Ep 443: Using Speed as a Competitive Advantage | Jay Baer Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Growing up with very little money. I’ve spent a decent part of my professional career studying money and learning about money. And one of the principles that I’ve heard consistently from different places about how do you make money and who makes a lot of money, is this principle. There’s, there’s a principle about making money that says money loves speed. Money loves speed, money follows speed. And, and I have really found that to be true, right? I mean, people are paying, they’re willing to pay for results faster. That’s what people are, are, are willing to pay for. And you know, this interview with Jay Baer blew my mind as it always does. And I, you know, Jay’s one of my best buddies and mentor and a friend, and like we’ve, we’ve helped him through the years. He’s helped us a ton. And every time this guy writes a book, it’s a paradigm shifting book.
RV (01:06):
It’s one of the things I love about Jay Baer books. And, and you know, he’s written on some different subjects over the years, but it’s like every time it’s like a new big idea every single time. And this I think is brilliant, right? His whole premise is speed as a competitive advantage. Speed as a competitive advantage going, I am not, what if you focus just on being faster? And I think that this is one of the most powerful questions that you can ask for, to make more money and to get more referrals and to break through Sheehan’s Wall and become more well known. It’s to say, how can I help my customers succeed faster? How can I help my customers succeed faster? That is like the whole mission of Brand Builders group that we’re on right now, right? Like when we first started the company, it was sort of like survival mode, getting it off the ground.
RV (02:06):
Then it was sort of like, you know, scaling up our, our operations and infrastructure. Then it was streamlining and, and really clarifying and, and distilling down what it is that we do. And, and you know, we had a one year that was basically like creating all the curriculum. And now we’re, we’re entering this era where all we’re doing everything that we’re focused on is how do we help our clients succeed faster? And I didn’t really think of that as a competitive advantage ’cause we don’t really compete with people. Like, we don’t make strategic decisions based on like, what other people in the market are doing, but just as an advantage, right? Or just, just, just as a, you know, as a, as a differentiator, right? Speed as a differentiator, or speed as a reason for people to choose you. And that the, the, the stat that blew my mind was when Jay said, two
RV (02:58):
Thirds of people say that speed is as important as price, right? So this is from Jay’s book, the Time to Win, which is obviously what we were talking about. Get it, it’s a great little book. I mean, it’s super quick read. And two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. Like we live in this era. You know, this is where, what he said, where people interpret speed as caring and responsiveness as respect. That’s so good. And that that is so true. Like that aj you know, there’s the, there’s the five love languages, whatever it is, like gifts of the heart and acts of service and all that. AJ’s love language is responsiveness.
RV (03:54):
What’s the delay? When’s it gonna be finished? What, you know, what’s the deadline? What do you need? Who’s the bottleneck? Da dah, dah, dah, dah. Like, what’s the, what’s the plan? And when she sends a message, it’s like she wants an answer immediately. And, you know, for, for A-C-E-O-I think she’s, she’s insanely responsive. Like most CEOs are not all that responsive. You know, they’re pulled in all these directions, but she just values it so much. And she interprets responsiveness as respect. If you’re, if you don’t respond to her quickly, it’s a sign of disrespect. And I, I’m, I’m starting to see this, right? This whole conversation with Jay opened up my eyes because I go, this is me. I care more about, as a consumer, I care more about speed than price. I go, yeah, I’m, I’m willing to pay more, to move faster.
RV (04:43):
And, and that’s part of what, you know, the era we’re in at Brand Builders Group is like, we’ve always, you know, we’ve been a, we are a strategy firm. Like at our core, we’re a strategy firm. We’re not an agency. But we, we are creating more tools and templates to help clients succeed faster and to always create better strategies, more customized strategies to help them access what they need so that they can get results faster and faster and faster to get things deployed. And here’s a, here’s another line that I love from Jay. When he said this, he said, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast. And, and many times, you know, you think of like search engine optimization, like demand driven marketing.
RV (05:31):
When people are searching a term, it’s like they want something, they want it. Now, a huge part of whether or not you make that sale is like, who can get to that person first? Who can return their phone call first? And so I just, I thought this was really, really cool. One of the tactical things that I just wanted to come back and underscore and highlight to the, you know, for everybody is, is the idea of a fast pass, right? The idea of a fast pass is that people will pay to be able to skip the line to people will pay, people will pay, people will always pay to be able to go to the front of the queue, right? I mean, this is like the VIP line. This is any anything VIP or, or you know, Disney has the, the fast pass or all the amusement parks, right?
RV (06:20):
If, if you go to Universal Studios or whatever. And that’s one of the things that we have started offering, right? Is, is we have created opportunities for people to coach with me directly. And it’s, it’s a higher investment because I can help people get to results faster. Just ’cause I got the most experience doing this personally and the most experienced coaching other people to do it, right? So historically, I’ve, I’ve never been available like formally to do private coaching with our clients, right? I, I mean, I, and, and I coach everybody. I’m at, I’m at our events and I do two group coaching calls a month. So like, we have different tiers in our membership, right? And so there’s, depending on what tier you’re in you know, you get to come to our live events. Well, we do, I think we’re doing 32 live events next year.
RV (07:13):
And so four of ’em that are two days, I’m, I’m at and AJ’s at personally, those are, so in-person event not all of our events are in person. And then twice a month for all of our members, I lead group coaching where people can ask me questions and, you know, we do like rapid fire, but doing private one-on-one coaching is, is not something that historically that we have offered until recently. We, we have created something called Brand mastery, which is when people can work with me directly in a, in a very small group, right? It’s still a small, a small group, but they can work with me directly as their strategist. And there’s a higher level of investment. And that’s ’cause we go really fast, right? And we have an, we have an annual pass of that where people are able to spend up to 10 days with me a year and we can crank.
RV (08:01):
I mean, if I get 10 days in a room with someone, I can, we typically, like we can transform their personal brand quickly. So that’s an example of a fast pass. We’re also working on a for years we’ve been developing something that we’re just, just now rolling out called Instant Automation Toolkit. Instant Automation Toolkit is something that’s only available for brand builders members, right? So you have to be one of our strategy clients. ’cause You have to have the education, you have to understand how it all works together. You have to know what a brand positioning statement and, and the 15 Ps and the content diamond and webinar funnels. And like you, you know how all of these, the, the, the modular content method, like how it all fits together. But then we, we took all of our six core campaigns for our, our web, our, our high converting webinar funnels, selling high dollar offers, booking keynotes, doing book launches, building websites, the six most important core campaigns.
RV (08:57):
And we templatized all of them. And now we make it available to members. They can either buy ’em and own ’em out outright, or they can just rent them for like a much lower fee so that we can get them live quickly. That’s why instant automation toolkit is everything about going, okay, now you’ve learned the strategy. The next era of Brand Builders group is going, how can we help you execute faster and, and cheaper? Because if you have to go source and hire all these people, whether they’re employees or vendors, it’s slow, it’s painstaking, it’s expensive, and you’re likely to make mistakes that cost you money because you don’t really know how to coach them. Well, instant automation toolkit is going, what if we just give you ours? And so we’ve been developing this for years and it’s, it’s amazing. We’re, we’re just about to roll it out.
RV (09:43):
We just, we’ve already rolled out our copywriting templates. So half of it is copywriting templates. The other half is the actual technology where we build the, we build the funnels and build the websites for you using our, using our actual one. So we take our exact funnels and then we swap out our stuff, put your stuff in there. So the copywriting templates have been available and it’s like we’ve got people cranking out entire pipelines in a few hours or a few days. Like it’s, it’s amazing. And going, yeah, people will pay for that because there’s, there’s value to that. ’cause, ’cause Money loves speed. You know, the other thing is, is when you think about money in relation to time, time multiplies money, right? Compounding interest. If I, if I take money and I invest it today, you know, it, it money invested over time is it grows and grows and grows.
RV (10:34):
So the earlier I can, the earlier I can have access to money, the earlier I have access to cashflow, the longer amount of time I get to benefit from interest, right? From compounding interest. So it, there’s value to having money today versus having money in the future. This is another thing that we do. We, we started in Brand Builders group about a year and a half ago we rolled out a pay in full feature. And so what happens is, you know, we have our, our programs are annual memberships, and we’ve got, you know, now, now counting brand mastery, we’ve got three different levels of, of membership. Well, there’s a, there’s a discount for paying in full where we give, we give people two months free if they pay in full today, because even though it costs us money, right? We lose money on that.
RV (11:26):
And we still have all the costs of delivering those last two months of service. But there’s value to having all the cash in hand now because we can deploy, we can reinvest that cash into growing the business versus having to wait for it and not seeing it for 10 months. There’s also value in the certainty of collecting it, right? And so we, we share in that with our customers to go, Hey, if you’re willing to, if you’re willing to commit for 12 months and pay us now and go, we’re in this together, we’ll give you a discount. And so that’s the first time we’ve, we, we don’t, other than that we don’t discount, we never discount, we don’t change our prices. You know, people can buy a lower thing and get a lesser price, but we don’t sell the same thing to two people for lesser prices.
RV (12:07):
We, we just, we don’t discount. So, but, but we have offered this fast pass and it’s been massive. C clients love it. They also get to accelerate the deduction on their taxes, right? So like right now, as an example or, or when you get to the end of the year or the end of a fiscal year, you know, they, they can pay us for a year in full and they can accelerate that deduction on like this year’s taxes. So we see a lot of that happen at the, at the end of the people’s calendar year, the end of their fiscal year. So think about how can you incorporate a fast pass concept into your business model? Because this really, I think this really, really is true. My third big idea or takeaway from Jay in this interview was when he said, give your customers a clue of what to expect as it relates to time, absence of any guidance.
RV (13:01):
They’ll expect it instantly. And I thought, wow, that, that, that really is powerful. And so make a time promise the way he said it was, make a time, pro promise, but make one that you can overdeliver on. And I think that’s really key, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, if you don’t tell me when I’m gonna get it, my brain defaults to, oh, I want it tomorrow, right? Even if it’s like building a website, right? You go, okay, well I’m hiring you to build me a website. Like why can’t I have it tomorrow? Like, why can’t I have it next week? Like, what’s the big deal? Right? Part of the reason, and and I think that’s a natural default that people have because part of the reason why they’re hiring someone else is they don’t have the wherewithal to do it themselves. So they often aren’t knowledgeable about all of the details and the steps and the processes and the things that go into doing something, and that’s why they’re hiring someone in the first place.
RV (13:51):
So we tend to, we tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. We tend to underestimate how long it takes other people to do things. And that’s because we don’t know how to do them. And so we’re not aware of all of the steps, and absent that, absent that awareness, we don’t have the ability to calculate the time or really appreciate even sometimes everything that they’re doing. So what happens is, if someone communicates though and they say, oh, no problem, we’ll have your, we’ll have your website done in two months. Well, I don’t love that, but it’s better than them not saying anything. And like, after the end of month one, I’m going, well, I was thinking this would take a week. Like, why is it taking four weeks? Like, what, what’s the deal here? And now I’m annoyed. Versus if you say, oh, it’s gonna take three months and you actually deliver it in eight to 10 weeks.
RV (14:44):
Now I’m ecstatic. ’cause I go, oh, you know, while I would love for it to be done tomorrow, you set the expectation for me that it wasn’t gonna be done for three months. And then you, and then you over-delivered and you beat that. So now I’m ecstatic. So this is a really important conceptual point to understand that it’s not really how long something takes that annoys people or makes them happy, it’s how long it takes in proportion to their expectation of how long they thought it would take, right? So if it takes six months, that’s neither long or short. It’s only relative. So this is very similar to how we teach we teach our members when they’re selling high dollar offers, there’s no such thing, there’s no such thing as expensive or inexpensive. There’s only such a thing as relative, right? So if somebody’s gonna pay me a hundred thousand dollars to spend two days with me, you go, well, that feels expensive.
RV (15:44):
And it’s not nothing. But I go, well, yeah, but if I can help someone land a half a million dollar book advance, if I can help someone become a New York Times bestseller, if I can help them get speaking engagements where they’re gonna, they’re gonna do, you know, half a million to a million dollars a year in speaking fees for the rest of their career. If I can help them save a hundred thousand dollars on their taxes every year for the rest of their life, if I can teach them, you know, how to build a sales team that will grow millions of dollars. Like, it’s, it’s not, it’s not much relative to that. So, so it’s always relative, right? Well, this is the same thing. Time is never really long or short. It’s always relative. And, and in this case, it’s the, for your customers, it’s relative to their expectation of how long it was gonna take, right?
RV (16:27):
So give them a time promise and, and make it one that you can overdeliver on. Because if you tell me it’s gonna take four months and it takes six months, now I’m upset. But if you tell me it’s gonna take eight months or 10 months or a year, and you’re done in six months, man, now, now I’m ecstatic. It still took six months, it took the same amount of time, right? Like, it, it, it takes whatever time it takes to do something. So of course, hopefully you can operate more efficiently. But, but I think what you wanna do is you wanna, what people don’t allow for the, and part of the reason why we underestimate how long everything takes is because what people never allow for, they never account for is they never account for unplanned expenses of time or money. They ne they never account for emergencies.
RV (17:15):
They never account for extraordinary items, unforeseen thing, unforeseen delays. I, I remember early in my career as an entrepreneur, I had a, a financial mentor, you know, and I, and and I, we were looking at financial statements and I was saying, well, gosh, you know, I feel like we’re being punished because there’s this one unusual item that, you know, we didn’t have in the budget. And I go, well, how is that our fault? Like, none of us saw it coming. It’s not like it was poor management of the company. And and his response to me was, he says, well, you have to create a budget that always has margin in it for things like that. Because while it’s unexpected, you can always expect the unexpected. You can always plan for the unplanned. You can always assume that something is gonna happen that you weren’t assuming was gonna happen.
RV (18:06):
And that is a radical mind shift as it relates to your personal finances, right? And not spending every dollar you have, but saving to go, I can’t spend every dollar because what happens when my, I get a flat tire or when the, you know, the water heater breaks or, or, you know, I have to take a sudden flight somewhere that I wasn’t planning on. You know, like you have to be able to, to do that. You wanna, you wanna have margin, margin, you wanna have margin in your planning margin, in your budgeting, budgeting of money and budgeting of time. And so understanding all of this and, and realizing that time is, I mean, in this case, according to Jay’s research, right, this is empirically validated. Now, two thirds of people say that speed is as important as price. And I’m in that two thirds, right?
RV (18:54):
I go, man, if one person you know is gonna charge me 10% more, but they can get it to me, you know, 30% faster, I’m in every time, every time. So minding people’s time, treating it as sacred you know, making a time promise overdelivering on it, giving them an opportunity for a fast pass to pay extra to, to, to move things faster. And, and just realizing that, that people interpret this is right from Jay speed as caring and responsiveness, as respect. That is from a man, Jay Bearer, his new book the Time to Win. Go by the book, y’all. It’s not even a full-size book. It’s a little tiny book. Like you could, you can read it in an hour. And it is life changing, paradigm altering, you know this idea of using speed as a competitive advantage. So thanks for tuning in.
RV (19:53):
Hopefully listening to this podcast is helping you accelerate on your journey. And I hope we get a chance to move you at some point from being you know, a, a free consumer of our content to working with us and watching how we can accelerate your dream, coming true faster and faster, faster, to help you drive more leads to your business, launch a new revenue stream, you know, write books, be a speaker, grow your audience, grow your impact. Whatever your dream is for building your personal brand, hopefully we get a chance to partner with you to make that dream come true faster. That’s a big part of our wish. Until next time, we will you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll sign off for now. Have a great one. We’ll catch you here. Next episode, influential Personal Brand podcast. Share this with someone who needs it. See you then.
Ep 441: Is this the Golden Age of Publishing | Allison Trowbridge Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, so I have a question for you. Are we in the golden age of publishing, like right now? Is this the golden age of publishing? And this is a question that came up in a recent conversation that I had with Ali Trowbridge of, if you think about it, we as authors or aspiring authors are in one of the most opportunistic times in history when it comes to getting your message out into the world. As few as 20 years ago, there was an absolute gate, right? There were gatekeepers that prevented authors from just publishing books and getting them out into the world. But with the emergence of self-publishing and hybrid publish publishing, almost anyone who really, really wants to can write and publish a book. And I said, almost. But if you can’t write your book, there are more mediums, more formats, more opportunities to get your message out into the world than ever before.
AJV (01:05):
You can be blogging. You can post blog like messages on medium. You can do LinkedIn. You can have, you know, micro posts happening on a social media. You could have your own YouTube channel. There’s free ways to do it, but then there’s ways that you can pay to get it out there with the self-publishing and hybrid publishing. That’s not to say traditional publishing is not an option. It is. But if you really think about it, this is the golden age of publishing. There are more opportunities, more ways to get your message into the hands of your audience than ever before you have more access to your readers or potential readers. We’ll just call ’em your audience than ever before. You can actually build relationships with the people who read your books. 20 years ago, that wasn’t a thing. You didn’t know who was reading your book, you didn’t know what they had to say about it per se.
AJV (01:58):
But now, on a, on a daily basis between podcast reviews and comments to blog comments to comments on social media, to Amazon reviews and Yelp reviews, it’s like you actually know what’s resonating. You know what people are thinking, and you can create a real relationship with your reader. That is amazing. And just the idea that there is not this, you know, ivory tower of publishing anymore that’s being broken down with the emergence of self-publishing and hybrid publishing. And so, as we think about this idea for the author and the aspiring author that we live in this opportunity ti this opportune time, this golden age of publishing, what does that mean for authors? And so here’s a couple of things that I wanted to share that I thought were really awesome takeaways from my conversation with my ally. Number one, you have to remember that if you’re an author, you are simultaneously an,
AJV (02:59):
A book is a product. And that means that it has to come with the same intention of what a business would do to sell a product and a service. As an author, you are creating a product, IEA business, which means that to do it well, right? There’s research and development, right? That’s your writing time. There’s the publishing time, right? That’s the production. But then you need a marketing plan. You need a sales plan, probably someone who is going to sell it and someone who is going to market it. There needs to be an operations component of like, how are we gonna get this distributed and fulfilled? How are we a finance person? Like, how are we gonna pay for all of this? How are we gonna collect money? How are we gonna pay money? Like, those are all entrepreneurial things that are required when you start a business, IE right?
AJV (03:53):
And publish a book. So as an author, you are simultaneously starting a small business with a product. That’s your book. That’s the first thing. Second thing is that, and knowing that, knowing that it’s not just you on your laptop and coffee shops writing words on pages, it’s so much more than that. You have to remember that writing a book is not a career move. It’s a calling. And it is not about the end result of having, you know, a giant business card or something that’s going to make you tons of money. It’s like, no, you have to go, I have to share this message.
AJV (04:34):
I have to get this out into the world. It is compelled from within me. It is a calling, it is a passion. This is not just something I’m doing to make money or to get a promotion or to raise my speaker fees. It’s like, no, I’m, I’m doing this because I have to. And that’s gonna make the rest of us a little bit more tolerable because there’s a lot of work. And writing the book is step one of a mini step process. Writing is just one small part of actually getting a book out into the world. And so you’ve got to love the process. You have to fall in love with all the parts of it. And mostly you can only love it if you know that it’s going to make a difference. It has the potential to make a difference. It can change a life, which means it could change the world. Those are things that you have to remember as you step into this. And if you’re not there yet, it’s just not time. And that’s okay. There is a time and a cadence for all things. But when you think about writing this book and launching this book, you need to think about also is do I have the time, energy, and resources to also build a business? Because a book is a business, right? Third thing, I think this is really important, and Allie talks a lot about this in
AJV (05:56):
Our, our podcast interview that’s called the ent the author entrepreneur podcast episode on the influential personal brand podcast. But how you get that book out into the world makes a difference. And she shares the three different ways you can publish a book today, self-publishing the hybrid publishing model, or a traditional publisher. And I love the way that she likened these to business. And she said, think about it like this. Self-Publishing is like bootstrapping. This is your self-funded startup. You’re bootstrapping and you’re scrappy. And it’s the entrepreneurial startup that’s self-funded. That’s how you need to think about self-publishing. Hybrid publishing is like going after an equity partner, right? You retain the ip, you have more creative rights, you make more money but you’re also paying for it, right? So like, somebody else is coming in to help with this, but you’re paying for it.
AJV (06:50):
So you’re putting together an equity partnership with this hybrid publisher, right? I love that example. And then a traditional publisher, publisher is like going after venture capital, which means you have to prove to them that you are a worthy investment because they’re taking a risk. They’re going one outta 10 of these, maybe one out of a hundred of these are actually going to make us any money. So you need to prove that not only is the content awesome, that’s a given. That’s the, you know, you know, that’s just required for entry, right? But they gotta know that you have the platform, the reach, the marketing, the sales, the operations, and the finance team behind it to pull this off. ’cause They’re looking at you going, is this a good investment? Which is why a book proposal is such a necessity. And I believe that a book proposal is helpful if it’s a self hybrid or a traditional publisher, because it, it’s the discipline of putting together your business plan for your book.
AJV (07:52):
And if you really want people to read your book, then you gotta have a sales marketing and distribution plan of how are people gonna hear about it and what’s gonna cause them to want to read it, right? What’s gonna make it a spread? Why would people recommend it? And that’s all marketing, positioning and sales. So I book proposals important in all three of those levels. But just thinking about self as the entrepreneurial, bootstrap, startup hybrid is you’re looking for an equity partner, and then a traditional publisher is a, a venture capital, right? I, I’ve loved those examples, and I think one of the things that came out of all of this conversation is that you just have to fall in love with the process of writing and the business part, right? This is something that you’re gonna have to learn. You figure it out, it’s trial and error.
AJV (08:40):
And that’s why it takes time. So give yourself some grace and patience in this. And as a part of loving the process, it’s a great reminder that those mountaintop moments are far and few between, right? Getting that book in your hand and that feeling when you’re like, it’s here, that’s somewhat fleeting a little bit, right? And if you’re gonna do all of this work and all of this preparation just for that moment to hold that book and go, it’s here that, that feeling’s gonna be pretty short, right? Because the next thing you’re gonna have to do is like the next step of the plan, and you gotta fall in love with the process. Not just those mountaintop moments of, oh, I wrote a book, or, oh, I hit this amount of revenue, or, oh, I did this thing, or, oh, I got this award. It’s like those are short, finite moments. And if you’re living for those moments, you’re missing the best parts of your life and the process and the journey. So you have to fall in love with the whole thing. If you wanna check out the entire conversation about this concept of the golden age of publishing and being an author, entrepreneur, head over to the influential Personal Brand podcast and check out my full interview with Allison Trowbridge. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 439: The Secrets of Building an Amazing Affiliate Lead Generation Machine | Matt McWilliams Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
One of the greatest secrets behind Brand Builders group’s success in the last few years has been affiliates. Um, we should hit eight figures this year. We’re right, we’re, we’re right on track to hit right around eight figures in our first and five years in businesses will be our fifth full year in business. And affiliates are a huge part of that. They represent over 60% of our revenue as a company comes from affiliates. It’s some, something around that number. And we simply would not, we would not exist at Brand Builders Group if it weren’t for all of our affiliates. And if you know much about the, the start of, of how our company started, we unexpected suddenly and unexpectedly exited and sold our last company and started Brand Builder’s Group. And we didn’t really have any plan whatsoever to do that. And yet we had a friend named Lewis who, uh, reached out to us, asked for some help, we started helping him.
RV (00:58):
And he was the one that said, this is what you were born to do. I’m gonna tell the whole world about you guys. And, uh, even though we had no audience and no platform, ’cause we had sold it, we, we previously had, but um, all of it was gone, uh, you know, very, very suddenly. And so we didn’t have that platform. And Lewis said, that’s all right. I have one and I’m gonna tell the world about you. And so right from the beginning, roots of our company, we, uh, you know, the, the arrangement was have us on your podcast and then we will pay you a referral fee for everyone that we meet from your show. And that is like the origin story of Brand Builders Group. And so affiliate marketing has been built into our DNA and we love it. We believe in it.
RV (01:47):
It is, I think, one of the most magical forces on the planet. It’s, it’s incredible. It is such a win-win. And if you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, just to catch you up, what the, what, what It’s referral marketing. It’s referral marketing. It’s basically to say, Hey, if you’re a client of ours, um, if you refer us to another client, we’ll pay you for that referral. And part of our philosophy and our strategy at Brand Builders Group is something that we say to turn your customer force into your sales force, turn your customer force into your sales force. I mean, think about that. How many salespeople do you have? If you’re a small business, you probably don’t have many, and there’s a good chance you are the leading salesperson if you’re the owner, the founder, the the entrepreneur, right? If you’re the CEO even. But how many customers do you have? You know, probably lots, maybe, yeah, dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands in some cases, tens of thousands. What if every single one of your customers was a salesperson? That is how you wanna do customer experience. That is how you want to create your product. That is how you want to, to create your offerings, is you want to do such a great job
RV (02:58):
And you wanna overdeliver for the people in front of you. And I think so much of the world is out there chasing thinking, oh, I need to have millions of new followers, and they’re trying to make mo money selling to strangers on the internet instead of the real secret of making money. The real secret of growing your revenue. And the real secret of building a business quickly is to serve the customers you have in front of your face in a better way, in a deeper way to overdeliver for the people who have already trusted you. And then if you do that, those people should want to and likely will tell their friends and family about you if you do an extraordinary job. And so, but, but, but too many small businesses are out there just chasing new customers all the time, that they’re overlooking the people right in front of them to go, how can I overdeliver for these people?
RV (03:48):
The way that we say it is, don’t forget, right? Don’t be so busy chasing the width of your reach that you forget about the depth of your impact and serving people in a deep way. Now, if you can pay your customers to do it, that becomes affiliate marketing, is to say, I’m gonna pay you for telling people you know about us, about our business. And we have built that into our business model. We have a very open 10%, uh, lifetime referral fee on all strategy services that are purchased from us that, uh, come from anyone that our clients ever refer us to. So many of our clients, this includes people like, you know, Lewis Howes and Ed, my lead, and, uh, people who have big platforms, they make more money from us than they pay to us. And that is just because they have very large platforms.
RV (04:45):
But even in our own community of, of like clients who are new, we actually call our affiliate program BBG for free, BBG for free. And the reason we call it BBG for free is we tell our clients, look, one of the fastest ways to make money from being associated with Brand Builders Group is just by referring friends and, and client, you know, friends and family and like other people who are mission-driven, messengers and aspiring speakers, authors, coaches, small business owners, professional service providers, you know, uh, direct salespeople. We, that’s a lot of our market, uh, or corporate executives who are wanting to like, rise in the ranks and build a personal brand. Well, since we pay a 10% lifetime referral fee on all of our strategy services that, uh, are purchased by anyone who our customers refer us to, that means if our customer, if our one customer refers us, 10 people who all bought at the same level that they bought, like at the same, you know, we have a couple different levels and tiers of our membership program and our, our various services.
RV (05:48):
But if you referred us 10 people who all signed up at the same level, you signed up then because you’d make 10% on each of those 10, that would add up to a hundred percent of what your service is, which means you would get your BBG for free. So we call that program BBG for free. And many of our clients get their BBG for free. They pay for their whole membership here, or they subsidize their own membership by the fact that, you know, they pay us whatever they’re paying us, but then we’re paying back to them on anyone they’ve referred us to. They can do that on day one before they have a website, before they have a book, before they have a funnel, before they have a sales team, before they’re doing live events, before they’re out there doing keynotes or have you even written a speech?
RV (06:29):
So our clients make money quickly. So this is, I think, the greatest secret that has been the secret to our success so quickly in growing our revenue. And it’s a win-win, right? Because if, if it starts with you though, it starts with you overdelivering for the clients that are in front of you, right? With us, it just so happened that Lewis Howes was our very first, you know, client or became our very first client, um, and it was going, how do we overdeliver for Lewis? How do we add so much value to him that he wants to tell us? And the idea is to overdeliver for the customers that are in front of you in such a big way that they want to tell you about their friends the same way they wanna tell their friends about a great movie they just saw, or a great restaurant they went to.
RV (07:20):
Even you wanna be so good, you wanna do such a good job that even if you didn’t pay them a referral fee, that they would refer you anyways, because that’s what friends do, right? Friends share good things with each other. If you see an amazing movie, you want to tell your friends about it. If you go to an amazing restaurant, you wanna tell your friends about it, partly because it makes you look cool because you found something really awesome. And you know that when they all love it, they’re gonna thank you. That’s how business should be done. Business should be done, especially small business. That’s how small business should be done. Small businesses can’t compete with the Fortune 1000 on advertising spend and employees and, you know, buying, you know, buying traffic and building these extravagant ad campaigns. But what we can compete on, and we can, we can win against the big companies, is by over-delivering through a customized experience for the people that we’re working with to where they become so, so, you know, uh, so loyal to us that they would refer people now when we pay them to do that, um, which is, you know, amazing.
RV (08:26):
Now in some industries, there’s actually, you can’t do it, right? Like I think in healthcare industry and then, you know, some financial, like financial services, there’s, there’s certain industries that there’s so much regulation because of what you’re selling. You, you can’t do it. But I mean, and, and most of the industries you can. And it’s, it’s amazing, right? Because it’s like everybody wins because you service your customer really well, which is where it starts. It doesn’t start by them giving you referrals. It starts by you over-delivering to the people who are right in front of you. That’s how the cycle starts. You overdeliver to them, then they refer a friend to go, I had such an amazing experience with Brand Builders Group, they blew my mind. They’re, they’re changing my life. They’re, they’re helping me make this dream come alive. And it’s, it’s fun and it’s exciting and it’s, it’s, you know, academic and it’s proven and it’s researched and the the people at the company are amazing and the people in the community are amazing and the people in the community are winning, right?
RV (09:21):
I mean, that’s, that’s one of the things that we’ve got going for us right now. Uh, last week we had our 24th client hit the Wall Street Journal, or USA today bestseller list, and we hit, hit the New York Times. We’ve had two of our clients hit the New York Times bestseller list this month. We’ve had eight clients hit the New York Times. In the last 12 months, we’ve had six clients have Ted Talks that have gone viral with over a million views. We have nine clients who’ve grown their annual revenue more than a million dollars a year. Now, are those results for everybody? No, they’re not. We have hundreds of clients, but it shows you the magnitude at which our clients are winning. And it’s because we’re not teaching gimmicks and tricks and hacks. We’re not cheating the system. We’re not trying to shortcut What we’re doing is we’re teaching people the proven methods of doing the hard work it takes to add value, to exceed expectations, to automate trust, because you’re over-delivering.
RV (10:16):
And that’s the secret. The secret is to do the work that other people aren’t willing to do, uh, to take the stairs. As I said so many years ago, in my first book, uh, that hit the New York Times, that broke through the, broke me through the wall, was this idea of do the things other people aren’t willing to do. So it starts with you making a commitment, making a resolution, making a decision, and taking an action to go, I’m gonna love on the people in front of me, and I’m gonna turn my customer force into my sales Salesforce. So that’s what it starts with, and that’s the psychology, uh, uh, of it. And then all you do is you put money behind it. And in our case, we do a simple 10% lifetime referral fee. And we’re transparent about it, we’re open about it, we tell people about it, right?
RV (11:00):
It’s disclosed in our website, like, this is how we do business. And so, um, when we recruit affiliates, part of what we’re doing, I think that’s working really well, which is what most people aren’t doing. When most people try to recruit affiliates, they try to recruit famous people, and they go out and they try to get like, you know, big celebrities with millions of followers. That’s not wrong to do, right? That’s not like bad. It’s just hard. It’s difficult, right? Like, how are you gonna get the rock to promote your stuff? I mean, like, what’s your strategy there? I mean, good, good luck, right? And you and everyone else, and you’re competing with companies who will literally pay the rock millions and millions of dollars to let you know his have his face associated. So you think he’s gonna post about your thing because you sent him a free sample.
RV (11:49):
Like, you know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s not impossible. It’s just not very possible. Um, so that’s what most people do when they’re chasing affiliates, is they’re chasing people with like large platforms. It’s the same idea that that small businesses are, are they’re chasing width. Everything they’re doing is, is reach. They’re trying to expand wide. That’s the whole mentality, right? Is I need more followers, more views, more impressions. Those things are not bad, but they’re not necessary to make more money. In fact, you can waste a lot of time chasing those things and overlooking the money that’s right in front of you, which is to go deeper with fewer people. Um, and so the way that we do that is even with affiliates, we’re not trying to find affiliates. We’re trying to find customers. And then once we find a customer, we’re trying to make a customer love us so much that the customer turns into an affiliate.
RV (12:43):
And who is more likely to refer us a celebrity that knows nothing about us or someone using our product, and which endorsement is truly more authentic and genuine. Someone who’s being paid to say something or someone who’s actually paying their own money, their hard earned blood, sweat and tears, cash to buy your product or service, and they’re spending money and they’re going, this is worth it. It’s worth more than what I’m paying. These people are amazing. They’re changing my life. And you go, that endorsement is, is worth more frankly. I mean, in, in some ways it’s worth more, it’s more authentic, it’s more legitimate, it’s more genuine for sure. And the thing you gotta realize is that most of us, most of you, you don’t need hundreds and thousands of new customers to have the greatest income year of your life. Most of us need a couple dozen customers, a couple dozen of our, our greatest customers.
RV (13:44):
Like our our best perfect customers would, would, you would have the year, the best year of your life income-wise. So you don’t need celebrities with millions of followers. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. That’s the law of AJ Vaden. That’s what we, we call it the law of AJ Vaden, because she says that all the time. And AJ has now been the co-founder of six different multimillion dollar companies, two eight figure companies. She’s had four years where she’s personally produced over a million dollars in revenue and she’s never had more than 10,000 followers. How does she do that? How does she do it? Because her strategy is to land and expand. Her strategy is to go deep, not wide. Her strategy is to do relationships and reputation and knowing that reputation precedes revenue. And that if you overdeliver, then you will win.
RV (14:33):
Because most people don’t overdeliver. What most businesses do is the least amount of e effort to acquire a customer, and then they go looking for the next customer. That’s what they’re doing. They’re now, and, and if anything, where they spend most of their time is on marketing and sales. And once they land the customer, they forget about the customer and they just move on to try to find the next customer. That’s not the, that’s not the strategy. At least it’s not the strategy that works for us, right? I can’t say it’s, it’s not the right strategy, or it’s not the best strategy. But, but the secret to how we’ve grown these large businesses in just a few years with no venture. We’ve got no private equity. We’re not venture backed. We have no outside investors. We have no debt. We have no bank loans. How do we do that?
RV (15:16):
It’s by helping people
RV (16:09):
So first of all, make it easy for people to agree to be affiliates. So make it easy for them to say yes. How do you make it easy for someone to agree to be affiliate? First of all, over deliver for the thing they’re paying you for. Second of all, over deliver for things they’re not paying you for. Ask yourself, how can I, what other ways can I add value to this person’s life? What other way can I help them? Right? What people can I introduce them to? Do they need vendors? Do they need employees? Do they need team members? Do they need speaking opportunities? Do they need podcast opportunities? Like, uh, who, who are they looking for? How can I introduce them to people? How can I, how can I give them advice, encouragement, uh, how can I cheer them on and, and give them, like, you know, celebrate them.
RV (16:55):
Those are things you can do that cost nothing. And then, and then also it’s like, what, what services can I add to people’s lives that maybe are just things that you don’t even offer for sale, but you do it for people to help them? Like, so one of our brand builders group mantras. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. So find those people and over deliver. The other part is serve people who have the same audience as you, but who have a different offering than you, right? This is part of making it easy for them to say yes, serve audiences who have the same, or, or, you know, try to, try to pick, when you looking at affiliates, look for people who have the same audience as you, but a different offering from you, right?
RV (17:42):
Amy Porterfield is a great example of that, right? So she’s a client of ours who became a client first, then became an affiliate kind of at the same time. But, but really she was a client first. We were, we were, we were serving her first. We were adding value, um, first as friends, then officially informally as a client. Well, Amy has our audience, but Amy doesn’t sell one-on-one coaching Amy teaches, she, she, she has course, right? She has courses, but her flagship course is a course on helping people create courses, right? So her primary business model is teaching. Uh, so selling courses, you know, digital Course Academy is her primary thing, right? And she does that. She’s had thousands, tens of thousands of students go through this program, right? So she has a great course on helping people, uh, teach them how to launch courses.
RV (18:27):
So her business model is different from ours. Our business model is not courses. Our business model is membership one-on-one coaching. We’re nurturing our community all the time. We have live events, right? We have pay for hotels and people fly in and like, we pay for food and catering and coffee. Like we have a, we have a, a human like interactive in-person experience. And then we do one-on-one coaching over Zoom. That’s what our strategists do. And then we have a training, we have live trainings constantly. We have 10 live trainings a month that are virtual, um, that, you know, I lead two of them for our community. So it’s a very heavy, you know, human experience. And it’s not as, it’s not as much digital or, or automated. So it’s not that one is better than the other, not they’re, they’re both good, but they’re different, right?
RV (19:13):
So our people can benefit from her stuff, her people can benefit from our stuff, and we’re not, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re both trying to serve the same audience, but we offer different things. So that’s a part of what you wanna think of. It makes it easy for people to say yes, you know? So you wanna find who has your audience, who has the same, who’s going after the same people as you, but they do something different, right? Like if I’m ACPA, right? And I’m doing, I, uh, let’s say I’m looking for small business owners. I wanna maybe form alliances with insurance agents who sell, like employee benefits and stuff, because we’re going after the same person, but we serve different, we, we, we have different offerings. We serve the same audience with different offerings. That’s part of how you make it easy for people to say yes.
RV (19:58):
The second key to to having affiliate program work is make it easy for them to market You. Make it easy for them to market you, right? Part of the reason why we do so well is we don’t ask our affiliates to do 50 email blasts and do these open cart, close cart launches, like the all between specific dates. That’s not bad to do. That’s not wrong to do. A lot of affiliates do that. That’s great if you can do that and you can get people to do it for us. All I have to be is a podcast guest, like any other podcast guest. And I just, I just, you know, and, and their, their mind is blown when they go, how does this work? And I say, just invite me on your podcast like any other guest. And they go, and that’s it. I said, that’s it.
RV (20:36):
And then we will build you a custom link. We build a custom landing page for each podcast we’re on, and we say, the only URL we’re gonna give it on your show is that link. And when we do that, everyone who comes through that page, we pay you a 10% lifetime referral fee on all strategy services that we sell to those people. Boom, there it is. And they go, you’re kidding. It’s that easy. It’s like, it’s that easy, right? Make it easy to say yes, then make it easy for them to market. And then if they say, well, are there emails I can send out? Sure can. I’ll write the emails for you. Here you go. You wanna post on social? I’ll give you assets. Here you go. You wanna know what ad you wanna read an ad for us on your own podcast and get affiliate fees?
RV (21:17):
Here’s a script for it. You don’t have to use it, but it makes it easy. Like you create all the assets, you create all the materials, you do all the work to make it easy for them to say yes, and then make it easy for them to market. And then the third thing is, make it easy for them to make money. Make it easy for them to make money. Make it easy for them to get paid. And you do that by having a great product, by having proven funnels, by having digital, you know, dashboards and metrics that you can tell them, you can estimate for them on the front end. Hey, if, if you send an email to this many people, this many people open it, this many people come to our free training, this many people watch this, many people buy, and this is how much money you’ll make.
RV (21:52):
Like if you don’t have those metrics dialed in, you’re not ready for an affiliate program yet. I don’t think like, I mean, you could do it more casually, but like not a large scale one. And we go, why do people refer us? Hopefully, because first of all, we’re awesome at doing what we say we’re gonna do. We’re over-delivering for them as clients. But second, we make it easy for them to say yes. We don’t compete with what they do. We do all the work of creating the assets for them. And then we send a massive passive mailbox money. We just go here, click this link, set up your bank account and we’ll wire you money every month. And boom, it’s on autopilot. And we’re sending out massive passive mailbox money to our affiliates. And that is my goal. My goal is not to go, how can I get something from them?
RV (22:32):
It’s not so much what can I, you know, what’s the least amount I can do to get them to refer me? I’m going, how can I constantly overdeliver for them in a way that they wanna say nice things about us, they wanna help us, and I’ll pay ’em on top of it. Massive passive mailbox money. So guess what happens? People are flooding to invite me on their podcast, right? They’re flooding us to invite ag on their podcast. They’re, they’re talking about us without us even being there and using their own affiliate link, because that’s how this works, right? And so start with your customers over deliver, build relationships before you need them. And that is how you build an incredible, amazing life-changing referral fee affiliate program. One of the most powerful dynamics in all of small business. Make it happen.
Ep 437: How To Get Better Outputs Using ChatGPT | Kyle Stout Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you want to be better at using AI to write copy? Well, I do. And if you happen to be in the category of me and millions of other people,
AJV (01:09):
It also sounds a little stiff or perhaps a little static or generic, or it feels like you could have read that anywhere else on the planet. It doesn’t cater to your avatar. And probably just generally speaking, it doesn’t sound like you it doesn’t sound like you. Well, we’re gonna talk about a few tips that you can start using right now to give chat g p t better prompts in order to get you better output. So here, here we go. You ready? I’m ready. Let’s do this. Number one, start by training chat, G p t. You can train chat, g p t and that means you have to teach chat, G p t how to write for you. It has to get to know you, your company, your products, and your avatar. So start with having it create your ideal avatar.
AJV (02:02):
So actually start by saying like, please create my ideal customer avatar based on blankety blank, blank, blank. Based on, you know, and this is just an example of mine. Hey, please create me a, an ideal customer avatar that is a female age, 35 to 45, who is successful in her career, lives in the United States, makes over six figures who is super ambitious and driven, but struggles with feeling not worthy, not enough, feeling invisible. You know, you kind of just go through the process, right? So first of all, you have to know who your avatar is. It cannot make it for you. But what you wanna do is you want to have it create your ideal profile by you telling it all of the demographics and psychographics, right? Where do they live? How old are they? What’s their industry? What’s their,
AJV (02:59):
Their socioeconomic status? And then the psychographics. How do they feel? What are their goals? What are they looking for? What are their fears? All the things. But by feeding it into that and having it create your profile, it will remember that as you start giving it new prompts, or you can just copy and paste those, that prompt or that output that it gives you and copy and paste and saying, Hey, please create me a landing page for X product that caters to, and then you can copy and paste and insert your ideal profile. But the thing is, is like, the more that you teach it, the more that it remembers. So the more that you do in there, it’s gonna remember that time after time again. So step one is train it on your ideal avatar. Step two is train it on your products, right?
AJV (03:46):
So the next thing you’d be is, please write me a product service or program description that is fill in the gaps. If I’m just using a brand builders group, it would say, I would say, Hey, please write. I wouldn’t say, Hey, but I would say, please write me a service description for a one-on-one personal brand coaching program that includes unlimited events to two day live experiences in Nashville, Tennessee. That includes 14 course curriculum access that in, you know, I would keep going on and on, and then it’s gonna write that. So I’m going to feed it my current descriptions. Now, if you don’t have a current, you know, product or service description, it can help you. But it’s gotta know your avatar and it’s gotta know who you are, what it’s for. It’s gotta know your company all the things that it’s gonna do.
AJV (04:39):
And so this is better suited for once you have your clear right service offering, your product offering, then have it go in there and have it build that this is a part of training it. It’s not that you’re u using chat g p T to create everything. You don’t have some of that work you gotta do yourself, right? That’s your job. And that’s why companies like Brand Builders Group exist, is we help with that part of the strategy, but it’s to help feed it into chat G P t to train it. So it’s now it’s learning who your avatar is, what your product is all about, or your service is all about. Then you wanna also teach it about your company, right? So for me it would be, you know, help create a company profile for brand builders Group who blank, right? So I’m going to help help it learn about brand builders group. So in my case, I would say like brand build create a pro a company profile for brand builders group who specializes in servicing the bur the personal brand strategy arena, who we cater to, coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, small business owners, buy dah, dah, right? So I’m gonna feed all of the things that we already have established
AJV (05:57):
About our avatar, about our offering, about our company is an effort to train, chat, G p T. So that’s step one. That was a long step one, but that’s step one. Step two is keep everything in one chat thread so you can build off of each new prompt. That’s a quick and easy one. Number two, use prior prompts in your new prompts to get more specific. So you can just copy and paste, use the little clipboard icon right there in chat, g p t, copy and paste the avatar. And you say, Hey, write me a email that caters to this avatar for this service offering, right? And you could just copy and paste the whole thing in there. It’s long, right? So some of those prompts are gonna be long, but the more that you do that upfront, the less you have to do it later on.
AJV (06:45):
Okay? That would be the the third thing. Fourth thing, be specific with what you want, right? So if you’re going, Hey, write me a landing page an active voice use X copywriting formula. So for us, it’s like, Hey, please write me a landing page, an active voice using the 15 Ps of copywriting from brand builders group who caters to blank avatar. That is not a discount oriented service offering that blank, blank, blank, right? And so I’m talking about be specific. So I would include things like please use humor, be concise. This is for a first time buyer. On and on, right? I’m gonna give you some of those examples in a second, but be specific, right? The more you do this upfront, the less you have to do it later on, or it changes, right? Use things like, are you looking for active voice, which is what most of us are probably wanting, or is it passive voice?
AJV (07:51):
Is this for a first time buyer? Is it for a repeat customer? Is it a, a re-engagement campaign of some sort for people who showed interest but never purchased or they did purchase, but it was X amount of years ago. Is this a discount, seasonal discount type of thing? Do you include a discount or not? Is this seasonal or not? Right? Is this something that you do every summer or every winter, every Christmas, every back to school, whatever. Do you want it to include humor? Do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be verbose? Do you want it to be concise? Do you want it to be in the voice of a certain person, right? So it, you can say, write it in the brand voice of AJ Vaden from Brand Builders Group, or write it in the voice of c e o of Brand Builders Group. You can be that specific. In that case, you would also need to train it on you as a personal brand. You can say things like, oh yeah, I mentioned this. Like, is there a certain copywriting
AJV (08:55):
Formula that you want it to use? Use things that say, I like it. Please use an email. Like, and you could use examples of other people or other companies. You can give it feedback, right? Rewrite this with more humor or less humor, or make it longer. Make it shorter. Make it more nuanced with different things based on who they are in your list. It’s like these are long-term clients that I’m catering to for this. You can do it for the sales pipeline, you can do it for nurture. All of those things. You have to be concise that this is a, the first email of a five email series, or this is the second email of five emails. All of those things are the things that we need to think about that most of us aren’t thinking about when it comes to using chat G p t.
AJV (09:50):
So there’s a lot in here, but here’s what I would say as your takeaway from this is number one, train chat, G p t. Help it get to know you, your business, your product, your avatar. Number two, get specific. No upfront, is this a funny email? Is this a short email? Is it serious? Is that with an offer or not an offer? Is it for a first time buyer or an existing customer? Is it for a past customer? That does no, has no longer has any engagements with you? All of those things are what you wanna think through, detailed out first, because those are a part of the prompt that you need to get or give to get the output that’s actually going to be usable. And just note too, it’s like, it’s not gonna write it perfectly, but it will take you from a copywriter to a copy editor, which most of us can edit in our voice. But we struggle with writing it from top to bottom. That’s where chat g p t can help you, save you thousands of dollars, save you tens if not hundreds of hours and help you get something that you can use right away. So how do you get better outputs with chat G P T? You learn how to tell it what you want upfront, and that’s what we did right now. So go test it out. Go use it and tell me what you think.
Ep 435: 3 Secrets to Getting Publicity | Paige Dungan Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Let’s talk about how to get attention for your book launch or your product launch, or your company launch, or whatever it is, and specifically how to get traditional media attention and how to get other people to feature you or your work. And this is sort of timely, right? Because right now I am launching we are officially launching a brand new podcast series that’s a total side project, but I have created a podcast called Eternal Life. Seven Questions Every Intelligence Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus of Nazareth. And in this case, it’s a total side project. It’s just looking at the logical historical, archeological, practical, rational evidence for the story of Jesus of Nazareth, and how as a logical person, I’ve come to believe that. And so we have, we in its 15 episodes, and they’re free, which you, you can go look at it right?
RV (01:01):
On Apple or Spotify. Right now it’s, it’s now finally up. And that is something that I have created that is really for my two boys that in case something were to happen to me, if I, I didn’t, I was not around to explain to him how daddy has become to believe in the historical accuracy of the story of Jesus of Nazareth, right? So let’s say I wanted to launch that. Now I’m not actually launching it. My, like, I’m not doing a traditional launch. There’s no book attached to it. There’s no revenue stream attached to it. It’s a total give back. But if I were trying to, I would go, okay, what are the things that I need to do to get attention for that podcast? And that’s what I want to talk about here. Okay? Not just, we can use that as an example, because it’s a real time thing going on in my life that I’m, you know, semi or quasi launching.
RV (01:57):
So these, these principles will apply a hundred percent to you launching anything, whether it’s a book, a podcast, a company, a product, et cetera, a nonprofit, anything that you’re, when you’re trying to use traditional media to get the word out, okay? And number one is super simple. You have to connect your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. Connect your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. This is the first of these three major publicity secrets. So the news, the news, you know, remember that the metaphor of news, if you don’t know this, news, NEWS originally began as an acronym, not a metaphor, excuse me, as a, as an acronym. It stands for Notable Events, weather and Sports. That’s what news stands for. Notable events, whether in sports. So still to this day, that’s what the news covers. Notable events, whether in sports specifically, if you’re not a, if you’re not, you know, talking about the weather or you’re not talking about sports, then what you’re talking about is notable events, or that’s what the news is talking about every day, right?
RV (03:08):
All the major news channels are talking about notable events. What is notable? Notable is notable. It’s remarkable. It’s worth remarking about. It’s unusual. It’s, it’s, it is unexpected. It’s different. It’s, what’s everyone’s talking about is captivating people’s attention. So the news, the news is not really interested in reporting accuracy. Unfortunately, the news makes money from attention, right? So they latch on every day, news channels, latch on to whatever the trending topics are in the world that have people’s attention, wars, diseases, economic collapses, you know celebrity stuff, like anything. That is the thing that people are talking about. They’re trying to ride the wave of attention. And so that’s what they’re doing, because the more that they do that, the more attention they hold, which means the more eyeballs they have, which means the more they can sell to their sponsors, and the, and the higher the packages, the higher the, the, the higher the impressions, the more money they can get from advertisers.
RV (04:15):
And so they’re playing not a game of accuracy, right? The news is not playing a game of accuracy. They’re playing a game of attention. Once you know this and understand this, then you go, great. If I wanna be featured in the news, I have to think of it as a highway, right? Think of it as like all of the trending topics are the interstate, and here you are, right? And just, you know, using me as an example, go, oh, Rory’s got this new podcast about eternal life. I gotta go. How do I somehow connect? I have to, I have to create an on-ramp for connecting my expertise into the flow of information and attention. This sort of attention superhighway that everybody is talking about. That’s what you have to do. You have to connect your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. If you can do that, then they’re gonna feature you.
RV (05:10):
Like when we launched our trends and personal branding, national research study which by the way, you can go download [email protected] under free training, or under brand builders group.com in our free trainings. Those are, those are downloadable. Also AJ vaden.com, she has it on her website as well. You can download that free training. Well, the day that it came out, the day after it came out, I got a call from Good Morning America, and I was, because there was a, a notable event. There was Victoria Secrets. The company made this major announcement that they were, they were going away from supermodels as their, as their spokespeople. And they were, they had instead selected personal brands, like they were taking recognizable people. And there were, you know, people from different women from different walks of life, but it was a major strategic shift that the company announced.
RV (06:08):
And they were saying, we’re, we’re banking on personal brands and we’re going away from the angels. You know, this, this women dressed in scantily clothing. So when we released a study, we, we happened to release a study right at that exact moment that was about how the trends in personal branding, national research studies showed that people are more likely to trust individual faces, then they are company names. And so it fit. And so they had me comment on, on that story on Good Morning America, right? That’s an example of connecting it into the news cycle. So if you want to get on television first of all, you’re gonna have to be prepared to pitch, or someone’s gonna have to pitch for you. But you have to think about, or, or the radio, right? Or, or anyone who’s, who has a big blogging platform, who’s blogging about current events, or even videos that go viral are often connected.
RV (07:03):
I mean, they’re trending topics, right? So they’re often things connected to things that are happening in this. You know, the nation’s conscience, Tom, Tom Hanks used to say, if you wanna make a hit, you have to enter into the nation’s conscience. So you have to ask yourself, what is everyone talking about? And then you kind of ride that wave by just figuring out what is the connection point that on-ramp is what your pitch is to producers. Producers are looking for interesting and new ways to cover the stories that everyone else is talking about. So if you can connect your expertise to what’s happening in the news cycle, they’re much more likely to say yes, right there. The news is not that we released a new national research study. The news is not that you have a book coming out. The news is not that I’ve launched a new podcasts, that’s news to me, that’s a notable event to me, but to the rest of the nation, that’s not news.
RV (07:54):
And books come out, you know, hundreds of books come out every single week. That’s not a notable event in the grand scheme of things. The notable event is whatever people are talking about. And all you have to do to figure that out is turn on the news and watch it for 30, 30 seconds. You’ll see there’s, there’s typically only a few stories that are dominating the headlines. Or pick up a newspaper scan, you know, scan the web, the, the major news outlets and see what the major headlines are. You just gotta pitch the, the producers of those networks, those channels, those outlets to say, Hey, I’m an expert on personal branding. I want to tie into this. You know, if, if, and, and if I wanted to get attention for, if I wanted to get mainstream media attention for my new podcast, I’d have to do the same thing.
RV (08:37):
Now I have zero desire. That’s not a part of my strategy nor my plan to deal with that. And part of that’s because I didn’t write a book on it. And, you know, I, that’s not the goal, right? Is that it’s, it’s, it’s a resource I’ve created for people to genuinely go study in an objective way, the data and the evidence that supports the narrative of Jesus, of Nazareth as being a deity, right? So I’m not trying to sell anything. I don’t need a bunch of urgent national attention. I’m putting it out there in the world. I’m letting people know about it, but I’m not like, you know, all in on trying to like promote this thing. So that is publicity secret number one, connect your expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. Publicity secret number two, become the media. Become the media.
RV (09:25):
And, and by the way, this is a recap of the, the the interview that I did with Paige Dungan, who is, is one of our, one of our implementation partners for pr. And we talked about, you know, if you’re looking for a PR person, go listen to the episode. I shared how you can get in touch with her. And she’s one of the people that we recommend for that service. And we have a, we have an affiliate relationship with her, and, and she’s great. I’ve known her for years, right? So we, there, we talked about, and this is true, is become the media build your own media platform. This is what we teach people how to do at Brand Builders Group. We teach you how to build your own audience. And you do that on social media, on blogging, podcasting, YouTube you know, whatever outlets you have.
RV (10:07):
And you know, if you’re, if you’re a brand builder and you’re one of our members, you know that we teach something called the relationship engine. And there’s a technique as part of that called the content diamond. These are the strategies, these, these techniques that we teach that you know, what is a relationship engine? A relationship engine is a digital automated ecosystem that we build an infrastructure around whoever the messenger is that pumps their content out into the universe as fast as possible to automate trust and capture, you know, and, and engage in lead capture. So that is how you start to become the media. You’re producing content, you’re producing videos, you’re producing audio. If it’s, you’re producing short form videos, you’re producing the written article, whether it’s on LinkedIn, pulse or Medium or Blog. If you’re following our content diamond strategy, you’re doing all of those things.
RV (10:57):
And most of all, you’re then converting those, you’re using that media to draw in attention and awareness. And then you’re using lead capture conversion to build your email list, your text message, opt-ins you know, direct message automation is a big place where we’re doing a lot right now. And so then you’re building this audience, and you are the media because you’ve built your own audience. The media is anyone who’s who, anyone who creates content for an audience on a regular basis. So there’s several things about this. First of all, when I launch a new podcast, I don’t have to beg anyone for favors. I can just go into my list and I can just write a, write a message and hit send. And boom, I could tell tens of thousands of people that I have a new podcast out. I can announce it on our own podcast, right?
RV (11:45):
Which is kind of what I’m doing now. And I, and I mentioned in, in some other places to go, Hey, I’ve got a new podcast. If you wanna listen to it, go listen to it. Eternal life. Seven Questions Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus of Nazareth. It’s my story as a skeptic going through the evidence and the history to go what ev you know, how can any of this be trusted and believed? So there’s two parts of be being the media. The first part is obviously that you’re building your own audience. And when you build your own audience, you can announce stuff to them. And that’s why publishers and literary agents and, and speakers bureaus and, and places like that, they wanna get ahold of creators who have access to their own audience because they can teach ’em how to monetize that in, in various ways.
RV (12:33):
And that’s what we teach people how to do both, how to build their audience, and then how to monetize that audience, how to add value to them in exchange for money, right? So there is obviously that part of it that you’ve built your own audience. The other part though, is that when you become the media, you understand the pressures, the desires, the demands, the challenges, the opportunities of having to create content regularly, right? There’s some beautiful parts about that. ’cause You go, man, I get to inspire people. I get to, I get to talk about the things that I think are, are, are important to me and are important to my audience. And then there’s some challenging parts of that going like, oh my gosh, like, you know, it’s, it’s another week. I gotta produce more content. I gotta have another video. I gotta have more articles.
RV (13:18):
I gotta have more insights. I, I, there’s, there’s this need, this engine, this, this engine that you have to constantly be fueling with new content. Well, when you understand that, it helps you relate to the rest of the media world in general, right? Like every day I get people sending books to my, you know, office and, and pitching me emails on, you know, sending me dms, trying to get on our podcast and all this sort of stuff, right? So I’m, I take the role of a producer and vet to go, does this person have anything worthwhile to say to you? To my audience, to our audience? Is it worth me putting them in front of you? Are they gonna add value to the conversation? If yes, then I say yes. If no, then I say no, but it’s not so much that they’re gonna pay me and I’m just gonna put ’em in front of you.
RV (14:07):
That doesn’t do me any good. I have to create content that’s useful for you, that’s relevant to the audience that we are building. And once you do that, you go, oh, that’s exactly what the, the producer on the Today Show, or Good Morning America, or Oprah or Fox or CNN or whatever the outlet is, they have to do the same thing, right? So they need, they need you as much as you need them. That’s something you gotta understand about media. They need you as much as you need them. They need someone to help them produce content that is worthwhile to be consumed by their audience, but they also need to make sure that that content is relevant to be consumed by their audience. So they’re both desperate for you, and they also have to filter out the right person. So it’s not so much about who’s the smartest or who’s the most famous, it’s who has the most relevant bit of expertise for my specific audience at this specific moment in time in history.
RV (15:06):
And that’s why someone could turn you down to be on national TV today and three months from now, everything can change in the news cycle, and you can make the same pitch and they would have you on. So when you become the media, you understand that, right? Like I’ve, I’ve, I, I’ve watched a lot of our clients do the same thing, right? A lot of our, a lot of our clients are the biggest podcast hosts in the world, and they get on these kicks of certain things like you know, Tom, Tom, Tom and Lisa biu, so they’re clients of ours. And Tom Tom’s a good example of this Tom’s podcast. He kind of like goes and kicks where he, you know, suddenly he wants to talk to anyone who’s talking about like, health and longevity or some, you know, anyone who’s talking about like you know, like crypto or Bitcoin or like any of you know, the metaverse kind of stuff.
RV (15:53):
And, and that’s just because he’s interested in that. And so in that particular moment, somebody who would’ve said no to as a guest six months ago, he might say yes to today. So you go, well, how do I know when to pitch him? Simple? Pay attention to what he’s, what, what he’s promoting. And, and then you have to, and then you have to check all the boxes, right? So you gotta pitch him the right message at the right time for his audience, what he’s interested on, and then you gotta have the credibility points that he’s interested in. So every different media outlet has different criteria for those. It’s not just about who’s the smartest, who’s the most famous, who went to the, you know, the most prestigious school. It’s a combination of all of those factors unique to their audience. So if they say no to you, don’t take it too personal.
RV (16:34):
It just means you weren’t the right match. You weren’t the right fit for what they’re producing at this time. It doesn’t mean you should never pitch them again, but it does mean if you’re gonna pitch them again, you need to pitch a different angle to a different, a different, you know, a different hook to a different thing going on in the news cycle. And when you become the media, when you’re producing your own YouTube show, your own podcast, your own blog, your own Instagram channel, your own LinkedIn feed, and you start featuring other guests and, and filtering content. You understand better how the media operates and what, what they’re looking for, which makes you a better guest. You also know, like, what are the things that are credible, right? Like, someone sends me an email that’s 18 paragraphs about why they’re coming to the show.
RV (17:18):
It’s like, I can’t, I’m not even gonna look at it, because the idea of reading 18 paragraphs is overwhelming. So it’s just a no, right? On the other hand, if someone that I know and I trust really well sends me and says, Hey, Rory, you should meet this person. I think they’d be great for your podcast. Here’s three sentences on ’em and a link to their website, and I click on it. I go, oh, website looks awesome. They look credible. They’ve got a book, they’re credible. You know, they, they’ve got some, you know, maybe some social media following whatever. They have these indicators that go, yeah, this person is legit. Great, let’s have ’em on. And it’s that simple. So the more you produce media, the more you produce content, the better you will be at understanding how to get on other media outlets. So that’s publicity, publicity secret number two.
RV (18:00):
And then publicity secret number three. And this is the biggest secret of all this. One’s the magic. This one is, this is the one that, that has built my career. This is the one that if you go, how did Brand Builders Group go from zero to eight figures in five years with no investors, no debt, no bank loans, no credit cards. Like how did you guys do it? It would be this one. And it is something that I call the relationship switchboard. Well, that’s the technique. Let me tell you the principle. Here’s the, here’s the principle, and like, write this down. Okay? Seriously, if you are driving, like pull over and write this down. If you’re running on the treadmill, stop for a second. You’re gonna wanna write this down. This is one of our flagship BBG Brand Builders Group mantras. This is one of the things if you became, if you were to become a member of ours and you were to become a paying client, which by the way, if you’re curious about that, if you go to free brand call.com slash podcast, free brand call.com/podcast, you can request a call with our team and learn more about what that would look like.
RV (19:05):
Well, if you became one of our monthly paying members, you would hear us say this all the time. Ready? Write this down. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them. What do I mean by that? I mean, invest in helping the people that you might one day need help from long before you ever need help from them. That’s what I mean. So how have we built this company so quickly? We’ve built it through affiliates. These affiliates who have who, huge audiences. How did we get to these people? Especially, you know, when we started Rambler’s Group in 2018, we did not expect to start the company. And when we sold our last company, we sold, we lost everything that went with it. All of our social media, our podcast, our email list, our whole team, we were sitting on zero, baby Zero starting over.
RV (20:05):
This was only a few years ago for us, right? How did we get back to, to where we are so quickly? We built relationships with affiliates, we built relationships with people who have large platforms. How did we do that? Well, we paid attention to who had something going on that they were launching, and when they had something going on that they were launching, we showed up and we offered to help for free. We said, Hey, I see that you’re launching a book, right? This is how I met Gretchen Rubin. This is, I always tell the Gretchen Rubin story because I love Gretchen. And she’s, you know, I guess I would call her a friend. Like we go back and forth a few times a year, but we’re not super close. But we’ve built a relationship. She’s been a, been a big supporter of ours.
RV (20:48):
She’s been on this podcast, she’s been on our summit. She lets us YYY you know advertise that, that she’s been a guest, things like that. And you know, how did I meet Gretchen? I said, oh, look, Gretchen has a book launch coming out, and when she has a book launch coming out, I say, Gretchen, I have some friends who have some very large podcasts. Would you be okay if I pitched you to see if they would have you on their show? Right? Not for money for free, right? I do PR for Free Brand Builders Group. We have a full-time person on our team that does free pr. We only do free PR member to member, though. We, we, we offer it as a free service for people who are active members in our program to help them get booked on the shows of our other active members.
RV (21:33):
We do that for free. You can’t buy it. It’s, it’s a, it’s just a, it’s just a value add that we do. It is also my number one prospecting mechanism and tool that I do to build new relationships. And I call it the relationship switchboard, because I keep track of everyone I know who is the host of a media outlet, right? Most of them are podcasts, right? They have great podcasts. Some of ’em are, are huge bloggers, some of them are top talkers, some of them are are YouTubers, some of them are in national tv. But I just keep a list of everyone I know who has a large platform. And then I keep a list of everybody I know who’s like AVIP guest. And all I do, a huge part of my time is just connecting these people to one another. And so I just go, if somebody, if somebody I know is launching a new show, like this is a good example right now.
RV (22:29):
Dr. Josh Ax, who, you know, we’ve been sort of casual acquaintances over the year. We become really close in the last couple years. We become really close friends. Part of that is because he’s launching a new podcast and he’s wanting to meet a bunch of people. And I go, dude, I got you. Like, I can get you access to like 30 major VIP people who I think would be a great fit for your show. And I’ll do it for free. Why? Because it helps Dr. Axe, it helps my other friends, and it, it helps me. I get caught in the crossfire. Now, a lot of it is it work for me? Yeah, it’s a ton of work. Do I get paid for it? No, I do not get paid for it at all. $0 zero now. But here’s another mantra I wrote about and take the stairs.
RV (23:12):
And this is another life philosophy that is true. You always get paid for how hard you work sometimes. Now, oftentimes later, always. Eventually, you always get paid for how hard you work sometimes. Now, oftentimes later, always, eventually. That’s spending your time on what we would call and, and procrastinate on purpose. My second book on things that are significant, what are things that I can do now that create more time or money tomorrow? Well, connecting people is something I can spend time on today that multiplies my influence tomorrow because it builds my reputation with both people. And I have nothing to gain from either per se, like no specific ask nothing, no money. It may never come back to me from those specific people. I’m simply going, oh, you need guests for your show. Let me give you access to all of these VIP guests that I have that are friends of mine.
RV (24:04):
Or if somebody is a guest and they have something they wanna promote and they suddenly launch like a new book, a new course, a new program, a new company, a new nonprofit, whatever. And I go, Hey, are you looking to get the word out about that thing? Let me introduce you to 30 friends I have who all have big platforms. Now, I know for you, when you hear this concept, you might go, oh, well that’s great, Rory, because your clients are, you know, all these famous people and Amy Porterfield and Ed Millets and Louis Howell and Eric Thomas’, and yes, but they didn’t. How did they become clients? They became clients from me doing this for them, right? This is how I build relationships with people. Save the best for first, give, give, give, give without expectation of receipt. I do this for people. I’ve done this for many people who I’ve never gotten anything from return.
RV (24:55):
I’ve helped some people get booked on shows, podcasts, like dozens of shows. They won’t even have me on their own show. Am I bitter about it? Yes.
RV (25:50):
And I could say, Hey, here’s a new podcast that I launched. You know, if I wanted to, I’m not gonna do this. ’cause I don’t wanna do a huge podcast tour for it. At least not right now to say, Hey, will you have me on your show? And they go, of course man, because I’ve been talking to ’em every week for three years, helping them get on shows and helping people get on their shows. So that’s the relationship switchboard. It doesn’t have to be media. That’s how I use it. I use it a lot for media. I also use it for speaking, right? I take all of my past speaking clients and all my friends and, you know, clients who are speakers who are in up and comers or in, in or around my fee range. And I go, Hey, you should meet this person.
RV (26:30):
You should meet this person. ’cause My clients need speakers, and my speakers need clients just like my hosts need guests and my guests need hosts, and I wanna get caught in the crossfire. So do I do it because something good will come out of it for me? Yes. But when I don’t know, I don’t keep, I don’t keep score. I, I don’t, I don’t let, it’s not about having people owe you one. It’s just about going, how can I add value to the community? How can I add value to the, the shows that I’ve been on? How can I add value to the guests who’ve been on this show? And how can I add value to the clients who’ve had me book on their stage, have me come speak on their stages, and how can I add value to my friends who are really good speakers, who I really believe in to help them get on stages?
RV (27:11):
This is the answer. And I get caught in the crossfire. I’m constantly in this interchange between awesome people. And what happens is that tends to cycle up. You tend to get around better and better people and bigger and bigger and more and more influential people, more and more people of notoriety. And it’s, it’s an upward snowball, just like everything we do with the relationship engine and building your own media platform. It’s about automating trust. It’s about saving the best for first. It’s about building relationships before you need them. It’s about give, give, give, add value. And it’s trusting that you can’t outgive God.
RV (27:50):
You can’t, you can’t outgive God. You can’t outgive the universe. You can’t outgive like, you know, Zig Ziglar said, help enough people get what they want and you will get what you’re, you want. And I have found it to be absolutely true. Now, I’m not always in a one-to-one relationship. There’s some people that I’ve helped a lot more than they’ve helped me, but then there’s other people who have helped me a lot more than I’ve helped them. But in total, I have received a massive amount of blessing far beyond the work that I have done to help others. But I’ve done a lot of work to help others. And so that blessing seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And even if not, you end up getting to play a role in shaping the world, right? And that’s awesome, right? I, I love, I love it when two of my friends or two of my clients get together and I go, yep, I connected them and they made magic.
RV (28:40):
They made magic happen. And I go that, that interview would’ve never happened if it weren’t for me. And I, I can take quiet credit for it ’cause it’s true. And I can be so proud that all I did was connect these two amazing humans and they made a little piece of magic for the world. And that’s all we wanna do at Brand Builders Group. We want to shape the voices that shape the world. That’s why we’re here at Brand Builders Group, right? We’re not trying to make a, you know, bazillion dollars. We don’t care about private jets. We don’t even care about being famous and selling lots of books and speaking on stages. I mean, those are good things. We’ve done a lot of those things. We wanna make an impact. We want to shape the voices that are going to shape the future of the world.
RV (29:22):
That’s why we do this at Brand Builders Group, and we wanna have a hand in it. And so that’s why we work with Mission-driven messengers. And that’s also why we turn clients away. There are some people where we go, yeah, sorry, we can’t help you ’cause we don’t believe in your message, right? No offense, we just, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t believe that that message lines up with what we think makes the world a better place. And so we’re not gonna do it. But if you are a mission-driven Messenger, and you do genuinely care about making the world a better place, you should probably think about joining our community because we have big things happening, big things happening. On that note, I, it would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to two of our brand builders, group clients hit the New York Times Bestseller list.
RV (30:04):
Just recently this month we have had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 clients this month. Eight clients who have become USA Today and or Wall Street Journal bestselling authors. And we have had two clients, Nicole Walters and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who have become New York Times bestselling authors. Two this month, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon wrote this book Forever Strong. This was the number one selling book in the nation. She hit number three on the New York Times. But she as a came to one of my private brand mastery events only about six months ago. And followed our system to AT no hacks, no gimmicks, no tricks, just adding value, working her butt off following the system. And you know, her book absolutely crushed. It was the number one advice, how to book by unit sold. It was number three on the New York Times but the, the, the highest selling book in the nation last week.
RV (31:08):
So congratulations, Dr. Lyon. That’s the eighth time that a Brand Builders group has hit the New York Times in the last 12 months. So we’ve hit the USA today in the Wall Street Journal with eight different clients this month. And then we’ve had eight times that we’ve hit the New York Times in the last 12 months, two in this month alone with Nicole Walters and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And these are just people doing work, adding value. What are they doing? They’re, they’re, they’re they building relationships before they need them. They are becoming the media. They’re building platforms, they’re creating content, they’re adding, they’re automating trust. And then when their moment comes, they connect their expertise to what is happening in the news cycle. That my friends are the three biggest secrets of publicity. And I hope that helps you if you are a Mission-driven Messenger, and I hope we get to work with you one day soon. Until then, keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 433: Building Your Consulting Practice by Positioning Your Expertise | David Baker Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all. We are gonna talk about how to build your consulting practice by positioning your expertise. And I say consulting but you could be a trainer, a coach, a speaker, an author but this is consultative approach to what you do. How can we build that by positioning your expertise? And this was motivated. This was inspired by a conversation that I had with David Baker, who was a recent guest on the influential Personal Brand podcast. And I thought this was relevant enough to a break it away and have a separate conversation around this idea of expertise and really overcoming the challenge of being a generalist, which really just means overcoming the temptation to say yes to everything I suffer from that. I know you suffer from it.
AJV (01:04):
So we say yes to all of them most of them not in our wheelhouse, not where we feel like we’re a, you know, a deep expert, but we feel confident enough or well versed enough that we can go learn it, figure it out, or do good enough. And then what accidentally happens, and I see this happen all the time, all around me, is that all of a sudden, without effort and without intention, you have become known for something that you don’t want to be known for. You have strayed away from your natural giftings, your uniqueness, and the things that you do better than anyone else because you have said yes to the wrong things for long enough that now people come to you for things that you aren’t as good at. It’s not your passion, it’s not your expertise. And you wonder why you feel like you’re working all the time.
AJV (01:58):
You’re burnt out and you’re tired. You’re tired.
AJV (02:49):
I have to study, I have to ask questions, ask. But when I stay in my lane, my expertise where I have knowledge like nobody’s business, right? It’s like, I could do this in my sleep. I could talk about it in my sleep. I live it, I eat it. I breathe it. Yes, I can help you with that. I feel a hundred percent confident in it. It doesn’t feel like work. Why? Because it comes natural to me, because I have spent most of my life doing it, learning about it, talking about it. And that’s what I do now. So the question is then why do we say yes to all this other random stuff? And I believe it’s for one of two reasons. One, we have a scarcity mindset, or we’ve got fomo,
AJV (03:39):
Because I, I don’t know if my next deal or my next client, I don’t know, right? I’m scared of the economy. I’m scared of the money in my banking account. I’m scared that I can’t generate a lead. I’m, I’m scared, right? It’s scarcity in this fear induced pattern, or it’s this kind of FOMO thing of you’re, you’re in the middle of a land grab, right? You’re like, I gotta take it all. I gotta grab market share why? It’s up. It’s like I’m new, so I gotta take everyone. It’s like I gotta get my reputation built up. And that happens by saying yes to everything. And it’s like, that’s also not right. I’m, and there’s some middle ground in there. And yes, I know that there are some times where we gotta take on business because we gotta, we have mouth to feed and bills to pay.
AJV (04:21):
And it’s like, you just gotta take it. But there’s a, that’s a finite amount of time, and it should be in only desperate situations. Because what we should be doing is narrowing our focus, honing in on that expertise. And so people know when to come to you because they know what you do. And it is crystal clear because you have made it crystal clear because your positioning is right. Your branding is right. Your talking points are right. Your, your conversation is right. Who you work with is, right? It is clear. But what muddies up the water is when you start adding in stuff that now your expertise is just broadened to the point of, well, I can do a little of sales, I can do a little leadership. Sure, I could probably talk about billing and some customer service. And all of a sudden that honed in focus on sales is so broad that you’re like, well, sales is everything.
AJV (05:20):
And so people go, well, I don’t know what to hire you for. And now you’ve muddied the water so much that people aren’t clear. So don’t do that. How do we do that? How do we not do that? Right? Here’s a few things that I thought was really wise from this conversation with David Baker. And I thought, this is fascinating and interesting. ’cause I hear people at Brand Builders group say all the time, well, man, I just, I think I’ve run out of things to say. It’s like everything that I have to say about it, it’s in my book, or it’s in this. And it’s like, well, maybe that’s not true. And I love David said, the, with a narrow focus, you always have more to say with a narrow focus. You always have more to say. The more narrow your focus, the more you have to say.
AJV (06:12):
And as I was listening to him, I just had this immediate thought about my husband and business partner, Rory Vaden. Now Rory is seemingly an extrovert, seemingly but really he is a secret introvert. And I have given him a hard time, most of our marriage and even dating relationship of he’s not a great general conversationalist. And I am like, baby, like you need to learn how to make small chat. And he’s like, I don’t know how to do small chat. I don’t wanna do small chat. I’m not good in a networking social. But here’s one of the things that I think is so fascinating. Every so often we’ll meet a new couple or meet a new set of friends or, you know, whatever. And when a topic of his expertise comes up, he is the ultimate chatterbox
AJV (07:10):
And where, where did all these works come from? He’s like, we could go weeks when he’s like, I, I got nothing to say in these meetings or these environments until something comes up where he has something to say. And while David was talking, I immediately thought of Rory of going, that’s it. He has so much to say about a few things because on those things, he feels like I have something of value to give here. I have deep experience, I have deep expertise, I have a deep passion about it. And it’s like when those topics arise, you know, because the words are flowing, right? He is chatterbox central and when he doesn’t have anything to say on topics he doesn’t feel confident in or he is not interested in, he’s like, I got nothing to say on this. I’ve got nothing to add. I’m gonna let those around me who have interest in that share.
AJV (08:05):
And I thought that was a really good example to me of going, man, you don’t run out of things to say when it’s a topic that you feel like you have true expertise in, because you’ve done the research, you have these conversations. You think about it, you research, you read about it, you talk about it. So there is always something to say. And so there is always more to say when that topic is narrow, because that’s where your focus is. So you look at the, look at things through the lens of that narrow focus, and then new things start to rise all the time through that. And that was just a great highlighted moment of like, even in my personal life of going, and there is so much power in the value that you provide when you narrow in your expertise, when you narrow in your focus of going, man, it’s like, I know when I wanna talk about anything X, Y, and Z, who to go to, right?
AJV (09:01):
Because I know that they are a deep expert in it. They are read up. They are ready to share and provide value that happens when you choose something that has a more narrowed focus and it gives you more opportunity to provide value. So back to that, it’s like talking about a narrow focus gives you more to say, not less to say. And I love that. And David actually said in our conversation, he said, an author is just someone who uses a book to force you, the author, to think about what you have to say. He said, that’s the power of writing a book on a narrow focus is that you spend all this time trying to say a lot about a little versus saying a little about a lot. It’s like, go deep in a subject matter, not wide go deep, right? But an author’s goal is to figure out how do I have enough to say about this narrow focus that I can fill 200, 250 pages of words that are about this singular thing?
AJV (10:04):
So you have to learn how to say a whole bunch about a little, right? A a generalist says a little about a lot. An expert says a lot about a little. And that same thing could go, you don’t have to be an author to do that. Speaker a blogger a content creator for social media. It doesn’t matter, but it’s honing in that focus. And the gist of this really comes down to you have to be willing to talk about what you have to say in order for you to figure out what you actually have to say. There is an art and a practice of the more you write about it, the more you talk about it, the more you learn about it, the more you read about it, the more you research it, you figure out, you distill, right? You filter through all of this stuff for you to figure out, this is what I actually have to say.
AJV (10:59):
And the more that you do that, you are positioning yourself of being a true expert. And the more that you do that you can charge more and have fewer clients, which means you can have more time to expand on other things that you have passion and interest in. So back to the topic at hand, it’s like how do you build your consulting practice By positioning your expertise is you become known for one thing. And that’s because your branding is, your branding is aligned, your conversation is aligned, your clients are aligned, your service offerings are aligned with a narrow focus. ’cause You don’t have to be a big firm to make a lot of money, and you don’t have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Being a small firm, being a solopreneur is not a bad thing. It’s the right thing
AJV (11:53):
For the right person. So you don’t have to go big to be really, really good
AJV (12:00):
At what you do.
Ep 431: How to Turn Your Personal Brand into a Worldwide Movement | Pat Flynn Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
So there’s a reason why Pat Flynn is a legend in the world of podcasting and just creating content and specifically creating community. And it’s the, it’s all the things that you heard on that interview. And if you didn’t listen to interview, go back and listen to it. I mean, pat is, I mean, he is one of the OGs of this space. He’s created this podcasting industry. He has impacted so many people, and you get to hear his philosophies. And that’s part of what I want to share with you now is what inspired me of what he said, like, what inspired me the most? Because, you know, it’s, it’s ironic that, you know, we titled that episode a, a after it, you know, we titled it How AI Will Reshape Customer and Member Experience. And I think the reality of how AI will shape that experience, if I had to summarize it up, is it will put more focus on the human elements, right?
RV (01:06):
Just like marketing automation and emails and things as, as automation comes in, creating automation in your business is not for the purpose of taking out or extracting the humanity of your business. It’s the opposite. You should be automating the routine things, automating the mundane things, automating the things that must be done as a baseline so that it creates the margin for you then to reinvest the time into the human experience, into the relationship, into the getting to know people, into transformation and changing people’s lives. And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand, or they, they do wrong, is they go, oh, I want to create, you know, some way to create massive passive income and not have to work or do anything for anybody. And, you know, maybe that strategy works, but I don’t, I don’t know of anybody that it works well for.
RV (01:59):
The people who I know are winning are people like Pat, who are going, I’m using technology tools, automation, AI in the future as a way of creating a great experience and then adding the human element on top. You know? So as you, as we think about what is going to take your business to the next level, and what, how do you turn something from a personal brand into a world changing movement? And what does that, what does that look like? And, and right now as I’m recording this, I am texting back and forth with one of our private clients, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who wrote this book that is called Forever Strong. And this is amazing. What has happened with this woman is amazing. So she became one of my private clients. She came
RV (02:59):
To my brand mastery event, which are these very micro group experiences that I lead in person. And we have usually only like five people there. And she came to one, several months ago, we were talking, you know, preparing and helping her with her book launch. Her book has taken off in, in an a way that like we’ve never seen. So she followed our whole system, followed our whole process, and everything we talk about is lighting the spark so that it will take off. That is what is happening with her book. Her book has been number five worldwide in all books on Amazon for almost a week straight for almost seven days. That is so insanely difficult. This means that she’s been selling, you know, well over like fif like between 1500 and 2000 units probably a day. Then the final numbers from last week are aren’t out yet.
RV (03:47):
But, you know, she’s moved a ton of books. She’s, I don’t know if she’ll hit the New York Times, but she’s certainly gonna be a New York Times candidate. And I was literally just talking we’re, I’m just texting back and forth with her as we’re talking about, you know, what’s working and the strategy for how we keep this going. And so much of it is ties into like this episode with Pat and going, okay, what’s working for Dr. Lyon in many ways is, is is very similar to how Pat has built his personal brand and his platform. And it’s, it’s like caring about people. Specifically. If you wanna know how to turn your personal brand into a worldwide movement, it’s understanding that you have to make it more about the message and less about the messenger. You have to make it more about community and less about the content.
RV (04:49):
You have to make it more about what you believe and less about what you’re trying to get people to buy. That is how you create a worldwide movement. That is how you create something that transcends your work, your expertise, your knowledge, and your vanity and your metrics and your profits and things, and go. And that is how you create something that becomes bigger than you. In many ways, it’s a matter of just setting the intention to have something that is bigger than you, that is greater than you, that is a purpose that is beyond just you, right? It’s more about the message, less about the messenger. What does that mean? It means that your personal brand and the content that you create is being created. Because what you are passionate about is wanting people to live a certain way, wanting people to act a a certain way, wanting people to change their life in a certain way.
RV (05:53):
And you care more about that. You create more about creating that change in their behavior and making that impact in their life than you do about you becoming famous and you becoming well known and you becoming, you having more followers, right? It’s not that having more followers is bad, more follow followers is good. It’s just saying for, to be a mission-driven messenger, it means that money is good, but money is subservient to the message. Income is good, but income is subservient to impact. You have to be more about the message and less about the messenger. And that is what these people do, and that’s what drives them, and that’s what makes them great, right? And I, I think Lewis Howes a great example of that Lewis House is, is, is someone who’s always just been so focused on helping his audience win, helping his audience succeed, and then Al also helping his guests succeed.
RV (06:53):
And he’s sort of come along for the ride, right? Like he’s the host that has come along for the ride. And now Lewis is this, this very world renowned, recognized, one of the most influential personal brands in the world, but it wasn’t because he set out on a mission to make Lewis famous. He set out on a mission to help people. The School of Greatness is about sharing and, and, and curating the greatest minds in the world, sharing their ideas for free on a podcast where people may not ever get access to that information, right? And so Lewis comes along for the ride. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon with this, this book, forever Strong is just blowing up. And man, I, I hope, I hope this, I hope we, we, we get good news that she hits New York Times. We got good news last week. So one of our other clients, Nicole Walters hit the New York Times.
RV (07:41):
She, she hit number nine on the New York Times. That was the seventh time that we’ve had a brand builders group client hit the New York Times in the last 12 months, seven times we’ve done that, right? People following our system and, and what is our system? The system is not gimmicks, right? The system is not gaming. The system is adding value, making a difference, creating a movement. And what’s happening with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is she’s teaching the whole world, right? She’s an actual, she’s an actual fellowship trained doctor, is she’s saying, we all think that we’re over fat, right? We think that we’re over fat, but we’re not over fat. We’re under muscle. And so she is starting this muscle movement, right? She calls what she does, muscle centric medicine, and she’s talking about what she believes. It’s not so much go buy my book, buy my book.
RV (08:33):
She’s, she’s, she’s passionate about educating people to go. The whole narrative has been about losing weight and cutting carbs and cutting calories and like reduce, reduce, reduce. And she’s saying it’s not about that. What really creates health is more muscle, right? More protein, more, more muscle. And so we all think we’re over fat and she’s teaching us, no, we’re under muscle. And then if we can build muscle, then all these other health benefits take care of themselves. And it’s, it’s a fresh, it’s a fresh message, but it’s, it’s about the message, not the messenger. And it’s, it’s about what she believes, not what she wants you to buy. That’s how you create a movement, right? And we’re just, we happen to be on the, on the behind the scenes, like inner workings on, on her actual team. And we have been for the last several months of preparing to launch this thing with the force it deserves.
RV (09:26):
And now we’re seeing it like catch and start to take off. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s blowing my mind, the numbers that she’s posting,
RV (10:13):
So the book gets caught in, in, in the groundswell of that, right? So the book kind of goes along for the ride. Her personal brand goes along for the ride. And that’s what happened with Lewis House, and that’s what happened with Pat Flynn with his podcast, right? He’s, you know, just been focused on the movement and the message. And, and I love what I love, one of the things that Pat said in the interview, again, go back and go back and listen to the interview. You just don’t get, you just are not gonna get access to somebody like Pat typically, you know, you don’t get that kind of access all the time. So it’s a powerful conversation. And one of the things he said, which I loved, he said, make each piece of content that you create a gift for your audience. Make each piece of content, you create a gift for your audience, right?
RV (11:08):
Is your content a gift for your audience, or is it something you do so you can grow followers? Is it a gift for your audience? Or is it something you put together so that you can sell people and get your hands in their pockets and take some money? Again, I’m not against money, I’m not against followers. We’re, we’re fans of money, right? We like money. We, we like followers, we need those things to make a difference, but it’s where does it rank in the order of priority? It’s is money subservient to, to the message, to the mission is serving your audience the priority? And then all the other things are subservient to that. So it’s not that there’s, you know, these things are bad, it’s just the order of priority matters. It’s about service, it’s about your audience. It’s about making an impact on the world.
RV (12:00):
It’s about going, what would I say if, if money didn’t matter at all, right? Like, what is the thing that I would dedicate my life to? What is the thing that I believe in? And when you’re creating content, the content is a gift. And y’all, I have one of these gifts for you, like, I’m, I’m gonna go, I’m, yeah, this is also a little bit off, off topic, but not really, you know, a few like a couple years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, this very sobering thought, which was, what happens if I die before Jasper and Liam, my kids are old enough to have a conversation with me where I can truly explain to them the logical and historical and archeological elements of why I have come to believe that, that Jesus of Nazareth is actually a deity. Why he’s actually a messiah. How, what is the evidence that I have discovered through research and reading and exploration and critical thinking and challenging and, and, and discussing and, and, and, and, you know, all of these things that I have done in my personal life, not in my business life.
RV (13:22):
And it was a sobering thought to go, wow, I’ve spent over 20 years, almost 20 years of my life now in my personal life, exploring this thing that is not a part of my business and my personal brand and what I do professionally, but it’s really important to me to share that with my kids. And what happens if I died before my kids got old enough? And that created this deep sense of urgency, this deep urgency in me to go, I have to get, I have to get this recorded for Jasper and Liam. Hopefully nothing happens to me, right? I’m not planning on going anywhere soon, but like, if something did, this issue of eternity is so important to me, and there’s so much misunderstanding around it, and I’ve spent so much of my own time exploring the evidence for this that it is of tantamount significant importance to me, that my boys one day will get the benefit of all of that knowledge.
RV (14:21):
And I said, I have to create this. I don’t have a way to monetize it. I, right? And so all I did was I just driven out of this, this purpose really for them. And then, you know, we recorded it and it’s 15 episodes, and it was like, well, we can’t release 15 episodes on this podcast, so, you know, we need to start another podcast. And so we are launching this, this whole separate podcast series called Eternal Life. Seven Questions Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus of Nazareth. What is this ep? What is this podcast? It’s just me sharing my personal life’s work of exploring the evidence, the logical reasons, the historical reasons, the academic reasons, the archeological support to go, how is it that a logical, rational person could ever believe in this idea of a human that was a deity, that was somehow a God who performed miracles and then died and re resurrected and came back to life?
RV (15:21):
Like, how does any rational person believe any of that? And, and that was the question I asked that caused this 20 year journey of me unpacking it to where I have come to the full conclusion that it is definitely what happened, and that there’s a mountain of evidence that supports it. And I’ve documented it for my boys, and I’ve decided to go, okay, why not release this to the public? Why am I telling you this? Because it’s a massive amount of time. I have no way to monetize it, right? I have no plan of making money. I’m not suddenly gonna build a personal brand around this idea. It’s just a project that was like, I have to share this and I’ll, you know, I have to make it and I might as well share it. So it’s a gift, right? And it’s a great example of, you know, when Pat said that you have to create, make each piece of content a gift.
RV (16:15):
It is a gift. I have no other benefit from that. Now, hopefully every piece of content that I create, everything around the four levels of influence and the psychology of influence, which is what my actual area of expertise is, and my actual business is about, right? Our business at Brand Builders Group, our team is about, you know, helping people become wealthy and well known, helping them make a bigger impact, helping them monetize their message and their personal brand, which is my actual core expertise, right? The content for that should also be a gift, right? But I have a reason to make that a gift, which is also that I get the side impact of having a way to monetize it. But even eternal life, it’s 15 episodes, it’s over 15 hours of content that I’ve had to create. It took me two years to build this, and I’m just giving it away for free.
RV (17:04):
It’s a gift, right? Not all of you are gonna wanna listen to that podcast. Some of you might, right? So, you know, make sure that you, you know, opt in here or go, go Search For Eternal Life is the name of the podcast by Rory Vaden. And it’s coming out soon, and it’s like within the, I think it’s supposed to come out this week, like by the end of this week. So it’s either out now or it’ll be out soon. If you’re on our email list, of course we’ll announce it. If you follow [email protected], I’ll, you know, I’ll be posting it there too, so that you can see it. It’s not the future direction of my personal brand, but it’s a gift, right? You have to make each piece of content that you create, it’s gotta be a gift. There’s gotta be a piece of you in it. There’s gotta be, you have to care. You have to give a crap. You have to have put time and blood and sweat and tears to go, I’ve created this for you and I’m giving it to you for free.
RV (17:59):
That’s the secret to content marketing, not which hashtags do you use and how do you edit and what are your camera angles, and what is your lighting and what’s the right hook? And how do you play the algorithm? To me, that’s not the secret, right? Those might be the secrets to GE going viral once in a while, but that’s not the secret to building a business and to changing the world. The secret to that is going create content that is, that matters deeply to you talk about the things that matter to you and create it as a gift to do the work of packaging it and preparing it, and then promoting it to your audience. And by the way, promotion is part of the gift, doing the work of telling the world about it. If I do all the research, discover the cure for cancer, but then I don’t do any of the work to tell the world that I’ve discovered it, the net impact of me discovering the cure for cancer is zero.
RV (18:57):
I haven’t affected anybody, right? So promotion is part of the gift. Promotion is part of the responsibility. Promotion is part of your privilege as the messenger. It’s part of your obligation, it’s part of your duty. It’s not just part of your job. It’s not just part of like, you know, the the price you pay to be successful, although it is that also for a mission-driven messenger, I have to reach more people because that’s part of my calling. Marketing is art, right? Promotion is a privilege. It is my duty. And so when you stand in that place, not the place of vanity going, I need a bunch of people to know about my stuff, but standing in the place of service to go, I have put some work into creating something that I think you’ll enjoy. Here it is. And I want that to get to as many people as possible.
RV (19:52):
That is the difference. And that is what converts a personal brand into a worldwide movement. It’s that conviction, that clarity, that dedication. And you see this with the biggest personal brands in the world, right? You see this with Dave Ramsey comes to mind, right? Dave Ramsey. He doesn’t need money. He hasn’t needed money for decades. Like he’s still on the radio three hours every day. Why? Because it’s a movement for him, it’s a mission. He’s going, I know what it’s like to be broke and, and bankrupt and be upside down financially, and have somebody come into my home and take my daughter’s crib to sell it, to pay off my debt. He knows what that feels like. So getting another download on his podcast or another follower on Instagram or another speaking engagement or another dollar in his bank account is great. It’s not why he does it.
RV (20:51):
If he did, if it was why he was doing it, he would’ve stopped a long time ago. He doesn’t care about, it’s not that he doesn’t care about those things, right? Those are byproducts of the mission, of the movement of the cause. And, and, and those of you that are clients of ours at Brand Builders Group, you know, in our, you know, we’ve got 14, 14 courses in our, in our curriculum, 14 different two-Day experiences that we take people through. And our flagship first experience finding your brand, DNA, we take, we help you create a brand positioning statement, which is what problem do you solve in one word? What is your uniqueness in one word? What is your solution to that sentence or that that problem? In one sentence, what audience, what audience do you serve in one phrase, what one revenue stream matters above all others.
RV (21:38):
And then we also teach you something called the cause, right? The problem is what people are struggling with the cause is why they are struggling with it. So the, the concept of a cause inside our curriculum, our formal curriculum at Brand Builders Group, it’s a, it’s a semantics. It’s a, it’s a formal, it’s a part of our vernacular. It’s an element that we teach on, is that there’s the problem which people are aware of. This is the thing they know they’re struggling with, they’re willing to admit it. And so we use that in marketing because it attracts people. ’cause They see it and they go, yes, that’s me. But then we teach, we teach messengers and we help them identify the cause, which is the thing that their audience doesn’t see, right? The problem is what they’re struggling with the cause is why they’re struggling with it.
RV (22:20):
The problem is what they’re aware of the cause is what they’re unaware of. The problem is what they think they is. The, they think is their issue, but the cause is what their real issue is. Well, academically speaking in brand builders group curriculum and in our construct, in our paradigm, our semantics and our vernacular in our frameworks, the causes, everything that I have just said to you, it meets those academic criteria. Additionally, though, deliberately and intentionally, the cause we deliberately use that word as a double entendre, meaning it has two meanings, A double meaning. It has the meaning of all of those things I shared, but it also doubles as the cause for your life. It is the cause, the, the purpose of the messenger. It’s the reason why they have dedicated their life to doing this. It is, it’s the, the source of their inspiration.
RV (23:16):
It is their cause for creating their personal brand, their cause for digitizing and monetizing their reputation, their cause for writing a book, their cause for creating a speech, their cause for launching a membership or a podcast or a course. It’s their cause. It’s their reason. It’s their purpose. In addition to being the cause of the root issue that people struggle with, the cause of the messenger is to say, I’m going to dedicate my life to eradicating the world of this invisible enemy that is taking them down. Right? For Dave Ramsey is helping people be debt free for Dr. Gabrielle Lyes, for helping people to be healthy, right? For Pat Flynn, it’s for helping people to, to, to create more income. Rambler’s Group, it’s for us to help you create more notoriety, to help you become more well known. So you have to find a cause that is something that you would dedicate your life to, and the the, when the cause elevates and you become subservient to that, that is when there’s a chance for your personal brand to turn into a worldwide movement.
RV (24:41):
And when it turns into a worldwide movement, there’s a bunch of other wonderful things that come along and you get to come along for the ride, right? I get to go along for the ride. The book gets to come along for the ride, your business gets to go along for the ride, but not because that’s first, because it’s a byproduct of being more focused on the message than the messenger. More about creating community and not just the content, and more about sharing what you believe and not just what you want people to buy. So make your personal brand a cause, make it a mission. Make it a movement. We’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 429: The Hidden Perks of Podcasting | Carli Van Heerden Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Wanna know three hidden perks of podcasting. Well, let’s talk about why podcasting, both as a host and a guest, has some really truly hidden benefits that maybe you’ve never thought of before. So I’ve got three things that I wanna highlight for you today about why podcasting can bring you more than what you think. So here’s the first thing. Again, this could be as a host or a guest, but the amount of free education that you get is insane. Like I have been the host, co-host of the Influential Personal Brand podcast for five years, which means I have had at least once a week, right? That’s about how many we do every year, about 52 times five. So about 250 hours of free expert training and free consulting advice over the last five years. If you think about that at an hourly rate. So let’s just say I’m pulling up my calculator here, and we’re gonna do some math here together at 250 hours over the last five years times an average consulting rate.
AJV (01:12):
And we’ll just go somewhere kind of low, $200. That means it’s $50,000 of free training and free coaching and free consulting advice over the last five years that is not just helping me personally and professionally, but then I get to share it with people like you. And it helps me build my audience. That is a huge hidden perk of podcasting that I don’t hear enough people talking about, which is the amount of learning and education that you get from being the host. And I would say that too, as being the guest, like when I get to be a guest on other people’s podcasts, I learned so much about them, how they do things, how they got started even just listening to the way they ask questions. So not only am I learning how to be a better host, I’m also learning how to be a better business owner, how to be a better speaker or consultant, or all these other things that I’m interested in just by having conversations with people and a very targeted confined space.
AJV (02:13):
And it’s, it’s interesting because we all know that we’ve got about 50 minutes here to get a as much value in as possible, which makes you as the host ask better questions. And if you have a great guest, it makes them get to the point quicker, which means the value is rich. These, these aren’t hours wasted. This is real education time that you as a host and the guest get as a hidden perk of podcasting. So that’s number one is free education. Number one. Number two is it’s one of the best prospecting tools on the planet. So this, think about this as a second for this one specifically, it’s about being a host. As a podcast host. I get to do outreach, warm and cold to people
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That I would love to be on the show. And there’s two approaches that you get to take if you’re a host. One of them is, Hey, I have this awesome podcast called the Influential Personal Brands Podcast, and I ran across your name or heard you speak here or heard you on this podcast, and I loved when you talked about X, Y, and Z. You would be an amazing fit for my audience. And then I’d do a little sales pitch. Version two. Outreach is a sales outreach, which is, hi, I am aj, the c e o and co-founder of Brand Builders Group. I was looking at your stuff as a speaker and it looks like you could really use our help
Speaker 2 (03:48):
The person who is not gonna take a a cold outreach to be a client will accept a potential cold outreach to be a guest on a show. Because being a guest on our show is the beginning of a relationship. It’s the beginning of a potential paid relationship. But most importantly, it’s just the beginning of a relationship. It’s no different than a sales environment. And so being able to do proactive outreach to have guests on the show is what I do now, whereas I used to do cold outreach for sales calls, now I’m doing it for podcast outreach. And it’s a natural transition where we’re both having a genuine effort of getting to know each other, asking questions, learning about each other, deciding if we like each other. It’s the beginning of a sale. It, it’s a relationship. So being a podcast host is one of the best prospecting tools on the planet because people are more willing to talk to you, and it’s about them being a guest on your show versus cold outreach for a sales call.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That’s number two. And then number three it is an amazing opener for sales conversations, even if you’re not using it for that. I cannot tell you how many times as both a guest and a host, but for this one, it’s more guest specific. One of the reasons I accept tons of invites is because I know that this gives me an opportunity not only to talk about Brand Builders group, my company to their audience, but it’s also to introduce it intimately to a person that I’m having a one-on-one conversation to. They’re literally inviting me onto their show to talk about what I teach, what I do, in the way that I do it at Brand Builders Group. And at the end of that, I guarantee you, 50% of the time they go, you know what? We should probably talk more. We should probably set up a time. I’d love to learn more about what you guys actually do at Brand Builders Group. And so, being a guest in a proactive manner of loving what I do, providing value for free and talking about it with conviction, 50% of the time when I’m a guest on someone else’s show, they’re going, Hey, I’d really love to schedule a
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Separate call just to talk about what you do at Brand Builders Group. And so it’s an amazing sales tool tool. The same thing happens as a podcast host. Many people at the end are like, you know what? I’m so glad to be on the show. You know, I was reading up on the website and everything and I, I really would love to learn more about what you guys do. So there’s this, there’s this, you know, kind of hidden benefit of there is this outreach component where people are more likely to accept a call with you where they may not talk, take a coffee or lunch with a complete stranger, but if it’s them being interviewed on your show, they’re just a little bit more open to it. And then it’s an amazing sales invitation tool. It’s like, if you think about it an interview is like a, a an hour long sales pitch.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
‘Cause What you’re doing the whole time is talking about what you do and how you do it and how you can help other people do it. And if you do a really good job at that, then the host naturally might be interested. And so there’s this dual benefit of an addition to expanding your audience, expanding your reach just sharing value. There’s all these other things that you get these hidden perks. You get education for free. There’s this outreach component that allows you to make new contacts, but you may not have gotten without an invitation to be on your show. And then there’s the bonus part, that’s the sales side. So those are the three hidden perks of podcasting that may not be so obvious to you, but have direct benefit when you host a show or you decide to be a guest on other shows. So go podcast
Ep 427: 3 Ways to Set Yourself Up for a Miracle | Tim Storey Episode Recap
RV (00:03):
Let’s talk about how to have a miracle in your life.
RV (01:06):
And that really got me thinking about how to prepare yourself for a miracle. Like how to set up the stage for a miracle to happen. And, and I don’t mean to suggest that you can just, that you’re in control of miracles in your life. I, I don’t suggest that. Like, I’m not saying that. And I, I think that God can move and can create miracles with or without us, for sure. I’m, I’m a hundred, I mean, I’m a deeply confident of that. But I also do think that there’s evidence, just like evidence in my own life exploration and then in scripture that would say that God is looking for willing participants. You know, there’s this old quote that says, God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called. And that he’s looking for someone who is willing to be an active participant in, in his story.
RV (02:05):
And that to me is, is what miracles are all about. So I wanna just share three tips, three ideas, three ways that I think will open you up to maybe be more likely to receive a miracle. I mean, who knows? But if, as I look back on my own life, I’ve had some pretty amazing things happen. I mean, in, in many ways I think of my life as a miracle. Like I think it is, it is a miracle to, to look at where I started my journey and to look at where the Lord and the people around me have led me to now. And I think of that as miraculous. I mean very, very unusual and, and, you know, divinely guided. And so, and, and I’ve had, you know, that’s on the whole, but I think I’ve had, I’ve had different versions of miracles in my own life and, and ones that I’ve seen.
RV (02:58):
So I just wanna share this ’cause I think it’s inspiring. And the first way to set yourself up for a miracle is to ask for a miracle to be willing to ask for a miracle, right? And, and I want to connect this to whether you, whether you believe in the divine or not, right? Let’s say for example, let’s say you don’t believe in the divine or the supernatural, or in God, even to me, absent that consideration, there’s, it’s, it’s pretty hard to ignore the, the, the ubiquitous nature of the power of goals and vision, right? Where people, you know, so many wealthy, successful people, I mean, there’s not a, I don’t think there’s a single ultra wealthy, successful person that I’ve ever met that doesn’t talk about the power and the importance of having a vision and like seeing something in your life, whether it’s the law of attraction or it’s, it’s Brian Tracy, or it’s, you know, pick your, pick your wealthy person.
RV (04:03):
It’s like, this is a common thing that people in a worldly way have in common, is they allow themselves to dream. They allow themselves to dream. And growing up around people who were more, we’ll say, lower middle class, lower class, you know, not maybe prob maybe not quite poverty, but, but close to it. And being around various environments of those types of people. I think I’m, I’m convinced at least in, in my own experience, that a lot of people don’t allow themselves permission to dream. They immediately write it off as impossible. And I know for my own life, the first time I ever said I’m gonna be a black belt, the first time I said that, that that was, IM impossible to me, right? I was, I was seven years old when I first had that thought. And I was like, that felt impossible. And then I remember distinctly the day I said, I wanna be valedictorian.
RV (05:04):
What, how, how, how amazing would it be if I could be valedictorian? I remember dreaming about getting a full ride scholarship. I remember being in elementary school, having this conversation with my mom about getting a full ride scholarship to college. I remember dream dreaming about being a record breaker in the direct sales company that I was involved in. I remember the first time I said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna win the world championship of public speaking. I certainly remember the first time saying, I’m gonna become a New York Times bestselling author. Not just once, but repeatedly, consistently in my life. I have pursued systematically things that have felt impossible. And so I understand why people have a hard time asking for a miracle. It seems impossible. And even out separate the divine for a second and go just in a worldly way, you go that I could never do that. That’s not realistic. That’s so unlikely. And yet, that is first and and foremost, the fundamental difference of the people who do achieve it and those who don’t. Right? I’m one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes is where Steve Jobs says, your entire life changes the day that you realize that everything in the world around you was created by people who are no smarter than you.
RV (06:24):
I love that quote. I found that to be true in people like Steve Jobs in my own life. And in the people who don’t achieve the things that they want, they don’t ask for a miracle. They don’t allow themselves to dream. And so, in a worldly sense, I would call that goals envision, whether it’s for your relationship and your family or your company or your own physical health or your own finances to, to allow yourself to dream. Most people won’t do that. But here to go, what if you, the next level of that is ask for a miracle. And here’s something that you need to know about miracles. What makes it a miracle is the fact that it, it seems impossible. And that’s the magic of it. I think that’s why God wants to create miracles, is he wants to demonstrate his power. He wants to demonstrate his supreme authority.
RV (07:12):
And yet, in order for a miracle to take place, we have to ask for the impossible. If it wasn’t, if it wasn’t impossible, it wouldn’t be a miracle. If it weren’t unlikely to ask for, it wouldn’t be significant then when it came true. So how can you have a miracle if you don’t ever ask for one? If you don’t ever dream of one, if you don’t ever think about one, you can’t. You won’t. You, you, you’re not allowing yourself. You’re not opening yourself to the possibility of it happening. You are closing yourself off. You’re deciding upfront, you’re reaching a conclusion in advance that it’s not possible. And when you reach that conclusion, you shut the door on possibility, whether you think of it as divine or not. So the first thing to do to open yourself up to a miracle is to be willing to give yourself flexibility, permission, and grace to ask for a miracle.
RV (08:12):
The second way to create a miracle in your life, I think, to open up yourself for a miracle to tip the odds in your favor of achieving a miracle, is to walk towards a miracle, walk towards a miracle. There there is this old phrase that says, as you pray, move your feet. Right? And I love that it’s to go again, separate the divine for a second, and just think about it in a worldly way. You know, this is my, my main critique of the secret, which I, I don’t, I don’t struggle with the, the idea, the power of the secret of you. You know, you, you know, ask, believe, receive you know, I think that’s a really important part. But there’s a, you know, there’s a huge step missing in between there, which is, which is not really true, which is, is ask believe, work your butt off, and then receive, right?
RV (09:07):
That’s the real formula. So there’s all of that is true. It that’s just absent. I think a really critical part. There’s nobody that I know who said, I wanna be a New York Times bestselling author, and they sat in a room and thought that, and it happened, right? That doesn’t happen. There’s no one who has ever won the world championship of public speaking, become a, a, an eight figure entrepreneur, become a millionaire you know, built a great business, built a huge church, started a massive nonprofit, like, you know, become a professional athlete, been an amazing actor, like landed a huge music deal. We, we know people from all these walks of life, and not one of them achieved those things by sitting in a room doing nothing, not one. What they all have in common is they asked for a miracle, right? They, they, they prayed for it.
RV (09:58):
If they, and even, even if they’re not spiritual, right? They visioned it, they gold it, they, they, they thought about it, they dreamed, but then they worked like crazy. They walked towards the miracle. And all of their stories are fraught with rejection and setbacks and failure and feedback and just, you know, losses that shaped them and gave them information. And it shaped their character as a person. And it, and it shaped their, their information, their education as a professional to where they could bring those together and they could become ripe territory For a miracle, you have to walk towards a miracle. You don’t have to you know, Martin Luther King Jr. You don’t have to see up the whole staircase. You just have to take the, the take the first step. Like that is true. And one of the ways that I think about this on a, on a, on a divine level, on a supernatural level, is that I don’t think that God shows us the second step before we take the first step.
RV (11:12):
I don’t think that God shows us the second step before we take the first step. Why? Because I think God is looking for someone to bet, to bet on him. He’s looking for someone to open themselves up to receiving his presence in their life, to allowing his spirit to move in their life. He’s o he’s asking for us to be faithful. He’s asking for us to, to trust him. And how do we demonstrate trust? Do we demonstrate trust by saying, I trust you, or do we demonstrate trust through the action of actually doing something? It is, to me, it’s the latter. You demonstrate faith by actually moving towards the thing, not by sitting in a room and going, I hope this happens, but to say, to first ask for a miracle, to pray for it, or to vision it and plan it. If, if you’re in the worldly sense and not the divine sense, but then to move towards it, right?
RV (12:04):
You have to take that action. And I think of Noah building the ark. Like, you know, he, he, he’s there, there, God is blessing him because he’s looking for someone who’s willing to take action. Someone who’s willing to build an arc before there’s a raindrop, right? Someone who’s willing to gather these animals before there’s a raindrop. You have to be willing to take the first step before God will show you the second step. That’s, that’s just what I think, right? That’s just an observation. I don’t know that there’s necessarily scriptural support for that, but, but I think that there probably is. And, and, and you know, my life verses Hebrews 1211, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, rather painful, yet it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
RV (12:53):
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, rather painful. That’s the first step. That’s the action that’s walking towards a miracle. That’s saying, I wanna be a New York Times bestselling author. I’m terrified. I have no idea how to take that step. I wanna become a Hall of Fame speaker. I’m terrified. I have no idea how to get on those stages. I wanna launch a course. I wanna start a business. I wanna find yeah, I wanna build a family. I wanna start a nonprofit. I wanna solve this problem in the world. They, they’re all terrifying. They’re so huge and enormous the first time we have them. But you, you have to step towards them. And at first, you don’t know what to do and where to go, because it’s, it’s painful. You’re learning. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, yet later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who’ve been trained by it.
RV (13:38):
What have you been trained by? You’ve been trained by discipline. You’ve been trained by action. You’ve been trained by taking the step, getting the feedback, adapting, adjusting, and your faith is demonstrated in the fact that you continue walking without knowing exactly how you’re going to get to the destination. And in my mind, it’s a little bit like, it’s a little bit like saying, I see the destination, but I’m not clear on the path, but I’m willing to take the first step towards the destination without, without knowing where the whole path goes. That’s a demonstration of faith, that’s walking towards a miracle is to say, I don’t know how God’s gonna pull this off. I don’t know how I’m gonna pull this off. I don’t know how we’re gonna pull this off. I don’t know how you’re gonna pull this off, but I’m, we’re gonna try, we’re gonna move towards it.
RV (14:29):
We’re going to do what we can. We’re going to do every single thing in our power to try to make this happen. And most people aren’t willing to do that. And there’s this extraordinary payoff that you get when you take action. The extraordinary payoff that you get is that if that dream doesn’t come true, if that miracle doesn’t come true, then you know, it must, because be because God had some greater plan, some reason why it didn’t, which means it’s part of a, a better plan. But if you have a goal, if you have a dream, if you ask for a miracle and you don’t take the steps in your control, you don’t do the things that you can do, then you don’t know if the reason it didn’t come true is because God didn’t give it to you, or the miracle didn’t happen, or it wasn’t in your destiny, or because the more likely truth, which is that you didn’t show up and do your part.
RV (15:23):
You didn’t do the work. You didn’t make the work. You, you didn’t make the call, you didn’t make the ask, you didn’t show up, you didn’t practice, you didn’t train, you didn’t learn. You didn’t do the things that you know how to do. That’s on you, that’s on you, and that’s on me. So if we don’t get miracles, that we can’t be mad about miracles that we ne we don’t get, that we never asked for, and we can’t be mad about miracles that we don’t get, that we never worked for. Right now, a miracle inherently is God covering the gap, God covering the distance. But I don’t think it’s just God doing the whole thing. Certainly he can, he’s, he is able to do that. But there is evidence all throughout scripture that God is looking for a willing participant, someone to step towards him. That is the sign of faith. Not to just say, I believe you, but to say, I believe you and I act in alignment with that belief. And even if you don’t believe in the divine or supernatural, to me, that’s a miracle in and of itself. It’s a miracle in and of itself that somehow, some way all of us know what the next step is in almost any dream, any goal, any miracle. Somehow all of us know what a first step could be. But God doesn’t
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Show us the second step
RV (16:52):
Until we take the first step often. So you gotta ask for a miracle, step one, step two, you gotta walk towards a miracle. Step three, you need to read about miracles. You need to read about miracles. You need to, I think you need to be become educated on miracles. And to me, there is power in reading the Bible. There is power in reading the word of God, even if you don’t understand it. Even if you don’t believe it, right? Like and, and now, now I would tell you, if you’re gonna read the Bible, I would not start at the front of the book, which is the Old Testament. And in Genesis, I would go skip to the New Testament and start there and start reading about Jesus who was a human figure, a real person. There is so much documented evidence that Jesus was, was a real person.
RV (17:50):
And by the way, I am launching a whole dedicated podcast series on this called Eternal Life. Seven Questions That Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus of Nazareth. And if you go to confident eternal life.com, confident eternal life.com, you can, that’ll take you to this special new podcast series that we have created, that I’ve created, that our team is launching. That is 15 episodes dedicated to my personal life’s journey. My, this would be my personal life’s work, not my life’s work from a career standpoint. ’cause It is totally not a moneymaking endeavor at all. But my personal life’s work studying the evidence, what evidence is there of Jesus and miracles? And it’s seven questions that every intelligence skeptic should ask about Jesus of Nazareth. And we look at the historical, the archeological, we look at the, the corroborating evidence, the documents that support, and we ask the questions like, how do we know Jesus was a real person?
RV (18:58):
How do we know he wasn’t just a good teacher in something more? What evidence is there that he was a deity of some type? What evidence is there that he ever resurrected from the dead? Right? We, we tackle these challenging questions about Jesus, who was someone who boldly made claims about being a deity. So that’s rare in and of itself right now, he’s not the only person to do that. Lots of people have David Koresh and lots of crazy people we talk about. We talk about that in. But the difference is he followed through on them. The difference is the things that he said would come true came true. The difference was many people who were not believers still witnessed unexplainable things happening. And even if they didn’t believe, they were not able to explain the things that happened and that were documented. So anyways, go to confident eternal life.com and check out, that’s a whole separate podcast series.
RV (19:49):
‘Cause It’s 15 episodes just related to the history and the, the academic logical scrutiny of the story of Jesus. But I’m telling you, if you read it and you dive into it, I mean, and you, and go listen to it, I mean, that’s me. That’s me taking basically 20 years of my personal life and consolidating it down into 15 short podcast episodes to share the best of the best of like what I found of the evidence. How could a rational, logical person believe in miracles and a savior and a messiah in heaven? How, how, how, how have I come to believe that? And that’s what we’ve taken the time to do with that special podcast episode. But I’m telling you, when you read it, you will learn about it. There is evidence, not just a little bit, an overwhelming preponderance of evidence, a, a gigantic mountain to where at the end of, at the end of my personal journey, at least for me, I started to realize it takes way more faith to not believe this stuff happened, happened than to believe that it did.
RV (20:48):
When you studied the evidence, the, the, the, the, the, the trail of provable and fa facts that we have a chance to corroborate, be given where we’re at in the timeline of human history and the tools that are available to us today. So anyways, you can check that out. But I think you should read about miracles. You know, and if you’re not comfortable reading a Bible or whatever you, you know, if you, again, if you’re new to it, I would say read the New Testament. Read about Jesus, right?
RV (21:36):
And what those people wrote and said about what happened. But if you can’t, you know, if, if you’re not into the Bible or Christianity, I would say you still read about miracles because it helped read about read. And, and, and if it’s, and maybe it’s not even the supernatural, right? You go, well, I have some other faith or whatever. Okay, fine. Still though, read about miracles, read about worldly things that came true, read about other people who accomplished the impossible. Read, read Louis Zpr, Reini, I think Zini is the, the unbroken story. I forget how to say his last name, but incredible, right? Like, read that story unbroken, like read that book, read the books of and, and watch the movies of people doing impossible things. Why? Because when you learn about other people who have accomplished the impossible, it helps you realize that you could do it too.
RV (22:28):
That’s part of the power is when you go, it feels impossible to me. But wait a minute, that person did it and that person did it, and that person did it, and that person did it, and that person did it. And that’s just in a worldly way. I’m not even talking about the divine supernatural stuff. I’m talking about the stories of survival or overcoming the odds or even even sports stories or people overcoming physical disabilities you know, read about the Underground Railroad. Like these impossible things that humans have pulled off, right? Launching spaceships to the moon. I mean, there’s so many different examples of people achieving the impossible. The only way that you could sit around and say it’s not possible is, is because you’re oblivious and you’re ignorant to the fact that impossible things happen all the time. Not just supernatural ones, but worldly ones.
RV (23:22):
You just haven’t been exposed. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s that it’s unfamiliar. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s unfamiliar to you. It’s unfamiliar ’cause it’s never happened to you, it’s never happened to your family, it’s never happened to your homies that you hang out with. But it doesn’t mean that people aren’t doing impossible things all the time. Be around people who are doing impossible things. And you too will see that the impossible, quite literally is very possible for them. And once you see it happen to enough of the people around you, you believe it for you. Right? This last week we just had our 21 Brand Builders Group client become a New York Times Wall Street Journal, or u Ss a today bestselling author 21 times. And they’re not game the list, they’re not cheating stuff, they’re not buying their own books. They’re doing the hard ethical work of selling books and building an audience and serving people, right?
RV (24:11):
And they’re using every mechanism that we have available to show them how to get their message out to the world. It’s not fake bots and fake people buying books and some of those things. It’s legitimate. It’s doing the work, but they’re achieving the impossible things that they never thought possible. If you hang around brand builders group long enough and you go, you see the stories of 21 other people who’ve done it, you start to realize, Hey, maybe that could be possible. Maybe there is a system here, like maybe there, maybe there is a way that this comes true. And, and you may not care to become a bestselling author, but I’m saying hang around the people who are achieving the impossible. And if you can’t hang around the people who are doing the impossible, read about miracles, read about ’em, the more you’re exposed to ’em, the more you will realize. It happens all the time.
RV (25:02):
You are a miracle. Your life is a miracle. The fact that we exist on this planet, in this solar system, in this extremely delicate scientific balance that I is, is the, the odds defy all logic and rational thinking that we would have life on this earth and that we would exist, and that we of, you know, all the sperm that came out like in the world like that, that, that, that we were the people, we are the people who are here now living in this place, in this world. I mean, the miracle of birth, the miracle of nature, the miracle of the solar system like you are a miracle. We are living in a world of miracles. There, there are, there are things that are happening all around us. And even if you don’t believe in the supernatural, I mean, there is all sorts of miracles that happen on a daily basis. So you, you can be a miracle. You can set yourself up, you can open your life up to the possibility of receiving a miracle and being one of these people. But you have to be willing to ask for a miracle. You have to be willing to walk towards a miracle, and you have to read about or surround yourself with people who are achieving and benefiting from miracles. I hope we get to continue to be a place of inspiration for you in that keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
Ep 425: How To Attract Your Top Customers | Tom Schwab Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So on a recent podcast interview with Tom Schwab, which is a old friend recently got in, reintroduced to an old friend. This phenomenal conversation developed around the concept of borrowed audiences. And it’s something that we talk a lot about at Brand Builders Group, but this was in a, a unique context, and I thought this example was really powerful enough so that I’m making a video about it right now. And the concept is around leveraging other people’s platforms versus leveraging other people’s money. And in the world of entrepreneurship where I have a, a ton of friends who own small businesses, some who own really big businesses but there’s a constant conversation of, you know, the idea of investment money and, you know, do we need whether it’s from you know, an equity company or you’re just trying to get a loan or you’re trying to bring in a, a partner or you’re trying to sell part of your business ’cause you need more funds.
AJV (01:04):
But there’s a lot of conversations in my entrepreneur community around other people’s money. There’s not enough conversation around other people’s platforms. And I love this example that we talked about in the podcast episode on the influential personal brand with Tom Schwab about the importance of not taking other people’s money, but instead leveraging other people’s platforms. And I shouldn’t say, not taking other people’s money, that’s up to you. But there’s another way that you can leverage other people in the business world to help you grow your business. And it’s not just getting in debt or giving up a piece of your business but it’s it’s exposure. And I love this example about Sarah Blakely and how when she was starting Spanx, there was an opportunity for her to go on the Oprah Winfrey Show. And imagine this, imagine if Oprah Winfrey had said, Sarah, I love what your business is all about.
AJV (02:02):
I love what you’re doing. Here’s a million dollars. I’ll give you a million dollars. I’ll take a piece of your business. Or you pay me x amount of interest or even interest free. But here it is. That’s option one. Option two would’ve been, Hey Sarah, I’d love to have you on my show. There’s no money involved here, but I’m going to introduce you to my audience of millions all around the world. Which one would you take? Would you take the million dollars or would you take the exposure? Now knowing Oprah Winfrey and knowing what results from that hindsight 2020 is pretty powerful. But what about in the moment? What if you didn’t know? And what if you were really desperate for money? Would you have taken the money or the platform? And I think that’s a really important question because I hear something else a lot in my community, which is, well, how much are you gonna charge for that?
AJV (02:57):
Or How much are you gonna pay me for that? And there’s a, a part of this where it’s like, would you rather take the money or would you rather take the exposure? Would you rather get the money or the platform? And I think there’s an opportunity for a lot of us as entrepreneurs and small businesses to reconsider the power of the platform versus the dollar. ’cause The dollar has a a short term impact, but access to these platforms is the beginning of something that can last for years and years. And it’s a small amount of money compared to a potentially huge amount of money if you take a leap of faith on yourself and what you’re doing. And the power of the platform today is like never before. And so there’s an, there’s an amazing opportunity for you to hone in as a personal brand, a business owner and entrepreneur of leveraging platform access to audience instead of money that might be more beneficial for you.
AJV (03:57):
And if you’re working yourself through the lens of, well, what should I charge for that? And how much should I charge for this? And I will only do this for that, it’s like, just pause for a second and go, just take money off the table for a minute and just go, let’s not think about dollars and cents at all. Let’s think about audiences and relationships. What would it mean for you to have a trusted relationship with someone who is willing to promote you, advocate for you, introduce you to their audience of millions? It’s worth so much more than a dollar dollar, but it comes from a trusted relationship that you have been building offline for a pretty long time in many cases. But then that introduction is worth millions. It’s worth tens of millions over the course of time versus this very small fin finite amount of money in the short term.
AJV (04:53):
And so in this conversation, it was this idea of how do you attract your top customers when maybe you, you don’t have the money to go pay for paid traffic or do some of these big things, but you provide an amazing service with immense value, and you have a trusted reputation with people who have audiences and that matters. That means something. So here’s a couple of things that I thought were really worth a takeaway from this podcast interview which is, number one is that today when it comes to online business and digital, digital marketing and AI and automation and all things truly we are becoming more efficient all the time every day at things that are not effective. We’re trying to work harder and harder and harder at repurposing content and automating things that aren’t even effective. We’re just trying to figure out how do we do more and less time without even paying attention to does that really work, right?
AJV (05:56):
Does that really work? And instead, we need to go, I’m not trying to get millions of clients or even thousands of clients, I’m trying to figure out what clients do I want to attract and where are they, even if I’m only trying to get 10 clients. It’s like, what if you were able to get introduced to 10 of your perfect ideal clients versus a hundred of your temporary clients that aren’t really a great fit, but they may be willing to spend money on what you offer right now? What do those two different strategies look like? And it comes down from, I don’t care to be seen everywhere, but I want to be where my clients are. And that’s being a hyper disciplined person in a world where there’s so much temptation to do all the things all the time and try to be everywhere for everyone instead of going, no, that’s not where my clients are, right?
AJV (06:50):
It’s like, I need to leverage the platforms to reach my unique and specific audience. So I don’t need to be everywhere. I just need to be where my clients are. And if you don’t know where your clients are, then you just ask them in real conversations, go through you, your list of clients and pick out who are your five to 10 top clients, your biggest clients, your most long-term clients, your favorite clients, the ones who spend the most with you, love you the most, promote you the most, introduce you to people the most. Those have the biggest audience, the biggest platform, whatever that criteria is, pick just a few of them and have real in-depth conversations about where are they spending their time? Where do they go to learn? What are they listening to? Where are they at online? What conferences do they go to?
AJV (07:40):
What you know, masterminds, are they a part of? What forums what whatever, right? What are they reading? Like truly get into the mental psyche of your top 10 clients. It is better to have answers from a few clients that really represent your ideal perfect avatar that have hundreds of responses from the average customer. So it’s like, take the time to get real answers to build real relationships and get real nuanced answers that allow you to go deep and to use tools like Spark Touro to go, okay, I spent a few conversations with these people and now I know exactly where to dial it in. And using Spark Touro will help you know where to spend time on online, what podcasts you wanna be on what websites that you’d wanna be featured in, what blogs what different social content, what influencers.
AJV (08:37):
It helps so much for you just to get clear on who are those top customers, where do they spend their time, where are they learning, what do they want? And it doesn’t take a ton of that for you to have some really clear answers. But that takes time because what you’re trying to do by targeting this in and by looking at the concept of platform and audience is what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to narrow in the time spent online and offline. Because if you’re doing everything, you’re simultaneously doing nothing. It’s like if you’re trying to go, Hey, I’m gonna be on Instagram and I’m gonna be on TikTok and I’m gonna speak at these conferences and I’m gonna do the LinkedIn strategy, oh, and I’m gonna launch a podcast. It’s like, okay, okay, at some point what is actually working right?
AJV (09:22):
And that in itself takes a lot of filtering and data reporting to go, well, this is where it’s all coming from. Instead of just going, let’s do all that market research on the front end to go exactly who are these people? Where are they spending time? Who has those audiences? And how do I leverage the audience that already exists to help me build my platform? It’s the Oprah Winfrey example. He like, would you take a million dollars or would you take exposure to millions of people? Everyone’s gonna make their own choice here, but I would advocate to go look at the, the trajectory of Sarah Blakely and Spanx, which in much part was launched on that Oprah Winfrey show. Not solely, not by itself, but that was a catalyst, right? And I can speak for Brand Builders group our own company. It’s like there was a catalyst event that went from are we gonna do this?
AJV (10:14):
Are we gonna make it to? Like the business is, it’s working and it’s producing. And it’s when we were on Lewis House, the School of Greatness podcast in July of 2018, 2018, and that was a catalyst event that went from, okay, we’re trying to do this thing to, oh no, we’re doing this thing that one podcast generated more than a thousand leads for us because we had a trusted relationship with Lewis offline, and he had a trusted relationship with a huge audience online. But it takes both, right? We did not have the audience at the time. We launched Brain Builders Group with no podcast, with no email list, no social media, and no website. And we were able to use the trusted reputation of Lewis introducing us to his audience, that borrowed platform to grow our business, to attract our ideal customers. We knew who our customer were who our customer was, and we knew where they were.
AJV (11:19):
And a lot of them were in that Lewis house audience. And so it’s a, it’s a huge decision for you to go, you know, I’m gonna spend the time to know who my customer is and where they are, and it’s to become efficient at the things that are working, not just being efficient for efficiency’s sake. So it’s a difference between are you trying to have high volume with lots of transactions, or are you trying to build real relationships and target your ideal customer? Because if you’re trying to attract your top customers not not the short term customers, but the ones that are your true customer who are going like, you know, you can serve them in the deepest, most meaningful way, there is a way to do it that allows you to attract those customers in the most efficient and effective manner, which is you have to know who they are, you have to know where they spend their time, and then you have to have a way to introduce yourself to those people. And a great way to do it is this concept of borrowed audiences, right? It’s using other people’s platforms to help you get introduced to the people that have never heard of you, who you have not met yet. And until you build your own platform and your own audience, your customers exist somewhere. They don’t have to be in your email list. They don’t have to be on your social media profiles. They don’t have to be subscribed to your podcast. You don’t have to have that yet. You just have to know where they are.
AJV (12:42):
What email list Are they a part of? What podcasts do they subscribe to? What events do they attend? What books do they read? That is what you need to spend time doing to be the most efficient person in the world at attracting your top customers. So what do you do from here? You ask yourself, who, who is my top customer? Start with looking at your current clients. Who do you wanna replicate? Who do you wanna duplicate? So first thing, who, second thing, where, where are they? And if you don’t know, get on the phone, dial ’em up and ask ’em. But who are they and where are they? That’s how you start to attract top customers.