Ep 572: Using Paid Virtual Events to Scale Your High Ticket Offer with Zach Hesterberg
AJV (00:34):
Everybody. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. AJ Vaden here. Super excited to have this conversation today, one, because I know Zach and I believe this is going to be of immense value to everyone. But two, I’m also super excited ’cause I shared this with him before I hit record. I’m so selfishly invested in learning this information that this to me is like, I’m just over here with like, like a, you know, a girl on the first day of school with her pen and notebook ready to take notes. And so should you as I always do here’s who this podcast is for, and this is why you should stick around. If you would like to know how to test and offer before you invest time, money, energy and resources into it, this is the episode for you, right? If you wanna know how to sell high ticket offers could be coaching, consulting masterminds, communities without taking one-on-one sales calls or big, or building a huge sales team.
AJV (01:34):
This is the episode for you. If you wanna know if you should be hosting paid events versus free events, this is the episode for you. And if you wanna know what the biggest mistakes are with hosting live events today, then this is an episode you do not want to miss. So let’s get right into it. Let me introduce you to the one, to the only. Zach Hesterberg. He is the founder of paid events, helping high ticket coaches, consultants, and course creators scale through paid virtual events with nearly a decade in marketing, Zach has helped generate six and seven figure paydays while selling over 15,000 event tickets. Y’all, that’s awesome. Unlike traditional funnels that rely on unreliable sales teams, his paid event method attracts high net worth premium clients, increases conversions, and creates predictable revenue without burnout. Who doesn’t want that? Zach, welcome to the show,
KH (02:33):
Aj. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me, by the way. Fantastic intro. You are a fantastic podcaster,
AJV (02:40):
Well, you know, if all else fails, I could always go into MCing, you know,
KH (02:45):
That’s, that’s fair. That’s fair. I’ve always said, I’ve always said, if I had a, if I had a secondary life, I’d always wanna be like a radio DJ or an mc. So I’m, I’m right there with you.
AJV (02:53):
That’s never too late. Never too late. Yeah. All right, well, just to help our audience get to know you a little bit I’d love to just start with, how’d you get into this?
KH (03:04):
Yeah, so paid events specifically that came probably 2020 I was doing, so I already had a marketing agency. Been doing that since 2015. Started in college, just kinda working with some local businesses. And 2020 came around and I was working with a couple clients more so just optimizing their sales process. I was, people were coming into us for help with Facebook ads mm-hmm
KH (03:50):
It was called the Wedding Photography Summit. And he reached out, he said, Hey, I know that you do a lot of stuff with sales processes. I’m selling $7 tickets for this upcoming summit having a hard time scaling up ads. And I also have some like order bumps and, and one click upsells that have a really low take rate on, could you help me out with that? I said, yeah, no problem. So for the next eight weeks, help them scale up ad spend. Got the, the cost per ticket sold like the, the CPA down pretty low got the order bumps swapped out, and it started working really well. We sold over 8,000 tickets. That was my first ever virtual event. Wow. And a week before the event, well, actually it was the week of the event, it was our last call of our consulting engagement. I said, so Jai, what are you gonna pitch during your event? And he said, I wasn’t planning on pitching anything. What do you mean? Like, I was just, I’m hosting a, a paid event. Like I don’t, I don’t wanna pitch anything like these people have paid to be here. I said, brother, do you hate money
AJV (04:44):
I was like, you’ve got 8,000
KH (04:46):
Of your best customers coming to you to learn how to build up their business. You have a coaching program for 2K, you should at least offer that. Like, because an event is only a catalyst to get someone transformation after the event’s over. Like, there’s so many people that will go to a live event, whether it’s in person or virtual. They get all hyped up, they’re excited, and two days, five days, few weeks after the event’s over. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. You’ve not taken action on anything. And typically that’s because there was not a real transformation that occurred during the event. You got excited, you got into a great emotional state, but there was no action that was taken to hold you accountable to seeing that transformation through after the event was over. So that’s what I pretty much told him. And he was like, all right, well, cool. I’ll give a quick pitch. And he made another quarter million dollars in the last second. And yeah, that’s, that’s how I got started with it. And so I’ve, I’ve taken on quite a
AJV (05:37):
Bit more. Well, that’s a good entry into the business, Zach. Yeah,
KH (06:34):
KH (07:23):
Most theologians would say there were probably 11 to 12,000 people in that crowd that day. And if you do the math and you say, well, if he was working eight hours a day and he had one hour appointments with people, eight, eight, yeah. Eight appointments per day nonstop back to back to back a hundred percent show rate. And you know, not taking any breaks, it would take him about five years and three months to have met with that many people. But he just did it in one afternoon. And it’s not, it’s not that like, it, it, it’s actually not impersonal to do that. It’s actually almost better because he, he’s doing a disservice if he has to have people meeting with him one-on-one. People want to hear from him. They don’t have to have a one-on-one with him. And so anyway, I was like, man, yeah, he used events to be able to start his ministry and even his disciples.
KH (08:16):
‘Cause Some people would say, well, you know, he had a disciple. So that’s his sales team. No, no, no. Most of his disciples were also doing sermons. It’s a far more efficient way to spread a message. And of course, you’re not gonna have a hundred percent conversion, but you could still have somewhere between a 10 to a 20% conversion pretty consistently when you’re speaking to a group of people at the same time, it’s kind of pitching in a one to many fashion. So that’s my, my inspiration behind some of this. I love that. But yeah I mean, happy to dive more into it. Like obviously there’s sales strategies that you have to deploy and you have to make sure that you’re pre handling objections and, and pre-framing people for the right reasons. But yeah, you could absolutely scale. Like I, we’ve seen the, the virtual events that we’ve hosted, we’ve seen them successfully sell anything from as low as a thousand dollars offers as high as $30,000 offers directly from virtual events where people are paying seven bucks for $9 for like really cheap. So it’s a loss leader model. You don’t, you don’t make money on the front end, typically you’ll lose money after the cost of acquisition, but you make all of your money in that backend sale.
AJV (09:17):
So this is so fascinating. So I would curious to hear from you, like, why do you think that these sales call funnels, like the call booking funnels, why do you think they’re becoming a little less effective as time goes on? Yeah.
KH (09:32):
I think it’s twofold what maybe threefold. In general, the, the reason I said twofold is because people are more sophisticated than ever before, and they’re also more skeptical than ever before. So sophistication is like they
KH (10:18):
People have made some investments that really weren’t the best fit for them, or maybe they didn’t get taken well or taken well care of. And so yeah, the, the skepticism and the, the sophistication, it’s like, it’s just really hard to sell to. And in the past you can, when those were both lower, you can easily have a quick 62nd ad that someone watches on Instagram, they watch it, they’re like, oh yeah, this is interesting. Then they click it, they opt in, they watch a quick 20 minute VSL or maybe a 90 minute webinar. They’re like, cool, yeah, I’m sold. I wanna book a call. They book a quick, a quick hour long sales call and they’re gonna buy no problem. But it’s just not happening at the rate that people would like to see at this point. And so, I, I, I always say that lead generation is easy. It’s really easy to get a lead or someone interested in working with you, but the conversion part is much harder. And that’s because most people skip the in-between step, which is the lead nurture. And so I’m finding that, and this is just my kind of hypothesis a virtual event or in-person event doesn’t really matter, is one of the most efficient ways to nurture a prospect and truly gain that know, like, and trust factor that they truly need before they’re ready to invest with you at a higher rate.
AJV (11:29):
So I have a question for you. You mentioned like seven to $9. Why so cheap? Like why not $20? Why not $50? Yeah,
KH (11:38):
Great question. Great question. I haven’t seen a whole lot of data on the 20 to $50 range. I’ve tested all out a, a good few on like the 97 to 2 97 offers, and people still use those. And so I’m, I’m not gonna sit here and say like, one is better than the other. The only reason we’ve done seven to $9, and, and actually here in about three weeks, we’ll be hosting our own event. We’re actually gonna we have the hypothesis that we think a dollar will still work, so we’re gonna do a dollar ticket because I think there’s just something powerful in the 16 digits being exchanged of, of the credit card number. But yeah, the seven to $9 came up from, honestly, that first client, Ja, he was already selling it for seven. And then the very next week I had a client, her name was Christian Boss, and she said, Hey I I, I’m curious about hosting this upcoming three day virtual event.
KH (12:26):
I was gonna make it free. What are your thoughts? I’m like, I have another client we just sold 8,000 tickets for, for $7. Like, do you wanna do that? And she did it. And a month later she had 3,500 tickets sold at a $7 price range, and she made a quarter million dollars from that as well. And I was like, huh, yeah, maybe there’s something to it. And so my hypothesis, like I’ve, I’ve tested out once again, other price ranges, but my hypothesis is that the lower the price range or the, the, the lower the, the price for the ticket, the easier it is to make that quick impulse purchase. And we’re not in it for profit on the front end. We’re in it for buy-in. And there’s a significant difference from a free event versus a paid event of any sort on the show rate as well as the backend conversion rate, because these people
AJV (13:07):
Are sure you better have some skin in the game, right? Yeah. Something.
KH (13:09):
Yeah. So, yeah, I, I don’t know, the seven to nine I, I’m open to being proven wrong. Like, our motto is, we don’t care to be right. We just wanna make money. So that’s why we’re gonna try the dollar tickets. And then we’ve tried some $27 and $47 events, but they just, the sales page conversion rate quite literally just has not been as desirable as we’d prefer. And at the end of the day, we want that cost of acquisition as low as possible.
AJV (13:32):
So that leads me to another question then. So clearly you’re not doing it for profit. Are you trying to do it for break even? Or are you fully prepared to take a loss? Oh,
KH (13:40):
Yeah, yeah. Fully prepared to take a loss. So I’ve
KH (14:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Literally on the spot. So it’s, they’re like, okay, well we can, we can float that cash. So yeah, you can absolutely try to break even. You can add in some order bumps, some one click up sales. But most of the clients that we work with, they’re busy. Like, they’re usually multiple seven figures, oftentimes in the eight figure range. They don’t want to have to come up with new products to sell just for a funnel. Like they’re, like, at the end of the day, they, they only care about the backend profit. So as long as you have the cash to float, great do that. But if you’re really cash strapped, you could of course add in some extra one click up sales and you could try to increase the average order value.
AJV (14:57):
So then it’s Okay. So walking through this process, for anyone who’s listening to who, okay, if I had a little money to put some, you know, money into some ads, had this low ticket offering, what are you seeing is the most successful formula for the event itself? Is it a full day? You mentioned three days. Yeah. Is it a half day? Yeah.
KH (15:15):
Great question. So it does depend on your market a little bit. For example, myself, if
KH (16:08):
The reason why is, is honestly just because if you can deliver a really powerful shift on perspective in their mindset on, on day one, they’re sitting in that for another 24 hours before they get to hear from you again. And then they’re now eagerly waiting for day two, because as long as you kind of create some nice open loops that don’t totally get closed on day one, now they’re super excited for day two and you’re taking up their brain space and their mental bandwidth over the next 24 hours, and that’s only a two day event. If you wanna do a three day event, great. Now you’re, you’re kind of taking up mental bandwidth for about 72 hours of time, and they’re getting to spend in their mind, they’re getting to spend multiple days with you, but really it’s might only be an hour or two per day. So really it’s not much different than a quick little two hour session or a three hour session. But if you could break that up into multiple days, there’s a, in my opinion, a pretty strong correlation on the, just, just the experience that the customer’s having.
AJV (17:02):
So That’s so interesting. So you find that it’s better to have shorter sessions over multiple days than having all together on like a half day full day. Yep.
KH (17:11):
Yeah. By it. I guess my, my rationale behind this, and once again, I like, I could be wrong on this, but my rationale is that the bite size information is easier to digest for sure, as compared to making someone absolutely just drink through the fire hose.
AJV (17:26):
Yeah. And then their brain is so full they can’t think. Yeah.
KH (17:29):
Because if, if their brain is twofold, they can’t think, and they feel like they’ve just drank from the fire hose for four hours straight, the last thing they want to do is now go buy a multiple thousand dollar offer that you’re pitching them because they feel like they just got so much information they need to take action on that before they invest in your offer, because that would almost be poor stewardship of the information they just got. So give them bite-sized, digestible information and still, like, I would say more so radically change the way they look at whatever the area of life is that you’re helping them, whether it’s business or marketing or health or finance, whatever, like help them out with some mindset shifts. Don’t teach too, too much of the how’s. And it’s not manipulative. It’s just like if you teach too much of the how’s, they will then feel like they have to go implement all of that.
KH (18:13):
Yeah. And we all know, going back to what I just said earlier, if they are so focused on the how, and they’re focused on implementing all of that now, they’re not going to actually buy. And if they don’t buy now, they’re, they’re not actually gonna get that transformation and the accountability mm-hmm
AJV (18:44):
Fascinating. And so next question I’d have is for the person listening you know, I think this is a really, you know, a big deal because first of all, you gotta have, you know, if you’re listening, you gotta have some money, right? To put into paid traffic. So is that if they don’t have any money. Yep. So this model still work, what’s just trying Absolutely. Trying to drive it organically. Have you seen that work?
KH (19:05):
Absolutely. Yeah. There’s, we have kind of four core ways that we’ll drive traffic to any event, whether you have a big budget or not. Obviously yes, ads are probably the most scalable. However, you can also leverage your email list or SMS list if you have those. If not, no big deal. I’m sure you have a few emails you could still send send invites to. But then you can also leverage your organic traffic, obviously go post on some social media. Go let your, your word of mouth network know. And then lastly, any JVs or affiliates mm-hmm
KH (19:52):
And so they, they’re financially incentivized for a different reason. We have seen a fun little hack I guess you could call it on the thank you page. There’s some, there’s some extra real estate you could use after someone buys a ticket on the thank you page. Instead of just saying, cool, here’s a receipt. See you there. Check your emails for more information. You could put a video on that thank you page, and you can now actually leverage that as a way to get some new traffic immediately. We’ve seen this done in two ways. Number one, we’ve seen it done where that that video is actually inviting them there. You could have a form directly below that to sign up to be an affiliate. Yeah. And you could get an affiliate code and immediately you could actually start making money. You could maybe give them a hundred percent of ticket sales a hundred percent of the proceeds of the ticket sales that they generate before the event starts.
KH (20:39):
They can potentially even have a little bit of an ROI before they even get to your event. That’s kind of fun. But the other way is just simply leveraging the power of relationships and reminding them of, Hey, look, congratulations on taking this investment, getting your ticket. I just wanna be really clear, we’ve all been to events where nothing changes after the event’s over. Mm-Hmm
AJV (21:40):
Yeah. I love that. I, I love that. Thank you Paige. ’cause That could work, not just for this event, but for anything, anything you have
KH (22:29):
Okay. just wanna make sure that we’re super on the same page. You’re talking about the in event experience, or are you talking about leading up to the event?
AJV (22:38):
My, like the in event experience? Yeah.
KH (22:40):
Okay. In event experience. I think your first question was what’s some of the biggest wins or like, things that they’re doing well,
AJV (22:46):
Yeah. But what should we be doing? Yes. Okay. And then what could people stay away from? Yeah. Like biggest mistakes.
KH (22:51):
Yeah. I think it’s gonna be, what I tell you to do is also the opposite of it is the mistakes.
AJV (23:35):
What’s this leading up to? When’s it coming? Yeah. Yep.
KH (23:38):
And then the second type of
AJV (23:38):
Person that’s me. I’m always like that at the events. I’m like, when’s it coming? What is it? Hurry up.
KH (23:43):
Yep. Yeah, I’m, I’m right there with you. And then the second type of person, they’re there genuinely thinking that their life is about to be entirely changed over the next two hours. Whether it’s one hour per day or whatever. And you can address both of these people in the same statement. You open up and say something along the lines of, Hey guys, I’m so, so excited that you’re all here today, guys, as promised, we are going to teach A, B, and C over the next few days. Whether it’s today or over the next two days or three days, whatever. It’s gonna be extremely powerful. There’s gonna be a lot of shifts in thought that you might have never had before. There’s gonna be a lot of just kind of knowledge bombs that are getting dropped. Like make sure you’re ready to take notes.
KH (24:20):
But I wanna make sure that we’re all on the same page with something. We’ve all been to events and we got some you know, value and it was exciting and then you left and nothing else happened. And so to make sure that I’m not just leaving you hanging there, just, just to call what it is, I’m going to give you an offer at the end of this event. Not gonna sit here and try to say, I’m going to like, it’s not gonna be a bait and switch. I’m actually gonna give legitimate value. You guys paid to be here, unlike a webinar you have paid to be here. Mm-Hmm
KH (24:55):
You’re gonna be off to the races. You do not need to work with us. Fantastic. I’m so excited you’re here. The others of you, you know that you’d much rather have someone holding your hand or some sort of support after this event is over. ’cause You’re genuinely serious about seeing a transformation in this area of your life. Guys, I’m not just gonna leave you hanging. I will absolutely give you an offer if you’d like to continue working with us. I can tell you more about that on the last day. No big deal though right now. I just wanna let you know there will be an offer. So hope that doesn’t offend you all. Feel free if you I’ll even give you a heads up before I give the offer on the last day, if you guys would like to get out of the room, if that would offend you, you guys can go, go ahead and leave.
KH (25:30):
I I don’t wanna pitch anyone that, that doesn’t wanna hear our offer. Yeah. Is that cool with everyone? And you could actually have everyone say, yep, sounds good. They’ve, everyone’s, everyone’s guard just totally dropped. So that’s one big thing that you could do. And then now they’re not, they’re not like surprised when you give them the pitch. I think a lot of people will try so hard to give this incredible amount of value on the front end during their event, and then they try to switch into the pitch and people are like, oh, wait, I wasn’t expecting that. Or like, there’s just kinda an awkward gap. Oh yeah. But if you open up like
AJV (26:02):
That, it, it went on. I love you to, oh no, you’re just selling me. Yeah, yeah. Like that.
KH (26:06):
Yeah. But if you open up like that on the, whenever it comes time to do the pitch, it’s like also, I, I learned this specific from Russell Brunson in one of his 10 x 10 x growth con presentations. He gave an ask and he said, is it cool if I take the next 15 minutes or so to tell you tell you guys about a special offer I created for you all today? And so he actually had kind of a, a question saying, would you be willing to let me give the offer mm-hmm
KH (26:48):
And you actually wait for everyone to say yes. Like, drop in the comments Yes. Or whatnot. Cool. Now they’re literally giving you permission Yeah. To give an offer and pitch them. So that’s gonna be helpful. And then lastly, I would say there’s, I mean, I could continue talking on this, but I don’t wanna ramble. Lastly, I would say keep engagement high. There’s a lot of people that will focus so hard on just rambling as I’m doing right now. And they
KH (27:34):
You could even share like have people share wins or a ahas after a certain session before you jump into the next session. And that way people are now jumping in and they’re actually reminding everyone else in the room of what they just learned. And so like when you do that, people are actually much more engaged. They’re not just gonna be jumping up on Facebook on a, on a different tab of their computer and start scrolling because they see that they are engaged. They are a part of this event. They’re not just watching someone teach.
AJV (28:00):
Yeah. That’s good. Now in terms of the offer, you said that you’ve seen as low as $2,000 mm-hmm
KH (28:13):
Yeah, probably like low end $5,000 higher end 15 k is probably the sweet spot. Reason being, there’s a few ways that you could pitch on the how to actually get the conversion. So you could pitch direct to checkout. My personal favorite. You could technically pitch to, you know jumping on a sales call. I don’t like that because once again, that now puts man hours at the bottleneck of how many people you could serve. And then there’s a third option that I’ve seen work pretty well which is you could pitch a deposit and say, Hey, this is exactly how much it’s, you don’t owe that right now. You actually owe X amount instead. I’ll give a direct example. The client that I mentioned, they’re, they they spend about 30 K right now per day. They have a $6,000 offer and their offer, they could go straight to checkout on this with no problem.
KH (29:04):
But theirs is very specific to a type of individual and some financial criteria. It’s, it’s kind of a a credit based offer and that you have to have a certain amount of credit in order to be able to leverage what they help you with in the backend. And so they, to make sure that they’re not taking on the wrong clients, they’ll say, Hey, look, our offer is six K to you today. Normally it’s 10. Which is true if you go book a sales call with their team, it’s normally 10 K and they say it’s, it’s six K this week. However, you don’t owe that today. It’s on day two. They say, you don’t owe that today. You’d actually only owe $500 and it’s a totally refundable deposit by putting $500 down today. We’re gonna do a bonus q and a day tomorrow, answer all of your questions on whether or not this is truly the right fit for you or not, because not everyone is perfect for this strategy.
KH (29:50):
And they’ll tell you, like on the pitch, like, who, here’s who it’s fear, here’s, here’s who it’s for, here’s who it’s not for mm-hmm
AJV (30:48):
Yeah. So now this is so fascinating and, and so helpful. What, what, what do you think makes a good offer? Like if you’ve been doing this for a while? I listen to it. I’m fascinated with offers. I sign up for all kinds of funnels. ’cause I just wanna see how they work. ’em, I love listening and some are really great and compelling and others are like, I can’t believe anyone is buying this right now. Mm-Hmm
KH (31:14):
Okay, so I, I wanna make sure, I would imagine you’re asking the general question, but just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding. Are you asking about backend high ticket offers or the front end offers?
AJV (31:25):
Yes. It’s for a high ticket offer. Yeah.
KH (31:26):
Great. Okay. In general, it’s gotta be like, I would say categorized under a few different key transformations. So
KH (32:23):
People buy the masterminds because they want the networking. There’s also dating coaches or Sure. People like that. So there’s that. And then also if you could sell, like, anything that’s investment related, that’s you know, it’s going to be an appreciating asset or there is a certain value to it that, yeah, I mean, I’m, it’s like a, a a, just a super high quality or super high service, like a high quality service or high quality product. If you think I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give the best example. The best offers incorporate multiple of these all at the same time. So Rolex, for example technically high ticket offer, you don’t really think of it though. It’s not really a coaching space, but Rolex is a perfect example of a high ticket offer. They’re charging 10 to, I dunno, 50,000, probably more than that for certain watches and what they’re selling.
KH (33:13):
Number one, it’s a high quality product. You know, that if you buy a Rolex, it’s not breaking a month later, it’s going to be around for decades and decades and decades. Also, high quality service, if you go on in, they’re gonna walk you back. Whenever you’re picking up your, your Rolex from your ad, they’re gonna walk you back into a private room. They’re gonna do a special unboxing thing, they’re gonna give you some drinks while you’re there. Like it’s a really nice prestigious service. Additionally, it’s an asset. You’re buying a watch maybe for 10 K that you can walk out if you really needed to. You could walk out and probably resell it to someone else for 15 to 20 K depending on which one that you’re buying. Additionally they’re selling ego
KH (33:59):
So like that’s a perfect example of a fantastic high ticket offer because they’re selling so many different benefits all at the same time. Correct. A bad offer would be something that is just hard to grasp. Like, I had a client not too long ago, incredible, incredible leadership consultant. He helps people with, you know, seeing leadership breakthroughs within their organization. And when I say that leadership breakthroughs, it’s like, why would I buy that? Like that’s, I don’t know, it sounds good, but I’m not ready to just go pay $20,000 for a leadership coach. I think I’m a fine leader. How do I know if I’m a bad leader? Like, you have to, you have to solve for specific pain points such as like, Hey, I’m going to help you get out of your day-to-day operations, or I’m going to help you hire a COO to, or Yeah, that would be even more specific.
KH (34:47):
I’m, I’ll help you hire a COO to get you out the day-to-day operations or a CEO if you get outta the day-to-day operations. Or I’m going to help you turn your team of task doers into business builders. Mm-Hmm. And they’re actually gonna start focusing on revenue driven activities. Or I’ll help you deploy systems that SOPs so that everyone can leave the office at 5:00 PM rather than working until nine or 10:00 PM every day. So like, you have to get way more specific there. So you can’t just say, I’m a leadership coach. You actually have to say, I help with X, Y, and z Kind of an esoteric high level conversation. But does that make sense? A few of those examples I’m giving.
AJV (35:23):
Yeah. I think that’s great. And I think for a lot of people, this comes back to do you know the benefits Yeah. Of your offer. Yeah. Right. This comes back to the fundamentals of what we do at Brand Builders Group with finding your brand DNA. It’s like, what problem do you solve? Mm-Hmm. Right? What’s the cause of that problem? What’s the unique way in which you solve it? That’s your message. Mm-Hmm
KH (36:08):
Yeah. It’s, it’s helpful. I, I love the way that you kind of reframed all of that, so it’s really helpful to understand Yeah. The pain points that you’re solving. ’cause I, I’m sure most of the people listening to this have already heard this before, but there’s only two core human motivators in life running away from pain or running towards pleasure. And so if you can understand your audiences, both of those, what specific pain points and symptoms are coming up in their life or in their business that they’re trying to solve for, and what specific desires are they trying to achieve? Mm-Hmm
KH (36:50):
You actually have to be able to point flaws or like kind of poke holes at Yeah. If you know them well enough, let’s say you’re a health coach and you help people, I dunno, lose the last 10 pounds of, of their little bit of belly fat, if you know that most of them are trying a certain solution and they’re not getting a result, you should also talk about that as well. So it’s like, Hey, I know you have the belly fat, you’re struggling to lose it. I know you want to have six packs, but here’s what you’ve keep. Like here’s what you continue trying to do, which is X, Y, and Z. Here’s why that’s not working. And now, and now you’re setting yourself up for why your specific solution is working well or why it can be the, the solve, like the, the true solution to their problem.
AJV (37:32):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. And that kind of comes back to one thing, and then I know that we’re almost outta time, and I have one really big question that I wanna hit before we do this, but before I get to that, it kind of comes back to a question that I meant to ask earlier. And I was just looking at my notes. It’s like, do you find that for these, you know, very low dollar paid events, that it is better to have a super niche specific targeted topic? Kind of like what we were just talking about? Yeah. Or do you think it’s better to Yeah. Okay.
KH (38:03):
Going broad is not the way to go get as specific as possible. And that’s where people actually make a, a lot of mistakes is that they’ll try to make their event or any of their marketing in general, in general, so broad to be all encompassing, but when you try to talk to everyone, you talk to no one. Yeah. So make it really specific to solve a very specific problem.
AJV (38:20):
Yes. Our favorites not our favorite. One of my, well, it’s my, maybe it’s my favorite, but one of our sayings at Brand Builders Group is so cheesy, but you’ll never forget it. It’s the more specific, the more terrific
AJV (39:04):
But if you’re one of those individuals who’s like, I don’t, I, it’s not that I don’t wanna build a team, I don’t have a team, right? I have to figure out something. I am the sales team. I think these are, these are the great options and why I wanted Zach to come on the show today. But he also has this awesome playbook called the paid events playbook. And you can go to paid events.com/playbook. And in that it’s gonna cover high level overview of how to plan for your event, how to fill your event, and how to convert attendees at your event. Zach, is there anything I’m missing with that?
KH (39:39):
Not really. I, I mean, you, you covered the high level overview for sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s more in depth than most people would think. And obviously if you have any further questions, you could either go jump on chat GBT and go find information, or if you want direct help, sure you can reach out. But that is a really good overview of yeah, how to plan for your event, make sure it’s actually gonna sell and attract the right people, how to host it, keep people engaged, and then how to make sure, you know, it’s, it’s not really helpful to have a hundred people there if no one buys in the end. So how to make sure you are getting those backend conversions.
AJV (40:08):
Yeah. So again, it’s go to paid events.com/playbook. Yep. Get it, read it, use it. All right. Now before our time runs out I have one last question that I think is universally applicable. And I mentioned this in the very beginning during my intro that we said we were gonna talk about how to test an offer Yes. Before you invest into or invest too much time, money, or resources in it to make sure that it’s an offer that will work. So Zach, how do we do that?
KH (40:40):
KH (41:24):
You could use it totally free. Everybody jump on there and you can make an account and it’s a, it’s an AI essentially presentation builder. And you can give a quick one sentence prompt and say, prompt and say, give me a presentation that, or like, give me a PDF that teaches X, Y, and Z. And so let’s say that you’re a health coach and you’re like, give me one that’s like, lose five pounds before your wedding. And then another one that’s like, how to gain five pounds of muscle in the next six months for bodybuilders or whatever. It’s all like, maybe you have a few different ideas, jump on there, create a PDF for all of them, and then we put together a quick Facebook lead form and Facebook lead forms. You can instantly have a download be given to the person, like without even having to set it up with your CRM.
KH (42:10):
And so we had a, we, we had the lead form for each PDF, we tested out a few different PDFs. And on the PDF, or I’m sorry, on the, on the lead form, we were asking name, number, email no, I’m sorry, not even number, just name an email company name. And then we wanted to know not just what was gonna get the lowest cost per lead, but what’s gonna be the highest quality lead. And so we had some custom qualifying questions in there, one of which I said, which of these describes you best? And that question changed depending on the lead magnet they were opting in for mm-hmm
KH (42:53):
And it was like, I’ve never hosted an event trying to create my first one. Second one was I’ve hosted them, struggled to convert. And third one is like, we crush events, we’re just looking at scale. And then I also asked, where’s your company revenue at? And I think that was it. And so I was asking the revenue question for all of our PDFs, and then I was asking a different kind of intention or sophistication level question for the other PDFs. And so what I did, I set it up for about a hundred dollars a day, and within 24 hours I had very crystal clear data.
KH (43:49):
So that way I was minimizing all variables except for the actual lead magnet. And then I was, I, I was like, well, I don’t care about the cost per lead. I wanna make sure these people are actually qualified
KH (44:25):
And they specifically had a, a, a unique experience with real estate investing. We’re like, okay, cool. That helps us out with the pain points and the desires. And anyway, you can do this. Literally go set it up for $300, go come up with two to three PDFs and I mean, you don’t have to spend much more time than two or three minutes on the PDF I beef mine up a little bit. But yeah, do that. Then go set up a lead form, ask some sort of questions for how qualified they are. I’d say like, a financial qualification is probably helpful. And secondly, what’s their sophistication level around what you’re helping them with? And now you’re gonna have way more intel of like, clearly our lowest cost per lead is coming from this type of offer, and here’s the majority of the leads. Here’s their core desire, core pain point, and we actually know they’re qualified. Great. Let’s actually start putting some bandwidth into creating a more robust offer around that.
AJV (45:15):
That’s awesome. Love that Gamma app.
KH (45:19):
Yes.
AJV (45:19):
Love it with Facebook forms, what AI saves the day.
KH (45:24):
It really does.
AJV (45:25):
Right. love it. So, so good. Zach, if people just wanna connect with you or follow you on social media, where should they find you?
KH (45:33):
Yeah Instagram’s good. Just my first and last name, Zach Hesterberg or YouTube. We’re starting to treat quite a bit more seriously. And YouTube a lot of it’s going to be biblical based content talking about events and selling high ticket. So if you want long form, go to YouTube. Short form, go to Instagram
AJV (45:49):
And we’ll put both of those handles in the show notes. Zach. So good. So many good insights. And I think also just a, a good reminder of like, Hey, just because everyone around you is doing it this way, doesn’t mean there can’t be another way. And I think this is a good reminder for all of us who’s like, you don’t have a sales team. You are the sales team, but there’s other ways to still reach the masses and help scale your business without having to scale your team. So this was such a worthwhile conversation. And everyone who’s listening, don’t forget to stick around for my recap episode, which will be coming up next. And Zach, thank you for being here, everyone else. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 571: Who to Hire to Build an 8-Figure Business | Jen Kem Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. There’s an African proverb that says, if you wanna go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with a team. And if you are an entrepreneur or you’re a small business owner and you’re trying to grow your business, you are definitely going to need a team. And in this video I’m gonna share with you exactly who should you hire first. As one of the most common questions that we hear from people is they say, I don’t know when to hire and who to hire first.
RV (01:08):
And what I’m gonna share with you may surprise you because I’m gonna say that the first people you should hire are gonna be people that support you in your personal life more than your professional life. So you’re gonna need people to work inside of your company too, but you’re likely gonna need to start at home first. Now here’s the high level concept. A high level concept is that you need to hire people who will take things off of your plate. So if you’ve ever felt like I’m doing so many jobs, or I’m doing four people’s full-time jobs, you probably are. That is what it means to be an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur. And so, as fast as possible, you need to get those jobs off of your plate. But the simplest and most direct positions to hire for are the ones that I think we hear the least about, and that is hiring people in your personal life.
RV (02:02):
So who would you hire in your personal life? The very first hire that I would make is a house cleaner. These are easy to find. There’s a lot of people who offer this service. If you are still cleaning your house, then that means that’s time that you’re spending there instead of spending it on your business. And that’s the big idea here, is anything that’s taking your time, we have to get off of your plate. We have to outsource it, we have to delegate it to somebody else. So I’m looking for the most tangible and tactical and practical things to get off my plate first. So I would start with the house cleaner. It’s also something that you don’t have to be a millionaire to hire a house cleaner. And you can use platforms like care.com, which is one of our favorites. We use care.com to hire, uh, house cleaners, pet care, elderly care, and childcare.
RV (02:51):
Um, you can even get people to cook for you, right? So you go, what, how much time am I spending on mowing the yard? I need to get someone to do the landscaping. How much time am I spending doing handy work around the house? You can, you can use, uh, Thumbtack or, you know, there used to be tackle. I don’t think they’re around anymore. But there’s, there’s all sorts of, uh, platforms and apps you can use to hire these people locally. Not only do you free up your time, you get them a job and you’re providing income opportunities for the people around you. So anything that is taking time around the house, I would start with first. ’cause that’s gonna give you your peace of mind back. And many times those are some of the most tactical universal skills that are the easiest to hire for next inside of your business.
RV (03:38):
The very first thing that I would, the very first position that I would hire is an assistant. You need an assistant to do basic things for you. Like, um, schedule flights, you know, these are people who can do expense reports, they can filter your email, they can schedule appointments on your calendar and deal with the back and forth with that. They can take the, all the things that come into your inbox that don’t really need your attention, and they can start processing those. In my case, my assistants have access to my inbox. I’ve always done that. And you go, well, what about privacy? And I go, well, if it’s anything that’s super private, then, you know, set up a private email inbox for that or a text message. But, uh, your business email
RV (04:34):
Like, that’s an important part of the job, but it’s, it’s not rocket science to solve that problem. But you need an assistant, you need someone to filter out spam and, and just everything. And also a personal assistant. So this could be the same person, or it might be someone else, someone to do your grocery shopping for you, someone to run to the dry cleaner, someone to do go buy Christmas presents, somebody to wrap the presents, somebody to meet, meet the maintenance man, take the car to get an oil change. All of these things that suck up your time, that is time that you could be spending either on your business or with your family or doing hobbies. Those are the easiest things to hire. After you get your assistant, then typically the next person that you hire in a, in inside of your business, I think is someone who can do marketing for you.
RV (05:22):
So marketing is another tactical skillset that you, that takes time and it’s things that people can learn, right? It’s a very straight down the, the path. There’s things you need to learn how to do. Now as you get lar bigger and your brand grows, or your company grows, you may need multiple marketing people. Specifically, there’s three skill sets you need. You need someone who can write something, copywriter. You need someone who can graphically design something, and then you need a video editor, somebody who can edit videos. Those are really, really common roles. Um, but in the beginning, you might just have a marketing assistant if you’re posting on social media or they’re helping make updates to your web pages, or they might even just be a project manager who’s managing your vendors. When you’re first starting out in your business, chances are you can’t afford a bunch of a bunch of employees.
RV (06:11):
So what you do is you hire contractors, you hire vendors, but you try to have one person who is on your team who can project manage multiple vendors until you can scale up and afford to bring people on your team, which is expensive. And then they want raises, and you want to give ’em raises and they need benefits and like they have to provide for their families. But you, you grow together, but you don’t have to wait to be able to afford employees to start delegating and hiring things off of your, your plate. You can do that right away with all of these apps. You can do it with, uh, hiring contractors, but you kind of do need somebody at home. It’ll start as an assistant. Then maybe there is an, a marketing assistant. Um, another early role that you’re gonna hire in your company is gonna be an accountant, a bookkeeper, right?
RV (06:57):
You’re gonna need someone to deal with quick QuickBooks or whatever software tool you’re using to keep track of your expenses. A lot of times you can, you can find, uh, retired accountants to do that. You can find people who know QuickBooks. You can find people with, you know, basic level education, maybe not even a college diploma, but who have experience in accounts payable and accounts receivable. It’s a great side job. And you’ll notice that all of the jobs, all of the roles that you’re hiring early on are tactical, not strategic. Strategic roles tend to be more expensive. They tend to require more experience and they’re more artistic. The easier roles to hire are the ones where it’s like, it’s a task and here’s a task and here’s an instruction manual for how to do it. And you can just like put anyone in that, in that seat.
RV (07:46):
As you grow, then you need to bring on more strategic people because there’s complexity that will be added to your organization, um, after you hire a bookkeeper and you get that in place, the next thing that I would be looking to hire is what we would call delivery. Somebody who can actually do client work for you so that you don’t have to do the work, right? In any type of business, even if I’m a, you know, if I’m a high school kid, starting a a, a, a mowing, a yard mowing business, there is delivering the service and then there is selling the service. And you have to separate those two tasks. You’ll make more money if you’re selling the service than if you’re delivering the service, right? So you go, I can make more money selling people $10, a $10 service to cut their yards, and then I can find people to mow the yard for $5 and then I’m gonna keep the five.
RV (08:40):
That’s how you really become an entrepreneur, and that’s how it starts. So in order for you to be able to sell more, you gotta open up your capacity, which means you need more people who can deliver. So you gotta get other people trained to do a good job. And that becomes a really hard part. The, the more people driven your business is, right. And so services like ours at Brand Builders Group, we do personal brand strategy. So the people that we hire are personal brand strategists. They have to learn our curriculum, our methodology, our philosophy. They have to hold our values and we spend a a lot of time training them. And, and we also look for people who come in with some experience so that they can work with clients at a lower rate of pay than somebody would have to work with me or my wife and our CEO my business partner aj.
RV (09:26):
Um, so you need to get delivery off of your plate, and that is where the business starts to become scalable because you can sell more and more and more as long as you can deliver that service and you have other people who can deliver it after that. The next thing that we typically start to outsource is sales. Because when you start the business, you are usually the top sales person, but sales is a tactical skillset and it is something that can be delegated and it can be farmed out. And this is something that we did in our past life, was train salespeople. We have inside of brand builders group curriculums for both how to sell and for how to recruit, train, hire, manage, and motivate salespeople. Um, the other thing that’s great about hiring salespeople, and sometimes salespeople you actually can hire earlier, is salespeople often can and want to be paid on commission.
RV (10:18):
If they’re good, they’d rather be paid for their results and they’d rather be paid a percentage of the business they bring in than a flat stable, um, stream of pay, like in a salary or an hourly rate. Well, when you’re starting a company, salespeople can really be great because you don’t have a lot of consistent revenue. You can’t take the risk of hiring employees. But if you find a salesperson who’s willing to work on commission, you can hire as many straight commission salespeople as you can keep up with because it’s on them to go out and sell and you wanna support them and help them. But commission-based salespeople can be one of the very first, uh, positions that you hire in the company. After that, it starts to get more strategic. Uh, in brand Builders group, we have a curriculum called Eight Figure Entrepreneur, and we talk about how do you grow your business from a six figure business to seven figures, multi seven figures, and ultimately eight figures.
RV (11:13):
That is something that my wife and I have done six times. Six times. We have started multi seven figure businesses and twice we have built eight figure companies completely from scratch, from zero, uh, with, you know, no, no venture backed money. We don’t use bank debt. We’ve built it from revenue, from customers in graduating the teams up. Now, when you get to that level, we talk about the eight departments of every business. Every single company, whether a small solopreneur or a Fortune 100 company has eight major functions. Marketing, sales, delivery, customer service, HR, operations, and IT administration and finance it. Every business has those functions. The reason you’re overwhelmed as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur is ’cause you have to do all eight of those things. Marketing has to generate the lead, sales has to sell, the lead delivery has to fulfill on that, uh, promise and deliver to the customer.
RV (12:17):
Customer service has to deal with any customer service questions or cancellations. HR has to hire all of the people to do of those things, operations. And it has to create the tools and the systems to support all of those people doing those roles. Administration deals with the, the strategic, uh, parts of the business as well as the legal parts, um, and, you know, taxes and legal structure and filings and all that. And then, uh, finance deals with counting the money of all of those things. Those eight functions exist in every business. And as you start to scale, you’ll start with these early positions, and then over time, you’re gonna need someone to head up each of those departments. And then from there, the sky is the limit.
Ep 570: Building the Team to Launch Your Brand with Jen Kem
0:00
One of my favorite interviews we’ve ever had on this podcast is from a woman named Jen Kem, who we’re going to hear from again today.
0:09
0 minutes 9 seconds
Now, when she came on before, she was kind and generous enough to share a lot of secrets about how to monetize events and structure your events in a way to sell high dollar offers.
0:21
0 minutes 21 seconds
And it blew my mind.
0:22
0 minutes 22 seconds
Like literally things that are so significant and monumental.
0:27
0 minutes 27 seconds
So I was like, we have to have her back.
0:28
0 minutes 28 seconds
And part of what we’re having her back for is she has a new book that is coming out.
0:33
0 minutes 33 seconds
And so let me give you the full the full rundown on Jen.
0:36
0 minutes 36 seconds
So she has been named as a top brand strategist by Forbes and she specializes in sort of like just launching innovative ideas with high performing teams.
0:46
0 minutes 46 seconds
And she’s done that for big companies.
0:47
0 minutes 47 seconds
She’s done that for personal brands, but she has what she calls the Unicorn innovation model, and that’s been used by iconic brands like Oprah Winfrey Network, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Oracle, and a number of New York Times best selling authors and keynote speakers and other thought leaders.
1:04
1 minute 4 seconds
So she knows our space really well.
34:15
34 minutes 15 seconds
I love it.
34:16
34 minutes 16 seconds
So I got one last question for you before I ask you that.
34:21
34 minutes 21 seconds
Just where do people go if they want to learn about the book and keep up with you and, and you know, for more info on helping build their own Unicorn team?
34:31
34 minutes 31 seconds
Yeah.
34:31
34 minutes 31 seconds
So number one, I mean, obviously the easiest thing to do is go to Amazon.
34:35
34 minutes 35 seconds
Most of us like go there and the books available in all the booksellers online.
34:39
34 minutes 39 seconds
And if they’re not, if it’s not in your local bookstore, ask them to order it for you.
34:44
34 minutes 44 seconds
Like it.
34:44
34 minutes 44 seconds
It’s available wherever books are sold, Amazon being the easiest place to find it currently.
34:50
34 minutes 50 seconds
And then if you want to know more, you can go to unicornteambook.com.
34:53
34 minutes 53 seconds
It gives you a lot of like other things that I didn’t get to share here that tell you what the book and tells you also all the places you can get it.
35:01
35 minutes 1 second
And then my favorite places to hang out, if you will, to kind of chat and and talk anything Unicorn is LinkedIn and YouTube specifically, but on Instagram is definitely me in the DM.
35:15
35 minutes 15 seconds
So if you like, you know, find me over there and you want to ask a question, it’s actually me responding over there.
35:21
35 minutes 21 seconds
I love it.
35:22
35 minutes 22 seconds
I love it.
35:22
35 minutes 22 seconds
So my last question for you, Jen, is just to go like, if you think about personal brands applying this sort of leadership energy to their futures, what, you know, what’s the biggest mistake you see them make that you would encourage them not to do in this particular area around finding the right people, finding the right idea, activating, you know, their energy of all the people, Like what do you think is kind of the biggest mistake that you would just say like just don’t, just don’t do this.
35:55
35 minutes 55 seconds
I’d say don’t abandoned your identity in the relationship to team, especially as people are telling you to scale and grow, which you you probably want to do.
36:07
36 minutes 7 seconds
But scaling and growing, if you abandoned yourself in that, it’s going to be difficult for you to have the energy to go to the next level because as I like to say, you’re going to hit the next level.
36:19
36 minutes 19 seconds
You’re going to meet a new devil and when you meet that new devil, you need to know what to deal with.
36:23
36 minutes 23 seconds
You need to know how to face that devil, and it’s really about you feeling that energetic strength to push through the right heart thing for the next right thing.
36:31
36 minutes 31 seconds
And so don’t abandoned yourself.
36:34
36 minutes 34 seconds
A team includes you.
36:37
36 minutes 37 seconds
That’s the bottom line, and you are the core and the nucleus of the team as the personal brown and as the founder of the ideas that you’re bringing into the world.
36:46
36 minutes 46 seconds
I love that.
36:46
36 minutes 46 seconds
I think I’ll that’s what will I, one of the things that will stick with me from this is just doing the things that give me energy and good permission to keep those things and embrace those things and not think, oh, as we grow, I I have to do these other types of things.
37:04
37 minutes 4 seconds
So that’s really, really powerful.
37:05
37 minutes 5 seconds
Well, you know, I’m a huge fan of you.
37:08
37 minutes 8 seconds
I’ve learned so much from you.
37:09
37 minutes 9 seconds
I’m so excited about this, the book, all the things that you’re up to.
37:13
37 minutes 13 seconds
And you know, when we get around to like doing our events and bigger events, it’s like you will be on that Unicorn team.
37:21
37 minutes 21 seconds
It’s like I got to call Jen because I know she she just knows how to activate, you know, an event.
37:27
37 minutes 27 seconds
So we wish you the best.
37:29
37 minutes 29 seconds
Thank you for letting us be a part of the journey.
37:31
37 minutes 31 seconds
Thanks for the time today and keep crushing it, friend.
37:35
37 minutes 35 seconds
Thanks, Rory.
37:36
37 minutes 36 seconds
I’m so grateful for you.
37:37
37 minutes 37 seconds
Thanks for being a Unicorn in my life too.
Ep 569: Redefining Work for the Long Term | Caleb Guilliams Episode Recap
AJV (00:01):
Are you working just to retire? Now, the reason I ask is I think it’s important to share the actual definition of retirement. The actual definition of retirement is to be taken out of service. So knowing that that retirement means to be taken out of service. Let me ask that first question again. Are you working just to retire? Now, if I had asked you that the first time, you would say, yes, I totally plan on retiring. I think most people in the United States plan on retirement at some point. But do any of us plan to be taken out of service? Are we saving all of our money so that we can just no longer be useful one day? I don’t, I don’t think that we would say yes if we were asked in that way. When people go, Hey, are you saving for retirement? What if we were actually asking people, are you saving so that you can no longer be of service to your community,
AJV (01:09):
I don’t think most of us would say yes to that. I don’t think most of us are planning and saving to no longer be of service at age, whatever. And so I thought it would be important to talk about where did this concept of retirement come in? And there’s no judgment being passed here. If you’re retired or you’re about to retire, or you do wanna retire one day, this is not a judgment call. This is a redefining what work means and redefining retirement. So it’s not this thing that we work for and work towards one day to be taken out of service, but it’s, it’s a rea, it’s a reallocation of our knowledge, our skills, and our time. But I think some of the, the hardest walks that I have walked through with friends and family are the people who have lost themselves, lost their identity, lost their purpose, lost their passion lost their excitement and life after they retired, or post-business sale.
AJV (02:15):
Now, I think that that is a dangerous thing that I’m not I’m not promoting that your identity should be tied to your work. I’m most certainly not saying that your identity is not what you do, but I think there’s another component of it that we as human beings, were created to create. We were created to work. Now we were not necessarily created to toil. And in my beliefs as a Christian, that happened after the fall, right? That happened when sin entered the world that we would toil for the rest of the days of our life in this current earth. I don’t believe that’s how it was meant to be. I don’t believe that’s how it will be one day. I do, however, recognize that is how it is today, but that’s not how it was meant to be. We were built to create and cultivate and to rule.
AJV (03:07):
That is, that is what our job is. We were created to be of service to one another and to the planet, right? So this concept of retirement has always been a little foreign to me. I, I, I think I was very fortunate. I, I consider myself very privileged to have been raised by several generations of entrepreneurs. My grandfather worked into his eighties and as soon as he did retire in his eighties, it was a sharp decline in his health. And I, I think it very much had to do with he lost touch with service and serving his company and his team, and his employees and his family. My dad is now in his mid seventies, and I, I hope that he never retires fully. His workload definitely looks different today than it did 20 years ago. He might disagree with that, but I think it’s really important that he has purpose and enjoyment in his work.
AJV (04:03):
And that is the purpose of this email is to, to enjoy what you do so that it doesn’t always feel like work, is that you’re living into what you were created to be and to do and to provide for this world. And I just, I come from an upbringing where I got to see my family of business owners actually contribute to the community and to our team members and to each other, and doing it in a way that was life giving, not life taking. I know not all jobs can be life giving all the time, but I do also believe that that’s a decided choice that we make. We get to make the choice to be excellent at what we’re doing no matter what that job is. And I have had jobs and the hospitality and restaurant industry to you know, pay commission, only pay cold calling, selling tickets, traveling full time to leadership roles and sales management roles, and you know, being paid to speak.
AJV (05:04):
There’s a large variety of roles that I’ve had over the course of time. And it doesn’t matter what your role is. It’s a decision that we all get to make, to go regardless of what I’m doing. I choose to be the best at what I’m doing right now. It’s a decided decision of excellence, of being good at what it is for the sake of giving it your best. Because we can learn something and grow in every season and in every role that we have in our life. Now, I also wanna get back to what I started with is this concept of retirement and where did it come from and how has it snuck into our culture that gives people an out to no longer create and cultivate in the way that we were actually created to do. And so I thought this would be a really interesting history lesson super quickly.
AJV (05:58):
But in the pre-industrial area pre-industrial era, most Americans worked as long as they were physically able. There was no formal retirement. A lot of that was physical labor, right? And so maybe those years were shorter
AJV (06:50):
Depression, and it established a government funded pension to provide social security for older Americans, right? Much of that due to the, you know, time of life that we were in with a great depression and needing more ways to support those in their older age. Not a bad thing. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, that’s a good thing. Then we get into the 1950s and sixties and company pensions became way more common. Not as common today, but very then, but this is where the whole idea of retirement and no longer having full-time, working hours began to really kick in. And retirement was really seen at age 65, right? Then we get into the 1970s and the 1980s that is when 401k started to come on the scene. That wasn’t until the eighties, like that’s when I was born. Like this is not something that has been around for, for a very long time.
AJV (07:47):
And I think this is really important because if you just high level, go back, it was not until the fifties and the sixties that retirement was even a thing, right? That’s not even a full generation ago, right? That’s my dad’s age. My dad was born in 1951, so at the time of him being born, IE that’s why my grandfather worked until he was 80. Retirement wasn’t a thing, right? You worked until you were no longer physically able. And one of the things that has been coming up a lot in our family, and we have aging parents and friends and who have aging parents, and a lot of talk about retirement. And here’s the thing that I just wanted to share with you guys in a long about way to be honest, is find something that you can do for the rest of your life.
AJV (08:37):
Find a way to be in service to a group of people for the rest of your life. And retiring from a, for a formal nine to five is one thing, but retiring in general so that you can golf and play video games that, that, that’s not being of service. That’s, that’s not the goal of retirement. The goal is not to work your whole life and not give back. The goal is to work until you can find more time to give back to the younger people, and to develop the next generation, and to create new leaders and to use your skills and experience to educate and inform and help develop an entirely new generation of people who will come after you. I find it odd that our most experienced workers, leaders, employees, the ones who are retiring, are the people we have the most to learn from.
AJV (09:27):
They’ve seen it all. They’ve been around the block. They’ve been through different economies and market conditions and recessions and depressions and life and death and marriage and babies. And they, they have so much to give. These are not the people we want leaving our workforce. Y’all. these are wildly experienced and important people in our job force. This is an very important part of our workforce. Now, the working hours look different. Can they look different? Should they work different? Sure. Those are all things that are good and fine. I’m just encouraging you to not work for retirement, but find a work that you can do for the rest of your life so that you are never taken outta service.
Ep 568: Building Better Wealth with Caleb Guilliams
AJV (00:00):
AJV (00:56):
So I invited my friend Caleb, onto the show to talk about money today because I think he’s got a really unique perspective, a young, fresh perspective on something that I would say most of us are looking for the gray hairs in the industry to learn about financial peace and financial wisdom. And Caleb is not that in fact, let me give you a little bit of his background. Caleb Williams is the founder of Better Wealth, and not only is he the founder of that he founded it at 21, the Age of 21, right? So, again, when I say Young, fresh Perspective, he’s not 21 today, but he started it at a really young age, and I think that’s a really important component of the conversation of how do we look at it in a new and fresh way, which is what you’re gonna get today. He’s also the author of the bestselling Bug, the And Asset. He hosts the Better Wealth Podcast and The Better Wealth YouTube channel. He also speaks to thousands around the world on how they can be more efficient with money and have more intentionality in doing it. So, Caleb, welcome to the show.
CG (02:07):
Hey, it is a pleasure to be on here, and I’m just so grateful to spend these next couple minutes with you and your audience, and we’re gonna have a lot of fun today.
AJV (02:15):
It’s gonna be great. And I have to tell you too, it’s like, as you, you know, we’re really big on titles at Brand Builders Group and Better Wealth is such a great title, right? One of the things we talk about all the time is, does it pass the I Want test and back to this importance of this universally applicable episode of, I think we all want better wealth, not always more wealth, but better wealth. And that’s it. The huge, honestly, it was one of the key foundations of why I wanted you to come on the show today is, you know, I think, I think sometimes we think about wealth and money as how do I get more of it? Yeah. And I’d love to kind of reframe some of that today for our audience, audience. But before we do that, I do wanna help everyone get to know you just a little bit. And as I mentioned you got into the financial world at a really young age, then you founded Better Wealth at 21. Yep. How, how, how did you do that?
CG (03:13):
I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make this quick, I’ll make this quick, but I, I think context is key. So I’m the oldest of six kids, grew up in central Wisconsin. My dad’s a PhD molecular biologist. My mom was a nurse. Talk about opposites of attract. My dad has no friends, very smart. My mom loves people. I, and she’s also smart, but in her own way. And I grew up homeschooled and, and, you know, grew up dyslexic and like, wasn’t sure what I was gonna do, but I was always fascinated around business and money. I got a job at a, at a chicken farm when I’m 15 years old, I apologize to all the vegans. So if you’re a vegan and you get offended, get off right now. But I, I literally gutted chickens. Oh my. And I made a dollar for every chicken that I processed.
CG (03:56):
And 15-year-old Caleb was given two books, good To Great by Jim Collins and The Richest Man in Babylon. Hmm. And those two books, especially being someone that reading was really tough. I forced myself to be a student of those concepts. One of the books is about level, level five leadership and like this idea of like, rallying people. And if you get the right people on the bus, you’ll be able to go to new heights. And at 15 years old, I’m like, I love this. And then the Richest Man in Babylon is like a parables of how anyone can be wealthy. And just going back to the basics of you gotta pay yourself first and all that good stuff. And so I remember, you know, being 15 years old and being like, I wanna do something in the money space, which led me to get a job at a bank when I was 17 years old.
CG (04:37):
Now, one thing you gotta know about me is I look young today, but if you’re not watching on YouTube, like I have kind of what you could maybe call a beard. But you know, when I was 17 years old, I’m the oldest of six kids. My younger sister was taller than me and looked way older than me. And, and again, like I looked like I was 12 or 13. So working at, at a bank was, had its own challenges to begin with. But what I did and what I committed to, and maybe as the first writer downer, is like I wanted to defer on money and learn as much as possible. And working at a community bank I became an HR nightmare because I would sit in on meetings, they gave the 17-year-old the, the ability to open the bank and close the bank.
CG (05:15):
‘Cause I would, after clocking out, I would just stick around and work and go to networking events. I would talk to the CEO of the bank about how we could be more profitable. And so I was definitely, I took that opportunity and ran with it and learned a ton about money. At the age of 18, I got to work in our investment department. And then at 19 years old, the person I was running our inve investment department at Community First Bank took, took another job. At 19 years old, I became the youngest person to step into the corner office and to many people’s horror
CG (05:58):
And people, for better or worse, saw me grow up at this bank. And they knew that maybe I wasn’t the smartest kid, but I would work my butt off to serve them. And so there’s a lot more to unpack. Stephen Covey, I’ve been indirectly impacted by him so much, made a mission statement, which simply read to help people see and reach their highest potential. I realize that money is not the number one reason why people get divorced. It’s up there though. But it is, it is the thing that if you don’t master, if you don’t understand it is, it’s a tool. And most people are using the tool not properly, and they’re living to a fraction of what their God-given potential is. And I think that’s a shame. And so it was like, I wanna do everything that I can to help people with that.
CG (06:39):
And so through that journey, learned from a ton of people. A big blessing in disguise was I didn’t have a direct mentor. So I didn’t learn like, maybe like an average way to think about money. I really got to stretch and be stretched. And through that process, I realized that I’m gonna die someday.
CG (07:22):
And people thought I was crazy. It’s like, you look like you’re 15 years old who’s gonna meet with you on the internet. And ignorance is bliss. And now we are, we’re, we have clients in all 50 states, and we have coaches in every time zone. We, we do insurance, we do invest, we have an investment arm, we do tax planning, and we have a fractional family office arm that helps six and seven figure entrepreneurs be more efficient with their money. And that’s the story in a nutshell. And there’s a lot of lessons that we’ve learned. We can talk about anything that you want, but there’s a lot of lessons. I currently now live in Nashville, Tennessee, and so grateful to be neighbors with you.
AJV (07:55):
You know, I love that story for so many different reasons, but what I love it most is it just feels like you found your calling in life at a really exceptionally young age, which gives you such an amazing opportunity to make a profound impact on the space that you’ve decided to be in. That’s, that, that’s like such a, that’s such a gift, right? Yeah. And I also love that you’ve done some really hard sucky jobs. Like, I don’t know, gutting chickens for a dollar chicken might be the worst job of all time. It might, it might be. I
CG (08:34):
Loved it. That’s the weird thing. I loved it. And I would go back to it tomorrow if I had to because it, I have so many memories, and actually some of the ways I think about money are going back to those jobs of like trying to be efficient. Yeah. And realizing that some of those universal principles are, are how we use money. But I, I’m with you. I’m, I’m, I’m not complaining about doing what I’m doing now,
AJV (08:57):
But, but I love, I, I think, and genuinely speaking, I’m a mom of two little boys who are five and seven, and we’re constantly talking about like, how do we ensure that our kids know the value of hard work? And, and I think it’s just so important. So I love that you kind of have that background and history. And then also just like the importance of reading and books and learning and all of the things. There’s so many things I love about your story, but one of the things that you said in there, and this is where I wanna start our conversation today, is you said money is a tool and most people just aren’t using a properly. So I would love to start there, like, what do you mean by money as a tool and how are people using it improperly?
CG (09:42):
Yep. We’re gonna, we’re gonna start with two words. I’m a big framework person and it’s wealth efficiency. And so when I, when I get the opportunity to speak to people, a lot of, a lot of times, you know, having a company called Better Wealth, a lot of people have mental thoughts on what wealth is. Usually when I say wealth you think of net worth being rich, having money in the bank account. And one of the, one of the different reframes that I try to encourage is asking the audience, how do you define wealth? Because if you, if your definition of wealth is foggy or not clear, then how in the world are we supposed to accomplish something that we’re not really clear on? And so the, the story that I used and I ask is, would you trade places with Warren Buffet? Warren Buffet at the time of this recording is worth over a hundred billion dollars.
CG (10:27):
And he’s one of the world’s wealthiest on paper, if we’re gonna use that definition. Men. And yet majority of the people watching and listening to this podcast, do you really think about it, wouldn’t even think about trading places with Warren Buffett because he’s also over 90 years old and not gonna live that much longer. And so there are things in our life that we value potentially more than money in a bank account. And so on a macro level, we get it on a micro level, if you actually believe that you’re disrespecting or, or not being true to that definition of wealth. And so our definition of wealth at Better Wealth is intentional living. You, you cannot be wealthy if you’re not intentional about your life. And the way that I think of Intentional Living is a couple categories. It’s your God-given skill sets. It’s how you use your time, it’s your relationships and how you use your resources.
CG (11:17):
There’s obviously more to that, but at the end of the day, those are like the four categories that we look at. And we, and we really try to identify like, what does an intentional life look like? And, and that’s where we start. And so you can’t be wealthy if you don’t live intentionally. The beautiful thing is it, an intentional living looks different for me than it looks like for you, but my encouragement to you is, is get really clear about like what what brings you a lot of joy in what you get to do. Like, you’re totally right. I have found something that I love. I don’t love all the aspects of my job, but I love the mission that we’re on and that I, I wake up excited and I want that for everybody. And so that, and then the, the, the relationships that you have and how you use your resources and how you use your time, super key.
CG (12:01):
So wealth is really key and, and we wanna make sure that we wanna lean into that intentional life. The second word is efficiency. It’s interesting because efficiency sometimes gets a bad rap. Even your husband who has a, a TED talk, that with five million views uses efficiency. And a lot of times people, sometimes the efficient thing is not what you should do because we are maybe not, not figuring out the right end goal. But the way that I define efficiency is, is something like this. It’s getting to your desired result by removing all the friction. And so to be efficient, you need to get really clear about that desired result. I would agree that if without the desired result, just removing friction to remove friction is, is not gonna help anyone. And that’s what a lot of people look at when it comes to money.
CG (12:45):
You should do this, you should do that. But it’s like, why? And so when we are trying to be efficient, we have to get clear about what we’re going or what our desired result is, and then removing any of the friction that’s getting in the way of that. And so what is the desired result? It’s that tangible, intentional life. And so the example is, I, I live in Nashville, but if I wanna get to California, I’m really clear about where I want to go. I could walk there and it would take me like a long time
CG (13:38):
And let’s eliminate that because the intentional life becomes the standard, becomes the metric that I reverse engineer everything by. And I think that is the first thing that I wanna encourage every, everyone to, to have the freedom to do is don’t let a financial advisor, don’t let me, don’t let someone on TV tell you the most important thing. Get really clear about what that looks like for you. Retirement is not biblical. It’s actually, it’s the definition of retirement is to be taken out of service. I don’t know why retirement’s even a goal for any, I don’t think any of your audience wants to be inspired to like retire someday. And so let’s get that out of our vocabulary. Let’s figure out what we want, like what that God-given calling is for our life. And then let, let’s that be the thing that we’re reverse engineer everything else by, and we can get into some of the other frameworks, but like that is a key deal, is like intentional living and then removing friction so that we can live intentional and making sure that that intentional standard is a thing that trumps cash flow, net worth good debt versus bad debt.
CG (14:36):
All of those are many frameworks, but should elevate your ability to live your one life. Well,
AJV (14:42):
Okay, well first of all, that is the most impactful
AJV (15:31):
So I love that. I love that. I also loved your side comment on retirement. I don’t know if I talk a lot about this on the show, but I know I talk a lot about it in my Instagram stories. But we don’t believe in retirement in our house. Like people say all the time, like, Hey, what’s, what’s the end goal with Brand Builders Group? And I’m like, I don’t know. We don’t have one. Like we don’t, we there is, there’s not some event that we’re working towards. We’re not planning on selling it or we don’t wanna retire. And it’s like until, until the Lord takes me home or my business is my ministry.
CG (16:05):
That’s right.
AJV (16:06):
And I think I, so I love just that, that whole concept of like, okay, first of all, retirement is not the end goal. Yeah. So let’s, let’s reframe that and now let’s start from there. So I love that. So I love that. So I’m curious to hear from you then it’s like it with this concept of wealth efficiency, right? Defining wealth, defining efficiency what is it that you see that is causing friction? Like what are the things that are causing people to not use money properly? Or where is the friction in this wealth concept?
CG (16:41):
Love it. And I’m gonna go through the next framework, which is the, the wealth framework. And stop me at any time. ’cause As you can see, I get really excited about this, but, okay, so now if we understand wealth efficiency, okay, now, now let’s get into like what that actually means. I, I have a problem with people that just stay in the clouds and don’t actually get tactical. And so this is, this is the way from a dyslexic mind, how you can understand this. And hopefully you can draw a picture in your mind as I speak. And so when I am speaking with someone on a whiteboard, I’m drawing a, a, an individual of a stick, a stick figure. And this stick figure represents you. And so we’ve already identified that it’s clear that you should get clear about what you want. If you don’t know where you wanna go, it’s like the Alice in Wonderland at the fork in the road.
CG (17:26):
Any road will get you there. Welcome to America. And, and if you’re Canadian, welcome to Canada
CG (18:10):
And in fact, your number one asset, which is your ability to create, doesn’t even show up on a traditional balance sheet. That’s how messed up that is. And so once you get clear about what, what you want, the next, the next conversation that I’m always looking for is how are you creating this thing called currency or cash? We’ll talk about that in a second. But a lot of times we divorce ourself from like cash from value. And, and you, you can really only create two fundamental things, a service or a product. Those are, and if there’s a third, please, please let me know. But someone can fundamentally create a service or a product. And just because you exist doesn’t make that service or product more or less valuable. We, we, we all know people that do the same thing on paper, but one gets paid a lot more.
CG (18:55):
An iPhone and an Android are not the same, right? So there maybe someone could charge more for one of those products. And so the idea is to get hyper-focused on am I creating the most value and really focusing on that. And what I find is a lot of people ask me, like, Caleb, what should I invest in? Should I do this Roth and other things? And I look at their financial situation, I say you should invest in nothing until you triple your income because you’re, if you wanna look at me with a straight face and say that what you’re making is, is optimized for your, for your situation. And a lot of times that’s, that’s just giving them the permission to quote unquote invest in themselves. But I can’t think of a better investment early on than making sure that you’re, you’re maximizing, this goes to our business owners.
CG (19:38):
If you’re, if you’re in business and you’re not reaching the heights that you know deep down that you can, it may, you may not want to tie up your money in other things until you’re really making sure that your printing machine is able to print out money. I’ll stop there. But then I, I wanna share what you do when you get money, but I find that so many people skip that step. They go, they wanna know where they should invest their money. Should I pay off debt? And all these things, we’ll, we’ll get to in a second, but I’m telling you, majority of the people listening to this probably need to hit pause and figure out ways that they can be more valuable, create more valuable services, or more valuable products to the marketplace. And cash flow or currency will reward value creation.
AJV (20:18):
You know, I love that you said this because we literally had this conversation a couple years ago and it was like, you know, we started Brain Builders Group, what, six years ago? And it was a couple of years ago, and we were, you know, deciding how we wanted to grow it and did we wanna grow it, and what, what, what did we wanna do with the money? And we were actually sitting down with our financial advisor, and this was like, again, like three years ago. And this was the conversation. And at that time, this was rates were still pretty good in a couple of different places and you know, better than they were in the last 12 months. And it was such a fascinating conversation. We were sitting here, we were listening and also doing math in our head mental math, and then we pulled out a calculator and we were looking at each other and we were like, literally the, and if you just think about this in really tactical forms, it’s like the rate of returns on any of the investments that we were talking about were half of our own profit margin.
CG (21:17):
Yeah.
AJV (21:17):
And we were just thinking, why would we put all of our money into these funds that are getting half of the return that we would be getting if we just reinvested into ourselves and reinvested into our people and reinvested into our business? Because our profit margins were double what any of the rate of return turns were even at that time period. And I think it’s a fascinating concept to what you’re saying. It’s like, like how often are financial advisors actually saying, well, hey, let’s talk about your profit margins. Let’s talk about how, how good you are doing versus where should we put your, your money in terms of funds or, you know, the market or whatever. But it was, it is literally what you were just saying. And it’s like, Roy and I recapped after the meeting and we were like, yeah, actually I think that BBG is the best investment that we can invest into right now. So we’re gonna, and it’s almost exactly this conversation you’re having, but realizing you are your number one asset. You are your best investment, and at least you can have some influence and control over what you do versus anything else that’s happening.
CG (22:23):
I I, I even, I’m, I’m writing, I’m writing a lot right now. I’m forcing myself to write some of these concepts down. And I was doing the math around just someone getting a $5,000 raise versus like investing and like breaking down the math and showing, okay, 8% compounded over a period of time, like, awesome. And then just like what a $5,000 raise would look like. And just showing them on paper of like, even if you’re not an entrepreneur watching or listening to this, like just by figuring out a way to make yourself more valuable to the marketplace, which is your employer is just something that I believe every single person going into college, going outta college, we gotta understand how this works. And I think it’s one of the things that we don’t talk enough about, but if, if, if people can be, if people can really maximize and optimize that space in their life, everything gets easier as, you know, making more money, just life gets a lot easier. It, it also covers up for a lot of mistakes that we make on the back end, and we can afford to make, quote, unquote, more mistakes. I say that tongue in cheek because we’ve really are are em, we’re creating emphasis on creating more cash and the person that’s creating more cash in the long run has just more options. And so that’s so yeah, I think you said it perfectly.
AJV (23:36):
No, I love that. And I think that’s a really important just reminder to all of us. It’s like, before you start investing elsewhere, just take a really good hard look at where are you investing in yourself? How are you helping yourself become more valuable? Because that’s, that’s the number one place to start. Awesome. That, that whole concept, I love that. That’s so good. Okay.
CG (23:57):
All right. You’re gonna love this next piece. ’cause I, I think what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna simplify this so dang easy where people will be able to get, ’cause a lot of financial, the financial side gets really complicated and they almost, people wanna make it complicated so that you trust advisors, you know,
CG (24:37):
Okay? Hear me out here. It can either be consumed or it can be saved, can be consumed. So I, I already know the Christians that are listening to this. Well, what about tithing? And I’ll, I’ll get to that. Okay. When you make money, there’s only two categories that can go consumption, which I’ll, I’ll talk about lifestyle. Think of lifestyle or saving, which is a verb to hopefully invest and multiply. Okay, we’re gonna talk about consumption first. When I make money, my dollar’s only capable of doing one of two things. Lifestyle or saving. Let’s talk about lifestyle. Lifestyle could look like taxes. Well, Caleb, I don’t like, taxes doesn’t affect my lifestyle. Well, if you don’t pay your taxes, you’re going jail. So taxes is a cost of living your life. It’s just the cost of living your life. Jail free paying debt is a, is a form.
CG (25:27):
Your, your debt service, your, that’s part of lifestyle. Your coffees, your intentional decisions that you make, intentional or unintentional. That’s the cost of living your life. And so really the three categories are spending debt and taxes are like the three categories we could get. We could get a bunch more nuance, but at the end of the day, the hacks here are track your money. It’s amazing when you start being intentional about like, why am I spending money and just like tracking it and then start asking the question like, am I actually spending the money on like what I care about? And what a lot of times we’ll find is we’re spending money to impress people for maybe some trauma re like, as a kid, like we can get really deep here, but a lot of times we’re spending money on things that aren’t actually helping us live more intentionally, but doing it for other reasons.
CG (26:21):
And so when we track that money, we just start having just better conversations. One of the best things that we do for clients is just help them track their money, because most people won’t do it. But if you’re, like, if you get a spending report every single month it could be painful, but it’s, it’s hard to hide when you start categorizing where your money’s going. Second thing is taxes. Nine outta 10 business owners are overpaying on their taxes. And I don’t know about you, but I want to legally pay as little tax as possible. I’m all about paying the government, but I’m all about paying the government as little as possible. And so without getting super in depth, there’s, there’s, you know, deductions, credits, things like depreciation, different tax strategies that you can go down. For any of your audience that reaches out to me, I can, we have a one page tax checklist with five categories. And within those categories, there’s a bunch of areas like in deductions and credits that you can take to your CPA and make sure that you have this checklist to see if there’s areas that you can save more money. That alone AJ is fun because on average a business owner is able to save 20 to $30,000 with that checklist just by taking it to their CPA and, and maybe asking certain questions or doing certain things that help you pay less in taxes. So that’s fun. Let’s pause right there. The
AJV (27:39):
Last, I wanna make sure that people hear this right, there is a one page checklist that Caleb is happy to give to you. And so if you wanna get that, then Caleb tell them where they should DM you.
CG (27:52):
You can, you can email me at [email protected] or go on to my Instagram at Caleb Williams and the, just trust the last name. Hopefully it’ll be in the title of this, of this podcast. I’ll put it on the, and if, yeah, it’ll be in the show notes. And so just if you reach out, I’d be more than happy to give you that. And we have a wealth efficiency packet, which is every framework that I’m talking about, whether it’s debt and other investments, like all these, I’ll give you the whole packet just to help you be more efficient, remove friction to get to your desired result. So yeah, we
AJV (28:24):
Did kind of recap that, right? Taxes, we, we all believe pay your fair share and not 1 cent more. So That’s right. How do you tighten that up?
CG (28:33):
Yeah, I, the, I I should go on a rampage here, but one of my good friends, Tom Wheelwright, who’s the CPA for Robert Kiyosaki, wrote the book Tax Free Wealth. He has a, a perfect analogy of this. He’s like the tax code, which is thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pages long. It’s like two or three pages of like what you owe. And then the rest is like a treasure map of finding incentives on how to not pay that. And so it’s just, it’s one of those things where you, you wanna start becoming treasure hunters and figuring out, Hey, how can I partner with the government essentially and create more value for the government? And oh, by the way, if I create more value for the government, they’ll, I’ll pay less. And so it’s just really, really cool and incentives work.
CG (29:13):
So, and then the, then the last thing when it comes to consumption is looking at debt. I have a, I have a non Dave Ramsey approach to debt. But I, I think about it this way is, I think when we’re, when we’re talking about debt, we really need to separate it debt and what you’re doing. A lot of times people marry those things together, but debt is just a tool in itself, and a lot of times it, it can be an enabler to make you make bad decisions. So I just wanna acknowledge that if I was talking to someone that was really pro Dave Ramsey, I agree personally debt can enable bad decisions. But when I’m looking at just for my personal life, I’m, I’m asking two questions. Should you buy these things? And then if I answer yes, then the next question is, what’s the best way to purchase those things?
CG (29:58):
And so for me, I look at cash flow and I just go to, if I’m already gonna determine to buy this home or this car, I don’t ever want debt to be an enabler. I don’t wanna buy this car because I can get it with debt. I wanna make the decision. And that that’s a, maybe a different podcast in itself because it’s like, how can you know what to afford? But once you make that decision, then I go back to what’s the best way to purchase that thing? And you can either use debt or use cash. And by the way, cash on the, on the top of your dollar bills says federal reserve note. So if you really wanna go down the rabbit hole, like cash itself is a form of debt because once we went off the gold current standard, every, all the, the, the dollar bills are just a form of debt.
CG (30:42):
So I get less emotional about whether I’m using a mortgage or not. And, and I just look at from a cashflow perspective, what gives me more control, what allows me to have greater cashflow that I can save and what limits risk? And in a lot of cases actually a 30 year mortgage and debt can, can actually be that thing that checks a box for a lot of people. Again, I I maybe I’m, hopefully I’m not confusing people more in saying that. I just wanna give you permission when you look at the lens through efficiency versus being debt free or not, it just allows us to be like, okay, what gives us more control? What allows us to be more efficient? Sometimes debt is that tool that we use on the saving side and the consumption side, but sometimes you can have toxic debt that’s just killing you, and you need to eliminate that, and that will free up a ton of cash flow in itself. So cashflow is what we really optimize for, or not, not something arbitrary like being debt free or not.
AJV (31:38):
Yeah, I know. I love that. And I think that’s, again, it’s using debt with guardrails, right? Yeah. And it’s like,
CG (31:44):
It’s using it as a tool.
AJV (31:45):
Yeah. It’s like making sure it’s a tool and you’re not flying off the cliff, right? And I think that’s true, you know, sometimes with cash too, it’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, sometimes if you’re just all cash, right? If everyone, if you know, it’s like we were all just hiding a bunch of cash and, you know, boxes under our beds. It’s like, is that really the best utilization of that? Right? So you can kind of go both ways, but I love that. So these consumption things, taxes, debt spending. What about saving?
CG (32:12):
All right, so, so, okay, so your dollar can only do one of one of two things. It can either be consumed and part of consumption is tithing, by the way, because that is the choice that you’re living your life. So if I decide I’m going to ti 10% in a way, I am voluntarily choosing a 10% tax as a part of my rich life, that’s just like, just something I want to be upfront with. But that’s a, that’s a lifestyle decision. Okay? So, so the beautiful thing is if you, if you make money and I figure out, I only need to know one thing, I either need to know how much you save or how much you spend, and I can determine, I can essentially model out your entire financial life. So if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you save 10,000, what are, what’s your lifestyle?
CG (32:56):
$90,000. We don’t have to do a whole budget to figure that out. It’s really quick. So that’s what, that’s a a life hack because part of that we can model out and say, okay, $90,000 today, this thing called inflation. Like what, in 30 years, what do you need to be having coming in to just maintain your current lifestyle? So that’s, that’s something that’s valuable. And understanding that your money’s only capable of doing two things, but okay, if we want to save money, going back to the richest man in Babylon, pay yourself first. Pay yourself first. There’s, there’s something really, really incredible about forcing yourself to, to save money. Saving is a verb. And so a lot of times a huge focus of ours is helping people be more efficient and then taking those inefficiencies from lifestyle and transferring them into savings category because majority of people are saving a fraction of what they need to.
CG (33:45):
But saving is, is a verb. And then what are we saving for? And, and we’re saving for investing and investing is a, is a multiplier effect. And one of the things that we, we try to determine is a lot of times people say like, what should I invest in? Should I invest in real estate? Should I invest in stock? Should I invest in myself? Should I invest in the stock market? And it, and there’s no right or wrong to this I wish I could tell you, like, do this thing, but it really comes down to everyone’s individual, you know, goals. And some people come to us and they, they realize like, I need to reinvest in my business. And so they, they’re in business, like for your example is like, that is helping me live more intentionally and oh, by the way, is gonna outperform any real estate or stock portfolio that I’m doing.
CG (34:33):
We have clients that are day traders, they really understand the stock market. Amazing. We have people that love real estate. Amazing. So it’s really identifying going deeper and saying, okay, what is this asset? It not only is gonna help me be more intentional, but it’s gonna create more cash flow. What’s the best way to be able to do that? And I’m not a fan of retirement, but I do think we need to be planning towards areas where our, our assets, whether it’s our business, whether it’s our stock portfolio, real estate portfolio, is creating enough cash that gives us the ability to do really whatever we want. Some people call this financial independence, some people call this financial freedom. But it, it’s just this idea of like, I have a system set up where I am able to live on my terms and to be able to make choices the way that I wanna make them, and I don’t necessarily have to go to work.
CG (35:24):
So that would look like in a business, having an operator do your thing. Or that could, and, but that’s ultimately you making the choice to continue to live intentionally, which a lot of our friends, aj, continue to work because work, they don’t work for money. They literally, literally are working because that’s what their God-given purposes for. And so all that to say, the saving is a verb to invest what you invest in. You can go through a process called investor DNA, which is something that I didn’t necessarily come up with, but it’s the idea of like, we’re all built a little different. And so instead of saying, is this good or bad, look at you and figure out where should I be spending my time and money? And then that will start highlighting where you should focus on. And then the last thing in this whole framework is risk, a risk management umbrella.
CG (36:09):
We could have, we could be crushing it, making money. We could be being super efficient in how we spend our money. We could be saving a ton, but if something medically happens or if something like a hurricane or a tornado comes and, and wipes out our business or on our, or our home and we don’t have it properly insured or having special risk management, like everything could be wiped out. And so as unsexy as it sounds like, you really do need to make sure that you are creating a, a moat and an umbrella around the life that you’re, that you’re living. And, and again, I don’t necessarily need to go into any more than that other than the checklist. I can give you a checklist to make sure that whenever you’re meeting with someone to help you, you, you can go through and make sure that you have all the risk management areas in your life checked. And, and then we’re, we’re cooking with gas. When you’re, when you understand that you’re your greatest asset, you really get clear about how you create money. Understand, once you create money, your dollars are only capable of doing two things. We can focus on optimizing or we can focus on multiplying. And then at the end of the day make sure that you’re creating a, a, a moat, a fence on umbrella around what you’re doing. So to, so that not one disaster can wipe it all out.
AJV (37:25):
This is so good, and I’m taking so many notes,
CG (37:56):
Yep. I, so, so any
AJV (38:00):
Personal recommendations?
CG (38:01):
Yeah. Okay. So the answer is you can actually, you, I could actually tell your audience exactly what they should be setting aside if I got, if I figured out how much money they’re making, how much money they’re spending, and then we could model out their situation. And not to depress anybody, but most people, 95% of people that model that are there, it doesn’t work. And so that it, it makes them realize like, oh, I either need to save more or spend less. So that’s just something that like, we can scientifically show what that in doing, hundreds and thousands of those models shows around 20 to 30%. That might sound extreme. Oh yeah. I, I I’m telling you, I’m not necessarily your biggest fan by saying like, you should save 20 to 30%, but I’m telling you, majority of people need to save 20 to 30% if they want to maintain their lifestyle.
CG (38:55):
And so a lot of times you, you can’t just strive harder. A lot of times people try to like, I need to just try harder. And that doesn’t work in most cases. And you, you, that’s where, again, not to, to pitch our business, but that’s where working with somebody that can be unemotional about your situation and help you free up cash and then also help you create a, a roadmap to say, okay, what does the next five to 10 years look like? And as we’re starting to make more money, let’s not spend dollar for dollar of what we make. Like, shocker. But there’s like anyone that’s listening or watching, and you are a value creator, there’s so much hope for you. You just wanna make sure that you could be your greatest asset, but you could also be your greatest liability. Most of the time it goes hand in hand. And so if you can get out of your own way 20, 20 to 30%, it should be the target. And it’s very doable if if you can get some of those pieces all working together.
AJV (39:45):
Yeah, and it’s interesting if you just sit here and do some, you know, personal calculations it’s like, let’s just say it’s like, yeah, the target is like, you really do need to be setting aside 30% of every dollar that comes in. And let’s just hypothetically say that tithing is something that you commit to. And even if you know, you’re not, you know, you know, doing that to the church, but maybe it’s like, Hey, I wanna give it to charitable causes or, you know, things I believe in, let’s just call it 30% savings, 10% tithing or charitable givings. Right? That’s 40% right there. And then assuming you are making over a hundred thousand, regardless if you’re an entrepreneur or in an, an employee job where you’ve got a salary, right? Let’s just call it’s a good healthy amount would be 30% in taxes. That means you’ve got to live on 30% of what you have coming in the door just there.
CG (40:38):
And yeah, it’s a, it’s, yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good framework to start at. And I, I don’t want that to be depressing for people to hear. And 30%, while it could be the target doesn’t mean you have to do that overnight, right? But it, it ideally for the people that are financially free, they are saving and investing in their unique ability. And, and it’s one of those things where they’re able to crush and it’s usually people that are able to save at least more than 20% of what they make are the people that can get on that road. And we’ve just seen a lot of success in that.
AJV (41:14):
Yeah. And I think that’s good. And it’s like as, and I don’t think it’s depressing as much as it should be a reflection moment of I wonder what I’m actually doing. Right? If you’re not sitting there thinking, huh, I wonder if I’m spending more than 30%. And I would assume that most people
CG (41:45):
Yeah. And, and just so you know, like that would just be a friction area. You don’t need to remove all the friction overnight. But the beautiful thing is if most people that come to us have friction all over the place, and what we try to do is, like, for example, taxes is a good example. If you’re overpaying on taxes and we free up some of that money, you’re already used to that lifestyle of paying the government. Why can’t we just pay you the difference? So it’s those kind of things that are like I, I don’t wanna make sound saving 30% sound easy. It’s not, but it’s not as painful as it might sound because you might be way over efficient. And this is where I’ll give Dave Ramsey his flowers. A lot of people are enabling themselves with that to buy things that they shouldn’t buy.
CG (42:27):
And sometimes the conversation needs to be, I should not be driving a hundred thousand dollars car, or I should not be living in this type of house. And oh, by the way, debt was an enabler. And that’s where, in a way, I 100% agree with what Dave Ramsey and the Ramsey court company teaches. Because majority of people, if you look at statistics, are over consuming. And that is made possible because of credit cards, because of debt. And so it’s not a cut and dry, black and white, but a lot of times we just need to wake up and say, especially if you’re listening to this or watching this and have something that God’s put on your heart to like go out and do and you have a mission that’s bigger than yourself. You, you have to realize that you could be the greatest liability to get that gets in your way. And that liability could be your lifestyle. So I don’t wanna sound like rice and beans, but sometimes math will just tell us like, what you’re doing is not gonna compound. Well, yeah.
AJV (43:22):
But I think that’s wise, and I think like for so many things in life, awareness is the first step, right? Awareness is the first step. Now I do have, I have a another quick personal question for you kind of on this, you know, concept of saving investing. Now this is this does not have to be formal, but since so many people are talking about it, I am curious to hear what’s your take on cryptocurrency, bitcoin? What’s your stance on that?
CG (43:54):
I, I ha have 5% of my investment portfolio, majority of my portfolios in, in our businesses and other businesses that I’m acquiring. I think crypto is not something that I am going like head over heels for, but I think there’s interesting, there’s, there’s interesting arguments to be made about it. And I, I think of it as a hedge to the American dollar and the hedge to maybe, maybe the stock market. I say that it’s a lot more volatile, but there’s some pe sometimes I talk to people that are like, the American dollar’s going away and we’re going all crypto. And, and, and my caution is this is how I, I think through things, if we did something like that, there’s gonna be a t it’s talk about a major shakeup. And so the thing that I always do is like, okay, if that happens, if over 90% of people in the population are gonna be like on their heels, there’s a really good chance that, like, I don’t ever wanna make like a decision based on fear.
CG (44:59):
And I find that a lot of people are going to crypto because of a fomo, like a fear of missing out. And I would not do that. But I do believe that that technology of blockchain is going to be something that is gonna continue to be more valuable. And so I’m giving you like a very political answer. I am keeping my eyes on it, but I’m not, I have less than 5% of my portfolio in it. And I would heavily caution you not to go all in on any one thing maybe other than your value yourself, making yourself more valuable. But I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of people lose a ton of money on, on crypto, and they’re, they’re, it’s really greed that clouded their judgment.
AJV (45:42):
No, I think that the good wise discerning statement around crypto, and I ask because I do think that, you know, in, as we have, you know, kind of just come out of an election season, there’s lots of talks of, you know the economy and market and the value of the dollar and exchange of presidents, which will be coming next year. So I think it’s always good to have some, you know,
AJV (46:33):
And so we’ve spent me personally a lot of time reading and listening, trying to understand the foundation of it, where it came from, how it was created, the future of it, the trends of it, the history of it. And you know what, that’s a commitment, right? That’s a learning commitment. And that, that’s our personal stance is I cannot give my money to something that I do not have my head wrapped around. And so we took a, a long sweet time to go, okay, now we have a little bit more of a better understanding, so we feel more comfortable doing it. But I will tell you, like back to investing in yourself, it’s like that was like, that was like, I was like, I gotta invest in myself and my own awareness and my own knowledge of what I’m investing in before I give my money to it. That’s
CG (47:20):
Right. That’s right. And yeah, and, and you also mentioned it’s like there gets, you get to a place where your dollar reinvesting in your business is not the right answer. And profit margin is what you look at. And so at the end of the day, there, there will get to a point where you’re crushing it in business and you don’t necessarily, you might not even need more money to make more like, so you’re getting to a place where your business is mature and then there’s so much wisdom in diversifying and, but you just wanna make sure that di you’re not diversifying your ability to make an impact and, and make money. And a lot of people AJ, are doing investing too early. Yeah. Like they, if you’re, if you’re asking me like, where you should put $5,000 a year, you’re probably investing too early. Mm.
CG (48:04):
Like, you’re probably need to go back to the drawing board and say, how, how can I have $50,000 a year to invest? And again, I say that outta love, but like that is the number one hack if I could give you anything, is like majority of people are, have the ability to create so much more value than what, what they’re showing up on paper right now. And so look as yourself as that asset and figure out ways that you can generate more value and like literally everything else, your ability to give, your ability to live your dream life, your ability to save 30% or more, all will get a lot easier when you, when you are optimizing and maximizing your ability to show up.
AJV (48:41):
That’s so good. And there’s so much wisdom in this conversation. And there’s honestly, there’s just so many like good reminders of not even just some of the, the more tactical frameworks and understanding of money, but also just how we view money in comparison to ourselves and why we’re spending money. Are you tracking money? Do we even know, right? And I think those are some of the things that, you know, as we approach kind of the end of year when this podcast is being released and as many of us are, you know, emotionally and mentally preparing for a new year it’s just a such a great time to have these conversations of going whatever you’ve done, you don’t have to do moving forward. Right? You can make a change at any, any time to reevaluate how you look at money, how you spend money, how you save money, how you invest money.
AJV (49:30):
And this is just kind of like a kickstart conversation that I would encourage everyone to lean into. And I would also encourage you to take him up, take Caleb up on getting those checklists. Like, if you’re like, I have no idea, well, great. That’s why we have interviews like this. This is why you come to podcasts like this. So take him up on grabbing those checklists, DM him, send him an email, both of which I will put in the show notes and make some, you know, minor changes to change the way that, you know, you’re reacting and you know, your relationship to money as we approach the new year. Caleb, such a great interview. So much wisdom. So many good golden nuggets. Love this so much. One last quick question for you, and then I will let you go. For everyone who is listening, if there was one thing that you would say, out of all the research, all the books, all the time, time in the bank, time, working with people, time in my own, you know, finances, if there was one thing, if you could look over, look back over everything that you’ve learned, what would you say is the number one most significant thing that you have learned about money?
CG (50:49):
I, I think the more I learned about money, the more I realize that it, it, it’s all, it’s all meaningless. And to really, I lean into what does your one life look like? I have a sign behind me that says one life. And it’s like a constant reminder that our life is, it’s, we’re a walking miracle. If you start realizing the odds of just being born and then like being, like listening to this, if you’re listening to this, you’re one of the world’s already wealthiest people. And so like really identifying that and realizing it would be a shame to spend your entire life chasing something that doesn’t have any meaning and money in itself. If you look at just paper currency, there’s no meaning in paper currency unless you give it. And so the big takeaway is like, live a life that gives meaning and then everything else will, will follow. And hopefully I didn’t just kill credibility of the entire, but I just like, I love this stuff, but I, I, the more I, the more I learn, it’s, I realize that we elevate all of these money conversations maybe more than the real conversation, which is how should I live my one life and living it with zero regrets and living it for a greater purpose?
AJV (52:02):
Hmm. No, and I think that’s actually the perfect answer. And I hope what everyone hears in that is from someone who has spent his entire professional career learning and teaching money, that at the end of the day, money is not what it’s all about. And it shouldn’t be what we’re all about, right? But back to where you started, money is a tool to learn how to use the tool. All right. Don’t let the tool use you, Caleb. So good. Y’all, thank you for sticking around. And don’t forget the recap episode will be coming up next. Thank you guys so much. We will see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. I’ll see you later.
Ep 567: 4 Steps to Sell a Lot of Books | Mike Thomas Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Let’s talk about four simple steps that you can use to sell a lot of books. And obviously I am, have been working at this a lot for a long time, became a New York Times bestselling author when I was 29. Have written two traditionally published books as of this, this moment two self-published books and have a, my first hybrid published book coming out that I’m co-authoring with my wife and business partner AJ here next year. And so we’ve been around this world a long time. We’ve also helped 56 authors at the time of this recording to become national bestselling authors, including 10 clients of ours who have become New York Times bestselling authors in the last year alone. So we have spent a lot of time in and among this world, and one of our formal curriculums at Brand Builders Group is called Bestseller Launch Plan, where we talk about how to launch a book and more specifically like everything that should happen when you’re pre-selling a book.
RV (01:04):
And that’s where most of the, the success has come for our clients. But today I’m gonna walk you through a four step process that I think is a great, a fantastic long tail sales strategy. And this came from an interview that I just did with my new friend Mike Thomas. So Mike is the author of this children’s book series called The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls. And my son Jasper devoured this nine book series multiple times. And I had become friends with Mike and interviewed him of course recently on our podcast. And Mike was walking through the story of how he sold 650,000 copies of this, of, of this, these books when he started as a self-published author. And there’s four, there’s four steps that he followed, which mimic four steps that I’ve seen be successful, that we’ve seen be successful, that we’ve done ourselves, that I wanna just sort of share with you to kind of recap part of what he was saying, but also generalize what he was saying to go, this is how it applies to anybody.
RV (02:17):
So first of all, what’s step one? So step number one is simple. Step one is you have to market test. You have to market test. What that means is word of mouth is always the best long tail marketing strategy that’s true for anything. So how do you get, how do you ensure that you get word of mouth for a new product? Like, how do you know if the product’s gonna get word of mouth when you’re just releasing the product? And the, the, the simple answer is you test it. This is, you do market tests, you do experimentations with the content, or if it was a physical product, right? Like these are market
RV (02:59):
Research groups where you, you give people early access to the product so that you can get their feedback from real people and go, alright, how do I have to take their feedback and adapt it in a way so that I can incorporate it into my product? So that going forward, it’s going, it’s gonna be much more likely to propagate because I’ve already solved the big issues that people have upfront. Well, authors have a unique advantage in this particular area. Now, the way that Mike told his story was that he actually wrote the book and then he went out and he started reading it in schools, and it was kids’ books, right? So he went out to his son’s school and was like reading the book in the classroom and getting feedback. And so he did that. Well that’s one way to do it, is to actually write the book and then go out and, and and, and circulate it and get feedback on it.
RV (03:50):
But the other way to do it is the way that we teach at Brand Builders Group, which is one of our, one of our mantras that we tell authors is that a book should never be a hypothesis. A book should be a conclusion. Writing a book shouldn’t be a hypothesis. Writing a book should be a conclusion. What does that mean? It means that I don’t write a new book when I have an a new idea that I want to share with the world. I write a new book after I have had an idea. I have shared it with the world. I’ve sold it to the world. I’ve tested it, I’ve gotten feedback, I’ve adapted it, I’ve molded it, I’ve shaped it. I’ve re re-edited it, re-presented it, retested it, reshaped it, and, and done that several times to where it’s like, ah, now I have a finished thing and that’s what I’m gonna deliver to the world.
RV (04:41):
And I go, I know it’s phenomenal before I release it because I already tested it. That’s what great writing should be. It’s going, I’m not testing out my ideas in a book. I’m testing my ideas out through speaking and coaching and consulting and training and you know, whatever video courses and membership sites and, and what whatever, whatever your business model is, I’m, I’m testing the content out with customers first. My existing, my preexisting customers, my past customers, my past readers, and I’m testing those concepts first, and then I’m getting feedback from them. And then I’m incorporating that into the manuscript that then becomes a book. And if you look at, you know, my journey as an author, it’s, it’s pretty unusual that someone becomes a New York Times bestselling author with their first book, right? And that’s something that we did in 2012 when my first book Take The Stairs came out on the surface.
RV (05:41):
It’s like, whoa, a 29-year-old first time author hit the New York Times. What an anomaly. And, and yes, it is an anomaly, but the true story for how we did that was that book came out in 2012. I had been speaking professionally on the concepts around Take the Stairs and the psychology of overcoming procrastination and creative avoidance and prior to dilution and the Buffalo Story, that is the flagship story that now lots of people on the internet use, but that I am the original author of. I had been speaking like the Buffalo story. I have been telling that Buffalo story from stage since 2004, right? So eight full years before it ever appeared in the book. I was building my career on it. I was getting feedback on it. It it started as an internal training that I led for a little team that I was running in college.
RV (06:36):
And I got so much great feedback that, that that became a signature story of my speaking. And that came part of our coaching program and, and part of our curriculum and, and so many people it got, you know, shaped and refined. And then it landed in a book one day that we wrote actually in 2010, and then was published and, and hits the New York Times Bestseller list in 2012. That’s an example of a story that I created years before that was tested and shaped and molded and adapted. And then when people read it, it was not a hypothesis, it was a conclusion. It’s the same thing when I go out and speak, right? I don’t when people pay me to speak, I’m not trying out new content on that stage. I’m delivering content that I have tested many times before in front of other groups or on social media or webinars or, you know, and when I first started, it was in comedy clubs and Toastmaster groups.
RV (07:28):
I built my first keynotes speaking to those audiences for free so that by the time I got in front of an audience where someone had paid me to be there, I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t afraid that it wasn’t gonna be good. I knew it was gonna be a home run. I knew because it wasn’t the first time I was giving it, it had been tested. And that is what creates word of mouth is market testing is to go, don’t make it a hypothesis. Make it a conclusion. And too many people, you know, there’s this old saying that says a lot of authors have read have written more books than they’ve read
RV (08:14):
And that’s, it’s not impossible that that’s gonna succeed. It’s just way more, less likely. It’s sta statistically exponentially much less likely that that content is gonna succeed. So it starts with market testing. The second step to selling a lot of books is having a single channel focus, right? Having a single channel focus. If you’ve been around brand builders group for any amount of time, if you’ve been in any of our trainings, if you’ve ever heard me on any other podcast, you know that perhaps our most flagship mantra is that if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And when you launch a book, or when you launch any type of product, you don’t want to do a thousand things that you could do. You want to pick a couple. And typically what we see is the most successful campaigns really focus and really drive on one kind of core strategy that they go, this is the one thing we’re gonna really go all in on.
RV (09:16):
And Mike, you know, he told the whole story in my interview with him about influencer marketing and that influencer marketing was the one thing that he did really, really well. And he went all in on it. It was super tactical. There’s other things that we’ve done. We’ve done big live events with ed Millet was one of our, one of our first clients that we did a big live event with. And we were a part of a team that helped Ed sell 35,634 books in a single day. We replicated something similar to that when we worked with John Maxwell’s team and we sold 11,000 units all wrapped around one event. That was one evening, it was a few in a few hours between the people who bought on the way in and then the people who bought that night. Those are huge numbers that, that are the result of a lot of focus on one specific thing.
RV (10:06):
So when we teach our bestseller launch plan, like our formal, our curriculum, our formal in inside of our formal program, we talk about how there’s really only five main mechanisms that, that anybody can use to significantly move a lot of books. But in the interview, Mike and I go deep on influencer marketing and, and I think part of why he was successful is he really mastered one. He really said, I’m gonna do this one thing really well, if you not just wanna sell books, but if you wanna sell anything, it’s going have one thing that you do really, really, really, really well that you perfect, rather than trying to have 50 different marketing strategies that you execute in mediocre fashion. And that’s a, that’s just a common, you know mistake that we see a lot of people do. Number three, give the product away.
RV (10:59):
Give the product away whether it’s a product or a service. This is a consistent trait, a consistent pattern. A a a consistent theme that we see among books that take off and products that take off, and companies that scale is you give a lot of product away. You give it away because you need people using it more than you need money, more than you need sales early on. You need a lot of people who have used the product in this specific case, a lot of people who have read the book. So you want to give it away. And that’s, Mike tells this story about how he did influencer marketing by giving the book to influencers and going, Hey, he, I wanna send it to you. Yes, that takes time. Yes, that takes money. Yes, it is a risk. Although if you’ve done your market testing, it’s not a huge risk because you know that they’re likely gonna love the product by the time they get it because you’ve already done the testing, you’ve already worked out the kinks, now you’re into marketing mode and you go, I need people to consume this.
RV (12:04):
And this is true for building your personal brand in general, is to go, the reason we put out so much content on social and blogs and podcasts is going, I want people to be able to experience me and and us at Brand Builders Group for free. I want them to be able to te test us to, to try it. You know, we use the analogy of chicken on a stick a lot of times because that’s like when you go to the food court, you know, or you go through Whole Foods, you go to the grocery store when they’re launching a new product, what are they good? They give you a free bite of the food that, because you need to taste it, you need experience it, and when you do, you’re more likely to talk about it and share it and buy it and promote it.
RV (12:44):
And, and people need that same thing for you. So if you’re just getting started, you need to spend some time thinking about how can I give my product away for free? How can I give my service away for free? How can I give my ideas away for free so that lots of people can get exposed to them, get a, a taste of them, get to sample them. The amount of sales that you make are gonna be directly proportionate to the number of people who have e experienced your product or service. And with a book, especially early on, it’s like you gotta have lots of people with, with, with getting lots of copies. And so, you know, now these days at this stage in my career, we don’t usually just give away a book to everybody, but we usually will do something in our launch strategy, which is like, if you buy one, we’ll give you one so that they can give it away.
RV (13:35):
And we call those trust soldiers around Brand Builders Group is is giving your customers or your fans giving them an asset that they can share with their friends for free. And you heard that in Mike’s story. Again, if you haven’t, if you didn’t hear that podcast, go listen to that to that podcast. You’re gonna want to check it out. And then the fourth thing is give people an incentive to share it with their friends and, and, and with their audience, which is kind of what I was just talking about. So, you know, step three is you’re giving the product away, but step four is give them an incentive to share your product or service with their audience. Specifically with books we’re going, okay, I’m gonna give you a book to share with a friend, or I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you free chapters that you can read or free chapters that you can send to somebody. In Mike’s case with influencer marketing, what he did that was so simple, so powerful, so effective was after he gave away a copy of the book, he said, Hey, would you like me to give you a few more books that you could do as a giveaway to your community? What a brilliant, simple strategy that is, is like worth its weight in gold
RV (14:51):
For the promotion to go. He’s gonna give away a handful of books here which will cost him, you know, tens of dollars, it will be dozens of dollars, and yet he’s gonna likely drive hundreds, if not thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars in sales that will result from the promotion and the exposure of everybody seeing someone talk about that product. So that is so smart that he’s creating that incentive. What incentives can you create for the people who are buying your product to you know, use the product, share the pro product, promote the product. So you’re not only just giving them one, you’re also creating incentives for them to share with other people and making it easy for them to say yes to sharing what you do. So those are four strategies that I think especially work well once a book is out and part of the long tail launch.
RV (15:47):
Now, if you wanna learn how to launch your book and, and really have a massive book launch knowing that over 90% of the books that hit the New York Times hit the first week, the book comes out, that’s a data point that our data science team figured out. And part of why, how we have reversed engineered so many best seller launches is because we have an entire pre-launch system. If any point you wanna learn that system, you can either, if you’re watching this, if you’re watching this on Instagram, just type the word call down below and you can, you can request a call with someone on our team and they’ll talk to you about it. If you are watching this on YouTube, just click the link near or around this video and we will set you up with a free call with one of our strategists to share with you what that process looks like.
RV (16:36):
And if you’re listening to this on the podcast, just go to free brand call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast and you can request a call with our team and they can introduce you to the system and start walking you through a bestseller launch plan. But there you have it. There’s four ideas four steps that you can do to sell a lot of books. First market testing. Test your product, test your feedback. Test test the content before you go out in full, full promotion. Mode. Two, have a single channel focus. Have one strategy that you’re gonna be absolutely sure you’re gonna go all in on making sure it works. Number three, give it away so that people can sample it and test it for free. And number four, give people incentives to share it with their audience, to share it with their friends and family. Do those four things and you are gonna have a book that is going to take off sooner or later. That’s it on this edition of the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Keep coming back for more. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 566: How I Sold 650k Books with One Strategy with Mike Thomas
RV (00:02):
Well, something very unexpected happened in my journey a couple years ago. I was reading a book to my son Jasper, and as we do often, almost every night, we read books to him. And I had this epiphany that all these kids’ books are crap. And a few weeks later, God hit me with a download where I went and wrote a kid’s book that is called Be the Buffalo. And I wrote that entire book in about 45 minutes. And I never, ever expected to be an author in the first place. Definitely never expected to be a children’s book author. And lo and behold, here I am now a children’s author. And so I am suddenly curious about children’s books and how do you write them? How do you sell them? And then recently I was every year we host this I co-host this, this bestselling author meetup with Donald Miller and Mike Malowitz and our, our late friend John Ruland and John Gordon and several other people.
RV (01:04):
And the, it’s not a ticket you can buy there’s lots of people who want to come to this, but it is an invite only event, and the only way you get invited is based on your actual book sales. And so we researched these you know, potential people to come so that we have real colleagues and no one’s making money from it. We’re all sharing collaboratively. And that is where I met Mike Thomas, who you are about to meet. And I have become enamored and fascinated with Mike J. Thomas specifically. My, my son has become enamored and fascinated with Mike Thomas. So Mike is the author of a children books, a children’s book series that if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see me holding it up. It’s called The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls. And it is a time travel adventure series that helps kids explore the Bible and grow in their faith.
RV (02:02):
And Mike, this, this series has sold over 650,000 copies. It grows every single year. Mike recently signed a deal with Harper Collins and Zander Kids to expand the series. He’s got experience both traditional publishing and self-publishing. And Jasper bugs me on a nightly basis. I’m not kidding. Jasper has read this whole series three times, like through every book cover to cover three times. And he always asks me, he’s like, when is your friend gonna write another book? When is your friend gonna write another book? And so I I was like, Mike, is there any chance that we could have you come on the podcast, hear your story? Mike also is a, has got a lot of experience in marketing and helping other authors to sell more books without having lots of, you know, social media followers and not having a huge email list or a huge ad budget. And he was a president and chief marketing officer of an educational fundraising company. So, anyways, it was all of those things that made me say, we gotta get Mike on the show. Mike’s been so gracious to Jasper and me and now to you coming to share his wisdom. So Mike, welcome to the show, my friend.
MT (03:13):
Well, Rory, thank you for having me. It is a joy to talk to you to share this information. And that’s amazing that Jasper’s read it three times. I have to say, that’s probably more than I’ve read the whole series
RV (03:52):
Yeah. So tell me, like, where did the idea come from? I mostly want to hear about like how you marketed and sold it and made it, but Mm-Hmm.
MT (04:03):
The idea came when my son, my youngest son, Peter, was in third grade and he had a book report due, and he went to a Christian school, and I looked through the book report list and I knew he was a reluctant reader, and if he was gonna take the time to read to something, I wanted it to be something interesting to him, something that could help him grow in faith, something that would be fun. And I looked through the book report list and I just couldn’t find it. It was not there. And, and so then I went to Barnes and Noble, I said, well, surely they’ll have it. And I went back and there’s this tons of books for his age group, you know, everything you can imagine. And I couldn’t find it there. And so I went home and told him, and he said, well, why don’t you write it? And I like,
RV (04:50):
Nice
MT (04:51):
MT (05:31):
And I would run into him in the hallway, some of his classmates, and go, when’s the next book coming out? I’m like, I didn’t think of a next book. So I said, well, maybe there’s something to this. And so I wrote another book and another book. I wrote three books. And I self-published those. And what I wanted to make sure was that it worked locally. I wanted to make sure, like I could see that was having the effect that I wanted to have, I wanted to make sure that it was helping kids learn about the Bible grow in faith. And when I saw that, when I saw it actually happen, I was like, okay, this is something I can get behind. This is something, you know, because as an author, sometimes we’re, we’re kind of afraid to be honest, to put our words out there. We’re afraid that it’s not gonna work. We’re afraid that it’s gonna be laughed at or rejected. And so I just kind of had to wait and see if it had the effect that on the reader that I wanted. And once I saw that, I was like, okay, I can get behind this. I can promote it, I can get it out into the world. So that’s kind of the journey. I
RV (06:46):
Love that.
MT (06:47):
And then from that point, it got put picked up from a publisher and I went kind of that, that route and ended up writing nine books in a three year period.
RV (06:57):
Wow. So when you first wrote the books, were they actually, did you have them printed and like bound or was it just like a Word document that you printed out and took into his class to read it?
MT (07:12):
Well, the, the first was just that, I mean, and that was kind of before I edited it and all that. And then I knew a guy I was like, okay, these are chapter books, children’s books. You’re gonna have to have artwork. And so I worked with a guy named Cody, and I said, Hey, you know, here’s the concept. Can you do some art for me? And he did like the original covers and some line drawings for inside the book. And I published them on Amazon, KDP. And I was like, and I knew like kids needed, you know, a physical thing, you know, they needed a real book to hold onto. You know, you can do some digital books for kids, but they just, it, I don’t, I don’t think it has the impact. You know, they’re very tactical, you know, they need something in their hands. So I did on those original three published on Amazon, and that was it,
RV (08:07):
Did they, did they take off right away? Like what did, did you just kind of throw ’em up there and then it was like you had them indexed on Amazon for like Christian early reading or something and it takes off, or
MT (08:17):
Yeah, yeah, it was like Children’s Action and Adventure or Christian Children’s Action Adventure. You know, I wasn’t really good at that point of, you know, how do you talk about it or index it and, you know, categories and things like that. My main thing was I wanted a place that there was a printable book available, and I also bought some of them for myself off of there and put ’em in a local bookstore actually three three local bookstores and two churches had kind of bookstores in their churches. And so I approached them and had them kind of put it in there because I wanted to see, you know, if they didn’t know me, you know, if it was just kind of on a shelf or out there, would someone just buy it? And so
RV (09:02):
You just bought ’em and gave the inventory to the stores to try and sell?
MT (09:06):
Yes.
RV (09:07):
Interesting. So you, and you just gave ’em like, whatever, like five or 10 copies or something to just
MT (09:13):
Yeah, yeah. And I said, here, you can have ’em. I don’t want the money. I just wanna make sure that it sells. Because I just knew that if it gets in their hands and they like it, they’re gonna share it, you know, because, you know, what I’ve found is, you know, word of mouth has always been the best way to sell books.
RV (09:37):
Hmm.
MT (09:38):
And if you get your books out into the hands of enough readers that like it, you know, they’re gonna tell others. And so that’s kind of my kind of book marketing philosophy is, you know, word of mouth is the best, has always been the best way to sell books. So whatever tools or strategies you use at the present time is, you know, how do you keep that word of mouth happening? How do you initiate it? How do you kind of stoke it? How do you keep it moving forward?
RV (10:09):
Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So if you look at the, if you look at the techniques or the tactics or the, the, the actions, the actionable things that you took to initially get your book in front of readers, you’ve already talked about a couple. One is, you went and read, you went read the book at schools mm-Hmm.
MT (10:40):
Yeah, those were kind of my, I don’t know. At, at that point I wasn’t really thinking, you know, this is marketing my book or selling my book. At that point, it was more kinda research, you know, it was kind of in the beta thing, feedback, it, it, yeah. It was more about, I wanted to make sure it was a good book and it was gonna do what I wanted to do. And so once I kind of got it there, and then once the publisher kind of picked it up and it was going out into the world, you know, it was going to like Barnes and Noble and different places like that, I was like, okay, now I gotta figure out how to actually market and sell this book. And so at that point, you know, I had a full-time job, and I was basically write, you know, having to write books, edit books, and sell books, and do the full-time job all at the same time. Mm-Hmm.
RV (11:31):
The dream baby, living the, the dream. Oh yeah. It’s so glamorous. It was
MT (11:36):
Absolutely. So
RV (11:37):
You get to wake up at, at 5:00 AM and edit your own books and stay on the on weekends and go speak for free to like, promote your book for, for 10 bucks at the back of the room. It’s so
MT (11:45):
Glamorous. Oh, it’s a beautiful lie. Beautiful lie
RV (11:59):
Books, I did that this morning, by the way. I’m, we’re, we’re writing our first book in 10 years. And I have been doing that every morning for like, weeks. So it’s just, yeah, it, and it’s, there’s something about that 5:00 AM because it’s like, you can just get enough time in before the kids wake up and things get going. Oh yeah. For the day. Oh yeah.
MT (12:16):
No one else is expecting your time at that point. So yeah. So that’s, so when it came to that point, I was like, I kind of dove in to like, what is the best, easiest, quickest way to market a book. And if you, you go to Google, you’re gonna, you know, look at book marketing. I mean, there is an insane amount of advice out there. You know, some of it is decent, you know, some, a lot of it is really kind of gamy to be honest.
RV (13:24):
Cliffhanger, cliffhanger,
MT (13:34):
Cliffhangers are fun in books. The and so it kind of came as epiphany. I was, I saw Gary V had a thing with some rappers, and they were starting off and they’re like, how do I get my music out there? You know, how do I, he is like, look, just get people to hear your music and share it with people. And they’re like, well, how do we do that? And he goes, just get on Instagram. Go to the influencers, DM ’em, reach out to ’em. I was like, okay. And so I saw that and I was like, well, maybe that’s something. So I kind of dove into that a little more. And I saw, well, a lot of people were kind of doing that. It wasn’t, you know, brands were doing that. Those were doing that. So I said, well, I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna go all in on influencer marketing. And another thing at the exact same mo moment popped up Brian Norman is my agent, and he Oh yeah,
RV (14:32):
I know Brian Norman.
MT (14:34):
And so he had I think it was another author or something that he knew, and they had kids, you know, she had kids in the, in the age range. And so he gave her the books, and I think her site was like, thrive Moms or something like that. And she did a post and it just was talking about the books. And it had like a giveaway, and it was like, it just got all these likes and all these comments. And oddly, I went and looked at Amazon ranking and I was like, the Amazon ranking just shot up. And I was like, okay, this is weird.
MT (16:00):
Wow. And so I just looked at some of the stats on it when we were kind of pitching the extension of the series. And I think I worked with over maybe 225 different influencers. Wow. And they had, and I kind of, kind of counted up and they had maybe a combined following of over 8 million.
RV (16:23):
Wow.
MT (16:24):
And so, and so that’s, that’s what I did. And, you know, during that time, that’s all I did. And I think within that time period had sold close to 500,000 books. You know, after that I’ve done a couple other things. You know, I’ve done some direct sales Facebook ads and things like that. But the thing that really got me going, ’cause I had no platform, I had no following. I had no email list. I didn’t even have a website for the books that whole time. Wow. The only thing I did was influencer marketing.
RV (17:00):
So
MT (18:00):
You know, I, I did come up with a system ’cause I was like, I, you know, I had such limited time. I was like, well, let me have a very specific system I do and just do it over and over again. Especially after I saw it work a few times. I was like, okay, this is what I’m gonna just keep doing. So there was the research side, you know, so, you know, once I knew who my, you know, first you kind of have to know your ideal reader, you know, who is your dream reader. And it’s gonna be different for the, you know, mine, since it was a children’s book, I had to say, okay, I’m not really selling directly to children. So it’s mo parents and in particular moms. And it’s like I say, I was like, okay, I have to figure out who are the ideal moms that would like this book.
MT (18:44):
Their children would like this book, and if they like it, they’re going to share about it. And so the first part was just kind of identifying, you know, who your reader is, and then looking at, okay, where do they congregate? And it’s like, okay, who, who are they listening to? And so that’s where I kind of said, okay, let me look through the influencers. Let me look through the, and when you say influencer, like you said, it’s not some, there’s not like a tag on there that, you know, okay, gimme the list of influencers. It’s basically you just looking Instagram and seeing who has a decent amount of followers and are getting engagement and are talking about the things that my readers like hearing about. And so I would just go through and find the ones I thought fit that criteria once I kind of knew who they were.
MT (19:40):
You know, once I could picture that person, then I just went through and found that person on Instagram. I mean, there’s techniques to do that. You know, you can look at hashtags, you can look at fall, you know, Instagram will tell you who is liked this person, you know, once you find another person. And I would simply, you know, there was some steps, you know, I would kind of follow them. But it really did come down to messaging them, you know, making that outreach. And I kind of did a, a kind of a framework that on what does that message look like? You know, how do you, and you actually shared the exact message that I shared with those people over and over again at the beginning when you
RV (20:56):
Led with giving them a copy.
MT (20:59):
Yes.
RV (20:59):
You did not lead with, would you post about it? Would you interview me? No, what you just said, can I give you a copy?
MT (21:07):
Yep.
RV (21:08):
That’s a big, that’s a really big deal. You just did that intuitively, I guess. But like, I don’t think that’s what people do. I think they go, Hey, I have this thing. Would you, would you promote it for me? And it’s like, I don’t even know. I don’t even know you. I have no idea who you are, what this thing is.
MT (21:24):
Yeah. So that was, you know, crafting that message, you know, is gonna be different for, you know, different, whatever your ideal reader is, who the influencer is, what your market is. But that’s what worked. You know, that’s what I found that worked. And so I would send it to ’em, wait for a response. You know, there are some follow ups that can be done. But if they did follow up, I would just send ’em the book. I would actually physically mail them the book.
RV (21:55):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (21:57):
If, you know, just ’cause it was a kid’s book, if you could send them a digital book and they’re good with that, you know, that would be a cheaper way to go. But I think getting a book in hand, a physical book in hand makes the possibility of them actually reading it. The possibility of them sharing it or promoting it. I think it exponentially shoots that possibility up.
RV (22:20):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (22:41):
Well at that point is when I, I was actually working with a publisher. I was with a traditional publisher at that point.
RV (22:47):
Okay, so you were buying ’em at your author discount, like at the wholesale price basically.
MT (22:52):
Yes. And
RV (22:54):
But still four or five bucks. I mean, still had to be like
MT (22:57):
Three. It is
RV (22:57):
Like three to five bucks. Three
MT (22:58):
Or $4, yeah. Yeah. In that range. And then you, you send media
RV (23:02):
And that sort a small book. I mean, that’s a, I mean, these books are, you know, just, they’re, they’re, they’re, I mean they’re kids books, so
MT (23:08):
They’re very light
RV (23:40):
Return on that investment and get
MT (23:41):
Right. And for me and for others, I’ve seen you get a good return because again, word of mouth is what sells books. So if you get someone presenting to their audience of 2000 people, 50,000 people, and they’re saying, check this book out, my kids loved it, or I loved it, go get yourself a copy. I mean, that is going out. That’s better than a Facebook ad. It’s better than you telling about it when you have someone that they know, like, and trust telling them that they should get this book. It’s just a much better marketing avenue.
RV (24:27):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (25:02):
Yeah. That’s interesting. I’ve played with that both ways. Oddly usually if you just said, I just wanted to make sure you got it, they would say, oh yeah, I was just mean to post about it. It was, it, it’s an interesting, it was a, I a couple times I would say, no, I’m trying to think. I was actually just too uncomfortable to ask them to post about it
MT (26:04):
And it was like, I didn’t want to push them if they didn’t really love the book or believe in the book, you know? So if they do, then they’re natural. You know, in my in experience, they naturally posted. There was a kind of another step that I would take with some, you know, and that would be a book giveaway. And so a lot of times they would post it and if we had a good kind of communication back and forth, I would say, Hey, would you like to host a book giveaway? And, and those cases is where you’d really kind of see engagement up. But I never would out the gate say, Hey, do you want to do a book giveaway? It always kind of started as just saying, would you like a copy of the book? I think it would be a great fit. And from that point, you know, if they post it and got a lot of engagement and even, you know, we kind of kept the dialogue going. Then I think the next step was kind of a book giveaway, hosting a book giveaway.
RV (27:06):
Wow.
MT (27:06):
So that was kind of, that was kind of my system. And then as I would kind of keep in touch with them, because each time a new book would come about, you know, I’d reach back out to that group and say, Hey, I’ve got a new book coming out. I can send you a a, you know, an early copy. Would you like to have it? And so it just kind of grew over time. Also, you know, with each thing, you know, there’s a new crop, a new, you know, a new crop of influence just, just to kind of add in there. And it just kind of kept growing. The other kind of byproduct was it helped my I, I still don’t have a ton of followers, maybe 6,000 something, but I started with like 15
RV (28:05):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (28:14):
I just did a single giveaway. Oh. And it was just like, yeah. And as it got to be the book set, I would, it, it, depending on how many they, you know, when I had five books, I’d do a, a, I would basically give away a set of the books and that was it. There was like one winner. And I, I kind of had a pretty simple system of like, here’s what they post, here’s kind of what it says. Once you choose the winner, you send me the address, I fulfill it for you. So they never had to kind of get in the middle, you know, they simply did a post. You know, they chose the winner from their comments and likes sent me the information. I fulfilled it and did several of those. And it did really well.
RV (28:55):
When did this all start? Like, when did you, when did you really start doing this? Like when did you start reaching out to these influencers and like, how much time passed between that? You said this was like your primary strategy for the first 500,000 copies. So how much time passes between when you kind of like hear the Gary V thing and start sending out to where you sold 500,000 units?
MT (29:19):
So the first book came out in 97.
RV (29:24):
Okay.
MT (29:25):
And so, but I didn’t really, this didn’t hit until like maybe six months after the first book came out. The sales weren’t right. I mean, they sold, it did okay. ’cause They did get him into like Barnes and Noble and some of the, and books of Million and some of those. So there was some movement just kind of naturally that way. But it wasn’t really picking up the way I would like, like it to have. And the other problem was, even though it was a nine book deal, it was like, if the first two or three don’t do well, we’re not gonna print the rest of ’em.
RV (30:34):
On. But INS, Instagram wasn’t around in 1997, so this had to be way later than that when you actually,
MT (30:39):
Right. Oh yeah. I got the years wrong. Yeah. It would’ve been a, I got that completely wrong.
RV (30:53):
2007. Okay.
MT (30:55):
Yeah. Sorry about that. Okay. 2007.
RV (30:58):
So it all happened like right as Instagram was coming on the scene?
MT (31:01):
Yes, yes. Yeah. It is been a seven year window here, so yeah. So it would’ve been right when Instagram was kind of coming out and I was kind of new. It was kind of, I, I did tinker a little bit. I tried a little bit on Twitter. It just didn’t work. You know, I, I’ve tried some other things for me. Instagram, it just was a great avenue. So the best platform for this did
RV (31:27):
The book, actually the first book was published in 1997, but then basically 10 years past,
MT (31:32):
No, I’m sorry, two 2007,
RV (31:35):
The first book published in 2007.
MT (31:38):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (31:39):
And then it was like, so then did you start doing this kind of like right then, like right in 2007? Or was it like more like 2010 or something like that? Like a few years after the book was kind of like,
MT (31:50):
It would’ve been about a year after the book came out. So it’d been probably 2008, you know, so Right in that timeframe.
RV (31:58):
And then how long did you,
MT (31:59):
I’d have to map it out a little clearer.
RV (32:06):
And then how many, like, how, how long did you do that for? Was it like a five year period or a two year period? Or like,
MT (32:14):
Because like how long have I done the in influencer outreach?
RV (32:17):
Yeah, like how, how long did you stick with the influencer outreach before you just kinda let it take organic flight from there?
MT (32:24):
Probably until the last book came out, which would’ve been 2021.
RV (32:32):
Gotcha. Wow. Okay. So this is like, this is like a
MT (32:37):
So you know, I gave you the wrong dates. Lemme give you the real dates here. Okay. Okay. So it was really 2017. I don’t know why I said 19 97, 20 17. I was thinking probably the birth of my child was when the first book came out. And so
RV (33:03):
I can look in the book because I got it right here
MT (33:05):
Next. Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s get the real dates. Let me,
RV (33:07):
Let me open the book here and see. ’cause It probably has the publication date. Yeah. 2017.
MT (33:14):
Yeah.
RV (33:15):
So this is 2017 is when, at least when the publishing deal happened. So you might have, you might have had the self-publishing before that and
MT (33:25):
Then Yeah. That was for a few years before that.
RV (33:28):
All that. So then it comes out. So, so, so then really you start hitting this in 2 20 17 through 2021. So it’s like four years. Yes. It’s all four years as you’re like releasing a couple books a year.
MT (33:41):
Yes. And
RV (33:41):
You’re, this is like what you’re, ’cause that was the other thing you said Russell Brunson, you know, like Russell Brunson, that, that’s all like 2015 plus. Yes, probably. Yeah. So yeah, so that makes sense. Okay. So then it’s really like, there’s really like a four year period that you’re hammering this. So that’s what I thought. ’cause I thought this was much, this is pretty recent stuff. Yes. and then and so you did, and, and so over that time you just, it, it started to consistently sell and it’s added up to hundreds of thousands of copies. It, so the book. So it’s really been, it’s only, it’s only, it’s only been like eight years. It hasn’t even been out. The series hasn’t even been out 10 years.
MT (34:24):
Right.
RV (34:26):
Got
MT (34:26):
It. Yeah. So the, like I said, like you said, for those four years while those across that timeframe, those books coming out just did the influencer marketing. Yeah. After that point, you know, I’ve done a few other things. Once the kinda the box set came out, I kind of went into doing also some direct sales and Facebook ads and book funnels. But up until that moment the only thing I did was influencer marketing.
RV (34:52):
Yeah. So ha have, have the, the Facebook ads and the funnels and that stuff. Has that panned out or kind of, or not really or? Yes, it’s amazing.
MT (35:03):
It’s doing well, you know, and I think depending on, you know, I think there’s some kind of milestones that have to be met for Facebook ads, to work for books. Like if, if you just had one single book, you know, that was selling for $10, it’d be really, really hard to make Facebook ads work.
RV (35:26):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (35:27):
‘Cause There’s not enough profit margin in the book to recover the ad spend to run the ads.
MT (35:31):
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I’ve talked to several people that run Facebook ads for books, and once you really dial it in, you could maybe get between, you know, between 10 and $15 cost of sale on an ad. So
RV (35:48):
10 to 10 to $15 in ad spend Per
MT (35:53):
Or per sale.
RV (35:54):
Per sale. So that’s a, that would be a CAC, a customer acquisition cost of like $15. And that now that’s to sell one of your box sets.
MT (36:03):
Yes.
RV (36:04):
Which is the, the whole nine series box set is like $150.
MT (36:09):
No, it’s $59.
RV (36:11):
Oh my goodness. Steal. Yeah, but then you go, okay, if you, if you collect $60, you take out 15 for ad spend, you take out, you know, whatever the wholesale cost is for the book, and then you gotta like pay the people to run the ads. And like, you’re not, you’re, you’re not, it’s not, you’re not making a lot of money there, but it’s, right. Yeah. But you’re breaking even. You might be breaking even or something.
MT (36:35):
I do a little better than break even. So what I, but the thing that I found was that although I was picking up, you know, the ads themselves point directly to my site where I sell them directly secret, the hidden scrolls.com and so they go there, you know, you can buy the box set. Right now I have like a 25% discount, you know, get a, you know, get some worksheets with it so you can have some things to help promote it there. So I sell enough books there to more than cover the ad spend. But what I found is I, Amazon sells and other sales shoot up, because what happens is, and you know this, and anyone who shops knows, if you look at a product you say, oh, this looks great. You go right over to Amazon and say, what’s Amazon got it for?
MT (37:26):
So if you got Prime, you’re gonna get free shipping. You know, so a lot of people are going from my ad to my website or seeing it over and over and then going to Amazon and buying the book there. Now I’ve tested this several times to say, I’m gonna shut off the ads and see what happens within a day. Exactly. Amazon sales rank drops. I mean, it just, to the moment you can see that it just, the sales start drying up there too. Turn ’em back on. You see the sales, your rankings start getting better and better take it off. I mean, there is a direct tie, even though the Facebook ads are running two direct sales, it’s also driving other sales.
RV (38:17):
Have you run ads on Amazon to the listing on Amazon?
MT (38:21):
I have not. Because it’s in,
RV (38:24):
It’s just tricky ’cause you’re just losing money. Like you just, you’re, you’re literally just losing money. You never
MT (38:29):
Yeah, I know people that do pretty well there. The problem is, like in traditional publishing, the, the way mine is kind of set up, it would be really difficult. Like if they’re the one selling it directly to Amazon, you know, if the publisher is selling it through Amazon for you to try to come in and run ads, running it to that thing, you’re not gonna be able to collect on the money. I mean, you’re not gonna collect on the ad spend because at that point you’re only getting your royalty Mm-Hmm.
RV (39:24):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (39:26):
But I don’t have any expertise on Amazon ads, so I can’t really be helpful in that area.
RV (39:31):
But when you run the ads, you just run, like you’re saying like a Facebook ad just directly to your book page to buy direct, like direct to consumer, check out, you know, here’s a shopping cart, put a credit card in. Mm-Hmm.
MT (39:57):
Yeah, I buy them from the publisher. And so every couple of weeks I’ll just place an order just to kind of keep, you know, over time I know how many I’m pushing out or how many I’m selling. And so I’ll just have ’em send me the box sets. In our back bedroom, we’ve got a table set up, we’ve
RV (40:18):
Got Oh, so you send ’em from the house,
MT (40:20):
The boxes? Mm-Hmm.
RV (40:21):
Got it. I’ve
MT (40:23):
Got the boxes. We, you know, I’ve run it on a Shopify site. Love it. I mean, it has just can’t say enough good about it. Just how it tracks things and how the shipping works and things like that. And so, yeah, so we get the orders, we print the orders, my wife boxes them up. Wow. Takes, you know, takes
RV (40:51):
Wow. Man, this has been so awesome, Mike. Thank you so much. I mean, just, it’s inspiring to hear the story, but actionable that it just to hear the, the strategies and it’s just, and I hope you feel how much of a difference it’s making. Like not just making money and like doing this cool art artistic expression, but just like, I mean, as a parent I go, I struggle so much. It’s, it’s really important to me to curate what my kids are reading, to just make sure they’re not being fed, you know, stuff that is gonna be crazy. And it’s a, it’s a really wonderful blend of what you put together here. And
MT (41:30):
No, I, I appreciate you telling me that because it’s tough as an author, a lot of times you’re, you’re kind of disconnected, you know, from the reader. And I remember early on, you know, just like getting up at five and doing these things and figuring out how to do the marketing, it’s just a task. I mean, it can turn into work and unless you have kind of that mission or that calling or, and believe that this book is actually going to make a difference, you know, that’s the thing that keeps you moving forward. And so at one point, you know, at some point along the way, you know, I started to receive the messages, you know, from parents and from kids. And when you see the transformation, it can help making people’s lives. You know, that’s what gives you the fuel to kind of, to keep for, you know, moving forward in those other tasks.
RV (42:20):
Mm-Hmm,
MT (42:32):
Yes. Yes. And on the other side, on the book marketing side, I am in the midst of creating a course called Influencer Marketing for Authors. And so that course will probably be available in about two to three weeks. And so if you know someone watching this or some of your people, if they would like to do that course, if they go to roar book marketing.com there will be until it’s up, I’m gonna have, there’s like a little thing that could fill out for a presale and I’ll have a 50% discount offer.
RV (43:09):
Very cool. Very cool, Mike. Well keep it going brother. So nice to thank you. Spend time with you, appreciate all the wisdom and we wish you the best.
MT (43:19):
Thank you very much.
Ep 565: My Favorite Books from Last Year That You Need to Read This Year | AJ Vaden Episode Recap
AJV (00:01):
Hello and Happy New Year. We are in 2025. I don’t know exactly when you are listening to this, but this is being recorded in Q1 of 2025. And a part of what I wanted to do to help start the new year is share my top personal five most influential books that I read in 2024. And I did a full bulk recap episode, if you wanna go listen to this on the influential personal Brand podcast. But this is gonna be like a five minute Cliff notes version of what was the book, who was the author, and what was my favorite quote from the book, right? I did like a full 40 minute solo episode on why these books and why they were selected as the most influential books that I read in 2024. But today, what we’re gonna do to help start the new year, is to give you five of what I think are some of the most powerful books that you can read this year.
AJV (01:06):
And I’m gonna share the book, the author, and the most significant and impactful quote that I pulled out of the book after finishing it. So this will be short and sweet, but if you’re looking for a good new read or a good old read to put on your queue for 2025, then this is a very awesome list of five. I feel like life changing, business changing books that should be on every person’s read list. And if you’ve read them before, like I had for some of these, they need to be on your reread list. So here we go. First one, what got you Here won’t get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. And here was the pullout quote that I picked. No one changes by learning things they change by doing the things they’ve learned. And I feel like if we just take it up a level this entire book is about how to be better, how to be better as a person how to be better as a communicator as a leader.
AJV (02:11):
But it’s how to be better. And realizing that many of us find success by accident
AJV (03:12):
So that was pick number one. Pick number two was Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden. I know it’s a bias pick, but I had not read this book in 10 years, and I was so reminded of why this is a timeless should read every few years book for me and for you, right? So take the Terrace by Rory Vaden. This is not one of his pullout quotes that he would ever share, but this is what I took from this book. And this particular read, frustration happens in the absence of perspective, frustration happens in the absence of perspective. Now, this entire book is learning what makes you successful in life, right? It’s, it’s all about the things that you can do to be successful in life. And one of the things that I find is that perspective is one of the most important things that you need to be successful in life.
AJV (04:07):
It’s a perspective of do I have enough or is it never enough? Is it a perspective of my glass is half full or my glass is half empty, right? This is, this is a great reread for me about remembering that I get frustrated when I forget to look at how far I’ve come. I forget to be grateful for the people around me and for the gifts in my life. And if I can focus on the good, then the frustration seems to dissipate. And so that was why it was my pick is this, it’s an overall mindset. Reshift re not that re reset book a reshift of making sure that I start this new year. That you start this new year with a glass half full mentality because there is so much good. Yes, there’s hard, but there’s so much good. So that was a perspective shift book of why I recommended this one.
AJV (05:04):
The third one was a personal pick. It’s a Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. And my pullout quote from this book was, A good Marriage is not something you find, but something you work for, right? A lot of the books that I read are business or professional. But every so often, probably every couple months, I pick a really deeply personal one. And sacred Marriage is single handedly the best book on marriage I’ve ever read. I think every single person who is married or who’s about to be married, it should be a prerequisite for your relationship. But this was just a great reminder. To me it’s like great marriages, good marriages don’t just happen. They happen to have two people who are willing to work for it. And yes, it is work, and that’s okay. We don’t have to be afraid of hard work in any area of our life.
AJV (05:55):
Great rewards come from hard work. Like, think about it, it’s like, do you feel the best after you just had like a, I think about this all the time. Like, I feel so good after like a really hard workout, right? And it’s like, it’s like this hurt. So good feeling of like, man, like I could do that. Like, my goodness. Like look what I accomplished. The same thing happens in, in any victory, right? The harder it is, the sweeter it becomes. And I think marriage is a lot like that. Fourth book is the Go-Giver by Bob Berg, and here was my pullout quote, greatness is tied to service and anyone can be great because anyone can serve. And I love the Go-Giver because it is a book about the heart of service. It’s about how many people can you help versus how much money can you make.
AJV (06:49):
And the more people you can help, the more people you can impact, the more income you will have. But it’s a byproduct of loving people, well, serving people well and focusing on people not dollars, right? And so that was my, I guess, business motivation. I love it because it’s in that very story like setting. And I just, I think those are simple, easy reads that illustrate really important parts. And this particular book is a very easy audio read, 90 minutes. But one of those that it’s a complete shift of are you focused on people or are you focused on yourself? And highly recommend it. It’s one of those two that it is so short and it is so good. It could be a every year read. And then my last pick for 2024, these were, these were my five highlights of 2024 I’m recommending to you was Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera.
AJV (07:46):
And my pullout quote from him is one that I have said probably 1000 times since I read this book, which is, nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it, right? I hear so often in personal and professional settings like, well, I’ve just never done that before. Well, great, go learn how to do it. I actually had this conversation this morning with a team member and they’re like, well, you’re just gonna have to walk me through it. I’ve never done it before. And I’m like, well, guess what? I’ve never done it either. So we’re just gonna have to figure it out. And that’s the truth about so many things in business. Nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it right. It’s the first time for so many people that are successful. It’s like, you know, it’s like you’ve never been a seven figure entrepreneur before until you’ve done it. It’s like you don’t know what to do. Or like, you know, it’s like nobody knows what they’re doing until they’ve done it. And that’s okay. That’s called learning. That’s called growth. But this whole idea of like, you have to know what you’re doing to go and do it. Like, if you really think about it, it’s like, how would you know what you’re doing until you actually did it? Like it, it actually doesn’t even make sense if you just sit there and have like a
AJV (08:54):
Very philosophical conversation of, of course you don’t know how to do it. You’ve never done it before and you won’t know how to do it until you go do it. You can only read so much and watch so much and shadow so much and listen so much. There’s only so much of that that you can actually learn. The best and fastest way to learn anything is to go and do it. It’s to stop the studying and just go do the thing. Now that’s different if you know, like you’re a brain surgeon, and I’m not saying that for everything, but in general business, it’s like, just go do it. You learn by doing it. Don’t be afraid to just put it out there and learn as you go. And I think that was, oh my gosh, probably the most repeated thing that I’ve said this year is like, well, nobody knows what they’re doing until they do it.
AJV (09:34):
Of course, you don’t know what you’re doing. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it. Right? And then I’m also gonna share a bonus quote from Will from this book, unreasonable Hospitality, because I think it’s gonna be like, one of my personal mantras in my family is make it cool to care. It’s cool to care like that should be on a t-shirt will you need bumper stickers and t-shirts. Make it cool to care, care about people, care about your team, care about your colleagues, care about your clients. Care about the stranger on the street. Care about the person who’s having a hard day care about the person who can’t pay for their coffee in front of you. Like care about people. Like if we just did that, like if it was our job to make caring, cool, think about how things would be different. Like think about how your business would be different.
AJV (10:22):
Like what if you said every single day, it’s like, how can I care for someone today? How many people can I care for today? And how can I make it the cool thing to do so that everyone that comes after me does it too? Right? Coolness is contagious. And if we can make caring, cool, then that makes caring contagious, right? So make it cool to care. Those are my five books, five authors, five pullout quotes from my favorite books that I read in 2024. Grab these, check them out and put ’em on your list for 2025.
Ep 564: My Most Influential Books from 2024 with AJ Vaden
AJV (00:01):
So for the last three years, one of the personal goals or commitments that I have made to myself was to read two books every month of the year. And I initially made that goal so that I had some accountability and deadlines. I’m a a highly deadline oriented person but one of the things that I really wanted to do is go, Hey, if I have extra time, I wanna be filling my mind with things that challenge me, grow me, make me think, make me better, versus potentially getting sucked into watching tv. I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just saying it’s good to limit it. But I really wanted to kind of set these things of going like, Hey, if I have the time, this is what I wanna be doing. So 2024 was my third year doing this the first year I said, let’s, let’s just commit to reading one book a month.
AJV (00:54):
And then in 2023, I did two books a month. And then 2024, I did two books a month. And one of the things that I have found is at the end of the year, I do a reflection of, of all the books, 24 books that I read last year plus the Bible. So technically 25 what were the most influential books that had the biggest impact on me, the ones that I have found that I have put into daily practice the most, and ultimately the ones that become my evergreen recommendation. So when someone says, Hey, what’s a good book that you’ve read here lately? I pull up the note on my phone, I literally keep it right here, and I keep the list of all the books that I’ve read and why I think they’re so significant. And I go, okay, well, let me tell you the five most influential books that I read last year, and here’s why.
AJV (01:40):
So that’s what I’m gonna do for you today on this particular episode. So these were all books that I read in 2024. And these are gonna be my top picks. I think I, I think I’ve highlighted six. But these are my top books and why, and this is a great thing to be doing as we enter in a new year, as we’re kind of like in Q1 of 2025. So I know if this, that you’re listening to this sometime in the future, this is when we’re recording this for context, right, Q1 of 2025. But it would be good for you to go, man, what’s my reading goal this year? Like, what challenge do I wanna set out for myself? And what are the books that are out there that I wanna read? And I’ll tell you one other quick thing before we get started is that there are tens of thousands of books that are printed every single year, new books.
AJV (02:29):
There is so many opportunities to read amazing books and not so amazing books. And one of the policies that I have put in place is I only read a book once I have rather heard the author speak, I’ve listened to several of their podcasts, and I’m like, man, like that is someone I wanna learn from. Or they have just been so consistently referred to me that I’m like, okay, at this point how have I not read this book? And so I would would just say, for whatever it’s worth, not only do I recommend these books, but these are books that had been repeatedly recommended to me at the point of like, well, I have to put it on the list. I have heard these authors speak in person. I have read other pieces of their work. I have listened to countless interviews with them.
AJV (03:18):
But these were not first time introductions where I just went through Amazon or walked through Barnes and Noble and was like, you know, any mey mighty move that one. That is not how this happened. So these were already pretty pre-vetted before I put them on my queue. Right? So with all of that said let me get through this so that I don’t keep you here for the next three hours. The first one is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera. And we were fortunate enough to have Will Guera on our podcast, the Influential Personal Brand podcast. And so if you have not yet listened to that particular episode, Rory interviewed Will about a year ago and a phenomenal, phenomenal episode. And I, let me just kind of tell you why I picked Unreasonable Hospitality. And although Will comes from the hospitality industry, this is not a book for the hospitality industry.
AJV (04:15):
This is a book about how to bring hospitality into your industry no matter what you do. And I love it because it approaches hospitality on an individual level, like a personal level, as a leader, as a business owner, as a, a frontline employee, as someone who interacts with customers on a customer service, a sales, a a experiential level. But more importantly, what I love about this particular book is it is back to the roots of what does it mean to serve people well, whatever your job may be. And I love that it took the approach of the hospitality industry in this particular case a restaurant. ’cause It’s like, it does not matter if you’re the one busting tables taking phone calls and seeding people. You’re the one serving the food, cooking the food washing the dishes. Like there is a very interconnected, intertwined element of every restaurant, thus every business, thus every relationship where every role matters and one is not above the other.
AJV (05:22):
And they all connect into what is the client experience? What is the customer experience, and what is the employee experience? Right? I think on average, most adults are gonna spend 60% of their waking hours at work. Think about that for a second. Post school in your adult life, 60% of your time in going to be at your job with your colleagues, with your boss, you better pick something that you love and enjoy and do it with people that are more like friends and family than, you know, coworkers and colleagues. And I think that’s about the heart of this is, and how do you bring service into every element of what you do? How do you take pride and excellence in your role regardless of what your role is? It’s like it, you are the one taking out the trash. How can you be the best trash taker outer on the planet?
AJV (06:21):
I often get to play the role as trash taker outer at Brand Builders Group. We have a lot of live events, and it’s all hands on deck. And one of the things that I love about our team, it’s like, no one’s above taking out the trash. We’re gonna do it with a smile on our face. We’re gonna make sure it’s swift, we’re gonna make sure it’s clean, we’re gonna make sure it’s quiet. And it’s, and I think that is back to the heart of service. It’s like, how do we welcome people so that they feel invited and cared for? And this is an experiential book with so many tactical takeaways of how to do that as a leader, as a business owner as a, as a frontline employee of how do you go above and beyond? How do you just pay attention to your customers and your employees to do things that make them feel welcome, unreasonably welcome, right?
AJV (07:12):
And so that is why that was my first pick of 2024. In fact, we loved this book so much that we made it our mandatory book of the quarter in Q2 for our entire company to read. One of the things that we do at BBG is we have a Book of the Quarter Club. And out of all the books that Rory and I have read, we go through and say, which ones do we think are so important? They need to be, you know, more cemented into the cultural language that we talk about. And Unreasonable Hospitality was one of those books for us in 2024. So that was my first put my first pick and my first recap for you Will Gera Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s the art of bringing service back to your work. And it’s so, so good. I would also say, if you are are an audio listener, this is a great audio book, will has an amazing voice.
AJV (08:00):
But he’s got so much personality and charisma in his storytelling. It’s like, I found it very hard to want to hit pause because it was, it was one of those books where it’s like what’s gonna happen? Like, what’s, what’s next? Like, don’t leave me hanging. I wanna know what you did for that customer. I, I wanna know what they said. So it is also one of those books that I would just say, if you love audios, this is a great audio. Not all of my books are, I think great on audio, but this particular one was great. My second pick is a personal pick. I have read a lot of books on relationships and marriage. Rory and I are about to celebrate 15 years of marriage this year in 2025, which is so awesome. And I love him more today than I did the day we got married, which I think is the biggest win.
AJV (08:48):
But this by far was the best book on marriage that I have ever read. And it’s rare that Rory gets on the bandwagon and reads a book with me. But I was talking about this book so incessantly that he was like, okay, okay, I think I’m gonna read this too. Now he also read Unreasonable Hospitality, but this is one of those personal pics that he was like, man, like I need to read that. So here it is, sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. And here is why I think this book is really important now. Yes. Is it about the, the, the marriage covenant? Is it about husband and wife? Yes. but I would just say for anyone who is married, who is engaged to be married, who wants to be married one day this, this is a great book for the context of what is marriage?
AJV (09:40):
What does it mean to be a good partner in marriage? What are ways to uphold the relationship in a way that, you know, similar to unusable hospitality in a way that serves your spouse? And I think this was a really good book an inner look at what is the point of marriage. Now, for those of you listening to me that know me, like, you know, my background is very faith heavy. I am a, a strong believer. And I do believe that like marriage is like the marriage covenant under God. And one of the things that I found was really amazing is that what I loved about this book that was different than every other book was this is not a communication book. This is not a, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Let’s talk about our differences.
AJV (10:26):
Even though clearly there are lots of personality, inherent traits, differences biological, cultural, all the things, right? Clearly men and women are extremely different. But what I loved about this book is the whole point is like, marriage is not meant to make you happy. Marriage is meant to make you holy. And through the lens of that, it’s like how do you look at the context of your marriage as this relationship with another human being? Right? My husband of going, this isn’t like about me de my happiness depending on what he does for the marriage or what even I do. It’s like, how is this relationship making me a better human being in light of God? Right? So it is a faith heavy book. I’ll put that up there for all of you who, who are like, no, that’s not for me. Totally right. Fine. Just want to let you know upfront.
AJV (11:19):
But in terms of where, I think this was one of the strongest marriage books I’ve ever read, was the inherent focus on what is the goal and purpose of marriage. And I think that, at least for me and my upbringing of how, like even how I went through premarital counseling and getting married, being married, I have never ever heard anyone talk about it this way of like, the challenges are not meant to separate you. It’s to grow. You and I, I’ve heard this a million times and I do believe it to be inherently true. It’s like growth happens in the challenges and that’s no different in marriage. I’ve heard people say to me before, man, it’s just not supposed to be this hard. Says who?
AJV (12:09):
Parenting is hard. Being in business is hard. Sales is hard. Like there are hard things, but we can do hard things. I think it’s the attitude and the commitment and the loyalty and the pro we take to doing hard things. And marriage is a, it’s a, an act of obedience and discipline. And I had never looked at it that way before. And it was a very good thing to go like, how do I keep myself in check of not putting my happiness on Roy’s to-do list? But it’s like, no, like this, this is, this is more of a test of my own endurance of like, can I run the race that’s been given to me with who I chose to run the race, which was my husband? And that doesn’t mean every day is perfect most certainly is not. But at the end of every day, it’s like I can genuinely through a new lens, look at my marriage and look at my husband and go, man, I’m so grateful that you are mine and that I am yours.
AJV (13:07):
And I think a lot of that self-talk and that appreciation came through the lens of this book. And that by itself has strengthened our marriage and my per my personal take on marriage and the way I approach disagreements or household tasks or anything like that really shifted through the pages of this book. So that, that was my second pick, A personal pick for the year, but Sacred Ga Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. All right. Next one, I have I have my little list here of all the ones that I picked out. The next one I picked, sorry, I’m looking through all of these this is an oldie but a goodie, which was the Go-Giver by Bob Berg. Again, super great audio read, you can knock it out and probably a daily commute. It’s about a 90 minute read.
AJV (14:02):
It is extremely short, and it is very what I would say anecdotal in its nature. It’s very like chocked for chocked full of a story. And here’s what I love about this book, and it’s actually one of the books that we’ve picked to be one of our books of the Quarter for 2025 for our team at Brand Builders Group is the Go Giver is all about the lessons you learn through relationships and removing perceptions removing what I would say would be expectations that you have on other people. And there are five laws that you learn in this book, and I’m gonna give them to you in a quick recap. It’s the law of value, which is what you give versus what you take. It’s the law of compensation, which is all about how well can you serve.
AJV (14:52):
It’s about the law of influence with putting others above you and ahead of you. It’s about the law of authenticity being true, being true, honest to yourself. And it’s the law of receptivity. How open are you to accepting what people have to give to you? And it was through these five laws, and they each come with a different encounter and a different individual and a different anecdotal story all through, like the same main character. And I loved this book so much for two main reasons. One, if you’re listening to this, have you ever had the thought, what’s in it for me? And let’s just be honest. We’ve all had that thought. Likely by the time that you listen to this today, you have already had that thought. I have already actually even said those words, I think to my husband. He was telling me about something he was gonna do, and I was like, well, what’s in it for you?
AJV (15:48):
And I literally like, had to bite my tongue and catch myself and be like, oh my gosh. Like, it doesn’t have to be, there doesn’t have to be anything in it for you to do it, right? And I think that’s the, the heart of this book. It’s like, are you doing it to be of service? Are you doing it to get something in return? And that approach to relationships and to business is absolutely vital. And at some point, it’s the, the truth of it sneaks through, right? And I think it’s a really important book and approach of how people do business and how they build business relationships, right? And I I love what the book talks about. I said, the three fundamentals of why you work are to survive, to save and to serve, right? Those are the three fundamentals of work, right?
AJV (16:37):
Survival, right? You gotta pay your bills, buy food, pay for shelter, right? But then it’s to save so that you have some surplus for retirement or for vacations, or whatever you’re gonna use it for. But then it’s to serve like we work to serve people. That is a part of what we do, regardless if we view it that way or not. And I think this was a really great book on each one of those elements. And one of the things that I love is this entire book back to the, the Law of Compensation is your income is directly tied to how many people that you can touch, how many people you can impact, right? And if you look at it through the lens of that, it’s like, if you go, how many people can I serve today? How many people can I help?
AJV (17:21):
How many people can I impact? Not how much money can I make, right? Not as well. What can I, you know, make in a salary or a bonus or a commission, or how do I make more money? It’s how do I serve more people? How can I impact more people? How can I help more people? And if you just went through every single day of like, all right, here’s my goal of helping this many people today. If you just shifted from, man, I need to make this much money to, I need to help this many people, how much money, how much more money would you make in 2025? And that is why it’s one of my recommendations for 2025, is it’s a perspective shift of not how much money can I make or how much money can I save? It’s how many people can you help?
AJV (18:07):
And if you focus on helping people, I have no doubt you will make more money. But if you always focus on making more money and not helping people, it, at some point, it’s just going to burn you out. It’s exhausting. And you’ll likely not hit those goals at the speed that you would like, but if you focus on helping people, you’ll likely hit them faster and you’ll hit, you’ll exceed them faster as well. So Go-Giver by Bob Berg. That is my third recommendation from books that I read last year. Alright, the fourth one. And listen yes, I’m aware that this might be biased, but this was also one of our books of the quarter in 2024. And it, again, it’s an oldie, but it’s a goodie. This particular book has been out for more than 10 years. And it’s Take the Stairs and it was written by the one and only Rory Vaden.
AJV (19:04):
But here’s why it made my list. You know, I’m just gonna be honest, it’s been about 10 years since I read this book, right? I read it, helped edit it clearly read it again when the book came out, and my husband wrote it. But it also has been a decade. And we picked this book to read because we are embarking on our new book that Rory and I have written together that we are launching later this year, this, this summer. And one of the things that we wanted our team to do is go back and read the very first book that Rory wrote in preparation to be like, okay, what’s it gonna be like for this entire team to do a new book launch this year? And I reread it, and I was reminded of how good this book is and how timeless the principles are, and how evergreen the truths are.
AJV (19:57):
And I actually listened to most of this book with my kids in the backseat. So they could listen to their daddy talk about discipline and success and time and faith and action. And it’s, it was fascinating for my kids to pick up on these little things. And it just was such a great reminder to me that not only is this a great book, it it’s a book for all ages. Like, there is nothing about this book that did not apply to my 5-year-old and 7-year-old, that what doesn’t also apply to me in my life. It’s do I have faith? Do I believe that things will eventually work out for my good, right? Regardless of how hard today is do I believe that discipline is important and necessary for my success and my personal and professional life? And what does discipline mean?
AJV (20:53):
Do I believe that there is a there’s an onus on me to take action and not wait around for other people to do things for me, not wait around for it to show up on my doorstep on a silver platter before I go and do something, right? Am I willing to take action and do something before I’m ready to do it? And is there reward in the action versus being perfectly ready? Right? Those are, those are some of the things. But also what my kids really latched onto was this story that my husband talked about called Mr. M, which is a little guy who sits on your shoulder and m stands for mediocrity mediocrity. And this, this little guy who sits on your shoulder, Mr. M is the one who whispers in your ear. You can’t do that.
AJV (21:38):
You’re not smart enough for that. You, you don’t have enough experience. You’re too young, you’re too old. You’ve never done that before. It’s that little mediocrity monger who whispers in your wi your ear. You can’t, you’re not enough. This isn’t for you. This is for somebody better than you. And that’s what my kids latched onto. And quite honestly, it’s what I latched onto. And it was the power of do you have a management system over your words and your thoughts? And this is where I spent most of my time reminiscing about the book and talking about this book with my kids. I ended up also talking a lot about this with our team of how often do we hear it’s like, well, I just don’t have time for that. I just can’t take that on. Like, there’s not enough hours in the day to do that.
AJV (22:29):
Like, that’s too much for me. And here’s what I keep telling my kids, and here’s what I tell our team, and here’s what I’m gonna tell you. Whatever you believe is true, and whatever you tell yourself the most is what you believe. I’m gonna say that again. Whatever you tell yourself the most is what you believe. And whatever you believe is true, if you believe that you can’t because you’ve been telling yourself I can’t for the last 10 years, then magically you can’t. Right? For some reason, other people can, but you can’t. That that is not because that’s true. No one else has more minutes in the hour or hours in the day than you do. We all have the same, some of us have just said, I can do it anyway. Right? We all have things vying for our tension and more than we can manage in most cases, between the different social platforms and family commitments and work commitments and technology distracting us from our, like distracting us and taking our attention. Like we could all sit here and go, there’s just too much to be done in a day. Or there, there’s a difference saying, which is, I choose where I spend my time.
AJV (23:59):
I mean, that’s it, right? It’s, it’s, it is a difference in going, this is where I choose to spend my time, versus, oh, I just can’t fit it all in, right? It, it, it’s the exact same thing. It’s like, no, that just means you have to say no to some things because you have chosen that other things are of more significance at this time, at this season of your life. And those are all mental choices that we get to make. That’s a discipline, that’s an obedience. That that’s also a faith element of going, I believe that this thing is right for me. But I just thought it was just so important in this particular book to go back and, and re harness the power of our thoughts and our words and what we say to ourself, and how that becomes our actions and our beliefs and ultimately our reality.
AJV (24:45):
And now, that’s not the whole essence of take the stairs, but it’s why it made the list. And my favorite quote that I don’t even remember reading in this book, I don’t even recall Rory ever mentioning this in a keynote, which I have heard hundreds of times over the years, but this was the number one quote that stuck out in this particular time, reading the book, right? Different season of life, different season of business. But this was the quote that stuck out to me that I’m gonna share with you. Frustration only happens in the absence of perspective. Frustration only happens in the absence of perspective. Now, perhaps this stuck out to me at the season of life because I say the words, I’m so frustrated on a daily basis with everything going on or perhaps that that was just the message that I needed to hear in this particular book.
AJV (25:40):
But that was something that I thought was really powerful because I think I hear a lot of people say, I’m just frustrated that I’m not where I thought I would be. I’m, I’m frustrated. Things aren’t going faster. I’m frustrating. This isn’t working the way that I want to, or it didn’t happen this way. I’m just frustrated and I hear those words so often. And I think that that also ties into that is Mr. M, Mr. Mediocrity, Mr. Mediocrity, that sits on your shoulder telling you the untruths, right? Being frustrated is a, a choice. When we don’t have perspective, it’s the other option to going. No. Like, there’s perspective here of like, and, and maybe it’s not going as fast as you want, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t progressed. And it’s a choice of going, am I, am I happy with progress?
AJV (26:30):
Am or am I dissatisfied with the lack of speed? And those are just, those are perspective shifts. And I think it was a really good review for me at least to go. It’s like, where am I missing perspective? Like, where am I not paying attention to all the progress and all the good, and I’m only focused on all the lack of progress and all the bad, right? So all of those things combined was really that internal mindset general inspiration book that made my number four pick for 2024, which was Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden. And then not well, I mean, gosh, if I’m going through these, there’s, there’s like five more that I probably could pick. But this is, this is the last one that I’m gonna pick and I’m gonna share with you. I forgot I had highlighted so many as I’m reading back here,
AJV (27:32):
I think this is one of those timeless reads that I will probably make a habit to go back and read if not every year, every couple of years. I think that this is a, a really important read for anyone who has gotten to a point where they’re like, okay, I know what got me here won’t get me there. And that could be a personal or professional endeavors. But I think that at some point, whether it’s one year, three year, five year, 10 years doing something, the things that you started with eventually have to change and evolve and elevate. That includes systems, processes, people business models, prices. At some point, things have to change for you to keep growing, right? And I, I think it’s a really, really important book as people are stepping into what I would say a level up kind of mentality.
AJV (28:29):
Like they’re ready to up level, they’re ready to take it to the next level, whatever, you know, phrase you wanna use there. But this was a, this was a book that I thought was really, really important because it focuses on the things that you can do that are super simple. And I, and I loved so much of that. Like, I thought it was so important, just the importance of listening and, and, and gratitude and, and some of those best practices. And I think it was also really important to talk so much as I think in business we talk so much about what we should do, and we don’t talk enough about what we shouldn’t do, right? And I, I love this in this book, is that we have to talk about what we have to stop doing as much as we have to talk about what we need to start doing.
AJV (29:20):
And I think that as an organization and, and being, you know, my previous life, a consultant to a lot of organizations, there’s a lot of talk around, well, this is what we’re going to do. There’s not a lot of talk about, this is what we’re not going to do. This is what we need to stop doing as an organization or as an individual. But that’s a really important part of this, right? If we’re only talking about all the things that we’re gonna start doing or all the things that we are doing, then we’re leaving out a huge category of things. And hey, there’s also some things that organizationally speaking, categorically speaking, we don’t do. And I feel like that is a missing part of the puzzle. That if you are listening to this and you’re going, man, I wonder if we have a culture problem or a communication problem or a collaboration part problem, or if you’ve ever said, it feels like the right hand and the left hand don’t know what they’re doing, it’s probably because you’ve been focusing on just one part of that.
AJV (30:15):
Maybe you’re a part of a, a team that only talks about what we’re not gonna do, and you need to spend more time talking about what you are gonna do. But I find more often, specifically in the newer parts of the year and the early parts of the year, it’s a lot more conversation around, these are all the things we’re gonna do this year, and there’s not a lot of talk about, and this is what we’re not gonna do this year. Both are equally important for clarity, communication, collaboration, and culture, the four C’s, right? Clarity, communication, collaboration and culture. And you need to both know what you’re going to do and what you’re not going to do as an individual, a team, a company, you know, whatever it is that you wanna be. But I think that’s a, a really, really, really important thing.
AJV (31:02):
So there’s a feedback matrix that they share and that Marshall shares in the book, and it’s like, what do you stop doing? What do you start doing? What do you need to do less of? And what do you need to do more of? Right? So high level, that would be a very quick thing that you can just go back is a feedback perspective on, man, what are we doing as an organization? It’s like, what do you need to stop doing? What do you need to start doing? What do you need to do less of? And what do you need to do more of very simple components to help you take like a holistic perspective. I mentioned earlier that I loved that there was such a huge part of this book about listening. One of the things that I discovered about myself in this book is that I need to be a better listener.
AJV (31:47):
If you would’ve asked me before this book, aj, are you a are you a good listener? I would’ve said, yeah, I’m a great listener. I listen all the time. After reading this book, I’d be like, Ooh, that might be an area of weakness for me. And he goes through this entire checklist of, are you constantly thinking in your mind what you’re gonna say as the other person is talking? If so, you’re not such a great listener. Are you constantly interrupting to get your thought in? If so, you’re not such a great listener. Are you constantly counteracting like, well, that’s not true in your mind. You’re not such a great listener, and then this is the one that hit me. Are you constantly finishing other people’s sentences? And if so, maybe you’re not the great listener that you thought you were. And I caught myself going, man, I, I think I do interrupt too often.
AJV (32:37):
I, I think I do try to finish sentences too much. And I went through and I shared this with Rory, and he just laughed out loud. And I was like, okay, well, that was probably the confirmation that I needed there. Like, this is, this is an actual goal of mine this year. This is a commitment to myself as I’m going to be a better listener. And again, we’ve probably all been taught this before, but I thought this was a really important skillset to get back to, which is simply think before you speak. Like, and so, like one of the goals that I’ve had for myself, as soon as someone’s done talking, I’m gonna let there be a nice pause before I speak. And I practiced this yesterday in a conversation, and after this individual was done sharing their thoughts I just paused and I said, is there anything else? And they said, no. And I said, okay.
AJV (33:33):
And then I said, okay, let, let me share my response. That is not typically my mo in that, but it was so helpful to them to be like, wait, is there anything else? No, I’m not that. I had a little pause because I needed to, to get my thoughts. Then I proceeded. And I have found that that’s so easy. It’s easier for me to do in, in-person conversations, but I’m trying to do the exact same thing in written communication. And if I don’t have a good clear response during some written communication, I’m just saying, Hey, I, I’ve seen this and I’ll get back to you. This was actually some feedback that was given to me because I didn’t do that. I saw the message. I knew I wasn’t ready to respond to it, so I just didn’t respond. And the feedback I got was, Hey, that was, felt really inconsiderate.
AJV (34:24):
That was like a really important message I sent. And then you just didn’t respond. And I was like, yeah, I was gathering my thoughts. They said, well, that would’ve been just good to know. And I said, oh, good, good feedback there. So now I’m just saying, Hey, I have received your message. I’ll be back to a response in the next couple of days. And it’s because I actually need the time to sit and listen. And even though they weren’t talking, it was in writing, I was still listening. And I think that these are just little things that make communication and collaboration and culture so much better because you have more clarity. So if you have never read this book, I highly recommend what got you here won’t get you there. Again, doesn’t matter if you are in any position in a company leader frontline, employee, owner, it doesn’t matter.
AJV (35:15):
It is for you. And I also think that this is one of those books where it hits some of the most practical things, like listening and saying thank you and giving feedback and receiving feedback but then also brings it up on a higher level as well. So it’s, it’s very into the weeds with like, here are things you can do, here are checklists, here are reminders, here are best practices, as well as some of the higher overview stuff that I think is really, really, really important. Here’s, and here’s again, I’m trying to like do some pull out quotes from each of these. And here’s what I would say this is one of my favorite quotes from this book. No one, and this is not a direct quote, this is my interpretation of the quote, so don’t cite me. No one changes by learning things.
AJV (36:07):
They only change by doing the things they’ve learned. And I think that’s also a great quote to end my book recap for 2024. Because here’s what I have found about people who do read and go to a lot of classes and seminars and sign up for courses and programs. And I think all of those things are good. The question is, but are you doing anything with what you’ve learned? It’s one thing to say, Hey, I read 24 books last year. It’s another thing to go in. Here’s what I learned and I’ve implemented from every single book that I’ve read now, I’m not gonna be able to implement every single thing that I jotted down in my notes from every single book. What my goal has been in this process in the last few years is what’s the one thing that I need to take from this particular book and put into action in my life?
AJV (37:00):
What is the one thing? And so for this book, right, what got you here won’t get you there. It was listening. Like, I took that to heart and said like, I have had an aha moment. I need to improve my listening skills in a, in a very important way to be a better communicator, a better leader, a better friend, a better spouse. But that was like my one thing I took away. And one of the things that I find is that if, if you as a reader can just take a moment of reflection at the end of every book and go out of everything that I’ve read, all the quotes, all the things, what’s the one thing that I’m gonna put into practice? And really try to make it one, that doesn’t mean you can’t do more, just highlight one. Then you’re not just learning things, you’re actually doing things. And that’s what creates change. Learning things does not create change. Doing the things that you’ve learned is what creates change. So regardless, if you go and read any of these books that I read last year I would say whatever books or whatever podcasts that you listen to or read this year or whatever coaching programs or courses that you participate in, ask yourself, what’s the one thing that I can actually start doing to create real change in my life?
Ep 563: Three Keys to Speaking Success | Lesley Logan Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. There are three key components to a world class presentation, and most people don’t even know what they are. So let me walk you through it. The first one is your content. The content of your presentation is the base. The second one is the charisma, and the third one is the circumstance. I’m gonna explain each of ’em to you in detail. So first, there is the content. The content is the basis of your presentation, no matter how funny you are, and no matter how inspiring you are, if your content is lame, it’s not gonna be an amazing presentation.
RV (01:14):
People will say, oh, that person was really funny, or They were really entertaining, but it didn’t change my life. And no one’s gonna invite you to come speak or hire you or recommend you. Beyond that, typically. So how do you make great content? Well, the way you make great content is to forward the thinking that’s already been done. So content is about having a clear message and making sure that the, the people in your audience know exactly what to do when they’re done hearing you, and that you share a balance of stories and education, what we would call frameworks, visuals, charts, tables, illustrations that help emphasize the point that you’re making. And in a perfect world, it’s original thought leadership, accompanied by what we call pillar points that are written by you, these catchphrases that you made up that no one has ever heard because they came from your mind.
RV (02:09):
The second part of a great presentation is charisma. It has to do with your delivery. How funny are you? How inspiring are you? How engaging are you? Being a masterful storyteller is one of the most important skills of charisma. Also, learning how to use the stage, learning the psychology of laughter, and how to tell jokes. Learning how to use your voice to command the audience. Learning how to use gestures, learning the, the mastery of the mechanics, of the professional trade of speaking. By the way, if you ever want to learn more about coaching with our team on how to be a better presenter, just click on the link around this video and I’ll set you up with a free call with one of our strategists. Third part of a great presentation is the circumstance, and this is the one that almost nobody knows about or thinks about.
RV (03:01):
The setup of the room in which you are speaking has a tremendous amount to do with the experience of that event. It is one third of the power of that experience, and that presentation is dependent upon the circumstances of the room. Now, when we talk about circumstance, we’re talking about lots of things like how close is the stage to the first row of the audience. The further the distance, the stages from the audience, the less connection you have, the less intimate the experience will be. It also includes things like the height of the ceiling. The more space there is between the tops of the heads of the people and where the ceiling is, the more energy that is lost and absorbed into empty space, rather than having that energy transmitted through the audience, creating a powerful experience. Also, the space between people in the room, right?
RV (03:57):
If you have a room of a thousand people and only a hundred are there and they’re all spread out, that’s gonna create a less than desirable experience. Other things include the time of day. The, the earlier you speak in the morning, if you speak very early, sometimes people aren’t awake yet, or sometimes they’re hungover, or if it’s late at night, they’re just thinking about going to bed, or maybe they’re thinking about going to the bar. So the time of day that you speak matters a lot. And then also who’s in the audience? Believe it or not, female audiences laugh a lot more than male audiences. So if you’re ever in front of an all male audience and you don’t get a lot of laughter or engagement, don’t be alarmed by that. That’s perfectly normal and typical for most all male audiences. All female audiences are my favorite.
RV (04:44):
Put me in front of an arena of 10,000 women at a direct sales conference, and we will literally make the walls shake with laughter and fun and have an awesome time. How well do the people in the room know each other and how well do they feel connected to each other? Has a lot to do with the power of the experience. The closer they are to one another, the more impactful the presentation tends to be. The more that they are strangers or feel only distantly connected, the harder it is for you to connect with them. All of these elements are related to circumstance which affect the connection you have with the room. So these three elements, the content, your charisma, and the circumstances of the setup determine the connection that you have with the audience. The more you maximize each of these three areas, the stronger the connection.
RV (05:36):
The more powerful the experience, the less effective you are at maximizing each of these three areas. The lower the connection will be and the lesser the overall experience for the audience. So if you want to have an amazing presentation, you first have to have amazing content, but content alone is not enough. You wanna layer on top of that the secrets of charisma. This is some of the things that we help people do for a living. It’s being charming and engaging and inspiring and motivating and entertaining and funny and, and touching people emotionally. But then also it’s controlling the circumstances, setting up the environment, do those three things, and I promise your presentations will go to a whole new level.