Ep 339: 4 Keys to Creating Persuasive Promotional Videos with Eric Solomon | Recap Episode
Speaker 1 (00:03):
So another powerful interview, educational, informative, entertaining at least for me, listening to Eric Solomon talk about how to create great videos. And, you know, the, the first, I guess, highlight, or the first recap I wanna share with you, it, it wasn’t so much something specifically from Eric. I learned a, I learned a bunch, you know, from Eric. And I’ll talk about a couple of those, those key things in just a second. But I honestly want to share with you and just let you know this, because I feel like maybe you need to hear this, which is that for me personally, I have spent a large part of my career frustrated that I have to do all this stuff, like, frustrated that I have to deal with marketing and sales because it’s like I started my personal brand because I wanted to impact lives, right? Like, I wanted to help people.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I wanted to dedicate my time. I wanted to dedicate my life to researching and finding answers and solving problems that made my life better. And then also transitioning or passing those, those lessons and those principles along to other people. I never wanted to learn about marketing. I didn’t wanna have to learn how to write copy. I didn’t wanna have to learn about video editing. I don’t wanna have to learn about websites. I don’t wanna have to learn about social media. I don’t wanna have to learn about podcasting equipment. I didn’t wanna have to learn about funnels and marketing automation, right? Like, all of these things that end up absorbing such an exorbitant amount of our time and our energy and our resources, for me, is frustrating and has been frustrating because those are not the things that I wanted to do. Like, those are not the reasons why I started building a personal brand in the first place.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And yet, those are things I have to do, and I spend a lot of time doing, and we spend a lot of money on hiring people and getting stuff done and having to learn lessons like this one. And if, if that is frustrating to you or has ever been frustrating to you, I can relate with you on that, right? Marketing is frustrating. It’s, it’s like, to me, it, it’s, it’s been a necessary, almost like a necessary evil as in order to get the chance to do what I really wanna do, which is impact lives and help people and make a difference, and solve real problems and do meaningful work, and be an actual expert and, and study my craft. And so, for much of my life, I’ve been frustrated or much of my career, I’ve been frustrated that I’ve sort of held back from doing what I really wanna do at a bigger level because I’m not so great at marketing.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And because I never had a passion for marketing, and that’s always been frustrating to me. Until really just a couple years ago, I had a huge epiphany. And, and this is an epiphany I want, I’m gonna share with you because I think, think there’s a chance that this might matter to you if you are dealing with some of that frustration and you’re going, look, I I, I, I’m a, I want to make art, right? Like, I wanna do my thing. I wanna work on my craft. I I wanna create art. And the epiphany that I had a few years ago was when I realized that marketing is art. Marketing is art. Marketing is part of your artistry. Marketing is part of your craft. Marketing is is part of how you earn the right for your work to be heard and to be seen, and to make an impact.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It’s not just enough to create the work. I have to do the work of telling people about the work, which is marketing. And that is something that has, has taken me a long time to get to. But the moment you have that realization that you go, oh, marketing is art, marketing is part of my artistry, marketing is part of my craft. Marketing is as necessary a part of the art as creating the art itself. That my job, my responsibility, my privilege, my obligation my opportunity as the artist in creating the art is also to do the work of marketing it and telling people and about it and sharing it with people. Marketing is art. And so these are necessary conversations to have. These are necessary things to learn. These are necessary skill sets to develop or to at least be able to become competent at hiring other people to do for you.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And I know it’s hard, and I know it’s, you know, probably not the primary thing. And so much of what we’re, so much of what we teach people and help people with at Brand Builders Group is templates and toolkits and, and systems and strategies and techniques and frameworks and, and charts and systems to help automate and streamline as much of the marketing elements so that you can really focus your energy in, in the area of your passion, which is whatever your artistry is and whatever your craft is. So, I don’t want you to be discouraged. I want you to be encouraged. And I, I, I hope for you to have that same realization that I had because it made a big difference for me. It made a big difference because instead of fighting all of these things and being annoyed that have to do them, and being resistant to the, to, to social media and being resistant to copywriting and graphic design and websites and marketing automation and paid traffic acquisition and making sales calls and building, you know, pres getts and having to hire people and vendors and like all of the necessary elements that are, are part of the work, instead of being resistant to that, I have been able to finally turn the corner and embrace that.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And I think that that’s been a huge part of the success of Brand Builders Group is because I’ve said, oh, these, this is where we can create so many tools and so many processes and systems and checklists and templates to help our clients with, with these parts. You know, this part of the work and, and this is work. And the other thing, the other thing that I would say, so, so one of, you know, mentality wise and getting your mindset around creating great video, which is really what that interview is about. I’m just sort of rounding it out here to some of these other necessary things you have to do as part of being a mission driven messenger and getting your message out is the other way to. So, so one way to look at it is that marketing is art, and, and all of these things are necessary part of your art.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You know, part of the art is telling people that the art exists, and that’s, that’s a noble and important part of the artistry, otherwise no one ever gets to experience. And so that art never actually fulfills its purpose. The other part of it that I would say, which is also something that I’ve had to coach myself on and, and slap myself in the face every once in a while and go like, yeah, there’s parts of this you don’t wanna do. Of course there are, there’s parts of any business that you don’t wanna do. There’s parts of anything it takes to be successful. I e my first book, take The Stairs, right? The whole premise of that book is realizing that successful people are willing to do the things they, they, they know they need to do, and they know they should do, even when they don’t feel like doing them, because they realize that they’re a necessary part of achieving the goals that they have in life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
People who are successful take the stairs. They do the things that other people aren’t willing to do. They do the things that they don’t like to do because they know they must be done in order to, and as part of a necessary stepping stone to the things that we want to do, and to achieving the things, the goals that we have for our life, and, and to, for the, for the purpose of living our purpose, we must do things we don’t wanna do. So I, I wanted to give you that context. That was sort of my first highlight, my first takeaway, my first aha, which wasn’t necessarily so much from something Eric said, but just kind of having this almost out of body experience have relearning principles that I’ve had to learn in the past and go like, yeah, normally I wouldn’t care about these things because they’re, they’re, they’re like ancillary to what my main focus is,
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Which is changing lives. But over time, I’ve really developed a, a love and a passion for this kind of stuff. And if you didn’t listen to that interview with Eric, I mean, you gotta go listen to it. I mean, hearing him talk about how, you know, his art is editing video, I mean video production, not editing video, but like producing a video a finished video product. And it’s amazing and it, it is transformative. We’ve also interviewed our one of the things we did for our members is we interviewed our creative director. She’s gonna be on the podcast as well talking about visual identity and graphic design, which are all things that, you know, to me was like, ah, I don’t wanna learn this. This isn’t really my thing. And it’s like, no, this is a part of it. And it’s, it’s a beautiful part of it, and it’s a necessary part.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
So marketing is art, and you also, there’s gonna be things that you just have to do that you don’t feel like doing. So that’s the first thing. The second thing on the topic specifically of what makes great video, and I, for me, the most powerful moment, or the most powerful concept in, in the entire interview with Eric was when he said, focus on feelings, not on facts. Focus on feelings, not on facts. When you’re producing a video, when you’re creating a video piece for whatever it is, whether it’s Instagram or you know, this, that, or whatever, focus on feelings and not on facts. In other words, the, the, the purpose of the video isn’t to convey information. The purpose of the video is to convey a motion to, to convey a feeling, to, to convey this transference of this energy, of what it’s like to do business with you, to hire you or your team or your company.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That’s what video does in such a powerful way. And I would say that’s also true about great copywriting, right? So those of you that are, are members of ours, you know, that we teach a very specific framework that again, was life changing for us once we figured this out. It’s called the 15 piece of Copywriting. And it is how to come up with the exact words that you need to put on a page in order to get someone to pull out their credit card and buy something from you. Well, the whole concept of the 15 piece is just a structure to help move the audience emotionally, to move the reader emotionally. That’s also what makes great photography. If you go back and you listen to the interview that we did with Nick Ankin, who’s celebrity photographer of like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and the Pope and all these people, right?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And also the interview that we did with Lewis Howes where we were talking about photography, and it’s, it’s great photography captures a feeling. It’s a state, it’s an emotion, it’s an energy. That’s what great copywriting does. That’s what great graphic design does. That’s what great video editing does. And so it was interesting, you know, for me,I’m tying back and some of those episodes are pretty old. Like Lewis was one of the very first people we interviewed on this podcast. So it’s been a couple years. UI’ve been on his show six or seven times,in the last couple years, but he’s only been on this show once. And,and then Nick Onken, who’s also Lewis’s photographer and also has become mine and AJ’s,you know, primary photographer for major photo shoots is,you know, that was old older too, but it’s the same.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
You’ll hear the same thing when our creative director comes on. And she’s talking about how we do visual identity, or Nick talking about photography, Nick or Lewis talking about photography is you know, us teaching the 15 P’s, us teaching the presentation, the one of our, one of our official courses for our members is called World Class Presentation Craft. And we teach all of these mastery level stage mechanics for how to develop characters and use your voice and, and write stories and create content and, and lay out visuals and create pillar points. All of these techniques use humor, the psychology of laughter, which are all focused on one thing, moving the audience emotionally, move the audience emotionally. They need to have an emotional reaction. They need to have an emotional response. And that’s what Eric was saying about what makes great video, right?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
And I, I have to think of another great example of this. You know, somebody who does video really well is Eric Thomas. So Eric Thomas, et the hip hop preacher, who is another one of our brand builders group clients. And we just, we just ran his book launch for him. And we just hit the New York Times bestseller list a few weeks ago, which was fantastic. But AJ and I had been fans of Eric’s for years before he ever became a client. And he, you know, has over 5 million followers and he’s got, you know, hundreds of millions of video views because when you watch Eric on video, it moves you emotionally, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not even so much what he’s saying as how he’s saying it. You have this like, this, this physiological response, right? That’s what makes a great speaker. Ed Millet is also that way, another one of our clients, right?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And Ed, when Ed’s on stage, he, he, as a speaker, he creates this, you’re listening. You have a physiological response. Your heart rate changes based on the way he’s using his voice. And those are things that we teach, how you’re using your voice, how you’re using humor, how you’re telling stories, the structure of things, all these different things. And that’s what a great video should do. And, and I think the part of why I’m harping on this is to go look, if you don’t know anything else about video, all you have to know is that when somebody watches it, does it move them emotionally? And does it create
Speaker 1 (14:51):
The energy in the viewer that you want that viewer to experience? And is that the energy? Does the video portray the energy of your brand? Does your video portray the energy of you as the messenger? And, and again, I just can’t help but talk about this concept and apply it also to, does your copywriting do that? Does your, does your photography do that? Does your your graphic design do that? Does your speech do that? Like, these are all aspects of marketing and personal branding, which have to just map back and, and tie directly to creating a specific energy or motion for your, for your viewer and for your audience. And that’s just so powerful. My third takeaway, and this is something that I truly have learned from Eric that I’d never heard before, that has really been a game changer for our business, is leveraging the power of the interview for leverage, the power of the interview format for video.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now, not just for like podcast interviews, you know, we all see people do interviews for that, but he was saying like, rather than trying to write a script for a marketing video for your company, interview your clients, or hire somebody like Eric to to interview them for you and, and interview them on video and ask questions in a way that’s gonna solicit or elicit the responses from them about what it’s like to do business with you. And when you get your actual customers just talking, then you’re able to take that and, and that becomes, becomes the gold. Now, a lot of times, you, you know, so that’s one thing is, is interviewing your customers. But the other thing is interview yourself or have somebody interview you. So, like, rather than trying to write the perfect script of, what am I gonna say on this promotional?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Let’s say it’s a promotional video. What you would do is you just have somebody interview you in a way that you can just sort of like unload on them, like emotionally, just like sort of unload or pop off on like this rant about why you do what you do and who you do it for, and why did you start this brand or this company, and what does it mean to you and why is it important? And, and who, who is it for? And just creating that, that, that eruption of emotion and sort of puking that out on camera, and then being able to go back and post production and edit that, that will take a lot of pressure off you. And, and Eric does it brilliantly. The very first project he ever did for us was he created a testimonial video, which is still on our [email protected]. It’s so good. And AJ and I aren’t even in the video, like no one, there’s a couple of our strategists that are in the video, but it’s mostly our customers
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Talking about what it is like to do business with us. And that’s still on the homepage of brand builders group.com. Or if you go to free brand call.com/podcast, it’ll take you right to it. And you can see the video of our customers talking about what it’s been like to, to work with us and do business with us. And so interviewing is super powerful, but we also, it’s also a great way for you to create content. Okay? So I’ve been talking about in the context of like promotional videos, like you know, a great example is with the speaker demo video. And, and Eric talks about these he said too, but I’m gonna say the three types of video that every personal brand needs is you need a personal brand or like a bio video, which is a short bio about you, which, which by the way if you go to my Instagram handle, which is at Rory Vaden I have pinned to the top of my Instagram my new personal brand little bio video that Eric produced for me.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And you can just go look at it. I’ve got it pinned to the top. So it will always be up there no matter when you listen to this. And it’s a 62nd bio video. And even in that bio video you’ll see there’s, there’s customer testimonials from Lewis Howes and Eric Thomas and Ed Mylett in even that little 62nd video. I’ve got three little miniature testimonials, and the whole video is really testimonials from our clients and our friends introducing me on their shows. It’s, you know, Eric put that together, he did a great job. So you can go look at that as an example of, of what a 62nd personal brand video looks like, which is also like a customer testimonial. And so anyways, you need three types of videos. You need a personal brand or like a bio video. You need customer testimonial videos like, or case study videos as he called them.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And then you need a speaker demo video. I’ve got two brand new speaker demos that Eric has worked on for me, but we’re not releasing them live yet, I don’t think until we release. We’re updating rory vaden.com and so that’ll be all part of it. So when, when that happens, I’ll make an announcement and you can go check out the new rory vaden.com. But the, so the interview format for promotional video is super powerful, but the interview format for a speaker demo video is especially a, a powerful tip because when you’re editing a speaker demo video, you have footage of you speaking on all these different stages and all these events, but it, they, you’re, they often don’t perfectly fit a through line of exactly the story you want to tell when you’re trying to sell yourself as a speaker. Cuz they’re, those are videos of you doing what you actually do.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Those are not videos of you selling what you actually do. And so the way to fit, the way to fill in the, the blanks there and the backbone of their whole demo video can be an interview with you. And so somebody can interview you on camera and they can interview you. And, and the first time we did it with Eric, he did it over zoom, like straight up just high quality, you know, as high quality zoom would, would put out, interviewed us. And that become the baseline, like for sort of like, when I say the through line, it’s, it’s the thread through the whole video and then you’re interspersing customer testimonial clips and, you know, media clips and you on stage and all the things that go into, into into a full demo video. But you become the through line in an interview direct to camera format.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Or typically you’re not talking right at the camera, you’re typically like looking off the, the lens just a little bit. And that’s super powerful. But the other place that we’re seeing interview formats show up now for our clients is when you need to create content videos. So for example, some of our clients struggle to build their first like webinar and they don’t know, you know, they’ll, they’ll be like, ah, you know, they struggle to get the slides together, or they don’t know the right format, or they’re worried about what they’re gonna say, or they just get nervous talking directly to the camera. And so one of the things we can do and we can do for them is we can interview them and basically the interview becomes the webinar. And so rather than a, rather than a recording of like a talking head over some slides, it becomes an actual conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And so we’ve done it, we’ve helped do clients do that for webinars. A lot of people will write books that way. They’ll have somebody interview them, record the whole interview. It could take, you know, a few days even record the whole interview, get it transcribed, and then send it to an editor and have them turn that into a book. We’ve done, we’ve done that way. We have done it for book launch bonuses. In fact, I mentioned Eric Thomas a couple times here. This is what we did for Eric Thomas did this, I did this for Matthew West also. So one of our clients is Matthew West. He’s a one of my favorite Christian musicians of all times a 25 Grammy nominees and, or sorry, five Grammy, five time Grammy nominated artist and 25 number one singles, Matthew West. And anyways, when we did his book launch, I interviewed Matthew about his book and that interview became the bonus content for people who pre-ordered his book.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And also at the end of that interview, we, we, we sold the upgrade the bulk packages. That’s all stuff we teach in bestseller launch plan, which is one of our phase three curriculums on, on how to do these, these book launches. By the way, we just had our 11th client, our 11th client this last week, hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, the 11th time. We’ve had one of our clients hit the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or USA Today bestseller list just in the last couple years. Like our book launching stuff is, is on lockdown, but one of the things we do is we create these bonuses to get people to pre-order in one of the bonuses is this, this reverse interview or this masterclass where it’s like, you don’t have to, you don’t have to even think about or plan for the content.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You just get someone to interview you and that becomes the bonus. And then we do this like, you know, kind of sales pitch at the end to get people to upgrade and buy and bulk. But anyways, the interview format and then one of our implementation partners for social media is now doing this for our clients. When our clients struggle to create content every week, like, you know, we teach this content diamond process, which I’ve taught here before you, if you go to rory vaden blog dot com and you search for content diamond, you know, I, I’ve taught the whole thing and that’s a, that’s, we’ve made that available for free. It’s an amazing training on how we do social media. But, and it starts with a, like a source seven minute video of you talking to camera. Well, some of our clients struggle with that.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
And so one of our implementation partners is so brilliant, starts started interviewing clients and just giving them like three or five questions every week to answer. And the interview format becomes the source content for the entire content diamond. And it fills their whole social media calendar for the week. And they don’t, they don’t have to like, prepare what they’re gonna say. They just answer these questions and then they cut, they, they edit together the interview as the source content. I mean, it’s really, really great. So you maybe haven’t thought about the power of the interview format in all of these different ways. And that was, you know, really eye opening when I first, I first met Eric. And, and now he’s taken us through his process several times. So there you have it. Some of my big highlights and takeaways, hopefully those are inspiring and powerful for you too. And just remembering that you know, marketing is art. Part of your artistry is letting people know that your art exists. And what is art other than a piece of work that moves people emotionally. So when you’re creating art, create something, create somebody of work that moves people emotionally, that’s what makes an artist.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Thanks for being here. Make sure you come back share this episode with somebody you know who needs to learn about video editing and marketing as artistry. Would love it if you leave a review and rate us on iTunes and just, you know, share this, share this with somebody you think it would be useful for. Have a great week everyone. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 337: How to Convert Your Speaking Business into Lifelong Clients with Matt Mayberry | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all, welcome to the recap episode on my conversation with the lovely Matt Mayberry. I just love my conversations with him. He’s so humble and he’s so helpful. I thought this was a great conversation, and so I’ve broken it down to my three main takeaways and I say three, but they’re kind of like all jumbled into like one main takeaway. So here’s like this kind of like overarching theme that I got from a conversation with Matt. And I don’t know why I had this like interesting aha moment during this conversation. But I loved what he said when he said that his definition of culture is just behavior at scale. And it got me thinking that for a company, we talk a ton about culture, but for an individual, the same goes for reputation. And then I started thinking about this concept of a reputation is to an individual, what culture is to accompany, right?
AJV (02:05):
Because both of the things are, what do you want people to feel or to think when they experience you? Right? So we’ve all been a part of different customer service experiences where you’re like, man, like that was amazing. We’re like, man, how are you even business? Right? How, how do you operate like this? And you know, it’s like, I’m not gonna say that people haven’t said that about us. Like we’re not perfect, but there is a culture in the way that people treat each other treat leadership, leadership, treats, leadership, leadership treats employees, how we treat our clients that the interactions like that’s a feeling, right? Those aren’t words on a page or pictures that it’s a, it’s a feeling I I’ve walked into offices before buildings before where it’s like, you could feel the culture that was there, right. Walking into a no offense, a holiday in express versus walking into a Rosewood property has a very different feeling and culture that emanates.
AJV (03:10):
And I don’t just mean due to the element of how nice things are, but it’s, it’s a feeling, right? You get the same thing. If you’re on the phone with somebody like the energy just emanates from them, the same thing happens with you and your reputation, your personal brand, as it does with a company. The difference is as an individual, my reputation, my personal brand is about me and for a company. It’s the culture, right? What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create this feeling. And this experience that people go through as a part of being a part of this company as a client or as a, a team member, but as a, an individual, a personal brand, we do the same thing and it has to be curated and it has to have intention. And there are countless countless books, classes, seminar coaches, consultant, speakers that could go on and on and on about how to create company culture.
AJV (04:16):
But where are the books, classes, coaches, seminars, consultant, speakers, about how to create your reputation, right? And that’s what we do at brand builders group. That’s what we’re passionate about. That’s what our uniqueness is. We lived in corporate consulting for 15 years, working with leaders about company culture and employees in retention and performance. And now we work with individuals about how do you do the same thing for yourself, which is your reputation, right? And the intentional creation of your reputation is your personal brand, right? So your personal brand is to an individual, what company culture is to an organization. And that’s how I really want you to think about this. If we go, it’s like, man, as, as, as leaders, we spend tons of time talking about culture and core values. Are we spending the same amount of time of going, what do I want to be known for who do I want to be known by?
AJV (05:22):
And then how do I become known for those things by those people that is personal branding and it needs, and it requires the same amount of focus and intention as it does to create a culture within an organization. Right? And I just, I just loved that just concept and a parallel of reputation and personal branding is to an individual is what company culture is to an organization. So it’s kind of like the broad overarching takeaway from me and that and then I, I wrote this down and I literally was like, man, that’s really important of just going your culture. Isn’t your core values, these aren’t words and definitions on a website or a flyer that you hand held a new, higher onboarding. But a culture are the daily behaviors that happen when the leader isn’t around. And so if you are a leader, right, and when I say a leader, I mean a parent, I mean a volunteer, I mean an employee, an employer, an entrepreneur, I mean anyone like what are the behaviors that need to happen on a daily basis to create the culture that you want?
AJV (06:49):
And then for an individual, what are the daily behaviors that need to happen for you to establish the reputation that you want? Have you thought about that? And if not, this is the time to do that. Like literally pause this recap right now, give yourself five minutes and go, what is the reputation I wanna have? What do I want people to think of when they think of me? And in order for that to happen, what are the three to five behaviors that I have to display on a daily basis to create that consistency. So that people associate me with what I want to be associated with and then do the same thing for your company. It’s like, what are the behaviors that need to happen with your executives, with your leaders, with your managers, with your employees in order for this culture to be curated and lived out on a daily basis, culture and reputation are the end result of daily behaviors.
AJV (08:02):
And we spend a lot of time talking about end results, and we need to talk about what are the daily behaviors that have to happen consistently to give us that end result. And then the last thing that I wrote down and I think again, just paying attention to all the things that I need to do as a leader, as an entrepreneur. But also
AJV (09:26):
So what’s your story and how are you using that to build your company culture, to build your personal reputation, to build your personal brand. What’s that story that what’s that defining story of your life that it’s like, this is a piece of what made me and here’s what I learned from it. And here’s what you, stranger friend, family member can learn from this. This is how you can apply something that I’ve learned from something that I went through and actually take it and apply it to your own life. Because here’s what I know at the end of the day. If you give me a whole bunch of words and acronyms and steps, I might retain some of it. But if you tell me a story how remember most of it. So what’s that story that makes you so unique that it sets you apart. So again, I would encourage you to pause right now, don’t put this on your to-do list.
AJV (10:25):
Don’t set a time to do it a month from now, which will never happen right now. Give yourself permission to take three to five minutes and just go, what are the stories that have shaped me? What are the stories that other people can relate to that? By sharing this piece of my story would help someone else that there’s a lesson to be learned from my employees, from my audience, from my clients, from my family. But what is this story that makes you, you y’all such a good interview. Go listen to it, take the time. Do these two quick exercises. I promise you, I took the time before doing this and I did it for myself. It makes a difference, but you’ve gotta have the intention before you actually create the plan. So take the time, create that intention and then go make the plan. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 335: Reinventing Yourself for the Next Big Thing with Former NFL Player Clay Harbor | Recap Episode
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, this is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to my recap episode on my conversation with former, former NFL player Clay Harbor. I don’t know why that’s such a tongue twister for me, former NFL player, Clay Harbor. And this is a, I would say an inspirational, motivational episode, but also with some tactical details about how to launch and grow your personal brand if you are thinking about starting or growing your coaching, consulting, speaking business. Definitely worth a full listen. But here is my take on this episode and some of the big things that I walked away with from this and my, my view on this, and I think this is a, a really important conversation to have, is how is comparison holding you back? And on the interview, Clay talks a lot about showing up and the difference between 80%, a hundred percent, 0% and the importance of not just showing up but showing up consistently.
AJV (01:07):
And then it got me thinking about my own life and lives of people I know and how much that comparison is the reason that we don’t show up. And most often the reason that we don’t show up consistently. And so here’s my question for you today, if you’re listening to this video, is what are you comparing yourself to or who are you comparing yourself to that you need to let go? And I don’t care who you are, what you do, there is something or someone that you compare yourself to that at some point in your life will make you feel not good enough, not worthy enough, not smart enough, not successful enough not doing enough, not helping enough, not making enough whatever it is, fill in the blank, not enough. And that’s what comparison does. Comparison makes you feel not enough.
AJV (02:08):
And that’s the problem with comparison is so often as individuals specifically individuals who are trying to do something bigger than what we’re currently doing is we get stopped by looking around and comparing our step one to someone else, their step 1000. And we just don’t know what their step is. And I just, I know when we started Brand Builders Group just four and a half years ago, it was really easy to go, Oh my gosh, here we are starting a personal brand strategy firm. And our personal brands had recently been scratched and completely, we were completely starting over. So neither my husband, Roy Va in our eye had any social media followers. We, we had lost our podcast. We hadn’t even started a new one. We hadn’t even created a website for Brand Builders Group when we started.
AJV (03:06):
And there was a lot of opportunity for us to go, We can’t do this because of this, this, this, and this. Like, what are people gonna think if we’re a personal brand strategy firm and we don’t even have a podcast launch, we have no social media followers, we don’t even have a website for goodness sake. What will people think? And I know that in many times in our life and in my life specifically, that would’ve stopped me. It would’ve held me back and said, Well, here’s one excuse of why I’m not ready. And here’s another excuse of why I don’t have time and here’s another excuse of how I can’t afford it. And here’s another excuse of, well, what are people gonna think? I could go on and on and on. The point is, is they all had to do with comparison. Cuz the truth is we did launch Brain Builders group with no website and with no social media followings and with their podcast. And we were just fine. We were just fine. And that had a lot to do with doing it in spite of what we thought other people would think. It was doing it in spite of,
AJV (04:51):
Sorry, you’re gonna have to cut this part together where we fell downstairs. He’s okay. But we had to do this in spite of what we thought other people were gonna think. Because here’s the truth, we could have launched with all of those things and people were still gonna have opinions, good or bad. So we could launch without all of those things. And people were still gonna have thoughts, good or bad. So why not just do it? Cuz the truth is comparison most often just hurts us. There’s always gonna, people who love you and love what you do, gonna and love what you do. There’s always gonna be people who don’t love you and who don’t love what you do. That cannot be what holds you back because that only hurts you, comparison hurts you. It’s an internal thing that we suffer with and we’re the only ones who actually have negative effects from how we compare ourselves to.
AJV (05:43):
And it, it’s really easy in a world today to get caught up with, well what does this person have and what do they look like and what are they wearing and what are they doing? And how many followers do they have? And what, how many likes do they have? And how many downloads and how much do they make? And sometimes we just need to stop looking around and put on some blinders and go. Everybody is on their own path. Everyone is on their own journey. And truly as an outsider looking in, we get a very surface level perspective of what every single person is going through. Cuz at the end of the day, we all know that every single person on planet Earth has a struggle. They have problems, they have issues. They have their own insecurities. They suffer with their own level of comparison.
AJV (06:27):
And we don’t get that picture. We don’t get to see all of the struggles and the hurdles and the obstacles that happened you know, years before or days before. We don’t get to see the behind the scenes that would eliminate the level of comparison and the significance that that has in our own decision making. And so if we stop looking around and we just put our heads down and and focus on what are we called to do and what do I feel like my mission is? And you know, for me it’s like, what is the calling that God has on my life and how can I serve people? And I think that’s the biggest thing is like when we’re focused on showing up for other people, comparison starts to go away. When comparison creeps in is when I’m worried about me, myself, and I, but when I’m worried about who I’m serving and I’m worried about my clients and I’m worried about my family and I’m worried about my friends and I’m worried about causes that I believe in when I’m worried about the people that I know are suffering, it’s like my comparison goes away cuz it’s not about me.
AJV (07:26):
It’s not supposed to be about us. And when you focus on serving and you actually focus on like, I think I could help somebody I I know I could help somebody. And even if it’s one person, it’s like, focus on that person. And those feelings of comparison start to go away. And it doesn’t really matter if you have a nice website or hundreds of thousands of followers or a bestselling book or you know, a notable podcast. And those don’t get me wrong, those things are great and I think you help a lot of people and you get more reach. So don’t get me wrong here, but when you focus on the one, when you focus on serving who’s right in front of you, the neighbor next door the kid down the street, your colleague, your coworker, that client who really needs you, comparison just diminishes.
AJV (08:12):
It just starts to go away. But you gotta show up. And you gotta do it consistently because comparison will creep back in the moment that you stop focusing on the people around you, the people that you were called to serve. And so I do encourage you to go listen to this whole podcast cuz it is about showing up and doing it consistently and not making it about you. And I think that’s where we get to shine the most is when it’s not about us. When it’s about the audience and the people that we can help and that we can serve. And the benefit for us, in addition to doing good works is that feeling of comparison goes away. And what it’s filled with is satisfaction of knowing. It’s like I have purpose. I can do things for people who need help. And it gives you a newfound level of purpose and passion and mission that maybe didn’t exist the minute before you did it. So focus on serving, it, eliminates comparison. Show up, do it consistently and go check out this whole podcast. I’ll check you, I’ll check you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.
Ep 333: Build Your Brand by Building Your Audience with Amberly Lago | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, y’all a J Vaden here and welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Amber Lee Wago. And I love her
AJV (01:52):
So, you know, I have a lot though. Okay. I don’t even know where to start cause they’re not three. And I know we usually say three, but I have more than three today. So here’s a couple of things that I think are really good. We talked a lot about a common theme in this interview with knowing who your audience is, right? So if you’re creating content and I would say content is not restricted to social media or blogs or podcasting we all create content. I literally was on a text thread with a girlfriend today. Who’s like, Hey, I, I’m making a really big change in my professional life. And it’s really hard for me to ask for help, but would you be open to dinner or coffee or drink? So I can just get some professional advice or just some input on this decision I’m making.
AJV (02:47):
And it’s like, to me, I’m already mentally preparing of like, how can I best serve my friend in this conversation? Right? It’s like, I know where she is. I don’t know what advice she needs, but I’m already going, like, what do I have that could be a benefit to her. That is content
AJV (03:48):
So again, to me, it doesn’t matter if you’re a salesperson, a mom, a friend, an entrepreneur, a CEO, and executive speaker, author podcaster, wrap it all up right into one it’s communication. And in order to be an effective communicator, you have to know your audience, right? That’s not new. That’s not like we haven’t heard that before to have effective conversations and to be involved in effective communication. We need to know where the other person stands. That is your audience. This is just to an audience of perhaps more than one, right? And so you’ve got to know your audience. So then the question is, how do you get to know your audience? And that’s a part of your job and curating, who do you want your audience to be? Because you actually do get to influence that. And a huge part of it is who is the audience already around you?
AJV (04:49):
And what do you have to share and give to those people? What is the audience that you already have online and offline, but just as much as who is the audience that you want to attract, that you want to curate, that needs to hear what you have to say. That can benefit from something that you have to say, because I just really come from a place of every single person listening to this and everyone not listening to this. You have something to share that can positively impact and benefit the life of someone around you, whether or not you believe that to be true or not. It is true. There is a story and experience. There is something that you have that will help someone else, but it will be more helpful when you know who that someone else is, because that will allow you to reach those people.
AJV (05:45):
And it will allow you to have a bigger impact because there’s a little bit more focus and intention. So again, in order to have effective communication, I E creating content, you have to know who your audience is. So you need to know things about them. You need to inquire, you need to ask them, you need to have a relationship with them, but you need to know who they are. So that ties into my second one, which I think this is really good. How do you curate this type of audience? This is so simple that it kind of blows my mind. It’s like one of those things where it’s like, it’s so simple and it’s so true, but yet we don’t do it. Or at least I don’t sometimes. So this was a great reminder to me, the way that you curate an audience is to share what, you know, that’s, it
AJV (06:59):
There’s in this phenomenon of this thing called the imposter syndrome. And for a long time, I was embarrassed to ask what is that exactly? Because everyone talks about it, but I was really unclear what it’s about to Google it when they like, what is imposter syndrome? And then it hit me. And I was like, what an odd phenomenon that people somehow don’t feel adequate enough to live up to the accolades that they’ve actually done. Why this is, it was, it was foreign to me at the time. And this is my reconciliation of that is that often now you don’t have to agree with this that’s okay. But this is mine often when we suffer from things like imposter syndrome, it’s because we found, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t get to speak what we know, and either we put ourselves there or we volunteer to get put somewhere, or we got hired to put somewhere, but we’re in a situation where we’re no longer speaking what we know.
AJV (08:09):
And we’re trying to seem more credible or we’re trying to share pieces of information that are academically correct, but they’re not personally in tune with us. And I believe that’s where a lot of imposter syndrome comes from. Because if you just share what you know, then that’s just who you are.
AJV (09:08):
Whether someone else agrees with it or not. That’s okay. But when you speak, when you share what you know through your lens, you naturally start to attract people and simultaneously repel people. The problem with that is the third thing we’re gonna talk about is we want to be liked by everyone and we’re gonna have to be okay with not being like every one. That’s hard. It’s hard for me too. It’s like, sometimes I get like hateful comments and I’m like, delete
AJV (10:17):
Not, that is not a life worth living. Well, there will be people who love you for just the way you are. Just like, there will be people who do not even like you for who you are welcome to life. That’s already happening all around us. It’s just amplified with the digital, the digital atmosphere that we live in. But the more authentic you become, the more polarizing you will also become. But that means that you are attracting the audience that needs you. And you are naturally repelling the audience who does not. And that’s actually a really great thing because you’re reaching the right people and the people who don’t can go find someone else. We have to be okay with that kinda like three high level things. But I also wanted to share some of these one liners, cause I thought they were really good that I just really love this.
AJV (11:15):
It’s treat your audience like family. And she goes, I have even a hard time saying audience. These are friends. These have become family, but treat your audience like family. Just really quick little things actually listen to your audience meaning actually pay attention to what they’re engaging on. And I love what she said. She goes, if you really wanna know what your audience needs and wants, ask them and pay attention to what they’re asking you for. Go back through your DMS or look at your emails, look at your text messages pay attention to what your family and your friends and the people around you and your everyday life pay attention to what they come to you for, what they ask you for. But listen to your audience, actually pay attention to what’s happening. That will give you the direction of everywhere.
AJV (12:03):
You need to go. Just listen. So good. Become known for one thing, right? You, we talk about this a lot at Ram builder, screw you break through Shehan wall by becoming known for one thing, but it’s the more you talk about one thing, the easier it is to become known for that thing. So focus, right? Put a little blinders on here. Don’t get distracted by all the shiny things, all the temptations focus. And you can do that when you know who your audience is, the focus I thought that was really great purpose instead of trying to find your purpose, try to serve other people and you will find purpose by doing that. So good. Y’all instead of me trying to just sit here and go, what is my purpose? Right? I’m like a journal about it. I could read about it, or I can go serve other people and find purpose in the process.
AJV (13:04):
So good. So, so good. And then last but not least everyone you need to serve is already all around you. He just have to see him. And I love this. If you didn’t listen to her story I will encourage you to go do so now because she has a really amazing story about being in a pretty tragic motorcycle accident, went through 34 surgeries and lost her very well known fitness business, but she’s built a whole new business by just showing up and being present for the people around her. And it started in a gym not online. It started in a gym by her showing up every single day. The same thing can happen for you. You do not have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars and you do not have to make millions of dollars to make massive impact in this world. Y’all, it’s an killer episode, highly recommend it. So glad that you’re listening, I really encourage you to listen to this one. If you suffer from imposter syndrome, if you’re trying to find your way, this is an episode worth listening to, so come back, check us out again and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 331: How to be Comfortable Selling High Dollar Offers with Ian Koniak | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Love, love, love hearing the true success stories of our clients who, you know, get to the point to where they’ve reached such a level of expertise that we can have on our podcast to share with you. And that’s what this Ian Cognac interview was all about. I mean, I, if you haven’t heard it, I mean, it’s so inspiring. He, he joined Brand Builders Group three years ago, y’all, three years ago, and three years later he’s doing almost, he’s gonna do about one and a half million dollars in revenue his first full year in business. So the first two years he was with us, he had a, he had a job, he had a day job, He was doing the stuff. We were teaching him on the side, he was building up. And then, man, and, and then, you know, he, he, it was time to leave.
RV (00:49):
He left, he executed, he’s followed the playbook and almost one and a half million dollars in revenue. He’s at 1.2 million right now, 10 months into his first year full year. And he’s gonna do about a million and a half dollars, is what he told me. That is inspiring. And that could be you that could be you. Like, and can we guarantee it? No, we can’t guarantee it. Like, we can’t guarantee those results for everybody. But I guarantee you that everything that we teach and talk about works, it always works. Eventually it works. The question is just when and how fast and on what magnitude and what scale. I was telling our internal team this morning you know, we just, we just had our client, another client of ours, Eric Thomas, et the hip hop preacher, just, we, we ran his whole book launch with him and his team and start to finish, manage the entire thing.
RV (01:41):
We hit the New York Times Best Sellers list. And I was telling our team that the playbook we run for Eric Thomas is the same playbook that we run for someone who is a first time self published author with zero followers. It’s the same playbook. It always works. The only difference is the magnitude of the results. And so this stuff works. And anyways, just so invigorating to see one of our clients like Ian succeeding. But I mean, we have a, we need to start like a little seven figure club at Brand Builders Group because you know, Lisa Woodruff and Candy Valenti and Anton Gun, like, we have a, we have a large group of clients that have gone to seven figures, like within a couple years of working with us, which is really, really awesome. So anyways, the conversation was around sales and specifically I titled that episode, How to Be Comfortable Selling High Dollar Offers because that’s what Ian has done.
RV (02:37):
If, again, if you haven’t listened to the interview we’ve known him for years. He sold for RICO business products, and then he was the number one salesperson worldwide at Salesforce selling million dollar deals. And he made over seven figures a year in income there. So and then he became a brand builders group client, and is now, you know, doing his personal brand doing sales coaching, specifically B2B sales coaching. So if you’re someone who sells business to business, like you sell to other companies, Ian is one of the people that we, we recommend. So if you go to brand builders group.com/ian cognac, that’s K O N I K you can, excuse me, you can check that out and learn about what he’s up to. It’s just, he’s literally like the, one of the best in the world, and that’s what he’s, that’s what he’s teaching people to do.
RV (03:28):
So I love that. Now I’m gonna share with you three of my takeaways things that I was reminded of. Obviously, sales is something we spend a lot of our time doing. We don’t focus, Brand builders group doesn’t focus so much on teaching B2B sales. We don’t focus so much on selling to companies. We do teach people how to book keynotes. Sell keynotes is something we do really, really well. But outside of selling keynotes, most of our curriculum is around selling business to consumer and directly to an end person to get them to buy. But in our former life, you know, with the way that AJ and I met was, we started a company that was sales coaching and sales col co consulting. And we exclusively sold sales training to companies. And that was an eight figure business that we sold in 2018.
RV (04:12):
And so we, we know a lot about sales, but these days most of what we teach is selling B to C business to consumer. And so I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you three of my highlights, three of my re reminders that I got from Ian, and, you know, just kind of like triggered things that I wanna share with you specifically for selling high dollar offers, B to c business to consumer. Because, you know, we, we talked about a lot of things in that interview, b2b, b2c, enterprise sales, It all applies. But here in this recap, I’m gonna talk about three things that really are going to help you sell high dollar offers and feel comfortable selling high dollar offers, offers. And by being comfortable, I mean, not feeling slimy, not feeling sleazy and, and just being confident. And yeah. So these are really, really important.
RV (05:06):
All right, so number one, and this was a, this was a, a, I’m gonna use the words that Ian said here, I thought were eloquent, is he said, Make your number one intention helping your client achieve a goal rather than pitching your product. Like you wanna make your number one intention helping a client achieve a goal rather than pitching your product. And this, I I, I couldn’t agree more. Like, it’s almost like if you’re in a conversation with somebody and you’re focused on the sale, you’re gonna miss, you’re gonna, you’re gonna lose the relationship. You have to look past the sale. And almost like even when I’m talking to a prospect, like if I’m in an active sales conversation with somebody sales to me is not about talking somebody into something they don’t want. And it’s not about talking someone into, to something they
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Don’t need. Sales isn’t really talking people into anything. Sales is about understanding what is their current situation and does the thing I have help them accomplish the end result. So when I’m in an active conversation with a sales prospect, I’m like looking past the sale, meaning it’s almost like I’m, I’m, I’m listening to what they want to achieve in their life. And I’m saying, Okay, let’s pretend they actually bought. Let’s assume that they bought, if they were a customer of ours, right? Now, are we set up to help them achieve the thing they’re saying they want? That’s it. If we are, then the answer is, you gotta buy. Like, you need to sign up, like we’re, we’re gonna help you. If the answer is no, then it’s definitely not. And if the answer is unsure, I have to ask more questions. I have to listen until I get clear.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I can’t really help them get clear on whether or not we can help them until I’m a hundred percent clear. But it’s like, that’s why the more that we’ve gone on, the more specific our audience becomes, and the more we narrow in on what we are doing and we’re growing, we’re reaching more people by narrowing our focus. Like at brand builders, at our core, we help experts, right? We also help entrepreneurs and we can help executives. But our core business is, is like if you are an expert of any type, you’re a coach, consultant, speaker, author, a doctor, a lawyer, a chiropractor, you, you know, a financial advisor. Like if you are an expert person who wants to become more well known, meaning your business will grow, you will make more money, you will make more impact. You’ll, you’ll achieve your life mission by having more people know about you.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
If you’re an expert who wants to become more well known, and I say this as humbly as I can, you should give us your credit card and just sign up. Like, we are the best in the world at this. We are like, I, I just, we, we’ve we’re, we’ve done this so long in so well, in such a deep way that like, if you are an expert who’s trying to become more well known, you’re trying to reach more people, you’re trying to make more impact, like, we got you. Now, if you’re not that, then that’s where it’s like, yeah, we’re not set up, we’re not, you know, we’re not set up for you, right? Like, you, maybe we’re not the right fit. You know, it is a great example of this interview with Ian. If you are, if you’re an enterprise salesperson, if you’re a W two employee and you sell to other companies, brand builder’s group, we’re not your people.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Doesn’t mean you can’t learn stuff from us, You can, but I’d go, you should talk to Ian, like homeboy is the best in the world at this thing. Like all he did was sell companies like business to business products. So for you in your business, it’s about being super clear on what results can you help people experience? What goals can you help them accomplish? Somebody comes to us, they say, I wanna be a bestselling author. We go, Yep, give us your credit card. I wanna become, I wanna speak on more stages and bigger stages. Yep. Give us your credit card. I wanna get paid more money for speaking, coaching, consulting. Yep. Give us your money. I wanna generate more online leads for my, for my service based business. Yep. Give us your money. Like, I, I want to be, you know, I wanna grow my social media following, I wanna have a bigger podcast.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I I want to I wanna scale my expert business. I want, you know, more automation. Give us your money. Like this is what we do and we’re gonna dominate for you. We, you gotta be clear on the results that you can deliver for people. If you wanna get clear on what your uniqueness is and what separates you from everyone else, give us your money. Like, that’s our flagship thing. Like, we do that so well. So what is the result that you provide for your clients? Like, it’s, it’s almost not even thinking about what do you do? Like we all think about what do I like, what do we do? And people say, What do you do for a living? I want you to think about for a second, just go, What are the results that I am capable of providing to somebody? And the more that you live in that world, you think in that world you talk in that world, you create videos about that world, you write copy in that world.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And then specific here, the more you have conversations in that world, like from that perspective of going, Okay, the person is talking to me, here are the results that I’m capable of helping them to deliver, are these the results that are on their checklist? Are these the results they’re pursuing? If they are, then it’s like, give me your money. Sign up. You’re crazy. Like you’re looking for a path that I have walked down. Come with me, let me show you the way. But if they’re not, then go, I’m not, I haven’t been down that path. I don’t know how to do that. You know, and try to try to point ’em to somebody else who can, right? I, I don’t think I would, I would not be the best person in the world to coach someone to be the number one enterprise B2B salesperson. I would definitely refer that person to Ian.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I’d be like, You should talk to my friend Ian. Like he’s got this dialed in now. You wanna launch a book, You wanna become a bestselling author? There’s nobody in the world that I could say legitimately no one in the world that could do that better than us. There’s a, there’s only a couple other people who I would say they know what they’re talking about. But like, less than five. So, and, and I would say that in many ways we’re, we’re, we’re one at least one of the best in the world. Same thing, You wanna Ted talk, you wanna grow your speaking career, you wanna grow your coaching, your information products, like, gosh, we’re your people. So get clear on that. But if you’re, if you’re focused on making the sale, you’re overlooking, you’re not looking at results, you’re just trying to make money.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
And so it’s like you have to overlook the sale. But what I mean is look past the sale, assume that they were a client, Could you help them actually achieve what they’re asking? If yes, they should buy, if no, they should not. So I love when he said the, the, the intention of make it your number one intention to help your client achieve a goal rather than to pitch your product is so good, so good. The second thing I wanna talk to you about is called the Pressure Free promise. And this is a bit right out of our formal curriculum. So if you’re not yet a brand builders group client we have 14 topics in our, in our training program. Each of them is a different two day experience, but one of them is called Pressure Free Persuasion, which is our version of how we teach sales, the methodology that we call service centered selling.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And, and we have coined this whole new way of selling you know, all these proprietary frameworks. And one of the, one of the techniques in that program is called the pressure free promise. And the pressure free promise is all about releasing pressure in any sales environment. Like whether it’s one to one, one to many high dollar offer, low dollar offer, it’s one of the most powerful things you can do. It’s like, it’s such a tactical thing. And what is it? The pressure free promise is just promising people that no matter what happens, you are not gonna pressure them. That’s what the pressure free promise is, is saying that, Look, if I’m gonna show you, I’m gonna learn about what you need, and I’m gonna tell you about what we do, and if there’s a match, I’m gonna facilitate the process of you buying because it’s gonna be the right thing for you.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
If what we have does not fit what you need, I’m gonna facilitate the process of you saying no, and that’s okay. I’m gonna, my job is to help you decide what is best for you. My job is not to sell you. My job is, is I’m a matchmaker. So it, the pressure free promise is a mentality. It’s also an actual, like, literal phrase. But the the mentality is my job is a matchmaker. If this is a yes, I’m gonna help you move forward. If this is a no, I’m gonna help you say no, but I’m gonna help you get clear that it’s gonna be one of those. But I promise you, either way, I’m not gonna pressure you. That’s the mindset. It, and, and, and we’re articulating, we’re saying out loud, we’re telling people. And so it sounds like, it sounds, you know, some variation of this.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It doesn’t have to be verbatim, but it’s saying, you know what, You know, Lisa, what I wanna do today is I really wanna understand what you’re trying to accomplish, and then I’m gonna tell you a little bit about what we have. And if this is a good fit for you, then I’m gonna encourage you and I’m gonna show you how to sign up. If it is not though, I’m gonna encourage you not to sign up. Whether you buy or not is not my main concern. My main concern is figuring out if what we have is a good fit for you. And so, I promise either way, I’m very easy to say no to. I promise it’s okay if you don’t buy, I wanna let you know it’s okay to say no. That’s the pressure free promise. You’re, you’re, you’re promising them. We’re not gonna have pressure.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
We’re promising them. I’m not talking ’em into something. We’re, but, and we’re promising them clarity. Like what, what I’m really committed to in a sales conversation is clarity. It’s clarity about the match. I’m a matchmaker. If it’s a good match, I’m gonna tell you to buy it and I’m gonna help you do it. If it’s not, I’m gonna tell you no, I’m not afraid of a no. And this is the difference between a pressure, a service centered salesperson and a normal commissioned breast salesperson. I’m not afraid of a no, I don’t mind a no no is fine. I’m not trying for a, no, I don’t, It’s not that I want to, No, I want to, yes, but I’m not afraid of a no. I’m not resistant to a no. A yes is good. A yes is what I want. A no is fine. What I don’t want is maybe, maybe is unacceptable, maybe is not okay.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Allowing people to say maybe is a disservice, not just to you, It’s a disservice to them because if they say yes, they can powerfully move forward. If they say no, they can powerfully move forward. If they say, maybe we are both stuck, neither of us can move forward. We have allowed ourselves to be stuck in this indecisive limo. And that is where mediocrity breeds and thrives in the world of indecision, right? I’d rather make the wrong decision than live an indecision. I’d rather take the wrong action than live an inaction. I would rather make it a no than allow it to be a, maybe, maybe is disgusting, like maybe is despicable. I like, don’t hate the no, hate them. Maybe like I’m okay with them saying no. I’ll encourage ’em to say no. In fact, if they tell me, maybe I’m gonna make it a no cuz I don’t want maybe is not powerful, maybe is mediocre, maybe as marginal, maybe is stuck in a world of not making a difference.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It’s maybe as stuck in a world of inaction, maybe as I’m not doing anything great with my life, but I haven’t yet freed myself from being stuck in the middle to actually go out and do something. So I’m fine with no, I’m not okay with maybe, So you don’t say all that to them.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
You give them permission to say yes. The moment you give them permission to say no is also the same moment that you give them permission to say yes. Because by allowing them the permission to tell you no, all their walls come down, all their, their relu, their sales resistance comes down, their, their buying reluctance comes down and all of their preconceived notions dissolve, and they can just have an open, honest conversation with you, which is what we both want, right? And so it’s, it’s about being service centered, not self centered. That’s what this is about. So that’s the pressure free promise. The third thing is turn your customer force into your sales force. This is the ultimate form of lead generation. The ultimate form of lead generation is turning your customer force into your sales force. How do you do that? It’s so simple.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Is it asking for referrals? Yes, we should ask for referrals, but it is by over delivering for your current customers. Like the best form of prospecting is helping your current customers succeed. The best form of prospecting new customers is loving on your current customers. When your new, your current customers succeed and thrive, then it makes referrals easy, which means the next sale is easy. But if your, your current customers aren’t succeeding or they’re not loving the program, or they’re not getting results, they’re not gonna tell anybody for you. But when they are, right? When you satisfy a customer, not just satisfy, but when you over satisfy, when you create a raving fan of your current customer, every customer becomes a salesperson. That typically happens much faster than recruiting and hiring and training a new salesperson. So turn your customer force into your sales force by overdelivering, loving on them, giving them more than they expect, giving them and, and, and just being consumed with the question, How can I help my clients succeed faster?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
That’s what we want you to be focused on. That’s what we want you thinking about. How can I help you succeed faster? Not how can I make more money off of you, not how can I get, you know, more referrals from you? Like, those are fine things, but make your number one focus. How can I help you succeed faster? How can I will help you win better? And the way that we came up with our whole affiliate program was, I didn’t wanna sell to my friends. Like, I have all these friends who are speakers and authors who are very successful and they need a lot of ’em, frankly, need what we do or can benefit from. They may don’t need it. They can benefit a lot from what we can do. We can help them a lot, but I didn’t wanna have to sell to them.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
So it was like, great, well, what if we came up with an affiliate program where we paid them money for everyone they introduced to us, and then they could use that money to buy from us? Like John Gordon the author of the Energy Bus just became a brand builders group client, full fee, full paying client of ours. And we’re working with him on some sales stuff, right? Him and his team on, on scaling their, their sales team and, and scaling some of their, their high dollar offers. Well, John’s been a friend. John’s a mentor of mine. I don’t like, you know, I was like, Ah, I don’t really love trying to sell to, you know, my friends and mentors, but he referred so much business to us that he had all this money. And I said, Hey, John, like, we’re, you know, we can pay you this money, or, you know, you can, you can, you can pay it back to us and we can offer you some services.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And it was like done. And so everybody wins, right? So we came up with that by, by by, by being focused on how can we help others succeed? And that mindset, just by itself is what this is all about. That is what this personal brand journey is all about. How can I help others succeed? Not how can I get more followers, not how can I be more famous, not how can I make more money? How can I help others succeed? How can I help others get a result? How can I make a bigger impact in their life? That is what Brand Builders Group is all about. That’s part of our uniqueness. Like, like it or not, that’s who we are. And that’s what we are about. And, and if that is you, then you are what we call a mission driven messenger. And you should become one of our clients.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
We will rock your world
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Need, need more money, right? Like we, we need our clients to succeed. We need our clients to win. That is like the ultimate fulfillment and we get out of all business is seeing our clients win. So thanks for being here. Thanks for letting us be a part of hopefully helping you win in one way or another. Keep coming back, share this episode with somebody who wants to feel more comfortable selling High dollar offers. And we’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 329: Authenticity as Your New Competitive Advantage with Erin Hatzikostas | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, y’all and welcome to my recap episode on my conversation with Erin hatzicostas. Now she’s got me all triggered about how to say her last name, cuz I’ve been calling her Erin hot Costas for forever and then she said cost us. So now I’m all insecure about it. But seriously, if you did not listen to this interview, I really suggest that you go. And I don’t say that just because it’s an interview. I think you should listen to, even though it is that it’s, it just it’s really universal. And it, it touches the core of, I think of a lot of what of us, a lot of what we all struggle with, who you’ve ever thought, do I really deserve this? Or am I living some imposter life or I’m not good enough? Or I have to be something I’m not in order for people to like me or respect for, or respect me or follow me.
AJV (01:43):
This is the episode for you, cuz it’s all about using authenticity as a part of your leadership strategy. And I love it. I love her. I think she is authentic. I also think she’s just an awesome human being. It’s a really great interview. I really recommend that you go and listen to it. But with all that said here are four, four things that I took away from this conversation that I thought were really worthy to come back and recap in this conversation. I loved what she said. She said that, you know, when she left corporate America and she was a corporate CEO for years but when she left corporate America to like kind of go out on her own as a coach, speaker, consultant, entrepreneur, podcaster, author, all these things she, for a long time, didn’t want to be labeled as a coach or a trainer, a consultant or speaker because she had this like preconceived notion of what that was.
AJV (02:37):
And I loved what she said about it. And she said, it took me a long time to get here. But here’s what I would do today. Here’s the advice that I would give someone today. It’s don’t not do something because you hated the way that you saw someone else do it. And in the middle of that is you know, the foundation, the gen Genesis of some authenticity, it said don’t define what something is because of one way that you saw it done that you’re like, well, I don’t wanna do that. Or I don’t wanna be that. Well, it’s like, don’t,
AJV (03:28):
Oh my gosh. I thought that was so good because I can think of so many times or so many things where I haven’t done something because I was like, oh, I didn’t like that. Or I didn’t like the way they did. It’s like, so what do it differently? Or get it done by someone else? That doesn’t mean you don’t have to like the whole thing just because you didn’t like the way it was done by one particular person or company or organization, do it differently, be authentic and do it in the way that feels you. Then this was a second big highlight for me is we talked about, well, what is authenticity? Like, what’s your definition of authenticity? And I think this is really interesting because I think sometimes that word can be overused, but in a way where it’s not really explained very well, right.
AJV (04:14):
I hear the word, you know, be authentic and you know, show authenticity. But it’s like, what does that really mean? Because it’s like, there’s all different types of internal translations we can make with things like that. And it’s like, just do you be you? And I loved, oh my gosh, I love this so much. I literally have it written down. I’m gonna share the whole team. But on a PostIt note of my wall, I’m gonna do something with this. Cause she said, authenticity is exposing who you really are when people least expect it. That is authenticity. Oh my gosh. That is so good. Like exposing who you really are, the moment that people least expected, what an amazing definition of authenticity. And then she followed it up and she said, it’s not just being yourself. Sure. That’s a part of it. And it’s not just being transparent.
AJV (05:05):
Right? authenticity and transparency are two different things with two different definitions. You cannot be too authentic, but you can be too transparent. Right. I think that’s really an important distinction, right? Authenticity and transparency. They’re different things. Right? I thought the other thing that she said I thought was brilliant is that it’s not about you. It’s really not. It’s about creating trust with other people by being more vulnerable and humble and you in the moment. And I thought that was really good. It’s like authenticity. Isn’t about you just putting it all out there for the world to take it all in. Being authentic is about creating a trust, a trusted environment. An environment of intrigue and curiosity, even with other people, by being more vulnerable, by being more honest. And by being more humble in the moment, going back to her definition, which is authenticity is exposing who you really are when people least expected mind blown.
AJV (06:17):
I love that so much. And quite honestly, that allows me to attach a whole new meaning to authenticity and being authentic, being authentic. Isn’t just being me. No, it’s being more of me in the right moments where people least expect it. That allows me to show my humanity. And it also allows me to show my imperfections, right. I love what she said. Her son says that she’s a imperfection. And we all are. We are all imperfections. We are not perfect, but it allows me to be more imper, imperfect, which naturally should make me more human and more relatable and more personable to those around me. I need that. We all need that. So, so good. Then we followed it up with about authenticity is not a permission. It’s a power. And I think I often hear some people you know, kind of roll their eyes at authenticity as like, is this some woo woo female feminist crap.
AJV (07:17):
AJV (08:20):
And also the fact that we just were really blessed to have the opportunity to have this conversation on this show and, and use it in a way that will make us all feel more ourselves and more human when we’re looking at those around us. Right. and then the last thing we did was that we talked about this awesome study that she just did was like did this national research study on authenticity in the workplace. So cool. I love this idea. I love the results. I love this study. The data is so amazing and so helpful and empowering as a leader or a business owner. But also really empowering as a, as a teammate, as an employee, as someone who just has human relationships and, and deals with communication, which is all of us. But one of the things that I thought was really fascinating is one of the key takeaways was the parallel between authentic cultures and talent retention, which is just a really hot topic right now, right.
AJV (09:18):
Everyone is talking about how do I retain talent? How do I, you know, recruit and retain really good people. And there is a direct correlation with, do you have an authentic culture where people can be themselves in the moment where there is humility and vulnerability and the ability to just get it straight with no facades and no pretending. Is there that, and if there is you have a higher chance of talent retention versus is this a culture where we just don’t talk about those things, you know, don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t really ever get to know your leaders. Don’t ever really get to know your executives. And if you have that, you have a very high chance of quick turnover. So let that sit in for a minute. If you have any sort of employees or team members, or even even run a volunteer organization, it’s people don’t have to stay. There’s lots of options, especially right now where everyone is hiring. So how can you use authenticity as your main retention tool with your team? Y’all check out this interview check out Erin Hatzicostas you can go to B authentic, Inc. That’s just the letter B authentic ink.com. You can check her out, follow her, get this study. It’s amazing. Go listen to it, put it into practice and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 327: First Steps to Launching Your Expert Business with Chris Ducker | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you find your niche and how do you find your first customers? That was the topic of conversation primarily with my good friend Chris Ducker. Welcome to this recap edition. I’m gonna be highlighting you know, some of my three top takeaways from that conversation with Chris, sharing some of my own thoughts here. And just hopefully helping you put this into practice because you know, as I shared Christa something very similar to what we do at Brand Builders Group. He focuses on helping experts build their personal brand, does it in a different way. He’s in the uk, we’re in the us He does mostly membership sites and, and group virtual trainings. We do mostly one-on-one coaching with people, but I’ve known him for years and love dialoging and just sort of like sharpening each other’s saw, diving in on personal brand strategy and online marketing and nicheing and all of those things.
RV (00:56):
So I’m gonna share with you my top, my top three, I’ll, I’ll say take aways. They were things that either Chris shared or things that it, it inspired me to talk to you about. And specifically I wanna, I’m gonna share with you three ways to find your niche, like, to help you actually niche down. But the first, my first takeaway was one of the things that Chris said early on, which is just going, How do you become someone’s favorite? Right? Like, become someone’s favorite. That’s what we’re trying to do. Like that is, that is what I want to do, right? Like, and, and, and I don’t know who needs to, I don’t know if you need to hear this, somebody listening needs to hear this. You don’t need to have millions of followers. You don’t need to have millions of downloads. You don’t have to have hundreds of employees.
RV (01:50):
You, you don’t have to, like, you don’t need those things. And in, in many cases, the chasing of those things, I think is what holds us back from actually receiving and achieving and accomplishing the things that are meant for us. Because we’re like caught in this distant facade and dream of like, Oh, we have to change the whole world that we’re missing out on. Like, we can change the lives of the people that are right in front of us. We can be someone’s favorite, and that’s what I wanna be, right? Like of course I wanna have, you know, reach more people and have more people buy, buy our books and our listen to this podcast and follow us on social media and join our email list. Yeah. You know, we’re, we’re generally speaking, we’re moving in the direction of, of more of those people, but getting consumed with that is really risky business. It’s really dangerous because it, it pulls you away from, you know, what I think Chris was talking about, or at least what it made me think about when he said, How can you become someone’s favorite, Right? Like, you go, maybe you won’t have millions of podcast listeners, but you’re have hundreds of
RV (03:00):
People that your show is their Favorite show,
RV (03:04):
Right? Your book is their favorite book. Like listening to you speak or watching your reels, or you know, your talks or your YouTube shorts or your, your, your YouTube videos or reading your blog, your, their favorite. How do you become their favorite? It, it’s, it’s actually way easier than people think. It’s easier to become somebody’s favorite by
RV (03:26):
Serving a More narrow group of people. Be because
RV (03:32):
There’s a couple reasons why, and I asked Chris this question and I liked the answer that he gave and, and I’ve got another answer that I wanted to share with you is I said, Why do you think that is? I said, Why, why is it that that the more you niche down the, the more you know the quicker you have success and like the more financial success you experience quickly? And he said, Well, I think a lot of it is language, right? And and I think that’s a part of it for sure. Like, it’s, it’s, we, we use the term native tongue. Like you’re able to use terminology that your audience relates with, and they go, Oh, you serve me
RV (04:06):
Like I’m your Person. And when and when your audience can show up and they, and they know, Oh,
RV (04:14):
Talk to me like I’m your Person,
RV (04:16):
Then it just creates this really quick intimate bond because you’re, you’re sharing their language that they understand and, and, and that’s super powerful. But, but the other thing, you know, as I was thinking about the question I asked him, which is
RV (04:31):
Why does it work
RV (04:33):
So much better to, to niche down rather than to go like, you know, broad market? Like what is it about that? What I realized,
RV (04:44):
What I realized is that I think the, the real, the real thing
RV (04:48):
That’s happening there
RV (04:49):
Is when you serve a smaller market, you have more opportunity and more availability and more specificity in being able to serve them in a deeper way. When you serve a narrow market, you can serve them in a deeper way. Because when you, when you serve a small group of people and you, you just ask, what’s the next thing they need? What’s the next thing they need? Then all of a sudden you can fully like, like own it and step into it and be a part of it and, and go, Oh, this is what they
RV (05:26):
Need. And, and part
RV (05:27):
Of what’s making me think
RV (05:28):
About this is the
RV (05:31):
Is the,
RV (05:33):
The, the, the book tool the book launch tool, right? So we are
RV (05:39):
Doing,
RV (05:40):
You know, book launches. One of the things we’ve been helping people with, and we’ve been doing it so much that it’s like, Oh, they need a template for this, and they need a template for this, and they need a template for this. And it’s like,
RV (05:49):
Through the process of
RV (05:51):
Coaching people on such a
RV (05:52):
Narrow specific part of their business, we’ve been able to create these incredible
RV (05:56):
Tools that we never would’ve thought to create if we were just sort of like serving the whole world. But it’s like the more we get specific on going, yeah, you know, like, I mean, if somebody’s launching a book like Brand Builders Group, I mean, we might be the best in the world at this, and we’ve just done it so much. And you know, I mean, just this year, I mean, we’ve had four clients, Ed Mylet, Eric Thomas, Tom and Lisa biu and Lovey Ajai Jones. We had four clients just this year that we’ve helped hit to New York Times, Wall Street Journal and or USA Today bestseller list. So it’s like, we’ve just been living in this, you know, for this season, especially recently, that it’s like, golly, for whatever reason, those have come to us and we’ve been, and, and we’re developing this depth, this real depth of knowledge.
RV (06:44):
You can’t do that when you’re trying to serve all different types of people and cater to all different types of businesses because you have to sort of stay super high level because, you know, it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this, this plane of there is, there’s principles that you can teach and then there’s practices and, you know, the, the, the principles of success are general. They apply universally. Like my book, Take the Stairs, a great example of that or my TED Talk, How to Multiply time, their principles. They, we, we teach at the principal level, and so they apply universally, which, you know, like people will watch a free TED talk, but I don’t make many money when they watch a free TED Talk. I do from the few of the groups that hire me to speak, which is a very small percentage of the people who watch it and, you know, take the serious book.
RV (07:30):
A lot of people read it, but it’s a $20 book, and which, you know, my royalty is 15% or whatever the number is, It’s not a huge amount. Versus when, when we’re serving people in, in the practices way, like we’re giving people verbatim scripts of what they can sell, what they can say to generate free calls and how to sell high dollar offers and exactly how to structure their sales pages. And these are the steps to do a book launch. And here’s how you, here’s how you get your first speaking engagements and, and here’s how you train your sales people, how to do free calls. And here’s what you say to ask for referrals, and here’s what you change to add humor into your presentations, and here’s how you better construct your funnels, and here’s how you optimize your offer structures, and here’s how you create more urgency.
RV (08:12):
And here’s how you, you know, like write your email copy and like, we can do it with such specificity because we’re, we’re, we’re serving experts and, and, and personal brands on really marketing and sales, how to generate more leads. And so who is that for you? Like, who can you be their favorite? Who can you be their favorite? So that’s the, that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is how to niche down. Okay? And this is where I wanna share you three specific questions. There’s three different ways of nicheing down, and I call this the M three model, okay? This is the M three model. This is part of our, this is one of our curriculum elements for our, our paying members at Brand Builders Group. Okay? So when you look at differentiating, how do you differentiate yourself from others in the market?
RV (09:05):
The first m is the, the market is the who. Okay? So here’s the three M’s. Market model and method, market model and method, Okay? So the, the first one is to say, can I differentiate in the market that I serve? Meaning in who do I serve? So market is the who model is the how. Method is the, what market is the who model is the how, Method is the what. So who do I serve? If I serve a very specific type of person, then that you’re automatically nicheing down and creating differentiation. Now look, you know, even like brand builders group, if you go, Okay, who do we serve at a high level, it’s, it’s probably entrepreneurs. Then you go, there’s a level down from that, and it’s like, okay, it’s anyone who does professional services. You do the level down from that and you go, Okay, it’s really experts.
RV (09:56):
And you go really down to the core. It’s like coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, professional service advisors, right? Like they’re, they’re experts. But then we narrow down to say we serve mission driven messengers. So they’re not just experts, They’re experts who care more about service than they they do about sales. They’re people who care about money, but the money is subservient to the mission. Our audience are people who wanna make a bigger impact. They wanna make the world a better place. Yes, if they make more money as a byproduct of that, that’s a great thing. And they need money in order to do that, cuz it takes money to, to make impact and, and do big things. But it’s like the mission is first. So that’s a part of how we have quickly differentiated and delineated and defined who we serve. So that’s who you serve.
RV (10:47):
It can be a demographic, like an age and a geography and, and, but it also can be a psychographic like mission driven messengers, which is their mentality. So who do you serve? Next is model, right? So the business model is, that’s when we say model, that’s like what is your business model? How do you service those people? You know, this came up on the show with Chris, which is like, he serves people through online courses primarily, right? We have a different business model. We are a, a one-on-one coaching model. Now we have courses, we have membership site, but that’s mostly just to help people have an affordable way to step in. Our goal is to work with people at our live events and one-on-one because man, when we get a chance to like talk to you and deep dive with you and, and help you not just teach it to you, but do it with you, it’s life changing.
RV (11:43):
I mean, we, we have, we can improve. Like there’s certain techniques we teach that can help people make six figures in 60 seconds. Like changing what you say on stage. I was using this example this morning with our internal team where we changed what one speaker said on stage and made a hundred thousand dollars in just adding a, a little 62nd pivot in what they said from stage versus when they hadn’t done it. And, and a hundred thousand dollars difference, like a hundred thousand dollars in this one pivot. We can’t do that though, unless we’re working with you one on one. So that’s our model. So, you know, Uber changed the model. Taxis had a business model, which was you go stand in the taxi line and, and you waited for them. Uber said, We come to you wherever you are, right? And instead of standing in a line, you push a phone a button on your app, and they come to you iTunes and, and Napster.
RV (12:40):
They, they changed the model. It was the same method in terms of the, what it was still music, but the model was different. It wasn’t by a physical CD or a cassette tape. It, it was, you know, go online and download a file or, or you know, basically plug into this, this platform that, that, that plays files. That is a change in model. Airbnb is, is a model. It’s like instead of staying at hotels, you know, people are renting out their homes. That’s a change in business model and it’s a way to differentiate. And then the third m m three is method. The method is what you actually do. So that’s like what you actually teach. So again, just using Chris as an example, since we kind of do something similar, you know, we both have frameworks and we both have a map. We both have, you know, like a roadmap.
RV (13:30):
We call ours the brand builder journey. And we both have techniques and, and exercises. We take people to help them clarify their audience you know, grow their audience, manage their, manage the different parts of their business, et cetera. But what we do is actually different. The models that he teaches are, are ones that he’s come up with that have worked for him and his clients. The ones that we teach are different. We have the 15 piece of copywriting. We have your content diamond for managing social media. We have the modular content method for writing your whole book in like two days. We have the something, something that we call pillar point formulas, which is like how to make your TED talk go viral. And we have our, our bestseller launch plan for launching books. And, and we have all of these different frameworks where it’s like the, what we’re teaching is actually different.
RV (14:18):
You can’t get what we’re doing from anyone else. You could get something similar, right? There’s lots of people who do something similar to what you do, but they can’t do exactly what you do if you’re creating your own unique methodology. And that’s part of what we teach people to do in captivating content is we teach you, we help you, we facilitate the creation of your own thought leadership, of your own original ip, of, of your own unique methodologies and frameworks and diagrams and charts and tables that they can’t, they can’t, no one can get it anywhere else in the world except from you, because that’s different differentiating your method. And that automatically creates differentiation and distinction. So that’s how you, you niche down, I would say focus on those three. You know, the market. Who, who am I serving? Who can I serve specifically the, the model.
RV (15:10):
How am I serving them? How can that be different? And then the method, what am I, what am I actually teaching or doing for them? That’ll help you niche down. And then the, the last, my last takeaway this was directly from Chris, just, you know, the way he said it was, you know, I said, What’s the best way to get your first customer? And I listed off all these different marketing method methods, and I loved his answer. He said, he said, Choose your weapon. Choose your weapon. And, and here’s, here’s how I internalized that. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing, because you’ll do it really well. Like, but the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. The formula for success is to do any type of marketing. But the formula for, for the, but the formula for failure, the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing.
RV (16:04):
Meaning if you do all of them, none of them are gonna, you’re not gonna do any of them well. So you can take any of them and, and focus on them and do them really well, and it will work, right? Like you can become a master of cold calling. You can become a master of, of sending direct messages of email marketing, of social, of podcasting, of YouTube, of LinkedIn, of whatever. But if you try to do all of them at the same time, they’re not, it’s not gonna work. Like it’s, it’s just, you’re, you’re, you’re not optimizing for, for your resources. Like, especially if you’re a small business. So the formula for success is to do any type of marketing. The formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. So choose your weapon, choose one form of marketing, choose one platform, one technique, one strategy.
RV (16:51):
Learn it, do it really, really well. And if you come to Brand Builder’s Group, we’re gonna teach you, we’re gonna teach you how to get referrals and we’re gonna teach you how to go out and do presentations. Cuz we know that that is the fastest path to cash for high dollar offers, is referrals from friends and family. And we’re gonna teach you exactly what to say, when to say it, how to say it, who to say it to verbatim, right? In our Pressure Free Persuasion course. And we’re gonna teach you how to create world class presentations that drive massive trust and leads immediately into your business using our, our world class presentation, craft training which is based on brand dna. So but whatever it is, choose your weapon and, and just do, do one really, really well and you will succeed. The riches are in the niches.
RV (17:38):
This is, this is counterintuitive that by narrowing down your focus, you will make more impact, more money and, and just more of a difference in the world. So don’t be afraid to just let go and say you have permission to not need or chase millions of followers. Just become the favorite of a few people. And the better job you do at doing that, the more impact, the more income and the more influence you will create. Share this podcast if you wouldn’t mind with somebody who you think will benefit from it. And keep coming back here week after week on the influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 325: Life Lessons of an Entrepreneur with Denise Villa | Recap Episode
AJV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, AJ Vaden here. And here is the recap of my recent conversation with Denise via and I love conversations like this because they’re just real. And if you’re looking for a real conversation with a, a real entrepreneur, who’s not shy about telling you the ups downs, good, bad, ugly all of the in between then go check out the full episode on the influential personal brand podcast with Denise via lessons from a real life entrepreneur. But I’m gonna pick out a couple of them that I thought were really important for this recap episode that we’re gonna talk about right now. So one of the things that I think is pertinent that I’m gonna share just because it relates to me. And since I’m doing these recaps, I get to decide what to talk about. But I, I loved her take on what it’s like to work with your spouse.
AJV (01:50):
And I worked with my spouse have for a really long time, little known fact Rory Vaden and I were business partners before we were spouses. We were business partners before we fell in love and got married, we kind of broke that Cardinal rule. And we have a unique perspective that we’ve never not known each other as business partners. Whereas many couples who work together became couples before they started working together. And we don’t know what life looks like, not working together. And perhaps that’s God’s saving grace or us in our marriage as we don’t know any other way. But I, I loved a couple of things that she said I thought were really insightful. And what I loved most is that what often you hear people talking about are ways to make it work. Like how do you, you know, still find time for each other and not let work conveyed the off hours.
AJV (02:50):
And how do you divide and conquer and how do you stay in your own lane and how you not kill each other?
AJV (03:43):
AJV (04:30):
It is hard, there’s hard things about it. And there’s also really good things about it. We just choose to talk about the hard ones and we don’t often talk about like what a blessing and what a gift it is to get, to build something together with your spouse or your family to, to get to enjoy seeing each other’s gifts at work, however they can drive you crazy. And I think just making that decided choice up going, man, like what are the, the gifts, the blessings in this creates a heart change in me, at least that makes the more challenging parts, less challenging, because I get to take a, a, I get a front seat of seeing my partner, my husband, my, you know, my spouse, my friend live out his potential, live out these gifts that God has put in his life.
AJV (05:22):
And I’m really grateful for that. And I, I love that part of our conversation of it’s easy to talk about just like, oh, how do you make it work? How do you not kill each other? How do you like not let work take over? And I love that there’s also a piece of this, of like, how do you get to just sit back and revel and the awesomeness that is your, you know, dad, child, brother, sister, uncle, husband, wife and get to see them at work. And so I just love that perspective on that of working with your spouse. So that was the first thing second thing that I just kind of, of wanted to highlight but I thought was really fascinating is
AJV (06:08):
You are sitting with so many responsibilities and of which include taking out the trash to pay in the bills to, you know, sitting on boards, to writing checks, to being featured in media, to letting people go laying people off, hiring people, leading people, managing people. And I just don’t know if you know, the, the letter CEO, chief executive officer are all encompassing enough for what really happens on a daily life as an entrepreneur of a small business. Right. and I thought that was a really good take of going, like what it really means to be an entrepreneur is that you’re willing to do all of the things. And you’re not above any things. If you know the mate isn’t there, it’s you clean it up, right. Trashman, didn’t show up, you take it out, person, quit, you do the sales call, next person quits, you do this call.
AJV (07:08):
Right. And it’s, and I think a part of that is an ingrained feeling right. Of it’s a, this is mine and it’s whatever it takes, right. It’s like, I like so many things in my life today to parenting.
AJV (08:08):
And that includes our clients, our employees, our mission our, you know, our company is like another baby, right? It’s like a child. But we get to do all the things to take care of the thing that we love, that we have to do all the dirty work. And it’s so hard. Those things are true too, but it’s that, that slight perspective shift that again makes all the challenging things, just a little less challenging. All right. And then my third thing kind of on this same kind of same line, right? I, this, I love the kind of title of this, just lessons of a real life entrepreneur of what is it like to go through the different ebbs and flows, the peaks and valleys? The good and the bad of having an exclusively high growth company to, wow. Now we’re having to lay everyone off just to survive and then to come back and go, okay, now things are back again.
AJV (09:08):
And, and that’s an emotional roller coaster and like buckle up, hold on tight, cuz you just dunno how fast the drop’s gonna happen and then how fast it could pick back up again. And I loved what she said about like how do you create some consistency right. Both mentally, emotionally, even physically of making sure that your work, isn’t just the only thing in your life. And I think that’s the real takeaway for me is I think as American entrepreneurs and I can only say that because I am an American. But I’m sure this is true in most countries. Our identity gets tied up in our work and our identity is not what we do. Our identity is who we are. And if all we do, if the only thing we do is work, then we lose side of all of the other pieces of us.
AJV (10:05):
So to create more consistency, to create more stability, what we do is we have to have a little bit more diversity and all the things that we do, right. I can honestly say before I became a mother work was way more all consuming than I would care to admit today. But I think through becoming a parent, I realized it’s like, oh man, I had really put too much of my identity into one thing. And I wanted to be really careful not just to dump it into the next thing, which is motherhood of going well, where is my identity and who am I, if it’s not just, you know, being Jasper and Liam’s mom or doing this ex company or doing these ex services or whatever it may be. But it’s really making sure that it’s like, I have more diversity in my life of recommitting my life back to, to Christ and getting more involved in Bible studies and increasing a friend group.
AJV (11:08):
I didn’t have friends for a really long time work was everything. And it was creating, you know, routines and habits that’s that created some separation where everything, everything wasn’t centered on just this one thing. And I think that that’s necessary in my opinion, so that your identity doesn’t get just tied up in one thing because that isn’t your identity. That is a, a phase of your life. It is something that you’ve done, although it may be a large phase of your life, but it is not who you are. It is simply something that you have done for a period of time until you move on to the next thing. Y’all so many takeaways, those were just three highlights. They had a common central theme there. Loved this conversation, loved these takeaways. They were important to me. I hope they’re important to you. So stick around and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 323: High-Performance Secrets of NBA Superstars with Alan Stein Jr. | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
High performance secrets from NBA superstars. What a fascinating conversation with Alan Stein. And man, I loved that more than I, more than I thought I would. You know, I’m just not, I’m not a huge sports guy anymore. Although I used to be, it was like my whole life growing up as a kid was Chicago
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Bulls.
RV (00:22):
But what a tremendous conversation, if you didn’t listen, go back and listen. It is fantastic. I’m gonna share with you some of my highlights. If you didn’t pick this up Alan was a skills trainer for NBA superstars and I’m talking superstars, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, step Curry. This guy was in the gym, working with them and you know, has written a book and started as a speaking career, sort of, sort of talking about it. And, and so I’m gonna share with you my three top takeaways from the interview of what hit me and also what I’ve been, what, you know, how I, how I interpret and internalize all these conversations. And the first one is really from Kobe Bryant. So it’s coming from Kobe Bryant by way of Allen,
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But Kobe said something so important. He said the best, never get bored with the basics. The best never get bored with the basics and from somebody that was so spectacular as a player,
RV (01:23):
As a performer, as Kobe Bryant,
Speaker 2 (01:25):
To
RV (01:25):
Hear him
RV (01:26):
Say that is, is moving to me and it’s inspiring to me and it’s validating for me and it’s edifying for me because I agree with that the best don’t get bored with the basics because the basics are what hold everything up. The, the really I would, I would say the, the people who are the best are the best, because they’re the best at the basics. They’re not the, they’re not the best at the exceptional. They’re not the best at the flashy. They’re not the best at the extraordinary. They’re brilliant at the basics. And that’s the thing to ask yourself, are you brilliant at the basics? Are you like, are you brilliant? Are you executing the fundamentals? Are you doing the things consistently that need to be done to grow your business? And, and when I think of like sales, right? I go, referrals are the basics.
RV (02:14):
It’s the fundamentals, but it’s the only thing you need. Like, are you asking for referrals in your business? If you are, you’re probably succeeding or you will be soon when, when you look at marketing and you go, are you putting out content consistently in many different places, right? Our content diamond formula that we teach are, are you following that? Are you doing it consistently? If you’re trying to be a speaker, are you speaking consistently? Are you, are you, are you on podcast interviews consistently? Are you, are you being brilliant at the basics? And personal branding is no different. Like these are the things every single weekend and week out, I gotta create a video. I gotta create a podcast. Our team’s gotta run a production
RV (02:53):
Schedule to just keep things going.
RV (02:55):
We gotta drive leads. Our sales team has to show up. They have to, you know, have conversations. They have to call follow up. They have to close. We have to onboard new people. Like we have to, we get to, we get to do all those things. And, and if, if the basics are good enough for Kobe Bryant, the basics are good enough for me. They should be good enough for you. And it’s, it’s the secret. It’s the truth. Like here’s the irony is I think people look at superstars and they go to superstars thinking if I could just get access to this superstar, then they’ll teach me the secrets. Then, then like, there’s, there’s some hidden playbook that we’re looking for. We, we convince ourselves that, that there’s something that they know that we don’t know. And if we could know what they know, then all of a sudden everything would be unlocked.
RV (03:44):
And there is a secret that they know that we don’t know the secret is there. Isn’t a secret. There isn’t a secret. The secret is to be brilliant at the basics, or as Kobe says the best don’t get bored with the basics. And so they’re not chasing flashy. They’re not chasing fancy. They’re not, they’re not chasing the spectacular they’re mastering, dominating and becoming brilliant at the basics. And so the question is, are you, am I, are we, what are the basics in your business? And are you dominating them? Are you mastering them? That was just so, so powerful for me. The second takeaway from that conversation with Alan was when he said these ultra performers, these superstar athletes have an amazing blend between confidence and humility, confidence, and humility. And I totally agree with that. I’ve seen the same thing over and over with ultra performers that I’ve been around in my life.
RV (04:52):
You know, and, and people think they, they get this mixed up. This is an important distinction. And it’s a balance that you need to understand that that confidence and humility are not at odds with one. Another confidence is not the opposite of humility. Pride is pride is the opposite of humility. Like being prideful is, is like, that’s more about who you’re doing it for, right? To me, confidence is the way you’re doing it, but pride is who you’re doing it for. And so when, when, when you have confidence, the way you’re, it’s the way you’re doing it, you’re doing it bold. You’re doing it aggressive. You’re doing it assertive. You’re, you’re, you’re doing it. You’re doing it with fire. You’re doing it with passion. You’re, you’re all in. You’re leaning into it. You are, you are, you are utilizing and accessing and withdrawing and leveraging and polling and investing every asset you have into to what you’re doing, the way you’re doing it and doing it well, pride is totally different. Pride is who you’re doing it for pride, prideful and
RV (05:56):
Being prideful is like, I’m doing it for me. I’m number one. I want everyone to see, you know, how great I am to me, that’s pride. And that’s the opposite of humility. But I think people, especially, if, if I may say, I think Christians are, are an interesting subgroup of people who struggle with this. At least I can speak for myself as a Christian, right? Because it’s like the meek inherit shall inherit the earth and, and humility is valued. And so it almost feels like if I’m being confident, I’m somehow being unholy, I’m being unspiritual or are I’m, you know, I’m, I’m not, I’m being less Christian, but I don’t see those at conflict at all. At least not now, I’ve been able to reconcile. I do see pride as being an issue because pride is doing it for me, showing the world, look at me, look how awesome I am.
RV (06:44):
Y’all need to respect me. And you bow down to me. And pride is a massive problem because it is in conflict with, you know, the first commandment of like no other God’s before me, where it’s like, humility is my life is in service of God. And my life is in service of the people around me. It’s not about elevating me so I can be humble and extraordinarily confident at the same time, I can be bold and humble. I can be confident and meek. I can be aggressive and assertive, assertive, and, and still be holy. But pride is different. Pride is like, I’m taking up the space of the most important of the most high, and that’s a problem. But and that’s different even than, than taking pride in your work. I think that’s different than being prideful. So these players, you know, probably take pride in their work, but they’re not prideful.
RV (07:38):
It’s not look at me. I’m the best. I’m the man y’all bow down. They’re they’re but they are extremely confident. I can take that shot. I’ve I’ve practiced this thousands of times. I loved, I loved when Alan said this in the interview, he said, if you hadn’t seen how many times Steph Curry had taken these millions of shots in an empty gym, you wouldn’t be as impressed when he makes 12 threes in a game. Right? It’s you know, for most of us like, oh my gosh, 12 threes, this is in a game. This is superhuman, but you go, nah, he’s like hitting 12 threes in an hour all the time, because he’s shooting millions and millions and millions of shots. It wouldn’t seem that like, you know, it just wouldn’t be that much of a superhero, cuz it’s like, it’s, it’s more like muscle memory.
RV (08:22):
And so I think that’s, what’s really cool is you can be confident and bold, but you can also have the humility to put in the work and, and focus on the basics and to keep practicing. And you know, I, I loved when he was telling the story about how Kobe was, you know, most players are working out once a day, the best are working out twice. Kobe’s working out three times a day, he’s leaving his first workout by the time people show up. And it’s like, he realized that if I do that every day, no one will ever catch me. Like over the course of a day, it doesn’t add up to much over the course of a, of a week. It doesn’t add up maybe to much, but over the course of a season, two seasons, five seasons, you know, a decade, it adds up so much.
RV (09:03):
So this blend of confidence and humility, you can have both, they’re not competing. They’re totally reconcilable. And you need both, at least, you know, this is a high performing secret of NBA superstars. According to Alan, which I concur with. And then the third one actually I thought was super relevant, especially for personal brands. Now at brand builders group, I think there’s sort of three core audiences that we serve. And, and I, I think of them as experts, entrepreneurs and executives. So experts are like speakers, coaches, trainers entrepreneurs are people who are more like professional service providers or direct sales people, or just, you know, they have some type of business and they’re, they’re not selling a product related to their expertise per se. They’re, they’re just driving leads for their existing product or their existing business. And then you have executives who are mostly on the hunt for a raise or promotion or maybe getting hired at some other company or, or just industry visibility.
RV (10:01):
But when I look at the expert portion of our audience, speakers, coaches, and coaches specifically, this was super relevant because, you know, I asked Alan, I said, you know, are you ever like insecure that, that you’re coaching the best players in the world? Like clearly they’re better than you are. And yet they’re receiving coaching from you. And I, I loved what he said, as he said, I knew they were better players than me. And they knew they were better players than me, but that doesn’t exclude them. That doesn’t exclude me from being able to add value to what they’re working on. Right? Like that doesn’t exclude me from being able to help them. And that was a really powerful and an important moment because you know, a lot of you, if you’re coaches or speakers, it’s like, you don’t necessarily have to have done something at the level or to the full extent that somebody else has.
RV (11:03):
You need to be an expert, you need to have results. You need to know what you’re doing, but you can still add tremendous value. So first of all, there’s, there’s that right? You can still add value, but the other part that hit me was going, there’s a big difference between being the world’s greatest player and being the world’s greatest coach. There’s a big difference between being the world’s greatest player and the world’s greatest coach. They’re not the same thing, many most nearly all of the world’s greatest players were never the world’s greatest coach. In fact, in all of professional sports, it’s extremely rare where a player wins a championship as both a player, and then goes on to win a championship as, as a head coach. Now, I, I look through this up a little bit and it’s, it actually has happened more often than I not specifically in basketball in football it’s like Mike, Mike DKA and Tom Flores.
RV (12:03):
And like Gary Koyak, there’s only a few in football where the, they won a super bowl as a player, but then also won a championship as a coach. And, and, you know, specifically as a superstar, like, I, I wouldn’t, I don’t, I hope he wouldn’t mind. I, I wouldn’t think of Gary Kubiak as a superstar player. He was a great player. I was Denver Broncos, right. I was Broncos fan. So I, I, I watched Kubiak, but a great coach and you know, an amazing hall of fame career. But my DKA, I would say was, you know, superstar and one as a coach, but that’s very, very rare now in the NBA. Steve Kerr did it you know, of course won championships with the bulls and then also won as a, as a coach. And Phil Jackson has done it, you know, but mostly as a coach, I think nine rings as a coach and two as a player.
RV (12:53):
And again, I wouldn’t think of him as a superstar player, but he is one of the greatest coaches of all time. And I didn’t know this, but Patrick Riley won a championship as a player. And then also, you know, as a, as a coach, but bill Russell was a superstar player and also won championships as a coach. But outside of like those, I, there weren’t a ton. Like it doesn’t happen that often. And, and, and even when it does it, doesn’t, it doesn’t exclude this point here. That there’s a difference between being the greatest player or one of the world’s greatest players and one of those greatest coaches. And it’s very rare and hard and not necessary to be both. And I think about this at brand builders group, right? Like, you know, we’re coaching many of the biggest personal brands in, in the world, right?
RV (13:36):
I I’m I’m or, or coaching advising, you know, being their strategist, I guess, is the technical term, but like ed, Mylet got way more followers than we do. He makes a lot more money than we do. He’s sold a lot more books than his launch than we did, but he’s humble enough to invite in somebody like, you know, us because we know something about it. And, you know, you, you, you take his reach his reputation. I mean, his, the success of his book launch is because of him. I mean, there was a whole team that helped him. We were part of that team, but it was really because of, of him, but yeah, our system helped. Yeah. We coached him through it. Yeah. We, we have a process that really made a difference and you know, of course he’s been super generous and, and grateful publicly about that.
RV (14:22):
And, and it just shows you that going, Hey, I’ve never performed in terms of, in some of those metrics as, as the way that he has. He allows me to speak into that Louis House, same thing, Eric Thomas Tom and Lisa BIU these, you know, we we’re, we’re getting more and more, we’re working with these very, very like high profile clients because we get really good results and we, you know, the word is spreading that what we do actually works and it’s ethical and it’s honest and all that stuff. So personally I experienced this now. I think I’ve performed in many ways. Like if you say personal branding, you know, speaking author, there’s many ways that I’ve I’ve been a great player. I don’t know if I would say superstar, I mean, a hall of fame speaking and, and New York times bestselling author are, I mean, I guess very legitimate things, but it doesn’t matter.
RV (15:12):
The point is for you, if, even if you’ve never been the greatest player, you’ve never been a superstar. You can still add value like Alan who, who was interviewing. He’s not gonna be in the NBA hall of fame yet. He’s coaching some of the best players in the history of the game, because he knew the game really well. And he was a great coach. And so I just hope if you ever have that, that sort of imposter syndrome of like, ah, you know, am I qualified to coach entrepreneurs who do better than me? You go, well, sh sure you might be, you might not be, but you might be, if you have legitimate insights that can help them, even if you’ve never been to that level yourself. Now that said, I really pride myself and AJ really prides herself. We pride ourself as a culture at brand builders group that we teach people to do things that we do and that we have done.
RV (16:04):
So, you know, we’re not teaching someone like ed, Mylet something that we haven’t done ourselves or tried out. It’s just, we’re teaching of something that we know that we know works. And then because of who he is and his reputation and his reach and his trust and all of his other relational capital and all the other assets that he has, it’s just, it, it’s a, a bigger result on a, on a grander scale. So, you know, it’s just kind of a balance, right? But like, don’t feel that imposter syndrome that just because someone’s older than you, or you know, maybe you think somehow smarter than you, or maybe they make more money than you, or they have a bigger business than you. It doesn’t exclude you from being able to add value to what they’re doing just in and of itself. And then also going well, yeah, the greatest players don’t hire the other greatest players to teach them.
RV (16:55):
They hire the greatest coaches. So you go, maybe I wasn’t, maybe I’m not the greatest player, but I’m gonna focus on being one of the greatest coaches who’s ever, you know, been in this profession. That’s awesome. Right. I mean, Phil Jackson has nine rings as a coach. I think it’s nine and two as a player. And it’s like, people think of him as a coach, one of the greatest coaches of all time, like he’s coaching Michael Jordan, you know, Kobe Shaq. Incredible. So just keep that in mind. And again, at this points to how insecurity and self-doubt is always, you only feel those things when you’re thinking about yourself, you don’t think about them when you’re, when you’re thinking about other people, when you’re just going, I’m here to help. I’m here to serve. I’m here to add value to you. I’m here to make a difference in, in your career, in your life.
RV (17:43):
I’m not worried about what you think of me or what my credentials are. I am here focused on you. I’m here to help you. That is a part of the essence of what makes a great coach even, and especially at the superstar level. So thank you for being here. Thank you for the honor of allowing us, me, AJ, our team at brand builders group to speak in your life. It it’s a, it it’s, you know, preaching to the choir here by, by definition, you’re here. Listening is a sign of, of humility and coachable coachability, and also hopefully confidence and boldness to go chase your dreams and knock ’em down and do the work it takes to make them a reality. So share this podcast with someone who, you know, who’s a sports fan. Who’s also thinking about building their business or they’re an entrepreneur or building their personal brand. This is a great one. Both the recap and the interview with Alan, make sure you go follow Alan on social and leave him a comment. Send him some love. Just say hi, let him know. You heard him here on the influential personal brand podcast. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 321: 4 Ways To Increase Your Content Engagement with Nora Sudduth | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:54):
Hey, all welcome to our pod recap. This recap is with my conversation with Nora Sudduth from hello audio. Oh my gosh. I’m nerding out over here. Like I literally have like my little workbook why I still have paper. I don’t know. But this was the most surprisingly unexpected, powerful, insightful content rich interview I’ve had in a really long time. I’m like blown away and it’s in fact, as soon as I hit stop on our left interview, I literally was like I’m in your website right now. I’m signing up for this demo. I’m like, how do I register right now to do this? Y’all this is amazing. I’m so excited about this. I am so excited that I randomly said yes to this pitch. It’s this was divine introduction introductions, so, okay. I could go on and on about that, if you haven’t listened to the full interview, you must, this is incredible.
AJV (01:49):
Just the content itself of how do you create more engagement and consumption with your content specifically around audio, but not, not only around audio. So, alright, I’m gonna tell you my big takeaways, there’s more than three today, so I’m just gonna give them all to you, but I’ll make it short and succinct. I have my timer on I’m paying attention to what I promise. Okay. First thing we started with this was amazing. You do not have to have huge online audiences to build amazing businesses. So great reminder, you hear this from us all the time at brand builders group. If you listen to this podcast, but start with your current reach, right? You don’t need to go do paid traffic. You, you can, but you don’t have to, you don’t have to go worry about building, you know, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of followers online to get business.
AJV (02:39):
You can, but you don’t have to, you already have an audience, right? They’re the people at the T-ball game or the people you sit next to at that concert, they’re the people at church or your kids’ schools. They’re the people in line at the grocery, like there are people all around you like, so go and look around and who are the people that are, are already in your audience that you already have access to that are already in your reach and do they even know what you do? And do they know people who need what you do or do they need what you do? Oh my goodness, how easy it is to forget that we have an audience right in front of us, when all we pay attention to is the social media PLA platform. Y’all turn it off for just a minute and get your eyes off the screen and look around.
AJV (03:22):
Like, don’t forget the real life human beings right in front of you and who they have access to. Right? It’s like all the audience you need is probably all around you. Most of us don’t need thousands of clients or even hundreds of clients. Many of us just need dozens of clients. Do you don’t need to go online to find those people to write in your local community. So don’t forget the power of the offline reach. I love that. Second thing, this was so powerful is like, don’t forget that your path happens one step at a time. You may not be doing what you’re doing right now in five years or in one year, but take that next step. And it’s okay to know. It’s like, this is my next step. I know it’s not my last step. Take steps in between. I’ve had so many conversations about this here lately is that you know, for me, this is what makes me think of is, you know, writing a book, creating the, your life’s content, your life’s message.
AJV (04:18):
Isn’t the first thing you do. It’s the last thing you do. And on my recent interview with a Mori tepo who wrote the book, bring yourself, we talked about how I was like, she was writing her book for 10 years before she wrote her book. And what I mean before that is she was creating her content. She was settling in on what she really believed she was teaching it. She was speaking on it. She was coaching on it. She was mentoring on it way before she ever wrote the book. So it’s like, you’re writing the book right now. You’re writing that keynote right now. Like you’re, you’re doing all the things right now. And your first step is not have to be your last step. Your path is step by step. Oh, that was just so inspirational to me. I loved that. Now get down to some of the technical things.
AJV (05:02):
We had a great conversation around why content does not get consumed. So why is it that we people who are interested in learning and information, which is who you are, if you, you know, buy books, buy courses attend seminars, you know, conferences, all the things listen to a podcast like this. It’s like, we, we want information. We wanna be inspired. We wanna be entertained. We wanna learn. Right. But why is it that some of us start and never finish? Or why do we spend money and have our actual actually start it? And I thought this was really good. She said, there are four keys to improving your consumption. Y’all buckle up. So, so good. Number one, make it enjoyable.
AJV (05:59):
And it’s not to say that learning is boring, boring, but what people really remember is how you made ’em feel. They remember the stories that you tell they remember the, the pieces that were outrageous or entertaining, or they believe the, the authentic nature in which you are just real and who you are much more than often. They remember the pieces of information. And I thought that was a really great in a great thing. And I loved what she said. She goes, more information does not equate to more value it doesn’t, which leads me to the second point time, make this consumable and short amount of time. Right. I love, she said time is my primary currency. And what we all have to figure out is what is the currency of our audience? Are they buying this to make more money?
AJV (06:57):
Have less stress increase their level of fulfillment? Are they doing it to have more time? Like, what is the currency in which your audience is, is trading in? Mine is time. So she was speaking my language. It’s like, I’m always like, how do I have more time? How do I do less? Right. less is more thing. And I love what she said. It’s like more stuff. Does that mean more value? And as she was talking, I was just thinking about myself as a consumer, whether or not you relate to this or not of how often do I look at something and I go a thousand dollars. Okay. But what’s included. And it’s like, you know, it’s like 42 training videos and access to group calls and, and it goes on and on and on. And I’m like, I don’t want any of that.
AJV (07:41):
I just, I need, I need, like, I need one thing. How, how do you get me? One thing that I can do in like an afternoon and then call it quits. I would pay more money for that, of going. I don’t have to do all of that. Right. In a two hour session, I’m gonna get everything I need. I’m like, that is worth it to me, give me that. Right. It’s a part of why I love conferences and events because I know I’m gonna go and it’s gonna, I’m gonna start and I’m gonna end. And I’m gonna have everything I need at the end of that day or two days, how do we create value based on the currency in which your audience is trading loved it. And I love that reminders, like more information does not mean more value, right? Often people want it to consume it and the least amount of time possible.
AJV (08:21):
So trying to add more stuff on actually makes it less valuable and more overwhelming. Ugh. So good. Number two, or number three, increase the likelihood of results speak the language of your audience. What do they want from this? What are they gonna get from this? Right? Are they, do they want to double their income in the next 12 months? Right? Do they want to 10 X their reach? Like, what is it that they’re going to get from this? Tell them exactly the results they’re going to receive. So increase the likelihood of results and go at the end of this. This is what you’re going to get. That increases consumption. It helps ’em make it to the end, cuz they know at the end, this is what I’m gonna be able to do. This is what I’m gonna be able to achieve or eliminate.
AJV (09:05):
So tell them right. Increase the likelihood, say, well the results are different for everyone. It’s like, well, that might be true, but what are the common denominators for everyone at the same time? So increase the likelihood of results. And then this was like where we spent the most time. And I think this is really important. It’s increase the ease of use, make it easy to use, make it easy to consume. If you’re making courses make sure that if you make ’em video, you also give an audio version, right? If you have a six hour course that requires someone to be in front of their computer, especially post pandemic. That can be a bit exhausting. It can be a bit much when they’re in front of their computer all day long, but it’s like, but could they go and do this out on a walk, right.
AJV (09:49):
Or, you know, on a hike or with the dog or in a park or in the car. So it’s making it easy to use. And I, I love that. It’s like, is it when you walk in, is it six hours or is it 15 minutes? Right? It’s like, I can get something done every day for 15 minutes. But if it’s a hour or two hours or six hours, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that. Make the workbooks easy to download, easy to write in, make it easy. Y’all make it easy. Y’all I cannot tell you how much I found value in this. And I’m kind of picky. I really am. This was so good. I totally am signing up for this free demo. I am going to hello, audio.fm. I am signing up for this free demo. I am getting the free trial.
AJV (10:36):
I’m gonna make our whole marketing team watch this so beware. This is very likely going to be integrated into our world very soon. Love the concepts, love the conversation. Go check out the full interview. And then just remember I thought this was the, the highlight, but just remember it’s like we pay to shortcut our path to success. And that was one of the last things that Nora said is that we pay to shortcut our path to success. So make sure that you’re helping people do that. If you’re creating content, you’re trying to help them, you know, not make this many same mistakes that you did. You’re helping them expedite their journey. You’re giving them a shortcut to success and people will pay for it, but make it easy. Right? Tell ’em what it’s worth. Right? Know what currency they’re trading in and make it enjoyable. Make it fun. Y’all so, so good. I could go on and on go listen to the full interview, go check it out and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.