Ep 507: How to Generate Massive Warm Referrals | Jordan Montgomery Episode Recap
RV (00:04):
Let’s talk about how to generate massive, warm inbound referrals In your business. And we’re not gonna talk about it. I’m gonna teach you exactly how to do this, and I’m telling you, I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell You the secret of what I personally do that
RV (00:29):
Floods our Business regularly in a recurring fashion with massive warm referrals. And I can teach this to you in one sentence, and then I’m gonna share with You four Reasons for why you should do this beyond just getting warm, massive, warm referrals, even though that’s what we’re talking about here. Okay? So How do you do this? How do you generate Massive warm referrals inside of your business? It is simple. If you want to get
RV (01:06):
Referrals, you need to give referrals. That’s it. If you want to get referrals, you need to give referrals. You need to become an expert at giving referrals. You need to have great systems for giving referrals. You need to develop a heart for giving referrals. You need to develop a faith for giving referrals. If you want referrals, you have to become a master at giving referrals. And if you become a master at giving referrals, I promise, I promise you’ll get referrals in return.
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Of the leads that come into your business, mostly because you’ll be working all the warm leads and all of the normal leads that come in. It’s like you gotta have somebody to help you
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Work, work Through those. And that’s like a big part of what becomes your team.
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So that’s the Secret in one sentence. I’ve done this again and again. I’ve watched AJ do it again and again, I’ve seen the clients that do this in, in their life again and again. There’s, there’s people in my life that I, I am the recipient of, right? I, there, there’s a couple people here. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give a couple shout outs. One, I will say Randy Garn is a, is a human that just focuses on giving referrals. And he seems to have, you know, no lack of referrals coming to him, and no lack of business coming to him. John Ruland is a, is a person in my life who loves to give referrals, and he seems to have no lack of influence and, and referrals and relationships coming to him. It is there, there, there’s so many others. There are so many others. We have so many clients, so many friends who have so generously give referrals to BBG.
RV (03:41):
And they get, you know, they, they are, they’re people. I look in their life and I go, yeah, sometimes. And here’s the thing you gotta know, is that when you give referrals, sometimes you get referrals back from that person, but sometimes the referrals you get are not back from that person. They come from somebody else. But it’s, it’s creating this abundance mentality, this abundance mindset, this abundance energy, this faith mindset, this faith mentality, this, this, this, this faith mindset that pours back into you. And you have to do this. And you go, man, if I really want to get good at getting referrals, you might need to flip a switch in your brain and go, why am I not getting more referrals? Right? Like, why am I not getting more referrals? If that’s you, like, if you look at your business and you go, I don’t think I really get that many referrals.
RV (04:37):
I’m certainly not flooded with a massive number of warm referrals. And you go, then I would ask you to say the second question. How good are you at giving referrals? Because I’ve never met someone who is great at giving referrals, who doesn’t also sooner or later, eventually over time, have a flood of warm bound of, of warm inbound referrals. So you might be thinking about it wrong, right? You might be going, oh, I, I need to have better product or a more sharper system, or a, you know, something in terms of like, why don’t I get more referrals? Or you might think, oh, my clients don’t refer people. Of course they do. Everyone refers people like, we refer people that we like, and we, most of us prefer not. Most of us, all of us prefer to do business with people we know. We prefer to, to buy and sell and transact with people that we trust.
RV (05:31):
And that happens through shared relationships. So what I wanna talk about is four reasons why. Beyond just getting more referrals per se. I wanna talk about four reasons why you should become a great giver of referrals for reasons why. Okay, first one, again, you probably overlooked this. Most people that I have this conversation with overlook this point. And yet this is a key point of getting referrals. And it’s a key reason to give referrals. One of the most amazing, beautiful byproducts of giving referrals is that you keep in touch with your past clients. You keep in touch with your past clients. When we say give refers referrals, who are you going to refer? You’re, you’re, you’re probably going to refer other vendors that can serve the people that you know, like, and trust. And if it’s inside your business, the people that you know, like and trust are the people you’re transacting with.
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It’s your clients and going, who can I introduce to my clients? That’s the mindset here is to go, okay, I have all these clients. A worthy referral from you is to someone who is, you know, a legitimate person, a legitimate buyer. Maybe they’re, maybe they’re a legitimate vendor. And you go, I need to think about who can I introduce to my clients and who can I introduce my clients to? What’s amazing about that, and this is the number one reason beyond just getting referrals about why you should become a great giver of referrals, is that keeps you in touch with all of your past clients. Like, the reason why I book so many people on podcasts and, you know, social media like lives and stages, you know, speakers and stuff, is not ’cause I’m in the business of that. I’m not in the business of that.
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We don’t get paid to do that. What the reason that I do that is because it keeps me in touch with past clients. I’m going, oh, you need to meet this person and you need to meet this person. Well, when I am constantly thinking about who can I introduce to my clients that would be helpful for my clients, whether it’s another vendor to them or if it is potentially introducing them as a vendor to somebody else, either way it keeps me in touch with my past clients. That is why you should do this. The second reason why you should give referrals and become a master at giving referrals is because it builds reciprocity. You may have heard this, that it’s called the Law of reciprocity, and I would argue emphatically that it is in fact the law of reciprocity. It is not the theory of reciprocity.
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If you give and support and help other people, it’s not that you might have other people give and support and help you back in return. It is a law. This, it is guaranteed to happen sometimes. It doesn’t always happen from the person you’re giving to, but it always happens. And often it does happen from the person you’re giving to. Almost always it happens, although it may not be in the same form, right? It’s like, I might give a business referral and they might, they might help me, you know, move my furniture when I move my house or something like that. So it’s not always the same currency, but it is always this balance of relationship equity that, that, that, that holds and maintains. It’s it, and it is a, it is a law. So you want to learn to proactively tip this scale in your favor.
RV (09:26):
Now this Bible verse, I’m gonna share with you a Bible verse. Okay? This, this is a, a this is a, a Bible verse about tithing. Okay? So this is specifically about tithing, but it, it nails the attitude and the mindset here of reciprocity. So this Bible verse is Malachi three 10, I think. Make sure that I send that right? Yep. Malachi three 10. This is one of my favorite Bible verses. Okay? So this is from the Old Testament, and here’s what it says. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. The God of the universe is saying, test me in this.
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Now he’s specifically talking about tithing to him and saying, trust me with your money, trust me with your resources. That’s the tithe. The first 10th percent, which is what tithe means. It’s a 10th, right? The first 10th is give it back to the Lord and test me In this. There’s not very many things you know, the Lord says, test me in this. In fact, I can’t think of anything else where there’s a few things where I say, you know, do not test the Lord, but in this one, the Lord is saying, test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing. Now, this is true about giving in general, which is why I’m using this. Now, if you’re giving to another person, that person may not throw out the floodgates of heaven on you.
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They may not have the ability to, that they may not do that, but God will. You can’t outgive God. You can’t outgive the universe. It’s, it’s a law of, of nature. And, and the God of the universe who created the universe is saying just in giving money to him, saying, trust me as a, if you become a giver first, then I promise you’ll receive much more than your fair portion. And it, it, it is a measure of faith. And that’s one of the reasons why to do this is it, is it builds reciprocity, but specifically it strengthens your faith. When you are giving anything, you are learning to say you’re learning grace. Grace means giving without expectation of receipt, but it is giving. It is giving and trusting that it somehow some way will come back to you. That is a measure of faith.
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And if you can learn to do that with humans, men and women, if you can learn to do that with humans there, it will also then help you develop that relationship with the Lord. And if you can do that with the Lord, it will also help you learn and develop that relationship with humans. Now, humans are not perfectly just like the Lord is, but I think the Lord often fills those gaps and go, well, I’ve been given to so and so and I was taking care of them, and they didn’t really give me anything back, and maybe they couldn’t give anything back, but it shows up somehow. And, and it is, again, it’s the law of reciprocity. Third reason why I want you to become focused on being a master giver is it forces you to become systematic. A huge part of growing a business.
RV (12:55):
Look, in, in, in my second book, procrastinating On Purpose, I said, no business can outgrow the strength of its systems. And I firmly believe that to be true today, as much as when I wrote it almost 10 years ago. Like, no business will ever outgrow the strength of its systems. A business is nothing other really than a product, a set of people and a set of processes or systems, right? It’s the three Ps. So you have to create great processes. Anything that forces you to create great processes is likely to force you to create a great business and in order to be a great giver, right? A a decent giver is someone who occasionally thinks of like, oh yeah, hey, I have a friend you should meet. But a great giver. A master giver develops systems like to systematically, proactively go, who can I introduce this person to?
RV (13:49):
Who can I introduce this person to? Inside of our members or in our, in our membership portal. For those of you who are members, if you’re a brand builders group member, you know that I have a whole training called the relationship switchboard, and I show you the actual switchboard I use. It’s just a simple sheet where I track it’s a spreadsheet where across the columns are all like, you know, the media opportunities or the speaking opportunities, and then the rows are like people who are great guests or great potential speakers for that. And all I’m doing is tracking all of those connections and relationships. And so whenever I get a new client, I am systematically thinking, and this is a private client, right? I’m talking about someone who I am working with personally, and I’m going, okay, who can I introduce this person to that would be useful for them and who they could also be useful to?
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It’s systematic, right? Giving referrals to be a master giver requires you to be systematic, intentional, proactive, deliberate strategic. That’s what, if you become a master of this, it will force you to do that, which will also help force you to develop those skills and those character traits, which will help you in other parts of your business. And it will namely, help you with massive lead generation. So that is another reason to give referrals beyond just the fact that you’re gonna get ’em, is it’s gonna force you to be systematic. And then the fourth reason why I want you to become a master at giving referrals is because it reshapes your heart from a posture of self-centeredness to service centeredness.
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And I believe that that is a big part of the journey of mankind. I believe that that’s a big part of the challenge of our humanity. I believe that that’s a, is is one of the big trials of our lifetime. It is one of the biggest opportunities for growth. It is one of the biggest opportunities for personal development. It is one of the biggest calls on our life as, as, as Christians or just as good people, even if you’re not a Christian, is to go, can I mature from my childish, my childish, immature self-centered nature of only thinking about myself, wanting what is best for me, looking out for me? Can I at some point mature to being service centered, looking out for the needs of others, trying to provide for those around me, trying to make the world a better place for everyone, not just for me.
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That transformation from self-centeredness to service centeredness is one of the sources of great happiness and joy and purpose in your life. And learning to give referrals makes you a master of that. I don’t think it’s an accident. Again, to give you a Bible verse, this is an Acts chapter 20 verse 35. So this is in the New Testament. This is shortly after Jesus, you know, dies, resurrected, you know, appears, and then is ascends into heaven for the final time. Paul, in the Book of Acts, this is like all the disciples talking about what happens right after Jesus ascends into heaven and how the, the movement of Christianity begins. Paul quotes Jesus directly in Acts 20, verse 35, and he says, remembering the words, the Lord Jesus himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
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Again, this is a posture that’s worth pursuing. This is a journey of a personal development transcendence that I think is, is, is a, is worth taking. This is a, a trial worth triumphing over is the journey from self-centeredness to service centeredness. And being a master referrals forces you to go on that journey and to, and, and it, and it helps shape your heart. It shapes the posture of your heart and your character in a way that is healthy for you, even if you never get another business referral. So there you have at four reasons why, to become a master at giving referrals, even though and above and beyond the massive number of warm referrals that you will get. If you just do these things, go find someone and serve them. Be helpful to your past clients in a way more than just selling to them. Introduce them to useful people and stay plugged in here for more great inspiration and tips to hopefully help you in your journey.
Ep 505: What’s Your Competitive Advantage | David Avrin Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
What is your competitive advantage? Okay, that’s the conversation for today. And this really spawned from a conversation that I had on the influential personal brand podcast with a really good close personal friend Dave Avrin. And he just wrote a book called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business with. And part of our conversation was, what makes it easy for people to do business with you? Or in other words, what’s your competitive advantage? And so this was a good enough conversation that I thought, this is the pullout of what I would like to talk about in this recap version of that conversation. So number one, let’s talk about what is not your competitive advantage. It’s not your people, right? I think we could all say we have great people. I say brain Boulder’s Group. Our people are our secret sauce. And not one of them, but all of them, they are amazing.
AJV (01:00):
They care, they have integrity, they have work ethic, they are smart, they are fast. But I also have like 10 entrepreneur friends who would say the exact same thing about their people. And so I would just encourage you that it’s not your people, right? Having great people should be a prerequisite for being in business. I know not all companies would say that, and there are some cultures that need work, but I would just encourage you that your competitive advantage is probably not only your team. I think it’s a part of what makes you awesome, but it may not be your competitive advantage. Okay? Second thing that it’s probably not is your high quality product. There are lots of high quality products and services. I am in three different coaching programs right now and for three different reasons, right? I’m in the EO Entrepreneurs organization and it’s a huge part of that is the business community that I have and the business education and business resources.
AJV (01:59):
I have a life coach Pete Wilson is my life coach, and he has a phenomenal program. It’s a high quality service. I’m in the Wellspring Mastermind, which is for Christian entrepreneurs, and it’s about how do you turn your, your business into a kingdom building empire, right? It’s say, I wanna do God’s work. I really genuinely do. I want my business to be reflection of my faith in Jesus Christ. And that is an, it’s a great quality program, but I don’t know if I would say for any of them is a quality program, a quality service, a quality product, their competitive advantage. ’cause Again, having a quality product or a quality program should be requirement for entry, right? Because if not, the market’s gonna snuff you out, right? You’re not gonna have growing customers, you’re not gonna have exceeding revenues because if you’re, if the product isn’t good, if it doesn’t work, if the program or the service, if it’s no wino, people aren’t going to keep buying it.
AJV (03:00):
They’re not gonna refer it. And so I would encourage, it’s also probably not a quality product. I would say low prices. It’s also probably not your competitive advantage. Tons of places have low prices. I would encourage you that it’s probably not your customer service, right? I would encourage you that it’s not a laundry list of other things, but I think what most people say is it’s our people, or they say it’s, it’s our unique program. It’s our unique service that’s our high quality product. And I would just encourage you that those probably aren’t it, right? That’s probably not your unique competitive advantage. And so how do you figure out what is your competitive advantage? Because if you would’ve asked me what our competitive advantage was before I had this conversation and before I did this work, and before I really sat down and thought about, I probably would’ve said our people, right?
AJV (03:52):
It’s our people. And if not that, I would’ve said it’s our community, which is also our people, right? It’s the community that we have built within Brain Builders Group. And then I started really thinking about it and I’m going, okay, maybe that’s not it. And how to rephrase that question is what makes it ridiculously easy for people to do business with you? And if you don’t know the answer to that, then I would encourage you to do a couple of quick things here. One, ask yourself, what would your customer say? And if you don’t know, go ask them. Be like, Hey, what do you like about doing business with me? What do you think are competitive advantages? And what would you say is the most easy thing about working with us? Or perhaps the question is, what’s the hardest thing about working with us?
AJV (04:45):
What is not easy? What do you wish was better? And perhaps there’s some gaps that you need to fill there. Second thing I would do is I go through your own processes as a consumer. So like one of the action items that I literally have here on my to-do list post this conversation is I need to go and go through our funnels as a consumer with a new email address so nobody can identify it. I need to schedule a call with their sales team. I need to request a customer care call. I need to email all of our different community listservs and check our response time. How do they respond? I need to be like, how many clicks does it take me to do this? I need to go through our funnels. I need to make sure no links are broken.
AJV (05:32):
I need to go through and, and experience what it’s like to be a new customer as well as a, a veteran customer, a brand builders group. And what I wanna do is I wanna go through that process and look for friction. I wanna look for all the places that there’s rub. Where is there a delay in response time? Where is it that you can’t have a human conversation? Where is it that the automation isn’t firing correctly? Or is it our calendar isn’t available enough or opportunities aren’t present enough or what is it? And I don’t know where the points of friction are, but it’s my job to find them. It’s not my customer’s job to find them. It’s my job. It’s the business owner to find those points of discomfort or challenge or, or friction. And then it’s my job to help remove those, right?
AJV (06:22):
And so when I was sitting here and going, okay, if I don’t know the answer to that, I’m gonna ask my team what do they think? And after that, I’m gonna ask our clients what do they think? And then I would also like to ask our affiliate partners, our referral partners prospects who never bought from us. It’s like, can you tell me why
AJV (07:07):
And to be able to say that with full authenticity and integrity and confidence of going, we don’t get it right a hundred percent of the time, but man, like we get it right most of the time here. And this is what you can expect. This is what makes us different. And this is what makes us unique. And I think that’s a really important thing that we all need to know, not only for us as individuals and our personal brands, but for the extension of that which is our business. And I think if you don’t know, you gotta go through the process of asking the questions to yourself, to your team, to your customers, to vendors, to prospects, to referral partners or affiliates, whoever you have, right? Whoever interacts with your business. The next is you have to go through the process of what it’s like to be a prospect for your business, to be a consumer of your business, and find those points of friction and also identify those points of ease, like what worked really well.
AJV (08:01):
And take all of that and go, man, if I were to boil it down and go, what is my competitive advantage? Here’s what I would say. Here’s what I would say. And so the question is, what is your competitive advantage? And if I’m telling you it’s not your people and it’s not your high quality product or service, and it’s not li it’s not likely your cost and it’s not likely your technology and it’s not likely your customer service team and it’s not likely those things, then what is it? What makes you truly unique amongst everyone else who does what you do? And I’m not talking about just your personal brand right now, because as a individual, I’m already unique, right? There is no other AJ Vaden on the planet. No one else has my unique set of brand DNA. No one has my life stories or experiences. They don’t have my
AJV (08:54):
Thoughts, feelings, emotions. They are not me. I am already unique. I am talking about your established business which is an extension of your personal brand, but it’s a, you know, a conglomeration of your products and your service and your team and your people and your clients. Like, what is that competitive advantage? And if you don’t know, we’ve given you several different action items to go through. And if you’re still pondering that, then I would highly encourage you pick up this new book which I’m a major advocate for by David Rin, which is ridiculously easy to do business with. And you can pick it up on Amazon. There are 28 things that it questions you on. It encourages you to investigate, it challenges you and it really gets you to ask those deeper questions that help you really uncover what is your real unique advantage in the marketplace that allows you to continue to do business, but not just do it, but do it well, do it exceptionally well in the service of other people. So what is your competitive advantage?
Ep 503: 3 Ways to Make One Million Dollars With a Personal Brand
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are three ways to make a million dollars from a personal brand, three fastest ways? This is a good question, and we’ve done all three of these, and I’m gonna walk you through each one. So the first one is speaking. Speaking is, here’s how you make a million bucks as a speaker. $20,000 speech times, 50 gigs a year, 20,000 bucks a speech times 50 gigs a year is a million dollars. Now, to get to be a $20,000 speaker takes work, right? It takes hustle, but you can get there. I mean, I got to that fee range probably in four or five years, not even four to five years. You could really get there. I’ve got friends that have gotten to that range in like two to three years. So if you know what you’re doing and you’re good on stage and you get, if you get good coaching on how to be amazing on stage, and you have a clear message and clear positioning, that’s how you get to a million bucks as a speaker.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What about membership sites? We’ve also made millions of dollars with membership sites. So how do you make a million dollars a year with a membership site? Super simple. You charge a hundred dollars a month and you get a thousand customers, right? Simple math, a hundred, a hundred dollars a month, a thousand customers. If you get a hundred, if you get a thousand people who are paying you a hundred dollars each a month, that’s a hundred thousand dollars a month. That’s $1.2 million annually. And that’s doable. Now you gotta get a thousand customers, but you’re only selling something that’s a hundred dollars a month. Most people spend more than a hundred dollars a month eating out at dinner, and they certainly spend more than that on, you know, car payments and insurance and a whole bunch of stuff. Like, so a hundred bucks a month is a very doable price point.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And you get a thousand customers. You also could cut that, right? And say we could do $50 a month and get 2000 customers, and that would be another way to get to a million bucks. And retention is gonna be key if you do membership site, but it’s doable. Third way, I would make a million dollars fast with a personal brand. I would say for that one who would be courses, because if you sell a thousand dollars course, you can get a thousand people to buy it. That’s a million bucks, a thousand dollars course. A thousand people to buy it. It’s a million bucks. Now, is it easy? No, it’s not easy, but is it doable? Yeah, it’s doable. I mean, there’s courses, people sell courses for $2,000, $3,000, and you have to be super clear on what course it is that you’re creating. Like, what problem do you solve? What problem can you solve in the world that people would pay a thousand dollars for? Another way of thinking about that is what problem could you solve for people that would be worth $10,000? We call that the rule of 10. The rule of 10 is simple. We always like to price things at like one 10th. The value of what it provides if you solve the problem for somebody. So if I’m gonna sell
Speaker 2 (02:59):
A course for a thousand dollars, I wanna be able to solve a $10,000 problem for people, or I wanna teach them how to make $10,000 at least, hopefully more. But if you can figure out what that is, and you can create a, a course that systematically shows people how to do that, that’s worth a thousand bucks. And then you only need to get a thousand people to buy that thing. And that’s, that’s a million dollars. There’s 8 billion people on the planet, like a thousand people is all you need. So those are three ways to quickly get to a million bucks with a personal brand. There are lots of other ways that you could do it, but those are three of the best ones. But I’m gonna save the best for last. The best one, my favorite one, the, my, my, my absolute favorite way to make a million dollars from a personal brand is to use your personal brand as an engine for monetizing the thing you’re already doing.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So the fastest path to cash is to sell the thing that you’re already selling. So if you, if you are a doctor, right, you’re gonna sell more patients. If you’re, if you are an accountant, you’re gonna sell more tax services. If you, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re gonna sell more widgets. Use your personal brand as just an extension of your current business. Just make it a piece of the marketing function of whatever’s already in front of you. If you’re in network marketing or direct sales, just use your personal brand as jet fuel for the business that you already have, and it will be a multiplier and it will help you exponentially make more money faster. And you don’t have to build a new product or a new service offering. The fastest path to cash is to monetize the thing that you’re always doing. So that’s 1, 2, 3, and four ways to quickly make a million bucks with a personal brand.
Ep 501: 3 Insights to Build More Mental Toughness | Dean Stott Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
Let’s talk about how to be more mentally tough. I’m gonna share with you three insights that I think are a requirement for anyone to understand. Who wants to be stronger mentally, right? And when I say mental toughness, what I’m talking about, I, I’m talking about the, the, the, the, the process of training your brain to think in a way that allows you to continue in the face of adversity. Everyone who has ever been successful has faced adversity. You’re going to face adversity again and again and again. Your ability to overcome adversity is completely connected and tied to your mental toughness. The way that your brain processes rejection, the way that your brain processes pain, failure, setbacks, tragedies, challenges, however your brain responds to those elements will determine whether or not you are successful in this life. It will determine whether or not you have or achieve, or gain or acquire the things that you desire.
RV (01:20):
Because
RV (02:21):
Now, the first one I’m actually gonna take directly from Dean from this interview, ’cause I had never heard anybody say it this way. I’ve heard lots of people talk about this concept. So I know this is a truth because I’ve experienced it and I’ve heard lots of other successful people talk about it in, in our research, in our coaching, and working with people. But I’ve never heard anybody say it the way that Dean said it. And this is so powerful. He said, anticipation is always worse, almost always worse than participation. Anticipation is worse than participation. What is he
RV (02:58):
Saying there? He’s saying that whenever you are going to set out to conquer something meaningful, whenever you’re gonna set out to do something significant, whenever you’re chasing a new dream, going after a new goal, attempting a new endeavor, the anticipation is worse than the participation. Our minds make things up to be much more difficult than they really are. And by the way, if your brain does this, which I know it does, this doesn’t mean that you are someone who’s doomed for failure. When your brain does this, this is what the brain is supposed to do. Your brain is designed to keep you safe. So when your brain is doing this, it means that you have a perfectly normal, healthy, functioning human brain. Why? Because the brain is designed to keep you alive. Survival is the first and foremost function of the human brain. And the way that you keep somebody alive is by keeping them safe, which means doing things that are comfortable, which means preventing you from doing things that are new and unfamiliar and un uncomfortable and uncertain.
RV (04:14):
So the brain holds you towards certainty, safety and repeated behavior where you already know the outcomes. And so fear is the tactic that your brain uses to keep you safe, right? That’s why my favorite definition of fear is the old acronym FEAR for fear, false evidence appearing real. So what does your brain do? Your brain by design biologically goes into mental mushrooming. It goes into forecasting the worst possible scenario. That’s what the brain, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It is forecasting all the negative things that could happen might happen. What if you know, like, what if there’s things you don’t know? What if you fail? What if you go broke? What if you die? And that’s the brain’s mechanism for keeping you from pursuing new things which are risky and keeping you doing the things you’ve always done, which is safe, which keeps you alive.
RV (05:15):
However, if you’re gonna be a successful person, you gotta overcome that. If you’re going to do something that nobody else has done, you’ve got to think in a way that nobody else thinks. If you’re going to achieve things that you’ve never had, you have to do things you’ve never done. You have to become a different person than you are. You have to set out on a trail that you’ve never been down before. And so it doesn’t mean that your, your brain is somehow faulty when fear shows up, but it also doesn’t mean that that’s the truth about what’s gonna happen. In fact, it’s almost never the truth. And what Dean is saying is the anticipation is worse than the participation. It’s thinking about it and thinking about how hard it could be and how hard it might be. Much more that is much more difficult than the actual doing the things.
RV (06:09):
And so you have to just know that in order for you to be mentally tough, you have to know a little bit about neuroscience. You have to know a little bit about psychology. You have to know a little bit about how your brain works so that you can go, ah,
RV (07:06):
People who are mentally tough have resolved to say, if I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail to something that’s real. If I’m gonna endure setbacks, I’m gonna endure setbacks to things that really showed up. What I am not okay with is I am not gonna allow myself to never achieve and to never even attempt or pursue because I am going to enable myself to be a victim of a figment of my imagination. I am not gonna lose to what is fake. I am not gonna lose to what is made up. I am not gonna lose to what is not real. You have to make that resolution. You have to decide that if you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose to a real opponent. You’re not gonna lose because you were too afraid to step onto the field. And 95% of people, probably 99% of people can’t get past that one hurdle.
RV (07:59):
You get past that one hurdle, you’re on your way because you realize that anticipation is often worse than participation. The second insight that you need to know to build your mental toughness is that you have to build a great plan and put your confidence in the plan, and then simply execute the plan, right? So what you don’t wanna do is be dependent on you having courage in every given any given moment, on any given day, in any given circumstance. What you don’t wanna do is be completely reliant on your gut instinct all the time. What you don’t wanna do is say, woo, you know, I’ll just fly by the seat of my pants and hope I figure this out. What you don’t wanna do is just run blindly into a fire. Like you want to have a plan, and you want that plan to be based on reality, data, experience, logic, rationale, other people’s experience, interviews, coaching, education.
RV (09:08):
You want to create a plan based on pragmatic logic. And what you do, and this is what all like peak performers do, right, is they create a plan and then they focus on executing the plan. Every professional athlete, professional coach, this is what they do. They create the plan. This is what the military does in life and death situations. What do they do? They create the plan. Do they sometimes have to deviate from the plan? Sure, they do, but they have a plan and they work the plan. They put time into creating the plan, and then they execute the plan, right? That’s what a budget does. A good entrepreneur creates a budget. Why? What is a budget? It’s a plan. It’s to go, look, if we have these financial goals, these are the things that need to happen. These are the inputs that need to happen to drive the revenue to this number.
RV (09:57):
And out of the revenue that comes in, we will plan to spend this amount on each of these things, and we will reinvest this amount to, to grow the revenue again. And then we’ll plan to spend X percentage of, of the revenue on each of these line items. It’s a plan. You create a plan and then you execute the plan. Now, greatness sometimes requires that you deviate from the plan, but you have to have a plan first. And you, you put, you put your self-esteem. This is something that I said and take the stairs all the way back in 2012. You put your self-esteem, you put your in your work habits, not into your production. You put your energy, you put your focus, you put your faith, you put your conviction. You, you, you, you put your discipline, you, you put, you put your, your, your faith into your work habits, into the things you control into the plan, executing the plan that you’ve laid out, doing the things that are pragmatic and functional and actionable, not in the results.
RV (10:54):
Because there’s things that show up that you can’t control. And you can’t always control the, you can’t always control the result. You can’t only, I can’t always control the circumstances, but you can control whether or not you set a plan and then you just work the plan. And part of how you overcome your fear of failure, part of how you overcome the fear of failing is, is to say, if I fail at something, my self-worth and my identity is not gonna be wrapped up in the fact that I failed at something. ’cause It wasn’t that I failed, it was that my plan failed. It’s not Rory as a person failed. It’s, I took the time to create a plan. I thought the plan was gonna deliver an outcome. I thought the plan was gonna deliver a result, and then my plan failed to deliver that result.
RV (11:44):
I didn’t fail. The plan failed. I only fail if I didn’t execute the plan. But that, or if I don’t have a plan, but I create a plan and then I execute the plan. Sometimes the plan works, sometimes the plan doesn’t. But if the plan didn’t work, you go, oh, I need to modify my plan. That’s it. It’s not, I’m a failure. I’m horrible. I’ll never be successful. I’m not spiraling down into some sort of de depression, and I’m not, my, my, my confidence, my self-confidence isn’t affected by the fact that I fail. See, people who are not mentally tough have fluctuating confidence when things are going well. They have confidence when things aren’t going well, they don’t have confidence. But people who are mentally tough constantly have confidence even when they’re failing. Why? Because their confidence isn’t based on the outcome. Their confidence isn’t based on result.
RV (12:37):
Their confident is based on their work habits. Their confidence is based on the plan. Their confidence is based on their effort, their discipline, their energy, their confidence comes from controlling what they can control. And if they’re controlling what they can control and they’re failing, there’s nothing to be upset about because you can’t control whether or not you succeed or fail. You can only control what you could control. So if you stay focused on that, you go, I don’t have confidence that fluctuates. Even when I fail, it wasn’t that I failed, it’s that my plan failed. I need, I needed a better plan. The plan was the issue, not me. Now, if I failed to execute the plan, that’s more of something that I have to face accountability for, and I have to take self accountability for, or I have to have accountability with a boss or a, you know, spouse or coworkers or colleagues or partners to say, yeah, we created this plan. I didn’t execute my part of the plan. I gotta own that. That is a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a personal failure, right? That’s a character failure. That’s a, my me not executing. But that’s why you create the plan, put your confidence in the plan, and then you work the plan and you put your self-esteem and your self-confidence and your self-worth in your work habits, not in your results, not in your outcomes. Mentally tough people do that. Number three. Number three, this is big secret, big secret of successful people.
RV (14:01):
It’s not that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. You just have to be willing to do the right things for however long it takes, right? A lot of people talk about doing whatever it takes. Eh, I don’t know about that, right? If it requires me to kill someone, if it requires me to steal, if it requires me to, you know, compromise my own personal health ever, if it requires me to like, turn my back on my family or not be available, right? It’s like, nah, I don’t know. What, what, what I will do though is I will say, if I want something bad enough, I will do the right activities for as long as it takes. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a decade. But if I really, really want it and I still want it, I will continue on course until the mission is complete.
RV (14:58):
You know, I love the, the old sort of tongue in cheek saying that says, I’ve never lost. I’ve only been behind when the, when the clock ran out.
RV (15:44):
But here’s the thing, if you stay focused on that goal, I promise, like if you stay focused on the goal and you really focus on it, you will get the goal. Don’t be discouraged by the deadline. That’s a big part of the point here is don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet the deadline. I think deadlines are important. Deadlines drive stress. That’s what deadlines do. They create stress. Some amount of stress is healthy. A deadline goes, man, we are gonna prioritize this to be completed by this date. And part of that stress creates, you know, it moves you from the inertia of standing still, and it gets you moving and you go, Hey, you better start moving because there’s a deadline. That to me, is healthy. The unhealthy part of deadlines is to go, man, I’m doing everything I freaking can. I’m working the, the most I possibly can.
RV (16:33):
I’m doing everything I know how to do. I’m laying it on the line. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m doing the best I can do, and I’m just not gonna get there by the deadline. Well, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be stressed and you shouldn’t be beaten up. You certainly shouldn’t be beating yourself up. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-confidence. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-worth. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-esteem. You can’t control those things. If you go, man, I am control. I’m working as fast as I can, and I haven’t been able to get there by this deadline, that’s okay.
RV (17:05):
The question is, are you doing everything you can do? Are you doing the best that you can do? And are you willing to do it? If it’s a goal that really matters to you, are you willing to do it? Are you willing to pursue it for however long it takes? Right? And you go, I always thought this, this is gonna sound arrogant, this is gonna sound arrogant. I don’t mean for it to sound arrogant. This is just the straight up truth. The first time I went to the National Speakers Association meeting, I think I was 22 years old, and they were you know, they do this awards banquet every year where they induct up to, I think it’s up to five, maybe six. They up the induct up to five or six people every year into the professional speaking hall of fame. And I’m telling you, I was 22 years old, and I decided, I sat there, right there, and I was like, I’m gonna be a, I’m gonna be the Hall of Fame speaker one day I will be inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame.
RV (18:00):
I made that decision at 22, and it didn’t feel like a big gamble at 22 because a lot of the people who were getting inducted were in their fifties and sixties, and they didn’t start speaking until they were in their forties. And I was like, well, gosh, if I’m, if I’m half as good as these people and I do it, you know, like for twice as long I’m gonna get there. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Now, what I didn’t say is I didn’t have the pressure to go, I’m gonna be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame in five years, or 10 years or 20 years. It was just like, no, this, I’m gonna do this. This is gonna, one day, I’m, this is gonna be me. And I was inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame when I was 37.
RV (18:35):
So was that a success or a failure? Well, on the one hand, you could say that was pretty successful. I’m the youngest American in history to be inducted into the professional speaking Hall of Fame. 37 years old. That’s pretty, that’s pretty amazing. But on the other hand, you go, it took me 15 years. Like, that’s not any faster than it took anybody else. Like, that’s not some child protege. That just means, I started earlier, like straight up somebody who gets inducted in their late fifties if they started speaking in their forties, like I didn’t do it any faster than them. I just did it earlier, right? I did it sooner in my lifespan, but like, I didn’t get there any faster than anybody else, even though I was the youngest person in history. So that’s what I’m talking about is I’m saying like, if you want something, if there’s something that you want bad enough and you go, I’m gonna freaking get this.
RV (19:33):
I’ll tell you, one of mine right now is I’m gonna get a house in 30 a, there’s an area in Florida that I love. It’s just, it is the perfect, to me, it has everything that I dream of when I think of relaxation and God’s creation and what family life should look like and what a community should be like, and assuming that that community doesn’t change sooner or later, we’re going to be there, right? Like, we’re gonna have a place in this one particular area. Why? Because I’m committed to it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. It might take the rest of my life, like, or I’ll die trying, but like, it’s gonna happen and there’s a good chance it’ll happen sooner than that, which would be great if it does. But if it doesn’t, like this is gonna happen. Now, my goal might change at some point, and you know, that that area might become run down or whatever, and I go, oh, I wanna do a different area. But like, the point is, you have to be willing to say, I will do this for however long it takes.
RV (20:37):
And I think people go, I’m a failure. Like I launched a podcast and I didn’t get a million downloads. I, I started posting on Instagram and I don’t have a million followers. I wrote a book and I didn’t sell a million copies. Like I wanted to be a speaker, and I haven’t been on a thousand stages. And you go, well, you failed. By whose timeline? Like, is the clock? Did the clock run out? Like, who’s the person that said the time has expired? You only, you extend your horizon, extend the timeline, be willing to do it for however long it takes to get there. You say, I’ll do it. That person is mentally tough because that person isn’t looking for the shortcut and that person can’t be beat. You go, you go, even if I go slow, I’m not stopping. Even if I take one step, I’m going forward.
RV (21:24):
Even if I fail, I’m failing forward. You, I cannot be stopped from achieving this goal when I decide I will pursue it for however long it takes. And that’s tremendously freeing and it’s tremendously confidence boosting to go like, oh yeah, I’m 22 years old. Like, yeah, I’m a hall of fame speaker. I, I mean, I may not be today, but one day I will be, but like, I already, I already know I will be, I just don’t know when. And then when it happened, it was like, yeah, awesome. I was so excited about it. But it, like, it wasn’t a surprise. It was like, of course. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m so grateful. I’m so happy. I’m happy it happened when it did. I’m kind of bummed it didn’t happen earlier, but I knew it was gonna happen eventually. And it happened, it happened sooner than later.
RV (22:05):
So I’m happy about that. This is like, this is something that I’m gonna do. And then you get to live your life as operating. Like, yeah, this is gonna be me. I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a top salesperson. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great spouse. I, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna gonna be a great, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a great CEO. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great author. Like, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not the year after. But like, if something matters to you and you go, yeah, I wanna change the world. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna start a podcast that changes the world. Can you do that in a year? Me? That might be difficult that you do it in three years, still pretty hard. Can you do it in five years? My guess is if you podcast for five years, even with as many millions of podcasts are out there, I bet five years from now, you start today, you’ll have one of them, you’ll have a very significant podcast that will make a difference in the world.
RV (22:52):
You do it for 10 years. I can virtually guarantee it. Why? Because most people die and they give out, like all you have to do is outlast most people, like straight up. The strategy for success in many ways is you just gotta outlast most people. And it’s the tortoise in the hare, right? This is the old story of the tortoise in the hare. And you’re just like, I’m just gonna keep trucking along. I’m not worried about speed, like whatever. I’ll get there when I get there. So this is what mental toughness looks like. You go, you can’t mess with that person. You can’t stop them because they, they, they’re un mess with a bull because it’s like, I’ve already given up on pressuring myself to do something by a certain time. I just know I’m gonna get there. So it’s like, you can’t stop me. You, you, you can’t, you can’t distract me. I’m on target and I’m committed to be like however long it takes and I’m going, you know, I’m already taking action because I know anticipation
RV (23:45):
Is worse than participation. And my identity is not gonna be thrown astray. I’m not gonna feel sorry for myself or beat up myself or be too arrogant, egotistical if I do achieve it or if I don’t. ’cause My self-esteem is in my work habits. My self-esteem is in the plan, right? If I get success, that means the plan worked. If I don’t get success, that means the plan didn’t work. I gotta modify the plan. But it’s not about me as a person. It’s about the plan and it’s about my habits. And I will show up and do what I said I’m going to do. You do these three things, you’ll be unstoppable, literally unstoppable. You will be mentally tough, and I promise you do these three things. You will be different than 99% of people. So just outlast everyone. Build these into your psyche, decide however long it’s gonna take. Put your self-esteem into your work habits, work to plan, and it will come true for you. I promise.
Ep 499: Non Competes Are No More – What You Need To Know | Matthew Miller Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So non-competes are going away. What do you need to know to stay compliant as an employer? So there is a new ruling by the FTC, right? The Federal Trade Commission on non-competes. Here’s what you need to know, is that the new non-compete rule is going into effect on September 4th, 2024, right? So as I record this, we are heading into middle of May, 2024. So in a short four months, this is happening. So there’s a cushion of window to get yourself prepared. What does it mean? Right? So this new comprehensive ban is federal, which means it is nationwide, not state by state, and it is banning all new, non-competes with all workers, right? So employees including senior executives. So this includes 10 90 nines consultants, employees, including senior executives. The final rule states that it is unfair to have a non-compete as it’s preventing a method of competition, and therefore they are banning it, right?
AJV (01:15):
So that is happening September 4th for existing non-compete. So anything that is established and in place, I would say prior to today, which is May 14th, right? So as I record this, anything that is before today would be existing. Like if you know about this, it is wise and I would advise you, not legally, but as a, a friend friendly advisor to go ahead and put these things into place because they’re coming, right? So what I’m talking about is pre-signed employee documents that have non-compete sent for those. This has a different, a little bit of a ruling for senior executives, and then it’s so it’s different for senior executives than it is for I would just call ’em non-senior executives. So what is the defining tool term of a senior executive? Typically it is someone who is making more than $150,000 a year, who is also in some sort of policy or decision making capacity, right?
AJV (02:21):
So don’t hold me to that for the, to the dime, but that’s what is technically considered a senior executive role. They have decision or policymaking power making more than $150,000, give or take a thousand or $2, right? So for those, for those individuals, for senior executives existing non-competes can remain in place, right? So existing can, but here, moving forward, again, I’m saying May 14th, like as you know about this, don’t be trying to like, just like hire a bunch of people if that’s not in your best interest. But this, this ban on September 4th also includes new senior executive positions, and they will, that will not hold to them. So it will hold, if you have a non-compete for existing ones, it will not for future ones after September 4th. So that’s the first thing. So if you are a non senior executive, right?
AJV (03:19):
So all work, all other workers different than senior executives it is not, nothing is enforceable after the effective date. It’s just gone, right? So existing ones for senior executives will hold intact, new ones will not, and for all other workers, it’s gone, right? So all other 10 99 or W2 employees the non-compete will not be enforceable after September 4th, okay? That’s, that’s, that’s the general thing that you need to know about this. Now there are some things that you should also know that are not a part of like this, you know, technically this federal ruling which are non-solicitation are staying intact, right? So as non-competes go away, which there are pros and cons to this, right? I used to be in the consulting world and this would be very advantageous for me in that role to not have a non-compete. But there are some nuances to that thing of proprietary information confidential information trade secrets, right?
AJV (04:22):
So there are some things that are still going to stay intact for a, you know, consultant work for hire 10 99, where if I, I’m currently being hired by, you know, X company with certain trade secrets, confidential information, proprietary whatever I’m not able to go and compete with a direct competitor with those things during my timeframe of work. But as soon as my timeframe of work is over the very next day, no non-compete will be eligible to me, right? So that is very much in my favor, although there is still some protection for the company, for the business owner who is hiring someone to come in. And this is where you just really need to make sure that as a, an employer as a business owner, this, this, you get this four month window that you really need to meet with your attorney.
AJV (05:12):
This is the time that you need to do contract reviews service agreement reviews for you and vendors. If you, if you hire consultants or 10 99 make sure you’re talking to your employment attorney about your current contracts because as non-competes go away, that doesn’t mean that non-solicitation is going away, right? So I think it is a fair to go, hey, like, you know, there are free market free trade here, right? If you choose to leave here, you can go do your own thing. You, yes, fine, but you cannot take our trade secrets and use them. You cannot take our confidential information. And this is where you really need to get into the nitty gritty
AJV (05:57):
Cross your t’s, dot, your i’s and your agreements to make sure that you actually have provisions, you have clauses that that does protect your proprietary information, your systems, processes, methodologies, frameworks, your ip, right? Those need to be in your employment agreements. Now, I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is my opinion as a business owner that just has non-competes are going away. Doesn’t mean that you can’t still be protecting yourself and your business as you want to be free, open, and transparent with your team. Of course you do. At the same time protecting, you know, trade secrets and proprietary information as well as keeping your non solicitations intact, right? So just because an employee at free will decides to leave and go start their own thing, even if it’s in competition with you, they cannot recruit other employees.
AJV (06:50):
They cannot recruit away your clients and they cannot take your information and use it as their own, right? So there are some things here that are very much in favor of the individual, the employee, which is fine, right? But that’s where you as the business owner need to step in and go, great. And now I need to double down in these other areas with confidential information and my IP and non-solicitation and everything else to make sure that you are fairly protected, right? Not being overbearing or this is no time to panic. Most non-competes. We’re holding up in a court a lot anyways mo there are many states that have banned this years ago, like California. So yes, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of flurry about this, which is part of why we’re making this many podcasts right now about it.
AJV (07:44):
And at the same time, very few non-compete lawsuits we’re holding up in court anyways. So this is just kind of like making it a federal stance overarching of what really was hard to uphold anyways. But it’s a great opportunity and a necessary time to update all of your agreements as well as review and ensure that you do have other clauses protecting your information, your ip, as well as doubling down on non-solicitation as the non-compete will be no longer allowed. It will be illegal to have that. So you do need to ensure that all agreements are updated. Those are removed by September 4th because at that point people can sue, people can turn you in. The federal government even has a website and a form where you can go and submit people who still have this in their agreements. Don’t be one of those people.
AJV (08:39):
And go ahead and take care of this now. So quick high level update. If you need more information, talk to your attorney, right?
Ep 497: 4 Principles of Making More Money | Mel Abraham Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
I wanna share with you four principles of making more money, right? Like, how do you make more money? What do you need to know to make more money? And this was inspired by the recent conversation I had with Mel Abraham on our podcast. And I wanna start by highlighting a couple things that Mel said. So this is not part of the four things that I want to share with you, but there were a couple, there were two really beautiful things that he said that I do want to share with you. ’cause These, these are from him, not from me, but he said, you should focus on building safety first and growth second. Safety first and growth second. And I actually really like that. I agree with that strategy. And I, I think there are also two different parts of your life. There’s, there’s times where financially your focus is safety.
RV (01:00):
That is a different set of rules, a different paradigm, a a different, a set of strategies, a different way of thinking when you’re trying to build safety. And then you’re going for growth. Once you have safety, then you go for growth. And I think thinking about it as like two different strategies and first get safe, then focus on growth is important. ’cause If you try to grow before you have a safe foundation, I think that’s a big mistake. And I think that’s a really big risk. You’ll see that reflected in my four strategies. But I’d never heard anyone say that. And Mel said that. And I, and I love that. And the second thing that Mel said, which was my favorite thing that he said in our interview together was he said, your family doesn’t care about profit as much as they care about your presence.
RV (01:45):
Your family doesn’t care as much about your profit as they do care about your presence. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs run the risk of saying, I have to make more money for my family. And in reality, they’re using that as a justification to spend so much more time away from their family that it’s like they’re, they’re giving up. Well, the thing that the family really wants, which is just more of you. And they don’t need more money. They, they, they do want more of you and they need more of you. And I, I never heard someone say it quite like that, so I love that. So thank you for that, Mel. And if you haven’t yet, go listen to the interview of Mel Abraham on our podcast. It’s really, really good. So I wanna walk you through four principles of making more money, having more financial security, more financial stability, more growth, more excitement, just in your financial life. And the first one is simple. Be debt free. Be debt free. Now, I, I know that you’ve probably heard that before, but it’s such a critical one, and I wanna explain why. I wanna make sure that this really sinks in as to why being debt free
RV (02:58):
Is such a good idea and why being debt free is so important to building your wealth. So first of all, from a, from a emotional standpoint, okay? There’s, there’s an, there’s an emotional side of this and a logical side of this. The emotional part of being debt free is really where I think the power most lies, which is to go, your level of peace changes when you don’t have debt. Like your stress level goes way down. And maybe you don’t have a nicer car, maybe you don’t have a nicer house. Maybe you don’t have the nicest tv. Maybe you don’t go on the biggest, most grand vacations. Maybe you don’t wear, you know, brand new, you know, brand label clothes. But, but what you exchange, you give up all of that. But what you get in return, the payoff is peace. And I really believe that peace is the new profit.
RV (04:02):
What we really want is peace. And even people I know that are super wealthy, there’s lots of people I know that are super wealthy, they don’t have peace. And there’s people who maybe don’t have a lot of money, but they do have peace. And where you get peace from, and to use Dave Ramsey’s term financial peace, to me, financial peace is less the result of how much money you make. And it is more the result of how little debt you have. Financial peace is more, is is less of the result. Financial peace is less of the result of how much money you make. And it is more the result of how little debt you have. In other words, the lower the debt you have, the more peace you have. That’s what the real secret is, because when you have debt, you have to work, not just have to work.
RV (04:53):
When, when you have debt, you have to make money. You have to, because you owe money and you owe money on timelines, you owe money on deadlines and deadlines create stress. And so when you have debt that creates stress, you have to make money to pay off that debt. The moment you don’t have debt, you don’t have as much stress, right? There’s always some level of stress to have to earn, to make money, to provide food on the table. But, you know, it doesn’t take, but, you know, maybe a few hundred, several hundred dollars a month to be able to provide food. And you know, I mean, someone who could make $12,000 a year could, could provide more than the amount of food they would ever need. Now, you might also have shelter that you have to provide, but, but even somebody making maybe $24,000 a year, if you had no other debt and all you had was like rent and food and like utilities, you could do that on a couple thousand dollars a month or realistically in the, in the us.
RV (05:55):
And that’s not blowing it outta the water, right? Like that’s not being filthy rich. Like that’s just going, but you would have less stress. And this is something that AJ and I decided, and, and look, we’re we’re far, we’re, we’re nowhere near the richest people in the world, but we’re far, far away from being the poorest. And one of the decisions that we made in our marriage that I think has changed our marriage and it has changed our family, and I actually think it has increased our physical health, is we decided we don’t need more money. As much as we need less stress, we don’t need more money as much as we need less stress. So what gives you the least amount of stress with, with, with money is being debt free. That’s the emotional side of it. Now, the, the technical side of being debt free, and this is obvious, it’s not so obvious to so many people, but it’s to go look, if you have no debt, like if you have, you know, debt is money going out the door, right?
RV (07:05):
That’s money you owe that’s going out the door. Well, it’s kinda like if there’s a hole in your ship there, if you plug that hole, there’s no money going out the door. So if you plug that hole, then even if you make a little money, you get to keep that little bit of money and that little bit of money, you know, next month piles on top of the little money and that piles on top of a little bit of money and it piles on top of a little bit of money and it piles on top of a little bit of money. And so it’s not about the quantity, right? It’s about the idea that whatever is coming into you, you actually get to keep, and you actually feel yourself and you see your account making progress. You see your account growing because it’s not all pre-assigned.
RV (07:47):
It’s not spent before you have it. It’s not going out the door, right? When you get it, it stays there. And, and that’s the, the logical part that should be obvious. But it’s the not so obvious strategy when it comes to money is it’s like, even if you only make a little, you get to keep a little. And next month when you make a a little bit more next month, that little gets piled on the little you have. And so you have a little bit more and a little bit more. And, and, and so that’s really the power. But what, what’s stressful is keeping up with the Joneses and having to have the nicest house and the nicest car and the biggest va biggest TV and the, you know, the grandest vacations and all that sort of stuff that, that’s stressful. You don’t need it. You don’t need it. So be debt free. The second principle of making more money that I just, I want to share with you, and, and by the way, if you haven’t gone through my, my free training High Earner Habits, it is the seven psychological ways that wealthy people think that’s different from everybody else. You have to go through that training like it’s a couple hours, but it, it’s, it, it teaches the best of what I have learned
RV (08:54):
About money and wealth and financial freedom. And it’s free. And, and you can go to my Instagram page and you can just comment HEH down below on my Instagram page, or you can you can go to rory vaden blog.com and click on free trainings and, you know, sign up for hiring your habits that way. But like, you gotta learn this stuff and, and, and, and nobody teaches this stuff. It, it’s, they don’t teach it in schools. And, and, you know, most of, most of the people are broke. So who are you gonna learn it from? You gotta learn it from people who have figured this stuff out. And one of the greatest differences of wealthy people compared to everybody else is that wealthy people spend their money to save time. What most people do is they spend their time to save money, right? They’ll spend three hours cutting coupons so that they can save $20 at the grocery store.
RV (09:53):
Now, $20 is not nothing, but what if you put that three hours into something else that was more income producing, or they’ll park, you know, an hour away from a stadium or their meeting to save money on parking, where it’s like, well, you could pay the money for parking and you could be closer. Now it’s, it’s, it, it all depends on how much money you have in total and like what your circumstance is. But the point is, I mean, the other thing is people will go, you know, small business owners will say, well, I, you know, I will do everything myself so that I don’t have to pay the money to hire somebody else. But, you know, if you can’t hire an assistant, then you are an assistant making an assistance’s wage. And that I talk about in my second book, procrastinate on Purpose, five permissions to Multiply Your Time.
RV (10:37):
The whole delegate chapter is just understanding mathematically it doesn’t make sense. You’re not actually saving money if you’re spending time doing a task that you could pay somebody less money to do than the opportunity cost of you using your time somewhere else, making more money. And this is just, just, just something you just gotta, like, it’s a switch you have to flip. It’s, it’s a realization you have to make. It’s a habit you have to change. And it’s just like a paradigm that, that, that has to be transformed is that most people spend their time to save money. Rich people spend their money to save their time to, they, they, they spend money to get their time back. They spend money to pay people to do things so that they get more time so that they can reallocate their time into higher income producing activities.
RV (11:31):
And that’s just, that’s just the way that it is. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a hundred percent truth of every single like, you know, really old ultra wealthy person that I know. The third thing is that if you really wanna make more money, you wanna be, choose to be paid for your results, not be paid for your time. Now, you can make, you know, if you’re a top level executive at a very large organization, you can get good money for your time, but you’re still trading money for time. So that can be okay. Like if your financial, you know, vision is, is not past a certain point, I’m not saying it’s wrong to trade your money for time, especially early on, that’s the fastest way to make money, is to trade your time for money. But the least scalable way long term to grow your income is to trade your money for time.
RV (12:21):
So you have to find vehicles that are create money disproportionate to the amount of time that you put in. So it’s not wrong to do it, it’s just saying that if you wanna become super wealthy, if you wanna be ultra wealthy, like really wealthy, it, it’s gonna happen from separating your time from the results. And that’s why sales is one of the first ways that people become really wealthy because you get paid not for how many calls you make, not for how much time you spend prospecting. You get paid per sale that you create if you’re in a commission, assuming you’re in a commission based sales position. And that was how I started to learn how to do this. And, and, and that was where I first experienced the power of being paid for my results was to go, well, if I could create a lot of sales in a short amount of time, I can actually make an extravagantly disproportionate amount of money for the time that I was spending where I was just getting paid hourly or as a salary for my time.
RV (13:26):
Now, is that risky? Yeah, it’s risky. Is it scary? Yeah, it’s fricking terrifying. But if you can learn to do that and you, and you develop certain skill sets of being a great salesperson or sometimes it’s being an artist or being a content creator, or being an entrepreneur in general or being an investor, those are ways that you get paid not based on how much time. Now if you fail, you’re not gonna make anything and that’s the risk. But if you can learn those skills and you can succeed, then you can get more money for your time. The other thing is, man, if you get a, if you ever get a chance to be a part of a company, ev even if, if even if it as you’re an employee, but if you’re a part of a company where they you know, offer some type of a profit sharing plan or, or, you know, even if they’ll invest into your retirement and things, right?
RV (14:16):
That’s why investing is powerful, because investing, you’re, you’re, you are trading time for money, but it’s not your time, it’s just the compounding interest of time and your money, time turns money into more money. So as you have money invested, that money starts to grow. But it’s not, it’s, it’s separated from how much time you’re spending working but it’s connected to how much time you have that money invested. So, you know, investing earlier in your life, investing when you are younger matters even more than investing a lot of money when you’re older. So figure out ways to, to, to be paid for your results and not for your time. And there’s many ways to do that. There’s, there’s profit, there’s commission, there’s bonuses, there’s profit sharing, there’s investing those, those are the, are the main skill sets. There’s operating a business, which is, which is again profit or it’s just agreeing to someone to say, you know, give me your to-do list and I will give you a number and you pay me for a project.
RV (15:17):
You don’t pay me for a time. You know, you ask me to, you know, design you a logo and you pay me to give you a logo that you’re satisfied with and you don’t, you know, charge for whether it took one hour or 10 hours or a hundred hours, and you get really good at your craft and then you charge for a, a result or a project. And, and that’s the other thing is you get paid for results. You can be a consultant who doesn’t get paid anything for your time, and you say, just pay me a percentage of the growth or a percentage of the increase or percentage of the profit. Is it risky? Yeah. But that is really where wealth ultimately comes from, is you gotta be separating your time and, and being paid for your time. If you wanna get really, really wealthy right now, if you just wanna make a lot of money, you can be really good at your job, get a great company, your income will grow over time, and that’s awesome.
RV (16:02):
But if you can find vehicles where you can, in order to become really wealthy, you have to eventually detach money from time you have to. And then the fourth thing is, the fourth way to make a lot of money is to de-risk your own business. You de-risk your own business. Like being an entrepreneur and starting your own business is the best way to make the most amount of money because you’re in charge of your own destiny and you’re separating your time for results. Now it’s extremely difficult, right? Don’t think it’s easy at all. It’s very difficult. And for many years you’ll be underpaid, right? For many years you’re putting in more time than you’re getting paid for. But if you have those skills and you learn those skills and you get good coaching from people like us or others who can teach you marketing and sales and operations and customer service and finance and tax, and you know, it, and infrastructure and project management, like if you can master those skills, then you can build a machine that makes money.
RV (17:05):
Well you should always be the number one investor in your own dream. And I really believe where I go, man, the number one thing I could ever invest in is into my own education, right? Like, personal development is the number one investment because I will get that return the rest of my life, right? Whether I spend 20 bucks on a book or $2,000 on a course, or $200,000 on private coaching from someone very high level who can teach me a skill, it’s like, yeah, $200,000 is a lot of money, but if I have the rest of my life and, and, and that skill that I’m learning is very, very valuable, I go, I have the rest of my life to earn back that investment. So the number one thing you should invest on is your own personal development, your own education. But the number two thing to invest in is to your own business, right?
RV (17:50):
Is, is into your own income producing activities. And that’s where I go, well geez, you know, if I invest into the stock market, I, you know, hopefully I get eight to 12% on my money. If I build my own company that has a 20% profit margin, that means I’m getting 20% on my money. So the the, if you have a business, the number one thing you can do is invest to grow your own business. And that’s why it’s like, yes, get coaching, get technology, hire people, you know, build your personal brand. Like those investments are huge because they multiply over time again and again and again into the future. But now investing in your own business can be risky. What makes a, what makes any risky? What what makes any business risky to invest in is how volatile the business is. So how do you de-risk that investment of any business, but especially your own ’cause, your own, you have control over super simple.
RV (18:46):
You’re gonna invest in the three Ps people, product and processes, people product and processes. If you want to de-risk your own business, if you wanna make more guaranteed money from your own business, if you want more stability in your business’s ability to produce more income for you, you have to get great people and spend money, recruiting, hiring, training, developing, promoting people. You’re investing money into people. By far, our people are the number one expense at brand builders group. It, it, and it’s the number one thing we spend money on our, in our, on our life, other than maybe taxes is we spend money. We are paying people constantly. We hire people for all sorts of things personally and professionally. We are constantly hiring people. So that’s the first thing. The second is, invest in your product, have an amazing product, make it look awesome, make it be awesome, make make it made of awesome materials and, and, you know, create an awesome product.
RV (19:49):
Like if it’s a service, make it an awesome experience. Invest in making sure that the thing that you are selling is absolutely phenomenal. That will de-risk the investment in your own business. And then the third is processes, processes, processes, processes. You need better processes. The the better processes you have, the less risk there are inside of any company. And in your company, you’ve got full control. So you need to invest in processes. And, and that could be technology, it could be equipment, it could just be paying people to spend time while they’re at work documenting exactly how to do every task in the company. Why? Because if that person quits dies or gets fired, now you have a process that someone else can be hired and they can step in and they don’t have to figure it all out. They can follow the process. A company really is what is the value of a company.
RV (20:46):
It’s effectively the people in the processes. That’s it. And, and I guess to the product to some extent, but it’s really the people in the processes. And then you can create products. You have to invest in your processes. This type of thinking, at least for me and most of my life and most of my friends, was very rare. It took me years to learn these things. Heads of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I invested to learn how to think the way that wealthy people think so that I could become like wealthy people, you know, become wealthy and it, and it has worked. And so you’ve got to learn from people who have done, been there and done that and understand it and who are good teachers. Again, just type HEH down below on my Instagram profile, and I will send you my free training Hire Earner Habits, seven Ways That Wealthy People Think and Live.
RV (21:38):
Or you can go to rory vaden.com, click on Free Trainings, and you can sign up for Higher Earner Habits there. That’s a great start. It’s totally free. Like it, it is the best of the best of what I’ve learned about money. I give it to you for free. So I wanna encourage you to do that. But in addition to that, do these four things. Be debt free. Spend your money to save time, choose to get paid on your results and de-risk your own business By investing in people, products, and processes. You do those things, you’ll be well on your way.
Ep 495: Trademarks. Do I Really Need One? | Autumn Witt Boyd Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So wanna know how to protect your personal brand. I just got off of an awesome conversation with a friend of mine, autumn Witt Boyd, who is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which is kind of a unique law firm in the personal brand space that she really caters to people who have personal brands, courses, books, keynotes, podcasts but anyone who would consider themselves a content creator. So if you’re listening to this going, I don’t know if I’m a content creator, I’m an entrepreneur or a small business owner. If you have a methodology or a framework to your business, this applies to you. You are a content creator. If you have a robust website or our blogs or you put out a bunch of free content, guess what? You’re a content creator even if you don’t think you are.
AJV (00:50):
And so we had this amazing conversation on the influential personal brand podcast, and I thought it was worthy enough to recap it in a shorter conversation of just how do you protect your personal brand? And one of the first things that we should really consider is how do we do that in a proactive manner, right? So there’s things to do on the backend. Those are always more time consuming and more expensive. So what are some of the things that we can, as we’re getting started, or even before we get started to protect our personal brands? So, couple of quick things that I thought were just worthwhile to share with you guys. Number one, make sure that you’re starting from a clean slate, right? So if you’re in the very beginning phases of your business and you haven’t come up with even a name for your business or your personal brand, or a title for a book, a keynote, a course, a, a curriculum, a framework, a methodology, whatever it is, right?
AJV (01:43):
This is the best place to start, is make sure that you’re starting on, you know, solid ground. And there’s, there’s nothing else in the marketplace that’s already being actively used, right? And there’s some nuance to that, but I just thought this was a good, healthy checklist is as you’re, as you’re coming up with the name or the title for your things, right? So again, those are variety of things, right? Could be company name, brand name book title, course title, keynote title, podcast title. Just think titles, right? Names brands, right? Brands have names. So these, these are some things you wanna just do to make sure you’re just
AJV (02:59):
That that’s a first round filter as you’re kind of going through what we call the title tests. This is what we call the availability test, right? So if you’re a part of the Brand Builders Group community we talk about this and finding your brand DNA, which we did trademark. So on that note this is one of the five title tests. And one of the things is going, is it available? Don’t take something that’s not available. So that’s the first round filter. Is it trademark, right? Is it already active and in use by someone else with a, with a legal trademark? Number two do a thorough Google search, right? These are DIY things. You don’t have to have an attorney to do these things, which means it costs your time, but it’s saving you dollars. So do a thorough Google search.
AJV (03:42):
What do I mean by thorough? Go at least to pages 5, 6, 7 on Google to see if anything pops up. And for all intents and purposes, screenshot all of the work so that you have proof. Make sure that when you’re screenshotting things, it shows the date on your calendar of like, Hey, on this date, right? Screenshots, also share dates. Don’t delete that, right? Label it with the date. But it’s better if it can share. Show your calendar for proof. But those are really important. Same thing with the US Office of Patent and trademarks. Whatever you can do to have proof that on this date, this is what I took, this is my proof, my documentation. Same thing with Google. Because to today, it might not be there, but a week from now it might, right? So it’s always good when you came up with something to make sure that you’re, you’re just taking the one extra step of documentation for proof and just wanna put those in your archive files.
AJV (04:39):
Save ’em for a rainy day, hopefully you’ll never need ’em. Third thing is check social media platforms for that title, right? So, you know, I use the brand title better than ever, so I’ll just use that, right? Not in use on anything with Google. It was not trademarked. It was there’s no podcasts, there’s no books, there’s, you know, there’s all the things, right? So that’d be the next thing. Do an Amazon search and just see if it’s in use. One of the things that we talk about on the podcast interview with Autumn Whit Void is just because it’s a book title does not mean you can’t use it. Doesn’t mean you should, but you cannot trademark a book title by itself. You have to have an entire series of things for it to actually get trademarked. So it cannot just be a book title. So if you have a book title and a keynote title and a course title all with the same title, now that’s a brand, but a book is not a brand. So you cannot trademark a book title. So just because it pops up doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just doesn’t mean you should, right? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should always. So you just wanna go and, and do the, the due diligence, right? If it was an Amazon book that was released 10 years ago
AJV (05:57):
And five people bought it and there’s no reviews, but the, you know, just use your common sense knowledge there of like what you should and shouldn’t do. But, you know, those are things that you wanna check, right? So check for book titles just to go, like if you find it there, then pull up the website, right? Is it in use? Is there anything else in there? Even if they don’t have a trademark, is it in use elsewhere? Because you don’t wanna be competing about what someone else already has claim over. There’s enough ideas and enough other titles that we can come up with. So those are just things to pay attention to. Next one is do a podcast search, right? So go through the iTunes library or wherever you listen to your podcast and do some title searches. And go, Hey, is this title being used here?
AJV (06:42):
Right? So you wanna be doing you know, clearly the US patent and trademark search. You wanna do Amazon search a good thorough five to six page deep Google search do a podcast search and then you know, the social media, right? And then do it for anything that would be on handles on the primary platforms that you would be using, right? So if you’re gonna have a YouTube channel, make sure it’s not in use on anything else’s, right? Make sure this isn’t someone’s handle on Instagram or make sure this isn’t a title actively in use on LinkedIn. So those are some of the key places that will just help you make sure that when you come up with something before you get emotionally invested in it do these availability tests and make sure that it’s available. ’cause Starting with a clean slate is one of the most important things you can do to have a good secure brand.
AJV (07:35):
And then it also gives you proof when you do all this documentation that you were first in use, right? So there is this idea of there is a race to use. In other words, there is a race to who’s gonna use it first, be the first. And if you’re gonna do it, then last but not least, take the necessary steps to get what you can trademarked or copyright, right? That doesn’t mean everything needs to be, but if you’re gonna have an entire brand bill around something, take the few hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars even and protect that. If that’s gonna be something that is gonna make you money, it’s gonna stay in the test of time. In other words, you’re gonna be using it for a while and you have an emotional investment in it, then it is worth the time and the money ’cause it’s gonna take time to do it and some money.
AJV (08:24):
But if this is your business title, your brand title, it is worth it. So once you find that it is clear, it’s available, it’s in use, take that next step. Do the due diligence, get an attorney and file your trademark and protect your brand, right? The more you do it on the front end, the less expensive it’s gonna be later on. So how do you protect your brand, make sure it’s really yours, and then take the next step to legally protect it, to make sure that you get to keep that brand and nobody else can take it from you.
Ep 493: 5 Ways to Create Limitless Power | Jim Kwik Episode Recap
RV (00:01):
I wanna share with you five of the greatest lessons that I learned from Jim kwik. So Jim is a client of ours and a friend, and somebody that I very much would consider a mentor, and recently interviewed him on our podcast. If you did not listen to it, you have got to go listen to this episode. It was absolutely incredible. And what I wanna share with you, here are my five biggest takeaways from that interview. Jim originally told me that he only had like 20 minutes for the interview. I think we ended up going 45. He, he got into this mode of just really pouring out his heart for our community and what we do, and sharing his story. And it’s inspiring for mission-driven messengers. But so there’s so many takeaways that came out of it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull my five favorite ones that just immediately spoke to me.
RV (00:53):
So number one is that your labels are your limits. And if you continue to fight for your limitations, then you get to keep them. That is one of his direct quotes that hit me so hard because it’s absolutely true, right? First of all, your labels are your limits. And sometimes our, our labels initially come from somebody else, right? Somebody calls us stupid, somebody calls us, you know, poor, or somebody else says we’re weird. Somebody else says, we’re like, you know, we don’t have what it takes. We’re not, we’re not cut out for it. We’re not from the right family. We, right? And so those labels sometimes become our limits, but then we often allow those limits to set hold in our life, and we start to fight for ’em. And we say things like, we start to make that our narrative, and we tell other people, and we tell ourselves why we can’t do things.
RV (01:50):
Oh, I’m getting so old. I, you know, I can’t exercise anymore ’cause I’m so old, or I’m always so bad at remembering names, or I’ve never been good at math, or like, yeah, I’m just not a good salesperson. Or like yeah, I don’t, you know, I don’t understand the social media stuff or like you know, I, I just, I’m, I’m too busy to, you know, do whatever, like, give back in whatever way. And we fight for those limits. And those limits, like what Jim said, is the, the problem with that is that when you fight for your limits, you get to keep them. That is a sobering truth, a sobering moment. The next thing that he said that really stuck out to me was when he was telling this story about meeting the, the, the father of his friend who changed his life. And he said, he said, Jim, you’re this close to changing your life. You’re this close to changing your life. And then he was pointing at his head, you know, the distance between his own brain, right? And, and going, it’s the six inches inside of your own, like your, your own head. You’re we’re
RV (02:58):
That close. You’re that close to changing your life. You’re that close. If you change, if you change what you think about yourself, if you, if you can, if you can change the way that you what you tell yourself about yourself, if you can learn about how your brain operates, we’re that close, right? You’re that close to changing your life a few inches. It’s getting your head straight. It’s getting your mind right. It’s getting your, your thinking ironed out in my take the stairs book. I talk about the creation principle of integrity. How you, you know, you think it, you speak it, you act, and then it happens. But it starts with the thought. You have to get the thought, right? First, permanent changes in your actions are require permanent changes in your thinking. They require permanent changes in your thinking. You can’t cover up, you know, poor thinking with actions.
RV (03:57):
That’s a diet, that’s a fad that you will change temporarily and it will go away. You have to rewire your programming. You have to rewire your thinking. If you want to create a permanent change in your life, that’s, that’s different. That’s, that’s rewriting the neural programming. It’s not just pos, it’s not just positive thinking. It’s not just personal development. It’s neuroscience, it’s psychology, it’s biology. You have to form new neural pathways in your brain. That leads me to the third, my third favorite thing that Jim said was when he said that if you’re struggling, if you’re thinking about quitting, if you’re hitting a ceiling, if you’re being blocked, if you’re plateaued, if you’re stuck, if it’s not working, you need to change your perspective. And the two fastest ways to change your perspective are to get new, to get around new people and new education, new education, new people, and new education.
RV (04:57):
That’s so true. That has been true in every moment of my life. Every time I pursued some new goal that seemed impossible, some new dream that I, I had no business doing, trying to, or, or, or coaching somebody else on that journey or, or trying to work with them to, to accomplish something that’s never been done before. Getting the right people, getting around the right people changes everything. And getting new education, getting education from the people who have done it before. It changes everything, right? And this is why, like, I, I, I just have to encourage you unapologetically that if you are somebody who wants to build your personal brand, if you are someone who wants to become an author or a speaker, you need to go to free brand call.com/podcast and request a call with our team. Jim Quick is a client of ours, right?
RV (05:43):
You could listen to the interview, right? Listen to what he said about how we’ve helped him. Now, he was massively successful before us, but we’re working with, like people like him. We’re, we’re, we’re adding value to people like him. And we’re, we, we see what people like him are doing behind the scenes. And we know something about this. And so, if you’re stuck, if you’re, if you’re speaking business, your coaching business, your consulting practice, your, your professional services firm, your network marketing company, your entrepreneur, your entrepreneurial endeavor, or your side hustle. If they’re not growing as fast as you want them to, you need to be around new people. And you need new education. That’s what we do specifically for those people, experts, entrepreneurs, right? Professional service providers. Like, that’s, that’s our world. Request a call with us, talk to us free brand call.com/podcast. Get perspective.
RV (06:34):
If it’s not us, get it from somebody, right? Get it from somebody. And, and I will, I will again underscore and, and highlight Jim’s book, limitless, right? I don’t read every book of every person who comes on the show. I can’t, right? Like I’ve got a stack of other things that I’m also reading, but like, this is a book that I highly recommend, limitless. I have read the book. It is so powerful. It is a, a, a, a user manual for your brain. It’s, it’s important. I think it should be mandatory reading for like every, I think it should be mandatory reading for every 18-year-old person to read, to read this book, and to read Take the stairs, and to read the trust edge and to read financial peace. Those are like some of the books that I go, man, everybody should have to read it.
RV (07:17):
But if you haven’t, read this one. Get it and get new education. Or, you know, get it from somebody. If it’s not from us or it’s not from Jim, get it from somebody. The fourth thing that Jim said that I absolutely love, that was a complete, you know, just great reminder is you’re one step away from completely changing the direction of your life, right? It’s one thing to go changing your life is hard work. Changing your life takes some time. You don’t change your life instantaneously, overnight. But you can start changing your life with one step, one moment, right? To, to biblically. There’s a beautiful word in scripture that the word is repent in the English language. But many people think the word repent means to be sorry, but that’s not really the nature of the word. Repent. The, the nature of the word repent means to turn in the opposite direction, which is part of how you demonstrate that you’re sorry for something.
RV (08:18):
That’s part of how you demonstrate that you wanna change, that you wanna change your life, that you wanna change your behavior, that you wanna change who, who you are as a person is to repent, to turn another direction, to take a step in a different direction. And you go, you know, the moment you turn your life isn’t completely different, but your direction is completely different. And once your direction is completely different, your destination will be completely different. And your destination is the inevitable outcome of your direction. So while I can’t change your destination in the snap, the snap of a finger, like you can’t immediately fast forward to the destination you can in the snap of a finger, in one moment, change your direction. And if you change your direction, you ultimately will change your destination. Because the destination is the inevitable byproduct of the direction and the direction you can change overnight, the direction you can change immediately, the direction you can change with one step, change your direction.
RV (09:17):
That’s so powerful, such an important reminder. And then the fifth thing that Jim shared, which is where I just feel like we’re brothers from, we’re brothers from other mothers, is to go, you know, you can sense this guy’s story, right? This guy’s, Jim’s superpower for most of his life was being invisible, was being unseen. He was hiding deliberately because he was the kid with the broken brain, right? Because he was the kid that the other students made fun of. He was hiding. And then even once he sort of found his power and he found his gift, and he was able to make money, he still never wanted to become well known. And he didn’t want to do that. He, he, he was, he’s introverted. He, he was shy, he was fine living, he was comfortable living in the shadows. So why then did he break free from that?
RV (10:10):
Why did he break free and start one of the biggest podcasts in the world with a hundred million downloads? Why did he start one of the most successful YouTube channels with one and a half million subscribers? Right? Why did he, why did he write a book, right? Why did he even ever work with brand builders group in the first place and, and, and write a book, and then rewrite the book and, and sell a million copies of his book? Like why did he do that? It was because of number five, ultimately, even though he wanted to hide ultimately, even though he was a master of being invisible, ultimately, that even though he didn’t care about fame or nor notoriety, ultimately all of those things fell subservient to a moral obligation to serve, a moral obligation to serve. That’s what it means to be a mission-driven messenger. It means you have an a moral obligation, you have a duty, you have a responsibility, you have a calling, you have a command, you have a summoning, you, you have a voice that you cannot quiet because it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the people out there in the world calling you and saying, I need you. I need your help. I need your wisdom. I need your perspective. I need your expertise. I need your advice. I need your strategies. I need your technique. I need you.
RV (11:34):
It’s not about your fame, your vanity, your riches, your followers. It’s about service, a moral obligation to serve. And if you’re a true mission-driven messenger, you have to stop hiding. You have to get out of the, get out of the shadows. You need to come out from behind the curtain. You need to, to, to get out and share with people. Share your story, right? Think of how many people, Jim’s life, his stories impacted the kid with the broken brain, the kid that was made fun of the kid who was dropping out of school, the kid who was letting his parents down, then becoming one of the smartest people in the world, and the brain coach to Will Smith and Hugh Jackman and Alex Rodriguez and the Rock and the, and half of the Fortune 500. I mean, what a transformation. And then sharing those because of a moral obligation to serve. It’s your duty, it’s your divine design. That’s what I think, right? I think it is God’s divine design of your humanity. The reason that you have struggled, the reason you’ve had challenges, the reason you have had setbacks and obstacles is because it was part of God’s plan all along to use you to impact other people.
RV (12:56):
And so to resist that calling to me is to defy God himself. That’s how I think about it. But a moral obligation, whether you believe in God or not, but like to, to, to realize and go, I’m gonna be subservient. Yeah, maybe it, you know what? It is uncomfortable to get out there and promote your stuff. It is annoying to have to learn about social media. It is a pain to have to figure out how to build a personal brand and create websites, and launch books and do speaking and, and sell tickets to events. And yeah, it, it’s a pain. Like it is a pain, but the fruit of it is you get to impact lives. You get to make a difference. You get to help people. You get to serve people. You get to add the meaning of all of the things that have happened to you suddenly have meaning as you add value to others. That’s what this is about. That’s what this journey is all about.
RV (13:55):
So my friends, don’t let your labels be your limits. Don’t fight to keep your limitations. Realize that you’re six inches away from every dream you’ve ever wanted by changing what’s in your mind. Get a new perspective. Be around new people. Get new information. Take one step in a new direction, and that will ultimately determine a completely different destination and operate out of a moral obligation to serve. That sums it up. Show Jim. Quick some love. If you would, if you would, if you got anything out of this episode or this recap, go just say hi and tell ’em where you found him. Say, Hey Jim, I love your stuff. Heard you on the influential personal brand podcast. Heard you from Rory and Brand Builders Group, Rory and AJ and Brand Builders Group. And just tell ’em, say, Hey man, thanks for your story. You know, if you can buy the book, check it out. He’s got good stuff. And share this episode with someone in your life who needs it,
RV (14:50):
Right? Share this with somebody in your life who needs it and keep coming back every single week. We’re working hard, right? We work hard to, to get ac get you access to people like Jim Quick. It’s not easy to get to people like Jim Quick. It’s been years of developing a relationship with Jim so that we could get him for 20 minutes to come on and, and, and talk to you and, and share this. And, you know, he ended up going twice as long ’cause he feels the power of you, the power of this community. So thanks for, for being the community. Thanks for being the reason he’s here. And thanks for being the reason why we do what we do. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 491: Creating Content for the Next Generation | Eevi Jones Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Have you ever thought about writing a kid’s book? If you have, then I would encourage you to stick around for the next five minutes. Writing a kid’s book is one of the things that I’ve always had a passion to do. I have not yet done it, but my husband had this spiritual download from the Lord about two years ago. And while we were putting our kids to bed one night, he literally in the middle of putting my two toddlers at that time, two and four down, he said, babe, I have to go. And he just leaves the room disappears. I finished putting my kids down and about 45 minutes later I’m like, where is he? And he emerges out of all places out of the bathroom, right? I guess where it’s for all great things happen for him. And he said, babe, I just wrote a kid’s book.
AJV (00:42):
And I was like, I’m sorry, you just wrote a kid’s book sitting in the bathroom. What are you talking about? And he goes, I want you to read this. And he hands me his phone and I hold up his phone and I start reading this thing that he just wrote. And lo and behold, he was right. And about 30 minutes, he had written an entire kid’s book. Now, the point is not that he did this in 30 minutes, ’cause he didn’t this actually was oh, the, this was the end result of 14 years of talking about his first book, take The Stairs, which is a business book for adults and post children, right? We read a lot of books and they suck. These kid books are not awesome. So if you’ve got great kids book recommendations, tag me, AJ Vaden on Instagram, I’d love to know.
AJV (01:33):
But I have not found a ton of them that are amazing. And while reading to our kids one night, he had this download of the message that he wanted to share with our kids from Take the Stairs. And so he wrote a book called Be the Buffalo, which is one of the signature stories in his first book, take The Stairs. That came out in 2010. And it’s about sometimes difficult choices, although they’re harder in the short term lead to better, you know, results in the long term. And it’s about charging the storm, right? It’s charging into conflict, not running away from it. It’s heading difficult. Things head on, not shying away because the more that you avoid it, the longer you spend time in the storm. But if you be the buffalo, you can charge the storm and get through those things quicker.
AJV (02:22):
And that story, that analogy is a really great thing that we talk about a lot. And what he was doing in the bathroom was figuring out how to, how do you take 250 pages of business words for adults and put them into about a 200 word poem for our kids? And I read this book and I was like, this, this is amazing. This is the best thing I’ve ever read. I’m pretty sure I was like ugly crying. ’cause I was like, this is so beautiful. This is exactly what I wanna share with my kids. And I said, you have to turn this into a kid’s book. Fast forward 18 months later it was still sitting on his phone. Why?
AJV (02:59):
Because we didn’t know how to do it. We knew we wanted to do it. We didn’t know how to do it. And I think this is the important thing. It’s like the reason that I felt so convicted that Rory had to get this book out into the world is as adults, we read a ton of books about how to be better leaders, better communicators, better humans, how to prioritize our time, how to have positive self-talk, self-control, discipline, obedience. How do we find our self-worth? How do we talk to each other? The importance of our words selling, marketing, recruiting, the list goes on and on and on. I read no kids’ book to talk about that, right? And I’m thinking to myself, why did I have to be in my twenties, thirties, and now forties to learn these things? Why are there books like this for kids?
AJV (03:50):
For my 5-year-old, 7-year-old, my 10-year-old niece and nephew, my 15-year-old nephew, right? My 19-year-old niece. Like, why did we have to wait to discover these lessons? To learn these lessons? And answer is because no one had written them
AJV (05:03):
What if I had a bookshelf that taught me how to have confidence as a leader with also empathy and reflection? But with confidence and, and power? What if I learned how to project, manage and not over commit? What if I learned the value of time at a very early age? And that money is not the end goal? What if I had learned all of these things as a child? What, how would my life been different? And how would have my ability to love and impact others been expedited at a much earlier age? Why did I have to wait to learn those things? And it’s because people who are writing the books aren’t writing them for kids. And so this is a call to arms. This is a challenge to the people
AJV (05:56):
Who have years and years, decades of experience of learning the trials errors and learning the lessons who are decidedly already putting those things into practice in content for adults. Do me a favor. Would you consider also putting those things into words for kids? Would you also consider about what it would’ve been like for you to have learned those things in your youth? And could you just for a moment, think about how could you do that now? How could you take the content that you’ve already created and use it to equip the next generation of leaders and humans, of employees, of moms, of dads, of just humanity to be better so they don’t have to wait like we did? So if you would be interested in learning about this, I would encourage you to check out our good friend Evie Jones. And she was the person that was referred to us that we found who was able to take our business book, take the Stairs, and turn it into a kid’s book, to take the lessons that were learned in the first, you know, 15 years of our career, but also our life.
AJV (07:12):
And put those in a book that would appeal and delight children to help them learn lessons that need to be learned to help establish mantras that you as a parent or an aunt or a friend can to rally behind to help these kids be behind pages of books, not screens, to learn lessons, not watch entertaining videos. Instead of getting into trouble.
Ep 489: How to Move From Your Current Gig to Your New Gig | Kelly Roach Episode Recap
RV (00:17):
I wanna share with you a four step process for exactly how to leave your job and start a side hustle. Welcome back to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. I am recapping the addition of the interview I just did with Kelly Roach. And one of the things that we were talking in there was about how did she start her own business? And I thought, gosh, I get this question so often, which is, how do I know and how do I orchestrate leaving my job and starting my personal project or my side business or even leaving the, the current thing you’re doing with your, your personal brand and then starting something new. And so I’ve got a four part process for this that I think will really help you. And these are kind of four principles and tactics and strategies for how to think about transitioning from the thing that you’re doing now into the thing that maybe you want to do.
RV (01:17):
And this could apply to, even if you already have your own business and you’re trying to pivot, you’re trying to maybe rebrand, you’re trying to move into a different space. But specifically I want to talk to those of you who are maybe working at like a corporate job or something and you want to try to leave. The first thing I want you to know, and I believe this firmly, this principle is actually in my take the stairs book towards the back of the book, there is a principle that I call crush It where you’re at, crush It where you’re at. And I don’t think that we hear enough about this in the world today. So many people just say, ah, you know, your job sucks. Quit your job and just start your side hustle. Like that’s gonna be a dream. Let, let me tell you something.
RV (02:01):
Being an entrepreneur is far from a cakewalk. It is grueling hours, it is rejection, it is fear. It is often years of brokeness. It is very challenging. It, it can be con, it creates a lot of conflict on a marriage. It makes it really hard to have a family. Like the on the entrepreneurial dream is also got lots of nightmare components of it. Now, I love being an entrepreneur and I love working with entrepreneurs, but I think it is far over glamorized. And not every person is a great fit to be an entrepreneur. And even many people who could be entrepreneurs, I think make really great intrapreneurs. What’s an intrapreneur? And an intrapreneur is someone who can be a mover and shaker inside of a company who can innovate and create and can, can cause change and make new things happen inside of the right culture.
RV (02:55):
So this first principle, crush it where you’re at is really important. And even though it’s not popular, and even though you may not want to hear it, ’cause perhaps you’ve already made up your mind, no, I hate my job. I wanna leave it. Or I, I don’t like my current business or my current business model, I wanna leave it. And just before you do, I just want to encourage you to crush it where you’re at. What does that mean? That means be excellent at what you’re doing now, whatever it is that you’re doing. Now, why do I say that for two very specific reasons? Okay? The first reason is because when you’re doing something excellently, it often looks different and feels different than when you’re doing it in a mediocre fashion, right? I mean, the, if you’re hiking up a mountain and it’s a really big mountain, you might get tired and that might not seem awesome, but once you’re at the top of the mountain, it can totally be worth it.
RV (03:58):
And too many people give up while they’re on the climb and they haven’t yet experienced the, the fruits and the benefit of everything that their current thing has to offer, right? And you go, maybe you hate your job because you’re not good at it. Maybe you hate your job ’cause you’re not doing enough. Now maybe you hate your job ’cause your boss is a jerk and it sucks and it’s negative and it’s not fun. And you go, great, go ahead and quit the job. But many times I think people have an opportunity to sort of excel at the thing they’re doing before they just abandon ship. And that, that leads me to the other reason why I think crush it. Where you’re at is, is really important. It’s really important because how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
RV (04:46):
That’s the age old quote. And I have found that to be really, really true. And too often people think, oh, if I just abandoned my corporate job and I start my own business, it’s gonna be a cakewalk. And you go, well, if you’re not putting everything you have into the thing you’re doing now, you might find that you won’t do it on your own either. And now you don’t have any of the guarantee or stability or the things that, that come with a corporate job. So I just want you to really think about that and go, am I crushing it where I’m at? Am I doing the best I know how to do? Have I experienced all there is to experience here? Am I squeezing all the juice out of the thing that’s in front of me? Now, if it’s just your dream and you’re a hundred percent sure and you just want to go, fine, go, or if, if, if you just live in a, if you’re working in a place that is just terrible and they treat you like crap and you want to go, go, but I would even, so I would still say, gosh, be really, really good at what you’re doing.
RV (05:44):
Be the best at what you do. Be be performing at your personal best, the the best you’ve ever done in your role before you decide to leave. Because what you might find is that once you’re performing at your personal best, you might decide you wanna stay, you might figure out, actually this isn’t so bad. Actually, there’s more opportunity. Actually, once I started performing at my best, they gave me more money, they opened new doors, they gave me more responsibility, they, they put me in charge of new initiatives. And so that’s really, really important because sometimes we think the grass isn’t, is always greener. And the reason the grass looks greener is ’cause you’re not watering your own grass, okay? So crush it where you’re at, and then even if you’re gonna leave, carry that momentum into the thing that you’re gonna do. Now, the second part of leaving your job and starting your own business or starting your side hustle, or again, it could be that you maybe have a current business model, and it’s like, I wanna just transition from what I’m doing is a rule that I like to call the 70 30 rule.
RV (06:45):
The 70 30 rule. How does the 70 30 rule work is simple. It means that there, in order to succeed at something and really blow it up, it takes a lot of focus, right? In order to win anything, you really have to crush it. As we sort of, you know, religiously say around Bram Builder’s group, if you have diluted focus, you will get diluted results. If you have diluted focus, you will get diluted results. So how then do you transition between two things? How do you go how do I do a good job, you know, at my corporate thing, but I really wanna like start my own business or my side hustle and I wanna go full time and when’s the right time to do that? Or how do I serve my current clients that I have and my current model, but then transition to my new model or my new dream or my new message or my new audience?
RV (07:38):
And that’s a really important tactical question, and I’ve got a functional answer that we’ve used and I think we’ve seen a lot of clients do this successfully. And it’s the 70 30 rule. And the 70 30 rule says, start your new thing, okay? And take your old thing and expend the minimum amount of resources that you can to maintain the level of performance of the old thing, right? So basically put it on autopilot, but not in a way that it’s, it’s autopilot. Like it’s going down. Put it in autopilot that it’s like, okay, I’m gonna maintain this level of performance over here and then dedicate 100% of your excess energy into the new thing and build the new thing, right? This is probably the nights and the weekends and the late hours and the early mornings, and you’re studying and you’re reading and you’re, you’re probably getting coaching and you’re investing money and you’re not making much money, but you’re building the thing.
RV (08:39):
You’re building the thing and you’re starting, you’re starting that thing and keep building that thing until your income reaches a 70 30 split to where you go, 30% of my income is coming from the new line of business, or it’s coming from the new side hustle, or the new project or the new audience. And what happens is you are earning a hundred percent of your income from the first thing, and now your income is starting to balance out to where you get to 70 30. It’s about that time that I would recommend that is when you make the leap, you rip off the bandaid, you jump into the deep end of the pool you, you, you wisely are reducing your risk. If you can get your income to about 30% on the new thing. Do you have to do this? Of course not. You don’t have to do anything that I say.
RV (09:30):
This is just an idea and an observation. But what I would say is a lot of entrepreneurs live by the seat of their pants and it’s kind of like, you know, there’s this phrase in the entrepreneur community that says, you know, you build the plane, you jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down. And in some ways that’s always true, but in other ways that’s downright stupid. And keep in mind that 95% of businesses fail. So just because a lot of entrepreneurs say it’s a good idea, 95% of those people don’t turn out to be successful. So I’m not taking advice from a group of people where 95% of ’em failed the class. So the smarter thing to do is to do calculated risk. And that’s what the 70 30 rule is all about. The 70 30 rule instead says, man, if 30% of my income is coming from the new thing, first of all, you get a sense of whether or not you really like it and you really want to do it.
RV (10:25):
Second, you really get to determine is there product market fit? Is is there an audience for what I want to do? And do I have the ability to sell it to them? Because if you just pull the ripcord and jump ship and start something from scratch, you might find nobody wants to buy that thing. Or you might find you don’t really love the thing, or you’re not as good at it as you thought, or that you don’t have a great marketing plan for it or a great sales strategy for it. And you need to try to figure out some of those kinks on the side and before you kind of jump full time, at least that’s how the 70 30 rule works. And that’s, that’s what we advise. So that’s the 70 30 rule. The third thing, and this is super practical, important, is to be debt free.
RV (11:10):
Be debt free. To the extent possible, the more that you can lower your personal debt, the more likely you are to succeed as an entrepreneur. Why? Because of something called Financial Runway, right? And this term, financial runway refers to, you know, a plane taking off. And if you think of like, planes don’t just suddenly take off like a helicopter, right? They need runway. It takes velocity, it takes speed. In order for them to catch the tra you know, trajectory and be able to climb that is runway. Well, cash is the runway. And if you run outta cash, you run out of runway and the plane stops, right? So you could start something and you could kind of get it going, but if you don’t generate enough cash or you don’t generate cash fast enough, or you’re burning cash, you’re generating cash in the business, but it’s, it’s less than what you’re burning in your personal life, the runway ends, the plane stops, and the business never takes off.
RV (12:12):
That’s what financial runway means. So the, the, the more disciplined you are about your personal expenses, the longer the runway you give yourself. It also means the lower the stress you have, right? When I’m in debt, if, if I’m in debt, suddenly I’m more desperate for a sale, right? Like, the more in debt you are, the more desperate you are to make a sale. The more in debt you are, the more desperate you are to make a sale. Why not? ’cause You’re a bad person, but because you have external pressure, you’ve got mouths to feed, you’ve got bills to pay. So the more you can lower those bills, the more you extend the runway of having a chance to sort of pursue your dreams. When you’re debt free, you’re, you, you’re beholden to fewer masters, and this is biblical, right? The borrower, slave to the lender, but literally and pragmatically and functionally going, I’m not as dependent on my job.
RV (13:13):
I’m not as dependent on, you know, the where my income is coming from. I’m not as dependent on my current customers because I don’t have other financial obligations. So staying debt free creates freedom in your life, freedom to pursue your dream, and, and it creates more runway, it creates a longer timeline for you to figure it out and make it successful. So it’s a really important part I think, of launching a successful business as an entrepreneur. Unless you’re raising a bunch of money and generating millions of dollars or, you know, you just hit the jackpot, but that’s few and far between.
RV (14:01):
The fourth key to breaking free from your corporate job, if you hate it or if you just have a dream that just is, it is time for you to pursue is to start first with what you know best. Start first with what you know best. What I mean by that is your best chance of making money is doing more of the thing that you already know how to do. Now that may not be the most exciting thing for you, right? That may not be what your dream is, but it is almost always the fastest path to cash, right? The fastest path to cash is to do more of the thing you’ve already been doing, to do better at the, the, the thing you already know. And so you might be doing it on your own. You might be, you know, s starting your own business or your own side hustle, but serve the people that you have access to.
RV (14:57):
So a real, if you need money right now, if you have lots of money, this thing changes. If you have lots of money, you have lots of runway, you can build a whole brand new business, you can dream up anything you want. But in the practical reality for most of us is you’re gonna have to make money fairly quickly. And, and so you have to do what you have to do in order to get, in order to earn the right to do what you want to do. You have to do what you have to do in order to earn the right to do what you want to do. And so you’re going to have to pay a price for a while, and part of that price you would pay is just offering your expertise maybe in, in a very, in a way that accesses the, the people who are closest to you.
RV (15:42):
Now, I’ll give you the an example. When I first wanted to leave the corporate job that I had while I was in graduate school and I wanted to become a professional speaker, I was in the Toastmasters world championship of public speaking. And I spent a couple years just studying the psychology of laughter and learning how to be funny on stage because I wasn’t funny in real life, even though I am hilarious in real life now. But I had to learn to be funny on stage. And so I studied humor. And even though I didn’t wanna teach humor for a living in that season of life, the most tactical, practical skill that I had was teaching humor. And so, a lot of people don’t know this, take the stairs. It was not actually my first book, it was my first traditionally published book. My first book was actually called No laughs, NO to no laughs, KNOW How to Be Funny to Make More Money, no laughs to No Laughs, how to Be Funny to Make More Money.
RV (16:43):
And the first income I actually ever earned as a speaker was I was hosting classes where people could, could they could buy a ticket to a class where I could teach them everything that I had learned about comedy, and then I would sell my books at the back of the room. And that was how I started. Even though I knew I wasn’t gonna do that forever. I started first with what I knew best. And if you really want a, a chance to escape, you know, something that you, a situation that you’re in now, right now professionally, that you don’t love, or if you’re really, really just passionate about having your own thing and you really want to pursue that, I would encourage you to start first with what you know best as a stepping stone to getting to do the thing that you really want to do later.
RV (17:28):
Because you have to do what you have to do in order to earn the right to get to do what you want to do. So there’s four key principles that I think we don’t hear enough about for strategies, concepts that I think if you are trying to make a pivot, if you’re trying to make an escape, if you’re trying to start something new, those are some modalities of thinking that I hope will really, really help you because we want you to succeed and we want you to be able to pursue your passion. We believe that the world is a better place when you’re listening to the calling on your heart and serving the people that you were meant to serve. So in the meantime, while you’re figuring it out, keep coming back to the influential personal Brand podcast and share this episode with someone in your life that you know is in this professional dilemma right now. We’ll catch you next time.