Ep 67: Gratitude with John O’Leary | Recap Episode
AJV: (00:00) Welcome friend to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Man, did we need to hear from John O’Leary right now! AJV: (00:10) Seriously. He’s so awesome. He’s just the best guy. AJV: (00:15) I mean his attitude, his mindset if you haven’t listened to the purpose. So yeah, I mean his story is incredible. We’ve been friends for years. One of the most successful speakers in the world, truly. And just an amazing guy, but to hear, to hear his story, you know, it’s like you can’t, we were talking to him about how he’s built his career and everything, but you can’t, his career is built on gratitude and love. Like his secret is not some business process or something. And that, that was my first big takeaway and I had never heard him say this, but he said, you know, there is an ROI on love. And when he was telling the story about loving on the AV guys that are like backstage at a keynote that you know, nobody talks to and if they do talk to them, it’s like, Hey, get this done for me or get this put in. AJV: (01:02) Or, you know, why doesn’t this work or whatever. And having those guys refer him, I just like that is the epitome of him. And I just thought that was a good reminder for all of us. Especially now when things are difficult and things are hard. Like you’re never too busy to love on people. You’re never, you’re never too broke to love on people. You’re never too important to love on people. And the world is starving for that right now. And I teared up in the interview like I, I just needed it so badly. He’s so amazing. AJV: (01:35) And you’re a big seller AJV: (01:36) And I am a softie. It’s true. It’s true. AJV: (01:39) We might take on John like outside of the interview is that anyone who can capture the heart of a three-year-old as an inspirational speaker has got my vote. Our child, our oldest child, Jasper talks about John O’Leary. Every day and I don’t mean some days, every single day he said, daddy friend, mr John, I want to watch the video daddy’s friend, mr John. And I just, to me there’s something about like what is it about him that has captured this curiosity in even a three year old and there is this uniqueness about John, I really do help you watch the interview. But actually it’s very rare that I take notes but I have a lot of notes. It’s very rare. But there were just like so many good one liners and nuggets and just like you said, it’s really an era of needing messages like this. And this is kind of in line with what you just said. It wasn’t my first point. My points are kind of out of order cause I had so many. But I loved this and he said there is no such thing as a little job. AJV: (02:49) And I love that and I, you know, it’s like we very much have the attitude, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO, the business owner, the entrepreneur, you are also the trash taker, the cleaner, the window washer. It’s like at one point do you think that you have elevated among the above the jobs that need to be done? And I just really believe that a servant’s heart and a true leader never rises above that. If there is trash on the floor, you pick it up, right. If there is something that needs to be cleaned, you do it. There is never this concept of rising above. And I loved it. He talked about this story about Lavelle, the janitor, janitor, the janitor in his hospital room when he was in the hospital bed for six months after he had this horrific accident. Yeah, truly fighting for his life. AJV: (03:39) And he said, he said, I believe that Lavelle saved my life many times because I was so succeptible to the tiny viruses. A little cold or anything could have been what ended his life. And he said, but because Lavelle was in there cleaning his room and making it sanitary every day, that was a part of what saved his life. AJV: (03:58) There’s no little jobs. AJV: (04:01) I’m just even reading this and it’s like I’m going to have to like hold the tears back because he said that today in the midst of covert 19 he said there is never been a greater reminder in our country of how every job matters. AJV: (04:16) Yes, like the grocery store when he said delivery truck AJV: (04:22) Tricity internet. I mean imagine if we didn’t have internet right now, like that AJV: (04:28) Be a big deal. It would be interesting. That would be a big deal. Or just people who are willing to get up and go to the grocery stores and keep those open and people who are willing to get up and put their lives at risk to keep a coffee shop open or the restaurants open. AJV: (04:43) The nurses right to, Oh my gosh, of course the doctors, gosh, our first responders and all the people who you know, you just never realize like what I mean how critical that just delivering, getting mail delivered is like keeping the country running. Being able to get things at your house. The person who picks up a side job running to the grocery store to grab groceries that an elderly person can get groceries delivered to their house. Amazing. AJV: (05:11) So many things. I just love that in the midst of this and then just also talking about that story of lavel just putting a name and a face to, it’s like some people may see it as a janitor. He said, no, this man kept me alive. It’s just such a powerful perspective. AJV: (05:30) That’s powerful. Yeah. And you know, kind of playing off of what you just said, I think when he was actually telling the story of how they got started and, and you know when he went out and started speaking and it was totally by accident and then you know, he ended up going, okay, this ha, this is our full time thing. We have to make it work and we have to do whatever it takes. And I feel like you and I have been there in our relationship, like with our business where it’s like both, both times. Yeah. We didn’t have a choice. Like we had to make it, we had to make it work and okay, AJV: (06:03) But we did have a choice. We chose to make it work. AJV: (06:06) Yeah, well we, we chose to do whatever it took to make it work. Like you always have a choice. You can take, you can take a safer route. But to that point of like there’s no small jobs. I remember a couple of weeks ago this is a little sort of side note, but Mmm, there, there was chaos in our house and there’s chaos every once in a while cause we have two little kids and everything. And I was overwhelmed and I just scooted out of the room like, and I just went upstairs and, and then later that morning AJ was like, I could tell she was upset and not upset, but just like she was quiet and I was, you know, she kind of brought up like, Hey, you bailed on me. And I felt so bad in that moment because it’s like you have to be willing to dig the ditches. AJV: (06:56) Like you got to do the work of digging the ditches and whether it’s your spouse or your business partner or the people next to you, everybody has to be willing to dig the ditches together. And I think, you know, people use that analogy like who you’re going to be in the foxhole with and a fight, which I think is, you know, inspiring and if you’re a war person or whatever, but the reality is for most of us, the daily life isn’t a foxhole. It’s not a matter of life and death, but it is a matter of digging ditches. It’s a matter of who’s doing the work and are you staying in the fight? Are you staying in the battle? And Mmm, just doing the work it takes to make it work. And so I took that. That was one of my big takeaways was when he was talking about doing whatever it takes to make it work, which also ties to what you were saying about there is no small job. Yeah, you got to hang in there and you gotta you gotta dig the ditches AJV: (07:46) And just appreciate like I don’t rise above the small jobs like yeah, I just, I love that. So yeah, so I guess that would be my first point. I will, I’ll claim that as my first point. My second point, which I think is kind of connected to that a little bit, but I just thought it was worthwhile sharing is don’t be so had to read this so I get it right. Don’t be so arrogant to think you should get paid in year one. AJV: (08:12) Wow. AJV: (08:13) I was like, I am right. Because I think so many people are like, what should I charge? What should I charge? And like part of like what we do at Brand Builders Group is helping people set their pricing schedules and their fee schedules. And it’s a really hard sketch. A hard question. But I love to, the attitude of like, if you really went back and you said, okay, well how did we get started and what did we do? It’s like, okay, well we spoke a lot for free. AJV: (08:37) Yep. AJV: (08:38) I lot like, I mean for eight years I was still speaking for free. Like I was still getting paid to speak, but I was still speaking for free. And it’s like, remember AJV: (08:46) Still speak for free at certain events, like still to this day, AJV: (08:50) But it’s like really before your speaking career took off, you know, I was like, you spoke over 300 times for free. And it’s like that very first year that we really launched our first business. You know, I spoke something like 220 times for free that year. AJV: (09:04) Can we tell him how much you made? The first year we had this, this is, this is not in Brand Builders Group. You’re making even less than brand builders group AJV: (09:15) [Inaudible] everyone gets paid before. AJV: (09:16) Yes. but in our first, our first year in business, you made like in our first business, 30, 20, 40,000, 24,000, $24,500 rolling in it. That, and then, you know, by the end of our, I mean, okay, a few years later they were making that every month. And then, you know, a few years later you’re making that more like every week. AJV: (09:36) Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s really is amazing and I think that’s, you know, not to like broadcast, you know, what we make or anything. But in year one I was making $24,500 of speaking for free. AJV: (09:49) A ton, AJV: (09:49) Like every day. But then it was by year 10 you know? Yeah. I mean it was more like I was making that a week. I was making it that a week AJV: (09:58) And to put things back in context. Okay. So brand builders, we’re now about a couple of years into the business. So year one you made AJV: (10:07) $600 I think it was technically, I think I made 13 AJV: (10:11) Oh yeah, for delivery work. Cause you assisted on some delivery work but AJ is the CEO of brand builders group and she gets paid last. She only gets paid if there’s anything like leftover and it’s been AJV: (10:23) Virtually zero now for virtually zero other than the delivery work. Yeah, I do. Some clients do some of that, but I just, I thought that was so important and I guess it hit me because we get asked that so much and I think 12 years later into our professional lives and personal lives, it’s we forget that the reality is, is when we started speaking, we didn’t charge. We said yes to everything and that’s so much of what John was saying. He said, my business group has, has said yes. I just said yes. He said we were yes, led and mission driven. And he said, and don’t be so arrogant to think that you should get paid the first time you do it or the first year because we did it for years. We still do it like, like we are, you know, after the sell of an eight fair bit, eight figure business and all the stuff that we’ve done, it’s like we still don’t get paid and we’re digging, AJV: (11:19) We’re digging ditches right now. We’re, we’re brand builders. Even though the, you know, the clients are doing well and our T, you know, like we’ve been able to get our team up to good levels of pay. AJV: (11:28) But there’s just, I just loved what he said. There’s like this, this attitude of people get entitled. I was like, I deserve to make this money. My time is worth this says you says who? And I just loved his attitude of like, don’t be so arrogant doing that work. Yeah. I love that. I just thought it was such a good reminder of when you’re asking yourself, what should I get paid and what should I charge? Maybe the question is like, well, just how many times can I do this before someone says, can I pay you? AJV: (12:00) Great. Gosh, that’s such a, such a great reminder. Yeah. It’s again, just so powerful to hear this inspiration and, and here’s the thing. You may be there right now, right? Like, maybe you were a speaker or you were an employee or you were someone making a lot of money and all of a sudden, boom, covid hits, you know, some crazy things happens in China with a bat. And here we go. Like all of us have to just do whatever it takes and you rebuild by serving, figure out a new problem and start serving it and start solving it and start helping and don’t be above it. And then the money always follows, like the money will come back around. Mmm. Way more important than the money. And this is what he’s all about. And this was my third takeaway was just being reminded of how much life is a miracle. Yeah. Towards the end. And he was just talking about you know, like one and there’s like a one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is of your, of your DNA coming together the way that it is. AJV: (12:59) And just like the fact that you’re here and, and then talking to somebody like John who’s so grateful for everything and go, go, you know what? Imagine if you didn’t have your hands right, like imagine if you didn’t have your hands or if you didn’t have your eyesight or if you didn’t have, like there’s so many people that are, you know, living with a lot of fear right now because their immune system is really weak and just really dangerous time for the vast majority of, of us. And, and perhaps you, we have so much to be grateful for. It’s, it’s so beautiful that we’re even here. We you know, as, as crazy as the current situation is of the quarantined world. It’s also pretty incredible how we’re able to connect and do business virtually and have our basic needs met and food delivered to our house. AJV: (13:50) And there’s, if this was, if there was ever a time in history to have this, it would be right now, like this has to have been the easiest time, the most medically advanced to ever have something like this. And it’s all about that perspective. I remember seeing something on Instagram about Covid where it said your grandparents were called to war. You’re being called to sit on the couch. You can do this. I posted, that’s right. I saw it somewhere and I’m always sealing AJ’s lines and but it’s true, but it’s true. You know, like we’re, we’re alive. We’re here and just don’t forget the miracle of, of that. The miracle of life. There’s so much to be to be grateful for. AJV: (14:32) Yeah, mine is probably my third point is similar to that and I think it was, it was probably towards the last half of the interview when we were talking to John about just how has this affected your business? What’s your attitude? What’s the plan on the go forward? And I just, I love that he said, I’m just so grateful for the season and I think it’s really hard for a lot of us to admit that openly because there are so many people who are struggling. There are so many people who’ve lost their businesses, they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their lives, they’ve lost family members. You know, you’ve, you will look at New York and you’re going like, how can I publicly say I am grateful for this season when people are every single day on the front lines risking their lives, people are dying, people like they are suffering. AJV: (15:17) And at the same token, there is this amazing privilege that has been given to so many of us to be at home. To refocus and reprioritize. And I, I really honed in on what he said and he kind of like took this and two parts in the beginning he said, you know, in year one I speaking my speaking career started because our little girl scout asked me to speak at her girl scout troop and then a parent in the audience was a part of the rotary club. And then some was there was a part of Kawanna. So his first year he spoke three times all for free year two, he spoke eight times, all for all for free. Year three though, he started charging and making money. He spoke 60 times. But yeah, 14 years later he has spoken more than 2000 times to millions of people. AJV: (16:07) And many different continents. And he said, he said over the last, you know, two months, he goes, I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve been able to tuck my kids into bed. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 days in a row where I’ve gotten to make them lunch. That’s never happened before. I’ve had 41 day, you know, and he’s kind of goes on and on and you’re like, it’s interesting because the first half of our interview is very much about how did you get your speaking career started and what you can expect. And it’s like, it goes from girl Scouts to like literally millions of people being impacted by John’s story on multiple continents in 2000 times. And, but yet, but the the amazing part of this interview is like, I’m so grateful for the things that I never knew I was missing. Like being home for 41 days. AJV: (16:57) And you also, in the context, if y’all don’t understand, like for John, somebody who’s primarily a keynote speaker and their primary revenue, like the keynote speaking business, he’s gone all the time. But this pandemic is impacting speakers radically. I mean, our entire keynote business is basically on the course of three weeks. Over the course of three weeks. Lost every event. Yeah. You know, indefinitely disappeared. You know, some of them will come back at some point maybe, but it’s okay. AJV: (17:28) But for him to, to have that attitude, it’s not like he just has it all hunky Dory right now. Like it’s entire business bookings for the rest of this year AJV: (17:40) Just went out the door. AJV: (17:42) They’re like, this isn’t like, Oh, it’s this one thing. It’s like, no, that’s his entire business went poof. And yet he is still choosing to be grateful, AJV: (17:50) Choosing to consciously be thankful for the things you do have versus unconsciously complaining about the things that you don’t, or being entitled and thinking that you’re above facing the challenges that are in front of you and. AJV: (18:04) Or that you’ve somehow earned or deserved to not have to deal with difficulty. RV: (18:09) Or to not that you’re above, above the work. Just really, really great, great reminders. Loved it, man. We needed this. And go listen to it. There’s a good chance you need it. Even if you don’t need it, you need it. Go listen to John O’Leary and be grateful. Know that your work matters. There is no job too small. There’s, there’s no audience to serve. That’s too small. There’s no message that’s too small. The work is important. The world needs you. Go find them now. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 65: Everything You Need to Know to Make Brilliant Online Courses with D’Arcy Benincosa | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, welcome to the influential personal brand recap edition. We’re breaking down our episode with D’Arcy, Beninicosa who I feel like is one of our new favorite friends. AJV: (00:11) Yes, we love D’Arcy D’Arcy. D’Arcy is so cool. She’s so cool. And she’s so interesting. It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t on this interview because I’d have been like, so tell me about your favorite place you’ve ever traveled. Tell me more about this upcoming book. So tell me more about your fabulous self. RV: (00:29) Yeah, we were focused and down to business on video courses, which it’s kind of funny. We haven’t had anyone actually come talk about this directly, even though so many of us and so many of our clients do them. And what happened was D’Arcy, so she’s one of our clients, she was in one of our events. She was in, I think it was our captivating content AJV: (00:50) and everyone wanted to learn from her, RV: (00:51) everyone was like, I want to tell us you stealing the show. And so they were, you know, she was like spending time with people and she was like, well, why don’t I just come on? AJV: (01:00) we were so excited about it. RV: (01:02) So if you’ve ever been curious about video courses, how much they cost, how to do ’em, how long they have to be, this is a really, really key interview. And I think that was my first takeaway was it’s not about the number of videos that determines the pricing. You know, she has a $50 course, which is like 15 videos and then she has a $1,500 course, which I think was like 24 videos. It’s not about the length of the, or the duration of it. So much as it is about the monetary value of what your teaching, in other words, how is what you’re teaching going to directly or indirectly affects the person’s income. And if the skills that you’re teaching directly affect somebody’s income, then you can charge more for those. Which like is the definition of value, right? It is. What is the value of the expertise that you’re providing? Not the quantity of information that you’re providing. And that was my first one. AJV: (02:02) Yeah. Which is interesting because that’s how everything should be priced. But so many people are like, well, it’s only one call a month. And I’m like, well what are you covering on that one call a month? RV: (02:12) If you get one idea that saves you from making a hundred thousand dollar mistake, which a Brand Builders I think is a lot of what we do is where we’re not only teaching people things that help them make a lot more money, I mean, but to prevent a lot of stupid money AJV: (02:28) and also just wasted time. But I just think that’s a good lesson in general. It’s not how many videos or how many calls are necessarily what’s included. It’s the price is more indicative of the content in which you’re teaching and you know from someone has in their life. Yeah. So from people like us who have a background of selling things that were as little as $20 for a book or seven figure consulting deals, I just realize it’s so much of application and content, not just what’s included in terms of how many hours. And anyways, that is a great one and mine isn’t all that off for my first one, which is I thought this was just a really important aha for anyone who is creating a webinar or video course. And it’s that the bonuses are almost as important as the course itself. Yeah, that was a good one. So what you include as your bonuses to get people to move to action are many times equally as important and need the necessary thinking and consideration and planning as the actual course itself. RV: (03:35) Yeah. And, and, and when you think about the, the pricing and the offer structures, so for those of you that are, uh, you know, come to our stuff in phase two and we talk about offer structure in getting people to actually pull out their credit card and make a purchase. You know, we talk a lot about how the total retail value should be maybe usually three to 10 times the cost of what you’re actually asking for in charging for. And driving up the real retail value has a lot to do with the bonuses. So the creating quality bonuses that are legitimately valuable and, and spending time to make them polished so that they have a high dollar value, not only does it help them implement the course more effectively, it also is going to help you sell more. So that was, that was really good. RV: (04:20) Um, on the, on the topic of marketing, I was blown away at the funnel even though this was for her $50 course and about how simple a funnel can be. I mean, we overcomplicate, you know, it’s such an intimidating concept sometimes the funnel of like, Oh well what technology do you use and how many emails? And like, how do you know, how far are they watching the video? And a lot of that stuff we teach cause that stuff really works and we believe in it. But for her to just go, no, I just took the first video in my course and listed it for free on YouTube with a link to say, if you want the rest of the videos, click here and there are for sale. And you know, she’s not, she’s not buying Maserati’s with that money, but I loved what she even said, AJV: (05:03) buying groceries every week. RV: (05:05) I’ve been paying for my groceries for since 2017 like that is totally meaningful. That’s totally valuable. So that was, mine is just that a funnel doesn’t have to be complex, complicated architecture. It doesn’t have to be long. It’s just a thoughtful process about how you can give value for free, create the law of reciprocity, and then offer people a chance for how to get more. And it’s that simple. AJV: (05:33) Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s my big second takeaway was the importance of prepping your audience before a launch. And she’s, she talks a lot about her methodology and she’s got a very scientific, like, this is what I do, this is when I do it. Which I think for anyone who is just starting out, that’s exactly what you need. Oh, this is like the weeks leading up. Yeah. Just give me the formula and let me execute it. Right. It’s like baking. Tell me how many scoops, how many drops, how many eggs? Like that’s all I need and I can do it. And that’s really what she’s outlining for you in this interview. And she said that, you know, I know that the six to eight weeks before I launch of a new video course or a webinar that, um, all of my content is going to be circulated around that exact launch. So people know that, Hey, this is all she’s talking about. This is, this is new, this is what I’m going to find on her feed, this is what she’s going live about. And then pop there goes her new course, there, goes her lunch, but she’s prepping the audience weeks in advance with a soft content, soft content, providing value, providing value before she comes out and offers the course. RV: (06:40) Yeah, there’s a, that makes me think of a book that’s out by Robert Cialdini who wrote the book influence, which sold like 6 million copies. Right. But he wrote a new book called Pre-Suasion and it’s all about setting the context in advance. And when she was talking about that, uh, I was thinking about that book and also just like, it just makes so much sense to kind of prepare people’s minds for like, this is the direction that we’re heading and tee them up. So, AJV: (07:07) but then also just makes your life easy. Like if you know, these are the launches I’m going to do this year, this is the content I’m going to launch. Or relaunch. Yeah. It just makes your life easy. Okay. Well I know that January, February, and part of March, this is what I do for my content. Okay, great. Now we launch. Okay, now in April, this is what I do. That it actually makes your life easy if you have a plan. RV: (07:27) Yeah. And it also prevents you what she said, that mistake, one of the biggest mistakes was I was launching too many things at once. But it’s like if you plan out the calendar, you don’t, you don’t find yourself in that spot because you go, Oh Hey, there’s a conflict here. So, um, that was really good. My last one was, it was just getting on live with your audience. And I don’t know why this was such a light bulb for me, but AJV: (07:51) probably cause you’re an introvert who works in a dungeon in the basement and never likes to see the light of day. RV: (07:56) No. Well that’s just, that is, that is, that is true. I don’t, I don’t, um, what do you mean I have to talk to people? Yeah, I mean I, that is absolutely true, but, but the, the idea of, I think at least the way most people seem to process like a webinar is they process it as like a one time event. And it is, it is an either or. It is either you do it live, uh, or you do it as a recording. But the live part of it, I think people process as like you only could do it live once and where she said do it live six weeks in a row of just doing it over and over again so you don’t feel like, Oh my gosh, all my eggs are in this one basket, this one hour. Like get everybody there. And if the tech goes down like, Oh, it’s so risky, but to just go, no, you’re going to, you’re going to do this live consistently, which is the best practice, right. RV: (08:50) Do it live and do it live for a while and then take whatever was the highest, uh, video and turn that, make that the recording that you make into your evergreen. Um, of course we just, we build a lot evergreen from the beginning, but just take the pressure off of you of going, I got, I got multiple shots and, and just be with your people. Like just say it’s, it’s not like, Oh my gosh, everything has to go perfect. It’s like, no, just hang out with your people. Like these are your friends, these are your friends, your fans. Like, hang out with them and give them a chance to like talk to you and just share with them what you have. And I think that it’s easy to get scared and intimidated by, you know, the webinars. AJV: (09:33) Oh, very scary there. So my last one was just something she brought up just kind of casually, but I really launched, latched on to it was the importance of not launching too soon. And so many people out there have this Jones’s mentality of, well, everyone has a course and everyone’s doing a webinar and everyone is this and every I gotta I gotta I gotta and it’s like, yeah, maybe, but not too soon. There is a huge danger of doing it too soon when your audience isn’t ready for it. And she talked about how she spent two years providing value to her audience before she came out with a course. And then her first course was 49 bucks and it was very niche and it was very specific. But there’s, there’s immense value of not rushing to do this when you haven’t primed your audience to be ready to buy from you. AJV: (10:22) And we have a recent customer from Brand Builders group that this really resonated with me and it was a, I’m an a gentleman who heard about us from Lewis Howes. Okay. What I’m talking about and my friend that this is like really resonated with me because he, he requested a free call with Brand Builders Group about building his personal brand. He heard about us on Lewis’s podcast and then he said, you know, I’ve been listening to Lewis for 10 years. And to me that just is like so much to what Darcy said, it’s, you know, Louis had been nurturing and building this relationship, this online relationship. Well this person for 10 years before he was ready to click and buy something and there’s so much value into not rushing it and just providing value. Like if you’re truly, truly trying to build a personal brand and it’s all about money, then you’re already not going to win. AJV: (11:18) People can smell it. You’re already not going to succeed if it’s just about that, you know, we always talk about mission over money. Yeah. But it’s, you know, if you’re on the mission of serving and providing value with real expertise that you have, which I think is what Darcy talked about in this tire and entire interview, it was if you have something worthy of sharing with the world than just do it. Like what are you the expert at? Where’s your real expertise and experience? What do you have results in that you could actually help someone else improve their life, their business, their systems or their mindset and actually get out there and do it. And it’s amazing how many people need that and are willing to spend money $49 or $1,400 for someone to be their guide to show them how to do it. And I love that. Um, I have a bonus topic that, RV: (12:06) so before you bonus your topic, just on that note, because one thing that she also said was she was like, and if you’re struggling with that, you should go back through phase one. And that was as a seven figure earner who has a lot of experience for her to say, I had to go back to phase one for my new thing and how like how challenging it still was and how important it is. That was, that was, AJV: (12:30) yeah, so make sure you go back and listen to the full interview specifically the last five minutes when she talks about how everyone needs to work with Brand Builders group [Laughing]. RV: (12:38) Yes, for sure. Now we have a bonus tip, AJV: (12:42) so I’d have a bonus topic where I really need everyone to figure out how do we go back through this process of getting remarried so that Darcy can come shoot our wedding. RV: (12:54) Oh yeah, AJV: (12:56) yeah. If you’re not following Darcy, you need to, in addition to being an amazing photographer, and here’s one of the things that I love most about her. What you guys did not talk about at all is at Darcy’s not one of those photographers who does all the filters and she comes back and she fixes everything. It’s like, no, like help me capture you and your natural beauty. Let me capture the essence that is you not let me bring it back to my photo studio and do all the airbrushing and fix every blemish. It’s like, no, like, let me capture the real you. So I want to know how do we get remarried so I can have Darcy come do my photo. RV: (13:33) Honey, will you marry me on the podcast? How romantic was that? How much romantic? A spontaneous reproposal right here on the podcast. I had confidence, I would say not because we have undying love, but because we want additional wedding photography from Darcy bidding process to go with our already amazing wedding [inaudible] AJV: (13:58) like, no. Oh my gosh. They’re incredible. They’re incredible. But what I was going to say is like in addition to that, her authenticity and her fun vibe and her personality and her confidence are just absolutely contagious. So if you are just listening to the recap, you are truly missing the best part, which is the interview of Darcy. So go check it out.
Ep 63: Putting A Stake Through The Sacred Cows of Your Industry with Mike Dillard | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Mike Dillard, a real life entrepreneur, network marketer, information marketer, doer of many, many things, investor, and really a breath of knowledge and wisdom to, to learn from. So we got our, our top three and three were both aligned in what our big takeaways were and we just want to summarize them and give you the, give you the highlights. So, babe, why don’t you AJV: (00:29) Yeah. My first one is really short and simple, but is the utter importance of copy. Knowing how to write it, knowing what to say, knowing how often to say it, knowing in what formats to say. I just think that hitting that was no doubt, an ongoing aha moments for anyone who is trying to build a personal brand. And I love the way that he put it. And he said, it’s, it’s your sale and writing. It’s the conversation you would have in writing. And I love how he talked about how he was an introvert and direct sales, very similar. He said, but he became a millionaire, right? Like making millions of dollars every year, not over many years, every year. Learning how to write really amazing copy because to some degree he was a little too shy to do it in person, which I thought was really fascinating. So he was forced to learn how to do it, but boy did he, he learned. RV: (01:24) Yeah, copywriting was the big thing for me. And you know, he used that illustration, which is been around for a while in direct marketing, which is you don’t sell the drill, you sell the hole, you sell the finish the finish product. We sometimes say, don’t sell the journey. Sell the destination. Right? No, she says it’s the climb. That’s totally different. That’s not what we’re talking about. Well then listening to Hannah Montana, well, I’m not saying that I haven’t been listening to Hannah Montana, but that’s not the lesson here. Is, is just, you know, sell, sell the white sand beaches and the, mai tais in this beautiful sunset, not the, Hey, we get up and we loved to the airport and we stuffed our suitcase and we paid baggage fees and we wait in line. And so you know how many modules it is and how many lessons now many courses, like that’s not what people are buying. They’re buying, they’re buying the result. AJV: (02:19) Financial freedom, security, flexibility RV: (02:23) Case, its reputation, it’s reach, its influence, its impact, its income. The fact that we put you through a nine phase process, this with detailed exercises and tons of education, you’ve got to learn. It’s like that’s, that’s the hardware. So don’t, don’t sell that car. Don’t tell him that part. Tell him, tell him what the results. AJV: (02:41) Yeah, but I just, I, I just know for us at brand builders groups, so many of our clients really struggle with how to write copy. What should I be saying? Just even getting the process started and it’s one of the one probably singular main reasons outside of design that we even started our brands implementation services that we do for our clients is it’s, it’s a real challenge for people to learn how to write. Sales copy is a challenge. So that was my big first takeaway. Yeah. RV: (03:08) Marketing copy copy. Copy. Copy. All right. The second one for both of us was, it’s funny cause the AJ is a big believer in this about where does thought leadership come from and well against the grain is that a lot of, a lot of times you know it’s like, you know, if, if to be remarkable as Seth Godin says, is, is being worth re worth being remarked about than what is remarkable. It’s the things that you don’t often hear it either in a captivated content in that whole event and area we talk about what can you say that either forwards the thinking or is sharpens the thinking or is somehow different from what has been said. And Mike was a great example of that. I mean it sounds like he was disrupting, you know, early on he was disrupting the industry that he was in in terms of network marketing. He was one of the early people to go, Hey, you can do this digitally and that positions you as a thought leader that that makes you outstanding. It makes you remarkable is what can I say that’s, you know, counterintuitive or different or unique or advancing somehow what’s been done or what’s been said? AJV: (04:23) No. Yeah, and I, I think for me, I think you’ve probably heard this for years, the whole concept of look around, see what everyone else is doing and then do the opposite. Like we probably hear that. I don’t think many people let it sink in and then actually do it because it’s so easy to look around and see what everyone else is doing and be like, Oh, I gotta do that. I had to do that too. Everyone has a course. I need a course. Everyone has email marketing. I need to do that. Everyone’s on Instagram, I need to be on Instagram. And all of a sudden you look around and it’s like you’re doing all this stuff and none of it is really true to you. Yeah. Because you did it just because other ones were. And he really said that, you know, he took a look inside and said, I wanted to see what everyone else was doing and then just be like, but you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be that way. And he found ways of really doing what worked for him and his own uniqueness and then made it really apply to the business. And you know, it’s interesting cause Roy and I were even been watching the series with Andy Stanley who is one of our favorite pastors of all time in Atlanta. And Buckhead church is the church, if you ever want a two nets RV: (05:27) Bible for grownups is the name is the name of this. AJV: (05:29) Yeah. And I just, I think this is an amazing parallel as one of the things that Andy Stanley was talking about. He said the Bible itself is only in existence because something outstanding happened that was noteworthy, right? The, the Bible is not this chronological documentation of everything that happened. That’s not, that’s not what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of personal letters and proof that was passed down from person to person for years and years documenting and outstanding event that happened. Not all that different than how we would document something today. Right? There is no doubt that the Corona virus, which is very prevalent and all of 2020 I will be documented in a variety of different ways. When I think about this all the time when Sully landed on the Hudson, it was documented in a way because it was something that was unique and outstanding and noteworthy. And I just, I liken that to this RV: (06:31) Being remarkable, doing something remarkable. And you know what Andy was saying is if just if Jesus died, there’d be nothing to write about that happened, but that people saw him in the resurrection and all that. You know, whether you believe that or not isn’t necessarily the point right here, but it’s going. So many people saw him. It was something that happened. So many people wrote about it and that later became a collection of documents. But it’s like something big happens and it’s outside of the ordinary and that’s part of how you break through is like it’s, it’s, again, I think it’s in our context, it’s about what are you doing that is unique to you and how is your message, how does it separate itself from the crowd? How does it stand out? What is unique about it in one easy place to say is, can I be counterintuitive? That’s one place to look. In addition to, into some others. AJV: (07:27) Well, I think too, just on that, and I’ll make this really short, it’s, it’s truly looking at does it have to be the way that it is, right? If this doesn’t feel right to me, if this isn’t the way that I like to do things, it isn’t easy for me. Do you have a new and better way? And if so, why not employ it? You know, why not teach it? Why not instruct it? Which is exactly what he did. RV: (07:50) Yeah. So the critical, the critical thinking of not just accepting what is. Yeah, I like that. So then the other part I think was ads was talking about how do you do the ad spend and you know, running, running ads and that was a big part of the conversation. And the thing that was edifying for me to hear because this is, you know, Mike and I have met a couple times, but this was the first time that we’re really like we’re talking shop in detail was the way that he was talking about one of the strategies that we teach at phase three, which is when you get into paid ads, everybody thinks about just like buying an a lead for an ad that will convert. And really you almost, you want to almost separate that in, split that into and say, I want to buy an ad that helps me build an audience that helps me build trust that that first I know this is someone who’s interested in my content because they’ve looked, they’ve watched, they’ve liked, they’ve commented, they have engaged and then I will serve up the ads or the things that convert those people only to those people rather just walking up. RV: (08:56) You know, the, the equivalent would be selling to a stranger. And so going, no, I’m gonna use, there’s a two part two pieces here to how we use paid ads, build the audience, build a trust first with no real call to action other than engage with my content and then come behind it and create the conversion. And you know, that’s, that’s how you lower the ad costs and you know, spend less money and have more results. AJV: (09:20) Yeah. And also not look completely salesy to the external world cause that’s all you’re doing is your reputation. Cause I feel like that’s a huge concern that a lot of our network has as well. I don’t want to look like that person. And that’s just a strategy behind it. I also loved on this and we were somewhat aligned when this, and you know, you hear so many people talking about Instagram and Facebook, but I, I have heard this more and more over the last few months and I don’t know what it is. Maybe you have insight. I don’t. But Mike brought it up again and he said, yeah, well we’ve been doing the Facebook, Instagram thing, but our focus is shifting towards a Google and YouTube. And I know that we’ve learned some really cool things from our ad partner lie and spa about some unique YouTube strategy. So you want to share some of those? RV: (10:04) Well, yeah. Well, and also we have, we have an interview coming out with Rick steel here in a couple of weeks. That is freaking mind blowing around Google and, and paid ads. But yeah, I mean there’s a lot of cool things you can do on YouTube as an example, one of the things that we didn’t really know is that you can run an ad on a specific video, even if it isn’t your video. So like my Ted talk that has millions of views, we’ve never run an ad on that video, which is dumb. There’s millions of people who are literally watching me that we never have a way to connect with. And knowing that we can run an ad on that video, even if it’s not our video, is a game changer. AJV: (10:44) Or even at running ads on our own videos. RV: (10:46) Yeah. To our own stuff. Just to say someone, just somebody sitting here watching this video right now to introduce them to some things go and say, Hey, how can we, how can we move them off of this video into one of the funnels? Because you can target so specifically down to each individual AJV: (11:04) And YouTube advertising right now is so much less expensive. Yes. The wild, wild West. I just think those were just really interesting things that we keep hearing and popping up. And he brought that up. He also shares tons of really interesting investing ideas and he, as we were, he said is it’s a wealth of knowledge and there’s a lot of different things covered on this interview, so, well worth checking out, RV: (11:27) Check it out. But you know, look, there’s a sign to this. There’s a, there’s a structure and you hear people like Mike who clearly has been a student of the game for years and years and years. He’s learning, he’s getting coaching, he is reading and then he’s testing and he’s executing and he’s experimenting. He’s trying it out. And it adds up over the course of time. So we’re glad that you’re here. We feel lucky to be a part of your personal development and business development journey specifically around helping you build and monetize your personal brand. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 61: Deeper Audience Engagement through Unscripted Keynotes with Connie Podesta | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder. Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Connie Podesta is a hoot. I said she’s a hoot. Aj said that I was a hoot. I’m not sure what that is all about, but I said, isn’t, isn’t Connie a hoot? And AJ said you’re a hoot…because she was making fun of me. Why don’t you tell them why you were making fun of me? AJV: (00:23) Because Rory starts out this entire interview with this wonderful build up of Connie and then she’s awesome indeed, but then says, well, you know, here’s how you know she’s really awesome as that I’m willing to refer her to my clients. But here’s why that’s a big deal. Because my clients have come to be accustomed to a certain level of performance that’s alluring to his magical performance back to his clients have become accustomed to his incredible delivery. And RV: (00:58) Now some of that you added some of that you added. I’m not saying, I’m not saying that I didn’t think that that was true, but I didn’t say that. I’m not necessarily saying it now either. Well, I am. I’m awesome because, and Connie is too. AJV: (01:12) Do you do, I didn’t think it was hilarious that as you’re introducing someone else, you’re like, well, you know, they’re awesome because I’m awesome. Right? RV: (01:20) I’m also extremely humble as is Connie. But here’s what I, here’s what I, here’s what I love about, there’s so many things I love about Kanye. I talk about it in the interview, but when I think of myself as a speaker and her, I couldn’t think of our style, like our being more different, AJV: (01:40) Basically everything she said denote story as completely answered. RV: (01:46) Yeah. Like the most boring speaker. I’m irrelevant. I’m outdated now. She does speak more than I do like, so she speaks a ton. It’s actually a really good interview. Yeah. And I think, you know, here’s the thing that she really inspired me in this interview particular is just this, this concept of planned spontaneity. I think I have, I have a hard time, you know, like my logical brain is just freaking out with all the stuff she’s talking about, about just don’t have a plan and like just, yeah, go off the cuff and interview everybody. And I’m like, what are you insane? But Mmm, really, I actually think it’s brilliant. What she’s actually doing is she has set up like a giant, choose your own adventure and she, she knows where all the paths are going to lead. But [inaudible] it appears to the audience. And it is, I mean it’s, it’s very engaging and spontaneous, but she’s not up there just winging it with no plan. It’s what comedians called planned spontaneity. It’s, it’s allowing for the appearance of spontaneity and it is spontaneous, but it’s, it’s sort of like there’s this plan that you have, AJV: (02:53) But also I think one of the things that you’ll learn if you go listen to the full episode is that she is not relying on some huge adventurous, a story that she had. Right. And you guys talk a lot about this and one of the things that I really loved in the beginning of this interview is that you both called attention to that. Both of you don’t necessarily have that incredible story in terms of the framework of how you teach, right? Didn’t climb Mount Everest, you didn’t lay right. RV: (03:20) Like neither of us are actually that exception, AJV: (03:24) Do these things. And so I think what I really love is that both of you are great examples of truly successful speakers without these truly unique stories. Now of course you have unique stories, but it’s not the basis of your entire book ability as a speaker. And I think that’s really inspiring for everyone out there, including myself, is that you don’t have to go climb the seven top peaks in the world to be a incredibly successful speaker with high fees and book calendars. And I loved that what Connie talked about in the very beginning and she said that her sales pitch, which I think this is also really [good], RV: (04:02) She also talks to all the people herself. Yeah. But that, Whoa, Whoa, sorry, sorry. She says maintain control of the mix so that if they ever talk, you take the mic back AJV: (04:15) Listening to her advice. And but I think it’s really good because she said, when I’m talking to meeting planners or whoever’s booking the speakers, I go, well, do you want your entire meeting to be about the speaker or to be about your audience? Boom. Because I don’t make it about me. I make it about you. And I make it about them. And it’s like, all right, let’s, you know, turn the switch. Right. I think that’s really amazing in terms of like, just a quick change, a perspective, how so many people think, well what’s my story? What’s my uniqueness? And she goes, cares about you. Nobody cares about your story. Right. It’s what about the audience? RV: (04:53) Yeah. And I would say her and I are very aligned on that point, which was kind of my second big takeaway was that even though it’s interesting cause it’s like we’re very different from most, not most speakers, from a lot of speakers and that we don’t have like this amazing life story. But then we’re, Oh, thank you sweetheart. But then we’re, we’re very different in our delivery style and our preparation method. But then we’re also very aligned philosophically on the unmaking, the audience, the hero. And she said, you know, the goal is not to make yourself look good. The goal is to make the audience look good and feel good and feel inspired. And I, I couldn’t echo that that more. And I think that that is inherently one of the biggest things that speakers struggle with. And one of the things that personal brands struggle with. RV: (05:40) I know, because this was also me. There’s you, there’s a level of ego that is involved. And when you start, it’s like it’s all about you and I, you gotta, you gotta sort of get past that. In fact, it applies this this last week I was, I was doing a thing for Lewis Howes for his inner members and we were doing like a copywriting training for them. And I [inaudible] I said this thing that I’d never really said and people really latched onto it, which is that copywriting is not about telling people what you do. It’s about telling people what you can do for them. And that’s the same shift as a speaker. It’s like, it’s not about you or, or what you’ve done, it’s about what you’ve learned and how that can help them. And [inaudible] especially if you don’t have some incredibly compelling personal story, you gotta make it all about the audience and it’s just, you gotta be there in service and [inaudible] AJV: (06:31) So we share that perspective. Yeah. RV: (06:33) Hold on. I’m not done yet. It’s still my turn. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now AJV: (06:37) Fast off is complete. Well I think the second thing that really hit me as that she talks about how she doesn’t rely on this story and she really wings it and it’s like, yeah, I mean kind of. She does that kind of, she doesn’t really, and I think what she really relies on, what she’d give confidence to everyone who is listening to this episode is that what she really is relying on is her expertise and her knowledge and that is what you got to own. It’s like the reason she feels comfortable we need to get [inaudible] is because she has an idea of exactly what they’re going to say. I guess she’s done this enough times. If she’s seen this, she’s seen this enough times to know there’s only one or two or three outcomes from this question, so I know exactly how it’s going to go. AJV: (07:16) So it’s that scripted non-scripted approach in terms of like if you’ve done something enough and you’ve done enough research and you have enough personal results and experiences, you know kind of where it’s going, which allows you to be up on stage feeling like you’re winging it, which in turn is really just relying on the years and years of your personal experience and your personal results, which is why that’s so important from the beginning. That’s what we talk about in the foundation of building your personal brand and our phase one finding your brand DNA is, you know, what do you have to hang your head on? What do you have research in? What do you have results in? Where is your experience? Where’s your expertise in your designated lane? And that’s what she’s saying. She goes, you know, she talks about how she doesn’t really have a plan and to some degrees because she doesn’t need one because she has all of this years, years and years of experience, firsthand experience to know exactly how this is going to play out. There’s no question she knows where it’s going to go. And that’s allows for this feeling of on the fly, even though it’s RV: (08:22) Pretty expected. You know, as you were talking, it was making me think about how when you see, you know, if you watch a live, one of the late night shows, you know, Jimmy Fallon or whatever, Jimmy, you know, whatever the late night show, Jimmy Fallon is the best one. And but there is the comedians that’ll come on there and they’re so funny. So funny, so funny. And you go, gosh, they’re so funny. They’re coming up with jokes on the spot and it’s like, no, they have been on stage so many times. They have all these little bits and pieces and they’re just as the, as the interviewer asks them a question, they pull on something that they’ve done before, they, they weave together this kind of beautiful, seemingly spontaneous thing. But it’s, it’s actually very well, well rehearsed. So anyways, the last one for me, the, the, the last kind of point, which I think was sort of the obvious point of what she was talking about was asking myself, how can I create more interaction with the audience? RV: (09:16) Yeah. It’s not, should I, it’s not, do I do interaction or not? Like for me, I’m a slides guy. I’m not going to be abandoning all my slides and signature stories. Like I’m just not going to do it. But, but I, I also, it was so compelling to say, okay, how could I create more interaction? And then even deeper than that, like I don’t think that her point was so much, Hey, you should do interaction. I think what she was saying is she’s like, that’s who she is and she allowed herself to be who she is and an actress and an a teacher and on the fly. And she is funny. And so she, she said, I’m willing to leave the slides behind so that I can be who I am. And so I think, you know, there’s that really important permission and principle and power to say be who you are and then you know, at the same time like I’m a slides guy, I’m a logic guy, I’m like efficient. RV: (10:11) I’m going, Hey how many points? That’s who I am and I’m also going, what could I learn? What could I take away from this to make it more fun? Even though I’ll probably never be the guy up there with no, no plan and no, no slides because that’s being who you are, right? Yeah. That’s who I am. But I think some people listening, like you might be listening going, gosh I didn’t even know you could do this and not have slides. And that’s so empowering, right? Cause slides are free in pain. They also, they also create technical challenges and you know, glitches and things that do happen. But all of us go on, what can we do that’s more fun and how do we also not rely on slides and the plan, but go, let’s rely like what you were saying on the depth of our expertise. Let’s sit in the comfort of what we really know, not just the mechanics of a manufactured and rehearsed presentation to where it’s the same rote thing over and over time. Yeah. AJV: (11:09) And that’s kind of similar to my third and final point. And I really love the example that she gave ran. She talks about how Hmm her, her desire and her need for having audience interaction really came from her years as a teacher and a counselor. And it just hit me in the moment of like, yeah, imagine just for a second that you were a high school teacher for behaviorally challenged inner city kids in Chicago. Just for a second, pretend that’s your audience. Imagine how a slide deck would go. RV: (11:44) Okay. AJV: (11:44) Imagine how a 60 minute lecture would go. And the point is it wouldn’t. And so she said, from that experience I realized the depth and that came from audience interaction because I was in front of an audience every single day for years and years of people who didn’t want to be there. And let’s just be honest, many of your audiences didn’t select to be there. They were told to be there. They were mandated to RV: (12:09) Depending, I mean if you’re in the corporate for sure. I mean if you’re more entrepreneur, it’s a little bit different, but yeah, AJV: (12:14) Right. At some point you’re going to have someone in your audience who was like, how long can I check Facebook before someone notices? All right, this is a little bit of reality and I think what’s interesting is she said, that’s where I’m going to start as F as if I didn’t have an engaged audience, as if I had an audience who wasn’t going to pay attention and how can I change that to enforce that they are paying attention and they are engaged and they do leave with something. And I just love that approach. And that doesn’t mean your whole thing has to be around interaction, but it’s more positioning yourself. It’s not around just your information, it’s how do you get your information and across the way that people will actually use it. And it’s, for me, it’s like I tell her, wear this all the time. I’m not an audio learner. I have to see it and do it in order to learn it. And I have, I would say borderline photographic memory. And it’s like, but if I don’t see it, I don’t do well. So I was actually one of those kids that I never really went to class and high school or college. Actually. RV: (13:16) Hold on, let’s have an honest confession here. How did you become the CEO of brand builders group? Tell us, tell us what makes you qualified. AJ Vaden, AJV: (13:27) That’s for sure. But the point is is I didn’t learn anything from the lectures. If it, if I heard it audio, it just is like, there’s like too many things going on in my brain. So instead of going to class, I knew that if I just read this and did this, like that’s how I learned. Like I realized that very early on. It’s like I went at a pace faster than my classes, right? And I learned that and then I got really bored and for sure wasn’t paying attention. And so I think it’s like, you’ve got to just say, it’s like, all right, there’s all these different learning types out there, right? They’re visual learners, there’s audio learners, there’s application learners, there’s tactical learners. What am I doing to appeal to all of them? Because if you are just a stand and deliver speaker, then you’re missing at least a third, if not a fourth of your audience. Just by the simple way you deliver it, regardless of how good your content is. And I think that’s what I really took away from Connie was how do you engage people? So they don’t just see slides, they actually learn the information enough to actually do something with it. RV: (14:26) Love that. That’s so good. So good. So another great interview. Definitely worth a listen. And w one of the best keynoters on stage really in the world from a mechanics point of view. So go listen to Connie Pedesta hear what she’s got to say. It’s, it’s exciting and, and it’s a hoot. Let’s just say that. So, wow, that’s a hoot. Have a hoot yourself and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 59: Selling to the Government with Jack Siney and GovSpent | Special Edition | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, welcome to this special recap edition of this special episode on recession proofing your business and recession-proof revenue. Talking about government sales. This was not on our radar. AJ made it on our radar. And what, what, what did, what did you think this was? This was your call to push our friend Jack up in the queue. AJV: (00:30) I did while I was on the, I was on a call, a client call, he’s one of our clients last week. And when I was going through all these data statistics that he had provided around the importance of [inaudible] gaining government contracts and your business, I just said, yeah, but that’s not really for everyone. And he goes, it most absolutely is. And as soon as he said that, a trigger went off in my mind of how many people are in our audience out there, you who were sitting there going, well, I could never sell to the government. Yeah. And I said, probably all of them, RV: (01:05) Including us. Yah. AJV: (01:07) So we need to have Jack on to demystify this concept that, ah, the government doesn’t buy what I do. I can’t be of service to the government or it takes too long or it’s too complicated and he totally De-mythed, all of that with some really simple resources. I think it’s very timely and it’s, it’s I think just really important because one of the two things that wasn’t necessarily a part of the interview today, but I think that are really pertinent is that in the midst of what the media shares, which is typically always negative there is also [inaudible] a counteracting of positive and good things that are happening that just aren’t as newsworthy. They aren’t as popular or trend worthy for whatever reason. And I think Jack was such a great example of, in the midst, over the last three weeks where so many people are like, WTF am I gonna make payroll? Is my business gonna make it? There are other businesses that are booming. They are exploding. They’re experiencing double, triple 10 times growth in the last three weeks. RV: (02:11) Yeah, well we’re, we’re, we’re having, we’ve had parts of our business struggle and then we’ve had parts of ours literally, boom. AJV: (02:19) So I think, I think one, it’s just that reminder that there is an opportunity in any market to be successful. Bill Gates has this long quote that I keep talking about over the last few days. When he talks about in a time like this, how you view the market is exactly what will happen to your business. If you view it as an opportunity, you’re going to find a way to be opportunistic and gain market share. If you view it as woe is me, I’m, I’m out of business, that’s probably what’s going to happen. And I think Jack’s take on how are you adjusting your skill sets, adjusting your services AJV: (03:00) To be applicable to what one of the biggest vendors out there is looking for either government, RV: (03:06) No, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest spender. AJV: (03:10) At least a minimum of $2 trillion out there for spending. What are, what are you doing to give some effect? Like that is why I wanted to have Jacqueline. Yeah, I think that was huge. RV: (03:22) And I mean even just that idea alone, like forget about covid, forget about economy, recession. Just go look, the number one spender in the world is spending a bunch of money. Are you aware of who it is and what they’re doing and what they’re spending the money on? And for the answer, most of us is no, which is insane. Like in any other normal private business usually like you would know who’s spending money and you and you would go there. So I think that that was one of my big takeaways was that there’s always people spending money. RV: (03:53) You’ve got to figure out who and in this case, yeah, Jack is bringing to this some great resources and things around the government. I mean that that website is like literally people trying to spend money and they’re just posting it on the site. AJV: (04:07) I think too. And it’s just knowing what to do and I love that his website govspend literally gives you who the person is, what their title is, what their phone number is, what their email is and their purchase history. Yeah. Everything they’ve bought ever before. RV: (04:24) And you can search, you can search it by those terms, which is super, super powerful. And then one of the things I actually that you said in the interview with Jack as you know, AJ doesn’t do all the interviews. This was one if you didn’t listen to what goes into it because we did the interview together. [inaudible] RV: (04:42) Was how you need to be Abel, you know, particularly if you’re struggling, right? You need to be willing to adapt and modify and pivot a little bit. And we’ve been talking about with our, with our members in our monthly membership, we’ve been talking about getting in the media and one of the things we say is you need to tailor your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. And that’s how you get in the media is connect what you do to what is happening. Yeah. Well this was really similar. This is like not just for media attention but for survival. Connect your skillsets to what is needed, like to what people desperately need and, and be willing to pivot because there’s, there’s opportunity. So that was, that was my second big takeaway was just watching you kind of process that. Like in that way, I think for anyone who’s out there listening, and that would be our team included, it’s a, we all possess a certain set of skill sets that you may not offer in your business. That doesn’t mean you don’t have those skillsets. Like I know zoom up down all around, been using it for eight, nine years. I mean, it’s a, it’s a crucial part of our daily life and our daily business. There’s no reason I couldn’t start offering a zoom training service if you needed to, RV: (05:55) if you needed to. AJV: (05:58) So like what are all of the Skillsets that you just naturally present has asked that you take for granted now that the whole world is gone, virtual, gone online to do business. And in addition to that, it seemed, I saw a story about these New York city dressmakers that have turned their sewing skills into sewing masks. RV: (06:18) Ah, AJV: (06:18) And there’s just so many great examples. Yeah. Like even here in Nashville, CycleBar apply it to what is needed or just get really creative. And I think that the story that I love here in Nashville where we live is CycleBar is one of the cycle studios in town. Clearly no one is going to class right now or shouldn’t be so here’s what they’ve done. Yeah. They are letting you rent their bikes that usually sit in their studio to deliver them to your house. You rent them, then they’re doing live virtual classes and you’re paying more to rent the bikes then you would for your monthly subscription to come to the studio. So just like there’s so many opportunities to innovate. Maybe they’ll never go back from that. Like this could be their new business, maybe not. But I’m just saying there’s just so much opportunity if we choose to get a little creative. RV: (07:12) Well, and for us, like we, we have done all of our live in person events have gone virtual and, and they are awesome. The feedback has been incredible. AJV: (07:22) We think so! RV: (07:22) Well, our clients think so too because they, they, they’re riding in the feedback and we do think it’s incredible, but it’s like people are saving money on travel and they’re having, you know, a very similar, comparable experience and they’re not having to do the risk. And there’s some, some really amazing things that come out of that. But I think, you know, and the two big thing questions at a high level that you should be asking yourself as one, you know, how can I be digital? Like whatever business you’re in, how can I be more digital? And you know, like this is the time for video courses and video funnels and webinar funnels and blogging and social and like all the things that we talk about on a normal basis to be accelerating because that’s how can I go digital? RV: (08:03) The second question I would be asking is going, how can I deliver service to people in their home? Okay. So like the CycleBar example is, yeah. Is a great example. There’s other examples of people you’re doing home-based kind of delivery services, right? Like Amazon announced 100,000 jobs or something that they need. Why? Because everybody needs stuff delivered to their house, which, and, and, and if this goes on for awhile, like eventually people are gonna need haircuts from their house. They’re going to want Manny Pedis from their house. They’re going to need, like everything is going to be who can deliver, get the service delivered to the home, you know? So in a safe way. AJV: (08:43) And if it’s not in the home, it’s just how are you uniquely transforming your business? You know, I read some stories the other day about a high end restaurants, that our now I’m doing a family meal prep. They would have never done take like these are not takeout places you don’t get take out and you don’t get to go orders from these five star four star restaurants, but now they’re making family style meals where you can come and pick them up curbside. So they’re quickly pivoting to save jobs, to save their businesses at like, clearly no one’s coming in here. That doesn’t mean we can’t pivot what we do still comparable, right? We’re still a food hospitality business. We’re just now doing it and family meal style planning for you to come pick it up. So even if it’s not in the home, it’s [inaudible] coven related, right. What are the things that are necessities of our current time and how are you adjusting your business now and for the future, which is one of the points that we had talked about in the interview, which is RV: (09:43) That would be my final, my final point. Right. I think to me a big part of this interview was just sort of like the creativity and the pivot and the awareness that like for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So for every challenge there’s an equal and opposite opportunity somewhere. And to bring Jack in as a real life example of someone that’s, you know, one of our clients who’s just all of a sudden like [inaudible] loaded that is out there everywhere. But then practically to directly what he was saying, I mean this was an eyeopener for me about selling to the government, that if you want to create recession-proof revenue, everybody should at least take a look at this, not just for the short term, I mean whatever that website, right. Whatever the website he gave, I think short term, you know, gov, quote dot U S it’s like, go look at that for short term money. Like yeah, money is flying out and available, but longterm is going, the number one spender of all is out. They are. And in down economies they spend more money. It’s like you should have a piece of your business and a piece of your mind, or at least being aware AJV: (10:52) Is somewhat recession proof. RV: (10:54) Yeah. AJV: (10:55) And yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, and perhaps today you don’t really have a segment of your business that applies and perhaps that’s where your creativity needs to come in and play. Mmm. Because that leaves needs to be a consideration. And RV: (11:10) Even if you don’t offer, you know, like that website of all the stuff they’re asking for. Right. You may not offer something, but that’s going to tell you what they need right now. And you go, Oh, I could [inaudible] AJV: (11:20) I could pull that. Yeah. Like another story. I’ve got so many stories. I’ve been, RV: (11:23) You’ve been reading the positive [inaudible] positive pandemic stories. Welcome to the positive pandemic news with Paula. Amanda Johns Faden reporting to you live on all of the most amazing creative businesses. Yes. AJV: (11:38) But I just thought this GM, right, I saw this [inaudible] the other day and yeah, so an African his name. But anyways, I saw it and I was just like, that’s amazing how they were calling all us manufacturers to do what the government can’t do. Yeah. And so RV: (11:54) At GM has all this manufacturing equipment, they’re going to start manufacturing respirators. Oh wow. AJV: (12:00) And so it’s like, yeah, I mean, they’ve got all the equipment that’s not a product that they’ve been doing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be doing that. They have the tools, they have the people, they have all of the manufacturing materials. They just have to reconfigure how they’re doing and what they’re providing. So again, there’s just so many things like that that are out there, that are happening, causing people to rethink, readjust, innovate, and create in a time that [inaudible] going to push us all to our limits. RV: (12:31) Yeah. And you, but you can do it. We’re doing it with you, right? Like our live keynote business when indefinitely postponed our live event business, which is like a core part of our business, suddenly became [inaudible] all real time in person events and they’ve been incredible. And you know, I’m sure there’s more curve balls coming our way and there’s going to be curve balls coming your way, but you can do it. There are opportunities out there. You have to just know that for every challenge there is an equal and opposite opportunity. So thank you babe for inviting Jack. And thank you for tuning in. We want to be that source of encouragement and inspiration for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 57: Dominating the Customer Service Vertical with John DiJulius | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00) Hey brand builder, welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. John DiJulius is somebody that I love that I trust, that I know that I have watched build an amazing business. And there’s people who have very public reputations, right? And some of our clients, some of our friends have very public figures, very high profiles. And you know, there’s something to be said about that, right? That’s very valuable. But I think what’s even more valuable is the private reputation of, of what do people say about someone behind their back. What do people say when nobody is around, you know, and it’s just the one on one conversations and everybody that I know that knows John de Julius fellow speakers industry, you know, Bureau’s agents, his customers, his team, they all say amazing things about him. And I love that. I love that about him because that is what reputation I think is, is really, really all about. RV: (01:05) So, you know, first and foremost, I just wanted to say that and make sure that, you know, and if you’re, you know, if you’re looking to improve your customer experience in any way, man, he’s, he is one of the guys. There’s a, you know, one of the, one of the people, there’s, there’s a handful of people who do that really well. But he’s, he’s certainly the top or one of the top. So so I thought it was cool to get a little behind the scenes look at how he became that way. And, and these were my three biggest takeaways two of which he didn’t even say. So one of which he did say, but two of them that he did not even really talk about. So my number one takeaway from John D Julius is practice what you preach, practice what you preach. RV: (01:54) See one of the things that I think is most compelling about him and it’s most amazing about him, it’s also something that a J and I aspire to and have always aspired to, is this idea that we’re not teaching, we’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned as much as we’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re not teaching people ideas that we’ve learned. We’re teaching people principles that we practice. We’re teaching people to do the things that we actually do. Right. And I think that’s why in the personal brand community, brand builders group has grown so fast because so many of the people who advise brands haven’t actually built one that for themselves. And that’s not a, I’m not, that’s not a strike necessarily against them. I think it’s, it’s hard. It’s extremely hard to teach people how to do something and do it yourself at the same time. RV: (02:56) Like it’s extremely difficult. And, and so I think, you know, in many ways it is, it’s, it’s, it’s okay and it’s right for an agency to go, well, don’t look at me, look at my clients. But I think what John has done, which is unique and this is something that we aspire to, is to actually, in addition to teaching people to do it, to, to do it and to continue doing it ourselves because it also keeps you relevant, right? Like the fact that you are building a company yourself gives you ideas and lessons and struggles and stories and pain that you’re experiencing every day that you pull into your personal brand. I think where the risk of becoming irrelevant happens is where it’s like, okay, I’m teaching all the stuff that I used to do or that used to work, but because I’m not actively in it anymore [inaudible] nobody, nobody knows, including me, nobody, nobody knows if these things actually work. RV: (03:56) So [inaudible] I love that about him and that is something that we, you know, always aspire to bring to you. And, and everybody that we bring on our show, we look at them in some way. They’re a practitioner of, of what they’re teaching. And that’s, you know, if you, if you want a little interview tip about how I do the interviews is I’m always asking myself, what does this person, I don’t even really care about what the person teaches. I really ask, what does this person actually do in their real life that I want to learn? I want to understand the behind the scenes truth, not of what they teach or how they present themselves, but of the things that I look at their life. And I go, man, I really admire this specific piece of, of their life. And I think I think it was Mark Twain who said, every man is my superior in some way. RV: (04:54) And so I’m always, I’m not asking myself ever, can I learn from this person about anybody, about every single person I meet? I’m never asking myself can I learn something from this person. I’m always asking myself, what can I learn from this person? And there are people who I think I have despicable personal track records or polarized opposite philosophies on things that I have that I still go, Oh, I can learn a lot about something from this person. To me it’s not, it’s not an all or none, but anyways, I say all that to say, practice what you preach and maybe a better way of saying this is preach what you practice. That’s probably that, that’s, that’s actually as I’m talking this out, that’s what the big, the big idea is, is preach what you practice, teach what you do and then you will know there’s always substance and support and evidence and and data and real experience behind what you’re doing and I think John does that as good as anyone preach what you practice. RV: (06:04) The second thing is, I mean, gosh, I’ve heard John say this a hundred times. It’s like one of his signature things is making price irrelevant, but specifically the thing that he said in this interview, which I’ve never heard him clarify or it never sunk in with me until just now was he said, making price irrelevant. Does it mean you can double your fees and not lose your customers. So he’s not saying, Oh, you can just charge whatever you want. What he’s saying is you’re so good and your, your, your prices are fair enough for what people are getting that even if they are premium prices, your customers never stop to check what your competitors are charging. So be so good that your competitors never stopped to check. Well who your competitors are like they never stopped to to ask that could someone else because you’re servicing them so well. RV: (07:03) You’re over-delivering, you’re, you’re exceeding their expectations, you’re giving them what you said and more and, and that’s, it’s been, it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to do that. Like one of the reasons that we have gotten into the agency side of the business at PR, at brand builders group and started helping people build websites and build funnels and write copies and do video editing and manage their social media is because we have found it so incredibly difficult to find reliable vendors and agencies who will over deliver. And I’ll tell you now that we’re in the business, it’s really hard. Like it’s really hard. It’s a thin margin business. Yeah, people have high expectations and you know, if they want to spend the least amount of money and get the best product, it’s, it’s just like the nature of it is really, really challenging, but you have to aspire and push and, and, and even if you can’t do it on day one, you want to always be going, how can we make price irrelevant? RV: (08:02) How can we over deliver so that our customers never even stopped to go, ‘You know, I wonder if somebody else could do this better. I wonder if someone else could do this cheaper. I wonder if someone else could do this faster.’ That’s making price irrelevant. And really what it’s like making competitors irrelevant and it’s just keeping people locked in. So you’ve got to be that good. You have to be that good and always be, be striving in that direction. So that’s super, I think powerful and just a good reinforcement. The third takeaway for me from John is also something he did not say explicitly. And the way I’m going to summarize this as this follows one message, multiple modality modalities, one message, multiple modalities. Yeah. John has one expertise, one focus, customer experience that his entire career is built upon as an entrepreneur and the spas that he runs and owns and operates. RV: (09:08) It’s about customer experience. And then you know, as a personal brand, as a speaker, author, influencer, whatever term you want to use, it’s all about customer experience. It’s one message. And yet he has built this multimillion dollar business based upon multiple modalities, right? So he’s doing consulting, he’s doing keynote speaking. He is also has his own conference that people are buying tickets to come to. And then he has, you know, the customer experience executive Academy. So he’s got these four different like verticals, if you will, but all on the same, all on the same message, in the same market. It’s just, it’s a great example of what we call the services spectrum. And those of you that are members of ours, you know that we, when we talk about, I’m like phase three and phase four, we look at the services spectrum, which is exactly that. RV: (10:07) It’s, it’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And that is what I think John has done really well. It’s going, I’m providing the same information but in multiple mediums and our event, you know, our, we have an event specifically captivating content where we talk about this, where we help somebody create their body of work for their, for their next book or their next course or their next thing. And it’s all the same thing. It is, you know, the way we design our content both internally at brand builders group as we teach personal brands to build and monetize their personal brand. And as the Rory Vaden personal brand, which is all about helping people, helping leaders overcome procrastination and move people to action. Those are, you know, how I designed my personal content is all around this thing we call the modular content method. And when you build it out this way, the book is, the co is a video course. RV: (11:09) It is a two day event. It can’t, it’s a half day training. It’s a keynote, it’s a coaching curriculum. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a consulting program and you just build a body of work, a body of knowledge that then gets subdivided and broken a ProCon apart into a Ted talk, a keynote, a half day training, a full day training, a two day training, a public event, a coach, a six month coaching, yeah. Program. And it’s organizing your content. It’s one message, one market, multiple modalities. And John is just a really great example of doing that. It’s not creating a different product for a different business model for every different market. It’s kind of dominating one vertical and then servicing them and multiple, which is, you know, a simple idea. It’s just vertical integration. But it’s something that I think most personal brands don’t do very well. RV: (12:00) And I think we’re quick to launch different types of business models that serve different audiences instead of going, how can I serve this one audience fully? Which is a lot of what we [inaudible], you know, we talk about here and every, you know, you hear the guests come on and talk about that so consistently. Cause it’s like that is the discipline and that is what works. And that’s part of why we bring you all these different guests from different backgrounds is because you can see how these people have built, you know, high six-figure, multi seven-figure. Occasionally we get the eight-figure entrepreneurs on here that have just built [inaudible] deeply in one vertical. And that’s what we want you to do, is to go, you know, who can I serve most powerfully? Who can I help in the most profound [inaudible] in meaningful and impactful way? Because that is like the foundation and the heart of a mission driven messenger, which is who we’re honored to serve. And so I’m honored that you’re here. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 55: Blogging: The Gift that Keeps Giving with Elizabeth Rider | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06)
Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Holy moly. What a powerful and technical interview with Elizabeth Rider. And there’s, there’s so many things that I loved about that interview. One of them is that perhaps you’ve never heard of Elizabeth Rider because you know, she doesn’t have a huge social media following but she dominates her niche and she has more web traffic by far. Then probably most of the major social influencers who are out there. And that is why this is such an important interview because this is something that we align with on, you know, for Elizabeth and Andy. I think my, my first big takeaway or just thing that I want to punctuate for you to make sure that you didn’t miss this [inaudible] where she said your blog is the home of your business. And that is what we are constantly preaching and brand builders group that the, your blog is the, the headquarters.
RV: (01:21)
It’s the central like home location of your personal brand, your relationship engine, which is what what we call the entire ecosystem. You know, for us, we use the term relationship engine, which refers to an automated ecosystem that is digital that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, introducing your content, two new people, and constantly bringing people in to your business and into your funnels and generating revenue for you. But the blog is, it’s the anchor, it’s the, it’s the cornerstone of that whole thing and people just don’t talk about that. And that’s because of, I think exactly what Elizabeth said. Mmm. Which is that we’re, we’re so concerned with the vanity of, of, of metrics of how many followers that we have, like in recent years, it’s just been about like the perception versus the substance and the reality of how many people are coming to a website that, that we own.
RV: (02:30)
And I love that exaRVmple that she was sharing about a blog post that she wrote eight years ago is bringing in 100,000 visitors a month to her site. That’s crazy. Meanwhile, the same amount of time as writing one blog post that you put into writing a social media post, that social media post is going to disappear in 24 hours. Like if you’re lucky it’ll last 24 hours. It’s just to get pushed down the feed. No one’s going to go back and look at that, but it’s like what you post on social media over time, the value of it diminishes. But what you post on on the web, like as a on your website or specifically as a blog article, over time it gains traffic. It’s like a, it’s like a growing snowball. It’s, it’s almost like the time on social media is like spending money.
RV: (03:26)
The time on your blog is like investing money. The time on your social media is spending money because it disappears and it never really comes back. The time spent on a blog is investing money because it starts even, it starts small, but it grows and grows and grows and grows over time and one post years later can be bringing you more traffic than it ever did when you first posted. And that’s just something that you don’t hear about. And so I hope that you caught that and it made sense to you in if you’ve been fighting those of you that are members, if for some reason you’ve been resistant to this strategy we’re talking about with making the blog that everything revolves around the blog. Hopefully you’re onboard now. Mmm. Yeah. And hearing about how much money it can make and generate for you. Now, one thing that we were not in alignment on with Elizabeth, just to kind of comment on this, you know, she talked about not using the sidebar.
RV: (04:25)
Okay. W we just [inaudible] flat out would disagree with that. We are all about the sidebar. Mmm. Yes. A course on mobile. The sidebar doesn’t display. So it’s a, it’s a both. And for us, we want to see the sidebar on the desktop view because there’s still a large amount, almost 50% of traffic is still coming, you know, depending on what you’re looking at, you know, 40 to 50% of traffic is still coming from desktop. So it’s not like you want to not do that. But I also very much adamantly agree with her that when you’re on mobile, you need to have a different type of lead capture, a mechanism that scrolls with people because they’re not going to see the sidebar like they will as they are reading on desktop. So the other thing was there was, you know, she was talking about RSS feed and that she doesn’t use an automated RSS, which [inaudible] stands for real simple syndication and RSS is a little technical term, which means that when someone subscribes it, the, the system automatically emails them every time you post a new blog.
RV: (05:33)
Well Mmm, I would, I would agree with her to the standpoint where I can say, yeah, Hey, if you can do a manual broadcast every time you post a new blog, do that. Like that’s better cause it’s going to be fresh and customized and all that. Yeah. Most of you, you know, most of us are just struggling to barely keep up with all the moving parts of a digital marketing machine on a weekly basis anyway. So that’s why we, we are very big fans of the RSS, you know, automated email system because we’re trying to automate as much of this as we can so that, you know, you can be out doing all the things that you need to be doing, but you know, so anyways, that’s not really a disagreement. That’s more of like an in addition to if you can do custom broadcast, fine.
RV: (06:18)
Yeah, if you’re not able, if you don’t have the [inaudible] time to do that or you don’t have the staff, then just do an automated RSSV to start and you can always grow later. But I mean, the blog, the blog, the blog, just really, really huge. And some of the things that she was talking about related to SEO of naming your blog post, don’t, don’t, don’t name it something like clever, right? We talk about this a lot. Clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. Name it something that somebody would type into a search engine. That’s what you want to name it. Mmm. And when you get to phase three, our phase three event high traffic strategies, one of, one of the six sections in that phase three event is understanding like the Google algorithm and search algorithms and how those all things work.
RV: (07:07)
And those are called your H one tags, which is your, your title tags for an article. So those are really, really important that what you actually name your blog posts is really, really important. The second thing, which is related to what we were just talking about that she just really nailed I think is how some of this is as a business strategy issue. But a lot of it is a heart issue. Like a lot of this is an ego issue is, is that there’s an ego in social media of like, as I spend my time there and I have more followers, like that makes me maybe look better on the surface to some people. But unfortunately that’s why there’s so many people that are Twitter rich and dollar broke. And, and I say that like meaningfully and honestly and, and in a heartbroken way that there’s a lot of people who have a lot of social media followers and they really, really struggled to convert that to real dollars or significant or scalable dollars because they don’t control that relationship that the third party platform controls that relationship.
RV: (08:17)
And it doesn’t mean that third party platforms are bad. They’re, they’re good, they’re providing a service for free and we want to provide value back to them by producing content. But it just means you don’t, you don’t want to build your house on rented real estate. You know, people talk about all that time. You know, I think Michael Hyatt was the first person that I heard say that. And it’s just, yeah, that’s a great, yeah, a great analogy. But I also want [inaudible] I want to highlight for you something that I am now referring to as the 1% rule, the 1% role. So here’s what the 1% rule is, and this is this an ego, it’s just, it’s an ego thing. It helps you give get perspective, right? When you look at somebody’s social media profiles and you see how many people are following them, it’s easy to be intimidated, right?
RV: (09:03)
It’s to go, well man, they have a million followers. Holy moly. But in reality, just do 1% of that number because that is realistically, you know, a much more consistent look at how in gay, what is the engaged number? So 10% would be a hundred thousand 1% 10,000 yeah, right? Now let’s steal. Great. Like I want to have a million followers. There’s no reason I wouldn’t want to have a million followers. But again, it’s like if I could choose between having a million followers on social and 100,000 and email, I would take the 100,000 on email every single day of the week without a shadow of a doubt because those 100,000 I can reach whenever I want, as much as I want, as long as I want. I’m in control of that relationship. The million could disappear tomorrow, right? Like literally the algorithm changes, it disappears tomorrow. So just keep that in mind. It’s kind of like don’t compare your step number two to someone else to step number 27 and you know, just keep in mind that what appears on the surface, the people hit it hit hardest by the algorithms are the people with the biggest followings like yeah, for people starting out, we got crap, you know, I got a few thousand followers and now it’s like I’m lucky if a couple of hundred people see the post.
RV: (10:28)
But imagine how painful it is. If you have a million and you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people and you’ve done all this work to build this audience and then only only a few thousand of them see it, that’s painful. Painful man. We don’t want to see that happen to you. Like we want our community to be sure or build on social media. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but it’s like make sure if it is one or the other that you’re, you’re bringing people over to the area that you control. And that should be your blog and your website in your properties in the, in the longterm. So that’s the 1% role. That’s the heart issue. And then the third thing that [inaudible] Elizabeth shared that I, well, it’s just so I think relevant and always good to hear and is scarcity versus abundance. Scarcity versus abundance.
RV: (11:20)
Yeah. More and more as time goes on, the people who I meet who are not only the wealthiest but the happiest, they are sharing what they know, they’re, they’re giving it away. They’re teaching people, they’re impacting lives. You know, [inaudible] [inaudible] discouraging to me how many times, cause this is what, you know, this is our business now. Brand builders group is what we’re doing all day. Every day is helping leaders and messengers grow their influence. And people say, I want to make an impact on the world. But then it’s like all they ever think about is like how much money they’re making. And that’s important too. We gotta be able to pay the bills and we want people to grow and make money. But it’s like they don’t, they’re afraid to teach people anything because they want to charge for everything. And, and so they never build a following because to get the real value you have to pay for it and nobody’s sure if it’s worth the value because they haven’t gotten any value yet.
RV: (12:17)
The abundance mentality is give it away first. Give it away first. Teach everything you know for free. Just teach it one bite at a time in all random order. Remember this quote, right? We say this all the time. People don’t pay for information. People pay for organization and application. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. You don’t have to be worried about giving away too much content for free. You don’t have to be worried about putting your best ideas out there. It’s not that you’re going to put all your best ideas out there and people aren’t going to buy from you. It’s that as you put their best ideas out there, you increase the chances that people are going to buy from you because they want to know what else and they want to see the full system and they want to see things in order.
RV: (13:06)
And most of all, they want help applying the ideas. Right? You can’t give away application because, I mean I guess you could, I guess you could give away. You’re doing work for people, but that’s, that’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about giving away the ideas and that people are going to pay you for the assistance to help them get it implemented. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application. So be of abundance. Share your best stuff, provide tons of value. And, and you know another way of thinking about this as the way that we try to process it is we want people to feel like they’ve gotten 10 times the value of what we’re charging for something before they ever give us any money, right? So if we’re going to come out and make a $3,000 offer, our goal is that by the time somebody sees a $3,000 offer, they feel like they have gotten ideas and strategies and insights from our free content that could help them make $30,000 and so by the time we asked for the sale, it’s almost like they feel like they owe us.
RV: (14:21)
It’s not even like they’re buying the thing that w it’s not even like they’re taking a risk on buying the thing that we’re promoting. It’s almost like they’re going, man, I’ve already gotten so much value from here. Like of course I’m going to buy like I’m going to keep buying and keep buying because you just keep over-delivering and over-delivering and that’s the brand you want to build. That’s the reputation you want to build and, and here’s the other thing that’s amazing. The more you give away for free, the more great ideas you develop. Like when you’re giving away stuff for free, you’re always advancing your thinking. You’re pushing yourself, you’re, you’re allowing for new space to explore new ideas at a deeper level. When you hoard the few ideas that you have and you feel like, Ooh, I want, I want to wait until someone pays me for it.
RV: (15:14)
It’s like you’re so busy hoarding these things and then [inaudible] manufacturer something on, on the, on the external, on the surface that people can digest for free and suddenly that’s, that’s meaningful. You, you never have this base or the energy to actually just develop more content. So the have the abundance mentality, give it away. Change lives. Like, yes, make money. We are all about making money to turn your reputation into revenue. That’s one of our slogans. But our, our, our thought process on that is like, we want to work with mission-driven messengers. We work with people who really want to make a difference in the world. So make a freaking difference in the world. Like go do that first, do something right now today that adds value to people’s lives. And, and I promise you somehow sooner or later it’s gonna come back to you in money and influence and all the above.
RV: (16:14)
I just, I just don’t, I can’t think of an example in my life or in anybody else’s life that I know where they, they provided so much value to the world that it didn’t flow back to them. And that’s just a mindset, a switch that you gotta make. So those are my three big takeaways from Elizabeth. I just, I’m so impressed with her. I love what her brand’s all about. I love the quality of the content that she puts out, the consistency, the clarity of her whole business model. And she’s just really, really awesome. So, you know, I encourage you to [inaudible] follow her and check out some of the stuff that she’s doing and stay tuned. As always, we’re working to help you mission-driven messengers turn your reputation into revenue and make a greater difference in the world. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 53: Finding Your Right-Fit Client with Bill Cates | Recap Episode
RV: (00:01)
Hey, it is the Influential Personal Brand Podcast recap, edition three and three, me and my wife and CEO of Brand Builders Group. AJ Vaden here to bicker and and discuss and go back and forth and share with you our top three highlights from our long time and good friend Bill Cates. So babe, why don’t you kick us off?
AJV: (00:22)
Yeah, I think the most interesting and I’m kind of like taking us all the way to the end and then we’ll kind of skip around. But this was just really, really fascinating to me. And this is all kind of in coordination with this book that he has which I think is just this whole concept of neuroscience. He has this whole chapter about it in his book and Radical Relevance is the book. And he said this is what he says. He said, your brain is literally looking six times a second for safety, like every single second. Your brain like that’s from anything from your biochemistry to just breathing, walking not tripping, not falling, not getting hurt to actual emotional, physical, mental,
RV: (01:07)
Which you notice when you have a three year old because it’s like, Oh, you never realize how much danger there is just everywhere
AJV: (01:14)
Everything is Danger. But six times a second your brain is looking okay for how to stay safe. And three times a second your brain is looking for an opportunity and what does that have to do with what we do in marketing and branding and building a personal brand. And I think this was the part that was like really tied it all in together and made it so interesting is you go, what do people really look for? And it’s like so many times we just go out and we market the solution and we forget to identify what’s the real problem. Like how are we helping people stay safe, be safe, feel safe.
RV: (01:53)
Like they literally scientifically will pay more attention to you can talk about the problem. Yeah. And how to stay safe
AJV: (02:00)
In addition to the opportunity. But it’s twice as more when you are trying to keep them safe, solve a problem protect them. Provide security versus just talking about what you can do. And I think that’s just really relevant. Yeah. To everything that we do. And that’s just natural brain chemistry.
RV: (02:21)
Fortunately or unfortunately, I think this is why I think the media knows this very, very well, right? Like they have taken it to the level of what Andy Stanley uses the term fear peddling, which I thought was a really good term. And you know, so it’s, it’s sort of a delicate balance, but any you, you want to be clear on what is that problem an and I think the, one of the things that jumped out for me or like a thought that I had as a result of what bill was saying cause the neuroscience thing was one of my top three takeaways as well. My second big takeaway was just that clear is greater than clever.
RV: (02:58)
Clear is greater than clever. It’s like people need to understand, it needs to be so painfully obvious, like ridiculously evident. Unmistakably clear exactly who you’re helping and what you’re helping them with. And that is this. You just can’t hear that message enough. And it’s amazing to me how almost every single interview we do with someone who has built a major personal brand, this comes up in the conversation.
RV: (03:33)
A key thing. So clear is greater than clever.
AJV: (03:36)
Yeah, kind of to that point, he even talks about when people go to your website and you know, it’s like you gotta be thinking about when you build your website, one of two things. First, who is this for? Right? Who is your, what we call your ideal avatar, your perfect avatar. He calls it the right fit clients. But who is this built for? And then what value are you providing to them? And he said, and it cannot be for everyone because it is the more general, the more confusing, the more general, the more overwhelming. And I think that too is kind of in line with what you said. Okay. So onto my second one. Mine was an analogy and I’ll probably use this for the rest of my life and maybe eventually take credit for it.
AJV: (04:20)
But at the very, very, very, very end of the interview, he just stayed, he said he got this from one of his mentors and this analogy of a water hose. He said, when you turn on a water hose, there is intense focus, all this water being streamlined into this tiny little tube and then it goes out and it can have a lot of velocity and make you know, a lot of distance and cover a lot of grounds, no pun intended. But what would happen if you took a needle and he started poking holes and this water hose and is that an eventually you’re going to start having all these little, you know what would you call them? Off sheets. Spickets spouse. There you go. Spouts. You’d have all these little spouts throughout the water hose. And the focused water at the end would start to dilute and get weaker and would it have as much power?
AJV: (05:14)
And he said the exact same thing happens with our message. If we don’t have focus, he goes, the more you try to do, the more diluted everything becomes. And that happens with your audience, with your message, with your marketing, with your services, with your offerings, with your copy. He goes, if you’re trying to serve everyone, you are serving no one. And he said in the more distractions that come your way are all these little holes in the water hose and you got to patch those things up and get everything streamlined into one concentrated effort. And I thought that was a really great visual. Yeah. I’m too be like, yes, that’s true. It’s like why am I getting distracted and all of this stuff
RV: (05:57)
All of the time. How do I refocus and get back on the one singular path? Yeah, I love it. So for my third thing, it’s kind of the same thing we’ve been talking about, but it’s from the other side. So one of the this was probably my favorite takeaway from this interview was that, you know, when we talk about having focus, which I mean that’s our, basically the entire conversation at our phase one event is how to find your one thing and to w, you know, we walk you through our [inaudible], our brand DNA helix. Those of you that have been through it, you’ve been through that process of reconciling all of these different questions we asked you to, to help you identify what is the thing you should focus on. But the way when we talk about focus and even as we’re talking about it now with our first ones, it’s always like, you should do this to create more differentiation.
RV: (06:45)
You should do this so that you have like your resources in mind in one direction. But the thing that he said, which I think is super important to realize is that when you do this, you serve your audience deeper. Like you serve your audience better. So it’s not only just about separating yourself from the noise in the marketing or being clear about who, who you serve. Those things are super important. But additionally, when you narrow your niche, when you narrow the audience, it allows you to actually spend the time exploring and diving deeper. And I think about brand builders group is one of the things that we made a strategic decision early on. W only gonna do personal brands. We get asked all the time about can you lead a strategy meeting for the company? It’s like, no, that’s it. It’s not that. What we do doesn’t apply to that.
RV: (07:38)
It’s that it takes us off course. And we, yeah, actually just to kind of like pinpoint on that, I love why are friends, Susie Moore says, because she says, I get asked, why don’t you have this and why don’t you have that? Why don’t you start a coaching program? Why don’t you do a live event? She goes, I’ve got a really good answer to that. I don’t want to, yeah, some degree. We made a conscious decision like, we don’t want to do company branding. We, you don’t want to. Well, and we just, we understand personal brands, our whole world, all of our friends, I mean it’s just like the world that we live in. And so, but the, to what he was saying is it’s not just like a business strategy, it’s also a service like a customer service strategy. Yeah. And I don’t think we think about it.
RV: (08:20)
I think we all think of it as like, okay, the marketing strategy is to focus, but also realizing this is a customer service strategy. And that was just a, that was a refreshing take on, you know, a fundamental concept of what we teach. And yeah, what we talked about. My last one is really short. It’s really simple and it’s kind of, I think the first thing he said on the interview, he says, relevance is influence, boom. And that was just like, I mean, that hit me like square on of like throw [inaudible] very feminine, masculine, masculine, Mike drop.
AJV: (08:59)
But just relevance is influence. And you know, and the times of today with all of this craziness going on, doesn’t matter like where you are and what’s going on. You have to be relevant to have influence. You can’t be teaching and peddling something that worked 20 years ago and expect to have relevance and thus influence today
RV: (09:19)
All the time. Literally teaching the same exact technique that they taught in the 1985
AJV: (09:29)
Doesn’t work. It doesn’t. Relevance is influence.
RV: (09:32)
There you have it. Friends, top three and three influential personal brand podcasts from your favorite Nashville couple with red hair and a dark hair who work on personal brands exclusively at brand builders group. We love you. Be relevant. Have a great one. We’ll catch you next time. Bye bye.
Ep 51: Mindset Shifts That Up Your Media Game with Susie Moore | Recap Episode
RV: (00:06)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with. This is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders group.com/summit call to talk to you soon on with the show.
RV: (01:02)
It is a happy day for you because you are going to meet one of the coolest people ever. Her name is Susie Moore. We met Susie at an event we were at with Michael Hyatt, who of course is a good friend of ours and Susie is one of these people that the more we’ve gotten to know about her, the more that we have fallen in love and ha and I know her and her husband Heath pretty well. We’ve gotten to meet him face to face a couple of times. And she is somebody who used to be a sales director in Silicon Valley and she left that to become a life coach and an advice column. This, but her real expert, one of her real expertise is understanding media. All right. So she helps people develop confidence and you know, does a lot of coaching around that.
RV: (01:47)
But tactically she knows a ton about the media. She’s been on the today show herself. She’d been on Oprah, she’s been in all the big outlets. She’s been in media over 300 times, I think if I saw that right, it’s 300 different outlets. There you go. And she’s just a master at it. So she’s the author. She’s an author, you know, her first book was called what, what if it does work out and she lives in Miami with a Heath and they’re just awesome. So I felt like you had to meet Susie to talk a little bit about media and PR. So Susie, welcome to the show, my friend. I just love much. Yeah. So I think of, you know, I remember when when we did our first book launch, you know, we hired a publicist and we did like, you know, a tour bus and we ran out of the country and like we did all this like formal media and it was in my mind, it was just like this one time event and, and yet you have, you help people like stay in the news all the time and and just kind of like get a understanding how did use media to drive their business.
RV: (03:02)
So I, I guess my first question is just sort of like, what do you think are the misconceptions that people have about PR in media in general? And specifically I’m talking about, you know, for our audience is mostly like either authors or speakers or executives who are trying to promote a cause or a book or a movement or some type.
SM: (03:24)
Yes. I mean I think the misconceptions, a couple of the real big ones, all that you have to have, you know, fancy [inaudible] the connections that you have to have some type of training or you know, foot in the door with somebody or something, but you need a publicist that this isn’t something that you can do yourself. I think the media can be a little bit intimidating. We don’t know where to, again, sometimes you think you have to be a real expert Xbox, you know, and certainly as authors, entrepreneurs, you already are experts in all fields, but sometimes I think it can be a bit intimidating. You think that you still need to kind of wait or you need somebody to help you do it and that it’s just not accessible. And really the opposite is true and it just does need content. Like you will be generous when you all pitching yourself. A couple of my editors need new 15 pieces like holiday on that website that, I mean they pay a lot of content, fresh content daily, so they also want to hear from you the talent. I mean there’s certainly a place to publicist because doing DIY media isn’t for everybody, especially at a business level, but I know having a lot of medicines as friends now that they will do hear from the talent, which is just regular people like you and meet with a regular stories
RV: (04:34)
And you’re saying when you’re saying hear from him, you’re saying it’s not a, it’s not a hit to your credibility to reach out yourself versus having someone on your behalf do it.
SM: (04:46)
It’s the opposite, right? It’s actually having a real, a real human, bright, real possible person about some of the human story and the reaching out directly wanting to connect directly and wanting to just kind of speak from the heart. I mean the best stories, the best media messages, all just these real stories, right? Human beings. Like what is that? We have to say what we’ve experienced, what it is that we’ve love to share hearing from this source is preferred in Mercedes.
RV: (05:11)
Yeah. I think that that is I think so that is a misconception for sure. Is like I gotta have a publicist just even to be credible now. And so I, I hear you saying, so it’s not that, where do you find these people? Cause, cause you go, okay, let’s say you are going to DIY and, and you know, some of our clients have pretty big operations and they, you know, they’re probably going to have someone, but a lot of our clients are newer and they’re just getting started and they need, they need a few media appearances to like build some of that credibility. But I don’t think they, I think you’re right. They, it seems daunting. It feels overwhelming. It’s like why would anybody reach out, listen to me and, and I don’t, I don’t even know where to start. So like where do you go find these people?
SM: (05:55)
I mean, it’s an interesting question, right? Because the, the daunting facts, it just puts people off in the beginning, right? It’s like I just went for the right, you know, I do need some help with it. Whereas people are just, they’re accessible everywhere. Like what do you think about, how do you find anybody’s info anyway, right. Twitter is still then as a right to stop home. If you can take any like large media outlet as often a contact with us page and even look at any magazine. Next. Last name, last name is listed, finding contact information. I mean, well I was speaking to an editor recently and I’m like, he’s like in a couple of my friends email address and she’s like, if they have five seconds in a Google account, like they could find it. Like edit does want to be available to, they will want to be found by people.
SM: (06:35)
Like again, just like even me and I even have a couple of edits and friends who are, who say, you know, if I get publishes emails I just delete them. Bet against you in some cases because if somebody found her information and they craft a pitch that’s, that’s relevant and suitable, then you’ve really gone up and an editor’s estimation immediately. They already can see it was a really promising source. So finding information, I mean you just, I use a couple of different email sites for specific, you know, if it’s Conde Nast or Haas for example, or NBC if you’re looking to pitch television. But I mean the intonation’s everywhere, it just takes you five minutes of home up to say, you know, I was a puzzle.
RV: (07:17)
So you’re basically, but the editor is who you’re going for. Is that who you’re looking for?
SM: (07:22)
Yes. The editors or producers? Yeah, it, depending on all the podcasts, Booker, if you will. And often it’s just reaching out to a host directly on Instagram. It can be as simple as it’s real again, right rule, just human beings. We love stories that really, you know, it’s what makes the world go around and people want to receive pitches, content. And if you, if you have something relevant for that audience and you’re being of service to them,
RV: (07:45)
I love it. Okay. So number one, don’t necessarily need a publicist. Number two, you can find the people they want to be found. Number three number three.
SM: (07:57)
So you’re just saying like race.
RV: (07:59)
Yeah. So then the, and then the third thing I think is that they need you probably more than you need them. So those are, those are big things. So now let’s talk about the pitch itself. All right. So you know, when you say pitch, that’s like an email or a DM or something, right? As typically that’s going to be how it happens. What do I need to know to like get their interest and make it worth their time, you know, reach out. Like how does their mind work and how, what do I need to know about how their mind works so that I can craft what I’m trying to say in a way that they go? Sure. Done. Let’s have, let’s have you [inaudible].
SM: (08:41)
Yes, it’s a great question. So a pitch essentially is you in an email and no more than three paragraphs saying why, you know, why. Well, you’re a perfect fit for this editor at this time. And then looking for just a couple of very things. So looking for relevance, right? So if you’re a travel website, no one wants to know about your newborn baby unless it’s about traveling with a newborn baby. Right? So it’s surprising how few people do the research on specifically what type of content editors want and what you have to do. Again, it’s five minutes like you’re going to travel and leisure.com going to Marie-Claire, going to SPI, going to whatever website it is and just seeing what type of content is being created. So you one of the relevant and then natural good thing. Well that audience what it is you have to say.
SM: (09:23)
And then also just being succinct. And how did you present your information? So a lot of mistakes. Icy, probably the most common mistake is a lot of rambling and a lot of lists. Why you like I’m this author, this many books and I’ve you know, been here and there, you know it’s great to include a couple of clips. Like your bio is like one sentence. Say why you right. So who has your hip has some white. So I’m worry and I do this for a living. And then you say your picture is simply what your idea is and then a couple of sentences about what you’ll say in your articles. So this is for guest post specifically or even for a segment, what it is exactly that you’re going to say about that topic. And then just having to, you know, assess, I mean ideally even those in peg it to something happening in the media. So if I mean thinking about anything that’s in the news.
RV: (10:10)
Okay. So, so hold on on that part. Cause that’s, that’s I want to come back. I want to come back and hit that. But, but so you’re saying too much rambling. So it’s just like an unclear like what the heck are you, what, what is the idea that you’re trying to present and too much of like the me monster, like here’s my 15 page bio.
SM: (10:32)
Yeah.
RV: (10:33)
And what all they really care about is what is the value you’re going to provide to their audience? Like what are you actually going to say? What is the segment and how is that useful to their audience?
SM: (10:43)
Yes. What am I, a friend says, you know, who cares? So what, why you right. And it’s as simple as that that you guys said walk, why you, and it’s like, yeah, so it puts simply who you want. We don’t need to know much. Right. And some people just really go into detail that isn’t necessary. What is it that you want? Just chef evaluates your Rita’s OPO is, and then how he finished it. Like what’s your idea? You know, he was a little bit of context and for context for this conversation where he’s, some editors get a hundred pitches in a day. So it’s just simply a time thing, you know, scrolling, scrolling. You don’t really want someone to scroll like you want me to just, Oh that, Oh, the meat there. And that’s it. I mean JetLine did a timely pitch. Ikea, keep it really simple. I think some people, again, Oh the complicate all of this, I swear, where we like life and business can be easier. The other ones who make it harder. We are the ones who created these like new roadblocks and this illusion of, you know, something has to be really challenging. It’s not, again, editors are just humans just like us. They want to get good ideas. You’re being generous when you’re sharing them and they just want to hit them struggling or simple way like we all
RV: (11:45)
Right. Yeah. And I think that was a big shift for me, which is, it’s just, you know, so much of fear is always like self-centered. Like, you know, am I good enough? Are they going to want me? And so you spew all this stuff about you and it’s like they don’t care about you. Not in a mean way. It’s what they care about is their audience. And it’s like if you can show that you, you know what their audience needs and you know what they put out to their audience and you can just sort of share, Hey, here’s something I could do for your audience. Then they’re going to be like, okay, great. I’ll take a look like this. This could be legit.
SM: (12:20)
Yes, absolutely. And if you want a couple of protips or brownie points.
RV: (12:24)
Yeah, yeah, brownie points.
SM: (12:28)
Because we want, I mean, we all want to get a yes, right? Rejection is very natural. I know certainly the pop machine process, but you know, a couple of things that you can do that kind of really go a long way. Again, because editors and producers are human, just like us, if you know to do a bit of often editing, she was staff writers and they do interviews or they write their own pieces. So if you can say, you know, I love the piece that you wrote on maybe music or you know, tumeric lattes, like with Android, either pieces based on where they are, wherever you can change to share the right. That was as a human, we all want to be acknowledged, right? If somebody liked how welcoming they connected with it, just, you know, Hey, I loved your piece on one sentence.
RV: (13:06)
Huh. Butter, butter them up. And if you have a British accent, it helps. It helps because if you’re, if you have a, if you have an accent, they like that too. If you’re talking to them on the phone. That’s so true. I mean that, it boggles my mind when people will reach out to me for my podcast and they’re like, you know, we can come talk about customer service or, or something crazy. And it’s like I’m, I’m dealing with authors and speakers. It’s like clearly you haven’t even, you haven’t, you haven’t listened to the opening 30 seconds of one episode ever. Like, it’s very obvious who our audience is. If you literally take like a second to know now I have other, you know, I’ve done other podcasts in the past and stuff for, it’s like, okay, yeah, this would be a fit for that, but not for this. And I, I think that does go a long way. It’s not even, it’s not even buttering up. It’s just showing them like you care enough to take a second to figure out what they’re about.
SM: (14:06)
Yes, exactly. And you know, I always say, I think I already said it, but if that’s repeating like a couple of minutes, if I’m lucky they call it [inaudible]. Let me just not being received as like, well I mean what, what like 30 minutes of research should be done in order to send like 10, 15 pitches. I mean it doesn’t, didn’t take much for me. Right. But the this thing does go a long way is research. And then the second piece, the second thing you can do for brownie points and you know, you’ll be fumbled likely to get a yes is to to, you know, pick a pitch to anything. Just really timely. Anything already kind of trending on this site. So maybe you have a different point of view. Maybe you don’t have an extension of information. If you start a piece on the right public speakers do this.
SM: (14:47)
Wow. Is there something missing? Do you disagree with that? Like, so it just shows that you’re kind of engaged, being annual aware of what’s hot. And then also, I mean, we’re all just, you know, SEO, you know, addicts here and we want, if something’s happening in the news, do you want to have an opinion? And so if you even have, I mean all of my content is evergreen, but I’ll pitch it to some things in the news whenever I can, which is actually again, pretty simple to do. I mean, one success story we had was when there’s a woman who, and I’m prepared as breath work, so like calming breathing, she doesn’t break you and other things, but she was like, my pages aren’t being accepted and then we’ll have fast pitch was accepted because instead of, you know, how to breathe through a lapse, you know, simple technique. It was how Megan Malko should breathe on the way to the chapel is Mary and Harry, like how should she eat everything? And it was all of the day of, or the day of the wedding were they also, so you can just see how it’s the same content, but can kind of pick it to something that just makes it really timely and relevant.
RV: (15:47)
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s just like, and that’s, that is also the work, you know, like the work that people don’t want to do is they don’t want to research, they don’t want to understand anything about the medium and then the work is going, how do I apply my expertise to something happening in the news? It’s the same five tips you’ve taught your entire career. It’s just connecting it to something that’s going on in the news that makes it worthy of dropping it into their, their news cycle. I didn’t, I think that’s, that’s so powerful and it’s, it’s so, so important and it’s, it’s, you’re just dressing up. It’s like lipstick on a pig kind of thing too. You readdress, you’re just, it’s a, it’s just a new wrapper. It’s the same candy bar. It’s a new rapper basically.
SM: (16:35)
I think they’re very exciting map, but it’s exactly the same. Me add a couple of veggies into a one sentence intro that’s different and a couple of kind of like bridging sentences in a piece to connect it to the timely relevant thing. The way that I’ve kind of explained it is just say, okay, I’m in a long, long trip and you’re driving like a junkie. Right. And you know, it’s like we get used to it and you’re like, I’ll just keep grabbing my jacket. If you just pulled up an Apple and like took a little break and just go on a plane, which involves just doing something different, you’re then just arrive at your destination very, very quickly. But most people just stay there and he called you a janky pitches and they confuse as to why they’re not getting any way quickly. So it takes a bit of a change, but it’s so worth it. I mean, it’s, it’s true. It’s pretty amazing how it can just transform your success.
RV: (17:18)
Yeah. So okay. The, the last little part I want to talk to you about is the money. Okay. So like how does this, because this takes a lot of time. I mean even if it’s a few minutes, but if you’re doing, you know, several things a week and then you’re going back and forth, even if you get accepted, it’s like, Hey, you need to edit it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s, there’s a lot of, there can be a lot of time here. Does this convert to money? Like, or how do you make it convert to money? Like cause I’ve had, you know, I’ve been on TV shows where we’ll see a it’ll sell a thousand books like that. I’ve been on other TV shows where there’s like, no, no, nothing has it, you know, it doesn’t apparently move the needle at all. So are there, are there certain outlets that you like more than others? Are there certain, you know, ways to do this, to actually make it move your business forward?
SM: (18:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Not only he is created equal, I mean absolutely not. And surprising what gets results over what you might see in buses actually, what, you know, what will drive immediate feature to actually make put money in the bank. And this is why I love guest posting specifically as a tool because it’s the most frictionless way for a Rita or to then purchase, right to have, if you had to base a piece of content. But simply that and I can share a free writing and write guest posts too. But if you have a piece of content where you get your advice regime tips, for example, you share a personal story, you then have what’s called a shut tale at the ultimate battle multiple, which is a two sentence bio. Again, really simple with a link or someone can have LUN.
SM: (18:52)
So for example, just say, you know, you’re, I know the sleep X-Box and you give advice on maybe business travel, you know, sleeping. If you have a child, be a newborn, wherever we go, peace, you know, it’ll be placed wherever it’s suitable. And then if someone’s like [inaudible], so who helps new moms get eight hours up to three months after your baby reaches the three month Mark and then you download this. How am I see my quick free training? It’s amazing when you, when you can see the, how many eyeballs will receive that piece say right? Or parents don’t come. Then the people who read it will then click through and to them, Oh definitely sacral you all parenting magazine, your trust factor is pretty like massively established, which really shows your sales cycle and then you already go directly to a landing page or even to a purchase stage.
SM: (19:40)
So that is, I mean it really the magic of of course, and then you get all the other crap, right? So media of course is a huge credibility market. That’s why I’m doing it as when I was side hustling as a life coach because I wanted to get people to discover me, to find me and I wanted to get through the credit, the immediate red, but only started realizing how you can just monetize these eyeballs. But I just didn’t. Giving them a flavor view with multiple and then an opportunity to work more deeply with you, which you just make completely visible and available and it just, they don’t care what happens. They just want them to like the piece and to share it and to comment. But that’s specifically why I like to guest posting. And then
RV: (20:18)
You’re saying because the, the, the, the idea is like if you watch a TV segment, you might be in your kitchen or whatever, but if you’re reading, yeah, like you’ve got to remember their name or a URL or something. But if I’m, if I’m reading a blog or an article and then it just says, you know, learn more about Rory or learn more about Suzy, you just click right there and they’re off and they’re into your, you know, relationship engine as we call it.
SM: (20:46)
That’s right. And another golden point here is you can, instead of even making it about me, you can say where we helps new moms. Oh this helps. And then you say about who is it you saw? And that often just be like, is that me? And then it’s pretty awesome how like how many just views, clicks and new subscribers purchases. I mean, depending on how your back is set up, it certainly leaves money in the bank. It still goes for me, the old pieces like that just out there in the ether and speculation. So that’s direct money in the bank, right? You see an immediate payoff once a piece goes live. But then there are also indirect, right? You can get speaking opportunities. I’ve got with my book deals from articles, you know, being discovered that way you can get brand deals. I mean there’s just, there’s so many, once you put yourself out there, I’m confidently more visible. It’s like you could almost say, I’m here. Right? Come, come and get me. Kind of take that step and then you’ll, I mean out there and then people, it’s how they discover you.
RV: (21:43)
Love it, love it, love it. This is, it’s, these are so many big mind shifts of just how all of this works. It’s where did, where should be, where should people go? Okay. All right, so give me Susie. I want, I want your, what did you call it? A short tail
SM: (22:03)
Shuts tail because it looks like,
RV: (22:04)
Oh, it’s a shirt tail. That’s, that’s, that’s an inappropriate American interpret interpretation. It’s a shirt tail or like a byline or you know, it’s like a micro bio or whatever. It’s just so, so anyways, so where should are our fans and followers who are wanting to get, you know, more media, where should they go to to learn more about you?
SM: (22:30)
I have a free training where I kind of break this down and she has specific hacks for writing a really great guest posts specifically to get rockstar on.com.
RV: (22:38)
Yeah, get rockstar PR. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want rock star PR. I don’t, I don’t want no like cover tunes in the back of a dive bar. PR arena, rock star PR.
SM: (22:57)
I just pulled overnight rockstar because it’s, I mean, one thing that I love about media to worry is unlike, you know, building this takes time, right? Building brands take time, but you can have a quick ring. I mean it’s something that you can turn around but even a week old. So I think we can allow our lives to be a little easier and allow some wins. Like, you know, have some of the fun with this and other people getting all the media like the slice.
RV: (23:22)
I love that. I love that concept of allow some wins in that. Maybe that’ll be your next book. I think that’s such a cool thing. I’m just like, life doesn’t have to be so hard. Like let, let things come to you. Keep it simple, be clear. And and I love that and I think that’s it’s so you’re so encouraging and you guys are so delightful and wonderful and also think you’ve really helped us feel empowered that this is, this is doable. They need you more than you need them. And so let’s just allow some wins.
SM: (23:56)
Yeah. And if I could just ask one more thing, cause I think that it’s kind of important because we all have our moments, right? Where we think, gosh, am I ready? Is this going to be, will they accept? Let me, I have no qualifications for work. I have a high school education. And so to be, have these kinds of expert stages, which you can you claim cause power can ever be gave. And she had to go and get it. New claim claimants yours. I, I’ve done this with like zero kind of formal qualifications. So wherever you’re at, you’re already have you have is enough.
RV: (24:25)
I love it. I love it. All right, Susie Moore, ladies and gentlemen, get rockstar pr.com. Thanks for your tips, Susie. We wish you well. Wish you the best, and we’ll talk again soon.
SM: (24:35)
Thank you so much Rory.
Ep 49: Orchestrating a Career Pivot by Owning The New You with Donald Miller | Recap Episode
RV: (00:00)
Welcome to the special recap edition of the influential personal brand. Such an honor to be breaking down our interview with Donald Miller. And I just have to say up front, like we have learned so much from Donald. We love StoryBrand, we love the SB7 framework. And we love this dude. Like he is such a quality guy and, and just, just frigging smart, smart, smart, smart. So if you haven’t listened to the interview, go listen to the interview, read the StoryBrand book, like do the StoryBrand stuff. They are amazing. And I thought some of the things that he shared on this interview, because we’ve interviewed him before and we know him so well, it was actually quite unique, not things from his book and necessarily and, and not things that I, I had heard him say, you know, so many times.
AJ: (00:46)
Yeah, and I would just say this was actually one of my favorite interviews on all of our episodes so far. And I think the reason why is it wasn’t about his book, it wasn’t about the framework and it wasn’t about the business. It was about his personal brand and his take on what it takes to make it and the benefits and the risks and the pains and the rewards along the process. That’s why I loved it.
RV: (01:11)
Well, and he made a big jump, and you may not all realize the massive shift in personal brand. Not many people at his level make such a dramatic shift,
AJ: (01:21)
Which is funny because I was a Donald Miller follower way before Rory, because I was, I was hooked on blue light jazz, which is an amazing book. Oh my God. Well, it had to be over a decade ago. Well, it had to be before that. It was before we were together, the app out a long time ago. Make me feel so old right now. So yeah, no, I love that. I love this. I love this interview and I’m looking at my notes right now because I actually took a lot of notes and I think this is really amazing. I think the biggest thing, or not the biggest thing, but my first thing I would say is this concept of what does it take to reinvent yourself at that level when you have become so well known for one thing and his case, it was Christian memoirs, how do you go from that to being a branding business strategist,
RV: (02:15)
Millions of copies, millions of copies he had.
AJ: (02:17)
So it’s a big job. That’s a very big jump to go from this very niche Christian market to, no, I’m now I’m a I business branding expert. How do you do that and how does that whole process work? And here’s what I love because I’m not one who likes to ease into things. So I think maybe this resonated with me because this is very much my style. It’s like, Hey, if you’re going to do it, you got to do it. He goes, here’s the thing, and I, this is my paraphrasing of what he said, but this is how I interpreted it anyway. He said, people are going to really, it’s going to take time for people to relearn the new view, right? They’re going to have to reassociate themselves with the new new you. And so why would you confuse them in the process by trying to blend your past in your future for any amount of time? And that just made a lot of sense to me. It’s like, well, yeah, it’s like, in I past I was a sales and leadership consultant. Why would I confuse my audience for months or years? Trying to ease them away from this and into my future, which is a personal branding strategist. Why would I do that? It confuses me. It confuses them. It dilutes the message 100%. That made a lot of sense to me. You’re looking at me like deer in headlights glazed over.
RV: (03:42)
No, I’m just, I’m not, I just, I’m this listening to you.
AJ: (03:46)
And I just thought that’s so true. And it’s actually what we did, not necessarily by choice, but it went from one thing to the next overnight. Yeah. It was very stark. It was very stark. And we’ve seen the benefits of how helpful that was to be still black and white. So stark. So from this to this. There’s nothing in the middle.
RV: (04:06)
And to this day, people call us, Hey, can you come do sales training? Nope. Sorry. Not interested. And we’re really not genuinely not interested
AJ: (04:16)
And it’s actually very liberating to be able to go, that’s not who I am anymore.
RV: (04:21)
That’s a great word. It is. It is liberating. Yeah.
AJ: (04:25)
And the freedom that it like it gives me inside to go, I don’t do that anymore. And I just, the clearness and the clarity of Nope, I’m making a pivot. That’s not what I do and I’m not going to confuse anyone in the process including myself.
RV: (04:42)
So to tie that together with, with one of my top things, which is, is very much connected to that, as he said, be known for one thing and be disciplined to only do that thing. And so what, what clicked for me was we talk about, you know, like a large percentage of the clients that we work with at brand builders group I would say are, are novice to intermediate. They’re kind of earlier in their journey and we take them through phase one, which is brand identification, but we’re getting, we get all these calls from like pretty well known celebrity type influencers that have been in the industry a long time because they’re not really in phase one. They’re, they’re really in, you know, we have four phases. They’re really in phase five they’re circling back around, they’re in reinvention and they’re having to get clear on what is my one thing for the next chapter.
RV: (05:30)
Like I’ve been this one thing and now I’m not. I know I’m not that thing anymore. I need help getting clear on what my, my next one thing is going to be. And it’s, it’s funny to see, like you can tell from the people who are more intermediate in their journey. You go, wow, this person really has a chance to succeed because they’re disciplined about sticking to one thing. And then the experienced people, you go, wow, they’re going to break through to even bigger level because they’re still, they’re still committed to that process of just, I am going to be known for this and I’m going to make sure that I shaped the world’s perception of, of, of me in this way. So that was a big one. That was a big one for me, which also tied to something that I know you want to talk about with the
AJ: (06:20)
Oh yeah, yeah. This was God. Can you believe it was four years crazy? Same election year. Oh Lord. Watch out. So yeah, so I thought this was really interesting and a lot of the concept was it’s not, it’s not that the best message wins always and it’s really not. Sometimes it’s the easiest message, the clearest message. But I loved the way he said it. It’s, it’s the message that’s easiest to memorize. And I was like, yeah. And here’s the analogy, and it doesn’t matter if your left, your right blue, red, whatever. The point is, there’s a really great analogy if you look back at the last election, really in the primaries before election Republican thing. But what was the message of Jeb Bush?
RV: (07:12)
I have no idea. I have no idea. And you know, and this is the United States election. We’re talking about the primaries from 2016 in the U S
AJ: (07:21)
Yeah. So, but what was Donald Trump’s campaign? Again? Nobody can deny that. They don’t know what that is. It’s great to get that thing. And I think that’s, it’s not that it was the best per se, but it was the clearest, it was the easiest to memorize, but more importantly, it was the one that you heard over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It was the one that was the most repeated. He had it on hats. He had it on tee shirts, he had it on bumper stickers. He had it all over Twitter. Of course, you know that he had it all over his messaging. It was everywhere. And that is what we have to do and is like, it doesn’t matter how good it is if no one hears it. And part of that is your job to share it. And that kind of ties in with a little bit of what I kind of, I’ve really picked up and it’s a little bit of a nuance here. And he said that he works with a ton of artists and one of the [inaudible]
RV: (08:18)
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Say that one. Cause you’re going to go into the promotion was
AJ: (08:21)
No, Oh no, I’m tagging this in. I know what I’m gonna say. And I thought this was really good because as he’s talking about, you’ve got to have the clearest message, the one that’s easiest to memorize, but you also gotta be the one who’s willing to repeat it the most. And he said, and there’s a real challenge with that with a lot of people in our space and to, what I was gonna say with artists is that he works with a lot of artists. And he said, and you know it’s not the most talented that always gets to be the most famous either. That’s not always what happens. He said the ones that are willing to work and hustle and promote and brand and get themselves out there and do it over and over and over again. As soon as he was talking, I was like, that’s bright. Kissell that’s one of my clients and his interview is in the influential personal brand summit. Yeah, dude. That dude was hustling from age 16 on, he was a salesman. He was selling his music and he said the real challenge though with a lot of artists types, this also could be entrepreneurs who are waiting around on investors or whatever. This is me. I struggle with what you’re about to say. You know what I’m going to say? Talked about it before because you never put someone on the air.
AJ: (09:32)
Sardine. Yes, but now he said it’s like, here’s the thing, there’s a real arrogance to people who are not willing to promote themselves and does that and it’s, it’s counterculture. Cause really you think, Oh, the people who are promoting themselves are all self-promotional and it’s me, me, me. And he said, no, there’s an equal amount of arrogance to the person who goes, you know what? I’m so good. I deserve to be found. My business idea is so good. I deserve that investment money. You know, I’m so talented, I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I should have somebody catering to me. I should have some body getting my stuff out there. I’ve got the talent.
RV: (10:09)
Yeah. It’s a form of indulgence and arrogance. People should find me and I don’t want to do the work of promoting.
AJ: (10:16)
Yeah. And I thought, let me know. And again, regardless of your political affiliation, I loved his, his kind of tying that into this you know, Jeb Bush, Trump thing. He goes, man, Trump was hustling and we all remember the message regardless of how you feel about the outcome. We all were member the message. And I just thought that was really good. In terms of are you willing to promote yourself? Are you willing to share your message and do it again? And again, and again, I loved it. I thought it was really solid.
RV: (10:46)
Yeah. I had never heard Donald say so directly as he did in the interview that that branding and marketing is an exercise in memorization. Like I, you know, I’ve heard him talk about clarity and being clear. I’ve, I’ve heard him talk about how to find, you know, like the way to tell your story of course, but just saying it’s really an exercise in saying the same thing over and over and over and over again. It’s not just clarity, it’s repetitiveness, it’s memorization. So that really hit me hard. It also is when we teach about titles, we have this thing called the five title tests and we talk about why most titles are terrible. And some of the mistakes that we’ve made around titles, one of the title tests is called the memorability test. And that half the battle is just being remembered. And if you look at take the stairs to take the stairs book, that book fails four of our five title tests, but it is a 1000% on the memorability test because people remember take the stairs, they see the escalator in the stairs and just they remembered it.
RV: (11:54)
And so that has always been such a mainstay part of you know, my personal brand journey. And that was just by dumb luck. But yeah, so I think memorization, that was a huge, huge takeaway for me is as well. My third takeaway, I’m just going to jump to it and then I’ll let you do yours, is they, he said this, he said, if your goal is to help someone make money, you will never have to worry about job security. What a great truth as so simple and profound that if you are just trying to help people make money, then you’re, you’ll never have to worry about a job. Like if you get good at helping other people succeed. And this it really, I think part of why it hit me as I’ve been working on our our workbook for our, we have phase three, we have our phase three event is called high traffic strategies and, and one of the, it’s like a lot of the more advanced strategy traffic strategies and one of them is affiliate marketing.
RV: (12:55)
And there’s this part in the phase three workbook where I say, look, you know that you’re doing affiliate marketing, right? When you wake up and you’re consumed with, how do I make my affiliates a whole bunch of massive passive mailbox money? I want it to be massive passive mailbox money. When you’re have that mindset, you’re going to attract a lot of affiliates and you’re going to make them a lot of money. And guess what happens is a byproduct. Like you’re probably gonna make some money out of that too. So if your affiliates are making money, you’re making, you’re making money, right? But it’s kind of like, how can I make this easy for them? How can I make this a no brainer for them and for their audience? Like what actually moves the needle and could make them real money. And when you lend yourself in a direction like that, not just with affiliate marketing mode, anything, right?
RV: (13:46)
You could be just an employee, an employee. I don’t, I don’t mean to say just an employee. I mean, you could be an employee, you could be a business owner, you could be a personal brand, you could be a corporate executive. You, you can be anybody in the world seeking to add value to anybody else. That’s a great life. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna make money. That’s the point. And I, I just, I love that. I’d never heard him say that again so clearly. Yeah. And there’s no just in front of anything. Yeah. I didn’t mean I’ve learned that hard lesson because I write with just, and almost every sentence, like just a minute or justice. I’m like, somebody wants to tell me there’s never a, just before anything. It is what it is. Thank you for calling me out and for making me feel completely inadequate in front of everybody. I know this is going to be as long as the interview I recap is a third one I really love. He said, and I think this is really relevant, what I’m going to bring this back. I said it’s so many of our clients and brand builders group are in that stage of making a pivot, right?
AJ: (14:52)
They were this and now they’re wanting to do this and it doesn’t matter if they’re going like so many of our people have these huge online social followings and they’ve been this huge digital influencer, but now it’s like they want to take that and they actually want to do something and make a more solidified message and write a book or be a speaker or create a product or they want to solidify all this stuff they’ve been saying into one unified message. And it goes from that or it goes from the person who just exited their business or just exited a job and now they want to work on this next phase of their life. Or we have actually a ton of people who have been a full time mommy’s, which is a full time job. So five jobs, like I used to say, say, Oh mom.
AJ: (15:33)
I’m like, no. Like what? What? Yeah, you’re at home, but you’re not studying there. You’re, you’re on the, I’m exhausted the days I’m home with my kids anyways, but they go from like, they’ve been a full time mom and he’s two now. They’re doing a side hustle. And it’s like, how do I make this pivot? And I just, I love this. He said, anytime you make a pivot, any, any process of reinvention is going to come with a fair share of haters. And it’s just to be expected. And he said, but you will lose some, but you will gain more. I said, you will lose some in this pivot. People are going to be mad that you’re doing this. They’re going to hate on you for doing this because they haven’t, or they can’t, or they think they can’t. He said, you’re gonna have some haters.
AJ: (16:19)
And he gave this really unique example that was really personal as something that happened online with him here recently when he left this, you know, Christian focused wife see this business strategy life. And and he, he gave this biblical reference of, you know, as we all know, Jesus, you know, one of the parables in the Bible is the story of turning the other cheek. And there was something in the way that he said that, that just immediately I made me remember the sermon at church. Here in Nashville. We go to cross point major props to Kevin queen. He did this amazing sermon series. Maybe it was last year, I don’t remember, but I remember the message and actually, no, it wasn’t. It was no, it was Chris Nichols. It was Chris Nichols cause it was a Martin Luther King holiday. So the whole point of this is he’s a, people get this whole parable of turn the other cheek, very confused in the Bible. He said, because back in Jewish times and in a way for you to turn your cheek this way, and I may get the directions mixed up, not my strong suit, but you would have to have smacked somebody with the left hand
RV: (17:42)
If somebody was going to smack you in those times. They would have backhanded you so they would, they would have hit you up from your right to left. But anyways, turn the other cheek meant punch me directly. No,
AJ: (17:55)
There was a whole nother connotation to that. And how I remember it, he said there was one thing because in order to do that is that you wouldn’t have been able to like do like this. You would have had to do it like this. He said an if to go with your left hand. He said that was a hand in which everyone wiped with because I didn’t have toilet paper back then and he said there was a, there was a sign of like just the absolute disgrace and nobody would have done that. And he said, so to turn the other cheek says, no, you’re going to have to use your other hand and you’re going to have to treat me with the equal respect that I deserve. And he said there was a connotation in the, not just the direction but the actual hand that you were using and this idea of turning the other cheek. It isn’t a fight back, but it also isn’t a cower down and just be belittled. It’s not that you just stay in there and take it and you don’t stand up for yourself, but you do it in a way that has kindness. You do it in a way that says, I’m not going to stand for this, but I’m also not going to attack you back.
RV: (18:52)
No, it was different. It was an act of defiance. It wasn’t an act of acquiescing. It’s not retaliating, but it’s saying, if you’re going to hit me, hit me like a man. Like I’m not beneath you. If you’re gonna hit me, you’re gonna hit me like you’re eating.
AJ: (19:06)
That’s right. And I thought that was really good because the way that he shared their response on social media just immediately made me think about that. He said, it’s not that you don’t respond, it’s just you don’t respond with the equal intensity and hatred in what you’re receiving. And he said, no, at some point, feel free to take it down. He said, but it’s not that you just let the haters go and you don’t, you don’t argue it. And he said, you’ll just let it go and ignore it. And he said, Ben, at the same time, you don’t have to do it with the intensity and hatred that’s out there. He said, because it’s just part of life. You’re going to have haters. People aren’t gonna like you. They’re not going to like what you do and what you have to say. And if you work this and you’re going do this, people are going to not like that.
AJ: (19:47)
Or they’re going to be jealous or confused or whatever they are. And that’s just part of it. But those people will fall off and you will gain more. You will take who the key part of who you had and you will add on to it. So don’t be afraid to make that pivot. Don’t be afraid to make the change and don’t, don’t be afraid of the haters. Just stand your ground and be rooted in your message. Which is why something that we promote at brand builders all the time is it’s like you have to have a message that you are willing to go to the grave with and that no one can tarnish that message because of what they think. It’s your truth. It has to be your truth. And if it is, then let the haters come. Yup.
RV: (20:30)
Standard ground be or be clear, be direct, be disciplined repeated often. Just powerful, powerful stuff on, on like the way of being, of being a, of a, of a big, a big personal brand. So thank you for that Donald Miller. Totally inspired us and hopefully inspired all of you. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.