Ep 149: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Rory Vaden is here, Roland solo. Again, we’ve had some weather challenges around town and we’ve had a crazy time trying to get coverage for the babies. And so mama CEO, AJ is off helping manage a million things. And so I’m solo on this recap edition, but this is an important one. Bob Glazer is the episode that we’re breaking down. If you didn’t go listen to that, make sure that you do, because Bob tells the story and talks about the story that we know we should do. We, we hear about it.
We kind of know intuitively off. I’m going to build my personal brand. I should write more and I need to write, and I’m not writing enough and I’m writing, but I don’t like it and it’s not working. And he tells that story about why it matters. And you can’t hear it. You just, you can’t hear it enough. I mean, it’s, it’s just about impossible. I think, to build a personal brand without having to, at some point master the written word. I mean, even if you are a video personality, like even if you’re a TV personality, there is something there is, at some point comes along in your journey where it’s like, you have to write a book. People want the book that you’re writing articles, you’re writing copy, of course, for your emails and for your website and marketing copy. But I think this, the idea of writing articles and just the power of the written word is so important because one reason is because of Google because of search engine optimization, the written word can be indexed and searched and shared and reviewed quickly and highlighted.
And you can go to specific points like you can’t, you can’t do that with videos. It’s, it’s really hard, you know, without going, Hey, go watch this video at minute one, you know, 10 minute, seven seconds, 38 seconds in, right? Like people don’t do it. And, and, and Google and the search engines, don’t, don’t yet fully index and you know, track. And it’s just not the, not the, the way of the digital world. So the written word is really important. It always has been important. I think it will always be important. And, and Robert is talking about how you can use the written word to grow your personal brand. It is free traffic. It is trustworthy reputation building. I mean, to this day, when people say, Rory, how do I become a speaker? Like, how do I get hired to speak? Like how, how do you get these gigs where you’re standing on stage in front of all of these people.
I want to do that. How do you do it? It’s very simple. I always tell them that the, it has never changed. The number one reason that people hire you to speak is because they have seen you speak. That is number one, right? We talk about all of that in world-class presentation craft in that course, and then also full keynote calendar. Those are our two courses. One is the artist speaking, the other’s, the businesses speaking our events, our courses that we teach, but the other, the number two reason, which is why I’m bringing it up here. The number two reason why or how you get booked to speak is because someone has read something that you have written, right? So number one is they saw you speak. They said, Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I need you to come do that for my people, for my audience.
But number two is they read it and they said, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like, this is what I need. My, my people, my audience, my, my fans, my customers, they all need to see this. Like, can you come and do it? And, and so the written word is powerful and, and the written word is the currency and the backbone and the spine of search engine optimization, which is, is like the core of, of digital marketing, right? And, and, and, and content marketing in the written word. And so this is just an important to hear about someone who has built their personal brand, mostly from the written word. And, and it’s, it’s really powerful. So anyways, here’s my top three, my top three takeaways for you and for myself, just as, as a recap, right?
So the first one, which
Is not unique, it’s not unique to this interview, and it’s not unique to Bob or to me, but you need to hear it. I’m going to say it because we need to hear it all the time is that it starts by asking, how can I deliver value for my eyes?
Like
That is the Genesis y’all
Of how this works is if you are not
Sitting and soaking and praying and meditating and focusing on how can I create more value for my audience,
Your brand,
Isn’t going to make it, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to get consumed with all the noise you’re going to get frustrated. Like, because if it’s all about you and your vanity metrics and your growth and your money and your, you know, your sense of fame or importance, like it’s going to burn out and, and re the written word, especially, you know, I loved, I loved what, what Robert said, where he said, look, I’ve been doing this for five years. And I figured out writing rewards the long game. It rewards the long game that, that search engine optimization as a hockey stick, right? Like it’s slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow spike. And that’s just, that’s the name of this game. Like, and it’s not just writing that, it’s all this stuff. It’s, it’s producing your videos on YouTube with eight views and 12 views and 20 views and 30 views.
And it’s like, the reason that more people don’t make it is not because their content is bad. It’s because they give up. Right. It’s because it’s discouraging. When you look at the numbers, it’s discouraging. When you go, gosh, I’ve been doing this for a year. I’ve been doing this for two years. I feel like nobody’s watching, nobody’s paying attention. And, and you know, that is, that is the path. But, but like, everybody dies on that path. And the first one or two years, there’s few people left when you get to your four and five and six and 10. And, and those are the ones you see and you go, Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. I want to be you. But it’s like the 10 years before, you know, at least five, I mean, don’t get discouraged in year one or two. And people, some of, some of us, like some of y’all get discouraged after three months.
And you’re like, ah, I’ve been posting videos every day on social media for three months. And now I, you know, I’ve got a hundred followers and it’s like, don’t even look, don’t even look until a year has gone by. And this is why being serviced centered matters, matters so much. Because if you’re, if you’re self centered in this pursuit, if, if your personal brand is really about you, it’s really about your ego. It’s really about your followers. It’s really about your money. It’s really about you feeling important and dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, if it is self centered, you’re going to burn out because you’re either going to hack your way there. And it’s going to be fake by doing all sorts of crazy stuff, or it’s going to be a slow build, and you’re going to go, man, I’ve been doing this for two years.
I’m not sure it’s working. And it’s like, if you feel that way, guess what it’s working because for everyone else who’s been on this journey, they tell the story, you listen to every single episode we do. Like all, all of us have the same story. And, and, and even for me, like, it’s so frustrating. Cause I already paid my dues once. Like I already, I already went on this journey and then started over. Right? So I mean, we, we exited a company and there were a number of things that went along with that. But, but the net impact is I had to start over. Like I just started my social media from scratch. I just start my blog from scratch, how to start my website from scratch, like start over. It is painful. And, and, and here’s what Robert said that I loved. He said, you know, I’ve been doing this for five years.
I’ve still never found a hack. And gosh, that’s so important to hear because I feel the same way I’ve been doing this for so long. I haven’t found a hack, right? The hack is provide a lot of value for a really, really long time. Like, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you need to hear it and you need to hear it every single week. And I don’t care if that’s, it. It’s like one of the top three takeaways from every single episode that you hear, we’re going to bring it up every time because we know how frustrating it is and how discouraging and how lonely and how empty and how hopeless it can feel and how you can be overwhelmed. And, and just beaten down that like, Oh, I’m putting in all this work. I’m spending this all this time. I’m putting in all this money.
Does it matter? And, and, and you have to be centered in service. You have to go, yes, it matters if only to one person, right? Like you have to stay grounded in that. And if you do it catches, it’s a snowball. It’s exponential. It’s a hockey stick. You know, like it is all of those things, but it starts by saying, and, and staying centered in how can I deliver value for my audience? You gotta live in that. You gotta, you gotta remind yourself of that. You can never forget that. It, it, it’s just, that’s the nature of the beast here. And, and it’s good. It’s good for our, it’s good for our ego. Like, it’s, it’s good to be reminded. Like, it’s not about your views and your comments and your likes and your engagement and your followers and your money and your duh. It’s like, it’s good to be reminded of like, no, I’m focusing on the one person who’s gonna read this.
I don’t care if one person watches this video, or one person reads this article. Like I’m doing it for that one person. And I am, I am doing it because I feel called in my life that, that there is some message inside of me that I feel called to share. And it is irrespective and independent of how many millions of people or how many zeroes of people ever see it. Because I feel called, which means there is one person out there that needs to see this. And that is why I do it. Not for vanity, not for likes, not for followers, not for comments, not for money, not for any false sense of importance or influence, but because I feel in my heart that there is a message that I was put on this earth to deliver, and I’m going to follow that prompting. And I will do it for as long as it takes, even if no one shows up that is the commitment that you gotta make.
And you gotta make it as a writer, as a speaker, as a content creator, as a podcast, host and producer at like, as a, as a, as a video producer, like whatever form of content it is that you just got to make it. And I’m telling you like, that is the battle. We have all of these amazing techniques and strategies that we teach and they frigging work. Like they’re really, really good, but nothing replaces that. So make sure you stay centered in that. Okay. Very good. My second takeaway this one, I don’t like as much, this one I don’t like as much was that sensationalism isn’t clickbait. Ah, I don’t like this one as much, but it’s a takeaway because it’s true. This one is also true this Sox, but it’s like, man, there is just a part of this that there’s just a game that you have to play to, to get ahold of people’s attention.
Like it’s, it’s weird, right? To say in this almost in the same breath, as you gotta be focused on your audience, which is, is still a hundred percent true, but it’s like to say that the vanity stuff doesn’t matter. And then to turn around and go, you know what? You have to not be afraid of a little bit of sensationalism. I don’t like it, but gosh, it’s true. It’s true. The data is true. It’s indisputable. People respond to all that crap. They, they, they do it’s it’s it’s it’s and, and here’s the way that I wrap my mind around, around being okay, to embrace a little sensationalism. Cause, cause y’all, I’m resistant to this, like this is not me. Like this is not the, this is not the way we play it at brand builders group, we’re playing the long game. We’re bringing value.
Our strategy is reputation. Our strategy is trust. Our strategy is, is ethical and honest and, and integrity. Like it is all of those things. And part of that is just going like, look, I mean, I think the way Robert said it, which hit me hard was he’s like people don’t click on the warm cup of tea titles. They don’t like, they just don’t. And, and the hard part is going, okay. We need to be willing to put out our content regardless of how many people are watching it. But at the same time, it’s like, we also have to be doing everything in our power at the marketing game. Like we have to do everything in our power to like communicate truth and honesty and integrity. But we also have to do everything in our power on the marketing game, because there’s a bunch of scam artists out there that we’re competing against a bunch of, there’s a bunch of negative images.
I mean, I would go so far as to say the devil is out there using every tool in his power to, to communicate false lies and propaganda and trash and, and negativity. And it’s like part of we got up, we got to stand up and go, you know what? I’m going to master marketing. Like I’m going to learn marketing. I’m going to do it because not because of the vanity for me, but because it’s like, if I’m going to, if I’m going to change lives, if I’m going to reach souls, if I’m going to impact people, I gotta be in front of people. Like if no, one’s reading the article, it’s not, it’s not doing any good. If nobody’s seeing it now I should be willing to do it. Whether there’s one person seeing it or a thousand, that’s what I just got to saying.
But at the same time, it’s like, I also want you to fight and scratch and claw and hustle and go, all right, how do we, how do we get in front of more people? Remember the reputation, formula results times reach equals reputation. Reach matters, reach matters. So there’s no, there’s no replacing the long game there there’s there there’s. We don’t want to be flash in the pan. We don’t want to be gimmicky. We don’t want to be empty promises. We don’t want to be over promise under deliver. We want to be substance. We want to be truth. We want to be valued. We want to be solid. We want to be honest. We want to be content, but we also need to have good packaging and a good wrapper and good marketing strategy and good and good tactics and good promotion because people, people got to find us.
And so when he was saying sensationalism, we’re talking about titles specifically where he said, sensationalism, isn’t the same as clickbait. And here’s how I processed. Here’s how I made sense of this because clickbait here’s, here’s what I, when I think of clickbait, what I think of clickbait as clickbait is bait and switch. So what is bait and switch bait and switch says, you know, click here to see a picture of, you know, Brad Pitt’s abs, and then you click here and it’s, it’s not a picture of Brad. Pitt’s abs it’s a, it’s a picture of, you know, it’s, it’s an article for how to buy my, you know, something that that’s, that is clickbait it’s bait and switch. It’s I Lou, are you here with one thing? And then I give you something that is other than that thing. It is not that thing to me, that is really when people say clickbait it’s bait and switch.
I do want to give people bait. I want to, I want to set a hook. I want to give them an appetizer. You know, the way that I think about it is like, when you go through the food court at the mall, they give you a bite of chicken, you know, honest toothpick, and they hand it to you and they go here, you know, it’s a sample, right? So they, they, they, they get you to salivate. They get you, your wedding, their appetite, your, your, your drawing, their interests. You do have to do that. And some of that is, I mean, he uses the word sensationalism. I, I, I hesitate, you know, for me, I’m just so reluctant to take it all the way that far, but, but maybe, maybe I need to be more aggressive. I mean, frankly, maybe this is why my brands my, you know, have grown slower than, than they could have is cause I haven’t embraced this.
Cause it’s like, I’ll tell you this, for sure. There is some other person out there that is not providing as much value who doesn’t have the depth of expertise, who is a lot more slimy and shady and unethical and they’re getting clicks, right? Like they’re getting the attention because they’re, they’re unafraid to just bait people in. And so that’s part of what you’re competing against. Right? And so the good people we got to learn to compete here a little bit. Like we gotta be willing to, to, to play the game, not in bait and switch, but in bait and deliver. Right? So that would be my theme here is rather than bait and switch bait and deliver. But I want you to bait, you got to set the bait, right? Like you, you got to hook them in there’s you can’t just throw a hook in the water and have no bait on it.
Like the fish aren’t biting. There’s God, there’s got to be bait there, but it’s not bait and switch it’s bait and deliver. In fact, it’s really bait and over deliver, right? That’s what we want. Not bait and switch bait and over deliver. That is what it’s after. But you gotta, you gotta, you gotta bait. You gotta be good at the bait. Like it’s just an, it’s a necessary part of this. And I wouldn’t even say it’s a necessary evil it’s it is just simply necessary that we are, we are battling for attention span. Like there is a battle that the especially the digital world is, is, is a, is a, is a 24, seven, three 65 battle for attention span. And, and, and we are in a battle. We are competing for people’s attention. And if you have valuable ideas, if you have good ideas, if you have worthwhile products, if, if you have substance, if you have truth, if you have integrity, if you have honesty, then you also be it.
You have to be willing to fight that battle, to get those people over there. What good is it? If you have the cure for cancer and nobody knows about it, not good, you gotta, you gotta be willing, but bait and deliver, not bait and switch. So sensationalism me. I mean, I might not, I might not sign off on that and give that the official brand builders stamp or Rory Vaden stamp, but I, I would sign off on, on bait and deliver. All right. So do what you have to do to get the viewers and the readers w you know, within reason, but you need to learn how to create better subject lines. You need to work to create better titles, which is my third takeaway. Okay. So my third takeaway was I actually went back through all my notes from this interview and just, you know, was, was trying to create a a list of great article titles.
Now, if you’ve been through our brand DNA event, our course, or our first course, or you’ve been through captivating content in both of those courses, we teach something called the five title tests, which is how to title your, your products okay. That you know, is kind of similar. But this list, this list is different. This list is for articles specifically, this is titling your blog articles and stuff, which, you know, I also think you can afford to be a little more Beatty with articles because they’re not as permanent as a book title or a coaching program title, or a course title. Right. That’s something like you’re going to live with for awhile. So but here’s, here’s some of the things that, that, that, that Robert threw out.
Ep 147: Exactly What to Say to Sell High Dollar Offers with Phil M Jones | Recap Episode
We are back with a recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Talking about one of my favorite things to talk about, selling. One of the reasons I love to talk about selling is because everybody does it wrong. They either don’t do it, or they do it wrong. And I have some very pointed philosophies about the right way in the wrong way to sell. And I have to say, you know, this, this interview with Phil M Jones, who I’ve never interviewed before. I was so happy about we met, I don’t know, you know, several months ago at this point, but we haven’t been longtime friends. I’ve heard about him. And there’s a lot of stuff that is taught on the profession and the art of selling that I flat out disagree with that I don’t like that I, I don’t subscribe to and that I don’t follow.
And that AAJ doesn’t believe in that we don’t deploy with our team. I think we sell in a very non-traditional way. I would, I would call it a much more modern way than how most people sell, which is just, you know, it’s not about all the tactics and the pressure and the, you know, just pressure. Let’s just call it, leave it at that. And so getting to talk with Phil was great because I was so impressed at how much we aligned philosophically on a topic that a lot of times just don’t align with people on. And so anyways, it’s a fantastic interview of, of course he has that wonderful accent to listen to, and you know, make sure that you, you go back and listen to it, but I want to give you my, my highlights is always getting to play the role of student here, listening from Phil who’s, you know, done has helped so many people.
And, and he’s got a great thing going with exactly what to say. And I think a lot of these things were reinforcements for me because I don’t really talk sales that much anymore. Not, not like direct tactical, like one-on-one selling, but that was, that was where my upbringing came from. I mean, that was how I started in business. I mean, I, I started going door to door. I mean, it doesn’t get much more like old school hardcore selling than that. I mean, in terms of dealing with the rejection and, and whatnot. And so I love this, and it’s been a long time since I’ve, I’ve talked about this and, you know, we have an event coming up you know, a new curriculum that we’re developing this year that is on sales specifically in selling high dollar offers, because we’re realizing that gosh, all of our personal brand, you know, clients need this help of, of what to say and, and how to have a one-on-one conversation that leads to a credit card.
And so we’re diving into this more, although we’ve left it alone for, you know, the last few years. And so it was great, you know, to, to do this with Phil and, and just walk you through my three, my three big takeaways, obviously you may have noticed AJ is not here today. So I’m filling in rolling, rolling solo. You got the, you know, I’m your, I’m your guy for today, which is a shame by the way, because AJ flat out is the single greatest salesperson that I have ever met. She is extraordinary. And she is so client-centric and, and so service centric and, and is just the epitome. I think of all things of what a great professional sales person should look like. And she outsold all of the top salespeople that I’ve ever known and ever been around. And so at some point we’ll have to get AJ back here to do an episode.
Maybe we’ll do a special episode on selling or maybe I’ll just interview her, her because it’s, it’s, she’s incredible. Well, but anyways, to break down the takeaways from Phil M Jones and who I really enjoyed learning from here they are. So number one and all of these, by the way, all of these are mental. And that’s what I have found this to be true about selling in general, the reason that people struggle with sales is not because of technical training. It is because of mental conditioning, their mind doesn’t think of it, about selling in the right way. And all three of these takeaways for me, kind of fall in suit with that. So, number one, and this is a mindset thing that you got to realize if, if you’re the sales person, no is not the enemy. Indecision is the enemy.
Somebody telling you no is not a bad thing. No means it’s not a fit. No means we don’t have a match. No means not right now. No means this, this, this, isn’t what I’m looking for. All of those things allow you to move forward in a powerful way to know what to do. Next indecision is the enemy in decision is what keeps us stuck in decision is unacceptable. Both for you and get this for your prospect, right? If somebody tells me no, I can move on. But if someone tells me, maybe I am stuck, I am not moving forward. Like I can’t move on. And, and I, you know, I, I can’t move. I can’t move onto something else. I am literally just stuck until they make a decision, which means I’m playing cat and mouse. I’m chasing them down. Right. And so many salespeople are afraid of the word, know that we do everything that we can to avoid the word.
No. And instead we set ourselves up for maybe. And what I would encourage you to do is set yourself up to hear no so that you don’t hear maybe a yes is good. Like a, yes is great. A yes is what we’re going for. Yes. This is what we want, but at no is fine. I know it’s okay. I know it’s not bad. I know is not the enemy, but in decision, Ooh, indecision is no way. No indecision is not good. Indecision is not acceptable because not only does it keep you as the sales person stuck, right. I don’t know whether to like celebrate and get this client activated or to, to, you know, close up shop and move on and go find someone else I’m like stuck in this limbo. I can’t move forward, but it’s not just about you. It’s and more importantly, it’s not about you.
It’s about them. It is a disservice to allow someone to tell you, maybe it is a disservice to them. Why? Because they can’t move forward either. Right? Like if they tell you, yes, it’s like, great. Let’s do this, right. If like, you know, just to use us as our company, brand builders group, as an example, since that’s a frame of reference, right? Like if someone says, I am ready for personal, I want to take my personal brand to the next level. I’m ready to grow. I’m ready to monetize. I’m ready to like build my speaking career, launch my book, you know, whatever, become a bestseller. Right? My Ted talk, like build out my digital marketing system and they go, you know what? Brand builders, I like you, I believe in you, I’m on board. Let’s do this then. Great. They can move forward. We can move forward.
That’s exciting if they say no, right. If they go, Hey, you know what? I don’t think you’re the right firm for me. Okay. No problem. You know what this, you know, I’m not going to, I’m just not going to move forward with my personal brand at this time, period. Okay. No problem. You know what? I’ve decided to do some, do something else fine. But if they say, you know what, let me think about it. That is terrible because that means they’re stuck. They’re not moving forward. They’re there. They’re not moving forward with us getting into action mode. And like, let’s do this. Let’s go. Or they’re not moving forward with someone else. It’s like their dream isn’t moving forward. Their dream is stagnant. Their dream is stuck because you have allowed them. The indulgence of that’s no good your job. And then this is, so then I’ll say this is a second tech.
So the first takeaway is realizing no is not the enemy, right? No. Is an inevitable byproduct of getting to yes, no happens because not everyone is a perfect fit for what you do. No is a necessary part of, of the process. But, but maybe is no good. We don’t want maybe yes, yes is great. No is fine. Maybe not good. Keeps them stuck. Keeps you stuck. Which leads me to the second big takeaway from that chat with Phil, which is just the way that you think about what you do is sales. If you, and here’s what it is, I’ll give you the takeaway selling is about helping people make smart decisions. That’s the way that that’s the way that Phil said it. Helping people make smart decisions. I would just say selling is about helping people make the right decision for themselves, not for you, but either way.
It’s about helping people make decisions. Why? Because people need help making decisions. That’s why like people struggle with procrastination. That’s why I wrote my take the stairs book. Like procrastination is something that we all struggle with and, and take the stairs was all about helping people overcome it. Because even in our own life, we naturally default to inaction. I mean, we live that the escalator mentality is pervasive it by subconscious. It happens automatically. We default to inaction. So in order to help someone change their life in order to help someone get something different in order for somebody’s life, to be better than it was, they’re better tomorrow than it was yesterday. There has to be some change in action. And my job as a salesperson is not to take something that they don’t want and use magical words to convince them they should get it.
That’s not ethical persuasion. We believe in ethical persuasion that isn’t ethical, taking some convincing somebody to get something that they don’t want, or they don’t need is unethical. That is taking advantage of them. That is using the psychology of influence. It’s using the principles of persuasion in a negative way. We are not on board with that. I don’t care how much commission you make from it. We’re not a fan. We’re not on board. And our sales team knows they better not sell anything to somebody that isn’t a fit for us because that’s just not what we believe in. But we do believe that people need help making decisions. They need help navigating uncertainty to arrive at a place about what is good for them. And sometimes that means they, you need to look them right between the eye and you need to tell them to their face.
You should buy this because it’s the right decision for them. Not for you. It’s all about them. It is helping them in a standing in service of them, standing in a place of helping them achieve their goals, their best interests. That is what ethical persuasion is all about. That is what we believe in. But, but know this. It’s not an excuse for you to WiSci out as a salesperson. All right. Sometimes it means it. Sometimes it does mean pushing them a little bit and saying, this is a good thing for you. You’re saying you want this, right? You’re saying you have a dream of inspiring millions of people. You’re saying that you want to make money to have a lifestyle business, teaching what you know, and doing what you love. You’re saying that you believe that we have answers for it. Then you’re telling me that you have the money. Let’s do this. Let’s go. You need to do this. That’s different than, than, than talking them into something that they don’t want, but people need help making decisions.
I would say that as a professional salesperson, your job isn’t to be a pro a smooth talker. Your job is to be an expert listener. And it is to help people figure out what do they want? What do they need? Where are they? What’s the gap between where they are and where they’re trying to go and help them make a good decision. And if that decision does not include you or your product or your service, you should be okay with that use, you should be willing and be okay with people telling you no. And in fact, you should not want the wrong people to tell you, yes, you should not hope for the peop the people who aren’t the right fit to give you money, because that doesn’t help you. What you need is the people who are the right fit to give you money, because they will take action.
They will do the thing that you have because it’s an alignment with what they need. And so they will get results and they will, and it will work and they will be grateful and they will be happy. And they will refer you people. What you don’t want is just a bunch of people you took advantage of because you talked them into it. That’s not what you want. Even though in the short term, it’s like that pays you money. That’s not really what you want. That’s not how you build lasting reputation. So what you’re looking for here is mutually agreeable outcomes, which is, you know, I think that’s the term that Phil used mutually agreeable outcomes. And I hundred percent agree. That is what we’re after now. Sometimes people, you know, sales, like sometimes the customer will talk you into doing stuff you don’t do.
We’re not a fan of that either, just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should, like, we’re not a fan of selling a custom solution to every single person. Right? We have some offerings and it’s like, if our offering isn’t a fit, even though you need our expertise, if it, if you want it in some other way, like we don’t do it. Then, you know, like brand builders, we do one-on-one coaching. Like that’s like our lane, we do it. You know, we have our events, which, but those are a part of one-on-one coaching. And even at our events, our events are so small because we put people in round table groups, they get one-on-one coaching at, in their round table groups. So like, one-on-one is what makes us as a part of what makes us unique. So, you know, there is a range of acceptability of which we will kind of bend and flex, but at some point it’s like, you offer, you have what you have.
And people either are a fit for that, or they are not. And if they’re not, you gotta be okay with that. But it’s mutually agreeable outcomes, right? What works for you as the provider, right? Like this is what you have to offer. And then it’s like, what does the client need? If that’s a match, we have a win. If it’s not a match, then it’s disjointed. It’s disconnected on either side and it should be a no, right? Like we don’t believe that you should try to sell every single person you talk to necessarily. We believe that you’re looking for the right fit. You’re looking for the right match. Because just because you can sell them, if you know, on the back end, what you deliver, isn’t what they need. Like, you’re, you’re gonna win in the short term, but you’re going to lose in the long-term.
So help people make smart decisions. We’re looking for mutually agreeable outcomes. It’s, it’s more like we’re looking for a match, right? It’s almost like dating. It’s like, we’re looking for compatibility more than we’re looking for manipulation or conviction convincing. Or, you know, even though we talk about like with digital marketing, we’re always talking about conversion. That still should be a win-win. It’s not about magically taking somebody who should be a no and turning them to the, yes. We don’t consider that a victory. What we consider a victory, right? It’s not a win, lose thing. If sales is a win lose, like I beat you. I got you. Right. That is not what we believe in that is not ethical. Persuasion. Sales should be a win-win thing. It’s right. And not even that, it’s really just a win. If it’s a win for the customer, it’s a win.
Right. But there’s no way the customer ever loses. And then that’s a win. What, what is the right thing as what is the best thing for them? If that happens to include us, then that is awesome, right? Like we’re of course we’re excited about that. But our job is not to coerce people. Our job is to serve people. Our job is to help them make decisions. And if you can flip that switch in your brain, you won’t have call reluctance. You won’t have fear. There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. You only feel fear when you feel pressure to convince somebody of something. Well, you know, if I have to convince you of something against your will, that’s combative. That is confrontational. That is conflict. Yeah. There’s, there’s pressure there. But if all I have to do is serve you. Right.
And it’s like, I’m bringing you food. And it’s like, do you like it? Yes or no. If so, here it is. If not, no, you don’t. It’s like, there’s no personal rejection in that. It’s just service. Like that is a big, an important switch. And then the third takeaway, which if you didn’t, you got to listen to that interview with Phil all the way to the end, because at the end we got into like some very specifics about marketing. Like you know, we’re talking about keynotes specifically. And I mean, to, to his, to his brand, he gave some really great one-liners of exactly what to say and, you know, selling yourself as a speaker. So this would apply. I think this was what we were talking about selling high-dollar keynotes, right? Because Phil and I are both in a, in a pretty top tier keynote fee range, but this would apply to selling a high dollar coaching program, selling high dollar consulting, selling any high dollar offer, selling high dollar or you know, medical services, right?
Like any, any high dollar offer. And, and here’s what, here’s what he said. He said, remember when you’re selling a speech, because that was the context, it’s not just about selling your content. It is your content plus their circumstances. And I would probably modify that ever so slightly. I would just say, it’s your content applied to their circumstances, right? Like that’s a part of what the artful selling is specifically with it. Anything that’s like information marketing related or thought leadership related or con you know, consultancy related is it’s not just, Hey, I’m, I’m an expert on blank. It’s, you’re struggling with this. And here’s how I think my expertise would apply. It’s more like we’re working together to, as a team, to help in a, in a partnership to help me apply, you know, what I’m doing to your situation, to help your people again, it’s, it’s like we’re working together for your benefit.
That’s what selling is. It’s not me convincing you, that you need what I have. It’s it’s me working with you to figure out, can we take what I have and make your life better? That’s the difference that is ethical persuasion. And I would say that is professional persuasion. Like that is what the best elite sales performers on the planet do because they get so many referrals and they have so much reputation. Like you become a top producer, not just by being a great producer for one conversation or one year. It happens over time because you develop a reputation and a confidence and an air for knowing like, I know who should buy and who shouldn’t. And I am a consumer, like I am consultant. I’m trusted. I have expertise. Not only in what I do, but expertise in helping people determine about whether or not I’m the right fit for them.
And that takes time. So it’s your content, your expertise applied to their circumstances, right? To their it’s, to their goals, to their dreams, to their future. It’s not about you. It’s all about them. That is what ethical persuasion is all about. And that is how you take the pressure off yourself. There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. So next time you’re in a high dollar selling situation. Make sure you’re not thinking about what you want and your commission. And are you saying the right thing? Just focus on service. That’s all we’ve got today for the into influential, personal brand podcast recap. We’ll catch you next time. Stay tuned.
Ep 145: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview and the recap with Eric Dahan and I’m rolling solo, no wifey and CEO. AJ on this one. She’s out traveling, but I am fascinated with this interview with Eric, because if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, I mean, this is guy who has an agency and also developing software that is specifically sourcing influencers to pair them up with his corporate clients. These companies who have money to spend on advertising and they are recognizing the power of micro influencers. And in his case, they’re not all micro-influencers. There, there are lots of bigger ones. But this is amazing. I mean, this is, I like the first thing that jumps out to me about this interview, which is not part of like what my takeaway is, but it’s, it’s just something for you to realize and was something for me to realize is like, this is really incredible.
That big brands and big companies are looking to for the most part every day, average normal people. I mean influencers, but micro influencers and paying money. They’ve got budgets, they’re hiring companies like Eric’s to go out and do the research and source people to say, this person is reaching our audience and showing up with real money to pay you, not, not the radio stations, not the people who own the billboards, not the people who own the TV commercials. You know, not the people with the who own the magazines, but that you, an individual person quote unquote an influencer, whether or not you think of yourself that way, but just you as a messenger and someone serving and cultivating an audience that you have the power to monetize that audience by way of the, the most classic. And this is what’s fascinating is in the one way, this is so new is it’s just the idea of micro influencers in two other ways.
It’s as old as time one is paying for celebrity endorsements, right? So we all understand that we would expect, you know, Brad Pitt to get paid a ton of money to be in a commercial. So we understand the concept of celebrity endorsements, both what’s new is it’s like it’s the local celebrity, the super local hyper niche, like micro influencer celebrity. So we kind of understand the concept, but it’s at a much more granular level, which is powerful, but then you also have the dichotomy of the, the age old, most pure form of advertising. There is companies paying to put their brand, their message, their, their commercial, their product placement in front of viewers in front of listeners in front of eyes and ears to get the message out. And that vehicle, that model has existed ever since there was media, right? Like pretty much ever, ever since there has been the, the modality of TV or radio or newspaper or print or magazine, like, and, and even probably before that, right, is just the idea that companies will pay and they have budgets to pay.
They, they have advertising as a part of the way that they function and they grow their business and they’ve got money to spend and they’re willing to spend that money in whatever vehicle gets their brand in front of their people and these micro influencers, which is you and it’s me. I mean, it could be at which, which is amazing to think of that even though you don’t, you know, you might not be a huge media company and you might not have hundreds of thousands of followers or even tens of thousands of followers, but that you can do a better job of reaching their core market in some ways, then like a national TV commercial, because they are captive. And I found, you know, this is powerful for me as an author. And as you know, somebody who is is an influencer, like being on other people’s podcasts, we see more direct response from that than we do from national TV and from major national hits.
Not, not always, sometimes, you know, the major national hits are huge. They have major, major impact, but sometimes, you know, I can think of one time specifically where I was on a major national morning TV show. And it was like, I literally don’t know that a single person saw it. I mean, I know they did, but we got like zero response, zero, like speaking leads, zero customer coaching requests, zero, you know, book us for this podcast, appearance, zero like tweets and comments. It was other than friends and family being like, Oh, Hey, I saw you. And no notable increase in book sales. And so brands and companies are waking up to this idea that, that the local person has influence, which is what has always been word of mouth, but now it is you and it is measurable and it’s trackable and it’s repeatable and scalable and predictable.
And that is fascinating to me. And somebody like Eric is out there living on the, you know, on the bleeding edge of this emerging space. So I just thought that was amazing in general, just to kind of realize and contextualize this interview with Eric of, of what this means. And, and if you’re new to this, if you’ve never heard of this, this concept is called influencer marketing and it is about getting brand deals. And that is what this is all about. So if you want brand deals, let’s talk about my three biggest takeaways from Eric, somebody who’s living in this all day every day. So number one, biggest takeaway of all don’t fake it, right? Don’t fake it. Don’t, don’t take the followers. Don’t fake the engagement, like the data is out there. The algorithms are out there, there’s the apps are out there.
Artificial intelligence is out there. Like if you want to have a legitimate shot at monetizing your personal brand through brand deals, which you may not. Right. And, and frankly, for me personally, and for brand builders group, the likelihood that we will ever care about this is, is very little we are much less likely to do a brand deal, like where a company’s paying to access us because we, it’s not worth it probably to us for that one time payment, when it cannibalizes our own offerings of our own coaching program, you know, like, which is our primary business is one-on-one coaching. So we, we would be more likely to do more of like an affiliate arrangement or something more long-term. So I don’t personally know that this will ever come into play for me, although it could, particularly as we kind of like focus more on my personal brand, now that brain builders group is kind of like up and running and starting to scale.
And, you know, we turn some attention maybe back to my personal brand, but anyways, regardless, don’t fake it even for yourself. Like if, if you’re faking it, the problem is you don’t know how you’re doing. Like you don’t get an honest assessment of what is there, which means you can’t make a strategic decision about what to do and how to move, to grow it. Because everything you do is like kinda clouded by this, this group of people who aren’t really followers. You know, now there’s a case to be made. And some people do this to just like nobody cares. I don’t care about audience engagement. All I make doing is a credibility play. I just need people to come out and see, I’ve got a lot of followers and they’re not check-in. And I don’t care about brand deals. And I literally just want, you know, whatever my clients are, members of the media to go, yeah, you know, you look credible because you got a lot of followers, you know, that’s a choice for you to make that’s a strategic decision that you gotta make.
A lot, this is perception. And so it’s, that’s something to consider. But if you want brand deals is the point, like if you want brand deals. And I would say, even if you don’t want brand deals, if you actually want to use the vehicle of social media and use the vehicle of audience building to drive real revenue growth for your company, don’t fake it, do the hard work and do the slow work. And don’t be embarrassed about how slow you’re growing or how small your following is. I mean, look, this is what he’s saying is going, you know, they don’t care. They’ve, they’ve got a budget based on how many impressions and they’ll pay you for whatever that is. But, you know, 10 qualified impressions is 10 qualified impressions. And, and I think some of these companies are realizing and waking up to the idea that we’re paying all this money for mass market media advertising.
And we’re not, we’re not even sure we’re reaching our right people. We could spend a lot less money in more targeted ways with influencers that are much easier to get ahold of and have, you know, probably a much smaller legal department and it’s easier and it’s faster and it’s more fun and it’s more organic. And it’s like, they’re supporting individual people and not you know, these huge enterprises. So just, I really loved what he said. Don’t fake it. The algorithm will pick it up and just, you need to know, like you gotta know, is my content working? Are we growing? Who are the people who are my followers? Like one of the most valuable parts of social media is not even just who you sell to. It’s being able to pull the analytics and go, this is the age. These are the geographic locations.
This is the gender. This is the income range. These are the industries. These are the job titles of the people I’m reaching. And these are the topics that my audience response to based on data. If I have a bunch of fake followers in there, then it’s like, I don’t really know what’s working in the data is constantly skewed. So, you know, just, just be really, really I guess, critical or cautious about doing the fake fake follower thing. And if you’re going to do it, you know, make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and just know it’s probably, you know, you’re, you’re missing out on some, some other things here, which, you know, might be a decision that you make, and those are just decisions you make. But that was the first thing. And I really believe, you know, clearly with artificial intelligence, that’s going to get smarter and smarter over time that, you know, at some point people like Eric are going to automate this whole, this whole space, this and, and companies are just going to literally go to some platform and say, I want to reach, you know, personal brands and, you know, some software or tool or AI will go scrape the web.
And it will say, ah, here’s the top 500 profiles that reach personal brands. And it’s like, Oh, brand builders group is on there and they’ll just email us and say, Hey, we got some money. This is what we think you’re reaching this number of people. Do you want it so fascinating, fascinating. Don’t fake it, pay attention to the data or, you know, think critically before you just kind of do the fake follower thing. Number two, simple it’s about supply and demand. This was a good reminder for me. I think this is a theme, as I’m even just talking this out of how there’s like a new thing going on here, a new movement that’s kind of fresh and fun and exciting. And at the same time, these are old principles, the principle of supply and demand, how many people are out there who do what you do, right?
And this is where the, the, the whole niching down thing is really powerful. If I have, you know, if I have, I mean, it can work for you and against you. If I have the world’s number one website on, you know, hand niche, Paul shoes for cats and kittens, then I probably have a very dedicated, loyal audience of cat owners who follow me, which means that pet smart is gonna, it’s going pay me a lot of money. Cause they know my entire platform, whether it’s a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand, like they know I’m reaching their audience. There’s not really any question about it. And so that is super powerful. Now, at the same time you go, you got to pay attention and be mindful of what is the demand for it, right? So like how many, how many brands are interested in marketing to cat owners?
Well, probably a huge number. It’s a huge market. But if it’s, if it’s something else that’s like super specific, there may not be brands interested in that. So if you’re playing the brand deal game, which by the way is a dedicated business model. And it’s a difference in positioning. If you come through finding your brand DNA, which is our phase one course, one event curriculum experience, one of the things we help you get clear on in addition to what audience do you serve? What is your uniqueness? What is your unique solution? Your unique message is what is your, your perfect business model that is suited for you? The reason why is because when you, when you make a strategic decision, if you’re going after keynotes, that’s different than going after brand deals. The business model you’re in drives a lot of these, you know, practical on the ground decisions that you make every single day.
So you need to be mindful of what is my primary business model. That’s what we call it in brand DNA. It’s finding your primary business model. And we, we take people through something called the golden grid, where we look at what your short-term primary business model and your longterm. And then we look at secondary business models, ancillary revenue streams, and you know, all, all these different, different ways to the five ways to monetize your personal brand, et cetera, but know what business you’re in, make strategic decisions accordingly. Don’t just like wing it by the, you know, fly by the seat of your pants. And if you’re playing the brand deal game, it’s simple. How many other people are out there that do what you do? How many other people, and more specifically I think is going, how many other people out there have the same defined audiences you, and if you are clear on what that is, you know, just be, be aware of it.
Because if there are a lot of people out there who do what you do, or more specifically, as it relates to brand deals who reach the same people you reach, then that means supply is high. When supply is high, that drives the price down, meaning the money coming to you. So you got to that’s, that’s, that’s a factor for you to consider how many other people out there are, are doing what I do or what I’m thinking about doing. And if there’s a bunch of them, right. You know, like if it’s general interest motivation, there’s a ton of them, right? Like a ton of people are doing that. If it’s leadership, there’s a ton of, you know, you know, tie to people now, good ones, maybe, maybe less, but what’s how many people are reaching your audience. And then the other part is the demand calculation.
And look, I’m I’m I know this is like basic freshmen, econ from college, but a lot of people don’t understand supply and demand, even though super simple. So if supply goes up, the price goes down because that means I can, I don’t need to buy from you because I can buy from there’s a hundred other people that do what you do. So I’m paying attention to supply how many other people are out there, have an audience like mine have as a result of having a topic like mine. Then the other thing is what is the demand for what is the demand for it? How many companies or entities or enterprises or organizations want to reach this market using something like pets. As an example, there’s a lot of companies with a lot of big budgets who know that pet owners spend money on their pets and they’re willing to pay money to get access to those people.
There’s high demand for that. Versus, you know, if you teach tennis lessons, how many companies are interested in the game of tennis? There’s plenty, but it’s probably not as many. There’s not as many people who play tennis in the world as there are people who have pets, right? So you’re, you’re paying attention to that. And then in terms of the pricing, it’s just knowing how many impressions can you get, right? So part of when you’re selecting your topic and, and your positioning in the marketplace, which is really like what we do as good, if not better than anyone else in the world is help you determine your positioning in the market. What is your uniqueness? What should you be offering? What are the words you should use to say it? How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? And anyways, once you nail that, then it’s just a function of how many of those people can you reach?
How many impressions can you get for the brand? And by the way, you don’t need to wait for the brand to show up to you. When you know this, if you, if you select brand deals as your primary business model, you just simply go, ah, I’m reaching cat owners. And, and, and you’re clear on that, which should come from your data, which should come from your dashboards, which we talk about at our high traffic strategies event. You could also listen to the interview that we did with Praxis metrics Aja grin, and Megan canal Connell about digital dashboard tracking. Or you could come to us through our high traffic strategies course that will pull and tell you who you’re reaching. And then you can actually go approach brands. And you can say to them, look, I believe like PetSmart, I believe PetSmart, I am reaching your target audience.
Here’s the data on the audience I’m reaching. And that is a sales job. Like, you know, just like generating any business. Any revenue is a sales job. And if you’re, you know, if you’re in this game of brand deals, I think understanding brand deals, this is a great episode. The other great episode that we did on this was our, our friend and client and fan, and one of our close Nashvillian neighbors who we love and believe in and support. And she supports us is Julie Solomon. She’s one of the masters at brand deals. She’s got a course on this, that we are an affiliate for, but she did an interview like a free interview with us, or back in one of the early episodes that was just killer. Also Kevin Harrington, the interview we did with Kevin Harrington, which is, you know, he was the, basically the founder of the infomercial.
One of the, one of the godfathers of this whole movement, which is now digital, Mark has evolved to digital marketing. And just talking about the way that he thinks about, you know, pairing up brands and ad spend. So check it out. But it’s supply and demand, simple supply and demand as supply goes up, price goes down, okay. As demand goes up, price goes up, okay. Because if there’s high demand and low supply, that means a lot of people want it. And there’s not many places they can it from. So price goes up if supply goes down and yeah, demand goes up. That drives the price up. If supply goes up, okay, meaning I can get it from anywhere. And demand goes down, price goes down. Because there’s not that many people who want it and they can get it from anywhere, right?
Like that is how, how it works. So toilet paper, you can get anywhere. I mean, demand is stable, but it’s not like super high until when COVID hit. And there was a run on toilet paper. Everyone was afraid of running on toilet paper. And so demand, even though supply was high demand skyrocketed. And so that drove up the price, the price K follows demand as demand goes up, price goes up as demand goes down, price goes down, prices, inversely related. So price is directly correlated to demand, but prices, inversely correlated, or indirectly correlated to supply as supply goes up, price goes down. A lot of people make it well, it’s available. Price goes down. If supply goes down, few people make it. Or few people have it price that causes the price to go up. So price and demand are directly correlated. Price and supply are inversely correlated.
So there’s your freshmen, economics class brought to you by Rory Vaden. All right. Third takeaway for me here, which is, is, is probably the biggest. One of all was the attitude of how you got to think about these people as your customers. These, these companies are your partners. Like even, it’s like, even though they’re paying you for the ad, spend your working for them, your, they are your client, they are your customer. And I think too often influencers and people going specifically after brand deals, it’s almost kinda like this game of like, how can I, how can I trick a company into paying the most amount of money I can get out of them? I’m all for, you know, being paid fairly and being paid well for the work you’ve put in, but you’re not. You don’t want to game the system here. You want to find a good match.
You’re looking for a partner. You’re looking for a relationship. You want to be able to provide results to this person, to your advertisers. And this applies to podcasting too, right? Like you don’t want to just sell your ads to anybody. I mean, at some point you might need to for cashflow or whatever, but it’s like, that’s not really what we’re after. We’re trying to find mutually beneficial relationships. We want them to advertise. Not just once, like, Hey, I’ll pay you and your posts. You want to be able to deliver results. So it’s like, Hey, I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. I’ll keep paying you. That’s a mutually beneficial relationship. And it’s just a great reminder that this business is about reputation. It’s about relationships. It’s about trust. If people aren’t buying from you, they don’t trust you. If they’re not coming back, they don’t trust you.
If they’re not following you, they don’t trust you. Like this is a game of trust. And you have to make sure you are always working to earn your client’s trust. To adapt something that I wrote about and take the stairs called the rent. Axiom that says success is never owned. It is only rented. And the rent is due every day. Trust is never owned. Trust is rented and the rent is due every day. You have to be out there servicing your customers, working to make their life better, not just taking money from them and disappearing. Be constantly thinking whether you’re doing brand deals or not. This goes for all your clients. How can I make my life better for my clients? How can I make it easier for them? How can I make them more money? This is what we are constantly thinking about at brand builders group.
I’m going, how can we make our, how can we make our affiliates more money? I want, I want them to get massive passive mailbox, money. How can we create more income for our clients and our referral partners? How can we help our clients be more successful in making money for themselves? How can we help our strategists make more money? How can we make our team members make more money? Like when you adopt that service centered attitude of how can I help everyone else win quickly, man, it’s like, it’s like the old psych. My man Zig Ziglar used to say, like, if you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want. So view these people as your partners, help them succeed and you will succeed. That’s all we’ve got for this recap edition. Thanks for tuning in. Keep coming back. We’re going to help you build and monetize your personal brand right here on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 143: How Entrepreneurs Can Use Their Personal Brand to Grow Their Business with Liz Bohannon| Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m Rory Vaden breaking it down so low. Our recap, this is a recap episode of Liz Forkin Bohannon and I am laughing because this episode cracked me up. I thought it was so funny because so, so here is my first, my, my first big takeaway. All right. So my first big takeaway was verbatim what Liz said, which actually has nothing to do with personal branding. Ubut I thought this was just so profound and powerful and relevant and poignant and, and wow. When she said a lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job. A lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job paying good money, providing good men benefits. And the reason I’m laughing is because this transformation, if you, if you listen to the interview, Liz talks about how she was like this nonprofit, bleeding heart, like change the world.
I’m going to go, you know, serve, serve people to becoming this extreme entreprenuer doing who’s launched now a huge direct sales, a business that she’s turned into a direct sales you know, multilevel marketing thing that, that she thought she invented the business model. And it’s just, it’s just hilarious. And it is in it’s awesome. And it’s profound about the idea that, you know, money, money solves problems, but not just giving people money, teaching people how to make money and creating an opportunity for people to make money. And that to me is just powerful. Again, it has nothing to do with personal branding, which we normally wouldn’t share as a takeaway, but I mean, I was inspired because I know that you probably, in some way, lead to the work that you do create jobs for people. And so often we think about like the audience that we’re impacting or speaking to are the people who are buying our products and services.
And we think about our own income, but I think this is a good reason and a good moment in time to pause and just go, thank you. And congratulations to all the entrepreneurs who create jobs, whether they’re full-time jobs or part-time jobs, whether as employees or contractors, but that the work that you’re doing as a, as an, as an entrepreneur, as an influencer, as an entrepreneur, maybe who works as part of a direct sales company, or even as an executive, a corporate executive at a big, at a big company, but that your personal brand is serving more than just you. And it is even serving more than your audience. Your personal brand is creating jobs and opportunity for a whole world of vendors and partners and contractors. And one day, you know, if you follow our model and we’re teaching it, you know, if you get to phase four where we talk about eight figure entrepreneur and scaling your personal brand, you’re going to be providing lots of jobs.
And that’s just awesome. That is awesome. That is another reason why we love serving you and, and helping people create jobs and businesses and side jobs and side hustles, and you know, work with people in direct sales because you, when you start a business, you create jobs. And as Liz says, a lot of problems in the world can be solved by providing a good job. So that was, that was a huge kind of unusual takeaway and, and rare takeaway from the event and just really profoundly impacted impacted me. And I just you know, I also find it hilarious kind of the transformation of this journey that she went on. And just, just awesome. So that’s great. So my second big takeaway from this, which is just magical is going if you’re an entrepreneur. And when I say we’re not for the purpose of this segment right here, when I say entrepreneur, I’m going to say that you’re a, I’m going to in quotation say a real entrepreneur.
And what I mean by that is going, you’re not just a personal brand, right? Like that you’re building and monetizing your face and your persona. But if you’re truly building a company and a, and a, and a brand name and company equity, and it’s not built around your face, most of what we do is, you know, the core of our target audience is people who are authors and speakers and coaches and trainers and consultants. And then, you know, our secondary, I think audience is more of like professional services and lawyers and accountants and, and doctors and financial advisors and real estate agents, and, and then direct sales. And then I think another big part of our audience is corporate executives. And then entrepreneurs like Liz, where Liz is main income is coming from her business, which is not selling speaking engagements and video courses and membership sites and books is from her job and the profits of her company and the salary that she draws. But if you’re a, if you’re that kind of an entrepreneur, I don’t real entrepreneur, maybe isn’t right, but it just, if you’re a classic entrepreneur or a true entrepreneur separate from being a personal brand,
Take notes of what she said about the power and the impact
And the significance and the
Value of free money
Marketing that personal branding provides to her company, to her corporation, to her brand, to her business, to her, her logo, to her, her, her exit value to her, to her asset that is this business that she has built. It, you know, she said, it’s remarkable if she could, if she could quantify the amount of free marketing opportunity that she has had for her company because of her personal brand. And I think companies and entrepreneurs and big corporations and small businesses are starting to really wake up to this idea, which, you know, a lot of the most successful companies have figured this out long ago, right? Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Steve jobs, you know, these are personal brands that have built huge enterprises and they leverage their personal brand to get media, to create, you know, influential relationships and connections and not to monetize their personal brand in the, in the classic way that we think of it, which is the paids, you know, the, the paids model that we teach and, and the various things that we talk about, but actually monetizing their personal brand through the profits of their enterprise, like of their actual business, the bottom line profits.
And that is just, you know I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here a little bit. So we haven’t shared this anywhere publicly yet. So you’re getting an insider secret of foreshadowing, a hint at something exciting that has company coming, that we have officially commissioned and commenced something that we are calling the state of personal branding. And we are in the middle right now of conducting a nationwide survey where we are looking at statistically valid sample, a sampling of valid populations to determine the trends and the data, and doing a pure empirical analysis on the trends of, and the state of personal branding. And one of the things that we are measuring and it’s tied to this is do people trust companies more, or do they trust personal brands more? Do they trust, you know, this big giant enterprise and the logo and the history behind all that?
Or are they more likely to listen to a person who is an executive at the company or a founder, or, you know, someone that runs a department or a product line or something that, and we’re fascinated to find out the results. I don’t know the answer yet, you know, from a data perspective, but we’re about to know, and we are going to be releasing this. But if you listen to just what Liz is saying here through kind of her own personal recount, she’s going my personal brand brand, your personal brand as an entrepreneur gets you access to marketing opportunities and connections and relationships and resources and, and money that you would not get if you don’t have the personal brand. And that is reason enough to do it, especially if you are an early stage startup, especially if you’re a small business it’s super duper powerful, but you know, like I said, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, I mean, all these, these people that we talk about, they are the wealthiest people in the world.
I mean, literally Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. So the wealthiest people in the world use your personal brand to build your business. And I thought, you know, what was important tactically for you, you know, real entrepreneur classic entrepreneur, that if you’re listening is to ask the question, how does this serve my main goal right now? Right? So most of you listening are like me, you’re a personal brand. You speak, you write books, you do courses, you do coaching programs, consulting, et cetera, et cetera. And then some of you are more professional services. What I would say is kind of like an intrepreneur where, where it’s, it’s not fully your own business, but you have your own book of business. You have your own clients and you do your own marketing and, and, and sales and service typically. But you’re probably not like dealing with PNLs and stuff like that as much.
But then if, if you’re truly running a company, like if you’re truly an entrepreneur and you’ve, you know, you, you file a 10 K every year and you have articles of incorporation and, and, and you have a tax ID number for your business entity. It’s going, how can I use my personal brand to drive the company profit? And that just like you would make investments into advertising and hiring and infrastructure and CRMs and technology, you should be making the same type of strategic investments into your personal brand because of the exponential returns that it gets you. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are waking up to this. And for those of you that are more classic personal brands, kind of like, as I view myself in many ways it’s, it’s realizing that not a lot of entrepreneurs start companies because they don’t want to be a face.
They don’t really, they like being sort of behind the scenes and, and they want to build something that is, you know, kind of, of them, but it is powerful. And I think entrepreneurs need to learn from personal brands, how to leverage their personal brand, to throw a tension and gasoline on the fire that is their company, and to grow their business and personal brands need to learn from entrepreneurs about how to scale and in, in, in incorporate infrastructure and systems and processes, and to build things that operate without them. And that’s, I think one of the things that brand builders group does is we sort of sit uniquely at the intersection because of our experience and passion for both entrepreneurship and personal brands. But anyways, that if you’re an entrepreneur, you gotta be lightened up about using personal your personal brand to separate yourself from every other company out there that does what you do.
And now is the time and stay tuned for the data on this. That is coming from the brand builders group, personal the state of personal brand study. I can’t even hardly contain myself. I’m so excited. You’re going to love it. All right. My third takeaway, takeaway number three, here was this term pluck that she uses pluck. Now, you know, it needs, it needs some explaining, which, you know, from that standpoint, you know, it doesn’t pass the clarity test to some of these things that we talk about with titles, but as a concept, the concept that she uses of pluck, I really, really love this because, you know, she, she describes it as a, as a, it’s a, you know, it’s an actual word that means determined, and it’s the determination and the commitment of a beginner. But I also think of it as passion plus luck which is, you know, pluck.
So I’m kind of adapting her, her term here. But the, what she said that was super powerful is that beginners have an advantage. So we typically think of beginners having a disadvantage, right? And there are some disadvantages, like you’ve got to figure things out for, you got to prove, you know, you got to prove that there’s a market for what you’re doing. You have to, you know, find a sales model and, and, and, you know, cashflow a startup and get things off the ground. There’s a lot of challenging things about about being a beginner, but there are also a lot of advantages to being a beginner. She talks about at least 14 in her book, but you know, this reminds me, this is a kin to what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, David and Goliath, which if you, if you’ve never read, of course, everything that Malcolm Gladwell writes is very fascinating and curious, and, you know, not as much practical as it is kind of interesting and philosophical, but somehow still applies to a lot of things in life.
And this is a great example of one, what he talks about it in David and Goliath is basically how, you know, we think basically how the things we perceive as disadvantages are advantages and how we all think David conquered Goliath. And it was like this mighty giant. And David was this little like scrawny kid with no armor and no weaponry who takes down this mighty giant, which is true. But he says, you know, he kind of makes the case and walks you through historically, what’s going on there, you’ve got this big, whatever nine foot man out there in the field moving, you know, covered in heavy, heavy armor. And, you know, David with the little Slingshot kind of darting around here and, and throwing a rock. And, and David had a lot of experience with this as, as you know, basically a sheep herder and a shepherd.
This was a tool that he used on a regular basis. And, and anyways, it’s, you know, the way Malcolm Gladwell kind of presents it, at least causes you to look at us and go, Hey, maybe this wasn’t as unfair as we all think about it. And we like to tell the story is that actually you could say David had the advantage. You know, if it was, if it was a really hot day and he has the advantage of agility, there’s advantages and whether or not that’s true, or you agree with it, or you like it, it’s a powerful perspective. And here’s why this is important because you right now in your own life, think you have disadvantages you right now in your own life. Think there are things about you that you have as weaknesses. And the reality is that every single one of those things could be flipped and turned to an advantage. If you just change the way you look at it, and that changes everything, because whether you’re able to turn it into an advantage or not the fact that you let go of the limiting belief, that your, that your perceived disadvantage is really a disadvantaged. If the fact that you’re willing to let that go, and you’re able to let that go in to say, Oh, this could be an advantage that changes everything.
Ep 141: How To Get Millions of Followers on TikTok with Maggie Thurmon | Recap Episode
well, I think that was our first teenager experience with a guest on the influential personal brand. Although she may technically not be anymore Maggie Thurman, but I was blown away. This girl is sharp and intelligent and compassionate and, uh, just really wise and clearly entertaining millions of followers, a hundred million likes on her videos. That’s amazing. Uh, so we’re breaking down. Welcome to the recap edition. We’re breaking down the interview that we did with Maggie Thurman and Tik TOK on millions of followers. And, uh, gosh, I just, I was just thought it was fun. A different perspective for me. So what were, what were your age? And I will break down our top three and three takeaways for you.
Yeah. You know, one of my biggest takeaways is something that we actually talk a lot about at brand builders group, which is you are your own media channel. Like we always say, it’s like, you are your own media channel. And we live in a day and time where individuals with their social media platforms, podcast, blogs, um, YouTube channels, that you can be your own media channel, like a network, each person like your own network. And I thought this was an amazing Testament, real life case study of what it means and what it looks like to be your own media channel. And in this specific, and this specific medium on Tik TOK, right? And she was talking about, she’s got friends in college who are 19 year years old, getting six figure brand deals for doing videos on Tik TOK. And here’s what I love about this.
This isn’t about the platform paying you. These are true brand deals based on your viewership, right? So this is like, you know, I was an advertising major for a hot minute in college. Like this is like the Nielsen ratings, right? It’s like how many people are watching and how much is each commercial worth. And that’s, that’s what the that’s what dictated commercial spend. And the exact same thing is happening now on all of these social platforms with brands going, you align with our brand. And we think that your audience meets our audience demographics. So let me pay you to do videos. Doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail, but it’s you or ship, same thing as a commercial
Literally are your own
Own media channel. And I just thought she was such a great real life case study of someone who’s doing it and figuring it out. And she’s completely supporting herself right now through her Tik TOK brand deals.
Not every gen Z ears could live in at home with the parents. Some of them are rolling in Lamborghinis and Ferraris from videos they’re making
Well, I, I, that was my first and biggest was like, yeah, it’s like, this is a great case study Testament of you are your own media channel. And in this case, if you think about it, you got to think about it that way you put it that way. And, uh, so I have, I have
All right, well, I’ll, dovetail on that. Cause so for me, I, one of the things that I was left with was that there’s basically like, uh, there’s four ways, you know, to monetize as a, as just a sh as a pure creator. And, um, you know, what you were just talking about our brand deals, right? It’s like you get a company to pay you that’s number one. The other is that there is ad revenue that comes from the platform. So a Tik TOK launched the creator fund. Facebook watch does it. And now, uh, and then YouTube does that, right? And so more and more that’s becoming like an additional source of income. And one of our friend’s clients Lewis’ Howes, has been sharing pretty publicly that he turned on ads on his YouTube channel for the first time ever. And it’s a massive flow of money that’s coming in.
That’s like, wow. Um, so you’ve got brand deals and ad revenue. And then of course, you’ve got your direct revenue, which is mostly what we specialize in is helping you convert your audience into becoming your own paying customer for something. And then you also have affiliate revenue, which is where you, you know, promote other people’s stuff. Uh, you know, like Lewis is an affiliate of ours and, and, and, and he gets paid when we meet people through him. We all, all of our clients, uh, for the most part are referral partners of ours. But, you know, that was just a quick takeaway for me was going, you know, people go, how do you make money from YouTube? And like, how do you make money from this? That’s it, there you go. Brand deals, ad revenue, direct revenue and affiliate revenue.
Yeah, that’s good. So, um, I started, okay. My big second takeaway was just listening to how many takes that they do to get video that they think will go viral. And she said that on their dance videos, that they would do a hundred
Takes. That’s crazy.
That’s crazy. He was like, say what? Like, and that is treating it like a real business, right? That this isn’t a hobby. This isn’t some side gig. This is like, no, this is my business. This is my brand. This is how I want to be represented. This is the quality of content that I put out in her case. It’s entertainment, uh, you know, the former part of it she was doing, but I just was like, that is no beginner, right? That is expert. Like, I’m taking this seriously. I’m going to make this a business. I’m going to make money doing this. Like, I don’t even know that many professionals who will make a hundred. Right. So it’s like, yeah, girl, you should be getting six figures. If you’re doing a hundred takes to get one, you know, 10 seconds, ten second video, you dang straight. Like you need to be getting like, but that’s what it takes. And I just was like, girl, what?
You don’t see? You don’t see that part of it. You just like, Whoa, a 62nd video with millions of views.
And she said, yeah, it’s like, we would, you know, and I love that she does it with her dad because that’s so much of her brand. Yeah.
Plus he’s cool. We interviewed him a few weeks ago.
I think that that would, to me, it was just like, that is you taking this seriously? This isn’t something that you’re just slapping some content up. This is, this is scheduled. This is planned. This is practice. And this is perfectly curated for your audience.
My second takeaway too was, I don’t know if you caught this. She said three hours of editing for every one minute of video. So you’ve got the hundred takes. And then you got three hours of editing, right? This, this is a business. It is a, it’s an art form. It’s a science like excellence. This is a, from a great book called take the stairs back in the day, like amazing. One of the best books ever. You should read this book by Rory Vaden. And he talks about in this book, excellence is never an accident. And here it is three hours of editing for every one minute of video. There’s no easy road, but you could do it. It just takes time and work and talent and talent. Yeah, that’s my problem. I don’t have the entertainment talent to do it. Although you keep posting these weird pictures of me and my pajamas, which are not supposed to make it onto the internet Baden
All the time. I know exactly how to make viral. He just refuses to take my advice. He doesn’t want it.
Nobody wants to be seeing my pajama, my pajamas online. Anyways, what’s your third takeaway? What’s your say? Focus. Third takeaway.
Okay. So my third takeaway was actually an internal thought that I had, because I am not tick talks demographic,
Except for Trump impersonations, AIG, Trump, Sidney.
Weird. Uh, they’re hilarious. But you know, it’s funny cause I really loved dance. I was a ballerina for 18 years. I like love dance. So you think I would really be into Tiktaalik it’s just not my platform. Not your demographic. That’s okay. Um, but I was asking myself if I were to be on Tik TOK. Okay,
Here we go. What would it
Be that I would want to make videos about? And I’ve been thinking about this ever since,
Wait to hear this. I don’t know what you’re about to say.
So that listened to Maggie’s interview. I was like, Hmm, what would I make videos about? And I’ve got two ideas. Um, so maybe, maybe I will get into the tech talk if, uh, if one, if you can give me some feedback on which one of these you think would be the best. So my first thought was I would love to do, um, kid interviews.
That would be awesome
To interview all the kids that I know specifically my kids, but not just my kids. Um, our friends, kids, just all the kids that I know of. Like professionally sound crest.
I love this. This is, yes. This is like that show. Are you smarter than a sixth grade? Kids say the darndest things, but this is the Tik TOK version, short version.
Hilariousness I love it because I think that would be this really the other one. So yeah. My other one would be to, um, do behind the scenes, um, where no one knows I’m filming you embarrassing moments.
I think you already started that. Haven’t you with husband?
I’m just testing out, testing out my concept. But I think that would be hilarious. I’m like behind the scenes, funny videos of like, nobody,
Like people say get in their car, like at the stoplight and they don’t know anyone’s watching them. Yeah. That’s good.
Is that people like yelling at the barista for no reason. I’m just like, what are you doing? Like why? Like, why are you, so
I want videos of people yelling at like Fox or CNN, like when they watched the, in the news of the other of the TV. Like, no,
No, these are my two ideas. And so I need feedback. Any comments I need you to tell me, uh, are either of these viable for a successful talk account and don’t we still an ideas.
I think what she’s saying is we need you to purchase services from brand builders group so that we’re not forced to head in this direction because this is not what we’re designed to do. I would probably do the kid interview. I think the kid one is legit because they’re hilarious. Oh my gosh, our kids, they say funny stuff. All the kids do.
They’re so funny. So those are ads. What I’ve been, I’ve been like, Oh, what would my Tik TOK channel be about?
That’s good. Um, mine. So my third takeaway all was, was a little, was it a little more? It was so fun, but it was a little more on the serious side, I guess, which was just something that I thought was just so profound and wise from such a young woman with so many haters.
I love this. She answered this so well.
And she said, just, you got to realize that people are hurting everywhere. And it’s easy to take that out on people everywhere. And, and for her to realize it has more to do with them than it does with you. I mean, I think most 40 five-year-olds putting content on social, do not get that. Right. And it’s so good.
Immature statement, realization, self realization. And I want to add something to it. You said since I already use my third one, I’ll just do
You’re intervening on my okay. Three, three.
Um, she also said on this exact same subject matter, she said, here’s what I have to realize is that I’m less of a real person online.
Like to them. They don’t really, they think of you as just a fake a character.
Um, I, I don’t have a family, right? You don’t know me. You don’t know my background. You don’t my backstory. You don’t know the struggles or the successes. Like I’m not as real online. So it’s easier to be mean to someone that you don’t actually know. You forget that I’m a real human being with real feelings and real issues and real things going on. And when I’m just a face behind a dance video, people forget that. Oh yeah, that’s our real human being. And I thought that was just such a mature insight of any age. I’ve just, yeah. It’s like when you don’t know someone it’s easy to talk smack and be mean and, and hate on them. Cause you forget, Oh yeah. Like this impacts them. This is a real person with real feelings. I thought it was just really, really well.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well there you have it. Go listen to the interview with Maggie Thurman, uh, YouTube maybe can have millions of followers on Tik TOK. We’ll have a couple more of these come in. Cause it’s, it’s, it’s exploding as a platform. Of course now there’s clubhouse and all these other, you know, always emerging things, but we want to help you stay in the loop on what’s going on with those and see how you may or may not be able to use them to build and monetize your personal brand. So keep coming back. We’re so glad you here, that’s it for this week’s edition of the influential personal brand.
Ep 139: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold | Recap Episode
Cameron Herold my friend breaking down this interview. Welcome to the special recap edition just me by myself today. And I love this conversation with Cameron. Here’s one of the things that I love about Cameron. There are certain people that I have in my life that I would say I would go to when I need to expand my thinking. When I need to look at a situation or a problem in a completely different way than I am seeing it. And that is to me, one of the amazing things about Cameron, and I think that’s a part of the magic of what he does and also the magic of the growth and the success of his personal brand. You know, the other thing is when I think about, you know, we talk about reputation, your reputation, precedes revenue, it’s it is what are you known for?
What do people trust you with? And I think, you know, when, if you’re a, a real CEO or a real entrepreneur or a real COO, you it’s like, Oh, at some point in your career, you’re going to come across Cameron, Herold. He has the reputation in that space, in that vertical, and it is so great. So I just want to break down my three specific biggest takeaways from him. And, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna classify this this recording for sure, as a sitting under our face for eight figure entrepreneurs. So one of the things that we’re doing, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash podcast, we are, you know, organizing all of these episodes now in alignment with our, our curriculum. So at brand builders group, we’ve got one curriculum, but our curriculum is divided into four phases.
And then each of our four phases is divided into three courses. So our core curriculum is 12 courses, four phases. And our phase four is the, we, we, we it’s the scaling phase and we, we kind of, our flagship course in phase four is called eight figure entrepreneur. And that’s definitely where this conversation lives. So if you haven’t yet listened to it, I would say, you know, this conversation with Cameron. I mean, if you’re brand new, it’s probably not that relevant to you, except for the idea of going these. This is the way you need to be thinking. And if you can structure your business on the front end you know, it’s going to set up for scale, but his, his real expertise. And, and I think, you know, creative genius is around helping businesses scale. And that leads to my first big takeaway is the concept of ones and threes.
And I, I was so excited to hear that this was, you know, Cameron’s Cameron’s concept because I, I have had heard this quoted by people who’ve said, I once heard someone say, I once heard someone say, and I’ve never known the original source of this. And he’s claiming ownership. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna say it was him. And this is a big idea of the ones and threes. In fact, we teach this at a figure entrepreneur is that, you know, it’s, it’s very much like what Marshall Goldsmith says, what got you here? Won’t get you there. And when you’re growing your business, it’s not that you just kind of do more of the same thing. That’s not really how you grow a business. It’s sort of like there is a range, there is a window where you can do more of what you’re already doing.
And if you become efficient at that, that will get you up to another level. But then as a wise author, once wrote in this amazing book called procrastinate on purpose, which if you haven’t bought it, go by procrastinate on purpose. Like that book will change your life. Of course, that’s my second book. But one of the things I wrote in there is that the next level of results always requires the next level of thinking. And the levels as an entrepreneur, I think are measured in ones and threes. And that’s what Cameron’s talking about. So these are revenue markers at ones and threes, which means the first marker in any business is can I get it to a hundred thousand in annual revenue? The next marker is 300,000. And going from a hundred thousand to 300,000, you don’t have to learn a lot of new skill sets.
You just have to do the skill sets that you have better than you were doing them before. But to go from 300,000 to a million is a different jump. It requires a new way of thinking, a new set of operating principles and practices to get to a million. Now, once you hit a million, getting to 3 million, a lot of times, it’s just doing more efficiently that which you’re already doing, and that one to 3 million, by the way we call this the swamp. There’s a lot, a lot of personal brands that get to that 1 million, but they get stuck in that one to 3 million and it’s, it’s hard to break free. And that is because there’s a big jump between going from 3 million to 10 million and annual revenue. Right. And that is a hard leap, which is what if you look at the brand builders group phases, I would say that like our goal with phase one, it’s like you know, we’re, we’re, we’re teaching you the fundamentals of like getting, what do you need to be clear on in order to get to six figures?
And then I, I think of phase two is really like, Oh, an okay. And now in phase two, we’re going to go, how do we get a hundred thousand to 300,000? And then in phase three, we’re going to go, how do we get from that 300,000 to that one to 3 million? And then in phase four, we’re going, how do you get from 3 million to 10 million all the way up to 30 million, which is phase four. And then honestly, once you got to 30 million in revenue, I would send you off. I would say, we’ve done our job. We would pass you off probably to someone like Cameron actually. Cause that’s really, his specialty is more of that, like you know, 10, 20 million up to a hundred million. And that’s, that’s what the ones and threes are, right? So the difference between 10 million and 30 million, isn’t that different.
It’s like a lot of what you’re already doing, but doing it more efficiently and just, you know, kind of smarter and more well-organized, but to go from 30 million to a hundred million is a big leap and go from a hundred million to 300 million kind of the same, but to go from 300 million to a billion, totally different. And so those are the ones and threes, and I think that applies for our operational practices. Well you know, we, we talk about the nine departments and how every company is laid out. That’s one of the things that we teach in phase four, but you know, like just to, to, to pragmatically speaking, the marketing that you do, we’ll work from one to threes, but till I go from 300,000 to a million, you can’t really just do more of the marketing you’ve been doing. You have to create some other new marketing stream, some other new sales stream, some other new practices, same with your operating, right?
So your, the, the operations department to go from 300,000 to a million, you probably need an operations apartment, right? Like to get to 300,000, you probably just have a couple people and freelancers, but then to make that jump, it’s like, we need to improve our marketing. We’d increase, improve our sales. We need to improve our operations. We need to increase, increase our financial disciplines. A lot of times you have to increase your it, right? So to go from 300,000 to a million is a big is, is usually technological infrastructure. And I would say specifically to go from, from 3 million to 10 million is an it infrastructure issue. That is one of the, one of the big things that needs to happen there. So ones and threes, ones and threes, and just kind of be knowing like, okay, where are you at? If you’re at a hundred thousand, the good news is you could probably get to 300,000 without changing much.
If you’re at 300,000, guess what? You’re probably going to stay stuck there until you have some big time breakthroughs. Now, if you’re coming through the brand builder journey, our formal curriculum, we’re going to, we’re going to take you there. We’re going to step you through these ones and threes, but super powerful concept. It stuck with me for years. I think it’s so true also with personnel, right? So just your marketing tactics and your operations and your it and your sales, but also your people, right? A lot of times people can grow with you. They can go through like up to two of those leaps, but after that, they’re either going to have to significantly up-level their skills, or they are not going to be able to take you to that next level. And so you’re going to have to like bring someone else in who, you know, is used to operating at that level.
And, you know, I found this to be true. So it’s not, it’s not written in stone, but one’s in threes. That’s where the big leaps are. And you got to have a systematic change in your, in your operating system in order to make that leap. The second big take takeaway, which I think is so important is that many people write a book based on an idea they have for a book. And they say, Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book on this. Or I’d love to write a book about that. But I feel like this is something Cameron said, and I agree with him that the best books are not based on an idea you have for a book, the best books are based on the needs of your real life clients. I would think of this as, are you writing books in forwards or in rears, right?
So if you think about paying your bills, some bills you pay and forwards, you, you pay them in advance of receiving the service. That’s called paying and forwards, and some bills you pay and rear, which is after you’ve received the service. Now, you know, if you’re running a business, you always want people to be paying in forwards. That’s one of the things that we’ll teach you in phase four, also for cashflow management. But when you write your book, we write our books in rears, meaning we don’t write a book as like a hypothesis of some ideas we think could be true. We write it as the conclusion of things that we have found to be true. This is why brand builders group hasn’t released a book yet, right? So we’re two and a half years, or, you know, like just over two years and some change into the start of our company.
And we don’t have a book out. Why not? Well, we certainly could write a book. We actually have 12 books. Every course that we teach in our formal curriculum could be a book, but we’re, we’re, we’re dialing it in, right? We, we create what, what our content is led by what our clients need. Those make the best books. And I think that is super duper powerful is just serving your client in a deeper way, figure out what they need in real life. And then test it, work it, refine it. And then the book is the final conclusion of that rather than the hypothesis. I think your book will last longer. People will read it. It’ll, it’ll have more depth to it. You’ll have better case studies and anecdotes and illustrations because you’ve done it. I think worse author sometimes get into deep water is when you sign like a multi book deal and you commit to writing so many books in some frequency of time, but you haven’t really learned that much new and you haven’t really had that much growth in your business or clients.
And it’s like, you’re trying to write in forwards rather than an in rears big idea. The third big idea that I think Cameron, you know, talked about, but also really to me, his personal brand is a great example of this. And this is such a simple question, like such an important question is to simply ask yourself, where is there a gap in the market? Where is there a gap in the marketplace that is an opportunity to build a great business as you go, where is there an underserved market? This is part of, this is exactly what, what Cameron has done with COO’s right? A lot of people do stuff for CEOs and and founders and owners, but almost nobody does stuff for COO’s training and developing the second in command. And, and Cameron noticed that and he said, Oh, I’m going to go serve that community.
I’m going to dominate that space brand builders group, I feel is doing something very similar. This is why we serve personal brands, right? We don’t work with companies. If Google calls and they say, Hey, will you consult with us on our branding? The answer is no, we don’t do that. We will work with one of your executives and help them become more influential. But we brand people, we don’t brand companies. Now just so happens. Google did call for me to do a keynote. I just did do a keynote for them, but that was based on take the stairs. It was more of my personal development content. It’s not what we do as a team, right? So that is a market that we said, you know, there’s a lot of people teach in webinars and podcasts and book publishing and video courses and membership sites and Facebook, traffic and funnels and copywriting, and you know, getting media interviews.
But nobody that sits on top of it and says, how do we orchid organize all of this and orchestrate it for personal brands? How do we create a strategy where all of these things fit together in a specific order in sequence that aligned with your uniqueness in your direction? We said, we’re going to come in and we’re going to serve. We’re going to serve that space. There’s a gap in the market. So that’s a good question for you to ask, right? It’s it’s and specifically, if you can go, where is there a gap in there in the market that aligns with your uniqueness? Like your passion, your experience, your results, your education that you can step in and serve? I think Cameron is just is a really, really great example of that. And I want to give you a little bit of a, a quick tip here on uniqueness and differentiation as well, because I’ve thought a lot about this, but I don’t think we’ve ever shared it on the podcast.
And we don’t even share this in our formal curriculum at brand builders group. So this is this is a, this is a great one, is that when I think of differentiation. Okay. and, and by the way, to me, uniqueness and differentiation are not the same thing. Differentiation is how do I decidedly draw a line that separates me from everybody else. Uniqueness is more of an exploration of who am I, who was I designed to be? Who am I called to be? Who does the world need me to be? What position do I uniquely serve in the world? It’s more intrinsic. It’s kind of from the internal out, differentiation is more of an external, like is from the outside in going, okay, how can I position myself in the market? So this is a tactic specifically for differentiation, which is rare.
Most of what we teach at brand builders group is finding your uniqueness like our flagship phase one course is called finding your brand DNA. It’s all about our process for finding your uniqueness. So this is a little bit different because I think what Cameron is talking about is more about differentiation than it is about uniqueness. Now we believe in uniqueness, right? We believe in become who you are, become, who you were created to be, become your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were and speak from that truth. And who cares what your competition is doing. That’s what we believe, but we also have an eye towards differentiation because anytime we can differentiate ourselves, that’s good. You know, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from a, another dear friend of mine, Sally Hogshead, who says you want to be able to position yourself clearly inside of a box that people understand, but then simultaneously to immediately differentiate yourself from everyone else who’s inside that box.
And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. So here’s a little tip. This is the, this is called the M three M three method or M three tip for a differentiation. So I think there’s three different places to look for. Differentiate differentiation, differentiate your first of all, your a market. Is there an opportunity to have differentiation in the market you serve? That is what Cameron was talking about, right? Like where is there an underserved audience? So for brand builders group, part of our, our uniqueness and part of what we’ve done to differentiate ourselves is to say, we survey specific market, a narrow market. This is a market as a type of person, right? For us, it’s personal brands. The second is your model. And by that, I mean your, your business model, which is how do you make money? So again, if you look at brand builders group, our model is one-on-one coaching.
Our pro we are primarily in the business model of one-on-one coaching, which is a differentiator of business model. Most people who teach to personal brands, they sell video courses, they sell membership sites, they sell masterminds, right? They sell one to many experiences, but our, our business model is one-on-one. If you want a one, if you want a private coach to help you apply the concepts and strategies and techniques and philosophies and principles of personal branding to your specific life and business, you need us. I don’t even know anyone else who does it at scale. There are some independent people out there, but there we do this. Cause we, we do one-on-one coaching really, really well. That’s a differentiation, not in the market we’re serving, but in the business model, the, the way we do it, how are we charging? Right. So the market is who are you serving?
Okay. The, the, the, the, the model I would say is how are you making money serving them? Right. So one-on-one coaching is a model. And then the third M is the method, which is what are you teaching them? Right? What are you teaching them that, or, you know, or teaching them for personal brands or in general, what are you providing you know, to them. So when I think of like the method, right? The method is more of like your unique intellectual property, your unique methodology, your IP, your framework, your body of work, all the things that in our, in our phase one course, two, which is called captivating content. That’s what we do is we help people extrapolate their unique SIS system or methodology, or we help people create their frameworks. We help them write their books, write their Ted talks all out of a, a unique set of IP.
That’s birthed from their own brain by way of taking them through our process. That is their method. That’s different from their business model, which is how do they make money, right? So the market is who are you serving? The model is how are you making money? The method is what are you providing to them? And, and are you differentiating it somehow based on what you, what you’re providing. So like, when I think of the like Uber, right? Like the Uber and taxis, it’s kind of the same business model. They’re charging for a ride, but the method is different. The delivery mechanism is different instead of a taxi, it’s an independent driver. They’re serving the same taxis and Uber. They both serve the same market. Pretty much people looking for a ride. They both charge the same way, which is how, you know, how far is the distance or time in the car, whatever.
But the method is different. The, the, the, the modality is different. One is, you know theoretically a professional driver was a taxi cab driver versus, you know, just a home driver. I think of Airbnb being similar, right? They’re looking, they’re serving the same market and they charge on the same model as hotels, which is like an overnight rate, but it’s a different method. It’s a different it’s a, it’s a whole different place and vehicle for establishing and providing that service. So the market is who the model is, how are you charging? And the method is what are you providing to them? So that is a little bit of a Diddy and distinction on uniqueness and differentiation, and kind of a rare lesson on how to differentiate yourself from the competition. That’s what we got. That was what I was inspired by, among other things from Cameron, Harold, a big time speaker, a complex thinker, someone very good at breaking paradigms, which is what you would want from someone helping you create these explosive growth opportunities between the ones and threes. So I hope you enjoyed it. Keep coming back, stay tuned, listen to the interviews, listen to these recaps, stay plugged in our free content should be enough to help you start making money. And then at some point we hope that you’ll consider investing some of that money into letting us, coach you to get to the next level with your personal brand. That’s it for now. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal
Bye. Bye
Ep 137: Secrets of Self-Publishing Your Way to Becoming a Bestselling Author with Chandler Bolt | Recap Episode
Hey, brand builder. Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap. Today, we are looking at self-publishing my old friend Chandler bolt, which was fun to go back on memory lane a little bit and see how far Chandler has come and his team, what they have built such a great operation. And so yeah, let’s dive in right away. We got my three big takeaways as well as ADJs for you. And I think the first thing, which is kind of obvious, but I don’t think it’s pervasive enough, which is the idea that every business owner needs to write a book because you use the book to build your business. And so it’s like, you may not care to be a New York times. Best-Selling author. You may never need a traditional publisher, but the power of a book is, is magical. And there’s just, there’s nothing quite like it in terms of the impact it has on your ability to market your business, your product and service.
Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s, that’s similar to my first one, but a little bit different. And this is something that Chandler said and the very, very beginning of the interview, probably in the first, I don’t know, five to seven minutes. So you’ll, you’ll catch this tidbit right off the bat. And he said, before you start asking yourself the question of, Hey, should I do a traditional book or self published book? He said, really the question to answer is, is a book the next best thing to do for your business. And in his opinion, it is, he said, you know, I love what he said. He said, books, change lives. Like they change lives. They can change your business. They can change your mindset. They can change your relationships. They can change your financial situation. They can change your fitness. Like books have the power to change lives.
Ask yourself is a book, the next best thing for my business, then worry about everything else. And I thought that was really powerful because I agree in so many ways. A book is a calling card. It’s a, it’s a giant size business card. But more than that, it represents what you stand for, what you believe in your way of doing business, your methodology, your principles, your philosophies, if you really want someone to know who you are, and if they’re a good fit for you and vice versa, read the book, right. Or, you know, listen to the keynote, you know, in, in many ways. But I thought it was really interesting. And he said, if you, and if you answered that, no, then move on. But if the answer is yes, then that’s kind of step one.
Yeah. And I think the idea of is it the next right thing is good. Cause like, even at brand builders, we’ve got several books that we are working on writing, but we haven’t, we haven’t said we’re ready to do the first one yet. So there’s timing, timing matters. That, yeah. So my second big takeaway from this was where he said, which I love, because this is a guy who has self-published his own books helps people self-publishers runs a school that teaches people how to self-publish. And he says, yeah, we got, we, we got, we got boxes from when you’re, when you’re, when you’re actually in the program. And here’s what he said. The key to a self published book is to publish to self-publish a book that does not look like it is self-published. And I think that was valuable to hear from him.
And I, I really agree with this because I think, you know, self-publishing has gotten to be so easy, which is a great thing that the downside is, you know, it’s, you can print something really quickly and, and not have it kind of look and hold the cache that you want it to, if it’s going to be a reflection of you and your brand and your business. And, and yet now it’s so sophisticated that you really can self publish a book. If you need to, or if you want to, but either way you can do it and it can look as professional and clean and neat and powerful as a traditionally published book. And I think that’s super important.
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And I think that self publishing has come a long way in the last five years. Typically it’s come a really long way. All right. So the, the next biggest takeaway for me is I just, I think this is, you know, kind of like a spoiler alert, like tr you know, to traditional publish, to self publish, and, you know, Chandler’s opinion is very strongly in there. Like self-publishing is the way, is that the only time that a publisher would ever want to do a deal with you is when you don’t need them. Right. and so it’s like, you know, it’s like when a publisher wants you, you don’t really need them. Self publishing is the way. And, but I thought it was really interesting, he said, but if it’s the way here are the things that you need to consider.
And I just, so I don’t mess this up. So I wrote these down and he said, you’ve got, these are the three things to consider time cost and royalties. Those are the things you want to consider. What are the expenses to get it done the time to get it done? And then what would be, what would you be for fitting or gaining and royalties? And then he broke it down. He said, them, there’s two types of costs. There’s costs of creation and then cost of production. And then he breaks it down again. And he says, now creation costs are covered design, editing, and formatting. Right. How does it actually look in the structure of the book and then production our print inventory and shipping, right? And it’s like, those are a lot of things to consider because I mean, it’s like if self publishing is the way you need to be really clear on what means in terms of time, resources, involvement, expenses.
I think, I think it is the way for so many people, but there’s also a lot of work to be done. But that’s why I think answering that question first is, is I book the next right step helps make the rest of this checklist very much a checklist of, okay, well, these are the things I need to do. This is just the next thing. Versus what do I do? What’s better. It’s like, well, these are the things to evaluate. And it’s very clear and it’s very transparent. It gives you a really good, accurate view of, okay, this is what it would look like for me to self publish. It was, it was so clear, transparent and very checklisted, which I love,
No, I loved it. I, in those same notes about, about the cost, like if you’re, if you’re considering this, you’ve got to just kind of think through it, treat it like a business. You know, I remember early in our career with our first books, we waffled back and forth between traditional self published. Like for so long,
Roy will not tell you this. Cause he doesn’t want you to know that it exists, but his very first book
That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. And it’s called no, nah, nah, you can’t share it. They’re going to go find it
Like in Oh two. No, that’s like, Hey, I know w how to be funny to make more back. You have, you have a coffee somewhere hidden. It’s actually really cute book, but we actually
Self publish first. That’s right. That’s right. And we purposely didn’t want a lot of people to know about it, but, but you know, so that question comes up a lot. Should I self publish? And should I traditionally publish? I really am convicted that they both can be great and they both can work. And it’s all about, we’ve done both. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s all about the right fit at the right time, which is what I think we help people navigate. But you know, if you wanted me to give you the textbook answer on this question, cause we get it all the time. You know, in one of our events is called bestseller launch plan and we teach how to actually launch the book once you have it. And for me, I say is pretty simple. It’s 10,000 units. If you have a plan to move 10,000 units within the first few weeks of it launching, you should go after traditional publishing.
If you you’ve got like that size of an audience of, of direct reach and indirect reach, you go for it. If not self-publishing is probably the way there’s, there’s enough advantages to self publishing. And so you’re a little formula. Oh yes. So, so here’s the thing you just got to keep in mind that to become an Amazon bestseller takes hundreds of units in a day to hit a bestseller, to become a wall street journal bestseller. You need to have thousands of units within a week and to become a New York times bestseller, you need to have tens of thousands of units sold within a week. And so if you can move thousands of units in a week and you want to go after the wall street journal, you probably to traditionally publish. But if you’re going after, you know, a few hundred copies in, you know, hopefully in a day or within a few weeks self publish and you, you know, if your platform is bigger than that, then you can step up to it later. But there’s, there’s, there’s no shame in either they’re both great. They both have good parts. They both have, you know, more challenging things, but that’s, that’s my textbook answer, 10,000 units.
And I think the last thing for me is really just waffling through the question of, well, what are the pros and cons of both because there are pros and cons in both. And I think a lot of the, you know, pros and cons of self publishing, we kind of talked about my second point and Taylor goes into a lot of that, but then it’s also, well, what are the pros and cons of traditional publishing, right? Cause those third year too. And I think one of the things that he liked, he highlighted, which I think is so true is specifically today is that publishers only want to work with authors who can sell books. Like that’s, that’s the short I have to work with, not to hate on publishing.
No, they, they have to work with that. They don’t sell books,
Marketing houses, right. Publishing houses. And I think that’s a huge wake up call. It’s like, if you think your publisher’s going to market and sell your book, you’re wrong. Like that’s not, that’s not the goal. They help edit books. They help publish books. They help format books, they help distribute books. So if you’re looking for a really big advance and lots of distribution, maybe you should try to go for a big, you know, publishing deal and get yourself an agent and get a big advance. But if that’s not the case, and if you don’t have a huge platform, and if you don’t have a way of selling your own tens of thousands of books, then self publishing is maybe the best way to go. And I love too, is that we’d had him on our podcast before Howe L rod is one of the greatest self publishing of all time.
He has sold more than 2 million copies of his book and, and is making tons of tons of money off of this book and has created this empire and impact around a self-published book. Didn’t need a traditional publisher. And then you’ve got other examples of people who started traditional and then went South because they’re like, well, I don’t need a traditional publisher anymore. And I think that the way that Chandler summed it up, or maybe you said it, I don’t know who said it, but I thought it was really good. He said, sometimes you just have to understand is a traditional publishing a step in the path or is it the path? And I thought that too was really good of just, you know, is this a way to help grow your notoriety and credibility and get your message out there? Or is it like, Nope, I’m just doing it for the advance. Yeah. Is it a money-making thing or is it a step in the path? And I thought that was just really good and clear
And you just, you need to know and remember writers, write editors, edit publishers, publish distributors, distribute retailers, retail, and nobody sells the book. So whether you self publish or you traditional publish, you got to sell it. That falls on you, whether you like it or not, there’s other advantages or disadvantages, but either way you author creator, influencer messenger, your job is to sell and we’re here to help you learn how to do that. So thanks for being here. Come back next time on the influential personal brand podcast
Ep 135: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff | Recap Episode
Welcome back to the influential personal brand recap. It’s your man, Rory Vaden. I am rolling solo today. AJ Vaden is out and I am breaking down the Lisa Woodruff interview that we did, which was awesome. I mean, hopefully you hear in my voice or heard in my voice how proud I am of her. Like she is one of our star students. She is somebody that it’s just amazing that we got our hands on in terms of working with her system and her teams or with her systems and her team several years ago. And we’ve known her and she’s been like a student of our philosophies. And over the last, I mean, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a long journey for her, but
The last, I guess, six, five or six years that we, we have known her and doing the various work that of ours that she has been introduced to. She has gone from a six figure business to now becoming a seven figure business, which is just awesome. A real life case study of a, of a massively successful person in a, in a very specific niche, right? With home organization and everything she’s doing to organize three 65. And it’s just it’s, it’s so exciting for us, right? Like when our clients succeed, we can’t take credit for it. Like they, they have to do all the work, everything we teach you on this show, like you have to be the one to do the work. And ultimately your success is, is about you and it’s up to you, but it does show that there’s a lot of people doing the same types of things as the things that we talk about and teach on the show and obviously to our members.
And so it’s just great to see that in in, in Lisa and she’s a rolling stone man. She’s a rocket, a rocket ship. I think she’s just getting started. So she came through our eight figure entrepreneur event recently which is our event that we it’s a phase four events. So if you, if you haven’t figured this out from listening to brain builders group, you know, we have one curriculum, but that curriculum is divided up into four different phases and each phase has three topics. So overall our, our flagship curriculum is, is 12 topics. You know, our, our full curriculum is is, is 12, 12 topics. And so anyways in phase four one of the topics is called eight figure entrepreneur, where we teach someone how to turn a personal brand into a fully operationalized business and how to scale and, and not just scale your reach, but scale all of your systems and your people and your processes, and build a company that has real value.
And anyway, she’s got some really big goals, which you got to hear a little bit about on the interview, but in terms of me being the student for you know, in and learning from her that so fun here’s my three biggest takeaways from the interview. And, and the first one is so profound and it’s so simple, but what she said, and I, and I wrote this down, she said, the only thing that you will ever have with you, the rest of your life is your own mind. Like that is the one thing that, you know, like, even if you didn’t have clothes, right, like even if you didn’t have food or a house or, you know, friends or anything like the one, the one thing that you will have everywhere you go for the rest of your life is your mind. It will last longer than like the basic necessities. And so personal development is the investment into the one thing that follows you everywhere into the one thing that is a part of every decision into the one thing that is a part of every single day, your mind is with you all the time. In every moment, every situation, every relationship, every single decision, like it’s this asset, it’s the one thing that you can invest into. And yet, how many of us do not?
How many of us think, Oh, that’s silly or, or, or the last time that we invested money into ourselves was when we were in college or we invest a little bit into it. It’s, it’s really scary because I heard Brian, Tracy say one time, I don’t know how statistically valid this is, but I heard him say this years ago, where he said, you know, the, the average person will spend more on car maintenance every year than they will investing into their own self-development and education, which is, which is crazy, right? Like you should spend more on your self-development than you do on your mortgage. Like your brain is the thing that follows you everywhere. And after college, most of us stop investing into it, probably because you’re still paying back. College loans are so long as a, you need to invest in some things that actually teach you how to make some money.
And so that was just so edifying for me of just the and, and she is a living example of it, right? Like, you know, I said earlier, like, we can’t take credit for what she’s done. I mean, I hope she gives us some credit and she pays, you know, she’s super polite and respectful and, and yeah, that works so grateful for the things that she says about us, but she has invested in lots of programs. She’s been through lots of courses. Like, she’s a great example, as am I, as am, as is AIJ like as, is the richest people that I know, like literally the richest people that I know. And there are, there are two billionaires that have suddenly come into my life here recently in our life recently to two different billionaire clients that we have, who I’ve been spending a lot of time with.
And both of them are, dudents massive students of personal development. Both of them have gone through, you know, courses and, and, and read books and, and spent, you know, years learning and studying their trait in their craft. And it’s like, this is the thing that separates people. It’s, it’s not the needy people, the broke people, the, the ignorant people who are at all the conferences, it’s the smartest, sharpest hard work, hardest working, most entrepreneurial, most creative people that are all the events. And and Lisa, just a great example of that. And I just, I want you to think about that, right? Like how much are you investing into your personal development? And Hey, we would love if you did it with us. Of course, we would write, like, we, we happen to think that we are the best among the best in the world at what we do.
I’m really convicted that we are, but whether it’s on your personal brand or whether it’s with us or someone else, or if it’s some area, other area of your life, right. Like, you know Dave Ramsey was a, who was a huge part of our journey personally. We’ve been through things like landmark forum that changed our life, obviously, you know, spiritually AIJ. And I study the Bible every single day. But in terms of, you know, going to marriage conferences and, and going to retreats and summits and video courses in an events, the most successful wealthiest people in the world do these things. So are you doing it are, I mean, are you doing it? Are you investing the money? Are you investing the time? And are you, are you after it? Like, are you investing into your own brain because it’s the one thing that follows you everywhere?
And man, there was just something about the way that Lisa said that that just hit me hard, that hasn’t just, hasn’t just like hit me that hard before. So yeah, invest in your brain and Hey, keep listening to the podcast, right? We, we have so much free stuff that we put out at brain builders group Rory Vaden, blog.com at, at our obviously we’ve got the podcast, we’ve got a bunch of free resources on our website. I think we’ve got like five or six free different trainings now at brand builders, group.com that are totally free, that are amazing. Like we should be charging for this stuff. And we don’t because we just, we want to build trust and provide value and help you make enough money so that, you know, you feel like you have some money to reinvest and, and you know, be willing to do that, be willing to do that and spend more on your brain than you do on your car.
And, and you know, maybe not more than your house, right? You gotta have a place to live, but you know, anyways, make that investment. The second thing. And the second, the thing that Lisa said, and this hit me, I thought this was super interesting. I had never thought about this is she said, think of brand builders group as your college degree for your business. And I thought that was really fascinating. And it, part of it is, is ironic because we have four phases. And we have our phases have three topics. So we typically tell people, it takes about three to four months to, to, to, to go through a topic. So if you went through our three topics, I mean, we teach them as in two day events, we have two day experiences. So it only takes two days to learn each topic, but then it takes about four months to deploy each topic.
And if you did that three times, that would be a year, which would be a phase. So our four phases represent, I mean, it’s crazy like what she said, it lines up so directly with this idea of like a four year journey with brand builders group. Now I, I think it’s, you know, if, if you’re looking to build an, a personal brand or an online business or, or a marketing machine or a marketing engine for your business, I think it’s, it’s extremely tactical. What we do is extremely tactical far more tactical than you would, you would learn in college, which is more about, you know, kind of like abstract thought and problem solving and conceptual learning. Brand builders group is very direct, like do this in this order, in this way, follow this process, follow this checklist. And if you, if you follow the roadmap, we’ll take something that would have taken you 20 years and we’ll help you get there in five.
But anyways, I thought that was interesting about education and, and that is a good way, I think, to look at, at brand builders group. And, and again, just kind of on tying back to what we were just talking about, what are you doing for education? Like, where are you learning? Like, who are you learning from? What are you learning? What are you doing? Like Charlie, tremendous Jones, who I got to meet several times. He was an, a legend in the national speakers association. He died a few years ago, but what was amazing, amazing, just one of the most incredible humans I’ve literally ever been in the presence of, but he used to say five years from now, five years from now, you’ll be the same as you are today, except for the books you read and the people you meet. And you know, that is, that is true.
And I would extend it from books. You read to the courses, you take the seminars you attend, you know, the, basically the education you receive and apply, which is true, right? Like some people say, Oh, I have five years of experience. And they really don’t have five years of experience. They have one year of experience repeated five times. They’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, which is, you know, the definition of insanity. If you’re expecting different results is, is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. So what are you learning? Like where are you learning? Who are you learning from? And, and are you learning about the things you need to grow your business? Obviously I’m, I’m, I’m preaching to the choir here, since you’re listening to this show. The only way you’d be hearing this as if, if you are listening and following along.
So I know I’m probably preaching to the choir, but just to Edify the time you’re investing here in another places to, to, to grow your brain and think of it, you know, you could think of brand builders group for those of you that are our clients, that our members you can think of our, our brand builder journey, our four-phase process as your college education. And then the third thing, the, the, the, the big highlight for me was, you know, she, she said this in the interview, it’s, it is just these, these four words that you, you can’t be reminded of enough. I can’t be reminded of this enough. And, and these four words are so important for your personal brand. In fact, they might be the foremost important, I would say definitely four of the most important words that you can remind yourself of on a daily basis.
It just takes time. It just takes time. It just takes a little bit of time. It just takes some time to build, right? Like when you know, I know some, some of our clients are in phase two, which is when we get into like the nitty gritty of building funnels and this thing, you know, the content diamond and managing your social media and all that. And it’s like, you know, we’re learning all these checklists and processes. And then it’s like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, how do I do this? And it’s like, well, if you only have to do it once, and it just takes a little time, but once you do it once you’ll have it forever. And then in general, right? Like when Lisa was saying, you know, I’m, I’m basically doing the same stuff I was doing 10 years ago.
The difference is I’ve been doing it for 10 years. A lot of people I’ve come across. A lot of people, a lot of people know me, a lot of people, I’ve got a lot more clients, a lot more testimonials, a lot more fans, a lot more reach, a lot more systems just from the course of time. So, you know, if you can add education and time, you know, and obviously taking action, those are the, those are the critical ingredients to your success. So just do it right, and just keep doing it. Like, just keep going and remind yourself when you don’t have as many followers as you want, when you didn’t, you didn’t convert as many customers as you want it in your last launch. When, when you’re not seeing the conversion percentages in your funnels, when you’re not seeing the engagement rates that you want on your social, when you’re not getting as many keynote leads, when you get turned down for the book deal, right? When you, when you launch something and it breaks when you’re, when, when you put up a website and nobody comes when you, when you do a video and nobody watches
And all of those moments, and you will have those moments. Every one of us does me, a J our team, our biggest clients, Lisa Woodruff, and you like, you will have those moments. It’s not about if you will have them, you will have those moments. And in those moments, you have to remind yourself of those four words. It just takes time. So keep going, keep coming back here, stay inspired, keep getting education and stay focused on the person out there who you’re trying to serve, because sooner or later you will find them. It just takes time. That’s all we got for today. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 133: YouTube Secrets Tips and Strategies with Sean Cannell | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. Recap edition, breaking down Sean Cannell. Sorry, Cannell. I keep saying it wrong kennel like YouTube channel. Oh, that is why I’m struggling with that because we have canals. I was like, why do I struggle with this? But anyways, it’s Sean Cannell like YouTube channel, which is the way to remember it,uwhich is smart and,ureally, really good. I mean, I just, I have really grown. I, I follow Sean closely now and he’s like the go-to guy on YouTube these days.
Rory was like, if you want to know YouTube, you have to listen to this
Because it’s, we’ve said in several of our recaps that like YouTube is
Literally every single guest has something unique in huh, to say about YouTube. And this was no different. I love it. And I love too that YouTube is making such a comeback in terms of conversations that people are happening. Cause I feel like for a long time it kind of fell off the wagon and it was all about Instagram and a tech talk and Facebook and you know, all the things. And can, I didn’t hear about personal brands on YouTube for a while, but some of the biggest personal brands we know have huge, massive followings and huge monetization plans using YouTube.
Yeah. And I think that’s part of the, part of the, part of the thing about YouTube is it’s, it’s not as like flashy and instant. And so that’s why it was like super exciting. And then it kind of went away and now people are realizing it’s got massive, long-term staying power. Like this is the place to be. And I think the first big takeaway was that Sean said, look you a skill you have to learn as you have to become a master at holding attention. And Gary V talks about this all the time that what he’s really doing is he’s day-trading attention. It’s, it’s, it’s not so much about the platform or about the content or anything. It’s about understanding your audience and how do you tap? How do these hand gestures, how do you captivate them? How do you hold them? How do you pull them in? And like, and, and, and, and, and have them, this is something that you gotta do. If you’re going to build, if you’re going to build a brand, you got to build your,
Yeah. I love that. And I think just even asking yourself, what am I doing to hold people’s attention? And this is something that we tell people all the time in our curriculums world-class presentation craft is watch yourself. I actually go back and watch yourself. Are you engaging? Are you inviting? Do you even want to watch yourself? Right. I think those are really good things that we forget to do. And you know, something we talk about, even with us, it’s when was the last time that we went back and listened to one of our own podcast recaps or podcast interviews, listening to our cadence and our speech and our hands gastros and all the things. But I think is really important. If you’re really trying to do this and really trying to build up this platform is are you watching yourself and becoming in tune with what is engaging and what holds people attention?
Because so much of it is people can’t sit and watch I talking head for an hour. It’s really hard. Just like you wouldn’t want to watch a PowerPoint with a voiceover for six hours. At some point, you’re going to be like, Oh my gosh, that’s too much for my eyes to take in. So what are you doing to vary it up and to capture and grab someone’s attention and then hold it. So, step one, I would just encourage you if you’ve got any sort of visual format or an audio format for that matter, go back and watch yourself and pay attention to those things. And when we actually talk about watching yourself four different ways,
This is from ed Tate. So this was, we learned this from ed Tate, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Okay. Go ahead and share the four ways to watch,
Just watch it normally. Right. I mean, I think I’m gonna get out of this watch it on fast forward. You know, that’s still a thing that from the BCR days but one of the reasons is that you’ll catch your little what do you call them? Your nervous ticks idiosyncrasies. It’s like do you have like a, you know, do you do this all the time? Like we had this friend one time that did this all the time and when you watched it on video, it looks like she was just filling herself up all the time. Do you remember this?
I do never noticed
It until it was on fast forward. Right. And then watch it on mute and then watch it not looking at it. So you’re just listening to it. Those are the four different ways, but I’m telling you you’re, it will be amazing to you to see what are all of the weird things that you catch just by watching yourself or listening to yourself, a stutter or Maybe you say, ah a lot
Of the little things
Like as mine, for sure. But I just think that’s really amazing to pay attention to because your job is to keep people engaged. So can you even keep yourself engaged? Step one?
Yeah. And part of that is just reducing, reduce, reduce, reduce, which was a big theme of what Sean talked about. I think of where Mark Twain said that brevity is the essence of wisdom. One of my coaches and mentors, David Brooks said he was the 1990 world champion of public speaking. He said, tell the audience every single word they need to know and not a word more. And that’s such great advice here. And that’s a part I think of holding attention, which was to me a great reminder of just edit, edit, edit, reduce, reduce, reduce. And then the last big takeaway for me was interesting because Sean is so technical and the stuff he teaches, he had this thing that he said like towards the end, that was like, whoa…
Oh, this is really, this is really profound. Yeah.
Yeah. So it was, and it was like, it was more than emotional. It was almost spiritual. What he said. He said, use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. Use your season of obscurity to prepare you for your season of popularity. That it’s like, look, you’re building the skills, the character, the talent, the systems, the processes in this, in this season that not that many people know about you because you’re being prepared for the person that the world one day need you to be, that you’re being, you’re being shaped and molded and created to be this extraordinary thing. And you’re just, that’s what’s happening. Like you’re, you’re it’s happening right now. Even though you think, Oh no, one’s watching my videos. No, one’s engaging. It’s now you’re, you’re actually being shaped. You’re being built. Yeah.
I love that. And I, you know, when I, when I read that Roy had highlighted this little sentence that made me think about one of my favorite pastors right now is this guy and I, Michael Todd. So total shout out to transformation church and Michael Todd relationship goals is the book. So shout out to that too, but I think it’s very similar to something he talks a lot about, which is the seasons of your life from being single, to being married. And there’s the season of being single that nobody wants to be in, but that is the season that you are being prepared for the life partner that you will one day have. And this, the season of just figuring out who you are and what you want and your connectedness to in our case, God. But then it’s like, people want to rush past that.
They don’t want to be single. They don’t want to admit that they’re single. They always are dating. And it’s like, if you’re always with someone else, then you never have time to find out who you are. And I think that’s very similar to a little bit of what Sean was saying is the season of obscurity is your season of just you at your time alone, it’s your time to set a solid foundation so that if you do get hit with tons of popularity, you’re, you’re grounded and founded in who you are and what you believe in. And it’s just a setting, a very solid foundation or tremendous growth. So very similar to that. And also just love to find any way to talk about Michael.
That’s a good word, Vaden preach it. That’s a good, that is good. That is strong. That is strong. And that’s why we’re here. We hope to keep inspiring you and keep informing you with our guests and our recap. So thanks for being here, come back next time. And we will see then on the influential personal brand.
Ep 131: How To Get Rich in a Niche with Clint Salter | Recap Episode
Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. We are breaking down the interview with my friend Clint Salter. I am rolling solo on this episode. AJ is momming hard and doing her thing as a CEO. So occasionally I have to step in and just do the debrief myself. But this interview is such a great interview to listen, to listen to. They all are. But specifically, if you have this thought that you say, I don’t want to limit my opportunity by serving a group that is too small and, and this for sure is my first take away from the interview because I’ve had this thought and there’s a good chance that you have had this thought, like, we all think I need a, you know, I need a bigger market. I need, I need, I need more, more, more people to serve. I don’t want to limit myself and really it’s the opposite, right?
You increase your opportunity by serving a smaller community in a deeper way. And I think that is specific and is really specific to personal brands, right? Like it’s different if you watch shark tank, you know, and, and a lot of, a lot of the people that do deals on shark tank, they’re not, they’re not service-based businesses, they’re not educational business. They’re not personal brands, right? The sharks are interested in like widgets and things that can just be produced on mass scale. And so when they talk about like, what’s the market for this, they need a big market because they’re selling a low dollar transactional item and it’s just like one item and that’s it. And that it’s like, how many people need this? And, and how do they need it on a recurring basis, but that’s very different, right? So like you might see that kind of thing or get that kind of counsel in, you know, say watching a show like shark tank or talking to other entrepreneurs.
But when you look at personal brands, it’s, it’s not so much, how can I create a product that has, you know, like an information product that has mass appeal to millions and millions of people? Not that that would be bad. I mean, you see books that sell millions of copies, but you don’t typically see video courses that sell millions of copies. I mean, even tens of thousands would be a lot. I mean, a 10,000 customers buying one video course would be a lot. You know, even, even the really big membership sites and stuff, they often, you know, have a couple thousand you know, members on some type of a re a recurring payment. So for most of us, for, for you, for most of you, Clint is such a great example of you increase your opportunity as a personal brand specifically in a service-based business or an information marketing type business and educational you know, type business offering of some type.
And whether that is, you have a small business service, but like when you’re carving out your niche, it’s who can I serve in the deepest way? So it’s a, it’s a small audience that you serve in a bigger way. I mean, he’s got a multi seven figure business here, dealing with dance studios. If you don’t own a dance studio, there’s a good chance. You’d never heard of Clint Salter before today, but if you do own a dance studio, or if you have a friend that does, they probably know him, he dominates the space, or they know someone who knows him because he’s, he’s owning an occupying and expanding and serving in this space. And you know, I think there’s, there’s always just such a draw to like, I need to have, you know, millions of followers and it’s all about just like volume, like the total number of people.
But, you know, keep in mind that one way to make a million dollars is to, is that you only need a thousand customers to buy a thousand dollar product. Right? Think about that for a second. Like why there’s, there’s multiple ways to get to a million dollars, right? You could have a million people buy something that’s $1, but for most personal brands, you’re probably much more likely to get there by having a thousand people buy something that’s a thousand dollars, right. A thousand. People’s not that many people and a thousand dollars is not that high, a price point, but it’s like, that’s how you get there and you go, I only need a FA I only need a thousand people. I don’t need to market to billions or hundreds of millions, or really even millions of people. Like I only need a couple thousand buyers.
And I’ll, I’ll share this with you transparently, right? So brand builders group are like part of our mission is what we call 1000 messengers. We’re on a mission to, we want to have 1000 messengers in our pro quarterly program, which is our flagship program. It’s our one-on-one coaching program that also includes access to events like four of our events a year supplemental. We only need a thousand customers in that program to like, achieve everything we want and be able to provide the level of income that we want for our team. And, and, you know, just having an extraordinary, extraordinary business, an eight figure business, a lifestyle business and we just need a thousand customers. So it’s like, we’re not trying to be everything to everyone to be all the places all the time. It’s like, we’re looking for a thousand personal that are serious about building monetize their personal brand that want to follow a process and want to have a roadmap and a proven checklist for that thing for, for building a personal brand.
That’s why it’s like, we don’t work with companies. It’s not that we couldn’t, it’s not that our expertise doesn’t apply to companies. It’s just that we we’ve narrowed our focus. Based on a couple things, first of all, we’ve, we’ve narrowed our model to one-on-one coaching and, and here’s, I’m going to give you a little framework. I’ve never shared this before, but if you’re trying to niche down, there’s, there’s kind of three different M’s here, okay. In terms of how you can niche down and, and some, and you can mix and match these combinations. So the first M is your market case. So that’s who you’re selling to. So Clint is a great example of niching down his market based on who, right. That is. He’s going after dance studio owners, very specific brand builders group is, is going after personal brands. You know, we’re going after coaches, trainers, authors, speakers, consultants entrepreneurs, and financial advisors, you know, service-based businesses, network marketers you know, fitness people, but, but they are they’re, it’s a face, right?
We’re helping people who are looking to like promote their own personal message. That is also a decision, a strategic decision to focus on a narrow market. So that’s the first step is market. The second M is model. Your business model is you can actually serve a narrow model. So brand builders is another thing that we do. Our model is unique. We offer one on one coaching, right? There’s a lot of people who teach video courses. There’s a lot of people who have events. There’s a lot of people who do masterminds. There’s a lot of people who do monthly membership sites. And part of when we came into the space is based this part of this based on our experience, also based on our passion to like really work in a deep way with, with people one-on-one is to do one-on-one coaching. One of our strategists talks to our, our clients have a strategist.
They talk to every single month. That’s a unique model. The business model is different, right? If you look at Uber, okay, Uber didn’t target a different market. W well, actually, so Uber, Uber, isn’t, isn’t a great example. There a better example of the next, the next M that I’ll talk about. So what is the model, in other words, what is the mechanism in which, you know, you, you make you make money and is there a different way of charging for something, you know, financial advisors had a big chant transition, or a lot of them are in a big transition of model where it used to be like a, you know, commission-based, or they would get paid per transaction. And now they move over to fee-based. That’s a, that’s a whole market of, of that’s a whole group of people, whole industry that is like migrating their business models.
So if you’re looking to differentiate, it’s could be who you serve. It also could be how you serve them, which is the business model. And then the third M is the method. The method is what you provide to them is actually different, right? So we also a brand builders group liked to think that our curriculum, I mean, our, it is unique. It is proprietary. The vast majority of the things that we teach in our curriculum are our own original frameworks, our proprietary IP, intellectual property, things that we have developed. But, you know, certainly some of it is principles that exist that lots of people talk about related to digital marketing, but again, we’re tailoring it to the personal brand. So, you know, there’s, those are three different FMS that would all help you. So you’re, the market is who you serve. The model is how you serve them making money.
And then the method is what you’re actually doing for those people. So, to me, I guess I would say you know, like Uber disrupted the taxi space, I would call that a different method. It was a different way of doing business. So it was still the same, the same model, which is that you’re charging writers per ride. So it’s the same business model as a taxi. It’s the same market. It’s people who take, you know, short-term transportation, but the model, but the, excuse me, the method was different was instead of taxi drivers of which there are a few, you take the entire, you know, pretty much anybody with a car and you turn them into the providers. So it, it created new providers as a different, a different model, or excuse me, a different method. A different model is like charging for a completely different type of delivery model.
So I would think about this as like all of these homemade meal plans, right? So you know, there’s people who are in the market for home cooked, ready to make meals. Okay. And so historically that would be like, you know, Domino’s pizza delivery and, you know, maybe Chinese food and delivery, but there weren’t like a lot of healthy options. And then nowadays you see all of these, these home delivery, health, healthy food being delivered to your home, you know, so hello, fresh and whatever fresh and fresh and lane is the one that we just tried. Our kids are on, we have our kids, our little kids on little spoon and we’ve used a number of them, but healthy food used to only be restaurant. And now there’s this new emergence of a new model, which is shipped healthy food.
Pre-Made shipped directly to your house. That’s a different model. It’s a, it’s a completely different mechanism, but you’re serving, you’re still serving the same. You’re still serving the same market. But in, in, in that scenario, I would say that the, the method is the same. It’s still health food. The thing you’re buying is still the, is still, you know, this kind of like the same, but it’s different in the, in terms of how you’re receiving, how you’re receiving that service. So anyways, the point here is for you, whether you’re differentiating, differentiating based on your market, based on your method and your message, or based on your business model, there’s a lot of ways to niche down. And we all think I don’t want to restrict myself, right? Like, I, I just, I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want to think too small, but, you know, serving a specific audience is not the same as thinking small.
And in many cases like Clint is, is demonstrating. It can be bigger. It’s the people say the riches are in the niches because you’re serving people in a deeper way, right? Like we are able to serve personal brands in a much deeper way than any just normal marketing advertising firm who services companies w just number one, we’re a strategy firm, right? So we’re advising on all the moving parts, digital marketing messaging, your audience like technology copywriting, you know, ads, speaking, books, publishing, launches, you know, funnels the whole, the whole thing just for personal brands. So if somebody just teaches, you know, those same things to everybody, they’ve got a lot more masters, whereas we can just go, man, we only serve personal brands. And if that’s you, we can serve you in a deep way. If it’s not, you, you’re not the fit for brand builders group doesn’t mean you can’t learn from us, right.
It doesn’t mean you might still not enjoy the podcast, but it means we’re not the best. We’re not the best fit for you. You know, now I’ve got books and stuff on my personal brand that, that people learn from, but, but don’t lose to the, to the idea that, Oh, by niching down too small, I’m limiting myself. It’s, it’s almost always the opposite cause you can serve them in a bigger way. All right. The second big idea, the second you know, takeaway or highlight for me from, from, from Clint was really something he said about the mentality and what he said was he used the word experiment. He said, I told myself, I would just, I would just treat this as a year long experiment. And I love that idea. I love the idea of taking the pressure off of yourself from like having to succeed or meet some expectation of like, this is only successful.
If whatever, and instead just going, let’s just treat this as a fun experiment. You know, it reminds me of one of our, our brand builders group clients. Who’s also a strategist. In fact, we’re going to have her on the show here Hillary, because Hillary experimented with tic tok and she did this little experiment with like, ah, maybe I’ll hop on Tik TOK and see if I can make some fun videos. And she generated over a half a million view, half a million followers, not views it’s, it’s hundreds of millions of views, a half tens of millions of views, but it is half a million followers in less than two months, two months, like 60 days, half a million followers just by an experiment. Clint was kind of like the same thing. It’s like, Oh, I’ll just, you know, I’ll treat this as an experiment. I’ll service this community. This sounds like it could be fun. And then maybe it turns, and then maybe it turns into something
And maybe like, maybe that’s you, maybe you have too
Much pressure on yourself right now.
Maybe you are feeling like
You’re not successful because you’re not achieving some number, some income or whatever. And they be, you should just, maybe you need to hear that and go, you know what, I’m just going to treat this as an experiment. If it works out amazing. If it doesn’t, that’s totally fine, but I’m just going to do it for a year. I’m going to commit to, you know, some period of time, I’m not going to just like have one foot in one foot out, so to speak, but I’m going to just play and see what happens. And that’s so valuable. And I think that’s so important. And, you know, even when you get into, you know, in the brand builders group curriculum in phase phase one, we helped you create your positioning phase two. We help you build the infrastructure to support your personal brand. And phase three is where we really start to blow the brand up and really create exponential growth. And one of the, you know, one of our, one of our events there is called high traffic strategies and that’s paid traffic acquisition. Well, when we do paid ads,
Ads, we experiment it. We expect,
Right. Everything we do is like, we’re going to drop a few ads out there. We’re going to put a few dollars behind them. And I’m talking like it could be 10 bucks could be 50 bucks, like at the most, right. Probably never more than a hundred dollars, but it’s like, it could be 10 or 20 bucks. We just want to see which ads perform the best and then put more and then put more money behind the winners. It’s just an experiment, right? There’s not any pressure at that first phase. It’s just like, let’s see what happens. And you, if you are just kind of like bound by
This, this, this,
This demand for perfection, or if you’re creating the of expectations or someone else is putting expectations on you, maybe just let that release, right. Just like release that and let it go and say, what can I do as an experiment? What am I drawn to? That sounds kind of like, it would be fun and, and go with that and see what happens. In the case of Clint, you know, it became this one business that, that L that was then sold that led to another business that led to another business to now, you know, this multi seven figure recurring membership company. And, and he’s doing what he loves. He’s combined, you know, dance and business, and like pulled this together. And, you know, I just, I think that’s good permission. It was good for me to hear and be reminded like, Oh yeah, you know, I, it doesn’t all have to succeed. Like it’s fine for it to be an experiment. So that was my second thing. My, my third big takeaway which is, which is, you know, kind of related to the idea of, of saying, Hey, I’m going to make a business decision to serve a niche, which was, you know, kind of the very first takeaway is when he said, this is what he said. He said, I was able to deliver massive value
Because I knew them.
So on top of just the strategic kind of logical business decision to niche down there is this like emotional reason to do it, which is that, you know them. And if you’ve never heard me say this before, write this down, this is something that we see a lot at brand builders.
You are always most powerfully positioned to serve
The person you once were, You are
Our most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. Why? Because you know them, it’s exactly what Clint said. You know, the space, you know, the fears, you know, the frustrations, you know, the roadblocks, you, you know, their worries, you know, the challenges. And if you’ve made it through that, you know, the solutions, you know, the shortcuts, you know, the hacks, you know, where there needs to be hard work. And, and if you know their challenges, then you can speak to people in such a profound and succinct and poignant way that they hear you. And you break through the noise because you’re speaking their language. It’s why we say that that calling on your heart is the result of a signal that’s being sent out by someone else is, is when we help you find your uniqueness in phase one, we’re helping you figure out who is the person out there sending that signal, and what are you feeling drawn to?
And when we can match those twos together, it’s like, even though, even though you could be in a room full of noise, right? And there could be just this like chatter at a party that you couldn’t hear, the moment that someone says your name, it’s like this precision, this level of precision of, of poignant clarity that cuts through all of this noise. And that’s what you want your marketing to do, specifically your positioning and your, and your messaging. And the words that you’re using is you want it to send out this, this very succinct, poignant, sharp, clear, precise signal that says, this is what I do. This is who I do it for, because this is who I am, because this is who I have been, because I have been you, I have been in your shoes. I have been in your seat. I have had your fears.
I have had your worries. I have had your concerns. I have overcome the roadblocks that you have overcome. That is the connection of a calling. It’s the, it’s the, it’s the power of a guide. Somebody who says, I know what it’s like to be you, because I have been you, that is transformational. It occurs almost as divine. And, and that is what you want to do. And it’s, and it’s just like that is serving people in a deeper way, both from a, a monetary business, empirical logical strategic standpoint, and from an emotional artistic profound passion standpoint, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. And if you haven’t figured that out, that is why we exist at brand builders group to serve personal brands, because we know what it is like to try to build and monetize your brand, to want, to make impact, to want to make a difference in the world, to want to do good, and to want to make more income, you know, like to make enough income, to like achieve your dreams, be able to give and tie the donate and, and support and invest in new or whatever it is, right?
Like it’s not that we don’t like making money. We do like making money. We believe in making money. It’s just that we know that you’re here because you are a mission-driven messenger that you want to make impact, and that you feel like you have some message inside of you. And because that’s you, that’s why we’re here. We’re here for you because of you to serve you because that is who we are and who we have been. So thanks for being here. Keep coming back. Hopefully you enjoyed the interview with Clint Salter, as well as this recap edition, and just keep tuning in. We’re going to be here to encourage you and educate you and occasionally entertain you. We wish you all the best for now. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.