Ep 87: Embracing Vulnerability as Your Superpower with Dave Hollis | Recap Episode
AJV: (00:06) [Inaudible] RV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. It’s Rory Vaden joined by our CEO, my wife, best friend, Amanda Vaden. We’re breaking down for you. The Dave Hollis interview, which was a powerful interview for me. I, I was not familiar with Dave. I mean, I was familiar with Dave, but we, that was like our first conversation for the most part. And so anyways, we’re breaking that down for you with our top three and three and I guess, babe, why don’t you kick this off? AJV: (00:36) All right. Well, my first one was this concept of that you have secret shoppers in your brand every single day. And I loved that. I think that is such a great reminder to all of us, that every single day we have secret shoppers who are observing, interacting, buying from receiving content, from interacting with our personal brands on a daily basis. And just keeping that in mind and, you know, does even for us, as I think about both of our personal brands, but then also our company Brand Builders Group who are the secret shoppers around us and how are they engaging with us interacting with us? What is the perception they’re getting from us? And I think too, something that would really hit me is that our brand is also represented, by our team and they are an extension of our brands. AJV: (01:31) And for all of you who have a personal brand or company brand, making sure you take that into consideration is that the people who work with you are an extension of what you want to be known for and how you want to be known. And it’s not just how they interact with you directly. It’s how do they interact with the people around you that are supporting your personal brand? Because they too are the ones giving impressions of your, of your personal brand and what you want to be known for this concept of secret shoppers, which is nothing new, but a great aha and reminder of, Oh, yes, I do know this, but it was a really great refreshing way to, RV: (02:10) Yeah. That is, that is, that is cool. That didn’t stick with me. So hearing you say that as like, Oh, that’s a good insight to draw out of it. That even for me to go, wow, that was a, that was a good, a good thought, for sure. So for me, the whole theme was really sort of summed up when he said vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower. Vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower and we just watched Brenae Brown’s call to courage the net, which was incredible. Yeah. Her Netflix special. And you know, it’s interesting. And, and, you know, you may not be aware of this, but there is a little bit of a context going on here. You know, like our hearts really go out to Dave and Rachel. They announced here with a few weeks ago when this came out, that they’re actually going through a divorce, which is something that’s you been, they’ve been talking about and praying about for years. RV: (03:02) And they kind of made that decision. And it reminded me of, of, I’ve been trying to make some sense of some of this with Brenae Brown, where she said, you know, vulnerability doesn’t mean you’re telling everybody everything that’s happening in your life. And that I think is a really big takeaway, not necessarily sharing the details and the facts of everything happening in your life with everyone in the world. That’s not vulnerability. She defines vulnerability as emotional exposure. And so that’s just sort of like sharing feelings that have happened and sharing stories about certain times in your life. But it’s not the same thing as just saying here’s everything here, here’s everything. And that people bond to the feelings, not necessarily to the facts of everything that’s going on in your life. And so anyways, that was just a, you know, something that I’ve been kind of questioning and trying to draw some clarity about. And I, I felt like I got a good, a good distinction there for me. AJV: (04:02) It’s so interesting because throughout the entire interview with Dave, I didn’t even pick like none of my takeaways have anything to do with vulnerability or openness or anything at all. It’s like, I’m looking at Rory’s points and I’m like, can we listen to the same interview? Because that is not at all what I got. So here’s my second one was this this piece of the interview where he talks about this meeting, that he got to sit in with Steve jobs during his time at Disney, he got to sit in with this meeting with Steve jobs. And Steve was talking about perception and customer loyalty and customer interaction and engagement. And he said, you just have to remember it. I’m gonna quote this because I’m not really about the facts here. I, you said everyone who interacts with your brand is giving you a brand deposit or a brand withdrawal based on their experience. AJV: (04:54) And I think that is a really big takeaway. And I don’t think we spend enough time talking about that as entrepreneurs and business owners and influencers and whatever you are, author speaker so forth is that every scene, every single interaction that you have with a customer or a potential customer is doing one of two things. It is putting a deposit into your credibility bank account, or just taking one out scary. And I think that this was such an aha enlightening conversation for me on a completely different perspective from you, because I am so in touch with all of our customer touch points. And it was just like tightening up every single system of how are we engaging on social media? What are we putting on the podcast? And it’s, I think it’s really important. I’m just remembering, it’s like, Hey, every single thing is going towards you or against you. And it’s knowing how to get more of the deposits and less of the withdrawals without us taking all of the word withdrawals so negatively, because there’s going to be some of those regardless. And I just think that was just a good reminder, too, of like every interaction is doing one of two things, are you even thinking about it that way? RV: (06:07) Yeah. Well, and as you were talking there about are kind of the way you and I processed the interview different, which I think is fun. You know, so the book right, has his new book get out of your own way. It’s interesting because he shares as a man sort of his resistance to vulnerability. That’s a big part of like what the book is about. And I think that really hit me hard, which is like, okay, where am I? Where am I resistant to being vulnerable? Where am I resistant to sharing? And one of the questions he shared that I thought was so powerful was he simply, he simply said this, where was pain present? Where was pain present? And if you think back to any circumstance or story in your life, and again, you don’t necessarily have to share all the details every time you share a story, but, but to go, where did I experience pain? RV: (07:01) And this to me is actually transcends the vulnerability conversation to just even copywriting, right? When we talk about the 15 P’s and when you lay out, okay, why did you create this course? You should ask yourself, where did you experience pain when you were trying to learn the lessons? Like we always say, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so asking yourself that question, I think is really interesting, where was pain present? That is a place of emotional connection with other humans is to be like this was a place or a time or a way in my life that I experienced pain. And just even allowing other people to see into the idea that you, to experience pain creates the connection beyond and outside of the facts of what caused or didn’t cause that pain it’s just the, the feeling. So I thought that was a really good question on both the tactical level and you know, an emotional level where, where was pain present? AJV: (08:01) Yep. That’s good. Alright. My third one is criticism is the price of entry for building a personal brand. RV: (08:09) You’re stealing my that’s my third one. AJV: (08:11) That’s my third one, but mine are probably still a little bit different. And I liked how he talked about how unfortunately, most of us pay attention to the 10%, not the 90%. He goes, have you got 10 people? You’re going to pay attention to the one that was unhappy versus the nine who were incredibly happy. And he said, you got to build your business for the 90%. Not for the 10%. You’re always going to have people who criticize you welcome to the club. You’re always going to have somebody who doesn’t agree with you, but build your personal brand in a way that aligns with your value. So much to the point of when people don’t agree with you and they don’t align with you. You’re still okay with that because your brand stands for something that is so aligned with your values and your mission and your message that the 10% no longer really matters. Not to the point of like offending anyone, but to the point of, you know what, that’s okay. Just follow me. Just don’t buy from me. My brand wasn’t built for everyone. That’s okay. But I need to focus on the 90%. Not the 10 person. RV: (09:15) Yeah, well that was my, my takeaway too. And it reminds me of a rule that I learned from a guy named David Glickman, who was one of the guys that I studied early on when I was learning the psychology of humor. And he said, you got to remember the rule of 2%. The rule of 2% says, 2% of the audience will hate you. Why? Because 2% of the audience always hates you. They just hate you. There’s no explanation. Like you’re gonna have people that just happen to intersect with you. That just don’t. And I don’t know if it’s exactly 2% or whatever, but you know, to realize it doesn’t matter how small or how big you are, like, you’re gonna have people that disagree with you. And you know, to what age I said, it’s just being, if you’re rooted in truth, like you’re rooted in your own identity, your own principles, your own values, then you’re not offended by the people who don’t like you. Cause you’re not trying to win them over. Like you didn’t lose, neither of you lost. It’s just, this is what is, and so anyways, AJV: (10:18) I likened it to this. It’s like, as long as you know, what you stand for, you have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. And that is the crusher. Just knowing what you stand for. And as long as you know, then you also have to be okay with the people who don’t stand for the same thing. Loved it. It was great. RV: (10:36) And for you listening, don’t be afraid to go where there has been pain. We love you. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 85: Using Elevated Realism to Build the Visual Identity of Your Brand with Nick Onken | Recap Episode
Speaker 1: (00:06) RV: (00:06) Welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down our friend, Nick on kin master celebrity photographer. I don’t know what else to say. Photographer guru photographer, extraordinary, extraordinary. The champion of all or so rent photography. I don’t know. Amazing guy, super powerful interview. And of course joined by my wife, our CEO, AIG Vaden. Why don’t you, why don’t you kick us off? What did you think? AJV: (00:37) Yeah. And I’m actually going to refer to my notes because this is one of those interviews where you kind of just get lost in the conversation. Nick is so conversational, he’s just just kind of a wealth of knowledge. And so I’m going to refer to my notes. I had five main points try to fit, but I’m going to try to fit them and still make them all fit. So my first one is just that great reminder that people connect to you through seeing photos of you and this digital landscape that we live in and the virtual atmosphere and how most of us are interacting today. It’s a, that the pictures of you that you post on social media is how people connect with you. And, you know, I know so many friends and, you know, professional and personal colleagues who say, well, I, you know, social media is just not for me. AJV: (01:23) Or I just do it for personal, or I only do it for professional. And we’re in this really interesting time where well kind of digital is the way, and that is how people connect to you and see you as human. Like this is the human interface and that is that personal dialogue. And you know, it’s interesting. I was at a friend’s house this weekend and she, she had her friend over there who I had never met before. And she said, yeah, I told her to follow you a few months ago. And she said, I know that you post like tons and tons of stuff about personal branding. And I was like, Oh yeah, you probably haven’t seen any of that. All I really post is pictures of my kids. And she said, actually, I really enjoy just getting to know you and your family. She goes, I love the fact that I’m meeting you for the first time. And I actually feel like I already know you. RV: (02:18) I didn’t know this. You didn’t, I didn’t real. I missed this. AJV: (02:20) Yeah. We were in the kitchen and she said, actually, I’ve seen your kids kind of grow up over the last six months. And you know, I have a one-year-old and we have a one year old, I had a role in it. You did. And it was just really interesting to me. I was like, man, I’m behind, I’m behind the game here. I’m behind the eight ball. I, I don’t know you. And I don’t know your three kids. And I felt really behind because she was like, yeah, I’ve been following you. She goes, I love the pictures of your kids. I love seeing your family. She goes, your kids are so cute. And she already knew so much. And it’s like, we all, it was like almost gave us a launching pad for this new friendship, for this new conversation. And I had never really viewed it through that lens before. And I actually felt like I was missing out because I didn’t have that same background knowledge on her. And it was this very weird aha moment. And so when Nick talks about in the interview of, Hey, we connect to people through seeing pictures of them, it was this great aha coming to fruition and this very first encounter of wow, that really, that really connects, that really makes RV: (03:30) It’s almost like it accelerates the relationship and so many ways. And I think it’s funny cause our feeds are probably completely inverse. Mine’s almost entirely business. I share. I do share personal stuff in stories, but not even that often. And yours is almost entire, your feed is entirely personal. So like many things, when you add a Rory in an ADJ, you have a great, you’ve got a great thing, but yeah, well, that’s super powerful. I, you know, Nick said that the camera sometimes adds a few pounds to 10 pounds. I’ve never met a camera that had less than 20 pounds to me, but I wasn’t upset by that. And my biggest takeaway from, from him, which is, I think what his thing is all about is elevated realism. And it reminded me of what Kristen Giza said a few weeks ago about TV. RV: (04:20) I think she called it heightened authenticity, the similar, like it’s like be yourself, but bigger, like you know, and a simple tactic in just that phrase, I think is super powerful, elevated realism. And when you look at his photos of Justin Bieber or of, you know, any of the people that he’s taken, you, you see this like, Oh, that’s what it looks like. I think of Louis behind the hot air balloons, Louis, they did a photo shoot. It really did. I mean, well, and so this was a tactical point that, you know, for someone I’ve never put a lot of stock stock in photography pun intended I have, but as someone learning a lot more about it and placing a much higher value on it, a simple tactic of make sure the background of your photo is a part of telling the story. And I thought that was just a super simple thing that like, you know, it’s, we underestimate, it’s like a very subconscious thing of what’s going on in the background, but particularly when you’re, you’re, you’re doing elevated realism and you’re, you’re producing an energy and an emotion with a photo that sort of faded background, but like whatever it is contributes a lot to that. And I thought it was both a tactical tip tip and also like a very artistic tip for how to do that. So that was a big, big one for me AJV: (05:45) Positions into my second, third, fourth point. I’ll put into one, which is make sure that your pictures and your captions make sense. RV: (05:54) Oh yeah. That’s really simple. Hashtag what was it girls with? Irrelevant captions. AJV: (06:01) Well, how’s it gotta be just girls Nick, come on. But yeah, I just, I think that was really an aha moment. Cause you know, I spent a ton of time looking at pictures and reading captions I’m in social media by trade quite a bit. And I just thought it was really interesting and you know, so I started actually going back through some of our teammates profiles while I was like listening to the podcast and I was like, Oh yeah, make a note. I’ll make a note there. And it was like one of those like aha moments where it’s like, okay, if you’re fully dressed, standing by the edge of an ocean or by the edge of a pool. And it’s like, great, first of all, that makes no sense to me. Why are you in a suit by the ocean? And then too, like reading the captions and I’m like, Oh, okay. AJV: (06:42) Yeah, I totally get what he’s saying. And I already knew that where it’s like, Hey, if you’re in a bikini or if you’re shirtless a shirtless male why are you like, you know, posting about deep thought and you know, soul searching. And it’s like, is that, are you finding your soul easier? Cause you have no shirt on, I’m not sure like what’s happening there, but it’s like, how are you making sure that your captions in your post connect in an authentic and real way? And are you just picking pictures you like, or do they actually help project the contents? And I thought that was a really good way of looking at it. It’s you know, and I think you could start either way. It’s like, what picture do I have that’s representative of this content that I’m trying to post, but then also what pictures do I love and what does that tell me to say, what does that prompt me to say? RV: (07:33) Well, even the story of that. AJV: (07:35) Yeah. Like what feeling does it, you know, kind of create in me. And I think you could go either way, right? You could start with the content and find the picture, start with the picture and create the content. But I just making sure they connect was a big aha. Yeah. Not necessarily a new one, but Oh yeah. Need to make sure we do that. RV: (07:53) Yeah. Just the little conscious, conscious things like this that will make a huge difference. And I think that it seems like it would be easier to find to, to, to find a picture that you love and then tell a story from, from that. But yeah. So anyways the, my big second, my second big takeaway, which I totally understand with physical products, but didn’t necessarily connect so clearly to personal brands is that different packaging results in different pricing, different packaging results in different pricing. We all know that like the way, you know, when you buy a Coke, like Coke or coffee, or you, you can go, what’s the difference between a Starbucks coffee and a seven 11 or a, you know, whatever air Jordans or what I grew up on, which was air Jordash. Like there’s, there’s certain things that you expect in the packaging, right? Apple has real. Yes. Well, it’s called Jordache, but I called it air door dash, but it was from Payless shoes. AJV: (09:01) Oh yeah. [inaudible] RV: (09:03) I call it air Jordash cause I wanted air Jordans. This is the whole story of my life. All of my ambition comes from the fact that I could not afford air Jordans when I was a kid. And so I wore air Jordache and then I was like, one day, I’m going to be able to buy your Jordans and you still don’t have any, I don’t have any, but, but Jasper got some what’s your sweet anyways. Yeah, Nordstrom rack. I’m on discount. But so your pictures, your photography as a personal brand represents a huge part of your packaging. And it’s, it’s, it’s funny because on the one hand you go, how come this photographer will charge me 500 and this photographer will charge me 5,000, but that’s also probably the difference between you charging 500 and you charging 5,000 for whatever the thing is that your doing. Yeah. And at least making a connection in your mind to go, my photography is directly correlated to the price that I can charge an excellent photography allows me to charge more. It enhances the perception of my credibility. And that was just a really important connection for me. AJV: (10:13) Yeah. Well again, great transition to my next one, which was, I’m literally reading my notes because I tried to capture this. You are creating the perception of what you want people to see you as right? Your pictures, your imagery creates the perception of how you want people to view. You see you as you’re creating the lens and which they put all of their thoughts around you. And I think that to your point, it’s a really big deal. It’s the way that you project yourself and your imagery. It is the perception that people have and you actually have influence over that. All right, these are your pictures. And I think that is a big deal and that is really important. And I really love that. It’s like, Hey, if people see you as one way, well, you can change that. Yeah. Post different images, post different pictures, create different content. AJV: (11:07) You have that power use it and you can do it through your images and your story. And then the other thing that I had kind of noted in this area is that people want to see you as human, which is why I post so many personal, personal pictures. I’ve decided Nick’s interview it’s because I have the human element. That’s, that’s what I’m going with. But I think that’s really important. And, and actually it was really interesting because as I was listening to his interview and I was like looking through my own feed of like, okay, okay, I’ll see how that connects. And I see how that connects. And as I asked myself, I was like, how do I really want people to perceive me? And I think for me, it’s like, yes, I’m the CEO and cofounder brand builders group. And I do all this stuff work-wise but more than anything else I want to be seen as Jasper and Liam’s mom like that truly is, it’s like, that is my number one priority. AJV: (11:58) It’s my number one, calling all thing and breweries wife. Right. You know, I’ll take that child of God all the things, but, you know, I think that was really, it was like an aha moment, the personal things in general. Yeah. Like that I would, I would much rather be seen as a human being versus I CEO or this or that. It’s just, just me. And I think that too is very reflective of what you get in my feet. And that was completely unintentional. Now I will put some intention to that, but it also was an aha moment of RV: (12:34) It could be good to put a business call to action in there every once in a while. AJV: (12:37) I do, I tied it in occasionally. But then I just, you know, that it’s a completely different feed than you would have found two years ago. RV: (12:47) Yeah. And it’s funny to me, cause people will comment on my profile or they’ll message me and they’ll say you have a beautiful family and I’m going, Oh, they must follow AJ. Because I don’t post a ton of the pictures, but like, or they’ll see us and they’ll be like, I love keeping up with your family. And I’m like, Oh, you’ve been following AJ. So, AJV: (13:08) But again, I just thought it was like very interesting.
Ep 83: Unlock Loyalty and Strengthen Your Network with John Ruhlin, the Guru of Giftology | Recap Episode
RV: (00:07) Welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Something exciting has happened. AJ and I have agreed on exactly two thirds of what we’re going to tell you. AJV: (00:19) I should make this shorter, but we’ll see. RV: (00:21) Yeah, well, it will. And we, we always have different viewpoints that we drive, but today, separately we came up with yeah, always on separate, but today we came up with, we each had two of the same top three, so yeah, kick it off. AJV: (00:38) My first one, and again, as a reminder, always, if you haven’t listened to the full interview, I highly recommend it. It’s really good. And it’s applicable to anyone. If you’re building a personal brand, if you’re not building a personal brand, it applies to all humans all the time, all out places. So I would that my first one was this concept of a love bomb and what I just love the concept let’s just drop some love. And I just loved that in general. In fact, you know, Rory and I have been recently talking about, about all of the challenges that are happening in the world today with, you know, racism and sexism, and there’s just so many things. And if you really think about it, there’s just one really simple solution and it’s, and it’s love. But it’s, it’s really hard. AJV: (01:27) That’s not an easy one, but it is simple. And this whole concept of a love bomb, it’s just dropping massive, just unexpected love and attention and intention on the people around you. And I thought this was really important, this kind of whole concept, he said, he said why don’t you try to do the extra ordinary for a few versus the ordinary for many. And I just loved that. And I, I think about so often things that we do and it’s like, we’re trying to include everyone. And that just gets really expensive. So you kind of like the more you include, it’s like, okay, well, we can’t do that. And okay, well, we can’t do that. And okay, well, we can’t do that either, but what if you said, well, what are the most intimate people, the most intimate clients, the most intimate family members or friends or whomever, and do something really extraordinary for them. And he tells as, as well as Rory, this really amazing thing that he did at our house, but I’m going to hold that to make you go listen to the full interview because it’s worthy of a listened to be like, why would you do that? And the answer is because he just wants to share the love bomb. RV: (02:42) Yeah. Yeah. And I actually, there’s not much more, I would say to that. You know, if you didn’t pick this up, so if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, John Ruhlin is an expert on like client loyalty and retention through gifting. And so he talks about strategic generosity and gifting and you know, so I would just, I’m going to springboard off that and say, my second big takeaway was a term that he used return on relationships, return on relationships. And you know, not just return on investment, not return on time, but just return on the idea of pouring into people and loving on them. And, you know, part of the mindset shift for me was going just like what you were saying, take what you would spend on like a lot of people and just spend it on fewer to create this more extraordinary impact, this deeper connection. RV: (03:38) And so that was big, but, but the other, the other part of it that I thought was going, how come we’re willing to buy Facebook ads or something like that. Right. And we’ll spend thousands of dollars advertising to a bunch of random strangers who have no desire to hear from us, right? Like we’re interrupting the life of a normal human minding, their own Telemark. And and, and like, what have you just took a portion of that and spent it on appreciating the clients you have appreciating the referral partners you have and knowing like that is marketing. Like it’s gonna come back to you in referrals and it’s a twofer because you’re loving and appreciating the people you have, and they are likely to give you more clients. Plus they are client, you know, if they are clients, they can more powerfully refer you than a cold traffic thing. But we don’t think about like a lot of us don’t think about that. So return on relationships. That was my second. AJV: (04:39) Yeah. And I would just add one tiny thing to that. And I thought this was really powerful and it’s not something that he says that he necessarily tracks and numbers, even though there is strategy. A little bit of it is by faith by doing good deeds. And by sharing the love, like the love naturally will come back to you. There’s this intrinsic thing and human beings that want to return goodness. Right? Yeah. There’s law of reciprocity. That was a tangent. That, wasn’t what I was kind of saying. Well, I was gonna say is this whole concept of return and relationships is wow with the unexpected. And that, that is so true. And he talks about all these concepts of like, it’s one thing to do things when it’s expected anniversaries Christmas, birthdays Valentine’s day. Right. but what are you doing? That’s really unexpected? How do you create this wow factor with the unexpected? And what he did at our house was that, and it’s funny because it’s almost been two years and we still talk about that evening and we made friends there and it’s just like one of those experiences. And that was something else he talked about. What are you doing in experiences? Not just in things. And wow. Will the unexpected. So that’s all I would add in my third one. And I’m actually gonna read this on, because your RV: (05:58) Second one tied into my third one, which was planned randomness, which is what you just annexed. Well, that was what I, what it was for me is the unexpected, like the timing matters more than the gift itself. So AJV: (06:12) I’m going to read, I’m going to read my last one because I actually like write this out and I want to get it right. And he said, cause I was capturing this as he was saying it, it was a handful of people that help launch millions of revenue. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. And that is so integral into everything that we believe at brand builders group. And if you are building a personal brand, you’re playing with the comparison concept of, well, in order for this to work, I’ve got to have hundreds of thousands of followers. And I’ve got to have millions of downloads in my podcast and I have to have this many of this. And it’s like, that’s not true. And I think the great example that immediately came to mind is Jesse Itzler. And if you guys don’t know Jesse, Jesse, Itzler, he’s a mega entrepreneur. AJV: (07:03) He owns the Atlanta Hawks. He started, but here’s what I want to talk about. That’s what I’ve got to talk about. So, but I think this was amazing because he started this pride. It’s the largest private jet company in the world, billions of dollars. And there was two ways of going about this, right? You’re going to rather sell in volume and have a low price, or you’re going to have a teeny tiny niche audience and have a very magnificent price. And he built a billion dollar company by selling to only a few people, a couple hundred people. I think it was like a thousand, right? And that is proof that you do not need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. It’s how targeted are you with your core target audience? Do you know them? Do you have something that they want and how do you reach them? AJV: (07:54) How do you market to them? How do you appeal to them? Because you don’t need millions to make millions. And that was just like this, gosh, that’s such an important thing for us all, to remember as we’re building courses or making funnels or speaking and all the things that you can do to build your personal brand. It’s like, you don’t have to reach millions. You can, and I’m sure you want to, but just remember, you can make a very great business and a really good living six, seven, eight, nine figures by selling to the niches right there. What’s that saying? You make riches in the niches. And I just thought that was like this aha moment of, wow. That’s just a really great concept to remember and to hang on to, RV: (08:36) Yeah. I’ve never had this thought until you were just talking, but I was, it’s so ironic because he married Sarah Blakely and they did like opposite business models. She so sold a low price point to tons of people. And he sold a high price point to a few people. So they can both work, but you know, particularly you have a high dollar offer. It’s like, you don’t need that many people to buy in and beyond the money. It’s like, you only need a few people who believe in you. You need a few people. Yeah. AJV: (09:05) Yeah. That’s right back to what he said. He said it was a handful of people that help launch millions of revenue. And that’s because I loved on him and I had attention and intention with every single one of them. It doesn’t take a ton to make it time. Loved it. Go listen to it. RV: (09:21) I listened to it. Go love on your people. Find a few people to invest in. Who’ve made a difference to you, make a difference to them and watch how forced back into your life. We’re so thankful for having the opportunity to impact you. So stay tuned and join us. Every single week. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 81: What Its Takes to Make It On Television with Kristin Giese | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. It’s your favorite married couple and personal brand strategy, Rory and AJ Vaden. Probably the only, well, I guess there’s not that many married couples that do anyways. So we’re highlighting the interview that just with Kristin Giese, which you know, shared a lot of back story about how we found her through a cold call. And we just want to give you our top three and three, the first one we both shared. So babe, I’ll let you kick off. What was your first big takeaway from Kristin? AJV: (00:34) Yeah, and it was a takeaway and an aha moment and. I’m not sure I’d ever want to be on TV at the same time, but just the importance of it’s kind of almost like entertainment over information. And I think she talked a lot about, so I don’t think RV: (00:52) The topic of the interview was how to get booked on TV if you haven’t listened to the interview. AJV: (00:59) But I think to me that the part that really stood out was it’s not really about the information as much as what do you do with the information to entertain the people who are watching. And that’s where I naturally have a conflict because it’s like, I don’t want to create drama when there doesn’t need to be so much of TV today and not saying it’s good nor bad. I’m just saying it is what it is. RV: (01:27) That’s what I heard. I heard you saying it was bad, but we’ll leave that to you. AJV: (01:32) But I, I just think that, you know, that it’s really interesting. It’s about emotion and the entertainment value of, Oh, the shock. And I can’t believe they said that or, you know, can’t believe this happened. And I’ve heard that and tie what I want in my life. So that was kind of like a really good, clear real. RV: (01:48) Yeah. And you probably don’t know unless you’ve listened to every single episode is Aja doesn’t watch crime movies. She doesn’t watch anything sad, anything with whore, anything with drama, pretty much she watches romantic comedies and animated feature films. AJV: (02:05) And I don’t even watch those are my kids really. It’s just romcoms, that’s it. If it’s not, I’m not into it. I don’t want to be scared, sad, and angry or cry. Yeah. So I think that part was just really interesting is that you’ve got to bring a lot of entertainment value to even media interviews and getting pitched. And you’ve just gotta be an entertainment value to it. So almost more important than the information in of itself. It’s how you’re delivering it. And I think that’s really important. RV: (02:36) Yeah. And, and so that was my first big takeaway. I wrote down entertainment, not enlightenment. I didn’t process it in, in such like a negative way, but more of a, of a, of an insightful going, if you want to be in TV, you gotta realize that you’re in entertainment, not enlightenment, which if you’re building a personal brand, a lot of times it’s like, you know, the essence was information marketing, not, not for everyone. That’s that’s information marketing and personal branding are not the same thing. Information marketing is a subset of some personal brands, but if you’re an author with the video course, it tends to be more about like teaching. And like you’re saying information and TV is, it’s not the goal. Isn’t to be high minded people don’t watch TV, they watch TV for an escape. They watch it to laugh. They watch it to be engaged and entertained, not necessarily to learn. RV: (03:35) And so per se, you know, there’s some, there’s some caveats to it, but yeah, anyways, so that’s that, that’s it. So that was the first one. That was for me, for me too. So that was the big one. All right. So my second one, which is kind of connected, but I actually really loved this concept. She used this phrase a couple times heightened authenticity, and I wrote it down. You should write it down because whether you’re trying to be a reality TV star, or you’re just trying to host an interesting podcast or be an author or have great videos or just, yeah, just be a great writer. It’s heightened authenticity. It’s it’s it’s. And this is an interesting balance between being real, not being fake, but creating kind of that entertainment value in. And, and it’s like in speaking, I was always told that speakers have a license to embellish. RV: (04:33) You don’t have a license to make up, but you have a license to embellish to accentuate the salient emotions of a story or of a bit. And I think that’s really important, especially if you’re on TV, but look, if you’re on YouTube, you’re on TV. You know, if you’re going to have a podcast you’re, you’re on the, you know, you’re on the radio or whatever, it’s, it’s, you’re a host. People are looking for that. And specifically, you know, what do you do with that practically? I think she said, don’t tell me who you are, make me feel who you are, make sure your delivery creates emotions, which we talk a lot about at our world-class keynote craft events, sort of the magic of how to do that. And it was just a great reminder and I had never heard that term heightened authenticity. Yeah. AJV: (05:20) Oh really? That’s really good. My second one is something she said towards the very end. But I thought, wow, that’s probably, probably, we need to like push that up to the front as a good reminder to everyone who is trying to get pitched for a media interview or even a podcast interview TV show, whatever it is, talk, show whatever. But it’s like social media is today’s resume. You don’t need to tell me all the things you talk about. I can go and find them myself and it better match up. And probably this was strike two against me because if you went to my social feeds, AKI would learn about me is I know how to make really cute kids. RV: (05:59) And she’s not hireable for that in case you’re wondering that’s, that’s not an available service, AJV: (06:05) But you know, it’s, again, it’s one of those things where, you know, how many of us have some sort of pitch deck or there’s a media kit, a speaker kit, whatever kit. And it talks about, well, here are my talking points and here’s what you did, the dah dah dah. Then you go to your social media and none of that is represented there. And she’s like, social media is your resume. It’s not about what you’ve done. It’s, you know, what are you doing? And is it current tense and two, how many people are you doing it for? And I thought that was a really good aha reminder. Cause I know so many people who are like putting together pitch decks and writing these long emails and got this kit. And it’s like, really well, they need to do is go to your social. RV: (06:45) I kind of do that. Yeah. AJV: (06:46) So is that representative of who you are, what you talk about, what your brand is about. And I would say for a lot of people, it’s probably not including myself, RV: (06:56) But you’re also clarifying, you’re not trying to sell a TV show and you’re not trying to get booked on media. So that’s okay. AJV: (07:02) No, but maybe my brand shouldn’t be more with my passion and interests, which are children. So that, you know, again, this is all those things I’m like, do you align with actually what you’re passionate about putting out there into the world? Are you putting anything out there? All those things I thought were really an aha moment. She shed something really quick. But if you take a moment to let that sink in, it’s like, Oh, let’s take a look at that. Let’s realign some things and make sure that they all match. RV: (07:32) Yeah, love that. So my third one was a simple, a simple thing. She actually didn’t say this, but it reminded me of something that I have held as a philosophy in my life for a long time that I need to be reminded of, which is that everybody is a somebody somewhere. Hmm. Everybody is a somebody somewhere. And I must’ve had that first. That thought when I was probably, or my early twenties, was that everyone that you sit next to on a plane, there are somebody somewhere. They can get you the hookup somewhere, right. Even if it’s just a place to stay at their house, when you traveled to their city or they work at some type of job where they hire speakers or they know someone who’s a podcast host or they’re friends with a big social media influencer, or they are a TV producer or they’re the assistant to a producer or, you know, they can get you free passes to the waterpark. RV: (08:28) Like every single person you meet, everybody is a somebody somewhere. And to Christine’s point, you know, because she’s not a personality, like she’s not trying to get on shows. She’s not her feed is her career kids. And if you just looked at social media, you might not realize that, Hey, by the way, this woman has booked dozens of people for Oprah. So she might someone you want to know, you want to be nice too. And the truth is everybody has connections and, and, and things that you could benefit from. So if you’re a jerk and can’t be nice to people for the sake of being nice, just remember everybody is a somebody somewhere. So that’s a reason to be nice to everybody also. AJV: (09:15) Yeah. I think that also is indicative too, of people’s like relying too much on their social feeds because you forget to realize like, these people probably do have professional lives and they have this and they have that. And without doing the necessary research, which I, I find that people don’t do today, there’s so much, they’re not sharing it’s, you’re not really sure how to connect with a great example of that. But I think all of those things really do. I think tee up something that she didn’t say so clearly here, but it’s do your research. Mike, you want to get on a certain show. What types of people do they interview? What types of content is really popular? Who is the audience? Who is that do the necessary research instead of copying and pasting the same email. And you’re saying, you know, attachment and send, all right, you’ve got to do the necessary research to see where you fit and how do you fit. And who’s the right person and what have they done. And that all takes time, time and effort. RV: (10:12) Well, and your, your, your third takeaway was started related to that general. Oh, okay. Well allow me to interrupt your transition. AJV: (10:20) So my third takeaway is it’s making it not about you, but what are you doing for the audience, right? It’s not just, Hey, I’ve got this great insight or this great perspective, or I’ve got this great plan or whatever you have. It’s what are you doing for the audience with that? So how are you making this relevant to the people who are listening or watching that they can then take it and apply it to their life, to their business, to their home and do something with it. So what are you doing for the audience? And one of the things that I think is really important for our audience is your audience in this respect are the people who are booking people that is your audience. So what are you doing for them? What did they want? And are you doing it for that audience? In addition to the actual audience that you would be doing an interview for, or podcast for, or TV show for a it’s two fold, and you’ve got kind of a primary audience, which is a person getting you on the show and then the secondary audience, which is the people who would be watching it. And that goes for podcast and all. So that was my last one. RV: (11:28) Yeah. So there you go. I mean, quick takeaways, powerful interview. If you’ve ever thought about pitching your own TV show, or getting just booked on a talk show or being a talk show, host an absolute must listen to Kristin Giese. As always, thanks for being here, we’re breaking it down. We’re trying to make it practical. We want to help you build and monetize your personal brand so that you can make more impact, make more income and just make a big difference in the world. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 79: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey, it’s time for the influential personal brand at recap of the Angie Lee episode. And I’m going solo on this one with AJ out and wanted to share my thoughts on the interview. I did with my, my good friend, Angie Lee, and you know, first thing in terms of the recap that I hope you hear when you, when you listened to the interview is the part where she says it took two and a half to three years to really even get started. Right? So two and a half to three years to even get started, like, but before she even started to see traction, and I hope you don’t skip over that, I hope you don’t miss that because, cause this is, this is the real deal. Like no matter how many of these techniques, and there’s a couple of great ones that we’re going to talk about here that we share that we, you know, that we teach you, you know, those of you that like, if you’re one of our clients, we, you know, we teach you the best of the best that we can. RV: (01:05) And on these interviews, like we try to draw out the most that we can from our, our network and our friends and the people who are actually making stuff happen. But the reality is just, you gotta, at some point commit to just be in here. Like you got to just commit to going the distance. And if you can’t be here for five years, like if you’re not in this for five years, then just go home. Now. I mean, like if, if you’re not willing and prepared to pursue this dream for at least five years, then just stop now because it takes three years to even get going, like to even just get out of the Gates of, of just hustle and work before people even understand it. And I think, you know, our pod, this podcast, a good example, like I’ve already hosted a podcast that had millions of downloads and starting over. RV: (01:57) We’re just now getting to about 50,000 downloads. And we’ve almost been doing this for already like another year and a half. And that it’s like, that’s a slow build for someone who’s been there before, but we’re walking this journey with you. And I don’t mean that to be, you know, discouraging. I mean that, to be encouraging, to throw the gauntlet down, to help you realize that this takes time, right? So like if your first email blast, didn’t generate millions of dollars for you. Like, you know, you sometimes see on social media and people over promise, like don’t be discouraged, stay committed to your mission, to your vision, to the dream of making an impact, be focused on impact and influence and income will come. It will come. Like the stuff that we teach at brand builders, it absolutely works. Like it works, it works, it works, but it takes time. RV: (02:50) There’s not a way to do it with no time. And anyone who tells you otherwise, they’re just, they didn’t really do it. And it’s not sustainable like that. You, you, you, we bring on people who are doing it, have done. It are the real ones making it happen day in, day out. And you know, so that’s just hopefully encouragement to you. Don’t be discouraged if you know, it’s not all happening right away. Like you just came here. That message enough. So beyond that a couple takeaways for me from my my pal. So I think that was, you know, that’s, that’s a big one, but a simple nuance. The Angie didn’t say so directly, but it, it, it kind of inspired me or it was something she said that reminded me of this idea that it’s, it’s important. It’s really important to lock this in your brain. RV: (03:43) And this is an important sales, marketing strategy, technique, mindset, whatever you want to call it, don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Don’t tell people what you do, tell people what you can do for them. Like when people ask you, what do you do? Don’t say I’m a real estate agent say, aye, how people sell their homes, right? Like don’t, I don’t tell people I’m a personal brand strategist. I tell people I help people build and monetize their personal brand. And that is a simple and important and clear demarcation line. Don’t tell people what you do tell people what you can do for them. And that just really stuck out to me was something to remind myself of and to make sure that you just nailed home, that you, you think about that always. Cause that’s the mistake is we tell people what we do. RV: (04:53) We tell people like this, this is, this is what I spend my time doing. And they don’t really care about that. They care about what you can do for them. So make sure you make that change mentally. And, and also literally in your copy in your videos and you know, anytime you’re communicating in various forms, the next thing and I think I love this was something I really did take away from me and G in terms of, you know, selling and marketing, I think it’s like a lot of times we see people when they, they feel almost like they love putting out content, but then they have to go into like sales mode and that’s where they freak out or, you know, they love teaching. But then when it goes into like asking people to buy or something, they, they freak out because they have like this, like a gear shift, like there’s this mode where they think about, okay, I’m being myself normally. RV: (05:50) And then there’s this moment where I go into marketing. And when Angie was saying is like, don’t do that. Just, just be the same person talking passionately about what you believe in like the, the, the tools that you use, the products that you buy. And they don’t even just have to be your products. Like she, she was saying, you know, she, a lot of times she tells people about tools that she doesn’t get an affiliate fee for. She just, she just in that mode because she doesn’t delineate between like, okay, I’m in sales mode versus I’m in like teaching mode, it’s just learn to, to be genuine. And, you know, like a verbatim thing that she said, which I thought was interesting was she said, integrate your ads into what you’re doing. So, right. Like you think of ads. It’s like, okay, I’m going to create my ad. RV: (06:37) And then I, and then I have content, but in Corp, if you think about it more as incorporating your ad into your content or that your content is an ad, you know, it’s teaching, but it’s also an ad for something that’s sort of representative of this mindset shift here of, it’s not like, there’s you as a, as a mid, as a messenger. And then there’s you as a marketer, it’s like, it’s the same thing and do them together. And just talk about it that way. What really, really helped you. Or another thing that she said was, don’t think of how can I sell more, but think about how can I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic about telling people what I believe in, Oh, I love that. I love, I love that idea. And, and, you know, I think of it as being more of like a promoter I’ve talked about this a lot is, is just, if you were going to tell your friends about a great movie you saw, or a great restaurant, you went to you, wouldn’t like put on your sales mode and become like robo salesperson. RV: (07:45) You know, you wouldn’t write out a script and be like, let me memorize the script. You would, you would just tell your friends all my gosh, like this movie is amazing. You have to see this movie or you have to listen to this song, or, you know, like you have to go to this city that I visited, the way that you promote to your friends, the things that you love and believe in is the same way that you should promote your own products. And you should have the same level of conviction in your own products that you’ve created as you do in the products that you use that are created by other people. And if you don’t, then there’s some disconnect. Like you need to work on your product. More like there’s something about your product that you’re insecure about that you don’t love it, or you don’t believe in it, or you didn’t design it in a way that it feels authentic. RV: (08:31) And, and the more you can do that, the more comfortable you’ll be the more persuasive you’ll be. And the less salesy you’ll be, because it’s, it’s like, you won’t be just, you know, regurgitating this, this, this script. So, so don’t do that, like just promote and speak and teach from the heart and be intimate and vulnerable and authentic about what you believe in. And that’s a important tip. That’s one of the things that I love about Angie. I think, you know, she’s always encouraging people to market and promote, but to like, not in ’em, you know, just, just in an honest way, like being congruent with who you are. And I love that. And she’s also telling the story, which was my point number one, about how long it really takes and the work it really takes. So those were my top two takeaways. RV: (09:17) My, my third takeaway, which is another tactical point, which has kind of come up before. But another thing you can’t hear too often is that remember, or just know in your mind that Instagram is not an SEO friendly growth platform, because social media in general is the opposite effect of, of search engine optimization. Like when you put content out on the web and, and, and, and so, so it’s almost like I think about it this way, your website, I E your blog specifically. Okay. So your blog, your YouTube channel and your podcast, those get better over time. The longer the content has been out, the more reach you have, the more traffic, the more valuable it is, the more new subscribers, like it’s like a fine wine. It gets better with age and those assets. That’s one of the reasons why those assets are so important and really, probably in many ways, the most important, I mean, yeah, your blog, your website, your YouTube channel, they get better over time. RV: (10:24) Social media is like she said, it’s better for, it’s just a nurturing platform. It’s a way to just keep in touch with people. But over time, the value of social media goes down w a piece of content on social media over time, goes down a piece of content on, you know, basically call it Google. Well, I mean, is there a podcast, your YouTube, or your website, your blog, it goes, the value of that goes up. And so they’re more SEO. They’re more SEO, friendly, and older pieces of content carry a lot of weight and they get, you know, they get more traffic and more reach over time. So you just need to understand that. Particularly if you’re someone who has a huge following on social media, but you have no email list, you have no, no blog traffic. You have no podcasts. You have no YouTube channel. RV: (11:12) It’s like, you are, you are one algorithm change away from your whole brand disappearing overnight. And all of the work that you’ve done to build an audience on social media, basically becoming worthless. So you better be migrating those over to these other platforms, YouTube podcasting, and your blog quickly, which is what, you know, we, we teach that in our relationship engine, our whole phase two is all about building your digital platform, your digital ecosystem. So make sure that you’re doing that, make sure you’re always doing those things. Social media is important. It’s a great way to get a lot of reach quickly. You know, you can go viral, you can nurture people. It’s like but it’s not the center piece of your personal brand strategy. It’s more of an, an outlet or redirect. It’s a tributary to your stream, which really should be your blog. RV: (12:08) And then, you know, you’re dropping your podcast and your videos from YouTube on there as well. All things that if you follow the brand builders group way, like if you’ve come to our phase two event, you know, if you’ve been through phase one, you come to phase two or you’re, you’re in our monthly and more, we’re teaching you the relationship engine. And you’re just, you’re building that out. We’re doing these things organically, but every time I do one of these interviews, I’d become more and more convicted of like, yeah, the process we’re teaching incorporates. So many of these things, these real, the real influencers are doing. So I hope you’re doing that and pulling that away as a tip, most of all, you just got to stay in the game. You just got to stay in the game. You just gotta keep going. You gotta keep pushing. RV: (12:48) You gotta know that every single day, there’s someone out there waiting to hear from you. And that most of this game is a matter of staying power. And it’s the person who’s committed to being here for the long term, that’s going to win. So I want to encourage you and invite you and challenge you to commit, to be here for the longterm, commit that this is your craft. This is your mission. What you’re doing with your personal brand is going to be the rest of your life. And when you do that, you’ll you’ll quickly go, right? So there’s a bunch of steps I need to take, but I got the rest of my life, you know, to work towards it. So we’ll just, we’ll just start plugging away. And that’s what we want to help encourage you to do. Whether we get a chance to call, hopefully you’ll do a free call with us. If you haven’t. At some point, we want to talk to you. Hopefully we get to see you at one of our events, or, you know, if for right now, just stay plugged into the podcast and follow me on social at Rory Vaden on Instagram and most of my other platforms and just, just stay connected so we can encourage you along your journey. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 77: Getting Your Slice of the Personal Brand Pie with Chris Harder | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder. Welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am joined by my wife and CEO and business partner. AJ Vaden, we’re breaking down the Chris harder, which Chris and Lori have that in common with us, that they work and do business together. It’s pretty rare. It’s pretty rare. So we’re sharing our top three highlights three and three. AJ you go first, babe? Well, this isn’t necessarily whatever AJV: (00:36) My highlights, but one of the things that I think is really important one of the things we talk about a ton at brand builders group is the importance of identifying what is your primary business model. And I think that’s one of the things that really makes brain builders group really unique in the marketplace is we’re not just a strategy firm in terms of what is your personal brand. And what’s your message. I think one of our real uniqueness lies in the fact that we focus a ton on the business side that’s our background RV: (01:07) Making money is AJ spiritual gifts. AJV: (01:10) But I think there’s so much that so many people talk about social media and websites and the visual identity and without a plan, none of that really makes you money. And that’s a real core competency of ours is how do you actually turn your brand into a business? And what I loved about what Chris talked about kind of throughout the entire interview is how they’ve leveraged direct sales you know, kind of just whole concept of how do you, how do you find what your primary business model is? And we talk a lot about that. We have an acronym for that page. We have a lot of acronyms here. But what I loved is he talked about how direct sales has the lowest point of entry, the lowest barrier to entry, but also has some of the biggest upsides. And if you’re not really sure what your primary boss business model is, or maybe you don’t have a secondary or ancillary, this could be a really great option for you to leverage because how I see a personal brand, as it relates to direct sales is really more of like attraction marketing. AJV: (02:15) It’s the fuel that happens on your blog and your podcast and social media is really attraction marketing as you as the face, but yet you’ve got this really great product and you’ve got the fulfillment, you’ve got the shipping, you’ve got the backend business, the infrastructure, the technology with that direct sales company. So it’s a really interesting component and I kind of will tie this into my first point. I changed my mind mid thought, but I just love that. And I think for anyone who is in direct sales, you need to listen to this interview and anyone who isn’t completely confident that their current primary secondary ancillary business model is going to make this a full time gig. You should consider direct sales and see what’s out there and see how that fits into your business model. That could be a really great one. And I just, I love that. AJV: (03:04) So my first point how that kind of connects is the difference between a personal brand and what he calls a media brand. And I loved this as it relates to a podcast and he shared this example that I thought was really kind of aha. It’s like, are you building your audience to be big enough so that you can sell just your coaching program or your consulting or your speaking, or your course, or are you trying to make it big enough that you can get ads and sponsors and brand deals. And that to some degree is the difference between a personal brand and a media brand. And I thought that was very insightful because we have clients on both ends of the spectrum and they have a really solid like, Hey, I want to build a coaching business. I want to build a mastermind. I want to build a course. I want to do live events. And for that, you don’t need millions and millions and millions of followers, right? RV: (03:57) In particular was the permission to say, you don’t have to have millions of followers. You can make money from a brand, from a personal brand. And to think about the media brand AJV: (04:08) A totally separate. Now, if you’re trying to get ads in sponsors and brand deals, different story, but is that really your business model? And I think that just even having that filter as you’re making these decisions to help, you know, like, what am I doing this for really makes an extraordinary difference of what I know one of yours is not comparing yourself to the person who has millions, because you don’t have to, because you don’t have to mail. You don’t have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. RV: (04:41) That’s my point. Oh, I love that. Well, yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go right off of that, because that, that was part of the conversation about the comparison game. And I think, you know, it’s easy to be like, well, I don’t want to start a podcast cause I don’t think I can get millions of people or go, well, my podcast is an important cause I only get a few thousand downloads a month and, and the point is like, no, millions of downloads does not equal success. It all depends on what the strategy and the purpose is. You may only want a thousand people listening and it’s like, but it’s the right thousand people that are listening and he’s extremely targeted. And I would say that there’s a lot of people who make more money from a targeted podcast. That’s like the right thousand than just a broad one that reaches a ton of people, but there’s no clear monetization strategy. And you know, what w what he was saying specifically on the comparison game that spoke to me was if you’re gonna play the comparison game, play the full comparison, meaning you can’t just look and, and you mentioned. Yeah. And, and him and Laurie, I also thought it was interesting to your point about the direct sales that they still to this day draw a lot of income from their, their direct sales business, which really was years and years. AJV: (05:57) And it’s been the launching pad for all the other, RV: (05:59) For everything. Yeah. And, and, you know, I got, I got a big part of my start in direct sales and, and, you know, my mom was in direct sales. I’ve grown up in the whole direct sales world and we speak a lot to direct sales companies and just, just love the love of the business and the people. But if you’re gonna play the comparison game, just keep in mind that when you see somebody that has a million followers, there’s hours and hours and hours of work that they have done to get there, that you don’t see. And I think a lot of our clients, when they become brand builders group clients, and they see us breaking down the content diamond and the relationship engine and the funnels and all of the things that we teach about how to do it, they go, wow, there’s a lot of work here. And it’s like, yeah, it doesn’t just happen by accident. And you should give yourself permission to just like, be like, to be okay with where you’re at and don’t compare your, your step one to someone else’s step 77. AJV: (06:56) Yeah. I love that. So my second point was something that we talk a lot about Cod the fastest path to cash, but Chris also kind of referenced that. And he said, I know, I know dozens, if not hundreds of people who have launched their personal brand and made six figures in the first year. And I also know people that it’s taken them five years to make six figures in just their personal brand. And I thought it was really interesting. And I think a lot of it has to do with what is your primary business model? What are you selling? Because if what you are selling is a $10,000 membership program that lasts a year, you don’t need a ton of clients. You just need the right ones. You need a targeted audience with a very clear offering to the right people at the right time at the right price. AJV: (07:46) And if you sell 10, you’re kind of at six figures versus if you are launching a hundred dollar, of course, it’s a volume business. So what is it that you’re selling? And if you’re going all in and launching your personal brand, it’s keep that in mind. It’s what are you selling? Doesn’t have to be the long game or the, the, the end of it. Doesn’t have to be what you do for the long term. It’s just, what are you doing now to play the long game, knowing that your business model may shift over the course of time. And there may be things that you have to do right now that you don’t want to do a year or two or five years from now. But you know that you’ve got to kind of pays the path to get there. You’ve got to build your audience. AJV: (08:31) You’ve got to build your content. You’ve got to build your platform. And I just thought that was really interesting of well, but two people could be both launching a personal brand, have the exact same platform, the exact same number of followers, but just because their offering is different, one is going to make a lot more money quicker than the other. And I think all of those things, and I don’t think building a personal brand is about money. However for many of you you do have to make money. So I think that’s important to talk about and to reference. And I just really thought that was a very interesting concept. And one to keep in mind as you’re making these decisions of what should I launch and how should I launch it, and when should I launch it and what do I want to do short term, and what do I do longterm? And RV: (09:18) That reminds me of a time. One time I shared the stage with Jesse Itzler Sarah Blakely’s husband. And he was, you know, they’re both super wealthy and successful independently. And he was telling the story, I forget the name of the company is maybe net jets, but as a private jet, it was a private jet company. And he said, the reason that I got into that business, as I figured out, it would take me the same amount of work to sell like a hundred customers, a a hundred thousand dollar product, as it would take to sell a hundred customers, a $10 million product. And so I realized that if I could just go get a hundred customers, I might as well just get the higher price point and just go for a few customers. And I didn’t, I didn’t have to be the guy that had 10,000 customers or a million customers. I only needed like a hundred to turn this thing into a billion dollar business. And you know, that’s, to what you’re saying, the price point selections is important. And that’s a big part. I think, of phase one that a lot of our clients do struggle with. Cause they don’t think so much about the money part or look at it at scale, like you’re talking about of what is it like the longterm? AJV: (10:25) Yeah. I think so many people see a personal brand just of what you see on social media. And that’s such a teeny tiny, very last thing you do part and there’s so much work and thought and strategy that goes in beforehand. And that’s why I loved Chris’s interview is it talks a lot about the things, not just the podcast and the, and the brand deals and social media, it’s all the other infrastructure that has to be in place. RV: (10:47) So the biggest takeaway for me, which was my second with Chris, which I loved was he said, ego is your greatest overhead. I just loved that. And that is tweetable moment. That’s a pillar point as we would teach and that concept y’all have that ego is the thing that holds you back because it’s the thing that keeps you scared and keeps you worried and like keeps you stuck is because you’re afraid it won’t be good enough. And it will, you know, whatever you’ll face criticism. It’s also the thing that keeps us from scaling because we’re so focused on ourselves and we’re, we’re not just serving our audience and helping them. And I just thought that was super powerful. And if you’re stuck in any, in any form or fashion, as it relates to the business, it’s like, God, ask the ego question. Who am I thinking about? And who am I producing content for? And how am I making decisions every day? Is it for me? Or is it for the best interests of are our customer? And that’s just, that was strong. Ego is the greatest overhead AJV: (11:54) That is strong. Alright. My third point, I’ll make it short and sweet of just this whole concept of, you have to know where the trends are heading and if you’re not creating them, you need to at least know where they are, because they’re all relevant to you. If you’re building a personal brand and he used the example of social media and he said it, you know, it kind of, if you look at the evolution of where people are going and what people are doing, it went from MySpace to Facebook and Facebook to Instagram and Instagram now to take top. And we were just having this debate before we started the interview. And I’m like, yeah, just, I started really like Ted talks on my thing and does it really have to be my thing to have a presence on there? And is that where the trends are going and what’s it going to look like in one to five years, but to just say, that’s not my thing, I’m going to ignore it really. It’s probably a little bit negligent. If your business is in the business of personal branding, so it was a good aha moment for me. RV: (12:51) We did ignore Snapchat though. We made a conscious decision to ignore Snapchat and that worked out well. But what we didn’t do was go all in on stories yeah. At the time, which is what we should have done, which was like, okay, AJV: (13:04) Again, it’s all about just, you gotta be in the know, and that takes time and research. And just knowing what’s out there, it’s like, if this is your business model, make it your business and it’s your business to know what’s going on. Yeah. RV: (13:17) Be where the people are on that note. So one thing our team shared with us this morning is, is they saw something that apparently Instagram is about to start on rolling ads on IgE TV posts. So that’s a new thing that’s coming. That’s more of a, what we would call a phase three conversation about paid traffic. But if you’re listening and you know, you, you know, our lingo and phase three, and you’re in that paid traffic section, that’s a big time, big time win because if someone’s watching HGTV, that’s a super fan. And so the idea to be able to run ads to those people is yes, powerful, powerful. So be on the lookout for that. My last thing you know, is what Chris was all about is this thing is all about generosity and just giving. And he’s such a giver him and Lori, they’re always doing sponsor your, to like contests and sponsoring small businesses and giving them money to help them start. RV: (14:09) And they’re just really awesome about that. But I think he, you know, he said, it’s the key to everything. One it’s good for your heart. But the other thing is, as a business strategy, it creates massive reciprocity. And even it doesn’t mean you have to be given away a thousand dollars sweepstakes every week, but you’re giving away your ideas. You’re giving away your knowledge. You’re giving way education, encouragement, insight information. And that creates the law of reciprocity when you give to people. And that’s the power of podcasting and YouTube and all social media and email is that you can give, give, give, give, give, give, and it’s like, you can’t lose you. You can’t, outgive, you can’t, outgive the universe. If you just focus on giving away an amazing experience and everything, you know, it’ll come back to you. And we call this the rule of 10. RV: (15:04) When we talk about pricing in phase two, when we work on your offer structure, and the rule of 10 is, is when, when you’re setting your price, set the price at a rate where you feel confident that you’ve already given away 10 times the value for free as what you’re asking them to pay right now. So by the time they even see a price from you, if it’s a hundred dollar product, the person is literally going, I’ve already gotten a thousand dollars worth of value. And we shared this on a webinar a couple of weeks ago, the rule of 10 and somebody in the comments wrote, and I love this. They said the rule of 10 takes all the slime out of internet marketing. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about is just generosity. Create the law of reciprocity, like test it, try to give away everything. RV: (15:56) You’re not, you know, and see if it doesn’t just come pouring back in to your business. And so Chris just nailed that on the head for me. So that was, that was it’s great interview. God, listen, SP you know, if you’re, if you’re in any kind of network marketing, direct sales, for sure. These guys are superstars, they turned it into a whole media empire. An awesome, awesome couple, although Laurie’s not there. We’ll get Laurie we’ll we’ll, we’ll rope her in to come and do an interview too. So thanks for being here and we’ll catch you next time. Bye.
Ep 75: Responding Versus Reacting to Injustice with Anton Gunn | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey there. Brand builder. Excited to bring you really a special edition here of the influential personal brand podcasts, a very unplanned, spontaneous we want to introduce you to a good friend of ours. I’m a client of ours, somebody who believes in us, somebody who we believe in tremendously. Somebody who we look up to. His name is Anton Gunn and he is a former senior advisor to president Barack Obama. And Anton is one of the world’s leading authorities on socially conscious leadership. So he has a master’s degree in social work from USC and was a resident fellow at Harvard. He is the bestselling author of the presidential principles and he’s been featured in time magazine, the wall street journal, BBC, NPR, and on good morning America. And as an international speaker and consultant, he’s worked with organizations like Microsoft, Sedexo, KPMG, Verizon, Aetna, Vanderbilt health and Boeing on and on and on. RV: (00:58) And so from playing sec football and being the first African American in history elected to the South Carolina legislature from his from his district early in his career to now working as a C level executive for an academic health system and serving on multiple boards. He has spent his life building or help helping people build diverse high performing teams and world-class leadership culture. And was this on our heart for you to hear from him about some of the things going on in the world and specifically how to use your personal brand to influence real change? And I’m going to let AJ say something cause she, I can, I can tell she’s bubbling. And you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know that AJ does not often conduct the interviews. She does all the debriefs, AJV: (01:53) But since then RV: (01:54) This was, this one was right from AJs heart. So AJV: (01:57) Well they’ll say yes, Amazon has this really nice, fancy bio with all of this amazing accomplishments. But the real reason that I felt led to forced Anton to get on this call of us, which he was so happy to oblige so quickly, it’s honestly, he’s so representative of what we believe in as people and as a part of our, our community at brand builders group, we just believe like Anton comes from a place of real experience. So do you also comes from a place that he really believes in justice but also doing it in a way that actually creates change by using real influence because he’s doing things the right way. And that’s not easy. That’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline to do things the the long way and that, but I just feel like you’re such a extension of what we believe in. And so thanks for, thanks for popping. AG: (02:53) Thank you for saying that. AIJ and I love you both. You are awesome. So happy to be a client. Happy to be your friend and happy to help you and all of your listeners and supporters understand that this is an important time for all of us to use our influence in authentic ways, in ways that we feel comfortable with, most importantly to help bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. And it already bends that way, but it requires each of us to do something in a way that helps to make things better. That’s what our responsibility to our leaders is to work, to make things right and every chance that we get. So I appreciate you creating the space for that and doing that and living up to who you are as individuals and as a business. RV: (03:39) Well, I love that Anton, and honestly we’ve struggled with what to say. I mean there’s a lot of things that I could say and kind of want to say, but don’t necessarily feel like they’re appropriate or you know, right on pace. I think that’s a lot of a lot of people. And, and, and like you said, as. AJV: (03:58) I feel like it’s so sensitive right now and being twisted and turned, and even with the best of intentions, it comes across as you’re ignorant. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand. Yeah, no, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. RV: (04:14) And, and I, I think, you know, when we reached out to you, we said, Hey, we don’t want to make this like a news media commentary on anything specific that’s happening in the news. But okay. You know, you’ve got a moral compass for fairness and justice. RV: (04:27) And I think one of the things that I struggle with, and I just wanted to ask you as your friend is, you know, there’s been a lot of stuff that says, Hey, you know, being silent as part of the problem, you know, silence, you know, basically if you’re silent, you’re racist. I don’t necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily connect with me. I don’t necessarily think that being silent means you’re racist any more than I think making a post will change the world. But what I am very interested in is what are the things productively that we can do? And that we should do like not just, not just using our voice, but what are the things that we can do. And you have such an interesting perspective from working in the white house to being, you know, a division one athlete to leading it in the healthcare world there. Yeah. AJV: (05:23) They’re all of these things, right? AG: (05:26) Yeah. So let me just say AG: (05:30) Know you gotta you gotta remember a leader’s responsibility is to respond and not react. And what do I mean by respond and not react? You know, whenever you’re in the heat of any kind of difficult circumstance, any kind of crisis, your emotions will get the best of you immediately. And what you see some people doing on social media are there emotional responses to what’s going on? And it’s not understandable for people to have an emotional response. Some people’s emotional response is to or emotional reaction is to lash out and scream at you for not saying anything. Cause if you’re not saying anything, then that means you must agree with the bad people who are doing bad things. Right. That’s a, that’s really a reaction. That’s not really a thoughtful prepared response. That’s a reaction. Some people’s reaction is because they’re so shocked by what they see. AG: (06:28) They freeze and they don’t want to say anything. I mean, we’ve all seen in circumstances you’re going to do three things. If you’re confronted in a crisis, you’re going to freeze, you’re going to fight, where are you going to flight any other direction? And I think what we have in the middle of any kind of crisis is that people freeze. Some people fight and others flight, and so I think the people who are fighting are the ones who are screaming out on social media. Some people are so distraught about what they see that they freeze and so that is sometimes silent. You’re when you freeze your assignment and some people could immediately assume because you’re not fighting like me. Oh, because you’re not running like me. Then that means you must agree with those who are doing bad things. That is not the case, but what you should do is be thoughtful about how you can have a positive point in the specs. AG: (07:23) How can you add to the construction of a solution and not to further destruction of the problem? And so what I tell people to do is first of all remain yeah. In your lane. And when I say remaining your lane is, you know, for the first 12 years of my career I actually was a community organizer. So I’ve organized protests, I’ve organized marches, I’ve done sit ins, I’ve actually hold politicians accountable for not doing the right thing. And that’s actually why I got into politics, because I got tired of politicians telling me one thing, but then doing the complete opposite. And I say, well, why am I asking you to do something that you clearly don’t have the capacity to do? Why don’t I just run for office and take your place? And literally that was my goal. But that’s not everybody. It’s not everybody’s name. AG: (08:15) Some people’s learning to say, Anton, you’re better to be out there on the front lines, but here’s what I can do. I have a hundred dollars and I’ll put it in a bail fund. So if you get arrested and go to jail, you can get out and go home to be with your family. Or maybe I’ll support your education campaign to teach people about what good policing policies are or what good environmental policy. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this current crisis or there’s other, some kind of injustice that exists. I will tell you this, we’ve had injustice in wrongdoing as long as we’ve had challenges in this country and around the world. I’ll give you an example of that is unfair and, but it’s something that everybody can relate to. The two of you decided to go out to dinner and you go to your favorite restaurant in Nashville and you’ve been waiting 90 minutes for a table and then my wife and I walk in five minutes in a manner of these sets us down at the best table in the house. AG: (09:16) But you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes now already. You know that that was wrong, that that was not right for me to be able to walk right in and sit down at a table where you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you like the restaurant anymore because you felt that you were treated unfair. So the question is, what am I going to do if I learned that you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes, do I just keep my table and keep eating and say, you know what? Too bad, Roy and AGA, you had the weight, 90 minutes. What do I say to the maitre D? That’s wrong. I’m going to get up and I’m going to give them this table because they’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. And if you saw me sit down at a table, do you decide to storm out of the restaurant or do you just stand there and do nothing? AG: (10:05) You just accept that you know you lost the table. Or do you walk over to the maitre D and says, you know what? I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair that we’ve been waiting for 90 minutes and we didn’t get the table that we asked for and you let somebody else have the table. Now the maitre D also has a choice and an option at that point. He can say, well, you’re just going to have to wait a little longer. Well, he can say, you know what, Roy J I’m sorry. As soon as our next table come available, I’m going to put you at the top of the list in all appetizers and a bottle of wine is on me. So in that situation, we all have the opportunity to respond or we could react, but the key is whatever it is, you want to be authentic to yourself. AG: (10:50) Where do you feel comfortable? And also when you have some expertise, because what I try to remind people is that we all have personal experiences in our lives that we can connect the dots to something else that’s going on. So you may not know what it’s like to be a black man living in America. I can count seven particular instances that I could have ended up like George Ford or Tamir rice or Eric Garner. All of them happened before the age of 27 Hmm. I did nothing wrong. I was a college athlete. I went to a gas station with my uncle to go in to just, he went to go get a bottle of Boone’s farm. Just tell you how long ago it was and I went in to play the lottery. You just connected with AGA. You might have more in common with Aja than you think. AG: (11:39) As it turns out, as it turns out you love boons Romney J yes, we all did. So we were leaving the gas station and out of nowhere, five police cars pulls up. They draw guns on us, they drag us out of the car, they throw us on the ground, he puts his knee in my back in accuses us of being a part of a game and doing a drive by shooting. We didn’t even live on that side of town, but my uncle worked at a restaurant over there and I caught the bus to his job. We got in his car and we’re driving home. We stopped by the gas station and this happened to me. So this is real for me, but it may not be real for you. You may never have experienced anything like that. But I would say you might know someone who has. AG: (12:28) And so in this time, I would say the first thing people can do if you’re trying to figure out how to use your influence, if you have people in your spear network, your friends with those people who you have in your cell phone, who you know might be feeling some kind of way about what’s going on, it’s okay to send them a text. We’ll make a phone call and say, Hey, listen, I don’t fully understand all of this going on. I don’t fully know what to do about any of this. But no, I’m thinking about you. And if you have people who follow you on social media, who you know fit that demographic, you can easily say, listen, Hey, I know you guys watch my pocket. You listen to my podcasts, you follow my feed. You’re on my list. I just want you to know for the interview who are affected by the current circumstances. I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. And I’m not sure what to do yet, but I’m trying to find out. [inaudible] AG: (13:19) We’re all going to be better because of this. And that’s the approach that you have to take is to say something, but you don’t have to have all of the answers because you don’t, you’re not an expert in that. This is about how to build a brand for a movement. Then they should definitely be talking to you, particularly if there’s a person leading the movement. But if this is just unrest or this is just community up uptick and outrage about things, you don’t necessarily have the lead dog role in this, but you can play a role. But first empathizing with people who might be experiencing it. And that’s what we all want. We all want someone to understand our pain, to understand what we’re going through. And you guys have done that just by creating the space and the opportunity. Second thing I was telling people, you are good at something. AG: (14:06) So some of us are great writers, some of us are great speakers, some of us are great at teaching people how to manage and deal with stress. So there are ways you can say, Hey, in the middle of the most stressful time that we might’ve seen in our lifetimes, here are three things. Things that you can do to lower your stress. That message becomes universal. No matter what your race, gender background is, that’s a universal way that you can help him make it. You provide people a way to say, listen, I want to create an outlet for people to be able to express themselves and let me provide feedback on how I can help you to channel that into something positive. Those are simple things or you can really start to do a little bit of research and say, who is working to make sure that injustice and unfairness no longer exists and how can I offer some free advice or some free counsel or free coaching session to help them through it. AG: (15:02) Now, that doesn’t have to be public at all. That can be very private, but it’s something that you can do too to add value and to be comfortable in your space. But speak to the times that we’re in because I do think Roy, there is a fear about the silence if, if it’s, if the silence goes on too long and people will assume silence is complicity. And so I don’t expect anybody in a emotional moment to react in aggressiveness or to jump right out and be a part of anything. Cause that’s what I’m not doing. I haven’t left my house. I still remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. And so I’m concerned about my health and my family’s health. So as bad as I might want to go out and Mmm, be a participant in some civil disobedience, I’m not doing it because one, that’s not my role right now. Number two, I don’t think it would be in my best interest for my health and my wife’s health and my daughter’s health. So I’m going to stay home. But what I am doing is reading everything that I could get my hands on about who’s trying to find a solution and rather than be a part of the problem and what can I offer in terms of expertise and support and help to do that. RV: (16:16) So can I, I have a question too. You should have scheduled your own interview, Anton. We need to have you. We’re going to do multiple. That’s right. All right. This is, AJV: (16:26) So what other questions I have, because I think this is just really pertinent and I think it’s a part of your expertise is there just seems to be a lack of leadership and all of this and a lack of a real coherent and consistent message of what do we want to see happen. And you know what’s like w where does that leave everybody? If there isn’t true leadership and there isn’t a true cause and a true message of like, let’s make this clear. AG: (16:54) Yes. AJV: (16:55) What needs to happen. So, RV: (16:56) Right. Like lighting a church on fire doesn’t signal a real clear message about what we want to see happen. In fact, it’s a very conflicting message to respond to violence with violence. At least that’s how it feels to me. AG: (17:09) Yes. So you’re exactly right. So I literally did a Facebook live about this last night for about an hour. And I hearkened back onto successful change efforts in America. I mean, you can go as far back from women’s sufferage to the civil rights movement. We’ve had a lot of successful change efforts in all of those efforts. You have to know what you want. Yeah. And not only know what you want, be able to clearly articulated in a way that everybody presents. You know, when you talk about building a brand, you gotta have clarity, right? You’re on problem and clear on the solution. AG: (17:51) Exactly. You have to be clear on a problem and clear on the solution. And the problem that we have in this current environment is there, there’s no clarity about this. There’s zero clarity from my vantage point around what do we want? I know what I want, but the solution to that is not clear because again, if you’ve got, you know, multiple things happening in multiple cities, the problem in Charleston, South Carolina is completely different than the problem in Nashville, which is completely different than the problem in Minnesota, which is completely different than the problem in New York city. And so because those problems looks similar on the surface, people are trying to apply a solution to fix all problems and there’s not one solution. This is a, a local by local problem and solution framework. And so when you, when you don’t have good leadership, the problem stays. AG: (18:49) I, I, I give people this kind of advice and I’ve given it to president Obama. So I just tell you anything I’m saying here is stuff that I say all the time to leaders at every level, from the dog catcher to the mayor, to even the president of United States. And the first is whenever you had a crisis, the first thing you must do is remain calm. The second thing you must do is you got to tell the truth. And when I say tell the truth, you have to be honest with people about where you sit and where things are cause people in a time of uncertainty, in a time of fear in a time of the unknown, people are looking for a beacon of hope. And so you got to tell them the truth and you got to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. The thing with so many people forget. AG: (19:35) They want to tell you the rosy truth and they want to tell you the happy true. But they don’t want to tell you the unpleasant truth. So the unpleasant tree is difficult, but it’s grounding. And I, and I say this all the time, the truth doesn’t hurt. It heals. So if we can begin to say, AJ, you are a Rory, you have skin cancer. So I can lie to you and say, Oh, you just got a blemish on your face and telling you you have a blemish on your face is cool and nice and, and you, you don’t feel bad about it. But if you find out that that blemishes cancer, then you can begin to do something about it. Because some people may say, Oh, I got a blemish. I’m just going to accept the blemish and be okay with it. But if you know a skin cancer, then you have to respond. AG: (20:20) So we got to tell people the truth and we got to tell it to them in a heartfelt way. You don’t need to be angry with the truth. You don’t have to be screaming about the truth. You can empathize with people and be heartfelt about telling the truth. But then the third step after that to me is you got to seek out expertise who can help you to find a solution. Yeah, that’s the problem is that we, Einstein said this one time, that many spend 95% of their time trying to solve the problem but only spent 5% understanding the problem. Well, we need to spend 95% understanding the problem and 5% of the time on the solution and you got to have experts to help you to solve the problem. And that’s what leadership does, is that they remain calm. They tell the truth, they tell it in a heartfelt way, and then they find experts to help them to solve the problem. And that’s what we don’t have in this kind of environment. The people who I know have expertise on not being sought out, they’re being questioned, they’re being antagonized, they’re actually being accused of being complicit in the problem when they actually have real ideas around a solution. RV: (21:32) Well, that’s an you know, that’s something that I’ve struggled with with this personally. You know, you talk about leaders, just leadership in general. You respond, you don’t react. You know, I’m seeing a lot of message and I’ve had some people messaged me about like, Hey, why haven’t you shared? Or why don’t you share something? And as a leader, my, one of my first thing is I’ve been afraid to say this, one of my very first things is I need to find the facts in any situation. It’s like as a leader, not civil rights, just leadership training is going, I need to understand the facts. And there are, as you said, and I, I love that you pointed out, I believe that it’s different in every city too. And I believe that every instance of this is different. RV: (22:17) Any type of silence is not condoning something. It’s going, I don’t have the full context of what happened in Minneapolis or in Atlanta or like, and, and until, I know I’m afraid to come out and judge anybody in any, you know, cause I just, I just don’t know. But I think it’s, it almost becomes popular that people want you to just lash out and rage. They want you to just throw fire. They be because they want you to be mad. And it’s like I am mad. Like I’m, I’m heartbroken. And there are, there are parts of these things that you go, they’re undisputable, they’re worth being mad about just like looking at it. But then there’s, there’s context around every situation, every social interaction, every communication with a spouse, a child, a teacher, a colleague. And that context really matters. And it, and it shapes a lot. And I’ve been actually afraid to say that cause I’m afraid of people just being pissed off at me for not being pissed off right away. Like, like you know, publicly. AG: (23:19) Yeah. So, so I will tell you this, and this is one of the things that I, I’ve gotten very comfortable and as a leader is recognizing that somebody is always going to be pissed off at you. And if, if nobody’s pissed off at you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the main point. And I know as an influencer you want to grow your brand and you want everybody to like you and everybody to on your team. But you know what? The happiest thing that I get every day in my inbox is the number of people who unsubscribed from my list. You know what? I’m happy about that. Yeah. Because I know what I’m offering is not for you, you, you, you’re not invested in what I’m invested in and, and you don’t like it. And that’s okay because I want the people who do like it, the people who do get the value, the people who do want to build, adjust organization. AG: (24:14) An organization full of ethical, inspiring and empowering leaders who worked in the unfairness in the workplace. That’s who I want to talk to you. Okay? I don’t want to talk to the people who want to carry it on or the people who are indifferent to it. And I think the thing that a lot of people are probably most frustrated with but people that don’t speak out is the indifference. And so my context would be you want to have the facts, you definitely want to have the facts. But for many of us, particularly me, that what happened in Minnesota is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back was broken on March 3rd, 1991 when I saw Rodney King get beat 56 times by LA police officers and they all got off Scott free. So for me it was a a moment as a teenager that said that I thought this was over. AG: (25:09) I thought this happened, you know, during the civil rights movement. I thought this happened in the 18 hundreds where you know, you could get pulled over and never be seen again. But here I am in the midst of getting ready to go to college and this is what’s happening. So some people would say, we’ve known this all along. There’s no additional facts for you to gather in this situation. But I think the, the burning and the riots and in the burning down buildings and kicking in Apple stores and all these other kinds of things, this is what I also have learned doing this work. Everybody who is with you is not for you. Your body does for you is not going to be with you. And there are some agent provocateurs who are using this yeah. Crisis or this opportunity to advance an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with justice in equity and fairness in the right thing. They have some of them. RV: (26:09) Yeah. And Anton, I just wanted to make sure that you said everyone who is with you is not for you and everyone who is for you is not with you. AG: (26:17) That is correct. Everyone who is with you is not for you. And everyone who is for you is now with you. So let me break it down. So you understand when I say everyone that is with you is not for you. There are people who are showing up and turning peaceful protest into violent protest, right? There are people who will show up at your events that are not really there to support your business there to copy and steal what you do. So everyone that is with you is not for you. The people who follow you on social media, they might be your followers, but they’re not for you. They’re for themselves. And we all have to understand that that’s always been the case. And secondarily, the people who are with you, sometimes they can’t be there for you. They’re with you in spirit. They may be with you in dollars, they may be with you in some other kind of way, but they’re not always going to be there side by side with you. AG: (27:16) So I’m with a lot of people that I can’t be side by side because I want to be here longterm. I want to be a person who lives a long time. And so for me, knowing that I work in healthcare, 90%, knowing that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I know it’s not cool to go back out and socialize right now. I get reports on how many new positive coded cases are showing up every day and we’re not in a clear, so I’m with a lot of people for a lot of people, but I’m not going to be there all the time. So you got to understand that you gotta be able to figure out who is with you and who is for you and what are they doing to help you and who are those that are not really for you. AG: (27:59) And again, I go back to some years of go work when I was being trained into the seat. So to be honest with you, I was trained at a place called Highlander in Tennessee. Tennessee’s where actually Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Rosa parks, all of them got their training on community organizing. Like some people thought Rosa parks sitting down on a bus and refusing to go to the back was a spur of the moment off the cuff event. It wasn’t not, they plan this for months in advance and they have five different people and Rosa parks actually was the one that was chosen to stay on the front of the bus. So most people think this is big civil rights broke protests started with a seminal event of someone just deciding not to get up anymore when she was a trained, a prepared leader who knew what to do and when to do it. AG: (28:54) So in my training, I learned then whenever we do things like this, there are people who are not really with us who are going to see what we’re doing and want to jump in. We got to control that because they could destroy the message, they could cloudy the message that we’re trying to send here. Then it can turn into something that is not. And that’s what I think we, we are seeing right now that there’s some people who are clouding the message that is not really about, you know, police violence. It’s about anarchy or it’s about I hate the government or it’s about, I hate rich people. It’s about I hate America. Because I do believe there’s some form foreign people who are involved in some of these efforts. And so we don’t know which is which at this point. We don’t know the enemy, our friend, because we haven’t taken a time to, to develop the right structure and strategy to move for change. AG: (29:51) And, and to give a quick plug to my former boss Barack Obama, his foundation has been trying to do his best job of this stealing information around what’s a right way for you to get involved. He posted the article on medium recently about, I know everybody’s upset. Protest is a part of, of making change. And we’ve always used protest in America from the Boston tea party onto present day. So he’s not saying not to protest, but he’s saying is getting involved in a way that can make sure that the positive change is lasting and that we actually do the right thing. And so he provided resources at the Obama foundation website. And so I would encourage people to figure out what you can do. But I think the main thing is we got to separate the wheat from the shaft and know that everybody that is with you is not for you and everybody that is for you. Sometimes it’s not with, AJV: (30:45) That’s so wise. That’s so good. One of the, one of the interviews that I saw online here recently was the son of an Atlanta, a city police officer. I’m a black man and he was, he did this really great speech, super emotional, but the thing that has stuck with me and I can’t get out of my head, he said, you don’t fight the enemy by burning down your own house. AG: (31:08) Correct. AJV: (31:08) And you said people were burning down our own house. Wait, that doesn’t work. AG: (31:14) It’s not smart. And that was killer Mike. He’s a hip hop artist, activist. I’m one degree separated and kill Mike because one of my mentees actually used to make beads for him. And I’m trying to get him to be a brand builder client too, by the way. So so yeah, I was willing to help, but that’s a point that, that everybody should understand that if you’re trying to solve a problem, go to where the problem is. Don’t go to where the problems now. So here’s how I explained it to him, the friends of mine and a conference call. If, if I have a nail in my foot five a nail in my foot, it doesn’t make sense for you to put a bandaid on my shoulder. Yeah, that doesn’t, that’s not solving the problem. Why don’t you haven’t taken the nail out of my foot and you haven’t stopped the bleeding on my foot. And so if the nail is in Minneapolis, well, if the nail is in Louisville, Kentucky, why are you burning down in Atlanta, Georgia, right? While you’re riding in Charleston, South Carolina. And again, my point is there are problems in every one of those cities. Atlanta is not perfect. Nashville’s not perfect Charleston, that there’s no perfect utopian city in the United States of America. But those problems require a specific and clear solution to those problems. AG: (32:37) If there’s a nail in your foot, it doesn’t mean there’s RV: (32:40) A nail in every foot. Like the problem isn’t even as a city necessarily. It is a person, a few people, a set of people. And if you can understand who it is, you can proactively handle the problem, which is the truth about any problem in business or our personal life or anything. You can’t. But if you’re blinded by just rage, it’s like you can’t see the problem. All you know is you’re in pain and so you start bandaging yourself and shooting other people and it’s like, Hey, there’s a nail in your foot. Get the nail out. AG: (33:14) Yes. And that’s exactly right. And in problems have levels to them. So, so I, I, you know, my training is social work. When I got my MSW was understanding systems in organizations where you have individual problems, you have group problems, you have family problems, you have organizational problems. And so like when I work with a healthcare organization, I want to understand the problem across the organization. You might have a problem in this department or you might have a problem with this person, right? But is it representative of a systemic problem of how you hire people and who you hire and how you train them and what you allow them to do and what don’t you allow them to do? And what I find more times than not is that people want to solve problems, but they feel paralyzed because they’re going to be punished by a largest system for trying to solve the problem. AG: (34:09) So it requires us to have some level of depth and understanding around what problems are, what our role is, and to solving those problems and going right to the source. As I told my group last night, I said, listen, Mmm. If, if you have police officers who are committing bad acts, okay. Then RDC that the person who can specifically do something about that problem is the police chief that hired them. And if the police chief doesn’t see the problem and doesn’t understand the problem where there’s a specific person who can do something about that person. And that’s the mayor of city manager that hired a police chief. Yeah. And if the mayor and the police chief doesn’t see that problem and doesn’t understand that problem, there’s a specific group of people who can do something about the mayor. And those are the voters who live in that city. AG: (35:07) But if you don’t live in that city, you don’t have the ability to get rid of the mayor. You don’t have the ability to affect the chief of police and you don’t have the ability to affect those officers. Now you can contribute in ways to influence their problems. So going back to the word influence, there are a few things that each of us can control. There are other things that we can influence if we can’t control and if we can’t control it or influence it, our responsibility is to lead. And we, we, we lead by being the example of what we want to see in the world. So if there’s injustice be just, if there’s unfairness, be more fair, if there’s inequity being more equitable. So it’s about what you can control, what you can influence it, where you can leave, but you got to understand the problem. AG: (35:56) And I think so many people haven’t taken the time in this situation to just understand the problem from a societal problem of law enforcement, police and communities, particularly communities of color, two. Our response to when those things happen because I think the main thing, and I’ll say this last point about what happened in, in any of these specific events, it’s not just that we see a bad cop do a bad thing because in every industry there is a bad person that does a bad thing. So you got a bad doctor who does a bad thing. You might have a bad hairdresser that does a bad thing, bad speakers, every industry you can’t fix bad things that individuals do. We can’t control in police individual behavior. The question is when that individual does a bad thing, is there any accountability for that individual? And I think what people are so outraged by is the continued bad things done by certain officers. AG: (37:06) And they rarely get in trouble. They rarely go to jail. The worst thing that happens to them is they lose their job. I mean, think about it. If you murdered somebody and the worst thing that happened to you is that you lost your job. Yep. That’s where is w where the outrage reviews until the conflict. How do we make sure that when bad things happen that we improve the process so they don’t ever have to happen again? Like if you take the airline industry, I’ll give you this, this example. Mmm. We rarely have plane crashes in the United States of America now 35 40 years ago we had a lot of plane crashes, but every time a plane crashes, the entire airline industry works like crazy to find out what happened, to make sure that it never happens again. Like we have four hijackers who crashed planes into buildings, into the Pentagon and nine 11 and there was nobody that was a Homeland security expert on September 10 2011 there was no Homeland security experts, not one. AG: (38:16) But after that day, the entire country, the entire government, every single person began to find a way to make sure this would never happen again. It doesn’t matter why it happened, how we let it happen, we want to investigate that and understand the facts of what led to it. But we’re going to do everything in our power and spend ungodly amounts of money and ungodly amounts of training and hiring new people and changing our processes so that it never happens again. And if we’re going to be good at solving problems when bad things happen or bad people happen, we got to figure out how do we prevent them from ever happening again. And when we don’t see that happening, that speaks to a larger challenge. RV: (39:03) I love that. That, and so, and I need to ask you this question specifically that that parallel is so good. Anton and I, I certainly, you know, even though I’m saying like, Hey, we got to find the facts and things are different in every city, I also very much empathize with when you see Rodney King all the way to where we are now and you see example after example, it’s like, Hey there, there certainly is evidence that there is, there are some systemic problems that need to be dealt with and people need to rally. But even to just know what you shared here of like go to the police chief, go to the mayor and also, you know what I’ve never seen as an article that recounts all of these instances. Yeah. What were the facts afterwards and then what happened to all the officers? RV: (39:50) Right. Like all in one place. You know, I’m thinking to myself like maybe that’s an article I should write is to go show people because once the facts have been revealed, justice should be served and it should be clear and Swift. But, but so anyways, that was so awesome. So much. This is so good. But hold on. I got it. Okay. So I have to ask you this question specifically as it relates to our audience and this, the theme of this podcast being personal branding. You, you’ve mentioned several times, examples of staying in your lane. You spent a part of your life as, as an activist and organizer and being on the streets. But now you’re saying you’re making an intentional choice to stay at home because of various, you know, considerations. Mmm. Do you feel like personal brands should be using their platform? RV: (40:42) Like if I teach yoga, should I be telling them, should I be taking my audience and telling them why racism is wrong? Should I be connecting? It should buy, should I be saying, Hey, that doesn’t, that’s not what my expertise is about. Like how do you balance? Yeah, because a platform is a sacred thing and audience is a sacred thing and the audience that you have didn’t necessarily show up for your opinion on everything that you’re not an expert on. But at the same time, we’re all people, we all have beliefs and as humans we are all in this together. And this, you know, Martin Luther King’s in an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, which I fully believe and support. Well, finding that balance between, so do you go, yeah. Tell people what you believe and even if it’s outside of your lane, but you’ve used that term stay in your lane. How do you, how do you find the line? AG: (41:33) Yeah, so, so I think the, the, the summary of how I would explain it and when, I mean stay in your lane is that Mmm, the best brands, the best personal brands are the people who are the most authentic that people connect to intimately. They just don’t know, Oh, what you want to teach them. They know who you are. Like I know who you two are. Okay, I don’t, you might teach me everything I want to know about being a personal brand, but I know who you are. I know how you met and how your relationship started and what you did before you were building a personal brand and your, your, your life story so to speak. So you can’t divorce yourself from who you are if you’re really building a strong personal brand. So my point is staying in your lane, if it’s something that is connected to who you are and what you do, then they find a way to connect it to what’s relevant. AG: (42:26) Because I think one of the things that you teach in personal branding is how do you, how do you take what you do as a personal brand and connected to what’s going on in the world and what people need. And so if you teach yoga, you don’t necessarily have to say racism is bad and that, you know, you know, police brutality is bad. You can say, I know everybody is stressed out right now and the world is stressed and we’re seeing bad things happen all around us. But yoga is a solution to get personal alignment in yourself so you can help get personal alignment in the work. So again, you’ve given some money to say, you know what, I never done yoga in my life, but if something can help me to get this tightness out of my neck because I’m angry at what happened in Minnesota or I’m angry about what happened last month and what happened last year, maybe this is a way that I should try that I haven’t tried before. So if I’m a yoga teacher, that might work, but not, maybe I don’t do anything related to yoga or I don’t run a fitness gym or maybe I teach karate or RV: (43:36) So, but to stick with the, to stick with the yoga thing, if I’m going to follow a yoga instructor. Do you think it’s important that the yoga instructor I’m following is sharing their personal viewpoints on abortion, women’s rights, politics, racism AJV: (43:52) For both of you here, like this is actually something we teach. We say once you know what your problem is, you answered all of the things, all of the questions that are happening in the world through the lens of the problem that you solved. AG: (44:04) Yes. AJV: (44:05) What is your unique lens on whatever the problem is that you saw? Like for me, my personal brain problem is irrelevant, right? I don’t speak on racism or discrimination. I don’t speak on gender equality. I don’t speak on those. But that doesn’t mean that my problem of irrelevance, it can’t be seen through the lens of all these things happening. Not to go out and say, here’s my opinions for the world to hear. But that doesn’t mean it’s not connected to who I am as a human being. Because the problem that I solve is connected to all of these things. It’s just how do you take what’s happening through the lens in which you see things as a personal brand. AG: (44:45) Yeah. So, so you agent you hit is something, and definitely Roy, I’m going to connect to that point. If you’re, if the problem you solve is irrelevance. There’s a lot of people who are feeling very irrelevant right now. Okay? Mmm. Women in the workplace feel irrelevant every day. So, so there, and that’s a problem. And so you can find a way to connect to it. But to Roy’s point about my views on abortion are my views on, you know, X, Y, and Z. My opinion is you don’t have to go there to go there. So like if, if I’m living my truth, if I’m being completely authentic, then it only takes one word or two words in Google, Google, gun and Obama. So you’d Google my name of Barack Obama’s name, then you know my position on healthcare issues, you know my position, well healthcare reform, you might know my position on how do we rebuild the economy, but you don’t know where I stand on abortion. AG: (45:47) You don’t know where I stand on gay marriage, you know where I stand on any of these issues. And those things are personal to me, but they haven’t been the full scope and scale of what I’ve done in my life. But again, if it’s connected to what you’ve done. So if you’re a yoga instructor who had an abortion and it caused you to go down this spiral dark hole in your life and the only thing that pulled you out was that you learned how to do yoga, then maybe it’s okay to connect the dots in that way. But that doesn’t mean you showing up at every abortion rally and trying to give keynote speeches around abortion in America because that’s not your lane. Your lane is yoga. Okay? But your personal story gives you a way to connect to what’s real. So I tell people to be authentic. AG: (46:39) And then the last piece of every influencer that if you got 50,000 Instagram followers or 150,000 or 5 million Instagram followers, I’m pretty sure your local elected official knows who you are. And if they don’t, they should know who you are. So if nothing else, you use your influence to say, Hey listen, I would like to meet with the mayor to understand what’s going on in our community and how it’s similar or different than what’s going on in another community. And so if you can get an education, just say, you know what, we haven’t had a case of police brutality in this city since the mid 1980s well that’s a good thing to say. You know what, this is happening in America and is wrong. But I’m very proud of my city because it’s not happening here. But you should never make that statement unless you know, never, ever, ever talk about what you don’t know because it will make people ask you questions that you can’t answer beyond the surface level. AG: (47:47) So to your point, Rory, doing some research around, you know, the last 25 years or 30 years of police encounters that ended in a death of a person of color and understanding how many it is because it’s, it’s much more than we got on video. I will tell you that much cause I’ve done that level of research. So, but no the answer and then say, Hey, this statistically is a problem and we should be doing something about it and I can’t fix the whole world. I can solve every other problem, but I can talk to the mayor of Nashville. Well I can talk to my city council member or my state legislator and understand what are we doing to prevent this from happening here? And if they give you an answer, be happy and be proud about that. That’s the main point. AJV: (48:36) Yeah. I so agree. And what are the, there was two things that happened over the weekend that prompted me to bring up this interview with Rory cause I really, I really like, I prayed about it hard because we had both been kind of like, okay, yep. What’s our role? Like what’s our role in this? And there was two things that happened over the weekend that I just felt like I thought literally was like, and this is the path for you [inaudible] stuff. The first thing was Whitney Hawthorne, who’s one of our brand builders clients, right? She’s awesome. She’s amazing. And she recently had her son, her second son. And you know, we have two boys and there really close in age. Like our boys are only a few months apart. Both of them. Yeah. [inaudible] She posted something really simple on social media about this newborn baby and however she drafted it, it made me think I will never [inaudible] [inaudible] the fear because she has, AG: (49:36) Do you want I just lost it. Yeah. I saw that post too. And know I think God every day that I had a daughter and a son, and it’s hard to, to, to fathom that to say, you know, you know, God gives you to get the children you want, whatever God gives you. Right. But when I had a daughter, there was an extra sense of relief in me that I didn’t have a son because I know what me and my brothers have gone through with our encounters with law enforcement. And I know that even as a 40 something year old man who’s lives in a suburban nice neighborhood, you know, professional got multiple degrees, I got a great career. Everything is going the way that I wanted to go. The moment I get in my car and just drive to the grocery store, if a cop pulls behind me, my entire physiology changes. AG: (50:44) I break out on a full sweat. I wonder, do I have my driver’s license? I wonder where’s my driver’s license? I don’t put it in my glove compartment. I literally keep it on the visor above my head because I don’t want to reach down or reach into the console and make it think that I’m doing something. I’ll throw my phone on the passenger seat because I don’t want him to think that I have anything in my hands. And so I don’t want to teach my daughter those kinds of things. Yeah. But unfortunately, there’ve been enough cases with women that I’m also having to teach my daughter because it’s happened to black girls too. It happened to Sandra bland. And so, so I don’t want any of this. And I know that there are a lot of people who will never understand this. And, and I, and I’ve been selling into a lot of my friends who I’m not black and no share my experience. AG: (51:36) I’ve been getting text messages from them and they literally have been, Mmm. I don’t know what to say. I want to help. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you and my response to them is that I appreciate you think it about me. I appreciate you caring about me and I appreciate you empathizing with my situation and [inaudible] and that’s all that I can ask you to do. And then if they ask me further, what is there anything I can do to help? I said that the one thing that I believe that you can do to help is you can talk about this because, and talk about this in a way that is, talk about this in places that I can’t go to talk about it. Okay. Mmm. You know, my pastor, I go to an a interracial church and my pastor is white and he is the founder of the church, is a massive church with more than 25,000 members. AG: (52:30) And when he was retiring and handing over the ministry to his son, he says, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in ministry, tearing down the walls of race in America, and particularly in church because Sunday is the most segregated day in America. And so I’m going to use my platform. I’m going to use my influence. I’m going to use my brand power to make sure that we tat on a Rosa wall’s race. And that didn’t mean doing anything visceral and violent. You know what that meant? That meant every time we invited a guest speaker to church, it was a speaker of color. And, and let them come in and preach to the congregation. It means standing up a diversity group and asking Anton to chair to diversity group, it meant going down to the city and asking the mayor, what are you doing to bring people together of color? AG: (53:23) And the mayor is going to respond to him because he’s the of a church with 25,000 people. So again, he didn’t step outside of his lane. He just started asking questions and talking about this in places that I couldn’t talk about it to people who wouldn’t give me the audience to talk about. So it doesn’t have to be big. It could just really be a conversation. No, to be clear, there’s some of us that got to give beyond the conversation because you can talk to somebody and they can continue to do the same behaviors over and over again. And then that means you got to move to the next level of how we change. And, and I think that is warranted where we are right now. But again, there’s so many people who are not talking about it. As I, as I teach the people who live in oblivion. AG: (54:06) Mmm. You know, I, I teach that in the social conscious construct, you got about half of people who are living in oblivion that they didn’t see anything that you saw that pricked your heart and mind and want to have this conversation. They never got a text or a message from their friends saying, why you aren’t saying anything. They just kind of, you know, a happy go lucky move in. And leave it to Beaver land or whatever, and they don’t see anything that’s 50% okay. Yeah. The 35% of them who sees something’s wrong, but they either don’t know what to say or they thank you, somebody else to this problem to solve or they say, little low me can’t do anything about it. And that’s understandable for time, but because you know better, you should know that there’s always something that you can do. The small baby steps lead to the bigger steps, but then there’s a smaller group of people about 10% who literally believe that they benefit emotionally, morally economically, politically from being, staying the way they are. AG: (55:17) Yeah. And we have to find a way to deal with those people, but those people are in the minority. Right. I listened to your podcast religiously, and so when you did the interview with Andy Andrews, and he talked a little bit about his book, how do you kill 11 million people? He pointed out in the book that at the height of the Nazi party, they were only eight and a half million of them when there were 80 million people in Germany. So you had this 10% minority that had control of an 80 million minority. So we got to stop the 10% wherever they are in business, in the world and wherever. But it’s so many more of us on the other side who can do the right thing, it should do the right thing. And that’s what I’m trying to teach is how to become a 5% leader. AG: (56:13) The admired leader who stands up for justice and there’s a laundry list of people, Dr. King Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, mother. These are people who says, you know what? I’m going to figure out what this problem is and I’m going to use my pulpit, my brand, my platform to figure out what I can do and what mother Teresa could do is not what Dr. King could do. So we’re all different. Well we got to stay in our lane and figure out what we can do to make a difference. And that’s what building the best brand is all about. RV: (56:46) Well you are a 5% leader and this has probably been one of the most enlightening conversations that I’ve had. Amen. And a really, really long that, and it’s just so helpful. I mean, just as a, as a friend Anton, to just hear your voice and hear your perspective on it. And I think it’s such a, a balance of what’s right and not who’s right and just doing what you can and not overstepping your bounds but standing for what is right. I’m just really, really graceful. We love you. We believe in you. Where should people go if they want to connect with you? I mean your, your brand is about leadership and like you, your, your voice man, like this is, this is why you’ve been through everything you’ve been through is like this time in the world right now I think lends itself to somebody just like you at just this moment. AG: (57:42) Well I really appreciate it and I agree. And if people want to connect with me, you can go to Anton Gunn. Com. That’s the home for all things. Anton, I’m on all social media platforms. I love Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I do the most dialogue around helping leaders be better leaders. So please follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But this is a time for all of us to learn how to grow as a leader and to have a greater impact and be the person who is the difference maker that makes the biggest difference. That’s what we all can do. RV: (58:17) Thank you, Anton. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.
Ep 73: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix | Recap Episode
Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible]. AJV: (00:06) Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. We’re breaking down the interview with as well. What I was going to say, I was gonna say legendary influencers because you think I forgot their names now. AJV: (00:24) I think you forgot their names. I thought you forgot what we were doing. AJV: (00:28) Well that is possible, but I was thinking like legendary, like you know, mega online influencers, massive reputation, early adopters, freaking awesome people freaking awesome and, and not the least of which this isn’t part of my top three, but it frustrates me that there are people as cool and as funny as them. Like Stevie is not funny, which it’s like, I hate people like that. AJV: (01:02) So is Sazan, AJV: (01:02) I know, like, and super fashionable, genuinely funny. It’s like we like you, but you also, you guys kind of sucked too. Like I like jealous and angry that you’re just naturally awesome. Anyway, separate of that. We actually have some useful constructive takeaways from truly an awesome interview. And we do, we love them. We work closely with them. We know them. Everybody that we know that works with them loves them, they’re just awesome. AJV: (01:34) It’s just a recap of how awesome Stevie and Sazan are, so we’ll talk about that for a few minutes. AJV: (01:37) But so my, in terms of my big three takeaways, so my first one was just be early and that was something that, yeah, you know, Saz talked about in terms of like, just knowing, you know, that weird connection with her friend who was dating the founder of Instagram back in the day and you know, basically one of the things where they were talking about like the early you are, the less good you have to be and that right now is tic toc, right? AJV: (02:07) Like that is the world that’s happening. And so I’m going, okay, I don’t understand tick-tock, I don’t like it like it. Well, there’s, there actually are some funny videos on there that. AJV: (02:16) Donald Trump impersonations AJV: (02:19) Yeah, AJ loves the Donald Trump impersonations, but it’s like, man, the earlier you are, the less good you have to be. It’s because that, that was that first one AJV: (02:29) In general. Just the whole concept of you gotta be early to the game. You really can’t be the late adopter and the social media game. You’ve gotta be on that forefront. You gotta be in the early adoption stage. And I’m gonna just figure it out as you go. But to that point, I think that’s really, that’s really good. One of the things that I love, so a minor in any specific order per se, but I love to hear about how they’re killing it on YouTube. I just feel like a lot of our interviews here lately have been like this reemergence of YouTube activities. Yeah. And I love that. And she said, you know, it’s like people find us from Google actually find us searching on Google and find their YouTube videos more than anything else that says something. So just knowing how to title your videos, how to use the descriptions of your videos, I think that’s really a big deal on YouTube. And then the other thing she said, you know, I was like, YouTube is the second highest ranked search engine. So outside of Google it is YouTube and people are really going there for education. So if you’re in more of the how to world, you better be on YouTube. Yeah. That was a really good just aha. Like very straightforward. AJV: (03:42) Yep. Yeah. And we talk about at the phase three event, we talk a lot about the search traffic and on Google and YouTube and you know, I think that that lends to my second one, which was to be trendy, like to be on trend. And they actually talked about, you know, this tool trends.google.com which I was like, gosh, I’ve heard about that. I’ve never once looked at it or paid any attention to it. And to hear them be like, yeah, this is, this is the source of where we figure out what we’re going to make videos on. Which just, it’s like, it’s so simple that it’s so easy to miss, but it’s obvious, right? Like pay attention to what the world is asking for and talking about. And it’s like you don’t even have to be good. You just have to, it’s the difference between like trying to pave a road on some back country highway and get people to come or just go where the interstate is, where all the traffic just is. And so anyways, I thought that was a handy little tool. Trends.Google.Com like I’m going to get into that and pay attention to what people are doing. And then I think relatedly on the trends was like hashtags and realizing that, you know, hashtags, are to social media, what keywords are to search engine optimization. If that light bulb hasn’t clicked for you, AJV: (05:01) You know, make sure you pay attention to that on the interview because that is really, really important to connect those concepts and understand, Oh, this is how people find my on social media is from hashtags. So those are follow trends. AJV: (05:17) Yeah. My second one is this, they spent a few minutes talking about this, but how they have been really afraid to redo content. And then I had this aha moment and Stevie talked about and he was like, Saz, your most, most visited, most viewed videos of all time are beginner makeup tutorials. Why wouldn’t you make more of those? And they had this fear for a long time. Well, I’ve already done that. But if that’s the number one thing that people are finding you for and coming to you for, why not do more of them instead of this concept? Well, I already talked about that this one time. Why not say, actually I’m going to talk about that every time and just increase that exposure. And I think so many of you have this fear of, well, I, I just did a video on self-development a couple months ago and you think you can’t do it again. Where the truth is is you could probably do one every single day and it would only enhance your followers and your engagement versus detract from it. So just a really great reminder of your most visited, most viewed, most downloaded, most commented, most lagged, most whatever videos or posts are the ones that you should do more of. AJV: (06:33) And even just tension to that, like, do you, do you know, do you know what your most viewed visit videos are? Do you know what’s causing people to find you? I mean obviously they’re, they’re super in touch with that stuff. AJV: (06:47) That was just really just, it’s really good information as well as you know, the how to do it. In terms of like the more softer like who you are approach, but it’s also a very tactical approach and I love that. So what’s your last one? RV: (07:01) So my last one, which you might find boring, but it’s like you can’t hear this enough and, and I hope that it sticks when you hear it from people like Sazan and Stevie is be consistent, right? Like I know you probably get sick of us saying it, but it’s like half the battle here is just sticking around. It’s just continuing to hit publish and staying there weekend and week out and day in and day out. And it’s like, on the one hand, I could see how that can be like, you know, discouraging or annoying and be like, yeah, we’ve heard it. On the other hand, it should be super empowering to go. Like all I have to do is keep publishing. I don’t have to, I don’t have to create Nobel prize books, you know, like I don’t have to or ideas or Pulitzer prize books or Nobel prize ideas. RV: (07:48) Like I just have to show up and be there all the time consistently. And if you are late, right? Like if you miss the early train, which I have typically missed the early train on all these platforms just because, you know, I’m like, social media isn’t my favorite thing to do. And I’m trying to not be that with tech talk. I’m trying to just at least be there. But it’s just like show up consistently and just stay there. Social media is not going anywhere. Like this is a part of the rest of our life. It, it’s a part of our life for the rest of our life. It’s changed the world. It’s so ubiquitous. It’s like this is how people consume media. And so you gotta be there and the best time to start up the plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time was today. Same as social media. Like the best time to start a profile would have been 15 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So get on with it and and stay consistent and don’t miss the schedule. AJV: (08:50) That was really long, long winded. RV: (08:52) That was not, that was not long. Three minutes, AJV: (08:56) Not three minutes. Was that three right. And more testing. And the last one I have, and I’ll make mine very short and succinct since mr. Verbose over here took up all my time. But the last one for me is something that stevie said at the very, very, very end, which I thought was so insightful. Did you hear people all the time going, well, I’m just too old for that. I’m just too old for that. I can’t be on tictoc. That’s for kids. And it’s like, well those kids will age those 18 year olds will be 21 year olds and then 25 year olds. And I just thought that was really interesting. It’s like, Hey, you have to go where the people are and if you want to get in and make a difference without all the algorithms coming into play, the time is now, and this is a nurturing environment. AJV: (09:42) It’s not where you come in and you just start selling from day one, just like you wouldn’t in any sort of relationship. Right? You don’t come in and you don’t talk about yourself, you don’t ask them questions there. There’s a process to it. The same thing happens online. It just takes a little longer. There’s this nurturing that happens and the people that you don’t think are your customers today, will be one day, right? So as they evolve, their needs will evolve. And I just thought that was a really good reminder for anyone who was like, Oh, well I’ve already missed that train or I’m too old for this and no, you’re not. No, this is, this isn’t going away. This is only increasing in how we do things. So you better get on it. And then I also loved how he said, if you really feel like you’re just too old, a really great place to start is YouTube. AJV: (10:28) I just think that too is really just a good for God. Can’t be on tick-tock, what am I going to do and tictoc. But it’s just figuring out what the place is for you. But just a great reminder to all of us. It’s like the people on any platform they will grow and evolve and age and their needs will evolve. So were you there in the beginning and are you growing with them? I loved it, but it was really just insightful. RV: (10:53) Yep. And if you’re on YouTube, you can be on tictoc, right? I mean if you follow our content diamond, we’re just going to repurpose. That’s what, that’s what we’re doing, right. our tictoc is just a shortened repurpose part of the video. So my tick talk is right. I don’t know what AJ’s tictok will be all like Trump impersonations and funny dances, but probably something with my toddler for sure. Yes. so you can do it. And here’s the thing, like if you didn’t listen to the interview and you’ve ever wondered, how do you build these huge social media empires, these, these, to have millions of followers on multiple different platforms, sharing their secrets, go listen to the interview and get like, and follow them on Instagram. Yeah, they’re super entertaining. RV: (11:35) But then you’ll know why they have yes, cause they’re more funnier and fashionable than I am naturally. So you can follow that and find out for yourself, but check it out. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 71: Putting the ‘Real’ Back into Reality TV with Mike Johnson | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06) Welcome to this special reality TV recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast that was different. A reality TV star, mega star, Mike Johnson from the Bachelorette and I, I mean, I, I’ll say this, I want to get his insights on what he had to share, but you know, he came to one of our events here not that long ago and people were freaking out, freaking out, snapping pictures with him, interrupting the conversation, strangers, not even part of our group party walking up and been like, can we take a picture? AJV: (00:48) All, all the ladies. RV: (00:49) But Mike is such a really great guy and he’s super likable. Obviously he’s done really, really well on the show. And I don’t know, it was interesting to hear about reality TV as a part of building your personal brand. AJV: (01:02) Yeah, it was fascinating. And I would say that I would love to say that, Oh, we were, you know, super fans and I was a fan girl, but I don’t watch reality TV, so I didn’t have a lot of context for why exactly does America love him so much? But he’s a super, super lovable guy. I think you guys will see a lot of why he was so popular on the show by listening to the interview by itself. But yeah, this is not new. But I feel like one of the biggest messages that he shared, which is something you’re going to hear from so many people that we interview, it’s just be yourself. He said, be your authentic self. And he goes, I think one of the reasons that I was really likable on the show is I was being myself and he goes, I was just keeping it real. AJV: (01:52) Like I was wearing my doo rag when it was time to wear my do rag and I’m a nice guy. So I was a nice guy on the show and I just, I think all of that is something that we hear all the time about how do you actually be yourself and in his unique case when there’s 20 cameras around, how do you keep it real? Like how do you actually be yourself? And I think to me, I really related to it in terms of how we are on social media, right? So many people use way too many filters. Like I see some of my girlfriends post pictures and I’m like, wait, is that them? I can’t tell because there’s so many filters, they’re almost unrecognizable and there’s this whole concept of be you, but yet not quite the real you be you, but a little bit altered a little bit. This don’t be afraid to be too vulnerable. We don’t want to come across as weak, but you know, you want to make sure you’re fun and you’re lively and engaging and it’s like, well, sometimes it’s just not you. So how do you really be you? And I thought he gave some really great insights and feedback on how to do that in a very intense, a really intense session in terms of doing it for live TV. RV: (03:08) Yeah, for sure. Well, and even just the hearing, the selection process of, of how they grab people for the show, right? So there’s all of these, these different rounds I guess, of, of editing or selection that they go through. And I think, you know, they’re looking for characters, like they’re looking for characters because they know that, that that strong characters, strong personalities create great TV. And I think that translates specifically to personal brands is like you, you have to be a strong character. You have to be like this amplified version of, of who you are. Or it’s just, it’s not really amplified. It’s, it’s more of like uninhibited or accessible or exposed. And I think, well authentic is a word you would use, you would be able to use for it. But Mike, Mike is acting as if no camera is there. And so he is being his personality as if no camera is there. RV: (04:13) Allowing people to see, okay, as a personal brand who’s presenting on camera, you have to get comfortable with the camera being there. Like you have to be comfortable being yourself, even though there is a camera. I remember one of my speaking mentor saying, you can’t be great on stage until you’re comfortable on stage because you’re going to be so consumed with being awkward and nervous and uncomfortable that you can’t even focus on connecting to the audience. You can’t even deliver a message or instruction or inspiration because you’re not being yourself. You’re consumed with this awkwardness and you know, so, so being able to be that person in your own skin and being okay with people seeing like the full heightened version of you, even when you’re making out with somebody. I mean that’s, that’s very extreme, but I think that that is, is part of the lesson is just being comfortable with, AJV: (05:06) Yeah, and I think like too that, that’s such a great point because I was, I’m laughing inside because we have so many clients in the brand builders community who are camera shy. I mean, they are incredible business people. They’re super successful entrepreneurs. They’re authors, they’re, amazing content creators. They’ve done incredible things. But yet the camera goes on and it’s like [inaudible] crickets. It’s like, hello, are you there? Okay. Hello? Is it still you? And it’s just like this weird thing where as soon as the camera comes on, they’re like too professional or they try to be too perfectionist and they try to write out a script for what they’re going to say on camera. And then, Oh, I messed up a word, got to do it again. And it’s like, y’all, you gotta be able to turn the camera on, makeup on, off in your case cloth, done cloth on, done AJV: (06:02) Off on. AJV: (06:04) But it’s like you gotta be able to turn on the camera and just go, no script, no planning. And in many cases, no being dressed up, no makeup, if that’s kind of how you now have your super glam and that’s your brand, then do your thing, girl or man, either way. But I just to that point, it just kind of like was laughing inside because you do have to be comfortable on camera, especially in today’s age to have a successful personal brand. But yet, I know that some of you who are going to listen to this podcast, if we were to turn a camera on you right now and go, all right, say your piece. You’d be like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Give me a minute, let me write something down. Let me make an outline. And it’s like, no, speak your truth and do it regardless. Right. To turn the camera on and go. And I think that to me in my opinion anyways, being on reality TV, Shirley is, I’m sort of training for that. But even Mike told us, he goes, Oh my gosh, I’m so nervous on this podcast interview. AJV: (07:09) Yeah, that was funny cause he wasn’t, he’s not used to being on podcasts, but here he is on TV. No, no problem. So it’s a different medium. I think it’s just, you know, the first time you do a podcast, even if you’re a professional speaker, like you get a little nervous, you know, the first time you do a speech on stage, you get a little nervous. Right? Or, or even if you’ve been a speaker, you stand in front of a, an a camera and you do like a TV shoot or you know, like a movie shoot or commercial something. It’s different in different set or shown up. I remember the first time I did a live news, you’ve done this the morning like the morning shows. It is, it isn’t. It’s a different environment and you have to just be able to trust that you as you are is good enough and to just sit and allow people to experience who you are and be okay if they like you be okay if they don’t like you, but the, the best experience for them and for you is to just allow them to have access into it, into who you are and to not have to pretend and not, I’d have to fake and not have to try and cheat. RV: (08:15) And I think Mike wasn’t trying to steal attention from the camera. He was just being himself and. RV: (08:22) said, which I really love. He’s like, I wasn’t trying to win a game. I wasn’t ready to win a game. And I think that is really insightful too for a lot of reality TV. It’s like, yeah, maybe some people are getting on there too. Get married and fall in love. But I think we all know that somewhat unlikely in many cases, but he wasn’t trying to win a game. He was just like, man, I’m just on there to see where the journey takes me. I wasn’t trying to get on there too to when I was trying to get on there to follow the journey. And I thought that too was really interesting. And then just his in general. But I also think what is really fascinating about this too is how one thing can completely catapult you into another thing. And he went from being a financial advisor, a very successful one, which people probably don’t know about to being on the bachelor and then the bachelor in paradise to now he’s getting ready to do all different types of things that I don’t think we’re able to share, but really cool and amazing things because of that. AJV: (09:23) So it’s, it’s that leverage and that platform that it gives you. And you can get a platform in a lot of different ways and clearly being on TV and reality TV is definitely going to help you increase that platform, which could help you do X, Y, and Z. So what are you doing to build your platform? It just happened to be that reality TV. Was his, his catapult vision RV: (09:48) [Inaudible] certainly a word catapult data pulls you in. That’s definitely a word. I like it. Well, and I, yeah, reach, I mean there’s that reach and I would say it’s easy to kind of judge people, right? And go, Oh, reality TV or Hey, you just want to be famous or whatever. But look, reputation formula, this is textbook brand builders one-on-one reputation is relation is your rep. Your results times your reach equals your reputation. So reach is a huge part of this. Like if you want to change the world, like you got to know, people got to know about you. You got to do something to increase your reach. You don’t have to go on the bachelor or the bachelorette like, but you, you, you could you just, but you, you do need to be mindful of reach. You can’t, you can’t be, I think in one part of your brain going, Oh, you know, you’re a fame monger and that’s bad. And then the other part of your brain going, who I, I want to reach more people and be successful. Until you reconcile that, like you’re going to sell self-sabotage because you’re not really believing in just going, it’s not about fame. It’s not about any of that stuff. It’s just about reach and making a difference in getting in front of more people. So I thought it was a really sweet interview. He’s a sweet guy, very lovable. Not, not at all, you know, fake or anything. He’s just really awesome. AJV: (11:11) Really down to earth. Check it out. You’ll like it. AJV: (11:14) You don’t get a chance to hear from the bachelor and then a bachelor in paradise on any other day. All right. Thanks for being here. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 69: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele | Recap Episode
RV: (00:08) well, um, that was amazing. Uh, that interview with Rick Steele, I’m telling you like that is, could be seen as more valuable than like an entire degree or program that you could, you could invest tens of thousands of dollars into and, and listen, right? Like when it comes to learning, uh, how to do it. RV: (00:36) Paid advertising, I’m going to go with the guy who spent $94 million, $94 million in Google paid ads, right? Like amazing. And he’s turned it into billions with a B, multiple companies doing billions of dollars. There’s something to be learned there. And it’s one of the things I have to S you know, I love about brand builders is it’s just when you come to our events, you know, whether they’re the virtual events or there are physical events, you know, our events are small. Like our events are capped at 50 people and most of them are like 25 30 people. And you’re literally sitting next to somebody like Rick Steele who is spend $94 million in ads, ran seven marathons in seven days, is built all these huge companies, you’re sitting next to these podcasters that reach millions of people or people have million social media followers. Like our community just fires me up. RV: (01:35) And so I hope you enjoyed and if you didn’t like go listen to this interview with Rick steel. He’s not like, he doesn’t teach what, like his personal brand is not about the stuff I was interviewing him. He did that as a favor to me cause he’s one of our clients and our friends [inaudible] okay. Him giving away his secrets about how to run, uh, paid ads through Google is just insane. So I’m going to give you the recap here. Um, AAJ wasn’t able to make it today. So I’m rolling so low of course this, this is this, this concept or this topic was square in the center of all things nerdy. And so it’s probably a proposed that I’m doing this recap by myself cause I just love this stuff and I want to try to simplify it and try to organize it for myself and mostly for you know, for you and for my, mostly for myself really just to like make sure I’m understanding things. RV: (02:33) That’s why we do these recaps and learn alongside of you. But here’s the first big idea I think from that interview is that intent based search. It is a huge part of the future for personal brands and that’s a big difference is understanding intent based search, which is Google. Somebody comes and they type in a term like nobody tight. When you go to Google and you type in broken water heater, you’re not typing it in just to learn about water heaters like you’re typing it in because you need that thing at that moment. And that’s the power of intent based search is it is somebody saying I need this thing at this moment versus traditional advertising. Even Facebook is more of awareness advertising. It’s, it’s, yeah. Inserting yourself in front of somebody and saying, Hey, check out this thing that I have, you should be interested. RV: (03:27) So you’re, it’s the difference between creating interest and, uh, drafting off of interest, right? Capitalizing on existing interest in which is what intent-based search is all about. And I, I want to make sure you caught what he said because he’s built huge companies and he said in the interview he said, I only have these two rules. They said, make sure there’s a big enough market for you to make a Denton. So there’s gotta be enough volume that you don’t have to be the only option that, that, that there’s room for you plus competitors. That’s really smart, right? Like it’s to go, there’s a, there’s a big enough market here that you can have at least a few, you know, really, really key players and as long as you’re one of the key players, like you can make a lot of money. So that was interesting to hear him say that. RV: (04:18) And then he said the second rules that don’t create a product that you’re going to be in competition with Amazon, which I thought was interesting. That’s more for you e-commerce people. Um, you know, selling, selling physical goods. But Mmm. You know, for personal brands, most of, most of you, most of us are selling video courses, membership sites, coaching programs, consulting, speaking, you know, like you’re selling, you’re selling more of a, a service or or knowledge, you know, information. And so I think it’s, it’s, you know, that’s a handy advantage that you have that you’re not really competing with Amazon. So, um, anyways, that was super powerful. The other kind of tip in this, in this space cause cause here’s the, you know, here’s the big idea I think in general. And, and, and by the way, so our phase three event, we have an entire event that is called high traffic strategies and it is a hundred percent dedicated to this kind of stuff. RV: (05:14) Now it’s all, it’s, we consider it more advanced because unless you have gone through phase one and captivating content and phase two and you have your funnels built and your visual identity done and your website and all of your copy is in place and all of your tracking, right? Like there’s all of these things that you need to do to build the house first. But then when you come to phase three like, um, this is where we really light it up and, and it’s doing this kind of stuff and, and you know, like the big idea here, it’s very straightforward. It’s in phase two, we’re going to teach you how to build organic traffic, right? It’s all about, you know, we teach this thing called the content diamond and there’s a 50 plus page document that we walk you through step by step, exactly what to do every single week with your social media plan and your email marketing. RV: (06:01) And it’s all organic. It’s all free organic traffic, but you’re building an audience. The difference here in phase three, which is the big idea is going find an existing audience and that the people that you want to do business with, they’re already aggregated somewhere. You just got to go find them. And that’s what the power of Google and intent based search platforms do is like literally someone is typing in a term at a specific and moment in time when they need a problem solved. And if you know what that problem is and you own and dominate that term and you’re willing to pay for it, you can force the traffic because these people already exist out there. And so I think this is something that I think personal brands are way behind on. I think, you know, personal brands in general, like there’s a lot of people doing Facebook ads. RV: (06:52) There’s not a lot of people doing YouTube and [inaudible] the Google ad network, right? Which is really Google and YouTube. Um, a lot of, a lot of you of that do personal brands, you know, like we’re using Facebook and Instagram, which is fine. That’s great. You know, that serves a PR that works too, can work. Um, and, but it’s, you know, it’s totally different. They’re two different universes. The other thing with the YouTube thing, which is, you know, as a handy little tip, if you didn’t pick this up from what he was saying was that in YouTube you don’t even get charged for the ad if somebody skips it. But you know, like if they watch less than five seconds, you don’t even get charged for the ad. So that’s like a free impression, a free show of like, yeah, you got, you got five seconds to do a free five second ad or say your name, your company name, and boom, like I get that impression out there that is super powerful. RV: (07:49) Like free advertising on the biggest ad network in the world. Mmm. Pretty incredible. So intent-based search I think is, is a big future for personal brands. We dive into it completely at our phase three event and it’s just decide all based upon the premise of that your audience has already collected, they’re already aggregated in many places. So while you’re building your own audience, go be in front of the existing audience. And that’s really important. The second thing that is more of a concept, I just want to make sure y’all understand is this concept of re retargeting and it’s important that you get this right because you know I didn’t really understand it and it it’s, it’s something you can hear and not recognize the power of of what it is. And what it means is that, you know, when somebody comes to your website, you’re probably familiar with the concept of lead capture and that’s something we teach in phase two is build a lead magnet. RV: (08:49) Yeah. Which is offer something of value for free in exchange for lead capture. You’re going to capture somebody’s name, typically their name and email at first, but what about the person who comes to your site and either you don’t have a lead capture setup or you know, they come to your site somehow they’re on there, they found their way there from something, but they don’t ever, they never fill out the lead capture. Right. They never contact you. They never say they want more information, but some they’re interested it somehow, some way they ended up there. Well that’s what retargeting does. It’s basically taking this person who would otherwise be invisible. You would have no way to track them. And it’s, it’s almost like you put a beacon on them and, and now it’s like a digital beacon that you can see wherever that person goes throughout the web and you can re target them, you can show them additional ads to try to drive them back to your website for specific products or specific offers. RV: (09:53) That is huge. That, I mean that is insanely powerful is to go imagine if in the real world you can know everyone who ever had a thought about, Hmm, your, your company or your product or service. And you could literally know everyone who had ever had that thought and then you could show an ad just to those people. That’s like what retargeting does. I mean it’s extremely powerful and they never have to give you their email. They never have to give you their phone number. All they do is show up on your site and that is how you get that. And so you know, there’s some technicality parts of that that we cover at the event in terms of how to set them up. But you know, your web person can set it up and Google, Google and YouTube and then Facebook and Instagram, you know those go together. RV: (10:38) They’ll give you what’s called the pixel, which is what you need. It’s a piece of code that you install on your site. LinkedIn also has one. So you know, if we’re managing your brand or or somebody else’s managing your brand, you just need to tell your web person like, I need you to install my Facebook pixel pixel or my Google pixel on my site and you’ll immediately start tracking that stuff. That’s part of what we do in phase two. We don’t teach people about pixels and retargeting, but we do. We do tell them you need to, you need to just do this. Like just, just listen to us and do this. We’ll teach you why later. It’s kind of wax on, wax off type of thing. But you gotta be retargeting, like at least be showing ads to people who are already saying they’re interested in what you do by virtue of them coming to your sites and to your registration pages for your funnels and to your sales pages for your products. RV: (11:30) Mmm, really, really important. And then the third big idea here I think is just optimization, optimization. You know, when he was telling this the, the, his story about, uh, you know, how, how he started his company and, and you know, they’ve done a couple, they were in the mortgage space and now they’re, now they’re in, um, you know, they’re doing blinds. But yeah, I think w when he talking about this idea of the very first ad they ran was for pho blinds and he was saying like, you start with 50 bucks and you just, you put $50 into it and you see what happens and you, you, you measure and you watch to see, do, do people click on the ad and then if they click on their ad, do they come to your site? And you can run different ads. And so even somebody who’s spending $94 million in ads, it’s starting with the $50 ad spend. RV: (12:26) Right. You know, you, you probably go, I don’t have $94 million. Well I don’t either. But you know, you could probably scrape together 50 bucks or a hundred bucks and get some data, get some testing and these tools that he mentioned, uh, I had heard of the first, I had not actually heard of the second, which I’m excited about. So these are some nerdy tools for, you know, either your digital marketing team or your tech person or you. And we’re certainly going to be, you know, getting into the details of these and introducing them to our, our team and our community when we get to phase three, um, is heat mapping. Okay. So that’s a crazy egg was the tool. There’s some other ones, but crazy egg is the one that I’ve always heard of. So heat mapping shows you, it’s, it’s kind of like, you know, when you see an ad for like an acid or Mmm, yeah, somebody is sick and they have, they show like a FA, a figure of a human body. RV: (13:20) And then there’s like flashing red where the pain is like, Ooh, heartburn. Um, that’s like what heat mapping is. It’s just, it shows your website and then it shows these flashing red areas of where people are hovering with their mouse. Right? So that’s one of the things people do is they wherever they usually point with their mouse, the mouse to where they’re reading. Okay. Or to, you know, clearly to what they’re going to click on. And so you can follow the journey that a new visitor coming to your site for the first time who doesn’t know who you are or an experienced person. Just anyone come into your site and, and you can go, you know, is my copy effective? You know, are my, are my lead magnets working? You know, are these buttons effective? And you can see like what are they passing over and what are they spending time looking at? RV: (14:13) And what are they clicking on because of the heat map. Tell you again, without even knowing who the people are, you don’t even have to have their email. It’s just the people who come to your site is tracking it. And then this is the new one, which is awesome. And this is next level. Uh, um, he said the company or the tools called full story, which I had never heard of. So I’m, I’m, I’m jacked about this full story, which is a video experience. So not just heat mapping, which kind of shows like these are the hotspots that people go to, but full story literally records the entire journey of someone on your site. So where do they down and where do they stop and, and, and how does their mouse move across the page. I mean, that is huge. Like what an unfair advantage of the digital world. RV: (15:01) And this is where it’s like, if you’re not doing this stuff, you’re, you’re, you’re behind. And if you’re not doing this stuff in five years, you’re, you’re out of business, right? Like, like right now, if you’re not doing it, you’re just behind. But if you’re not doing this in five years, you’re out of business. But here’s the problem. You don’t, you don’t start with this stuff. This is domino number 76 you got to lay the first 70 Domino’s in the right order, which is what phase one and phase two is all about. And you got to get busy and I got to get busy, right? Like I freak out here some of this stuff cause I’m like, man, somebody is going to figure this out. They’re going to come crush. They’re going to come dominate. So if you’re not doing it right now, you’re just behind. RV: (15:44) But if you’re not doing this in a couple of years, you’re out of business. So this is a big deal y’all like this is, this is happening, it’s been happening and we need to get on board and, and you perhaps need to get on board or your team needs to get on board. We need to up the sophistication here because we’re competing with people who do this, right? You’re, your website isn’t just competing with other people who do what you do. You’re competing with Amazon, you’re competing with Rick steel, you’re competing with Ninja level digital marketers and cutting edge tools and intelligence and data and tracking. And it’s like if you’re not doing any of that, it’s time to pick up your game. You better get going. Um, because there’s only probably a little window here of, you know, a couple of years where you can establish yourself as the authority in your space. RV: (16:35) And then after that it’s going to be hard to come and dethrone the King. I mean, think about if you were launching a store right now that was like, okay, home Depot and if you were going to try to build a brand and to go, you know what, I have an idea for a hardware store and you would be competing against Lowe’s and home Depot and ACE hardware and true value and, and, and Menards and then, yeah, and be like, yeah, I’m going to start a new one. Think of how hard that would be to dethrone these huge national brands with millions and millions of dollars. It would be difficult to do it. It’s not that it couldn’t be done, but it would be difficult. There would have to be something very disruptive. Well, that’s how it’s going to be in the personal branding space. RV: (17:23) I think in five years there’s going to be people who own the verticals. They’re already are right there already are these giants in the space, like, you know, you already have Tony Robbins than you, you’ve got Mmm. Yeah. You know, like Rachel Hall is, you’ve got Mel Robbins, you’ve, you’ve got Brendon Burchard, you have Marie Forleo, you’ve got, uh, you know, Lewis house. So some of our clients have these huge spaces that they own and, and there’s a little gold rush going on, right? And if you’re not in the game, you’re in trouble. Like, you gotta get going now, like move this is, this is it, you’re, you’re living in a time where you have an opportunity to change the world with your message, but there’s a closing window of, of how much opportunity there is there. And, and you know, talking to somebody like Rick in this interview just makes me go, Holy moly. Like I, I’m, I need to pick up my game and I consider myself, you know, towards the leading edge of, of, of thinkers and leaders and teachers and people in this space. But knowing that Rick steel’s out there, whew. Like it’s a new level and it’s a new day, but also massive, massive opportunity. So it’s exciting and it’s fun. And I’m so glad you’re here because you’re learning it now and you’re not learning it before it’s too late. So thank you for being here and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.