Category: Podcast

Ep 394: Scaling Your Coaching Practice with Andy Bailey

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I’m so, so excited to get to introduce you guys. To my friends a Andy Bailey today. Before I give you a formal introduction to Andy there are two things that I think is really important for everyone to know. Who’s tuning in is one, as you guys know, since you listened to this podcast, you know, we serve the expert, community coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers, authors, or any of you who want to be one of those things. And a huge part of what we’re gonna talk about today is how does scale your coaching practice, right? But we’re gonna talk about the business components, the personal components the leadership parts, the sales parts. And so if that is you and that sounds appealing, then this is probably an episode you wanna stick around and listen to. The second thing that you need to know is how I met Andy Bailey, which now would be, I don’t know, 14, 15 years ago.
AB (01:03):
Hey, right after you moved to
AJV (01:04):
Nashville. I mean, it was like within months, and we got connected through a mutual acquaintance. But I remember coming to your office and I was working at our former company, and I met you there, and I still have it, and it’s sitting on my son’s shelf. And you gave out this little Yoda, these little bobblehead Yoda. Do you know what I’m talking about?
AB (01:24):
Hundreds and hundreds of those things we given out. But yeah, ,
AJV (01:28):
I still have it. Do you really? I should have brought it up here as proof that I still have it. But it’s
AB (01:35):
My
AJV (01:37):
And I carried around. I still, I had carried around that to two companies, several offices, a new house, and it has made its way onto the shelf of my son’s, both of my son’s study room. And, you know, for years, people would come into my office and they would say, are you into Star Wars? And I’d be like, no, I’ve never seen it. And they’re like, why do you have a Yoda? And I’m like, oh, well, I’m gonna tell tell you this great story about this person I met named Andy Bailey, who did not give me something with his logo on it, but gave me something that now makes me tell his story everywhere I go. So I have used that on stages on podcast interviews. And you may not know it, but I talk about that little Yoda and meeting you all the time.
AB (02:22):
Well, I need to get a bigger stash of Yodas to start. That’s gonna be the the outcome .
AJV (02:27):
Yeah. And, and I still have that little sucker. So I just think that’s really important because so many of us are trying to figure out in a world that’s really noisy, how do you stand out and how do you be memorable? And sometimes it’s the personal things about yourself that stick with people the most. And I don’t get to see Andy a whole bunch. She’s now lives in Colorado, but I still have your Yoda on my shelf. And so I don’t see you all the time, but I think about you every single time I walk by that little Yoda. So, again, for those of you who are tuning in I’ll give a quick formal intro of Andy. But this is, that’s one of those things that’s like, we’re all trying to figure out how do we grow in business? How do we scale?
AJV (03:09):
How do we get people to know about what we do so they can buy your products and services? And often we skip past the simplest of things, which is just help people get to know you. Be memorable by just being you, which is exactly what Andy did for me 15 years ago. And now you’re on this show set. Now let me formally introduce you and we’ll get down to business. But Andy Bailey is the founder of two awesome companies Petra coach, which we’ll talk about, and his newest company that will also talk about called Boundless. But he helps businesses scale to the point of selling or scale to just the point of healthy profitability. He helps so many people that I personally know with their leadership teams, their sales teams, their executive team. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He and I are part of the same EO group here in Nashville, the Entrepreneurs organization. He is a, a speaker and a constant adventurer. So without further ado, Andy, welcome to the show.
AB (04:10):
Oh, aj, thanks for thanks for the introduction. There’s a lot in there for sure. We’ve been an EO member for since 1997. When I speak to those groups, I always kind of weave that in. And I’ll say, is anybody older than me in the, or? Like nobody in the world has been a member longer than 97. I’m sure there’s a few, but if there are few and far between,
AJV (04:27):
Oh, that’s so funny. You know, things, I, I just hired two new people and on both of their you know, I’m like filling out payroll yesterday and both of them were like, born in 2000. And it was like, how old am I? What do you mean? We’re born in 2000? So when you said 1997, it’s like, I’m like, I was just filling these out yesterday going 2000. How old are you? I’m like, doing the math and it’s like, oh my gosh, you’re babies. You’re babies. Well, I, I’m I’m so excited to have you on the show, one, because I just, I know you personally, I know that you’ve got such a breadth of wisdom of not just in business, but in this really awesome niche business that we happen to be in, which is in the coaching world, right? It’s like you have built an enormously successful coaching business that helps other people build their businesses. So there’s so much dual benefit of the conversation that we’re gonna have today. And so I’m gonna start super broad and I’m just like, whatever wisdom you have to get, I’m gonna take this personally as like my free coaching hour with Andy, cuz you’re real expensive. But for everybody else’s gonna get some benefit too. So here’s my first question. If you had to nail it down to like the top one to three things that you think business owners need to do today to grow and scale, what would they be?
AB (05:49):
That’s pretty easy. So I, I think in this order of importance, and this is never a popular answer cause I’ve, I’ve, I’ve given this answer at colleges and at talks before and everybody wants me to say stuff like, you know, find something you’re passionate about or define your purpose and put a big, like, you know, all that stuff is great, but first and foremost, it has to be profitable. Hmm. If a business doesn’t generate a level of profitability, it can’t fulfill purpose, it can’t take care of others, it can’t fulfill a mission, none of that stuff. Mm-Hmm. matters. I’m not saying one’s more important than the other, but if you don’t have the money, you can’t run the business. Yeah. You know, and I watch it happen quite a bit. So profitability would be at the very top of the list, making sure that that’s in check.
AB (06:39):
We were talking about people earlier. You, you have to, and we see this in EO quite a bit now. I have the fortunate I get to go talk to a lot of EO and business people and big groups and big crowds and usually leadership or the leader themselves, they invest in their own personal growth. Hmm. But they don’t do the same for their team members. Hmm. If you take a, a general business that’s about five or 10 million in revenue, and if you took their p and l and just looked at what is the education line or the learning line the majority of that’s gonna be tilted towards the owner of the business, the entrepreneur themselves, and then it just goes right down the scale all the way to the frontline. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re investing to grow our people.
AB (07:24):
Sometimes I’ll, I’ll speak to it as, you know, if a business is growing at 20% a year, everybody in the business has to grow at 20% a year. They have to build additional capacity. Capacity can be knowledge or skills or, you know, feeling better, whatever it might look like. But we have to make sure that we’re investing in the people. So, so profitability, focusing on to the individual. And then I think they gotta get really good at sales and marketing. Hmm. You can have a lot, you can have a lot of really screwed up in your operations side, and that stuff’s a little bit easy to fix, but if you don’t have anything coming in the front of the house, it’s hard to, to work on the back of the house. Yeah. Making sure that what you build, the engine you build is a profitable engine. Making sure that you’re growing your people at a pace that you’re growing your business and then making sure that you have a way to go get people in the door to buy or to to sell your services or your product too.
AJV (08:23):
Mm-Hmm. Those are good. And I have a question for each one of these cuz I think these are one just sound business like sound business principles that we often neglect in the sake of do what you wanna do and, you know Yeah. And that’s also important. But those should important that those should a little bit be the, well duh, you should do what makes you happy, but at the end of the day, it also has to work, right? And working means it’s profitable. So if you, generally speaking, had to just give anyone who’s like, their businesses could be, maybe they’re a speaker, maybe they’re an attorney, maybe they’re a dentist, maybe they’re a coach or anything in between, right? But it’s like, if there were just a couple of simple keys of going, like, this is just basic business 1 0 1 when it comes to getting profitable, what do people need to know?
AB (09:13):
Be the, be the, be be good. That’s the answer to your
AJV (09:16):
Question, . Yes.
AB (09:17):
Yeah. That
AJV (09:19):
. Yeah. Actually do what you say you do, right?
AB (09:23):
Yeah. well we have some rules in business. One of ’em is do we say you’re gonna do be, you know, be on time every time, finish what you start and say please and thank you. Like that’s four rules in business that everybody should be following. Your competition doesn’t do that. It’s easy to outpace your competition if you do those four things. But what I’m saying about being good is if I stack up everybody else that does what I do and you know, people are gonna pick me, I, this sounds like an arrogant statement, but people are gonna pick me outta that lineup nine out of 10 times. I’ve, I’ve literally had spent a thousand days in rooms with teams like let that seek in for a second, 1,008 to 10 hour days working with teams of people over the last decade plus all the prep work, plus all the reading, you know, the 300 books that went into it.
AB (10:09):
I’m good at what I do. I’m really good at what I do. That means I don’t have to go market myself all that much or go sell myself all that much. It means I can be more profitable. It, it means I can do all the things in business that I want to go do. Now my job now, because of the scale of Petra, is to get other people to be good, which is a whole nother challenge. And that’s what I’m working on. But the answer to the question is, if I can give you one piece of advice, go be good at what you do. Yeah. Really, really good.
AJV (10:41):
I love that. What I wrote down for myself is be so good at what you do that you’re the only option, right? It’s like you so outpace everyone around you that you are the only option because you’re so good at it.
AB (10:52):
That’s right. That’s right. Whatever is your chosen field. If it’s writing or speaking or coaching, especially your audience, you know, probably a lot of solo entrepreneurs or solopreneurs, you know, they’re, they have to, they, they probably spend a lot of their time in as my website, right? As my business card ride. Do I have my, my thing put together is the cover of all that stuff is good and you gotta do that. But if, if you’re not delivering at the point of delivery to a level better than everybody else, it’s not gonna matter that much.
AJV (11:22):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. You know, it’s interesting we talk about this all the time at Brand Builders Group is that people often want to skip the fun, what we would call the fundamentals of building your personal brand. Which is, you know, ultimately what problem do you solve? What’s the unique way in which you solve it? Who do you solve it for? And how do you make money solving it? That’s step one. Step two is what do you have to say that forwards the conversation? So it’s developing your true thought leadership. And then number three is then how do you wanna say that? Right? That’s the art, the artistry of our content, the art artistry of our spoke, of our body of work. And what I find so often is people wanna skip all of that and they wanna have a pretty website, right? Because there’s this tangible pretty thing that’s like, look how pretty this is. Or they wanna jump straight to social media or they wanna, you know, they wanna do all the things that make it look like something versus having back to what you say, it’s like, make yours content so good, you don’t have to market it. Right? And it’s like, that’s hard and it takes time. A lot of effort.
AB (12:33):
The time piece is probably the one that’s most difficult, especially in our time now. Cause everything is instant and you have an entire generation that grew up on everything is at my fingertips. If I want something, I just push a button in the car comes, picks me up, takes me. Like all that stuff is instant. There’s no real concept of time. And you’ve heard the statement and everybody probably has heard the, you know, every success overnight success is a 25 year journey always,
AJV (13:00):
Right?
AB (13:00):
Mm-Hmm. Petra is now 12 years old. I mean, that’s a, that’s a decade long business journey. And if you look at it, you go, man, these guys are doing great. Well, we weren’t doing great 12 years ago, and we were charging nothing and working our asses off and, you know, screwing a bunch of stuff up, but learning along the way. But we built on a little bit of success and then built on a little bit more and built on a little bit more and we didn’t stop being good and we kept mm-hmm. looking for what’s the next good. And we still do that today.
AJV (13:29):
Yeah. And that kind of leads into the second thing that you said, which is be growing as yourself, the leader, right? The entrepreneur, the business owner, but also have your team grow. And so I’d love, do you have any just kind of like tips or, you know, best practices, rules of thumb, whatever we wanna call it, of how much do you invest in your team, right? Like what, what’s a good budget policy? Do you let them pick? Do you pick like what’s a good practice?
AB (13:57):
I don’t think there’s an answer to what not, not a universal answer. You know, if you’re, you know, 10% of gross margins should get, like, that stuff probably doesn’t exist cuz everybody needs something in a little different degree. But certainly if you’re running an organization that has people in it, other than you, you should be working with the individuals to figure out where are their gaps. You know, what is the place, not weaknesses, but gaps. Mm-Hmm. what they need in order to, if your business, I said this to you earlier before we got on, but if the business is growing at 20% a year, that’s 60% over a three year period, every person around the table had better be 60% better, stronger, faster, smarter, all the stuff. Or when you reach that place, you’re gonna hit a ceiling and not be able to grow past it.
AB (14:42):
Or you’re gonna Yeah. Experience a lot of chaos and pain. Right? So what do you have to do? And sometimes that’s people skills. Like, Jimmy, I need to teach you how to actually deal with people and, and sometimes that’s knowledge and you know, I need to learn you how to learn how to code something, right? There’s, there’s, it depends on the, the position and what the outcome is. But if we do it, if we wait until it’s too late, then it’s too much to grasp. You know, if you, if you wait until you’re 40 pounds overweight and you start working out, it’s really difficult if you start doing it now while you, you can keep it in check kind of thing. So small bite sized pieces, but the key is to sit down with team members and find out what are we doing to grow you. Mm-Hmm. not what are you doing to grow the business, but what are we doing to grow you? And it doesn’t have to be like 50% of the person’s time or 5% of the person’s time. It can be small things. If we do it on a regular basis, that’s
AJV (15:37):
Good.
AB (15:38):
The company just don’t focus on that.
AJV (15:40):
That’s good. But that, I mean, that’s the whole, that’s the whole concept. I remember hearing this years ago, it’s like, if you grow, the business will grow, right? So it’s like, you know, it’s like we’re all, businesses are just a collection of the people, right? And their experience skills, knowledge, right? It’s like, businesses don’t exist without humans. Some human has to be there. So it’s like, where are you growing? And as long as you’re growing the business will likely follow you in some capacity. All right. And then the third thing, sales and marketing, which you kind of referenced this a little bit. It’s like, man, if you’re so good that you’re the only option, kind of sell yourself. But in a world where it’s easy to compare your step one to someone else’s step 1000, or you’re year one to someone else’s year 12. And when you get in a world that’s so noisy with distraction of, oh, we’ve gotta, you know, we’ve got this growth funnel and we’ve got this email thing and we’ve got this new website thing and you’ve got all things digital that are real distracting and surprise, they actually cost a lot of money and also take a lot of time, what would you say are the one to two things? It’s like, just pause for a minute. If you really wanna grow sales, this is what you need to do. What would you say?
AB (16:58):
Ask
AJV (16:59):
.
AB (17:02):
Ask, ask for the sale. I mean, most people are, you, you, we don’t get what we, I mean nobody, you don’t get a date unless you ask for a date. Like they don’t just show up. I mean, maybe they do these days, but they typically, you have to ask in some form or fashion. We hide behind a bunch of that doesn’t put us face to face with people. Mm-Hmm.
AB (17:19):
, you’re wanting to get an engagement, sell a book, sell a case of books, you know, book a speaking thing and you’re talking to somebody, ask ’em for the sale. Hey, are we ready to do this? We ready to get this on? Whatever it is you’ve gotta say, and I explain it like this to salespeople, my own salespeople included, before that moment in time you didn’t have anything. Nothing. You didn’t have the sale. You did not have the sale. You had zero, so you got no risk in it already. Mm-Hmm. , take the risk. And the second thing would be pricing. Most of the people that I’m, I’m making some assumptions here so correct me if I’m wrong, but I would, I would eventually guess that, that most of the people that you work with are way under charging for the services that they provide.
AJV (18:06):
Way undercharging. Let me make sure you heard that way. Undercharging. Most of you.
AB (18:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And I find that even in business, especially in small business, and it’s one of the hardest things we do. Like we, we coach it’s 10 million to a billion dollar companies now. But anytime that we go into an organization and we do a financial review and, and we have like le we call ’em levers, we can pull these levers. One of the levers is increase in price. Hmm. And you would’ve thought I just shot somebody’s dog in the room and made ’em watch. When we started talking about we’re gonna have to do a 3% increase in price, well shut the market and paper costs 17% more gas is 40% increased freight to bring the stuff to the warehouse went up by 70% last quarter. What do you mean you’re freaked out about passing along this percentage increase to the customer? Well, I’m gonna go tell ’em.
AB (18:54):
It’s a price increase. Everybody’s got a price increase. Mm-Hmm. and most of the services that we offer have value on the other side of it. And I think what we get tangled up in is our own minds of what’s just me on the stage for an hour or, you know, it’s just the written word, you know, that my creativity shouldn’t cost all that kind of much. Mm-Hmm. . But what you’re bringing to the table is not what you’re doing in that room or what you wrote on that page. It’s the 18 years of experience or five years of experience or the thing that you lived through that was pure hell. And now you’re gonna go tell the story. That’s the thing. That’s the value. Now you put in the work for 18 years, eight months, three days, whatever your story might be, that’s what you need to get paid for.
AB (19:37):
Mm-Hmm. . So I tell businesses a lot, especially little ones. I remember we have a mutual friend in Nashville. I won’t mention her name, but she is in the wedding business. Okay. and, and the first time I met her, she asked me if I would have a business, you know, could I help her with her thing? And it was probably her and like one other person. And the first thing I told her was, double your prices. Don’t even talk to me anymore. Go back to your office and double your prices. Now, I didn’t talk to her for a a while and she came and found me one day and said, I did exactly what you told me to do. Certainly did doubled my business, not just my number. Doubled my business in the first year. So those two things ask and charge more.
AJV (20:21):
Yeah. That’s so good. You know, it’s so funny cuz I know exactly who you’re talking about. And, and not only did she double her business, she had a wait list. She had a wait list of people who wanted her services to do their, you know, very at that point, high-end weddings. And it did double her business and then had a wait list. Because I think a part of that is, you know, I think what I have found anyways in a lot of programs out there is if you, if you don’t have confidence in your own pricing, the consumer base has just a lack of confidence in what it is. And it’s like, that’s only this amount of money. It can’t be that good. It’s like we even associate pricing with quality, which is often not true. Right. And I think the great analogy to that is a book, right? It’s like, I think books are one of the most undervalued and most important things in the whole world because it’s like, you think about how much I prepared Noah offense and for this podcast and it was like 10 minutes. But you think about how much I would prepare for a blog, I don’t know, maybe it’s 20 minutes, but how much time I take to prepare for a book is years. Yeah. Right? The amount of editing and distilling and back and forth and it’s what, $24 and 99 cents to buy a book?
AB (21:41):
Yeah. You make books. I got a couple of ’em myself,
AJV (21:44):
You know, and it’s like, but it’s like I think we, we go, oh well, you know, but Right. Somehow it’s like, if I wanna coach with Andy, it’s gonna cost me $20,000. Right. It’s like, or I could read a freaking book. Right. And it’s not that it’s, they’re clearly different, but a lot of times we just undervalue things because they are underpriced and it’s like when you get it priced right, people actually, you attract the right audience. And I just, I see that happen with our clients all the time. It’s, they’re not attracting their right audience because they’re not priced right. They’re attracting an audience that actually is the opposite of what they’re looking for based on pricing.
AB (22:20):
Well, they, and they won’t volume too. They, they’re, you know, well I can get, they won’t buy it at that. Everybody else is charging $99 and if I charge more than $99, they won’t buy it. Well, everybody’s buying the other person’s now. It’s like, you know, do you want all of those because you gotta go do the work that represents all of those. If you triple the price and you got one third, the amount, you’re actually better because you’re working one third is often or the same money. Like Correct. It, it, it, it doesn’t make any sense. I mean we, we’ve got, we in our organization, Petra today, we’ve gone from, I remember the day that we went to $2,500 a month was our standard fee for coaching. We have companies today that are 25,000 a month. Mm-Hmm. , same, same person, exact same person. Pretty much the same process has evolved over the course of time a little bit, but pretty much the same process, A lot more knowledge, decade of knowledge in the room. But from 2,500 to 25,000, I go see somebody for two days, every three months they pay me $75,000 for two days and I go get it. I feel like I do a good job. We have good results. Then they make another a hundred million dollars at the end of the year. Everybody’s happy. Yeah.
AJV (23:35):
Yeah. It’s kind of back to, it’s like people don’t pay for time, they pay for experience. That’s right. And your ability to consolidate that and to super easy to, you know, like to comprehend strategies and principles that my team can then go and deploy. Right. That’s what we’re paying for. So, kinda on that note, you mentioned Petra, which you have scaled to a very healthy eight figure coaching business over the last decade. So if we were to just take a moment and narrow in a little bit of, not general practice, but like scaling a coaching business, like what does it take, what do you need to know and how do you do it? What do you got for us?
AB (24:15):
Well that’s, that’s a, I should probably write that book cause a lot of people wanna know that. What I did in the very beginning when it was just me, was a, I went to some kind of thought leader gurus that are around the coaching world. And I started asking the question, cuz this is what I do and I teach other people to do the same thing. If I wanna achieve something, go find somebody who’s already done it and just ask ’em how they did it. You’re asking me now. So I went to two or three people who are kind of kings of the methodology and just said who, you know, I, I would like to, I’m my history comes from recurring revenue. So I learned the reoccurring revenue thing back in when I, in my twenties. So I did not want to just trade my time for money for the rest of my life.
AB (24:58):
I wanted to make sure I built something that returned return revenue without me doing it back in the story. So I asked a few people and they said, you know, I don’t really know of anybody that that took, you know, a methodology turned and that they would deliver to a group of people and turned it into a practice with. So I had to figure that piece out on my own. Extremely difficult, more difficult. And I, and I started a software company aligned, as you’re familiar with it’s in New Orleans has 25 or 30 employees, does great down there. We’ve got a marketing company as well you know, in, in the Petra imbalance. So I, I started these kind of traditional businesses alongside this coaching practice after having a traditional business for 18 years prior to that and exiting it, coaching practice factor 10 more difficult to scale factor a 10 .
AB (25:52):
Like, it, it’s an incredibly difficult thing. So how did I do it a little bit at a time? So we’ve made some mistakes early, we got some wrong people in the seats outta necessity. I learned that lesson really quick, meaning there was so much business coming in the door that I just really needed the relief. Mm-Hmm. . So I’ve put a couple of coaches in place who were not good at what they do. They weren’t any remotely near good and turned them loose on these people who quickly ran away from them. So I had to kind of back that up. So I learned, well, exactly what am I looking at looking for in a coach? I didn’t really know. I, I like intuitively knows, so defined exactly to the letter what that looked like mm-hmm. . And we are incredibly intense on anybody who wants to work inside of the organization as a coach today. They have to go through, we called it gauntlet. You know, I talked to a guy today and he wanted to be a coach. I said, look man, we’re like the Navy Seals, you know, we take the best of the best in the world and then we put ’em through hell and if you make it through hell, then maybe we’ll invite you in. You gotta be ready for that kind of thing. So people, some people are attracted to that process, some people are repelled by it. There’s a reason that that exists mm-hmm.
AB (27:01):
. And then again, it’s when you first got someone in, so I go get another coach, we bring ’em back in. There’s a period of time that, and it’s usually somewhere between 12 and 24 months. They go through a training process and then day one in the room with the client, they completely fall apart. Like they forget all their training, what they’re supposed to say, what the next steps are, what page, like forget absolutely everything. So they screw up for about a year to two years. And we call it burning members. We call our clients members because we know we are putting companies in there now they’re getting value, more value than they would get from the open market, but not nearly the value that they’re gonna get if they came to this person when they were two years in. You with me? Sure. Mm-Hmm. , we, we charge less for it. We’re very open and straightforward. They get a lot of time with the coach, but the coach’s abilities aren’t developed yet. But we, we’ve learned that recruiting the right people is incredibly important. Making sure that we do not compromise on that no matter what the circumstance is. And then training and retraining and training and retraining as we go down this path. And nothing replaces experience.
AB (28:20):
We can do all the online training, all the shadowing, all the books, everything, everything. But as your speakers on this absolutely understand you’re not as good. I don’t care what, you know, from stage, the 50th time as you are gonna be the 500th time experience is the best teacher.
AJV (28:43):
Yeah. So funny. One of our early mentors, when my husband Rory was competing for the world championship of public speakers, I, we remember this so clearly, and Eric Chester is the one who told us this. He said, the only difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is a thousand speeches. I said, go give this presentation a thousand times and a promise to you, it’ll be great. Yep. And that’s what he did. That is literally what my crazy husband did. In the back of a Denny’s with two, two people to any school or free club that would have him. And, and that first 12 months when he was competing, he did that speech probably 340 times. And that’s once a day. Y’all like, there’s only 365 days in a year. And out of 25,000 contestants, he came in second. Right. What he says he is the number one loser . But it’s like, you know, but it’s like, man, it was, he’s doing it every single day. You think about that, it’s like you do anything every single day over time, you’re just gonna get better.
AB (29:52):
There’s, you have no choice. But most people, most people will not go do that. And we talked a little bit prior about, you know, just the societal viewpoint today is, I won’t give me that now. I deserve it. Mm-Hmm. , no, you don’t, you haven’t done it a hundred times or 340 times or a thousand times. You don’t deserve it. You’re, you’re not going to be good or great until you go put in the work. And that the work part is the, the part that most people won’t go do. Only a few. And those few will ex, you know, exceed and show up and, you know, get, they’ll get the brass ring or the golden ring or whatever it is that they’re chasing.
AJV (30:37):
Yeah. I think that’s a good reminder to all of us. And even like starting Brain Builders Group, like we turn five years old in just a couple of weeks. Right. And it feels, it feels like yesterday, right? But we were build building our first coaching company for 12 years. And you know, the thing that I’ve learned is like, the more that you do something, the quicker you can redo it and make it better. But, you know, it’s like we stepped into building brand builders groups constantly frustrated of like, why isn’t this working fast enough? Right? And it’s like, but you look up one day and you’re like, oh, that’s because it’s like, again, I just, I have, I have so much to learn in the patience category, but it’s like, and it takes time to build anything good takes time. And if you rush it, you’re gonna cut corners and you’re gonna skip things that are crucial to the foundation. And I know from our community and from people listening, it’s like, man, you wanted to work so bad and you wanted to work so fast that you’re often tempted to just skip steps. But it’s like you’re always gonna have to repeat those steps at some point.
AB (31:39):
And everybody’s looking for a like a silver bullet. Like a, can I use a piece of technology? Can I use a, you know, like no , you can use it, but you’re not getting a skill from it.
AJV (31:52):
Yeah. That’s good. So I, I think one of the things too, because you have done this, how many, how many coaches do you have at Petra?
AB (32:01):
There’s about 20, 25, 26, something like that.
AJV (32:03):
That’s a lot. That’s a ton. So if you were to give any tips, and I know we only have a couple of minutes left here, but if you were to give any tips for people going, wait Andy, I have to go hire people. Like where do I find good talent? Like how do I find, attract, train, and keep good talent? What are your tips?
AB (32:27):
First of all, it’s a decision process. And I, I’ve had this conversation, especially when somebody, I, I, I’ll use an example. Been working with the company now for a while, like a decade, a while. And when they first approached me, highly successful, highly profitable, just a few people kind of run like a fraternity house. And they were in the sales business and they all made great money, I’m think, I mean like millions a year, right? So, and they want, but he wanted a business. He’s like, you know, I feel like, I feel like I need a business. I’d like to, I wanna scale this thing. I wanna turn it into an actual business. I know it’s just a job right now and it’s a good job, but an actual business. I’m like, are you sure dude? Like, you need to be sure.
AB (33:12):
And there’s nothing wrong with solopreneur lifestyle business, you know, staying small, staying small and being great. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Cause it takes an enormous amount of energy to scale something beyond yourself. Mm-Hmm. a group of people to look, smell and act the way you want them to look, smell and act on a regular basis is not an undertaking for the lighthearted. So the first is be very cautious with even the decision. Cause you know, we glorify business people and put ’em on magazines and talk about their organization. You know, it’s a 10,000 person group or a hundred thousand person group or whatever. But the glory is the end result. What they don’t see is, are the years of the pain to get there. So the first point of that is be cautious of making that decision in the first place.
AB (34:07):
The second piece is you’re going to lose money before you make money. Mm-Hmm. So if you make 2 million a year doing what you’re doing today as a solopreneur, you probably are gonna get to a place where you make it half million dollars in the first three years of your little venture off into being a business. Cause now you’re paying other people to do this stuff 30% as well as you were doing it until they can get it up to the a hundred percent where you want them to be. And you gotta be willing to suck that up for a period of time in order to get scale on the other side. Right. So you’re gonna, it’s gonna cost you not just effort and energy and time, but a lot of money to go build something like that as well. So at the end of the day, just be cautious with the decision itself.
AJV (34:48):
Yeah. I think that’s actually really wise. And sage advice because I think we often get so tempted where we think we have to scale. We think we have to grow. And the truth is, you
AB (35:00):
Know, you don’t have,
AJV (35:01):
You don’t,
AB (35:02):
I’m at a place right now with Petra where we, we, you know, we had meeting, we had a meet half a half a day meeting today. I mean, our business does really well. It makes, it makes really good money. I’m not that involved in it anymore. You know, I’ve built it so it could run on its own. That’s what we do with other companies, might as well do it my own. So all of my businesses operate pretty much without me. But in order to go from where we are to the next level, you know, the 25 it’s gonna take a lot of my time and attention and I’m weighing in my mind like, am I actually willing to go do that or am I OK where I am and could I point my energy in another direction? So the, I’m, I’m making that decision personally while I’m telling you guys the exact same thing you asked me about how to, where to go look for a great team members to be in a coaching, right. Put down the attributes, not the skillset. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:55):
. That’s good.
AB (35:56):
What are you looking for from an attribute standpoint before you look at the skillset? Skillsets can be taught, attributes are innate and they’re just part of the being.
AJV (36:06):
Mm-Hmm.
AB (36:06):
. So what are your core values of your business? What is the purpose of your business? What are the pure attributes that you’re looking for in a human being to ? You know, I wrote an article years ago AJ called sharing a toilet seat. It actually was in the Tennessee, if you remember that old, that
AJV (36:21):
Old office. Yeah.
AB (36:22):
. And it was about I said, look when you hire somebody, you’re gonna sit on the same toilet seat that they sit on. Aren’t, don’t you wanna take just a little bit of time picking that person like, like hiring somebody. Right? And then it went into what are the inter what can you do to slow this process down and be more just more pointed with making your decision.
AJV (36:43):
Yeah. I actually, I love that it’s, you know, and actually I really love that it’s what can you do to slow the process down versus, you know, how do I speed it up? And I think so often it’s like, how do we make faster recruiting decisions and how do we expedite the onboarding? And it’s actually, I really love the advice of like, no, slow it down. Right? It’s like, don’t make these hasty decision decisions. Know exactly who they are. Make sure they know who you are. And that, again, takes time. So slow it down.
AB (37:15):
Well, you, you’ve had the experience. I’m making an, again, another assumption and I talk to a lot of business people. You know how difficult it is to get somebody out of your business once they’ve been there.
AJV (37:25):
Oh yeah. It’s, it’s annoyingly difficult and to do it, there’s not gonna create any sort of legal ramifications or everyone leaves on good terms and everyone’s happy. It’s like, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a little bit like getting married. And you know, for those who’ve been through this getting divorced, it’s often a lot easier to get married than it is divorced.
AB (37:49):
Super easy to get married, super easy, really difficult to break that thing up. Yeah. Same thing is true and
AJV (37:55):
Painful for all the parties involved. So slow it down. I love that advice.
AB (38:01):
You wouldn’t rush into a marriage you would date for a while. You’d pick different people, you’d sit with ’em, you’d talk like, you learn about somebody before you make the commitment. Same thing is true here.
AJV (38:09):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. Andy, if people wanna learn about Petra and what you do for businesses, and if somebody’s in a state of like, I am scaling and I do need this kind of advice, where should they go to learn about Petra?
AB (38:22):
Just go to petra coach.com. We have some online tools and some downloads there. We also do some live events virtual live events. May the 18th, I don’t know if this comes out prior to May the 18th, but we, we do have a live event in Nashville that people are welcome to sign up. Most of this stuff is free as well.
AJV (38:39):
Ah, that’s awesome. And I’ll put all that in the show notes. But then also you’ve got this awesome new company boundless, stop me. And that’s really more about the personal development side. And so can you give us your 32nd? Tell us about Boundless and where people go to find out about it.
AB (38:54):
Yeah, so as we were talking about earlier, like growing the individual inside of the business, that was a missing component inside of Petra wasn’t something that we could spend a lot of time with. So we started the business a couple of years ago that St took the tools for growing an organization, a company. And we just turned those tools into tools for the individual. We call it high performance for high performing humans. So it’s literally, think of it as life planning. Where you, where you gonna be in your life? What do you want in 10 years? What do you want in a year? Very, very detailed. We created a journal system that goes along with it so you can write every day. And it’s a process I’ve been following personally for 12 years and I just turned it into this stuff. It’s been, this has been a fun journey creating this.
AJV (39:35):
And people can go to boundless.me to check out the more personal development side. And then also in the show notes Andy’s been so gracious, we’re gonna include an awesome QR code where you can just sign up for quick, easy little, you know, snippets of information that’ll come to you every day. And so that’ll all be in the show notes and I’ll put all of the other links in there so that you guys can learn, stay in touch and continue to get these awesome pieces of wisdom from my good friend Andy Bailey. Andy, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you. And for everyone listening, make sure you stay tuned for the Cliff Notes version of this episode, which we’ll release shortly after this. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 392: How to Build Your Own Media Production Team with Dan Martell

RV (00:02):
So straight up, you are about to meet one of my favorite people to follow online. And I actually started following Dan Martel before we became friends, and I followed him for like a year. I really loved his content because there’s certain people, and I, I follow less than a hundred people total online. And the people that I follow are people who I have deciphered are people who are achieving real results in real life, not just they have lots of followers, or they have a big personal brand, but I’m actually following people who are real life business owners. And I was able to, to, you know, sort that out quickly with Dan. So he is an angel investor. He’s a, he’s an influencer, YouTuber thought leader. He’s also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of this book. It’s called Buy Back Your Time. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that.
RV (00:55):
But before that, he founded Scaled and exited successfully three different technology companies within a 10 year period. So in two, in 2012, he was named as Canada’s top angel investor. He invested in companies like Intercom, Udemy, unbalanced all very, very successful companies. And now he runs a SaaS academy and is basically, he has one of the largest coaching companies in the world. He specializes in talking specifically to SaaS founders, which I am not, but we are a recurring revenue business because of coaching. And we also, you know, have a membership component of that, which is like the online version of ours. And so a lot of the principles that apply to SaaS companies apply very much to any recurring type of revenue model. And so I really, really love, love Dan. I believe in his stuff. And then I saw his book, came out, hit the Wall Street Journal, and then he was doing an event in Nashville, and I was like, man, I want to come over and meet you. And we met up. And so anyways, here he is the man, Dan Martel. Welcome to the show, buddy
DM (02:02):
Rory, it’s an honor man. I’ve I’ve been a huge fan of your work and you know, just congrats, man. Like watching all my friends that you work with, the support you, you give them and the, the results they’ve gotten. It just is a testament to the mastery that I know you focus on, you know, when you, when you deliver for people, and it means a lot. I think there’s a lot of folks out there, you know, selling stuff and not delivering, but you know, I could tell within our first conversation that that’s that’s not you. You’re somebody that over-delivers and it’s awesome.
RV (02:35):
Well, thanks brother. And I we really do my wife AJ says this all the time, she says, utilization equals retention, utilization equals retention. And she just is always about over-delivering and getting people using it. And even though, again, we don’t do SaaS, I know that like so much of what you teach is just around that same thing of providing a quality product, making sure people have a great experience using it, training the team to sell marketing. Like all, all, all in. And so I want to talk about buy back your time, okay. The book, but I wanna talk about it specifically to personal brands, which you’re uniquely equipped to talk about. And one of the things that you were sharing with me before we started was how you’ve been applying this principle to your new life as a YouTuber and a influencer. And you know, you’ve gone from being you’ve gone from being an entrepreneur to being an investor, to now also you’re, you, you said, you said something to me, you said, right now you’re really investing in media. So I’d love to hear about what that means and also why at this stage in your career, do you suddenly care about investing more into media?
DM (03:54):
Yeah, it’s an awesome question, Roy. I mean, my, my quick arc was, you know, I, I grew up in a really tough environment, got in trouble with the law at a young age, diagnosed with a D H D, you know, ended up in prison twice by the time I was 17. And in rehab, actually taught myself to code. And that, that literally became my new addiction at that point. It kind of filled the hole that a lot of the you know, the addiction I was, I was suffering with you know, left. And then I got into entrepreneurship, which is this like, beautiful forcing function for betterment, right? Like, if you think of like getting big, like growing a business, if you wanna be more successful in a business, you gotta go look in the mirror. So my, my, my message for a long time was about, you know, like growth and mindset and all these things.
DM (04:44):
And the problem was I struggled with disconnecting from the obsession of building, right? I had two failed companies right out of the gate, 17 again at 19. And it wasn’t until I was 24 that I hired a business coach that essentially showed me how to operate scale, begin with the end of mind, a lot of the principles that are fundamental that I just was lacking, right? I just thought we’d build a product, people buy it, you have a business. And it was through that experience in my third company that made me a multimillionaire that I essentially like crater my life because I was engaged with a woman that it turns out, you know, to have, to have a successful relationship, you actually gotta be present. And I just wasn’t, I, I didn’t know any better. I was so scared of failing because of the momentum I’d built that I I just kept working a hundred hour weeks and I wasn’t present.
DM (05:36):
And eventually I came home one day and I found her in tears in the kitchen, and she just took the ring off and walked away. And it was about seven weeks before the marriage. So that was my wake up call to all of this. And that’s really where the buyback principle, which I teach in my book, which is, you don’t hire people to grow your business. You hire people to buy back your time, because if you do the second, you get the first, but you don’t necessarily get the, you don’t, you know, most, most entrepreneurs build businesses. They grow to hate. So I, I started coaching companies I invested in 15 years ago, this core principle, right? Like I had to learn it for myself. I exited that company, sp and then I went to Silicon Valley and built two venture backed companies and really understood scale and leverage.
DM (06:23):
And I started tweeting and blogging. And that’s kind of the beginning of like the, if you want to call it influencer phase, but I did it as very much from a marketing point of view. You know, it’s like, oh, if you have an audience, you can hire easier, you can get customers, you know, inbound marketing started to pick up back then. What shifted for me recently was, honestly when the book came out a few months ago and it became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, I underestimated the value of a book by 10 x. Okay? Like, and, and Rory, you know, this better than most. It is one of the easiest way to build credibility. So like, I had all this business success, but I don’t know, there’s just something about a physical book that all of a sudden now people see me in a different light.
DM (07:09):
And then what happened as I was doing all this media stuff like Instagram, social media, I have about a million followers across all my platforms, but I was, I was doing just enough. Like I wasn’t, I wasn’t like thoughtful about it. I wasn’t, I would say investing in it. And there was just like perfect tsunami of some friends of mine that I watched essentially, like grow their audiences and see them get access to opportunities to impact people on a level I couldn’t even imagine. I was like, how did that happen? How did you get on national tv? How did you, you know, get a New York Time bestseller? How did you get these, you know, 50 k speaking opportunities, et cetera, or even access to deals, right? And it, it just occurred to me that the, if my goal is truly to, to have an impact to serve at risk youth, which is near and dear to my heart, then it’s, it’s irresponsible of me to not lean into it.
DM (08:03):
Like, it, it, it kind of doesn’t make sense if you tell me your goal is to help people and you intelligently look at how can you help people? Well, the, the, the trade of putting out content and serving literally millions of people and it costs you nothing huge leverage. I’m all about, you know, buy back my time. And then, and then from that opportunities tip of the spear for me to buy companies, which I do with one of my private equity companies I’m involved in, or like coach in SAS Academy or, you know, travel the world and speak, or, and it’s funny cuz you mentioned reoccurring revenue in coaches. That’s actually a big part of the people that have reached out recently because they’ve seen me scale not only SaaS Academy, but like helped other friends of mine in coaching industries just understand the dynamics that are present and just natural in software as a service SaaS, right? So that, that was what shifted is just this realization if I wanna help people investing, you know, dollars and cents into building a media team. And that’s, that’s the identity shift for me. It went from being a marketing function to a media team. So I look at myself as a media person, not as a talent in a marketing function.
RV (09:16):
So, so, so hash that out for me. And, and, and, and also this applies to how does the buyback principle apply to creating lots of pieces of content, which is something that, you know, I’m watching, I’m watching you do, and watching you uplevel sort of the, the quality of what you’re putting out. And so I’m really curious to hear what, what is representative of that mindset shift from marketing, you know, function to media company, and then also in addition to the mindset shift, what is the, what’s the tactical expression of that in terms of how many people are you hiring? And like, what does that mean you building out a whole studio and you’ve got like, tons of producers and like script writers or, or like what does it mean exactly?
DM (10:05):
Yeah, I mean, I, the other thing where I wanna be careful that I wanna scare people away, right? So I’ll give you the like, like low budget version and then I can share what I’m doing. Yeah. But I’m also not ignorant to the fact that, you know, I have dollars and cents to invest and some people may be trying to make more money, but even
RV (10:22):
Though you do have limited of money, you’ve still stepped into this. You, even though you’ve had money, you’ve stepped into this. Totally.
DM (10:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it’s, it is literally one of the best trades any person can do with their lives. And I think, you know, you’ve seen people like Gary V and many others been screaming at the mountaintop about this and it, and I’ve known Gary for 14 years and it took me this long to finally get, and again, the book was the catalyst, the book came out and I was like, whoa, how, how is this thing helping tens of thousands of people? And I’m not like, talk about leverage. So here’s, here’s the first thing is the whole idea of just capturing what you do, right? There’s this great book called Show Your Work by Austin Cleon. It’s for artists, but I, I really, I read this book and I leaned into it. So for example, I have two cameras on me right now, like on my desk, they’re, I don’t even know what kind they’re, but canon something, whatever.
DM (11:15):
And all my meetings from coaching calls to all hands to investor reviews to this podcast I just, I just click a button on my laptop and it records everything and then it saves it to a Dropbox that synchronizes, right? And it puts it up into the cloud. Now then I have a team that goes through all that footage and they decide like, oh, that was actually interesting. That was not right. So to me, the whole idea of just like start capturing stuff right, is just such a basic idea. A lot of people I know are doing audio podcasts, but they’re not recording video. So, and, and it’s fascinating to me. I’m like, well, you’re already talking to the person, just like, do it on a platform, do it on Zoom, and then just grab that video content and put that out, you know? So that, that was like the easiest thing to do.
DM (12:03):
And then what I started doing to level up the capturing side is now I just hire freelance videographers in different cities. I predominantly go like LA or Vegas or you know, in my own city when I’m doing speak engagements or, or coaching sessions and they’ll just come and, and video record just me. So just now asking for permission, so like when I have clients fly in for, for a v i p day the rule is, is like the videographer will be there, he’s recording me, but not you. And, and none of your stuff will be in the video. Well, all of a sudden I, I’ve take a, you know, a, a six hour day and produce 50 pieces of content that I didn’t have to like go into a studio and shoot right now. Some people are gonna have a hard time with that cuz I don’t think they actually know what they’re talking about.
DM (12:55):
So their content ain’t that interesting. I mean, Rory, that’s the truth, man. They don’t, they don’t know how to tell a story. They don’t know how to make a point. So some people will be like, I feel like I am not as good. But the truth is, is a good editor a good what’s called a times stamper or Clipper, they will find the nuggets, right? And you, and over time what’s cool is like I only see my social media content that gets put out there. Once it goes out, I literally have a creative director that takes care of deciding what he thinks is, is appropriate or not inappropriate and, and puts it out. So I get to consume it at the same time as my audience. But it acts as a feedback loop because I can see what they think is interesting. I can then see what works on social media and then I can go, oh, that message seems to resonate so I can think about that when I’m sharing or talking or doing other stuff. And you can be
RV (13:43):
Surprised by your own brilliance. Occasionally you’re like, wow, I can’t believe I said it. That was really freaking
DM (13:48):
Good. The editing skills, they literally, they’ll take 20 minutes of me rambling and just like punch it into a 35 second reel and I’m like, wow, it made me sound so smart. But that’s, that was good. Yeah, I think, I think the key is just start capturing and then, and and have essentially a videographer and an editor, ideally the same person, like on staff part-time. I think it’s, you know, as much as you have a bookkeeper and you have an assistant, you should probably start thinking about getting a full-time or a part-time videographer slash editor.
RV (14:17):
Yeah. So talk me through the specific like team members. So is that, is it really just, do you think it’s, it starts with one person who’s like a videographer and an editor on staff?
DM (14:27):
Yeah, I think, I think there’s, there could be two components to this. There’s the, the creating the, the reels, the video assets, and then there’s publishing. So there’s the copywriting and publishing side. So you know, at the easiest level following my own, you know, advice in the buyback principle, I would say your assistant can probably write first drafts of a lot of the marketing collateral, right? Like, especially if you have a body of work they can go look at and say, oh, this is how you wrote your newsletter, this is how you write a caption. I mean, truth is with chat g p t, you get a transcript of your video and you ask AI to do it, it’ll get it 90% good, right? Like better than you could write it. You can even say in the tone of somebody you admire like the Rock or Joe Rogan, you can literally ask it to write in a certain tonality that’s appropriate for you.
DM (15:14):
And then you can just come in for a couple hours once a week and just edit that stuff, right? But again, my process is do something till it becomes, you know, timely. So if you’re trying to produce at scale like I am then you start hiring people that are just a copywriter and somebody that manages your social media posting schedule. Because I mean we’re, we’re taking all that raw video and we’re producing LinkedIn posts, we’re producing email copy, we’re producing Facebook posts. We’re literally, all social media platforms are driven from that raw capturing of video for written format and, and email.
RV (15:52):
So, okay. And I’ve heard you mention a couple different terms here and what I hear you saying is version 1.0, it might be a part-time videographer slash editor and your assistant, and maybe your assistant is taking the transcription of the video and using chat G B T to help write the captions.
DM (16:11):
Totally. Yeah. And then scheduling it on social media for publishing the publishing
RV (16:15):
And like they have to go in and schedule it or log in and post it or whatever. So then what about, but then you, you have copywriter, you have like a social media scheduler person, video editor, and then creative director. So at this, at this point then, is that at my
DM (16:34):
Scale? Yeah, at my scale. Because again, the amount of content I’m putting out, I think three reels a day. We’re, you know, I’m spending probably 15 k a month, right? So like a major investment. And I’ve got my creative director, we’ve got one or two video editors. We have one person that just does timestamping. They literally go through because I’ll produce, you know, today I probably have about five hours of capture from all my different calls, podcast interviews. I just did a keynote. So, so somebody’s gotta go through that and just timestamp the clips of what’s interesting to cue it up, up for the editors. And then we have a copywriter, I’m assuming on retainer. Again, my creative direct today cuz I’m all about, and you know, people read my book, I’m all about delegating outcomes, not tasks. I’ve delegated the whole thing to my creative director.
DM (17:27):
They manage their team in budget and then they’re the conversation I have in regards to feedback on, hey, this worked really well. I remember my, my creative director the other day, his name Sam, he goes he goes, Hey man, he sent me a text message with two, two videos. He’s like, there’s this video and this video. And it’s like, this one was good but not great. This one went viral. He goes, you, you need to calm down. And I go, okay, well first he’d asked if I was open to feedback, which the answer’s always yes, but I love his approach . He goes, you gotta calm down man. He goes, I think in this video you were like trying to project, but if you look at these other ones that did really well, it’s just you having a conversation with a friend. And when I saw that, I, all of a sudden now, like right now I’m sitting down at my desk cuz there’s a different tonality if I’m standing up Rory, I don’t know if you have a standup desk, but there’s a different energy, right?
DM (18:23):
So he now is giving me feedback into topic content. Like things that are like, hey, talk more this way. Tell more stories use more feeling words. Like it’s just this beautiful feedback loop. And I think if anybody wants to just become better at communication in general, it’s kind of a life hack because it creates an audience that you can serve, costs you nothing. Especially if you just capture the work you’re doing already. And it is a forcing function and a feedback loop for you to become better at a skill that will transcend anything you could do. I mean, becoming a world-class communicator in the moment where you’re able to pull vocabulary and tell stories and just be on point. Like that’s, that’s the thing that is the X factor, right? When you look at your clients, you’re like, man, they’re really great at what they do.
DM (19:17):
It’s because they practice. They had, they had reps. And that’s what I, that’s the way I look at it is like, it’s just this beautiful kind of feedback structure that just keeps feeding every other project I’m working on in my life. It makes everything else I do easier. I mean now, I mean we we’re adding thousands of people per week on my Instagram account. N now I’m getting people I’ve wanted to connect with start following me cuz they’ve seen something I put out there. I mean that, just talk about speed. I I it’s just, it’s fascinating that it took me this long to figure it out.
RV (19:50):
So, and coming, so coming around, so you have a creative director, a video editor, a times stamper
DM (19:56):
Who, a copywriter and a copywriter. Yeah, and a
RV (19:59):
Copywriter. So four, so really four at, at your current level of scale, you got four. And those are all full-time people.
DM (20:08):
Copywriters part-time times stamper is per hour editor is per project. So yeah, they’re not full-time. I mean you can, again, there’s different levels of quality. You can do some people, you can get people to produce videos for you for like 25 bucks a video, right? Or 15. I mean I’ve seen people, I mean my DM and I’m sure yours are too, they’re just full of people offering to do edits. So you, you don’t have to spend that much, but you’ll also, you know, the results are in what you invest. So if you, if you wanna, you know, have a conversation with, and that’s why my creative director is the ultimate hire because I need somebody that’s really trying to understand the platforms and what’s popping now and gimme that feedback so that we can kind of iterate cuz it’s not just about kind of a set it and forget it. It’s a very creative process.
RV (20:56):
And that person’s full-time the creative director. A
DM (20:59):
Hundred percent. Yeah.
RV (21:00):
Gotcha. And then what about graphic design?
DM (21:03):
Yeah, it’s part of the editor stuff. I don’t even know
RV (21:06):
The video editor does the graphic. Yeah, I
DM (21:08):
Think we have, we have a really strong design template structure that my designer, so I have a part-time designer Rich, who does all my design work. But he’s given like kind of like an asset library to the, the video team so that they can pull from so they don’t have to ping ’em every time.
RV (21:24):
Yeah, I love that. That’s, that’s super helpful just to, to see. But yeah, that’s a big in, I mean, 15,000 a month is a big investment even with chat G B T and everything else that you can use like, and and yeah and doing video editing so you know, you’re, you’re in a couple hundred thousand bucks a year and so you gotta have a way to monetize that. And in your case you do that with coaching. So I’d love to hear how have you applied the buyback principle to scale the coaching business? Cuz obviously that’s the thing that’s gotta pay for this cuz you’re not making, you’re not making $200,000 a year on brand deals and stuff like that. You’re not messing around with that as much as you’re not yet.
DM (22:02):
I mean this is funny, right? It’s like what? Yeah, the amount of opportunities now, like, you know, speaking fees, I think if you can sell tickets to an event, I mean you, you’re in the 25 k plus level, right? 50 K speaking. It only takes a few opportunities to kind of justify those expenses. The brand deals I don’t do yet, although, you know, my videographer or my creative director keeps talking about it cuz like there are certain products that I do love and I just happen to share often because it’s in my world. So like anything you can do to subsidize a media production I think is an interesting thing to consider. Again, financially it’s a different game for me. But you know what’s interesting is I actually don’t monetize my personal brand directly for SaaS Academy SaaS Academy’s. Kind of like how, I mean the, I think there’s two parts of the question.
DM (22:49):
How have I applied the buyback principle to the coaching business? There’s a few ways I will, I will tell you this Rory cuz you know, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of friends that coach, right? It’s, it’s because it’s easy to do. It’s like real estate agent or a social media expert. Like there’s not, the barrier venture is pretty low except most people get stuck in one-on-one coaching, right? And they don’t have an audience, a lot of their customers are through referral. So there’s always this feast or family because a customer comes in, they help ’em get a bunch of results and then they feel like they run outta runway and they go some results. So what I’ve gotten really good at because of my software background, is understanding how to design programming for my coaching clients and, and essentially productizing the coaching in a way that would allow me to buy back my time.
DM (23:40):
So for example, I actually did a video the other day about this. Like I now have a instructional designer that creates all of my growth playbooks. You know, you came to my event at that event two day event, I’m only on stage for an hour and I’m teaching, right? And that even that training at my scale, cuz you know, we have over a thousand clients, it’s a very big organization. I’m not creating that training now I know people listen to that, that, that coach are like, so what somebody else can coach my clients. My answer is yes at scale. Like I just, I just think I wanna bust the belief that coaches think that your job is to be the emotional container for your clients. Your job is to create a framework that your client can see themselves in and then from within that framework understand where they’re starting and give them the sequences of success for them to execute, get feedback on and move forward, right?
DM (24:44):
And I’m just, I’ve always been somebody that like, you know, I read this great book called The Goal Eliah Gold Rat, I believe is his name if I’m pronouncing it right, but it talks about manufacturing and systems design and that’s just, that’s how my brain thinks. So it’s like I always go left to right, raw material, finished product, even if it’s in coaching. Okay, what part can I then get support on? So like in the early days of coaching, it might be having somebody else, you know, onboard the client right? And set the expectations and schedule them up and send the invoices and schedule the next call. So like just having an executive assistant or an account manager help you out, right? Buy back your time from doing 10, 15, 20 hours a week on that kind of stuff. And then over time you might say, well I’m gonna hire somebody to help me on the marketing stuff.
DM (25:32):
Well, we just talked about, and and eventually you might have somebody like, here’s, here’s a great example. My buddy Motown one day he called me up because he was just like really stressed out the amount of work he was doing for all his different coaching clients. He had just did this big launch and had like a hundred new clients. And in that offer he, he talked about like helping them set up and, and you know, work on their Facebook ads, right? It’s just like this amazing offer. He, him as a coach, he’s a business coach, but part of that was the Facebook ads and he was just like overwhelmed. And I asked him a simple question. I said, do you know anybody else that’s a consultant, a freelancer that’s better than you, than Facebook a on Facebook ads? And he goes, yeah. I said, how much would you have to pay that person for their time?
DM (26:18):
And he goes, I don’t know, like a hundred bucks an hour. I go, cool, you have a hundred clients that paid you tens of thousands of dollars a coach with you. You can just pay somebody else to do that part of it and you can still be involved, right? What I call the ten eighty ten rule. The first 10% on the ideation, the creativity side of like the position, the other 80% of setting up the ads and the landing pages and the lead capture and all that stuff. Give that to the, your buddy and then come in at the last 10% to do the review. And that’s the 10 80 10 rule. And I mean this is, this has been around forever. This is how Andy Warhol built the factory of how he painted so many paintings back in the day. He was notorious for it. It’s how you know Tom Clancy, even though he is passed on, still writes books like people, there’s ways to capture the magic and then create systems around having other people support you on different parts of it. And that’s, that’s for me, even in coaching I think is a missing art that would allow a lot more coaches to scale and support more people if they got themselves and their beliefs out of the way.
RV (27:24):
Can you just give, hit us with the buyback principle directly? Cuz we kind of skipped over it and jumped, jumped right into it. Just, just like, what’s the main premise of what does it mean to buy back your time? And cuz you, you’re touching on it in different ways, but I’d love to just kind of get it
DM (27:40):
Straight up. Yeah. The buyback principle states, we don’t hire people to grow our business. We hire people to build buy back our time. So that’s fundamental to everything I do. Okay, what does that mean? It means it’s a calendar, not a capacity problem. Most people hire folks to do work in their business, video editors, copywriters, et cetera. But they don’t start with the first principle, which is look at your time, look at your energy and, and buy back things that suck your energy that are low value to pay somebody else to do. So that’s why that’s the buyback principle. But the process is this thing called the buyback loop, which is, which is essentially anytime you feel like your calendar is at capacity, right? And that might be anybody listen to this? Then you do three steps. You go audit, transfer, fill. Okay, audit is doing a time and energy audit on our calendar over the last two weeks.
DM (28:34):
You look at it and there’s a whole process for doing this, but I wanna look at what things light you up. Cuz some things could have lit you up and now take your energy and things that light you up are not there, right? So like look at your calendar for like red or green. Is it red takes your energy green, it lights you up and then put a dollar sign to those tasks. Is it $1 sign? Meaning that, you know, you could pay somebody very little like $15 an hour to do for you? Or is it $4 signs, which is like hiring somebody to do your job, like a c e o type pay and there’s a gradient in between, right? Whatever that is. If you just then take everything that’s in a in the red, that’s a low dollar amount to pay somebody else to do.
DM (29:14):
Typically, if this is the first time you’re doing it’s an executive assistant and you bring all that off your pa your plate, that’s the audit side, then you transfer all those tasks to them. And I teach that in the book. I mean, we can dive in as nerdy as you want to. I love this stuff. And then, then we fill it with things that light us up that make us money. Like I really believe that if people just gave themselves permission, right? Some people feel so guilty asking somebody else to help them, right? Or they have anxiety around having somebody else do things on their behalf delegating, right? They, they in their, their soul, it’s just like they’re so scared somebody’s gonna embarrass them through their work or whatever it is. And, and these people get stuck usually around three, 400,000 a year. They’re, they’re really great at what they do, but they never grow a business.
DM (30:01):
And then the next level is about 2 million a year where they hit this, this ceiling of complexity that they can’t break out of usually about 13, 15 employees because they, they gotta fu you gotta fundamentally change, right? So once you audit your time and calendar and you do this as frequently as you get at capacity, transfer that to other people, then you fill it with things that are going to either one of three things. Either build your skills, like uplevel your skills. So some people are like, well I don’t know how to do that thing. I don’t know how to build a media team. Cool. That’s a skill. Google it, search the books, read the books, go to the seminars, find the experts, learn then it’s beliefs. What are my beliefs around the world and my scarcity mindset and my money beliefs and my people beliefs that are stopping me from expanding, right?
DM (30:46):
Because at the end of the day, the world doesn’t get easier, you get better. So we have to expand our mindset and our worldviews. Then there’s character traits, right? In regards to, you know mental toughness, consistency positivity, your communication skills. These are all character traits of who you are that maybe you just haven’t become the person who can get to that next level. So the whole point of buying back our time is not to go do a four hour work week. It’s to actually become more. And that’s why like for me, I want creators to create, I want people to build mini empires and an empire. My language is somebody that creates a life of unlimited creation. They never have to retire from. That’s, that’s what I want. For every person out there that feels like an artist or a creator or a visionary, I want you to do all of that to the highest level with no hand break on. But the only way you’re gonna get there is if you understand how to buy back your time.
RV (31:46):
Yeah, man, I love that. I, I think even just giving yourself permission to just, I mean, one, one of the one of the biggest epiphanies for me as an entrepreneur was realizing everything that I hate to do someone else loves doing. And they would, they would be happy to do it and just be paid to do it for me. And just like, once you have that, that epiphany, it’s like, man, you are providing jobs, you are transferring money, you’re making your life better. And I, I think it’s, it’s just it’s a, it’s a completely freeing breakthrough in realization to, to when you start doing this and you start really buying back your time. So I love this. I think this is, this is so fascinating, interesting. I don’t want to let you go without asking you a little bit about this is a little bit off topic related to the book, but or maybe it’s not, but I, I wanna talk about retention and, you know, your expertise around SaaS companies and their valuation and going, I have to think that what’s really driving a lot of these valuations is reducing churn, reducing the amount of lost customers every month, the people who are canceling.
RV (33:11):
And I know you’ve seen so many of these, and so I wanted to just ask you a couple, like, if we talk about how do we reduce churn in any type of subscription business. So whether it’s a SaaS company or obviously you obviously have a coaching business, it’s gotta be the same. Like you’ve gotta have some thoughts and some strategies for how to reduce churn. Yeah,
DM (33:35):
I, I really wanna encourage people like pause and go get a pen. Okay? Cause I’m gonna, I’m gonna share it, but , it’s kind of like the thing that I do. I’ve always done it, so I’m gonna talk fast and I’m, and and feel free to, to double click or pause me on stuff. But every, to reduce retention, right? The number one thing we have to look at is cancellations. Okay? So in the software world, we call it the cancellation capture system. Any person that’s leaving a program, a software canceling our, our coaching, we need to ask them why. Okay? Because that’s where the gold lives. Too often people just are too quick to dismiss, oh, they left because they didn’t wanna win or they, they canceled because you know, they weren’t willing to do the work. It’s like, no, find out, you find out their language.
DM (34:24):
Okay? So, so if you collect that information over a dozen clients, then what’s beautiful about that is every product improvement shouldn’t be made unless it improves retention. Okay? First and foremost. So if, so, like, what’s cool is you don’t have to be that smart about how do I make my product better? You literally just have to say, well, the people that didn’t stick around, why did they leave? And use that to ideate around those opportunities. The other thing to understand is there’s this thing called the growth ceiling, okay? And the growth ceiling. If you have a subscription business, I can tell you to the day, Rory, this is what’s crazy cuz it’s math. I can tell you to the day when you’re gonna hit your gross ceiling, meaning that your ability to grow is gonna be capped because as a percent of customers that leave every month, your ability to add new customers to just replenish that pool decays.
DM (35:21):
Like you, you’re just not able to spend fine channels to replenish. So there’s this point, and I can tell you the day and I can tell you the dollar amount, your business will, will essentially hit the ceiling at at that point. And so essentially, based on your current numbers, I know what size of business you’re running, right? It doesn’t mean you can’t make it better, it’s just this is it, right? If I, if I know how many new customers you add, I know how many customers you lose every month, how many you have right now, what you charge per month on average, that gives me that data, right? And it’s a spreadsheet that we’ve created. So then what you do, once you understand why people are leaving, you need to understand what’s a normal churn number, okay? Because, because trying to get a hundred percent retention is impossible and it’s, it’s actually unrealistic and there’s a point of diminishing returns.
DM (36:11):
But in your industry, trying to understand based on the way your model works, what is normal. So if you sell to small to medium businesses, it’s different than mid-market or medium sized businesses or larger businesses, they’re all different. Larger businesses churn less, medium churn a little bit more than large and then small turns a lot higher. So once you understand what the norm is for your world, then you just try to fix it to get to normal. Okay? So that’s like step two. It’s like wire canceling. Let’s fix that to try to get to like kind of best practices baseline. Then there’s this thing, I don’t wanna lose everybody, but it’s a term called expansion revenue. Okay? Expansion revenue is the dollar amount that a, a group of people will end up spending with you. Either through their expansion into a high level program that counteracts what’s called contraction revenue, which is cancellation in downgrades in your world.
DM (37:08):
So if you think about it, you might have a hundred people in January, out those a hundred people, how many people left? How many people downsize, how many people expanded? So if you think of that group of people in January, by December, you know, you wanna get to a place where you are at least, I mean I wanna, I know our numbers, which are the best in the industry just cuz this is my world, but I mean, for most coaching organizations, they wanna be at about 70 to 80% revenue retention, right? Meaning that out of those a hundred customers in January, by the end, if they spent a hundred thousand a month, you’re at 80,000 a month for that group of people, right? So, so that’s where you gotta start thinking about what’s 12 months later. You talk about 12 months later. Yeah, 12 months later.
DM (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Within an annual period. Cause cuz that’s gonna give you some insights into what we call the, the strategic P three s, the product positioning and packaging, right? So like, what are you selling? How are you delivering it? How are you positioning, who’s the customer? Cuz some people have high churn, they’re selling stuff to the wrong people. And then what’s your packaging in regards to like how your packages work, right? So pricing strategies and kind of like the plans you might put together and like, that’s the next area to focus on. So to give you a sense of like, what’s the gold standard in software, it’s 130%. Okay? So companies like Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, et cetera, they’re in the 120 to 125% revenue retention. Meaning then that’s why software is so valuable in the market is because if you fix these problems and you really dial this stuff in, it does become an annuity, right? No different than insurance plan or whatever. It’s like it will continue to pay dividends based on a customer. You might have to pay a little bit of money to acquire them today, but your product expands with them and they, they spend more every year, which is a, a really cool thing to watch happen. But that’s, that’s the model.
RV (39:05):
And so you’re, you’re saying, so 130% would mean cuz you’re saying a hundred percent isn’t realistic, but that’s because if you lose 20% of the people in
DM (39:15):
Coaching, yeah, it’s very rare in coaching you’re gonna get that. I would say if you are at at least 80% revenue retention, you’re in the top 1%, 5%,
RV (39:25):
But you could through expansion revenue. So even though 20% of your customers leave the other 80% that stay, if some percentage of those are upgrading to something else, the net revenue number of those of that, like kind of
DM (39:41):
It could, I’ve never, I’ve never, I haven’t seen, yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. Usually what you’ll see is what’s called logo churn versus revenue churn. The logo churn for most coaching organizations, I would say the average is about 40% per year, if not 50% per year, right? That’s the average. Like most people are not good at retaining customers. If you can retain 70%, so you’re churning 30%, then revenue expansion will make up the rest of it. That’s where I get that 85, 80 85 revenue retention. Does that make sense? So I’m taking into consideration accounts leaving and expansion into higher level upward mo motion. But like when I look at most programs, the way they’re structured, you know, a third of the people in this program are gonna upsell into this next level, but that thing’s usually twice as more expensive. But again, there’s still cancellation contraction in that program.
DM (40:32):
So it’s actually an interesting thing like to, to figure out for your business is like as a coaching organization that focuses on subscriptions what is your growth ceiling? If you understand the calculation, like where do we essentially, what’s the, what’s the highest potential output of this engine that we’ve built? And do we wanna invest another four? Like, I mean, I see people all the time, they call me and they’re like, Dan, we’re thinking of spending like hundreds of thousand dollars building this thing. It’s like, for what? They’re like to improve this. And I go, what does that mean long-term? Is that realistic? Like, what’s your ROI on that? And they’re like, well, I don’t really know. That’s the whole point. It’s if you have decent numbers, then the plan is to operationalize that and don’t break anything, right? And maybe add more people. But if your numbers aren’t good, then fix that, then scale back up. But at a certain point, most organizations, especially coaching organizations, there’s gonna be this natural place where they, they end up, right. Some people that’s 60 million a year, some people that’s 6 million a year, right? That’s just the way it is,
RV (41:31):
Man. I love that. I knew you would have awesome thoughts there. We could do a whole nother episode sometime maybe on just coaching retention. But this has been awesome. Y’all, the book is called Buy Back Your Time, wall Street Journal, bestselling book. Dan, where do you want people to go if to connect with you and, and learn more about what you’re up to?
DM (41:51):
Yeah, Instagram’s my favorite. Dan Martell two ELs a Martel, find me on Instagram. That’s my favorite place. I’m on other socials. And then, you know, if you do get the book and it serves, please leave me a review. The team and I are creating a movement around buying back your time. It’s like my, as you know, it’s the topic I’m most passionate about. I don’t think there’ll ever be a day where I’m not excited about trying to teach people how to get their time back to go create more in the world. Cuz I think that’s, that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to become better versions of ourselves and then share ourselves with the world through our business, through our community, through our church. And I really wanna see people kind of elevate that for themselves using this process.
RV (42:29):
I love it. I love it. Well, I can’t recommend you enough, my friend. Thank you so much for being here and we wish that you the best of luck and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be following you and cheering you on.
DM (42:40):
Appreciate it, Rory. All the best.

Ep 390: What You Need Legally To Protect Your Personal Brand with Heather Pearce Campbell

AJV (00:02):
Hello brand Builders Community. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden. Here I am one of your co-hosts, and I am joined today by not only a friend, but also someone that we happen to be a client of. So you guys are gonna get to hear from Heather in just a few minutes, but I wanted to as always, remind you why you want to stick around and listen to this episode. Now, there are some episodes that we do that are for very unique niche groups of you listeners. And there are some that are for every single one of you today is one of those episodes that is for every single one of you, because today we’re gonna talk about what do you need legally to protect and build your personal brand. So we’re gonna be talking about the legalese of what you need for IP sales agreements, contractor agreements, employment agreements, all the agreements, right?
AJV (01:04):
This is service agreements. We could go on and on, copyrights, trademarks, whatever the, wherever the conversation leads us. What I have found in my own business and in my own relationships through other entrepreneurs is people often just default to one of two things. They suck it up and go hire an attorney and then complain about it, or they do nothing. And Heather has created this awesome middle ground. And we’re a customer. We’ve been a customer for about five years. I’m a huge advocate, and we’re gonna learn all about the details of that. But ultimately, if you have any concerns around like, am I really protecting my business legally? Do I, am I doing anything to actually protect my intellectual property, which actually does have a lot of value, then this is a conversation that you wanna stick around to. Not to mention if you stick around Heather is also thrown in a really awesome free bonus for all of you listening, which we’ll also have in the show notes.
AJV (02:01):
So, okay, now let me formally introduce her, cause I could go on and on about why you should listen. But she and I were just talking about how we’re both moms of two little, so Heather is a warrior of mama, which I love that. Also you’ll find that her I don’t even think it’s a side hobby project, but your second business, a legal website warrior. I love that you call yourself a warrior mama. She’s a nature lover. She’s a dedicated attorney, attorney and legal coach for world changing entrepreneurs, which is all of you, right? She’s also the creators I mentioned of the legal website Warrior, which is an online business that provides legal education and support to coaches, consultants, online educators, speakers, and authors, which couldn’t be more perfect, perfectly aligned to serve the audience that we also serve. And so, without further ado, Heather, welcome to our show.
HPC (02:59):
Thank you, aj. It’s so great to connect. Oh my gosh, I feel like we’ve been in this very synergistic alignment for years now, and I was just telling you like just a couple weeks ago, right? I met Rory in person, which it’s always so fun, and I was really hoping you would be there. It’s so fun to meet people that I’ve either been connected to or have worked with or provided support to in person. It’s like one of my biggest joys. And so it’s really great to be here today and connect with you. And I’m super excited because your people are my people, right? My people are your people. We serve the same audience, and it’s a really important conversation.
AJV (03:38):
Well, and I would also say it’s like, not only is it an important conversation, I feel like with the way that the virtual world of business is growing at such a unbelievable rates and the content creator economy it’s, it’s kind of a necessity. And it’s one that most people, one, they don’t chalk up the books because they’re going, attorneys are ridiculous. Why is this so expensive? I feel that way often, and I’m, it’s such a blessing that we were introduced to you so, so many years ago. Or they’re just going, I don’t even understand what this means. So here’s my first question. Why a God’s green Earth? Do legal contracts and documents have to be so confusing? Like, why is there so much legalese that just makes everyone else feel dumb?
HPC (04:30):
Mm-Hmm. , it’s such a good question, and I will just say it happens to everyone. And here’s the interesting thing is like, I work with some really sophisticated clients who have dealt with many, many contracts. Like I’ve got a client on the East coast, and we literally, we put like 2.6 million advanced, like in advanced fee publishing agreements in place for him, which included a lot of international agreements as well. Anyways, for that client, a loan for that one project. And I’ve worked with him for years and years and I mean, it was probably 30 to 40 agreements that we had to review together, right? And, and I’ve drafted a bazillion agreements for his business, and they have ranged like a, a wide variety. And the way that I draft, like, yes, there’s some legalese in there because it’s essential, but I do also care that it’s accessible mm-hmm.
HPC (05:24):
. And even, even then I get questions of like, can we make this easier? Can we make this more simple? Can you reduce this down to one page, right? And I’m like, oh, I feel the pain. And my response is, do you want a one page agreement or do you want actual protection? This is the reality in the legal world, is that there is a role for some of that legalese because of the way language is interpreted. Hmm. And we have case histories and, you know, a, a gazillion interpretations of what language means. And it is, you hear those cases that make the news. There was a really big construction case, for example I can’t even remember when it came out a few years back, but it was like literally millions of dollars at stake over the interpretation of a single com. Was the comma misplaced, which totally changes, modifies the way that one sentence would be interpreted, or was it intentional?
HPC (06:32):
Right? So it’s interesting, yes, you, you will get court’s writing opinions because their job is to interpret contracts. And so there’s so much that people don’t see about what has gone into legal drafting and the current interpretation of, of legal language that is super relevant to this conversation. Yeah. And so what I typically do, the way that I approach that, especially with small businesses where it’s like, usually what we’re doing is getting a core set of documents in place for them, right? A core set of tools that are going to cover their primary services, protect their IP, support, their JV relationships, or some of the ways that they’re promoting and growing the brand, right? But it really is a limited set for the most part. And I’m a big believer that people should understand these tools and know how to use them in their business and have confidence using them in their business.
HPC (07:33):
And so what I will do, and, and even if you think about like the enrollment conversation, right? So you guys work with big names and big brands, and you help people build these amazing personal brands or do a huge, you know, book promotional campaign or whatever, right? That all started with an engagement of some kind, right? And hopefully legal language that supports that relationship. And what I will often do is like create the, the version that clients will use, and then if they need me to, in order to support those enrollment conversations, create a cliff notes version. Like, here’s what this section means. Here’s what we’re, here’s the goal and our objective for this section. Here’s so that they can have the conversation directly with a potential but everyday client. Yes. With a potential partner that breaks it down so they don’t have to feel intimidated about presenting that contract and actually enrolling somebody. Right. Or misrepresenting what it right means, right? Right. So there are ways to deal with it, but ultimately, you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, can I just have the one page contract? My question again is gonna be, do you want a one page contract? Like, are you so committed to that versus actual protection in, in your business? There is a difference.
AJV (08:57):
Yeah. Actually I wrote this down. I think that’s really, I think that’s really good because I hear this often of why does it have to be so long? Why is it so complex? Like, can we just make it simple? And you know, it’s like what you’re saying is, do you want simplicity or do you want protection? And those, those often can be the same, but often not. And I love what you said about this you know, lawsuit or whatever it is going on. And I always remember back in English class, the example, the simple example is let’s eat grandma versus let’s eat grandma. Right? Those are two really
HPC (09:31):
Different
AJV (09:32):
Statements all based on a comma.
HPC (09:36):
Yeah.
AJV (09:36):
Right? And I think
HPC (09:37):
That’s exactly it.
AJV (09:39):
Yeah. And what you really have me thinking is, shoot, I need to have you go back over all of our contracts,
HPC (09:44):
.
AJV (09:45):
And it’s sometimes I get frustrated because I know the US specifically. So for those of you who are based in the us, we’re way more litigious than many countries. And at the same token, you know, there’s sometimes you just gotta play the game even if you don’t like it a little bit. And so what is that game for people who are building their personal brand? So what are the fundamental assets? And when it comes to legal documentation for the, you know, author, speaker, coach, consultant out there, or one who is aspiring to do that. And I think that’s the first is, you know, I’ve just thinking of all the different conversations we can have around just ip, right? Just ip, we could have the next two hours. So we’ll just, you give us what you think this audience needs to hear, cuz I know you know it really well, but what do we need to protect our personal brand?
HPC (10:37):
Yeah. Such a good question. And I, I wanna comment really quickly on your reflection of the US market being very litigious. Yes. And part of that is we are a very commercial mm-hmm. based contr, right? There’s tons of commerce. There’s, which also means there’s tons of opportunity, tons of competition to like it all, it all goes together. So you have the risk and you have the opportunity, but in certain countries you don’t even really have the opportunity. Yes. So, so you have, yeah. So you just have to see the good with the bad. And, and with that, I will also expand and say, because my clients are around the world, the commonality is that they are reaching into the US for a huge portion of their business, right? Mm-Hmm. , whether they’re client bases there, et cetera. So we’re not just today speaking to the folks in the us.
HPC (11:34):
If you are anywhere in the world, this conversation applies to you in part because the concepts are really the same wherever you’re at. And most likely, if you are like so many of AJ and Rory’s clients or like the types of clients I serve, your business is international. You are not, not restricted to your geographic boundaries and you are reaching people all over the world with your message, your opt-ins, your email newsletter, right? So, so the, it’s really important for you to understand the framework because mm-hmm. , regardless of where you are, the concepts, the framework that I teach is the same. You may have different, for example, if you’re in the UK or Australia, you’re in Canada, different legal entities available to you than we have in the us for example, the L L C model, which is really, really popular, not available in certain countries, but they will have something either equivalent or an alternative, right?
HPC (12:29):
So you may have to swap the actual strategy or solution, but the framework is the same. So that’s a quick overview. And if you’re reaching into the US because a lot of international clients get this wrong. They, they don’t think about their, their risk from the standpoint of needing to understand u US laws u us i p laws as well, just from the fact of reaching it because they don’t know legal concepts. Why, how would you, how could you know legal concepts if you’re not an attorney based in the US that does business law? Right? So for example, I had one client, really gang buster’s business, very well known. He’s based in Canada, but probably 70 to 80% of his business comes from US-based clients, right? He does live events, he does online events, he’s a speaker, he’s an author, right? He does all the things that this audience does, and he’s advertising on Facebook and social media platforms to the US-based audience.
HPC (13:32):
And guess what? Get slapped with. Basically it was initially a cease and desist and then lawsuit from a US-based company who owned the trademark that he was using in Canada to reach into the US with. So even if you are established in your home base, if you have not done the research in the US around the phrases, the names, the things that you’re using, you could be in trouble. Right? And so for him, we ended up in this battle. It, it luckily, you know, I got involved early enough, we were able to keep the train on the, on the tracks, and we ended up buying out two registered marks from the US based company. And so now his brand can run wild in the US but that was completely an unexpected hurdle for him, right? And so, so it is just a reminder, I wanna set the context because it’s a reminder that if you’re listening and you’re in this audience, the world has become a lot smaller based on the digital age and online e-commerce. And you do have to really understand the rules of the road. So, okay. I know that sounds scary and people are like, oh crap, I just wanna turn this off right now. don’t stick with us, I promise. It’s, you know, there are some really powerful things that you can do that do not take a lot of money or a lot of time mm-hmm. that will help you really, truly be a better leader of your business.
AJV (15:05):
Oh, that’s, so, honestly, that’s such a great reminder of for all of us, of going, you know, I mean, most of us would probably love to spend our money in other areas. Oh yeah.
HPC (15:19):
Be honest. Oh yeah. However, being the outside of the vehicles, right?
AJV (15:24):
Yeah. But imagine building an entire brand around something and then to get a cease and desist. So it’s like, like everyone just let that like sink in for a moment. And that gives me a little bit of heartburn, , right? It’s like you build your entire brand around something and then one day, whew, you get a cease and desist because you didn’t file for that trademark and some other joker came along. So now you’re gonna have to try to prove and spend a lot more money doing it. And and again, a lot of this comes to when do you need to do things, which I know we’re about. Yes.
HPC (15:59):
And I wanna get back
AJV (16:01):
To your question. Yeah. That’s a good reminder to everyone of like, yes, you think it’s not, doesn’t pertain to you, but it it ultimately does
HPC (16:08):
It, it ultimately does. And it, the analogy is like we get into vehicles, most of us every day, right? We put on our seatbelt, we, you know, do certain things before we drive down the road to make sure that we’re safe. In the online world of business, people just fly into that space. No seat belts, no understanding of the rules of the road, and yet they are entirely responsible for understanding mm-hmm. all of the legal rules that apply to their particular business. Right. And people just, they don’t get that until they are like punched in the face with a legal reality that’s really painful. Whether it’s being shut down because they violated a marketing rule. Yeah. Or the F T C finds them and hunts them down, or they have to file bankruptcy cuz they didn’t have the right disclaimers in place or contracts for volunteers at an event or whatever. Right? But this stuff happens every day in this type of business. So it’s,
AJV (17:06):
I will just say, well, I’ll just second thought one quick thing is not to mention there not to frighten anyone, that’s not the point. This is helpful conversation, but I’m a part of EO at the Entrepreneur’s Organization here in Nashville. And about a year ago, maybe two years ago when everything was just going not so of everyone going digital and online, there were people out there intentionally hunting out websites that were not a d a compliant and then slapping you with lawsuits. Right? I mean, there are people that make a business out of your lack of policy understanding compliance and legalese. Yeah. You know, and you’ve got the whole thing with GDPR that, you know, it’s, there’s so much to learn. It’s like, it’s impossible for the everyday entrepreneur by myself to keep up with that just like taxes. Yeah. Which is why I think what you’ve created with legal website warrior is so, so helpful. Okay. I could get sidetracked five more times. So no,
HPC (18:07):
These
AJV (18:07):
Why
HPC (18:08):
Though though, these examples bring it to life, right? Yes. Because I think a lot of people sit back, I mean, before we went live, you and I were talking about how people just don’t look into this bucket, right? There’s so much resistance or fear or whatever. And, and I think there’s also what, what I see and have seen for years, cuz I’ve been practicing law for over 20 years now, right? It’s people discount themselves and the size of their business before they even get started. So I, I often hear like, well, I’m too small or I’m not really, I’m not really like that business that needs a A B, C X, Y, Z or whatever. Let’s be clear that 99.9% of all businesses in the US are small businesses. That’s right. We, you guys, we are the marketplace. We are the marketplace from a numbers perspective. Sure. You hear about all the big businesses, Starbucks and Nike and IBM and whatever those are, you
AJV (19:07):
Know, our few and
HPC (19:08):
Compare Microsoft. Yes. And of course they throw a lot of weight around. They’re big brand names. And when you hear about data breaches and stuff, it’s those big businesses that you hear about. But small businesses every day are battling the same battles in their businesses that they just don’t get reported on. Right. And, and it’s important to understand that collectively we have so much influence and so much sway and are responsible for such a huge percentage of, you know, annual G D P. I mean, it’s just massive. And so we also have to elevate our own thinking around where we fit and what our role is and the reality. And I’m a huge believer that a rising tide lifts all boats. The more of us that can get educated, especially in the mission driven, impact oriented business space, the better we can be at business. Amen. The better our peers are gonna be, the, the more impact we will all collectively have for good. And thi this is the whole point, this is the whole point of business of what I do, probably of what you do, right? I mean, I just feel it to my bones. It’s what I get up every day to do is elevate the level of business that my clients are in.
AJV (20:26):
I love that.
HPC (20:28):
So back to your question about like, where do we start? What do we really need? What are the essentials? Right? Especially as a personal brand or a, you know, different names expert based business, solo entrepreneur, right? But a lot of solos, like they end up building small teams over time as they build these businesses. So it’s not that we all stay there but what do we need and how do we not count ourself out of the conversation to begin with? So, and I have a framework and I think that’s probably what I will share at the end, right? That for people that wanna walk through and understand the whole framework, I’m laughing because in Rory’s live presentation a few weeks ago, , any question he got was like, I have a framework for that , I have a framework for, right? And I’m sure that people who literally live, we live in frameworks, , oh my gosh, I giggled so hard the entire, I have a frame and then he’ll go to this slide.
HPC (21:21):
I have a framework for that. So I have a framework for this map and I, I give it away for free and I teach on it and I speak to it. And it is the same framework that I give to free to clients who go through my legal basics bootcamp. It’s the same framework that I walk people through for clients that want a risk assessment of their business and they pay me a couple thousand dollars to do that. It’s the same framework that I implement for my Catalyst Club clients that are paying me $25,000 a year to do this work inside of their business. Right? It’s the same. So you are getting the same framework I teach to my clients that are making two and 3 million in revenue a year and are really in that scaling phase and are playing catch up on their legal needs, right?
HPC (22:04):
So, so again, you’re not too small, you’re not too small to learn this, you’re not too small to get started on this. So where do you start? Step one, and this is even before we get to like some of the essential business contracts, is do you have a business legal entity set up? Right? It is the difference between protecting your personal assets and what you’re building on the personal side of your life and not protecting it, like hanging that out to dry. And I, I spend a lot of time on this point and some people listening are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve had my entity for years. But understand 60% of the US marketplace of small businesses in the US marketplace, sole proprietors, 60%. It’s a massive number of people that never get to step one in my framework of actually setting up a proper legal entity.
HPC (22:59):
Whether that’s a C corporation, whether it’s an L L C. Yeah. So it is a really relevant issue. And if you’re listening thinking like, well, you know, I’m kind of an island, I have a home-based business, I’m just a coach or whatever. No, stop it, stop minimizing yourself because there is real liability that goes along with your business model, with your work. And even though the liability might be less than, for example, running a on location-based gym , right? With heavy equipment and whatever else, you still, especially if you’re in a community property state and you have a partner, you are putting your personal assets at risk through your business activities, you’re putting your partner’s assets at, like, it’s a much bigger conversation. You are not an island. Right? So I start there, obviously we could go deep into that bucket, but I will just say, if you are listening and you don’t have a legal entity set up, make that the very next priority in your business. And also understand when you handle that, it will shift your relationship to your business mm-hmm. , and you will show up differently in your business and you will be the difference between like saying, I’m ha I I’m launching a business or having a business or working in my, my business and really being committed to like, yes, carving out the space, the commitment of, you know, investing a little bit in that legal structure, in that protection and then proceeding the right way. So, right.
AJV (24:29):
So real one real quick question, I won’t derail promise. Do you have a entity preference for people getting started? Recommendation?
HPC (24:38):
I totally do. And it’s because most of my clients fit within this particular model right now. There’s always exceptions. So if you’re listening and you’re like, look, I’m gonna, you know, here’s where I’m starting, but my ultimate goal is in five years to, you know, build this mega machine and spin it off and sell it for a hundred million dollars. Like that’s a different path. You’re more of a traditional startup path. You need to start in a different place, right? Who I’m speaking to are the personal brand builders that are creating a business because through that business model, they get to fulfill their personal mission in the world. They get to do meaningful work that changes the lives of their clients, changes their industry landscape. So it’s about, it’s actually about being able to do the work. Mm-Hmm. creating a business in a way that allows you to show up every day and be fully into your work.
HPC (25:36):
That that’s who I’m talking to. And if you are there and you’re like, okay, great, and maybe you build a small team, maybe you do other things and your business doesn’t totally look like just a solo personal brand builder, entrepreneur for life, that’s fine. You’ve got flexibility. But I would recommend the l l C model because it’s easier to manage mm-hmm. , it’s, there’s less, there’s less scrutiny from the standpoint of like quarterly filings and stuff that you have to do with a C corporation. A lot of people ask me, what about an S corp? S corp is not technically a legal entity. S corp is a tax election status. And if you’re like, want w want like the Charlie Brown, you know, teacher voice, basically understand that to have an S corp, you either initially set up a C corporation or an L L C and then you make that tax election status.
HPC (26:28):
So it’s not that complex, it’s like filing a single form, but what it does is it results in some tax savings for you if you’re an L L C and you’re really starting to generate revenue. So this is also one of the benefits of setting up an L L C is you have some flexibility in tax treatment, you can make that election at any time and really bring some additional benefit into your financial life. Amen. So I know check, check six, check. Yep. So, and yes, if you have questions, get in touch, go visit any number of my past, ask me anything lives like this is something that I drill into people and cover a million times. So there’s more out there on this topic. But also if you’re like, well, does this really apply to me? Again, when do you hire an attorney? Is if you’ve got something really unique and you just need custom advice, right?
HPC (27:17):
Mm-Hmm. . So of course there’s always that caveat. Now that’s in my framework, that’s step one, right? Step two or bucket number two is business contracts. And this is a big bucket, right? And as your business grows, this becomes a bigger bucket. But for pe, for folks that are like, what are the essentials? Where do I start? I always say start by protecting your money maker. What is it that you’re doing to generate revenue inside your business? Right? So let’s pretend that you’re a coach or you’re a consultant and your primary revenue right now is through one-on-one consulting or coaching. Get a killer client services agreement in place that serves you really well with every client you work with, right? And make sure that you understand that agreement. It’s literally a working tool in your business. You’re confident using it. Start there. That’s one agreement that covers a huge majority of the work that a lot of coaches and, and consultants do.
HPC (28:16):
Right? And then let’s pretend you’re like, okay, I, you know, my next step is that I’m building out more of my online presence and maybe I wanna create my first digital course. Great. Going online, which a lot of people have had to do, right? Thank you Covid. I spent a huge portion of the first year of covid, like trying to help anybody in my database. Like, get online, get your stuff protected, get the website protection package, right? Whatever. It’s, it, the online hub, often as you evolve in, in these types of businesses, becomes like your home base for your business, right? You’re setting yourself up as an expert in the space. You’re publishing articles or blogs or maybe video tutorials or something that drives traffic to your website. Again, builds credibility, right? You might do other things as well as you evolve, launch a podcast mm-hmm.
HPC (29:09):
do other things that get hosted on your site. But these are all ways that you are actually technically creating IP in the world and exposing it to the marketplace, right? So website is super, super key, super important. And even through what is generally accessible to the public, you expose a lot of information. Yeah. And so that becomes another area of your business that you have to look at. Is that a huge focus? If it’s not, it should be or it will be soon as you continue to grow. Are you launching products, courses, online offerings? Great. You’re in an awesome, awesome place and time in your business to be looking at how to protect the online components. And, you know, I think, I think you are one of my website protection package clients, right? So that package is really designed to protect these kinds of businesses, right?
HPC (30:09):
So the difference, and, and you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, well I can just go get some free templates online, Yes you can. And let’s pause and talk a moment about the difference between free templates. Borrowing, I put air quotes, if you’re not watching the video, borrowing other people’s documents. Even going to a place like, like Rocket Lawyer or Legal Zoom, Uhhuh , right? Because one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is educating people on their options in the marketplace. I mean, obviously as a service provider, I have strong opinions about this, but it’s also because I have such a big heart for entrepreneurs, which is why I built my whole second business to serve this specific group, right? Free templates. You know, people might be like, oh, that seems great, especially if you don’t have legal knowledge around what you actually need. Mm-Hmm. , for the most part, they’re not great. The number of times I’ve had to fix people’s businesses because they use documentation that was not a fit for what they’re doing, it’s one of the primary reasons why people show up to my door.
AJV (31:20):
Well, and not to mention on that note of borrowing with the bunny of other people, it’s like, I’ve seen other people do that. Like cuz I’m in a massive entrepreneur, you know, kind of group. And then they, they missed a couple of the edits they need to make because they borrowed someone else’s and they did not read every single word word for word. Yes. And then all of a sudden your own agreements have industry lingo that’s not yours.
HPC (31:51):
Oh, right. Or even worse, somebody else’s business listed in your like
AJV (31:57):
Yep.
HPC (31:58):
Oh, people. And, and this is, you know, I have to get on my soapbox for just a minute because on this point, whether it’s legal, whether it’s somebody else’s content, right? Like we all have different areas of expertise. The thing that I teach repeatedly and embed into my audience and my list and people that show up and engage in my life calls is if you did not create it or hire somebody to create it or pay for the right to use it, do not even for a split second, think about taking this off the internet. You can get in such hot trouble so fast. So for example, let’s talk about even just taking something legal related from somebody else’s site. One, if it’s truly worth taking, they paid
AJV (32:47):
For it, right? And it’s customized and it
HPC (32:49):
It’s customized. They hired somebody to do it. So tell me how you feel about showing up and taking something that they paid somebody else to create for them. It’s just unethical and there’s not Wow.
AJV (33:03):
You know, it’s like, this is like one of those things. It’s, it’s like what I tell my kids all the time, I’m like, at the end of the day, no one, not every mom specifically is not gonna know all the things that you do. So only you’re gonna know the choices that you make. And it’s like, this is like, you know, parenting 1 0 1, it’s like act like someone’s always watching and would you do this if mom was standing right next to you? And it’s like, I do that. I am a big believer in, in God and it’s like, I’m always like, nobody else might see this, but he does. So totally. What am I doing? And I think a part of it is, it’s like it’s gonna come to bite you in the tail. I literally read through other people’s stuff and I’m like pretty sure that’s not your company. And they’re like, oh crap. Missed that. So glad you saw that. I’m like, ok, you should probably go back and read that, please. Well, Anna, no, I have a quick question for you because I wrote this down as you were talking so I didn’t forget we would come back to it. So this has been an ongoing conversation in our own company because this is where I get free legal advice for two minutes. ,
HPC (34:05):
Happy to provide it, right? Better listen up folks, listen up.
AJV (34:10):
But like, we have like five different product and surface offerings, right? We have courses, we have memberships, we have Immersives, we have Mastermind, we clearly have products. So like we have all these different things. We do book launch fulfillment, we have lots of offerings. And the question has been to simplify, do you need a service agreement for each one of those individually, right? Or the complaint has been, oh, can’t we just like have one that mentions everything And our default has, like, I know it’s more annoying, it creates so much work when we do like company-wide updates, but we have a service agreement for every single thing individually. Mm-Hmm. Is that overkill or could we consolidate?
HPC (34:52):
Oh, this is such a good question. And as brands grow, this really becomes an increasingly important question. And if you’re listening and you’re thinking like, well, I just have, you know, two or three things right now that I am doing in my business, still super relevant. Because you need to be able to make strategic decisions as you grow. And the the key part of this conversation because there are multiple ways to, to do what you’re asking about, right? And yes, you can have a client service agreement that looks like an actual quote unquote traditional legal agreement. People either sign it physically or through like DocuSign mm-hmm. or Hello Sign, right? Or the alternative, which so many of us are familiar with are the terms of purchase approach online. Like think of iTunes or anytime you’re purchasing a digital purchase, right? Checking that box.
HPC (35:44):
I have read and agree to the terms of purchase whatever, which I have never done ever, but okay, right. , I have see the nerd in me. I mean even particularly like, don’t even get me started on this AI world and what we’re, what we’re doing wrong with our intellectual property by participating in it. But anyways, maybe a round two on that because AI is just opens a whole bucket of worms for people that are already established brands. Like how do you use it the right way and not sacrifice your ai? So I mean it sacrifice your I ip, sorry, yes, all these acronyms. But back to, you know, do I do traditional service or client service agreement or terms of purchase? Here’s what you need to think about. One, are you optimizing for numbers? Meaning that you, it doesn’t matter if you enroll five or 300 or 20,000, you, you know, you want the potential to do that, right?
HPC (36:43):
Mm-Hmm. , if you’re optimizing for numbers, you have to think about speed, ease of enrollment, right? And to some extent the user experience. But when you’re optimizing for numbers, usually the user experience is a little bit lower on that list, right? Mm-Hmm. Gotcha. So let’s pretend that it’s a digital course. It’s a pre-recorded workshop. It’s something that you’re like, you know what? I’m gonna put this online and I wanna sell it into infinity and it doesn’t really matter. Clearly optimize for numbers, put it under a terms of purchase, especially let’s also talk about price point if it’s a lower investment amount, right? So if you’re down in the range of you know, even close to a freebie, let’s pretend you’re one of the business models where you just have to sell that first thing and you’re ma you’re really minimizing and it’s a $29 template to do this particular process or whatever, right?
HPC (37:38):
Optimize for numbers, optimize for the ease of enrollment. That can, that can work all the way up to multiple hundreds, even a couple thousand, you can do terms of purchase with that process, right? And some people, even with higher dollar amounts are still gonna prefer digital because it’s better for their business model and their business system. Mm-Hmm. . So, you know, and you have to think about it cuz it really, the other thing I’m really passionate about is like build a business that you love being in. And if you don’t love dealing with paperwork or you’re not set up to provide great customer service cuz you haven’t built out team yet. Like you have to balance all those things. So it’s like what kind of business are you making mm-hmm. and what systems do you have to support the process balancing that with a user experience with the whether or not you’re optimizing for numbers, right?
HPC (38:35):
So generally what that looks like is memberships you know, any digital offers that are pre-recorded. So courses, you know, those kinds of things that are hosted on platforms optimized through terms of purchase, a digital click. You have to do it the right way. Let’s be clear, there’s lots of wrong ways that people are still doing this. Sure. So you have to do it the right way to have adequate legal protection. And that’s part of what I teach inside of my website protection package. But if you go through the effort of, and it’s not that much effort, I’ll be clear, it’s just about knowing where to put things, what order. A lot of people just do this stuff out of order. Mm-Hmm. , you can have a really well-built revenue generating machine that is totally designed optimally ease of use, lots of enrollment, and you’re covered.
HPC (39:25):
Right? Gotcha. Now if you’re running, let’s pretend like one of my clients is running to just launched like a $29,000 a year. Pretty elite. Like it’s invite only membership club for women. That’s combination like networking, you know, masterminds. She’s bringing in like really famous people in the business world to talk to these folks. So she’s very high level. Do people want to click a box and enroll that way? Probably not. Yeah. You really, if you have that business model, you are optimizing all the way for user experience and you’re optimizing to also create and ensure that you have very high level clients in that experience. Right? Optimizing for clicks for easy enrollment means you’re gonna have a few misfits mm-hmm. that get into your model, right? But if you are sending somebody a client services agreement and it’s a $29,000 offer and you’re really vetting people all the way you want a, a literal signed agreement or something sent through DocuSign that follows probably a pretty detailed conversation and Yeah. You know, process for enrollment. So it’s really about matching your, your client enrollment process to the type of business that you wanna build or the type of service that you’re enrolling people into. Cuz you can have different levels of people mm-hmm. That you serve in your business. And one level’s gonna be perfectly served by that terms of purchase model and the other level, like in my business is gonna be well served by that one-on-one client services agreement.
AJV (41:03):
Yeah. Super helpful. Really good. And I think that just even those little points of delineation just help so much of like, what do I need when, yeah, so totally. I’m watching the clock and we have like seven minutes. Okay. And so we talked a little bit about entity structure, super helpful business contracts, right? Mm-Hmm , protect that money maker first focus on your service agreement, make sure that you’ve got online protection for your website. So it’s like, I mean there’s just like, you’ve gotta have your user policy, you’ve gotta have your, you know, purchase policy. Like these are all things in the website protection, you know, kit that you offer. It’s like, that is nice cuz it is a template and it is like copy and paste our details in because it is really matter of fact
HPC (41:47):
Super easy to implement.
AJV (41:48):
It’s a no brainer. Like if you don’t have those things and you need to go to our affiliate link to have a legal website warrior which I will put in the show notes, but if you don’t use our affiliate link, just go cause it’s worth it. The website protection kit is just such a no-brainer because people are hunting people like us out online and going, oh, they don’t have this boom, I’m gonna sloppy you with a lawsuit or you can just pay me this amount of money and I’ll forgo it. Like I know that’s Steves, but unfortunately, like I know three people that happened to with the A D I A D A compliance issue. Yeah. so just do it, right.
HPC (42:26):
Just do it. And the final point I will add about that because it is kind of a templated package. You modify certain parts, but it is pre-built for this very, very narrow niche that I serve. It is not for the industry at large, it is not for bigger business. It is, it is not even for brick and mortar like, you know, mom and pop selling widgets, gidgets and gadgets, but like it’s for a very specific type of business. And so it’s literally pre-built to fit your business model right out the box. And that’s what I cared about doing with all of my documentation,
AJV (43:01):
Which means a lot. And just little things like you don’t think about like earnings disclosures and
HPC (43:06):
Totally thanks your privacy policy that’s required by law. And now we have all of these changing legalities with international privacy issues. Like there’s a lot to cover. You don’t have to do it yourself, but I want you to feel so good about being in your business and not wor like the, the way I’ve had certain clients describe getting the support that they need is like, I did not realize I was carrying around this 50 pound backpack. Yes. And I finally got to put it down. Yep. These are people who have made millions of dollars in their business, you know, and it’s like they finally got it resolved in a way that suited them. So anyways, that’s my pitch. Just go do it in regards to like what else you need because you did we, we talked about legal entity, we talked a bit about business contracts.
HPC (43:55):
Just understand like any exchange of value that you have in your business, right? Maybe you’re hiring independent contractors or employees or, or you’re working with JVs or affiliates or you know, any number of ways that you’re exchanging value through your business. Maybe it’s additional services or offerings. Mm-Hmm. , one of those should have a business contract around it because you’re disclosing IP and like, you know, you mentioned not having your documents in place and being on the receiving end of lawsuits. The other thing that happens massively and why people show up to my door is they don’t have their online documents on place. People get into their, their programs and services. Just copy them, just duplicate ’em and rip ’em off, right? They didn’t have any terms or anything protecting their ip. So so there’s that, right? It does, this does a lot of heavy lifting in your business when you get the right tools in place.
HPC (44:47):
The next bucket, and we won’t talk about all the buckets, right? And if you want more information on the other buckets, just go through my little freebie. It’s super fast. Five minute videos delivered once a day for a week, like five days. Yeah. So it’s super easy, very accessible. It’s gonna link you to other resources and things you can go take a peak at. But the third bucket ip, I really want to talk about ip, right? Because a lot of people are like, well what about ip? Understand you do a lot of heavy lifting to protect your IP in the contracts bucket. Mm-Hmm. a lot of overlap there, right? So if you’re like, oh, I don’t have a massive budget, maybe I’m not in the place of going and getting a bunch of registered trademarks or registered copyrights, start with your documentation and then get that in place and then come visit me and we’ll talk about the other things you can layer over, but IP strategies that are available to you if you are a personal brand builder or an expert based business trademark registrations, right?
HPC (45:46):
Yeah. Think of your brand or your business as a mountain trademark registrations protect what’s visible from the marketplace. So if you live close to a mountain, you know that like what sits above the clouds or your city or whatever is the Snowcapped Peaks the very top of that mountain. That’s what trademarks protect. This is gonna be your business name. Mm-Hmm. your tagline, your logo, like assets that are identifying your brand, right? So like, think of Nike, Nike as a trademark. The just do it. Their logo has a trademark and the Nike Swoosh has a trademark. That’s an easy way to remember. What do trademarks protect, right? The rest of that mountain, what I call the body of the mountain, is the body of your work. Your workbooks, your video tutorials, your blogs, your articles. Like all the ways that you expressed your ideas into the world, right?
HPC (46:39):
And all of the folks that I serve are massive information publishers. Like you literally need to think of yourself as a publisher, like even Rory of a framework for that, of a framework for that, right? We publish when we’re experts in our spaces, massive amounts of information. So registrations are available to protect that trademark registrations, protect the top copyright registrations, protect the body of your work. So if you’re publishing books, if you’re, you know, creating a video series, like I said, all the ways that your work is actually taking a tangible form in the world.
AJV (47:17):
I’m so good. And that’s such an easy way to think about it too. Yeah. Jessica, people get
HPC (47:21):
Those, yes, get them mixed up all the time. And I just want, like, I’m such a visual person, I just want you to remember that analogy of the mountain trademarks are at the top, which means also that they’re a little bit more of an investment. They take a little bit longer to obtain super, super powerful assets to have in your business. And then copyrights, you can be strategic about what you protect. And my question for you if you’re listening right now is like, where do you start when it comes to co copyrights are much more accessible. You can file them on your own and it’s like $45, very, very accessible, right? So whether that’s a video suit series or a workbook, or maybe you’ve self-published a book, ask yourself like, what is the best expression of your work or your framework or your ideas? And start with that. Like you have core assets in your work, start with those. You don’t have to register everything, but start with what you know to be core to your work, right? Mm-Hmm. . And that, that will be a like, will really set you on a good path because some of us can express the same teachings through writing, through video, through all these ways. And you may not need to protect everything, but you do need to choose very carefully what to protect and get started on those.
AJV (48:39):
Oh, this has been so helpful, y’all. Like we could literally go off and on and on talking about this. This is like scratching the surface as Heather mentioned. She’s offering a free little mini course. I’m gonna put the link to access that in our show notes. I’ll also put a link to her company legal website warrior. If you want to use our affiliate link, do it. . But if not, just go cuz it’s, it’s worth it. We’ve been very happy customers. We use her contract templates, her website protection kits, we use it for service agreements, employment agreements. We pretty much at this point I think we own most of all of the templates. We, all of them over should
HPC (49:22):
Check, right? I know there’s been, like I said, in parallel universes for so long. I should go check up and we can chat if there’s anything that you’re missing. But I so appreciate you. I what I want for people, cuz some people are probably listening and still feeling overwhelmed. Just understand. The thing that I love most about entrepreneurs is their grit. Like the perseverance, the willingness to like roll up those sleeves. Mm-Hmm. , put a little elbow grease into something just like you have to learn marketing or sales or information technology or team building as it relates to your particular business. You also just need a certain amount of legal chops so that you can issue spot, you know, when to get help in the right way and in the right timing. And you can be more strategic about that. And it, it can be very accessible and that’s my entire goal is to make it feel and actually be more accessible to you.
AJV (50:16):
Ah, so good. Heather, thank you so much for being here. Everyone else stay tuned. Check out our Cliff Notes version of this episodes and we’ll see you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later guys.

Ep 388: Having a High-Performance Mindset with Todd Durkin

RV (00:02):
Well, one of my favorite quotes is from a Navy Seal. My friend Navy Seal Joe, and he said, Rory, the human body can take near anything. Hmm. It’s the mind that needs conditioning. And today I’m gonna introduce you to someone who is a new friend of mine, a client of ours and an expert on high performance mindset. His name is Todd Durkin, and when I say he’s an expert on high performance mindset, we’re gonna hear some of his story. But just to give you a frame of reference, he has been part of the mental and conditioning coach for people like Aaron Rodgers, drew Brees, and U F C Champion, Mike Chandler. So we’re talking some of the premier athletes in the world. Todd is also the author of the book called Get Your Mind Right. And that’s why I brought him here today. He’s gonna help us get our mind right and stay in that high performance mindset. So brother, welcome to the show,
TD (00:56):
Man. Roy, thank you for that introduction. Great to be here.
RV (00:59):
Yeah. And I can’t, it would, it would be, it would be wrong not to give a shout out to our man, Bob Wheatley, who is one of our clients and one of our team members and one of my favorite humans who I really respect. And that’s obviously how we met. Met you, you were his coach, right?
TD (01:13):
Yeah, B Bob used to come down and train in San Diego at my gym, fitness Quest 10 when he was a pitcher at U S C. And every year he and his brother Brent would come down and train with me in preparation for his season. And then ultimately Bob became a professional pitcher. But the Wheatley family is an amazing family. And when Bob reconnected a few years ago after his professional career, he said, Hey, I’m working with this guy Rory Vaden and Brand Builders Group. And I’m like, what’s that? Bob came on my podcast, we talked about you. And I’m like, I gotta meet this guy at Rory. And that’s how we got connected, Rory.
RV (01:49):
I love it. I love it. Well, so I wanna hear, I, I wanna hear about what it takes to have the kind of mental conditioning at at this, you know, elite, athlete level elite entrepreneurs. I know you also coach entrepreneurs, especially now in recent years. But like, tell us a little bit about the backstory first. So you mentioned, you mentioned your gym. Sure. How did you, how did you kind of get into where you’re at now?
TD (02:13):
Yeah. Well, one thing I always say, and I’ve said for 23 years in working with those athletes and entrepreneurs is this, get your mind right. Get your mind right. Get your mind right. But the reason I say that is because I wanna know how you get your mind right when your mind’s not right when you’re struggling or when you’re down, or let’s say you used, you know, you’re a high performer, but maybe you’re, you’re overwhelmed or you’re stressed, or you’re depressed or you’re down, or life through your curve ball. I’ve really set my life to be one where I was the underdog, right? Growing up, youngest of eight kids, parents were divorced earned a college football scholarship. And when I went overseas to play professional football in the World League, I hurt my back and three herniated discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative back disease. And at the age of 25, my dream of playing in the N F L was shot.
TD (03:02):
I’m like, what do I do now? Cuz from five to 25, I wanted to be a pro n f l quarterback. And I did a lot of soul searching. I had to heal my back pain without surgery, ideally, which I did. And I was like, man, what am I gonna do next? And that led me down this five year circuitous route to ultimately open my own gym. And being from the east coast, I was born and raised in New Jersey and moved to San Diego. After living in 13 cities in five years to heal my back, I opened my gym with no clients, no money and no business plan. Not a good way to start , you know, open a business, no clients, no way, no business plan. And for all, all of our mission-driven messengers out there, you could probably laugh and smile about how, how, when you started your business what that was like. But that’s how I started. And it was with a heart to try to serve. And that’s how it all got started in year 2000,
RV (04:04):
Uhhuh . And then you, so through the gym you started meeting some of these local athletes and started coaching,
TD (04:10):
Right? So what happened was, I started working with everybody, didn’t matter who, like, it wasn’t athletes. I did not work with athletes. It was anyone who would come in. Cause I had to pay the bills. And I’d laugh now because I was working with people from teens on up, the people in their seventies, obese non-athletes, tennis players, you name it. I worked with them. But in through a fortuitous or not moment, I, I met a guy named Vaughn Parker. Vaughn Parker was the starting left tackle for the then San Diego Chargers. And I actually did body work and massage therapy and waling along with training. Vaughn had a bad back. So when I worked with Vaughn, session number one, I’ve got him on this table and doing all this hit rotator release technique. And you know, he had just signed a 20 million y year deal, which was a lot of money.
TD (05:02):
It’s a lot of money now. It was a lot of money in year 20 2002. Well, the table, Rory, when I was working with him, broke in half with him lying on the table, 310 pound left tackle for the single chargers. It breaks in half. Like, my gosh, my gosh, my first pro athlete table breaks in half. He’s lying on the, on the floor saying what just happened? I’m like, I’m not sure. But I had just watched this v h s tape on time massage. So I br I take off my shoes. I start doing this time massage work because what do you do? You bootstrap it, you figure out what to do. And he’s like, this is amazing. This is wonderful. How long you’ve been doing this work? I’m like, this is like the first session I’ve ever done with time massage. But I had a, a background in body work.
TD (05:46):
Well, Vaughn, after that session was like, that was the most amazing work. The San Diego Chargers, we, we’d love to have you come down and, and do some work in, in the team room after the games to stretch us out, do body work. And lo and behold, I become the, the, the sports therapist for the San Diego Chargers. I met LaDainian Tomlinson, the first round pick for the Chargers, drew Brees. That’s how they ultimately became clients of mine because one guy named Vaughn Parker brought me to the Chargers for two years. I trained those guys and, and did all their body work. Ladainian came into my gym, he brought Drew into the gym. I’d been training Drew now for 22 years. And the rest is history. Cuz in the athlete world, it’s all word of mouth. And in 23 years of my career in the fitness world, a lot of doors have opened up.
TD (06:33):
But it was my pain back in my back injury that all of a sudden these guys would come in like, man, I got a bad back, my bad back. And that was my vehicle to change lives. And for the better part of two decades, what I’ve learned is that physical pain often perceives your deepest purpose. And even the last three years of the pandemic, I can tell you what in, in doing a lot of depth work in helping people overcome the mindset aspect of, you know, being down and out. Ladainian wrote the forward to my first book, the Impact Body Plan. Drew wrote the Forward to I Get Your Mind Right book because I don’t care if you’re a high level, you know, athlete or you’re an entrepreneur, you, you have a successful business or not. Mindset is everything. Energy is everything. And what I’ve learned is my gift is in mindset and helping people get their minds right, especially when their minds aren’t right. Because I’ve been down that road multiple times of how you gotta fight for your mindset, your heart set and your soul set.
RV (07:31):
Yeah. So I want to, let’s, I wanna talk about that cuz I mean obviously you mentioned Covid, like it’s been a heavy, it’s been a heavy last few years for the whole world. And you know, in the United States, we got a lot of political divide. We got, you know, covid and controversy of our vaccines and, and you know, all this George Floyd and all of these, you know, massive external things that are happening. But then it’s like alcohol is, you know, through the roof anxiety and depression and all that sort of stuff. So like, talk us through that. If your mind’s not right, like what’s the, what’s the first step that you do? Like when you say get your mind right, and you go, okay, how, walk me through, how do I get myself out of that spot?
TD (08:16):
I want to get deep on you for a moment because I believe everyone’s got a struggle. I think everyone has a struggle. Even the most successful athletes and entrepreneurs in the world have a, have a struggle. And the last few years there’s been a struggle on some level, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. There’s, there’s a struggle. And a lot of times a struggles, especially amongst men. We don’t talk about it many times, but I know in a lot of the people who I’ve been working with there’s a struggle, mentally mindset, overwhelmed, maybe anxiety, maybe depression, maybe they feel like they’re off their north star. And, and, and man, I used to be, everything was flowing and now everything’s a push. And I’m like, brother sis, I, I feel you. I know because Rory, the back pain I had 25 years ago, for me, it resurfaced in the middle of the pandemic.
TD (09:09):
Why? Well, because I have the mentality of I’m gonna save the world. This isn’t a good thing, by the way, because I took on the onus of I’m gonna save all the people I work with in my coaching groups. I’m gonna save all the gyms in the world. I’m gonna save my own gym. And I literally said this, get on my back. Get on my back. We got this, we got this. Well, my body broke nine months into the pandemic. My knee started hurting. I had a second knee replacement, 52 years old, knee replacement. Six weeks after that, my back starts killing me. I spent all of 2021 in debilitating back pain where they told me I needed a massive fusion of my back. Here I am Rory, I I I’m a coach, I’m a trainer. I I I’ve had all this success in the fitness world and I’m, I’m breaking physically and mentally.
TD (10:03):
Cuz when you’re in pain, you, it’s all consuming in your head and you, you can’t get outta your own head. And here I am, I just wrote a book, June of 2020, it came out. Get your mind right. And here I am the Wright maniac guy. In my mind, I’m like, I am practicing everything I say in the book. And I’m like, God, why are you putting this on my plate? Why are you putting this on my plate? So when I say, you know, how do you get your mind right when your mind ain’t right? There were a time, even the last couple years, I had to fight like mad to get my mind right myself personally. And what I found was, the more I shared that, the more people were opening up and like, they’d be DMing me or hitting me up like, Hey Todd, like, man, if they only knew, like my marriage is good, my family’s good, you know, business is good, but let me tell you, I I am really struggling right now.
TD (10:51):
I’m like, okay, where are we at? Like, number one, like, I wanna make sure you don’t do anything stupid for yourself personally, but I wanna make sure that, you know, you start to feel an alignment again. And when you say, where do you start? For me, this is me personally. I’m a man of faith. We gotta look at all your core values and are you, are you living in alignment with that? Because let’s face it when you look back at your struggles, it’s always the struggles that ultimately allow us to go to that place that allow us to grow. But none of us love pain. None of us love struggle. But in the last three years, it’s those struggles that ultimately allow us to find what we’re all searching for, fulfillment, joy, peace, happiness, harmony in our lives. These are the things that we truly want.
TD (11:35):
And where do we start? I think it’s with a lot of tapping into the whispers. I call it my book, tapping into the whispers is what’s God revealing to you? Where do you need to go? Do you need to slow down? You need to speed up. Do you need to spend more time with your, your kids and become a better father or mother? And to me it starts with a lot of, of internal doing the work and, and talking to a coach or someone, a therapist, or even a doctor about where it’s at is how do you get your mind right? You, you, you, you do that soul searching, it takes. Now I can tell you all the things you need, okay? You need to be working out. Well, what if you can’t work out? I I couldn’t work out with my back in knee.
TD (12:12):
Were all jacked up. I mean, I’m crawling in my backyard thinking I gotta get my mind right. I know movement’s a key part of it. I talk about it all the time. But what if you’re so in pain, you’re debilitating and you’re on a couch and, and you’re like, man, I I I need to take a nap all the time. I’m exhausted because pain is killing me. So to me it’s like, you gotta fight. Like Madden have other people around you. I call ’em fire breathing dragons. How do you surround yourself with fire breathing dragons that’ll say, you know what? Get your tail up, get your booty up and move. I don’t care if you take a five minute walk, you listen to a great podcast like yours, Rory. You listen to some, some great music and whether that be gospel music or old school music, hip-hop music, you move your body, you listen to the right messaging, you listen to that message is gonna really heighten your vibration so you can operate a different level and you fight light mad for your identity.
RV (13:00):
Well, and I, I mean, I I pick up the move your body thing, which is, which is really huge. But I, well, I heard you before that when you’re talking about like listening to the whispers, it almost, it’s, it almost seems like you’re, you know, there’s like a part of like listening to your body, listening to your soul, listening to God, listening to what, whatever term you want to use of interpreting that signal about what needs to happen and what, what do you need to do? Like how do you tap into that?
TD (13:30):
You develop a routine in the morning, in the quiet time where you sit there in silence. See, silence is the hardest exercise you’ll ever do. Be like, Hey, what’s the hardest exercise you do with the, the guys in the gym? I’m like, it’s called meditation or prayer. And you just sit there and silence and you listen. I used to think prayer was, you know, talking to God and you’re praying like, dear God, can you please bless all my problems? And I got these challenges and through a lot of work with my pastor and and mentor a lot of prayer is actually listening and listening and tapping in and tapping in the whispers means this, I believe that when you hear shouts, it’s ego. And when you hear whispers, it’s God. So if there’s these shouts going on all the time, it’s probably your ego saying, I need to do this or I need to do that.
TD (14:18):
But if you consistently journal your, your whispers and day after day after day, it’s saying, what I was writing down in 20 20, 20 21 is slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down. For months I was journaling the same thing. Slow down. How do you slow down when the world is so fast? Or when you’re trying to figure things out, your mind is racing and it, it, it, it creates anxiety. How do you slow down? And one thing I’ve always said, and I’ve watched some of the best athletes in the world do this, and I’ve come up with the good ones could speed a game up and the great ones can slow it down. The good ones could speed a game up. The great ones.
RV (15:01):
What do you mean by that?
TD (15:02):
What I mean by this is this. If it’s I’m an athlete, I’m a coach. As a coach, you look at the world’s best athlete, think about a two minute drill. A two minute drill is if you were to watch a quarterback go down the field in a two minute drill, while it’s really happening fast, everything is beautifully slow and he’s in control of the rhythm of a game. Life is the same way. It’s really fast right now. There’s a lot of things going on. A lot of decisions have to be made. You’re trying to juggle your family and all of the things with your business and revenue and payroll and the team and leadership. And it could be overwhelming. But when you can slow the insides down where you can actually control and not get anxiousness or anxiety, or you’re constantly just reacting to everything, I believe the best entrepreneurs and business folk in the world actually operate slowly and that’s hard to do.
TD (16:01):
So I liken the, the athlete to the successful businessman or businesswoman who can slow things down, at least in my world the last several years is when oper, when I’m operating at my best, the insides are actually slowed down. Despite everything on the, on the outside world is really, really fast. When I react to the speed on the outside, all of a sudden now my anxiety will start to heighten. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like, man, I’ve got 50 things going on and I need to really reduce this. And Rory, we talked about this on my podcast cuz you talked about what you, you shared with, with Lewis. How’s going from 17 to three? It’s how do we simplify? You know, it’s, it’s this, it’s this simplification process is really complex, but for me it’s how you slow things down early in the morning before people get up.
TD (16:51):
You sit down and if you open up a blank notebook or a journal and you just sit there and listen for a minimum of five minutes and then start to write, that’s part of your morning routine. And you, and yes, exercise and movement is, is a part of that. But if you can tap into the whispers and slow things down and really listen, whether you call it meditation, whether you call it prayer, whether you call it quiet time, I believe that is going to allow you to give, get you some inner peace and to really tap into the profound wisdom that’s already there versus just reacting to the day, boom, boom, boom, boom.
RV (17:29):
You think that like, you know, like I’m thinking about Mike Chandler, so I’m not, I don’t follow UFC that close, but like I know he’s, you said he’s fighting Connor McGregor coming up and like, yep, that’s, that’s the real deal. Like how do, how, how does somebody like that incorporate Wyatt time or slowing down their mind? Is it something that happens before a match? Is it, is it, does it happen during a match also somehow?
TD (18:00):
Yep. Yeah, that’s a good question. Let’s, let’s face it, if you’re a UFC fighter, you gotta train like mad because it is me metabolically one of the hardest things you’ll ever get. Those
RV (18:10):
Guys are, I’m in there insane, insane,
TD (18:13):
Insane. But let me, let me, let me liken it to this. All of us should be training with that same intensity. We should all be training with that same intensity. Now, it might not replicate, you know what Mike Chandler, who, who is, who is prepping for Conor McGregor as we speak right now, but that intensity when training and if you’re a a, a 40 or 50 or a 60 year old man or woman, you have to be training with the intensity that is going to allow you to release all of the, the, the angst and anxiety and stuff on the inside so that when you feel, when you’re done with your workout, you feel more at peace. And now you’re not being run over by overwhelm or anxiety. That’s the first aspect.
RV (18:59):
You say training with the intensity you’re talking about physical, like physically,
TD (19:02):
I’m talking physical, working out,
RV (19:03):
Physically moving in in a way that’s comparable to release the internal turmoil.
TD (19:09):
100% interesting. Now, when that’s done, the best time like Mike would do is then when you’re, you’ve got all the junk out of the trunk as I would call it now tap in and take 5, 10, 15 minutes of quiet time to reflect on the inside because Mike, who is tr is in in great shape, in great condition like an N F L athlete would be as well. Then it’s, Mike is a man of faith. Mike’s gonna be in prayer. Mike in the locker room is gonna be very calm prior to that, that fight. Now in the cage, you’re gonna be a little, you know, you’re gonna unleash it a little bit, but if you get too hyped up, you start what hyperventilating you get short of breath and breath. What I would say is this, I said this to Drew Bre, I asked him this question, when you’re coming out in front of a a 70, 80,000 people, are you hyperventilating and you’re stressed or are you relaxed?
TD (20:03):
He said, well, a little bit of both because I know that someone’s trying to kill me. So if you realize that every one of us has 18 to 22,000 breaths a day, if you take a deep breath right now, you have 18 to 22,000 breaths a day. How can you slow your breath down to number one, be thankful and grateful for breath and realize that if you can slow your breath down in the midst of a fire, in the midst of a fight, in the midst of chaos and turmoil, then you can operate more functionally. So to answer your question, Mike is in tremendous physical shape, but he’s also going to be tremendously disciplined in the practice of prayer and quiet time as well. In the mental preparation, the mental preparation for that fight is visualization. Can you can you envision the game a thousand times before you play the game?
TD (20:55):
I would tell a high school athlete, like I would tell an entrepreneur before going to a big meeting or like, Mike’s gonna fight Connor. You’re gonna fight that fight a thousand times before you fight that fight. Because mentally you’ve gotta make sure that you can visualize, you’ve gotta smell what you’re gonna smell in the ring, in the cage. You’re gonna smell it, you’re gonna visualize it, you’re gonna see it when you’re walking out. You’re gonna feel the music, you’re gonna feel it. So you can be relaxed in that situation. The power of the mind is amazing. So if you can use that visualization every single day to manifest what you wanna manifest, that’s the power of, for anyone who might be listening, like, man, I lost myself. I used to, I used to have the edge, I used to have the mojo and I’ve gotten my butt kicked, my tails between my legs, fear or not my, my friend.
TD (21:38):
You can get it back. You just gotta get aligned with those habits, those values, and make sure that we can recapture that mojo and that edge. Just as Mike Chandler would do, a Drew Brees would do an entrepreneur would do is get it back. Cuz we don’t wanna be that p i p that previously important person. We wanna be that v i p that we have it, but like that self-talk, oh man, I don’t know. Am I too old? Man? I’m getting my butt kicked. I, I don’t know if I still got that edge. I don’t have the energy levels. Like stop, stop telling yourself these things because the self-talk gets ingrained and gets wired in your brain. Just as someone that’s at the elite level, at 25 to 35 years old, physically performing at their best, stop telling yourself what you can’t do and start using positive self-talk that will allow you to operate back in the, in the position that you used to be.
RV (22:28):
I wanna talk about TT talk about, talk about the difference, right? So you, when you think about a Drew Brees and Aaron Rogers, you know, these are the premier performers. Ladainian Tomlinson in his, in his time was, you know, one of the greats.
TD (22:46):
Oh my God,
RV (22:46):
What, what, what is separating them from everyone else? Because you go, I mean, to get to the N F L, don’t you have to do all these things? I mean, to even to even be there, don’t you have to have self-talk and you have to be training hard and you have to have visualization. You, you know, I don’t know how many of ’em do quiet time or journaling, but, but certainly controlling your breath, I mean, certainly the physical regimen, I think. Yeah, but then you go, you know, to me those things don’t even represent, like to me those are almost like the price of admission to getting to the league. It’s not, you know, like what separates Drew Brees from, you know, any other N f l quarterback? I mean, or, or do you think it does, do you go No, there’s quarterbacks in the N F L that are not, they’re not doing that kind of routine with their, their mental conditioning like they are with their physical conditioning.
TD (23:43):
The, there are, there are quarterbacks that aren’t, there are some that aren’t, but I’m talking absolutely. Okay. I’m talking Rory about the elite of the elite. How do you become elite? And I would say there’s two things. One is extreme discipline. And now that sounds rhetorical, but when I say extreme discipline in nine years of training, LaDainian thomason, I can’t count on one hand the times that he was late or ever missed a session ever in nine years, he’d be un early, he’d be doing his mobility work, he’d warm up on the treadmill, he could see him prepping if he wore that little headband. I knew he was being serious that day, but he always showed up. Now were there times where he didn’t feel like it 100%, but he also told me, Hey, I wanna be better than Emmett and Walter and I’m gonna train to be the best to ever play the game.
TD (24:33):
Now whether he’s the best to ever play the game or not, it’s not important. What’s important was his desire matched his discipline, right? And he did that. Drew Brees people will tell you when you, when you were around Drew in, in the 20 years that he was playing and training here with Darren Sproles and, and all the guys he trained with you know, everyone from, you know, chase Daniel and, and Zack Erz and Gerald McCoy and Srosy, all these guys. Drew made everyone better. Why? People say, why do those guys come to you? Do, what do you do that’s different? I believe the best of the best needs someone to hold them accountable and get their mind right, because who’s gonna call people out when you’re at the top of the game? I didn’t understand in 2006 when LaDainian won the MVP and he said this to me, what’s next?
TD (25:26):
What’s next? It made me think like Rocky four, when, you know, you know, you lose your passion, you take all your passion and you lose it. And, and that like, what’s next? Like, what do you mean we do it again? I didn’t understand that when I was in my early thirties of like, what’s next? Just let’s run it batten lt. But what he was saying was, I need a bigger dream. I need something to keep me fueled up. Because when you have reached what you may have believed is your pinnacle of your career, and maybe you’ve tapped out at a certain financial level or you don’t know how to continue to operate year after year after year at the highest level what I have learned is it’s mindset. So when I say extreme discipline and mindset of the two things that separate all of the world class high performers I’ve ever worked with, it’s one thing to get to the top and I love the climb, but man, oh man, it is a far different thing to stay at the top knowing that man, I gotta recreate and reinvent myself to get to another dream.
TD (26:22):
You know, pastor Jeremiah, he’s not an athlete, but let me tell you, at 80, 82 years old, I’ve had the opportunity to train this guy for seven years. This guy inspires me. He’s always like, how do I get to the next level? I’m like, doc, you’re, you’re one of the top the top pastors in the world and have a huge following. H how do you get to, like, how do you do that extreme discipline and mindset at 82 years old to say, we ain’t done yet. The best is yet to come. I’m like, man, I I gotta pick up my game. That’s when you talk about iron sharpens iron. You put yourself on other coaches or, or entrepreneurs or other mission driven messengers, as you would say, Rory, man, now you get inspired when you go to a live event and I’ve been at your live event. I’m like, dang, Gabrielle, like, fires me up, Ryan fires me up. Right? All, all the, when you’re around other people who fire you up, your mind all of a sudden like, man, I gotta pick it up. We all need that.
RV (27:17):
Mm-Hmm.
TD (27:19):
String discipline, extreme discipline and mindset. The mindset of, I ain’t done yet. I gotta find something to go deeper. I need a coach to take me there. I need, I need, I need someone to, to sharpen my sword or call me out like I call drew out or LaDainian out or any of my, any of these guys that aren’t doing the things the way they need to, I’ll call ’em out. Most people wont call people out. If you’re, if you’re already successful, they’ll kiss your tail. We don’t need more tail kissers. We need people that are gonna call us out and, and say, Hey, you got more in the tank, but you need to pick it up and stop drinking the way you’re drinking. And you alluded to that. Or Hey, why are you doing that stupid habit? It’s all about habits. So what, what do you, why are you not taking your quiet time?
TD (28:00):
Or why not working out the way you, you need to work out. Like when you get some serious accountability in your life and you’re like, Hey, let’s pick it up because you got more in the tank versus settling for mediocrity because now it’s like we just kind of like settle. It’s nothing worse than settling for mediocrity. I hate it. I hate it myself. If I’ve ever been stuck, I’m like, man, I gotta pick it up. I gotta do something. Go to a personal growth workshop, hire a coach, read a great book. Like do get around people that are actually inspiring you. Make sure you’re going to the gym and working out, getting into an environment. These are things that you know and you gotta stop doing. The stupid habits that get you in trouble. Eating like garbage drinking, too much alcohol, doing other knucklehead things that, that we sometimes, as as humans do recalibrate, reignite and reinspire.
RV (28:50):
Mm-Hmm. , how do you get yourself to go to the gym when you don’t want to? I mean like, show up
TD (28:56):
Up.
RV (28:57):
So don’t even, just don’t even just don’t even worry about it. Go, just go,
TD (29:01):
Go just sh go The heaviest way in the, in the gym is the front door. Or if you’re really like, man, I’m real. I, I I know that but I’m not doing it. I’m weak in the flesh. Then hire an appointment with a trainer where I come from the background. I’ve been in the training world for 20, almost 25 years and my, my gym for this question, it’s, it’s built on accountability. Now I’m doing less training these days and focusing on, you know, the entrepreneurs and athletes that I wanna work with. But the bottom line is this, if you really wanna show up, then set an appointment with your trainer in your respective community. And I’ve got folks, if you don’t like, I don’t know any good trainers, then reach out to me and I’ll set you up with a trainer in your community. Cause I know I’m worldwide. And watch what happens when you have a session once or three times a week at 6:00 AM 12 noon, 6:00 PM whenever you don’t show up because it’s in your calendar. Pastor Jeremiah three times a week is with me. He, he makes it 12 noon. I’m like, why 12 noon document Murray workday. He like, cuz it’s not convenient
RV (29:59):
,
TD (30:01):
He’s like, I need to have the discipline to do the things that are most important because I know that my physical strength and energy that I get from the gym and you are going to allow me to write the prolific work that I wanna write. So I’m gonna schedule it in the worst part of my day. 12 noon. I’m like, that’s pretty brilliant. That’s an 82 year old man who is trying to change the world. And he does it Roy, I have a nutritionist myself. Wait, you’re a coach, you’re a trainer, you’re a speaker. All the, yeah, I need the accountability. I need to have my meals delivered because if I don’t, I don’t eat lunch cause I get too busy. So it’s the accountability. So how do you do it if you’re, if you like show up, well, I’m not showing up then hire, hire a coach or a trainer or an accountability coach like myself to say, get your boot to the gym.
TD (30:49):
I’m gonna follow up with a text. And did you get there? You either did it or you didn’t. And if you want to, if you wanna perform at the level you say you want to, then you better show up. I have a guy I once train named Jacque Suze. He came with me the first year, a small college division three. He said, man, I wanna make it one year in the N F L. I said, that’s all we gotta do. Jacques show up every day for the next three months. Jacques is there, made it in his first season. Jacques played 12 more season in the nfl. He’s now coaching in the N F nfl. But it’s like the extreme discipline to show up and you don’t feel like showing up. And if you don’t, I’m gonna text you. I’ll come get you outta bed. If I have to like show up and do the things that you say you wanna do because there’s nothing worse, then you tell me you wanna be great.
TD (31:28):
It’s like I tell my kids I got three kids. Don’t tell me you wanna be great. Like do the work, show up and do that. Because the last I check is that you know, a lot of people have talent, but not everyone wants to work for that. So they always say that hard work beats talent with talent don’t work. A lot of talented people out there. If you can match talent with hard work, watch out. You can do whatever you want. You can take your business to the next level. You can recapture the essence of of you, you can get your edge back in life. So to me, what I’m finding is a lot of 40, 50, 60 somethings right now that have lost that edge. I’m like, get your edge back. Get your life back. Cuz man, if you feel like you’re drowning or you’re struggling, you’re overwhelmed, you’re burnt out, man. Now’s the time to reset, recalibrate.
RV (32:15):
Mm-Hmm. Todd, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more about what you’re up to?
TD (32:21):
Website’s probably the easiest way. Todd durkin.com. Todd durkin.com. I got all, everything that we do is on the website. I’ve got a podcast, the Todd Durkin impact show. It’s my way of of getting people to get fired up. Cuz the motivational aspect is one thing. And I’m on social media, Rory, I love Instagram. I love Instagram. I’m, I’m on that all the time. You can always DM me, but my website has all the opportunities. Bottom line is this motivation’s in the in the head, inspiration in the heart. So motivation dries up if you don’t constantly feed your mind, you know, fertilizer and get that mind right by listening to good message and listening to pods and getting your workouts in. You gotta protect your dome. You gotta protect your dome. And if you don’t, you’re gonna slowly follow down the abyss of depression and and anxiety and you feel like everything is like caving in on you. That doesn’t have to be the case. And I say get your mind right. Get your mind right. Get your mind right. Change it today, change it today and make it make it part of your mission. We talk about a meaningful mission is make it your mission to get your mind right, get your heart rate, get your soul right. And when you get all those things aligned, then you can recapture the essence in the mojo that maybe you’re really striving to do.
RV (33:35):
Yeah. Well, brother, I appreciate the, the, the inspiration and the injection. I feel like you fired me up and I lo I love that you’re helping people get their mind right. Thanks for sharing a little bit of that with us and we wish you the best. Good luck to you, man.
TD (33:51):
Thank you. You as well. Thanks so much.

Ep 386: How To Turn Your Job Into Your Calling with Ryan Blair

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. I am joined today by a newer friend. However, although he and I are just getting acquainted to each other, I have heard about Ryan Blair for years, and we have lots of mutual friends. And then a good friend and team member of mine joined his mastermind this year. And praises just come every day if not every hour, about Ryan and what you’re doing with your new company Alter Call. And so just mad kudos in respect all that you’ve built and all that you’re building. And so I feel super honored to get to have you on the show today and to get like the next 40 minutes of your brilliance and wisdom, and to get to share that to our awesome community with Brand Builders and the influential personal brand podcast.
AJV (00:55):
So I could continue complimenting you or we could get to it. Let’s go, let’s, let’s dive in. Everybody who’s listening, if you’re not familiar with Ryan Blair, let me just give you a very high level, quick background. He’s a number one New York Times bestselling author. He’s a serial entrepreneur. And by that I mean like a whole bunch, like a $2 billion company is what he built as an entrepreneur. But it’s some really fascinating background information is was gang member turned businessman, and, you know, talking about billion dollar sales. And, you know, just like, that’s kind of an interesting story we’re gonna have to hear a little bit about. But your, your newest company, alter Cloud is the one that you’re building and growing right now and touching so many lives, including the lives of people that I know and hold super near and dear to my heart.
AJV (01:51):
You’ve been a c e o, you were part of visas, you’ve got books, you’ve got all these inspirational messages. I could go on and on and I’ll just tell everyone the reason that I wanted to have Ryan on today is selfishly because I really want to learn about how he’s been able to include the personal aspects of his life into his business, right? And so if there are things that you’re trying to figure out of, you know, for me personally, it’s like, as you guys listen, you hear this all the time, you know, I’m really into Jesus and I’m really into my faith. And it’s always like, what’s that fine balance of bringing that into my work, right? So if there are things that you believe in or, you know, the world can be unfortunately really polarizing right now, doesn’t matter which way you look, there’s something that somebody’s for or against and you’re trying to figure out, like, do I bring that into my business?
AJV (02:45):
Do I keep it separate? Thus keeping you separate from your business and your message, or can you find a happy medium of a way filled with, you know, acceptance and grace, but also truth and love of how do I combine what I personally believe into what I’m building in a business? So that is why I wanted to have Ryan on, but also mad businessman, building wicked awesome companies. Plus a lot of, I think the emerging trends that everyone’s talking about with AI and technology are all gonna be a part of our discussion today. So the point is, stick around. It’s gonna give fun. Brian, welcome to the show.
RB (03:22):
Thank you for having me, aj. I’m a big fan of your work and thank you for the kind words.
AJV (03:25):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. So give us just high level, like when you say was gang member, turn to businessman, like, let people know, like, what does that actually mean?
RB (03:36):
Well, you know, I have to because we’re among fellow brand people. I have to tell you, I’m a good storyteller, , and I went through a very difficult set of adversities as a child, but I packaged them into a story that made me the hero in my hero’s journey. Hmm. And I needed to do that to get through those difficult times of being a gang member, losing my family. I went through a lot of adversity. I could, I could give you a long list of, you know, some pretty difficult things that I’ve experienced, but I’ve just crafted a story and I’ve made myself the hero in the journey. And I’ve told that story to millions of people. And that story resonated because it was truthful. And yet I dealt with a lot of adversity. I overcame it. I was vulnerable in the telling of the story.
RB (04:24):
So I could go into the art and technique of sharing your adversity, or I could tell you specifically about mine. But you know, when I looked at the pattern from a spiritual standpoint and I saw all these crazy things happening, and then a mentor showed up into my life and it changed my life forever. And another mentor showed up and another mentor showed up, I said, God’s gotta be at work here. And so it was my duty to explain God’s work in my life and to put it into books and movies and some of the other things that I’ve done, because I could just see the creator’s craftsmanship at work in the crafting of my character and my competency to be the man that I am today.
AJV (05:05):
I love that. And so I would love to know, cause I think mentors and rather they’re people who come alongside you and do it in a loving just free or their paid coaches or whatever it is, like the power of mentorship in your life. Can you just talk about that for like 60 seconds?
RB (05:25):
It’s the most important thing. I I’m praying for a mentor now on a particular subject, a spiritual subject that I, I need somebody who’s in office who anoint people in their callings. And I need to, to talk to this person about exactly what they do and how they do it. I need people to teach me different gifts of discernment, or I’m learning to sing. I have a mentor that teaches me that I’m learning to box. I have a mentor that teaches me that, you know, I, I used to spend a lot of money on stupid stuff like bottle service and lavish vacations. Now I spend even more, more money on mentors and I’m growing like crazy because of it. And I’m in the greatest season I’ve ever had because I have all these great coaches that are teaching me how to become a better individual and how to enjoy life more and, and how to, you know, put together different skills that I wouldn’t learn otherwise.
RB (06:14):
So mentorship is extremely important. But before I could afford mentors, I pursued people. And when people showed up with information that I felt that I needed to have in order for me to achieve my goals, I extracted that information. I was very prepared, very diligent. I’d write up hundreds of questions in preparations for these meetings, even as a young 20 something year old want to be entrepreneur. And if I could get an entrepreneur in front of me that knew more about entrepreneurship than I did, I wanted to close the gap as much as I possibly could. And I valued every single meeting as though God had sent the person to me to transfer this information that I needed to be able to further my journey. Mm. So it’s, it’s been a part of my process since I was 17 years old and I’m now going on 46 and I’m investing more in the process now than ever.
AJV (07:06):
You know, it’s interesting, I just had a very similar conversation with my husband Rory. And I was in a, an unusual season for me in 2021, where just found myself in a funk. And I didn’t really pinpoint why. And it’s because I spent all of 2020 trying to be the problem solver. Mm-Hmm. versus being the learner and kind of spent the whole year working versus learning. And in 2021, I recommitted and I said, I’m gonna read the Bible cover to cover every page. I’m going to read, you know, two books a month. I hired a business coach, a personal coach. I was like, I can’t, I hired, I had a therapist. It was like, I went and you know what’s so funny? It’s like I look back now and I’ve continued, I’m reading the Bible again. I’m still doing two books a month. I still have all these coaches.
AJV (07:55):
And my husband literally gave me one of the greatest compliments of my life the other day. And he said, babe, like I can see not only like do are you happier? He goes, but I can literally see you growing. Hmm. And it was like, that’s beautiful. The greatest compliment of my life. And like to that about, you know, free mentors, it’s like I had forgotten the power that a book has to change your life. And it’s like, for those of you who can’t find a free mentor, it’s like, get yourself a good book. It’s like, you know, it’s years of preparation to get those words on pages sometimes that ultimately can really change your life. So I love that. And I, I think this is really good cuz you’ve already brought it up a couple of different times around this idea of like, God orchestrating things in your life.
AJV (08:41):
And you know, one of the things that I love about what you do is you don’t shy away from your faith. And you actually do the opposite, right? Yeah. You run right into it and go, now this is a part of my business. It’s a part of what, what I do, how I do it. And that’s a part of your uniqueness. And I’m curious to know how did that decision come about? And for those of us out here that are struggling to balance that line with what’s personal, what’s business? Any advice you have around that?
RB (09:15):
Yeah, it, it’s very hard. Because the business world has removed God from the conversation. They have made it a completely secular conversation for the most part. Majority of, we’re not supposed to bring our faith to work with us. We’re supposed to separate that and our work, if not properly, boundaried will take over our entire lives, especially as entrepreneur. So for those of us who are entrepreneurs, we have to boundary work, right? For those of us who are underachievers, let’s say you got a boundary life because life will take all the available space and you don’t get enough work done for the overachiever and the entrepreneur. You got a boundary of work cuz it will take all the appro, all the space and then you won’t have a life. And I’ve been on that side of the equation for far too long. So, you know, the way that it came about was simple.
RB (10:07):
I had built a business that was built on the greet of Wall Street. You know, I was a publicly traded company about making my numbers. It was filled with ego, it was filled with just non-spiritual activity, let’s say, for lack of better words. And when I had stepped down as c e o of that company and take care of some family matters, I thought I was done with entrepreneurship. I thought that you could not be a spiritual and be an entrepreneur at the same time. Like people talk about being conscious and a capitalist, I thought those two things were mutually exclusive. Like this isn’t gonna happen. And in a lot of contemplation, a lot of you know, getting deeply connected to my faith, I realized that my calling was to fuse the two together to teach people how to be spiritual entrepreneurs. And in order for me to step into that calling, I had to learn to embody both the spiritual and the entrepreneurial gifts that I had been able to obtain throughout my walk.
RB (11:02):
Mm-Hmm. . So I, it was very hard though because I had to walk away from making hundreds of millions of dollars and I had to walk away from an older version of me and I had to learn how to become a spiritual leader. Mm-Hmm. . And I had no idea what it took to be a spiritual leader. It is not easy. It looks easy on paper. It is hard work to learn and craft yourself and grow yourself in such a way that you can be relied upon spiritually by the people that you’re called to lead. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s the hardest work in my life. It’s harder than any athletic endeavor I’ve ever done. It’s harder than any New York Times bestselling campaign I’ve ever worked. It’s harder than any I p O I’ve ever pursued. It’s harder than all of that because you are going to constantly be greeted with challenges and opportunities to change, to change your character. And you have to embrace that. And each person that you get that gets called into your life is going to bring you things about you that you need to, to work on and change. So it’s the fastest, most conducive to growth environment that you can ever participate in. But because it’s conducive to growth, it’s also conducive to lots of challenges that stimulate that growth.
AJV (12:17):
Mm-Hmm. , I I love that so much cuz it’s, you know, as you’re talking, you think it’s like I literally can think of like, you know, two or three people in my life where I’m like, oh yeah, they definitely present the biggest areas of growth for me and to people. I do what those people are my three-year-old and six year old where I’m like, well, I need more patience. Like, God help me can but more patience. I need that. But it’s like, I’ve never been so in tune with my impatience Yeah. As I have been trying to raise to godly men. And I think that’s really powerful. But you gotta be willing to embrace it.
RB (12:56):
Yeah. Every, every relationship that we have should be treated as sacred. Mm-Hmm. , the real difference between a spiritual entrepreneur and a secular entrepreneur is a spiritual entrepreneur sees their work as sacred, and therefore they treat the work as sacred. They treat the relationships as sacred. And if you’re a spiritual leader, you are, you are, you’re convincing those that work with you to treat the work as sacred too. And if you can get everyone treating your company and your work as sacred and your customers as sacred, for that matter, you’ll have a blessed business and it will grow. It will thrive. It’ll be the greatest opportunity for not only your personal growth, but for the personal growth of everyone connected to the the business. And so the, you know, people ask me how I’m able to recruit such talented talent, and the answer’s simple. There’s no greater growth opportunity in the world than this vessel that I’ve created. And that’s my belief system. So when they show up here, I say, if you’re, if you’re interested in growing and you’re interested in really getting to know what you’re capable of, this is what we stand for. And this is what we do here. And that’s why we’re able to attract some of the engineering talent and some of the scientific talent that we’ve attracted because we believe that we’ve created the greatest growth engine for our people possible because we treat our businesses sacred in our relationships as sacred.
AJV (14:14):
Hmm. Those are just two good life lessons. I don’t care what your business is, . Right. Those are just good life lessons, right. On the note of what you’re creating, right? So you go from this you know, very, pretty well known right. Product business with visas to this what I would call more of a, you know, services personal per professional development world. Like why this shift from a very productized business to something that is more development oriented. And I think for a lot of our clients and a lot of people listening, the reason I ask is they’re leaving one thing to do a new thing. And, and some of ’em, lots of them struggle with, well, what is this new thing? This is what I’ve been known for, this is what I know how to do, and now I’m heading into this uncharted territory, and am I really equipped for this? Am I really good enough for this? Does anyone really wanna learn from me?
RB (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, God doesn’t call the qualified, he, he qualifies the called as the old saying goes. And I’ve certainly been getting qualified in, in this, this calling of mine. You know, I, I didn’t think I’d ever be a one-on-one coach with people. You know, I used to sell out stadiums and now, you know, I’m doing thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching calls, and I’m learning to be a better coach. I’m learning to listen better to, you know, to counsel people and to, to help people on a one-on-one basis. And I’m also called to work with groups. So we have experiences and so forth. The the thing that I’ll, I’ll tell with you other than just that, or tell you other than just that spiritual belief that you know, that I’m being qualified in this calling and that I’ll, you know, I’ll have the right people come to teach me the skills that I need in order to, you know, fulfill God’s purpose in my life and my personal mission and that.
RB (16:02):
But I, I also have always looked at the analogies between businesses. So yes, I was in the consumer product space and I learned a lot about consumer products, shipping billions of dollars with the computer consumer products around the world. I’m taking those best practices and those learnings, and I’m applying them now to a technological product that we’re building here at Alter Call. So prior to that, I was in broadband wireless, I was in telecommunications, and I took a lot of the best practices from that business. And I created all visas in our, a lot of our pricing models and shipping models. And our financial models were all, because I had brought with me prior experiences and prior investors and prior business understanding, and it in a completely outside business, that’s where real innovation occurs. Because if you have experience in one business and you can apply it to another sector, that’s where innovation happens.
RB (16:54):
If I was born and raised in Tony Robbins, you know, and, and I showed up and I worked with him and I learned all about what he does and everything he does and how he runs a business, and then I went to start my own, it would just be a knockoff of Tony Robbins, right? Mm-Hmm. , that’s, it wouldn’t be anything different or maybe subtly different, but I wasn’t, I was born and raised in a totally different business. So I’m applying all that I’ve learned in those different businesses to this concept of, of how do I heal at scale? That’s my personal mission. So I’m taking the technological insights that I’ve obtained to the various tech companies I’ve invested in. I’m taking the personal growth insights I’ve obtained, and I’m, I’m building a business model that’s different in the personal growth industry. Mm-Hmm. But that said, the, the last, you know, item that, that really surfaced was, you know, at Visa Salas, I was in the weight loss business and I went really wide in the way that I impacted people.
RB (17:47):
So think of it like going wide like width, not to use a weight loss analogy, but I went for a billion pe millions of people, 3 million people. Now I’m going deep in the impact that I want to make. Eventually I will be called, as I master that deep impact, I’ll be called to go wider and wider and wider, but I’m called now in a season in my personal life as a leader and in the business that I’m creating to create the deepest impact that I can. And then from that deep impact, we will start to go wider as we go. So it’s, it’s very, I could very much see the creator’s craftsmanship. And then one other item I’ll just mention to you, you gotta be willing to walk away from something. And what I walked away from expertise in the direct selling industry, expertise in consumer products.
RB (18:33):
Mm-Hmm. , billion dollar dreams. Those were no longer my dreams. My, my dream was to build a legacy, build a company that makes the deepest impact possible, not the widest impact possible. I’ve already done billions a year in revenue. I’ve already made many millions of dollars. So I’m looking for depth. Not with, but a lot of entrepreneurs haven’t had a, a massive hit yet. They haven’t had a company on Wall Street or a number one New York Times bestselling book. So they’re, they’re called to go wide. Yeah. And that’s great. Once you’re called to go wide, then you might be called in another season to go deep as I am now.
AJV (19:07):
I love that. I I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of or read the book, the Circle Maker?
RB (19:13):
I have not.
AJV (19:15):
So this is a new book I just started reading and you just said something and I had just read this yesterday in this book. And I, I loved this description of it. It’s that, you know, if you’re searching for your purpose for what’s next, it’s, it’s often has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with us. And they said, the problem isn’t that God doesn’t give you what you want, it’s that we don’t know what we want, so we don’t know what to ask for. Mm-Hmm. And I feel like that’s a lot of people today, it’s like they think they want something because they’ve seen it somewhere else. But it’s really come down to redefining what does success look like in your life? Like, what is this thing I’m going after?
RB (19:54):
Yeah. When you’re, but when you’re on the spiritual walk, there’ll be a resonance. And if you really get to know your soul and you do the internal work, you might help one person and you’ll be like, that lit me up that I felt something there. And that’s a clue. And with obedience, you go, you move toward that clue. God uses clues for you to really determine your calling. He doesn’t just tell you what your calling is because then you wouldn’t discover it. It wouldn’t, you wouldn’t earn it. Right. So God uses clues. And what I do is I just, I conduct a number of experiments and the ones that completely fail, I had no business experiment. You know, that, that experiment didn’t work. That wasn’t my purpose. The ones that succeed, I know okay, that experiment, it had some light to it, it had, it had some energy to it.
RB (20:39):
The Holy Spirit was in that experiment. And I then go deeper into that experiment. And, and that’s the process that I use. But I’ll, I’ll tell you with regard to purpose, we all have the exact same purpose. And that is to leave the world better than we found it. And to share our love and wisdom abundantly. That’s it. Now the vehicle for expressing that changes. Yeah. But we shouldn’t get caught up in the vehicle. We should get caught up in the fact that I’m here to serve. I’m here to make the world a better place than I’ve found it. I’m here to leave behind my love and wisdom to my son and to all that I mentor and my true legacy. I’ll never be able to calculate it. Cuz I have no idea how many people my son’s gonna make an impact in the lives of, or his son or their sons or anybody’s children.
RB (21:26):
I have no idea what my true legacy is going to be. So I should just focus on service. The more that I serve, the more that I’m able to step into that calling. And then I get the feedback in real time when I’m on path. And when I’m not on path, God will use detours and close doors to get you back focused on your calling. So if a friend of mine says, let’s go invest in Bitcoin, and I entertain the idea, next thing you know, I’m heading in that direction, I’ll start to have some feelings that I’m, I’m not on the right path right now. And then I’ll get redirected. Mm. Like, you know, to, to where I need to, you know, to focus.
AJV (22:00):
I love that. My friend always says, and I’m sure she got this from somewhere else, but I love what she said. It’s like what often we feel as rejection is simply God’s protection. Right. I love that old saying. Now you mentioned something about now the way you do it and the way we all do it will change over the course of time. And I feel like we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about some things that are inevitably changing in the way that we work and do business. And you’re kind of at the forefront a lot of this and the technology companies that you’re investing in and AI and just what that looks like for business today and what it’s gonna look like in the future. So let’s shift a little bit and talk about Yeah. Technology as it is just warp speed, changing the way that we work and live and communicate and do life. But then also some specifics around like what, what you’re finding in ai. So this was open up that Pandora’s box.
RB (23:01):
Yeah. Let me, well, you know, I, my background, I started my career in technology and I’ve always viewed myself as a technologist at Visas. I, I saw the cloud as, you know, my work and then everything else was just a product of that. So I’ve always been heavily invested and involved in technology. I, I, I knew that AI was going to change some industries, and I got that insight about five years ago before I started alter call. And I started looking at AI in the addiction industry because I lost my mother to addiction. And I’ve lost many friends. And my family’s had a very difficult time with it, and I had some challenges with it as well. And so I thought, is there a way that AI will make an impact there? And, and so I’ve started my, my research five years ago.
RB (23:48):
And then I decided to set my sites on the coaching industry because the accuracy of the AI wasn’t at the level that where we could detect addiction and and improve outcomes. But the accuracy has improved. And so now we’ve been investing heavily in AI powered coaching. We have three AI scientists on the team right now as well as number of engineers. And we’re expanding our team and we’re building AI powered coaching. So I just got off a call before this one where I was having my coaching calls reviewed where it would tell me the sentiment, the questions asked and answered the use of language that the onwards and transition words and, and a full analysis of my coaching calls to help me become a better coach. And so that’s some of the innovations that we’re doing. We’re, our goal is not to eliminate the coach.
RB (24:34):
Our goal is to power the coach and to augment the coach. Yeah. but there are a number of jobs that will be eliminated as a result of ai. And if your job is one of those that you’re worried about being eliminated, my advice to you is simple callings will not be eliminated. Mm-Hmm. jobs will be, careers will be, but when a person is called to the highest level of mission, no employer is gonna wanna remove a person that is working in their calling. Mm-Hmm. , we can look at a job and we can rationalize, you know, the removal of a job or even the removal of a career from our container. But if a person’s operating at that calling level, they are so valuable to us that we would never want to remove them. We would reskill them, retool them, give them a new role, get them empowered in a new role.
RB (25:25):
Right. So my advice to each of you listening in, if you’re worried about your job or your career being taken by ai, you need to learn how to step into a calling and need to learn to greet your work as such. Because if you do that, you are irreplaceable. And if your employer wants to replace you, there’s many of us that are gonna pick up people that are, that are gonna be called to the work. And that’s what I’m looking for when I’m working with people. I’m not looking for people to take a job with me. I’m looking for people to share in this calling with me. Mm-Hmm. . So that’s extremely important and that’s part of the work that we’re doing at Al Alter call. One of the reasons why I believe we are called to heal at scale and, and in utilize AI is the scale part of that is because there’s going to be a huge need for coaching coming up here to retrain and retool people Yeah. That are losing their identity as a result of their careers and their jobs being taken over by, you know, robots, so to speak. Hmm.
AJV (26:19):
You know, it’s interesting and I think, you know, even pre ai I would say it’s like I kinda, you know, I loved what Ariana Huffington said, it’s, it wasn’t the great resignation, it was the great like reassessment, I forget the exact words. Yeah. But it was the, it wasn’t a great resignation. It was the great, you know, like reassessment of like, what am I doing with my life? Yeah. Like, what, what am I doing? And do I even know who I am? Because my entire identity has become my job. Right. Yeah. You know, and I think that’s just unfortunately a lot of the work culture in Americas, you know, we all do this, we all suffer from this. As soon as you meet someone, it’s, my name is and your name is, and then what do you do?
RB (27:08):
Yeah.
AJV (27:09):
Right? Yeah. Have you ever had anyone say, so tell me who you are, right? No. It’s like, what do you do? Right. And I think that there’s a lot of doing that happens and that all of our identities have got sucked into this doing part of why versus just who you are innately. And I think there’s, I think the reason in my opinion that the coaching industry has blown up so much, had very little to do with everything going digital or the great, you know, quote unquote resignation and much more of going like, I, I wanna find who I am again. And the demand for that desire has created a booming industry. Right. The coaching industry just in the US will do more than 20 billion this year. There’s more than 1.2 million people just on LinkedIn in the US who identify as a coach.
RB (27:59):
Yeah.
AJV (27:59):
Right? Yeah. And it’s like, those may not be full-time jobs, but there’s a demand of going like, teach me a new way. Teach me a better way. Someone show me, guide me, mentor me. And that’s what you’re doing with this. So I’m so fascinated. So I literally, I wrote this down and I was like, AI powered coaching. So like, tangibly speaking, like what is this? Like how, like what is this?
RB (28:25):
Well, one and I’ll, I’ll just give you an insight that I’ve pondered recently is the reason why we have so many coaches is because the education system has failed us completely. And we should have had great teachers that taught us how to know our body, taught us how to balance a checkbook, taught us how to be an entrepreneur. And instead we got Henry Rockefeller and or Henry Ford and Rockefeller education system to turn us into industrialists to identify with creating products for others. Yep. Basically we became worker bees. That’s right. And and that’s the entire education system that we’re in, and it is failing us. And that’s why we need coaches to go find a level of mastery and the internal skills or external skills mm-hmm. and then bring those to us. So that’s why we have a million coaches because we have a deficit of millions of teachers.
RB (29:13):
And so I’m a huge fan of the coaching industry. It’s expanding everyone moving into the coaching industry. I see it as the age of the messenger. Like we have people out there with the message and they’re sharing it. And so I applaud everyone who proudly says, I’m gonna become a messenger, a messenger of yoga, a messenger of, of whatever practices and so forth. So that’s where I see us from a macro basis and from a historical basis. But, and that’s why I’m so excited by the, the investments that we’re making in AI and so forth, but what, what AI powered coaching is going to do, because it’s such an unregulated industry what we are doing is we are extracting the best practices and we’re doing so by evaluating the outcomes from the clients. And then we’re taking those best practices and training our coaches and how they can model those best practices to accelerate outcomes for clients.
RB (30:07):
Our vision is that we can reduce the time that it takes to get to an outcome. We can and, and also make it more affordable to get to an outcome so that we can make coaching available to the masses. I believe that everyone should have a coach. And, and if you think about it, our family structure is disintegrated as such that we just don’t have fathers as coaches anymore, or mothers as coaches anymore. Even when we have mothers and fathers, oftentimes they have to go work, you know, like a slave and somebody else’s job, and they can’t bring back their best selves to coach the children. So we, we have to solve this problem through this new you know approach. And so we’re using AI and technology to make our coaches more efficient, to improve our client outcomes, and to to eventually make coaching faster and more afford more affordable.
AJV (30:57):
I love this. This is so cool. And I honestly, what I think is so cool about it is, again, this isn’t replacing coaches, this is empowering coaches. It’s allowing you to do what you can do at a more rapid impact, right? Yeah. And it’s like, man, just the learn to, to shorten the learning curve for people. Yeah.
RB (31:19):
So, yeah. One of the, one of the things that we, we do analysis on is the emotionality of the coach and the correspondence to that of the client outcome. So like, I get a feedback report after every call, and on some calls it says like, my sentiment was neutral. And I’m like, that’s not what I wanna bring to my clients. They pay me a lot of money. Right. I want, I wanna bring the best sentiment. And so just because I’m able to have AI evaluate and, and run models and tell me my sentiment, my tonality, and tell me the use of questions and answers and the amount of presence that I bring to my calls, I’m now a better coach because of that. That’s our mission, is to take an unregulated industry and to give frameworks and teaching, teaching methodologies, and then use ai to evaluate these coaches so that way they can become more efficient and more productive and create greater results in the marketplace.
AJV (32:10):
Love that. Fascinating. all right. So I know I’m watching the clock. I’m always trying to be sensitive. We got about like five minutes last here and I have a, a couple of random q and as that I wanna just like hit you with, so you mentioned earlier, yeah, some jobs will be eliminated, not callings, but jobs. So what do you foresee other jobs that are likely gonna pass away with the future of ai?
RB (32:35):
Well, a lot of ’em in, in, in my, my particular case, you know, you know, teachers are you know, there’s going to be a a front on teachers, any, any job where people are not doing a good job at it, where the industry is being cornered by unions, by, you know, and teachers is one of those, there’s some good teachers out there, don’t get me wrong, but then there’s some terrible teachers out there. And so the opportunity to re you know, eliminate those jobs and disrupt those jobs is very high. So you’re gonna, you’re gonna see any of those jobs where people are not serving at their highest level are, are going to be highly impacted. But it’s also going to force us to evolve. And just, for example, chat, G P T, which we’re all very familiar with, when, when I go on there, I ask great questions and I evolve the quality of my questions and I get nuanced answers as I am able to ask better questions.
RB (33:36):
So just that large language model is gonna teach us as human beings to ask better questions. Mm-Hmm. , which is one of the most important things that we can learn in the personal development journey, is to ask very intelligent, nuanced, precise questions. Mm-Hmm. . And so here’s a feedback engine that’ll tell you whether or not your questions, you know, are, are very good because you’re, you know, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll get better information or richer information by the quality, by the merit of your question and by the quality of your question. Mm-Hmm. . So there’s, there’s a huge evolutionary component to what AI is going to do to us. So many of the jobs that’ll eliminate that are eliminated are going to forge people to expand their skillsets. Mm-Hmm. expand their way of, of doing business and make new jobs. And I think that we’re gonna have a massive renaissance of new jobs created because of these things that will certainly replace the jobs that are taken away in the short term.
AJV (34:30):
Well, yeah. You know, it’s like too that I’ve already seen this pop up in a few places is, you know, I, I live in Nashville, right. Music city, and there’s just like, I get bombarded with like all these different webinars and stuff going on in the city, and it’s like, is AI going to destroy music city, the songwriting business? You know, that just like something flew across my inbox and it’s like, I have a lot of friends who are singer songwriters and I’m like, no, it should make them better. Yeah. Right. It should. It’s, it’s, the collaboration should be quicker, faster. What did take months could now take days. And, you know, we live in the, you know, creator economy in the world that, you know, we are in, we, you know, we serve the expert, right? We say our target audience is the mission driven messenger. There’s been a lot of talk about like, is AI gonna completely replace copywriters and graphic designers? And I’m like, no, unless you’re not good at it. Unless you’re not efficient. So I had this great conversation with a good friend of mine where he’s got a full-time copywriter on his staff and his, his outcome, like his output every week is one blog.
AJV (35:36):
Hmm. And we’re like, not now. should
RB (35:41):
Be 10 blogs a day.
AJV (35:42):
Not now . It’s like, we’re gonna need to see that increase. And so what I have found in like, similar to what you’re saying, it’s like it’s going to disrupt the areas that need disrupting. Yeah. But if you are good and you can use, like, this is a tool just like anything, but you gotta learn how to use the tool and that is going to require coaches. Yeah. And I’ve already seen this pop up, all these classes of going, let me teach you how to ask, you know, AI the right questions. Yeah. And it’s like there’s already this new era of education.
RB (36:13):
Yeah. It will, it’s going to certainly improve efficiencies for all of us, which is a good thing because the more efficient we are as entrepreneurs, the more income we can generate, the more income we can generate, the more we can pay salaries and, and all of the things that we get to share our wealth with. So that’s, that’s gonna be a magical boomer, a coaching business for example, that had one blog a week, you know, and, and, and couldn’t hire another blogger to do another blog per week, can now get 10 blogs out there a week, and that’s gonna spread their wings and, and spread their message and, and generate more revenue. So we’re gonna see an expansion and many industries and companies would get capped at a certain revenue size, cuz it was just extremely hard to build beyond say, 30 million a year. Mm-Hmm.
RB (36:54):
now with these tools, the, those 30 million year companies have the opportunity to become 300 million a year companies. So you’re gonna see an expansion in the capacity of the small business. Yeah. Which is going to create a lot more revenue for all of us to be able to share with our stakeholders and so forth. So that, that’s gonna be you know a huge you know, a huge benefit that we’re, we’re at the very beginning of, no one is the, the company that got stopped at the scale of 30 million has yet to learn how to use these new tools to break through to 300 million mm-hmm. . But those cases, those use cases will start to emerge and you’ll be like, wow, this industry we only thought was capable of getting to 30 million a year was the max that you could do in a coaching business, for example. And now there’s a company utilizing these modern tools and they’ve gotten to, you know, 3 billion a year. So you’ll start to see the expansion of the market caps as a result of these tools.
AJV (37:46):
Mm. It’s gonna be interesting fascinating. I think it’s the word. It’s gonna just be interesting and fascinating. All all right. Next question, because you mentioned this a few times, and this is something that is a constant conversation in our house, is how do you think this impacts, or just what is your personal opinion on the future of college and higher education in the traditional sense?
RB (38:11):
Well, there’ll always be a marketplace for ego and greed and you know, many people that go to colleges are sent there by way of ego and greed. Right. So, you know, I I get personal identity outta my son going to Harvard, so I’m gonna insist that my son goes to Harvard, I’m gonna make this poor kid go to Harvard. You know, that’s gonna be in our, our, our ecosystem for quite some time. Yeah. But you know, it, it’s, it’s not going to be a necessity. It’ll give you bragging rights. It’ll give you ego benefits, but it’s not going to be a necessity. So I, I went to a, a decent little school called Cal Lutheran University, and then I dropped out my senior year and I’ve never cared whatsoever about, you know, any of that because I’m learning and growing each and every day, and I’m applying skills and getting feedback as an entrepreneur. You know, these things are only as good as the belief that they create within you. Mm-Hmm. . And so, you know, college is good to create some belief within you and give you some structure around learning. And that’s worth a hundred thousand dollars or 200,000 if you’re gonna make, you know, millions a year. But it’s certainly not worth $200,000 if you’re only gonna make 30 or $40,000 a year.
AJV (39:26):
Unfortunately, the only thing I retained from college was how to play corn hole and beer pong
RB (39:31):
.
AJV (39:32):
But I got a lot of practice. Yeah, right. I’m really good at that.
RB (39:36):
That’s priceless though. That’s priceless. I imagine that family outings.
AJV (39:42):
Oh, I dominate, dominate. But it is, you know, it’s interesting. So you have a son
RB (39:48):
Yeah.
AJV (39:49):
Who’s how old
RB (39:51):
Reagan is 14 years old.
AJV (39:53):
He’s 14. So to college you’re not with Reagan.
RB (39:57):
It’s whatever he wants, you know whatever he wants. If, if he wants to go to college, you go to college. If he wants to start a business, he is got a VC in me to help him start a business, whatever he wants. I my parenting method is a little bit different in that I’m looking for what is his personal calling, what is his soul called to do? And then I want to put everything I can to support that. So if he’s called to be a musician, I don’t care if there’s any money in musicianship mm-hmm. , if he’s called to be a, a botanist, I don’t care if there’s any money in botany, I want him to do whatever he’s called to do. And I’m here to support that. Help him identify that, witness him when he is in his calling, witness him when he is in his higher self versus his lower self and help him, you know, learn how to step powerfully into a calling. Of course, I would dream that one day he would take over his dad’s work, but if he chooses to do something completely different, then you know, I’m gonna be his number one supporter and I’m gonna invest in him every step of the way.
AJV (40:56):
Good answer, Ryan. You know, mine are little, right? So I’ve got a three-year-old and a six-year-old and, you know, we are on the homeschool path. My kids are homeschooled now, and, you know, we’ve taken the stance of if you wanna go to college, that’s fine. If you want us to pay for it, you’re gonna have to convince us why it’s the good idea. You’re gonna have to convince us of why, what exactly are you going to be doing? Because I know what I did. But I think Yeah, I love that. You know, I just finished reading how successful people think by John Maxwell. Yeah. And like, my biggest takeaway from that entire book was don’t build your business based on profits. Build your business based on purpose. Yeah. Right. And it’s
RB (41:39):
Like, yeah, I love John. John mentored me for a couple of years. I I have a personal relationship with him and I love him dearly. He’s one of the he’s a great source of wisdom and for all of us, Steve, it, it, it is by Reagan’s 14 by the time that he enters the workforce. Yeah. It’s gonna be about callings and whatever that calling is. And the last thing I, I do wanna share with you something that you mentioned about the national concept. You know, my words are going to be easily replicated via ai, but the delivery of those words is unique to me. Yeah. So I need to work on the artistry of my delivery. So does every musician, right. Because it’s going to be the way you deliver that song that’s going to be the essence of mm-hmm. of, of you. And so we need as speakers and, and lecturers and teachers, we need to work on becoming better artists. That’s good. Because AI will give our information away to everyone, but the artistry of our delivery is what we need to go to work on.
AJV (42:32):
That is so good. And, and, you know, honestly, that’s so true. It’s like reading something versus hearing it and feeling it. Yeah. You know, it’s, I always tease, it’s like I often don’t want to see some of my favorite authors speak in person because I love their words so much, but then when I hear them as presenters, I’m like, well, that ruined it. It
RB (42:54):
Ruined, right. Yeah.
AJV (42:56):
Right. Totally ruined it.
RB (42:57):
Yeah. You’ll more vice versa, right? Yeah. You’ll, well, we’ll no longer pay a person to do research and organize the information then deliver us information. Because I could do, I could ask Ja G b t Yeah. What are the benefits of it all plant-based diet compared to X or Y I don’t need to go to a seminar, you know, for that information anymore. So the, the people that are in the delivery of knowledge and wisdom are gonna have to become better artists and get, and, and, and go on a growth path where they’re bringing in more information from consciousness or from the Holy Spirit and they’re delivering it to the world. So it’s going to eliminate the people that have earned false wisdom. Yeah. Or un or they have unearned wisdom. They just got it through a bunch of research. It’s gonna eliminate that job. And those of us that are wisdom holders and, and, and growing in that we’re gonna have to get better at the delivery of that wisdom.
AJV (43:48):
That’s so good. Like that’s gonna be the big takeaway from this for me is like, don’t be concerned with what’s gonna go, but like, focus on your artistry. Yeah. That’s the thing that no one can take, no one can replace. It’s, it’s yours. But you can work on it and fine tune it. Ryan, thank you so much. Y’all, if y’all wanna catch up with Ryan it’s at Real Ryan Blair on Instagram. So you follow him on the gram, but also check out Al Alter call this amazing program that has coaching. You’ve got masterminds, you’ve got all types of things involved in it. And so go to alter call.com. I’ll put both of those links in the show notes. Ryan, is there anywhere else that you should tell people to go find you learning
RB (44:34):
You? No. No. I, I love meeting new people, so if you hit me up on Instagram we could start a conversation.
AJV (44:40):
Awesome. Y’all, thank you so much for sticking around. Be sure to tune in to the Cliff Notes version of this episode on the podcast, and we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later.

Ep 384: Using Funnels to Drive Revenue Growth with Lauren Cannon

RV (00:02):
So I had a very awesome opportunity for about a year in my career. So when we started Brand Builders Group, one of the clients that we had fairly early on was a gentleman named Glen Stanford. And Glenn, it was the billionaire founder and owner of exp Realty. Well, while we were working with Glen, he actually had opportunity to buy Success Magazine and he bought Success Magazine and asked me to come over and be the interim editor. A lot of people don’t know this, but I was the interim entrepreneurship editor of Success Magazine for like a year, and I really loved it. It was the first time I actually worked inside of like a traditional media company, like on the backend. I had written articles and stuff, but never like sort of seen the backend. So I was there at Success Magazine. While I was there, I got introduced to an amazing woman named Lauren Cannon, who you are about to meet.
RV (00:55):
Lauren has worked at Success Magazine. She worked for a while with Brendan Burchard. She now has her own mar. She, she now has her own marketing agency. And she does a lot in the world of marketing automation and funnels. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today because I really like her and she like me, I think is a fellow nerd, but she doesn’t look like a nerd. She doesn’t act like a nerd, but she is so smart and so brilliant at what she does. I just felt like you needed to have a conversation or listen into a conversation with me and Lauren, her agency’s called Make it Pretty. And so anyways, Lauren, welcome to the show.
LC (01:36):
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.
RV (01:40):
So how did you get into the world of marketing automation? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, it’s, it’s not that, you know, the industry’s not that old, but you’ve been, you’ve been in this space for a minute.
LC (01:52):
I have, yeah. Almost 10 years now. So I started with project management. I just, success had brought me over and we were launching new courses and we were doing events and they needed help organizing it. And at the time, I was the project manager of all things and process engineering. I love figuring out how things work and how to make them work better and more efficiently. And through the course of doing that, I just started learning every single skill there was in marketing everyone’s role to where I developed to be able to do it. And then I started to put myself further and further into marketing positions.
RV (02:33):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. So, so you got introduced to the world of marketing automation and then I guess mm-hmm. . So, so can you just, like, for somebody listening who like, isn’t familiar with that term when they hear marketing automation, and let’s go ahead and talk about funnels at the same time mm-hmm. , because I, you know, some people are like, yeah, I’m, you know, I’m a funnel hacker and I know all about funnels, but I think there’s a lot of people who still kind of hear that term and go, you know, isn’t that what info marketers do? Or like, that’s only certain types of people. Can you just define marketing automation and funnels? Like how would you define those terms?
LC (03:10):
Yeah, I would, I would say, you know, specifically, especially with, with the world that, that we’re in, the industry we’re in as you say, the mission driven messengers, it’s a, it’s a vehicle for delivering that mission and that message in the most effective and efficient way. We wanna make sure that someone is spending more time and energy on developing that mission and developing that message and less time and energy on the delivery of it. Mm-Hmm. so funnels and marketing automations are gonna be how you can not only constantly serve people, but how you can constantly reach more people and it becomes this endless cycle of people coming into your world and into your mission.
RV (03:56):
Yeah. And I, that’s, I love that. And I, I feel like, you know, when I think about it, it’s, it’s going in a tactical sense. You’re driving people to your website or to a landing page, typically you’re offering them some type of value and now, you know, some type of a lead magnet, a free asset mm-hmm. , they’re downloading it or subscribing or, you know, tuning into a, a webinar or a challenge or something. And then they’re, and then they’re, and then they’re on your email list, but there’s a lot more between that and getting them to buy. And I think a funnels a sort of like covers the distance between, okay, I, you, I gave you my email address, but between getting their email address and making a purchase to me, like that’s where funnels live. Yes. And a lot of people don’t know, know that much about ’em cuz they’re invisible. Like you don’t, even, when you’re going through one as a prospect or a customer, you often don’t realize mm-hmm. , you’re inside of this ornately designed infrastructure and architecture. But would you, does that, would that sync up with how you think of it?
LC (05:00):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are so many people who, like you said, they can funnel hack, they’ll hack a funnel, you know a big launch that just happened in, in the space was Marie for Leo’s Copy Cure. She just opened that up so you can sign up for her lead magnet, get all the emails, see the sales page, and then, you know, ultimately buy or not. But essentially you have the whole email. So now you’ve hacked the funnel, let’s say. But there’s so much more that happens outside of that period of time that Marie has done to develop that sale. And so that’s what really a funnel is. It’s a whole launch system that is year round and your business delivering content in different ways and segmenting your audience in different ways so that you’re delivering value to what that specific person needs.
RV (05:53):
Mm-Hmm. mm-hmm. . So what, what do you think are some of the most like, practical examples of funnels either that you’ve seen or that you’ve worked on or that you build where you go, here’s how and where and when mm-hmm. you would use a funnel, and, and by the way, just for everyone, if you’re totally new to this term, I, I kind of think of as marketing automation as basically like the tools and the process and the science of building funnels, which are these mm-hmm. sort of automated nurture sequences to move someone from, okay, I’m on your email list to now I’m gonna buy, or I’m following you on social, but now I’m gonna ultimately become a customer. So what are the use cases, I guess, of these that you think are either the most common or you think everyone should have or just that you kind of work on a lot
LC (06:39):
Mm-Hmm. ? Yeah. We have we’ve worked on a lot with speakers who after they deliver a keynote speech, they want to leave the audience with something to continue connecting with them and build that, that relationship. And, you know, if you’re a speaker, that connection you make with the audience is one of the most valuable connections you can make. And you don’t wanna walk out the door without giving them the option to continue that relationship. So we’ll do a lot of lead generation from stage where if there’s a QR code and, and typically something that is related to your keynote but is truly of value to that audience member, something that’s gonna help them take whatever your presentation was and either apply it to their lives or accelerate their results into achieving the results you shared. So not necessarily the slides or something like that, but maybe it’s an ebook.
LC (07:43):
We’ve done quizzes and things like that. So getting these people into your email list is always number one. And then from there, it’s really inviting them into this conversation with you. So not necessarily selling right away, just say, you know, Hey, I’m so glad to connect. Here’s my best content and you wanna deliver, you know, three to five excellent pieces of value content and just get them to keep opening your emails. And you just build these nurture sequence along the way. And then as you have offers that are related to that segment, starting to build in the sales sequences,
RV (08:21):
Uhhuh . So that’s a great example. So you’re on stage, you’re doing a speech, speech comes to the end, you say, Hey, here’s a free tool I put together for you. I’d love to stay in touch, text this number or go to this url mm-hmm. or scan this QR code or whatever. And then it takes ’em to a page. It takes ’em to a page. Or it could be, if it’s a text optin, I guess they’re just like sending a message and now they’re on your email list mm-hmm. . And then like how many pieces of you, you said like three to five excellent pieces. Is there like a rule you follow of like the ratio of how much value you really should be given before you ask for a sale or when you ask for a sale? Or like at what are some of, like, philosophically speaking, what are some of those transition points in your mind where you go mm-hmm. , okay, we’re gonna shift the conversation to like, I’m building the relationship, I’m adding value. I’m, I’m basically giving you free instruction, advice, whatever encouragement to then shifting towards making a sale and asking mm-hmm. for like money from somebody.
LC (09:23):
Yeah. Typically the sequence I would I follow is they enter your email list, they saw you on stage, they enter your email list, the first email they get is a personalized, thank you, I’ve got you here. This is the tool, this is how you’re gonna make the most of this tool. And you know, I’ll be checking in with you tomorrow and see how things are going. And then that second email that is, you know, automatically kicks off in your sequence. It is gonna say, again, following up on the tool, saying, I really hope you’ve seen this and this, and the tool, here’s how, you know, I have this piece, this video that really shows how this tool can effectively make your life better. And then, you know, there might be a Ps I’ve got more coming soon, just kind of teasing that you are going to sell them, but you’re still delivering content.
LC (10:17):
And then that third email is gonna be another piece of value content that you’ve already got written if you’ve got blogs or videos. And it’s also gonna be a bigger teaser that’s like, Hey, you know, if you’re interested, I’ve got this program that I’m gonna tell you more about tomorrow. Stay tuned, keep your eyes on your inbox. And then as you get into email four and five, you can start to build that sale up. And it really depends on what your offer is. If your offer is something in the 20, you know, it’s a low ticket, 27 to 1 29 kind of offer, you can start to build that in around email three and four. If your ticket is something that’s really high in let’s say a thousand dollars to $5,000, you’re probably gonna be doing what we call lead stacking. So you’re gonna have almost another lead magnet that they’re gonna raise their hand for that’s gonna give them a little bit more of a sales sequence in it. So a webinar or something like that. And then you’re gonna put them into that sequence.
RV (11:26):
Got it. Uhhuh, . So you, you were, you were talking, one of the things you shared with me, which I, I thought was powerful, is this this relationship between the lead magnet and the offer. So talk, talk, talk us through why that, what that means and why that matters.
LC (11:44):
Yeah. It’s a lot of people, you’ll, you’ll throw together a lead magnet. You know, you need to build an email list and you know, you need a lead magnet to do that. You see opted pages and that is the best way to build your email list. But a lot of things that I see where we need to go and fix some funnels is they have the wrong lead magnet for what they offer. So you need to make sure that what lead magnet you’re showing people is going to align with your offer. Because if it doesn’t, it’s gonna create a lot of misaligned connection points in that you may not have a properly segmented audience. So y your lead magnet may attract an audience that can’t afford your offer. And then your lead magnet content has nothing to do with your offer. So some of the things, you know, I see lead magnets as a sliding scale in terms of their perceived value and how it connects to your offer. So if you have a high ticket offer, an ebook is not gonna be the best lead magnet. Cuz going from a free, let’s call it 20 page e-book into a $5,000 program, that’s a really big jump. So you wanna, the more interactive and hands-on you are in your lead magnet, the higher price your offer can be.
RV (13:06):
So what are some examples? So, so I love that. So, so basically the higher the price of the offer, the more valuable the lead magnet needs to be.
LC (13:19):
Yes.
RV (13:19):
Okay. And then when you mention, you say the lead magnets are like a sliding scale of perceived value. So if you have it, if so, if an e-book is on the low end mm-hmm. , what would be high-end lead magnets? Like, what would be, so let’s, let’s say you do have a, you know, a six month, one-on-one coaching program and it costs, you know, a thousand dollars a month, right? So you have a $6,000 offer some, something like that. What, how would you do the lead magnet differently?
LC (13:48):
I would do a live webinar, but for something like that I would do the lead magnet stacky method, where you may have someone, especially if you’re going with cold traffic, you have this six month coaching program and, and they haven’t heard of you yet. They bought into what you have to offer, what your mission is, and they, you need to build that trust and rapport still. So you may start with a quiz or an ebook, something that is on the lower end of the perceived value chain. And through that you’re gonna say, okay, I’ve given you value. I, I know this about you, and so I know that X is gonna help you even more, which would be your main lead magnet and a live webinar. The higher the ticket, I would do a live webinar. If you’re, if you’re looking at something that’s maybe 2,500, you could do an on-demand webinar, but something like 6,000, I would do a live webinar. Because what happens in those situations, one of the best ways to convert someone into something like that is a live transformation. So we have people that we see that go live on Instagram every single day and do free coaching, but what they’re doing is they’re building this, this audience that sees these live transformations happening and they can fill up their mastermind of it or something like that. So the more you can create that live experience, the more people will pay.
RV (15:25):
Interesting. So, and when you say on demand, when you say like, on demand webinar, just to be clear mm-hmm. , so you’re talking about like a pre-recorded automated, is that what you mean by an on-demand? Yes. Webinar, yes. Okay. And then, and you’re saying that you might be able to, so if you said, okay, I’m gonna give away a quiz or an ebook or maybe a quiz, then an e-book, then an invitation to a webinar, then they’re on a webinar, then at the end of the webinar, which, you know, you’re adding some value for an hour of the webinar or something mm-hmm. , then at the end of that, now you could make a two, a 1500, $2,000 offer, something like that. But if you’re, and you’re saying that could be a prerecorded webinar Yes. But if you’re gonna go north of that, then you would say you would basically invite people to like watch a live coaching and like a live coaching session of you with somebody?
LC (16:18):
Yes. Yes, I would. And I would spend that time, you know, you may say it’s a, an hour long, I would spend that time, the first, first bit of time teaching, have it, make sure it’s a, a masterclass on, you know, part of your framework. And then, then you wanna open it up to be able to interact with that audience and provide coaching transformations. And all along the way, once you get to that segment, you’re starting to infuse what you sell and say, you know, in my coaching program we go deeper into this and, and starting to, to build into that message
RV (16:59):
Uhhuh . So then that just to like talk about the funnel example. So it’s like mm-hmm. , maybe they saw you speak on stage, then you had an offer for a ebook, then you invite them to a webinar, and then at the end of the webinar you sell something or you invite them to, I guess you would invite them to a live webinar mm-hmm. . And then you, you still do, you still basically do a webinar, but you’re saying incorporating the element of like a live coaching session where they see someone go through the process would then be, is like a key thing for selling a high, high like north of a few thousand dollars?
LC (17:35):
Yes. Mm-hmm. .
RV (17:36):
Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. How do you use the funnels in the follow up sequence? So like you know, I mean, I guess I would just be curious, like let’s say you did that, let’s say you built all that out and you go, okay, I’m speaking and they’re getting this free thing, and then they’re showing up for a webinar, or they’re here live, they watch this live coaching experience. Like in your experience, do most of the people that are gonna buy buy right on that at that moment when you make the offer? Or is there a follow up that happens afterwards?
LC (18:10):
There’s a follow up that happens afterwards. And I would say from doing, we’ve built so many launches over the years, ed, there’s really this, this sweet spot when it comes to your launch. And even if you’re doing an evergreen, it follows the same type of sequence. It just turns on and off. And so you’re gonna get about 20% of your sales from that webinar. So 20% of the sales you do in your launch are gonna come from the webinar.

LC (00:04):
The rest of your sales are going to come in the last 24 to 48 hours of your launch. And that doesn’t mean that, uh, you can have a two day launch and the rest of your sales come in the next day. We actually have found the best launch timeline is 12 days. And so that creates this ability for you to share more stories and transformations as you lead into that final close down. Uh, and so in those last 48 hours, about 70% of your sales are gonna come in and you’re gonna send probably somewhere between five and six emails. A And so throughout that 12 day period, you’re sending most like an email every single day. But they’re very prescriptive. Uh, you want to tell them what they’re, you wanna focus on a feature that’s in your program, but highlighting it through the benefits language. And you also wanna have emails that act as your faq. But when you ask questions and your email marketing, you’re not answering questions like, how many video modules is this? It’s more of, this is what I have going on in my life. How is this program gonna fit in my schedule? And so you’re, you’re thinking of what are the sales objections someone’s gonna have? And you’re using those as the questions and doing FAQs through that. And then you’re sharing more case studies and stories of testimonials through that 12 day window.
RV (01:40):
Uhhuh . And did I catch that? Yeah. Did I, did you say that you think that roughly 70% of the sales will come in like the last 48 hours?
LC (01:49):
Yes.
RV (01:50):
Yes. And then, and you said you send something like six, six emails in the last 48 or out, so usually like two emails on the second to last day and then like four emails on the, on the LA on the last day, the day of,
LC (02:02):
Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm. . And it’s a lot, it’s a lot of emails and you know, if you’re out there funnel hacking, you’ll notice like there are some that send 10 emails on that last day. But, you know, part of what we talked about earlier with the funnels there, it, it’s a lot of what happens outside of that window. So they may, someone may be on your list and receiving all these emails and you’re gonna get a higher number of unsubscribes during that period. That’s naturally gonna happen. But what you do outside, once that’s finished, what you do outside that period is you’re building that list back up so that when you come back around to launch a significant high ticket, you have a new list of people. And then you also have this list of people that they really enjoyed the messages, they really enjoyed the emails with the stories that you shared, but they just weren’t ready to buy yet.
RV (02:58):
Ah-huh. . Yeah, I mean that’s, I mean, to me that’s really encouraging and such an important thing for people to know. Like, cuz you do this webinar, right? You like, put all this effort into it and then a couple people buy, you know, if you have mm-hmm. , you know, if it, you have a couple people buy and then you’re just like totally deflated and defeated. Like it doesn’t work like this whole thing and you have to have the follow up part of it to pull this all, to pull this all together. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Um, and so, so in a 12, you, you know, using that like 12 day sequence, so basically is it basically like the first two or three days are getting people to show up for the webinar and then on like day four you run the webinar and then day five and six is like a replay of the webinar and then basically like five to seven days of like, here’s a case study, here’s a question, here’s a story, here’s an extra bonus. Um, if you sign up and then, and then it all ends with like, there’s a deadline. And on that, on this deadline, you know this, there’s four emails on that day. Is that kind of the rough Yes. Arc of it?
LC (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (04:11):
How many
LC (04:12):
Yeah, exactly like that. H
RV (04:13):
How many, uh, I know this is a hard question to, to ask and to be pinned, to be pinned down on, but like if you go through this whole process, right? Because this is like, it’s a lot of work and it’s time and it’s money, um mm-hmm. , you build the funnel, you write the emails, you build the email list, you put together the webinar, you do the webinar, you have the live coaching, you have the follow ups, like you do all this stuff in your eyes, what do you see as a successful conversion percentage on of, of a funnel? Right? So let let, I mean mm-hmm. , let’s just say you start with a 10,000 person email list mm-hmm. and go, you know, if I have a 10,000 person email list, how does that whittle down to become how many customers? And like in your eyes where you go, gosh, this, this, you know, this would be awesome. This would be like pretty solid and then, you know, anything less would be like, yeah, it’s less, you know, it’s very much not what we would hope for. Um, yeah, like if, talk me through that.
LC (05:16):
Yeah. So I would say, and I’m not great at mental math, so you may have to help me here. Okay.
RV (05:21):
I can help you do,
LC (05:22):
I’ll do the percentages . Uh, but if you have like a 10,000 person email list and you send out, I’m doing this free master masterclass, it’s gonna be live, it’s your webinar, uh, and let’s say about of your 10,500 sign up for that webinar, you’re not gonna get a huge chunk of people. And then from that 500 about 70% would actually show up to the webinar. And that’s a really good show up rate. It may be more like 50%. Okay. And then from that, the people that stayed on and watched and are now in your s they would probably generate about 5% of sales would be good from that 500. But I would say, I would still say 5% of the 500, that’s what I would track as the math. However, you’re still gonna be emailing your list even if they didn’t show up. That’s where those fourth days are great. Where it’s saying, Hey, you missed it, here’s the replay. And they have a couple days to watch the replay. And even if they don’t ever watch, you’re still sending them through that sales cycle.
RV (06:40):
Yeah. So, so like 5% basically of, so we, we, we call that term funnel conversion percentage, which is the 500 mm-hmm. that opted in a good solid funnel would be like 5%. So 10% would be 50. So 25% would be 25 people. So if you had 500 people sign up for the webinar, a bunch wouldn’t show. You know, some, some would show, a bunch wouldn’t show, some would watch a replay, some wouldn’t. And then I always find it ironic cuz it’s like some of the people who actually buy didn’t do anything. They signed up for the first email. Oh yeah. Waited till the last minute, saw the bonuses and were like, yep, I’m in. And never like watched anything . Um
LC (07:21):
Yep. So we’re all natural born procrastinators, uhhuh, I mean, like you say, procrastinate on purpose. So that’s why that those last days, that’s why the, the timeline is the timeline cuz people are going to wait until that very last minute. And even then, and that’s what’s the hardest is co telling people do not stick to your word. Do not open that cart back up when you close the cart. Because I’ve done it myself where I’ve had FOMO on, on a course and I’m like, oh I know I saw the 27 email that I got from this and it was gonna end, but the next morning I was like, I’m ready to buy and it’s gone. You just, you have to stick to it because you’re gonna open it back up and, and that integrity you’re building with that person is going to convert them. Mm-hmm.
RV (08:08):
. But I think that again, just like it’s good to have you walk through that and I’m glad you said that cuz those, those numbers would match up, you know, I think reasonably with like what the mm-hmm. what we would hope for. I mean our, our best converting funnel that we have is a summit funnel and it’s me interviewing mm-hmm. a lot of our like pretty well known clients and we see about 8% of those people Yeah. Will request a call. So a conversion mm-hmm. for us is, that’s not even a credit card that’s like they request a call. Right. Um, and then mm-hmm. , most of our like, uh, outside of that we’ve got some evergreen webinar funnels that convert it like 5%, but most of them are closer to like two and a half to 4% mm-hmm. . And we’ve got some video funnels that convert at 1.3%. Um, so I think the, um, you know, but if you started with 10,000 people, you might go, oh man, I’m such a failure. I got 20 people to sign up. And it would be like, no, you’re, that’s like, that’s the, that’s how it works. . Yeah.
LC (09:10):
That’s how it works. And you’re doing good. And I mean, that’s a big part cuz it kinda like you said, you’re building a lead magna, you’re building pages, you’re putting people through a webinar, you’re doing, you’re doing so much and people burn out from it. And, and that’s be, you wanna maximize your work and not your effort. And so it’s like you, you have to create all these things, but once you’ve created it once, you can just recycle it. I mean, I can’t tell you with, there are certain funnels out there that they launched twice a year every single year. I’ve gotten the same exact emails in that sales sequence for three years in a row. Hmm. You know, and, and it took me two years before I ended up buying that program. And so it is that like you put in a lot of work and effort to build this funnel, but you can keep it on, tweak it as you go and, you know, everything should start with your program and what you provide, the value you provide and be extracted from that. So if you’ve got a coaching program, take one piece of the framework that you’ve already created and just tweak it a little bit here and there and turn that into your lead magnet. Yeah. Or turn that into your webinar script and then, you know, there’s just so much repurposing and reusing people start from scratch and you should never start from scratch.
RV (10:31):
Mm-hmm. , do you have any, um, tips for Evergreen or on-demand webinars,
LC (10:39):
Evergreen and on demand? I would keep the, I usually like to use those as like my mid ticket kind of funnel. Like if you’re gonna have, if you have multiple offers in your offer suite, I like to use those in my mid ticket price and low ticket. Um, evergreen is, I feel like it’s this unicorn people chase and they think that they’ll sustain an entire business on an evergreen model. Uh, but it, it, you, you need those launches infused there to get those like big pickups of revenue. Uh, and then forever Evergreen. I, we’ve, we’ve run them in the past where, uh, and we have one currently running where it’s to a book and then to a minicourse and to, you know, their entire offer sequence. And the, the secret to it is making sure you build and nurture sequences along the way. So when you do that, say you come off of a sale, you wanna make sure you have about four weeks of just value sequences and it’s not an email every day, but you’re, you’re providing value and then you’re leading into the next thing. And that’s how you can kind of turn that evergreen
RV (11:48):
Uhhuh . And you’re just saying basically like in a series of ascending offers from like mm-hmm. a book to a course to whatever, but you have, it’s like a bunch of mini funnels that you sort of string together with like a value funnel or a value chain in between there of just like, sort of cooling, cooling the jets for a minute and, and going back and adding value. Yes. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. That’s really, really interesting. Well, y’all, so if you’re interested in more of this from Lauren and, um, you want to find out more, we set up a little link. If you go to brand builders group.com/lauren, this is our affiliate link. Um, as I said, she’s someone that I have loved working with. I trust her. I, you know, I enjoyed getting to know her. Every time we talk and hang out, I pick up like some really good stuff. And this has been awesome, Lauren. Like, uh, I think even, even as someone who spent a lot of time studying funnels myself, like I always pick up l you know, new things and, and, and tidbits from this. So, um, you know, last thing I would just ask you is, is if someone is considering their very first funnel right now, like what would you say to them mm-hmm. if they’ve never done this before, but they’re kind of like thinking about it, what do you think they should know?
LC (13:05):
I think one of the most important things to know if you’re thinking about this and you don’t know where to start, is focus on providing as much value as possible in the front end. Do not be afraid to tell people what you do and lift the curtains and, and they wanna buy the how. So people will hold back on how much value they share, but they wanna buy, they wanna buy the how. So always provide that value and then knowing that your product is not your offer. So really focus on how are you helping someone apply and accelerate their results. And that’s gonna be your offer. Once you have a solid offer, then you’re ready to launch.
RV (13:53):
Mm-hmm. , I love that. I love that about helping them apply and accelerate their offer. Like, and that’s what it’s really about, right? We’re really trying to mm-hmm. , we’re not just trying to make money from a stranger and be like, ha, we won, we got you. We convinced you to give us your money. Like, we’re trying to deliver a result for people, um exactly. In their lives. And I think that’s exactly, that’s the, that’s the part that is the difference between slime and service. And that’s the part that I think people can vet out and they can sense like, you’re just trying to sell me something versus you actually care about helping me achieve this transformation. So thanks for that, Lauren. Um, we really appreciate it and we wish you all the best my friend.
LC (14:39):
Awesome. Thank you Rory.

Ep 382: Building a Profits and People First Mindset with Vinnie Fisher

AJV (00:02):
Hey y’all. Welcome to a new episode on the influential Personal brand. I have got a really special guest today because it’s not often I bring on a guest where I’m their client. But today I have a new friend, Vinnie Fisher, who is the CEO of a fully accountable, which is our bookkeeping controller, fractional C F O Tax Strategy Firm, , that’s all the things that we use. It’s basically the Financial Department of Brand Builders Group and Vinny founded and as the CEO of that. He’s also an author of two amazing books we’ll talk about and there might be more than two. This is just, I’m thinking of the two I know about. But before I introduce you to Vinny, I actually wanna tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this episode. So before we get into it, you’ll know if this is an episode for you.
AJV (00:53):
We’re gonna talk today about the differences between growth and scale, because they’re different and we hear from our community and our audience all the time. I hear this all the time. Well, it’s just time for me to scale. Why there, why? And most of us don’t have to, we think we should. And so we’re gonna talk about the differences on a business standpoint of what it means to both grow and scale. And then we’re also gonna talk a lot about the mindset that kind of comes around that. So if you’re in a particular season of your life or your business where you’re going, I wanna grow, but I don’t know how, or I wanna scale, but I’m not and you’re confused between what is growth and what is scale, then truly this is the episode for you. And if you’re really confused on if you should or should not grow or scale, this is also for you. This is a lot around that mindset around that. So this is an episode that you wanna stick around for when it comes to that. Now let me formally introduce you to Vinny Fisher. Vinny I already mentioned is the c e o and founder of Fully Accountable. But I also have here, and I love so much that this is in your bio cuz people never put in it’s like that, that you’re married, you’ve got, you married how long?
VF (02:13):
Almost 30 years.
AJV (02:14):
Almost 30 years. That’s one of my favorite things ever. Nobody ever puts that in their bios anymore. But my husband and I just celebrated our 16th date anniversary. So we’re, we’re nerds. We celebrate dating and married. So
VF (02:29):
Actually we’re 31 years if I add the three or I was slow playing the whole situation. So it’s me, .
AJV (02:35):
But I love that. I think that’s a testament to success both in and out of business. So I love that. That’s in your bio. Alright, so let’s talk about all the things. So Vinny, help our audience get to know you. Like what’s your background? Like how did fully accountable Star, you got these awesome books, like why did you write books? Like What’s your story?
VF (02:55):
First off, I wanna start with thank you aj, your energy. I got to listen to a show, but I also, like you said, I know from our teammates you are just a fun person to be around. It’s by the people who like to work with y’all and your team. So your energy’s great. I love what you’re doing for this community. So when you asked if I would be on the show, I felt very humbled and honored to do that. So thank you for having me. Oh, thank you. It’s easy to talk about me cuz I look at myself in the mirror every day. , you know, I I started early on, I’m a lawyer by training. Uhm not an accountant. I actually wouldn’t hire me to be the cfo. F I like you was our first client. I built this organization cuz I saw something that was missing that I needed from the marketplace.
VF (03:39):
So I fast forward to my story is I’m highly creative. Like I’m the one that starts something, right? So, you know, if I was a church person, I’d be a church planter. If I’m a business person, I’m a startup person, not necessarily go and join an existing business. So I highly creative. I had a eight figure health brand, lot of women’s face cream, fun stuff. Marketing. You don’t really normally hear a lawyer marketer, right? And so I like to write highly creative and I had no real capacity to understand all my high transactions. And so I saw a problem I wanted to fix it went to go buy it from the public accounting space and it didn’t exist. And so what I envisioned in my mind in 2014 was more like a 2020 version of our company and we set out the build it cuz the tech wasn’t there.
VF (04:32):
But that’s my story. Like when I look back through it, I have you know, I was trained early on in a big fancy firm cuz I did well enough in school and law school and got recruited in highly professional firm. But I, I look back, I always had like this little like chip on my shoulder because I would’ve come from an impoverished environment and not really like, just physically impoverished, more mentally impoverished. Like we thought small, we were always waiting for the shoe to drop, but there was shame always around our last name. And I just had this chip that I didn’t want that. And so I first phase of my career was always to outwork the next person near me. And I realized early on that there’s a lot of smart people and I’m not necessarily one of them, but my secret weapon is I just usually outlast and outwork most people.
AJV (05:21):
Hmm. I love that. And you know what’s so funny I literally, I’m not exaggerating. One of my my true, like if you were to ask my husband, he would tell you the same thing. It’s like, what is AJ just extraordinarily gifted out? And he would tell you just outlasting the competition. Mm-Hmm. , she just follows up and follows up. My personal sales philosophy is I never hear no, I only hear not right now. Just not right now. It’s gotta outlast the others. Right. , that’s definitely,
VF (05:48):
Well, you know, the opposite of that’s true for me, Rory, our aj it’s so funny you said that because I, I was, had a terrible relationship to the word no because I have a gift of of hospitality, so I wanna say yes to everything, including use of my time. So I had to learn to start saying not right now. That was a verse version of how to learn how to say no.
AJV (06:06):
Oh, that’s so funny. . That’s awesome. Well I mentioned these two books that you’ve got, I’ve mentioned ’em a couple times, but I didn’t tell anyone what they’re called. And we’re gonna kinda, I just, I think talking about false profits and I remember I got a copy of this book when I became a client of Fully Accountables. The firm sent this out and I remember I thought it was so fascinating at the time because I don’t think creative attorneys are typically terms that go together. Yeah. I would say, I would say the same thing with CPAs or financial people. Not to be offending anybody, but Yeah. But
VF (06:42):
It’s true
AJV (06:42):
Typically, right? . And I remember getting this book of going, well they don’t even know that we’re a personal branding firm and they already get the power of personal branding of content creation for their communities. And so I think that I would just love to know like, why did you write that book and what is false prophets?
VF (07:03):
Yeah. You know and by the way, I want all of your community to know we, we love giving out things, our stuff. We don’t really believe in kind of hoarding information. So we built a a page where later on you can get that, it’ll be in the show notes, but it’s just fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. And so the whole gist of it was honestly, I own that health supplement company that we briefly mentioned earlier. And I was making about 8% at the bottom line of a 40 million company. And it felt razor thing cuz we had to keep buying inventory and cash was tight and I knew we were doing something right. We had a really good product at the time, Ella. And it made it into Macy’s and all this fun stuff. And I’m making all kinds of noise on a lot of gross sales.
VF (07:49):
And I was really deflated that there was no money left at the end of the month. We were just big enough where it sucked actually. Like we were making a bunch and I was able to pay bills and have a lifestyle, but it wasn’t like there was accumulation going on. And you know, I one day was completely discouraged and I, I remember a friend being like, well what’s a business like in your space? Like, what’s it supposed to normally make as a profit? And I’m like, I don’t know. I I, I don’t know, I, whatever’s left. And that turned out to be obviously not right. Well, I did a little basic research and found out the type of business we had should have been profiting anywhere between 20 and 22%. And I’m like, wait a minute, I’m not making 8%, I’m losing 14% every month.
VF (08:36):
And then I said, why? And so I woke up one morning, AJ as crazy as this sounds, I’m already successful. This is, at this point this would be my third eight figure venture. Hmm. And I broke one of them tragically and wrote a book about it to kind of cleanse myself back to life. But I woke up and I’m like, wait a minute. It’s not how much revenue is on the top, it’s what we keep. And I was like, I think I know the title of this book I’m gonna write that I didn’t know I was gonna write. And that’s really, and the, you know, the first chapter, I say that every book has certain good principles and I’d say that solving for X was the game changer for us knowing what our business should make as a profit, looking at our direct expenses and then treating my cost to acquire the customer as my real variable expense, not my profit margin was a game changer for me. And actually it was the genesis that led to fully accountable.
AJV (09:30):
Oh, that’s so fascinating. And I, you know, it’s so interesting because like even when I approached you, I said I really want this podcast episode to really be about the difference between growth and scale and like mentally, like simply I just think about growth is revenue growth scale is profit growth, right? And to hear this idea of like you were, you know, I don’t even think people know what their profitability should be like they don’t even know what it could be, but they definitely don’t know what it should be. So just taking it like back to like the basics, like what are good goals for profitability of, and I know that’s like a loaded question based on business businesses, but generally speaking it’s like how do you know like, well what’s a good profit?
VF (10:16):
Yeah. So each, each industry has a standard, you know, and we can use some fun geeked out terms like the variation or the deviation of that standard. But each, each, you know, particular industry has a range that’s an appropriate range for a business model. So like in the public accounting space, a little bit different than where we live. It’s not unusual to think about a 30% profit margin. It’s actually quite reasonable. A lot of the digital world we live in, if you do digital ad agency space, they could live around 35% margin. The marketplace, Amazon sellers, depending on their blend between their own shopping cart versus the marketplace is probably 25 to 27% people like, all right Vinny, you know that cuz you studied a lot, honestly a little thing called the Google . And you could do real simple things like check in with trade associations of the type of work you do, ask some questions.
VF (11:16):
It’s actually much closer of an answer than you realize. You know, I subscribe to things like statistica and other survey things that allow me to extract some data for our data team and things. But even short of that, you there, that is a couple questions away. Like, like I’m not saying go put a Facebook post up of like, hey what should my profit margin be? Cuz you know, everyone’s gonna be a profit on that answer. So that may not be your best place. But there are things like that AJ that can give you a very clear, fair start to that so that you could have a, a base of something you can go after every company including fully accountable. Right? So we should profit about 25 to 28% if we’re in modes where we’re investing in something. That’s the next version of what we wanna add in this, in this case, we’re investing a lot in technology to try to remove some manual pieces to improve on error.
VF (12:13):
Well we’re gonna dip into the teens cuz I had another engineer to the team. Maybe I’ve staffed up a couple. So may right now we’re running at like 18% where we should be at 25. But I can explain to you where those seven points are because I have a baseline of knowing what I’m supposed to be. And I think that is one of the healthy things for a business is get a a a something to, to target after. So you have that and then you start looking at your leaky bucket. I’m not an accountant, I just started realizing where it was leaking cuz I was trying to shoot and needed to shoot for that number and now I can suddenly look at everything a little differently.
AJV (12:51):
Yeah. And it’s like that old saying, it’s like if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there . Exactly. It’s like you gotta, it’s basic goal setting, right? Set a goal doesn’t have to be necessarily legitimately what other people are doing. And I think some of that comes to the mindset that I know we’re gonna talk about a little bit of, it’s good to have perspective around what other people are doing and also go, but I could do it different. Like if this is what I really want, I could probably find a way to get there. So I am curious in a non-accounting perspective, how do you grow profits?
VF (13:23):
Yeah, so I, you know I I think one of the things that’s really amazing about our digital automation world today is that there’s tools that allow us to really get a bunch of stuff done quickly. I love that. One of the downside of automation is we wanna do that to every element of our business. And you know what, 83% of all companies in America are service companies. No. So if I were to say to our average client, Hey, what if I handed you 10 more clients right now, most of them was like, well no, maybe I’ll take four or maybe I’ll take three. Well then I’m like, well why are we using words like scale when you probably can’t even handle some of that growth? And we want, we’re so attracted to some of the automation pieces of growing our business that we get addicted to wanting to automate everything.
VF (14:17):
And so honestly, how do you build profit? I think you address, there’s two phase, probably three phases, but for sure two phases in business only about 7% of all companies America do 7 million of annualized revenue. So that means that the first goal is to actually acquire a customer that they, you have a, an offer that is a valuable proposition to them. The first phase of a business is to do that. The second phase is to improve its operations in its business process. A lot of us have that reversed. We have very little customers. We really want to improve all of it. When I’m like, no, you need some more customers and like, like
AJV (15:00):
Maybe
VF (15:01):
You should worry about that. So I think part of it is, is the phase of having a few more customers, but just a few more. Don’t hear. I need 60 more. Cuz part of my story is I worked really hard at my reputation in the market and mm-hmm. I cared and I still do about that. And so I think how do you build a profit one client at a time?
AJV (15:27):
I love that. I love that so much. As timely to this conversation as many people in the business community are talking about this bank run with S V B and the F D I C and government bailouts and rising interest rates and all the things banking. And it’s been really interesting to go. But if you look at what really happens, at the end of the day, it was a bunch of VC backed startups, really highly in the tech world. And most of them with most of their funding coming from investors, not from customers. Yep. And my husband and I had this really helpful conversation around, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business at some point, right? The funding will run out at some point. But you gotta have customers. So how much of our focus is really on sales, right? At the end of the day, marketing, but sales get more customers and once you have more customers, then improve operations, then upgrade the systems, but get the customers first. I love that.
VF (16:29):
Yep. And it’s really hard in fairness to everybody listening that habit switch of get the customer to then turn gears and cuz it’s at that point where I started to become the c e O, once I have a maturing operation, it’s at that point I have to switch gears from only worrying about acquiring a customer to now servicing them better, improving process, deliver efficiency. Like those are s you want those to be first things, but if we’re really honest, those are second things. Yeah.
AJV (17:00):
If you wanna survive. Yeah. If you wanna
VF (17:02):
Survive,
AJV (17:02):
If you wanna make it so good. I really love that. So onto this conversation of a little bit of this growth mindset versus scale mindset. I’d love to just hear your thoughts. They could be tactical, philosophical. Yeah, it could be whatever, but why grow? Why scale? What’s the difference between the two and which one should you do?
VF (17:23):
I heard a great quote. I asked the question at a conference. I actually was sitting in the green room, which, so that’s not a flex, it’s just true. Had a little one-on-one with one of the founders of Legal Zoom and then he was getting interviewed by the conference host. And so I was sitting relatively close and raised my hand and I said, Hey, when should a company worry about growth versus profit? And I loved his answer, it’s the way I think, so I’ll give him the credit. And I was delighted to hear a validation. He’s like, every company should worry about profit. The only ones that have a little bit of a different know the ones that are, are funded sufficiently to re worry about profit later. Hmm. And I’m like, oh boy. Okay, wait a minute. If that’s true, that sets the deck for everybody.
VF (18:14):
We’re all worried about pushing profit down the road Yeah. And worrying about like getting paid later, but building something and making all these excuses right now. So I think everyone is, has bought and sold a bill of goods that isn’t true. Businesses need to build the bedrock of healthy growth in place. Listen, I love these adages of 10 x and they sound super great. They do. They sound sexy. I want them all to be true. They just sound so good. I want all of that. And I’ve had some really amazing growth years, but things like two x two and a half x, three x are more in line with what looks like substantial growth for most of the marketplace. Mm-Hmm. unicorns are unicorns, which is why we call ’em that . But for most part, growth is a mindset of building out something stable.
VF (19:05):
That is at the point in my philosophy where scale starts to come discussion, like fully accountable has been in growth mode. It hasn’t only been recently with the breadth of clients we have and some of the technology we’re doing that I’m even starting to dream about the idea of exponential aspects of growth that could lead to things like scale. I can’t, I’m a growth person. I want scale to always be the thing it is talked about too much mm-hmm. as this thing everyone should do when honestly we need good, healthy, stable growth. And I suspect if more entrepreneur friends of ours believe that we probably could lower the breakage rate a little bit.
AJV (19:47):
So why do you think that is? Because I just know, like in my entrepreneur community and even in the brand builders group community, there is this tendency to go, it has to happen, it has to happen now and it has to be huge in order for it to mean anything. So like
VF (20:01):
Yeah, I think in the beginning, if you look at my story and look at my resume, my first good run was in figuring out the affiliate space in our web hosting company. And I realized, whoa, I just need like a bunch of people to send sales for me. And I remember in order to get affiliate to send me sale, I would always say to our, my affiliate managers, I want you to do everything for them. I want the link there. I want the creative there. I want you to deliver the creatives package the sizing back then I’m a little older aj, in case you didn’t notice. So the things didn’t always size well to the mobile phone. We wanted it on a desktop. Well I wanted all of that creative suite done for them. Mm-Hmm. and one of my young affiliate managers said, we’re doing everything. I’m like, the second it feels like work, no one wants to do it. So the problem with growth is it sounds like work. Mm-Hmm. And scale just sounds super fun, . And so of course I want scale, but growth requires an effort. And so we all want the thing that skips to the easy button line. We all want it. I’m guilty of it. We’re all guilty of it. And so it just sounds more enjoyable to scale than do all the work of growing.
AJV (21:05):
Yeah. It it is. It’s like, you know, that whole idea of like, build it and they will come. No, they don’t. No they won’t. . Maybe build ’em. You gotta tell everyone and then tell ’em again and again and again and maybe they will come. But I think there is a lot of that. I think the other, the other misconception that at least I see and experience in the marketplace and specifically the personal branding kind of like world right now is everyone talks about revenue. And they talk about how they had these, you know, six figure launch, how to make six figures in three days. How to, you know, 10 x your revenue, but yet no one talks about profitability. They talk where we know behind the scenes that a lot of these six figure launches lost six figures at the same time because of the amount of ad spend it took to get that. But that’s not the story being shared. And so
VF (21:54):
It doesn’t sound fun
AJV (21:56):
it
VF (21:56):
Just sounds way fun to say, I just put a hundred thousand dollars through the door even though I plus minus a thousand dollars left. Which is why I love that people like you are like, wait a minute, let’s really push into this subject because it is really what’s left. Not what comes, they have a correlation to each other. Right. You gotta drive revenue in order to be able to keep some revenue. I wanna be fair to that, but man, I, I had a big problem and I’ll be honest, I cared more about acquiring a new customer than keeping one.
AJV (22:28):
Hmm.
VF (22:29):
That was my big problem. That had to be fixed.
AJV (22:32):
Yeah. That’s a but that, that’s a big problem for a lot of people. So how’d you fix it?
VF (22:37):
Through a lot of medication and counseling now you know, school of hard knocks and honestly some personal development. I I had a lot of mindset stuff. I really had to take captive my thoughts. I spoke awful to myself. And I started to realize that I’m really good at acquiring a customer. And when I started seeing the metrics around what it costs to acquire one versus the reinvestment cost of keeping one, I’m like, holy cow, I’m working the same amount to work at getting a new customer. I could actually increase my runway of keeping a customer. And we took that health business breakage rate from like 15 to sub 10 and we were massively more profitable because we worried about keeping them buying a little longer. And it just slowly turned. It wasn’t this like cloud opening moment, but I just really got sick and tired of giving it all back.
AJV (23:34):
Yeah. I think that’s so important. It’s like if we spend as much time servicing, delivering and keeping our customers as we did getting them right now, some of us need to focus on getting ’em. Yeah. But once you have ’em, you also need to have a focus on keeping ’em, otherwise it’s just this, it’s exhausting revolving door. Now you kinda like tiptoed into this conversation around mindset. So I’m gonna just like, I’ll just blow the the door wide open on this conversation because I think this would be great. So you have a book called c e o Mindset. Yep. Right. And, and
VF (24:05):
They can have that free. All they gotta do is, we’ll, we’ll probably extort ’em an email out of ’em, but We’ll, if you live in America, we’ll mail you a nice fancy package. If you don’t,
AJV (24:16):
That’s awesome. That’s so awesome. But there’s a, a couple of things that I kinda like pulled out at, at a high level that I thought would be worth talking about. When it comes to kind of like the c e o mindset of first of all, what is a C E O mindset? Like what is the mindset that A C E O should have?
VF (24:37):
Yeah. So, you know, that’s really great. Right? And so first off, the title is used a lot in a lot of ways, right? And I, I wanna be fair with some of my presumptions of what A A C E O leads people. I, if, if you’re leading yourself, then okay, then wear two hats. You’re, you’re leading yourself in another role. I, I’m fine. I can have a c e O of one. I have personally never done that, but I can see where that doesn’t break down. But my C EShip and the way I see it is I have the privilege of being the leader of an organization of other people on the team. And so, you know, for me, my faith and who I am and what I stand in, and that’s important to me. Like obviously not every one in my company has a person of faith, but that’s super important to me.
VF (25:25):
And so I lead with attributes that I think of look to be really important. But I know someone mutual in your life that’s in mine, John Maxwell, and he did a study of executives and of all the traits that were most important to A C E O their integrity came out as the number one thing. And so I think first and foremost, I think the transparency and integrity of the C E O is hands down, the number one thing A C E O does, they leave people. And so since I’m left with the burden of leading people, depending on the complexity of your organization, I might be reading metrics and then conveying strategy and like helping to unblock blockages. But at its core, I’m helping to maximize the potential of the people on our team.
AJV (26:12):
I love that. And I love John Maxwell. Actually, our entire company is we have a book of the quarter club. Yeah. And so everyone has like, we kinda like all read a book and we’re actually reading how successful people think right now. And they’re easy, simple reads. But you, you said something there that really got me thinking and I was having actually having a conversation with a very successful entrepreneur friend of mine. She’s got wickedly successful med spas all over the west coast. And she was talking about just like, man, it’s like, ah, I got a a a a people problem. Right. A burden. Mm-Hmm. And we just had we’re both people of faith and we just had this conversation around like, what if we stopped looking at people problems as people problems and started looking at them like our ministry opportunities. Amen. Like, and it’s like, instead of looking at my business, like my job, it’s like, no, this is my ministry and these are the opportunities to per to minister. Not necessarily like I’m doing bathtub, bad baptisms at work meetings or anything. Yeah. I mean, I’ll, that’s not what I’m doing. But it’s this conversation around, it’s like, it, this isn’t a a problem, it’s a privilege. Right. This isn’t my work, it’s my ministry. And that just that those simple conversations that we tell ourselves of, it’s not a problem. It’s a privilege I’ve been
VF (27:29):
Given. Yeah. So take captive your thoughts, right? Yeah. So I think it is the battle of the mind and I think the c e o mindset around what it is, the privilege that I get to walk along other people’s burdens. Think, you know, I think one of the things that can be hard today is the world has the vision of humility backwards. Right? The world would say think of yourself like think less of yourself. Mm-Hmm. like you’re in a lower, actually, really, you should just be thinking of yourself less. Yeah. And so I’m always thinking about what our people, because I wanna be honest about something. I love it. I’ve talked to all these high principles. I, I need to admit something, Debbie, my wife knows I’m inherently lazy. I don’t want to do something twice . So I know if I invest in our people and I help it, I don’t want to do something again that I don’t think I should do again.
VF (28:24):
And so there are people who want to thrive in those positions. Hmm. And actually, if I can help them do that, I know that they’re going to be more satisfied in helping solve other people’s problems. So think about our CFOs and you work with one and if I can actually help him capture his strengths, his vision of what he can know that he can do to help you, I know that he’s going to have greater satisfaction which is going to impact him and his family, which will then ultimately impact you and will impact our team. I think the ripple effect of someone who understands the privilege to carry others’ burdens, now we have leadership and that’s the quote above my head, I think about every day without leadership, you know, no vision in people perish. Right? So I think that’s the burden of the privilege I get every day. And I love it. It’s super hard. I go home super exhausted when my brain is un empty from carrying others burdens. And when I’m done doing that or I’m tired, it’ll be time to tag out. Hmm.
AJV (29:23):
No, I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s about growing the business or, you know, it is, it is like both really. It’s like at, at the end of the day, as long as you’re focused on people, right? You’re gonna get more customers, you’ll keep more customers, you’ll get better employees and you’ll keep the good ones that you have. Right. But it’s about having this desired interest of like, I wanna invest in people. I remember, oh gosh, this was a long time ago. Don’t even, I can’t even give credit where credit is due on this. But I remember at some point in my life hearing this, and it has stuck with me and the conversation was around somebody had said like, I just don’t wanna spend all this time and all this money into all these new employees if they’re just gonna get up and leave. Mm-Hmm. , and I remember the speaker, author, whoever it was said, but what if they stay? Yeah. Like, what if you don’t do this? And they stay, like, where do you wanna be? Like, would you rather go through and invest and have the risk of them leaving, but have them high performing or have very average mediocre performance, but they stay a long time? What do you want?
VF (30:32):
Yeah. And so, you know, when we think about principles, you know, the CEO’s mindset, the principle there of that book is all about investing in people. So the best chapter in that is the people chapter not, and not actually that’s my favorite. The first two, the mindset and the people. And what I’m, why I’m saying that is I believe that small and medium as enterprises, importantly all of them, but really the smaller the enterprise, the, the key leader is really going to dictate the heartbeat and health of the company. And for me, my values, who I am, what I stand for are critically important. If I’m surrounding myself with people that I’m gonna invest in that don’t align with that, the organization’s most likely gonna have a heart attack. And so we only really hire for effort, attitude and ability. Mm-Hmm. And what we do is we think of competence, all things equal.
VF (31:27):
Great. We’ll take someone with a little bit more experience. Most people hire competence and then go try to train on the other items. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re mismatched and I, every one of us, including me, when we hire for competence first and, and don’t use our own elements of our scorecard or our core values, we can be very mismatched very quickly with people all the time. I hear people say, oh my gosh, Vinny, they, they all like sound like you. They act like this. I’m like, I hope they don’t all sound like me, but they all have common elements of the way we deliver. Because we work really hard at the people in this organization should be mostly aligned on those issues. And I can tell you there was times when I’ve shown up to one of my own companies where I didn’t even want to go inside. Mm.
AJV (32:15):
I’ve been there.
VF (32:16):
Yeah, buddy. That’s a problem that starts with me because I was building a, a culture of mismatched people who were highly competent.
AJV (32:24):
I mean, that is like, at the end of the day, it’s like people alignment is culture. Right? It’s finding people who already have alignment and then you’re just coalescing in this larger vision that is culture. Right? That is culture. That’s so good. I love that. So
VF (32:40):
I, the mindset around that, your question was like, where’s the mindset? Well, I have to be the custodian of that. Yeah.
AJV (32:46):
So,
VF (32:46):
You know, we have things about clients going too far. Well, uncle Vinny shows up and steps in between that if we have people taking plays off or they need a little bit of like love through a situation or somebody on the team commits some of the unforgivable offenses, well the vice principal shows up. Right. I’m the culture. If I’m part of the curation, I am at most definitely the top security guard.
AJV (33:12):
Yeah. The culture keeper. You’re the culture keeper. I love that. You said something that I wrote down that I thought would be worth exploring to just hear your thoughts. And I’m, I’m conscious of the time, so I only have two more questions. Very cool. Make sure we land it. But you mentioned earlier like you have to take captive your thoughts. Yep. How do you do that?
VF (33:35):
I, I, I’ll tell you this real quick. I, my daughter’s in the journey of getting serious with a young man and I asked her to come up with a list of the attributes she wants in a husband. And she’s like, God, that’s like a lot. I said, okay, I asked you an unfair question. Why don’t you gimme the list of things you don’t want? Oh, I can write that down. She was 10 down before she was even struggling. Yeah. Most of us know the things that don’t line up with us. Mm. And I ask people to create a non-negotiable list of the things that won’t work in their life. And so when you start getting things that sound untrue or not noble, or not praiseworthy, it’s like a, it’s like aspirin is to a headache. It takes the edge off. It’s like prayer is to anxiety.
VF (34:17):
It takes the edge off. Taking captive your thoughts is not getting too spiraling away in untruthful things. And you have these guideposts that keep you there. And then for me, the rest of that verse, which is super important, is then make ’em obedient to truth. What? Well, there is a truth there. So how do I make it obedient back to that? Well, I gotta be able to have this early warning system of where it, it gets all jacked up. And if I can’t do it, I hope and pray. I’ve got people around me who notice it quicker than me spiraling down. Debbie and I have a joke. If we’re in the pit, hopefully the other one doesn’t get pulled down in there with her.
AJV (34:52):
Oh, that’s so good. . That’s so good. They’re my, one of my favorite pastors who also happens to be an incredible author, his named Andy Stanley. And he did this entire awesome series a few years ago called Guard Guardrails. And I just remember, like my husband and I totally binge this on YouTube, this guardrail series. Cuz the whole thing was, if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And it’s like, you gotta put up these guardrails to keep you on the, the straight and narrow. Right. And it’s like, but if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And that’s so much of what I hear you saying. It’s like you’ve, it’s hard to take anything captive if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
VF (35:35):
That’s so true. And that’s why internal inventory, like, you know, we practice around my life, radical honesty. Mm-Hmm. , that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be kind. It shouldn’t be compassionate, it shouldn’t, you know, have a little more listening than, than less talking, which we’re not doing a good job of me on this show. Lots of talking . But you know, like all that’s personal inventory stuff. And the more that I’m growing in that everyone around us that I have the privilege to lead with and through grow as a result.
AJV (36:04):
Oh, that’s so, so good. There’s like so much wisdom in this conversation and I could probably easily have like 30 more questions to ask and then it would be like 4:00 PM and it’s a three hour podcast. However I’ll wrap it up to one last question. So in your opinion, because you’ve done this several times and you’re doing it now again, what do you think, if you had to pick one thing right now that you’ve done this a few times and you’ve had successful businesses, you’ve had growth, you’ve had scale, you’ve done it a few times. If you could look back and go, there is one common theme that I know across my businesses, your businesses business in general. When I see this one thing, I know that the likelihood of success is high.
VF (36:51):
So this is the easy answer. Statistically, almost no company has a an executed 10 year plan. And it’s funny, when I started to study that, I also noticed that a three year plan is really hard to do. What I noticed in successful organizations or successful people in life is that when they reach Crossroads, they’re honestly willing to take an inventory of the things that worked and didn’t work. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re the ones that make the necessary and sometimes really hard decisions on owning the things that didn’t work and choose to change those. I I can’t tell you how many of our clients, I could show you the roster who either know or get the advice and choose not to make those decisions. Mm-Hmm. and they’re definitely destined for mediocrity. But the ones who actually at that, that point of where you’re either leveling as a company or you have a tough situation or a person, the ones who, regardless of the amount of information necessary to make a decision, actually make those decisions you’re going to see evidence in breadcrumbs of a lot of success for people who do that.
AJV (38:01):
Hmm. Yeah. Let that in because it is hard to recognize mistakes and then actually do the hard work of changing those mistakes super hard. Y’all, I encourage you to check out this amazing gift that Vinny and his team has put together. I will put this in the show notes, but again, go to fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. They have offered up wickedly awesome free stuff. And yeah, you may have to hand over your email, it’s worth it. Do it. Also to learn more about fully accountable, which as a paying customer and a, a long-term paying customer, I would say I have referred them many times over. And so reach out to fully accountable.com. You can reach out to anyone at Brain Builders Group and we’re happy to do a handheld introduction in. But it’s been super helpful on so many different levels both at the bookkeeping accounting and the fractional side.
AJV (39:02):
It’s been insightful, it’s been helpful. It’s allowed me so much of my time back to do what only I can do to feel like I have a, a team that in the event something do doesn’t go right, there’s a whole company behind it to make it go right. Which you don’t always get that if it’s just your full-time employee. So there’s a, a real benefit of having a company behind that with a varied set of skills and so highly recommend them. And then of course, you’ve got two awesome books that you should also check out Co mindset and a whole bunch
VF (39:32):
Of other resources we threw in there for you too. So it’s great.
AJV (39:36):
So generous. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving us your time on this show. This episode was phenomenal and again, we’ll put it in the show notes, but go to fully accountable.com and slash influential personal brand and grab some of those assets. Benny, thank you so much,
VF (39:53):
Aj. Thanks for having me today. It was really a joy.
AJV (39:55):
Yeah. And everybody else, stay around. Stay tuned for the recap episode that will be coming out in just a couple of days. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 380: Advanced Email Marketing Strategies with Nathan Barry

RV (00:02):
I have to say that one of the most powerful forces in the world, I think is marketing automation. And we hear about social media and we hear about podcasting and we hear about YouTube and all stuff. But man, the thing that has changed my life in terms of the digital landscape the most in the last 10 years is email marketing, marketing automation in general, and specifically email. And we’re gonna talk about that today with someone who is definitely an expert on the subject. We’re talking to Nathan Barry. He is actually the founder of Convert Kit, which is one of the largest and most well-known and respected tools among creators for email marketing. And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. Just so you know, he’s also an author himself and Convert Kit, you know, as an entrepreneur is a tremendously impressive success story.
RV (00:54):
So they’ve got over 25 million a year in annual recurring revenue, over 3 million in profits. They’ve got almost 60 team members. And they bootstrapped the company 100%. So this was not where you had millions of dollars of investor money, like from Silicon Valley flooding in. They built this for creators and Nathan was a successful blogger before and just kind of created this himself. So he’s also the dad of three boys, which I can appreciate. I’ve got two, so anyone who’s got more than me, I’m like, man, I don’t know how you do it. But brother, you’ve done a bunch of awesome stuff and thanks for making time for us.
NB (01:31):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
RV (01:33):
So I’d love to just hear the story of Convert Kit, like your personal journey. Cuz cuz you started as a blogger, right? And then all of a sudden you kind of were like, saw the need for this and then how, I mean, how to, how to go down.
NB (01:44):
Yeah, so my like traditional skillset is software design. I got started web design and then started building software for the web. And then when the iPad came out in 2010 I was working on a team that was trying to have an iPad app out the day the iPad was released, which was a fun challenge of like designing and trying to test an app, like all in the simulator. Like, you don’t act, the device doesn’t exist yet. And it was fun like going to the Apple store and like buying a dozen iPads, you know, like on launch day and testing our software and all of that. So that was a, a fun world. And I got pretty deep into, you know, iPhone and iPad app design. And then from there I had this idea that if I wrote a book about designing iOS apps, then people would wanna hire me to be the one to design their app.
NB (02:34):
And I, I thought I’ll make money from this book too. Like, this isn’t a charity, but the main thing that I want is design clients. Sure. Right? You wanna hire the guy who wrote the book, obviously. Of course. And so what I did, I built up a small pre-launch email list on MailChimp, got to 800 subscribers you know, teased that, wrote the book, self-published it. And my goal was to make $10,000 over the lifetime of sales for the book and see how many clients I could get. I ended up launching it and I made $12,000 on the first day and never took on another design client. Like, just like, nope, that world is, I’m not a freelancer anymore, I’m a content creator and this is what we’re doing going forward, . I love it. I love it. And really quick in the process, I had made my own iPhone app that was a app called Commit.
NB (03:25):
It’s not around anymore, but there’s other apps that do similar stuff. It was just for building a streak. And I had this streak of writing a thousand words a day. And so after I published the book, my app popped up and said, Hey, you’re gonna write a thousand words today. And I was like no, I’ve, I’ve published the book, but it was like I saw 80 days in a row and I didn’t wanna break the streak. So I was like, you know what, I’ll write a, a blog post about the book launch. So I did that, shared the numbers. And then the next day the app did what it did and popped up was like, are you gonna write a thousand words today? And I was like, no, I don’t have anything to write. And it was 81 days in a row I was thinking like, ah, you know what?
NB (04:03):
I’m gonna write another book. And so I wrote another book on designing web applications. So similar topic, different medium, and wrote like edited and published that in like just over 90 days. So it was self-published, also self-published as well. Okay. Made 26 grand in sales on the first day from that. And I was off to the races, but in that process I really got obsessed with email marketing and I was seeing that all of the sales were coming from the email list, you know, and that was where like giving away a sample chapter, getting people the email list and then dripping out emails and then them coming back and buying the book. All these things were working super well and it was driving more sales than like Twitter and Instagram and everything else combined. And I told this to a friend of mine who’d been in online marketing for long time, what year is this?
NB (04:53):
2013. Okay. Yeah. So talking to this friend who’s been in online marketing forever, I’m like, Hey, email is driving more sales than every other channel combined. And he just looks at me and is like, yeah man, we’ve all known that since 2005. Like, do you want a gold star? Like , you know, this is not a new thing. Great epiphany. I was gonna say 2013 is not that long ago. Yeah. And so but it was, it was brand new to me. And so really I became obsessed with email and email marketing, learning all the best practices. And then I just got really frustrated with MailChimp of trying to like implement these best practices in that tool. And looked at all the other tools. There were others that were like, had more automation were powerful, but super confusing. And I’m like, I’m a designer, I gotta use something that’s like elegant and beautiful. And so I decided to start my own. So it was January 1st, 2013 that I started to convert it. And yeah just over a decade later, it’s a giant company used by you know, most of the top graders, like James Clear, Tim Ferris, Ryan Holliday, Arnold Schwarzenegger has a convert kit newsletter that he sends out every week. And it’s super fun.
RV (06:04):
That’s really awesome, man. So congratulations. Like that’s no e that’s no easy feat. I mean to do, to do, you know, eight figures in 20 million plus in, in re recurring revenue is really, really powerful. So I wanna talk about email marketing strategies specifically. Especially, you know, in today’s era, email marketing has been out a long time. Yes. Email marketing automation has been out a long time. You have something that you talk about just sort of like a general strategy you were telling me about it fly, you call it flywheel for clients.
NB (06:44):
Flywheels.
RV (06:45):
Yeah. So I, I’d love to hear about this cuz cuz here’s, here’s one of the things that, you know, sort of like annoying and frustrating to me is even in just the world of email, one of the things that we teach our students is there’s, we think of emails like there’s, there’s four type four different types of emails. So there’s like, you send a broadcast email, everyone at the same time gets it. That’s what we think of. But then we have r s s emails, which are, every time a blog gets posted, that’s gonna automatically send an email. And then we have like these short-term nurture sequences where you’re someone’s in like an active selling situation and you’re like nurturing them to watch a video or, you know, buy something, there’s a closed card or something. And then you just have like your long-term automated nurture sequence. And suddenly what happens a lot is you end up going, you’re emailing people so much and, and you, you can even lose sight of track of like, oh my gosh, how are they, they’re in all these different sequences getting, so how do you kind of like pull all that together into a, like a, a more cohesive strategy?
NB (07:51):
Yeah. Well the first thing is that a lot of people end up in a position like I did where they realize how powerful email marketing is and then become obsessed and they go like way off the deep end and it’s so fun and it probably generates a lot of money for your, for your business. And then you get to that point where you’re like, oh, now all these cool automations that have set up are starting to step on each other. Like, it, it’s maybe the person that I hired on my team moved on and I now have a new person. And it’s way too hard for them to understand and like, it’s not documented well. And so I think keeping things relatively simple is a good way to go. Like one example that I really like is doing something called an Evergreen newsletter.
NB (08:34):
And this is where instead of sending, well let’s say half your content that you send out is really timely, you know, hey, I’m going on book tour podcast episode’s coming out. Or you wanna like respond and comment to recent news that just happened or, or ride some wave of some conversation in like mass media. Maybe we send that email as a broadcast every Tuesday. But then there’s also, like, you and I have been writing for a very long time. We’ve produced, you know, hundreds of thousands, you know, may maybe millions of words at this point of content. And like if someone signs up today and they’re getting, Hey, this is what I write every Tuesday, like, there’s this crazy back catalog that they’re never encountering. And so one thing that I like to do is set up an evergreen newsletter sequence, and I might send that out every Thursday.
NB (09:24):
And that is actually a sequence time to when you join and it’s like, Hey, here’s my best content over time. They don’t really know that one is the same email to everyone at the same time. And the other is like timed just to them. They’re just like, I don’t know, Nathan kept like, every Tuesday and Thursday he sends me great content. And so I could have an Evergreen newsletter sequence that’s 50 emails, a hundred, you know, 104 emails long, and I got two two years of content and that’s just working for me. And I go, oh, this is a great article that I’m really proud of. I’m gonna put that like in week five instead of week 100 where it would naturally sit. And so you end up making these systems that work for you. So that’s the first thing that I would do is really love it, really simplify that.
NB (10:10):
Another one, maybe if we talk about Flywheel for a second oh, when was this? Back in 2008, I got the opportunity to do like some public works projects in Lisutu, which is a little landlocked country inside of South Africa. And one of the things that we ended up doing was working on installing this well at an orphanage there. And so if you think about like, as a kid, I went camping and you know, there’d be like this hand pump to like pump the water at the campsite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s a, this like up and down motion and if you stop doing it, the water stops flowing immediately. And that’s the old, well at this orphanage had a pump like that and we actually replaced it with a flywheel, which was my first exposure to a flywheel. And so what that is, is this big metal wheel that sits on top of the well and it’s super heavy and it turns in place.
NB (11:05):
And like I remember when we got it all hooked up and we were like, okay, let’s get this going. And I tried to turn it and it was too heavy, I couldn’t turn it by myself. And so like another friend was on the other side and we’re pushing it as hard as we can and we got it turning and as it got momentum, it got, it turned easier and easier and faster and faster. And what it, it got to the point is that like my friend stopped helping and I could stand there and with like, you know, one finger keep this thing spinning and it’s just pumping out tons of water for this whole orphanage. And that’s the idea of a flywheel is having something that’s not a bunch of separate activities. Like it’s all the activities put together into one flow and like you get to continue that momentum and we can apply this concept to newsletters and to creators really well.
NB (11:50):
So there’s kind of three rules of a flywheel. Okay? The, the first one is that each, all these activities have to flow nicely one into the next. Okay? So if we apply that to marketing, you might think, okay, when I publish a an article, I’m like, okay, you know, how do I, we’re we’re, where am I gonna promote this new essay or, or this new article? And you might sporadically promote it a few places. But it’s really different if you say, okay, this is my playbook every time. This is what I do every time I publish an article and here’s maybe where I ask for ideas to give me concepts on what to write next. Right? It’s like, it’s a defined process that that happens smoothly. The second rule is that each rotation of the flywheel should be slightly easier than the previous one.
NB (12:42):
Okay? Right. So as you’re building that momentum, it gets easier. So here’s an example. Most people have an a newsletter where they’re sending out weekly content because what happens? You have to write that content. I know that’s not brutal, that’s not easy. And so a a little tweak is you go from the content that you’re writing, you know, your weekly newsletter like new subscribers are coming in and in that automated welcome sequence that you’re writing, let’s say email three, email four, you have a question, there’s a, Hey, what’s your let’s say we have a marketing, you know, we’re teaching people marketing. I ask, Hey, what’s your biggest frustration with marketing in your business right now? And by asking that question, everyone’s replying to you. Like, hit reply and let me know people are replying. We categorize those replies in a label in Gmail and now every Monday at 8:00 PM when I’m like, shoot, I don’t have a email ready to go for Tuesday yet, what am I gonna write about?
NB (13:37):
I go into that label in Gmail and I go, what are, what are people frustrated with? What are they not understanding? And I pick one out that seems interesting and I write a response to that and then I change it a little bit. So it’s for everyone. And then there we go. And so now in this flywheel, like I just made each rotation easier cuz now my new subscribers are feeding me content ideas. And that made that rotation easier. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, lemme stop there for a second. We can get into the third rule. Love, but love that. I’m curious if you see any of those things in your business or
RV (14:08):
Totally. Yeah, no, I, I love that. I mean, and the, the whole thing of like, you know, having to write a newsletter once a month or once a week, I mean it really, the, the problem is, it’s like inconsistency is the kiss of death and Right. The one thing marketing automation can do is like, solve that problem permanently. How, like, I want to hear number three, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious how many emails a week is too many? Like the, is like, you’re talking about kind of a cadence here, which is you’ve got your one long-term nurture going and then you have like one broadcast a week. Is that the actual cadence that you sort of follow as like two a week and, and you know, both what have you seen for yourself, but then also when you look at your, you know, your top clients, are they sending more frequently? Are they doing more broadcast? Are they doing more evergreen? Do you know, do they have multiple things happening? Like I’m just sort of curious like in the modern day, what’s the, what’s too much volume or what’s the right, what really what’s the right amount of volume?
NB (15:12):
Yeah, I think the right amount of volume first it comes down to expectations that you set with your audience. Uhhuh. So when, if you sign up for Seth Godin’s newsletter or I think it’s actually just a blog, I don’t know, that’s a newsletter, right? Just RSS to email. He, he posts every day always has, always will like clockwork. You know what, some, some of his posts are like four sentences long. Some of them, you know, might be a couple hundred words. They’re not super long, but you expect that every single day you’re gonna get a note from Seth and you knew that when signing up. And so he’s matching expectations. So is seven days a week or five days a week, whatever, he does too much. No. Cuz he set that expectation and it’s bite-sized enough that you can consume it. I think you need, when you think about cadence, you need to make sure you can maintain two bars. One, can you always match this ca cadence that you set? You’re like, Hey, a daily email, but I miss half of them because I’m busy. Or like, the kids got sick or whatever else. Like, no, don’t do that. So if you, if you hit a, a email once a week every single week like clockwork and you can get ahead, perfect, that’s a great cadence for you. And then the other thing is what cadence can you maintain quality?
RV (16:26):
Ah,
NB (16:26):
Like if you can’t write great content once a week, you know it’s a lot better than that is great content once a month, right? Pick a cadence that you can always hit and say, I will always be able to meet the expectations I set for my audience and I will always be able to put out content that I’m proud of. And some people do it every day. I personally like twice a week of the ev the balance of the Evergreen and the live, cuz I want both formats. And so I do an evergreen email on Fridays and a live email on Tuesdays and that I know I can hit and hit every single week and hit my bar for quality. Yeah. Some, sometimes it’s hard. We are like,
RV (17:08):
I love that I’ve, I mean I’ve heard, you know, I’ve heard the like consistency one, but that’s a really good about the quality metric and and that’s, I I’ve, it’s funny cuz I feel that way about books. It’s actually been several years now since I’ve had a book come out. I’ve written three, but it’s been, you know, we sold our co the last book I wrote was 2015. We sold our company in 2018. And so then it’s like, we basically been rebuilding for five years and you know, people are like, when are you gonna write a book? And I’ve always, you know, I’ve, I’ve had mentors tell me, you only need to write one book and you spend the rest of your career talking about it. And I, I really believe you can do that if you, if you do it right. I’ve had other people say, you need to write a book every two years, otherwise you’ll become irrelevant.
RV (17:50):
And I also can see the case for that. And so I think where I’ve landed is just, I’ll write a book when I have something significant to say. Yeah. And you know, to what you’re saying, it’s like, do the same thing with your email cuz I guess it’s, you know, I guess the big problem is going whether it’s once a week or once a month, the big issue is not that they’re not hearing from you frequently enough, the big issue is that they stop listening to you. Right. Because either the, the, the rhythm is inconsistent or the quality is, is inconsistent. That’s
NB (18:20):
Good. Yeah. They either forgot about you or they decided that you’re not worth listening to.
RV (18:24):
Yeah. I want to ask you about that too, in terms of how do you warm up a cold list? Because that’s a lot. Like, we have a lot of clients who will come to us and they’re like, eh, you know, I have an email list, but I haven’t sent anything to them in like a year. And especially, you know, a as, as a, you know, an email service provider. There’s a lot of rules there too, I think that you guys have to manage on a global level of her deliverability and all that. So like, but like what do you do? You go, these people opted in, like they wanted to hear from me, I was writing to them for a time, but like, I haven’t written to them in a minute. I mean, what would, what’s the, what’s, what’s the right way to to, you know, follow the rules and warm it up and like make use of it? Do you just scrap it and start over or like, what do you say?
NB (19:10):
Yeah, so what you do, one, don’t scrap the list and start over unless it’s been like a decade. It’s
RV (19:15):
Been a decade. We’re not gonna do that. Even if you tell us to anyways, we’re still we’re still uploading,
NB (19:20):
We’re gonna try to resurrect it somehow. Yeah. So the first thing is to, to try to look at what do you know about these people is there’s some cohort, let’s say we’ve got a list of 10,000 people, right? Is there some group that you think for one reason or another is more engaged than others, right? Maybe they bought a course from you, maybe something else. So if you email all 10,000 people at once, a bunch of people are gonna be like, make the news Nathan, I don’t remember him at all. Right? And they’re going to Marcus spam or whatever or not engaged. And the inbox providers, so like Gmail, Yahoo, et cetera, are gonna see that and be like, Ooh, this did not go well. And then my reputation, my domain reputation that I have is gonna go down, right? My Nathan barry.com domain will not be as respected by the inbox providers because of that and I’ll have a harder time reaching the inbox. So what we wanna do instead is warm this up. And so I’m gonna look and say, okay, instead of sending all 10,000 at once, I’m gonna start to build this reputation so that I’m not showing up, you know, with to, with 10,000 people at the party all at once. And the host is like, ah, I don’t want this. You know, so instead what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say, okay, 500 of of these people bought a course from me.
RV (20:35):
Yeah. You know,
NB (20:36):
I’m gonna email them first and am I, am I right one, hey, I’m back email. Now you can expect a once a week or email from me. Here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s next. It might be the same email, but I’m gonna send it to only 500 people first and the the 500 that I think are the most engaged based on how that goes. Then I’m going to take a slightly less engaged group that I might sylvan, maybe they showed up to a meetup once. Like all of these things that I think there’s a bit more of a connection with. And I’m gonna gradually expand that circle and then people who don’t engage or I’m gonna say, say something in there and say like, Hey, if you don’t want to be on this list, like click here to unsubscribe and I’m gonna put that right at the top of the email.
NB (21:21):
I’m gonna make it really easy for someone to hit unsubscribe rather than spam. I do not want someone marking this is spam. That would be very bad. And so then really what we’re doing is watching that engagement. If people don’t engage, I’m gonna delete them off of the list cuz I want, I wanna take that 10,000 who may not have heard from me for a couple of years and I want to trim it down to whatever number of people that’s really engaged and wants to be there. Let’s say five to 7,000. And I’m gonna do it gradually and warm up that reputation. There’s other things that like get more advanced that our like deliverability team at convert it can help with, which is like making sure that your domain is authenticated correctly. And and we can put together a whole warmup plan or this, but that’s the basic concept is reach out to the most engaged people first and then gradually layer in people who are a little less known.
RV (22:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So you kind of just like start with the warm circle, work your way out mm-hmm. and then when you get to the, when you get to the remaining cold part of the list, just make something right at the headline to say unsubscribe so that they click that instead of spam and let let them, let them self eject and and not mess it up. I think that’s a good thing. I mean, I think there’s a mentality there for a lot of marketers that are like, well, I’d rather you know, send it to 10,000 people on the hope that someone might do it. And that’s the switch you gotta flip of. Like, no, what you really want is you really just want whoever’s really engaged, even if it’s 500 people, right? You really just want the one, you don’t want to, you don’t, it’s not a good strategy to email people who don’t want to hear from you.
RV (23:00):
Like it doesn’t actually work it and it has a lot of negative, negative impacts. This is kind of like what I hear you, what I hear you saying. So I have another question. I do want to, I want to hear number, I want to hear your number three of your flywheel or your three rules of the flywheel. But here’s another thing is when it comes to creating conversions, okay, so we’ve been, you’ve been talking like what’s your long-term nurture strategy, but let’s say you’re in a launch of some type, like a book launch or a course or a product or you know, or if you’re just making a fourth quarter push, we have a lot of professional service providers that work with us too. You know, they’re doctors and lawyers and chiropractors, whatever. And they’re just trying to drive leads into whatever their small business is.
RV (23:43):
So what about when you’re, when you’re trying to do like a quote unquote close cart situation? Yeah. Does, does, what do you know about effective email strategies there? Does the volume increase? Does it change? Like is there anything that you know about this? If you, if you’re trying to use email to actually sell, like not just build trust and add value, but like in the moments where you’re going, I need people to buy, like this is my moment where I pay my expenses for the year. How do we treat email differently in those seasons versus just the normal?
NB (24:22):
Yeah, you, you send more emails that, that’s the quick version of it. So let’s say we’re doing a a cart close right? Course launch any, any activity and we’re saying, Hey Friday at 10:00 PM like, that’s it, you can’t buy this anymore. A lot of people, you know, Friday at noon would send the last email, right? Or they’d be like, I don’t know, I told them on Wednesday it’s gonna close on Friday. So I probably like, they knew that, so I probably shouldn’t send another email like, no, no, you should definitely send an email. Probably the three things that I would do is I would send an email Friday morning saying today’s the last day and I might even kick in some bonus that I’m gonna give to everybody who bought. But I’m like, Hey, if you bought today, I’m a, maybe I wasn’t talking about it all the way along, but I’ll do this extra little thing to, to kick it over. And just make sure to give it to everyone else that way someone who’s like, Hey, I bought like day one. Yeah.
RV (25:17):
Early words got screwed.
NB (25:18):
Yeah, you don’t want that. Oh, another thing that helps in, in any kind of launch is being able to have multiple deadlines. So let’s say it’s a five day launch, I don’t know, opens on Monday, closes on Friday, you want something that goes away Monday end of the day, right? So that you can do a cart close on Monday, the, it’s still open, but like this extra bonus went away and then, so you’ll get this spike. Or maybe you do, actually I’d probably do that on Tuesday. Now I think about it because Monday gets you all this hype. Everyone who’s excited Tuesday you get this, Hey, this bonus is going away, so let’s let’s you email twice that day cuz you’re like, hey, the bonus goes away. And then that in the morning and then that evening you’re like, this is about to you know, you’re about to lose this back in sales.
NB (26:12):
Find some good educational re reasons to email on Wednesday and Thursday and then Friday morning as like, hey, we’re we’re closing tonight. Here’s some testimonials, here’s things that people have gotten. And then I, I would send an email like the last hour, you know, this is the, you have one hour left to buy it. And then the final thing, cuz you’ll see a bunch of sales happen then, especially from the people who are like, oh yeah, I’ve been watching this, but like every time I’ve gotten an email I’ve been doing something with the kids or you know, whatever Austin, you’re like, okay shoot, I actually have 52 minutes left to do this, you know, and throw a countdown timer in the email. That’s the feature that’s built in to convert it makes it really easy.
RV (26:52):
Well that’s really cool to not have, you don’t have to like put a little third party widget or something in there. You drop a native. That’s cool.
NB (26:58):
And then the last thing that I would do is on Saturday in our fictional example, I would do a down sell where I would say basically send the people who are interested in the launch but didn’t buy. So make that custom segment and then send them an email and like offer something different. Maybe it’s if you’ve had all of this stuff for one package in your, in your course, maybe you’ve trimmed it down to a lighter version and you’re selling that and say, Hey, if that wasn’t a good fit, maybe check out this other thing and it’s to a smaller group and you’ll drive another maybe 10% of sales off of that. You could also do an email and just say like, Hey I noticed you really engaged but you didn’t end up buying. Could you let me know what the reason was?
NB (27:47):
And a bunch of people will come back and be like, oh, it’s too expensive. I didn’t see the value. Like there’s some really good customer research that happens in there and, and you could even have like your assistant go through and be like, oh, well if it’s too expensive, here’s this option. Or if you didn’t see the value, here’s some of their case studies and you know, someone would be like, oh, well that’s, that’s sales, that’s not scalable. And it’s like, okay, but if I, if it takes me another five minutes to send a custom email to make a $300 sale, like yeah, that’s pretty scalable to have a team member be doing
RV (28:15):
That. Especially if you can copy and paste that email 25 times and like pick up, you know, pick up more sales. So, so basically in that, in that theoretical example, you have something you’ve probably been adding value the week before. Yep. And then when you
NB (28:30):
Actually, and you have to build up to the launch, like yeah, it’s so important.
RV (28:33):
Okay. And then when, when, when you open the cart, you have like one email on Monday.
NB (28:43):
I I would, I’m, a lot of people will send more emails. But yeah, I’m gonna end up sending eight emails in five days basically. It’s kind of the cadence.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. So you got basically one on Monday, you got two on Tuesday with like that Oh, the early, basically the early bird bonus. Yeah. And then one on Thursday, one on, or one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. So that’s five and then three on Friday. That’s like eight.
NB (29:07):
Yeah, two or three on Friday and then definitely one on Saturday. One on
RV (29:10):
Saturday. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I love that. And
NB (29:13):
You’ll get unsubscribes. Another quick little tip is this is another thing that converts good at is putting a little link in there and j just saying like, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re, we are talking about this product all week long. If you don’t want to hear about it, but you don’t want to unsubscribe, click this and won’t, I won’t send you another email this week and like next week we’re back to our regular scheduled programming and it’ll just pause that for them. Cuz someone will be be like, look man, I’m not gonna buy it, you know, for whatever reason, but I love your content every week and you just don’t want that person to get annoyed. And so right at the beginning and actually the week before, you could say, Hey, we’re we’re rolling into launch week for this. I remember talking all about it. If you don’t wanna hear about it, click this link and we’ll skip next week and or, you know, and I’ll see you later or I’ll see you soon and that’ll save a bunch of unsubscribes and let people kind of control their preferences.
RV (30:07):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I mean, it goes back again to just this idea of there’s this like weird thought that marketers have that somehow if they spam people enough that someone who is not interested will like accidentally decide one day to buy, become interested and become interested, keep them up the head with it more, and then they’ll get excited about it and it, and it’s like, it’s the opposite. It’s like if they don’t want to hear from you, let them not hear from you. Or if they don’t want to hear from you so frequently, let them slow down the cadence, you know, until they’re ready. That’s the whole point of email is you’re just nurturing them in an automated fashion and then you will catch ’em on the next launch or the launch after. But if you, if you annoy ’em, you’re gonna, you lose them here and then you taken money out of your future pockets. So I’m a I lo I love that. So I wanna go back to number three. You said the, there’s three things that great flywheel should have. And then I want to hear, I want to hear a couple specific, I have a couple specific questions for you about convert kits. So yeah, what’s the, what’s the third part about the flywheel?
NB (31:11):
Yeah, the third rule is that every rotation of the flywheel should produce more results than the previous rotation. Mm-Hmm. So going back to the rules, right? It needs to be in sequence, these can’t be scattered tasks. The second rule is each rotation needs to be easier than the previous one. And the third one is that it has to produce more results than the previous rotation. So if you think about that, like, wait, our rules are that rules two and three together is like, it has to get easier over time and it has to produce more simultaneously. Like that’s kind of a high bar to hit. But there’s a lot of creators that have done this. So let me give you an example. There’s a creator his name’s Sawhill Bloom and he writes a lot about habits and mental models and business and, and you know, all of these kind of things.
NB (31:55):
And he’s popular on Twitter. And so he’s built up a good size following on Twitter and he drives a lot of subscribers from his email or from Twitter to his email list and then from there into automations. And he’s got a few things going on here. He he does a referral program where he says, Hey, if you refer three friends to my newsletter, then you get this extra guide that I wrote for free. And so that means every subscriber that comes in, you know, maybe 10% of ’em refer friends. And so that turns into, you know, every one subscriber turns into 1.1 or 1.5 subscribers, and that goes from there. The next thing that happens is he’s got paid products that he is selling that’s pretty normal. So, so he is making money off of every subscriber from there on, from there he is in something called the Convert Kit Sponsor Network, and that’s where we sell advertising sponsorships for his newsletter on his behalf.
NB (32:50):
And so he is making a good amount of money from that, and he’s actually taking all of the money that he makes and pouring that back into advertising to grow his newsletter faster. And so what happens is, if we put some actual numbers to it at the beginning or like February, 2023, he had 200,000 subscribers on his list. And that’s growing at a pretty decent pace from, from social, but he was able to sell sponsorships and make tw about $25,000 a month off of selling sponsorships on his newsletter. He attends twice a week and he is taking all of that money and putting it into something called the partner network that a company called Spark Lu has. And that’s where you can sponsor other creators and like pay them $2 per subscriber that comes to you.
RV (33:42):
What’s it
NB (33:43):
Called? The company is spark Loop and we have a partnership with them. So you get it for free if you’re a converter customer. But it’s their partner network. And so basically you can say, Hey, I’ll pay $2 for every engaged subscriber that someone sends to me, and then creators can go browse it and say, oh, I like Nathan’s stuff. I’d happily get paid to send subscribers to him. So now instead of me going out and like paying Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram for more subscribers, like I’m paying another creator. And so Sahi is taking all the money he makes from sponsorships, spending it there, picking up another like 10 to 15,000 subscribers a month. And so now like he has this flywheel that keeps going around in circles, he’s taking his money, he’s reinvesting it, growing his list. But if you think about it, the more subscribers there are on his list, the more he’s able to charge brands for sponsors, which means the more money he makes, which means the more money he’s spending on advertising.
NB (34:43):
So his list grows faster. And so every rotation, this is actually getting easier and producing more results. So I think he started the year in January at about 150,000 subscribers and today what is it, April 20th or so he’s at 300,000 subscribers. So he is, he’s doubled the list in Q1 by like running the flywheel very aggressively. And he’s a great marketer, but that’s how you can kind of put these things in sequence and then make it so that the flywheel, you know, it’s like a snowball going downhill. It’s like picking up more snow as it goes. It gets bigger and bigger faster.
RV (35:16):
I love it. Yeah, that is really cool. How do you do the referral thing where you say, Hey, if you, if you refer three people to my newsletter, I’ll send you this bonus, which, I mean, does that basically mean you have to set up like an affiliate link for every single subscriber and somehow it has to track if, if if that subscriber sends it out and three people convert on that land? I mean that’s a, is that how that’s being done?
NB (35:42):
Yeah, so basically what it is in, in the same way that we’re all used to affiliate programs, you know, it’s similar this tool, spark Loop has that built in. And that’s something that people get for free with convert Kits Greater Pro Plan, and that’s where it’ll set up that system. And in the footer of your email it’ll say, Hey, here’s your link. You’ve referred two people. Like refer one more to unlock Nathan’s free guide to whatever. Right? Or it could be an email course, it could be maybe if someone’s like, Hey, if you refer 10 people, you know, I’ll send you this shirt. If, if you refer 20 people, I’ll give you this invite. Like you get to come and do this like one day workshop or you know, something else, right? You could, you can offer any kind of custom bonus. And it’s a really effective way of getting your best like your biggest fans to refer more, more people.
RV (36:36):
Interesting.
NB (36:37):
But it’s all, it’s all automated. You set it up once yeah.
RV (36:41):
And this is
NB (36:41):
Basically, I’m obsessed with flywheel and automation, so there’s no way
RV (36:43):
Is that like an HTML code you drop into the email and then it’s basically reading like how many people Yeah, exactly. Subscribe to and pulling that through. Wow, that’s interesting. That’s fascinating. Well, okay, so I don’t wanna let you go before we talk a little bit about, about Convert Kit. And, and I, I’ll tell you like I love all the marketing automation tools and I also struggle with all of them cuz there’s like certain things that they do and like you guys have some really, really awesome features. First of all, a lot of our clients use you and they say it’s very easy to use. It’s like, it’s not super comp, like it doesn’t feel overwhelming and complicated. And so a lot of clients really like that, especially if they don’t have like developers or a lot of team or like a lot of time for the tech stuff.
RV (37:27):
One of the features that y’all have that I don’t think I’ve never seen anybody else have, and I told you this before and I was like, it’s really an amazing feature, is to send emails based on zip code radius to say send an segment my list by people who are all within some radius range of the zip code, which is huge for anyone that does any type of events event marketing and for book book tours and stuff like that. Or even if you’re a speaker and you’re like, go, I want to have a meetup in all these different places. It, I mean, it’s a really, really cool thing. So anyways, w what would you say are like, let’s say, let’s just take three, so I’ve given one what would you say are like three of your favorite features about Convert Kit? Maybe they’re things that you, you guys either do that other people don’t do or you think you do better or it’s easier. But I would just love to hear like, what are your, your top three kind of like favorite features of On Convert Kit?
NB (38:29):
Yeah. First the location based one. I absolutely love, we have a bunch of clients that are musicians. Yeah. So like Tim McGraw and Land Bridges and Mandy Moore and a bunch of others. And their teams are doing that whole thing, you know, they’re like, oh, we’re playing this show, either a huge stadium show or something smaller and it’s like, look, you know, we want to email people within 200 miles of Dallas Fort Worth. Right? Super easy to do. Or another example is you get these customers who are selling like food products, right? Maybe you’re you know, you have like the recipe blog or there’s one that there’s a, a blog called Hey Grill Hay. She runs this fantastic barbecue blog and she’s just getting into selling her own like sauces and rubs that are getting carried in grocery stores.
NB (39:15):
Okay. And what she does I think is just brilliant is if she gets carried in a new grocery store, like they’ll just run this little test like, okay, we’ll see if people, like, if consumers want to buy your product, she’ll be like, cool, what what store did carry that in? And then she goes to her email list, you know, and says like, okay everybody within 50 miles of Denver where like this, you know, store is carrying our product, you know, she emails him and says like, go here and buy this. And then also tell ’em like, Hey, are you like, are you gonna carry this other ver you know, like you only have three other flavors. Where’s the fourth one? You know, whatever. And so these stores are just like, wow, your product was a huge hit, we should carry it. And more.
NB (39:56):
She’s like, yes, you should. I agree , and that’s the, the location-based play. But, but two other ones. One feature that Convert it has that I think no one else has. Well let’s set a scenario. We’re in our product launch and we’re like, Hey, the cart’s open, it’s live. Like go buy it. It’s that Monday morning email that we sent out and you hit send and you’re like, okay, here we go. You’re like refreshing for sales and instead of sales, you get an email back that says like, Hey man, your link’s broken. And you’re like, ugh. Like just this crushing feeling. You’re like, now do I send another email and all of that? No. In Convert It, you go in and you click edit on the link and you change it and you remove the like extra slash that you put in or however you type with the link, you fix it and hit save and all the links come through and, and click through automatically correctly. So it like, you
RV (40:47):
Can edit embedded links after you’ve sent them out.
NB (40:51):
Yeah, and I, as far as I know no other email tool will let you do that.
RV (40:56):
That’s cool. I don’t know of another tool that does that. I mean, that’s, that’s pretty awesome. I mean it was like one you hope you’d never have to use, but man, if you
NB (41:05):
Didn’t need use. But if you do it’ss there
RV (41:06):
For you, it’s pretty, it’s pretty clutch. Yep.
NB (41:08):
Like we’ve got your back. There’s a bunch of other fun things and like you know, like we’ll automatically check to see if any of your links are sending you a 4 0 4. We’ll check your subject. Like we’ll do a bunch of stuff like that for you automatically before you hit send. But probably the picking three, I love automations like as a feature and it, and pretty much every tool, email tool is gonna have automations. Things that I like about ours is you can click into an email sequence and see all the emails listed down the side so you can move between them really quickly. And so it’s easy to see like, oh, what did I send them last week? Or what was yesterday? And you’re not like backing out and going back in or opening a ton of tabs, you’re just like clicking between them. It’s really fast. I’m
RV (41:56):
Not gonna, that’s handy cuz a lot of the time you lose is just in the extra clicks when you’re building these things is like, click in here and then click in here and then click in here to edit it and then click back out. Click back out. Yeah.
NB (42:07):
Yeah, so making things load really quick. And then really like these advanced things that you’d have to be normally be like a marketing automation expert to implement. We’ve got all these recipes like shared automations inside of Convert It. And so you can go through and be like, okay like gimme the book launch template and let me load that in and then just edit it from me. So it’s really like, how do we take something that before only the experts could do and make it so it’s approachable for
RV (42:36):
Yeah. You mentioned that like the, you you mentioned that like deadline sequence, sort of countdown timer inside of an email. That’s a cool thing cuz normally you’d have to use like a third party plugin or like
NB (42:45):
Yeah. How do you install it? Like, paste in this html nobody knows how to do it, no one wants to, so it’s like click little plus icon, select countdown timer, set the date you want it to countdown to hit send on the email.
RV (42:56):
Yeah. That’s really cool. That’s awesome, man. Well just so everybody knows, like if you go to brand builders group.com/convert, that is our affiliate link for Convert Kits. So we are, you know, been fans of Nathan. A lot of our clients use Convert Kit. I wanted to have ’em on the show so you could like, hear, you know, his story and what they’re about. We’ve heard great feedback on it. Some of these, some of these features are really, really hard to find. So Nathan, this has been awesome. Like what’s, what’s the vision for Convert Kit from here? Like where do you, where do you, where do you think you guys are going? Like are there any big things ahead in terms of like what you’re working on or, you know, what’s, what’s that? What’s in the future?
NB (43:42):
Yeah, so our company mission is that we exist to help creators earn a living. It’s deeply personal to me. I grew up in a family where money was really scarce and when I learned about making money on the internet, I was like, does everyone know this? Like, like, I wanna make this accessible to as many people as possible. And so everything that we’re coming out with whether it’s our sponsorship network that we’re building and still in the early days or work at Commerce where you can sell digital products or even this new partner network that we’re working on with Spark Loop, those are all about like, Hey, how can we make it easier? Like, how can we get creators paid? And so that’s really what we’re building is like turning all of this into a flywheel that someone can sign up and say, Hey, whether you have like 500 subscribers or 50,000 subscribers, there’s a lot of great ways to make money. And so that’s kind of, kind of next, that’s the North Star. How much money can I pay to creators every single month? And then whatever crazy ideas I can dream up that makes that easier.
RV (44:44):
I love it. Well, thanks for what you’re doing, man. Thank you for supporting creators. We’ve got a, we have a sh a shared united passion for, we call ’em mission-driven messengers, but like we you know, and the tools, the tools matter a bunch and, and they’re making a big difference, man. So we wish you all the best. We’ll stay connected again, go to brand builders group.com/convert if you wanna learn more specifically about Convert Kit and you know, Nathan, I’m sure I’ll talk to you again soon.
NB (45:11):
Sounds good. Thanks for having me.

Ep 378: 4 Financial Facts That Will Help You Keep More Of The Money You Earn with Shannon Weinstein

AJV (00:01):
Hey y’all, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. And y’all, let me tell you, this is an episode that you want to listen to. So before I formally introduce my friend, Shannon, I need you to know why you need to stick around all of you. And I don’t care how much of it you have, but all of you make money. I don’t care if it’s a dollar or a billion dollars. You got some amount of dollars in your banking account. And here are the three things we’re gonna talk about when it comes to your money today. One, we’re gonna talk about how do you keep more of the money that you’re making? Who doesn’t want that? So you’re making it, how do you keep more of it, number one. Number two, there is no minimum income level to benefit and learn from what we’re gonna talk about today.
AJV (00:53):
This is not for billionaires, millionaires, or thousands of errors, . This is for anyone who has dollars, all right? And it’s like there is no minimum amount. These are skills and tools and mindsets that you need to have when it comes to money. It doesn’t matter how much that you have. So there’s no minimum requirements to be a part of this conversation. And then number three, which is, this is just a precursor to just a little bit of what you need to know when it comes to keeping more of that money. The number one tool that you need to have in that toolbox of yours is understanding cash flow. You can have money on a p and l statement and not have money in your banking account. So how do we understand cash flow to help us ha, help us have a happy, healthy financial business?
AJV (01:38):
So without further ado, I’m going to give you a formal introduction of my friend Shannon Weinstein, and we’re gonna talk about all things money. But before we do that there’s a couple of things that you may want to know about Shannon. So I’ll give her a quick formal background overview, and then I will let her tell you guys a little bit about herself. So Shannon is a c p a. So, so she actually has credentials in this money conversation, always a bonus. She’s also a fractional c f o for growth minded business owners, emphasis on the growth minded. She’s a teacher at heart. Her real life relatable example, simplify, which I think is really important, help make easy the financial side of business so you can stop stressing and start scaling. She’s also the host of the most awesome, keep What You Earn podcast, which I got to be a guest on a few weeks ago. And I’m so, so, so excited to get to swap the roles today and be the interviewer, not the interviewee. So without formal ado, Shannon, welcome to the show.
SW (02:45):
Thank you so much for that intro. I really appreciate it.
AJV (02:47):
I’m so happy to be here and have this conversation because I think the best thing about being a podcast host is all this free training, free coaching. Amen.
SW (02:58):
Amen. Amen. Same here
AJV (03:00):
As host. And so to help our audience get to know a little bit about you, I would love for you to kind of just give, like, how did you end up doing this, right? As a C P A? It’s like, right, we know that the trajectory that you were on, but somehow something took you off course to get you to where you are today. So give us a little of the backstory.
SW (03:22):
So nobody grows up in like second grade, and when they ask you what you wanna be, when you grow up, you say c p a. So there’s always an origin story that that deviates from. Well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to work with numbers and spreadsheets. In fact, spreadsheets didn’t exist, I think when I was that age. So I, I lost a bet with my dad and ended up majoring in accounting wi willingly, willingly. But it was, it was fun because what I realized was numbers were a language that I spoke and I actually loved language. I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, believe it or not. And I I fell in love with languages and teaching languages and speaking different languages. And I was like, this is so cool. We can communicate through these different ways and people understand different things.
SW (03:59):
Hmm. So in learning all that, I was fascinated by it. And then I took an accounting class again, a dare from my dad. He’s like, take this and if you hate it, I’ll stop bugging you about, you know, taking over my firm and being my protege and all this stuff, right? And, and I took it and I was like, I actually love this. Hmm. And I realized that it was something it took to me easily, and my dad sat me down and said, this is the language you need to teach people. So that is exactly how it happened. I’ve always been kind of a teacher in the back of my mind and couldn’t wait to share knowledge, teach it. Every time I learned something, I go, how will I explain this when I pass it on? And that has been the, the kind of the anchor point for everything I do since then. You know, working in corporate, working in big firms, and then eventually starting my own practice.
AJV (04:43):
I love that whole piece about numbers is a language because it is like, it really is. And then the financial acumen of knowing what numbers are make up the most important parts of the language, I think is a really important thing that, I mean, I’m just going back thinking in my college days, like, you know, I had a business minor. I actually was a Spanish minor, so also love language. But there, you know, I remember those accounting classes and I’m like, I retained nothing. There was nothing of actual value, real world personal or professional value that I can recall from any of my college courses. Now, perhaps that was my college of choice, who knows? But I do think as we kind of enter in, I also believe that most people didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs, right? They developed into that without having developed some of the financial acumen to help them keep more of the money that you’re earning. And so, I’m gonna start with what I think is what you said. The most important kind of thing is understanding this language with the number one tool, being understanding cash flow. So walk us through, and let’s just like take it down to the basics. What is cash flow? How do you know if you have it? And how do you start learning the language of going, all right, this is actually something I should be looking at as a business owner.
SW (06:09):
So another fun fact about me is that I worked in fitness for about 10 years. So most of my analogies are related to fitness, but I think it’s something everyone can relate to cuz everyone has hated a workout or been on a diet or seen a diet or something before. So it, it’s really relatable and I look at cash flow as your business’s metabolism. Mm-Hmm. So it’s how, at what pace and through what timing are you bringing cash in and paying cash out and paying cash out comes in the form of both expenses. And when you take money out of your business to pay for things personally. So you have to be looking at, are you consuming what your business is producing at the rate that you need to be? Or are you consuming more than your business can produce? And you’re tapping into the back reserves and you’re actually at a sort of a deficit in terms of what you’re bringing out of the business.
SW (06:56):
And what you may not realize is that could be happening even if your bur business is turning a profit mm-hmm. because you’re just pulling more than what your profit is producing. And you may not realize, you just see the bank account and you see a certain number and that’s the metric. But that’s like looking at the scale on a given day and measuring your overall health. Yeah. You don’t know what’s behind that number. That is one data point. So unless you understand how rapidly that is changing, then you don’t really know what that number is telling you.
AJV (07:23):
Hmm. That’s so good. I love thinking about it like the metabolism, right? It’s like, you know, because it’s, it’s easy to think about. It’s like if you eat more than you burn, eventually you’re gonna gain some bees, right? Exactly. And if you burn more than you eat, eventually you’ll lose some bees. So it’s like being able to think about it that way really does make it easy. So what are some of the best tips of like, where, where should you start of going, okay, I don’t do this, haven’t been doing this, I get it, I should be doing it. Where do you start?
SW (07:53):
So I recommend anyone who’s brand new to the idea of cash flow, sit down with maybe a month or six weeks. I say four to six weeks of a cash flow forecast. Don’t get scared, but it actually makes sense when you break down the weeks across the top and let’s say a spreadsheet, or you can, you could even draw it, it doesn’t matter. But across the top you have all the weeks for about four or six weeks. And then you list out every way money comes in, every way money goes out. And you can look at your bank statements as a hint as to where things are going. And you can kind of figure out, Hmm, this is how much money I have now, this is how much I’m expecting to come in each month. This is how much is going out each month. And then the bottom is your cash flow.
SW (08:30):
It’s pretty simple. And accountants like to make it more complicated by throwing jargon in the mix and calling it different things and different labels and cash flows from operations. And it’s like, let’s just keep it simple to what’s coming in, what’s going out and what is happening at the bottom. Cuz I think most entrepreneurs will be surprised to realize that they actually have negative cash flow. Hmm. And that that can be, again, it’s not bad. One month of negative cash flow is not bad, but as a habit and as a consistent habit, it can actually lead to the downfall of a business. It’s the number one reason small businesses fail according to surveys is lack of cash flow or capital. But unfortunately a poor cash flow, you don’t realize until it becomes a problem. Yeah. Like a real problem. It’s kind of like how you don’t realize you’ve been eating too much until the jeans don’t fit. And by then you’re like, it’s kind of too late. I gotta go buy new jeans. So it, you don’t wanna get to that point where it becomes uncomfortable and those problems surface and you really feel the symptoms. You wanna be able to identify those before they become a problem.
AJV (09:29):
So this is, I think this is such a great conversation specifically for entrepreneurs and small businesses, small business owners. I, I think also in this, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and philosophy on this. Like one of our, you know, we’re, we’re Dave Ramsey people, so we’re net free livers. You don’t have to subscribe to all things Dave Ramsey to acknowledge like not having lots of debt isn’t a bad idea. If for no ever reason, then peace. So we’ve always kind of been of this, you know, belief that we self fund, right? We don’t have investors, we don’t have loans, we don’t, we don’t, we just, we self fund. And so one of the things, and I don’t know who taught us or where we learned this along the way, but it’s been, it’s been a true saving grace of we actually, and I’m just like, this is again, philosophical question. What is your take on the amount of money that a good healthy business should keep on hand? And both ordinary day-to-day operations, but then also in reserves. So kinda like your emergency fund above what you need on a daily operating level.
SW (10:37):
So I believe that you should have four to six months in a normal economy of expenses of what I call your monthly burn. So I think your monthly burn, if I were to define that, is anything that you’re committed to spending, whether you make a sale or not. So if that’s the rent for your building or that’s the subscriptions that you’re on or your software or whatever, where if you don’t bring a sale in, you still got these bills coming in, then I would say that could be your team, your management team, your operations, right? So I look at monthly burn and that cashflow forecast is part of that too is like, what’s the burn gonna be over time? Mm-Hmm. But it, it literally is calorie burn. It’s like, what are you burning if you’re doing nothing? If you’re not moving at all, what is the minimum amount you’re gonna be burning every month in cash?
SW (11:18):
Yeah. And I look at that and say that times, let’s say six is what I wanna make sure I have in the bank account at any given point in time. And right now we’re recording this amidst pretty much chaos in the financial industry and a lack of understanding of, of banking and what’s going on. And I go now, I would say six to eight. Wow. I would say six to eight because you just wanna make sure that in turbulent times that you feel extra secure. I mean, look what happened with Covid, that was definitely an evident example of who wasn’t keeping an emergency fund. And I think that you wanna be ready for six. I mean, we literally had six months shutdown. Like we, we’ve been saying this for years, six months in, in the bank. And then I think all the accountants looked around and said, holy crap we were right , like, like people literally shut down for six months and those who who had that advice were like, oh, we’re gonna be okay until August or whatever. And, and I think that you just wanna be ready, you just wanna know that you’re ready and you can tap into that if you absolutely need to. But I think having a good emergency fund of four to six months on a normal day and maybe six to eight if you wanna be a little extra safe is a good bet. And I think that’s reflective of what the cost to operate from payroll, to subscriptions to rent and so on. That’s what goes into the emergency fund.
AJV (12:31):
Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. And you know, you brought up something because we are recording this in the light of what an interesting time with S V B and the government and this bank run and volatility and interest rates and we could go on and on and on. So completely a side thought that just came to my mind because I called up our personal banker as probably the majority of small business owners understood on Monday. I’m like, so let’s talk about my account dispersion and coverage and all the things here. And so I’m curious to kind of get your thoughts. And you can be as vague or as specific as you like around just how important it is to even know the types of accounts that you have in the bank because we definitely are in the middle right now of going, oh, we need to move this here and move that there, and we need to close that account and open this type of account. And that all came in light of somebody else’s tragedy. But there’s great lessons for all of us to learn. So would love any thoughts or insights you would have to share on this really unique time that we’re in when it comes to money and accounts, what type of accounts you need and how many and all the things.
SW (13:48):
So of course it’s gonna vary based on your goals, right? Like the number, like the number of accounts you need, what types of accounts you need. It’s gonna depend on what purpose each account serves and what mission it has. So my, my philosophy on it is, there’s a couple of things. One, my husband and I specifically, if we’re talking about the personal end, and you can do this for your business as well, I do this with my clients as A C F O, but we go through every quarter and we take stock and inventory. Where’s our money? What accounts is it in? Is it doing its job? Hmm. So if we have too much in the checking account, I go, do we really need all that money in the checking account? Can we move it to a high yield savings, getting 4% interest? You know, can we move this over here?
SW (14:24):
Like, is everything doing the job we want it to do? And we just have a, a checkpoint every quarter at a minimum. We have that kind of on the calendar at the end of every quarter to just go through and do a quick update and to do our own little family balance sheet. Now, of course I’m an accountant, so of course we’re gonna do this. And Jason and I, my husband, we’re nerds. But it’s a good habit to just take stock of everything, be aware of where your money’s at. Because when this happened, we weren’t worried. We knew where the money was, we knew what it was doing, and we knew we were under the insured insured limits. So we got nothing to worry about. So we weren’t making any phone calls. We were, we were cool, but the most people get into panic mode and they go, I don’t know where my money is.
SW (15:04):
And I said, well, I think that starts with that. It starts with the awareness of where your money is and also knowing what the goals are. So if you’re in a business, for example, and this goes back to business owners, right? Of if you have everything in checking and you have like multiple hundreds of thousand dollars in checking, I would say if I were your C F O and I see that, I go, do you really need that much? Is that really six months worth of operating expenses, especially for service-based businesses who may have, you know, not that many expenses. Hmm. I say take some of that, put it in high yield savings, take some of that, put it in the tax savings account, take some of that, put it into like an investment account for like that rainy day fund, but make sure that that’s earning interest for you.
SW (15:39):
Make sure that you’re letting your money work for you and that you can call on it if you need to, if you need to keep it liquid. We call it liquid meaning ready access to it. So you don’t have to sell anything to cash it out. And, and that’s what I would encourage people to do is just be mindful of how you’re managing your money and aware of where it is and just make sure that you’re clearly defined on what goal every dollar has for you so that you know if it’s doing that or not.
AJV (16:04):
Yeah. So you just again said something that I wanna kind of like take this rabbit trail naturally here because this is, again, one of those like real simple but really important things of actually having different accounts to properly save for things like taxes. And it’s like we, I have just found like for both us personally and us professionally, it’s like, I don’t know if I’m embarrassed or proud to say this, but it’s like we have like 13 different banking accounts and I’m just like, this is the savings for this thing and this is the savings for that thing. But a lot of it’s not about, it’s, I I can’t, this is not money I can use for every day function. Like this is every single month I take, you know, basically 35% of our earnings and I just stick it in this tax savings account for a rainy day. Right. One day it’s gonna have to come out. But yeah, like I’d love to hear some thoughts and best practices around like, how can entrepreneurs, small business owners go, okay, I have everything in one or maybe just two accounts. What are some of those accounts that would be really good for me to really start developing as my business matures?
SW (17:09):
So I I bel I subscribe to this idea of I think it’s Parkinson’s law that like things will take up the space you give them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s why we, it’s why we cram before exams and do our assignments the night before. Right? If you gave me two days, I would get the same work done as in two weeks. I just do it the day before . So the idea behind that law and why it relates to your bank is if you are a business owner and you open your checking account on your online banking and you see $200,000 in there, guess what you’re gonna think, I got money to spend. I can do all these things with that. That’s, I could pay for that mastermind, I can pay for, I can pay ahead, I can pay, you know, all these things. I’m rich.
SW (17:45):
You feel like you’re a scooch McDuck in the vault, swimming in the dollars . And then you realize, oh wait a minute, I got that money in the bank cuz I did a launch and I have to make that last three months. Oops. But you don’t realize, you see that money and it makes you feel something and it makes, it changes how you think. It changes how you say yes or no to things. It changes. It’s like I can afford it, therefore I will do it. And, and I wanna be careful with that. And where I’m going with this is when you’re, when you’re designing how you’re gonna organize these accounts, I would say these outta sight outta mind concepts of when you take the money, like as soon as it comes in, just like you said, aj, take a certain percent and put it to taxes.
SW (18:26):
And if you’re taking it out of pure revenue, you can round down a little bit. I say between 20 and 25% if you’re in California, sorry, it’s on the higher end of that, probably more. But it depends on your federal and state tax rates. But you’re gonna want to set aside that money and set it and forget it because your paycheck used to do that for you. They don’t do it for you anymore. So you gotta have the discipline to go move that money and say, that is not my money. I’m hanging onto that for the government, but that is not my money to spend. And then same thing, if you wanna save up I have a particular client right now who’s saving up to buy a license to be able to use certain imagery on her products. So what we’re doing is we actually created a quote unquote sinking fund.
SW (19:05):
So every time she makes a sale, a certain amount goes into that towards the saving. It’s almost like putting coins in that piggy bank when you were a kid and going, I’m gonna save up for my first whatever. Like I did that to save up for my PlayStation mm-hmm. . So it’s the same concept of throw a few here and there, here and there until you’re reaching that goal of like fundraising for your business mm-hmm. . So we actually do that with clients all the time. We set up multiple accounts under their bank account and we use it for different purposes for their payroll, for their savings, things like that. So when you give your money a mission and you have a way to measure it, you’re much more likely to be successful in accomplishing that.
AJV (19:41):
Love that. So good. So good. So, okay, so on the note of measuring it, what would you say, you know, on the topic of how do you keep more of the money that you earn? What are the things we need to be looking at? What are the things that we need to be measuring? What actually can we do to keep more of this money that we’re working for?
SW (20:01):
So as I mentioned before, it’s, it starts with the cashflow forecast or create the initial awareness of where is my money actually going? And then being aware to go, Hmm, well do I want it going there? Is that, is that aligned with my mission? And one thing I always do with my clients is we go back to their three goals or I call their components of their why goals. So it’s like three levels of why. It’s like why are you doing this business? What are you trying to accomplish with this? Like the, the why, why, why, right? And if these expenses don’t serve that or anchor to that, I ask all the time, is this something you really want to do? This something you actually need? Or is this something you think you need? Because so and so is also doing this. Like, do you need to be doing that?
SW (20:41):
And not to be the Debbie Downer, right? , but we wanna be able to to minimize extra costs mm-hmm. and be able to really hone in on what is actually serving the mission. And then I also look at keeping more of what you earn is also understanding the flow of when it’s coming and going so that you can plan. And if that launch brings in a bunch of money, you know exactly how long that’s gonna last you and what your goals are for that launch because you’re aware of what you’re gonna spend over the next, let’s say three or four months. So you’re going, in order for me to do this, I need to do this in terms of selling. And I think that’s a, that’s a big piece of it. The other part of keeping more of what you earn naturally every entrepreneur’s biggest expense is what
AJV (21:23):
Taxes.
SW (21:23):
Exactly. So when you, when you look at taxes, right, it’s saving for your taxes, but it’s also strategizing and it’s also figuring out how can I reduce my tax liability as much as possible using business strategies that maybe I wasn’t taught in school. Because if they teach you these things, they don’t make as much money.
SW (21:45):
Wait, imagine if, imagine if Target taught a course on how to use coupons at their store. Yeah. Right. That wouldn’t benefit them and welcome to our education system. Yeah. So they’re not gonna teach you how to use the coupons. What you have to do is figure it out. You have to start hunting for your own little hacks and and things like that. And to do so legally cuz everything’s in the tax code. It’s just that nobody wants to read that rule book. They want to find someone who read it who can explain it to them. And that’s what we try to do in, in our profession. And and tax strategy is probably the number one thing that can help entrepreneurs save money in taxes that they didn’t even know they were overpaying.
AJV (22:20):
Oh my gosh. This, I don’t know how accurate this statement is, but I remember I was on like a, a two year mission when we started Brand builders goo group to reorient myself to tax law, tax changes, all the things that had changed in the, you know, at that time there were new administration and Yep. And just also getting reacquainted with how do we want to set things up. When we started Brand Builders Group, and I remember in one of the courses that I had bought, they had said, just like most rules tax rules are also built with adjustments, right? And with I would say not that rules are meant to be broken, that’s not it. But it’s like, and this was like the example, and again, don’t quote me on this, but it’s like the tax code is like, I don’t know, I re easy math a thousand pages of which actual tax rules are like 30 pages and the rest of them are the different caveats to the rule. Is that true
SW (23:23):
? It is 5%. I’ll, I’ll say it this way. 5% of the tax code is how to pay taxes. 95% is how to not pay taxes. So the the, it is actually true. So there’s only about a, there’s only a, you know, a, a decent amount of afternoon reading of how the tax cut actually works and what is taxable. And then there’s a ton of stuff, hundreds if not thousands of pages of how to avoid taxes legally by doing, by doing behaviors. The government incentivizes. Yeah. Like donating to charity, owning property, creating jobs, retirement funds. So as the government decides they want their citizens to execute on these certain activities like buying electric vehicles, solar panels, things like that, they start offering these tax incentives to people to say, we want you to do go do more of this and we will pay you for it.
SW (24:15):
Essentially. We’ll we will make sure that you don’t pay taxes on that. So that that way you’re encouraged to do it. That is at the simplest level what it is not to mention this is gonna make it sound so less glamorous, but they literally write tax code to benefit the senators and the congresspeople. So for example, I’ll give you guys an example. When you sell a house, if you’ve lived in that house for two of the last five years, you don’t have to pay taxes on your profit up to a certain amount of money. The reason they did that, guess what the congress person’s term is two years.
AJV (24:51):
So Bo guess .
SW (24:53):
Exactly. But they did that so that they could relocate to another home because they were living in their constituency and then they would have to move so they wouldn’t have to pay the appreciation on their profit. So understand if you live like a congressperson
AJV (25:07):
good,
SW (25:08):
That was actually written for them,
AJV (25:11):
It’s really built to benefit the elected officials. Exactly. So we have to think in those, they wrote it Uhhuh , they
SW (25:18):
Wrote the rule book who, if you had access to the pen and paper to write the rule book, wouldn’t you write rules that kind of work in your favor? And that’s exactly what they’re doing. And of course they represent their constituency, but they’re, they’re also thinking, well I don’t wanna sign and get myself screwed with my, my real estate here. So think about that. Like it really is that simple and it’s like, Shannon, did they really do that? I go, wouldn’t you? Yes. ,
AJV (25:44):
I mean it’s it, but it’s just like kinda one of those things. I just remember being in that ring. Like 5% are the rules. 95% are the exception to the rules. Exactly. Come again, I need to really learn these exceptions. Right? Yep. And it’s like, and at the same time I can’t learn all of them. So give us some hacks. What would you say are like your three to five, like no-brainer, you must be doing this tax saving strategy if you’re in business.
SW (26:10):
So I would say just to, to make sure you guys know how accessible these strategies are. I think once you’re making about 50 K in profit or more, you have tax strategies available to you. So if, if you, if you immediately dismiss that and say, well I’m not rich enough to do strategies, wait for it. Because there’s always a way to plant the seeds now and then be able to take advantage later. I would say number one for me, and I just love it, is the S corporation once you elect to be taxed as an S corp, which is just an outfit we throw on your corporation or your L L C so that the government doesn’t make you pay self-employment tax on a certain part of your profit. And all that really is, is you’re saving so much money with every dollar of profit that you keep.
SW (26:52):
And as you grow, you’re just saving year over year over year. And if you’re not doing that, you can be overpaying so much money in self-employment tax. And it really is as simple as making an election and faxing four pieces of paper to the i r s to avoid so many thousands of dollars in taxes. And I think that many entrepreneurs aren’t even aware of this or they’re a little bit suspicious of it, like it’s too good to be true. And I go, it isn’t because a lot of these guys in congress started these companies and they started doing this. So so it’s absolutely legit strategy and if you’re in good shape with your bookkeeping and you’re compliant and you’ve paid all your taxes so far, you’re in great shape to implement that as well. That’s one of my favorite hacks.
AJV (27:32):
So on that note, so we are an L L C with, you know, the S corp tax selection. And one of the things I think would be great is going, you know, well now that you’re technically an employee of the business, what is an adequate salary to pay yourself so you don’t get flagged Yep. But also so that you are receiving the actual benefit of doing such. This thing.
SW (27:55):
I think the biggest mistake people make with this reasonable salary requirement on an S corp is they, they just kind of pull it out of thin air. We go through a comprehensive analysis where we actually look at comparables, we analyze your time, we analyze your region, we, we look at what people are getting paid to do your job and we look at how much time you’re spending in versus on your business. And we do a comprehensive analysis with our S corp clients twice a year to make sure that their compensation is reasonable and it can be backed up in the case of an audit. And this gets to the point of the strategy is only good as what you write down because if you can’t tell the story through documentation and evidence, your deductions will get disallowed. Yes. So it’s just as important to know the strategy and to go implement it properly with the right evidence, illustration, and storyline that that talks for itself. Then you don’t have to actually explain or you know, have to fight with an i r S agent in an audit you have all the evidence that backs it up.
AJV (28:50):
So what would be some of the evidence documentation that you would recommend?
SW (28:54):
So for, let’s say for the salary, right? I would want comparable jobs in my region. I would want to see maybe a calendar of like, show me how you spend your time. Show me a bit of how you work on your clients. Right. I would just say a lot of that can be proven just because it is the business owner, they are the expert. But a great example too is another tax hack, which is called the Augusta Rule, which Oh yeah, we may have heard about where you can rent out your primary residence to your business for up to 14 days a year at the market rate of rent for a meeting space. Yeah. But when you’re picking that rate of rent for the meeting space, you gotta have comparables. You gotta be able to show that that’s a fair rental rate. Cuz if you’re charging 10 grand a day for your house in Nashville, I’m like, well the Marriott doesn’t charge that, so we gotta figure out how you feel like you can actually, unless
AJV (29:45):
You are in Nashville and then they do .
SW (29:49):
True. But if you wanna host a like three person meeting in your space, it’s kind of like, well you don’t need, you know, the Gran Ole Opry to, to do that. So we actually look at, you know, what is a reasonable comparable rental rate. You know, what is what, what could we use as a basis to argue this is how much we’re gonna deduct and why that would be acceptable by the I r s. So there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do on the backend to prepare to make your case.
AJV (30:17):
Yeah. You know, that’s so good. This, you know, I think both of these are super helpful and it’s, and then it’s like, you know, I’m curious, I mean it’s, I think it’s, we still have like two years with a 1 99 a you know, business deduction with a passthrough, right? Mm-Hmm. , it’s about two years left on that. And it’s again, one of those benefits of an L L C with an S corp. If you’re not taking a salary, then it’s like you get this pass through benefit. But it’s good to go back and go, okay, to justify why I pay myself this amount, this is how much I work in the birth business on the business, this is how I could replace myself, this is what I would pay. Like just having that pre-planned so wise that’s so smart. And then the same thing with the Augusta rule. Like, I did a little BA background digging because I got bored one day and I was like, because also I’m from Dalton, Georgia and I’m like, like Augusta, like Augusta, Georgia. And it was like, yeah. Yes. Actually Augusta, Georgia, because the masters Yes,
SW (31:13):
The masters, yes. That’s how it started. So they wanted to go, let’s be real, the senators wanted to go to the masters.
AJV (31:18):
I mean, I want, it’s like so much of this is so crazy. So one of the things that I picked up, and I’m curious to get your thoughts on this to how accurate or am I just being completely O C D over here, but it’s like I go to like the crazy extent every single month I have like a little meetings template of this was the meeting that was held at my house. These were the attendees, this was the time that it was held. And then I have my assistant make one of those for every single month for our meetings. That did happen at my house, but we actually have meetings minutes from each of those meetings are, is it that level of documentation or is that like overkill?
SW (31:54):
No, no, that is perfect. That’s actually what we, we give templates for that as well. We don’t put in air quotes. They’re legit meeting minutes. They’re they’re they’re legit. They’re, but they’re like the meeting minutes. But also we think outside the box too, because you can use the house for other things than, than meetings. So for example, I have a client who used her home for photo shoots. Yeah, yeah. And that’s great. We have the photos to prove it. We have actually ba behind the scenes footage of how much of the house they were consuming with backdrops and cameras and lighting and, and the catering for the, the, the crew. Like it was a big deal. Like this is a large mansion in LA that happens to be where she lives. And I’m like, go figure. Like this is such a funny thing that I would never let slide for certain clients.
SW (32:34):
And I’m like, no, this is actually like really legit. Like you’re filming content all day in your house. Yeah. And like your kids had to leave, you needed to get childcare. Like this whole thing. I go, I, I can see how that could be, that could work cuz it was actually cheaper than going to another photo shoot location to use the home. Mm-Hmm . So we basically found a comparable rate that we could use that was pretty conservative and and it benefited them greatly to keep that cash flow in house because here’s how these things work, right? Tax-Free cash flow, it’s a deduction to the business. Meaning it lowers your profit and therefore lowers your taxable income. But also when you’re, when you’re paying that, that is not income to the recipient, it’s not income to you as an individual because of the Augusta rule because they give you a 14 day headstart, like a freebie. So basically until you cross 14 days of renting out your house, it’s not really rental income. You don’t have to claim it. So basically cuz of that rule, you get a tax free transfer of cash from your business to you personally if you use this rule the right way.
AJV (33:35):
Okay. So two things on that. This has come up in other questions that around this conversation in my entrepreneur community is one, do you have to give yourself a 10 99 on that?
SW (33:45):
Yes.
AJV (33:46):
Okay. So asking what’s really important to know, because again, auditors ask for it, document it, still gotta document it. This comes up so much in our entrepreneur community. And then the second thing, cause so many people now are working from home and it is your primary quote unquote business and it’s your home. Mm-Hmm. , does this still apply if you have a from home at home business?
SW (34:11):
It can, there, this is a very tight, I had to pay for research on this because this is such a, like a nuanced thing. So, so here’s how, if your home is your business location, there’s two things you’ll need. Now, can you use Augusta? Yes you can. But that would be a secondary thing. And I would start with figuring out what portion of your home is exclusively used for business and is the primary place you conduct business? I e a home office. So if you have a home office space, or let’s say you’re a product-based business, like e-commerce, I have clients who use their whole garage, uhhuh or maybe they have one car and a whole bay of their garage is storage. So I go, okay, let’s measure the square footage of the home office space. That’s exclusively business. I’m not talking about like I’m sitting here in a guest bedroom, I’m not talking about the bed and all the other stuff.
SW (34:59):
I’m talking about the desk area where I actually work. Then I add in like the storage spaces, whatever is like really just business use and divide that over the total square footage of your home. Now you have a percentage and that percentage is how much of your home expenses can be pushed through the business. Yeah. But this is done a very certain way depending on what type of business entity you have, this is executed a certain type of way. And we call this the accountable plan for my S-corp and c corp owners. We call this the accountable plan. And you can reimburse yourself from your business these types of expenses. So you can pay a portion of your mortgage interest, a portion of your rent, a portion of your utilities security, landscaping, cleaning, repairs and maintenance. Like it’s, it’s all over the place and it can actually really add up. And if you’re using a lot of your home as your business, then that’s a really big benefit. Beyond that, you could use the Augusta theoretically to rent space that is not part of your primary business use. But that requires a bit of map and that square footage and like I would definitely back it up if you’re gonna use both of those con conjoined, you have to have really good documentation to clearly separate the, the space that you’re renting versus the space that you’re using for your business.
AJV (36:11):
I think that’s, it’s so good to get double verification from a professional versus my coursework . Yes. But it’s like for, you know, like I’ll give you an example of like, something that we do that we started doing for this unique reason is we host quarterly socials, like quarterly social event for our employees and we do them at our home. They’re not in our home office, but we use our backyard, we use our pool, we use our kitchen, we use our living room, we use our dining room, we use all these non at home business locations that are a part of our residential property to then it’s like if I were to go rent out a rooftop pool and any place downtown Nashville, I’m gonna be paying easily 30 grand easily to rent out this entire rooftop or pay myself to have it here at the vaden villa pool. Well back out those windows. Right? Yeah.
SW (37:07):
I love it. . Yeah. That, that can be beneficial. The, and I wanna add on to this too, that like me saying this doesn’t just make it deductible. Ultimately every i r s agent is going to interpret things differently. Yeah. Be able to enforce them differently. This is just my interpretation cuz there’s nothing in the tax code and this is the burden of it that it’s so specific, it leaves a lot of stuff out, but it’s also so vague that it leaves a lot of stuff out. So there’s a lot of things that they don’t specify about how, how these things interact with each other. So until they put tax code in place, there’s a lot of gray area that isn’t really spelled out and this is one of those things. Hmm. So depending on how you interpret the law or how your professional interprets the law that you can potentially take advantage of this or you know, a a an auditor can easily come to you and say, I don’t think that’s reasonable.
SW (37:57):
I don’t think that entertainment should count. I don’t think this based on their interpretation of the law. And usually when I’m representing clients with an auditor, it’s me and the auditor reading the, the law and saying, here’s what I’m reading and them saying, here’s what I’m reading. And it’s different things. Yeah. And then you have to kind of agree on agree to disagree and agree on some type of like, negotiation, but there’s a lot of gray area and that’s part of why having a professional is key to help you kind of translate that because it’s not really all spelled out for you.
AJV (38:27):
Oh, I love that. All right. One last tax strategy, tax savings tip,
SW (38:33):
I would say. Okay. So we, we went through a little bit of the accountable plan, the Augusta rule. I would say, oh my god, my favorite strategy to implement, even though it’s the most work , is hiring your kids.
AJV (38:43):
Oh
SW (38:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, here’s why it’s my favorite, number one it, number one tax savings straight up. Like you can pay them up to, I think we’re up to 13,850 this year. Oh, oh, up pay them. It went up and it keeps going up. So we increase the standard deduction so you can pay them up to that standard deduction. Now they can, I should say, they can make up to that standard deduction. If they got a job at Wendy’s, then that goes into the mix too. So you gotta make sure that they’re not making more than that limit, otherwise they’re paying taxes. But ultimately you can pay your kids to do age appropriate work and that’s the key to do age appropriate work. You’re not gonna hire your two year old to be a courier and drive you around. Like you can’t do that.
SW (39:25):
So you have to make sure that it’s age appropriate and that you have really good documentation of how they’ve spent their time, what they were doing, how they were doing it the hours they were spending, how much you paid them. And there’s a very mechanical way, which I won’t go into on how you have to pay them through payroll. That requires a lot of setup and infrastructure. But once you build that mouse trap, like once me and my team help entrepreneurs build that system, you can pay them up to 13,850 a year. And the beauty of it is they can also put that into, let’s say a Roth ira mm-hmm. meaning no tax on the way in tax-free growth and no tax on the way out. So if they’re young enough too, you can start this process. Next thing you know, you’re building tax-free wealth for your kids.
SW (40:05):
They graduate school and they have this, this whole amount of money to use to go buy their first place or to go on their next phase of life. So that one of the reasons why I love doing that is the tax-free wealth building. The other reason is I love teaching kids about money. I love having kids get a paycheck and like look at it and go, taxes taken out. Right. Or whatever it is. And understanding what it means to work and get paid. Yeah. Because I do believe that when kids understand that money, you know, isn’t guaranteed that you have to work for it in some way, whether that’s physical labor, being smart, being creative, whatever that may be, that you’re gonna be rewarded for that by being able to make money and learning that at a young age is so powerful.
AJV (40:46):
Yep. That money don’t grow on trees. drives me nuts when my parents used to say that and now I’m like, I’m that parent. I’m like, where do you think this money comes from? Yeah. So like on that note, like a couple of things I think would be great questions of like, okay, so let’s just say your kids are eligible to, you know, be employees with legitimate, you know, business tax Of course. Could you put ’em on a 401k?
SW (41:15):
Could you, could you, yes. It depends on the type of business you have. There’s a ton of questions that just popped into my head. So it’s like case by case possibly I’ll say,
AJV (41:25):
Okay. Because that could be a po potential thing. Again, like these are just all the things that I’m constantly like, can we do this? Can we do this? Can we do this? Mm-Hmm. is, do, is there an a minimum age for something like a four [inaudible] or Roth ira?
SW (41:40):
Oh, the minimum age for those I’m not aware of. That would be a great question for A C F P, but I was thinking you were gonna ask a minimum age to hire the kids. And I will add in that it’s ideal. Most of the SEC social security administration and others generally look at seven and up as like, just seven’s like a functional human that can actually do things. If they’re, if they’re really, if they’re like infants on your payroll, then they’re generally in marketing content. Like I had a, a client that sold baby clothes and I was like, that’s legit. She’s in every single photo. Yeah. So I, I would say that would make sense to me, but the it has to be, again, age appropriate and business connection. So if they’re just in marketing content, but your stuff has nothing to do with family, I would also kind of weigh the options of that. And if it’s worthwhile, it has to be pay that’s is appropriate and experience appropriate. Like you can’t pay your infant 10 k a month or whatever. . Yeah.
AJV (42:34):
So
SW (42:34):
I would not, I would not stretch that to the extent, if they really can’t work more than like 20 minutes a month, I would say, well, let’s be realistic on what you’d actually get paid to do
AJV (42:43):
That. So, and this is I think, really super applicable to a personal brand audience. And it’s like my whole personal brand is about being a mom and an entrepreneur. So I hired my kids as child models.
SW (42:58):
Yep.
AJV (42:58):
Because they were required to be in these big photo shoots for my website, for my social content or blogs because the whole, my whole thing is about like balancing both entrepreneurship and motherhood. Right. And so this is like, I literally went out and said, what would I be paying to go rent some kids , aren’t my kids for these like photo shoots? And it was like, I’m
SW (43:24):
Laughing at, I’m laughing at what agency you would go to to like rent it. Like I know it’s model agencies, but the, like, I need to rent to
AJV (43:32):
Kids agencies. And it was $180 an hour
SW (43:37):
Wow. For one
AJV (43:38):
Through these modeling agencies. Now of course the kids don’t end up getting that. Right. But I was like $180 an hour. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So my kids are child model employees. They are required to do all the photo shoots. I tell ’em to and they’re child models now they’re under seven, but it’s, again, it’s applicable work and it’s, it’s, they have contracts. So we made ’em a contract I had to sign as their legal guardian. Right. And it, there is like, when it comes to payroll, so much additional paperwork and I had to like file all this stuff and sign this stuff and all the things. It’s
SW (44:12):
Gotta be worth it. It’s gotta be worth it. And, and I think a lot of business owners, a lot of business owners have, like, they may do that, but they don’t do that many photo shoots or they may want to do that, but it may not be as applicable. And I go like, is it worth all the work to save a couple hundred bucks in taxes? Like is it, is it, wouldn’t you rather spend that time making more money than worrying about all the payroll documentation, the contracts and all that stuff? And sometimes the answer is it’s not worth it. Yeah. And I’m totally okay sacrificing a little bit of tax savings for a lot of time because it really comes down to is it worth it for you as a business owner, this is one thing I truly believe is that if anyone is just like throwing cookie cutter tech strategies at you, go do this, go do this, go do this without understanding how it actually benefits you or what it actually requires of you in terms of a commitment to your responsibility to maintain that, then I think they’re doing you a disservice because you need to make a co I make a conscious decision on, okay, if I do this, I get this result.
SW (45:09):
But if, is that result worth the work? Mm-Hmm. and the answer might not, maybe no, it may be no.
AJV (45:15):
You know, it’s like I get hit up, we use Gusto and it’s like gusts always like sending something and they keep being like, do you wanna qualify for $8,000 in the, you know r and b credits? And I’m always like, no, no, no, I don’t because the amount of work that it would take to apply and file for that stuff would cost me 20 to get eight. So I think that’s a really good thing. It’s like sometimes we see, oh, credit this, credit that, and you realize yeah, the amount of hours and time and all the things to get that is so much more than what the savings would actually be.
SW (45:49):
Yeah, I agree. And and it’s the same with tax deductions. People misunderstand tax deductions and think it’s like a rebate or a credit and I go, no, A deduction is a coupon, A credit is a gift card. So when a deduction comes in, you get a percentage off. So when I look at it, I like think about going to a store you go to, like I used, remember we used to go to the mall and go to like Ann Taylor and there was just sales everywhere. It was like every day was a sale or New York and Company in those places in the mall. And I’d be like, it’s only this much, it’s 20% off. And it’s like, it’s always 20% off. It goes between 20 and 40. It goes between 20 and 40% off. Like it’s never not on sale because that’s how they’re getting you to buy it.
SW (46:26):
Yeah. So instead of don’t spend a hundred to save 20 because you’re spending 80, you’re still negative 80. So when you’re, whenever you’re looking at tax strategy and deductions, you’ve gotta make sure that there is a benefit beyond the tax savings to the thing that you’re doing. Like don’t go buy a G wagon just to save on taxes because you’re probably not gonna save on taxes. You gotta pay for that in insurance. You gotta pay for the thing, you gotta maintenance for maintenance, you gotta pay for the oil changes you gotta pay. So you gotta be ready for the responsibility of those things. It’s not just a tax rebate as you know, the 15 second videos on TikTok would leave you to believe, but there’s a lot more that goes into
AJV (47:04):
It. I love that. I wanna make sure I wrote this down. Credit is like a gift card. Yes. But a deduction is like a coupon. Correct. That’s so good. Just simple everyday metaphors that we can kind of relate to because it is easy to get caught up in all the, whoever TikTok, Instagram, it’s like, you know, there’s a lot where it’s like, I actually need to verify your fi, you know, your credentials. Are you an actual financial anything? Who’s like, spouting out all this stuff when you actually, you go back and you get to the heart of it and you’re like, that is a lot of work. That doesn’t even apply to me. And you find it after hours and lots of dollars trying to figure it out. So just little simple ways. This is so helpful. There are so many things like we could continue this conversation probably for eight hours and still not cover even like, scratch the surface of things that you do. Shannon, where should people go to learn more about you?
SW (47:58):
So you can find me on my podcast, which is called Keep What You Earn. We have five episodes a week and I drop stuff. I have episodes on everything we discussed today. Much more in depth. And people like AJ on to interview them and learn more about business strategy and all dimensions of your business.
AJV (48:11):
Y’all go subscribe, download, comment, like, share, do all the things. Keep what you earn. Podcast with Shannon Weinstein, y’all, this is gold. This will help you keep more of the money that you’re making. Thank you so much, Shannon, for being on the show. For everyone listening stay in tune for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. Until next time, we’ll see you later.

Ep 376: How to Build A Credible Personal Brand with Dr. Mariel Buqué

RV (00:02):
I am delighted that you get to meet a newer friend of mine, but someone who I absolutely adore and I feel is really, really a special soul. And this woman is a true expert and a total class act, and you probably have already seen her on social, but I predict that she’s, she’s gonna be one of the most influential personal brands in the mental health space in our era. So her name is Dr. Mariel Buque, and she is a Columbia University trained psychologist. Okay. So she’s an actual psychologist, a trauma expert. She’s the author of a book coming out called Break the Cycle which is from Penguin which is my publisher, Woohoo. Go Penguin. And she’s been featured on CNN and the Today Show b ABC News, and she does corporate wellness workshops to companies like Google and Twitter and Capital One and Facebook.
RV (00:57):
Her and I shared the stage together at Louis How Summit of Greatness. So she was one of the other speakers, and that was how I met her. And I immediately was like, Aw, I just love this woman. She’s awesome. And so we got to connect a little bit and I want you to hear her story because, you know, she, she was a psychologist and she had a practice, which we’re gonna talk about, and she’s gone from that to over 700,000 followers online. Huge following on both, both Instagram and TikTok. And so I want to hear about some of what her strategy’s been with social media, how she kind of went from, you know private practice to personal brand and just kind of hear that journey. And then also, you know, maybe, maybe we’ll get some free trauma counseling out of it along the way. So Dr. Mariel Buque, welcome to the show.
MB (01:49):
Thank you so much. Rory I’m such a fan of yours just from a professional standpoint, but also you’re just such a wonderful person and so I’m, I’m delighted to be with you here today.
RV (02:00):
Well, thanks buddy. I, so, so tell us your story. So you go to Columbia, you become, you, you’re a classically trained psychologist, and then did you immediately, like, start a, a private practice?
MB (02:13):
No, actually I started a private practice in the pandemic, but even prior to, I was already offering some education online as a student. So part of the reason why I decided to start offering information was because I was seeing so much of this information floating through these ivory towers, right? We have like these peer review journals and all these places where we place information that’s really important for the public to know, but it wasn’t really out there. And so I was like, okay, social media is a public space that can be a space where people can gather some of this mental health information. So it kind of all started even before I graduated, about a year or two before that. And then I transitioned into being a psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center. So I was a staff psychologist there in addition to also holding some courses. I was a professor in the medical center and in the main campus. And then within a year’s time, that’s when I developed my private practice. So I was very busy.
RV (03:17):
Wow. Okay. All, so you actually started while you were still in school, so you were still, you were a grad student mm-hmm. . And and then, and then you were, you said you were a counselor at Columbia University Medical and also a professor.
MB (03:31):
That’s
RV (03:31):
Right, yeah. And then went into private practice. So, so talk to me a little bit about social media, like the journey on social media, because I think there’s a lot of, a lot of people say, well, I’m not an online influencer, and I don’t know if social media applies to me because I don’t wanna do dances on TikTok, or, you know, I don’t really want to do hashtags. And our audience, you know, we describe as mission driven messengers mm-hmm. , and if I had to sum it up in one word, I would call ’em experts. I would say that they’re experts and, and you know, I just have this deep-rooted belief that you, you know, there’s nothing wrong with all of these things. You know, different transitions and reels and like, you know, learning all the skills, the hashtags and the angles and the, you know, the dancing and the music and whatever.
RV (04:17):
But I’m a, I’m a really firm believer that if you just share your expertise, there’s gotta be a way to make this all work. And when I look at, when I follow you and I go, oh my gosh, you have blown up so massively. So can you just like, tell us how did you get started on social media? What are some of your philosophies there? And, and also like, yeah, just like your mindset of going, you know, you’re a Columbia trained psychologist, but yet you’re on social media and, and, and going, there’s a little bit of a dichotomy there of like credibility mm-hmm. things, but clearly you’ve, you’ve made it work for you in a really big way.
MB (04:55):
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting that you say the, that there’s that dichotomy because when I first started off, I actually, I was really hopeful that none of my professors would find me on social media, , .
MB (05:11):
Cause I thought, you know, this perhaps doesn’t present as professional. They might have some sort of view on what, how I’m presenting the information to make it more accessible to the general public and not feel like this, like very dense clinical information. And so there were so many things that I had to think about in, in reference to how to make the information feel like it was reaching the places that I wanted it to reach. And interestingly enough, I’m actually going to speak at Columbia this week. So it’s, it’s very, very interesting how that, the reason why I’m going to go speak at Columbia is because of the visibility that I’ve been able to amass based on social media. So it, it’s just coming back so full circle where, where,
RV (05:57):
I just think it’s funny cuz it’s like, normally, you know, people post stuff online and they’re like, I hope my parents don’t find out, or I hope like, you know, my, my boyfriend and my girlfriend doesn’t see. And you’re like, yeah, I hope my professors don’t see, I think . That’s, that’s so funny. Yeah.
MB (06:12):
You know, it was in part because it was so new, like, I was one of the, the first therapists and therapists in training that were coming into the social media space. So we didn’t have a blueprint for how we were supposed to be showing up into these spaces. We were just doing it based on our own personal style. And this is one thing that I, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned even through looking at your work, shout out to Lewis House also, like looking at how Louis shows up to the work itself as well. And I, because I show up from a place of wanting to serve in addition to wanting to be very authentic in my delivery, I think that’s worked out really well for me. And it’s something that people have gravitated to because they appreciate the authentic expression of the things that I say.
MB (07:01):
Right? And like being able to connect with the real human, but then also because I show up from a place of wanting to serve every day, I present information that is driven towards like, helping the public to better feel, better educated, and feel healed. And so that allows me to step into these spaces without having to overthink how it is reflected upon me. So I think that that’s been really helpful and being able to see the folks that I’ve been able to connect with, like you and Lewis and others, and also just bring in my own element of authenticity into this work. And I think that that has contributed to the, the amalgamation of like, you know followers across all these social media spaces.
RV (07:46):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, I mean, I, I think that’s really powerful because you go, Hey, on the one hand, I don’t wanna risk like my professional credibility with my peers and my colleagues. On the other hand, you’re, you’re going, I’m using social media as an outlet to serve people so that I’m, I’m deliberately trying to make this information more accessible, as you say, which I think is a, is a great word, word for it. So how would you describe your social media strategy? Like, when you just think about it and you go, in my mind, here’s what I think about in terms of the type of content I’m gonna present, the way I’m gonna present it, the frequency at which I’m gonna present it. Can you just like, talk to us briefly about about that? Like just what, what are some of, what’s your mindset as a, as how you approach content creation for social?
MB (08:42):
Mm. Ooh, I love this question. Content creation has been a combination of a few things. The first of which is a unique approach that has been very, very much a part of what has driven like my mission to show up in these spaces. And what I mean by that is, I have this way that I present information with something that I do every single day, which is drink tea. And so I present the information like I’m having tea with someone and I’m breaking the fourth wall and I’m engaging the person. And when I started doing that, I started getting the feedback that people were actually feeling like they were landing in a gentle place where they can actually like listen to a tip that felt doable, accessible. And so when I started hearing from my community that that was the case, I started doing more of those very unique types of videos. In addition to that, in terms of the cadence, I believe that right now algorithms are a little bit influx, but what matters is that people notice your presence. So I have had a steady flow of information for now almost seven years.
RV (09:56):
Wow.
MB (09:57):
Yeah. It’s been a while. . So the information has looked very different because I started off just as many of us did with very dry mental health information. Like, this is depression, this is anxiety, these are the symptoms. And we were just educating the public and bringing that information out. Whereas now there’s a lot more that people are talking about, what is codependency? What’s trauma, you know? So there are a lot more nuances that people are willing to engage in, in terms of the work. And so there’s more that we can do in terms of how we can deliver it. And there’s so much more content that we can actually use because people are having, you know, these kinds of words in their vocabulary and they’re, they’re understanding what we’re saying outside of the therapy room. So the cadence is daily. And what I aim to do is to provide information that hopefully people feel is new in some way.
MB (10:52):
Like, I presented information about grief the other day and how grief is connected to healing. That’s something that a lot of people, my followers were like, wow, I never thought of it that way. This is something that I’d like to sit with. Right? And so the fact that it’s new information, or at least my, my interpretation of how healing can look is allowing someone to take a step back into their life and really think about their healing work in a different way. So I try to add that element in there too, in addition to the other pieces. But I have realized that when you show up with consistency, people that digest your information are really grateful for the fact that you’re willing to do that.
RV (11:38):
When you say daily, break that down for me, like mm-hmm. , does that, does that mean every single day? Saturday and Sunday? Does that mean multiple times a day? Does that mean you’re like going, you have a YouTube video every day and a bunch of, you know, Instagram posts? Like, like talk to me about that. The, what, when you say showing up daily, cuz that’s, that’s an, that’s an insight in and of itself to just go like, Hey, you’ve been doing this for seven years. It’s, it’s not an overnight success story. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s like consistency always wins. I mean, if you post great content for seven years, how could you lose? Like, but, but break it down. Tell me the seven, well, tell me what you’re doing every day. Like what’s your daily rhythm?
MB (12:21):
Yeah. So I must say there is one day where I’m no longer posting, and that’s because I’ve looked into my insights and that day isn’t a very highly engaging day, which is Friday. And so every platform’s different, every account is different. So I would urge anyone that is like hoping to understand how their users are digesting their content to look into their insights. So Fridays is the day off, basically, but on my bigger platforms on Instagram and TikTok, there is a, an almost daily presentation of information in some way or another. There’s a carousel post, there’s a video, there’s some sort of a repost of somewhere where I’ve been. And I have also restructured, especially my Instagram into being break the cycle of trauma, that being one account, which is primarily the information that you’ll find in my upcoming book, and like information that can be digestible around trauma.
MB (13:23):
And then there’s my main account, Dr. Dot Mario Bouquet, which is where I present some information about what I have going on in addition to some mental health tips. So there, I, I’ve actually just recently broken them out instead of having everything live in one space. And the reason being is because I wanted there to be a space where people can go to and then just digest the information and a space where pe where that would be more branded in, in reference to my own personal brand. Now typically what the posts look like are carousel posts or reels, given that they’re so popular now with a boom of TikTok. And whenever I’m doing a tee time video presenting information in that way, that’s typically presented like on a weekly, now two times a month basis. And I, I find that presenting the information in that way gives people an, an opportunity to look forward to the information and to really digest it even more. Versus when I was posting a video on tee time and trauma every single day, I felt like I was oversaturating my audience and it wasn’t being received in the same way. So I did do a little bit of internal studying of what has worked, what the feedback I’ve received in the comments section, dms, I get emails every day. So all of this, I’ve kind of created my own self case study, if you may, and it has led me to figure out what the right cadence is for me on each of these platforms.
RV (15:01):
Mm-Hmm. and, and so, so is tee time a longer format post?
MB (15:07):
It is, it’s an approximate minute of me inviting someone to tea, offering up a, a bit of information about mental health, providing a mental health tip that they can try for the week, and then closing out the segment within a minute’s time. I don’t know how I do it, but it, it gets done.
RV (15:25):
Okay. And so you do that, you do that only once a week?
MB (15:28):
Once a week, sometimes twice a month, just depending on whether or not I can actually provide my team with the video that they need to chop up and make into a tee time. But yes, once a week.
RV (15:42):
Okay. But it’s, it’s only a 62nd video.
MB (15:45):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. But it, it’s, it’s about seven minutes before it’s chopped up.
RV (15:50):
Oh, it’s a seven. So it’s a seven minute video mm-hmm. that you record that then gets chopped up and they take like one, the, like, the top 60 seconds of it and that’s what they turn into a post for you? Yeah,
MB (16:02):
Yeah, because it’s a, it has a certain style, so it’s chopped up in a certain way where it’s inviting, it’s a little bit on the therapy humor and but it brings us back into something that’s a little more serious, so it has a flow to it and the editing behind it you know, requires for me to have a little bit more B-roll.
RV (16:21):
Got it. And then the rest of that, like every day you’re doing just a carousel post with more of like just text copy and tips that way and, and then other personal stuff or re-sharing things that you’ve been up to. Mm-Hmm.
MB (16:36):
. That’s right. Yeah.
RV (16:38):
Mm-Hmm. . How, and so tell me about your team. So you bring up a good, a good point, right? I think this is something that people struggle with as they’re like, okay, well, you know, I, I have some of this, I have some expertise, right? Like, I’m a lawyer, or I’m a, you know, I’m a C P A or whatever. I’m a financial advisor. Like I’ve got this, this professional, you know, expertise, but I don’t have the time to do this and I don’t, maybe I don’t love social media or don’t even feel comfortable, like, or maybe I don’t even get on the apps that much and like, push the buttons and like, know what to do to whatever, edit the, edit the reels and, and, and all of that. How do you get around that and how big is your team? And, and, and talk me through like the evolution of your team. So when you first started, I’m guessing you maybe did, were doing it yourself. And then how has that evolved where you’re at now?
MB (17:28):
Yeah. So I absolutely first started with doing it every, doing everything myself. And interestingly enough, when I was doing interviews for publishers, like shopping around publishers to determine who I was gonna go with for my book in every single meeting, and I have 15 of these me meetings Wow. Within a two day span. And in all of those meetings, everyone asked you do all that yourself. And I said, yes, I do. And so they actually couldn’t believe it, but I realized in that moment, I need to outsource. I’m clearly doing much more than what I need to be doing. And what I learned in that journey is that people have an area of expertise in their respective area that can help burgeon your platform that you may not have. And outsourcing is actually one of the wisest things that you can do in order to really build a platform beyond, you know, where you are.
MB (18:22):
So right now, my team is still relatively small, but it’s a very mighty team. And so I have a brand manager someone who is a, a content creator and facilitates a lot of the brand elements of what is forward facing to my followers. I have someone who manages more of the financial side of things and helps me in orienting me around those moving pieces. Someone who in essence oversees everyone else who is more of a business manager and oversees also all of the moving pieces of the business, including speaking, although I am transitioning into speaking via a speaker’s bureau and which is it, it’s still tentative who I’m gonna go with. But I have been managing all of that on my own, on the backend with my team. And so there is a person that helps me to make sure that everything is like running smoothly.
MB (19:28):
So it’s been, in essence, more of a, with myself included four person team, which I think given how much I have on my plate is most of what I can manage. But I do believe that having someone that oversees everything has freed up a lot of my own space to be able to be creative, know what kind of content I wanna put out, because I still very much am tied to that part of the work. And the reason being is because it’s such sensitive material that I have to be closely connected to it, whatever goes out into the public. And so it, it gives me an opportunity to do that, to write and to think about, you know, the evolution of what will be out there in the future for, for all of us, for my business.
RV (20:12):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So, and, and business model wise. So you finished school mm-hmm.
MB (20:20):

RV (20:21):
When, when you first started, you, you, you were a counselor, right? So you, you, you, you were taking on clients and that was how you were bringing in most of your money mm-hmm. and then how, how has your bus, how has the business model evolved? Like, how have the revenue streams kind of come and gone and changed over the, over the time span of, of making this like your official full-time gig? Mm-Hmm.
MB (20:45):
. So it has had an evolution that has geared in the direction of consulting, writing, and speaking. So those are my main areas. Now. I do a lot of corporate wellness consulting. And then as you mentioned, you know, kind of through some of my bio stuff, and then also with the authorship journey, it’s my very first book, right? So I did give myself an opportunity to, to streamline everything else so that I can then focus on the writing piece. The evolution of that was primarily me trying to set up the business financially. So before I, I used to take on a lot of brand partnerships with some of the health organizations that are out there, Ali Wellness, c v s even some organizations that had a health element or an element around self care, like anthropology for example, or Dove who weren’t necessarily like health organizations, but were connected to a mission to serve in, in the area of mental health.
MB (21:48):
And so all of that actually helped me with the financial setup to be able to then create a team and have an actual funnel of income to individuals that can help me to build what, what I really desired, which was an evolution of my expertise in the authorship and speaker arena, right? And so now that’s where I am now. I’m, I’ve been able to build that out. I have a really solid book deal. You know, I have a strategy for how to move forward. And so all of that is now in place because I first started off with doing all those other things, right? Like all the things that are in your traditional kind of psychology trajectory, being a clinician, being a professor, and consulting here and there, but not as much as I’m doing now.
RV (22:39):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I, one of the things that I love about the way that you’ve done what you have done is you know, like a lot of times, you know, lots of people wanna write a book, and, and one of the, one of the big things that we’re always telling people is we’re saying, Hey, build the audience before you build the book. Because you gotta have, you gotta have people who, who want to buy the book really like because you know, we all think, oh, I’ll just write a book and then all of a sudden, you know, everybody will run out and buy it. But it’s like, you really need that kind of core fan base. Mm-Hmm. . So how do you nurture that fan base? Like in addition to posting, how do you handle are like, are you doing comments and dms all day long? Like, are, how much time do you spend on that actual you know, interaction piece?
MB (23:36):
I go in at least once a day to make sure that I’m connected in some way to community and see it, especially if there are any comments that I feel, feel like might need special attention, however, and, and also with people that DM me that wanna build with me in some way. There’s a lot of people like that, and I, I don’t wanna miss those messages, but for the most part, the, the, my team member who is managing a lot of the content side does have a good way of being able to connect with people in a way that is my voice in many ways. A lot of us are doing now. Because sometimes these platforms just get way too big and it can be a bit overwhelming to manage it as one person. So I try to stay connected to the community. And even through my newsletter, like in my newsletters, people email me still via the newsletter when they receive it, and they’ll tell me it’s a newsletter that helps people with coping skills.
MB (24:34):
And people always tell me like, this one really helped me. I’m gonna use this one this week. And so I try to be responsive there as well. However, because of the enormity of these platforms, now I, I can’t respond to everyone. And before, when I first started off that first and second year, every comment was attended to every last one, even when I was at, you know, 10, 20, 30,000. But now it, it’s almost impossible to do. But I do try and make sure that if there’s ever any sensitive material or if there’s anybody who feels a little bit more tender and sensitive or like they really want to connect that they’re being attended to, because one of the things that is really important for me is for a person to feel like when they come to any of my platforms, they feel a sense of security, safety and like they’ve landed in a soft place. And if I can make that even, even though I can’t please everyone, if I can make that a core part of my mission, then I’ve been able to really fulfill a lot of what I’m, I feel like is a part of the work that I’m here to, to do. So the, the comment section is an important part of my work, but you know, the more that we grow the, the harder it gets to mm-hmm. manage
RV (25:58):
. Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. I mean, that’s true about everything. I mean, the, the more the business grows, it’s like it’s harder to keep up within, that’s how you end up creating jobs for people and, and doing that. So well, Dr. Marielle, this is, this has been so good. Like, it’s so cool to to hear this. I got one other question for you, but before we do that, where do you want people to go if they want to connect up to you and like, follow your journey? And, and obviously we didn’t talk much about what your actual expertise is, like intergenerational trauma and like, you know, like you said, the dealing with having coping skills and things for, for dealing with, with trauma and mental health. But where should people go if they wanna, if they wanna follow you?
MB (26:41):
They can go to dr marielle bouquet.com, which is my website. And there, there’s just about everything that I’m up to, but I’m Dr. Dot Marielle bouquet on all socials, and so they can find me in that way as well.
RV (26:55):
Uh huh . So, and it’s, and her name is m a r i e L, and then Bouquet is spelled B U Q U E, just so you all know. So head over and at least leave her a comment or a shout out on TikTok or Instagram and follow her and, and just let her know that you heard her here on influential personal Brand podcast, Dr. Mariel is, if, if there’s somebody out there who is professional services person who’s like, has a really deep expertise, who really cares a lot about quality and credibility, and you know, has a true desire to maintain professionalism within their craft mm-hmm. but they’ve been sort of slow to adapt to social media or to adopt social media, or you just haven’t made it a priority, what advice or encouragement would you give, you know, would you give to that person?
MB (27:49):
I would say bring your authenticity and your voice. So find whatever it is that it is your voice within this space, within your own respective health space, and bring that in. Like, there are people waiting to hear from you. And I think we oftentimes, we’re, we’re so caught up in our own process of how to make it happen, that we forget that there’s an audience that’s there that’s waiting for our voice. And in addition to that, I know you mentioned TikTok videos and dancing. I just wanna say I don’t dance and I don’t dance on these videos, , and I’ve still been able to to amass a healthy audience. So there is a way that we can, as health professionals, really get the message out there. Just find your own flow, your own way, whatever authentic message it is that you wanna relay and your own clinical voice. And I think that there’s so much power in that and you can bring to these platforms.
RV (28:42):
I love it. Well, we will link up to dr mariel Buque.com [email protected] slash podcast in the show notes. So you, that’s an easy way to find her if you, if you don’t find her on your own. And Dr. Mariel, this is so wonderful. I, I love connecting with you. I’m excited to follow your journey. I’m absolutely confident that you’re just going to go so far and, and continue to impact millions and millions of people. So thanks for making time for us friend, and we wish you the best of luck.
MB (29:10):
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.