Ep 506: How to Scale a Coaching Business from Scratch with Jordan Montgomery
RV (00:00):
To, you know, every once in a while I meet someone and I go, man, this person is a rolling stone. Like, this person is making a big impact in the world, and they’re gonna be big. And that’s how I feel about Jordan Montgomery. I’ve heard this guy’s name for years and we’ve kind of gotten to know each other a little bit. He became an official client, a brand builders group. Through that, our team’s really gotten to know him and he’s really, really impressive. So he is an executive coach. He coaches you know, top, top athletes high performing CEOs, entrepreneurs, et cetera. He’s also a very busy speaker, keynote speaker. And so he speaks to sales organizations, small business owners, and just talks really about high performance in general and, and has worked with he, he was a sales manager and managed top performing sales teams. So he came, he comes outta the financial services industry. We’ll hear a little bit about that. He’s got a new book coming out called The Art of Encouragement. We definitely want to hear a little bit about that. And you just wanna hear his story about how he has made the transition from somebody working in professional services to moving into, I think, becoming one of the fastest rising stars in the, in the space of sales and leadership and communication and just like personal development in general. So, Jordan, welcome to the show, man.
JM (01:24):
Rory, thanks for having me, man. So fun to be with you. Honored to be here. Fun to share some time with your audience. And for so long, I’ve respected your work, respect, what you’ve built at brand Builders. Actually heard you speak circa 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Really, it was my first experience being in, I remember this, a Marie Vaden room, and I just thought, man, this is a guy that I wanna follow I wanna learn from. And man, just fun to grow a friendship and kind of surreal man, longtime listener. First time caller to be on, to be on your show. So thanks for having me,
RV (01:57):
JM (02:00):
Was it, man. Yeah, you got it.
RV (02:01):
You got it. You were a speaker. You were also speaking, right? I also speaking, you were working for the company at the time. That’s
JM (02:06):
Right. That’s right. Yep. And so I was a manager at the time, and you were the outside, you know, keynote speaker, and I think it was after you had written the book, take the Stairs, and you delivered a great keynote message. And I just remember thinking, I gotta follow this guy and learn from him and continue to spend time with him. So 11 years ago, man, in a ballroom in Chicago.
RV (02:25):
So, so that’s really cool. So tell us the story about how you transitioned. You know, I think particularly in like professional services, we meet a lot of people who are, you know, they’re successful lawyers, they’re, you know, accountants, they’re doctors, they’re financial advisors, and they grow a great practice. And a lot of times they grow a great practice because they’re consuming personal development content and knowledge. And it’s a pretty common path that they go, man, I think I wanna do more of this. I wanna spend more time teaching, training, coaching others. But it’s hard to, you know, like not many people make that leap fully successfully. You’ve, you’ve done a really great job. So can you talk to us about, like, how did you go about doing that? When did it all happen? How did you kind of structure it and like, when did you kind of, you make that transition? Hmm.
JM (03:18):
Well, I wish my story was one of like, extreme success meets like extreme success, but it wasn’t that way. There were a few bumps in the road. There was actually a really large bump in the road, and the bump occurred April 1st, 2015. So I get a call from my then supervisor. I’m working in financial services for a Fortune 100 firm. I have one of the top offices and organizations in that firm. It grew really quickly. I came from kind of a blue collar background, Rory. So my dad’s a painter. Mom’s a teacher, didn’t really have any relationship with money growing up. The
RV (03:53):
Right? Iowa.
JM (03:54):
Iowa, man, small town, Iowa. Yep. One stoplight town. God bless, Kelowna, Iowa. And so, man, like when I graduated college, I just knew like I’m willing to work and my dad taught me the power of like, working hard. So I got that from dad and I worked, man, and I, I just, I was putting in the 70, 80 hour weeks. And so from 22 to 25 that business consumed my life. And I had some success. I had a lot of success. To kind of paint the picture before I tell you about April 1st, 2015, I’m traveling the country. I’m speaking at all these major conferences. I’m flying private. I’m the closing keynote speaker at a lot of major industry events. Matter of fact, I was the closing keynote speaker at one of the largest industry events. It’s 15,000 people sold out MBA arena.
JM (04:38):
I am living in like the proverbial penthouse. But I had an issue, Rory, I was overexposed and I was underdeveloped, meaning my character wasn’t really keeping pace with my influence. Hmm. I was so young and so naive. And I had sort of been on this rocket ship to like this crazy professional space that I really wasn’t ready for. And so April 1st, 2015, I get this text message from my then supervisor and he says I need to meet, I need to meet with you right away. To which I respond because I was naive. I don’t have time. My calendar’s full. Not today, but maybe some other day,
JM (05:31):
So then I’m thinking, Rory, someone on my team must have made a grave mistake. I gotta go clean it up. ’cause I’m, you know, sort of player coach. I’m running an office, but I’m still doing financial planning. I walk into his office a couple hours later, and this is what he says to me, Rory, he said, you haven’t been malicious or intentional, but you’ve been careless and casual. And when you’re casual, you create casualties, said, Jordan, this is gonna be really uncomfortable for you, but today you’re the casualty. This will be your last day with our firm.
JM (06:03):
The story was, there was a person on my team who had taken a test on, on be on my behalf, was a continuing education assessment. And that industry, that’s an infraction. It can’t happen. But moreover, there were just like things that I was missing, Rory, in my development and my leadership wasn’t dotting i’s wasn’t crossing the T’s and it was within his right to say, I don’t trust your wisdom, discernment, your leadership, your development, and so you can go work somewhere else. You just can’t work here. Well, this was devastating for a 27-year-old man. He found all of his identity in achievement, status, accomplishment. It, it becomes more devastating. The company sends out a company wide email with my name on it that explains my termination, kind of at a high level. I get about 3000 text messages within a matter of, you know, 24 hours.
JM (06:54):
And I just sort of go into hiding. I didn’t just lose my job. I lost all my money. I was involved in some real estate deals. They go sideways ’cause they weren’t structured properly. And I literally, Rory go from like the penthouse to the outhouse overnight. A guy by the name of Tim Bohannon scoops me up, says, you can come work for me. Same firm, min apple, Minnesota, I’ll give you a second chance, but here’s how this is gonna work. No speaking, no training. You’re gonna rebuild your business and rebuild your life and I’m gonna help you do it, but it’s gonna be really tough. And it was tough. So for two years, man, I’m in this valley season I think God does his best work in the valley. And I read my Bible and I got connected to a church and I started to call home to mom and dad and rebuild some relationships that I had sort of let go of.
JM (07:40):
And God just met me in that place in a really, really broken place. And I met my now wife who was coming out of a rough divorce. So we kind of met both in a broken place. And what I didn’t know, Rory, is God was preparing me for my biggest leadership job, which was gonna be becoming a daddy to two little girls, ages five and three. I dated Ashley for six months. We got engaged, we got married. Six months later I moved back home to Iowa. I’m still doing financial planning. I looked at her and I said, babe, I just, I got this itch for coaching. I started coaching five people. Coach 10 got open doors, 10 turned into a hundred, a hundred turned into a thousand. And I left the financial planning business behind. And I say all that to say this for most of us, we wanna pivot from a place of strength.
JM (08:28):
Like we think that it’s like, again, extreme success meets extreme success. But for me it wasn’t that way. Like I think God’s preparation was packaged as pain and I had to go through some really, really tough stuff to ultimately get to where I’m at today. And I want people to know that about my story. And I write about that in the Art of Encouragement. It’s actually the first chapter. And we talk about the art of character, encouragement and encouraging people in valley seasons. And man, God just met me in a really unique place and I was fortunate to have some people that stepped into my life who encouraged me and cared for me in a really unique and special way.
RV (09:09):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (09:28):
That’s right. So I moved back home to Iowa, kind of moved the practice with me. I still planned to grow that business, right? So I’d rebuilt the business. I didn’t plan Roy to start a coaching business. I just thought I’ll coach a few people on the side as I’m running this financial planning business. But I, I can’t explain it other than like, I think God blessed it, but I think I also had to I had to be humbled. Like there had to be something in me that changed for me to really be ready to do that work at a high level. And so it’s that old adage that like, sometimes God asked to do something in you before he can do something with you. So I think he just changed my spirit, my empathy, my compassion, my heart for people and, and then blessed it man. Like yeah, today we get work with pro athletes and high level CEOs and I got a team of 22 people who does this work at the highest level around the country. And it’s been a, a real joy.
RV (10:20):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (11:01):
Yeah, so let’s speak to some brand builders who wanna scale and we didn’t do everything right. So full disclosure, there was so much that I did wrong and there’s things that I would redo. But if there’s one thing that we did right it’s that I think I was willing to let go early on and trust and empower some other coaches. Hmm. And I’m really proud of that. I think for so many of us, we, we can be control freaks as type A, you know, leaders of people. But I realized early on, like, unless I’m just gonna sell my time and fill every slot on my calendar and live sort of a miserable life that’s totally consumed every hour of my day by work I’m gonna have to figure out a, a different way to do this. And so Rory, I I just started connecting with other people who do some coaching. They were established leaders who wanted to take on a handful of clients. And we sort of just organically grew the business and I wanted to make sure that I over-delivered in every situation. So we had a really referable brand. We grew our business through word of mouth scale to team, but I let go early. And our friend Craig Rochelle says this, you can have control or growth, but you can’t have both.
RV (12:15):
Mm-Hmm,
JM (12:18):
Up control was really scary. But I learned to just sort of step into the pain of being less than excellent. I didn’t have all the answers, I just realized that I needed to build the plane as I fly it. And I had to do that with the help of other good people. And also that there’s other people that had expertise that I didn’t have. And so yeah, letting go early was for sure a, a key move for us.
RV (12:42):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (12:50):
Yep. Yep. So they’re all 10 99 independent contractors. Some of them have 40 clients, some of them have five clients. Some of ’em will speak 50 times a year. Some of them will speak five times a year. And so they’re all different in terms of their capacity, their background, their skillset. But I wanted to build sort of a robust team where from a personal development, leadership development place, we can help and equip just about anybody in any situation. So if somebody comes to us, says, Hey, I wanna coach, I wanna grow my development in most cases we have an answer. Not always, and I certainly don’t have the answer, but because we have a team, we’re I think uniquely equipped to help a variety of people.
RV (13:31):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (13:45):
Okay, so I’m gonna say this tongue in cheek because this is the Brand Builders podcast, right? And we’re talking to people who wanna build a brand. So you should build a brand, but you should also just be really, really, really good at what you do. I was having this conversation with John Maxwell the other day, Rory, and he said, you know, so many people come to me because they want me to like, put my stamp on them. You know, they want me to sign off on them or help them kind of build their name or thrust them out into the world and give them a bigger platform. And John said, I, you know, I can do that in some cases, but what happened to just being really, really good at what you do? Like he said, a lot of young people should be worried less about like their reputation and brand and more concerned about being really good at what they do. Now, this is the Brand Builders podcast, Rory, you’re thinking, okay, hold on. Like, we still want people to build a brand. They need to,
RV (14:42):
No, I’m not. I, that that is, that’s how we define brand is reputation. Like it is, right? Brand is not, it’s not reputation. You’re, you’ve got pretty websites and nice videos and beautiful colors and, and, and nice fonts that pair well together. Like, that is not what brand is. Brand is reputation. That’s, that’s how we do, that’s the core of how we find it. It define it. So like, I’m, I’m Amen. I I think I’m, I’m, I’m behind that a hundred percent.
JM (15:11):
Well, you and I, yeah, you and I align in terms of, I think how we think about growth and scale and brand. And you know, for me, I just realized early on, like, I need to overdeliver and I need to make sure that I’m really good at what I do. And we’d ask for, you know, an endorsement, a testimonial, connection, introduction. And, but I think it was really through being good at what we do and developing reputation that allowed us to scale.
RV (15:33):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (16:02):
That’s part of the reason that we’re working with brand builders full disclosure, is because we have a lot of work to do and, and we have opportunity to grow. And, and I would say, yeah, a lot of what we’ve done is, you know, we’ve built the brand around me, which is both good and bad. But I think again, we’ve, it’s gotta be less about me and more about the company. And I think we’re in that transition phase sort of right now, transparently Rory, of figuring out like, how do we move this away from Jordan and more towards team? Because we we’re fortunate that we do have a lot of just inbound, you know, inquiries based on building reputation and brand. But then there’s some strategy that goes into it as well. We host some webinars, we do some live events, virtual events. So we’ve been really fortunate to spend off opportunity from that. And then when those opportunities come in, my brother, who’s the director of coaching sort of filters those opportunities to the appropriate team members. But we have a lot of work to do. You know, I think we’re just getting started in so many ways in terms of what God’s called us to and what we hope to eventually build.
RV (16:58):
Now you’ve also done speaking so simultaneous. So you’ve, you’ve built a great coaching business, which I love. And I, I love the coaching model ’cause I just, I think it applies massive value to the customer quickly. It app it, it applies real significant meaningful revenue to the coach. And it’s, it creates, there’s a scalable opportunity and great, I think great content comes outta great coaching conversations and all that. But then speaking is very different. That’s a very different skillset. It’s a very different business model. It’s like more of a B2B where coaching, coaching is like business to consumer speaking is like business to business coaching is one-on-one speaking is one on many. You know, I think coaching is, is like, you know, very organic and I think speaking is much more like polished and like you, you know that, so how did you, when did you really start? Did you, when did you start building the speaking side of things and how fast did that take off compared to the coaching business?
JM (18:02):
Well, they’re uniquely tied together to your point. I would speak and then because I spoke, I would naturally have, you know, inquiries on the coaching side of the business. And like any other speaker just like you, Rory, like I’ve become more selective over time on what fits and what works. In the beginning though, if I’m talking to some folks who wanna speak or maybe you’re doing some speaking and you’re trying to scale that business, like I, I would just go back to be good at what you do and also be willing to do stuff either for free or for very little. If there’s one thing I’m proud of, like when we started that business I would just, I’d speak and I’d speak to small groups. I’d speak to churches, I’d speak to youth sports teams. And I just, I never I was never too good for that.
JM (18:47):
And I’m, I’m proud of that. And some of our best relationships that we have today, Rory came out of those environments and I see so many people that wanna speak who aren’t willing to do that work. I’m talking to one of the top speakers on the planet, like Rory Vaden is a, well-known, unbelievably gifted keynote speaker. But I think part of your magic, Rory, is you had humility and still do today to serve and add value and jump in where God’s called you to reach people. So, you know, in the beginning it was like, man, I do stuff for a cup of coffee or a really small check or sometimes, you know, again, just for free for the relational opportunities. But I was always really keen on follow up, making sure that I communicated the fact that I didn’t want this to be a one-time engagement.
JM (19:34):
Like, Hey, I would love for our impact to go beyond today. I would love to better serve your organization in a deeper and more intentional way. And so we had a really strategic follow up process to engage with the company beyond the stage. And I think that’s where so many speakers go wrong, is they come in for an event, they get a 25,000 check or whatever the check is, they feel good about it and they move on. And there’s really no process for engaging with that culture or with that group of people in a deeper way. So for us, that became a big part of growing the company, is making sure that we had a follow up process that was really dialed in.
RV (20:07):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (21:01):
I was doing high schools, I was doing cheerleading teams, I was doing standup mic, you know, open mic nights to four people at some crummy like com. Yes. You know, comedy bar like a anywhere and everywhere. And I did, you know, hundreds of Toastmaster groups that were all like between three and three and a, a large audience was like eight people. You know, local real estate offices and car dealerships. Like, I mean, I was going anywhere that people would listen for for like three years, four years, like a, a, a hot minute. Did most of your speaking engagements evolve out of that? So basically was it like, speak for free, do an amazing job, get referred to people who have money, or was it like, let’s build a system to go prospect people who have money and pitch me as a speaker?
JM (21:55):
I think it was a combination of both. I think, again, what worked for us is I knew the audience that I would work well with. So first off is like, be really thoughtful. Like as you continue to grow experience and you gain confidence, then I think be strategic and thoughtful about where you would work. Well, so I knew my, my deal, Rory, is I would work really well with folks. You know, the emerging professional, typically under 40 years old, he was trying to grow a sales oriented or people oriented business. Mm-Hmm.
JM (22:38):
And we, and then we’d have, you know, a lot of coaching inquiries that would come off of that. From a speaking standpoint, I would just follow up with the person who booked me to speak and I would just be really candid. I think, you know, so often this isn’t complicated. Like, I think we just, we overthink it. I’d just say like, Hey, I really enjoy being with your people. I love speaking to organizations like yours. If there were three to five people that you think I should be spending time with, I’d love to know who those folks are. And in the spirit of adding value yeah, I’d love an endorsement or testimonial. Like I just, it’d mean a lot to me if you’d be willing to share a couple, you know, kind thoughts, remarks about the speech. And so it was never like, invasive and it, I didn’t, never felt like I was asking for too much. But I wanted their feedback I wanted their endorsement, and if they were kind enough to make it an introduction, I would always gladly take it.
RV (23:26):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (23:44):
Yeah. And I, lemme say this, I think a lot of folks focus on the referrals that they get and they’re not focused on the referrals that they give. So like, if you’re a speaker, for example, if you’re doing what we do, I wanna try to out-give, I wanna try to give more than I get now over time, that, that, that takes on a new shape and form. But in the beginning it was like, okay, if I spoke to an organization, I knew I could introduce them to other speakers or other thought leaders or other people in their industry that they needed to know. And so I was always trying to be really strategic about that as well. Like, Hey, you need to meet Rory, or you need to meet David Nurse, or, Hey, for your next event, you need to bring this person in. Maybe I can get ’em at a discount or maybe I could get ’em to do something for free. Here’s this event that I’m gonna be a part of. I’d love to take five of you with me. You know, I I just was trying to find unique ways to add value. But then that also helped on the referral side, right? Like people, people were more willing to give me referrals, Rory because they knew I was reciprocating and I was interested in adding value and, and giving referrals.
RV (24:47):
Yeah, I mean, to this day, to this very day, that is the number one way I get speaking engagements is because I’m introducing my friends to my past clients. And it’s probably, the ratio is probably like three to one, probably for every three I give, I get one back. But if you keep doing that and doing that, then like, it just keeps growing and growing. And what’s interest, what, what I’ve realized is it’s it that actually is my follow up strategy for keeping in touch with my past clients is introducing them to other speakers because they need a speaker every year, or multiple speakers. Most of ’em at this point, you know, a lot of times I’m one of like several speakers and going like, it gives me a reason to stay in touch with them and see how they’re doing and what’s going on with the business.
RV (25:38):
And like, a lot of times what happens is they go, Hey, it’s been four years since we’ve had you, we should bring you back. And it’s like, I’m not even trying to do that. I’m literally trying to go, how can I give to, you know, who, who, whoever our, our friends or up and comers and that, that kind of a thing. You know, and to your point, I think it’s important to speak in front of other speakers for that reason is like when, when a speaker sees you, sometimes they’re the, they’re the re the best marketing strategy you have. Like, you know, like I’ll sometimes I’ll speak at speakers events, you know, like, I just did this for John Maxwell and I was like, look, the requirement is you have to sit here and watch me speak. That’s all I want. I just, but I want you to sit here and I want you to have the experience as an attendee of what it’s like to be in the audience because I know that that always turns into more fruit for everybody. And you know, so amen. About, and that’s, you know, the, on the referral side of giving out, you know, giving more than you get, get, it’s like that applies for every business at every level. That’s right. Services. Like, that’s right.
RV (26:48):
The key to getting referrals is to give referrals. It’s that simple. And nobody does it. Nobody does it.
JM (26:53):
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Like I’ll say this because you’re a really, really well connected person, Rory because you’re a connecting person. Mm-Hmm. So like, if you’re listening and you’re like, man, I wanna be more connected, then start connecting. Because connecting people are connected people and connected people are connecting people. So like, if you understand just the art of adding value, you might be listening and going, well gosh, I’m not Rory, I don’t have high level introductions that I can make. Well, here’s what you can give, you can give your attention, you can give your time, you can give your empathy, you can give your counsel. Like, it doesn’t always have to be an introduction, but just get obsessed with giving and adding value to people. Overdelivering, somebody says, Hey, what do you look for in a new hire? Like if you’re gonna hire somebody in your organization, what do you look for? I would say I look for the person who’s hardwired to overdeliver. Mm-Hmm.
RV (28:15):
That’s so good. That’s such a wise, I I love that Jordan, that that connection between just be connecting because like yes, today I am introducing people to the biggest stages in the world. I mean the biggest speaking stages in the world, but it’s like all I’m doing I was is I’m doing the same thing I was doing when I was speaking at Perkins. I was like, Hey, I spoke at this gig at Perkins, like there’s this little book club that meets like, would you wanna speak there? It’s, it’s just the same habit but at a different scale and a magnitude, which is just the, you know, happens organically over time if you do that. I love that idea. If you just you’re a well connected person because you’re a connecting person. Alright buddy, I know we only have a few minutes. So you have the art of encouragement. You’re a fantastic encourager. You’ve encouraged me in and out of just this conversation alone,
JM (29:20):
I think encouragement for so long has been a topic that people either engage in or they don’t. So a leader will say something like, I’m an encourager or I’m just not much of an encourager. So I think it’s sad that we see it that way and we don’t see it as an art. I think it’s an art form. It’s an art form just like any other leadership skill. And so we wrote the book, the Art of Encouragement. There’s 10 Arts if you wanna truly encourage and recognize the people around you. I think it changes relationships. I think it’s a universal language that people understand. And I think it taps into our most basic social and relational psychological need, which is the need to be known, seen, and valued. And so my belief is that if we can get busy encouraging people in real and authentic ways, we can change relationships, change lives, and help people feel seen, valued, and understood. And so yeah, I’ve just been the beneficiary of some world-class encouragers and it was a book for me that was easy to write because it’s been such a huge part of my life. So that’s why we chose the topic.
RV (30:21):
Yeah, I remember Zig Ziglar used to say all the time, encouragement is the fuel on which hope runs. Which was basically to say, if you keep encouraging people, they will continue to have hope and they will keep going. If you stop encouraging people, they lose hope. And so they stop, you know, they stop pursuing. And it’s like, what, what blows my mind about encouragement is that it’s free and it’s unlimited. Right? Right. Like, you can give it, you can give it. And I think to take what you said about connecting the same thing applies to encouraging is like if you’re a great encourager, you will always be encouraged.
JM (31:00):
That’s it.
RV (31:02):
Yeah. And I think your life is evidence of that. Jordan and I, I watch, I watch What’s Happening to You and it excites me. ’cause I feel like I love it when I go, oh, there’s the good people are winning. Like, it’s still, you know, there, there’s a lot of places in the world where like, oh, you know, the, the best marketer is, you know, looks like they’re winning or the, you know, the richest person is winning. But it’s like, nah. Like ultimately it’s still the good guys still win. If you, if you do all the work and you do and you do the things, and I see that happening with you, that’s very convicting to me. And and I love what you’re doing, man. You are, you’re on the right path. I mean, it’s just like you can’t do all the right things, right? You can’t like do all the right things and have it not end up in a good place.
JM (31:46):
Hmm.
RV (31:48):
And so where do you want people to go? So Art of Encouragement is the book July coming out July 24th. So right now, July 24th, 2024. And where do you want people to go to get the book? Because you’ve got some bonuses and stuff that you’re giving away. Yeah,
JM (32:06):
Yeah, yeah. Go to the Art of encouragement book.com. You could register for a free webinar John Gordon Ryan Leak, David Nurse and Jess tro. We’d love to have you that webinar’s taking place on July 12th. There’s some other freebies and we’d love to hang out with you, get to know you better have you a part of our community. But or the book, we’d love for you to read it. We’d love for you to share it with a friend. Yeah, I think this is a universal language that the world understands. And to your point, Rory, it’s free to give our our listeners, I’ll, I’ll leave us with maybe this final question. John Maxwell asked this question one time. He said how do you know if somebody needs encouragement? Like, how are you to know that? And then he answered his own question and he said they, they have a pulse.
JM (32:54):
You know, like the world needs encouraged. I don’t care if you’re the most successful person on the planet or the least experienced person in your industry. You need to be encouraged. And I do think it’s fuel. And we’d love to help people with that. And so yeah, go to the go to the website Art of encourage book book.com. We’d love to have you for the book launch webinar on July 12th. Book drops July 24th, Rory, God bless you. Appreciate your friendship man, and all the help that you’ve offered. Let me say this. Your company is top-notch. You communicate at the highest level you follow through, you touch base, you connect. Like what you are building at Brand Builders is so significant and so special. We will work with you until the end of time because we just feel cared for, valued, seen, understood. And again, the fact that you’re having me on this podcast is just more evidence of the way that you care and the way that you show up for the people that you work with. So thank you, man, for your support and your friendship really means a lot.
RV (33:55):
Yeah, buddy. Well, it’s, it’s a pleasure. We, we started this company to find mission driven messengers that we could get behind to go. These are people that we want to teach, what we have, what we’ve learned to go help them, like make the world a better place. And, and, and you represent every part of that brother. So we wish you all the best. Thanks for being here and we’ll catch everybody next time on the influential Personal Brand podcast. Good luck, Jordan.
JM (34:20):
Thanks for having me, Rory. Be well. God bless.
Ep 504: Ridiculously Easy To Do Business With | David Avrin
AJV (00:01):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And today is Uber. Uber, super duper special because I get to interview a very good close personal friend. In fact, we’ve been online together for already 17 minutes, and I just finally hit record.
DA (00:24):
It’s time for others to join in this conversation just a little bit
AJV (00:28):
AJV (01:22):
It’s why books are so important. It’s like you can’t do for yourself what others you can do in community. And that’s what you did for Rory. And Rory still tells everyone that you’re his mentor for it’s a lifelong mentor. But you’re a close personal friend. I think you’re just so wicked talented. You’re the best dad, awesome husband. So anyone who is listening, I would just encourage you, this is kind of one of those episodes that you just wanna stick around for because we’re gonna be talking about what it’s like to become a highly paid professional speaker. What it’s like to write several books and more importantly of what his new book is about is how do you become ridiculously easy to do business with? And it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re at in your journey, what your business is, we all should want to become ridiculously easy to do business with.
AJV (02:11):
So this is an episode for you, right? Sometimes I go, here’s what it’s for. Here’s what it’s not for, but today it’s for you. It’s for all of you. So with that, let me give you a little bit of the formal accolades and then we’ll jump right in. All right. Here’s what you need to know about Dave Rin. He’s one of the most in demand customer experience speakers out there. He also does tons of consultings for companies all around the world. He is A CSP, which is a certified speaking professional for the National Speakers Association. He’s a global speaking fellow. He has spoken in 24 countries around the world, and, you know, you have a lot of years left. So I’m, I’m thinking that you could probably hit 50, right? So I think you should be going for 50 countries at minimum. His insights have been shared all across all media, all around the world. And at this point, what, how many, is this your fifth, sixth book?
DA (03:06):
This is my seventh book altogether. My seventh book, sixth business book. I also wrote a sappy Dad book in there. But yeah, my sixth business book,
AJV (03:15):
Y’all,
DA (03:17):
Y’all
AJV (03:18):
Such a lifelong. And here’s what I would say. It’s like, I think this is like one of the, those great conversations where there’s just a, a firsthand wealth of knowledge, right? Like the co the day’s conversation isn’t gonna be about things that you pulled from other places or things that you learned. It’s what you do. It’s what you live. It’s, it’s how you’ve done this. And that’s kind of where I wanna start. As you might be somewhat newer to some of the people in our audience, and we have a lot of people in our audience who aspire to write a book one day Sure. And speak on stages one day. So what I would love for you to share with everyone is, how’d you get into this? How long have you been doing it? And what should that aspiring speaker or aspiring author know? What do they need to know?
DA (04:02):
Sure. Well, I, I think first I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the, the, the lovely introduction and the acknowledgement, you know, it was, or in my careers. I, I look back at, at you and, and Rory and the, the tremendous work and the, and the pride I have welling, welling up inside me. I, I feel very paternal, but, but very proud. I, when I met early or met Rory, he was 19 years old and in incredible potential. And I, I love that line that says, for those of us who have enjoyed a measure of success, it’s important that we send the elevator back down and, and, and to help up. And I watch what you do now, and both of you and the audience and the, and the people and the brands that you’ve built, and the careers that you’ve bolstered is phenomenal.
DA (04:44):
I mean, my, my background and everybody has a background, right? Everybody starts somewhere. And, and I was in marketing and public relations for many, many years. I helped organizations craft the words they use to better describe what they do. That was the early part of my career. I, I worked for some, some major brands and, and was on staff. I was the PR director of Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado in my early twenties. And I had great success in generating publicity and coverage and on Good Morning America and Oprah and today’s show and all the magazines. But the world has changed in a significant way. And what was then back trying to get on magazines on our radio shows. Today, of course, it’s blogs and podcasts and different ways for us to communicate. But I, I made a transition about, about 25 years ago as I realized that that you can actually get paid to teach what you know.
DA (05:37):
And so after having a, a reasonable career in this work, I, I was invited to speak at an organization and, and it was just, it was to the core who I was. ’cause I think I’m, I’m a teacher at, at the core. And, and it just grew from there. So now we’re in my 25th year. I speak for a living full time, and I leverage that for consulting. And we have a, a variety of others, you know, assessments and, and, and that as well. But, but to the core, it’s, it’s, I I love sharing from the, from the front of the room. As you had mentioned, this is my, my sixth book. And I think all of that’s important because it’s important to stay relevant. It’s important to stay current. And we look back at what we knew 10 years ago and, and we better know something different today if we’re teaching the same things and sharing the same information and strategies that we did 10 years ago.
DA (06:28):
It’s antiquated how we buy, how we connect, how we learn and pay, and, and, and share is all different. So it’s exciting for me because there’s always something to, to learn. There’s always some new strategies and tactics to share. And I’m fortunate, actually, it’s been 26 countries now that I, that I’ve spoken in around the, around the world. In, in November I’m in, oh boy, here’s some geographic name dropping. I’m really fortunate ’cause I gotta bring my lovely wife with me. We’re, we’re speaking in London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malta Vienna and Gdansk. I love that. So it’s just, it’s a tremendous, it’s a tremendous time of life.
AJV (07:07):
I love that. And you know, one of the things you said that I want you to circle back on, ’cause I remember my early days, and this was Lord, 18 years ago when I was, you know, joined the Nationals of Speakers Association, my early twenties, and was going to all these sessions, learning from people who’d been in the business for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. And I remember sitting in this one particular session, and a question was asked, like, you know, how do you book speaking gigs? Like, how, how do you get on these stages? Like, I want to do that. And I remember one of the speakers was like, well, you know, you just need to answer the phone when it rings. Oh,
DA (07:43):
Wouldn’t that be nice?
AJV (07:45):
Why did you make the phone ring?
DA (07:48):
Oh, yesterday year,
AJV (07:49):
DA (08:10):
Well, you know, I, I, let me, let me start by saying, here’s what many of us have learned. Speaking is not a business. It’s not getting the gig is the business speaking’s the performance. We love to do that. I, I we talk to countless people who, who have, is something burning in their heart, this passion I wanna share. I want to touch lives. Nobody’s hiring speakers because you want to touch lives. The, the nobody’s hiring speakers because you want a cathartic experience and exercise your demons or your therapy on stage. I’m actually fortunate that I’m on the main stage at, for the National Speakers Association this year in my session, my very first slide is somebody putting on a pair of blue rubber gloves. And I’m gonna say, hang on friends, this is gonna be uncomfortable. You’re gonna feel a little pressure. And there’s just a lot of nonsense in this business.
DA (08:57):
And I love sharing what it really takes. And I’ll talk about sort of the marketing aspect of it. But one of the interesting things is we have a very interesting profession because arguably, it’s the only profession where most people get into this business because they’re encouraged by somebody who has no idea what it really is. Oh my God, that story about you and surviving cancer, when you climb that mountain and you fell into that crevasse and you say, you should be a professional speaker, I love the way you tell stories. You could touch people’s lives. And I wanna say, I think you should just feed your family. Now, if you can use that story and leverage it to help companies increase their sales and guard against disruption and future proof their engagement or motivate their people, that’s legitimate as well. Then there’s something there.
DA (09:39):
But the reality is, the business of speaking is, is marketing. I, I, I hear people say, listen, I took a, I took a three day bootcamp on hand gestures, and I can’t get the phone to ring. And I’m like, pick up the phone. You know,
DA (10:21):
It’s not who you know, it’s who Knows You had come out. And I was 20 years ago, and I was doing very well, and I was talking about my speaking business. And I was sitting around with some colleagues and our, our mutual friend, Dave Horse Hager I talked about my business and he said, dude, you don’t have a business. And I looked at him, I said, what are you talking about? I said, this is my best year ever. He said, no, no, no. You have gigs. You don’t have a business. And I said, what’s the difference? He says, what, how much are you gonna make next year? I said, I have no idea. I said, of course you don’t because you have no process. How are you finding contacts and turning ’em into leads? Are you turning leads into prospects? How are you leveraging and converting those prospects into paying clients and, and beating out other speakers for that, for that particular slot? He says, you are so headed for a fall.
DA (11:07):
He says, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen speakers make seven figures and they can’t pay their mortgage two years ago because what they were talking about was hot. He says, you need to put a business behind it. And so that’s what we did. And I went home that night and I didn’t sleep. And I went home and I talked to my wife at the end of the conference and we talked about how do we do this? And how do we find a way to hire staff and create systems and process. And to be clear, it’s not an automated system. I don’t automate anything. Yeah, I could, I could hit one click and reach 50,000 prospects to say, Hey, hire David as a speaker, and 99.9% will never be opened. So we have gotten very good at creating a process. We, we find ways, we find organizations that hold meetings.
DA (11:51):
We look ’em up, we find out who they had for LA last year, when their next meeting is. We know when to pitch. And we try and make it very simple. We know that the, the one behavior that is predictive of our success is if I can get prospects, people who hold meetings to watch my preview video, if I, it’s pretty good. And if they watch that, I have a chance. If they don’t, they don’t. So I don’t wanna go too deep into it. It there, but, but you’re right. It’s a business. It’s a business. And it’s a business that I’m, I’m up at 5:00 AM I go to the gym. I try and be at my desk no later than six 30 or seven. ’cause I wanna get a little bit of work. And because I have a lot of clients internationally. And so, you know, it, it’s a business. And I think the, probably the most elusive thing in the speaking business is longevity, because most speakers starve. We, we like to call new speakers, ignorance on fire. They, they’re so passionate that, and I’m, I’m, I’m on a mission to help speakers feed their families so they can do this for a long time.
AJV (12:51):
You know what I love about this? And, and I kind of knew what you were gonna say, which is why I asked it. But I think it’s such an important message for everyone to hear, because what people love is creating content, sharing their content,
DA (13:05):
Performing. Yeah. Performing.
AJV (13:06):
It’s great. But what you have to become amazing at is the sales, the marketing. Right? Absolutely. I, we had this conversation not too long ago at one of our events, and someone said, well, you know, I’m, I’m running out of, you know, you know, kind of running outta rope before I’m gonna have to go back and get a full-time job. And my question is, well, how many sales calls are you making every day? And they kind of looked at me and I was like, every week. And they kinda looked at me and they’re like, what do you mean by sales calls? And I was like, okay, wow. We need to, we need to talk about actually how you get booked on stages. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems that you’re calling people, you’re emailing people, you’re doing outreach. This is sales.
DA (13:54):
So much of the conversation is around the passion and the story and, and stepping into your truth and, and or stepping into your power and speaking your truth. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. And, and people, that, that’s really hurtful for people. I don’t mean it to be because it’s coming from a good place. People are telling other people, speakers are telling other people their friends and family, oh my God, you have this, you’re so good at telling stories. If you have passion in your heart, if you have a drive, you can be a No. It’s, I mean, that’s, that’s the foundation of it. I mean, you don’t have to be great to make it as, you don’t have to be great. You have to be good. Mm-Hmm. Your content has to be great, but you have to have sales and marketing. And, and I don’t know why that’s scary for people.
DA (14:37):
I, I think some people are, are reluctant to be, seem overly self-promotional. But the reality is you will touch very few lives. You’ll make a very small impact if you don’t get booked. Yeah. And think of it like any other, other business. And you and Rory have been teaching this for years. People don’t know who they don’t know. Hmm. And I’m not, I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. There’s a lot of people who are good at what they’re, I’m not on Shark Tank. Right. I don’t have that kind of a platform. So we hustle and we work and we work and and half of the, the presentations, the gigs that I get are from organizations who had no idea who I was until we reached out to them.
AJV (15:16):
Perhaps. I think everyone needs to pause and let that sink in. It’s like, if you think some bureau is gonna fill up your calendar, or you think some agent’s gonna show up on your door and magically get you booked or any of that, the truth is you’re the agent,
DA (15:32):
Well, you’re your sales director. Yeah. That’s the other partner as well, is even when I got staff, and this is sort of the, the, the, the quintessential E-Myth, right? It’s Michael Gerber. That, that we feel like as long as suddenly we have help. So we kind of push it to them like, good, finally you go do it. You can’t abdicate, right? We, we, we think that, that we’re delegating. We’re not, we’re abdicating. You go do it. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be the sales director of your own organization until you get big enough to actually hire a sales director. But if you’re big enough to be able to, to have an assistant I I, I love that line. I’m trying to think who said it that if you aren’t, if you don’t have an assistant, you are your assistant, right?
DA (16:11):
And so, but, but we also have a responsibility. We can’t bring on that second person until we are confident that we can cover their salary for at least a year. Right? ’cause it takes time, but it’s time, it’s process. But here’s the best part, aj, it’s worth it. It’s worth it because you gotta feed your family while you get to do what you maybe were, were born to do. But, but ultimately it has to be in the service of others. It has to be to help them do what they do. They’re not paying you 10, $15,000 for you to have a cathartic experience and bring joy to people’s lives. Right. and so, and, and, and because I’ve had a measure of success, and I’ve done this for a long time, I’m, I’m approached by a lot of people who want to tell me their story. Right? Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I want to do. You know, I survive cancer. I I won this Olympic medal. And, and listen, I’m not mocking ’cause I haven’t done any of those things. But the, your business is not about your story. It’s about how do you leverage your story in the service of others. And, and it has to be unique enough. So there’s a lot to go into, but yeah. Sales and marketing, sales and market, I love that.
AJV (17:18):
How do you think books play into this meeting? Very
DA (17:23):
Important.
AJV (17:24):
So, you know, clearly you think so because every time I talk to you, there’s a new book coming out and maybe we just need to talk more
DA (18:16):
Absolutely.
AJV (18:17):
And, you know, digest and actually act on. But in terms of the power of a book and how it can help you build your business. Yeah. Like how, how, how would you say that all integrates?
DA (18:29):
Well, it, it, it doesn’t in a big way. And I’m gonna, and I’m gonna challenge one small thing that you said. First of all, I, I write books not because it’s time for another book. It’s, it’s relevance, it’s gravitas, right? It’s that credibility that they’re the person that wrote that book. But I’m also very cognizant that a lot of people aren’t gonna read it. Larry Wingett is, is is a little cynical about it. He says, I sell souvenirs in the back of the room,
DA (19:09):
Or take the stairs or atomic habits. So I look like a big deal. I hope people read my books. I put a lot into it. But, but even if they don’t, here’s, here’s the value. And it’s a tremendous value. It’s credibility. They’re the ones who wrote X or Y. We find that in our marketing and in our sales processes, we’re introducing people to me as a speaker and a, a good resource for their next conference. Just the fact that I have a book coming out there in peaks their interest, which is really interesting that it’s just as valuable in the lead up phase as it is to when you publish it. And of course, the time afterwards because you don’t want it to be an event. You want it to be a process and a marathon. But books are really important to legitimize that.
DA (19:54):
Why are we turning to this person for consulting or speaking another ’cause they’re the ones who wrote blank, right? Most people’s first book tends to be just a compilation of blogs and articles that they’ve written. If like, I’ve written all of this stuff, let’s put it all together in some reasonably linear fashion, but it doesn’t really work. And I’ll freely admit, that was my first book. It was just, here’s a compilation of all my writings. But I try and be much more intentional now. Everybody comes up with a title they think is the, the Cure for Cancer that tastes like chocolate. And then we learn. I learned, I learned from Rory, I learned from Rory when, when he learned the lesson and realized that and what he teaches and, and I took this to heart, was that title has to be something aspirational.
DA (20:40):
Like I want that. And I didn’t learn my lesson. I had a book I that came out during Covid called The Morning Huddle, which was the physical manifestation of a video series that I had created. And it’s all these great conversations for your morning huddle. Nobody sits around and says, I need the morning huddle. Right? I don’t I need, but do they need to know how to be ridiculously easy to work with? Do they or to to do business with? Do they need to know why customers leave? My book, why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back is in six languages now because it’s perfectly aligned with Rory’s lesson about that’s aspirational. I want that. I wanna know that. And so there’s a whole process. I’m actually holding a, a, a retreat to help people write their first book.
DA (21:24):
And there’s so many people, you know, people come up to you all the time saying, how do you do that? God, I wish I could write away. Well, you can. But I think there’s also a, a, a fallacy that writers enjoy writing. I I don’t, I think I’m a good writer. It’s just, it’s agony for me, but I’m disciplined. I do it because I need to feed my family. I’ve got five colleges. I’m paying for five colleges and, and four employees. And so I work, but I, there’s a famous line, A woman was asked, famous author, I can’t remember her name. She was asked if she, she says, they were asked her, do you enjoy writing? And I loved her answer. She says, I love to have written
DA (22:18):
Like, I, I did this. Like, I, I wrote a book and, and you’ve seen it on the screen and, but now you can touch it and hold it. It’s, it’s powerful. It’s really powerful. And, and it’s something that many millions of people talk about and a much smaller fraction actually do it. So it’s incredibly important. It’s a legacy thing, depending on what it is you wanna write. It’s a galvanization of the content and the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years that you can, you can put down on paper and is there for, for history. It’s an accomplishment. But for a business, it’s credibility. It ab it absolutely helps. They don’t have to buy your book. They don’t have to read your book. But the fact that you wrote it and take some time and write a good book, don’t have ai, write it for you. Write your book. It’s credibility. And that’s really important. It, it drives, it drives your fee structure. It drives your visibility. Very, very important.
AJV (23:15):
Yeah. You know, one of the things that we talk about all the time is you can actually look at the trajectory of any speaker’s kind of financial path in terms of their fees and literally go no book, book bestselling book, right? A Wall Street Journal, bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book. And it’s like, you can literally watch, you know, the, the escalation percent when it comes to fee structure with the enhancement of that credibility. And so, so I think that’s just a really important conversation also leading up to this new book that you have released, which I think it’s a killer title, and I think everyone wants that. So let’s talk a little bit about this new book, ridiculously easy to do business with. And I think we would all like to know how do we become that, right? So what, what’s, what’s the book about?
DA (24:10):
Sure. the book is about, I mean, at the, at the core, it’s customer experience. I spent the early part of my career as a speaker and a consultant, probably the first 15 years, talking about marketing and branding. How do we better describe what we do? How do, how do we choose and craft those words? But I saw a significant change happening in the marketplace. And this was of course, with the advent of social media and social proof and, and mobile devices and everything else. And it became very clear that what we say about ourselves while not unimportant, is far less impactful today than what other people say about us. And so that was the research that went into my book, why Customers Leave. And we’re in a time, a really remarkable time. It’s a great time to be a customer or a client.
DA (24:54):
The, the conveniences are, are off the charts. It’s a tough time to be in business. And so, as I have spoken, because I I’m also a former Vistage chair, I, I led CEO Roundtable groups for years, and I spoke, I’ve spoken to 539 CEO Roundtable groups over the last 15 years. And as I would go around the table, I say, what’s your competitive advantage? Why you, what’s the secret sauce? It’s always some version of the same answer. It’s our superior quality, commitment, caring, trust. It’s about our people. Here’s what the research shows. People are prioritizing. Speed. Customers are prioritizing speed, speed of access, speed of answers, speed of of resolution, speed of delivery simplicity of process, accommodation for unique circumstances. Don’t be rigid. And of course, convenience in many ways. Our, our colleague Sally Hogshead talks about that different is better than better.
DA (25:49):
And I would submit that convenient is better than better. ’cause We’re in a time of pervasive quality. Everybody’s good, everybody’s good. So where are the real opportunities for, for distinction, for standing apart and standing and standing out. And that’s what drove the book ridiculously easy to do business with. It’s about reducing friction at every point possible in the process. If you have a business process an interaction, a purchasing process, or ordering for your clients that was designed 20 year, 10 years ago, it’s already outdated because we’re used to being able to buy with one click. And, and we can lament the loss of iconic brands. You know, we can lament the loss of, of Bed Bath and Beyond, or Toys Are Us. I guarantee you, nobody’s struggling to find toys. Nobody’s struggling to find toys. Why did they go? They, because we have other better options, better by some measure.
DA (26:43):
It’s more convenient, it’s more prevalent, whatever that might be. And so in the book, I I, I came up with 28 different ways to to be ridiculously easy. And, and I, on our business, I was on a podcast and somebody was asking me how, why is it that business just doesn’t get it? And I said, I think they get it. Of course they get it. It’s very smart, very good people running businesses. But I think there’s a grand experiment going on, which is, how much can we cut? How much can we push to the consumers? How much self-checkout before it’s that law of diminishing return. And they say, this has gotten so frustrated that frustrating, that now we’re gonna go somewhere else and we’re still figuring out what that is. There, young people I, I heard that somebody said, for the first time ever, we’re serving five generations at the same time.
DA (27:30):
And I was, and young people want to buy very different than older people, and we have to find ways of serving all of them. Those points of frustration, some of ’em are pretty obvious about being ridiculously easy to reach or to resolve issues. But I even cover chapters. You need to be ridiculously easy to see. Most marketing collateral, material, business cards, and others are designed by people in their twenties and thirties. 65% of all is by people over 50. I can’t see any of that.
DA (28:23):
And my job is to bring an external perspective of saying, here’s what’s frustrating for your customers. And why is that important? Because we have a bullhorn that reaches around the world now. We have Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and, and Glassdoor. Everybody’s good today because if you weren’t, you would be outed very, very quickly. And so in the book, ridiculously easy to do business with, it’s sort of a here’s an outside perspective on all of your systems and processes, and here’s how your customers really feel about it. And it’s also a way to sort of future proof your engagement and say, how do you think business? How do you think your customers want to do business with you? Or will wanna do business with you not 10 years from now, two years from now? What do we need to start doing now to, to make those tweaks and adjustments?
DA (29:09):
We’re all competing against Amazon and Uber in terms of simplicity of process. And I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned. I’ve been very gratified. We’ve just been out as of the recording of this, this podcast. We’ve just been out for a couple of weeks. We went to number one very, very quickly in the consumer relations category. I think we were number two in, in entrepreneurialism or something else. And of course that’s Amazon. I mean, let’s talk legitimate. The goal is Wall Street Journal or New York Times or others as well. But it’s a process. And it’s for anyone in business to be not just competent, not just capable, but preferable. And that’s the key that we don’t talk.
AJV (29:49):
You said this and I’m curious to know in the book, like what are some of the biggest frustrations that customers have with companies? Like what are they?
DA (30:00):
Yeah. Well, the, some of the frustrations are obvious ones, which is just when we’re literally yelling into the phone. Real person, real person agent, I think you said no. Oh, right. You know, and, and there’s, I unders I’m not naive. I understand that AI and chatbots, and it’s, it’s all part of where we are and it’s all part of where we’re going. But when they make it so difficult to get an off ramp to a real person when you need one I’m, I think I’m the only person on the planet. I’ve never had a a question that’s frequently asked apparently, because I can never find my issue. And one of the things I talk about is, is there’s a strategy, is that if you, if you are really frustrated and you can’t get through, whether you’re typing in a chat bot or you’re on the phone, just start shouting profanity into the phone and, and AI recognizes that it’s frustrat and they’ll transfer you to a real person or, or just yell, know, cancel membership.
DA (30:54):
And then you get to, and, and people laugh and, and it’s true. It’s unfortunate. Why, why do we have to yell profanity, right? In order to talk to get mad to get attention. Why do we have to get to that point? And then here’s the thing. ’cause I have a real heart for customer, customer service agents. What a tough job. But now organizations are, are, are frustrating their customers to the point where by the time we talk to a real person, they’re being inundated and abused all day long. I think it’s incredibly unfair that they do that to, to those representatives. What else? It, it’s, it’s an inflexibility that it, that shouldn’t be. Somebody was asking like, how could this possibly be getting worse if we’ve been talking about customer service or experience, whatever for 50 years, how could it be getting worse?
DA (31:41):
And it is, and here’s why is because we’re getting more rigid. We’re trying so hard in our companies to have some level of predictability in the process. Here’s how they reach out or learn about us and, and, and inquire and buy and negotiate and pay and deliver and, and it works, right? ’cause And if we can have greater level of predictability of that process, we can predict revenue and cash flow, right? And we can plan for that. We can hire for that. The problem is, your customers haven’t read your employee manual. They don’t know how they’re supposed to buy from you. They just know how they want to. But that’s changing. So we get rigid and we say no to stupid things. You know, I was checking out of a hotel and they’re like, sorry, we’re not doing any late checkouts. I’m like, I can’t get out.
DA (32:26):
I’m going to a And they say, yeah, we’re gonna charge you for a second day if you can’t be open. I’m like, okay, then I just won’t check out of the room. There we go. I just pay for another. And it’s, it was an easy yes, but the manager said, no, they checkouts today. Right? And the pushback I get for this kind of flexibility, I think is really important. I get this pushback and they say, well, if we do it for you or if we do it for him, we to do it for everyone. And my answer is, no, you don’t. It’s your business. They, it, it’s such a crutch. Well, if we do it for you, we have to do it for everyone. You do whatever your works for your customers. Most won’t need the special accommodations. And so when I talk about being ridiculously easy, like I have clients all over the world.
DA (33:05):
I’ve got clients in Mumbai and Singapore and Johannesburg. When I have a call with a client, a Zoom call, I’m the one talking at two o’clock in the morning or three o’clock every time. It’s never them because I am ridiculously easy to do business with them because my competitors, my colleagues, our friends, they’re phenomenal. I have, we are, we have such great colleagues who are so good at what they do. What’s my competitive advantage? Yeah. I’m gonna knock it out of the park on stage, but I’m also not gonna make you search for a phone number. I’m not gonna make you fill out a contact form in order to reach a real person. I, I, I thank speakers all the time, and I’ve spoken at nine of the international associations. I said, I want to thank you all for putting contact forms instead of emails on your website because you put my kids through college because I’m, I’ve already sent over a a contract by the time they’ve responded to your, your, your contact form.
DA (34:03):
I, I, and, and to be fair, I’ve got multiple small business, they all have contact forms and I have cell phone numbers for every member of my team. We have email addresses. I’m ridiculously easy to get in touch with. I mean, there’s, there’s some maddening things, AJ of, of companies that make it difficult to reach you. I mean, are are you that good that your customers are gonna put up with that? And, and people say, well, you don’t have life balance if you’re, I’m not talking to three o’clock in the morning every day, but this feeds my family. Hmm. And my, my clients ask, and the answer is yes. What’s the question? Hmm. Right, because
AJV (34:39):
That’s good. I literally, yesterday as you’re talking, I’m like, this would, like, this literally happened to me yesterday. I signed up for this health portal and I won’t share their name, but it’s like this supposedly amazing thing that was referred by a very good friend, and you do all this blood work and then it’s kind of putting the patient back in control of all of your panels. Yeah. So doctors don’t own it. And it was like a really cool concept. So I’ve been trying to schedule my second round of blood work, right? There’s no email address, there’s no phone number. The chat bot keeps saying, can’t accept request right now. So I’m like, I can’t chat with you. I can’t call you, I can’t email you and it won’t let me schedule my appointment and it has to be in a certain period of time, which now has expired. Now I have to wait 30 more days to use what I’ve paid for. And it was like, I to the point of like, if I can’t use it, I want a refund. I can’t talk to anyone to even request it. Right? And so it’s, but
DA (35:35):
That, but that’s the other thing. That’s the other thing thing. And you talk about where the frustrations are about organizations that make it ridiculously easy to cancel. Well, they do that on purpose. I think it’s slimy. Or, or here’s the other one is they they give you a free trial, but it’s not a free trial. Right? Sign up for a free trial. What’s the requirement? You have to give ’em your credit card information. Right? And then we have a, that that wall comes up that, that trepidation. It’s the number one reason for abandoned shopping carts in membership trials is a requirement for financial information. So I go through all of that. Yeah. But it’s one of those, it’s like, who designed this process? And that’s the difference between product centric and customer centric. That product centric is, we’re very good at what we do, and so let’s deliver that and sell as many as we can and create market share. Nothing wrong with that. Right. I love that
AJV (36:19):
Too. One of the things that I love, like we’ve had this conversation so often, and like, one of the things that we’re really big advocates of, and I love, like there’s an entire book about this is give it all away for free. In fact, give it away. Give everything away to the point where your customer says, man, I feel like I’ve gotten so much value from you, I need to pay you. And that’s so counterculture, right? It’s, and we brought that up and somebody said, well, aren’t you afraid that people are just take advantage of you? And I’m like, no, I’m not at all. Because they could go get this information for free at tons of places, right? They’re not paying for the information at that point. They’re going, I want it from you because that’s who I’ve begun to trust. That’s who I’m gonna, I, that’s who I like.
AJV (37:08):
Now, this is who I have a relationship with. It’s like the information is out there. Buy a book, listen to a podcast, read a blog, watch YouTube, you know, watch any of the social media platforms. It’s like whatever it is you wanna know, you can go find it. You are not paying for information at this point. You’re paying for experience, relationship, trust, organization, application, execution. You’re paying for those things. So don’t be, don’t be afraid to give things away so that people understand like, there’s real value here. I want to give you my money, not I have to.
DA (37:40):
You know, I think for many of us, we’ve come to realize sometime back, the biggest competitor out there is free, right? I, I think when, when newspapers stopped running the presses and they thought, we’re gonna just think about how much money we’re gonna save and we’ll have everybody use subscription. I’m reading an article online and all of a sudden I get stopped and something pops up that I have to subscribe to the New York Times to read the rest of the article. I don’t because free is pervasive. But, but I like what you said, but I think it goes even further. And this is where you have to accept the, the compliments and realize that some people, when you’ve built a really strong personal brand, when you are known for the wisdom and the content and the value that you provide, there’s a certain category of people that want to touch the robe.
DA (38:24):
They wanna be there because it’s you. They want to, to pay more and get a deeper access to you and information because it’s you. And, and you’ve earned that. And you have to earn that, which is the other part. You can be well known and have a great personal brand, but if it’s not a brand of value and that people aspire to be you to some extent there are people who will come to that workshop to learn from you. There’s things that we can learn almost anything online. You can go to YouTube and you can learn how to use YouTube, right? But when you have built that strong service oriented, high content personal brand, there’s a category of people that will only pay that money and do more than what they could do free because they want to touch the robe. And that’s something that, that you build and something to be proud of, and it’s something to leverage.
AJV (39:17):
Hmm. So if you were going to, you know, kind of summarize some of the highlights of the book and go, all right, everyone who’s listening, clearly we don’t have time to talk about all 28 things, but if there were two or three things that you’re like, hands down, yeah, you love me doing this to be ridiculously easy to ba do business with, what are some of those things?
DA (39:38):
I, and lemme go a little bit broader and which is the importance of, of sort of the concept. I was about to keynote a conference and the, the CEO was on before I was there was a huge organization. There was probably 800 people in the audience. And the CEO was doing the big rah rah speech. And at the very end, he said, and, and remember, we’re gonna win on quality. At the end of the day, it’s about quality. And everybody cheered and went crazy. And I thought to myself, I could not disagree more. At the end of the day, it’s not about quality. It’s not, everybody’s good. Everybody’s got quality at the beginning of the day. It’s about quality. Quality is the entry
AJV (40:13):
Requirement for entry.
DA (40:14):
Quality gives you permission to do business in the marketplace. You better be good or the marketplace will figure it out. But at the end of the day, it’s about competitive advantage. It’s not what do you do? Well, what do you do better than others who do it well? And so back to the book, I I laid out 28 short chapters of here’s all the things that you can do to gain a competitive advantage. Recognize that your competitors are all good. And here’s the worst thing about competitors, and nobody says this out loud. Most of those competitors are very, very nice people. They’re, they’re, they’re not our our enemies. They’re, they’re our, our our colleagues in arms. They’re all, we’re all trying to feed our families. And, and if you, if you believe that you’re so good that, that everybody has to discover you and they’re gonna reject everybody else.
DA (41:00):
I heard somebody saying that, that they what makes us different is we actually do what we say we’re gonna do. There you go. And I look at ’em, I said, you actually believe that. Don’t you? Do you actually believe that your competitors are consistently underperforming and that they have yet they have, but to discover you, everybody’s good. You need a competitive advantage. And the competitive advantage is eliminate friction. Don’t, don’t make your customers do business the way you want them to do if they want it to do differently. So it’s taking a step back. It’s understanding what customer centricity really means. And all of this, of course, profitably but we’re in a very competitive environment. I think the theme of the book and the examples are all about, here’s how you do it, here’s why. It’s, it’s a challenge for us. And here’s, here’s a different way.
DA (41:47):
And each one, each chapter has stories and examples and marketplace examples and research to bolster the points. But it’s very, very, I mean, even the, the tagline says it’s a practical guide to giving customers what they want, how and when they want it. And it’s an ongoing process, and it’s of, of reexamination. And it’s also my mantra and my message as I, as I travel the country and travel around the world my presentations are, there’s a lot of humor. It’s very entertaining. But I use that strategically to temper a tough message about what it takes to compete and win today. And whether you’re in small business, whether you’re building your brand, whether you aspire to be a speaker or consultant, it’s a business and you treat it like a business.
AJV (42:32):
Hmm. So what would you say if I were to ask you, when you say, sure, you know, this cocom competitive advantage, and that’s a part of what you’ve gotta figure out, like what is, as a speaker and an author, what is your competitive advantage?
DA (42:46):
My competitive advantage is, is a, I’m always relevant. And I, and I am committed to delivering it, knocking outta the park on the, on the stage every time that I think is the entry fee. I I am, I’m really good at what I do, as others are as well. My competitive advantage is I never stop marketing. I never stop selling. Through covid, through all of that as well, I did 87 virtual presentations on a webcam in my home studio because I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have a plan b hmm. And I love what I do, but I don’t get to do it if I don’t have clients to do it for. And so my competitive advantage is that I will outmarket. When we have somebody, we have a, a potential hit, I do a, a BombBomb video message, and I talk to ’em, hi, it’s David Verin, thanks for this. Here’s what we, I can’t wait to work with you. Here’s all the books that I’ve written, and we send ’em a book and here’s what we do on our first email. And here’s what we do on our second email. If they don’t respond, here’s how we put ’em back in the system. We don’t automate anything. My competitive advantage is we are relentless and we are diligent, and we are strategic, and we are ridiculously easy to do business with.
AJV (44:01):
I mean, honestly, see a great
DA (44:03):
Way to wrap that up.
AJV (44:04):
What competitive and competitive advantage should be. I always do outreach, right? It’s
DA (44:09):
Always that. There’s, there’s, that’s, that’s a good way of synopsis, synopsis, outreach never stops. I’m not famous. I’m good at what I do. The people who I do business with love me. My friends and family love me. You guys love me, I love you guys. But there’s a huge portion of the population who has no idea who, who, who I am and that I exist. I talk to people. If you’re in a, in an auditorium or a conference center and you’re speaking to 600 people, there’s 4.3 million people within a a 60 mile radius who have no idea you’re there. Yeah. So how do we leverage proximity? How do we leverage? So yeah, outreach is incredibly important. It’s probably the most important thing for my longevity.
AJV (44:52):
I love that. And I think for everyone who’s listening, if you would just take a minute or five or 10, whatever you got and ask yourself like, what is my competitive advantage? And it’s not that I care a lot, and it’s not that I have a superior product. It’s not that it’s a high quality product or whatever else. It’s like, what is your competitive advantage? And I think also asking yourself the question, which hopefully is similar, but what makes it ridiculously easy to do business with me
DA (45:24):
Or ridiculously easy to choose you, right? That, that’s a whole chapter in the book as well. It’s not even just how you do business. Make it ridiculously to easy to choose you over your competitors. And to do that, you need to be really clear what others are doing. We never denigrate them. We never criticize competitors. I love com. I love complimenting competitors. They’re phenomenal. But this is what I do. They do this and this and this and this. They’re really great. But this is, but I specialize in this, but well, that’s what I need. I I think it’s a better choice. So that market analysis is important. We could talk all day, but I know you have time constraints.
AJV (46:02):
I know this is so good though. I love it. And y’all, I would highly encourage for you to go pick up the book. I already have the book. It’s on my summer read list. And I’m even more intrigued now to go, what are these, you know, 28 things? And and now I’m like, well, I need my team to know what these 28 things are. And I love that what you said too, it’s like you have to identify the friction points, right? And that just means all of us have to take a step back as a consumer. And I, that would be like a, a great, I think just even for me, I’m just going like, man, I wonder when the last time I, like, I clicked through our website, how easy is it to get in touch with me? And if I wondered if I, like with an anonymous email hit our customer care at email, how quickly people would respond. And it’s like, I’m so curious now to go through our own systems and process.
DA (46:52):
You could shop yourself. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Where
AJV (46:54):
Are our friction points as a consumer? And as a, an entrepreneur business owner you should know those, right? And so ask yourself, when’s the last time that I actually went through my own processes the own systems with our team to go, where is it hard? Where is there friction? And how can I make it easier? And I love that. ’cause I think what you said earlier, and I wanna kind of like wrap it with this, is speed is really becoming an increasingly important part of why people do business with you
DA (47:25):
Very much. Jay Bair did some groundbreaking breaking research on that recently as well. Great colleagues, Jay Bear and Shep Hyken and Roger Dooley wrote a book called Friction that changed my life. I, I, I am so annoyed looking at the world now because he’s made me hyper aware of things I hadn’t even thought of before. So we have wonderful colleagues in this space. But, but yeah, go pick up the book, Amazon,
AJV (47:50):
Amazon,
DA (47:51):
Easy to do business with.
AJV (47:53):
And I will put the direct link to pick up the book and the show notes. And for everyone else, make sure you stick around for the recap version, which will be coming next. Dave, love you, love what you’re doing too. Such a rich conversation. Thank you so much for being here. And if people want to follow you, stay in touch with you. What’s your preferred platform?
DA (48:13):
My, you can check me out on my [email protected], and then it gets a little complicated. And on Instagram, it’s the real David Aver, and that’s a catfish for another day. But yeah, check me out. Instagram, the real David Rin TikTok, it’s I think real David Rin. But if, if there are hundreds or thousands of followers, it’s the real account. Otherwise, it’s not me. Go to my website, david rin.com.
AJV (48:36):
So go to his website, david aver.com, go to Amazon, pick up the book ridiculously easy to do business with. Thank you guys for being here. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 502: The Messy Truth of Entrepreneurship with Alli Webb
RV (00:02):
Well, I am so impressed and inspired by this next woman you’re about to meet. Alli Webb is someone who has become a friend. She’s a brand builders group client, and she kind of famously sold, founded and sold Drybar for $255 million. This is back in 2020. So she started Drybar in 2010. It exploded into over 150 locations. Very, very successful product line. She became a New York Times bestselling author as part of that journey, and she has since kind of evolved and, and adapted and diversified into starting many different businesses and using her personal brand to really create enterprise value. She one of their current projects is called Squeeze. I’m AJ and I have been to Squeeze. We love it. It’s, it is massages. They have you know, kind of like health spa sort of situation. And they, Brightside and Beckett and Quill is other businesses that she’s involved with.
RV (01:01):
She’s got a new one called Canopy, where she joined as the, the president Canopy’s, super chic reimagined, humidifiers are making big waves in the beauty industry and innovative beauty device category. So lots of stuff around beauty and health. She’s been a board member of several companies. She’s been on the cover of Inc. Magazine’s, how I did This Issue, she’s been named the hundred most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. She’s been featured on Fortunes 40 Under 40 List Marie Claire’s most fascinating women. And she’s just an amazing, amazing woman who has accomplished so many things. We got to work together on her recent book, the Messy Truth, which of course became a USA Today National Bestseller. And Ally and I became friends, and I was just like, you gotta hear this woman’s story. It’s really, really powerful. So, ally, my friend, welcome to the show.
AW (01:55):
Thank you. And thanks for that warm introduction. I appreciate it.
RV (01:59):
So, I am curious, you know when I think of entrepreneurs, I, I, I almost sort of divide the world into the entrepreneur world, into two categories. There are people who are entrepreneurs, which are like content creators, and, you know, they like do speaking or coaching or, or whatever. And and, and then there are also people in this category who are like you know, professional service providers, financial advisors, CPAs direct salespeople, you know, real estate agents all like actual on, they’re, you know, by definition entrepreneurs, independent contractors, stuff like that. And then I have like a different category. I, I don’t mean to be offensive to either group, but I call ’em real entrepreneurs, which are people who like actually start a company, build it, build it, have to create the marketing, the sales, the product development, the hr, like the whole, the whole thing.
RV (02:57):
They’re not kind of using someone else’s operating system. They’re like building it. And I feel like a lot of the quote unquote real or regular or traditional, maybe traditional entrepreneurs would be a a, a better sense. They kinda look at the people who use their personal brand entrepreneurs and go, eh, I don’t need to build a personal brand. I’m building a business to operate without me. And that’s the whole point. And then you are different. You’ve done both, right? You have straddled both. You’ve built so many real businesses, successful scaling operating entities, but you’ve also put a lot of time into your personal brand. And so I’m just curious, why have you done that? How do you think about that? How do you value it? How do you, how do you justify the quote unquote, time away from your real business to like, kind of build your personal brand? So I’m just curious about that,
AW (03:55):
About that. Well, gosh, I love that framing and that question, and I sitting here listening to that and thinking like, it’s so nice to be asked these kinds of questions now. Like, I feel like I’ve, like graduated from, like, so tell me how you build Drybar, which, you know, is like a, an honest question that most people ask me. And, and, and I’m always happy to share it, but it’s not, it’s, it’s interesting to be asked a question in that framing. So anyways you know, I think that it was a progression, like a gradual progression. And, and it’s funny, and I’m sure you, you experienced this too, as you speak to different entrepreneurs you know, who want different things. And there are those entrepreneurs who, to your point, want to build and grow and scale a company that doesn’t potentially need them eventually, and they can step out and do something else, and they wanna be behind the scenes.
AW (04:46):
You know, I think it’s a, it is, it is a bit of a personality trait. And I, I was just like talking to an entrepreneur that I’m mentoring yesterday, and, and she was saying that her team is really pushing her to be out front and build her own personal brand. And she’s like, I don’t wanna build my own personal brand. I don’t like being in front of the camera. I don’t like being out front. Mm-Hmm. She likes being behind the scenes. So it’s a real, like, personal question of what you like doing, what gives you energy? And, and, and I didn’t, I wouldn’t have known the answer to that question until it was like, thrust upon me. And, and I was, you know, rightfully so, the, you know, brand ambassador for Drybar. It was my idea, it was my baby. I was the hairstylist. Like I was the mom.
AW (05:26):
I was catering to women, like I was the client. So it made sense on multiple levels for me to be the, the, the face of the brand. But you know what, what, what happened as a result of that for me anyways, was like when I, you know, started being on TV and I started being in front of the camera, and I started like, you know, speaking on the brand, like, I really fell in love with that aspect of it, you know? And but it wasn’t like, I wanna go be an actress and be on TV in that regard. Like, I really loved talking about these brands that I built, and more so, because I learned so much as, because I didn’t, you know, this, I didn’t go to college. So I don’t have like any like, degree or any real like pedigree in building a business.
AW (06:11):
I didn’t, I didn’t know a lot when we started, other than the fact that my parents were entrepreneurs. And I had, I had that a little bit, but, you know, I learned on the job. Like, I always say, I feel like I got like a, you know, a business degree growing and building Drybar, and I did, I learned so much. And so I feel so compelled to share all of that. Like, I have so much in my brain that I don’t ever think about, but if you ask me a question about a certain thing, I can usually pull it up a pretty good answer and experience around that thing. And you know, and I think like a lot of, as I’ve gotten older and I’ve been through some, some like pretty crazy hard things, you know, I think it’s brought out this like, you know, piece of me that wants to be of service in lots of different ways.
AW (06:57):
And I think that like my, one of the best ways I can be of service to people is by giving back, like what I’ve learned and being that you know, that place for people to go for when they feel like, I don’t, you know, you’ve done this and, and done that. Like, can, can you, you know, paving the way a bit. So, so I think the decision to build a personal brand ca that’s where it came from, is like a real love for all of it, you know, like, I, I love being on stage. I love talking about my story. I love giving back. And so that’s just, that is a love of mine. So that’s what I’m feeding, you know? And, and I don’t, you know, after, I mean, I built Drybar and I can tell you a hundred things, hundreds of things about how that all happened.
AW (07:41):
But like with Squeeze, for example, Brittany Driscoll, our head of marketing, she, or, or former head of marketing, Drybar, she’s the CEO of Squeeze. She’s in the day-to-Day. I’m not in the day-to-Day. I don’t care to be in the day-to-Day anymore. I’ve done that. I don’t, it is not where I get my energy and life and light from. So, you know, for me, graduating more into the building of a personal brand at this stage felt right. I couldn’t have done this so much in the dry bar days. It was towards the end of the Drybar days that I, I recognized that I wanted to do that.
RV (08:11):
So is, and you think that’s really is how it is, like the success of Drybar, you started to get noticed? Did, did, did, did media outlets start reaching out to you, or did you reach out to them? Like, how did that transition even happen? Like, you’re just, were you minding your own business building, trying to build a successful enterprise? Or were you like hiring PR firms and really trying to get like placements and stuff?
AW (08:34):
Well, I mean, I had, I had a lot of different careers over, you know, like in my twenties, which I highly recommend, you know, people like if you’re, if you’re young and you’re, or even if you’re not young, if you’re listening to this, like go try all the, all the things, you know. And then that’s what I did in my twenties. Like, I, I became a hairstylist, but I also like worked in retail and I was, was, you know, I, I ended up working at Rogers and Cowan, which is a massive PR firm for, you know, this guy named Paul Fur, who was ran the music department. And that was, that experience really taught me how to write and all, all the stops. My point is, all the stops along my journey would, would turn out to be really important. But, so because I worked in pr I really saw firsthand how important PR was.
AW (09:17):
And, and I think it, it looks different in today’s society because it’s like kind of a different kind of marketing PR used to be just like magazines and tv. Then that was it. It’s obviously the social media has changed a lot, but I knew early on before we even opened the, the Doors to Drybar, that we were like, I knew we, I knew we would be able to get good PR because we were such a new concept. So it was like a no brainer. We were gonna go do that. It wasn’t until, you know, we were crafting the pitch, which you do when you’re, you’re working on a, you know, trying to, you know, pitch sell something out there that it was like, oh, okay. You know, in con early, early conversations with our PR team was like, what, what makes sense here? It’s like, well, this was Ally’s idea.
AW (09:57):
This is Ally’s baby. And my, my brother and Cam were, were integral parts. It would never have gotten to what it did without them. But from a relat relatability standpoint, and to sell this to the public, I knew we knew that. Like I needed to be the one out there talking about it. And I didn’t know anything about that. I didn’t know how to do that, you know? But I, you know, we, we recognized that, you know, it was only one person that was gonna really be able to speak to the brand, and it made the most sense for me to do it. So, you know, from the get go, I was doing that, like the first week we opened Drybar, because it was such a new concept. Like, we had TV crews coming in, and I was the one talking to them. And, and I, I mean, I was like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even bear to look back at those interviews because I was so green and I didn’t know how to speak to media yet, and I’ve had media training and, and all that.
AW (10:43):
So it was this kind of slow progression. And I was also really fortunate and, and amazing timing that I was really at the forefront of the entrepreneurial craze that we’re in now. You know, it’s like I, in 2010, like nobody knew people, founders, and CEOs yet. Like, you know, it was like, I remember like looking around going, who else is like me here? Nobody. It was like, maybe, I always think like maybe Donna, Karen, like, there were very few female founders that were known that had started. I mean, the landscape is so incredibly different now, but like, I was at the forefront of that alongside like Candace Nelson and who started Sprinkles and like other, there’s so many female founders now, which is awesome. But, you know, so I, I was at the front of that getting a lot of, you know, talking a lot.
AW (11:31):
And then Drybar became such a big craze, and it was such a love brand, and people fell in love with it that they wanted to talk to me about it, you know? And so it just kind of came, it all really, I mean, we hired PR to build the brand, but I was always the spokesperson. And so I was always the person that people wanted to talk to. And then, and then it kind of, they people became interested in lots of things about me, not just my founder, at not just me being a founder of the company. Like what was I wearing and what trends did I see happening and that kind of stuff. And that was
RV (12:02):
Fun. Well, I wanna talk about that because, you know, there’s this, there is this thing of like, oh, you know, started a company grew, you know, had TV crews there. The first week we grew the company, I was on magazines and then, and then we sold it for 250 million. Like, all of that sounds like a pretty Cinderella story. But then as you became popular and we’re in the public eye, I feel like your life took a little bit of a different direction. So like, what is some of what happened like after Drybar for people who don’t know the story?
AW (12:36):
Well, it’s certainly not a Cinderella story. I mean, and if, and if you know, you know, my book The Messy Truth, like, I, I really talk a lot about how hard it was. And like the first shop, yes, it was very popular and people were showing up left and right. The second shop, crickets, third Shop, crickets. It took so much effort and marketing to get us there. So it wasn’t just like, we opened it, it was amazing. We sold it for 255 million. I was at, you know, on a Shark Tank and on covers of magazines. Like, it did not, it didn’t happen like that. It was a, it was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears without a doubt. And my life fell apart during Drybar. It wasn’t even just after Drybar, you know, it was like my first marriage to my co-founder, you know, fell apart.
AW (13:18):
And my son went through rehab and, and, you know, and Maria, you know, you know a lot about this, and there’s a whole chapter in my book about my son and, and what, and, and the, and the pain that he went through. And, you know, it is as bad as like it can get for a parent. I mean, it was like literal hell. And it was, you know, and the company was like six or seven years in like, still on this like, upward trajectory. But luckily we had built out such a strong foundation and like such an exec, great executive crew, that the company was able to keep going because I was not, you know? And, and so, yeah, I mean, there was so much falling apart in, in the building of Drybar that happened to me personally, you know, that I, you know, gosh, it was, it was so, so hard. It was so, it was definitely not a Cinderella story, for sure.
RV (14:07):
Yeah. So, so then, so, so that, that’s interesting. ’cause I think of it as being after, but it really was, it really was going while, like as you guys were still growing,
AW (14:18):
There was a really, then there my life fell apart again after Yes. But even during it was there was like, I am navigating some really tough waters for
RV (14:27):
Sure. So what, so, so tell us about the Messy Truth. So you mentioned the book, right? So the, the book is the, it, it talks about some of this. So, so why this book? What’s in the book? Like, how does that apply to your entrepreneurial story?
AW (14:40):
Well, it was been an interesting evolution for me. And the fact that I am, I mean, I decided, you know, I was, I decided to call the book The Messy Truth because I wanted, I felt really comp compelled. I think I always thought I’d tell the story of my, the growth and the, the fascination of, of, of how we did Drybar. ’cause People love it so much. But I didn’t, I don’t know that I ever thought I would tell like such a personal, such a, such a personal side of it, you know? And I think that that, that came from when I was in the thick of, of Dry Bar and my life fell apart, and I felt, and social media had, you know, was a really big deal then. And I just felt like I didn’t wanna be inauthentic with, with where I was and, and showing this version of me that was like shiny happy on tv, growing this massive brand and all this greatness in when really in the background I could, you know, get barely get off the floor and I, it it at in a period of time.
AW (15:40):
And so I think I, I couldn’t like lie about that. And so I was, I was, you know, transparent about it to a degree. And what I learned, the feedback that I got, which was so beautiful, was that like, it was really resonating with people because it was like, oh, the polarity of like, she’s got all this success, this company that’s thriving, but holy, her life is falling apart. And so showing that and, and that connection that was formed with so many people that I didn’t even know who were like, oh my gosh. Like, it was like a, it was like a sigh of relief that like, oh, you can both can exist and frankly, both do exist. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think anybody lives a life that’s like perfect and not hard at different times. And so I felt like, I felt like such a, a calling to that, oh, you’ve gotta show all of it.
AW (16:32):
You know, I have a great life. Like, I’m very blessed. I have, I’ve, I’ve had a really great life. I’ve also like, you know, been on the floor and felt like I wanted to die. So I’ve had the extremes of both. But I think that, that, talking about that more the messy truth of it all and, and making that the underbelly of my book, that it’s very much a business book, but I, I always say it’s like a, a business book and a and a, you know, and a memoir had a baby, and this is the book, you know, and it’s because the book does really highlight all of it. And now I just feel like I’ve really taken the messiness to a whole new level. And like, you know, like I was telling you before, starting this messy collective, which is, you know, all the lessons and all the things that I’ve learned, but like, really capitalizing on the, capitalizing is not the right word, but like you know, and you can edit that out, right? ’cause I hate
RV (17:27):
That. Yeah. We can edit, we can edit that if you want.
AW (17:30):
Yeah, edit that out because I don’t wanna say capitalizing, but, but more like, you know, becoming like
RV (18:19):
So talk to me about how’s your personal brand evolving now? I mean, you, you’re, you have clarity on sort of like, it, it seems like this sort of unfiltered, open, honest is like what it is. But from a business perspective, are you still building companies? Are you investing, are you operating, are you boards on, like on boards? Are you just trying to try to like, own minority stakes and let people run it? Like what, what, what are, what does this next season look like in terms of the evolution of the business side of your personal brand?
AW (18:57):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, like a little bit of everything you just said, you know, it’s like we, we do have, you know, companies like Squeeze and Brightside and Okay, humans and these brands that are kind of, you know, that I’m an investor advisor in, I show up to the board meetings, give my thoughts, help where, where, where it’s needed. That’s like one bucket. And then I am on some boards I have a harder time sitting on long phone calls. So I don’t know if I’ll continue to do that. I, ’cause I was experimenting the last couple years of like, what do, how do I wanna spend my time? I do mentor a lot of different entrepreneurs. Like there there’s a, a site called Intro where you can, you can pay to like, have time with CEOs and founders. It’s amazing. And I do that and I enjoy that.
AW (19:41):
You know, and I am, which I haven’t publicly announced yet, starting another brand in the hair space, which I’m gearing up with my brother to do right now. So yeah, it’s like I can’t really stop. I have so many, I have so many ideas and so many things that I wanna do. And I have like, you know, people talking about optioning my book, and then there’s like a, a show idea in the works. I mean, honestly, I couldn’t even, like, it would take a, it would take me a pretty long, long, long list of like, all the things that I’m working on, but it’s all in this vein of like, let me, like, I’m throwing a lot at the wall and let me see what sticks, which is so funny. Rory, and I don’t know if you you’d wanna cut this or not, but I remember when we were sitting in that room and you were talking about Lewis and how when you met him, he was doing so many things and you, like, you helped him like distill it down. My focus.
RV (20:31):
Yeah,
AW (20:31):
The focus, which, which I think about that conversation a lot because I am in that state of, I’m doing a lot of things right now, but I think I’m doing it purposely and I’m aware of what I’m doing because I wanna see what works, resonates, is, you know, is, is is lucrative, like all the things. And I’m not quite sure. And there’s, there’s a handful of them that I’m working on right now which is, which is fun. And I, I almost feel like I’m, like, in my early twenties again, like, I’m like, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do this, and I’m just gonna see what, what feels best to me, what, what seems to be working? And so I’m, I’m at this like really fun stage, but
RV (21:07):
You’re kind of experimenting with different Yeah, yeah. Totally different things. The, the tell me about what, what’s the difference between being on a board and being an advisor? Like I, ’cause I think that does happen that we see this a lot with clients es especially as they get more notoriety and as they become more successful, there’s, you know, brand deals sometimes then become equity deals and like consulting relationships sometimes become equity relationships. In your mind, how do you delineate, you know, what, what’s the different to be a, on an, to be an advisor to a company like advisor, investor, board member? Like, how do you think of those roles differently and how do you choose which companies to play each of those roles with?
AW (21:56):
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s all like, it, it can look anyway you want it to. I mean, and, and I’ve tried it a handful of ways, you know, I mean, in, when I first, you know, sold the company and made some money, I was pretty, like, I wanted to join some boards and I did that. And like I said, it, it didn’t seem like exactly the right fit for me. It’s different being a board of my own company. But, you know, and then I also was like investing in a lot of brands. Like, I have a lot of, I have a probably like 20 or so investments in companies that are like my friend’s companies, or just like a company that I really believed in, you know, re regardless of what my financial advisors were, like, this feels like a real risky deal. I’m like, I know, but it’s like one of my best friends and I’m doing it more for like, you know, for them to have, to be able to like, use my name or call me up and get some advice and like, you know, kind of a loose relationship, you know.
AW (22:51):
And then there’s like, and then there’s situations where I’m like an advisor for equity, and I didn’t put any money into the company, you know, so they’re able to leverage my experience, have a conversation with me, and I’m not getting financially compensated, but I do have a little stake of equity in the company, you know, so it can, it can look a lot of different ways and you can negotiate really whatever you want. And, you know, it’s just kind of, it is a negotiation depending on what you want. I have, I’ve been through so many different scenarios at this point that I can kind of, you know, at this point I’m, I’ve decided to not invest mostly in most companies unless it’s something really that really gets me and rather say, Hey, I’m not gonna invest financially in here, but I’m happy to be an advisor to the founder, whatever, for equity. You know? So there’s, there’s lots of different ways you can, you can form it and it, it really can be, it’s just a negotiation.
RV (23:44):
Uhhuh
AW (23:55):
I mean, it all depends. I mean, all depends. It just depends. Yeah. It just kind of depends on what’s happening with the company. Like what your, you know, what your outlining as is, what you’re going to contribute to, you know, the company, the founder, how much, how much time and energy you’re gonna give them. You know, it’s, it’s really, it can run the gamut.
RV (24:11):
Mm-Hmm,
AW (25:08):
Yeah. I mean, I was
AW (26:10):
And also, like, I’m just a different person. I’ve been through some real life changing things and I have, you know, as you know, I’ve, you know, really come to find faith in my life. And I think that, like, I didn’t have that sense of, it’s all gonna be okay. It’s all gonna work out one way or the other. You know? I really truly believe that now in a very profound way that I didn’t have that back then. You know, back then I was like, I felt like I had to work myself into the ground, you know, I had to work constantly. And there was, it was like some sort, I talk about this a lot. Like, it was like some sort of badge of honor to work, you know, these crazy days, you know, days that you just like, like are working for the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes.
AW (26:54):
And like, this was like, and that is a little bit of like the entrepreneurial, you know, plate that we have because we, we breathe this and sleep it and drink it, and it’s just like all consuming, which, which it is. But again, if I had it to do over, I would like put it down a little bit more than I did and, and try, because I did get burned out so much. And there was a, you know, there was a lot of my life that I wasn’t paying attention to my health and to my wellbeing and, you know, things that were, were really important because I thought if I took my, you know, my hands off the wheel for a second, that the whole thing was gonna implode, which it wasn’t, and it didn’t, you know, and, and, and being, you know, like I was saying before with my son, and like the divorce, like that was probably around, I don’t know, year six, seven, something like that.
AW (27:40):
You know, it’s like I, I, I literally, somebody was saying this to me, I heard somebody talking about this not that long ago, that like, you set your company company up in a way that if, like, god forbid something happens to you, that the company will still exist and be okay for many, many years. I don’t think that was the case with Drybar. You know, it was like, I was firmly at the helm of that company, which is great. But like, you know, because we brought in a professional CEO at like two or three years, and then we built up this great team when I did have to dip out and deal with a lot of personal stuff, like nothing, nothing happened in the business was fine, you know? And that I think is a really important thing to point out, you know? And so it just also points to the fact that like, I could have done that sooner and enjoyed my life more than I did in that time when I was so worried and stressed all the time. Mean I, you know, and it’s like, like, you know, life’s too short for that. And I, and I, I, I would do that differently and I just, that’s how I kind of approach things now. I like, you know, and I have to remind myself of that, like, it’s a self-awareness thing, which by the way, self-awareness is probably the greatest gift of all of this, is like having much more self-awareness now than I’ve ever had in my life.
RV (28:53):
Mm-Hmm.
AW (28:58):
RV (28:59):
Tell us, tell us. Put it on the air.
AW (29:02):
I can’t, I mean, I’ve
RV (29:59):
Mm-Hmm.
AW (30:17):
I, I really am. And, and like I was telling you, you know, I ask all like the people in my life who are, you know, who, who would know, I’m like, who’ve like, read the Bible and know, I’m like, I don’t wanna watch this unless it’s like legit, you know? And, and I’ve been given the light green light that it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty accurate. So it’s such a better, you know, and it’s really interesting. It’s like, it’s such a easier way for me to ingest it. And from a storytelling standpoint, you know, my, my best friend Paige and I talk about it now. I mean, it’s like, it’s all I talk about now. And we, you know, and, and a lot of people have said to me, even, even like Mariah Irwin’s daughter has Erwin McManus, which, you know, we all know and love, you know, she’s like, it, it, you probably want to, you know, interpret it in your own way too. Like, watching it from a movie standpoint through somebody else’s lens is, has been really great. But like it, I do, I do have a little bit of like, oh, I should probably ingest it my own way. And, you know, because there just seems to be so many interpretations of it all that I am curious, like what my interpretation would be. So yeah. Yeah. I’m in this conversation a lot with myself,
RV (31:25):
That’s really, that’s really, really cool. Well, you know, you seem really happy. You can, you can sense, you can sense the sense of peace that you have, which is like, it’s just amazing how that comes from faith and not from a dollar figure, or being on a cover of a magazine or having celebrity friends or being invited to the red carpet. Like, it’s, it’s like
AW (31:50):
That’s wild. I mean, I, it’s interesting that you bring that up because it is true. I mean, I’ve had all of that, all those things that you mentioned, and, you know, it was never really fulfilled by it, you know, and, and it’s, it’s fascinating how, how profoundly different, and I feel now you’re right. You know, with this like this, those are not, those are, you know, those are just not real things. It’s really, and I, and they’re cool, and I, I mean, I like ’em, but it’s not, it’s not the thing,
RV (32:21):
Not the thing. So I love it. So we’ll link up to the messy truth is that so people can, can check out the book if they wanna learn more about it. Anywhere else you would point people to if they wanna connect with you.
AW (32:32):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the, the Messy Collective, which is the online community that I’ve just launched which you can get to by just going to ally webb.com or my Instagram, which is just Ally Webb and, you know, this community that I’m trying to create and foster for female entrepreneurs who are in the throes of building their companies and want some advice and community. And I feel really excited and good about it. So I’m, I’m excited to, you know, keep fostering that, that world.
RV (32:59):
That’s really cool, friend. Well, thanks for being so open about everything going on. And it’s, it’s your life is a movie. It’s going to be, it’s gonna be a movie. Your life is Your life is a movie. So I’m waiting for the, I’m waiting for the movie, movie premiered. Oh. I’ll
AW (33:14):
Be calling you to, to help me promote it. Don’t worry.
RV (33:18):
Yeah. So, all right, well, we’re, we’re cheering for you and we wish you the best. Ally Webb,
AW (33:23):
Thank you so much. Awesome.
Ep 500: The Mindset of Relentlessly Pursuing Excellence with Dean Stott
RV (00:02):
Every single month, we probably get about a hundred cold pitches for people to be on our podcast. And we say no to at least 99% of them. We usually only meet guests by people that we know personally, but every once in a while, there’s one that will grab me and I’m like, this is a no brainer. And this is one of ’em. And I am, so I’m just meeting Dean Stott, who you’re about to meet. We’re just meeting for the first time ourselves. But when you hear this guy’s story, it’s gonna blow you away. So he started out in the British Special Forces rose to the ranks to be in, you know, the, the kind of the, the premier in that whole world, right? He was in Special Boat Services. And then what happened is, after that, he got into private security.
RV (00:48):
He has evacuated people from Israel and Benghazi and like, I mean, this guy has been in the middle of like the craziest war scenes you can imagine. So he also is a world record setting cyclist. So fast forward here to a couple years ago and he rode, I want to get this right. So he began training to cycle the longest Motorable road in the world, the Pan-American Highway. He completed a 14,000 mile route from Argentina to Alaska. In May of 2018, he achieved two world records. He raised 1.4 million US dollars for mental health awareness charities. In the process, he passed through 14 different countries on this expedition, crossing some of the most dangerous passages in the world. And in the very final stretch, he continued for 17 hours and covered 340 miles on his longest day. So he then recently released a book called Relentless, just kind of sharing this experience, this inspiration, and I think the overall mindset of unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
RV (02:02):
And so I was blown away by a story. Plus I like having a lot of personal friends who are in special forces. And, and so with that, welcome Dean. I’m so honored to meet you, man. Thank you for being here. Morning, Roy. Thank you for having me. So I wanna start with what your dad told you Yeah. Early in your life because I am someone who I pretty much do everything to avoid physical pain. And so whenever I meet people who do the extraordinary physical feats, I’m just blown away. And you’ve, you, what part of what amazes me about you is you’ve become, like the number one in the world in three completely different, at least three completely different areas that are very competitive areas. But it started, the first one was this British Special Forces journey, and it started, and it didn’t sound like your dad was so much behind what you were doing there in the beginning.
DS (02:59):
Yeah, no, my, my father, he was in the military himself, which was quite shocking when I, I know, I, I always wanted to be a fireman. And I went through school went to college, and I decided that I didn’t really want to go through college. And I, I, I’ve always surfed since a young boy. So I went on a surfing holiday, which was supposed to be for two weeks, and it turned out to be six months. And this was long before the mobile phone. In 1994, my father found me working in a surf shop and sort of highlighted to me that I’d, I’d wasted my education and what was I now gonna do in my life. And so to silence him, I said, well, I will join the military. You know, I’d always wanted to be a fireman, but at the time, I think there was 2000 applicants for one job.
DS (03:37):
There was a huge recession in the uk. So I was not gonna get that, that job straight away. So my mindset was join the Army, do three years, get get what I can from the military, get some discipline, and also build up in the way I wasn’t the physique that you, you see nowadays, I was about five foot seven and weighed about 130 pounds. But my father told me I would last two minutes. It wasn’t the, the comfort and words of motivation I expected. And so for me, I was like, well, I can argue with my father all the way back home now for the next five hours, or I could just be silent. And the best course of action was action itself. So the Monday morning, I walked into the careers office and I joined the Army. But then my father, once he saw that I was being serious, he then started to get, get behind me.
DS (04:22):
But I never had aspirations of doing the Special Forces. My father was the the Ted Lasso of the of the British Army. He was the Army soccer manager and coach. So his career was very sports driven and not like special forces driven. So I didn’t really have an insight into that world. And in a very short period of time, within three years, I’d done every arduous course you could do in the military. I was a para airborne, I was a commando. I was a diver. And already in the tier two special forces. And then the next, the next option for me was tier one Special forces. And as you touched on in the opening dress, I joined the Special Boat Service which is your, your, the equivalent here is SEAL Team six. But I was in ar I was in the Army, and I was told I couldn’t go to the Special boat service.
DS (05:10):
It was just for the Royal Marines only. But unlike here where Delta Force and Seal Team six have their own training, ours is actually combined. And so again, I ignored them. I, I still put my application in and we started with 200 candidates, and then six months later, I was one of the eight candidates that was successful and the first, one of the first to join a special boat service. And I think now 15% of the special boat service come from the Army candidates. So again, yeah, there was a lot of times in my career and in my life that I was told that I couldn’t do anything and I just, just kept my head down or tried to keep my head down. As they say, they tell you to be the gray man on these courses. I was the gray man for about two minutes.
DS (05:51):
RV (06:29):
Yeah, I mean, I love what you said of like, rather than arguing with your dad, like you just take action. I like so many people, their first step is to run their mouth and like brag about all the stuff they’re going to do, or they tell everyone like, here’s the new thing that I’m doing. And they receive all this praise before they’ve actually done anything or, or all this resistance before they’ve actually done anything. Like that must be one of your core philosophies.
DS (06:59):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, yeah, as you said, they’ll run their mouth off. And some people don’t. I don’t think they realize what’s actually involved. And a lot of people, you know, I personally, I get a lot of messages from people I want to join the special forces. What, what can, what do I need to do? And they almost think it’s, it’s one pill, you know? Or it’s, it is 1, 1 1 one course that you go on. It is, it is an accumulation of, of stuff. You know, I’m not here now in front of you telling you my story because I did it in the last two years. It’s what’s I’ve done over the last 30 years to get here. And I think some people when they, they have the right intentions in their mind to do it, but actually when they realize how difficult or what’s involved, you know, and then there’s also things that can come in a way, you know, I’ve said it before, I’m gonna go do this, and actually something else happens and changes the course direction of my life, and then it, that doesn’t actually come to fruition.
DS (07:49):
So for me, I just think yeah, have it intentionally in your head. And also, I’ll give an example for some people say, I’m gonna run the LA marathon. I only only say that ’cause it’s next weekend. They have the intentions of doing it, but no one actually believes you until you’ve actually put a date in the diary or you’ve actually signed up for it. You know, that’s when I start to think, right? ’cause Once you’ve signed up for it, you’ve let the world know of your intentions, and then there’s that additional motivation to do it. Just talking about it, you know, you could keep talking about it for the next three or four years.
RV (08:20):
So, so this leads to a a, a question I wanted to ask you is, what happens when you sign up for something
RV (08:31):
And you have this moment where you suddenly realize it’s harder than you expected? Right? So, ’cause there’s the, there’s this like honeymoon period when you first sign up for something like, all right, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna run a marathon, or I’m gonna join, you know, special boat service, or I’m gonna be the the first guy to like ride 14,000 miles on my bicycle. And then there’s gotta be a moment where, you know, you’re in training and you go, whoa, this is harder than I, like, this is harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t just proving to my dad, like in the moment, like, oh, I was gonna prove to my dad. But then you get into, you know, training or whatever, there’s, you’ve gotta have had those moments. What do you do in those moments? Especially the first ones?
DS (09:15):
Yeah. Well, like, like the 14,000 miles, and that was in 2018. If I was a young 18-year-old boy, I probably wouldn’t have achieved that, you know? So when I was in the military, as I mentioned, I had no aspirations of special forces. But each time I went on a course, whatever course it was, I was physically getting stronger, but mentally I was getting stronger. And so I sort of took that experience in, into the next course and then into the next course. So I do, I, I always say you can’t be experienced without experiences. So my bike ride was an accumulation of everything I’d experienced in my time in the special forces for my time in the private security. And I just adapted that to that. So, so for me, I was confident that I could do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have put my name to it.
DS (09:57):
So for me, I think, yes, it depends where you are in your life and whether you’ve had experiences before that’s gonna help you with, with the new challenge. But I like to get out my comfort zone. So for me, I’ll, I’ll go back to the bike ride. I’d only cycled 20 miles before I applied for the world record. Wow. But what they did is I managed to get as much information as I could from books that I was reading. I spoke to the previous record holders. And I just literally used that information. I got the experts around me to help me. I knew that I could cycle. I knew I had the endurance and the mindset, and I had to choose cycling because I had a parachute accident, which ended my special forces career. So I had to find a sport, which, which wasn’t gonna hamper my knee. And so for me, I, I had been tested before, physically and mentally, so I knew that I just had to do that on, on a bike. But everything else, it was the planning, the coordination, the logistics. My wife ran all that as well around me for me. So also having a good team around you helps you as well. And getting, and getting knowledge of the experts as well.
RV (11:02):
Yeah. So I, I hear you on that, like sort of preparation, research and sort of strategic selection. What about, what about the moments though, when you want to quit? Or like, I mean, like you’re talking about building this mental toughness. Mm-Hmm.
DS (11:50):
Yeah, I think you have to, you have to have a motivation, which is personal to you. You have to be motivated to do, to do that. You know, when I was in the Special Forces, there was some guys there and they, they were there because their dads were in the Special forces. Oh, that’s not a motivation. ’cause When it gets hard, you know, it has to be personal to you. Why do you want to be it? Why is it, you know, when it gets hard, when it gets scary, you know, you need something that’s gonna, that fire to, to push you through. So that, that was that. But with the, with the bike ride, you know, we did it for, as you touched on, for mental health charities, there was 11 mental health charities that we raised the money for. And so I knew that one of the charities called Place to be the, they were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand pounds, which enabled 14,000 children to step into a school psychologist.
DS (12:41):
And so I would then revert that into miles. So every mile I was cycling enabled a child to do that. So there’s ways of tricking, tricking the mind. But actually, I, I never had pressure from the sponsors. I never had pressure from the charities themselves. I actually put my, it was my own pressure. I told the world that the ethos of the UK special forces was young, relentless pursuit of excellence. So how does it look to the world if I don’t finish this challenge? So I put myself under my own pressure, but my own motivations. But I also, that’s why I, I aim for the world record. So that’s why I applied for the world record. Sorry. So I had something to aim for, you know, in the military we’re very objective driven and target driven and mission driven. And so that was the mission.
DS (13:22):
And you know, I think after the first week I was 39 miles. The world record was 117 days. And I was aiming for 110 days because when I’d put all the planning together, looked at all the potential scenarios, it was natural disasters, coups, things that are out of our control. You know, you can’t control the uncontrollable. So I gave myself a week’s fudge. So should we encounter any of that along the way? It was eaten into that week. And I think the worst position I was in on the whole challenge was the end of the first week. ’cause We had such strong winds. I was 39 miles behind Target, but my target was still a week ahead of will record. And from then on, it was always gains. And so mentally wise, I was always in a, always in a good place. I was hitting the targets and I was now a ahead of target.
DS (14:06):
So I see people, other people doing challenges or doing, doing things, and they’re like, well, I’m 10 miles behind today, I’ll catch that up tomorrow. But you dunno what’s gonna happen the next day. You could have another bad day and then be 20, 30 miles behind. So that message with your head mentally when you go to bed. So I always say, stay on that bike, stay in that canoe, make those extra five phone calls at work. Make sure you where you are, where you are supposed to be at the end of the day because you are then in the right mindset and head space going in on the next day. You are not trying to catch yourself up.
RV (14:38):
Uhhuh.
RV (15:31):
I know that you have become perhaps what many would say is the, is the number one leading expert in the world in evacuations. Yeah. You’ve done evacuations in, you know, the, the highest stake situations you can imagine. Mm-Hmm. There you’re not facing pain as much as you’ve gotta be facing fear. Yeah. there is, you know, literally you could turn around at any second and lose your life. Yet you’re running into those situations. You’re going there repeatedly you’re thriving. How are you, what is your strategy for managing the fear in those moments of the, you know, the potential life and death at any moment?
DS (16:15):
Obviously there, there’s fear comes in all shapes and sizes. You can, there’s so many fears for me with, with this, I was confident in the plan. You know, I would be more fearful if I wasn’t confident in my plan or there wasn’t a plan in place. So the, the, the very first time I did this was back in May, 2011 in, in the Arab Spring in Libya. And I soon identified these, these largest security companies were charging six, seven figures, sums of crisis management evacuation plans, which weren’t actually in place. And that still seems to be a lot of the cases today. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market. I buried them between tuna and Egypt, and designed my own evacuation plans. And I put them in place. And then when your American ambassador got killed in Benghazi, I was there that evening and got an oil company.
DS (17:01):
And yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but where I’ve been successful in this is I don’t bring in westerns my own teams, guys that look like me. I use local resources. I use as many local people as possible. It’s understanding the demographics, the politics, and the tribal influences of the countries. So actually the success of the majority of mine has been down to local influence and, and support and sort of capitalizing on that. Because as you, as you touch on the Special forces, Hollywood doesn’t help matters. You know, what you see on the movies is called the offensive action. The bo the, the bombs, the bullets and the biceps. You know, that’s, that’s 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is, is support and influence its hearts and minds. It’s being embedded by locals actually understanding what’s happening on the ground, ground truth, and not what’s being reported on the media. And so that’s where the success has been for me. And that’s, and going back to your question reduces my fear because I’m not fearful ’cause what I’m seeing on TV, because I actually know what’s going on the ground, the ground truth, where things are happening. And we are probably one or two stages ahead.
RV (18:08):
Interesting. That’s fascinating. So you said 25% is bombs, bullets, and biceps, 50% is influence, you know, the support,
DS (18:16):
Support, support and influence hearts and minds. Yes. Small things just being embedded with locals, working with better winds, working with tribes in all these countries and really understanding, you know, especially for ex for example, Libya. Libya has 167 tribes. You, you know, I mean, you have to really understand the nuances with that. So when I had the the Benghazi incident, the easiest option would be to drive from Benghazi to Tripoli in about eight hours along the coastal road. But coming from Benghazi, you can’t get a driver from Benghazi to Tripoli. You’ve gotta go through Misrata to Tripoli. There’s various tribes along the way. And so what I did is I headed south to Zella. I had a safe house in Zella. We stayed there for 36 hours. We just actually see what was happening because at this point we still didn’t know what was going on.
DS (19:04):
We didn’t realize the American ambassador had been killed. And that gave us this soap period. But unbeknownst to the drivers, I had other drivers coming in from Tripoli. And so I could send those drivers home and use those. Because again, if you didn’t really understand those tribal in infants and, and things like that, you could, you get yourself in trouble. You could think, right, I can just drive to to, to Libya. So they’re, they’re the sort of things I needed to understand is what people can I use, who are the best people that are gonna help me get to certain areas? And when I evacuated the Canadian embassy from Tripoli to T is 18 military in four diplomats. My fixer, he was from ra, which was the border of Tuni. So he knew everyone along there, but also his cousin was the president of the GNC, which was the new interim government.
DS (19:51):
So it’s really just having the right people, the right key people. And also the key to me is it is showing respect to the locals as well. So the British Embassy, when, when I evacuated the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy got shot at, at every checkpoint the week before, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So myself and my fixer went out to the checkpoints. We didn’t speak to the guys with the guns, we spoke to the tribal elders. And we actually just sat down with, and we were just very transparent. We’re like, this is who we are, this is our intentions, and this is when we’re gonna do it. And they, they let us in, let us through. It is just because the British embassy decided to speed through without stopping or even negotiating. So a lot of it’s, you know, it’s just simple communication and respect.
RV (20:36):
What’s the other 25%?
DS (20:38):
The other 25% is probably
RV (20:45):
Yeah.
DS (20:45):
‘Cause You obviously, you can’t act on, on any of that without without the, without the information itself. So surveillance.
RV (20:52):
Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s almost like what you are doing also with like your bike ride you’re talking about. It’s like a lot of this is the gathering information and the intel on the front end. Yeah. Then, then creating a plan. And if you do that, then the last, it’s only the last 25% is like the muscle.
DS (21:09):
Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, one of the things we do in the special forces is I think that you guys in America, they call it a, a washup, we call it a hot debrief. So every time we came off the ground, whether it’s on operations, on exercise, anything we do daily before we clean our weapons, get showered, have food we do a hot debrief. ’cause It’s still fresh in your mind. And so as soon as the helicopter landed, we’d be off and the the ops officer would have us in. And it was three simple questions. It was, what worked, what didn’t work? And if you were to do that again, what would you do differently? And these are great lessons because each operation’s slightly different. So when I did the bike ride, I was getting information from books that I was reading and, and articles, but I wasn’t getting that critical information for my plan. And so I reached out to the previous record holders and I asked them those three questions and all their issues were in south and Central America, bureaucracy, languages, spares to the bikes. They all started in Alaska and finished in Argentina. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with a second half? Why not get address those issues early? And so that’s what I did. I turned it 180, I started in Argentina and finished in Alaska. And that, that was my plan, and that was literally from the information I got from them.
RV (22:22):
Wow, that’s wild. They were willing to, they were willing to just talk to you and share it.
DS (22:26):
Yeah. Which was a great, a great surprise to me. Yeah. It seems to be, you know, with the world records, you’re there just to set a bar, you know, you want other people to help. You know, I’m helping a young gentleman at the moment who’s wanting to beat the world record next year. And so, yeah. You know, for me, I wasn’t a cyclist. I dipped my toe in it just to, to prove a point. I started cycling at the age of 40. And so, you know, he’s a younger guy. And so for me, I was like, well, here’s the information, here’s what I learned. And, you know, hopefully you can learn from that. But there are other factors that you can’t control. Weathers, you know, when I went through Nicaragua, I think four weeks later, there was a coup, you know, there’s certain things that are outta your control.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So I’d like to talk about that for a second, because, you know, let’s say you do all the planning, right? Like you’re gonna launch a business or pursue some goal or dream, right? You do all the planning, you get all the surveillance, you get the right people on board, they go to help you, you then, you know, overcome your fear. You’re in the situation, you’re doing the stuff, but then sometimes there are things that just happen outside of your control. Yeah. There, like, you could do everything. You could do everything, right? Yeah. And suddenly there’s this thing that takes place that you, there’s no way you could have planned for, you didn’t plan for. What’s the mindset that you use in those moments to, to sort of deal with or reconcile and move past the things that happened that are like, that you didn’t prepare for that just were completely out of your control?
DS (23:55):
Well, there, there was a, the, I would use, probably use the bike ride as a good example. You know, I, I headed from south to north. I 10 days off the South America world record. My wife was the campaign director. My wife, you know, she, she’s the team. You know, I would talk about the success of individuals, you know, people would’ve seen me on social media, but it was the team around me. My wife was very much the, the lead for that. But actually we had a a, a RV and a four by four, which was gonna get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. Because coming from south to north, we were having to change vehicles at every, every border crossing we could get one from Alaska to Argentina if you crossed the Darien gap. And so my wife rang me when I was in Ecuador to tell me the vehicles hadn’t been loaded onto the shipping container.
DS (24:39):
So that was out of our control. But my wife and my pa and a couple of friends they drove, they flew over and they drove the vehicles 4,000 miles in eight days from Fort Lauderdale down to Panama, through Mexico and all the la Central American countries. Wow. So that was, you know, we didn’t see that, but we reacted to the situation change, and it kept to the team moving. I then get into North America on day 70, and I’m 14 days ahead of the world record. So mentally I’m, I’m in a good place. You know, I’m now in America. Everyone speaks my language, the culinary options a lot better. And my wife then rings me five times, and I think, you know, normally she keeps distractions away from me. I think there’s something wrong with our children. And she then tells me that we’ve been invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which was, which was nice.
DS (25:26):
No, prince Harry and, and Meghan. Wow. So I was like, and this was their, this was the charity that we were doing for, was for Harry, William and Kate. It was one of their charities called Heads Together. And I said to her, I said, that’s nice. She goes, no, you don’t understand. You are now one day behind. So going into that phone call, I was 14 days ahead, 10 minutes late, I’m now a day behind, because the last flight out of Alaska in time for this wedding was Day 102. So I had to change that I way that I cycled in, in North America. I had the luxury being able to cycle at night because in South America and Central America, it’s safer to be off the road. And so I I cycled North America. I had 17 days planned. I did an 11 and a half days.
DS (26:06):
I literally, I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day. We had 16 mile an hour winds in tornado. So it’s now two days behind. And there’s a, there’s an app on your phone called Windy tv, which is very popular with sailors and cyclists. And it gives you the strength and directions that the winds forecast for two weeks every hour. And so I just put pen to paper. I had to cycle 340 miles in the next 36 hours to miss the next weather window and just played chess with Mother Nature. So I was using what resources I had available to me. I picked up a 50 mile an hour tailwind in Cheyenne, you know, which covered 270 miles in 11 hours. And so that’s where I gained that time. And so, you know, the, the situation that the objective hadn’t changed the timelines had.
DS (26:52):
And so I got a week outside and then I got a in a town called Whitehorse. And I get a, a phone call from a friend saying, have you seen this guy who’s, who’s a professional cyclist sponsored by Red Bull? He’s already got free hover endurance wheel records. He’d come out on social media that day and said he wanted to be the first person to cycle the Pan-American Highway under a hundred days. So every time I kept hitting my objective, my objective kept moving. And so I was, I could have stayed on the bike and just, you know, come in at reasonable time, but I just, for me, I wasn’t happy. So I, I pushed myself even harder. I cycled I cycled for 20, 28 hours in the last 36 hours to come in, in, in in 99 days, 12 hours and 36, 56 minutes in minus 18 winds and snowing in,
RV (27:41):
It was what it was 99 days.
DS (27:43):
99 days. 12 hours and 56 minutes. So again, and I think on the, on the last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I was like, well, I’ll do 150 miles today, I’ll do a hundred on the last day. And we’re well in under a hundred days. I did the first 50 miles and we got to a a roadblock and they, they, they were like, you cannot pass. I, I hit the roadblock at noon. They said, you cannot pass till eight o’clock tonight. So they took eight hours off me. So even to the very last day, there were things that are outta my control. So I just, you know, the success of this was a, was having a plan, but also being flexible with that plan, just reacting to the situation changes. You know, for me, first question is, is anyone gonna die? No. Then we can always make a plan, get the kettle on, and we’ll make a plan. But yeah, that wasn’t, when I was back in UK making that plan, I didn’t factor this other cyclist. I didn’t factor tornadoes. I didn’t factor royal weddings. There was stuff that were outta my control.
RV (28:41):
Those dang royal weddings, man. I mean, you get invited to those things, they just screw everything. They just really screw everything up.
DS (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (28:50):
Well that’s so cool, Dean.
DS (28:51):
Yeah.
RV (28:52):
I so, so the book is, the book is called Relentless Ya. Where do you want people to go to like, learn more about you and the book and stay in touch with what you’re doing?
DS (29:02):
Yeah, so you go to my website, deans.dot com. You know, a lot of this stuff will be up on there. I’m on the normal social media, media handles Instagram and Facebook. And you can also buy the book either on the website or through Amazon.
RV (29:17):
And then if there’s somebody right now who’s listening, who is in one of those moments where like either they are experiencing pain, right? Mm-Hmm. They have a goal. They’re either experiencing pain, they, it’s harder than they thought, or perhaps they’re experiencing fear. There’s some threat that has showed up, or perhaps they’re just facing some, you know, outside circumstance beyond their control. Yeah. And you know, they’re sitting in that moment right now debating whether or not they should keep moving forward and sort of pressing towards the objective and towards the goal and towards the mission. What, what encouragement would you give that person right now?
DS (29:58):
I think what I used to use for some of my recruits on the commando calls when they were fearful on certain tasks that we were doing was anticipation is worse than participation. You know, your mind plays tricks on you. You think that is impossible. I’m scared. And actually, once you push through, once you leaned in and got through it, you look back and think, actually that wasn’t as bad as I thought. So that was probably my, my leaving comment for them.
RV (30:23):
I love that. I love that anticipation is worse than participation. Make the plan, take the action, have faith in the plan. This is so good. Dean, thank you for sharing your insights with us, brother. And thanks for the protection you provide and for the way that you push and, and, and challenge all of us through what you’re doing, man, we wish you all the best.
DS (30:44):
Thank you so much, Rory. Appreciate it.
Ep 498: Important Things to Consider Legally When Starting a Business and Building a Brand with Matthew Miller
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. So, so, so excited to get to introduce you guys to one of my closest friends, Matt Miller. And although I could literally spend the next 60 minutes just shooting the breeze with Matt, that is not the purpose of today’s conversation. So y’all, before I introduce you guys to Matt, I want to tell you what the premise of this podcast is all about and why you need to stick around. And then I’ll do a quick formal introduction. There are a lot of things changing in the legal landscape, and here’s what I know to be true. Most of us have no idea what they are,
AJV (01:01):
And so I have invited on a very, very knowledgeable wise individual to help us understand what it is that we need to know when it comes to protecting our business, protecting our personal brand, but then also just some things we need to know in the ever constant changing landscapes of what it means to do business today in the United States. So that is what today is about, which means if you’re in business, it pertains to you. So stick around. So now let me formally introduce you to Matt, formally Matthew, but I call him Matt Miller, who is a nationally recognized attorney and a legal advisor to businesses with a niche in healthcare companies as he lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Everyone has to do business in healthcare. But my love is that he has a focus on merger, mergers, acquisitions, private equity transactions, and general corporate law.
AJV (02:00):
I’ve been harassing him for months on how do you, how do you become my, my general counsel? I think eventually he will fold and say, fine, fine here. Here’s how we do it. But he is literally, when we say nationally recognized, he was named as one of the Bloomberg laws, 40 under 40, and being recognized as one of the nation’s most accomplished legal minds. He has been recognized in the best lawyers in America. He has overseen transactions ranging from a hundred million to over a billion dollars. That’s with a be. And that is why I have him come o come on the show today because I need someone who actually knows what they’re talking about to help us understand what is going on in the legal landscape today. So, Matt, welcome to the show.
MM (02:44):
Thank you, aj. This is amazing to be here. Are you guys a billion dollars yet? I think you’re getting close.
AJV (02:48):
MM (04:11):
Well, that’s, you know, like we said, broad questions are the name of the name, name of the game today, I guess. I mean, I, I think it’s amazing that, you know, a lot of people are getting their legal information off of Google today.
MM (04:52):
So what we do as lawyers is not just, you know, have the information in our heads and, and, and, you know, provide that to clients, but we try to organize and apply that information in a way that benefits the client. So I think with all that’s going on out there with, with the changes, and like you just pointed out, is it is an election year. There is is going to be potentially a change in the executive branch. There could be changes at the judiciary. There were certainly a lot in the last few years. There are changes happening at the regulatory level on the FTC side. There are changes happening at the antitrust level. There are changes happening in the small business domain. There are so many things happening. How do you get your mind straight around what’s important?
MM (05:41):
You know, what, what, what do I need to pay attention to? What is just you know, not applicable to me? And, and there’s a lot. So I totally see how it can be overwhelming at times for the small business owner. And, and that’s what I really would like to do, is help make that a little bit more accessible, make it a little more organized, make it a little more or understandable so that small business owners can go out and feel protected and, and have confidence in what they’re doing is compliant. So, I mean, I guess one of the, one of the areas I think, or I guess what I could say at the outset is, one thing that’d be good to like take off the table is that if you are a small business owner that is operating, you don’t need to really have your finger on the pulses of every legal, legal change.
MM (06:21):
I think you do need to be aware of a couple things. And those with, with, by and large, don’t change, right? So the typical rules around formation of your corporation, the tax rules around recognizing revenue and income those things, you know disclosures to your shareholders, if you have shareholders, how you treat employees, you know, discrimination, hiring and firing rules, all that doesn’t change by and large. But the things that do change, you hear about, right? And I, I think we were talking either before we started, or you just mentioned it, that we’ve all heard about the recent changes to the non-compete laws that have been proposed. And you, you’re right. I mean, the FTC, which is one of the agencies that oversees antitrust and anti-competition laws held a special session where they voted three to two to actually make illegal non-competition agreements for most workers.
MM (07:18):
Okay? Hmm. So this applies to both W2 employees and to consultants. And that’s a pretty revolutionary thing. And formerly you could apply a non-compete to an employee in most states. It just had to be narrowly tailored in terms of the scope and in terms of, you know, the geographic scope and then the duration of the non-compete. But what the FTC has said is that starting, and I, I, I apologize, I don’t remember the effective date of this, but it, you know, it’s not effective yet, but starting here in a few months, the proposal is that every non-compete would be defacto illegal in the United States. Now, there are a couple of exceptions to that. There’s, there’s the standing exception for if you sell your business, you’re not allowed to turn around and compete against the buyer. So non-competes in connection with the sell of the business will remain in effect, and non-competes for certain high level executives will be allowed, it seems again, with narrow prescriptions around duration and scope.
MM (08:19):
So that is one key area that has changed a lot, and it’s interesting to see that that happens right on the cusp of an election year. So you’re right to be mindful of those things. But I wouldn’t say that you need to be juggling all of this as a small business owner. You can talk to your tax accountant, talk to a CPA or talk to a lawyer who, you know or even if you have to Google it, and they’ll probably give you enough information at least, oh, ask an intelligent question
AJV (08:47):
Yeah. So on this topic of non-competes, like, just in case someone is listening, going like, okay, I hear this term tossed around a lot, but what does that actually mean? Can you like, help explain, like, what is a non-compete?
MM (08:59):
Right. Well, a non-compete is actually a it is a contractual agreement. It’s a restrictive covenant. Okay? So it’s a promise that you make as an employee or, you know, going forward a consultant that says that you will not participate in a business that is potentially competitive, or is comp actually competitive with the person or the company on the other end of that agreement? Right? So if you are an executive at a company and, and you’re privy to a lot of internal information, a lot of confidential information, then you go and leave that company and you want to start another business that your company will want to put certain restrictions around you to make sure that you’re not going to start a business that could compete and, and take away customers and take away take, take away business, take away employees to, to this new venture.
MM (09:56):
Mm-Hmm,
MM (10:48):
It goes beyond logos. You know, I think, you know, you talk a lot about reputation. It, it really is your, a reputation in the marketplace, or in other words, your goodwill. That’s the legal term for it. One way to really lock up goodwill is a non-compete. A non-compete means you can’t take that goodwill from one business and take it over to another one. It is restrictive. It is, it is in some cases could be deemed punitive. And so the law has always tried to reduce those and tried to make those reasonable and supported by consideration. But now it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, could be the law of the land. And now states have been doing this for many years. California has always made non-competes defacto illegal, and you can actually get in trouble if you try to enforce one in, in certain states. But the landscape is changed, is, is changing. And I think it’s important for brand owners to understand that it, this is actually a potentially good thing for them because it means that their, their goodwill is going to be protected and respected and not subject to unreasonable restraints.
AJV (11:58):
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because this whole concept of a non-compete or a consultant Mm-Hmm.
AJV (12:54):
It’s like, right. There’s a lot of different things there that probably was not okay when I was in that world just even six years ago. And today it’s going, no, like I could go do whatever I want with all of your competitors, but then also I wanna talk about it as the, as the owner, as the CEO, as the founder. If I hire a consultant, the last thing in the world that I wanna do is give them keys to the kingdom of everything we have built, and then have them also go call up John Smith, you know, my top competitor and go do it for them too. So I see how it’s advantageous in one, you know,
MM (13:37):
Out? No, no. You, you are exactly right. And it’s a very astute question, and I’m trying to get too in the weeds on this, but, you know, consultants, you can restrict their performance, right? Because one of the tests to see if someone’s an employee versus a consultant or not, is whether or not the company or the employer is exercising too much control over the service provider, right? If you exercise too much control, then they actually convert from a consultant or an independent contractor into an employee. And one of the ways that you exert too much control is, is having something that’s an expressed non-compete against a consultant. So they have or, you know, so you, you, you will see, you will see things like conflicts of interest policies where they will say that if you are working for us on this project, you cannot go out and work again, you know, work for a competitor.
MM (14:30):
While you know, you know, you know, while you have this information with, with us, that is, that is a non-compete that would be potentially struck down under, under the analysis the FTC is now putting out. So conflict of interest type policies you know, you have to really word those correctly to have them only apply, like while the service provider is providing services. And you really can’t have a post-term period of a non-compete. And so that is potentially challenging for the business owner and potentially liberating or freeing for the consultant. Mm-Hmm,
MM (15:43):
There’s lots of different ways that you can address this new liberality that consultants have under these non-compete under the loosening of the non-compete laws. But but yeah, I mean, previously consultants were the most subject to these kind of ancillary non-competes that were, were enforceable. Now they’re seeing a, a great lifting of those restrictions in their ability to go provide services after the consulting agreement is ended. So during, during the period of, of service, you know, a non-compete or some sort of conflict of interest policy that’s reasonably tailored, that’s probably okay. Mm-Hmm,
AJV (16:41):
So that’s interesting. So it’s kind of like with anything, it was, there’s this natural ebb and flow, right? You’re gonna have some release of some of these restrictions, but it’s very likely, very possible and probably in the, you know, business owner’s best interest to then tighten up some areas of contract or service agreements and other areas like, you know, confidential information and trade secrets, right?
MM (17:07):
And, and that’s, those are usually the information that, those are usually the terms that the business owners know least about. Yeah. And there’s not great forms that really cover they’re sort of broad based, you know, templates that are out there, but they don’t really address your unique business and your individual business and your situation, and they may not be tailored to your laws. Particularly trade secrets are operate under a wholly different set of laws than just typical confidential information operates. So those are kind of separate concepts. You know, I think something else to keep in mind is that non-solicit will still be enforced. So there are certain things that the law will allow you to continue to do that have been historically the way we’ve done business for a long time. And things like non-disparagement clauses, other restrictive covenants that prevent someone from leaving a company and then saying bad things about that company later down the road.
MM (17:58):
Those will all be those will all still continue as will just general releases when you, whenever an employee, employee leaves a company. And, and if, if, you know, if there’s a, if you get a release from them, those will be upheld and enforced so long as they’re supported by consideration. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (18:35):
Yeah. So it’s so interesting because, you know, on the one hand, you know, our former business was heavy on, you know, 10 99 and, and we literally had to like, you know, check every t dot every i for, you know, all the compliance things. And I wonder just like, how much of this is just to deter, right? Hiring 10 90 nines and kind of forcing everyone towards the more W2 environment Mm-Hmm.
MM (19:04):
Tax. Sure. Well, and, and there’s another thing to keep in mind too, is that a lot of companies will have arbitration clauses with their consultants, and you have to word that arbitration clause correctly. I’ve seen this a lot lately where an arbitration clause that does not have a carve out or protecting your confidential information means that you’ll have to go to arbitration in order to protect your ip. Right? Now that is difficult because you’re going into court where there’s not a judge that can give you an order that can allow you to do an injunction. You’re really in front of a binding judge. But that, but they’re not a court of, it’s not a court of law. It’s not under the laws of our United States and our federalist system. It’s more of like a contractual agreement between the parties to go to a commercial resolution Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:15):
And then you also mentioned the non-solicitation. So that will stand, so can’t solicit employees, can’t solicit clients. All of those things will stand, even though the non-compete will eventually fade away.
MM (20:30):
That’s right. Because, you know, that’s a restriction on on, on the, you know, not a restriction on someone’s ability to, to be employed and to go work where they want to work is different than the ability for someone to come and, and take employees from someone else. And now you, you can always generally advertise and, and invite people to come work for your company, and you just can’t do a targeted solicitation if there’s a non-solicit in your contract. And, and that will continue to be the case. But yeah, this is, you know, it, it, there’s a, there are also some changes happening that are relevant to the business owner in, in something, some things around corporate formation and reporting beneficial ownership. And I think, I think, you know, aside from the non-compete, there, there are some changes in the law regarding corporate information.
MM (21:24):
And, and that’s called the Corporate Transparency Act. You may have heard of it. This is a law that requires it, it was really put out for to prevent money laundering. And so people would companies were starting shell companies and no one really knew who owned these entities. And in order to deter fraud and, and in order to like cut back on Monday laundering and things like that, they have started requiring businesses to report their ownership. Now, it’s interesting because one of the carve outs or exceptions from the reporting obligation are large businesses or businesses with lots of employees. Those typically do not have to report their beneficial ownership, but small businesses do. And so this is one of those laws which is meant to target one group of, of individuals or, or, or companies or founders, but it ends up you know, having an effect on a d on a different class that they really intended.
MM (22:24):
A lot of people are still grappling with the requirements of the CTA. There are portals to register and, and to make reporting your information more efficient. Most people are not even aware of it, and there’s already a couple suits making their way up to the Supreme Court, hopefully about the legality of requiring people to disclose their ownership in, in these corporations. So that’s another development that if you’re not aware of it speak to your lawyer or talk to your even accountant would probably have some information on that. And then the the so,
AJV (23:01):
So on that note, really quick before you move on, so the Corporate Transparency Act is basically, so when you say small business, is this like under 5 million, under 10 million? Like, are, is it a revenue requirement? Is it employee requirement? What is it?
MM (23:16):
Yeah, I, so I think there is an employee requirement. If you have more than 20 employees then, then, you know, I think you, you fit into the large business. And I think that there’s, I, I can’t remember right now off the top of my head what the revenue requirement is. But we actually have a policy at our firm that any advice related to the CTA has to be run through a special team because it’s so new and it’s just so unclear what, what the process is. I mean, this happened January of this year, and now we’re just, just past April tax reporting season, and now people are starting to report for the first time. And
AJV (23:54):
How are people supposed to know about this?
MM (23:57):
AJV (24:30):
Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. So I just think this is so fascinating. I only knew about the Corporate Transparency Act because you told me and I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to tax law and corporate law. And I mean, there’s been two or three things that have come up here lately that I’m like, well, what, where did I miss the memo on that? And I am generally someone, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, I attend lots of webinars. I’m in different organizations to keep me up on that, and I’m still just like missing stuff left and right. And I’m just curious, for the average business owner who is head down in their business, who’s not checking in with an attorney on a regular basis and really only talks to their accountant during tax season, like, what are the repercussions for not doing this or not knowing about it? Like, are there gonna be penalties? Are there fines like,
MM (25:27):
Well, we don’t even know. That’s the point.
MM (26:22):
And if you keep that in mind, a lot of things that you think are the law, they could change because either they don’t align the incentives correct correctly, or they’re, they don’t promote efficiency. Hmm. You know, so that, that’s one of the things that’s, that’s cha challenging about the law, is that even when something is the law, like in the case of the non-compete that we discussed, that can change in a year or, or, you know, in, who knows, it may, it may come back and it may, it may be different in different states, but, but it, it looks like at least for now, that those are the two big developments this year are, is the change of the non-compete, which, which would be a federal law, meaning it applies to all states, and that a state could not go below that floor.
MM (27:07):
And, and the, the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires small businesses to report their beneficial ownership. I think it, if, if you could put that on the awareness radar of most of your audience and most of your listeners, I think then they can start asking the questions, well, what do I need to do? But in terms of the penalties for non-compliance, in terms of like, what happens if you don’t do it? You know, my advice would be do it follow the law, right? While it’s the law. But the truth is we don’t know because it’s so new. So even lawyers are grappling with these things.
AJV (27:41):
So fascinating. And part of why I wanted you to come on, because I think there’s just so much that, you know, unless you do have, like, you know, legal counsel on staff or accountant on staff, and most, I would say personal brands don’t, right? That this is a really hard thing to keep up with. So is there a place that if you don’t have an attorney that it’s like, oh, well, this is how I get federal updates or legal, like, does that exist? Like, how do you
MM (28:10):
Find this stuff out? You, you know, you know, unfortunately, it, I don’t, to my knowledge, there is no place other than having a lawyer to explain these things to you. There’s no place you can go that will give you legal advice. I mean, it’s, it there, the way that our legal system is structured and the way that our attorney-client engagements work, it’s very outdated. It’s very antiquated, and it, it, it, it, it’s not that it discourages the free full of information because you can get information and you can get people to help you. Like you can go to a conference, for example, Mm-Hmm.
MM (28:59):
You know, you know, about these changing trends, about these legal issues to the general public. Mm-Hmm.
MM (29:55):
I, I think the law firm model is, is really evolving from a, a fee for service institution to a, to a flat fee kind of project based or relationship based model where clients are able to get the information that they need based on their, their unique situation and, and not so much based on the billable hour as it has been in the past. And, and that, that is one big problem out there is that the affordability of good legal counsel, it’s hard, is not really available. Yeah. We don’t, and now, now there are legal clinics that are out there, right? There are, you know, there, there are services that will provide advice on a relatively budget basis but a lot of, a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs that are actually making revenue and growing and growing businesses won’t qualify for a lot of that support Mm-Hmm.
MM (30:56):
AJV (31:57):
Yeah. Because at the end of the day, well, first of all, it seems like there’s a gap in the marketplace that you should go and fill. So I’m just gonna give some encouragement. There seems like a, well, I, I have,
MM (32:07):
I have some updates I can share on that if you, if you want.
AJV (32:09):
Yeah. Yeah. But then also I think it is kind of one of those things of, you know, really it’s like, it’s, it’s the beauty of content creation, right? It’s like the whole premise of, you know, give away the what for free charge for the how. Right? It’s like, just because I know about the Corporate Transparency act doesn’t mean I’m gonna go and DIY the whole thing. It’s like, tell somebody for free, tell me about it, and then tell me how you could help me do it. Right? It’s, you know, welcome, you know, to year 2024 attorneys. So,
MM (32:41):
Well, I mean, there are actually, there are actually in, in, in the, in the, for the average business, there are really five journeys that they go on and, and the lifecycle, right? And it’s, it’s starts with, with the, with the founding or the formation of the, of the business. And then it goes all the way through to the exit of the business. And as the business grows and evolves and goes through these different journeys, I like to call them their needs change. And so it’s not just about having advice at, at the stage that you’re at, it’s what are, what advice are you gonna need as you continue to grow and evolve? Because it, it does change every time.
AJV (33:19):
Yeah. So it’s a great transition that I think would be really good to talk about is since you have such specialty in mergers and acquisitions I would love to just hear from you, like, what are the things that people need to know or consider? Like if somebody is listening today going, Hey, maybe I’m in the beginning phases. Maybe I’m in growth phase, maybe I am, you know, ready to exit, whatever they are. But what are some things that you see that make a business worth buying? Right. Because I think there’s a difference in I’m trying to sell my business versus someone who’s trying to buy my business. Right? Right. And I think we just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine of going, trying to sell your business means that you are trying to find someone versus someone who’s trying to buy it. So make it a business worth being bought. Right? Right. So, how do you make your business worth being bought? So since you’ve been through this, what are some of those things? Like what makes a business purchase worthy?
MM (34:22):
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, I, I guess the first thing is what you do in the early stages really matters at the end. Mm. And it’s not just, okay, now we’re ready to sell our business, let’s go to market. It’s, it really when someone comes to look at your business, they’re gonna do diligence on your business, and they’re gonna go all the way back to the moment that you formed your company till the present date. So things that you do in the beginning matter later. And that’s, that’s the first point. The second point is that, you know, the, the way you organize your business model matters a lot too. If, if you are going to be a services business, that is kind of one direction, if you’re going to be an ip business, that, that relies more on proprietary information and systems, that is another direction, right?
MM (35:06):
If you’re, if you’re gonna have a brand that does a little bit all the above, you know, that’s, that’s another business. And, and those businesses are valued differently and, and, and at the later stages of their, of their life than they are than the others. So not every process is the same, but, but what we look at when we’re trying to acquire a business is we wanna make sure that the risk is minimized as much as possible for the buyer. And that if anything was done that was not correct or not accurate you know, or not in compliance with law, that that risk remains on the seller. So you, you, it’s not like you can just sell your business and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I mean, the buyer will make sure that, that you are responsible and ultimately held accountable for that, and it could come out of the sales proceeds.
MM (35:56):
So it’s really in your interest you know, when the business is small and, and these things cost a few hundreds of dollars to deal with them now versus when they cost few hundreds of thousands of dollars later. And we see business owners have to put up large escrows large amounts of indemnification to offset certain risks and purchase price, price adjustments all the time because of things that were not caught early enough in the, in the process. So it, it’s really like, do yourself a favor. Save a ton of money later if, if you’re planning to ever exit by getting those things right today. You know, and I think as, I think really if you look at the early stage founder, one of the most important things that they can do is choose the right business partner. And I think that is something that often gets overlooked or, or not really fully appreciated, is that, you know, are you in business with the right person?
MM (36:53):
And does that person have the same vision as you? The same? Are the, are the skill sets complimentary? Are, are they gonna be able to take the business the long term? Do they have the same sort of goals as you, and, and, you know, it may be that they do initially and that changes over time, and that’s okay. I think it’s okay as long as you have the right documents in place. And that’s the third thing, is you wanna have, you know, the, the right business model, the right team, and the right documentation. And that documentation is really where the rubber meets the road, because say there is a change in the partnership, say there is a, a different direction that the founders want to go, and one founder wants to leave and the other founder wants to stay. And, you know, how do you negotiate that split? Because that is a very common that’s a very common scenario. Happens all the time. It’s nothing, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. It’s just you need to plan for that in some ways. Or at least you need to have mechanisms that allow that to naturally evolve without it destroying the business or harming the business. So that’s what we focus on a lot in the initial stages of the business.
AJV (37:59):
So when you talk about documentation, you mean like an operating agreement?
MM (38:03):
Correct. Yeah, the operating agreement. If you’re an LLC, if you are a corporation it would be something like a certificate of incorporation or a charter. Typically, we would organize businesses that want to raise capital. So if you’re a software business or a technology business, or you’re any kind of business that has a really high level of research and design r and d attached to it, you’ll probably, so if it’s capital intensive, you, you may need to raise money. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (39:07):
Why do they like ’em more?
MM (39:09):
Well mostly because they’re corporate in Delaware a lot of the time, and the Delaware corporate code is very investor friendly. Mm. Also for tax purposes, c corporations don’t have an automatic pass through. Mm-Hmm.
MM (40:15):
And you wanna protect the investors. So investors get a little, a little bit more protection in a, in a C corporation, but you can certainly invest in an LLC as well, like LLC operating agreements. Certainly can have investor provisions and they can issue units, common units and preferred units just like a corporation. They can even have you know, many of the same investor rights, hard is harder. And to, to make the same level of anti-dilution protections in an LLC as you get in C corp. And I’ve actually seen that a lot lately, or a couple times lately, where investors have been asking for anti-dilution protection, but it’s an LLC that they’re trying to invest into. And the way the partnership system works, because it is a pass through, it causes all sorts of issues from a tax perspective when you try to adjust for the varying levels of, of the company’s valuation amongst members in an LLC.
MM (41:11):
Interesting. So that’s one issue. And now it, now a lot of people have been asking about s corporations, and I’m not a tax attorney. But you’ll see people form S corporations or you’ll see ’em form LLCs and it’s Fast Corp, excellent LC and then right. And then file, then check the box, file a, it was called an 88 32 form election, which checks the box, and then they’ll file a 25 53, which is an s selection to essentially qualify for better tax treatment on their self-employment. And, and that’s fine if you are doing a consulting business or if you are, you know, just, you know what, what you don’t wanna do is start an operating company file an S selection and then go need to raise capital. Mm-Hmm. Because what you can’t be, if you’re an S corporation, is you can’t be a, you can’t be a business that has multiple classes of stock.
MM (42:07):
That’s one of the impermissible things in an S corp. And the moment you take investor money from investors, they’re going to want usually a preference or some sort of interest rate, and that creates a different class or different economic treatment on that stock. And that can invalidate your s selection. So if, if you’re forming an S corporation solely for the purposes of being a consultant and, and getting some tax efficiency on your, on your on your self-employment that, that’s one thing if you’re forming an S corporation because you want to be a corporation, but want to pass the treatment of an LLC but wanna raise preferred stock, that’s not okay. You’re gonna blow your s selection. So, oh, man, that’s one thing you can do correctly. And I’ve actually seen a business get all the way down to the end 10 years later thinking they’re an S corp and turns out that they had actually blown their s selection a long time ago, and now that’s a big tax bill that the company, the sellers have to come up with at closing in order to make the buyer comfortable enough to buy the business back.
AJV (43:11):
And not only that, it’s a very, make sure you form it correctly in the beginning. So it’s like really, like, you know, that old saying, start with the beg you know, start with the end in mind is
MM (43:20):
Like Yeah, yeah. Begin with the end in mind. Sure.
AJV (43:22):
This is such a great real life tangible business example of, I think a lot of people just rush to get their entity started, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (44:03):
My, my favorite one is that people will say, I just want to do the simplest thing. I’ll do a 50 50 J, I’ll do a 50 50 LLC. So an LLC with each member has a even share. And, and most people think that’s the most simple way of going forward. It’s actually the hardest way to structure any entity formation because it raises all sorts of issues around voting. And the impasse you, when you, if you don’t have an agreement among the 50 50 members, then you can have a real problem. Not a, not a, not, it’s a, it’s avoidable. It’s fixable. Yeah. But you, it’s, it’s one example where most people think they’re doing the easy thing, but in reality, it’s actually the hardest thing you could possibly do. So it’d be much better to do, just do 50 51 49, please
MM (44:54):
Ah, but people often will say, no, 50 50, we’re just trying to be fair and reasonable, not realizing that they’re causing themselves a whole lot of information of, of, of, of a headache. Because now they have to go out and get a buy, sell clause into their LC agreement. And if they don’t have that, then they find themselves at an impasse where they have to really negotiate amongst themselves how they’re gonna wind down the business or, or, or come over or make a certain decision that might be a, a different change of direction for the company. And, you know, the company needs to have a decision maker. It needs to have someone at the helm and 50 50 LLCs are not always the best for that. So
AJV (45:32):
That’s good. All right. Last question. I know ’cause we’re running out of time, but since you do have a lot of this, there’s been a lot of talk and my circles at least around the, the valuation of companies has like, it’s like an all at, at an all time market low. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. ’cause I’m not in the business of buying companies and I’m definitely not trying to sell mine, but can you give us any updates on how are companies being evaluated today? I heard the other day it’s like, you know, what was getting 10, you know, 10 x multiple five years ago is like getting three today. What’s true, what’s not true? And what do we need to know when it comes to getting, you know, a valuation on your company today?
MM (46:15):
Yeah, so I mean, the thing about valuations, good businesses are selling at great multiples. Good
AJV (46:22):
To know.
MM (46:23):
Okay. So that, that has not changed. But, you know, a lot of valuation metrics are based on the appetite of the buyer and what they are looking to do with the business that they’re acquiring. In the healthcare space a lot of companies, private equity companies will go and acquire a, a healthcare practice, a a medical practice, and they’ll pay the initial the, the initial practice will, will get a high multiple, and then as they go and add other practices to that platform they, they will pay lower and lower multiples in, in order to arbitrage or or average out the average multiple paid. And then with hopes of growing the platform over time and then selling that platform to, you know, a higher bidder. By the way, healthcare private equity is also an area where there’s been a lot of change lately and a lot of attraction from the federal regulators.
MM (47:22):
So that’s also another area, but not so relevant maybe to your, to your audience. But you know, that it, it, you know, multiples are a function of the economy. They’re a function of, you know, interest rates. They’re a function of a lot of different socioeconomic and political forces. But ultimately good businesses will sell at the max multiple. You know, and, and, and that’s something that just won’t ever change. If a buyer wants the business bad enough, and if it’s accretive enough to their organization, their revenue you know, their, their own reasons for wanting to acquire the business, you know, they will pay it. Mm-Hmm.
MM (48:28):
You know, and that really is market timing, right?
MM (49:25):
And that’s really where brands come into play, right? Because ultimately a brand, the way that the law looks at a brand is, it’s a trademark, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (50:15):
Mm-Hmm,
AJV (50:56):
Yeah, and I love that. ’cause It, it’s, it’s keep it simple. It’s like if you have a great business, then likely you would be naturally attracting a great buyer. And I love that. Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. So much wisdom, so much information and I love most of all that there’s nothing that you said that should cause anyone to get in a flurry or a panic, but nonetheless, we all need good resources. And this was a great resource for our community today. So thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show. And for all of you guys listening, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. And we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 496: Build Your Money Machine with Mel Abraham
RV (00:03):
Anytime we can talk about money and financial freedom and being more rich and abundant and helping you grow your business, it is a powerful conversation. And today is especially going to be that because we have my good friend Mel Abraham on the show. Mel and I have known each other for several years now, and he is one of the most genuine amazing nice individuals that I’ve ever met. And everybody who knows him in real life will say the same thing by trade though, he is a CPA and he is a deep, deep expert on, on the subject of all things money. He is a globally recognized thought leader. He shares the stages with shares the stage with 400 Fortune 500 companies. He speaks at some of the biggest public events in the world. He is friends with a lot of the most influential people in this space, and he understands online business, understands offline business. He’s also a cancer survivor, which was something that he endured like in and around the, the pandemic and went through some of his own financial, you know, kind of issues dealing with that. And he’s just an amazing, amazing, genuine human. So he understands our space and he understands specifically, you know, he’s an expert in, in finance and all things money. So, without further ado, Mel, welcome to the show, buddy.
MA (01:25):
Rory, it is so good to be here. Thank you for having me, man.
RV (01:29):
Man, I’m so excited about your new book. So, building Your Mon Build Your Money Machine, which I love the title, build Your Money Machine. This book is fantastic. It is. It has diagrams and tools and charts and tables. You do such a brilliant job of making it clear and simple, you know just helping people understand money. So I’m excited to talk to you. I I, I wanted to ask you, where did your whole journey start? Like, how did you get into money and like, what, what happened early? I know you, you talk in the book a little bit about some of your earliest, like money memories and how that impacted you and has really like, set the trajectory of your life. So I’d love to hear that.
MA (02:16):
Oh my God, thank you. So, yeah, I look, most of our money lessons are caught not taught. And, and I was no different. I, I remember my, one of my earliest money lessons was was seeing my dad cry for the first time. Now, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My dad came here at 17 years old with nothing. He came here to go to school and, and he fought to get here and built a life, you know, he was an engineer, you know, aerospace engineer. But in my life, I looked at him as this tower of power and everything. And here he was in tears for the first time that I’d ever seen him in tears. And I didn’t know the specifics. I just knew it had to do with money. It was my mom and him having a conversation.
MA (03:07):
And I hear my dad say, I just feel like I’m letting down and disappointing the people I love. And I, I, and that hit me. And I didn’t realize how much it hit me, but I ended up carrying this idea that if I don’t make enough money, you’re gonna disappoint the people you love. Hmm. And I’m, it, it became this, this chase for me, the, the challenge was obviously I was wrong,
MA (04:02):
And Jeremy, at six years old comes running in and says, daddy, daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And so I kneeled down to grab this picture and look at it, and there I am, and blue felt tip pen, a stick figure with two computer screens and a phone in each ear, and the one on the desk ringing. And that was a mirror into my soul. He, he in a moment looked at me and said, dad, you know, you, you may want the profits because it pays the bills, but I don’t want the profits. I just want your presence. And that’s, it was in that moment where I ki I kind of looked at things and said, how, how is it and is it possible for the dream to be an entrepreneur, the dream to, to build and impact lives, to coexist with the gift of being a parent, giving, being, being a dad.
MA (05:01):
Because I knew that no matter what my financial success was, if I screwed up and messed up the parenting part, then I was a, I failed. I failed. Mm-Hmm.
RV (05:46):
Yeah. I love that. Well, so, so let’s talk about that specifically in the context of entrepreneurs, because there’s a part of being an entrepreneur that is like, when, when I think of it financially, there’s like these different buckets, right? So first of all, it’s like I have to make a lot of money. Like I have to generate revenue. That’s a, that’s an important part of being an entrepreneur. Then there is I have to manage expenses and I need to not spend more than I’m making. Then there is whatever past I had, like the debt I came in with to being an entrepreneur in the first place. And so I have to like, resolve that. But then it’s like, I’m also planning, I also have to plan for the future, right? For like retirement. And, and then I have like my personal finances. So if, if I just think about like, the businesses, okay, we gotta make money.
RV (06:43):
We have to spend money wisely. We have to pay off debt that exists. We have to plan for the future, and then we have to like pay our expenses now. And like, it is freaking hard. Like just, just even saying that out loud is overwhelming. It’s going like, yeah, I do feel like I need to get back to work. Like to do those five things really well is incredibly difficult. And then you go, how do I do that in some reasonable amount of hours inside of a week where I can still be a present dad and, you know, mom and friend and not, not work all the time? ’cause It’s scary going, how the heck am I gonna do those five things? So where do you think is the, is the, is most often the first place to focus? So like you look at those buckets, there’s making money, they’re spending money wisely. There’s paying off the past planning for the future and then like, you know, managing our personal, our personal lives. If, if, if, if that’s sort of overwhelming to me, where do I start first or just, you know, in those various areas, what are some things that we can do to kind of get more control Yeah. Financially.
MA (07:53):
So before we get there, I think the first thing that we wanna make sure we have clarity on is our direction. And that’s why everything I think starts with life. What is that life vision? What do we want for the business? What do we, you know, are we trying to, like I look at the stage of, I, I’m at my desire is to impact people as much as possible and have as much reach. My desire isn’t to build this huge organization. And so, so we, we need to be clear that we’re running our race first, because the tendency, and I watched, I watched a dear friend of mine start hiring a bunch of people because everyone else around him was hiring a bunch of people, and he felt it was the thing to do. He was miserable until he skinnied it back down to a small team to do the things that he really wanted to do. And, and so, so I think the very first thing, whether it’s in the personal or the business, is to ask ourselves, what’s my race look like? What’s my finish line look like? Where am I trying to go and why am I trying to get there? Mm-Hmm. Because then we allow that. So that will inform the plan. The vision will inform the plan. The plan will determine the strategy. The strategy will dictate the tactics. And then there.
RV (09:09):
That’s so good. That’s so good too. Because like, if you don’t, if you don’t do that, you literally, you scroll on social media and you see Lamborghinis and Ferrari’s and private jets, and you’re like, oh, my whole life needs to be about this. And then one day you wake up, you go, I don’t even care about that crap. Like, I don’t want five houses, five houses sounds like a fricking nightmare to me. Like all the, all, you know, mowing five yards and cleaning, having five, even if you’re not doing any of it, it’s like managing the contractors. It’s like, what a nightmare. But yet, if you don’t do this deliberately, you get like swallowed up into this current, like this, this mainstream current of like, more is better, bigger is better, nicer house, nicer car, bigger, nicer vacation. And, and you’re like consumed chasing something you literally don’t even want.
MA (10:01):
It’s, it’s so true. Patrick Beda, I saw an interview with him and he made a comment, he said, when we were growing up, and he grew up not far from, from where I grew up. And he says, when we were growing up, we would see a kid with a new bike. And that became our comparison set where we’re looking at new bike, I kind of want the new bike, but now because of social media, the comparison set is the Kardashian’s new jet and starts to create this, this need, this desire. And that that’s the definition of success. But the reality is, is that your definition of success might be a tent in Montana. And, and that’s okay as long as it’s of your own hands, of your own doing. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that came out of the drawing that Jeremy made was because I had so many people saying, Mel, you have to get work-life balance.
MA (10:54):
But balance is a myth. This idea of a weight on one side, a counterweight on the other side, playing tug of war. And on average you’re balanced. And it’s like what we really needed was harmony. And harmony comes from intent. And I think when we become intentional with our life, with our time and our money, now we can direct it in a focused way to, to achieve the things that we’re trying to achieve. But too often we’re diluted in our, in our focus because we’re getting all, we’re getting barraged with all these messages, and we haven’t taken the time to define really what our lane is and what our race is
RV (11:31):
Gonna look. So when you define it, when you define it, like what, what does that mean? Does it mean like, I need to say exactly how much I money I wanna retire with, I need to describe exactly the kind of house I wanna live in, how many cars I want to have, what kind of college I wanna send my kids to, if I wanna send ’em to college? Like, what are the elements of going, this is what it means to be clear on the race that you’re running.
MA (11:58):
Yeah, so, so I look at it and I say, we’re gonna look at all the domains of life. So we’re not just gonna, so, ’cause it’s, it’s how we wanna live our life that matters. And then we put the price tag on it. So relationships, what do we want our relationships to be like? What do we want our family to look like? Where do we wanna live? What does our career look like? What is our health? So we, we define that and say, okay, what does it take to get there? Now let’s just be really clear. We can get as specific as we want, but we’re not gonna be exact. Because if I had that kind of crystal ball, then I’d be in a totally different business. I don’t have that crystal ball. So I look at things and say, where do I want to be in a decade?
MA (12:41):
Let’s just use a decade to start, because then a decade I can break to a five year milestone to a one year milestone, to 90 day increments, to action steps and projects. And it allows me to look at things through those eyes knowing that life’s gonna change. When, when my son was born, life changed. When I met my wife, life changed and things changed. And we have to revisit it. When my granddaughters were born, things changed. When I got cancer, things changed. So, so what we’re doing is setting a trajectory for a horizon to get us going the right direction and give us the boundaries that we want to operate within. And then as we start to live our life and we get closer to that time, we’ll refine it. And a lot of that refinement is realizing, I actually don’t like that, so I’m gonna put it away and I’m gonna just focus on this.
MA (13:38):
Like you said, I, I don’t own a ton of real estate directly, and part of it is I don’t want that lifestyle. I, the, the thought of having a bunch of properties and to manage it, even with a management company just stresses the hell out of me. I don’t want it. And so we tend to, to not do that. So the first thing is, is this is, let’s just figure out an idea of where we’re going. Let’s put a price tag a an estimated estimated price tag on it. So we kn we have something to go towards. Because the risk is if we don’t do that, we have no idea what the finish line is. And we don’t know how close we are, how far we are, and we have nothing to judge. So I just want to have something there. And every year, every couple years, you’re gonna revisit it and get more precise.
MA (14:28):
Then we can look at it and say, okay, great. Now I have an idea of where I’m going. Let’s look at where I really am. Because once I have those two points, my current reality, my desired future, we know the gap in between. Now we know the work we have to do. Mm-Hmm,
MA (15:19):
We gotta get a bigger shovel. We gotta get more income. And I think one of the biggest things, especially in a personal brand type of environment is that, is to ask ourselves, do I actually value myself? Do I actually own the value with conviction that I bring to the table because, and am I getting paid for it? Because that we grew up in this, the industrial age thinking of time clocks and time sheets and hourly rates and, and, and billable hours and all that stuff. Commoditize everything and, and cheapens it. And that’s the risk we create when we start to think in terms of a math equation, especially if we’re talking about expertise and personal brands and that kind of thing that we have to get away from that math equation. So one of the biggest, so how
RV (16:15):
Would you price it instead of that, right? Like how would you think of it instead of using like the math equation and is there a different way to think about it?
MA (16:24):
I look at, so part of it is, is looking at the, the value of the solutions you create. So for instance, in my world, what I originally started doing was I was A-C-P-C-P-M, still a CPA, I was valuing businesses to buy and sell, but I was also valuing businesses for purposes to fight, you know, tax, tax situations and litigation. Well, someone brings me in to do a valuation for an estate that’s gonna pay an estate tax at 40%, and I have the ability to create a value, you know, to come up with a valuation that supports a reduction of that, that tax by a million dollars. Me sending them a bill for a hundred grand is a drop in the bucket. And so I look at it, I started look at my business and say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna price it based on the solution that I’m providing more so than the hours it takes to do it.
MA (17:29):
Now, in some cases I got burned. In other cases, if you reduced it to an hourly eight rate, I got paid $10,000 an hour. You know, but I’m trying to, because the other thing is, I think it’s important for us to have the conversations with the potential clients. And, and in, in, in the frame of, of value, we don’t talk price without the context of value. It just, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t play well. And in the, the, the risk, I had a, a, one of the top tax attorneys, he, he since passed away in Beverly Hills. He brought me into to meet with a client, have the conversation, see if I was gonna be the one that they would hire. And then when the client says, how much is this gonna cost, I hemmed and hawed and I didn’t. And I, I hesitated.
MA (18:19):
And once the client left that the attorney Elliot looked at me, he says, if you ever do that again, I’ll never bring you another client. He says, you need to understand that you have a specific set of skills and expertise that you bring to the table, and you have to own them. The reason you hemmed and hawed is because, one, you didn’t own it. Two, you believe that it is your job to justify your price and your value to the client. He says, no, it’s your job to own your value. Put it on the table and sit there quietly. And the client is the client’s job to deal with it. And either they will or they won’t and, and leave it. Leave it that way. And so all of my pricing, other than government contracts, which required an hourly rate that I did all of my pricing was, was project pricing based upon what I saw the value of the solution was. And either they, they decided to hire me or they didn’t, and I was okay with it.
RV (19:16):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (19:23):
Yeah. And then, you know, and with, you know, post-cancer and all that stuff, you start to value time and, and, and your life. So I start looking at things and saying, how much of my life force is this gonna take away from me? Do I really want to get on the plane? Do I really want to do that? So, so I start to price things out saying, that makes it worthwhile for me. Now, is there a math equation behind it? Likely not. It’s, it’s me sitting back saying, I’m, I’m okay, this is the value of what, what I, what I can create for you and I’m willing to, to, to, to own it.
RV (19:59):
What if it’s not an empirical thing, right? Like it’s one thing to go, I can save you X percent on your taxes, or I can help you grow your revenue. You know, I can help you double your revenue, but what if it’s more you know, I can say, help you save your marriage or, you know, or like, I can help you get in better shape. I can, I can, it, it, it’s more per I can restore your relationship with your kids. Yeah. I, I get, you know, some of these like non non empirical types of scenarios. Is there a way to still do that, do you think? Or do you, is it, does it only work in certain environments?
MA (20:37):
You know, it’s, it’s harder to do it in there because it’s, it’s, it’s not as easy to quantify in, in that perspective. But I look at it and I go, the first doctor I went and saw for my, when they, they found the tumor was very flippant when we went in, he says, ah, it’s my bread and butter. And he just kind of, and, but he sat on the, on the original CT scan for 11 days. And I thought, and now he says, I need you in surgery right now. And I said, how is it that now it’s an emergency, but you sat on the CT scan for 11 days and I, so we made calls to different doctors and this, this one doctor came up three times and called his office sitting in the parking lot of the original doctor before we left. We called this doctor’s office. He says, we have an opening tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM do you wanna come in? And I said, yes. I didn’t ask the price,
MA (21:32):
I didn’t care. Now I was for, I’m fortunately in a financial position to not worry about it. But, but the solution was because I looked at it and go, this could be the death of me. You know, this could mean losing my life. And so I don’t know how to put a price tag on that. And so I didn’t ask the price, I didn’t look at it from that perspective. I just said, give me the best and I’ll figure out a way to make this work. Because the pain of losing life, not being here to live with my wife and my kids and the grandkids and all that stuff was too great. And so there was still a, a transactional analysis, even though it wasn’t monetary. It was, it was, it was still something. I looked at it and said, I, I can’t put a price on it other than the fact that I wanna be here.
RV (22:26):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (23:30):
It’s like, I’m, for my business to work, typically I have to be all in on the business. And it, it, it’s like having a baby, right? Especially the first five years. It’s like, it consumes all of your attention. So how should we, as entrepreneurs be thinking about retirement and, and are there any sort of retirement strategies specific to personal brands that you think that, that really lend themselves well to like experts, right? Yeah. Speakers, authors, coaches, financial advisors accountants, doctors, lawyers, like professional service providers, you know, people like that, direct sales, et cetera.
MA (24:38):
All right. I thought he would, I thought he wouldn’t bark, but
RV (24:41):
It’s all good. It’s all good. All good. We’ll edit it out. I made a note.
MA (24:47):
So this is a, this is a really important question to, to look at and to answer. The first thing that I, I’d like everyone to understand is that wealth creation is a muscle group. It’s, it’s a, it’s a behavior. Our ability to build that wealth is more about our, our actions and behaviors than it is about our money. So I’m not as concerned at the beginning, especially when you’re first starting out with how much you’re putting away. What I am concerned about is that we’re getting into the habit of putting something away. So, so no matter who or where you are, I just want you to put a little bit away and we’ll talk about where in a moment. But I, but I want you exercising the muscle. And so that’s, that’s one piece of it. The second, and I hear this all the time with entrepreneurs saying, I can make more money if I just reinvest in my business.
MA (25:42):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (26:46):
And so, so, but we set, we tend to just look at it and say, I can make more in the business by putting all my money back in the business. And the answer’s yes, as long as you can run the business and it can continue to run. But if that, if either one of those is not true, then you would’ve been better served to have a little bit put aside somewhere else to give you some cushion. And so that’s, that’s the, the foundational just philosophy behind it. I also look at things and say, I wanna build safety first, growth second. So my job is to keep, keep people safe. The way you keep ’em safe is, is to, to have some diversification, but also keep simplicity in it. You know, you mentioned all kinds of things, crypto and real estate and all that stuff. And you’re right, you’re trying to run a business.
MA (27:39):
You can’t learn about all that other stuff. And if you don’t have a passion for it, it’s gonna be hard to learn about it. So keep it simple. If all I had was 50,000, $10,000 to invest, you’re not going to buy a piece of real estate. At least you shouldn’t. Because again, we come back to risk. I can ba buy one property. If I have a bad tenant, a tenant that doesn’t pay someone I have to evict long-term, vacancy, bad repairs, all those things. I can’t carry it because I got into it and I don’t have safety first, growth second. And so I tell people when you first start out, let’s just keep it easy. I want you to put it in a diversified ETF or index fund. Buy 500 companies, 3000 companies. Make it easy. We know long term, 94% of the time in over 10 years or more, that that market’s gonna go up.
MA (28:38):
We’ll make eight to 10% in it. You have diversification, you have liquidity, and you’re in the game and you’re doing it simply. And if you’re not sure what to go into, you go into either an s and p 500 fund, a total stock market index fund, or you just turn around and do something called a target target date index fund. Say you don’t need the money for 30 years. You pick a 2055 fund with Vanguard or something and, and you just park it there and let it roll. There’s no, there’s not a lot of thought, there’s not a lot of analysis, there isn’t a lot of management, there isn’t a lot of fees, there isn’t a lot of expenses, but you’re in the game and the money’s starting to work for you. But it has to be long-term money to do it that way. And so that’s, and
RV (29:24):
That you can park that it started inside of an IRA, right?
MA (29:27):
Yeah. So I was just gonna go there so you can, you can park it inside of an IIRA. Now in the book, I talk about the wealth priority ladder, and I literally break down where you put each dollar, depending on where you are in that ladder. And, and so, so one of the things that we might do is early on, early on, if you’re not making a lot of income, we might have you put it into a Roth IRA first, because that’s gonna grow 100% tax free forever. You know, so, so early on, I wanna take the, the, the, the tax advantaged kinds of things, especially if I’m a low income bracket, low tax bracket. The tax deduction doesn’t mean a lot this year. Put it in, I’ve got a kid, 16 and a half year old kid who joined one of my programs. We had a conversation, 17 years old.
MA (30:23):
He says, he got, I got a job, what do I do? I said, open a Roth. I said, great. So three weeks ago we’re on a call and he says, I funded my Roth. I said, he says, I don’t know how to invest it, what do I do? I said, how much do you fund it with? I said, you’re still 17? He says, no, I just turned 18. So he’s 18 years old. He funded a Roth. And, and so I’m thinking he’s 18 years old. What did you put in it? 500 bucks, a thousand? And I said, how much you put in? He says, well, I fully funded 2023 and I already funded 2024. I go, hold on a second. You’re 18. You’re telling me you put 6,500 in for 2023 and 7,000 already for 2024? And he said, yeah, he says it helps because I’m living at home. But here’s what happens. If he just put it in an s and p 500 fund, let’s just say it grows at 8%, it will go up 107 times before he, before he ever get, you know, is at, at retirement age. That means that he’ll have $1.2 million or more without doing a thing. It’s in a Roth. He put 13,000 in, he gets 1.2 million out. He never pays a diamond tax.
MA (31:35):
And, and so at the very beginning, if I have low income and I’m eligible, ’cause there’s income limits for Roth, I’m probably gonna tell you to put it in a Roth. Take the tax advantage, have it tax free down the road, then you’re not not worried about it. Then as the income grows and we do, we have more income in the business, we might put a solo 401k in to get more because the Roth is limited to 7,000 bucks. Now but if I put a solo 401k in, I can put 23,000 and if I put a profit sharing piece to it, I can put up to 69,000 or so in there and more if I’m over age 50. So the, there is a, just like a recipe, you need to know the ingredients, the amount of the ingredients, and the timing in which to do it. So there is a hierarchy that I break down that literally says, if you’re here, this is what you do. If you’re here, this is what you do every step of the way. Because every dollar that comes into our life must have a job description before we earn it. If we want it to do the things intentionally, like we talked about the way to, to get us to the goal, we want
RV (32:45):
IEA budget and a plan or just a plan for that dollar. It’s a plan where, where it’s going. Yeah. A, a, a plan. Well, so that is, that’s why you need this book. You also building your money, build your money machine. And like I told you, like Mel has a knack for making it simple, breaking it down, the visuals, the ladder, the, this kind of stuff is super duper helpful and straightforward. So where should we, where do we want people go, Mel, to buy copy of the book and connect up with you?
MA (33:15):
I’ll go to your money machine book.com and you can, you can, you’ll see the, the links there to different booksellers in the uk in Australia, Canada, us You can buy the book, come back, give, give us the receipt and we’ll, I’ll give you some, some other wealth resources and gifts to help accelerate your path to financial freedom. And some additional trainings around, around that and resources. So, so yeah, that’s, that’s where they do
RV (33:44):
It. I love it. Your money Machine book.com. Mel is also a brand builders group client. So if even if you don’t wanna buy the book, you should go to your money machine book.com to see how he’s got his page structured and he’s given away some killer incentives for pre-ordering his book which are super duper valuable. And Mel, I’m so grateful for you, man. I, I, I’m grateful for your friendship and just for your partnership and, and letting us speak a little bit into your life and you speaking into ours today. Brother. We’re praying for you and your family and all the clients you help and, and we just wish you all the best.
MA (34:19):
I appreciate you, my friend. It is, it has been a journey and it’s good to have you on, on the journey with me.
RV (34:24):
Thanks, buddy.
Ep 494: How To Protect Your Personal Brand with Autumn Witt Boyd
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. So excited to get to interview a newer friend of mine, autumn Whit Boyd. And although we are just getting to know each other over the last several months we actually have a long history in common that we discovered at a Christmas party where her husband and I grew up in the same hometown, which Dalton, Georgia is a pretty small hometown, very small, so
AJV (00:52):
So we’re gonna be talking about different things you need to know in terms of maybe trademarks, copyrights, just intellectual property in general, but then also it’s in the litigious environment that we tend to live in here in the United States of America. What do, what do you need to know that you don’t know? And so, again, this is kind of one of those episodes that doesn’t matter where you’re at in your journey, this is going to be helpful for you. It does not matter if you are a beginner or you are super established. I promise you, there is something that you’re like, oh, I’m so glad I listened today. I had no idea. So this is one of those episodes you wanna stick around for. So let’s me formally introduce you to Ms. Autumn with Boyd. So Autumn is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which in my opinion is really a law firm really built for personal brands.
AJV (01:47):
Now I’ll let you define that in a second, but I think that’s really important because I think that you have a really cr you have created a really unique niche in the market that you cater to the individual, the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the small business owner who also has some sort of, you know, personal brand as a part of their business. And anything from contract templates to custom built contracts, to just even strategy on your ip, which is one of the things we’re gonna talk about today. This is a really unique business model that you have created to cater to people like me and everyone listening today. So to help them get to know you a little bit, I would love to hear from you, how did you create this niche in the marketplace? Because it is different than most other attorneys and other firms that we have met, that we have talked to over the years, because you have a deep knowledge in the personal brand space. So how did that happen?
AWB (02:50):
Absolutely. By accident. It was not a grand plan. I quit my last job, hopefully we’ll never have another one. And started this firm in 2015. And I tried a couple different things. I tried working with startups. I tried working with creative, more creative entrepreneurs service providers. And what I found is I tried lots of different things, was that my favorite people to work with were these personal brands, mostly folks selling either education products, doing speaking a lot of coaches. So all of them had a deep mission at the kind of core of their business. So they wanted to build something bigger than themselves. They wanted to have an impact. And they were just energetic and creative and fun to work with. My background was as a copyright litigator, so I used to go to court and mostly worked with photographers and stock photo agencies.
AWB (03:42):
So I have a deep knowledge of copyright. And what I found was for these personal brands, you know, I ended up building a team that we can really do everything they need. The good news is the business model is fairly simple, even as it scales now, as it scales, the complexity of some of the legal needs becomes more significant. But you know, in the beginning there’s not a lot of revenue streams, there’s not a lot of moving parts and pieces. So it’s easy for us to come in and really make a big impact with not a huge amount of, you know, legal spend or a lot of you know, complex legal protections.
AJV (04:19):
Yeah. So that’s a great opening to this conversation, and I love that you went to, like, you were in litigation for different copyright. Like yeah, that’s one of the biggest things that I think our audience, it’s just unaware about. And I think it’s, ’cause it’s one of those things where there’s just a lot of nuance to what can you copyright, what do you trademark, but what should you copyright? Yes. Or what should you trademark? So can you just like, define it, like what’s the difference between a copyright and a trademark?
AWB (04:51):
Yes. So we’ll dig in. So when we think about copyrights, think about content. So if you have a curriculum or a framework, things that you teach, a signature talk that you give all of that is going to be protected by copyright. Also, things that you think of more as like true art. So photos, sculptures, paintings, movies, music, all of that is covered by copyright. When we think about a, a trademark, think about a brand. So it could be your name if you are the personal brand, we certainly have helped some of our clients register their names as trademarks. Often it is the name of a signature concept, or it could be the name of a business. If you have a signature course or offering, it could be that name, it could be a podcast name. Anything you think of that is attached to your company. So the purpose of a trademark is to help customers find you basically, and to know that when they find you, you are the thing they were looking for. So in a more traditional corporate sense, think of like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. Like those are big, big brand names. So you know, when you get a Coke off the shelf, you know what you’re getting because it has that Coke branding on it.
AJV (05:56):
Oh, that’s a really great distinguishing factor. And I love how simple that is. It’s just like copyright is content, right? Yeah. And I think, and I love too, it’s like it’s, it’s, it’s art is considered into like photos and anything like that, but it’s the, the creation, right? So it’s what have you created, whereas trademarks or anything associated with the brand, so your name, company name, curriculum names, so titles, yeah. And ultimately helping define that you are who you say you are and helping other people find you.
AWB (06:29):
Yeah. There’s a little bit of overlap when it comes to logos. So think of like, Mickey Mouse is my favorite example here. You know, that is a creative work, but it also signifies the Walt Disney brand. But for most of the people in our space, you’re not really gonna have a lot of overlap. Logos are
AJV (06:46):
So it’s interesting. So then with all of the people that you have worked with, like what do you think people should be like in our space? Right? So most of the people listening to this are in some sort of content creation Yeah. World, whether it’s you’re writing books or creating speeches, or you have coaching programs, consulting programs, or you’re just trying to come up with methodologies and frameworks for your existing business, right? So what should we be thinking about when it comes to, well, what should I go and get, you know, a trademark for what should I try to get a copyright for?
AWB (07:20):
Yeah. And I forgot to give my standard disclaimer, aj, which is, I’m a lawyer, but this is not legal advice, so I’ll plug that in. And I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to trademarks. So I really think for personal brands, the folks who are listening probably don’t need a lot of registered trademarks in their business. So what we usually recommend, we’ll kind of take an inventory when we start working with a new client, you know, what are the different brands you’re using in your business? And we’ll look at them and we try to prioritize what is making you money
AWB (08:04):
But usually there’s one or two that bubble to the top of like, oh, if someone copied this, you know, it would really confuse my audience. Or like, I would definitely lose sales. So we kind of prioritize it that way. Is it making you money? Number two, are you going to stick with it for a while? Because in the United States, the trademark registration process is expensive and it takes forever
AWB (08:53):
So I wanna make sure that you’re gonna stick with it long enough that waiting that time, spending a couple thousand dollars, usually if you’re working with a lawyer on a trademark registration, it’s not cheap. And you wanna do it the right way, very easy to mess up on your own. So I wanna make sure you’re gonna stick with it long enough to see some benefit from having that r in a circle. And then the last thing I always ask is, you know, would you be upset if it were copied? So sometimes there are things that aren’t necessarily a money maker, but they’re just very personal or you feel really attached to them. And so maybe it is, you know, if you do have the you know, extra funds in your business, it may make sense to register that just because you would be, you would feel very violated if someone else copied it.
AWB (09:36):
Mm. And what a trademark registration does for you, it gives you an easier way to enforce your rights. So if you’re not willing to send a cease and desist letter, if you’re not, if you don’t want to kind of become a little bit combative, now you don’t have to file a lawsuit, but to maintain a trademark registration, you have to enforce it. That’s one of the requirements. Or it will just basically become worthless. So you have to be monitoring the mar marketplace, seeing if anybody else out there is starting something similar. You gotta keep your eyes out. And then, and we do that for a lot of our clients and then you know, take appropriate action. So send a cease and assist letter or try and figure out, you know, can we coexist in this marketplace? Can you stay in your lane and I’ll stay in my lane? So the getting the registration is really just step one of a much longer process of protecting that brand. Yeah.
AJV (10:25):
So that’s a really good conversation. So registration is step one. ’cause You may not even get it right. Right. You may apply for it and be denied, but assuming you do get it, that’s really step one because then you have to have things in place to monitor the marketplace to see if any else is using it. And then you actually have to be willing, right. Both in emotion and in dollars Yes. To actually enforce it. So, and I love those questions. You said it’s like, Hey, is it making you money? Are you gonna stick with it? And would you be upset if somebody else was using it? And if the answer is yes to all of this, it’s gonna be a couple thousand dollars and a year and that stuff, or
AWB (11:02):
More, it could be two or three years depending on kind of some of the speed bumps that you may come across.
AJV (11:07):
Yeah. But they approve based on date of application date of when it was in use. How does that work?
AWB (11:14):
So there’s two ways you can file an application in the United States. One is you’re actually using the trademark. So that’s called an in use application. Those go the fastest. But you can also file an application if you’ve got an idea or something you’re planning to launch in the near future. And that’s called intent to use. So you go through the process and then you kind of hit a speed bump and you still do have to show you’re using it. So you can’t get to the finish line, but it will put you ahead of the line of somebody who comes after you to try and apply. But in the US it, the, the rights are all based on use. So we have what’s called a race system. So it’s a race to be the first to actually use your trademark in connection with selling something. So it’s not enough to just have a landing page up or a coming soon. You have to actually be using it in commerce.
AJV (12:01):
Yeah. So this is so
AWB (12:02):
Interesting. So it can get tricky.
AJV (12:04):
This is so interesting. So I have a question. So what about ’cause you mentioned slogans, but like, what about quotes? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (12:15):
It can be. If it’s something now it has to be used in commerce and you have to prove that to the US patent and trademark office. And they have specific ways they wanna see you using it. So it has to be used kind of near where you’re selling something. So you’d have to use it on a sales page or you know, in a brochure that has a way that you can call and buy something. There’s different ways, but they’re always looking for you to use it in like an advertising or marketing way. It can’t just be, I say this thing on my podcast a lot.
AJV (12:43):
What if it was something that makes sense? What if it was something in your book?
AWB (12:47):
Yeah. So you’d have to show that you’re using that quote, not just in the book. It would have to be featured in, you know, again, like a pull quote on a sales page or something. Yeah.
AJV (12:58):
Interesting.
AWB (12:58):
It’s very strict. They’re very stringent. This is why a lot of applications get denied. And that’s why I always say, you wanna work with a trademark lawyer who knows what they’re doing
AJV (13:06):
To have it in the right and necessary places, but really they wanna see it. How is it being used for commerce?
AWB (13:12):
Yeah, exactly. That’s what trademarks are all about. Copyright, you know, it could absolutely be in the book and be protected, but it has to be you know, a a quote would be too short to be protected by copyright. It has to be considered a, a work.
AJV (13:26):
Fascinating. Does that
AWB (13:27):
Make sense? Yeah.
AJV (13:28):
So what, what do you see are the biggest mistakes that people are making when it comes to copyright and trademark?
AWB (13:35):
So, on the trademark side, since we’ve been talking about that, the biggest one is choosing a brand and then not checking to see if anyone else is already using it. Because again, we’re a race system. So if somebody else, you know, you come up with this really great slogan or brand idea, someone else is already using it. It doesn’t matter if they stay very tiny and you, you know, achieve this great success and huge exposure, they would still have what’s called priority. So they, they win the race, they could come after you, you know, years later after you’ve really built that brand invested time and money into promoting it. Okay. So, so we always wanna start with a nice, fresh, clean brand that is really just yours that you can own.
AJV (14:19):
Agreed. So what should people be doing to go, oh shoot, is my stuff already being used out there? Like, where’s like the safest place to check? How would we do that?
AWB (14:29):
Yeah, so I usually recommend a couple. You can do these on your own. Now we have a paid tool that we use at the law firm. So if you wanna register your trademark, we’ll do a deeper search. But you can absolutely do it on your own. I always start with a Google, but go to like page five or six, like do a deep Google check any social media platforms that you may be using. So if you plan to be on LinkedIn, go check LinkedIn and see if that brand pops up when you search. Same if you intend to start a podcast, go check the podcast players, type in the brand, see what pops up. And then also the US Patent and Trademark office. But there are so many unregistered marks that could still cause you problems because in the US you can have what’s called common law rights, even if you never register your trademark.
AJV (15:12):
What’s that?
AWB (15:14):
So it just, it, you can file a lawsuit, you can take action to protect your brand, even if it’s not registered. It’s a state law, right? So it’s not quite as strong as, you know, the federal rights that you get when you register your trademark. There’s definitely advantages to registering. But there are people out there with common law rights that can cause you problems. So again, that’s why we wanna make sure we search and we see it’s not just the registered ones that could cause us problems.
AJV (15:41):
Yeah. So back to this litigious environment where anyone can file a lawsuit for anything for any reason.
AWB (15:48):
Correct.
AJV (15:49):
Yeah. That’s, thanks Americans that is that is definitely something to be on the lookout for pros
AWB (15:56):
And cons for sure.
AJV (15:57):
Yeah. And I, and I love that it’s like, do a Google search, you know, go through podcasts, right? Search, you know, apple, iTunes clearly the US Patent and Trademark office social media platforms what about Amazon? Like, should we be searching like Amazon for book titles, or does that really matter?
AWB (16:16):
So a single book title is never a trademark. Okay. But if you’re doing a series of books that can, because book titles are generally, you know, not really a brand when you think about if you’re looking for something Sure. Yeah. But if you have a book and a course that goes with it, or if you have a book and you know, a workbook or a series of things okay. That can’t, now there there is confusion among book titles, but I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed if you search up a book title, there may be five different books with the same title. That’s pretty frequent.
AJV (16:45):
Yes. Or I usually don’t just like one word different. Yes. Yeah.
AWB (16:48):
I usually don’t worry too much about that if the plan is just to make it a book. Okay. Now, if you’re planning on making it a, a big brand, you may wanna consider choosing a different title ’cause you don’t want that confusion.
AJV (16:58):
So I wanna be clear really quickly. So using my husband as an example, who has his first book Take The Stairs, which was a, a New York Times bestselling book. So you’re telling me right now if some other person today decided they wanted to write a book called Take the Stairs? They could. And it’s not a big, like,
AWB (17:18):
It’s not a violation of any rights. Yes, I know.
AJV (17:22):
But we have
AWB (17:23):
Authors don’t like that
AJV (17:24):
AWB (17:34):
Not for a book title. Book titles are, are generally never a trait. But if he has other things connected to it that could be become a brand. Like does he have a signature talk or like handouts or, yeah, so usually there’s like a, a universe that grows a, around something when it’s
AJV (17:53):
Fascinating
AWB (17:53):
A slash like that.
AJV (17:54):
I think this is a really unique and important topic for our, the brain
AWB (17:58):
Vendor for sure.
AJV (17:59):
Right.
AWB (18:06):
Like a freebie. And a lot of people do this in publishing now. You know, you buy the, you buy the book early, you get some sort of online resource. Yeah.
AJV (18:14):
I
AWB (18:15):
You’re very familiar with that, aj.
AJV (18:16):
I know that and that’s why I’m asking. ’cause I just like, out of all the things, like this is something, it’s like, hey, it’s like if you’re gonna write a book, then you need to make sure you have, you know, the coordinated keynote speech to it. You wanna have some sort of like, Hey, free download it, you can get ahead. Yeah. And they, and they all need to have the same title. Correct. And then in that regard, if you had your, now it’s
AWB (18:34):
A
AJV (18:34):
Brand. Now it’s a brand. So now we can go and try to trademark trademark it. Yes.
AWB (18:38):
Exactly. Yep.
AJV (18:40):
Y’all deal. And this is always
AWB (18:41):
Something, a big deal, and this is always something I negotiate when my clients get book deals, is making sure that they own the trademark to the title. Because that is not something that most publishing companies think about.
AJV (18:51):
Yeah. But that is a huge deal.
AWB (18:53):
It’s a valuable asset for sure.
AJV (18:55):
Yeah. If you’re gonna publish this book, then we need you to at least publish this free workbook that’s three pages that goes with it and have your keynote title the same thing. Now we have a brand, now we can go trademark it. And that’s a really
AWB (19:09):
Important thing. And now you can exclude other people. Yeah. Yeah.
AJV (19:12):
That’s so nuanced, but so vitally valuable for every single person who has listened to this, who goes, one day I wanna write a book. ’cause We do this thing. So we have what we call the five title tests. And a part of those tests is, one of them is the availability test
AWB (19:47):
I Yeah, no, I agree. I would avoid it. Yeah.
AJV (19:49):
Find, find a new title. But ultimately if it’s just that somebody else could go, no, I’m gonna go for it, I’m taking it. It’s true.
AWB (19:57):
Yeah. If you’re really connected to it. Yeah.
AJV (20:01):
But that’s a big deal. Yeah. You know, our whole thing is like, Hey, if they’re already taken, let’s find something that can be unique. No,
AWB (20:08):
I agree.
AJV (20:09):
I agree. For sure. But somebody could on their own go, wow, they don’t even have a website, they don’t have a podcast, they don’t have a thing, they don’t have anything else. I’m going for it and I’m gonna take it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (20:55):
Yeah. So when we think about most of those things, they’re gonna be protected by copyright, not trademark. And we, we’ve all probably heard you have automatic copyright protection as soon as you create a work. If you haven’t, good news, you have automatic copyright protection. As soon as it’s out of your brain, it has to be in a computer document or written or something. But in the United States, you cannot file a lawsuit until it’s registered. So it’s kind of the, the opposite of with trademark, you don’t have those common law rights. So if you have something, again, that’s a really key asset in the business, a signature course, a signature talk, something that would really have an impact. If someone copied it, we highly recommend registering that with the US Copyright Office. And it doesn’t mean you’re ever gonna file a lawsuit, but if you did have to send that cease and desist letter, you know, if I get a cease and desist letter and I check and it’s not registered, I’m like, I’m not really worried about it because I know they can’t really do anything. They, you know, it’s kind of an empty threat. Yeah.
AJV (21:51):
So that’s interesting.
AWB (21:52):
The good news is the copyright process is much simpler than the trademark process. So, and it’s really it’s almost the opposite. So with trademarks, they’re giving you a monopoly on that brand. So they’re very, they make it very difficult. It’s very hard to get through that process on copyrights. They want to encourage creativity. So the process is much simpler. I would still recommend working with an attorney, but if you want to try and DIY it, it’s pretty forgiving if you make mistakes.
AJV (22:18):
So what are some examples of things that people should get a copyright for?
AWB (22:23):
So an online course or curriculum? I have seen people do keynotes. Podcasts are hard to do because it’s episode by episode and that’s just a slog. It’s a lot of work and time and money books for sure. And if you’re working with a publisher, they may take care of that for you. They may not. That’s something to check your contract on whose job that is. But definitely, definitely a book. I’ve registered the copyrights to entire websites, especially if they have a, you know, a rich, you know, history of blog posts or really good content. Wow. so again, the analysis is, is it valuable to your business? Would it impact you if it was copied?
AJV (23:04):
That’s fascinating. So again, everyone who’s listening courses, books, yeah.
AWB (23:10):
We register a lot of courses. Yes.
AJV (23:12):
Yeah. And, and that’s a lot. The thing that,
AWB (23:14):
Yeah. The thing I will say, though kind of on the the flip side of this, people often ask, you know, how can I stop someone from copying my course? You can’t, you can’t actually stop someone. You can set yourself in a good position so that if and when it happens, you know, you can take action. But I usually tell people, don’t worry too much about it being copied. You know, go ahead and put some protections in place and then kind of put your blinders on. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:48):
That’s right.
AWB (23:48):
It’s not just that they wanna learn about Facebook ads or they wanna learn how to garden or whatever the thing is that, you know, you’re teaching about. So it’s very hard for a competitor to just copy your content and have any kind of impact. Yeah.
AJV (24:00):
And I love that you said that. ’cause That is so true. It’s like they could go learn this anywhere else. They’re coming to you because they wanna learn it from you. Right. Right. And I love that you said that there’s a time and a place to go, Hey, let’s, let’s be wise and protect the things that are valuable assets that make you money, that have meaning to you, that, you know, whatever. But at the same token, remember at the end of the day, they’re coming to you because it’s you. And No, I love that. I think that’s a really good checkpoint of not creating panic
AWB (24:35):
Can be, it can be a huge energy drain. I’m sure you’ve seen this. Oh yeah. And it can be very dis very distracting and very upsetting when you find that you’ve been copied so it doesn’t feel
AJV (24:45):
Good. So, so on that note, so what do you do if you discover that you have, right? Like if somebody has copied your work, like what do you do? What should you, yes.
AWB (24:56):
Yeah. So step one is always create a record
AWB (25:39):
And then step two, once you’ve got all that collected and organized depending on kind of how important it is and who it is, this may differ a little bit, but I like the idea of reaching out to the person before you involve lawyers and before you get really mean and strict about it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (26:21):
Like whatever in your eyes would make that feel okay. And I would say 99% of the time they’re super embarrassed. Mm-Hmm. And they will comply right away. They’ll either take it down, they’ll apologize. And then that 1% of times, you know, they may get their backup and say like, no, I created this. Or they’ll deny it. And sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s a little more of a gray area, like they’ve copied your ideas, but they haven’t copied your exact words. And that’s where it becomes a little harder. But then sometimes we do have verbatim copying where they say, no, I’m not gonna take it down. And that’s when you probably wanna get a lawyer involved if it is something that is, again, valuable to you because lawyers are expensive. Yeah. so not everything is worth, you know, spending thousands of dollars on hiring a lawyer to help you with. But if it is something essential to your business, then that would be the next step to kind of ratchet things up. Yeah. Is get a lawyer involved who can help you. You know, sometimes people can say things accidentally that they don’t know could hurt them later. Uhhuh,
AJV (27:22):
Anything you say can, will be
AWB (27:24):
Used, can and will be used against you. Yes.
AJV (27:26):
But I think that, I love that where it’s like, you don’t have to go right to level 10 immediately send a cease and desist. It’s like, Hey, make the person aware. Ask them to take it down. Make sure you take the proof. Then it’s like there’s a system of escalation. Yeah. Yeah. To
AWB (27:43):
AJV (27:45):
Which is good because nobody really wins in a lawsuit. The only, you know, I had, we were in a lawsuit once trying to get our IP back and you know, the lawyers were really upfront and they just said, I just wanna be upfront with you day one. You do not win here. The only people who win here are your attorneys, the lawyers.
AWB (28:05):
Yes.
AJV (28:05):
We just want you to know you. Even if we win, you’re not winning. We are winning. Right? Yes. And they were so correct and I was so appreciative of like, oh yeah, like, you won big time. You know? Yeah. Because it’s, it’s, it’s an emotional drain. It’s a financial drain. It’s a time drain, and it’s like, you better really be sure. Right. And, and also that should on the other side, people don’t wanna be involved in that on the other side too. Right. So I love your approach of most people are gonna be embarrassed and they’re, they’re gonna want to avoid that as well. So start with doing that before you involve attorneys. Now I do have a a, a personal question, and I’ll leave any names out of it, but in my husband’s first book, there’s a very famous quote Right. That he uses in, in his speeches in, in our courses and the book, it was just kinda like one of those signature pullout quotes. We call it the rent axiom, which is, you know, the rent is always due. And people really like that and took that. And
AWB (29:10):
This is his original Right. He didn’t borrow it from anyone else. Yeah,
AJV (29:14):
Yeah, yeah. And they took it and used it and quoted it and put it on t-shirts and put it on posters, shared it on national television and never cited it. Yeah. Now, I believe that some of these very well-known famous people probably didn’t know where it originally came from. They just heard it Right. From a, from a whomever. From a whomever, from a whomever. So what do you do in those cases where you’re like, Hey, like you are saying this and not giving yourself credit, but taking credit for it. What do you do in those cases?
AWB (29:46):
Yeah, I think again, you have to decide, like, is that impacting your business enough to spend the time and energy chasing it? And maybe it is, maybe this is something that’s really personal and means a lot to him, and that he wants to be attributed. I mean, I think if you see like memes and quotes, they are misattributed all the time. Totally. And so you’re definitely playing whack-a-mole at a certain point, trying to go after all the places that have, you know, cited that incorrectly. But there may be a couple, you know, if it’s Oprah, that you try and get in touch with their people
AJV (30:38):
Yeah. That’s interesting. So you’re kind of just SOL kind of
AWB (30:42):
A little bit. Yeah. Again, we all have limited time and resources, so even though I’m a lawyer, like you could spend all of your time and energy chasing after this stuff, and most of the time it’s not really having an impact on your business. So I’d rather see you focus on growing the business, being proactive.
AJV (30:58):
Yeah. And I, and I love that because what it is having an impact on is your banking account with all that money coming out. Yes. Yes. So back to be selective, be protective, but be selective. Yeah. Right. I love that.
AWB (31:10):
Yeah. You don’t, not every battle is one you have to fight.
AJV (31:12):
Amen. I love that. So, okay. What else do we need to know to protect our brand?
AWB (31:18):
Okay. This is the one that nobody talks about. ’cause Trademarks and copyrights are sexier. But contracts are
AJV (31:24):
Really Yes.
AWB (31:25):
The biggest, most important. Yes. Like legal foundation. This is really, even though we’re IP lawyers here at the A WB firm, we spend almost all day, every day working on contracts that may touch IPN may not. Mm. So tell me how you see contracts coming up with your clients. Like where are, because I can, I can think of a couple, but I’m curious what you’ve see.
AJV (31:47):
You know what’s so interesting? I feel like most people wonder if they need them
AWB (32:20):
I was about to say. Yeah. It’s, it’s
AJV (32:21):
In flux. It’s except for, except for right. Executives for X amount of periods. So there’s these nuances to it. And if you don’t live in the legal industry, which I do not, but I’m in the EO group with you, right? Yes. Entrepreneurs organization. And that’s just a really added bonus that people are always talking about these things. And I catch ’em really in the peripheral. Yeah. But for those of you who don’t, so like, this is a great example with this new non-compete walk. Does that mean that all of us as business owners need to go update all of our contracts today? Do we need to go and, you know, have previous signed assigned employment agreements refreshed? Like what do these laws mean? One thing that they passed, but then what are we expected to do? And if we don’t know because we’re not attorneys and we do have ’em in there, and then someone’s like, that’s illegal. Like, you know, so I think those are the nuances where I hear, I’m like, well, I didn’t know that. It feels
AWB (33:19):
Very overwhelming, best to
AJV (33:21):
Know that. And so I think it’s one, do I need a contract? But then two, it’s like, what do I need in the contract? And I’ll tell you the number one thing that people I hear from, at least our audience, is I don’t wanna 13 page contract and I want, I don’t want it to sound like some attorney wrote it. ’cause No one can understand that junk. Like, how do I get a normal everyday language agreement that I can understand and my clients can understand? Yeah. So, and that’s kind of hard to do.
AWB (33:48):
It is. So going back to the first question, a contract is better than no contract, even if it’s not perfect. So I will take an imperfect contract all day long. All a contract is doing is setting expectations between two people or two companies about what’s gonna happen, value that’s being exchanged, you know, if there’s money being exchanged services if you’re selling a course or curriculum or licensing your content to somebody else to use. So there’s still gonna be a lot of good stuff in there, even if you mess up some of the specifics. So, and most things will not go to court. So that’s the good news. Most of the time you’re negotiating with the other person if something goes wrong. So using a contract is better than not, even if it’s not perfect. Mm-Hmm. As far as keeping up with all of the changing things, I understand that is overwhelming. I have a resource to recommend, which is the a WB firm firm newsletter. So we send out a newsletter every week or so with these kinds of updates. So if you are in this industry you know, I can’t promise we’re gonna cover every single thing. But it’s a nice way to just get little, you know, snippets about things that could impact your business. And you’re not getting a bunch of junk that applies to like a giant corporation. It’s really focused.
AJV (35:03):
I give online business, I’m gonna give you a plug for this because I subscribed to this and the one that came out I think last week was are you mandatorily required to hand over sales recordings to your clients if they ask? Right. And I literally sent that to our VP of sales. I’m like, I need you to listen to this. Right. And it’s like, but it’s like, those are like things that wasn’t even on my radar, right? Yeah. And it’s like just subscribing to this newsletter. And just so you guys know, I’ll put this in the show notes. I’ll have all of the links for everything that you need and want and sh should do, even if you don’t think you do. But this one, if you go to awb firm.com/newsletter, a wb firm.com/newsletter, you can sign up for it. It’s free. But like, this is a great example of like, this is like things that I’m busy doing other stuff with. I’m like,
AWB (35:58):
Right, you’re not a lawyer, it’s not your job.
AJV (36:00):
Do we have to send these sales recordings and what are they gonna do with it? You know, so yeah. Little things like that I think are really, really valuable. Just a plug. Yeah.
AWB (36:09):
And the other thing I would mention is the way we approach legal protections and keeping up with all this stuff is proportional to the size of your business and to the risk of your business. So if you are just starting out, if you are getting your brand, your personal brand up and going, a lot of this stuff really doesn’t matter because you don’t have a lot of money in the business. You don’t have a lot to lose if you mess something up and you’re unlikely to be a target, frankly, for someone to sue you report you, you
AJV (36:36):
Know, bonus being a beginner. That’s
AWB (36:38):
Right. You’re, you’re, you know, little business, little problems
AJV (36:58):
Yeah. And I think that’s, so that’s so why so on some of these specifics, like just because these are things that I know have come up in our community a lot, like non-disparagement can’t do it. So at the same time though,
AWB (37:12):
In some scenarios,
AJV (37:13):
AWB (37:42):
Yeah.
AJV (37:42):
So is that in line? Is that okay?
AWB (37:45):
Yes. And that was our, sorry, that was already illegal. Like that’s liable or slander saying things that are false. So what defamation clause is really out, if you have a defamation clause in a contract, what it prohibits is saying things that are true
AJV (38:05):
That’s, but that’s you know, one of the things that’s come up in my eo, it’s a
AWB (38:08):
Fine line. Uhhuh.
AJV (38:09):
AWB (38:22):
Yeah. So if you were gonna sue someone for liable or slander for defamation, it can’t be a feeling. It has to be a fact. So it has to, it has to be a false, you know, statement that you could test or verify. And it has to have a negative impact on your business, succeed.
AJV (38:38):
So succeed, lemme give you an example, succeed. Yeah. this was something that came up in like one of the like forum chat groups I’m in and they took a screenshot and somebody had put on like Yelp or Google reviews or something, worst business ever. Worst money I’ve ever spent. And it’s like really was is it really the worst business ever of all time? Is that truly accurate? Is it really the worst money that Right. Spent really? It’s like, have you eaten at, you know, the gas station? I don’t know, like Right. You know, it’s like really? Right. So what do you do with stuff like that?
AWB (39:14):
I mean, that stuff is just part of being in business. You gotta let it roll off your back. You can try and respond, you know, I mean, I, I don’t know about you. I’ve had some clients get canceled and it’s often over like really silly things and it’s very painful, it’s very hurtful. Awful. But often the best advice is just to ignore it. Like, just to move on. Yeah. Go do something positive to kind of shut out the negative noise. But I understand a lot of them are like, well, I wanna sue them. And I’m like, that is a
AJV (39:43):
Waste of your time.
AWB (39:45):
Kind of the worst thing you could possibly do. ’cause Now your answer just attention.
AJV (39:48):
It’s just attention. It’s just attention. Yes.
AWB (39:50):
And I’ll often say, this is not a legal problem, this is a PR problem.
AJV (39:54):
Yeah. That’s good.
AWB (39:54):
So some of it you have to kind of handle that way.
AJV (39:57):
So what, so why did so what was the basis for getting rid of these non-disparagement clauses? Just
AWB (40:04):
They’ve been legal for a while, but no one was talking about them. Yeah,
AJV (40:07):
So I this is, I don’t know why it is like it’s, this has been in the last two years and
AWB (40:12):
People, it’s, yeah, it’s been talked about more. So it’s a federal trade commission rule and it’s consumer protection. So it’s meant to protect customers from being able to speak truthfully about their interactions with a business. So you can’t, it’s kind of like a gag on them being able to, which is why a lot of people want to include non-disparagement in their contracts with their customers. So it’s, it’s still legal in other scenarios. It is becoming a little more iffy in the employment scenario. And I’m not an employment lawyer, so Yeah. I’m not gonna misspeak about that. But it, it is nuanced there. I do know. Yeah. so if you are wanting to include a non-disparagement clause in a, like a severance agreement or a termination agreement, talk with your lawyer because first mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:04):
But I think just everyone, as you’re paying attention to that, just make sure that you are looking at your contracts to make sure they do say things that people are aware of. It’s like you cannot falsely exaggerate or make false claims. And I do contract reviews for some of our clients on occasion. Anyone listening, do not email me.
AWB (41:28):
You’re delighted to review your attorney, your
AJV (41:30):
Contract. Correct. In passing, like, Hey, can you look at this, this? And it’s like, and you don’t have anything in there about cannots. And I think that’s back to setting proper expectations of Yeah. However common sense at things. Sometimes it’s good to have common sense in writing. So that would be one. And then since you’ve kind of like, this kind of came up for both of us, like this new non-compete bill that has passed. Yes. Which will be nationwide.
AWB (41:53):
Yeah. And so that is actually a regulation from the Department of Labor. So it’s not a law, it’s a regulation, but it has just come out. It has not been, you know, they have a publication period where people can comment. So it has not gone into effect yet. And actually we’re sending out a client alert, I think it’s like on my desk to review
AWB (42:39):
But just kind of like, this is a great time to just see if this even matters to you. If you’re drafting new agreements, you might consider leaving it out because it may or may not be valid. One thing in the rule is it, it says if you include a non-compete after the rule goes into effect or maybe if you have one, I can’t remember exactly, but you have to actually send a notice to the person who signed that contract. Like, Hey, that non-compete you signed is no longer valid. Oh. So I think most pe most people don’t want to have to do that.
AJV (43:08):
Interesting. So, so what about preexisting signed contracts? Those stand, it’s just anything new?
AWB (43:14):
No, the non-compete would not be enforceable,
AJV (43:17):
But, but you wouldn’t have to send out something to previously signed yeah.
AWB (43:20):
Don’t quote me on this because it is detailed and nuanced, but read our client alert,
AJV (43:25):
AWB (43:28):
We had a Slack conversation that was like very long about all the nuances,
AJV (43:34):
It’s not simple. This is kind of back to the conversation at hand. It’s like, what do you need to know? And if you don’t know, how do you stay in the know? Right. Yeah. So that’s my last question for today. Other than signing up for this newsletter as a very entry level basic, have some sort of source of information. Yeah. Yeah. If people don’t have an attorney on demand or they don’t have a legal counsel, or they don’t, you know, that’s most people, right? Yeah, absolutely. How on God’s screen earth are we supposed to stay up to date with this stuff?
AWB (44:04):
You’re gonna do the best you can. And that is, you know, again, proportional to the size of your business and the risk. You know, this is something a lot of people start taking more seriously around half a million, a million, several million in revenue. So if you’re there and you still are not really up to date on all this like judgment free zone, do not beat yourself up. But you can always do better tomorrow.
AJV (44:27):
But
AWB (44:30):
Yeah. I mean, just the bigger your business gets, the, you know, some of my clients come to us saying, I feel like I’ve got a target on my back now. Mm-Hmm. And like, I’ve really gotta make sure I’m all buttoned up and that if somebody comes at me that I’m like ready to go. Yeah. So there, there will hit, you will hit a point in your business where it becomes more important. And I’m not saying ignore it, but
AJV (44:47):
Once you’re doing like seven figures and annual revenue, would you say, Hey, like this is,
AWB (44:51):
You definitely need a lawyer. Yes. Yes.
AJV (44:53):
So that’s everyone who’s listening.
AWB (44:55):
I would, I would say probably like half a million to a million is a great, that’s a great entry point for us. ’cause There’s enough to do you Mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:10):
You know, and I, you know, I say this lovingly because we’re friends, but not everyone really wants to pay attorneys. Like people don’t really want.
AWB (45:17):
I understand. It is not the most fun money to spend. I know. Oh.
AJV (45:20):
But I think that’s a good benchmark for everyone listening. It’s like, even if it’s, sometimes you just have to spend money even when you don’t want to, but
AWB (45:27):
In your budget, it’s like, it should be in your budget just like marketing or just like working with a bookkeeper or a CPA. Like, it really is a cost of doing business. You cannot ignore it.
AJV (45:37):
And I would just say from our experiences, it’s much cheaper when you’re proactive. It’s cheaper, it’s always cheaper when there isn’t anything pending. Right? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (46:07):
Information, not advice.
AJV (46:08):
Thank you,
AWB (46:11):
I’ll plug one other thing. Yeah. I’ll plug one other thing before we go, which is we have our own podcast, the Legal Roadmap podcast, which I have stopped publishing new episodes, but there is a ton of evergreen content. So if you’re looking for like the latest and greatest, it will not be there. But if you’re looking to learn some basics about copyrights, trademarks, employment law, all these things that you need in a personal brand business, go check out the legal roadmap.
AJV (46:34):
Yes. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well. Autumn, this is so helpful, so, so knowledgeable and helpful. And y’all just all got at least $650 worth of free legal information. That advice. Just information. That’s right. So thank you. This was so, so helpful. And again, I just wanna do one more plug for the newsletter because I subscribed to it and it is super helpful and I’m constantly telling people on our team, listen to this one, go watch this. Like, read this. It’s a wb firm.com/newsletter. And then also if you wanna just stay in touch with Autumn, get additional tips, learn stuff, and also the a WB firm, check them out on Instagram. A w firm is their handle. Again, I’ll put all of that in the show notes. And last but not least check out the podcast even though that they’re not posting new episodes you can go and get some evergreen content, which is the Legal Roadmap Podcast. Autumn, thank you so much. This was so helpful. Thank you hj, for asking great questions. This is a fun conversation. And for everybody else, check out the recap version that we will pose shortly. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. Bye everybody.
Ep 492: Creating a Limitless Life by building a Limitless Mind with Jim Kwik
RV (00:02):
Well, I’m honored to introduce you to one of the people who is my favorite friends and one of the smartest people I think, on the planet and truly has become one of the biggest personal brands in the entire world. And Jim Quick is someone that I just got to meet maybe just over a year ago. Actually a couple years ago. We met at Ed Mallet’s book launch. We became friends. He became a, a client of Brand Builder’s Group. And every time I meet this man, I’m just blown away by his brilliance, his network, his commitment to service, the depth of his expertise. You may not know this, but he is a brain coach that’s been has worked with people like Will Smith, Hugh Jackman, Jim Carrey, Alex Rodriguez, the Rock. I mean like major, major celebrities. And he’s well known for his speed reading and memory techniques, as well as just helping people optimize their brain overall.
RV (00:58):
He’s got millions of online followers. He’s trained many CEOs, obviously celebrities. He’s spoken for world renowned organizations like Virgin and Fox Studios, Nike, Zappos, Harvard and he’s been on the Today Show and all over national media. And then, you know, he wrote this book, limitless, which sold several hundred thousands of copies, became a New York Times bestseller. We got a chance to work with Jim on the expanded edition of Limitless, which just came out. And you can learn more about [email protected]. Anyways, Jim, thanks for making time for us, man. What an honor to have you,
JK (01:35):
Rory. I I really appreciate not only what you do, but the manner you do it. So thanks for your friendship. Thanks for your support and helping us with our brand. Yeah, we’re on a mission to build better, brighter brains. No, no brain left behind.
RV (01:48):
Yeah, man, I I, I love that. I, I for the people that don’t know you, can you just tell us the story of, of, you know, it’s in the book and you talk about it, but like why you started working on sort of brain optimization in the first place from your, from your personal childhood?
JK (02:03):
Yeah. I mean, I know your listeners are interested in this. ’cause Entrepreneurs, they, you know, your number one wealth building asset you have is your mind, right? I mean, and the faster you can learn, the faster you could earn today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit. And so the more you know, the better decisions that you can make, the more you could expand your business, your bank account, and your brand, you know, the effect that you have in the world. One of the ways I share my messages on stages, we’re in front of about 250 to 300,000 people every single year. As a public speaker, you know, this is my 32nd year of, of speaking as a brain coach. I usually do, if there’s time these demonstrations, I know you and I have shared the stage numerous times.
JK (02:49):
For me, if I have time, I’ll pass around a microphone in an audience and maybe 50 or 60 or maybe even a hundred people introduce themselves and I’ll memorize all their names, or the audience will challenge me. Amazing. Memorize a a hundred numbers or a hundred words. Yeah. And I’ll do it forwards and backwards, but I always tell people, I don’t do this to impress you. I really do this to express to you what’s possible. Because the truth is every single one of you listening, you could do that too. Regardless of your age, your background, your career, education level, financial situation, gender history, iq we just weren’t taught, you know, school is a great place to learn what to learn, like math and history, science, Spanish, but there are zero classes on how to learn. And I think if there’s one skill your listeners like that, there’s like one idea to take away from this.
JK (03:32):
Your ability to learn rapidly and translate that learning into action is the ultimate competitive advantage today in the 21st century. Right? And I know it’s possible for all of us because it’s such an advantage, but I didn’t grow up with that advantage when I was five years old. I had a traumatic brain injury. I had a very bad accident in school. When head first into a radiator. I was rushed to the hospital, lost all this blood passed out. I mean, but really where I showed up was in school. I had learning disabilities after that. I was put in special education. I had poor focus, poor memory. I had migraines every single day when I was five and six, seven. I just thought it was like normal when I was, it took me three years longer just to learn how to read. When that was very frustrating.
JK (04:21):
It really laid into my, my self-esteem, my self-worth, you know, a lot of self-doubt because if I wasn’t like all the other kids, I would work hard because I came from immigrant parents. But it’s, you know, that installed that discipline. But I, I just didn’t do well. And I just felt like it was kind of unfair When I was nine years old, I was being bullied and, and teased for slowing down the class. ’cause I just didn’t understand lessons. Teachers would’ve to repeat themselves over and over again. And I would learn to pretend, but I didn’t really understand. And teacher came to my defense when I was being teased, pointed to me in a fellow class and said, leave that kid alone. That’s the boy with the broken brain. Oh. And I could tell you Rory, that that label became my limit. I didn’t understand it at the time.
JK (05:06):
Adults had to be very careful, their external words, ’cause they often become a child’s internal words. So every single word it play out. Every single time I did badly in school, which was all the time, I would always say, oh, ’cause I have the broken brain. Or to my parents, I didn’t do well on this quiz ’cause I had the broken brain, or I was in pick for sports. ’cause I have the broken brain. And you know, we’ll talk a little bit about that in terms of learned helplessness and how our self-talk. I believe our brain is this incredible supercomputer. And our self-talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself something like, I dunno, maybe your listeners say to yourself, I’m not good at remembering names. Right? Something pretty common. You won’t remember the name of the next person you meet.
JK (05:45):
‘Cause You program your supercomputer not to. Right? Your mind is always eavesdropping on, on your self talk. And so I struggled and then eventually I found a mentor at age 18. So I struggled. Those 13 plus years got introduced to the power of the mind, the power of the brain. I started leaning into starting getting curious, like, how does my brain work so I can work my brain, right? How does my, my memory work so I can work my memory better? You know, how does I got curious about how to make it practical every day. You know, if they say your brain is this incredible gift and superpower, why wasn’t I able to, why do we forget the keys? Right? Why do we forget what we just read,
JK (06:28):
So you know, and after I learned these things, I started to teach. And my, one of my very first students I started to tutor, she was a college freshman. She read 30 books in 30 days. Wow. Not skimmer scan. And I know you’re a book lover and reader. Yeah. But can you imagine that advantage? And I wanted to find out not how I taught her how to speed read, but I wanted and to understand even more than she would. I wanted to find out not how, but why I am always interested like you, why, like why do people do what they do? Right? How many, so many people know what to do, but they don’t do it. ’cause Common sense is not common practice. And I found out that her mother was just recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and doctors gave her mom only 60 days to live.
JK (07:13):
Wow. And the books she was reading were books to save her mom’s life. And with that leverage, you know, it was just, I, I wish her prayers six months goes by, I don’t hear from her. And I get a call one, one morning and it’s this young lady and she’s crying profusely. But when she stops, I find out there are tears of joy that her mother not only got, you know, survived, but it’s really getting better. Doctors don’t know how or why they were calling it a miracle, but her mother attributed a hundred percent to the great advice she got from her daughter who learned it from all these books. Wow. And in that moment, I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it’s a superpower we all have. It’s just, you know, people are struggling with their focus or their memory, or their overload or distractions, whatever.
JK (08:00):
It’s not really your fault. You know, we just weren’t taught how to be able to use your brain doesn’t come with an owner’s manual and it’s not user friendly. So that, that’s why I wrote Limitless, to be an owner’s manual for your brain, your most valuable asset that controls everything to be able to read faster, focus better, improve your memory, remember client information, product information, you know, give speeches without notes, do all these things. But yeah, I just feel like we wanna fill in the gaps of the education system, you know, for both education and, and professional personal development. And I feel like it’s a gift that everybody could give themselves.
RV (08:39):
Yeah. I mean, it, that’s what it is. It’s, it, it is an owner’s manual. Like it is an instruction guide and there’s mindset. There’s motivation, there’s daily practices like, it, it’s such a powerful book. And you, you know, you, you mentioned that your, that label became your limit, right? Early on. What do you think are some of the most common destructive labels that people have? I mean, like, you mentioned their names, right? Like, I’m bad with names, but like, when it comes to, let’s talk about personal brand specifically, right? So like, you had to overcome this learning deficit, this sort of, you know, these mental challenges with like your development. And you then became one of the world’s leading experts. And then you went, you know, kind of from being like, you’re pretty, like a lot of people don’t, maybe don’t know this, but like you’re pretty introverted guy. Yeah. And yet
JK (09:32):
Very, very,
RV (09:32):
You are one of the, become one of the biggest personal brands in the world. You’re reaching maybe a few hundred thousand people a year in your speeches, but millions through your videos and your podcast and social media, et cetera. Like, what were some of the labels you had to overcome or that you think personal brands often have to overcome to be able to get their message out to more people?
JK (09:54):
So for me, I, I believe it’s the person in the mirror. It certainly was in my case. My two biggest challenges growing up were learning. And because of it, public speaking, I would I remember I was failing high school English, and they called my parents in, and I was so ashamed you know, I wasn’t gonna pass the class. And the teacher, you know, talked to my parents, talked to me, and felt a little empathy and said, I’m gonna give you one last chance you could do this book report on Albert Einstein of all people, and to get extra credit to be able to pass, you know, class. And, and I I said, I’m gonna do it. I told my parents, told the teacher I made promise to them and myself. I spent this was back when people spent time in the libraries.
JK (10:41):
This, I was dating the, you know, pre-internet
RV (11:22):
Oh no,
JK (11:24):
I froze. ’cause At this time, you know, I never gave a speech before. I, I was my superpower. I talk about superpowers a lot. I was really being invisible. You know, as you mentioned, I was very, I’m very introverted, but I, back then I was extremely shy and awkward. ’cause I never knew the answer. So I was being, I would always shrink down ’cause I didn’t wanna be called on. ’cause I just never could know. I didn’t know anything. Wow. And I would sit behind the tall kid and even my posture was like slumped up to take up less space. I didn’t wanna be seen or heard, or maybe I did, but I didn’t, you know, want to. So out of fear. So I think fear is a big obstacle for a lot of us. It’s interesting that my two biggest challenges growing up are learning and public speaking,
JK (12:07):
‘Cause God has a sense of humor. You do it for a living. Those speaking, yes. All I do is public speak on this thing called learning. But it’s just a reminder to everybody that your struggles lead to strengths. Right? Our challenges lead to change and adversity can be an advantage. Like, I, I believe that sometimes there’s some things we can only learn in a storm, right? And some, some storms come to be able to clear our path. And we don’t know until hindsight looking back years from now, why things happened the way they they did. But I do believe I was guided and, you know, grateful for what I went through. But I bring this up because the things that kept me from growing even the impact was, you know, self-doubt. You know, people struggle with things like imposter syndrome. Who am I at 20 years old to be able to go into companies as I did and teach people three times my age?
JK (12:58):
Right? Like, and, and it was, it was interesting. So I, I would say the person in the mirror was, was my biggest obstacle. The doubts, the fears not being good enough, your failure. A lot of trauma that I had to kind of unravel growing up. And I just, even with the book, people Assume when the book came out in 2020 that I had like lots of books. But this was my first book. Mm-Hmm.
JK (13:46):
I feel like if I had that drive, I’ve maybe even helped more people. But because of it, you know, over 30 years, every opportunity to really scale, I always said no media book deals, train the trainer. I met with Kaplan, the franchise, you know, like to open up quick learning centers, you know, different places, infomercials and PBS specials. All those offers came. And I always said no. And then one day I, I was in a car accident and I I almost died and I definitely could have. And the next day that week, I, I signed the book deal that was in my inbox for like, 10 years. Wow. Because it just made me think about legacy. And you know, just to everybody listening, I don’t know who I’m talking to, but creating the life you want, you know, the contribution, the character that, you know, all whatever is important to you, it can be scary, but you know what’s a lot scarier is regret.
JK (14:45):
You know, I, I spent a lot of time in senior centers. I, I lost my, my parents, I mentioned they immigrated here, had many jobs. We lived in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. Didn’t speak the language or anything. My grandmother took care of me because my parents were always working. And when I was going through my challenges at five years old, she started showing early signs of dementia. And she, she eventually passed of Alzheimer’s when I was seven. So all those things like really informs where you go. Like, my inspiration really was my desperation to feel good enough to feel like, oh, is my brain gonna work when I’m older and, you know, with my accident? So, you know, it’s the idea where people listening where you make a decision where you take your mess and you turn it into your message.
JK (15:34):
And I totally agree with you that we are best suited to support and help the person we once, you know, were, you know. And so like, I want to help that 9-year-old boy that had so much doubt and, you know, was being teased and ridiculed and feeling like they weren’t enough. And I think we can improve our confidence, our self-esteem overnight if we just understand our, our, our brains. Like, ’cause it’s so fantastic. And, you know we’ve dedicated our life to getting this out there on stages. And we have one of the top where we’ll cross a hundred million downloads on our podcast this year.
RV (16:08):
Wow. I didn’t realize that it was that, that’s awesome, man.
JK (16:12):
Yeah. And the book, thanks to, you know, yourself, your team and the other supporters, like, you know, we’ve done over, over a million copies just, you know, on on limitless on audio books and Kindle and print 40 different languages. We’re just very, very, very proud. We donated all the proceeds to charity. We built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, and Kenya also supported Alzheimer’s research for women. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer’s than men. So in, in memory of my, in my, my grandmother. But it’s nice. You know, I feel like, you know, we’re just getting started and you know, our goal is to be able to support people, you know, having their, the brain they desire and deserve.
RV (16:53):
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, that concept of, I, that’s probably one of the reasons why I was drawn to you right from the first time I met you. You know, we were backstage originally at, at that, at my lead event, and there were so many like major VIP important people both speaking and just like in general
JK (17:14):
That, that was, that was a, who’s who I remember was Jenna and Mel and everybody. Yeah.
RV (17:21):
But you were, you were so humble. And it was like what you just said, I think is what spoke to me was like, I’ve never ever caught a sense of ego from you or a, an ounce of like, posturing or positioning or who I know. I mean, before we started this interview, I had to even ask your permission to share. Like, are you okay if I tell people that like, you work with Hugh Jackman and the Rock and Will Smith? ’cause I know you’re like, you don’t share those things very often. And I’ve gotten to know that and I’m just like, I mean, this is amazing, Jim. Like, it’s, it’s incredible the, the, the, the people that you’re working with. And, and yet it’s the heart of going, it’s your heart of service, which has been really powerful to see and to go look at all the good you’re doing from your, from scaling.
RV (18:05):
Like look all the money you’re doing for charity and all of the people you’re reaching. And I just, I love that because to me that’s what, you know, we just, we define our audience as mission-driven messengers. Hmm. And it’s not that we don’t care about money. We do care about money, but, but money is subservient to the mission. And I’ve always felt that way about you. And I can’t say that about everybody else in this space. But I do feel that way about you and, and I and, and, and I, you know, I love that you, you know, you’ve got one book, like you put every so much into this one book. Not, not everything, you know, but like so much into this, you could have written 15 books. But like you’ve, you, this is one of the things that we, we tell our clients about books is a book should be a conclusion, not a hypothesis.
RV (18:55):
And a lot of, a lot of authors write books that are hypotheses. They have like, oh, an idea and then they put it out there. This limitless is, this is a series of conclusions of a lifetime of work and study. And it’s like, it’s banked. Dr. Mark Hyman wrote the Forward for this. Y’all like the, the, the, the doctors, some of the leading doctors in the world. Come on Jim’s podcast and everything. And I just, anyways, I, I love what you do and most of all, like the, the way that you do it I, I got one other question for you before you go, but, but, but where do you, before that, where should people go, Jim, if they want to, you know, connect up with you, obviously they can get limitless, expanded. Well else would you send them?
JK (19:38):
The book [email protected]. You get to where support your local bookstores, you know I would say social media, you know, take a screenshot of this conversation wherever you’re consuming it, and tag Rory, tag myself. Say hi. I’ll repost some of you know, some randomly and gift out a few copies of, of Limitless to your community as a thank you for having me on your show. We, we were not, we’re, we’re not hard to find, you know, just search my name in your podcast app. We just crossed a 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube. So we put, you know, regular content there and help how to read faster, improve your memory, best Brain Foods, changing your habits, unlocking limitless motivation and, and so, so much more. Yeah.
RV (20:29):
I mean, it’s amazing. And if you, if you just think about like the a hundred million podcast downloads and the, the millions of subscribers, all the people you’ve helped that never buy a book or never buy one of your courses or programs. Like what a what a what a gift.
JK (20:46):
Nine 95% of what we put out there is completely free. You know, we’ve just, again, we wanna positively impact at least 1 billion brains. It’s pretty bold and audacious. That’s why we appreciate you and your community and just helping us show people build a better, brighter world. I believe you change your brain, you change your life, you change your brain. You could change the world. And yeah, I’m, I’m very optimistic of, you know, what the next, in the years are for everybody here that’s listening, you know, in terms of their own potential and on performance.
RV (21:20):
Yeah. So last little thing. You know, if somebody is sitting in that moment right now, Jim, they’re listening to this and they, they have a label that’s a limit, right? They had somebody say something to them. Yeah. Or they had, they said something to themselves and maybe they, they do have a vision to go, I want to impact millions of people. I want, I wanna, I wanna create videos, I wanna create content. But they’re struggling in that moment. Like, what, what, what encouragement, what last little bit of encouragement would you give to that person?
JK (21:47):
I’ll if it’s okay, I don’t, I’m, I don’t really share this, but how I got started on my career, maybe people get a couple of little nuggets that they can relate to. When I, when I got accepted into a local university I thought freshmen meant I could make a fresh start. And I wanted to show the world that I could do it and make my parents proud. I’m the oldest of three siblings and I wanted to be a good example, right? And I took all these classes freshman year and I, I did worse because it’s so much more difficult. And I was ready to quit. And I don’t know if someone’s at that place right now, that they’ve tried a few things and they’re just kind of ready to quit. But but hear me out. Like I, I told a, a friend of mine that I didn’t know how to tell my parents because I didn’t, I didn’t have the money to be in school in the first place, so I didn’t wanna waste it, right?
JK (22:45):
And my friend said, Hey, why don’t you come with me to visit my family? I’m going this weekend and get a different perspective. And I, that word perspective really changes things for me. I think that if you’re anyone feels stuck, like they’re not making progress in some area of their life, maybe their brand, their business, their followers, their impact or income, whatever, it helps to change your point of view, right? And how you do that, you change your place or you change the people you’re spending time with. And I end up going the weekend visiting his family and pretty well off family, a beautiful home on the water. And the father walks me around his property before dinner and asked me a very innocent question, which is the worst question you could ask me. He says, Jim, how’s school? And I just, I start, and you mentioned how introverted I am, I start bawling, crying
JK (23:53):
It’s not for me. Don’t have the money. They don’t know how to tell my parents. I’m gonna be a total disappointment to them. And he’s like, Jim, he asked me a new question. He’s like, well, why are you in school? And besides perspective changing the place and people you’re with, maybe we need to ask ourselves new questions. ’cause I didn’t know why I was in school. I just thought, that’s something you do, right? You go to school, get a career and do that thing. But, you know, I was like, I didn’t have an answer ’cause no one’s ever asked me that question. And you ask a new question, you get a new answer, like a, a question like what’s the best use of this moment? Or what if it would’ve succeeded and I didn’t do it right? Like, it’s just a different thing. And, and then he says like, well, Jim, he saw I was struggling with the answering.
JK (24:38):
It’s like, well, what do you wanna be, what do you wanna do? What do you wanna have? What do you wanna share or contribute? I didn’t have any answer. And he really was patient with me. And I start to answer and he takes out a piece of paper to stop just, and he asked me to write it down, right? Like a bucket list, like all the things I want to do before I kicked the bucket. Mm-Hmm.
JK (25:22):
Yeah. Things I’ve never shared with anybody or even realized until I wrote ’em down myself. And when he’s done. And we’re all scared of being judged, right? Like, that’s why I was shrinking down all the time. ’cause I didn’t wanna be judged, right? Other people’s opinions or expectations. And I realized that if we fuel your life with other people’s opinions, then we’re gonna run outta gas. Right? It’s just not very sustainable. And I would remind everybody, don’t take criticism. ’cause That’s what keeps us from acting is like what people are gonna think. And you don’t wanna be criticized. I I, I live by this thing. I have this on my wall. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. And so he’s reading it, I don’t know how much time goes by. He’s like, Jim, you’re this close to everything on this list and I’m spreading my index fingers like a foot apart.
JK (26:09):
And I’m thinking, no way. Gimme 10 years. I’m not gonna crack that list. And very wise, ma man who was mentor to me, he takes his index fingers, Rory, and he puts ’em to the side of my head, meaning what’s in between was like the key that’s gonna get me everything on that list. And he takes me into a room of his home I’ve never seen before. You would love it. It is wall to wall ceiling, the floor covered in books. Awesome. And I remember I had my reading difficulties. I’ve never read a book cover to cover, and it’s like being in a room full of snakes for me, right? I’m so intimidated. But what makes it worse, Rory, is he starts going to shelves and grabbing snakes and handing them to me. And I’m freaking out, right? Because I’m thinking like, what does he want me to do with this?
JK (26:52):
And yeah, I started looking at titles of these books. And there are these biographies of some incredible women and men in history and some very early personal growth books. Like Norman Vincent Peele, the Power of Positive Thinking, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, right? All the classics. And he says, Jim you have to read to Succeed. I want you to read one book a week. And I automatically go and I say, are you kidding me? Like, did you hear anything? I was saying, I have a brain injury. I’m a poor reader, and I’m not that smart. I have all this schoolwork. And when I said schoolwork, he was like, Jim, don’t let school get in the way of your education. Right? That’s like a Mark Twain quote. And I was like, that’s very insightful. And yet I can’t commit to doing that. ’cause If I say I’m gonna do it, I have to do it.
JK (27:41):
I can’t. And I, people do this to me all the time at events. They know a memory guy. They’re like, Jim, I’m so glad you’re here. I have a horrible memory. You know, I’m, I’m just getting too old. And I always say, stop, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. Hmm. If you fight for your limits, they’re yours. Right? But I’m fighting for my limits of, and I mentioned the schoolwork and he’s like, don’t let school get my education. I’m like, yeah, but I still can’t do it. Right? And then, very smart man, he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out my dream list, which he still has. And he has the audacity Rory, to read every single one of my dreams out loud. Oh my gosh. And imagine that, right? Like this insecure self-doubt. And you hear like someone who’s obviously doing well, complete stranger.
JK (28:24):
You hear your dreams and somebody else’s voice, enc canted out into the atmosphere, right? Yes. And it messes with my mind and my spirit something fierce. ’cause A lot of the things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family, you know, for my parents, things they, they can never afford to do. Or even if they had the money, they wouldn’t do it for themselves. Right? And with that motivation, having going back to purpose, if you have a reason, you’ll get the result. ’cause Reasons, re rewards, right? And a lot of people, they’re not, you know, if they’re, if they’re holding back with their brand or their book or something that they know they wanna get out there, like I did for so long, I didn’t have a, you know, I wasn’t, I knew intellectually the reason, but I wasn’t feeling allowing myself to feel that reason.
JK (29:08):
And with that leverage, I agree. ’cause I wanna help my family to read one book a week. So fast forward, I’m back at school and I have a pile of books sitting at my desk. I have to read for midterms. I have a pile of books that I wanna read that I promised to read, and I already couldn’t get through pile A. So what do I do? I don’t have the time. So I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t work out. I don’t spend time with, you know, people and anything. I just live in the library for weeks and weeks and weeks. And one night at two o’clock in the morning in the library, I pass out, out of sheer exhaustion, I fall down a flight of stairs, hit my head again. Oh my gosh. And I woke up in the hospital two days later.
JK (29:46):
And at this point, ’cause I wasn’t eating, I was very malnourished, hooked up to all these IVs. I was down to 117 pounds. Wow. Right? So I lost all this weight. I thought I died. And it was the darkest time in my life. And when I woke up, I thought, there has to be a better way. Right? And when I had that thought, and you know, God speaks this in in different ways, like the nurse came in and brought a mug of tea. And on it was a picture of Albert Einstein, you know, the person I did that book report about. And it was interesting that learning that he had learning disabilities and he processed things differently and all this. But on the mug was a quote that said, the same level of thinking that has created your problem won’t solve your problem. And it made me ask a new questions like, what’s my problem?
JK (30:35):
Well, I have a broken brain. I’m a very slow learner. Well, how do I think differently about it? Like Einstein, I was like, well, maybe I could fix my brain. Maybe I could learn how to learn faster. And I was like, okay, where do I do that? Well, school. And I asked the nurse for a course bulletin for, with all classes for next semester. And I start going through it a couple hundred pages. And they’re all classes again, of what to learn, but not how to learn. So I set my schoolwork aside and I started studying these books and then other things in the area of neuroscience, adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory. You know, I wanted to, I was obsessed, like, how does my mind work? So I work my mind. I wanted to know what did, what did ancient cultures do to remember things before there were printing presses and, you know, computers, right?
JK (31:20):
And I started studying that, and then light switch went on. And I just started to understand, you know, about 60 days into it. And my grade shot up. And so did my confidence in my life. But to, to bring it back to my career, how I ended up teaching it was, I, I was upset that I struggled every single day for 13 plus years when there were solutions out there. And, you know, I felt a moral obligation to help people around me that were struggling the same way. And that moral impetus, I started to tutor and I wanted like friends just for free. And then I was like, well, how do I get more people? I was like, and I had that thought. There was a classroom that wasn’t being used on a Thursday night at seven o’clock. I was walking past. I said, okay, next week, same on Thursday at seven o’clock, I’m gonna just put five or 10 people in there, teach them for free for a couple hours.
JK (32:15):
And then maybe afterwards, one or two of them wants to be tutored and I can help them. And I go back, this is my first marketing. All right? So this is how free public seminar. Here it comes,
JK (32:58):
Not a lot. Fast forward to Thursday. The next Thursday I’m walking at seven o’clock and I just pray there are five people that show up, right? I turned the corner and outside of the room, there’s a crowd of people. And my honest thought Rory, was, wow, I hope whatever’s going on ends soon so I could do my thing. Right?
JK (33:47):
And I, I pushed my way in and packed, right? All the seats are taken, people standing in the back, and lo and behold, no one’s teaching. Right? And it takes my slow brain all that time to realize why they’re all there and who they’re all there for. And remember, I’m 18 years old. I look like I’m like 13 years old.
JK (34:37):
But when the class ended, I remember leaving the class, I, I reach into my book bag and I take out that, that professionally bound book report. And I, I threw it in the trash. And I think it symbolically it was like giving up hope. You know what I mean? Or my dreams or my potential. But that’s why Einstein coming back to me and giving that kind of, that, those words of wisdom. But going back, I, I still haven’t done any public speaking. So I’m freaking out. My heart’s being outta my chest. I I even talking about it, my mouth is going dry so I leave. Right? And, ’cause I can’t even talk with all those people there. You just left. Yeah. ’cause there’s not five or 10 people. I do a head count and there’s 110 people. Oh man. Right? So I leave, I told you it was a good hook.
JK (35:20):
It was a good marketing
JK (36:10):
And there’s a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher that says, life is the letter C between the letters B and D. Or B stands for birth and D stands for death, life, c, choice. We always have these choices, right? Our lives are the sum total of all the choices we’ve made up to this point. You know, I believe these difficult times, they could distract you these difficult times. They could diminish you or these difficult times they could develop you. You decide. And I made this choice to go back to the classroom. And I go there, I apologize, but I don’t remember what I talked about for two hours. But you ever, like, this stream of consciousness just kind of flows through you. And when I’m done, Rory, I came out of this trance. I was like, I don’t know how to help all of you, but if you’re interested, I need about 10 hours to teach you what’s working for me.
JK (37:00):
Maybe two hours a week over the next five weeks I get $30 an hour. This is what I got teaching tennis back in high school and just making this up there. And I say, I’ll be in the student center tomorrow at noon. If you’re interested, I’ll answer your questions. And I swear, Rory, a hundred people stand up and they leave. Not one person talks to me. Huh? So I am sitting 10 o’clock at night in an empty classroom and I’m totally confused. And I’m so exhausted. ’cause You know, when you do something you never thought you could do, I end up passing out on the carpet and it was the best sleep of my life. I get woken up the next morning, the class coming in at eight o’clock and the next morning and I run, I’m embarrassed. I run back to my dorm room, shower, go to breakfast, go to class, 12 o’clock I promised to go to the student center to answer questions.
JK (37:50):
And I’m going to the student center running a little bit late. And I just hope one person believed in me, just one. Right? And when I get there, Rory, that same crowd of kids were there. And at the end of 90 minutes or two hours, 71 of those students signed up for a program that didn’t even exist. And at $300 a, a person. ’cause I didn’t do the math. 10 hours times, $30 an hour. And I didn’t realize that students could go, they have a plastic card that goes into an ATM machine that takes out $300, right? Because I didn’t have that. And so I’m not even 19 years old and I have $21,000 cash in my pockets and my, my book bag. What? And, and I don’t even know, like, it’s so surreal. ’cause That’s a lot of money. But that was definitely a lot of money.
JK (38:38):
30 back then. Yeah. Years ago. That’s a lot of though. Yeah. And so I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, what do I do with this? And I hear my mentors phrase, don’t let school get in the way of education. I use practically all of it to travel the country by every program, go to every seminar get mentored and coached by some of the best people in the space. And I, I really feed my mind. And one of those 71 kids was this young lady who read 30 books in 30 days and saved her mom’s life. Wow. And that’s why I continued on the journey, you know, but I, I just wanna, men, you know, reiterate that it was, it was perspective. If I feel, feel stuck changing the people replaced to get a new point of view, asking new questions of yourself. ’cause You ask new questions, you’ll get new answers.
JK (39:31):
And stepping in a direction, making a choice, right? ’cause One step in another direction completely could change your destination. And if you’re listening to this, I feel like there’s a reason why to, to our, to listeners that, you know, maybe they could relate to some aspect of my story. That they feel like they’re here for a reason and they, and they went through adversity and they, they learned something from it. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We do not hear a lot about the other side post-traumatic growth. People have gone through such difficult times that you wouldn’t wish upon anybody. But you discovered something. You discovered something about yourself, or you got clarity, or you found a mission, you found a traitor, a strength, right? And you, you know, and you want change what happened, right? And I feel like now’s the time that we have to so many people, like we dim our lights.
JK (40:23):
Like I was shrinking all the time because we didn’t want those light to shine in somebody else’s eyes. And I feel like we live in a, sometimes in a dark, dark world. And we need as many people to shine as possible. And and do the things. I feel like life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either you’re leaving your comfort zone, life gets difficult, right? And you’re in the unknown. Or life is difficult ’cause you’re staying in your comfort zone. And I feel like that for a long time, I stayed in my comfort zone because I just wanted to have my small little learning center and teach, you know, the, the a hundred people a month that I was teaching or whatever. But I also feel like that moral obligation that, you know, we’re here for a reason. And I feel like at the end of our life, I feel like that it’s like I, I visualize myself meeting the person that I could’ve been.
JK (41:20):
You know? And I just don’t wanna be disappointed. And my message for everybody here is that there is, and I promise you, I, I coached half of the Fortune 500 companies in the world. I, I, I, I, we have students online in every country in the world have a lot of feedback from people. And I could tell you without a doubt that there is a version of yourself or your brand, or your book or your bank account. There’s a or your brain, there’s a version of yourself that’s patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up every single day until we’re introduced. Right? And I just feel like we’re all on this quest to reveal and realize our fullest potential. And when, when would now be a great time to make that choice. You know? And it doesn’t have to be a big one.
JK (42:07):
It could be like little, a little thing you could do to kind of keep your momentum, you know, for me it was about getting my brain and my mind right? Because I knew everything was gonna come from that. But things have to go from your head to your heart, then to your hands, right? You know, it’s, it’s your mindset. It’s your motivation. It’s also the methods. So that, that, that’s, that’s what limitless is for me. I love that Limitless is not about being perfect. It’s not about, you know, it’s about progress. It’s about advancing and progressing beyond what you’re currently demonstrating or you believe is possible. And I just know that this is available to all of us. That I’m not, definitely not special in this case. You know, and so I, I look forward to people like staying in touch with, with both of us. ’cause I, I, I’m, I’m hoping that I get to read their books or see them on stage or watch their, their videos or however they’re getting their, their message out to the world.
RV (43:01):
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s so powerful. That’s why I get my kicks, I get my kicks these days from watching clients succeed and when they win. And it’s just awesome to be a part of it. What an inspiring message, buddy. So y’all get limitless. Follow Jim. Say hello. Learn from his stuff. I’m telling you guys, this is a guy has a heart of gold. And it’s, and, and, and brilliant insights that’ll change your life. Jim, you went way over time, buddy. Yeah. You gave us so much extra time,
JK (43:33):
RV (43:48):
Come on now. We’ll
JK (43:49):
Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’ll, we’ll talk, we’ll talk about that. But thank you, thank you for what you do. You’re, you’re an inspiring force of nature, you know, and unstoppable force for, for good and for God. So thank you.
RV (44:00):
Thank you, brother. Well, we’ll link up to everything y’all and Jim, we’re praying for you. We’ll talk soon, buddy. All the best.
Ep 490: How To Turn Your Business Book Into a Children’s Book with Eevi Jones
AJV (00:02):
E everybody, welcome to the influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. And y’all, I am so excited to get to introduce you to a friend but also a vendor like we are a client
AJV (01:07):
And as a mom of two young boys, there is nothing more important than me finding good books for them to read because there’s not a lot of them. So let me also formally introduce you to Edie Jones. She is a USA today and a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning writer. She’s also the founder of Children’s Book University. She does writing, she does co-writing. She does a lot of this under pin names, so you would never know that it’s her, but she’s authored more than 60 different children’s books. She’s been featured in Forbes, business Insider, Huffington Post, scary Mommy, EO Fire, Kendall Preneur. I could go on and on and on. And she lives in DC and also has two young boys. And I am so excited for this conversation. So, Evie, welcome to the show. Well,
EJ (01:55):
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, aj. I’m really so excited to be here.
AJV (02:00):
I mean, and I think this is going to be such a, a cool conversation not just for authors, but for anyone who creates content and who also has kids, nieces, nephews, no kids, like whatever it is. And I just, I love the whole idea that whatever we create for adults why don’t we also think about this? How does it have, you know, universal application and benefit to our kids? And you have done such an amazing job for us. So just for you guys know who are listening, we’ll talk about this later. But Evie was behind the scenes in helping us take Rory’s first book, take the Stairs, and turn it into now my favorite kid’s book, slightly biased, but it’s my favorite kid’s book called Be The Buffalo. And so she was able to help take this one memorable concept of an a book written for adults.
AJV (02:50):
And Rory wrote this kind of poem, right? And then she was able to take that and architect it and found illustrators and printing and publishing and all the things that we didn’t have to do. And we literally went from idea for this book to publication in just a few months. And it has been a dream of a project, and you have been so awesome to work with, so, so excited just to introduce you to our community. But those are all the things I know. So let me have you introduce yourself to our community. And I would just love to know, like, what is your background? How did you get into doing this? And just a little bit about your company so that our audience gets to know you.
EJ (03:31):
Yes. Well, so your introduction was already so amazing. You, you already hit all the main things. So yes, I’m Evie. I am a professional writer and award-winning children’s author and the founder of Children’s Book university, where I teach color aspiring authors how to write and also how to publish their very own children’s book. They always wanted to write and, and share with others. And so over the past few years, as you have already said, I have written and co-authored and ghost written over 60 children’s books for children ranging from pre-K all the way to middle grade, which of course includes, you know, picture books all the way to middle grade chapter books. Hmm. And so the way I got into all this, you know, I wrote my very first children’s book back in 2013 for my then 2-year-old.
EJ (04:19):
He’s my oldest and he just actually turned 14. And so he always, he’s always so embarrassed when I tell this story because my very first children’s book was a a party transition story. So he was already potty trained, but you know, he had a really hard time transitioning from a potty chair to a regular toilet. And yeah, because I, because I couldn’t find any books on this topic, I just decided to write my own. So my first children’s book was really born out of this particular need. And so to this day, my boys are such a huge inspiration to me and my writing. And so the books I wrote throughout the years are truly, you know, a reflection of the interests they had or the struggles they also faced over the years. And so, as for the teaching of other aspiring children’s authors and the ghosts and co-writing especially within the entrepreneurial space, that’s something I really just fell into.
EJ (05:17):
Hmm. So a couple of years ago I read Todd Herman’s Wall Street Journal bestselling book, the Alter Ego Effect. And I know that Todd has been on your podcast before as well. And yeah. So I loved his book so much that I wanted to share it with my two boys. And so I turned a book of nearly 250 pages into a children’s book with about 250 words. And so my boys loved it, and they loved it so much that I actually ended up reaching out to Todd and sharing it with him. And he loved it too. And so much so that we decided to co-author a children’s book version for his book. And he was planning on doing so anyway, so the timing was perfect. And so that’s how his children spoke.
AJV (06:01):
I wanna pause really quick. Yeah. And I wanna make sure everyone heard this, because I think this is really important for all of us when we’re trying to do something and we think somehow that we need to charge for our services before we do them. Like, you’re telling me that your whole business evolved because you saw something that you could do to serve your children, you did it for free, and then because of that you said, Hey, I just want you to know this is something I did. And that was the genesis for this entire business.
EJ (06:39):
It was Yes, absolutely. That’s interest.
AJV (06:42):
Make sure everyone, I make sure everyone heard that. Right. I just wanna, I think that’s important that everyone knows that often your business starts with doing stuff for free and you make it so good. Absolutely. It’s undeniably impossible not to do more with you.
EJ (07:00):
Yes, yes, yes. And so ex that’s how his children’s book, my Super Me was Born. And it’s a story where a little hero puts on his cape and learns to play through the fearless traits of his superhero stuffed animal Captain Storm, and where he finds the courage and resilience to show up in a more brave, more brave way and ultimately unlock his heroic self. And so, yes, through this collaboration, this project, this opened up a whole bunch of new doors and opportunities that I am really just so grateful for because Todd just kept introducing me to new people. So that’s how that got started.
AJV (07:40):
I love that. And, and really just added passion and interest of how do I share this with my kids, and how do I make something that helped me help them? I love that. Yes. I love that. So, so much. So at this point, tell us how you work with authors, right? So I’ll just we’ll use Rory as an example of, yes. Okay. So you’ve got this adult book.
EJ (08:07):
Yes.
AJV (08:07):
What does it look like to go from this book that was written for a, a business audience in this case to, and now we have something that would be great for a three year-old five-year-old, 10-year-old.
EJ (08:20):
Yes. So in your case, it was, you know, you, you guys, you and Rory reached out last year, and at this point, Rory had already written his beautiful story, which you guys called Be The Buffalo. Right. Which I, I immediately fell into in love with the story, you know, because writing in rhyme and reading stories in rhyme is just my absolute favorite just because reading these types of books to little ones is just so much fun for us grownups as well, right. Because we want to make sure that it’s fun for us also because we have to read these books over and over again to our little ones,
EJ (09:15):
And that’s because, you know, a children’s books are a lot shorter, meaning we only have a few hundred words to share what we want to say. So every single word here counts, and B, even though the concept we want to share in our story may be quite complex, we will need to share it in such a way that it is both interesting to our little readers while telling it in such a way that it is easily understood. And so, I think Be The Buffalo does just that, you know, it’s, it’s so much fun to read it and it’s it, this message is just so powerful. I wanted to actually tell you, you know, my two boys that are now nine and 14 so they’re already a little bit older, but my husband and I both constantly use the phrase, be the Buffalo Now you know, whenever our boys are faced, faced with a decision that might require them to choose between an option that seems easier at the moment and an option that seems harder at the moment, but better for them in the long run, we use that, that phrase now.
EJ (10:15):
And so I know that Rory tells the story of the Buffalo in his book, take the Stairs, and that the story has been shared many, many times over the years, often unfortunately, without attributing it to Rory. Right? So I really just love that it is now that he’s now sharing this valuable lesson with little ones in the form of a children’s book as well. Mm-Hmm. And so, yeah, so the way this usually happens is people often come to me not always, but often they come to me as a, as a fellow entrepreneur, and they already have a book written on the subject of expertise, usually, right? Just like Todd Herman had the book, the Alter Ego Effect that shares how to unlock Most Heroic Your Most Heroic Self. Or Brian Johnson, for example, with this book, Ari Taylor shows us grownups to become the best version of ourselves.
EJ (11:11):
So they either have a book or they have been teaching or coaching a particular topic, you know, using a specific proprietary process that they would now like to also share with children in the form of a story. And so, what many are essentially looking for and asking for is to take the essence of their books or the essence of their teachings, and then convert it into something that we can share with little readers in, in such a way that it is easily understood. And I really love this so much because what we are essentially doing is we are taking all these amazing teaching points that took us grownups, decades to learn, right? And, and internalize, and we make them understandable and ac accessible to little ones so they can learn about them in a fun and creative way, which then in turn helps them create these habits and healthy mindsets early on in life. And yeah, you know, knowing what I know now, I would give anything, if I could have learned about the power of the alter ego early on in life, you know or the power my words can have on others, or knowing that sometimes taking the seemingly harder path often turns out to be the better one, right? So instead of waiting until our twenties or thirties or forties, we can share these incredible nuggets of wisdom early on with our little ones in the form of a children’s book. Yeah. I could
AJV (12:38):
Not not agree more. I could not agree more. Like one of the, honestly, like, just for everyone listening, like one of the reasons I wanted to have Evie on the show is because there is such a void of good kids books. Yes. Like, I literally find myself spending hours sorting through reviews, reading the first few pages, and then putting it back, putting it back. I’m like, Nope, nope, this makes no sense. This has no story, this has no plot. And there’s definitely no lesson that I want my kids to learn. And I love what you just said, and I think this is so important for anyone out there who is a content creator, whether you have a book, wanna have a book, or you never thought about it, but you have a lot of content of why wouldn’t we want to empower our kids the next generation with all of the life lessons we’ve already learned? Why should they wait till they’re 20, 30, 40? I love that you said that, ed, of going, no, look, we have an ability to teach them those things now. Like right now, all the things that we wish we would’ve known and we can do it through actually helpful kids books versus some of the nonsense.
EJ (13:41):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So
AJV (13:44):
What, so what does it look like? So, okay, so we’ll just use like any book, right? So let’s just say I’m an author and I, I have a, you know, business book about, you know, whatever, it doesn’t matter what it is. And I’m like, yeah, I’d love to figure out how to turn this into a kid’s book. Like what do you do? Like, you have, you do have a gift, you’ve got some magic behind the scenes and, and doing this. And a lot of it’s ’cause you’ve done it for a long time and you’ve done it many times. Yes. Right? But what does that process look like for the person going, yeah, I would love for my book to be a kid’s book.
EJ (14:20):
Yes. So usually what I do when, when people come to me is I actually read this book myself, and I’m very active within the entrepreneurial space. So I, the chances are actually pretty high that I have already read the book. But either way I will read the book and really also have a one-on-one conversation. You know, what is it that you want to get out of this book and what do you want little kids to get out of the children’s book? And so then this will always help me really condense this message down because that’s what we need to do, right? Like I said, we have to turn 250 pages into 250 words. And so yeah. So once we are clear on the main teaching points or the main purpose of the children’s book, we want to figure out what age group we want our book to be for.
EJ (15:06):
That’s really, really important because something most aspiring children’s authors don’t know or don’t realize is that they need to be really clear on their audience, very much like businesses in general, but we need to know who we are writing our book for as well. Right? Many often tell me that they want their children’s book to be written for any child, so that no matter the age, whether they’re two or they’re 12 years old, you know, everyone will enjoy it. But looking at our own kids, right? We know that that’s just not possible. A 2-year-old won’t really enjoy what a 12-year-old is reading and vice versa. And that’s simply because we develop cognitively the most during our childhood. And that’s why, you know, there is such a vast difference in the use of vocabulary and also the word count within children’s books and the number of pages and the number of illustrations and things like that. This is not random, you know, it’s all based on our target audience, the age group. And so that’s why we want to be very clear on what age range we want to be writing for so we can then choose the right length of words or the right length of the story and the right type of story. So
AJV (16:15):
I have a question for you about that. So yes, this is basically figuring out what is your core target audience for your children’s book. And so what would you say are like the age ranges? Does it go from like two to four, five to seven, eight to 10? Or like, because you’re right, like even the books, like my kids grow out of books probably every year, if not every two years. So that is a really interesting insight of like, you’ve gotta be really micro specific of who your book is going after.
EJ (16:47):
Exactly. So that you, the age ranges you gave is exactly that. And so based on each, it’s, you know, you make the story a little bit longer or you can also use a little bit more challenging vocabulary. And so also, do we want to have illustrations on each page, or would it, for older kids, they only have, you know, illustrations, maybe a couple of pages, every couple of pages. How much text do we want to have on each page? Things like that. So yeah, it’s really important. That’s
AJV (17:15):
Really insightful. ’cause You know, what you said in the beginning is probably what I hear most people say is like, I want it for all kids. And it’s like, yes, you are right. A 2-year-old and a 12-year-old are very different and want very different books. Just you know, just thinking about that. I’m sure me and Rory even said that like, we wanted to apply to all kids, and that’s not how it is. Right. That’s really, really insightful of how narrow it must be for children. Mm-Hmm.
EJ (17:43):
Exactly. Yeah. And so that’s usually, that usually takes part of the story writing part because, you know, I will then usually take it and write something have, first we have a conversation of where I would like to take it based on the book, and then I write something and then, you know, it’s, it’s very much a co collaborative work, right? Where we go back and forth tweaking it and just seeing to seeing where we would like to take it, or, you know, sometimes it’s either spot on or sometimes we need to still tweak it a little bit. And so that’s what we work on there. And so then after that, it’s re really about the visual part. This is what’s so beautiful about children’s books, because it’s not just the story, it’s also the visual, right? The through illustrations, which is always so much fun.
EJ (18:29):
And so most children’s books are passion projects, meaning we usually just start writing and then start envisioning the different illustrations. You know, and the really, that’s really the exciting part for me as well. And so because we are mainly driven by our passion, we don’t really think about the more technical things like, you know, the illustration sizes or the book size that are available to us, or, you know along with the orientation, you know, should we have a landscape or the other way, you know, and things like that. And so I remember wasting so much time with my very first children’s book because I didn’t think about any of these things, you know? And so all illustrations ended up being the wrong size, and I essentially had to start all over again, and I lost so much time. And so before reaching out to an illustrator, we always want to already have these things in mind, you know, know the size we want for our book, or at least have an idea.
EJ (19:26):
Or like, you guys, you, you came and you said, you know, we really like these llama lama books, you know, and so that was really helpful. So that helps. And so we also want to already have an idea of what kind of illustration type we like, you know, where we what we want our children’s book to look like. Because if we start looking for an illustrator without already having some sort of vision, we can get overwhelmed really easily and really quickly, because there are just so many different styles out there. So we first want to get clear on what style we like and then go from there. And that’s really, you already had a vision, so I could you, you know, that you shared with me that was so, that made it so much easier for me. So that was amazing.
AJV (20:08):
But I’ll tell you, as content creators, that was the most challenging part for us. Like, before we found you, which we’re so glad we got referred to you, you know, I don’t know if Rory told you how the Be the Buffalo came to be, but we were literally putting our kids to bed one night, and I was tucking him in, and we always usually do it together. And Rory looks at me and he goes, I have to go. And he just left the room, and I’m like, are you sick? Are you like, what is going on? And he just disappeared. And so I finished putting our two boys down at that point, Liam was probably two, and Jasper was four, and Roy disappeared. So like 30 minutes later I went looking for like, what, what is wrong with you? Where are you? And I couldn’t find him.
AJV (20:51):
And he was downstairs in his office. And so finally he emerges and he goes, babe, I just had a download from God. I just wrote a kid’s book. And I’m like, I’m sorry, what? What you, what whatcha talking about? And he goes, I don’t know what happened, but we were just putting the kids down. And I literally just got this message and I just wrote a kid’s book. And he goes, will you read this? And I was like, if you wrote a kid’s book in the last 30 minutes, what are you talking about? So I pull up his phone and I read it, and I literally, I start crying. I’m like, this is exactly what we wanna teach our kids. This is, this is exactly the heart of the parenting that we want to have with our kids. And I immediately said, this has to be a book.
AJV (21:34):
This cannot stay with us. Fast forward 18 months. Right? So, like, he had written that, and immediately we were like, we need an we, we know we need an illustrator, right? And we, it took forever to find anyone who would even talk to us about it. And then we hired someone paid several thousand dollars, and it was like we would get an image or two every few weeks and not in a book format. And finally we were like, listen, you can keep the deposit, but we had a bail on this. And then Rory was like, babe, we just don’t have time for this. Long story short, we finally got introduced to you. And from the time that we got introduced to you to like a book in hand, it was just a couple of months. And so much of the power of working with someone who knows what they’re doing has a lot to do with like, we didn’t have to think of all the things you said, these are the illustrators I use based on what you told me.
AJV (22:26):
This is what I need from you. Get, fill this, fill this out, fill this out. And I, I share that because I think it’s so important of going, we could have had this book out a long time before because the, the book itself, the poem, right, it came in 30 minutes, but it took us 18 months to finally find someone who knew what the heck they were doing to allow us to create something. And that was you. And it was so much of the guidance and the coaching, and this is what I need from you next. This is what I need from you next. And the, the illustrations was a huge part of it. ’cause We don’t know, we had never written a kid’s book before, right? We just knew that we wanted this for our kids and our friends’ kids and any kid. And I think that’s, that is what is the problem with so much of our businesses. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing for adults or for kids, it’s like what you’re good at is the content, right? But putting it all together, getting it printed, getting it in a course, putting it in a keynote, that’s, that’s what stops a lot of us from getting the message that we feel called to share from actually ever getting out. There are the technical and tactical things. And in this particular case, you take care of all of that. If you wanna put ’em in a kid’s book.
EJ (23:47):
Yes, exactly. Well, I’m just so grateful that you kept nudging Rory to really do turn it into a children’s book.
AJV (23:55):
More like harassing, but
AJV (25:08):
Absolutely. To do it for children. Mm-Hmm.
EJ (26:09):
AJV (27:02):
Yeah. So you wanna be an establ you wanna be established in your
EJ (27:06):
Personal brand. Yes, exactly. Brand.
AJV (27:07):
Mm-Hmm.
EJ (27:24):
Yes. I mean, but if you have, you know a proprietary system that you’re using that you, that you have in your course, then you can, then you do not necessarily need a book. Okay. Yes. But it always helps me if you have material like a book that always helps me just to draft your story. But I can also, I often also go through my client’s courses. So, you know, if they don’t have a book, I go through their courses and then I just get inspired there. So that also works.
AJV (27:53):
But it’s most important that you’re just clear and established and who you are. Mm-Hmm.
EJ (28:05):
Exactly.
AJV (28:06):
Okay. So that’s all
EJ (28:07):
I need.
AJV (28:07):
So and then, so then kind of my second question is that is how do you determine if the content is suitable to turn into a kid’s book? Or have you ever told someone, I love your content. I don’t think it’s good for kids.
EJ (28:24):
Yes. I mean, you know, a lot of people think that a, a children’s book about business just has to be really about business. Like, you know, marketing or selling or having a lemonade stand, because I see those books all the time, right? Mm-Hmm.
EJ (29:16):
Just like their language becomes second nature, this knowledge is simply a given. And simply they grow up with this, right? And so if you are asking yourself, is this worth a children’s book? Then I would say, you know, in today’s fast and ever changing world, we all need to be asking ourselves, how am I impacting and supporting others with my life and my energy? How do I leave a lasting positive impact on my little ones that leaves them for the better long after I’m gone? Right? And so my providing of these services is my attempt to help others do just that. So yes, I hopefully that answers your question.
AJV (29:55):
Yeah, I think that’s really good. And I, and I think it’s, it’s what I hear you saying is that there’s an opportunity no matter what your message is Yes. To find an application for it to be meaningful for kids.
EJ (30:07):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:09):
Yeah. I love that. So then my next question is kind of like, how could this help you built Mm-Hmm,
EJ (30:33):
Yes. So for many of my clients that so for example, Todd Herman, he uses his and Phil Jones. I know that Rory knows Phil Jones, and you maybe also they just take their children’s books anywhere they go because this is just another angle to share your own message. You know, and this is why I was saying earlier, it’s really helpful that if your children’s book you know, shares the same message as your own, as your own brand, right? If it ties together what you are teaching and what your children’s book is teaching, if that ties together, that’s really great. And that you can then later on share your message from different angles, because a lot of our clients have children. So then you can share your children’s book that way and tackle things that way. Or for example, my, my client Brian Johnson with his book Ari Te, for him it is really important to reach as many people as possible.
EJ (31:32):
And so, again, that’s why he, he create, he has this book Ari Tale for regular people then, but then he also has programs that reaches athletes, for example. So, you know, he wants to reach athletes, so he creates material that specifically targets them. And so that’s why we wrote his children’s book series heroic for his heroic brand to reach children. And so that’s, I think how this ties it all together, just being able to share it with a different generation, the same teachings that are important to you to be able to reach other generations with that message.
AJV (32:11):
Yeah. Well, I love it. Well, I’ll tell you, for everyone who’s listening, and for you too, Evie, as a consumer, as a parent, I often buy way more kids books than I do adult books, right? It’s like, absolutely. I, I pretty much am like for every Christmas present for my niece and nephews, it always includes a book for most birthday presents. ’cause I wanna give something that’s not just a toy that’s going to disappear in three weeks. I almost always include a book. Like, that’s just who I am. Maybe not everyone is like that, but I buy way more kids’ books. And when I find a kid’s book I love, I’ll buy like 20 or 30 of ’em. ’cause Then I’m like, I know your kid needs it. I know your kid needs it. I know you want your kid to have it. There’s very few adult books that I’ll do. I’ll recommend ’em, I’ll share them. But like the kids’ books, because kids can’t buy them. I do that. And so for whatever it’s worth to everyone listening out there, people will buy more books for their kids than often they will even for themselves.
EJ (33:17):
Absolutely. I, I absolutely agree. Especially what you were saying with as a gift. Right? I, I very rarely give books. Maybe my husband, I give him books all the time, but friends, not so much. The only time when I do give books to friends and family is when it’s a children’s book.
AJV (33:34):
Yeah. So, so for anyone who’s listening, just going, it’s kind of a big deal. And then I think another thing that we’ve really seen is just doing special times throughout the year of like where we package. You know, you, you buy this book and you’re gonna get the kids’ book with it. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (34:22):
I I sometimes I’ll just flip through be the buffalo as reminders of things that I won’t necessarily pull out, take the stairs and flip through it, because it doesn’t have pictures. There’s not that emotional visual reminder and there’s a lot of pages and a lot of words, but sometimes I’ll just flip through it for those like quick subtle reminders that Yes. And I think part of it is ’cause I lo it, I love it in a poem version. I know you mentioned you do too, but the simplicity and the, the shortness of how quick you can get through that is a really powerful reminder when the, I can only think of like maybe two books ever that I reread. Like, there’s just not a lot. But with kids’ books, to your point, you’re gonna read them until you’re exhausted of ’em. You’re like, oh my gosh, can we never read this book again? But those reminders really mean a lot when they actually have a plot, a story, and a lesson, and it’s just as impactful for me, the adult, the reader, and in this case, the parent to read it to my kids as it is beneficial for them.
EJ (35:23):
Exactly. Yeah. I love that you say this because that’s what I get a lot about my own books also, that when people read it, and it’s supposed to be for children, but they say, oh my goodness, that was so amazing to just read for myself. So, and you know, if you have a book like this that is really, that’s something special, you know, if if both can get something out of this yeah. I love that.
AJV (35:47):
I love that. So okay, two quick questions left, and I’ll be sensitive to time, but how long does this process take? So if somebody’s like, oh yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been wanting to do this, like what is like a timeline of expectations to get something out into the world?
EJ (36:02):
Yes. So your timeline was super short. Right. And because, and the reason why this is not always the case. The reason why was whenever I send something your way for a thumbs up or you know, your feedback, you were on it. So it really depends on, you know, my client’s feedback, how quickly can they return my calls or my emails and things like that. And so yeah, based on that I don’t remember, but it wasn’t, was it three to six months? Right? Yeah. So it was really quick. It
AJV (36:34):
Was not long. It was not long.
EJ (36:36):
Yes. And so yeah, around that timeframe, I would say. But again, it really depends on how quickly, you know, the client can respond. But I always try to write my story very quickly, thoroughly, but quickly because I know that people are so excited, you know, to get this going and to share it with the world. And so, yeah, so I work as quickly as possible, and then we just always take it from there.
AJV (37:01):
Well, I’ll just tell yer, if you haven’t yet written a book, the idea if you could get a kids book out in three to six months is about 10 x shorter
EJ (37:44):
Yeah. Well, so I would, I would say as a children’s author is that if you have ever thought about writing a children’s book, whether it is for your brand or as a passion project, I would encourage you to really look into it and just go for it. You know, it’s 90% of the people that hear that I write children’s books, they tell me that they always wanted to write their own. Hmm. But so few actually end up doing so for, for various reasons. But really, it’s never too late to write a children’s book. Something people often are held back by is the thought that they don’t have any experience either in writing children’s books or, you know, in writing in general. Or oftentimes people share with me that they don’t have kids or, you know, that they, that because of that they don’t feel like they are fit to write a children’s book.
EJ (38:32):
But, you know, there are really, there’s no reason to think that having kids or not having kids disqualifies us to write a children’s book. You know, I have worked with many clients that also don’t have children, or where the children are already fully grown and have already moved out. So it isn’t necessarily about having kids or being around kids, it’s about having been a kid, you know, and remembering similar experiences or having overcome similar struggles that kids go through today. That’s what we’ll connect with little ones, not whether or not the author is around children on a daily basis, you know? And yeah, it’s just so funny too, because so many don’t know that some of our most beloved authors we remember from our own childhood also don’t have children, or didn’t have children. For example, Dr. Seuss, he didn’t have any children, you know, and Louis Carroll, the, the author of Alice in Wonderland didn’t either or, or she Silverstein or Marie Sendek, you know, who wrote where the Wild Things are. Or Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon, all Without Children. And yet they all have, these are some of our most beloved children’s book authors. So I think that’s something to just keep in mind also.
AJV (39:46):
Yeah, those are iconic books for the most part. Mm-Hmm,
EJ (40:00):
Absolutely.
AJV (40:01):
And how can you impart that gift to this next generation? That’s so good, so wise, I love that so much. Everyone who’s listening if you are curious about this, if you’re going, I would love to learn more about what it, what it’s like to write a kid’s book or turn my book into a kid’s book. Evie has put together a special link just for our community, for our podcast listeners. So if you wanna check this out, if you wanna learn more, go to Evie Jones. It’s EEVI jones.com/brand builders. So evie jones.com/brand builders. I’ll put that in the show notes. And she’s gonna do a 15 minute call for free with anyone who’s interested. Most of her services are not for free, so this is a very generous offering of just to go like, what’s it about? Could I do it? How would I do it? And what, what’s the process like? So if you wanna learn more, check her out. Evie, if people just wanna connect with you on like, your preferred social platform, where should they go?
EJ (41:06):
They can just go over to Instagram. That’s Evie Jones. That’s where you find me, that’s where I am. And you can also message me there as well.
AJV (41:15):
Awesome. And then one last bonus question for me, but if it’s for me, bet other people would like to know it as well, what is your favorite kid’s book to recommend to other parents?
EJ (41:28):
Well, I have so many because, you know, I, I write and read so often. I read so many, so I would say I absolutely love The Little Blue Truck Series by Ali Shirley and the Lama Lama series, which I know you love so much by Anna Ney because they express so much with so little, you know, so just so few words. And so for older kids, I adore Andrea Beatty’s, the questionnaire series, if you are looking for something for your boys like, you know, she has books like Rosie Revere Engineer, or Iggy Peck Architect. So I’m really drawn as, you know, to rhyming stories because they, they’re my favorite way of writing. And so for older kids, Mary Pope Osborne, you know, her Magic Treehouse series, I absolutely love this one. And then of course, I have to mention my favorite illustrators who are Peter H. Reynolds and Lauren Long. I love them so much. So yes. And then of course, your book. I love it so much. I hope lots of people get it. It’s absolutely adorable. And like I said, the first time I read it, I, I just knew it was something really special. And we use this phrase all the time now. So, you know, when we see a set of stairs or you know, an escalator,
AJV (42:50):
I love it. And I promise I did not ask her to say that I did not
EJ (43:41):
Bye.
Ep 488: Creating Operational Infrastructure with Kelly Roach
RV (00:01):
Well, Kelly Roach is a new friend of mine and who says You don’t make real friends on social media because we met on social media and now are becoming real life friends. And I think she’s just delightful and really intelligent and very successful, which you’re, you’re gonna hear this story, which when I saw the arc of her kind of career journey and path, it really impressed me because she started out as it didn’t start out, but she was a former NFL cheerleader. Mm-Hmm.
RV (00:54):
We’re gonna talk about that. She also is a, a, a multi-time bestselling author. She has been featured in A, B, C and Fox and Forbes and Inc. 5,000. She’s been on Inc. 5,000 list. And one of the other things that I love about her is she’s done, she’s built this business with no debt, no investors or outside funding, which is also what we believe in how we operate. And it’s, it’s pretty unusual for a company to get to eight figures in annual revenue without those things. So I was like, yeah, let’s, let’s talk to Kelly and let’s see what she’s about. So Kelly, welcome to the show.
KR (01:31):
Well, thank you. Thank you for the intro, and I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
RV (01:35):
Yeah. So tell me how, first of all, so you were NFL cheerleader, so I want to hear about all these leaps because Yeah. You know, a lot of the people we talk, I mean, we do personal brand strategy. Yeah. So a lot of people are going through a pivot of some type Mm-Hmm.
KR (02:07):
Absolutely. So I, it, it all started one day on the free lunch line. So I was on the free lunch line. There was five kids in my family. My dad worked for a nonprofit. He decided that he wanted to give his life to that work. My mom was a stay at home mom. You can do the math. Okay. Five kids, right. Stay at home mom, dad worked for the nonprofit. I’m on the free lunch line. No one knows. I’m on the free lunch line holding it all together. One day there’s a, a fill-in cafeteria lady, and she rips open my envelope in front of everyone and there’s no money in it. And that moment was a turning point for my life because in that moment I was just, so, I call it naked in the lunch line, like vulnerable. And I was like, I’m not gonna live that life.
KR (02:52):
And so I was, you know, early in middle school. And at that moment I was like, I’m gonna do every possible thing that I can to change my circumstances, to live a different life, to make my life what I believe it can be, and I don’t wanna be naked on the lunch line again. Right. And so you said, how did I go up an NFL cheerleader? Well, I cleaned the dance studio floors after school almost every day for seven years, so that I could go to the best dance school in the area. I would go, oh,
RV (03:22):
That’s like how you paid for your,
KR (03:24):
That’s how I paid for my lessons. I would go after school, I would eat my dinner in the car, I would go clean the dance studio, and then I would stay for lessons. And I was able to go to the best dance school in the area. It was a very competitive dance school that produced professional dancers that went on to have careers. And so I did that for seven years. Loved it. I loved performing, I loved entertaining all of those things. Got into high school and college, and I was like, you know, I, I think I had five jobs in college. Being an NFL cheerleader was one of them. So I was the youngest NFL cheerleader
RV (03:58):
People. People don’t often realize that the cheerleaders don’t make what the players make.
KR (04:04):
I mean, and, and yeah. And I completely did it because it was, it was an ability to continue my craft, right? Sure. Because I went to the college where I was gonna be in the least amount of debt they had like a D three dance team, D three cheerleading team. I was like, all right, I don’t think I can do this. So I was like, I’m either going to shrink back to my circumstances, or I’m gonna leap forward and just go for it and audition for the NFL. And I was like, F it, let’s do this. So I auditioned for the NFLI made the team my freshman year. So I was teaching aerobics. I was cheering for the NFLI was a cocktail server. I was babysitting all the things. And it was great because I always had money. I was able to have these amazing experiences, all of that. And, you know, as I was progressing through college, I had been on the, the cheerleading team for a couple years and I was like, okay, it’s time to get really serious about my career. And I was going to school for communications because I was like, I have no idea what I wanna do with my life. I just didn’t wanna sit in spreadsheet
RV (05:00):
All day. You’re using your, of all the people who went to college, I feel like you’re actually using your degree, isn’t
KR (05:06):
It wild? So I picked a communications degree. ’cause I was like, I just don’t wanna sit in a spreadsheet, like in a cubicle. I won’t interact with the world. I had no idea what that was gonna look like. So I got the most entry level job in the Fortune 500. ’cause I was like, if nothing else, this girl knows how to put in the work. I was willing to do the work. And I was like, I can get promoted here. I can grow here. I can become financially free, I can learn business. So I was the first one in, last one out basically every day for a decade. I was promoted seven times in eight years. I went from being a single producer in the most entry level job in the company to becoming a senior vice president. I was managing a $50 million portfolio.
KR (05:43):
I built a team from one to a hundred, interviewing, recruiting, hearing, training, and I was managing 17 locations. And so over the course of this journey, I got this amazing business education. Like I fell in love with sales and marketing and teaching people and coaching. And I was like, this is unbelievable. Like, I just was like, I need to share this with others. But when I got to the top of that, you know, ladder corporate, I was traveling all over the place. I mean, I had branches from New York City down into the Carolinas, and I was like, I had been dating my husband at that time. We’ve been together for 18 years now. And, you know, I was starting thinking about, well, what do I want for my actual life? And I was like, it’s not this, right? I don’t wanna be on planes and trains and buses and be away.
KR (06:32):
I wanna have a family. I wanna have a life. And I, I loved the work, but I did not feel that I was making the kind of impact in the world that I felt that I was intended to with those skills. And so I said, well, who can I help? Like, who can I share these, these principles, these lessons with? And I was like, I know small business owners because small business owners start a business. ’cause They’re graded a think necessarily. Have the operations and the sales and the leadership and the management, which is why 85% of businesses, you know, go outta business. So I started this side hustle. I actually went to my employer and I said, I’m doing this. You can fire me if you want, but I’m doing this. And, and I I said, if you see my performance drop, you can also come back and fire me. And they didn’t. They let me because this performing person in my role. So they let me build my business on the side. Even even, you know, while I was working full-time, build it to seven figures, became a full-time entrepreneur, took it to eight. I have six companies now in the portfolio that I’m growing. And here we are now I’m interviewing with you, Rory Uhhuh
RV (07:43):
KR (08:21):
Yeah. That’s a really good question. Let me answer both sides of it because I think it’s, it’s pertinent to the conversation that we’re having. First and foremost I focused on building and mentoring teams. So over a 10 year period, not only did I coach and hire and manage the entry level people that were gonna be the ground floor producers on my team, but I promoted internally managers, senior managers, pre vice presidents, senior vice presidents. And so what I was doing was I was building autonomy and I was building this very high performance, very systematic high growth team instead of leaders. And so I went from being the manager where I had my hands in everything and I was part of everything day to day. And I needed to be active on the floor, you know, hip to hip coaching producers every day to getting to the point where over, you know, a period of years I was able to elevate leaders.
KR (09:18):
They had worked with me. There was a cadence, there was predictable performance. We had metrics and KPIs and structure to what we were doing. And it got to the point where they really only needed me in a much more consultative capacity day to day versus like the kind of the, the fire, the flames that you have to be in. And so I had breathing room intellectually, and I actually built my business on the side, basically doing an hour before work in the morning. I would go outside and sit in my car on my break, and I would take an hour on my lunch break, and then I would basically service my clients in the evening, like seven, eight o’clock at night. So that’s, that’s kind of how I got it off the ground in terms of how did I get customers? That’s such a great question.
KR (10:03):
I started running ads from literally almost day one, really my business. Wow. Yes. One of the best things I ever did. I, there’s three things that I did that I feel fundamentally changed and formed my ability to be where I am today and to do what I’ve done. One, I hired my first coach before I had my first client. Two, I, I started building a team from day one. So I had, I had support in the business before I had a client and I had a coach before. I had a client, number one and number two. And number three, I started running ads right away. And the simple ads that I started running were for people to book a free consultation. And I would take consultations either on my lunch break or in the evenings. And I started off by selling high ticket one-to-one services until I got to the point where I was like, okay, I can’t do that anymore. And then I obviously pivoted into a group program. But running the ads allowed me, when I was at work during the day, I had an automated machine that was building my email list, building my audience, booking consultations for me. So that gave me this duality of, I’m at, I’m at work, I’m managing my team, I’m running the business, but I have ads over here that are working all day, even when I’m not available. What
RV (11:20):
Year was this?
KR (11:23):
Okay, so 20. We’re talking 20 12, 20 13. Yeah.
RV (11:28):
Okay. Yeah. So you were running like digital Facebook ads kind of a thing?
KR (11:33):
Yeah, I wasn’t running them, but I paid someone to run them. Yes,
RV (11:36):
Sure, sure, sure. Yes. Yes. But yeah, I mean, that was like the heyday of ads, right? Where they were just coming on. Oh, it
KR (11:42):
Was so different. It was
RV (11:43):
So
KR (11:45):
Do you even remember those days?
RV (11:47):
I mean, did you, did you even, so were you driving, were you driving ads directly to a free consultation? I mean, you mentioned building your email list. I was, were you trying to drive right your
KR (11:56):
Email first? I was both doing both. It’s so funny. I wish I had it. So I had like the cd Did you have the CDs? Did
RV (12:02):
Cds
KR (12:02):
Nice. Of course. Oh yeah. We had couple loads of CDs. So yes. So I had
RV (12:05):
Secret and then we went to SB b thumb drive secret, like mail the thumb drive. We did that for a hot minute. Yep. Secret. Yes,
KR (12:10):
Yes. So I did both, right? So I was always running the opt-in ads where they could get the digital thing and then they could also add a, an address and we would physically ship them. I still remember them with the little sleeves. But yeah, then I also simultaneously was running ads direct to consult. And that’s how I got like the majority of my customers in those beginning years was, you know, email list, audience building ads and then running ads directly to consultation. And that kind of was like my salesperson until I was ready to hire my first salesperson. Uhhuh
RV (12:46):
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s interesting. Like the one-on-one coaching model is what we tell almost everybody. Like, if you’re trying to build an escape path from your corporate career, it’s like one-on-one coaching is the thing. ’cause Consulting takes absolutely. Time to build. Speaking takes time to build writing books takes time to build. And then a lot of the things like the courses in the eBooks, it’s like you can’t make enough money selling a $99 widget to, to really leave until you have a monster audience. Yes. You’re not making enough. So it’s interesting that that’s like your exact path
KR (13:19):
And that story. I mean, that’s exactly it. And, and that’s exactly what I tell people today. Everyone wants to go right to like the digital product, the course, the, the low ticket thing, but they don’t realize the size and scope of the brand and audience that you have to build. So I do those things now, but I’ve had 10 years of audience building behind me to do that. Right. You’re absolutely right. I mean, for anyone that’s early stage, whether you’re working job or whether your business just isn’t at the point yet where you can support your family. Like that one-to-one coaching model is beautiful. And the thing that’s so powerful about it is you become so so well versed in the exact trends and language and, and break points and all of that, that it’s so easy to sell group coaching. When you’ve done one-on-one, I find people that try to go straight to group coaching really have trouble selling it because they haven’t been in the trenches and gotten to the point where it’s like they could look at someone’s, you know, situation in three seconds, they can pinpoint exactly what the person needs.
KR (14:22):
‘Cause They’ve been there, done that. It’s like they can do it in their sleep. And it’s so much easier to sell and to scale a product when you understand your avatar to that degree versus trying to do it in theory. Right?
RV (14:34):
Mm-Hmm.
KR (15:11):
Yeah. It it’s, it absolutely is. And it’s so funny because I’m sure you get this question from people all the time, and so do I, because like I pump out a ton of content. You do too. Right? And, and people are like, how do you think of your content? How do you know what to create? How do you, how are you always create, I’m like, if you’re having conversations with your people, you are never creating, in theory, you’re always creating to answer questions and to solve problems Yeah. That people are already pushing to you Anyway. So I think that’s kind of the danger of, you know, in today’s market, there’s so much focus on like automation and digitizing things and all of that. And listen, I have a Black Belt six Sigma operations manager that help like automate and digitize things and like get stuff dialed in. But the human element is so essential to sell with ease. Because when there’s connection there and there’s congruency and you’re not trying to take an idea and force it on the market, but instead you are like in cohesion right. With your people. That’s where it is. Like it’s fun and it’s easy because what you’re producing is is what they’re already craving. They’re just waiting for it. Right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (16:24):
Well, and it’s interesting how simple, like, you know, the other thing about running ads to a consult, which is really great, is we call it chicken on a Stick in the Brand Builders group community, which is, I love, like giving people that sample, right? Is just going like, how do they sell chicken in the food court? They don’t say, we’ve got the best chicken in the world. Yeah. They hand you a piece of chicken on a stick and you eat it and you’re like, wow, that was amazing. Like, I think I will have a chicken sandwich. That’s
KR (16:48):
So good.
RV (16:49):
Like doing a free coaching call. Even if you don’t sell them, you get all these other benefits that you’re talking about.
KR (16:55):
For sure. They
RV (16:56):
Get to trust you. They become a referral source, they become a fan, and hopefully they become a client. But even if not, like you get all these other things but it’s, you’re so right. Like everybody wants to jump to the like, scalable digital empire of reaching millions of people and then they, they, they don’t give themself enough financial runway to ever get the plane off off the ground
KR (17:19):
That that’s a thousand percent in. And I mean, I go off on my like soapbox about this all the time because, you know, you can, you can do a quick Google search. It, you know, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and, and you can look up the fact that, you know, the average business is not profitable for two years. If you go into a business and your only focus is, let me extract every single dollar out of this business as fast as I possibly can, the chances are it’s gonna fail. Because you need to be able to love and nurture and invest in that business building a foundation that is gonna be sustainable, that’s gonna last a profitable foundation for growth. So number one, I feel like so many people are starting and growing businesses from a place of financial, like dire straits, right?
KR (18:02):
And, and, and then how do you make good strategic decisions? How can you be a visionary if you’re making decisions you know, in financial dire straits? But, but also I think people are very quick. Like, I know the whole like, mindset is burn, burn the boat and, you know, don’t give yourself any other option. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, if you have a job, like find a way to get your business off the ground on the side before you quit, because you need to fund getting that thing off the ground and you’re gonna be a much better CEO if you’re making strategic decisions and not very transactional ones because you’re trying to survive. Like, it’s, it’s not a great place to build a company from, you know? Yeah.
RV (18:41):
I mean, it’s just desperation. Like very few things are good to do. Like from desperation, specifically financial ones
RV (18:52):
I love that. So I wanna come back to something you said a few minutes ago, which was that before you had your first customer, you hired your first person. Mm-Hmm. That’s the other thing that I think small business owners really struggled to go, well, I can’t afford to hire somebody. And it, and it, and it’s, it’s not just the first person. It typically stays with them for like many years where they’re constantly going, I can’t afford to hire. I’m not making enough money to hire somebody. Yeah. How did you flip your mindset there and how, how did you, how did you get yourself to do that?
KR (19:22):
Well, I think there’s a couple things. And one I got so off about exactly what you just said, that I wrote a book about it. Because no one is teaching entrepreneurs how to build teams. And this is why entrepreneurs are, are so burnout and overwhelmed and frustrated and stressed in their businesses because they don’t have the appropriate support. To answer your question specifically,
RV (19:41):
What’s that book called?
KR (19:41):
Oh, it’s called Bigger.
RV (19:42):
You have 11. You have 11 books. So
KR (19:44):
What’s that one? It’s bigger than You. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Building an Unstoppable Dream Team. And it literally walks you through step by step by step, the strategy, the thinking, the mindset, and the tactical action plan of how to go through building a team that will be profitable. So to answer your question, almost any role that you hire for, especially in the beginning of your business, you know, you’re, you should hire, basically there’s a front of the house and a back of the house, right? We, let’s just make it really, really simple for people. Front of the house is sales and marketing. Back of the house is operations and client support. One is driving new customer acquisition and one is making sure you get paid. You service the people that are already paying you, you keep them and you grow them. Almost any role that you hire for in your company can be monetized.
KR (20:32):
So when I hired, when I brought on my first person, they had a element of their role that was already built into it that was going to monetize. They were helping me to get referrals. They were helping me to do upsells. They were helping me to do contract renewals. So I knew before I hired this person that yes, they’re gonna cost me this amount each month, but this is what I’m gonna do to monetize their roles. That instead of this being an expense, this is gonna be an investment. And that’s how I look at any person that I’m hiring in any one of my companies today, before I go and bring someone on board, I’m saying, how is this role gonna be sustainable in my organization? Because as the CEO, your plan is the survival, your responsibility is the survival of the business. It’s how does this business stay in business?
KR (21:22):
How does this business stay profitable? How does this business keep growing? And if you start building a team with either a, the mindset that this team is gonna cost me money, then you have a scarcity mindset, and you’re probably not gonna hire the right people or the best people, or any people at all. To your point, rari or on the flip side, we have people that go out and they hire all these people, but there’s, there’s no plan, right? And when you hire people without a plan to monetize their roles, it it’s, it’s a heavy burden. So now you end up working to pay their payroll instead of them working for you. But I think the beautiful thing, and this is what I remind my clients all the time, is this is all decisions we have free will
RV (22:14):
Wanna, I wanna, I wanna zoom in on that because Yeah. You know, you, you mentioned like, there’s certain roles where you go like, hey, referrals or repeat customers or renewals or you know, collecting cash or like outstanding payments even. Yep. What are some of the, how do you, so, so I I’m curious to know, like you mentioned front of the house, back of the house, sales, marketing, operations, delivery. Have you seen a consistent pattern in who you should hire first versus who you should hire second, who you should hire third? Or is that different? Yeah. For every business, yes. And then, and then also what I really am also curious about is how do you tie operational roles like assistance and, you know, people like that. How do you tie those to a metric to where both, like you can feel like, oh, I’m getting the business is getting the money back for this person.
KR (23:09):
Yeah. These are really good questions. Thank you for asking these questions. I think these can change people’s lives that are listening here today. So listening. Totally,
RV (23:16):
Totally.
KR (23:17):
Okay, so, so let’s start with the first question that you asked, which is, is there an order of hiring? And this is what I’ll say. Obviously there’s nuance to every situation, so it’s not gonna be like, yes, it’s the same for every person, but let’s just talk about like, the trend, the pattern of, of what I see with the thousands of clients that I’ve worked with, right? First things first, you need to buy back your time period, right? Because as the CEO of the company, you need to be doing things that are forward market facing, creating content, getting on podcasts, generating leads, having consultation called, doing launches, right? Which means that the first thing that you need to do is to get your time back on admin operations. Just all that transactional stuff that takes your time during the day that keeps you, I say like, behind the scenes instead of out front.
KR (24:05):
So the first thing to think about is how much of your time is actually being spent out front driving the business forward, versus how much of your time is being spent behind the scenes, basically just maintaining the tasks that have to get done. So that tends to be the very first role. And it doesn’t need to be a full-time person. It could be a, a fractional admin, it could be a part-time person. You know, there’s all different ways you can slice that, you know, equation. But that’s number one. Then number two is you need someone whose only role is gonna be to generate cash. So someone who’s gonna probably be a hybrid of sales and marketing with a goal of taking the leads that you’re generating, building relationships with them, nurturing them, getting them into consultations or getting them on your calendar for consultations. That tends to be the second one, which then puts you the business and puts you in a position to be able to afford to hire the third person, which is now, oh my gosh, I have more clients than I can service well myself.
KR (25:01):
How do I make this business scalable? Point number three is, okay, now we need someone that can actually do client servicing, that can take your methodology, that can take your, your, you know, scientific approach to what you do and can empower other people to go through that process. It doesn’t mean you’re totally removed from it, but it means you can elevate your role and then you can have support roles, right? That are taking the nuances and, and helping the application of them. So that tends to be the most effective order. And I’m not saying it’s like that with everyone, but I’m saying that is a pattern that tends to work very, very well because first person gives you back time so you can sell more. Second person is selling more directly or indirectly, and then third person is able to then help you to make sure that you retain, upsell, get renewals, get referrals from the people that you’ve now brought in. Mm-Hmm,
RV (25:54):
KR (26:56):
Yeah. It’s such a good question. And, and the answer is that it changes as the business grows very dramatically. So like, I’ll give an example of like, here’s what this looks like. I have, I have some companies right now that are only 1-year-old. I have my original company that’s now 12 years old. So let’s talk about the difference between an operations person in a baby company versus an operations person in a a established company. ’cause It’s so different, right? Totally. In a baby company that’s just getting started, your operations person is very much gonna be in like a hybrid role, okay? So this person is gonna be doing tasks related to scheduling your customers, renewing their contracts. They’re gonna be kind of interacting and engaging. They’re not servicing your customers, but they are going to be kind of that, that touch point, right? They’re doing all of your scheduling, they’re coordinating with customers on all different things that come up.
KR (27:46):
They’re, you know, managing billing to make sure that, you know, all, all things go in order. All of those things, right? And, and many times, the first time that you hire for any role in your company, when your company’s very small, the role is gonna be a hybrid role. Meaning they’re gonna be doing a lot of kind of different things because you don’t need a full-time person that’s gonna sit there all day long to do operations for a little baby business, right? When I was fi first building this role, and I still do this with my newer companies now, I tend to have kind of someone in an operational, hybrid, hybrid role that in many ways, even though they may not be the person that is servicing the customer, they are almost like the customer care person for all intents and purposes, which means that they’re getting referrals, right?
KR (28:33):
When I first started doing this, I literally had my ops person send thank you notes and, and touch points for our referral program, and she would generate new referrals every single month. She was a brand new college kid. I hired her as an intern. She had no sales experience, she had no marketing experience, and I was literally training her from the ground up on operations. But I said, what’s something that is systematic and can produce profits that someone that’s brand new can do well? Anyone can build relationships by caring anyone, right? Sure. And so I said, I’m gonna have this person, I’m gonna look at my client base and I’m gonna say, who are the right people that I could be generating consistent referrals from? And I simply had her manage the monthly touch points for referrals. And we consistently saw that we got sales coming in and introductions coming in because of her just doing these kind of thoughtful monthly touch points to our own customers.
KR (29:30):
And a lot of people think, well, I’m a small business, you know, I’m just getting started. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a referral program. If you have one customer and you get one referral, you just double the size of your business. Amen. If you have five customers and you get five referrals, you just double the size of your business. So you can do this on a really small scale, or you can do this on a really large scale. But when I was starting at the very beginning, that was how I monetized that first role. They got us referrals. They got people to renew their contracts and do upsells. Let’s say someone was in my group program, they could add a VIP day with me. At the time I was still doing a lot, like, you know it looks different for everyone now when I look at, you know, our operations manager, you know, in my coaching company that’s 12 years old, right?
KR (30:18):
He’s a black Belt six Sigma, and his job is helping us buy back the time of every other person in the organization by finding efficiencies in the business systematically. And then getting them to work like a well-oiled machine so that every other person in the company’s productivity is lifted up so that they can actually open up their bandwidth, open up their productivity to sell more, to serve more clients, to get more leads to, to close more whatever it’s gonna be. So it looks, it looks really, really different. It’s kind of much more scientific over here ’cause it’s like deep dive, like systems efficiencies, you know, process orientation. Whereas in the beginning stages it’s just like, well, what are the things that most small businesses don’t do? And, and Rory, this is what, if I can just take one minute on this. Most small businesses, they do not consistently reach out to their customers for referrals.
KR (31:14):
They do not consistently reach out to their past customers. This was the other thing I had my operations manager do. Whenever someone rolled off a contract, she would stay with in touch with them every month. And then we would consistently see them come back and they would come back and they would come back. So that was the other thing. It was just she wasn’t selling, she was just literally staying in touch with them. Right. We would put together mailers or a handwritten note or whatever the case. So I’ll just pause there. I know that was kind of a lot.
RV (31:41):
No, that’s great. I I was actually gonna ask you what are these monthly touchpoints that you’re systematizing for referrals? Yeah. Like what are, what are they doing? ’cause Like you say you is intern fresh outta college, like not the sales and marketing wizard. Yes. But clearly you’ve developed some type of process or system that they’re able to run.
KR (31:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So we do everything digitally now because we run much larger scale programs. But back then, and even I would say if you’re running a small business and you’re just getting off this off the ground and you’re not talking about you know, hundreds of people that you’re reaching out to you know, we sent handwritten notes. You know, we might share an interesting article with them and say, you know, I thought of you this, you know, I thought you would enjoy this. She might share a resource with them. We did send out gifts, we sent physical gifts. So I mean, again, I’m in the high ticket world, primarily that this business that I’m talking about is in the coaching consulting world. So when someone works with you, you, and, you know, the equivalent of a relationship is a hundred, $200,000 over the lifetime of the business, it makes sense to spend 50 bucks on a gift for someone, right?
KR (32:49):
So we did gifting, we did thank you notes, we sent out articles we would make connections if there was someone that we thought that it would be relevant and meaningful for them to, you know, have a connection with you know, she would answer questions here and there. So it, it was nothing genius. It was just literally the consistency of doing it at all. And that’s kind of what my point was. Most small businesses never follow up with their past customers. Your past customers know you. They like you, they trust you, and they’ve gotten a result working for you. But if you don’t care enough to reach back out to them and say, Hey Rory, I saw we haven’t worked together for two years. What have you been up to? I’d love to see you back in our world again. Why would you come back to us?
KR (33:32):
Right. You’re gonna go to someone who’s pursuing you and saying, I’d really like to work with you. Right? So that’s one of the easiest money makers that sit in every single business that most small businesses, they don’t have any cadence to how they’re going after that business. And that’s free money. That’s free money because most people buy things cyclically and habitually, meaning they’re gonna buy in that category for life, but they’re not gonna buy every day for forever. And people buy from top of mind awareness, which means they’re gonna buy from one of the last three people that they interfaced with. So if you put those two things together, people buy habitually, meaning they buy typically in a category for life. If you’re a person that believes in coaching, you’re probably gonna keep investing in some way, shape or form in expanding your education and growing and whatever. Right? So we know that people, when they buy in a category, tend to buy in that category long term. We also know that people’s lives go like this. They’re, they’re not ups and down, they’re not
RV (34:33):
Ups and downs. Yeah.
KR (34:34):
There’s constant ups and downs and season
RV (34:37):
Have kids, you go to college, you move da, you get a new job, you start a new company, whatever, Uhhuh,
KR (34:43):
That’s exactly it. So where someone might be your best customer spending 50 grand, a hundred grand, $200,000 with you for three years straight, something might happen in their life where they don’t work with you for three or four years. I’ve actually had this happen. And, and then, and then when it’s time because we maintained a relationship, they’ll come back again. Right? And it’s not to say that people never will if you don’t maintain a relationship, it’s saying that you’ll 10 x 20 x 50 x the amount of people that will if you focus on just maintaining a relationship, right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (35:14):
KR (35:33):
Amazing. Uhhuh And, and you know what’s so funny, Rory, to your point, people will come back to us all the time now and they will literally say, thank you so much for following up with me. Like, I’m, I’m just here ’cause you followed up with me. And like, they’ll come back and they’ll buy again and they’re, they’re just simply there because we like reminded them. Mm-Hmm.
KR (36:28):
Most people focus singularity on customer acquisition and the bottom of their business is like a funnel and it’s just pouring out the bottom. And so they’re just on this constant hamster wheel of they have to sell just to maintain. There’s no continuity of building the brand because they’re only focused on customer acquisition. They’re not focused on retention, renewals, referrals, upsells the lifetime value that creates really nice stability in the business. And no one’s selling you that course. No one’s selling you that methodology because it’s not like the bright, shiny Right. You know, exciting thing. No one’s
RV (37:04):
You to like how to be successful eventually one day through Exactly. Long-Term relationships and long-term strategy, you know? No, exactly. I’ll teach you how to quadruple your revenue over the next 10 years
KR (37:17):
No, it’s not exciting. But the thing is, it’s what it, it’s what will keep you in business and it’s what will make you a multi, multi multimillionaire. I mean, it’s, it’s, it, it, listen, it’s very hard to retain really high level performance in a company if you don’t get the backend right. Totally. Most will never scale because they figure out the front end, but they never figure out the backend. So it falls out the bottom as fast as it comes in the top. Mm-Hmm.
RV (38:06):
Absolutely. Well you know, I’m sitting here thinking to go you know, I’ve interviewed so many different people on this show, amazing, amazing thought leaders. But if like someone asks me to say, Hey, who’s a, who’s a business coach you would recommend, like, there’s not somebody that I really go like, ah, this people share same philosophies and similar things. And I think so much of what you shared is so similar in our philosophy and what we’ve, our experience more than our philosophy, just our, our experience. So I love that. So Kelly, where do you want people to go if they wanna connect with you learn about you, obviously you’ve got your podcast, which I know is really important to you and, and is a great show. We’ve had so many of our, our clients on there. So many of my friends have have been on there. So you got the podcast. Is that the best place or where else should they go?
KR (38:53):
Yeah, I mean, definitely come listen to the Kelly Roach show. I bring it, you know, there’s a thousand episodes you can literally grow your business for free. Just come and listening to the show or connect with me on Instagram, Kelly Roach official come DM me. My team’s in there all the time, but I pop in too. And, and they’re there as themselves. So if it comes from Kelly, it’s coming from me and I love to meet you. So come say hello.
RV (39:13):
I love it. Well, we will link up to all that. Thank you so much for this. It just never amazes me. You know, I can, I can always tell when I meet a real eight figure entrepreneur because they’re not talking about the flashy tactics and trending things. They’re talking about the principles that have always worked and will always work that are not sexy. But they are simple and they’re not, they’re not easy, but you can execute on ’em and they will make a big difference. And that’s what I think today has been all about. So we really appreciate it, Kelly and so great to connect and we wish you all the best.
KR (39:49):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.