent here is SEAL Team six. But I was in ar I was in the Army, and I was told I couldn’t go to the Special boat service.
DS (05:10):
It was just for the Royal Marines only. But unlike here where Delta Force and Seal Team six have their own training, ours is actually combined. And so again, I ignored them. I, I still put my application in and we started with 200 candidates, and then six months later, I was one of the eight candidates that was successful and the first, one of the first to join a special boat service. And I think now 15% of the special boat service come from the Army candidates. So again, yeah, there was a lot of times in my career and in my life that I was told that I couldn’t do anything and I just, just kept my head down or tried to keep my head down. As they say, they tell you to be the gray man on these courses. I was the gray man for about two minutes.
DS (05:51):
RV (06:29):
Yeah, I mean, I love what you said of like, rather than arguing with your dad, like you just take action. I like so many people, their first step is to run their mouth and like brag about all the stuff they’re going to do, or they tell everyone like, here’s the new thing that I’m doing. And they receive all this praise before they’ve actually done anything or, or all this resistance before they’ve actually done anything. Like that must be one of your core philosophies.
DS (06:59):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, yeah, as you said, they’ll run their mouth off. And some people don’t. I don’t think they realize what’s actually involved. And a lot of people, you know, I personally, I get a lot of messages from people I want to join the special forces. What, what can, what do I need to do? And they almost think it’s, it’s one pill, you know? Or it’s, it is 1, 1 1 one course that you go on. It is, it is an accumulation of, of stuff. You know, I’m not here now in front of you telling you my story because I did it in the last two years. It’s what’s I’ve done over the last 30 years to get here. And I think some people when they, they have the right intentions in their mind to do it, but actually when they realize how difficult or what’s involved, you know, and then there’s also things that can come in a way, you know, I’ve said it before, I’m gonna go do this, and actually something else happens and changes the course direction of my life, and then it, that doesn’t actually come to fruition.
DS (07:49):
So for me, I just think yeah, have it intentionally in your head. And also, I’ll give an example for some people say, I’m gonna run the LA marathon. I only only say that ’cause it’s next weekend. They have the intentions of doing it, but no one actually believes you until you’ve actually put a date in the diary or you’ve actually signed up for it. You know, that’s when I start to think, right? ’cause Once you’ve signed up for it, you’ve let the world know of your intentions, and then there’s that additional motivation to do it. Just talking about it, you know, you could keep talking about it for the next three or four years.
RV (08:20):
So, so this leads to a a, a question I wanted to ask you is, what happens when you sign up for something
RV (08:31):
And you have this moment where you suddenly realize it’s harder than you expected? Right? So, ’cause there’s the, there’s this like honeymoon period when you first sign up for something like, all right, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna run a marathon, or I’m gonna join, you know, special boat service, or I’m gonna be the the first guy to like ride 14,000 miles on my bicycle. And then there’s gotta be a moment where, you know, you’re in training and you go, whoa, this is harder than I, like, this is harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t just proving to my dad, like in the moment, like, oh, I was gonna prove to my dad. But then you get into, you know, training or whatever, there’s, you’ve gotta have had those moments. What do you do in those moments? Especially the first ones?
DS (09:15):
Yeah. Well, like, like the 14,000 miles, and that was in 2018. If I was a young 18-year-old boy, I probably wouldn’t have achieved that, you know? So when I was in the military, as I mentioned, I had no aspirations of special forces. But each time I went on a course, whatever course it was, I was physically getting stronger, but mentally I was getting stronger. And so I sort of took that experience in, into the next course and then into the next course. So I do, I, I always say you can’t be experienced without experiences. So my bike ride was an accumulation of everything I’d experienced in my time in the special forces for my time in the private security. And I just adapted that to that. So, so for me, I was confident that I could do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have put my name to it.
DS (09:57):
So for me, I think, yes, it depends where you are in your life and whether you’ve had experiences before that’s gonna help you with, with the new challenge. But I like to get out my comfort zone. So for me, I’ll, I’ll go back to the bike ride. I’d only cycled 20 miles before I applied for the world record. Wow. But what they did is I managed to get as much information as I could from books that I was reading. I spoke to the previous record holders. And I just literally used that information. I got the experts around me to help me. I knew that I could cycle. I knew I had the endurance and the mindset, and I had to choose cycling because I had a parachute accident, which ended my special forces career. So I had to find a sport, which, which wasn’t gonna hamper my knee. And so for me, I, I had been tested before, physically and mentally, so I knew that I just had to do that on, on a bike. But everything else, it was the planning, the coordination, the logistics. My wife ran all that as well around me for me. So also having a good team around you helps you as well. And getting, and getting knowledge of the experts as well.
RV (11:02):
Yeah. So I, I hear you on that, like sort of preparation, research and sort of strategic selection. What about, what about the moments though, when you want to quit? Or like, I mean, like you’re talking about building this mental toughness. Mm-Hmm.
DS (11:50):
Yeah, I think you have to, you have to have a motivation, which is personal to you. You have to be motivated to do, to do that. You know, when I was in the Special Forces, there was some guys there and they, they were there because their dads were in the Special forces. Oh, that’s not a motivation. ’cause When it gets hard, you know, it has to be personal to you. Why do you want to be it? Why is it, you know, when it gets hard, when it gets scary, you know, you need something that’s gonna, that fire to, to push you through. So that, that was that. But with the, with the bike ride, you know, we did it for, as you touched on, for mental health charities, there was 11 mental health charities that we raised the money for. And so I knew that one of the charities called Place to be the, they were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand pounds, which enabled 14,000 children to step into a school psychologist.
DS (12:41):
And so I would then revert that into miles. So every mile I was cycling enabled a child to do that. So there’s ways of tricking, tricking the mind. But actually, I, I never had pressure from the sponsors. I never had pressure from the charities themselves. I actually put my, it was my own pressure. I told the world that the ethos of the UK special forces was young, relentless pursuit of excellence. So how does it look to the world if I don’t finish this challenge? So I put myself under my own pressure, but my own motivations. But I also, that’s why I, I aim for the world record. So that’s why I applied for the world record. Sorry. So I had something to aim for, you know, in the military we’re very objective driven and target driven and mission driven. And so that was the mission.
DS (13:22):
And you know, I think after the first week I was 39 miles. The world record was 117 days. And I was aiming for 110 days because when I’d put all the planning together, looked at all the potential scenarios, it was natural disasters, coups, things that are out of our control. You know, you can’t control the uncontrollable. So I gave myself a week’s fudge. So should we encounter any of that along the way? It was eaten into that week. And I think the worst position I was in on the whole challenge was the end of the first week. ’cause We had such strong winds. I was 39 miles behind Target, but my target was still a week ahead of will record. And from then on, it was always gains. And so mentally wise, I was always in a, always in a good place. I was hitting the targets and I was now a ahead of target.
DS (14:06):
So I see people, other people doing challenges or doing, doing things, and they’re like, well, I’m 10 miles behind today, I’ll catch that up tomorrow. But you dunno what’s gonna happen the next day. You could have another bad day and then be 20, 30 miles behind. So that message with your head mentally when you go to bed. So I always say, stay on that bike, stay in that canoe, make those extra five phone calls at work. Make sure you where you are, where you are supposed to be at the end of the day because you are then in the right mindset and head space going in on the next day. You are not trying to catch yourself up.
RV (14:38):
Uhhuh.
RV (15:31):
I know that you have become perhaps what many would say is the, is the number one leading expert in the world in evacuations. Yeah. You’ve done evacuations in, you know, the, the highest stake situations you can imagine. Mm-Hmm. There you’re not facing pain as much as you’ve gotta be facing fear. Yeah. there is, you know, literally you could turn around at any second and lose your life. Yet you’re running into those situations. You’re going there repeatedly you’re thriving. How are you, what is your strategy for managing the fear in those moments of the, you know, the potential life and death at any moment?
DS (16:15):
Obviously there, there’s fear comes in all shapes and sizes. You can, there’s so many fears for me with, with this, I was confident in the plan. You know, I would be more fearful if I wasn’t confident in my plan or there wasn’t a plan in place. So the, the, the very first time I did this was back in May, 2011 in, in the Arab Spring in Libya. And I soon identified these, these largest security companies were charging six, seven figures, sums of crisis management evacuation plans, which weren’t actually in place. And that still seems to be a lot of the cases today. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market. I buried them between tuna and Egypt, and designed my own evacuation plans. And I put them in place. And then when your American ambassador got killed in Benghazi, I was there that evening and got an oil company.
DS (17:01):
And yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but where I’ve been successful in this is I don’t bring in westerns my own teams, guys that look like me. I use local resources. I use as many local people as possible. It’s understanding the demographics, the politics, and the tribal influences of the countries. So actually the success of the majority of mine has been down to local influence and, and support and sort of capitalizing on that. Because as you, as you touch on the Special forces, Hollywood doesn’t help matters. You know, what you see on the movies is called the offensive action. The bo the, the bombs, the bullets and the biceps. You know, that’s, that’s 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is, is support and influence its hearts and minds. It’s being embedded by locals actually understanding what’s happening on the ground, ground truth, and not what’s being reported on the media. And so that’s where the success has been for me. And that’s, and going back to your question reduces my fear because I’m not fearful ’cause what I’m seeing on TV, because I actually know what’s going on the ground, the ground truth, where things are happening. And we are probably one or two stages ahead.
RV (18:08):
Interesting. That’s fascinating. So you said 25% is bombs, bullets, and biceps, 50% is influence, you know, the support,
DS (18:16):
Support, support and influence hearts and minds. Yes. Small things just being embedded with locals, working with better winds, working with tribes in all these countries and really understanding, you know, especially for ex for example, Libya. Libya has 167 tribes. You, you know, I mean, you have to really understand the nuances with that. So when I had the the Benghazi incident, the easiest option would be to drive from Benghazi to Tripoli in about eight hours along the coastal road. But coming from Benghazi, you can’t get a driver from Benghazi to Tripoli. You’ve gotta go through Misrata to Tripoli. There’s various tribes along the way. And so what I did is I headed south to Zella. I had a safe house in Zella. We stayed there for 36 hours. We just actually see what was happening because at this point we still didn’t know what was going on.
DS (19:04):
We didn’t realize the American ambassador had been killed. And that gave us this soap period. But unbeknownst to the drivers, I had other drivers coming in from Tripoli. And so I could send those drivers home and use those. Because again, if you didn’t really understand those tribal in infants and, and things like that, you could, you get yourself in trouble. You could think, right, I can just drive to to, to Libya. So they’re, they’re the sort of things I needed to understand is what people can I use, who are the best people that are gonna help me get to certain areas? And when I evacuated the Canadian embassy from Tripoli to T is 18 military in four diplomats. My fixer, he was from ra, which was the border of Tuni. So he knew everyone along there, but also his cousin was the president of the GNC, which was the new interim government.
DS (19:51):
So it’s really just having the right people, the right key people. And also the key to me is it is showing respect to the locals as well. So the British Embassy, when, when I evacuated the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy got shot at, at every checkpoint the week before, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So myself and my fixer went out to the checkpoints. We didn’t speak to the guys with the guns, we spoke to the tribal elders. And we actually just sat down with, and we were just very transparent. We’re like, this is who we are, this is our intentions, and this is when we’re gonna do it. And they, they let us in, let us through. It is just because the British embassy decided to speed through without stopping or even negotiating. So a lot of it’s, you know, it’s just simple communication and respect.
RV (20:36):
What’s the other 25%?
DS (20:38):
The other 25% is probably
RV (20:45):
Yeah.
DS (20:45):
‘Cause You obviously, you can’t act on, on any of that without without the, without the information itself. So surveillance.
RV (20:52):
Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s almost like what you are doing also with like your bike ride you’re talking about. It’s like a lot of this is the gathering information and the intel on the front end. Yeah. Then, then creating a plan. And if you do that, then the last, it’s only the last 25% is like the muscle.
DS (21:09):
Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, one of the things we do in the special forces is I think that you guys in America, they call it a, a washup, we call it a hot debrief. So every time we came off the ground, whether it’s on operations, on exercise, anything we do daily before we clean our weapons, get showered, have food we do a hot debrief. ’cause It’s still fresh in your mind. And so as soon as the helicopter landed, we’d be off and the the ops officer would have us in. And it was three simple questions. It was, what worked, what didn’t work? And if you were to do that again, what would you do differently? And these are great lessons because each operation’s slightly different. So when I did the bike ride, I was getting information from books that I was reading and, and articles, but I wasn’t getting that critical information for my plan. And so I reached out to the previous record holders and I asked them those three questions and all their issues were in south and Central America, bureaucracy, languages, spares to the bikes. They all started in Alaska and finished in Argentina. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with a second half? Why not get address those issues early? And so that’s what I did. I turned it 180, I started in Argentina and finished in Alaska. And that, that was my plan, and that was literally from the information I got from them.
RV (22:22):
Wow, that’s wild. They were willing to, they were willing to just talk to you and share it.
DS (22:26):
Yeah. Which was a great, a great surprise to me. Yeah. It seems to be, you know, with the world records, you’re there just to set a bar, you know, you want other people to help. You know, I’m helping a young gentleman at the moment who’s wanting to beat the world record next year. And so, yeah. You know, for me, I wasn’t a cyclist. I dipped my toe in it just to, to prove a point. I started cycling at the age of 40. And so, you know, he’s a younger guy. And so for me, I was like, well, here’s the information, here’s what I learned. And, you know, hopefully you can learn from that. But there are other factors that you can’t control. Weathers, you know, when I went through Nicaragua, I think four weeks later, there was a coup, you know, there’s certain things that are outta your control.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So I’d like to talk about that for a second, because, you know, let’s say you do all the planning, right? Like you’re gonna launch a business or pursue some goal or dream, right? You do all the planning, you get all the surveillance, you get the right people on board, they go to help you, you then, you know, overcome your fear. You’re in the situation, you’re doing the stuff, but then sometimes there are things that just happen outside of your control. Yeah. There, like, you could do everything. You could do everything, right? Yeah. And suddenly there’s this thing that takes place that you, there’s no way you could have planned for, you didn’t plan for. What’s the mindset that you use in those moments to, to sort of deal with or reconcile and move past the things that happened that are like, that you didn’t prepare for that just were completely out of your control?
DS (23:55):
Well, there, there was a, the, I would use, probably use the bike ride as a good example. You know, I, I headed from south to north. I 10 days off the South America world record. My wife was the campaign director. My wife, you know, she, she’s the team. You know, I would talk about the success of individuals, you know, people would’ve seen me on social media, but it was the team around me. My wife was very much the, the lead for that. But actually we had a a, a RV and a four by four, which was gonna get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. Because coming from south to north, we were having to change vehicles at every, every border crossing we could get one from Alaska to Argentina if you crossed the Darien gap. And so my wife rang me when I was in Ecuador to tell me the vehicles hadn’t been loaded onto the shipping container.
DS (24:39):
So that was out of our control. But my wife and my pa and a couple of friends they drove, they flew over and they drove the vehicles 4,000 miles in eight days from Fort Lauderdale down to Panama, through Mexico and all the la Central American countries. Wow. So that was, you know, we didn’t see that, but we reacted to the situation change, and it kept to the team moving. I then get into North America on day 70, and I’m 14 days ahead of the world record. So mentally I’m, I’m in a good place. You know, I’m now in America. Everyone speaks my language, the culinary options a lot better. And my wife then rings me five times, and I think, you know, normally she keeps distractions away from me. I think there’s something wrong with our children. And she then tells me that we’ve been invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which was, which was nice.
DS (25:26):
No, prince Harry and, and Meghan. Wow. So I was like, and this was their, this was the charity that we were doing for, was for Harry, William and Kate. It was one of their charities called Heads Together. And I said to her, I said, that’s nice. She goes, no, you don’t understand. You are now one day behind. So going into that phone call, I was 14 days ahead, 10 minutes late, I’m now a day behind, because the last flight out of Alaska in time for this wedding was Day 102. So I had to change that I way that I cycled in, in North America. I had the luxury being able to cycle at night because in South America and Central America, it’s safer to be off the road. And so I I cycled North America. I had 17 days planned. I did an 11 and a half days.
DS (26:06):
I literally, I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day. We had 16 mile an hour winds in tornado. So it’s now two days behind. And there’s a, there’s an app on your phone called Windy tv, which is very popular with sailors and cyclists. And it gives you the strength and directions that the winds forecast for two weeks every hour. And so I just put pen to paper. I had to cycle 340 miles in the next 36 hours to miss the next weather window and just played chess with Mother Nature. So I was using what resources I had available to me. I picked up a 50 mile an hour tailwind in Cheyenne, you know, which covered 270 miles in 11 hours. And so that’s where I gained that time. And so, you know, the, the situation that the objective hadn’t changed the timelines had.
DS (26:52):
And so I got a week outside and then I got a in a town called Whitehorse. And I get a, a phone call from a friend saying, have you seen this guy who’s, who’s a professional cyclist sponsored by Red Bull? He’s already got free hover endurance wheel records. He’d come out on social media that day and said he wanted to be the first person to cycle the Pan-American Highway under a hundred days. So every time I kept hitting my objective, my objective kept moving. And so I was, I could have stayed on the bike and just, you know, come in at reasonable time, but I just, for me, I wasn’t happy. So I, I pushed myself even harder. I cycled I cycled for 20, 28 hours in the last 36 hours to come in, in, in in 99 days, 12 hours and 36, 56 minutes in minus 18 winds and snowing in,
RV (27:41):
It was what it was 99 days.
DS (27:43):
99 days. 12 hours and 56 minutes. So again, and I think on the, on the last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I was like, well, I’ll do 150 miles today, I’ll do a hundred on the last day. And we’re well in under a hundred days. I did the first 50 miles and we got to a a roadblock and they, they, they were like, you cannot pass. I, I hit the roadblock at noon. They said, you cannot pass till eight o’clock tonight. So they took eight hours off me. So even to the very last day, there were things that are outta my control. So I just, you know, the success of this was a, was having a plan, but also being flexible with that plan, just reacting to the situation changes. You know, for me, first question is, is anyone gonna die? No. Then we can always make a plan, get the kettle on, and we’ll make a plan. But yeah, that wasn’t, when I was back in UK making that plan, I didn’t factor this other cyclist. I didn’t factor tornadoes. I didn’t factor royal weddings. There was stuff that were outta my control.
RV (28:41):
Those dang royal weddings, man. I mean, you get invited to those things, they just screw everything. They just really screw everything up.
DS (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (28:50):
Well that’s so cool, Dean.
DS (28:51):
Yeah.
RV (28:52):
I so, so the book is, the book is called Relentless Ya. Where do you want people to go to like, learn more about you and the book and stay in touch with what you’re doing?
DS (29:02):
Yeah, so you go to my website, deans.dot com. You know, a lot of this stuff will be up on there. I’m on the normal social media, media handles Instagram and Facebook. And you can also buy the book either on the website or through Amazon.
RV (29:17):
And then if there’s somebody right now who’s listening, who is in one of those moments where like either they are experiencing pain, right? Mm-Hmm. They have a goal. They’re either experiencing pain, they, it’s harder than they thought, or perhaps they’re experiencing fear. There’s some threat that has showed up, or perhaps they’re just facing some, you know, outside circumstance beyond their control. Yeah. And you know, they’re sitting in that moment right now debating whether or not they should keep moving forward and sort of pressing towards the objective and towards the goal and towards the mission. What, what encouragement would you give that person right now?
DS (29:58):
I think what I used to use for some of my recruits on the commando calls when they were fearful on certain tasks that we were doing was anticipation is worse than participation. You know, your mind plays tricks on you. You think that is impossible. I’m scared. And actually, once you push through, once you leaned in and got through it, you look back and think, actually that wasn’t as bad as I thought. So that was probably my, my leaving comment for them.
RV (30:23):
I love that. I love that anticipation is worse than participation. Make the plan, take the action, have faith in the plan. This is so good. Dean, thank you for sharing your insights with us, brother. And thanks for the protection you provide and for the way that you push and, and, and challenge all of us through what you’re doing, man, we wish you all the best.
DS (30:44):
Thank you so much, Rory. Appreciate it.