Category: PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Ep 116: Dynamic Speaking and Scaling Joy with Dan Thurmon

Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show. Dan Thurman is one of the reasons why I almost gave up my career as a keynote speaker. He is extraordinary.

I mean he provides amazing content you know, just kind of like real, true thought leadership, but in the most acrobatic and entertaining way. And I use the word acrobatic because he does backflips. He juggles, he throws knives. He can do handstands on podiums, like and I know that most of you are listening to this, but if you don’t know this, we record all of these episodes as videos and we put them also on our YouTube channel. And you know, I don’t know for sure, but like, there’s probably going to be some elements because Dan is so visual that you, you may hear us reference and usual bit too to the visual and you might go check out our YouTube channel and you know, we’ll post we’ll post a link to that. But so Dan is incredible. I mean, he is a hall of fame speaker.

He’s also a former president of the national speakers association. I’ve known him for years. Although I wouldn’t say we’ve been like super close friends. We have the same friends that we’re super close to, and it’s not for any other reason than we just both been out there running a gun. And, but I mean, listen to his client list. Okay. So when I talk about the kind of work that he’s doing and the, the kind of companies that, that he is speaking to it’s extraordinary. So you’re talking about the Coca-Cola’s of the world bank of America, Proctor and gamble, Marriott Johnson and Johnson, Walmart crafts, state farm Honeywell. I mean, these are some of the world’s biggest and brightest companies that have brought him in to speak. The reason, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that I invited Dan to be here is because he has been around in the speaking world as a very successful speaker for a long time.

I mean, he was inducted into the hall of fame almost 10 years ago. So and he has also, you know, he spoke on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. So he’s been around a long time, but he’s doing some incredibly innovative things. So he’s checks like all the kind of like classic marks, you know, he’s got a great book called off balance on purpose, but he’s doing some things. So first of all, on Tik talk, him and his teenage daughter, Maggie are like tick tock celebrities. They have multiple videos that have been viewed more than 30 million times. Their Tik TOK channel has over a million subscribers. And so it’s so innovative. And then one of the other things that he’s doing is the way that he has pivoted to his virtual live stream events is just extraordinary. And so we’re going to, we’re going to just talk about how to stay relevant in a kind of like COVID world as a speaker and all, all things. How do you get to be Dan Thurman except, you know, we’re not going to do pushup and handstand tutorials, I don’t think, but anyways, welcome to the show, Dan, glad to have you,

What an intro of Rory that is so amazing for your compliments. One quick update because things change quick, you know, that Maggie’s following on Tik TOK is now over 3 million. And so yeah, so things just keep growing and growing, man. It’s, it’s a lot of fun though.

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really crazy. Like, you know, and I’m serious about that. Like the first time I saw you keynote, I was like, why would someone hire me when they could hire this guy? It was like you know, I have that thought every week, not very often, but every once in a while I have that thought and I was just like, you know, that was it. And then, and then just seeing you guys crush it on social media is kind of the same thing. And I mean, you’re an entertainer. I think there’s a, there’s a big part of your background, right? Like you just been in entertainment, but so let’s talk about tech talk for a second. Since we can kind of dive in, what the heck, like, how do you get 3 million followers? Like why, what are you doing? Like, what is your strategy? Because most speakers, I think, a what a waste of time, and you guys are just crushing it. So like, what’s your mindset there a little over a year,

Year ago, like most people never heard of Tik TOK, but Maggie had. And so she got involved on the platform. She had a good background and foundation because for a year she had been in high school, a brand influencer and advocate for Hollister. She was hired on a team and a project to promote endorse, launched new products and things. They, they really educated her in many ways about social media and Instagram. It was really Instagram based on that platform in terms of how to work for for Hollister that ran its course and the program ended, but she already was quite marketing savvy, had grown her Instagram following a good bit and heard about Tik TOK got involved in, tic-tac had a couple of her videos that did well. And then she had a, she asked me, dad, do you want to do a dance together?

We did this dance that to a Fergie song that just went completely bonkers. We went to the gym to play racquetball. And by the time we got out of that session, it had over 300,000 likes or something stupid like that. And then it just kept going and going and going that elevated Maggie’s platform. And, and she continued to do her own thing, but the things that we did together, what was interesting is it became very much about our relationship. We have a very genuine, loving natural relationship which filled this need in Tik TOK. A lot of people responded saying, I wish I had that in my family. I wish my dad would do these kinds of things with me. And so in a very careful way, we’ve, we’ve managed her brand to she’s now in college, a freshman in college and envisions this as her career. Obviously I’m not going to be a part of that journey for her whole life. And so we we’ve grown the dad daughter stuff in dance and comedy. And of course the variety of skills that we do with juggling and acrobatics and unicycling and silks, and, and kind of found different ways to introduce all these skills.

And very quickly, I just have to say, like, you know, it’s a little bit frustrating that you like God was dishing out talents. And I think there was like a glitch in the system and just like dumped. I mean, you guys are incredible, like the dancing, the acrobatics, the juggling, I mean, that’s really, it’s really, it’s entertaining. It’s really entertainment, entertainment in the most pure sense.

It’s, it’s so fun. And it’s a part of who I am. It’s just by my language of my love languages, kinesthetic movement. I love to just do things, learn things, develop skills, always have. That’s kind of how I channeled my hyperactive energy. And now you and I are a lot, a lot the same. But as she got closer to college, what we began to do is, you know, obviously she’s branching out more with her own videos and her own skills. And, and now it’s probably like 90 10, like where she’s doing Mo mostly her content I’m involved in our channel here and there. We had a trip to LA last week to see some other influencers. And so we did some more together during that. I have my own tech talk where I only have like a half a million followers on mine, but but, but it’s, but I’m still thinking about Tik TOK relative to my brand, because this is gen Z. This is that next level audience. And what I’ve sort of learned is that they, they are very receptive to what I have to teach and to the way that I can teach it, it’s just a different vibe and a different connection. So I’ve been very careful and very fascinated by how I could develop that relationship, that relationship with a new, a new generation all over the world. And it’s extraordinary to wrap your mind around.

Yeah. So like talking about, thinking about the generations for a second, you know, we had Jason Dorsey on here just a few, a few episodes ago, talking about generation Z and all of their research and stuff, you know, on the one hand people kind of go, you know, how do you make money from tech talk other than like brand deals and stuff. But if you’re going to be like a speaker or an author or a, or a personal brand, and do you have some type of a monetization strategy or is it more of like, this is street credibility? Or is it more of like, these people one day will be the book buyers and the decision makers. And so I want to connect with them or do you just, or is it just like, I’m just there because it’s fun. And I think it’s fun to do, like, how do you approach that?

So I’m not trying to monetize it in any direct way. Although I have had speaking engagements that came in through Tik TOK or coaching relationships that started because people found me on Tik TOK, people who find me on Tik TOK, find me, go to my LinkedIn and see my business side. So, so it’s definitely feeding that pipeline. But so much of it, Rory is I know that something great is happening as a result because it’s pure and it’s, and it’s real. And, but my intention is only to give and to help. And if I can scale giving and helping and filling a need on this level, you know, that’s a type of success. I don’t even have to monetize. I would be, it would be so satisfying and wonderful to know that I, that I could contribute, especially now to a world where so many kids are facing depression and bullying and, and all this frustration.

And I’ve been challenged at early early ages to feel like they’ve got to have it all together when really they could, they don’t and they shouldn’t, and they can just be themselves and find themselves and they need joy. They need, they need, as Maggie’s tagline to her whole brand is go make someone smile, literally just go make someone smile. So there’s a lot of ways that you can make someone smile. And the best smile that we can have is when we appreciate ourselves and who we are. And so that’s really my intention with it is that yes, these will be perhaps future clients. It’s nice to have that brand elevated. It’s good to get recognized in Starbucks and in, by Jenny’s eaters, which, which happens regularly now. And, and it’s pretty bizarre cause it, it doesn’t matter where you are, right. It’s not geographic, it’s, it’s a, it’s a bigger type of celebrity, which I’m obviously not accustomed to, as a keynote speaker, I’m accustomed to going into the room. Nobody knows who you are. Right. Right. And then, and then when you’re done, you, everybody knows who you are and you get that like temporary celebrity. And then you can go back to the airport and blend in again and be completely anonymous. So it’s not that I’m super famous. I’m really not, but it’s, but it’s been fun to, to, you know, get recognized here and there.

Yeah. That’s amazing. I mean, I think I don’t want to skip over what you said there about, if you could just scale giving and helping at this kind of a magnitude, this sort of a level, that’s a success that you don’t have to monetize. And I feel like that mindset alone is the thing that ultimately is the cause and the source of the people who break through the wall, what we call breaking through the wall and sustain longterm, regardless of its Tik TOK or Instagram or email marketing or speaking or writing books. And just to like, hear you say that, you know, I want to ask you about some other stuff, but I don’t want to skip over that because that, that is such a big, a big moment. And that’ll probably be one of the biggest things that I take away from this, which I, I love,

It’s easy to say it’s, and we’ve always said that, that we’re in the business of giving and helping and serving, but, but, but really a huge part of our brain is always trying to work the revenue and work the business and grow the business and, and measure ourselves and compare ourselves to our competition by what we’re doing and how busy we are and how much we’re making. And so for me, the challenge of COVID was, you know, obviously the dates fell off the calendar and when you identify yourself as a speaker, who’s out there doing live engagements and there certainly are no, there’s no events, there’s no engagements, there’s no stages. There’s no audiences. Now we’re faced with the question, well, who are you now at? Or who are you really? And so very, very early on the shift became, I’m not sure how much money we’re going to make this year.

Yes, we’re going to, we’re going to pivot. We’re going to do our thing. We’re going to serve our clients. We’re going to grow our business, but let’s change that measurement to how many people can we help this year, because one, thing’s for sure in the supply and demand world point that the demand for our help and our services has never been higher. People need it more than ever. So if, even if it’s just giving it away, that’s what I want to do because I think it’d be interesting if we got hall of fame awards for the biggest impact that we made in the world. I pray, I certainly wouldn’t get one of those. But I I’d love to.

Yeah. And that’s, that’s such a great perspective. And social media gives you that ability to like, if you really want to change lives, like if it really has nothing to do with money, like turn on your camera and talk to the camera and change lives. Like there’s never been an easier way to, to, to access people. So I want to come back to the technical a little bit. What are you doing with reels? So now Instagram has released the reels functionality, which is basically like their answer or competitor of Tik talk, you know? Are you reposting the same videos to reels? Are you not yet paying attention to reels or like what’s yeah. What’s, what’s going on there.

Yeah. It’s not something on my radar right now. I I’m aware that it’s happening, but, but Maggie has I think it kind of told me that her generation kind of thinks it’s it’s not there yet in terms of what it could do and the capabilities you know, so, so that’s not something we’re doing. We are posting on Instagram and we’re posting on, IETV sort of my weekly coaching videos, which get a very modest impression. I think it’s, it’s nothing like the scalability of tick-tock for me. But I’d be very curious to know more.

What is your just for the purpose, what’s your Tik TOK handle and Maggie’s, do you mind throwing that out so that people,

So Maggie’s is Maggie Thurman, T H U R M O N. So just at M a G, G I E T H U R M O N. And and my, my ticket Tik TOK handle is actually Maggie’s dad one, two, three. So, so this, and this was a very early decision because I didn’t. So for me, what was happening with tick-tock was so special as a father and in our relationship. And I didn’t want to, in any way feel like I was trying to, you know, chase her clout and, and trade off of that in my own business. So I’m just, Maggie’s dad one, two, three, which is kind of funny. And it sticks because even though now I’m doing more of my own content on my channel, that origin story is still really special to both of us. But you know, all along, I really saw that as more our thing than my thing.

I love that that is really, really, really cool. So yeah. Okay, great. So we’ll put links to that. Maggie, Maggie Thurman at Maggie’s dad, one, two, three. So I love that. So you mentioned COVID here a while ago and the pivots, and I think most people are pretty aware of this. I mean, if for those of us that earned a large percentage of our ordinary income from getting on an airplane, flying to an event, being in front of hundreds of thousands of people coming in as a stranger, as you say, you know, delivering this whatever 60 or 90 minute performance slash teaching, and then COVID happens. And all of those events disappear. I mean, like literally all of them disappeared and almost literally overnight, they were gone. What so separate of this tick talk, social media thing, you also have done some amazing pivots with your, you know, what let’s call it, your corporate brand or your classic brand, or your classic message even down to the technology and the studio that you’re using. And again for you listening, you’re not going to have the benefit of this, but can I ask you to do a virtual tour for, so the people watching the video can literally see what you’re about to change rooms. Like, like just give us the, the tumor, if you, because when we jumped on here, you like stood up and walked to a different room and like the whole thing changed. So can you just give us like a virtual tour of your studio so people that can watch the video can see what’s happening here?

Absolutely. Okay. So the first thing to understand is my brand, which is that elevated experience. People hire me because they want more than just a speaker. They want mind, body, and spirit kind of all in connection. And my method of teaching is very physical, very, very visual. And so we realized early, we wanted a space where we could do that very well. So we have three different sets I’m currently sitting in the library, which is where we really get into that heart connection. More that spiritual connection, driving stories, home, closing points, that type of thing. But then we needed a physical space, which is right over here. So stepping just to my right, this is the stage, this is our action room.

Okay. And for those of you that aren’t seeing this, I have just, he stood up out of his chair, walked, I don’t know, three feet to the right. And the entire screen changed. And we went from looking at a library to now we’re still on a zoom meeting, but now I’m seeing a completely different backdrop with a podium and a teaching screen.

Right. So, so for example, you see the podium and you see my, my teaching screen. And you mentioned the book off balance on purpose. So in many ways I’ve been preparing for this moment this year and teaching in my contents, very, very congruent because we’re more off-balance than ever before. Moving through these changes with uncertainty, just kind of unfolding and forth in front of us for the foreseeable future. And so one of the ways I teach that here, I’m moving to the lectern is you know, this is like our foundations, which all of our foundations, how we work, we teach how we parent, how we eat, how we shop, all of it’s been rocked. And so the question is, how do you position yourself on top of uncertainty? Okay, here we go.

Going for it. This is crazy. He is vertical, complete handstand on top of a podium. This is so corroborate.

You got to see us. I’m not, I’m not balanced. I’m balancing, I’m making constant adjustments and corrections. And after all that effort, I’m still right here. So we just cut to a second camera, but here’s the message balance. Isn’t what you get balance is what you do this year is about developing the skills to make those adjustments in real time, even though your foundations are rocked and unstable, which you can do, if you bring a greater sense of purpose to the moment that you’re in and manage and use these skills, which we teach to help you leverage the positive aspects of uncertainty in order to, in order to change and in order to grow. So that’s,

That’s awesome. So, so this is where, okay, so hold on. I want you to, I gotta interrupt you because I want everyone to know what just happened. So he just, first of all, the last angle we were looking at, you were doing a handstand on a podium and there was two camps. There were two different camera angles on that shot. So it was the second setup, like a second stage with two different camera angles. And now you’re just walked another, like, I don’t know, three feet to a different direction. And now you’re in a different, what, what do you call this set? Okay.

This is our classroom. This is really where our we teach and break down ideas. So if you think of mind, body, and spirit, so this is where we would really focus on your mind and how we teach you ideas, but then break them down into strategies. Like for example, on this Flipboard here we talk about this is actually a different work for a client that we we’ve been working on right now. But let me move to one of our recent phases. We can interact with this and we can artfully go through different content in different phases. One of the things we talk about quite frequently is this spectrum of certainty. Like I talk about, you know, managing the positive aspects of uncertainty, which you can do because really all you ever get is some certainty. You know,

Just again for everyone that’s listening. So now he’s in his teaching classroom set and there’s another camera angle. So it just shifted. So you’ve got two camera angles here going,

And, and what, what I want you to know is that even with the, the other set, you had the low angle where I went into the handstand, we switched to a different camera here, we have this forward camera, and then we have the second camera, which is how you, where you see me, right. And it’s also a closer shot, a more personal shot. The point is, it’s not extraneous, everything’s intentional. And if you have different cameras, but they’re not for specific reasons, then it’s really the same as pacing a stage without any purpose. And so everything has to be well thought out and used in a strategic way. And so, okay.

So one other, sorry, real quick, before you go into the spectrum of certainty, because I think both your content is relevant to us, as well as how you’re delivering the content is super relevant. So I apologize for the interruptions, but like, are you looking at, do you have tally lights, like a camera lights that come on to tell you where to look or does the camera switch when you look to the camera?

No, I have Stephanie and Shan. Right? So, and that’s been another incredible thing this year. Rory is that so often we’ve, we’ve been on our own on the road doing our deal, and it’s been very much a solo effort. This brought our whole team together. My wife Shea is incredible and is a visionary and a video producer and developer in her own, right? So she brought a lot of understanding in terms of how to do this and was able to source the equipment. We leveraged fellow NSA, friends, like [inaudible] and others who, who helped us understand what they were doing and really cut our learning curve in terms of making this happen. So Shay’s here and she’s operating a camera and and kind of running some things in the background producing Stephanie is the, is doing the camera switching. And so we’ve, we’ve practiced enough and she’s watching me attentively. So when I, when I look from this camera, I do it very abruptly and she sees that and then she’ll, she’ll make that change. So it’s, it’s really a matter of me being clear with where I’m looking and, and then she knows how to read that. But you know,

And direct, you’re directing the camera shots basically by a definitive gesture to move where normally in a TV studio, somebody, the director is moving the tally light, the little red light, and then you follow that. You follow it, but you have it in reverse.

And what I’ve learned is I just have to be very clear because if I’m kind of like wandering around, she’s got no idea where to go. Right. And so it’s just, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve developed that skill over time,

But I love what you’re saying. That’s a, that’s a very SIM, that’s a similar parallel to just wandering eyes in an audience versus deliberate eye contact to like different people in the room. Right.

And, Oh my goodness. I can really go into that. We could do a whole tutorial on how to, how to teach to a camera which is maybe we should

Have you come back and do another one of those.

Yeah, exactly. But but the point is, we’ve learned a lot and we’ve really used this period of time to our advantage. And so this concept of a spectrum of certainty really is about three steps, three strategies that we teach to claim your certainty. So we got to claim what is certain, everything that we know already, still counts. We just have to use it differently. We have to redeploy what we’ve gained all these years and say, how does it still serve us? Or how does it serve us now in maybe even a better way than it did before? And so, instead of when you feel uncertain about some things, you can feel like you’re uncertain about everything, and it’s not true. There’s a lot that, you know, and it all counts and serves you. So you really have to claim it. You have to embrace what’s unknown because you, and I’ve seen a lot of speakers, authors companies, clients, who who’ve just spent enormous amounts of energy saying, well, when will this be over and how are we coming out of it?

And when will we be back on stages? And it just, all this mental exercise on really what is right now, not only unknown, but on knowable, right? We can’t control that. But what we can do think about your future as if it’s not just uncertain, but it’s unfolding, it’s unfolding and you have this role you’re playing in terms of how to shape it. But there’s just some things we’re not going to know until we get to the next chapter, like reading a great book or watching a great movie. You don’t have to know the ending to enjoy the movie to be engaged. And, and, and along the way we can create more certainty than the way you create more certainty is by testing yourself and improving yourself and saying, regardless of how everything else is working out, I know for sure we’re going to be better on the other side of this because of what we’re choosing to do now. And this studio is really our response to putting that into action. Right.

Right. Yeah. I, I mean, I love this. So can you walk back to the library? Is that, is that doable? Yeah. Amazing. And so then you just move over. So these are three, literally three different physical setups you have in the space. Then the room that you’re in this, isn’t like a virtual background shift at all. This is

Three physical spaces, five cameras. So there’s only one camera in here, which is all I really need, because again, this is about pouring into your heart, you know, and, and just really connecting eyeball to eyeball.

Yeah. So, so it’s a five camera shoot. And then the, in terms of the other technology, you got two people to run the room. You said Shay and Stephanie are both there to like help you operate things when you’re doing it. And then so you obviously have a switcher. So this is just like an alive event. You have to have a switcher to switch camera feeds. So you have a switcher. And then is there any other big pieces of technology that’s going on? I mean, must be some program that you’re running to like S or is it just different camera feeds into a school?

The beauty of keeping it with the physical switcher and we’re using an ATM system, a black magic ATM, which has a total of eight different camera inputs. We’re only, we’re using five for cameras, we’re using one for media. So in other words, we could start our show by taking a video and intro video that brings it in or cut to a video. I have, I have a scene where I’m in the action room and I finished something and I’m talking about, you never know where your next challenge is going to come from. And literally at that moment, a rope drops from the ceiling and I’m like, okay, well, I’m going to, I’m going to go for it. And meanwhile, watch this video. And I literally climbed the rope out of the camera lens, and then we cut to video. And so it’s, it’s really like producing a TV show, but the equipment of the cameras, bid cameras, a good switcher, a good computer to drive it, the S the software, because it’s hardware, you don’t need a sophisticated software program.

Usually there’s another device that flows out of the switcher for the interface to whatever platform you’re using. And what we found is depending on the platform, whether it’s zoom or go to meeting or black or whatever, it could be a Microsoft teams this afternoon, we’re doing one for a platform we’ve never done before. It’s a proprietary thing with each of those setups. And also with each of the updates, because there’s always new security settings and things like this, you really have to always, re-examine how your equipment’s working and make that happen. So it’s not a one and done set it and forget it. This is something you have to keep learning as you go.

Wow. but more or less you, you got, you got, you got a switcher, you got some camera and you got inputs from the from the cameras. And it’s not, you know, it’s not impossible. I mean, you guys are pulling it off. This is incredible.

Well, thank you. But I, and I also want to point out because I know that that a lot of people starting out are thinking, well, sure, like if I had a studio and a set, then, then everything would be easier and I’d be much more engaging and whatnot course. And the point is, you know, that’s the trap of this business is that comparison to what others are doing or what they, what you think will be necessary. And it’s not, it’s not necessary. There are so many of our speaker friends who are, who are doing something so much more simple and are still having incredible success because they know how to connect with an audience. And they’re bringing relevant content, which is the whole key. I mean, if you think about like an X, Y axis, this whole business and success and brand is about relevant content and then your engagement and your experience, and, and not just, not just what, you know, how, what, you know, really fixes the problem, applies to your audience and are you delivering it in a way that they can really absorb it, learn from it, remember it for a long time to come.

And so you can do that in any number of ways. This is just one of the answers. This is the answer that works for me.

Yeah. Well, this is so extraordinary. And, and I would, I would just, you know, I echo that point and emphasize that it’s not about the technology or any, it’s like, it’s your mindset to go? How can we serve? How can we adapt? How can we pivot? How can we be off balance on purpose as you say, and make the most out of this. And and it’s fun, you know, like I just, I really love it. You’re, you’re what a great way to showcase you, living out your message and your whole team coming together, and, you know, the family business of your wife and your daughter, like it’s just really, really cool. So Dan, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and like find out more, and man, if you’re booking virtual keynotes, like don’t bother calling Rory Vaden, just call Dan Thurman, just like skip past us contact Dan. And w H how do people connect with you?

Sure. Just it’s super simple. Just go to my website, Dan thurman.com Dan Thurman, T H U R M O n.com. It actually loads at the moment to our virtual page, but there’s a lot of content and resources there too, as well as our weekly coaching series. So maybe you’re running a team and you’re really looking for something that you can use to help them recalibrate their mindset. There are some videos on my website that can serve you and conserve them. And by all means, please help yourself and use those and spread those as you will.

So we’ll put links there to Dan thurman.com as well as to Maggie and Dan’s Tik TOK profile. So you can see this as lots and lots of fun. My friend, we just appreciate you and your mission and your heart to serve people. And just make the most of the talents you have to make the world a better place. And that totally shines through. And, and we wish you the best.

Ep 113: The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod | Recap Episode

Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We are here breaking down the episode with Hal Elrod. AJ was just making fun of me before we started. And so that’s why I see he’s chuckling, but we’re going to give you our top three and three takeaways, and I’m going to go first this time. You know, I have so much respect for how I think you probably hear that in the interview, but from a technical perspective, in addition to his personal story of dying and coming back to life, which is incredible. He also is an eight self publishing success story, probably my favorite self published success story. And everyone thinks you have to traditionally publish. And there’s a lot of advances. There’s a lot of advantages to traditionally publishing, but you know, he tells the story about for three years, he tried to ride it and he thought he had to traditionally publish.

And then finally just realized that actually the publisher doesn’t do that much to promote your book. And so you have to do the promotion anyway. So why not self publish? And he does it and boom, 2 million copies tell, I don’t know of anyone that sold 2 million copies, self published, and it’s just incredible. And to me inspiring that it’s not just traditional publisher. Self-Publish it’s what is your dream? And what belief are you allowing to hold you back? What, what wall are you allowing to be there that you’re, you’re acquiescing to? When in reality, there’s not even a wall there and you can just blow through it and figure it out yourself. You don’t need to get a TV show. You can launch your own show. You don’t need to get a traditionally book published deal. You can self publish, like you don’t need to be on national radio. You can launch a podcast. So many limits just exist in our own mind. And I just, I loved that. It was inspiring to me it a long rant. That was not that long. Hold on, pause the recording. Let’s go look. I don’t think it was though.

It’s felt long, been a long day, but I think is really pertinent to this particular interview. And as you can tell, this is a, not a shower day for me. This is my mommy day. And Rory, actually,

For those of you watching this on YouTube, those of you listening to the podcast,

I sound just as like normal

In full makeup and full hair and her nicest outfit.

Oh, well, yes, but I will tell you it’s, it’s kind of interesting because we, we came in through, from a weekend trip yesterday and didn’t have time to record our recap when we typically do. And Tuesdays are always my mommy day where I’m just full time mom, all day long with my two toddlers. Which means I don’t usually get a shower or hair or makeup or do anything for myself. Maybe I get to eat. But Rory was like, Hey, I really want you to listen to this. And I’m like, Oh, you can just record this one. And then I listened to it and I’m like, Oh, now I know why he insisted that I listen to it. Cause I had a really couple of negative moments of like, I’m so overwhelmed. There’s not enough. There’s not enough time to go around.

No one’s looking out for me. Kind of had some of those moments and he was like, Hey, are you going to listen to that podcast? And I’m like, okay, well now it’s all clicking and I’ll putting together. And I think that was one of the things that was really important to me listening to this and why all of you should listen to this as much as you’re going to learn about your personal brand and self publishing and traditional publishing for that matter and building a community. I think the first half of the interview is worth listening to whatever you, you gleam from the rest of it is awesome. But the first half is just such a great reminder, no matter where you are in your personal brand journey, you control how you feel, right. You control. If you think you’re succeeding or not.

That has a hundred percent to do with your perspective and your perception of what is impact to you. Is it one person? Is it a million persons? Like why does that matter? It’s like, why do you have to have a hundred thousand followers versus a hundred followers? If you truly believe in what you’re doing and what you’re called to do. And that, I just feel like that more than anything else is why you should listen to this interview and follow Hal and read the book and do all the things and why I really needed to listen to this myself right now is that great reminder of, I have nothing to complain about. I have everything to be grateful for and so do you, right? If you have the opportunity to share your message to even one person that is worth it, it is not about your follower count.

It’s not about six, seven, eight figure advances, even though those are awesome, right? Those are amazing byproducts of just doing what you believe in and what you’re called to do. And I just think if you just focus in on what are you called to do and what are you passionate about and what are you grateful for and how does that just exude from every part of your being, this will work out for you at some point at some time in some way, this will work out for you. And how is a great example of, I’m not gonna wait around for anyone else to do this for me, I can just go do it myself, because I feel that called to the message to the mission and to getting this out there and I’ll do what I gotta do. And sometimes that’s what we gotta do. So that’s why I really think this is awesome.

Yeah. And that, as I would, I would count that as my, I was actually going to save it for my third takeaway. But since you brought it up the first half of the interview, if you haven’t listened to it yet is his personal story about how he died. Came back to life, died again, came back to life, made it through this whole bout and then had cancer and just this inspiring outlook on what it means to be alive. And and how you are in control of what’s going on inside. Like there’s a lot of thing, a lot of things externally that we don’t have control over, but everything that’s going on inside, you are in control of your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, what you choose to be grateful for, what you decide to spend your time on and to hear it in the context of someone that has gone through so much challenge is just inspiring.

And I, I agree with you it’s that his personal story is just so moving that it is it’s beyond all the wonderful technical details that he shared, you know, things about how self publishing works and how do you do it and how did the advances work and how does the money work? He was super transparent. But you’re in charge of what’s going on inside of your head. And I think as influencers or personal brands we are, so we’re so used to being the teachers or the messengers, it’s easy to forget how we also have to be the students and getting to learn from other people like how and go, wow. Like I’ve got a lot of personal development work to do myself, in addition to all the business work I need to do on my, on my brand. So it was, that was awesome. That was my second takeaway.

Yeah. And I think one of the, I think one of the more technical components of this as it relates to building your personal brand and, you know, writing and speaking and publishing and all the things that he talks about. But I just really love this, this whole concept of people talk about this a lot in the space of you can’t really make a ton of money selling books anymore. A book is more of like a business card. We’ve even said that well he proves that very, very, very wrong, and I think that’s awesome. Like you need some people to step up and go, no, you can. It’s just, you’re not. And I, that was like a really good like, Oh yeah. Like you really can make a lot of money. I mean, you’ve got plenty of people. Who’ve, you know, you know, you’ve got, you know, the Twilight and Harry potters and all of those ends of the world.

But then, but then like when you come to like the real personal development and business space, it’s like, you’ve got those two, you’ve got, you know, like Dave Ramsey and how L rod on the self publishing route like that, that is worth noting. And I just want you guys to like, pay attention. It’s like he has sold 2 million copies self-published and average retail price is around $20. And let’s just say he even gets to keep half of that, which I think he said it averages a little bit higher than 50%. I’m on print version. Y’all at $9. And I just low balled. It like is $10 would be 50%, but at $9 at 2 million copies, you don’t have to be a mathematician to do this. It’s $18 million. You can make plenty of dough selling your books that you self published. And there is all kinds of talk in the industry about, well, if your book won’t just won’t be seen as credible, or it won’t have the same distribution. Well, that just ain’t the case here. And that just proves all of that wrong of, well, no, you can write, you can do that, but you gotta hustle and you gotta do it and you gotta be committed to it. And I, I think that was a great reminder of, you know, you can just, most people aren’t,

Right. Yeah. If you sell a million of any set and you’re going to make money, right. Like matter what it is. And that’s really good. And, and yeah, I think it’s, you know, John Gordon and John Maxwell are people who traditionally published, who I have sold a lot. They have make plenty of money from just book sales. And the Andrews makes plenty of money from just book sales through traditional route. And then you have hell rod. And then, you know, of course, Dave Ramsey’s self-published stuff and then traditionally published and gone back to self publishing. So yeah, I, I love that. And to your point about the hustle, I was just looking up the notes the first year, he said he did 140 interviews, 30 podcasts interviews did 36 speeches and sold like 13,000 copies. He’s strong, which is super strong, but it’s also not the one where you go, Oh, they sold 50,000 units on opening week. And you know, this is, this is the next book that’s going to sell a million. It was 13,000 copies over the first like year and a half, but then he did it consistent and it grew

Not consistent. It totally multiplied because it went from 13,000 in year, one to six years later, 2 million or a million,

Six years, six years to reach a million,

18,000 to a million in six years is like pretty aggressive.

That’s amazing. Well, and so that was my third point is this Facebook group that, you know, and here’s what I think the point is is that if you build a community around your message, then book sales naturally flow out of that, right? Like most people think, how can I build a community around my book when I have a book launch in order to sell my book. And it’s like this one time thing, how wasn’t doing it out of marketing, he was doing it out of impact. He’s like, I want to create a place for people to support one another in cheer each other on and get them to meet me and I can meet them and to answer their questions. And, and it’s the, the Facebook community that he built that, yeah. You know, when you have 250,000 people in your Facebook group every day, talking to each other, of course, they’re going to like the topic of conversation is around this thing.

That is your book. Of course, those people are going to buy, and they’re not just going to read it and forget about it. They’re in there all the time. It’s like having 250,000 salespeople for your book. And that flew flow out of flown out of it, grew out of it. It came out of a mission to serve and build a community around a message, not build a community around a book. And we actually use house book in our bestseller launch plan, which is one of our phase three events. There’s a, there’s a window of that event that we talk about the long tail sales plan, like the perennial bestseller. And we talk about building a community around you know, a movement, not just around a book and how is this great, an example of that? And you can do that today. Even if you don’t have a book, you can build that community now and pour into people and then it will sell books.

Well, you can tell Roy is very passionate about this particular topic. And now there’s a lot of hand movements, a lot of hands movement,

Youtube. You’re seeing my hand movements come aggressively at the camera.

There’s a lot, there’s a lot of hands moving over here. My third point is somewhat similar to that, but I think that I’m not going to say it’s easy, but how really deep details out the plan of, it’s not that difficult to get your book self published and get it distributed. Right. And he really lays out like, well, here’s the company that does this, and this is how you do this. And this is how you get an audio and here’s on Kindle. And it’s like, I’m not going to say it’s easy because that’s still work. But it is simple. It’s not rocket science. And we just have so many people in our network. And if people who are clients that are just baffled and stuck about what do I do, and it’s like, just do something right. If you’re waiting around to decide if you should get traditionally published, it’s like, I think he made a great point.

It’s like, ask yourself how big is your platform? And if it’s not going to sell itself for you, then you should go ahead and self publish. And here’s what you do, right? Here’s how you set up your distribution with Amazon. This is how you set up your Kindle. These are the percentages, and then you do the deal and then you go out and you sell it. You get on podcast interviews, you go speak and you the pants off of it. But if you really are trying to go for that traditional route, it’s just a great reminder of publishers. Aren’t trying to sell your book. It’s your job to sell your book. So do you want to sell it via a publisher and their distribution or sell it via yourself and use all the other distribution channels that have developed over the last 10, 15 years. That really weren’t there back in 2010, like these are all things that have exponentially made this process easier for people to get their messages out there, which is you. And you don’t have to be traditionally published to make tons of money and to be a super credible author these days, you’ve got tons of examples of that. It’s just how bad do you want to do it?

Absolutely. Amen. And you can find a way you can figure it out, by the way, if you’re looking for tactical strategies on how to actually market your book. I mentioned this already. We have an event called bestseller launch plan, which specifically teaches you tactics to market the books. And we use, like I said, how as a case study, another thing that we address in there is when to self publish versus when to traditionally publish you know, a quick tip on that just to rough, a rough guide is we usually say, if you have a platform where you think you can move 10,000 units in the first four to six weeks, that’s a good signal that you’re ready for traditional publishing. And that it probably makes sense. And if you’re not there, or even if you are there, you still need to take a good look at self publishing because of all the reasons that he was talking about the cool 18 million of them, if you got a calculator so anyways, go listen to the interview. Thanks for being here, knocked down the walls, let us know how we can help you. We’re here to support you along the way. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brands.

Ep 112: The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod

RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:04) My day is just better. When I look on my calendar and I see an appointment with Hal Elrod I have grown to love this man. Truly love him. And it’s like, John O’Leary, you heard me, I’ve interviewed John O’Leary before. These are two of like people that most inspire me in a profound way personally, in terms of what they’ve overcome in their life, the attitude of which they’ve overcome it. And what, how has been able to build in terms of a community is just inspiring. And it makes a difference in the world. Like he is someone who is a mission driven messenger. He’s a classic example of what we’re trying to help people become in his book. The miracle morning is what we actually uphold in our bestseller launch plan event, as sort of like the ultimate pinnacle of a, of a self published work. RV: (01:55) It has now sold over 2 million copies. There are multiple derivatives of the book for, you know, different groups. He released another book called the miracle equation, not too long ago and how, and I saw each other again, and we shared the stage at an event, one of the best speaking events in the world advisors Excel in early 2020, it was like one of the last human events in person events. And I got to see him speak which was such a treat. So anyways, how brother welcome to the show. Good to see you, Rory brother. It is, it is a pleasure man. And I’m I’m excited to to dive into that. So I want you to tell the story. We want to hear the story of the miracle morning community, which is amazing 270,000 people in this Facebook group. And I want to hear how you built a quarter million people in a Facebook group and sold 2 million copies of a self published book. But for people who don’t know you, can you just tell us like a little bit of your personal story of like, what happened and, and, you know, you survive this near death experience and then how that kind of led to you starting your, you know, as an, HE: (03:12) On a personal brand. Yeah. Yeah. I think we all have wake up calls at different times in our, in our lives. And they usually come from adversity, right? Some sort of adversity challenge tragedy. When I was 20 years old, I was driving home from a Cutco sales meeting. I sold Cutco cutlery and I gave a speech that night at this conference and driving home that night in a brand new Ford Mustang. My first new car, I was hit head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour. And my car spun off the drunk driver. The car behind me hit me at 70 miles an hour in my door. And I broke 11 bones on the left side of my body from the side impact. And that night I bled to death. It took the paramedics and the fire department and our to use the jaws of life and cut me out of the car. HE: (03:55) And so I was just bleeding with 11 broken bones in the car. And that night I was I died on the helicopter. I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes while I was taken to the hospital. You know, heart stopped beating, wasn’t breathing for six minutes and then six days in a coma. And I flat lined twice more. He came out of the coma to be told I would never walk again and that I had permanent brain damage. And I always joke that my wife will about for the brain damage, but I did learn to walk again. And you know, and, and went on to, and not really did launch me into like, even in the hospital. I’m like, I felt this sense of purpose. Like I’m meant to overcome this in the most positive, proactive way. I can, as an example for other people. HE: (04:39) And I didn’t know who those other people were. I didn’t know if those were just going to be my future kids or my circle of influence or my family or the world, but I did always want to be a, a keynote speaker, motivational speaker. I called it back then. And I remember I told my dad, I said, dad, you know, he, he was the doctors were wondering why I was so positive. And I said, look, I’ve always wanted to be motivational speaker, but I had kind of a normal life. I never had anything good to talk about this. Maybe this is why this is happening. So I have a story of overcoming that I can share with others and, you know, turned into be exactly that. And and then in 2008, when the economy crashed, I crashed. RV: (05:18) So you actually, so you died clinically died three separate times and, and that, that’s how this all started. HE: (05:26) Yeah. That’s where, yeah, that, that, that was where that adversity, that wake up call of like, Hey you know, it really taught me what I think right now is so important year. What year was this? Two a night, December 3rd, 1999. Okay. And yeah, so 99, so 20 little over 20 years, right, right. Over 20 years ago. And and just taught me that our, our outer world what’s going on in the world, what’s going on with other people what’s going on in our government, what’s going on in our job. What’s going on in the economy is not determining the determining factor of our inner world. You know? And, and I really that’s what I learned is that the, the, the world can be falling down outside of me. And I will choose to be at peace, happy and grateful, no matter what’s going on around me. HE: (06:12) And that for me, I applied three years ago with diagnosis of cancer, a very rare, aggressive form of cancer. I was given a 20 to 30% chance of surviving. And, you know, as a doubt, I mean, you know, when you’re, when you’re sitting there looking at your 11 or your seven year old daughter in the face and your four year old son and the doctor just told you that day, that you’re most likely going to die. It’s a hardest, that’s the hardest thing, you know, to deal with. And and I have, I had the same, the same decision. The day I was diagnosed with cancer. And given those grim odds, I called my wife. She was out of town and I had to tell her, and she in buttoned tears. And I said, sweetie, I promise you one thing, I can’t promise that I’ll beat this, but I promise, I believe I will give it everything I have, but I said, I will promise you, I will be the happiest and the most grateful and the strongest I’ve ever been while we endure the most difficult time in our lives together. HE: (07:02) And it was by far the most difficult time, but but I was, you know, there’s video of me, you know, in pain and, and no hair and then chemo. And, but just genuinely, like, I’m not letting my circumstances dictate my emotional wellbeing. And I think for all of us, we, we, we’ve been conditioned to think they’re mutually exclusive like, Oh, bad things happening in the world. And in my life, I feel bad, good things happen. I feel good. But, you know, I think that the most important thing that we can adopt is it doesn’t matter. What’s going on outside of me. I am always in control of what’s going on inside of me. And from that place, we can find joy, happiness, motivation to create the circumstances that we want in our lives. RV: (07:42) Gosh, brother, that is just so powerful and meaningful and needed, I mean, in the world. So, so how does, did the community start first or did the book start and like, did you try to traditionally publish and or did you just kind of go like, cause basically, so miracle morning was the first book, miracle equations, the new book, but miracle morning is this story. And then it’s also a morning routine and set of set of practices that you follow and help people to live this. Did you so, so talk to me about the book. Like when does the book come on? How does that come about? HE: (08:22) So miracle morning, it was, it was never a book idea. It was in 2008, when the United States economy crashed, I kind of crashed with it. And after like a six month downward spiral of losing over half of my clients losing my, you know, having to foreclose on my house getting my body fat percentage tripled, like I, I was, I was, I was in debt. I was depressed. I was kind of a mess and a series of events and some advice from a good buddy of mine. John Burgoff do you know John Bergoff? I don’t know John Bergoff and that’s all right, I’ll introduce you at some time. But I said, John gave me advice. He said, how you should go for a run every morning and listen to self-help. He said, put yourself in a peak state, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and listen to something that will enhance your mental and emotional wellbeing. HE: (09:07) And I’m like, Oh, okay. You know, like I need to make money even. And I don’t, I don’t say that’s gonna make me money, but, but it basically led me to realize that how I start my day was the single most determining factor in the state that I begin the day in and thus carried out the day in and thus created my results. And so, in other words, how you start your day sets the tone, the context and the direction for the rest of your life. And so I started practicing this and it changed my life very quickly. I went and told my wife, after two months of doing this, I said, this morning routine feels like a miracle. You know, we’ve doubled our income. We have all these amazing results. And she goes, it’s like your miracle morning. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. And then that’s when I started teaching it to people, my clients, and in speeches and RV: (09:53) Quickly that the most successful male authors in the world are simply plagiarizing from their wives. Yeah. Yes. HE: (10:00) Our wives or our muses. Yeah, no, she, she, she came up with the title and even though, again, it wasn’t a different book title, but so I finally was like, I have a responsibility because it changed my life and it was changing all of my clients’ lives. And I went, none of us were morning people. So the, this, if this could change our lives, this could change anybody’s life. And I felt a sense of responsibility to write a book about it. And it took me three years. And during that time to answer your question on the traditional versus self publishing, I thought, okay, I really want to change millions of lives with this book. So therefore I have to traditionally publish to be taken seriously and for it to get any distribution. And then as I kept writing the book and doing my research, I went, Oh, that’s not true. HE: (10:42) Like the publisher doesn’t do much to market your book unless you have a household name and they know that it’s going to give them, you know, give them a nice ROI. I realized that if you traditionally published, you’re lucky just to get a deal and then you still have to do all the marketing. So I thought, I believe in this concept, I’m going to self publish. I self published the book on 12, 12, 2012, so 12, 12, 12. And it didn’t have a huge, you know, I didn’t have a big, I wasn’t an influencer. I wasn’t like Tim Ferriss. I didn’t have a blog. I, you know, I wasn’t well known. And it’s about a year and a half of, of promotion. The first year I did 150 podcast interviews. I did 50 of my own podcasts. I get 36 speeches. HE: (11:24) I was on 12 TV shows. Like I did everything I could. And I sold like 13,000 copies. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I was committed for as long as it took to get the message out. And it took six years, six years to reach a million, a million copies sold. And in that time, the book was translated and traditionally published in 37 different languages. So once it got fractioned being self published an agent reached out, I got an intro to an agent and said, Hey, this, you know, this things like the trajectory of this book is, is, is going off, you know, was on fire. We think that traditional publishers would be interested and publishers. And so, yeah. So then, so it’s, it’s still sell published in the U S and it’s traditionally published in 37 other countries. So RV: (12:14) Do you have to traditionally publish a book to make money from writing a book? HE: (12:19) No. I would say 90. RV: (12:23) That was a short, complete answer there. HE: (12:26) No, no. Tell us about it. 95 to 99% of authors I would say would be better served self publishing. I have 13 books or so, and all of them, except one is traditionally published. And that was last year. And here’s what I learned. The only thing that a publisher cares about, I shouldn’t say the only thing, their highest priority is the size of your platform. That’s it? That’s what you get paid in, advance on. It’s not on how good your idea. Everybody thinks I have the best idea ever. They don’t care because the best idea, if you don’t have an audience that you can reach that, that book too. That’s why anybody that’s on the news or has a talk show, Anderson Cooper, whoever, right? Like Oprah, they get a multimillion dollar band because the publisher knows that it’s a guaranteed success, right? It’s a business. HE: (13:12) So if you have a large platform of, you know, let’s say a hundred thousand followers, then it’s worth shopping around to a traditional publisher and seeing what kind of advance you can get. But the big difference is you’re going to get, you know, let’s say on average, 10, 12% of the royalties are of the book, the profits from the book, if you traditionally publish, when you self publish, you get anywhere from 70 to 90% of the profits. And so in the long game, you’re, you know, you’re almost always better off to self publish. So, RV: (13:47) So I love that. So thank you. Thank you for that. It’s funny you use that 100,000 number. We use the same number. We say once you have a hundred thousand followers, that’s about the time to start, look at traditional publishing. And when you can move 10,000 units, when you feel like you can sell 10,000 units on opening week, that’s when it’s time to think about bestseller, you know, like bestseller, New York times wall street journal, kind of a thing, but the money here. So can you talk to us about how the money works? Like, we don’t need to know how much you make or anything, but like, I think a lot of people don’t realize that, like people say, you know, you don’t make money writing a book. It’s just a business, HE: (14:28) Which, yeah, RV: (14:29) It is a business card, but you actually can make a truckload of money from doing this, but can you walk us through, like, how does the money work? Like where does it actually, like if you, if I type a book, if I write out a book on my computer today, it took you three years and then I go print it and put it in Amazon, or I use create space, or then what happens? And where do you, where does, where do all the sales come? They come from Amazon. I’m assuming a lot of them happen in Amazon. HE: (14:59) Yeah. So all of, I mean, so all true. All self published books. So I self published through it was CreateSpace now it’s called it’s Kindle direct publishing, which they just took over create space. It’s all, they were all, it was an Amazon company. And and so that when you publish the book, you just check a box if you want it on Tindall right. So paperback, Kindle and then Amazon owns a company. I don’t know if it’s changed since I started doing this, but it was a C X, the letter, a letter C X acx.com. And that is what that is there. Audio book publishing arm. So audio book, self publishing. And so I, you earn on your traditional books. So my traditional, my paperback is or on my self published paperback it’s the retail price is 20 bucks is what I haven’t said at 1999. Amazon sells it for whatever they want, which usually ranges from 15 to 18. And I think I earn just under $9 per book compared to a dollar or two per book, if it was traditionally published. Right? So you sell you know, a thousand copies of the book, right times, you know, that’s, that’s what, $8,000 in income now on Kindle you price it at nine 99, you were in 70% yearning, $7 per book sold on Kindle. Okay. Sorry. Hold on. Sorry. Kindle. RV: (16:22) So, so like on paperback, you’re getting like 50% HE: (16:25) Ish. Yeah, yeah. 50% ish and 70% on, on Kendall. RV: (16:30) Got it. Okay. 50% paperback and then 70%. HE: (16:33) And it’s not an exact formula it’s based on the cost of printing based on how many pages you are. Right. So, so, but, but let’s say yeah, you know, 40, 50% and then on audible I got lucky when I signed on the audible, they used to have a sliding scale where the more books you sold, the higher your percentage jumped up and it stayed there forever. So we are now at 90% for audible. So we are nine on, but now that’s not the case anymore. They changed that model. It’s now a flat 40. So you had 40% of all your books sold an audible. When you go through the, the audible exchange, the ACX company, you can find a narrator, put up, put up, you know, a word, a PDF of your first chapter of your book. You can have people audition for it and then choose one and then either pay them a split or pay them upfront. RV: (17:21) Wow. I mean, that’s pretty simple. I mean, really like, that’s, it’s really pretty simple. And then you’re just basically like doing social media and emails and speaking, and webinars and like, whatever, like all the usual stuff, people go to Amazon or Kindle or audible, and then they buy books and, and then get, HE: (17:40) Yeah, you get a direct deposit in your bank account every month. That direct deposit every month. Yeah. Towards the end of the month. Okay. RV: (17:46) That’s so cool. I mean, and 2 million copies is, is all in for paperback, Kindle and audio. HE: (17:54) So 2 million copies, a half of that roughly is self published us and the other half are those other 37 foreign publishers. So the other half are across the other countries, which by the way, I think a million are in Brazil alone. That’s been the biggest, I think we’ve sold more books in Brazil than in the United States. It went crazy there. Wow. RV: (18:15) That’s so funny. I mean, it’s random how that stuff happens. And then, so talk to us about the, the community, the community. Yeah. Like w w w when did you start that? I mean, this is like, this is way before Facebook groups where like a strategy, you were just, I remember the first time we met, I can’t remember. Maybe it was probably John Ruhlin who interviewed, introduced us, or maybe, actually I think it was Peter Vogue actually, who introduced. And I think the first time you interviewed me, it was actually maybe in the community. I don’t even know if you had a podcast back then. I don’t know if that’s right, but, you know, anyways, tell us how did it start? HE: (18:54) W w where did this come from? So it was an 11th hour deal where I had sent the, my almost finished a manuscript for the miracle morning to a handful of my buddies. And I was like, Hey, will you guys read this and give you feedback? And Jon Vroman was like, Hey, have you thought about creating some sort of online group, any, and this was yeah, 2011, right. Or 12. He said, somewhere, he goes, it feels like this is going to be a lonely venture for a lot of people. Like, if they’re the only morning person, their family they’re by themselves. And there’s nobody to, to connect with and be held accountable to. And he goes, I could see them sliding backwards. I was like, Oh, that’s a great idea. You know, he goes, yeah. He goes, I go. And so I started looking like Kajabi. HE: (19:34) I’m like, maybe I’ll create like an online form. And he said, dude, if I were you, I would just do Facebook groups. He goes, don’t, don’t give people another place to log into because they don’t have that as a habit. You’re trying to get them to create a new habit. If they’re already on Facebook, they’ve got notifications built in the functionality of the group has already, he goes, I would remit the wheel, I’d go to Facebook. And I’m like, yeah. Great idea. So I started a Facebook group called the miracle morning community with me, my mom, dad, John Broman, my sister, right. Like, you know, a handful of us. And I put in the, in the book in the beginning, a special invitation join the miracle morning community to, you know, to, to get accountability and encouragement, swap smoothie, recipes, learn new meditation routines, like whatever. HE: (20:19) And I was the only one in there. I would just check in every day and put quotes and means and add value and right in there and this and that. And as the book sold, right. I mean, as the, you know, so in the beginning, the Facebook group mimicked the book sales because that’s where people found out about it. And and so it started out with, you know, grew to a few hundred people and then eventually crossed a thousand and that particular year, you know, and and then and then it just, it just kind of scaled up. And, and now there’s 270 some thousand members from over a hundred countries. And and they support each other. Like, I don’t, it doesn’t run on me. It’s, it’s them logging in every day. And it’s, we’ve really created this culture of people who are waking up every day and dedicating time to fulfilling their potential with their miracle morning. HE: (21:05) And then they’re, they’re lifting each other up, they’re supporting each other and you get in there, people that, you know, that will celebrate, you know, Hey, today’s day 100 of the miracle morning, and then you’ll get somebody that’s like, Hey, I’m brand new. My friend told me about this group in this book, but I’m not a morning person. Should I do it? And don’t get 150 people for an hour. And they’re like, dude, I was the same, I wasn’t a morning person. Like it works, you know? And, and then they’ll give it a try. So yeah, it’s become really, really, really, really a special, special place, RV: (21:35) Man. That, that is so awesome. And so just a technical question here, you know, like normally when you post on Facebook, a very small fraction of the people, see it when you posted in the Facebook group, like at that scale 270,000, is that similar that only a fraction of those people are seeing it? Or is it, is it, is it because it’s a group it’s a little, it’s a little different HE: (22:01) No, it’s still true. And it’s really, really frustrating. Right. I mean, it is what it is, but and we’re, and we have explored, you know, going with a different platform, like mighty networks and yeah, but it’s just, it’s this, it goes back to John Bowman’s original advice, which is like, you know, are they people really going to log into a different thing? And so we’re, that’s still ideal. We want to take the control of that, but to give you an idea yesterday, one of our admin Stephanie Blackbird, she runs the group in terms of the admin for it. And cause we get, you know, hundreds of new requests every day, somebody’s got to, you know, vet those. And she, but she posted, where are you from? And in less than 24 hours, we had over a thousand comments. You know what I’m saying? I’m from, I’m from Belgium, I’m from France, I’m from America, I’m from Russia and from you just all over the place. So I would imagine out of the 270,000 people, maybe 2000 saw it, you know what I mean? Like, so it’s, it’s definitely tough. RV: (22:59) Yeah. Well, I mean, whether you’re sending emails or you’re doing social media or, I mean, you’re always, you’re always dealing with that, but how cool that this community has taken a life of its own and and then it’s like, it just, it’s just growing, like it’s just this asset that just keeps making a bigger and bigger impact in the world. HE: (23:20) So like what else RV: (23:22) Do you do other than the book? I mean, the cool thing is if you have one great book, self published book like this, like you could actually make a pretty fine living just off of the book and then, and then you speak and any other parts of the business model that you’re working on or have been doing that you’re super excited about. I mean, obviously I know you’ve you were dealing with cancer here for a while, so that’s been, you know, that’s got to have been. HE: (23:46) Yeah, well, yeah. I’ll tell, I’ll tell you the Mo the miracle morning movie is coming out on 12, 12 to 2020, and there’s nothing I’m more excited about than that, but I will share what I turned before. I I’ll, I’ll get to that in a second. It was that when the book came out I, you know, I, then I started, I was a college speaker and I always wanted to be a keynote corporate speaker and be able to raise my fees and Reno reach more people. And so I used the book to plant the seed in there that, you know, when I was speaking at this event, when I was speaking at this event, you know, I can, you know, I’ll bring the miracle morning to you guys. Right. And and so almost every speech I’ve given in the last, you know, whatever eight years is some leader that read the book and wanted me to bring it to their people. HE: (24:30) Right. So it did, it might, my speaking career launched off of that. The so that was a speaking career. And then we started doing live events every year, and then God, last year, because I was having trouble with the chemo and depression and anxiety, I decided to take a year off of the event, which is this, it would have been this December and who knows what headache. It would have been trying to deal with the hotel and re refunding 500 tickets transitioning to LA, you know, online, who knows. So, so we did have live events. We did have a mastermind right now it’s it’s, I just do virtual keynotes, which are not the same as you know, I’m sure. And so, so, but books and virtual keynotes, and then, yeah, we were making a documentary called the miracle morning movie about five or six years ago, we started making this and I started going around and interviewing, you know, world-class influential people, Muhammad Ali, 18, or Mohammed Ali’s daughter, sorry, not Muhammad Ali mom and all these daughter, Laila Ali she’s in it, her morning routine, you know, Brendon Burchard, his morning routine Lewis, Howes, Robert Kiyosaki, Robin Sharma. HE: (25:40) We started interviewing all these world-class individuals, their morning routine. And that was the movie we were making. And and then I was diagnosed with cancer and I called our director and I said, Hey we gotta put the movie on hold, man. I’m, I’m fighting for my life. It’s not looking, it’s not, it doesn’t look good. And he said, you know, being a filmmaker, he said, actually, if you’re okay with it, I’d like to film this journey and, and, you know, come to the hospital and film you going through this. And Holy moly kind of caught me off guard. And thank God we pushed for it because the, the, the first hour of the movie is what we intended it to be. And the last 30 minutes is the most unexpected inspiring, you know, me fighting for my life, with my family, by my side, a wall, I’m still traveling the world trying to spread this mission. And yeah. And so that, that, that’s what I, my main focus right now is just launching this movie to the world on in December. And and then, and then I’ll take a breath and see what’s next from there. So did you so the, the, RV: (26:44) So the movie is that like, self-published too, like, did you pay for it? Did you get a film? You just got your own film crew and a director and said, Hey, I have a vision for a movie. I’m going to make my own fricking movie. HE: (26:56) Yes, yes, my buddy. So my buddy, Nick Conedera is a director. And a few years, like six years ago, he was at my house for dinner. He said, dude, we should make a movie about the miracle morning. Cause he’s in the miracle morning community. And he does it himself. And he would see these people, you know, this guy, Mike Keaton posted how he lost it. And he lost 90 pounds, six months after he started the miracle morning. And he had been obese his whole life. And he attributed to my miracle morning. And so Nick is goes, dude, we got a feature, all these stories of people overcoming depression and starting businesses and all the sudden you’re good morning. I was like, that’s a great idea. I said, but I don’t even know what that looks like, dude, like, right. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. HE: (27:34) Yeah. Yeah. Like, like I don’t even like talk to me later and he kept bugging me about it. And like a few months later, he, he, he found the angle and he called me and he said, how, what’s your mission in life? And I said to elevate, or actually back then it was to change millions of lives one morning at a time. And I said, why? He said, what percentage of our society, you’re trying to change the world. What percentage of our society read self help books? And right away, I kind of got where he was going. And I went, I like 1%, maybe he said, what percentage watch movies? And I went, you’re right. If we’re going to reach, if we’re going to reach the masses, it has to be in another format. And so that’s when we started making the movie and yeah, I funded it. We had a few producers, but I, for the most part, I funded 98% of it. And he, and then I started just meeting people that became part of the team that just kind of God put them in my life. And it was like, perfect. You know, RV: (28:31) That is amazing. How buddy, you are, you like, you are amazing and your, your life is been used for so much. Good. And then continues to be used for so much. Good. And I just buddy, I’m so grateful for you. Where do you, where should people go if they want to connect to you? Obviously you’ve got the Facebook group. Where else would you direct people to? HE: (28:54) Yeah. Miracle morning.com is the best hub. You can find all the books from there. You can join the community from there. You know, you can join the join, the email list. We don’t the movie isn’t for sale yet. We’re working on getting the site up and stuff. People can buy tickets for the world, premier, which is gonna be really cool on 12, 12, 20, 20, we’re doing the miracle morning movie experience, the world premiere. It’s going to be the worldview of the film followed by an immediate, like, how do you implement this? So like, okay, you just watched a movie, you were all excited, you know, about the miracle morning, how do you start it tomorrow morning? And I’m going to teach how to do that. And there’ll be like a live Q and a with me and the director and the team. And then there’ll be a 30 day challenge that people will be able to join, you know, for free. And so yeah, so go to miracle morning.com. And if you join the email list, you’ll get my weekly podcast. You’ll get that way. We don’t RV: (29:42) Sell anything really to you. It’s just, we just try to add value. And until the movie comes out, I love it. Well, we’ll put miracle morning.com in the show notes, rather, thank you for what you do and for your story and your faith. And just for keeping the fight for yourself and your family. And obviously for the message, we, we appreciate you and we pray for you and we wish you the best. Thanks brother. Appreciate you, man. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Ep 111: The Foot Traffic Formula with Stacy Tuschl | Recap Episode

RV: (00:06) Hey, it’s the Influential personal brand recap edition. Although it’s just me this time I’m filling in for momma CEO. AJ who is out today and I’m going to be breaking down my new friend, Stacy Tuschl interview, which I loved. And here’s why I loved it. I loved it because more, probably than any other interview that we have had, she talks about the intersection of digital marketing, marketing, online marketing, in other words, and offline marketing, this intersection between the offline world and the online world, which is where the magic happens. It’s it’s not about either, or it really is about both now, specifically. I think more of the angle that she takes in her business and in the interview, if you didn’t listen to it, go back of course, and listen to it. But, um, is she’s really teaching online marketing strategies for brick and mortar businesses. But if you listen closely, she’s really teaching both just online marketing and offline marketing, which is the story of my life. RV: (01:25) That is the story of our companies. It’s not free traffic or paid traffic. It’s both, it’s not, uh, offline or online. It’s both, when you’re launching a company, when you’re building a personal brand, you have to do everything you can possibly do to get the word out about what you do, right? Like it, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you do all the things at once. It means you, you, you know, obviously if you’re one of our members, we teach the brand builder journey. So we teach a specific sequence and how you build this. But the thing you got to know is it’s, it doesn’t matter how advanced you are, how big you are. Like we have to over the course of time, master as many marketing strategies as we possibly can, like build in as many as, as we, as our team can handle and that we can, we can run effectively. RV: (02:23) And that is just important, right? It’s, it’s important that you know, that it’s important that you hear the truth, that nobody built a business on just going viral. And nobody just got lucky where people just showed up. Like that’s not a strategy and it’s not the truth. The truth is that every great personal brand hustled, they built one channel at a time and then the next, and then the next, and then the next all as ways of reaching out. And I think that’s just, you know, something that we can never, we can never hear enough of. Right? Because when you look online and you go, Oh my gosh, like I don’t have the followers that she has, or I don’t have as much engagement as he has, or my videos aren’t as cool as hers. That’s what we look right. That’s, that’s the thought process that we have, but you, you can’t compare your chapter one to somebody else’s chapter 25 and you got to remember that, right? RV: (03:31) You can’t look at what Dave Ramsey’s doing and be like, Oh my gosh, why? You know, like I’ll never be able to do that. Well, sure. You will. It might take you a while though. I mean, it’s taken him him 30 years, but he’s been slow and steady and consistent, and you can do the same thing and that’s marketing you all. Like it’s a, it’s a grind, it’s a hustle. It’s a battle. I mean, I I’m reminded of, you know, shark tank, you know, shark, shark tank has all these famous investors. And you would think, how do the sharks have a company that fails? Like, aren’t they famous enough that they can just like, you know, make a video post about anything and it’ll just turn into success. And the answer’s no, they’re not like it helps tremendously, but they can still fail. They, the companies still fail because, uh, you, you need a marketing system, you need a marketing plan, you need a marketing strategy. RV: (04:32) You need mechanisms that reinforce your message and are constantly working to, to tell people about who you are and about what you do. And that’s, that’s duplicatable. That’s, replicatable, that’s, that’s something that can grow all this other stuff, you know, going viral and all that. That’s just luck. That’s not something you can, you can reproduce. That’s not what you want to build your company off of, even though it’s worth aspiring to do that. So anyways, it was a great interview for that reason. I’m going to give you my three highlights, but that, that was the message, I guess, that was on my heart for me. And for you of just knowing that, Hey, this it’s all online and offline and we got to do everything we can do to tell the world about what we do. And that’s the truth of every successful business and successful personal brand. RV: (05:26) And so Stacy was a good reminder of that, but, um, all right, so here’s my top three takeaways. So first, first of all, she says directly in the interview, my traffic comes from three places, Facebook ads, Google search, and our referral program. Bam, like there, she is sharing her secrets two decades here of a successful brick and mortar business of where her traffic comes from. Facebook ads, Google search, I E search engine optimization, I E Google ads and referral program. So here’s my first question for you. How many of those three things do you have running in your business? Facebook ads, search engine optimization and Google ads and a referral program. It’s possible that you have zero. And if you’re not experiencing the kind of traffic that you want to be having, it might be because you don’t have any of those three things, things running. RV: (06:31) Now we teach all three of those things. Facebook ads, Google. We would break apart into two. We would call search engine optimization. One part that’s free Google. And then we, we, we have Google ads, which is paid traffic, which, um, specifically YouTube and, um, Google ads, which are both the Google ad network. We would actually kind of treat those as two separate things and then referral program, which we would call affiliate marketing. It’s just another word for that. Um, all four of those traffic sources we teach in our event, high traffic strategies. And there’s a reason why now that’s a phase three event and you go, well, Rory, why would you wait all the way until phase three brand builders group has four phases. We have three, two day experiences in each, each phase, right? So this would be like event number nine out of 12. RV: (07:24) And people say, well, Roy, why do you wait that long to teach traffic? I mean, isn’t traffic important. Yes. But if you don’t have, if you don’t have clear positioning and you, you don’t have a clear offer and you don’t have a clear business model and you don’t have your revenue engine, what we call your revenue engine set up for all your lead capture and all your funnels traffic is, is worthless. Um, but when, once you have all this stuff built and you go, bam, let’s go light up the traffic, the traffic ways, um, three of the six that we teach in our high traffic strategies event, you know, sh she’s doing the same thing. So there you go. Like you’re looking for the secret, like there’s the secret, like that’s what to do, um, how to do it is a different story, but that’s what to do. RV: (08:09) Facebook ads, search engine optimization, Google ads and referral program. And how many of those do you have set up? And if you don’t have any, or you only have half of them, well, the good, the bad news is that’s probably why you’re not seeing the traffic you want. But if the good news about that is, Hey, there’s a lot of room to grow. And, and, and it works, right? You’re not, you’re not yet doing the things that other people are doing that get traffic. And that’s why you don’t have traffic. So that’s a good thing. You’re, you’re clear, at least if you’re listening to this episode, you’re, you’re clear on what will drive traffic. Um, now there’s a whole bunch of things that we do for free traffic. And then our favorite traffic of all is what we call get paid traffic. So this, this category, Facebook ads, Google ads, and affiliate is in what we call paid traffic. RV: (09:02) We have another form of traffic that we teach in phase two, which is another reason why these are in phase three for us, which is free traffic. Um, and then our favorite traffic of all, which she actually didn’t talk about is what we call get paid traffic, which is where you get paid to be put in front of someone else’s audience, uh, which is the number one traffic source we have, of course, for us, it’s speaking, um, where you learn how to get paid and get put in front of an audience, which is amazing and book deals. But, um, anyways, there you go. That’s, those are the things you need to be doing. If you don’t have traffic, that’s why, why you don’t have traffic. You’re not doing those things. Um, and the, when is important, that’s what we would add to it, right. And brand builders group. RV: (09:47) So anyways, that was really edifying for me just to hear her go, okay, we don’t have a brick and mortar business, but even in a brick and mortar business, that’s what she’s doing. And that’s powerful. All right. The second thing is that she said brick and mortar is faster. In other words, offline marketing is faster. I believe that is true. What, wait a minute, Roy doesn’t brand builders kind of specialize in, in, in teaching like digital marketing strategies. Yes. We also specialize in teaching offline. Why? Because funnels and traffic and social media and podcasts. These are slower, longer term, more scalable solutions to traffic, but they are slower. So they’re more scalable. And, and in the longterm, they’re, they’re more valuable, right? Cause there’s only so many phone calls you can make in a day. Maybe not. I maybe wouldn’t say more valuable because you can build a team of people, but from you personally, as a one person, as a one man band or one woman band, you can only make so many phone calls. RV: (11:01) But remember our background, I knocked on doors for 80 hours a week for five summers. Then I tell them marketed in corporate enterprise sales. Then we did business to business sales for 12 years in our former company. And then we did digital marketing. And so that’s something I want you to know, like if you’re just starting out Facebook and Instagram and you know, funnels probably isn’t the fastest path to cash. It’s not what we teach. We actually have a, uh, in our virtual training, even for our virtual members, the very first training we put people through is what is called the fast cash, uh, the fast cash formula. And we talk about offline marketing because it’s people that, you know, it’s, it’s your customers, it’s your friends and family getting referrals from people that you know, and your clients. And it just people who trust you, that’s the fastest path to cash funnels and ads and, and, and social media and podcasting and publishing books. RV: (12:08) Those are all great things. They’re amazing things. They’re, they’re important things. They’re life changing things, but they’re longterm things. They’re longterm things, right? If you need to go sign up top 10 customers tomorrow to pay you a thousand dollars each, and you’re just starting out, getting on Instagram is not the fastest way to do that. You gotta get it through your, your friends and family from referrals and from your first clients, even if you do it for free so that you get testimonials and you can get referrals. Offline marketing is the fastest path to cash. Typically in the short term, unless you’re a celebrity, unless you have a huge following, then it’s, then it’s different. But for most of us, offline is faster. You can go knock on someone’s door. You might have to knock on 50 doors to get one person to buy from you, but you can get a credit card in a day versus, you know, it can take six months a year to get a funnel launched in some cases, depending on how much, you know, what you’re doing. RV: (13:10) Um, but asking your, your brother-in-law for a referral, emailing someone and being on a phone call tomorrow, you can collect a phone, a credit card by this afternoon or by tomorrow. So you work your offline relationships, your offline relationships are just as important. Um, and especially in the short term, you know, brick and mortar, I mean human humans. And by the way, those of you that have done, like if I speak in front of a live audience, we might see a 30% conversion. But if I do a webinar funnel, we might see a 3% conversion. So it’s a trade off. Now the good news about a webinar funnel is that we can have an infinite number of people without adding any time in my calendar. So, uh, a one to 3% conversion works as long as I have enough cash to last for six months while we get the thing built and launched and tested and tweaked, but you’re gonna see lower conversions online than offline. RV: (14:11) And it’s going to take typically a longer runway online than offline. And then finally, the last thing, this was so simple, um, was she just said, and this was just powerful, but she said, you have to scrap how you used to do things. And instead ask, how would I do things if I would just starting today in 2020? Right. So what I used to do, you know, it’s irrelevant. It’s irrelevant unless it’s still relevant, right? Like doing something because that’s what I used to do. That’s not a reason to keep doing it. The reason to do it is to go, isn’t the best thing to do today, IR, regardless and separate of what I used to do. But so many people are living in the past going, well, we didn’t, we’ve never done that. That’s never worked. I don’t know how to do that. I w I, we never used to do that. RV: (15:09) So I don’t know how to do it. Great. Learn how to do it. Right. The question is not, what did you use to do? What you used to do is irrelevant. All that matters is what do you need to do? What do I have to do right now? What do I want to do? What do I have to do? And I have to do, I have to learn whatever I have to do. And I have to do whatever I have to do, regardless if I want to do it or like to do it. It’s, it’s kind of what my mom used to say. Entitlement, you know, is, is interesting because enjoying it, isn’t a requirement of doing it, enjoying it. Isn’t a requirement of doing it. And that is true when it comes to marketing. So it’s, it’s what do I have to do more than, what do I want to do? RV: (15:58) It’s not, what did I used to do? It’s what should I do today? And some of those things from the past can still work and other things you need to let leave them behind. And in a lot of cases, you need to reinvent or supplement your traffic strategy with some new skill sets. And you can do that. And you can learn those. Some of those things right here on these podcast interviews, you can learn a ton of them from our team at brand builders group. But no matter how you do it, you got to pump your message out there into the world as fast as possible in many, as many outlets as you can keep up with. Uh, so that people hear about you because excellence is never an accident. People don’t accidentally find you and you don’t accidentally grow your business. So online marketing and offline bring it together. And that is where the magic happens. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye [inaudible].

Ep 110: The Foot Traffic Formula with Stacy Tuschl

ST: (00:06) RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call, hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) I’m so happy and excited to be able to bring you a little bit of a discussion from brick and mortar land from one of the women who is really one of the experts and is also kind of a new friend, but we’ve known of each other for like the last couple years, her name’s Stacy Tuschl. And I met her at a couple of different masterminds. I spoke at and through mutual friend, Julie Solomon, some of you know, and she’s amazing. So first of all, she’s a bestselling author and speaker, she’s the owner of multiple seven figure businesses. She’s the creator of something called the foot traffic formula, which we’re gonna talk about. And she, one of the things that I love is she has a real good focus and balance on just not making work, everything always all the time, but like having the personal life and being, being a family, a family woman, or a family, man, I guess you could say two of ’em those of you that are, you know, trying to raise a family. And, and, and in addition to the business recently she actually became she got the Wisconsin, small business person of the year award from the SBA, which if you know anything about like local business, that’s a big, a big freaking deal. And Wisconsin is a big state. So I’m excited to introduce you to her. We’re just going to chat and hear some of her stories. So Stacy, thanks for making some time. ST: (02:36) I’m excited to be here. This is going to be fun. RV: (02:39) So you have 18 years, you five years of doing online business. Yep. Which we’ll talk about that too, but really you’re 18 years, like a true brick and mortar business owner. Like, can you tell us a little bit about that and like how, what you were doing and how you got started? Yeah, so I actually started right out of ST: (03:00) High school. The summer I graduated. I was a dancer in high school, kind of late to the game. So I knew I wasn’t going to do it professionally, but I didn’t want to stop. So I decided while I was going to college, I went to UWM Milwaukee here in Wisconsin. While I was going to school, I decided I was going to teach middle school dancers. And we held classes in my parents’ backyard. Talk about strapping. And I had 17 girls start that first year. Within three years, we had a hundred kids still coming to the backyard. And then thankfully I grew up in a small business. So my grandfather started a construction business about 50 plus years ago, so older than me. So I grew up in that and my family saw the dancers, saw what I was doing and said, I think you have a business here. ST: (03:50) Like, I think we could start charging and you could do this for a living. And like just blew my mind because even though I had grown up in that world, it was very different. I mean, construction, dance classes, it just didn’t feel like this could be something I could do. So in 2005, I officially incorporated started charging, rented a space. Today we have now two locations here in Milwaukee. I own both of the brick and mortar, like commercial buildings that we house the dancers in, and I’m about 50 employees. So it’s a pretty well oiled machine. I no longer teach. I strictly work here in my home office on the business. And then about five years ago, people started to say, how are you doing this? Can you teach me? And that’s kind of the birth of our, my online business. RV: (04:39) Huh. So this is like, so it’s a dance studio effectively. I mean, that’s, that’s what this is. And there’s a whole community dance studios is it’s fascinating. Clint Salter is a, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him ST: (04:54) Spoke at cleanse event in January before we all were shut down. RV: (04:58) Oh yeah. I love that guy. And you know, so, but, but one of the reasons that I thought this would be cool to talk about is cause everyone talks about online business and, and I think there’s a good overlap, but foot traffic formula was originally designed. Tell me if I got this right. Specifically for more of those brick and mortars about how to drive more revenue. And so, you know, I kinda think of three things going on here. There’s sort of strategies for, for those of us that are using a personal brand to drive a brick and mortar, then you go, how do we supplement this with online? And then we go, how does COVID interrupt both of those things and marry them together? So that’s kind of how I want to like talk about this, but in a non COVID world for a second, I feel like we never produce content for the people that, that our clients are like, you know, they either have a dance studio or a fitness gym, or they do salons and spas, or we got jewelry designers and they have like boutiques. So if I have a retail business, how do I get people to come in? Yeah. ST: (06:02) Okay. So I love this and here’s what I want to tell you too. Even if you were an online business owner, listen, because business is business is business, right? The strategies I’m using online, I’ve used in my brick and mortar. But the biggest thing that I, I, the difference I should say with brick and mortar is we can get them faster because we’re in person, it’s a deeper connection, right? So sometimes you’ll hear online marketing and they’ll talk about these email drips and spending how many emails, you know, getting them warmed up in the brick and mortar world. I I’m running Facebook ads directly to a free trial or a book, a call or things like that. And we’re getting people on the phone that day and possibly in our building that week. So it’s a little bit different and how fast we can do it because a lot of times our people are searching for us. They already know they have a need and they trust us a little bit more because we are local down the road. We’re one of those neighborhood businesses. But our typical funnel looks like Facebook ad to some way to not just collect their name, their email, but also their phone number. So we get to go a little deeper on our landing pages than a lot of people do in the influencer world. Not everybody’s collecting phone numbers, but in local brick and mortar, it’s more normal. Like it’s the regular everyday thing. RV: (07:20) Yeah. Well, and, and one of the things you said there to me, which is like such a big delineation for people to understand, but whether you’re online or brick and mortar or some combination of the two is when I think of local businesses, that’s like intent based search. Someone is searching for a plumber or a dance studio. And there’s a whole world of digital marketing related to that, which my mind also goes to Google because like the Google network has really like intent based search, which is different from the online world where it’s more like I’m trying to create intent. I’m trying to drum up interest like, Hey, check out this ad, meet me or this piece of content. And then kind of like rope them in versus capture them. Is that, do you see it that same ST: (08:09) For sure. I feel like the intent based marketing is a lot more we spend more time on it. So Google, my business is a thing you want to make sure it’s updated. It’s maximized because people really are searching for us using search engines like Google. So that’s huge for us. It’s absolutely one of our number one resource or sources of new leads. However, we are doing paid traffic to look alike audiences, people that, you know, we’ll upload our current customer base into Facebook and we’re doing lookalikes in this area. So that is an intent. We’re putting it in front of them, hoping, okay, maybe this will be a good fit. Right. So we do a mix of both in our brick. RV: (08:51) Yeah. So, so just so everyone understands, you kind of brushed through that real quick, but it’s like, you actually took your customer, your customer database from your brick and mortar store export it, it, theoretically you could use a plugin, but you export it as a, as an old school CSV file, upload it to Facebook. You could show ads to those people, but then you’re allowing Facebook to create a look alike off of that, knowing that those people are all from a demographic, like a geographic region. And so is going to pick that up and show ads to people like that. ST: (09:25) Yeah. And one thing we do too, to get a little bit more advanced too, is if you have a software where you can say, who is not currently active, that used to be active, like, could we get a reengagement campaign? Could we get them back in the gym? Could we get them? So you don’t, especially with COVID. If, if people have taken a break from you, how do we go back to our inactive list of customers upload that into Facebook and see who we can target. Like that’s another great way to get them back in and engaged. RV: (09:56) And then the other thing. So I love this cause you’re, you’re advertising to your customers. This is like the intersection of digital and brick and mortar you’re advertising to your customers. Like in some that are inactive, you’re advertising to look alike audiences, which are people who Facebook says, looks like these people. And then do you also run ads? I mean, when you’re the one thing about brick and mortar is you go, can I run ads to people who like the ice cream shop right down the street from my studio? Do you do that kind of stuff? ST: (10:25) So it’s a little harder because a lot of these little local brick and mortar businesses, we can’t, we’re not big enough to say like that they like this person, you know, do this. So it’s a little harder, but we will find, you know, for my ideal client, she’s a typical mom who likes target and certain brands. So we can grab bigger companies that are more nationwide that she’s going to, like that would still be a good fit for us. Like if we’re looking for the soccer mom, right. The dance mom, we can find out some of those interests, but it’s, it is harder to grab like the little ice cream shop or the gymnastics studio down the road. RV: (11:00) Gotcha. Okay. So that’s really powerful. So would you say that again, we’re talking brick and mortar, but we’re talking digital strategies for brick and mortar. Do you think most of the, you know, kind of like the primary ways you drive traffic or controllable traffic to your store, is that coming on the digital front and that’s pushing people into your store or are there still a bunch of things that you’re doing that would be like offline advertising that is really moving people into your physical location ST: (11:35) Is definitely pivoted much more digital. I mean, I’ve been around since pre social media. I always tell people, my first memory of marketing was I would walk in subdivisions and hang door hangers on people’s doors. Like Facebook ads was like the most amazing blessing that I’ve ever, that I didn’t have to go walk in some divisions anymore. So I mean, we’ve been doing it a long time. I will say one of our best sources to this day is having a referral program. And I know you’re big on that too. So we, we do kind of like the direct TV model where, you know, the friend gets something as well as the person they refer and we are very public about our referral rewards and referral program. So that’s huge for us. I mean, they’re either coming from a Facebook ad, a Google search or a friend referred them. I mean, those are the three big things we’re finding. RV: (12:25) Interesting. So Facebook ad a Google search or a referral. Yeah. So we had brand builders is that way, right. We have a very public lifetime referral fee. And then Amanda tress, who I know you also know who’s also a good friend of ours. She was on the show, I don’t know, a few weeks ago. And she, you know, her whole business like blew up with all the referral program and she’s talked about that whole thing. Okay. So you talked about Facebook ad, you mentioned, you mentioned Google, my business and then the referral program. Is there anything about else about Google search that we kind of need to know or key in on? And I, I guess this would apply again for brick and mortar, but I think, I feel like we hear a lot of people talk about Facebook ads. But we don’t hear that much about Google for personal brands. And so could you, is there anything there that you feel like we should know? ST: (13:20) So Google my business and Google, right, just in general, SEO is definitely brick and mortar. People are searching for you there, right? We want to make sure that you’re ranking high. Now, if you’re in an area where you want to get on that homepage, but if you have tons and tons of competitors, it can be really hard to fight for a spot on that homepage in the online world. It’s going to be very difficult to fight for that homepage because there are a million people doing something very similar to you. That’s why I think there’s a big difference in people. Don’t really talk about Google and SEO as much online as they do in the brick and mortar world. It’s just less saturated. Right. but I will say with Google ad words I think Google ad words work great for brick and mortars. ST: (14:06) The one thing that I will say is watch your market. So I don’t run Google ads right now because nobody in my area runs Google ads and I’m at the top of Google. So if you Google like Oak Creek, Wisconsin dance classes, I’m going to be right there at the top. So I don’t feel the need to run ads to get higher than myself. If that makes sense. If my competitors started to do it, then I would probably have to consider it. I also know it would totally push me in the game and I’m afraid that if I start proactively, it’ll just push them into the game. And then we’re just going to be outbidding each other when let’s just stay free. If we can. Let’s just say, RV: (14:45) You’re the one that if, especially if you’re the one at the top, ST: (14:49) Yeah. It was still reason to get the Google game. RV: (14:52) We’ll make sure that this podcast isn’t seen by anyone in Wisconsin. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll ST: (14:59) It’s just kind of like my strategy right now, but you may be in a different situation. You might be not even on the homepage, like number one, and you may have a lot of people running Google ads that you might want to think about time to pay to play. Right. There may come a time that I’m going to have to start doing it. It just isn’t right now. RV: (15:18) Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, one of the things about brick and mortar, one of the things about Google in general, that’s amazing is you can actually see how many people are searching for a specific term. And, and then how much it would cost to bid on that term. And so when I think of brick and mortar, I also think about hyper localized search. So like the name of a community or a small, you know, like I’m a Nashville, you know, it, you wouldn’t be going for like personal branding Tennessee, or you could do personal branding Nashville. I mean, it doesn’t really fit for us cause we don’t have like a retail location, but you might use like Oak Hill or green Hills or whatever the name of the community is. If it, if there are people, if there is a lot of, a lot of pain going on, you could like narrow the geographic niche. ST: (16:11) Yeah. And I think there’s different phrases that somebody local is looking for. Especially if they’re typing in Nashville, they might be typing in marketing agency, right. Consulting, like they’re looking for phrases like that. And then that’s something you absolutely could be doing keyword wise, trying to get people to see you, but people that kind of get this whole online world and that there’s gurus out there. Right. They may not be going to Google. They’re probably going to Facebook and kind of going down that rabbit hole. RV: (16:39) Yeah. well, that’s interesting. Okay. So that now this whole context of this conversation was brick and mortar strategies, everything, including the referral program applies to digital as well. Are there, are there things okay, so the foot traffic formula originally, it was kind of targeted at brick and mortar and but all of these things would apply just as you said, in the beginning to any digital business, is there any other sort of advantage that a digital business has that your, you would say is like, you’re seeing a lot of traffic that you really don’t, you can’t do or benefit from and in the brick and mortar world? ST: (17:18) I don’t, I don’t think so. I mean, for the most part, when I started my online business and I was struggling in the beginning, I had to go back and go, well, what did I do in the first business to become successful? And I truly was duplicating a lot of that online. That’s why I always go back and say like, this is just marketing. You know, this is not something brand new. It’s just a transitional period of what our marketing looks like, what business is now turning into. And 2020 has been a slap in the face to say like time to update, you know, your business model if you’re still living in the past. RV: (17:52) Yeah. Well, and like, just even using that as an illustration, like the door hangers, I mean, a Facebook ad is kind of like the equivalent of a door hanger. I mean, you’re going to see it, the diff the difference is you often don’t have to pay for a digital impression where you would have to pay to physically print that. ST: (18:10) Yeah. I paid for everyone. I had to manually put them on every single door, whether somebody took that and just threw it on the ground or threw it in the garbage. Right. but it looked just like a Facebook ad. Would it had a graphic, it had a headline, a call to action with a link. I mean, it took them exactly like you would do it right now in 2020. RV: (18:30) Yeah. I mean, that’s like, you know, when, when we’re trying to teach personal brands about like a webinar or something, we’re going look, the way I built my whole speaking business was I went and spoke for free. And I was on stage in front of live people with humans and they get to sample me. And then that was how they buy the stuff. A webinar is exactly the same thing. Except I think what you’re saying is true. You got to realize in the digital world, it’s, it’s slower, a lower percentage than, you know, kind of like in that physical world. So on the topic of the digital marketing, are there any places, so Facebook and Google, is there any other place that you’re looking or spending time, or you have your eye on right now in terms of online traffic sources beyond Facebook and Google ST: (19:13) For my brick and mortar or online or both? Both. Okay. So we’re definitely, we’re, we’re trying to do Facebook and Instagram, both. So when I say Facebook, I also mean Instagram and we’re definitely starting to look more into LinkedIn and YouTube for our online business this year. We’ve been doing it, but I’m talking like getting really serious and using the platform and maximizing it. RV: (19:38) Yeah. But not for brick and mortar per se. ST: (19:41) I’m not for brick and mortar. I actually thought about with my brick and mortar, I thought about doing a podcast, like a local podcast, and that will be happening. It’s just with COVID things that definitely changed the game a little bit. And that’s something that I is a little different. I don’t see a lot of brick and mortars having a podcast, but I also see podcasting just getting bigger and bigger. And I kind of want to start that trend in my area too, for just that extra credibility. Yeah. So I’m really excited that it would have been on my, to do list already pre COVID, but now we’ll, we’ll be doing something soon which is exciting. Like I love doing something experimenting. Like, let’s see if this works, let’s see what happens. RV: (20:20) Yeah. And we did an interview with a guy named Rick Steele. Who’s has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Google advertising. And one of the things he was talking about was with the YouTube ads, you can choose to run an ad in front of any specific video, not just a, a channel, but one video. So if there are videos out there that are like getting a lot of views that are somehow for a local market, I mean, it’d be to see, yeah. It seems like the battle there on YouTube and Google land is developing more and more in LinkedIn too. Although I, you know, I hear pretty consistently at LinkedIn feels very expensive to get to people. So let’s talk about just COVID real quick then. So you, you you’ve mentioned COVID for our brick and mortar people. I mean, what do you do, ST: (21:14) Where do you start? RV: (21:15) I mean, yeah. Where do you even start with? I mean, obviously stores, you know, some of them are getting to open up the nail salons and stuff, or start open a little more and more, but what, what was the strategy? I mean, here you are an 18 year vet to brick and mortar, and I’m guessing that for some period of y’all, must’ve got shut down. ST: (21:33) Yeah. We were closed from about mid-March until June 1st. So for us you know, we didn’t have anything digital. We had never been doing anything like that. We, the good thing is because I already was in this world and I, you know, I’ve been on zoom a million times. Like this is where we live as an entrepreneurial online. I was able to go into my brick and mortar and that day say we are immediately going virtual. We are going to have zoom classes. And it’s funny because my entire team was like, what is zoom? We don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are these videos going? What are you after you do the video? Where does the video go? Like, it was just, they were so like, I couldn’t even believe that my team who’s incredible. They just, they didn’t live in that world. ST: (22:18) So what was exciting was I realized, okay, they’re so confused. And this is what’s happening right now for my competitors. They’re doing this whole thing, but they don’t have me going guys. I live on zoom. My mum’s zoom all day long. I’ve got this right. So we were the only ones in my area to pivot virtually. First of all, we pivoted within two days, we opened up on like a Tuesday and said, here’s what we’re doing. And we kind of held it over. We kept, I think we were at like 90% retention that first month. Wow. So we were really like trying everything. And then we got to open back up June 1st, but we’ve actually kept, you can come to us in person or you can stream virtually at the same time for those that don’t feel comfortable. So it’s definitely changed the way we’re going to continue to do business for a little while. But what I realized was we can’t have all of our eggs in one basket in one type of product. Like, all we do is service based businesses in person. That was scary when I realized like, that was a lot more fragile than I realized it was. RV: (23:24) Hm. ST: (23:26) Well now we’re, we’re asking ourselves, what else could we do? Cause I think there’s some people that say, yeah, but I do live of like, like I have a customer that is in live event, promo. They do swag for live events, right. In person events, they’re gone. Right. And they’re so stuck on like, but that’s what we used to do. That’s how used to make money. And you have to just scrap how you used to do things and ask yourself, how would I start again today in 2020? What could I offer that would still work in this market, you know, in the online space per se. RV: (24:02) Yeah. That’s powerful. That’s a powerful question. What did you do to like when you stream? So I was actually curious about this. So we are streaming classes, your dance classes. How are you connecting the camera to zoom? Like, what are you, is that where you using zoom to stream it? Or were you using something else? ST: (24:20) So we were just using zoom. However, some people did not have great computers. So we bought them little webcams that hooked up to their computer. RV: (24:28) Oh, okay. So, so people just, this is your, Oh, that’s right. Cause your instructors are not at the studio either they’re at home or wherever they are ST: (24:36) Correct. Even when we opened back up and they were streaming with it, now they’re in the building, but they all have to have their own computers. We have to have, we have like, I don’t even know maybe seven classrooms going on at the same time. So I need seven computers, seven cameras, seven microphones. Like I needed all the equipment. So that was, that was a process right there. RV: (24:56) But you’re streaming. You basically got a U S like a, an external USB camera that plugs right into the computer. And then you’re just setting that camera wherever you need to film the instructor. Correct. And then how are you miking up an instructor? ST: (25:11) Yeah. So that was a challenge. And that was something I’m like, you know what, no, one’s going to know that, no, one’s going to know they’re going to need good audio. I knew video needs to know. RV: (25:19) I know that. But like these mikes we’re talking on you, can’t like, if you’re teaching dance, you’re not just like, ST: (25:25) I wish I could show you, but there are fitness. Mike’s like, if you Google like fitness microphones, they’re wireless, they plug in your back pocket. So you can actually hook up a headset. And my, now my instructors have these fancy ones that go like around their neck and they sit right here. So they’re talking into the microphone. So there are options for people that need even us, if we want it to walk around and do a whiteboard back here, I could be 10 feet away writing. And you could still hear me with the wireless mic. RV: (25:51) Yeah. Yeah. So the, but it’s Bluetooth, Bluetooth technology basically. Yeah. wow. Well, look at that. We’re getting, we’re getting a few secrets again. We’ll make sure not to run ads to anyone in Wisconsin to promote this episode. And if you’re from Wisconsin, I’m sorry. You just have to ignore this episode. Particularly if you’re in the dance dance business, but I’m not thinking we’re reaching a lot of people in that market, Stacy. So I think, ST: (26:15) And here’s the thing. I really have that abundance mindset of even if they go to do X, Y, Z, I’ll always be one step ahead. Right. I’m always looking and investing and researching, and that’s what you have to do because there are competitors everywhere. Right? So you’ve got to stay on top of your game. They make me stronger. RV: (26:32) Yeah. And I mean, so many of these things, it’s like, they’re simple, but nobody actually does them. Like, there’ll be such a small percentage of people who actually go do something. And it’s, and it’s like as simple as exporting your customer list, uploading it to Facebook and running ads to those people. Who’ve been inactive that could change your business. But only 5% of people who hear that idea will probably ever actually even attempt to do it. ST: (26:58) Right. Cause somebody is thinking, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know where that would be. I don’t have the software to do that. They think of excuses. Why they can’t instead of just making it work and figuring it out. RV: (27:09) Yeah. So are you, you, you’re still loving the brick and mortar. Like you’re, you’re doing, you’re finding the hybrid. I mean obviously teaching people, brick and mortar. So foot traffic formula is an online business that teaches brick and mortar people, how to use online to drive their brick and mortar business. Right. So you’ve got an online, but you’re still brick and mortar. ST: (27:32) I am. And you don’t, people will say to me all the time, like, why don’t you sell? Like, why don’t you get out of it? And here’s the thing. When you build a business that runs like a well oiled machine, there’s no reason to get out of it. I don’t feel trapped. I don’t feel underpaid. I don’t feel exhausted by my brick and mortar. And when people tell me, like, get out, sell, do this. I always think you probably had a bad experience managing a team. You probably didn’t have consistent paychecks. You probably had a lot more chaos than I’m experiencing. So for me, I don’t have plans to sell my brick and mortar at all. Like we’ve been doing this, I haven’t taught a dance class in over 10 years. I haven’t worked in the building for about seven years. And I plan to keep, to keep running them. RV: (28:17) Wow. Well, and isn’t that the truth? I mean, when you understand the way businesses are valued, all you’re doing is getting an advance on future earnings. So it’s like, I’m just, I’m just giving up an ATM machine that I’ve built and in exchange for a onetime payment, it’s like, well, I kinda like my ATM machine and it’s, as long as I think it’s going to keep running, I’m probably just going to hang on to that. Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, really, really cool. And just something you just don’t hear every day. So I mean, Stacy, where do you want people to go if, if they want to connect with you or learn about foot traffic formula or, you know, some of the stuff that you’re up to. ST: (28:53) Yeah. So you can just go to my website, Stacy, social.com. I know that is a lot to spell. So I’ll have you look that up on [inaudible] podcast, but yeah, RV: (29:04) L it’s not a big deal, but it, you know, until it’s, you know, you might go Tuscaloosa to show just to shul, but to USC AHL, but yeah, we’ll put a link to it, of course. ST: (29:16) But yeah, I would say my podcasts, foot traffic, and then everywhere on social media, it’s just at Stacey social. RV: (29:22) Yeah. I love it. Well, thanks for sharing some of these secrets. This is a very unique space. I think you’re, you’re one of the earlier people for sure, into this space and I love that you’re doing it. I love that. You’re like running the brick and mortar doing it as an active, not teaching stuff you used to do, but like, you’re actually, you’re doing it. It’s really good. ST: (29:44) I think that was one of the big differences with COVID. We had an influx of people coming to me and it’s because I’m still running it. I’m in the thick of it. That was a crazy mass in March. And when they could learn what I was doing in real time, that was helpful. So it actually showed me the importance of keeping the brick and mortar to truly be able to teach in real time what’s going on so we can continue to strengthen our skills as well. RV: (30:10) I love it. Well, we’ll link up to Stacy tuschl.com. Thanks for being here. We wish you the best and we’ll talk to you again.

Ep 101: The Battle Against Reactive Busyness with Juliet Funt | Recap Episode

RV: (00:00) Hey, good news. You just listened to the 100th episode of the influential personal brand podcast. HOOORAYYY pretty amazing to start a brand new podcast and get to a hundred episodes, it’s exciting for us. Hopefully you enjoyed it. So the interview was with Juliet Funt one of our good friends and like always, we’re going to be breaking it down for you here, give you the recap kind of cliff notes and just our takeaways of, of what it meant for us. So why don’t you kick us off first, babe? AJ: (00:43) I think my biggest thing was more on her personal brand, which is just the importance of having white space. I think all of us are plagued by the life of busy-ness and what’s next. And how much can I fit in versus providing a little time to think process brainstorm, strategize, and I love what she talked about. It’s just like how many of us have time in our calendars to think, just to think me with nothing to do no emails, no podcasts, no projects, no calls, no meetings, just white space. And I think that’s amazing because so much of our creative time happens during just blank space. Right. I just, that’s such a great term. And I just, I think out of everything, I love that the most of just making sure that every single day your calendar has white space to just think, to create, to imagine, to just be in what you’re doing. And I think that that’s hard that actually takes quite a bit of discipline to do that versus, okay, great. I’ve got five minutes. How many emails can I check off? Or how many of this can I do? And I’m totally guilty of that. And just building in white space. I love that. That was my, that was by far my biggest thing. RV: (02:05) Yeah. I mean, that’s a big takeaway of mine too. It is, you know, the way she describes it, like it could even just be this interstitial sip of space. It doesn’t have to be like a 30 minute or a 60 minute block necessarily, but I think the interstitial, yeah. AJ: (02:24) And he knew I was going to ask that didn’t you? Right. So even when she was saying it, I was like, interstitial RV: (02:32) Fancy. AJ: (02:33) I need to figure out how to work this into conversation RV: (02:38) The day here, Brand Builders Group interstitial. Not really, but I kind of, I’m kind of guessing, but AJ: (02:46) Taking it and being like, Oh, I can repeat this. RV: (02:51) Here’s the, here was the thing in terms of, you know, like for me, I think I, I almost feel like a slacker if I stop and pause and just like have nothing. I’m like, well, you’re not being like I’m not being productive. And the way that she described it was like, if you’re busy every second of the day, you’re not allowing yourself to catch the brilliant innovations. Like you’re not allowing yourself to catch the big ideas and the big creative moments. And so it’s almost like having that white space, if you’re a personal brand, it’s essential, like it’s a part of the creative process. And so having that permission, I just, I just thought that was powerful, powerful as well. So my second big takeaway was really about her lifestyle and I thought it was interesting to me that, you know, she’s almost been two years. RV: (03:47) Her family have been gone from the United States for two years, living on the road, providing, you know, a whole income funding, their team, and being able to do everything virtually. And, you know, even if that’s not your dream or my dream or our dream, like the idea of saying, of having that as an option in your life, like having your business set up in a way that it can be flexible and virtual like that, and still be able to finance a great living. I, I thought that was really cool. And, and also a great example of her living out her uniqueness and actually doing the things that she talks. AJ: (04:29) Yeah. You know, it’s so funny because I was listening to this podcast and for like a whole minute, I was like, Oh, that sounds so good. And then I remembered that my kids are one and three, and then I had hot flashes. I was like, Oh no, no one had this idea. Maybe when they’re older. Yeah. But it was like one of those moments, I’m like, Oh, this is awesome. And then I was like, Oh, not, not for one and three year olds. Yeah. I love that too. And I just, I think that’s the power of where we kind of are in today’s world and creating a business that allows you to do whatever you want to do. So even if it’s not traveling, just the concept of creating a business that fits your lifestyle. My second one I thought was just a very kind of like high level takeaway, but I loved how she talks about how she was so far along. AJ: (05:23) She is so far along in her career and is just now launching her first book. And that people just assumed she had one because she is a successful speaker and has this business. And of course you have a book. And I just think that’s really hopeful and introspective for so many things of you can be so established as a personal brand, without a book. You can also be super established with one, but you don’t have to have one to make your Mark. And I just think that’s really great for all of you who are like, Oh my gosh, the thought doing that just seems daunting. Well, don’t do it. There are so many other ways like she has been incredibly successful up until now and now is just doing the book. So I just, RV: (06:09) Yeah, again, that’s interesting, an interesting permission that it’s like, there’s multiple ways to do this. Like there’s not just one way to be successful as a personal brand, as a speaker, as a whatever you influence or whatever you want to call it. So I like that. The other thing that I actually liked was one of my takeaways, which is kind of similar to this which is sort of different than what we preach a little bit at brand builders group. Not really, but she said you have permission to be iterative and speak on lots of things as a way of finding it. Right. And so that’s for those of you that if you’ve been to our, our kind of our flagship first event is called finding your brand DNA or strategy day, that is where we help people find their uniqueness and figure out like, what were you uniquely designed to deliver? RV: (07:01) Which I think is still powerful. But I also think what she’s saying is powerful that, you know, absent that kind of clarity, you can learn by trying and by testing some things out, hold on, hold on, hold on. I know you’re like dying to like get in here, but and, and even, I’m not so sure that I love, like I personally kind of follow the idea of speak about lots of things at, at one time, but I do like the idea of being iterative and going, Hey, I’m going to do something and I’m going to be great on that. And then I’m going to reinvent it and then I’m going to reinvent it. And then I remember, so I really liked the iterative idea that even if you’re, even if you’re going after you, you, your uniqueness, it doesn’t have, you don’t have to sign a stone tablet that says, this is what I’m going to talk about the rest of my life, which were a great example of that. We are in a new season, AJ: (07:50) Cause you kind of started with this is contrary a little bit to what we say, but it’s really not. Because she said it’s like speak on many things, but once that, but one at a time, one at a time, and I think that’s the key it’s like, you cannot be a wellness and nutrition speaker and a leadership speaker and a sales speaker and an economist at the same time. That just makes no sense. It’s like, maybe you could speak on fitness and wellness and nutrition, but those are all like lumped together. But I just think now over time, maybe you start as this and then it evolves into this and then into this. And that’s what I think you were saying and what she came around to saying too, it’s wasn’t like, you’re, you’re speaking on a body image and marketing at the same time. That’s, that’s not what happened. It evolved into that. And then into another thing, and I think that’s a natural process of just finding your niche and then reinventing I think that’s all really natural. I knew you were going to say that. RV: (08:53) And, and the other thing about that that made me think of is just like, you know, what brand builders group, we don’t teach people to only talk about one thing. We teach people to have a very clear message and that message can be applied to multiple different, multiple different things and angles. So anyways, that, that, but again, that was kind of a different perspective. So what was your third takeaway? AJ: (09:12) I think my third takeaway was just the general conversation of how you grow into your personal brand. I just think that, so for so many people you just have to get started, right? And it’s such a great reminder that many times, your first speaking engagement or your first 100 sometimes will be free, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do it. And hers, you know, she was doing this a lot until she got paid $750 whoop right. Big paycheck that it’s like, this is all a part of the journey. It’s all a part of the mission. And she’s been doing this for a very long time and it’s just now doing her book. And I love what she said about that component, which is if she had written this five, 10 years ago, it wouldn’t be the book that it deserved to be that you needed to wait until this moment for her. AJ: (10:01) And I just, I think that’s so important for us all to like, not feel pressured by what everyone else is doing. And if we can just like stop the comparison game and go, well, I have to have a book or I’m going to no, no, no, no, you don’t. You do it, as soon as you feel called to and not until and I think just like listening to your own internal guide on that is so important because there is, there is no secret recipe for so many of us. It’s just, what do you want to do and do it at the right time and at the right pace. And I just thought that was a good reminder of just the growth pattern of how she started her personal brand and her career. RV: (10:39) I love that. And I, I, she, I know that she wouldn’t mind me saying this roughly, but the other thing is she got a very large, the largest book advance. I know of, for, of like a first time, a first time author, because she, she did it right. And she built it and she waited until she felt like now is the time. And she, now she has a huge platform. And so there you have it, there’s, there’s multiple ways to do this. You can figure it out. It can be done. Don’t compare yourself to what other people are doing. AJ: (11:09) Yeah. I love this all the time about, it’s like, don’t compare your step one to someone else’s step 1000 and it’s so easy to do. And maybe you thinking, Oh, first time author, but she is not a newbie. She is not a beginner. I think those are all in context of like, Oh, first time, like, okay, well that, that’s very broad and context of like first time author, but that does not mean newbie. Right. So I just think all those things are RV: (11:37) Bama was a first time author too. I think Speaker 3: (11:41) Oland content content, AJ: (11:43) I think again, just don’t compare your step one to someone else’s stuff. RV: (11:47) And hopefully you’ll stay here as a source of encouragement and education. We’re so excited. Hey, thank you for all the reviews. I was checking out the reviews. Thanks for sticking with us a hundred episodes. We’re just getting started. We’ve got so many great people for you to hear from, but we’re glad you’re here. We want to follow you and continue encouraging you on your journey. We’ll get you next time. Speaker 4: (12:13) [Inaudible].

Ep 100: The Battle Against Reactive Busyness with Juliet Funt

RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) I’m so excited to introduce you to one of the coolest people ever here. Juliet funds a story just as a first of all, I’ve known her for years. I met her in the national speakers association years ago when I was this little runt kid, she’s an amazing performer. She has spoken at the global leadership summit, which is like the largest speaking event in the world multiple times. She’s the CEO of a very successful company. And she works with a lot of the fortune 500. So her expertise is around something called white space, which you’re gonna, you’re gonna hear about and we’re going to talk about it and the company is white space at work. But you’re gonna tell us a little bit about her story. So one thing to know, she just got I don’t know how to say this. RV: (01:50) A very awesome, awesome book deal with Harper Collins, juicy, juicy. Yeah. So it’s coming out. Yeah. So we’ll maybe talk a little bit about that. The other thing is she has the last couple years, or several times in her career, she has built her business while living abroad with her family. And she has lived that dream of being able to speak and write and let you know, travel with her family and see the world. So she’s just incredible and had to bring her on. And so Juliet it’s, it’s good to chat with you. I have been called different things, but JF: (02:26) The coolest, so infrequently one of them and I’ve always wanted to be cool. So I’m really, I’m super excited about this one. RV: (02:32) Well, yeah, so I mean, you are cool. I mean, you do cool stuff. You’re your content is fantastic. I think that’s super relevant. I want to, I do want to hear about that, but I, I want to start by your story about how you got into the industry. I think a lot of, a lot of people listening, you know, they want to be a speaker. They want to speak at big events. They want to be an author. They want to travel the world. They want to maybe work with the fortune 500. Some of our clients are more on that, like kind of corporate track, some are more entrepreneurial, but you’ve been able to do so many of those things. And can you just like, give us a little bit of behind the scenes of how did you get started and then how did you end up there and then like, how do you see the world now in terms of your personal brand? JF: (03:23) Yeah, so I started, I really started my speaking career when I decided to be a theater student because the performance elements that I learned when I went to Northwestern and thought that I was going to spend my life with pinner and Shakespeare and Shaw have actually been the secret sauce of everything else that I did in my career. So I tell people constantly whatever you’re about to do to build your career in any aspect, go take acting and theater and improv and voice lessons first, because there’s something about creating a performer self that then follows you around and amplifies everything else that you do for your entire career. And I was just lucky that I accidentally ended up thinking I wanted to be in theater and learning all of those things in college. And, and I did it for a little while. It wasn’t a right match for me, but then those skills sort of became part of my kit bag that I took with me everywhere else. JF: (04:16) And I was really lost in my twenties. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn’t one of those people that found it early, I did catering. I was what’s called a food stylist, which is when you take a little tiny tweezer and you make food beautiful for photo shoots. I’ve always been really into that. And along the way, I started volunteering because I had an eating disorder in my twenties and I spoke on some panels. So, sorry, where’s that off? It’s not even going off now. So sorry. I spoke on some panels. People asked me if I would speak on panels for eating disorders and it was just me with three or four other people, personal testimonial. How did you get better? What did it look like? I was very young and something happened when I was on those panels at those little folding chairs and folding tables at high schools and colleges, where I realized that people leaned in when I was talking in a way that seemed different than other people. JF: (05:18) And it seemed like I enjoyed putting together the arc of thought the stories connecting with the audience. There was something there and it was different from acting because it was getting to be myself and it wasn’t being another person. It wasn’t having to pretend that I was another person. It was me, but still in front of an audience, there was something kind of magical. I just got a little tiny goosebumps of just that feeling of I get to be me, but I still get to perform. And so speaking became an Avenue for that. Now I put it back aside for years and years and years, and I was still doing some volunteer work. I did some talks in colleges and high schools, and that was the beginning of my paid career, but I was working my job as sorry, when you first RV: (05:59) Is this, like how many people are in a room here? Like when you’re first starting. I mean, I have to assume, you know, like some of the events you speak at now or 7,000 people in an arena, and you’re like up there doing your performance when you started, I’m guessing it was quite a bit different than that. 12 people JF: (06:19) For $750. I remember this one eating disorder talk. When I first started getting booked to be paid, to go up and talk about body image and women and media. I was writing content and I was expanding beyond personal testimonial and this little kind of funky high school way up in the mountains in Colorado that paid me $750. Cause a friend of mine, Scott Greenberg, who’s another speaker. We were volunteering at the same place. And he said, come up and got me my first gig. And that was, that was that one. And then I very quickly evolved out of youth and education evolved out of the topic of food, started talking about media, started talking about over-scheduling of teenagers, which was the crossover topic because these kids were so busy, they were busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and Hey, their parents were busy and their administrators were busy and everybody was busy. And that became the very, very early seeds of whitespace was looking at why are we so overloaded? Why do we keep moving this way? Why don’t we have time to think and pause and breathe and appreciate. And that really quickly took over everything, all the food related body related image stuff dropped completely away. And that became my topic, which became the seeds of white space. And then, yeah, RV: (07:33) That Peter’s early, like the early, like you cry. That was pretty much like your first pivot became the foundation, which you’ve pretty much stuck with of just like, over-scheduling just that concept of being overloaded, you know, just busy over-scheduled. JF: (07:50) But I tell speakers any, and people creating a brand. It actually took me years to get to the point where you’re describing this as a fast pivot. So when people come to me and they say, I don’t know my topic yet. I say, speak on everything in the sun for five years and don’t even worry about it. Don’t even worry about finding the lane cause you might want to be in the lane for a while. Don’t don’t marry the first guy, a kiss, you know, just that get, stay in their play, try different topics, commit to something and then know that it’s going to be iterative and give yourself permission to tell everybody you’re one thing. And then be another thing two days later, this is just so important. I think. RV: (08:29) Interesting. so then over the course of time, like why do you think like a lot of speakers kind of come and go and I’m using speakers just cause that’s kind of the way that we kind of interfaced and met. Do you, do you see yourself as more of a speaker, a consultant, a trainer like an entrepreneur? Like how has that evolved? Cause it does sound like you started as a speaker. JF: (08:57) Yeah. The first, the first 15 years was a speaker. Now the last 10 years has been as an entrepreneur. And I actually had sort of a victory of sorts last year where I spent 14 months in a row where I made no money from speaking. And for me, that victory is that I I’m ready. It’s been 20 years. I love speaking. I’m enjoying different things. Now I’m enjoying writing. I’m enjoying running a company I’m enjoying figuring out where our philanthropic dreams are going to go. And so I feel like I don’t need so much of that anymore. And it was a, it was just a victory in terms of business to be able to sustain ourselves 14 months, no speaking, because speaking is a very lucrative part of our revenue model. And it’s also the most lucrative part of our lead generation model for the things that we sell as a company. So you pull out speaking, you realize, Oh my gosh, all other lead sources suck compared to speaking because there’s something about being up there. The people that you meet are already enthralled with what you’re talking about by the time you even move into a conversation of, can we help you? So you take all of that out for over a year. It’s way more lost than just the revenue loss. RV: (10:10) Yeah. I mean, that’s a, I guess those are the blessings and the curses of a great have a great have a great speaking business. And so so let’s talk about that a little bit because you, you, so it’s interesting that you did that 14 months ago, like for 14 months, a couple of years ago, and now in a COVID world, everybody’s doing that JF: (10:35) Speaking disappeared, RV: (10:37) You know, as a model, it kind of disappeared and you were already traveling and I know, you know, travel, you know, we’ve talked about this. This is kind of a sensitive thing. JF: (10:47) Yeah. Let me actually, I’m just before you get to travel, let me just, I feel like we left our well, we left our friends a little bit disjointed in the middle of a story because we’re having so much fun jumping around, but let me just finish. So youth and education led to talking on overload, which led to about 15 years, speaking on this concept called white space. We can talk more about that in a minute. And then at some point a client said, can you scale this? And we built a company with models that could be taught and digitized and shared, and that’s what we do now. So what allowed me to take that 14 month period was that we sell a lot of other things that are not now involving me speaking for a check. And so that’s just to finish a little bit of that story before we flip to travel, which is so interesting. I just wanted to let them understand the last chapters there. RV: (11:39) No, actually I’m glad that I’m glad that you closed close that loop cause that’s really important. And that’s, that’s I think that’s a rare position that a lot of personal brands never get to the point where they transitioned from a personal brand to a real business where they, they are scaling how many people are, are in like the whole white space at work team. JF: (11:58) It’s small, we’re tiny boutique. We have 11 people including our part time people. And you know, just so you know, it’s still a struggle every day to separate the brand from me. I have branding conversations, people all the time. You’ve been one of the people that I’ve come to for help in a lot of areas that, that there’s something about the looping in of my personality with the brand personally, we’ve tried pulling pictures off the website. We’ve tried pushing the content instead of pushing the person. But it’s really tough when you grow a tree, it’s like those two trees, you see that grow up on a, on a side of a wall in Cuba or Guatemala or something where they’re just, they grew into each other and it’s very hard to unwind them. I definitely have not cracked that secret sauce yet of extricating myself. RV: (12:49) Yeah. Although you have been able to create the lifestyle that we were talking about here, which is where, you know, you’ve lived the dream for years at a time of being able to take your kids and your family and go on the road. You’ve got three kids, right? JF: (13:07) I have three boys, 10, 12, and 14. Now we left on this trip that you’re talking about two years ago. Next week on our anniversary, August 28th is going to be two years on the road. And it has been a dreamy combination of the world of white space. It’s the ultimate white space application really? And it came out of, I was having do you know, David Covey, but one of the Covey brothers RV: (13:38) I’ve met David Covey. I haven’t, I actually he’s been at my he’s been to my house one time. The only time I met him. JF: (13:44) So I had, I was having Indian food with David Covey and salt Lake city about four years ago. And he told me that he lived in different countries with his children when they were growing up. But, but he did a year at a time and he ran his businesses and lived in different countries. And it just fascinated me and it captured my attention and it percolated and percolated and percolated. And then we met these people that were doing something called a world schooling, which had a name in which had an association. And they had conferences about people who had decided that travel was a better education for their children than school. And we left, it took me about four months to convince my husband. And then one day he left a map. I get up about five 36. He gets up around nine and stays up till a billion o’clock in the morning. JF: (14:32) So we have very different schedules and he left a little map in the shape of a heart on my desk. One morning for my 6:00 AM walk in and said, let’s go. And he finally went over the line and decided, and then we left and we went to, we stayed domestic for the first months only because of speaking. I would have been international immediately, but I couldn’t be far away. Cause I was flying away from the trip to go finish the gigs that had already been booked. And then once that concluded and we were able to say, no more gigs after a certain date, then we went international. We’ve been in Europe, Asia, Bali, Thailand. And we are now in New Zealand where we were supposed to be for two months before going to China. And then obviously didn’t go to China. And then we waited and waited. And now we’ve been here six months and we just applied for another six months. Cause honestly we don’t really know where to go. So COVID has stopped the trip where we’re very dedicated to one more location on our way home. So that the story is not that we went on this beautiful trip and then COVID killed it. And we’d like there to be one more different final chapter to go. We’re thinking about going back to Hawaii, which is where we started at the very end RV: (15:48) And, and you’ve been able to do that. So, so the business you mind sharing with us a little bit, how have you operated? JF: (15:54) No, I’m trans transparent to the point of you have to stop me and then I get myself in trouble. So that’s not, that’s not hard to share. We have not sold a house or gone on savings or anything for any portion of this trip. We have earned as we’ve traveled with the one exception that I have quite a lot of miles. So miles have helped for sure with the international, but I work, I live on a laptop. I go into coffee houses all over the world. And in Bali I watched the ducks and in, you know Croatia, I was on my laptop in a hotel above these fighting Russian tourists. Every time I would go work and I pull out the laptop and I, I work in the time zones, kick my butt. And in Bali, I’m up till two in the morning and here I’m up at four 30 and you get used to it and we have a remote team. So we sell, we sell an online product now and actually COVID inversed what you just said, which is that I went back to live presenting because of COVID because so many people wanted immediate help with work from home efficiency, which is a subset of our work. So I actually did more presentations in the last four months than I did in the previous two years. RV: (17:13) But they’ve all been virtual. Yeah. JF: (17:14) Correct? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I’m just talking about speaking for money came back after. Yeah. RV: (17:22) Well, and I think that’s it. I think that’s really interesting because you know, if you hang around the speaker crowd, you know, there’s a lot of like, Oh my gosh, you know, all the gigs are postponing and et cetera, et cetera. And it’s like at the same time, every company in America is having meetings every single day that are virtual and they need outside voices. And it’s like, in some ways there’s more opportunity than ever. No one has to rent a ballroom, they just need a link. And like you can be in front of their entire company from anywhere in the world. Like you’re, you’re stuck in quote unquote stuck in New Zealand. JF: (17:58) Yeah. It’s a bad word for wouldn’t being here, but yes. RV: (18:01) Yeah. well I think that’s, I think that’s, that’s, that’s amazing. Now you also have this book deal. How did the book deal come about? Cause that happened over that same time period, right? JF: (18:14) The book deal had been so that my, my, the comic secret of my professional career is that everybody already thinks I’ve written a book because of where I am in the circuit. So if you’re on stage between you and Marcus Buckingham and then Laszlo Bock comes up, there’s no way that that lady in the middle hasn’t written a book. So everybody always thinks that this is my second or third book. So it’s just a funny thing, but it’s not because I had a lot of trouble writing a book and I had trouble getting quiet enough. I’m super interpersonal. I’m great graded all the parts of business that are interpersonal and the lonely quiet work of the chair. And the laptop is very hard for me, but I also was doing other things and I had three children in six years and I was building this business and I made a decision not to be a mom. JF: (19:01) Who’d never saw my kids. And there was a lot of other things. And so the book just kept getting pushed, but there was an agent who adored my work and tracked me through ups and downs of that process. And he became my agent and he’s the best agent in the universe. And when we wrote the proposal, the time was right and we had six offers and it was wonderful. It was a wonderful experience. Wow. And I got the offer. I got the final offer from Harper on a porch in Gatlinburg where we’re looking out at these kinds of Misty. I think I want to say smokey mountains, but I can’t remember if that’s Gatlinburg. My God, it was, I have locked in memory the moment that we got that phone call and, and it’s been a really wonderful experience. I’m preparing for the ups and downs of an actual book launch, especially post COVID. We have a lot of things we’re going through, but it’s been wonderful and I’ve really enjoyed the writing more than I would have guessed. RV: (20:02) I love that story. So, I mean, and you got, I mean, you’re technically a first time author, but you’re not, they’re not treating you like a first time author and that’s something I think that’s good for people to know is like, if for whatever reason you don’t write the book, you don’t write the book, then it’s like, Hey, all of your hard work will catch up with you at some point. JF: (20:22) Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. Cause I, if I could have had someone I trusted relieve the pressure the 10, 15 years in NSA of write the book, write the book, write the book, write the book. If I had written the book at any of those times, it wouldn’t have been this book and it wouldn’t have been as fully cooked and it wouldn’t have been as perfect as it is now to write this book. And so I’m glad I didn’t write the book. I’m glad I didn’t use my content and my brand and the name Widespace on a book that was so much more juvenile than this book will be. Cause I couldn’t have done it twice. And so that I wish that I could have taken that out of my psychological equation. Maybe I can do it for one other person. RV: (21:05) Yeah. Well, and it’s like, you can do it both. Like you can, you can do it both ways. You can be successful either way. Like, you know, some people say, Hey, the book changed my life and here you’re going, look, I was able to do it without it. And now I can write the book and you know, it was like, the book is going to change your life. Again, and it’s like a whole, you know, but it’s not, it’s not a, it’s not as a straightforward formula that you must follow one way or the other. Right. so I love that. Okay. So I want to, I want to spend a few minutes actually talking about this. So, you know your story, I wanted everyone to hear your story about kind of the sequence of how things have gone and, and, and what that’s looked like. JF: (21:50) What is it, RV: (21:50) White space? Can we talk about white space for a second and specifically what is white space? Why does it matter? And then what I’d like to do is be able to get into the, you know, a conversation of how does that apply to personal brands, which is something that even though you don’t traditionally teach that you are, you are one and you know that, you know, you haven’t been and you know, that space really well. So I’d, I’d love to get like a, a once and only Juliet Funt white space for personal brands in the only place you could get it right here in influential personal brand podcast. JF: (22:26) Cause it’s never been done. So here we go. So white space is we define white space as a strategic pause taken between activities. It’s, it’s the open fluid, flexible unscheduled time that used to be in between things in life and now has gotten filled by busy-ness and cell phones and tech addiction and all the things that we cram in. And one way to think about it is if you imagine the periodic table of the elements, and if you imagine what would happen, if one of the elements just fell out and all of a sudden there was no salt or all of a sudden there was no nitrogen systems would collapse. And we believe that this is the case in a sense with white space, that there is this element that is supposed to be present, weaving in and out of our days for breath, recuperation, stepping back, all sorts of things that this element of white space is supposed to give us permission to have that have now just gone away. And the mission of the book is to reinstate that into the lives of working people everywhere. And that’s my mission as well. RV: (23:39) So it’s like going extinct. It’s this thing that’s sort of disappearing from, from the earth because there’s always JF: (23:46) Something to do. So if you have a second and you can think of it really, really tactically, the name white space came from a couple of different places, but the main place came from coaching executives 20 years ago. And we would look at there then paper day planners and we would look for white is the white, just Penn and Penn and Penn and Penn and Penn. And where is the white space here in this day where somebody could think strategize, prepare for a call, step back, reflect on their own behavior. Where, where is the white deer executives? And that’s where the white spaces coming from. The white space is literally on the calendar came from. So we don’t have it because now when there is a pause, our nervous systems are so wired. Usually it’s just the phone is the simplest first insertion. But if you were to, let’s say you were to finish this podcast and you look at your calendar and you realize that you have seven minutes before the next thing, the chances of you leaving any of those minutes open would be very rare. JF: (24:50) You probably get up and get a cup of coffee and do those things, but then you’d come back and you’d realize you had 40 minutes left. You would probably check your email or check a social feed or do something tactical or manual like unplugged desk or pack a bag or get ready for the, the chances of you leaving even a minute where you just looked up and went, Hmm, how’s my life. How’s my work. How am I? Am I okay? It’s been a lot lately. The chances that you would use that time to leave it open and see what happens is very, very rare. And that’s what we want to change. And for personal brands and entrepreneurs, work is never over the, to do list is never over. So if you have five minutes between calls, you have to jam something in there and get one more thing done and check off one more box. JF: (25:42) And the chances that you would use that time to remain open are light, even when it furthers your business goal. So let’s say you’re an athlete and you have a call in six minutes, that’s going to be with a promoter. Who’s going to do something fantastic for your career. Most people would work right up to a minute before, especially if they’re very experienced salespeople or presenters, they just swing around in their Herman Miller and dial right in. They’re fine. But what if you had white space before that call for five minutes and you sat there and thought, who is this person? How were they last time? What were they into? How do I want to come off? What is it? What could this really mean to me? And you really used thinking as a business tool to change the outcome of what came next, everything would be magically and completely different. And so that is part of the goal. It’s not only personal white space or reflective white space or recuperative white space. It’s also a tactical use of white space to further the thing that comes next. RV: (26:48) Yeah. So it’s, it’s not necessarily, you know, I saw one of your videos one time that said like white spaces, not meditation. JF: (26:55) Yeah. Not meditation, mindfulness nine. My wandering, we go through all the things that it’s not, RV: (27:01) But you’re saying it’s like for entrepreneur or a personal brand, that it, it actually that minute to pause, to think, even though it feels like slowing down, you’re saying that that actually could enhance the overall business versus just doing constantly JF: (27:17) Must enhance it. How can you know where you’re heading? Would it be a tragedy if you were on full steam for seven years heading in a direction and you never even took some time to say, is this the right direction that I’m heading full steam for seven years? Or is this the right way? I want my data flow or how, who am I bringing to this business? How am I treating the people that work with me? And for me, these are contemplative questions that great leaders ask, but they must have white space to do that. RV: (27:48) Is there a, is there a amount or a percentage, right. You know, and I, I think this is so relevant, personal, personal brand, right? It’s like, and then onto any entrepreneur, let us, like, you could be shooting a video, writing a blog, preparing a presentation, building a funnel, like answering your emails, writing a book, like customer service. JF: (28:13) And that could all be like within a couple hours. I know. Is there like a proportion of RV: (28:18) Time? Like, how do I know what’s the right? Like, how do I actually practice? You know? JF: (28:26) Yes. And that’s that question is the perfect litmus test of our entire personality. Isn’t it? Like, you want to know, you want to know the formula, right? So that’s yes. RV: (28:38) Block it on my digital calendar and you know how you could color code it. I’m going to color code at white in honor. JF: (28:44) Yeah. Juliette actual white space. So the people that like that more regimented approach, you can just start with two minutes, a couple of times a day, it’ll feel like the longest two minutes of your entire life, just begin to experience stopping the machine and restarting the machine. So for those of us that are more fluid and less structured, it’s just about an interstitial pausing. 10 seconds here. A minute there, 30 seconds here, this incremental and interstitial use of white space is extremely powerful. It’s also the majority of the way that I personally use this tool as an overbusy Energizer bunny, kind of a person. So that interstitial use can be amazingly. It can be you’re finishing work and your kid needs you. And you say just a minute and you spend 30 seconds transitioning from business hat to daddy hat. And that’s all it is now longer stretches of white space, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes with a legal pad, deeper white space away from your technology to think deeply about your business or brainstorm or vision. Beautiful, beautiful, and important. But the life saving element of white space is the interstitial sip. That’s what makes us learn that mechanism again, of stop the machine, start the machine. That’s all we want to do is step off for a period of time. RV: (30:20) Yeah. I mean, I liked that idea of a sip. Just like a sip of water, like water. I feel like there’s a fear that is underneath this. That’s driving that leg. If I’m not maximizing every single second, like it’s all gonna come crashing down. JF: (30:37) Yep. And it is come. I mean, that philosophy is crashing down all around us. Now five months post the novel coronavirus because teams are now working 12 to 14 hours a day because they can. So when the office is in your bedroom, there’s no off switch and there wasn’t an off switch before. So actually one way of thinking about it is all of our corporate pals have now joined the entrepreneurial pain that we’ve all lived with for a very long time, which is work can be all the time where can be all the time. And there’s mental health challenges and focus, challenges and creativity, challenges, and sustainability challenges to that. The corporate people are starting to see it. It’s harder for us to see it because we have that bravado of I’m an entrepreneur. I just have to keep going. RV: (31:22) And if you’re a chronic like, you know, checklist or the idea is not that you have to retreat, you know, you’re not retreating into meditation. It’s just thinking as a business tool about going like, Hey, before I dive into my email, like, let me just process what’s going on? Where am I at? What’s the next most, you know, best use of my time. And JF: (31:48) It can be. So the whole purpose of white space is that it is an open container. Now your saying one possible application of it, thoughtfulness as a business tool, another possible application, I’ll just rifle through a whole bunch of them is daydreaming, which has been proven to lead us to wonderful creative places, appreciation time to combat some of the pain and challenge by looking at what’s wonderful recuperation, literally just doing nothing, letting your body come back during that a little bit of open recuperate. It better be, it better be, you know, we have, we have the dopamine from our devices. We have caffeine, we have energy. We have passion. We have a lot of different ways that we can goose up adrenaline to keep going, but the price paid at some point will arrive for never turning it off. And the, you know, the deep white space that I, one place I’m really, really good at deep white space, even though I tend to take my sips incrementally, is that on those vacations, when I take a vacation, the cell phone is in the bottom of the suitcase. JF: (33:01) It is dead and it is off and there is no email. And it’s the only way that I can come back after the kind of exertion I put into my work month. So I’m a big advocate of when you do disconnect, really disconnect. I think a vacation kind of like driving from New York to LA and you want to get to a different destination, but every time you touch base with work, even once in the morning, you have to drive back to New York. So you never get farther and farther and farther away to have perspective and look back. And that’s why people who do take disconnected vacations, even if they have to be staycations, that’s why they do come back with innovations for the business and great new creative ideas. Cause they’ve gone away. You can’t really go away. If you go back for a visit every 12 hours. RV: (33:52) Fascinating, fascinating. And I could, that would totally apply to any creative work, writing a book. You know, it just, just makes sense to like, to be away from all the busy-ness to just kind of sit and think, or, you know, recoup or daydream JF: (34:11) And writing the book has been a great example. If I take these book day retreats where I’ll do 12 hours in a shot on and off with my white space breaks, but, but a lot for me, and it is so tempting to spend all of the working minutes of that period, working to spend all the working minutes of that period in a document editing, writing on book related phone calls, interviews. But if I’m willing to really just close it all down and think about what do I want to make sure that I don’t not say in this book and what do I want to really make sure that what part of my heart and my willing to be a little shockingly authentic with so that in a business book, you’re crossing a line to realness in a way that people aren’t anticipating those kinds of thoughts can only happen in white space. And they can only happen when you create separation between you and your product. And that can’t happen while you’re in it. RV: (35:11) I love that. I love that. So Juliet, where, where do people go to connect with you and stay plugged in and, you know, be on the list to be notified when the book out and all that JF: (35:24) [email protected] we would love to hear from you. And you’re welcome to reach me personally, a [email protected]. RV: (35:31) Love that. So we’ll link. We will link that up. We’ll keep you all posted. When the book comes out, clearly you can see the application. Y’all I know you’re listening going. Yes. I need white space in my life. Well, we wish you and your family the best be safe while you’re out there traveling and then have your one big adventure Juliet, and then hopefully we’ll get to see you in person soon.

Ep 87: Embracing Vulnerability as Your Superpower with Dave Hollis | Recap Episode

AJV: (00:06) [Inaudible] RV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s Rory Vaden joined by our CEO, my wife, best friend, Amanda Vaden. We’re breaking down for you. The Dave Hollis interview, which was a powerful interview for me. I, I was not familiar with Dave. I mean, I was familiar with Dave, but we, that was like our first conversation for the most part. And so anyways, we’re breaking that down for you with our top three and three and I guess, babe, why don’t you kick this off? AJV: (00:36) All right. Well, my first one was this concept of that you have secret shoppers in your brand every single day. And I loved that. I think that is such a great reminder to all of us, that every single day we have secret shoppers who are observing, interacting, buying from receiving content, from interacting with our personal brands on a daily basis. And just keeping that in mind and, you know, does even for us, as I think about both of our personal brands, but then also our company Brand Builders Group who are the secret shoppers around us and how are they engaging with us interacting with us? What is the perception they’re getting from us? And I think too, something that would really hit me is that our brand is also represented, by our team and they are an extension of our brands. AJV: (01:31) And for all of you who have a personal brand or company brand, making sure you take that into consideration is that the people who work with you are an extension of what you want to be known for and how you want to be known. And it’s not just how they interact with you directly. It’s how do they interact with the people around you that are supporting your personal brand? Because they too are the ones giving impressions of your, of your personal brand and what you want to be known for this concept of secret shoppers, which is nothing new, but a great aha and reminder of, Oh, yes, I do know this, but it was a really great refreshing way to, RV: (02:10) Yeah. That is, that is, that is cool. That didn’t stick with me. So hearing you say that as like, Oh, that’s a good insight to draw out of it. That even for me to go, wow, that was a, that was a good, a good thought, for sure. So for me, the whole theme was really sort of summed up when he said vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower. Vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower and we just watched Brenae Brown’s call to courage the net, which was incredible. Yeah. Her Netflix special. And you know, it’s interesting. And, and, you know, you may not be aware of this, but there is a little bit of a context going on here. You know, like our hearts really go out to Dave and Rachel. They announced here with a few weeks ago when this came out, that they’re actually going through a divorce, which is something that’s you been, they’ve been talking about and praying about for years. RV: (03:02) And they kind of made that decision. And it reminded me of, of, I’ve been trying to make some sense of some of this with Brenae Brown, where she said, you know, vulnerability doesn’t mean you’re telling everybody everything that’s happening in your life. And that I think is a really big takeaway, not necessarily sharing the details and the facts of everything happening in your life with everyone in the world. That’s not vulnerability. She defines vulnerability as emotional exposure. And so that’s just sort of like sharing feelings that have happened and sharing stories about certain times in your life. But it’s not the same thing as just saying here’s everything here, here’s everything. And that people bond to the feelings, not necessarily to the facts of everything that’s going on in your life. And so anyways, that was just a, you know, something that I’ve been kind of questioning and trying to draw some clarity about. And I, I felt like I got a good, a good distinction there for me. AJV: (04:02) It’s so interesting because throughout the entire interview with Dave, I didn’t even pick like none of my takeaways have anything to do with vulnerability or openness or anything at all. It’s like, I’m looking at Rory’s points and I’m like, can we listen to the same interview? Because that is not at all what I got. So here’s my second one was this this piece of the interview where he talks about this meeting, that he got to sit in with Steve jobs during his time at Disney, he got to sit in with this meeting with Steve jobs. And Steve was talking about perception and customer loyalty and customer interaction and engagement. And he said, you just have to remember it. I’m gonna quote this because I’m not really about the facts here. I, you said everyone who interacts with your brand is giving you a brand deposit or a brand withdrawal based on their experience. AJV: (04:54) And I think that is a really big takeaway. And I don’t think we spend enough time talking about that as entrepreneurs and business owners and influencers and whatever you are, author speaker so forth is that every scene, every single interaction that you have with a customer or a potential customer is doing one of two things. It is putting a deposit into your credibility bank account, or just taking one out scary. And I think that this was such an aha enlightening conversation for me on a completely different perspective from you, because I am so in touch with all of our customer touch points. And it was just like tightening up every single system of how are we engaging on social media? What are we putting on the podcast? And it’s, I think it’s really important. I’m just remembering, it’s like, Hey, every single thing is going towards you or against you. And it’s knowing how to get more of the deposits and less of the withdrawals without us taking all of the word withdrawals so negatively, because there’s going to be some of those regardless. And I just think that was just a good reminder, too, of like every interaction is doing one of two things, are you even thinking about it that way? RV: (06:07) Yeah. Well, and as you were talking there about are kind of the way you and I processed the interview different, which I think is fun. You know, so the book right, has his new book get out of your own way. It’s interesting because he shares as a man sort of his resistance to vulnerability. That’s a big part of like what the book is about. And I think that really hit me hard, which is like, okay, where am I? Where am I resistant to being vulnerable? Where am I resistant to sharing? And one of the questions he shared that I thought was so powerful was he simply, he simply said this, where was pain present? Where was pain present? And if you think back to any circumstance or story in your life, and again, you don’t necessarily have to share all the details every time you share a story, but, but to go, where did I experience pain? RV: (07:01) And this to me is actually transcends the vulnerability conversation to just even copywriting, right? When we talk about the 15 P’s and when you lay out, okay, why did you create this course? You should ask yourself, where did you experience pain when you were trying to learn the lessons? Like we always say, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so asking yourself that question, I think is really interesting, where was pain present? That is a place of emotional connection with other humans is to be like this was a place or a time or a way in my life that I experienced pain. And just even allowing other people to see into the idea that you, to experience pain creates the connection beyond and outside of the facts of what caused or didn’t cause that pain it’s just the, the feeling. So I thought that was a really good question on both the tactical level and you know, an emotional level where, where was pain present? AJV: (08:01) Yep. That’s good. Alright. My third one is criticism is the price of entry for building a personal brand. RV: (08:09) You’re stealing my that’s my third one. AJV: (08:11) That’s my third one, but mine are probably still a little bit different. And I liked how he talked about how unfortunately, most of us pay attention to the 10%, not the 90%. He goes, have you got 10 people? You’re going to pay attention to the one that was unhappy versus the nine who were incredibly happy. And he said, you got to build your business for the 90%. Not for the 10%. You’re always going to have people who criticize you welcome to the club. You’re always going to have somebody who doesn’t agree with you, but build your personal brand in a way that aligns with your value. So much to the point of when people don’t agree with you and they don’t align with you. You’re still okay with that because your brand stands for something that is so aligned with your values and your mission and your message that the 10% no longer really matters. Not to the point of like offending anyone, but to the point of, you know what, that’s okay. Just follow me. Just don’t buy from me. My brand wasn’t built for everyone. That’s okay. But I need to focus on the 90%. Not the 10 person. RV: (09:15) Yeah, well that was my, my takeaway too. And it reminds me of a rule that I learned from a guy named David Glickman, who was one of the guys that I studied early on when I was learning the psychology of humor. And he said, you got to remember the rule of 2%. The rule of 2% says, 2% of the audience will hate you. Why? Because 2% of the audience always hates you. They just hate you. There’s no explanation. Like you’re gonna have people that just happen to intersect with you. That just don’t. And I don’t know if it’s exactly 2% or whatever, but you know, to realize it doesn’t matter how small or how big you are, like, you’re gonna have people that disagree with you. And you know, to what age I said, it’s just being, if you’re rooted in truth, like you’re rooted in your own identity, your own principles, your own values, then you’re not offended by the people who don’t like you. Cause you’re not trying to win them over. Like you didn’t lose, neither of you lost. It’s just, this is what is, and so anyways, AJV: (10:18) I likened it to this. It’s like, as long as you know, what you stand for, you have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. And that is the crusher. Just knowing what you stand for. And as long as you know, then you also have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. Loved it. It was great. RV: (10:36) And for you listening, don’t be afraid to go where there has been pain. We love you. We’ll catch you next time.

Ep 86: Embracing Vulnerability as Your Superpower with Dave Hollis

What if you’d worked hard so hard to create a brand with all the right optics and suddenly, it all came crashing down? Dave Hollis, today’s guest, experienced this when his wife Rachel wrote her renowned book, Girl, Wash Your Face. Rather than having the devastating effects he feared, Dave instead witnessed more authentic connections […]

Ep 83: Unlock Loyalty and Strengthen Your Network with John Ruhlin, the Guru of Giftology | Recap Episode

RV: (00:07) Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Something exciting has happened. AJ and I have agreed on exactly two thirds of what we’re going to tell you. AJV: (00:19) I should make this shorter, but we’ll see. RV: (00:21) Yeah, well, it will. And we, we always have different viewpoints that we drive, but today, separately we came up with yeah, always on separate, but today we came up with, we each had two of the same top three, so yeah, kick it off. AJV: (00:38) My first one, and again, as a reminder, always, if you haven’t listened to the full interview, I highly recommend it. It’s really good. And it’s applicable to anyone. If you’re building a personal brand, if you’re not building a personal brand, it applies to all humans all the time, all out places. So I would that my first one was this concept of a love bomb and what I just love the concept let’s just drop some love. And I just loved that in general. In fact, you know, Rory and I have been recently talking about, about all of the challenges that are happening in the world today with, you know, racism and sexism, and there’s just so many things. And if you really think about it, there’s just one really simple solution and it’s, and it’s love. But it’s, it’s really hard. AJV: (01:27) That’s not an easy one, but it is simple. And this whole concept of a love bomb, it’s just dropping massive, just unexpected love and attention and intention on the people around you. And I thought this was really important, this kind of whole concept, he said, he said why don’t you try to do the extra ordinary for a few versus the ordinary for many. And I just loved that. And I, I think about so often things that we do and it’s like, we’re trying to include everyone. And that just gets really expensive. So you kind of like the more you include, it’s like, okay, well, we can’t do that. And okay, well, we can’t do that. And okay, well, we can’t do that either, but what if you said, well, what are the most intimate people, the most intimate clients, the most intimate family members or friends or whomever, and do something really extraordinary for them. And he tells as, as well as Rory, this really amazing thing that he did at our house, but I’m going to hold that to make you go listen to the full interview because it’s worthy of a listened to be like, why would you do that? And the answer is because he just wants to share the love bomb. RV: (02:42) Yeah. Yeah. And I actually, there’s not much more, I would say to that. You know, if you didn’t pick this up, so if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, John Ruhlin is an expert on like client loyalty and retention through gifting. And so he talks about strategic generosity and gifting and you know, so I would just, I’m going to springboard off that and say, my second big takeaway was a term that he used return on relationships, return on relationships. And you know, not just return on investment, not return on time, but just return on the idea of pouring into people and loving on them. And, you know, part of the mindset shift for me was going just like what you were saying, take what you would spend on like a lot of people and just spend it on fewer to create this more extraordinary impact, this deeper connection. RV: (03:38) And so that was big, but, but the other, the other part of it that I thought was going, how come we’re willing to buy Facebook ads or something like that. Right. And we’ll spend thousands of dollars advertising to a bunch of random strangers who have no desire to hear from us, right? Like we’re interrupting the life of a normal human minding, their own Telemark. And and, and like, what have you just took a portion of that and spent it on appreciating the clients you have appreciating the referral partners you have and knowing like that is marketing. Like it’s gonna come back to you in referrals and it’s a twofer because you’re loving and appreciating the people you have, and they are likely to give you more clients. Plus they are client, you know, if they are clients, they can more powerfully refer you than a cold traffic thing. But we don’t think about like a lot of us don’t think about that. So return on relationships. That was my second. AJV: (04:39) Yeah. And I would just add one tiny thing to that. And I thought this was really powerful and it’s not something that he says that he necessarily tracks and numbers, even though there is strategy. A little bit of it is by faith by doing good deeds. And by sharing the love, like the love naturally will come back to you. There’s this intrinsic thing and human beings that want to return goodness. Right? Yeah. There’s law of reciprocity. That was a tangent. That, wasn’t what I was kind of saying. Well, I was gonna say is this whole concept of return and relationships is wow with the unexpected. And that, that is so true. And he talks about all these concepts of like, it’s one thing to do things when it’s expected anniversaries Christmas, birthdays Valentine’s day. Right. but what are you doing? That’s really unexpected? How do you create this wow factor with the unexpected? And what he did at our house was that, and it’s funny because it’s almost been two years and we still talk about that evening and we made friends there and it’s just like one of those experiences. And that was something else he talked about. What are you doing in experiences? Not just in things. And wow. Will the unexpected. So that’s all I would add in my third one. And I’m actually gonna read this on, because your RV: (05:58) Second one tied into my third one, which was planned randomness, which is what you just annexed. Well, that was what I, what it was for me is the unexpected, like the timing matters more than the gift itself. So AJV: (06:12) I’m going to read, I’m going to read my last one because I actually like write this out and I want to get it right. And he said, cause I was capturing this as he was saying it, it was a handful of people that help launch millions of revenue. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. And that is so integral into everything that we believe at brand builders group. And if you are building a personal brand, you’re playing with the comparison concept of, well, in order for this to work, I’ve got to have hundreds of thousands of followers. And I’ve got to have millions of downloads in my podcast and I have to have this many of this. And it’s like, that’s not true. And I think the great example that immediately came to mind is Jesse Itzler. And if you guys don’t know Jesse, Jesse, Itzler, he’s a mega entrepreneur. AJV: (07:03) He owns the Atlanta Hawks. He started, but here’s what I want to talk about. That’s what I’ve got to talk about. So, but I think this was amazing because he started this pride. It’s the largest private jet company in the world, billions of dollars. And there was two ways of going about this, right? You’re going to rather sell in volume and have a low price, or you’re going to have a teeny tiny niche audience and have a very magnificent price. And he built a billion dollar company by selling to only a few people, a couple hundred people. I think it was like a thousand, right? And that is proof that you do not need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. It’s how targeted are you with your core target audience? Do you know them? Do you have something that they want and how do you reach them? AJV: (07:54) How do you market to them? How do you appeal to them? Because you don’t need millions to make millions. And that was just like this, gosh, that’s such an important thing for us all, to remember as we’re building courses or making funnels or speaking and all the things that you can do to build your personal brand. It’s like, you don’t have to reach millions. You can, and I’m sure you want to, but just remember, you can make a very great business and a really good living six, seven, eight, nine figures by selling to the niches right there. What’s that saying? You make riches in the niches. And I just thought that was like this aha moment of, wow. That’s just a really great concept to remember and to hang on to, RV: (08:36) Yeah. I’ve never had this thought until you were just talking, but I was, it’s so ironic because he married Sarah Blakely and they did like opposite business models. She so sold a low price point to tons of people. And he sold a high price point to a few people. So they can both work, but you know, particularly you have a high dollar offer. It’s like, you don’t need that many people to buy in and beyond the money. It’s like, you only need a few people who believe in you. You need a few people. Yeah. AJV: (09:05) Yeah. That’s right back to what he said. He said it was a handful of people that help launch millions of revenue. And that’s because I loved on him and I had attention and intention with every single one of them. It doesn’t take a ton to make it time. Loved it. Go listen to it. RV: (09:21) I listened to it. Go love on your people. Find a few people to invest in. Who’ve made a difference to you, make a difference to them and watch how forced back into your life. We’re so thankful for having the opportunity to impact you. So stay tuned and join us. Every single week. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.