Category: Podcast

WWK Ep 035: Who Not How: Dan Sullivan on Building a Business That Sets You Free

Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
1
01:00:00:04 – 01:00:02:23
Speaker 2
I’m totally opposed to the R-word,
01:00:02:23 – 01:00:03:14
Speaker 2
retirement
01:00:03:16 – 01:00:08:21
Speaker 1
is the difference between the entrepreneurs who have the sustained motivation
01:00:08:21 – 01:00:10:02
Speaker 1
versus the ones who are
01:00:10:02 – 01:00:13:09
Speaker 1
let down by what entrepreneurship has to offer?
01:00:13:09 – 01:00:16:15
Speaker 2
one of them is happy and the other one isn’t happy.
01:00:16:17 – 01:00:19:10
Speaker 2
All happiness lies for measuring backwards.
01:00:19:14 – 01:00:26:14
Speaker 2
think the basic instinct of entrepreneurs is they like creating the future that doesn’t exist
yet.
01:00:26:16 – 01:00:33:18
Speaker 2
then there’s unique ability and unique ability you’re born with. I’m convinced it’s
something you’re born with.
01:00:33:20 – 01:00:37:01
Speaker 2
Minded people find shortcuts. They find workarounds.
01:00:37:03 – 01:00:45:21
Speaker 1
For more than 50 years, today’s guest has challenged almost every rule we’ve been
taught about business, while the world tells us to work harder,
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
2
01:00:45:21 – 01:00:54:05
Speaker 1
Dan Sullivan teaches entrepreneurs to do less. While we’re told to become better
managers, he tells us to find better who’s.
01:00:54:05 – 01:00:56:23
Speaker 2
So all we ask the entrepreneurs is
01:00:56:23 – 01:01:00:13
Speaker 2
not ask, how am I going to do this? But who’s going to do it?
01:01:00:16 – 01:01:05:13
Speaker 1
His ideas have transformed. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs through strategic
coach
01:01:05:14 – 01:01:11:05
Speaker 1
and inspired bestselling books, including Who Not How the Gap and The Gain, and
Ten Times
01:01:11:11 – 01:01:12:21
Speaker 1
Easier Than Two Times.
01:01:12:21 – 01:01:15:18
Speaker 1
At 82 years old, Dan is still writing, still teaching,
01:01:15:18 – 01:01:17:03
Speaker 1
and by his own admission,
01:01:17:03 – 01:01:17:22
Speaker 1
more ambitious than
01:01:18:04 – 01:01:21:05
Speaker 1
Because to Dan, entrepreneurship was never about building a company.
01:01:21:07 – 01:01:23:13
Speaker 1
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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was about building a life with more freedom,
01:01:23:13 – 01:01:24:16
Speaker 1
more growth,
01:01:24:18 – 01:01:25:16
Speaker 1
more time spent
01:01:25:17 – 01:01:28:03
Speaker 1
doing only what you’re uniquely built to do.
01:01:28:04 – 01:01:31:13
Speaker 1
Today, Dan and Rory discuss unhappy millionaires,
01:01:31:13 – 01:01:33:12
Speaker 1
the difference between jobs and roles.
01:01:33:12 – 01:01:36:10
Speaker 1
Why the right employee should make an immediate impact.
01:01:36:10 – 01:01:40:00
Speaker 1
Using AI to simplify a business by 80%.
01:01:40:00 – 01:01:41:17
Speaker 1
Before Rory brings up a quote
01:01:41:17 – 01:01:44:05
Speaker 1
that completely changed the way he operates.
01:01:44:07 – 01:01:49:00
Speaker 1
If you have enough money to solve a problem, you don’t have a problem. Who who
said that?
01:01:49:00 – 01:01:50:11
Speaker 2
Quote, that would be me.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
4
01:01:50:11 – 01:01:54:23
Speaker 1
Can you unpack that
01:01:55:01 – 01:02:02:05
Speaker 1
If you are an entrepreneur who wants more freedom, less stress, more profit, more
impact.
01:02:02:05 – 01:02:16:21
Speaker 1
This is an episode you need to pay attention to. You are about to learn from a legend in
our industry, a legend both in the entrepreneurial space and then also one of the
foremost thinkers, arguably in history, and definitely in our time.
01:02:16:22 – 01:02:19:20
Speaker 1
I’m interviewing today, Dan Sullivan,
01:02:20:01 – 01:02:34:00
Speaker 1
He has a brand new book coming out called The Greater Game, which is how I was
able to rope him in to joining us on the show. And we’re going to talk about all things
that experts and entrepreneurs need to know to
01:02:34:02 – 01:02:39:03
Speaker 1
maintain sanity while growing their business. So, Dan, such a pleasure to have you,
my friend.
01:02:39:04 – 01:02:40:20
Speaker 2
Well, thanks for the invitation,
01:02:40:22 – 01:02:43:01
Speaker 1
You’ve been in this industry 50.
01:02:43:01 – 01:02:45:19
Speaker 2
Years, 52, 52 years? Sure. Yeah.
01:02:45:20 – 01:02:57:17
Speaker 1
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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You could have cashed out a long time ago. You’ve had plenty of money, impact,
relationships, influence, bestselling books, blah blah blah. Why are you still doing this?
01:02:57:19 – 01:02:59:14
Speaker 2
the big thing is
01:02:59:14 – 01:03:02:09
Speaker 2
I’m totally opposed to the R-word,
01:03:02:09 – 01:03:03:18
Speaker 2
retirement world.
01:03:03:18 – 01:03:09:05
Speaker 2
Don’t even say it. Retire. You’re not allowed to say it in the strategic coach workshops.
01:03:09:07 – 01:03:18:11
Speaker 2
started coaching one on 1 in 74, 1974. I was a writer, copywriter, big ad agency in
Toronto.
01:03:18:11 – 01:03:26:21
Speaker 2
And the big thing that caught my attention, that really gave me the commitment,
encouraged to actually jump out of
01:03:26:21 – 01:03:27:19
Speaker 2
it the microchip.
01:03:27:19 – 01:03:33:04
Speaker 2
and there were predictions being made about what this was going to do.
01:03:33:06 – 01:03:36:00
Speaker 1
As you’re talking, I’m thinking of AI right now. It feels like.
01:03:36:01 – 01:03:36:06
Speaker 2
Well.
01:03:36:06 – 01:03:41:17
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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Speaker 1
Yeah, it feels like we’re in a parallel time to that right now of like when the microchip
was first.
01:03:41:18 – 01:04:08:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. But the two things that really caught my attention was that the big paramedical
organizations, big government, big corporations, big unions, they were going to have a
hard time with this invention, because you could use the microchip to improve almost
every other invention, and you could use the microchip to improve microchips so they
would get more powerful. But the predictions were made.
01:04:08:14 – 01:04:12:03
Speaker 2
It was going to be more and more of an entrepreneurial world. And
01:04:12:03 – 01:04:25:06
Speaker 2
I’m sort of a coach by instinct. You know, I’ve you know, my mother was not surprised
at all when I did this. She says, you were always telling people, you know, you should
do this and not do that. You should do this and not do that.
01:04:25:07 – 01:04:28:07
Speaker 1
Is that a fancy way of saying you were bossy as a kid? No it wasn’t.
01:04:28:08 – 01:04:29:20
Speaker 2
I was observant.
01:04:29:22 – 01:04:30:03
Speaker 1
Okay.
01:04:30:04 – 01:04:31:16
Speaker 2
Okay, I was insightful. Yeah,
01:04:31:19 – 01:04:53:05
Speaker 2
but I have a feel for where people’s energy is when they talk, you know, and you can
kind of tell that they’re doing a big circle of activity, but it’s actually just a small activity
where they’re the love of what they’re doing is actually in that small circle, and they’re
actually good at it, you know, so they they have the best both worlds.
01:04:53:07 – 01:04:53:23
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:04:53:23 – 01:05:07:21
Speaker 1
What do you think is the difference between the entrepreneurs who have the sustained
motivation over a long time versus the ones who are sort of left feeling let down by
what entrepreneurship has to offer?
01:05:07:21 – 01:05:11:04
Speaker 2
one of them is happy and the other one isn’t happy.
01:05:11:05 – 01:05:27:10
Speaker 2
You know, it’s hard to sustain ambition when you’re not happy because, you know, it’s
the higher achievement. It’s not going to make any happier. They’ve never been happy.
And it has to do with the way they measure success. So
01:05:27:14 – 01:05:34:14
Speaker 2
in our book, The Gap in the game, what we say is that everybody’s got ideals.
01:05:34:15 – 01:05:40:09
Speaker 2
They have ideals. You know, they have a kind of a perfect picture of themselves in the
future.
01:05:40:09 – 01:05:50:20
Speaker 2
And they they get to the goal, they achieve the goal, but then they measure against the
ideal and it’s like they haven’t done anything.
01:05:50:22 – 01:05:57:18
Speaker 2
And from the outside it looks very successful. They look like real winners. But on the
inside they don’t feel like winners at all.
01:05:57:18 – 01:06:03:08
Speaker 2
so there’s the problem that they get depressed, but nobody understands why they’re
depressed. They’re
01:06:03:10 – 01:06:19:00
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
8
they’re measuring reality against unreality. And there’s another way of doing this same
thing. You have the ideal that’s show. It illuminates where the goal is. You achieve the
goal and you achieve the goal. And then you turn around and measure where you
came from.
01:06:19:04 – 01:06:21:21
Speaker 2
All happiness lies for measuring backwards.
01:06:21:22 – 01:06:23:01
Speaker 1
Oh, interesting.
01:06:23:01 – 01:06:32:20
Speaker 1
I’m thinking about the life that my kids have is so in one generation, massively,
radically different from mine as a kid. And you go when I look back that way,
01:06:32:22 – 01:06:35:16
Speaker 1
I go, oh my gosh, we’ve come so far when I look.
01:06:35:20 – 01:06:53:00
Speaker 1
But yet I feel behind all the like, I just feel nothing. But behind in AI is making me feel
more behind. Like just no matter what we do, it’s like we’re not going fast enough,
we’re behind, we’re not helping enough people. But then you look that way and it’s like,
oh my gosh, my kids are in a different universe than than the world I grew up.
01:06:53:01 – 01:07:06:22
Speaker 2
And that explains the difference. It’s just this difference. So one of the things, right,
when the entrepreneurs come into the program, we say how you’re measuring your
progress, you’re making progress. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been successful.
01:07:06:22 – 01:07:16:04
Speaker 2
but one of the interesting things, if you do the gap to yourself. So there’s always a gap
between you and your happiness.
01:07:16:06 – 01:07:19:18
Speaker 2
you’ll do it to other people, to you’ll do it to your kids.
01:07:19:20 – 01:07:26:22
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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It just wasn’t good enough. You know, you could you could have done more. So there’s
never any satisfaction to the progress.
01:07:27:01 – 01:07:27:06
Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:07:27:08 – 01:07:38:15
Speaker 1
I feel like there’s there’s three evolutions of motivation. Like in in my own life. I think it’s
it starts with ambition. It’s like I grew up with nothing. And so I was like, all I wanted
was Air Jordans,
01:07:38:15 – 01:07:53:21
Speaker 1
and I wanted box cereal because we had bag cereals and was stale all the time. But
then that doesn’t motivate after a while. And then it’s like competition. You’re like, well, I
want to be the best. But then that wears off. And I think it’s like the best motivation
seems to be mission where it’s like, I just want to help people.
01:07:53:21 – 01:08:00:23
Speaker 1
And I just I’ve always gotten that sense from you that, like, you do this because you
just you care deeply about helping entrepreneurs.
01:08:00:23 – 01:08:01:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. And
01:08:01:14 – 01:08:02:20
Speaker 2
we have a great company.
01:08:03:01 – 01:08:11:02
Speaker 2
the same concepts that are provided to the entrepreneurs and the workshops are also
provided to our team members.
01:08:11:04 – 01:08:14:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. So on the topic of team members,
01:08:14:09 – 01:08:22:20
Speaker 1
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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Business schools teach you that you need to be a great manager. You need to know
everything that’s going on in your business. You need to, you know, oversee
everything, know how to do all of it.
01:08:22:20 – 01:08:33:17
Speaker 1
Tell us what your philosophy is and what you’ve seen that I think rails against the kind
of like classic management business school advice for entrepreneurs.
01:08:33:20 – 01:08:38:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think the first of all, I think entrepreneurism starts very young
01:08:38:13 – 01:08:45:21
Speaker 2
have some interests that they’re exploring, and it doesn’t take them very long to realize
that freedom requires money.
01:08:45:21 – 01:08:47:05
Speaker 2
They want to be free.
01:08:47:05 – 01:08:47:12
Speaker 2
So
01:08:47:12 – 01:08:55:01
Speaker 2
we’re really going deep with entrepreneurial research. I think we’re going to have the
best entrepreneurial research research bank in the world
01:08:55:05 – 01:08:55:11
Speaker 2
01:08:55:15 – 01:09:02:14
Speaker 2
think the basic instinct of entrepreneurs is they like creating the future that doesn’t exist
yet.
01:09:02:14 – 01:09:06:03
Speaker 2
And what they are not generally as good managers.
01:09:06:03 – 01:09:18:05
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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we have 5 or 6 profiles that we use to sort of show the entrepreneur that there’s an
energetic center where if they stay in the energetic center, everything works.
01:09:18:10 – 01:09:22:18
Speaker 2
If they go outside the energetic center, then life gets really, really.
01:09:22:19 – 01:09:32:21
Speaker 1
I mean, we’ve seen this, we’ve experienced it. It’s a joke around brand builders group
because our team, like, I’m a terrible manager, I’m like, I could.
01:09:32:23 – 01:09:47:11
Speaker 1
but it is it is true. And it’s part of why, you know, AJ and I have such a beautiful
partnership is she is an incredible manager and organizer and, you know, just kind of
consolidator of all, all strategy and things. But
01:09:47:11 – 01:09:52:16
Speaker 1
explain exactly the who not how strategy and how does that how does that fit into this
conversation.
01:09:52:17 – 01:10:07:02
Speaker 2
Well, you have a book out on procrastination. And I think procrastination comes
naturally to entrepreneurs, and it’s a part of seeing a new possibility in, in the future.
01:10:07:04 – 01:10:18:12
Speaker 2
it’s a beautiful what it’s a beautiful what. And you’re really excited about it. And then all
of a sudden you come back and you say, well, how am I going to do that?
01:10:18:12 – 01:10:25:03
Speaker 2
So all we ask the entrepreneurs is to ask, not ask, how am I going to do this? But
who’s going to do
01:10:25:05 – 01:10:33:22
Speaker 2
So the name of the concept is who, not how. And it’s one of those instant ones. It’s one
of those instant insights.
01:10:34:01 – 01:10:40:23
Speaker 2
And so the the big thing that we focus there’s a two fold focus in strategic coach.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
12
01:10:40:23 – 01:11:01:09
Speaker 2
There’s your energetic center. And when entrepreneurs come in. We have them do a
90 day activity audit and a, you know, 30 or 40 things that they’re doing. And so then
we break it into four columns things you’re incompetent. It you know.
01:11:01:11 – 01:11:03:21
Speaker 1
That you’re doing things. You’re doing that you’re incompetent.
01:11:03:22 – 01:11:05:13
Speaker 2
Incompetent right. Yeah.
01:11:05:14 – 01:11:08:16
Speaker 1
Like they’re doing finance or something. It’s like you have no business.
01:11:08:18 – 01:11:22:01
Speaker 2
And they’re bad at it. They’re really bad. Wears them out and they’re bad at it. Then
there’s competent. They are competent, you know, but so are hundreds of others that
can do the same.
01:11:22:01 – 01:11:31:07
Speaker 2
Then there’s excellent. And this is where you have a lot of professionals. You have like
the people who have credentials like doctors and lawyers and accountants.
01:11:31:07 – 01:11:40:15
Speaker 2
And I find the professions uniquely trap people in. Excellent. They’re really they’re
really good.
01:11:40:16 – 01:11:43:03
Speaker 1
But this is like as good as the enemy of the great kind.
01:11:43:03 – 01:11:55:01
Speaker 2
Of best practice. Yeah, they’re really good. Their masters of best practices. Okay. And
they’re paid for it. You know, they they’re highly paid and but there’s no energy there.
01:11:55:03 – 01:12:01:06
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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then there’s unique ability and unique ability you’re born with. I’m convinced it’s
something you’re born with.
01:12:01:07 – 01:12:07:10
Speaker 2
You just it’s just a natural way that you take action to get results.
01:12:07:10 – 01:12:21:21
Speaker 2
And the thing that interferes with it is the school system. Because in the school system,
it’s not the result that matters. It’s that you follow the procedure that the teacher gives
you to get the results totally and.
01:12:21:21 – 01:12:23:18
Speaker 1
Show your work.
01:12:23:20 – 01:12:27:05
Speaker 2
Minded people find shortcuts. They find workarounds.
01:12:27:05 – 01:12:33:08
Speaker 2
That’s what entrepreneur is and is its whole series of shortcuts and workarounds,
01:12:33:08 – 01:12:50:04
Speaker 2
so what happens that they do that and they find out that they’ve they’ve got all they
have 40 things. There’s only three of them that are in the unique ability column. And so
our job in strategic coach is to find the who’s who take care of everything else.
01:12:50:06 – 01:12:59:20
Speaker 2
And today we have the added advantage of automation. So who can be a machine. It
can be an AI program.
01:12:59:20 – 01:13:05:10
Speaker 1
So this is one of my favorite quotes of all time. And people sometimes argue over who
said this.
01:13:05:10 – 01:13:10:03
Speaker 1
If you have enough money to solve a problem, you don’t have a problem. Who who
said that?
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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01:13:10:03 – 01:13:11:14
Speaker 2
Quote, that would be me.
01:13:11:14 – 01:13:12:09
Speaker 1
That’s what I thought.
01:13:12:09 – 01:13:13:21
Speaker 1
Can you unpack that for us?
01:13:13:21 – 01:13:14:06
Speaker 1
Because
01:13:14:08 – 01:13:15:18
Speaker 1
changed how I operated.
01:13:15:18 – 01:13:16:14
Speaker 2
So, yeah.
01:13:16:14 – 01:13:24:05
Speaker 2
Well, the big thing is that that’s what money money is for, is for buying solutions that
you don’t want to do.
01:13:24:05 – 01:13:27:01
Speaker 2
That’s the big thing the entrepreneur wants to go after.
01:13:27:01 – 01:13:31:03
Speaker 2
First they they just want to free up enormous amount of time.
01:13:31:03 – 01:13:31:23
Speaker 2
And
01:13:32:01 – 01:13:37:04
Speaker 2
on the one hand, they get freed up from everything that they shouldn’t be doing.
01:13:37:04 – 01:13:42:03
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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Speaker 2
that time is being spent on what they love doing most and where they’re really great.
01:13:42:04 – 01:13:42:09
Speaker 2
01:13:42:13 – 01:13:53:21
Speaker 2
There’s no greatness, incompetence, competence, or excellence. There’s greatness in
unique ability, and great unique ability never wears out.
01:13:53:22 – 01:13:55:11
Speaker 2
I’m 82 right now.
01:13:55:11 – 01:13:57:16
Speaker 2
and I’m at the top of my ambition.
01:13:57:16 – 01:14:08:09
Speaker 2
And the other thing I’d like to comment on, I’m the co-founder of Strategic Coach.
Okay, so I have a partnership with Bab Smith.
01:14:08:10 – 01:14:14:06
Speaker 1
Babs. She’s here. You can’t see her. You don’t get to see Babs. You have to pay extra
money. If you’re going to see Babs on camera.
01:14:14:10 – 01:14:25:22
Speaker 2
The big check. That’s the big check anyway. And Babs and I got together in the 80s.
We met in 82. As a matter of fact, tomorrow’s our wedding anniversary.
01:14:26:00 – 01:14:27:07
Speaker 1
That’s so great.
01:14:27:07 – 01:14:30:11
Speaker 2
And I had been through a practice marriage.
01:14:30:13 – 01:14:34:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. You had a divorce and a bankruptcy on the same day, right?
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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01:14:34:22 – 01:14:45:16
Speaker 2
August 15th, 1978. Yeah. And that the big thing is that I needed a partner. I needed a
partner. And the interesting thing is that,
01:14:45:22 – 01:14:59:12
Speaker 2
there’s all sorts of profiles, and one of them is Colby. I don’t know if, you know, the
Colby taken it. Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re we’re almost identical in our Colby. We’re both
high quick starts, low fact finders, low follow through and everything else.
01:14:59:12 – 01:15:07:09
Speaker 2
But Babs has a genius of putting together teams, teams of great, great team members.
And so
01:15:07:15 – 01:15:20:02
Speaker 2
when we first met, she said, you can’t be doing that anymore. We got to get somebody
to do that. And probably for the first, I would say 15 years, she would say, you, you
can’t do that anymore. You gotta.
01:15:20:03 – 01:15:20:20
Speaker 1
We got.
01:15:20:21 – 01:15:22:16
Speaker 2
We got to get someone to do that.
01:15:22:16 – 01:15:23:04
Speaker 1
So,
01:15:23:04 – 01:15:34:05
Speaker 1
this is one of the most popular questions that people ask on like Reddit. So I want to
double tap in. This is to go when you’re entrepreneur, especially if you came from
nothing. You know, like many of us did.
01:15:34:06 – 01:15:34:18
Speaker 2
That’s a great.
01:15:34:18 – 01:15:54:04
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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Speaker 1
Start, right? It’s a great place to start. But when you have scarcity around money,
which I did because we had none of it. And then you get to this point and you go, hey,
you need to hire someone. I told some of this the other day. I said, I’ve never once in
my career felt like I had the money to hire someone before I had the need to hire them.
01:15:54:04 – 01:16:03:01
Speaker 1
It was like I had to hire them first, and then on the faith that the money would show up
versus being like, oh, I got so much money, I can just hire someone to do this.
01:16:03:01 – 01:16:04:01
Speaker 1
coach us through that?
01:16:04:01 – 01:16:09:11
Speaker 2
Well, there’s a neat thing in the marketplace. You get to pay them 26 times in the first
year.
01:16:09:14 – 01:16:12:22
Speaker 2
You don’t have to pay the whole first year right away.
01:16:13:00 – 01:16:24:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. You’re saying you’re not paying it. You think of it as like, I’m going to pay this all
up front. Like I can’t afford a person at this salary. Yeah, but just thinking about we
would call that the significance calculation, spreading it out. It’s just like thinking longer
term.
01:16:24:08 – 01:16:34:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. And most countries, the three countries we operate in the US, Canada and
Great Britain, UK, they have a three month no fault
01:16:34:10 – 01:16:44:00
Speaker 2
you can fire someone at three months. Well that’s you know, that’s six, six, seven pay
periods if you don’t if they’re not delivering in 6 or 7 pay periods,
01:16:44:02 – 01:16:49:13
Speaker 1
what I hear you saying there is okay. It’s two things. One, realize you’re not paying this
all up front. You’re paying it over time. And
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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01:16:49:17 – 01:16:52:23
Speaker 1
you’re not seeing the return from it, then you don’t have to stay committed to it.
01:16:52:23 – 01:16:56:02
Speaker 2
Well, there’s two other considerations along with that one.
01:16:56:02 – 01:17:08:10
Speaker 2
the other one is that you’re not actually investing in them. You’re investing in you, you
know, like you’re hiring someone. Let’s say it’s 50,000 a year for the for the first year
that
01:17:08:11 – 01:17:10:20
Speaker 2
50,000 is not in them.
01:17:10:20 – 01:17:21:08
Speaker 2
That’s 50,000 is that if I got freed up I’d make much more than 50,000. So it’s a nonbelief in your ability to produce more. If you were freed up.
01:17:21:09 – 01:17:21:23
Speaker 1
There it is.
01:17:22:00 – 01:17:22:09
Speaker 2
Okay.
01:17:22:09 – 01:17:25:13
Speaker 2
the other thing is you’re looking at it as a cost.
01:17:25:13 – 01:17:40:17
Speaker 2
I’ve never looked at payment to employees as a cost. It’s an investment, okay. Humans
and cost. You don’t have those two thoughts in your head at the same time. Might be a
bad investment, but it’s not a cost.
01:17:40:17 – 01:17:47:19
Speaker 1
when you make the right hire, you feel their impact almost always right away. Is that
true or false?
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
19
01:17:47:20 – 01:17:48:11
Speaker 2
True.
01:17:48:12 – 01:17:49:16
Speaker 1
Okay. Interesting.
01:17:49:16 – 01:17:52:15
Speaker 2
the most important thing is that they have the right attitude,
01:17:52:17 – 01:17:53:20
Speaker 2
which means that
01:17:53:20 – 01:17:56:13
Speaker 2
the moment you bring on board they want to be useful.
01:17:56:14 – 01:17:57:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I
01:17:57:10 – 01:18:11:02
Speaker 1
if you ask me, what’s Rory, what is one thing you changed your mind on about
entrepreneurship? I would say young entrepreneur was like, we’re going to hire people
and we’re going to invest them in, and we’re going to train them, and we’re going to
teach them, and we’re going to hang on to them until they can figure it out.
01:18:11:05 – 01:18:32:11
Speaker 1
And now a little more experience. Rory goes, man, I’ve wasted a lot of money and a lot
of my time and frankly, a lot of their time trying to do that. And it’s like, no, we’ve never
had a counterexample. It’s like when when somebody is the right hire, we feel the
impact right away. Like, like immediately we go like, this is this is why they’re here.
01:18:32:15 – 01:18:39:12
Speaker 2
And I have another book coming out in the fall, major book, and it’s called casting, Not
Hiring.
01:18:39:12 – 01:18:55:09
Speaker 2
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basically what you want is someone from day one that’s taking their cues from you as if
you were in a theater company and you’re the main actor. So that person is a support
actor, but they’re part of the whole story.
01:18:55:15 – 01:19:03:16
Speaker 2
People don’t like jobs, okay? Jobs are blueprints for not getting fired.
01:19:03:18 – 01:19:05:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. What’s the difference between a job and a role?
01:19:05:23 – 01:19:13:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I just said the the job. It’s a blueprint. If you do this and this and this and
this and this, you won’t be fired.
01:19:13:11 – 01:19:14:05
Speaker 1
You get to you.
01:19:14:05 – 01:19:32:19
Speaker 2
You get to stay. Yeah. You get you get to stay a role is that we’ve got a big
presentation. And there are other people who I have to interact with in such a way that
they’re freed up to play their role. So my role is freeing up, freeing up Rory so he can
do his role.
01:19:32:19 – 01:19:40:01
Speaker 1
as an employer, I guess it’s more of going like, I should be hiring people who take stuff
off of my plate and, and free me up.
01:19:40:01 – 01:19:42:07
Speaker 1
And if they’re not freeing me up, then it’s not the right hire.
01:19:42:08 – 01:19:43:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s the big thing
01:19:43:14 – 01:19:50:02
Speaker 2
before I started coaching, as I mentioned, I was an ad writer, big, big agency.
01:19:50:02 – 01:19:54:07
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Speaker 2
And about a month into the agency and
01:19:54:08 – 01:20:05:23
Speaker 2
I got to know the half owner, but he was the creative director for the agency. And one
day I went out and I said, can can you explain how this business works
01:20:05:23 – 01:20:13:21
Speaker 2
And he explained, you know how agencies work. They make their big money at 17.5%
of the media placement,
01:20:13:23 – 01:20:23:14
Speaker 2
and he gave me the entire blueprint of how they got paid. And I said, good. I’m, I
wanted to know that so that I, that every day I walk in, I know I’m worth it.
01:20:23:18 – 01:20:48:04
Speaker 2
But it really solidified our relationship because I wasn’t asking about my job. I was
asking, how does the company make money and be profitable? Right? Any person that
you bring on who wants to know what the big picture is, they’re going to naturally
become a great role player. The other thing is how do you look at yourself? I mean,
yeah, I’m the boss.
01:20:48:04 – 01:21:14:20
Speaker 2
Babs is the boss. But I have a special role inside the company. I create new material, I
create new books, I create new workshops. We have thinking tools. You know, inside
coach, I produced podcasts and everything like that. So my my role is out there to
constantly be putting out new product to the marketplace. And I coach the top level.
01:21:14:22 – 01:21:20:17
Speaker 2
I have about 110 that I coach entrepreneurs out of 2500.
01:21:20:22 – 01:21:31:16
Speaker 1
And just for those of you that don’t know. So you talking about. You’ve your personal
brand, the two of you together. You’ve built a business where you’ve got 2500 actors.
01:21:31:17 – 01:21:32:05
Speaker 2
Active.
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July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
22
01:21:32:06 – 01:21:36:05
Speaker 1
Active members that are paying 25,000 and up.
01:21:36:06 – 01:21:36:22
Speaker 2
Up to 50.
01:21:37:01 – 01:21:37:23
Speaker 1
Up to 50.
01:21:38:05 – 01:21:40:20
Speaker 2
Basically 15, 25 and 50.
01:21:40:21 – 01:21:41:12
Speaker 1
It’s a great business.
01:21:41:12 – 01:21:42:17
Speaker 2
Three levels. That’s good. Yeah.
01:21:42:17 – 01:21:50:22
Speaker 1
what’s the last mistake that entrepreneurs tightly hang on to and they just like won’t
they just won’t let go of this thing and it holds them back.
01:21:50:22 – 01:21:52:03
Speaker 1
Is there anything that comes to mind?
01:21:52:04 – 01:22:02:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got one. What kind of entrepreneur are they? Are they a lifestyle
entrepreneur or are they a growth entrepreneur? Okay. And what.
01:22:02:21 – 01:22:03:18
Speaker 1
Are the two options?
01:22:03:19 – 01:22:07:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, what I mean by that I’ll take yours as an example.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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01:22:07:08 – 01:22:12:19
Speaker 2
in the town where you live, there are people who live differently. They had big homes,
01:22:13:00 – 01:22:13:18
Speaker 2
they
01:22:13:20 – 01:22:19:23
Speaker 2
picture of themselves in the future, having a home like that. Yeah, right. Neighborhood
grade schools.
01:22:19:23 – 01:22:30:08
Speaker 2
And that’s your goal. That’s your goal is to get to that level. Yeah. And when I first
started coaching, I noticed they were really, really ambitious.
01:22:30:09 – 01:22:34:07
Speaker 2
What I didn’t know is there was a stopping point in their future
01:22:34:09 – 01:22:57:04
Speaker 2
for some of them, but for the others, what I noticed was that they would take a jump
and then they would normalize at that jump. They would bring everything. It was like
the locks of a canal. They would go and they’d go there, and then they’d have another
jump and they’d have another jump and say, they’re the same age, and they go
through 20, 25 years of growth.
01:22:57:05 – 01:23:07:21
Speaker 2
And then one of them stops and the other one just keeps growing and growing and
growing. So I’m I’m a growth entrepreneur, so I have no end in sight.
01:23:07:21 – 01:23:15:23
Speaker 1
And so you’re just saying a growth entrepreneur is just somebody who is loves growth.
And just like continual, never improving kaizen sort of sort of a thing.
01:23:16:03 – 01:23:29:12
Speaker 2
But the big thing as you go along. It’s not just your growth, it’s other people’s growth
because of you. So you feel this enormous feedback, you know, from the people who
are in your company, you know, they’re growing,
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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01:23:29:12 – 01:23:36:18
Speaker 2
We have coaches and the coaches are growing. Then I have the clients and the clients
are growing. So you’re in a growth environment,
01:23:36:18 – 01:23:47:07
Speaker 2
And it’s you know, I think growth is one of the greatest emotions that people
experience. So when do you want it to stop. When do you want all the energy to stop.
01:23:47:09 – 01:24:10:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. I thought when you first said there’s a growth entrepreneur and the lifestyle
entrepreneur, you know, my mind went to a growth entrepreneur or someone who
wants to come and, you know, take on debt and investors and ramp up and sell. And
that’s not us right. For us. Pro like one of the things that we we said in this book and
we really believe like for us, peace is the new profit.
01:24:10:08 – 01:24:30:03
Speaker 1
It’s like we want peace. But we couldn’t have peace if we weren’t growing. Like we
would not be okay with just everyone stagnant in us. We can’t be. It’s not about being
unsatisfied with like we need more. No, it’s we just can’t be satisfied with saying the
same as who we’ve always been. That’s just not who AJ and I are.
01:24:30:06 – 01:24:38:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. So that’s interesting. So it’s not about like the motives to like sell the company.
It’s just continually improving. Yeah.
01:24:38:03 – 01:24:41:15
Speaker 2
And two insights on what you just said. One is.
01:24:41:19 – 01:24:46:19
Speaker 1
Now I’m getting free coaching. This is why you need to have podcasts. You get free
coaching from the best coaches in the world. Yeah, but.
01:24:46:19 – 01:24:53:13
Speaker 2
But there’s two other considerations which are unique to our day. I mean, this was not
possible 25 years ago.
01:24:53:13 – 01:24:54:12
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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And as AI,
01:24:54:12 – 01:25:06:01
Speaker 2
And AI is doing two things. One is all the things that people you know are already
experiencing, which is that there are all sorts of processes.
01:25:06:01 – 01:25:06:06
Speaker 2
And
01:25:06:06 – 01:25:10:06
Speaker 2
AI can probably simplify that stuff by 80%.
01:25:10:08 – 01:25:23:02
Speaker 2
You know, if you have the right person and you have the right commitment to it. That’s
one aspect, and that’s the aspect that is being most talked about. The other one is the
impact of AI on medicine.
01:25:23:05 – 01:25:24:09
Speaker 2
Okay. So
01:25:24:11 – 01:25:29:15
Speaker 2
Babs really got me on the road to great health, great fitness,
01:25:29:17 – 01:25:42:01
Speaker 2
and a lot of that is AI driven. But the testing is all AI driven. You know, there’s no
reason why anything catches you by surprise these days if you’re using the latest
diagnostics.
01:25:42:01 – 01:25:46:07
Speaker 2
so my sense is if you’re.
01:25:46:08 – 01:25:54:20
Speaker 2
A growth entrepreneur, you just got a massive boost by a new technology, which is
going to get better six months from now.
01:25:54:21 – 01:25:55:03
Speaker 1
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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So
01:25:55:03 – 01:26:02:01
Speaker 1
You’re talking about one is AI improving productivity and workflows, simplifying things,
reducing complexity.
01:26:02:01 – 01:26:10:22
Speaker 1
In our operational structure, you have AI simultaneously improving the health, you
know, the longevity and the quality of life.
01:26:11:03 – 01:26:17:07
Speaker 1
So how should we be not not how should we be using AI?
01:26:17:12 – 01:26:21:15
Speaker 1
How should we as entrepreneurs be thinking about AI?
01:26:21:17 – 01:26:36:05
Speaker 2
Well it’s going to be there. I mean, it’s it’s going to be there as AI in itself or all the
products that you’ve been using before. Like, like everything you’re using on your
computer is going to be infused with AI already is,
01:26:36:07 – 01:26:56:06
Speaker 2
the big thing is that anything in the future that’s an ambition of yours, and ambition
comes from new capability. Ambition is actually a result. It’s not the cause that when
you take on a new capability, when you got this studio, your ambition, you know, this is
a big capability for you.
01:26:56:06 – 01:26:58:20
Speaker 2
I mean, what did you do before you had the studio?
01:26:58:21 – 01:27:04:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, we were doing mostly zoom podcasts and we were like, we gotta we gotta level
up here. Yeah, yeah.
01:27:04:18 – 01:27:19:02
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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The moment you got the studio, your your ambition grew. So in our world, ambition is
not the reason for something new. Capability is the reason for something. And once
you get the new capability, the ambition automatically grows.
01:27:19:02 – 01:27:19:16
Speaker 2
But the.
01:27:19:16 – 01:27:23:04
Speaker 2
the big thing about this with ten times, let’s start with ten times.
01:27:23:04 – 01:27:27:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. And you should probably explain what ten is easier than two x like the principle
of that. Yeah.
01:27:27:06 – 01:27:28:01
Speaker 2
Well most people
01:27:28:03 – 01:27:39:18
Speaker 2
pick revenue or they pick EBITDA. You know they have their you know their you know
what the company could be bought for. And most people, most entrepreneurs, even
successful entrepreneurs,
01:27:39:18 – 01:27:49:07
Speaker 2
they get a multiplier for what their EBITDA is, you know, and for most people, if they
don’t really think about this, it’s three times to five times,
01:27:49:07 – 01:28:03:20
Speaker 2
but the way we do it with ten times. So we get them to pick a number. You know net
worth could be net worth. It could be, you know EBITDA. And then you say let’s go
back in history. When were you one tenth of where you are right now?
01:28:03:22 – 01:28:35:06
Speaker 2
And then we analyze how they got from one tenth to where they are today. And it’s not
one thing. It’s about 30 things. Okay. And I said, so you’ve already gone ten times, but
you didn’t actually see how you did it. So we’re going to give you a picture of how you
actually went ten times. And I want to tell you something, 80% of what you did to do
the ten, 10%, you already know 80%, and we’re going to supply the other 20% for you,
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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28
01:28:35:06 – 01:28:37:09
Speaker 2
For example, about eight years ago.
01:28:37:09 – 01:28:48:12
Speaker 2
I was watching television and I said, this is really a worthless activity. So I stopped
watching television. I said, I’m not going to watch any more television. So I haven’t
done it for eight years.
01:28:48:12 – 01:28:54:21
Speaker 2
and I got 800 hours a year back from doing that.
01:28:54:23 – 01:28:57:07
Speaker 2
And what can you
01:28:57:10 – 01:29:00:23
Speaker 2
do if you had 800? If you had 800 hours back, what would you do?
01:29:01:01 – 01:29:06:05
Speaker 1
I mean, you can do anything you want. I mean, that’s so much time. You can master
just about anything with 800 master there.
01:29:06:06 – 01:29:07:12
Speaker 2
But that’s just one move.
01:29:07:14 – 01:29:15:20
Speaker 2
you know, if I make this move, I’m going to get a result from it. But if you have that
sense in your life, like you’re. How old are you?
01:29:15:22 – 01:29:18:07
Speaker 1
43, I think.
01:29:18:08 – 01:29:19:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. 43.
01:29:19:03 – 01:29:44:09
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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29
So I’m 82. I got 39 years on you. Yeah. Okay. And but the big thing is it’s just an
expectation. And if we’re going to be getting healthier. So most of the tests that we do
indicate that I have probably the health of a 59 year old energy 50 or, you know,
checking, checking out, that’s going to happen more and more that you have the
energy.
01:29:44:10 – 01:29:58:14
Speaker 2
The biggest reason why people retire is the energy it requires to be committed and
courageous to something new isn’t there anymore, because it’s not supplied by their
physical health. They’re wearing out.
01:29:58:14 – 01:30:05:12
Speaker 2
But the other thing is increasing who it is that your company is working with, you know,
in the marketplace.
01:30:05:12 – 01:30:06:09
Speaker 1
What do you mean by that?
01:30:06:10 – 01:30:13:01
Speaker 2
Well, bigger checks, bigger checks. For one thing. People are writing bigger checks for
you. They’re more interesting to work with.
01:30:13:03 – 01:30:26:16
Speaker 1
Oh, I see what you’re saying. Like you’re attracting. Ambition more. Yeah, yeah. It’s so
funny you mentioned that. So I was on the. I was on a call this morning with Gary
Keller from Keller Williams. And he was just saying, like
01:30:26:16 – 01:30:34:15
Speaker 1
I don’t see anyone else that can help me really, except you guys because he’s like, I
want to play.
01:30:34:17 – 01:30:36:13
Speaker 1
I have such a big game. I still want to play.
01:30:36:13 – 01:30:47:05
Speaker 1
He’s like, I’m struggling. He’s like at a point where he’s like struggling to find people
who will play at a whole nother level. And I was I was like, wow, that really does
become a challenge.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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30
01:30:47:06 – 01:31:00:08
Speaker 1
Like as you get to a certain point, it’s like there’s not that many people that are going to
keep playing at that, that level. So yeah, that that’s interesting. And I think about, you
know, on that question about how should I be thinking about AI?
01:31:00:14 – 01:31:20:08
Speaker 1
I think my, my biggest fear is that I will underestimate what is possible. And it’s like,
that’s probably the thing that I’ve always been most risky, like the most like the most
natural thing that we all do is underestimate what could be possible. And that was
before AI, right.
01:31:20:09 – 01:31:21:02
Speaker 1
So now you
01:31:21:02 – 01:31:23:02
Speaker 1
You multiply it by AI and it’s like,
01:31:23:03 – 01:31:25:06
Speaker 1
anything is like possible.
01:31:25:08 – 01:31:30:11
Speaker 2
I’ll just ask you the question. Could you get better at how you’re using AI today?
01:31:30:12 – 01:31:31:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. Of course.
01:31:31:11 – 01:31:33:23
Speaker 2
Yes. Okay. If you do it today, can you do it tomorrow?
01:31:34:00 – 01:31:34:15
Speaker 1
Yes.
01:31:34:20 – 01:31:38:09
Speaker 2
Just have 100 days in a row getting better every day.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
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31
01:31:38:11 – 01:31:45:18
Speaker 2
Everybody’s going to use AI for their own specific purposes. But if you compare
yourself with other people, you’re dead in the water.
01:31:45:19 – 01:31:46:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I
01:31:46:13 – 01:31:47:07
Speaker 1
think it’s more of like,
01:31:47:07 – 01:31:51:19
Speaker 1
like a question I wake up and think about all the time is how do we help our clients
succeed faster?
01:31:51:21 – 01:31:52:19
Speaker 1
And I think it’s like,
01:31:52:23 – 01:31:55:12
Speaker 1
you know, we’re not competing with anybody else.
01:31:55:15 – 01:32:00:04
Speaker 1
We’re competing with that. We’re competing with how do we help our get our clients
there. So
01:32:00:04 – 01:32:05:03
Speaker 1
You got a new book coming out, The Greater Game. I have not read this yet.
01:32:05:07 – 01:32:06:10
Speaker 1
give us a little highlight on.
01:32:06:12 – 01:32:09:05
Speaker 2
First of all, I’m going to tell you about my cooperator
01:32:09:06 – 01:32:11:23
Speaker 2
So my first three books were with Ben Hardy.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
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01:32:12:00 – 01:32:14:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. He’s a friend, Doctor Ben Hardy. Yeah.
01:32:14:05 – 01:32:26:22
Speaker 2
Very brilliant. Ben’s a great, great writer. Yeah, yeah. And you know, he wrote I didn’t
write their strategic coach concepts and I was consulted.
01:32:27:00 – 01:32:35:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he told that story and who not how that he was your who for
writing the book like of your of your own your your own ip.
01:32:35:22 – 01:33:00:18
Speaker 2
Well well he started it. I wasn’t going to write a book. He came and he offered his
services and I took him. I took him up on it. So I’m a great collaborator. I like doing
collaborations. So John Bowen is arguably the number one coach of high, you know,
very, very wealthy financial advisors whose entire client base is wealthy entrepreneurs.
01:33:00:20 – 01:33:09:16
Speaker 2
Okay. So they represented about the top 5% of entrepreneurs. And he’s been in
strategic coach since about 17 years.
01:33:09:16 – 01:33:18:22
Speaker 2
But the big thing about it is the research, really good research on entrepreneurs is not
available because it hasn’t been created.
01:33:19:03 – 01:33:46:15
Speaker 2
And the reason is it’s mostly written by college professors or by management
consultants or by corporations or the government. And they they treat entrepreneurs
like they’re, they’re they’re little ankle biters in the economic world. And yet all the new
breakthroughs that corporations enjoy after time come from entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs are really at the center of the culture now.
01:33:46:15 – 01:34:11:12
Speaker 2
That’s really happened in the last 50 years since I was coaching. I mean, Elon Musk is
an entrepreneur. The guys who created Google are entrepreneurs, the guys who
created Apple or entrepreneurs. These are major these are major, major players. So
the big thing is that we’ve this is actually the book is one part of a three part system.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
33
01:34:11:14 – 01:34:12:00
Speaker 2
So
01:34:12:00 – 01:34:21:12
Speaker 2
we interviewed lots and lots of entrepreneurs about this. And I have the experience I
have 50 years experience of what what are the multiplier attitudes.
01:34:21:14 – 01:34:52:18
Speaker 2
It’s a multiplier stack. So you had one stack ambitions number one. But then you have
to have security. Are you properly secured in the marketplace. Are you properly
protected. You know and you go down. Are you part of a community and you get
grades for that. Then there’s a second component which is a dashboard which you just
download download from the book and it has these multipliers, but it’s based on our
research so far with about 7000 entrepreneurs.
01:34:52:18 – 01:35:00:17
Speaker 2
And there’s numbers for each of them. And then you can measure yourself weekly
against on the eight multipliers.
01:35:00:17 – 01:35:06:16
Speaker 2
Based on those modifiers, it tells you what the multiplier value of your company is.
01:35:06:18 – 01:35:12:13
Speaker 2
And you can see the valuation going up as your numbers get bigger. That’s cool. And
then the
01:35:12:13 – 01:35:25:21
Speaker 2
third part about it is the research company that John has that we that we interview 500
new entrepreneurs every quarter to add to the depth of the, of the scorecard.
01:35:25:21 – 01:35:33:01
Speaker 2
And that that goes out to everybody. Anybody who buys the book gets access to to all
that.
01:35:33:03 – 01:35:37:09
Speaker 1
the greater game, folks? That’s what Dan Sullivan and then John Bowen
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
34
01:35:37:11 – 01:35:38:16
Speaker 1
available.
01:35:38:18 – 01:35:39:13
Speaker 2
At Amazon.
01:35:39:13 – 01:35:40:13
Speaker 1
Endorsed by
01:35:40:13 – 01:35:49:11
Speaker 1
a friend of mine. You’re much better friends with him, Peter Diamandis and Michael
Hyatt. And great stuff. So undoubtedly go check this out.
01:35:49:13 – 01:35:56:04
Speaker 1
I think so much of the work that you’ve done, you and Babs has been about creating
freedom for for entrepreneurs.
01:35:56:08 – 01:36:00:03
Speaker 1
But a lot of entrepreneurs don’t feel free. They feel trapped. Yeah.
01:36:00:05 – 01:36:13:03
Speaker 1
If somebody is listening right now who feels totally trapped inside their business, either
trapped by the overhead that they are having to provide for or trapped like they don’t
have a way to like how they’re going to get out.
01:36:13:05 – 01:36:16:19
Speaker 1
What would you say? What would you share with that person if they’re feeling that way
right now?
01:36:16:23 – 01:36:29:08
Speaker 2
First of all, that they have to treat themselves like addicts. And the first thing you treat
yourself like an addict is to admit that you’re an act, you know, and I my name’s Dan,
and I’m trapped.
01:36:29:08 – 01:36:35:06
Speaker 2
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
35
So our attitude towards it, if they’re if they’re reading the book, they’re probably an
entrepreneur.
01:36:35:07 – 01:36:48:15
Speaker 2
And if they read the whole book, it’s because they’re an interest at entrepreneur. But
that’s stage one. And they’ve done this. They have a rugged individualism that doesn’t
allow them to free themselves up.
01:36:48:15 – 01:37:10:17
Speaker 2
They’ve hit the ceiling and they they’re just not going to go any further. And then they
get into some real addictions, you know, they’re frustrated or they, you know, they start
buying multiple businesses, which traps them even more because they’re going to
meetings a lot and they’re meeting too many lawyers and the whole thing.
01:37:10:18 – 01:37:34:15
Speaker 2
So the big thing is that we consider strategic coach stage two of their career. They’re
going to be in a room where everybody in the room is going to be supporting their
growth, is going to be a plotting. Their growth totally comprehends how they get into
trouble. Totally tell their stories of how they got out of trouble. But the big thing is they
have to get nowhere.
01:37:34:15 – 01:37:57:08
Speaker 2
Their unique ability is, and then start eliminating all the activity that they’re doing that
isn’t their unique ability. And it’s done quarter by quarter. You know, it’s it’s but they they
have to have a big time frame. I recommend 25 years that you your vision that you’re
operating in is 25 years. Tell you a little story.
01:37:57:08 – 01:38:18:12
Speaker 2
so when I was coaching it, I don’t coach the first stage of the program anymore. But I
said, just take your biggest income year and multiply by ten. And the guy I saw, this
person, he just jerked and he says ten times, he says, I can’t do ten times in three
years. And I said, I didn’t say anything about the time.
01:38:18:12 – 01:38:41:05
Speaker 2
I just said ten times. I said, I’ll give you 25 years. And he says, 25 years. I don’t need
25 years to go dentist. I said, really, how many years do you need? And he says, 15. I
could do it in 15 years. I said. Isn’t that great? You go ten times in 15 years and you get
ten years change because we talked about 25.
01:38:41:06 – 01:38:58:19
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
36
Speaker 2
What would you do with it next ten years? And he says, I’d do it again. Wait a minute. I
says, you’re having trouble with ten times. So now you’re talking 100 times. 100 times.
I don’t I don’t go crazy because of their goals. They go crazy because of their
deadlines.
01:38:59:00 – 01:39:21:22
Speaker 1
Oh my goodness. Hallelujah. That is AJ. AJ knows I hate deadlines. I’m just like I mean
we got to have deadlines for things. But I go just set the goal and just start working
towards it. Like we’ll get we’ll get there like there’s no pressure of we have no artificial
deadline other than what we impose on ourself. That’s really great, I love that.
01:39:21:23 – 01:39:23:20
Speaker 2
So listen to your own podcast.
01:39:23:21 – 01:39:24:06
Speaker 1
What?
01:39:24:09 – 01:39:29:07
Speaker 2
Me? What? You just said. You should play it over before you go to bed. It.
01:39:29:09 – 01:39:30:01
Speaker 1
Yeah,
01:39:30:01 – 01:39:30:20
Speaker 1
what an honor
01:39:30:20 – 01:39:37:20
Speaker 1
to meet you. And you, what you have built is really incredible. And you have made
such a huge impact in the world.
01:39:37:20 – 01:39:42:16
Speaker 1
And I think that that impact gets multiplied because of your coaching and
entrepreneurs.
01:39:42:17 – 01:39:44:08
Speaker 2
And because of your podcast.
Brand Builders Wealthy and Well Known Podcast
July Guest Dan Sullivan Transcript
37
01:39:44:09 – 01:39:45:05
Speaker 1
Well, yeah. I mean,
01:39:45:05 – 01:40:01:16
Speaker 1
you’re going to reach so many people from this podcast alone. So thanks for what you
do. And thanks for modeling the exponential thinking and freedom and service. And,
you know, not ever doing the R word. So I’m so grateful that that gave me a chance to
meet you.
01:40:01:16 – 01:40:03:18
Speaker 1
And I wish you all all the best.
01:40:03:19 – 01:40:04:15
Speaker 2
Thank
01:40:04:17 – 01:40:05:23
Speaker 3
we appreciate you being here.
01:40:05:23 – 01:40:12:06
Speaker 3
That wraps up this edition of the wealthy and well-known podcast. Until next time, go
serve the person you once were.

WWK Ep 034: Burnout Is an Alignment Problem

It was the lowest season of my marriage. I just did not have an ounce of energy left. My body was
telling me, you’re burnt out, woman. I think I’m on the verge of like a full-on meltdown.
Literally waking up with stress and anxiety of work. That was the first signal.
Everybody thinks burnout is about how much you’re doing, but we are going to make the case that
burnout is not always a volume issue. It’s an alignment issue. And we will explore the micro signs
that allow you to get ahead of it. So you never get to the point of, I’m in such a dark place that
I need help. There are preventative measures that you can take, and we’re going to talk about what
those are today. Ever wonder what it actually takes to build a reputation that generates revenue?
Rory and AJ Vaden are the powerhouse duo behind Brand Builders Group. NYT bestselling authors,
and the personal brand experts who have helped some of the world’s most influential leaders scale
their personal brands. Now, they’re pulling back the curtain on how to capture attention, build
massive trust, and turn your expertise into a lasting legacy. Get ready to elevate your influence
and your income. This is Wealthy and Well-Known.
All right, y’all. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that many high achievers are
too proud to admit. which is burnout. And I have a little confession for you today,
which is a little bit of some backstory of a season of my life where burnout literally took me out.
And this was a 13-year journey to get to a point of decision of realizing that everything I did
was for money, ego, title, ambition, and I didn’t see the signs.
But today we’re going to talk about how you notice them before they take you out. But when I didn’t
see the signs, all of this led to a season of literally utter despair in the sense of,
I don’t know what to do. I’m not happy. I wasn’t seeing friends. I wasn’t seeing family. I would
say it was the lowest season of my marriage with Rory. This was in 2021. This was a season of I
just did not have an ounce of energy left. There was nothing I could do that would bring me joy.
And yet every single day it was to wake up and do the entire thing over again and again and again.
I had very little friendships going on. I had very little personal life. Everything was circulating
around this idea of how do we figure this out? How do we make this work? How do we grow this? And
it literally took me to the bottom of the barrel of, I think I actually need to seek professional
help. And there were many micro signs along the way that I could have seen,
that I could have noticed, that I could have gotten ahead of. And today’s episode is to talk about
those things so that you never get to the point of Oh, I need to seek professional help.
I’m in such a dark place that I need help. There’s things that you can do before that,
preventative measures that you can take. And we’re going to talk about what those are today. Yes.
And I will say that probably the biggest thing I’ve noticed on this topic of burnout that I hope
that we can talk about today is that everybody thinks burnout is a volume issue.
And I’m going to make the case that burnout is not always a volume issue as much as it is an
alignment issue. It’s not always about how much you’re doing. It’s about the reasons why you’re
doing as much as you’re doing. And that if we can get the alignment right, you actually can have
high capacity to perform and you can perform at a high level. but it doesn’t without it taking over
every ounce and every second of your entire life. And so I think there’s a lot of misconceptions
around burnout and I’ve run pretty hard for a pretty long time.
And I’ve never really bumped up close personally to burnout. I witnessed it in that time of 2021.
That was the hardest point in our marriage for sure. There was a lot going on as there’s probably a
lot going on in your life, right? We had young kids, we had COVID, we were in the middle of a
startup. You know, you had a lot of health situations and it’s hard.
It’s hard. So I hope we can just have an honest conversation. We’ve been there close together.
We’ve also had a lot of endurance. We’ve had some success through this. We’ve had some hard
seasons. So let’s get into it. Yeah. So I’m going to pull a Rory today and I’m going to answer my
own question. I thought we were disallowing answering our own questions. I was disallowing you to
do it is what it was. But the very first question, I’m going to read it. And then I’m going to
answer it and then you can answer it. But here’s the question is, what are the first signs of
burnout? What did you ignore and what did you, what did it cost you before you admitted that it was
happening? And so I think the, I want to start with what were the first signs. And I think for so
many of us, these are the things that we ignore. And I ignored all the physical signs.
Like my body was telling me you’re burnt out woman way before my mind was willing to admit,
I think, I think I’m on the verge of like a full on meltdown. And those started with a sleepless
nights. It really, it started with like every night I would wake up with a mental to-do list.
At what time? All through the night. I would wake up repeatedly. of uh oh my gosh did that happen
did that get done or i need to write this down or like there was even some nights uh well i guess
mornings you could say it’s like i’m like i have to start at 4 a.m because the kids are going to
be up and uh we are still in a season of really young babies and it’s like i have to be able to do
this and this and it was like but it was like there was so much anxiety that my body could not rest
I still have a challenge with rest and how even today I know that I’m on the verge of overwhelm or
burnout is when my body won’t rest. Like I can’t nap. I can’t sleep. I have problems sleeping.
Like those are physical signs where my body is like something’s not right. You’re not settled.
You’re anxious about something. And I just ignored them. I was like,
oh, it’s like, you know, we have young kids. It’s busy. But this was years. If you remember a
couple of years, it was like I could not sleep through the night. That was the first signal. The
second signal was literally like physical manifestations of pain,
of illness, of sickness. Like those were things that really started to become a really present
issue. There was so many little things. But finally, if you remember, I was diagnosed.
With gallstones. Yeah, it really culminated in gallbladder. It culminated in a very, very severe
gallbladder attack. And then in life or death emergency surgery. But it was, you know, it took me
18 months of visiting different doctors, trying to do different things until a Eastern medicine
practitioner looked at my tongue and checked my pulse rate and said, you have gallstones.
And I was like, come again? And this is a crazy story because you like walked in. And you
described, you spent a few minutes describing this and he’s like, open your mouth. He’s like, stick
out your tongue. And I was like, okay. I sticked out my tongue and he held my wrist and he goes,
you have gallstones. And I was like,
what? What are you talking about? And you spent years talking to doctors trying to figure out
what’s going on. Almost two full years. And then, but this was, that part was fascinating in and of
itself. And then he sat down and he said, do you have a problem with frustration?
And when he said the word frustration, I said, how did you know that? Like I bet in that season of
my life, I probably internally or externally verbally said the words, I’m just so frustrated 10
times a day. Like at least if you remember, I mean, at every turn,
I was just like, I’m just so freaking frustrated. This is so frustrating. Like I literally said
those words. And when he said that, I was like, how do you know that? And he goes. Your gallbladder
is the organ of your body that holds frustration. That was so crazy because he was able to say each
organ in your body is connected to a specific type of emotion. And he said, you have gallstones
because you’re not able to process frustration. And until you do, you will not heal.
Tell him what the prescription was he gave you, the most immediate prescription, because that was
also crazy. And that’s what I’m saying. This was a physical manifestation of overwhelm and burnout.
And he said, what I need you to do is go home and hit something every day. Husband,
duck! And I was like, what? It was not a drastic diet change.
And he was not being facetious. No, he was being dead serious. He was like, I need you to get a
bat. I need you to get a tennis racket, a punching bag,
punching bag. He was like, but I, he goes, working out is not what I’m asking you to do. He goes,
I need you to have a physical release of tension by hitting something.
You have to make physical contact. And here’s what all of you need to learn. I give your body keeps
the score, right? I read this book. It’s a hard book to read. It’s a heavy, heavy book,
but I do believe in the premise, like your body keeps the score. And if you just pay attention to
your body, inflammation, swelling, unwanted weight gain,
water retention, sleepless nights, headaches, tension in your face,
muscle aches that won’t go away. Like these things are your body trying to give you signals that
something isn’t right. And what it’s telling you is like, there’s a root issue here. This isn’t,
Hey, pop a pill or, you know, take a shot. That’s not what it’s saying. Your body is going like,
there is something being developed in you that you need to recognize. There is a root issue here.
And for me in that season, it was like, it was an unbelievably. tense season of so much work so
much overwhelm over committed is not an hour to myself no breaks no mental breaks wasn’t even just
physical breaks it was no mental breaks and so i would just encourage all of you it was it was a
stressful heavy season for the world but i would tell i would encourage all of you like your body
is telling you right now if you are approaching burnout your body is telling you something is not
right It’s just, are you paying attention to it? Are you going, oh, that’s, you know,
it’s just this or, oh, it’s just aging or it’s just whatever. And it’s like, it’s not just
anything. If you can’t sleep, something is not right, right? If you’re gaining weight unexpectedly,
something is not right. If you can’t focus, if you have fatigue,
if you’re, you know, have mental cloudiness, if you’re forgetting things, those aren’t nothing.
Your body is sending you cues. And it was amazing for me to have these encounters in that season
that eventually led to healing. And now it’s like, I know when those things start to pop up,
it’s like, oh, something’s going on in my work life and my work life balance, like something’s
going on. So physical cues are the first indicators. And we, one of the things we learned about you
in that whole experience was. your physical energy exertion. He was talking about impact, but in
general, we learned you are a high energy burner. You have to have physical energy exertion,
physical release. And I, we might catch some hate for what I’m about to say. And because I don’t
mean to oversimplify how to deal with burnout, but I’m just going to share my honest experience
here in the seasons of my life where I have approached burnout or stress.
There have always, always been one of two things out of alignment.
I either was not spiritually centered. So I was not going to church.
I was not reading the Bible. I was not engaging in practice. And if you’re not a Christian or
whatever, like it could be meditation or whatever, but like I was not spiritually centered and,
or I was not exercising properly and consistently. And I don’t mean to say that those two things
are the ultimate cure for every source of burnout, but I can say without a doubt,
100% of the seasons in my life where I’ve approached burnout, one and usually both of those things
had somehow, some way, for some reason, fallen to the wayside.
And my encouragement to you would simply be if you’re feeling exhausted,
if you’re feeling burnt out, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, I would simply ask you to go, are you
spending time with the Lord or whatever your version of spiritual sentiment looks like? And are you
exercising before you do anything else? Before you take a pill, read a book,
talk to a doctor. I’m just going those two things. Do those.
Do yourself a favor. Get those two things right and see if a whole bunch of stuff doesn’t change.
And in your case, the hitting was a very unique thing, but it also was just, we’ve learned even
now, like you need hot yoga, you need walks. But for me, I think, and this is, again, every
individual, it’s like, you got to pay attention to your body. But I think one of the things that’s
really important about this for business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, it’s like,
you have to slow down enough to listen to your body. Like some of us are just moving at such a fast
pace. It’s like there’s not a there’s not a break to even notice what’s going on, much less stop
and think about it and do something about it. So it’s like you have to slow down enough to go like,
what’s going on here? What are the trends that I’m seeing? Then you can assess.
But I think one of the things that you were going to say, Rory, is like for all of us, it’s it
comes in different like exercise to some might be a brisk walk. Like what we found out for myself,
it has to be like an intense. energy release so like a brisk walk won’t do it for me it has to be
something where it’s like i’m almost to the point of exhaustion she has a weighted vest she’s got
her little pink bangles on and she is cruising like i cannot keep up with her she is hustling but
it’s like i gotta get her a parachute i gotta give you one of those like little parachute things
those weighted things that you put on um but i think it’s like that’s really important it’s like
you have to know like what actually resets you And that, that took me a long time to figure it out.
Like I used to do hot yoga in my early twenties. And then over the last 15 years, I just stopped
going. I was doing bar three, doing Pilates. I was doing all these other things and it wasn’t doing
what my body needed. And the moment that I have gotten back into intense hot yoga,
it has been amazing. Like I told Rory this just the other day. It’s like. I literally go in one way
and I leave feeling a different. There is a physical difference in my body, but there’s a mental
clearing that happens in a 60 minute period that happens with no other workout. And I’m not being
an advocate for yoga here. I’m just going, find the thing that does that for you. But I do think
like the natural release of endorphins is a huge component of you getting those boosts that are
needed. to combat some of this. Yeah. And, and I’m, in some ways I’m the opposite because sleep is
what recharges me so much, right? I’m just like the koala bear. I’m just like, if I can just get a
30 minute power nap, I literally. wake up feeling that same way. I feel like a different, a
different person, but what does burnout look like specifically for a personal brand? I think that,
I mean, it, this, I think it doesn’t matter if it’s in your personal brand, business, personal
life, whatever. It’s like, I just think in general, the thing that shows up often is like,
there is an element of just exhaustion. Like it’s, it’s like,
it, maybe that’s not even the right word, but there is a, a dimness. to the conversation versus
something that has just a natural energy to it there is a lack thereof and I think that you can
sense like hey this is being forced or this is I’m doing it out of following through on my schedule
and commitment and i have some of those days like right now it’s like there are some days where i
have film i have to film a content content shoot and i’m like this is the last thing that i want to
be doing today with everything else on my plate and i’m forcing my way through it versus other days
where i’m like i’m in the right mental headspace i’m in the right and this is all i want to do and
i think those are the things that show up it’s it’s a forced thing Of, hey, I’m doing this out of
obligation versus out of genuine passion and mission. Yeah.
A word I would use is dread. Yeah. Is like, you know, you’re starting to burn out like
professionally when there is a sense of dread of like you get the Sunday night blues and you’re
like, oh, I’m not looking forward to today. There’s a difference between. I have to versus I want
to. Of like, oh, I really just do not want to do this. that’s very different from like oh my gosh I
worked so hard and I’m so tired but it was like man I was I was cranking today I was jamming I’m
exhausted but like the same way I’m exhausted coming out of the gym versus a dread of like I’m
having to muster up just being here and so I think that that is a sign that I would I would tell
people to to be looking for and I think that’s an indicator professionally that you’re not
operating in your uniqueness I think that is a sign that you are probably trying to emulate other
people. Maybe you might be copying content. You’re doing what you think you’re supposed to versus
what, I would say, what God created you to do or what your uniqueness is. It’s like you’re so busy
comparing and trying to shape your personal brand and your business by what other people are doing
or saying. And you’re operating kind of from the outside in versus operating from the inside out
and saying, why am I here? Who do I care to serve about? What are the things I want to research?
What are the things that I want to study? Where is my natural sort of curiosity or fascination
leaning me towards? And that’s like,
yeah, you’re off course because you’re like, you’re trying to make money in this way because you
think it’s a way to make money or you’re trying to do your content this way because you think
that’s how your content has to be done. You’re not just. listening again, not so much to your body,
but you’re not listening to your own intuition about what your mission is and what your message is
and who you’re supposed to serve. So I think that’s also a sign of a misalignment of your
uniqueness being expressed as a personal brand. I have a question for you. What do you think is a
lie that people tell themselves when they’re in burnout? Like when they’re in this mode of dread,
as you said, like, what do you think is a lie that people tell themselves when they’re in this
mode? Yeah. Here’s the ironic lie about burnout is they tell themselves,
if I just work more, I can work myself out of this. That’s where I really draw the line and go,
this isn’t a matter of doing more. It’s not a matter of the volume of work you’re doing. It’s a
matter of alignment. I think burnout is more the result of misalignment.
There are people who can work crazy amounts. I go back to what Navy SEAL Joe told us that day that
you bought me with our friend Joe, who’s a Navy SEAL. He said, The body can take damn near
anything. It’s the mind that needs conditioning. If there’s a misalignment of your mind,
everything breaks down. If you’re in alignment, you can do so much.
You have the source power of the creator working through you.
You can do so much. But if you’re off the track, it’s like you’re operating in your own willpower
and you’re just… You’re just, you’re just depleted and exhausted. And I think back to an earlier
season in our life and our business and with our first company where you,
you experienced a different kind of burnout. You weren’t physically burnt out.
You were working like crazy. You’re working 80 hours a week. You’re crushing it. You’re winning all
the goals, like winning all the contests and stuff, but you were emotionally depleted.
And it was more of a, again, it was a misalignment of like, it wasn’t about what you were doing.
It wasn’t about how much you were doing. It was about the underlying motivation of why you were
doing what you were doing. You were doing what you were doing to prove something to someone or some
sets of people. And that’s exhausting. Even though you were really good at the work and clients
were loving it and you were crushing it and you were making money and doing things. But I just know
like kind of in the background in that season, you felt like you were losing yourself,
I guess is how I would describe that you’ve described it. The general conversation is so much of
burnout. A way to prevent it is to make sure that you’re working in alignment with Where you feel
like you’re supposed to be. Because even if you do less, it’s like if you’re doing something you
hate, but you do less of it, you’re still going to be burned out. Like that’s not the answer. Yeah.
And that’s what I think people don’t understand. They’re like, oh, I’m working too much. It’s like
not necessarily like there’s some healthy boundaries to like the quantity of work you do.
But usually when when you’re on track with the calling of your life.
the natural divine design, the natural skills. It’s one of my all time favorite quotes,
um, from the guy’s name that I can’t say correctly, but it’s Panta Panta Jolly or Panta Jolly,
where he says, uh, when you’re inspired by some great extraordinary purpose, dormant forces and
faculties come alive and you find yourself to be a far greater person than you ever imagined
yourself to be. And I’ve found that to be true in my own life. I’ve witnessed that in your life.
I’ve seen that in so many of our clients. It’s like, when you’re on purpose, when you’re on track,
you come alive with creativity and energy like this boundless energy.
Yeah. I think a lot of this, it’s like, are you working from a place of true enjoyment?
Are you working from a place of forced will? Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of burnout comes from,
Hey, you’ve been working from a place of forced will for so long that at some point you’re like,
I’m out of runway here. There’s no more forced will ammunition coming.
It’s like it’s all burned up versus working from a place of genuine skill, enjoyment,
talent. We read a book a couple of years ago as a company called The Working Genius by Patrick
Lencioni. And one of the things that I love about that book, he said, no matter what you’re doing,
if you’re doing something that is not your natural genius, eventually. you’ll burn out totally
doesn’t matter what it is and how good you are if it’s not natural to you at some point that forced
effort will burn you out mentally, emotionally, physically, depending on what the job is.
And that really is back into an alignment with what are you naturally gifted to do? Where are your
natural interests? Where are your natural talents? Where are your natural passions? Where do you
have natural inclinations to succeed and do that? Whatever it is.
And he said, what I love, he goes, people always talk about, hey, I need a vacation or I need a
break or I need a day off. And he’s always like, no. you need to get in alignment with what you’re
good at at work. Because when you’re in alignment with what you’re good at at work, you don’t need
that. Not saying we shouldn’t take breaks, vacations and whatever. But he said, people need a break
because they’re tired because they’ve been forcing it versus am I working from a place of natural
genius? So I have a personal question for you and a professional question about you handle this. I
sometimes look at my life and I feel like I’ve had an unfair advantage and that unfair advantage is
you as my partner. I would agree with you. Yes. I mean, you and there’s this term in the Bible,
Ezra Konegdo, which is in Genesis. And often the English translation says,
I will make for you a suitable helper. But the actual translation is what?
It’s closer to soul saver. Soul saver.
I feel like you are my soul saver. And so I feel like that is an unfair advantage to me and to men
in general. I think moms carry more on the personal side.
I’m not talking about assigning gender roles. I help with the dishes. I clean around the house,
but you do more of the cooking. You coordinate more with house stuff. And the general default,
whether we like it or not, is just the kids come to you. How do you balance burnout on the personal
front? Because you’re fighting two wars. And it’s not that I don’t think I’m completely absent from
one, but I do think it’s different.
I don’t know if I have a great answer to that because it is a struggle. I think where if I was
being honest, it’s like I have the amazing benefit of help. Right. And I know a lot of families
don’t have that. Yeah. And that’s a very unfair advantage. I sit at our home often and wonder,
like, how do full time families who have two working parents do this?
So this is so hard. There’s so much. There’s so much. And so I have a lot of sympathy and empathy
of going like, if I can barely keep up and I have help. How are families doing this with two full
-time working parents? This is so much. And then I have some friends who have six,
seven, eight kids. I just stand in awe of like, like what?
Like, and here’s, here was my answer. You just figure it out.
And it’s like, is some, sometimes you get help. Sometimes you don’t have help. You have two kids or
you have eight kids. You have zero kids. It’s hard no matter what. Right. And it’s that whole idea
of like, it’s hard to be single. It’s hard to be married. It’s choose your heart. And then you
choose to figure out how to make it work. And so I think in general, not saying this universally,
I do think that women have higher capacities to handle more because I actually genuinely think we
were built that way. And I say to handle more. It’s like I think it’s like. And clearly we were
biologically made to be able to carry humans and to raise them and to like nurture for them.
But I don’t think that’s just for our children. I think it’s for all humans. I think it’s for our
husbands. I think it’s for our communities. I’m not saying men can’t, so don’t hear what I’m not
saying, listeners. But I do think there are some unique things that are biologically different.
And I think some of that is the more that you’re created to care for humans,
you have to have more capacity because they require more. OK,
so that leans into my next question, which is about at work. OK, how do you when you manage a team,
how do you have compassion and empathy for everything you just said, what they’re dealing with at
home and keeping all of that? But also holding high standards and a high accountability to the
success of the company. But like knowing that, you know, your employees, our employees are also
battling burnout and we going, hey, we know that it’s important to not work constantly.
So how do you as a leader create a culture where there’s a healthy blend of you need to have a life
outside of work and that’s important? And we also have very high expectations and very high
standards of performance. How do you reconcile that? I mean, I genuinely think it’s everything that
we’ve been having in this conversation of hiring the right person with the right skills for the
right seat. It’s alignment. It really is. It’s alignment.
It doesn’t matter what role you sit in. It’s like if you’re out of alignment, it’s like if your
employees are doing X, Y, and Z tasks that they don’t really love doing, they’re going to take
longer. The output’s not going to be as good and they’re not going to enjoy it as much versus
someone who is in a seat where it’s like, this is made for this.
This is my jam. I can do this and not get paid. It’s different. It gets done better.
It gets done faster. It gets done with more enjoyment. It’s about alignment. And so I think the
accountability comes to the leader of going, did you hire the right person with the right skills
for the right job? That’s really what it comes down to. It’s like we’ve had this conversation the
last few episodes. It’s like the problem starts with the leader. It starts with the owner. You are
the problem. So it’s alignment in a different way. But it’s the same conversation no matter if it’s
for you or it’s for your team. All right. So it is time for our community question. This question
comes from Christine in our community. She says, I have been a part of your program for several
years. Uh, it looks like she loves working with us. She says, I’m 99% sure I’ll be a BBG or for a
long time. Um, but she says that she is in the middle land. She’s struggling where in the middle
land, the middle land where she sees the value of more systems and more kind of technology and
infrastructure in her business, but she doesn’t yet have the budget to just go hire all the people
to do it for her. And so she’s struggling with How much of her time should she lean into trying to
like figure that out versus doing more of the things that are in her own strength and,
you know, like her current strengths versus, okay, should I just hire someone to do it?
And so I think I’m adapting her question a little bit to what I think is sort of relevant for
everybody. But she’s describing a scene where she’s like not yet there where she can just write a
check and like pay someone to solve this problem for her, even though she sees the value. Um,
and so she’s just kind of like in that, you know, no man’s or no woman’s land of,
you know, that, that in, in between. Yeah. So I think I’m going to give a generally broad answer to
this. And it’s like, I think for all of us, no matter what your seat is, um, no matter what your
role is, I think everyone needs to understand that there is a cost to inexperience.
Sometimes that’s with your team. Often it’s with you and there is a cost to inexperience.
There is a cost to you saying, I’ll do it. it because I can’t afford someone else to do it when
you’ve never done it. Like it will take longer. It will not be as good. It will take you 10 times
the amount of time and you will end up spending 10 times the amount of money from hiring a
professional who could have done it right the first time more efficiently and more effectively. And
I think that is a lie that we tell ourselves is I can’t afford it, but yet you’re paying yourself.
And if you are sitting in a seat that you’re not supposed to be in, then you’re not doing the thing
that only you can do, which would be providing the money and the resources to go hire the thing.
So to answer that question a little bit more directly, what I would say is, what’s the one thing
that you dread? What’s the one thing that you’re like, ugh. Not this again.
And that is the first thing you should outsource and go, if I reallocated the time, money, energy,
and resources that I’m currently giving to this little thing that sucks the life out of me,
that makes me not enjoy my job, that makes me question if I should be doing this, what is that?
And if you reallocated all of your time and energy into something that you’re naturally gifted at,
could you justify the trade-off of like, okay, I’m going to take a leap of faith.
And I’m going to go hire someone to do this thing so I can double down here. Here’s the second
thing I would say that I hear entrepreneurs say all the time is like, well, I can’t afford it. I’m
like, you can’t afford not to try. That doesn’t mean you have to stay. It’s like you can go try it.
And in 30 days, if it’s not working, you can’t pay for it. Discontinue. That’s why I think it’s
great to start with vendors. It’s great to start with outsourced fractional firms. You don’t start
with a full-time employee where you’re now taking on their livelihood. That’s a dangerous decision
for you and for them because it puts unnecessary pressure on two places that doesn’t make sense. Do
you need someone for five hours? Well, you can hire a firm for that. You can hire a vendor. You
hire a company for that, an agency, whatever, and reinvest your time and energy into things that
only you can do and tell me you can’t pay for it 30 days later. Yeah, amen.
self-promotion here, but I would point you towards the delegate chapter of my second book,
Procrastinate on Purpose, Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time. That is a must-read chapter on
this issue. And one of the insights is exactly what you’re just saying. You already are affording
it. You’re either paying someone else at their pay rate or you’re paying yourself at yours. And
what I would say is every entrepreneur believes that they they don’t have enough money yet to hire
the person and they’re waiting to have the money to hire the person. And so they never feel like
they have it. And so they never hire the person. And so they stay stuck. The act of faith is the
act of trust, both in a higher power and in people and in yourself and your own ability to generate
income is to go, no, I believe that if I hire the person first, That will create more time for me
and with more time and more energy, I will then be able to create the money.
And there’s not ever really been a point in our life where we have had the money available to hire
the person. It’s always been more of an act of faith of we’re going to hire the person and trust
that that’s going to create the margin of opportunity and time and resources for us to go make the
money. And that is the trade-off. And that struggle is the struggle.
It’s the struggle of every entrepreneur. And at some point, you just got to take that act of faith.
And I think what you’re pointing out here is a great part of giving yourself that permission is to
go, you don’t have to commit to it forever. Try it and see if it doesn’t work that way.
And even if it doesn’t work, a lot of times you go, oh, well, that setup didn’t work, but I
actually… hire someone else. I can see how I could make it work, even though that was wrong. So
you learn by doing it, but you don’t learn by waiting until you can afford it.
It’s a hard, it’s a really hard, it’s a leap of faith. That’s why they say that term. Yeah.
And I would just encourage you to, I hear so many people say, well, I’ve just made so many wrong
hires in that seat. I’m not going to do it again. And it’s like. Well, that doesn’t mean you don’t
do it again. It just means you get better at it, right? So you make the decisions faster. You get
better at hiring. You get better at training. You find the right person in the right seat. Just
because it didn’t work one time doesn’t mean it won’t work next time. So I would just encourage
that too. But there is a cost of an experience and most likely it’s you. So it’s a costly
experiment to be doing something that you’ve never done before when you can go hire it.
out to someone who knows what they’re doing. So if this episode has been helpful to you,
I would just encourage you, if you know someone that is on the verge of burnout or who is even
saying like, I feel burned out, do them a favor and share this episode with them.
We know that the body will tell you when you’re coming in. So just paying attention to the cues
will help you prevent yourself from burning out. And then sharing this episode could help a friend
of yours from experiencing the same thing. So share this episode with a friend. Do us a favor.
Subscribe. Stay tuned to the podcast. And also, as you’re learning about entrepreneurship, if you
would love how to get more support like this, we would really encourage you to request a call with
our team.
request a call with our team to figure out how can you be building your personal brand and your
business in a way that’s aligned to you, right? That’s what we’re after here. How do you do it in a
way that’s aligned to you? And you can request a call with our team to do that. We’ll catch you
next time on the wealthy and well-known podcast.

WWK Ep 033: Why Having Fun Is a Business Strategy

The biggest threat to any small business is that the founder just simply doesn’t want to do it
anymore. The lie we’re telling ourselves that it has to be us and it has to be right now. And
neither of those are true. 90% of all small businesses in America won’t make it past their 10 year
mark. You have to ask yourself why. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the balance of hard
work, but also fun. and rest we explore how entrepreneurs and business owners can move beyond
hustle culture to build lives and companies they don’t need a vacation from focusing on longevity
joy and balance instead of non-stop grind contentment it’s a skill but it’s a choice what is your
level of enoughness protect your most important asset you and make fun a core part of how you work
lead and live every day Ever wonder what it actually takes to build a reputation that generates
revenue? Rory and AJ Vaden are the powerhouse duo behind Brand Builders Group,
NYT bestselling authors, and the personal brand experts who have helped some of the world’s most
influential leaders scale their personal brands. Now, they’re pulling back the curtain on how to
capture attention, build massive trust, and turn your expertise into a lasting legacy. Get ready to
elevate your influence and your income. This is Wealthy and Well-known.
Have you made hustle an idol? Have you made nonstop work your only strategy?
We have a deep… belief that the people who win in the next decade are not just the people who
work the hardest. It’s really about who lasts the longest. In this episode,
we’re going to talk about the balance of hard work, but also fun and rest.
I love this conversation. I think AJ and I have different views. If it weren’t for AJ, I would
probably work all the time and just be a boring, boring, boring person, but she has shown me how to
have more fun. And we have a lot of fun, particularly as a family. So we’re going to talk about and
help you wrestle down this issue to find the balance of work and life in a way that’s going to make
you succeed. Well, I think it’s really important because when you think about 90% of all small
business in America will fail or simply not make it past their 10-year mark.
I mean, you have to ask yourself why. And I believe there’s two fundamental reasons and research.
corroborates this is number one is that people simply don’t want to do it anymore. And the second
is they run out of cash. But here’s, I think, a really interesting part of why fun as a business
strategy really does produce longevity in the business because you still enjoy it.
Like how many of us as entrepreneurs or solopreneurs or just in business in general have going
like, why am I even doing this? and what you started wow because it was exciting and invigorating
and there was passion and belief and it was fun all of a sudden isn’t really fun anymore and it’s
because the business has all become about spreadsheets and emails and making it to the next meeting
and you look up and you’re like I’m freaking exhausted I don’t have time for friends or family or
life or faith or myself and you look in the mirror and you’re like I don’t even know who this
person is And I think that is why fun as a business strategy is such an important topic,
not just for business success, but it’s also for personal success and it’s for business longevity.
I think Mike Michalowicz is the one who I heard this say, who I heard him say this first is that
the biggest threat to any small business is that the founder just simply doesn’t want to do it
anymore. The burnout. Because it’s not fun anymore. So this episode is really about how do you keep
fun as a business strategy to keep you in the game, engaged, and also making sure that you have a
healthy, happy workplace. Because if you’re not having fun, guess who else isn’t having fun?
If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Like nobody’s having fun if you’re not having fun.
Your customers aren’t having fun. Your team isn’t having fun. So this is a little bit of how do we,
incorporate a little fun back into your business and i want to i want to start on the top about
what business you choose like just starting there because we’ve had so many people come to us to be
like hey you guys could make money doing real estate you guys could make money doing investing you
guys could own a piece of this other business you could have all these things and i think one of
the things that we do a pretty good job of is like money is not our ultimate scoreboard and we go
well yeah but Even if we could make a lot of money, that just sounds exhausting.
That doesn’t sound fun to us. It might be fun for somebody, but it’s not to us.
And I think people need that permission right away up front to go, you can make money.
You can make enough money being good at just about anything as long as you’re really, really,
really good at that thing. And I do think a lot of people get into a business to go like,
I’m going to start this business because I think I can make a lot of money at it. And then they’re
surprised when five years later, they’re like, I’m freaking burnout and exhausted. And it’s like, I
don’t care how many ping pong tables you have in your break room. Like if you’re doing that, but
you hate the business you’re doing, like there’s no cure. There’s no, there’s no bandaid you can
put on something where it’s like, I actually just hate the business that I’m in. And I go make.
choose something else, make less money. Even if it means make less money,
but you’ll be so much happier just doing the thing you want to do. And I just think sometimes
people just need that permission. And so that’s why it’s like money is just not our ultimate
scoreboard. It’s an item we are mindful of, but it’s not our number one. I think the other thing is
too, is when I think about a lot of people, grownups, adults, right? this whole idea of adulting
grownups, grownups. I think that there’s a lot of it where it’s like, I do think there’s a
sentiment of like, you can’t have fun and be a serious business. And I just don’t think that’s
true. And if it is, it’s like, well, that doesn’t sound like something I want to do. Like I’m just
being real. It’s like, like where did joy and happiness and fun get cut out of the equation in
order to be. you know, serious or taken serious or successful. And I think that that is a shift
that I think is happening generationally of, and maybe it’s something that maybe even some
industries get a bad rap for. But it’s like, man, like, let’s have a little joy.
It’s like, I just, I think one of the things that I hear a lot of people talk about my dad, I just
turned 75 this year. And he still goes to work every day, his version of work, according to my
brothers who are in the family business. But nonetheless, it’s like he doesn’t believe in
retirement. And my grandfather, who was also an entrepreneur, worked until he was in his early 80s.
And this whole concept of retirement, I think it’s like I’m kind of obsessed with. I talk about it
all the time. It was an American invention. Like this is not something that used to exist prior to
the 1960s. This is also not a practice that is all over the world. It’s a primarily American
function that was created in the late 1950s. Tell them what the word retirement means.
But yeah, but to retire means to be taken out of service. Like, well,
what’s that? But then this whole idea of I’m going to work, work, work, work, work, work, work, and
one day retire. Like what?
friends are busy and you’re old and you’re not physically capable anymore. Like that’s the dumbest
thing I’ve ever heard of. Right. You’re going to sit around and watch wheel of fortune all day.
Like, yeah, you’re going to, what are you going to do? best years working nonstop, having no fun so
that one day you can have fun when you no longer feel like doing it anymore. It’s crazy. So I’m
real convicted that fun has got to be a core part of your business strategy. And I don’t mean fun
in the sense of, yeah, playing ping pong or cornhole or whatever that is, but it’s how do you have
lightness? How do you have levity? How do you have rest? How do you have components of enjoyment in
everything you do? Yeah. And I’m going to do the thing again where I ask a question and then answer
my own question. This is going to have to be disallowed moving forward. You’re not going to be
answering your own questions. Well, you gave yourself the good questions and I’m afraid that you
won’t ask me it.
All right. Answer your own question. Okay. So here’s the question. Where did I learn that rest and
fun were a necessary part of being successful and what planted that belief?
So I want to talk about a book that you read. that changed my life and the book was called every
good endeavor and it was by timothy keller and y’all if you don’t know this aj reads like crazy
like i don’t know if he reads like a book every couple weeks and one of the things in that book
that timothy keller reminded people of and reminded me of was that work existed in the garden of
eden before original sin which means that work was part of God’s original plan.
Work was never meant to be a price that we paid for sin. Work was not a part of a broken world.
Work was a part of the perfect world. It was a part of God’s divine design.
It was the original creation that work is a part of what gives us purpose and joy.
And that book and that idea really transformed the way that I think about work.
If I’m having to grind through work, I’m not doing it right. It doesn’t mean I don’t work hard.
It means that it shouldn’t be that hard to do work. I should enjoy the work.
I should enjoy the challenge because that’s part of God’s design. And if I’m living into what we
would call uniqueness, then I should be exercising skills and functions and capacities that God
gave to me. And that is the kind of fun that I think of. It’s not going like,
oh, if I spend more time on the beach, I’ll be better at work. That may be true,
but that’s not the big idea for me. The big idea for me is to go enjoy the thing you’re doing and
figure out a way to make that enjoyable. So anyways. Yeah, I think that’s good. I’ll add two quick
things to that that I think are worthwhile is that God did. create work in the perfect world.
And so did he create rest as a law, as a commandment,
as a necessity, because I think, not I think, I know he knew that we as humans would have the
tendency to want to outperform, outachieve, and that our worth would be tied to productivity,
which is why he said, no, you have to take the Sabbath. And that is where you have to rely on me.
That is where you cannot be completely independent. This is not of yourself. Everything that you
have has been given and provided in some way. And just as we were created to work, we were also
created to rest and have peace and enjoyment. That is the purpose of the Sabbath.
But I think for a lot of us, to the other thing I was going to comment on, this whole idea of
hustle culture and grind, I think a lot of that stemmed from this idea of comparison.
It’s like we grind and we hustle and we work more hours and more days and we never take breaks and
we don’t take vacations and this idea of getting ahead, of getting more,
of getting ahead of the next person. Beating other people. But all of it stems from it’s like,
well, I got to get what they have. So I got to work more hours. I got to do this. I got to do this.
I got to do this. And it’s like, would we ever have done that if we weren’t looking around at
everyone else was doing? I don’t know. And I think that overwhelm comes from taking more on your on
your plate than you can actually get done. Right. It’s an over committed. Why do we say yes to
things that we shouldn’t be saying yes to? It’s, you know, you feel guilty or you’re trying to keep
up or you’re a people pleaser or, you know, there’s this thing of like, well, everyone else is
doing good. I guess I got to do it, too. And I think there’s some of that built in here that we got
to unwire from our thinking. And I think that’s why pausing and going like, hey, it’s not always
about doing more. Sometimes it’s just about being better at what you already have, being better at
what you’re doing. But also there’s a skill of contentment. And I think that’s a discipline and
it’s a skill, but it’s a choice. To enjoy what you’re doing is a choice. And,
you know, one of the policies that we have at the Vaden household for our youngest to our oldest is
that we are going to be excellent at whatever it is we do. I don’t care if it’s loading the
dishwasher. I don’t care if it’s organizing the pantry. She does care if it’s loading the
dishwasher. For the record, it matters that we load the dishwasher with excellence at the Vaden
household. I’m just, if you come over, I’m just warning you now. There is a way to do it. But that
really does stem from the idea of like, if my hands are going to touch it, it’s going to be done
well. Yeah. And it doesn’t matter what it is. Taking out the trash. I’m above nothing. And that was
very much a learned attribute in my household growing up. And in my grandparents’ household, it’s
like if you’re going to touch it, you’re going to touch it with excellence. I think it’s like we
don’t appreciate the job we have or we think we should be doing something else. And it’s like, nah,
just be excellent at the job you have. Enjoy the job you have. And those are choices, right?
So I think a lot of that is, yes, do something that you’re well-positioned to do, but also be good
at whatever it is you’re doing. Yeah. And I want to, I want to double tap on, you brought up the
word contentment and you said contentment is a skill. I could not agree with you more. One thing
that changed my life was a question that my, one of my best friends, Jason Dorsey asked me,
he said, what is your level of enoughness? And he was asking the question,
like, how much is enough? Like how much money is enough money? How much impact is enough impact?
How much recognition or reputation is enough? That question really rocked me the first time he
asked. And I think it is a sign of maturity to go to say,
I do have enough and I’m not in need of more,
but I’m always doing something because I do things with excellence and because I enjoy doing it and
I feel called to do it and I feel like I’m using my skills, but not out of comparison, not out of
beating others and not out of trying to… satisfy my own deep feelings of insecurity or
inadequacy. That’s the part that leads to burnout. I think it’s less about the quantity of hours
you work. I think burnout is more related to why are you working those hours and what is the drive
behind the work? If the drive is competition or ambition,
I think you can run into burnout. If the drive is mission, then I think you can work really hard
for a really long time because you get the power of having mission as your motivation is if I
impact one person, I get this deep, satisfying gratification.
And yet at the same time, I am. I have an insatiable desire to impact and help more.
And so mission is really beautiful. But I think it’s more about the motives behind the work than it
is about the volume of the work that you’re doing. And a lot of that comes down to more emotion and
psychology of contentment and enoughness. And God’s just designed for rest to say,
do you trust me enough to rest? Yeah. All right. So I have a question for you. Uh, what do you do
for fun that helps you be a more happier,
productive person at work? We were having this conversation before we hit record.
So it’s like, this one’s hard one for me. I mean, well, define fun for you and then answer the
question. I mean, for me, fun is enjoying my life. Right. To me,
it’s not. What does that mean? It means that like, I’m happy with the life that I have. It doesn’t
mean, oh, when I’m at the beach, that’s fun. But when I’m on my office, that’s not fun to me.
That’s a, that’s a losing life. Yeah. Like I go, it doesn’t matter how much time I have at the
beach. If I hate what I’m doing in my office, like. You just always want to be at the beach. Yeah.
You always want to be at the beach. Like Seth Godin had this great quote where he’s like, build a
life you don’t need a vacation from. Amen. Like. I go, that’s it. To me, that’s fun is to go.
What does that look like every day for you? I mean, here’s, I think what it looks like is, you
know, my source of fun would be the things that we do as a family. Okay. And I think we decide as a
family, we were going to invest into experiences and go, we’re going to go to games.
We’re going to go to concerts. We’re going to go to events. We’re going to show up at birthday
parties. We’re going to try to go to water parks. We’re going to try to do stuff that.
creates memories and we’re going to focus more on creating memories than just having possessions
and largely i think that was your influence which uh you know you do a great job of making our
family fun and i think making brand builders group fun like if I think Brand Builders Group would
suck a lot more to work at if it were just me, for sure, because you do prizes and recognition and
tacos, this tacos thing that we do. It’s fun. It’s fun,
yeah. Separate from our family, the way I would have to answer that question is I don’t think I do
fun. I think I do rest. One of my goals was to get to where I could afford a massage every week.
I do that almost every week. I want to be able to,
on Sundays, I am completely unplugged. Sundays is truly a Sabbath for us.
For you. For me, yeah. Saturday is more when you Sabbath, and that’s only because you’re spending a
lot of Sunday working to prepare to host Bible study on Sundays. But I think…
know, we wake up, we go to church, we have brunch as a family, we come back, we get ready for Bible
study. We have family Bible study from 3.30 to 8. And then we go to bed and,
you know, maybe read the Bible some in between there. That’s like our Sunday. And I think we,
you know, do that even though there’s work in preparing for that. Fun for you is rest. I think fun
for me is rest. I would second that. Our kids call Rory the master napper.
Their whole idea of a fun day is telling dad, you can’t nap today.
Napping is fun for me. I can nap right now. I can go to sleep at any moment.
I think what I do have the ability to do is… off work from my brain and like go rest um and i
think that has been a learned skill which is also i think a demonstration of faith and this is a
difference between our first business and our second business in our first business it was like if
it is to be it’s up to me we’re going to work all the time non-stop i think when we started brand
builders group we made a resolution that we’re going to work hard from, you know, nine to five.
And at five o’clock, we’re going to shut the laptop. We’re going to stop answering the phone and
go, God, I’m turning over my business to you. That’s how I’ve had to process it to go.
There’s a bunch of urgent things that need attention, but it’s five o’clock. God, I’m handing this
back to you. It’s the same thing you do with your money. When you give a tithe, a tenth is to go,
God, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m turning this money. back over to you because I trust you to do more with
it. And so I think that rest, that enoughness, that separation, that picking a life you don’t need
a vacation from. Those are the things of how I do rest.
You know, other than that, it’s it’s swimming and reading. But I think for everybody, it’s like you
have to first define what is fun for you. Yes. Right. And fun isn’t going to necessarily amusement
parks or concerts or whatever. It’s like you get to define like and I think I think how I would
define fun in this regard of how do you make fun? A business strategy is what brings joy back to
your life. Right. And like when I think about what is fun for me, not as a mom,
not as a business owner, not as a wife, but what is fun for me is I like to be out in nature.
Like that is fun for me. Like I love going on a long walk or a hike. I love yoga.
I love being physically active. That is fun for me. It can be a yard game.
It could be a walk. But it’s like what is fun for me is to be physically active. And so for
everyone who’s listening, I’m just going like, well, I don’t have the money to, you know, go do X,
Y, and Z, or I don’t have that time. It’s like, no, no, you got to redefine fun as what brings joy
back into your life or what gives you mental reprieve. Like we have come to know at my house,
like if I don’t have some sort of physical release, the whole family feels it. And it’s like,
I’m like, I need to go on a walk. I shall be back. And I will come back a different person.
And it’s like, so I’ve just realized like fun for me, what brings me joy is just having physical
activity. It doesn’t matter what it is. I just need to be physically active every single day.
It could be a walk. It could be yoga. AJ is a high energy burner. I am. But it’s like, that also
brings me joy. It’s fun for me. I love that. It’s like, I actually really love working,
but I also love not working. I love both. Like, I think one of the greatest gifts of being a parent
that I never expected was how much joy I get from doing nothing.
It’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s just, they make everything fun.
And it’s like, it’s not about productivity. It’s not about, it’s just, we’re just doing it to do
it. And that has been a really important business and life lesson of not everything has to be about
productivity. It’s like sometimes you can just do things to just do them. And that has been like a
really good gift that I think is really important for us all to realize. It’s like I can easily.
Make yoga a competition. It’s like, how good can I get? How many poses can I learn? I can do that
with the books I read. You can do it with anything. How fast can I walk? How many steps can I get
in? Those are all things that we can do. And I think the greatest thing about having something that
just brings you pure joy, that to me is fun, whatever it is. And it’s like, really think about the
things that are fun. something that doesn’t have some sort of productivity measurement tied to it.
It’s just something that gives you a release, a reprieve. something that gets you back in alignment
those are things that are fun that’s what makes it all worth it because there’s hard days you got
to have something that will give you a release on a really hard day and I think those are the
things that when you think about fun as a business strategy that it’s not you’re glued to your desk
right you’re peeing on mute you’re eating on calls like that’s not sustainable For the long haul.
Peeing on mute is kind of fun because it’s a challenge.
From the mouth of Rory Vane. I have an important question. This is a really good one.
So I want to talk about not working for a second. Because in addition to running our business and
running our household and being a mom and spending time with our kids. What is the lie that most
high achievers are telling themselves about why they can’t slow down?
And specifically. Have you been there? How did you get past it? What have you,
how did you resolve that? Yeah. I mean, I come in and out of that every single day of,
you know, I can’t take a break. I can’t have lunch. I can’t do this. I can’t stop at five.
And I think the lie is that I have to do it. It has to be me. That is the lie that we all somehow
believe is like, somehow there’s like this magical power that we possess. That no one else does.
Only I can figure this out. Only I can do it. I can only do it this fast or it has to be this way
or it has to be this good. It has to be X, Y, or Z. The lie we’re telling ourselves that it has to
be us and it has to be right now. And neither of those are true. And so I constantly have to be
checking myself of what, and I think the practice that I have in the morning is what’s my priority
for the day. And as long as I get my priority done for the day, I’m good for the day.
That doesn’t mean there’s not urgent things. I mark them as urgent. I get to them as quickly as I
can. But that’s also learning how to use a team. And it’s also giving yourself permission of like,
I set forth a goal of the day. Have I completed the task of the day? If the answer is yes,
my priority has been completed. Check. I can check out now. But then the other thing is really
learning how to use your team. I think a lot of people hire a team and then they’re frustrated that
my team isn’t producing. And it’s like, well, are you giving them things to produce?
And it’s like, why are you still holding on to all these things? And some of that is,
I believe, one of an entrepreneur’s greatest skill sets is to hire people who know more than they
are, or know more than they do. To hire people who are better than they are at something. To hire
someone who knows more than something they do because… One, I think it’s a really important skill
set for you never to be the smartest person in the room. That is a dangerous place to be always
forever, no matter who you are. Like for me, for example, it was a really scary place for our
business and for me, for me to be the smartest person with our accounting and financial team.
I didn’t go to school for accounting or finance. Yeah. I mean, we should have known we had a
problem when the art major was the CFO.
Technically, I graduated as an advertising major. Okay, well. But it was like,
you know, I need to hire someone who is smarter than me in this. And if I’m the smartest person in
the room when it comes to our money, we’re in trouble. And it’s been so amazingly enlightening and
surprising in the best way possible to hire someone who knows so much more than me.
in this skill set, because what it is, it’s giving me the confidence of, uh, I can give this to
you. I don’t have to do it. You know what? I’m not the smartest person on this. It’s I’m not the
only one. And that it’s, um, that’s almost like, um, an addiction.
It’s like when you realize, Oh shoot, what else am I doing that someone else could do better? So
now I’m constantly looking around of like, wow, am I doing this? you’re so much better at that.
Why haven’t I given it to you? So I think there’s something in there that there’s a lie that we
believe that it has to be me and it has to be right now and neither are true. What would you say to
the entrepreneur who hasn’t had a day off in like a very long time? Like if somebody is listening
right now and they are like, they don’t know how to give themselves permission to take the time.
Like the only thing they know is, I do everything. I grind.
I make this thing work. And they feel like if they stop,
it’s going to fall apart. What do you say to that person?
I think there’s a lot of things I would say. But the truth is,
is you’re never going to realize that it’s not going to fall apart when you stop until you stop.
And then you realize it didn’t fall apart. Um, that’s the truth. And especially if it’s a day or a
week, it’s like, may there be a pile of things to come back to? Sure. But is it all going to
completely fall apart because you stepped away? No. And if you really feel that way, what the real
advice I would give to you is you need to look around at the team you have or the lack of and go,
why do you feel that way? Because there’s a reason you feel that way. It’s rather you haven’t
released control, you haven’t provided the necessary training, or you haven’t hired the right
people in the right seats. And that’s a you problem, right? That’s a business owner problem.
But a lot of that is I think we’re conditioned and some of it,
it just becomes a habit. And it takes a minute. And sometimes it takes abruptness to break a habit
like that. I have been in those seasons. And what I needed that is I needed accountability. I
needed someone else to come alongside me and go, no, we’re doing this. It’s phone-free,
device-free. This is what we’re doing. And so maybe that’s what you need. But I think for the
first, most important part, if you feel that way, there’s a reason. It’s rather you haven’t
released control. You haven’t trained up the team to help. You haven’t hired the team or you
haven’t hired the right team. Here’s something I want to say that is going to make some people mad.
But take this from someone who was a workaholic. I firmly believe now that overwork is a sign of
underfaith. I really believe that. And I don’t mean to offend you, but if it offends you,
I’m okay with it because I think you need to hear it. If you are overworking. It is a demonstration
of a lack of faith. It is a demonstration of going, I don’t trust God to fill in the gap.
I don’t feel like I’m going to be taken care of, which means you’re demonstrating a level of
exertion that probably carries into other areas of your life where you feel like you have to
control everything. And ultimately, you’re not in control. Like you can influence things, but you
can’t control it. The benefit that you get is to is to feel like you’re in control.
But the price you pay is a never ending soul crushing weight and stress.
It is a prison of your own construction and you will never break free from it. Because I would say
to you, I would say, how’s it working? Right. You’ve been working. How long have you been working
all day, every day for? How’s that strategy working? Did you get, is your inbox at zero?
Do you have things finally under control? Do you finally feel caught up or do you feel less caught
up? Do you feel more behind? Do you feel more busy and buried? And I go, because there’s no amount
of work that’s ever going to make you feel caught up. The only thing it’s why we talk about in
wealthy and well-known peace is the new profit. And that peace doesn’t come from spending in.
an infinite number of hours working on your business. At some point, it is a matter of
relinquishing control and saying, I will do my best and God.
I’m trusting you with the rest. And until you get there, you’re just going to keep in the pattern.
And that’s why overwork is a sign of under faith. And I believe that the pressure you’re feeling,
the stress you’re feeling is God trying to get your attention to go, hey, give some to me.
Give this to me. And it’s the same thing with a team, right? So if you don’t believe in God and all
that, it’s like a similar, it’s a, it’s a similar dynamic with your team. One is a spiritual, one’s
a practical. It all comes down to trust and surrender. Trust and surrender. It doesn’t matter which
angle you take, but it’s like, one of the things you have to realize is that the more you work, the
more work you create. And it’s like, until you rest, like, it’s like, there’s always going to be
more to do. Always. At home, at work. And you don’t even have to be in like.
a professional career to experience that. The same thing goes for a stay at home mom or like it
doesn’t matter. It’s like there is always another load of laundry, another load of dishes. There’s
always something to pick up. There is always more to do. It’s never going to go away. It’s your
choice to go. That’s not my focus right now. So I have one last question for you before we go into
the community segment. Then what are the non-negotiable fun moments that are the things that you
protect in your calendar no matter what? Every year we make an annual calendar and we,
I think, have done a pretty good job of this. So first thing that comes to mind, Sunday,
Sabbath, we’ve already talked about that. Second thing that comes to mind is Wednesday date night.
We’re relentlessly protective about one night a week for us. Third thing is we take birthdays off.
Um, and we celebrate, we just celebrated, uh, our youngest son’s birthday. Uh, you know, this week
we were out like, and, and I’ll tell you what, I was more exhausted at the end of that day than at
the end of the work day. Cause man, keeping up with the kids, man, they are nonstop. We were,
we were moving and grooving and playing games and doing stuff all day long. I was exhausted. I was
like, let’s play soccer. Can I please just have a day of meetings? Uh, cause it was, it was, it was
fun though. Um, so I think we, we, we celebrate. A lot. Like we celebrate.
You’ve built a culture in our family of like we celebrate things. And then I think the other thing
is you and I, and a lot of people don’t do this, you and I get away,
just the two of us, at least two weekends a year. We used to get like four a year. Childcare
coverage is the biggest obstacle and challenge. to it but i think ideally we’re getting away three
to four times a year even if it’s for one night or two nights and i am shocked at how many of our
friends will take a trip and they’ll be like is this the first time we’ve had a trip with just the
two of us and no kids in six years nine years 15 years and it’s like How can you stay connected to
your spouse if you never have time with just you and your spouse? Like those are non-negotiables
for me. And I think for us that have made a huge difference.
Yeah. And I would just add to that, regardless if you’re single, married, kids, no kids, empty
nester, it doesn’t matter. But it’s like you have to schedule it in. It’s just like you prioritize
the meetings and the tasks and appointments that you have to do at work. our personal life the same
way. It’s like I will book activities, fun things, whatever it is, six months, nine months,
a year out to go. It’s in the calendar. It’s we’re committed to it. We paid for it so that we can’t
be too tired or too busy to get to it as because we’ve already put the money and it’s already been
on the calendar. And those are things that we have put it as and it doesn’t even have to cost money
to do that. It’s like, hey, we’re doing a picnic at. xyz park and it’s like it’s in the calendar
that we schedule it we plan it we treat it like a meeting we treat it like an appointment because
if we don’t it’ll never happen and i bet the same is for you so it’s like what are those non
-negotiables for you uh that are fun right so i think that’s the first thing is just like what
brings you reprieve what brings you joy what are those moments of fun that you can bring back into
daily and i do think they need to be daily Not weekly, not monthly. I’m talking about daily.
You need to have moments of fun every single day. And maybe it’s just like you have a really fun
friend that you call or you’ve got it. You’re you’re on a friend text chain and it’s like, hey,
when we share these things every day, it’s so fun. Find the thing. that gives you joy and do the
thing every single day. Because I do think that helps you last longer. This is,
again, it’s not about how successful you are, it’s how long can you last. And those are things that
really matter. I love it. All right, it’s time for our community question. So this is where our
Brand Builders Group monthly members who are in our formal program get a chance to ask questions in
the community and they each vote up on their favorite questions. So the question for today is from
Mark. Mark says, I’m four months into working with Brand Builders Group and I am absolutely loving
it. I’m grateful for you both. We’ve been in the coaching space since 2017. I was inspired by
something you shared at one of your recent events, which is that the future vision of brand
builders group is to become a business operating system. I am wondering if you have any
recommendations on software platforms, teams, or phases of development for how we could also become
an operating system for our clients. So it’s a little bit related to systems and structure.
Um, you want to go first and share your thoughts or no. You want me to take this one?
No, I sure I have lots of thoughts and ideas. And I think, again, you have to for whatever your
business is. I think the conversation that we’re having at Brain Builders Group is how do we go
from being a luxury? business. In other words, a nicety, something that is not fundamentally
necessary to the function of our client’s day, right? So that’s what I’m going to call that a
luxury business to an essential business or a necessity. So you could either word nicety to
necessity, luxury to essential. That is the conversation that we’re having at Brand Builders Group.
And we are making a strong pivot towards being a strategy firm to a firm that helps execute
strategy. That’s how we’re going to become an operating system. And so that’s really what Mark is
talking about. So when you think about that, whatever your business is, and this isn’t going to be
a technology platform conversation. This is more of a structural mindset of going,
how do you become essential to your client? Yeah. So I would starting high level,
I would say the question that we ask is how do we help our clients get results faster?
So that’s the guiding question is to go, what tools, technology, systems,
techniques, templates do we need to create to help our clients succeed faster?
That’s the overarching question. The second thing I think you do is you go, what are the systems
and tools and technologies and templates that we use in our business? And how can I recreate those
and document them, codify them, extrapolate them? out of your head and your team’s head and get
them onto paper get them documented and go ah this is the system and then go what technology or
tool can we use to create to make those scalable and interchangeable
And that is what we’re doing, right? So in our case, we have been investing heavily in creating a
tool that does marketing automation, CRM, workflows, you know, drip email.
sequences to help people execute on the backend, all the systems and structures we do along with
content management systems, along with lead generation systems. So those are the three main areas
that we’re building tools. And I would underscore something you said, strategy matters way more
than the technology. You can get whatever technology you need to do, like to get it to do the
thing. What matters is you figure out what’s the strategy. How do we templatize that? And then just
go find whatever technology is available that’s kind of the closest and most affordable and meets
the number of things. And then make it work and do that work. But we’re trying to do as much of the
work as we can for clients so that when we teach them something, it’s like 80% executed already.
And then all they need to come in and do is tweak it and tailor it. And that’s been a long journey.
Mark said he is an eight-figure business. So this is not something you do on day one. No, and I
would just say too, it’s like you can become an operating system for your clients. sans technology
sure like you don’t have to have technology or platforms or softwares to actually become an
operating system uh becoming an operating system for your clients has everything to do with
answering this fundamental question which is what does your client need what do they need and
you’re giving them the playbook and you’re giving them and that could be a playbook could be a
playbook it could be a system there’s so many but that system doesn’t mean it’s software You have
to have the answer to these two questions. What does my client need? And what would make me
essential? Right? Like, what do they need? And what’s going to make me a line item on their budget
that’s like, can’t cut that. Gotta have that. It’s a fundamental part of our business. This is how
we do it. This is what we need. And so I think those are the two things that then you can come
with. Hey, what are the softwares or technologies or what are the things that we can have 80
percent done or what can we do for them? Those are all the fill in the gap after, you know, the
answer to those two questions. Absolutely. So if you want more help with that kind of thing or if
you have specific questions about how to customize strategy for your business. If you go to
freebrandcall.com slash podcast, you can request a call with our team. We will do the first call
for free with you. We’ll connect you with one of our strategists. So we want to invite you to check
out freebrandcall.com slash podcast. The other thing is I would encourage you to share this
episode with the busiest entrepreneur you know and maybe highlight, send them the time code of
whatever your favorite part of this episode was and just see if you can be like, hey, go listen to
these two minutes. and see if you can add value to someone in your network that way. And that would
be a great help to them and to us. And also it would be a way for you to build relationships before
you need them. So hit subscribe while you’re at it and you’re on the show and stay tuned for next
week. What do we got coming up next week, AJ? Oh yeah, I was just going to add, it’s like, hey,
let’s not forget that you did not build the business that you’re building to miss your whole life.
That wasn’t the point, right? A part of this, we started the conversation with like, we believe
that work was created in the original perfect design of human beings and so was rest.
But you didn’t build a business to miss your whole life. That’s not it. You’re building it so that
you can enjoy life to the fullest. So that is the point of this episode. And it’s a little bit of
what we’re going to even talk about on next week’s episode, which is how to protect your most
important asset in your business, which is you. So how do you do that? Come back next week and
you’ll find out.

WWK Ep 032: Another Year Wiser

AJ and I are going to share some insights of our biggest wins and our biggest losses over the last
12 months. What we learned, what we’re leaving behind, and what we’re taking forward so you can
apply the same kind of review at mid-year or at the end of the year. If there are problems in your
company, it’s looking in the mirror and going, what’s my part? What do I have to own of this? We’ll
show you how to take radical ownership, rethink how you lead your team, and rebuild a healthier
business from the inside out. Ever wonder what it actually takes to build a reputation that
generates revenue? Rory and AJ Vaden are the powerhouse duo behind Brand Builders Group,
NYT best-selling authors, and the strategists who have helped some of the world’s most influential
leaders scale their personal brands. Now, they’re pulling back the curtain on how to capture
attention, build massive trust, and turn your expertise into a lasting legacy. Get ready to elevate
your influence and your income. This is Wealthy and Well-Known.
Most people determine the success of the year by whether or not they hit their empirical goals.
But I’m going to argue and we’re going to argue that that is not the most important way to measure
success. In fact, in this episode, we’re going to make the case and we’re going to share some of
our personal insights about why success is not what happened to you. It’s what happened in you.
And this is the part that almost nobody tracks. It’s not what you did. It’s who you become.
And AJ and I are going to share some insights of our biggest wins and our biggest losses over the
last 12 months. For example, a year ago, I actually believed that nobody would show up for live
webinars. I kind of thought that people were over and done and finished with live webinars and that
they just weren’t worth doing. And I have completely, radically flipped my belief on that this
year. We know for sure that as much as ever before, people are showing up live.
They’re wanting to build a relationship with you. And if you want to activate your email list, you
want to invite them to live webinars. That’s an example of just one thing that has happened. Today,
we’re going to give you a whole bunch more. Now, today is an episode where we’re going to be
talking about the last 12 months, but it’s not a year-end episode for you. It’s a year-end
episode for Rory and I because this is the end of the last 12 months as Rory and I are approaching
our birthdays. Happy birthday! We’re only one day apart, July 25th and July 26th.
For most of you, this will be an opportunity to have a mid-year check-in. But for us, this is an
opportunity to review the last 12 months with you and help you understand how you could do your
own. you know, year-end review, whether it’s your birthday, the end of year, or is this just a mid
-year check-in? So we’re going to do some reflections on what did we learn? What are we leaving
behind? And what are we taking with us moving forward? And hopefully you’re going to pick up some
of the same things along the way. All right, Vaden. So first question is for you. What is one thing
that this year taught you about yourself that you genuinely did not expect to learn?
I have so, so many things. And I actually was in a mastermind meeting yesterday.
And one of the biggest ahas that I’ve had actually in the recent months is that most of the
problems in our business start with me. It’s like I am the biggest problem in our business.
I’m glad they told you that and not me.
Well, it’s not just me. It’s we. It’s we. Oh, shoot. Me too. And it was interesting to have that
moment of reflection because it’s been an interesting start to 2026. The last six months,
it was definitely a year that I was not expecting to have as much stop and starts,
trying new things, things that aren’t working. The market is changing. The industry is changing.
Technology is changing. It’s been moving at a rapid pace. And then on the personal side, we moved
houses. you know, way past our move in date. We didn’t have time and plans for that. There’s just
been a lot of transition. And I’ve literally been looking around going, what is wrong?
What’s the problem? And literally the last 30 days, I literally have had the realization that all
problems start with me. I’m the problem. And it really hit me yesterday. We were in a team meeting.
And so any of you who are listening to this, who have teams of any size, maybe you can relate to
this. And we have a board, we follow traction and we have rocks, which are just like our quarterly
goals. And every week we have a weekly tactical, a check-in. And on that we put issues and
opportunities and people can bring like, what are the most. pressing issues that we need to discuss
as a team. But this particular issue was brought that was a question for me. It’s like, hey, I’m
not clear what you want for this agenda at our upcoming mid-year meeting. And it hit me.
I’m like, oh, this is what I’ve been journaling about.
I have conditioned our team that I have the answer to every question. And so I am not allowing them
to think for themselves. I’m not forcing them to think for themselves. And I think there’s a part
of it of like, I enjoy having the answer. I can make quick decisions. And so we get to that part of
the meeting. And the person who asked the meeting was like, I just, you know, what do you want
here? This is what I have. But like, what do you want? And I said, you know what, team, I’m going
to try something new today. I’m not going to tell you what I want. And they all literally stopped
what they were doing and said, come again. And I said in the meeting, we have this on recording.
I said, actually, I don’t think that’s working very well. Me telling you everything. So I’m not.
How about we try this? You build out the entire thing the way you think it should be. And then you
tell me what you think it should be. And the person who was asking the question literally paused
and said, everyone, can you please document this? This is being recorded. Can someone confirm that
everyone else heard her say this? And then it really hit me. Oh, this isn’t just I have the
problem. They know I have the problem too. So I think that’s one genuine thing that I have learned
recently. Can I ask an additional question on this? So as the leader, how do you overcome the fear
of going, if you don’t tell them exactly what you want, then they might produce something that was
different than what you wanted. Because there’s a, you know, the benefit of articulating exactly
what you want is you get what you want. But that’s what I’ve realized. I often don’t get exactly
what I want. Even when you say it. Even when I say it, because I didn’t take the time to give.
Every specific nuanced thing. I have the curse of knowledge. They don’t have all the inner
knowledge that I have to produce what makes it so clear to me what I want because I didn’t give
them a three page instruction manual because who has time to do that? But are you letting go of
actually what the finished result is as well? But I think that’s where this was where the big
realization happens. It’s like I can’t continue to be the source of all answers.
I don’t know it all. Surprise. I don’t. And I think one of the things that’s happening is,
you know, the end result yesterday was you complete your entire draft. This is your deadline. Then
we will review it together. I will give you simple feedback and we’ll carry on. But I’m not telling
you what I want because that’s not actually working and it’s not helping my team grow as leaders.
So what you have to be doing here is also yielding a little bit that the outcome will be.
something you create together, you’re giving up the power of saying, this is going to come out
exactly as I want or close to what I want. And I’m going to yield that power. But the payoff is I
don’t have to make all the decisions. But what if it comes out so much better than what I thought I
wanted? Because I don’t have the same opportunity. to have the same thought process,
time, expertise that everyone on my team does. So that was something I learned this year that I
genuinely did not expect is that if I have problems in business at the end of the day, I own the
business, I lead the business, the problem starts with me. That’s a good one. I like it. Okay. All
right. I’ve got a question for you. Hit me. Okay. If there’s problems in the business,
it’s not because of me. That was my… That’s your key takeaway. That’s my key takeaway. That’s
great. Okay, so if you reflect back 12 years ago to our birthdays last year,
okay, that’s where I want you to start. Where did your plan and your reality diverge?
And what did that gap show you about what you actually value?
Ooh, that’s deep. Okay, so 12 months ago, the biggest thing going on in our world professionally
was our book launch. And we were launching Wealthy and Well-known.
And the goal was to hit the New York Times, which we did. And that was powerful because we
established this book as like our flagship. Here’s who we are. This is what we believe.
It’s the anchor. It did that. I thought it was going to bring a flood of customers.
That’s right. It didn’t bring us a flood of customers. It did bring us a flood of leads. But that
wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting people read the book and they’re like, OK, I’m in. I’m
buying like we’re sold. And what it actually did was it brought us a bunch of leads.
Now, the part that is here’s an honest thing to share.
We’ve had a harder year financially in the last year than in the last several years.
And part of that was because we had a hole in the back door of our business where people were
leaving the program. faster than they used to. And I think what we realized is there were some
things that we changed operationally. We were the problem. We were the problem. And I think this is
a we thing, is you and I both said, we’ve got to fix the backdoor first.
We’ve got to solidify keeping our current customers over delivering with the people who are here,
and then we’ll work on bringing more people in the front. And so when I think of the big last 12
months and to the point you said, what we’ve realized time and time again in our meetings is we did
this to ourselves. Every ratio that has changed in our business, we can point to a decision that we
made, a change we made in technology, a change we made in leadership, a change we made in protocol,
process, belief, something we wanted to try. And then we just didn’t monitor the data and error
correct quickly. And that is the theme is going, crap, we did this to ourself.
We are the problem. I liked it better when you were the problem.
So a question for you, give me a moment, a specific moment where you realized we need to change
things here. Roughly January 31st, our accounting manager came to me and said,
I can’t be a manager. I need to be managed. And this is I’m over my head.
And we made the mutual decision to part ways. But what hit me is like,
why did it take her having to come to me when I knew six months ago that she was in over her head?
I knew well in advance of her coming to her own realization, which I so appreciate because she
didn’t have to do that. Right. Because how long would it have gone if she didn’t bring it up? To
go, I am not a manager. I need to be me. I need to be managed. And I was that was the moment of
like she said it and I’m like, oh, I know. But I had known for months. And that was really the
turning point for me of like I have not faced the reality of the hard things to do because I’ve
been so I’m using bunny ears. If you’re listening. busy doing other stuff that I didn’t have the
time and capacity to handle the bigger things. And I think a lot of that was there was two
realizations. One, it’s like, oh, I’m not doing things proactively. I’m having to react when they
finally come up, even though I know well in advance. Wow. This isn’t working.
And I’ve paid the price a lot this year of inexperience and reactive leadership.
OK, so. One of the things that’s really a delicate nuance of this that I want you to comment on is,
so this marketing manager was a young woman. Accounting manager. Sorry, accounting manager.
And as a leader, you want to give people a chance, right? There’s a positive part of this where
it’s like, I want to give someone a chance to step into what we need. But then you got to reconcile
that with the going, oh, they’re in over their head. So, you know, you were you were doing you were
trying to do a good thing for that person and for the business. Well, I would caution that I don’t
necessarily reflect back and think I was. OK, interesting. And I think that’s more of an honest
reflection of for all of us as leaders. Are we stepping people into leadership who aren’t ready
because we need them to be ready to get things off of our plate? because we need them to be ready
because we need to fill that seat? Or are we stepping them because they’re actually ready? Like
qualified to do it. I think about this a lot. I’ve been, you know, as you know, but maybe others
don’t, I have a really specific journaling and prayer time every morning with the Lord. And like
one of the things that I’ve been praying a lot about is a good father disciplines his children.
And a good father doesn’t give his children every single thing that they want. And I pray for a lot
of things that God says no to. And then later I’m like, thank you so much. Thank you for knowing
better than me. And if I were to give my kids every single thing they want, it would be a disaster.
And I think a lot of times as leaders, we relent to what our team members want,
even when they’re not ready. And that does more damage to them and the team and the company and to
you as the owner than it does giving them what they want. See, I put this person into leadership
before she was ready. I should have taken the time to go, here’s a path to leadership. Here’s the
training and the knowledge that you have to have in order to embrace that one day. And that would
have given her the opportunity to opt in or opt out, which she later did. at a much larger
detriment to me, her, the team and the company, because now I have this huge open wound in the
company that I had to step in and fill. Because I think if I had done it that way, she would have
never said yes. She would have been like, oh man, I’m so glad that you made me take these classes
or read these books or step into this slowly because I would have realized that’s not for me.
Right. You mask it as like, hey, I’m creating this opportunity. But in reality, what’s going on is
this person’s not set up to succeed for what we need. And ultimately, we all know that.
And then it eventually fizzles out. Oh, yeah. Like how many times am I going to have this exact
same encounter before I change how I’m leading my leaders? Yeah. That’s good.
I mean, I will say I have become a different leader, a different business owner in the last five
months because of this. One of the things we say a lot is what got you here as a performer won’t
get you there as a leader. And I think what got you here as a leader won’t get you there as an
owner. And I think you’re really stepping into being an owner and going in order for you to be the
owner, you’ve got to have. real leaders. And so it’s like, it’s like a second rung of a big
transformation that we’re going through. We teach the stuff. We’ve had a fair bit of success,
but it’s like, it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard. And we’re learning, we’re learning lessons. It’s always
easier to see the log in someone else’s eye than it is yours. But that’s what you have to do as a
business owner. You have to look in the mirror and go, if there’s problems in your company or as a
parent, if there’s problems with your kids or as a spouse, if there’s problems in your marriage,
it’s not about pointing fingers. It’s looking in the mirror and go, what’s my part? What do I have
to own of this? And that’s humbling and that’s hard. And it’s overwhelming to go like,
crap, right? This all starts with me, but. I just believe a healthy friendship,
a healthy marriage, a healthy body, a healthy family, healthy kids, a healthy business. They all
start with someone raising their hand and taking personal accountability of going, this is my part.
I’m not going to own someone else’s part, but I’m going to start with mine. And I think that’s a
hard pill for a lot of us to swallow. Yeah, definitely. That internal locus of control is
definitely one of the things that successful people have in common. It’s like it’s on them. But I
would say it’s like as hard as I would say the last 12 months have been in terms of transition and
change and unmet expectations. There’s also been other things that have happened that have been
amazingly positive. But I just I’m a big believer and I hope that everyone who’s listening who can
relate to this. I have a ton of friends in the entrepreneur community that it’s been a hard 12
months. It’s been a hard six months to the year so far. Every conversation I’ve had,
it’s like, whoa, we’re flat, we’re stalled. We can’t do business development the way we used to.
We’re not getting leads the way we used to. We’re having to pivot. There’s been a lot of transition
across the board in at least the circles that I’m a part of. But one of the things that I just
believe, it’s like, for all of us, we are made better and stronger through the challenges.
And it’s like, if I wasn’t forced to become a different leader, then I wouldn’t become a better
leader. It’s like I would stay the status quo and growth is never fun.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary and there’s not fruit on the other side of it. And I just,
I firmly believe that for all of us, all of our character is built in the valleys,
not in the mountaintops. And it’s in the valleys where a strong team is made and the valleys is
where a strong company is made, a strong family is made. But that also means you gotta muscle up.
And you got to grit through it. But when you do, it’s always going to be better on the other side.
I might take a minute, but it’s always going to be better on the other side. So that’s what we’re
going to talk about next is on the other side. I want to ask, I want to ask the next question, but
I want to answer it first. I’m going to ask it. Okay. So you want to answer your own question?
And then you can answer it too. But here’s the question. What is the habit? or discipline that
proved itself again this year what is the one thing you are never going to cut again oh i know my
answer oh my gosh okay oh i know my answer so here’s what i did i we did as a company a law that we
violated and it is the first law of sales and i learned this going door to door when i was 17 years
old it’s a numbers game It is always a numbers game. No matter what you’re selling, no matter what
the economy is, no matter what industry, no matter what price point, no matter what type of
customer you’re selling to, sales is always a numbers game. That is the law,
the first law of selling, and we violated it. And here’s how we violated it this year.
We convinced ourselves. that we knew good enough about who would buy that we could use a fancy
filter application in our free call pipeline, that we could filter out who the buyers were based on
how they would answer some questions. And when we did that, the number of people who requested a
call with us in one year who got on the phone with us was like 65 or 70%.
That was like 2024. And then in 2025, that number went down from 70% to like 45%.
And that’s because we convinced ourselves that we had enough data to be able to predict who was
going to buy. Well, in all fairness, that’s not exactly why we changed the filter. Okay, well, you
can give your story. But my story is going, however we want to slice it, we turned down a huge
percentage of people who asked to talk to us for whatever reason. We filtered out. and didn’t talk
to them. And that was a mistake because people will answer things on an application that are
different than when you have a human conversation. And I will never do that again.
So that’s how I interpreted it. Yeah. And that’s not the full story, but. That’s your version of
it. It’s my version. It’s my version of the whole story. But the thing that you’ll never cut again
is not just working the numbers. Just the numbers game. Never forget that sales is a numbers game.
Sales is a numbers game. And if you did anything, if you did anything that just reduced the number
of people you were talking to, you are setting yourself up for failure and you can’t blame it on
the economy. You can’t blame it on your team. You can’t blame it on anything else. I agree with
that. If you violate that law. And we violated that law, law number one. Yeah, so many of the
people that we talked to, they’re like, well, my conversions are so great, but my business isn’t
going. And I’m like, well, then you have an activity problem. It doesn’t matter how good your
conversions are if you’re only talking to five people. Like, that’s why your business isn’t
growing. It’s an activity problem. Mine is similar to that. And I would say one of the things that
we have always believed in our entire professional careers in sales, which is now 20 years,
is that there is power in a one-on-one conversation to make a sale.
Oh, yeah. And I think mine is very similar to this because, again, I think this is really important
that sometimes you can take the advice of one person or you can hear the desires of your sales team
or a team member and you hear it even if it’s in micro. environment,
it’s like, oh, well, this consultant said that, or, you know, I heard that on that one podcast and
now my team is saying it. But in reality, that’s a very tiny group of people. Very tiny.
But you can do that. We did that and we’re like, huh, maybe there’s something to it. This
consultant said that no one is requesting one-on-one calls. This viral clip, this random
paragraph from that one book, this speaker. It’s like what happens is your reticular activator
kicks on. Yeah. And it works against you. Because you internalize bad advice as good advice because
you hear it in a few places. Yes. And I do believe like this, it happened with a consultant saying
it, then it happened in a small room. But ultimately, why we changed our application was actually
in coordination with a back to a good father doesn’t give their kids every single thing they want.
A good leader doesn’t say yes to every idea their team has. Yeah. I said yes to an idea that was
presented by our team that was like, hey, we can’t be doing one-on-one calls with everybody.
That doesn’t scale. But we have built our entire business, the last one and this one,
on one-on-one calls. And we said, okay, well, how do we start to do this in a group environment?
How can we scale something that we actually don’t believe in? And really got disillusioned to the
idea of, well, let’s. make this easier for our sales team. Let’s help make this,
this, this, this. And instead of doing one-on-one calls, what we did is we invited people to join
a small group and we tried to do it in small groups. And it, I mean, I think we can say it failed.
Oh, it epically failed and blew up in our face. And at the same token,
it’s like in this, you know, also. Cost us a relationship with another individual because it was
like we made these changes based on an individual’s desires, based on what was healthy and right
for the team and the company. And I will never make that mistake again. So there’s two things.
It’s like, no, there is a power in a one-on-one conversation. So much power. It’s a fundamental
value that we hold that we will never waver on again regardless.
And if you just don’t agree with that, then you’re just not a fit for this team. It’s like we
believe in a power of a one-on-one conversation. That means something because we’re curating at
Brain Builders Group a community, not numbers. And you cannot curate like-minded individuals that
you don’t talk to. So that is important to us. And I think we got away from that a little bit.
But then the second thing is that I will not ever make the decision for the benefit of an
individual over the benefit of the group ever again. So that’s really two things I learned in that.
But man, I will not do that again. It’s been a painful, long lesson that’ll take us a hot minute to
recover from. Okay, here’s a question for you. Talk to us about a relationship,
a mentor, a team member, a peer, a friend, me, whoever that showed up for you in a way that you did
not anticipate in the last year and how it changed the way you think. The first thing that came to
my mind, was all of the people who spoke at our event for our book launch. So that was Eric Thomas,
Trent Shelton, Amy Porterfield, Michael Hyatt, Jasmine Starr,
Julie Solomon. Will Gadara. Yes, Will Gadara was like, we’ve spent years building relationships
with these people. And they came and they spoke at our event. And we did an event with the Wealthy
and Well-Know Book Launch. And this was an important moment for us because this was our first book
launch since starting Brand Builders Group. It was your first book. It was our first New York Times
run with Mission Driven Press, our sister company, our imprint that’s distributed by Simon &
Schuster. And this was like becoming our flagship book. And so it was a really important moment for
us. And I would say both the speakers and the customers who were in that room.
We had so many, because I don’t remember how many books you had to buy.
It was like a package, but you had to buy a lot of books. 250. 250. And we had a lot of people,
like that package sold out pretty quickly or relatively easily. Like we had a lot of people show up
for us. And that, when I think of the last 12 months, that’s the thing that jumps out to me.
And one of our mantras is build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you
need them. Build relationships before you need them. And I think we do a pretty good job of not
keeping score, of like, oh, hey, you owe me this because I did this for you.
And we try not to ask for a lot of stuff. We try to give more. But man, it meant a lot to me,
the speakers that showed up. because there’s no way we would have been able to afford to pay all
their normal speaking fees. Like we would not be able to afford that. And there were only 30, 40
people in the room. I mean, did you say Michael Hyatt? I said Michael Hyatt. I’m trying to like
make sure we didn’t forget about it. But it’s like when I was thinking about speaking fees, I was
like, definitely cannot afford all of these people. No way. I mean, just, you know, Eric Thomas and
Will Goodere alone. And it’s like, we’re out. But they showed up and then all of the people in the
room, that was a magical room. It was some of our most loyal customers, our longstanding customers.
our BBG OGs, as we say, the Brand Builders Group OGs. That was a special moment.
And it, you know, it meant a lot to me for all of these things, but also, you know, our book launch
meant a lot to me because it was your first book. That was really important to me, our team, our
community.
That’s the moment for me. Yeah. I think one of the things before you tear up and start crying over
there. Um, as he often does, uh, one of the things that’s probably a good challenge for all of you
who are listening right now, it’s, uh, who has been that person that showed up for you in a way
that you didn’t expect in the last year or even this year or even last week. And it’s like, take a
moment today and just text them or even better pick up the phone and call them, um, and let them
know that like, Hey, you showed up in a way that I was blown away by, or maybe you don’t even know
how much this meant to me. I just want to say, thank you. I think it’s a good reminder to never
take for granted the power of a thank you because so often we just assume people know.
They don’t. You still have to tell them. So maybe that’s a good action item for you to do today,
Rory. And then for everyone who’s listening is like, hey, as you’re doing this mid-year check-in
with yourself or maybe it’s your birthday in July and you’re doing an annual review, it’s like,
who are the people I need to make sure know how grateful I am? for what they’ve done for me in the
last year. Yeah, that’s good. All right. Well, I’ve got a lot of text messages to say now.
All right, let’s do community question. Okay. So community question. So this is the segment of our
show where the Brand Builders Group members, so our actual monthly members, get to ask their
questions and they vote up on which question should be answered on the show. Today’s question comes
from Carlos, one of our longstanding members. Carlos just spoke and actually crushed the stage at
one of our events called the Member Showcase or the Speaker Showcase. So once a year or so,
we have an event where our members apply to speak at this event in front of all of the other
members. And so they get live coaching. I think we have like 16 or 18 speakers who will speak.
They get like 15 minutes each. They get multiple camera angles and they get all the photography and
the footage for their demo videos. And then they get coaching from me and AJ. And Carlos’s question
is, what advice would you give to someone who is about to speak, who got selected to speak at the
next Brand Builders Group Speaker Showcase? So although this is super specific to our community and
our members, I would say for any of you who are listening, who are like, okay. I have an upcoming
speech or a presentation. It could be a sales presentation, a presentation at the Chamber of
Commerce. Maybe you got booked for a TED talk. Like it doesn’t matter what it is, but through the
mental of like, what advice would you have? So we’re going to make it specific and general at the
same time in order to prepare for an upcoming presentation. I will hit the specifics of ours.
I’ll let Rory hit the general of anyone who’s going, hey, I have a very important presentation
coming up. What advice would you have for me? But specifically to our member showcase, one of the
things that I would really encourage anyone who’s listening, who’s a member of Brand Builders
Group, in order to prepare for what we do at the speaker showcase, I think there’s three things
that are vitally important. And I think for anyone who’s listening, you can take these and apply
them across the board. But number one, as we say this all the time, is that the most important
thing about your speech is that it’s a great speech. The content has to be good.
And so make sure that the content is tight. This should not be the first time you do it.
It cannot be, not should not. It cannot be the first time you do it. And that may mean it’s like
you’ve done it 100 times on video to yourself or to your parents. to your friends or to your spouse
or to your kids. Like, but it can’t be the first time. If it’s that important, you’re not going to
lay it on the line and let it be the first time. So that’s the first thing is the content has to be
tight. And then the second thing is it can’t be the first time. The third thing is that delivery
matters and you can have amazing content and lame delivery and the content totally gets overlooked.
I have seen so many of my favorite thought leaders on stage. and totally dozed off or left early
because the content was so rich and so good in the book or on interviews. And I’m like,
I cannot wait to see this person. And then I get there and I’m like, stay awake. I’m like totally
zoning out because their delivery was so not there. And so it’s like,
you have to remember, it’s like, this is edutaining. It has got to be part education,
part entertaining. It has got to have a mixture of story and laughter and emotion and variety.
You can’t just stand up there with a microphone and expect people just to get it. It’s like,
no, we have to take them on a journey. So those would be my three things. It’s like the content has
to be good and tight. You have to have practiced it. It can’t be the first time you deliver it. And
then it’s got to be edutaining. Yeah, that’s good. By the way, just a little secret nugget.
Ed Milet and I are going to be teaching a two-day event called Presentation Mastery this fall.
We haven’t announced it, and I’m not officially announcing the details on it yet. But if this is a
topic you’re interested in, you need to stay plugged into the podcast for when we announce it.
We’ve never done this. We may never do it again. But we’re going to be hosting an event in
November, Ed Milet and I, on this topic specifically. So stay tuned for that. I want to give you
the single greatest secret of master presenters. And it still holds true today.
And it is something, whether I’m listening to a sermon, a TED talk, a keynote speech,
here is the mistake that every presenter makes. They try to communicate too many different things
inside of one presentation. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.
Here is what you need to do instead. Start planning your presentation by answering this one
question. What do I want the audience to think, feel,
or do when I am done? Period. If you cannot answer that question,
you’re not ready to start writing your speech. You start writing your speech by answering that
question. What is the one thing I want my audience to think, feel, or do when I am done?
Not 10 things, not five things, not three points. One thing. And if you have to have that as the
clear backbone and spine of the presentation, and it becomes the litmus test by which you filter in
or out all other stories, details, anecdotes, quotes, facts, illustrations, frameworks against that
as the litmus test. So that must be there. It is the most advanced and most simple technique of all
time, but it continues to be the thing that every speaker fails at. And I just cannot say it
enough. Like most speakers can talk for an hour, but cannot answer that question in one sentence.
And that’s why they fail. And that’s why they don’t break through the wall. And that’s why they get
absorbed by the noise and they don’t become famous. It’s not because they don’t have enough good
ideas. It’s because they’re not clear enough about the one great idea that they have.
So you got to be clear on it. Otherwise, you’re going to get absorbed. in and among the noise. So
if you are somebody who wants to grow your business, you want to become a better presenter, you’re
learning from the lessons that the mistakes that we’re sharing here and also some of the tips and
techniques, we would love to talk to you and we would love to meet you one-on-one. So if you go
to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast, freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast,
you can request a call with our team and we will connect with you one-on-one. And I would just
remind you for everyone who’s listening, as you have listened to us kind of do our own review of
the last 12 months, I think this is a good reminder. It’s like, you’re not behind and you’re not
late. And this year is still being written. This story, your story is still being written.
And there is so much to learn. There’s so much to celebrate. And there’s so much to also leave
behind. And I think those are really important parts of doing this mid-year check-in and going
like, What have I learned? What do I want to carry forward? What do I want to leave behind? And
make sure that there’s a lesson in all of it, right? And so I think that’s a really important
thing. It’s you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. And there’s a lot of your story left to be
written. Now, as a tee up for next week, it’s going to be a lighter, brighter episode as we talk
about how having fun is a business strategy. So come back next week and we’ll see you then.

WWK Ep 031: The Membership Mistake That’s Costing You Recurring Revenue with Stu McLaren

We’re in the happiness business. As long as people are experiencing progress, they’re going to be
happy. As long as they’re happy, they’re going to stay. The internet has taught us that growth is
about attention. It’s about more traffic and more customers. But what if we’ve been measuring the
wrong thing all along? What if the businesses that survive aren’t the ones that attract the most
people, but the ones that give people a reason to stay? Today’s guest is Stu McLaren.
For nearly two decades, Stu has quietly become one of the most influential minds in the world of
recurring revenue, memberships, and online communities. He co-founded Wishlist Member,
a platform used by more than 70,000 businesses around the world. But what makes Stu fascinating
isn’t his expertise in memberships. It’s what he believes memberships are really about,
a sense of belonging. and the psychology behind why people commit to something and why they leave.
Because according to Stu, the greatest threat to a business isn’t competition. It’s indifference.
It’s the moment someone says, Ooh, this looks good. I’ll save this for later and never returns.
But how do you go from celebrating your first sale? And it was a whopping whopping $7.95.
And I was ecstatic to building an eight-figure business. And why does one of the world’s leading
membership experts believe the first seven days determine whether a customer stays for months or
for years? That’s where this conversation begins.
Would you like more recurring revenue in your business? Would you like to lower your churn?
Would you like more people coming in the front door, being onboarded properly, staying longer,
and referring more people into your business? That is what we’re going to talk about on today’s
episode of the Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast. I’m joined by someone who is a pretty good friend
of mine, but a really great friend of many of my good friends, Stu McLaren. And Stu is…
one of our industry’s most recognizable experts in the space of memberships,
recurring revenue, reducing churn, and all of those things that I talked about. He wrote a book
called Predictable Profits on this subject, and he’s had a few different exits for different
programs that he created. So in 2008, he co-founded Wishlist Member.
which was the most popular membership platform by WordPress. When he sold his stake,
over 70,000 people worldwide were using that. I met Stu because after that, he went to work with
Michael Hyatt and Michael had a membership program that was high six figures and they partnered
together and Stu helped Michael grow that to a multi seven figure low stress business.
So I’ve just heard so much about this man and his integrity and he raises money for his nonprofit
that he runs and we have so many mutual. friends. And so I invited him today. He was in town in
Nashville and I was like, we got to have him on the show. So Stu, welcome to Wealthy and Well
-Known Podcast, brother. Thanks, my friend. It’s great to be here. I can’t believe we’ve never met
in person. I know. It’s been a long time coming. Plus, I don’t have a lot of Canadian friends. So
every time I’m like, yes, another Canadian friend. Well, you’ll hear my shouts and abouts, I’m
sure, as we go through. So buddy, I know you’ve lived in this space for such a long time.
what I would love to know is I first want to talk about getting new members and what are people
doing right now that is working to get new members. Uh, I’m going to spend most of our time talking
about keeping members. Um, because I think that’s, I think to me, that’s where the magic is.
And that’s the part that people really overlook is keeping members, but let’s start with getting
new members. Yeah. And I know you’ve got lots of different students, lots of different business
models. What are some of the things that you think that people are doing right now that works
really well to get new members? Well, there are three keys to growing a membership. Number one,
you said traffic. getting members. Number one, we’ve got to get traffic. Number two, we’ve got to
convert that traffic into paying members. And number three, we’ve got to keep them happy. So a
membership model is really simple if you just break it down to those three key areas. When it comes
to getting traffic and converting that traffic into paying members, there’s a ton of different
strategies. But generally, what I like to do is break it down into different phases. So if you’re
in the early phases of growing a membership, meaning you have zero people right now, and you’re
going from zero to about 2500 then i’m actually going to recommend a strategy that sounds absurd in
the beginning it’s a closed door strategy and what that means is that we’re actually going to close
the doors and people can’t join the membership Now, this sounds weird, probably because you’re just
like, Stu, I was asking you, how do you get members? Not like keep them out. But the reality of it
is, is that when you have a closed door membership, the way it works is you only open registration
a certain number of times throughout the year. In between those periods, you’re building your list.
So all the things that we want to do to grow our audience, we’re using social media to drive people
to build our list. We’re speaking on podcasts. We’re speaking in public. All the different things
that we’re building our list. And then a few times a year, we open registration for our membership.
A few like three, four, two. In the beginning, I would probably say four would be a good rhythm.
As you start to grow, I would actually decrease it. So a good example, when I partnered with
Michael Hyatt, he at the time did not have a membership. He was coming off the back of his New York
Times bestselling book, Platform. He was getting asked a lot of questions. And I’m sure like a lot
of people in your audience, because they’ve been following you and they’ve been publishing their
book and getting their material out and building their personal brand, they’re probably getting a
lot of questions from their audience right now. That’s a really good sign. And so with Michael,
he was getting a lot of questions. he was answering a bunch on his blog in the form of blog posts
and on his podcast. But the reality of it was, is there was a lot of hunger there. There was a big
appetite. You could see it. So ultimately a mutual friend introduced us. We came together and I
asked him, I said, what’s the biggest challenge you’ve got in your business right now? And I’ll
never forget. He said, Stu, I love what I do. I love who I get to serve and the message I get to
share, but I’m tired. He’s like, I just, I just want to be home with Gail.
And the girls and the grandkids. And I said, I can help. And so we came together and we formed
ultimately a partnership. And it started with his membership. Now, in the beginning,
we were open all the time, meaning anybody could join his membership at any point at any time.
And we would grow about 100 to 125 members per month. But then we had a conversation and he said,
Stu, I love that we’re growing the membership, but. the calendar’s really full.
Like I would love to create some space to do some other things, maybe some other courses,
maybe future books. So I said, okay. I said, well, what if we go from promoting all the time to
four promotions a year? Oh, okay. So this was more of like an accidental thing. It was an
accidental discovery. Okay. So now in that moment, there’s fear because it’s like,
can we get as many members in four months as we do in 12 and so it was like well let’s experiment
so one of the things i appreciate about michael is he’s open to trying new ideas and so we did and
so we did a promotion and we said we’re going to be closing the doors and so now is the time to
register and what was amazing was Typically in a three or in a three month period,
we would get, like I said, anywhere between 300 to 370 plus members. Well, in this one.
Right off the bat, we more than doubled that. We had over 650 plus members join in that promotion.
And so it was counterintuitive. It was less work and more revenue.
Yeah, we’re not okay with that. We’re not okay with less work and more revenue. You must work
harder if you’re going to make more revenue. It was like crazy. And then we asked another question,
which was like, well, what if we go down to two? promotions a year we’re like same fear oh my gosh
can we you know in two promotions get as many members as we did in four well the crazy thing was it
gave us more lead time to build up and create anticipation for that promotion so then when we went
down to two those promotions we were welcoming anywhere between 1500 to 3000 plus members in a
single promotion so it increased even more it increased even more so we were working even less and
making even more and so the crazy pretty soon you go down to zero promotions
But it, so I recommend no, you know, some, we have some clients that actually do one big promotion
a year. I wouldn’t recommend that. I think I would settle in on, you know, no less than two,
no less than two and no more than six. Exactly. Like you want to find a rhythm that is going to be
right for you. In the beginning, I would say probably four is a really good rhythm. The other side
benefit to this is that when you close the doors, It gives you more time to actually just love on
your members. See, people often forget when you’ve got a membership that’s open all the time, you
are… caught between two worlds you’re in promotion mode and serve mode yeah and those are two
different worlds two different mentalities two different um approaches well i mean at brand
builders group we literally have two different teams right two and it’s basically like we operate
two different companies there is the marketing company and the marketing and sales which is all new
business and then there’s just delivery and you know customer service which is all Cause it,
and it is, it’s, it’s hard. It’s a, it’s a thing. Like I’ll never, uh, there was, um, years ago,
uh, one of our clients, Jennifer, she had a membership and she was open all the time. And,
uh, she was in my mastermind and she said, Stu, like, I really want to grow this thing.
Like, I know that I’m capable of much more. And she had been working at it for quite some time. It
had taken her four years to get to the point where she had about 700 members being open all the
time. And Hey, that’s not shabby. Like that’s pretty good. Like 700 members. But she was right.
She was definitely capable of much more. And I said to her, well, you know what I’m going to
suggest? And she’s like, no, I’m not doing that. I said, Jennifer? She’s like, no, I’m not. Okay,
fine. I’m open to. I said, what do you think I’m going to tell you to do? She’s like, you’re going
to tell me to close it. I said, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell you to do. And I said, why
are you hesitating? She’s like, well, I don’t want to do like a big promo. I don’t want to, you
know, it feels like heavy. I said, okay, well, how would it feel light? By the way. The questions
we ask ourselves are really important because if we want to know how to do something,
we have to ask ourselves, like, how can I close the membership and keep the promotion feeling
light? Your brain searches for those answers to close the gap. So that’s what I said to her. I
said, you know, what feels light for you? She’s like, well. you know, Facebook lives feel like,
like those are easy for me. I said, okay. So what if you close the membership and you did a series
of Facebook lives leading up to that close cart day, you just get on and you start talking about,
you know, your membership, why you’re closing it. Cause she was going to make some changes. So it
was a perfect test, right? She can say, look, I’m about to make some big changes to the membership.
So I’m going to be closing it down. And that was her reason in this case for closing it down. So
she did that leads up to it. she welcomed more than 1,100 members during that promotion.
So it had taken her four years to get to 700 members. In one week, she welcomed more than 1,100
new members. But the greatest message I got back from her afterwards was, yeah, she was excited
about the growth in the business, but she was also just relieved that she didn’t have to be in
promotion mode all the time. So closing the doors, it’s counterintuitive, but…
is one of the biggest drivers of new members joining a membership. Now, this is bearing in mind
that you have an audience that you have been growing. Now, you don’t need a massive audience, by
the way. This is another huge misconception that a lot of people have is that you’ve got to have
this big audience to do it. No, no, no. If you’ve got an audience of 200 or more, you can run with
this closed door strategy. And so we can unpack different ideas further.
But in stage one, definitely a closed door strategy. Okay. So I want to just briefly touch about
why is that? My mind immediately goes to it’s because of urgency and scarcity.
If it’s open every month, then people can just procrastinate.
There’s nothing forcing them to make a decision. Well, what they do is the kiss of death for all of
us as entrepreneurs. They’re like, ooh, this looks good. I’ll save this for later.
If I were to look at my phone, I have an Instagram, a whole folder of products,
thousands of them. Then I’m like, ooh, this looks great. I’ll save this for later.
Kiss of death. Kiss of death. Worst thing ever. Have I ever gone back and bought any of them? No.
Actually, I take that back. There was one product that I bought and I had saved it. And in fact,
if I go back to that folder, I’ve saved it multiple times. And, but the reason I bought it was
because they did a promotion and guess what there was a deadline deadline. And I’ll never forget.
I was lying in bed and, uh, I was doing that, you know, late night scroll. And,
uh, I said to my wife, Amy, I said, Amy. I think I’m going to buy this thing. She’s like, what is
it? I said, it’s this thing that I found. She’s like, what is it? I’m like, it’s an electric bike.
And like, it was like this electric bike with big fat tires. And I just envisioned myself riding it
on the trails. And she’s like, okay. She’s like, well, let me look at it. So she, I showed it to
her. She’s like, we should get one for each of us. Oh, nice. So it went from, because they finally
added a little bit of urgency with a deadline. We went from, ooh, I’ll save this for later to not
buying one, but buying two, thousands of dollars in investment in these bikes because they had a
deadline. And the same is true with a membership. You don’t give a deadline. then what happens is
people will save it for later and they never come back. See, it’s interesting. Before we started
Brand Builders Group, I built my career on a book called Take the Stairs. That whole book is about
the psychology of overcoming procrastination. And like I spent the whole first part of my career
doing nothing but studying procrastination and never thought it would be so hyper relevant to
building personal brands. But it’s like the human brain keeps you safe and the best way to keep you
safe. is to keep you doing what you’re doing now and not changing. And so it’s like,
if you don’t force that deadline, you just continue being like, yeah, I’ll just hang out. And you
get the psychological payoff with the save of like, if I need it, it’s there. It’s like insurance.
It’s like, it’s there if I need it. But here’s the other side of this that I think is really
important. I often hear people say, well, I don’t want to give a deadline.
It feels like I’m creating fake urgency. Like that doesn’t feel good. But the flip side of that is,
does it feel good knowing that the audience that you are looking to serve is delaying getting their
problem solved? Does it feel good knowing that they are still going to continue having that
problem? Unless… give them a reason to join today. And so we have to think of it differently.
Like all we’re doing is we are creating urgency so that we can help people, so we can help them
achieve their goals, make progress in their life, overcome obstacles and so forth.
And so I think more than anything. If we’ve got a mindset that this is a great opportunity for us
to serve, we want to create every opportunity and we want to set the stage for people to be able to
come into the doors so that we can love on them and serve them. The thing that makes me think about
is like a marathon. Okay. So you go, what if all marathon runners,
if it was just like, okay, go run a marathon whenever you get around to it and then just report
your score. Nobody would ever train for it. They would never do it. It’s a service to pick a date
on the calendar and go, everyone show up on this date. It’s true. We’re all running the marathon.
And so you train for, you know, like when it’s the deadline that is the catalyst for the
transformation in their life. I think about my business today. We would not be here if I didn’t
have a dear friend who gave me a deadline. So I had been behind the scenes helping people.
grow their memberships. Michael Hyatt was one. And then that took off. And before we knew it, that
was a multimillion dollar a year membership. And so I started getting a lot of other people are
like, Hey, could you help me do that? Can you consult with me that? And so I was behind the scenes
and a mentor of mine was really encouraging me to come out and share this and teach others how to
grow memberships. And so I had been doing some private workshops. And I felt like I had built my
body of work that I could turn this into a program and launch it. So I was talking to a friend of
mine, Jeff Walker. So I said, Jeff, I’m thinking of packaging this into a course. Would you be open
to helping promote it and share it with your audience? He said, yeah, what are you thinking?
I said, well, I don’t really have like a date set. And he’s like, Stu, if you don’t give me a date,
I won’t promote. I was like, oh, okay. August 18th. He’s like, perfect.
And then everything backed up from that date. And so urgency. with a date is really important it’s
not only important for us personally like to get us moving but it’s also important for our audience
to get them off the hump of thinking about and more taking the action to solve their problems all
right so in between the deadlines yeah you said we should be building our list yep there are
literally millions of things you can do to build your list yeah is there anything that you go
again, this is what you should be doing right now that’s really working? I love having list
building events. So a good example of this would be Tara Phillips in our audience.
So she’s a former teacher and she had been in the classroom working with kids with autism for 25
years. Over the course of that period, she realized that she had developed a bunch of resources
that would be helpful for other educators in working with kids with autism. So she started selling
them one off on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers. And she was earning some extra income,
which was great. But then she learned about memberships and that’s when she came into our world.
And so she launched her membership and very quickly she had grown that membership to a couple
hundred members. But then she really wanted to grow it even further. So she now hosts a list
building event once a year and it’s a big summit. And so she gathers the who’s who of the autism
world. And she has a summit where they’re each sharing different presentations.
And just on the front end of that, she is like her last summit that she did,
she generated over $400,000 on the front end. So it’s free to attend.
Then there’s a VIP upgrade package. And in her last summit, she had over 50,000 plus people
register for that event. So if we just pause right there, that in and of itself would be a home run
win. If all she did was just have 50,000 plus people being added to her email list,
that is a huge win. But then she sold the VIP package and she had over 4,000 plus people take her
up on that. So that was over 400,000 plus dollars. This is like a $97 VIP upgrade.
Then she had sponsorship. So this year she’s doing it again. This year she has Sesame Street as a
sponsor. For the virtual event. For the virtual event. Wow. Melissa and Doug Toys. She has Beaches
Resort in Turks and Caicos because they have a whole thing working with kids with autism.
So it just compounds and gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year that she does it. Then on the
back of that, after the summit, she offers her membership. And she’s had anywhere between 800 to 1
,000 plus members join. When you say on the back of that, do you mean… the actual end of the
summit? Or do you mean like a month later or like? At the end of the actual summit. Okay. So
there’s an offer that comes at the end of a, whatever, a week long summit or something. That’s
true. Yep. If we take away the offer for the membership, if all she did was just do this summit for
the sole purpose of building her list, it’s a gigantic win. And I think too often. we are too
passive in our list building. And I would encourage people to be more intentional and strategic.
Get some dates on the calendar where you’re doing some kind of a virtual event with the intention
that It is there to build the list. And yes, we can be strategic and we can look to generate
revenue afterwards. Like I always love covering my costs of building that list. So if I can cover
my costs, to me, that’s a home run win because I know throughout the rest of the year, that list is
going to pay for itself. Yeah. I mean, Michael did this for years. I was on it. You did one
recently. I was on yours. So it’s really great. So we’re building our list.
We’re adding value. We’re building trust. Then we have our closed cart. People come in.
How do we keep these people? Because here, here’s, I’m going to say something that’s going to make
a lot of people mad. Everybody buys into the dream of a membership site and you go,
oh yeah, just get a thousand, a thousand people to pay you a hundred bucks a month. You’ll make a
hundred thousand dollars. You’ll do $1.2 million. The reality is most of those people are going to
stay for two months, maybe three, and they’re going to churn out and you’re going to spend all your
time tracking down. declined credit cards and cancellations and now you got people who are upset
about this and that and like your whole life which it seemed like oh i’m just gonna have passive
income the reality is it’s a churning wheel so how do we stop that well um we’re gonna agree to
disagree on this okay okay um because you will have churn if you don’t have a retention plan in
place so People who have a retention plan in place don’t see that kind of churn. They don’t see
their members staying for months. They see their members staying for years. And there’s a huge
misconception when it comes to retention and churn. And it’s almost like accepted that members only
stay for a few months and that’s just part of the business. No, it’s not. Listen, when people join
a membership, they’re joining because they want to get a result. If they are experiencing progress
toward that result and they’re happy, they will stay. So we’re in the happiness business.
If people join our membership, our whole goal is just to keep them happy and keep them progressing.
Because as long as I’ve been doing this for 18 plus years, I’ve never known anybody to leave a
membership because they’re experiencing too much success. Like, Rory, nobody comes to Brand
Builders Group and says, Rory, it’s been a great ride. We have like, you know,
grown our business to a whole nother level. Peace, I’m out. They’re not saying that. They’re
saying, Rory, this has been amazing. Give me more. Yeah. And so as long as we are helping people
experience progress, they will stay. So the goal is not just get them in and let them churn.
No, no, no. The goal is get them in and love on them and support them and help them experience
progress. And I think they, you, you said it, they don’t have a retention plan because the big
mistake, everyone in this. business is making is all they think about is the new customer, right?
They never think about loving on the person that’s in front of them, like that they have already.
They never think about like the retention plan. So like, what are some of the touch points, I
guess, that we could go like, how do we, how do we have a retention plan? I mean, what does that
even, what does that even mean? Well, I’ll tell you, if you’re looking to save members, the most
important period is the first 30 days. In fact, I would say it’s the first seven days and studies
have shown If people have a positive experience in that first seven days, it will on average triple
the lifetime value of that member. So this first seven days is vital.
It is the most important piece to a new member experience. That’s really powerful.
The key to keeping people for months and years is what you do in the first seven days.
Like that’s a huge insight for people that we don’t, I think a lot of people overlook this.
I’ll give you an example. If somebody has friction in their onboarding experience,
it’s immediately creating a negative seed in their mind. So I had a client recently who hired me
for a VIP day. So once a month, I reserve one day to work one-on-one with a client.
They had an established membership site. They had, it was just shy of 800 members and it’d been
around for quite some time. And they said, Stu, Can you take a look at our retention? Like we’re
struggling. So I said, sure. I said, what I want you to do is I want you to send me a link where I
can join your membership as though I’m a new member. So they sent me a link. I start going through
the signup process. And it was like friction after friction after friction. And one of my favorite
questions to ask them is I said, on your exit survey, when people are canceling your membership,
what’s the number one reason that they’re canceling? And they said they don’t have time. uh to go
through all the stuff so i said okay so time is the the biggest um objection they said yes i said
great great so I come to the registration process. It’s not clear in terms of like the flow of
where I’m supposed to click. Like I join and then there’s a page that gives me instructions to do
three things. I can’t do any of those three things on that page. I have to click to another area.
So I click to another area and then there’s a video and it’s the only thing on that page,
which is good, but there’s no. time on how long the video is.
So I start playing the video. I have no idea if this is like a two minute video, a 20 minute video,
a two hour video. So what are most people doing? If they’re strapped for time, they’re like peace
gone. They’re not even watching it. It is the most important video that you want somebody watching.
And there was like mistake after mistake like this. When I finally got into the members area,
it is a sea of links everywhere. I have no idea where to go,
what to look at first. It was a mess. And this is a huge mistake that a lot of people make.
So when I’m thinking about how do we make that first seven days just a golden opportunity where
people have that positive experience, the very first thing that I’m looking to do is to help the
member get clarity. Where are they in this journey? Where are they going?
And what should they focus on? It’s something that I talk about in my book called The Success Path.
And we want to map out what that journey looks like because not all members are equal.
So a huge mistake that a lot of people make is they just treat everybody the same. It’s like a one
size fits all. But you know, and I know that not everybody’s the same. You’re going to have people
that have more advanced skills. You’re going to have people that are in the beginning. Some may be
intermediate. So one of the very first things is part of the onboarding is you wanna ask a few
questions. You wanna ask a few key questions to identify where are they in this journey. Then after
they answer those questions, you wanna take them to a page that has content that’s specifically
relevant to where they’re at. So it would say, hey, Rory, sounds like you’re at level one.
Based on that, here’s what we recommend you focus on right now.
don’t worry about all the other stuff. Because if you just focus on these few things, you’re gonna
be able to make progress toward this. And that is like a huge weight off of people’s shoulders
because they don’t have to go learn all the things. They just gotta learn the next right thing and
it’s served up on a platter for them. So number one is you want to make things clear.
You wanna give them clarity. Where are they? Where are they going? And what should they put their
focus on right now? Second thing is that you wanna help People connect.
So I always think of when my family moved to a new area. This was a few years ago.
New area, new school for the kids. You got young kids. My kids were young at the time.
you know as a parent you have that like feeling like i just i just want the kids to feel settled
you know like that’s the main thing so i remember amy and i we walk the kids to school we drop them
off they find their teacher in they go and we’re just like please just let this be a good day the
end of the day we come to the school to pick them up my daughter comes running out first marla and
she’s got this she’s coming towards me she’s got this big smile on her face and she comes home i
said marla how was school today she’s like dad this is the best school ever i was like really i’m
like why She said, well, you know how I used to go to a Montessori school? And I said, yeah. She
said, there’s a girl in my class that used to go to a Montessori school too. I’m like, that’s
awesome. She’s like, but dad, it gets better. I said, how? She said, well, you know how I love
riding horses? Yeah. She rides as well. I’m like, that’s incredible.
And she’s like, but dad, even better. You know, the new stable that I’m riding at? Yeah. Her mom
owns the stable. I’m like, what? Get out of town. She’s like, dad, this is the best school ever.
Her whole perspective on this being the best school ever had nothing to do with the school.
It had everything to do with the fact that she had made one meaningful relationship.
Wow. So if we take a step back and we think about that in our own memberships, one of the hardest
things is when somebody comes into a new community, they’re that new kid in school. They don’t know
anybody. So one of the best things that we can do is to help them form that one meaningful
relationship. And there’s a ton of different ways that you can do this. One of my favorites is if
you’ve already got members, have a welcoming committee where, you know, new members join us like
Rory. Awesome. So glad you joined. Hey, where are you from? Why did you join us?
Asking a few questions. And then it’s like, oh, you know what, Rory? Let me connect you with Neil
over here. Oh, and Jane, she’d also be a great contact for you. And do you know Carl?
He lives near you. And so all of a sudden, there’s like this community aspect. You’re finding those
common traits that people have. And you’re connecting them accordingly. And so I always love having
like an introduce yourself post. Sure. community but the last thing that i want is like hey rory uh
go introduce yourself i’m brand new and then crickets yeah nothing nobody responds yeah yeah
because like an introvert you know shout out to all my introverts an introvert the last thing that
we want is to go into a community and be like hey my name’s stew let me tell you why i’m awesome
i’m awesome for this reason that reason like nobody wants to do that right but it’s so much easier
if you’re set up with like three questions hey just go answer these three questions But the purpose
of those three questions is to pull out what I call connection points. So if I were to think of my
own life, what would be some connection points? Well, number one, I was an athlete all throughout
high school and played soccer at college and we won two national championships.
So right away, any of the athletes, boom, we got a connection. Number two,
I… And my wife adopted our son from South Africa. So that’s a beautiful connection point with
anyone who was adopted or has been adopted or has an adopted child. And another connection point is
that both my wife and I, we were born in England and lived in England. So now all the Brits,
we have a connection point. So there’s all kinds of different things that we have in common with
other people. With your questions in an introductory post, we want to pull those common connection
points out so then people can find that common ground. Does that make sense so far? Yeah, that’s
awesome. I love that. All right. So you help them get clear. You’re going to connect them to
community. Help them connect. And the third one is help them get a quick win. So one of the magical
things about memberships is that, as I said, as long as people are experiencing progress,
they’re going to be happy. As long as they’re happy, they’re going to stay. But we often think the
only way to make a member happy is if they get the big wins. Like in your case, a misconception
might be like the only win is if they hit the New York Times bestseller list. And so it’s just
like, oh my gosh, like that is a huge thing. That takes years of prep. And in that years of prep,
people often give up. So what we gotta do is we gotta break that journey down. I like to break it
down into different stages. And then even within those stages, there’s different milestones. And
those are indicators that, hey, We’re going in the right direction. And we want to celebrate those.
So I’ll give you an example. In our community, we celebrate when somebody welcomes their first
member just as much as we celebrate somebody who welcomes thousands of members in a single
promotion. Why? Because I know how important that first sale is.
I still vividly remember my first sale. I, in fact, have a picture that has been plaqued that is in
my office of me sitting in front of my computer like that after I made my first sale.
And it was a whopping, whopping. Seven dollars and ninety five cents. Nice. And I was ecstatic.
And I’ll never forget, like my wife and I, we were working for my mentor at the time and we had
flown to LAX to host a seminar with him. And I remember saying to Amy,
I said, I got to I got to get up and check my stats. She’s like, check your stats. It’s like some
flood of sales are going to come in like during this flight. So I remember we get up to the hotel
room and I log on. And, uh, there it was. And, and I was just like, Oh my gosh,
somebody that I don’t know that’s not mom has just purchased from me. It works.
It works. And I was just like, I was just like filled with belief in that moment.
And I said to Amy, I’m like, babes, you got to take a picture of this. She’s like, why? And I’m
like, this is going to be on the cover of ink magazine one day. I’m like, and so she took the
picture and then, uh, it’s so funny when I look back, but she’s like, she says to me,
I’m so excited for you. She’s like, how much did you make? And I was like,
it was $7.95. She’s like,
okay. She’s like, okay, but how much did you spend to make that?
I was like, it was about $800. She said, pardon me? I said,
it was about $800 in ads. And she’s like, $800 in ads? She’s like,
I’m not the business major here, Stu. You made $7.95 you made and it cost you $800?
She’s like, it’s not adding up. Why are you so excited? I’m like, babes, this is just the
beginning. This is a numbers game now. And I was just like, it just created this belief. And I
think about like all this transpired afterwards. And I don’t know if we would be here today if in
that moment, I didn’t have the belief. that it was possible, that it could happen.
And it came from that first sale. This is why I celebrate that first sale in our community.
Because I know that that creates incredible belief and momentum for people.
And that momentum is the thing that’s gonna carry them to the next thing and to the next thing and
to the next thing. And the more we celebrate, the more confidence they get, the more momentum they
build, and it gets them to the finish line of doing the big thing. But it didn’t happen until they
did the first thing. So back to onboarding. When we think about onboarding, the sooner we can help
people get just that little win and celebrate it and make a big deal out of it, the more momentum
they begin to have, the more confidence they begin to build and the more positive they feel about
this whole experience. They’re like, man, this is incredible. Like I have only been here for a
little bit and look at me. And so there’s a couple of key things here. When someone joins, you
wanna make sure that you draw a line in the sand as to where they are right now because if you
don’t do that you don’t have anything to measure the progress against and so now once we’ve got
that line in the sand we can look back and be like look at you Rory look how far you’ve come in
such a little period of time that’s what feels great so there’s a few tactical things that we got
to do as a membership site owner but at the end of the day if we just keep it simple it’s like just
help them get a win If you help them get a win, it feels good, and that’s what creates a positive
experience. So help them get clear so they know where they are, where they’re going, and what they
should focus on. Number two, help them connect with others so that they build that one meaningful
relationship. And number three, help them get a win. And the sooner you can help them get a win,
the greater it feels, the more likely they will stay. Well, there is a lot more that we need to
cover. We didn’t really get to cover how to keep people using the program and how to renew them and
how to get referrals. There is so much, though. You see how deep Stu went in just this seven-day
onboarding period. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to give you a membership guide that Stu
has put together. And if you go to freebrandtraining.com slash membership, freebrandtraining.com
slash membership, we can continue the conversation. Stu, tell them. What what are they going to
find in this guide? And then where do where do they go from here? Well, there’s a lot of questions.
I know you’ve got more and I know that you want to. That’s why we’re going to end the interview so
I can get free consulting before.
But. What we did was we compiled like the most common questions that we get asked. We’ve been doing
this a long time, helping people in all kinds of different markets and niches. And so we compiled
those top questions and I answered them. But then within that, we give tons of examples and case
studies. So you can see how what we’re sharing is applied in the real world. And so that’s what
they’re going to find is answers to the top 10 questions that are going to help them get moving
into getting their membership site off the ground. And if they’ve already got it off the ground,
growing it to the next level. Yeah. So I love that. So go to freebrandtraining.com forward slash
membership. And I’ll just give a vote of confidence for Stu. Like, you know, that AJ and I are very
selective about who we network with and who we invite on the show. But this man has the highest
levels of integrity and obviously is a deep, deep, has deep, deep expertise in what he’s doing.
So Stu, this has been phenomenal. I am going to walk away like I’m going to have to send this to
our team and be like, we better we need to go audit all of these things and make sure that we’re
doing it. And everything we do at Brand Builders Group is for mission-driven messengers. This is
not a profit maximization endeavor for us. We sold a company. Brand Builders Group for us is an
impact maximization endeavor. And we just want to help people who genuinely care about making the
world a better place. And you do such a good job of that. And your reputation precedes you.
It’s been such an honor to meet you in person. And thank you for being so generous in what you’ve
shared here today. Well, I appreciate it. One of the things that I firmly believe and I struggled
for a long time with was making money. Because believe it or not, we all want to make money.
but i actually struggled in feeling guilty about making money and it held me back for a long time
and i could not break through the four hundred thousand dollar threshold and it was hard because i
i grew up with two hard working parents you know both my parents were two full-time jobs but they
were always at every basketball game and soccer game and i don’t know when they slept to be honest
And so I felt really guilty. I was making more money than both my parents combined. And so what
would happen is I’d get to that threshold and then I would self-sabotage. I would stop calling
clients. I would stop doing the campaigns that I knew would work and my income would come back
down. It was like my subconscious was like, yeah, that’s better. And it wasn’t until my wife and I
went to Kenya to look to build our first school with our charity called Village Impact.
And I was… talking to the chairman of this community. And I was trying to figure out like how
much things cost. We had no idea. And I asked him, I said, how much does it cost to fund the full
-time salary of a teacher? And he thought for a moment and he said, it’s, it’s about a hundred
dollars a month. And at the time I was selling my software for a hundred,
it was $97 for a single site license. So I had this moment of like realization where I said, Oh,
wait a minute. If I, if I just allocate the proceeds from one sale, I could fund the full-time
salary of a teacher and imagine the impact that would have. And then the real light bulb went off,
which was like, hey, Stu, what if you just make a ton more money and you just give a ton more to
the people and causes you’re passionate about? Imagine the impact you could have. And it was that
breakthrough. Because what I realized in that moment was the more money I make, the more impact I
can have. And that transformed everything. I, for the record, love making money.
I love it. And I am proud to say that because it went from feeling guilty. and shameful about
making money like it was a selfish thing to now it’s a very honorable thing because the more money
you make the more you can give to people and causes that you’re passionate about and that very next
year i went from 400 000 to more than a million and now we’re eight figure plus business and it’s
because giving and philanthropy is woven right into the fabric of what we do and so i just want to
encourage everybody as you’re moving forward like take pride in what you do take pride in like who
you help take pride in the impact that you’re having with your work and also take pride in the fact
that you have a skill to be able to make a ton of money. And with that money, you can give to
people and causes that you’re passionate about because there are a ton of people and causes that
need help. And this is the gift that we have as entrepreneurs is being able to use our skills to
make money and to be able to give to people and causes. So I love the fact that you guys are really
focused on. helping so many others be able to get their message out and to be able to help and
serve and uh and that’s a woven into the fabric of what you do so i appreciate you having me and
thank you so much for today yeah well amen brother amen to all of that and i want you to share this
episode with somebody who you know that has some type of membership or coaching business just hit
share send it to them also show stew some love online if you can you know leave leave a comment
below uh obviously hit subscribe so that you don’t miss any more of these And just whatever you can
do to take the goodness that is here. I mean, this episode literally is worth thousands and
thousands of dollars and to the right person could be worth millions of dollars, which means that
they could be giving back to other people and causes just based on what is available here for free.
So I hope you’ll do that. I want to invite you to do that. Make sure you stay tuned to the wealthy
and well-known podcast. It’s our honor to serve you. Go out and find someone to serve. We’ll see
you next time.

WWK Ep 030: 10X Is Easier Than 2X: Dr. Benjamin Hardy on the Science of Scaling

RORY (00:00)
I’m gonna 10X my comp I’m gonna grow 10 times larger than I ever have been able to get to so far. I’m going to get 10 times further than I’ve gotten my entire life in three years. Yep.

I have to tell you, when I first saw this, I my brain processed what you were saying as hyperbole.

DR. BEN HARDY (00:18)
Exactly. That’s what I meant. People take it metaphorically or they don’t take it literally.

RORY (00:26)
You’re about to hear from one of the smartest people on the planet today. And in the space of personal branding, this guy is a master. He is someone who models exactly what we want to see in terms of true thought leadership. We’re going to talk about how do you forward the thinking of what has been done in your space? How do you separate yourself in a in a world of noise? And specifically, we’re going to talk about how to scale your business, how to 10x your business in the next couple years or less. That’s something that he’s helped a lot of people do.

Who am I talking with? I’m talking with my good friend, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. He has a PhD from Clemson. He is a New York Times bestselling author. He has written several books. Some of my favorites: 10X is easier than 2X, Who Not How, and his newest book, The Science of Scaling, which hit the New York Times bestseller list when it came out. He has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books. He’s had hundred million people read his blog articles. He’s been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes.

fortune, so many great places and he’s become a friend. So he’s an organizational psychologist and he’s gonna talk about how to help you blow up your personal brand, how to develop true thought leadership, and how to scale your business as an entrepreneur. Ben, welcome to the show.

DR. BEN HARDY (01:40)
Good to see you, brother. So great.

RORY (01:42)
Glad to have you.

I want to dive right in with scaling. ⁓ I want to understand what is the difference between growth and scaling? Because everyone listening, you know, here is an expert of some type. Most of them are entrepreneurs. If they’re not entrepreneurs, they’re intrapreneurs, right? They’re they’re operating a you know a division of a company or something like that, or they’ve got, you know, maybe like a side hustle or something.

And I think you hear those terms a lot growth, scale. You say there’s a big difference. What’s the difference?

DR. BEN HARDY (02:14)
So for me, the difference is growth is usually taking where you’re currently at and doing more of it. And so you can know if someone’s growing, if they use where they’re at now or what they’ve accomplished in the past to to like set their objectives. So as an example, if we did a million revenue last year, let’s go for two this year, you can automatically know that that person is growing. Also I think a very easy example is if someone is not literally two Xing on an annual basis, they’re growing. So if someone’s, you know, growing by one percent, that could be considered growth.

Right, that’s definitely not considered scale. ⁓ so if you’re doing less than two X on an annual basis, you’re growing. So

RORY (02:50)
2x

means 100%. Correct. 100% growth. Yep. would have it to so it’s really like you can grow ninety-nine percent once you hit a hundred percent. It’s gotta be at least a hundred percent.

DR. BEN HARDY (03:00)
I’d

say so. I I that that that that starts to get a little close, but for us, scale is an exponential. And for something to be an exponential, it has to be a multiple, and that’s gonna be at least a 10x. And so for us, scale has to be at least a 10x. So

RORY (03:14)
we say it as growth is linear, scale is exponential. Would you agree with that? It is

DR. BEN HARDY (03:20)
Yeah. And so scale is at least 10x. And for us, we actually do put the time constraint on it because you could linearly grow for for decades, right? ⁓ usually, usually you’re gonna hit a plateau, but for us, scale has to be speed as well. It’s not just the the size, but it’s also speed. And so for us, scale is gonna be something that happens in a few years, not in a decade. We usually put the time cap on it three years or less.

RORY (03:44)
Yeah, let’s talk about the speed dynamic because you showed a ch there’s a tr t table, a chart in this book, which you also show in your presentation about what it looks like ⁓ on a you know, if the x-axis is time and the y-axis is growth. Sh explain the difference as best you can w visually what does that what does what is growth look like on that graph versus what does scale look like on that graph.

DR. BEN HARDY (04:11)
Yeah,

so you just like have a have a slope, a a growth slope is gonna be very like small, like it’s gonna be very linear, whereas ⁓ scale is gonna be like very sharp. It’s gonna be sharp upwards, gonna have an intense slope, which is also an intense learning curve, right? And so just as an example, like if you want to go from zero to a hundred, right, that that could be considered growth. Whereas if you want to get to zero to ten thousand, right? That’s just those are just random numbers, but the numbers are bigger, but also the timeline is shorter. And so it just forces a different path.

RORY (04:39)
It

forces a different path. Yeah. When you when you look at going to a hundred if you go from zero to a hundred linearly, that would be like ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty that and that’s what you’re talking about is growth. But if you go, if I shorten the time horizon, yep. And I go, well, I I can’t get to a hundred and ten years. I gotta get there in th in three, as you guys say. Now all of a sudden you have to go ten, sixty, a hundred or you know, something like that, and it and it shoots up. Yep. So

How do we scale? So I love that definition. All right. So I I I love the idea of going growth is linear, scale is exponential, ⁓ and then shortening the time horizon is a part of requiring it to be exponential. So then how do we how do we identify what

Is going to scale our business. Like when you say 10x is easier than 2x, or you say, you know, like what you guys do at scaling.com, and by the way, shout out to Blake Erickson. So he’s the co-author of this book, longtime member at Brand Builders Group, one of the people I have the most respect for, one of the best young entrepreneurs in the nation. ⁓ and you guys are business partners, co-authors. ⁓ so major shout out to Blake.

DR. BEN HARDY (05:51)
Like

he gives you a lot of credit, by the way, for so much of what he’s learned.

RORY (05:54)
I mean, ⁓ that’s I that’s very generous and I appreciate it. I mean, that kid is he’s a superstar. I mean, I say a kid because he’s so young, but like he he’s got more going on than most like 50 year old entrepreneurs. ⁓ so he’s really, really wonderful. So when you guys at scaling dot com, what you guys do is you you’re you will tell them tell them what the promise is. What because you have ⁓ you have a criteria to even like be considered to be kind of a part of this community. What what’s the criteria?

DR. BEN HARDY (06:23)
Criteria is you can’t first off you have to be at a million revenue. Like that’s a we we don’t it’s we’re not a you know VC firm. We’re not like looking to like find unicorns. We want someone to have some establishment. and then we so that’s like a base, you gotta be at least at a million revenue, but also we require as you come in there, you’re gonna commit to 10xing in three years. So if you’re at one million, you have to at least commit ⁓ both to you know, you might not have the perfect pathway. That’s why we give you a strategist, that’s why we give you case studies, that’s why we we help you through the process, but you have to at least be committed to 10xing.

in three years or less. Yeah. And so like that has to be completely established on the inside because we don’t want to bring people in who part of our philosophy was is we want the only room where everyone’s 10xing. Like and we want, we want everyone in there to be scaling because I’ve been in a ton of rooms and ⁓ a ton of communities where

They’re in it’s an entrepreneurial room, right? People are in there getting training, they’re masterminding or whatever, but only like two or three percent of people are actually like becoming outliers, right? It’s a very bell curve normal distribution where most people are actually fairly stagnant, even though they’re in an entrepreneurial room community getting training, et cetera. Only a few were just rapidly 10xing.

Right. And I’d been in so many of those rooms. I was often one of those outliers. And so we just decide we want to create a room where that’s the only thing happening. And so we require 10X from the beginning. So, you know, we have a comp we have companies in scaling.com that are doing over a billion revenue, but they we require the same commitment of them as well. If they’re not willing to 10x, and we take it very literally too. Like this is something that I think was a mistake of mine when I wrote 10x is easier than two X.

is because I talked about 10x both quantitatively and qualitatively, qualitatively being like transformation, value. Okay. I think a lot of people took it too metaphorically and they didn’t literally set a 10X goal and then use that 10X goal to reverse engineer and re engineer their business.

RORY (08:08)
Yeah,

so I want to talk about that. But I and I just want to like double tap on what you said there, because you you you say it all the time and you you go through that, and it’s like your requirement is someone who is going to make a commitment to 10x their business in less than three years. That is a really big commitment, and it is a very unusual.

Person. It’s a very extraordinary. It’s a very non-aver to even commit to something like that, to even sort of like audaciously say, I’m gonna 10X my comp I’m gonna grow 10 times larger than I ever have been able to get to so far. I’m going to get 10 times further than I’ve gotten my entire life in three years. Yep. That’s a radical, that’s a radical commitment from them, and it’s a radical.

promise that you are promoting. You’re not promising it to them, but it’s a it’s a it’s a challenge that you’re you’re throwing down. ⁓ I have to tell you, when I first saw this, I my brain processed what you were saying as hyperbole.

DR. BEN HARDY (09:20)
Exactly. That’s what I meant. People take it metaphorically or they don’t take it literally.

RORY (09:23)
Yeah, and and or and just as like a marketing gimmick. Okay. So I thought it was like, ⁓ you know, here here’s somebody like ⁓ y you know, it’s like, the you know, the billionaire mindset. And it’s just like, well, you’re just like throwing something out there, like no it but you actually have much much to my satisfaction, ⁓ and much to proving me wrong, you have a framework and a and a set of strategies.

And you’ve codified an actual scientific form of thinking for how this is possible. and the way the way that it’s possible is inherent in the goal itself. So can you talk to us about the talk to us about the floor and the focus and why the goal of 10x isn’t just a superlative, but the goal itself is the strategy.

DR. BEN HARDY (10:19)
Hundred percent. Yeah. And I think a lot of people when they use that word strategy, they think about strategy as pathways to goals. Like that’s how I kind of I think people think about like what’s the strategy or like do you have five strategies to get there? And for me, strategy is mostly about the objective you choose. Right. So it it actually starts with what is the goal we’re going for? What are we after? So like when when ⁓ the US was deciding to go to the moon, like going to the moon was the strategy, right?

And so it’s like now we can figure out how to do that, but getting to the moon was a strategy. So the goal is actually mostly like is like I would consider ninety percent of the strategy, the goal itself that you choose. Getting there now we can figure that out. But choosing the objective is the most fundamental aspect of strategy.

RORY (11:01)
And I think that what you just said there, the goal is ninety percent of the strategy. I think that is a radical insight and a unique insight to where people think of the goal as a destination only. You and your work, what you guys have said is no, the goal is the strategy. Explain that though. Like, how is the destination the strategy?

DR. BEN HARDY (11:07)
Hundred percent.

Hundred percent. So

It kind of goes so one of my favorite quotes comes from a a psychologist named Roy Baumeister. Roy Baumeister is one of the kind of founders of the whole field of positive psychology. And what he said is that the self, he’s talking about like you or me, our self is not a thing, but it’s a process. And it uses the future to organize the present. Okay. And so this goes against a hundred years of Freud based psychology that’s very past based. A lot of the research of a hundred years and a lot of the philosophy of psychology was that if I wanted to understand who a human was, all I have to do is understand their past.

past. Yep. And and the view is is that the past predicts the future. And so if I want to know who Rory’s future is, all I gotta do is look at Rory’s past. If I know about who Rory was five years ago, I’ll know who he’ll be in five years from now. And I

RORY (12:12)
I would say that is actually 1000% true if nothing changes. Sure. Your past will will will continue. Sure. But and that’s what and that’s exactly what most people do, which is part of your point, is they’re doing everything based on a a a lens of the past.

DR. BEN HARDY (12:26)
And we even consider that growth. We when you use the past to shape your future, right? We did five million revenue last year, so let’s go for six. You’re living in that incremental, very slow world. But back to back to Baumeister, and really it’s pretty revolutionary, but to me it’s very natural as well, that humans use their future to organize the present, right? So we use our model or our view of the future, or in other words, our goals. and Victor Frankel talked deeply about this in even Man’s Search for Meaning, right? Man’s Search for Meaning, him talking about his experience in the concentration camps. He said that the only thing that would work

When you’ve had everything removed from you, stripped from you, right? He’s talking about people who are dying in the concentration camps. He said that the only thing that would work is to have a goal that gives your life meaning. Like, and he said it’s the pu peculiarity of people that they can only live by looking to the future. So the most critical aspect of a human being is their future, right? That’s what modern, like that’s what positive psychology shows, that’s what neuroscience shows, is that our future is actually the thing we use to shape, filter, organize our present. And so when you understand that.

You start to understand that human beings operate off of goals, right? And you definitely don’t want your goals to be based on the past. And so when you understand that humans operate off of goals, and we use our goals to organize our present, whether that’s ourselves and our skills, our abilities, when I decided I wanted to go get a PhD, that shaped, you know, ⁓ the research I did and getting, you know, letters of recommendation and getting into a PhD program, right? ⁓ when you decide you wanted this studio, right? That goal allowed you to organize this beautiful room.

Right. And even your business and things like that. And so we use the future to organize the present. ⁓ and so that then takes us to strategy and like what is the future? What is the goal we set? ⁓ John Dore, who’s the billionaire who he basically helped Steve Jobs, all the people at Google, he said that a goal properly set is halfway reached. And so for us, that takes us to the idea of scale versus growth. And that the the first thing you really want to do is you want to scale your goal, right? When you take a goal, say, you know, say

Say I’m a I’m like a million dollar business, right? if I scale my goal to a hundred like a ten X, right? And I would say at least a ten X, so at least ten million, and I give myself a short amount of time, what that goal does is it it forces me to relook at the present. That goal, in our words, we actually say it raises the floor because it eliminates most options. When you go for 10 X or more, most things can’t get you there. And that’s really the point. Like to go for 10X or or even 50 X.

very few things can get you there. Very few pathways can get you there. And so it naturally raises the floor, meaning it un it naturally eliminates most options. Most options can’t get you to 10X. And so it forces you to filter and find the few that can, which most people are not doing that. Most people because they’re operating towards a more linear future, they’re not looking for the most powerful pathways.

RORY (15:06)
Yeah. So I and I wanna I wanna again, I wanna punctuate that moment right there is to go when you so a lot of people feel pressure, like if they set a goal 10X, what that would create for them is pressure and like obligation and like, I don’t think I can do that. And they it’s like, but what you’re saying is you’re going, it’s not the pressure of hitting the goal. It’s that is the strategy because

The moment you say, I’m gonna do something 10 times greater than what I’ve done, all almost every option that you’ve been pursuing becomes irrelevant. If I wanna grow by 10 or 20%, there are a hundred ways I could get there. If I want to grow by 10x, which would be a thousand percent, right? Would be 10x. Yep. If I’m gonna grow a thousand percent, the hundred options quickly reduces to like two or three.

And so the f the strategy is that it it provides focus. It shouldn’t create pressure. It like eliminates a whole bunch of stuff and it reveals what matters, right?

DR. BEN HARDY (16:14)
It reveals what matters, it reveals what has leverage, it reveals potentials that you didn’t know were there because you weren’t looking for them. Yeah. And it and it really fits exactly with strategy because, you know, Michael Porter, who created the field of strategy, he said that the the essence of strategy is deciding what not to do, right? And it really has to do with eliminating most options. And so when you actually set your goal appropriately or effectively, which for us is both in scale and timeline, we want the scale to be extreme and we want the timeline to also be extreme.

And we use that as a tool for eliminating almost all options. We really want the goal. We use the goal as a tool, right? Not as a stressor, not as a pressure, but simply as a psychological tool for firstly eliminating most options, because most options can’t get you very far. Most options are gonna be competitive. They’re gonna the the things that most other people are already doing. They’re not gonna have extreme leverage.

RORY (17:02)
They’re

incremental. yeah. Yeah.

DR. BEN HARDY (17:05)
Yeah, and and and and it just it’s you have to just understand, and as people who understand the eighty twenty principle know, that most things don’t produce all the results. The eighty twenty principle says that a few things create almost all the results, and everything else really doesn’t do very much. And so we wanna use that understanding to say we wanna set a goal that’s gonna naturally force out all the incremental ideas. It’s gonna force out all the bad ideas and all the distractions and all the dead end pathways, and it’s gonna force us to find only the few.

With the 10x upside. We still have to go find those. We have to go exploit those, right? We have to go work on those and navigate those and focus on them. But it fits exactly with what Steve Jobs said, which is innovation is saying no to a thousand things. Right. So the thousand things we want to say no to are the incremental concepts that can’t get us very far anyway, so that we can then go and innovate and focus on and build teams around the few pathways that can. That becomes our focus.

RORY (17:54)
Yeah, and and it it is the it is the huge goal that clarifies the few levers that can actually get you there. And that I think is where you go. You it’s it’s the goal is the strategy because it it reveals that. It it it creates a new frame. Yeah. It creates a new frame, you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re seeing the world. And you know, I ⁓

I process things through data. I process things through observation. I also process things through personal like experience. And I look at, you know, when I share my story of like, you know, I was raised by a single mom. When I was born, we lived in a trailer. We had no money. We had no famous friends. We had no super well-educated friends. We had no rich friends. If you and and most of the people who are born in those types of situations,

There’s generational poverty. Their past tends to repeat itself. But my mom, that you know, one of the things she always said is she’s like, you can do anything that you can dream of. And so my whole life, it was like, ⁓ so I got really big into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Karate Kid. Right. And so I was like, ⁓ I was watching Karate Kid. You remember Karate Kid? So ⁓ you and I have many things in common. So, you know, I was like, I want to be a black belt.

DR. BEN HARDY (19:03)
Yeah. And I love n Ninja Turtles.

RORY (19:13)
And so that was like the first major goal in my life was like I was 10 years old, I became a black belt. And it was like I didn’t worry about that I had never done martial arts. I was like, I want to be a black belt. And then my mom said, You’re gonna go to college. And she said this to me. She said, You are going to college and you are going to get a full ride scholarship because I will have no money, I promise you. And you’re going. So you need to figure out not just how to get there, you need to figure out how to get a full ride scholarship.

And she set that for me. And that re was a a reverse engineering from that future. And I got a full ride scholarship. You know, Blake and I have a a common passion of I went, I went door to door for five years in college. And so, you know, we’ve spent a lot of time in direct sales. And it was like, I want to be number one. And then it was the world championship of public speaking. And then it was a New York Times bestselling author. And then it was an A-figure entrepreneur. And then we, you know, effectively.

Exited, lost our first company, and it was like, how do we get back there? And when I look at my whole life, it is a series of impossible goals that have been reverse engineered ⁓ versus going, here’s where I am, what what should someone like me be capable of? And that’s what most people do. And it’s that same, so I I see that in my personal life, and it’s like you’ve codified that same principle empirically and quantum.

quantitatively for entrepreneurs.

DR. BEN HARDY (20:42)
Yeah, and I I just want to say I love your story, Rory. Like I love the, you know, I I wasn’t there, obviously, you know, in that trailer park or wherever you were with your mom. But I love that something about your mom told you, like, no, like I don’t care what your present is. You’re not defined by the present. You’re not defined by our generations behind us, even though like we we can still honor them and love them, but like

Here’s a goal. Go get go get a black belt, right? Or you’re going to college. I love that she just planted those, but I also love that you honored your mom and like trusted her and said, I will go and do that. Like a lot of children won’t actually trust their parents. And so I just I love the young version of you, and that says a lot about who you are, that you honored your mom enough to say, I will go do that. And so she planted a much bigger future in your life.

And then you went and did it. And so I just think your story is special. And so I I just think one of the things I love about your story is that you really don’t want the past to determine your future. As as good as the past could have been, ⁓ you don’t want the past to determine your future. You always want your future to determine to determine your present. And that’s why a strategy is so much about choosing a different future and and choosing a future that then

gives your life new meaning and gives your life new direction and requires you to stretch in ways that you never did before. I mean Frankel himself again just said that humans don’t need a tensionless state. Like we all want a tensionless state. He said what we all need is the striving and struggling for a worthy goal. And he says, but it’s a freely chosen task, right? And so choosing effective goals is the most fundamental aspect of being a human being. It’s choosing a goal that then reshapes and redirects your present.

And it allows and it requires you to make trade offs and it requires you to ask, you know, is this thing that I want worth it in in light of this new th this new opportunity or this new potential that I could step into?

RORY (22:31)
And it it it’s choosing a goal reshapes your thinking. It reshapes your perspective. It re it reshapes what you’re paying attention to. ⁓ so one of the things that you talk a lot about is future self. I mean, that’d be one thing that you’d be like, you know, you you if if we had to say you you’re the world’s leading expert, it might be in like future self thinking. ⁓ can you just can you just touch on

⁓ we’ve talked a lot about this, but you’ve got a framework in this book that’s simple. It’s three circles and it you talk about, you know, past, present, future. Can you just walk us through directionally what most people do versus what scalers do?

DR. BEN HARDY (23:12)
yeah. So, you know, in our so we think about time I as a psychologist, I think about time not as like what’s on the clock, you know, and even physicists don’t do that either. But I think about the time that you’re carrying around in your mind, right? Your past that you’re carrying around in your mind. So we all have a past self and we all also have a present self and a future self, right? And most people spend because we’ve been trained to do this and because it’s natural, the l older you get to to over index on your past self, we spend way more way way more of our time being defined by our past.

RORY (23:40)
Which

like more time thinking about our past being defined by your

DR. BEN HARDY (23:42)
Well, it’s really interesting. I think we’d be

defined by it. Humans still spend ten x more time thinking about their future. ⁓ we spend ten x more time thinking about our future, d whether it’s just trying to think about, you know, how to pay the bills or or whatnot. ⁓ but we we index too much on defining ourselves by the past.

RORY (24:01)
Like

our identity, most of us for most of us our identity is determined by our past.

DR. BEN HARDY (24:06)
We do that naturally, ⁓ even though it’s not the best way to do it. ⁓ so I would just say from like a ⁓ a direction of time, most people use their past to shape their present and they use their present to shape their future. ⁓ and and what happens with this is is that and this is just how people have been kind of trained to think. And it also makes sense because when we think about a clock, the clock’s moving forward, right? It goes from twelve to one to two to three. So we just we think about our own time that way, even though that’s not the best way to think about it. ⁓ and so

I think that the the real downside of that, and there’s a lot of research on future self of future self, is is that when you use your past and present to shape your view of your future self, your future self isn’t very different. You know, people think about their future self ten years into the future and they really just think it’s the same person they are today. So in psychology they actually call that the end of history illusion. So the idea is is that, you know, I’ve had all these experiences in the past that have brought me here.

But now if I just think about who my future self will be in ten years from now, it’s basically gonna be the same person I am today. And so they call that the end of history illusion.

RORY (25:03)
like growth, like in a business sense, it’s how you’re talking about it’s like incremental change, but you’re more or less the same person. Yeah. In a few years.

DR. BEN HARDY (25:12)
So how we prefer to help people think about it, and it fits back with that Baumeister quote, is is rather than the past and present shaping the future, for for me, it’s the future that always shapes the present, right? Whatever view and model you have of your future, and mostly that’s your goals, whatever goals you have, those are actually the things most dominantly shaping who you are in the present. And it’s you in the present that shapes and reshapes the meaning of your past.

And so for us, like if there was an arrow of time psychologically, it’s not moving forward, it’s actually moving backwards. The past shape or the present, sorry, the future shapes the present and then the present shapes the past. And and this is really how memory works, by the way, is is that it’s always you in the present that always they call it reconstruction. Memory is always a reconstruction. It’s actually a creative process. Like if I want to go and think about my childhood, I don’t grab from a file cabinet.

I have to like literally conjure up and think about my past. And I then think about it in a different and specific way. So if I want to think about, you know, my neighborhood when I grew up, I now have to like go back and think about that, right? And so we’re always reconstructing or recreating our past in the present. But it’s also up to us to determine what’s the angle we look at that past, what’s the meaning we give to that past. What does it mean and what does it mean for us now and later? So if I think about, you know, your childhood, you know, and you growing up, you know, you could use easily use that past ⁓ as an excuse or to blame.

you know, the society or your situation or your parents, right? But instead you you can also look at that from a hundred different ways. That situation with your mom, that series of events, and say, what do those mean? Why are those blessings? Why are those assets? What’s the value of those? What how can I use that to have a better future and to inspire millions of people, right? You can use the past in any way you want. And so it’s the present that shapes the past. but it’s the future that shapes the present. And one of the most powerful things that I take from this is

With the linear model, ⁓ it as I said, it’s prediction based. So if with the linear with a linear model, your past determines your future, which means that your past and your future are very much the same. Whereas the other way where you let the future shape the present and you let the present shape the past, you actually it forces a recognition of difference. Like it forces a recognition that things aren’t the same. So if I look at the pre if if I’m looking from the present at my past, if I’m thinking about Ben Hardy a year ago.

Because I know that it’s me in the present that is looking at that, I can look at what’s different. How’s Ben Hardy different from who he was a year ago? You know, how do I look, how do I, how do I treat my children differently? How do I, how do I value things differently? What have I learned in the last year that I didn’t know a year ago? And so I think it’s very personally beautiful. And there’s actually research on this as well, that you actually want to separate your past from your present, but you don’t want to be mad at your past. I don’t want to be mad at Ben Hardy from a year ago, even though, you know, Ben Hardy a year ago was pretty ignorant, like compared to what I am now. And I’ve

If I would have if I could go back a year ago, I would do things very differently. But I don’t need to be mad at at my former self’s decision making or thought process. I can just actually respect that there’s difference. ⁓ and I can be blown away at how much things have changed. And I and seeing and recognizing how much things have changed and how much I’m not the same as my past self, ⁓ creates that psychological flexibility, which allows me then to think very differently about my future self. And that’s really when you start to like when you dig into the research on future self, one of the most critical insights.

is the that you want to appreciate that your future self is a different person than who you are today. Yeah. They actually do see the world differently. They do have different values. They, you know, and so you want to start to tap into those differences and even to choose and create those differences. My you know, your future self could largely be in an extremely different situation than you. Care about different things, have totally different leverage capability, options. ⁓ and that when you start to appreciate that, then you stop having such a fixed mindset. Well

RORY (28:51)
It’s it’s it’s it as an adult, it’s kind of like hard to believe that I’d be exponentially different. But when you look at kids, it’s it’s God’s divine design. You go like, think about a one-year-old versus a 10-year-old. They are exponentially different in every way. So then how come there’s not an exponential difference between a 40-year-old and a 50-year-old? There should there should be. Yeah. And not just there could be, right? It’s like there there there should be. ⁓

DR. BEN HARDY (29:12)
I think

RORY (29:18)
And I think that’s what’s so cool, where the goal is the strategy. The goal having a 10X goal reshapes the way you see the world. It reshapes what you pay attention to. It reshapes what you look at. And and one of the last things I just I want one of the last points I wanna make that I’ve drawn out from you and learned from you that I think is relevant to everyone in our audience. And I think you are an example of this as well, is as experts, as mission driven messengers, our job

is to find the levers in the areas we study. Right. So we work with personal brands. So we have to figure out what are the exponential levers that launches a personal brand forward. Right. That’s why New York Times bestselling books and speaking and there’s these things that we spend, we overindex our time on and we try to find the the most the the the the most key strategies, the levers that are going to create the biggest results. So

The science of scaling, as you teach it and talk about it, is a goal setting framework. It’s a business strategy. But I also think for thought leaders and experts, it should be a filter by which we choose what to study and we choose what to teach, right? As you go, AI is going to present an infinite amount of information to everybody. Our job is to try to filter and discover and find what are the one or two most

Consolidated, succinct ideas that move the thinking forward, that move people forward in our space. And that’s what you’ve done with this book. ⁓ So you’ve you’ve modeled it. And that to me is what a thought leader represents. Because it’s like you’re leading the thinking of what’s been done in a space. And if all of us as messengers go out and we ask the question, ⁓

How do I help my clients succeed faster? What is the, what are the few discoveries that really matter? What are the, what are the few strategies that are actually gonna change the lives? Not just so I can sell stuff to people, but so that I can actually create a meaningful difference in someone’s lives. You go, that is how you at sub 40 years old have become one of the leading thinkers in the entire world with you know hundreds of thousands of books.

million maybe millions of books sold at this point. If not, soon soon to be. ⁓ have you sold millions of books? A couple of million yeah so

DR. BEN HARDY (31:49)
Yeah, a couple of millions.

⁓

RORY (31:53)
That’s amazing. So

but but also the the this filter applies to our personal goals, our professional goals, and I think to the work that we do at ⁓ as thought leaders. So Ben, thank you for this work. this is clarifying and inspiring and empowering and practical. And you know, so and and thanks to Blake for partnering with you to help, you know, you guys bring this to the world.

y’all need to go get a copy of The Science of Scaling. ⁓ go to scaling.com also and you know if you’re if you’re an entrepreneur who’s gonna commit to growing 10X, ⁓ you know, you should be you should be talking to these guys and looking what they’re doing. So I really appreciate you, brother. And is there anywhere else you want people to go to to find about you guys?

DR. BEN HARDY (32:40)
No. When you’re ready to 10X your business in three years, come to Skunny.com. We’re happy to we’re happy to guide you through that process. And I just say one of the last things I want to just mention on what you said. I think what you said, you and I, you’re right, have have a lot of ⁓ shared insight. I think the the fact that you’re looking for those few levers that make the t you know, make almost all the results and you’re looking for that in your field, in your craft and you’re willing to dig

harder and deeper than than anyone else in your space is why you’re a master. And I think that that’s to me, that’s that’s what we call power law thinking, right? Power laws or if it’s with the 8020 are the few things that create almost all the results. And it’s just that recognition. And that’s why, you know, that’s part of why our framework works is because it forces that type of thinking. When you start to go for the impossible goal or the 10X goal, it strips out everything except for the few things that can work at that level, right? Only the few things with that level of leverage. The few things and those are the from my perspective, if you want to scale

Those are the those are the only things you can focus on. Whereas everything else becomes noise. And so I just I just love that that’s how you operate and that’s why we wrote about you in this book, is because that’s that’s that’s what you represent in your field. So I just thank you for your example, brother.

RORY (33:45)
Yeah, we wish you all the best, man. Thanks for being here. Yeah.

WWK Ep 029: Are You Using AI… or Is AI Using You?

RORY (00:00)
There is an area where I feel like AI is cheating and it pisses me off. I used a bad word.

AJ (00:04)
Due to the

RORY (00:07)
When people literally clone verbatim scripts of other people’s stuff where they go, this is happening everywhere. They’re going, here’s a video that went viral, use AI to transcribe it, then feed it into a teleprompter and read it yourself, or feed it into your AI avatar and read it. That’s not cool. And I go, that’s not cool because it’s it’s stealing. Yeah. It’s stealing.

AJ (00:27)
Yeah, that’s

Somebody else’s

RORY (00:34)
It’s lying if you’re not disclosing it. I it it’s lying. And most of all, it’s unoriginal where I go You’re not a thought leader. You’re a parrot.

AJ (00:47)
welcome to the wealthy and well-known podcast. I’m joined here today with Roy Vaden, ⁓ who is my better half on most days. No, sometimes. ⁓ sometimes every once in a while. And today’s gonna be a really awesome and interesting day because we, like everyone else on planet earth, are gonna talk a little bit about AI, but really specifically.

RORY (00:59)
Every once in a great while.

AJ (01:12)
Where to draw the line with using AI when it comes to creating and producing content for your personal brands? So, what are some of the things that we’re using it for? What are some of the things that we’ve drawn our own personal boundaries? Of this isn’t for us, and here’s why. So, we’re gonna talk about ⁓ the powerful use of AI because there’s a lot of really great uses. And and when, where, and how do you create your own boundaries, your own lines of engagement?

To make sure that AI is a supplemental tool and it doesn’t become the creator of your own content. Rory?

RORY (01:50)
Yes. Let’s talk about that. Okay. Is that a question?

AJ (01:53)
We are gonna talk about that. So ⁓ I think this would be a great place to start is just how are you using AI when it comes to content creation?

RORY (02:04)
Yes. So we are using AI in terms of research and synth in terms of choosing the topics that we should address, right? So we’re trying to take large amounts of information of things we could talk about and trying to pinpoint and identify what topics we should.

AJ (02:25)
So

I think this is worth pausing of going, that might sound familiar to some of you and some of you are going, well, why would you do that? So can you talk about like what’s the point of doing that and how does that actually help you when you’re trying to grow your following?

RORY (02:39)
All right. So yeah, that’s good. There’s there’s two different reasons and ways we use AI for research. Okay. So one is to identify popular trends. Okay. The other is to identify needs. The purpose of identifying popular trends is to grow organic reach and sort of try to catch the more viral wave.

AJ (03:08)
Topic wise. Just what topics are trending.

RORY (03:09)
Topic wise,

the reason to answer people’s biggest needs and their questions is more of a long term ⁓ and it’s actually to try to show up in AEO answer engine optimization to show up and search. So that’s why we do and what we’re doing. One is kind of a short form viral game. The other is more of a long a long term, you know, AEO game.

And it’s very similar to the difference between social media is trends, but search engine optimization is long term. It’s just the new iteration of that.

AJ (03:45)
So you’re using AI to help you analyze and to provide some research support to know what topics are trending, where to spend time on, and then what questions we should be answering.

RORY (03:58)
Right. Okay. I think one of the important things there is to go, what are we not using AI for?

AJ (04:05)
Before you do that, I want to recap this so just for everyone, so we can make this a very tactical, ⁓ bullet pointed ⁓ podcast episode for you. It’s step one, we are using AI as a research assistant. Okay, so as a part of our content creation, SOPs, it’s like bringing on a

Research assistant. That’s what we’re using it for. Someone to scour what’s happening out there, what’s trending, what’s working, what are the most commonly ⁓ asked questions so that we can be aligned with what people are actually asking for. So research assistant, step one. Yeah. Now continue.

RORY (04:41)
Definitely.

Yes. Okay. So I think an equally important question is what are we not using AI for? We are not using AI to write the scripts that of what I will say in terms of what I think about the popular trends or what AI thinks I should say in answering the question. So we’re using it for research. We’re not

Outsourcing my personality or opinion. And that’s where I think people have to be super careful because when AI creates content, it gravitates towards the middle. It literally takes everything that is out there in the world and it sort of like migrates towards this middle mesh of what like the general population is saying. It’s it’s literally triangulating all of these things that people are saying.

And to be unique, uniqueness is about having a perspective and a point of view and a sort of strong conviction that things should be done in a certain way based on your actual experience. It’s almost the opposite of going, what does the whole world think? And let’s do that. Uniqueness is going, I don’t care what the whole world thinks. This is what in our expertise and our experience of actually doing the thing, this is what actually works.

So we’re not outsourcing or allowing AI to write our the script for what we’re gonna

AJ (06:12)
Yeah, so here’s ⁓ I I would say so step two is really what we’re not using it for, but in that same vein of like we’re not using AI to actually write scripts, think for us, create content for us, establish our thought leadership, which to be clear is no longer yours. It’s AI’s, it’s not yours. but I would say a caveat to that, a caveat to that is a few things that at least I’m doing that is really helpful when it comes to that. So like here’s a couple of best practices around where

To use AI to help with content organization, not content creation, but content organization. So I think this is a really important.

Concept that a lot of people, it’s nuanced, but I think it’s worthwhile talking about. So what I mean by content organization is I’ll ask AI, ⁓ and this doesn’t matter, whatever your preferred thing is, Gemini, Claude, Chat, like whatever, it doesn’t matter. ⁓ to go out there and say, Hey, can you please go out and review all of my top performing posts, categorize them by topics, and then tell me why those are in line with all of my thought leadership that you can find.

In my blogs, on my podcasts, on my website, and through my own personal brand documents that I’ve uploaded to store there. And so that is a very helpful thing. If it’s like it’s giving feedback to me of, hey, what your audience really enjoys most from yours when you talk about these things. So categorically, I have a topic list that I’ll go through. And then from that, I will say, hey, can you please help me create 10

Additional questions that you think my audience would like to hear the answer from from me based on these trending topics. Now, from those questions, it’s not creating my content, it’s just saying, hey, this is what I have found that your audience really wants to learn about or hear about from you. So it’s just helping me compile the questions. So it’s content organization. Then I can take those questions and I’ll rewrite them. Sometimes I’ll be like, I don’t like those, they’re too.

formal, I’m more casual. I want these to be more lighthearted. And I’ll just give it direction. But now all it’s doing is it’s curating a list of questions for me that I can then go grab my phone or schedule some content film time. And now I have a list of questions of like these are questions that feel super aligned to something I want to talk about for my audience. This is what they have actually said they like from me based on what they engage with, what they like, what they share, what they comment on. And so I’m going to take that, I’m going

to organize. I’m going to use AI to help me organize my content so I can then go and have a more streamlined and efficient and effective film day based on topics. So it’s content organization. So I do that a lot. That just helps me be really efficient and effective with the time that I have so that I’m actually creating content that people want.

RORY (09:15)
Yeah, that’s cool. And it’s almost like a second layer of research. You’re you’re researching the best of it’s like what you’ve put out there and it’s going, here’s your greatest hits, like talk more about this.

AJ (09:24)
So wait, well hold on. I have more. I have more. Okay. So it’s not your turn yet. ⁓ so part two.

RORY (09:30)
I’m in timeout. I’ll

stay over I’ll stay over here.

AJ (09:32)
Part two of content organization is this is actually how I’ve been using my drive time. ⁓ and this has been a really helpful thing because ⁓ when being a content creator is not your full-time job like mine, I’m literally having to figure out like how do I use every minute of my spare time to fit this in. Because I’m not a full-time content creator. That’s Rory’s job. At VBG, it’s not my job. Full-time is

RORY (09:57)
Part time. Yeah, part time.

AJ (09:58)
Strong

word, strong word. but so here’s what I’ve been doing is I just use the voice activation component on I so I use Chat GPT. I have found that for this sort of thing content I like it better than Claude. I Claude for other things. But this is what I do is I just talk it out and I’m I literally it’s almost like a voice memo, ⁓ but then I give it some very specific instructions. I’ll tell you, hey, here are some topics and themes that have been showing up in my life that I feel really passionate about talking about.

and I’ll say, hey, I’ve recently had conversations about faith in the workplace, or hey, I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about how do you get rid of mom guilt or work guilt, right? When I’m with the kids, I feel guilty, I’m not working. When I’m working, I feel guilty, I’m not with my kids. Or, hey, like you’ve had this health transformation. Tell me more about that. Or, you know, all whatever it is. And I’ll just talk it out. And I’m like, hey, these are things that are constantly coming up in my personal life, social life, ⁓ business life. And I just talk

them out and then I just start ideating and I’m like what I’d really love to tell people is this or this or this. Sometimes these messages to ChatGPT are like 10 minutes long, but I’m just doing it in my drive through

RORY (11:08)
In other

words, you’re using Chat G BT as a therapist? Is that what is that what I’m just picked up?

AJ (11:13)
And then the at the end I’ll say, I need you to take all of my thoughts, all of my random commentary, everything I just shared with you. And I need you to organize it for me in questions and categories that I could then go create content for my audience. Love that. And so it is totally unorganized. I have no agenda. I am just using it to be like, okay, here’s my 10 minutes of everything that’s been going on in the last week or through conferences I was at or

client conversations or internal meetings and I’m just it is literally a free it’s a brand

RORY (11:49)
It’s like a brain dump, but you’re but

you’re using it to organize

AJ (11:52)
But

at the very end, my prompt is all please take my random splattering of thoughts, ideas, questions, and content and organize them for me. Help me create a very clear list of how these could be turned into questions and do them categorically speaking. And then for each category that you come up with, give me five, two, ten questions. And again, it’s all about the question. And I’m not saying create my content. I’m saying give me questions that I can then authentically and

in my own voice, go and answer these. So I don’t want your help with any content. You’re good? No thanks. I just want you to organize all my thoughts and create a strategic plan that I can then put on a Word doc printout and use as my as my outline.

RORY (12:36)
Yeah. So one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about how we’re using AI and I personally am excited to use AI, which I think gives a strong distinction for what we use it for and what we do not. I’m a fan of using AI for the packaging, but not the product. So if you think about a candy bar, right, there’s the candy bar and then there is the then there’s the wrapper. I know we don’t need candy bars, but ⁓

Do I look like I eat candy bars? No. Okay, you’re whatever. Some health bar with no no sugar added. RX bars. Okay. Rx should sponsor the show now. but you’ve got, you know, the thing and then you have the wrapper around the thing. AI is great for take this thing that I wanna say and turn it into hooks so that we can use the opening screen or the opening frame.

AJ (13:28)
Create a CT.

RORY (13:28)
Or create a call

to action out of this. the other thing is like I’m perfectly comfortable having the team use AI to create thumbnails for Instagram posts, for YouTube, or titles, whatever. And yeah, and title ideas. So it’s like, I’m gonna say the thing that I’m gonna say. That’s the product. I’m not using AI for the product, but I’m perfectly comfortable with using AI for the packaging to go, how do you, you know.

wrap this up in a way that is really attention grabbing, that is really enticing, that is is is really eye opening. And totally happy with that. And that

AJ (14:04)
Say,

I would say that’s category three, right? So category one, research assistant, category two, it’s content organization. Category three would be use it for the packaging, right? Use it for titles, thumbnails, hooks, CTAs. It’s to create all the marketing assets around the content, but not the content itself.

RORY (14:26)
Yeah. And we have for our members, if you’re listening, you’re one of our members, you have access to brand bot, which is all of the bots we’ve created. We have a title bot, which is specifically to help you come up with the titles. We have ⁓ something called topic bot, which does this exact thing is it it reads your brand memory of what everything that you’ve the work you’ve done, and then it says, Here are some content ideas, and it gives you like different title options and hooks. Yeah. So that that that’s awesome. And that’s not only how we’re using it, we’re now

Institutionalizing and operationalizing those use cases for our clients.

AJ (15:01)
with our specific methodologies layered on top.

RORY (15:04)
Right. But but even there we’re not we’re not writing the script for them. We’re just creating the packaging of of the piece.

AJ (15:12)
Now I will tell you, so I would go then to category five. Did we say four? Four. Four. Category four. I skipped category four. Category four, I would also say is I do use chat to help me create opening lines. And I’ll say, okay, here, so I’m gonna be talking about today, ⁓ you know, I’ll just pick this one set or how to share your faith in the workplace without alienating other people, right? And it’s like, hey, can you create an opening line?

So that because I think that’s a really important thing. That’s kind of like on the hook. Yeah. but so I will use it to help with that. I will say often though, I’ll just use it as ideation and I’ll go back and I liked this piece, but this is how I’m gonna edit it and make it mine. So again, it’s not creating the content, but it’s the marketing components around that. So I would say on that note with other things I would put in category four, I would just use it for outlines.

I think those can be really good. So if you’re someone who doesn’t create a lot of content, again, this is not creating a script for you. This is not creating your thought leadership, but it’s going, hey, I want to do a topic on, you know, how to keep your metabolism going well into your 50s, right? Maybe you’re a health coach or something like that. And it’s like, hey, this is the topic I want to do. But what I’ll be very specific so you don’t get tempted to like let chat do the thought leadership for you is like, give me.

a three point bulleted outline.

That I can use with these are the big points that I want to hit based on my content. So you can also do it with just like bullet points to keep your I guess your train of thought focused so that your content doesn’t linger to five to seven to 10 minutes when you’re trying to make a 90-second post. So I think those are really helpful. You can just do bullet point outlines if this is something that you’re new to and you’re like, okay, well, this is what I would say. And so again, this is where I use, you know, my voice memo activation.

is I’ll talk it out and then I’ll just say, hey, can you put those into three bulleted points so I don’t miss anything I just said. I’m personally not a big fan of having every single word scripted. I think it’s great to have outlines so you can add lib, right? And I think that’s where some of like the thought leadership is really helpful, but you can use it just to create bullet pointed outlines to help you stay focused and on track, mainly for time purposes.

RORY (17:40)
All right, rapid fire questions. Let’s do it. All right. Let’s talk about video specifically. Okay. So AI generated avatars and voice cloning are becoming normalized. Where do you draw the line on what’s authentic versus what’s deceiving to your audience?

AJ (17:57)
Okay. I’ll just start with a blanket answer because we used AI to do our first round of our audiobook. Yeah. Right. So we wanted to get our audiobook out before we actually had time to go in studio and actually record our real voices. And I think the difference between, you know, what’s real and what’s deceptive has everything to do with what you’re willing to tell people. It’s disclosure. And it’s like at the very beginning, it was like this is read by A.

RORY (18:21)
Disclosure.

AJ (18:26)
AI. And it’s like, and you could there were some parts where you couldn’t tell, and then there would be other parts where it’s like, what was that? Right. And it’s like AI is not perfect in that. But I think the most important thing is to disclose it. Now we did it for a short-term temporary basis to give us enough time to get in studio and get the real voices activated, but we were just very upfront and disclosing.

RORY (18:48)
Which

is way better.

AJ (18:49)
Read by AI. Absolutely. AI is never going to be able to imitate the unique, the uniqueness of voice inflection and human emotion. And thank goodness that that’s good for us. ⁓ we’re still needed ⁓ in many ways. And so I think that would be one, it’s just disclosure. It’s only deceptive when you’re letting people think AI is you. And that goes the same with content creation.

Right? That’s the part where there’s the line, right? It’s like, are you letting people think this was you when it’s not? Or are you being up front and saying, Hey, this this voice audio is, you know, provided by AI or, you know, it doesn’t matter. So that to me is

RORY (19:29)
What whatever

whatever you gain in the automation of creating something, you’ll lose a hundred times that in trust if you don’t disclose it. So don’t think of this this is a classic trap of the escalator mentality, the shortcut seeking, I can just like have AI answer all my phone calls and make and and do all my chats and my DMs and like, yeah, you can, but you better disclose that. If you do not, I’m telling you, there is gonna be a tidal wave that hits you where you lose all.

All the trust from your community because they’re gonna be like, wait, what? This you were this was AI the whole time? This wasn’t even you and you didn’t disclose it? Like that’s a stupid idea. Don’t do that. So if you’re using AI for voice cloning and for video, just disclose it and tell people and let and let them know ⁓ otherwise you’re gonna you’re gonna pay a price later.

AJ (20:23)
Yeah, so I think that that to me is the line of delineation of are you disclosing it upfront? And as long as you are, then everyone knows. No problem.

RORY (20:32)
Yep. Okay. Next question. ⁓ for someone who has been resistant to AI, there’s still a lot of people out there on this, a lot of people. For someone who has been resistant to AI because they feel like it’s cheating, what would you say to shift their perspective on this, especially in a competitive content landscape?

AJ (20:51)
I guess my return question would be, ⁓ depends on what you’re using it for. Cheating how? Like is having an assistant cheating? Right? Is, you know, like what’s cheating? Like is getting support cheating? So I guess the question would be like in what context? So we can make our own assumptions of

RORY (21:10)
I I think this is like people think ads is cheating. People think, you know, yeah, you have a you win because you have a big team. That people think, ⁓ y you know, just i I I think really what’s going on there underneath the surface is a fear about something or also an annoyance of having to adapt and change and learn something. That’s what I think. I think if it if you’re resistant to AI, I think a lot of it is just going

I’m I’m resistant to going having to learn something new. It’s like I don’t have time to learn this new thing. And and so I think often we’ll use things like, cheating as a defense mechanism to write off is like, I shouldn’t have to do it. Is that protects me? The payoff is it protects me from having to like get uncomfortable and dig in and do something new. And ⁓ you know, so to that person I say, I feel you. Like I feel you, like I’m so

it it’s like by the time you feel like you get your hands on one thing and figure it out, it’s like it’s already changed and different and it’s been that way for decades now. And so I’m frustrated by that. But I I think you gotta beware. I think this is how you become irrelevant. I think you become irrelevant by being annoyed that you have to change. And so you don’t and the world moves on and one day you look up and you go, my gosh, like I’m I’ve I’ve been totally left behind. So that’s how I process this question and

⁓ but I feel you and but and I go like I think the resistance is is a is a fear and an annoyance and I think you just gotta be careful about what that really means deep down.

AJ (22:49)
Yeah, I think not to go too deep psychologically, but I think a lot of people who think it’s cheating to get help, it’s really that it doesn’t matter where it would come from. It’s like if you think getting help is cheating, then there’s something probably inside of you that’s like, I have to do it all by myself. Right? and that’s probably where I would lean. I actually I think about my favorite, y’all, little known fact, my maybe it’s a big known fact at this point, but my favorite television show of all time is Modern Family. Ever. Greatest show ever. And

RORY (23:17)
Greatest show ever.

AJ (23:19)
There’s this one episode where Claire has become CEO of Pritchett’s Closets. She has taken over for her dad, and she has been borrowing the marketing assistant as her personal assistant behind the scenes, but no one at work knows, and no one in her family knows. And the entire family keeps saying, I just don’t know how she does it. And she’s got the marketing assistant making, you know, brie and apple sandwiches and wrapping birthday presents and doing laundry and fill her

Is just like overwhelmed with like, how are you doing this? And the kids are, you know, like, Mom, you’re the best, you do everything. And Phil’s like, How is this happening? And it’s just, it’s a great reminder of like what what she doesn’t want to admit to anyone is that she has help. And I think where I hear cheating is a very strong parallel to the same person who refuses to get that assistant or hire that house cleaner or hire someone who’s landscape.

That’s my job. I’m supposed to be able to do it all. Or the mom who refuses to get help or accept a meal or to, you know, it’s like we have this burden of we have to do it all by ourselves. We have to do it. We can do it. I don’t need any help. And I think that this question and from some people that I talk to, it’s like I think it innately comes from more of that place. when the truth is is like we all need help. Like I don’t

think using AI is cheating at all when I disclose it and when I use it for the right things. In fact, it’s it’s helped me become more proficient and efficient at things that I was like, when am I ever gonna find time for this? And now I’m like, my gosh, I can actually do this. This is amazing. And so it but to me it’s like having an assistant.

And it’s not replacing my assistant, but I have support in the areas. And so in my opinion, if you’re struggling with like it feels like cheating, I would say like what other areas in your life do you also feel like are cheating? Because I think this would fit in there too.

RORY (25:17)
Hmm, that’s good. There is an area where I feel like AI is cheating and it pisses me off. I used a bad word.

AJ (25:23)
Due to the

RORY (25:26)
When people literally clone verbatim scripts of other people’s stuff where they go, this is happening everywhere. They’re going, here’s a video that went viral, use AI to transcribe it, then feed it into a teleprompter and read it yourself, or feed it into your AI avatar and read it. That’s not cool. And I go, that’s not cool because it’s it’s stealing. Yeah. It’s stealing.

AJ (25:46)
Yeah, that’s

Somebody else’s

RORY (25:53)
It’s lying if you’re not disclosing it. I it it’s lying. And most of all, it’s unoriginal where I go like, you can’t be a thought leader. You’re not a thought leader. You’re a parrot. Like, like don’t steal other people’s stuff and then try to position yourself as an expert. You’re not an expert, you’re a parrot. You’re cloning, you’re cloning other people’s stuff and going, that’s not cool.

So that is a place where AI is cheating and I’m I’m I’m clearly I’m clearly feisty about

AJ (26:22)
I’ll

say AI isn’t cheating. Humans are cheating. AI is just a tool. Like anything else. It’s a tool. ⁓ can be wielded for good or for bad. It’s a tool. humans get to decide how to use it. So don’t be blaming AI. It’s just a tool.

RORY (26:39)
That’s true.

You’re right. It’s like For now. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I hope there’s somebody out there that’s building like happy robots and positive, you know, anti-cyber scamming, ⁓ AI stuff, man, because it’s

AJ (26:53)
I subscribe

to this account on Instagram that only shares happy news. Like it’s it. They they’re only like what good news in the world happened in the last 24 hours. And it’s like pandas are no longer an extinction. Did y’all know that? The great panda is no longer an extinction. And it’s only feeds me positive news. Like the state of Florida just banned ⁓ animal abusers from owning pets. That’s amazing. That’s so great. They shouldn’t get to have pets. ⁓ so

Here listen.

RORY (27:23)
Is there anything

on there about positive AI robots and like AI ⁓

AJ (27:28)
It’s all about

animals. Okay. but it was good. It was positive. So I’m just saying it’s like there’s good things happening no matter where you look, and there’s bad things happening no matter where you look. It’s just you’re gonna find whatever you look for. That’s

RORY (27:42)
All right, community question. You’re supposed to read it this time. Are you ready? I yeah, now everyone’s thinking about pandas. We were talking about AI now.

AJ (27:46)
I am ready. I was thinking about pandas.

Big

deal. Like they were on the verge of extinction and now they’re no longer. Thank you. That’s awesome. That’s really awesome. All right. this is one of our favorite segments of the show. Every week, V BBG members vote up. ⁓ one of the most pressing questions from the community, and it gets featured here, and we get to answer it. So let me read the question to you.

RORY (27:58)
That’s great.

AJ (28:16)
This comes from Danielle. I’ve started using ChatGPT to help me write my content. And honestly, my captions have never been better. But my best friend told me it’s inauthentic and that I’m basically lying to my audience. Am I doing something wrong or is she overthinking it?

RORY (28:40)
This is balance of what we’ve been talking about here. It’s a really good question.

I think if you’re using AI to write your content, I think you’re lying to the audience. But if you created content and you shared your own original ideas and your own original thoughts, and then you transcribed it and you said, AI, turn this into a well-written caption for me. I don’t think that’s lying at all. I think that’s a great use of it. So I guess what I would say here is a way that I could maybe summarize a lot of my opinion on AI. If I’m using AI to outsource my thinking, that’s a problem.

Don’t do that. If I’m using AI to outsource the doing, I’m okay with that. What do you think?

AJ (29:22)
Yeah, I would say it it kind of goes back to like those four categories that we talked about earlier. It’s like use AI. I what did did I say AI? Use AI. I can’t hear my own accent. Sometimes it gets strong.

RORY (29:33)
A sound use A. This sounds really close to I ⁓

AJ (29:38)
Really strong.

I can’t even hear what I’m saying. but if you’re using it as a research tool to help you be like, what are the topics? What what’s trending? What are the questions? That’s fine. If you’re using it to organize your thought and your content, we talked about that. That’s fine. Right. If you’re using it for the packaging, right? And that could be the titles, the thumbnails, the hooks, the hooks, the CPAs, some the captions, that’s okay. ⁓ and then even in, you know, category four, when we were talking about

Hey, are you using it in a way to help you, you know, like kind of pace things out and create bullet points and even my write the opening line? I think that’s okay. That’s all an organization and packaging. ⁓ I think those are all things that are okay. What’s not okay is it actually becomes the source of your thought leadership. That’s not okay. That’s where it’s like the whole reason for you that you’re in BBG is so that you’re coming up with your own content based on your own experiences, your own expertise, your own

Thoughts and those are valuable. You do not need to use AI to create your content. It’s yours. Like it doesn’t know what stories to tell or what life experiences or what emotions you felt or the failures or the victories. Like that’s yours. And that’s actually what people want. And that’s also specifically to you while you’re while you are a member in Brain Builders Group. It’s like I feel called to share something to an audience that really needs to hear it in a way that only I can share it.

A I can’t do that. So the only person you’re cheating by doing that is cheating yourself of letting the world hear your true message, your real life story for hearing from your real life events and the real life feelings. Like it can’t imitate. And and when it says like the captions have never been better, it’s like, says who? Says you?

We’re always gonna be the hardest judge on our own stuff. and so I would just encourage, it’s like a little imperfection is quite beautiful. ⁓ what’s what’s really most important is that people can relate to you and that it’s personable and that it’s real. And you’re only cheating yourself if you’re not letting your real message, your real story, your real thoughts come out. That’s who’s being cheated in this. And so I would just say there’s plenty of ways to be using AI to help you be more efficient, more effective, ⁓ research, organization.

⁓ but when it comes to the actual content, that’s yours. Let it be yours.

RORY (32:08)
It just dawned on me as you were talking about like such a powerful reason for BBG to still exist. Is you go, what does AI do? AI consolidates, reviews, analyzes everything that’s out there that’s ever been created. What can it not do?

Create your original thinking about how you solve the problem from your own vantage point. Your own anything that exists in your head becomes truly valuable and truly unique as the world just gravitates towards more and more noise.

AJ (32:38)
Totally. It’s like it can’t go in and recall all of the stories and the memories and that’s that’s the human experience and it can’t do that. So don’t let it.

RORY (32:49)
Yeah. So ⁓ if you want to have some help doing that, create original intellectual property, to extract your own original thinking, to create your own ⁓ frameworks and proprietary IP, then you should request a call with us. If you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast, we’ll talk to you about that, exactly what our process looks like to help pull out that uniqueness from your own lived experience to create, you know, more human emotion, more human connection and establish.

Your place as a thought leader in the world today and in the world of the future. Again, freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast. This has been a great episode, four ways to use AI and good news about panda bears. That is gonna be on the title and the thumbnail of this.

AJ (33:35)
say like if you’ve been listening for a while and you liked this content and this podcast is resonating with you like do us a favor and write us a review. That would also be really helpful in helping us reach other people who are looking for this kind of content in this way. So if you if you’ve been a fan, if you’ve been following and if you like this, do us a favor and write a review.

RORY (33:54)
And if you hate us, write a review, but don’t hit publish. Just email it to us so that we can see it. ⁓ that’s it we got for today. Welcome. thank you for tuning in to the wealthy and well-known podcast. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it. We’ll see you next time.

AJ (34:17)
this one go viral. How do we make this one go viral? And then you go, idea. Chatbot, make this go viral. And then you’ll be like, did you say spiral? And then I’m gonna add a chatbot going, initiating spiral. And you’re like, no. Okay. And then we’ll cut it. Okay. Okay. Got it.

RORY (34:34)
What am I s what am I supposed to do? A little more

So you’ll be like, All right baby

AJ (34:45)
Has rained down?

RORY (34:52)
Say it a in in as much of an accent as you can. And then you’re gonna be like, did you say spiral? ⁓

AJ (34:55)
Give. Okay. And got it.

Got

it. Cool. Got it.

RORY (35:06)
All right, babe. We need this we need to come up with some ideas. How do we make this episode go viral?

AJ (35:11)
Hmm. I know. Chatbot, how do we make this episode go viral?

RORY (35:19)
Did you say spiral? No.

Can you can you can you also do so so if that comes together, do it. But the other is go, okay, when you say say say one, just say, I got an idea, mm-hmm, panda bears. Just say that. Okay.

AJ (35:38)
Okay.

So you’re gonna start it again? Okay.

RORY (35:45)
All right, babe, we need to come up with a great idea for how to make this episode on AI go viral.

AJ (35:51)
I know exactly. Panda Bears.

Okay.

RORY (36:06)
All right, babe, we need an idea. We need to come up with something to make this episode go viral.

AJ (36:11)
viral. Ha ha. I know exactly what will make this go viral. Panda bears.

WWK Ep 028: The Truth About Building a Paid Speaking Career 

RORY (00:00)
this is a topic that makes me angry.

Is that I think the world of speaking has a lot of predatory vendors. There’s a lot of people selling the dream of become a speaker who have not actually done it. There’s a lot of people who are like, buy my service and I’ll help you get on more stages. They’ve never actually done it. There’s a this this industry, this particular space, for some reason is fraught with people teaching how to do something they’ve never done. And I think it’s because they make a lot of money off of people.

What do you really need to have and do and become to build a professional ⁓ keynote speaking business? All things that we’re gonna talk about on today’s episode, along with

the vast amount of improper information and misappropriated information and misconceptions and miscommunicated information there is out there on this topic. So we’re gonna settle this once and for all. I’m joined by my wife, my best friend, my business partner, and the CEO of Brand Builders Group, AJ Vaden. Welcome to welcome

AJ (01:04)
Well

this is a a teed up episode for you for sure. I think it’d be good to give everyone some recap of your speaking life history and I can start for you since my job as a wife. Why don’t you I will just tell everyone what they need to know about you and

RORY (01:24)
And us. Something we built this together. So,

AJ (01:26)
Yeah, tell them about

it. So Rory’s wanted to be a professional speaker since he was in middle school. He heard a let’s see, let’s actually, this is a good time for you to see how accurate I can get your story. Okay. So in middle school, he heard a speaker. Actually, he helped hire a speaker, and when he found out they got paid, he was like, You get paid to come and talk? How do I do that? Right? Am I good so far?

RORY (01:36)
Yeah, interesting.

So that was close. So when I was in middle school, do you remember the name of the school I went to? Platt middle school. PMS. There it is. PMS. It was I saw a speaker, and then a few years later, I was in student council in high school. You combined two.

AJ (01:52)
Yes, PMS.

being it started in middle school right and that was like a really big dream and passion of his and then ⁓ I think this this is the part that’s just good for everyone to know it’s like this isn’t a new endeavor right and this isn’t also one of those things that’s built overnight right we’re always been wanting to do this and practicing and learning and honing these skills for at this point more than 20 years. Yeah. Yeah your age is starting to show

RORY (02:30)
I know, you were pointing out the gray hairs ⁓ this weekend. You’re like, ooh, there’s a lot of salt.

AJ (02:34)
My point is that it’s this is ⁓ it’s it’s like a ⁓ snowball, right? It it starts with like a dream and an idea, but the more you stick at it and the more you practice and the more you learn and the more you get coaching and the more you do it and the more you do it and the more you do it, the bigger that snowball gets, right? And then it starts building that momentum. And that also requires patience, right? It requires patience. but then

In college, Rory sold door to door and during that process had also really said, like, I want to be a professional speaker and started on the track of ⁓ doing Toastmasters and then post college, right post college, he joined the world championship of public speaking through Toastmasters. ⁓ and so again, if you’re looking for a place to hone your skills, Toastmasters is great because they’re very technical, very tactical in some of those things. And the first year that he did was a young.

Person to ever make it to the world championship of public speaking and made it to the top 10. ⁓ and you were 23?

RORY (03:41)
Yeah.

AJ (03:41)
Twenty two.

I was close. ⁓ then he didn’t win, but he was in the top ten. But I what what people don’t know is the amount of work that went in behind the scenes. And since we were friends at that point That was Yeah, we weren’t dating, but we were friends. It’s like he was like the annoying nerd on the team that was like, Sorry, can’t go out tonight. I have to go speak ⁓ at Denny’s. Like, what are you do speaking at Denny’s? And it’s like and this is the unglamorous part of the speaking story. It’s like it didn’t matter

Who was willing to listen to him? When I say Denny’s, yes, Denny’s restaurant, the restaurant, Denny’s, you heard that right. Speaking to three people sitting in a booth in the back of Denny’s. Why? Because he needed reps. He needed to practice. He was practicing his content. He was honing the skills. It’s like those are the things that people never talk about behind the scenes, right? They talk about the stage time and the glory and the fees and all the other stuff. But it’s like Rory spoke for 300 times that single year. One year. That’s almost once a day for free.

⁓ with no expectation of getting paid, but to hone the craft, to get good at what he was doing, to tighten the message. And for to be in the world championship of public speaking, the speech has to be seven minutes. That’s half of a TED talk, y’all. So it’s like you got to be dialed in. It’s got to be on it. And if you go over, you’re disqualified. So it was like a big deal, right? then he did that again the next year, right? And so it was like two years of just getting speech coaching, watching footage, watching his own footage, hiring coaches.

Like extreme, it was like very intense. ⁓ but he came back the second year and got first runner up, right? Second place, which I still think is pretty awesome. ⁓ you think it’s not as awesome as I do, but for someone in the audience of going like, no, I’ve seen the work behind the scenes. I think that’s what’s really important when we talk about how do you get paid to speak and where I’d really love to start this. And then you started charging, right? But even then, after you were second place in the world.

In the world championship of public speaking, we still spoke for free. Today, 23 years later, you still speak for free for the right audience at the right time, right? It’s different. ⁓ but one of the things that I would want to encourage as we kick this off is one of the best and fastest ways for you to become a highly paid professional speaker is to be the best speaker.

Right? You have to be really good at the content. You have to be amazing on stage. Because if you convince someone to give you money and you get on stage and you’re not good, it’s the last time. Right?

Like you don’t have footage, you don’t have assets, you don’t have testimonials, and you don’t have anyone advocating for you. So, and again, the reason that you sc go and speak for free is yes, it’s awareness, yes, it’s marketing, yes, you’re making contacts, but what it really does for you is it hones your craft. And it’s like if I’m gonna spend $10,000 or $20,000 to bring a person in to speak to our community, it’s like you better believe they better be good. They better be good on stage. I’m putting you in front of my people. And I think that’s what people don’t often talk about. They’re like, when do I start charging fees? Like when you’re dang good.

When you’ve done it so many times that people are like, you’re amazing. This is incredible. ⁓ then you do it. And it’s like it’s don’t rush the process. Be really, really, really good at your craft. And that’s why I think this is the perfect perfect episode, not just because of the marketing, but because you’re an actually very good speaker. ⁓ There’s your warm-up. There’s your intro. How’s that?

RORY (07:06)
Thanks, babe. That’s great.

Thanks. That was accurate. And thank you. ⁓ I’m excited to talk about this because I this this is a topic that makes me angry.

Is that I think the world of speaking has a lot of predatory vendors. There’s a lot of people selling the dream of become a speaker who have not actually done it. There’s a lot of people who are like, buy my service and I’ll help you get on more stages. They’ve never actually done it. There’s a this this industry, this particular space, for some reason is fraught with people teaching how to do something they’ve never done. And I think it’s because they make a lot of money off of people. So I’ve

think understanding the reps and and and what’s gone on behind the scenes and you know you left out a big part of that which is you started a speakers bureau in our first business and you recruited agents, you built up a team of people, and I was sort of like your lead product. So you guys were really building the machine sort of behind getting me out there and we’re working together, right? I’m supposed to bring back leads and and we worked at, but ⁓ yeah, so I think how do we get, how do you get your first

gig. What do you need to know about the world of paid speaking? What do you ⁓ what are the misconceptions that are out there? ⁓ the the first thing I wanna talk about is free speaking. Yep. Because there are ⁓

The fastest way to get clients in anything is to do it for free and you you go and people sample you, right? We use the phrase around our brand builders group community all the time, chicken on a stick. Because when you go to Whole Foods or you go to Costco, they give you like the chicken on a stick sample. And it’s like you have to go out there and people have to see you speak. That’s the number one reason you get hired to speak is cause someone has seen you speak and people say, Well, I I’m trying how do I get people to see me speak if no one will hire me to speak and it’s you go speak for free. And otherwise

AJ (09:03)
Even at Denny’s. It’s like anywhere. But it’s like again, like tactically speaking, associations, local groups, chambers of commerce, it’s like

RORY (09:14)
Why are associations so good? Let’s talk about that that as a potential place to go speak for free. Let’s go through a list of all the reasons speaking at associations are good.

AJ (09:25)
I think

associations are great because they have both. And one of the reasons that associations are great is because they have local chapters, state chapters, and then a national meeting. And so that’s really helpful. It’s like all in this one association, you could try to get the local chapter. Then if that goes well, you can get a state chapter. Then you go to the other state chapters and the other local chapters. So associations are great because they’re in every state.

So all you’re thinking about is like, ⁓ I have more times at bat. Like I’m just trying to go vertical. I’m working deep, not wide. So

RORY (09:57)
You

could do fifty events for one association and you hit all the state chapters.

AJ (10:01)
And

it’s and and they escalate in terms of fee ranges. At the local level, they’re probably not gonna have any budget. And if they have any, it’s a probably a couple of hundred dollars. It’s an honorarium. It’s very small. But then as you go to the state level, they probably have a few thousand dollars. But then as they go to the national level, they have larger, bigger budgets because people are paying to come to those. So it’s it’s nice because it allows you to build relationships within an organization at the local, free or honorarium. Then you get good enough or you get referred, you go to the state level.

And you can work all the states. So it gives you lots of opportunities to go deep in an organization. And that’s why we love associations on how do you actually get your foot in the door? It’s like if I just have all the information of all the, I don’t know, state school board associations, right? It’s like I have at minimum 50 opportunities to just go, I know what you’re looking for, I know what your fees are, and I have at least 50 opportunities, right? Even if you’re really bad.

Like at sales and marketing, if you have 50 opportunities and you can only like get 5% of people to give you a shot, it’s like that’s amazing, right? but it’s good because on a sales perspective, associations are great because they have to, it’s required for them to list their executive committee on their website.

RORY (11:19)
Okay, so first reason that associations are great, you can go deep i in one organization because they have so many chapters multiple fee ranges. Second reason why associations are great

AJ (11:22)
We can go deep.

Multiple fee ranges. Local, state, national. Right.

Their contact information is required to be listed on the website. So you go to any state association or any association and you go to team, about us, executive board, whatever, it’s all in there. But they actually have to share a picture, a name, and an email address.

Bingo. Yes, please. Right. And so they’re very easy and very simple to find. And almost 99% of the time for an association, you’re looking for the executive director. They’re the one who is actually going to make the final decision, the financial decision making. Even if they have a committee, it’s like I just bypass all that. And I’m looking for the executive director. Cause at the end of the day, they’re going to make the final decision and actually write the bill or write the check. Yep.

RORY (12:14)
Third reason why associations are great is because associations exist solely for the purpose of having meetings. What is the value? there’s there’s like 10. Okay, I’ll go, I’ll go. Okay. So they they’ve got

AJ (12:22)
There’s a fourth reset. Well I have another one. Okay. Okay.

RORY (12:31)
What is the value of an association other than people networking and meeting one another? And you go, okay, how do we add value? We have to create content that causes all of these people to show up, i.e., a speaker. So they must have speakers. And oftentimes, ⁓ you know, the there’s the well, so here’s another reason why associations are great. There’s so many associations.

AJ (12:55)
There’s association

for everything.

RORY (12:57)
Everything.

AJ (13:01)
There’s literally

associations for everything.

RORY (13:03)
And a lot of them, you know, a few of them do have big budgets. A lot of them run pretty lean financially. So you’re not competing with Simon Sinek and Brene Brown for that slot. You’re you’re you’re competing against other people who are in the association, who maybe aren’t professional presenters, who maybe haven’t like published a lot of stuff. So they’re gettable, they’re gettable spots. Okay, what’s the next reason associations are great to start?

AJ (13:28)
They’re paid prospecting. Because the beautiful thing about speaking to an association versus a corporation, when you go speak to a corporation, no one else in there is likely to hire you again. They just hired you to speak to everyone, right? These are all frontline employees, they’re leaders of the same organization. They all work for the same company and you’ve already

RORY (13:44)
All work for the same company.

AJ (13:48)
Spoke. You’ve already gotten the spot. You’re already doing it. Now they may hire you again for other reasons, but the point being there’s not a lot of spin-off at corporate events. Associations, everyone else is a prospect. Because the beautiful thing about associations is everyone is coming in from other companies, other organizations. It’s literally the perfect. And that’s why we’ve always had an affinity for them. And we’d be even willing to go, hey, like for the right one, like we’ll do some sort of an agreement of some sort of lesson fees.

By negotiating for other things. We don’t discount, but there could be some sort of exchange of, hey, we’ll reduce our fee by this much because you’re also going to provide me $5,000 worth of film footage or X, Y, and Z. And that’s why it’s like, hey, even if the association itself couldn’t pay the full fee, you’re literally in front of.

dozens, if not hundreds, of other organizations and decision makers that are you’re just it’s a tryout. It’s a paid tryout to get spin off. But that’s why being good on stage is so important. Because if you’re not good on stage and you get that opportunity, it just falls flat. And you’re like, well, associations don’t work. And I’m like, no, associations work. Right? These work. These provide spinoff. It’s how good were you on stage? And that’s where the honing the craft has to come first. But there’s many reasons why associations are a great

place to start. One, they’re easy, low-hanging fruit for you to get your foot in the door when you’re when you’ve never spoken before at the local level. And then you work that network and then you get referred to the state level. And that’s the other thing is like again, these are all they exist for the point of having meetings. And so they don’t have just one speaker. They have multiple speakers. They’re gonna have mainstage speakers and they’re gonna have breakout speakers. And so if you don’t get the main stage spot, take a breakout spot.

so there’s just lots of benefits of going after associations because you get so many times that bat. You can work deep in an organization. All of the decision maker contact information is found online and it’s a paid tryout to get more business. It’s a great place to start no matter where you’re at. Never done it before ever, first time, great, local level, all the way to doing the national stages where you can get lots of spin-off.

RORY (16:00)
All right.

So here’s one of the questions. So Brendan Burchard, Tony Robbins, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziggler, many of the legends of this industry, and then also, including us, have made money speaking at a completely different type of event, which is invisible to most people in the market. This is something known as the seminar model. And ⁓ can you just walk us through what is the difference between?

Between like a a speaking engagement and a seminar, and how do you make money with seminars and like let’s talk a little bit about that in terms of a starting point for people to get paid to speak, but in a way that might be different than what they think.

AJ (16:44)
Yeah, I think again, when you’re a highly paid professional speaker, that’s you’re getting booked by other people. You’re going to someone else’s audience and you’re getting paid to come onto their stages and to be a part of their agenda. In the seminar model, you’re speaking to your audience, right? You’re hosting the event, you are the speaker, you bring the audience to you. And I think those are just two very different models.

RORY (17:10)
Yeah. And I think it you would say in a way you could say there is a pro paid keynote speaking as like you’re speaking to a private audience, right? Of a company as an example. And then seminars are often referred to as like public seminars, where there are all different just people that are in coming as individuals, and you’re either selling a ticket or ⁓ letting them come for free, or it might be some moderate ticket. And then typically the way that you make money on the public seminars is by selling something from

stage or making an offer to the people that are there. And that is, a lot of people don’t know, that is literally the first dollars that I ever made from speaking was I was hosting a free training, actually on humor training, believe it or not. And I let people come to a free one-hour training. I was teaching on the psychology of laughter. And then I sold a ticket to come to like a one-day event with me on where I would teach like the full system. ⁓ That’s also how AJ and I started first business

business together. So walk them through what our model was ⁓ when we first met and and started as business partners.

AJ (18:16)
Yeah, so I think again you have to look at and I I say this to people all the time, you have to redefine what is a speaking engagement, what is an event, right? You can host your own event, you can stick something on Eventbrite, put $200 behind it, and I bet you would have a small event of roughly 20 to 30 people show up in your local market. That’s an event. That’s you speaking in front of people. It’s just kind of have to have a back end offer. ⁓ the challenge with a lot of professional speakers is they don’t have a back end offer. They’re a speaker. That’s what

They do. So that’s the difference between are you on the path of becoming a highly paid professional speaker where that’s what you do, versus are you speaking as prospecting? And those are almost two different career paths for the professional speaker. Are you speaking as a way to generate business for your business or is speaking your business? And those are two different things.

RORY (19:08)
They

are. And and I would really argue that ⁓ most many of the people who make it as a true paid professional speaker, a lot of them survive financially long enough because they do both. They have their own events. They’re doing public seminars, selling their own tickets to their own events, or selling something at their events, and that’s where they make enough money to stay in this industry long enough to where they get known and they get enough spin-off and they build enough brand equity and reputation to where people start hiring them.

To come into the events. That’s not always the case, but a lot of I mean, you you know, some of the legends I mentioned, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziggler, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, Jim Roman, like all of them did that. We did that. ⁓ Mark Sanborn, Ed Tate, these would be people more modern day who have had great professional speaking careers. They were doing both. And

That’s like you’re paying your own bills. You’re kind of like hunting the rabbits while you or you’re hunt you’re you’re shooting the rabbits. You’re hunting the elephants and shooting the rabbits along the way. The elephants are like the paid professional speaking, but then the rabbits are like your own seminars, even they can be small.

AJ (20:15)
So, as what Rory said is, you know, one of the things that we did when we started our first business in this, you know, what what I would call a micro seminar business is we would reach out because we were selling sales training. We were sales speakers selling sales training, and we would call sales teams. Again, somewhat easy to find with a little bit of research online. And it’s even easier. No, yeah. These ⁓ we’re talking about a Wells Fargo home mortgage sales team where the average office has somewhere between eight.

RORY (20:37)
Audio.

AJ (20:45)
To 10 loan officers. I would call their sales manager. Why? Because they have a meeting every week, right? So I’m looking for meetings. My mind is always going who has meetings? Who has meetings? Everyone does, especially sales teams. ⁓ Almost every company has an annual meeting, doesn’t matter what kind of company you are, or quarterly meetings. Like we have a semi annual required all hands on deck in person meeting. It’s like companies have meetings. It doesn’t have to be the big grandiose thousand person company with you know fire on the

stage and smoke machines like we’re talking about just normal meetings and that’s another way of going like hey you have a sales meeting i’d love to come in and offer a one hour free sales training why sales managers don’t have to plan the agenda that’s great for them so you got to think of like one where are meetings they’re everywhere you do it what it’s like your reticular activator will kick in the moment that you go who has meetings and then you realize my gosh there’s meetings everywhere everyone has meetings everyone’s in a meeting

Meetings are happening all the time all around me. You just have to gear your mind towards, well, then why would someone have me into their meeting? What can you do for the person who’s running the meeting? Can you save them having to plan for an agenda? Can you offer them something of value for their team? So that’s what we said. Hey, you don’t have to worry about planning the agenda. I’ll work with you. I’ll let you customize it. I’ll come in. I’ll provide a dynamic one-hour value-ridden sales presentation. You don’t have to pay for it. No problem. My only ask is at the end, you let me tell

about a big event that we have coming up and if they want to come they can buy a ticket. No skin off your back. So that’s that’s another version. I think the the goal of all of this is to reorient your mind around what is a speaking engagement. And a speaking engagement is anywhere you can speak. The end.

y’all, I was telling someone the story this the other day about one of the speaking engagements that I had that was most surprising to me and what really reframed my mind of what is a speaking engagement. We live here in Nashville, Tennessee, and I had just been networking and talk a lot about you know what we were doing. This is in our former business, and a law firm here in town, actually, our attorney was like, Hey, do you ever speak for law firms? And I was like, I most certainly can. I’ll figure it out. What do you need? And

They’re like, well, we are really looking for LinkedIn sales training. I was like, got you. Own this. Got it. I didn’t even have to talk to a person. They booked me through an email. It was $7,500. This was years, this was years ago. $7,500. So I show up literally with a full PowerPoint deck, full dress to the nines, ready to go. And they lead me to this small conference room. And I was like, this must be the green room.

It was not the green room. It was the room. And I’m like, hmm. Who am I speaking to today? One junior associate. Single audience member. $7,500 for that speaking engagement. And I was like, ⁓ I need to rethink about what is a speaking engagement.

RORY (23:41)
One person audience.

AJ (23:50)
It is any time that you are speaking to an audience. And in this particular case, at that time, that was my full fee. I didn’t even talk to them. I was like, this is the easiest sale of all time. Then I get there. It was one person.

And it’s like reframe how you consider speaking engagements. Reframe of just turning on your reticular activator to look for meetings. That’s the only thing I was talking about. Is I speak about this for people with meetings. and it will it will revolutionize your ability to get booked as a speaker by simply redefining how you think about being on stages and how you think about audiences. And that is how I built my own speaking career and was like, I don’t care if it was one person there or if there was a

thousand people there and engagement is an engagement, same money.

RORY (24:36)
I love that. There’s three things that I want to add for speakers that will accelerate your career. So, number one, you want to realize that the biggest marketing asset you have is your speech itself. Okay. So AJ’s been talking about that. The second thing that’s connected to that is that the biggest barrier to you getting your number one marketing asset out there is the fee. If you take the fee away, you get your marketing asset pushed forward. So anytime you need more speaking engagement,

You lower the fee to open up the door to being in front of more people, and then the speech itself drives more leads. The third thing I want to share with you is to go, if you can learn to sell at the back of the room.

Or just capture free calls, then you have created your own speaking career. That is the skill that unlocks the flywheel is going, I’m gonna go speak for free or low fee and offer people a free call with me and ⁓ andor sell something in the back of the room, which takes a lot more skill. But if you can learn that one skill, then it can change everything for you. And as you can tell, these are things that we’ve spent our life teaching people how to do, doing ourselves.

If you want to build your speaking career, go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast and request a call with our team and we can talk to you more about this. ⁓ all right, community question.

AJ (26:01)
Yes. I was gonna say before I go to the community question, I just wanted to share one other quick thing. ⁓ in this in this spirit of redefining ⁓ what a speaking engagement is and where should you speak, I just wanted to share another quick personal story that actually happened here recently. And although the dates didn’t work out, I would have said yes to this. And I just I want to constantly just reiterate to everyone who is listening, ⁓ because this is really important. Like if you really want to be a speaker or you wanna speak to Jen.

You have to look at every single opportunity in front of other human beings as something that you would just highly consider. So I have a really close girlfriend. We went to college. My college best friend, she is the principal of a pretty big school here in town. And she had reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and said, Hey, would you be our guest of honor at our middle school career day? And I like some people may go,

No, I don’t have time to do that. And if the date had worked, unfortunately it didn’t, let me tell you why I would have said yes to this. I would have said, one, are you inviting parents? Because if parents are there, I’m in. I’m in. Now, unfortunately, the date didn’t work out. So ⁓ if she’s listening to this, like she already knows the date didn’t work. But number one, it’s like our parents coming.

Right. So some might go like, I don’t have time to go speak to a middle school career day. And it’s like, well, one, I do it one, just because she’s my friend, right? And I, you know, you build those relationships before you ever need them. Two, it’s our parents coming. Three, our administrators there. Right? Because why?

There are school board associations, there are vice principal associations, there are principal associations. So going and being present at that was not just the hour to be the guest of honor talking about being a female business owner in Nashville, Tennessee. It was are parents there.

Our administrators there. And you yourself, my friend, are a principal. Can you introduce me to this Tennessee State Principals Association? What about your vice principal? Can they introduce me to the Tennessee Vice Principals Association? Because I know associations and I know all three of those exist and are in that audience. Reframe how you think about speaking and engagements and what you say yes to, even if it was a middle school career day.

So that was just a recent thing again. It’s a reframe of where are humans gathered together in one place. They’re everywhere. Yeah. They’re everywhere.

RORY (28:23)
If you think about speaking as paid prospecting, it changes everything. Or even just prospecting in general, it changes it changes everything.

AJ (28:31)
It’s a reframe. And all you got to do is reframe who has meetings, where are meetings, and that will literally change how often you hear about them and notice them where maybe you didn’t before. Okay. Now we’re already mentioned we’re moving into our community segment where somebody from our BBG community, that’s brand builders group, gets to propose a question that they would like to have answered on the show. And then all of the other other members upvote what question is most applicable and timely for where we’re at today. And that is

What we’re gonna do right now. So let me read you the question. This is from Marcus. And here is his question. I’ve been speaking for free at local events. Good for you. For about a year and a half. And I feel like I’m ready to start charging. But every time I bring up a fee, the conversation goes cold. How do I transition from free speaker to paid speaker without burning relationships I’ve worked so hard to build?

Great question.

RORY (29:31)
Mm.

Yeah. So the the number one thing that you need to do to move from free speaking to paid speaking is generate inbound demand, right? Anytime you’re making outbound demand, it’s a little bit harder to sell your value and charge for something. So when people are coming to you and asking, that’s a different story. And how do you get people coming to ask? You’re speaking for free or you know, discounted fees and you’re generating spin-off. So when people see you, you can automatically in that initial conversation let them

know, hey, ⁓ is there a budget that you have for this event? Once you share with me your budget, I’ll be glad to share send over my fee schedule and we can talk about whether or not we can make this work. But I think just realize that when leads are coming in, you are in a much better position to sort of establish yourself with a f with a fee. So those are a couple thoughts that I’ve got right off the bat. What do you what do you think?

AJ (30:24)
So I think this

is ⁓ really important ⁓ for everyone to realize is that you always have a fee. You don’t always charge it. Okay, you always have a fee. And I think a lot of people get confused, maybe when we talk about, hey, go speak for free, ⁓ as if you didn’t have a fee. No, you have a fee. You’re just not going to charge it when you’re first starting out. And I think that’s the first thing. This is around positioning. So even with this career day, right? I would have said, hey, my normal speaking fee is this.

I’m guessing you guys don’t have the budget for that sort of thing for a career day. Right? Well, friend, let me tell you why I’m not gonna charge that fee.

Right. And so I think one is setting the pace, even when you’re willing to do it for free, even when you’re first starting out, even if it’s at the back of a Denny’s, even if it’s a middle school career day, even if it’s at a local chapter, they need to understand from the get-go, and it’s not too late to do this, just start doing it now, that even though you’re not charging it, you have a fee. It’s amazing how many people don’t realize that people do this for a living. They just think it’s like.

Charity. They think it’s a a hobby. And it’s like, no, you have to be the one to say, here’s my fee. Here’s my program description. And because it’s local, or because of this, this, or this, I’m willing to waive my fee for this, this, and this. Because I am trying to break into this association because you’re going to put me in front of other business owners, because you’re willing to give me a testimonial, because you are willing to give me referrals, because you are willing to provide me with footage. So I

always have a list of concessions, right? I always have a fee. And then I always have a list of concessions of when, where, and why I would reduce or eliminate the fee altogether because I don’t have to get on an airplane and it’s local. Because I have X, Y, Z ties to this organization, because I’m trying to break into this. But the point is is you have to let people know even when you speak for free, you have a fee.

And I bet that’s why you’re getting a little bit of resistance right now is well, whoa, whoa, whoa, you’ve been doing this for free the whole time. Now all of a sudden you’re charging. Well, one, that’s how business works, right? Supply and demand. But two, it’s also because you’ve likely never shared that you had a fee to begin with.

Right. And so that’s where making the transition from free to or from free to fee gets a little challenging, is it feels like, well, you were doing it for this and now it’s this. Well, I I if if I had known that, I would have never done it. And it’s like, well, let’s start with the very beginning, which is I always have had a fee. I just didn’t charge you for it because of X, Y, and Z. So you always have a fee, and then you need a list of concessions that would reduce or eliminate the fee altogether. And that is

an easier, more simplistic way to go from free to fee.

RORY (33:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. The other thing is to go, like we’ve said, if you can learn to generate leads from your speaking engagements, you only start taking free engagements that are in front of your perfect prospects and you pay yourself, right? You pay yourself from the business that you generate out of that. So there’s lots of ways to get there. ⁓ one other big question or one other tip here on getting paid to speak. When if you have inbound inquiries, one of the first things you should say is, What is your budget for speaking engagements? You also can ask.

who did you hire last year? ⁓ because then you can get a you can get a sense of, you know, do they understand? Do they have a budget for this? Is this a part of their, you know, their normal line item? And you kind of work your way up from there. So there you have it. Anything else that you want to do to say to to wrap up this this conversation on paid speaking engagements and how to get started and where to go?

AJ (34:08)
Think the last

thing I would just say is like the more you speak, the more you get to speak. ⁓ and that’s true for most things. The more you do it, the better you get, the more people realize you do this, ⁓ the more referrals you get, the more the more awareness that you get is like the more you speak, the more you speak. And so be willing to speak for free, but always have a fee. I think that’s really important. But also, if you’re gonna go speak for free, then you need to put on your sales and marketing hat while you’re there. You’re not there to show up 10 minutes before, go on stage and leave. What’s the point of doing that? You need to

To be there before. You need to network, right? You need to be there after. You need to meet people. You need to have a good, clear call to action from stage, at least getting people’s email addresses. And that’s why we say there is a strategy behind everything that you do. you got to build relationships with a meeting planner. Who else could they refer you to? It’s like when and if you’re willing to do it. Yes, it’s for practice, but there’s also a strategy behind it of relationship building, marketing awareness, email capture, ⁓ networking on site. There’s so many.

many things that go into that. It’s never just a one and done. It should never, let me be, let me rephrase that. It should never be a one and done. You get there early, you stay there late. You’re there to generate business. So you got to go there with sales hat on.

RORY (35:21)
Yeah. If you need encouragement, accountability, support to help you do those things, go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast. We’ll share with you exactly how we do that for people. And whether you do that or not, please come back and stay tuned in for the next edition of the wealthy and well-known podcast. We’re glad you’re here. Go find someone to serve. We’ll see you next time.

AJ (35:41)
that was some pretty good information today. Yeah.

RORY (35:44)
I mean, we know something about this. So subscribe.

WWK Ep 027: Small Audience, Big Money: How to Monetize Without Millions of Followers

RORY (00:00)
here’s something that I’ve been changing my mind on lately, which is the value of consistency in terms of your posting. if you’re trying to build a large following and you’re trying to be an online marketer and you’re trying to really grow that aspect of your business, consistency is really key. It’s really important. If you’re a small, small,

Business, and if you are sort of a micro influencer who’s gonna make a lot of money from a small audience.

I actually don’t know that you should be spending all your time cranking content consistently. And the reason why is because the algorithms are no longer just rewarding you for cranking out a whole bunch of content.

AJ (00:42)
In a world where everyone thinks that bigger is better, today we’re gonna talk about the power of a small audience. And I think this is a good reminder for all of us, including me. So maybe today is just for me that bigger isn’t always better. And that a small audience can actually generate just as much, if not more, revenue than a big audience. Would you believe that a smaller audience can actually be

More powerful in generating revenue from your business than a huge audience. And would you believe that some of the highest paid experts in the world actually have an embarrassingly small audience? And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is how do you monetize a small audience and that it’s never too late to get started, and that it’s most powerful to serve the audience that’s right in front of you. And you can do that whether you have 10 followers or 10 million followers. So, Rory.

Here’s my first question of today. All right. All right. If you were to narrow it down to some of the best monetization models.

That would help someone go, I don’t have a big audience. Actually, I have a relatively small audience. We’ll say below 5,000. Below 5,000 followers online. We’ll say email us and all of that. But if you have you have a small audience, what are some of the best monetization models that you can use to actually generate revenue and create a business with a small audience?

RORY (02:09)
Yeah, so it comes down to one word, I would say really is like intimacy or access. When you have a small audience, what people are gonna pay you for is more access. Right. When you have a big audience, they they they don’t get close to you. But when you have a small audience, you can serve people in a very close way and they will pay money for that access. So I think, you know, my brain immediately goes to coaching and consulting as the actual business model to.

Make a lot of money from a small audience. Why? Because those are the most intimate environments from a business model where you go, I’m really getting to know people. I’m I’m working closely with them and their team. I’m probably walking with them over some period of time. And so they get access to me. And then also to the extent that I can do more done-for-you services, that is going to be the primary, those are the primary levers that I’m pulling: access and execution.

To go, hey, we we can get a lot of money from a very small audience. Even one customer, you know, two customers, five customers, ⁓ you know, you can make a lot of money serving people. And when we say you make a lot of money serving people in a deep way, that’s what we mean. You’re up close with them and you’re walking, we’re walking with them to the point of executing exactly what you have to share.

AJ (03:34)
So for clarity’s sake, can we just define what is coaching versus consulting?

RORY (03:39)
Yeah,

that’s a great question. ⁓ I want to hear your answer to this too. Okay, so basically

the the the simplest delineation in my mind between coaching and consulting is I think of coaching as B2C business to consumer. I’m working with an individual person. ⁓ I think of consulting as you know B2B business to business. I’m working with a group of people or a company. And even if I’m I can be coaching as a subset of consulting, but it’s like I’m consulting an organization and as part of that package

I’m coaching individuals. So I think that’s the main delineation that I have, but it’s it’s still they both sit inside the vein of: I have a framework, I have a methodology, I have unique intellectual property, I have a unique method, something we would call your modular content method, and I’m deploying my method.

to an organization or an individual to help them apply that to resolve a problem and achieve a payoff. And it’s just am I doing that at the organizational level or am I doing it at the individual level? That’s it.

AJ (04:47)
Yeah, I’d I’d say my definition’s pretty dang close to that. ⁓ it’s just a a one to one versus a one to many. It’s like when I think about a coaching relationship, it is a one to one relationship. When I think about consulting, it’s what am I institutionalizing that is one to many. ⁓ it’s for the people who are here today, but also for the people who will be there in the future. I’m putting systems and processes in place that allow people to run on a track. ⁓ so it’s more systems and process driven. It’s more

are what I would say corporate.

RORY (05:22)
Give give give us some tangible examples because ⁓ so here’s something that I don’t think not everybody knows about you because you know today you’re the CEO of brand builders group and we do what we do. ⁓ in our former business, among other things, you ran a consulting division that was a multi-seven figure division inside of the whole company, and you were doing a lot of this B2B. What when you say installing systems, giving people a track to run on, taking a methodology and applying it one.

to many. What are examples of the kinds of systems? What are the ways you’re institutionalizing your expertise in an organization at scale that allow you to charge high fees and and more importantly, bring high value worth high fees?

AJ (06:07)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest opportunities for people who want to be consultants or who are consultants and who are maybe even asking this question of like, well, how do I better monetize what I’m doing in my consulting business with a really small audience? And the beautiful thing about consulting is you don’t need a big audience. you couldn’t handle a dozen projects if you wanted to. Like if I had three projects running at the same time, I was like

trying to breathe air through a straw in the middle of a tsunami. Like more than three or four projects. I couldn’t handle more than that. But that has a lot to do with how do you define consulting, right? And it is the institutionalizing of systems and processes. So here’s one tip to ⁓ actually help monetize a consulting business is I started every consulting project with a research phase. And I think a lot of people don’t do that. In fact, I know a lot of people don’t do that because we have hired many a consultant

that never offered that. Or at least we considered hiring them. But I think that’s a really big part of like I was like, I can’t even tell you what you need. I can’t even offer my services to you because I have no idea what you have in place. So if you really want to consider this, what I will sell you where we start everyone was a flat consulting package that was just a research package. Now, this isn’t a research study. This is hands and feet

Hitting the pavement and being like, I’m coming in and I’m secret shopping. Right. I spent three months as a somewhat undercover retail operations person for a client that I cannot name publicly here because I don’t think that would be fair and right, but it’s like I had the uniform.

Right. I was working in the retail stores, ⁓ doing research. That was a part of what I was being paid to do. Why? I needed to go. Did the systems and operations that they had as a company actually make it to deployment in the stores? Were they actually using the scripts? Did leaders actually do what they were taught to do? Right. So it’s one thing to have systems and processes. It’s another thing for your people to actually use them. We know that even internally at our small company. So a research phase is going, hey.

If you really want to see movement and success in your organization, then I first have to assess where you’re at. I can’t help you get to where you want to be if I don’t know where we’re starting from. ⁓ Also, that’s a part of the adoption process. It’s going, I have to be able to culturally align whatever I’m doing to something that’s going to fit in your organization. And that’s why I charge a premium. Everything I’m doing, even though there are systems and processes, I’m going to adapt them. I’m going to mold them. I’m going to customize them to fit within your culture.

Cultural parameters based on something that I think your people would actually do, that they would actually adopt. And I can’t tell you how to do that if I don’t know your people. So I would be reviewing scripts. I’d listen to sales calls. I’d sent in call centers for hours and hours at a time, listening to how people answered the call, had the conversations, ended the call. I would ask them how they documented stuff. They thought I was there often being onboarded as a new employee. So it wasn’t deceptive. I just didn’t share a whole lot. And I was introduced as hey.

She’s here shadowing today. And it’s amazing how many people never asked. What are you shadowing for?

RORY (09:26)
And so you

you would actually companies would actually pay you to basically just go listening. Just listen, read, watch what they’re doing. You’re not actually teaching them anything. You’re not doing anything for them. You’re just learning effectively. You’re learning their organization and how they do what they would do.

AJ (09:33)
What’s happened?

Absolutely. And then at the end, I provide my feedback analysis and recommendations. And at that point, my part of the process could be done. And I was like, you can take this research report. because this is hands-on research of what’s happening at the frontline level, at the mid-level manager, at the executive level. This is what’s being used. This is what’s not being used. Here’s why it’s not being used. Here’s what’s working. And here are my recommendations of what need to be improved. And on a consulting basis, most people

Are going, hey, we’re trying to increase increase top line revenue. ⁓ 99.9% of the time, it was something to do with revenue generation or revenue retention. ⁓ and then I would say, here’s the real problem: there is no consistent sales training. There is no sales training, there are no scripts, there are no processes to follow. You don’t even have regular meetings, there’s no chain of communication, there’s no

No, whatever. The point is, is that is one way for anything that you’re doing as an actual consultant to be implemented and to get real results, is that before you go and deliver, which we often hop to, it’s go, hey, first I have to assess. And it didn’t matter how small the company was. I did this for companies that were as small as twenty or thirty people. And I did this for corporations that had hundreds of thousands of employees.

RORY (11:08)
And to so to tie this back to monetizing, if you have a small audience, right? You can’t provide that level of service to clients and have hundreds of clients to go spend four hours watching their videos, watching their people, going through their website, secret shopping them, reviewing their internal training materials, interviewing their leaders, interviewing their frontline. And you go, that is a massive value add. And it’s exactly what we’re talking about when we say it’s more access to you.

It’s a more intimate experience. And the end of that first project is just telling people what to do. So you learn and assess and then you tell them what to do, but you don’t tell them how to do it. That’s what they hire you for on the ongoing basis. But so that would again a few clients, a big big big

AJ (11:57)
There’s a great ways to a great way to increase monetization if you’re a consultant. And then coaching was always just a part of what we included in the next phase. That’s like part of what you need is you need coaching. Like these people need help. They need support. They need guidance. so I would just say like that is one way to monetize a very small audience because you can only handle a very small amount of people doing that level of intense work. So you don’t need huge audiences for one-on-one coaching or for consulting.

And again, it doesn’t matter the organization size. ⁓ It’s like, you know, you’re paying a premium because you are paying me to do something that is completely custom for you. It’s this isn’t a course. This is like I am in your uniform, in your call center, following your people, going on sales meetings. And so you can charge a premium for that because it’s so custom and it’s so tailored.

RORY (12:50)
Yeah. And it I think when you think about monetizing a small audience, I think about this as like David and Goliath, right? It’s like if you’re Goliath, you’re big. You’ve got a big audience and that gives you certain advantages. But most people who have a big audience monetize it by selling lower price products to a lot of people because they built a big audience by sort of generally applying at a sort more surface level to a lot of people. If you have a small audience, that’s like David, right? You’re more nimble. ⁓ and

You go, I can serve a small number of people, but in a much deeper way, a much more intimate way, and a much more customized way, which I think is a big word that you use there. And people will pay for that premium. They’re not paying you a lot of money because you have a lot of followers. Nobody pays you a lot of money because you have a lot of followers. People pay for a result. They pay for you to solve a problem. They pay for you to be helpful and to be customized and unique to their situation. And that doesn’t have anything to do with how many followers you have.

have and you could actually argue that the smaller the audience you have, the smaller the team you have, the more time you have available to be with clients because there’s less time you’re having to do to like manage your team and your media company and and do all of those things.

AJ (14:03)
Thanks.

So here’s what I would say is if you’re because the question really to go back to this is what are the top monetization models that you can use with someone who has a ⁓ smaller following, under 5,000 people? And we’re saying it’s one-on-one coaching or it’s consulting. Now, I think something that’s really valuable to add on to that if you’re, you know, sit in that coach or consultant category is to go, well, how do I get started in that? Right? Like if what if this is ⁓ a business model that I’m new to? Like, how do I introduce myself as a

coach or consultant. And here’s where I would say that true expertise is your biggest advantage. And this is where I would also say that our what I think is one of our most powerful quotes out of our book, ⁓ which is about the person you serve. And what we say all the time is what, Rory?

RORY (14:51)
You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

AJ (14:55)
Okay, so pause right there. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. This is the fastest way to activate a coaching or a consulting business. I’ll give you a couple of ⁓ nuanced micro examples that are varied just to help you have a little understanding of like what

I don’t know. It’s like I I’ve been in roofing sales for the last 20 years. Like, how would I do that? So we have a client at Brand Builders Group. Who is that person? He was a top 1% in the nation salesman for a nationwide roofing company.

Okay, they went through a merger acquisition, something. And anyways, his office got closed and he found himself ⁓ without a job. he was getting recruited left and right to join all these other roofing companies in his local area in Florida. But he didn’t want to do that. He goes, I actually want to build my personal brand. I want to get out of being an employee for another company. And I I at this point doing this for I think he had been doing 30 years, he goes, I want to build my

personal brand. How do I do that? And I’m like all these companies that are recruiting you to come and be their top performing salesperson, just saying you’re not for hire, but you are available as a consultant.

Right. True expertise, true results was the pathway for him to building his coaching and consulting business. He didn’t even have to go find these people. He just had to take these recruiting calls and turn them into sales calls. So that’s one way, right? So let’s just say you found yourself being laid off or there was a merger and an acquisition or whatever, but you’ve got real expertise and a real reputation in your industry. That’s why building a personal brand, ⁓ even as a corporate employee, even as a frontline

Salesperson for someone else matters a lot because he had a reputation and decades of real results and experience where people started calling. They were blowing him up. And all we talked about is take those recruiting calls and turn them into sales calls. You’re not available for hire, but you are available as a consultant.

RORY (16:59)
And an easy line to say there is to say you’d have to pay me so much money to be an employee, you could not ever afford it, but you can fractionalize that and I can not only d you know help your team, I can install the principles that makes everyone on your team do in exactly what I did. And that’s because you had the results to prove

AJ (17:19)
That’s right. So that’s the first example. The second example is how do you make this transition? So let’s say you are trying to make the transition out of corporate. And one, let me just say this as a caveat. I do not think everyone should leave corporate. I do not think everyone should own own their own business. I do not think everyone should be a coach or consultant. That does not serve everyone really well. I think it is great and amazing for some of us to be nine to five employee jobs. That is like what we were built and suited for. And companies need you. Companies need it. So like let me just say that. Like not everyone should do

RORY (17:48)
It’s

also not as easy as glamorous to be an entrepreneur.

AJ (17:51)
Like first,

I’m not saying everyone should just like bail or threaten their employers. Cause if my team says, ⁓ listen to that podcast, I’m gonna have like a full on like meltdown and be like, delete that podcast, right? That’s not what I’m saying. ⁓ but I do think this is important. ⁓ if and when the time comes where you’re like, hey, like, I do have a calling on my life and I do know I need to go do this other thing. Like a great transition out is to contact your current employer and be like, hey, I’ve got to go do this other thing. Like, I feel called to do it. I can’t be a full time

I’m employee anymore, but would you ever consider retaining me as a consultant?

So that could also be another path to transition. ⁓ not allowed for our team members, of course, because you want to be full-time employees here at VVD, but for other companies, that is a really good transition that I have actually had lots of people at Brand Builder’s Group go, hey, because I was so valuable, because there was so much trust equity in the decades and decades that I had been there, this was a good, healthy transition for me and for them. Instead of leaving the organization, I became a consultant on retainer as I started.

building out this other business and it was a win-win for both entities. That doesn’t work all the time. It does it’s not a good fit for every situation. But one is to turn recruiting calls into sales calls. the second thing is to make your current employer your first client as you’re making this transition out of corporate. So those are two things. The third thing that I

RORY (19:14)
Just on

one thing on that. So and often what happens is the the company’s gonna pay you less money. So one, you had to get great results when you’re there.

You had to kill it. And then what happens is they go, Okay, I can actually pay less money to hire someone else to do your job. You’re gonna train them to do that as a and then and now I’m your customer and you have to take care of me as getting one customer to go off into the into the future. So but that does happen, ⁓ that that that can be a good way where you’re saying it is a win for everybody and sort of like a springboard for somebody.

AJ (19:45)
Yeah,

it’s a it’s a healthy transition path for both parties. because losing top talent is hard for any organization and starting your own business is especially hard for any individual.

RORY (19:55)
But as a consultant, you have to think that way. You go and I’m I’m trying to replace myself. People are paying me a lot of money, but not forever. They’re paying for me to install a system and a process that other people can step into. And that’s what you’re doing. And when you’re not serving a lot of customers, you’re not having to cater to a large audience, then you can do that kind of deep work.

AJ (20:19)
And then the third thing I would just encourage is I think the third way that you could kind of start up in this is really where you’re actually, and I I really do strongly believe this, is that you are a local presence. Like I really do believe that most people’s initial coaching business and initial consulting business comes up with local clients, local prospects, because you are a local presence. That means that you’re a part of different associations and networking groups in the town. You are an active member of your church.

You serve on nonprofit boards, you are a well-known community member. And I think that’s really important in an era where it’s really easy to sit behind a screen all day long. And I just remember this, ⁓ I heard this a long time ago, is like be with people before paper, people before paper, people before paper. and this never rings more true is that when you’re actually trying to start your own thing as a coach or a consultant or even your own business, is that you already have an established community.

community presence. And people are coming out of the woodworks to go, how can I help? Who can I introduce you to? Because you are an established person in that local community. Because I bet most of your first clients will come in your local community.

RORY (21:33)
Mm-hmm. Yep, I agree with that. I mean it’s gonna be referrals, it’s gonna be word of mouth. Th and you know, crush it where you’re at, right? The best way to get your the next thing is to be awesome at your current

AJ (21:44)
Exactly where you’re at.

RORY (21:45)
And

when we say the the best marketing in the world is a changed life is going, you need one customer who has an amazing experience with you who’s gonna introduce you to their people. That’s right. And if that’s not happening, that means they didn’t have an amazing experience, which means you need to go back and work on your product a little bit. So there’s a question ⁓ here, what role does content consistent consistency play in small audience monetization?

we hear a lot of people feeling like they’re po posting into the void. How do you keep going when the numbers don’t feel like they’re reflecting the effort? That’s good. So here’s something that I’ve been changing my mind on lately, which is the value of consistency in terms of your posting. ⁓ if you’re trying to build a large following and you’re trying to be an online marketer and you’re trying to really grow that aspect of your business, consistency is really key. It’s really important. If you’re a small, small,

Business, and if you are sort of a micro influencer who’s gonna make a lot of money from a small audience.

I actually don’t know that you should be spending all your time cranking content consistently. And the reason why is because the algorithms are no longer just rewarding you for cranking out a whole bunch of content. ⁓ And as a small business owner, as a micro influencer, the way that I think most of you are going to make money from social media is not that media is generating leads. It’s that it’s the new website. It’s that when you’re at your local chamber of commerce and someone hears your name.

They’re gonna go look you up on LinkedIn. They’re gonna go look at your Instagram profile before they talk to you or before they agree to a meeting or just in their decision-making process. And what I think matters more is having

A few pieces of really quality content that people see on your feed, they’re not gonna buy from you because you post every day at 9 a.m. But they are gonna buy from you when they look at your last 10 videos and they go, my gosh, all 10 of these videos are killer. I got 10 tips in 10 minutes that blew my mind that were more valuable in their free content and more beautiful and presented well than what I paid my last consultant in their monthly retainer, right?

That’s how I think the future of making money from a small audience connects to social media. And I’m, I think I’m gonna stop encouraging the people with the really micro audiences to just be like, you just gotta keep creating content and create content and create content and post thousands of times a day. I don’t see that, I don’t see that small creators are making a lot of money that way. I think if you wanna build up, be a micro influencer and you get to 10,000 followers, you’re gonna get some brand deals, but that’s not how you’re gonna get rich. And I think the consulting and the coaching, you make a lot of

of money by having a few pieces of really quality content and you make sure every one of your prospects sees them and you you feed it to them in your email nurture sequence like you know send them an email with a link to your best performing YouTube video. I think that’s what it really is about because the algorithm there’s too much noise and the algorithm is just not rewarding volume. ⁓ and AI is, you know, people are produce producing so much garbage.

AJ (24:54)
So

I would ⁓ so I think this is a worthy content topic to go, okay, so posting every day might not be all that fruitful for someone with a small audience, but what’s the frequency that you need to hit at minimum?

RORY (25:08)
You need to not look like you’re a ghost, right? You need to not be like, I posted I posted in 2023 a picture with my cat. That’s not that ain’t it.

AJ (25:16)
Yeah. So but even if it’s good quality content, and I can just tell you, like as somebody who is vetting vendors and employees, like if you haven’t posted something in the last 30 days, I skip over you. Like if I’m going and looking LinkedIn profiles would be a great example. It’s like, because that’s where we do a lot of our business recruiting and or vendor vetting. And it’s like if it’s not a complete profile, i.e., there’s not even a picture, or the last time you posted anything was months ago, I literally I’m like

Like I’m a

RORY (25:47)
They’re an inconsistent person. They look like an inconsistent person.

We were literally texting about this this morning. A vendor we’re evaluating that is one third the cost of other vendors that we’re looking at, but but their their content is very inconsistent and the service they’re selling us doesn’t at all match up with the content that they have posted. And it’s like, yeah, they’re cheap, but it it looks like that’s why they’re cheap, is it it doesn’t match up what we need. And it’s like, ⁓ I don’t know, like we have to we have to discuss this and figure it out. But that’s a great example.

AJ (26:19)
Well, and I would

just say, like, even as an employer who’s recruiting, right? And it’s like the first thing I do, literally, I think this is good for us all to think of like where do personal brands really matter, right? And it’s like the first thing I do before I go through your resume is I go to your LinkedIn profile.

I come back to your resume to verify, but I’m going there to go like, are you engaging? I want to be like, what what did you have to say online? Have you gotten endorsements? It’s amazing how no one has recommendations. And I’m like, huh.

Like, are you not asking for them? Do they post? What are they posting about? What are their interests in? Your resume is the static thing that you fill out and you forget it. It’s a set and forget thing that people are only updating once they’re looking for a job. ⁓ that’s not a

RORY (27:08)
Public. It’s

also not public. So you don’t have the corroboration of

AJ (27:12)
It’s not an

indicator of a good candidate or not, in my opinion, anymore in today’s time. It’s, you know, you update it only when you’re looking for a job. It’s like, it’s not something you keep up to date. It doesn’t give me anything cultural for me to go, like, are you really a values alignment? So I go to your LinkedIn and it’s amazing because we’re in the middle of hiring somebody for our finance team and it’s like

There’s no pictures. There’s incomplete profiles and it’s like their resume looks amazing. And I’m like, you don’t even have a picture. You don’t even have a complete profile. Like I I no. Moving on.

And so again, even in a finance and accounting world, I don’t expect you to be some content creator or ⁓ you know, some finance, you know, influencer. But I’m going like, this is a public facing representation of who you are. And there’s nothing there. There’s no recommendations. There’s no interests. There’s an incomplete profile. There’s not even a picture. And the last last job that’s mentioned is one that you had five years ago. I have a problem with that.

As a business owner in today’s time, when I’m going like, hey, I have to know more than just what it says on a piece of paper that can’t be corroborated.

RORY (28:21)
So one of the things that we’ve been doing recently that’s been awesome is we take members of our actual paying community at Brand Builders Group and they ask us questions and the other members vote up the topics. And those are the questions that we choose to answer here on the show. So this one comes from Trevor. Trevor says, I’m a business consultant with 12 years of corporate experience, and I know I have real value to offer, but

But I only have about 1400 LinkedIn connections and barely any social presence. Everyone I see succeeding online seems to have hundreds of thousands of followers. Is it too late for me to build something real or am I starting from too far behind?

AJ (29:03)
No, it’s not too late. No, you’re not starting too far behind. Remove the word only before 1400 and the perception you have is not accurate. So let’s dissect this question a little bit. Like one, you have 1400 followers on LinkedIn. That’s amazing. You only

Again, it’s like again, this is I think is really important. You’re a business consultant. We just talked about this. Like this whole episode is for you. Trevor, I really I’m gonna figure out who you are and I’m gonna send this episode to you because this is really important. Like you don’t even need 1400 to have more business than you can handle. You are a business consultant. That’s what you do. We just said if you had more than three or four clients, you’d be so inundated you couldn’t breathe. ⁓ so again, it’s it’s reframing what we what we really need to focus on, which is how many clients do I need? How many of my

What new ones am I trying to get this year and reverse engineer that? So one, remove only. You have 1,400 people who have invested into your content. That’s amazing. How can you go better serve those 1,400 people? How can you better outreach to them, but build better relationships with them, give them the content that would generate your next 10 clients? So one, congratulations, you have 14. It’s not only you have 1400 connections on LinkedIn. Amazing. ⁓ Number two, it’s never too late. ⁓

clients in our community who are in their late seventies. Like they’re crushing life. They’re crushing it. It’s never too late. that is something that we tell ourselves when we feel like giving up.

When we look around and we compare our step one to someone else’s step ten thousand and go, everyone else seems to be, you know, doing this or this. And it’s like, one, that’s comparison, and you just can’t compare. Right? ⁓ perhaps they’re not business consultants. Perhaps they need that volume. ⁓ we cannot compare. So I would just encourage put some blinders on when it comes to that, because you cannot compare things that aren’t comparable. It’s like, you know, do I like this Kiwi or do I like

Rice. It’s like they’re not even the same thing, not even in the same category. We cannot compare those two things. and then it’s like, are you starting from too far behind? No, you’re not behind. I don’t know why you think that. Like, who has told you that you were behind? You are not behind. You’re exactly where you should be. You have 1400 LinkedIn connections. You’re a business consultant. You can’t have 1,400 clients. You probably could only have 14 clients. You are not too far behind.

RORY (31:30)
I think a big thing people need to understand in here is that the number of followers that you have is not a demonstration of the level of value you can provide. And in many ways, the larger the audience you have, the more obligated you are to serve them and to be available to like nurture that community, which means the the less available you are to work with any small number of those people in a very deep way. When we hire people to do various services for us personally.

For the business. We don’t look at how many followers does this person have at all. It’s not even in our consideration of do we hire them. We do look at: is it relevant? Is it up to date? And is their content worthwhile? Is it useful? Is it valuable? Are they demonstrating that they are an expert at the thing that we are considering hiring them for? And I just want to ask All of your clients are doing the same thing.

AJ (32:28)
And I want to add two other things to that to what we said because we’re not talking about hiring people. We’re talking about hiring vendors. ⁓ the two number one things that we also vet is were they referred to us?

Did someone else recommend them who has used them and can vouch for them? ⁓ and then two, it’s like, do they have a list of testimonials that prove that they’re really good at the thing they say they can do? Right. And it’s like, one, can I go and validate those testimonials? Are these real humans with a first and last name? Like are they videos? and it’s like I weird, we’re just living in an an era right now where Amanda P says, I’m like, Who’s Amanda P? Like, is she a real person? Like, I I I need to know. I need to see her picture. I wanna know her last name is, I wanna know where she works.

I need to go validate this because that is an like if you weren’t referred to me, it’s like this is how I’m proving that you’re trustworthy. Is I’m basing the experience of someone else who’s hired you. And if it’s just partial human, it’s like I it’s not enough for me. Right? It’s not enough. So I think those two things in addition to everything you said are also really important when we’re looking at these things. It is not follower count though. That’s not even a piece of consideration.

RORY (33:33)
And and and to me, testimonials, what we’re really looking for is sample work. Yeah. We want to see a sample of what you’ve done and a testimonial, depending on what trait you’re in. Like, you know, if you’re a videographer or photographer, I should just be able to see a portfolio. When you’re a consultant, it’s a little bit tougher to see your sample work. And so testimonials is the closest thing to that. But we’re trying to go, can you create the thing that I’m considering hiring you for? Point blank. That is that is the question. But it’s not about how many followers you have. The only

Person who’s concerned about that is you. And that is a fear living in your own head. It’s false evidence appearing real. It’s a figment of your imagination. Do not let you do not let it hold you back. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create quality content and demonstrate your expertise, but do not let the number of followers be the reason why you can’t grow your personal brand and turn your reputation into a massive pile of revenue. That’s right. All right.

AJ (34:26)
Preach it.

RORY (34:28)
So, if you have a small audience and you want to make a big amount of money from a small audience, which by the way, arguably we are some of the best in the world at making a lot of money from a smaller audience. We don’t have a huge audience, and much of our audience has only grown here in the last couple of years, really. ⁓ so if you are that person or if you know somebody who has a real expertise and a real passion for helping people and a real mission-driven, ⁓ you know, sort of purpose and stance in life, make sure you share this episode with them and then let them.

know they can request a call with us at freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast and we’ll do the first call for free to understand where they’re at. We’ll show you our entire four phase journey and we’ll create a custom plan for exactly what steps you need to take next, whether you work with us or you don’t.

⁓ and for the rest of you, please ⁓ thank you for tuning in to the podcast. Please rate and review this show wherever you listen or watch. Make sure you hit subscribe, follow, ⁓ and share. And we’ll catch you next time on the wealthy and well-known podcast.

Now, before you go binge watch all the rest of our episodes, we want you to know we’re committed to serving you as an individual in a much deeper way.

AJ (35:43)
And we actually mean that. We don’t have to make these episodes. This is something we want to do to serve the person who’s really listening. And the first way that you can do that is to actually subscribe, to tune in and to learn more on every episode that goes live.

WWK Ep 026: 100,000 Followers or 1,000 Emails? The Truth About What Actually Grows Your Business

WATCH THE INTERVIEW LISTEN TO THE EPISODE BELOW A big following feels impressive, but it does not automatically create trust, leads, or revenue. In this episode of The Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast, Rory and AJ break down one of the most common traps in personal branding: assuming that more followers means more business. They unpack why neither followers nor […]