Category: Podcast Recap

Ep 229: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman | 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 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 brandbuildersgroup.com/podcall brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. Recap. It is Rory Vaden here. Rolling solo today, breaking down the interview. This recent interview with David Glickman that I did, who’s a long time friend and somebody who is one of the funniest people that I’ve ever met and somebody who has a knack for understanding comedy and writing comedy for other people. And I’m going to talk about five, five keys to creating comedy in this recap inspired by some of what I’ve learned from David is not with us today. So sorry about that. You got them, you got yours truly, but we’re going to make it awesome because this topic of, of humor, we we’ve had a couple people come on where we have started talking about it. But you know, this is an important, an important topic to me.
RV (01:49):
And it always has been because I was not funny. Like I wasn’t the funny kid and, you know, to, to have my dream of being a speaker and, you know, like reaching millions of people, this was one of the skills I felt like could help me. And I thought it was just something you either were born with, or you did not. And of course I’ve learned over the years that that comedy and humor is very much a skill. It is a science it’s, it’s rooted in, in our brains. Like there’s, there’s neuroscience behind it. And it’s, it’s such a practical thing. It’s not easy, but it is something that you can learn to do. And so anytime I get to have one of these conversations with, you know, these like professional comedians, these, these people like David who are really truly funny and, and understand how their mind works.
RV (02:41):
I just get excited about that because, you know, for someone like me, it’s just super, super empowering. And so I’m going to share with you my top three takeaways, but one of them is, is really broken down into a four parts or five, five parts. So I’ll start with the first one. All right. So my first, my first takeaway here on the subject of humor, and this came up, we did another interview with another one of my comedy mentors, Darren LaCroix, while backs may a few months ago where we talked about some other, other elements of comedy, but David brought it up here in a, and I just think it’s, it’s almost like an unnecessary disclaimer that you, you stay away from controversial or emotionally charged topics. Like that is one of my takeaways is just a good reminder of just going like, look, if you don’t, first of all, you don’t need to go down that road to be funny.
RV (03:39):
Like you just like, you don’t need to swear now if swearing as part of your personal brand, fine, like, yeah, that is that’s up to you, but you don’t have to do it. You know, a lot of times people think of being like a standup comedy comedians. It’s like, oh, they’re really grotesque. Or they’re, you know, they, they cuss a lot or, you know, they’re very graphic. You can do that and be funny, but you also don’t have to do that to be funny. And in many ways I am much more impressed by the people who don’t from an artistic standpoint, not even from like a philosophical belief or whatever, but from an artistic standpoint, because the foundation of all of humor is very simple. It is misdirection. It is causing people to think you’re going to say one thing, and then you say something else.
RV (04:30):
And that is, that’s kind of the, the, the, you know, the grand Poobah of premises, as it relates to humor at our we have a members only event called world-class presentation craft, where we talk about the nine psychological laughter triggers and then nine laughter techniques that you can do immediately to get more laughs. But the foundation is this misdirection. So anytime that you say something unexpected, that’s part of laughter well saying things that are gross or offensive or flagrant or cussing or whatever those things get lasts because they’re, you know, they’re missed they’re unexpected, but it’s kind of like not artistic, right? I mean, at least that’s how I think of it. So I, there are some comedians that I really love who cost a lot. I mean, and there’s some, you know, that I think are really, really funny, but I really admire the ones, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld, as an example, who, who almost never cusses, like even a little bit or Ellen degenerate, because it’s such an art and the, the, the, the big takeaway here is going, I would encourage you and advise you.
RV (05:42):
And, and again, everything that we teach at brand builders group, including the stuff that we’re sharing, you know, here for free on this podcast are things that we actually do and don’t do. And so my encouragement would be just stay away from controversial or emotionally charged topics. You don’t need to go there. You there’s, there’s better, safer, more inclusive ways of, of getting laughs. So, and it was, that was, that was a takeaway that you prob probably should go without saying, but I don’t think that it does. Even for myself of just being reminded like, Hey, you know, always have that filter of like, who am I offending here? Who might I be offending? So the, the second big takeaway, which to me was the, the re was the big takeaway. This was the big idea from this interview with David is, is understanding the first step in being funny.
RV (06:35):
Like if you are going to try to create a joke or write something that is funny, whether it is for you on stage for an interview, a line in a, in a movie or in a TV show or a line in a book, the very first step is a step that most people overlook in. The magic really starts from nailing this first step. And if you miss this step, it kind of just feels impossible later. But if you become a master at this one first step, then the rest is all doable. Especially as you learn more about it. Like I said, you know, we teach a bunch of techniques and triggers and psychological things that are our actual tactics are our tactical ways that you tactical things that you can apply to actually create a laugh. But if you miss this first thing, man, you, you missed it.
RV (07:29):
And, and it’s not this first thing doesn’t even take that much of a blessing. Like it’s not even a a talent. I mean, certainly it could be a natural talent, but of all the parts of comedy, this is probably the part that requires the least amount of talent and the most amount of discipline. What am I talking about the first step to writing? Great humor is observation observation. And that really stuck with me from this interview with David in a way that I’ve never has never really been, I’ve been so clear on is that if you can be a great observer Andy Andrews would call this being a noticer. By the way that the podcast interview we did with Andy Andrews was, was also about humor. He’s one of the funniest speakers I’ve ever seen. But if you can observe, if you can notice, it’s almost like you have to identify the, the, the key to great comedy is identifying the opportunity for humor.
RV (08:35):
It’s, it’s going, ah, it’s like setting this mental alarm. Like there’s something funny here, or there could be something funny there. And if you can identify that ripe opportunity, then it’s just a matter of mechanics and, you know, some practice and, you know, training your brain to think in a certain way to make it funny. But the real first thing is, is observation, and you have to master it. And that’s what David was talking about. So I’m going to share with you the five CS of comedic observation, five CS of comedic observation. So this is all undertake away. My second takeaway, and I, and I got a third one too, but I thought this was, you know, even for myself just capturing this. So the first C is characterizations characterizations. So this is self-deprecating humor. You can, the first opportunity to observe, or the first, if, if I was looking for sources of potential comedic material, the first place to look is with yourself, it is self-deprecating humor.
RV (09:41):
And so I call it characterizations because it’s like, if you were going to get a sketch of yourself by like a, like someone who made you into a character, what are your most salient features? What are your most noticeable characteristics? What are the most obvious physical traits, or even, you know, demographic traits about yourself that, that somebody might point out. And if you can just like, look at yourself and your family and your life and your expertise in your industry through this lens of like, what if you were a character, what parts of you would, would I exaggerate? You know, if, if we were on the streets of France, you know, and, and somebody was just like drawing, drawing you out on a page is, is, is, is to, is to characterize to over, over or, or just to exaggerate the most salient features that you have.
RV (10:40):
That’s a huge opportunity for humor. And obviously if it’s about yourself, that’s a much safer, you’re less likely to offend people. The second C is challenges, challenges everywhere. You’re experiencing a frustration in your life everywhere. You’re annoyed, everything that makes you mad, everything that drives you crazy. Those are the most ripe opportunities for humor, because we laugh as an exhale of tension. We laugh as a, as a way of releasing stress and releasing pain. And also, you know, Andy Andrews, if you go back and listen to that interview, he talks about how humor is basically zooming really close in on things it’s zooming in really close and things that everybody sees. And so you go, what are the things that just drive you nuts about your kids, about being married, about owning a house about, you know, being a man or a woman, or, or, or like just, you know, being on the phone with Verizon or going to the mall or traffic or airports.
RV (11:48):
I mean, if you, you sit back for a second, you realize like so many comedians taking these everyday parts of our lives, and they’re just, they’re zooming in on the challenges. So you got to train yourself to go, I need to keep a challenges list of anything that frustrates me. I’m going to, I’m going to note that as a potential, that’s an observation. It’s a place that I can draw comedy from. The third C is culture culture. Anytime you can make cultural references, it’s going to be, it’s going to be funny. And it’s going to give you a really easy way to naturally create a laugh. And you just got to go, what is popular right now in culture? What is the thing that everybody’s talking about? What are the big TV shows, who are the, what are the big movies who are the big actors and actresses, the musicians, what are the big, you know, the sports teams the sports teams in your area, what are the, the, the most popular books?
RV (12:54):
What are the big things in the news cycle? Anything that has like national attention is, is pop culture, anything inside a culture, if you can just reference that, somehow people will think it’s, it’s funny. So again, you, the first step is not to create something funny. The first step is to identify where you might have an opportunity to create something funny. And it’s, it’s these observations. So that’s the first C was characterizations. Then you had challenges. The third C is culture. The fourth C is customization, which is really what I think most of this interview was with David. So if you you know, this recap is a little bit of a, you know, I’m kind of also turning into a teaching point for myself and, and hopefully for you, of things that I’m putting together from various places, but this was really about customizations and, and talking about how do you find basically the challenges and the characterizations of like the group you’re speaking to and pulling that into you know, you’re basically just commenting on it and by the fact that the virtue of commenting on it, everybody laughs and so customizations are an easy opportunity for humor.
RV (14:17):
The bomber about customization is also part of what makes it the magic, which is that you can only use it once, right? You can only really use that joke for that one particular audience, but it also doesn’t have to be so super funny which is actually what my third takeaway was, the more narrow, the customization, the more forgiving the audience. So the, the more hyper-specific your reference, you know, if I referenced Ted lasso, that could be very funny. It is a pop culture reference that a lot of people are talking about or aware of. And if I can make some comparison, you know to the way we run our organization is like Ted lasso or so-and-so, it’s like total at Ted lasso, or, you know, our, our, our email list is growing faster than Ted lasso. Those could be funny, but the, the more specific to the audience, which is like, you know if I’m talking, I’ll just grab pampered.
RV (15:17):
Chef is one of my past Keno clients, right? If I’m talking to pampered chef and I make a joke about the pizza stone, which is like one of the products they sell, that it doesn’t have to be written as well. It doesn’t have to be academically as funny as like a, a perfectly structured joke would be because it’s so custom to that audience. Right. And if I’m in front of pampered chef, everybody’s going to know what a pizza stone is. And you don’t, but anybody there would, and that’s, that’s the, that’s the point. So this is another opportunity for you for humor is anytime that you’re in front of any audience, you just kind of ask yourself, what are the key terms for this audience? It’s the same exercise as like the pop culture, except instead of thinking at a national level, you’re thinking at a very localized level of, you know, that community or that industry, or that company, et cetera.
RV (16:16):
And then the fifth, the fifth C for comedic observation is callbacks callbacks. So you’re just looking, you’re just referencing things that other people have said that was funny. And if it was funny the first time, then you can call it back just by bringing it up. So you, you know, inside of callbacks, I would be listening to who were the other speakers before me? What was the funniest thing that happened? Whatever that was, all I need to do is kind of mention that, and everybody will laugh. It is both a callback and it is a customization. And you know, it, it likely could be a challenge as well. If, if, if it was originally commenting as something that was frustrating, the other place you can look for callbacks is your own stuff, right? So as you start to master your presentation and world-class presentation craft, that’s where we kind of go through the detailed mechanics of how do you structure a truly brilliant masterful presentation?
RV (17:20):
Well, and humor is one of those parts as you start to get laughs and you, you, you do your presentation, you get better and better at it, and you start to get people to laugh, pay attention to your own laughs and then ask yourself, okay, this was a big laugh earlier. How do I bring it? How do I bring it back later? How do I, I, I referenced it back. And then the other, the other place for callbacks in terms of observation where this is the whole skill here is observing where’s. The opportunity for humor is with hecklers. Now, hecklers are people who yell stuff out in the middle of your presentation. Well, if somebody yells something out in your presentation, there’s not much you can do in that presentation. I mean, you might be able to turn it into a call back somehow later, if everyone hears it.
RV (18:11):
And it was funny, but hecklers are, are, are often saying out loud, the thing that kind of like everybody is speaking, and you just want to pay attention to when people heckle you and, and try to like meant to make a mental note of it. And then as soon as you’re like done with your presentation, you go write it down. Or if you’re running a webinar, read the comments, or if you did an IgE TV, read the comments or your YouTube video, read the comments because when people make smart Alec remarks on what you said, you can often take that and then kind of massage it. And it will be funny. There’s almost always an element of truth in what there’s. I mean, there is an element of truth in what they’re saying, even if we don’t like it, that’s what hecklers are doing. They’re they are they are commentating on what is happening.
RV (19:04):
So if you can then take that and some of my best jokes are where someone came up to me after a speech and said, oh, you know, I thought you were going to say this, or they’ll blurt something out in the crowd. And then we go, ah, I’m going to take that. And I’m going to deliberately put it in an and manufacturer that as a, as a joke. So anyways, you can do this. It starts with observation. It starts with observation. It doesn’t start with comedic timing or billion being brilliant or having, you know, perfect charisma or delay. It starts with observation. The first step is to like, identify the opportunity using these five CS. If you can do that, you can be com funnier. Just one of many skills that you will learn is if you hang around brand builders group and give us a chance to help you continue to grow your business, grow your brand, grow your message, grow your impact. So keep coming back here to the influential, personal brand podcast, Hey, share this episode with somebody who you know, cares about being funny or someone who you want to make a funny or someone who can help make you funnier. Make sure you send this out to them, say, Hey, I think you, you would like this. Cause we’d love to meet your friends and your network. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 227: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Holy moly. Jeff goings blew my mind. It blew my mind. Obviously say AJ this where we’re, this was, this was one of my favorite interviews as it relates to content, like your big idea, like how do you find like the kind of idea that can build a career off of? What’s really good, really clean. And anyways, I’m talking to AJ our CEO, my business partner, my woman just we’re here breaking down. We’re about to break down the interview with Jeff Goins and it’s good stuff from Jeff Goins.
AJV (00:45):
Yes, really, because it’s really, really good. I’m guessing that was my transition. You want me,
RV (00:51):
That’s a transition. That was my casual toss over to my cohost. Well, you, but you invited him to do, to come and talk to our members.
AJV (01:00):
So excited about this. I think this is going to be awesome. In terms of like, just like really leaning into what are you creating content about. And, and this is like really about, you know, book content, but you could really take this and apply it to any sort of content that you’re building, which is what I love about interviews like this is there a universal, even if they have a targeted emphasis on the actual interview. But here’s the thing. I love this. I love this because it reminds me of my celebrity crush J-Lo. And so my first takeaway is that good ideas make bad books, reason being, is that a good idea is just that it’s a good idea and that’s not good enough. Good ideas are average. And I love this. And lo if you guys have ever watched the show world of dance, it did not renew.
AJV (01:46):
I don’t know how that happened, but three seasons, four seasons can’t remember, it’s really, really good, but I loved one of the things that Jlo said. I think it was season two and she was like, it’s not good enough just to be good. You have to be different. It has to be unique. It has to be original. There’s just too many people who are good at something, but what is it that is unique and eye catching and scroll stopping what goes, wow. I never thought about it that way, or I’ve never heard it that way, or it’s never been explained that way, or that is a novel idea in terms of how we’re approaching something that maybe we had a construct in our brain that was very set in stone, and then someone comes along and goes, no, it’s not about how you calendar stuff. It’s about how you think about stuff, right. To tee up to my man.
AJV (02:42):
But I think that’s really good. And that’s a really important it’s like, you don’t have to create new stuff. You just have to go, how do you rearrange this and put your spin and your take on it. Right. And I love that because I think so often we think we have to come up with this brand new idea and it’s like, are there any new brand new, new ideas? I don’t think so, but it’s the way that you rearrange it. It’s the way that you, we explain it. It’s your interpretation that makes it so original and unique. And it’s not good enough just to be good. It’s gotta be different. It’s gotta be original. It’s gotta be your take on it. And so I think that’s just a great place for us all to start. The more you can just leave live into your uniqueness in that the better it’s going to be.
RV (03:26):
Hey man. I mean, that was there, there were a couple of lines. That was my, my first takeaway is very much related to this. Like you’ve picked up that one where you said good ideas, make bad books. Another line that he said that was kind of in that same vein was ordinary ideas get forgotten. And that really hit me as like kind of a sobering thing. And then the other thing I loved about the interview, so that was very kind of like alarming and guide, oh, man, it really grabbed me to go, what, what is different? Like what, what are we doing? That’s different and unique. And then he kind of gave two really tactical formulas kind of all throughout. But, but you know, I, as I went back and reflected on the interview, there was sort of like two tactical formulas for how to not be forgotten and for how to not just be, you know, consumed.
RV (04:16):
And the first one was, he said, an interesting idea is something that is 80% the same as what we’ve always heard, but then 20% different. And so that was really powerful to be like, it’s gotta be close enough that it’s familiar to people and we can go, oh, I like that. I get it. That is true. But then 20% different to go, oh, but I’ve never thought of that. I’ve never heard it like that. And so I thought that was a super tactical way to like position the same, but different. And then the other thing he said, which is something actually we’ve, we’ve taught our members about specifically with Ted talks is that you think X, but really why that’s a really great formula for a big idea is you think X, but really why. And it kind of also lends to that sort of like 20%, 20% different rule. And I mean, I could see this 20% different role becoming something that we use a lot. We might have to like coin it after Jeff to be like the goin’s the goins rule of 20% or, well, maybe we’ll have to come up with something. So anyways, I had the same, I had the same takeaway as you, as you have the first one.
AJV (05:28):
Yeah. Well, I would just like tag on one little quote that I would add in there. And I thought he was really good. It says, you, you change the world by changing people’s minds. And that’s like very much like a tag, what you just said. And it’s like, that’s what people fall in love with is like this idea, right? It’s like you change the world by changing people’s minds. So I just thought that I would add that in there. So that’s kind of like a transition it’s I just flew my earphones out of my ear almost. So here’s my second one is that people buy the idea of the book before they buy the book. And I think that’s really important because they’re not buying the words on the pages, that’s what they get after they buy it. They’re buying the idea of the book.
AJV (06:21):
And I think we get consumed with the words on the pages and going then, and then the note, why are people going to buy this? It’s the idea that the book represents, not just the words on the pages, because they’re never going to get there. If they do not pick up that book or put, turn, play on audio to listen to it. And it’s like, how much have you spent going, what is the idea of this book? Like, what am I trying to change someone’s mind about what am I trying to make better or easier, but what is the idea of the book? And I think to me, the reason that’s so important because that’s the sales strategy, right? That’s the marketing strategy. I love one of the things that he said, at some point in this really good interview, he goes, once the book is written, basically your marketing hopes are over, right?
AJV (07:14):
And it’s like, you’ve got to have the hook of why are people going to buy this before you write the book? Right. And I think there’s some real, real power in that I’m going, it’s like, what are people going to buy in terms of the idea? Because I think that that is the sales and marketing strategy of the hopes. Even if the book ends up being a real let down. So I think there’s a lot of power in that is like, what is the idea of it? Because that’s what people are really going to buy into. That’s also a huge part of the sales and marketing concept.
RV (07:47):
Yep. That, that stuck with me too. And I think we, when we teach one of the things we help with our members, a lot of times is helping them come up with titles. And we talk about, you have to learn to separate the truth from the title. The truth is inside the book. Like it’s the thing, that’ll change their life, but the title is the transformation. It’s the promise of what the book provides. And that’s what you’re really selling. It reminds me of a couple of the metaphors that we use where it’s like, you know, if you need to get a dog to take medicine, you put the medicine inside a peanut butter. And so it’s like the title of the book, the marketing of the book is the peanut butter. And then the text, the words on the page is, as you say, J that’s the medicine, but so it’s so difficult for an author to separate those two because we’re so attached to the medicine where we’re so attached to the truth, to the, to the concepts that we’re writing about.
RV (08:45):
It’s hard to kind of separate ourselves and go, okay, this is the thing I’m teaching, but what’s the bigger idea that I’m selling. What’s the, what’s the payoff that I’m promising? What is the destination that I’m, I’m taking people to. And, and so I think you gotta be able to separate those and then even think about, okay, how do I package this idea so that they, people will buy the idea? And that’s really what they’re buying is, is the idea. But if you can’t, if you can’t separate in your mind, those two things, then you’re going to have a hard time. And, and frankly, most of us, like most, most authors don’t separate them because you’re not trained to, and publishers don’t teach you to, cause they’re, they’re focused on the book itself. Unless you really have somebody who understands marketing, who’s coaching you and guiding through the process. You’re, you’re not going to think of it in that way. So that’s yeah, so that’s good. Separate got a separate the, the title from the truth, the cover, the cover from the content and the idea of the book versus what’s in the book. So what was your third one?
AJV (09:57):
Yep. So my third one kind of similar, but just a little bit different and it’s really just how you actually put the book together. So thinking through chapters and the words on the pages. So I kind of thought to like big idea to like the tangible, like, how do you outline a book and how do you get in process? That process started. And I loved what he said on that. That was really, really good. It’s like, front-load the book with the big idea, like the entire front part of the book to be just front-loaded with the idea of the idea. And then the rest of the book should just illustrate that idea. But it’s like, front-load that book with those big ideas that are, I’m not going to say controversial in a negative way, but that are thought provoking that are different. That would go, I thought it was X, but he’s saying it’s Y but not how or why or what. It’s just the idea to get people going. I got to know where this is going to go, then use the rest of the book to illustrate that big idea. And I loved that. It’s like, you’ve got to sell the idea, then you can illustrate the idea. And that’s kind of like a way of outlining the book. I thought it was really good, simple
RV (11:07):
Save, save the best for first that’s one of our mantras around a brand builders group always saved the best for first, push it up front, you know, capture their attention. For me, a part of why I love this interview is because you could just see, Jeff’s like, you could hear, Jeff’s love for the art of writing and not just his love for it in the way that like, oh, he’s good at it. And he really likes it, but he, he places a value on it that, of, of the importance of it. And you, you know, Asia, you actually said this earlier, which was what my third takeaway was, which is that you can change the world by changing people’s minds. And for him, it was like, he really cares about helping people write better ideas, not just to sell more books, but because better ideas make a better world.
RV (11:59):
Like he actually said that like better ideas make a better world. And I really felt aligned with him on that as this kind of like, just like for us, it’s like, we’re not trying to just help people grow their, their reach or their platform for like vanities. Cause we’re, we’re trying to make a difference in the world. And I really felt that heart from him of like, don’t forget, don’t forget to work on the book. And I think, I think so many authors are like, oh, they think about writing the book. And then they come to brown doodlers and we’re like, Hey, you got to build the audience before you build the book. And you know, it’s not New York times bestselling author it’s New York times or not New York times best writing author. It’s New York times bestselling author. And we teach a lot of the authors how to do it.
RV (12:39):
But, but I think this was a good like reminder of like the return to good create good content, like original like create, create great ideas because they’re interesting because they’re fascinating because they’re new, but because they make the world a better place, like put together, put in the energy to come up with ideas that make the world a better place. And so we want to do both. We want to help you create amazing ideas. And then we want to help you tell the whole world that there, there is that you can make a lot of impact and a lot of money doing it. So I just loved it. Great episode, definitely a top one, go back, listen to the Jeff Goins interview and keep coming back here. I mean, th the interviews are just incredible. We learned so much hope. We hope and trust that you are too. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 225: How To Get 1 Million Followers with Brendan Kane | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Brendan Kane was this week’s appearance guest on the influential personal brand podcast right now, myself and our CEO, Amanda Johns Vaden are going to be breaking down this interview. Which was, whoa. It was awesome. This, I loved it. This is one of, probably the most where I, like I learned the most personally AJ so anyways,
AJV (00:30):
Heavy content episode where you will undoubtedly, no matter what level you’re at, learn something, it is really good.
RV (00:38):
Yeah, totally. And it, it, there was like a few things that it changed my mind on. And then there was some things that were, that were very different than I expected. And I guess I’ll start, I’ll start with that. So, so my first takeaway was like really early on where I was like, I was kind of joking with him, like, yeah. So how do you hit 1 million followers, which he has, which you know, is kind of the premise of his first book was how he did it. And I was, I, I, you know, I was kind of saying it tongue in cheek, like, yeah, what’s the secret. And he just very like approached it very systematically. He’s like, yes, there are four ways to hit 1 million followers and, and, and just started like rattling through them. And I was like, whoa. And so, you know, one is organic and algorithms and playing that game, which is why I think what most people think of.
RV (01:26):
And the thing about that, that I loved that he just nailed was he was like, look, it is, there is not any sort of slant or favoritism or politicalness to the content. There’s no way they could keep up with all of the content creators in the world of what they’re saying. He said it is completely objective. It’s completely democratized based on one thing. Does your content keep people watching? Yes or no? That’s it like, it is a very straightforward, fair metric whether you like it or not, doesn’t matter, but it’s like, does your content hold people’s attention? Yes or no. If yes, it will get shown to more people. If no, it will not get shown to more people. And that was, that was really like good to hear. But then he also said giveaways, giveaways are a huge way that people get lots of followers.
RV (02:25):
Now. They often get, you know, the, the question is, do you get the right followers? And people will unfollow, but giveaways work and you don’t, we haven’t heard anybody really talk about the power of doing giveaways on social and then influencers and doing trade for share for share, like you do a post for me, I do a post for you. And then pay paid, but specifically with paid. And this is the thing that I want to highlight was, you know, we’ve been, we’re really set, been setting the stage to some paid campaigns, but he said specifically for followers, I would not run paid ads. If the goal is to get more followers, he was saying, I would do promoted posts. And I would pay me my accounts to do a post that’s, how you’ll get the most followers is by being tagged in someone else’s posts, which is like, duh, that’s true. Like we know that organically, but, but don’t think of that as like basically a brand deal, like go pay people with lots of followers to tag you in their posts. Like that’s a much smarter way to go about doing it. So anyways, that was, that’s all I know, that’s a lot, but that was those, those were good things and hit me
AJV (03:39):
Hard. It was that all one takeaway.
RV (03:42):
That was all one takeaway. That was, that was one fun four-part takeaway.
AJV (03:48):
So yeah, it was my first one was very similar to that and it was kind of around that question. It’s like, you know, how would you grow your following? Right. And I think you asked that in the very beginning. And it’s like, if I had money at all, I would be using it to build growth. But building your audience is a longterm play. Right. And so it’s like, you gotta be doing it in a few different ways. And so the kind of thing that I highlighted was harnessing the traffic of a different source, right. It’s go where the traffic is. And if your platform doesn’t have the traffic, then how do you get your content on a platform? That’s got a lot of traffic. Right. And I think there’s just a lot to that. And I think the one thing that came up to my mind and all of these different interviews is I’ve kind of been adverse to like getting on Tik TOK because it’s not for me.
AJV (04:36):
But that’s where tons of our customers and consumers are. And Roy’s like, they, we got to get them ticked off. I’m like, you get on ticked up, but it’s kinda like one of those things, it’s like where you’ve got to go where the traffic is and the traffic is on tick-tock. So it was like, then how do you use that to harness all of these different things? And so I think that was like the big one for me. It’s not just go to the platform that you prefer to consume content, which is something we just picked up from the Jasmine star episode. She go check it out. But it’s like have a preferred platform in which you create and you need to create where your customers are. So where are the customers? Where is the traffic? And I just, you know, it’s like, tick-tock just you know, labs YouTube for most time spent on any platform. And it’s like, kind of undeniable, it’s no longer should I it’s like, well, you need to, but it’s in an effort to grow your following. And so I thought that was really good and it just connected a few dots for me. So that would be my first one. It says, you just have to go where the traffic is.
RV (05:36):
Yeah. And that was, that was my second takeaway was, was just talking about that, which is we, you know, in our high traffic strategies event, we teach it that’s the kind of the central premise of the whole event is find an existing audience and figure out how to get in front of them. But, you know, here he was referring to it as like content distribution, which is a little different from going, okay, search engine optimization is like, there’s people searching this. I want to get in front of them versus he’s, he’s kind of going, yeah, just get your content distributed to somebody who has an audience. And I’ll tell you one of the things that our team immediately did after this episode or after the, you know, the interview was we immediately started researching meme accounts on Instagram. So for our topical areas, we immediately started going, okay, we gotta go, we need to go identify.
RV (06:30):
And just so you know, if you’re, if you haven’t listened to the episode, a meme account is an account that is it’s themed. So it’s not like a person’s account, like a Rory Vaden or an AIG Vaden. It’s not a company account, like a brand builders group. It’s like, you know well, like the one that came up a couple of times was the good quote and that’s a huge account. It’s got millions of followers and it’s, it’s all just like inspirational quotes. And then, you know, you can pay up a truckload of money and they’ll, you know, for certain people they’ll do, they’ll do promoters partial posts, but basically it’s is the, you know, do you know, do you know what those accounts are? And those accounts exist for the purpose of doing what we’re talking about here. Like that is their business model is to find great content and build an audience around it so that people who are interested in that topic will come and pay them to do those posts. And just like in my mind, that was just a big, giant disconnect and just got super clear and went immediate into action mode. So that was my second takeaway. I’d say, what was your second one?
AJV (07:40):
My mind was the content itself and asking yourself is your content holding someone’s attention? Because at the end of the day, that’s the only care of the platform is can you keep people on the platform? So if you want to win, it’s like, are people staying in tune with your content? Is your content holding attention? And then I love this. Cause I thought he shared some really amazing like little stats. He said one of the big ahas we had with the 28 seconds of content versus the 21 second hold. And if that’s like a very, like, you’re talking about seven seconds, right? And this isn’t like three minutes or five, no seven seconds. And attention span of like, how do you go from this to this? And if you can’t keep people’s attention for 21 seconds, you will lose. And so to that, I go, wow, that’s really amazing.
AJV (08:31):
And like, and I thought to myself, it’s like, how much content can you really teach in 21 or 28 seconds? And the answer to that is like none, pretty much none, but you can tell a really good, quick story. And I think those are like those kind of like, what are you doing in those first? Let’s just call it 30 seconds to get someone latched, to get someone hooked. And I love, he said, it’s not about super high production. It’s not about like tons and tons of content. In fact, the content doesn’t even have to be that great, but it’s got to have an emotional tug, right. You’ve got to be pulling up those heartstrings. So it needs to have a good story and it needs to be something that can suck someone in really, really quickly. And so it’s like, how are you starting all of your videos?
AJV (09:15):
And that’s like, I know for a while, we’ve since done away with this, but it’s like, we had all these like bumpers that were seven seconds. And I was like, gosh, we probably were losing tens of people for it. I get to the end of the bumper. And so it’s just to me, it’s coming, going back in, it’s not about high production value. It’s about the realness. It’s about the stories. And then he talks about a couple of different accounts to go and follow. One of them, he said was the Dodo. But then I actually thought about Jay Shetty’s Instagram accounts because Jay Shetty’s Instagram account is like every single time I watch one of those little videos he shares. I’m like heart love, like so good. So funny. But here’s the thing it’s like, he didn’t produce probably 90% of those, right.
AJV (09:53):
That’s already existing found content, but it’s like, I love that account because they’re all inspirational motivational, like heart tug stories. And they’re really short and they’re quick someone who hasn’t seen a loved one in like 21 months for, because of COVID or, you know, a dad coming home from, you know, overseas and surprising his kids at graduation. And it’s like, I love all of them. And I thought, well, movies. And like, when I listened to this, that was what dawned on me. It’s like, you don’t even have to be the creator of a lot of really good content to build your following, but you need to be a curator of really good content. So there’s some that’s created and there’s some that’s curated. How can you make a combo of both?
RV (10:34):
Yeah. That, and that that case study he was using was a, I think it was from Alex stamp where he said one video got 90 million views. The other got 5 million views. And the difference was a seven second watch time. So it’s like that even making an incremental improvement in the watch time of seven seconds can be the difference between 5 million views and 90 million views. And and that, you know, this was my third takeaway too. I mean, just moving people emotionally, it’s gotta be what moves your audience emotionally? Like, it’s that inspiring? Or, you know, and even the angry stuff. I mean, like, I don’t know that you want to like do stuff that makes people angry. But if you, if you think about it, it’s like, why does the very political content get, get so much reach on social media? It’s not because the platforms are going, yeah, let’s put this political content in front of people.
RV (11:39):
It’s saying people are engaging with this. They’re reacting to it. They’re responding to it. So the things that activate our human emotions, the things that make us laugh, the things that make us cry, the things that make us mad, the things that, that make us sad, the things that make us inspired or ambitious, like those are the things that people watch and they watch it all the way through and they share it and they comment on it and they engage with it. And so you got to find a way to make your content more emotional. It’s gotta be more, more captivating and just understanding the kind of funded, you know, fundamental things. And like, you know, you’ve mentioned the word AAJ. It’s like, if you don’t know how to do that on purpose, just tell a story, like stories inherently keep us hooked because we want to know how the, how the story ends. So just really, really good stuff. And, and you know, you, you also said this, like, it’s not the quality of the production that matters. It’s just the quality of the storytelling. That’s, that’s, that’s the part. So I loved, I loved it. So what was it? The third
AJV (12:47):
Oh, mine are mine is, is kind of like the summary of like the three things to be asking yourself, which I thought were just really simple and powerful. It’s like one, how are you stopping the scroll? So what are you doing to make someone go? I need to watch that. I need to read that. I need to look at that. So question number one, how are you stopping the scroll question? Number two, how are you holding their attention? Right. So what is it that’s going to pull those heartstrings and suck them in. We’re not going to start to see what happens here, right? So what are you doing to stop the scroll? What are you doing to hold their attention? And then how are you going to monetize that attention? Right? So if this is a part of your business, it’s like, what is the next step? Right. So it’s like, is the next step, just a follow me? Is it subscribed to something? But it’s like, how are you using that to grow your audience and to monetize your business? So just again, it’s like, how are you going to stop the scroll? How are you going to keep their attention? And then how are you going to monetize it?
RV (13:52):
Simple stuff, simple stuff. But it works really, really, really powerful interview. I was totally impressed with, with Brendan. And he clearly lives in the world all day, every day,
AJV (14:04):
Very content rich. It’s really, really good with, I think really actionable, like, okay, that’s what you do. That’s how much you spend. And then also some really good, quick case studies that really back it up. It was really good.
RV (14:17):
Love it. I love it. So go listen to it. Listen to all the episodes, dang it. They’re all really good and listen to it for a long time and then share them with everyone, you know, and be like this At least 30 seconds, 27 seconds worth. It’d be like this podcast is amazing. So we are grateful for you. We love doing the show. We love reading your comments over on iTunes and seeing all the testimonials and stuff. So make sure you drop us one of those, if you haven’t yet. And keep coming back, come back next week. And we’re going to be talking about Jeff Goins and being an amazing writer and finding your, your, your brilliant idea. So we’ll catch you soon. Bye bye.

Ep 223: Secrets of Growing a Social Media Following with Jasmine Star | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today, me and Aj are breaking down the interview with the one and only Jasmine Star, which is pretty awesome to get a chance to have a conversation with her and just get some of her thoughts and behind the scenes kind of secrets on how she’s built a huge, awesome personal brand and social media following. So AJ, welcome to the show.
AJV (00:32):
Happy to be here.
RV (00:34):
Yeah. so we’ll share our top three highlights. I’ll go first. I think, you know, the first one that jumped out for me was where she said, I’d rather be liked for who I am than for a carbon copy of who I am or for a pretend version of who I am. And she said, this is, this is the line that she said, having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful having lukewarm followers, isn’t powerful. I want to attract or repel. And that really stuck with me about just like the lukewarm part of it. And just having people that are really engaged in the way you have people really engaged just by being like yourself and letting people, letting people see you. And I, that kind of hit me of like, I wonder how much I’m doing that online and should I be doing a better job of that and doing more, you know, but anyways, that I thought that was super powerful. So that hit me hard. I knew that was my first takeaway.
AJV (01:35):
I love that. I love that people do fall in love with who you are, not the carbon copy. I love that. That’s really good, not my first one, but I love that. I think that’s really good. My first one was when she was talking about a platforms of choice and she said, I’m not choosing a platform on where I want to be. I’m choosing my platform based on where my customer is. And I think that’s really good because so often we hear so many people talk about, you need to be on every single platform and it’s going, I just hear more and more these days. Well, is that really true? And why would you invest time on being on a platform that your audience is not on? And I think that’s just really good. And I think it’s really important to go, where is my customer?
AJV (02:23):
And I think the second part of what she talked about that I thought was really connected to this and like really like close the circle on this was if you have to choose just one platform, then divide the platforms and how you choose them. In other words, separate where you want to consume information versus where you want to create information. So if your platform of choice is Instagram, because you love it and you love pictures and you just love keeping in touch well, that’s where you consume information, but if that’s not where you’re gaining traction and that’s where your audience does not live, then you don’t need to use that platform to create you have one to consume and one to create, which really allows you to have a preferred platform in which you consume information because you enjoy it, but a separate one where you create information because that is where your audience lives. And I just loved that. I thought it was very clear. We’ve heard a lot of conversations around that over the last few months. And I just love the way that she just split the two and to have a place where you consume, have a place where you can create, maybe they’re the same place, but if they’re not make sure you’re creating where your customers are.
RV (03:30):
Yeah. Amen. I love it. The second thing for me was, was it was towards the end where we started talking about monetizing kind of your following and going okay, how do we turn this into money? And she said, basically people get discouraged because they try to launch something or do something. And nobody buys and they have these really low conversions. And she said, don’t think of low conversions as a no think of, think of it as a, not yet. And that shifting is really good. I that’s the thing I’ve shared before on other episodes that I learned from you AJ that you you’ve always said, like, basically there’s no such thing as a, no, like everyone will buy eventually. And that, so hearing her say it was a good, it, you know, I guess edification and iteration of it, even on like social media and your funnels and stuff is just like, you can’t think of it as a fail or a no.
RV (04:25):
Or I don’t like you, or I don’t want you, or I’ll never buy this thing. It’s just the idea that you have a lot of trust to build and you have to add value for a long time. And if you out serve them in the meantime, eventually it catches back up with you. And I don’t think we can ever hear it enough. And the other thing I want people to hear, which is between the lines on that is I also hear her saying even I don’t convert massive percentages of my following, right? Like you don’t, you assume that people are like, oh, they make millions of dollars. They probably have 50% of the people that buy, but that’s not at least our experience. She didn’t say that directly. But you know, we see behind the back behind the scenes of a lot of these funnels and even the biggest names in the world convert 1, 2, 3, 5%. And so the way they keep going is, is this mindset. And so don’t be discouraged if that’s you, you just need more people and more time don’t give up.
AJV (05:24):
Yeah, I like that. And my second one was kind of connected to that. I’m very similar to, it’s not just a it’s not a, no, it’s not a, not yet, but not just that in terms of helping people get to know you, you have to have multiple points of entry. So multiple funnels. And I share this because I just know so many of our clients have one it’s like one lead magnet, it’s one video funnel, it’s one webinar funnel. And I’m just going, it’s like, really think about how do I have one of each right, for the people who just want the immediate gratification of here’s this immediate thing, I’m going to get a PDF. We have to be able to fulfill that desire and our audience and for the other people who want a really short video course, or for the people who want longer form content and a 2, 3, 4 hour webinar, it’s like we have to be able to create multiple funnels so that once they complete one, we can feed them another one.
AJV (06:20):
And once they complete that one, we can create another one. And it’s funny because this is literally what we were talking about on our internal marketing today is our marketing cycler of how many different funnels do we want to constantly make available to our audience, that people who haven’t bought yet? Because it isn’t a no, it’s a not yet. And people have to know you and trust you before. They’re really willing to give you their money. And it can’t just be one quick PDF. And you’re like, why didn’t I buy or one video funnel? And you’re like, well, that didn’t work. It’s like, no, this is a relationship. And that takes time. But it’s about that relationship building process. And multiple times the more you can have multiple times in front of them, the better you’re going to be. So similar to yours with just a little add on of like how many different points of entry do you have and then how do you combine all those? So people can constantly get fed all of your information over the course of time.
RV (07:19):
That’s funny, AJ and I literally came off of a call like a 2 hour call. And if you ever hear us use the term marketing cyclers. So that’s the term that we use, which is like we’ll cycle people from one free training to the next free training to the next free training, and basically just drop value, value, so much value that it’s like, eventually they have to go. These folks are awesome. I want to talk to them. So that’s so good. My, my third takeaway, it was funny cause it’s, it was actually more like emotional. You know, she used a word that is is sort of near and dear to my heart is this it’s in the subtitle of our second book permission. And when we wrote procrastinate on purpose, we talk about the emotional side of productivity. And we say, what people are missing is permission.
RV (08:07):
They have to give themselves permission to say no permission for imperfection permission for the incomplete. And Jasmine hit that word really hard in this interview with just permission to succeed. So it was a different, a different context, but I love where she said, one day, I’m going to write a book. And the last page in the book is going to be a permission slip that you have to fill out for yourself. And you’re going to write your own name in and say, I give myself permission to blank. And that really hit me hard because I was like, how many of us have a dream? But we don’t even give ourself permission to daydream about it. Or we have a tactic we know we should do, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to try it. Or there’s something we’re doing that we D we, we don’t really want to do. We feel like we should let it go, but we haven’t given ourselves permission to just let that thing go. And I just thought that was really good. Like, what do you have to give yourself permission to? And the permission slip. So I, I, that really was simple and clean and powerful and inspiring for me.
AJV (09:18):
I love that. I think that’s really good. And I thought for a second, that your third one was going to be my third one. Cause when you said emotional, I was like, oh wow, we’re gonna have the same one. But it wasn’t, it’s completely different. And so my third one was give people who follow you the opportunity to have an emotional response, to getting to know you. And I thought that was really good. It’s, you know, social media is giving someone the emotional response to knowing you. And I know that oftentimes we can get stuck in the content side of what we do, and it’s all about information and content and value. And at some point it’s like, but who is the person behind this information and this content. And it’s like, how do we create that emotional connection to the human being who is creating this?
AJV (10:12):
That’s allowing them to get to know you, to get to know your family, your likes, your interests, your dislikes, what you believe in. And although that’s connected to your content, it is different. It is less letting people know you for who you are, not just for what information you can provide. And I thought that was really good of, I think that the idea of these perfectly curated Instagram accounts or social media accounts, although in theory and even visually they’re real pretty, it’s like people don’t really want pretty, they want real and authentic, and they just want to know that it’s not curated, that it’s just who you are. And I really appreciated that. And also it’s like, don’t be afraid to, you know, have a series of content next to you making spaghetti with your kids or Halloween costumes, or just the, the realness of who you are as a person. Because that’s what really makes people fall in love with you. It isn’t just what you teach them, it’s who you are. So I love that.
RV (11:11):
That’s really, really good. And y’all, I mean, this is an episode. I mean, Jasmine is, I mean, she’s one of the best in the world that organic content, viral marketing, social media, like go listen to the full episode. If you haven’t already there, there are so many nuggets and we talk about Instagram reels and how they’re, over-indexing lists a lot of like really important practical tips. And also some, obviously some inspirational ones like we just shared, but check out the full length interview. Thank you for being here. Keep coming back. We got lots of amazing guests and you know, we’re, we’re getting people to tell the stories of exactly what you need to do to be successful. We’re glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 221: Using Quantum Physics to Build Your Brain and Your Brand with Mark Victor Hansen & Crystal Dwyer Hansen | Recap Episode

AJV (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand. I am AJ Vaden and the CEO and co-founder of brand builders group. And I am also riding solo today without my counterparts husband, business partner, all the things were evaded. But today I am here on myself to give you our recap on a recent interview that we did with Mark Victor Hansen and his life at crystal Dwyer Hanson on the basis of this new book that they had come out, not that long ago, but it’s called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. And I love stuff like this because we don’t do a ton of it on this podcast. I feel like we get very technical and very technical, and it’s all about how to, and it’s not that this is not a how to episode it most definitely is, but it’s a how to, in a very introspective way, which I think is unique and different.
AJV (01:11):
And I also just love the insights that they have on going from where you are to where you want to be and the power of questions and the power of asking. And I really, this was like one of the best interviews that I’ve listened to in a really long time on just that power of asking. Right. And I also really love this because it type takes it down to a Gary, how to tangible way on a kind of Ethereum topic. And so, okay with that, any more explaining, I’m going to get right down to what are the three big takeaways from this interview with mark Victor Hansen and his wife crystal? So the first thing was this thing that he said, because I am a mom of two toddlers and I am bombarded with questions all day long about all the things a million times.
AJV (01:59):
So I loved something that they said he said, is that as children, we are uncorrupted askers of questions. There is no fear and asking for what you want and doing it repeatedly with guard lists of what the answer is. And I love that phrase where uncorrupted askers, and at some point down the line, me and you and everyone else on this planet has been corrupted by fear and rejection and not getting the answer we want or not getting the outcome we want. And so we stopped asking, we stopped asking why we stopped asking how we start out. We stopped asking what, and I think that was a really aha moment for me because I recently had some other questions that have been asked of me. And I will kind of give you a little parallel of something that really clicked for me on this very particular topic is I have a life coach and he’s awesome.
AJV (02:58):
And his name is Pete and I have been working with him. Well, I dunno for the last several months and he asked me not too long ago, he said, how much of your life do you feel like is being lived by default? And how much of your life is a created lights that you’re, you are intentionally making. And that was a really big question, because I think naturally as an entrepreneur and as someone who runs a business, I’d be like, I am making it like it is a creative life. But if I was really honest with myself, I bet it’s like 80, 20, 80, 20 is default in what just comes my way. And at some point along the lines in last few years, I have really stopped asking myself, what do I want to be doing? What business do I want to be in? Why am I doing this?
AJV (03:52):
How can I do something differently? How do I have more time with my kids? How do I have more white space? And I’ve just said, there’s so much to do. I don’t have the time to do that. And I’ve become a corrected asker and I’ve stopped. And instead over the last few years, there’s been this default life that has been created unintentionally for me instead of a created life by me. So when I heard him say this, it was this combination of these two conversations that I’ve been having here lately. And I thought, wow, I can’t be the only person having these internal and external dialogues about why am I not asking for the things that I want, even if they’re of myself. So that would be my first big takeaway is just how do we become uncorrected askers? And we start asking ourselves those big questions that can be life-changing and life-giving but it’s like, we actually have to ask, what do we want and how do we get it, but also why do we want it? Why is it so important? And I think that that’s kind of the first thing, and I love what he said about this. You said that quantum physics and one simple sentence is just simply what you expect is what you’re going to get.
AJV (05:07):
And to me, that is a default lives or created life. And so how do we become uncorrupted askers of the things that we want? So that was my first big takeaway. I thought it was really, really good. My second one is kind of like a multi-piece component. And his, I love this. He says, you are not a human being. You are a human becoming. And I loved that. I love that reminder that just because we are where we are, does not mean that is where we’re going to be good, bad or indifferent, right. We will change, things will change businesses, economies, markets, friends, family, life, it will change, and it will all evolve. We are not human beings. We are human becomings. And because of that, we, the power and the ability to change those things for ourselves to get what we want, what we expect is what we get.
AJV (06:03):
So what are we expecting? Right? And then he said, there’s three simple things that you need to be asking of to get there. It is, ask yourself, then ask others and then ask God, not necessarily in that order, right. It’s probably ask God, ask yourself, ask others. But those are the three different places where we should be asking questions, right? It’s asking God for guidance. It’s asking ourselves what we want and then asking other people for help and a mix of all those things, right? Asking God for help asking ourselves for guidance. It’s like all the things that it’s ask yourself, ask God, ask others. And I love that too, because I think so often we forget that there is a higher being that cares and has intention of where our life goes. But he’s also one who wants us to come to him and ask of him.
AJV (06:58):
And I think that too was a great reminder for me is sometimes I’m too self-reliant and I’m too independent. And I forget to lean into the places that have already been designed for me to lean into. But I definitely don’t know best. And I definitely need the help of other people. Right. I, I, you know, I love this African proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others, right? It’s like, you’re not meant to do this by yourself. You’re not meant to do this life and business or personal brand by yourself. You need help. You need guidance, you need support. So ask yourself, ask God and ask others. And I, I loved that. He reminded us like right, there are billions of other people on the planet, but how many people have we actually asked?
AJV (07:52):
Right. And if the first a hundred thousand said, no, guess what, there are billions of other humans on this planet. And how often do we ask like 5, 10, 15 people? And we get told no, and we’re like, she’s never going to happen. There are more than 7 billion people on planet earth. And we’re asking five, 10 or 15 people. And we think it’s over. And we think they, we can’t be helped because of that. Like that was a mind blowing moment for me, just to remember, it’s like, oh yeah, I could ask like five or six people and get told no, and be like, it’s hopeless. Then to remember that there’s billions of other humans on this planet. And I haven’t even began to scratch, scratch the scratch of the scratch of the surface when I stopped at this nominal number with just the people in my local community.
AJV (08:43):
So it’s asked and knowing who to ask and how to ask and why you’re asking, okay, I can easily go on a tangent with all of this for a long time. All right. And then here’s my third one. And I thought this was really good. And he said, no, I want to also dig into, and I keep saying he, but it’s he? And she and mark Victor and his wife crystal. And it is both of them. It is a really great interview. And I really encourage it, encourage you to go listen to the full thing. But my last one here is just how this was really powerful. is they talked about the different roadblocks to asking, and why don’t we ask if like we know these things and we can buy into this idea, but it’s also like, we need to have some self realization of why don’t we ask these things.
AJV (09:23):
And they said there are seven roadblocks to ask, and I’m going to give you a very high level. But this is where you really need to go and get the book and actually read it for yourself. But here they are. So the first one is unworthiness. It’s like, well, we don’t think that we’re worthy of asking for the things that we really want and desire. The second thing is naivity, right? We don’t even know what we could be asking for. And I think that was really, really good. Three is doubt. Like, is this really possible, right? Could this really happen? Like, would anyone actually be able to help? Like with God really listening, there’s doubt. And then there’s excuses. I don’t have time for this. This isn’t what I was designed for. Right. I’ve already been told, no, can’t do it again.
AJV (10:03):
It’s like excuses. And I think that’s where a lot of us live. We live in this false reality of excuses that we’ve made up that are not real. We think they’re real because I live in our mind, but they are not real in the real world. And then five was fear, right? We are afraid to put it out there. We are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of being persistent. We are afraid of all the things that actually may be even what happened if these things did come true, but there is some fear associated with asking six, there’s a pattern paralysis, right? It’s a, this ongoing idea that it’s like paralysis analysis too. Right. But it’s, this whole idea is like, at some point we prepare repair, we prepare, we prepare, but then we never do. Right. And then that’s a repeat that happened so many times in our life is we get into this pattern and we don’t know how to get out of it.
AJV (10:57):
I, and I think about that as a, as a mom, I often pull most of my examples because I’m in the thick of it. It’s like, at some point it’s like, you get into this repetitive pattern and you’re like, oh my gosh, am I ever going to sleep again? It’s like, as those newborn, those first few months, it’s like, you kind of get in this pattern. You’re like, oh, I don’t even know what to do when there’s dozens, if not hundreds of things you can be doing, but we’re, we’re paralyzed in the moment of this pattern that we’re living in. Right. And that happens with asking for what we want in life too. And the last, but not least is disconnection. We are disconnected from ourselves. And what we really want are disconnected from our relationship with God and we’re disconnected from our relationship with others.
AJV (11:40):
So we don’t even know who to ask and we don’t even know if they would want to. And I think these going through these seven things and really talking about why aren’t we headed in the direction where we want to be, and how did we get in this default life versus a creative life is really powerful part of this interview of this episode. And I so highly recommend you go back, listen to the whole thing with Mark Victor and his wife crystal also go check out their book. And then also come back and listen to more episodes and more recaps on the influential personal brand with myself and Rory Vaden. And until next time I hope you guys have a great day.

Ep 219: Optimizing Your Amazon Book Sales with Naren Aryal | 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 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 (00:55):

I love talking about books and selling books and writing books and making books and changing people’s lives with books. And that is why I’m excited to do this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am breaking down the interview that I just did here with Naren Aryal. And he is someone that has been a friend of a friend for awhile, and now we’ve got some of our clients that have done projects with them. He’s becoming one of our preferred vendor partners that we’re we’re we’re using and introducing, introducing people to. And so it was, it was time for us to sit down and have a chat and it was awesome. I mean, I love it. You maybe aren’t familiar with Aaron and I, I think it’s like some of these, some of my favorite episodes are ones where it’s like, you, you don’t know these people because they work in the, behind the scenes part of this whole space and an industry and, and business of building personal brands, but they have the secrets, like they’ve got the knowledge and they’ve, they’ve got you know, the tactics and this episode was one of those.

RV (02:04):

And so definitely go back and listen to it. Of course, I’m going to share with you my top three takeaways and highlights from the, from our chat together. But I’m rolling solo today. We don’t have AJ and so you’re just going to get me, and I’ve got three big takeaways from this, from this interview, from this episode, but each of these have a ton, like I got so much out of this, which is, which is crazy, right? Like we’ve we do. We help people do book launches all the time where we teach how to do book launches. We’ve done book launches. Like we’ve got friends that are launching books, like constantly, almost every week. We have a friend doing, doing some type of a book launch. And, and yet I learned a ton and that shows you that there is a lot to learn about and it, it doesn’t happen by accident.

RV (03:01):

It doesn’t happen by luck it’s it’s strategy and knowledge like so many things. So here’s my first takeaway was very simple and high level, but even for me, this was so clarifying. It was the five parts of book production. And just going like this was so powerful. And these are like the phases of writing a book, which most of us don’t even think about and writing a book can be intimidating yet when you understand and break it apart and break it down into these five phases. Now there’s, there’s another phase of which is actually writing the book, which is the first step, which is what we help people with at brand builders group, right? Like we help you figure out what’s the problem you solve. What’s the message in one sentence, who are you writing to? And then we help you in our captivating content event, we help you do the thinking of the book, which is the, the, the most important part, in my opinion, is, is the original thought leadership pulling out your true expertise, organizing it into pillars, creating true intellectual property that is truly unique from you and not a regurgitation of stuff that other people say.

RV (04:14):

So we do that, but then what happens once you have a manuscript, right? That’s where a lot of people get lost and Naren broke this down. I thought so well, and just these five phases, these five parts of book production. So like once the manuscript is sort of done, then what happens? So first of all, there’s the editorial and all of these phases also have costs, right? So this is something you got to think about when you go, should I traditionally publish, should I self publish? Should I use a hybrid publisher? Like, you know a lot of our clients do on like maybe their first or second project. So there’s a lot to it. So editorial is, you got to edit the manuscript. It’s gotta be sharp and tight and clean and, and punctuated. And, you know, the thinking has to be good first, but then the writing has to be good.

RV (05:03):

And those are two different things. And so you’ve got editorial, which could be ghost writing could be coaching, could be editing, could be just proofreading. The second phase is the design. So there is, there is design, which is more than just the front cover. I mean, that’s what we think about is what’s going to go on the cover, which is part of it, but it’s also what goes on the back cover and what goes on the spine and what goes on the flaps. If it’s, if it is a hard cover book. And then also, how do you lay out the book in on the pages? Are there pull quotes? How big is the font? There’s something called the gutter, which is how close are the words to to the, how close to the words line up to the crease in the book, like all these things you don’t think about, how much margin should you have around the outside of your pages?

RV (05:52):

How many pages are there? What visuals have to be designed, right? Like there’s a whole of stuff in that second phase of design, then there’s publishing, which is a word that we hear a lot. And most people sort of assign, I think publishing is like a blanket statement for all of this, but actually publishing is really just one part of this. And so that’s why I think a lot of authors are let down when they find out how little marketing that publishers do, because they don’t realize how much work there is to do in just publishing the book. So that is the, the, the, the creation of the book, you know, finalizing the, the, the files, pulling it all together and then printing the books, listing them in, you know, the, the library of Congress, getting the ESPN, getting them uploaded into retailers and into distributors.

RV (06:46):

And it’s actually like inventorying the book into the system that, that makes books available world worldwide, or at least, you know, domestically then the fourth phase is warehousing and distribution. So when you publish you, you now have a bunch of physically printed books, and you’ve got that book is now available in a variety of places, but it’s not physically there. So now you have to physically get this book to these locations, to these retailers. Now if it isn’t, if it’s an online, even if it’s an online retailer like Amazon, they have to have your book in their inventory, or you have to use their like print on demand service if you’re self publishing. And so a lot of people do that, but you know, if you’re working with a publisher, whether it’s a a hybrid publisher or traditional publisher, someone’s got to print books and ship them somewhere, and then they gotta be stored and there’s costs associated with all of these steps, right?

RV (07:49):

And then finally there’s marketing and, and platform development. In our case, we would call it launching. And it is, it is the book launch. And this is where brand builders kind of steps back in a lot of times. And you know, one of our, one of our flagship events is called bestseller launch plan, where we teach the whole systematic step by step process of exactly what needs to happen to get people, to buy the book, which is an eight month process. We, our checklist starts eight months before publishing date before the pub date. So that’s just that fifth phase. So when you back out from there, okay, warehousing distribution, and then publishing and then design and then editorial, and then the manuscript creation, and then the ideas and flushing out all of that it’s, it takes years like it’s, it’s a couple years at least to do a book the right way, at least the way we would teach.

RV (08:42):

So that was powerful. Five parts of book production. And really there’s, you know, six, if you count the whole ideation, which is really important. And then that last stage platform development that happens years and years before, during, and after the book launch, which is actually my second takeaway. It was really great to hear, Narren talk about the importance of platform development because not every, not every author gets that. I mean, I’d say most authors don’t get that. There’s this myth that you’re going to write a great book, and then someone’s going to publish it and it’s going to become a best seller. It ain’t true. Like it’s not what it’s about. Y’all like the, the, the biggest bestselling books are not the best written books. The biggest bestselling books are not the best thinking books. They’re not the best advice. They’re not the best strategies necessarily.

RV (09:41):

They are the books from people who have the biggest audiences. Did you catch that the best selling books come from the people with the biggest audiences? That is what it’s about is you got to build an audience. And so, you know, the, the, one of the things that we’re always telling our members, right, are our coaching clients at brand builders group that we work with one-on-one is, we’re always saying, you’ve got to build the audience for the book before you build the book. So you even back that stage up to go, you’ve got to build the audience for the book. Just like when we, when we talk about the ideation of a book, so this is another thing. Cause because we do help our clients with creating original IP and their thought leadership, but we don’t deal with all the nitty gritty logistics of like making the, the book, an actual physical thing.

RV (10:37):

With the ideation we tell our clients build you know, build. So first of all, build the audience for the book before you build the book. And then we say, right, the book has a conclusion, not a hypothesis. So you shouldn’t publish a book and share. And this is our opinion. This is our opinion is to say it shouldn’t be ideas that you think might be true. That would be hypothesis. A lot of books fail because the author is writing a hypothesis. Well, what a book should be is a conclusion. It should be the final finished, tested work that you’ve tested on your clients on yourself. You’ve got data behind it. You’ve got actual case studies and strategies and stories. And it’s, it’s the conclusion. So that is with the ideas in the book, similar though, with your platform development, this is a big shift that authors need to make.

RV (11:32):

You know, if you ever have a chance of being a best selling author is you have to realize that you have to think of a book launch as the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship. A book launch is really the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship, meaning you don’t write a book and then people find out about you. People find out about you and then you write a book for them, right? You build the audience before you build the book. And if you wrote a book and it didn’t sell well, don’t misconstrue that as thinking like your book was a bad book, it wasn’t at all. It means you probably didn’t have the audience built for it. There’s a lot of very average mediocre books that sell lots of copies because they come from people who have the biggest audiences.

RV (12:23):

And so the first people don’t buy your book typically on first exposure, they buy your book because they’ve had lots of exposure to you consistently. And then they see your book and you go, you know what I’ve I’ve heard of this person. They’re really good. I like their stuff. I want to see what this is about. Now in reality, sometimes the book is the Genesis of relationships. But it’s usually because somebody who had a relationship with you bought the book and then told someone else, you gotta read this thing, right? So there are some people who find out about Rory Vaden still to this day, because someone said, you got to retake the stairs. This book will change your life. That happens a lot. But a lot of people it’s, it’s more of, they hear me somewhere. They see my Ted talk, they see me speak.

RV (13:10):

They hear me on a podcast interview or interview, or they, they stumble across me on social media, from hashtags or from they stumble across my blog because of search engine optimization, all these other things that we teach. And then they kind of follow, follow, follow, come into the email list, get loved on, you know, they subscribe to the podcast, we’re dropping value, value, value constantly. And then we release a book and they go, man, I I’ve learned a ton. I, I wanna, I wanna, I want to get serious about learning more from these folks. That’s how it works. That’s the culmination of a relationship in reality, it is a, can be the Genesis of a relationship, but you got to understand the flip in the switch in your brain that most authors think, okay, I will write the book and then people will find it and I will become famous.

RV (13:55):

Or the book will become a bestseller. No, no, no, no. That that’s not how it works. It’s the other way around. So build the audience before you build the book. And then the third thing which we talked about, which I love, which I do not do, have never done, don’t know anything about. And, and I’m going to start learning and diving into is Amazon specific strategy. And so there were two parts of this. One is the category, which we are aware of, but we never do this because we traditionally publish. And so our traditional publishers set the categories that it’s in, but if you’re self publishing, you know, Amazon has, I don’t know, thousands of categories and subcategories and subcategories of subcategories. And you, when you self publish, get to determine three categories to rank your book for. And what Darren said, which is a simple strategy, is go take two of those three and pick the categories you want your book to actually be in.

RV (14:55):

So that other people who are interested in those categories will find your book, but then take one of your three categories and choose a very non-competitive category so that you can become a best seller an Amazon bestseller in. And the way that happens is you become Amazon publishes bestseller lists that are updated every hour and they have bestseller lists that are done category by category. This is why there is an explosion in the world of bestselling authors. The vast majority of them are Amazon bestselling authors and there they are category best-sellers and often sub category of category bestsellers. But that’s a great, I mean, that’s a, that’s a great win. That should be a first, you know, when to go, you’re truly a best seller. Like according to Amazon, your book is the best selling book in that category. At least for an hour in compared to all the other books in that category.

RV (15:55):

So that’s a good strategy to do to legitimately be like, Hey, I’m, I’m a bestselling author. Now we’re going to teach you how to kind of, you know, if you really want that title best-selling author, you need to not just have the title. You want to have more, more and more credible versions of that, right? Like to be the number one book, Amazon worldwide as much more difficult, or even the number one in your sub, like your, your category, your like your main category, like business versus marketing versus marketing for dentists, right? Those are how they go. And then outside of Amazon, of course, there’s wall street, journal, bestseller, New York times, bestseller USA today, they’re all, you know, difficult to reach much more difficult than an Amazon bestseller because it’s only Amazon is just for an hour. And it’s compared to all those other books in the category.

RV (16:46):

Anyways, that said, I think it’s a great strategy, brilliant, simple, easy there it’s completely authentic and validated, like you’re the best seller in your category. So choose one of your categories strategically for that purpose. So simple, so simple. And then the other thing that he said, and this is one I’ve never done is by, by bid on the ads for the terms of books that are like yours in your category in Amazon. So Amazon is a search engine, just like Google is a search engine, just like YouTube is a search engine and they make money off advertising. And you apparently we can bid on terms. And so if you say, I want to bid on this term when people, you know, look for this book, show them my book as well. I think that’s pretty clever way to use advertising spend. So it’d be tricky to figure out how many of those convert and do you make your money back on that?

RV (17:40):

But I think this is this is a world we’re going to get into. So holy moly, like that’s a lot of information that I just dropped and spit at you for the last few minutes, but there’s so much to learn. This was such a practical podcast. I picked up a ton of stuff, helped me organize my thinking, go back and listen to the whole episode and, and just know like the, if you’ve got the dream of being a bestseller, it’s possible, it’s probable. I mean, it’s very likely if, if you stick around here and you follow the things we’re teaching and the things that our guests are doing, that you will do it because it’s very systematic. It’s not easy, but it’s fairly predictable and systematic. If you’re willing to do the work, as long as you know exactly what the path is. And that’s why we’re here every week is to help you find the path, know the path. And then at some point, our invitation to you is to join and actually become one of our paying members where we’re working with you. One-On-One and we’re actually helping you do the path for your own personal brand, but either way, keep coming back week after week. We’re so glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 217: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
And we are here influential, personal brand podcasts, recap. I love it. When AJs here, life is better when wifey is here, she of course is our CEO Xtrordinair. And we are breaking down the interview with Craig Valentine, which was a blast from the past, for me, someone who had a major shaping on my life and career early on. And so anyways, this was a chance to AJ got to listen into our interview. And we’re gonna, we’re going to share with you are our top three takeaways each and bay. Why don’t you go first?
AJV (00:38):
Okay. so formal these podcasts recaps, babe wifey. So formal and professional. Are we so my first one is actually something you said in the very beginning, which I then thought it was hilarious that he then talked about it later on. And he said this comment in the beginning, he said, what I realized really early on, I said, it’s not good enough to get ready. You have to stay ready. And then he used that exact same thing, like five minutes later when talking about creating statements that people don’t just remember that they can repeat. So my first two takeaways are kind of like a combo deal. And the first one is this concept of getting ready versus staying ready. And I think this is really, really important for the audience that we really want to serve. Because when you think about storytelling is not about just telling stories in a keynote, and that’s so much of what people prepare for.
AJV (01:37):
It’s like, I have to think about these stories for a book that I’m writing or a course I’m creating or a keynote. And those were very singular activities. And it’s like, what about the stories that you tell in everyday interviews or your content creation on social media or a podcast or TV or radio or whatever. And I think that’s really important. I’ve just being able to stay ready. So at any minute, if a reporter tweets you at 9:00 PM at night, that you could be ready to go for an interview at 11:00 PM, which is exactly what happened to us just a couple of months ago. And because we were ready, it landed on good morning, America, totally unexpected, but we were ready. Didn’t need to get ready. We were ready. And I think that’s just a really great story is if you get ready and you stay ready, then it’s easy to accept the opportunities as they fly by, because it would have been equally as easy for someone to go. I don’t know what I’m going to say for that and turn down I mega opportunity just because you weren’t ready. And so that was my first big takeaway. And also gave you a teaser to my second one that I’ll share in just a minute.
RV (02:47):
Well, that’s good. I mean, that is just as like being in that mindset of like, I can go at any moment. It reminds me what you said reminded me of our friend Navy seal Joe. And one time I asked him, you know, why don’t, why don’t you drink? And he just said, well, cause at any, any given moment, you know, I might have to defend somebody. I might have to do something
AJV (03:07):
That’s a different
RV (03:08):
Kind of stay ready. Right. But it’s like that when you’re a Navy seal, it’s like, you’re always
AJV (03:14):
Ready,
RV (03:14):
Always ready. So one of the things for me, I mean, Craig is I think one of the masters of teaching storytelling, and I think it’s part of the impact he’s had on my life has helped me tell a great story. And even after all these years, as I was listening to him, I realized I don’t always have a clear conflict in my stories and you need to have a clear conflict. And that was my takeaway, which I’ve, I’ve been reminded of by him before, but somehow still forget. And, and in any story like the story is in the struggle, the story is not what happens at the end. The story is this one step forward, two step back of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And the moment that the conflict gets established is the moment that something gets in the way of your goal.
RV (04:09):
And so you have to have a character who wants something who has a block. You know, we, we refer in our a world-class presentation craft. We talk about how you have, you have the main character and then you have the enemy. You, you have to have a main character. Who’s trying to achieve something. Who’s being blocked by an enemy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a person, but often it is. But if your stories are falling flat, it’s because you don’t have a clear conflict, which means you either don’t you, you don’t have a clear picture of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And there’s not clarity about what is standing in that main characters way. And if you don’t have those two things, you don’t have a story. You’re just, you’re just sharing words. And that is so simple, so simple, but just really hit me as profound. And it’s like, gosh, I should know this. I should know better, but I just don’t. And I, and you just forget that the fundamental, so that you got to have a clear conflict. That was my first big one.
AJV (05:12):
Yeah. Well, on that note Craig talks a lot about this in the interview is the importance of both conflict, but then also character dialogue. And those were equal parts of a great story is like, yeah, the story needs conflict, but there also has to be some character development I E through dialogue. And so it’s helping get to know each point of the characters in the story, even if it’s only one character that conflict and dialogue are of equal importance. And I think that was a really unique part because often sometimes the heart of the story is missed because you only get a one-sided character perspective.
RV (05:52):
Yeah. That was that your second takeaway was dialogue.
AJV (05:57):
That was a side tangent.
RV (06:00):
Since you, since you went there, I’ll just do my second one. Cause that was, that was my second one was that dialogue was my big second takeaway because of exactly what you said is you flesh out the characters, you get to know them by knowing what they’re thinking and what they’re saying to each other, which again, you don’t always think about. So anyways, that was my second one. I did two in a row. Okay. Back to you.
AJV (06:22):
Yeah. So my second one was something that I said at the very beginning, because I thought they were, they were very much connected, but it’s this whole concept of, you know, don’t tell stories just to be remembered, but tell them in a way that can be repeated. So it’s creating statements little taglines but easily remembered, but also easily repeated statements that actually carry through conversations. And that’s a huge part of a brand recognition it’s that people don’t just remember that, you know, you talk about, you know, overcoming self-doubt or you talk about in our case, personal branding, but it’s like, we’ve got these statements that are defining part of our personal brand and it’s easy for people to repeat them because they’re catchy, they’re easy to remember, but they’re also easily repeated. And I thought that was really good. And so it’s like, what are the conversation centerpieces that you have in your personal brand and in your stories, but in your content that allow people to go YAG tweet that I’d retweet that it’s like, I post that on my social.
AJV (07:26):
It’s like, I would, I would talk about this. Like, this is a, this is a good conversation starter. And it even, it doesn’t even have to be all that catchy. Sometimes it just has to be somewhat controversial in terms of like, this is different. Like one of the things that caught my attention when listening to this podcast with Kregg is this whole concept of, you know, in our opinion, that personal branding is the future of marketing and that’s somewhat controversial. I’m going like really like really it’s the future of marketing. And it’s like, that allows someone to go. It’s like, Hey, there’s this firm out there that did this study. And they’re saying that personal branding is the future of marketing. It’s like that personal branding is the way to build trust. And so again, it’s, it doesn’t even have to be like a tagline for it to be catchy, but it’s gotta be interesting enough that people can remember it and repeat it and that they would want to. And I thought that was a really huge part of stories are there to get people engaged. But then what’s the point, what’s the takeaway of the story. And are you giving it and little snippets that people can remember and want to repeat?
RV (08:37):
Yeah. Amen. It’s like, what’s the story, but what’s the, what’s the point? What’s the takeaway? The story is like the entertaining part, but then the point is like the educational part or the inspirational, the part that adds real value to our life. And you know, we call them pillar points internally, obviously like those, those catchy, those catchy phrases, and that kind of points to my third takeaway, which is which was, was actually nothing about the technical stuff of what Craig was teaching related to how to tell a great story. It was his kind of catchy pillar point from his wife. Your dream is not for sale. And I have heard him tell that story so many times about you know, him trying to quit his job to go pursue his dream and, and his, his boss offering him more money and him almost taking it.
RV (09:29):
And then his wife saying your dream is not for sale. And that has stuck with me that has stuck with me for almost 20 years now, from the first time that I heard that. And that is so powerful as a concept that like, you know, if you have a dream and there’s something that you’re dreaming about, like you literally want, and, and it is placed on your heart, that this is the thing that you’re supposed to pursue. Don’t let anything distract you from it. Don’t let anything pull you off of it. Don’t let anything convince you that you’re not worthy of it or that you can’t have it. And certainly don’t go chasing money in as a, as a way of avoiding chasing the thing, you know, that you’re called to. And even though, you know, that wasn’t a technique that he was there to teach, you know, he’s teaching us secrets of storytelling to hear that story risk recounted over and over is just such a powerful reminder for me in my own life to just go, yeah, your dream is there for a reason, your dream is there because you’re supposed to pursue it.
RV (10:33):
You’re supposed to move in that direction. There’s other people that you inspire by doing it. There’s other people that you help by chasing after it just don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked with other stuff.
AJV (10:45):
That’s good. That’s good. All right. Well, I’m at this up my third one. And I find a line and I, again, this wasn’t necessarily new, but it was a great reminder for every single person who is listening to this podcast is that it is not about selling a product it’s about selling results. And the best way you can do that is in storytelling. And it’s like, if all you do is talk about your product. It’s like, people get burned out. It’s like, you can only talk about it so much, but it’s like, what are the results that you will achieve or experience because of your product or your service. And he goes, you know, he gets that great story about when he was buying his first car several decades ago. And the first dealership he went to, they talked all about the car right here are the features of the car.
AJV (11:34):
Here’s the gas mileage. Here’s the rates that it at a desk, second place. He went and said, why are you buying a new car? And he said, oh, you’re going to look good in this car. Just think about all the ladies you’re going to get in this car. But it was, it was the results, but it was also the story. Like when you tell story, you’re able to put yourself in the character, see and experience it. Like when you talk about, oh, in this car, you’re going to look so good. I just want you to imagine, like, for me, it’s like how clean and organized a new car would be with your two toddlers. And if you owed, you had that captain seat, you wouldn’t have to climb over the seat to get in the back, or you’re going to have this extra space.
AJV (12:13):
Like you can tell I’m a mom of two small kids right now, because that’s what appeals to me like that if you put me as the character in the seat of the car, it’s like, oh yeah, I want that. I want clean carpets again. Yeah. I want seats where my kid’s little legs, can’t kick the back of them. That, how do you get me bad versus just telling me about just safety features and just the components of a car, but it’s like, how do you use a story to put your audience as the character in the seat to help them actually experience what your product or service is without making it all about just the facts and features and components of what you do, but it’s, what is it going to give them in peace or happiness or in my case organization. Right? So it was like, what are those things? And how do you use stories to help sell results? Because at the end of the day, people aren’t buying your product, they’re buying what your product or service is going to do for them.
RV (13:13):
So good. So good. And just storytelling. I think it’s, it’s easy to underestimate the power of stories because they’re so simple. It’s easy to forget the fundamental parts of that should be in a story because you just overlook them. And, and, and certainly just easy to forget, to use stories in your selling, your writing, your emails, obviously your presentation. So listen to this episode, go back. If you didn’t and listened to the episode with Craig Valentine, it is fantastic. He is a gifted speaker and also extremely gifted at teaching the art of story, which will help you and make a difference as does every guest. At least that is our hope every week here on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s all for this one comeback soon. We’ll see you then bye-bye.

Ep 215: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Youtube and video domination. This is a topic that I am growing more and more interested in. Hey, it is Rory Vaden. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition of the Marley Jaxx interview. I am doing this recap solo. I got no, AJ with me side-by-side today, but I’m going to break this one down for you. And I’m telling you, like, this is something, when I think about Rory Vaden, a Brand Builders Group, and in two years, it’s like, we better be dominating YouTube. Like we better be figuring this out. And so we’re learning a lot. And this, this interview with Marley was just fantastic because I just, I think this is so important. I think this is such a big part of, of the future and such a big part of like content marketing for professionals as is YouTube because you know, the, the big thing here and I’ll get into my, my, my top three takeaways from Marley.
RV (01:13):
But at a high level, the thing that I hope you’re getting, not just from this interview with Marley, but from some of the, several of the interviews that we’ve done with some video folks, and you know, some of our, some of our various friends, people like Sean Cannell and others that we’ve had on the show is just that, you know, video is the future of marketing period. I mean, it’s also the presence and in some ways it’s the past, but content marketing is, is video. And this even, even Instagrams found, or it was several months ago at this point, but Instagram sharp started as a, as a photo sharing app, right? That’s how it started. And, and, and Instagram, not their founder, but Instagram CEO announced that the, it is now a video tool, and that it is focusing on video.
RV (02:12):
That why, because the engagement is higher for everybody with video. And that’s what these apps want you to do is create content that keeps people on their platform. That’s what they’re interested in because of advertisers, which is how they, they make their money. And so the longer you keep people on their platform, the more ads they can show up their advertisers and the more money that they make. And so that’s why they want to keep people on these platforms. Well, that’s, you know, something like Instagram, Facebook, any of the social media platforms, but YouTube is really different because YouTube isn’t social media in, in a lot of the ways that you think about it because YouTube gets better over time. It’s like search engine optimization and you know, on Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 2 (03:00):
The, the, the posts that get the most traction are the ones that were posted most recently. And so you have to constantly be pushing stuff out there. If you want people to see it, people don’t see, there’s not a lot of traffic to your old posts, but YouTube is the opposite search engine is the opposite. Like an article that you wrote on, on a blog 10 years ago is worth more in value than an article that you wrote last week. It’s got that one of the it’s got like more Google juice, so to speak, right? It’s got more history and everything with Google, which YouTube of course owns Google. So it’s, it’s all about kind of the legacy value of a piece of content. And, and it grows, it can grow over time, more like a fine wine. And so creating and producing video content and optimizing it in an intelligent way is a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And of course, you know, go back and listen to this, this interview, this episode that we did with Marley. But I just want you to really get that, or at least make sure you, you catch the gravitas of which I’m viewing that. And, and, and part of it is this, cause I think I’ve just missed the boat really badly on, on this. And so it stings a little bit every time I hear someone talk about YouTube and, and we’re still not there yet, right? Like we still don’t have our ducks in a row to like do this or working on other things. And our clients are going really fast. So our, you know, we’re focused on servicing them, but as we’re, as we turn towards scaling and ramping up our team, it’s like, this is a, this is a game that we up, we got win and, and video just lends itself well to professionals and experts because it’s all about trust.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And I need you, if you want people to trust you and they trust you more, when they see you, they do. And they just, you trust the people that you see every day. That’s why we trust celebrities. We see them on TV. We trust them. So video is a big deal. But anyways, here’s my three by three takeaways from Marley, which I thought were acute not cute. Acute. They were acute. They were sharp. They were poignant. They are they’re, they’re not things that you always hear in the first one is more emotional. And it really hit me when she said, look, you’re going to be judged either way. Like the reason why we don’t turn on the camera is because we’re afraid of being judged, right? We’re afraid of some kid that made fun of us in elementary school, like seeing this video and be like, hi, you’re stupid, right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Or, or the online haters or we’re, you know, we just, aren’t confident with how we appear on camera or whatever, whatever. You know, and, and her point is like, in your life in general, there is always a risk of doing it, but there’s a risk of not doing it. Also there there’s, there’s a, there is a cost of doing it. Like there’s a potential loss there. If you do something and you make a mistake, but there’s a bigger guaranteed loss and not doing it, not trying for it, not going for it, feeling this, calling this prompting in your heart, that, that you’re supposed to share your message or that you’re supposed to teach, or you’re supposed to encourage, you’re supposed to educate, inspire entertain, and you feel this prompting on your heart. And yet you’re losing to this, this self doubt, this, this fear, this fictitious imagination, like imaginative dream of all the bad things that could happen.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And you’re not counterbalancing that with all the good things that might happen and ignoring the fact that if you don’t take this risk, then all you’re going to have is more of what you have right now. And that’s guaranteed. And so you’re going to be judged whether you do it or not, there is risk whether you do it or not there, if you do it, there’s gonna be, there’s gonna be losses, but there’s also gonna be wins. But if you don’t do it, then there’s only losses. There’s just, there’s just no attempts. And, and grasping this idea and go, and look, we got one life. Like we got one shot at this. We got one chance to show up and bring our best to the world. We got, we got one opportunity there. There’s one season that you’re going to be of like healthy mind and healthy body.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
We’re living in this incredible era where never before, has there been such an opportunity to use a tool like video and social and digital and, and, you know, whatever the internet to just impact the world. Like this is a very unique time in history. So do it like go for it. What are you waiting for? Take your shot, take a chance, start doing it. And, and, and who cares about all the reasons you might feel silly or what people are going to say that you don’t care about and, and, and do it. And by the way, like maybe you’ve been waiting, like you’ve been listening to this podcast and you haven’t done a free call with our team. Go freaking, do it, go to free brand free brand call.com/podcast. Right. Go there right now. Let me double check to make sure that link works here.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
A free brand call.com/podcast. It does work. Okay, great. Go there and request a call with our team and we will help get you started. Right. So, and if you’re not ready for that step, or maybe you’re already a member and you just haven’t turned on the camera, turn on the camera. Like I loved when I asked her, what’s the right, what is the best camera to have? And her answer was so perfect. I said, what’s the best camera to use. And she said that, she said, whatever camera you have, that is such a great answer. So you got to do it now. Now there are two things are more technical and these are just super quick ones. So that I thought, gosh, these are really interesting. I’ve never, I’ve never really heard someone say this so sharply. So my second big is the concept of an engagement break and engagement break.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And so you, you often see people do a call to action at the end of your video, which you should do, right? Like whatever, like share this post with someone who needs to see it, or leave me a comment below or whatever. But especially if you’re creating content natively for YouTube, and it’s more like a nine minute, 10 minutes, 12, 15 minute video, whatever, having engagement breaks along the way, like in between the points of your video. And so if you’ve got three points that gives you a chance to say you know, between point number one and point, number two, you go, Hey, if you are not, if you, if you’re not already subscribed, press that subscribe button, like there’s a lot more to come. I got two other points to share, but make sure you’re tuning in and subscribe to what we got going on.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
All right. Point number two is right. And just that little kind of, it’s a great little break in the action. It’s an opportunity for another, you know, conversion. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s really brilliant and elegant and simple. It’s super simple and it’ll make a big difference. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of times you don’t keep people all the way to the end of the video. So take advantage of this. And I really, really love that. And you can tell people to leave a comment like rate, subscribe, share or give them a link to go off and do something else and buy whatever, whatever. So use engagement breaks, how simple, how Al straightforward, how practical I love it. And then number three was to put your link right in the description of the video below. And for me, like that should be obvious probably for someone like me, but it wasn’t.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And so maybe it’s not as super obvious to you is to go, you know, the concept of a funnel, which is something that we, we teach. It’s it’s in our more advanced trainings for our members and our community. We teach them funnels in the strategy and the psychology and the technology and all the things you have to do to like make a funnel work. And they’re, they’re amazing, but like version 1.0, can just be a video of you providing value with a link down below for someone to click and request a call or click and go to your sales page and buy. And that’s so simple like that, that is a funnel like a funnel as anything that is proactively nurturing somebody in a way that you’re giving value. First, you’re giving first giving first giving first you’re adding value to their life. And then you offer them an opportunity to take a next step.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
What could be a more simple, elegant way of doing that than just posting a video on YouTube, teaching them some stuff, and then saying, Hey, if you want more click the link down below in the description, you know, or, or and, and that’s it, that’s a simple call to action. And when you do that, then it’s like each video that you create is like a warrior out there. Who’s like recruiting for you. It’s like a marketing warrior. This soldier who is living out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that anyone in the world can watch you click on when you’re not there. It’s this, it’s this scalable vehicle mechanism. It’s, it’s like if like hiring an employee for your company or something that is always there and you go, what happens if you create a thousand videos like that? Like somebody’s going to find you, somebody is going to buy from you.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
And if you’re just talking to them and you’re adding value, and then you offer them a simple call to action, click the click, the link in the description below, that’s it, that’s the whole call to action. Give value, click the link down in the description below that is a funnel, because a funnel is not about a certain amount of technology. It’s about psychology and the psychology is give before you ask help before you sell, right, like offer before you, before you inquire and, and a video does that. And that’s just something that it’s like, there’s just, there’s just no excuse you carrying around a phone in your pocket. You can record a video in literally, you know, two minutes you can turn on and record a video. And that’s what I’m starting to do. Like that is what’s crushing for us on social is no fancy graphics.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
No, you know, fancy borders. No, on-screen text no B roll, no music underneath. Just literally hold the phone up, hit record and talk and, and pro and say something inspiring. You know, it’s basically the three E’s it’s entertaining educational the w hold on, let me think here, you got, you got you’re entertaining. Oh. Or encouraging you’re entertaining, educational or encouraging in some mix of those. You have that power, like never before. The only thing that’s holding you back is fear is the only reason why you wouldn’t do it. You’re afraid, silly. Don’t be afraid. Don’t lose to your fear. Don’t let some stupid made up story in your mind about what might happen, be the thing that holds you back, right? Like if you could fast forward your life in two paths and go, okay, what if I could see ahead in the future?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, one path I took action. And the other one I did not. And you, and what if the one where you took action led to every single dream that you have coming true. If it’s like all of the, the deepest desires of your heart were all available and you could actually see and go. The only reason I never got to have that in my life is because I allowed myself to lose to a fictional made up story that I allowed to play in my head over and over. Imagine all the people that you could have helped that you didn’t help because you allowed yourself to fall victim to this fake fictional made up story. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. So don’t let it happen to you. You got to stay encouraged. You got to. And by the way, that’s why you got to stay plugged into what we’re doing.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
If you’re not following me on Instagram and AIJ and brand builders group, like you should be following us on LinkedIn and follow us on Instagram and make sure you’re tuning into the podcast. And goodness, if it’s, as soon as you can please become a member of the community, because we’re going to give you the encouragement, keep you going. We’re going to plug you in to other people who are on the same journey as you, because a lot of this battle is just, it is emotional, man. It, it is, it is about fear. It’s not just the tactical, it’s emotional, but if nothing else, please keep listening to podcasts. Please keep coming back. Yeah, leave us a comment. Let us know on iTunes, give us a review and tell us your feedback. What kind of guests do you want to hear more of? Like, who do you love? What are your favorite episodes? We read that stuff. We’ll pay attention to it. And just more than anything, just keep coming back, stay encouraged. Listen to that. Calling in your heart, go out, make something happen, serve somebody. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 213: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Well, not every interview on the influential personal brand podcast turns out to be exactly what we thought it was going to be. And I would say this is one of them in a very delightful way. At least for me personally, I thought this interview with Celinne Da Costa was really a treat and different than what I expected. I thought it would be more in the area of sort of like branding and marketing, but it was really a level, a level deeper than that. It was really about the limiting beliefs that we all have, which then show up in our marketing. And so AJ and I are going to break this interview down for you. We’re going to share with you our top three takeaways. AJ is here with me. She is the CEO of brand builders group, my wife, best friend business partner and baby mama all at the same time. So babe, what what did, what did you think of this? Cause you, you haven’t interacted with saline really until this, this episode,
AJV (00:59):
Just through listening to the podcast. So I like all of you, it’s just a listener along with all of you. So I, here’s the first thing that I took away, and I think it’s really important because I think it’s also something that maybe just connects to even what we do at brand builders group. So my number one takeaway is that when it comes to building your brand really first and foremost, you have to know what your uniqueness’s like, what’s your X factor. What’s that one thing what we say is your uniqueness or your super power, like, what is it about you? That is a God-given gift to the world and to those around you and owning that. And one, you have to figure out what it is. And two, you have to figure out how to harness that. And then three it’s like, how do you get it out into the world?
AJV (01:50):
And so that’s kind of like the biggest thing, because I think so many people struggle with this and I can speak for all of our clients. Not all of them. A lot of our clients at brand builders group is I really struggle with owning. What’s already naturally amazing about them is that they downplay their accomplishments. They downplay all of their accolades, they downplay their education or their experience or their client roster, whatever it is, but they downplay it and they just think of, oh, well, that’s just what everyone else does. And it’s like, no, it is not. And sometimes I think for yourself, it’s really hard to even identify sometimes what is your natural super power, because you are so used to it that you don’t see it as all that unique or that powerful even. But it’s like all of us have that one thing, we all have something and many of us just haven’t taken the time to explore and ask the right questions and really try to figure out what is that thing that is really unique to me.
AJV (02:55):
And how do I use it to service the world and service humanity, but you do have it and it is within you somewhere. And so I think the first thing, and I love this because it’s also where we start is just figuring out, like, what is your uniqueness, your super power, that X factor, whatever you want to call it, but what is that about you? And that’s just where you start of telling your story. It’s what is that uniqueness? So I think that just resonated with me off the get go, because that’s a lot of what we talk about at brand builders group.
RV (03:27):
Yeah. Yeah. There’s, there’s, there were some themes there with you know, what we do at brand builders group of kind of that deep dive sort of internal work. And I’d say that was my number one takeaway too. Is there, I don’t know if she said this or this, I wrote this down. I’m not sure if she said it or if it was an adaptation of something she said, but this was one of my takeaways. And it’s, it’s right to what you were talking about, where the big journey here is coming into yourself and revealing and remembering who you already are. And it makes me think about AJ you know, like one of the things that people always get a tremendous amount of value from, from the work that we do. And our team does is when we write their expert bio, we take people through this exercise, right?
RV (04:14):
Of like, we go through this brainstorm of all these things that they’ve accomplished. And almost every one of our clients is like, oh my gosh, you made me sound amazing. You guys are so good at this. Like, this is incredible. This, this one little thing you did is worth the price of the whole program. And yet all we’re doing there is reflecting back to them. Exactly what you said, everything they already are. We’re just packaging it in a way that they wouldn’t package it because they don’t, they don’t see it. And they don’t think about it. And in a way it’s kind of sad that we, you know, we don’t see how, how awesome we are. And so this idea of revealing and remembering who you already are, is, you know, like where the uniqueness lies and that’s good. Yeah. So that was, that was, that was my, my first big takeaway. What was your second?
AJV (05:09):
And it’s kind of similar to that too. I think because I, you know as a mom as you are also a dad, but as a mom of two young boys, like I’m constantly terrified of screwing them up, right? It’s like, I’m constantly terrified of changing them into something that they are not. And all I want to do as a parent is channel their uniqueness, channel their greatness and not try to amend it to what’s convenient to me, but to help them explore, like, what are they naturally gifted at and interested in and how do I channel that into greatness and whatever greatness may mean for them. But it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, cover up or muddy up what is their super power, but I want to help them bring that out. And I think it’s like, if we’re not really intentional about as human beings that you know for yourself.
AJV (06:02):
And I even think about this with my kids, it’s like all this beauty that lives out there just gets muddied up over the years because we, what is truly your gift is seen as an inconvenience or a seen as the opposite of a gift, right. It’s seen as what needs to be fixed or what’s broken. And, and I think it really starts at a really young age. And then we get to adulthood and our, you know, in my case, in my late thirties, and it’s like, oh man, I’m trying to like wash off the mud. I’m like 30 years of trying to really reveal to what you said, what is already so awesome about who you are. And so I just think about my kids and they’re at this like really pure state I’m in existence at two and four. And it’s like, how do I not keep them pure?
AJV (06:50):
But how do I make sure that this, this brightness that is within them, doesn’t get covered with mud. And then it’s, how do we do that for ourselves? Right. And I think in a lot of cases, you can’t, I think you need someone else to come and help you wash that mud off. I don’t think that you’re able to do it all by yourself sometimes. And you, you really do need someone to walk along with you. And rather that is someone like Celinne or someone like brand builders group or somebody else. It’s like, you really need someone sometimes to remind you of who you are, because we can’t do it for ourselves. It’s amazing to me because I often get to help people craft their expert bios to what you were just saying, Rory and I often will, you know, they’ll do a draft and I’ll send it to me and I’ll make a few edits and I make a few suggestions and send it back.
AJV (07:39):
And here’s the number one response that I get when I, what I would say is I just pretty it up a little bit as I go, wow. Like, I feel like an imposter and it’s so interesting to me. And I’m like, okay, well, let me just make sure that I didn’t make anything up in here. You did this, right? Yeah. You were featured in this, right? Yeah. Okay. You worked with this kind of company or person. Yeah. Okay. You were awarded this award, correct. And it’s like, I go through the checklist. Yes, yes, yes. What part of this makes you feel like an imposter and it’s somewhere along the lines. We, we have told ourselves what we do, isn’t good enough, or someone else is better than, and it’s like, then you take a step back and you actually bring all of this amazingness to the surface and you put it on paper and it doesn’t even feel like you, and that’s because we don’t even take the time to celebrate our own greatness.
AJV (08:37):
And that isn’t about being prideful or full of ego. That’s about just acknowledging that you are worthy and good, and there is greatness within you and you were born with it. And those are the things that we forget. And so I just think I’m at my second takeaway was a lot about like, how do we like uncover the layers that we’ve spent so many years or someone else’s spent covering up that bright shining light within us. And how do we get back to what is that X factor or that uniqueness to begin with? And I think a lot of the times, it’s just, you need someone to do it with you, not for you, but you need someone to walk along and help you clean off that mud and remind you that you are worthy and good and special and unique and all the things, right. It’s like sometimes we just need to allow someone to come into our life and, and speak good. And to our ears and into our heart.
RV (09:35):
That’s so powerful. I mean Hey man, who rah like that is that is it. So in my second takeaway, what I wrote down was were we are all still looking for external solutions for internal problems and know
AJV (09:54):
A much more succinct way of saying,
RV (09:58):
Well, I think it, I think it’s really related to what you were saying, right. Is cause we, we, we have like we think we need to hire some perfect vendor to like solve some expert problem like this, this, this external problem, or that there’s like some skill set that we have to acquire. And really it’s this internal struggle of feeling like we’re good enough, that’s the real issue. And I would say that we’re even seeing this in brand builders group a lot right now, because we teach so many, I mean, we have 14 different today experiences like there’s 14 parts of our whole curriculum. We have all of these tactics and strategies and information and people, I think, love that, but more and more it’s becoming about the community and the comradery and the belief that they get from being around our team and each other, because the real thing that’s holding them back is their own limiting beliefs that they’re not good enough or that they haven’t done enough or they don’t deserve it.
RV (11:01):
And then, you know, you sit in a room with other people and you realize, oh my gosh, we all feel this way. And yet we look at each other, like we’re all superheroes, but we don’t look at ourselves. And, and out of that comes tremendous power. I know these application events that, that you you’ve basically invented for brand builders group AGA that you’ve been running where we now have a 15th type of event, which is is we call them application events because we don’t teach anything like our other 14 events are all like we’re teaching stuff. And these new application events are nothing but getting feedback and live coaching and instruction and, and community and networking. And, you know, we just happened to have one. So it’s fresh on my mind. And I think that, that these application events you created, they really speak to the internal struggles that people have and that the real power of brand builders group is moving away from our content and our education. And it’s really becoming the power of the community and the people they’re helping each other believe in themselves.
AJV (12:07):
Yeah. Well, both are needed. This one, one becomes more relevant at a certain time than another. But yes. Okay. So my last takeaway would be is that the vision has to be bigger than the fear, right? And I love this conversation and this isn’t necessarily brand new. I, man, it was a really good reminder of if the vision isn’t big enough, the fear will always win the fear of, well, what if it doesn’t work? Or what if, what the killer is? What if right? That’s just, it just whatever, whatever is after that, that’s the bad part. What if but it’s, it’s truly, it’s like the vision has to be bigger than the fear and whatever comes after. What if this vision this purpose has to be bigger than anything that comes after. What if, and that takes some work and conversation and brainstorming and thought.
AJV (13:07):
And in my case, a lot of prayer it’s like it, but it’s gotta be bigger than that. Otherwise, the, what if is going to be always the thing that holds you back, it will always hold you back. But the vision has got to be bigger than the fear. And that was such a great comment. It’s such a great reminder, no matter where you are in your business or in your personal life, wherever you are in your life journey, your personal brand journey, the purpose and the vision must always be bigger than whatever comes after. What if
RV (13:33):
That’s so powerful? And that points to my, what my third takeaway was, you know, my third takeaway was actually a quote that saline shared from somebody else, which after she said this, I was like, wow, this is so powerful. I cannot believe I’ve never heard anyone say this. Oh my goodness. It was, it was so huge. And so it’s from Carl Young. And he said until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.
AJV (14:08):
Mm that’s so good. Yes. I remember this now. That’s so good.
RV (14:11):
It’s so powerful. Right? Cause it’s like, we, we have these habits, these, these deep rooted beliefs, this, these years of conditioning, like you were talking about earlier age, where of, of things that we tell ourselves of other things that other people have said about us, that we accept as truth. And we allow them to live there in the unconscious. And then we, our life turns out a certain way and we think that’s our fate, ours, it’s our destiny. And it’s really just the by-product of these beliefs. It’s the by-product of these habits that we never questioned that we never challenged that we never see. They just live there in, in the unconscious, the subconscious, and yet they dictate our life. And and then we can transform our life. We can break through, by moving those doubts into the conscious, challenging them, changing them, rewriting them. And then those become the new programming for in a future that is wildly beyond anything that we imagined until you make the unconscious conscious. It will rule your life and you will call it fate. I hit me hard. Hit me hard.
AJV (15:21):
You should print that out, tape it up somewhere and read it every day.
RV (15:26):
Yeah, absolutely. Or you could come back and listen to the influential personal brand podcast on repeat over and over. You could listen to the episode, the interview that we did with saline, you could listen to this recap. You could just keep coming back. If you, if you get value out of these, please share them with your friends. Please tag us on social. Let us know what your favorite parts are of these interviews. And you know, leave comments on AIG’s profile or mine or the company is we want to know what parts are connecting with you and what is landing with you and what you’d like to hear more of, because all of that for us is unconscious. We don’t know what it is that you like unless you tell us. So bring it into our conscious so that we can rule over it and create a bigger future for all of us. Thank you for being here. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 211: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):

Here we go. We are back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition today. We’re talking about the interview that we had with Mike Michalowicz, who is a long time friend of ours. Now at this point and a really brilliant author. We spent a lot of time getting to know Mike here in the last couple of years. And I know AJ has read some of some of his work and he’s just a friend, a friend of the community, and I am joined by AJ our CEO of brand builders group AJ. Welcome. Good to see you

AJV (00:32):

Always happy to be here.

RV (00:34):

Why don’t you kick us off today and share you know, let’s just kind of go back and forth. Here are our top three takeaways, but why don’t you get us started on, on what did you learn from Mike?

AJV (00:44):

Well, first of all, I had a really hard time watching this interview because all I could focus on was this enormous beard he has grown. So all I was like distracted the first 10 minutes of going, how long did that take? How does he care for this? Why is it so long? So first of all, just note like the first 10 minutes, I wasn’t quite focused, but what I did take away in those first few minutes, and I thought this was really interesting. So I don’t think this is necessarily like a tip or a technique or anything. I thought it was fascinating. And it’s that 98% of businesses in the United States are considered small business. Only 2% are considered enterprise businesses. So like, you know, your Amazon and your Googles and your Teslas only 2%, 98% are considered small business. And all of that, 98%, most of them are considered micro business, which means they’re doing under $1 million in revenue.

AJV (01:46):

Like that’s insane. And I just was like, wow, I think we forget because we focus on these huge companies all the time and the media and everyone’s case studies and comparisons. You’re talking about the Coca-Cola’s and the Amazon’s and Facebook. And it’s like, yo, that’s only 2% of us business. 98% are the rest of us like myself and Rory. And most of you listening and even a huge percentage of the 98% are micro businesses, which are doing less than a million dollars in revenue. And I think that’s really, really important when you choose what outlets to listen to. What books do you read what entrepreneurs to follow it’s. I think that’s really significant because I think there’s amazing. There’s amazing opportunities to learn from these enterprise businesses. Like I love learning about Disney and Nordstrom at the same time, I don’t have the ability or the funds or the Reese’s resources or the staff or the time to implement some of those things at that level.

AJV (02:56):

But if I was looking at someone who was just a slight step ahead of me, like, how are they doing this? I would be able to act so much faster and probably with a lot more confidence in going like, no they’re doing it. They’re just one step ahead of us. We got this versus like one day I want to have a customer service team, like the Ritz-Carlton and the four seasons, and we’re going to deliver, you know, Hain tattles to everyone who comes to our events. Right. and so I thought that it was really, really important just to take a step back and remember that for all of us, especially beaver, if you’re B2B and some capacity, it’s like, we’re really selling to other businesses who are considered small business and a huge percentage of those are micro business. And so how you reach those people, I think is fascinating, which is what the majority of the interview is about is your lead attraction process. But it’s just taking a moment and realizing 98% of American business or small business. And that’s what we’re going after. That’s who we’re selling to that’s who we’re a part of. And I guess that was a good statistic that I hadn’t heard in a really long time. So, you know, I was attracted to the, the statistic. But I just thought that was really good. So that’d be my first

RV (04:08):

Interesting, well, I think, you know, you make a good point there about like, if most businesses are micro businesses, then what would be relevant most relevant for us would be to learn from other micro businesses or ones that are a step ahead. And I think a lot of this conversation really was about gaining instant attention. And one of the things that he said was about relevance. He said, you know, our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. I thought that was such an eloquent, eloquent quote. Our brain is designed to efficiently ignore things that are irrelevant. And basically in marketing, you’ll hear this phrase. It’s, it’s a good phrase. It’s a good concept. It’s called a pattern interrupt that, that people, as they’re scrolling through their social media feed or zipping through their inbox, or just cruising along down the highway, you have to do something like that is a pattern interrupt that is sort of jarring or jolting to even get the split second opportunity to tell them what you do or introduce yourself.

RV (05:17):

And that you don’t, we don’t realize how much the brain is constantly ignoring and that the brain has to ignore there. The, I loved when he was talking about like, you know, if you just look around your office space, there’s so many things there that your brain is ignoring and you have to ignore it for survival as a way to like conserve mental capacity, to focus on like things that are really important and go that’s, that’s the battle here that marketing is really neuroscience and understanding the way that attention works. So I, that was, that was my first big takeaway.

AJV (05:50):

Yeah. I think that’s really, that’s really good and important. And similar and I had highlighted that as one of the, I thought that was a very interesting and what you said eloquent way of describing that the followup to that, and I’ll make this, my second point is don’t confuse different without rages. And I thought that was really good because I think some people think in order to stand out in order to differentiate, we’ve got to do something that’s completely outrageous. That’s never been done before. And that’s not necessarily the case, right. It’s just because you want to be different doesn’t mean you have to be so outrageous that it’s completely polarizing or it’s, you know, so outlandish that it takes some incredible ideas. Like that’s not really what we’re saying here. And I, I loved that whole concept of pattern interrupt and what it made me think about.

AJV (06:42):

And I thought about a couple of different examples of this. And for those of you who don’t know, you can go and Google the videos on this because they’re so stinking hilarious, but just a pattern interrupt, right? Just not outrageous, but different would be the advertising of some of these brands like Poo-Pourri right. Like that is just enough where it’s got personality to the brand. So you kind of fall in love with the personality of these people who were behind Poo-Pourri, which is like, you know, the spray that you spray on the toilet before you, you know, go to the bathroom, but the commercials are hilarious and they’re like these like mini series, like it’s, it’s not your typical 32nd commercial. They’re like three minutes. And it tells this whole storyline and you’re like, I got to see what happens next. What, what are they going to do?

AJV (07:27):

What are they going to say? And then the other one is the Squatty potty, right? It’s like that thing, which you put your feet on. I don’t know why are these are all about in the bathroom, but they’re so hilarious. And it kinda like gets you trapped in, and you’re no longer even paying attention to the product. You’re paying attention to the story. So it’s a true, you know, pattern interrupt. But that doesn’t mean it’s so outrageous that, you know, no one else could do it, that it’s just different enough that it catches your attention in a new way. So asking yourself, like, what is everyone in my industry doing? And then just think about how could I do it or talk about it or communicate it just a little bit differently. And I, I won’t go on a tangent on this because I could, but I thought about one of our clients and I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing the story.

AJV (08:16):

But one of our clients, his name is Matthew Davis and he’s an attorney, right. So he’s a lawyer and he’s got a law firm in Oklahoma. And, but here’s what I love about it is like, he’s also this like old school, like gun metal rocker. Right. So it’s like, you know, like eighties hair and like hardcore, like, you know, like I think about like seventies rock but just like Jammin, right? So I’m like white snake. And that’s like, that’s a huge party, like who he is deeply then this like professional, like white shirt and tie. And so they’ve got this whole new idea of talking about the lawyer. And they’re going to make all these hilarious, like, you know, F the law stuff. And I just think like, part of that is like, well, that is not what you would expect from the typical normal everyday attorney. Right. But it’s like just enough different where he’s infusing his personality. They’re not trying to be outrageous. They’re just living into how they’re already different and infusing that into their business. So a couple of rants there, but I thought those were all very relevant of you don’t have to be outrageous to be very different.

RV (09:24):

Yeah. That’s a good distinction. I, I, I made it, hadn’t made a note of that. My second takeaway was just kind of related to the first thing, but was that the brain immediately processes something as threat opportunity or ignorable, like threat opportunity or ignorable. And if you just think about like your website or your social posts or the start of your video, and you just go, okay, step back, detach yourself from the content for a second. And just look at the thing that you’re creating and ask yourself, is, are people going to see this as a threat and opportunity or an ignorable? And, and for most of us, you know, personal brands, we’re living in that space of opportunity. We want them to see opportunity. We want to, to quickly tell them what is in it for them, so that the viewer hears it.

RV (10:20):

And you know, this is, I recently heard a, an advanced training on like growing your YouTube channel. And this was one of the things that they were talking about is that basically the start, like the first seven seconds out of your mouth on a YouTube channel should be something like, Hey, welcome in this video, you’re going to learn blankety, blankety, blankety blank, and three reasons why you shouldn’t blankety, blankety blank, stay tuned, and we’ll get, you know, stick around. And then you go into the trailer and think, and so they’re like immediately hitting people with that opportunity. I think of the title tests that we teach at brand builders group to our, to our clients in our phase one course, one brain finding your brand DNA event. We talk about why most titles are terrible and it’s, it is very much connected to this conversation with Mike about just going, you have to demonstrate within milliseconds how, what you’re communicating is an opportunity for the viewer, for the reader, for the listener. And it’s very simple, but it’s, it’s super, super difficult. And you just, you just gotta be intentional about it.

AJV (11:26):

Yeah, no, I think that’s really good. You really went on like the science brain.

RV (11:31):

I know. Yeah. I was on the, I was in the nerdy. I was nerding out over this. I was like, Ooh, I like this.

AJV (11:37):

That’s awesome. Okay, so this is my last one. I’ll make it short and sweet since my other ones were really long. But it was he asked a simple question, like, what’s your number one source of lead generation. And for most small business, it’s word of mouth and words. It’s somewhat reactive, not a whole lot of proactive. And I think this is really true. It’s like even in our business, you know, ad say we’re just exiting our start-up mode from brand builders group. We’re three years in. And most definitely a hundred percent of the business that we have garnered in the last three years has come from word of mouth, through affiliates or clients or through friends and family and past clients. But it’s definitely been word of mouth. And here we are three years in and we’ve built an awesome, you know, multi seven-figure business off of word of mouth, but probably to go to the next level, we’re going to have to do something else.

AJV (12:31):

So it’s like, at what point do you prepare yourself to move from this reactive? You’re just doing such a good job. Everyone is talking about it to no. Now I’m intentionally going after growing and expanding, scaling my business with intentional proactive marketing. And if you really want to grow, then you’d have the responsibility to market. And if you believe in what you do, then you have the responsibility to go out and tell people about it. Right. And I think a lot of people very much put marketing off to the side of like, oh, we’re, we’re, we’re doing just fine. We’re going to let it grow organically. And I think that there’s no problem with that. And then there’s another school of thought of, well, if you really believe in what you do so much, that you think it helps and you think it changes lives, then you have the responsibility to get out there and make sure people know about it. And I think there’s, you know, somewhere in between is where a happy medium is probably where you should be. But I also believe that it’s like, you know, if what you do really helps, then it is your job to get out and tell people about it. I E marketing.

RV (13:34):

Yeah. That’s I think a marketing is just like one of those things. It’s a skill you have to learn to do it. You’ve got to do it consistently. You got to choose to do it over and over. And yeah. I think what you said there AIJ is so true. It’s like, so to scale, at some point you got to extend beyond just the, just the word of mouth. When I think about marketing lessons that we’ve learned which is also my third takeaway here, because Mike reminded me of it was that in your marketing, you have to tell people exactly what to do. Like the marketing cannot just be like brand awareness or impressions. You have to include a direct call to action, which would say, you know, make sure you like, make sure you follow, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share, leave a comment, register, click this link, sign up, go like you have to include the actual instruction and the order and the command because otherwise people don’t do it. And it just because you, they have to be told exactly what you want them to do. So don’t just tell them who you are, tell them what you want them to. And that’s a big, that’s a big thing that I’m trying to focus more on. And cause you see like all the top marketers are doing that all the time. They’re very clear with what’s the instruction that they are, they are driving with their audience. So on that

AJV (15:06):

Of you who are listening, what we want you to do is go and subscribe to the podcast, the influential personal brand podcast. Here’s what you need to do. Subscribe, make it very clear, just like that,

RV (15:20):

Just like that. And if you haven’t yet requested a call with our team, go to free brand, call.com and request a call with our team. And we can start working with you formally on, on crafting your custom personal brand strategy plan to help you build and monetize your, your impact in your influence. So check that out. Also keep coming back every single week. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand. Bye-Bye.