Ep 421: Use Your Existing Customer Base to Double Your Business | Nikki Nash Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all, let’s talk about three things that you can do with your existing client base to help you double your business. Now, it does not matter what kind of business you’re in. These are three things that are universal that you can actually start to do now to help you grow and scale your business. And this is all within the context of the clients you already have. So I will say, I’ll preface, you need to have clients for this to work. So if you’re at the very, very beginning stages of your business earmark this particular training, come back to it when you have a handful of clients because this is gonna be most useful to you once you already have an existing client base. So how do we grow our business from within our current client base? I’m gonna just talk about three quick ideas.
AJV (00:48):
First one is create new products and services that can serve your existing client base. One of the things that we talk about at brand builders a lot is the concept of fractal math. And I’ll go through this very high level but just let’s say you have a hundred clients. The assumption using fractal math is that at least 10% of your clients will spend 10 times the amount that they’re currently spending with you. So if you have a hundred clients, again, for easy math that are each paying you a hundred dollars, at least 10% of those people, 10 people would likely spend 10 times the amount that they’re currently spending a hundred dollars, which 10 times that would be a thousand dollars. So if you have a hundred clients that spend each spend a hundred dollars with you, then at least 10 of those people would be willing to spend a thousand dollars with you.
AJV (01:48):
That is fracked on math. That goes down again. So if you now have 10 clients that are spending a thousand dollars with you, the assumption with fractal math that at least 10% of those people would also spend 10 times the investment. So if you have 10 clients, then at least one person would be willing to spend 10 times their current investment, which would be 10 times a thousand, which would be $10,000 with you. So if you have a hundred clients, then you have at least 10 of them who would be spending a thousand dollars with you, and then you have at least one of those who would spend $10,000 with you. And so a huge part of what we need to do is not create brand new programs to go out and market into the community trying to get new clients, but is to figure out what is the most meaningful, what are the deepest ways that I can serve the people that I’m already serving, right? Your existing customer base, what more do they want from you? What more do they need from you? And how can you package that in a way that they would be willing to spend more money with you to get more access to you, more time with you more work done from you, whatever it may be.
AJV (02:59):
So it’s that concept of fractal math. And if you don’t know what to offer, the best thing you can do is just ask your super clients, right? Go to the top five, top 10, how many of your clients you have, top 20 clients that you have that have been with you the longest, love you, the most that you know of, spend the most money with you and go, Hey, if I were to create something new, what would you want? I’m coming up with some new program ideas and I wanna create it for your, you know, your avatar. You are who I wanna serve. What more would you want from me? And just ask. It’s the best market research you can get is asking your current customers who already know you like you and spend money with you. So that’s the first thing is just find new ways to serve your existing client base.
AJV (03:45):
I e sell more to your existing client base. Number two, keep your existing clients
AJV (04:43):
We forget to continue to market and sell what we do. And so if you’re selling, you know, 12 month agreements or three month or six month, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. You have to continually talk about, hey, this is the initial terms of our agreement and this initial year together and this initial phase together and these initial steps together. So you wanna help people know, it’s like this is not a 12 month program, right? It’s phase one is 12 months, right? The initial term is 12 months. And that is a very intentional verbiage and language that you need to use in marketing, your initial sales conversations on every single client interaction in your ongoing marketing in your ongoing communication. You need to create that atmosphere of, I have more to give that extends 12 months. So you may not choose to be here 12 months, but my program goes beyond 12 months. We just choose to review and renew at 12 month increments. And so one very quick tip that I’ve always done since the beginning of my coaching years, which, how old am I, how long have I been doing this for? Almost 20 years, that feels impossible to say that,
AJV (05:56):
That for almost 20 years, this has been one of my key policies, key philosophies in retention is that from the very first call, very first coaching call or client engagement, doesn’t have to be a coaching call, consulting, engagement, whatever. As I always talk about the next three calls or the next three months or the next three things. And so at the end of every call or training, I talk about the next three, right? So let’s just say it was a coaching call. At the end of today’s call, I’ll say you know, Hey Terry after our call that I’m gonna send you a recap and I’m gonna go ahead and put together what I think based on our time today are the three topics of conversation that I wanna map out for the next three months. And so we talk every month.
AJV (06:41):
So this is my plan. I’m gonna put that in the email. I want you to think about it. If we need to change things and adapt things, then we can, but based on today, I’m gonna go ahead and map out our next 90 days, our next three months together. And I would do that all the time from the very first time. So when I get to month 10, 11, 12, it’s not new for me to go in month 12 at the end of the agreement of, hey, just so you know, we’re coming up on our 12th call. Here’s the mapping for our next three calls. However, our first set of engagements ends at this next call. Do you want me to go ahead and keep mapping those next calls? Or do you wanna talk about an an exit plan? So we’ve got a continuity plan or we have our exit plan and it’s a very natural ease of transition because I’ve been talking about the next three months from the very first month.
AJV (07:30):
So when I get to month, whatever is the end of my program, I’m still talking about the next three months as if they’re going to continue. And then it’s an easy transition to go. And by the way, like we can use this time to talk about the next three months, or we need to talk about what it looks like for you to carry on in the next three months without me, but would love to keep it going together, right? So that would be the second thing with just retention and renewals of always having a plan for the future and always talking about that. Then. So, okay, let’s just recap. So we’ve got sell to our existing clients. We have to retain our existing clients. And then last but definitely not least is we need to get referrals from our existing clients. That’s real important. So a couple of things.
AJV (08:14):
Getting referrals starts in your marketing language. This should be a part of your company culture. It should be a part of your sales culture, your operations, your customer care, your delivery. Everyone should be talking about growing your business through referral. So it has to start in marketing. Number two, it has to be all the places all the time. So it needs to be visible everywhere you go. It’s not that you’re gonna depend on one person asking for referral. It’s like, no, we talk about how our community is word of mouth. People ask me all the time, it’s like, Hey, aj, is there anything I can do for you? I’m like, yeah, you can give me referrals to help grow my business.
AJV (08:54):
But when people go, Hey, how can I help? I’m like, honestly, you can help share the word of brand builders group. That’s how you can help. Genuinely, we are a word of mouth business. We do very little paid marketing. We are a referral based business. So I depend on people like you telling the people that you think would be a good fit that we exist. So that’s how you can help. It needs to be easily found on your website or in your learning portal, in your email marketing, you know, like a brand builders group. We have a whole slogan for it. It’s called B B G for free. And it’s like, Hey, we want you to invite your friends to be a part of this community. Help us grow the community with people that you wanna be in community with. And it’s called b g for free.
AJV (09:36):
And it’s if you refer people to us we actually pay you referral fees where they’re gonna pay it to a paid marketing agency or we’re gonna pay it to our customer base. We’re choosing to pay it to our customer base. So we’re choosing to pay you to help be our marketing force versus paying a traditional advertising company. So make it a part of your culture, then make it easy. Give people multiple ways to refer you business. So I can just use Brand Builders Group as an example because that’s what I know the best. It’s so it’s like you can click on a link and you can populate your own U R L. Now that’s easy to do for you the customer. That’s not always easy to set up on the backend. It took us a long time to set up that infrastructure, but it’s like you can just click a link, make your own custom a referral link and use that.
AJV (10:24):
We also have a simple form that you can just fill out a form and emails our sales team notifying, Hey, there’s a referral to be had here. You can also click on a phone number and talk to someone and go, Hey, I’m not really sure, but this is someone I think, so that we have three different ways that you can actually refer us business. And it’s like, what’s easiest for you? Do you wanna just talk to us and have us reach out on your behalf? Do you wanna click this form and just give us the info and we can take it from there? Or do you wanna click this link, make your own u r l and you can send it out on social media, send it to your friends in an email send an email out to your list. We’re trying to make it easy for you. And so, again, how do you double your business from your existing clients? It’s one you sell new programs, new services to your existing clients. If you don’t know what, ask them. Remember the concept of fractal math. Number two retain your existing clients. Keep them longer. It’s the cheapest, fastest way of going your business is you’re not having to replace your clients. And then number three, get referrals from your existing client base. So there you go, three ways that you can start to double your business from your existing business.
Ep 419: 7 Tips for Winning a Lawsuit | Rebecca Zung Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Well, I am sad that I have to have this discussion with you or to share this bit of content, but I’m afraid that I do. I’m afraid that this is necessary. And what we’re gonna talk about today is how to win a lawsuit, how to win in a lawsuit. The th there are, it is a reality, unfortunate reality of life that you may end up in a lawsuit. In fact, I remember one time talking to my friend and our client, Kevin, Kevin Harrington, who is one of the original sharks on Shark Tank. And Kevin said to me, he said, Rory, you’ll know you’re really starting to get to be successful when somebody sues you. And the more successful you get, the more likely it is that at some point you are going to end up in a lawsuit. And so that’s why you know, going, go back and listen to the interview that I did with Rebecca Zung on negotiating with narcissists such an, a powerful interview, such a useful and tactical interview to understand just the psyche of who these people are and how they got to be that way.
RV (01:28):
And also to, to give you some hope and some to, to have you know, some encouragement because it can be a very, very difficult situation. Also, her book, slay the Bully is out, it will be out soon if you’re just listening to this podcast. There you’re still some pre-order bonuses you can get. And some of you, if you’re listening to this later you can check, you can check it out, and she probably has some bonuses still available on her site. But we wanted to release this early so that you had a chance to still take advantage of some of her pre-order bonuses. And and she’s dynamite. She’s one of our clients. I’ve learned a ton from her. I she is the, the preeminent expert in the world on negotiating with narcissists. And so that inspired me to share something that I’ve never shared which is just in general, I’m gonna share with you seven ideas for how to win in a lawsuit.
RV (02:20):
And she wasn’t necessarily talking about lawsuits, but you know, she is a lawyer and you know, has been a, a high profile divorce attorney. And, and this does come up. And so I wanted to share with you, and I’m gonna have to do this one from a, a little bit of a, don’t ask me how I know but let’s just say that I have been involved in multiple lawsuits. And it really is for someone, if you are a mission-driven messenger, if you’re someone like that, if you’re someone who is in our audience, you listen to this show, this is a really difficult thing because you may have done everything in your power to never get in a lawsuit. You may have never thought you would be end up in a lawsuit. And yet you find yourself in one, one day, and it can be so discouraging because you’ll, you’ll be shocked at how you, you’re someone who wants to pursue the right thing.
RV (03:15):
And yet you end up in a lawsuit and it’s a very, very scary, can be a very, very scary situation. So, I’m gonna walk you through seven things that, these are seven things that I wish somebody would’ve told me, you know, kind of as an entrepreneur before I’d ever had a lawsuit. So that if I had ever gotten into one, which I have been in multiple ones now, that I would have known. Okay? And so here’s the first thing, the first thing to know, and I don’t know who said this quote, but it’s a good one, that sometimes the only way to win a fight is to not have one.
RV (03:54):
And in particular, when it comes to lawsuits, this is one where I really would encourage you to, if you can avoid it, avoid it. The only people who really win in a lawsuit are the lawyers. And I don’t, I don’t mean that in a rude way, but that’s, you know, something that people say, and I have found that to be true. And it’s, it’s not like they win and everybody loses, but, but they get paid no matter who wins and who loses, right? They typically are gonna get paid. And so they make, they make money. In some cases, this is not every lawyer, but something that you just gotta know logically is even if you’re talking to a lawyer on your side they get paid, the, the longer the lawsuit goes on, and the more time it takes, the more money they get paid, right?
RV (04:45):
So they’re, most lawyers are paid hourly, so they’re not necessarily aligned with you on an incentive basis. The incentives aren’t necessarily aligned to end things quickly because they make their money from the time that they spend. Now, I don’t, I don’t think that every lawyer nickels and dimes people and tries to like, drag it out as long as possible. I’m just saying, you gotta pay attention when you pay attention to behavior, how people, what people are incentivized to do, and lawyers, most of ’em that are paid hourly, they’re, they’re incent, they’re not incentivized to do things the fastest possible way necessarily. So be aware of that. But the other thing is, now some lawyers are paid on contingency, meaning it’s basically like commission where they get a percentage of a settlement or the percentage of, of, you know, whatever, if you win.
RV (05:36):
And if you, if you lose, they get nothing. And, you know, that can be a very powerful very powerful person to have in, in your corner. And, and it was for us, we, we had an amazing lawyer and, and it was our, our hourly lawyers who referred us to a contingency attorney for one of the lawsuits that we were involved with, which ended up being a really, really a huge blessing in our life. And I’m, I’m so grateful to, to Doug and, and other lawyers that we’ve met along, along the way who’ve been important assets and, and advocates for us in our life. And so the, the, but the thing I wanna say here is you don’t wanna get into a lawsuit. You want to try to steer clear of it, because as you’re about to hear, it’s, it’s painful.
RV (06:24):
And it can be very, very, it’s very financially draining, right? We’ve spent lots and lots and lots of money over six figures. We, well, well, well into six figures we’ve spent on lawyers. And that is a very tough way to lose money. So if you can avoid the lawsuit, swallow your pride, apologize, right? Like, make things right, do what you can to, to stay out of it. Because sometimes the best way to win a fight is to not have one. And I, and generally speaking, this, this is the case. And when we get to number seven here, you’ll understand really why by the time we get through all of ’em, and especially number seven, you’ll, you’ll understand why. And so that’s the first thing. Try to avoid the lawsuit. The second thing, and this may be simple, but it’s worth saying, is avoid crazy people.
RV (07:17):
RV (08:20):
You might think, oh, that’s never gonna affect me because that’s not me. And I wanna tell you that that would, is a naive way to think that when people are engaged in wild living, whatever your version is of that, I’m telling you that proximity is power, just like proximity is power, and you can get drawn into good things. You get drawn into the drama of the people around you as well. And you can be a completely innocent bystander to some choices that people make in their personal life that suddenly overtake you, that, that because you work together, or they’re your customer, or you’re their customer, or they’re your vendor, or you’re their vendor, or you are their business partner, they’re your business partner, or like you’re, you know, their, their spouse is wild and they’re a friend of yours, and it’s like suddenly you’re in a car together and one of ’em is driving drunk, right?
RV (09:12):
And you go like, whoa, how did I get here? And a lawsuit can be like that. You can, you can get sucked into things that really don’t have anything to do with you. And I’m not just speaking from, I’m not just necessarily talking about my experience, but my friends other entrepreneurs, people I know, you know, our clients, we, we hear and see a lot of stuff. And so you wanna try to just not be around people who engage in wild living and do wild things because they, they will pull you into what they’re into sooner or later willingly or not like it’s, there’s, there’s just, there’s a lot to be said for that. And if you have a customer who is giving you a lot of like weird signs in your sales process, don’t sell to them. This literally happened to AJ and I, I mean, this has happened multiple times where we will fire a client.
RV (10:03):
And this happened to us recently where there was some language that a client was using with us early in the relationship, and we’re like, you know what? We’re not gonna do this. We’re we’re we, we we’re deciding that we’re not gonna work with this person, and we unwind it because it’s not worth getting involved with people who are super high drama, that have absolutely outrageous, unrealistic expectations who lose their temper, people who fly off the handle, people who are doing crazy stuff in their personal life. It’s like to, to, to the extent that you can try to stay away from crazy try to stay away from dramatic, try to stay away from unreasonable and, and try to stay away from just like outlandish, exotic, like, you know, I, I just use the, the biblical term wild living because you get caught up in that, even if, if you don’t mean to.
RV (11:05):
So that’s the second thing. The third thing, and this is something I really, the, this is one of the most tactical pieces of advice I wish somebody would’ve told me. When I, when I, they, they say, Roy, you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. You’re gonna be in a lawsuit at some point. Don’t read the lawyer letters. Don’t read the lawyer letters. So here’s what happens in a lawsuit. You know, you get, once you get to the point of like hiring letters, these lawyers before they get to court, a huge part of the negotiation is trying to generate emotion and get you off and angry and scared and like frustrated. And because they know that the more emotion they steer up in you, the more likely you are to acquiesce to their terms, right? So if somebody can make your life, it’s, pardon my language, if someone can make your life a living hell, they know by doing that, that you are gonna be more likely to wanna just end it quickly or to surrender, or to give up, or to give in, or to quit.
RV (12:18):
And so a huge part of, of the letter writing that happens back and forth, it is nothing to do with truth. It has everything to do with getting you off in emotion. And they will lie. And, and this is something that has been very sad for me. I’ve been involved with situations where I could not imagine people that would lie, lie through their teeth, blatantly lie. And they will do it just to, to get their way to win at all costs, to take advantage of you. And one of the things they’ll do, and a and, and a lot of times what people will do if they’re, if they’re skilled in, in legal battles, they will hire the nastiest, scariest letter writing attorneys, and they will, they will hire them for the skillset of being able to intimidate you and scare you and threaten you and twist the truth.
RV (13:21):
And, you know, those, those letters are not like part of evidence. They’re not like things that get ad ad admiss, they’re not like admissible in court, but this is what the, this is how it works. And so when they send a letter and you read it, you think that what this is, is a matter of, of settling what is the fair thing? And it’s not that, right? If, if you are somebody who is a naive, heart-centered, service centered, mission-driven messenger and believe me, that is me. I operate from a sense of altruism and a sense of service and kindness and, and believing that if I treat people nicely, it’ll come back to me. And that’s worked really, really well. But it is also a place where I’ve had to learn a hard lesson that people will, they will play on that, and they will threaten you, and they will lie, and they will, they will twist the truth to make you feel like you are the person who has done something wrong.
RV (14:21):
And they do that as a negotiation tactic. And so part of what, part of why you need to have a lawyer is so that you don’t waste your time reading the letters, because the letters don’t have to be factual whatsoever. And so related to that, I would say don’t take things personal. This is part of number three is like once you’re, if once you’re into a loy a a legal situation, don’t take things personal because they’re trying to make it personal. They’re trying to get a rise out of you because they, they want, they want you to want to resolve the situation. They want you to want to acquiesce, they want you to want to surrender. And so the more objective and logical and, and unemotional and even keeled, you can remain the better off you’re gonna be just mentally and emotionally. And again, that’s why it’s like, if you can, if you can avoid a lawsuit, avoid the lawsuit altogether.
RV (15:19):
So the, that’s number three. Don’t read, don’t read the letters and don’t take things personal. Number four is keep meticulous documentation, keep meticulous documentation. Now, before a lawsuit, what happens is it’s all hot air
RV (16:20):
Number five is to build a timeline. Number five is to build a timeline. This is, this is a little bit of advice that somebody gave me that seemed really silly at first when I, when, when, when I first was involved in a lawsuit. As they said, keep a timeline of events, because usually it takes a long time to get into court, sometimes years and years and years. And the details will become fuzzy about how things happened and when they happened, and why they happened and, and what happened exactly. And you know, when you get to a court, it’s all about having your details tight. It’s all about having a clear story and having evidence and documentation that supports it. Well, even a very honest person can lose sight of the actual facts of like, wait, what, when was that? Did that happen first?
RV (17:08):
Or did that happen first? And wait, when, when did that, and who actually said that? Like, so keep a timeline of dates and, and descriptions. The moment you realize things are turning south with, with a relationship, and you go, Hey, this might be heading towards a lawsuit, or this, this is starting to head towards getting lawyers involved. Build a timeline. And, and or, and if you’re in one, now, go backwards and reconstruct a timeline of exactly what happened. Because even as you can, as you can keep a documentation of the timeline of events, it’ll help you remember important details that you forgot. And it’ll help you corroborate things. And so build a, build a timeline because it also will help you refute things when the other side is intimidating you and scaring you. And, you know, blowing hot air and like doing all these things.
RV (18:01):
When you have a timeline, you go, Hey, if we ever get into court, even, even though they’re saying nasty things in the letter, and you know, that’s why I say don’t read it. ’cause It’s like, it’s not at all about being factual. It’s, it’s just about getting you emotional. But when we get into court, you go, yeah, I’m not gonna be worried about that because I can prove it because this happened, this happened, this happened, and then I can document all of it, right? So keep meticulous documentation. And part of that is building a timeline that relates. And, and when I say meticulous documentation, you know this ties into number six. Have contracts, have contracts, have dates. Keep your contracts, keep your email threads. If you start to think that something is heading towards a lawsuit, then go do the work now of going back and extrapolating all of the email correspondence and keeping all of the written correspondence.
RV (18:54):
And this is the other thing, get people to commit what they’re saying to writing. Because I’ll, again, don’t ask me how I know, but there are people who will make promises to you and promises to you and promises to you through the spoken word, and then they will never write it down. They will never, because they can say whatever you, whatever they want, they can tell you, you know, this is while you’re working together or, you know, whatever, like, whatever the situation is of your relationship, they can, they can make you all sorts of promises. They can tell you all sorts of great things and, and they can make you think they would never not follow through. But I’m telling you, this has not only happened to me personally, where they have said something, I’ve completely believed it, and then they flat out lied, completely lied in a court of law, they’ve lied.
RV (19:47):
People will do this, right? And I’m not, I’m not referencing any specific case or anything here. I’m just saying in general that this will happen. I, the lawyers, lawyer, friends that I have, they tell me, they go, Rory, that happens all the time. People get into court and they lie. That’s what they, they they do hand, you know, they swear oath on the Bible, and then they lie. They, because, because for some people it doesn’t, it’s not about, it’s not about right and wrong, it’s just about winning and losing. And that is really sad. But it’s true. And you, and I’m telling you, it’ll be, it’ll be people you never, ever thought, and it will, it’ll be people who, you know, looked you in the eye and promised you this and that, that they swore up and down they could be counted on. And so get it committed and writing, get it documented.
RV (20:37):
If you can get it in an agreement, if you can’t get it in an agreement, get it in a written email get it in an, an employee handbook. Get it, get something that says, like, like, Hey, here’s the documentation of when they told me this. And, and I will tell you if somebody is making promises to you, but they, they delay and kick the can on getting it writing, that’s a red flag, a major red flag that they’ll make promises to you, but they won’t commit it to writing because that’s, they know they can be held to that. So that is something that is a red flag. Now, I do believe, you know, this is, you know, something that Dave Ramsey said, which I, I, I agree with him, and I, I, I agree and I disagree. What I agree with is, is he said one time he said, if I can’t trust, if I can’t trust the person’s handshake, then the contract doesn’t matter anyway.
RV (21:30):
And I do agree with that, right? If I can’t, if I can’t trust their handshake, if they’re gonna screw me, they’re gonna screw me, whether it’s in writing or not. The difference is if I think I can trust their handshake, and it turns out that they’re willing to lie and they’re willing to compromise their integrity later, the fact that I have it in writing means even if they’re gonna try to take advantage of me, I have a real strong negotiating basis. Whereas if it’s just the spoken word, I do not because it’s my word against theirs. And nobody really, you can never really prove that. And in certain places, you know, even recordings aren’t admissible into court. You know, there’s certain circumstances where they are and they are not. But so keep meticulous documentation, you know, that’s number four. Build a timeline, number five, number six, get it in writing and written contracts.
RV (22:19):
And here’s something else that I’ve learned about lawsuits. Your interpretation of written contracts is pretty much as good as any
RV (23:12):
And they’re, and then they read it and they go, no, I, I think I feel the same way as you. I when I read it, I think the same way. And I’m going, well, why is it written in such crazy language? Right? So one of the things that we’ve tried to do is, is a part of attempting to avoid lawsuits, right? We don’t ever want to have to sue anyone. We certainly don’t wanna be sued. But we don’t wanna have to sue people. And we go, we just write that, we write our agreements in plain English so that the goal is not to trick someone. It’s not, at least for us, right? The goal is not to take advantage of somebody. It’s like to lay out on paper and your, if you can’t understand it, then don’t sign it Like it should. It should be straightforward.
RV (23:51):
Don’t think that, oh, it has to have fancy legalese in order to be enforceable. Not at all. Your interpretation of it is as good as anyone’s. And if you can’t understand it, you shouldn’t sign it. And so that is really, really important. And, and you should, you gotta get things in writing and have a copy of it. Because if not, that’s just a sign that like you guys aren’t on the same page, or you’re dealing with someone who is maybe not super honest and they don’t really have every intention of following through on their word. And that happens a lot. Like if they can’t show you the detail, if they can’t, if, if, if, if they, if, if they get dodgy in any way around, like, you know, hey, we’re negotiating a contract of some type, like we gotta get this thing in writing.
RV (24:37):
Like, what if, if it’s an agreement, what are we, what is there to hide? There shouldn’t be anything to hide, but just, just beware of that and, and get it in writing. And then, you know, number seven, and, and this is the part that’s most heartbreaking to me, and I hate having to share this, but if, you know, again, I’ve been involved in multiple lawsuits. I’ve been on the board of organizations that have been involved with lawsuits. I have lots of friends who have been involved in, in lawsuits or, you know, been in lawsuits. And when I say lawsuits, it’s like, you know, sometimes it goes to court, sometimes it gets settled and resolved. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of threatening lawyers back and forth. And, you know, it comes to some agreement. You know, sometimes it’s just nasty people saying, if you don’t do this, I’ll then I’ll, you know, take action.
RV (25:24):
But all of those things, unfortunately, what I have found is that it’s not really about justice. It’s often the, the, the person who wins is often not the person who is right. It’s often not the person who is ethical. Unfortunately, the person who wins typically is the person who has the most money and who has the longest timeline. Because if you have a lot of money and you can pay a lot of lawyer fees, you can scare people, you can intimidate them, and you also can drag things out. You can appeal things. You, you, you can delay things and understand this, that there is a playbook that some people will run against you. And that playbook is to drain your bank account to where you are forced to acquiesce to terms that are terms that, that are less than favorable for you. And it is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever experienced to, to see, you know, to be involved with people that you trust and that you think are good people, but to then watch these scenarios where there is a playbook that they’re running just meant to drain the other side of cash.
RV (26:51):
And this happened. And, and, you know, here’s another thing you should do. You should watch Suits. I know this is silly, but if you’re involved in a lawsuit, you should watch the, the TV series, it’s called Suits. It’s an amazing show. It’s really, really a, a, a fun show. But if you are new to lawsuit, you’ve never been sued or you’ve never sued someone, and you fi you find yourself where you have to, you should watch that show because it teaches you a lot of just how it works. And you see like, oh, nobody is actually interested in figuring out what’s the right thing to do. No one is really interested in fairness, it’s just about winning. And it is really, I, I hate to paint such a sad picture of humanity, but that is how it often gets to, and that’s why it’s like, if you can avoid the lawsuit on the front end, do it.
RV (27:43):
Because by the time you get into a lawsuit, it’s like people abandon all ethics, all morals, all decency, all you know, human dignity, all respect, honesty, integrity, those things go out the window quickly. And the name of winning and the name of, you know, taking you to the house and the, and, and, and being right, and being the victor and having power over you. And it is sad, and I’m, you know, I’m hating to to say it, and I’m, this is not just these things I’m sharing with you are not just from one episode in my life. These are from having multiple episodes multiple experiences, some more involved and more painful than others, but witnessing, witnessing them. We have clients at Brand Builders Group who, you know, we, we’ve had, we’ve had four clients that are billionaires, like in the last year and a half or something like four with B billionaires.
RV (28:37):
We have lots of clients that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We’re around a lot of wealthy people, and many of them have lawyers on staff and on retainer for nothing other than fighting off frivolous lawsuits, right? Because they’re, they’re so wealthy. And that’s like, I mean, man, you know, on the one hand it’s like, must be nice to be that wealthy. On the other hand, it’s more money, more problems, you know, and people are just suing you for, for insane stuff. And sometimes people pretend to sue you just so that you’ll settle, just so you’ll go it away. So it’ll go away because it’s cheaper to settle the, the matter than to take it into court and pay all the lawyer fees. So this is, it’s, it’s, it’s really sad. Like, and so that’s why it’s like the best thing you can do is avoid this and, and, and avoid people who seem litigious and that, you know, wanna get involved in these, these kinds of things. And I would say, you know, being around people who are narcissistic in nature or in tendency, those are risky ones because like you heard on the interview, or if you didn’t go listen to the interview with Rebecca,
RV (29:41):
They’re very serious about just demonstrating their power over you, their control over you. And in, in many cases, it’s even more about that than money. They want to own you. They want to defeat you. They want to, in a way, it’s like they want to kill you, even though they may not want to physically kill you. It’s like they want to see you cry, they want to see you squirm, they want to destroy you, they want to destroy your reputation. And it’s like, it’s not actually about who was right or what is fair, or even what the law says. It’s really about who has the ability to persevere longer. And a lot of that has to do with how long can you be peaceful? How long, you know, like, how long can you handle all these nasty lawyer letters and not get upset? It’s also how long can you be peaceful knowing that you have a lawsuit going on?
RV (30:31):
Which is not it, it consumes a massive amount of stress. It creates a lot of, lot of stress. And the other one is, who has the longer financial runway, right? If someone has a financial runway, and I would say, you know, I would add this to the conversation, not only would you try not, would you try to avoid a lawsuit? I mean, of try to avoid getting into one with somebody, or being around people who might get you into one, but do the right thing yourself. Try to abide by contracts, right? If, if you make a commitment to do something, do it. Because you don’t wanna be on the receiving end of a breach of contract. It’s like, you know, it, it, it comes down. On the one hand, you would say it comes down to integrity, but unfortunately it doesn’t un unfortunately, people can sue you for anything, and they can really make your life miserable, even if you did, not only if you did nothing wrong, but even if you do everything right, they can still make your life miserable.
RV (31:24):
And so a lot of it just comes down to the people and treating people with kindness and treating people with respect. And I would say this too, like, the more that you, the harder you punch, you know, it’s typically the, the harder they’re gonna punch back. Like, if you get into a lawsuit, it quickly spirals outta control. And that’s why it’s like, I think the strategy is to neutralize, right? Like neutralize, neutralize, neutralize to the best you can. But I, I’ve been a part of multiple scenarios where it was like I was doing everything that I could to neutralize it to not to, to, to go, here’s, here’s how this could go down very amicably. Here’s how we could end this quickly. And sometimes people didn’t want to. They want to bury you, they want you to hurt. And and many times they’re willing to do whatever.
RV (32:16):
And I know that’s not a great picture of humanity, but that’s where it’s like, you wanna stay out of this if you can. But if you can’t and you get involved, try to stay logical. Try to neutralize and keep documentation and you, you know, build the timeline, get the contracts in writing, keep your email threads, go back and audit that. And you know, I I, I’ll say the other thing is, is be nice and be nice, even, even when they’re being mean to you. Be nice. Because if you end up going to discovery and this has happened to me before, where they can, they can make claims that you’re saying all these nasty things. If you go into discovery, the court can, can say, give me your phone, give me your email accounts, give me your bank accounts. And they get to audit all of them.
RV (33:09):
And that has happened to us. And we’ve been in a scenario where, where somebody swore up and down that we were doing some things and saying certain things, and that happened. They got to go through all of our email, our financial records, our phone accounts, and it, it sure served us well when they came up completely empty. There was no cussing, there was no, you know, there was, we weren’t doing the things they were saying. We weren’t, we weren’t saying nasty things about them. And you know, for them to be left empty handed shows a lot about our character. And, you know, that was important to us just ’cause it’s the right thing to do, but it also can play really, really well, right? So you certainly don’t wanna be firing off nasty emails about people to them, or even internally to your friends and your family, or, you know, other people in the company like that will come back on you.
RV (34:01):
And so those are some things. Those are seven ideas for how to win a lawsuit, you know? And namely by winning, we’re saying, try not to have it and try not to get wrapped up in it. And so I do think ultimately kindness and treating people and integrity is the best strategy on the front end. And then, you know, once you get involved, you know, you’re trying, if you, if you get sucked into it, and in multiple cases, we’ve been pulled into it where it’s like, you know, we were either a innocent kind of third party that got pulled into something or somebody came after us. And you know, I do believe where it’s like the truth will set you free in every scenario, the truth has set us free. And one of my biggest philosophies in life is to live a life that stands up to the scrutiny of transparency to go, if someone did audit everything, and they did, they did get access to look at your phone records and your email and all of your text messages and your, where you’re spending your money to go.
RV (35:08):
I’m not willingly gonna turn that over to somebody just because I don’t want to and ’cause it’s private. But that if somebody did, you go, I have nothing to hide, right? Like, go ahead and look at my e go ahead and look at my internet browsing history. Go ahead and look at my bank account. Like, go ahead and follow, you know, put a private investigator and follow me around. You’re gonna see that I’m an honest person. I’m not taking advantage of people. But that doesn’t mean people won’t try to take advantage of you. It doesn’t mean they won’t lie. It doesn’t mean they won’t say horrible, horrible things to get you, you know, fired up. It doesn’t mean that they won’t waste their money just to try to get you to burn out all of yours. So try to stay out of it. Try to, you know, try to avoid the fight, try to try to be around good and kind people, keep great documentation, build a timeline, get it in writing, and then ultimately realize it’s not about justice.
RV (36:01):
That’s, it’s often about, you know, who can, who can, who can last the marathon without going crazy or going broke. And if you do that, you, you’ll ultimately, you’ll get there. And I do ultimately believe the truth will, will set you free. So not the most uplifting content I know, but boy, if you know someone who is in a lawsuit or is being threatened by one, I think it would be good to, to share this with them. I certainly wish that I would’ve had something like this in the times that myself or organizations I’ve been a part of or my friends other entrepreneurs have been involved in lawsuits. Because having the perspective of someone who’s been through one that can really be helpful, even, even though a lot of times they can’t share specific details, because a lot of times lawsuits end up getting resolved with confidentiality clauses and things like that.
RV (36:56):
But somebody can sure give you a lot of perspective. And that helps me too. I’ve, part of how I know a lot of this is, I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been in a lot of lawsuits, and it’s good to have their perspective to that. For many of ’em, they go, yeah, lawsuits is a part of business and a part of life, and you, you learn to be desensitized to it. Which, you know, again, isn’t the most beautiful thing, but you go, it’s kinda like, you know, paying your taxes or something, you go, yeah, I don’t love it, but I gotta do it and I gotta deal with it. And it’s a, it’s a, it becomes a piece of the business, you know, that you just, you do. So try to be nice to people, do everything you can, but, but I, I think the thing also that I want you to know is that if you find yourself sucked up into a lawsuit, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.
RV (37:45):
Sometimes people are literally thinking that they can take advantage of you because they, there’s a lot of people who will assume your kindness is weakness, and kindness is not weakness. Kindness is incredible strength. And the people who have misunderstood our kindness as weakness you know, it, it, it ended up costing them, you know, a a, it, it was a misinterpretation right to go. Kindness and weakness are not the same thing. Kindness and strength are the same thing. And, you know, you can get sucked into this. You can be a perfectly honest, hardworking, ethical, kind human and still find yourself unexpectedly in a lawsuit. And people can be trying to just take advantage of you and trying to hurt you even when you did everything by the agreement and by what is right. So don’t take that personal either, ’cause that can weigh heavily on you of like, gosh, there must be something wrong with me.
RV (38:54):
And, you know, if you listen to the other side, there’s probably a good chance they’re gonna try to make you feel that way. They’re gonna play into that. So you can be a good person and you can step through a lawsuit in an honest, ethical fashion. You can let the facts surface for themselves. Just don’t get caught up in firing off the hate and making the threats and doing those things that will just spiral outta control and it’ll make it more expensive and more time consuming, which makes it even more expensive.
Ep 417: 3 Tips To Help You Uplevel your Instagram Game | Chelsea Peitz Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Do you want to know how to be better on Instagram? Well, I’ve got three things that are gonna help you do just that, and I’m gonna make this as short and sweet as humanly possible. But I just wrapped up an amazing conversation with a newer friend of mine at Chelsea Peitz, and I had Chelsea on the podcast, the Influential Personal Brand podcast, and we were having this conversation about how many people are like, how to just, whatever I do, it doesn’t seem to be working and Instagram’s not for me, and I keep trying this video content, but it’s, you know, no one is liking it, it’s not getting an engagement. So how do I be better at Instagram? Like, how do I be better on this platform? So here are the three takeaways that I think are really helpful and tactical that will allow you to actually take some movement immediately into actually being better on the platform.
AJV (00:55):
Number one is you have to know how the algorithm works. And it’s very simple. The algorithm rewards you when you spend more time on the platform. Surprise, right? It’s not a secret, but we, we think it’s this mysterious thing that we can’t figure out. And the truth is, now it’s quite simple. They reward you when you spend more time there. And the most time that you can spend there is an engagement, right? So it’s responding to comments, it’s communicating and engaging in the dms that matters. It’s not just the content you post and how many people see it, but it’s how much time are you spending on the platform and how much time are you engaging others on the platform? Because if you’re engaging with others on the platform, then you’re both spending time here. So if you’re doing that with lots and lots and lots of people, then you’re bringing more and more people back to the platform, and it’s gonna reward you for that then, because it knows that you’re spending time there and you’re bringing other people there.
AJV (01:56):
So it’s not just about posting content, it’s not just about great content. Those are prerequisites. It’s not just about consistency. Those are expectations. Now, now it’s rewarding. It’s like, well, how much time are you spending? Right? This, these are businesses, you know, like Meta is a business, a very successful high revenue business. So they’re in the business of making money. And when you spend time on there, ad revenues go up and more money comes in. So that is it, it’s simple. That doesn’t mean we have to like it, but it’s more time on the platform is how the algorithm works. So spend more time in engagement and comments and dms. And the other parts are prerequisites. You have to be posting consistently. It has to be good content, it has to be searchable and findable. Those are prerequisites. Now it’s how do we go from here?
AJV (02:47):
And it’s more time on the platform. And what I love what Chelsea said, she said, the most important conversation is the communication that you’re having on the platform. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is don’t forget that there are some things, tactical things that you can do to become more findable and more searchable. So don’t forget that Instagram, like all other social media platforms, is a search engine just like Google, just like YouTube it’s a search engine. People are going there, searching for things, entertainment, education relationships, engagement, whatever. But there, it’s a search engine. So you have to be findable, you have to be searchable. And there are two searchable fields on your profile that allow you to be more findable. One is your handle, right? So it can’t be, you know, jogger 1, 2, 3, underscore 2023. It can’t be it, right?
AJV (03:48):
You have to be findable. So as much as usually humanly possible, use your name, right? Mine is AJ Vaden. So it’s like, get as close to your name as humanly possible. But that’s what people are finding. It’s like I type in people I meet all the time and they’re like, oh yeah, just find me on Instagram. And I assume, oh, it must be your name since you said, go find me on Instagram. When it turns out, it’s like, no, it’s, you know, I can’t even think of one right now, but it’s like, you know you know, sassy Saysso. And I’m like, well, who, who the heck is sassy? I dunno who that is. So you gotta be findable, right? So that’s the first place. And then the second is where your name goes, right? So it’s your profile and then it’s your username, right?
AJV (04:35):
So it’s like your handle. And then it’s like, what is the actual name? So like where that is if you’ve got the blue chip, then you’ve got to, you also have something that’s legally identifiable on your license. So my legal name,
AJV (05:23):
So those are the two fields that are searchable. And then the rest of the information in that profile section is helpful, but it’s not searchable, right? So once somebody finds me or finds brand Builders group then it’s like, is this someone I want to follow someone I wanna look at their content, someone I wanna engage with? And I make it very clear like, this is what you’re gonna get from me, and here’s my call to action of how to engage with me off the platform. Those are all really helpful things. ’cause We’re not trying to build our audiences just on social media, right? Social media to us that it’s an advertising vehicle. But what you really wanna do is you want to move this relationship off of social media and into your email list or to a blog subscriber or a podcast subscriber.
AJV (06:10):
But we’re not trying to only access this relationship on the social media platform. We also want to have them on our platform so that relationship can be more intentional, more meaningful, more direct, right? So you gotta have your handle, then it’s like what you choose to put in that username category. So, you know, it could be what you do. In my case, it’s the name of the company. And then underneath that, it’s like, what’s gonna appeal to the audience I’m serving? And then what’s the call to action to engage with me off of this platform? So your profile section is actually really helpful and mostly it’s helpful in making you searchable. So make sure you capitalize that space as much as humanly possible. And then last but not last the importance of video content. Not everyone is gonna love that we’re talking about this yet again but video is favored and preferred on all platforms, not just Instagram.
AJV (07:05):
And so this is something that we do have to learn and we do have to be better at if we want to have this component of, you know, social media. If we want social media to be a component of our lead generation, customer acquisition, employee retention, customer retention. But this is marketing, this is awareness. This is the game that we’re in. This is how we reach people today, and we do it with valuable content. We do it with relationship and engagement. And those things can happen at scale all across the world. It’s not a bad thing. To have this opportunity and access, we just have to know how to use it in the right way. So a couple of quick tips for creating video content. Short and sweet. Save the best for first. You don’t need to introduce yourself at the beginning of every video.
AJV (07:53):
People know who you are for the most part, they’re following you if they’re engaging with you. That can be found in the captions below, that can be found later out later on. But they need to know, what am I gonna get from this short video, right? So we need to start with the best content we have. And so we need to lead with, you know, wanna know how building a personal brand’s gonna double your income in the next 12 months. I bet you do then go into the content, but you want to start with a little bit of that marketing pitch. It’s like, yeah, it’s like, I believe that you’re building your personal brand can double your income in the next 12 months, and I’m gonna tell you three ways we can do that, right? Or maybe you’re in the dental business and you’re going, Hey, do you still have metal crowns in your teeth?
AJV (08:39):
Wanna know why those are linked to X, Y, and Z? It’s like, yeah, I do. If I have metal in my teeth, I wanna know that. So it’s like, start with those headline statements. It’s always helpful to start with a question or a provocative statement, a fact, a statistic. But you wanna start with something that’s gonna catch someone’s attention. This is where that catchy marketing lingo is really helpful in your favor, but you wanna give people what they’re gonna get right up front, and you wanna save the best for first. Then you wanna make it short and sweet, then you wanna tell people, if you wanna learn more, here’s where you go. Right? That’s where you continue the relationship, continue the engagement. Other quick things, and these came from Chelsea. I thought these were so helpful in our conversation,
AJV (09:22):
And if you’re watching this then you can see what I’m doing. If not, I’m gonna explain it. But don’t forget that if you’re like using your camera to film, it’s like you can just move your arm and get different angles, right? So it’s, I can start here and then here and then here, and then here, and then here. And it’s like all of a sudden you’ve got a multi camera angle shoot by just using your iPhone. But movement matters. It catches the attention, it breaks things up. If it’s just my little head in a tiny little box and there’s no movement happening the whole time just like this. We, we kind of get distracted kind of easy. Like we, we don’t have high attention spans today. And so we’ve gotta keep it engaging. That’s why it needs to be short, and there’s gotta be some interaction.
AJV (10:06):
Also if it’s your tiny head in a box, you can’t use your hands like I’m doing right now, which also really helps with the engagement factor. You can see when I’m getting excited or when I’m slowing things down those things matter. The other thing is that you’ve got to have captions that everyone listens to everything on audio they read. So having the captions makes a big difference, not just because you have some people in your audience who are hard of hearing, but because many people are walking through the airport or sitting in their cubicle at work and they’re not supposed to be maybe listening to things aloud, but they can be reading, they can be scrolling. And so it’s paying attention to the multifaceted ways of going. Like, we need movement, we need sound but we also need the words.
AJV (10:48):
And that’s easy. It’s all built into the platform that allows you to do that. Now, last but not least, this is the last thing. It’s don’t forget that you don’t have to create every single ev every single piece of content that you make. Now, original content matters a lot because it’s your story and everything else has already been said except for your story. So tell your story. No one else has your unique personal experiences, life stories only you do. So tell the thing that no one else can give the ideas and the examples, the only you can because they’re yours. But that’s not the only thing that you have to create content about. And you can vary it up so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming, like, oh, I have to come up with this brand new stuff every day or every week. No, you don’t. You can come up with it as it feels good and original to you, but don’t forget, every single day you get asked a certain amount of questions that you know the answers to. Could you share that content in a video? Don’t forget, every single day you ask questions
AJV (11:52):
That you need answers to once you get ’em. Could that be a piece of content you share with your audience every single day? You go places you see people, you have experiences, you encounter interesting or weird moments. Can other people relate to those? Does that create the human element that you need? Does that create relational value where somebody else can go, huh, me too. That happened to me today too. Like, I’m so glad I’m not the only one. Or I can’t believe this had happened to somebody else before. I thought I was the only one. Right? And it happens at both levels. And so don’t forget, you don’t have to create every single piece of content based on your original content, although that’s helpful and important and valuable, but there’s also everyday moments that we all experience all around us that allow you to create that human relationship online where someone else can go.
AJV (12:48):
Me too, me too. So if you wanna be better at Instagram it doesn’t take, it’s not rocket science, right? It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to figure this out. But it does take some time and effort and intention if you want to do it. And it’s not for everyone. So don’t feel like you have to. And I think that’s a big takeaway. It’s like, if this is not the platform of choice for you because your audience doesn’t live there, skip pass, go move on. Don’t worry about it. These, there is no like rule of like, this is what you have to do to be successful. You do not have to have millions of followers to have a, a massive impact on lives that you are touching. You do not have to have viral videos to make a difference. You, you don’t just focus on the one, focus on engaging and building relationships just like you do offline, right? It takes time and work to build relationships in, in real life in person. It takes the same amount of work online. So don’t forget that time matters and it takes time to make this work. So there you have it. Here’s how to be better at Instagram with three quick tips that you can start doing today. See, you.
Ep 415: Questions to Ask to Help You Find Your Why | Bianca Olthoff Episode Recap
RV (00:03):
Resilience, grit, determination, perseverance. Why do some people have it? And some people don’t. Why is it that some people can barrel through walls and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and other people can’t get the motivation to get outta bed or keep going Sometimes? What is the difference? And that is what we’re gonna be talking about on today’s episode. I’m gonna share three ideas to help you be more resilient. And this was inspired from my conversation with Bianca just here recently about adding more grit to your life and how personal brands can develop that kind of grit and perseverance. And Bianca’s a new friend of mine, she’s Jasmine Star’s sister. We got to meet through Jasmine. And I’ve really enjoyed meeting her. And just the conversation inspired me to, to, to stop and say, I wanna put together specifically one tactical tool right here, right now that would help you immediately become more resilient, immediately become more perseverant.
RV (01:11):
And I call this first technique, or this is gonna be the, the main technique of this lesson is 30. What questions to help you find your why 30, what questions to help you find your why. So we all know that having a why is really important in an episode not that long ago. I talked about kind of a refresher of something I said in the Take the Stairs book, which is that discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. Discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream that we, we wanna leverage long-term vision to endure short-term sacrifices. So the amount of our endurance, our perseverance, our resilience, our grit, whatever word you wanna use for this is directly proportional to it, to the clarity of our vision, the, and the clarity of our why. And one technique is to get really clear on, on the vision of what you want, which is actually to create a picture.
RV (02:12):
And I’ve talked about that before, but today I wanna talk about finding your why specifically. And I’m gonna give you 30 what questions to find your why. Because what I have found is over the course of my life and my career, that a lot of people struggle to find their why, so to speak. They, they struggle to boil it down. And yet when we give them these specific tactical, what questions, like when you answer these, what questions, all these questions start with what? Then once you go through and you answer all of these, your why sort of gets revealed out of that. So I’m just gonna run through this list, okay? These are 30 what questions to help you find your why. Number one, what issues are you most passionate about solving for the world? So just you, you answer that. What, what issues are you most passionate about solving for the world? Number two, what problems are you most capable of solving for other people? What problems are you most capable of solving for other people?
RV (03:19):
That leads to question number three, which is kind of related, but a little bit different. What type of person can you serve in the deepest way? So you just think of like all the different types of people out the world, and you go, what type of person? What are the makeups of the, the specific characteristics of somebody that I can serve in the deepest way? Number four, what are the biggest challenges that you have overcome? We’ve talked about this a lot in brand builders group where we say that you’re, you’re your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So what challenge have you conquered? What obstacle have you overcome? What setback have you survived? What tragedies have you triumphed over? That all comes into what are the biggest challenges you’ve overcome? Number five, what practical skill sets do you have that you wanna develop more of?
RV (04:18):
What practical skill sets do you have or do you want to develop more of? So what, what things do you actually wanna learn that is a hint at your why? Number six, what skills do you want to learn and master that you don’t have? So this kind of goes in tandem with the previous one. So what, what are skills that you, you don’t yet have, but that you wanna learn and master? Number seven, what would you do if you knew you could not fail? What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? I first heard Brian Tracy ask that question years ago. That’s been a great one to think about. Number eight, what do you feel called to, what do you feel called to, like, what do you feel called to do? Number nine, what places in the world do you wanna visit?
RV (05:08):
So now we’re starting to get into the more tangible things which often help clarify and, and, and help us codify like a big part of our why. So that’s what this next little section is all about. What places in the world do you wanna visit? Number 10, what type of family do you wanna have? So just like, when you think ahead 10 years from now, what type of family, like how many people do you see in the family? What, what type of family? Anything you can describe about that. Number 11, what physical attributes do you want to exhibit in your body, right? What physical things do you want to maybe change or highlight or, you know, modify in your body? Number 12, what type of job title do you want to have?
RV (05:57):
Like, what would your ideal job title be? Number 13, what type of clients would you most enjoy working with? What type of clients would you most enjoy working with? So if you had your pick of the litter and the whole world, and you said, this is the, the the specific type of person that I wanna work with what would that be? That that’s gonna, that’s gonna give you a hint as to what your purpose is, right? Like, we believe that all of these things are hints and clues as to what you’re calling is. There’s a reason why God made you in the way that he made you. There’s a reason why you are drawn to the answers to these things. These are not bad things, they’re not selfish things. They shouldn’t become idols in your life, right? They shouldn’t take the place of God.
RV (06:48):
They shouldn’t be the most important thing, but they’re good things. They’re beautiful things, and we believe that they are, they are there for a reason and they guide you in the, in the way that you should go. Number 14, what amount of vacation would you like to take each year? What about a vacation would you like to take each year? You might think, oh, I want permanent vacation. But the the, the reality is that you probably don’t. I mean, if you’ve ever been on vacation longer than seven days, it actually gets boring pretty quick. I mean, you can only go out to eat at like so many restaurants and sit around on the beach all day and do nothing. Like there’s so many, so many days and, and I know you’re probably listening and you’re like, try me, right? I’d like to, I’d like to have that problem, right?
RV (07:30):
Where I was bored of too much vacation. So maybe you need to do that and experience that and, and realize, no, I, I wanna have work. We were designed to work, right? God created work in the garden before the fall of original sin. So regardless of what your spiritual beliefs are, you know, for me that is the source of truth is biblically speaking work is not a part of the, the, the curse work existed before the curse work gives us purpose. So what amount of vacation would you like to take each year? Number 15, what type of house do you wanna live in, right? Like when you, when you think of your house, I mean, of course maybe you have some dream mansion or something, and that’s fine. Like if, if that’s it. But, but realistically go, gosh, like how much space do I really need?
RV (08:15):
What would I, what features would I really love to have? What type of house do you wanna live in? 16. What city and state would you wanna live in? If you could live in any city and any state, where would you wanna live? Or what city? Just sticking with the what theme, number 17. What type of neighborhood do you wanna live in? So is it a cult sack? Is it, you know, the, the mountains? Are you by yourself? Are there people near you? Can you see your neighbors? Can you not? Like, is it really tight and close-knit? Is it gated? Is it like, you know, is it just a big open area? Can you walk to the grocery store? What, what type of neighborhood do you wanna live in? Number 18, what type of car do you wanna have? What type of car do you wanna have?
RV (08:56):
And I know some of these might seem shallow in terms of like, you know, or superficial, but I don’t believe they are. I think that, that these physical things give you a lot of clues and a lot of insight into the type of lifestyle that you want to have, right? Believe it or not, not everybody wants a Rolls-Royce, right? Not everybody wants a Ferrari. Like I don’t want a Ferrari. The the, now I would have another Bentley, like I, I do, I do some days Miss Mile Bentley that I sold when we started brand builders group. But like the, you know, what, what type of car would you have? Those give you clues and hints and insight into the type of maybe job you want to create or the way that you need to plan and save money. And, and you can reverse engineer that into the type of career, the type of work or the type of client you wanna work with.
RV (09:40):
So I think these are, you know, worthwhile questions. Number 19, what do you want your ideal daily schedule to look like? What do you want your ideal dream daily schedule to look like? So if you could like, plan the perfect week and just plot it out on a calendar, here’s what I would do on Monday morning and Monday afternoon and Monday night and Tuesday. And, and not just like a vacation. I mean, you could have a dream vacation, but this is more of like, if, if this was a week that you lived on repeat, right? Going back to what I said earlier about vacation, I believe it or not, I think a lot of people don’t want permanent vacation. I, I, I have a lot of friends who have sold their businesses and it, you know, of course it’s fun for a while be like, oh my gosh, I don’t have to work again or whatever.
RV (10:26):
But a lot of ’em go into a deep depression and they really struggle to find purpose because it’s like they’ve had this, this focus and then once it’s gone, cuz work is good. Work is a good thing, it shouldn’t be an ultimate thing, but work is a good thing. So, you know, what would, what would your ideal weekly schedule look like? Number 20, what amount of money will you need to fund the type of lifestyle that you wanna have during your retirement? If you’re gonna take a retirement, right, or you know, what, what amount of money would you need to have to just live your dream lifestyle might be a better way if you go, no, I’m not gonna work forever and then just retire and do nothing. But if I wanted to sort of like, paste it out a little bit, what amount of money do you need to to fund that?
RV (11:09):
Number 21, what do you want your taxable income to be? What do you want your taxable income to be? Number 22, what activities do you love that are life giving? Life giving? What are the activities that just, they just make you happy for no reason? And you go, you know what, maybe I shouldn’t love mowing the lawn, but I do. Now I do not, right? That is not one of mine, but like, maybe it is for you or maybe it’s cooking or sewing or, or reading it. Reading is is mine, right? I could sit and just read for hours. It’s just completely life giving to me. So what are the activities that are like life giving number 23 is the opposite of that question. What activities do you hate doing that are life taking? And
RV (11:52):
You’re not exactly sure why. And maybe some people love ’em, right? I mean, one mine is landscaping and gardening, right? I know some people love it, it’s their thing. For me, I’m like, this is is prison. Like, I’m miserable. I do not wanna be outside in the hot sun sweating, like bent over getting dirty and all. It’s just like, it’s just not my jam. So what are the activities that you don’t like doing or the things that are life taking? Number 24. This is a good one, okay? This is where we start to get into the type of person you need to become to have all these things that we just talked about in the last section. So I would, I would classify these 30 questions. It’s not equal 10, 10, and 10, but the first 10 questions are really about like, what’s your purpose and your calling in life.
RV (12:37):
The second 10 or, or the middle part, they’re not exactly the second 10. The middle part are really questions around what type of lifestyle do you wanna lead and do you wanna have? And then this, these last ones are kind of more about what type of characteristics do you need to develop as an individual. So number 24 would be is what would the self-talk be of someone who had already achieved all of these things? What would the self-talk be? What would the, the mind of someone who had already achieved all of these things that you just listed out, what are the things that they would say to themselves? Because whatever those things are, are things that you can and mean should and need to say to yourself before they happen, right? Self-Talk should happen in reverse. The your self-talk happens first. This is the creation principle of integrity chapter from my take the stairs book that you think it, you speak it, you act, and then it happens.
RV (13:33):
So first you think it and then you speak it. So what would your self-talk be? If you had already achieved all these things, number 25, what would you have to learn to achieve the things on this list? What are the things that you would have to learn? Number 26. What person or people do you know who have already achieved the things that you wanna achieve? So what person or what people do you know of who have already achieved the things that you wanna achieve? What people already have, the things you wanna have. Those people are the people who have the answers for you, right? So just identifying them. Number 27, which is a little bit related. What type of coaches would you need to help you to get to where you want to go? What type of coaches would you need to help get you to where you want to go?
RV (14:31):
Right? I mean, Michael Jordan has a coach. The greatest actors in the world, they have coaches like the, the, the elite highest performing athletes and entertainers and musicians. They all have coaches. The best authors in the world have coaches. We coach a lot of ’em. The, the best speakers in the world, right? We coach a lot of ’em. Like there there is, everybody needs a coach, like, and can benefit from a coach. So what type of coach would you need to or coach would you need to get to where you want to go? Number 28, what behaviors do you need to stop doing in your life? You don’t even have to. You just go, these are things I’m doing, I just need to stop doing these. What behaviors do you need to stop doing? You know, things that have shown up for me over the years has been like drinking alcohol eating sugar you know, staying up late.
RV (15:20):
Like these are, these are things as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, I just need to stop. Like, I just need to stop doing this. So what are they for you? Number 29. What behaviors do you need to start doing? What do you just need to start doing? And you go, you know what, like plain and simple. I, this is, I need to just start doing this. I know for whatever reason I know that this is a, a behavior I need to start doing. And then question number 30, and this is a big one, okay, what would you be willing to give up if you knew you could have all of these things?
RV (15:56):
Like what would you be willing to trade? What would you be willing to give up if you knew you could have all of these things? Those are 30 what questions to help you find your why. Those are questions that anybody can ask themselves to immediately get clear on what your, get clearer on what your why is, what your real purpose is, what your real driver is. And I obviously if you’re watching this or you’re listening to this, I know you probably didn’t capture all that. The good news, if you go to rory vaden blog.com, we will list, we’ve got these all listed out on my blog. So you can go get the full list there if you want to download it or screenshot it or whatever or just, you know, play this, play this back and you can listen over and over.
RV (16:42):
So that is the theme of today, 30 what questions to Find Your Why. And and when I talked about the three ideas to help you be more resilient, it’s really those three sections, right? It’s, it’s the first section of questions is all about understanding what purpose do I feel called to The second set of questions is really what are the things that I want to have or do or achieve? And then the third set of questions are really about what is the type of person that I need to become? And if you are clear on those three things, those three sets of questions, then inside of that, i, I, as a result of that, as the the byproduct of that, you’ll develop more resilience, you’ll develop more grit, you’ll develop more determination. Because now all of a sudden your brain is set on something that it wants, and now it has a reason to go out and achieve it and acquire it and make it happen. So get clear on these 30 what questions and you will find your why. And as you find your why, you will find the ability and the drive to be more resilient and more perseverant. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and we’ll catch you next time.
Ep 413: Do You Need an App? | Josh Hotsenpiller Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Oh boy. I just had the best and most enlightening conversation. And it’s like one of those conversations that when you have it, you’re like, oh, I really need to tell somebody else about this. Usually the first victim is my husband and he’s always getting infiltrated with all the new things that I’m hearing and learning, but today to you. So welcome. Here’s what we’re gonna talk about for the next just few minutes. I’d like to keep these short, sweet, and simple. But I was recently having a conversation with a newer friend of mine. His name is Josh Hotsenpiller, and he’s the founder and CEO of this awesome company called Juno, which we happen to be using to build the new brand builders group app. And so I also have another great friend, Amanda Mariachi, who also owns a company called appt.
AJV (00:46):
They build custom apps. And you know, apps are a big conversation, right? They’re a big topic, they’re really expensive, take a ton of time. And so I’m always so curious to go like, how much does it cost to do that? And you know, there’s so many apps out there. I’m like, all these people spent all this money making these apps. How long did it take? And it’s like, the more you get into it, it’s like, wow, like that’s really expensive. It takes a lot of time. And so I was having this conversation with Josh about building and creating apps, and he cut me off right in the beginning, which is always a good sign, something good’s gonna happen. And he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the wrong conversation to have. The conversation is not do you need an app? The conversation is what problem are you trying to solve?
AJV (01:31):
And is one of the solutions an app? And I thought that was so wise and so simply stated because, you know, we at Brand Builders group, like every other human out on the planet gets distracted by what’s happening in the market, what’s happening all around us, what our friends are doing, what our competitors are doing. Just what’s happening, right? And it’s like everyone needs an app. And the truth is, no, you don’t. Not everyone needs an app. Not everyone needs this. Not everyone needs that. And I thought it was just a wise thing for someone who owns an app company to go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wrong conversation. It is not, do you need an app or How much should I spend on an app? Or, you know, at what point do I get an app? He goes, all the wrong things. All you need to figure out is what are the main problems in your business?
AJV (02:22):
And then could an app be one of the solutions? Because it’s definitely not the only one. And it really got me thinking, you know, we started this app conversation, this app journey months and months and months and months ago. And really the problem that we have been trying to solve at Brand Builders Group is consolidation, right? It’s like up until now we have had a private Facebook group for a lot of our community interaction. We have used Thinkific as our L M Ss. We use Keep as our, you know C R M, but we use Teams
AJV (02:58):
For internal Chat. We have all listservs for days for our community. But it’s like, in order to really get the full picture of all things Brain Builders Group, it’s like we have our course curriculum, our course content, and think if that you use several different, you know, landing pages to register for events or register for virtual trainings. You can come live, you can come in person, you go to our Facebook group for daily interactions, and we have a growing number of people who are like, I refuse to log into Facebook. How else can I get engaged? And we haven’t really had an answer. And what we were solving that we weren’t even clear that we were solving is our big problem is consolidation. How do we create a platform, a go-to place where you can come in to one place to get access to every single thing that we do at Brand Builders Group?
AJV (03:46):
Log into your affiliate commission statements and sign up for a referral program. Register for an event attend a live event happening right now. Chat with our community, join a forum, watch course content gamification, see leaderboards. And we were using so many fragmented tools to make that happen. It just so happens an app was the solution for our unique problem. We just went and reverse order, didn’t do it in the right order. Luckily, it all worked out in our favor. However, I just thought that was a really powerful conversation to have. And not just about an app, but about technology in general. It’s not, do you need a C R M or do you need an L M s or do you need this? It’s no, no, no, no, no. Wrong questions. What problem are you trying to solve for your business? And what technology could help?
AJV (04:42):
What problem are you trying to solve in your business? What’s the biggest problem you’re trying to overcome right now? And then is there, and then what technology could help? Super simple conversation today, but was one of those aha. You know, like ding ding, dinging moments. And I wanted to just stop in a moment and record this for you of going, it’s like we get distracted by all the shiny objects. We all have a little bit of squirrel syndrome, right? It’s like shiny object swirl. And this is a great moment to go. Like just because it’s out there doesn’t mean you need it. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to. But get focused and get centered on what problem are you trying to solve. And then what and if technology or if technology can do it, and then what technology is out there that can actually help solve that problem. So hope this helped you. It was an aha for me. I’ll catch you next time. See you later.
Ep 411: Eternal Life Part 1 | Strategy for Defeating Death
RV (00:00:03):
What is your strategy against death? I mean that seriously. What is your strategy for dealing with defeating or overcoming death? What is your philosophy about death? What do you believe about what happens after death? Ironically, this is probably one of the most important, if perhaps not the single most important questions for you to answer during your life. And yet, many of us speaking, at least for myself, my friends, my family, many of the people that I know and interface with, many of us spend a shockingly little amount of time thinking about or answering or even having any crafted philosophy at all about what happens after we die. And to me, from a logical standpoint, you put all religion and spiritual spirituality and, and, you know, theism, aside from a purely logical standpoint, this seems like an important question, one that we should spend a little bit of time thinking about, because one thing that I know is that 100% of humans that have ever lived have also died.
RV (00:01:36):
RV (00:02:42):
Do you believe in reincarnation? Maybe you do. If you do, though, why? Like, what evidence is there for reincarnation? What, what logical or academic or scientific support beyond just your own personal convictions, beyond your own feelings, beyond your own instincts, beyond your own emotions, what evidence is there to support that? That’s real. I’m not saying that you have to have evidence for that. All of us, of course, you, myself included, we are all welcome to have whatever beliefs that we choose. But for me, as an analytic, not somebody who’s a pastor, but as someone who is a critical thinker, someone who is logical, someone who is systematic and pragmatic and practical, I just am curious to know, is there any evidence for what you believe? And what is the evidence for what you believe? Maybe you believe in heaven. So what evidence is there for that?
RV (00:03:45):
And how do you get into heaven? And is heaven really real? And if there, if there is a heaven, how confident are you that you are going to get in
Ep 409: 3 Things To Know Before You Write A Book | Risha Grant Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So this is for the person who has always thought I have this great idea. It needs to be a book. Or maybe it’s for the person that gets told all the time, wow, you’re such a great speaker, or a great storyteller, or, wow, you have an amazing story. You need to write a book. So that is who this particular message is for today. And here’s what I have to say about that. There are three core philosophies that I have along with my company, brand Builders Group around the art and the science of writing, sell and selling books. Number one, a book should be the last thing you do not The first thing a book is when you have a truly vetted idea and you have enough content for it to actually be a book, not a chapter of a book, not a blog, not a podcast, but an actual 200 to 300 page book, which means you need to have points and stories and frameworks.
AJV (01:14):
And I idea for a book is not a book. A great story is a great story, not always a book. And I often wonder when people started writing these books, did they ever ask themselves, should this be a book, a chapter of a book, or a blog, or even just a conversation on a podcast? Because great ideas and great stories can be any one of those things. It does not have to be a truly vetted and fully published book for it to make a huge impact. And so I have read many books where at the end of it, I’m like, man, that would’ve been a great blog
AJV (02:12):
And each of those chapters has to have different stories and points and frameworks that all build together, right? In a through line of what’s an overarching theme of this body of work, which we call a book. And that doesn’t start in the beginning. That’s the end, right? That’s the conclusion, right? You don’t start writing a book with a hypothesis. You start writing a book when you have the conclusion, when you have all the information. And that takes time. It takes talking about it a lot writing about it a lot creating content about it a lot, speaking about it a lot. So if you have a great idea or you have a great story, the first thing you do is not write a book, sorry, to burst your bubble on that
AJV (02:58):
One. The first thing you do is you start talking about it. You start blogging about it. You start writing content about it. You start making videos about it. You start speaking for free or for money, but you start speaking about it. It just needs to be vetted. You need to know what people remember, what appeals to them what you love talking about. Like what stories should you use? And then once you’ve done that for an adequate amount of time, and I’m not gonna put a timeframe on there for an adequate amount of time where you now have an entirely vetted, like, this is the main theme. These are the points I wanna make, these are the stories that support those, and here’s what I wanna teach people, i e frameworks, then, then you’re ready to write the book.
AJV (03:46):
But it’s the last thing you do, not the first thing you do, right? So that’s number one. Is that writing a book is the last thing you do, not the first thing you do. And if you think you have a great idea, start with a blog
AJV (04:36):
You, you think that the message that you have will help impact someone to change their life or their business for the better. Otherwise why do it? Because it takes a ton of your time, energy, resources, and money. So if it’s not going to be something that you’re deeply passionate about talking about for a long time, then write a book, right? So back to this is that writing is just part one. And what most people don’t spend near enough time thinking about and planning and executing is the sales and marketing plan. And I did say those, those in order sales and marketing, right? If you think that you’re going to write a book and send it to your email list, even if you have a huge email list, it will likely not sell as many books as you think. If you have a huge social media following and you think that you can write a book and just use your audience, I think you will most likely be severely disappointed in how even that does not move many books. That’s marketing. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, of course you should do that. Of course, you should market your email list. Of course you should be marketing it on social media and doing a podcast tour and doing all the
AJV (05:56):
Things. Yes, but that’s not the bulk of what actually moves books. What actually moves books is you the author selling. Now I say you the author because you are the best and most well positioned person to make the sale. Now, that does not mean you can’t have support and help doing all these things. Of course you can. But when you think about how do I move books to get them in the hands of people that I think it will actually make a difference in, you literally have to think of old school selling. And here’s what I mean, my old school. Pick up a phone and call somebody. Pick up your phone, text somebody, engage with them, go speak to their group, go meet them in their office. They need to see a, a tangible copy of what this book is, why it’s important. And you need to start with the people who know you like you and trust you the most.
AJV (06:56):
So those are the people who have hired you before. They have paid for your services before. They have worked with you before. They’re the ones who were telling you that you need to write the book. Well, if they think you need to write the book, well then they need to buy a copy of the book, right? But it’s like that is sales. You need to pick up the phone and call people and give them a reason to buy these books. And hopefully you have some people who will buy lots of books at the same time, right? So bulk sales and as well as the individual orders. But you have to be a salesperson to be compelling enough to go pull out your credit card, click on this link and give me at least 24 99 to buy this book that takes sales and supplemental marketing, right?
AJV (07:41):
It’s not one or the other. It is both. But please hear me when I say it takes a sales effort, a sales plan, which means you actually have to have people to call on, right? So back to, are you ready to write the book? Do you have enough content? The second question to ask yourself, am I ready to write the book? I e do I have enough people in my audience in my my client sphere, in my, you know, friends and family sphere that I could actually get this in enough hands of people and make it, you know, marketable enough that this would actually spread and make a difference, right? That matters. Now, if you’re writing a book just because it’s a legacy book and you’re like, man, I just wanna get what I believe on paper, and I don’t care if I ever sell a copy.
AJV (08:28):
I’m not gonna try to, I’m just gonna have some for friends and family to give away. That’s a different story. This, this piece, this message is not for you today, right? This is for the person who’s going, no. Like, I want this book to make a massive impact. I want this to be a part of my business. I want this message to spread. I want this to be in the hands of people I care deeply about that this is who this is for. So number one the book is the last thing, not the first thing. A second thing is get sales ready, be sales ready. And then the third thing, and this is not in order per se, but the third thing is you have to know how you want to actually publish the book. That’s it. That’s it. An important part of this formula that maybe wasn’t such a part of the formula 10 years ago and definitely wasn’t a part of it 20 years ago when we wrote our book take the Stairs in 2010 is when it launched.
AJV (09:21):
And so that’s what 13 years ago, like, there was not a lot of awesome self pop publisher options where it was credible. There was hardly any even less than self hybrid options. I mean, it was like, if you really wanted to get your book in the mainstream, it was a traditional publisher, right? And it took us two years of hardcore whole hardcore sales and cold calling and prospecting and follow up to get an agent to even look at this much less considerate, right? So two years of just going like, please
AJV (10:21):
It’s like, we’ll do your fulfillment for you, right? So it’s like that’s something that we do for our members at Brand Builders Group because we care deeply about getting your message into the hands of others. There are good self-publishers. Like there are books out there that are self-published like Miracle Morning, Hal l Rod, where it has sold it has sold millions of copies and he gets to keep every dollar of it, right? But that this is an important part of the journey. ’cause What, here’s what people think. They think I’m going to get an agent, which is pretty much necessary in order to work with a traditional publisher. I’m gonna get a big advance and whew, my job is done. Earn not true. That’s not how it works. Agents sell your book proposal to publishers. Publishers publish your book. They help edit it, they help formatting, they help with not help.
AJV (11:11):
They tell you what the cover’s going to be. But they do those com right components. They put it into a form of a book where you can flip pages and read it. They do not sell your book. Now, maybe if you’re Michelle Obama, they will help market your book for you. But if you are not Michelle Obama, they do not sell your book. They do not market your book. So the question is if publishers publish and editors edit, then who sells? And who does that? You do the author, that’s your job, right? So being an author today also means that you are a sales person. Going back to step two. But that is an important part of the journey of like the advance. What that really should be considered is like, this is an upfront amount of money that I’m gonna reinvest back into the book launch.
AJV (12:01):
Because if you get a big advance, that means that you’re not going to make any additional money until you earn that out. And royalties. So people are always like, well, I don’t have the money to traditional, or I don’t have the money to self-publish, which is why I need a traditional publisher. I don’t have the money to do a hybrid publishing deal because that takes my money upfront. Well, the truth is, is it takes your money both ways. It doesn’t matter. You’re just going to ex have an expenditure upfront that you then get to earn and keep all the money on the backend, or you’re not gonna have an expenditure upfront, but you’re going to make pennies on the dollar for the life of that book. It takes your money any way you look at it. It’s just, do you have the money to invest upfront?
AJV (12:50):
Yes or no? And that is really the only thing to decide because it does take your money. It doesn’t matter how you do it. It’s an investment of time, energy, and financial means to get a book in the hands of people that it will make a difference. And so deciding which route to go is really important. And if you think that, you know, oh, if I do it this way, I’m gonna get all this support. Think again. There are things that people do and there are silos, and then there are things that are up to you and there are some things that are gonna be on your plate regardless of which path you go. And sale, selling and marketing, the book is one of those things. So consider those things as you’re, you know, going through the options of like, how would I wanna do this?
AJV (13:33):
And it’s like, do I want to have more money for the long tail? Do I have enough confidence in myself to sell this at the back of the room or to sell this to clients or not? Right? And tho those things make a big difference. Do I have enough money upfront to be able to make that upfront investment, but then earn it back and I get to keep it versus no, I’ll take this money upfront, but that money costs me a lot in the long run. ’cause I won’t make another dollar until all of that is earned out. And then I’ll make very small royalties for the rest of the lifetime of that book. So, like I said, it’s gonna take your money either way. It’s just which way makes more sense for you. So those are the three things that you should know as you prepare on the adventure. ’cause That’s what it is. There’s peaks and valleys of writing a book. Check out our entire podcast interview with Isha Grant to hear more about all that it takes to write your first book. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 407: Telling Stories That Make a Difference | Damon West Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So I just had this amazing conversation with a newer friend of mine, his name is Damon West, and he’s got an incredible story from being a collegiate athlete to working at a very large investment bank, to getting hooked on meth, to being sentenced life in prison, to getting parole, to becoming a motivational speaker and a multi-time published author. And the stories just awesome. But while I was talking to him, it spurred this idea to make this video to share with all of you. And I think it was really good cause we were talking about how do you incorporate these crazy stories, these events, these, I can’t believe this happened to me, type of story into your message. And how do you take a very, you know, you focus story, in this case, a very me focus story and turn it into a message that is universally helpful to your audience, where I’m not just telling you my story to help you get to know me, but I’m telling you my story.
AJV (01:14):
Because within that story, there is a message that means something to you, the person who is listening, the end user, right? So at Brand Builders Group, we have a really simple formula that talks about this, which is tell a story, make a point. If you’re going to tell a story, what’s the point of that story? The story part is about you. The point, the message is about them. So what are you trying to convey during this message? And this was just a really great storytelling conversation, is really what it ended up being, is how do we tell our story in a way that actually helps other people? And so here’s a couple of things that I just wanted to share from this conversation cuz I thought they were worthwhile. So number one is just asking yourself, and I’m, I’m literally using words out of his mouth cuz I thought this conversation was so great, is what’s the SWAT team story in your life?
AJV (02:14):
Like, if you’re struggling on how to make a point and create a message, then ask yourself like, what are the SWAT team stories in my life? And what I mean by that is, you know, in Damon’s life, there was a SWAT team raid, and that’s how he got arrested. A SWAT team busted down the doors, rated a, I think meth house would be the appropriate term and arrested him, right? That’s a SWAT team story very literally for him. But all of us have those swat team stories in our life, those defining moments or events or decisions that said, my life was going this way and then this thing happened. That SWAT team moment
AJV (02:59):
And then my life went in another direction. Could be good, could not be good. But what are the SWAT team stories, the stories that make you stop in your tracks and go, wait, what that happened to you? Like this thing, this decision, this event, this moment? Like, wait, I, what? So what are the SWAT team stories in your life? And then what’s the message within that story, right? That, what’s the point of that story? Because that’s what takes a story that’s yours and makes it a story that other people need to hear. Because there is a message, there is a point, there is something within that story that is universally applicable to anyone who hears it. I’m going, I needed to hear that today. I needed to be reminded of that today. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is know what your signature stories are.
AJV (03:50):
When I was talking to Damon, we, we were both talking about how it doesn’t matter what audience you’re in front of, right? This is maybe an audience of one and maybe you’re just practicing in the mirror, right? Maybe you are the audience of one. Maybe it’s in a one-on-one coaching call. Maybe it’s on a podcast like this. Like right now, technically I’m talking to my camera, right? Although others will hear it. I’m talking to myself, right? The only thing I see right now is a little green dot on my computer. I’m talking to myself. However I have you in mind, right? So maybe it’s that maybe you’re making content videos or maybe you’re speaking on stages. Maybe you’re speaking on stages to hundreds of high schoolers or thousands of people in corporate America. The the point is, it does not matter who you’re talking to.
AJV (04:32):
It’s what are the signature stories that you tell no matter what, because this is a signature story of your message of your life. And it’s profound in many ways. And so we have lots of stories. Like I have a list of probably at this point, a hundred different stories that I could tell, but I have two or three that I tell no matter what. Those are my signature stories. And it’s like, I know that this was such a defining moment. This was such a swat team story in my life that it doesn’t matter what audience am I, I’m in front of, this is a story I’m telling. That’s what we’re calling your signature stories. It’s those one or two stories that are in every single message that show up in all the different types of conversations because they’re that powerful because they were powerful to you.
AJV (05:17):
And if they were powerful to you, if they changed you, they have the power to help change someone else too. So what are your signature stories? All right, so have your list. The next thing is knowing how to tailor your presentation without changing your message. And I thought this was really profound because in an era of everyone’s something that’s a little special to them, right? Most audiences wanna feel like this was catered to me. This was tailored for me. This was crafted or built or customized just for my audience. At the same time, that’s what we think we want. But what we really want is we want something that we know is going to be impactful to the audience that’s going to help them, help them make better decisions, help them think differently, help inspire them in some way. And sometimes having something brand new isn’t the best way to do that, right?
AJV (06:07):
Sometimes the good old tried and true is what people really need, although that’s not what they think they want. So knowing how to tailor your message or your presentation know how to tailor your presentation for the audience without ever actually changing the message. So here’s how you do that is you can tailor the opening. You can tailor the ending. You can work in industry lingo or statistics. You can make it about the event. You can weave in acronyms. You can tell a story about the audience. You can do something about the city that it’s in. Like I have go-to stories and jokes. If I’m ever speaking in Las Vegas there are just, this is like, I’m gonna tell this joke or I’m gonna tell this story if I’m in Las Vegas because it, I know it’s gonna be a home run no matter where I tell it.
AJV (06:56):
Or if I’m ever speaking at 8:00 AM I always have a story for an 8:00 AM if I’m ever speaking over lunch. I have little jokes that it’s always for lunch meetings. If it’s I’m, if I’m the closing speaker and I’m the last people, that last person there and people are constantly leaving to catch their flights because nobody thought about having a speaker right before everyone leaves. It’s like, I have stories and jokes just for those time that’s tailoring the presentation that makes it feel custom and unique. Although my message is never impacted. So how do you tailor your presentation for the industry, for the audience, for the company for the location, the locale, the theme of the event without ever actually changing the message itself. Cuz when people say, Hey, I I love that you customize this, what they’re really saying is, I love that it felt like you customized it just for us, but what they really want is the goods.
AJV (07:47):
And you only know it’s the goods because you’ve delivered it enough to know that point resonates. That story is what people remember. You need to be doing your message and your presentation so often that it’s like, I know a laugh is coming here. I know a silent moment is coming here. And not only happens cuz you’ve done it dozens, if not hundreds of times. And so people say they want something custom, but you don’t wanna try out brand new stuff and an audience like that, that’s for your small group of friends or for your mirror, right? That, that takes practice to know it’s like it’s gonna crush that’s gonna make a difference. That’s going to actually be what they asked for while also giving them what they want, which is making it feel custom and tailored. And you can do that without ever changing your message. So don’t change your message. Learn how to tailor the presentation, right? And then I have these other quick three things that I just thought were really good. Just little motivational bombs for you today. So number one I thought this was so good for all of us, is that there’s only two ways to think about the future. It’s with fear or with faith. And they both have more in
AJV (08:54):
Common than you think. They are both a hundred percent based on things in the future. One is negative and one is positive. Fear is thinking about all the bad things that might happen in the future. Faith is remembering that good things are coming your way. And as we’re doing all these things, we’re thinking about, you know, speaking on that stage or writing that book, or getting our message out into the world or, you know, starting this new venture or this relationship or having a baby. It’s like we can choose to be filled with fear, which is the negative, or we’re gonna choose to have a little faith because they’re both a choice. And it’s just which one, which path are you gonna take? Is it the path of fear or the path of faith? And that I needed that yesterday when I had this conversation.
AJV (09:36):
So thought maybe it would be good for you too. Number two is that you are always more capable to overcome more than you think. You are always capable to overcome more than you think. And I think that’s just a reminder to all of us. It’s like once we’ve overcome it, then we’re reminded of like, whoa, I did that. But before it happens, or even during, we’re like, I don’t know if I can do this. But the truth is you can, you can do it. You can overcome this. You can make these new decisions, you can create these new habits, you can do this. And you are way more capable of overcoming more than you ever thought was possible. You are capable. That was number two. And then number one, I asked a amen at the very end. I said, with all these life trials that you’ve been through that you have overcome without, you know ease with lots of difficulty what would you say is like the number one thing when it comes to keeping this positive mindset and choosing a faith future over a fear future?
AJV (10:41):
And he said, number one key to my mindset and to my emotional wellbeing and my overall growth is just consistency. It’s nothing big. It’s just showing up every day. It’s making a choice. I’m not going to, you know, do drugs again. I’m not gonna take that sip of alcohol. I’m not gonna eat that cookie if I want it. I’m not gonna spend that money here. I’m going to investigate here. I’m gonna wake up every day. I’m gonna get in the shower and I’m gonna try. I have to put in the work. And he said, it’s n nothing profound and it’s nothing big, he said. But it’s those daily decisions. Those defining moments that were made in the, the ease of the moment where I could have easily said, this is too hard. But it didn’t. I said, no, this is hard and I can do hard things. And it was a great reminder to me, and I hope it’s a great reminder to you that success isn’t easy. It takes work whatever that success is. It’s not supposed to be easy. Who said this was supposed to be easy? But the best things in life come from overcoming. I, I know that for most of us when we look back, it’s like we don’t remember the things that came easy, but we profoundly remember the things that
AJV (11:53):
Came hard then we overcame because it changed us, it challenged us and it grew us. Those are the things that we remember and those are the things that your audience is gonna remember too. So don’t be afraid to share those moments of your life, the hard stories because they do make a difference. They made a difference for you and they make a difference for people like me. So tell your story. Get out there and I’ll see you later.
Ep 405: The 5 Reasons Why Authors Miss Bestseller Lists | Patty Aubery Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
What a fascinating, uh, story and recount of the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand. I loved it. Uh, this is a recap, uh, a little bit of that, that interview I did with Patty Aubrey and just, uh, if you didn’t get a chance to hear it, it’s about how they built the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand and, you know, sold all those books and changed the whole world and changed the whole industry. And it’s just a little bit of a, a, you know, just fun to go behind the scenes and, and see how that all worked out. And so I thought for today’s episode, I would stay in the theme of book launching and book selling. And I’m gonna walk you through five of the reasons why I think, uh, the five of the most common reasons why authors miss bestseller lists. Um, obviously Chicken Soup for the Soul came out years ago, and so it was fun to see how they bundled things and packaged them together to, you know, sell so many books.
RV (00:59):
In recent years, this has been a huge part of what we do at Brand Builders Group. We, we’ve helped 14 different authors become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers at this point, um, including myself, of course, which we’ve done. And it is something that we just, we know a lot about. And we are working with all of the biggest publishers in the world, pretty much, and many of the biggest authors in the world. And, you know, so many of our clients at Brand Builders Group are authors at some point are aspiring authors. And so we, uh, you know, we don’t just do book launches, but that’s one of the things that we do really, really well. And we’ve had a, a really strong track record of success, especially here consistently in the last couple years. So, um, I wanna talk about the five biggest risks that, uh, we see for why authors don’t hit bestseller lists.
RV (01:51):
And number one is volume risk, volume risk. So by far, the number one reason why most authors don’t hit the major bestseller lists is simply because of sheer volume. You know, the way that these lists work, uh, you know, the two major ones, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, we do follow others. We follow U s A today, we follow Amazon, we follow, um, you know, the Washington Post, we follow Publishers Weekly. There, there’s, there’s several other lists, but the two main ones, New York Times and Wall Street Journal are, are the biggest and the most credible, and people just have no idea how much volume it takes. Now these lists, most of them are weekly. The New York Times does have a, a monthly bestseller list, um, that is a business bestseller list, which actually, there’s, there’s more than just business books that qualify for that list.
RV (02:42):
We see, uh, psychology books appear on there, and self-help books also appear on there. But the main, uh, list that most of our clients at Brand Builders Group, uh, are going for in that we’ve, we’ve hit is the New York Times Advice Weekly, how to List, which is arguably the toughest list there is. It’s, it’s a very, very competitive list. And then, um, in the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal has a, a nonfiction list that many of our clients hit. And it’s all formats, paperback, you know, uh, and, and a hardcover, but, and all different nonfiction, um, BSAC codes. And then there is the, the Wall Street Journal business list. And, um, all three of those are the kind of the main three lists that we track and that we’re helping clients hit. ’cause that’s mostly what we do, right? Is, is non-fiction, business, self-help, health psychology, et cetera.
RV (03:33):
And, um, so you have to, in order to hit these bestseller lists, I mean, there’s a lot of things that have to happen, right? Part of which I’ll talk about here in this, in this, this episode. But the first, the first thing is you have to have a volume of units. And, and you have to understand that not every sale counts, only sales at certain outlets count. They’re called reporting outlets or reporting retailers. And so that’s one of the things that we do. And we advise our clients on their strategy. One of the things that we talk about is making sure their sales count. Um, and that’s something that we often help authors with as in addition to helping them create the strategy for how to sell a lot of books. Um, we also have a lot of strategies around making sure the sales count.
RV (04:15):
Because if you sell books at the back of the room, like, let’s say you’re a speaker and you sell at the back of the room, those books don’t count. Um, for the bestseller list, they have to be sold through reporting retailers. And, um, that’s a whole puzzle in game in and of itself. But, um, the way that these bestseller list work is they’re weekly lists. And so they are the number of units sold through all, you know, reporting retailers within a certain period in a window. And usually that is one week. And, um, in this case, these three, they are in one week. And, you know, just, we have a data science team that tracks this specifically. And once someone becomes a client, we actually share a lot of this data with them. The actual specifics, I’ll give you some broad numbers here though, but you know, roughly to make a run at a New York Times, uh, bestseller, you roughly need to have around 15,000 units in a week.
RV (05:07):
Um, we have had clients that we’ve been able to hit with less, um, but we also know people who have missed with more than that. And so, again, part of it depends on how the sales happen and where the sales happen, which is just one of the things that we just try to speak into and, and that we do speak into. ’cause we’re really good at it, even though our main focus is just teaching authors how to ethically and honestly sell a lot of books. So you gotta get about like 15,000 units though just to hit, you know, the, to be a candidate, you know, to hit the New York Times. So that’s not easy. And then a Wall Street Journal nonfiction bestseller, you know, roughly speaking on most weeks and every week is different. And that’s something that we look at and track, um, is when’s the best time to publish, to hit bestseller list, et cetera, and who your publisher is.
RV (05:51):
There’s lots of things like that. Um, but there is around 10,000 units is usually what you’re gonna have to sell in a week to be a candidate for a Wall Street Journal nonfiction bestseller. And then for the Wall Street Journal business, um, that, that one fluctuates, you know, quite a bit. But we typically say 3000 units sold in a week. Um, and you know, that’s a lot of books to sell in a week. So, you know, you’ve gotta create a campaign and a strategy, but that’s the number one reason why authors don’t hit, is they just, they have volume risk. They don’t have enough volume pushing through and also in the right locations. Like they don’t, they don’t know who the proper reporting retailers are, and they don’t have a strategy there, and they don’t even know that. They don’t know that that matters. And so, um, I mean, I, I see sales, I see books every week.
RV (06:37):
I mean, I just looked up one yesterday, a book that sold 4,000 units in a week should have hit a bestseller list. And it didn’t, it missed, and clearly they didn’t have someone advising them on, you know, the, the full picture of how to run these launches. But so volume risk is number one. Um, and it’s heart, it’s heartbreaking when people get the volume and miss, and the reason they often miss is ’cause of number two, which is what I call technicality risk. Um, so the technicality risk is just being unaware that there are so many technicalities that go into hitting these bestseller lists. Part of how I learned this is that one of the most heartbreaking moments of my professional career, um, was when my, my second book Procrastinate On Purpose came out. Um, and I, uh, we, we sold several thousand units. We should have been, and we expected to be a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, which we were with, uh, take The Stairs, my first book.
RV (07:35):
And I sort of fully expected to do that. And I, we sold the units and then the bestseller list come out. And not only did we not hit number one, we weren’t on the list at all. And that is part of what sent me down a journey of discovery because it was gut-wrenching and, and, and heartbreaking. Um, not because you need the title to feel important, but because you pour your heart and soul into something for years, you know, making a book and preparing and doing the launch. And, and, you know, we know a lot about launching books, um, and, uh, this was at our former company, but, uh, so we weren’t in the business of, of teaching people how to do this, but it was, you know, it was frustrating and discouraging and it felt political, right? I, I felt like I, I got hosed or somebody was against me or out to get me because I sold more books than the books on the list that week.
RV (08:26):
And yet we didn’t, we didn’t hit the list. And that’s because of something called technicality risk. There are many different technicalities that have to be accounted for. And one of ’em, as an example is something called your BIAC code, B I S A C. Um, and so BIAC code is something that most authors don’t even know about or don’t even think to look at. Now, BSAC Codes stands for book industry Standards and Communications. Um, and what it is, is it is like the way that, that the industry organizes and categorizes books, right? There’s so many books, thousands of books, you know, every probably every month or maybe even every week that are coming out. And so these books get organized by category. And the industry categorization method is called the BSAC Code. And the BSAC code is the official category that your book is in.
RV (09:15):
Well, for example, when it came to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, what was so painful was that, um, my second book was not properly categorized, and it was categorized as a self-help book. And really it’s a business book. Well, why did that matter? It because self-help books never show up on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller list, regardless of how many units they sell. So I did all of this work, our team did all of this work. We pour our heart and soul into it. Our clients are rallying to support us. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re launching this book out into the world. We execute everything and we miss the list on a technicality.
RV (09:55):
It was heartbreaking, right? Um, and, you know, that book never took off. Like my first book, take The Stairs took off, and my first book continues to sell really, really well. Now, it, it, uh, procrastinating on Purpose. My second book, it sold fine. I’ve earned out my advance, I get royalty checks. Um, we sell, you know, a a hundred plus copies every week still, but it never took off, like take the stairs. And part of it I think was ’cause we just, we lost a lot of that momentum of the bestseller and all the buzz, and it was because of an avoidable technicality. And yet no one brought it up to me. No one ever mentioned my literary agent, my publisher, my editor, our, you, you know, our marketing team, like our PR team. No one brought it up. I don’t know that they knew to bring it up.
RV (10:40):
I didn’t know to bring it up. And so that’s a part of where I started exploring this. And then ultimately when we exited that business, it started Brand Builders Group. One of the services that we started providing was book launch, you know, consulting and coaching and teaching people how to not only sell the books, but how to make sure their book sales count for the list. And that you don’t lose out to technicality risk. That’s only one type of risk. There’s other types of technicalities, geographic, there’s publisher risk. Did you know that certain publishers are more likely to show up on the New York Times than other publishers? Um, there are all these things that we track that are just technicalities and you just don’t even know as an author, and no one even brings it up. And you’re so focused on just trying to sell books, which no one has a really good plan for, unless, unless you’re working with us. Then it’s, it’s just like, man, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s really tricky. So you gotta watch out for technicality risk and you need to talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing and who understands and looks at these bestseller lists. And that’s, you know, part of what we built at Brand Builders Group is a data science team that does nothing but track data just to understand how the bestseller list work. Um, number three is kind of closely related, we call it over estim Overestimation risk.
RV (11:52):
Overestimation risk. And this is definitely one of the reasons why authors miss the bestseller list, which is that they overestimate the importance of PR and social media. Uh, now you might say like, how could you overestimate the importance of PR and social media? Well, PR and social media are good things. You, you need to do them, you should do them for your book launch. But for most authors, that’s what they think. That’s what they think is going to make them make or break hitting the list. And what we know in reality is that only 0.001%, that’s what our team estimates after running several of these launches of your social media falling will convert to become book buyers 0.001%, right? So if you’re Eric Thomas, et the hip hop preacher, we helped, um, Eric Thomas run his entire book, launch the Strategy from Beginning to end, um, and we hit the New York Times with et or he hit the New York Times, we got to be a part of it.
RV (12:51):
And you know, ets amazing. He’s a legend and he is got 5 million social media followers. Well, we estimate that around 5,000 of the book sales came from social media. Um, how do we know that? Because we track all the sales and where all the sales come from. So that’s, if you’re Eric Thomas, right? You might sell 5,000 units from that. So when we created bestseller launch plan, which is our formal curriculum at Brand Builders Group, where we teach people the five mechanisms for how to sell a lot of books, what we created that because we realized for ourselves that social media and PR doesn’t sell that many books. Even when you get on the major podcast, like the biggest podcasts in the world might move a few hundred copies, right? I mean, we’ve had, we’ve had clients and friends and I personally been on many of the biggest podcasts in the world.
RV (13:37):
You might move a couple hundred, 300, a huge, huge podcast would move like 500 units, even the Today Show or national television, right? We’ve had friends, uh, and clients get on the Today Show. We might see a thousand units from that one sale or from that one appearance, which is good. You still need to do it. That’s a thousand units, that’s a thousand lives you’re changing. But a thousand is nowhere near enough to hit any of the bestseller lists, let alone a New York Times, right? So you gotta have a whole other strategy going on here to to, to pull it off. I’ve been on national tv, um, multiple times and I’ve seen, I’ve seen my biggest national TV appearances might move a thousand units. I’ve had some national TV appearances where I can’t even tell, you know, any sort of a, you know, deline able difference in book sales from a national TV appearance, which is hard to get.
RV (14:27):
Um, so there’s this overestimation risk of PR and social media that’s not what move books. You need to figure out a better plan that’s gonna move them. And if you’re a B B G client, obviously we’re, you go through the bestseller launch plan curriculum, you have access to it. We teach you, we teach you the whole system. So watch out for that. Number four is inventory risk. Inventory risk. And this one is another devastating, heartbreaking, tragic thing that makes, gives me so much pain, which is that authors do all this work to create the sales. They have all the money, they have all the people out there buying the books, and the publishers haven’t printed enough inventory, or they have printed enough inventory, but it hasn’t been shipped in time to get to the retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Books Ilion and all the independent stores and whatever.
RV (15:16):
And so when your audience goes to buy the book, either it shows sold out and nobody can buy it. Or what’s even more frustrating is you can buy it. And so you’ll place an order and you’ll buy a book online and you will make the sale, they’ll collect your money, but because they don’t have the inventory, the retailers can’t ship the books out in time. And so the books get reported when they ship. And so even though the sale happened in a certain week, the reporting of that sale doesn’t happen till future subsequent weeks. And so you have an author’s launch where all, everything they poured into this, their, their reporting gets diluted across multiple weeks. And I’ve seen that happen multiple times. And it, and it typically happens with newer authors, younger authors, smaller publishing companies, and smaller print runs because they just, they don’t know how many books the the author’s gonna sell.
RV (16:14):
It’s their first time. They don’t, they can’t take a huge risk to print a whole bunch of copies. They don’t realize how important it is. And they underestimate how long it takes to print books and get ’em shipped, and then for the retailers to get ’em and checked into inventory and you could do everything else right? And then miss on this one, just again, sort of a horrible technicality of, of, of going, man, I, I created the sales. The sales are there, people spent the money. We, we, we had people buy that many units in a week, but they didn’t get reported because of the way that the inventory happens on the backend. And again, as an author, it’s like, how do you know this? Like, you don’t even know to know this. It, it’s taken me years to figure this out and to learn this stuff.
RV (16:56):
And, and obviously part of why we started Brand Builders Group and created the services that we have, one of which in, in this book Launch in Space. And that points to number five, which is the last one, which is Planning risk, planning risk. And this one is the one that’s controllable. And this is the, this is, you know, the biggest controllable issue that authors have, which is they wait way too long to plan for their launch. Most authors don’t plan for launching their book until their manuscript is done. And you might only have a few months before the book comes out. And that’s not enough time to fully plan and execute and orchestrate and pull off the, the, the logistical, uh, masterpiece that has to take place in order for a book to become a bestseller. I mean, most of these clients that we’re working with we’re, we’re, we’re helping them, we’re helping them years in advance because they’re b b G clients.
RV (17:52):
And so we’re helping them build their platform, build their speaking career, build their social media, build their podcasts, build their funnels, right? Build their sales team, build their events. We’re, we’re building all of this stuff up. And so they’re already in position that we can execute a launch quickly. But if you’re just rolling off the street as a new author and you don’t have a clue how to sell books, and you don’t have a team and you don’t have a huge audience and you can’t get on national tv, it’s like there’s no chance. I mean, the, the ship has sailed be before, you know, like that, that game is already over before it began. And it’s just ’cause you don’t know and you don’t realize that you have to plan. I mean, anything that takes excellence, takes planning. Like you have to plan way out in advance.
RV (18:32):
And so, you know, we tell even, uh, our ideal time is that we should be talking to an author about a year before their publication date of their book if they really wanna make a run at a bestseller. Now, there’s times where we have one regardless, right? Um, Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, uh, hired us 13 days before their book launch. And in 13 days we were able to grow their total sales over 30% in 13 days. And, um, Lisa hit the u ss a today bestseller list, kind of just barely. And so we played a really significant role in that, um, which was great, but you know, they also have a lot of things going for them that not every, you know, new person does that we could, you know, so we were able to move some things and make things happen quickly. Can’t always do that with, with up and comers.
RV (19:17):
So, um, you gotta start planning early and, you know, if you have a book or you wanna have a book coming out in, within the next year, I mean, request a call with us now, like, do not wait. I mean, and you can, you know, you can do that every week. If you go to free brand call.com/podcast. We mention this every week. You can request a free call with our team and you can start getting educated on this and learning about this. But don’t wait too long to plan otherwise, you’ll miss your window. So there’s a lot more going on here to becoming a bestselling author than just selling a lot of books. And those are the five biggest risks for why people miss the list. Hopefully, by knowing ’em, uh, you can help avoid, will help you avoid ’em. And if you’re not sure or exactly clear on exactly how to do that, then talk to us and let us be your partner in this process. Share this episode with an author that you know, or someone who’s an aspiring author or someone who has a book coming out. This is a must listen to must see episode. If someone is an author, this can be life-changing information. So I hope you’ll share that with somebody who is on that path. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-bye.
Ep 403: How to Set Your Fees | Mitch Matthews Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right, guys. We are going to talk about how to set your fees. In other words, how to be well paid as a speaker, coach, consultant, author, who also does speaking, coaching, and consulting. But this is a conversation specifically designed for what we call the expert community. That person who is trading their content, right via coaching, consulting, speaking, writing, content, creating for money. And ultimately, this is to help you make more money so that your, your message gets more out into the world. At the end of the day, I believe that most of you who are listening to this are driven by mission and purpose, and you want to make money as a bri, as a byproduct of doing really good work. But at the same time, if you do really good work, then you should be paid like you do really good work.
AJV (00:56):
And for many of us there, a reason you’re not getting paid like you should is because you don’t have the confidence or the conviction to charge what you should. And that’s what this conversation is about today. So at Brand Builders Group we believe that there are four categories, sorry, five categories missed. One, there are five categories that really will help you decipher how do you set your fees? So we could talk about things philosophically or in theory, we could share best practices. That’s not what this is about today. What this is about today or what are the five categories that you need to evaluate yourself in to know how to set your fees. All right? And each one of these, I just want you to rank yourself on a scale of one to 10, one being not existent, 10 being crushing it out of this world, killing it.
AJV (01:53):
That’s what we’re talking about. So high level here are the five categories that we’re gonna go through. Credibility, content, delivery, right? Your presentation style, right? Stage presence, we could call it that. Marketing materials and reach, right? So I’ll say ’em again. Credibility, content, delivery, marketing materials, and reach high level. That’s what we’re going after here. So I’m also trying to keep this 10 minutes or less. So we gotta crush, we gotta roll. First one, credibility. Again, rate yourself on each of these on a scale of one to 10. One being I don’t have any in the market. 10 being I’m a household name, right? So this is what we’re talking about. A 10 is like a PhD or a global thought leader. These are people who have viral TED Talks, New York Times, bestselling books, people who are regularly on some of the biggest media and podcasts, your mainstream, right?
AJV (02:47):
That’s a 10. One being is you’ve got no specific expertise or track record in the public. Now, you may have a lot of hidden credibility. In other words, only a few people know about what you’ve done. But man, for those who know about it, they know it really well, and you’ve done an excellent job for them. But that’s a one, right? So this is credibility in the known marketplace. One to 10, one is going to be a lower fee. A 10 is going to mean a higher fee, right? And we’re gonna do this five times. So I want you to take an average at the very end, right? So as you jot down these numbers, so let’s just say you give yourself a five in credibility. I want you to take your average of each of these. And at the end of the, you know, episode, I want you to go, Hey, what’d you average, right?
AJV (03:37):
Did you average a five? Did you average a seven? Did you average a three? That’s what I want you to do. So that’s credibility. Content is the next one. Rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. 10 is someone who’s got award-winning ideas, original research. You are regularly referenced in the media or in the mainstream, but people come to you for this piece of content. You are known for this thing, right? You have a truly original thought leadership in this area, okay? That also means that you’ve got well-documented frameworks and IP that could be in the form of books, courses, speeches, TED talks, all the things. But it’s documented as yours, referenced as yours. That’s a 10 a one. As someone who has loosely constructed ideas, but no specific frameworks, f frameworks or organization. There’s no unique methodology or processes. And if you were just honest with yourself, these are somewhat largely repackaged ideas that already exist somewhere else.
AJV (04:44):
In other words, nothing original, truly yours yet, yet, okay? So give yourself a ranking of scale of one to 10, one being got none, 10 being I own this. Okay? That’s content. So you’ve got two. Now. Now, let’s go into number three, delivery. This is, again, I kind of said this earlier, stage presence, right? What is that? You know personality or charisma that comes across on camera, on stage in front of people one-on-one, right? 10 being you are
AJV (05:37):
But it’s like people are constantly commenting on the delivery of your presentation, of your content, right? One would be, you don’t get that
AJV (06:33):
That’s with websites, demo videos, slides, workbooks, resource guides your social media, right? It does not mean you’ve got to have the fanciest, most expensive stuff, but it looks good, right? It looks well presented. I just came off of seeing Taylor Swift in the ERAS tour. Now, she spent millions and millions and millions and dollars. I’m not saying that’s what it is, but man, it looks well thought out. It is well planned. It is important how things look and come together. You can tell that. So is that yours or are things mismatched together and you’re just scraping by? And that’s okay. You don’t have to be at a 10 here, right? But this is, this is just helping you go, man. It’s like, you know, people always say, don’t judge a book by their cover. Well, unfortunately, sometimes they do. They go, man, that looks so good.
AJV (07:21):
It must be as good as it looks. So gotta take some of that in. I’m not saying I agree with all of that. I’m just talking about where, where, where we are here in the world. And number one is that, I mean, you’re just, you’re first starting out and it’s version 1.0 of everything. You’ve got things in word docs and PowerPoints, and you’re using your own stuff on Canada. That doesn’t mean it looks bad, it just means things are kind of compiled together and mismatched, right? That will affect your fees and pricing. It just will. So let’s just call it what it is. Where do you fall on a scale of one to 10? Always knowing that we get to improve at every level, right? We get to do better then reach. So reach is how many people do you reach?
AJV (08:04):
How many people do you have access to? How many people follow you on social media? E email list, subscribe to your podcast, how many people you are in front of on a consistent basis, right? So a 10 would be you’re someone who reaches millions on the regular, right? This is in some sort of controlled medium as well, not just on social media, but you’ve got a large email list. You’ve got a huge amount of subscribers and downloads to your podcast. And you’ve got social media, right? So when you think about this, you probably have hundreds of thousands of people on an email list, hundreds of thousands of people on social media. You have access to reach through main media other top known, well-known podcasts TV shows, radio shows et cetera. But that would be a 10, right? A one would be you’ve
AJV (08:55):
Got no email list. You don’t even know how to make an email list.
AJV (09:39):
I only have like 9,500 people that follow me on Instagram, maybe 15,000 all in on social media. So this is not all about having a huge social media file. I don’t care to have that. But we have a fairly large email list, which I do care a lot about. I have access to lots of large audiences through other people’s podcasts and stages, but I would not rate myself anywhere near a 10. I would say I’m, in terms of reach, I’m somewhere like a six or a seven, right? And I do this for a living, right? But is, is being honest with myself to go through each of these. It will help, you know, one where you are today and in what of these categories can you quickly improve on. Like, I could improve on reach if I so desired, right? I’ve spent a ton of time and money and resources over the last year to upgrade my personal marketing materials.
AJV (10:26):
That was an area I was focusing on. My content, I feel like is world class, right? I do believe you should believe in yourself, and I believe in myself. Credibility. I have good credibility, right? Can always be more, we have original research, we’ve spent the money to get original data, like we’ve done that work, but it’s like where you score also lets, you know, where could you do more? Where could you get help? Where could you get coaching? Where, where do you need to put some attention is also really helpful. So here’s how I would base across, if you averaged ones across the board, I would just say a starting point would be, you are probably charging for, this is for a speaker fee or coaching fees. I’m just calling it for an hour, right? But if you’re charging, or sorry, if you’re averaging a one, you’re probably charging in the hundreds, not the thousands in the hundreds, right? And then just for the sake of time, just to kind of give you some averages here, if you average a five, right? So if you’re averaging fives across the board, you’re probably charging somewhere between thirty five hundred and fifty, five hundred, right? That’s a five. So at one would be you’re charging hundreds of dollars, right? And then the twos, threes and fours are those low thousands. And then as you average out of five, you’re probably charging somewhere between, and this, I’m looking at an hour here. This is kind of like for a speaker fee,
AJV (11:52):
Right? For $3,000, right? So if you were gonna do that for coaching, that might 3000 might be your first coaching package, right? Then again, trying to give you some baselines here. If you’re, try, if you’re averaging in the eights then you’re probably at a keynote fee. If you have eights across the board, you’re probably charging somewhere between 25,000 and $30,000 as a coach or a consultant. That means your package is probably somewhere between 25,000 and $30,000 if you’re averaging the eights. Now, if you were averaging tens across the board and you’re just like, you know, pit bull, pit bull is to worldwide himself, right? Like a speaker fee for you would be like a hundred thousand dollars of speech, right? You’re talking about like presidential rates here. You’re talking about Brene brown rates and Mel Robbins rates, Tony Robb rates who are more, right?
AJV (12:45):
Those are even more than this in some cases. But if you’re a coach or a consultant, right? Those are your packages, right? You could be upwards of the a hundred thousand dollars packages of your tens across the board. So this is how I want you to think about this. It helps, you know, one, what’s your baseline, where you are today in these categories, credibility, content delivery, marketing materials, and reach. And then I’m just giving you some averages. If you averages one across the board, then you’re in the hundreds. If you’re five, you’re in, you know, averaging five, somewhere between the three and 5,500 range. And then eights, you’re up there, you’re getting up there. It’s like that’s that 25 to 30 range. And if you’re, tens are across the board at six figures and up per speech or per package. So how to set your fees back to this, it’s like there are five categories that we believe are really important for you to consider to have some unbiased internal look at.
AJV (13:38):
What’s my content, right? How original is it? How forward thinking of it is it what’s my delivery style, right? How, how much have I invested into making sure that I know how to deliver it? Well, marketing materials, your reach. And there’s so many different things to be looking at here. And I hope this is kind of gives you a baseline. It’ll help you know where to start, where to improve. And also as those numbers, those averages increase. So do your fees. So how do you set your fees? You ask yourself, how credible am I? How good is my content? How good is my delivery? How good is my marketing material? And then how, how much reach do I have? And those are the five categories to help you set your fee. So go set your fees, go raise your fees, and go get well paid. We’ll see you next time.