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.
Ep 319: How to Get Publicity with Selena Soo | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
How do you get publicity for your business, for your brand, for your book, for your mission, for the, for your nonprofit, for whatever it is that you’re trying to do or advance in the world. That was the subject of this week’s interview with Selena Soo. It was awesome. And I really enjoyed meeting her. I was the I, that was the first time I’d ever met her. I I’d heard about her for years just through friends and stuff. And I’m gonna share with you my some of my takeaways from Selena and also I’m gonna share with you some of my own philosophies here about how publicity works and things that we have learned. We’ve, we’ve done a pretty decent job of getting our share of, of publicity over the years. So it’s something that we definitely know about, and then also helping our clients regularly get national appearances for, for different things.
RV (00:52):
Which is, which is great. But one thing I wanna point out is even if you already listened to that interview with selena the first the first time you listen to it, you probably listen to it like as a student, which is like, sort of how, how I was like, what she was saying and trying to learn from her, but go back and listen to it again of not what she’s teaching and not what she’s saying, but how she’s doing it, of all the guests that, that I’ve ever interviewed on this show. And I won’t speak for all the guests that AJ’s interviewed, but of all the guests that I’ve interviewed on this show, I could tell that Selena was a true pro at being a guest because of the way that she sequenced the conversation. And she one thing led to the next and she had frameworks and all of these things, but by the way, if you’re a brand builder, like if you’re one of our messengers, one of our messenger messengers, one of our clients you’ll, you’ll hear her doing things like frameworks and pillar points and the things that we teach you to do and captivating content.
RV (01:59):
And so just like watch how she does it. She was a tremendous guest all the way down to her lead magnet and everything. So just two different ways to learn from her. One is what she was saying. And two was like how she was doing it all. And I recognize those things, cuz those are all things that I try to do and things that I do actually do that have made a huge difference for converting media appearances into leads for your business, right? Like you know, there’s, I, I, I am, I think of myself almost as a professional guest, I’m trying to be a guest and I have a limited window, a limited time, a limited opportunity to be in front of someone else’s audience to deliver so much value quickly in a way in a sequence that creates context for a, a conversation to continue and then to open the door and offer them a chance to find me and stay in relationship with me and us and our team at brand builders group. And then, you know, you know,
RV (02:58):
Turn that into revenue and impact and relationships and Selena did a, a magnificent job of, of it as well. You could go listen to me as a guest on someone’s show too, and you could also see some of those things. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about a little bit here. I was really, really impressed with her. So how do you get publicity? How do you get publicity? First thing that she brought up, which I really loved because I don’t think we hear about this enough is that if you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. If you don’t have a mainstream product, you don’t really need mainstream media. Like, so what do I mean by that? I mean that many of us think, oh, I wrote a book and now I just, I wanna be on good morning America or the today show or Oprah or, you know, the school of greatness podcast or ed my letter, like we think, oh, this would be the secret.
RV (03:53):
Like this would be the key is I gotta get on mainstream media. But in reality you don’t because first of all, the riches are in the niches. The riches are in the niches. You you’ll you’ll often make more money, get more leads for your business by being in a, in front of a smaller number of people. But it’s the right people, this more like rifle approach versus the shotgun approach of like, I just wanna be in front of massive, you know, numbers of people, because if you don’t have a mainstream product, then that means it doesn’t apply to a lot of people. So if there’s a big mass general audience listening, then you’re going, you know, 99% of the audience may not care about what you have. And so it’s not serving that media outlet well, and it’s not serving you well, and it’s not, it’s not serving their, their listeners or their audience.
RV (04:42):
Well, and so you can sort of let go of that idea that in order to, in order for media to be successful, I have to be on the biggest podcast or I have to be on the biggest TV shows or, you know, I have to, I have to be interviewed by the most famous interviewers. You don’t, you don’t, the riches are in the niches. Like so I, I, I want you to, to think about that. Another thing, and I, I talked about this a little bit. I shared this in the interview with Selena, because this is something that we’ve started teaching our, our brand builders clients, which is think of your online audience as an offline room. Think of your online audience as an offline room. So what does that mean? It means for some reason, when we see, like, if you post a video online and you get 14 video views, like a lot of people would look at that and be like, oh, I can’t believe I got 14 video views.
RV (05:38):
Like, you know, I put all this work in for this 62nd video and only 14 people watch it yet. If you were gonna stand up in front of a real life, offline room of 14 people, you’d probably be excited about that. Right? Like your heart would get racing. Certainly if it were 50 people in a room or a hundred people in a room and it like, they are, it’s the same thing. Those are real humans, real people like it’s 14 or 50 people watching a video, just like it’s 14 or 50 people watching you in a room. So those are real human lives. And just, there’s something weird about when we think about it in the context of online. And it’s probably because we’re comparing it to everyone. Like, you know, we’re comparing it to people who have millions of views, like, or their video goes viral and we’re like, oh, why don’t my views?
RV (06:23):
My videos go viral, right? Like I’m only reaching 50 people, sweetheart. You only gotta reach 50 people. Like most of us don’t need thousands of customers to change our life. Most of us, our business would be radically transformed if we had like a dozen or two dozen of our perfect customers this year. Like you don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars as AJ says. So think of your online audience as an offline room. And that’ll give you a little more confidence and context of like, yeah, what you’re doing is making a difference. And it will also help you with your media strategy. Why? Because chasing mainstream media, it’s it’s, I don’t wanna tell you not to do it because it’s certainly not impossible. It, it is possible. And, and they, you know, the media needs you more than you need them. So that is true.
RV (07:11):
It’s just, you can expend a lot of energy chasing it and the odds aren’t in your versus you can go after things that you would think of as smaller or like not less important or less significant and actually get in front of a hundred people. And it’s like, that’s a hundred people. That’s a huge audience. You don’t need to be on a podcast that has millions of people. If, if you’re on a podcast that has a hundred downloads, a hundred, not a hundred million, a hundred, if those are the right a hundred people, that’s the same as speaking in front of a room of a hundred of your perfect prospects. So it’s like I would be more specific and target. And we talked about, listen, notes is a great, a great tool for that and spark Toro, where a couple great tools that you could look up that will help you research, you know, different podcasts and things on specific and different influencers on specific topics.
RV (08:03):
So you don’t need to have mainstream media if, if you don’t have a mainstream product. Also to this point, I, I was talking about how clicks are better than views clicks are better than views. So if we’re getting a media appearance, you know, like a, a five minute video clip on good morning, America is not gonna change your life. Like we, you think it will, but it’s not like it’s just not gonna drive that much website traffic. You’re not gonna get it that many opt-ins, you’re not gonna get that many. If any sales like take it from me, but on national TV a few times and had a lot of friends have done it now with a book launch, you get a national TV appearance. You might move a few hundred units with that, like, which is something, but it’s not gonna automatically make you an overnight bestseller just cuz you got on the today show one time, like it’s, it’s different,
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But what can help is when you get a write up and an online and somebody’s blog, like somebody who’s a huge blogger or you know, entrepreneur or ink or Forbes or fortune, if they have a link there to your site, that’s gonna move some people. So clicks are better than views. Although I, I think, you know, full length views, if it’s like an hour long video or an hour long, you know, listens like a podcast, those are super powerful cuz you, they, you have ’em for an hour. Other than that, the real value of national media is really how you repurpose it. It’s it’s, it’s making sure you put the logos on your website. You put the the video, you know, like the clips of you on TV, in your demo videos, in your sales videos and in your press kit, the clips of that, of course, all things we teach you specifically how to do and give you templates for if you’re one of our members which by the way, if you’re not a brand builder member, you should be.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I mean, I, I mean our stuff is legit. I don’t, as humbly as I can say, we’re changing lives and we have a system that works like, and it’s not only working for us. It’s working for the biggest personal brands in the world. It’s working for people, just brand new intermediate people. Like we got people doing viral, Ted talks, book launches doing seven figures, eight figures in their business, growing their email list, growing their social followers, hundreds of thousands, people going viral with their Ted talks, like our stuff is working cuz it’s system, you know that we spend a lot of time. And, and if you ever wanna talk to someone on our team, you go to free brand call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast and request a free call with our team it’s free. And then we’ve got different levels, right? We’ve got like stuff for beginners and you know, people in between and then, you know, private, like high end one-on-one coaching for like big time businesses and personal brands.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So anyways, free brand call.com/podcast. Check that out every once in a while, if you haven’t yet. Alright. Second takeaway from Selena. If you wanna get on TV, there’s three things you need to do. Okay. So this is like divided into three subparts. So let’s, if you wanna get on TV and we have the actual TV conversation first of all, start local start with local TV, your local news channel. Why? Because there’s less competition. Two is because they need to feature local news, which is local people. So if you live there, you are a local. So it automatically skews it in your favor. There’s less people asking. They have the same amount of demands for putting out content every single, you know, day 24 hours a day. And and the other thing is because you get to practice, you get to practice, it’s a sandbox, right?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Like you get to play there in the minor leagues a little bit. Before you go to the big leagues, big leagues, you don’t want your, I, I promise you, you might think you do, but I promise you, you don’t, you don’t want your first TV appearance to be the today show. You don’t want your first podcast appearance to be Louis Houser. Ed Mylet you might think you do, but I’m telling you, you don’t, you want to have practiced and you wanna be confident and tight and sharp and pithy and pointy and punchy and clear. And so that when you’re on there and you’re, you’re delivering your pillar points, it’s like bang, bang, bang. And you know, if again, I’m sound probably like an arrogant jerk here, but if you haven’t yet go listen to ed. My let’s show the ed, my let show podcast and listen to the interview of me on his show.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
What you will hear. There sounds like a spontaneous conversation. And, and in many ways it was and it was very honest and heartfelt and that’s part of the magic. But the baseline of it was that it was the greatest hits of what we teach at brand builders group delivered all in an hour. And so we have, I mean, we have dozens of comments there, there were thousands and thousands of comments, but dozens of comments saying, this is the greatest podcast episode I’ve ever heard on any podcast. Why? Because it’s four years of our life buttoned up and, and, and, and polished and put into this one, you know, 45 minute conversation plus Ed’s magic. And he’s amazing, right? And his audience and all that stuff. Like they love him. They trust him and, and we have great rapport and all that, you know, there’s a lot of things that come together, but we have hundreds of leads that came from that interview because it’s the right combination of all of these, all of these things, not the least of which is that, you know, ed is, is very trusted and he’s got a huge audience, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a great audience, right?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And it’s like, I would rather have that appearance than the today show because it’s a, it’s, A’s an audience of entrepreneurs, which is our target audience, right. Experts and entrepreneurs. So start local learn to speak in sound bites, catch phrases. For those of you that are listening, that are brand builders internally and captivating content, we call these what pillar points and we teach you the six pillar point formulas. These are six different forms of sentence structure that make it sound smart. And what the way you say it is as important as what you say, the cadence of how we hear things makes it sound smart and even sink and sound smarter than the integrity of the idea itself. And you need to understand how to, to write, speak in soundbites. So like some of my more popular soundbites, success is never owned. Its rented in the rent is due every day.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, you make a life from the problem or you make a, you, you make a, a living from the problem you solve, but you make a life from the passion that you chase. All of these kinds of one liners that automation is to your time. What compounding interest is to your money. These are all one liners that I’ve spent years crafting, right? And then you hear ’em on a, on a TV show and you go, whoa, and it’s, it’s tight. It’s, it’s not three minutes to explain a concept. It’s
RV (14:50):
Like, like the most concentrated core essence of a, of an idea packaged beautifully delivered eloquently in a way that hits the ear and people just go ding. And that’s what you need. You know, when I’m saying we’re going bang, bang it’s it’s soundbite, soundbite, sound bite sound, bite, pillar, point pillar, point pillar, point catchphrase, catchphrase, they’re all, all the same thing, more or less. And then the other thing that she said, which I always forget about, I always forget about this was probably my greatest personal reminder from Selena was think about how to make it visual TVs are visual medium. So if you’re trying to get on TV, think about how to make it visual, right? Don’t just go. Here’s why I’m awesome. And why you should have me think from their perspective, they’re trying to go, how can we put together compelling visual content that holds people’s attention?
RV (15:48):
So just the fact that you’re smart isn’t necessarily make you a great guest for TV. Even if you’re eloquent, cuz it’s like, they need visual elements. So how can I make this more visual? And that was great. And, and again, just to shout out to Selena, like her framework that, that she taught and ran, ran through, which I just loved and you know, it was super simple. The publicity pyramid, you know, she’s a pro she’s a pro like was really, really good. And then the third thing, this is the last one. This is quick one, have one call to action and make sure it’s a lead magnet.
RV (16:24):
Don’t, don’t send people to a thousand places when they’re at the end of the interview and they say, so Rory, you know, this has been great. Where should people go to find out more about you? Be like, well, you can get my book on Amazon. You can follow me on Instagram at this handle. I got a podcast over here. I did a webinar one time on this, you know, I’ll probably go live next week on Facebook over here. No, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Send them to one place, one URL, one call to action, say one thing over and over and over. And again, go listen to me on the ed mallet show. Part of why we got hundreds of leads is not because I’m saying, check out my book over here and I do this and that. And you want info about me on a keynote speaker, duh da no.
RV (17:10):
Yeah. You wanna learn about me? Go to one place free brand call.com and then I give, you know, his affiliate, right? And so everyone there’s and it’s like, well, where else should they go? I would just start there, go to free brand call.com. You know, and his is ed Mylet. You know, the one we use for this podcast free brand call.com/podcast, right? That’s what I’m talking about here. So one call to action, be very specific, clear one URL and send them to a property you control, right? Don’t send them to Amazon. Don’t send to Instagram, right? Like you finally got a captive audience. You finally have an opportunity to build your list and, and, and to start a relationship. And then you send ’em to a website. You have no control over where there’s a million other things going on, send them to a URL, dear goodness, like, and, and learn to create a lead magnet, a lead capture.
RV (18:01):
What, what is that? Right. Okay. All stuff we teach you inside a brand builders group, formal formal training, but a lead capture is a form. A lead magnet is something of value to them, right? And you go, here’s a free training or here’s a free download. Again. Selena did a brilliant job on our show. She had this amazing 12 month media calendar. And I was like, she’s such a pro. She gives one lead magnet, her little calendar, which I, I went and she got me. She got me
RV (18:46):
Download open up PowerPoint, design a seven step checklist to blanky blank, save it and export it as a PDF, and then tell people how to go get it, where to email you and, and how to get it. Or, you know, as you get more sophisticated, you build it as web forms and all that stuff. But that’s the lead magnet is the thing you give them. The lead capture is the place you send them to actually get their information where you capture their info. So when you get these media appearances, oh my goodness, or a speaking opportunity, or you’re on TV or a podcast, like, please don’t send someone to go, go follow me on Instagram so that you can see 1% of my posts. Maybe if you even manage to find my profile and you don’t get distracted by cute puppy dogs or, you know, pictures of Teddy bears rolling around, like, and then if I’m lucky, you’ll see one out of every hundred posts I make no send them to a lead capture with a lead magnet where you can have them in your database and you can own their relationship.
RV (19:45):
I’m not saying don’t use social media. We use social media, but like, this is your opportunity. You just delivered value bombs on a media interview that you spent years practicing and sharpening and getting your pillar points down, make sure you harvest it properly, send them to a place. And don’t just send them to your website. If your website doesn’t have a lead capture on it, which it should be like, you know, lesson number one, lead capture, lead magnet on your website. Yeah. Make sure you have those things straight. So all, all things we’re gonna step you through. If you’re one of our brand builders and do time in, in the right order, but some great takeaways from Selena brilliant job she had, she had all the things we’re talking about, right? It’s not a mainstream media. Our, our podcast is not mainstream media, it’s niche, but it’s right in her niche. She knows that we trust people, our people, you know, we, we, we try to cultivate trust with y’all. We try to give you value. She’s speaking in soundbites. She has frameworks, her little publicity pyramid, one lead magnet, her little 12 media things. She gives you one URL, one place to go download it, pop,
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Pop, pop, pop, pop. That’s a publicity pro. So you know, anyways, we’re gonna get some affiliate links to, to promote some more of Salinas stuff. Hope you check it out. Thank you as always for tuning in. I love you. And thanks for listening to me rant here. I’m just trying to add value. I want to encourage you make sure you go you know, send Salina some love on, on social, like go follow her, leave her a comment. Tell her that you heard her on the influential personal brand podcast. Keep coming back, share this episode. Who do you know in your life that needs publicity? Who do you know, that’s an entrepreneur who do you know, that’s in a book launch? Who, who do you know in your life? Who’s like in this moment going, I’m trying to reach more people send ’em this episode, it’s free. All of our episodes are free. It’s unbelievable. The podcast. I hope you feel that way. I know from your reviews on iTunes, many of you do and you leave us great reviews, which help tremendously. So thank you for that. Thanks for your attention, your reviews, your sharing, your, your loving on our guests. And just for being here, we wanna see you succeed. We wanna see you exploit your uniqueness in the service of others. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye.
Ep 317: Be a Better Negotiator with Mori Taheripour | Recap Episode
AJV (00:02):
All right. Y’all welcome to my recap on my conversation with Mori TaheripourAnd y’all, she’s just so cool. If you haven’t please go check out the full episode. But this is an episode full of tactical and mindset tactics when it comes to being a better negotiator, but also knowing when and how to publish a book. So we kind of got a, a twofer in this one.
AJV (01:04):
And then we get to learn about the content, which is the skillful art of negotiation. So with us that I’m gonna share my my top three takeaways from my conversation with ma and I just think she’s so wicked cool. Y’all she’s done so many amazing things, but more than that, she’s just had a heart for teaching and a passion for helping others believe in themselves more and believe in their abilities and who doesn’t love that. Right. So here are my my top three takeaways. So here was my first one. I actually, I got to have a little coaching session during this interview. So if you’re interested in seeing that or listening to that go check it out. It’s it’s worth the interview. She called me out hardcore. So that was like my first big takeaway is that our view, our perception of how the conversation is gonna go in this case, a negotiation conversation has much to do with the end result.
AJV (01:59):
And so I made a comment how I have a pretty potentially difficult meeting coming up about some financial negotiations with someone. And I use the words if I have a fighting chance and she called me out so hardcore, and she was like, why would you say that? And then it just, it doled me in a second. It’s like I have a negative view of negotiations, which is interesting because in a sales environment, I would never have that view, but in a, a salary and you know, an employee conversation, it’s like feels like a little bit of a war of defending my stance or not making someone feel like they’re not worth it at the same time, being reasonable with what we can afford and was a really helpful conversation of going, there’s no fighting here. This is not an argument. This is a conversation. And that was so helpful
AJV (02:59):
Of the way that we view things ends up our ends up dictating how the actual conversation goes and the end result of it. And it’s like, I was going in with this concept. If it was a battle, this is not a battle. This is a conversation with someone that I truly like respect value. That’s not a battle to conversation. So just changing your mindset and the way you can talk about things. I really like, I I’m tell you, I woke up today with a completely different mindset of how this conversation’s gonna start, go and end. That was different than yesterday, which is short conversation with Maria. It was so helpful. Also reminded me to finish the book
AJV (03:48):
She said that, well, this is my perception. This is my this is how I heard what she said. Some of these may not have been her words, but this is how I interpreted what she said in our conversation. And she said, negotiation is not confrontation. Negotiation is collaboration y’all but is so good. It’s like, if I can change my mindset, both in a sales oriented environment, a recruiting, hiring retention salary pay, pay, raise commission conversation, as well as, you know, as a, as a, as a customer, right? Who I’m trying to negotiate better, better rates or better deals with our vendors. Right. But if I view all of that as like, let’s come together and collaborate of what makes sense, what’s worth it to both parties. What’s a win-win versus there’s some sort of confrontation that has to take place and I’ve got to, you know, take my stance.
AJV (04:49):
So there, so do they’s like if we come from a place of being immobile, there is no negotiation. So negotiation is not about confrontation. It’s about collaboration. It’s about having a conversation where both parties leave feeling good about the situation. And that is what I want. And I bet that’s what you want. So it’s just redefining what is negotiation? It, it’s a conversation of trying to find middle ground amongst two people in a setting doesn’t even have to be a business setting. I negotiate with my five and two year old, all day long, and they are master negotiators. They do not hear no. I need to take a note out of the toddler playbook when it comes to this. But they come at it with a playful heart, a big smile on their face, but Ooh, do they know how to, like, just one more time?
AJV (05:34):
It’s like my two year old Liam constantly wants treats. He loves treats. He loves snacks. He loves treats. He’s like, oh my gosh, no, you cannot have any more lollipops kid. And he’s always just like, just a little bit. And I’m like, no, baby, not just, just a little bit mommy. And then I’ll say, okay, well just a little bit. And he goes a lot of bit mommy. And it’s like, he just is like, just a little bit, just a little bit, well, a lot, a bit. And it’s like, it’s just coming from a place of love and community and trust and playfulness, but also it’s like knowing what you want. So that’s my third takeaway. And this conversation and this, this has to do with both publishing and negotiation. But I loved what she said when she goes, it’s like, you’re never gonna get what you want until, you know what you want.
AJV (06:23):
AJV (07:03):
And I thought that was really powerful as a reminder of like, no, the book is the last thing, not the first thing. You do so much more before you ever figure out what do I really have to say? And that’s what goes in the book. And she said, a part of that is you have to know what you want. Right. You have to know that and then find a way to get there. And part of that conversation was setting up your non-negotiables, like, what are the non-negotiables that you have in your life, both personally and professionally. And I asked her what hers were and I thought they were so good. They’re at the very end of the interview. So I’m not gonna tell you what they are. You’ve gotta go listen to the interview to hear ’em. But I’ve spent a ton of time in the last 24 hours going do I, do I have non-negotiables in my life?
AJV (07:46):
And am I, am I really clear on them as a leader, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as my personal brand, as a mom, as a wife, as a human being, as a Christian, like, have I set forth, what are my non-negotiables that everything else is negotiated around and you gotta have those, right. And it’s like, I think one of the things I need to reset are like, what are my schedule? Non-Negotiables what will I allow and not allow to come into my schedule that will get me off track to the things that I deem most important. And that was just a really big one. And I think other ones are around, you know, I’ve got business ones, personal ones, marriage ones parenting ones. But am I super clear on what they are and do other people know what they are?
AJV (08:28):
And do I, do I live by those? Do I parent and work and conversate around those? Probably not. It was an amazing discussion. It doesn’t matter where you are in business or personal brand or just your, you know, personal life. Those are really valuable. And all in the context of negotiation collaboration and conversation. Y’all so good. I could go on for another 30 minutes on this legitimately. It was so good. So go check out the full interview check out more. I check out her book, bring yourself and stay tuned and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 315: 5 Steps to Getting Paid Speaking Gigs with Grant Baldwin | Recap Episode
RV (00:03):
How to get paid as a speaker, always a fun topic, something I love talking about you may not know this, but you know, for me, this whole entree into being an entrepreneur and being a bestselling author and personal branding all of those things are byproducts that resulted from my initial desire and my initial vision and my initial dream, which was to be a speaker. That was something that I knew early on in, in high school. I saw speakers and, and I went to these leadership conferences and I immediately recognized that that is something I wanted to do with my life. And so this has been something, I, this is a profession that I have pursued my entire career, like before I was old enough to drive.
RV (00:59):
I love talking shop. I love talking business. And of course, what we do at brand builders group has evolved to be so much more than speaking. You know, we’re doing podcasting and, and positioning and branding and messaging and funnels and, and book launches and building your sales team and high dollar offers and online marketing and traffic and, and you know, all search engine. Optimiz like all the things that surround this and entrepreneurship in general and managing cash flows and building your sales team. But originally for me, my dream was to be a speaker. And that’s what sent me on this journey. And so getting to talk to grant Baldwin on this last interview, which was, which was a great one, it was a great one I’ve known grant for years and years at this point. And I remember when he first started out in the speaking business and, and someone had introduced us just because, you know, we were fairly young guys and, and back 20 years ago, there weren’t a lot of young people in the speaking business.
RV (01:56):
It was always very much like a pres you know, like a second or third career for a lot of people. And nowadays with, you know, the explosion of personal branding, it’s, it’s become something that people get into much earlier. So what I wanna do today is as always do a recap, but today’s gonna be a little bit different because I’m, I’m probably not gonna recap too much of what grant shared specifically in that interview. I’m actually going to share with you some of the things that we teach at brand builders group related to speaking, which are, are very much related to the things that came up in the conversation with grant. But people often ask, you know, can I, you know, can they coach with me? I get that question a lot. Hey, Rory, can I, you know, what would you be my coach? Would you be my mentor? And, and one of the things that we created is, is a program that’s very affordable, where I actually can coach people. And twice a month, I do these group coaching calls and people come on, they ask questions, they get access to all 14 of our courses as part of this program for the, for a price that’s less than the cost of what one course would cost.
RV (02:59):
But it’s a monthly membership program and they I, I teach, you know, twice a month and we’ve been in a mini series, a at this happens to be at the same time called how to get the gig, how to get the gig. And it’s like an eight part mini series. And so we’ve been talking a lot about this internally. Just, just recently with our, with our, with our members, with our clients, with our, you know, we call ’em Messenger’s mission driven messenger. So I’m, I’m gonna grab a couple of the highlights from that and share them with you here. And the first at one is, is something that one of my mentors, David Avrin taught me one time, which is so important. Like, if, if you wanna be a professional speaker, you have to understand this idea. And if you don’t understand this idea, like until you understand this idea, like you’re gonna struggle in this business.
RV (03:58):
I guarantee it, like, if this first idea that I’m gonna share with you here, if this doesn’t lock in place, you are gonna be in trouble. You’re gonna struggle if you are trying to pursue a career in speaking. And, and here’s what it is. And this is, you know, basically verbatim, as, as Dave told me, he said, Rory speaking is not the business. Getting the gig is this business speaking is not this business, getting the gig is this business. So what he means by that, right, is like people see the stage, right? And they see a speaker and they go, wow, that would be amazing. How do I get to be that person? Like, I wanna be up there inspiring people and encouraging people and, and, and adding value to their, to the, the lives of so many. And yet that’s the tip of the iceberg, right?
RV (04:49):
That’s the part you see, that’s not the business, right? Like that’s not the daily life. Like that is not the job. The job is getting the gig invitation, earning the right to be up there, putting in the research, the writing, but not, not just the content development, but actually the marketing and the sales and the messaging and the clarity of, of your own expertise of all of those things, working together to get invited onto that stage or to, you know, to sell your way onto that stage. And nobody understands that they all think that just like, oh, well, I’m, I’m a good talker. I’m a good, I’m, I’m good in front of people. I, I should be a speaker, but that’s not the business. Getting the opportunity to speak is the business. That’s where all the, the, the, the, the hardship is that’s all the, the beneath the surface, the behind the scenes.
RV (05:47):
And so everything we do at brand builders group is about that. And that’s the part that like, nobody teaches. Nobody talks about you don’t hear that often. Right? You just see the speaker and you, you never see what it takes to get there. And so when you try to figure it out, people fail, right. There’s a lot of bodies on the road to the dream of being up a professional speaker, cuz it’s not easy. Now, after 20 plus years of doing this, we figured out it is simple and we have structured it and documented it, diagramed it. And checklisted it. And templated it and F workeded it. And that’s what we teach at brand builders group is the step by step, not just of how to be a professional speaker, although that’s a big part of what we do. It’s, it’s a, I can’t even say it’s a big part.
RV (06:30):
It’s, it’s a, it’s it is a big part. It’s a big part of what we do. It’s but it’s just a part of what we do in terms of helping mission driven, messengers, reach more people get more leads, make more money, you know, through scalable revenue streams impact more people ultimately in the world. So you gotta understand this, that speaking is not the business, getting the gig is the business. And as from my mentor, Dave ARN, and the sooner you grasp that, the sooner you grab hold of that, the sooner you accept that, the sooner that you go, okay, I acknowledge that the sooner you can get busy doing the work, getting the coaching and doing the activities it takes to actually get the opportunity to be on that stage because the stage is a gift. The stage is a privilege, but the, the stage is an earned right to be there.
RV (07:25):
And it’s, it’s it, it’s not easy. It’s not easy, but it is very doable. And you know, many ways it’s guaranteed like the, we know the stuff that we do works because we’ve done it for ourselves for so long. And so many people at all different fee ranges, but that’s the, that’s the switch you gotta flip in your head. If you really wanna be a speaker it’s not what you do on stage. That is the business. It’s what you do off stage to get the gig. So that’s the, that’s the first thing. The second thing I wanna run through here is something that we just recently put together at for our, for our members, as part of this, this internal, you know, mini series that we’re, we’re, we’re coaching them on, which is seven different ways you get paid for a speaking engagement.
RV (08:14):
There’s seven different ways you get paid for a speaking engagement. And, and so even though the interview, you know, this interview this week, and what I’m talking about here has sort of been in the context of paid professional speaking. The vast majority of our 600 clients are not making full-time careers as paid speakers. They’re using speaking to sell their other things, which would be information, products, books, coaching courses or coaching courses, membership sites, assessments, certifications and there’s three different. There’s three different audiences that we sort of serve at brand builders group. The first are experts. Experts are selling their knowledge. And so we help them productize that as books, speeches, coaching programs consulting curriculums online courses, et cetera, that’s one group of our audience, but huge second group of our audience are just entrepreneurs. And they’re not actually trying to productize their knowledge.
RV (09:15):
They already have a service based business, or even a product based business where they’re we work with a lot of professional services though. They’re accountants, they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re they’re financial advisors, they’re they’re chiropractors. They are all different, all different things. And in that case, they’re just using their personal brand to drive leads to their business. And that’s a great way to monetize a personal brand. It’s actually faster than an expert because you already have the business. By the way, we put direct sales people in that category of entrepreneurs as well. They already have the product and they already have a business opportunity that they can monetize. They’re just using their personal brand to drive awareness for the thing that already exists. Those are entrepreneurs. And then we have a third group of people that are clients of ours that are executives executives, executives, aren’t making money selling anything.
RV (10:09):
But what they’re doing is they’re raising their profile in their industry and in their company so that they get promotions, they get invited to be on boards. They get to speak on panels. They, they get to, to com to, to influence and impact their industry, their trade, their profession. And they, they gain visibility in notoriety, which typically shows up in, in more salary or stock options or, or, or just just recognition, right? So on, we have experts, entrepreneurs, and executives that we all, you know, generally classify as mission driven messengers. But if you look at this, the second two groups of entrepreneurs and executives, they may never get paid for a speech. That’s not the purpose of, of why they speak, even though we’re gonna teach them how to do this. And, and even experts, many experts won’t get paid for their speech itself.
RV (10:58):
They’re gonna get paid in one of these other seven ways. So let’s run through these the seven ways to get paid for a speaking engagement. Number one is a speaking fee, obviously, but believe it or not, that is the least most common way to get paid for a speaking engagement. That’s the least most common way. So if you can get that great, cuz here’s the thing, you know, the, the best of the, the best thing is when you get the best of both worlds, where you get a fee and you get all of these other six things which we’re gonna, which we’re gonna talk about. So, but that’s the least most common even inside of our own community, which are people who are saying, yeah, I wanna get my message out to the world. I mean, we have some of the highest paid speakers in the world that are clients of ours.
RV (11:44):
Like literally the highest paid speakers in the world. We have clients of ours, multiple clients who make over $70,000 a speech. We, we’ve got, you know, several clients that make, oh, you know, more than $30,000 a speech. And then a whole bunch that are in the 10 to 15. And then, and then there’s a whole bunch that are under 10 or free, which would be the largest percentage of our clients. Why? Because of the other six ways you get paid to speak. So the second one is leads. You get paid in leads. This is where I was saying that second classification of people that we work with, which are entrepreneurs. They’re not trying to get paid to speak. They’re also not trying to sell a book or a course at the end of their speech. The reason they’re speaking, whether it is on a webinar or a podcast or through on YouTube or live on social.
RV (12:37):
The reason they’re speaking is to drive leads to their business. They’re trying to drive leads to the, to the, whatever the widget is or the service that they already have to sell. They’re not creating a new one. And that is every one of our customers. In those first two categories, experts and entrepreneurs are driving leads to whatever it is their business is. Even if it’s recruiting it might be recruiting employees or recruiting team members. Certainly if you’re in direct sales, that’s a huge thing is we teach you how to use your personal brand to drive leads. That’s the second way you get paid to speak. The third way you get paid to speak is you, you get paid from customers that you generate on site at the back of the room. So this is selling a book or selling a course on site.
RV (13:28):
So you, at the end of your speech, this is how Rory Vaden earned his first speaking fees. I would speak for free. And then I would sell a $20 self-published book at the back of the room. And I quickly figured out that it was a lot more work to create books that I could only sell for $20 than it was to sell a ticket to a half day training with me, which I could sell for a hundred or $200. And so I quickly moved to selling tickets to other trainings. And then we started our first company and that’s how we did it. We used to speak for free and sell tickets. And then we figured out we could speak for free and we didn’t even have to sell a one day ticket. We could just sell right into a coaching program. And that was the business model that we used to create an eight figure business more than 10 million a year in revenue from this one business model, speaking for free to very small groups of like three to 10 people, and then selling our coaching program at the, at the end, anybody can do this.
RV (14:28):
Speaking is incredible. It, it, it is absolutely phenomenal. And, and that’s the third way you get paid fourth way you get paid video footage, video footage. There were times early in my career where I would take gigs for free or highly discounted just because I needed the video footage. The reason reason is, is because the number, the number one reason you get hired to speak is because somebody has seen you speak. That’s always the number one way you get business. But the, the number two way is that you have great video footage where people can watch you on stage. Well, it’s a chicken in the egg thing because it’s like, well, how do I get invited on stages when I don’t have a video of me on stage to get on the stage? And the answer is you go speak for free to get the video footage, and then you take the video footage and you use it to then get more paid engagements.
RV (15:25):
And inside a brand builders group, we have an amazing partner that we use who also does events where you can, that are, they are on a, you know, a half, a million dollar stage with full L E D lighting, six cameras, a live audience of few hundred people. And you can actually pay to get 20 minutes on that stage. And then, and then you have an, a, a video from it, by the way, if you want even, even if you’re not a member of ours, you can check out that partner. It’s if you go to brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers, go to brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers you can check out our partner that does that, but you, if you don’t have a lot of money, you know, you, that cost of money is very reasonable. It’s a, it’s an incredible program.
RV (16:15):
And in fact, we’re gonna, we’re gonna bring the, our partner onto the podcast probably, and talk more about that, but like the it still costs some money, right? But so the other thing is go speak for free or speak for discount, just to get the video footage of being on really nice stages, fifth way you get paid to speak. Testimonials, testimonials are huge, and I’ll never forget when Joe Calloway was a friend of mine. And, and I would say a mentor. He was a hall of fame speaker and, and Joe, we were talking about speakers bureaus one time. And, and I asked him, Joe, when’s the right time to contact a speakers bureau. Like when am I ready to work with a speakers bureau? And you know, there, there, there were two things that you hear a lot in this world about speakers, bureaus.
RV (17:01):
And we, we love speakers bureaus. We haven’t traditionally worked with a ton of them because the idea with speakers bureaus is you don’t need them until they don’t you don’t need them until they don’t need you or wait, how’s that go? Yeah. You only need them when they don’t need you, or they don’t want you. And then by the time they want you, you don’t need them anymore. Meaning that when you first start out and you need someone to promote you, they’re not gonna promote you, cuz no one knows who you are. And it’s a lot of work to sell you for a very low fee. And so they don’t make any money. And so it’s, it’s like, why would they do all the extra work and not make very much money? So they’re not really there in the beginning. And then, so you build up your own career.
RV (17:41):
And so then you get to where you’re making a lot of money. You got a lot of people asking for you and that’s when bureaus want you, cuz now their clients are asking for you, but you kind of don’t need ’em cuz their clients are asking for you cuz you’ve done a good job of building yourself up. So there’s great. There’s great relationships you have with bureaus and they can be a great thing. Really great thing. And several of our friends, our clients use them and, and work with them and, and we do work with a couple bureaus. But anyways, I asked Joe Calloway when’s the right time to approach a speakers bureau. And he said, when you can send them a killer demo video and a stack of a hundred testimonial letters, that was his answer. When’s the right time to speak.
RV (18:23):
When is the right time to contact a speakers bureau when you can send them a killer demo video and a hundred testimonial letters. And I thought that was really, really good. And Joe worked with a lot of bureaus during his career was extremely successful. And so you need testimonials. Now whether it’s working with speakers bureaus or not, if a client’s gonna hire you to speak, they need testimonials. And our, our, our personal brand national research study showed this is the number one criteria of people who will hire you is they want testimonials from other customers. So consider that a form of compensation and we would write it into our contract. If someone didn’t have our fee, then we negotiated. We say, well look, we wanna, we want a testimonial letter now. Sometimes we get it anyways, which is great. But if we’re doing it as a discount, we’re gonna negotiate that into the contract specifically to say, we want video footage.
RV (19:17):
We want a chance to make an offer at the end of the you know, at the back of the room we want testimonials, which leads to number six, which is referrals and introductions. The other way you get paid to speak, number six is by referrals to other people. And so the, again, hopefully this happens always in our pressure free persuasion course, which is one of our phase three courses on, on sales one-on-one sales. We teach scripts for how to ask for referrals. Well, the better job you do as a speaker, the more likely you are to get referrals. If you, if you do it and you know how to do it. So that’s a great, that’s a form of payment, right? You’re getting another gig outta the gig that you got. And again, sometimes, sometimes we will put into a contract or, you know, not so much these days, but when we first started out, we would say, look, if we come do this for a discount, we want three legitimate introductions to other people, you know, who run meetings.
RV (20:13):
You don’t have to guarantee that they’re gonna hire us, but a legitimate handheld like white glove email introduction. Now, you know, when we’re chasing down speaking gigs, we do that anyways. That’s all part of pressure, free persuasion, but that’s a way you get paid. And then the seventh way which people don’t do that much anymore these days. But you should because this back in like the seventies and the eighties, the sixties, seventies, eighties of the heyday of speaking, like people used to do this all the time, which is barter. You can barter things. AJ once bartered a couch, we have bartered, we have bartered two couches and an entire custom closet from one company that was one of our past clients. And it’s, they were very expensive. I’m talking about like each piece is tens of thousands of dollars. We would, we would never buy no matter how much money we had, but they were beautiful and AJ loved them and, and she bartered speaking fees for them.
RV (21:11):
So you can barter things. Why, because it only costs them wholesale, but it’s worth retail value to you because you would have to pay for that. But you can also barter for travel, right? Give me, give me you know, let my spouse come with me or my kids come with me or I want extra hotel stays if it’s in a really cool place or I want you to upgrade me to a nicer suite. You know, a lot of these clients already have to fill a certain number of room nights anyways. So they might as well use that as an incentive to help get you. And there you go, seven ways to get paid for a speaking engagement. And then finally the third takeaway from today is the one I wanna leave you with, which is kind of a tie back to the first one that, you know, speaking is not the business, getting the gig is the business, but follow up is the key follow up is the key follow up is the discipline of this whole business.
RV (22:11):
AJ has always said, you know, one of the things I’ve learned from AJ is she always says, there’s no such thing as a no, it’s never a no, there are only, it’s not right now. There’s no such thing as a no, there’s only such a thing as a not right now. And what she means by that is sooner or later, everybody is going to buy, especially in the speaking business. Cuz if, if they’re have an event they’re putting on every year, they need speakers every single year. And so they might not book you this year or next year or the year after. But if you follow up and you’re nice and you build a relationship and your career is growing and you’re improving and you’re doing all the things we teach at brand builders group, sooner or later, they’re gonna go, you know what, let’s do it, let’s have you.
RV (22:57):
And so follow up is the game like follow up is the discipline. You gotta be willing to do the work of staying in touch with people. So there you go, three great takeaways, seven ways to get paid for a speaking engagement. These are just a, a couple tips, right? Whatever I’ve shared here I don’t know, 10, 15 minutes of, you know, more than seven hours of training that we have done because we’ve done seven seven or eight calls in our little internal training. So this is the kind of stuff that we teach inside a brand builder’s group. I wanted to give you a chance to get a little sample of that. But right here on the podcast, we’re so grateful that you’re here. Hope you’re enjoying the show, share this with somebody who’s trying to start a speaking career or somebody who is interested in
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Speaking or somebody who just wants to get out there and speak or could, or should speak to drive more leads to their business, even if they’re not paid. And if that person is you, please make sure that you request a call with our team at freebrandcall.com / podcast. And let’s talk other than that, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 313: Creating Videos That Go Viral with Travis Blakely and Teun Van Der Lugt | 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):
All right. Y’all here I am on the recap episode of my conversation with Travis and Tony from interlight media y’all such a good interview, such good human. So insightful worked with so many amazing content creators anyone from Lewis Howes to Jay Shetty you like so, so many individuals right soon to be AJ and Rory vaden
AJV (01:48):
And he said he got that from prince back in the day when they were working together. But plan B is just to make sure that plan a works. In other words, don’t give up. Right. when you don’t think you’re seeing progress, you are, you just don’t see it. It’s, it’s hard to see the forest through the tree sometimes, and you gotta acknowledge the mini victories along the way, because there are some, there’s a victory every day. There’s progress made every single day, but we gotta be looking for that. But don’t give up, don’t quit cuz you think it’s hard? I just there’s so much power and just going, man. It is it’s. There is no overnight success, right? There is gradual consistent success. So just don’t give up. Right? So plan B to make sure plan a works. I love that.
AJV (02:35):
It was such a good, true thing. Second thing we were talking about how do you create more authenticity in video, which is a huge part of what they do at interlink media. Like their tagline is making videos go viral. And so I said, well, how do you create more authenticity on videos? And I love what they said. They said, you’ve gotta focus on the feeling that you want your audience to feel. And that was like really important to hear. I think often I don’t think about that. I don’t know about you, but I often am thinking about like, what content do I wanna share? What point do I wanna make? What story do I want to share, but I’m not thinking about the feeling, but I know for a fact of just listening to this conversation, if I know that the feeling I want to share is hope I will come at it with a different angle, a different tone a different dimension of anything from my voice to my, my facial expressions, my examples, but I gotta focus on the feeling.
AJV (03:39):
Right. And, and it’s true because it’s like, we’ve all heard. It’s like, people don’t remember what you say as much as they remember how you made them feel. So if you wanna come across with more authenticity, it’s like focus on the feeling that you want your audience to experience when you’re sharing your content, when you’re sharing your message. And that’s always easier to do when you’re talking about something that you actually care about. So talk about what you actually care about. That makes a difference. Second thing around this authenticity is ask yourself before you start, who is that one person that you need to show up for today? Right? So before you start your video, before you start sharing your content, before you hit record, ask yourself who is that one person in my life that I need to show up for? And what do I need to say to them?
AJV (04:35):
What do they need to hear? And Travis was talking about how I’m always constantly reminding myself if I only had 30 days to live a little bit morbid, but if I only had 30 days to live, what is the one message I would wanna share who needs to hear it? And who is that person I need to show up for that one person. Just having that one person in your mind. Really again, changes the tone and the feeling and the emotion of what you’re trying to say again, back to that feeling that you’re trying to get across. So who is that one person, keep that person in your mind visualize them, see them, talk to that person and ask yourself how you need to show up for them. What do they need from you? What do they need to hear from you?
AJV (05:20):
And then last but not least, this is from Travis and Tony, both. But I think this is so important. It’s focus your efforts on one message. And on one platform, we talk about this all the time at brand builders group that you break through Shehan wall you break through the noise by intentional focused effort while it’s no different on social media, you do not have to be everywhere all the time. So pick one platform and do it exceptionally well, then add another platform, calm down, do not exhaust yourself, pick one and do it really, really well. Thanks. Y’all hope you enjoyed go listen to the full episode and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 311: The Fastest Way to Become a Paid Professional Speaker with Kindra Hall | 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.
RV (00:54):
What is the fastest way to become a paid professional speaker? That was a big part of the topic of conversation. Of course, in this recent interview that I did with Kindra hall, who is a friend, a colleague, someone who I have now known for years, and it’s been delightful to see how her speaking career has taken shape. I met her when she first started out and I just love, I love seeing people who are winning and who set that, set a goal and create a vision and go out and knock it down. And so it’s great to reconnect with her and and bring some of this. Some of these highlights in education to you and not everybody wants to be a paid professional speaker. Now, if you are in, if you are one of our brand builders group messengers, if you’re in one or one of our clients, you know that we talk about presentations a lot, because we believe that presentations are both your best first product and your best first piece of marketing collateral.
RV (01:57):
We use presentations and speaking as the number one way to drive leads into your business. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be paid to speak. And it also doesn’t mean even that you have to do it on stages or even in person. A lot of times it happened through webinars and podcasts and social media lives and, you know, just little YouTube videos and things like that. But we believe in speaking, but this episode specific to the business of paid professional speaking and that is really a, a very specific thing. And so in our world, one of our, one of our courses is called full keynote calendar, which is where we teach the entire business. It’s the, the whole two day event. Or if you do it as a course, you know, or you do it at a private strategy session with us is completely dedicated specifically to the business of paid speaking, which is what the topic of this conversation was with Kindra.
RV (02:55):
So I wanna share with you a couple of my highlights and takeaways from Kindra and also share, you know, just add in some of our other tips that, that we know of from the, from just from spending a career doing this. So, first of all, one of the things that she said, which is incredible advice, it is completely true. I totally agree. And if you hang out around like the national speakers association or other kind of paid professional speakers a lot or aspiring speakers, you will hear this. This is, this is sort of age old wisdom. And in the, when it comes to the business of speaking, there may not be a better piece of tactical advice than this, which is speak at associations. That is where you start, you start your speaking, your paid professional speaking career, and, and unpaid, you can also do this for, for free speaking engagements for lead gen, right?
RV (03:50):
But you start by speaking at paid, sorry, not that start by speaking at associations. If you are wanting to build a career as a paid professional speaker, why? Okay. Because a few reasons. So first of all, think about it. Associations bring people together who all work for different companies. So associations exist entirely for the purpose of having meetings. That is, that is why they exist. It is, it is for the purpose of best practices and, and networking and creating community among a profession. So associations exist like solely to have meetings, to create encounters with people who are from different companies, but are inside of the same industry. That is why they exist. Now, anytime you have meetings, you need speakers. So that’s the second reason why is in order to incentivize these people to come together collectively, one of the best ways to do that is to provide education.
RV (05:00):
That is a VI that will, will benefit all of them, which means they need speakers. They need educators. They need people who can add content to their program, to their lineup, to create and enhance the value of that meeting, which is inherent and, and necessary and essential in getting people to even show up for the meeting in the first place. So they are desperate for speakers. They’re dependent on speakers. That’s very different from a company, right? Like a company, people are all there gathered every day in the same place. Anyways, they may or may not have a meeting. And if they’re having a rough year financially, one of the first things they probably cut is a meeting, but associations can’t cut the meeting like that is the association is getting people together and they gotta have speakers. So that’s the second reason why they are great.
RV (05:46):
The third reason why associations are great and why you should target speaking at associations first is because they typically don’t have a lot of money.
RV (06:47):
So, so they, they run on a tighter budget, which means that it’s less competitive. Why? Because the higher paid speakers who are typically more established who are world renowned, who are the whatever bestselling authors, the, the, the, the, the people with lots of notoriety or followers or high profile executives, et cetera, they’re competing for higher paying gigs here at associations. Like a lot of times, you know, like these days, honestly, for me, I don’t speak at that many associations. Why, because my fee is outside the range of what most associations can pay. And I am getting as many speaking gigs as I desire to have. So you know, that’s an example. You’re not gonna compete against experienced speakers as much in the association market. So it’s a great place to get started. If you’re trying to speak at, you know, apple or Oracle or, or, you know, the million million dollar round table.
RV (07:45):
Now that’s a, that’s technically an association. That’s a huge one. It’s one of the most illustrious and famous in the world. That happens to be one I am speaking at, in a couple weeks, as a matter of fact in Australia. So there are, there are really, really huge ones that are very, very competitive, but, but the higher end ones have more competition. So when you’re just getting started, it’s good to go in places where you can get momentum and win. So that’s the third great reason to speak at associations. The fourth, great reason to speak at associations is because you are in front of a lot of potential prospects. You’re in front of a lot of potential prospects. I never get more spinoff opportunities than when I speak in front of an association. Why? Because every person in the audience is from a different company.
RV (08:35):
They’re from a different, you know, location, they’re from a different organization, which means all of them are potential people who could hire you compared to when you speak at a company, right? All of those employees work for the same company. So it’s less likely that somebody there is gonna say, Hey, come let me hire you to speak for this other company, because they all work at the same company. Now we’ll talk about that in a second and how to, how to make that work for you really well. But those are four great reasons to speak at associations. And then the fifth reason to speak at associations is because they are easy to find because they’re easy to find. You can just go search association in any industry. And it, it, they’re not that hard to find now narrowing them down and figuring out which ones are, are, are the, you know, the best ones that takes some time.
RV (09:29):
In fact, one of the benefits that we provide to our members and our monthly community at all levels, it’s just inside of our portal. We have a proprietary software that scrapes the web. It’s a, it’s a search tool that scrapes like 60 different search engines. And it’s, it’s set up to have all of these advanced ion logic searches to help you find associations. So if you’re one of our clients make sure you go and, and use that tool in the portal, because it does a lot of that legwork for you, like in a, in a, literally in a split second, but in general, associations are easy, easy to find. All you have to do is ask people, you know, are you a part of any associations and people who are professionals will say, yeah, I mean, this association, that association, you can Google it.
RV (10:12):
There’s directories of them. Like they’re, they’re, they’re trying to be found. So they’re easier to be found. Whereas some companies don’t try to you know, make that much of a public, a public play in terms of who they are. So those are great reasons why to speak at associations five great ones. Okay. So that is where you wanna start. It is the fastest way to get traction. Now you might have to speak for free early on and in general, that’s something we believe in when you’re starting out is you speak for free until you can get until you generate enough demand in the marketplace to speak for a fee. But often you don’t have to cuz the other thing is, even though associations don’t have a lot of money, they have a budget for speakers because they’re essential to the organization.
RV (10:59):
So many of them do have money and they’re willing to, to, you know, spend it with you cuz this is why it exists. So they’re just really, really the great place to start for all of those reasons. And you know, I think that’s what you wanna look at. So it’s interesting to hear Kindra talk about that. Something that we have done, we do, we teach you know, our paying clients and then obviously talking about here, like just for free, it’s a great idea to, to do that. Alright. The second tip, the second takeaway. This was less of something that Kindra said and more of something that something she said reminded me of this is that you wanna learn to work in both horizontals and verticals. You need to learn to work in both horizontals and verticals. And this applies to any profession.
RV (11:49):
Okay. Any, any, any, I would say B to B business to business, any B to B type of environment. You need to learn to work horizontals and verticals. What are horizontals and verticals? Okay. Horizontals applies to the divisions inside of one company and verticals applies to the other companies that are in the same industry. So let me give you an example. Horizontals is if, if I get booked to speak at a huge organization like I’ll give you a good example. Mass mutual was one of, one of our, one of our best speaking clients of all time. I got booked to speak at this mass mutual organization for a gentleman named Michael book, who I became friends with and was someone we profiled in procrastinating on purpose, my second book. And so we spoke for his team inside of mass mutual, but that was just one team inside of mass mutual.
RV (12:49):
So then what we did and, and when I say we, this was really like AJ and, and, and her team. This is part, part of the brilliance of what makes AJ an amazing salesperson is this kind of thing is she then went horizontal and said, what are all the other divisions that mass mutual has? And big companies have many divisions, right? Like they might have, there’s an HR, there’s an HR annual conference. There’s a customer service, there’s a sales conference, there’s a leadership, you know, executive meeting. There might be incentive trips, like big companies have not just one meeting a year. They have lots and lots of meetings across lots of departments or divisions. That’s working horizontally. It’s, it’s going okay. I spoke at this one event for this organization. Let me, let me work laterally in what other departments or divisions does this company have meetings.
RV (13:40):
And rather than, you know, you, you, you do internet research to start all of this, but once you get a little bit of momentum, even, even like two or three customers, you can immediately start doing this and you’ll get way more traction faster because they’re all gonna know each other. And they’re gonna say, oh, Rory did a great job for our HR conference. You guys should look at ’em for your customer service meeting. Boom. Now, now I’m in, right. They, they, even if they don’t know each other inside of a large company, it’s so much credibility to, to be in that organization. Like I, I spoke for Google here, not that long ago. And we’re not proactively hunting keynotes right now. We’re just working inbound. But if we got back into that mode, Google would be one of the, a great example where we would go, oh my gosh, they, they got 25 different divisions probably that have meetings every year.
RV (14:28):
And you could make a, a year or maybe a career just speak into that one company. I had a good friend named Paul early in in my career. This guy spoke at, at just Aflac meetings. Like he, he did so many, he was a mentor and a friend and loved, loved this guy, but he made a great living and he just like dominated Aflac. And he spoke for all these different Aflac. He did other stuff too, but it was like, that was sort of his bread and butter and, and they all knew him. They all got to know him. That’s working horizontally now working vertically. He is working inside of an industry. So that would be like, okay, let’s say I spoke at mass mutual. Then I would say, okay, that’s a financial institution. Then I would say, what other financial institutions could I speak at?
RV (15:11):
Right. Northwestern mutual. You know, I could go to speak to all, all the different insurance companies, because I’m gonna get to know that industry very well. And even though they don’t know the other people at other companies often they do though, because they meet ’em at associations. But even if, if they don’t, they’ll recognize the companies and go, oh yeah, those are reputable companies. They have a lot of the same issues that we have that must mean, you know, something about this industry. And so you get momentum by working horizontally inside of an organization or working verticals inside of an industry. So those are some really tactical, strategic, like important and you know, valuable tips that that will make an immediate difference in terms of your ability to get your speaking career off the ground. Right? So I want you to pay attention to those.
RV (16:03):
And then the third tip, and this definitely was a takeaway from Kindra which, which is more related to her most recent book, which is, you know, she’s sort of an expert on storytelling. And so she teaches how to tell stories and use stories for different things. But what I loved about her second book is it talks about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and this applies to everybody, but it certainly applies if you’re trying to become a paid professional speaker is you have to ask yourself, what is the story? I’m telling myself about myself. If I’m saying, oh no, one’s ever gonna hire me. I don’t have enough credentials. I don’t have enough experience. I’m not famous enough. You know, I’m not funny. I’m not good. You know, I’m not, I don’t have charisma or like, whatever those stories are. And I loved, I loved kind of the, the method she laid out as this little three step method.
RV (17:01):
And she said, first of all, just ask yourself, is that story serving you? Like, does, does that story serve you to tell yourself that if it doesn’t serve, you drop it, stop saying it, stop propagating. It, just drop it, right? Like you don’t have to like try to lie to yourself. You just drop it and go that story’s not serving me. I’m just gonna let it go. And then step two, your job is to choose better stories. So you tell yourself you know, look, you could say no one will hire me because I’m inexperienced. You also could easily tell yourself an authentic truth, which is the inverse of that to say people are gonna hire me because I’m a fresh face, which is leg legitimately true. Like many of our longest standing speaking clients are always bringing things to me and they’re going like, Hey, do you have any fresh faces?
RV (17:52):
Like, because you know, some of us speakers been around for a while. And so they, they get to kind of, you know, people have seen ’em and they’re like, we’re looking for some fresh faces or media will say, we’re looking for some fresh faces. You know, success magazine asked me that. And I remember candy. Valentino was one of our brand builders group clients that I introduced her to them and they love her. Right. And that she was just in their magazine and like she’s doing other stuff with them and they, they, they nominated her for this award and just like really awesome. Because they’re looking for fresh faces and you know, that’s one part about being great inside of brand builders is we see a lot of the fresh faces we’re trying to, we’re trying to help. ’em Right. We’re trying to make, ’em become the household name.
RV (18:28):
So your job is to choose better stories. And then you need to, you need to reinstall and repeat the new story, right? So drop the old story, choose a new story and then reinforce or repeat that new story over and over and over. And you say, you know what, I’m a deal, right? That was something that I used to tell, tell people, and, and it is like, Hey, it’s a deal. I still feel that way about myself. I’m going, Hey, in a few years, my speaking fee is going to be outrageous. Like this is the best time ever to hire Rory Vaden. Because my fee is only going up, like I’m on sale. Like I, this is the best time. And that is true. Like if you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re one of our members, if you’re doing the things we’re teaching you, your fee is going up for certain, like, there is no question about whether or not the stuff we teach works.
RV (19:21):
It a hundred percent works if you follow it, it is G like it it’s guaranteed to work. The question is how fast and just, you know, when and how fast, but you you’re on sale, right? Like I’m on sale. I am, I am, I am the cheapest. It is the cheapest to work with me right now, either to hire me as a speaker or to hire me as a personal strategist. Neither of those things I would say are cheap. Right? they’re definitely lots, lots more than they used to cost when I first started, but I’m still on sale. Like it will never be more affordable to work with me than it is right now. And to work with our company, right. We do price increases over time cuz we get better at what we do. There’s more demand. And, and the price goes up, but so you need to remind yourself of that too.
RV (20:04):
Like just inflation alone, the price is going up. So it’s the best time ever to hire you. You are on sale right now. So those are a couple ideas to help you. Those of you that are interested in a paid professional speaking career, but they also apply, even if you’re not interested in professional speaking, but just going out and speaking to drive more leads to your business and to your personal brand, which is a huge part of what our audience does. And it’ll change your business, getting out there and being in front of people and speaking and just giving them a sample of what you do, it’ll change your business. So that’s what I got for you today. Thanks for being here on the influential, personal brand recap, share this episode. Would you please like who do you know that you, you think, Hey, they should be a speaker or they wanna wanna be a speaker, share this episode with them and be like, Hey, you, you need to tune into this cuz I think it’ll help ’em so as always, we love you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 309: How to Grow a Personal Brand and Build a Real Estate Empire with Vinney Chopra | 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):
All right. Y’all welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Vinney Chopra. Y’all he is just like a little pile of joy. Like it’s like, you know, you meet these people and it’s like, how do I bundle all of that up? Put it in my pocket so I can access it every single day. That’s just a contagious joy that he emos. And if you haven’t listened to the full episode, I will not do it justice. Please do. But in an effort of giving you the cliff notes version of my conversation with Vinney that’s what you’re here for. So let’s, let’s do this, sorry. Here are my three key takeaways from my conversation with Vinney Chopra. So here’s the first thing I loved this and it was such a great reminder. They said that teaching is just choice learning.
AJV (01:47):
That is so good. It’s like to be a good communicator means you need to be a great student, right? To be a coach, a consultant, a speaker, a podcaster, anyone who is conveying information to another human being. I E a teacher, an educator, an informer or a communicator. There has to be a level of choice learning. And although that was so good, and that happens in a variety of different ways. And we live in a unique era, a time in history, where information is at our fingertips to the better or worse of what that brings about, but fits there. So choose to use it for your betterment. It’s like, you can be listening to podcasts. You can read books, you can listen to books, there’s blogs, there’s social media, content posts, there’s courses, there’s webinars, there’s coaching consulting. There’s just so much out there.
AJV (02:37):
And perhaps that’s, sometimes the challenge is with so many options. It’s not easy to choose one, but to be a great educator, a teacher, right. You’ve gotta be a great student. And I love that was such a great reminder to me, of like my job is to learn right, as a human being, as a parent, as a business owner, like a huge part of my job is to be a great student, a great learner of information. So that was my first takeaway. The second is something that I’m just really fascinated with, which is real estate syndication, right? And so I loved this conversation. I’ve been having with him off and on through text and through conversations ever since he and I reconnected just a couple of months ago. But that this is somewhat of a newer concept to me of right.
AJV (03:24):
It’s pooling your money with another group of like minded individuals to be able to invest in larger things. And this is something that he has done extraordinarily well over the last seven years almost 700 million with real estate assets. And so much of that is through syndication. And I love it’s like, I may not be able to buy a 25 million multifamily complex, but I could be a part investor in one. And I love just the whole concept of right, if your money is sitting idle right now, sitting in a bank somewhere, it’s literally losing its value due to the rate of inflation right now. And I, I am not a financial analyst or forecaster. I’m not an economist, but I think there’s some certain things that we can all just consider is true, which is we are going to see the impacts of the choices that our government has made through the pandemic.
AJV (04:23):
Not making a side either way. It’s just choices always have consequences, the choices, bad choices, they all have consequences. And if we’re, we’re gonna fill the ramifications of that at some point in the next 10 to 20 years, if not sooner. And so it’s like how you’re investing your money, spending your money right now is gonna make a huge difference. And so investing into real estate is something that I’ve really gotten a lot of passion about learning, right? It’s a topic I’m learning a ton about right now. And syndication is just a really fascinating way. Then he has courses. He’s got books, he’s got podcasts on this. We barely scratch the surface of this today, but it’s pulling your money with another group of like-minded individuals who are all investing in the same thing to get more people’s money working together for you in a quicker fashion.
AJV (05:12):
So just fascinated about this concept. I think sometimes investing in those types of things can be intimidating, but this is a less intimidating way to go about it, at least through my lens. The third thing I love we talk about is the third, the three tsunamis that are impacting the United States today. This is so good. Like the whole conversation could have been around this. So here are the three tsunamis and a cliff notes version. The first tsunami is the gen Z and millennial tsunami. Right. and basically what that is, is the, the growing number of millennials and gen Z who don’t want to own properties, right? They are turning the country into a renter’s nation along with these other two tsunamis. And I think this is fascinating because it’s like, I have so many friends, I am a millennial, I’m an older millennial, but I have so many friends who are in this gen Z and millennial, you know, generation who don’t see the value in owning.
AJV (06:10):
They don’t want to they wanna be able to rent and hippity hop all over the country or all over the world. I was talking to someone today. The last time I talked to him, he was in Amsterdam today, he’s in Tokyo and I’m like, wait, what? And it’s like, it’s just this transient lifestyle, this laptop living this virtual work environment where we can do things from pretty much anywhere. And we’re seeing that grow and grow with the pandemic. And probably not going back to full time in office jobs for a lot of companies. And so you’ve got this first tsunami of gen Z and millennials who don’t wanna own anymore. The second one is the silver tsunami, right? The growing number of people who are turning age 65, there are 10,000 people every day in the United States that are turning 65.
AJV (07:01):
That’s huge. He said, there’s another 6,000, every single day that are turning 70. And then another 4,000 that are turning 80. Y’all, that’s huge. This comes down to what is the quality of living and life gonna be like for our parents, for grandparents in the next 10 to 20 years with everyone living longer they are, there’s going to be additional requirements for when this person can no longer sustain living in their home alone. Maybe just due to the upkeep that’s required. Some of it may be to illness or sickness or, you know, some sort of injury or handicap, but a lot of it is just due to the upkeep of they don’t want to anymore, or maybe they need to sell so that they can downsize. And there’s this huge, huge era of what are we gonna do with the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who were living well into their seventies, eighties, nineties, in terms of their living arrangements.
AJV (08:01):
And I love any passion around reimagining and redefining what senior housing senior living looks like. And this is probably what I am most passionate about. Learning about. My dad is about to turn 71. He is nowhere near meeting this sort of thing, but if he ever would, I wanna put him in a place that is fun and awesome, and somewhere that he enjoys and he doesn’t consider it being in a senior living home. It’s like, no, this is like spring break for someone in their eighties. Right. and I think that’s a huge thing. This is a huge tsunami that is impacting this trend towards a renter’s nation here in the United States. And then the last is the immigrant tsunami, the amount of people who are moving to this country on a variety of different statuses. But they are moving here and they are not able or eligible to buy a home.
AJV (08:54):
So there is forced renting. Right now in the United States, there is a 20 million how a 20 million home housing shortage right now. That’s extraordinary. And what does that look like in five years or 10 years? And the difference between renting and owning and multifamily and single home and all these different concepts that make up, you know, all the different ways that we can be investing in real estate is a way of making our money work for us. And this was just such a powerful interview. And the reason I wanted to have Vinnie on the show was to talk about like, when your business, when your personal brand is growing and succeeding and you’re making money, because it will, it will do that. Like, you’re probably already doing that now. It’s like, how are you then reinvesting that money so that it’s working for you.
AJV (09:41):
And I just, I wanted to have him on, he’s got amazing podcasts and books and courses. He’s got this amazing personal brand, but simultaneously he also has this really powerful, real estate investment side of him, of a real estate syndication and senior living and multi-family unit housing and hotels and all these different things. And it just got my mind thinking of how are we investing our money and there’s a time and a place for Roth IRAs and 401ks, and then there’s another time and a place of, yeah. And what else am I doing? And I just thought this would be a really great opportunity to talk about as your business scales. How do you make sure that you are scaling up your investment strategies? And just a, a brilliant mind who was doing this exceptionally well? Both in the personal brand space and in the investment space. So I have not even scratched the surface here. There is so much more to talk about, check out this interview follow Vinney Chopra. You can go to Vinney chopra.com, VI N N EY chopra.com. If you go to Vinney chopra.com/free book, you get to get a free copy of his book. The E version check him out, follow him. Y’all just was so good. Hope you enjoyed it. And coming back next time on the influential personal, see you later.
Ep 307: How to Dominate on YouTube with Evan Carmichael | 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.
RV (00:54):
Oh my gosh, Evan Carmichael blew my mind. Like it takes a lot. It takes a lot for me to find an educator on something related to personal branding where I go, holy moly. I’ve never heard that before. Now I, we ha this we’re on this episode here. We’re gonna break down. We’re gonna obviously break down what happened in, in the, the podcast interview that you just heard with Evan, but he came and did this, the training, you know, this very, this much longer in depth training for all of our, our monthly members. And it was just, just awesome, like really, really good and love, love seeing somebody who’s a really tactical expert and you know, somebody that we’re now confidently recommending, which, you know, we don’t, we don’t recommend people lightly, right? Like we, we, we flush out what they’re about and if we catch any sniff of them being weird or doing silly stuff, we immediately shut that down.
RV (01:51):
So if you go to brandbuildersgroup.com/evancarmichael you will hit our affiliate link and go over to his training. That is just, you know, that that’s, that’s his training, that’s his, his little monthly program. But for all of our, our like active coaching clients, he did came and did a special thing that we recorded. And it was like, oh my gosh, like just amazing. So anyways you can check that out brandbuildersgroup.com/evancarmichael, which is a link to some of his other stuff, but three, three biggest take takeaways here in terms of how to dominate on YouTube. My, my big three takeaways from the podcast interview specifically. So first of all this is something that’s not necessarily unique to Evan, but it’s super edifying to hear him talk about it. And it just reinforces one of our core central beliefs, which is put education in front of the sale, put education in front of the sale.
RV (02:52):
You have to, you, you, you have to earn the right to sell something to somebody you have to earn their trust. Trust has to be in place first before there’s a transaction. Trust must take place before there’s a transaction. Like the trust has to be in place first. How do you build trust with the stranger? The answer is you give you, don’t ask you, give you give value. First, you deliver first, you teach and, and, and most of you, most, most of our audience and in, in some way are experts and educators, right? Like you have some valuable knowledge that you’ve acquired over some journey you’ve been on in your life, which is what makes you a mission driven messenger, which if you’re listening to this show regularly, anyways, that’s who you are. You are a mission driven messenger. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re feeling called to like, share your message with the world.
RV (03:49):
Well, why are you doing that’s because you’ve, you have some expertise. Why? Cause you walked the path, right? There’s a problem you’ve been down. There’s a challenge. You’ve conquered, there’s an obstacle you’ve overcome. So take that massive education and put it, give it away and put it up front first. And that is a core central belief. And, and I think when, when people get so lost in, like, how do I podcast? How do I YouTube? Like, what do I do on social media? Like, I don’t know what to post teach. ’em What, you know,
RV (04:39):
That is how you build trust. Like that, that’s it, that’s the secret. At least that’s our secret. If we got a secret, like however we’ve been able to do what we’ve been able to do. I mean, go look at my Instagram, go read my blog post, listen to all these podcasts you know, my books we sell for whatever, $12 on Amazon, but like, you know, we’re giving away everything. We can that we’re we’re, and we’re pumping it out into the universe as fast as humanly possible. Now I will say part of my action item from this E even though we know this part and we preach this part and we believe this and we do this part pretty well. I think, but was when Evan said you should, you, you should take your live coaching calls and publish those on YouTube. That’s really interesting because we, we do have our customers sign a release that, that gives us permission to, to, to do that.
RV (05:39):
And it, it does, I mean that that’s an infinite stream of content, right? An infinite stream of content is to go take questions for people and, and give them live coaching and publish that online, make that available to people. And I thought, huh, that’s fascinating. Like we’ve got hours and hours and hours and hours of that, but it doesn’t, you know, whatever it is, just teach, add value, share, educate, inspire, entertain. You know, the three E’s is what we, we talk about with our members, your, your, your content marketing strategy effectively is one of the three E you’re either, you know, educating, encouraging, or entertaining some mix of the three, but it’s typically one of those three, you’re either an educator, an encourager or an entertainer. And if you’re trying to sell stuff online, put education in front of the sale, give people a chance to sample you.
RV (06:33):
So anyways, that’s a, that’s a good one. Always good to be reminded of. Number two, my number two takeaway is make data driven decisions about your content specifically with YouTube, specifically, this audience retention curve concept. I mean, what, this, this is so simple and so practical, and like, anybody can do this. Like, why aren’t we, why aren’t we not doing this? This is so straightforward. And, and so if you miss the interview, what’s the audience retention curve. It’s a, it’s a tool it’s a widget on, in, in the back end of your YouTube channel that shows you second by second, how long people are watching and what’s gonna, what happens? You know, remember what he was saying here is, you know, typically the, the highest spike is the beginning is everybody starts watching. Almost everybody starts watching your video in the beginning, and then they keep for a little while, and then there’s some sharp drop off.
RV (07:35):
But then what you’re looking for are the spikes. Cuz if it’s flat, okay, if it’s flat, that means you held their attention. So that’s good. Like holding their attention is a massive victory. If it’s a drop that’s bad, that means we lost people. That means whatever we said right before it wasn’t interesting enough to help people keep hanging on, to hear what was coming next. So that is a big time problem. But then what you’re looking for are the spikes. The spikes are gold because what’s happening. There is people are pausing, rewinding and rewatching your video, which, you know, if you’ve ever wondered, like I wonder what’s the best part. Like if I, if I posted a 20 minute on VI video on YouTube, which 60 seconds of that video, should I post on Instagram reels or TikTok or like a YouTube short and you go, I don’t know, like, you know, I’ve got a one in 20 chance there, or you could just look at the data and see either where you held the audience flat or where there’s a spike and go.
RV (08:43):
That is that’s the clip. Like that’s the hotspot. Just grab it, that, grab whatever that is. Take it out in 60 seconds. And boom. Now, now your, your whole content strategy, like the art is gone pretty much. It’s mostly science at that point. So good. So simple, right? Like, I mean that one idea can grow. Your social can help you get your next great client. You know, it can help you make your impact in the world. It can help you become more well known. It’ll help you drive more leads. Like just that one practical idea. I mean, this podcast is nuts.
RV (09:31):
I mean, incredible, incredible. So that was the second one. And then the third one also sort of blew my mind and this one was like, where’s AJ, AJ. I want you to listen to this AJ, this clip is for you. I need to cut this clip. Somebody, can we cut this clip and send it to AJ? Because it was when I asked into question, how long should my videos be on YouTube? And everybody in the world is saying shorter, shorter, shorter, shorter attention. Spans humans are developing. We don’t pay attention. We want things shorter. Right? And, and Evan’s going, that’s not what the data says, sweetie. That ain’t what the data says. Not on YouTube anyways. Not on YouTube. His advice was a minimum of 10 minutes, but really 1, 2, 3 hours hours, 1, 2, 3 hours. That is amazing. 1, 2, 3 hours, no stinking way. One to three hours, unbelievable.
RV (10:36):
1, 2, 3 hours inly.
RV (11:24):
And we had Vanessa van Edwards on our podcast here. Not, not that long ago, like recently. And she was telling us some of her secrets and, and she’s a great example. Vanessa is blowing up on YouTube and I’ve known her for few years now, but like blowing up because of her YouTube channel. And if you go look like her, I, I, I, she, I sent I sent our team, her videos just because I said, look, it’s not that fancy. She’s not doing fancy editing. There’s not fancy lighting. I don’t even think she’s using a microphone. Like, and she’s blown it up, cuz she’s just teaching consistently like these great little tips, these little vignettes, you could do the same thing. Just you know, this is a game of education at scale. I mean, that’s how, that’s how Evan Des defined and described YouTube education at scale.
RV (12:17):
That’s it like that makes sense. And you go, well, I could, I could go speak to, to, to five people at a rotary club or I could record myself on my phone uploaded to YouTube and have a few dozen people or hundreds or maybe thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people watch it. Why are we doing this? Why are we not doing this? So and long form, long form content, man, that’s a that’s that. And, and AJ always tells me I’m she says you’re a little verbose, honey, a little verbose. But she, you know, she’s like trying to be to cut it down, cut it down. That’s cuz she, she doesn’t she’s like just cut to the point, cut to the chase, give me the deal. That’s how she operates. But the data, the data in general, sweetie says long form content rules the day, at least on YouTube.
RV (13:08):
So I I’m going with, I’m going with my men, Evan Carmichael and the data that makes me happy. That’s excited. Just teach, share what you know go back, listen to the episode. There’s there’s a, there’s a ton of, of great little things in there. Again, brand builders, group.com/evan Carmichael. If you wanna learn more from Evan and check out what he’s doing, very tactical, very specific to YouTube, but extremely, extremely tactical. And this YouTube being one place that I would say, yeah, we’ve, we’ve dropped the ball. Like we’ve never dominated YouTube, like we should, but we’re, we’re getting on the, we’re getting on the, the train. Now, even though I feel like a million years late we’re we’re starting now. And and you know, Evan is, is one of the people that we’re learning from. So check that out and keep coming back, share this podcast.
RV (13:54):
We’ll share this episode with somebody who needs to start a YouTube channel or, you know, you think somebody, you know, that’s really smart and go, Hey, you’re really smart. You should be posting your knowledge on YouTube because it’s gonna change your life. And you should listen to this interview with Evan Carmichael and Roy Vaden at brand builder’s group. So do that, would you for a friend and probably share it to your team, maybe if you’re listening and you’re not the one who actually edits your video, probably wanna share that interview with Evan Carmichael. And might I add the one with Vanessa van Edwards as well? So and Sean can the interview with Sean can, that we did as well was also a great, a great a great one on, on YouTube. So there you go. Look at that. You go, you got other episodes to go listen to right now, if you want more on this subject. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 305: What You Need To Know To Hire The Right Talent with Matt White | 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):
All right, y’all welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with my good friend, Matt white who is a culture index advisor and works with tons of CEOs. So this isn’t gonna be my five minute recap. I’m gonna time myself.
AJV (01:36):
And I mentioned how I love Ariana Huffington’s perspective on this. And she said, it’s not so much the great resignation as it is the great reevaluation. And I just believe that, and there’s this old saying that people don’t leave companies, people leave people. And although I do believe that to be true I also believe that there is a, a new form of resignation that’s happening right now. And it’s not company resignation. It’s not leader resignation, it’s job resignation, right? They, they have reevaluated that I don’t love what I’m doing. And even though I love who I’m working with and I, I love the company and I love the values and I really do like my teammates and I like my boss. I’m not happy with what I’m doing. And I feel called to do something else, or I’m not using my brain power or I feel stagnant or stuck.
AJV (02:28):
And I think that’s a lot of where we’re experiencing right now is people want a different job environment. They want different skill. They want different to put their skills to different uses. And that’s why I wanted to have Matt on to talk about the culture index, which is a it’s an assessment tool specifically designed for company leaders to create the ideal job position. And then you have your candidates take it. And what you’re trying to do is figure out based on the job that you know, needs to be done. And based on this person’s natural skill sets, how much of a match are they or not? And I think it’s really important that you know that, but also that they know that I’ve had interviews in the last year where I literally, they, somebody, I, I can think of this specific example.
AJV (03:12):
I was looking for a new EA about six months ago. And so I had my profile filled out. I knew exactly what I was looking for in an EA. I know what skills and you know, like what their natural, you know, talents need to be. I know how they need to problem solve and what their motivator should be to work well with me. And I remember this one girl filled this profile out and she filled this out. And in the interview, I like really liked her. She was very sales, mind, marketing minded, all these things. And I was like, that’s a lot of what I want. I want someone super proactive. And it’s like, if I hadn’t have done the culture index survey, I probably would’ve hired her, but she filled it out. And on our second interview, I said, I’m gonna make this a really short interview.
AJV (03:55):
You’re not a fit for the job. And you’re not a fit for this kind of role ever. So I would encourage you not to take it. And I said, here’s your culture index profile. And I’m telling you right now, you would be miserable doing this job, even though I really like you. And I know that you say you could do it. I need someone who wants to do this, not treat this as a stepping stone. I, I need someone who wants to do this for the next three to five years, not for the next three to six months. And I said, but you have the profile of the ideal salesperson. You need to go find a sales job. That is where you’re gonna thrive. It’s where you’re gonna succeed. It’s what you’re gonna love. And I actually reached out to her just a few weeks ago for an open sales position we have.
AJV (04:31):
And she said, it’s actually finding, I took a full-time job actually in a sales position. I’m so glad that we had that conversation. And it was such a blessing to both me and her of going, I know what I need and that this ain’t it for her. And it’s not it for me. And so getting really in tune with that I think is really important and a great reason why you should listen to this. And then there’s two other quick things that I’ll give you that I think are really important. And it was at the very end of my conversation with Matt. And we were talking about how, like, people don’t leave companies and sometimes they don’t even leave people. They leave jobs, they leave jobs that they’re not happy and they don’t feel fulfilled in anymore. And so how do we fix that problem?
AJV (05:08):
And it’s by knowing what they want, like, what are their natural behavior drivers and how do we fit that within a job that works for them. And then it got me thinking about I think people often come to companies because they believe in the values and the missions of the company or the leader, right? The leader is super inspiring and has visionary skill sets. But at some point there has to be a transition of your team members, believing in what you believe in to actually believing in you. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what really helps you retain great talent. That’s what helps you retain people is that there’s been a transition of, we started with, because we shared the same beliefs, but today I just believe in you and whatever it is you do, I wanna be a part of it.
AJV (06:02):
I, I, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You could be digging ditches. You could be building skyscrapers or helping people build their personal brands. But I believe in you, and I know if you’re doing it you’re gonna take care of me and you’re gonna help me. And you’re gonna believe in me too. And there’s this trust that’s developed and it’s gotta go from, they believe in what you believe in to. They just believe in you. So making that transition of helping your team get to know you. And the last thing I’ll share is that a quote by ed Mylet who am a, I’m a recent follower of, but I love this. He was in an interview and they introduced him as this self-made millionaire, right. A hundred millionaire. And he corrected him and he said, no, no, no, nobody is self-made anything, especially not me. There is no self-made man. There is only team made, man. And that is what I wanna leave you with. It’s like yeah, we cannot do this on our own as entrepreneurs, business owners leaders we require people. So we are self made nothing. We are team made everything and using culture index is a great tool, great way for you to help build a team around you. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being a listener. Go check out the full episode and we’ll catch you next time.
Ep 303: Understanding Enneagram with Ian Morgan Cron | 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.
RV (00:53):
It is truly one of the joys of my career being a podcast host, and there’s many reasons why, but one of the reasons why is because of the fascinating people that I have gotten to meet over the years of, of hosting a podcast. And that was evidenced and, and a great example of it here was with this, this recent edition with Ian Morgan Cron, who is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the Enneagram, right? And he wrote the road back to you, very, very popular book. And you know, I’ve been hosting this podcast co-host of this podcast now for four years. I think about four years, three, three years, maybe three years, we started it. We started it a little bit late when we launched the company. And, and some of you don’t know, but when we sold our our last company that we had, I had been podcasting on that show, which was, had millions of downloads hundreds, hundreds of episodes.
RV (01:54):
And that was several years, maybe, maybe five years, something like that. So I, I have done a lot of interviews and I just, I absolutely love it. And if, if you are one of our mission driven messengers, like if you’re one of our members we always talk about this, that like, it’s, it’s the most amazing platform for meeting people. It’s, it’s like a free way to grow your own personal development. You get to interview these amazing people every, every single week. And it’s just, it’s the most incredible networking tool of all time. But anyways, I, I rant and say all that a little bit about the power of being a podcast host. And I guess just to take a minute and just to say, thank you like, thank, thank you for listening and I mean, thank you for the gift of your attention.
RV (02:36):
Like thank you for the compliment of being here. Thank you for downloading this. Or, you know, if you watch it on our YouTube channel or on our blog, or like wherever you’re listening, like just thank you. I mean, it’s, it’s the most, this is the most amazing, amazing, I mean, well, like getting to be a, I feel the same way about writing and speaking and, you know, my Instagram videos and I just, just think it’s, it’s, it’s the coolest thing ever. So you know, to get to it, to make sure we’re providing value to you. That’s why we’re here. I, I wanna dive into my three big takeaways from this interview with Ian Morgan, Cron which, you know, in a, in a weird way, I was like, ah, I think I should probably be more starstruck about meeting Ian than I am.
RV (03:19):
Cuz I just, I haven’t been a huge engram fan. Like I’m not, it’s not that I’m not a fan. I’m just not, I’m ignorant to it. We have some people internally Elizabeth on our team loves it and she’s really good with it and knows all about it. And you know, we, we took the test. She gave us the test for Christmas a couple years ago. And so it’s really cool. So like it’s a little bit of our culture, but I’ve always been more into like disk and Myers Briggs and KII temperament. And like I have done a bunch, a bunch of these types of things, but anyways really, really powerful insightful conversation with Ian and, and you know, here’s my, my top three takeaways. So number one, which I never really realized was such an important part of the premise of the ideogram was realizing that what is best about us is also what is worst about us?
RV (04:10):
What is best about us is also what is, is worst about us. It is our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness. Our greatest asset is also our greatest liability. The, the thing that we do extremely well is the thing that we can overdo, like we can overuse, right? And so I think I look at myself as an example and I go, okay, what are some of those things? And I, I think this would be the exercise for you, you’re listening and saying, okay, well, what are those things like? What is it about what is, what are the best things about me and how do those things become the worst things about me? And, you know, I think of discipline, which is like a core part of my, my, my personal philosophy, my personal brand, of course the centerpiece component of both my first book take the stairs.
RV (04:58):
And my second book about how to multiply time procrastinating on purpose is just like discipline. And you go, okay, discipline is how I’ve achieved. It’s how I’ve been successful. So that’s the best of me. How does that become the worst of me? Well, it, it makes me righteous. It makes me inflexible, you know, it, it probably makes me dogmatic to some extent and, and, you know, like one of the things I hate is being off schedule, like when there’s a, when there’s a routine and a rhythm and like it gets interrupted. I’m like, it, it, it throws my whole life outta whack. And so I, you know, I see that the other thing is, you know, I think if I had to summarize my entire body of work my entire career, you know, and if you said, what is Rory really an expert on? I would say the psychology of influence, moving people to action.
RV (05:45):
I would, that is what I would say. My, my expertise is the psychology of influence, which specifically stated is the psychology of moving people to action, including ourselves, which is where all the self development work comes from. But also my work in sales my work with leadership teams, and then of course, you know, our work, what we’re doing right now with brand builders, group, teaching people, how to become more influential. So I go, okay, well, what is it about influence? Like if I really understand the psychology of, of, of moving people to action, how does that show up as weakness? It, it shows up as weaknesses going, oh, I might be trying to, to, to move people in a direction that really isn’t fair or what they don’t want to go. And if you heard my last recap edition on, on, it was on the Catherine Gordon interview, Catherine who, John Gordon’s wife, John Gordon, longtime real close buddy of mine, author of the energy bus.
RV (06:43):
And then they wrote the book, relationship grit together, and they, you know, she came and did this whole amazing interview. If you didn’t listen to the episode with her about how to have a better marriage. I shared that in the recap edition that I think my greatest mistake as a husband or one of my greatest mistakes has been that I have not given AJ a safe place to share her feelings and emotions without trying to shape them. Right. Like she shares how she’s feeling. And I tell her why she shouldn’t feel that way. She shares how she’s feeling and I’m telling her why she should think about that different. She shares how she’s feeling and I’m telling her how I don’t really deserve to have her feel that way about something I said, or did gas, gas lighting is apparently is the term for that, which I was I’ve, I’m, that’s a term that I’m new to.
RV (07:39):
But yeah, I, I shared this, you know, pretty emotional moment for for me in, in that last recap edition, talking about that, and then listening to going back and listening to this, reviewing this interview with Ian and going, oh, where is my greatest strength? Also my greatest weakness, where is what is best about me also? What is worse about me? I go, ah, there it is, right? Like my ability to coach, to guide, to see things a different way to bring perspective to, to, to help do that for people is great, except in your marriage, in a moment of vulnerability where someone is sharing their heart and how they’re feeling and going, oh, let me, let me take your heart and tell you why that’s not right or change that that is terrible. Right? So anyways, if you wanna listen to me cry, you can go,
RV (08:38):
Right? So that’s the, the, to turn this to you, the question would be, what is your greatest strength? How might that be showing up also as your weakness and just being aware of that? So I thought that was, that was insightful for me. And the second thing, which is huge was that all of us have a false origin story. All of us have a false origin story, every single one of us, like we all have a story that we tell ourselves about who we are and why we are the way we are. And it is never true. It is always partially true. It is always based in some level of truth, but it is never accurate. Like it is never fully precise. It is a story. And, and it’s a story that we tell ourselves so many times that we believe it. And then the trick about this is like, this becomes our identity.
RV (09:32):
Our identity for the future is written by the story we tell ourselves about the past. Our identity for the future is written by the story we tell ourselves about our past. When we say the reason I am, why I am, is because of this happened. And because my parents were this way. And because I went to this school and my teacher said that, and the bully did this, and this happened in the economy and this happened in the world and this happened in politics. And like, I, I, I am, I am because of the neighborhood that I lived in and whatever, like that story that we look back and somebody says, how did you get to be how you are? That story is of, of our past is, becomes our identity for the future. And it’s never accurate. Like it’s never a hundred percent accurate.
RV (10:18):
It is always an interpretation of what happened. It is always based on a memory of what happened. It, it is always based upon a, a, a selective monitoring of key elements and components of a, of, of circumstances that we have crafted into a narrative that shapes our life. So why does this matter? It matters because if it’s not serving you, you can just drop it, right? Like, if, if, if you’ve been telling yourself your whole life, you’re not a smart person, because a teacher said that to you, when you were a kid. And most of these stories, we have most of this programming that we have was written when we were very young, like before we were even aware that our brain was a program that was being written, most of the program was written by other people and not by ourselves or, or by ourselves, but subconsciously, right.
RV (11:15):
And so you go, oh, okay, well, I thought I was dumb, or I thought I wasn’t smart. Or I thought I was gonna, you know, money doesn’t grow on trees, or, you know, you can’t, you can’t be successful in your career and have a great family or all of these things, which become, I’m not gonna call ’em limiting beliefs. I’m gonna call them confining beliefs. Right? A limiting belief is negative. I mean, it has the connotation of negative, but I wanna shift, I wanna shift the distinction here to say, it’s, they’re not all negative, but they’re confining. They shape the world in which we live. They sh they shape the world. As you see it, they shape what you believe to be true. Now, if it’s negative, that’s a limiting belief in some ways it’s positive, right? You might have said, man, I’m, I’m athletic.
RV (12:09):
I’m great at remembering people’s names, man. I’m good at sales. I’m good at speaking in front of an audience, I’m a great leader, right? Like there’s certain things that you have told yourself about yourself that are really positive. So they’re confining in a healthy way. Now there could be limitations to those, or there could be impacts on the people around you for those, because they’re the things that you believe to be true. Like we don’t actually believe what is true. We believe what we tell ourselves. Most often, we don’t actually believe what is true. We believe whatever we hear most often, whatever we say most often, whatever we tell ourselves most often, that is what we believe. Which means if, if your current identity stinks, like if your current current identity, isn’t a good one. If you’re not performing at the level, you think you’re capable of in your life or that you wanna perform at in your life, or if you’re not being the person, you know, you were meant to be, if, if you’re not operating at the potential of your, of your calling, if you’re not operating at the potential of your purpose, if you’re not operating at the potential of what you think God made you to be.
RV (13:17):
It’s because you have a negative story from the past that you are carrying into your identity for the future, and you need to drop it. You need to stop it. You need to cut it. You need to leave it and create a new one. You create a new one. All of us have a false origin story. So to the extent that it is serving you keep it to the extent that it is not write yourself a new one, write yourself a new one, write yourself a new one, sister, like get you a new program, get you a new story, tell yourself something different. Say I was this way, but now I’m this way. Proclaim that, repeat it and say it over and over until you believe it because we don’t believe what is true. We believe whatever we tell ourselves most often get yourself a new story.
RV (14:19):
My third takeaway was just his little tip for identifying these negative stories. And this was super practical, super helpful, like super insightful. This was just like so specific. So easy. So clear, just like, oh, you go. Where? Where, how do I identify the negative stories? How do I identify the, the places that I’m not serving myself with my own belief system? It says, it’s simple. Wherever your fears are disproportionate, wherever your fear is disproportionate disproportionate. That’s where you struggle. That’s that’s where there’s the, the, the glitch in your program. That’s where there’s the air in your system is whenever you’re experiencing fear, right? You’re experiencing fear. And it’s, you know, this old saying fear is an acronym. F E a R. It stands for false evidence appearing real. That is what what’s happening, right? Like, think about it this way. Two, two people stand on stage.
RV (15:20):
One person looks out and says, oh my gosh, I’m terrified. I’m not good at speaking. The other person stands on stage and looks out and goes, oh my gosh, this is the greatest moment in my life. Here. I am standing in front of a bunch of people. They’re both true, right? They’re both true for that person. Neither of them are true inherently of the situation. What is true is whatever we tell ourselves most often, what, whatever we’re saying inside of our own head is what’s true. Our own brain is its own echo chamber. And so you go, where are you experiencing fear? Where where is your creativity working in the wrong direction? That’s how I describe fear in my take the stairs book. Fear is your creativity working in the wrong direction. So you’re, you’re going, oh, this isn’t gonna work out. This is gonna fall apart. I don’t like this. I’m not good at this. I can’t do that. I’m not capable of this, blah, blah, blah. Like wherever you at that train is running. That’s where you got a crappy story. That’s where you got a, a broken program. That’s where you got err, bug in your system and you gotta capture that thing. You gotta squash it and you gotta just rewrite a new one. You just gotta rewrite a new one. So wherever you’re experiencing fear, that is where you have an ineffective story.
RV (16:42):
And yet all of us, every single one of us have the opportunity each and every day to rewrite our story, to rewrite our story of the past, to change the narrative that we tell ourselves about why we are the way we are, and also to change the narrative of our future, to tell ourselves what is going to come of us. That is one of the greatest sources of power and also the greatest sources of weakness that all of us have in our own life. You take agency over that. I promise, you’ll see your life. Start to change. I hope this podcast. I hope my, my blogs are our podcasts, our blogs, our free trainings. Our Instagrams are tweets, our Facebooks. I hope they are things that you find encouraging to you to help you write a better program so that you can have a better life. Thanks for being here. We’ll get you next time.