Ep 483: 5 Techniques to Gain Thousands of Social Media Followers | Ryan Pineda Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in three weeks. It was actually five simple ideas that I just wanna share with you. The first thing was to focus on starters. Another term for this would be the hook, but it’s really paying attention to the opening first few seconds of your videos. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but everyone throws that word around like, you gotta have a great hook.
RV (00:58):
It’s all about the hook. Start with hook. And I’m like, what exactly is a hook? Because nobody seems to be able to explain what that means. I’ve heard that term for years, but something finally clicked in the last few weeks, and I’m gonna share now what I’m using as my definition of a hook to see if it helps you. And a hook is simply this. Tell people what you’re about to tell them. Tell them what you’re about to tell them, right? Think about how they advertise the news. They say, A new study reveals a food that causing cancer will tell you what it is to tonight at nine, right? Like they tell you what they’re gonna, they they tell you what they’re gonna tell you. And in Toastmasters, where I started my professional speaking career, Toastmasters used to have a phrase where they said, tell the audience what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em.
RV (01:48):
And now I’m realizing, oh, that’s the same opening formula for a great video. Tell ’em what you’re about to tell ’em. You’ll notice that I started this video saying, here’s how I grew my followers by th here’s how I grew by 3000 followers in the last three weeks. I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you. I don’t launch in to telling you how to do it. I’m telling you about what I’m about to tell you. And that’s what the key to a hook is. It’s super duper simple. So focus on your starters. Focus on the opening first three seconds of your videos. Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, and I think you’ll see an immediate improvement. The second thing is screen quality. And by screen quality, I just mean production value. We got my main man, Chris, over here. We finally invested to get a good camera and get a a, a, a decent, decent microphone.
RV (02:43):
And I think that’s made a really big difference. If you go look at some of my old videos, they’re just not as visually capturing because they’re not as quality in terms of the resolution. The content, I would argue, is just as good as it has ever been. But the production value is definitely up a notch. And I think at this point, if you’re trying to compete online, you need to make that investment. Why? Because all the other people who are doing it are doing that. And so you’re not, you’re competing not just on the quality of your ideas, but you’re competing also on the quality of your production value. And so it’s time to make that investment if you’re ready to really get serious. So that’s the screen quality. The third thing is stimulus stimuli. We have increased the cuts in our video editing dramatically.
RV (03:33):
Again, my man, Chris, over here rocking the camera is doing cuts every one or two seconds. And when I mean cut, if you just watch a video and count how many seconds go between each time the screen changes, something moves, right? A talking head video is just me here talking. The camera is not cutting. It’s the same view for an extended period of time. But adding stimulus means you’re adding cuts. You’re showing other pictures, other you know, it can be captions. It can be moving things around on the screen. It can be having pullout quotes. It can be dropping in emojis. It can be dropping in B-roll footage. It can be dropping in stock footage of other things. You can be referencing news media articles, but the camera is cutting every couple seconds. And again, this is just a tactic to hold people’s attention, which is a huge part of what growing your followers is all about.
RV (04:31):
The algorithms reward people who hold people’s attention on the platform. The fourth thing is stories. Tell stories. Stories from your life are an automatic great format and formula for capturing attention. There’s something about the human brain that we are drawn to stories. So for example, I spoke at the Keller Williams National Convention. There were 17,000 people there, and I had an opportunity to share the stage with Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, and several other speakers. Well, I told the story when I came back of how I watched Mel Robbins speak. And I stayed two days longer in Vegas than I planned to, just so I could get to see her. And I just shared the story of what I thought of her presentation. Well, unbeknownst to me or unplanned by me, she saw the post and she reshared it. So part of the, the value was certainly the size of her audience.
RV (05:29):
But what really was powerful was the story. It was, it was sharing a story of what did I do and what did I learn? And that’s really the simple format for a story is what happened to you and what did you learn? And I’ve got other videos that talk about the four parts of telling a great story. But every picture in your phone is a story. If you just kind of go through your phone, camera roll, every single photo is a story. Tell the story of who was there, what were you doing, what happened, what did you learn? And how does that apply to the people who are in your audience tell great stories because they automatically serve as great hooks and great lessons and great attention grabbers and attention keepers. And finally, number five is stages. Getting on stages. As I mentioned, I was at a very large event, and to this day, the fastest way that I have ever seen to grow my email list, my social media following my customers or just new friends and fans, is to be out speaking on stages.
RV (06:36):
This is one of our expertise at Brand Builders Group. This is one of the things I’ve spent my life learning and that our team specializes in teaching you how to do, is to get on stages. Now, they don’t have to be thousands of people. You don’t even have to be paid to be on ’em. But the shortest distance between someone who is a complete stranger, becoming a lifelong fan is a world class one hour presentation after seeing you on stage. And by the way, if you’d like to talk to someone on our team about some of the strategies we use to help personal brands get on more stages, just click the link that is somewhere around this video and we’ll set you up with a free call. But there you have it. The five strategies that I’ve used to grow my followers more than 3000 in the last three weeks. It starts with the starts have great hooks, then it’s all about screen quality up your production game. Third, have more stimulus, more jump cuts, and more advanced editing happening inside of your videos. Fourth, tell more stories. And fifth, get on more stages. If you do those five things, I promise, you’ll see your followers grow.
Ep 481: How to Know When You Should Write a Book | Bill Blankschaen Episode Recap
AJV (00:03):
I get asked all the time, when should I write a book or more often I get told I’m going to write a book. This is the year, this is the month, this is the time of my life that I am ready to write that book. And this little 10 minute video here is all about when do you know when it’s time for you to write that book? And here’s just a couple of things that I thought would be helpful and insightful is I process a conversation that I just had with a good friend, bill Blank Shane, who is the founder of a company called Story Builders, who works with aspiring authors to become the author that they want to be and produce a book that they are proud to call their own. And I think it was a really important conversation because there is no right time.
AJV (00:55):
There is no better time, there is no worse time when it comes to actually expressing your content. Now, yes, there are times in your life that it makes sense to dedicate time, energy, and effort to writing a book. And there are times in your life where maybe it doesn’t like, right? That has everything to do with capacity, that you have to give it the time it deserves. Because writing a book is like starting a business, and it requires that amount of time, energy, effort, and resources in order to do so. And I think before I even start on this and just realizing if you actually want people to read your book, writing the book is just step one. And after you write the book is when the additional work, most of the work actually begins writing the book is just step one to a mini step process to launch and get that book out into the stratosphere.
AJV (01:46):
So when is it time to write your book? Number one, I want you to remember that the book is the very last thing you do, not the first thing. It is the conclusion, not the hypothesis. So do not rush the process to actually organize and clarify your thoughts, your stories, your points, right? This is a body of work that is meant to represent something that you think is needed in the world to help a group of people, right? Your audience, your readers, with something that you know, that you are well positioned to help them with. And that does not come quickly, right? In fact, I had a guest on the influential personal brand podcast earlier this year, and her name is Maury. And she wrote a book about negotiations, and I asked her, I said, so how long did it take you to write this book?
AJV (02:42):
And she was like, you mean like putting words on the pages? Or How long did it take me to figure out this is the book I was meant to write? And I said, both. And she said 10 years, right? 10 years. It took me 10 years to figure out what I had to say on this topic, what I was meant to say on this topic. Now, the process of actually writing the book was probably a year to two years, right? Still a fair amount of time, but it was 10 years. Why? Because she was looking for a conclusion. She was looking for the facts, right? The end points the ends of the case studies, the ends of the stories, not ideas. She was looking for conclusions, not hypotheses. So the book is the last thing you do. Once you have cemented your ideas, your thought leadership, this is once you have come up with the stories and the points and the frameworks, this is the last thing, not the first thing.
AJV (03:37):
So don’t rush the process. There are plenty of ways to get content out into the world. You can blog, you can create video content, you can podcasts, you can host a podcast, you can guess on podcasts. You can do medium, you can put LinkedIn posts, like the list goes on and on and on. There are many ways for you to be testing and piloting your content before you go through the painstakingly expensive and time consuming process of writing a book. Okay? So that’s number one. Number two, you have to know the purpose and intent of your book before you begin, because that dictates how you write it, how you decide how to publish it, how you market it, how you sell it. Knowing how you want to use this book actually is the beginning of making a lot of decisions that will be very impactful for you, your brand and your business, right?
AJV (04:29):
Is this a traditionally published book because we just, we just added a whole bunch of time to the process between finding an agent, shopping a publisher, getting bids, writing the book, publishing the book, selling, marketing, the book, right? It just added a lot of time that you may not have been prepared for, right? Versus, hey, is this really more a statement of cementing my thoughts, ideas, frameworks for my business? So maybe traditional or hybrid is a better route? And then it’s like, okay, well if I actually want people to read it, like how am I gonna market it? Right? And all these different things matter. So knowing the purpose of the book, right? Is this your your life’s work? Or is this a, you know, a solidification of a set of ideas, but not your life’s work? Those things matter. Is this to support a business model or a coaching framework that’s more better to do in a self-publishing route? Or is this a a statement piece that you are using for credibility and notoriety and you’re going for, you know, a hybrid or a traditional knowing the purpose and the use of the book, not just the content within, but the purpose of it. Are you doing it to increase fees, expand your business? What are you doing it for? Matters a lot in how you write it, how you publish it, and who we are going to market and sell the book to. And then the last, but not the least is are you
AJV (05:56):
Willing to talk about this book for the next two years at minimum, nonstop ad nauseum, right? Are you in love with this topic enough that for the next two, or in some cases 10 or 20 or 50 years, are you willing to continue to talk about the stories and the points and the frameworks and the content for the next two 10 decades ahead of where you are? ’cause That’s what you need to be willing to do because in order to actually help people find the book or read the book, you have to talk about the book, speak about the book, interview about the book, go on podcasts, about the book. You have to post content and make videos and do all the things about the book, which means it needs to be content that is meaningful to you, that’s not going to drain you and be like, oh my gosh, I’m so tired of this.
AJV (06:53):
It should also be content that’s not extraordinarily trendy, right? And so this needs to be something that has some weight to it and that you can continue to talk about it. And I’ll give you two quick examples. My husband, Roy Vaden, his first book has now been out for almost 14 years. He still does the same keynote that he did 14 years ago when the book came out. Take the Stairs. The content of that keynote has not tra changed extraordinarily. So, I mean, he’s gotten better at delivering it. But the content there in and of itself is the contents of the book. And he still loves giving that keynote and telling those stories. In fact, he just released, I, I take the Stairs kids book called Be The Buffalo because it still resonates and it’s still meaningful and it’s still important. This was a piece of his life’s work.
AJV (07:44):
And it doesn’t matter that he printed that book, published it 14 years ago. It still as relevant today as it was then, if not even more so in our lives. And we find it so relevant. It’s like we, we want our kids to learn this. So we, we published be the Buffalo, which is a kid’s book. 14 years later, he is still doing the same talks, telling the same stories, sharing the same points on a piece of work that was done 14 years ago. So can you do that with this work? That’s how you know when you’re ready, right? And the sample the second example I was gonna give you was my husband’s second book Procrastinate on Purpose, which has now been out 10 years almost or even more so maybe 11 years. And it’s the same. It’s like he still gets comments on different frameworks in the book.
AJV (08:32):
And the Ted Talk is growing even though it’s now been out for 10 years plus. And it’s like he still gets booked to speak for that. He still loves talking about it. Why? Because it’s evergreen content, it’s life content, it’s not going away, it’s leadership, it’s productivity, it’s time management, it’s business. And he will be talking about these topics for the rest of his life. I guarantee you the fact that we’re now producing new versions of those works that is just proof. But over the course of time, it was started as a book and then it was a keynote. And now we have courses and there’s kids’ books now. Like it is content that continues to grow. Why? Because it is a part of who he is. And that is what you need to be considering when you go, am I ready to write this book?
AJV (09:20):
It should be work that you are still proud of and excited to talk about 10, 14 years later. And that you’re still adding to and adjusting and building things around because it’s evergreen. That’s how you know when you are ready to write the book, it’s the last thing you do. It’s not the first thing, it’s the conclusion, not the hypothesis. You know, the purpose and intent, the use of the book, and you’re gonna be willing to continue to talk about it for years and years to come. That’s how you know. So are you ready to write that book.
Ep 479: 3 Tips for Awkward-less Networking | April Garcia Episode Recap
RV (00:00):
You know how when you go to events and they give you a name tag and you always feel awkward meeting new people, I’m gonna share with you three simple steps in three different environments to make it easy for you to meet new people so that you can grow your business. All right? So first of all, let’s talk about events. What do you do at events? Well, here’s what you don’t do. I’m not a fan of walking up and saying, hi, I’m Rory, nice to meet you. Mm. Like, I always feel weird, and, and it’s not wrong to do that. It’s not bad to do it, but it just feels very abrupt and sharp. So lemme give you the three part formula that works really at any event or any in-person environment, anywhere you go, it’s compliment questions and then free compliment question and free. So here’s how it starts.
RV (00:53):
Start with a compliment. Don’t walk up and say, hi, my name is, walk up and compliment somebody on something. Hey, I love your smile. I love your hair, I love your shoes, I love your outfit. And if you can’t find something honest to compliment them on, then what you should do is comment on the environment, right? Rather than introduce yourself to the person, comment on the environment. So you would say like, man, it’s freezing in here. Or you know, do you have any idea what that food is? The the point is to break the ice of the conversation by not having such direct eye contact and such an, an abrupt opening to the relationship. So either compliment somebody on something genuinely, or comment on the environment. The second thing that you should do to meet new people is you should ask questions. This is the easiest secret tip of building relationships with new people.
RV (01:50):
And it takes all the pressure off of you when you feel like you have to meet people. Like you have to be somebody, you have to share something magnificent, or you have to like, show up and impress people. That’s gonna put pressure on you. And it’s also not the way to actually build relationships quickly. The way to build relationships quickly is to ask questions. Just simply ask questions. So where are you from? How did you find out about this? Have you been to this event before? Do you know? Who do you know here? Did you come with somebody? How did you hear about this? And then from that question, go to the next question to the next question to the next question. The key to meeting people is to not be so focused on yourself, but just be focused on asking great questions. Then how does this turn into creating new business for you? Well, that’s step three, which is offer something for free. Remember the formula, compliment questions, and free. That means offer something for free. Offer them free help, free advice, a free call. Offer them to, to connect
RV (02:58):
Them to somebody for free. A vendor, perhaps a friend of yours that might be useful for them, or a contact that you have. Or send them an article or send them a video or, or send them send them something, right? Give them something valuable that is free and it might just be free time with you, a free assessment, something like that. So we wanna be thinking about whenever you transition from a meeting somebody for the first time, usually you’re asking them questions. A lot of times that will show up as them asking you questions back. But when you transition into your business, think about what can you give them for free. That’s the, that’s the most gradual, safe, easy, smooth way to transition into talking about your business. And this works in person at events, it can work on an airplane, right? If you’re sitting next to someone on an airplane, you might feel awkward saying, hi, my name is, and, and immediately breaking the physical barrier of shaking hands, right?
RV (03:59):
Not everybody is prepared initially to, to make physical contact. They’re also not prepared to make eye contact. So if you instead compliment them and say, Hey, I love your shoes. Or hey, I love that show. If they’re, if they’re, if they’re, if they’re watching something on their iPad or comment on the situation, right? Like, comment on the airline, comment on how small the plane is, comment on the tray, comment on the flight attendant, comment on the environment as a way of breaking the ice. Then ask questions, then offer something for free that will work in any sort of in-person environment. The second place that you can really meet people, and you can follow this same three part process, is online on social media. So how do you build a relationship with somebody digitally in the interwebs on social media? Same exact formula, compliment question, and offer something for free.
RV (05:04):
So you show up and you leave a genuine compliment. Now it’s, if you just go to somebody’s profile and you comment on their post and you say, great post, they’re not gonna notice that. But if you write a genuine compli compliment as a comment on one of their posts, they’re gonna see it. I’m telling you, we work with some of the fam most famous personal brands in the world. These people have millions of followers. When you write genuine compliments, they see them. Here’s a secret tip. Realize nobody ever gets tired of hearing how awesome they are. Nobody, doesn’t matter how rich, how famous, how successful. You might think, oh my gosh, everyone tells ’em this. I’m telling you, there’s not a person in the world. Whoever gets sick of having other people tell them how
RV (05:56):
Awesome they are. So don’t do this in a fake way. Do it in a genuine way. Tell them what it is about them that you love. Tell them why you follow that person. Tell them what was awesome in the video or in the thing they just shared. And by the way, the other way to compliment people online is to share their content, right? You should retweet them. Or what do we call a retweet now for X? I don’t know. Rex them. I, I actually don’t know. But you can share their post, you can send it to a friend. And they’ll often see that as well. But leave a genuine compliment. Then if and when they respond to you, ask them a question. And this is a mistake that people make, is if they ever get a response from the person, they often immediately launch into their pitch of like, Hey, can, can I come on your podcast?
RV (06:52):
Or can I, can we go to lunch? Or can you know? They asking them for something? Don’t do that. Just ask them questions about something going on in their life. The key is to ask questions and not for those questions to be about something that they can do for you. And then the third thing is, if the opportunity presents itself, offer something for free. Now, I wanna say this, in the online world, where you wanna build relationships is not in the comments. You wanna do it in the dms. The, the goal of content is to create comments. The goal of comments is to create dms. And then once you have dms, then you can build offline relationships and then you can get stuff done. So you don’t wanna do this back and forth in comments. You wanna tell ’em, Hey you could leave a compliment publicly on their post.
RV (07:41):
And then if they respond, you can say, Hey, I just dmd you a question. And then move them into the dms. Ask them questions, go back and forth. And if the opportunity presents itself for some way for you to potentially, possibly, maybe might do business with them, do it in a way of offering them something for free. Give them free value. Don’t try to sell ’em something. Don’t try to pitch them on. You. Offer something for free. If you do that, then you have a chance of building the relationship. Now, the third place that you can meet people is through referrals. Referrals, referrals, referrals. I promise you that referrals from humans to other humans is the fastest way to build your business and to build relationships. And on this one, I’m just gonna give you one really quick line. One simple technique and tactic that works for asking with for referrals. And it all comes down to how you tee it up. The reason why most people are terrible at asking for referrals is because they think that if they ask for referrals, they’re going to come across somehow as needy or annoying or unsuccessful
RV (08:54):
Or weak. But in reality, you should be none of those things. People love to do business with friends. We all understand that we all prefer to do business by way of referral. So when you ask for referrals, I want you to use that line or to use this line that I’m gonna give you. And here’s the transition as you say, Hey, you may not realize this, but I really only prefer to do business with friends or friends of friends. And because of that, I was wondering if you might be open-minded to introducing me to, and then you explain the kind of people that you’re trying to meet. But that key transitional phrase is, is where the magic is. You may not realize this, but I really prefer to do business with friends or friends of friends. And so I was wondering if you might be open-minded to introducing me to people who are, and then you describe the type of people that you’re looking for.
RV (09:53):
If you can get past that part, if you can get past that awkwardness that, that opening moment, then there’s a good chance that your friends, your family, your active clients, your past clients will introduce you to people. They will refer you to people when you simply explain that’s how you prefer to do business. So there you have three different environments, live events, social media, and referrals. If you’re meeting new people for the first time, remember compliments questions and offer things for free. And if you’re asking for referrals, just explain that you prefer to do business with friends or friends of friends. Hey, if this video is valuable for you, make sure to hit the subscribe button and share this with somebody who you know in your life that needs some tips on meeting more people.
Ep 477: Entrepreneur Mindset | AJ Vaden Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
We’re gonna talk about mindset today. And specifically we’re gonna talk about the entrepreneur mindset. And I’ve got five quick things that I wanna hit on to help you develop a rock solid entrepreneur mindset. And even if you are not a, you know, definitive entrepreneur, I wanna create an entrepreneurial mindset that no matter what you do, what role you have or title you possess, that these five characteristics can go with you anywhere you go. Because having an entrepreneurial mindset really just means you have an ownership mindset. And I don’t mean ownership of a business, I mean ownership over a task, ownership over a person, right? In terms of like owning, like what you’re gonna do in order to develop, develop, and lead that person, it’s over a project, or it could be over a business, but it is an ownership mindset. That’s what I need mean by an entrepreneur mindset.
AJV (00:59):
So number one, build as you go. That’s the first thing. Don’t wait until it’s perfect. It’s not going to be, so you must build it as you go. There’s this great analogy, actually, I saw a picture of this on Instagram so, so many years ago, and it was a picture of an individual who had jumped off a cliff and they were building the airplane as they fell. And the, the caption read below the life of an entrepreneur, right? Building the airplane after you jump off the cliff. And that’s a little bit of the ownership mindset of like, no matter how it goes, I’m gonna own it. I’m gonna own the successes, own the failures, but I, most importantly, I’m going to own the process of building it as we go and knowing that it’s always going to have opportunity to improve and be better.
AJV (01:44):
And we will do so as we go. But I’m not going to wait to launch. I’m gonna own what I’ve got and I’m gonna go and I’ll make it better as we continue. Number two, be a salesperson first. The ownership mindset is the, the key to all business is to make more than you spend
AJV (02:59):
Companies. ’cause Other companies have said, my gosh, they’re better at selling this than we are. They have more influence than we do. They have become great salespeople. So in an ownership and an entrepreneur mindset, you have got to, to own and take on the abilities and the responsibilities of being a great salesperson for your company, your products and your services. Number three, grow only as fast as you can. Serve your community. IE your clients and your employees. Grow only as fast as you can. Serve your community. Some of the greatest stories of all time about companies who have had enormous growth in unbelievable timeframes and in a devastatingly sad story of how they imploded that’s most of the docuseries out right now are about that. And I won’t list any of them specifically, but there are story after story after story about this monumental mind blowing growth.
AJV (03:57):
Only to watch it come to a tumbling disaster. A pile of rubble in the end because they outgrew their ability to serve their customers in a good and decent way. Right? Now, that’s not just their own customers, that’s also your employees. Don’t outgrow your capacity to take care of your people. So if that means you need to slow growth down, slow it down so that you can do it right? You don’t have to grow fast. There’s no accolades and fast growth, although seemingly that’s what people talk about in the market often fast growth is worrisome to me of going, do you have the infrastructure in place? Like if you’ve grown that fast in that short amount of time, like, do you really have all the systems in place? Like, can I see a little bit more into the, you know, under the cover now, under the hood, grow only as fast as you can serve your people, your community.
AJV (04:51):
That’s your employees and your customers. Number four, hire a players only if they are not an A player, don’t hire ’em. You gotta have a players in every single role of your company. This whole idea of the weakest link, why do you have weak links? Why? Why do you have those? I have no idea. I’m not saying that we haven’t had weak links. I’m just saying like, be cognizant of hire a players. An A player can do the job of three C players. So hire one phenomenal person. Pay ’em every single thing that they’re worth and it will save you three other positions. Hire top talent. Hire A players. Don’t settle. Hire the person that can help you grow, help you take it to the next level. Hire top talent. Hire A players. I cannot say that enough on repeat. And then number five, focus on being better over bigger. This is one of my favorite stories to tell right now. And it’s funny ’cause I don’t even remember the book that I read this in last year but I, that’s
AJV (05:57):
Not true. I think it was called To Create, it was a book called, called to Create. And they were telling this amazing story about Truitt Kathy, who’s the founder of Chick-fil-A And it was in the late mid or mid to late 1990s. And there was apparently this, you know, once of kind of like once of a lifetime boardroom meeting with Truit Kathy, who I, I did not know personally clearly, but was known to be a very calm executive. But in this particular meeting they were meeting about a competitor company called Boston Market, who had come on the scene and was growing at an expedient rate, taking up massive market share. And they were on the track to being a a billion dollar company at this point. I think Chick-fil-A was maybe like $400 million. Don’t quote me on the facts here, I’m recalling from memory.
AJV (06:46):
But they were in this conversation about how all these other Chick-fil-A executives were wanting to talk about, well, how do we grow market share? We need to open more stores. We need to do this and do this. And uncharacteristically of Truitt Kathy, he bangs his fist on the table and he said, we’ll have no more talk of this. The only thing that we need to talk about is how do we become better? We don’t need to become bigger. We need to become better and let our audience demand that we become bigger. And this saying has become a mantra at Brand Builders Group because who says you need to be bigger? Who says scale is better? That’s not necessarily the case. And I love this story with Truitt Kathy, because less than a decade later, Boston Market had filed bankruptcy. But Chick-fil-A was now a billion dollar company.
AJV (07:41):
When you focus on becoming better at what you do, you force your customers to talk about you more in the best way. Better quality products, better quality team members, better quality experiences. That’s how you grow. That’s how you become bigger, better, makes you bigger. Bigger does not always make you better, but better, almost always makes you bigger. So focus on being better at what you do, not just being bigger. Focus on better teammates, better training, better experiences, better service, better programs, better products, better services, better, better, better. And then let your audience demand that you get bigger because they want so much of it.
Ep 475: 6 Tips to Scale the Profits of Your Personal Brand | Jeremie Kubicek Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help Mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started.
RV (00:34):
I want to share with you one powerful principle and six key questions that you can use to scale your personal brand revenue right away. And this is really what I more and more as time goes on, I really believe that this is the secret to making more money. And it’s not something that most people are doing, it’s just the thing that I see the people who are making a lot of money are doing. And what this concept is all based upon is the idea that most people are pursuing width rather than depth. They’re concerned about the width of their reach, they’re trying to get more followers and more subscribers and, and that kind of thing. But the people who are making money are focused not on the width of their reach as much as they’re focused on the depth of their impact, and they’re utilizing something that we have created or coined as fractal math.
RV (01:30):
That’s the, the, the fractal Math method as what we call it. And we didn’t create the concept necessarily, but we’ve kind of branded it as that. And we are teaching it formally in our Brand Builders Group membership to all of our members. And so this is the big idea, this is the big concept that I will share with you. Fractal Math is a principle that says that 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times what they have already invested in. So 10% of your customers will buy something that’s 10 times more than what they’ve already invested in, right? So the the simple math example or illustration that I used for this is, let’s say that you had a $30 offer. Okay? You had a a $30 product, a $30 book, let’s say and you got a thousand people to buy it.
RV (02:20):
If a thousand people buy a $30 offer, that’s $30,000. When most people think about doubling their revenue, they think about adding more customers, right? To go, okay, if I wanna add another, if I wanna add another 30,000 revenue, I need to add another thousand customers. But a new customer is the most expensive type of customer there is acquiring, you’ve probably heard the term CAC or cac, the cost customer acquisition cost. It’s how much does it cost to acquire a new customer? Because new customers are the most expensive thing. The most profitable customers are existing customers when they buy repeat business, that is the most profitable because you get to have new revenue without any of the CAC. So the concept here, fractal Math, says to focus on serving your existing customers. And instead of getting a thousand new customers, the, the fractal math says that 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times higher than what they’ve already invested.
RV (03:21):
So if you have a thousand people who bought a $30 product, then that means 10 per, that means a hundred people, which is 10% of the thousand, a thousand customers, 10% of those is a hundred, a hundred people would invest in a $300 product. So 10, you know, 10 times what they’ve already invested, they already bought 30 times 10 is 300. So one 10th of the audience will spend 10 times more than what they just spent. And now you have a hundred customers who are already in your database, who invested at $300 rather than 30. And $300 times a hundred is also 30 grand. So you doubled your revenue without adding a single new customer. And it continues, right? So you go, if a hundred people would buy a $300 offer, then that means that 10 people, 10% of a hundred is 10, 10 people would buy a $3,000 offer.
RV (04:13):
And that’s another 30 grand because $3,000 offer times 10 people is $30,000. And then that means that one person, ’cause 10% of 10 is one, one person would invest at $30,000 with you potentially. So that’s another 30,000. So that’s three sets of $30,000, a thousand people buying a $30 product, a hundred people buying a $300 product, 10 people buying a $3,000 product, and one person buying a $30,000 product, 30,000, 30,000, 30,000, 30,000. That’s $120,000. That means you have not just doubled your revenue, you’ve quadrupled your revenue, and you’ve quadrupled your revenue without adding a single new customer. And that is the most profitable way to do it. And so this is, this is one example When we say that we teach monetization strategy inside a brand builders group, right? Part of our spiritual gifting is making money. We are good at it, we are good at teaching people to do it, and it’s through helping them understand principles and concepts of money that are like this, that a lot of people don’t know.
RV (05:21):
So that’s the concept. The concept here is fractal math. 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times higher than what they’ve already invested with you. And another way of saying it at a principle is to say, focus not just on the width of your reach, but the depth of your impact. And so now I’m gonna give you the six key questions that we ask for to, to increase our monetization at Brand Builders Group by increasing our, our level of service to our clients. And there’s six of the same questions that we ask, you know, my private clients who, who you know, either come invest to spend two days with me, one-on-one, or they come to one of my Brand Mastery events, which are very, very small events that I host now that are just like five or 10 people.
RV (06:07):
And we spend two days together. And basically I fractionalize the cost of two days with me, one-on-one across like five to 10 people. And so it becomes much more affordable. And these are the kind of concepts that I’m helping walk them through, okay? So here are the six questions that will help you extract more revenue from your current customers. But I don’t wanna don’t just think about it like that. And this is what question number one is. Question number one is, how can I help my clients succeed faster? How can I help my clients succeed faster? That is something that you should be asking. This is not just how do I get more money out of people, right? That’s not it. It’s thinking in a service centered way. And that’s what these six questions are. These are six service centered questions that lead to scale, that lead to more profitability for your personal brand and really for any business.
RV (07:02):
Although we only focus on working with personal brands. So when you ask that question, the quality of your answers is determined by the quality of your questions. And so if you want different answers, you gotta ask different questions. And if you ask better questions, you’ll get better answers. And that’s why these questions are so important. How can I help my clients succeed faster? Remember, money follows speed. That’s a principle of money. The faster you can, you can get a result for somebody, the more they’re willing to pay you for that result. And the more people there are who are willing to pay you that money. So that’s a question you should be asking. How can I help my clients succeed faster? Number two, what can I offer to help my clients succeed in a deeper way? Right? So how do I, how, how can I serve them in a deeper way?
RV (08:01):
How can I give them more access to me? There’s a, a, a principle and a, a framework that we teach in monetization strategy in our, in our formal curriculum that’s called the services spectrum, which is basically this idea that as, as intimacy goes up, as, as, you know, proximity to the messenger goes up, the price goes up because you’re able to serve people in a deeper way, right? Like the most expensive thing someone can buy from brand builders group is two days with me, one-on-one that’s expensive, but that’s also the most value that I’m able to give. I can completely customize everything I’ve spent my life learning to one person’s business or one person’s strategy. And that’s what, you know, most of my big private clients, the Louis Howes, the Ed millet, the, you know, the, the Eric Thomas’, the, the, the Amy Porterfield, the Jasmine Stars, the Jim Quicks, right?
RV (08:47):
These are people that are private clients of mine where I’m able to work with them one-on-one, and I can help them create massive value. Some because of who they are and what they have. And, and, and some just because, you know, they’re massive action takers and they, they, they execute and they’re coachable. So how can you serve your clients in a deeper way? How can you give them more access to you? More access to you requires more of your time. If it requires more of your time, then you should, you should. It’s justifiable to collect more money for that. It’s also worth more money to people because you’re able to shorten the learning curve because they’ve got more custom solutions coming directly from you. As they get closer to you, the solutions become more custom to their unique situation and more applied to their specific questions.
RV (09:34):
And so it’s worth more, and it also is worth more because it takes more of your time. So there’s more opportunity cost to your time. So how can you help your clients? How can you serve your clients in a deeper way? How can you give them more intimate access to you? Number three, what tools can I create that make it easier for my clients to implement? What tools can I create that make it easier for my clients to implement? Right? So especially if you are some type of educator or you, you’re an expert, right? We, we serve mission-driven messengers. A lot of our clients are experts. They don’t all sell information like courses and eBooks. A lot of ’em are professional service providers, right? They’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re accountants, they’re chiropractors, their financial advisors, their real estate agents. But what tool can you create where the tool can help your clients succeed without you having to be there?
RV (10:30):
Especially what tools can you create that help them implement the things that you teach or implement the things that you ask them to do? The more that you can create those tools, the higher value you, you, you are providing because you’re moving them from just education to application. And remember, that’s another one of our principles that we say is that people don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application and tools accelerate the time, you know, it takes to, to implement it. You know, they, it compresses the amount of time that it takes to, to execute related lead. Number four, what vendor partnerships or vendor relationships can I form that I can refer my clients to that will help them execute, right? So maybe you can’t execute everything for all your clients we’re that way, right? Like we have over 800 clients in our, in our flagship membership program now, right?
RV (11:23):
Like, we’re serving 800 people. Our vision when we started the company was a thousand messengers. We’re getting really close to that. And we have like another 1500 private clients that just do, you know, private two day sessions with us. Well, the, the question is, is to go, well, we can’t write the copy for all, you know, 2000 of our clients. We can’t build every funnel for 2000 clients. We can’t ever, every video, you know, launch every podcast, manage every speaking career, do every single book launch write every single speech, write every joke. We can’t do that for all 2000 clients. And so we are going, what tools can we create to make it more accessible? And then also, where are their strategic vendor relationships? And I think one of the most valuable parts of our community when someone becomes a, a, a paying member of Brand Builders group is we curate a community of vendors, right?
RV (12:13):
So it’s like you need people to write copy, graphic design, do video editing, do websites, you know, build funnels like, you know, do research studies. Be a literary agent, book you for speaking like what all, you know, PR services, all of the things that personal brands need that we can’t provide. We’re just not that big, at least not yet. We go, well, let’s, let’s let’s curate vendors to introduce you to. And we do referral fees with the vendors, right? We pay them when they refer people to us, and they pay us when we refer people to them. So it’s a win-win win for everybody. Number five, big question. Where do my clients most often get stuck when they’re trying to implement the things that I teach? Right? So that’s a big question. Where do my clients most often get stuck when they’re trying to implement the things that, that you teach to them, right?
RV (13:06):
So you know what to do, you know how to do it. You’ve been doing it your whole life, your whole career, or some big chunk of it, right? And so what you gotta identify and your current clients well, and your past clients can help you do this, is go where do they fall apart, right? Where does, where does everything fall off the tracks? Where do they, it’s like they, they get excited and inspired, but then when they get to, you know, blank, it all just disintegrates and they lose all their momentum. You have to identify those roadblocks, those bottlenecks, and then you have to provide support to them. And then question number six, what problem can I solve for my clients? That never goes away. What, what problem can I solve for my clients that never goes away? And I give you example of some of the ones that we do at Brand Builders Group.
RV (13:51):
People come for our content, right? They come for our expertise, they come for our principles. They come because we give them a world class education that, in my opinion, exceeds the practical value by a long shot of what you would get from, you know, a a hundred thousand six, multi six figure MBA. And we teach them how to apply things quickly and make money for an a, a, a fraction of what something like that would cost. They come for the content, but they stay for the community. See, people leave college, they get their degree and they leave here. They stay because there’s, there’s community, there’s relationships, there’s joint ventures there’s friendships that are formed, right? There’s accountability that’s developed. They’ve got access not just to me and aj, but to our strategists and, and to the other clients. We also provide a lot around data and trends.
RV (14:41):
So our clients get insider access to like, what’s working right now. Not what worked five years ago, or just what worked five years ago, but what worked right now. Another thing that we have started doing for our members is pr. Our members need pr. They need publicity. They need to get in front of more stages. They need to get on more podcasts. They need to be on more YouTube shows. They need to be doing more Instagram lives. They need to be doing more, you know, onstage speaking breakouts, virtual summits, et cetera. Well, we are not a PR service, so you can’t hire us to book you for pr. We don’t do that. But what we figured out is, wow, we have 2000 clients. Almost every one of our clients, e every one of our clients has some type of a platform. They have podcasts, YouTube channel, they have events, they do stages, they do summits.
RV (15:27):
And so what we, we hired a full-time person to do nothing but connect our members to one another. So it’s an internal PR service inside our own community. And so people are going, wow, I’m paying for education, but I’m getting community and I’m getting these tremendous PR opportunities because I’m sitting next to people at your events who write for Forbes and do big summits and have huge podcasts. And all of them have social media followings, like is PR and then related is gigs. This is the next thing that we’re, we’re moving towards is helping our clients actually get paid gigs. And that’s like the new emerging area for us. So those are problems we can solve that never go away. So there you have it, one key principle, fractal math, and six key questions to ask to help you scale the revenues of your personal brand much faster.
RV (16:20):
Don’t be so consumed with the width of your reach that you ignore the depth of your impact. If you want more strategies like this, and you’re serious about taking your personal brand to the next level, make sure you go to free brand call.com/podcast to request a call with our team. If you’re not ready for that, that’s all right. Hang on here. Stay tuned next week, share this episode with someone who you think it would be valuable for. Come talk to me on social media and we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 473: How to Know When You Are Ready to Launch | Melanie Ann Layer Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So the question of today is this. How do you know when you’re ready to launch? And here’s the answer, you know you’re ready to launch when you know that your product or service has the ability to help someone else, the end. You see, so often in life and in business, we complicate things because we think they should be more complicated. We think it should mean more and be more complex and have more steps. And the truth is
AJV (00:54):
And at some point it makes sense, but you don’t need it to launch. You don’t need funnels or webinars or a podcast or a big email list. You can have those things and at some point I encourage you that you should, but you don’t need it to launch you. See, you also, you don’t need lots of social media followers or fancy graphics or brand guidelines or fonts and email marketing. You can have those things and one day you should, but you do not have to have them to launch. The only thing that you need to launch is a product or a service that has the ability to help someone else. The end
AJV (01:49):
It is your obligation. It’s your responsibility to launch because you know that someone is out there who needs what you have, they need you and the way that only you can do it and the way that only you can serve them because you’re you and all those other things come with a price and with time and energy and resources and there’s a time and a place for everything. All I’m saying is that those aren’t requirements to launch. They are supplemental, they are ancillary. And at some point they do feel like in order to scale to grow, they become more necessary. They’re just not necessary or essential to launch. The only thing that you need to launch is knowing and believing that your product has the ability to get someone else results in whatever it is that you do. Now, that believing part is really critical.
AJV (02:42):
‘Cause That means you believe it. You believe it enough to talk about it. You believe it enough to tell people about it. You believe it enough to have sales calls and ask for their business. You believe it enough to go speak on stages. And those are stages of one 100 or 1000. It’s to go to the networking meetings. It’s to show up and go, I know this can help you. And that comes with that inner conviction that you know, you can get someone else results ’cause you’ve done it before. You’ve done it for yourself, you’ve done it for someone else, and you know how to help somebody else experience those level those levels of results. That is what is required to launch. If you know that you can help people, then you are ready right now today. Even if you don’t have a way to collect money, even if you don’t have a way to process it, even if you don’t have a fancy course or PDFs, if you know you can help someone, then you are ready right now.
AJV (03:42):
Now that’s not to disvalue or undervalue. The importance of all those other things, systems and processes and technology and having ways to collect money are important. So don’t hear what I’m not saying. What I am saying is that you’re ready today. You don’t need to be perfect. It never will be perfect. And you don’t need fancy websites and lots of followers. All you need is knowing that you have the ability to help someone else. And when you know that you are ready. And you see, here’s the thing. I actually heard this quote and on a conversation I had on the influential personal brand podcast just a couple of weeks ago with Melanie Laer. And I loved what she said and she said, and I don’t know if she came up with this or she heard it somewhere else, but man, it has stuck with me.
AJV (04:27):
And she said, here’s the thing, is you’re gonna wonder how to do it until you wonder how you did it. And that is the beauty of moving forward in conviction and in belief of just knowing like, I don’t have to have all of that stuff. No, you can, but it’s not necessary in order to launch. And sometimes you’re gonna wonder like, how is this ever gonna work? How am I going to do this? Until one day you wake up and you’re like, how did this ever work? How did this happen? Like, how am I here? Like how is it that I am looking at the answered prayers and the hopes and dreams and the goals that were of my past and I’m living them today? ’cause You will ask the question, I wonder how it’s gonna happen. I wonder how I’m gonna figure this out.
AJV (05:09):
I wonder how I’m gonna do it until one day it just changes to I wonder how I did it. I wonder how this all happened. And it’s because you move forward in faith, you move forward in action. You don’t procrastinate, you don’t wait because you know that you are ready. When you know you have the ability to help someone else and you’re not afraid to talk about it, you’re not embarrassed to talk about it. Now, I’m not saying to be prideful and ego ridden and talk about everywhere you go that and be self-promotional. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is though you have a deep unwavering conviction that what you do helps other people and you have proof. And when you feel that you are ready, let’s go. That’s how you know you’re ready. So when
AJV (05:56):
Are you ready to launch? You know you’re ready to launch when you know that your products and service can help other people. So are you ready?
Ep 471: 4 Techniques to Make Your Content Go Viral
RV (00:04):
So I’m gonna share something awesome with you today. I’m gonna share with you four techniques to make your content go more viral. And the reason I’m sharing this is because I’ve spent a lot of time learning about this in the last several months. And if you’re new to this podcast or if you’re new to following me, you won’t know any different. But if you’ve been here for a while, you know that especially if you’re one of our brand builders group members, you’ll know that we don’t put a lot of stock into things like social media or a lot of time upfront into social media. And the reason why is because we know that building a real business is much more profitable. Focusing on systems, developing people, creating use, useful content, having automation and you know, follow up and, and these kinds of things that aren’t as sexy that you don’t hear about as much in the world today.
RV (01:00):
But you know, generating referrals speaking on stages, those are the things that actually are gonna generate meaningful or significant income in your pocket quickly. But there is this vanity of going viral that everybody is chasing. And you know, then they’re surprised when they don’t actually make much money from it. And so we just don’t focus on social media as much, right? Early on. But if you’ve, if you’re one of our members, you know that in our brand builder journey, we, we talk about doing the, there’s a, there’s a, people sometimes do the right things, but in the wrong order, right? They do the right thing at the wrong time. And the sequence matters a lot, particularly if you wanna scale a really significant multi seven or eight figure business. Now, that all said, we hit eight figures last year as a company, and we have spent five years perfecting our craft and creating our curriculum and building our systems and training our people, and doing all of those things.
RV (02:03):
And so what we have done is we are now set up to scale. We are set up to really rapidly grow. And so now all we have to do is go out and grow our audience. And so we are now turning our focus and our attention to learning some of these things that are more about scaling your audience. Because we’ve scaled our people, we’ve scaled our offerings, we’ve scaled our systems, we’ve scaled our team, we’ve scaled our technology, and so now we’re really ready to go out and scale our audience. And so that’s what I’m gonna share with you a little bit about what I’ve been learning in that front. And, and also to kind of say like, if you’ve been following me for a while watch out. Here we come, right? Watch how, watch how fast we’re gonna start to grow on social media and things.
RV (02:49):
And that’s because we can afford to do things now. We can afford to hire the team. We can afford to, to, to buy traffic if we need to, to, we can afford to produce high quality content. We can afford to invest in education to grow our audience because we have a backend business that can pay for it, right? If you know anything about how we teach paid traffic, which we don’t really talk much about here on the podcast, that’s really for members only. But we talk about how the, the person who wins the click is whoever can afford the most to pay for the click. And so the key is to not actually spend so much time just trying to build the audience or dropping a bunch of money into ads, is to build something on the backend that is very profitable so that you can afford to go buy traffic so that you can afford to go buy awareness.
RV (03:37):
And that’s basically what we spent five years doing. That said, I know that many of you’ll be excited to be learning about, you know, some of the strategies and techniques that we are learning to go viral. And I’m gonna share with you four of them today that are really important. That will make a huge difference for any of you, regardless of, of whether or not you have that backend system, and you have that, that clear personal brand, and you have that uniqueness and, and you really are building things the right way. Or if, you know, you’re just trying to get more views on your videos, and that’s what you, you, you know, or your, or your podcast or whatever your YouTube. And so either way this is, this is gonna be great. All right? So let me walk you through these. So the first one is content selection secrets.
RV (04:22):
Content selection secrets. A huge part of going viral is knowing what type of content is going to go viral. What kind of topics are going viral? What are, in other words, what are people already interested in that they are naturally sharing, that they are likely to share? And you might say, well, okay, but how do I know what the whole world is interested in? How do I know what people are likely to share? And that is the great question. And the answer is actually much simpler than you might realize. It is to watch what other content is going viral and to recreate your version of that same content. When we teach media strategy we referenced, you know, a term that David Meerman Scott created years ago called Newsjacking. And he said, if you wanna get featured in the news, what you do is you watch what is breaking news, and then you produce content on that same story, but with your slant, your expertise, your angle on that topic, because it will get picked up by the media that’s breaking news.
RV (05:32):
Well, this sort of viral drafting as I sometimes I think of it as like drafting is you’re, you are figuring out which topics are already going viral, and then you’re gonna draft off of those. So you’re not gonna copy them. You’re not going to, like, you’re not gonna just take a, a viral video and post it on your feed. That’s actually against many of the, the terms of many of these social media outlets, although people do it all the time. What, what I’m gonna say is watch for, for topics that are going viral in your niche and then create your version of it. So how do you do that? Well, there’s some simple ways. One is look at what’s showing up in your explore page. Look what is showing up in, in the trending section in YouTube, you can simply go look at a video and look at how many views a video has compared to how many subscribers the channel has.
RV (06:30):
If it has way more views than there are subscribers in the channel, you know, that piece of content is performing very well. There’s also lots of other third party tools that you can use to do this research for you. We talk about those in our membership program. But, but, but you can watch on what’s recommended for you. Like all of these platforms recommend content and push content. You know, in YouTube there’s like a whole panel down the side that will say, you know, you know, recommended next or, or watch this next. Those are all videos that are being recommended because they’re holding people’s attention, and that’s what the, the platform wants. And so those videos are performing well, and so they’re recommending those to more people, which, so you have to just pay attention. You have to like open your eyes. You know, when we say the next level of thinking or the next level of results requires the next level of thinking, it’s like your eyes have to be opened to a, a new way of viewing the world.
RV (07:23):
And, and this is happening all around you, and you’re probably just not paying attention to it. You’re not seeing it. So you need to look for that. And then you look for the topics that lend themselves to your expertise, to your niche, to your industry, or that you have something to say and you kind of recreate it in your own style, in your own voice. That is how you create viral content is, is basically recreating your own version of content that has already been proven to go viral by other people, right? So that’s content selection. And then that’s the first technique. Now, each of the next three techniques are all gonna be about hooks, okay? We’re gonna talk about visual hooks, text hooks, and audio hooks. In order to teach you each of those, you need to understand what a hook is. And this has been one of the most frustrating parts of my journey as it relates to kind of organic marketing and social media marketing is so many people say, you gotta have a hook.
RV (08:28):
You gotta start with a hook. You need a great hook. That’s a great hook. But nobody can define what in the freaking heck an actual hook is. Like, what does that mean? What is a hook? Like, I know the concept is that it hooks people attention, it hooks people’s attention, but how, like, what’s the formula for creating a hook? And I now, after studying this, you know, for a couple years, I think I found the answer. And I think it is insanely simple. And I think even the people who teach it, they can’t articulate what it is. They know what it is, and they’re able to replicate it, and that’s why they grow. But they actually can’t articulate it in a way that they could teach it to somebody else. And that’s what’s been so frustrating is, is, is figuring out how, what is, what is a hook?
RV (09:20):
What does that mean? What is a hook? And when I was in Toastmasters, when I started my professional speaking career, Toastmasters used to have this formula for a speech, okay? Not for videos, but for speech. And they said, and its formula’s been around for, you know, probably centuries, but at least decades. And they said, the formula for a great speech is tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, tell them, and then tell ’em what you told ’em. Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, and then tell ’em what you told them. And that’s, that’s what the formula was for a great speech. What I’m realizing now is that what a hook is, is that first part. Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell them. So many people will start a video by just saying like, you know, here’s something I was thinking about the other day.
RV (10:08):
Well, that’s a random thought. Instead, what you wanna do is make the first words out of your mouth on the video telling the people exactly what you’re about to teach them, right? So you don’t wanna pontificate and flounder and mess around. You wanna say, here’s four ways to make your content go viral. And then it’s like, okay, one, I’m gonna teach you 1, 2, 3, 4. But the opening line should be, here’s four techniques that will help you go viral, right? I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you, or I’m telling you what I’m about to teach you. That’s the hook, right? I had my first con, my first social media content. I mean, my Ted Talk has gone viral and I studied TED Talks, right? So that, that’s gone viral. But in terms of like just creating organic content, I finally had a, a, a a, a social media piece go viral.
RV (11:03):
And it was when you, you know, I told the, the story of how someone stole $40,000 from me and for me and aj, and that was the opening line. I, I said, someone just stole $40,000 from me, and I want to tell you what they did. So it doesn’t happen to you, right? I’m telling them what I’m about to tell them, or I’m telling them what I’m about to teach them. I promise you, if you, if you focus on making the opening three to five seconds of your content and be very clear of just telling them what you’re about to teach them, your content is gonna perform exponentially better, exponentially better. So that’s the big idea. Now, let me teach you, you know, I promise you four techniques to make you go viral. So all three of these next techniques are related to hooks, but there’s three different type of hooks I want you to focus on.
RV (11:55):
Visual hooks, text hooks, and audio hooks. So a visual hook is when you hold something or you show something visual like you could be holding a prop or you could be, you could be doing anything that is different than just a talking head. It could be where you are. The, the where you’re behind. It could be something you’re wearing. It could be something you’re holding, but it is, it is something like visual that the eye can see to go, oh, this piece of content is going to explain this thing. Why am I standing here? Or why am I holding this? Or why am I doing x? That’s a visual hook. The visual hook is a signal that I’m about to tell you something related to that visual element, and that serves as a hook. So that’s visual hooks. Then you wanna use text hooks.
RV (12:53):
Text hooks are actually the easiest is to make sure the onscreen texts, like the, the, the, not what you say, but, but what you, what they see, that text that they see visually says what you’re about to teach them. So if this were a video, it would say four techniques to make you go, make your content go viral. And it would be titled that, and the text would be on the screen. It would also be the first line of your caption. And then the third type of hook is an audio hook. An audio hook is what you actually say, assuming it’s a video or a podcast where there is a spoken word element as you say. You know what I’m gonna share with you four ideas to make your content go more viral. So they’re seeing a visual element, they’re reading a text, a description, and they’re hearing an auditory description, all of which are three different types of hooks, A visual hook, a text hook, and an audio hook, right?
RV (13:55):
Lemme say that again. You’re giving them, they’re, they’re, they’re seeing a visual element, they’re reading a text description, and they’re hearing an auditory explanation. So they’re seeing a visual hook, they’re reading a text hook, and they’re hearing an auditory hook. I promise you, if you start your content with those three elements, and especially if you’ve, you’ve made a content selection, a strategic content selection, your content will go more viral. So there you have it, four techniques that will make your content go viral. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please make sure you leave a review for me on iTunes or wherever you listen to the show, and share this episode with someone who you think will benefit from it. That’s how you can pay us back and really help us. We, it’s what keeps this podcast going. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 469: How To Cultivate Your Community | Lindsey Schwartz Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
AJV (01:04):
The second one, I want you to think about it in terms of client relationships, right? So these are the people who are paying for your products and services. These are your customers, right? And how do we think about community in that realm? And then the third category is I want you to think about community in terms of your team. And these could be full-time employees. These could be part-time contractors, and anywhere between, but community also happens within your company, within your organization. And I want you to think about it and those three different formats, because it doesn’t matter where you are. One of those fits
AJV (01:56):
So it doesn’t matter. So I just want you to think about this as you head into this conversation of which of those buckets am I gonna filter through with this information, right? And maybe it’s all three but I would encourage you to pick one for this first round lesson of which of these is this most closely apply to me? And where I am right now? Is it my overarching just community in general that would be more personal? Is it my clients, my customers, or is it my team? Right? Whether contractors or employees, doesn’t really matter. So first highlight is knowing the difference between audience and community. And I thought this was so wise. And so right on where Lindsay said that you have to think about your audience is all about connecting with you, but community is about helping your audience members connect with each other. And that really is so powerful because when you, when anyone thinks about how do you grow a scalable business, it’s you have to remove yourself from the center of
AJV (02:58):
It, right? And at some point it’s gotta grow beyond you. And that means that people are now connecting and communing and collaborating with and without you. And that could be, again, personally, professionally, and in terms of your team or your customer base. So that’s the first thing, is just knowing that an audience, you know, in this regard is thinking about your customers, right? This could be online followers, offline customers, doesn’t matter. But an audience is that one-to-one relationship. Whereas a community is how do we take all of our customer or potential customer relationships and start connecting them with each other so it’ll go so much further beyond you. You’re just the conduit of these relationships. You’re the host of the party, right? You’re the person who’s just sending out the invitations. But you’re not expected to entertain or talk to every single person the entire time at a party, right?
AJV (03:53):
You bring people together who are going to talk amongst themselves, who are going to connect and network, interact among themselves. Same thing happens in our personal life. Same thing happens within our team. And the same thing happens in our customer base. That’s the first thing. Second thing, create the culture of people that you actually want to attract. You know, tons of much smarter people than I am talk about culture, but one thing that I believe is that culture should attract or repel people
AJV (04:49):
But you want people to resonate with that. And the best way you can do that is you have a well established and a firm foundation of the culture of people that you want to attract. And so I, in my conversation with Lindsay Short, she said, so how do you do that? There’s two thi two quick things that I would love to share that she shared. Number one is ask yourself, what do you want to unify people around, right? So when you think about rallying the troops, what is that? You know, mor cry, right? That rallying mission that everyone is coming together because they all believe in the same thing. They all want the same thing. That would be the first thing. Second thing is ask yourself, who is the aspirational person that my community wants to become, right? So is it they’re all trying to become better at wealth management. Maybe you’re a financial advisor. Maybe they’re, they’re trying to become better moms. Maybe you you are very much in the business of helping support moms or working moms or parents or dads, whatever, right? Maybe it’s for the aspiring entrepreneur, maybe it’s for the established entrepreneur, whatever.
AJV (05:57):
Just decide who it is, right? In order for you to attract these people, you have to know who they are and then where to find them, right? And that, that’s a huge part of just establishing like, this is the culture of the people that we wanna attract. It’s like, you know, at Brand Builders Group, we say that we serve mission driven messengers. We want to attract a culture of people who are unified around this idea of mission over money, and that you make money as a byproduct of serving people well, of living out this mission, of having a message that is worth sharing and having the courage to share it, right? That is what we’re trying to unify people around. And the aspirational person that our community wants to become is they want to become that person who is a conduit of good change in the world.
AJV (06:49):
They believe that their message has the power to change someone’s life, right? That is who we want to attract. And if we do a good job at that, then people will come into our community and go, wow, I’m so happy I found you. Or they’ll go, whoa, y’all are whack. I’m outta here. And that’s okay. And we have to be okay with that because we have well defined bound. We have well-defined boundaries of who we are trying to track attract, because we know the culture of who we are. And I can just speak personally, the same thing goes for the people on our team. The people that we are attracting to work at Brand Builders Group also go, man, I wanna, I wanna be about something that’s not just about money in my banking account. I wanna be about something that is bigger than me.
AJV (07:31):
I wanna be a, a play a small part in something huge. That’s who we’re attracting, right? And I can say that part is working great. Our people are amazing. I feel utterly blessed and ignorant
AJV (08:27):
And, okay, I’ll go do that on LinkedIn later. It’s like, no. Like right now, what are creative ways, and not even just creative ways, what are ways,
AJV (09:11):
So our people have physical locations since we’re virtual to go and connect and brainstorm and ideate. We’re having quarterly social events. And these are just ideas with our team within our client community, right? Brain Builders Group community. Who is the best community in the whole world? Shout out to all of you. It’s, we spent an entire year building an app in an integrated way, a one place, you know, stop for you to ask questions get on live trainings, network, have chats, have a social feed have topic specific forums, all these different things. And it’s like within this one place, they have tons of ways of connecting. They can hop on virtual training calls, they can hop on networking calls. They can be a part of meetups. They can do forum conversations, which are again, like vertical conversations around certain topics.
AJV (10:00):
They can just chat with each other in the social feed, kind of like a Facebook group. They can have one-on-one chat conversations right in the app. And this was a huge undertaking because we said there’s so many different ways for people to connect If we don’t figure out how to consolidate, and that was the word for us, consolidate these ways, we’re gonna lose people, right? They’re gonna be so confused and so overwhelmed. They’re not gonna do anything. And that’s what I mean by tactically sufficient, right? So it’s one thing to go, you can, you know, hop on this zoom call, you can go to the Facebook group, you can go to, it’s like you can, but most don’t
AJV (10:51):
Now that’s all digital. We also do 48 different virtual events. That’s not gonna work for everybody. We do six in person, not gonna work for everyone. So you just have to take some of these ideas and go, how could I implement something that would help my community connect with each other? It could be a free Facebook group, it could be Zoom meetups, it could be client appreciation events. It could be virtual. That could be virtual or in person. You could do a variety of things. You could also just go through your client Rolodex and go, who should meet each other? It could be as free and as manual as that, or have an app, right? So there’s all different things. The point is, is what are you doing to help your community connect with more than just you, but help them to connect with each other? And that’s what turns an audience into a fully alive and engaged community.
Ep 467: 8 Best Ways to Grow Your Podcast | Hala Taha Episode Recap
RV (00:09):
I wanna share with you my eight favorite techniques for growing your podcast. This is coming off my interview from Hala Taha, my friend talking about some of the technical sides and some of the, the detailed sort of tactical things that you can do to grow your podcast. And if you didn’t listen to the interview that her and I did, you have to go listen to this. Like, the interview blew my mind. There was so much about the world of podcasting that I did not even know. So what I’m gonna share with you are sort of like the eight conceptual things that have grown our podcast, right? And this podcast is the second time that we’ve grown a podcast to over a million downloads. And we only started this one a few years ago. So here we go. Let’s dive in real quick.
RV (00:55):
I’m just gonna give them to you the eight, my eight favorite tips for building a great podcast. So number one is appear on other podcasts as a guest. That is for sure. The fastest way to grow your podcast is to appear as a guest on other people’s shows. I remember interviewing Jordan Harbinger on this podcast. We actually talked about this. He started a show many years ago called The Art of Charm, grew it to millions and millions of downloads left the show or lost the show, and then started his own show, the Jordan Harbinger Show. And he rebuilt the whole thing like in a matter of a year. And the way he did it was by appearing on other people’s shows, like, so that is the fastest way. And part of that, right, is because people want to stay in the platform they’re already in.
RV (01:43):
Like, it’s harder to move somebody who’s like an Instagram follower to follow you on a podcast or a YouTube subscriber to like follow you on Facebook. People like to stay in the format that they are in. Now, you wanna try to move everyone, obviously, to your email list. But anyways, moving people from one podcast to another is much easier than moving somebody from some other platform to your podcast. So guest on other people’s show, which leads to both number two and three in my list, which are strategies for how to achieve, number one, to get book on number on other people’s shows. So number two, strategy is to help book all of your guests from your show onto other people’s shows. Yes, that that’s, I’m, I said that correctly, that one of the best ways for you to grow your podcast is for you to spend time and energy helping all of your guests who come on your show to get booked on other shows. Now, at first you might go, why? Like, how does, how does that work? Like how does that make sense? How does it grow my show? The reason it grows your show is because it causes you to network naturally with other podcasters,
RV (02:59):
And that forces you to build relationships with other podcasters, and you add value and you build relationships with all of your guests. So helping your podcast guests get booked on other shows is one of the fastest ways that you can build a relationship with somebody. And so what happens is they, you become friends, and so they start referring other guests to be on your show. And they start fu referring you to be on other shows, because when they go on shows, the the shows they’re off and on will ask ’em and they’ll say, Hey, who, who, who should have me on? Who, who show should I be on? And who should I have on this show? Which leads me to number three which is asking, asking every time you’re on a podcast as a guest, say, are there any other podcasts that you think I would be a good fit for?
RV (03:51):
That’s what you want to ask every time that you’re a guest. And similarly, when you’re the interviewer and you interview someone on your show, you should always ask them, who else do you know that would be a great fit for this show? Right? You gotta make the ask. You gotta make the ask. So that’s really, really key. Now, number four, here’s the secret to getting big guests. Okay? The secret to getting big guests is to offer them help in their time of need. Okay? So on any given day, a a an invite for a celebrity to come on a podcast is sort of an annoying, disruptive thing that they have to say no to or turn down, or they say yes, and it kind of throws ’em off the rhythm, right? Some, some, for a lot of high profile people, that’s, that’s how it occurs.
RV (04:44):
It’s like, I, I I’m not in podcast mode, so you don’t really wanna ask for that if you don’t already have a relationship or a warm referral or introduction to them. So what you wanna do is wait for their time of need, right? And you go, ah, they just had a book launch come out, or they just had a new TV show come out, or they just, they just, you know, they’re doing something right and you’re keeping an eye on the, the guest that you really want. I call this the Gretchen Rubin story because this is how Gretchen Rubin and I genuinely became friends. Like I for years admired her and thought she was so great and, and, you know, both academic and, you know, and also like in the personal development world and just really sweet and a fantastic writer. And, and so, you know, I waited until she had a book coming out, which is the easiest time to do it, right?
RV (05:29):
Everybody wants to go on shows when they have their book coming out. So I almost always wait until they have a book coming out, and that’s when I’ll ask them, because that’s when they’re most likely to say yes. In fact, here’s a little advanced ninja tip from one of our brand builders, group strategists. This is Matt LaBree. So Matt, this is a shout out to you brother. What he does for his show is he actually looks on Amazon at all the books that are scheduled for publication in like the next three months. And he, that’s how he picks his guest to come on his show. So is so smart. He’s getting them even before their new book comes out, because that’s when they’re doing all of their pre-launch prep. And he’ll make a commitment to say, Hey, let me interview you before your launch and I will help you during your book launch.
RV (06:15):
I’ll publish this episode on your launch. Relatedly, the other thing you wanna do with big guests is, is promise them that you’ll do the full court press on promotion. Tell ’em, you know, I’ll email my whole list. I’ll, I’ll post multiple times on social, like, I’ll tell everybody about you. And that’s a big deal because even if there’s a really big podcast that might not perform as well for someone as a small podcast where the host is super enthusiastic about the guest and willing to like, promote heavily the guest being on their show. So that’s the key to getting big guests, is help them in their time of need and, and promise to do a full court promotional, pro press for them, and then, and then do it. Relatedly number five. So here is another simple step any podcaster can do that we so often overlook.
RV (07:11):
Email your list every time you publish a new podcast. Email your list and tell them you have a new podcast. And if you think that’s emailing them too often, then I would say, well, then your podcast must not be that good, right? Nobody gets annoyed at like having too much like valuable information that’s hyper relevant to them being sent to them. So, and podcasts take a lot of work to, to produce and schedule the time and prepare for the interviews and find the guests and, you know, record and edit and blah, blah, blah. So what I want you to do is make sure that you don’t overlook the step of emailing and telling your people like, Hey, we have a new show, a new episode that just went live. You gotta check it out. And if you’re publishing your podcast on YouTube, it’s especially important that you, you email and you push traffic to your YouTube video the moment it goes live, like the moment it’s published, because part of the YouTube algorithm is a affected by how quickly a video is getting views.
RV (08:17):
You can, you can force that by driving social and you, you know, your, your email and your social list directly to YouTube to sort of spike the algorithm. So make sure you’re doing that. Number six, make it easy for your guests to promote their appearance. Make it easy for your guests to promote their appearance. How do you do that? Basically by giving them beautiful assets that make them look like the star from when they were on your show. So think about this for a second. Everybody has to feed the social media beast, right? Like anyone who is, you know, a con, a mission-driven messenger of any type and is like, very few people love being on social media every day. So it’s a chore that we all have to do, is we have to put out relevant content on social. So if you can create an asset that’s not about you so much, and not about your show, like take a back seat and highlight your guests.
RV (09:22):
Make your guest the star of the post, draw attention to your guest and give them assets that they can promote. Or even if they won’t promote ’em, hopefully you can, you can post it and you can tag them. And a lot of times they’ll share your post from their post post. We also related to this, we email our guests every time the show goes live. That’s an important step here, is just alerting them that, hey, like, we prerecorded this show two weeks ago, or two months ago, it’s going, it just went live. And we let ’em know like, Hey please review first of all the page, make sure that we didn’t spell anything wrong. You know, make sure that it looks the way you want it to. If there’s any changes, let us know. And also, here’s an asset if you, if it’s valuable to you, this is one of the highlights from the interview where we thought you really looked like a star.
RV (10:16):
We, we’ve gone ahead and edited it for you and put it together. But it has to look more like their branding than your branding. No one’s gonna share something that looks like your logo and your show and all that. You gotta take a backseat if you want them to share it, right? You can share it. You make your own assets that are more about your branding and you’re featuring them to your audience. But if you want your guests to share it, you, the asset needs to look more like them and less like you. So give your, give your guests assets to help them promote, make it easy for them to promote. Number seven, consistency. Consistency, consistency, consistency, right? I, I could not put this list together and not talk about the importance of just being consistent. Almost every single podcast does not have linear growth.
RV (11:07):
It has exponential growth. It’s it’s the hockey stick curve. It starts slow, slow, slow. And I would say you should consider publishing your podcast for a year and not even look at the stats, because that’s how long it takes to even start to begin to get traction. But like, if you’ve been publishing for six months and you look at your stats, you’re probably gonna be depressed and deflated. But if you keep going for like another year and 18 months in, it’s gonna start to catch flight. And by two years it’s gonna be become significant after two and a half or three years. If you’re doing all of these things, your podcast is gonna be a full out asset that produces leads and credibility and trust for you for the rest of your life. It’s gonna be the greatest door opener you have for networking to high profile relationships, to book deals, to speaking engagements to clients to just attracting friends, to just making an impact in the world around the world globally. If you just stick with it, A huge part of the podcast game is just not giving up. I mean, that’s a huge part of the personal brand game in general is just not giving up. So, consistency. Consistency. And then number eight, and this is my favorite. So I, I saved this for last, although I have a bonus tip for you. Number eight is move the audience emotionally.
RV (12:41):
Move the audience emotionally. A podcast is intimate, you’re talking right in people’s ears, right there. Your voice is in their head. And so you wanna become a master of emotions. You wanna become a master at using your voice, telling stories, delivering frameworks, pillar points, all things that we teach you. For those of you that are members, brand builders group inside of captivating content, right? Where we talk about the advanced storytelling mechanics, we talk about the six pillar point formulas. We talk about the 17 thought leadership frameworks. We talk about the, the, the exercise and engagement list, all all of these things, behavior drivers, all of these techniques for crafting amazing content and delivering it. You, you wanna apply that to your podcast. Your podcast is stage time. And what makes a great presenter is giving the audience an emotional experience. One where they’re inspired, right?
RV (13:39):
They’re moved, they’re proud, they’re, they’re challenged. They’re saddened, they’re they’re scared, they’re frightened you know, they’re provoked. Like move the audience emotionally. The, the use your words and, and your stories and your guest stories. And whenever there is an a chance to have an emotional moment, zoom in on that moment. Don’t skip over the emotional parts. People want to be moved emotionally. That creates a visceral bond, visceral attraction. And one of, one of my, one of my favorite quotes from one of our brand builders group clients, so this is not a Rory Vaden quote I did help them come up with this in one of our strategy sessions, but this is, this is their quote, it’s from the attention ears from Hillary Billings is she says, remember when people get emotional, they get promotional. When people get emotional, they get promotional.
RV (14:32):
That’s from Hillary Billings, from attention ears and Marshall, they that, that’s, you know, one of their pillar points. That is so good and so true. When people get emotional, they get promotional. So you gotta move your audience emotionally. And then number nine, bonus tip for you in terms of how to build a great podcast is interview your top prospects. Interview your top prospects. Even if your podcast never grows, even if it never becomes an amazing networking opportunity, even if it never becomes like a super loyal audience of like lots of listeners, which it will, if you do, it will over time consistently, it’s still the most amazing prospecting tool, I promise you. Take it from someone who went door to door for five years, spent two years calling over the phones to, to enterprises, and spent like five years walking in office parks and cold calling.
RV (15:25):
No cold call. Like if you’re cold calling somebody on the phone in their office knocking on their door, like 99% of the people are gonna slam the door on you. But when you show up in someone’s inbox and you say, Hey, I’m the host of this podcast. I would, I’ve been following your company, I think you’re so brilliant and I’d love to share your insights with the world. Would you be open to an interview with me? Like, who says no to that? Like nobody. So now all of a sudden you get to learn from them and you get to build a relationship by giving to them first, celebrating them, promoting them, adding value to them first. And now after the podcast is over and you’ve built rapport, now you can have an actual conversation as humans and maybe some that can go somewhere. So podcasting is the most magnificent Trojan horse prospecting strategy, I’ll call it the Trojan horse prospecting strategy of all time.
RV (16:22):
So it blows my mind that more business development people are not using this tactic, but it’s also, it’s also what I can use to prospect other podcasts to be on, right? Like, if there’s a podcast I want to be on, I don’t reach out to them and say, Hey, will you have me on the show? I reach out to them and say, Hey, can I have you on my show? Can I promote you? Can I highlight you? Can I celebrate you? Can I tell the whole world how brilliant you are? And let me do that first, and then maybe there’s a chance that we’ll develop a relationship from there. So there you have it. Nine of my, my favorite tips on how to build a great podcast. I promise if you do those, it will work over time. I promise it can’t not work. So I want you to share this episode with someone you know, who either should start a podcast or who has a podcast, share this with them so that they have this checklist to make sure that they’re doing it for themselves. And in the meantime, keep coming back. We’re always looking to give you the best of the best that we can to help you build and monetize your personal brand. And I hope that we get a chance to work with you as one of our mission driven, mission-driven messengers, who will one time become one of the members of our community. But until then, keep coming back. Stay tuned. We’re so grateful for you. See you next time.
Ep 465: Turning Your Most Embarrassing Moments Into Your Most Relatable Moments | Henna Pryor Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So I just did a podcast interview with a new friend of mine, Henna Pryor, and she’s the author of a new book called Good Awkward, which is ultimately how to be good at Being Awkward. And I was kind of inspired to do this post after this conversation when I sat back and just realized for a moment that most people that I know in my life avoid awkward moments like the plague, right? Like embarrassing. Like even people go, that’s your most embarrassing moment. It’s like even recalling your most embarrassing moment can make you blush or, you know, give you goosebumps. It’s like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that happened. And this whole conversation is about how to embrace awkwardness in order to give you an upper hand, an advantage on connecting with your audience becoming more relatable enh enhancing vulnerability, increasing authenticity. There’s all these different things, but at the end of the day, what it really comes down to in my perception is learning how to be comfortable with yourself and yourself is gonna make mistakes yourself is awkward, right?
AJV (01:12):
Like we do awkward things. We say awkward things, we are awkward different stages of life and some, some of us longer than others. And if you really think about it, those are the moments that make you the most different, the most unique. But yet we’re we’re also, those are also the ones that we try to like hide under the covers the most. Like, lock in a closet and go, let’s just forget like that three year period of my life where I had a perm and wore Snoopy shirts every day. Like, let’s just, let’s just close that door and pretend that never happened and or that that stage of business where I can’t believe I was doing this. And I have to tell you guys this story, I have a few stories I wanna share actually, about, you know, the things that make you vulnerable are the things that people fall in love with.
AJV (01:59):
They are the things that make you relatable. Because the truth is, regardless of how much, you know, there are things you don’t know. And regardless of how good you are at some things, there are some things you’re not good at. And when we see is what you’re good at, it makes us feel like, man, I, I just can’t be myself around that person. Like, they’re too smart or they’re too rich, or they’re, they’re too this or they’re too that. And all it does is create a level of discomfort for those around you. And the truth is, you’re not like that at all, right? It’s like you’re goofy when no one’s around and you make all kinds of silly mistakes, but no one knows about ’em. But if they did, they would love you even more. And I feel so, so overly confident in that. So I’ve gotta tell you two quick things. One is a story about me and Rory. And one is a story just about me, of just a little bit of a example, proof of how the awkwardness of your day, of your life, of your business, of your journey is often what will be
AJV (02:58):
The number one thing that helps expedite your connection with your audience. And so about two years ago Rory and I were going through all of the early footage from Brand Builders Group, you know, brand Builders Group started in the middle of a crisis, I would say. And, you know, I was fired very publicly, which was, you know, pretty awkward in and of itself. From our fire, our, our prior company. And then Rory resigned two weeks later. And so Brain Builders Group kind of happened in the middle of this crisis. It was very much a God thing, but in those early days, it’s like we didn’t have a lot of money to do high production quality. And I ended up getting pregnant with our second son only like three months after we started the company, which, you know, was great timing.
AJV (03:44):
And so we had to turn Rory’s office into a nursery, which mean for a short amount of time we had to share my office and doing podcasts
AJV (04:32):
We had no one reviewing content. And this content stayed live in our portal for, I don’t know, almost four years. And we were doing this content archive, cleanout refreshing a bunch of old videos, and I’m, we’re going through all this content and I’m watching these videos and I’m like, can you see the sheet in that video? And so we started watching all these other videos, y’all, there was like an entire series of content videos that you could see the top of the shower rod in my office dividing our two offices. So you could see my shadow behind this white sheet and the shower rod in all of our public facing course videos. I was like, are you kidding me right now? I can’t believe anyone comes back to this portal. I can’t believe anyone is watching this video. And I remember being so embarrassed, and me and Roy
AJV (05:24):
Those are the first things that are coming down Monday morning. And so we emailed our team and like, okay, as we’re archiving videos, start with all the ones that you can see the sheet and the, and the curtain rod that are dividing our offices. And then we were at one of our events very shortly after, a few weeks after, and we were telling this story about we all come from humble beginnings in some way. And we were telling this story, and afterwards, I probably had two if not three people come up to me and they go, I know exactly what videos you’re talking about. That’s
AJV (05:56):
When, when I fell in love with you guys. And I was like, what? And they were like, when I saw that you guys were just doing this because you love it and you had passion for it, and you were using a bedsheet and you were sharing an office, I said, these are my people. These are people that I care to learn about. These are people I care to know because they’re not trying to be something or not. They’re not trying to do this with lots of production value. They’re this, this is not just about entertainment. This is not about a performance. You were just like, here, I think I can help you with something. I don’t care if there was a bed sheet. No, we didn’t know they could see that. But it’s like the whole point is that thing that we felt so awkward about, so kind of embarrassed about like, I can’t believe this happened.
AJV (06:38):
Don’t, they were like, no, that’s when I fell in love with you. That’s when I said, these are my people. I, I wanna, I wanna learn from these people because I felt like you got it. You knew what it was like to be in a startup. You knew what it was like to hustle and you were doing the thing, and I was watching you as you were learning and you were growing. And that’s when I fell in love with you. And I was like, what? Out of all the things, the Bedsheet videos, and I think that was like this whole interview with Henna Pryor was those moments of awkwardness when people go, man, that that’s when people, right, what we find most embarrassing other people find the most endearing. And that’s when you create this unbelievable connection of, man, I I know who you are, right?
AJV (07:23):
Because you don’t hold it back and you don’t pretend, right? And so I think there’s, there’s some element of that, of going what what we think is embarrassing other people find endearing. And so it’s not that you wanna find moments to embarrass yourself, but also don’t, don’t be embarrassed by the moments. Go. That’s just a part of where we were, that was a part of our journey. Like that was hustle mode. That was startup mode. And yeah, there was a shower curtain and a sheet. And now the way that I look back on it was like, yeah, that was, that’s how we started this, and that’s okay. And it’s okay for other people to do that. And by sharing that, it allows other people to settle into their newness, to their beginners, to their whatever stage that they’re in of going, okay, that that’s okay to be that way.
AJV (08:12):
I don’t have to have this, this, or this to make this work or to succeed or excel, because that’s the truth. You don’t. And so allowing people to see those missteps, those awkward moments, will not only allow them to get to know you better, but it also creates a, a new level of comfort in what they’re going through themselves, right? So, second quick story I’ll share is one of my biggest consulting clients of all time in my former life was Bridgestone retail operations. And I had an amazing opportunity to train more than 2,700 retail stores at Bridgestone. And as a part of this, you know, two year engagement we
AJV (08:54):
Were also the host, the training host at their annual conference in Vegas where I don’t know how many people there, I’ll try to be conservative, 10,000 of their retail operators were there. And I was in this ballroom and they were rotating classes, you know, and we were talking about sales and customer service and customer experience and, you know, all the things. And this ballroom probably held 2000, maybe 3000 people. And it was the first session of the day. And I had been doing so much prep work for this because, you know, I may not be like the, you know, avatar to relate to the average Bridgestone retail operations team. And I’m like, all right, I gotta, I’m, I need to find some car humor and I, you know, I need to make this relatable so it’s not some, you know, rando chick up on stage talking about what they need to do in their stores.
AJV (09:47):
And so I found these hilarious videos that I thought were hilarious on Seinfeld about this conversation that Seinfeld was having, about how he didn’t know anything about cars. And, you know, it’s like he was saying, you know, I could take my car to the shop and they could tell me it needed a Johnson rod and I wouldn’t know the difference. And, you know, it just kind of like went on and on and on. Well, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t know what a Johnson rod was. ’cause I don’t know much about cars either, so I just thought it was funny. And so I add all of these videos to my presentation, and as I’m playing these, you know, videos as examples of customer awareness, they all start dying laughing. And so I’m like, I roll with it, and then I’m, I’m saying Johnson Rod, and I’m using that in the examples, and I’m telling stories about it now, and I’m now calling back to the video.
AJV (10:37):
And every single time I do, the laughter gets bigger and bigger and I’m like, wow, I really got this going. Like, I’m really relating to this. So I just roll with it. And the mc of the day was introducing everyone, and that at the end of every session, he would wrap it up with going, can you believe? Right? And it’s like, can you believe that we achieved da da da da dah, and can you believe this da da da? Well, heaps my presentation, and this is how he recapped it. And you believe that AJ said Johnson rod five times on stage. And everyone just dies laughing. And I’m sitting there going, okay, I think I’ve missed something here. And I look back in the back of the room and I can see three of my team members waving their hands in the air frantically like this, like, stop, stop.
AJV (11:20):
And I’m like, what is going on? So I get off stage and one of them rums up to me and she goes, agent, do you know what a Johnson rod is? And I was like, clearly, I do not. And she goes, are you kidding me right now? And I’m like, what, what is it? And she goes, it is the male private area. And I’m like, what? And she was like, this whole video was, you know, this sexual innuendo about, you know, the male private parts. And I’m like, oh my gosh. And this is in front of like
AJV (11:52):
2,500 men, me on stage talking about Johnson rods. And so for the rest of this two day conference, everywhere I went, they were like, Hey Johnson, hey Johnson. And I’m like, I’m never gonna recover from this. This is the most embarrassing thing of my life. I’m not gonna be able to finish this consulting project. I’m gonna get fired. All these horrible things. So a week goes by, I get on the phone with my direct contact, who was the COO of this operation. He goes, stop, heard you were quite the hit at the conference. And I’m like, Uhhuh, did you hear about it? And he goes, yeah. He said, honestly, it was the highway. He goes, the rest of these sessions were so boring. He goes, yeah, I’d appreciate if you didn’t say that anymore. But, and it was like, this rolled right off the shoulders was hilarious, just
AJV (12:47):
And it created this level of I’m not just a consultant coming in here changing stuff. It’s like, I’m this moron who came on
AJV (13:38):
So I would just encourage you as you kind of settle in and highly encourage you to listen to this full episode with Henna Pryor or pick up a book. Good, awkward. It’s, how do I embrace awkward, right? It’s, how do I use my missteps to give me an opportunity to showcase who I really am, not who I think people want me to be, but who I really am. So how do we good? How do we get good at being awkward is one, we realize it’s gonna happen. We be prepared for it, and we don’t hide it, but we embrace it. And even sometimes maybe put a spotlight on it to go, Hey, not everything is worth sharing. But there’s a few things that would really humanize me, make me relatable and help other people have a, a greater sense of comfort and peace and ease about their situation if I just shared a little bit of mine. So here’s a little bit of inspiration to embrace those awkward moments, embrace those missteps and use them to your advantage this year.