Ep 478: Small Business Success Secrets with April Garcia
RV (00:02):
It’s always a privilege when I get to introduce you to someone that I’ve known for years and worked with as a friend also as a client. And April Garcia is one of my favorite people that we have ever worked with. She was one of the early BBG members B-B-G-O-G as we like to say. And she comes from a world of big, big business. And she climbed the ladder as a top performer in the financial and telecom industries. She’s got a bachelor’s degree in biology. She built several businesses. She’s advised both US and international corporations all the way from like startup to billion dollar enterprises, right? So she’s an expert in growing revenue, sales, operations, and just kind of like what it takes to scale. But a few years ago, she made a pivot to say, I wanna start working with small businesses to help them succeed. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, is basically how can small businesses apply the principles of big business to help ’em scale faster? And where should they not try to be, like big businesses so that they can scale faster? So anyways, welcome to the show. April Garcia, it’s great to have you,
AG (01:12):
Rory. It’s so good to be here. I’m so glad that we made this happen, and it has been such a journey with you, with the company I’ve loved working together, and I so appreciate being here today.
RV (01:22):
Well, thanks buddy. So I just wanna start, like, right, what I was just talking about is going, what, you come from the big business world. You’ve been working, helping small businesses. What do small business owners need to know and ex like, what do they need to do, like big businesses? How do, how should they be thinking more like big businesses? Mm-Hmm.
AG (01:57):
Yeah. There’s so many things. I’m gonna try to boil ’em down to just a couple of things. Part of it is that we, we don’t realize when we’re leveling up, we’re a small business owner. We start with zero sales, zero experience. And it’s not like someone comes to you and says, Hey, you just crossed this threshold. Now you need to start doing these things. Or you need to let go of these old habits. And so there’s no kind of this magic moment where someone comes to you and says, it’s time for, for example, processes. And so, one of the first things I will tell you is, when I made this transition from big business to small business, what I found overwhelming was that, well, small business owners were completely overwhelmed. They had way more things than could possibly get done. And so it’s, it’s funny, I did this exercise one time.
AG (02:40):
I was, I was doing a training and I said, okay, if there’s one word that could describe your state, write it down on a piece of paper and I’m gonna gather everyone’s up, and then I’m gonna look at it. And there’s probably 30 business owners in the room, and they ran anywhere from they’re small business owners, you’d say probably about 500 K to about 5 million. And they all wrote down a word. And then I opened it up, and every single one of the words were some iteration of overwhelmed. Wow. Every single one of them. And then I said, okay, we’re gonna take this a little bit farther. I said, if you could have a superpower, what would it be? And now I put a little space between these two questions. And what was very interesting is I was kind of thinking we’d get a couple of, like flying or I don’t know, see-through walls or something like that.
AG (03:24):
Ultimately, it was some version of could I multiply myself like, or slow down time so I could get more things done. And I remember this hitting me like a, a, a ton of bricks. And I thought, gosh, they’re really struggling with overwhelm. And so part of that is when we’re small businesses, we don’t think about things like processes. Processes aren’t fun, processes aren’t sexy. But if you don’t have time for processes, you never have time, right? And so, one of the things that big businesses have, they have processes, they have SOPs, standard operating procedures. Now, this doesn’t have to be a super involved process. This doesn’t have to be someone that, you know, an onset consultant that you bring in to do this. Just capturing what needs to happen to make your business run so that as you staff up, you can convey that information to them will be huge. Now, let me tell you what I see small business owners where, where we mess up, and I’ve done this too in the businesses that I’ve owned. We say things like, well, I need someone who’s quick on their feet. I need someone who’s a fast learner that doesn’t need me to handhold. And when you hear words like that, they need to be red flags of like, oh, so you’re planning on not training that person, right?
RV (04:35):
Can you come take care of this mess for me while I pay you, pay you under market value, overload you with work? And can you just like, solve all my problems,
AG (04:46):
Sometimes I’ll be asking you to work on operations, and other time I’ll ask you to pick up my car. This is, we all do this, right? Like, we all start there. And, you know, I worked with this real estate investor in Ohio for a couple of years, and he always complained about like the job market. And he’d say stuff about the millennials and the job market and what kind of, you know, what kind of talent are they turning out of the universities? And what I continuously had to remind him, as I said, Eric, and we’ll say your name, Eric. Eric, what kind of training program do you have? How are you training these people? Mm-Hmm. He wasn’t. And yet he was continuously disappointed with what they were providing. So when I say training guys, I don’t mean that you have to sit down and you have to write a dissertation on how to do a job.
AG (05:30):
I mean, it could be you turning on Zoom or you know, Google Meet or something like this. And you walking through a process your organization does while you’re doing a screen share. And that does a couple of things. One, it addresses the people that are audio learners who are listening, but it also addresses the people that are visual learners. They actually are watching you walk through the process. So, I mean, this is a very tactical thing I’m jumping into right away. But for example, if you need to know about how to onboard a client or how to send out an invoice, you turn on Zoom, you do a screen share, and someone’s watching your mouse clicks, someone’s watching. As you talk through the process on Zoom, it’s being recorded. And then afterwards, zoom has this nice, and it doesn’t have to be Zoom guys, but it was a nice little transcribed feature.
AG (06:10):
Transcribe it, go back in, take five minutes, just clean up, make sure that the transcription was accurate. Bam. Now you have an SOP. Now you have a process in your organization for onboarding. And this doesn’t, you don’t require tens of thousands of dollars of software or tools or, or consulting fees. There’s value to that. Yes. But if I’m talking to a small business owner right now, they’re already so busy that when you propose more expenses and when you propose more work, it feels overwhelming. You can literally put something together in a Google drive. Now again, big businesses, they’ve got nicer tools for that. But let’s just talk about the scrapper. That’s the up and coming. Mm-Hmm.
RV (07:14):
Mm-Hmm, yeah, I, that, that is what happens, right? I mean, in so many of these small businesses, the hardest thing is they go, well, I can’t, I don’t have the time to hire someone, so I’ll do it myself. And then they get to expert and they go, okay, I’ll hire someone, but I don’t have the time to train ’em. And then the person leaves and they go, see, I don’t have time to hire them. That never works out. And mm-Hmm,
AG (07:34):
RV (07:35):
I’ll do it myself. And, and it’s just this sort of vicious cycle. And I think a lot of times a lot of times I think small business owners mislead themselves to thinking, oh, a person is the answer. I’m looking for this magical person. And it’s not. The process is the answer, which is good news. Absolute is because the process is more controllable. The process is mm-hmm,
AG (08:15):
You can keep doing iterations and it gets better and better. And, and, you know, the other thing is, we, we jumped in the process thing. And, and, and I’ll be honest with you, where no one wants to hear that they need a process, no small business order. They’re like, oh God, not the process thing. Next thing I’m gonna tell ’em to have a morning routine or journal. I get it. I get it. Everybody’s busy and they don’t wanna hear that, even if it’s good for them. But Rory, I’ll tell you another piece that big businesses do fantastic and small businesses overlook. Oftentimes we get into running our own business because we’re very good at our craft, but we are not very good at selling our craft. And what I see small business learners do over and over again is they love a good product development.
AG (08:51):
They love getting better and better and better at their craft. Mm-Hmm,
AG (09:38):
So get it’s facts and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s facts. And, and that’s, and that’s the thing I see a lot too, is people will go, well, why that person? Why, why is that person, you know, getting the book deal? Why is that person on stage? Why did that person get the big clients? It’s not skillset guys. It’s mindset. It’s confidence. It’s things that you have totally under your control if you just use the tools that help you improve those things. So I have a lot of people that sit in front of me and say, I’m not good at sales. Well, you’re not gonna be good at your craft. You’re not gonna be able to do it for the right people, because there’s someone out there tonight, I want you to imagine that 11 o’clock at night, someone has opened up their laptop and they’re trying to find a solution. They’re googling for answers that are inside your head. And unless you get good at sales, unless you, unless you get a sales plan together or hire someone who’s good at sales, they’re never gonna get that solution. So stop burning the midnight oil, getting better at your craft and get better at sales.
RV (10:34):
Yeah, I think, I think, you know, there’s, there’s something to be said to be for being great at your craft, for sure. Sure. But it, it’s like there’s, there’s so many great artists that are the starving artists and you and Mm-Hmm.
AG (11:31):
And it’s because product development is fun. It’s fun.
RV (11:33):
Product development is fun. Yep. You don’t have the rejection, you don’t have the, the the, the fear. Totally. And like, it is this, it’s creative avoidance to use a term from take the stairs. Yes. It’s, it’s going, it looks like we’re being productive, but we’re really doing it subconsciously as a defense mechanism to avoid the pain that comes from, like, what, what needs to happen. So I wanna stick on this for a second, and then I want to talk about what small businesses should do different from the big businesses, but to stick on this Mm-Hmm.
AG (12:47):
So we constantly iterate so we don’t have to sell, maybe because we really like it to be perfect, maybe because we’re convincing ourselves that we wanna make the most impact in the end user if we make it really, really good. But I have found time and time again that it’s fear. Because if we get to stay in our workshop and tinker on our craft, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a speak if, if it’s a speech, if it’s a book, it doesn’t matter what the, the particular craft is or the product. And when I say product development product, I mean your service, your product, whatever widget you sell or whatever service you sell, when we get to just stay in our workshop and tinker, we get to stay safe. Mm. And we don’t have to get out in the middle of the arena where people are gonna throw things at us, right?
AG (13:30):
I mean, it’s scary to get your product out there. There’s there’s a famous quote. I’m gonna, I’m gonna paraphrase. But essentially if you know that your product is ready to release it, then you’ve waited too long. I’m paraphrasing. But you have to get your product out messy. You have to get it out and iterate. Product development needs to be an iterative process because you have to get feedback from the marketplace, not feedback from your mom or your brother or your wife. You have to get feedback from the end user. Don’t show it to someone that isn’t the end user. I wanna say end user. I mean, if I am writing a book about how to help real estate agents sell, don’t sell, show it to your sister that runs a bakery. Like that’s not your market. And it won’t resonate with her. And besides she loves you and she’s probably gonna tell you good things.
AG (14:16):
So you have to get it out. Like you have to birth that out in the universe and then let someone throw tomatoes at it. And I see that over and over again. I, I work with a client Ben, who’s a remarkable composer. And he, he said it great. He said, I find that I just over complicate it like it’s a Christmas tree and I keep hanging ornaments on over and over and again until it gets so heavy, it just falls over and I start again. And I thought, what a great way to do that. So small businesses continuously focus on making their craft better, making their product better so that they don’t have to be exposed. I mean, this is why I, I go on a tangent here for a second, Roy, but I hate when social media loves people love to put this out on social media about like hustle and silence and then surprise them with their results.
AG (15:00):
And I think that is absolute garbage. I hate that when I see that on Instagram and Facebook, because people should see you iterate. People should see you get out there and like, well, this didn’t work. Well, that’s okay, I’m gonna try again and I’m gonna try again. Like, don’t only come out when everything is polished and perfect. The only person you are protecting in that instance is you, is your ego. But when someone sees you iterate, they see, hey, that’s available. Or someone like me for someone who’s messy or someone that maybe has a learning disability with someone with, with a DHD, someone with young kids. All those reasons that we tell ourselves. ’cause We, we’ve got that negative narrative well rehearsed as to why that success isn’t available to someone like me. When you actually get it out to the marketplace, when you stop living in product development, that’s when you can also inspire people with your journey.
RV (15:50):
Mm-Hmm.
AG (16:39):
Yeah. So I will start by telling you how I did this wrong, Rory. So I’m glad that you asked this question. So, when I came out of the big business world, I had just finished this we’ll say a very, very popular telecom launch. And it was a hundreds of millions of dollars of a launch. And I was very much a part of the strategy and spearheading this and negotiating all the contracts and the deals and flying over all over the world to make this happen. And then I went and built a personal brand five years ago, which is where we met, right? Mm-Hmm.
AG (17:24):
I was used to being the big dog on campus. Well, when you’re a small business, you aren’t, and you have to be aware of your expenses. And so, one thing I would encourage someone is you are not building a hundred million dollar company. You’ve first gotta build a million dollar company before you can build a hundred million dollar company. So when you’re out there looking at the big guys again, let’s say you’re, you are speaker, if you’re out there looking at someone who’s been speaking for 20 years and they’re, you know, wildly successful at what they’re doing, you cannot fully emulate them. Yes. I say, who are you chasing? You, you should be chasing someone. You should be, you know, have an idea of, okay, I wanna be similar to the speaker we were talking about John Maxwell earlier, or Les Brown. You can have an idea of someone that you’re like, okay, this is someone that I’m, I’m, I’m sort of chasing, but understand you’re chasing the version of them that are finely tuned 40 years down the road.
AG (18:13):
If I am trying to scale a large consulting business, I can’t look at a, a consulting business that’s a billion dollar business and say, I wanna be like them because they were first a million dollar business. So I will say, scale appropriately, watch your expenses. You can’t indulge in expenses like the big guys can. But I’ll, I’ll make it even more tactical than that. Rory. I’m going to say that you’ve got to be very particular who you take on as a client. Oh, large businesses, yeah. This is key. This is key. So large businesses can take on a multitude of clients, and they have lots of customer service people and lots of salespeople and lots of account managers and, and engineers and different people to sort of scale according to the customer demographic. Small businesses, we don’t get that. The problem is, when we are a small business, we kind of have this rule, whether we say it or not, they’re like, well, if it ships, it fits.
AG (19:07):
If they pay, they play. Right? And we take on all these clients that aren’t a good fit for our model, which is one of the reasons why I loved your guys’ program about like the avatar work and primary and secondary audience that is so key. Because what I saw with small businesses is that anybody who could write a check, they would say yes to. Mm-Hmm.
AG (19:47):
We’ve all had those clients. Like we’ve had the client that just made us not love our craft anymore. Big businesses can afford that. Big businesses have the, the latitude to take on different client demographics. If I’m talking to a small business owner right now, like whoever’s listening right now, if you’re running, and, and I’ll say I usually define small businesses under 50 million, but probably for, for who we’re talking to, I’m saying between, you know, 1,000,020 5 million, who you choose to have as clients is everything. Because that will make you and your team love your work or hate your work. And I’ll give you a little, I’ll give you a little insider tip. This is an exercise I do as a business advisor. Your highest maintenance clients will almost always be your lowest profit clients. But they won’t appear like that at f at first. So that same 750, you know, K revenue c client might get a 250 K contract and they go, this is the mo the biggest contract we’ve ever had as a business.
AG (20:46):
This is amazing. This is amazing. But if it’s not the right fit, it will end up costing you in the long run. They might be high maintenance, they might not be a good fit. You might have to add on extra bells and whistles just to meet their demands or meet their needs because they weren’t quite a fit. But you really needed the money. And I, I’ll tell you, I’ve seen so many small business owners grow to dislike what they do. And it wasn’t because they, they don’t like doing it anymore. It’s who they, who they’re doing it with. A lot of times when I talk to small business owners, when they say that they’ve lost that love and feeling like, oh, I just don’t enjoy it as much. I always say, talk to me about your client demographics. Who are you working with? How has that changed through the years?
AG (21:26):
And sometimes it’s, well, I got part of this organization and they were sending me leads and so I just took them. And they aren’t realizing that they’re not loving it anymore ’cause they’re working with the right, wrong kind of clients. So small business owners be very clear, not who you can serve because you are a creative person, you’re a resourceful person, you can help lots of people, but I want you to be very specific on who you should serve, not who you can, you can serve lots of people, but who should I serve? Who am I passionate about serving? But also will light me up too. Because again, you’re resourceful. You can help lots of people, but you help the wrong person and you won’t love your business anymore.
RV (22:03):
Mm-Hmm.
AG (22:43):
Yeah.
RV (22:43):
So, you know, that kind of fits with alignment and goals and something in general you talk about. So mm-hmm.
AG (23:04):
Absolutely. So smart goals is sort of, well, the gold standard, right? Like they it, and, and there is, there is validity to that. I, I operated off of smart goals for years, but there is a piece that’s missing in the smart growth format that I found has really handicapped a lot of people’s success. Part of what I do, much of what I do, I, I said that people come for skillset, but they stay for mindset. Part of the mindset piece is just getting people out of their own way and making sure they’re truly leveraging all the tools that they have around them, even the ones that they’re overlooking. So I use a framework called the anatomy of goals. And in the anatomy of goals, it’s around identifying the what. That’s, that’s key. But usually when people are setting goals, they move right into the how.
AG (23:45):
The second they say the what, it doesn’t matter what the goal is. It could be, I wanna hit seven figures this year. It can be I wanna run a marathon or write a book. The goal doesn’t matter. And, and that’s a piece that’s important too. Goals are just project management with a bunch of emotions baked in. People try to make goals into this big thing. It’s just project management. It’s, it’s figuring out the what and then chipping away at it a little bit at the time and figuring out a way to keep yourself focused on it until you hit that. But the piece that’s missing with smart goals is the who, like who can help you get ahead. And so what I created in the anatomy of goals is, is it’s a three part. You establish the what, which is very important. Okay? I want a seven figure revenue, for example.
AG (24:25):
Great. We’ve got the what now, resist the temptation to move right into the how, which is where our brain immediately goes. If I say, okay, I’m gonna hit seven figures immediately, it’s like, well, the market’s downturn with the political climate, dah, I’ve got all the reasons why I’ve, I’ve practiced this narrative many times of all the reasons why that’s not feasible, or if it’s I’m gonna run a marathon. Yeah, but you know, my kids are still kind of young and would drop off and now we’re sending so and so to soccer practice. There’s all these reasons why that’s not possible. ’cause We moved into the how, forget the how go from what. And then you immediately go into the who. I break the who into three parts. So regardless of the goal, I want you to be looking for three different parts. The first one is the mentor, which makes sense.
AG (25:06):
Like, who’s done this thing that I’m about to do? I wanna hit seven figures. Who do I know who’s hit seven figures? I want to write a bestselling book. Who do I know who’s written a bestselling book? That’s the mentor, the person who has gone ahead of you. The next is the networker who has the network to support this goal that I want. Sometimes the mentor and the network are the same person. You know, if I want to climb Everest and I have this friend Allison who’s climbed Everest, okay, great. She could be the mentor. Does she have the network? Now here’s how that’s different. Does she know the Sherpas I should use? Does she know the pilot that can fly me in? So who’s got the network, the connections that can help me get to my goal quicker? Here’s the third piece, the buddy.
AG (25:46):
And that is simply the accountability buddy. So again, I want to hit seven figures, so I’ve gotta sell a bunch or I want to climb ever. It doesn’t matter what the goal is. You should have an accountability buddy in there for your goals. The buddy doesn’t need to know anything about your goal. They could never have written a book in their life. But just by virtue of the fact that they text you every morning and ask what your word count was, I mean, I’ve done this before. I have a cousin that knew nothing about the goal that I was doing. She’d understand the intricacies, but I said, here’s the exact words you need to say to me. This was years ago. I said, this is the exact words you need to say to me. You can even set this up that it automatically gets text to me.
AG (26:22):
But by me just knowing I was gonna get that text from my cousin, I tended to perform. So when you’re looking at your goals, a lot of people will go, okay, I’m gonna research this. I’m, I’m gonna run my first marathon. So they’ll research a ton out of how to run a marathon. But if you simply hang out with a bunch of people that have run marathons before, it’s gonna shorten your path to success. If you talk to someone, how did they do it? Who do they know? Do they know? Any races come up? And so when you’re looking at your goals, guys,
RV (26:49):
It’s funny that you talk about this. ’cause I’m literally in Bible study with a bunch of marathon runners, Uhhuh. And I’m actively gonna end up running, trying to repel the idea. It’s not gonna work that I get, that I get recruited into running this. ’cause It’s like, it’s not gonna work. It’s so organically there’s such an organic draw to like, come do this. And I’m like, no. The answer is no. Resistance
AG (27:08):
Is futile. I Rory
RV (27:09):
Given
AG (27:12):
We’re gonna talk to Rory again in six months and he’s gonna tell us how many miles a week he’s doing It just, just, you can’t, you can’t, you gotta give in if, I mean, if you what was it Steve Harvey says, if nine of your friends are broke, you’ll be the 10th. I love that saying, but the truth is, the opposite is true as well. If nine of your friends are rich, you’re likely to be the 10th. Totally. I I, I worked with a guy who was part of a, a I’ll say a men’s group that was amazing. This was a few years back. And he ended up dropping out and I said, man, I thought you really liked that group. And he said, yeah, but he’s like, they were all really, really wealthy and it kind of made me uncomfortable, like their conversation, I didn’t feel like I belonged at that table.
AG (27:46):
And I said, and by you dropping out, you will never belong at that table. Hmm. If you can just withstand the discomfort that you, yourself feel, nobody else needs to feel it. But if you can just withstand the discomfort that you feel because you, you feel that they’re operating at a higher level, you’ll reach their level. This is the power of a network. This is the power of a social circle. Our mamas we’re right. Like we are who the, you know, the people we surround ourselves with, which is why Rory Vaden will become a runner.
RV (28:13):
No, you heard it here first. Not become a, I’ll change Bible studies before that happens.
AG (28:28):
Absolutely. So the best place is the april garcia.com. I’m the April Garcia on all the platforms as well. And I got a lot of free tools and free resources as well as the the Pivot Me podcast, the April Garcia Pivot Me podcast. I love what I do, I love who I do it with. And I’m happy to answer any questions about what we talked about here or any other topics on the podcast.
RV (28:48):
So cool, friend, well, we’re cheering you on. We’re, we’re so grateful for you and just believe in you more and more friend. I, I know the be the best is ahead for you. So thanks for making time for us and, and keep crushing it.
AG (29:00):
Absolutely. This was amazing. Well done. Thank you so much for having me on Rory.
Ep 476: How to Go From 0 to 8 Figures in 5 Years with AJ Vaden
AJV (00:02):
How do you go from zero to eight figures in five years or less? That’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. And I gotta be transparent. I gotta be honest. I was actually in the shower this morning and I was brainstorming, what am I gonna do for this solo episode for our podcast today? And I, I looked over at my husband, Rory, and I said, Hey babe, what do you think would be worthy of doing a solo podcast episode, which is what we’re doing right now? And he said, babe, you gotta talk about the growth trajectory of Brain Builders Group. Because what’s what’s been done is something that has happened organically and the lessons that we have learned are extraordinary for entrepreneurs. And mainly because of all the things that we’ve done wrong. But luckily over the last five years, there’s been a few things that we’ve been blessed to do right through the grace of God and good coaches and mentors and amazing community.
AJV (00:54):
And in a fantastically awesome team at Brand Builders Group, we’ve been able to pull some pretty cool things off. And so we’re gonna talk about that. It’s what are eight things that you should know to help you go from zero to eight figures and five things and five years or less, right? So number one, focus on sales and revenue first. And don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying don’t focus on people or service. What I am saying is you have to know how to sell your product and service as the first thing you do. You have got to have a sales oriented mindset, a revenue focused effort before you start thinking of things that are ancillary, which I’m gonna throw out there would be marketing, right? And this will hear, hear more about this over our story, but it was sales first. It was like, we have to bring revenue in the door. If we’re going to make it, we’ll figure the rest out later. We’ll get better as we go, but we have to figure out how to sell this first. So it was figuring out what problem we solve, who we solve it for, the unique way in which we solve it. It’s what at Brand Builders Group, we call your brand positioning statement. It’s what are the offerings that
AJV (02:03):
We have and the price points, which will inevitably change. They will evolve. They must evolve. They must change as you grow as a company. But first and foremost, you have to know how to sell what you offer products or services alike. So, sales mindset first, revenue focused first. Not in lieu of service, but you’ve gotta bring clients in the door. You gotta bring money in the door in order to serve them well. So that was number one. Number two,
AJV (02:35):
Make more than you’re spending, right? Simple Law of Economics. Spend less than what
AJV (02:43):
You’re earning, right? In our case, it was like we, we were focused on making more than we were spending. And that means that us as the business owners were the, honestly, the, the lease paid people in the company for a minute. ’cause We could afford it. We had lots of savings. But
AJV (02:58):
We were not getting big office spaces. We still work from home. Still don’t have a permanent office space. We still use coworking spaces. We’ve decided that’s not the right capital investment for our company. We are investing in other things first. Website. We, we had, we full launched as a company way before we had a website. We didn’t even have a website until we were almost a full eight months in to Brand Builders group. So yeah, it’s a little bit amazing that this thing took off the ground, but it did. And we’ll talk about why. But just focus on spending less than you’re making, right? Be wise with the money. We did not take loans. This was all self-funded. I’m not saying don’t take a loan, I’m just saying we didn’t. ’cause We were sales focused first and we were focused on making more than we were spending, right?
AJV (03:43):
That was number two. Number three, build and adjust as you go. We were not tied to, it has to be this way. In fact, we were tied to the fact that we don’t know how it’s supposed to be. That we’re very open and very quick to adapt. And I think that’s one of the, the great blessings of our team and our company at Brain Builders Group is we are quick to pivot and rather everyone that is a part of our team is naturally this way, or they have adapted and adjusted to be this way. Our team has an incredibly high tolerance for change. Myself and my business partner, my husband, Rory, have an incredibly high tolerance for change because we know that in a startup, that we know in order to survive, in order to succeed, things have to change. And they, we have to be able to change them quickly.
AJV (04:27):
There can be no bureaucracy. We have to see a problem, fix a problem, right? See something, say something. Airport policies, we gotta be able to quick to pivot, right? And as a smaller, more nimble company we’re able to do those things. So we have been very willing to build and adjust as we go knowing that what we build today very likely won’t be a fit for even a year from now. And we’ve bought into the idea that that means we’re growing. That means we’re succeeding. So we’re buying into that. That’s a choice. It’s not a choice everyone wants to make, but it’s a choice that is necessary to make. And that with a changing market, a changing economy, changing technologies, as you have to be willing to build and adjust as you go, you cannot build it to be perfect and wait till it’s perfect to sell it.
AJV (05:13):
‘Cause That date never comes, right? It’s never gonna be perfect. It’s never gonna be exactly the way that you want it. There are 1,000,001 things I could list out right now that I wish were different, that I wish were better, that I wish were X, Y, and Z. But that doesn’t mean we don’t launch. That doesn’t mean that we don’t continue as is because what we have is good. And that’s how you know that it’s ready to sell. ’cause You know that it works. You know that it can help people. And we work to make it better every day, every week, every month. But it’s not the best. It’s better. And that’s okay. So build and adjust as you go. Number four, hire, right? Hire for the long term and set the vision for the people hiring, right? You’re gonna probably hear me mention the importance of team members again, in just a, a second.
AJV (05:55):
But hire right means hiring for the long term. And what I mean by that is like, when we bring on somebody literally on our first interview, I tell people and I think that’s something that I would just, I would like to mention, I’m a part of every single interview process. I do not hire anyone for any position in our company without also getting to meet them and interview them. This is a family. This is not just a business to us. This is our ministry. This is our calling. This is what we feel like we were put on this planet to do. And we wanna do it with people who share those values and beliefs and who are in it for the right reasons and who are in it for the long term. So on the very first interview, I say, I’m not asking you to sign a 50 year contract, although I would if I could.
AJV (06:37):
But I am asking you to don’t take this position. Don’t continue this interview if you don’t think this is a company that you could be with in 10 years, right? And I think that says something because we want to hire top talent. That doesn’t mean we can’t afford all top talent, but it means we want to hire the top talent so that we can afford top talent. And you do that with having a long-term in mind of like, Hey, we see the potential in you and in this company, and we want you to be here when we can afford to pay the top, the top pay for the top talent. We don’t want to grow and replace, grow and replace. We want to grow and promote, grow and promote, grow and promote the team that is here today. I would love to say that we hired so well, and so, right?
AJV (07:21):
It’s almost the same team that you’re gonna see in five years or 10 years, knowing that of course there’s gonna be turnover. We have had turnover. We have made not ideal hiring decisions based on fit and skills, but that doesn’t mean that’s not what we aim for, right? It is not hire just a body or hire the lowest, you know, paid person I can find it’s no, I hire the right person and I see if we can, we can make it work. And as we grow, their income’s gonna grow along with us. But that means you’ve got to sell the long term. You’ve gotta know the vision and sell the vision. Being a great recruiter is one of the most important assets of a leader. And as a CEO and an entrepreneur, recruiting is one of my number one jobs as the owner of Brand Builders Group.
AJV (08:07):
And it needs to be one of the number one jobs of our team recruiting, IE selling, right? But recruiting great talent is a skill that can be developed and honed. But a part of that is knowing where you’re going so that you can sell the vision and bring people along with you and actually fulfill the vision and the process, right? Number five, ask clients for feedback and then actually act on that feedback. It’s one thing to get feedback, and I think that’s humbling enough to, to constantly ask your clients like, what are the things we’re doing not so well? As well as what’s, what’s, what’s going well? What can we do more of? It’s a whole nother thing to go, I hear you and I’m gonna do something about it because I want the clients that we have today, just like my team to be the clients we have 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 year, 10 years from now.
AJV (08:52):
I want them to feel like they’re a part of building this company because honestly, our community at Brand Builders Group has been, they are the people who come up with the ideas. They are the ones who give us the feedback. And sometimes it’s not awesome feedback to hear that often is the feedback that is necessary to make that next move to growth. I can give you countless examples of things that I’ve just grabbed off of a survey of going, yeah, why aren’t we doing that? Or a conversation that someone said, Hey, would you be willing to hear me on this? And it created a whole new event or a product line or a service line. It’s ask for it. Genuinely, genuinely ask for it and then actually act on it. Help your community be a part of what makes you great. Because they know, they know where your weaknesses are.
AJV (09:39):
They know where your strengths are. And if you’re humble enough to ask for it and to listen to it and to act on it, it will make you a better company, a stronger company, and it will create more loyal customers. Okay? Number six, dev or sorry, give 10 times the value of what you charge. That’s a core philosophy of brand builders group. Every single time that we look at our, our suite of offerings for each of our product products or programs, we go, do we feel like they’re getting 10 times the value of what they’re paying for? And if not, how do we add more? It’s not, how do we constantly increase prices, although we’re in business at some point, we have to do price increases with the rate of inflation and the, the, you know, just cost of economies. Like, yes, those are things that we have to do to adjust with the rest of the world and the markets, but we are going to add more as we do that.
AJV (10:28):
Why? Because retention matters. Our customers matter. Our team matters. We don’t wanna be a revolving door. We want the, we want lifetime customers just like, and to some degree, I want lifetime employees, right? Again, but it’s, are you giving 10 times the value for what you’re charging for? So instead of thinking, what should you be charging, just be like, how much value can I give? And how can I make it such a no-brainer that it’s impossible to say no. Like I would be so dumb to leave. I would be so dumb not to do this. Like, I’m getting what? Like, is there a catch? Is there a trick? Like you want people to be like, this is extraordinary. How do you afford doing this? In fact, one of the most often questions I get from other people I know in our space is, why aren’t you charging more?
AJV (11:12):
Like, you know, you should be charging more, right? And I’m like, I mean, I know we could be charging more, but I don’t know that we should because we are aiming to do a very specific thing for a very certain group of people. Not to say that our prices won’t increase over time, they will, but always subservient to the value that we’re providing. So give 10 times the value than what you charge. Number seven, care. I’m just gonna pause for dramatic effect. Care, care about your team. Care about what you’re doing. Care about the numbers. Care about the details, care about your clients. Care about how things are done. Care. And I don’t mean you should be involved in every minute detail, that’s not what I’m saying. But in order to care, that does mean you need to stay on the front lines. You need to have contact with your customers.
AJV (12:06):
What we call our community. They’re way more than customers to us. They are our community, they are our friends, they’re our family. These are the dreams that we’re, we are working to empower, to come to life. These are not clients. This is our community. These are people that we care deeply about serving and helping. That’s why we’re doing this. And back to, it’s like we treat this as our ministry, not just our business. This is, these are friends and family. These are relationships, not clients. Customers and employees care. Stay on the front lines. Know your people. Know your community. Know what they’re about. Know what their brands are doing. Know what they’re up to on social media. Now, if you’ve got thousands and thousands of clients, I know that gets harder, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay on the front lines. You read the surveys, you show up at the events, you get on customer service calls.
AJV (12:59):
You meet with the sales team, you meet with your team of people who deliver your products and services. You stay on the front lines. That’s how you show that you care, right? There’s places that you can care and there’s people that you can care. And what I mean by that is that there are some places that you need to be. And then there are some people that you need to be with. Know the places and know the people, the care, stay on the front lines. And number eight, develop your team so you can trust your team. And that has a lot to do with the mindset of no one is going to step into any role perfectly. It doesn’t matter what their experience is. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been with you. There are nuances to every day, every role, every market, every year.
AJV (13:52):
They need developing just like you do as the business owner or as the leader. Develop your team. Provide them books to read, classes to go to courses to part, to participate, to participate in events, to go to coaches, develop your team so that you can trust your team. If you are a leader right now who questions your team, then I would question how much time you have spent developing your team. When you develop your team, it grows trust in your team because you know that they are getting equipped with the skills that they need. And they don’t all need to come from you. They cannot all come from you. They should not all come from you. They need to learn things outside of you so that they bring new things to the table. And that means they need developing. And that means you need developing.
AJV (14:44):
So who is your coach? How are you growing? What conferences are you going to? What classes are you attending? What courses are you participating in? Develop your team so that you can trust your team. And if you can’t do it together, right? Have a book of the month, have a book of the quarter, go to events together atti, you know, participate in courses together, whatever it is. Like, do things together so that trust grows at the same time, in the same ways, in the same places. But develop your team so that you can trust your team. Now I have probably like 88 more things that I could have listed, but when I reflect over the last five years of brand builders group, these are the eight things that we have done to go from zero to eight figures in the last five years. Now, there is one overriding thing that I would be remiss if I did not mention, and it is the fact that more so than anything else over the last five years, we have had open hands and we have said, God, this is yours.
AJV (15:46):
Do with it what you will and equip us to do what you want. Now, regardless of what your religious beliefs are and your affiliation with any sort of faith or religion, I would just encourage you that there is power and surrender of holding your business with open hands of going, this is not me. This is not my identity. This is something I do. It’s something I’ve been entrusted with. There are people here that I care about and that I have the opportunity to grow, trust, and develop. I have been entrusted with them. That is a responsibility I carry. It is not a burden. It is a responsibility. It is an honor, it is a privilege. And I hold it loosely knowing that this is not mine. There is no way that we could have done what has been done in the last five years on our own.
AJV (16:42):
And I don’t just mean our team and our community. I mean, this was a, God did it company, it is a God did it company. And it is because that we have been obedient and disciplined and we have listened. We have made lots of mistakes. But you know what? We didn’t stop. But it is holding it with faith of going, whatever is happening, I believe it’s for a reason. I believe there is a lesson for me to learn. I believe there, there is something to garner out of every bad situation that’s going to make us better. And for every ounce of faith that it has taken to do this. When we had to sell our car to make payroll, we said, okay when we had to you know, battle a lawsuit in order to start the company, we said, okay, when we gave up our life savings to start this, okay when it required us taking no pay so that we could pay our team, okay, there is an element of faith.
AJV (17:39):
IE trust that what you’re doing is significant enough that it’s worth the risk. But that doesn’t mean you don’t work. You must work. We, we work, we work hard, and at the same time, we do what we can while letting God do it. Only he can. And that’s where the trust and the faith has to come in. And again, regardless of your religious beliefs, I would just encourage you holding it loosely of knowing your business is not who you are and it is not your identity. It is something that you’ve been given. It is something that you’ve been entrusted with. You have skills that align well with you being successful at this, but it is not who you are. It’s not your identity. And if you hold it loosely there, the success has come a little easier and with a little less ego, but the failures come a little less hard. So five years, eight lessons to go from zero to eight. Hope this was helpful and I can’t wait to hear your story in the next five years.
Ep 474: How to Build a Personal Brand that has Enterprise Value with Jeremie Kubicek
RV (00:02):
One of my favorite sayings that we’ve been talking about recently with our community is that, you know, in golf, you drive for show and you put for dough, and we’ve been talking about how email or social media is for show, and email lists are for dough, and that’s really where you make money inside of that same vein of that concept, a lot of the personal, the biggest personal brands in the world that you meet and you follow and you hear of often don’t have that big of businesses on the back end. And that’s usually because they’re really built around one person and one person can only do so much, they can only be available so many days in so many ways and so many places. And so there’s a very different conversation that happens around building a personal brand versus turning a personal brand into something that has enterprise value, basically a, a business or a revenue stream or set of revenue streams that you can sell.
RV (00:59):
And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about how to turn your personal brand into a business that you could actually sell one day, or just that has enterprise value, that it would live beyond you if you died, or that could be transferred to your kids or your employees you know, after you die. And to talk about that, we’re gonna bring one of the people who is truly the best in this space of anyone in the industry, of any, anyone that I’ve ever met in the personal development industry. So his name is Jeremy Kubek. I’ve known about Jeremy for years probably over a decade. We’re gonna, you’re gonna hear some of his background. But this person, like this man has had a lot to do with being a part of John Maxwell and helping build the Maxwell companies and some of the things they’ve done.
RV (01:47):
If you’ve ever heard of Chick-fil-A leader cast Jeremy was a huge part of that. These are, you know, huge catalyst catalyst conferences. This is a man who was very involved in a significant way behind the scenes. Now today he’s a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He’s a speaker. He talks, he’s a thought leader and he is a serial entrepreneur, and he, you know, generally works in this space of kind of corporate leadership. And we’ll talk about some of his model today. But I really brought him on the show to talk about his newest book, the Communication Code. So, we’ll, we’ll touch on that a little bit, and also to really talk about how do you turn your personal brand into something with enterprise value. So Jeremy, welcome to the show,
JK (02:32):
Or good to be with you. Thank you, man. I’m, I appreciate all that you do. You have such a good reputation and just fun to be here.
RV (02:38):
Well, thank you, man. I, I, so you too. And, and I think specifically when I, the brands, the, the, the, the brands, the movements, the conferences, the companies that you’ve been a part of are ones where it’s like, you know, they have very, very strong reputation. So knowing that the context of this conversation is kind of around building a scalable enterprise can you just give us sort of like a brief history? I know you’ve done so many things, but like some of the high points of the big personal development brands that you’ve been a part of, of building.
JK (03:15):
Yeah. And so much of what I’ve done in the past, you know, which was, and I’ll tell you why I shifted to where I’m going and where I’m now, but we were a part of helping John Maxwell. We bought John Maxwell’s assets years ago inside Enjoy Maximum Impact. We bought inside of that was Catalyst. We stripped out and built the Catalyst conferences. We created Leadercast as a brand and started that as well. And then we partnered with people like Henry Cloud, pat Lencioni, Craig Rochelle, Andy Stanley you know, these thought leaders that were just doing amazing things and, and still are. But at the time that was, you know, that was back in the day, right? It’s like, yeah, I’m the good old days. And it was at the height of the conference world, and I, I saw the writing on the wall.
RV (04:08):
What year is this? What year is this? This is
JK (04:10):
2007 to 2015 that timeframe. And up to, I sold it all in 2011 and then 17 in parcels. And these
RV (04:23):
Were all on my vision board. FYI like Leadercast funny. I’m speaking at Leadercast this year. That’s, that’s still going. I’m actually speaking there in April. But like Leadercast and Catalyst, like these, these were events that were on my vision board as like an, as a up and coming speaker. So that’s, that’s awesome.
JK (04:39):
Yeah. And so, and you know, catalyst was so fun because Brad Lanik and I I was CEO he was exec director. He, he did such a good job, but we built an unbelievable experiential event. I don’t think there’s anything like Catalyst today. And, but the problem was, is that I, I was looking at it going, okay, this is a 20th century model. We are one pandemic away from going outta business. We’re one terrorist attack. And I was trying to figure out how to scale, how do we scale content? And most all the content was speakers having books, and what do you do from here? Right? And that led me on this journey of like, man, I wanna, I wanna actually go and look at how do you actually scale. So I moved to London, sold all of that, and people thought it was crazy. But we started over because I was trying to look at the 21st century, how do adults learn? How do you actually work inside B2B and actually make it stick and last? And that’s what we’ve done since that time.
RV (05:46):
Uhhuh
JK (06:06):
Yeah, that’s right.
RV (06:07):
Is that like, and how do you, how do you get a title sponsor? How did you even think to go to them? Like how did that come about? And like, if somebody has a big event, like what, what do they do to land sponsors like that?
JK (06:18):
Okay. It was, it was unbelievable how this happened. This is an epic story. So I my, I have a phrase like, who says we can, right? And so I had built a relationship through Chick-fil-A through David ERs, and he was over marketing and a good friend of mine, JT Robinson at Chick-fil-A and they connected me to Dan Cathy, and then we started becoming friends. And, you know, they loved the Catalyst conference. We were in Atlanta, so they already knew all about us because of that, right? So we already had these great relationships. But I invited, we were, we had Tony Blair, we as the speaker with Leadercast, and I invited David to come with me, Sawers and Dan, Kathy and I had Henry Cloud do the interview. So we’re in Tony Blair’s office, which was the home of John and Abigail Adams that shows you how old it was.
JK (07:08):
Wow. And we did the interview there, and it was, I have funny side stories with Henry Cloud and, and Tony Blair’s socks. But anyway funny things that happened. And then Dan, Kathy was with us and he saw the gravitas of it. He saw it. And on the way home David Sawers we took another trip to Paris and let, let’s get a couple of days and just, you know, process a partnership. What would a partnership look like? We’re on the way to the airport in a taxi, and David throws out a number, he’s in the front seat. I’m right behind him. He goes, Hey, how about X? And I go, how about Y? And then he goes, well, how about Z? And we shook hands at the, at the airport as we’re both flying back, and that’s how it took place. And we created the title sponsorship with a vision of the Chick-fil-A leader cast. Unfortunately, I had sold down by the time we were finished, I had sold down. And the other owners, they made different moves and didn’t value that partnership. I think it was fear of political positions of Chick-fil-A and things like that, that I think they overthought it. And now Chick-fil-A’s at 22 billion and Leader cast missed out on it. But I had already sold at that point in time.
RV (08:30):
Yeah, that is, that’s just wild. And so, like,
JK (09:21):
Well, so let’s take Leader Cap. I meant Catalyst is pretty simple. You have an arena, it has a cost. You build an amazing experience and amazing brand. And we actually, we, we did Catalyst. We said you had to be over 40 to come under under 40 to come. And we, we carted people at the door. So we created Scarcity with the idea, and then we produced the ticket price, and we said it’s for volunteers inside churches. So it’s not just church leaders, it’s the entire volunteers of a church. So they would use it as their annual retreat. And so Catalyst became kind of a mecca, probably the wrong word to use, but from that, the, a mecca of that, that that world. And then for Leadercast, it was different. I had already done the Maximum Impact simulcast, we own that. And then I sold that with John Maxwell and I sold it back to him.
JK (10:11):
So I built the leader cast brand. And we just took a brand that we had, we had done before, but we hadn’t used it. And I basically thought of Jake at State Farm. This is State Farm Insurance around the, the United States, like small town insurance agents, small town chambers, small town bank presidents. They want to gather and have events, but they can’t afford to bring Tony Blair in. They can’t afford to bring John Maxwell in or pick a thought leader. So really, there was a simulcast for small towns. And then you get them to, to host it, and they pay a host fee. And I can’t remember what we charged at the time the fees, but we basically, there’s different levels. They sold tickets and it was different. You know, if you bring X people, if you bring under 50, it’s this price, 50 to a hundred, a hundred to, and then you just sell the host fees. So we’d have, I think the highest I had was 184,000 people at 874 host sites. And that was the highest that we had ever gotten. I
RV (11:21):
Said 184,000 people watching live from how many host
JK (11:25):
Sites? The simulcast at 874 sites.
RV (11:30):
8 74.
JK (11:32):
Yep.
RV (11:32):
Wow. And so each of those sites, they basically pay a fee to be able to host it, but then they go resell the tickets and they keep the profit from it, some of
JK (11:40):
It that’s right. Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:08):
A break in the agenda for like a local person to get up and speak.
JK (12:12):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:13):
Oh, that is brilliant.
JK (12:16):
So, so now that became a massive business year over year. And then we would do live, well then Chick-fil-A sponsorship basically helped me pay for the live location, because that’s where all the expense is. You have the technology back in the day, this is, this was before the modern streaming, but you had a lot more broadcast, literally broadcast trucks, you know, and, and so it was just, but it was a lot of risk, man, a lot of expense. Just to pull it all off, you work 360 4 days for one day, and it was just, it was intense.
RV (12:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh
JK (13:03):
We had, we had we had, we got hacked. The group that we bought got hacked, and we had Aramaic on the bottom screen for 45 minutes one year. You know, this is little spooked out after nine 11, things like that. I mean, it was just, we had some hard stuff that took place, but we did it from 2000, whatever, all the way to you know, it’s still going, you know, I sold it and now it’s become a lot smaller. But it’s, it’s the concept. Anyone could do it. I mean, it’s, if you have vision for it, yeah. But what was the problem was this, the group that I sold to, they started going to larger companies. Larger companies. They get to see Tony Blair, they get, and they took, I think they took their eye off the ball of Jake at State Farm. It’s small town America, small town, you know other countries that, that’s where the, the, the opportunity is. But how do
RV (14:01):
You reach those people? Did you have local reps or do were you just do an advertising and stuff like that? You have an inside phone sales team? All,
JK (14:08):
All, yeah, we had a sales team. And so the sales team, then we had leads, and we’d have, when I, what I had at the time, we had regional connectors and, you know, people who would be one city leader. Hey, I know 10 churches, three chambers, you know, and you kind of build it that way.
RV (14:28):
Amazing, amazing. So you, but then you thought, you saw going, man, we’re one pandemic away here from live events or something. So you saw that in 2017 and bounced out. That was, that was about as perfect autonomy as you could have gotten. And, and you basically thought, okay, adults are gonna be learning virtually, and how do we deploy this to companies? And that’s so, so, so catch us up now to what you’re doing now.
JK (14:55):
Yeah. So Steve Cocker and I my business partner in England, we started to, like, honestly, here’s how we did it. We’re like, who’s scaled better than anyone in the world? And we’re like, Jesus
JK (15:11):
How did he do it? So we dissected the Jesus model, and this, I’m not even religious when I say this. Just how did he do it? And we’re like, oh my goodness. He used parables. So we use visual tools and we figured out that most adults, they, they’re cynical know-it-alls, and they don’t read much anymore. And they have short attention spans, and everything they do is on video and short video. And so we’re like, okay, where we go. So we took all of these concepts and we built 75 visual tools, and we made the tools so scalable that they help people get healthy relational, intelligent, but we teach them to multiply. So they have to teach it to other people. ’cause When you teach, you learn. So we started packaging these programs and we started certifying people. And eventually, now we just, we’re just a wholesaler. We just certify our content for coaches and consultants, and anyone in the world can use it. And so now we’ve got a, a system. So the Five Voices is probably what we’re best known for. Okay.
RV (16:13):
So hold on a second. Let me just, let me back up and pause there to make sure I understand. Because, because you’re saying we’re just a wholesaler, basically, you’re a, you’re a wholesaler, a wholesaler of your own product. Like you basically created ip and then you allow coaches to resell that IP wherever they are at, to whoever they want. So then how do you, how do you make money? And how does the coach make money? So
JK (16:41):
Here’s how, here’s what we figured out. It’s a win type of, of proposition. And it’s really interesting. We to set in 2019 we were more traditional in our certification process, 2019. I’m like, we have to be in technology. We have to be ready to scale. Don’t, didn’t like our business model. So we shifted and we launched in January of 2020 into a SaaS business. Wow. So we moved in January with the pandemic in March. We had no idea, but we, we turned and we started selling to coaches, in essence. I don’t know why that does that. But we started selling to coaches for 2 99 a month. So $299 a month. They get to be certified in our content. They take our content, and then they become a partner with us. And we built a community and we help them build their business.
JK (17:37):
And then they take our content of the Five Voices, 100 x our toolkit, and they sell that inside companies. And then we have an operating system, it’s called Giant os pro. And they take five Voices assessments, team performance assessments, and it’s a recurring revenue machine. It’s basically a SaaS business for them. We, we help coaches have a SaaS company. And if you don’t know what SaaS is for those listing, it’s software as a subscription. So it’s, it’s technology at $10 a month. So we have now they sell price points and products inside companies, but they get to keep a hundred percent of their workshops, of their keynotes, any of the content. They keep a hundred percent of that. They pay us 2 99 a month. And then they sell products, technology products inside companies. And then we do a rev share with them.
JK (18:33):
So it’s brilliant. They have direct work. They have directed work because now we have a community and they help each other around the world. They get pulled in to each other to help each other at Google or Pfizer or Biogen or wherever. And then they have a recurring revenue, a SaaS model. Well, here’s the beauty. If you think about us from enterprise, our evaluation of our company in 2018, we had a hundred coaches at 2018, and we did rev share splits. When you take their gross margin and all the way down to our ebitda, we maybe would’ve gotten three times our ebitda, which was really low. And we’re like, we’re gonna work this hard for that. It’s not sellable. We have content that everyone loves. We have this coaching community. It’s kumbaya, people love Giant, but it, the economics weren’t working. We flipped it, went to a SaaS model.
JK (19:31):
We’ve spent the last three years really, really pushing hard to get it established. Now we’re at scale, but now we’re being traded off of revenue. And Rory, this is the craziest part, you know, this, but SaaS businesses are traded off of revenue because our growth rate is so high. Our gross margins are so high, but now we’re probably worth on the minimum of six times revenue up to 12 times revenue, depending on our growth rate. Growth rate, not of ebitda, off of revenue. So a, a business that was worth maybe 900,000 in an EBITDA model is now worth 30 to 40 million in a SaaS model. And that’s the beauty of it.
RV (20:18):
Yeah. And let me just, just to walk y’all through like some rough math on this. If you’re not familiar with valuations, right? So let’s, let’s say you have a company that does just for easy math, 10 million in revenue and 1 million in profit or ebitda, right? Earnings before interest, tax risk, depreciation and amortization, that’s basically profit. So most companies are valued at a multiple of profit. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Jeremy is saying. A, a service-based business would be valued at a multiple of profit. So if you had a, a three x multiple on profit, that’d be three times your ebitda. So in this case, three times $1 million would be a $3 million company. But if you’re a SaaS company, you’re valued off of revenue. And instead of three times a million, which is, you know, the multiple times the profit, it’s, it’s maybe something like, let’s say five for easy math, five times the revenue.
RV (21:09):
So five times 10, which is 50 million, right? So that’s by, by repositioning the company. For, for those of you, that’s just like a quick little math, like lesson in how this works. And so anyways, so, so come back. So, so it’s blowing my mind here is now you said the coaches are creating a recurring revenue, you’re creating a recurring revenue model for them. So I see how you’re creating a, a recurring revenue model for yourself because they’re paying you 299 a month. Got it. They get to use all your content. They get to keep all a hundred percent of their training and speaking, which is cool. ’cause That’s always a rub, right? Is who gets to, you know, who gets to keep the percentage, but then you have these IT products you’re talking about that they’re then selling into companies. And so are those basically subscription products and that that’s what your revenue sharing? Yeah.
JK (21:58):
So they’re selling the operating system inside companies. So when they do Five Voices, for instance, five Voices is we think the most innovative personality driven growth tools. So you understand your personality and wiring. Well, people take the assessment through the operating system and it’s $10 a month per employee. And then they, they find or
RV (22:20):
Limited access to the test,
JK (22:22):
To the operating system. Mm-Hmm.
RV (22:24):
Whole operating system,
JK (22:25):
They get everything. So the employee, they get, and, and it’s robust, they get team performance assessments, they have peace index assessment, communication code assessment, all of our books and tools, they get access to all of it. So, and employees now can build their team leaders. They can run their teams through Giant, but we’re partnering with a coach, a consultant. So each of them are then bringing on, like today I showed you that list that wins channel. Becky in England, she brought on 45 people at $10 a month. Well, that’s $450 a month, so it’s really low for the client. But that adds up because our churn rate is super low. It’s less than 3%. So people stay with us a long time because they’re using it as an ongoing basis. So now we’re in the software model. So now we’re helping coaches and consultants actually have a software business because they couldn’t afford to build what we’ve built.
JK (23:27):
So now we’re partnering with them. They’re selling five Voices, pro or Giant inside the company. They’re adding people onto the software and technology, and they’re running their systems off of it. The coach and consultants working with the company to do that. So now you have your direct income. So the, the direct income would be if you do a workshop or speaking, that’s a hundred percent yours. If you are so full and you need help, you can pull from any of the other giant community and ask, Hey, can you do this work for me, Rory, I can’t do it. But you keep a percentage of it. So you get a percentage of you directing work to people, and then you have recurring revenue. So we have one group, and it’s the largest group. So be be mindful of this, we have one group that’s making 49,000, or they have 49,000 a month in recurring revenue, and they’re making 25% of that. So 25, 30% that they’re making of 49,000 a month. We have other people making 9,000 a month. We have other people making 1000 a month. But it’s the idea that as a coach or consultant, you can actually have recurring revenues. You can actually be in the SaaS model itself. And that’s the partnership that we’ve, we’ve figured out.
RV (24:43):
Amazing. So, so basically they get a hundred percent of the speaking, you get a hundred percent of the coach’s monthly fee, and then they get 25 to 30% of the recurring. But then they also have a, they’re also vested in making sure people are logging in and using it and using the tools and all that sort of stuff. Yeah.
JK (25:00):
And it’s a frequent
RV (25:00):
That is so brilliant. That is so magnificent. I love that so much.
JK (25:05):
JK (25:59):
We’re doing different businesses, but Giant has now got five voices, but we are building certifications around five voices for other things. There’ll be a future of five Voices for healthcare, five voices for cells. And so now we’ve got this community that wants to take it in different directions than they can, but it’s just a different way to think than the other alternative, which was, I go speak, I sell books, and then maybe I get a certification product that I can sell to people. There we go. I’ve, I’ve already sold it. Maybe they do renewals. Well, in this case, it’s like we’re trying to, we we’re, we’re, our churn is so low. We’re trying to get to 3000 consultants. We’re at a thousand right now. We’re trying to get to 3000 consultants minimum that we think that will be the kind of next level for us. So, and we made it where it’s just very inexpensive. It’s 2 99 a month in that regard. So,
RV (26:56):
Yeah. Interesting. Well, that, I mean, that is so fascinating, and it’s just part of what I wanted to, to, to show in the interview is like, there’s different, there’s different ways to do this. And sometimes a shift in your thinking sometimes a minor shift in your thinking, create an exponential difference in the outcome of, of what it’s worth. And I think, you know, there, there’s a lot of people chasing like big speaking fees and, you know, wanna be the bestselling author and want to have lots of followers and like the celebrity, which is not bad or wrong. I mean, there’s, we, we do a lot of that, right? And we, we understand that world, but it’s also like there’s a way to be filthy rich and totally obscure at the same time.
RV (27:42):
You can get your content out. You can change the world. You can, you can multiply through other people. You can leverage. I, I also love how in both the story of Leadercast and in this model, you are really like reaching like the small town people and the, you know, the independent coaches. And, but, but, but pulling all those people together becomes a really powerful force. So I think that’s just really, really fascinating. So all right. Well, I, I, I, I, I, we, we gotta wrap up here soon. I, I wanna make sure that you get a chance to talk about the communication code. And maybe you can, you, you can just do a brief mention of how does that book tie into what you’re doing and, and you know, why did you write it and all that? ’cause I know that’s your, your most reset.
JK (28:24):
Yeah. So real fast. So I create content. The content then goes into our operating system and it goes into our consulting pool. They use that content for marketing. So we have the five gears, five voices, a hundred x leader, peace index, communication code, so on and so forth. So the communication code is one of our powerful tools in the giant community. They love it. And you can check it out giant worldwide.com if you want to find out more of what that community looks like. But communication code was really a tool. The idea is this, that Rory when we communicate, we have communication has expectation attached to it. Every communication is an expectation. And every expectation has a code word attached to it. If you understand and learn the code word, then you’ll unlock the expectation or the relationship. If you miss the code word, then you’re gonna miscommunicate.
JK (29:17):
And when you miscommunicate walls go up and then relationship sour, that’s the summary. So the five code words are, there’s care, there’s celebrate or celebration, care, clar, clarify, collaborate, and critique. Those are the five things that people are wanting when you understand what it is, and specifically how, and you customize it. ’cause Your care might look different than my care. But once you figure it out, then you actually use code language. Hey Roy, all right, we’re working today. Hey, what are you wanting today? Well, I want you to clarify first, and then I want you to collaborate. Awesome. You gave me the code words. I, I probably won’t miscommunicate, but if, if you come to me with desiring care and I start critiquing and then you pull back and I’m like, dude, what’s up with him? And most relationships are strained because we’ve missed the code words of communication. So it’s a, it’s one of the tools in our communication sec or section of Giant. We have communication, we have a relationship alignment, execution, and capacity tools. And that’s one of the key tools for that.
RV (30:28):
Very, very cool. So Jeremy, where do you want people to go if they wanna learn more about you and be connected with what you’re, what you’re up to? Yeah,
JK (30:36):
So jeremy ache.com. It’s not the easiest spell. Maybe that can be in the show notes. Giant.
RV (30:41):
We’ll put it in the show notes.
JK (30:43):
Yeah. And giant worldwide.com. Those are two that are very easy. You can also find our books on Amazon.
RV (30:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you reach out, make sure you just let ’em know that you heard ’em with Brand Builders Group and Influential Personal brand and show ’em some love online to some of his social counsel stuff. Jeremy, thanks for that story, man. What, what an amazing trip kind of down memory line and just the evolution of the industry and, and kudos to you for making a lot of impact. I mean, separate of money and all that stuff is like, I just think about all the people who came to Leader, leader ca have come to Leader, cast and Catalyst, and, you know, Maxwell and all the stuff that you guys are doing, you’re doing now at Giant. Like, it’s really, really cool to add all that up and go, you know, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere somebody’s lives been vastly improved by the sacrifices and the work that you’ve put in. So kudos to that. Man. We wish you the best. Thanks for being here. And we’ll continue to follow your journey.
JK (31:38):
Thanks Rory. Appreciate you
Ep 472: Building a Huge Business without Having a Huge Audience with Melanie Ann Layer
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden, one of your co-hosts, and super excited today to talk about how to build a multimillion dollar business without having to build a huge, multimillion follower brand. So I think for everyone who is listening of going, man, how, how do I continue to grow my business without feeling the pressure of having to grow podcasts and email lists and paid media? And if you fit in that bucket, then this is a conversation that you wanna stick around for, because today we’re gonna talk about how you can explosively grow and build your business without having to do what a lot of people talk about in digital marketing today, which is you know, you gotta have all the things on all the platforms, you gotta have a podcast, gotta have an email list. And it’s like those things aren’t bad, and you can have ’em, but they’re not a necessity to having an amazingly successful business.
AJV (01:01):
So if you fit in that boat where you wanna grow your business without the pressure of having to grow everything else underneath the sun, then this is probably one that you wanna stick around to. Now, let me formally introduce you to my guest today, which is Melanie, Melanie Ann Layer. Sorry, I’ve got tongue tied there. I mean, she’s the founder of Alpha F Brand, which I’ve spent a bunch of time stalking on social media, and I love all the visuals and glamor that is associated with what you see online, but also just really love the concept and the heart around a lot of the conversation that’s gonna happen today. But just so you know, alpha Femme is a global coaching and mentoring company. It launched in the online space in 2017. So to talk about growing a super successful business and not a ton of time that’s one of the things we’re gonna talk about because that was not that long ago. And so one of the reasons I invited Melanie Ann on today is to really talk about how do you do these things in a way that works for you, and how do you weave your story into all the things that you do. And so we’re gonna talk about growing businesses. We’re gonna talk about using your story. We’re gonna talk about how you do it with staying true to yourself and so much more. So welcome to the show,
MAL (02:18):
AJV (02:21):
MAL (02:44):
Well, I would probably start by saying I’ve always been a little bit different. And my, my experience of myself is always, I’ve been a little bit different, even, you know, my brother and my sister were really good with the traditional education model, and I just could not get myself to do it. It just, I’d study for a test a minute. The exam would go in front of my face. I’d forget absolutely everything, but I knew every lyric to every song I cared about by heart. It’s like I, my brain just was wired differently. And I came to realize later in life that I have an emotional brain. I have an artist brain. If I care about it, I remember it forever. If I don’t care about it, doesn’t matter how much I repeat it, the minute you add pressure, stress to my life, I forget.
MAL (03:22):
And so, it’s been such an interesting journey for me to not discredit what anybody else is doing, actually, to take a stand and say, let’s not ever discredit what anybody’s doing ever again. Let’s instead look for other ways. What are all the ways we can become successful? What are all the ways that we can highlight our intellect and our creativity and our uniqueness? Because I, I think that a lot of times success is put in a box where if you don’t fit the guidelines, it’s predictable that you won’t get it, or that you’re not deserving of it, or it, it’s just kind of a weird thing where even, even after I achieved a lot of the success that I achieved, I was constantly questioned about my education and why I felt I had the right. And so I think what I love about the conversation we’re gonna have today is the fact that I decided I had the right, and then I built something extraordinary after that.
MAL (04:09):
Nobody told me that I was special or that I deserved it. Nobody gave me a leg up, a hand up, a whatever up to help me do it. I didn’t receive any funding. I didn’t like, there was no help. There was just, I wanted to do it, and then I did it. And I feel like we need more stories like this. Yeah. Now, the other thing I wanna say is, I’m gonna talk about how I built this without any of the traditional stuff, but I’ve helped so many of my clients, whether they have the traditional stuff or not, I think the key is not to say, oh, I, I, you know, I stand against the traditional stuff. It’s more I wanna find my, my perfect recipe that makes it, that I’m not fighting against any part of myself in order to be successful. It’s the opposite.
MAL (04:47):
I’m leaning into every best part of me and finding what are the things that are actually my effortless, we’ll call it a strategy, it’s an energetic strategy. Like, when I do this, I feel good empowered, I feel limitless, I feel magnetic. Like those are the things that are usually the gateway. And so I just followed my own magnetism. Whenever I felt stifled, stuck questioning myself, I was like, is there another way? I just questioned what everybody ever told me was the only way. And I found many alternative ways. And what I wanna say, we’re celebrating now since, you know, I opened my brand in 2017. We’re se we’re celebrating $78 million since 2017 in Alpha Femme. And I can tell you, I have found 78 different ways to make a million dollars. I did not make any of those the same way. They’re all different. And so that’s why I feel like I can help so many different people because not one of those millions was the same. And so it’s just to open your mind, open your heart, start getting curious, ditch whatever you’ve been told that would have felt like limiting. And let’s get into the expansive mindset of what could be. And that’s, that’s who I am. That’s why I’m here.
AJV (05:55):
I love that. You know, and one of the reasons I thought that you would be so great for this particular, you know, time for our audience, is that we get asked all the time, do I have to have this? Do I have to do this? Right? And a lot of that circulates around, do I have to do social media? Do I have to do video content? Do I have to have a podcast? And we’re always like, no, you don’t have to do anything. So I thought this was just really good. So this is where I’d like to start, is how did you build what you’ve built in a relatively short amount of time without any websites, any podcast, no paid ads? So walk us through like, what was the strategy and how did this happen?
MAL (06:41):
So the first thing I wanna say is I was actually good at what I did. So when I first started my business, I started this brand. I had gone bankrupt. My whole life had fallen apart. And I started, I, I took a phone call from a friend that was going through a hard time and she fell in love with my life coaching. And my life coaching was literally just everything I was studying to try to get myself back on track. But my focus at that time was helping people fall in love with their lives, regardless of their circumstances. So I was not selling a dream here. I was, I was like, I felt sitting in the front seat of a car, low on food, gas, heat, everything you could think of in the winter snow storm. If I can find gratitude, I can help anyone find gratitude in their life right now.
MAL (07:26):
And I built this life coaching brand from the front seat of my car. And I hit six figures from the front seat of that Honda Civic, the fir the first year we, I hit six figures. And so what all I cared about at that point was helping people and becoming better at really saying the thing the person had. Like, what was the thing that the person wasn’t seeing? What was the blind spot? How could we create more joy now, more happiness now, more power now? How could we, how could we build on that? So I was not trying to be famous, I was not trying to be successful. All I cared about was being excellent and giving transformation to my clients. And because I was sleeping in the front seat of a car, and I did not feel that any of that was very appealing, I called my brand the Invisible Coach.
MAL (08:09):
And so no social media, no email, no Facebook, no nothing. Everything was word of mouth referral. So if a client loved what I did, they referred a friend, they got 20%, and that’s it. I built my whole business that way. Now, eventually things kind of got bigger because someone asked me if I could come and do this kind of work at their office, and could I help on a bigger scale? Could I coach a team for this kind of mindset stuff? Then some of my past life where I was, I was good in sales, came in and I was, I helped teach high ticket sales to people who felt kind of stressed, especially the dental field when they had to sell big cases like, you know, $60,000 veneer case. And they’re making, you know, 30, $40,000 a year. Like, there’s a gap there. It feels very stressful to sell high ticket when you’re not making a lot of money.
MAL (08:55):
Money. So I started bringing sales training into what I was doing. My business organically expanded. So the first thing that’s so important is I did not start trying to get rich, trying to get famous. I started wanting to be excellent and wanting to be good at my work. That, that’s the first thing I think is very important. The second thing is, I didn’t even use social media when I first started on social media thinking I would become social media famous either. So the first time I ever put my stuff out on, on Facebook, it was like 2015 or 2016, I started posting. 2016 was my first ever live stream. The reason I did this was because I never actually went anywhere. I didn’t buy a house or get an apartment after I went bankrupt and ended up sleeping in the front seat of my car, I actually just became a digital nomad.
MAL (09:38):
So I would drive my car all over the country, all over the, you know, all over the us, wherever, and I would just live wherever I I was. And so as my financial situation got better, the hotels got better, but I just never got another place to live. So I would connect with people everywhere, whether it was by the pool, at the coffee shop, at the grocery store. And in order to stay connected, I had the social media presence. It never crossed my mind that I could meet a person on the internet that would become client. That felt impossible. What did feel possible is someone who I’d had a conversation with, who stayed connected over time could eventually, maybe especially if I went back to that town, become a potential client or a connection, but never ever did I think I would create something on the internet.
MAL (10:26):
So what I think made me very different there as well is I wasn’t doing any kind of strategy. The all I was doing was being the most real version of me because it was like, you’ve met me in person, you know who I am. I’m gonna be the same person online as I am offline. ’cause That’s what it’s gotta be. And by doing that, an audience started to build. And it was the weirdest feeling of my life when someone messaged me that I did not know and said, I’ve been watching your live streams and I’m wondering if you, you do private coaching? And I was like, how did you meet me? And they’re like, I, I saw your live stream. And I was like, what
MAL (11:06):
It all came from a very real place. I think that’s another important thing to to know. My first brand that I ever made, my first company name was my name Melanie Layer, incorporated. That was it, MLI. But then people started asking me what it meant and I felt a little weird, but that’s what it meant,
MAL (11:52):
I didn’t look for it. It, I didn’t work hard to find it. I didn’t hire someone to tell me what I should call my company. I didn’t wait until I had a good name before I made money. I didn’t wait until I had a good name in order to become successful. I called it whatever I wanted to call it until one day Alpha Femme came outta my mouth and I was like, oh my God, that’s it. And I, I could not believe it when I was looking for it on the internet and no one had it. I was like, how does this not already exist meant to be, meant to be? So when I claimed Alpha Femme, the next thing that happened is I realized this is a really good brand. I’ve gotta raise the bar. There was a moment where I realized this is not just about me making money. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (12:58):
One thing, I wanna pause there and talk about this just for a second. So one of the things that you said earlier, which I, I jotted down because I think it’s so good, it’s, you know, let your results speak for themselves. Right. And it’s like, kind of like that’s what I heard you say. I don’t know if that’s exactly what you said, but it’s along these lines of just be so good. People can’t not tell other people.
MAL (13:17):
Yeah,
AJV (13:17):
Exactly. It’s like they can’t not, and so I just would love for you to talk about that for a second of like, what was the mentality that you had around? It’s like, if I just focused on the people who I have right in front of me and changing their life, I know that by the nature of doing awesome work, more business is gonna come. ’cause One of the things that I feel like I’m constantly hearing from friends, family, and our Brain Builders group community is like, well, how do I get more clients? How do I get more clients? How what our constant message back to them is just focus on the ones you have.
MAL (13:49):
Yeah.
AJV (13:50):
And so that’s such a mentality shift. It’s such a, a redirecting of abundance versus scarcity. And so I’d love just to hear like what your message would be to anyone who’s out there going, yeah, I’d love to have a word of mouth referral business where everyone is just sending me business. How do I do that?
MAL (14:08):
When your intention is being excellent for your clients, they feel that when your intention is growing your business, they feel that it’s a different energy. And sometimes it is hard to pivot it when you’re like, okay, that sounds great, but I really do wanna build my business. And it’s like, I know, but is there something else inside of you? Is there something bigger inside of you? Can you actually see that your business, if it, if it were to grow the people, it would help that that’s good for the world. Like, can you actually get behind that? Can you see the ripple? Like I remember early on in my career when one of my first clients was telling me, she’s like, my, my marriage was on the rocks when we started. And I, I’ve, my husband is completely different. You know, another client with her daughter, she’d had, she’d been on the rocks with their daughter and things were just turning around.
MAL (14:56):
Another client’s sister reached out from, for, you know, years ago that hadn’t talked to her sister in years, you know, promotions. And I’m like, I’m speaking to one person. But the the wor their work is changing their, their, you know, sister, their mother, their partner, their everything’s changing. And I was like, the ripple effect of this is spectacular. I’m making such a difference. Mm-Hmm. And that was the thing that really drove me was like, this is helping. This is working. And I think especially in businesses where people have this profession, obviously it depends what profession you have in your life. I, for me, ha being a, a coach, that meant I have to be good at, at having people change their lives. That’s my job. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people get caught up in being marketers and then the job is secondary.
MAL (15:45):
But really it’s, you’ve gotta be good at your job and then you’ve gotta market how, you’ve gotta market that you’re good at your job if you are a good marketer, but you’re not good at your job. It’s like, hmm. So the first thing is be good at your job, then the marketing is easy. Is it word of mouth? You know, is it through live streams? Is it through a beautiful brand? Is it through this? Now you’re adding things to support this amazing career that you have. And it, and it’s never do I have to, it’s like what are the channels that are gonna help me expand this? But nothing’s gonna make you good. You know, you, you can’t just market. I mean you can, but eventually your reputation will catch up with you and it won’t work. You know, it is gotta come from I’m excellent at this and then I market my excellence from that. The sky isn’t even the limit.
AJV (16:27):
Yeah. I love that so much. ’cause I think that is, that is just such a heart change of going, the marketing will come, the sales will come. But right now I just have to be the best in the world out of what I’m doing or
MAL (16:39):
The best therapist I can be right now. Because this is another thing is every single industry has nuances. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (17:19):
MAL (17:20):
I really only thought when I first started this work that there was me, Tony Robbins and Esther Hicks. I thought that was it. Like we, we were the only people in the world that knew about this profession. I wasn’t trying to beat anybody. I thought the world was in need of more people like me. That’s another perspective shift. I don’t need to be the best. I wanna be one of the greats.
AJV (17:38):
Yeah. That’s so good. That’s such a good, you know, just even verbiage reminder to me it’s like, it’s not about being the best in the world. It’s about being the best you, which somebody needs that somebody needs the best you. And so, so, okay, so here’s my second question that kind of popped up through all the things that you were ta talking about in my notes, is this whole idea of figuring out what feels most aligned with you. And you said, you know, it’s like made $78 million done at 78, you know, different ways. So what, what advice would you have or any sort of tips around, like, how do you just figure out what that combination is?
MAL (18:20):
So what I love about marketing and also coaching, what I love about the whole thing is it feels to me like a scientific experiment. I think a lot of people do marketing and do business like math. I sucked at math, but I love, like, why is it that when you add milk and vinegar, it, it does this weird thing? Like why? And that’s a lot of times what business is. It’s like, why did that work? How did that work? Why did that work? It’s not one plus one equals two, it’s milk plus vinegar equals like why? And so I love it so much because I always tell my clients, you’re gonna wonder how to do it until you wonder how you did it. Mm-Hmm. It’s not this like recipe that you do it once, then you nail it forever. You’re gonna have to pivot course correct.
MAL (19:08):
You’re gonna have to innovate. It’s gonna work once in the second time. It won’t work again. You’re gonna have to change. Like, you’ve gotta be a mad scientist. It’s gotta be this like, let me explore myself, my clients, the world, the market. Like it’s, everything’s changing. So if you’re trying to find the one ticket to success, the one ticket to fame, the one, it’s like, it’s very rarely gonna be an energetic match for you to succeed long term. But if you’re like, sky isn’t even the limit. Give me everything you’ve got. I’m a mad scientist. I’ll make anything work. I’ll make 1 million, I’ll make it 1,000,078 ways I’ll do it so differently. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be the same. I don’t need to do it like her or like him or like them. I do not need to beat anyone.
MAL (19:45):
I wanna be one of the greats. I respect the people I walk with. I walk with giants. I love this moment that we’re in, in this planet. I love that I get to be in business in this modern time. I love that there’s so many different ways I can market what I do. Let me do this this month and if I’m sick of this next year, I’ll find something new. Like I’m in the game evolution and growth over a lifetime. Let’s figure this thing out. That energy is so magnetic, so playful, so fun. And you’ll just end up making money. And it is like, money’s the byproduct of the entrepreneur you become. Yeah.
AJV (20:16):
And I think I, and I love what you said, it’s like don’t be afraid to just try it. Yeah. And if you hand it, stop, pivot, do something else. And I think that’s a lot of people just kind of feel like if I start it, I have to just keep doing it. And that’s not true.
MAL (20:29):
No. You get to say, okay, well look, and, and you can see it through, you know, you can say, okay, so we did this and here, what’s the outcome? Well, the outcome is this. Okay. So now we know we won’t do that again. Like, you track it without meaning. Yeah. Kind of like Einstein, who found 3000 ways not to build a light bulb
AJV (20:45):
MAL (20:46):
You can’t get defeated. It’s like, okay, so this is not the way for me not, and this is not the way for me. And it’ll just make you wiser. Mm-Hmm.
MAL (21:20):
Like get your hands dirty. Go in, leave your ego aside and just go in the sandbox. Be like, let me get my hands dirty. Let me build something fun here. Let me figure out what I’ve got, what my tools are, what my skills are, where I need to get better. What results can I produce with what I’ve got? Because it’s not gonna, it might not be a million, but it could be a few tens of thousands. And that’s celebrate something to celebrate. Like, you’re gonna get good stuff on the way, and then you’ll learn to celebrate those little things and build off of those. And it really is, it’s a scientific experiment. And the people who are able to play like a mad scientist at this, they have fun for way longer.
AJV (21:57):
And that’s a key word in all of this is you wanna have fun. Yes. It should be fun. It shouldn’t be, I think
MAL (22:04):
Before we all decided to be entrepreneurs because we imagined it would be, yeah. We thought, can you imagine not having to wake up at a certain time? Imagine being able to go to lunch at the restaurant in the middle of the afternoon. Imagine not having to work till 5, 6, 7 every night. Imagine not being stuck in traffic. Imagine. Oh my gosh, I could work from wherever in the world. Oh my gosh. Then you get this opportunity and you make it, you, you forget a job. I
AJV (22:28):
Think
MAL (23:22):
Yeah, so there’s a, there was a few pivots. It happened a few times along the way. The first really important pivot was the Alpha Femme brand. When I said, I have a brand, like this is my brand, this is what I, it’s like I, I felt the brand had so much potential that I had to raise the bar of who Melanie was to fit Alpha Femme. Mm. And that was amazing because instead of trying to build the business, instead of having Melanie and Laer try to build a business that would be successful so that I could feel like I had done it, you know, that feeling we sometimes have where it’s like I’m trying to build a business so that I won’t have to worry about money. And so that I will feel like I have done something with my life. I, I I I, mm-Hmm
MAL (24:14):
Who do I need to be? Do, am I even an energetic match for this brand and what it could be? And so that made me raise the bar in even who, who I was. And it was like, I’m the founder of this brand that represents the world. There was like a, an uplevel there, but the real huge uplevel that happened for me that changed everything. And this is quite interesting because the story starts in 2020 or the story starts, pardon me, in 2013 when I went bankrupt and I was sleeping in my car, IWI had, I was working a commission only sales job. So if I made nothing in one day, no money came. There was no minimum wage. It was just whatever money I made. And there were days and days and days that I made absolutely no money whatsoever. I’m sleeping in the front seat of this car.
MAL (24:55):
I sometimes I have money for a night at the hotel. Most nights I’m just sleeping directly in the car. Some days I can eat, some days I can’t. Like it’s, it, there’s just no consistency in my life whatsoever. And I have this like really traumatic experience while I’m sleeping in the front seat of a car and there’s first responders on site and they, one woman comes, psychologist sits in the car with me and starts talking to me and she’s like, I don’t know why, but I keep having this, this feeling to give you this business card of this person. I feel like you need to speak to this person. And it was this super like spiritual, like a person, like a, that could see into the future kind of thing. And I’d never done this stuff before at all. So I’m, I, I’m like, okay, thank you.
MAL (25:36):
But I have no money for this whatsoever. I have no money. And so I keep the card in my car and I keep looking at it and it’s burning the image in my head of this person. Like, I, I need to call, I need to do it, but I don’t have the money to do it. So I chose to not, I slept in the my car for cup for like, nonstop, nonstop, nonstop. Even when I had the money not eat, even if I had the money to save up to buy this one session for a hundred dollars. And I drove up to this person’s condo and she was moving, there were boxes everywhere when I walked in. She said, I’m sorry, the place is a mess. We’re moving. You know, I’ll have to have you sit in my bedroom. I sat on her bed, I was like, I’m gonna die.
MAL (26:13):
This is how the story ends,
MAL (26:58):
We were, we had only rented it for a few days to do content creation. They shut the country down. We couldn’t leave. They had no other Airbnbs, no other hotels. Like we either stayed there, we lived in the street and it was way above our budget. It was the craziest thing. And we were having this like meeting the three of us, what are we going to do? And my sister, obviously, I had told her the story about the this woman in the card and all the things, but she just has this look on her face. Like she just saw a ghost. And I said, what, what? Like, what? And she, she said, just look. Oh, because that’s the craziest thing. Like I was, I was in a town where there is no ocean. Like I don’t, there she says to me, you’re gonna change the world where the mountain meets the ocean. There is no ocean. Like I am in Quebec, Canada. There is no ocean anywhere. And so I said to her, which ocean? And she said, oh, I can’t tell you that. Of course you can’t. Okay, how do I even get there? And she said, you’ll be there when it happens.
MAL (28:01):
MAL (28:53):
It stopped being about alpha femme and it started being about changing the world where the mountain meets the ocean. Hmm. It started being about helping people through a pandemic. It started being about having a mission, feeling like there was a reason that I was alive to serve the planet. Like I, I took it out of my, am I good enough? Am I worthy? Do I have what it takes? Do I, blah, blah, blah. All the little chatter. And I expanded my vision outside into like my impact on the world as it stands. And my entire business changed. And I just kept myself in that mindset. This isn’t about my worthiness and my deserving. Every single thing I touch helps people. Every dollar in my business is a person who’s expanding every Yes. Is a person who’s working on their life, their purpose, their their marriage, their their business is helping people.
MAL (29:43):
It’s like, I’m a funnel now. Mm-Hmm. Everything that goes through me comes to other people. Whoever’s distributing the funds up there is going, okay, pass it through her hands. Money in her hands is good for the world. Power in her hands is good for the world. Influence in her hands is good for the world. And so my message to people is like, get out of the little smallness of your fear that you somehow are inadequate because that, that’s like you are just hoping everything that’s funnels towards you is just gonna come to you and die there.
AJV (30:13):
Yeah. So good. Cut
MAL (30:14):
The floor. Cut the floor and make sure that things go through you, not just to you make sure that you amplify everything you receive and you’ll never have to get blocked about worthiness again. And actually it becomes about the world. And you can stop being all stuck in your ego and we can actually start doing something.
AJV (30:31):
You know what I love most about everything that you just said is that whole thing of like, stop worrying about what comes to you and pay attention of what’s going through you. Because I think that is, it is such a limiting belief of going, like everything I’m doing is just so that money comes into the account or a client comes into the account or followers show up or emails show up. It’s like, that’s really small thinking.
MAL (30:57):
Yeah.
AJV (30:58):
I love that about this. Like, no, don’t think about what comes to you. Think about how it comes through you of just like, whatever comes through you needs to go right back out.
MAL (31:07):
Yeah. And, and it’ll, that’s
AJV (31:09):
An abundant mindset and
MAL (31:11):
It’ll, and it’ll create so much beauty on the way through. But everything is temporary. You know, even the money you think you want, you want it so you can spend it on something
AJV (31:21):
MAL (31:22):
You know, it’s like everything, if it comes through you, if there’s something that passes through, joy is temporary, sadness is temporary. Just let it pass through. Let just let yourself be the biggest conduit you can be and don’t shut yourself off and shut down the channels when you’re afraid of losing. You know, don’t hang on too tight to things ’cause you’re afraid if you lose them, you lose them forever. Just be confident that things through you are good for the world and amplify how much can pass through you.
AJV (31:50):
Yes. I love that. And you said something earlier, I wanna go back to really quick, and I’m, I’m cognizant of the time because I think there’s so much richen richness in the conversation. But one of the things that you said earlier, and again, this is again how I perceived it, is like, don’t wait until it’s perfect to get going. Like, don’t wait to get going. And I think a lot of people wait to get going ’cause it’s like, oh, it has to look a certain way or I have to have this lined up a certain way. So I’d love to just hear like, what would your 2 cents be to the people here out there listening? Well that’s sounds great for you Melanie. I’m so glad you did that, but I don’t have this, this or this or that. And then it’s like, and I love that you come from a Yeah, don’t give me any, I don’t have that. I was making calls from my car, living in my car. So we’re good there. And, and still people really get stuck with like, I just can’t do it yet. Right. I can’t sell it yet. I can’t teach it yet ’cause my website’s not live or whatever limiting belief they’ve come up with. And so for those people listening who going, yeah, but it’s not ready.
MAL (32:56):
Yeah. I think the most important thing is it’s not about what it looks like. It’s about what it is. So if it’s good, it’s ready. The only time I would say, okay, get like, take the time is if you’re like, I don’t know how to do it. You know, I wanna, I wanna do a coaching business, but I’m terrible at coaching. I want, I wanna be an art, I wanna sell my paintings, but I’ve never painted a painting and I’m no good at painting. I wanna be an a singer. But I I, I haven’t taken lessons. I don’t know how to sing. I’ve never s sang a song. Like that’s when I’m like, okay, well then get good at your craft. Mm-Hmm
MAL (33:34):
It’s about what it is. How many hole in the wall spots do people line up at the door outside and it’s like, don’t let this fool you. This is the best pizza. Yeah. This is the best coffee, this is the best. You know what, whatever it is. Like there’s a lineup. You can’t even get in the best tacos. And it’s like this place, this place
AJV (34:17):
And back to what you said earlier, it’s like if you’re so good at your craft that you’re helping your clients get results, everything else will work.
MAL (34:28):
Yes.
AJV (34:28):
And I don’t have to have all the things. Okay. I have one more category, so I’m bouncing around a little bit. ’cause I think there’s so many good nuggets here. You mentioned this earlier, which I think is a really good takeaway for a lot of people who are listening. And so I didn’t wanna just skip over it and not come back to it. It’s incentivize your customers to help you grow your business. It’s the, you know, the difference of like, hey, whether I’m gonna pay you or I’m gonna pay marketing agencies or Facebook ads or whatever. So being selective of like, how am I gonna spend the funds that I have to help grow my business and why not market and create some incentive to my clients to refer me business. So you wanna talk about that for a sec?
MAL (35:07):
Well, the most beautiful frequency I’ve ever found for my business is for me, for you, for us, for me, for you, for us. If I have it be all about me, there is no us. And if there’s no us, there’s no long-term business. If I make it everything about you, there’s also no us
AJV (36:07):
Mm-Hmm.
MAL (37:05):
That’s incredible.
AJV (37:07):
Anyone can do that, right? It’s like, it’s just choosing on where you invest the funds, right? And it’s like, that’s your choice. So make your choice. Don’t be mad about it. But you get to make your choice. And I think that’s a really solid, great way of going, Hey, I win, you win, we win. I love my business and this is a great way for you to spread something that you love and get paid for it. I win. You win. Thus, I think that’s such a good reminder to everyone. And back to, there’s many different ways to build something that you love. Don’t be afraid to try things. Don’t be afraid to pivot. Don’t be afraid to change and adapt through the process. It is a part of finding your niche. It’s a part of finding your groove.
MAL (37:49):
Yes.
AJV (37:51):
I love that. Where should people go if they want to stay in touch with you? Like where would be like the central place that you would wanna say, Hey, if you run a, a real feel of what I talk about and, and here’s what I, I loved this conversation today. I thought, I mean I probably have like 10 bullet points that I wrote down and I usually have like five
MAL (38:29):
And the wild thing is like all the strategies work.
AJV (38:32):
Yeah.
MAL (38:33):
All of them. So it’s just none of them work for a not good product. Yeah. All of them work. When you’re in alignment, it’s just about what do you like? So even if it’s a good strategy, if you hate it, it’s not good for you. If it’s a good strategy and you love it, it’s good for you. And you tell people that’s the best way because it’s good for you. They try. It’s not good for them. So I love, I love strategy, I love trying different strategies, but from the place of if the energetics are aligned to all the strategies work. Yeah.
AJV (38:59):
And I love that too. It’s like anyone who says this is what you have to do and this is how you have to do it, it’s like, well not really. There’s a way
MAL (39:07):
For my scientific mind comes in and is like, really, let me see if I can find another way. Yeah.
AJV (39:13):
MAL (39:33):
So at this stage still, I don’t have a website. So the way is Facebook and Instagram. So you’ll either be my friend on Facebook or you follow, I have two accounts on Instagram, Melanie n Layer and Alpha Fme. And if you follow that, you’ll know when I have free masterclasses, you’ll know what programs are running. You’ll be able to read my posts that are masterclasses within themselves, watch my live streams. Like I’m, that’s where I connect with people and that’s the way to do it.
AJV (39:58):
And I will make sure to put all of the different links in the show notes ’cause she’s got her personal and Alpha F for Facebook and Instagram. So just go to the show notes and you can grab those. Connect with Melanie directly. Melanie, this was awesome. Really, really awesome, rich conversation. I’ll say that probably five more times today.
Ep 470: Passion Struck with John R. Miles
RV (00:02):
Hey, I’m so excited to introduce to you someone that has become a friend over the years just being in this space, John R. Miles. And he is the founder of a movement, I’ll call it, a movement called Passion Struck. So he is an authority on behavioral change, and we’re gonna talk some about really like the science behind behavior change. And that’s a really important thing to him. But basically all things personal growth. And he’s just a really inspiring guy. And his, he has a podcast that is an award-winning podcast. It’s called Passion Struck with John R. Miles. And he, we’re gonna talk about this too, because it’s been really impressive to see what has happened with his show. He’s had amazing, amazing guests on there. I mean, Marshall Goldsmith, Jim Quick, Gretchen Rubin, mark Hyman. You know, like so many of my friends and colleagues, lots of our brand builders, group clients Dan Pink, Dan Dan’s not a a client, but he’s a friend.
RV (00:58):
And then a lot of our brand builders, group clients, you know, Jen Gottlieb, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon it goes on and on and on and just really amazing. And so I want to hear his story, but he’s got the book coming out. Passion Struck is just coming out now. And so he has been recognized by a few different places as like one of the top alternative health podcasts. And he’s got experience in over two decades he spent in corporate and military leadership. And so anyways, he’s just a really fascinating guy and has some remarkable achievements. And I felt like you need to hear and know John Miles. So John, welcome to the show.
JRM (01:42):
Hey, Rory, it is so amazing to be here and I’ve been looking forward to this for like two weeks, so, so thankful to be here. That’s
RV (01:49):
Really great, man. I, you know, I wanna start by talking about the book ’cause I know that you’re really big on behavioral science. So tell us like, what is the idea behind Passion Struck as a movement and sort of a premise. And then I would love to hear a little bit about some of the behavioral science that is, is kind of behind your, your writing in the concept.
JRM (02:13):
Yeah, so I think a good introduction to this, and it’s how I start out the book, is one of my favorite quotes is by Henry David Thoreau. And he says that the mass men lead lives of quiet desperation. And that’s how I was living myself. Part of your teaching is we’re best positioned to serve the person that we once were, and that’s who I was. And when it happened to me, it was at what most people would’ve thought the pinnacle of my career. Here I am Fortune 50 CIO, making seven figures plus, wow, have the house, have the cars, have everything you would want. But I think what ends up happening is in the success driven society, we find ourselves in, we’re, we’re orienting our success around the wrong things in life. And what it brought me was a complete utter burnout, numbness, et cetera. And so when I found myself at that state, I tried to think using your one word problem, like what was it? And it’s, it’s not an easy thing to do. I mean, I struggled with this one word problem, but you,
RV (03:24):
You and every, every brand builders group client is, it’s such a hard, it’s like such a simple question, but so hard to answer, right? Like, what problem do you solve for your audience in one word? And, and that’s my story too, right? That’s where we came up with this. I struggled with it. I had a mentor ask me that, but it, it is hard, it’s hard to answer that. So what did you come up with?
JRM (03:43):
Well, I started coming up with things, working with my coach that turned out to be symptoms. So I came up with a apathy and, and other things. And what I figured out it was, was anti-matter unmuting the fact that we reached this point where we feel like we don’t matter to others, we don’t matter to the world, we don’t matter to ourselves. And I think it is such a profound thing because it’s literally impacting billions of people across the planet. I mean, you just look at what Gallup is saying, and there are 900 million people in 142 countries who are unfulfilled with what they’re doing day in, day out. Said another way. Tom Gilovich psychologist at Cornell just put out a study in 2018 examining thousands of people about their biggest regret in life. And it wasn’t our biggest mistakes, it was the would haves, the should haves that we could have accomplished. It’s, it’s the lack of pursuing our ideal life. So passion struck is really about that pursuit. How do you become one of the five percenters? How do you 10 x your life so that you live it in the most fulfilled way you possibly can?
RV (04:57):
Mm-Hmm,
RV (05:44):
And the people, the mission-driven messengers who are in our community and, and, and, and not just our clients, but the ones who listen to this show, finding their passion is a huge part of building their personal brand. It’s a huge part of breaking through Sheehan’s Wall, as we call it. It’s, it’s a huge part of m making it as a successful business. Like making your personal brand into a successful business is so closely aligned with nailing and finding and being clear on your passion. So how do we find that passion? I mean, I think if people know when they don’t have it. So how do we, how do we find it?
JRM (06:24):
Well, man, Rory, I I’ve got a great story for you. So I know you and aj are are both religious as, as am I and as I was
RV (06:36):
At this, yeah, we’re not just religious. I mean, we’re hardcore Bible thump and Jesus freaks, right?
JRM (07:09):
So what I found is the biggest barrier to truly understanding what your pap passion and purpose are on this planet is that we don’t listen to that inner voice because we’re so distracted by what’s going on around us that we’re not really in tune to what it’s really calling us to do. And I remember interviewing Andreas Wooder, not sure if you know him, but he Uhuh he started the business school at Catholic University in in dc. But he was just this guy who went in, he was in his late teens, was completely listless. He had no direction and ends up applying to be a Swiss guard, never thought he would get it. And he ends up getting selected and being one of the Swiss guards for Pope John Paul ii. And he told me that Pope John Paul II was just amazing in that when he was with you, you felt like nothing else in the world mattered.
JRM (08:09):
And he became this incredible mentor to him. But he told him that, Andreas, your issue is that you’re not discovering your uniqueness. He said, God’s pursuit for you is he’s put you here to solve a problem that only you can solve with the skill sets that he’s given you. And it is your life’s journey to find this uniqueness and then exploit it in serving others, which is basically the whole message that you and AJ teach. But as I was looking at this for myself, I had been getting this inner voice for a while, but I didn’t understand how to process it because it was telling me, John, I want you to go out and help the lonely, the hopeless, the beaten, the board, the battered, the broken. And here I am sitting as CIO of this company thinking, what the heck am I supposed to do with this?
JRM (09:03):
And I don’t think this finding your purpose is something that you just flip a light switch on. To me, it all started when I really doubled down into my mindfulness practice, got rid of the noise, and really focused on self-awareness and self-compassion. And I started really leaning into what did those words mean? And that’s kind of how I came to this whole conclusion that it’s really about people not feeling like they matter. And that’s why we have that mental health issues. We have so many people feeling lonely, helpless, whatever you have, but then it’s, you can’t use that as your marketing blueprint, of course. So it really took me, once I understood that’s what I was trying to do, it was then how do you approach this with the audience in a way that it resonates with them? And so for me, that became the power of intentionality. How do you create an intentional life?
RV (10:00):
Hmm.
RV (10:01):
So if you, if you walk down that and you go, I love that idea of intentionality, sounds like a uniqueness, what we would call a uniqueness, right? Is to go, okay, the cured insignificance is intentionality. Where do you start with that intentionality? Like what’s, what are the, what are the first things that we should be intentional about that will lead us towards finding that passion? Or like you’re saying, like we believe it’s a divine design of each person. Just like kind of what Pope John Paul, the, the second was saying there is like, we believe that it is a part of how we are divinely designed is to, is is to to serve a purpose. So if if someone’s listening right now and they’re kind of feeling that way insignificant, or they’re burnt out, or they’re realizing like they’re just not loving what they’re doing, what are some of the things they should be intentional about first?
JRM (10:59):
Well, this really goes into the core aspects of my book, and let me just set this up for you. So this thing just didn’t come out of thin air, and I think it’s important for the listener to understand that I have always been passionate about leadership. It’s what led me to ultimately going to the Naval Academy instead of going to other public universities I got into. But as I was going through, I really started to, to look at, you know, what made some of the greatest Naval and Marine Corps leaders of all time. Like, what allows someone like General Stan McChrystal to do what he does and why do some of us fall short? And it really launched me on this, what is now become a nine year journey of examining over 750 remarkable individuals about what allows them to break through so that they are living this ideal life that they always aspire to.
JRM (12:00):
And and some of your clients are, are doing this. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who you mentioned Jen Gottlieb, are, are two great examples. Louis Howes is another one. And what I found was initially about 30 core things. And as I looked deeper and deeper, I boiled it down to that there are 12 principles that they all seem to follow. And it just so happens is I went further and further into behavior science that all 12 of these align with principles of behavior science. So the first principle that I talk about is you need to become a mission angler. And in each one of my chapters, I tell the story by examining people who have perfected this. So in this chapter, I cover Jim McKelvy, who founded Square and Gary V. And Life Crafting is something that I talk to a lot with Hal Hirschfield, who’s a behavior scientist at Anderson School of Business at UCLA.
JRM (12:58):
And it’s really about, if you think about the topic of this chapter, mission Angler, anyone who’s ever been a fisherman, and I live here in Tampa Bay, it’s not as if I get into a boat and just arbitrarily go 20 miles into the Gulf and hope that wherever I put the anchor down, I’m gonna catch fish. Typically, you’re looking at tidal patterns and you’re looking at moon phases, and you’re looking at what’s, what fish are in season right now, and where do they typically migrate to during different times of the day and moon phases. But so many of us, we don’t craft our lives the same way. We leave it up to chance instead of being deliberate about the outcomes that we want. And so one of the things that I talk about is that you need to craft the life you want. It’s, it’s that difference between your actual self, your odd self, and this ideal self that we aspire to become.
JRM (13:56):
And it’s how do you close that gap between where you are now to where you want to be and do it as Ben Hardy says, through the gains, by measuring yourself against who you used to be over time. And at the core of this, Rory, is, is aligning the actions that you’re doing with your intentions, with your aspirations. And people get this causality wrong. They think they’re all, they think that they’re standalone things, and they’re absolutely integrated, because if you’re not being intentional in alignment with your core values, your core beliefs, then it’s gonna lead you astray. You’re not gonna find yourself in those critical moments making the right decisions. And to me, that’s at the crux of having intentionality.
RV (14:46):
I love that. So walk me through that again. You said a align the action, align your actions with your intentions and aspirations, like you’re talking about the relationship there. So are they sequential or like, is is it a hierarchy or like, what’s the, what’s the connection point between each of those?
JRM (15:05):
So the way I describe it in the book is that you have passion, perseverance, and intentionality as the foundation for this. And I looked at Angela Duckworth’s work on grit, passion, and perseverance. And those things kind of make up what constitute your actions. But when you couple that with how you’re intentionally undertaking those actions and then doing it through the lens of your dreams or aspirations, it’s then that alignment of A plus B plus C equals six that ends up compounding as these things come together. So another way to look at this is something that I often talk about is oftentimes we become our own visionary arsonist. And I’m not even, I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard me talk about this before. No,
RV (16:00):
I’ve not, I’ve not heard this, but this is, this seems interesting.
JRM (16:04):
Well, what I mean by this is it’s really self-sabotage. We arson the very things that we want to create in our lives. We arson the growth and achievement because we inadvertently undermine our own progress. It’s akin to programming a destination into your GPS, but then repeatedly taking detours that lead you farther away. And yet we find ourselves doing this all the time because of perfectionism or setting unrealistic goals, procrastination, negative self-talk, odent behaviors, you know, you, you name it. But the problem with this is that it’s taking us further and further away from where we want to go. And this is an absolute great way to look at the synergy of action, intention, and aspiration. Because if you disrupt their harmonious interplay, that’s how this visionary arsonist comes into effect. Because what ends up happening is they’re misdirecting their actions. While they may be engaged in an activity, the actions are not in sync with their intentions or aspirations. So the actions, instead of being in the present moment of anchoring yourself intentionally to them, they become erratic and misaligned. So that, I think that’s a way of looking at it, is you’re, you’re ending up ha wanting to have this alignment, but you keep doing things underneath it that sabotage one element or another of it, and all of a sudden you’re halting your own progress. Mm-Hmm,
RV (17:39):
Yeah. It, I think one of the things that, that ha has stuck with me, I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is that it’s just like the reason that most people don’t succeed or have ultra performance is not because of a technical skill. It’s not like a tactical thing they’re missing it’s ’cause of a mental belief system that they have, you know, that’s somehow working against them. And, and it’s like this program, like you’re saying, it’s like a faulty map program that just is, is detouring them, is, is, is pulling them off track. And
JRM (18:59):
Yeah, so I mean, to give this some backdrop to the listener is it’s not as if four years ago I came here and I had this incredible brand, like Mel Robbins has it. I had come out of this prolonged career being an executive where the majority of the companies I worked for, the last thing they wanted me to have was the personal brand they wanted me to represent and be the face of the company. Now, thankfully, a lot of this is changing, and I highly encourage people to start their personal brand as early as they possibly can. But I remember starting to have these ideas for the book, and I started shopping it to different agents, and the agents all came back to me and said, you know, a how do you know any of this is gonna resonate? What audiences have you tested it on?
JRM (19:47):
And three, how are you even gonna sell it because you don’t have a brand that anyone identifies you with? And so it really put me in a place where I was thinking about how do I get the word out there? And so I started to really use your content pyramid, and I started playing around first with getting blog posts out and social media posts, just testing the ideas. And I was getting some traction, but not as much as I needed. And so I started to really examine podcast, and I started to, to really listening, listen to maybe 15 to 20 different podcasts a week. And before I knew it, I’d probably listened to a hundred different podcasts. And from that I figured out people who were doing it really well, who then became the guidepost for me. And I became really intentional about it.
JRM (20:40):
I know a lot of times people who do podcasts after a season or 10 to 20 episodes, they stop. And I knew I didn’t want to do this if it was that type of endeavor. So I really was careful about how I thought about it when I started it. So when I launched it, I knew I was going in, I matter what for a year. And no matter what the results were, I was making this a long-term decision. And I, I have to tell you, when I first ended up launching it, I think, like many people, it wasn’t resonating the way I thought it would. It would, like, not everyone is a Mark Manson who launches their podcast, and all of a sudden it’s in the top 30 of podcasts. That’s not how things happened to me. It started out with me getting 50 or 60 downloads. And the funny thing is, they weren’t even from family, family and friends,
RV (21:38):
Common, thanks everybody for the support. I really appreciate it.
JRM (21:42):
But what I ended up really coming to the conclusion of about five to six months in was that I wasn’t being authentic in the way I was hosting it. I had seen great podcast hosts, whether it’s, you know, ed Millette or Lewis or Jay Shetty, or Dax or Mel or whoever you want to say. And, and I was trying to be, I think too much of them instead of really carving out my own lane. And it was really when I started to do the entire podcast through the lens of how do you create this intentional life? And interviewing people through that lens that I started to see this traction emerge. And then it, it’s like one action, as Lydia FiNet says, it’s like action leads to action. So the more I doubled down on this, the more I kept interviewing people through this lens, it was like word started to spread.
JRM (22:35):
And I remember the first person of notoriety, notoriety, I can’t even the first person of significance. I, to me, every guest is significant. But to me, when I got Susan Kane on the podcast, that was like a defining moment because it kind of established some credibility with what I was doing. And from her, I was able to book Dan Pink, and then it led to Gretchen Rubin and then others. But I’ve been very mindful that just ’cause you have a big name doesn’t mean you have the best wisdom. And so what I try to bring on the show is a combination of these big guests, which I think you have to have. But I also try to bring on a lot of what I call everyday heroes, whose stories people can really relate to because they’re stuck just like we all are. And then they find their way of being unstuck. And I think people can relate to their messages.
RV (23:32):
Uhhuh
JRM (23:41):
It’ll be three years when the book comes out. So Uhhuh,
RV (23:45):
Uhhuh
JRM (24:09):
Yeah. So I started out with doing one interview, one solo per week, and I did that for the first year. And I found out I was having so much interest of people being on the show that I had a backlog. And so I thought, I’ll get out of this backlog by doing an additional episode for a short period of time. Well, that became permanent, and now I find myself in this s backlog again. I mean, we’re booked out right now till till June. So I’m trying to think of what’s the next evolution of this, because I’m not sure I, I want to add additional days to this format. But there are so many great people who are coming to me. I, I, I hate saying no to ’em. So, so right now I do Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Right. The, these next couple weeks, it’s actually gonna be four because if I tell someone they’ve got a book coming out, I have them on the show I’m gonna get it out the week their book launches. So I do a couple bonus episodes here and there.
RV (25:13):
Wow.
JRM (25:14):
So like, yeah.
RV (25:16):
How do you do how have you been doing, it’s interesting that you’ve been doing like the solo episodes from the beginning. How, how do you come up with the content for those and you know, like I, I think they’re all your, yours are like 20 minutes roughly, right? Usually they’re around like a little more than 20 minutes. Like how do you come up with what to talk about for 20 minutes now? And I think this ties in obviously to your passion, right? Is if someone, and that’s why I think it’s so important to personal brands. ’cause It’s like if you nail your passion, then hopefully you can talk, you know, about it in a very deep way. And but I’m just curious, like, have you struggled with the solo episodes or how do you out, how do you outline those or think about ’em?
JRM (25:56):
Yeah, I’ve, I try to do ’em through storytelling as much as I can. So I, I try to do ’em as if I was delivering a keynote speech. So I try to set up the big idea that I want to talk about. I then try to express it in a story either about myself or a person I’m talking about. Then I try to hunker down on, on two or three big ideas, go through ’em, and then kind of give a summary. And a key takeaway is the format that I’ve, I’ve kind of come to. But yeah, I think I’ve done 140 solo episodes now. So putting out that many solo episodes and for them to be unique is, is absolutely, it takes a lot of effort. And each one of these, if you think about it, it’s almost like you’re writing a 3000 to 4,000 word speech a week.
JRM (26:46):
So I read a ton. I read probably a hundred books a year, and a lot of the inspiration for the topics comes from things that I’m reading. I read Scott Berry Coffin’s book transcend, and I think I probably got 20 ideas just out of reading his book. You know, I I, I got a whole bunch out of, you know, let’s say hell Air Rod’s Miracle Morning or Jim Quick’s Limitless. I mean, but the important thing is it’s, you can have the idea. I mean, they’re talking about it through their voice, but I try to passion struck it. So I’m trying to share something that I find interesting for my community, but I put it through the lens of what we talk about on the show. So that’s kind of how I come up with it. But we, we have kind of a, a rolling list of 50 to to 70 different ideas that we’ve thought about for, for content.
JRM (27:44):
And then we kind of just think about what we’ve talked about. Because something that you’ve taught me that I think is in extremely important is I like to teach things randomly. I think I put the information out there in a random way because I want people to keep coming back because they never know what they’re gonna hear. Like this week alone, I’ve got Mark Hyman talking about the future of medicine. I have Dr. Aliza Pressman talking about parenting, and I’ve got Mike Mcic talking about being all in. I mean, there are three completely different topics. And then my last one, my solo this week is on quiet desperation. So I try to just make these things so that people keep coming back because they never know what they’re gonna get. And I don’t like doing things too habitual from a content perspective.
RV (28:37):
Interesting, interesting. Have you done anything to get to try to get people to leave reviews? ’cause I know you also have a ton of podcast reviews and that’s you know, that’s super impressive, like thousands and thousands of reviews. Which do you, do you, is there anything that you’ve done there that gets people to, you know, excited to do that, or not really?
JRM (29:00):
I mean, I just constantly ask for it. I mean, I think sometimes it’s one of those things that you, you’ve gotta be, you can’t be bashful about asking for things. So I ask my guests and I ask, I put it out in every episode, and I ask on social media, and I ask every single opportunity that I can because that social proof is extremely important. I mean, the fact that we have 16,005 star reviews in the US I mean, tells you something. It, it, so to me it’s extremely important to cultivate that. And so it’s something that we’ve just been mindful of since we started the show.
RV (29:40):
Yeah, there’s that intentionality again. And I think that’s an interesting part of it that people don’t just realize is like, Hey, you have to actually ask for them to do it. And it’s a measure of how engaged your community is too. And it’s encouraging. ’cause What’s interesting, the podcast format is you, like, you never hear the other people, right? You have like a conversation with your guests, but there, you know, there could be hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people listening, but you don’t get feedback from them other than like the review. Like that’s really the way that you, you, you get to interact with people. So it’s interesting, you’ve been so intentional about that and asking and asking for the reviews. So anyways, I think, I think this is so powerful helping people find their passion and having a plan for it.
RV (30:26):
These 12, these 12 principles that you talk about in the passion struck book, I I think that aligns with personal brands because if you really nail your passion the all of a sudden you’ve got something to dedicate your life to and a and a and a cause to build a personal brand around and build a business out of, and most importantly, a mission to live. And you know, something to, to, to serve. I, I have one other question for you before I do that. Where do you want people to go, John, to like, get a copy of the passion struck book or like stay connected with you and, and, and learn more about what you’re up to?
JRM (31:04):
Yeah, Rory, the best place for them to go is all things passion struck Central, which [email protected]. And if they purchase the book before the end of the publishing week, I have curated over $300 worth of free giveaways specifically for the audience eBooks, I, I did a master course. You, if you do it this, if you do it sooner, you get a free access to the, the first chapter of the book and other things. But passions struck.com is the best place to go.
RV (31:33):
I like it. I like it. So the last thing I wanted to ask you about before we turned on the recording, you talked about, you were telling me, you were about to tell me about the Hockey Stick moment. So you were, I think you were talking about at, I guess maybe there was at some point you had like a tipping point for your personal brand or, or the show. Do you, so do you remember what that was? I’d love to, I’d love to have you finish that story.
JRM (31:57):
Well, I think it was a combination of both. So I was working with Hillary at the time and Hillary Billings, and I was at this point where we were, this
RV (32:08):
Is a brand builders group with one of our strategists. So you got to, so Hillary was your private strategist.
JRM (32:13):
Hillary was my private strategy, and I was at this point where I was thinking about launching other things, but I’m one of these people that, in that, I think when you dilute your focus, you end up basically disintegrating other things that you’re working on. And the podcast hadn’t gotten to the point that I had wanted to, and I knew I was at this crossroads where I was either gonna double down on it and figure out like, what is causing it to stagnate or I was gonna jump to this new thing and I decided to double down on it. And that’s when I really started to examine how I was doing it, not from really the cadence of how I was putting out the content, but in how I was being deliberate about how I was curating it, how I was asking questions to the guest, who I was bringing on, why I wanted them on.
JRM (33:08):
And I really started putting myself in my audience’s shoes. Like, if you are in this life right now where you feel stuck, or maybe you’re a high achiever and you’re feeling burned out, or you don’t know how to make that next leap, like what is advice that we can start giving on this show to help you fundamentally change your game? Because as you know, most people, I mean, I love the way you say this, people don’t pay for information. They pay for the application of it. I didn’t want to just put out information and have no one do anything with it. I wanted to start putting out information that people could live by. And so I really started to intertwine not just people talking about it, but the science behind it, so that if we’re talking about a discipline, bringing on experts who can then lay in the science for why it works, to me became a powerful one-two punch. And when I became more authentic, starting leaning into really serving my audience and making that the focus, so it, the whole thing became about, it’s almost like doing a keynote speech where you’re not up there serving yourself, you’re serving the listeners. That’s what I did. And quickly, over time, everything changed. When I leaned more and more into my uniqueness, it, the hockey stick happened. And, you know, I, we’ve had now 36 months of consistent growth on the show, so.
RV (34:38):
Wow. That’s really, really cool, man. Well, we’re so excited for you. I’m so proud of what you’re doing. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I admire what you do. I, I love what’s happened with the show. And so we’ll put a link to passion shuck.com where people can go check out the free resources, check out the book, check out the podcast. John, thanks for helping people find their passion. And keep going brother. And we we’re cheering for you. We wish you the best. Well,
JRM (35:07):
Rory, it’s such an honor to be on your show and I just hope the rest of the people who are listening to this, you know, create that ideal life that they want because that’s what we’re all put on here. Earth here to do. So start doing it today.
RV (35:21):
Amen. Me too. Me too brother. Me too.
Ep 468: 3 Steps To Help Turn Your Audience Into Your Community with Lindsey Schwartz
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here, and I’m so excited to introduce a new friend and I say a new friend because although we have dozens and dozens of mutual friends, somehow Lindsey and I have just now gotten to meet. But I believe it was God’s timing and super serendipitous because it’s super in alignment with what we’ve been hearing from the Brand Builders Group community, and all of our listeners on the influential Personal Brand podcast. So, I’m so excited to introduce you to Lindsey Schwartz. I’m going to give her a formal introduction in just a second. But first and foremost, I wanna tell you why you need to stick around for this podcast and how you know if this episode is for you. Number one, if you are in a season of trying to figure out how to build engaged community around your personal brand and your business.
AJV (00:52):
Well, this is, this is a custom designed episode for you. Number two, if you’re figuring out how to get more engagement from your community online and or offline, this would be an episode for you to episode for you. Number three, if you’ve been thinking to yourself, I wanna create live event experiences, and you’re wondering, should I do that? Why would I wanna do that? How would I do that? And are you crazy enough? Do you do that
AJV (01:45):
And how do we stay in touch with our community when we don’t live nearby and we don’t see you all the time? So that is what we’re gonna talk about today. And if that sounds appealing to you, then don’t miss a second. Stick around to the very end, and you are going to be glad that you did. Now, with all of that said let me introduce you to Lindsey Schwartz. I will read you an official bio, but I know just even by reading this, there are millions of things that she has left off in this because I know, ’cause I’ve heard so many amazing things about her for so long that she is very much downplaying all of her awesomeness in this bio. But I’ll tell you that she is an author, she is an investor, she is a master community builder, and the founder of Powerhouse Women, which is fiercely committed to supporting other women, which I love. But she also invests her time in mentoring women and girls of all ages. And I think that’s amazing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a high school student or a, you know, powerhouse entrepreneur, the power of just mentorship and leadership is ever present and all things that you’re doing. And I’m so excited to learn from you today and to ask you questions, and most importantly, introduce you to our awesome community. So, Lindsey, welcome to the show.
LS (03:01):
I am so thrilled to be here. I’m a longtime listener of the podcast, so this just feels super fun.
AJV (03:07):
I am so excited. And one of the things that I would love to do before we get into the nitty gritty details, since we are newer friends and you’re new to our audience, I would love for you to just kind of give a high level background of where you started and how you got to where you are and what you’re doing today.
LS (03:26):
Mm. I am so grateful that you asked this part of the story because the further removed I get from it, I think people see what powerhouse women is today. And it’s easy to forget that everybody has that day one. Everybody has that season where you’re figuring it out as you go. And powerhouse women really started when I decided to do something that challenged me, probably for the first time in my adult life. And when I tell you that I had lived a very safe life, I had lived a life that didn’t involve much risk, it didn’t involve getting outta my comfort zone. And it was tricky because I am the person that can give 60, 70% of my full potential, and I can create results that look really shiny on the outside. But I think you get to a point where you realize that personal growth is such a fundamental need.
LS (04:20):
Our own evolution is such a fundamental need that that life starts to feel really small if you’re not stepping into things that really challenge you. For me, this season really came to a head about seven years into building a, a little network marketing business that I built. And, and it was really successful. So I shouldn’t really even call it little, but I was in this season of restlessness, just praying for direction, praying for an answer. And, and, you know, I think we, we often pray prayers that we’re not ready for the answer for
LS (05:07):
And I published consistently one article per year because I was just so afraid of putting myself out there. You know, they say publish consistent content. So every year I would put out one blog
LS (06:05):
It really is already within us. It’s within the seeds of these dreams and visions that are put on our heart for a reason. And the book was released, and my, I had some support in, in the publishing process. My editor and publisher now, good friend, said, you should do a book launch event. That’s, that’s what people do to promote their book. And I said, okay. So the very first Powerhouse Women event was really just a day supposed to be about celebrating this book and this message. And I’ll never forget, you know, and we’re gonna dig into what a big production it’s become. Now. I’ll never forget at the end, women said, okay, well, what’s next? And I was just kinda like, goodbye
LS (06:58):
And realizing that there were so many others who were in a similar season. They just knew they were meant for more, but they were stopping themselves because of fear, or self-doubt, or all the things that now we know are so normal. That is actually the price of admission. That’s how, you know you’re pursuing something that’s, that’s worth pursuing. So, fast forward, here we are seven years later. I know we’re gonna get into all of that, but the beginnings of the story are very humble. I had no clue what I was doing. I was really operating on faith and on this, this knowing that I couldn’t keep playing small and hiding my gifts anymore.
AJV (07:37):
Hmm. I love that. One of my favorite quotes that I keep getting fed to by the Instagram algorithm is let this year be a God did a year. And I love stories like yours ’cause it’s like, you can take no credit. And it’s like, it’s like to give him all the glory of, if we just step back and step into faith, it’s amazing what he’ll do without us
LS (08:38):
Well, I think on the heels of what you just shared, I thought I was living my life by faith up until that point, but I, I realized that faith doesn’t actually enter the picture until you step beyond what you know yourself to be capable of. So here I was operating within what I could control and what I, I wanted to control the outcome. I wanted to control people’s perception of me. I wanted to control so many variables of it. And I had this tight grip on my story and my purpose and my life. And it wasn’t until I opened that up and I said, okay, I’m gonna step way out, way beyond what I know myself to be capable of. And now the lesson I learned in that is that that was where all the magic lies. That’s where the miracles lie. You don’t actually start to scratch, scratch the surface of what you’re capable of until you step into that feeling of, can I really do this?
LS (09:34):
So even still now, I know that my next miracle, my next breakthrough is waiting for me. Just beyond, like, if you imagine kinda like looking over the horizon, it’s, it’s just over what we can see. Mm-Hmm. And that’s easy to say, and it sounds really cute, and we’ll probably all be fed a quote like that on Instagram this week. But it’s a whole other thing. Let, let’s just be real. It’s a whole other thing when like, your heart is pounding and your palms are sweating and you’re like, am I really about to do this? Which kind of brings us to, I know we’re gonna get into the just the community element today. I think that’s why community is absolutely essential, because I’m not strong enough to do this on my own. And I, I don’t know many people who are, I just think we’re, we’re really designed to create in community.
AJV (10:18):
I love that. So that’s such a good transition to talk about community. And so I would love to know, it’s like, what would you say is the difference? Because people always talk about my audience, my audience, but an audience and a community are really different. Yeah. And so how would you define like, here’s my audience versus here’s my community.
LS (10:39):
It’s, it’s such a important distinction to make, and I’m sure other people would have their own definitions, but I remember when I started to be asked to teach on this, and I really had to sit step back and go, well, I don’t know, we’re just do, I’m just doing what I’m doing. I couldn’t even tell you what it is. But the moment I sat down, it really kind of just downloaded right there in that moment that I think we, we confuse an audience with a community, and both are necessary. And I have strategies for building both in my business, but building our audience is really step one. It’s really it. When I think about building my audience, I’m, I’m answering the question for myself. How can I get more people to connect with me? Whether that’s me as a personal brand or me as a business brand?
LS (11:23):
And that’s important. We want people to know about you and know about how amazing you are and how you can serve them. But most people are stopping there. They think, okay, I’m just gonna get that attention and convert that into sales. And you can do that. That, that’s beautiful. It’s a, you know, that’s a whole strategy. But what I predict and what I know from my own personal experience is when you take it a level deeper and you start to ask a better question, once you have that attention, you have a way to bring new people into your world. It’s asking a question of not how can I get them to connect with me? Now they’ve done that. How can you get more of those people to connect with each other? And that’s where community really starts to form. And it’s, I mean, it is the most valuable thing that you can build for your brand is a connected, engaged community.
LS (12:13):
And even when people hear engaged community, I think they imagine, oh, when I post something on Instagram, they’re talking back to me. No, no, no. What I talk about when I say engaged community is I’ll use, you know, my own story as a, just a mini example. We will launch, you know, event tickets. And I’m actually not really selling that event. It’s the people in our community saying, Hey, five friends, you have to come with me. Yes, buy your ticket. I’m gonna send you the link. But it’s taken a lot of intentional cultivating to get to that point. So when you have an engaged community, you know, because you have these, it’s just like this natural built in almost affiliate marketing channel. You have these referrals coming in, you have this brand loyalty that actually can’t be taken away and it can’t be matched. It’s so deep. Community is just so much deeper. But it really starts with that question, how do I get more of the people who are following me to connect with each other?
AJV (13:13):
I love that. And it’s so true. But I love that distinction of building an audience is helping people connect with you. Building a community is helping them connect to each other. And that’s awesome. So I would love for you to talk about how do you do both of those
LS (13:48):
Well, it’s interesting having you ask that question in that way, because what I realize is we, we actually focus primarily on building the community element. And that inherently has helped to also grow our audience. I think audience growth, and you have so many amazing resources even on this podcast to really dive deep into that. You know, it’s as simple as really knowing who is the person you’re speaking to, what, what works in terms of getting them to come, you know, and, and wanna engage with your account to listen to your podcast. So we just pay a lot of it. It’s kind of boring. We pay attention to metrics and numbers and we’re like, oh, wow. When we do a podcast about this topic, we tend to have more downloads. Or when we post quotes on our social media, those are actually what get us new eyeballs, new followers.
LS (14:34):
So there’s, I, I think the strategies for how to build an audience are, you know, there’s so many different resources out there, but for us, just really paying attention to numbers, metrics, what works. I’m most excited to talk a little bit about like, the strategy behind the community. ’cause I think this is kind of where it’s, there’s not many people really teaching this. Hmm. But when we, when I really sat down, like I said, to kind of put it into a formula that I could gift people, that I could help them have the success that we’ve had, I realized that there’s, there’s these three crucial elements. But if you skip the first one, the other two don’t matter. Okay. So the first one is, there’s this culture, there’s an energy and a magnetism. And even if you, you know, go to the powerhouse Women page today, or you, you meet someone, I, I always say that the true test of culture is if you meet someone who’s associated with that brand.
LS (15:26):
So if I were at a party and I meet someone who I know has worked with Rory and aj, because I follow their brand, I love their brand, I immediately assume some things about that person. That’s the culture. Whether you’ve intentionally created that. And if you haven’t, then now is the perfect time to start. Or if you haven’t, it’s, it’s really what do people know about your brand, whether or not you’re telling them that, what are your customers, the people who engage with you, what are they saying about your brand? But it starts with the, the easiest place to start. So if this is kind of like, woo, okay, that sounds deep. And where do I even begin to really cultivate that culture? I think the most important question any of us can ask if we’re really serious about building community is the question of, well, what do I want to unify people around?
LS (16:18):
What’s gonna be the connective tissue that brings people together? Because you can unify people around all sorts of things. You can unify them against, we all dislike this thing, this topic, this person, people unify around that you watch it happen all the time, or you can unify people around a common mission, a common cause. But what I found, I’ll just give you the cheat sheet for what I believe is the most, the most powerful thing to unify people around, especially those of you that are building more personal brands, is who do they wanna become? What’s the aspirational identity that they wanna become? And that, that’s essentially what we’ve done within powerhouse women is, you know, there’s this, people would probably use all different words to define it, but there is this mission-driven, heart-centered, collaborative version of ourselves and, you know, kind of like this future higher self that we’re all on this, this journey to step into. And so defining that culture, what you’re unifying people around is number one. Then there’s a whole strategy around,
AJV (17:30):
Before you go on, ’cause I wanna, okay,
LS (17:38):
Agreed.
AJV (17:39):
It’s so focused on where do I get the people? Where do I find the people that they forget? It’s like if you don’t know who you’re trying to attract and why you’re trying to attract them and why they would stay, right? It’s like you’re missing the core element of what really builds community. And so Mm-Hmm,
LS (18:17):
Yes ex, it’s exactly what you guys teach.
AJV (18:20):
And that is so true. It’s like if you met somebody that was associated with brand builders group, like we know, like hopefully they have this, this, this and this, because that would be an extension of the culture that we’re trying to create. And hopefully they wouldn’t have X, Y, and Z and there’s nothing wrong with X, Y, and Z. It’s just not what we represent. It’s, there’s a, there’s a community for that person. It’s just not here. And I think a huge part of that is knowing you gotta know who you are and who you’re trying to attract, so that when you find them, you’re like, that’s you. And they know that too. So I love that. Yeah. And then the second piece is, who is the aspirational pers the aspirational person they want to become. And if you have a whole bunch of people going after the same thing in the right direction, it will multiply.
AJV (19:08):
Because then it’s like they become your sales force, which is kind of what you said earlier. And I love that. And I don’t wanna skip over that. ’cause I think these are the types of things that people skip over and the plight of urgency to get it done. Mm-Hmm.
LS (19:47):
Yes. So from the very beginning, the motto within powerhouse women is we’re not meant to do business or life alone. So what we’re unifying people around is this belief that we are better together and not just as like a platitude of women supporting women, which is beautiful. There’s something wrong with that. But I, and, and this is very much the truth today. I want people to feel that when they walk in the room, I want them to feel it when they engage with someone that they meet from the community. It’s, it’s different and people feel it. So it, you know, what you’re unifying people around is, is so much more than words. It, it’s, it’s something that it takes time to, to really cultivate this, but the depth of it should be felt Mm-Hmm. Before you even have to say the words. So really that connection and true collaboration almost just seems like, not a strong enough word, but the belief that we’re better together.
LS (20:45):
And, and the aspirational identity is, is kind of what I described before of this woman who knows she’s meant for more and wants a space that it’s safe to be just as unapologetic about how big her dreams are and whatever size big really means for her. ’cause We all have different, different callings in life. But she, she feels the sense that she’s meant for more. She wants a place that it’s safe to be unapologetic about the big dreams, but equally safe to be really honest about the parts that are challenging and hard. There can be space for both. ’cause I believe when we’re, when we give ourselves the freedom to be just as honest about both and really open and unapologetic sharing both, that’s where our true power lies and where we really see that connection and multiplication of sharing in each other’s gifts really, really comes to life. So that would be my answer today. And there’s, you know, I think that’s important to know too. I’m constantly getting to know my own community. And my community is constantly evolving. So this isn’t something that you write down day one of starting your business. This, this should be something that evolves as your mission and your purpose evolves. And mine has,
AJV (21:58):
I love that so much. And I think too, just knowing that it does evolve and so whatever you said it as today, it’s like, let it organically change and evolve as things grow and progress. And that’s okay. ’cause It makes different, likely will look different, you know, from where you are today, seven years ahead, which I’m positively sure all of the things we’re gonna talk about have gone through an evolution process. Okay. So that’s number one I love. I just thought that was so powerful. I wanted to stop to make sure everyone got that. Yes. Okay. So that’s number two.
LS (22:29):
Well, and I, and I definitely wasn’t trying to steamroll and, and jump into number two because what I, what I said at the beginning is give yourself time to sit with and marinate in this first piece. And, and I think that’s the other thing I just wanna make sure to mention is I wasn’t clear about those things in the first couple of years, but what I was really dedicated to was constantly gathering feedback. And I would, I mean, I, I would set up one-on-one Zoom calls with, with women who would come to our events and, and just for 15 minutes and like really hear their heart. So the way that this started to form was by getting together, like, just communing with the people who, who were in, in some way or another really resonating with, with the message. So it, it took me some time to even get really clear.
LS (23:21):
I would say I remember so vividly it was, it was our third annual event. So first one was in 2017. In 2019, all of a sudden I felt like something clicked in. And that was after two years of building this community, listening to people not even really monetizing it yet, other than the event which was essentially just, you know, paying for itself barely. It was two years of cultivating this. So I want, I wanna make sure to, to state that piece. The, the second part, the second pillar of, of what it really takes to build not just an engaged community, but a profitable one, is that connection piece. And, and that’s the connection where you intentionally create ways for people to connect with each other. And, and this goes like to such a deep human need this. And, and if you look at the, the hierarchy of needs right above food, shelter, and water, like things that are actually necessary for our survival is a feeling of belonging.
LS (24:19):
Mm-Hmm.
LS (25:17):
Like it’s a direct conversation between us and them. We do this on our social media channels. And my favorite little tip to give is, you know, do you use your Instagram captions to encourage connection between each other? Or do you use your captions to encourage connection with you? Now we use both, right? So a call to action if I want someone to engage with me is, you know, tell me what you think about this. Or we’ll post about a podcast and say, you know, have you ever experienced this? We’re asking them to talk back to us, but take in another step further and instead create captions maybe once a week that in call people to engage with each other. So we’ll do things like, hey, our motto here is, you’re not meant to do business or life alone. And we believe that the answer to anything you need is just one or two, you know, introductions away, or one or two bold asks away.
LS (26:08):
So in the comments, you know, comment below one need that you have in your business right now, and then go through the comments and see if there’s someone else that you could be the answer to their need. And we get people to engage with each other. A even simpler way to do this, this is like one of my favorite things to do it either in Instagram comments, or you can do this on Zoom calls, is we’ll just say, Hey, we’re gonna have everybody drop, you know, an emoji in the comments below. And all I want you to do is go and follow and DM the person who commented right above you. We’re gonna use this thread for you to make two new friends right away. You just send one message, you’re gonna receive one message. Little things like that, all of a sudden start to position you as sort of this, this place where people know they can come to your brand and they’re gonna meet like-minded people.
LS (26:56):
It’s no longer just about you and connecting with you as the brand. That’s gonna happen anyway. If I know that I’m gonna get a core human need met when I am interacting with your brand, I don’t even need to worry about people falling in love with the brand. That’s just gonna happen by default. So that connection piece, those are just two really easy examples for how you can start to build connection. Now, of course once you’ve gotten really clear, like, well, what do you wanna build connection around? ’cause It’s gonna be a different, different conversation. If I’m building co connection around business and entrepreneurship and, you know, supporting one another than it is if I’m building connection around gluten-free living and, and healthy eating or clean, you know, a clean lifestyle. So I think, again, starting with that most important piece, but connection is an action word. So how are you encouraging people and telling them to take the action that you wanna help them take?
AJV (27:55):
That’s so good. Because the truth is, as much as people say, I want community, they truly do need to be told how to build it. Yes. How to involved, what to do. It’s like, just give me some steps. Right? And so the easier you make it, it’s more likely they are to follow through on it. It’s like whoever’s above you, this is what you do. And it’s like, oh, okay, I can do that. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (28:41):
And it’s like, man, this is hard enough to do with other people.
LS (29:23):
Mm. It’s so, it’s, it’s so simple that it’s easy to overlook
AJV (29:29):
LS (30:05):
AJV (31:02):
I love that. I think that’s so good. So another question I have, wait, was there anything else? Were you gonna add anything else? So there
LS (31:09):
The third piece, and we won’t even really dive into this because unless you’re doing the first two, the third one doesn’t matter. But because like I said, there’s, there’s this journey. You’re essentially invi inviting people on. You’re inviting them to grow with you. So the third piece, because I love a good alliteration and I needed a C word, is the climb, which is do people see a clear way for them to continue to grow with you? Mm,
AJV (31:32):
That’s good.
LS (31:32):
And that there’s a whole other strategy to that, but I really want people to not, again, ’cause I think people jump to that and they’re like, oh, great, this is where I sell offers. No, not necessarily this, this is such an important piece, but if you aren’t mastering the first two, the third one is gonna fall flat. So we’ll kind of leave that there. We can always do a part two if we need to in the future at some point. But just asking yourself the question, do people see a clear path to grow with you? And I think the self rele reflection question is how are you modeling that as an aspirational leader? Are you constantly growing? Do your people see you evolving? Because that is, that sets the tone, especially if there’s a personal brand element to your business.
AJV (32:13):
Mm. I love this. One of the things that just like registered as you were talking about this is, although we’re talking about, you know, a community centric conversation today, my mind also just went to this is mutually applicable to all things company culture with recruiting, hiring and employee retention. It’s like there’s, that is your community. Yes. So don’t think this is just for, you know, your customers. This is for your so true and so true. This is equally as important for any of you who are maybe I don’t wanna build a huge community per se, but the truth is, is you do have a community, it’s your team, it’s all the people around you. So how are you instilling these things within your community so you have less turnover and better retention and happier employees and because they too are your best, you know, recruiting grounds. So you never have to go out and recruit like they’re doing it for you. So,
LS (33:11):
So well said.
AJV (33:12):
So many of those things are just very much the same. Now, one of the things that I wanna make sure we get to before we do run Outta time is one of the, you know, choices that you have made is to create this experiential component with live events. And I know that is no light undertaking. And so I would love for you to kind of just as much as you’re willing, pull back that dark black curtain and say like, this is what it’s actually like to run big events. And big again, is totally up to you to decide what’s big, but it’s like, I think an any, any size of event can be considered a big event because there is so much planning and orchestration and doesn’t matter if you’re talking about 50 people or 5,000 people. So what would you have to share with us about what it takes to sell out an event? In your case you’re, you know, 500, 600, 700 plus P person events, but what are the mechanics to pull that off?
LS (34:16):
Well, this has again been m many years of, I wouldn’t even say trial and error, it’s more dedication to building the community. Just knowing that, because I have always, and we haven’t even really touched on this, but let me just pull back the curtain all the way. We’ve always had a very small audience. We sold a 600 plus person event last year with an email list of under 10,000 or right around 10,000 and our social media falling now we’re starting to grow and get some traction. So anyone who’s coming to the brand now is like, you don’t have that small of an audience, but, but it, it really started very small. I didn’t even start an email list until mid 2018, almost two years into the business. Really wish I would could go back and change that. But so when I say I have always had a small audience, I think there’s so many of us that use that as an excuse.
LS (35:09):
Mm-Hmm.
LS (35:51):
And just in something in my spirit kind of just said, okay, Lindsey, you’re thinking about this. Like you’re doing it by yourself. You don’t need to know 50 women, you just need to know 10. Who would all be willing to invite five friends? And so I think that was always the way that I look at, I look at my events that way now, is how can we provide such an incredible experience and make it feel like something that you wouldn’t wanna come to this alone, you wanna invite, like even that, that cool girl that you haven’t really talked to in your Pilates class, but you just sense that like she’s got, she’s into the same things and maybe you two could connect and go to this event together. So it’s just built into our culture that you don’t, yes, you can come to this event if you don’t have a community and you can find your community, but once you’re in, it’s kind of like, okay, who are you bringing with you next year?
LS (36:43):
Because you wouldn’t wanna keep this to yourself. So in the early, early days, you know, we’ve we’ve also never run ads. So it’s all completely organic, small audience. So anyone who wants to come at me and say, Lindsey, here’s my excuse for why this won’t work,
LS (37:43):
But it’s not just because I woke up one day and had this huge email list. It’s seven years of creating the connection, listening. There’s no one who’s more in touch with her community maybe than me. And still to this day, individually answering dms and messages and, and really creating the experience that this isn’t my community, it’s theirs, and I’m just the one who’s gonna throw the party for all of us to come together. So I know that that’s a little, I I can just hear the people who are more left brained, like, but give us a strategy,
LS (38:34):
So in the past we would do like an early bird ticket sale, and then we would do, you know, just then from however long you have until the event, you’re just trying to get butts in seats, right? We’ve realized, again, data and numbers, which I have the most brilliant business partner, my COO, who is brilliant at this. And she really helps to bring, bring these numbers together. We noticed everyone buys tickets right before a deadline. So if you notice this trend within your own event promotion, just create more deadlines. So we create deadlines that are ticket price increases. That’s kind of like the mower conventional approach. So we’ll do, when we launch tickets in March, there will be a one week flash sale. You have seven days to get the best possible price. So it’s condensed into a really, really short timeframe. And we typically will sell 30% of our tickets in that one week.
LS (39:25):
Then it goes to our early bird, and that’s kind of like the longest stretch of time. It’s kind of like the Sahara Desert where you see a tumbleweed coming in that’s like one ticket sale every couple of days and you can’t freak out in this period time period. There’s just no urgency for people to buy. So until we have another price increase that we can really push toward, we create other deadlines. So one example of this is we host a speaker contest where two women get chosen to do like a five minute head talk, if you will. We call it my powerhouse moment. And you have to be a ticket holder in order to submit. And we, we realized that that was one of the biggest questions we would get asked from our, from our audience, from our community, was how do I become one of the speakers?
LS (40:10):
I would, my dream would be to speak on stage one day. So we, we gave them the opportunity and we built that into a reason why they, they should have their ticket earlier than maybe they were planning to purchase it. So yes, there are strategies, but it all really comes down to building that community and creating something that people can’t miss. It is, we actually now relate to it as our New Year’s Eve. That’s like the start of our year. And then we come back around and we celebrate the growth we’ve had in the previous year, you know, at the next event. That’s, that’s just kind of how we roll now. But,
AJV (40:42):
You know, part of that is, and I love that because I do think it’s like we’re just trained, our human brains are trained to go like, you know, fomo, right? It’s like, I want this good deal, don’t wanna miss this deadline. It’s like our brain thinks in those types of tranches. And, but what I love is that you’ve also incorporated some of the things that your community wants as incentives. Yeah. And you can only do that if you’re in touch with your community. You’re getting feedback from your community, you’re listening to your community, and you’re going, Hey, like let’s weave this in as an incentive to get people to move to action. ’cause We all need that. We all need some reason to get a, to move to action so that we don’t miss out on the things that we said we wanted. So I love that you’re also using the things that you already know about your community as a way of getting them to take action and in a, in a schedule that works for you, right? Because in the event business
LS (41:42):
Oh my goodness.
AJV (41:43):
You know, I love it.
LS (41:44):
Once you, once you become an event host, you realize, oh, okay, I was the jerk that was always waiting last minute to buy my ticket. And then you’re hosting an event realizing you have to pay all of those deposits months in advance. So if you, if you really wanna get on an event hosts good side, buy your ticket early
AJV (42:04):
LS (42:17):
That is so
AJV (42:18):
Genius. I was like, yeah, that’s true. And it’s like, yeah, you are gonna pay more if you wait till the last minute because it’s stresses everyone else out. So yeah, you’re gonna pay more if you pay. Yeah. You have less stress, it’s easier. But I think there’s a lot of those just nuances of going, like, I gotta get you to move to action so that we can move to action on the backend. And so how do we dually incentivize that? And I love that deadlines and discounts and speak on stage incentives. That’s like probably like a, a favorite that you mentioned of giving something to people that they’re asking for. And, you know, for so many people, what a cool life changing moment for them to like fulfill a dream that, you know, I love that. I think that’s so cool. I, I love all of this.
AJV (43:02):
And I know that you have your big events coming up and it’s in August and tickets are going to go on sale any day. So as this is being released, as, as you were listening to this right now we are timing the release of this also with your tickets going on sale for your 2024 Powerhouse Women event, which is going to be in Scottsdale on August 9th and 10th. What can you tell us about this event? So, I, I just, I’m an advocate of abundance mentality. Everyone who’s listening, if you wanna just go and watch how it’s done, right, like this would be like a great opportunity to do that. But tell us about this event and what, what should people expect?
LS (43:46):
Oh, you’re so kind. I I’m biased. So I always tell people this upfront. I am very biased. So I will tell you it is, it is the best day of my year. And it’s, it’s truly, it’s a culmination of everything we talked about today. If you are someone, if who is listening and you’re like, yeah, I, I wanna be more unapologetic about how big my dreams are and be in a space where that’s celebrated and where people aren’t intimidated or trying to talk me into a smaller vision, but I also wanna have real conversations about the challenges that come along the way. And I wanna meet my people. I wanna meet people who are on that same journey. Then we’ve brought them all together in a room for you. And it is happening August 9th and 10th. The 10th is the full day event. And then the ninth, we have a kickoff party, which is a pajama. It’s a big pajama party. We call it pajamas and Prosecco. And really, that even that’s intentional. It’s, it’s, it can be intimidating to walk into a room of powerful women, but it’s a little less intimidating if you get to meet them Friday night in fuzzy slippers. So, and they’re pajamas.
AJV (44:49):
We do
LS (44:49):
That in pajamas,
AJV (44:51):
In your pajamas. I love
LS (44:52):
It. It’s a little less intimidating. So it’s, it’s just the most beautiful celebration of ambition and authenticity. And we bring in amazing speakers, some who you’ve probably had on the podcast, Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Star has spoken on stage, Lori Harder, Patrice, Washington. We do have, I guess I can share it here. Jamie Kern Lima is coming this year, which I know you guys are helping That’s
AJV (45:16):
Awesome.
LS (45:16):
With her book launch. So we have a lot in store and I’m, I’m just so excited for it. Yeah. And the tickets will go on sale any day now. But like you said, even if you’re just listening to this and you just wanna take like a masterclass in how we are promoting this event, you know, tap into our email list, watch our social, you’ll see actively how we’re doing this. And I’m just so excited to pay it forward.
AJV (45:40):
I’m so excited for you and for this event and for this episode. So much goodness in this. And I love your heart behind everything and I love too, that you can appeal to the right brain and the left brain
AJV (46:30):
Mm-Hmm.
Ep 466: Secrets of Growing Your Podcast with Hala Taha
RV (00:02):
I have to tell you that whenever I meet someone who is crushing social media, I’m always like, how do you do that? What is working? Dah, dah, dah, duh. Like, I’ve never, it’s one of the things, ironically of building a personal brand that like I’ve never been that good at naturally. We’re probably more well known for, for making a lot of money from a few, from having very few followers than we are from having lots of followers and reaching lots of people. And I was introduced to the guest, you’re about to meet Hala Taha from a couple really good friends that I I really admire. And I’ve heard several people say so many great things about her. I’ve gotten to know her. And she is amazing. She is super duper sharp, so she is known. Some, some people call her the podcast princess.
RV (00:48):
She’s the host of a huge podcast called The Young and Profiting, or the Yap Podcast, young and Profiting podcast, which is very regularly the number one business and entrepreneurship podcast across all different apps. So you’ll see her podcast charting. And then she’s also the, the founder and the CEO of Yap Media, which is both a podcast network with some of the biggest podcasters in the world are on her network. And then she also has, and this, you know, they’re like an award-winning social media, full service podcast, social media marketing agency for top podcasters, celebrities, CEOs. She’s had so many celebrities on her show as a guest. And she’s probably known. I mean, she’s also known for being a top top influencer on LinkedIn. So anyways, I was like, gotta have her on the show. Gotta learn from her. Gotta get free coaching for me at the same time for all of you. So, Hala, welcome to the show.
HT (01:48):
Wow, what an incredible introduction, Rory. I’m so excited for this conversation.
RV (01:53):
I, I seriously am so impressed by you. And you know, it’s one thing, there’s plenty of people with lots of followers, but when, you know, like Jenna Kucher or Julie Solomon or like the, like the Marshall Goldsmith, these people that you have worked with that, you know, and I know a lot of them, they don’t lightly throw around a, like, compliment behind the scenes. And so I was super impressed before I met you. The more I’ve gotten to know you, I’m just like, man, you are just so sharp. And I feel like we, we have very complimentary superpowers. So I wanna start with podcasting. Mm-Hmm.
HT (03:13):
Yeah, what a great question. So, first of all, you, it’s never too late to start a podcast. When I started a podcast six years ago, people told me it was too late. Now I’m literally at the top of Apple charts every single day, right? When it comes to growing your podcast, really what, what you need to think about is how do I create the least friction possible for people to subscribe to my show? Hmm. And when you think about that simple question, it’s really, I need to reach podcasters where listeners where they are, I need to reach these podcast listeners where they already are. I don’t need to try to convert them from some other platform to decide to listen to podcasts, to decide to listen to my podcast. That’s a really friction, full experience, but experience. Instead, I can guest on other podcasts like we’re doing right now, where people are already listening to a podcast app that they like, they’re already bought into the idea of podcasts, right?
HT (04:05):
I can do commercials on other podcasts and I can actually track and see based on the commercials that played another podcasts who went and then downloaded my show and started listening to my show. I can look at all the different podcast players out there and see what advertising opportunities are on all the different podcast players. There’s about 70 different apps. Apple and, and Spotify make up about 60% of the market share, but 40% of the market share is made up of 70 other apps that you can advertise on Android apps, castbox Google Play, you know, there’s a, a number of them you can think about. What are the ways that you can proactively influence the algorithms of the ranking charts so that you can rank and get discovered through ranking on Apple and Spotify. So you just have to keep thinking about how can I actually reach podcast listeners in the podcast apps? And a lot of it has to do with actually collaborating with other podcasters, which is why this podcast space is very collaborative and you hear a lot about like, swaps and trades, because the number of audience members who actually are active podcast listeners, they’re sort of finite and they listen to seven or so shows. So you wanna be one of those seven shows and you wanna get into that person’s ecosystem.
RV (05:16):
A amazing, so that, I think like you just gave, I think what’ll be an outline for the whole, like our whole interview together. ’cause I wanna dive deep on those, on those specific things, right? So, so first of all, part of what I want to know is how do you know if a podcast is legit? Hmm. Like what, what tool, what metric do you use? Like, you know, you can kind of go on Instagram and see how many views someone has on their reels, how many comments do they have? Like, you get a sense of like how real the whole thing is. Podcasting feels a little bit tougher to me. Mm-Hmm.
HT (06:05):
Oh yeah. So first of all, I just wanna call it out. There’s like a lot of fraud going on within the podcast industry. There’s a lot of people bloating their downloads using virtual machines to load their downloads. Something called coin marketing to blow their downloads. So a lot of fraud going on in the industry. One of the first things that I look to, ’cause I have to basically accept podcasters into my network. So I can just give you the process that I vet my own podcasters before I totally sign them. Basically what I do is I look at their, first of all, they’re Apple reviews. It is a huge red flag for a podcast to be like ranking or saying that they have, let’s say even over a hundred thousand downloads a month. Which, if you’re getting a hundred thousand downloads a month as a, as a podcaster, you’re really in the top 0.05% of podcasts, like four real.
HT (06:52):
It’s very rare for even like the biggest shows in the world to get like 700,000 downloads a month or a million downloads a month. So it’s not this thing where podcasters are getting a billion downloads per month or a couple million. And that’s a normal thing. That’s not normal in the podcast world. Actually, a real show with organic following a big show will have anywhere from a hundred thousand to maybe a million million five downloads a month. And that’s sort of the cap on the audio side, right? Like right now. So it’s like just knowing that what the realistic numbers actually are. Sure. looking to see on their reviews. If you are somebody who says that you get over a hundred thousand downloads a month and you don’t at least have two or so new reviews from the month, that is a huge red flag for me.
HT (07:33):
I go on people’s reviews and I see that the last review they had was last year. There’s no way you have active listeners in the last review you had as last year, right? So it’s like, if you go look at a podcast like mine, you’ll see that I have like dozens of reviews every month. Now if you have hundreds of reviews, that’s you prob somebody probably did a contest or it’s maybe not legit. But if you have dozens of like dozen or so real reviews every month, that shows me that you have an active audience, it’s really hard for every like 10,000 listeners you get a review or even more, right? So it’s really rare to get a review, but if you have none, that’s a huge red flag. Okay. So that’s number one. Number two is there’s different rankings. So there’s Chartable podcast rankings, there’s Apple, there’s Spotify, those are the main three.
HT (08:16):
Apple and Spotify are trending charts that are gonna show you who’s getting new downloads every day and new subscribers every day. And the chartable charts are actually download and reach charts. So if you wanna understand somebody’s actual reach, you wanna see their chartable rankings and see what is their reach on a global level, on their category level. And then you’ll get an understanding of how big that podcast is out of all the podcasts in the world. So like, if you go on Chartable, I’m in the top 1000 of podcasts and most of the podcasts in my network are in the top 1000 of podcasts. The bigger you are, you might be the top 500, and that’s actually a direct relationship to your IAB certified downloads across all the different apps. Not just Apple, not Spotify, all the different apps. So at one point when I was not huge on Apple, I would rank really high on Chartable ’cause I’m the biggest podcaster on castbox, but I had a very little following on Apple, so I wasn’t even ranking on Apple.
HT (09:08):
So Chartable gives you an idea of actually how many downloads you have, no matter what app it is, and is directly correlated to your reach as a podcaster. So I look at Chartable downloads, then I look at Apple and Spotify to see like if they’re trending, if they’re growing, if they’re hot, or if they’re sort of like outdated. And then the other thing is to look at the timing in which the person started the podcast. If you are a podcaster like Louis Howes or Jordan Harbinger, or somebody who started Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, some of the people in my network, they started a long time ago, they’re likely to have more organic downloads than a podcaster that started even three years ago. That’s ranking at the same level because they’ve got all these like, legacy subscribers from when there was no competition. So just like so many different factors to look at.
HT (09:51):
The other thing I I look at is to see like, how are their reels performing? Do they get real comments on their reels and social media? Because all of that is correlated. It’s, it’s pretty unusual for somebody to have like a huge podcast but then have very little engagement on other channels. That usually signifies to me that either they got really lucky, they’ve got an awesome podcast topic that everybody’s searching for. In that case, it is legitimate that they could have no so social following, but if it’s not it, that seems very suspicious to me that they would suddenly have a podcast following, but no other following on other platforms. Mm-Hmm.
RV (10:22):
HT (10:25):
Like, there
RV (10:25):
Are like, like there are, there are a few of those. So that’s interesting. Okay. So charitable is where you’re looking. And just for those of you that are listening,
HT (10:59):
So IAB is basically this bureau that determines what is the standard download, and then all the platforms sort of align to the standard to count what a real download is. Mm-Hmm.
RV (11:13):
Yeah. Okay. So, so I wanna talk about advertising. So it’s interesting you said to grow your podcast. You run, I forget what you called it. I don’t think if you said commercials, but you, but you know, more or less you’re, you’re running ads on other people’s shows. Yes. so how do you go about doing that? So let’s say you find someone in your niche, right? Like, let’s say you’re a, you know, whatever, like a, a lifestyle influencer who does like home decor or something. Do you go, you basically go on chartable or listen notes, you figure out, here’s the podcast I want to be on, and then you just like DM the person and say, what are your rates? Or like, is there a more formal way of going about that?
HT (11:57):
There’s lots of different ways to go about it. So now there’s a new platform called Swap fm. There’s also called a pla a, a platform called pod, which was like a legacy platform doing similar things where you can basically solicit that you’re, you, you want to buy commercials on other podcasts and set up trades on pod, you buy the commercials on swap fm, you set up trades if you want to just reach out to somebody cold what I would do is look up somebody in your category or just anybody who you know has a podcast that you feel like has a relevant audience for you, reach out to them on Instagram. You can, you know, get their email from LinkedIn, like scrape their email if you want, reach out to them on LinkedIn. And then you basically have to plan what the swap is.
HT (12:40):
So usually it’s an equal impression swap. You figure out how many downloads do you get a month, how many downloads do I get a month? Again, you wanna make sure it’s a legitimate podcast so that you’re not trading with somebody who has like a fraudulent audience or doesn’t really have an audience and that it’s a fair trade. So you might say like, Hey, I’m gonna trade 50,000 impressions with you this month. Now Jordan Harbinger is one of my mentors, and we do trades all the time. His show is like five times bigger than mine. He’s one of these legacy podcasters. Even though we both rank at the top of the charts, again, those are trending not based on reach. So, hi, even though we’re ranking the same, he gets five times more downloads than I do. So when I do one commercial for every five commercials I do for him, he does just one commercial for me.
HT (13:24):
And we do something called an impression based swap. So even if you are a smaller podcaster, you can actually trade up with bigger podcasters by doing more commercials for them. So the impression amount doesn’t have to be only what you can achieve. You basically figure out how many commercials do I need to run in order to hit the impressions that I wanna trade. And so you, you do those types of commercials. Then on Chartable you can set up something called a smart promo campaign where basically you just set up a pixel on your hosting provider, same with the other podcaster. And you can basically see who went and listened to the podcaster’s commercial and then came to your podcast and downloaded your podcast. And you can see how many downloads you got from that trade. It’s not directly correlated with subscribers, but it’s a good indicator of who came and subscribed to your show as a result of the trade. And then the shows that do well, you wanna lean in and keep doing trades with them until you don’t see that return anymore.
RV (14:21):
Fascinating. Okay. So that’s what I was gonna ask you. So you basically, there’s a, you said on the smart pro promo campaign inside of Chartable, there’s some type of a pixel that you set up that like an auto, like an auditory pixel somehow?
HT (14:34):
Yeah, basically it’s like on the, the episode itself I, I don’t recall if it’s like actually setting up a chartable pixel across like all your hosting or the episode itself. I’m not, I don’t remember. ’cause I don’t haven’t done this in a while, like myself, I have a big team now. But yeah, you set up a pixel and it basically just tracks the episode and then you have all the conversion data.
RV (14:54):
Okay. So, but when you were starting, you would do this and then you would see, oh, this podcast that I either was on or like that I bought, I either did a swap or I bought a commercial on their show. We could, you could track that with somehow this pixel and then go, oh, I wanna buy more ads there until that, just, until that starts to dwindle
HT (15:13):
Basically. Totally. And now Swap FM allows you to do this in a way less technical way. So that’s why I was saying like you could also just use swap fm now to do it, which is like, I’m getting my whole network up on swap fm. So we could just do this internally really seamlessly.
RV (15:27):
Uhhuh. Yeah, that’s so, that’s so good. The so now when you, once you, once you, once you start to grow, like how much do you charge for podcasts? So this is another thing that really comes up is like, when, when is your podcast big enough to charge advertisers? How much do you charge? Where do you find the advertisers? Like do you know that, that, that whole thing and like, you know, kind of give a maybe if, if you’re able to give like a small, like a smaller show just starting out, like here’s when you’re first ready and then over time they become, they, they probably join like a network like yours. Right? And that’s part of what you, you handle. So give us like the small and the large short term, long term.
HT (16:16):
Yeah. So as like a individual podcaster, you can start at any point to try and get direct sponsorships. There’s no limitation, right? Especially if you have a really niche audience. Like let’s say you’re a, you’re a lawyer and you’ve got an audience, and even if it’s a hundred lawyers are listening to every episode, you can proactively reach out to LegalZoom and try to get a sponsorship because even though you’ve got a small audience, it’s exactly who they’re targeting. So they may wanna work with you and then advertise on your podcast or socials and whatever else as like a micro influencer of that specific niche. So the more niche you are, the more that you can get started on monetizing, I believe, right away. Okay. Got it. Now if you have a broad audience, typically if you, if you wanna get advertisers, you’ve gotta really wait to getting about 20,000 downloads per week or about 80,000 downloads a month.
HT (17:08):
That is typically the first step of you getting sponsorships would be to apply to a podcast platform like advertise, cast or gumball to try to do your sponsorships direct. And the limitations of that platform is 20 to 25,000 downloads a week for you to be accepted to start getting direct deals from a podcast. They call themselves a network where they just basically accept any show that gets that amount of downloads and they’ve got like hundreds of shows and they’re just this like middle man between agencies and brands. And if you do well for them, they’ll get you a lot of deals. So like the first step is to get that many downloads and then plug in if you have an internal team to, to like an advertised cast or gumball and start doing direct outreach that is monetizing on your own. Now, the next level would be to join a network like mine, whose job is to not only get you sponsorships, but also to host your show on their hosting provider to flight your ads and to actually grow your show through growth tactics and swaps and, and whatever it is.
HT (18:12):
So a network has other incentives. They’re, they’re exclusively driving your brand deals negotiating on your behalf, soliciting directly and through agencies on your behalf. But then you’re also hosting their show, growing their show flighting their ads and doing other services for them. So a network is a more like exclusive thing. And typically, you know, for my network, for example, we’re looking for people with 150,000 downloads per month or more, maybe a hundred thousand downloads. Podcasts is actually getting there’s been a big Apple update. So a lot of people’s downloads on Apple have actually shrunk 30 to 40%. So our tier to let you in the network has significantly lowered because in November, most of the legacy podcasters out there on Apple lost 30 to 40% of their downloads. So now in general, standards are a little lower in terms of download counts.
RV (19:04):
So there was just like an Apple update, just like a Google SEO update and it just crushed everybody
HT (19:08):
Down. There was an Apple update in November where basically there’s no more auto downloading if somebody has not listened to your show in like six months. So a lot of these older podcasters that had these legacy audiences, it turns out there was just a lot of auto downloads happening. Mm-Hmm. And now it’s better for advertisers because it’s actually real listeners who are active listeners of the show, but these legacy podcasters thought they were getting a million downloads a month, turns out they might be getting 500,000 or 600,000. And so there was a big, big impact in the industry and caused a lot of like back and forth with advertisers because of the, the download discrepancies.
RV (19:41):
Mm-Hmm.
HT (20:26):
Pod yeah, pod you could also use advertise, cast gumball, the other platforms that I was mentioning as
RV (20:33):
A, as a, as a buyer. Yes. And then roughly like, is there a, is there like a rough budget that you would apply or, you know, is there kinda like a minimum that you have to spend? Or like how do you even come up with
HT (20:46):
That number? It’s just based on the size of the podcast. So all advertising and costs is very standard on the audio side of the podcast industry. So it’s all CPM based, it’s cost per 1000 downloads. So, you know, if you’ve got a show that gets a hundred thousand downloads, you wanna buy Midroll on that show, it costs $25 per 1000. You’re spending $250 per commercial on that show. And typically these shows will have like a three flight minimum just so that they aren’t only getting paid two 50 to do a commercial. Podcasters are hesitant to just do like one off deal. So it’s like there might be a three flight minimum. So you might have to pay $750 for three commercials on that show.
RV (21:27):
Uhhuh I think that,
HT (21:30):
I think I did the math wrong. I think it’s $2,500. The commercial, not two 50.
RV (21:34):
You’re saying $25 per thousand?
HT (21:38):
Yeah, 25 times a hundred. So that would be 2,500 per commercial.
RV (21:42):
Yeah. So se so you’re saying, so then it would be 7,500 bucks is what you would pay to have, like,
HT (21:49):
And you’d get 300,000 impressions total.
RV (21:52):
Okay. Yeah, the math, there’s the zeros, it’s like the zeros, it’s
HT (21:56):
RV (21:59):
Okay. They can, we can go, we can go back and rewind. I, I’m okay. I, I’m, I’m following you. So what is dynamic insertion and explain to us what, what is dynamic insertion? How do you do it? Why does it matter? And if you don’t use dynamic insertion, then what, what, what, what happens then?
HT (22:23):
Sure. So when podcasting first came out and there was advertisers, people would bake in their ads. What does that mean? You would actually record an ad and it would be embedded in your podcast episode. Now, as all these podcasts came out and they put out episode after episode, what they found out is that a lot of people will go back and listen to older episodes. And so there’s all of these downloads that people are listening to, but they’re listening to old commercials from sponsors that are no longer actually paying the podcaster, right? So these baked in spots caused a problem because you were unable to monetize your podcast fully based on the new people that were listening. So dynamic ad insertion fixes that problem. So basically if I get a hundred thousand downloads per month and I get an advertiser to sponsor my show, that means that the ad will play across every single episode. No matter if it’s a new episode or an old episode, it will play across the podcaster’s entire catalog. So every week I have sponsors and I record my commercials, and the commercials that I record get played across every single episode, no matter if it’s episode one or episode 400 on my podcast they hear the same commercial. So that’s basically what it is. It’s just infl the commercial across the entire catalog.
RV (23:40):
How do you set it? So like, what does it take to set that up? Because like when you first start, you go, oh, I’m just recording on my microphone, I’m uploading, you know, I’m uploading a file and we’re off and running. But then in order to get dynamic insertion going, what, is there like a tool that you use for that?
HT (23:54):
Yeah, so there’s two hosting platforms that allow you to do this. Primarily it’s megaphone and art. 19, if you’re on those platforms, you’re like basically getting ready for monetization. You’re a podcaster who’s getting like 80,000 plus downloads a month, like, and you’re basically ready for this step. So moving to a hosting provider that allows you to do dynamic ad insertion and allows you to plug into a programmatic advertiser like Spotify ad network where you basically can have prerecorded commercials play on your podcast. Okay. So the way that you set it up is you basically have to decide where you’re going to be inserting all of these dynamic ad commercials. So for example, a typical podcast might have like two pre-rolls, maybe two mid roll breaks with two ads each, and two post rolls. So all those insertion markers need to be added in your hosting provider.
HT (24:42):
Then once you get hosted ads, you have to record those commercials, and then you basically flight them in the insertion markers that you’ve set up in your hosting provider. And then for any open inventory you can basically put that up for programmatic ads to say Spotify ad network. If anything’s open and it’s not filled with hosted ads, they’ll play a prerecorded commercial in that spot if they find a brand that matches. So that’s what podcasters are doing. They’re basically setting up insertion markers. They’re getting their hosted ads either from their network or directly, they’re placing the ads in the proper insertion markers, and then anything open they’re leaving for programmatic ads if they’ve turned that on.
RV (25:23):
Yeah. So I’m gonna officially call this that you who are listening have had your mind blown many times,
RV (26:18):
And I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell people what to do at some point if they want to get in touch with you. In fact I’ll go ahead and share that now. So what I want you all to do, if, if you wanna get in touch with Holla, you know, you can reach out to us in [email protected] and I just want you to put Yap in the subject line, YAP for Young and Profiting. And then it’s possible that you would go, Hey, I want, you know, maybe you wanna apply to be a part of her network. But the other thing that she does is that she does high-end, sort of white glove, full service social media management. Mm-Hmm,
HT (26:59):
Sure. So like Rory said, I’m the podcast princess, but I’m also the LinkedIn queen, so I know everything about that platform. I’m running the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. I run most of the influencers on LinkedIn right now and has have been responsible for growing dozens of influencers on that platform. So essentially I have a white glove, social media and podcast agency. We stand up a dedicated team for all of our clients, which includes an account manager, a ghost writer, a graphic designer, a video editor, a community engagement specialist. We do sales funnels on Instagram and LinkedIn, and that is definitely our secret sauce. So we’re doing dms all day to try to drive growth and conversions for our clients. Most of my clients are in this space of being like an author, a speaker, a big entrepreneur, a coach.
HT (27:47):
They’ve got courses. This type of a person does really well with us. Anybody who basically has a converting offer all 10 x anything that they’re doing, especially on a platform like LinkedIn. And then we also are experts in creating podcasts, growing podcasts, and then eventually monetizing podcasts including YouTube and simulcast. So those are our, like, main areas is that we’re the number one LinkedIn marketing agency, also crushing it for people on Instagram podcasts and YouTube. And we do everything end to end where we basically have like a very intensive onboarding process. We’re managing your brand, your voice, your graphics. I have an amazing video team, creative team, and essentially everything that you guys see, like on my platforms, it’s like basically my team doing it and we do it for other people. So it’s, it’s incredible. I love my team. We’ve got a huge team, 50 people plus around the world. And we’d love to speak
RV (28:42):
To you. And I think, and, and what I would say there is, is going, it’s also like, you know, you’re, it’s an investment in a team and, but rather than having to hire and manage a team yourself, you can just hire Holla and her team, and then you, they go build the team. And so if you’re in that, if, if you’re in that mode of like, someone make my pain, go away, like, just deal with all of this, and you go, I’m, I’m serious, you know, I’m ready to invest. So email, email us info at bramble, just group.com, put, put YAP app in the subject line. Or you can reach out to Holla, holla and tell her that you found our found, found us here, whatever. But that is something I wanna make you aware of. ’cause That’s not what we do at Brand Builders Group, right?
RV (29:24):
Like we are a strategy firm and we get asked a lot about execution and social media is a real big pain point. So that was part of why I wanted to have her on the show. And I wanted to just give you a taste of like, you know, the, the way, the way that, the way that I talk about like book launches and speaking, as you can clearly see, it’s the way that this woman talks about podcasting and social media. I mean, it’s, it’s deep, deep, deep expertise. So holla, thanks for the time. I mean, you blew my mind. I, I’ve
HT (29:52):
Podcasting thanks
RV (29:53):
For a long, long time. So I just am really, you know, grateful to know you and grateful for your wisdom and you’ll look forward to staying connected.
HT (30:01):
Likewise. I really enjoyed my time with you. Thanks Rory.
Ep 464: How To Get Good At Being Awkward with Henna Pryor
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody, AJ Vaden here on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. So happy to be here today, and I love when I get to interview new friends. And Henna Pryor and I got introduced and just found out that we have lots and lots of mutual friends, but she was introduced to me from our Chief Experience Officer, Matt Lyles. She’s also good friends with one of my closest friends. And, you know, as we were just talking I wanted to make a quick note for everyone about why you need to stick around for this particular episode. And I didn’t even have this on my radar, didn’t even have this on my agenda And as Henna and I were talking right before I hit record, she said something. And I’m like, that’s gonna be the most inspiring thing of all for everyone who is listening. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (00:47):
And so here is, here’s my number one recommendation. For anyone who is tuning in going, is this an episode that I should listen to? Would this be helpful for me today? Here’s what I want you to know before we get into this interview. Henna started her speaking and now authoring career two years ago. I’m just gonna pause for a second and let that sink in. I didn’t say 10, I said two, two years ago, right? And then just last year, she was named as Success Magazines Woman of Influence. Her book was her, her new book, good Awkward, was listed as one of the top books of 2023. She is on a rocket ship to the Moon with her speaking bookings. And this was two years ago. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about how to use awkwardness as a superpower.
AJV (01:36):
We’re gonna talk about her book. We’re gonna talk about all kinds of things. But most importantly of all, if you are someone who is going like, man, I just feel like this has taken forever, and I feel like, you know, I just, I’m gearing up for like this 10 year journey. I would just encourage you as I was just encouraged of, like, it might take that long, but it might not. And you may wanna tune in today to just get a a spike of inspiration and rejuvenation of going like, Hey, the work you’re doing can pay extraordinary dividends. Don’t give up. And so that would be my encouragement as you’re listening and tuning in today. Stick around and learn how somebody like Henna started just two years ago and is way further ahead than she ever thought possible just two years later.
AJV (02:21):
So that would be my encouragement to you. Now, before we get going, let me formally introduce you to Ms. Henna Pryor, who is a sought to after workplace performance export. She is an award-winning two-time TEDx speaker. She is a global keynote speaker. She’s an author, she’s an executive coach. I love this. She says her clients call her the Secret Weapon for Impossible Change. I think we all could use a little secret weapon of that and our lives. But she’s also known, which I appreciate this for her Science-based approach in a fun, no nonsense, no jargon way. And you, I know if you guys listen to the podcast, you know that she’s speaking my love language. And as I mentioned earlier, she was recently recognized as a Success Magazine Woman of Influence. What an awesome honor. And she has a bestselling book, good Awkward, that was named as one of the best books of 2023. So Henna, welcome to the show.
HP (03:15):
Thank you so much. Do you ever have that experience when someone is talking about you and describing you and you’re like, wait, seriously, that’s me,
AJV (03:31):
Love it. And I’m so excited to connect, and I’m so excited that there was like this, like, you know, behind the scenes inner webbing of mutual connections that led to this interview. And that’s what I love about when you’re just great at what you do, your, your name just kind of starts popping up everywhere. And the fact that we were able to pull this off and get this interview recorded today is just so exciting to me because anyone referred to me by, you know, Matt, who’s our chief experience officer, already comes in high regard. And I’m just so excited to to delve into this. And I wanna start this interview by this comment that you made before we hit record, because I think this was not, I, I love it when things, I’m like, whoa, that wasn’t even on my radar for this conversation. So I’m so glad you mentioned it. And so I want the audience to get to know you a little bit. But also I wanna know, like, what were you doing before two years ago? And then what led to this pivotal change where you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna head down this, you know, professional speaking path and then writing a book, and then how long God’s skirting Earth have you done what you’ve been able to do in two years time? So I know that’s a lot, but this is what I wanna start with.
HP (04:44):
I love the question. Is coffee a fair answer? Is that allowed lots of it coffee and a lot of laughter? No, the, the short answer is I spent 14 years in the staffing industry. So direct hire, executive search, where I was working with both candidates and clients. But in that space, I got to work with leaders across industries and get a firsthand view as to what made employees happy, what made experience strong, what made people stay, leave, what made brands successful. Kinda got to watch it from a a 20,000 foot view for 14 years. When I left there in late 2019, I actually went and got my executive coach certification. So for about a year or so, I focused on the one-on-one space and executive coaching. But slowly that morphed into, Hey, can you come do this with my team? Can you come do this thing that you do with me at our conference?
HP (05:33):
Can you start to, to talk to more of us? Which naturally and organically shifted into speaking. Now, my first paid speaking gig was late 2021. So two years in, let’s say two months. At this point, I got paid $250 to go to Vegas. They did not pay for my flight. I live on the East coast, so I went in the hole, right? I think I was in the hole about $200. But that was my first time speaking to a group. And immediately I was like, oh, doing this in front of a bigger group feels electrifying. I love this. I would do this for free. And I think immediately, once I had that experience, I knew not only was that something that I loved, but frankly that was a calling I had had for a long time and was too afraid to step into because, you know, at the time of I’m, I’m 42, just about to be 42, I’m like, I, I’m gonna tell other people how to run their businesses, how to build their brands, how to be successful and have peak performance. I’m only halfway through my life, but I finally got out of my own way long enough to say, you know, you can, you can try this, you can take a stab at it, place some betts. And I’ve been placing Betts ever since, and it’s been great.
AJV (06:44):
So if you don’t mind me asking Yeah. You first paid engagement $250, roughly two, two and a half years ago. Yeah. Do you mind telling people how often you’re speaking now and what you’re charging now?
HP (06:58):
AJV (07:22):
Yeah. That, you know what, and I think that’s really important to know because I think one, it’s really important for everyone to just pay attention. Like, her first paid engagement was $250, not $2,500, not $5,000. It was $250
HP (07:37):
In a paper check that they handed me in the lobby when I got there. Yeah.
AJV (07:40):
And didn’t cover her travel. So it’s like, if this is really a calling on your life, it’s like, and I love what you said, it’s like when I did it, I was like, I would do this for free. Right. It’s an honor to get paid. I love this so much, I would do it for free. But it’s, I think it’s important for us all to know you’re gonna start in some humble beginnings. Yeah. But that can quickly expedite 10 XA hundred x if you’re phenomenally good at what you do. Right. And I, that’s what I just, I really want people to latch on. It’s like, don’t be embarrassed to go, I’ll come for free a hundred dollars. Sure. I’m coming. Knowing that in a short one or two years later, it could be so much more than that. But you gotta be willing to go, I don’t care. I wanna do this so much, I’ll be there.
HP (08:28):
Yeah. And I, I appreciate what you said about being phenomenally good at what you do. I think there was some of that where I was naturally good at some of what I did. You know, I think there’s a degree to which some people have something in them that activates this, but there was also a lot I was not good at. There was a whole bunch that, you know, as it relates to the craft of public speaking and, and sort of thought leadership, which I do believe is a craft, I had a lot to learn. So once I decided I was gonna plant my stake in this, I invested a lot in coaches, in programs, in partners, because I don’t think that the people who want to play at the highest levels get there quickly without support. And I was impatient. I wanted to get there quickly. I wasn’t willing to wait 10 years, 15 years. And I do think that for me has been a big difference in the speed in which this has happened. You asked, how did it happen in two years? I found who I perceived to be the best. And I called them and I said, how do we work together? And that has played a huge role in the fact that things have happened as quickly as they did.
AJV (09:31):
I love that. You know, we say this all the time. It’s like, you don’t have to recreate the will. So don’t, right. It’s like there have been others that have gone before you get a mentor, hire coach, attend a conference, but my goodness, get out there and do something to help expedite that learning curve. You know, I was just thinking about this my, I have a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, both boys who are oddly obsessed with football. And we were just watching a game, and I’m, I’m drawing a blank and striving me nuts right now of like what the team was. But they were talking about this quarterback, and he is not, he is not a well known quarterback at all. And in fact the statistics that they were sharing about him were in the last two years, two, two years, he has been sold or traded, or you switched positions or team 23 times.
HP (10:28):
Oh my god.
AJV (10:29):
But in two years. And I’m like, what is that even possible? Like, how did that happen? And he was having the game of his life. They ended up winning the game. And the only reason I know is ’cause our team was the other team. And, and they were like, just talking about like this amazing story of perseverance. And then they shared with this kid, he’s not a kid, he’s in his late twenties. Yeah. But this kid was doing, and he said he has hired every coach, he has gone to every off season training. And they were, all these announcers were just sitting there going like, look at this success story of someone who no one thought would even be in the NFL two years later. And here he is living out his dream playing quarterback in the NFL, but he took a risk on himself. He invested all the money he was making to hone his craft. And now look at him. Mm.
HP (11:20):
Yeah. What I love about what you just said, I think that that the line that just grabbed me, you said at the end is he took a risk on himself. And I, I, I resonate with that so much because when you take a risk on yourself, it can feel really embarrassing and really awkward to get traded 23 times. Most people wouldn’t wave that flag proudly. No, they wouldn’t say like, good for me, I got traded or make it.
HP (11:43):
That’s embarrassing as an athlete that you couldn’t, you know, stay in demand enough with where you were, that people didn’t wanna trade you off like a playing card. I mean, that’s, that can be embarrassing and it can derail people from trying something new in the future. But I love that that didn’t stop him. He continued to take the risks on himself because he had a goal. Yeah. And that, that to me is so, so much my ethos too.
AJV (12:05):
Yeah. And I, and I love, I think that’s, and that’s really what it is. It’s like when you are truly following your calling, it’s like, I can’t not do this. Mm-Hmm.
HP (12:14):
I have to Mm-Hmm.
AJV (12:14):
HP (13:05):
Ah, the book. Okay. The book, I’ve always wanted to write a book since the fifth grade. I think I always had this, this desire to write a book one day. But similar to the speaking thing, I think I was nervous to do it because there’s a lot of books,
HP (13:49):
And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel impossibly awkward about it. So fast forward, you know, college, I sort of found my people. Then I entered the professional spheres. Every transition point professionally, every inflection point. I feel like all those feelings came back again. Mm-Hmm. Like, they’re looking at me, they’re wondering what I’m doing. Am I being an idiot right now? This is embarrassing. I don’t, I’m not saying the right thing. And our queen, Brene Brown started saying this thing at the end of her podcast, she would say, stay awkward, brave and kind. Mm-Hmm. That became her tagline. And I had a very visceral reaction to it. I remember thinking, brave. Yep. Yep. I know that one kind. Yes. My parents taught me that one. Stay awkward. No, thank you. I’ve been trying to get rid of this my whole life. What are you talking about lady? Everything else you say is brilliant. This one, I don’t know. And I got very curious about this particular emotion and how it relates to the way we show up at work in life in our personal brands. And the deep dive began. So TEDx and then book on that very topic.
AJV (14:52):
I love that so much. And the fact that you just like embraced it so wholeheartedly and wrote the book, launched the book, and all of this too is in like the last two and a half years and some change. Yeah. I would love to know just really quickly, and then I actually wanna get in and talk about how do we use awkward as a superpower? And like what is good awkward, right? Because I think most people associate awkward with like well, awkward is just awkward. It’s not good. Yeah. But Right. There’s these amazing things that can come about that. But I’d love to hear about like, you’re just the, the authoring process. ’cause First time author, right? Yep. And we have so many people who are first time authors or aspiring authors in our audience. So I would love just for you to share what was your experience of writing your book?
HP (15:40):
Yeah. Oh gosh. So I was listening to your recent episode with I think his Alison Trobridge that she was talking about a little bit of the authoring. And so a lot of what she said, I was nodding my head, but for me, you know, I mentioned I’ve wanted to write a book since the fifth grade. I’ve always liked writing in, let’s call it dabbling context. So there was a period there where I had a Tumblr blog and then, you know, social media posts and all that. But a book felt like a big ask, right? It was a big reach and not a small project. I’m a little squirrely in that I don’t like doing the same thing for too long. So I thought, do I even wanna do this? But what it really ended up becoming about was I started to seed the idea on social media.
HP (16:20):
So on LinkedIn, I started to kind of test this idea of awkwardness as a superpower. Where are my fellow people who feel awkward all the time, not necessarily who identify as awkward? And we can talk about that, the sort of state versus trait, but that feel this a lot. They feel awkward raising their hand in a negotiation or for a promotion, or for a project. And so I started to test some of this content that was in my mind on social, and it was very quick that I realized other people are resonating with this. And so I didn’t just start writing a book sight unseen, right? You have to sort of know, is there a reader for this thing that feels important to you? And to the answer on social media was yes, people are like, ah, I feel like you’re in my head, I feel like you’re putting words in my mouth.
HP (17:03):
And it became very clear that there was a community of people who also had strong feelings about that word. And once that became evident, then it sort of felt like this natural morphing from, you know, TEDx was a 15 minute test of the idea that resonated. And then there was a lot more to talk about than landed in 15 minutes. So it became perfect fodder for a longer form book. And I wrote and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and half of it got thrown out
AJV (17:36):
Yeah. I think what’s so important for everyone to hear is that the book was not the testing ground.
HP (17:42):
No. Gosh, no.
AJV (17:43):
I, and I think so often it’s like, people are like, I’m, I’m, I wanna write a book. And then it’s like, we get busy with like writing the outline and we start writing, and it’s like, that’s not really where it starts. And no, you know, back to what you said, it’s like I had a Tumblr blog, I was doing LinkedIn posts, and then that graduated into a TEDx. And it’s like, the more that I did, the more I figured out what was resonating and what was clicking. And it’s like, we always say this at Brain Builders Group, it’s like, you know, writing a book is not the hypothesis, it’s the conclusion. Right? But we, we gotta know what that is. And the only way to really know what that is, is to start testing it, right? Yeah. And that’s the power of a blog and social media and, and speaking even, right? It’s testing out the content of going, okay, now I know the words that need to be on the pages.
HP (18:29):
Yeah. I think not only testing the content, but also it was opportunities to test my voice. So I, I’ve written a book in the nonfiction, personal and professional development space alongside lots of wonderful serious types. And I quote Tupac in the book,
AJV (19:27):
I love that. And, and I love too. It’s like, I love that quote. It’s like, take the work seriously, but not yourself. And if you’re not, and I think it’s too, it’s like if you haven’t figured out your voice yet, that’s not time yet. Yeah. Right. I love that. Testing your voice as well as testing the content. So let’s talk about the content. So let’s talk about this this new book of yours called Good Awkward. So what is good, awkward?
HP (19:50):
What is good Awkward? So quick definition of awkwardness is helpful here. So lots of definitions from every dictionary, but for the context of today, awkwardness is the emotion that we feel when the person that we believe ourselves to be our true self is momentarily facing a gap between the person other people see on display. In other words, for moments or maybe moments, our internal identity doesn’t quite match their external reality. So I raise my hand in a meeting at work, and I call someone the wrong name. In that moment, the internal identity I hold someone who’s thoughtful about names, who pronounces them correctly, is facing a gap between the version that they see. Sloppy, careless doesn’t care about these things. Hmm. In the personal branding space, I put out a post that, you know, without me realizing it comes across as, you know, a little tone deaf or a little bit off, off the cuff.
HP (20:47):
The person I believe I myself to be is now facing a gap between the person that other people see on display. That middle space where we feel that discomfort, emotion, that specific emotion of discomfort in a social setting is where we experience awkwardness. Good, awkward. It simply means that in order for us to grow as professionals, as people, as brands, as personal brands, every time we put ourselves into that stretch zone where growth is on the table, we are going to face the potential and the possibility of awkwardness. There’s no avoiding it. Because to avoid awkwardness is to avoid uncertainty. So eliminating it is not an option.
AJV (21:28):
Mm. I love that whole concept of just get good at awkward. Mm-Hmm.
HP (21:32):
AJV (21:47):
Yes. I love that. So let’s talk a little bit about how do you become good at awkward?
HP (21:54):
Yeah. So two, two parts here. The first part is awareness. There is a mindset component here. So awkwardness, again, it’s a social emotion. Let’s say you’re practicing a, a social post that you wanna write, you’re kind of drafting it out and you, you know, get a, get a fact or figure wrong. Well, if you didn’t post it yet, nobody saw it, you don’t feel awkward about it. It’s a social emotion. It’s once other people start to create an opinion of it that all of a sudden it kicks up. So it is very closely tied to approval. So part one of this conversation is how do you start to peel back the layers on the stories that you hold around awkwardness. Maybe growing up it was, you know, don’t do that. People are watching, you know, other people are looking at you. If you grow up with those messages, then you probably are going to have lower tolerance for awkward moments.
HP (22:42):
Everyone’s staring, everyone’s looking at you. So a little bit of a, a narrative rewrite on what is awkwardness. It’s natural, it’s universal, it’s normal, and it’s part of the growth journey. Mm-Hmm.
HP (23:32):
We don’t have to have it anymore. And so what’s happened is that we don’t even have practice in the small moments. Yeah. And all of a sudden we need to course correct on something that went sideways in one of our, our speeches, in our posts and in podcast we were on. And we’re even less primed for how to handle those moments because we don’t even have these daily moments of happenstance anymore. So we actually need to now overcorrect and condition for those social moments. And there’s lots of ways that we can do that. But conditioning is a second important component to this.
AJV (24:05):
You know, as you were talking, it just made me think, because you’re right. It’s like I don’t have to have social interactions, unfortunately, but it’s like, even in like social media, it’s like you can custom curate the perfect post of like, I never have to look awkward. I never have to experience awkward if I don’t want to. And I think that there’s a little bit of it because I just turned 40 this year, so we’re Mm-Hmm.
HP (24:43):
People think they’re like, oh, is it the new generation? I’m like, well, it is. You know, my daughter’s 13 and it, it’s for sure in this generation where we went to a friend’s house, I was about to ring the doorbell, and she’s like, no, no, no. We text, we text here from the driveway. And I’m like, oh God. But then I, you know, I thought, okay, maybe it’s just the teens. It’s the youths. Right? Get off my lawn. My husband, who’s in his mid forties, we were trying to order DoorDash the other day and it wasn’t working. And I said, okay, well, can you call the taco place? And he says, no, no, no, we’ll just get pizza instead. And I’m like, babe, I want tacos. Like, just call. Right. He, by the way, he’s in sales for a living. Ah.
HP (25:19):
Not an introvert. Funny. So we’re, we’re all facing this, right? Yeah. And, and where I think it’s important to understand is it’s not changing anytime soon. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:36):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. And I think it’s like anything, it’s like if the more you do it, the better you get at it. Right. And it’s like, the more it does just become that. So let’s talk about these in a couple of different ways here, because I, I love what you said, and I’ve kind of have like a few questions that I wanna make sure we get to through this interview. And I, you know, my job is to keep us on time, which I’m not always so good at
HP (26:25):
Yeah. I love that you started to touch on it when you were talking about, you know, the, the way we show up on these social channels. So the thing about social, or let’s just call it like our digital presence in, in brand world, is it’s asynchronous, meaning we don’t get to mess up and then quickly get the response response from a mess. It kind of trickles in right? With like likes and comments. And it’s all this slow different timeline type of experience. But what happens to be universally true is, you know, there is, I think, a greater skepticism towards the performance that happens, especially online. Totally. So in the, in the book, I have a, a line, you know, we’re either awkward or we’re performing Mm-Hmm.
HP (27:16):
Otherwise we’re in that awkward potential of something, you know, going un unexpectedly awry. So where there’s opportunity here is knowing that our audiences generally are holding up a little bit of skepticism about the highlight real world. The perfect, you know, we’re always on, we’re always getting it right. There is enormous opportunity in life’s natural and inherent awkward moments to create a literal espresso boost of loyalty from our, our clients, the people that we serve. So, example, Cheryl Sandberg, when she wrote Lean In, you know, again, hailed by many as a great book, and she’s very quickly been catapulted as a thought leader of our time. But it was very quickly criticized by many because it was out of touch, or really only for the privileged. Now for Sheryl Sandberg that had the potential to be very embarrassing, very awkward. Here she is trying like hell to advocate for women in a wave of people, or telling her she’s out of touch.
HP (28:15):
She doesn’t understand. She could have ignored it. She could have shut down. You know, that there’s a lot of ways she could have gone. But instead she not only heard the criticism, she named it, she named it out loud. And she continued to then incorporate what she was learning and hearing in the areas where she fell short in this conversation, into her future, talks into her future content, into her keynote, which made even those who kind of were, let’s call it early haters of the work, all of a sudden come on board because of the way she handled that awkward situation, it could have been, again, a huge derailment to the message she was trying to create. And instead she used it as a force for good. Mm. There’s hundreds of examples of similar, but when we have those moments, what are we going to do with them? Because it can either become something that shuts you down, or we can look for that gift in the garbage and use it as an opportunity to rise up further and faster than we did before.
AJV (29:09):
Yeah. You know what, and that’s such a mindset, right? Because it’s like Mm-Hmm.
HP (30:08):
Yeah. There, there’s a couple pieces of research that are really helpful here that shaped my thinking around this. One of my favorites is from psychologist Elliot Aaronson. This was decades ago that he noticed something called the Pratfall Effect. So what I am not suggesting is that you currently, you know, in your spaces, step in it on purpose to make yourself feel more relatable. Right? I’m not telling you to go spill coffee all over your lap and you’re next, you know, LinkedIn live. Please don’t do that. But what I am saying is that what the research shakes out is if you are generally someone who appears competent, intelligent, smart, capable, if you generally most of the time come across as someone like that, and you occasionally say the wrong thing, step in it, embarrass yourself, have an awkward moment, it actually does not hurt you. In fact, what the pratfall effect tells us is that people like that, what it actually does is it kind of knocks you down a little bit off the pedestal that we put you on and makes you one of us.
HP (31:08):
Mm-Hmm.
HP (31:52):
But for me, that felt like a misstep that I wanted to address. So it wasn’t terribly difficult to say, you know what, I, I wish I didn’t use that word. Right. And that’s just something I’m being mindful of. No judgment, you know, everybody else is on their own journey. But I got I think, 20 messages in response to my follow up, just saying, Hey, I appreciated watching you do that in real time. I love that. Right. I appreciated just you, you figuring that out real time and sharing it with us. Same thing with book things that went sideways, things that didn’t work out. You know, again, these embarrassments can end up being the thing that create the loyalty that nothing else can create that quickly. How many of those can we lean into? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (32:30):
Mm. I love that. It’s, you know, I just, I jotted this down as a reminder to myself. It’s like your reactions are just as important as your actions. Yeah. You know, know, and it’s like, sometimes it’s the way that you react to the thing. Mm-Hmm.
HP (33:01):
Yeah. And I think just the, the second thing I’d add to this is, you know, we just heard that the word of the year was authenticity. Right? Merriam Webster said the year. And a lot of people are like, yes, I love that. I can’t wait to be more authentic. And yet they are still trying so hard to be perfect in their videos, in their posts. And what I remind them is, you can’t get to authenticity without stumbling through awkwardness first. There isn’t a path there awkwardness. And the messy middle is the journey to authenticity. And what I’m not asking again, is for you to falsify it. But what I am asking is don’t keep the curtain shut during those moments. Just let people in and trust that as long as you are generally, again, doing a good job in your other spaces, you generally show up as prepared in care of the people that you serve. That believe it or not, people will not hold it against you. In fact, it has the inverse effect. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (33:57):
Yeah. You know, I love that. And actually, you know, made me think of something I think my husband does amazing things in lots of areas, but one of the things that Rory does really well is, you know, he learned the art of this at a really young age. You know, he started speaking when he was like 18 to high school groups, but in his early twenties, I remember him teaching other, you know, young speakers these comeback lines. Mm-Hmm.
HP (34:50):
I love that you made this connection. Yeah. ’cause one of the, the last chapter of the book, we talk about using kind of improv skills to tolerate and embrace awkwardness. And it’s exactly what you’re describing. It’s understanding that uncertainty is going to come, are you building the muscle to tolerate it? And again, you don’t have to take an improv class. In fact, let’s start small. The next time you’re at a coffee shop, leave your headphones out. Right. See what happens if you catch someone’s eye the next time you’re in the supermarket line, leave your phone in your pocket. Yeah. See what happens if you catch someone’s eye an elevator, don’t hammer the closed door button shut. See what happens if someone walks in and you make a quick conversation. We have to intentionally now create these little moments to practice being in social uncertainty. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:45):
Have to build up disastrous. You know, it’s so funny, as you said, as you mentioned improv. I’m like, oh my gosh. During this exact same time period, Rory was taking standup comedy lessons.
HP (36:13):
Nothing will phase him anymore. Yeah.
AJV (36:15):
And it’s so true. And, but I Mm-hmm. You know, it’s like I totally connect the dots as you were talking about that. And I don’t know why I had a 20 year flashback, but I’m like, oh, that’s what that was.
HP (36:25):
He’s ahead of his time. I
AJV (36:27):
Love that. So, okay, so my next question is how do you monetize this? Right? And it’s like you have this whole idea of like, you can monetize your missteps. Mm-Hmm.
HP (36:46):
Again, I am so just tickled and grateful and thankful and humbled by the last few years. But I will tell you one of the biggest pieces of feedback I get after a keynote is, gosh, Henna you’re so relatable. Hmm. You’re so approachable. You’re one of us. And I’ll tell you, it’s as simple as naming my fops out loud, excuse my language. Right? Like the, the things that I’m teaching, I don’t start with what went well. I start with how I royally screwed it up a million times. Often on a stage, I will say, you know what, I meant to explain this graph differently. Rewind. Let’s try that again. Right. I will, I will have very natural moments of brain fart. I went blank. I meant to explain that differently. Or someone will, you know, respond. If it’s a small group in a way that I didn’t expect, I don’t run away from that.
HP (37:34):
Or I, you know, shy away, I actually run in and say, you know, I didn’t expect you to say that. So let’s talk about this a little more. Tell me more about what you mean by that. But I lean into what in many cases would create a, oh my gosh, I don’t, I don’t appear like an expert anymore. I don’t appear what I’m talking about anymore. And people are so afraid to do that because they’re afraid it’s going to diminish their, you know, perception of expertise. But again, I’m here to tell you that if you generally are well prepared, well rehearsed, well thought out the rest of the time, those couple of instances are actually going to give you feedback of, oh, you’re so human. Mm-Hmm,
AJV (38:23):
You know, and I think that’s a, I think that’s a huge part of it, is that, you know what I said, what you said there that I think it’s really important is relatable. And that doesn’t matter if you’re a speaker, an author, small business owner you know, a startup. It doesn’t matter if you’re a salesperson, a doctor, a physician. It’s like, my gosh, we all want someone who, it’s like, do you get me? Because this conversation, like, I feel like I’m so dumb right now. Like, I don’t even know what words, you know, I, we were at a restaurant here lately, and I’m like, I feel so dumb asking this, but I don’t know anything that you just said,
HP (38:54):
AJV (38:55):
What is that and how is that cooked? And it was like, Rory, Rory on purpose always is like mispronouncing things on purpose to embarrass me. And you know, it’s like, you know, ve he’s always like, verts. Oh,
HP (39:10):
AJV (39:10):
Stop saying that. But it was like, we were at this restaurant and I’m like, I literally dunno what anything is. I’m like, you were talking too fancy right now. And it was like, I was like, in that moment, I felt so out of place in this restaurant Mm-Hmm. And I’m like, this is like too much. I cannot handle this. And he was like, you wanna leave? And I’m like, kind of Mm-Hmm. I’m like, if I can’t tell what is on the menu and the servers having to explain to me what all these things are, I’m like, this’s too much. But I think there’s a lot of that of going, like, it literally did create like a physical reaction of like, I’m, I’m not comfortable here. Like, I’m not enjoying myself anymore. I feel so dumb that I just had the ask all these things.
AJV (39:53):
Like, why couldn’t there just be a little bit more of like, the everyday person who eats food’s gonna come in and wonder what is all this stuff that we’ve put on this menu? And it was like, literally I was like, like we almost got up and left and Roy was like, beg just the food’s gonna be good. Right, right, right. But it’s like one of those things, it’s like a hundred percent of it was like, I felt so out of place because Mm-Hmm.
HP (40:44):
What I love about your story is in those moments, like most of us would think, gosh, everyone must feel read on my face. What I’m feeling like the server must realize that I am just so uncomfortable right now. Everybody around me must realize. But awkwardness is sneakily one of those emotions that you’ll always feel it 10 x mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:49):
I’ll tell you, I’ll not be going back.
HP (41:51):
AJV (41:54):
I need to know what the words on the menu are in fair, fair you know, but it’s like, but it it still come back. It’s like relatability factor. And it’s like, the truth is what we discovered is we were not their audience. Yeah. And that’s okay. They’re it’s okay. You know, and that’s okay. But it’s like, if you know who your audience is, then you gotta speak language. They understand
HP (42:13):
You wanna go where they have green, green beans. Yeah.
AJV (42:16):
I need to know. I don’t need these fancy, fancy French words. But it’s like, I think a lot of that has that relatability factor, right? And it’s like if clients are saying, Hey man, you’re so relatable, but that’s telling you it’s like, these are my people.
HP (42:27):
Yeah. Yeah. And
AJV (42:29):
So that’s identify
HP (42:30):
Yeah. Agree. And I think, you know, the, the best part of all of this is it actually takes less effort. It takes less effort to let some of this fall off some of this armor of perfection and Mm-Hmm.
AJV (43:17):
Yeah. So let’s talk about that for a minute. So how do we do that? ’cause I think that’s a fascinating thing, especially with, you know, the emergence of, you know, technology and social media and my gosh, now AI and all of the things where I’m like, is that, is that you or is that a fake deal? Yeah. Like, I dunno. And it’s, I think a lot of it has to do with, it’s like, I, I want to get the same person at coffee that I see on social media and often it it, they are different, right? Yeah. I’ve got this continual hangup about meeting people that I really admire. I’m like, I just don’t want them to be different. Right? Yeah. So from afar, I think I know who they are. Yeah. And it’s like, but it’s because so often they don’t match.
AJV (43:58):
Yeah. And so what, like, what causes that? And, and I think what can we do to go, man, we can be the same in all the places. ’cause At the end of the day, that’s what we all want. Yeah. We wanna know that the person online is the person on stage, and the person on stage is that’s who they are at home. That’s who they are behind closed doors. We don’t want these, you know, Dr. Jekyll, you know Mr. Hyde Mm-Hmm.
HP (44:36):
Yeah. So what causes that is there’s an interesting piece of research I talk about that it speaks to this idea of catering. So what a lot of speakers, authors, thought leaders, entrepreneurs do is they try very hard to cater to their audience. So their definition of catering, there was a study done by Harvard Francesca Gino and her team catering essentially means presenting or speaking or writing in order to meet other people’s expectations. Hmm. What do you think your audience wants from you? And then you do that, right? And we think that’s going to make us more successful when we cater to other people’s expectations. That’s gonna make us more likable, more successful, more desirable, when in fact the research shakes out that that is not the case and it’s a lot more exhausting to cater. So they did a, a pitch study actually with entrepreneurs.
HP (45:24):
There was entrepreneurs pitching to investors for funding. And the entrepreneurs who catered to the investors essentially presented what they thought the investors wanted to hear. Were one third, I’m sorry, two thirds less likely to get the funding versus the one third who kind of came in passionate, organic, raw, stumbles, fumbles, blunders, and all that. Third was more likely to get the funding. So catering not only does not help your leadership or your persuasiveness or your influence, in fact it hurts it. And you collapse into bed at the end of the night because you’ve been wearing this mask of someone that you’re trying to be for other people. And so what we can do to overindex on that is to just try to be really honest with ourselves. Is this what we actually wanna say? Or are we saying it because it’s what we were told other people wanna hear? And we can also just monitor our energy levels. At the end of the day, if you’re pooped at the end of the day as a content creator, as an influential brand leader, think about why Mm-Hmm.
AJV (46:36):
I think that’s so good. It’s that whole thing. It’s, I it is so much more work. It’s like, okay, I think this is what they wanna hear. So I have to Mm-Hmm.
HP (46:50):
Right. And making adjustments along the way, you know? Yeah. If you say the thing and it’s not for them, guess what? You’re not likely to end your career there. Make adjustments along the way.
AJV (46:59):
And that’s the thing. There’s an audience for anything. And an audience for anyone. You just have to find yours.
HP (47:03):
Exactly.
AJV (47:04):
Exactly. I love that. But it’s, and it’s true. ’cause It’s like when you’re trying to fit the mold of whatever you think it is, it is more work. Yeah. It’s so much more work
HP (47:14):
And the mold changes. Yeah.
AJV (47:16):
Yeah.
HP (47:16):
You know, our audience is shapeshift constantly the mold, all of a sudden the goalpost like, oops, it’s not there anymore. And here we are trying to chase a target that is, is a kind of fool’s errand.
AJV (47:27):
All right. So I have just a couple of last minute things that I’m just curious to get your thoughts on. So what, what would you say for the person who’s listening, who’s going, man, I avoid embarrassing moments, awkward moments at all costs. Because I don’t rebound quickly and it does affect me mentally, emotionally, and maybe even physically. What would you say to that person who is going, I mean, I listened to this, but I’m going, that makes me wanna cringe the thought. Mm-Hmm.
HP (48:15):
Yeah. So awkwardness, embarrassment, cringe. They’re human, universal emotions. So I hope to a degree, everyone listening to this is like, oh boy, she’s having me lean into this. This is gonna be uncomfortable. Yes, it is. And the moment you realize that it is not something avoidable and that it is not something we can run from, is the moment you’ll at least start prioritizing your response to it. So it’s not that you’re never gonna feel it, you are, it’s just are you hooked by it? Are you ruminating? And more importantly, is it freezing you from raising your hand the next time from trying the post the next time? Is it paralyzing you from taking those micro risks you need to take in this current market to stand out, to be a leader, to be provocative, to be someone different if it’s preventing you than it needs reexamination if it’s not preventing you.
HP (49:04):
Some people own their awkwardness. They’re like, I’m awkward. I say awkward stuff. And here we go. Right? They’re, they’re comfortable. Know which one you are. And then the second thing I would tell you is that it is not just an awareness thing, it is a conditioning thing. So I’m not saying your first at bat is put up a really, you know, provocative or potentially controversial post and let that be your first effort. How about start with, you know, calling your dinner in tonight at the restaurant instead of using the app. Right? How do you start small? How do you create opportunities for uncertainty in your social environment so you can start to build up slowly? That tolerance for when something goes sideways, if you don’t create any opportunities in the small moments, every big moment is gonna feel like that much more of a disaster when it doesn’t go the way that you ex expect. Create opportunities in the small moments. Hmm.
AJV (49:55):
I love that. To, you know, and that’s the thing. It’s like with anything, it’s like take the small steps, but I love that it’s like to create opportunities for uncertainty. Mm-Hmm. And I think most people are trying to avoid uncertainty at all costs. Yeah. But you’re saying no, find it. Right. Even if it’s as small as picking up the phone and calling. But find those moments for uncertainty to build that muscle.
HP (50:21):
Yeah. If we don’t, then taking small risks is never going to feel okay. And as people building brands, we have to,
AJV (50:29):
Okay. Last question. You mentioned it’s like you can, em you can embrace this idea of good awkward to expand your brand. Mm-Hmm.
HP (50:41):
Just, you know, every time you have one of those moments where you’re like, this post was a flop, this podcast, I said something dumb. Right? It’s okay to do that. I just wanna ask you don’t run away from it. See what might happen if you actually even put a little bit of a spotlight on it. Right. And so in the case of the, the tribe comment, not only did I not ignore it, I actually raised it to the forefront and made it a conversation. So your missteps, your fumbles, your stumbles, they’re going to happen. Not everything requires a spotlight. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (51:27):
Oh, that’s so good. And I love that it’s not like, Hey, tell everyone every embarrassing thing No. That you said or you did, but it’s like, Hey, don’t ignore these awkwardness that happens in life and don’t ignore your missteps, but, you know, discern with discernment. Decide which one of those would actually help you expand your brand, connect with your audience. And for those, put a spotlight on ’em. Mm-Hmm.
HP (51:57):
Yeah. Yeah.
AJV (51:59):
I love that. And I think that so much of this is about you know, in my filter, this is about relatability, which I think is a key to trust. It’s a key to building strong relationships, which you can build without actually ever meeting anyone in person. But so much of that just comes with like, I know that I’m getting the real person. Yeah. Right. And it’s like
HP (52:21):
When someone says, Henna I feel like I know you and they’ve never met me. That feels like, you know, a tick in the win column, because that means I’m giving enough of all of it to my branding efforts. And the good news is all it requires is me not stopping it. Mm. Just letting it, letting it come out.
AJV (52:40):
I love that Henn.
New Speaker (52:41):
a. If people wanna connect with you, follow you, learn about you, where should they go?
HP (52:46):
Thank you. It’s henna pryor.com. I’m Henna Pryor on LinkedIn and Instagram. I love to make new friends, even if it feels awkward to reach out, do it anyway. And the book is good, awkward and good awkward.com has more details. It’s everywhere books are sold.
AJV (52:59):
I love that. So henna pryor.com. I assume people can get all their social stuff there. And then if you wanna check out the book, which you should check out the book, I think this is one of those, again, universal topics that applies to all of us, all stages of life, all stages of business. And for, for that, go to good awkward.com. Henna, this was awesome. I loved it. I love having conversations like this. I love meeting new friends. And for everyone listening, stay tuned to the recap episode, which will be coming up next. And I will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 462: StoryBrand 7 Step Method with Dr. JJ Peterson
RV (00:02):
I am so excited to interview my, my good friend Dr. JJ Peterson. We’re gonna be talking about StoryBrand and the StoryBrand framework. I take credit for the success of the StoryBrand book because we did the book launch party at our house. Donald Miller, who was the original author, wasn’t gonna do a book launch. And we’re like, Don, are you crazy? We gotta launch this book. We launched it at our house, and I think it’s gone on to sell a million copies, or, you know, close to, if I think it, I think it sold a million copies. So that’s all because of where Don hosted his book, launch party. And that night I got to meet Dr. JJ Peterson, who now is the head of StoryBrand. He’s also the host of the Chart topping Marketing Made Simple podcast. And JJ is an amazing guy.
RV (00:49):
So he has a PhD in communication. He spent the last 20 years studying and teaching communication theory. He’s also an adjunct professor at the Owen School of Business at Vanderbilt University. And I mean, he’s, they, they, they’re, these guys are involved in so much with, you know, helping politicians and filmmakers and business owners and, and academia. I mean, StoryBrand has become mainstream. And it was like, I can’t believe we haven’t actually had you back on the show in such a long time. Never. J’s never been on this show. So we have to do this. Dr. JJ Peterson, welcome to the show, brother.
JP (01:29):
Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much for having me. And yes, we still to this day absolutely give you 100% credit for that book, selling a Million
RV (01:38):
Yeah, we we’re gonna start charging a package. Like, if you just wanna sell a million copies host, you can host your book party at the Vaden Villa.
JP (01:46):
I will give you a testimony right now,
RV (01:52):
I mean, obviously I, I feel like StoryBrand has become mainstream pervasive. It, it, it’s, it’s become a verb that people use. Like you got a story brand it, but if, if someone’s listening and they’ve, they’ve never heard of the book story building a StoryBrand, what is, what is StoryBrand exactly? Like, give us, you know, take us there.
JP (02:12):
Well, the, it kind of all goes back to when Donna Miller, who was a, you know, he was an author and had written a bunch of, you know, bestselling books, and most of them were memoirs. And he ended up putting on this conference where he was inviting people to come and kind of become the hero of their own stories to like, basically create these life plans, find purpose in their life. And, you know, he’d sold millions of books at that point. And so they were like, yeah, the conference is a no brainer. He rented out an auditorium for about 1500 people and sold 700 seats for the first event, and which was great, profitable, wonderful. And got great reviews. And then all of a sudden, the next time the conference came around, they’re like, well, we’ll sell out this time. And sold about 700 seats again,
RV (03:38):
Does
JP (03:38):
He, as he does, as
RV (03:39):
He just disappears to the cabin and comes out with another bestseller. Me off, like,
JP (03:43):
I’m, so, I know it’s a bit annoying. His genius is a bit annoying in that way. But he goes off and he kind of begins to, he gets distracted and starts watching movies and he, he tells the story, you know, and he really, he had been studying story for a while, been he had written a screenplay, and he began to realize that, you know, there really was formula to all movies, formula to all stories. Hmm. And in the moment, what he started realizing is, what if we could apply story frameworks, which really were, you know, the, the, like, they’re powerful mediums. You know, movies are making millions of dollars. Story has been studied for centuries, and there are rules to story. And he thought, well, what if we could take these rules and move it out of the screenwriting space and actually put it into marketing?
JP (04:34):
And through that position, the customer as the hero of the story, instead of what most businesses do is position themselves as the hero. And so he began to change his marketing for the conference and position the customer as the hero was able clearly to articulate how it worked clearly articulate how the conference was gonna benefit them, help them survive and thrive, all these things that you do in marketing. And the next conference did not spend any money on marketing. The very next conference sold out, then went to a bigger venue, sold out, went to a bigger venue, sold out. And he began to realize that when companies or thought leaders or authors were able to actually articulate the value of what they bring to the table in a way that through their marketing positions, their customers, the hero that both people win out.
JP (05:31):
Mm-Hmm. Because if a thought leader actually has something that’s gonna change people’s lives, or a business has something that’s gonna change people’s lives, then it actually, it does not serve the world
RV (06:14):
I know you guys do. And, and it’s, it’s funny because it’s like one of the toughest questions for people to answer. And, and I’ll say for mission-driven messengers, like for personal brands, right? Like, the people that we serve are these, like, oftentimes they’re almost like these bleeding heart. I, I wanna change the world, I want to help people. And then someone asks them, what do you do,
RV (07:02):
And, you know, I remember the first time I read you know, I still have the, one of the galleys, one of the advanced reader copies of StoryBrand and Mark the whole thing up. And I, I, I called Don and I was like, dude, this is gonna be a game changer. Because it’s, I mean, why do you think we have such a hard time JJ communicating? Like when someone asks you, what do you do when you’re on a airplane, or, you know, you’re at you at a dinner party or whatever, a networking event, it was like, what do you do? Like, why do we fumble that up so much?
JP (07:34):
I think some of it, if, if I’m, if I’m really digging in, some of it is trying to be, it’s insecurity and also trying to be humble. Like, there’s two things in that. Like, there’s some insecurity about what you do, so you start fumbling through that, or there’s, you’re trying to be, you don’t wanna come across as cocky. Yeah. And so you’re trying to be humble in that. And what we’ve just found with all of that, and what I would say is that when you try to shrink in what you have to offer the world by not coming, you don’t wanna come across too cocky. You don’t like, you’re insecure about the fact that you can make a difference when you actually shrink in that moment, not only are you not serving yourself, but you’re not serving the world, you’re not serving your potential customers.
JP (08:17):
Because if you actually have experience, if you have things that you figured out along the way that can help pe make people’s lives better and easier, and you don’t know how to, and you lack confidence in your way of communicating that what you’re doing is by shrinking, you’re actually not serving people. And so we teach people how to explain that through through the whole StoryBrand framework really is there are seven talking points really that are essential to every good story. And these, like I said, have been studied for centuries. They go all the way back to Aristotle and Plato who argued that the best way to move people to action, the best way to change culture was through story. If you go back, you know, all the way to poetics it. Like,
RV (09:04):
No, you guys better be careful. I’m just afraid that Aristotle is going to bring a plagiarism lawsuit against Don here. And I, I don’t know if we should be sharing that. Well,
JP (09:13):
We, we cite him. We cite him. So we c him.
RV (09:15):
Him. Okay.
JP (09:15):
We cite him. Okay. So we definitely cite our sources. You
RV (09:18):
Tag him. Do you tag him on Instagram?
JP (09:19):
A hundred percent hash hashtag Aristotle Poetics hashtag Aristotle.
RV (09:22):
Okay.
JP (09:23):
And
RV (09:53):
I, I, we are gonna, I do want to go into those, but before we do that, you know, you’ve touched on this idea that I think one of the big mantras of StoryBrand, and one of the thing that works really well, and one of the reasons why we believe in it and like we become such emphatic fans about it, is the idea that you as the business owner, as the mission-driven messenger, you as the marketer, you are not the hero. The customer is the hero. And I just wanna connect this back to what you were talking about shrinking. When people shrink themselves, or they wanna be humble, the reason they’re doing that is because they think the conversation is about them, or they’re making the conversation about themselves. And I think a huge, like the big central thing is to go, if, if the conversation’s not about you, if, if the goal of the conversation is not to impress the other person, but to simply help the other person to serve the other person, now all of a sudden there’s no reason to shrink. ’cause It’s like you’re showing up as like, the best helper in the world versus like the most important person in the world. And, and, and so I just wanted you to talk on that part a little bit. ’cause I think, you know, the tactics of StoryBrand are super practical and actionable. I wanna talk about the seven points, but to me, the real heartbeat is this idea that customer’s the hero.
JP (11:20):
Yes. And you know, you would never see, well, let, let me just say this. We all wake up pretty much every day as the main character of our own story, right? That just really is how it is. Like you’re the main character of your movie. I’m the main character of my movie. And so we’re all kind of walking through life that
RV (11:39):
Way. And in my head, I have abs that are more defined than what I actually see. But like, yes, I, I wake up, you know, I think of myself as like Brad Pitt, but you know, it’s not
JP (11:49):
Way Oh, you
RV (11:49):
Are, you’re, but I’m, but I’m, I I, I get what you’re saying. Keep kick your
JP (11:52):
JP (12:48):
So in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is the hero, but he comes in contact with Obi one Kenobi and Yoda wi in Lord of the Rings. There’s Frodo, but then there’s Gandalf in Hunger Games. There’s Katniss. But then there’s Hamid. There’s always this older, wiser guide who comes along to help the hero win the day. And when thought leaders position themselves as the hero, and what I mean by that is when you start talking, quote unquote about just yourself making the conversation about you, what you’re actually doing is positioning yourself as weak. ’cause You’re positioning yourself as a hero in the story. The best people who are equipped to help other people win are always the guides and guides are confident. They are s strong, they’re actually the strongest character in any movie, right? Obi one, Kenobi, Yoda, Gandalf, strongest characters in the movie who are helping other people win.
JP (13:50):
Now, they’re not out there bragging about themselves. They’re not even talking a lot about their history. In fact, we usually don’t know a ton of their history in a movie. All we know about them is that they are equipped to help the hero win because they’ve been where the hero has been, and they’ve overcome the same obstacles. So when you’re a thought leader, or you’re in business, when you talk about yourself and just make it all about kind of your insecurities, or kind of shrink a little bit, you’re making yourself the hero of the story. And you’re actually positioning yourself as weak, which means you’re actually not able to help other people. But when you talk about yourself in a way that talks about how you’ve overcome the similar problems that the people in your audience or your customers have experienced, right? So if you say, look, say you’re a thought leader on finance, and you stand up in front of an audience, and you don’t have to say, look, I’m really good at finance all this stuff.
JP (14:46):
But if you get up in front of an audience and you say, Hey, I used to be overwhelmed by finances as well, I get it. I was actually depressed, I was really struggling. What you’re doing in that moment is you’re positioning yourself beginning to position yourself as a guide to your audience with empathy. So when you say, I get it, I was like, you, and then you say, but actually, I was able to figure out a system where I was able to budget and invest in a way that actually has made me a millionaire in the past 10 years. And I wanna share that with you. Mm-Hmm.
RV (15:33):
Is one of our, one of our flagship, you know, probably most repeated quotes at Brand Builders Group is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
JP (15:45):
Yes. I love that.
RV (15:46):
It, it anchors to what you’re, it anchors exactly to what you’re saying here is to go. You, you can be the guide if you actually are teaching people and selling people something that you know something about because you’ve been there, it automatically, like the default is you are the guide, and it it sets, it sets you up, like in that position perfectly.
JP (16:09):
And because everybody’s the hero in their own story, they’re looking for a way to overcome their problems. They’re looking for a way to win the day. They’re looking a way to move forward. And so, again, going back to your initial question when somebody says, what do you do? And you start fumbling and you start kind of trying to shrink a little bit and going, well, it’s really complicated. Immediately in their brain, what they’re doing is, oh, I’m not sure this person has really anything to help me move forward. Not in a, like, not, not in a,
RV (16:39):
In a subconscious
JP (16:39):
Way. Yeah. But it’s very subconscious. They’re going, this person, it is not gonna help me move ahead. And quite frankly, they’re not interesting
JP (17:28):
All right? In order to position your customer or your audience as the hero, what you wanna do is the very first thing you wanna do. And somebody says, so what do you do? You don’t answer that question. You start with a problem that they or your customers are experiencing. So if you asked me, just like, jj, what do you do? I would start, I wouldn’t say I work at StoryBrand. I would start by saying, so many businesses and thought leaders have a hard time explaining what it is that they do in a way that can actually make them a ton of money. So I just start that like, people have a hard time explaining what they do to grow their business,
RV (18:06):
Articulate the problem,
JP (18:07):
Articulate the problem. What you’re doing in that moment is you’re actually making the story about the person you’re talking to, not about yourself. So you start with the problem, then you come in as the guide and position yourself as a solution. So I’ve said, you know, a lot of thought leaders and businesses have a hard time explaining what they do. So they’re actually missing out on a, on a lot of money. What we do at StoryBrand is come in and help people create a clear message using the elements of story. So now I’ve just positioned myself as a guide to, to you the hero. And then I finish out the story with my customer success. So then I say, when people go through this, they’re able to not only articulate what they do in a really powerful way, but they’re able to actually help more people and grow their business. So it’s what the, the three elements are problem, solution, success. That’s a short story. So I’ll just put it all together. I would say so many thought leaders and businesses out there have a hard time explaining what they do to people in a way that makes them money. We help people clarify their marketing and their message by using a story framework so that then they ultimately have a clear way of explaining their value proposition can help more people and grow their business. Mm-Hmm.
RV (19:26):
Got it. So yeah, give us the seven points. I wanna make sure that we at least hit, hit high level on ’em. I know you, they go deep in the book and in the course. Yeah, yeah. And the training that you guys do. But like, walk us through the seven parts. ’cause, And I want for you listening, these are the seven parts of a story. But then this is also like a checklist for like how you would write out the copy of describing whatever it is that you do. So all right. Hit us, jj.
JP (19:53):
All right. So the seven elements of any good story are that in the first bit of the story, right at the very beginning, there is a hero. And that hero wants something in a movie within the first nine minutes of a movie for the story to be good. We have to know what that hero wants. And we could probably all think of movies where we just could say, oh yeah, the hero wants this. It should be very clear, it should be very obvious, and it should be really one thing. Jason Bourne wants to know his identity, but he can’t also open a cupcake shop and want to run a marathon. And all these other things has to be one thing, right? How that
RV (20:32):
Someone wants to get married, couple wants to have kids, somebody wants to be rich. Well, someone wants to find their dad. You know, finding Nemo wants to find their parents like Uhhuh.
JP (20:41):
Yep. Very, very clear. How that then applies to marketing is the principle is that companies need to, if you’re positioning your customer as the hero, companies need to be able to clearly articulate what they offer. And it actually has to be one thing. It can’t be 50 things. And that is what enters your customer into the story. So you have to be able to say, not just say like, I help people achieve a great life. No, no, no. What do you actually offer? And it needs to be clear. So you need to create talking points that articulate what you offer. ’cause That is really what your customer’s looking for. The second element of any good story is that once the hero, we know what the hero wants. A problem has to get in the way. The only way a story gets interesting is if the hero encounters a problem, right?
JP (21:32):
It’s like, if Liam Neeson’s daughter gets kidnapped for the eighth time, and he gets that phone call that says, you know, I have your daughter. And then all of a sudden she hops on and goes, just kidding. It’s a joke. Do you want to come over to Europe and we’ll just go shopping and look at colleges? And then the rest of the movie is about that
JP (22:25):
These two pieces are the two biggest pieces when it comes to writing a good story and creating good marketing. If you don’t articulate what you offer and you don’t constantly talk about the problems your customers experience, then people won’t pay attention to you. And if you can get those two things right in a movie and in marketing, you’re gonna do great. But the story keeps going and gets even more interesting. So then the element comes in that we’ve already talked about. The third principle of the StoryBrand framework is that the hero meets a guide. Mm-Hmm. They meet somebody who comes along and helps them win the day. Mr.
RV (23:02):
Miyagi, here you come. Yes, here he comes. Daniel son, Mr.
JP (23:05):
Mgi. Yes, exactly.
JP (24:01):
And what that does in a movie is show the audience that there is a clear path forward, easy and clear path forward for the hero to win, right? Even in Oceans 11, they’re gonna rob the Bellagio, it’s never been done before, it’s impossible. And then they go, but here’s the plan, right?
JP (24:50):
We just have three steps to show them this is how you win the day. Then the fifth element in a good story is that after the hero gets the plan, there’s a moment where they have to be called to action. They have to be either in or out. And so the, in a lot of movies, there is a ticking time bomb that is gonna force the hero to act, right? Like, it’s gonna go off in five minutes and they’ve gotta be in or out, they’ve gotta run towards it. Or runaway a tsunami’s coming to de destroy Los Angeles, and they’ve gotta get their daughter out of the city. You know, there’s all of these kind of this countdown that says you need to act or there may be consequences. The principle for that in the marketing is we actually need to have clear calls to action in our marketing, our heroes.
JP (25:40):
Our customers need to know exactly what they need to do in order to buy our product and service. There is a study that was done recently that said 70% of small businesses in America do not have a clear call to action on their website that people are losing money if they don’t know if, if your customers or your audience doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do next. If you’re a thought leader and you’re up on a stage, you better at the end of your talk have something that they’re supposed to do that will connect them to your products and services. What’s the next step they’re supposed to take in order to work with you?
RV (26:16):
Yeah. And I, you know, it’s interesting. It’s never really dawned on me the, the, the, the, the dynamic of the ticking bomb part of it, right? So there’s a clear action, but then, you know, obviously, like you know, we do a lot of copywriting, like sales copywriting, like to, you know, how do you create page that gets someone to pull out their credit card? And you know, urgency is like a really big part, is people, people always procrastinate. And I’ve never thought about that with the relation, like the connection to StoryBrand in movies, how it’s like, you know, he, he’s about to get on an airplane and leave your life forever, or you know, you better ask her out on a date before she like gets on the train That there, like that kind of a thing. So do you guys advocate kind of like deadlines and countdowns and that kind of stuff?
JP (27:07):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because if you allow people to delay action, it often becomes inaction. So I, I say that a lot. Delayed action usually is inaction. And so when you, it’s always in a movie, like you said, it’s very clear, there’s a moment, right? It’s, it’s not kind of wishy-washy of what the hero is supposed to do. They have to go get the girl, they have to disarm the bomb, they have to hop in the helicopter. There’s something that they have to do. And all the sports very,
RV (27:35):
Very clear. Every i’ll I have the built in clock, like
JP (27:37):
Exactly. And if, if you’re saying, okay, so let’s say Tom Cruise is running through the airport to disarm a bomb, and all of a sudden he finds out it’s going off in a month, well, there’s no urgency for that action
JP (28:21):
What you’re doing again, in that moment is you’re shrinking. And again, I’ll remind everybody, you shrinking does not serve your customers or the world
RV (28:53):
Clear. And I think of it, you know, so like, as a parent of two toddlers, I go, if my son is about to pick up a marble and put it in his mouth, I don’t kind of politely say, Hey, you should maybe not do that. Or like, I reach over and I smack it out of his hand like now. Right? And so, mm-hmm,
JP (29:54):
Absolutely. Clarity is kindness and showing people where they’re supposed to go, what they’re supposed to do is actually an act of service. So if, if
JP (30:42):
They’re gonna get the girl they’re gonna hit the home run, or that actually they’re gonna strike out and everybody loses. They’re gonna miss out on the girl and she’s gonna marry his brother. You know, like we know what the tragedy, what we’re pain we’re trying to avoid, and what success we’re cheering for. And it’s the same thing in marketing. You need to create talking points and value proposition around what their, your customer’s life will look like once they do business with you. That’s called success. So what, what are they gonna save time, save money? Are they gonna be more confident? Are they gonna be able to get ahead? What are the things they’re actually gonna be able to benefit from, from your product or service? And we need to write those out and articulate those, but we also need to articulate what they’re going to miss out on, or what pain they’re going to continue to experience if they don’t work with us, that they’re gonna continue to be tired, they’re gonna continue to be overwhelmed.
JP (31:38):
And that might get a little bit worse where they actually struggle with burnout, right? You can kind of forecast what can happen to them if they don’t work with you. And mainly it’s that their problems either are solved if they work with you or are not solved. If they don’t, and they either can get then a little bit better or a little bit worse. And those really are the seven elements of a good story. And a seven, the seven elements of good marketing. So what we actually do is then teach people how to create talking points for all seven of those elements so that you can make sure that on your website emails, when you’re giving keynote addresses, when you’re doing webinars, that everything you’re talking about is very clear. It’s positioning your customers the hero, you as the guide, and showing how you can make their life better if you work with them by giving them a clear call to action. Mm-Hmm,
RV (32:30):
JP (32:44):
Yeah, we actually have a little a little gif for everybody who’s listening is that you can actually go to storybrand.com/brand script. And when you go to storybrand.com/brand script, you’re actually gonna see what we call an online brand script where it has these different elements that I’ve just been talking about. And there are boxes to be able to create, start working on your own story, your company story, your entrepreneurial story, to try to create talking points around those pieces. So it’s actually like an online version of everything that I just talked about. So you can go there and practice creating your marketing and your messaging, and that’s storybrand.com/brandscript.
RV (33:27):
So Cool. Yeah, so we’ll link up in the show notes. And you know, I guess this last thing, jj, like, if, if someone is starting out, you know, right now and they’re hearing this and they’re going, oh my gosh. Like, you know, I, I I’m, I I I struggle with articulating what I’m doing and y you know, like, I don’t know, you know, I’m not a great writer, et cetera. I mean, you’ve given ’em some really great tools and, and stuff, but just kind of more like on the emotional side, you know, what, what’s kind of the encouragement or the reminder that you would want that person to hear?
JP (34:05):
Yeah, I think, you know, I, for me, for a long time, ’cause I’ve been in marketing and public relations and things for a very long time, and the thing that I struggled most with was I, I never wanted to brag about myself. I never wanted to elevate myself. And it, it meant much of that came from kind of a false humility. Truthfully,
JP (34:54):
And it actually lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders and allowed me to talk about myself and the things that I do in a way that really serves others versus serving myself. And so if you’re in that spot where you’re like, I don’t know how to do this. I’m, I, I feel weird talking about myself getting on podcasts or going, getting up and giving speeches ’cause it feels like, what do I have to say? Well, the first thing I would say is you have amazing things to say, everybody. A lot of times people think they don’t have anything new to offer the world. And I’m telling you, you may not have a new idea, but you have a new way of telling it because you’re the only person who’s ever experienced what you’ve experienced. So stand in that authority that you have that there is only one you.
JP (35:39):
And then the second thing is, stop thinking about what you do and start thinking about the problems that you solve for other people. What pain are people experiencing? What problems are they experiencing? And what wisdom do you have, or tools or tips or tricks do you have in your arsenal that can help them solve their problem? If you start just thinking in that way, the weight will come off your shoulders. You’re gonna get so much more excited about talking about what you do and selling your services because you are going to make the world a better place. People need you. They need your wisdom, they need your experience, and they need what you have in order to make their lives better and the lives of the people they serve. So,
RV (36:25):
Amen.
JP (36:25):
Think about that and solve problems. Don’t talk about yourself. Solve problems.
RV (36:31):
Yeah. Amen, brother. Don’t, don’t be the hero. Be the guide. Dr. JJ Peterson, thank you for coming and for sharing your wisdom, brother. We love you guys. And we, we, you know, we always want the best for you guys, so keep kicking butt.
JP (36:45):
Oh, thanks. It’s such an honor to be here. Love you guys too.
Ep 460: Helping Speakers Get Booked On More Stages with Joe Heaps
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. AJ Vaden here. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand. I am super excited for today’s interview because I love when I get to do interviews around very niche topics like we’re gonna do today. And today we’re gonna be talking about the world of speaking and most specifically how to get booked as a speaker. And I have invited a newer friend of mine, but a good friend of my husband and a lot of the team at Brain Builders Group, Joe Heaps. And I’ll tell you a little bit more about Joe in a second, but I wanted to let you guys know what this interview is about and why you should stick around. And just before I hit record, Joe and I were talking about how, you know, there’s so much stuff
AJV (00:53):
And the truth is, I think there’s a lot of value in some stuff that’s out there, and there’s no value in other stuff that’s out there. And so we’ve been on this kind of mission to help get some industry leaders in the speaking industry on this podcast to help create some clarity and expectations around if you have a dream, if you have a passion of becoming a highly paid professional speaker who is booked on stages because you have a message that you just feel called to share, right? There are some things you need to know that will prepare you and equip you to do that successfully, where you can take this dream and turn it into a very lucrative business. But if you think it’s gonna happen overnight, and you think it’s gonna happen by, you know, just posting some social media content, well, that may be where you’re a little off schedule, right?
AJV (01:45):
And so today we’re gonna have just an honest conversation of helping you build that dream of building your speaking business. So if you’re an aspiring speaker or even a speaker who’s getting booked, that just goes, man, I wanna get booked more. I do want this to be my full thing full-time thing, then this is the interview for you. So stick around get your pen and paper, take notes, because this is gonna be jam packed with tons of industry insights that’s gonna help you succeed in that endeavor. Now let me introduce you to the gentleman who’s going to help share some of these industry secrets. ’cause It’s not gonna be me today. I’m just going to be asking some questions. And quite honestly, I have my pen and paper too. ’cause I’m super excited to learn what’s new, what’s changing, what’s evolving. Because as a speaker myself, I have no doubt that Joe’s gonna share some tips today that I can put into practice in my business.
AJV (02:39):
So Joe Heaps is the managing partner and also the CMO at E Speakers, which you’re gonna learn all about. He is and why I think this is so helpful. He’s the one who’s responsible for all the sales and marketing strategies, which, you know, surprise, right?
JH (03:34):
Thank you. Appreciate the invite.
AJV (03:37):
Yeah. And you know, as we’re kind of getting started and helping everyone learn about you and e speakers and why I got started, I just wanna start with like a little bit of background knowledge of like, what is e speakers and how did that even come about? Like how did you get started with that? Like yeah, tell us what it is and then why, why did it get created?
JH (03:55):
Yeah, you bet. Well first of all, our e speaker’s mission statement is we truly believe that the right speaker in front of the right audience can make a lasting, it kind of creates a magic. And and that right speaker in front of the right audience leads to like long-term improvement in organizations and individuals. And so the, the idea that a speaker can go out and just speak to anybody is false. I mean, you can collect a check, but we really feel like there’s a magic when the right speaker gets in front of the right audience and that change is made. And that’s really what this is all about. And I know any speaker that’s out there has felt that, like, you felt like maybe you just checked the box, you gotta check and you walked away and it really, you, like, you did your job, but you didn’t really connect with anybody.
JH (04:42):
And I know that people have been in the audience and done the same, but that, that change is really what’s important. And it’s what keeps a speaker getting booked, quite honestly, is if people in the audience feel their authentic self and they, they really connect with their content and they feel like they’re making a change in their life. And so our mission is to help speakers get on more stages and to make that change more often. Mm-Hmm. How we started was 24 years ago by a speaker named Art Berg, who Rory is a good friend of, I don’t know, AJ if you met r art before, or not he hasn’t. But art was a speaker he’s a quadriplegic and spoke, you know, over a hundred times a year, traveled the world. And that, and that at the time was a pretty big challenge, kinda like a a unique situation because he was in a wheelchair and traveling the world and on his own without any help.
JH (05:47):
And that, that’s a lot of work for a quadriplegic. And now there’s, there’s several more you know, and, and they do great jobs. But the fact that Art did that was a major thing that he tackled in his life to show that, you know, that wasn’t gonna stop him from making a difference in the world. And so one of the things that art he was really big on technology and how it connected with people. And he had this vision that through technology, his job could get easier and he could make the meeting planners, the buyers, the people that hire speakers, their job easier. And so he created a, a software with my business partner, Dave. And they started off with that technology. And the technology was really an event management tool that he could track all of his events in, in the calendar and everything.
JH (06:45):
And that he kind of gave a backdoor for speaker bureaus, which are kind of the in-between people that that book speakers off also, they’re kind of an agency. And those speakers bureaus kind of had a backdoor into the calendar. And at the time the cloud wasn’t really even a thing. Nobody knew of the cloud, and this was kind of a cloud technology. And so it, it allows people from their offices to be able to connect with speakers and be able to book them. Because at the time, you know, cell phones were just barely coming into the picture. No, internet wasn’t even around in the beginning. And so, you know, it just, it just blossomed from there. And unfortunately a few years into the Endeavor, art passed away. And but, and that’s when I joined the team and, and you know, that’s what Speers that’s where we started.
JH (07:38):
And really art art’s vision really is what we use every day to kind of keep us moving forward is just that idea of making speakers more readily available to book and giving them the tools and, and the things they need to be able to, to get booked. And then making it easy for meeting planners to connect with them and, and their job. And especially in this day and age, it’s you know, you can search the internet for any type of speaker and find something, right? But again, is it the right person and are, is it making it easy on the buyer? So that’s kind of what we have an event management tool that we can talk more about if you’d like. Or we have also have an arm of our business that is all about promotion and marketing of a speaker and specifically to those meeting planners or those buyers. So that’s kind of
AJV (08:34):
What we do. You know, I, I love that. And I know I’ve heard, you know, so many different great things about e speakers through the years and, you know, we’ve known of you guys since we’ve been a part of the National Speakers Association, but I mean, it has to be at least 20 years that I’ve known about you guys. So what did you guys start in the nineties?
JH (08:53):
99. 9 99?
AJV (08:55):
Yeah. ’cause I know it’s like, even in the early years of us being a part of the National Speakers Association, I remember seeing e speakers and, you know, I spent some time on the websites, you know, kind of getting up to date on the all the news speakers that you guys are featuring. And I think that’s and I think talking about both of those would be really interesting in interesting for our conversation today. But one of the things that I would love to start with since you are, you know, a huge part of like the sales and marketing strategy I’d love to start there of just going, like, when you think of a speaker and what assets, what, what tools they need to get booked as a speaker, right? So when you’re thinking of like, what do meeting planners need to make quick decisions, and what does speakers need to have readily available to supply? Like, what would you say are the most important marketing assets that a speaker needs today?
JH (09:46):
Yeah. Well I think probably the thing that we see that peop, that speakers stumble on quite a bit is what we call our audience benefit statement. It is it’s front and center on a speaker’s profile and the audience benefit statement. We tend to see speakers and they don’t really have that defined in, we’ve actually gone through your course Brand Builders course ourselves. And, and and so I know you, you know a lot about this as well, but really talking about the benefits of hiring you rather than in marketing. Marketing 1 0 1 talks about features and benefits of a product. Doesn’t matter what product it is. A good product is marketed with benefits. Like, it’ll help you do this, you’ll feel better doing this. It’ll, you know, and, and we give lots of examples of companies that do that in their advertising.
JH (10:38):
But the benefits of hiring a speaker are way more powerful than the features. So we see speakers lead with things like, I’m a New York Times bestseller, I’ve written these books. I’ve, I’ve talked to these people, I’ve presented to these groups, I have these degrees. I went to this school. You know, and that, that’s, that’s really, really common. In fact, seasoned speakers still tend to kind of slide back into that because speakers are unique in regards to a product because you do talk about yourself a lot, and you’re building your own personal brand as you know, right? And so that’s one of the things that causes some pain for speakers is they’re wondering, why am I not getting booked? And it’s because they’re leading with the features of the product. They’re the product and they’re leading with the features rather than the benefits. And the benefits are things like, why would somebody hire you?
JH (11:31):
What do you, what benefit are you going to bring to that audience? And so you need to lead with things like when I come speak to your group, we’re gonna identify these key things and your audience will walk away knowing how to do this, this, and this. Right? And so that’s really kind of the idea of a benefit statement. Yeah. And, and there’s a lot of different examples. I mean, if, if, if people wanted, they could go to our directory at e speakers marketplace and, and go through and search on a topic. And you can see, in fact, if there are speakers listening, I’d encourage you to do that. Put your topic in and, and see the reco the results that come up. And you’ll see some really good ones. We’ve tried to really work with people on that audience benefit statement, but some of ’em come up and, you know, they’re, they’re just, like I was talking about, in fact, they lead with their name.
JH (12:18):
Like, you know, it would say, Rory Vaden is a New York Times bestseller and speaker and author and trainer. Well, we have like 20,000 speakers in our database. And same thing, most of ’em are trainers, authors, and speakers, right? And, and could be New York Times bestsellers. So you know, that that type of, just getting that outta the way and the process of working through that audience benefit statement really sets the stage for the benefits. And then you take those benefits of hiring you and they become, you know, bullet points in your bio and they can become even programs like your speeches, right? And so that’s really the probably the biggest thing that we see. The other thing in regards to just, I mean, that’s the marketing side. I know that’s what you ask about. But the other thing that we see is speakers tend to struggle with systems.
JH (13:08):
And that’s where our tool really shines, is that, you know, a good system means that you can be away from the system. And, and our, we live in ACI in a world now that everything is connected, everything ties together, whether it’s through I calendar, whatever. And you have all these different ways now, even since the pandemic, zoom is the new thing, and, and everybody, you can zoom from an airport if you needed to, right? And, and on the road. But speakers are super busy. And you know, having a good system that keeps them on track mm-hmm. Is, is really important. And that’s one of the things that Art started in the very beginning is, you know, being, having such a demanding schedule with over like, you know, 200 presentations a year or whatever. One staff member, he found the value of systems and the, the freedom a good system gives you to like chart this course of success.
JH (14:07):
And so really that’s, that’s kind of what he harnessed in our tools and, and we see as a real big value. And it’s still a big struggle for speakers, is is having a good system. Could they be away from their business for a week and everything continued to run? That’s good. And, you know, that’s, that’s really not just, I mean, of course we expect speakers to take a vacation, right? But not just vacation. It’s, it’s being booked three times or four times that week. And just the intricacies of going to Nashville, going to Dallas, going to Chicago, flying to LA and you know, just don’t have time to keep up with things. And so having a good system is super important. So, oh, well I, that I’m not sure if I answered your question, but No,
AJV (14:49):
I think I have some follow ups, but I think that that systems part of the conversation wasn’t even on my radar. And the truth is, is most speakers, at least when they start out, they are the sales department, marketing department, operations department, billing department. Right? Right. It’s like they’re all the departments. And I don’t think if a lot, I don’t think a lot of people realize, it’s like, no, being a speaker is being an entrepreneur. It is a business. Yeah. You gotta do all the same things that you would do as a small business owner. You, and if you don’t have a good system, all of a sudden it’s like, it’s not so fun anymore. Yeah. Now it’s, it’s a lot of work. And you’re working all the time, traveling all the time on stages all the time. And it’s like, oh, all right. This thing I thought I wanted to do, I don’t wanna do it anymore. Yeah.
JH (15:34):
Well, and if people, if speakers only, if all you had to do is say, Hey, you have an event this day, show up at this address and speak on this topic, and that’s all you had to do then I think things will be a lot easier. But the truth of it is, is that it is literally a business. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (16:50):
No, I love that. And, you know, often I refer to speakers as artists, right? And it’s like, the reason most people wanna be a speaker is because they have this message that they wanna share and speaking is a, a craft that they want to get better at. And, and it’s like, but then you get kind of stuck with all you’re doing is sending out emails and proposals and, and contracts and, and all of a sudden all the things that you wanna do, the things that you love to do, you don’t, you don’t really get to do those anymore. And having a good system gives you the freedom to work on the message, hone the craft and do the revenue generating activities, be excellent on stage and do the pre-event calls. So I love that you brought that up. That wasn’t even on my radar for our conversation, but it’s such an important part of where most people get into something and then all of a sudden they’re like, I’m exhausted, right?
AJV (17:42):
I’ve got major burnout, I don’t know if I can keep doing this. And it’s because you didn’t have a good system to start with. So I love that part of it. Right. And I love the, the benefit statements. ’cause You’re right, it’s like most speakers start with, here’s, here I am, right? Like, these are my credentials. So I love that benefit start statements piece. But then you also mentioned a few other things like program descriptions and all of that. And so do you find that it is still necessary that speakers have like a media kit or a press kit, a demo video? Like what’s most important, what’s least important? How long should they be? Like, what are those things look like today?
JH (18:18):
Yeah, no, those are good questions and yes, super relevant. All of that is still needed. I mean, and just to give the listeners a, a kind of a blast from the past, the way this used to happen, I’m answering your question, I promise. The, the way this used to happen was quite literally, if any of you were old enough to remember how you used to order things over the phone instead of online, you’d open the JCPenney catalog and you would find the number and call ’em and say, Hey, I want x, y, z number. Well, the same thing happened with speakers. Specifically bureaus would print this big, like catalog of speakers and they would ship that out to all the buyers, all the meeting planners. And then the same thing happened. They call and they look through and say, Hey, these are the speakers I want.
JH (19:06):
And so it, it changed from that to then speakers had like individual websites and then social media came into it. And then people were still mailing VHS tapes and then CDs and, you know, all of that. And that media kit has graduated into this digital media kit now. And so yes, it’s still valuable, but, but different. And, and one thing that I think speakers need to know is that just because you have a website and everything’s there doesn’t mean that that solves the, the doesn’t make it easy for a buyer to hire you. They have to go find your website, they have to navigate that. And you have to give them things easy at their fingertips. And I mean, I, I haven’t seen the numbers on this lately, but seems like before the pandemic MPI, which is meeting professionals international, they’re a big group of meeting planners.
JH (20:06):
And they had listed being a meeting planner was in like the top five most stressful jobs in the US. And I’m still, it’s, I’m sure it’s probably still up in the top. But they have a lot on their plate. And if you just say, yeah, go here and do this, then that’s, that’s not easy. And we’ve become a society where we want things instant. Like we go buy something online and you want to actually see if they have those red shoes in stock. And if they don’t, you’ll go somewhere else where you know, they have it in stock. ’cause You don’t wanna wait. Mm-Hmm.
JH (21:00):
They can narrow it down to one of ’em, hire ’em and and sign the contract and pay ’em all through online. And all of that is generated or has come about because of the, the type of buying that people are doing online. Right. That’s a new, and anyway, so my point is, is that that digital kit is so important and yes, have it all on your website, but that’s one of the reasons that our, our profiles, our online profiles have done so well is something we launched about 10 years ago. And we had, we saw this need where speakers were sending their kits out to all the speakers bureaus and all their meeting planners. And it’s a huge cost number one, ’cause you got to, it’s a big box, you know, then you’re shipping that out and then they have to then go through that and digitize the video or then take the video and put it on the website.
JH (21:56):
And it’s a lot of work for all those people to do that. And we heard from the bureaus that they have rooms to just boxes full of VHS tapes or CDs, right? And, and meeting planners have the same thing. People just send meeting planners random boxes of stuff and just say, Hey, I’m a speaker on leadership, hire me. You know? And so they just had a hard time processing all that. So the, the digital media kit is effective in the, in the sense that it’s one thing that you can send them and it has everything in it, and it’s easy for them to like save in a folder and, and share with people and things like that. And that’s one of the things where the profile, our profiles have really shined is on the profile itself. We have all the different marketing materials that, that are, we’ve found that speakers or the buyers want to know, they don’t have to leave the profile at all.
JH (22:49):
They have their bio, they have all their topics, their fees, they have videos, they have marketing materials, they have all their programs, their calendar, if they do virtual work, all of that thing. All of that is on one profile. And it, what it creates is a an a a better experience for the buyer. And they have everything they need right on that one page to make the purchase decision. And yes, they could go to the speaker’s website, yes. They could be go to the speakers social media, yes, they could look at this PDF, but you know, ultimately, like having one place where all of that is, is together is, is still valuable. So, yes.
AJV (23:28):
Yeah. I love that. And I think one of the things you said that really stands out to me, and which I don’t think a lot of speakers are probably doing when they think about their demo videos or speaker press kits is, am I building this to appeal to the, the buyer, right? Am I building this to attract them, make it easy for them? ’cause I see a lot of Prescott that are like 12, 13, 14 pages and it’s like, takes me forever to go through it. And I’m supposed to be doing that for our clients, right? It’s like, that’s really long. Or demo videos that are 20, 30 minutes. And I’m like, I don’t have time to watch this. So I’m guessing a meeting planner doesn’t either. So for, when you’re thinking about making it easy for this buyer, right? The meeting planner to make decisions, is there like a special recipe of like how short it is this? Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah,
JH (24:16):
There is, well, specifically with programs, so we, let’s just talk about that audience benefit statement that it’s kind of your lead in, right? It’s what’s your, the benefits of hiring you. And then as you take that, you go into your bio and your bio should always start with an extension of that audience benefit statement. ’cause You don’t want ’em to all, all of a sudden go to your bio and now all of a sudden you’re talking about being a New York Times bestseller and all this stuff. And you said, Hey, I thought you were a leadership expert that could change the culture of my organization. And now all of a sudden you’re talking about this. So it’s kind of the segue paragraph. That first paragraph is the segue paragraph that really ties in your audience benefit statement into, now this is all about me. So you have that, that segue paragraph that talks about the benefits still and explains them in more detail.
JH (25:06):
And then the rest of the bio is all about you as a speaker. Sure. Say all those things that we talked about. These are the things I’ve done, books I’ve written places, degrees I have, or what makes you be able to support that. You, you can change culture in an organization because you’ve done all these things. Right? And then the, the next extension of that is in the programs, your speeches. So when you outline your programs, you always lead with the benefit, right? So this is the benefit of hiring, this is why you want me to speak to your group on this program. And then the format of that is always great to identify who this is good for. This is great for senior leadership, middle management, you know, salespeople, whatever. And so you identify kind of who it’s for and then the last thing you look, make sure you always have in the program description.
JH (26:01):
You have the program description and then the takeaways. Mm-Hmm.
JH (26:50):
And they can send ’em this PDF that’s a one page about how to create culture in an organization and kind of more about what you present. So that’s kind of the general gist of kind of the content that you should have on your profile, you know, really driven by the benefits. And then you asked earlier about the video and we find effectively that somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes of video total is like probably the most valuable. But we, we prefer really small segments. Hmm. So I wouldn’t ever put a raw video up there. It’s like 30 minutes of you speaking. ’cause That’s just boring Right?
JH (27:49):
Wow. And so, and, and really we found more success with short little video clips. So let’s say you know, a AJ or aj your speaker, right? Mm-Hmm.
JH (28:48):
Like, what’s all this stuff? And so if that’s not, if they don’t see you on the stage in the first 30 seconds of the video, they’re out. Right? So I’d always lead, and I don’t have any problem with voiceover videos, but, you know, if you want to take the first couple seconds and say, Hey, this is AJ Vaden leadership expert, and then show you on stage where you’re delivering content, that’s where the value comes. And that’s really what they want to see. They want to see you delivering your content, how you interact with the audience, if they’re engaged with you less about the content itself and more how you’re working with the audience. And then secondly comes the content, right? And so that’s where, if aj, you’re a, a branding expert, they want to see the content. This is, this is AJ speaking on branding, it’s the video name.
JH (29:37):
And the next video might be, you know, AJ speaking on corporate culture or whatever, right? And they expect when they, when they listen or watch that, they’re going to hear a segment of your speech that talks about branding, about corporate culture or whatever, right? It’s not just somewhere in that 30 minute video or 15 minute clip. It’s, it’s in that two minutes. And you can obviously go longer than a two minute clip. But we found that we, in our system, you can have six topics, up to six topics. And so that would give you six individual videos that would show you delivering your content and with those particular topics. And that’s a really great way to do it. And then of course, you can also add other videos that would be like a testimonial video. So if somebody was interested in hearing testimonials, not just reading them, you can, you can go in and add those testimonial videos and, and of, and if you wanted to outta a sizzle reel. But in our system, you can set a primary video that always shows up on your profile and that particular one I, I don’t like making it anything other than something that you’re right up on the stage in the very beginning to catch ’em. So
AJV (30:52):
I love that. That’s what we, I think that’s really insightful about Yeah, it’s great to have a sizzle and it’s great to have testimonials, but that needs to be ancillary to the main thing being the main thing, which is you on stage, which is what this meeting planner needs to see first. Right.
JH (31:07):
And the interesting thing is that we’ve seen speakers do this and they create these little clips and you can be, so if you don’t have stage video and you can be just like, AJ is right here to me in the Zoom window, and and you can just say, Hey, my name’s AJ and I, I’m a, I’m a expert on corporate culture and when I come speak to you, we identify this, this, and this, and you audience will walk away knowing how to do this, this, and this. I mean, it’s just simple as that. Hmm. And it can be a video just like we’re on right now. And you know, it, it works out great. And and it’s something that can be shared on your own social media and on your own website and meeting planner really like that. And it can be even a marketing, we have a couple speakers that just did some marketing emails out about being an expert in whatever it was that they were an expert and that video was part of that email that they put out. So anyway, it just, there’s a lot of value in like, really specifically saying what you do and how you solve problems. You
AJV (32:08):
Know, I love that for the, the brand new speakers who are just starting out where, you know, so much of it as you hear, it’s like, you’re not gonna get booked without a demo video. And it’s like, well, you’re saying yeah, you can. Yeah. So I think that’s a, a really one hope inspiring for everyone who’s just beginning. But for those people who are just starting out going like, Hey, I’ve got my message. I know what I’m doing. I just don’t have any stage footage yet. I haven’t had that opportunity to get it filmed on stage. You really think doing something like this that’s just articulating what you talk about, how you do it, what the benefits are. You think that meeting planners are booking speakers that way?
JH (32:44):
Yeah. Well, a hundred percent. I know they are.
AJV (32:46):
That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s, I think that’s really hope inspiring for everyone out there going eventually you need stage footage, but you don’t have to have it to give back.
JH (32:57):
Yeah. Well, and the crazy thing is, is we all know people that have big names, celebrity figures, Malcolm Gladwell, Simon Sinek, whoever, AJ Baden,
JH (33:55):
And and anyway, but that, so that’s how we got him to get booked. But you know, the, the, the point is, is that that if you’re not a celebrity figure, which the majority of us aren’t then how do you get jobs? And it, it takes, it, it really takes the doing all the time. I think, oh man, I, I don’t remember who it was. It might’ve been I don’t know. I was listening to David Goggins I think one time, and, you know, he said to Grove something, you really have to do it. You have to be in doing it. And it’s all about the doing. And I’ve always remembered that as just like, it, you, you can’t, there, you can’t just like all of a sudden say I’m a speaker one day and not do anything to like build your business.
JH (34:46):
Right. You has, you have to do it. And so when you’re small, it means doing everything. And when you’re larger, it means you know, making sure that other people are doing everything right and that everything’s still happening and all the boxes are checked. So that’s, that’s what we’ve seen as we work with speakers and we’ve actually seen, I have literally seen speakers come and I’ve talked to that haven’t had one speech. They not even call them. Supposed they’re just learning about speaking to now they’re charging $20,000 a speech and they’re booked over a hundred times a year. You know, so it’s, it, it, it, it happens, it does happen, but it just ha you have to, you have to go and get in and do it. And that’s what people, they have to roll up their sleeves and get to work and it just doesn’t happen automatically. So
AJV (35:41):
Yeah. It’s, but it’s back to, it’s treating, speaking like a business, right? It’s like Right. Say you’re a speaker doesn’t mean anything’s gonna happen. Right. But you gotta put yourself out there and do the right things to get yourself booked, so. Right. All right. So I’m watching the time, and I know we have this a little bit longer, so I’ve got a few other questions here. So one of the things that I think we hear all the time at Brand Builder’s Group is how, how do you know how to set your fees? And so any insights around, doesn’t matter if like this is your first engagement, you’re just starting out, or you’ve been doing this a while. Is there any sort of thoughts, insight, or is there some magical strategy of how speakers should be setting fees?
JH (36:23):
Well, I’ve always heard this philosophy, it, it’s whatever people would hire you for is what your fee is. Right? And so it’s a sup, it’s a supply and demand thing. But in general we encourage new speakers to just get out and get experience, speak for free, get low paying jobs. You can start with like, rotary clubs are a great way, chambers of commerce are a great way. Like you can, you can really get out and get paid $50, a hundred dollars a speech just giving speeches. You just, you can’t I don’t know. I had a, I was talking to a guy recently that was a CEO at a company and he was transitioning over into speaking and, you know, he makes a good amount of money as a CEO and then came into speaking and felt like, well, I’m not gonna go earn a thousand dollars.
JH (37:16):
You know, it’s like, well, you have to then build your brand. You have to, you know, like you have to give, there has to be some reason that they would hire you for more than a thousand dollars. And so we kind of helped him recreate his what he was doing in a different approach and, and added more value to it by his experience as a CEO. And, but if you’re just starting out, that is obviously gonna be a lower fee. And so you just keep pitching it. And I’ve, I’ve heard this question a ton is when do I know when I can raise my fee? Hmm. And so that really comes when you’re getting booked enough of that fee that you feel like if I raised it, I’d still get booked and everybody’s different. There’s no secret sauce on fees. Unfortunately in my, in, from my experience start low, like if you wanted to start, like low range is, you know, 500 to a thousand, that’s really low range.
JH (38:17):
In, in our database of our speakers, you know, like a lower range would be like 2,500 to 5,000. That would be a good place to start. So if you, if you’ve spoken a bunch maybe for low fees and you’re trying to set some type of fee, you know, 2,500 is a good fee that p somebody would pay to get you to, to book you. And then like the 2,500 to five is a general good range. If you’re a, you know, if you’re like five to 75 is another good range, but like right around 10 is a, is a fee range that you see most speakers kind of ride around. You know, they’re, they’re booking 80 times a year 80 dates, and they have a pretty good business. And anybody above that, they either have some content or experience, they landed a plane on the Hudson River, they wanna race, they sold this business for whatever.
JH (39:13):
They have some reason that’s taking their fee, you know, to a higher level and or their content is just so valuable, right. You’re a Simon Sinek and you know, people will come just because of your content. Yeah. And that, and that’s a whole different thing, right? You, you know, those, those, those people are 50 to a hundred thousand a speech or not, or more. Right? And so it really depends where you’re at. But that’s, that’s that’s in general I think kind of the fee ranges that we see. And I really would just start with people, things like chambers of commerce and, and rotary clubs and, you know, volunteering free stuff. Just get some experience underneath you. ’cause You don’t want to go get somebody to say, yeah, I’ll pay you for 5,000 and you don’t have the experience delivering that speech and you don’t do a great job. And they’re like, yeah, not so great. You want all of your speaking experience, your, all of your bookings to build upon each other so that you can get references. Because that’s super huge in, in speaking as you want to be able to have testimonials to say, yeah, they delivered a great speech. And those also help in raising your fee.
AJV (40:28):
Yeah, I think that’s really, I think that’s really wise. And it’s, I think it’s interesting to hear, it’s like most speakers are around that $10,000 range. It’s like, if you’ve been doing it for a while, would you say that’s the most crowded fee range where that’s like, where it’s like, man, is there the most competition in that fee range?
JH (40:47):
In which one?
AJV (40:48):
The 10,000?
JH (40:51):
I would probably say five to 10,000 is probably the range, but probably more so there’s probably more people in the 7,500 to 10. They’re the, they’re the speakers that have figured it out. They have system in some place. They have they have a good database of, of contacts. They’re, they’re getting leads off the web. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re kind of well-rounded mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:49):
Yeah. And I think that’s really helpful of just going like, Hey, starter fees, you know, it could be as low as $500, but somewhere between 520 500 if you don’t have like, a lot of name recognition or credibility or, you know, books or content that’s gonna set a higher precedent. I think even having that idea for everyone who’s listening of going like, okay, like I thought my fee was gonna be 10,000
JH (42:48):
Some of it’s exposure too. I’ll give you an example. A local speaker here in Utah I had a youth group activity in my backyard and I had him come speak and it was, I don’t even remember what the topic was. It was just probably about achieving your very best or something to that effect. And he came and did it for free. ’cause He was looking for experience. Right. He was just transitioning into it. And that was probably eight years ago, and I just ran into him the other day and his fee is 50 grand. That’s awesome. And it’s all because of exposure. He got, he, I, I always thought he was great. He’s the same great guy now that he was then he has the same content, he’s better at it. Yeah. But he literally has the more exposure, he got more people like, wow, where’s this guy come from? And he just, it just, it just ballooned from there and got bigger and bigger and bigger. And now, you know, he’s 50 grand of speech and that’s amazing. Right. And that’s about eight years ago. Eight, eight years of work, and now he’s going from zero per speech to 50, and he’s still booked, you know, 80 to a hundred times a year. So
AJV (43:59):
That’s amazing. You know, but, but my favorite sayings is the more you speak, the more you speak. Yeah. Right. And it’s like, you just gotta get out there and as you’re, as you’re in, you know, a beginner mode doesn’t mean you’re a beginner in business, but a beginner in the speaking world, it’s like you just say yes. Right? You take the gig. It doesn’t matter if it’s at the Chamber of Commerce or, you know, the, you know, networking group in the back of Applebee’s. Like whatever. Right. You just say yes because you never know who’s in the audience. Right. And that’s always been our take. It’s like you just never know who might be there that can lead to the next event and who’s gonna be there that lead can lead to the next event. All right. So I’ve got two last questions for you.
AJV (44:40):
That was I think super insightful, especially for those in that beginner range and aspiring of going, like, what is a moderate price to start with? All right. So two last things. Who would you say is booking most speakers today? Or what topics are getting booked the most? Like, are there any industry trends of going like, Hey, like education is just like booking everything or ced, or are, or are there any topical trends that you’re seeing of going, Hey, doesn’t matter what, you know, year we’re in culture’s always gonna be top. Because I know for a long time there was like this huge rise in social media speakers but I’ve also seen that really go down. And then there was like, you know, diversity and inclusion speakers was really high, and then it’s kind of dropped off. So are you seeing any trends with like, industry bookings or topical bookings that we should know about? Yeah.
JH (45:36):
Yeah. Well, let me ask you this first. This is a roundabout answer. What percentage do you think a speaker hiring a speaker is in all the things that a buyer does a meeting planner does? What percentage do you think, where did that rank?
AJV (45:55):
Oh, maybe 5%.
JH (45:58):
What, okay. What, what priority do you think? Yeah. Oh no, 5%. Five percent’s good. I mean, that’s a good guess. The truth is, is that we did a recent poll with our database of meeting planners, and it’s 81% of event organizers said it’s in the top three things that they do. Wow. Is hiring a speaker. 81. 81% said that. And so the, the thing I want to bring up is that you know, speakers always, it’s, it’s a small thing. I mean, like booking an event or scheduling an event, you book the space. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (47:10):
Just like, as meeting planners or, and I think that’s fascinating. ’cause It’s like, I would’ve thought it probably would’ve been further down because it’s like, my gosh, there’s so many logistics to do these big events. Yeah, yeah. But it’s like, are there any trending topics?
JH (47:24):
Oh, right. That’s right. Yeah. So knowing that, that they’re, they are hiring speakers. I’m going right to our live statistics right now on e speakers. And the top topic that’s being searched right now in our database is inspirational. Hmm. Inspirational healthcare humor health and nutrition customer service, leadership. Those are some of the big ones. Women in business. Those are some kind of trending right now. I do know that corporate culture is huge. I mean, we, we get a lot of re inquiries about that changing the culture of, and it, and it has been since the pandemic because it’s unique environment, right. Culture is a big deal. And, and diversity, even though it has dropped off a little bit in regards to our focus of it, it’s still one of the top things that people get booked for.
JH (48:24):
Diversity and inclusion, equity inclusion, it’s all, it’s all super important. And, and anyway, so I, I actually was at a conference for speakers in Canada for the Canadian Speakers Association, like NSA in December. And there was a speaker that spoke about how we need to do better jobs as speakers of being diverse in our presentations. And this is, this is one of those things that you don’t really think about as a speaker. It’s like, I don’t speak on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I speak on these other things, but really you do, because we live in a world where there’s so much diversity in the audience that the things you say matter make a difference. Right. They do matter the way you address people. And I’ve even, I I, I took this to heart and because I say you guys and hey, you guys, and hope you guys are doing well and all of that.
JH (49:26):
And I, I know that’s changing now, right? But you can’t just say guys, and you can’t even even say men or women or ladies and gentlemen even. And it’s, it’s very specific. And so it, you wanna make a difference. As a speaker, I’d really dive into that and, and address how you actually present to your audience and what you can say and what you can’t say and, and make a difference that way. Even if you don’t speak on Mm-Hmm.
AJV (50:28):
Yeah. I think that’s wise. ’cause They’re like, you know, I thought that was interesting and I had jotted this on when you said it, it’s like inspirational as a top trending topic. But it’s like the truth is any speaker could make their topic inspirational. Right? Right. And it’s like, same thing with, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion. It’s like you could integrate some component of that into pretty much anything that you talk about. Right? Same thing with culture, right? And it’s like, same thing with customer service or experience. It’s like if you just focus on like, Hey, these are things that are important out in the business world today. These are what people are looking for, and learn how to integrate that into your message without changing your topic, then it really does make it a more well diverse option right. Across the board.
JH (51:12):
Yeah. And, and one of the things that we’ve seen where speakers are more successful is where they actually have an outcome that comes from their, their topic, right? So you’re solving a problem, there’s an outcome to your topic. And if you don’t already have that, if you don’t know what your outcomes are, then I would highly recommend that you look at that because you’ve gotta know what, what is the outcome that this buyer wants me to deliver on? What problem do they have and what outcome am I delivering? What am I solving? What problem am I solving? And if you don’t know that, and just say, I’m a speaker on this and, you know, hire me to speak, you’ve gotta talk about, you know, solutions and problems and you know, outcomes. And we’ve seen a, the speakers that focus on an outcome driven content Mm-Hmm.
AJV (52:08):
I love that outcome because
JH (52:09):
They’re actually solving the real problem. Right? What’s that?
AJV (52:12):
That outcome driven content. Yeah.
JH (52:15):
Yeah. They’re really solving problems.
AJV (52:16):
Yeah. And that is the hard work of making sure you know, the problem that you’re solving and are you speaking to that. And I, that’s all back to honing that craft of practicing that. And it’s like, sometimes you only figure that out because you’ve done this speech a hundred times, right? And sometimes it’s a hundred times for free, right. But the point is, is you’re getting out there, like you said earlier, and it’s like you’re doing the work whether you’re paid or not, you’re out there doing the work. Joe, if people wanna learn more about e speakers, where’s the best place for them to go?
JH (52:49):
Well it’s pretty easy. E speakers.com and there’s some dropdowns there for speakers on how you can learn more. You know, we you know, if you, if you contact us and tell us that you listen to this podcast, we can give you a free base account because we’re partners with brand builders and, and love these guys and they do great work and and we’ve gone through it Ourself has been amazing and, and they’ve changed some of the things and the ways we do things even so. But anyway, yeah, east speakers.com is where they can go and get a free profile and get started. And if you’re brand new, that’s a great way to kind of put a stake in the sand and say, Hey, I’m in the speaking industry. And if you don’t have a system in place and you are a successful speaker and if seasoned and you don’t have systems in place, we have great solutions for that and tie into a lot of the CRMs and financial software. And so we have, we have 24 years of business behind us, under our belt and most of the new features and system, the features that we work with and the benefits that we’ve come from or we’ve I guess that we, the benefits that we provide are driven by our customers, our speaker customers. They say, Hey, look, this is what I need to run my business better. And so we provide solutions and and tools for them to be able to run their business with them. So
AJV (54:17):
I love that. And that’s so super generous. So if y’all didn’t hear that, go to e speakers.com, mention that you heard about e speakers from this influential personal brand podcast with Brand Builders Group, and they will let you set up with a free account. So cool. So generous. Joe, thank you so much for being on here. And for everyone else, stick around, listen to the recap episode and then join us again on another episode of the Influential Personal Brand. We’ll see you next time.