Category: Podcast

Ep 602: Books Don’t Sell Themselves: How to Build Influence (and Income) After You Publish – with Nick Hutchison

AJ: [00:00:00] Welcome to our show. I am so excited to have you on the show today. It’s rare that I get to have an actual real life human friend, but also I actually got to spend the last almost eight hours with you today. So also getting to see you shine in what you do best, and I’m so excited to help the world get to know about what you do.

But before we get into that, ’cause I could spend the next hour just asking you questions. I would love for our audience to get to know you a little bit better, right? You’re the CEO and founder of Book Thinkers. You started this company, what? What year is it? Almost eight years ago. In 2017 with two friends.

Tell us what is Book Thinkers? Why did you start it? And what do you do?

NIck: We’ll actually start the story back in 2015, so two years before I started Book Thinkers, and I think this will be interesting to your audience. Prior to 2015, I was not much of a reader at all, even though it’s my [00:01:00] entire personality today when I was growing up, I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic.

So I mean, you couldn’t have paid me to read a book back then. But in 2015, I took an internship going into my senior year of college at a local software company, and it was a sales internship. And my boss, Kyle, he’s a little bit of a pain in the neck, but the one thing that rubbed off on me in a positive way was personal development.

He loved personal development content, specifically podcasts. Now, at the time, I had never listened to a podcast in my life, but I was commuting almost an hour each way. Day, five days a week to that internship. So 10 hours a week in the car, and Kyle said, that’s a book said to me, that’s a week, Nick. It was, well, but first he said podcasts.

So he said, on your way to and on your way from work, you can listen to the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Talk about how they became successful for free. Mm.

And

NIck: I was like, that sounds amazing. And Kyle was a cool guy and he was recommending it. So I gave it a [00:02:00] shot. And very quickly within the first couple of weeks, I realized that most of the successful people that I wanted to be like, because all of these people were superstars, I.

They were all giving at least some credit for their success to the books that they had read. Mm. And here I was too cool to read a book. Not willing to read because of my reputation. I thought I was the cool guy on campus, but I was entirely wrong. I went to my local, Barnes and Noble. I grabbed about 10 books from the shelves.

AJ: Right. Hold on. What books did you grab? Do you remember?

NIck: Oh yeah, of course I do. And I wish I, I actually reached out to Barnes and Noble for the receipt, but they didn’t have it because I wanted to like frame that thing. Mm. I didn’t know it was about to change my life. So Rich Dad, poor Dad. Mm-hmm. By Robert Kiyosaki and the Cashflow Quadrant were the first two books that I read as an adult.

I also read The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the Richest Man in Babylon by George s Clayson. A lot of money books here, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But that’s the funny thing is like. You are most powerfully positioned to serve the [00:03:00] person you once were.

Mm-hmm. And I think that books, they solve problems. Amen. Just like people solve problems. So at the time I’m a business school student. I don’t know anything about money. I get super insecure in the classroom when kids start bringing up like how much they’re gonna make outta college. And all of these complicated, like kids are managing money with the school’s money.

It, it was all over my head. I. So I’m like, I was naturally drawn to books that promised to solve my financial literacy issues. Hmm. And that’s why I think when I first started getting into these books in 2015 and they started solving my problems and building the skills that I was looking to build, I just became hooked.

And money was that first thing.

AJ: Okay. So lots of people read books. Very few people are so moved by them. They then go, I gotta turn this into a business. I’ve gotta like do something more with this. Lots of people read. What was it that made you go, okay, this is beyond just reading books and personal development.

This is, this is a business.

NIck: The [00:04:00] original idea for book thinkers was a little funny because I was reading so many books, but I was having a hard time retaining anything from them. And I had a friend at college, his name is Alec. And Alec and I were always trying to find a new business to start. We didn’t really know what, but we were looking for opportunities and we heard that entrepreneurs solve.

Problems. Well, I had started forgetting so much of the content that I was reading, that it was becoming a problem. And one weekend we were sitting in, I went to the University of New Hampshire. We were sitting in a little room with the whiteboards, just drawing out all the problems that we face that week.

And I said, I can’t remember anything from the books I’m reading. I need a place to document my favorite takeaways from each book. Yeah. Around the same time, a hometown friend who I had gotten coffee with Derek, he said, let’s put all of those takeaways on a website. So we all got together, we called it Book Thinkers, and the very first iteration of Book Thinkers was simply a website where I would put my favorite takeaways from every one of the books that I was reading so that I could go back and reread those [00:05:00] notes.

Hmm. This was before an Instagram account or before any author services. It was just a way for me to retain content. And obviously it’s evolved since then, but that was the need that I was trying to solve in my own life.

AJ: Yeah, I mean, lots of people read lots of books and apply. None of it. Is that kind of the thing?

It’s like how much are we reading, how much are we retaining, and then how much are we actually applying?

NIck: Yeah. My, one of my mentors Kevin Horsley, who’s a grandma of memory, and we could talk about what that means in a minute. He has this great Ted Talk. He, he starts by saying to the audience. How many of you have read the legendary book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and every Hand in the room goes up, and then he says, now put your hands up again.

If I can call on you and you can name the seven habits and no hands go up. And then he delivered this line that the first time I heard it, it hit me like a punch to the gut. He said, what is the use of reading or learning anything? If you can’t recall

AJ: what

NIck: you know,

AJ: that’s good.

NIck: The minute that information [00:06:00] disappears, so does its value.

AJ: Mm-hmm.

NIck: And so we spent all of this time consuming content in the same way that people look at social media and they want the likes and the shares and the vanity metrics. People also read books just to cross ’em off a list, add them to the big stack of books that they’ve read, put it on their Zoom background.

And that frustrates me because these books like yours have the power to change lives. Yeah. But people aren’t using them that way.

AJ: Mm. I love that. And that’s so true. You know, I didn’t read a lot growing up. I read a lot of fiction, but not nonfiction, not like personal development. It wasn’t until my early twenties, but I really got onto that train.

But then when I had kids, I just honestly gave myself the excuse. I don’t have time for this. Right. It’s like I am to the max. And I can tell you when I stopped doing personal development, when I stopped listening to books or con going to conferences and stopped reading, like I really fell into like a pretty, I’m not gonna say like a full on depression, but I was in a pretty severe [00:07:00] state, like not a good, healthy mental state.

And I remember like Rory, my husband as you know, having like a, a serious come to Jesus meeting with me, he’s like. Hmm. You have got to snap out of this. Like, what is going on? Like something is up. Like, do you need counseling? Do you need therapy? Like, what? What is happening? And I wouldn’t do it. And so somebody recommended a book to me.

They said, Hey, you’re really struggling with your transition in life right now. I recommend a book. It’s an easy first step. Nothing to prove by Jenny Allen and that book. It changed my life. It set me back on a trajectory of rediscovering purpose. Mm-hmm. Personal value, my connection to God. Like it literally set me on a new trajectory.

And that was what, roughly five years ago. And ever since then, it’s like back on the book train, back on the learning train. But it’s like when you say books have the power to change a life, that book nothing to Prove by Jenny Allen changed my life. [00:08:00]

NIck: I love that story and it’s a testament to my entire personal brand at this point.

I mean, I, I believe the right book at the right time when properly implemented, like we’re alluding to, will change your life. These books condense decades of somebody else’s greatest life experience in today’s and for $20, or in your case for free. You can read the book, you can implement the lessons, you can overcome the problem or build the skill.

You can diversify your perspective, live up to your potential. Like there’s so many reasons that books are a great medium for learning content, and so I’m so happy to hear that. And like my life has been changed and I can’t tell you literally thousands of dms since we started the company with people saying, Hey, you recommended this book.

I decided to read it and it changed my life. Mm. Like my entire life is different. Books change lives. They really do. When you

AJ: think about it. For 25 bucks, you can get some of the best business coaching, financial coaching, marriage coaching, life coaching, whatever it is in the world. So the whole idea of, I can’t afford it, [00:09:00] or it’s like go to the library, get a library card, it’s like it is accessible for the cheapest amount of money humanly possible.

It is right there. And you kind of have dedicated your whole business model to helping books. Be known. Right. So tell us how Book Thinkers has evolved from just helping you remember the books to helping other people know what books are out there.

NIck: So I started sharing the content that I was reading on social media, and as my audience started to grow, as I started to reach more people, I would have authors reach out to me in my dms and they’d say, Hey Nick, I love your content.

I’ve been following along for, for a long time, and I think your audience would get at a kick of, I think your audience would get a kick out of. My book, how much do you ca, or how much do you charge to promote it? At the time I was reading for free, right? This was just a passion of mine and so the idea of getting paid to do something that I was already doing for free was like a dream come true.

So, and I looked [00:10:00] this up recently, the first author that I ever did business with. I charged him $50 for a review, so he sent me a copy of his book. He sent me $50. I read it cover to cover, and I just talked about my favorite takeaways on social media, and the light bulb went off if there’s natural inbound momentum mm-hmm.

For this service, I bet if I started to reach out to other people. That they would be interested in it too. And not only just random authors looking to sell a couple of books, but some of my favorite authors, big time authors looking for additional promotion. And so that’s how the flywheel started. As we started to work with more authors and I would get involved in their businesses, I realized that a lot of times these books in the nonfiction business or personal development space, they’re not standalone products, but they’re a lead mechanism or a credibility builder or a business card.

For some type of higher ticket complimentary product or service. Mm-hmm. You know, coaching, consulting, speaking, all of the things that the BBG clients love to build [00:11:00] on the back end of their books. And so that’s when I thought, I bet I could help them sell books. But also coaching, consulting, speaking, whatever their business was.

And that’s when we really started to sort of hit the gas and, and take off.

AJ: And when was that?

NIck: It took a couple of years. Book Thinkers was very much a side hustle from 20 17, 20 18, 20 19. I started to take it more seriously. There’s about six figures in just book promotion income at that point. And so I started to take it more seriously, like I bet this could be my full-time job.

Hmm. At some point.

AJ: So one of the things that I love, um, ’cause I think I’m, I’m a lover of books ’cause I know the value that there is and, and quite honestly how much time and preparation goes into it. If you think about the amount of time that we prepped for this podcast, just being honest, I probably spent 15 minutes on an outline, called it a day.

That’s about what I would do for a blog. When you write a book, it’s years. It is [00:12:00] years and so much time, energy, money, and resources, it’s not even comparable. So when you think about that, not spending the time to promote the book is just nonsense, right? But as authors, we spend so much time writing the book, creating the content, getting it out there.

Then it’s like we’re kind of just tired. And it’s like, well, really, that’s when the work really begins. So what I would love for you to share with everyone who is listening is. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you see when it comes to book marketing that actually helps authors get their book out into the world?

NIck: Robert Kiyosaki said it best. It’s not New York Times best written, right? It’s best selling. Selling is a verb. It’s an action. It’s something that you need to participate in. I think gone are the days because the barrier is so low to get a book out there that you can just put together some content. It’s uploaded to Amazon and all of a sudden you’ll sell a million copies.

It’s very unlikely that that’s going to happen. I think the sales [00:13:00] process that you teach at BBG through the bestseller launch plan is great because you do all of this work leading up to the launch for the better part of a year. That’s how much time it takes to prepare for the launch, and that entire time you’re working on your messaging, you’re putting together these bulk order packages, you are selling your book, putting together a launch team, and then your launch happens, but you need to continue to pour more fuel on the fire, which we could talk about in a few minutes.

The misconception is that the book will sell itself. Hmm. It won’t. Yes, of course, word of mouth can happen. If you change a life over time, people will start to share your book, but that’s slow. You want it to happen faster, right? You wanna change more lives, which means you need to put more effort into promoting and marketing your book.

It will not sell itself.

AJ: So why don’t people do that? Like, why don’t people promote market and sell their book?

NIck: I think that it’s uncomfortable. People are scared, they’re uncertain. They don’t know how to navigate this new age of marketing, which is social media and personal branding and podcast [00:14:00] guesting, and speaking on stages, traditional advertising, like putting your book up on a billboard in Times Square or something like that.

So a bunch of random tours can see it. It’s not gonna sell books. I even had a client tell me once that she was on Good Morning America. And sold zero books. Zero, zero.

AJ: We were on Good Morning America and sold zero books.

NIck: Now I know two people that that’s happened with, and so that traditional advertising of pr, public relations type stuff, little three minute clip here and there on a big talk show.

Doesn’t sell books, it’s boots on the ground. Consistent building trust, winning over, providing value to your target customer over a long period of time. That’s what sells books. And so it’s just different. It’s new. And so that’s what Book Thinkers exist for is we help people navigate that. You know, they’re again, spending decades of their life learning something really unique years of their life, putting it together.

And then they’ll knock on our door three months [00:15:00] after launch and they’ll say, nobody bought my book. Can you please help me pick up the pieces? And that is sad because these people are special. Their book has the potential to change lives, and that’s what they set out to do. But. They never invested in the marketing side of things.

AJ: Hmm. So what would you, ’cause I agree with all that and we’ve seen it and studied it and been a victim of it in some cases. Um, what would you say are the best things, the best mediums, the best vehicles that you have seen that actually helps authors sell books today?

NIck: I think that trust can be built in one minute increments through short form thought leadership, video content, which we can unpack in a minute.

It can be built over a 30 to 60 minute podcast interview, or over an hour on stage when you’re presenting. Those are my three favorite formats, and in a lot of ways, you can retain and consistently promote to those people if you can collect their email as well. Mm-hmm. In any one of those formats. So through short form video content, I love Instagram [00:16:00] and I love LinkedIn as mature content platforms where you can actually sell through to an audience.

Mm-hmm. They might have slightly less viral potential than maybe TikTok does, but it’s easier to retain that person consistently, provide them value when their trust over time and sell to them. So I love Instagram and LinkedIn as more mature platforms, especially for the. Personal development and business type content that we love.

Mm-hmm. Fiction is a little bit different. I think you could sell a lot of fiction books on TikTok, not so much nonfiction. I think with podcasting, who sells better than the author? Mm. And so, well actually, the person whose life has changed from the book might sell better than the author. That’s fair.

Right. But I think if the author has a chance to show up for 30 to 60 minutes on a podcast, tell their backstory. Build a relationship with the audio listener or the video listener, share some background stories, like really build it up. Then talk about why it matters so much and who they’re best positioned to serve.

It’s a great platform [00:17:00] to sell books. And then I think the last piece is that in-person presentation, which BBG knows all about.

AJ: Yeah. Well I love that too. And I think people really underestimate the power of the podcast medium, and they forego that for more traditional, you know, larger. Larger scale media such as national TV and radio.

What is it about the podcast niche that you guys have seen work so well At Book Thinkers?

NIck: I think you can get hyper niche. I think you can serve your target client and I think that, uh, what’s nice about podcasting is you can get really targeted like that.

Yeah. So

NIck: we were talking about this earlier today with you and with Rory that.

Impact and virality. Oftentimes they sit on opposite ends of the social media or podcasting spectrum. So content that reaches more people by definition, has to be slightly more general than niche content, which has higher sell through. And so couple of years ago when I launched a book, I put this to the test myself, and I went [00:18:00] on a lot of smaller niche podcasts, and I had amazing experiences selling through at a much higher rate.

Not only because the podcaster was more. I’d say enthusiastic about the content because it was solving a problem that their audience had. Mm-hmm. They were really proud to have me on the show. Um, off. I think if you can be a big guest for a small podcast, they also put in a lot more effort in their preparation.

AJ: Oh, that’s good. Yeah. Everybody needs to write that down.

NIck: They do. Yeah. There’s this misconception that you have to go on the biggest podcast possible.

That’s so true. Yeah,

NIck: those, those podcasts oftentimes do the least amount of prep work. They have the most shallow conversations, and then they do the least to promote the episode.

They don’t collaborate with you on their Instagram posts. They’re not out there posting 10 or 15 times about your podcast on every platform. But the smaller shows, they really hustle like they’re so happy to have you on.

AJ: Oh, that’s a really good, I’d like to just stick there for a second because I think that’s really good because.

I think so many of us think back to, it’s like, oh, I have to be [00:19:00] on Good Morning America, or I have to be on, you know, the top 10 or top 50 biggest podcasts in the world if this is gonna work. Mm-hmm. And the truth is, is that’s not true. That’s, that’s inaccurate, and you’re probably even better suited to be on more small, medium sized podcasts.

What that old saying is like, well, do you wanna be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond? Like which one is better for what season of life you’re in? But I love what you said also is the more niche the podcast is, the more targeted the audience, which. That helps the sell through rate, right?

The bigger the audience, the wider and more general it is by nature. Mm-hmm. So if you don’t have a super general, you know, topic appeal, then it’s gonna be surface level.

NIck: Yes. And you can also stand out as a guest on that podcast and disrupt the listeners. Normal tendencies to just press play and then kind of zone out.

If you [00:20:00] are a dynamic presenter, if you are leagues above everybody else that’s been on that podcast. There’s a Malcolm Gladwell book that I’m thinking about for the first time and connecting it to this, and I don’t remember if it was out, I think it was Outliers where he talked about this idea of big fish, small pond, small fish, big pond, that in the world of athletics, if you are a superior athlete, you’re much better staying at a small school.

And standing head and shoulders above everybody else as a way to stand out compared to going to a bigger school where now everybody’s competing on the same level and you don’t stand out as much. Mm-hmm. So you have a, a far better success rate to be an outlier, to be a standout if you are that big fish.

In a small pond. And so if you go on some of these really big podcasts, you’re competing with the largest personal brands on the planet. People who have spent decades of their life learning how to present their content with all this amazing enthusiasm. It’s tough to stand out, but if you go after the smaller or medium sized shows in your [00:21:00] niche and you’re great at what you do, it’s a lot easier just to, I think.

Have the host help you present, you know, have the host help you promote the content because they’re just so proud of what they did with you.

AJ: So how do you find these? Like what are some like best practices for the listeners that they’re going? Yes, Nick, that’s what I needed to hear. I need to find these other podcasts.

Where do we go find them?

NIck: You should hire book thinkers. What I will do though, is I wasn’t the

AJ: tee yet for you.

NIck: I’ll give you some of the strategies that we use for free, and if you want help implementing them, we are happy to do that. So back in 2020, it was my goal to start a podcast. I realized in 2020 that I now had access to all of my favorite authors.

And so within the first 10 episodes, and I won’t name any names, but we had a lot of author celebrities on the show. As a result of that hot start we had. 15 to 20 inbound inquiries from my show every single week from PR companies and independent publishers, publishers, self-publishing services companies or independent [00:22:00] authors wanting to feature their content.

And every pitch looked exactly the same. It was done via email. It was 15 paragraphs long of background, credentials and book summary info. It all sounded the same and it was generic. Hey, podcaster, you should interview X, Y, Z author. It didn’t matter if you were the best thing since sliced bread. I was deleting the email.

It was too much for me to consume. I was too busy. You got lost in the noise. Just submitting an email inquiry to me and. After a few months of like literally a hundred of these same exact cookie cutter templated emails to me, I just became shocked at how transactional the industry was. And I reached out to a bunch of our book promotion clients and I said, how many of you are paying for services like this?

And a lot of them were. And there were three things that they all had in common. One, there was no guaranteed deliverable. So with our service, we provide a guaranteed deliverable. If you buy four shows, you’ll get four shows. If you buy 25 shows, you’ll get 25 shows [00:23:00]

AJ: versus a monthly retainer or mm-hmm.

NIck: Number two was, uh. They were getting placed outside of their niche. So again, they weren’t presenting to their target customer. So their message might have been great, but it was falling on deaf ears because they weren’t presenting to the

AJ: people. Because it’s not about how big the show is, it’s who has my audience.

NIck: Exactly. And the last piece, which I think a lot of people were very unhappy about was they were in these fixed contracts where they had to work with that agency for six months or 12 months. So at Book Thinkers, no fixed contract month to month. We have to win you back every single month by putting you in front of the right audience.

And delivering value. So here’s a little bit about our process, and feel free to steal this if you’re an author or anybody really listening that wants to be on more podcasts, instead of sending a pitch via DM or email offer to get on a call, that’s a big differentiator, novel idea. Yeah. I’ve been pitched talk to someone since 2020.

I’ve been pitched. Hunt 500 a thousand times for authors to be on my [00:24:00] show. Nobody’s ever offered to get on a call. Learn more about why I started the podcast, what my interests are, make their pitch, confirm that it’s a good fit, and then introduce me, not a single person. So that’s our secret. We reach out to podcasters.

Hey, aj, we just brought on a brand new author. He or she would be an amazing fit for your show. Can I jump on a quick 15 minute call? Tell you more about him or her. That’s it. By the time we’re on the show, we learn the backstory. Why’d you start the podcast? Who are your best guests so far? Who are your dream guests?

What subjects are you just so passionate about? We confirm it’s a good fit for our client, which is part of the due diligence that we make an educated pitch. The likelihood that you say yes, and then we’ll take our clients consistently goes through the roof.

AJ: You mean you’re actually having real life conversations?

NIck: Yes. Believe it or not,

AJ: I mean, I think this is a really important moment. I. For everyone who’s listening to just like, stop whatever you’re doing and [00:25:00] listen to the importance of what’s being said, which is this whole like, rinse and repeat, copy paste. Uh, just work the numbers. Like there’s a, there’s a time for that and there’s also a time to go.

I need to do my research. I need to pick up the phone. I need to have a real life conversation. I need to build a relationship. I need to make a sales pitch, not just blanket market as many people as humanly possible and see what sticks.

NIck: Yeah, and there are so many AI tools coming out, and I get pitched on all of them because I am an author.

Hey, you should check out our new AI software for pitching you on podcasts. It’s the same problem. They’re just spam emailing podcasters who somehow they bought their information, like, I’m never going to take one of those spam emails and have that person on my podcast. I’m looking for direct referrals.

Rory, in the last couple of weeks introduced me to Ryan Leak and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. They’re coming on the Book Thinkers podcast because Rory made a direct introduction. Mm-hmm. Or somebody on your team did that introduction [00:26:00] means something because I know Rory. Yeah. And I know you. And when you say I Great.

Understand your podcast Nick. This is a great guest. I’m willing to make the intro. I’ll say yes, but if you just spam me via email every week with a list of new people, I’m never gonna take them. So that’s our secret. We get on calls, we get to know the podcasters, we get to know the authors. We only make an introduction if it makes sense.

AJ: I love that. And you’re putting together actual. Relational pieces that fit for both parties. Yes. Which I think really makes a difference. I can tell you similar to you, it’s like we get cold pitched daily of guests on this. I bet. Out of the seven years since this podcast has been live, we’ve accepted two in seven years of a cold pitch.

That’s it. Very, very rarely. But if somebody personally says, Hey aj, I got a great guest for you, 50 50. It’s 50 50, they’re coming on the show, assuming they’re a right fit. But again, it’s [00:27:00] back to, it’s a trusted relationship. It’s that transfer of trust and it’s a real actual conversation, not just a blanket email.

So I think that that was significant enough to talk about that for a minute. Um, now the other thing you said is presentations. Why do presentations sell books?

NIck: I’m still in the process of learning more about this. I’m stepping into the world of public speaking as we know it, just because I see so much value in it.

I think a couple of things. Number one. That presentation in person, you can retain so much more of it. That’s my belief. I mean, 80% of the 80% of the information that flows into our brain is visual, and so getting in front of another human being where they can experience you in your entirety, they get to see how you move, see how you feel, see how you talk.

I think that it just builds such a deeper relationship. Now, obviously there are speakers that sell books in the back of the room. But then there are also speakers [00:28:00] that negotiate those books into their fee. And so that’s the brilliant way of doing it is instead of selling one-to-one, you’re selling one to many by doing the speaking engagement.

I always think of 80 20 selling what 20% of people can sell 80% of your books. It’s event planners and conference hosts. And so that’s something that I learned from you and uh, I’m stepping into a lot more.

AJ: Well, I’ll tell you one other thing that I would add to that, that is. Not strategic whatsoever, but just a bonus ad for everybody.

Think about the last time you went to any sort of event. Like just yesterday, I came home from going to an Atlanta Braves game. I also came home with a suitcase full of stuff IE souvenirs, right? There is a human tendency when you have seen someone speak live. When you have been to an event, you want a memento.

You want a souvenir, especially if it’s a signed one, right? It’s a signature piece of me being present and live in attendance at this [00:29:00] thing. Saw that Speaker live, got my book signed. Gonna put it on the shelf. What we have found is just as many people buy these books at events, speaking in events for souvenirs from mementos as they do to actually read them.

Now, of course. We want them to read them, but however, I would just encourage anyone who’s listening, it doesn’t even matter if you’re getting paid to go and speak, go speak for the sake of actual branding awareness, marketing awareness, because people will wanna copy just because they were in the audience.

NIck: Yeah. The first time an event host told me, Hey, I have 200 people in the audience and I want 200 copies of your book. What kind of deal can you give me? I’m like, I just sold 200 books in one conversation.

AJ: Amen.

NIck: One conversation. Yeah. Power. So it’s amazing power.

AJ: I mean, it’s being power of proximity, right?

It’s being in the room.

NIck: And also what’s fun about Books as a business card as a souvenir, is that people don’t throw away books. People donate books sometimes, but people don’t throw them away. There’s something weird about a book.

I agree. Like too much

NIck: effort went into it. You can’t throw it [00:30:00] away.

Yeah.

NIck: Right. Even though it’s just paper, like the Amazon cardboard box that your book came in, you can’t throw it away. And so it will exist in your environment forever. And that person who brought your book home will always be thinking in the back of their head about you. Now if they read the book, which would be amazing, then it also exists as a trophy in their environment, reminding them of the amazing thing that they learned, which is also really cool.

AJ: I love that. That’s so good. Okay. I have just a few other things I wanna talk about before I let you escape ’cause you’ve been with me all day. Um, so this whole concept of all this work we have to do as authors to get to the launch day, to get the book out into the world, it’s a lot of work. You just talked about the marketing and being on podcasts and speaking and.

How disappointing it is for some authors to get all the way to that and then nothing sells and then they call you three, six, nine months later ’cause they didn’t know you existed and they’re like, oh, I think there’s some really important wisdom in this whole concept of going, we do all this work up until the book launches.

What [00:31:00] needs to continue to happen after the book launches? ’cause this isn’t just about launch day, right? There’s a lot that leads up to that. But we want the book to keep selling. Yes, we do. So how do do that? We

NIck: do. We have to wake up every single day and ask ourselves, how do I sell another book? Today. Mm.

Because selling books leads to changing lives, and that’s why we all get into this. And the best form of marketing is a changed life. And so if you want more business as a result of your book, you need to continue to change lives. I think one of the greatest books for getting this into somebody’s head is The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.

I’ve read that book so many times, and it says that small steps in the right direction when repeated over a very long period of time will lead to disproportionately. Positive outcomes, the same content. That I was producing back in 2017 that only reached a hundred people is the same content that I produced today that reaches tens of thousands of people.

You need to stay in the game long enough to make [00:32:00] a difference. And so yes, your book launch is an excuse to talk about the book a lot. It’s fun, it’s new, it’s sprint hot off the press, and people will share the content. They’ll be excited about the content, but it’s your responsibility as the author to continue that excitement for as long as you can see.

Sustain it, and I think that’s for at least a couple of years, if not forever. I think the longer a book shows success and the more people that it positively impacts, the better chance that it does kind of catch that forever momentum. Totally. You know, whatever they say, 10,000 books. If you can get over that mark, your book will sell forever, and I believe that.

If you have 10,000 little soldiers out there changing lives and people just can’t stop talking about it, you’ll sell books forever. So stay in the game as long as possible. What do you need for that? I believe you need content. I believe you need content that was filmed when you were excited about the book, that you can then distribute forever and continue to repurpose, which is another service that we offer at Book Thinkers.

AJ: Yeah, but you also do [00:33:00] it in a very specific way. So let’s talk about the ki, the kind of content that actually converts. And this is, again, we’re talking specific for books and book content and thought leadership, but the way you do it is very specific. So what are some of the things that make the way that you produce content for authors and books that’s really unique?

NIck: Yeah. We love to build content that follows the following formula. Kind of each video should start with a hook. That hook pulls your target customer, that niche that you serve pulls your target customer into the video and rejects anybody that’s not a good fit. Mm-hmm. You don’t want monotony or mediocrity.

You don’t want people who don’t agree with you or aren’t going to pay you money. Consuming your content because you made it too general pulls your target customer in, rejects anybody that’s not a good fit for you. You might credentialize yourself quickly, but you move into providing value as fast as possible.

The value that we typically pull out of the book is the value that serves your [00:34:00] target customer as an author. And so it’s your goal to start to share that content. Give your target customer a preview for what they might be able to learn inside of that book. Demonstrate your value, demonstrate that you can solve that problem or help them build that skill.

And then right as you hit that sweet spot, right as you start to prove that to your potential customer, you move into a call to action. Tell them where they should go next. Should they get a free copy of your audio book? Should they buy a physical copy of your book? Should they follow you on social media or share the video with somebody that it might be able to positively impact?

There are a lot of great options for that call to action, but that’s the formula. Hook your target customer, provide value, and then tell them where to go if they would like to continue that learning.

AJ: Okay, I have three follow up questions for you. Hit me since I’ve spent, you spent eight hours with you doing this.

Number one. Length is important. So what’s the ideal duration and why?

NIck: Of the entire video or the hook?

AJ: I Or both. The whole video or both? Yeah, both. [00:35:00] Give us all you got.

NIck: What’s beautiful about today is that all of the major social media platforms love the same kind of content, which is short form video, short form, meaning less than 60 seconds, ideally and vertically cut.

So that same video that you film is good for LinkedIn. It’s good for Instagram, it’s good for Facebook. It’s good for TikTok. It’s good for YouTube. It’s good for X. It’s good for everything. Five years ago, you would’ve to create that same video in five different formats with five different dimensions in order to satisfy all the social platforms Today, that same video is good for everything.

Can

AJ: we talk about just for one second, why? Why, why is that? Like what changed?

NIck: Well, unfortunately, I think that social media companies realized that. Variability increases dopamine, so the more often you can get somebody to the next piece of content, the shorter the content is, the longer you can retain them in the platform.

So all of the platforms over time have just gotten to [00:36:00] this short form video content, like what’s the smallest amount of time that we can hook your attention and then move on.

AJ: Oh, interesting.

NIck: Yeah. Hmm. And I hope that over time there’s this reversion back to longer form content that’s maybe a little bit more meaningful.

But you can still deliver a ton of value in a short form video.

AJ: But it’s hard.

NIck: It is hard.

AJ: It’s hard. So I think that’s one of the things, that’s why I asked the duration question, because I think we all underestimate. Oh, that’s so short, right? Uh, brevity is the essence of wisdom. And it’s so hard, right?

It’s so easy to talk for five minutes. It’s so difficult to get it all in in 30 to 60 seconds. What’s your best tip on how to do that

NIck: editing film a three minute video, edit it down to 30 seconds later by removing anything that’s not necessary.

AJ: And that’s, uh, the hard cold truth, right. Or spend more

NIck: time scripting.

So there’s that. I forget who said it, but it’s like, oh, I apologize for the length of this letter. If I had more time, I [00:37:00] would’ve written a shorter one.

Mm-hmm.

NIck: So it’s this idea that it takes time. To create a short, concise message. Oh yeah. I love the analogy that a surgeon, while performing surgery doesn’t make extra cuts ’cause it’s not necessary.

And a salesperson, we’re all selling. A salesperson shouldn’t use extra language when selling, and it takes a lot of time to condense your message. That’s why a book takes years to write. Mm-hmm. Rather than you could get the same amount of content in an hour on a podcast. But if you want to get the right message, the juiciest content, it takes time.

AJ: So true. Like, again, back to just even the podcast, like to fill 45 minutes. No problem. If you wanted me to fit this all in 15 minutes, I’m gonna need to strategically outline plan. You know, do a, if you wanted to be in seven minutes, I need weeks to be thinking right? Planning, editing, reviewing. Tightening.

It’s like the shorter it is, the more planning or the more editing, uh, which is the easier option of [00:38:00] the do. Uh, but I think that’s really important, right? It’s like don’t worry about how long it is. Make sure you have a good editing team.

NIck: Yeah. Yeah. Shorter content does typically perform better in terms of view count, but I think we’re noticing a shift right now, and we’re talking about this today, which is that view count doesn’t indicate sell through.

AJ: That’s right.

NIck: Right. So impact and virality are on opposite ends of the spectrum, and so in the thought leadership space, I think shorter is not always better. I think if you can use that full 30 to 60 seconds, sometimes a 62nd video might sell five times more than the 32nd video that got more views, so, mm-hmm.

Yeah, we’re still. Collecting data and analyzing this. But that’s a trend that I’m starting to see.

AJ: And it changes, right? And it changes. And it changes,

NIck: which is why a lot of big publishing companies and then the big book PR companies don’t touch social media is because it changes all the time. All the

AJ: time.

NIck: Yeah.

AJ: Now, let’s talk about the call to action because we had a brief conversation earlier today about how many authors you work [00:39:00] with who refuse to give any sort of call to action at the end of their videos to sell their own book. Why

NIck: you would think if they believed their book had the power to change lives, they wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it.

But I think most people, they don’t wanna come across as salesy. There is still this idea that the used car salesman is jamming something down your throat. They don’t wanna be perceived that way. Oftentimes the business professionals that we work with, they’ve spent decades in an executive type role, C-level, big company.

They wear a suit and tie every day. They have to be very careful about how they communicate. They wanna be perceived as opulent or articulate, and they don’t wanna come across as salesy and enthusiastic and just jamming the message down your throat. But that’s the, that’s something that we’re overcoming with them, is the idea that if you genuinely believe your book has the power to change somebody’s life, you shouldn’t be able to stop talking about it.

AJ: Hmm. You know, I had two thoughts [00:40:00] when you were talking. One is something that, um, a good friend of mine, Hillary Billings always says is that when you get emotional, you get, you get promotional, right? Mm-hmm. And I love that concept of like, if you really believe in the concept of this, right, you’ve gotta get emotional.

And when you do, you get promotional, which is what your reader readers will do if they actually make it through the book, right? In theory. Hopefully that’s the plan. And then the second thing that you had me thinking about is this. It’s a sales issue of, Hey, I don’t wanna be perceived as salesy, or somehow selling is a bad thing.

Uh, like, what do you think we’re doing here? Right? It’s like, I need you to pull out your money and buy the book, and if you do, I will give you value, right? Like there’s like this weird fear based or perception based thing of, hey, sales is a bad thing, or it’s a slimy thing. And so I’m just curious, have you seen anything that really helps authors get over that?[00:41:00]

Because I know, ’cause we work with a ton of authors at both our publishing and print as well as at Brand Builders Group where we know that unless they get over that ain’t know books being sold, ain’t no list being hit and ain’t no lives being changed. So I would just love to see like, have you seen anything that really helps authors overcome this?

NIck: I’ll give a great example from today. I. Because I watched you and Rory both do this really well. Instead of selling the book in every single video, you’re giving away the audio book for free. Mm. And so for anybody listening or watching the podcast today, I think you should spend some time learning a little bit more about what Rory and AJ did for Wealthy and Well-known.

This is Credit to Brand Builders Group and Mission-Driven Press for this idea of giving the audiobook away for free. Upselling the physical book. And that’s because the book is a business card for your businesses. Mm-hmm. Which is beautiful. You can’t feel guilty giving away an audio book for free, can you?

I mean, that’s not sales. That’s [00:42:00] just like, please hear, I’m being of free value. So that’s genius.

AJ: Well, you know, and it’s interesting as one of the reasons that we did that is because what we wanted is for everyone else to have that same no pressure feel to promote the book. Mm. Right. It’s like it was easier for us, right.

To go, hey. Can we provide your audience with a free value, a free audio book versus, Hey friend, would you please promote my book to every single person on your list? Would you mind doing a live about this? And those are big asks, especially when a lot of people have been curating their audiences for years.

It’s a big ask, but to go, Hey, we have something for free. Added value, no cost for your audience. Can we give it to them? It was a much easier ask. So again, it was like our own, how do we overcome our own slight sales resistance? Um, we don’t really have sales resistance. Like we are happily shoving this down.

All the throats all around us. Yeah.

NIck: You said you even reached out to your friends and family. Like beware. Yeah. Beware for the [00:43:00] next six months. Yeah. This is

AJ: all you’re gonna hear about. Um, but, but also back to what you said, it’s because we deeply believe and are truly convicted that if you read this book and you actually apply it.

It will change your life. Mm-hmm. It will change your business. It will make a significant difference. We actually believe that. So to not share it is a disservice. Right,

NIck: right. Yeah. So many authors undersell to their own audience because people aren’t aware of the book. I think here, here’s a another funny thing that we do sometimes, which is we will have an author film, a Call to action, and then we’ll attach it to their other videos.

So they’ll only do it one time. Ah. ’cause they feel so uncomfortable doing. It’s like, come on, just try it one time and then we’ll attach it. Once they see that it works and that it’s not that icky. The other thing, the other beautiful thing about short form video content that’s attracting your target customer.

Providing value. And then you say, the call to action is, you’re not selling to anybody that’s not a good fit.

Mm.

NIck: They have to make it to the end of the video, which is [00:44:00] very specific. Mm-hmm. About your content in order to hear the pitch.

AJ: That’s good. Yeah. That’s a good reminder to everyone. It’s like they’ve already made it through the filter.

They wanna hear what you have next, make sure you give them something. Right. And I would just also encourage, as someone who had to do this like at least 30 times today, it’s like building a muscle. Right. And the more times that you give the CTA, the easier it gets, the better it gets, and the funner it gets.

NIck: Yeah. You started to have a lot of fun with vocal variety and you were focusing on different words, and you said it, so you had a lot of fun with it.

AJ: But it didn’t start that way. I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like in the beginning, right? And it’s like, I do this for a living, and it’s like, wait, what am I trying to say?

What am I trying to do? That’s the power of having a good coach, right? Mm-hmm. Right. I think for all of us, it’s like. Getting your book out into the world is not just about the writing. You said that earlier. Right. Robert Kiyosaki says, it’s not the best written book. Right. It’s the best selling book. That is a discipline.

It’s a skillset. Mm-hmm. [00:45:00] And it’s one that you guys really help with at Book Thinkers. Now the CTA, just one last quick question about this. What are good CTAs to help someone buy your book?

NIck: I think asking people to share the video with somebody that it might be a good fit for. So they’re, they’re not buying it themselves, but they feel comfortable like, Hey, this message could really help a few people that come to mind.

So that’s a good call to action. I think your call to action today was great, which is comment the word audio and we’ll send you a free copy of the audio book. You’re integrating your social media accounts with many chats. Mm-hmm. So the. DM with the audio book link will automatically go through. I love inviting people to comment and share their thoughts below.

Mm-hmm. And then you can engage them in a conversation between before you pitch them on your book. Yeah. So if you’re just selling the book directly, it’s like, comment down below, let me know what you think. If you wanna move the conversation to dms, I’m happy to have it. Mm. If you’re talking about something that’s intellectually controversial.

Which can make for great content. That way you’re not asking somebody [00:46:00] to marry you on the first date, but you’re having a conversation with them about the book before you ask them to buy it. And if you have a team to help you support that, that can be really helpful too.

AJ: I love that. Um, all right, one last question about book marketing and then I have a list of some hot questions, um, that I’m just super curious about, and I’m sure our audience will gain some benefit from this.

So, okay, we’re 2025, right? The landscape has changed drastically over the last five years, uh, when it comes to book publishing, right? Mm-hmm. As you mentioned this earlier, the barrier to entry to have a published book is basically none, right? For very little money. You could have a book out into the world.

That doesn’t mean it’s a great book, doesn’t mean it’s well published or well edited, but you could have a book, right? So with this emerging trend of the last time I checked, it was like. Tens of thousands of new titles are published every year. Think about that for a second, tens of thousands. [00:47:00] What would you recommend people do to break through the noise?

Like that’s so much.

NIck: So many different ways I could answer this question, but the first thing that came to mind was invite your existing community into the book writing process with you. You did a great job. Rory did a great job at this. I think it was popularized a few years ago when James Clear took a blog.

Mm-hmm. Where he collected a lot of data and then decided to put that into a. Book. Mark Manson did the same thing. And there are more and more examples of people using their social media to invite their audience into the book process, whether it’s split testing titles or cover designs, or just sharing him writing today.

And here’s the. Here’s the question that I have for my audience, and I’d invite you to give me some feedback on it. Or, you know, like releasing content through social media in micro videos or in blog formats, or on podcasts and just testing the waters. It’s like doing a minimally viable product before you release a finished product.

Good to [00:48:00] confirm product market fit, and. I also had this realization, I mean, I talked a lot about the book I released a year and a half ago on social media in advance of the launch, and I got feedback. But something funny happened when I started to do a lot of podcasts on the subject, which is that.

People started asking me questions that were a na, a natural progression of my thinking and my teaching and my strategies that I didn’t write about in the book that I wish I did. Hmm. So another thing is, as you are sharing the book content and collecting feedback throughout the journey, which will make your launch more successful because people are more bought in, they feel like they were part of the process.

Of course they want to talk more about the book. Like, I help contribute to that even in a small way. Yeah, that’s good. The other thing is. Test the content in a live format on podcasts and see what people are asking about as you start to share these stories and strategies, because there will be things you missed.

There will be things that you wish you wrote about. Hmm. And those podcasts, Hey, I’m writing a book and. [00:49:00] It’s coming out a year from now, but I wanna start to test some of the theories that I have in the book. Do you mind if I send you some sample copy? We could chat about it on your podcast. It also gives you an existing audience to tap back into when it’s time to launch the book so you can go back on, have a second impression with the same audience.

Now it’s time to have your call to action to actually pre-order the book or give it away for free. And so it’s just involving like your existing community in the book process a little bit more.

AJ: I love that. Let’s have ’em come along for the ride.

NIck: Yes.

AJ: Now, before I ask you these last couple of questions, if people wanna learn more about what you do at Book Thinkers, where should they go?

NIck: They can go to book thinkers.com and there’s a contact form there.

AJ: All right, so book thinkers.com. Click the contact form, learn more if people just wanna follow you. Like where, what social media platform should they go to? What’s your handle?

NIck: Instagram is our largest social media following, and I think it’s our most vibrant community as well.

So if you want to be around a lot of [00:50:00] other nonfiction, business and personal development, book lovers and authors, check us out on Instagram at Book Thinkers as well

AJ: at Book thinkers, and we’ll put both of those links in the show notes, which is a great segue to my rapid fire questions. Now, you’ve already mentioned a few of these, so cannot be one you’ve already mentioned.

Right. What’s one nonfiction book that has changed your life?

NIck: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

AJ: Why

NIck: that book took me from a cubicle to a remote job traveling the world. Hmm. And then I eventually used the principles in that book to build book thinkers, and I became detached from my business in a lot of ways by automating, delegating, or eliminating low impact activities and replacing them with high impact activities.

I owe so much to Tim Ferriss. A lot of times I say he’s my spirit animal. He doesn’t know who I am, but the four hour work week changed my life.

AJ: I love that. And that’s so good. And it’s a great book, right? It is a

NIck: great book.

AJ: You’re gonna work for more than four hours, but it’s a great [00:51:00] book. Most underrated marketing channel for authors.

NIck: Ooh, small podcasts. We talked a little bit about this, but again, podcasting people have this idea they have to go after the big show, small to medium niche podcasts where you can over perform and the host can fall in love with your message and help you promote it everywhere. Super underrated.

AJ: I love that whole conversation around like.

Go pick a host that’s so excited to have you. They’re gonna promote the pants off of it.

Yes.

AJ: So much better than being on a show that doesn’t even get a mention.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: So much better. I love that. It was one of my favorite things you said today. Favorite tool or app for productivity right now?

NIck: Mm. It’s the, my favorite tool or app for productivity is this kitchen timer box that I have in my office where I can put my phone in it, set it to an hour, lock the box, and I can’t touch my phone.

I have tried so many other ways to get off of my [00:52:00] phone. Mm. Muting notifications, setting time limits. None of it works, but putting it in the little kitchen timer box for an hour or more at a time and locking it. That thing’s indestructible and I am laser focused.

AJ: Fascinating. How often do you put it in the box?

NIck: At least a few times a week.

AJ: And this is when you’re just trying to get undistracted focused thinking, get something done, put the phone away. No distractions. Lock it away.

NIck: Yes. And sometimes I’ll be mindlessly scrolling on Instagram reels and I’ll get a video about how Instagram is killing my brain, and that’ll be the, okay, I’m going to put it in the box now, but it’s

AJ: in the box.

Yes. I love that. What? What? What’s the box called?

NIck: I think it’s called Kitchen Safe Kitchen. It’s literally you could, I think it was actually designed for in a kitchen you could put cookies in it or something like that, that you’re having a tough time staying away from, and you could lock it for 24 hours or something like that.

But I put my phone in it.

AJ: That’s good. I might be ordering one of these after this. Yeah, and they’re cheap too.

NIck: That’s like an under [00:53:00] $50 hack for everybody.

AJ: Yeah, that’s good. Like one of, like one of my big, uh, new Year’s resolutions this year was um, once the workday is over, I leave my phone in a different room.

Right. And it’s been really helpful. ’cause if I really want it, I have to get up and go find it. Mm-hmm. Right. And I’m like, where did I put that? Dead gum thing. But it’s been really good. But it would be better if I just put it in a safe. So can’t go find it and you can’t touch it. Yes. I like that. Okay. I like that.

That’s good. One piece of advice that you’d give to a new first time author who’s trying to promote their book,

NIck: slow and Steady wins the race. Mm. No matter how many times you read Aesop’s Fable, the Tortoise and the Hare, the Tortoise always win. If you have smaller expectations, you won’t burn out. You won’t be so disappointed.

Slow and steady wins the race. The best form of marketing is a changed life. That’s what you’re in it for. That’s good. Not how many books you sell, but how many lives you can change. Just like it’s not about how many followers you have, but how much money you make per follower. Same thing with the book.

You’re not trying to get it out to people that don’t truly [00:54:00] need it for the sake of that vanity metric of, I sold X number of books. You’re just trying to get it to the right people, and you do that slow and consistently and

AJ: you cannot say that enough.

NIck: Slow and steady. Yeah.

AJ: Pause, rewind. Play that again.

Last question. What does Influential, now that you’re on the influential personal brand podcast, what does influential mean to you?

NIck: Over time, I’ve realized that it means impact.

AJ: Mm.

NIck: If you are a person of influence, you should be making a positive impact on this beautiful planet.

AJ: I love that. Yeah. And impact

NIck: comes through specificity.

AJ: Well, we talked a lot about that today. Yeah. Right. And the importance of, again, back even to the content, right? It’s like you have to be super specific to get something shared in 30 to 60 seconds, but specificity matters. But I love that it’s impact. Y’all. If y’all have not already written this down, go to book thinkers.com.

Learn more about what Nick and his team do. If you wanna follow them on [00:55:00] social, get book reviews, learn about authors, learn about all the books that have changed your life and so much more. Check out at Book Thinkers at Instagram. Nick, this was amazing. So many good tips, so much insight and wisdom. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

For everyone else who’s listening, stick around for the recap episode, which will be coming up next, and we will see you soon on the influential personal brand.

Ep 601: From Obscurity to Influence: Rory Vaden on the Path to Becoming Wealthy and Well-Known 

Stephen: [00:00:00] Hey guys. Welcome back to the show. As you know, we always set ourselves apart by bringing you amazing guests, world class thought leaders that do world class things, but more importantly, help others do world class things. Our special guest today is none other than Rory Vaden, New York Times bestselling author, world class speaker.

He is co-founder of the Brand Builders Group and a entity that I personally partner with myself over the number of years. To make sure that I’m trying to do my impact and also become one of his mission driven messengers. Rory Vaden. Dude, welcome back to Build Man. So good to see you, man. It’s

Rory: good to, good to be with you in person.

Yes. I don’t think we’ve ever done an in-person podcast interview. No,

Stephen: this is the first No, I’m digging it. I’m digging it. That’s good. So, hey, like, I’m wanna jump straight in. We got get, you’re a very busy man nowadays. You got a lot of attention. Uh, you’re doing a lot of book launches, you’re doing a lot of personal branding.

You are the thank you ma, as far as far as I’m concerned.

Rory: Thank you. Uh,

Stephen: I legitimately don’t know anybody else better in the business than you guys. Thank you seriously. Brand Builders Group has been a huge asset, uh, to me in my journey. Um, and I know I’ve been a huge asset to so many other personal brands, uh, book launches and [00:01:00] everything else.

I mean, there’s some of the best known books in the marketplace right now have come through your doors, so thank you. Yeah.

Rory: Yeah. I mean, we’re, you know, we’re serving mission driven messengers and, and the only thing we’re doing is try to help, uh, you know, in our case it’s. It’s, it’s like a ministry. We feel God saying, Hey, help my people be heard.

Yeah. And help the good guys win. Yeah. Uh, and not just have a world where the best marketer wins mm-hmm. Rather than the best idea wins. Yeah. Or the, the more, the most service centered person. So we’re really just dedicated to trying to help. People who genuinely wanna help the world. Yeah. And uh, it’s working, it’s working right now.

Yeah. We got a good thing going.

Stephen: Yeah. And no, it’s, it’s not just working, it’s scaling, which I, I absolutely love. As somebody who’s been, you know, part of the picture now for several years, got to watch almost the, almost the inception, right. Of Brand Builders group. And, uh, to see you guys doing such amazing work in the marketplace.

It’s amazing. You know, I, it is funny you mentioned the me driven messengers, helping them be heard. Yes. Right. And, uh, you and I did a podcast, it was a couple years ago, and I was like, I think on the podcast, I literally like, got stunned. I’m like, oh man, what? [00:02:00] ’cause you asked me a question, I was like, well, I think I’ve been trying to figure out if I’m worthy of a voice.

Mm. And I think a lot of personal brands or aspiring personal brands, people that maybe have a lot of wisdom and knowledge that maybe haven’t hit the marketplace yet, probably be struggle with that. I wanna start there. Mm-hmm. And then I wanna jump into monetization, but, uh, what are your thoughts there?

Rory: Yeah, I mean. What makes every person worthy of a voice is all the people that they can help.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: We’re not in this for a game of vanity. Mm-hmm. But we’re very much committed to this game for the betterment of humanity. Mm-hmm. And the people that we work with are the people who realize. My message matters not for me.

Yeah. But my message matters for the people that I’m trying to reach, and I think some people frankly hide behind humility. Mm-hmm. And what their, their humility is really [00:03:00] just fear masquerading as humility. Yeah. They’re afraid that they won’t succeed. They’re afraid. People will think they’re stupid.

They’re a, they’re afraid that people will say you’re a copycat or someone else. Who do you think you are? And do you only feel fear when you’re thinking about yourself? Ooh, there is, there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. Yeah. That’s one of our big bbg mantras. Like, I mean, if you, if you. And this, this is like all types of fear, right?

Like if you go, when you, let’s say you’re driving down the street and there’s a car that’s turned over. Mm-hmm. Right? And you hear somebody yelling, you run over. You’re not, you’re not thinking about how, how does my hair look? Yeah. Like, is my outfit cute? Like, does my breath stink? Like, you’re, you’re not worried about it because you’re going to help somebody.

Yeah. All of us, um, we, we, we, we, the way we like to say it is we say. Um, your highest value is when you’re being your highest value to others. Mm-hmm. And there’s a magical [00:04:00] part of that, that when. Your skills and talents are being used to help somebody else. Yeah. You perform in a, a way that we believe is divine.

We believe this is part of your divine identity. Mm-hmm. That this is the design of your life, that every problem you’ve gone through. Mm-hmm. Every heartbreak, every setback, every struggle, every challenge. It really didn’t have anything to do with you. Mm-hmm. It had everything to do with making you into the person you needed to be.

Yeah. So that one day you could reach back and help somebody else. And you know, of course the, the flagship, uh, yeah. I think I showed you this. So, you know, the, one of our flagship mantras, uh, we, we printed it on the covers like a little Easter egg. You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

Mm-hmm.

Stephen: And so we put and all the variations of that person. Totally.

Rory: Yeah. Totally. And, and, and I think when people hear personal branding, you know, sometimes they equate it to like, oh, ego, arrogance, [00:05:00] celebrity, like mm-hmm. Self-centeredness. That’s not it at all. I mean, that, that’s not how we do it. Like to us, your personal brand is not about you.

Mm-hmm. It is a hundred percent about the person that you’re here to serve. And, and the reason that you’re, the reason that you’re worthy is not ’cause you’re worthy. It’s ’cause someone else is worthy. Yes. Yes. And because that person is worthy. It makes your message really important. Yeah. Um, and that makes you important.

And, and I think that’s this great irony is that our, our lives have meaning in the context of other people. And I think one of the great travesties of the world today is like, so many people are depressed because it’s like, I’m seeking happiness. I’m seeking happiness. How do I get happy? Like, what do I have to do to get happy?

Like, what kind of routine? What, what thing, what do I drink? What do I eat? What, what do I wear? What, what do I buy that makes me happy? Mm-hmm. And that. Pursuit leads to depression. Yeah. Because it’s completely self-centered. Mm-hmm. Um, kind of our philosophy on this is like, don’t pursue happiness. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:00] Pursue service. Mm-hmm. And happiness shows up as a byproduct. Yeah. Like you pursue service and purpose shows up as a byproduct because when I’m helping somebody, there’s nothing like the feeling you get when you help somebody.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.

Rory: And you, and you realize, and you, you get to experience. This visceral taste of, wow, my life matters.

Not because I’m important, but because I did something to help somebody. Mm-hmm. And that’s what. Personal branding should be about. Yeah. I don’t think that’s what the early wave of social media has been. Yeah. Yeah. But it is the, the, the people who are winning and making real money and making a lasting impact are not just people who are going viral once or writing the algorithm for a few months.

Mm-hmm. It is mission-driven messengers who are dialed in that, that their worth is con is, is inherent because of their desire to serve.

Stephen: Dude, I’m really glad you said all that. And I’ll tell you why. ’cause I, I have personally have a, I have a love hate relationship, uh, with the marketplace. [00:07:00] And if you’re gonna step into a role of influence, doesn’t mean, so you mean influencer or a thought leader or personal brand?

Like, it’s like if you’re, if you have a voice that’s influential to other people. Mm-hmm. Right. To me, there’s a responsibility with that. And at least for me, part of the difficulties that I faced in trying to break through the noise was, I call it the, the degradation of trust. You know, you, you, you kind of alluded to it, the early wave.

It’s like, you know, they built audiences and things of that nature and then maybe didn’t really have the heart of service, maybe, didn’t really do it authentically, uh, maybe hurt some people along the way, whether intentional or accidental, maybe in that selfish capacity. And as a result, you had this wave of the guru versus now what I’m seeing the economy shift to, which is the guide.

Mm-hmm.

Stephen: Right. And these guides are not self-centered. These guys are selfless in that they want to train and help. What would you say to, uh, the marketplace that has, you know, at least in [00:08:00] today’s times, there’s, there’s been a little bit of, you know, trust lost with a lot of, um, various levels of thought leadership and things of that nature and, you know, and.

You know, I think people do want to hear from people that have had this, you know, a similar experience early on, you know, serving the person you used to be and things of that nature. How do we rebuild trust as a personal brand, as it ’cause you know, a lot of our listeners are aspiring entrepreneurs or early stage entrepreneurs, mid stage, like they haven’t quite broken through the seven picker ceiling.

You and I both know you guys did a, uh, an amazing study not that long ago. Mm-hmm. That kind of proves the point of how powerful personal branding is, but they’re also like, well, I don’t wanna be like that guy or that woman, or that person, or, I’m just curious, how do we handle the trust?

Rory: Well, the, the first thing that I would say is.

Um, you know, when people hear about brand Builders group and personal branding, they immediately think like online marketing or social media or podcasts. ’cause we work with a lot of the biggest podcasters in the world. Mm-hmm. And we work with a lot of the, the, the, the most well-known speakers in the world.

Yep. And things like that. Um, but what we have to tell people is don’t think of personal branding [00:09:00] as online, really. Mm-hmm. We define personal branding as the digitization of reputation. Mm-hmm. All this is is an old, this isn’t a new concept, it’s an old concept. It’s really reputation, and reputation is about trust.

And I would say just like so, yes, I think there’s been a lot of people who’ve been taken advantage of and burned by people online who just want to get their hands in their pockets. But that happens every day offline too.

Stephen: That’s true.

Rory: Happens every day with and in

Stephen: every

Rory: industry, every industry, every geography.

And what, what I would say is. You can take advantage of people once. Mm-hmm. Maybe twice. But if you have any type of vision for a sustainable business or brand or m money making machine mm-hmm. You can’t. Can, you can’t continue. You can’t, you can’t scale garbage. Yeah. Right. Like you can take advantage of somebody once.

Mm-hmm. But they’re not gonna refer their friends. They’re not gonna come back again. [00:10:00] And repeat business and referrals and recommendations and endorsements is, is all of business. Mm-hmm. And that hasn’t changed. It’s just multiplied. It’s exponential now because we live in such an online world. Mm-hmm. Um.

So what I would say is it’s the same as it’s always been, right? Like the guy who has a plumbing business. Mm-hmm. There’s some other plumber out there taking advantage of people and double charging and not fixing, doing a good job and all this sort of stuff. Well, at first it may look like he’s winning, but over the course of time, all that business eventually migrates to you.

Yeah. And so I think my encouragement would be, think longer term. Mm-hmm. But my encouragement is go, you gotta remind yourself that this, that if you’re a mission driven messenger, you’re not trying to go viral for a moment. Mm-hmm. You’re not trying to be famous for 15 minutes. You’re trying to make a lasting impact in the world.

Yeah. And that takes time.

Yeah.

Rory: And, and if you do it right, it will last a long time. Mm-hmm. It’s not, we’re not the people. You can’t, we’re not the people who look for [00:11:00] hacks. Right. Yeah. We’re not looking for tricks and gimmicks and, oh, how do I like find a trending audio or like a, a secret hashtag like.

That’s not what it’s about. It’s about reputation. It’s about trust. And if you play that game sooner or later you win. Now the other thing I would say to people that is important about this is in the short term, it may feel like you’re losing.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: But, but you always get paid for how hard you work.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Sometimes it’s now, but usually it’s not. Oftentimes it’s later. But always, eventually. Mm-hmm. And that’s the secret that most entrepreneurs lose sight of, because honestly, some people get drawn into entrepreneurship with the lure of like riches and mm-hmm. Private jets and like, you know, big balling and fancy watches and like, uh, and, and that’s why they’re like, oh, I’m gonna come in with that.

And, you know, there’s a lot of power to being driven by ambition. There was a big part of my life where I, [00:12:00] I was driven by ambition. Uh, I’ve been driven by competition mm-hmm. For parts of my life. There’s some healthy parts of those that really push you.

Mm-hmm. But

Rory: eventually they kind of like fizzle out.

Yeah. The part that never fizzles out is mission. Yeah. If you can be driven by mission, if you can be driven by service. Then you’re never done, but yet you always feel satisfied and fulfilled. Mm-hmm. And, um, you just gotta be willing to play that, that long game. And I think that’s, you know, the same as it’s been in any generation is, is people are always falling victim to the short term impulses.

Mm-hmm. But the, the people who are breaking through the wall. Are consistently building trust, adding value for the long term.

Stephen: Yeah, dude, that’s so good.

Rory: That’s

Stephen: so

Rory: good.

Stephen: You know, I was also thinking too, so I was very fortunate to get a advanced copy of, uh, wealthy and Well known. Bro, that book is meaty. Oh my gosh.

You fit so much into those pages. You and AJ did a phenomenal job. Thank you. Um, it was funny as I was reading it, it’s very

Rory: tactic. There’s a, an emotional [00:13:00] human part, but then it’s very, bro, it’s, it’s, again, it’s tactical textbook. It’s one of the

Stephen: best books I’ve seen hit the market. Uh, in a long time I’m not, and I’m not just blowing smoke.

Like I’ve had the privilege and honor of, um, being a client, uh, working alongside of you guys on specific projects and really watching you actually truly. Walk out what you write out.

Mm.

Stephen: You really, you guys really do as an organization. And I’ll give you one of the things that you guys really helped me with, because I think a lot of personal brands really face this.

Rory: So before you do that, yeah. Should we give the book away to everybody?

Stephen: Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Okay.

Rory: Okay. So, so this is something that we’re doing with our friends as we’re, we’re, yeah. We’re giving away the audio book completely for free. Mm-hmm. So we, uh, the book is obviously available or, you know, depending on when you watch this, it’s, it’s about to come out.

But we’re giving away the audio book for free. If you go to free brand audiobook.com/build, so free brand audiobook.com/build because you’re a friend of Stevens and Stevens is a friend of ours. You we’re [00:14:00] literally, you get the whole book for free on audio. You get it right away, no catches, no catch, nothing to it.

Stephen: Guys, I told you, these people are amazing. I keep telling you guys, man, dude, thank you so much for that.

Yeah, I’m

Stephen: sure everybody’s gonna love that, man. I hope so. Um, again, I, I’m still gonna highly recommend they grab a couple copies for themselves and their friends, because I found myself with a highlight in Ink Pen.

And while the audio book is amazing, and I’ll absolutely love it, I I I, I’m gonna highly suggest they wrap a couple extra copies for that reason. But you like the physical I’m that I like both, man. I’ll listen to the audio books on the airplane or on a jog or on a walk and Yeah, but I have, you know, but that’s good.

And then I’m like, oh, now, now that I’m listening to it in my head I’m like, oh, I wanna highlight that. I’m like, oh, wait a minute. I can’t highlight my, what I’m hearing. So it’s, so, it’s, it’s a, it’s a best of both worlds from my perspective, but sometimes

Rory: I, I, I mostly listen. And then sometimes I’ll buy it just to put it on the shelf, like a, like a trophy, like I conquer, like I conquered that book.

That’s amazing. Yeah.

Stephen: I haven’t thought about that. Maybe I should try that too. But, uh, yeah. You know what, one of the things that it is gonna help, I think a lot of folks do, is one of the things that you [00:15:00] guys have taught me over the number of years, um, is the importance of being authentic. And, you know, I really struggled for a long time to really have a clear message.

Mm.

Stephen: And it wasn’t. For me, it was more along the lines of, there’s so many experiences that I’ve had, right? Mm-hmm. I have a very robust background of challenges and adversities. A lot in business, a lot in life, a lot in relationships, a lot in different varieties. Mm-hmm. And it’s like, okay, I have all this experience.

Um, I think God has given me enough, uh, quite a bit of wisdom with a lot of these experiences. ’cause I look for the lessons. What do I talk about? How do I shape that? How do I, how do I lean in? And, you know, and it was really, really difficult until I really started working with you guys and you guys helped me clarify really what that message is by a filtering process.

Mm-hmm. You know, I think that a lot of people, and this is me talking, right? I think a lot of mission-driven messages that haven’t stepped up to the plate yet aren’t doing so out of fear of wanting to serve, but fear of not knowing what to say. Sure. [00:16:00] So kind of let’s walk through that a little bit.

Rory: Yeah, for sure.

Well, uh, you know, our. We, our full curriculum, we have like 12 different two day experiences. Mm-hmm. Right. Our flagship two day experience is the first one. It’s called Finding Your Brand, which I did, which you, you’ve been through, uh, a lot of the content in this book is from that. Mm-hmm. So this is kind of like the self-guided version for 20 bucks.

Yeah. Uh, but we work with people, you know, one-on-one. Um, and if you came through that experience, there’s, there’s four. Things we, we gotta get people clear on. Mm-hmm. Um, and it’s, it’s kind of like four one things. So the first is you gotta be clear on what problem you solve mm-hmm. In one word. And that’s like the genesis.

Yeah. And most people can, they can’t even answer that question. What problem can I solve for the world in one word? Yeah. The next thing is, who do I solve that problem for? Mm-hmm. In one phrase.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Then how do I solve that problem in one sentence, which is what we call your message. Yep. And then. What [00:17:00] one single revenue stream matters above all others.

Mm-hmm. And if you get clear on those four one things, we call that your uniqueness. Mm-hmm. And, and it’s really important to narrow it because of a, a concept that we call Sheehan’s wall. Yeah. Right. So I, I named THS after a colleague of ours, Peter Sheehan, who’s really, really brilliant, mostly in the corporate world.

I, I originally heard the concept from him and then we adapted it to personal brands because, um, it was so good. And, and then we named it after Peter, but. You know, in any, in any vertical, in any industry, there’s two groups of people. There are those who are unknown. Mm-hmm. Right? So they’re, they’re living in obscurity.

Yep. And then there are those who are, are well known. Yep. Uh, they have notoriety. Mm-hmm. They’re recognizable. Right. That’s where the well-known of this comes from, is where helping people move from unknown to well-known. Mm-hmm. Well, what most of us do that are unknown is we look at the people who are well known and we go, oh, I’m gonna do what they do.

And so we look at Gary Vaynerchuk and he talks about lots of topics, right? And he talks about [00:18:00] entrepreneurship and sports and music and entertainment and wine and Web3 and social media and cryptocurrency and ai and AI and all this stuff, right? And we’re like, oh, I’m multi-passionate. I, I, I wanna talk about a lot of topics.

Multi-passionate. A multi-passionate. I was

Stephen: multi-passionate. Yeah. Yes. Uhhuh. Okay.

Rory: Yeah. And, and that’s what we’re like, oh, I. I’m multi-passionate. Mm-hmm. So I’ll talk about a lot of topics and then, and then, you know, Gary and everyone else is saying, well, you gotta be on, you gotta be multi-platform. You need to be on, you need a podcast, you need YouTube, you need Twitter X, and you need Facebook Meta, and Instagram and Snapchat and Pinterest and YouTube, like all the places.

Um, and you’re like, okay, all right. So I’d be on all the places. And then it’s a challenge because you’re like, who do I talk to? It’s like, well, there’s so many people following me that are from different areas, like. My grandma follows me and my kids. Yeah. My kids’ best friend’s parents and my people from church and like my employees and my customers.

But then I’m also like, have this hobby like on the side. And uh, and then we’re trying to monetize in too many different ways. ’cause we see the rock, I. Right. Mm-hmm. And we go, well, the Rock owns a sports team [00:19:00] and he owns an energy dream tequila, and he owns tequila. And he owns, he owns men’s facial products and clothing line.

And, and, and he’s a comedian and he’s an actor. Mm-hmm. And, and I’ve heard multiple streams of income is how you get rich. So I, I want multiple streams of income. And so what happens is we’re talking to too many audiences mm-hmm. On too many platforms. Mm-hmm. About too many topics, trying to monetize in too many different ways.

Mm-hmm. And what happens is you bounce off the wall. That’s the noise of the confusion. That’s the noise. The reason you bounce off the wall is because if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Mm-hmm. Period. Yeah. Right. And, and that came from my, that’s a quote from my first book, take the Stairs, which came out years ago.

Yeah, right. It’s still an amazing book. It’s been true. Still true. Right? Yeah. Is is, um. The, and if you think of the metaphor of the wall, right? Like, okay, if, if I’m hitting a wall, if I’m swinging a sled sledgehammer and I’m hitting all these different spots on the wall, nothing happens to that wall.

Mm-hmm.

But

Rory: if I pick a spot on the wall mm-hmm. And I hit the [00:20:00] same spot over and over mm-hmm. And over again, and again and again. Yeah. Eventually that paint is gonna chip and then it’s gonna crack. Yeah. And then there’s gonna be a divot. And then I’m gonna, I’m gonna punch through. There’s gonna be a little tiny hole.

Yeah. And then I’m gonna punch through and when I punch through and pull back, the entire wall comes crashing down. Mm-hmm. And that’s how you become. Wealthy and well known. Yeah. Because nobody who got rich got rich from multiple streams of income. It’s the stupidest piece of advice on the internet.

That’s

Stephen: very true. I didn’t, yeah, I didn’t, everybody,

Rory: you’re a great example. Yeah. Everybody who got Rich got rich from one amazing stream of income. They had one thing they did really well, right? Mm-hmm. Like, uh, you know, messy is a soccer player. Wolfgang Puck is a chef. Mm-hmm. The Rock in the beginning was just a wrestler.

Mm-hmm. In, in, in the beg, like Sarah Blakely had Spanx mm-hmm. Richard Branson had like Virgin records. You had, you know, Elon Musk does a lot today in the beginning. PayPal. PayPal, yeah. Like there was one [00:21:00] thing, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, like there, there’s not an example, like there’s, there’s like zero examples mm-hmm.

Of people who got rich from multiple streams of income. And there’s like zero examples of people who got famous for multiple things. The way you get wealthy mm-hmm. And well known is you have one amazing stream of income and you become well known on one single topic. Mm-hmm. Right. If you go, Brene Brown became one of the most influential people in the world.

Mm-hmm. All she did for decades was study a one word problem. Shame. Mm-hmm. And you can’t talk about shame without someone bringing up Brene Brown’s name. Yeah, she owns the topic. Dave Ramsey. Owns the topic of debt. Mm-hmm. He has built a multi nine figure business in annual revenue, a thousand employees.

Mm-hmm. Bill, 1 billion podcast downloads like 17 million people listening to him on the radio, and yet he’s been saying the same thing every day for three hours. The [00:22:00] same seven baby stuff for 30 years. Yeah, that’s true. Over and over. Yeah. And over. Right. You, you break through the wall by being the world’s leading authority on one thing.

Yeah. And so the discipline. Is in, is in finding your uniqueness. As Larry Wingett told me early in my career, the goal is to find your uniqueness. Mm-hmm. And exploit it in the service of others. Yeah. So what we did was we created a process that curates. A multi-passionate person mm-hmm. Through a series of exercises and introspective questions and reflection to where the answer emerges.

Right. Yeah. Like, I can’t just like look at someone and go, oh, your uniqueness is blank. Yeah. But you go through this process and the process, it’s revealed. Mm-hmm. Right. And so, you know, that’s the process. We, we, we. Teach in the book for, you know, a few bucks, uh, and then, you know, for more money, we can guide somebody through it if they’re really struggling.

Stephen: Yeah. You know, I’m so glad you, you, you really unpacked that because I, again, I think there’s a tremendous amount of confusion because of all the things that you say, right? [00:23:00] Uh, if I’m, if I’m new to the in, I, and I was at one time, I was very new to the industry. And I wanted to serve people. Mm-hmm. And I think a part of me had to die to self a little bit of, you know, a little bit of, alright, what do you, why do you really want to do this?

Do you really wanna do this for the service of others or do you, are you just saying that and not really meaning it? That’s, that’s good. Steven. Which, which is authenticity. That’s honest, bro. And I find that I’m not the only one that’s faced that

Rory: all of us face that, you

Stephen: know, and

Rory: every day.

Stephen: Yeah. Well, and I think that’s the, I think that’s part of the important part of the conversation, like, yes.

Brand builders group is, is the very best. At what you guys do hands down? I don’t know anybody like you guys, um, from personal branding to books to book launches, there’s nobody better that I’m aware of. I haven’t, I haven’t been introduced to ’em yet, and I’ve been in a lot of rooms, uh, thanks to doing what you guys have taught me to do.

Rory: Well, and we, we created the thing that we wished we had. Mm-hmm. Right. We’re serving the person we once were before I was. The youngest Hall of Fame speaker in US History. Mm-hmm. Before I was a 29-year-old Best New York Times besting [00:24:00] author, before I had a TED Talk go viral. Before we had millions of downloads, I was a broke.

Person aspiring to be like, I wanna speak on stages, I wanna write a book. Mm-hmm. I want, I wanna help people. And there was no path. Yeah. So we don’t know of one that exists either. That’s why we created it anyway. Works. We’re serving the person. We’re serving the person that we once were.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I wanna, I wanna touch on, I wanna go back to this for just a second ’cause I’d love to hear your thoughts.

’cause this was a hard lesson for me to learn. Right. Um, you know, I went through an embezzlement. Situation with the company I sold number of years ago. Um, and I had this lady come up to me one time, uh, I, that happened the night before, a three day event that I was gonna be teaching for three days straight Transform.

You live the first one? Mm-hmm. 2017. And in walks this, uh, I call ’em a little pro, uh, prophetic woman, right? She’s African American lady. I loved her. Her name was Dee. And she looks in, I’m about to start crying. Um, and ’cause I, I, she doesn’t, I’m about to step on stage for three days and teach for three days.

And this was happening the night before. Right? Nice. Uh, or so, as far as what was made aware of that, and I remember this concept of her coming [00:25:00] to me in this meeting, or not this, in this, in this event. ’cause she was one of the attendees and walking up and I was starting to cry and she’s like, oh no honey.

Oh no honey, you can’t go to where you’re going next without going through this door. Now up until that point, I admired everybody that I followed. Right. Uh, you and Ramsey and, and so many others. Uh, Maxwell was like somebody I really admired a lot of and in that, and it was like, uh, ET was, uh, obviously we, we both worked with ET a little bit.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, we, these people I just admired, right. I just admired how they carried themselves and how they showed up and served and tried to model my speaking and all this stuff after anyway, long story short was probably 90 days I did the three day event. I was told it was some of the most, the best content I had done, but I was completely.

Catastrophically humbled. Mm. Like I had nothing to draw on, but exactly what I was teaching on, period. It was stuff that obviously I used to get that far. 90 days goes by, I walk at night, I happen to get, go and sit in her office, and I’m sitting in the chair and I’m crying and she’s just smiling and she’s like, [00:26:00] what’s on your mind?

I’m like, if this is what it takes, I don’t want it.

Mm.

Stephen: God can have it. I don’t need to step on a stage. I don’t need to write a book. I don’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want it. You know what she said? She goes, oh honey. Now you’re ready? Mm-hmm. So I wanna talk a little bit about, because you and I have both experienced this, you know, as you know, our mutual friend, Randy Garn, um, I started trying to help some of his, uh, thought leader friends, monetize their businesses and funnels and things like that, just with the, with stuff I’ve learned over the last several years.

And, you know, we’ve, we’ve both ran into, uh, what I call it, it’s like a personal brand growth curve. Honestly, it’s almost like you move from ego into your authenticity. And I’m curious to know, and this is, I know this is not something we ever talked about before, just just ’cause you’re so brilliant at what you do, what do you think are, is some way to almost do like a reality check or gut punch to see where you are in your journey?

’cause it’s, it wasn’t until that moment that stuff started like really flowing for me is when I actually finally said [00:27:00] yes. I, I actually do want to serve people. I actually do want to help people. I actually do have a voice. I do have a truth. I do have something in my spirit. Mm-hmm. Like what, how do, how, ’cause I feel like that’s, you know, that’s, that’s part of breaking through the wall in many respects as being authentic.

Rory: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I, I think of that less as like a journey that you’re on. Mm-hmm. And I think of that more as like. A daily decision that you have to make. Ooh, yeah. So, so here’s a good example, right? So, you know this, I’m a hardcore Bible thump in Jesus freak I put it out there, right? So whe whether you’re, whether you’re a, a, you know, a Christian or not, it doesn’t matter.

But like, stick with me on this. So, uh, Colossians 3 23. In the Bible it says, do your work unto the Lord and not unto earthly masters. Mm-hmm. Right? And so I hear that and I’m like, yeah, that’s good. I should do my work unto the Lord and not unto earthly masters, and definitely not unto myself for my own like success.

[00:28:00] And then it hits me. I go, okay, well how, how do I really know if the work that I’m doing is for the Lord? Mm-hmm. Or if it’s for my own selfish interest. Mm-hmm. Or if it’s to try to win the approval of other people.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Because here’s the, here’s the irony. Yeah. Either way I should do great work.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Right. If I’m trying to garner fame and accolades for myself, I have to be really good at what I do. If I’m trying to earn the, the genuine approval of others, of my colleagues, like I have to do something really good. And most of all, if I’m dedicating my life in service of the Lord. And, and for those us, those of us that believe that we were created by him and in his image mm-hmm.

With, with the abilities that he’s given us, that should be excellent work. Yeah. So how do I know if I’m creating excellent work, who’s it for? And, and the only thing I’ve resolved to on this, Steven Yeah. We’ve never talked about this, but is I have to make that my prayer [00:29:00] every day. I, because in any scenario, I’m gonna wake up and hopefully do excellent work today.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: The question is, what’s the intention of why I’m doing it? Mm-hmm. And, and who am I doing it for? Mm-hmm. And so all I can do every day is say, Lord, please use me. Please make my life about you and not me. Please put my life in the service of others. Mm-hmm. And what’s amazing about that is. You know, you get this divine sense of purpose.

And fulfillment and, and it, and it’s amazing. So again, you know, like I think of, you know, somebody, this is, I don’t know, I think it’s in Matthew, I think it’s probably in a few of the gospels, but somebody comes up to Jesus and, you know, says, you know, there’s like 617 laws in the Old Testament or something.

Something like that. Mm-hmm. Six 17, I think. And anyways, I, uh, this guy says, well, Jesus, which, like, which one’s the most important? And Jesus goes, oh, well, love the God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind and your [00:30:00] soul, and, and love your neighbor as thyself. Mm-hmm. Basically love God and love others.

Mm-hmm. And that’s such a simple, but beautiful, profound strategy that I go if I’m doing my work unto the Lord. Mm-hmm. And even if you don’t believe in God, if I’m doing my work unto make the world a better place. Mm-hmm. I have purpose, I have passion. Uh, my mind begins to transcend limitations of what I think I’m capable of.

And I get out of this negative self-talk of I’m not sure I’m good enough, or I’m not sure I’m smart enough, or I, I I don’t have the connections, or I don’t have enough money, or all the, all the, the self-limiting beliefs that show up in a self-centered conversation and my mind becomes consumed with. How can I help that person?

What would make them succeed faster? Where are they stuck?

What,

Rory: what do I have to offer that could be useful for them? Mm-hmm. And that’s the whole strategy. Yeah. Like both in a spiritual sense, [00:31:00] but also in a practical one. Mm-hmm. Like part of the way that I’ve developed relationships with so many of these client people who then became clients, right.

The Lewis House, the Amy Porterfield, the Ed Millets, et the hip hop preacher. Yeah. Is my goal isn’t to sell to them. My goal is to be so useful to them that they can’t ignore me. Yeah. Right. To be so helpful. Yeah. That they have to pay attention. Mm-hmm. And. Great economic and, and worldly things come out of that as a byproduct.

But, but much more important is meaningful relationships and a deep sense of purpose. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, for myself and, and hopefully Brand Builders Group becomes a big amplification of that, bro. It’s

Stephen: already there. And just scaling.

Rory: I hope so.

Stephen: Not a hope. So it’s a, it’s a facto.

Rory: Well, and we gotta, that’s gotta be a part of our culture, of our mm-hmm.

Of every person on our team and, and every one of our clients. And so we curate our clients like pretty stringently. Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of people [00:32:00] that we don’t allow to become clients. Um, but, you know, coming back to your question, you know, I, I don’t know a way to put the ego to rest permanently.

Yeah. All I know is that every day I can wake up and I can say, God, everything you’ve given me, I give back to you. My life is yours. Yeah. God, take this company and make it whatever you want. Yeah. Uh, take this, you know, take this book God, and like whatever, whatever you want to have happen, let it be Yeah. I trust you.

And whatever the results are, I surrender to whatever that is. Yeah. That’s the only thing I, I don’t know how to put my ego to bed. Mm-hmm. All I know is the discipline of waking up every day and, and doing that.

Stephen: Well, it sounds like you put the ego to bed. By the same way I had to do it, which is surrender.

Surrender. Yeah. Just, yeah. Surrender to the, yeah. Dude, that was so good.

Rory: Well, and so, and sometimes it’s like, I think it’s like, you know, it’s like, well, why do bad things happen? You know, who knows? But, but what I [00:33:00] do know is that a lot of times in my own life, I’ve had to be beaten down to the point where I give up.

Yeah. It’s what Dee told you, right? I, I’ve, I, I have had to get to the point where I, I quit because I’m like. I can’t take this anymore. Mm-hmm. I can’t carry this stress. I cannot go to bed every night thinking that we have 50 employees and all their families now that we now own a building and we have mm-hmm.

We have dozens of book launches that are like life changing moments that are literally in our hands that, you know, our me driven messengers are, are reaching millions of people every day. Mm-hmm. And like. The obliga, the weight of going, we better not screw up. Yeah. And I’m like, I can’t carry that. Yeah. So I’m like,

Stephen: this is not my problem.

This is your problem, bro. I’m so happy you acknowledged that. ’cause I mean, you, you guys are, you guys are playing a massive role in changing lives as a bi You and I obviously did a, a helped ed with this book launch a number of years ago and, you know, I think I shared with you on another podcast like, dude, it was just an honor to [00:34:00] know that we got to touch lives through.

Through helping what Ed was doing. Yeah. Yeah. And that was such a surreal moment. And it sounds like you get to relive that almost every day.

Rory: Well, yeah. I mean if you just took, you know, we have like 900 active members in our, our flagship coaching program. So if you added up all the impressions those people get mm-hmm.

And that’s what we started Brand Builders Group. Right. Brand Builders Group was never started to be a profit maximization endeavor. Yeah. It was started to be an impact maximization endeavor. It was to go. What could we do that actually would shape the world? And it’s like if we took everything we knew and applied it to just my personal brand or AJ’s.

Mm-hmm. Aj, my wife and my business partner, our CEO, for those of you that don’t know, which is by the

Stephen: rock, by the way. She’s a rockstar. CEO. She is, she is bad. Right. And this is her first book.

Rory: You know, we co-authored it together and yeah. What’s cool is Take the stairs is really like my life story. Mm-hmm.

Coming out. Uh, for this, this is more of like the tactics, but. This is her first book, so her life story is really in the book. That’s so good, dude. First time. That’s [00:35:00] so good. Um, but I think it, it, we, we were going Oh yeah. Like we could make a much bigger dent in the world mm-hmm. If we took what we know and multiplied it through mission driven messengers like you.

Yeah. And, uh, that’s really amazing. And, and, and, and now we’re trying to go, all right, well. Uh, how, how, how do we make sure that this thing would continue even if we weren’t here?

Stephen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The legacy play. Yeah. Like just, yeah. Legacy. Build it, build it for legacy

Rory: to, to, to go be, because it’s truly, it’s truly god’s.

And, and you know, our first business was, and we started in 2006. Mm-hmm. We grew that to eight figures. We had 200 team members. Um, it took us 12 years to do that. We lost everything overnight, very unexpectedly. Um, brand builders group got back to eight figures in five years. We had no team, no investors, no money.

Mm-hmm. No followers. We started completely from scratch and we got back in half the time. And you go, how? Yeah. We gave it to God from the first day. You

Stephen: gave it to God and you [00:36:00] also stepped out. Just, and at the, if I’m not mistaken, it started with you just simply helping a friend.

Rory: Yeah. It was helping Louis.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Lewis, it was just, it, we were trying to just be useful to Louis. We didn’t even need anything from him at the time when, when Lewis mm-hmm. House and I became buddies, uh, I just thought he was cool. Yeah. And, and, uh, you know, I could tell, I was like, man, this guy’s gonna. He, he’s gonna be something he big in the world.

And that was long before he was everything he is now, which is massive. Uh, and, um, you know, I, I just, I think, I think there’s not enough conversation about the power of service in personal brands. People are like, their scoreboard is, how much money did I make? How many followers do I have? Mm-hmm. What stages did I get on?

What podcasts did I get invited to? What media outlets have I been featured on? What letters do I have after my name? Mm-hmm. You know, and, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those things. How much money is in my banking. I, I

Stephen: think they’re great as long as they happen [00:37:00] organically as a byproduct of service,

Rory: right?

Yeah. That, that’s the gonna be the healthiest, the healthiest and most sustainable thing is to go, how can I fall in love with the idea of taking everything that I have and everything I am. And helping other people with it. Mm-hmm. And that is not only the like emotional strategy, it’s the practical one.

Mm-hmm. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Mm-hmm. So, you know, one of the things that we talk about in the book is, um, start with who. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, you know, I’m a huge Simon Sinek fan. I think Simon is brilliant and he’s one of my favorite writers. I think he’s one of the, the, the, the most brilliant thinkers of our time.

And, you know, he popularized the phrase, start with Why Largely, I think his, that book and his writing is targeted towards organizations. Mm-hmm. Well, with individual personal brands, actually don’t think that advice is right. I think for what, what we’ve seen to be successful is you start with who. The moment I’m [00:38:00] clear, the, the moment a personal brand becomes clear on who they’re serving.

Every single other downstream decision becomes clear. Mm-hmm. Right. Like if I know exactly who I’m trying to serve, I know where they hang out. So I know where to advertise. I know what words I should use on my advertisements. Yeah. And on my pages. Yeah. I know exactly what products to create because I know what needs they have that need to be solved.

Mm-hmm. I know how much money they make, so I know how to price my offerings. I know exactly what they’re gonna need to implement. Those solutions once they buy them. And so I know what team to build. I know what technology we need to have to support that. Yeah, like everything is clear. Contrast that with somebody who goes.

I wanna help the whole world. Well, that was me at the beginning, so that’s right. So now you gotta advertise to the whole world. Yeah. Which is expensive, by the way. You, it’s expensive. You have to use language that appeals to everyone. You have to talk about problems that every person has. You have to create [00:39:00] products that a, that every single person could buy.

What is that? By definition that is commoditization. Mm-hmm.

That

Rory: is a race to the most general, generic, most universal, ubiquitous thing that applies to everybody.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: And that’s what most people do. And they bounce off the wall and they’re caught up in a, in the very sea of noise they’re trying to escape.

And the only way you break through that wall is if you have huge budgets or you already have massive fame, you already have to be super rich. Yeah. Or super or, or super famous. Yeah. The way. For the rest of us, the way to break through is find that uniqueness, serve off one specific who, and serve them in a deep way.

And you go, you don’t need millions of followers. And you wanted to talk about monetization strategy. So this is where like suddenly the spiritual connects with like, making money. Yeah. Is you go, you know, people think, oh, I, I need, I need millions of followers so I can make a lot of money. You don’t need millions [00:40:00] of followers to make millions of dollars for the average small business.

Literally, like think about this for a second. Most of you watching could triple your best year in income ever with probably less than two dozen of your perfect clients. Wow. Like if you had 24 people. By your top end service. Mm-hmm. You would probably triple your best year ever. You would? Yeah. I would be willing to bet You would definitely be your best year ever.

That’s 24 people.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: There’s billions of people on the planet. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Yeah. Everyone is so focused on the width of their reach that they’re, they’re forgetting and overlooking the depth of their impact. Mm-hmm. The, the key to making money is to serve a few people.

In a really deep and profound way. Yeah. That’s, that’s the key to getting rich.

Stephen: You know what’s really interesting about that is I’m aware, uh, I can’t remember if it was a year or two ago, or [00:41:00] three years ago, but it was a, it was a time and place where there were a couple launches happening at the same time.

And the person, it’s, it reminds me, you know, what reminds me of it, reminds me of Jesus, uh, telling, uh, a parable of how the Pharisee went to go drop in their 10%. At the, at the temple. And yet a woman walks up the stairs and she’s an elderly woman and she’s literally giving everything that she has as an offering to God.

Mm-hmm. And Jesus is very clear. He is like, which one gave more? Right. And even though the 10% wasn’t remotely close to what the widow had in her possession, God smiled on that, on that give. Right. And what, what comes to mind is that, is it, I don’t think it was that long ago. There were a couple major launches happening at one time.

Uh, one was a bit of a celebrity, one was not. And yet the one that was not because they showed up to serve in many cases, outperformed the celebrity endorsement.

Rory: You’re talking about one of our clients.

Stephen: I’m just talking about, I’m talking about in general. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. We, we, we

Rory: had, we had a, we had a client with that was very, very famous.

I mean like millions and [00:42:00] millions of followers. This show on Netflix, like the whole thing. Mm-hmm. Um, and. Then we had a client who had 800 Instagram followers. Yeah. And I knew, I

Stephen: heard from somewhere. Yeah.

Rory: Yeah. This is a true story. Yeah. And, and we taught them both what we do. I mean, book launches is one thing we do, right?

Like we do. Yeah. It’s one of many things. One of many things, I mean for, for this is your, the personal brand world. Yeah. We only do things for personal brands, but like book launches is one of the things. And so we taught ’em both the same system and the, the, the, the rookie went out and did everything that we said.

The celebrity was like, ah, it’s a lot of work. I’m just gonna post on social media. And this rookie outsold the celebrity author who got a huge advance, by the way, from a publisher Wow. On launch week and a year later had still outsold more Wow. Of this book. And it’s, it’s realizing that you can go deep.

Um, and, and that, that, um, so there’s a, there’s a, there’s a technique we talk about in the book that we, a pattern we started to [00:43:00] notice, we call it fractal math. Mm-hmm. And. This is how you get rich quick. So if you wanna know, well, as I

Stephen: was gonna actually ask you in a couple of minutes we have left about how fractal math, how, how, how to actually use fractal math to monetize.

Rory: Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about it, right? So here, here, here, here we go From like Jesus to like getting filthy rich. Hey, it’s all connected, bro. Um, so here’s the concept of fractal math. This is the principle. It says 10% of your audience. Will an invest at a level 10 times what they’ve already invested with you.

Mm. If you give them more application and more, uh, intimacy. Mm-hmm. All right. So let’s say you have a product that’s $30. Mm-hmm. And you get a thousand people to buy it. Okay. For you math majors, that’s 30,000 in revenue, right? Mm-hmm. $30 a thousand people to buy it.

Stephen: Multiply X in the middle.

Rory: So, so now if you go, I made 30,000 in revenue.

What’s the fastest, cheapest, easiest way to double my revenue? What [00:44:00] most of us do naturally is we think about width and we go, great. Go get another thousand customers to buy your $30 product.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: And that’s not wrong to do that. That is true. That would double your revenue, but that is the most expensive, slowest, hardest way to double your revenue.

Mm-hmm. The, the easiest, fastest way to double your revenue is to use fractal math. So what is fractal math again? 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times more if you increase their application and intimacy. So. So if you had a thousand people buy at 30, fractal math says that a hundred of those thousand, which is 10%, would invest 10 times more, meaning $300.

Mm-hmm. So a hundred of those people would buy a $300 offering if you just served them in a deeper way. Now look at what has happened. You’ve doubled your revenue because 300 times a hundred is also 3000. Mm-hmm. 30,000. Um, same as 30 times a thousand. You’ve doubled your revenue. But here’s the key. [00:45:00] No customer acquisition cost.

Mm-hmm. Right. The most expensive customer is a new customer. Ain’t that the truth? We had no customer acquisition, acquisition cost. Um, and it continues to go forward. So if a hundred people gave you $300, then 10 of those hundred, 10% of the a hundred is 10 people would give you $3,000. Mm-hmm. That’s another $30,000.

Mm-hmm. And that means one of those 10 people. That gave you 3000 more than that would give you $30,000. Yeah. So there you have 30, 30, 30, 30, $120,000. You quadrupled your revenue. Didn’t add a single new customer or spend any more money on ads. And instead of trying to reach millions of people by trying to go wide.

Yeah. You instead were in deliberate and intelligent. You spent no money. Yeah. No other money. And you went deep.

Yeah.

Rory: And it was faster, it was easier, and it was [00:46:00] way more profitable. Yeah. And nobody does this, uh, until you work with us and then we teach you like, we’re like, I was gonna say, I said, I’m trying to do it.

Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. And you know, it’s God, dude, you’re, you’re, oh man. I’m so ha God, I’m so happy God created you, bro.

Well,

Stephen: I mean, I mean, and I don’t mean that obviously there’s, there’s, there’s business insights that I grasp, but you’re just an amazing human. I’ve had. I get thank I get the pleasure, honor him hanging out with you from time to time.

And um, you know, I guess in closing this thing out, I want to encourage everybody to go make sure you get your own copy of Wealthy and Well Known. Yeah, Roy’s already gonna give you a free copy. So

Rory: free brand audiobook.com/build. Build B-U-I-L-D, free brand audiobook.com/build. Yeah, I’m telling

Stephen: you right now.

What you got is a small, very small piece of what’s in this book and, um, I can’t thank you enough, bro. You, you’ve, you’ve, you have been one of the, the few, uh, that when I started this journey, you and like Evan Carmichael and Randy and some [00:47:00] others that really stepped in and said, bro, I think you got something here.

I think you should keep going. I don’t think you should give up. I think you should really go out there and, and get a message that resonates out to an audience. And I want to thank you for that. ’cause it means the world to me. ’cause I almost gave up probably five or six times on this journey.

Rory: Well, you’re, you’re, you’re welcome.

It’s, it’s a, it’s an honor to do that. And it’s a privilege. And, and here’s what I would say to you, and, and I would say to you, if you feel a calling on your heart, right? Like if you listen to this whole conversation and you’re like, man, I. I have this nudge, like I have this, this calling that I feel like I should share my story.

I feel like I have something to teach. I feel like I have something to offer. I, I feel like I could help the person that I once was. We believe that the, that calling that you are experiencing is actually the result of a signal that is being sent out from somebody else right now who needs you. Mm-hmm.

And, and that’s actually a signal that you could, you could measure scientifically. Mm-hmm. [00:48:00] That, that somebody out there, that person needs you much more than you need them.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Right? Like, that’s the person that matters. That’s where our worthiness comes from. That’s where the, the, the purpose comes from.

Because they’re out there, like you’re going, oh man, I, I feel like I could do something cool and I could inspire people. They are. Quite literally on their hands and knees crying. Crying. Mm-hmm. Begging and pleading and praying out to God or the universe, or just desperately seeking and searching answers that, you know, like the back of your hand.

Why? Because you’ve already been embezzled from, you already built a nine figure company, you already were homeless, you’ve already been through stuff in your personal life, like you’ve already gone through the things that they’re in the middle of. And your very existence, the fact that you have survived all of that and they meet somebody to go, wow, there is, there is hope.

Like you’re, you are, you’re a living testimony, [00:49:00] uh, before you even teach them anything of like, there’s hope for me. And that’s why every single person matters. Every single story matters, every heartbreak you’ve been through, and, and you just have to ask yourself, what challenge have I conquered? What setback have I survived?

What tragedy have I triumphed over? Because all of those things were a part of preparing you and shaping you and molding you into the person you needed to become to reach back one day and help somebody else. And I believe that that is God’s divine design of your identity. Mm-hmm. But even if it’s not his design and you don’t believe in him, you believe in humans and you can recognize the power Yeah.

Of another person’s story. So go be that person for someone.

Stephen: Bro, you’re amazing, man. Love you, bro. Love you, man. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey guys, that’s gonna do it for this episode of Build. Uh, yes, go get your free downloaded copy right now of the audio book of Wealthy and well known. I promise you you’re gonna love that, but you’re also love getting a couple copies for yourself.

More importantly, I want [00:50:00] you to go right now, stop what you’re doing, literally pause the video, pause the audio, go to your favorite social media app, and I want you to follow Rory and AJ Vaden right now. Right now because they can speak life into your life as they spoke in life into mine. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Much love. Take care of peace.

Ep 600: The Pain That Prepared Our Purpose: The Untold Story Behind “Wealthy and Well-Known”

Rory: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome to a very special edition of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. I am excited to interview the most beautiful, the most smart. The best guest we’ve ever had. My wife, my business partner, my best friend, and, uh, the co-author, my co-author of our new book, wealthy and Well-Known.

Please welcome CEO of Brand Builders Group. Hey, Jay Den,

AJ: you can tell he’s earning some brownie points working towards, oh, working towards some, some good feelings with the wife.

Rory: I either got in trouble or I’m gonna get in trouble, so, um, uh, so. We’re interviewing AJ about our new book, wealthy and Well Known.

If you haven’t heard, uh, this is my first book in 10 years and it is AJ’s first book ever. Congratulations, babe.

AJ: Thank you.

Rory: Um, so the way we’re gonna do this is I’m gonna interview AJ on her book. Her first book ever. So I’m an interviewer, even though I, I helped write some of it. Um, and we did [00:01:00] this together.

We’re gonna ask her, uh, about the book and some of what’s not in the book, uh, and the story behind the book. And, uh, we just wanted you as our dedicated podcast listeners as some of our most loyal fans and subscribers. We wanted to make sure you got a chance to hear from us first about this book and, and why we wrote it and, uh, why we’re, what, what we’re doing here.

So, um. I wanna start with why, why did, why did you feel like we needed to write this book right now at this moment in history? ’cause we’ve been in business for seven years already. I. Uh, so why all of a sudden now’s the time?

AJ: Well, it definitely wasn’t all of a sudden, let’s be clear. Um, technically this book is a lifetime in the making as many of our life stories and the examples and.

Stories in the book. Literally go all the way back for at least me in this particular book to [00:02:00] age seven, right? Mm-hmm. So it’s a lifetime in the making, but seven years truly in production. So the idea that all of a sudden we decided this was the time, that’s not necessarily true. In fact, just this morning we were having this conversation with some new members of our team about build the audience before you write the book.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: Right? Build the audience before you write the book. And. It’s been seven years of. Rebuilding our audience, building a new audience, and rebuilding our team and putting in the infrastructure. And if you’ve been here long enough listening to this podcast or a part of the Brand Builders Group community, then you know, we say this all the time, that the book is not the hypothesis.

It’s the conclusion.

Mm-hmm. And

AJ: the last seven years have been our hypotheses that we’ve been validating, testing and curating and fine tuning and making sure that everything was tight. And that has what has led us to this [00:03:00] time. I don’t think there’s anything unique about this particular day or season of this book other than we’re ready.

We’re ready. That’s why it’s time.

Mm-hmm. We’re

AJ: ready. I feel like the audience is ready. Um, but we feel very, very clear on what our purpose is here in this world and in this life. And I think it’s taken us a while to get clear on that, but I feel like as we have gotten really clear on that, it has become more clear.

This is the book, this is the time, and, uh, we’re here. Right now.

Rory: I love it. So one thing that I love about this book is that it is. A combination of different things. It’s a tactical textbook, a very like best of the best of what we’ve learned at Brand Builders Group from building and being a part of some of the biggest personal brands in the world behind the scenes.

But my favorite part of this book is the memoir piece of it. There’s stories about our lives. Memoir is

AJ: a strong word, that memoir, [00:04:00] there’s,

Rory: there’s stories, um, that are a part of our, there’s some good stories and particularly your life because. This is your first book. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people, you know, we’ve never codified your stories, stories, stories in a book.

Now you mentioned a moment ago that we’ve had to rebuild, um, for people who are brand new or haven’t heard the story, or haven’t heard the story in a while. What were we rebuilding from? And can you, can you share the opening line? ’cause we alternate chapters. Uh, so we write, we each take turns writing different chapters

AJ: here.

I’m just gonna read it. Why

Rory: don’t you grab it? Why don’t you read the first line so that you can hear the first chapter verbatim right outta your voice. Here’s a little, a little, a little clip of the audio book, uh, directly from AJ Vaden opening line.

AJ: May 4th, 2018. Today is your last day. Your services are no longer needed here.

Rory: What [00:05:00] happened? What, what, what did happen? What, what are you, what what? Uh, what’s the. Tell us the, tell us what you can of the story briefly. What was happening in that moment?

AJ: Yeah, so May 4th, 2018 was, you know, I think all of us, if we look back just a little bit of universal context, have moments, events, uh, experiences in our lives that there was a before and an after.

Mm. Right.

AJ: And that was that for me, it was the ending of an era and the beginning of something new and what that new was, I wasn’t sure in that moment, but it was definitely the ending of something. It was a necessary ending. It was, uh, an ending that I wish had gone a little differently. Um, but on May 4th, 2018, I got fired and there was a, a long season of three or four years.

I had a really hard time saying those words. I had a hard time saying the words. I was fired. I think there was a lot of [00:06:00] shame around that. Like what did I do like. Like, I think there’s just like a negative connotation with getting fired. Um, and I’ve come to realize it’s not always true. Sometimes there’s a negative, uh, reason.

And, and in this case, I think I could share my perspective. They could share their perspective. And at the end of the day, I don’t really care about my perspective or their perspective anymore. I care that God had a better plan for me. And I didn’t have the courage to leave our former business.

Rory: Yeah. What, what were you being fired from, just to clarify our former company?

Yeah. So what, what was, what, what were we doing?

AJ: We had a sales training and sales coaching business that we had spent the better part of the previous 13 years building. Um, and when I say the better part, I mean the better part of our lives. Right. Um, I share this in the book. It’s like for, I saw the decade I very.

Willfully gave up all personal events, birthdays, [00:07:00] anniversaries, weddings, birthday parties in the name of company, first revenue, profit, ego, ambition, success titles, accolades, uh, thinking that, you know, if I give it all up, if I put, if I make the company first, then, then they’ll see how good I am. Then they’ll see how loyal I am.

Then I’ll, they’ll see how committed I am if I give it everything I have. And so I did. I gave it everything I had and then I got super fired and lots of different things went into that. And the truth is though, I knew I was losing myself, uh, I knew years before I got fired, this wasn’t the right place for me.

I knew in my soul that I was doing something that didn’t feel aligned with my purpose. I felt. Uh, very isolated from my personal life and personal friends and family. And, um, I lost a lot of friends in the, in those seasons because of ambition and success [00:08:00] and the pursuit of success, uh, whatever that was, uh, for me at that time.

Um, and I didn’t see it, but I felt it. Right. I felt alone. I felt isolated. I felt like no matter what I tried, it wasn’t enough. I felt really like I had to earn my worth, and I, I didn’t feel good about that, and so I had genuinely wanted to leave a couple of times and didn’t, and. When this day came, and that’s why I said I, God had a better plan for me.

And, uh, this was no longer the seat for me. And because I didn’t have the courage to do it when I knew I should, it happened in a lot more of an aggressive way. Um, but I also, I can honestly say, and I share this in the book, it’s like I needed a. A full tear down. I needed, I needed the, the humbling experience of having it stripped away.

I, I personally needed a heart [00:09:00] transformation for me to become present to how much I had made my work, my idol.

Rory: Yeah. I think, you know, as I reread this, uh, which you as if you’ve ever written a book, you know, you reread your own book dozens of times before it becomes real. One of the things that really has.

Set in with me is that this is a book about identity. Mm-hmm. Not just the tactics of personal branding, but the, the stories and particularly your stories, uh, and how they intersect become our story. And the company story is really about who you are as a person. And, um, for those of you that don’t know, our first business, that was an eight figure business.

We had about 200 people, uh, ish that were on the team with business partners with. We had business partners and investors. Investors. We had, um, uh, thousands of clients. Um, you were consulting and large boardrooms with some of the biggest companies in America. [00:10:00] And all of a sudden, in one moment it was gone.

Um, and everything that we had known. Was gone, our team was gone. The technology we’d built was gone. The curriculum we created was gone. The, the relationships that we had built were gone. Our, our, our platform, our following, our podcast, uh, all of it was gone in an instant and there was a clean slate, um, for us And for you.

And, and I think, what did you learn a, a, about your identity in that moment? Because you’re talking about. You, you kind of knew you had some instincts or some nudges that maybe you shouldn’t leave. You didn’t, for various reasons, obligations, responsibility, but then it was all taken away. What did you learn about yourself in that moment when it was all erased or like wiped clean, as you said?

AJ: Well, I share this in the book. Um, but in the moment [00:11:00] that those words were spoken, there was this immense sense of relief.

Hmm.

AJ: And terror. It was like, oh my gosh, I, I don’t have to make this decision. It’s been made for me. That was the relief. It was, I don’t have to explain or let people down or justify my reasons.

I don’t have to do any of that. This was, this was done for me. That was the relief part, and the terror part was, oh crap, what does that mean next? Like. Does that mean I’m not gonna have a paycheck? Does that, what does that mean, uh, for my team? Do I not get to say bye? What does that mean? What does that mean?

Mm-hmm. Like for our business, for our equity, for our ip. So it was this also, we

Rory: had a a, a brand new baby.

AJ: Had a brand new baby and, uh, first baby. So there was all those kind of, there was this [00:12:00] huge 800 pound gorilla. Removed from my back and then a new one put on. So it was, uh, but I, but that’s the honest truth.

It was a huge relief because I was kind of living in this daily torment of should I go, should I stay? Should I go, should I stay? Um, and the, the staying part kept winning.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: Um, against my better judgment for, for me. And that, that was the relief part. And the terror part is it’s, oh crap, what does that mean for.

Real everyday life.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: So I think that is a huge part of realizing there was this deep knowing that I wasn’t doing what God called me to do. Um, and that was the relief part of like, okay, like this is my chance. And then the terror part is the, the fear of the unknown, just fear in general. Um, but what I learned about myself, not in that moment, that’s what I learned in that moment, is you can have both at the same time.

Rory: Yeah.

AJ: And I [00:13:00] think that’s healthy and was uh,

Rory: there may be someone living that right this second feeling like there’s something wrong with them. And it’s like, no, you can have these two very absolutely strong dichotomy. Juxtaposition, very real.

AJ: And it was the next couple of years that I learned that my entire worth, my entire identity had been basically packaged up underneath this work, this work role that I was living.

And it was a really hard. Transition of everything I had done, everything I had built, everything I had known was just gone and quote unquote, had nothing to show for it. Um, lots of life experiences, lots of good things. Um, but tangibly, I’m like, oh my gosh. It’s like all gone.

Rory: It can all be taken. My social media

AJ: is gone.

The podcast is gone. The books might be gone. My clients are gone. The money is gone, my team is gone, my assistant is gone. My contacts. Are gone. Like [00:14:00] that was a very real thing of going, I, I didn’t know that could happen. I didn’t know it could just like disappear in 24 hours. And so I think that was like more of the terror, uh, part that I’m like, wow, you could spend 13 years.

I spent 13 years giving up everything that I stood for that just disappeared overnight. It was really humbling and very, um, infuriating. And so what I learned is, the reason I was so mad about it is because I looked around and I didn’t really have a lot of friends left.

Mm.

AJ: I looked around and I, you know, I didn’t have the work to do where I had filled my mind with bu

I, I looked around and felt really lost because everything that had been my identity was just gone. And the quote, unquote, nothing to show for it was. Oh, I don’t have all this busy work to do, or calls to lead, or emails to check. And I had found like that I found my, my worth [00:15:00] and all of that stuff. I had found my worth in a whole bunch of insignificant things like emails and calendar invites and calls and, and when it was all gone, I kind of looked around going like, what now?

Like, who, who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to tell people I do like, and that’s, that’s when it hit me. It’s like, oh, I, I didn’t get it right. I got it wrong. I got it really wrong. Um, and it had to be all gone for me to see it.

Rory: If you look at the high level arc of our journey as business partners together, if, if you don’t know, AJ and I were started as business partners first, uh, in our first company.

And then we started dating like a year into that. But we started from zero making cold calls out of the Yellow Pages, built that company to eight figures. We launched our first New York Times bestselling book. We built this team. You built a multi seven figure [00:16:00] consultancy, speaking bureau, coaching company, and then all of that disappears in one moment.

And then you fast forward to where we are today. A brand Builders group is back to eight figures. We got 50 ish employees. We work with some of the biggest personal brands in the world. Many of the people who endorse the book, uh, ed Millet, Amy Porterfield, John Maxwell, Louis Howes, et cetera. Um, we’ve worked with a lot of these great clients.

But in that interim, tell us the story of how Brand Builders Group got started. So you’re, everything is gone. You realize, oh man, my whole identity was wrapped up in this. Who am I? What do I tell people? I do. What happened next? How did, how did you go from that or to, to brand builders group becoming a thing?

AJ: Mm. Well that’s a great question and uh, I’m actually gonna pull the book out just for a second and go back to the acknowledgement. Section at the very end of the book, um, because I think it’s [00:17:00] worthy of doing a verbal acknowledgement for a very specific person. There’s so many people that made this possible.

Um, but at the, at the very start, the match that kind of started the flame was Lewis Howes and. So I’m just gonna read this ’cause I think in the audio book, Rory reads it. So this is my chance to read it to Lewis. To Lewis Howes. It’s pure fact that we would not be where we are or doing what we are doing without you.

We are eternally grateful for the divine intervention that brought you into our lives. We cannot possibly begin to express our gratitude for your generosity, belief in us, and willingness to help us when things felt so out of reach. Thank you for the bottom of our hearts. That took a lot of restraint, not to cry, um, but uh, you know, in the middle of the chaos that was getting [00:18:00] fired and a lot of unnecessarily.

Hard things that came out after that. Um, we get a call from Louis, um, and Rory, you know, you had been building a relationship with you Lewis for years. I was very much, um, an associate like a, a friend of Louis by proxy. Um, didn’t have a personal relationship with Louis at all. So when he calls us, was really calling you but us by default, um, as this two become one thing.

Right? So, uh, he calls. And it was like, Hey Rory, I don’t know why I’ve gotten this feeling, this prompting. I should call you and, uh, I need help with my business and my personal brand. And any chance you just have some time to like sit and talk to me. And, uh, I remember we were not too far away from each other and it’s like this almost the first time of levity, of laughter in the middle of all this, of like, yeah.

We got lots [00:19:00] of time, lots of calendars, calendars and calendars wide open calendar has been cleared. Yeah. Um, which I do also believe is the divinely orchestrated.

Amen.

AJ: Uh, the timing is just impossible to ignore. In the contacting of us by Lewis, the later the podcast that released and the events that followed, like the timing is impossible to ignore, that this was not divinely orchestrated.

Um. For our good. That doesn’t mean good things aren’t hard. I think the best things in life can be very hard. Marriage is hard. Being a parent is hard. Uh, running a business is hard and it’s good. It’s so good. So when he called, we did have this wide open calendar, which if he had called two weeks before.

Yeah. Right. Like. Our calendars were chock full every minute of every day. That wouldn’t have been a, it [00:20:00] wouldn’t have been a possibility. It would’ve been an oversight or it just, it just wouldn’t have happened. Um, so I think that in, in and of itself is just, was the first sign that like, God’s up to something.

Mm-hmm. Like this, this is gonna be okay. And that was just within two days of me getting fired. Um, and then Louis came to Nashville. Flew to Nashville, spent two days with us in our basement. Now the, don’t think basement. Basement, it was like a decent basement. Yeah. Like, uh, it wasn’t like it was fish. We were hiding out in a dungeon or anything.

It wasn’t that crazy. Um, but we spent two days with him and just listening and asking questions and thinking and talking. Really, it was just doing the stuff that we do and that we had done for your book, for the podcast, for our coaching business, for all the things that, here’s what I would say, what I realized in that the, the two weeks after is that everything had not been lost.

It had all been for preparation. Um, the conversations around books and speaking and [00:21:00] podcasting and coaching and consulting are all things that we had been doing for 13 years, and that’s why we could speak so easily and off the cuff about it. We didn’t need to have a course or a book or a workbook ready to do this to help him.

This was already in our lane of expertise. It was already in our lane of what we do. ’cause we’ve been doing it

Rory: even though that’s not what we.

AJ: Did as a business. That’s not what

Rory: we did as a business before then.

AJ: But I think it, it was all like coming together of like, no, like this is preparation. Like what we, what we quote unquote lost has not been lost, is just showing up in a new way, in a new form, in a new season.

Um, and I think those were, you know, really important aha moments to have in the middle of a lot of like, oh gosh, are we gonna make it? Oh gosh, are we gonna be able to pay the bills? Oh gosh, what? What’s gonna happen? Also at the same time knowing, oh, okay, [00:22:00] there is something there. We have done this before.

We can do this again. Again, feelings of fear and hope can coexist. Mm-hmm. They can be there at the same time. Um, and so at the end of those two days, it was Lewis who said, this is why. This happened. This is why you’re fired, right? This is why this is going on. Like this is your new business. This is what you guys can, you can do.

You, y’all should do this. Like this is your new business. Um, and, but this is, but this is a part that’s crazy. It’s like I just genuinely believe regardless of what everyone else’s religious beliefs are, and affiliations of faith, for me, I’m a devout believer in Jesus. And God, and in my life and in our family, this was the biggest, loudest, brightest sign on planet Earth of, I have a plan for you.

Rory: Amen.

AJ: [00:23:00] Will you trust me?

Rory: So Louis comes over, I remember he says to us, you guys were born to do this. This is your new business. And I was like. No, we just got done working 80 hours a week, like for 12 years. Like we don’t have a business, we don’t have a team, we don’t have a bank account. Like we don’t have not a business bank account.

A business bank account. And, and I said, we don’t have an audience. We don’t, we don’t have a, a database, a list. And Louis said, that’s okay. I have one and I’m gonna have you on my show. And we’re going to, you’re gonna tell the whole world everything that you taught me, and we’re gonna tell everyone this is what you are gonna do.

And so, uh, he invited me out to speak at his mastermind. We signed up our first two clients there. Uh, brave

AJ: souls. Very brave souls. We didn’t even have a way to collect the money. [00:24:00]

Rory: Justin

AJ: and Danielle, if you are listening, you have no idea how much confidence that you inspired in us and our team. By signing up and giving us your credit card that in that very first two weeks.

Rory: Yep. And then Lewis has me come on the podcast. We started, uh, walking and figuring out, oh, could we do this and what would it take and how could we pull it off? And then we, and then I go on the podcast, what happens after that podcast?

AJ: Lots of things. Do you have something specific in that? Well, just, just, just

Rory: the how many calls and like, what was the state of our, what was the state of our team in our company?

Oh,

AJ: I, I asked because I was like, and again, I think this is just a, a beautiful picture of how the best things in life and the hardest things at life can all happen simultaneously. I got fired two days later. Louis shows up with this. Grand idea. Um, right. Divinely orchestrated, um, [00:25:00] Lewis’s podcast. Go live, goes live and we get sued all within three days of each other.

And so I think that, and that’s why I asked, well, which thing? There’s lots of things are happening around that time. Um, and so I think that’s just, it’s a really beautiful example of the highest highs and the lowest lows can coexist in life. And that is the adventure of life.

Rory: It’s so interesting ’cause one of the other things that happened was around that time someone broke into our house.

Mm-hmm. And they stole all of your late mother’s jewelry. Um, and just recently, like recently, now. Lewis had someone break into his house, uh, and then, and then someone broke into Matt’s car and they just posted about this on YouTube and I said, I said, man, uh, it’s so terrible. I know you, you feel so like victimized.

But I said, look, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. I. And I think when these bad things happen, it’s because you’re being prepared for this incredible good. And the, the, the metaphor I think of as an [00:26:00] arrow being pulled back. Mm-hmm. Right? And it’s like the farther you pull the arrow back, the faster it shoots forward.

And so I think. Sometimes when these like really hard things are happening, it’s because it’s like, it’s literally the world is shaping. God is orchestrating to go. There’s an equal and opposite positive reaction coming, like you are an arrow being pulled back that’s about to release.

AJ: Well, yeah, well just even at the, the story of when our house was broken into and all of our, you know, things were stolen.

Um, it was also in a really hard financial season where it was like, are we gonna be able to make the next payroll? Are we gonna be able to pay our bills? And the insurance money was able, it bought us three months of payroll. And it’s not, that’s not just putting a positive spin on it. It’s, it was provision.

And that’s just a choice to see it. It’s a perspective, it’s a lens. It’s like, is that the way I wanted provision to show up? No, uh, not really, but at the same token, I was praying for provision and there it is. It’s like, but do I see the [00:27:00] blessings right in front of my face? Or do I only see the hard parts?

Um, and so, you know, Louis’ podcast go live. We get sued almost at the exact same time, but, you know, this podcast goes live and we’re a personal branding firm, y’all. Um, and we launch our business on Lewis’s podcast, which is very well done. Uh, very high quality, very well produced. And we have an uns stylized landing page that’s white with a picture of me and Rory with an orange button that says, request to call here.

Rory: No

AJ: website. No website, no social podcast, social media, no email list. Barely, uh, barely a business license. And lo and behold, the next miraculous thing happened. A thousand people requested a call from the orange button. I don’t know what possessed those people to click on that button, other than one of the things that we talk about through the book, which is we borrowed the trust of Lewis’s [00:28:00] audience.

And I think trust is the underlying current of so much of what we talk about in the book is trust and reputation.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: And because we had a trusted reputation with Lewis and because he had a trusted reputation with his listeners, our business launched. Our business flourished because there had been VA an exchange of value and trust for years on our behalf of Lewis and on his behalf with his audience.

And I think it’s a really good reminder for all of us listening, it’s we are, we’re living in a world, and this isn’t new, but it’s a good reminder of instant gratification. We want it right now. It doesn’t matter if it’s starting a business, launching your personal brand, writing a book, a podcast, social media, whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, it’s like somehow we forget that that actually takes work and that work is good and good for us.

And it creates, uh, truly, it creates endurance. It creates a competitive spirit. It creates the, the [00:29:00] necessary lessons. To make sure that it lasts and then this in this world where, especially with AI and technology where it can just be done faster and faster and faster, we somehow think that the rest of our lives get to be lived that way too.

And

AJ: that’s just not true. Relationships don’t happen like that, and long-term success doesn’t happen like that. And trust doesn’t happen like that. It doesn’t happen in an instant. It doesn’t happen in a moment. It takes time, it takes work. And that work. Was happening behind the scenes long before that podcast went live, which is why our relationship with Lewis and his relationship with his audience transpired into something that is today brand builders group.

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I wanna, I want to read another section of acknowledgements, uh, because that all happened and to the point of trust and, and relationships. So one of the things that we talk about in here is. You build relationships before you need them, and that’s one of our BBG [00:30:00] mantras is build relationships before you need them.

Uh, and that takes time. Mm-hmm. One of the other things that is just a true part of the story, so I’ll just read this. First and foremost, we want to express our deepest gratitude to the founding team members of Brand Builders Group. El Petrillo, ILA Lake, Thomas Dotson, Jeremy Weber. Jane Weber, Kristen Hart Nagel, Elizabeth Stevens, Jennifer Kerr, Brittany Parker, Kevin va, and Nicole Gale.

Elise Archer and Kristen Colon. Each of you risked your livelihoods and your financial security to join us on this wild and uncertain adventure. You believed in the vision of what could be before there was any proof that it would work. Your courage, dedication. And unwavering faith in this mission laid the foundation for what Brand Builders Group has become.

We owe you an immeasurable debt of gratitude for taking a leap of faith with us and helping us to turn a dream into reality. And I think that’s the other part of this story that people don’t always know is, um, [00:31:00] after, uh, AJ was fired, uh, and two other senior female executives were fired at the same time, I resigned.

And then it’s like. When the four of us left, there were a lot of people who, who left our former company and some of them came and found us, and Brand Builders Group started because we had a team of people who also believed in this and they had, you know, when you said earlier it was like, it felt like we lost everything, but it was like we had our reputation, we had trust, and um, we had a lot of loyalty.

AJ: We had an amazing team.

Rory: And we’ve had, we have an amazing still do, amazing team still today. Um, they’re paid better today than they were, than they were in those early days, but I think that’s such a good message for everyone and anyone to know is just like, you don’t get rich overnight. You don’t change the world through going viral.

Like you don’t, you don’t [00:32:00] just. Accidentally instantaneously become like this worldwide phenomenon. It’s through years and years of trust and relationships and serving. Um, and we were helping Lewis long before we had anything to gain from him. Um,

AJ: and didn’t do it for gain. And didn’t

Rory: do it for gain. We had no reason to Back then it was, but God was orchestrating this in a way that was super powerful.

Um, I wanna talk about your, another part of your personal story. Um, which is the story before all of this. Mm-hmm. So you mentioned that, um, you know, as we talk about identity, a lot of the work that we do today at Brand Builders Group is, is, uh, we do what Larry Wingett. Says, which is help people find their uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.

One of the things I’m most proud of with this book is I, I think it gives people a chance to see your uniqueness in a way. Oh

AJ: yes. Tell us what is that, Roy? What is my uniqueness? What’s your head

Rory: in a way that that isn’t often shown in [00:33:00] broadcast? ’cause you don’t care to be on the front of the, you know, the scenes and on the stage and in front of the camera.

Always. Um. But I’m so proud of that. People get a chance to see that. And, uh, there, there’s a section in this book, chapter three, which I have read at least a dozen times, and I cry every single time. And it’s, it’s your story and part of it is ’cause I’m so connected to your story, but it’s, it’s, it’s because of this woman in your life.

And something she said to you that is so important and powerful. Can you just tell us the story of what happened when you were seven years old and then,

AJ: I don’t know, we have enough time in this episode for all of that. This is chapter three in the book. Um, I can give you the truncated high point. The truncated version, the high points, um, but all the, all of the details are, you can listen to it in the audio book or what would be so helpful is you picked up a copy of the book.

So feel free to do that as [00:34:00] well. But, uh, by

Rory: the way, before you jump into the story, so we actually are doing someone with this book that we’ve never done before. We’re giving away the entire audio book for free. If you go to free brand audiobook.com/podcast, that’s free brand audiobook.com. Forward slash podcast, um, for a limited amount of time.

We’re not sure when, but at least until when the book comes out, we’re giving away the audio book for free. Maybe after that, um, you can go check there and you can get the entire audio book for free. Uh, and then we’ll also share with you details about how you can order the actual book. So anyways, that was a good pause for that.

So, seven years old? Yeah. What happened?

AJ: Highlight, this is very short version, but I was in a very terrible car accident along with my entire family when I was seven years old. Uh, we were on a short journey from Dalton, Georgia, my hometown, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is just 30 minutes. Away. And I was seven.

I have a younger brother at the point, at that time who was five, an older brother who was 10. And my parents, we were [00:35:00] all in. My dad’s good old, good nineties, early nineties, Cadillac, uh, heading to Chattanooga, and we hit abrupt traffic. And were hit going 70 miles an hour, um, by a tractor trailer. Uh, the driver fell asleep at the wheel and didn’t see that traffic had come to a halt and hit us going 70 miles an hour.

It was the, we were the first car hit in a 13 car pile up and, um, it was a devastating accident and there were people who died that day. Um, luckily no one in my family, uh, died that day, but my younger brother and my older brother were in. Critically, um, severe condition. Um, my dad was injured but conscious.

They were

Rory: actually pronounced dead. Dead at the scene, dead

AJ: at the scene. Um, they were saved by the jaws of life. Um, strangers from vehicles in front of us came and tried to, uh, help get my family out. My dad was conscious they couldn’t get my mom out. They couldn’t get my brothers out, but since my dad was able to escape from the driver’s side window, he was able to [00:36:00] pull me out through a, a broken window, set me on the side of the road, and I watched.

As these strangers risk their lives. Didn’t know if the car gonna explode as, you know, something. Who knew what was gonna happen? It was, it was a devastating, um, accident, um, trying to save my family, but they couldn’t get ’em out. And so then the jaws of life showed up. Um, they were able to get my brothers out, but they both were without a pulse.

Um, con considered dead on the scene. Both were, um. AirVac to the nearest hospital. My mom and dad went in an ambulance. I went later in a police car as they were clearing the scene. And long story short, both of my brothers made miraculous recoveries. Um, neither were supposed to make a recovery. My youngest brother gave, was given a 10% chance of living.

He was in a three month coma. He was not predicted to make it. And if he did not live a normal life, uh, he lives a normal life. He’s married, he has a child, he [00:37:00] has a job. Uh, my older brother made a complete 100%, uh, recovery, unexpected without any medical intervention. It was absolutely miraculous, uh, doctors said.

So, it was just so obvious that this was God’s work, um, to the point where our family was contacted by the Children’s Miracle Network telethon because of the miraculous, unexplained medical miracle that had just occurred. Um, to be a part of their telethon series in 1990. My youngest brother was the poster child of the year that year, and we traveled, um, the country with the Miracle, the Children’s Miracle Network, telethon for the next.

Five years helping raise money for the children’s hospital and doing fundraising events and telephone events. I don’t know if they still do those. Um, but that was a very big part of my childhood from age seven to 12. And here’s how it went. Meet Christopher and meet Jason, the [00:38:00] Miracle kids from this accident.

And that’s what I heard my entire childhood meet my brothers, these miracle children. No one said I wasn’t. But no one said I was. So, I spent the majority and they, and they were

Rory: miracles, they a

AJ: hundred percent. Um, but I very much interpreted that as I wasn’t saved, I wasn’t important. Um, I wasn’t special.

Um, I didn’t get a settlement from the accident since I wasn’t injured, so I wasn’t even considered as a part of the accident. Um, everyone else in my family, um, got fairly large settlements. Um. At, but not me. And so I, I, it felt very overlooked, undervalued, um, unseen. Not intentional, but very real. Um, and so I started believing those things about myself, um, that I had to do something to be seen.

I had [00:39:00] to work. To show my worth, hence the how that carried on into the later years of my adult life. And then fast forward to college, I went to University of Tennessee Vols, very proud. Caught the college pride. Let’s stay on pride, let’s proud. Lots of college pride. Um, but it was, uh, at a sorority dinner, um, during parents’ weekend.

Um, my mom passed away as r he mentioned when I was 15. Um, and my dad. Wasn’t able to make it that weekend. And I was one of the only kids, one of the only girls there who didn’t have a family to sit with. And so my little sister in the sorority said, Hey, sit with my family and I. I didn’t have any options, said I will because I don’t have any parents here.

Um, and Katie was just trying to make a small talk, my little sister in the sorority and said, Hey, tell my mom your story. And I knew what story she meant ’cause she knew my story and her mom was a doctor. I don’t recall a doctor of what, [00:40:00] uh, I just remember had the Dr. Um, doctor something. And so I’m telling her this story and you know.

Fully expecting to hear like, wow, that’s amazing. And at the end of the story, I just remember her grabbing my hand and she goes, aj, my goodness, you are a miracle.

Rory: And and you said to her, tell him what you said to her.

AJ: Sorry. You must have misheard me. No.

Rory: You said my, I’m not the miracle. I

AJ: know y’all, Rory is crying like a bloody mess over here. Um, we’ll have to edit this part out of, uh, the podcast. Don’t

Rory: edit it. Tell the story, babe.

AJ: She said, you are the miracle. And I said, no, you misheard me.

My brothers, they’re, they’re the miracles. [00:41:00] And she said, no, I heard you, you just said. That you survived a 13 car pile up with not a scratch on you, no bruises, no internal injuries, you walked away unscathed. You are a miracle child.

And for the first time in my 21 years, I thought to myself, wait, what?

Did I, did I miss something? Wait, could that be true? And I remember getting in the car to leave the dinner, to go back to the sorority dorm and thinking to myself, wait, was I too a miracle was I, was I saved In that moment from a, from a stranger radically changed my life. And I just so [00:42:00] very firmly believe that the power of the tongue has the ability to build up or destroy, and we use it at will to do either of those things, and you can be a complete stranger.

And a side conversation unknowingly changed the course of someone’s existence on this earth, and that’s what happened.

Rory: That story makes me cry for many reasons. Um, uh, but I think the part that connected for me when we wrote the book was, you know, this book is about identity, and that moment was one of the most redefining moments in your life. That, that literally redefined your identity.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: And now what your [00:43:00] identity is, is helping other people get clear on their identity.

And of course, one

AJ: which is very fitting

Rory: and so fitting. And one of the, one of the, one of the flagship phrases in the book is what we print, we printed right here on the cover. It’s a little Easter egg, so you’ll have to, if you don’t know to look for it, you won’t see it. But if you open it up, it says right on the right on the front cover, you are most powerfully positioned.

To serve the person that you once were. And we discovered that. We discovered that. We didn’t know that when we started Brand Builders group. Mm-hmm. But we, we started to notice that pattern as we had worked with hundreds and now a couple thousand clients that, oh, for all of us, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

Well, we are a company who helps people get clear on their identity. And that moment, that story in your life and the story of you getting fired are two really defining moments, [00:44:00] redefining moments of your identity, which I look back and I go, God is orchestrating your life from the time you were seven years old to go, I’m gonna build this woman into a woman who helps.

Other people find their identity, that helps other people get clear on their identity that he was making you a woman that would be like Katie’s mom. Um, and I hope Katie’s mom hears this story because the way that she spoke life over you is the way that I pray. That brand builders group and our team and our strategists and our content and curriculum and that this book, I pray that it’s, it brings life to other people that when they’re going through the hard times, when they’re going through the hard parts, it gives them the perspective to go, I know this is hard, but it’s because God is doing something powerful in you.

Mm-hmm. And he’s shaping you and he’s, he’s making your identity.

AJ: Well, I think that. [00:45:00] I think one of the big takeaways of why we included the story into the book, and that’s the first time I’ve ever really publicly shared that story. I didn’t have a purpose or, um, a good point to what is the universal nature of this story and what, what good does it do other people?

And it wasn’t until, uh, writing this book that God just really put outta my heart like, this is the story that people need to hear. Because I think that we all struggle so much with this concept of what’s my purpose? I. What, what am I here for? Am I, am I doing the right thing? Like, does even, does e does anyone even care?

Like, what am I doing? Like, what, what is this about? And, and I think that’s a lot of people, and I think another group of people live in the hardships of their past. They live in the, the trauma and almost can’t see the good. That has come because they’re so focused on the bad. And I only share that ’cause I lived [00:46:00] in that too.

I had a really hard time seeing the gift of my saving of my rescue. ’cause all I could focus on through the lens of comparison is what my brothers were getting, which was attention and gifts and accolades and time. Um, and it was through the lens of comparison that I lost myself. When I was a child.

Mm-hmm.

AJ: And I see a lot of people live that through adulthood. I too have lived that in adulthood. Um, but I think that’s one of the reasons why this book is so important. And, and it’s not just a book about personal branding, it’s a book about finding your God given purpose. Because it’s there. It was crafted before you were created in your mother’s womb.

It’s there today. It’s in the midst of all the hardships and the struggles and the trauma and the valleys. It’s there at the mountaintop moments. It’s it’s there and the victories and the successes, but it’s there in the hard stuff. It’s not mutually exclusive. They’re all [00:47:00] together working for the good of your life and the good that you can do in other people’s lives, and I think that is a huge reason.

Why the story became really important for the book and, uh, the signature story of chapter three is until you realize that you do have purpose, you can’t find it.

Mm,

AJ: you have to believe that you were created to do something, to be something that you just haven’t discovered yet, and you only discover it by serving other people.

Yeah. Like you only do it by going back and helping the person you once were. It’s like you find purpose in that because you’re helping someone else. Um, it’s not gonna be found in money in your banking account. Sorry. Hate to disappoint all of us. Uh, that’s not where it’s found, it’s not found in a bunch of material stuff.

It’s not, we all know way too many people who have all the things who’ve done all the things that are [00:48:00] still searching for purpose and fulfillment. ’cause it’s not where it comes from. It comes from knowing that you’re living into the reason you’re here, that you’re, you’re doing the thing that you were created to do for the person that you can help.

Rory: That’s why we went, by the way, I dunno if you can see this on the video, but there’s a single fingerprint on the cover and, and in the hard cover it’s raised is going, every single person makes a unique mark on the world. It’s, it’s. The difficult things that you’ve been through that are actually what equip you and prepare you, the pain that you’ve gone through, is what prepares you for your purpose.

Because it’s, it’s what has shaped you and molded you into being the only person in the world who can help somebody else, who’s going through exactly what you’re going through, what you’ve been through. Um. And I just, I think that’s so powerful. Again, you, [00:49:00] if you go to free brand audiobook.com/podcast, you can download the audiobook, um, completely for free.

Uh, I. I am so honored to do life with you and to do business with you, and to raise a family with you, uh, to now be a co-author with you. Uh, I’ve always thought, you know, the idea of there’s no such thing as a bestselling author. There’s only such a thing as a bestselling team, and we’ve been a team. From the beginning.

And now we’re officially, you know, a team and, uh, our whole team, brand Builders group and our whole community at Brand Builders Group is a part of this. Uh, whatever this book becomes, it’s gonna be in large part to the fact that our community right now is sharing it and they’re, they’re giving the audio book away for free to their people.

And, um, I think that’s what brand builders has become. And for, for AJ and I, you should know that like brand Builders group was never started to be. A profit [00:50:00] maximization endeavor. Um, we started this to be an impact maximization endeavor. We started this because we felt like God was telling us, help my people be heard and help the people who are mission-driven messengers, the people with great stories to.

Okay, share their stories because their stories matter. And you know what you were, when you were just talking about purpose, I couldn’t help but think about this story. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. When, when Jesus is asked, I don’t know if it’s a Pharisee or someone asked him, he says, you know, there’s 617 laws, I think 617 in the Old Testament.

And he says, which, which is the most important? And Jesus says, you know, love the God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind and soul. And then love your neighbor as yourself to like serve and. Yeah. Even people don’t believe in Jesus. They’re not Christians. I think there’s something inherent about a mission-driven messenger that goes, I want my life to count.

I want my life to have meaning, and it has meaning in service. Mm-hmm. It’s in the con, in the [00:51:00] context. My life, in and of itself sits as this sort of isolated piece that’s disconnected from everything, but the moment I engage with helping somebody else, I have meaning and I have purpose, and it, it never goes away and it’s never insignificant.

It’s. It, it just, it matters. And so that’s what we’re doing at Brand Builders Group. That’s what we’re hoping to do with this book. Um, what is any final thoughts that you would share, uh, as we wrap this up and this journey about the book? Yes.

AJ: I’m gonna flip the switch for a minute and ask you a question about the book.

How about that? Uh, wealthy and well known. Why that title? Oh, because. Uh, I think it can be misleading, but we had very big intentional reasons around these words in this title. So why this title? Rory Vaden?

Rory: Yeah. Well, it’s not accidental. It, uh, it is a bit of a bait and switch. I mean, well, obviously at Brand Builders Group we help people become more well known and we, monetization strategy is something that we do really [00:52:00] well, but it it, the epilogue of the book, you will find that we transparently disclose, um, this not so secret.

Hidden agenda, which is, I used to think, you know, when I grew up I was, I was raised by a single mom. We didn’t have a lot of money. Um, a defining part of my youth was being curious about how do you get money and why do some people have money and, you know, why are there the haves and we seem to be the have-nots and how is that fair?

And, and so I used to think growing up, I used to think that wealth was an abundance of money. And then later as I got older, I used to think, I, I, I evolved, I guess my thinking to think that wealth was an abundance of time and that, oh man, time is the thing. That’s really the precious commodity time is the thing that matters the most.

And today, I, I, I still see a, a big value for money and time both in the world, but I’ve come to believe that [00:53:00] wealth is simply an abundance of peace. And I really believe that peace is the new profit. And we have been a part of, you know, a small part of some of the biggest personal brands in the world. Uh, a big part of some other personal brands.

But we’ve been around a lot of people. Uh, I mean, I think we have seven billionaires that are clients. We have some of the best selling authors of all time. Some of the most famous speakers, some of the highest paid consultants are now clients of ours. And it’s not the money that gives them the peace.

It’s not the fame that gives ’em the peace. Uh, what I’ve come to believe is that the only true sense of peace is God. Um, and it’s no accident that, that Jesus says, you know, my peace be with you, my peace I give you. And that peace is what we’re really after. Mm-hmm. Um, and you can, it’s ironic because you don’t have to become rich or famous to experience peace.

It’s a gift that’s [00:54:00] available. To all of us immediately at any moment through knowing Jesus and God. But, um, you know, again, even if you’re not a Christian or you’re not sure where you stand on the religious thing, there’s peace and service. There’s. You know, I think so many people are struggling because they’re trying to find happiness.

They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re trying to find happiness and they’re so self-focused on my happiness and they’re missing that. Where purpose really comes from is from being service centered on others. And then the other thing about being well known is, you know, you talk about this in, in the, in the book, you’re already well known by your creator.

Um. Why, why don’t you talk, why don’t you talk about that and land the plane on. Uh, so that’s where wealthy comes from. Where does well known come from? Well, I just

AJ: added one quick thing to the, the wealthy part is like really, it’s like peace is the new wealth, um, is what we talk about in the book. And also I think a lot of peace comes from knowing and believing [00:55:00] that there’s purpose in your pain.

I think there’s peace in knowing that you’re not going through this for no reason, right? And that good will come of it and that you will be stronger and that you will. You’ll find purpose in helping others going through the same thing. And I think that’s also finding peace of going, it’s, nothing is lost.

Everything will be used. Um, how doesn’t, we don’t always get to know and decide that, but I think there’s also a lot of peace in that. Um, the well-known piece is, I think so many of us spend so much of our time trying to get validation from external sources. From how many likes we get on social media or content or engagement or downloads or book purchases or what lists we’re on or how much money is in our account, or what bag do we cover, carry or car, do we drive?

We look for so much external validation, um, because that’s where we think we’re seen or known or loved or respected or appreciated or valued. [00:56:00] And we all know, we just talked about it. It’s like that’s not it. Because we can do all those things and still feel really empty, really lonely, uh, really isolated and very confused of like, I thought, I thought this was the thing that was gonna make me feel known, loved, respected, valued, and important.

And it doesn’t happen. It, it doesn’t come. And, um, and I think this whole concept of what does it mean to be well known is just to realize right where you are in this very moment. You are known, fully known, fully loved as you are. In your mess, in the chaos, as unknown as you might be in worldly standards, you are so very well known by your creator, and you are desired, and you are wanted, and that you have purpose and that you are created for a reason, for this very time at this very moment, and for a person.

Right. You were created for a reason and you were created for a [00:57:00] person. And so it, it’s helping us all take a step back from the very, um, influencer world that we live in. There’s no shade, not costing any judgment on the influencer model and helping us all realize that doesn’t mean you’re known, right, and that you are already known as you are right where you are.

Rory: So there you have it, friends. Um. Wealthy and well-known. You can download the audiobook for free one more time. Free brand audiobook.com/podcast. Uh, we’d love it. Also, if you considered ordering a copy or getting send one to a friend, uh, if you’re not able to do that financially, share this episode with them.

Just give, share the episode. Episodes totally free. Um, with someone who needs it. The book is quite tactical also, uh, we, we, uh, I wanted to interview AJ on more of the kind of heart emotional side, so you could get to see that side of her, but, um, it’s, it is quite tactical as well. [00:58:00] And, um, I think I, I speak for AJ when I say, you know, we feel like we’re stewards of this message.

We feel like we’re stewards of brand builders group. This was not our plan. You’ve now heard the story. We didn’t have a brilliant plan. We didn’t have a strategy. It, it all happened to us. Right? And for us, and for us, and more importantly, for you and for others. And the same is true with your life. It’s not, it’s not just happening to you, it’s happening for you.

And more importantly, it’s happening for others. Mm-hmm. Because your pain is preparing you for your purpose. So thanks for letting us be a part of your journey. Uh, hope you’ll support the book, share the episode, the podcast with a friend, and we wish you all the best.

Ep 599: 3 Hacks to Help You Persevere Through Trials | Mike and Kass Lazerow Recap

[00:00:00] This is perhaps the single most important mindset hack to people who conquer and achieve huge, massive, impossible goals. And I’m gonna read from you or read for you a passage from a book that captures this really well. When I interview some of the most successful people on the planet, they consistently talk about a mindset that pushes them toward a destination.

But more than that, it’s one that embraces the path and one that finds joy in the journey. Their mentality is altogether different. While most people seem to complain and rant about life’s challenges, ultra successful people seem to learn to fall in love with the daily grind. Successful people take pride in tackling the tasks that other people rebuke.

They understand that there is no real finish line, no magic moment when they will arrive. No magic [00:01:00] moment when they get to rest on their laurels. Discipline is a perpetual process and the growth is in the journey. That came from my first book. Take the Stairs in the very first chapter. This is on page 26.

This book was originally published in 2012, and it is as true, if not more true today than ever before. The single greatest mindset hack of people who achieve the impossible is this, they learn to fall in love with the daily grind. That’s it. They learn to fall in love with the daily grind, and I was reminded of that on this most recent podcast interview I did with Mike and Cass Lazaro.

These are two entrepreneurs who have had multiple exits. Their first company, they sold for $25 million. Their second company, they sold for over $700 million to Salesforce. They’ve sold businesses for $5 billion. They’ve been advisors to companies like liquid Death, and [00:02:00] hundreds of others. And we were talking about their journey as entrepreneurs and what they have really, really learned and, and what their secret was.

And so what I’m gonna share with you right now are three tactics, three tricks to help you do a better job in your own life of embracing this mindset, of falling in love with the daily grind. And this is much simpler than you might realize, but if you don’t teach yourself to think this way. You will never do it because it is not at all natural.

Okay, so here’s the three hacks that I want you to focus on. Hack number one, remind yourself that perseverance is the priority. Remind yourself that perseverance is the priority. Perseverance is the goal in and of itself, not some. Other, in other invisible finish line that is a mirage, right? Not some number, not some date on the calendar, not some [00:03:00] achievement or goal of just like, oh, I, I conquered this objective.

It’s fine to have those goals, but the, the ultimate goal, the ultimate trick or hack of, of the mindset of ultra performers is that there’s not like a finite thing that they’re pursuing. What they realize is that perseverance. In and of itself is the priority. Perseverance is the goal. In other words, just keeping going is the main focus.

Just not quitting, just not giving up, continuing to to pursue and grow and improve and develop. That is the priority. When you do that, when, when you embrace that as the objective, when you embrace that as your source of truth. You start to care less about what the numbers are and what the deadlines are, and where are you at compared to some arbitrary date on a calendar, or how are you doing compared to other competitors or [00:04:00] to other arbitrary sort of budgets and timelines that you say or you determine that should be successful.

You let all of that go and you go, no, the, the goal is to keep going. The goal is like in Finding Nemo, just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. That is the goal because perseverance is the, the ultimate indicator of success is just going, my, my only, my only backup plan is to get back up, to get back on my feet and just to keep going and just to, to, to stay the course.

That’s really all you need. And so when you shift from having this, like, arbitrary focus on objective. Things to a more perpetual you know, like ever improving of just, I want to get better and I just want to keep going. It changes everything because perseverance, the person who perseveres is the person who’s gonna win.

So that’s the first one. Remind yourself that perseverance is the priority. Number two, remind [00:05:00] yourself that if you can learn to love the hard parts of what you’re doing. Everything else becomes easier if you can learn to love the hard parts of what you’re doing. Then everything else becomes easier if you resist the hard parts, if you shy away from the hard parts, if you’re scared of the hard parts, if you run away from the hard parts, if you avoid the hard parts, then you give the hard parts power, right?

They, they get bigger as you worry about them. They, they grow in their, their power over you because you’re admitting this like reluctance or this weakness that you have. To deal with these things. And another, another thing that I said and take the stairs. Procrastination is an indulgence are nothing more than creditors that charge you interest.

Waiting makes it worse. Waiting makes it feel more difficult than it really is. On the contrary, if you can fall in love with the hard parts, if you can embrace the hard parts, [00:06:00] if you can learn to find joy in the things that are difficult. Then everything else is easy, right? So make the challenge, make your focus less about how do I do more of the easy stuff and make your focus more of how do I fall in love with the hard stuff?

Because if you fall in love with the hard stuff, then everything is easy. But if you only focus on trying to do more of the easy stuff, then all the hard parts grow in their power. And there’s this looming shadow that is always sort of hanging over you, that you’re running from. If you can embrace that as part of your mentality, it unlocks so much opportunity.

It unlocks freedom, it unlocks emotional health, and it unlocks confidence. It unlocks courage because you realize. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of the hard parts. I welcome the hard parts. I dominate the hard parts. I fall in love with the hard [00:07:00] parts. So that’s the second thing is if you can learn, remind yourself.

If you can learn to love the hard parts, everything else becomes easier. And then finally, the third little trick, the third little tactic here for this ultimate mindset hack is remind yourself that when it gets hard, that’s where everyone else quits. Where it gets hard is where everyone else quits. I sometimes refer to this as the law of the moat, right?

What is a moat? Think of a castle, right? A, a castles. They used to have moats, which were, you know, this, these like rivers that they would put around and they would put alligators in the moat. And so that moat was a source of protection that you, you had to get through that incredibly difficult barrier in order to make it to the castle.

Well, everything that is difficult in your business, everything that is hard for you to get past, every obstacle that you have to overcome, every challenge that you have to circumvent or navigate around [00:08:00] becomes a moat of protection for you. What is a challenge for you today becomes a layer of protection for you against competitors later.

Why? Because just like it was hard for you to conquer. It will also be hard for others to conquer. And so the harder your journey is, the more secure you are from other competitors coming in, right? People tend to gravitate towards the easy things. We live in an escalator mindset world. That’s where the whole metaphor of take the stairs comes from.

Well, that is always going to be true. And so when you do hard things, you not only get stronger, you not only get more capable, you not only develop a stronger character, I. You also develop a naturally stronger layer of protection against other copycats and against other competitors and other people entering your space.

When you think like that, it causes you [00:09:00] to approach the challenges and the obstacles you’re facing today differently. You go from Why is this happening to me? And oh my gosh, this is so hard. To instead being grateful to go, wow, nobody is ever gonna get through this. Right? So few people are ever gonna have the stamina and the discipline and the character, and the resilience and the perseverance to overcome the kind of challenges that our team is overcoming today.

And you take pride in that. You get excited about that and you go, yeah, we’re gonna conquer this. We’re gonna make it through this. You know what, this is hard, but we’re gonna survive. We’re gonna make it through it. And when we do. It’s going to become one of the very things that protects us in the future.

One of the very things that sets us up for long-term sustainable success. You may not realize it, but this type of thinking is exactly the type of thinking that separates the wealthiest people. The biggest companies, the most successful sports teams, the, the, [00:10:00] the most impactful nonprofits the, the highest performers, the ultra performers.

In all walks of life, they have learned to embrace the hard stuff They have learned to find joy in the journey. They have learned to do the things that others aren’t willing to do. They have a take the stairs mindset and they have learned to fall in love with the daily grind. Make sure you leave a comment down below about where you have fallen in love with the daily grind in your life.

And share this video with someone who needs to see it. Also, if you haven’t yet, hit the subscribe button so that you get access to more of our content. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 598: Scaling 8 and 9 Figure Businesses with Mike and Kass Lazerow

Rory: [00:00:00] A lot of personal brands have a bit of a fantasy about what it means to be an entrepreneur and run your own business, and you know that AJ and I have a heart for quote unquote real entrepreneurs. People who have been on the front lines, had their hands in the dirt, the people who have built real companies that have provided real jobs, serve real customers, and battled all of those headaches in between.

And a lot of the biggest personal brands in the world don’t really build large teams and ~large, ~large organizations. And so anytime we get a chance to talk to entrepreneurs who have created businesses with real, genuine enterprise value, who have had massive exits, that is somebody we ~re ~respect and admire and we want to get ahold of, and we want to introduce them to you because you might not be as familiar with them because they don’t have as big of personal brands, but financially and.

From an impact perspective, these people make a, ~a bigger, ~you know, as big if not much bigger impact [00:01:00] than the biggest personal brands in the world. And that’s what we have an opportunity to do today. You are about to meet Mike and Cass lro, who I love and adore for many reasons. We’ve got mutual friends.

I met them through will Gera, a really good friend of mine a client of Brand Builders Group, someone I’m a huge fan of. He spoke so highly of them. They’re also husband and wife, which is very rare to operate at the level that they operate at ~and ~and the companies they’ve been a part of, which is something that AJ and I have always done.

We have been business partners before we ever fell in love, and so anytime we get a chance to meet a successful married couple who’s crushing it in business, we’re paying attention, but. Let me give you a little bit of their pair pedigree here, and then I’ll introduce you to them. So they are serial entrepreneurs and they have been involved with massive companies.

So first golf.com was one of their most famous claims to fame that they had a $25 million exit as part of that business. Then they were a part of starting Buddy Media, [00:02:00] which they sold to Salesforce for. Get this. $745 million, 745 million. Dollars. They have also been advisors and angel investors to companies like Scopely, which had a $5 billion exit in 2022.

They’ve been advisors to companies like Liquid Death, which I’m a huge fan of. And they have a new book that has come, just came out it’s called Shoveling Bleep. We’ll say shoveling stuff. But a Love story. About the entrepreneur’s messy path to success. And so we’re going to hear a little bit about their messy path to success and the advice that they have for entrepreneurs and dreamers and mission-driven messengers just like you, from people who have actually done it.

They’ve been on the front lines, they’ve had their hands in the dirt, and they have shoveled some stuff. So Mike and Cass, welcome to the show, friends.

Kass: Thanks for [00:03:00] having us.

Mike: Thank you so

Kass: much.

Rory: So I would love to hear about golf.com ’cause that was like your first really big exit, right? That was your first sort of like materially successful entrepreneurial venture.

What I wanna know is what was your mindset when you started the company? What did you think it meant to be an entrepreneur? ~Her ~and then like, what was the reality that you discovered and then where were you at the end of that first one and how did you kind of ~get the, ~create the exit and like achieve that sort of first race?

’cause I look at all the things you’ve done, but that feels like it was sort of like your first race. So I’d just love to hear that story from, from each of you.

Kass: So for me, Rory, that definitely was like my first independent race. I had started an interactive arm of a agency before, but this was really my attempt at running something.

[00:04:00] And I started it with another co-founder who we had three in, in addition to Mike here. And it was a jump. To basically have independence. And for me, I wanted to build companies that had better culture, ~that had, ~where everyone owned a piece of the pie, that we were all in this together and that we actually aligned all of our interests.

So. I did that jump. It was the height of the internet, right? This was 1998 and 99. It was incredible. Obviously I thought I could take advantage of that amazing window of time not knowing the crash was coming in 2000. And you know, you start shoveling and what happens? You get punched in the face.

You know, an entrepreneur is really got. Probably 10 failures a day, these little mini micro failures. And then they’ll have one win. And it’s kind of like golf. It keeps you in the game. You have one good shot and you [00:05:00] just keep going. Right? So that was really it for us. And we got a big punch in the face and, really, ~we, we, ~we sold the company originally to chip shot.com in December of 1999. And they were going public, they were Sequoia backed, and then the call came in March of 2000 that Sequoia backed out and the crash was there and they were going bankrupt, and they were pulling us into bankruptcy as well.

Oh,

Kass: so talk about, you know, ~if, ~if anybody’s out there and they really think like, oh my God, being an entrepreneur is like so glamorous. You can do whatever you want. You know, you pick what you wanna do and everyone else can do it for you, not the case. Not the case.

Rory: What’s the reality, Mike? ~Like what, what, what?~

Like, ’cause especially with, you know, today that is what people see. It’s like, oh, there’s private jets and helicopters and fancy cars. And like, look at me. I’m on TV and I’m on big stages and I’m on the cover of a magazine, and it’s like, woo-hoo, be an [00:06:00] entrepreneur. Leave the nine to five. ~What, what’s the, ~what’s the real story, Mike?

Mike: Yeah, I think the real story is that there’s virtue and hard work and ~you know, I tell. ~You know, every young person that I speak to that we’re a 30 year overnight success story. So I started my first company at Northwestern University called University Wire and then did golf.com with Cass, and we’ve done eight companies together.

And so our biggest and what we’re known for is Buddy Media, but we learned more from the failure of golf.com initially and buying it back, and then scaling that. Than we did really at Buddy Media and even after Buddy Media working for Mark Benioff. I learned more about how big companies operate and at the end of the day, if you do.

The same thing over and over again. That’s working every day, every week, every quarter, every year. And just keep at it. You could build something big over time and Instagram and all the [00:07:00] social networks celebrate the instant win, the overnight success story, but those are very rare. Just look at your business, right?

No one knows kind of building businesses and building brands better than you and. What you’ve accomplished over many years, you probably couldn’t imagine what you do any given day. There’s only so much.

Rory: Yeah. It’s interesting to hear you say that because you know, AJ and I started our first company right outta college 2006, making cold calls out of the yellow pages, and we grew that to 5,000 clients, 200 people.

It was an eight figure business. And then we sold the company in 2018. But in, ~in, you know, ~reality, we lost the company AJ was fired by the investors. So we ended up bringing on investors and we had other partners, and then she was fired and then I resigned. And so we had a built-in equity structure and so we were able to have an exit as part of that.

But like, it was not [00:08:00] the like glamorous, oh my gosh, like ~right ~private islands and never work again and cover a magazine, but. We learned so much. Brand builders group. You know, we started in 2018. We are doing more in revenue in half the time with no debt, no investors, no partners, no audience. And it’s like, I don’t wanna say it’s easy.

It’s not at all easy. It’s nowhere close to easy. But like we learned everything in that first rodeo that it’s like. It’s a more straight path. Right, and it’s been a faster path. It sounds like you guys had something similar with Buddy Media.

Kass: Yeah, I would say so. I think, you know, we had. ~You know, ~a small win under our belt, right?

And people knew us for exiting, and I think that really helps. And Mike had done such a great job at relationship building. So you know, we started to get known in the New York [00:09:00] space as. ~You know, ~really good entrepreneurs who, like Mike said, put our head down, ~right. ~We didn’t complain about things and we actually executed what we were gonna say.

So, raising money, when it came to Buddy Media, you know, let Mike, ~you know, ~talk about this was easy. Like, ~you know, ~Mike, how long did it take you to raise the first couple million in?

Mike: Yeah, so I say it took me a week to raise it, but really a lifetime, right? Because. You know, if you are just cold calling investors, it’s very difficult.

It’s very difficult to just send an email and saying, Hey, invest in me. I’m great. Right? But if you invest in networking and building relationships and giving right, like you do Rory every day, then what you get in return is so much bigger. And so when I called our first investor, Howard Linson, who’s one of the epic.

Angel investors who funded Robinhood, the first money into Robinhood and e [00:10:00] Toro and all these great companies, I had already helped him sell another company. We built a relationship and it’s those relationships that you have to look at over a very long arc and not be transactional. So if you’re transactional, if it’s just, you know, what can you do for me today?

You’re just gonna burn through relationships. If you invest in genuine relationships, you know, that’s where it’s at. And any entrepreneur who’s not networking with investors is leaving a lot on the table.

Mm.

Rory: Yeah. ~I, ~I love, you know. One of the reasons I love talking to real entrepreneurs is because, you know when people hear like, oh, brand builders group’s, a personal brand strategy firm, like their mind goes to oh, social media and like books and speaking and TikTok and YouTube and podcasts and like one of the very first things we have to tell people is we say, look, a personal brand is none of those [00:11:00] things.

It’s much bigger. It’s the digitization of your reputation.

Kass: That’s right. It’s your

Rory: reputation. And Cass, when you say we had a reputation for not complaining, putting our nose down, hard work, executing, doing what we say we were gonna do, that’s what it takes. ~And, and, ~and part of the reason I have so much respect for entrepreneurs is ’cause you can fake a following.

Like you can fake an online following. Yeah. There’s lots of ways to fake an online following. You cannot fake a freaking $700 million business, right? Like you can’t fake a workplace culture where you attract great people. You can’t fake those things. ~And I, I kind of wish we lived, not kind of, I, ~I wish we lived in a world more where like real entrepreneurs got more attention.

But ironically they get less attention because they’ve got their head down building companies and shoveling stuff and like doing the deal every day. ~They’re not. That ~they’re not out there like celebrating themselves and promoting themselves. ’cause they’re like [00:12:00] solving problems behind the scenes. Right.

Kass: And with us when we were doing it. You know, I made Mike ~the, ~the Ford facing person of our, ~you know, ~founding group. And it was ~this ~all in trying to create his brand, his ~his like ~being synonymous with Buddy Media. ~That ~it was thought leadership, it was trust that we were going to solve your issues when it came to managing your social media because we built this incredible and leading social media marketing platform.

So it was interesting because yeah, we didn’t have any time to be like, Hey, look at us, we’re good entrepreneurs. It was more like, what could we do for the company that would actually serve the purpose of the company, the investors, and especially the employees.

Rory: Mm-hmm. I love that. ~I, ~I wanna talk to you about that because.

You know, that is very obvious, right? What you guys have built on the business side now though. So you’ve got ~your new book, your, ~your new book, shoveling [00:13:00] stuff as I’ll say it for the family friendly part of the show, but it’s called Shoveling Stuff again. A love story about the entrepreneur’s Messy path to success.

And so now you’re doing, you know, you’ve had a few exits, you’re, you’re more investors and now you’re getting opportunity to do it. I wanna ask you about the tension between building a personal brand. And building a company that has enterprise value because we seem to live at this unique intersection at Brand Builders Group, where we have a lot of people who have some real, like built some personal brands.

Like they have got large followings. ~Some of which, ~several of which are, ~we, ~we should say they’re, they’re Twitter rich, but their dollar broke. Like they’ve got these huge followings, a lot of pe, they inspire a lot of people. They got a big audience, but they. They haven’t figured out how to make much money and they’re trying to like become a real entrepreneur.

And then we have a whole bunch of these other people who have been really successful entrepreneurs who have made real money, learned real lessons, but nobody knows who they are. They have [00:14:00] no social following, they don’t get invited to speak anywhere. They have very little like media about themselves and.

We’re trying to help each side understand the other, because there’s advantages ~and ~and disadvantages of each side, and I wanted to just kind of like have you riff a little bit on. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a company having strong personal brand? You know, like cash, you said you, you guys really pushed Mike forward.

How is that a liability? How is it an asset? How do you manage it when you go to sell? And then like, how are you thinking about personal branding now, now that you’re sort of like, you know, in some ways a little bit behind the chapter of building companies?

Mike: So I’ll start with basically saying, you know, the best way to approach this is to be yourself.

You know, every time we’ve tried to be someone else, we realize that someone else has taken and it doesn’t work. And so the content we put into the world is very similar to the [00:15:00] advice we give to our a hundred plus entrepreneurs that we’ve invested in. ~And it’s. ~A lot of our cheat codes that we use to grow the business.

And so we feel good about it because the first 50 years was all about like heads down, earning reputation, money, all this stuff. And when we woke up we basically said, Hey, let’s like figure out how to scale impact. So the philanthropy side of what we’re doing, you know, helping more entrepreneurs, which isn’t philanthropy, but you know, we live in the greatest country.

And one of the reasons is because we have free markets and the ability to start businesses and fail and not have that be an albatross around our neck for the rest of our lives. And that’s a blessing that I think we overlook many days. And so when we look at. Building a business, it’s how do you use the leadership?

It could be the founder and CEO, it could be other people to communicate that you have a vision for the world in your industry and that your company [00:16:00] is the one that they will wanna work with. You know, people will work with companies that they like the people and they like the vision. You know, most industries have multiple options.

So to think that you are the only option in an industry means that it’s probably not a very big industry. You know, we also have ~beginner’s mind, a ~beginner’s mind. And to be honest, a lot of what we’ve done at Cass and Mike has been new and scary. You know, riddled with fear, right? We’re getting up and doing keynotes together for the first time, I was the one who used to do keynotes.

Now I have to watch timing and am I stepping on her toes? And you know, we wrote a book together. We never really worked together. She did ops, I did sales. And so, you know, we’re newbies. We feel like we are. Interns in this kind of social influence world, we look at what you and many of our friends have done and we kind of [00:17:00] put you on the pedestal.

And maybe one day in 10 years or 15 years, we can say to ourselves that, you know, we committed and we’ve kind of figured it out. Right now. We’re like many people in your audience that we’re just trying to figure it out, but ~what ~the way we’re figuring it out is we’re working harder than. ~E, ~you know, everyone I know in this space.

So we’ve applied the same, you know, philosophy to our personal brand of transparency, hard work, you know, putting in those extra calls as we did for all the businesses. ~I.~

Kass: And it’s about reps, right? Like everyone always thinks there’s shortcuts. When you’re an entrepreneur, there are no shortcuts, right?

It’s about doing the reps. Like if you look at our first posts versus now, right? It’s much improved. Mike, would you say that, that you regret not for us going silent kind of in social media after we sold? Would you regret that?

Mike: I mean, I wish we hadn’t. Because, you know, we helped invent social marketing at Buddy [00:18:00] Media.

We were friends with all of these people who are now influencers from Gary Vaynerchuk to Scott Galloway to, you know, name them, you know, Jimmy and Mr. Beast we’ve been on a call with. So yeah. But hindsight’s 2020. Yeah. After we sold the business, we turned inward. Our kids needed more attention. Hmm. And I think we had a little PTSD from going from zero to 50 million in annual recurring revenue in three years with offices in Singapore and London and all over the place.

So we say all the time that you can have anything and do anything. You just can’t do everything. And so one of the things we didn’t do, I. Was be public with our presence, which I wish we did, but hindsight’s 2020. Here we are.

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah, ~you, ~so just to double tap on something you breezed through there really quick.

Zero to [00:19:00] 50 million in recurring revenue in three years. You guys did?

Mike: Yes.

Rory: Yeah. That’s gnarly. And it took a to on us.

Mike: It’s why I weighed 40 pounds more. It’s why Cass and I weren’t connected. It’s why my cardiologist, I have an artificial heart valve, said I’m gonna die if I don’t take care of myself.

Right? So there are trade-offs to this and I don’t regret them, but nothing is free in life.

Rory: Yeah, I want to talk about that. So, specifically I wanna talk about being married in doing it right. AJ and I, we had a mutual friend. She had grown up with him and I met him in college and we started our first company together, and so we started as business partners and then it was a year into the company.

We did the like unforgivable sin. We started dating, we risked the whole company. It was just like, this is such a bad idea. We just could not help it. And we were just madly in love and we’ve been together ever since and it has totally worked out. But [00:20:00] we don’t know any other life other than working together.

And people are always like, how do you pull that off? Like, how do you not kill each other? ~How do you like,~

Kass: right.

Rory: So I would love to hear. About your marriage doing business together. What’s been awesome about it? What’s been hard about it? What advice would you give to people about when to do it, not to do it, why to do it, why not to do it.

Kass: Well, ~I, I can’t, I I’m like you, I, ~I can’t imagine working with anyone else because when you have that rhythm and that synchronicity of trust, right? That implicit trust and you don’t have these overlapping skills, and I am curious if you and AJ have overlapping skills or you’re totally separate. Separate.

~But. Separate. ~Exactly. That’s where like any good co-founding relationship, you don’t overlap, so you just kind of go down your lanes. But it’s like you have the best partner in the world because there’s so much trust, like you’re not gonna drop balls for each other. And I think because we had, we dated a [00:21:00] year and then I started this company and then I got Mike on board with golf.com and then we just kept going.

It’s been our superpower ~and I, ~and I really do love. ~You know, ~couple entrepreneurs because I feel like ~if they, ~if they’re in their own lanes, it can be the best superpower. The times I think that are difficult I think is just, there’s no end. ~Right. I. ~There’s no end. And yet at the same time I hear all of my friends who are entrepreneurs and they’re only like, let’s just say one of them is an entrepreneur, the spouse or the partners complaining because they’re always doing work.

Like we never complain ~when ~to each other, when ~we’re, ~we’re trying to catch up on work because we know we can relate so much to what we’re doing.

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s a good perspective. ’cause it’s just like when you’re in it together, you understand like, hey, the stakes are high. The ~like ~timelines are tight.

There’s people counting on us, we’re trying to make payroll, we’re trying to satisfy these customers. And like, versus if you don’t know that world, you’re like, why are you working? Like stop working and why

Kass: [00:22:00] aren’t you paying attention to me?

Rory: Uhhuh, right?

Kass: Yeah.

Rory: What are some, do you, have you guys created any sort of like rules or boundaries or like little relationship codes that have ~helped, ~helped you?

Because that’s, you know, ~the, ~the other part is just like, work is life, work is all the time. It’s, you know, you don’t have like different jobs that you’re like filling each other in. It’s like, okay, when we’re filling each other in on what happened this day, it’s like, effectively we’re just talking about work because we both work at the same place.

Mike: Well, I think why we’re so excited about Shoveling Blank, a love story is that the book is unique and it’s not just designed to revolutionize how you work as a leader, as an entrepreneur, but it’s really about how do you optimize a life and how do you build a life in this world, whether you’re an entrepreneur.

A small business owner, ~entrepreneur, right, ~who kind of never has enough resources, never has enough time or a leader trying to do something ~that, you know, ~with a high performing team. And so we’ve pulled back the curtain [00:23:00] on what we think are the real unfiltered cheat codes that have been game changers for us.

So for example, we have date night every Wednesday and Saturday night. There are probably 50 entrepreneurs we work with who now have date night every Wednesday

and

Mike: Saturday night. If you don’t schedule time with people who you wanna build relationships with, they will disintegrate. And so if your marriage is important, you have to prioritize it somehow.

Now, we think two date nights, if you can do it. It makes sense. And what we did is by the time ~we did, we realized [email protected]. ~We had a little money, not a lot, but we had some money, and we just hired a babysitter. We said, listen, every Wednesday, every Saturday, we will pay you whether we use you or not.

Block that time because it’s really important. And when we sold the company, [00:24:00] you know, the people who helped us in that capacity were also given. Bonuses, they helped us achieve what we achieved. And if you wanna kind of feel good, go give a big check to someone who has watched your kids like a life changing check.

Thousands of dollars, right? Because we think that the people who have helped us along the way in the non-business capacity are just as important ~and. ~These cheat codes are meant to basically let you build a life. ’cause at the end of the day, you know, if you’re successful, if you make boatloads of cash, but your life isn’t worth living, why bother?

Mm-hmm.

Mike: If you can’t help people, if you can’t have relationships that are fulfilling, if you can’t spend time with your faith, if you can’t do stuff that makes you human. Why go through the process? [00:25:00]

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s so good. I mean, that’s like, one of the things that inspires us is just going like, I think a big part of the first company in the first ~y you, several years, a ~couple decades of our career, I was so self-centered of like, I wanna achieve this and I want to do this.

~And then there’s a. ~Even though there’s a part of that that I look back and I go, gosh, you were such a self-centered person. There’s a power in achieving that, which is going, it wears off, and you get to a place where you go. The only thing that gives me kicks is when my clients succeed, when our employees succeed, when they make money, when they get the title ’cause and it’s like.

It’s where all my kicks come from, right? It’s like it’s the only thing that’s exciting anymore is like helping somebody else succeed. And so that’s a really beautiful place. You know, I think that people get to, certainly you guys have I want to dive in on some of just a couple cheat codes really quick.

Going back into business. There are [00:26:00] a lot of personal brands. That gets stuck in what we refer to as the swamp. So we refer to the swamp as basically between two to 4 million in annual revenue. And the idea is that like if you’re a really smart person and a really hardworking person and you’re really good at relationships, you can build a little kind of personal brand fiefdom to a two to 4 million in revenue by just basically redlining it.

Then you hit this cap to go, you don’t get to 10 million unless you get, you gotta change systems and people and processes. Like you have to become a real entrepreneur to get to like an eight figure business. What are some of the, and you guys have been on that journey before, advise several people on that, you know, that I feel like that’s ~the, ~the hardest jump to me is not starting the business and, and it’s hard to get to a million.

And, and hard even to get to 3 million. But it seems like the place where people really get [00:27:00] stuck is in that swamp because they are working so hard that they’re burning out, but they don’t have enough money to just go hire like a, you know, 10 senior leaders. But they need it, but they can’t afford it. How do you make that jump from the swamp that like two to 4 million?

To the north of 10 million where you do start to kind of get resources to be able to hire people and get stuff done. ’cause you guys have done that leap multiple times.

Mike: Yeah. So the biggest cheat code that I would share is focus and how you focus yourself shouldn’t be that different than how you would focus a business.

And I say yourself, your personal brand. So it starts in our world, we use something called the V two Mom. I’m not, I don’t need to go into the whole thing. It’s in the book. It’s vision, values, methods, obstacles and metrics. And you need a vision for yourself, for your personal brand that is achievable, that is concrete, that [00:28:00] matches the kinda life you want.

And a bad vision isn’t. I want to create a $10 million business around my personal brand. Like that’s a very valid vision. Okay? What are the values you hold? True transparency, growth, beginner’s, mindset, whatever is important to you. And then it comes down to, okay, if I wanna eventually be there, it’s not gonna happen overnight.

Last I checked, you have to do a million in revenue before you get to 10. You gotta do a hundred thousand before you get to a million. But what do you need to do today? To put yourself on that path. And I would encourage everyone to put together a timeline that they think they can do, reach their vision.

Whatever the vision is, is then double the time. ’cause it always takes twice the amount of time and double your budget. ’cause it always takes twice as much money. You don’t know you don, like building ~a housebuilding ~a house.

Rory: It’s like building [00:29:00] a house. ~Like~

Mike: building a house. Totally. And so, you know, that’s the biggest cheat code is BI.

Not only persistent, but be proactive. Don’t react to the incoming. Be proactive about what you wanna do to grow, which is what we’re doing. It’s why we launched Cass and Mike. It’s why we wrote the book, you know, we wanna scale our impact, and we thought that although we’re not measuring it in dollars right now.

We thought in order to start scaling it, getting out there again through content in a book ~was the best, ~was the number one thing we had to focus on.

Kass: I also think that when you’re in a company, and like you said, you’re stuck in the swamp, it comes down to a lot of it is operations. At that point you talked and you said, Rory, ~you know, you, ~you think you need all these managers and ~you, ~you need to hire more people and everything.

~I, ~I would challenge everyone out there to, I know they’re not gonna wanna do this, but like. Put the priority to take a look at all [00:30:00] your processes and where you have efficiencies and trying to look at, okay, wait a second, these 10 people are doing all the same thing. Could we get three of them to do all of it?

Right? And you start to look at and take apart how teams work. And it comes down, and this is what I would do at all the companies, ~it’s, ~it’s about scaling the processes. Because if you can scale those, you save money and you save time. And that’s how we would start to catapult ahead in our revenue, which would then allow us to hire the people.

And then that flywheel starts, right?

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that ~the, the, ~I think a lot of times entrepreneurs think. I just need to hire the person to come solve this problem. Yeah. And in my experience, it’s like if you just hire a person and you have crappy processes, now you have crappy process and an expensive person.

It’s like Exactly.

Kass: You

Rory: have

Kass: ~to, ~you have to, like, who’s gonna fail? ~Fail,~

Rory: who’s not gonna help you? Yeah. It’s like. Your [00:31:00] job is to create the process first and then bring someone in to kind of run the process. But if your processes are a disaster, like yeah, ~you just can’t, ~you just can’t outspend your way to like.

~Nope. ~Fix crappy processes. Exactly.

Kass: And ~that’s where you’re, ~that’s where the fear comes to, because ~you don’t, you, you know, ~entrepreneurs get stuck and they don’t wanna break anything. ~They think, ~they think there’s a person that’s the savior, as opposed to saying, wait a second, if we wanna get to 10, like Mike says, what do we need to do?

Okay, maybe that’s, I need 50 more clients. Okay, well, how do I have the current team service? 50 more clients? It comes down to the processes, right?

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean the, there’s a, you know, there’s so much culture and like entrepreneur, like just delegate or like, don’t do anything you’re not good at. Just hire someone to take care of that for you.

And it’s like, well, okay, great, but like with what money? Right? And also, like, ~I don’t have, ~I have zero time right now, so like what time do I have to like go hire the person? And there’s a part of me that wants to just go, oh yeah, I just wanna hire a [00:32:00] person and they’ll come and fix it. And that feels empowering at first.

But then it’s like it’s very hard to find good people and train ’em, and they’re usually expensive if they’re good and like all that stuff. And fixing the process seems more difficult, but actually that’s more empowering. It’s like you have control. Yes, right now. ~Go find, ~go fix the process. Document the process, codify it, train it, have it videoed.

And now you can hire someone to come run it and they’ll actually be successful. So it, it, it feels scarier and like it’s more work, but actually it’s the thing that’s in all of our control and it’s empowering to just like get it documented. And I think it’s, you know, ~there’s, when you, ~you seem to have such great superpowers working together of like, you know, Mike’s got this relationship building in the sales and cast.

You’ve got like this operations mastery and it really is. Such a great partnership. So I, I just, I love seeing [00:33:00] you work together and using each other’s strengths and, and, and being a team to do this.

Kass: Thank you.

Mike: I also don’t think it’s unique to like what we’ve experienced as husband and wife, which has been really rewarding and I couldn’t imagine any other way.

You can have similar relationships maybe without the personal intimacy with your co-founder, and I would choose your co-founder as carefully as you would your spouse. Because who you start a business with is often more important, much more important than what the business does to start because you’re constantly evolving the business.

Right. It’s easier to change business models than co-founders.

Yeah.

Mike: And so, you know, when you go into the relationship. Not only do you want different skill sets, so you can get a lot done, right? One plus one equals like 3, 4, 5, but you have to have a shared vision, common [00:34:00] values, effective communication, a growth mindset, right, and equal workload.

And then on top of it, the best entrepreneurs we found have this like self-awareness, like superpower, I would call it. That you know your weaknesses and you’re willing to let other people help you and you know your strengths. And when you have to like show up and kick some backside and so that co-founder relationship, you know, put as much time into it as you do your, like, business thinking.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Yeah. ~That’s good. Yeah, I, ~I mean, we hear a whole lot of horror stories of partnerships. Not working out right, like business partnerships. ~That’s why~

Mike: companies fail. They either run outta money or internal fighting leads to just lack of focus and that the company eventually improves and

Kass: paralysis.

~Yeah.~

Mm-hmm. [00:35:00]

Rory: Yeah. I love this. Guys, this is so powerful. I mean, it’s just rare to have the perspective of people who have made the climb as many times as you have from many different vantage points as you have. I mean, 50 million in recurring revenue in three years is like, man, ~that is, ~that is naughty.

That’s like, the irony

Mike: ~is ~I went, you know, ~I was, ~I was proud of it. And you know, we start these conversations, we get inbound interest to sell the business and one is, you know, mark Benioff. And so I go to his house in Pacific Heights and, in San Francisco, and it’s actually two houses. One’s his office, like huge townhouses.

And you know, he just worked out and he’s sweating and he’s eating an energy bar and we’re just like jamming on the business. And he goes, you’ve made a huge mistake. I’m like, okay, probably. ~I probably made, ~I probably made 50 huge mistakes, but okay. Like, hit me. He goes, you only have 40 salespeople. You should have 400.

Hmm.

Mike: And so we were here thinking that, okay, we launched the product in [00:36:00] three years, we get to 50 million of a RR, and he is saying, oh, you’re an idiot. Like ~you didn’t high, ~you didn’t scale fast enough. I was like, yeah, you’re right. If we had, but there’s only so many people you could onboard any given time.

You know, it is what it is. We did it well.

Kass: ~That ~that’s why it was a perfect fit though.

Mike: Mm-hmm. Yeah. They had the sales team, which is why ~it. You know, ~it worked out so well.

Rory: Yeah, it’s great. You know what, mark for a cool multiple of 15, we’ll hand it right over to you, buddy, and you can plug it into your machine.

~I mean, mark,~

Mike: listen, like we never got into the business to sell it. We thought we were going public. We’d made some epic hires, CFO and a president to help you know, those public company ready. And we started these businesses just to be independent, like just to not have to sit behind a desk like we never spoke about money starting it.

We were as happy, poor as we were, [00:37:00] kind of as we are rich, we’re a little more comfortable, but we were driven by a fear of failure and just the joy of hard work more than any pot in, I. You know, the potential future, because that’s so unknown.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Yeah. I love it. ~I I love this guys. ~Where do people go? So obviously again, the book Shoveling stuff, a love story about the entrepreneur’s messy path to success.

Where do you guys want people to go if they want to follow your journey, learn from you, get the book, et cetera?

Kass: Well, they can get the book right on Amazon. I think that’s the easiest way. And I think most people probably already ~shop, ~shop there. But if they wanna learn more about us, they can definitely go to Cass and mike.com and they can learn about what we’ve done, what we do.

They can definitely learn about all of our philanthropy, which we’re really excited about. And yeah, ~they’ll see, ~they’ll see lots of stories.

Rory: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ~It’s, ~it’s great. ~I, I, I, ~I love [00:38:00] the. Appreciation that you have for the work. ~Right. Just the joy of ~just the joy of hard work. I think in the very beginning, Mike, you said there’s, ~you know, there is like ~value in just doing good work.

~Like, I think and it, ~I think if people could fall in love with the idea of just doing good work. ~A, ~a lot of the rest of the entrepreneurial journey ~would, ~would work itself out. And I know that’s just ~like ~the core of the message, right? ~It’s just like, right.~

Kass: It’s like if you can learn to love to shovel, which is the hard work every single day, you’ll be unstoppable.

Mike: Mm-hmm. And it’s also the, you know, it’s not just kind of virtuous. I think, you know, the Bible wants you to be rich. Right. So like if you look at kind of how rich people are treated, whether it’s Abraham or others, you know, who he got wealthy on, like livestock and other stuff. They’re treated great by God, right?

Like, but what comes with [00:39:00] kind of freedom and resources is moral responsibility.

Kass: Yes.

Mike: And you know, it’s why, yeah. We live in an interesting time where there’s been a tremendous amount of money made in the world’s greatest country and we’re underperforming ~and given ~and giving back, right? Like we believe anyone who has been fortunate enough to be born in the time we’re born, educated, start businesses, you know, at a time where in the last 10,000 years, like if you were born a thousand years ago.

We’re not having this conversation. Right. And you have a responsibility. And we’ve always felt that. And ~I don’t think it, ~I think it transcends whatever religion you are. ~I. You know, ~you follow whatever kind of ethics drive your life.

Mm-hmm.

Rory: Yeah. One of my favorite verses is Colossians 3 23, [00:40:00] where it says, you know, do your work not unto earthly masters, but unto the Lord.

And it’s just like, you know, ~if, if, ~if you really did that every day, if you really said, right, my goal today is to create something, make something that would make. Like God or my Lord, proud. Right? It’s just like, think of how much intention and care and focus you would be like, ~I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, ~I’m making the best thing I know how to make with whatever tools I have available, whether that’s a huge team or no team, a lot of capital, no capital, but it’s just like I’m dedicating my life to building something great, and that also will help other people.

And it’s like you do that long enough, eventually you get paid. Eventually the money shows up. And anyways, you guys are a great proof of that. Thank you for the stories. Thanks for the honesty. Thanks for, for, you know, weathering the storms you’ve done and for investing back into so many people now and giving so many entrepreneurs a [00:41:00] dream to like.

Do the journey. And anyways, it’s, it’s been an honor to meet you guys, get to know you a little bit and I look forward to continue to follow the journey and, and we wish you the best.

Kass: Thank you so much for having us ~r~

Mike: Thank you for the support. ~Really~

Kass: appreciate

Mike: it.

Ep 597: Why More Is Not Always Better: The Truth About Vanity Metrics vs. Real Growth | Lee Pepper Recap

[00:00:00] More is not always better. In a world where everyone is talking about more, more followers, more subscribers, more likes, more downloads, more clients, more money. More, more, more. I think it’s important to take a step back and ask the question, why is that? And do I really need more? Or do you even want more?

And in some cases we think we do, but if more really came, would you even be able to handle it? Like I know for most of the clients that we serve at Brand Builders Group, if they got even a dozen more clients, they would be full, right? It’s like they can’t handle 10, 20 incoming prospect calls a day. They can’t handle hundreds of clients.

They’re not set up to do that. But yet we still live in this world where everything is about more. And what it’s not about is how do we actually just serve the right audience in the right way [00:01:00] at the right time. I recently just had a conversation with a guest on the Influential Personal Brand podcast who’s a super close friend of mine, and his name is Lee Pepper.

And we kind of had this side conversation about the difference between vanity metrics. And real metrics and what it means to chase vanity metrics versus having an intentional focus on real metrics. And we’re gonna talk about what those are in just a second. But before we do that, I think it’s really important in a world that is selling more, that you realize for you, for your personal brand, for your business, for your team, is more really the right thing.

And instead of trying to get bigger. What if you just focused on getting better, better serving your clients better, honing your craft, better targeting the right type of customer that will get the right type of results, the type of [00:02:00] customer that will attract more customers for you, right? Is it really always about.

More because for many of us, more doesn’t lead to more peace, often more pressure. It’s often more pressure, it’s often more responsibility. It’s often more time, more hours, it’s more money, and that’s not what we’re all after. And I’m not saying that it’s bad to chase those things. I think it’s great to have a bigger impact.

I think it’s great to make more money. I think it’s great to grow your team. I think those things are great. For the right person at the right time. ’cause we can do the right thing at the wrong time and it blow up in our face. So my question to you is simply is more really the right thing for where you are right now, and instead is better or more focused, really the path that you should be [00:03:00] taking.

So let’s talk about these metrics. In a conversation about more, or not necessarily more, but in this case better. What do we really need to be looking at when it comes to metrics, when we think about our digital space, the dig digi, the digital reputation in which our brands are living in the ecosystem of social media, blogs, podcasts, YouTube.

What should we really be focused on in order to reach that right client at the right time, at the right place and it, and really in the right season for both them and for you and your own team. So here’s some of the vanity metrics that we talked about that do not necessarily lead to the right things all the time.

A lot of us we think we need to go viral. And what do I mean by that? That just means more views. What a lot of us are chasing is more followers, more likes, more fans, more subscriptions, like more [00:04:00] subscribers. We’re, we’re chasing a lot of that more, but really what it is, is we’re, we’re chasing eyeballs.

And those are called, in some cases vanity metrics because they don’t actually lead to anything. Like what does it matter to you if you have a hundred thousand Instagram followers, if you have. Not enough money in your banking account to pay your bills. Something we refer to at BBG is Twitter rich and dollar poor.

Like why do you need hundreds of thousands of followers if you can only take on dozens of clients? Or why do you need to go viral? What is it about going viral that’s somehow gonna help you grow your business? I’m not saying it’s not. I’m just saying, do you actually have a goal, a plan, a strategy in place that going viral would actually convert into something to help your brand, to help your business?

Right. Why are, why are we chasing more views, more followers if we don’t [00:05:00] actually need it? Why aren’t we instead focused on, hey, for the followers that I do have, right? For the people who are engaging with me, what can I do to serve them better? What value can I provide to them that would convert them from someone who’s making a comment to someone who’s actually buying my services?

So it’s not always about more eyeballs. Often it’s about how do I serve them in a deeper way, provide more value so that I have more conversions? And that isn’t just as necessarily about adding more to every single platform. More often it’s about doing less in a le in a more focused way, but in front of the right audience at the right time.

So those leads us to the real metrics, right? How can doing, how could doing less actually lead to more customers? Well, here’s how you do less platforms, but more intentional [00:06:00] posting. I. Right. You do less of the trending and the fad, and you do more of the strategic and more of the focused, intentional work that it takes to convert a customer, not just gain a follower.

So sometimes doing less can actually lead to more customers. Because you focused your intention and attention, you focused your resources in less places, which naturally allows you to go all in and provide more value, serve people in a deeper and more meaningful way. Actually work to serve the people you already have that are already giving you their attention instead of always trying to just get more.

So, some of those metrics would be things like emails. How many emails are you converting? From your different lead capture forms, your different lead magnets, social media, and ask yourself, do you even have a way to capture email addresses? Because that’s step one, right? Why are we trying to grow social [00:07:00] media if we don’t even have a way of taking those followers or those fans into actual email addresses, contacts in your own database?

Right. So email addresses could be one. Engagement is one. So that’s comments, dms, but it’s not how many people are following me. It’s how many people are engaging with me. Following is a vanity metric. Engagement is a real metric. Calls how many of the people that I am engaging with are actually converting into calls, right?

People on the actual phone with me, that could become a customer. And ask yourself this, if you don’t have a way of catching an email address, do you have a way of actually turning a follower, a fan into a phone call? Because that’s conversion metrics. Those are real metrics. That’s what actually helps you move the needle, not posting a hundred new reels or a whole bunch of new carousel posts, or redesigning your graphics in Canva.

That’s not it. It’s what is the value that you’re providing [00:08:00] that’s gonna make someone engage with you, request a call with you and buy from you. And that comes from real value. And you know what guys? To provide real value, it takes real time. And if we’re just trying to throw something up there, it doesn’t provide real value and you’re not giving it the time that it needs, which means you’re not getting the customers you need.

And you know what happens when that happens? You run outta steam. You run, you run out of runway, you burn out, you run out of time, energy, and money to continue this thing. That was a mission, that was a passion for you, that gave you purpose and you give up on it because you’ve been doing so much stuff to get more, you haven’t actually focused in on the things that actually create real change for you and for your customers.

So, as I said, to begin with, more is not always better being. Better is always more important than being bigger.

Ep 596: Why Most Marketing Fails (And How Military Strategy Fixes It) with Lee Pepper

AJ: [00:00:00] Lee Pepper. I am so excited to have you on the show today. And, uh, here’s what I wish I would share with everyone listening. As you guys know, there’s a lot of, uh, new friends that we have on the show that’s not today. Uh, Lee is a genuine personal friend. We go back now over 10 years. Can you believe that

Lee: it’s gone by so quickly?

AJ: When we first met, uh, your kids were still in like elementary school. School and now you have a soon to be college graduate, like crazy. Um, so I’m so excited to have you on the show and one of the reasons. For everyone listening why I wanted to have Leo on the show today as I just think he brings a really unique perspective to the importance of marketing and executive leadership and innovation that you just don’t hear a lot in typical digital marketing strategies on the web today.

So this is a true marketing expert, and I can say that because I watched him behind the scenes at work and if it, if I don’t recall, like you helped [00:01:00] 60 X your former company before it went.

Lee: At Foundation Recovery Network, our first private equity play, we returned 60 times.

AJ: That’s insane. And, uh, for all of you who listening, I met Lee because in my former life when I was in sales consulting, I was hired by the company that he was running all the marketing for to come in and help with sales strategy.

And I’m sitting in these call centers and they’re, they’re yielding 20, 30, 40,000. 40,000 calls a month from his marketing strategies, and my job was to help convert those into sales. But just sit there for a second and go, what would your business look like if you had 10,000 inbound calls a month? Crazy.

It’s wild. So we’re gonna talk a lot about marketing, but also what marketing looks like in terms of innovation and on the leadership team, which is what I’m really excited about. But before we get into that, I wanna help our audience get to know you just a little bit, and you have a varied background.

Anything from [00:02:00] military to presidential campaigns to uh, you know, private equity funded exits. But let’s start way back in the military. And you were in the Army.

Yes.

AJ: So your new book has a lot to do with some things that you learned in the military, in the Army, and how you can apply that to leadership and marketing.

We, I would like to know what those are.

Lee: Right. And I, and I hope, uh, thank you so much for the kind introduction. Uh, aj I think that for me, you know, when you’re first, uh, enlisting, I enlisted in the Army when I was a sophomore in college, and I, uh, was a 76 Yankee. Unit supply clerk. So you go to basic training and you know, one of the things that, that you learned, you obviously learn how to shoot, right?

Uh, but nobody wins any battles just because they know how to shoot. Like there’s, there has to be a strategy and that is where I took that. Then when I went to officer candidate school and got commissioned as an officer went to, went to armor school. At Fort Knox. [00:03:00] That’s where then when I transitioned to my corporate career, especially in marketing, a lot of people want to get stuck on the how to shoot on the tactics and what really lacking is the strategy.

So that’s what I try to approach in my book, never Outmatch, is to, is to give some voice to here are the strategies which are pretty accessible to most people, even if they don’t have not served in the military. They’re mental models, like they’re very accessible. And if you will focus on creating the strategy, then you will decide the tactics that will make you successful.

If you do it in the inverse, you’re constantly switching tactics and you’re never getting that 60 times return that everybody wants.

AJ: Okay, ’cause I wanna sit on this for a second because. We at Brand Builders Group are a personal brand strategy firm. Yes. And we know one of the biggest objections we get as you know, potential new customers get on calls with us is they’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But when do we get to do the fun stuff? Right? When do we get to [00:04:00] launch the website? When do we get to make the pretty designs? When do we get to? And it’s like, I don’t know, depends on the strategic approach you’re taking. So this is something we hear all the time ’cause we’re big believers in like. If you don’t have a good blueprint, then you don’t know how to build.

Why is it? So many people skip the strategy.

Lee: I think you, you hit the nail on the head when you said people wanna get to the fun stuff. You know, when I retired from the Meadows a few years ago, I didn’t necessarily mean to get in consulting, but people realized that I was now retired, semi-retired, not really retired, I guess.

Uh, but, uh, pretend

AJ: retired. Yeah,

Lee: they, they started reaching out and calling a lot of word of mouth and. Every single one of my clients, it was always the same thing. We got started doing this one thing, this one tactic, and it’s not working, and we have to kind of reverse it and go, let’s start high. Kinda like what you guys do with brand builders, which I, I love being connected with you all, but I think it’s because.

Uh, people, especially when you’re running a business, and a lot of times when my phone rings it’s [00:05:00] because there’s a major problem, like they’ve tried everything else that’s not working, and there are, there’s pressure for results and so people will over promise, oh, I can come in and I can help produce this many.

Uh, website visits as much traffic or I can produce as many phone calls, but yet we’re still missing out on the whole strategy part, which is really, there’s a lot of temporary things you can do, but it’s not long lasting. Whereas the way you approach it, the way I approach it, it’s long term. It’s long lasting.

AJ: Yeah. So I mean, a lot of what I hear you saying is like the strategy helps prepare for the long run versus a lot of like the quick tactics. It might work temporarily. But like with any fad, it’s kind of, kind of fade away, right? If you don’t know what to do next

Lee: in the military, you can’t have these fads.

Yeah. Or else you will get overrun. And there’s people, there’s people’s lives, uh, at stake. And so. It’s not that necessarily in our corporate li corporate businesses that lives are at stake, though a lot of times in healthcare there are. Mm-hmm. But we have to start with the overall strategy. But, and then [00:06:00] you can maneuver, you can change tactics, you know, things will change within there, but you have to have this overarching strategy.

AJ: So when it comes to marketing strategy, like if there were some universal principles or some universal concepts, even if they’re just mindset shifts. What would you say to you are like the, the core truths?

Lee: Here’s the first, here’s the first one that I always bring up. It’s this notion of commander’s intent.

And what commander’s intent is. Do, do, do your, does your team, do they understand what the board. And what management actually wants. Like you need to give that commander’s intent. And then each of your team leads are going to take from that their own personal commander’s intent and they need to give that to their teams.

And what happens a lot of times we want innovation. I. But we can’t just command innovation. We have to set up the culture that’s going to allow your team the freedom of movement, good military term, right, so that you can [00:07:00] innovate. But what ends up happening, a lot of times we end up being very top down, whereas innovation and creativity is bottom up.

And in the military, there are tons of examples I give them in my book, where you would’ve lost a battle. Unless you allowed your, uh, soldiers to have that creative freedom of movement. So instead of saying, stay right here in this foxhole and defend it to the death, no, they’re told, Hey, here’s your strategy here.

You have commander’s intent, you have freedom of movement. But a lot of times in our companies, we don’t really, we don’t operate that way. We have this top down mentality and we wonder then why our teams are not innovative. Mm. Because we haven’t given the freedom to be innovative. That is one of the things that when I first met you, uh, aj, was that.

I had just taken over the, the call center, our admissions team, and I knew from the beginning, no matter what we did in the marketing, no matter how we changed the lead source, the volume, our conversion rate wasn’t changing. And so I wanted to be able to have that, the ability to, to change the [00:08:00] conversion rate, even if it made it worse.

Yeah. I wanted to understand that we were controlling. That’s when I started asking questions like, who do we need to meet in this town? And that’s how we got referred to you. So. My team knew the commander’s intent and we had the freedom and the to innovate, which we did.

AJ: Okay, so for so many companies that don’t have that, why not?

Lee: I think it’s for a lot of small business owners and I work with a lot of folks that are owner founders. There is this struggle that this is their baby, that this is their company, their brand, and they are afraid to even. Let go of anything. And so a lot of times when I’m consulting the, the message is you spent the time to hopefully hire the right people and go through a good process.

You have to entrust that they are hearing your commander’s intent. And there are some strategies. I talk about it in the book, there’s a thing called a talk back. Mm-hmm. You know, and in the military, when we’re giving orders, we ask for the talk back, [00:09:00] repeat back what I just said. So I make sure that you understood.

What my intent really is. Right. And a lot of times in the corporate world, we don’t do that. Hmm. Um, you know, I, I had, uh, in my book I talk a lot about George Patton, probably one of my favorite generals, you know, ’cause he was armor and there are. There’s this lead from the front mentality, and I think you’ve been in enough companies and you certainly remember the days at foundations when you come, when you came into the foundation’s office, I dunno if you remember where my desk was, but my desk was out in the middle.

Mm-hmm.

Like

Lee: we had a very open, open workspace 30, we had 30 staff members just in marketing, and I was right there in the middle. I was, I had always known from the beginning of my military career that I wanted to be at the front lines. Mm-hmm. Right. There’s a great example in my book How Patton used that same strategy, uh, to, to take over a failed American strategy in the, in, in North Africa.

And within 90 days, you know, they were, they had ousted Rommel from North Africa. So there’s also this mentality, you can’t be stuck in your office. You can’t be stuck leading from [00:10:00] spreadsheets. You’re gonna have to be kind of on the front lines.

AJ: You know, it’s so interesting that you say that because only here recently, so Brand Builders Group is about to turn seven years old this summer, and in the last like four or five months I have taken back over the sales department, but for the last seven years.

Ironically, it’s kind of been led by other team members, um, and they’ve been, they’ve done a great job, but there were some things that were coming up where I’m like, I need to get back on the front lines. Something’s not clicking, something’s not working. And it has been so invigorating, so refreshing to be listening to the sales calls, remapping the sales talks.

But like to what you’re just saying, it’s like how many people are willing to get back on the front lines and go, no, it’s my job to get in there and be on the front lines and be accessible.

Lee: Absolutely. You know, and, and aj this is one of the things that you all brought to foundations was this notion of actively listening to phone calls.

And that was something that was not being done. [00:11:00] And we implemented that. And a lot of times when I come in to do an analysis or, or start working or coaching a CEO or a CMO, that’s the first thing I’ll ask. How many calls have you listened to this week? And it’s every single time it’s, I haven’t listened to calls.

Hmm.

Lee: And yet. They feel like they have a marketing problem, that’s why they’ve called me. But invariably, there’s, there’s some mix. It’s not just necessarily the marketing issue. It may be a conversion issue. And so you have to be able to take the time and not, and, and not be afraid, right. To jump in. Because like for me, I didn’t have any expertise, right?

In sales. Like I learned a lot from you all. Uh, but I wasn’t afraid to listen in and learn. And so that’s a, a lot of where you, you have to kind of put away some of your biases. And, uh, I write about this, uh, you know, in my book there are a lot of, uh, cognitive biases that we all, that we all bring to the table that we don’t even realize around subconscious.

So if you’re a, a finance person, right? And I talk a lot about how, you know in [00:12:00] the book, how you can start to communicate differently. With your finance team and your accounting team, but there are cognitive biases that they have. Doesn’t mean they’re bad people, but they have these cognitive biases. And if you’re not aware, you don’t even know how to fashion, you know, building out your KPIs or how to fashion, uh, how you communicate in an effective way.

AJ: You know, that’s interesting because I think a lot of times when you think about companies as they grow and scale departments start to become siloed. Right, and marketing does what marketing does, and sales does what sales does, and it’s like, well, no, really, part of marketing’s job is to provide leads for the sales team, and if they’re not talking together.

Inevitably there’s gonna be some issues. So I’d like to hear from you like what is the role that marketing should play in driving enterprise value, like in an ideal world, and you’ve had so much experience with being at the helm of not just marketing, but technology and information, but like what is an ideal role for marketing to play in a company’s growth?

Lee: Uh, I [00:13:00] think that marketing has the ability with the right person developing a strategy to impact so many departments. Amanda, uh, one of the, the, uh, examples I use in the book is with, uh, human resources. We always say that, wow, I wish I could recruit better people. Hmm. And I wish our retention rates were better, but yet we never, like, we never partner.

With the marketing team to see how that relates. And so I use this example of force multiplication of how you can kind of create a budget to kind of take advantage of that. But there’s so many opportunities where you can become kind of that, that you can relieve the pain that your other departments have.

So, like in the HR example, marketing can really help with retention, keeping people like employed longer and, and, and being happier in their job versus just saying, Hey, hr, that’s your job when HR doesn’t necessarily have that experience. Same thing in accounting and finance, you can make accounting and finance’s job a lot easier, right?

If you’re in partnership and connected with them and now all of a sudden, instead of just being another department that they have to kind of, you know, maintain and [00:14:00] run reports for, they see you as really driving value. It’s just understanding what, what is important to them, if that makes sense.

AJ: So I would love to hear just a couple of minutes.

How do you do that? Right. Because in theory, that’s like, yes, our communi like our, you know, different departmental, you know, teams are communicating and they’re working together and they’re collaborating and it’s shared resources. And in reality we know that often doesn’t happen.

Lee: Right. Well, you said this word shared resources and I kind of get, uh, tinged.

So I think that there’s, there’s, there’s a couple of things that, how you get tight with them. One, you have to be part of their budget. Hmm. And a lot of times companies are like, well, what? At foundations, we had a percentage of the alumni team budget went to marketing. A percentage of the HR budget went to market so that we were responsible, right?

That we were actually having meetings and that we had, that they had skin in the game, and we had skin in the game. So many companies don’t budget that way, and I’m not [00:15:00] suggesting you’re giving like 50%, it can just be like 5%, but all of a sudden now you’re putting, you’re, you’re giving your marketing team.

Right. Something that they can maybe hire somebody extra to kind of help support. A lot of times we say, oh, it’s gonna be a shared resource. Well, if there’s not actual hard dollars to it, you’re not gonna get their attention. The second thing is, are the goals matching? And I use an example in, in, in, in my book where, uh, there was a, a, a, an opera.

There was a time when, uh, finance and marketing, like our, uh, bonus goals were not aligned. And so all of a sudden it creates a lot of headache. So you have to make sure from a leadership perspective that each of the department’s goals are aligned and supportive of each other. Because if there’s any type of contradiction or incongruency, now you’re gonna have inviting, which is what a lot of times you see in companies when they’re like, well, marketing’s not helping me

Or, well, maybe you didn’t budget and maybe you also didn’t align your, your actual bonus goals together.

AJ: Interesting. So if [00:16:00] you were to look at a company, I know this is a broad statement here. If you look at like allocation of resources, human capital dollars and cents, is there like a best practice of what should go to marketing versus other departments?

Lee: Well, that, you know, in my experience in behavioral health, we always tried to, uh, keep our marketing budget 10% of net revenue. So that was, but you know, some companies can afford more and some companies maybe they have less margin. So it has to be less, but I think it shouldn’t be a secret. Like you should develop, what is your number going to be?

And it shouldn’t be a secret. And then when it comes to other departments, they have to understand the value and how you can solve some of their problems. So like in the HR situation, you know, I think, you know, if you establish a starting point, so you, you might go with something very small, like 5%, and if they know that 5% of their budget, now they’re gonna start wanting to know like, what are you doing for me instead of just this?

Oh, shared re resources, and maybe I’ll get something, maybe I won’t. No, now they’re a [00:17:00] customer of marketing. Right. And I think that all of a sudden you start to get some synergy there because from the marketing perspective, I want to be well connected to HR because I’m gonna get some value from maybe website traffic, you know, or outbound links, you know, coming into my website from stuff they’re doing.

Like there’s some benefit there too. Uh, and that’s where in my book, I, I talk a lot about this idea of force multiplication.

AJ: Yeah, I love that. And that is for sure the first, I have heard about this whole concept of make sure all the other departments are almost customers of marketing. Absolutely. And this vested interest, they

Lee: can’t be free.

Marketing’s not doing free work.

AJ: That’s right. That that’s good.

Lee: Yeah.

AJ: I mean, and that really does force some more of that communication and collaboration and transparency in the budget.

Lee: Yeah. I mean, so many times I’ve been at some of my customers and they’ll, they’ll be like, oh, well, HR is doing, they, they decided to start experimenting with TikTok or reels and, and you wonder why they’re terrible because they didn’t like partner with somebody in marketing and kind of maybe help and maybe marketing would love to, but marketing’s also [00:18:00] busy driving revenue.

That’s

AJ: right.

Lee: So we, why would you want to take them away? So you have to give them some allocation. And now all of a sudden you’re gonna see amazing things that can happen.

AJ: Okay. So you just brought up something that leads me to a question that I have around, you know, maybe they’re experimenting in TikTok or reels or all these other things.

So there is a lot of companies that you can just tell there is not a strategy in place, they’re just dabbling. Right. And with the amount of data and the amount of platforms that are available now, like what would you say are some key. Tips or key strategies to make sure that you win at marketing. And also what have you seen of why companies are failing at marketing?

Lee: Wow. Well, there, there’s a lot in that question, aj, but what, what I would say is that you have to forget these vanity metrics.

AJ: Mm-hmm.

Lee: And that’s what we, I see a lot. Um, you have to just, you have to make sure you’re communicating not only to wait, be clear.

AJ: Like tell everyone what’s a vanity metric in your world?

Lee: Well, a vanity metric might be, um, an [00:19:00] example of YouTube. You know, it might be, um, subscribers.

Mm-hmm.

Lee: Um, it might be, uh, even views when, so that, that to me is a vanity metric. Whereas a real metric is I want to see the number of comments on a video because if you’re getting comments that’s real, people that have watched your video that are giving you feedback or with views or with subscribers, could just be bots that were bought.

Mm-hmm. Could be poor traffic. So for me, I, I go straight to the comments. Um, same thing when it comes to, uh, site visits on your website. I mean, it’s a number you look at, but it’s a vanity metric, right? What really is important is the conversions. How many phone calls did I get? Or if you’re doing lead forms or live chat, that’s where it’s really is important.

Um, so I, I’ve had a lot of times where I’ll come in and I’ll coach A CMO and work with the agency to kind of help shift that narrative.

AJ: Okay. So real quick for everyone who’s listening, ’cause I think this is a really big deal because at least in our world, [00:20:00] in the personal brand space, there’s a lot of focus on vanity metrics.

Yeah. A lot. And I think some of that is because you get tempted by, oh, I wanna blow up. Oh, I wanna go viral. Oh, I wanna do this because everyone else is. And at the end of the day, we all know that doesn’t necessarily mean you have any dollars in your banking account. We say a lot of times people are Twitter rich and dollar poor, right?

Those are the vanity metrics, right? So in terms of the real metrics. Can we just do like a quick list? You said comments, so some engagement, um, email subscribers. Would that be one? Yes. Like what, what are some other real metrics people should be looking at?

Lee: Yeah, I think, um, well, like when I’m thinking about like what we were just talking about off camera, about, you know, our, our conversions off our website for books.

I mean, you want to get to that number and so there’s. The, the, the key is that most agencies, they’re going to tell you they can’t do that because, well, they don’t have, they don’t have insight into your backend. Hmm. Right. Uh, well, yeah, you can get ’em insight, like [00:21:00] you can get ’em access to your call tracker, you can get ’em access, uh, to, uh, you know, actually what converted, and you kind of start to remove that.

And I, and I think that we’ve fallen into this vanity metric. Um, situation because we didn’t have that integration. But the integration is possible. And even if you have to use something as fancy as Microsoft Excel, it is possible right to track this and get the information back. Um, a, a similar one is, uh, when you look at, say, Facebook and, and Instagram, it’s likes, you know, I mean, that might, could, you know, you, you really gotta drill down like what is, who is liking and how are you getting these likes?

Again, I like to get back to the actual, um. Uh, comments and also the clicks into your website. Like that might be something that’s not quite as vanity. Like, I, you can drive all this traffic, but did somebody actually click and now you’ve got, now you’ve got something to work with. You can say, well, I either had a conversion problem mm-hmm.

On my, on my social channels or on my website, which that could be valid. Mm-hmm. Maybe you don’t have the right CTAs and you can fix [00:22:00] that or. You’ve got a problem with the kind of traffic you’re getting. So where are you sourcing your traffic? You know, where are you, where are you trying to get your traffic from?

And you might find, oh, well I didn’t realize that I was paying the agency to run these paid, you know, ads. And they’re, and they’re terrible. Yeah. But now you’ve got something to work with, but you, it’s your responsibility. You know, you have to kind of do the research and it’s not that complicated because, um, we’re not talking about really super complicated theoretical things here.

Right. You’re saying how many phone calls did I get? How many people clicked on that ad and then how many bought something? I mean, it’s not that complicated.

AJ: That’s good. Okay. Sorry. I wanted to hit through, ’cause that, that’s a constant never ending source of conversation in the brand builders group community of Right.

Putting the attention quite honestly on the wrong thing and having the right things, the real things that matter, I think is a big deal. And

Lee: aj, I don’t know if you remember me saying this, but you know, with most of the behavioral health clients that I, that I coach and support, um, they’re surprised when they’re always talking about, well, I [00:23:00] need more phone calls.

I need more phone calls. And I’m like, do you? Mm-hmm. Because what I’m trying to do. In working with an admissions team, I’m trying to get one phone call, right? That converts to one assessment. That then that assessment converts to one admission.

Mm-hmm. I’m

Lee: not looking for 500 phone calls.

Yeah.

Lee: But what does that mean?

Mm-hmm.

Lee: So they’re all, and usually when I explain it that way, they’re like, yes, I want less noise. I want better quality. That’s right. That’s where the vanity metrics miss out sometimes. Mm-hmm. You know? And you more is

AJ: not always better.

Lee: Yeah. More is not always better. I want quality. Listen, we only have so many hours in the day.

Right. So like for me with, you know, especially, you know, with my coaching and consulting clients, I don’t, I can’t take 10 prospecting calls a day. You know, I mean, I Maybe that’d be all you do. I mean, it’s all I would do. Mm-hmm. I, I need the one. Right.

AJ: That’s good. Okay, so back to this, you know, what are some of the, you know, reasons why marketing fails, and then [00:24:00] what are you, what, how do you, like, can you spot a company and go, they have a great marketing team, they have great marketing and also.

That they don’t.

Lee: Um, y well, yes. You know, and the thing is, I, I think about my clients. I, I’ve got, um, a dear client who’s who I’ve, who’s been with me for a long, long time. And, um, when I first got to their location, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna name, I’m gonna protect the, but, uh, but I, when I first protect the innocent air, yeah.

When I, when I got there, I was watching what they were trying to do on, on TikTok and, and Instagram, and they thought. That they were doing it right because they were just busy. Mm. And I, and I use an, I use an example, uh, in my book about this. How, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re not careful, you’re gonna, you’re gonna look busy, you’re gonna be in your uniform and, and, and all the pageantry, and then all of a sudden you’re gonna get completely wiped out.

Mm-hmm. You know, by somebody that has done some research and is gonna wipe you out. And so that was what was happening with, with this clients like they were. They, they had just said to their team, we, we need, we need, we need [00:25:00] reels, we need TikTok. Mm. And that was where they left it. And like, nobody, like, thought to maybe get some coaching, some maybe bringing, have a strategy.

Have a strategy, right. Instead of just doing the tactical part. Which is what? And, and that’s the danger of our technology today in a sense that we do make it very easy.

Yeah. And

Lee: it becomes very accessible. But, um, it’s, it’s almost like a gun in the wrong hands that can do bad things. So can all these social media tools we have totally, like in the wrong hands that can do some bad things.

I mean, there’s

AJ: a lot of noise. Yeah. So how do you know, and on a marketing, you know, when you think about like strategic marketing plan mm-hmm. How do you know what the right thing to do is with so much noise? How do you know?

Lee: To me, what I challenge, uh, each of my, um, clients and the folks that I coach is that it has to be documented.

And so I think that when you go through that, and it doesn’t, documentation doesn’t mean bureaucracy. It doesn’t mean that it takes months to create this, but I challenge them to put it down in writing, right? And so we do things like if we’re going to do social media, okay, then [00:26:00] we’re gonna grab and do screenshots of the social media that we’re going after.

So I wanna see the style guide. I wanna see the types of messaging. ’cause you, there’s tons of ways to go there, but we’re gonna document what we’re doing. Same thing with our website, our SEO content. Um, and it’s gonna be documented even in a Word doc, right? I mean, it could be in something like Evernote or Notion too, but, but we’re gonna document it and then each of the team members are gonna have access to this so everybody knows.

What everybody is doing. Mm-hmm. Even your HR department, your accounting department, your C-suite, it needs to be readable and accessible. Now all of a sudden, now you’ve got buy-in and now you start to overcome these cognitive biases. Mm-hmm. Because now you’re not gonna fall to. Uh, to fomo.

Mm-hmm. Because

Lee: that’s a lot of times where I’ll go somewhere, I’ll be, oh, well this treatment center over here is doing this, or, you know what?

Our CFO, you know, uh, they just said their son is blowing up on TikTok. Well, okay. Or I just Googled myself like, another, another problem that can happen. And it’s like, and, [00:27:00] and you fall victim when you have not. Documented what you’re doing and then, and then maintain that documentation as a living, breathing.

And that’s where the innovation and the experimentation comes in. We wanna experiment.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Lee: So, you know, the companies that are doing well now, it’s not because they just started TikTok today. Sure. They might have been dabbling in it’s evolution process, investigating it last year. And that’s the thing, you always wanna have some percentage of your budget where you’re willing to experiment and learn instead of, instead of getting involved two or three years when it’s too late.

AJ: Uh, I think that’s really good. The documentation part I think is a huge part ’cause so many of us are just going out and doing the new thing, doing the next thing. And not even paying attention to the old thing. Yeah. Right. And it’s always what’s new? What’s new? What’s new and what’s new isn’t necessarily right.

Always. What’s better? If you

Lee: remember aj, uh, there were, there were two things that really helped us sell, uh, a couple of the companies that I’ve been involved with. One was, you remember, remember all the screens we had? Oh,

AJ: yeah.

Lee: Um, you know, at one point we had 20, it’s

AJ: still Rory’s vision. Yeah. To have TVs with marketing [00:28:00] data everywhere.

Lee: We had, we had, I think, I think we were up to 20. Uh, TV’s, monitors that were reporting in real time, different aspects of our marketing. And that’s a

AJ: true marketing war room.

Lee: It was a war room, absolutely. And, um, that was one of the things that really helped us sell, uh, our businesses because people that were acquiring us and investing in us, they knew that we knew.

Mm-hmm. And it’s not, and

Lee: we were understanding trends and we were able to react, uh, because we were, we were proactive. You know, in, in, in our approach, like we were monitoring, we knew what was happening. So if Google made an algorithm change, we knew it. We didn’t find out about it three months later.

AJ: I think that’s a huge misconception that people have about marketing.

Lee: Mm.

AJ: Is how data-driven.

Lee: Yeah.

AJ: Really good marketers are.

Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

AJ: So. I mean, I know that you’re super data driven and

Lee: Absolutely because, you know, I, you know, I’m, I’ve been fortunate that I married, you know, my wife, Jennifer’s an artist, and a lot of art can be very subjective. Mm-hmm. Like how [00:29:00] people view it.

And so I’ve always been sensitive to that and. I know enough that as a CMO, that when somebody brings me something and they’ll ask me a, uh, an open-ended question about, well, what do you think about this ad? Okay, I’ve, I’ve got cognitive biases. I’ve got subjective biases, but that doesn’t mean I. That it won’t work.

Mm-hmm. So that’s why you have to look at the data. I want it to be, uh, objective, not subjective. And that’s why if you are tracking some data, even just some basic data points, I want the data to be the bad guy instead of well lead in like my ad. Right. And that, and, and there’s, and again, companies can decide.

It doesn’t have to be super complicated. You’re gonna have two or three basic. Data points that you wanna, that you wanna review, and then all of a sudden now your team is focused on reviewing that instead of, oh, well, you know, Susie didn’t like that shade of green. You know, I mean, it’s, it, it gets like that.

AJ: Oh, I know. I think, I [00:30:00] think somewhere along the lines, a lot of people, and if. This is you listening, I’m not shaming you, but somewhere along the lines, a lot of people have gotten branding confused with marketing. Yes. And marketing is not fonts. Typography. Right. Iconography, color palettes. That’s not marketing.

Yeah. That’s branding. Yeah. And I think a lot of people get confused with us ’cause we’re a personal branding firm and they’re like, when do we get to make my visual identity

right?

AJ: And I’m like. I don’t know.

Yeah.

AJ: Do you, do you even know what you’re selling? Right. Do you even know what you wanna be known for?

Right. They’re like, no, but when do I get to get my visual identity? So have you seen that too in like, big companies?

Lee: Oh, it’s, it’s all the time when I, when I go somewhere and, and they’ll say they’re creating a new program and, and they’ll use that term brand.

AJ: Mm-hmm.

Lee: And they’ll be like, well, you know, we, we need to start branding.

And for me, I’m like, I, I don’t know what you mean. Oh, well we need to run billboards. Okay, billboards are appropriate in certain circumstances, but I need to understand like, what is your, what is your overall [00:31:00] goal so that we can create the strategy first. We don’t just go run, I’m opening up a new location, so I gotta run a billboard and just put our logo up there.

Mm-hmm. And

Lee: that’s where it gets into the branding, the marketing. And people have to understand that. And I think, I think for most, for most people, like we’re small. Business owners, you know, or we’re creating these businesses. We’re not Coca-Cola.

AJ: That’s right.

Lee: You know, and that’s where, um, we are establishing ourselves and that’s where we have to be data driven because we only have so much time and we don’t have so many dollars.

And so we have to be very strategic in how we spend those, especially when it’s a lot of it’s our money. Mm-hmm.

AJ: That’s good. Um, all right, y’all, I have a few last questions for Lee, but before we run out of time, uh, I want to encourage you, if you, if you guys have been listening to this, this is barely scratching the surface.

This is the tip of the iceberg of all of the conversation that Lee lays out in such a strategic way in his new book. So I just want to give everyone an opportunity. [00:32:00] His book comes out in early fall.

Lee: September 2nd,

AJ: September 2nd. So if you go to never outmatch.com, you can go and pick up your pre-order copy right now before it sells out.

Right? So that’s, I’m putting that out there. Thank you. Into the world. Never. outmatched.com. Go now. Pre-order your copy. It’ll be hitting bookstores on September 2nd, and I’m a huge advocate. I wrote an endorsement for the book because I have been a part of the living. Legacy, um, that you’ve created through all of this marketing work you’ve done with these companies.

I’ve seen it firsthand. So highly, highly, highly recommend and endorse it. I will make sure our marketing team reads it. Um, but all right. I have three last questions for you. Yes. And this is a little bit of, uh, rapid fire. And I think what I love about this conversation is it’s, it’s not just about marketing, it’s about marketing and leadership and company collaboration.

And I love that so. [00:33:00] Best leadership lesson that you learned while in the army?

Lee: Boy there, there’s so many. I think one of the, um, one of the first lessons I learned and, and this is very appropriate for admissions teams, you know, that I, that I coach a lot and that is when I first arrived at Fort Knox. They set up video cameras.

Now this is back before the internet when I was in, right, this is 1992. Um, but they set up video cameras and they had us read our orders of the day in front of video cameras. Why were they doing that? Well, they wanted you to start to watch yourself, huh? And understand. Were you putting your hands in your pocket?

Were you saying ums and ahs? Because now you’re giving orders. You’re a young lieutenant, nobody cares about you, but you’re giving orders to grizzled old veterans, so you better have your stuff together. And so that was one of the first lessons that I learned at Fort Knox and, and the army was really ahead of its time in that, in listening and watching and giving that feedback.

AJ: Ooh, I love that. I actually just watched a video, someone had sent it to me about how the Blue Angels [00:34:00] practice. Before they go air. I saw that same

Lee: video. It’s amazing.

AJ: It’s a, and it’s like, it was amazing their precision and accuracy and how well they knew how the other person was gonna react and they closed their eyes and they visualize it.

Right? And but so much of that is because they’ve been watching each other and they’ve been practicing each other. And it’s so much of like, how do you become good at something you practice,

Lee: right?

AJ: And you watch yourself. Do you still watch yourself on video?

Lee: I haven’t watched myself on video in a long time, though.

I guess I do, because I’ve been on a lot of podcast interviews, so I have seen it. But I do listen to myself on phone calls. Mm. So I, I will say I do that, but. You know, it’s one of these things where I’ve tried to instill this in both my sons because my older son is graduating, uh, well, he’ll be graduating next year from Wafford, so he’s going through the interview process, you know, with internships and we practiced.

It’s like it’s not enough just to get Oh, that’s good. You have to practice with your team. So we’re always, I, I’m always available to people I’ve worked with. When they’re going for job interviews, it’s like, no, let’s practice, let, let me be the interviewer. Oh, that’s good. And like it just helps so much because [00:35:00] we just, sometimes we’re afraid because you know, you have to be a little more vulnerable.

And so, but once you can do that, now all of a sudden you’re going in prepared. You’ve done it.

AJ: We were laughing because this is something that we encourage speakers to do, is to become a great speaker. It’s like you’ve got to watch yourself on film, but we encourage you to watch yourself four different ways.

You need to watch yourself normal, then you need to turn your back to the camera so that you’re just listening. Then we want you to watch it on mute so you’re paying attention to your body movements. But then we want you to watch it on fast forward. ’cause you pick up ticks, you pick up all these little weird nuances that you don’t do.

And somebody in the audience at one of our events said, well, why would you wanna do that to yourself? Right? And we said, well, the audience had to sit through it. Shouldn’t you have to? Right, and it’s the same thing with what you’re saying. It’s like you’re making all these people sit through phone calls with you and interviews with you.

Like shouldn’t you take the time to know what they’re experiencing to become better at it?

Lee: Absolutely. Absolutely.

AJ: Okay, I love that. Watch yourself on video, y’all. Most overlooked marketing metric,

Lee: [00:36:00] most overlooked marketing metric. I think the, well, I think we alluded to it earlier, was the YouTube comments, I think.

I think you’d be really hard to find somebody in an agency that would report that number to you.

Hmm.

Lee: Um, again, ’cause we wanna, we always wanna report subscribers, which can be bought, you know, or be bought. We always want to, we always wanna, uh, report views. Sure. And it was like, okay, well did they watch the whole thing or just two seconds of it?

Uh, but comments, you know, you, you’ll see quickly are those real people? And, and, and what is the, so I, I think comments is, is a big one. And then of course, uh, you know, for a lot of my type of work, uh, we’re optimizing to the phone call. I have to have the phone call.

AJ: I, I would say for most people in our world, that’s the same as well.

It’s like most people are making a soft, off, soft offer for some sort of high ticket dollar offer. And it’s all about call conversions. Um, so that’s not different in the personal brand world. Uh, one marketing book that you think every executive leader [00:37:00] should read other than never outmatched, right?

Because definitely that the outside of that.

Lee: Yeah. Um, well, what’s funny is, I think I mentioned this in the book, uh. A book that I have by my bedside table is, uh, Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gaelic Wars. So it is a military book that was written, uh, authored by Caesar. I have that and my wife always laughs because I’ve got a a 1895 translated edition, uh, that I, that I read, and I don’t read it every night, but it is probably, it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s.

Usually at least once a week, I’m flipping through it. So that’s where I continue to get inspiration for these, um, military strategies that have stood the test of time. Wow. Um, and when you think about, um, corporations, uh, were first started in 1602, uh, with the East India Trading Company, you know, in Amsterdam.

So a lot of times we get. We get focused on just reviewing the last 400 years. Mm-hmm. But military strategies are thousands of years old. So the [00:38:00] question is, what can you learn from the leadership, the innovation perspective of these military mental models, and then how do you apply them to your marketing?

Fascinating. So that’s, that’s what I’m constantly, uh, and that, and that’s what I’ve written in the book. I mean, it’s 12 chapters. Uh, there are 12 basic military strategies that I, that I go over and I, and I find they’re, they’re very accessible.

AJ: So I have a, a quick side question. Um, since you’ve been in the army and you’ve, you’ve been spent a lot of your years there, but also in presidential campaigns, how many, how many new tactics, how many new strategies are there?

Really, I.

Lee: Yeah, it’s a lot less than you think. Yeah, because again, we get stuck on the tactics. Mm-hmm. There’s always gonna be new things, you know, coming on our plate, new, new ways for us to reach people. But at the end of the day, there are some, some really time tested mental models, military strategies, ways that you, that you can reach an audience.

The, the, those are not things that [00:39:00] are just being, you know, reinvented all the time or invented all the time.

AJ: And that should be hopeful and promising to all of us.

Lee: Yes. And I think that, you know, uh, you know, less than 1% of the US population will serve in the military. And that’s, that’s not a critique.

That’s just where we are in today’s society. So I think a lot of these things, um, when I speak to people about some of these strategies, a lot of times they’re like, wow, they’re just not as accessible as they might’ve been even a hundred years ago. Hmm. Right before we had all this digital advancement. So I think what I’ve tried to do in this book is I’ve tried to like, kind of like, um, reintroduce.

Some of these, uh, time honored strategies that really we should all be familiar with. These, these, these, this is not necessarily, um, that I’ve just come up with all of a sudden these new innovations. Mm-hmm. No, the, you know, I’ll talk a lot about Caesar and Hannibal. I’ll use probably the most recent example I use is, uh, Norman Schwartzkoff.

And his use of the hammer and anvil in the, in the first Gulf War. But I mean, a lot, I talk a lot about, you know, Joan of Arc, you know? Mm-hmm. And, um, [00:40:00] and so I, I’m really excited to, to, to bring some of these new ideas, and that’s why I keep using this word, mental model because, uh, sometimes military strategy might seem inaccessible.

Uh, but I think there’s a lot for, uh, people to grasp and think about how they’re gonna apply this strategy right into their marketing before they start jumping into tactics.

AJ: Well, the truth is, is military strategy has been around a lot longer than marketing strategy. And there’s some timeless pieces of information that we can pull from military into marketing and leadership in general.

So if you didn’t hear me earlier. Please check out Lee’s new book. Never Outmatch. Go to never outmatch.com. Grab a copy, get the pre-order comes out, drops September 2nd. And Lee, thank you so much. Thank you AJ for being on the show. This is so good. Uh, I can’t wait for the book to come out. I can’t wait for everyone to read it.

And then one last quick question and we’ll wrap. What does influential mean to you?

Lee: Uh, [00:41:00] influential to me. Uh. I, I’m a big believer it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. Mm-hmm. And so I have always, uh, uh, used that as, as one of my mantras. And so to have people know you, you have to help people. So that’s always, I’ve always been very giving of my time and my advice, whether they take it or not.

Uh, and so to me. Um, I would consider myself influential, though. I’m not sure you would count me as an influencer, but I feel like I have been very targeted and influential in a lot of people’s lives, and I think that’s the most important thing.

AJ: I love that, and I love what you said. It’s not who knows you, uh, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you, but people know you because you’ve helped them,

Lee: right.

AJ: That’s the key part. I love that.

Lee: Absolutely. Absolutely.

AJ: So good. Y’all okay, AJ, stick. Stick around for the recap episode. It’ll be coming up next, and we’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 595: From Loss to Legacy: How JJ Virgin Reclaimed Her Brand and Dominated the Health Space

RV: [00:00:00] I have a very, very special treat for you today. You’re about to hear from somebody who is a newer friend of mine, but somebody that I followed for a long time.

This woman has four New York Times bestsellers. She has a podcast with over 20 million downloads. She has been all over national television. Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, uh, she has one of the most recognizable. Personal brands in the world, and specifically in the health and nutrition space, which we’re gonna talk about and we’re gonna hear that story.

But more than anything, her reputation behind the scenes is just someone that I have, I have grown to have so much respect for so many people in this space have learned from her and studied under her. And I’m honored that she’s here. We’re gonna hear the story today from JJ Virgin. Jj, welcome to the show.

JJ: Good to be here.

RV: Um, we’re in Nashville. You made a trip. I’m meeting you in person with this stuff. I love

JJ: Nashville. If I didn’t live in Tampa, Tennessee’s the other state I would live in.

RV: Come [00:01:00] on. Yeah. Uh, I I, I, I get it. And, um, we’re so glad to hear to have you here. So I would love to start by hearing where you are now.

Um, I want people to get a sense of the magnitude of here’s all the things that you have going on. ’cause I don’t know that to the untrained eye, they may not realize. Here’s what the empire looks like. And then I wanna go back, and then after that I’ll take you back to go tell us about the hard road to get there.

But like, you know,

JJ: you said road and it was roads. Roads, yeah. Many, many roads. Many roads. Many hard roads.

RV: So tell us like, you know, you know, humble. No, no. Humble brag. Just brag. Just give us the where, where are you at? What’s the, what’s the magnitude of the team? How many businesses you have going on, whatever kind of.

Numbers or details you can share to give us a, an understanding of your personal brand? Right now,

JJ: actually just released one business. I’m really trying to focus, I have two companies and [00:02:00] I am more excited about my personal brand consumer company now than I think I’ve ever, ever been. Like, I am so fired up about it.

I feel like the zeitgeist of what’s going on in health is just in such a perfect place. Um, so, and I’ve really changed the way that I, I operate that business. So I, I bought it back, um, last June 30th. I was up in the air. Uh, going to Spain when it became final. So champagne. So you had sold it 10,000 feet and then you

RV: bought it back?

Yes,

JJ: I bought it back. So, um, and I really, it was in, it’s interesting, when you are buying a company back, I had to think it’s almost harder to give CPR to a company that is going down than just to start all over again. So I really thought I, and, and or not do it at all. And because I have two companies, I was like, maybe I shouldn’t do this.

Maybe I should just release this. And so I had to really dig in and go, [00:03:00] do I love this? Is this what I want? Would what, you know, the what would, what would be a dream come true? Dean Jackson statement. And I decided to go full bore with that company, but to redesign it in a different way, which is actually really great in that it is, it has got.

One employee.

RV: Oh, wow.

JJ: I have shifted that model where I have amazing agencies in brand sales, in social, in marketing. So what’s the bus? What’s that business? So, so that business is my consumer brand and what it is are books, programs, products, coaches, and a lot of brand deals. Ultimately, what I really am doing there is I am a, an integrated media personality, driving traffic to all of these different income streams that help women improve their body [00:04:00] composition and because of that, their health.

RV: Got it. And that, so that business, how many employees did it have? Like when did you start it? How many employees did you have when you sold it? How long had you’ve been out of it when you bought it back?

JJ: So I started it like, I think 2000. 2000 probably. Okay. Um, yeah. Right, right around 2000. I sold it. Uh.

2015. 2017.

RV: Okay.

JJ: Must have been 20, 20 19. ’cause it was, yeah, 2019. ’cause it was about five years and then I bought it back. Okay. Um, so right

RV: before COVID you sold it? I

JJ: sold it right before COVID and moved to Florida. Uh, because they wanted me to be in Florida. That ’cause I was part of a parent company that was in Florida.

They wanted be in. To be in Florida. So it was the universe, like had my back, okay, to move out of California, move to Florida, [00:05:00] sell this consumer brand. I am trying to remember how many employees we had at the time. It was, you know, like maybe 15. Okay. Um,

RV: and it was same thing, programs, coaching courses. It was, it was,

JJ: it was my books into, into programs, uh, not much in the way of coaching and a lot of products.

That company basically got rid of the programs, turned it into solely a product company. Um, took my name off of the products. We were gonna do a transition from my name on the products, which by the way, the only reason my products were called JJ Virgin was I was in the hospital at the time, my book and my products were launching, and we hadn’t named the product line yet.

And I’m like, we were like, just slap her name on it. I mean, we didn’t, it was like it had to be done and there was. That was it. And it was funny at the time, ’cause I watched all these people start to call their products their name and I go, don’t do that. The reason I had to do that was I didn’t have an option.

Um, and so we had searched for a new name, but we had a whole [00:06:00] plan of how we were gonna do that transition. ’cause you can’t just flip a name overnight. But when we sold it, they basically booted me out. Okay. May, 2020, I remember it ’cause it was right around Mother’s Day. They kicked me outta the company.

They’re like, it’ll be fine. You’ll get paid no matter what, so just go do other things. It actually ended up great because it was during the pandemic and my other company, which we’ve rebranded now as the Health Business Growth Collective. Okay. It’s known as Mindshare, uh, was an event-based company and we had a big event every year called the Mindshare Summit.

We had a mastermind. It was very event-based. And then we also got attacked in June of 2020 as the um, company dedicated to keeping wellness white. Huh? During the whole BLM. Gotcha. So it was like, so I got to focus completely on what to do about an event-based business that was having a PR crisis, which, you know, it was, couldn’t be further from the truth, but it all ended [00:07:00] up actually fantastic.

’cause we started a scholarship fund for, um, historically black universities and did all sorts of cool stuff. ’cause I went, well the problem is we don’t have enough people of color in the industry. That’s the challenge. We actually have more people in our group than are in the Indus, you know, percentage wise that are in the industry.

But the problem is they’re not in the industry. Let’s go back and figure that out.

RV: So you had the space to do that because you basically were booted from the farmer company. Yeah. Becausecause, I

JJ: was kicked outta the other company. So all these things that at the, on the outset looked like horrible things.

Right. Worked out perfectly ’cause I was able to focus over on the other side. Um, but when I did, they actually took that brand. I remember they changed all of the look and feel of it changed the name of it. So people thought it was a different company. So all of a sudden I started, they took

RV: your name off the whole, they took

JJ: my name off of the product line because the product line, we were gonna change it into Reignite Wellness.

We had a two year transition plan where it was JJ Virgin’s Reignite Wellness, [00:08:00] where we would keep the same look and feel. They changed the logos. They made it look like a little girl’s unicorn birthday party. Like they changed the color. ’cause all the color schemes were very clear. Right? They changed it to like these pastels and this like.

Very, it looked very different. And I literally went on the page and they had on this, on the marketing page, they go, we are all things to all women. I went, uhoh.

Hmm.

JJ: Who is marketing this? We are all things to all women. We celebrate women of all sizes, all ages, all shapes. And they had this page of, it was actually two morbidly obese women and then a normal weight woman all together.

And I’m like, what on earth? I, I am in the optimizing your body composition. World.

RV: Right? That’s your whole brand. That’s my whole brand. Get healthy and,

JJ: and, and it really is for women. 40 plus. So my whole brand is for women, 40 plus optimizing body composition. [00:09:00] You just put like a 20-year-old, you put things that would attract like women in their twenties and you’re marketing to healthy at any size, and I don’t believe in that.

RV: So what’s what’s weird to me, and I’m always curious about this, so, so you sold them the right to use your name?

JJ: I did the biggest booboo ever. So I hope, oh,

RV: tell me, tell me, I know this sounds, tell me what’s the biggest boo boo ever? The biggest

JJ: booboo ever. You know what’s so funny is. I, I’ve never been that person who could listen to a story and go, oh, I’m so glad I learned that.

I won’t do that Mistake. Nope. It, it’s like I have seem to have to blunder through the whole thing. Right. You’re the

RV: one who has to touch the hot stove. Yeah.

JJ: I am. So maybe that’s why I am a good mentor because I’ve done all the dumb things and so I can help you not do them. And so I sold my website. Like they, they had everything.

They had my social media, they had my name Uhhuh. So, ’cause jj virgin.com, all of it, right? They had all of it. [00:10:00] So all of a sudden you go to jj virgin.com and we are, we believe at health in any size. And I’m like, I, so you have

RV: 19 years of your personal brand, your research, your reputation, everything. You believe you sell this all at one moment.

JJ: Yes.

RV: And then you’re out and then they basically like, well,

JJ: it gets worse, change a lot of it. So I’m out, I have, I sell it for, um, payments over. Five years, but then a percentage of the parent company. Mm-hmm. Because the parent company was a company I worked with for years, so I was gonna help them grow.

And they had a, you know, they had a big plan of where they were gonna grow to. Yeah. And then I had a percentage of the back end, which was what I was the most excited about. Right.

RV: That’s kind of how they lured you in, is like the vision of the big picture, the whole thing. Well, because I said what

JJ: I needed to make in order for me to even consider this, like, I threw out a stupid number.

I, I’ll consider it if Yeah. And they’re like, we can do that. And I went, uhoh. So, all right. So that’s how the whole thing was gonna work with this backend. Huh. You know, and that would’ve [00:11:00] been great, except the founder decided to take some private equity. So my phantom stocks got exercised early instead of later.

Like every, like anyone who had phantom stock, which is what I had, the minute you do a a, an equity deal, they,

RV: as soon as there’s a liquidation event, it’s Yes. Uhhuh at all. At all comes to you basically at the time. So.

JJ: Basically I got a 10th of what I should have gotten.

RV: Yeah. Yeah. And then how did you get it all back?

Yes. Here, that’s, well, because the

JJ: founder’s an awesome human and one of my favorite people on the planet and high, high integrity. And so he was watching this whole thing unfold because once private equity was involved, all of a sudden he didn’t have the control he used to have. Mm-hmm. And you know, I, I came to him two years ago and I go, I cannot do this.

Like, I can’t do this. Like, I’m, this just hurts my soul. Yeah. And he goes, you know what? Well, [00:12:00] he wanted me to come back. So here’s what happened about, I was out for three years and they were mucking it up and he goes, I want you to come back. Actually, I think I was out one year. In one year. My email list went four from 400,000 people to 30,000.

RV: Wow.

JJ: Sales were. Devastated. ’cause all they did, so the marketing person that also marketed were all things to all people. So you can imagine how good of a marketing person this is. Yeah. ’cause that’s the first violation of marketing. She also, all she did was run, run sales, starts blasting your list. Like she’s the lowest life form of marketing.

Gotcha. All she did was run sales. So the list got trained to, to do sales. Right. And it never, and it just was going downhill. And so he’s like, I want you to come back. And I remember he, he pinged me about this and I would, had just landed in Orange County and I was going over to Mary Morrisey’s house to spend the night

And Mary Morrisey’s, like one of my close friends, but also a [00:13:00] mentor, she’s an ama. Do you know who she is? Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. She wrote, uh, brave Thinking. She runs DreamBuilder Institute. She was a, um, had the biggest non-denominational church in the country for a while. She’s an amazing woman. So I go over there and she, I, she says, well, let’s talk about it, you know, is this something you would love to do?

And so we walk through it and she coaches me on it, and I come back and tell him exactly what it is, how I will do this, what my terms would be. And he’s like, okay. So basically

RV: to get back in.

JJ: Yeah. Basically to get me back. They, he created a deal where if I wanted to leave again, I would leave with all of my ip.

Wow. And so that’s lucky. I think. God. Yeah. So that’s lucky. I know. So when I was leaving, so then, because they owned your social media accounts, the books, everything, everything, everything. Like I, I was like, I’d have to change my name. So, so now, this was two years ago, or a year and a half ago. ’cause it was December [00:14:00] at a four MI talked to him and I go, I’m like, miserable.

This is like killing my soul. And he goes, all right, I, I get it. And I’d already talked to Mary about like, what would it take for me to buy back? Like, ’cause I was looking at what things would I need to get back from them because it was really only the product line. What was gonna happen is if I was gonna split, I get all my stuff, my programs, my, but they would keep the product line.

And

RV: you, when you came back in the second time. You basically pre you, you, you almost created like a prenup. You pre-negotiated it Really did. Yeah. You pre negotiated. It’s kinda like the postnup uhhuh.

JJ: So, so basically I pre, I, I had it so that anything that was my IP would come back to me. If we split up, they would keep the product line.

But the reality is the way the business had shifted and we were starting to turn the ship, but you know, that, I mean, turning the ship around is a two to three year deal.

RV: Well, there’s a, you know, in the investor community, so like in the real, like private equity, it’s that they, they say never catch a falling [00:15:00] knife.

That’s the, that’s the way they describe it is like, you don’t wanna buy a business as it’s going down. And it’s like, it’s, you’re trying to grab a falling knife. It’s, it doesn’t, it’s not easy. It’s not a good situation usually. And they

JJ: literally gave me like a year to turn it around with no cash to run ads or anything else.

It was like, okay, turn it around, but you don’t have any money to do it.

RV: So organic was the plan, like you gotta rebuild all the trust. So I came back in

JJ: and I’m like. All right. Well, I’ve managed to start businesses with no money before. Let’s see what we can do. And so I had no budget to run any kind of ads or anything else.

I now had a shell of a team. I brought in one gal who had helped Mark Hymen, so she really knew how to do these things. But I had a shell of a team and no budget. We still managed to turn this thing decently around in that amount of time, but we, I was like, I, I can’t do the things I want to do. Mm-hmm. I can’t in every, they, every month they were trying to cut more costs and I’m like.

We’re profitable. Like [00:16:00] me start to, this is classic financial

RV: thinking. This is classic. Like, it’s so awful. Just cut expenses. Yeah. To get, get your way out. I’m like, how

JJ: do we get our way out if we don’t run ads and, and start to, yeah. And they didn’t understand. They don’t understand this business of social media and podcasts and speaking and where, where you really need to spend your time.

So I bought it back and the big bummer, I was like, you

RV: bought your, I bought every non-product stuff back. Well,

JJ: so, no, I got that back. The other side was the products. And I’m like, okay, I’m gonna have to start a whole new product line. Ah, because they manufactured the products and they had reignite wellness.

Are these

RV: products, these are like, like supplements? Supplements, like physical products. Yeah.

JJ: So I, I was like, all right, what’s it going to take for me to create this new product line? And then I’m gonna have time when I don’t have products. ’cause new manufacturing, new products, you have to go through a process that’s at least four months.

Per product.

RV: This is like formulation and stuff you’re [00:17:00] talking about? Oh yeah.

JJ: Yeah. My 4:00 AM formulations that I’ve been doing, which by the way, AI is fantastic for formulating products. Interesting.

RV: Yeah.

JJ: So once you have the idea, but I ended up being able to buy the product line back for a dollar.

RV: Why?

’cause it was losing money.

JJ: I still, I know that the founder put his thumb on something. How did this happen for you? The first thing that happened is I talked to their current CEO and, and the founder told me what the CEO thought would be a great idea, which was for me to pay him 10%. Of the gross for 10 years to get the product line back.

And I basically told him, you must be high.

Yeah.

JJ: You know, so Jonathan told me the whole thing and he was like, you know, be cool about it. I’m like, oh yeah, I’ll be great. And we were actually at a Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation event. And my husband’s like, all right, now you’re like, very zen and you’re gonna get on this call.

And I’m like, I’ve got it. I’m good now. Do you know what the color code personality test is?

RV: [00:18:00] I, I think I have done this before.

JJ: Okay. So, but I don’t

RV: know it well enough to like recite it back to you. So there’s

JJ: red, blue, yellow, white.

RV: Okay.

JJ: White likes to keep the piece. I am not a white yellow. Likes to have fun.

Okay. Blue is very relational and intimacy and reds are very direct and they wanna lead. I am Super Red. The guy who taught us the color code, he goes, we’ve never in the company seen anyone at this level. So I’m like, don’t worry, honey, I’ve got it. You know, about five minutes into this conversation I am like, you must be high blowing it.

I’m like, Tim, stop it. You know? Anyhow, talk did not go well. And I’m thinking, oh great, well I guess I’m gonna have to like start my own product line. Somehow the founder managed to get this together where I got to buy the product line for a dollar, but I basically told the guy, I go, listen, that’s not gonna work.

[00:19:00] And here’s the thing. We separate our ways and tomorrow I tell everyone why I’ll never use those products again. And you know what’s gonna happen, you’re gonna get stuck with them. Mm. So

RV: interesting. You cast a very, I cast a negative vision. I was a a very negative and use that to buy it. To buy your back.

So one of the things I wanted to ask you about this, this is a a little bit off what we were just talking about. But even in your story, you talk about the amount of investment that you do personally, like at your level. You, you, you’ve invested so much into masterminds and coaching programs. Oh my gosh.

Well,

JJ: I’m here. I’m here investing in you. That’s right. You better be good.

RV: That’s right. I promise. It’ll, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll be at least above average. Um, and, um, what, what’s your philosophy on that? Because I think, I think a lot of people would assume someone at your level, you know, even with your personal brand, the story, I mean even to, you know, just to be transparent, what you’re sharing there with me, [00:20:00] right?

It’s like, look at the, you know, you’ve done all these things, you’ve been around, um, to accomplish things that people dream of, and, and here you are still investing. In yourself at this stage in your career, learning and growing, and you’ve got people who invest with you to learn from you. So what’s your philosophy there on personal growth and how much has that played a, a, a role in your journey, do you think of building your personal brand?

JJ: So when I was 30, I had my first mentor, which I didn’t realize I had a mentor. Um, she’d actually been a personal training client in my twenties. And I was in Miami. I was in Fort Lauderdale and I was going to University of Miami. And I remember walking down the beach with her and she said, so why are you getting your wiring school?

And I was getting my master’s in exercise fi and, and I go, I want to be more successful. She goes, oh, now she grew up in a trailer, had a high school education, [00:21:00] and she lived in a multimillion dollar house. And a place in Fort Lauderdale called Millionaire Mile. Mm-hmm. Where the beach is on one side of your house, and then you have a little street, and then the intercoastal is on the other.

Okay. So that’s where she lives, right? Mm-hmm. And she goes, huh? She goes, all right, what are you gonna do after you finish your graduate degree? And I said, I’m gonna go get my PhD.

RV: Okay.

JJ: And she goes, huh, why? And I said, well, because I wanna be more successful. Duh. She goes, I could teach you to be more successful.

I can teach you to make money. I go, this is not about money. ’cause I was in my twenties, Uhhuh, you know, no kids or anything else. I’m like, oh gosh, are you kidding? So I go back, I, I leave, um, Fort Lauderdale to go to USC to work on my PhD. And, and she goes, she said to me [00:22:00] on the beach, she goes, well, when you are 30, you’ll start thinking about money.

Things will shift. She’s so future paced me. Right. So I’m 30. She sends me a little box. It’s a, um, a little VHS tape and it’s from New Skin International. Yeah. And New Skin was going the direct sales company into interior design nutritionals. Okay. And she sends me this box with, and then a box that’s got the, um, weight loss program.

And I remember watching this tape and it’s people running all over the place in New York City, and there’s a clock ticking. It’s talking about trading time for money. And I’m like,

ah.

JJ: Because at the time I’d started at UCLA as a personal trainer paying my way through school and grad school. And at the time I was making like six figures in cash.

Mm-hmm. But I could

JJ: never make more than that. Then I started to hire some trainers to work for me. Then I started to go speaking because speaking would pay me. First it was a thousand dollars and it was $2,000, but it was still, I was like. F stuck. Right? And so the [00:23:00] minute I saw that tape, I’m like, oh my gosh.

I dropped outta my PhD program. I got rid of all of my stuff. I drove across the country and I moved in with her and she’s like, I’m like, teach me. Right? And what I didn’t know was she was actually the biggest mindset trainer of the distributors in New Skin. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. And so I move in with her and all she does is coach me on mindset.

And it just becomes like, there are no, you know, there are no limitations. The only limitations are in your mind, there are no victims, only volunteers. Like thoughts create all of the Zig Ziglar, you know, Wayne Dyer, all of that. She turned me on to Nightingale Conant, like I was managing everything, thinking mindset.

And so that’s, that’s how everything shifted. And then after that, I just, it just changed the way I operated. Right. Dropped outta the PhD program, started thinking about how I could duplicate myself into other people. Mm-hmm. But I didn’t have [00:24:00] another mentor until 2007. And I was listening, uh uh, I was talking to, do you know who Joe Cola is?

Uhuh. So Joe Cola is very well known in the health business. He started the biggest natural website in health and I was launching a book, and Fab Mancini was like, you should go meet with Joe Mercola. So I did. And Joe said, jj. And this was 2000, it must have been 2005 or 2006. It was maybe 2006. I was on Dr.

Phil every week. I had a website. It didn’t have that little box to get your name and email.

Mm.

JJ: So I have my website. I’m on Dr. Phil. I’m thinking someone is gonna discover me. I’m working as a nutritionist now. I’ve learned how to package things into programs. I’ve got some people working for me, but I’m still stuck.

Right? Like I’m still like trying to figure out how you get past 25 KA month.

RV: And this is 2007. So you’ve been at this for seven? This is like 2005. [00:25:00] Yeah. Okay. So you’ve been at this for years. But I

JJ: mean, literally I started as a trainer in college, right? There were a couple of us, mark Sisson, Tony Horton Body by Jake.

Like the first personal trainers.

Yeah.

JJ: You know, in the eighties. So I’ve been at this. For decades,

RV: uhhuh,

JJ: and I can’t figure out how to get past, like, you know, so figure

RV: out like 20,000 a month, 25,000 a month in revenue. Yeah. Like

JJ: stuck. Stuck.

RV: And that’s revenue. That’s not income. You’re, that’s revenue you’re paying.

Right. But I don’t

JJ: have a whole lot of ex, I, I don’t have a ton of expenses. Sure. But still I’m stuck. Um, and I’m also teaching doctors how to put supplements in their practices. So I’m getting commissions off of that, but I’m still stuck. I’m like, like 300 grand. Okay. Stuck. And I’m making, yeah, I’m netting maybe about 150, 200.

And so I go, I’m sitting at dinner with Joe Cola and he goes, the money is in the list. And I go, what list?

Yeah,

JJ: which list? Show me the list. I’ll get the list. And it was the [00:26:00] list that if you had the box on your website, I would’ve had. And so literally he tells me this and he says, go read the four hour work week.

And so I read the four hour work week. I’m convinced that there’s a missing chapter. Somewhere because like I I, the joke is I read the four Hour Workweek and started working 80 hours. I started like Gary Veen, as did all of us. Yeah, yeah. I’m like, and uh, but when I read it something, there was a, something about Dan Kennedy in there and then I like.

Was Google, Dan Kennedy. And then he was doing a call with Ali Brown. And I remember listening ’cause it was a woman because instead of all these dudes and I went, I bought her Boost business with your own easing. And I bought this little program for $197 and I started an easing. And then that started actually doing something and building a list and making money.

And then I went to one of her workshops and she was selling a mastermind and I didn’t know what a mastermind was. Mm-hmm. And [00:27:00] it was a hundred thousand dollars. She had an $18,000 and a a hundred thousand dollars one. And before I knew it was a hundred thousand dollars, she was talking about this and how elite it would be.

And there were very few people and they were gonna be the best people. And I’m like, o, obviously I’m gonna join that. And I told everyone around me I was gonna join that. And then she said what it was and I wrote a bad check and joined it.

Mm mm

JJ: Which I don’t tell, like do not do that. Um, but it changed everything.

RV: So you joined this a hundred thousand mastermind

JJ: I did with no money. I like was, did not have the money to join this. And then you were like,

RV: I’m gonna do this. You know what, I’m gonna figure it out. Yeah, it it paid

JJ: off. It totally paid off. I think one of the best things you can do, ’cause, ’cause constraints, foster creativity, but like if you can totally afford something, you don’t pay attention.

Like if you could charge people just slightly more than what they perceive they could afford. ’cause a lot of that’s just a perception anyway. They’d pay a lot more attention.

That’s the secret right [00:28:00] there. It

JJ: is. Like that first easing course I bought for 197 bucks was a stretch. So I paid attention and I put it all to use.

And when I joined that a hundred thousand dollars mastermind, I burned out my adrenals crazy that year. ’cause I was gonna squeeze every penny out of it.

RV: Uhhuh.

JJ: But I mean, that first year I came in with nothing. Like, I thought I had a plan, scrap the plan. I made $550,000 and I felt like a failure because Lisa Sasovich was in, and she went in and went from I think like 130,000 to 3 million, and I’m like, okay.

I, I, I’m lame.

RV: I mean, this is an interesting thought as to go, you know, in some ways it’s a service to charge people a little bit more than what they’re comfortable with because that makes them show up as a bigger version of themselves. Mm-hmm. That makes them pay attention. It makes them invest, it makes them, like, it puts their back against the wall to where they, they activate versus if everything is comfortable, you just don’t change.

Like, you don’t show up, you don’t do the work. [00:29:00] That’s, I think that’s a really important lesson for anyone that struggles with charging more for what they do. Thinking that, well, I want change the world. I want to help people. I just wanna give it away. Not realizing that. In many ways, it is the fee that you’re charging that causes the transformation for the person, because now they’re, now they’re invested in doing the work.

JJ: I don’t know if you know Simon Bowen, but he has a great statement. So I, I always love to credit people that I, if I can remember where I heard it, and he talks about the moment they pay, the healing journey begins. Mm. What you said is never more true than in the health space where people have so much money, mindset issues and they feel like they shouldn’t charge if they’re healing people and they try to give it away for free.

And it’s always something I coach our members with because every single one of them has tried to do this for free. I have multiple times, I’m like, how many times do I need to learn this lesson? If you give it away for free, no one pays attention. And the more [00:30:00] they pay, and that’s all relative, it’s like lifting heavy weights, right?

It’s heavy for them. The more they pay attention. It’s like you, you’ve got to charge people, so they will actually. Take it seriously.

RV: Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s interesting to me, you know, like we have some pretty high profile clients at Brand Builders group and, and, and it’s like you also attract a really amazing group of people, you know, but assuming you’re charging something that you can deliver upon.

But, uh, I think that’s super powerful. Okay, so this leads me to one of the other things I wanted to ask you about. Health is like one of the most noisy, if per, if not perhaps the noisiest space on the planet. I mean, you have health, money, relationship, spirituality, like those are the topics that apply to everybody.

And because they apply to everybody, there’s a a million bazillion people. Somehow. You have managed through your journey to become one of the most recognizable health [00:31:00] voices, experts, influencers, whatever term you want to use. Why do you think you were able to do that? You know, I, I’m interested in the how, but I’m, I’m actually interested in why, why do you think you actually broke through the noise in one of the most competitive populated topics and spaces when so many people want to do it and somehow you managed to do it?

JJ: Hmm. I’m looking at the different, different levels of breaking through and I would say I just kept taking the next step out of my comfort zone. And I was just driven, like when I got to Palm Springs, I moved to Palm Springs from North Carolina and I had two young babies, like literally a six month old and a year and a half old, [00:32:00] and a, a husband who didn’t wanna work and we were not independently wealthy.

Hmm. He just. Like had his parents had pushed him into law. He hated law. He wanted to teach tennis. And, um, I was like, uhoh, you know. And so I went into overdrive and looking back, like the less he did, the more I did, so the less he did, so the more I did. So the, like, you, you look at it now and go, you know, it, it, it just was a, a perfect storm.

Like he’s the sweetest guy, but I was like, okay, this is ridiculous. But because of that, I was like, I have to be successful to take care of these kids. And so I’m looking at Palm Springs and I’m going, Hmm. Affluent area. I can pull this off. How do I market my business? I’ll get on local tv.

Hmm.

JJ: And, and I just was on local TV all the time.

And speaking at all the country clubs and everything else. Well, the minute I was on local [00:33:00] tv, um, you know, then all of a sudden I’m used to being on tv. So that when I met a doctor who needed help with the Dr. Phil show, I was used to being on tv. I went over, it wasn’t my first rodeo. You know, people always talk about how they wanna be on this big show or big podcast.

I go, you actually don’t wanna do that until you’ve gone, like, I remember being on one of the, I agree a hundred

RV: percent with this. Oh my

JJ: gosh. I was on local TV and I didn’t know about powder. So I taped a show and we were doing like some of the segments we were gonna air on the show at a gal’s house.

And for six hours I did not put any face powder on. It was very hot. It looked like literally my face was like a swimming pool. Hmm. You know, I also didn’t know about like, best sides in your hair. So I did a whole thing where I looked like cousin, it, you know, that’s nice. Like, oh my gosh. So you just learn.

And I remember, um, just taping a segment where they go, listen. If you’re doing tv, it’s sound bites. I’m like, sound [00:34:00] bites. You know? So I learned so much stuff before I ever got to Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz, or Access Hollywood or any of these things. I knew what to do. So that then they would call you back, you go on national TV and flub it, you’re done.

RV: Mm-hmm. So, uh, some of what I hear you say in terms of answering that question is you succeeded because you had to, it’s almost the same as the answer to your question about like the a hundred thousand dollars mastermind that you joined. It’s like, well, I got my investment back on it because I had to.

JJ: Right. Well, and here’s the, here’s the thing. What I’ve discovered about myself is that I, and I, I, you know, that I would start to put myself into situations that would force me to have to be successful. So after, you know, after that, like the Virgin Diet. I remember my son was in a very serious accident where he nearly died.

And the night it happened, a month before the book was gonna [00:35:00] launch, I literally was holding this one finger. He’s in a coma, promising him that I was gonna bring the troops and do everything it needed to be to get him to be 110%. And then walking out the door. And Ali Brown called me and she goes, now I know you’re really going to nail this.

And Brendan Burchard actually flew into LA to help me with the book launch. Like, wow. But I knew, I was like going, oh, this, this book has to be a massive success because this is how I’m gonna bring my son back to life. And so like, I kept getting into these situations where success wasn’t optional. And then after the, after that, I started to put myself into situations to make it happen again, because I kind of felt like it’s sort of like a, a, you know, a professional athlete who.

Thinks that they need a certain condition to be successful. You know, I do think we get too comfortable that you have to give yourself a [00:36:00] reason that you need to be successful. Otherwise you’re just gonna get to a place where you’re comfortable. Right.

RV: You mind sharing with everybody what happened with your son?

’cause this was a pretty, this was a very horrific situation. This was a horrific situation. He was 12, right? He, he was 16. Oh, 16.

JJ: 16. My, um, other son was 15 and it was literally like a month before the book launch. Um, it happened September 11th because I remember thinking, oh my God, it’s September 11th, you know?

Yeah. Um, and the book Pubbed, I think early November, but we were starting all of the launch stuff in October and I’d been taping all the PBS special stuff that day, the things that I needed for the program for PBS. And so I was doing a PBS, special ed, all these things lined up. And I come home, my son goes out to walking, you know, at dusk to go to a friend’s house and gets hit by a car.

Mm-hmm. And we don’t even [00:37:00] know what the heck happened. Um, we just know that this neighbor pulled around, saw a woman, get out of her car, gasp, drive off, and he literally was on the pavement. Uh, 13 fractures, torn aorta, multiple brain ble, brain bleeds in a deep coma, airlifted to the local hospital. And when we get there, now it makes sense the way they handled it.

Um, fortunately my husband was a medical malpractice trial attorney in his old life. Right. So it made sense the way this was. The doctor wanted to handle it, and because of his background, it really helped us. Not have that happen. The trauma surgeon when we walked in said we needed to let our son die.

That he sometime in the next 24 hours was gonna pass away that this aorta, every hour that chance of rupturing increased by 10% and we couldn’t airlift him to the next hospital ’cause he’d never survive it. And [00:38:00] even if he did, he wouldn’t survive the surgery. And even if he were to survive both, he’d be so brain damaged, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Mm-hmm. So we’re listening to all this and my son Bryce is listening and my son Bryce now they’ve been around me with the mindset mentor who’s now completely how I live. And he’s used to me saying things like, you know, the only limitations are the limitations in your mind and thoughts create and blah blah.

And he, so he is looking at this doctor and he goes, sounds like maybe there’s a 0.25% chance he’d make it. And doctor says, that’s about right. He goes, it’s not zero, you know, and, uh, good for him. Yeah. And. I literally walked out at that point and said, grant, what, what, what do you want? Because I’ve always been very connected with him.

And I was like, you know, and I just heard a fight from me mom. Mm. And so my ex-husband’s like, we’re overruling you. And, uh, you know, and he started to use the litigious comments that a [00:39:00] medical malpractice attorney would use. Hmm. And so that doctor got into high gear, but you would understand it was Palm Springs, California.

This doctor was used to dealing with 80 year olds, not a 16-year-old who was, looked like a linebacker. Yeah. And very stubborn, you know, he had a lot of muscle mass on him. That’s really what saved him. He had a family that would go all in, you know, and, and that’s what we did. We literally, like, I had Dr.

Amon come into the hospital. I like, we went all in. We’re like, what do we need to do to bring you back out of this? But, uh, I was up against the wall again and I literally, all I focused on was. Grant’s gonna be 110% book is going to be huge. And I broke my very first million in business in October, sitting bedside with my son in a coma.

And then I broke my second million in business at the next hospital we transferred him to in December. I hit the New York [00:40:00] Times list, and then I hit, I think it was number three, and I stayed on it for 26 weeks. Wow. And, and you know, I had rolled the dice so hard because A PBS special, there’s no guarantee it was a $200,000 investment.

RV: You invested 200,000 uhhuh to be on tv

JJ: to do the public to, when you do a public television, um, show, basically you fund it. Either PBS will fund some of ’em. Okay. But then you have no creative control. So you fund it. Now, Daniel Eman had kind of showed me the ropes on it and I’d gotten his old producer who did his and Pearl Mutters and hymens so and so I’d funded it and now I had to go to all of these PBS stations.

But if the show doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.

RV: Right. And it’s your money on the line.

JJ: It’s your money on the line. So basically I’d gotten a half million dollar advance for this book. I’d invested it all in the [00:41:00] launch between PBS. ’cause not only do you have to fund the show, you have to fund the backend packages with all the books.

Hmm.

JJ: So, so you have the books with the, it’s books and a bunch of other stuff. So figure each one of those costs you about $25 to put together and you have to have at least a thousand of those. You’re

RV: saying to sell them on the show, like Right. People watch the show, they buy the thing, but you gotta pay for the inventory.

You gotta pay for the

JJ: inventory in advance. And then PBS pays you. A month or two after the fact. Yeah. So you’ve gotta front all that. It’s

RV: cash for nightmare. Mm-hmm.

JJ: And you gotta go out to all these places. You gotta fly all these places, you know? And I had my book launch and my team like all these things.

Wow. Yes. So I still remember this because I had taken the whole advance, invested in all of these things. And then I was doing a free plus shipping book launch to, to launch the whole thing off. And I had 11,000 books and we sold out of [00:42:00] those books in under 24 hours. Wow. And what I hadn’t planned on is that, and I didn’t, I was like, uhoh, now what do I do?

I hadn’t planned on two things. I forgot about the amount that shipping would cost.

Yes.

JJ: And that I’d need another $50,000 for shipping and I didn’t have any money. And I was like, okay. Oh, come on. I remember walking through going, are you kidding? So I was like, $50,000 under and I ’cause you sold out of

RV: everything.

JJ: Yeah, because I’d forgotten about the shipping costs. I hadn’t factored them into that. Like you didn’t collect enough? I didn’t collect, I didn’t collect enough to cover extra shipping. I just forgotten it. It was another fee that I was like, oh shoot, I forgot that part. It all worked out. I don’t remember how, but it like showed up.

’cause I was like, come on. You know that it showed up and we sold out of all the books. So I literally called Mary Agnes, who you will meet tomorrow. And I’m like, we need a guide. And here’s what’s crazy. So [00:43:00] we create a guide. So everyone now, because we have all these people who were helping because they really wanted to help, especially now because of grants.

So they’re all now sending to the guide. So we gotta, we had like over a hundred thousand opt-ins. Between the free plus shipping and the guy, like crazy amount of stuff going on. So it actually catapulted the whole thing. Hmm. So, yeah, broke my first million, broke my second million, broke 6 million the next year.

I mean, it just went ba boom.

RV: And then your son survived. And

JJ: my son. So, you know, he comes outta the coma. And by the way, when people come out of the coma, it is not like tv.

Hmm.

JJ: You know where they come. I thought he would, the doctor said when he comes outta the coma, it will be ugly. So I thought he would come outta the coma and scream or something.

And he comes outta the coma and he stares off into space and he had cast on his leg still. He had a cast in his arm. And all he did was move one arm back and forth for [00:44:00] days and stare off in space. And I’m like, oh no. You know, uh oh. And so I started doing everything I could to try to wake up all of his different senses.

I brought in popsicles, I brought in aromatherapy. I would like, just, and he just started coming through, you know? Hmm. But it was, it was like, it was such a mindset management thing. ’cause I had, I just would not allow myself to see him anything but 110%. But there were times that it’d be like uhoh, it’d be like a Friday night in the hospital.

I’d be all by myself. ’cause my, uh, ex-husband and son were home in Palm Desert and I was in LA and the hospital would give me a room to do podcast interviews. I was doing LA TV shows. Wow. And it was just craziness. Crazy.

RV: And then he, but he eventually came out of a coma and then

JJ: he came out of the coma and then he was in, and when they come out of a coma, it’s ugly for months.

[00:45:00] Years. It’s not ugly for a little while. It’s, it’s ugly and they have no filter. So he would go between, he would get like kind of scary, violent where they’d have to medicate him down and they didn’t know how to handle him at that hospital. It wasn’t a rehab hospital. So we then got him over to Children’s Hospital.

So we had him there for a couple months and then it was really clear. I was like, I think we could do better at home. They wanted to keep him there for months and months and rehab him. I’m like, I think we can do this. We got him into like a really great training gym and we just did it at home. And that’s where honestly, my ex-husband’s like the most amazing human for what he’s been able to do with my son.

Wow.

JJ: And bring him back. But you know, I mean, he didn’t know how to talk. He could, I mean, couldn’t remember anything. He had to learn how to walk again, everything.

RV: But he did. He did. Ultimately, he runs, however, how many years did that take to where he, he recovered?

JJ: It took about a year and a half to [00:46:00] really bring him back.

Mentally. He had worked with a speech therapist, like to even know, like, that’s an apple. You know, everything, you know, find words, put words together again. Wow. Um, it’s, yeah, it was crazy.

RV: And meanwhile, you’re paying for all those bills and trying to get this amount, the amount of money.

JJ: I’m like, okay. He’s like the $20 million, I mean, the amount of, because when you look at what it costs, the, a lot of the things that really were instrumental in bringing ’em back are not covered by insurance.

Mm-hmm. Like we did stem cells right into his spine. I had a great doctor who was kind of at the forefront of all of that. We did neurofeedback, we did hyperbaric, we bought a hyperbaric. I mean, we just so many different things because fortunately. I’m in the field. Yeah. And I have all these amazing friends.

Friends, yeah. Who know all this incredible stuff. So we were able to do a lot of stuff. But I, you know, nutrition was one of the first things.

RV: Yeah. That, that, that’s [00:47:00] such an incredible story. And I’m so glad. I mean, that he recovered, you know, there’s, there’s this theme that I’m seeing with your life and this journey of, it’s like, I’m investing to the point of discomfort.

I’m in this uncomfortable situation. I’m succeeding. ’cause I have to, you know, it, it also, as I’m listening to you talk, I think there’s a lot of people have this pride point of like, I’ve never spent money on ads. Right. And people will say that like, I did X, Y, Z without spending money on ads. And every time I meet a hu, like a very successful personal brand, it’s like.

You know, they spent tons of money on advertising coaching. Like, it’s, it’s the opposite. It’s not the pride point of like, I spent nothing. It’s, I invested and reinvested as fast as I could. Yeah. Am I, am I hearing it accurately in your story? That’s, yeah,

JJ: that’s, that’s how I’ve looked at everything. Like a book advance to me.

It’s like, okay, then you invest in marketing. You know, it’s not, can I afford it? It’s like you can’t afford not [00:48:00] to. You look at the most successful people, they’ve never done it by themselves. If I could go back and tell my younger self, like it would’ve been hire mentors, find groups way earlier, I just didn’t even know they were a thing.

Hmm.

JJ: And you know, I mean, one of the devastating thing of the last five years is not being able to run any ads. I mean, imagine that like having a company that stopped all your advertising. Hmm. I mean, crazy. Yeah. Crazy stuff. Yeah. Well, it’s a,

RV: it’s interesting. I mean, so we, you know, we, we built, our first company was an eight figure business.

We never spent a dollar on ads. Brand builders group. We started in 2018. We built that to eight figures in five years. Less than half the time of the first company. Never ran money on ads. And now I’m like, waking up to go. That shouldn’t, that’s not a, that shouldn’t be a pride point. Yeah, that should be a, like, what are you doing?

But I was doing the same

JJ: thing, I’ll tell you like, like I [00:49:00] was, you know, one to two to six, no ads, never ran any ads, sold the company like we’d done a little bit, barely, and then brought the company back. I’m like, get the ads rolling. You know, it’s like, it’s like, why wouldn’t you? Pour a little gasoline on the fire, why wouldn’t you use all of these different things?

RV: Mm-hmm. Well, I, it, it, it’s, I don’t know. It’s like sometimes people think it’s cheating or they think, uh, they shouldn’t have to do it. Or I think particularly for our audience, you know, we, we say that we serve mission-driven messengers. I think that there are a lot of people in the world who think, well, I’m, I’m an artist.

I’m an expert. I’m sort of above advertising. I, or I’m above the marketing. And what I’ve realized is, no, there’s two parts of your art. There is the art of what you do, and then there’s the art of telling people about what you do. Marketing is art. Marketing is part of your art. Otherwise, you’re just creating [00:50:00] stuff that nobody sees, nobody listens to, nobody benefits from.

And so, you know, I wonder how much sometime is, sometimes it’s just that, like, oh, I’m, my stuff is so good. People should have to find me. Versus the humility of going. I, I don’t deserve, like, I have to go fight and, and hustle and, and tell people that I’m here and that you know, that what I’ve created, because otherwise I’m just gonna be overrun by other people who are,

JJ: well, what I used to see on, on Dr.

Phil is that a lot of the experts they would have on TV weren’t the best experts. They were just well spoken. And I, it was interesting at the time because I was going into a lot of different doctor’s offices, helping them put nutrition into their practices. But I couldn’t just do that. I had to start with the marketing piece with them because I would meet some of the most brilliant, brilliant practitioners.

But they couldn’t explain what they could do in [00:51:00] a way that anyone would ever understand and grab. And they were the best kept secrets. And meanwhile, the person who wasn’t really very good at what they did is sitting here on national TV and getting all of these, you know, all these accolades. I’m like, this, this is mixed up.

It’s backwards. So you owe it to your patients. If you really want to transform the world, you’ve gotta be exceptionally good at marketing. And you don’t have to, it’s the, you know, Ben Hardy who, not how you don’t have to learn all the things, but you better get your messaging down. You’ve gotta get your messaging down.

Mm-hmm. You’ve

JJ: gotta be able to do a really good signature talk. You better be able to nail an interview. You’ve gotta be able to tell your stories. Like 20 years ago, you didn’t have to do all this stuff. You wanna be an expert. Nowadays, it’s skill development.

RV: Hmm. Yeah. I, I think that, that, that. Is it, it’s a much more competitive landscape.

I mean, personal brands, and [00:52:00] this is part of why I wanted to interview you and hear your story about selling the company and all of that. I think personal brands are trending towards a level of sophistication that is competing with like private equity and normal entrepreneurship. Right? They’re realizing that like you, you know, this is big business.

Uh, I mean, co I was on Cody Sanchez podcast recently. She’s one of our clients. I mean, they have a team of very sophisticated people who are running an operation. We see someone like, oh, here I am on social media. Like, it’s just like I flipped out my phone and it’s like there’s an army of people. There’s ad spend, there’s data analytics.

There, there are, there are world class employees who are very skilled, who are, are we are now competing against, even though it looks like, oh, this is a person with a phone. But to, to make that kind of global impact. I think that’s. I think that’s trending more and more, especially as the power moves from media companies to individuals.

Money is moving from media companies to like [00:53:00] personal brands and so it’s like the sophistication is also coming along with that. It’s like you don’t just throw up a website like it’s, it’s, those days are over. It’s a big machine now.

JJ: The days where you could write an email and send it and people opened it are over the days where you could invite someone to your teleconference call and sell a five part series are over.

Yeah, but here’s what’s exciting. This is the era of the brand. It is the era of the personal brand because of ai. I believe that this is where we really have an opportunity if we develop our skills. And again, talk, talk about that. I wanna

RV: hear, I want to hear as someone who’s been in this industry for a while, like you, this wasn’t, you were in this industry before.

Personal brand was really like an industry. You’ve been at the top of this game. Tell me about ai. What do you see happening with ai? How does it affect personal brands?

JJ: Well, I think what’s [00:54:00] gonna happen is because so many, it’s so crazy to think of the things that we’re using AI for, when, when you figured it would be much more for like lower tasks, not the more creative tasks, but it will never replace that person telling the story.

You know, it’s, it’s, I know they keep saying, oh, you’re gonna have the AI avatar, but still the podcast, the, the standing on a stage speaking, it’s not gonna be able to replace that hopefully. Right. And so what does that mean? That means we have to be really good at being able to tell our story, at being able to, to relate at being able to interview, to be interviewed.

We have to sharpen those saws. That’s where I think we need to really double down is, is learn to be a better speaker, lean into great speaker trainings, you know, learn from people like my buddy Lisa Nichols. Um, you know, I am constantly doing speaker training. Mm. Because I think [00:55:00] that skill is the single best skill we could have, and you can never be too good at it.

RV: Mm. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Um, I’ll make a little secret. So Ed Millet and I are working on a speaker training thing that we haven’t announced yet, but you can stay tuned for that because, but that’s so powerful to hear about, like this idea of. It’s the human skills, like leaning into the human skills.

’cause AI takes over all the more like operational stuff, the researching, the prep, like a lot of those things help. But yeah, there is something just magic about this. You know, we only started doing these in-person podcasts like a few weeks ago. Uh, we’ve been hosting this show for seven years, but we didn’t invest in having the space and everything.

And it’s just like there’s a magic to this that is just so much better, so much better. It’s so much better. It’s, it’s harder to coordinate, especially with, you know, people who are busy. But, um, that’s amazing and, and encouraging. To me, that is an inspiring to me to hear you say that, to [00:56:00] go no matter what happens with ai, more and more it’s just gonna create this, almost like this craving for the attraction of the, the human interaction, the human element.

And therefore investing in those skills, which in some ways maybe have gotten pushed down in the past maybe 10, 20 years of the soft, the soft skills. They’ve been like the soft skills. Are kind of coming back Right. And being more, more important. So, uh, JJ, this has been amazing. Uh, where do you want people to go if they want to learn more about you?

Stay connected. Uh,

JJ: well, jj virgin.com is mine again. Boom. Yay. So, two things. That’s, that’s my consumer world. And then we also have rebranded to Health Business Growth Collective. Mm-hmm. Which I like. It was so funny. We did all of our rebranding around our Mindshare collaborative and we did the new logos and everything else.

And we were in London [00:57:00] last year and I woke up one morning, we were doing a meditation. I’m like, uhoh. We need to change the name and uh, ’cause we, we’d been doing some work there and I’m like, they don’t know what Mindshare is there. So I’m like, oh, I love it when that epiphany

RV: comes after you’ve spent 50 grads.

It’s always, it’s always after

JJ: that it was like, we worked with left right labs. I’m like, oh. And so Tim pulls up and I think, you know what I’m gonna tell him on the plane. I’ll tell him on the plane from London to Tampa because he’s stuck there with me. So if he gets upset, he’s stuck

RV: strategy. And

JJ: literally he pulls off his eye mask after the meditation and looks at me.

He goes, we need to rebrand. And I’m like, get outta my head. Oh wow. We’ll take it. Yeah.

RV: We love that. So, so, yeah. And you have amazing people in this community. Oh my gosh, they’re incredible. We’ve had a couple of our clients that I know you’ve had a ma a massive influence on over their career and um, it’s just really, really great.

Well, uh, jj thanks for [00:58:00] the stories. Thanks for sharing the experience and. Going on this journey. And, and I have to say, I’m, I’m so inspired by the fact that you continually, intentionally, deliberately stretch yourself just a little bit outta your comfort zone.

JJ: We have to, well, I gotta tell you one thing sticks with me.

This is my, my concept of how you can continually stretch yourself outta your comfort zone. And I think it all comes down to your physical body. When you do hard things, when you work out and you push yourself and you do hard things, it shows your, your mind. And actually, Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about this, like you form new neural pathways that tell your body you can do hard things.

And so then you get faced with scary things in life and hard things in life. You’re like, I can do these hard things. So I know this is a business podcast, but. Go do hard workouts too.

RV: I love it. I love it. Well follow jj, give her some love [00:59:00] online. Say hello, drop a comment, share this episode with somebody who needs to see it, and push yourself outside of your comfort zone so that you can, you can confidently declare and build the, just the, the, the promise of knowing you can do hard things.

It’s, it’s not the thing you have to avoid. It’s the thing that you have to do. That is the key to everything else. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.

Ep 594: 10 Things You Can Do to Better Manage Your Marriage and Run a Happy House | Casey & Meygan Caston Recap

[00:00:00] Run your house, like you run your business. That’s some of the very best marriage advice that Rory and I got during our newlywed season, and somebody came up to us and said, Hey, listen, you guys. Have figured out how to operationalize and systemize so many things in the business arena. What we encourage you to do as you move forward in this new marriage endeavor, which was now officially 15 years ago as I record this you need to treat your family, your marriage, your household, like you do your business.

So the systems, processes rhythms that you work so hard, tirelessly to create in your business. Put as much energy and effort into that into your household, which I would say our marriage and family follow up under, and you will see success in both now. I got prompted to record this video after a awesome podcast interview that I [00:01:00] did for the influential personal brand with Casey and Megan who are the founders, Casey and Megan Caston, who are the founders of Marriage 365.

And I encourage you if any of being that I share resonates with you, go listen to that full episode. But it, it reminded me of this advice that we were so fortunate, so lucky to receive. In the very early months of getting married all the way back in 2010. And one of the things that hit me is that I have a lot of friends in the entrepreneurial community.

One I. I am one too. I live in Nashville and there’s a huge entrepreneurial community here. But also as a part of the blessing of being a part of this brand builders group is we have a ton of solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and those aspiring to be that. So I get to hear a lot of the things that are working and, and things that are not.

And I’ll tell you something that I have found is an interesting trend. And not I’m not casting anything other than [00:02:00] love and light to everyone that I have learned from. But here’s what I would say. One of the biggest things that I’ve learned from my entrepreneur friends is that I have to create.

A system for running my house like I have for my business because so many of my friends in this arena, they are winning at business, right? Their, their businesses are thriving, their teams are great, their company culture is great. They’re winning at work, and they are struggling at home. It. They go from thriving at business to chaos at home.

And here’s what I know for any of us who live in a dual environment, if there is an area of your life where you’re winning and there is an area of a life where you’re struggling, what are we as human beings naturally prone to do? Right. We’re gonna go to where we’re winning, right? Because that’s where we feel accomplished.

That’s where we get accolades. That’s also where we get paid, right? Versus the place where I’m struggling and I’m not [00:03:00] appreciated and nothing I say works and I come home to chaos. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Right? If, and you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to get this right, but it’s like if you have a tight schedule at work.

Make your tight schedule at home, right? If you run off a, a certain rhythm at work, why can’t you run off that same rhythm at home? Right? If you have onboarding manuals in your company, then why on goodness gracious, do you not have manuals for your house? So with all of that said I really started thinking after this of like, why?

Why? Do. So many of us live in these dual word dual worlds of we’re winning at work and we’re struggling at home when it doesn’t have to be that way. We know how to do it ’cause we do, we do it over here. But how do we transfer this professional feat that we’ve done to the personal one in our marriages and our families and in our households?

So. By no means do I have this. Figured it out, figured out. I most certainly do not. But I have learned 10 healthy [00:04:00] practices that are helping us move more towards the way of having this figured out with a long way to go. But I thought I would share 10 things with you that can help you run a better house and a better marriage.

So, take the best, leave the rest. But here are the 10 things that I have learned over the last 15 years. Of running a house, running a business, and having a marriage that works. Number one, you gotta have a weekly meeting. Rory and I started this a few years ago, and we have a weekly meeting every Monday from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM.

We do our very best to not book over that if, if we have to, we reschedule it. But it’s a three hour meeting and we are married in business together, so a bulk of that meeting is talking about work, but another part of that meeting is running over our families. Weekly schedule, right? Is the nanny working?

Is anyone traveling? Do we have any evening events? Do we have any morning commits? Do we have sporting events, but we do a healthy [00:05:00] review of like what’s happening in our lives this week at work. And at home. Is there something hard coming up? Is there a celebration we wanna be prepared for? Is it gonna be a tough week?

Should it be an easy week? Like we mentally and emotionally prepare on Monday mornings for the week ahead for our family, our house, our kids, ourselves, and our business. A part of that is redefining, like making sure date, night on date night is on, the babysitter is on, here’s what we’re doing. But we have a plan.

Right. And I think that’s the number one thing to take away from here is like, do you have a plan for how you’re running your family? I. Your marriage, your kids, your house. If not, that’s step one. And by simply adding a meeting to, okay, we don’t have a plan, we just need to have a meeting to get a plan.

Start there and then make it a weekly recurrence, right? For us, we do it at the start of the day. Maybe you have to do it after the kids go down. Maybe you have to do it earlier in the morning. Maybe you have to do it on a weekend. Doesn’t matter. It is worth it. So, weekly meeting. Second thing is have [00:06:00] a family shared calendar.

We use Skylight. I’m not an affiliate for Skylight. I get no perks for recommending Skylight. It’s just a tool that really works. It connects with Gmail or Outlook. But I found that having everything into my Outlook calendar was too overwhelming. I needed my Outlook calendar. That was just all the things.

Work And our skylight calendar is a shared calendar that we can share with grandparents. We can share with our childcare support our nanny and it, it has our family schedule. Travel sports schools, spring breaks, vacations. All the things, but it’s a shared family calendar in addition to our work calendars.

Number three is we have a house manual, right? And one of the things that we learned is that we kept. Going over the same exact stuff all the time of like, how do you change this frigging filter in the fridge again? Or, Hey, who, who, who’s the, who’s the kid’s eye doctor that we saw that one time? Or where do we go to get the oil changed?

Or, you know, [00:07:00] who is that vendor? Or, or who’s the, who’s the phone number for the, the lawn maintenance? It was all this chaos. It was chaos. It was just chaos. So years ago, probably seven years ago, probably right around when we were pregnant with our first child somebody gave us the advice of like, y’all need a house manual.

How does your house run? Right? What are the vendors you use? Where like we have a, a little reference for all the manuals, for the refrigerator, the microwave, all the warranties are organized in this house manual. The phone numbers, emergency contacts where we buy certain things. The rhythm for certain things of like, Hey.

April 1st schedule, power washing you know, October 1st schedule, Christmas lights. Here are the vendors. It’s all the things so that somebody else could step in and help support us, or if we were gonna do it, we just go to the manual. We do this at work all the time. It’s called SOPs. We built a family, SOP, we built a house, SOP, and it changed our life.

It made things so much easier. We [00:08:00] put the time in on the front end to save hours, if not dozens, hundreds of hours later on. So a family or a house manual. Okay, number four. Schedule on a recurring basis, all routine things and appointments. We do this on an annual basis, all doctor’s appointments, car appointments vacations when we go get groceries, when we do meal prep how often we get gas to make sure there’s always gas in the tanks all the things, right?

And, and that may seem excessive, but again, it’s like whatever you don’t plan for, you will be reactive to. So this is a proactive measure of going, how do I create peace in my house? How do I create peace in my family? So those are routinely scheduled and on the calendar, they’re on the shared calendar for the family calendar, they’re on my work calendar if it interferes during a work schedule.

Right, or it coincides. Not always interferes that. I think these are really important things of going, no, we have rhythms and routines to [00:09:00] our schedule for our health, for our spirituality, for, you know, maintenance. Like all the things are done, scheduled on a recurring basis. Just follow the schedule, right?

Just look at the calendar and go, and it, again, it’s about peace, right? Number five, a weekly date night. This is one of those routines that’s a non-negotiable for us. We started this in the very early years of our marriage. Again, someone gave us this great advice. We took it. Never looked back. Wednesday night is date night.

And Rory, he’s my husband. He continues to court me and date him to date me. Right? It’s his job to plan the date. So, this is one of those places where as the. You know, type a wife, I have to surrender, control and go, whatever it is you choose, I will do. But it’s, it’s the process of dating, right?

This is how you keep a healthy marriage. It’s connected time and it’s like, it’s a non-negotiable, right? Find the sitter, drop ’em off with friends, figure out a barter arrangement. But we have to have time protected time [00:10:00] for our marriage. Right, and that’s about prioritizing that. So, a weekly date night, we also prioritize our family.

So we do a family date night. We do Friday night family night. And this is where the kids get to pick family activities. We go bowling, we go biking. Sometimes we do movie night. But this is something that we all collectively get to look forward to and so that they don’t get sad when we leave them on Wednesday night.

We’re always talking about what we’re gonna do on Friday night, family night, right? So those are two types of recurring rhythms. That help protect our marriage and bond our family. A weekly, a weekly date night with just me and Rory and a Friday night family night with us and our kids. Number seven we have a family bookkeeper.

I cannot recommend this enough. And now again, that’s has to be within your means and has to be within your budget. But this could be someone that you hire. For just a couple of hours a week. This could be someone you hire for a couple of hours a month. It could be a family office. There’s lots of different things that you could do here, but a [00:11:00] family bookkeeper has saved us so much stress, so many arguments, and so, so, so many hours.

Of work, right? Someone to monitor our budget help us pay our bills, help us keep things in line for taxes. And I can honestly say in the 15 years that I’ve been married and the 18 years that Rory and I have been together, I can honestly and transparently say that I can count on one hand how many disagreements that we’ve had about money.

And that is because we set a budget, we stick to the budget, and we have someone helping us. Hold us accountable. We have someone doing the prep, the plan, the tracking, the review so that we can stay aligned and on the same page. And to me, I would rather forfeit dinners out even vacations in order to have that level of peace in our family and in our life.

So, a family bookkeeper would be on my top 10 list. Number eight, outsource, automate, or delegate. Things that you cannot do. Physically or time [00:12:00] constraints or that you’re just not good at doing or that you simply just don’t want to do. Right? And this, again, this is within your means and within your budget.

But outsource, automate, or delegate, what am I talking about? It’s make sure you’re enrolled in online bill pay. That would be an automate one. Outsource or delegate would be like if you just really. Despise laundry. You know what? Hire a high school student or a college student or find someone on care.com and pay the 20 to $30 a week to have someone come in and do that, to give you that one to two hours back.

Right? And what would you do with that? Right? Could you go on a date night? Could you have an hour to yourself? An hour with your kids? Like, right, maybe it’s my husband does not love. Lawn care that’s not his gifting. And instead of doing something else, we invest the money to have someone else take care of the yard.

’cause it’s not what he wants to do after work or on the weekends. Right. But those are budgetary decisions while we have a family bookkeeper of going, what are the things that just [00:13:00] don’t bring us joy? Like what are the things that create stress are. Chaos or havoc in our families. And we’re, we’re deciding how to use the means and the money we have to create peace to create something that works for our family.

Doesn’t have to work for every family. It just has to work for your family. Number nine. I said this before, but I’m gonna say it again. Prioritize your marriage. Time together. Time away, right? So we have a weekly date night. We also try to do a quarterly getaway. Sometimes those don’t fall exactly once per quarter, but it’s two nights away.

Right. And that’s important. It’s not in your house, right? It’s not with your kids. And honestly, this takes a lot of creativity. We don’t have family who live in our town, so, whether we’re having to coordinate with parents who live out of town we’re asking friends to help, but it’s like. We, we are doing it right.

We are trying to figure out a way to make it work because we know that a happy marriage makes a happy family, a happy, and Rory AJ makes a happy [00:14:00] two little boys, right? And that is a really important part. We also know that anytime that we feel stress in our marriage, stress in our family is a sign of we haven’t had alone time.

In, in a long time, right? So, we have a quarterly rhythm and sometimes it’s a one night staycation. We can’t get away for two nights. We can’t leave town, but you make it work. Prioritize your me your me, your marriage, pursue each other, right? Continue to get to know each other, date each other beyond your wedding date.

One of the things that I would say that you always gonna kill me for sharing this tip with you guys but something that has really helped us in this pursuing is for special gifts throughout the year, and for this is married couples only. I am not advocating for sex outside of marriage. This is.

For within the marriage bed only. This is my recommendation for women or men, depending on, you know, how it all works in your marriage. But I give him for Christmases, Valentine’s and a anniversary [00:15:00] present sex coupons and sex coupon is free reign. For him to use it at potentially inconvenient times, that gives him a hundred percent confidence he’s always gonna get a yes.

And I will tell you what, it’s a mutually agreed upon gift that helps us prioritize our marriage, helps him pursue me, and helps me pursue him. Right? These are the exchanges that you gotta have to decide of like, how do I pursue my spouse? How do I love on my spouse? And I have found that this is the best gift I’ve ever given my husband, ever.

And so find a thing that allows you to have that. Play full time with each other and to do something that gives you free reign to be a married team. Right? And that’s a part of it, right? And then last, but definitely not least, is you have to learn how to make time for yourself. And I say you have to learn because it, it, the time doesn’t just appear.

That doesn’t exist, but you have to learn [00:16:00] how to make time for yourself. You have to prioritize it, right? Everyone in my family knows that a stressed AJ is not good for the family. And I know that for me, my alone time is made up of being outside. Alone time inside is no good for me, right? It’s like I need to exert energy.

I need to be outside and I need my alone time. And for me, I need time with the Lord. I need time to sit and settle and be with the Lord if I’m going to be a healthy, happy, productive human being for our company and for our family, right? And so if I have to get up early, then that’s what’s gonna have to happen.

If I have to delay a meeting, it’s like alone. Time is precious. We don’t get enough of it. And I don’t mean alone time in front of a tv. That is not what I’m talking about. Alone. Time is mean. Actually having time with yourself, you can think, you can pray, you can journal you can be fit, you can do healthy stuff, you can be outside, but find something that actually allows [00:17:00] you just to be.

With yourself. And I know that anytime that I’m stressed, my husband will say, why don’t you just go take a walk? And what he’s really saying is, you need some time alone. So we have to be as the, the managers of our family productive and aware enough to know that I just need to take a step back and have some alone time so I can reset and come back a better person.

Those are my 10 things that can help you run a happy house and better manage your marriage.

Ep 593: From the Brink of Divorce to Empowering Millions: How Casey and Meygan Caston Built Marriage365

AJ: [00:00:00] Hey y’all. Welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. Uh, we got a special episode today that is personal in nature, and we love doing episodes like this every so often because in the world of talking about personal branding and tips and technologies and strategies, sometimes we just need to take a step back and also look at the other parts of our life that are really.

Foundational and fundamental. And today we’re gonna be talking about one of those parts on the topic of marriage because as an entrepreneur who is married to an entrepreneur who is in business together, uh, this is a never ending topic at our house. And, uh, what I have learned over the last. Few months, as I’ve been talking to a lot of brand builders, group members and podcast listeners is there’s a lot of you out there who are on the precipice of going into business with your spouse.

And so I thought this would be an amazing episode, uh, to [00:01:00] not only hear from two people who are married. And working on their brand together, uh, but two people who actually speak about marriage. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. And so we are joined by Casey and Megan Caston. These are the passionate co-founders of Marriage 365, which I have got to learn.

So much about over the last several months, and I love, they also have a new booklet just came out. Uh, you guys are gonna learn all about that. They have an amazing app. We’ll talk more about that later as well. Um, but they have an amazing, uh, and powerful testament to resilience and love as they’ve transformed their own struggles from the brink of divorce into a thriving resource for couples.

Everywhere. And, uh, that includes, uh, not just people who are married in a business together, but it’s all types of couples from all different types of walks of life. Uh, they’ve been married, uh, I believe now for almost or over 22 years if [00:02:00] my, uh, memory is correct. Uh, but they also have over a decade of experience helping couples reconnect.

And so today we’re gonna talk about something that might be controversial in nature, which is. Couples don’t need more therapy, they need more tools. So Casey, Megan, welcome to the show.

Casey: Thank you so much aj. Excited to be here. Yes. It’s weird that marriage is our business and our business is marriage. Yeah.

So it is a nonstop conversation around our world to like, how do we manage the business and our marriage at the same time? When that’s our business.

Meygan: Oh yeah. We, we’ll get in like to an argument and then immediately after I’m like, Ooh, that would be a really good podcast episode. It’s like, okay babe, chill out.

Let’s just like calm down from the argument. But it’s funny because every time we have an interaction, we learn, we fight, we argue like every other couple, um, you know, we’re like, how can we help other people that are in the same situation as we are? [00:03:00] That’s what we do.

AJ: I love that. Uh, and you know, uh, what a great way to make every argument a successful piece of your content,

Meygan: make every argument count.

AJ: That’s right. That’s right. Um, I love that. And, uh, what I would love to do, um, is kind of, you know, start with some of the, the meat and tools, and then I’ll probably backtrack a little bit and talk about how you guys got here. But since I’ve led with that provocative statement of, you know, couples don’t need more therapy.

They need more tools. I would actually love to start there because I think that we, even before I hit record, we were having this conversation, I’ve, how the default is with any relationship, any marriage that’s struggling, it’s like, oh, we need, we need to go to therapy. Mm-hmm. And you guys are going, no, couples don’t need more of that.

They need better tools. They need more tools. Yeah. So can you just kind of like, well, one, how did you come to this? You know, you know, recollection of like, no, it’s not that, it’s this. And then what? [00:04:00] What are the tools that we need as married couples?

Casey: Yeah, so I think when we walked into marriage, like all of our friends, we just kind of felt like love is all you need and we’re just gonna wing it.

And I think there’s so many people that feel like that when it comes to their love life. They just kind of go off on the whims of whatever they feel in the moment. And I think that that is very damaging to long-term relationships because Megan and I got married and then I thought love would carry us through the day.

But what happens when I don’t feel love? Then I, then I thought there was something actually wrong with us, and that’s what took us down by year three, we, we grew to actually hate each other because we, we had all these expectations over how you were supposed to treat me and you were supposed to be there for me.

Then you let me down. And all that missed expectations just led to anger and resentment and it was very explosive for us. We’re very, we’re both fighters competitive and we’re probably more different than [00:05:00] we are alike.

Meygan: Yeah, on top of being very stubborn people. Stubborn, so then very stubborn. Then you kind of start to think, you know, did I marry the wrong person?

And I think all these couples go through those questions. Did I make the biggest mistake? Did I marry the wrong person? Oh my gosh, we’re falling out of love. And this whole idea of therapy, I mean, therapy’s only been around for what, a little less than a hundred years. So what did all the millions and millions of couples do from the beginning of time?
It’s the longest institution we have on the planet. What did they do? They couldn’t go to therapy. And what do you do if you can’t afford therapy? What do you do if you have a spouse who’s unwilling to go to therapy? Which by the way is the majority of couples. These are so many good questions. Yes. What do you do if you don’t have a great therapist in your area?

I mean, I know we’re both fortunate to live more in areas where there’s a lot of. Resources and therapy. There’s a lot of people in small towns that they don’t have. If you go to the one marriage and family therapist, everyone in your town’s gonna know about it, and everyone’s gonna talk about it and go, Ooh, what’s wrong with them?

Casey: Right. And so that [00:06:00] just can leave a fe a a couple feeling very stuck. Mm-hmm. And from a biblical worldview, you know, we, we see that there’s biblical principles, uh, that make things work. They’re found in the Book of Proverbs, we always consider the book of Proverbs to be actually be the book of marriage.

Mm. Because. And, and, and when you think about Proverbs and even like New Testament James, like very practical, very tactical. And when you think about a marriage relationship, you can’t give a platitude to get somebody out of anger and resentment. You have to give them tools to be able to navigate conflict, talk about uncomfortable topics and, and to, to even plan for the future.

So I think there was a big aha. Especially as like, we’re trying to, we’re like building our business. And when we think about walking into this area and domain of our life, you know, we’re very practical. We’re tactical, we’re looking at goals, we’re looking at frameworks. How do I build [00:07:00] and scale a business?

And when I talk to entrepreneurs, which, which most of our listeners, right, they’re all, we’re all trying to build a brand. We’re building a business. We’re listening to podcasts, we’re receiving content and information, and how do I structure my business? What are my operating system for my business?

Mm-hmm.

Casey: And so working with entrepreneurs, they totally understand that I. But then when they walk through the front door of their home, it’s just the wild, wild west. Yeah. It’s chaos. You’re reactive. Mm-hmm. And it’s like I walk, you know, when I walk into the office, I’m like thinking Stephen Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people.

Be proactive. First things first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when I walk in the home, it’s like, be reactive. The priorities are all out of whack. Like, I’m not, you know, trying to learn and grow. And that becomes the place where a lot of couples find themselves struggling because they haven’t been intentional [00:08:00] and they haven’t been curious with that.

I have

AJ: a question. Yeah. ’cause I think that is, uh, spot on what you just said. ’cause it’s, I live in a very entrepreneurial, you know, connected community, uh, here in Nashville. And what you just said is true. I’ve almost. Everyone that I know, it’s like, you know, it’s like they run a tight ship at work and when they get home it’s complete chaos.

Yeah, yeah. And we were really fortunate to get some amazing life advice early in our marriage. ’cause we were, I don’t know if you guys know this, we were business partners, Rory and I, before we fell in love and got married.

Meygan: Oh, I did not know that. So we started

AJ: in business. Wow. Before we fell in love and got married and.

Somebody just told us very early on, maybe even before we were formally married, but they just said, Hey, let me give you a tip that’s gonna help you in every aspect of this partnership [00:09:00] together. And they said. Run your house, like you run your business. Oh, I see. That’s great

Meygan: advice. Yep. Great advice.

Whoever that was. Thank you.

AJ: And so and so we did. Yeah. Um, like from the moment that we got married, we’ve always had, like, this is our household calendar, this is our business calendar. We have a household, uh, manual of like how the house works, what does, like, we’ve literally treated it like that. That was not of our own volition, right?

There was somebody who came in and said like, this is the best advice I can give you in this season of life you’re in. And it’s treat your house like you treat your business. But most didn’t get that advice or they haven’t heated that advice. And since you guys have worked with so many couples like this, I would just love to know like.

Why is that? Like why are we so wired to do it in one aspect of our life and completely negate or ignore it in another?

Meygan: Yeah, I think honestly, it’s a cultural thing. I think that we invest so much into our children’s education, which is great, and then we go to college and we get really passionate about [00:10:00] our career and that pathway.

Right, right. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all for that. We, I believe, and Casey believes this too, and we are seeing this now, and I think especially after Covid, our relational IQ is depleted. It’s not there. It’s non-existent or it’s very weak. Where we are really good in our career. Or our hobby, but we are not great at relationships, emotions, feelings, communication within relationships that matter.

And so Well,

Casey: people wanna go where they’re winning too.

Meygan: Yeah. And you wanna go where you’re winning. So if you’re winning at work, you’re not winning at home, you’re gonna escape to work. And not only that, but you get a paycheck and you get attaboys at work. Right. Where at home it’s. You might be getting nitpicked or

Casey: you just get dirty diapers

Meygan: Yeah.

To do that. Right. Um, your kids don’t thank you until they’re older. That, and so it’s kind of thing good. Yeah. And so I think that what we’re seeing is this cultural shift and it’s very slow, which is good. It’s going in the right direction where people are realizing it’s not working [00:11:00] what we’re doing.

Mm-hmm.

Meygan: We’re neglecting the most important thing, which is connecting with others. Right. Our, our work is meaningful because we believe in it, but that. Can can shift any day, right? Like you could lose your job tomorrow. You could get in a car accident and be parallel. I mean, we just don’t know what tomorrow holds.

But if we’re connected to our spouse at home and that’s like the mothership and our family’s running well then, then we’re good to go. So I think, again, going back to your example, see you guys didn’t need therapy. You got a tool. And you utilized. There you go. The tool. And it worked for you. And that’s what’s amazing.

And listen, we’re not here to, to harp on therapy because part of our story is I went to therapy by myself because he wouldn’t go. Mm-hmm. We’re very pro, by the way, individual therapy. Yeah. But again, not everybody can afford it. Not everyone’s gonna go.

AJ: Yeah. It’s expensive. Hard to find good people, hard to afford it.

Not covered by insurance out, I mean, yeah. Yes.

Meygan: You know what, AJ too. It’s a very slow process. You know, a once a week, [00:12:00] one hour session is not enough for most people by the time they go to therapy. I think that’s the other thing, like the the way it is is, is

Casey: it’s hard now, and mind you aj, we’re, we got a unique perspective because we probably get.

Two to 300 dms a day just on Instagram. And the story is the same. We’ve spent thousands of dollars and months and years in therapy. Yeah. And all we do is just talk about our problems, but we don’t have a tool. Solution. Yeah. Or a solution. And that to me, right there is where again, like. Uh, marriage is so tactical in life.

Like the way you run your marriage is the way you run, actually a lot of things in your life. Yeah. Um, and that’s why what actually one of the tools that we talk about is the weekly marriage business meeting, which you kind of actually do with Rory, which is once a week Megan and I walk through our calendars.

Yeah. We look through meal plans. We have a, a whole list. We’ll, we’ll send that to you so you can share that with your, your audience, but

love that.

Casey: Um, it is a [00:13:00] weekly meeting and it sets, it sets intention. Yeah. The right expectation and we find alignment for the week ahead where we’re actually calendaring time for us too.

Mm-hmm. Or alone time. Like I need some self-care time. I need to work out. Right. I got, I gotta put that in the calendar, but I walk through the week now being very proactive and when I do have those evenings with Megan, instead of talking about the schedules. We actually get to connect

Meygan: and have fun together.

’cause we

Casey: already talked about all the transactional stuff. Yep. We’ve talked about the logistics of life

Meygan: and we say it cuts conflict, 50%. Oh, easy for every couple. Easy. And, and honestly, aj, we fight if we don’t do our weekly marriage business meeting, because then that word means we’re not aligned. And wait, you said you’d be home at six?

Well, no, I said seven 30. Well, we didn’t talk about it, so that’s why we are. Adamant every Sunday night after the kids go to bed, well, now they’re teenagers even when the kids are up. Um, when they were little, it was after they went to bed. We, we talk about it and there’s something that’s a little [00:14:00] controversial on that worksheet, but we schedule sex.

We’re adamant boo the kids for scheduling sex. And we always tell people this, if you are having spontaneous sex and both you and your spouse are satisfied with the quality and the quantity. Then you don’t need to schedule sex, but if one of you is wanting it more or you feel like it’s not happening ’cause you’re so busy, which.

People probably look at us and think, well, you work together and you’re talking about marriage. You have all the time in the world to have sex. Even we struggle to find time. Like we’re busy. Yeah. I worked like a 12 hour day yesterday. We didn’t have sex, so that’s why we schedule it. You know what,

Casey: tomorrow’s though, babe.

Meygan: I know. Hump day. Hump day. Wednesday night. Our kids Wednesday, our kids go to youth group every Wednesday night. Guess who’s having sex? So don’t come and knocking on our door by the Wednesday. So

Casey: we put, we put in the calendar nap time. Nap nap time. It stands for Naughty and Playful.

Meygan: Oh, that’s hilarious.

Yes. The way

Casey: the kids, if they see the calendar, they’re like, oh, it’s just nap time. Okay.

Meygan: We don’t wanna, we don’t wanna put like sexy time and then our teenagers are like, Ew, [00:15:00] gross. I remember though, this is a funny like, side note that our daughter, she um, like did catch our phone when she was eight and she’s like, why are you taking a nap at nine o’clock at night?

AJ: Oh my gosh. So bed. Um, because

Meygan: moms all the

AJ: things when your kids grow up and they’re

Meygan: gonna be like, oh my gosh, I know. Yeah. They’re gonna hear this and

Casey: they’re gonna be like, ah,

Meygan: yes. But yeah, so we even schedule sex. And I think that what’s really cool about it, and obviously you can tell we’re passionate about this, is that we schedule doctor’s appointments, dentist visits, oil changes.

Mm-hmm.

Meygan: Uh, podcasts, like being a guest on a podcast was in our calendar with a reminder because it’s a priority for us, right? Yeah. It’s, our brain is our largest sex organ. Yeah. So if we go into marriage thinking and sex, wow, this is something I get to do. Like I get to put this on my calendar and I get to prioritize it.

And then Casey on Wednesdays is so much more nice and thoughtful and true foreplay all day long. Like, I mean, but it’s

Casey: Tuesday and I’m already thinking about Wednesday.

Meygan: Yeah. And I’m, yeah, and I’m I, and it’s funny ’cause [00:16:00] they, people say, well, gosh, doesn’t it feel so like forced? I’m thinking again though, if your brain is your largest sex organ and you’re going.

Into it feeling that, yes. But after we enjoy sex, we’ve never been like, well, that wasn’t worth it. Of course. We’re like, why don’t we schedule it more? Yep.

AJ: I’ve been reading, um, the book, it’s an oldie but a goodie, um, what to say when you talk to yourself by Shad Helmstetter. And one of the things that I’m constantly reminded of, ’cause it’s all about positive self-talk and all that, our entire company is reading the book, um, as our Q1 book of the quarter.

And it was a great reminder to me. It’s like we can train our brain, right? Yeah. And we can reframe, rewire, uh, we can condition ourselves and our brain is gonna naturally react to whatever we feed it the most. Right, exactly. And a lot of that is routines and habits. And it’s like back to scheduling, right?

It’s like, it, it does become this, uh, muscle [00:17:00] memory of like, oh no, this isn’t just in my schedule. It’s not so, you know. Non-intimate because it’s, oh, it’s in my calendar. It’s like, no. It becomes a part of muscle memory of like your body starts to know like, Hey, every Wednesday, like this is coming. Right?

There’s all those natural things that start to happen, uh, that make it less. I don’t know. Scheduled per se. Yeah. Yes. Uh, but it’s, it’s the, it’s whatever I tell people all the time, it’s like, whatever gets me to do the thing I’m supposed to do is worth me doing the thing to get me to do the thing I’m supposed to do.

There you go.

Meygan: Yes. Right. Whatever. It’s in marriage. We are advocates for having a shared calendar. Yeah. And putting anything you need to mm-hmm. With reminders. Text My Spouse a flirty text. Put it in your phone. Yeah. That’s okay. If it doesn’t come natural to you, then make it, make it habit of it to put it in your phone to remind you.

Casey: Well, and aj, I, I wanna actually want to, uh, kinda riff on that concept of having the right mindset that leads us to successful relationships because, you know, um. [00:18:00] For, for your listeners. We’re all entrepreneurs. We all actually have these two essential mindsets that Megan and I have kind of sussed out that like creates successful marriages.

And the first one is curiosity. So as an entrepreneur, we walk into the marketplace and we go. What is a problem I can solve? What kind of gifts and talents do I bring to the marketplace? And how can I solve a problem such that I can make a profit, earn a living, you know, sustain my family? And there’s a lot of curiosity behind that because you try, a marketing effort doesn’t work.

Meygan: What do you

Casey: do? Let’s get curious. Why didn’t it work? Why didn’t

Meygan: it work? Let’s, let’s, let’s,

Casey: let’s try a different way. That didn’t work. Let’s try a different way.

Meygan: Constant AB testing. Yeah.

Casey: I mean, I think marriage 365, we, we felt called, we knew that God had called us. There was so many different, like, like iterations of the clouds parting and it said something about marriage for us and we were like, well, what do we do?

[00:19:00] What do we do next? We got curious and I think when we come to our relationship. We’re very curious when we first start dating our partner.

Mm-hmm.

Casey: Right across the table. And you’re looking at this person just like enamored and like you’re just like, who is this person? Tell me your hopes and your dreams, your desires, where you wanna go in life.

What’s your childhood like? Tell, tell me everything. ’cause I want to know, and while you’re asking all these great questions. What happens is you’re communicating without communicating it. I desire you.

Mm. I

Casey: I wanna totally pursue you. Totally. I wanna know more about you. And that right there, that fuels attraction.

I. Okay, so what happens is then we get married and then we get stuck in the routines and the wash, rinse, repeat of the weeks go by and we stop getting curious. Yeah, and it’s not

Meygan: intentional. No. We’re not waking up purposefully saying, I don’t wanna know your heart. [00:20:00] We just get busy or distracted, or we turn on the tv rather than turn towards each other and curiosity.

We should never stop being curious about our spouse, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, what’s going on in their world because. We change, we evolve as humans, but also we need to continue to get curious about ourselves. Ooh, gosh, why did I respond that way? Ooh, when my husband said this, I got triggered.

What is going on inside of my heart? Yeah. So curiosity isn’t just about the other person, it’s also about you as a couple and you yourself.

Casey: Yeah, and I, I use, I like to use the image of a lattice in a vine. Okay. If curiosity is the vine that kind of crawls all over and you know, finds these little nooks and crannies

The second, second mindset is intentionality. And intentionality is the lattice that holds the vine together.

Mm-hmm.

Casey: Because again, as entrepreneurs, we realize if we wanna sustain a business, we have to be intentional. Going back to being [00:21:00] proactive, right? Mm-hmm. To weekly marriage, business meeting. Could you imagine Rory?

I’m sorry, aj, uh, if you walked in. To your, to brand builders and you were like, okay guys, this week everybody just do really good work and just, just go out there and do great work. And And you didn’t give them a plan. You didn’t tell goals. Yeah. It just would be chaos. It would be chaos. And that to me is, you know, we walk into building a business very intentional by learning and growing.

Hiring coaches, hiring you guys, right? When we launched our book, we hired you guys because you guys were gonna give us the structure on the plan, how to launch a bestseller. We

Meygan: needed a plan, we needed next steps. We had no idea what we were doing. Right? And you provided that.

Casey: And so aj, like the same thing happens, is like we walk into relationship relationships.

We stop being intentional.

Meygan: Yeah. We were intentional when we were dating. I mean, you [00:22:00] know, if, if. Rory didn’t initiate a date.

Oh yeah.

Meygan: Right. You’d been like, snooze fest. Something’s wrong with this guy. You know? Like he’s not being intentional. Like if he, if you were on a date and he was kinda like, yeah, whatever you wanna do, like whatever.

And he was really passive. You’d be so turned off by it. We’re so intentional when we’re dating and again. We get married. It’s not that we intentionally wake up to not be intentional. It happens. We get busy, we build resentment of the kids, get in the way, whatever the reasons are. But intentionality provides that structure.

Like the weekly marriage business meeting would be a great example.

Casey: Yeah. Otherwise, what happens is we just kind of have a slow drift, and I think that’s probably the most dangerous and maybe most common thing that we see in marriage is. We started off with a goal, with intention, with curiosity. Mm-hmm.

And then just slowly we, we, we get off one or two degrees and the months go by and we don’t really see like the damaging [00:23:00] effects.

Meygan: Yeah.

Casey: But then when you compound that with the months and then the years, and then what we’re seeing now is when, when people start to empty nest, they’re looking at their partner and they’re like, we did all of this life together.

Meygan: Yeah. Have

Casey: roommates.

Meygan: We raised our children well.

Casey: Yep.

Meygan: But I don’t even know you. I don’t know if I even like you anymore. And that’s why the empty nest phase is now the second most common time for couples to divorce. So the number one is year four to 10. So when the kids are little, really high demand.

Yeah, just really difficult. Right. We’ve all been there. And then the second time is, is empty nesting. So that’s telling us something that couples are slowly growing apart.

Casey: So we’re, we’re trying to be out in the society, bang the pan pots and pans going, Hey,

Meygan: hey, hey, don’t do that again. Going back to they don’t need the therapy.

Like I maybe, maybe some people do with some severe trauma and things like that. Please go if you’ve got that. But the majority of couples actually just need really good tools. Hmm.

AJ: Yeah. So I would love to talk about that. Like, and I know that we can’t cover all of it, but if you guys were to say [00:24:00] like, Hey, these are the.

Two to three tools that will revolutionize your marriage. What would those be? Uh,

Casey: well, the, the weekly marriage business meeting. Yeah. That’s about, that’s we, we just, that one. That’s absolutely number one. We get the most feedback from that, that couples say, this changed our marriage. Yeah.

Meygan: The second one would actually be asking open-ended questions.

Oh. Which

Casey: is

Meygan: our book that came out in 2024. Um, there’s basically a question a day and. This is supposed to spark, um, really great conversations about everything. There’s fun questions. There’s deep thought questions. There’s self-awareness questions, questions about money, boundaries. What, what you do? Sex.

Sex, yes. But the goal is that couples, just like when you were dating, you talked about. All these things and found each other interesting that you would continue the conversation. And so, um, it’s interesting actually, ’cause I’m not sure if you know, we actually self-published our book back in 2018. [00:25:00] We’ve always had something called connecting Questions.

That’s what we call ’em, connecting Questions that Marriage 365. And we’re like, what if we put ’em in a book and we made one a day? Perfect. Our brands Marriage 365, like this is a no brainer. Perfect. And I remember telling Casey like, okay, what’s our personal goal? Making goals, right? It’s like, okay, if we sell 5,000 copies in our lifetime, like we did a great job as a self publisher.

Remember, books

Casey: don’t do that.

Meygan: We sold 5,000 copies. In three months.

Yeah.

Meygan: And we were like, okay, we’re onto something. And 5,000 copies turned into 50,000 copies. And then just a little company called Penguin Random House, heard about it, uh, back in 2024, and they said, Hey, we’d love to buy it and update it and revise it.

I love that. It’s been a huge, huge, amazing blessing. But what I love again is it’s a tool. It’s a tool for a husband or wife to just open up. And ask the question of the day. If you don’t like the question, flip to a different question. Yeah. You know that that’s okay. But that I would say [00:26:00] is a non-negotiable if I were to say the weekly marriage business meeting, asking open-ended questions, you know.

AJ when, I love

Casey: that, when hurting, when we were hurting in our marriage. It’s not like I woke up and I was like, I just don’t care about Megan. I really did care about her. I just didn’t know how. Mm. And I, and when I coaching a lot of husbands, the desire is always there. Mm

mm

Casey: I just have to know that like the desire is always there.

It’s just the know-how. And so I, you know, I think a lot of the tools that we, we build and we work through and we teach are tools that we look at. You know, poor Casey, Megan struggling, didn’t have a guy to mentor. You know, we didn’t have a healthy family upbringing. Like my mom’s been married six times.

Um, so, and be, and be fact between both sets of parents, we have 12 marriages. So it’s

Meygan: a, it’s crazy. Wow. We have a model’s a lot to,

Casey: to work off of, and. I wish I could have given this book [00:27:00] to, to that struggling couple because then even in the midst of the hurt, we would’ve had a guide to, to talk and connect.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean,

AJ: I’m just curious to hear from you. Um, ’cause I think, you know, if, you know, kind of in this entrepreneur conversation, right? If we run our house, like we run our business, like everyone who’s listening, like, just imagine if you didn’t have team meetings. Yeah, exactly. Like imagine if you didn’t have a list of goals for the year or a budget, or you didn’t talk to your team and you, you didn’t ask questions.

Or what if they didn’t ask questions? Yeah. Like could you imagine how well things would not be going? Yeah. If we did those things as entrepreneurs, as business people. But even if you’re not an entrepreneur of just going like, imagine in your work. If there was never a meeting Yeah. Or a plan or got am I imagine being onboarded, right?

Mm-hmm. When I think about getting married, right? Imagine being onboarded to a new [00:28:00] company with no onboarding. Yeah.

Meygan: It’s like,

AJ: here you go. Yeah. But that’s what we do in marriage.

Meygan: Yes. Right?

AJ: Yes. So many of us, and I love what you said about the book, ’cause I think the book is really important of like just helping people have conversations and I would just, what I want, the question I have for you is.

What do you think gets in the way of couples talking to each other? Hmm. And asking questions and. You know, it’s like, I just think to my, ’cause I even use myself as an example. It’s like I talk all day long, right? Yes. I ask questions. I’ve in meetings all day long and often, like when it is just me and Rory, I’m like, so what do you wanna talk about?

Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. Um, now part of that is because I’ve been listening to him talk and he’s been listening to me talk all day. But, uh, even without that. You know, there is saying we work together. Yes, I get it. I mean,

Casey: if we work together all day long, it’s not like at the end of the day, like, tell me about your day.

Yeah. I’m seeing I was sitting next to you all day long. Don’t

AJ: you [00:29:00] know, weren’t you listening? I told you all day. Yes.

Meygan: Yeah. Which is

Casey: funny ’cause I mean, if you find us on a date, we have our book next to us.

Meygan: I mean, that’s what’s, that’s what’s so, so I think what stands in the way is, let’s just talk about some, some really simple, obvious ones.

Busyness. Mm. People are busy. You know, um, if it’s a child-centered marriage where the kids dictate your schedules again, and you’re not doing a weekly marriage business meeting, yeah, you’re probably never going to really have that time to connect because you’re gonna have to talk about the logistics and you’re trying to just go, how was work and what’s for dinner, which are just really boring questions day after day.

Um, I think another thing actually that a big one that we’re seeing is resentment. Years and years of, you haven’t taken me on a date. Um, my wife’s been nagging at me, whatever’s going on. Um, yeah, I feel like you don’t initiate sex. There’s a lot of really big hurts and people don’t realize that Basically what resentment is, is unforgiveness.

So our spouse did something or said something. We have pain now. Right. It, it hurt and we have that choice to forgive or to let it go. [00:30:00] And if we don’t forgive. It becomes resentment, which then now that hurt has taken root in our heart and in our thoughts, and so you could use to compartmentalize it up in a garage and it’s kind of stored away.

But now the resentment. Like when you sit on the couch. Yeah. You’re like, I don’t really wanna talk to my husband. I don’t really wanna talk. I dunno if I really like, they really hurt me. And resentment, definitely unresolved issues, resentment, things like that. And that in away, and that’s sad. That’s sad

Casey: too, because one of the things we fight for is trying to teach people the tools on how to actually repair your relationship after you’ve heard it.

Yeah. Because

Casey: we’ve all made mistakes. We’re all gonna make mistakes, we’re all gonna hurt each other. If you have a tool on how to repair the relationship.

Meygan: Then, you know how, and so then I think kind of what you said, aj, of like, okay, I don’t really know what to ask. I genuine genuinely believe that after a long day of working the kids, it’s really hard to come up with a question.

So if you’re listening and you’re like, I, I want to do that, this sounds amazing. Don’t feel bad, Casey and I are just like, they’re with you again. Which is [00:31:00] why we use our. Own book. I love that. And, and so that’s why we wanted to provide a tool for couples to say on the go, if someone travels, take a picture of a few questions to, to answer.

When you’re over the pool, you know, at the pool or at a work meeting, wherever. When you have that time to connect, now you have a question and you don’t have to be creative in the moment. And, and, and wing it. And it’s kind of like we talk about this with, um, on our weekly marriage, business meeting, meal planning.

Have you ever done this where you’re both tired, it’s six o’clock at night, everyone’s hungry, and you’re like, what should we make for dinner? Um, what typically happens? Okay, sounds like we’re gonna go to Chick-fil-A, right? Like, don’t cook it. We don’t have anything. It’s hard to be creative. It’s like stuff

Casey: of my nightmares right there.

I know it’s, I’m hungry. And then you look at the pantry, it’s empty, like, ugh.

Meygan: Or it feels empty and you’re like, I don’t know what to make. It’s kind of the same concept of I wanna connect with you. We’re sitting on the couch or we’re taking a walk. But it’s been a long day and I can’t come up with something from scratch.

AJ: I don’t have the energy to even think about it. No decision

Casey: fatigue, right? It’s real.

AJ: Yes. [00:32:00] Yeah. But you know, it’s true because it’s like we say, uh, we say this in our house all the time, that, you know, fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Mm-hmm. And it’s

AJ: like that whole concept of, hey, when we’re so tired that we can’t think, we can’t step into a space of being creative or going out on a limb or doing something that feels.

You know, even the slight, slight bit of hard because it’s like I’m just tired. And what we, you know, it’s like we get, we, we tell people at our house that we get tary, right? That’s tired and angry.

Meygan: Oh,

AJ: who’s hangry? I like that. I’ve never

Meygan: heard that before. I mean, I’ve heard hangry, but I’ve never heard tary.

I, we might have to steal that and use that.

AJ: And it’s like, that’s, and it’s mainly because, uh. Roy Vaden gets Ry. Oh. Oh, okay. Okay.

Meygan: Alright. Casey Fasten gets hangry, let me tell you. Ooh. Yeah.

AJ: But it’s, it’s like concept of like, Hey, it’s like I just had, and I, I, I don’t know, but it’s like I at least think in an [00:33:00] era, in a world where Bo most homes have both spouses working.

Yeah. At least some, even if it’s not a full-time, 40 hour endeavor, it’s like there’s just more opportunity of like. I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. It was busy today.

Meygan: Yeah.

AJ: Um, and that creates that

Meygan: Yeah. Uh,

AJ: kind of rolling, uh, issue there. Yeah. Um, so I, I love this conversation and I kind of fast forwarded into some of like these tips and tactical things that I’d also like to just take a step back for a second and be like, how’d y’all get here?

Yeah. Right. And I think this is a little bit of the story of your personal brand and, uh, all of the content. It’s like I imagine, uh, as most good things, there was a problem I. Yep. And then you guys found a solution to the problem with her, with her.

Meygan: I thought you were the problem. No, you were the problem.

You were the problem. What? How do I fix my husband? Uh, I almost got that tattoo. No, it really genuinely came from this idea when we, so we fell in love. It took [00:34:00] us two years to fall in love and get married. It took us three years to destroy our marriage, unfortunately. And it took about four to five years to rebuild our marriage.

And as we were rebuilding and healing our marriage, we were extremely disappointed. That there was a lack of marriage resources out there. Talk about, you said getting curious, like mm-hmm. There’s gotta be a solution to this and we could not afford ongoing therapy.

Mm-hmm.

Meygan: But what in the world is missing?

I mean, this is not only a mass market, but how many people get married in their lifetime? And the marriage books again will tell you, you guys should communicate, you should forgive. Okay. But how do you forgive someone that you literally hate? Hmm. And you feel it. I mean, I, I gen you mentioned it. Yeah. We, we really had hatred towards each other.

We had so much resentment. And

Casey: let me just, let me just say also too, we were going to church and we were being told what to do. Like you should apologize, you should forgive. I. But no one ever told us how to do it. Yep. Mm. So then we’re like, I’m sorry. Yeah. I, I forgive you. [00:35:00] Yeah. I forgive you.

Meygan: Yeah. Moving on.

Moving on. And, and we still didn’t feel it. So it really, marriage 365, I mean, there’s a whole huge bigger. Backstory behind it. But that was one of the main motivators was we started becoming problem solvers. I’m a major problem solver, fixer. So Casey’s actually the more empathetic one in our marriage when we argue, thank you babe.

Where I tend to go to like solutions based and being like fix it mode. Like, okay, let’s solve this. So I kind, we kind of both just dove in and that that whole idea of the weekly marriage business meeting came from, wait a second. Businesses are organized. We could do that. Why don’t we make a marriage one?

I mean, that’s all it was. It was like, let’s do it. And we sat there and we wrote on a like a napkin one day and let’s figure this out. And so we started problem solving and of course all of our friends and family saw us and we’re like, okay, you guys should have been divorced by now. Yeah,

Casey: the pool. Pool.

Meygan: Yeah. Like we had bets on it that you guys were gonna be a done. They’re like, the fact that you’re laughing and like each other and fell in love is not only a miracle, [00:36:00] but. Yeah, you are genuinely changing and you need to share this with the world. I remember one of Casey’s best friends went to him and said, you need to stop

He was a nonprofit fundraiser for a long time, and he, and he said, you’re in the wrong business, buddy. You need to be helping marriages.

AJ: I love that. That’s so good. Yeah, and that’s, that’s

Casey: when we started posting stuff on Instagram. It was like the early days, and it just, it got traction really quick. Now, I, I will tell you, aj, like if, if there were stories.

Of our marriage that were so embarrassing that I was like, that story will never see the light of day because it was, it just like bad. We just were so ashamed. Yeah, so, so much shame around it. And it’s funny because those exact stories. Are the stories that people connect with most always. They, they see that always when they’re like, oh, well, maybe they see it and they’re like, well, at least we’re not as bad as Casey Meghan.

Jeez.

Meygan: So, you know, a [00:37:00] Facebook and an Instagram post then became, well, let’s try it. Write an ebook, and, you know, let’s do, um, you know. Uh, what else did we do? Well, let’s do retreat, let’s do coaching. I mean, and then we started getting training. We did training premarital training, premarital, and we, we

Casey: had a premarital course and then we start, yeah, started coaching and one thing led to another.

Yes. And again, it was just like the need testing different things.

Meygan: Testing, testing, testing all the time. Testing.

AJ: Okay. I wanna pause right here ’cause I need everyone to hear this on a personal brand. Level, and I think this is so important for everyone who’s listening, um, this isn’t just an episode about marriage.

This is also, this is also a message about business entrepreneurship and personal branding. Because any good business, any good brand first solves a problem.

Meygan: Yep.

AJ: Right? And how do you solve a problem? It’s like you’ve experienced it yourself. Right. And then you, you figured it out. You compassionate about it.

Other people see it. And I, and I love the organic nature of [00:38:00] not just your story, but some of the, the my favorite brands, um, that I’ve encountered, not just in brand builders group, but outside of it. It’s like, uh, this happened accidentally. This happened because we had a problem. We solved the problem. Then we realized, well, if we had this problem, there must be other people who suffer from this.

But it wasn’t just that you acknowledged it. You did something about it. Yes. Right. And I think that’s what’s so important of like if you feel like this calling on your heart of like, hey, like there’s something out there that there is. Right? Yeah. And, and it’s there for a reason. And you guys are a great, amazing testament to like.

It can come from anything. Mm-hmm. Right. It can come from like the valleys of a really distressed marriage to the reconciliation of that, of going, okay, well, clearly there’s a problem with this in our country and in this world. What can we do about it? And then. From there, you test, and I think that’s the [00:39:00] most important thing I want people to hear is that you don’t have to have it figured out the first time.

Oh, we had no idea what we were doing, figured out the first time. Yeah. So you guys, you said you did an ebook, then you did premarital, then you did marriage coaching. It’s like. Yep. What was that process like to figure out what, what is our home base like? What’s the thing? Can I

Meygan: say one thing and then you go for it?

I think one thing that Casey and I will always stand on is that we are never afraid to fail. I. Mm. We will always try something and we don’t look at it as a failure. We look at it as a teachable moment. So let’s do it. We’re gonna test it, see how people respond to it. And while it may not have gone what we would’ve liked it to go and or whatever that looks, the response wasn’t what we wanted.

We always do either a survey or we do like an internal one to say, what worked, what didn’t work? What needs to continue? Is this worth doing again? Right.

Casey: And I would say that, I mean, our faith is a backstop to that. To know that God’s gonna take care of us [00:40:00] no matter what. And I, I find it in this, especially that we had a, a, a down year last year, and it’s just kind of an interesting season to reevaluate where we’re heading.

And there’s this tension of, of recognizing that God’s called us to do this and there’s a, an act of faith. Like I, I, I consider Marriage 365 as, as Meg Casey, and Megan’s long obedience in a single direction.

Hmm. You know, we’ve

Casey: watched a lot of people come and go. Over the past almost 15 years. Um, but we’re still here.

Mm-hmm. And I will say in the marriage space, yeah. You have to be called. ’cause it’s really tough work to walk through people through their most traumatic experiences of life. Like, it, it is not flashy. What do we say? It’s, you’re not getting rich or famous doing this one, this work. Yeah. This is, this is tough in the trenches type of work.

But you know, at the same time, like I, we want to. Grow and scale so that we have the largest amount of impact. And [00:41:00] there’s that tension of always holding both of those together. Mm-hmm. That I think we walk with. And that’s, that’s a day by day kind of thing that we’re, that we’re walking through. So. We do have like this backstop to say like, we are not afraid to fail ’cause God’s gonna take care of us.

And he has called us and there have been times when things have failed miserably. I mean the, we need like five more podcasts to tell you all the, but. At the end of that day, we had to go, but God’s called us to this. Yeah. And we keep trying.

Meygan: So tactically, how does that look? Yeah, it, it’s testing a lot on social media.

That’s been a really big platform. We started in 2013, technically as a Facebook page. That’s how Marriage 365 started. Um, and then once, you know, you build an audience and you get them on your email list or your platform, whatever that is. You know, it was like, well, let’s try to write a blog and get people off of meta onto our platform.

Right? And it was like, oh, we got a good response. Then it was, well now these people are on our, you know, email list. Let’s write an ebook and see if we can make [00:42:00] money for five bucks. Yeah. For five bucks. Well, it was back in 2013, right? Life was a lot different back then. It was, social media was really just, I mean, just

Casey: Instagram really

Meygan: booming.

Well, no, we didn’t start Instagram until 2015, but, oh, that’s true. Yeah. And so, um, all that to say, we. I think that we had a vision board and we looked at all the different things and resources that we saw missing in the marriage world. Mm-hmm. Okay. In the marriage space and how could we be different because we are a different kind of a couple and how could we get our message out to people?

And then again, just testing, testing, testing well and trying things and really. Uh, we’re also big on calling people, so that’s another thing. I know a lot of companies, they don’t like to call customer service those kind of calls, but we, Casey and Megan Caston, co-founders, Ofer, you will get a call from us sometimes if we’ve got your number and say, Hey, can I just ask you like, what did you think about that book?

Or what did you think about that blog? And people are always shocked to hear from us, but we genuinely wanna know because guess who [00:43:00] we’re making the resources for? That’s

AJ: right, mom. Yes.

Meygan: We’re making it for them now. Now they’re helping us, but we don’t wanna stay in our own bubble and think, well, every couple’s gonna love this.