Ep 374: How Believing In Yourself Can Grow Your Business with Michelle Chalfant

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. As you know, I say this every time, and I genuinely mean it every single time, but I am so excited to have my friend and our, our guest on the show today, Michelle Chalfant. And there’s a couple of things that I think you need to know. So, before you settle in and go, is this the episode for me? I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you it is this is an episode for you. Because we’re not talking about unique or specific business tactics today. However, what we’re gonna talk about today is one of the most common and universal things that you require to be successful in business and in life. And it’s self-worth, it’s self-confidence. It’s the belief in yourself that you can do what you were put on this planet to do, what you were set out to do, most likely, whatever it is you’re doing which is why you’re listening to this podcast in the first place.
AJV (01:03):
So it is, I’m, I’m gonna say it’s like it’s not a traditional business tactic, but it’s one that is absolutely necessary in the space that we’re in. Building your reputation, building your personal brand, and doing it with authority and authenticity. So it is for you. So now you know this is the episode for you. So stay tuned and listen to the whole thing. I promise it’s going to be worth your time. Now, before we get started, let me just do a quick formal bio of Michelle, and then I will also give her a chance to introduce herself a little bit more casually. But she is a licensed therapist, a master life coach, and the founder and c e o of the Michelle Shon Company. She also leads this wickedly awesome podcast called The Adult Chair Podcast, which blends psychology and spirituality together, which is probably to me, one of the most foundational important things in all of our lives is how we’re connected spiritually, which drives all of our, our business decisions and life decisions.
AJV (02:05):
It also is globally recognized. It’s got millions and millions of downloads. We’ll put links to it, but you definitely wanna check it out. She also runs these amazing events. She’s got courses she does coaching. I could go on and on and on, but I think the, one of the reasons that’s so relevant to everyone who is listening is because these are the same things that you are doing. These are the same things that you wanna do. And so how do you go from not doing those things to doing those things? So, Michelle, welcome to the show.
MC (02:35):
Thank you so much, aj. That was such a warm welcome. I loved it. I feel like I’m joining a party. I’m like, oh,
AJV (02:43):
That’s how we should feel. That’s
MC (02:45):
Fun, .
AJV (02:47):
Alright, so help our audience get to know you a little bit. Like how did you get into this space of coaching and events and content creation and courses? Because being a licensed therapist and doing all these things, I kind of find is a little bit unique. Yeah. And you didn’t always do these things. So how’d you get into this?
MC (03:08):
Oh my gosh. Okay. So I was a licensed, I still am a licensed therapist for about 20 years, but about, gosh, 10 or 15 years in, actually moved to Nashville in oh seven and had to start my practice all over again because nobody knew me in Nashville, . So for me, I was like, okay, let’s go. I just went out, started offering free workshops, free and free courses, built a business really, really quickly because my style, what I realize now is my style is very unique. It’s not exactly traditional therapy, but it’s not exactly coaching. It’s kind of a hybrid model of coaching, therapy, consulting, teaching, the whole thing. So I built it very quickly and in 2013, I hired a guy by a friend who said, Hey, you need to use this guy to do your, your, your new website. I said, fine. We clicked right away. We started working together and he’s putting together my whole site and he goes, the way you work with people is so cool, it’s unique. He said, you should do a podcast. And this is in 2013, right? I’m like, what’s the podcast? I go, is that like that radio thing that people are talking about? He’s like, yes, you really have a lot to talk about. You know, this is a long time ago. This is 10 10. Is it 10?
AJV (04:20):
Almost 10 years ago? Yeah.
MC (04:22):
Yeah. It’s, and I said, okay, I don’t know. So he kind of hounded me for like a year. So the end of 2014, I said, fine, I’m doing it. So we launched the Adult Share podcast. And the podcast is all about teaching people how to be emotionally healthy adults. Hmm. It’s stuff I love to talk about. So it is, it’s a lot of self-worth. It’s how to have healthy relationship. It’s how to work through your fears, your codependency, whatever the heck, anything at all. That is what I used to what I talk about. So that happened the end of 2014. I did not even pay attention to the stats. I didn’t care about them, you know, I was like, oh, this is good. You know, I didn’t really wanna do it. I was like, I’ll do it for my clients. So it was fun to say to my clients like, Hey, you wanna learn how to set a boundary?
MC (05:08):
Go listen to number 15. You know, I just did a podcast on it. So anyway, that was the end of 2014. By 2018, 19, it’s really, you know, then the podcast rule is really growing and it’s taking off. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I realized I’m like, I, I gotta, I need to do more. Because what was happening was my business that was already full-time. I was getting people all around the world hitting me up for sessions. Cuz I was also a coach at that time. I became a coach, I think sometime like maybe 2010, something like that. So I did that to my, to my trainings so I could see clients anywhere in the world. So I was getting reached out to, you know, from Germany to San Francisco to China. You know, people were like, Hey, can you, I wanna see you as a, as can I see you as a coach?
MC (05:54):
Well, I couldn’t cuz I was already full-time. So I said, let me create something for them that will appease them. Right? So I did a membership, I started a membership in 2019. I kept getting hit up. They’re like, well, we want more. We wanna, we want people that know how to talk about what you do . I was like, what am I gonna do? Those really inspired and I am a big meditation person. And I sat there for about two months and I kept hearing and becoming aware of the same thing. I kept hearing these words, teach people to do what you do. So with that, I said, I’m gonna create a coaching certification program and I’m gonna teach people how to do what I do, but frame it through their own per their own style. Right. So I, we launched that in 2020 and yeah.
MC (06:39):
So now we have this global, you know, people from all over the world are taking our certification program. We are now, this is the year. So we’ve run it since in the middle of Covid is when we launched it. If you can imagine, we launch it in September of 2020. We’re now in our third year now we do two pro programs a year. So we’re launching our next one this June in 2023. And it’s just, it’s such an incredible way cuz my mission is to bring healing into this world. Mm-Hmm. So I have this vision for creating this army of light workers, like these army of coaches that can go out into the world and really multiply what I’m doing. And again, it’s not all about me. I’m not the only person doing this work, of course in the world, but I love that we’re able to reach more people through our coaches. So that is where I, that is where I am today. So I’ve got a book, I’ve got, I’ve got another book coming out. I just gave it to my agent the other day. Congrats.
AJV (07:30):
Yeah. So when did, when did your first book come out?
MC (07:34):
Oh gosh, 2018. Yeah, so, so the first book really outlines the adult chair model. And then again, I do the live teachings, I’ve got the podcasts, and now the coaching program is, are really the biggest thing right now.
AJV (07:48):
And you have a new book coming out?
MC (07:51):
I don’t know one, I just gave it to him. He is looking at it. So I’m, I’m the beginning stages of that, probably am gonna say in the next nine months or so to a year.
AJV (07:59):
Okay. So I think one of the things I was trying to do as you were talking because a lot of people, what I have found, which will be very relevant to our conversation today, and I think this is really important because I see this no matter who you are, no matter what your business is, is we compare our step one to someone else’s step 1000. Yep. And we go, well this just isn’t working and you’ve been doing it all of six months. Or you think it needs to be happening faster, but yet
MC (08:28):
Yeah,
AJV (08:28):
Good things just don’t happen fast often. It takes time and work. So I was trying to capture this and I built a little timeline. I think this is important. So tell me if I missed anything, but I was trying to capture this. So one, you’ve been a therapist for 20 years, so let’s just pause for a second. Go . That’s an enormous amount of time building content and real life practice and doing this, right? Mm-Hmm. , this is ton of already pre-existing value education information. Like that’s a lot. 20 years is a lot. So then in 2010 you became a coach. So just a pause, that’s 13 years ago for everyone who’s listening. Then four years after becoming a coach is when you launched a podcast. Not the next day, not four weeks later. Four years later. Then a book came out four years after that in 2018, not four months.
AJV (09:26):
This is so important for everyone . Then after the book, you’re like, okay, now I’ve got a whole, you know, one, you have requests, right? You have demand, but also it’s like you’ve got frameworks, you’ve got everything built out. So then a membership in 2019, then a year after that, a coaching certification program in 2020 and now almost three years after that. A new book. Yes. That’s it. Okay. So I think that timeline is so important. for so true. So many, so many different levels. And I think there’s something that you said that resonated when me and I was listening to this. And we do book launches for our clients. So we’ll actually do the fulfillment of book launches. Mm-Hmm. It’s not, it’s not the main thing of our business at Grand Builders Group, but we will help people that we work with on the strategy, do the fulfillment and someone on our own team, cuz brand builders group as a company, as our own entities, only five years old this year.
AJV (10:25):
Mm-Hmm. . So we’re babies. It’s just still a baby company. Mm-Hmm. . But somebody had in our own company, on our own team, literally I heard ’em in a side comment going, well this is just amazing. We just started doing that a year ago and look at all these clients we have. We’ve had 12 people hit a New York Times or you know, a Wall Street Journal bestseller list. And I heard it outta the corner and I was like, we just started doing this. And they were like, yeah, like, you know, like Yj started doing this like a year ago and look at all this. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We did our own book launch in 2010. We’ve been doing this for ourselves for 14 years. And it was like an aha moment for them of going, you did, what do you mean?
AJV (11:09):
And I was like, take the stairs. When we launched that in 2010, this was a grassroots hiding away in our closets into the wee hours of the morning . Like, what do you think we did? And there it was like, it was such one of those moments of, even in our own company mm-hmm. , I’m going, oh, this isn’t new. You’ve been doing this a really long time. But you look at where people are today and you go, man, I’m failing. I’m not, I’m not, this isn’t working for me. Should I be doing this? And we look at everything that’s happening all around us and we somehow don’t realize that there’s decades of work and experience and ups and downs wins and losses behind the scenes. Yeah,
MC (11:52):
For sure. People, people absolutely look at the 1% that are making it and doing so well and making the millions and millions of dollars. And they think it’s so easy and they don’t see all the struggles. In 2018, if I can tell you a little side story here about one of my biggest struggles probably was when, again, the podcast is taken off. I mean, I’m getting hit up constantly. Like, can I work with you? Can I work with you? Can you come to this country? Can you come to this? Like, I was like, I I can’t do it all. I need to hire a marketing firm really to help me. Mm-Hmm. , I, I knew I needed like online courses and I, you know, and I gotta do what I’m best at. And that’s the other thing we should talk about. But I can’t do it all.
MC (12:34):
I don’t wanna learn how to build a website. I don’t wanna learn how to build an online course. I don’t wanna learn how to build a membership. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not a tech person, but I can get up on stage and I can talk and I can write books and I can do all that. I’m gonna do what I’m great at. So anyway, I researched marketing firms and I said, okay, I need to hire a company. They can help me really launch this thing big time. And the one that I hired in August of 2018, I, I signed a contract with her and shortly thereafter I knew it. I was like, this was a big mistake. And I mean, it was horrible emails that went out. I had given her a membership. I said, these are the thing, these are the ones that I really like.
MC (13:13):
Well, she took one of them and copycatted it almost exactly like I looked at it when it was done and I said, this is someone else’s. I’ll get sued for the, like it was, I can go on and on. I’m not gonna go into it. But it was one thing after the next I’d signed a contract. I was stuck with her for six months. A hundred thousand dollars I spent on her. It was one debacle after the next, after the next, after the next, after the next. So that was from August through, I think it was December some or July through Dec. It was December 3rd is when it ended. I can tell you that’s branded in my mind. But I remember the day I was done with her, I was like, I am done. I’m not only done with this, I’m done with everything. She had just fried me out.
MC (13:56):
I had lost all this money that I had saved that I was so ready to launch my company. And I actually went out with one of my husband’s mentors that lives in Nashville. And I went out to breakfast with him and I looked at him, I was in tears all the time. I was like, I don’t wanna do co this business. I don’t wanna be an entrepreneur. It fried me out. I mean, I was done. And I went out with Richard and he looked across the table from me. He’s a guy that goes into companies. He’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And he looked at me across the table and he goes, Michelle, what’s going on? And I told him my whole story and he said, I said, Richard, I just lost a hundred thousand dollars. I am fried. I don’t wanna do this anymore. And he goes, so you lost a hundred thousand dollars? And I said, yeah. And he goes, so what? He looks at me, he said it as if I dropped $5 out in the parking lot, like I had lost $5. And I was like, what
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Do you, you hear what I said?
MC (14:51):
Like, that’s a ton of money. Goes are you’re an entrepreneur. Do you expect not to lose anything? And I said, yeah, you know, I researched her, other people I know used her and I, but I found out that the other people that had used her also dropped her. And I was like, I don’t know how I made such a bad mistake. I’m so intuitive. What’s wrong with me? And he goes, how do you know that you didn’t learn from it. Mm-Hmm. It wasn’t a mistake. And he made it sound like it was so not a big deal. He completely reframed my whole drama. You know, I was quitting my company. He goes, you can quit if you want, but I think you’re stupid. I was like, no, I’m stupid. I said, okay. So I left breakfast and that was when I got back on the horse and I was really done.
MC (15:34):
I mean, aj I was done and I spent the rest of that month. I remember I went through Christmas and I said, okay, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna stay or go? And I made the decision. I said, okay, I’m going to do this and I’m gonna do it in my own way and a different way. And that was then when I hired one of the best hired as I’ve ever hired, which I still working with her now. She’s my c o o and I hired her January 7th. And it has been full steam ahead ever since. But I’ve still made a lot of mistakes along the way though I’ve still lost money. Not a hundred thousand, thank God, but that’s expected. I mean, yeah. You know,
AJV (16:09):
I think that’s, that’s such a good reminder. And I’m actually, I’m pulling up something because I, I have like recently even been in the season, so I think you know this cuz we had to reschedule this podcast, but just five weeks ago to the day I had emergency gallbladder surgery, rush to the ER said, you’re not leaving here until this comes out. It was somewhat of a, a life or death situation. And I came out of that and I think part of it is like, it was a really big wake up call for me of like, whatever I think is big is not big when it’s compared to this mm-hmm. . And it was a, a deep desire and a longing to change my schedule, change my priorities but also paired with an, an unbelievable workload at this particular time. Brand builders group as we’re blessed, we’re growing fast.
AJV (16:59):
We have lots of teams that have two young babies. Mm-Hmm. Just a very busy season. And I feel like over the last six weeks I have been dropping balls left and right. I can’t catch a break in terms of, and it’s, and I think, it’s not that I can’t catch a break, it’s God trying to slow me down. He’s like, woman , like, what else do I gotta do for you to like slow down? And I’ve been really feeling a lot of like, oh man. It’s like, I don’t know if I’m just, maybe this isn’t the season for me to be doing this role in our company and that own thing. And it was a very similar thing to like you going out and having this breakfast and I, I pop open, I do a lot of like bible study reading through a bunch of people that I follow on, on the Gram.
AJV (17:43):
And I thought I was like, this was like very, very similar to that of going, man, it’s, it’s my own perspective. It’s my own perception of my situation. And when we’re too close to it, we can’t even see what’s happening. And I, I literally popped it up and this is the very first thing I saw on my phone. And this was just like last week, like super relevant to what you were just saying. And it says, God is saying to you today, you have been questioning yourself lately and wondering if you are really strong enough or good enough to do what I have placed in your heart to do. But let me remind you that you can do all things through me. Don’t let fear talk you out of your dream. And remember I am with you and you will make it. You can do this. And it’s so similar to like those breakfast conversations when I think we, we just give up too soon. We give up too easy because it’s hard. Running a business, pursuing a dream life is hard.
MC (18:38):
It’s hard. It’s really hard. And, you know, so we certify coaches now. Like that is a big part of what I do. And it’s so interesting cuz people get so excited about becoming a coach. I’m like, all right, now let’s, let’s talk about going out and building your business, you know, and let’s go get some clients and let’s go talk to people about what you do. And people are like, can you help me? , , I remember, I remember years ago, like 20 years ago, doing a lot of the MLMs, you know, and even that, it’s like you gotta go out and you gotta ask for business. And I have no problem. It’s easy for me. I love talking to people. Right. But I realize it’s really hard for people like to overcome that and really put yourself out there.
AJV (19:21):
So, so let’s talk about this for a minute. Cause I think this is a good transition because one thing I know is true, it’s like you wouldn’t still be in business if you weren’t going, I’m gonna tell people about this. And it’s like, yeah. The way that it has iterated and grown and evolved just p it, I love it because it’s organic and it’s like, I’ll do what my audience tells me they want from me. Right. Yeah. That feels true
MC (19:45):
To me. Yeah.
AJV (19:46):
However, a lot of people want to be coaches. A lot of people are coaches, wanna be authors, wanna be speakers, and a lot who are but I thought this was an interesting statistic is that the coaching industry is the second fastest growing industry in the world right now. It’s expected more than 20 billion in the United States. Just the United States this year. There’s more than I think 1.4 million people with coaches their title just on LinkedIn alone. There’s so many indicators of going, man, there is a deep desire, a deep longing for someone to be like, help me . Yes. And truly. And simultaneously for someone who’s hearing that going, I want to do this. I’m not a therapist, I’m not a counselor, but I can coach. I can mentor.
MC (20:35):
Yeah.
AJV (20:36):
Yet they can’t get clients. Mm-Hmm. . So let’s talk about how do you bridge that gap? And how did, we’ll just start with how did you bridge the gap? Like how did you go from therapists to full on coach mm-hmm. , speaker, author, podcaster, event host, all the things. Yeah. Membership. Right? How did you do it?
MC (20:56):
I really, again, I followed what the audience wanted from me. So I, people started asking me, is there a book on this? Is there a book on this? Is there a book on this? I’m like, sure I can create a book. So I wrote the book, you know, is there a live event? Can you do a live event? I love doing live event. Sure. I’ll do a live event. So I’d put together what the audience was asking me to do. But when you talk about like, how do you overcome that fear? I mean, I moved to Nashville and I didn’t know any, I knew nobody. And I had a a, a shingle. I, I could hang a shingle as a therapist. I had a private practice, I had a license, I could do it. But it’s like, I don’t know anybody here. There was no social, like, maybe, I don’t even remember when Facebook, I think Facebook might have been coming up, but it’s not anything like it was now. And it’s funny because I didn’t think twice about it. I really didn’t, I didn’t think it would be hard. I was like, all right, well I’m gonna go out and talk about what I enjoy talking about. I’m gonna go out and talk about again, like how do you have a healthy relationship with, with self and others? You know, how do you, how do you build self-worth? How do you love yourself? I’m just gonna go out and talk about that. How do you build a business? I would just go out And where
AJV (22:03):
Would you go? Yeah. Where would
MC (22:07):
Went to I, I and I, I went to the Brentwood Library, that was one of the first places I went. I hit up yoga studios. I was like, Hey, do you want a speaker to come in? Like I’d love to come and talk to you about this. I remember different schools would say, Hey, will you come in? Oh, I like what you’re doing. Can you come talk to my, we’ve got a classroom full of parents, or I’ve got a classroom full of, so I got a classroom full of so-and-so will you come talk to my mothers about this? Sure. I’d go to like the doctor’s office and I’d bring my business cards and I’d go, Hey, if you have anyone that needs any help at all, this is what I do. And I give them my cards. You just can’t be afraid to put yourself out there in that way.
MC (22:46):
And y it’s not like you’re asking for money in that moment, but you, this is where the self-worth comes in. You’ve got to believe in yourself in what you’re putting out there. And you need to believe that you have value. And I knew what I was doing was different for me. And I can say this cuz I’m a therapist. I think therapy is outdated. It’s a little archaic. And not to say that, hear me now, there are a lot of great therapists out there, but it’s interesting and I have heard that coaching is really taking off. But when I started my coaching program, I didn’t even know that. I was like, this is just what I wanna do. I wanna create something that’s really a crossbreed between both that has the best of both worlds coming together. And honestly, it’s more of like a consulting coaching kind of thing.
MC (23:31):
But anyway, you’ve gotta believe in what you’re doing. Hmm. And the way that I teach my coaches, like, they have such great success when they’re in the practicum hour part of it. They’re like, I really st I’m believing in what I can do do. Like, they’re walking away saying how great I am. So for anyone listening, you’ve got to believe in what you’re putting out in the world. You have to believe in that. Like what are you putting out there? If you believe in it, then, then, then when you talk about it, there’s an energy that you portray out into the world. And yeah. So,
AJV (24:03):
You know, it’s, I’m so glad that you said that because I, we all know this, we’ve all met, let’s just call ’em salespeople, right? Yeah. Because at the end of the day, we got a little bit of salespeople in all of us. Yeah. We need to. But it’s like, you know what it’s like to talk to someone who’s like, man, even if I don’t buy this, they, you are so passionate about this, I’m just like, totally, I wanna help you even though I’m not gonna buy it. It’s like, who can help? Yes. Who can I tell? Because you can feel it. It is, it’s an energy. It’s no, it’s an energy. But I think a lot of that just stems from one, they believe in it. Two, they’ve, they’re confident. Right. The, the confidence. Totally. You can, you can feel when someone is confident, even if they don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.
AJV (24:48):
It’s like when you say it like you do, it’s just so funny because I was just talking to my husband in the car driving home somewhere the other night, and I’m trying to remember what the word is, but I completely made up a word. And as soon as it came outta my mouth, it was like I was trying to say a very normal basic word. And then I got like tongue twisted in my head and I said the word, and then I was like thinking like, wait, that’s not a word. And I looked at Rory and I said, did you just let me say that? And he goes, babe, like you said it so confidently, I was wondering if I’d never heard this word before . But it’s like, you gotta just be like, I don’t care if you buy from me or not.
AJV (25:23):
I believe in what this is. And so I’m, I think this is like two things. I think a really important one is I wanna talk about how do you build that level of self-belief? Yeah. How do you build that level of self-worth where, you know, you are a little bit rejection proof. Yeah. And you don’t let the external things in this world impact you. So you give up on your dream. Mm-Hmm. specifically too early. But also I wanna make sure people heard what you said. I said, where did you go and talk about these things?
MC (25:53):
Oh
AJV (25:53):
Yeah. I wanna recap. If you do not write this down and humble yourself to the point of, if I really wanna do this, if I really wanna be this bus and be in this business, I’m going to have to show up at the Brentwood library. Yep. At the local yoga studio with sweaty people and yoga clothes. Yep. At schools with parents. Yep. At doctor’s offices who were like, I thought there was a no station slot on the door. Right. It’s like, but you gotta be able to go like the, anywhere I go, there is an audience. If you believe
MC (26:27):
Always
AJV (26:28):
What you do, and I’m imagining a lot of those were not paid
MC (26:33):
In the very beginning. I’m gonna say probably the first two that I did were not paid. And, but very quickly, again, there’s an energy, like I love showing up and speak. I, I get, I’m very excited when I speak. I’m like, oh, we’re so excited to be here. And then people would say, when are you doing this again? I’m gonna come back. I go, oh. So I always had the next one ready mm-hmm. . So when they’d ask me that, I’d say, oh, I’m coming back in two months. They’re like, where do I sign up? Oh, it’s right here. And that one is gonna be, you know, and I’d raise it to like $50 for the class. Okay, great. It was like, no problem. It’s always an energy. There’s just, it’s not about the words, it’s our energy. So the words are great, but if you don’t line up with what you’re saying, people won’t buy into it.
AJV (27:19):
And, and a little bit of it’s a plan, right? It’s like what? And a plan. Yeah. A plan, right? It’s like you gotta show up prepared. Absolutely. It’s, it’s, you gotta show up with the belief that they’re gonna wanna come back. Yes. That they’re gonna want more. So you better be ready and prepared. And how are you gonna give it to ’em? But stems from self-belief,
MC (27:39):
You have to show up. Like, they’d be crazy not to work with you
AJV (27:44):
Like, have you ? It’s, it’s a little bit of like yes, I am here. I know you’ve been asking where have I been your whole life. Here I am.
MC (27:52):
That’s it.
AJV (27:53):
. And
MC (27:54):
It’s not arrogant though, it’s just believing in yourself. It’s believing in what you’re putting out into the world
AJV (27:59):
And believing what you do can actually help the end user. Right? And,
MC (28:04):
And yes. And you’re gonna have people that are gonna be like, well that’s too much money. Or why would I do that? And that’s okay. That’s okay. Because there’re for, for those few people, there are like a hundred or thousands more that really want to work with you mm-hmm. . So you will have those people that will be like, oh, no way. You know, no way. Da, da da. That’s okay. You can’t buy into those people. You keep focusing on your goal and what is your vision and what is your mission. And if you stay on target, these little people over here that are saying these things to you, just brush ’em off and go, thank you anyway.
AJV (28:38):
Not
MC (28:38):
For you. Not everyone is gonna be for us. Right? Like, not everybody is, and that’s okay.
AJV (28:43):
Yeah. This is so, such a good reminder. So for, again, I don’t wanna recap, just if you didn’t catch it for the second time, one more time. you’ve got to be willing to talk about what you do everywhere you go. And if you’re going, well, man, I just don’t know where to go. It’s like, go to your yoga studio, go to your church, go to your kid’s school, go to whatever school is closest nearby, find a library, do something. Right? But it’s not gonna just fall in your lap. You gotta go find it. So now let’s talk about, well, how do we create this feeling of self-belief, this self-worth? And we had a a little bit of a conversation about this before we hit record on the podcast today. And one of the things that I mentioned is, I just hear this term so often that I, I, I wanna talk about it on the show. And I think it’s super tied to self-worth, self-belief, confidence, all the things. But this term, imposter syndrome. Mm. Right. And I dunno if it’s just like a really trendy term or do we really all suffer from it because of comparison? Like I, so I’d love to just unpack that with you mm-hmm. in the, in the conversation of how do we generate self-belief in ourselves. And so I’d love to hear from you like, what is imposter syndrome and how do you know if you have it?
MC (29:57):
Imposter syndrome is when we feel like we’re a fraud, it feels like we are not capable of doing what we are doing. It feels like I’m, I’m giving you all the ideas. You might have the, like you need more education, you need more training, you’re not good enough. There are people that are better than you out there. You shouldn’t be doing this until you reach this level, which the level keeps going up and up. There’s a never ending point to that. So yeah, really it’s feeling like a fraud. Like you shouldn’t be doing or offering what you are offering in the world. That’s what it is.
AJV (30:30):
Where does that come from?
MC (30:32):
You know what I had, you know who Stephen Pres Presfield is the war of art.
AJV (30:36):
Oh, yes, yes.
MC (30:38):
So great. Okay. So something that he said, which I love, and the war of art is all about resistance. And I had him on the show and he said to me, when you meet resistance, you know you’re moving in the right direction. That’s how you know, because that part of there we, we are, we are human beings that are filled with parts. So even though there’s one Michelle sitting here and filled with hundreds and hundreds of different parts of self, we’ve got a victim, we’ve got an inner critic, we’ve got a fraud, we’ve got an inner child, we’ve got all of these parts, right? So we all have it. And the more exposed we are and the more we put ourselves out there in the world, the greater the chance that we are gonna get judged or criticized for what we’re doing. So there’s that inner part of all of us that we have this fraud or this inner this or inner critic or this imposter that will say, don’t do that.
MC (31:35):
Get small, stay small. Don’t put yourself out there. So the way that you can turn that around is you look at and examine the thoughts or the beliefs that are coming up around this imposter syndrome or the fraud statements that you’re getting, all of the limiting beliefs. So you might hear things like, you’ll never be good enough. You are a loser. I’m not, I’m not lovable. You don’t matter. You know, whatever it might be that you’re saying to yourself. You look at those statements and those are the statements that you wanna go after. And you examine, you say, thank you so much, I appreciate it, but here really is what’s true. Mm-Hmm. . So what most humans do is when we have negative thinking, they push it aside. Like we just don’t wanna look at it. You know, people go home, they’ll have a glass of wine or a bottle of wine, or they’ll do whatever they can do to numb out.
MC (32:27):
Well, those beliefs don’t go away by numbing them out. It’s like putting a bandaid on something. You’ve gotta invite those beliefs in and get to know them. And when you get to know those beliefs, that’s how, how you then transform those beliefs. You can’t transform them until you get to know them. Mm-Hmm. . So humans will just say things like, that just feels horrible and we don’t really even know what the belief is. So slow down, stop what you’re doing, sit down and close your eyes and ask yourself, what is coming up inside of me? What are these beliefs? And if you give yourself even a few minutes, you will hear the belief like, I’m afraid I don’t wanna get judged. I’m gonna get criticized. And that scares me. And that’s, all of these thoughts are okay. And they’re so common. And that’s what people don’t believe. They’re like, I think it’s just me. I’m the only one in the whole world . Right.
AJV (33:21):
Definitely not, definitely not right.
MC (33:23):
People think, oh, this is just me. It’s like, no, you know, I have one that that says continue to get better, more trained. Like mine was like, you’re not trained enough. I mean, I have so many certifications, it’s ridiculous. , it’s like 30 like ridiculous amounts of training. And yet mine will come in and go, you need to get more now. Thank God I’ve worked with it enough now. It, it slowed me way down. But you can’t change those beliefs until you look at them. You gotta look at them and you’ve gotta decide what’s fact and truth today in this very moment. And that’s what, what the whole model of the adult chair is, is what I talk a lot about. And when we live in the adult chair, we live in this moment with fact and truth and these beliefs are from a long time ago.
MC (34:09):
So they’re coming up saying, you’re bad, you’re not worthy, you’re not good enough. And it’s like, well wait a minute, what’s the evidence of that? Is that true today? 2023 in this moment? It’s like, well, you know, I guess it’s not because this person likes me and this person loves me. And you know, you kind of, you challenge it, but you don’t fight with it. You have a conversation with it. And that’s how you start to morph and change that belief. And then it gets quiet and then when it rears up again, you go, I hear you. Thank you for, for that. I hear you. I know you think that I’m not good enough. I know you want me to not move forward, but I’m gonna move forward. We’re okay. And then it gets quiet.
AJV (34:48):
So I mean, it’s like just even being cognizant and aware and conscious of these is life altering. Totally. It really is. Like, as you’re talking, I was thinking about the last six weeks in my own brain of going like, man, why was I feeling that way? Like, what was the limiting belief that I keep saying to myself? Or I keep saying out loud. And it was like, as soon as you were talking, I was like, oh, I don’t exactly what it is. I have caught myself saying, I just don’t have enough time. Oh. Like a hundred times in the last six weeks because I’ve been healing and things are piling up and I haven’t been able to work at normal capacity and all these things. And I have allowed myself to go. It’s like I literally let this idea of, because I don’t ha I’m not working a full work schedule. I’m not capable of being the c e o.
MC (35:40):
Oh
AJV (35:41):
Yeah. And it’s like, but just even allowing yourself to go, let’s pause for a second and go, why am I feeling this way? It’s life altering. Cause the truth is, it’s like I have just as much time today as I did before. The days, like the hours of the day haven’t changed. What’s happening in those hours have changed. But it’s like a funny thing that if you don’t watch it and you don’t, you don’t stay on top of it. It’s like that will turn you upside down so fast.
MC (36:08):
Yes. These beliefs come in and instead of witnessing them, they, they kind of take us over and we get lost in them and we start spiraling down and we make decisions based on those limiting beliefs. And all of a sudden, you know, we’re not in a good place where if we can witness it and see it as a part almost external to self, so we can go, oh, there it is, there’s my fraud again, you can even give your fraud like a visual. Like you can see it as, you know, a little person or a little, little mony guy or whatever you, however you wanna see it. A blue blob, it doesn’t matter. But when it comes back, you can go there. You are, what do you want me to know? All that it’s coming in to do is to protect you. Like it’s intentions. Very good. Trying to keep you safe, trying to keep you from getting criticized and judged. You can go, thank you so much for being here. I’ve got this, I appreciate you being here, but really it’s okay, but you don’t let it take you over. You witness it and talk to it in that way. And that’s how you change it.
AJV (37:07):
And this right here is why the coaching industry is exploding. Yeah. Right? Because yeah, we need these reminders. We need to vocalize them, verbalize them, tear them down, figure out how to conquer. Yes. A lot of our own mindset. And I don’t think that’s new. I just think that, like, I know when we started our first coaching business in 2000 and oh my gosh, what year was that? 2006. wow. A long time ago. I just remember it was like the idea of having a coach was like in a very, they were very niche industries where it was widely accepted. I remember this is one of the most significant I memories I have from my late twenties. And I was at a b and I networking meeting, I don’t even know anymore. But I was at one of those and they were, you know, like networking hour, whatever. And they were going around and saying, you know, what do you do? And I said, Hey, my name is AJ Vaden, I’m a consultant and I remember this one guy looks me dead in the eye, laughs in my face and says, oh, you mean you’re unemployed?
MC (38:08):
Oh my gosh.
AJV (38:09):
And I was like, no, I mean, I’m a consultant. And he goes like, for real, like, you actually have paying clients. And it was like such a taboo thing of, oh, if you’re a coach, that means you don’t have a job. Like, I remember that. But like today, if you don’t have a coach, I’m wondering why not? I don’t know anyone totally doesn’t have one or who isn’t looking for one.
MC (38:30):
Yep.
AJV (38:30):
You know, and it’s, it’s completely different just 15 years later. So, okay, so on that note of like this whole thing of, because I really do think this lack of self-belief is the number one I believe regardless of what anyone else does, I believe, and I see it with my own eyes, it’s the number one reason and my personal experiences of why your business fails.
MC (38:54):
Yep.
AJV (38:55):
Because you stop.
MC (38:56):
Yeah. You
AJV (38:57):
Could. And a lot of that has to do with, are you going to be willing, confident enough to go and ask people for the business, even if they tell you no. So how do you build self-belief and self-worth? And I will just tell our audience right now before we get into this conversation, because this’ll probably be a part of us wrapping up because I’m a chatty Kathy and I could talk about this stuff for the next three hours, have to watch the clock. I’m like, oh,
MC (39:22):
Countdown,
AJV (39:23):
. You have put together this generous, thoughtful, extraordinary offer for everyone who is listening on the podcast today. And you have this awesome course mm-hmm. called the, it’s the self-worth bundle. Right? Yeah. And for all of you guys listening, Michelle has made this available for free to you today as being a listener of this show. So if you go to the adult chair.com/brand builders mm-hmm. , so the adult chair.com/brand builders, you can get this awesome self-worth bundle for free, which is going to be a much larger expansion on this conversation that we’re gonna head into right now. So Michelle, loaded question, how do we build self-worth? How do we get this thing?
MC (40:11):
Yeah. So, oh my goodness. So again, with self-worth, we wanna notice when we don’t feel good about ourselves, we wanna start slowing down and paying attention to the thoughts that we’re having. I love journaling and writing them down because, you know, we try to like master these things in our mind. So it’s like, okay, well I don’t wanna think that thought, I’m just not gonna think it anymore. No, that does not work. . You’ve gotta write it down and then look at it and then you can go, wait, is that still true today? Is it true? Is it true? And then you write ro you wanna write down what’s the evidence that that is not true. So that’s one, that’s one thing. The second thing we wanna do is start planting the seeds of the positive things that we want in our life. The positive beliefs.
MC (40:59):
So it’s hard to go from, I hate myself, do I love myself? But can you go from, I hate myself to, I like who I am today or I’m starting to like myself. So you wanna build that bridge to where you wanna go. So find beliefs that feel right for you today, and you start saying those to yourself. You look in the mirror and you say those back and forth to yourself. I like myself, I’m beginning to like myself more and look at it and then feel it in the body. When we feel these beliefs in the body, we’re anchoring them in. That’s what happens is again, we try to, to do this mental ping pong. It’s like, I don’t wanna think this thought. I’m gonna stop. I’m gonna have wine, I’m gonna watch Netflix, I’m gonna do, it just numbs us out temporarily because the beliefs are there until we really look at them and work with them.
MC (41:46):
Meditation is wonderful and this and this self-worth bundle that I put that I’m offering for you guys is for meditations. Mm-Hmm. And one of them is on limiting beliefs, is journaling prompts, all of those things. So you can re and it’s not gonna, does not take a lot of time, but it really is a way to get you started, to start changing your self worth so you can feel really solid about who you are. Because again, if you don’t feel Val valuable, then what you’re putting out in the world is gonna fe other people will feel that lack of value in what you are putting out. It comes from you, it comes from inside. So again, examine the beliefs that you’re having now that are in conflict with you and how you want to feel. Write them down, challenge them, figure out what’s true today. And positive affirmations are huge, especially looking in the mirror. That’s a great place to start for sure.
AJV (42:38):
So good. For sure. That’s one of the things that I wrote down that I heard in my brain that you said is, you know, it’s like what we really do instead of dealing with this stuff is we distract ourselves. Oh yeah. Right. It’s like we grab, grab the glass of wine, say, I don’t wanna talk about it right now, we turn on a show and we veg out. Yep. We just smacked ourselves and all the while we’re just pushing all this stuff down and never actually going. I should probably address that. Should probably figure out why that’s happening. Yep. And so I love this and I love that you’ve provided some frameworks and meditations to like, help people do some additional exercises. So y’all please go grab the self-worth bundle. We’ll make sure the link is in the show notes on this same topic.
MC (43:23):
Yeah.
AJV (43:24):
Kind of tied to business development because I think for any coach or any entrepreneur for that matter but I’ll, I’ll target this to the coaches right now. It’s like how, how do you get someone to be confident enough to go, I’m gonna go sell what I do, I’m gonna go ask somebody to pay me money to be their coach.
MC (43:43):
Mm-Hmm. again, it goes back to why are you doing what you’re doing? What gets you jazzed up? What gets you excited about doing what you’re doing? From my own coaches, I’ll say to them, why did you join this program? Like, what’s your why? If you don’t know what your why is, then you can’t go out and sell yourself and offer whatever you’re here to offer. And for my coaches, they’ll say, well, I wanna help you change the world. I wanna change the world. I wanna be part of that. This is the key though. I say, okay, those are great words. How does that feel? What does that feel like in your body? That again, anchors in this beautiful belief of I’m here to change the world, I want to change the world. When you feel it in the body, your whole body starts to expand and then there’s that energy and then it’s like, the words just start to come.
MC (44:34):
People have it backwards. You know, people ask me all the time too, like, how do I set a boundary? Can you give me the words? I’m like, no, I can’t give you the words because you won’t set a boundary until you feel worthy. Yeah. And you feel value. It’s, it’s a, you gotta go inside first. So no matter what job, no matter what business you have, you’ve gotta believe in it. You’ve gotta remember what’s your why, why are you doing what you’re doing? When you believe it and you believe that what you’re doing is really important in the world, not to everybody, but to, there are, there’s a target audience that really wants to hear from you. When you believe that that is how then you can go out and sell yourself. And again, challenge the thoughts that will come up and say, you’re not good enough though.
MC (45:18):
You, it’s alwa for me, it’s always about looking at the thoughts. What are the thoughts that are coming up? The thoughts are gonna come up to trip you up. It’s just is every human has these thoughts that try to stop us, get in touch with those. But again, more importantly, what’s your value? What’s your why? What’s your reason for doing what you’re doing? For me, it’s like my north star is I’m here to bring healing into this world. Everything I do is about bringing healing and to every human I can touch on this planet. That’s my thing. That is what I’m here to do and nothing’s gonna stop me, but I believe that for myself. So that’s what others have to do for their own business as well.
AJV (45:56):
Yeah. It’s like you gotta find that, that deep resonating belief of like, yep, I don’t care if you pay me or not, I’d still be doing this, totally doing this for the next six months. I’m gonna be doing this for the next 60 years. Totally. But you gotta kinda have that like longevity perspective in it. I love that. I think that’s, it is true. It’s like you gotta know your why and then you gotta know your who. Like who are you doing this for? Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s so, so good. Okay, so two last quick things. And this can be rapid fire. We don’t have to like go into like deep dialogue if we don’t have time, but I, I think these are two really just quick things. Do. You mentioned earlier it’s like way in beginning and the early of the conversation of like, I just learned it’s like I have to do what I am best at and that’s not everything. Mm-Hmm. . So how do you learn to say, this is what I’m best at and this is what I’m gonna do and this is what I’m gonna go hire out. So it’s like what phase in the journey you’re going? Listen, you are no longer the person who can do all the things.
MC (46:54):
Yes. So this, again, I I, I go back to my body as a barometer or what that tells me. I’m very in tune with what I feel. And again, it goes back to energy. So if I am cha, if someone says to me, and let me give you an example, Wayne. In the beginning way, in the beginning in 2000, whatever it was 14, 15, I remember I was working with a guy that started the podcast with me and he goes, you need to start doing social media posts. And I was like, okay. And he sat down with me and he did a tutorial for me. Like he could do it in two minutes. I sat there, I remember like checking out , my whole body was like contracted. And I’m like, I don’t like this. Like I don’t wanna learn this. I’m feeling resistance.
MC (47:37):
Mm-Hmm. So there’s resistance from fear and there’s resistance because it’s just not my thing. I wasn’t afraid to do it. I was resistant because it’s not my thing. Like if you said to me, go write four meditations and start writing a book, I’d be so happy. Right? , it’s like, that’s what I wanna do. So the resistance came up and I tried to do the first social post on Facebook. I remember way back when it was crooked, the words were coming off of the thing. It took me an hour and a half and I go, I’m done . I’m not doing this. And I remember in that moment, this is when like oh my god, what was it called? Craigslist was vague. We supposed to ask, this is like 2014 or 15 or whatever. So I went in there, I hired an assistant like that day and it was so inexpensive and I said, oh yeah, she turned it around in five minutes.
MC (48:24):
I’m like, it took me an hour and a half and I go done. So look for that resistance. When you feel resistance, you’re not meant to do it. And I talk to a lot of people that’ll say to me, I’m gonna design my new website. I’m like, are you outta your mind? Hire, go to Upwork. Like, hire someone to do that. Do, do you wanna do websites, you know, for a living? They’re like, no, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m gonna take a tutorial on YouTube. I’m like, you’re insane. Like, resistance. You hire it up. Upwork is my friend. So
AJV (48:51):
Yes, I love it. I think that’s like such a good reminder to all of us. It’s like, there are, there are so few things that only you can do, right? Totally do those things. Do those things. There’s a whole world of people who can do other things that you not do. So, all right, last question. We talked about this just a little bit, but you had mentioned a, a key part of what you do and all the things that you do is just teaching people how to be an emotionally healthy adult, right? Yeah. Yeah. So in as few words, as quickly as you can of going, I wanna be an emotionally healthy adult , what do I do? My husband really wants me to be an emotionally healthy, the adults. So give us some tips, give us some best practices. What does that mean?
MC (49:35):
Okay? The whole model is based on five tenets. I’m just gonna give you the five tenets, right? You gotta own your reality. That means get radically honest with yourself. What do you, what’s going on in your life that you’re not owning? Like, are you drinking too much? Are you in a marriage that you’re not happy in? Are you in a relationship you’re not happy in? So own your reality and live responsibly. Number two, you’ve got to learn how to feel your emotions. Because if we don’t, we project. If we don’t know how to do that, we numb out. So you’ve got to feel your emotions. Number three, we’ve gotta manage our triggers. We don’t project our pain on other people. When you’re triggered, here’s the key. When we’re triggered, it means that there’s an unconscious limiting belief that belongs to us, that’s rising up for us. It’s a belief that belongs to us. Yet what what we do is we get mad at others. Right? Stop it. Look at yourself. It’s a limiting belief. It’s a gift, honestly, that’s what I say. Triggers are a gift. So we gotta manage our triggers. Number four, build self-worth. Number five, you’ve got to learn how to set healthy boundaries for yourself. That’s it.
AJV (50:45):
Where do people go? Where do people go? How do they work with you? If they’re going, whoa, what you just said is what I need, where do you wanna go?
MC (50:54):
Yeah. Yep. You go to the adult chair.com, I’ve got the podcast. I talk about all this on the podcast. I have guests on. This is what I teach my coaches how to do. This is how I teach my coaches to work with other people, though, doing this exact thing.
AJV (51:07):
So, oh, Michelle, so much wisdom. This is, thank you. This is so awesome. So, I mean, I, I’m literally like taking notes both for all of you, for the show notes, but then for myself, right? It’s like this, this is what we need, right? This is what everyone needs, and that’s why I started this podcast. I saying, this isn’t a business tactics episode, but this is a necessary and required, universally applicable conversation that we all need to help succeed in what we’re doing, whatever that is. And then also to get your message out to the world. You don’t wanna be the world’s best kept secret. That’s not what we’re doing this for. We wanna get it out there. So Michelle, thank you so, so much for this gem of a conversation. Thank you. I will put all of these links in the show notes. And for everyone listening, don’t forget to grab the self-worth bundle and we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 372: How Pastors Can Build Their Personal Brand with Carey Nieuwhof

RV (00:02):
Hey, I am so excited to have this conversation with someone who is a newer, but quickly, I think quickly becoming good friend of mine, Carey Nieuwhof, and I love this guy. So I was him and I met backstage at a couple, at, at different events. We’ve had a lot of friends of friends through the years. It’s one of those relationships where it’s like, how, how do we not know each other? Uhhuh, how have we not connected? Recently I was on his podcast. He has a great podcast. It’s got millions and millions of downloads, and he is one of the most influential leadership speakers and authors, I think, in the world today. So he’s got blogs and his online content which has over 1.5 million, you know, visitors, viewers, readers a month. He’s the founder of the Art of Leadership Academy.
RV (00:53):
His bestselling book is called, at Your Best, how to Get Time, energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor. He has been profiled by Forbes and Fast Company. He lives in Toronto, and he also is a pastor. And his personal mission is about reducing the decline in the church. And so, you know, I’m a hardcore bible thump in Jesus freak, and so we have that in common. But I thought it would be fun to hear Carrie’s interesting and unique perspective on how do you grow your personal brand as a pastor in gen, you know, building, becoming an author and a speaker, and having a huge podcast and blog following in general, but also specifically as a pastor in some of those church specific dynamics. So anyways, Carey, welcome to the show.
CN (01:39):
Hey, Rory, great to hang out with you. Thanks so much for having me on.
RV (01:43):
So, can you just tell us a little bit about your story, because I, I think there’s a, you know, churches are, you know, hu huge institution in the world, obviously, but even in, just if you think about it in the context of personal branding, so many authors and so many speakers come out of quote unquote the church world, whether it’s church conferences or their pastors, or they have like sermon series that go viral and that launches their personal brand. You know? Tell us a little bit of your story of just like how you came up through the church world, and then where did your personal brand, like what do you mark as the genesis of your personal brand?
CN (02:24):
So there was absolutely no strategy behind the personal brand. It was completely fortuitous, providential, accidental, I mean, pick your adjective. It was no intention. I had started out as a lawyer that was what I was gonna do with my life, and God interrupted me in the middle of law school and put a call to ministry on my heart. So I finished up law, went into seminary, but started at three little churches just north of Toronto. And I’m in my house right now as we’re doing this interview. It’s like 10 minutes from my house, these three little churches. We’ve lived in the same community for over 25 years. Wow. And started with these dying rural mainline churches. So just think about every stereotype that comes to mind when you think about a dying mainline rural church. Okay. I was facing that as a 30 year old a number of years ago, starting out in ministry.
CN (03:25):
And we, we just kind of saw the writing on the wall. Like I would do the circuit between these three churches on a Sunday morning. Attendance was extremely low, had been since before I was born. So one of them had six people attending on a Sunday morning regularly. Another had 14, and then the megachurch had 23. Wow. So I started, I’m the like, young 30 year old, let’s go get ’em pastor. And by the grace of God, we started to see growth almost overnight. And we soon out grew those historic buildings. We amalgamated those three churches, built a new facility, but we were part of a mainline denomination. And that’s got a lot of benefits and some challenges. So a number of us, for a variety of reasons thought it would be best to start over again. So in 2007, we rebooted and became Connexus Church, a non-denominational church.
CN (04:18):
I was the founding pastor there. A lot of those people came with me, went up and down the road. We started a multi-site thing. And that was in 2007. So that’s when the church really, it started, we, we were the fastest growing church in our denomination and one of the largest in our denomination. But when we started over again as a non-denominational church, we started to reach even more unchurched people. And I led that until 2015. And that was when I turned 50. And so I really felt it was time to hand things over to the next generation, found somebody who could do a great job as lead pastor. He’s been doing an awesome job. And then I started focusing more on this hobby, which a lot of people call a a personal brand, but it sort of developed by accident around 2012. For real. It was just a hobby of mine. I thought, I’m leading this church full-time, it’s not taking all of my time, it’s going well, but I really want to like, like start helping leaders. And so I started doing that on a semi-serious hobby basis in 2012, and it just kind of took off
RV (05:32):
Uhhuh . And when did you start the podcast?
CN (05:34):
Podcast was 2014. So actually when we started Nexus in 2007, the denomination I was a part of said, Hey we don’t want you communicating about this new church in a church owned by our denomination. I’m like, fair enough. Blogging was fairly new in 2000. So I had a friend of me of mine who said, I’ll set, set up a blog for you. So I started blogging as a way of communicating with people who wanted to be part of this startup. And that became like a bit of a habit and a discipline for me. But then like a lot of bloggers back in the day, I’d let it slide. So in 2012, I had written my first solo book and I’d read Michael Hyatt’s platform, Uhhuh Uhhuh. And I thought, well, I probably should start blogging on a semi-serious basis. So I started doing it in the fall of 2012 and have never really looked back since.
RV (06:37):
Got it.
CN (06:38):
And, and then the podcast came two years later in 2014, fall of 2014.
RV (06:42):
Yeah. So that was you, that’s fair. Still fairly early to that, but you’ve, so you’ve been at this for 10 years. Yeah. I mean, effectively this is, this is far from an overnight success story in terms of building the audience and everything. How do you, how do you, so, so it’s interesting. So you said when you started Conexus, then you became a non-denominational, nondenom non-denominational church. Yeah. And I guess, how have you navigated, or how do you think about, or how did you think about up until 2015, the reconciling the dynamics of Carrie as a personal brand and this like leadership writer and podcaster and teacher, and then Carrie, the pastor of ConnectUS Church, and how do you d how do you, how do those overlap and how do you like draw the line between the two?
CN (07:39):
I saw the leadership aspect as a hobbyist. Okay. I needed a hobby. I had gone through burnout back in 2006, 2007, and I realized I didn’t have a hobby. So I really enjoyed writing, I love building into leaders, and I thought this’ll be my hobby. So the hobby really took off in 2012, and I literally did it in my spare time. I had six or eight weeks of vacation, I forget how much, but enough that I could squeeze the speaking into a vacation day or a Friday or another day off. And then my writing would happen in the morning. I’d hit the alarm at 5:00 AM I’d write for a couple hours, and then I would publish initially three days a week. So it totally fit into hobbyist hours. And that’s really how I saw it. And, and the truth is, even if you go to Nexus today, a lot of people have no idea. I do the whole leadership thing. They see me as the founding pastor. And when I was still the lead pastor of the church, a lot of them didn’t really track with that stuff. If they saw that I was in Atlanta or LA or a place like that, they would be like, okay, what was that about? Again? Like, they weren’t really sure because I was just their pastor and it never really bled into, not, not on a serious basis, my full-time job.
RV (09:01):
Got it. And then, and then how did your, how did your first speaking engagements come along? Like where did you, were you making like a proactive sort of outbound, I want to go speak at these places, and that happened? Or was it more organic as people had seen you at church or because they were following your podcast or your blog? Or like, when did you, and and when did your speaking career start? Like,
CN (09:24):
I guess, so my speaking career started probably, I’m gonna say, well, I’ve always done forms of it. So even in the nineties when I was starting out, because our church was growing I would get invited to go to a neighboring city and like, what, what’s your new membership process? Explain that to us. Or how are you reaching new people? And I got a text from a friend the other day, a mentor who I’ve known for over 30 years, who sent me, like, one of my early resources, it was literally, it was like a Word document with clip art. Nice. I printed out on a printer and was like three staples along the side. So I, I guess I’ve been producing resources for church leaders for a long time, and that was just an instinctive thing for me to do. It’s like, okay, if we have a resource that really worked for you or for us, I’m happy to share it with you.
CN (10:17):
So I would do that. And then I think the first time I got invited to be on a plane was maybe in 2005, 2006, Willow Creek Canada invited me to do a conference, or I would get invited to do breakout somewhere. But then I had a providential meeting in, in oh five, I met a guy named Reggie Joiner who was a co-founder of NorthPoint Church, and we became fast friends and he said, listen, I want to introduce you to my boss, Andy Stanley. Well, I’ve been following Andy for a number of years online. I met Andy, Andy and Reggie invited me to speak at NorthPoint. Then Reggie left and started Orange. He kind of recruited me to do a lot of speaking for him. And when I got on some US stages back in oh 6, 0 7, 0 8, that’s when things really started to take off.
RV (11:06):
Got it. So, and, and you met him just sort of organically at a conference or something like that?
CN (11:12):
Actually, I was doing a conference in 2004, 2005. We did this conference at our church called Generation Next because we were growing fast and one of the largest churches in the country in our denomination, we had inbound requests from coast to coast. Like, how are you doing this? How’s it growing? And I said to the team, let’s just throw a conference. So both years we had about 400 liters fly in from across Canada. And the way you do something in Canada is if you’re just a Canadian, no one’s gonna come. You have to have an American speaker, you gotta have a big time speaker. You gotta go connect with a guy like Rory to get you a keynote speaker. So I didn’t really know anybody, but I knew somebody who knew John Maxwell and John wasn’t able to come, but Tim Elmore came one year and Tim was friends with Andy Stanley tried to get Andy, Andy wasn’t traveling at the time, but he said, I won’t come, but I bet you Reggie Joiner would. So I had Reggie come up and we just became really fast friends. And then ironically invites me to meet Andy. I end up speaking at North Point. And that’s how it kind of took off. So that’s how that happened.
RV (12:22):
I
CN (12:23):
Love it. Again, I couldn’t engineer that if my life depended on it. There’s so much providence in this story. It’s, it’s unbelievable, Rory.
RV (12:30):
Totally. Well, and, and there’s, you know, there’s a couple like very consistent themes here too, though. It’s just like doing great at what’s in front of you is what opens the next door. Like you were growing the church and that’s part of why you were getting attention is you were, people were hearing and seeing that as a leader yourself, you were, you were doing great at the thing that was right in front of you. And so people wanted to know and they were inviting you, come teach us how to do that. So you were operating in your uniqueness, operating in your, in your strength. And that’s what opened the door and I, that, you know, I mean that’s, at least that’s one of the things that I’m seeing
CN (13:09):
That No, that’s exactly it. And I mean, there were a lot like, not to over glamorize anything in the early two thousands. There were a lot of church basements where an elder board would invite me in and I mean, you know, I wasn’t getting paid for those. Maybe on a good day they’d give me a Subway gift card or a a card for gas so I could get home. And it didn’t cost me anything. Lot of hundred dollars honorariums for workshops or keynotes. But again, I really enjoyed the opportunity to help other leaders. And so I’m like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do that. And as long as it didn’t overcom compete with my family, I was very happy to do that. And most of it, for the first number of years, well probably seven, eight years, was all within a one or two hour drive of my house. It was just people who had heard word was spreading. And of course we didn’t have social media back in the nineties and early two thousands, so ideas didn’t spread as fast. But I was, you know, as far as I was concerned, that’s what I was gonna do for the rest of my life. I was gonna lead a church and if I was able to help another congregation or a presbytery a regional government or you know, someone else, then sure, I’ll, I’ll sign up for that.
RV (14:19):
Uhhuh . And you said that you were speaking within one to two hour radius for how many years?
CN (14:25):
Oh, probably six, seven years before I ever got on an airplane to do something more.
RV (14:31):
Wow. And so that, and were those all like all for those six or seven years? All of that was mostly that kind of like honorarium gift card, maybe
CN (14:40):
A few hundred percent here. Nothing. Uhhuh , Uhhuh
RV (14:42):
.
CN (14:43):
Yeah. And I just did it cuz I like helping leaders and there was again, no plan. It was just like, it was all inbound. There was no outbound, there was no website, there was no hire me, there was none of that. It was just all inbound. And actually today most of my business is inbound. Like I’ve never, I’m with the speakers bureau, but I know how that works. Nine times outta 10, it is somebody saying, okay, I want to get Carrie to speak. Okay, I gotta go through Premiere in Nashville, you know those guys right? Yeah. So away we go. And there just hasn’t been a lot of outbound. I haven’t, I haven’t like yeah, I have a website now, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s all pretty much still word of mouth.
RV (15:25):
Interesting. So when thinking about today, okay, fast forwarding today cuz you get to invited to speak at some big big events and part of how we met, where do you think most of your speaking opportunities come from? Do you think it’s more of people heard you on the podcast, they read your book, they followed your blog, they saw you preach, you know, as a pastor somewhere, they saw you speak somewhere. Is it a YouTube video? Is it social media posts that you’re making? Like are you able to kind of tie back and go in terms of generating invitations to speak today? Here is where I think they come from.
CN (16:06):
Definitely not the preaching. It’s, it’s ironic. Okay. You know, I probably, if you look at my last 27 years, I probably spent more time writing sermons than I’ve done anything. Now the reality is I think they served our local church really well and you know, you have those moments, particularly when I was in my thirties where I thought, you know, maybe one day somebody will hear a sermon or whatever. The sermons never really took off despite all the work that I, and I think I’m a decent preacher, but it was the exposure at NorthPoint Orange conference, which is Reggie Joiner’s Conference, rethink Leadership, which I’ve headed up for Orange for a number of years that probably gave me more of a national stage. And then definitely blogging, blogging’s changed a lot. I mean, blogging isn’t what it used to be 10 years ago, so I don’t blog as much anymore, but that kind of thought leadership on blogging generated a lot of inbound requests.
CN (17:04):
And then yeah, people would hear me at other conferences. They, the podcast definitely gives me, I think probably in authority in the marketplace, not because I’m talking like, I’ve already talked more on your show than I would ever talk in a 90 minute episode on my show. Right. If I’m doing my job right. Because I’m interviewing guests. Right. But I’ve had some world-class leaders on like yourself, but, you know, I, I kicked off this year with James Clear and Chris Anderson from Ted I mean we have pretty much the who’s who of whoever on my show. And it’s been fantastic. So I think it’s a combination of all of those things. And then, yeah, just like we’re, we’re, we’re, I did go with the Speaker’s bureau because they’re better at negotiating than I am. Mm-Hmm. , and we get parameters a lot clearer on that, but there hasn’t been a lot of outbound
RV (17:59):
Mm-Hmm. . and then it’s, it’s never been in terms of, if you were mentoring a young pastor today and going, Hey, here’s some ideas or some, what are some of your philosophies or your tips around balancing this? Because on the one hand you go, there’s some really massive personal brands. You know, I think of like Mike Todd as an example. And when they did their relationship goals sermon series on YouTube, that thing went viral, drove a lot of awareness, was an amazing sermon series and, you know, for Transformation Church. And they’ve grown a bunch and you know, you see him everywhere. He became a New York Times bestselling author. There’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of pastors who end up sort of becoming celebrity personal brands. They have, you know, they’re speaking at huge conferences, they’re selling lots of books. Their churches are growing. And then, you know, I think there’s also this dichotomy of going, well, hey, you know, you’re, you’re a pastor. You’re like, it’s really not about you being out in front and you know, like h how do you, how do you balance that? Or what would you say to somebody going through that right now?
CN (19:13):
So I think Mike is a great example and I know Mike and I’ve interviewed him a few times and we’ve gone over the story that you talked about when relationship goals, this series went viral. So I’m gonna share with you nothing he hasn’t shared in public, but it’s a really helpful thing. What I see a lot of young leaders trying to do now, cuz we, we get a lot of requests in this area is like, you know, how do I grow a personal brand? A guy like Mike would be the first to tell you he had no intention of growing a personal brand. He was pastoring a church of three or 400 people at the time. And he had this series that he was really passionate about called Relationship Goals. And what he said to his elder board was, he said, Hey, more and more people are watching messages through the lens of a camera they spent, if I’ve got the number right, about $80,000 on new cameras, which is a pretty, you know, ambitious but local church thing to do.
CN (20:05):
And he said, that way when we capture the message, it’ll, it’ll look a lot better than what we have right now. So he did that and the series didn’t actually take off. It was normal Sunday at church, 250, 300 people there series was over. And then one day someone on Twitter of all places found it, tweeted it and it went viral. The snowball started rolling down the hill and it was completely, he was as shocked as anybody and took off on Twitter. Then it took off on Instagram, then it took off across all social media platforms. And his story has been, he was doing really good work as a local pastor. I would say Mike is still mostly focused on doing really good work as a local pastor, but the influence that he’s had has exploded Transformation church. I mean, they meet in an arena and they bought an office complex to house the whole infrastructure now.
CN (21:01):
But that’s an example. And, and I tell you that story to say what Mike did is on a much bigger scale, similar to what I did, just do the work, do the really good work of writing a great series for your local church. Maybe it’ll take off, maybe it won’t. I set a pretty ambitious goal 10 years ago because otherwise my hobbies die a pretty quick death. And I said, all right, when I start blogging three times a week, I want to hit a hundred thousand page views in 2013 and I might as well have said a million because it was impossible. It’s like saying, I wish it was a million dollars in my bank. You get 10 bucks in the bank, it’s like that chance that’s gonna happen. But I said, a hundred thousand is a goal. So what I did was I started sharing on social media as it was then if I wrote a new post, I’d put it on Twitter, Facebook, and then one day Instagram, when that came along and it just started to go crazy. And within a couple of months I had my first a hundred thousand page views. And then 2013 wasn’t a hundred thousand, it was a million. Now social spread ideas via blogs a lot easier 10 years ago than they do today. But that was sort of the thing, I wasn’t focused so much on acquiring an audience as I was producing the best content I knew how to produce that I thought would be helpful to other leaders.
RV (22:25):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And I think if somebody listening, like even if you’re not a, you’re not a pastor, when most people listening are not pastors, it’s the same connection point though to say, do great work at what you’re already doing. And, and it’s not going, oh, I need to leave this thing so that I can go start the work I wanna do. It’s almost always a, you, you, you, you transition off of doing great at the thing that you’re doing and that is what sort of gives life to the next thing.
CN (22:54):
Yeah. And you may not even have a, my a financial model, like for the first three or four years of this hobby I had no, I had, I had entrepreneurs in my ear on a regular basis. Good friends who are like, Carrie, you got a million people visiting your website, you gotta monetize this, you gotta monetize your blog, you gotta monetize the podcast. And I was drawing a salary at the church I mean, wasn’t a huge salary, but we were able to pay our bills and save to put our kids through school. I had some speaking income that was definitely, you know, not what I get today for doing a keynote at a conference. But it was meaningful enough. And I made a decision early on. I’m like, I’m not gonna monetize because my currency is trust and what I want to build is I want to build a readership, a listenership, and I want to build trust with my audience.
CN (23:46):
I want them to know that they can trust in my content, not everything’s for sale. They can trust in the guests that I bring to the podcast. And so for a couple years I didn’t monetize anything and then when I was ready to monetize, I had choice cuz I had this big audience. I didn’t have to jump at $10. I could go and interview different people who were interested in partnering with me. And you know, we joke about it with my team all the time. I’ve left a lot of money on the table because I’m like, I don’t think this is the right fit for my audience and I won’t do a deal if I don’t think it’s the right deal for my audience. So what I would do is focus on your craft, do really good work, focus on building an audience, and the monetization will eventually take care of itself.
RV (24:34):
Mm-Hmm. . And now, and then the, how do you monetize a blog following in a podcast following?
CN (24:44):
Well, it’s changing. It’s changing pretty rapidly. So before we used to have ads on the blog and that kind of stuff, and we don’t anymore. If you go to our website, a lot of that is our internal product. So the financial model for what I do now has changed dramatically in the last seven years since I focused on this pretty much full-time. Used to be mostly speaking income, little bit of sponsorship income on the podcast these days because the podcast is so big and has a lot of influence and authority in our field. We take a couple of partners, we call them partners, not sponsors per episode. So I’ll have two ads read by me per episode. And you know, it’s not cheap to be on my podcast, but it’s not cheap now because I didn’t take anything at the beginning. I banked all of this trust and almost 30 million downloads later.
CN (25:37):
Mm-Hmm. Now I can say, this is what it costs to get on the podcast. And we sell out every year really before January 1st. People are itching to get on. We also, because I limit it too, I’ve had people say, well you can do a third ad or you can do a mid-roll. And I’m like, nah, I don’t wanna exhaust my audience and I wanna make it meaningful. So I do those reads all the time. We also have a newsletter, a sponsored newsletter that I started every Friday called On the Rise. And in it I find really curious, interesting articles that I’ve enjoyed on the internet. I’ll link to them. These are all outbound links. And then there’s a partner link in that as well has an excellent open rate. And so we’re able to monetize that just one outta maybe 5, 6, 7 links will be a partner link.
CN (26:25):
And we’re transparent about it. And then once in a while we send out a dedicated email on behalf of a partner. And then there’s speaking income. And then I have my own platform. I got into courses about five years ago. And so courses eventually became the Art of Leadership Academy. It’s a membership site and that generates about half the revenue in the company these days. So that’s sort of how we did monetization. But we did it very slowly very experimentally and little bit of trial and error. You know, there was one, one or two sponsors I had in the early days of the podcast where we were getting feedback from. And these were, I don’t wanna say who it was, but I mean, I used to listen to this company, advertise on other podcasts so bad on me. I didn’t do my due diligence. We got complaints from listeners who said, Hey, I used this agency service wasn’t what I thought. And I’m like, that’s it, you’re fired. You’re off the podcast. That’s it. You’re disappointing our clients. And we went without revenue for a month or two and then we found another partner to fill that gap down the road. But I think because we’ve done that so well, we’re able to monetize with some integrity what we’re doing. And our audience now trusts us. And that’s what our partners tell us is like, your audience takes action.
RV (27:41):
Uhhuh , do you sell your own ads? Like have you always sold your own ads? Mm-Hmm. and yeah,
CN (27:46):
How do you, we have someone in-house who helps with that. At the very beginning we did that through an agency associated with a company in Atlanta. And then in 2017 I bought all that out. And I have a guy who helps me. He’s sort of on our team. He works with a lot of different organizations. He’ll do the leads and then we’re developing our own internal team to handle all of that in-house now.
RV (28:08):
Interesting. And so you’re
CN (28:09):
Just Yeah, so we’re not, we’re not like part of a network like HubSpot or that kind of thing that, that sells ads. Again, because we’re such a niche market, it’s mostly you’re either a pastor or a church leader who works at a church or you’re a guy like you. If, if you listen to my show, so you’re all about the church even though you don’t work in the church. So we’re either entrepreneurs who do what you do or we’re people who work at churches and that’s a very high value audience to a select group of people in the marketplace.
RV (28:39):
And so you basically just say, this is my audience who, what companies or organizations wanna reach my audience? And then you just like contact, just email ’em or phone call ’em
CN (28:52):
Actually, actually Brad Loick does that work for us. And mostly it’s, it’s again, inbound to pick up on a theme that we’ve talked about. We, I don’t, I think I can honestly say I haven’t pursued anybody. They have pursued us.
RV (29:05):
Gotcha. Uhhuh .
CN (29:08):
I haven’t personally, I don’t know a hundred percent what Brad does, but mostly it’s people approaching us. And so I recruited Brad to sort of be the go-between cuz I don’t wanna be involved in the negotiation
RV (29:21):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. But that’s interesting to be at your size and to do it all yourself, like do it internally. Mm-Hmm. , you don’t have to have a huge agency. And then you know, and so you’ve got that. And then you’re saying the membership side, actually what started as courses became a membership side and now that’s like half the revenue of the whole operation.
CN (29:39):
Yeah. And that’s all in-house two. We and my team’s small. There’s six of us, seven of us, so that’s it. And we keep it in-house, we keep it small. It’s grown as a company, as has grown. A few years ago it was me and a couple of assistants and then we started hiring some leaders to really lead. But yeah, I’m very, very proud of the team and what they’ve been able to accomplish. And that allows me to really focus on what I do, which is interview people, write content, serve the members in the academy, and try to deliver great keynotes when I speak at conferences or events
RV (30:14):
Mm-Hmm. . And are you trying to speak more? Like, is that something that you’re, or have you always sort of tempered it? Because you have two, two kids, right?
CN (30:22):
Yeah, two kids. They’re grown, actually. My youngest works with me. So that’s, that’s a fun part of running the company. He’s 27 and my 31 year old’s a software engineer. So he works outside the company.
RV (30:32):
Uhhuh, . So you’re, do you speak a bunch? Like how often do you
CN (30:36):
Speak? I could speak a lot more. Our mutual friend John ak, like he’s on a plane almost every week and that kind of thing. And, and he and I catch up on this all the time. I think it works best for me if I’m speaking one or two times a month. Yeah. Nine times outta 10 in the US I do a little bit of international, I’m already lined up for Australia, New Zealand and Germany in 2024. A big like one month road trip. That’s gonna be a lot of fun. But for the most part, like I’m flying to Tennessee next week, it’ll be great. And then I’m on, I’m at home for another three weeks and then I’ll go to Atlanta and then we’ll fly from Atlanta up to Northern California and I’ll do an event there. And then I’m back for another three weeks and then down to Orlando. So that’s a pretty typical rhythm for me. And we say no to about 90% of all speaking engagements.
RV (31:26):
And then books. You also have books on top of all that. So you’ve got books.
CN (31:30):
Yeah, I got five, five books that I’ve written.
RV (31:33):
Uhhuh, . I mean it’s, it’s interesting because to me this, this follows a very similar path. I mean like, you know you know, like pastor or not like just going, you build an audience, you build trust, you create a a, a fan base, a group of people, you’re serving them. And then over time it leads, it just sort of becomes all of these, all of these things. What is, what is the, what’s the business of speaking in churches? Like how do you, is it mostly just pastors? Like some, cuz churches will hire people to come in and do a Sunday service, right? Mm-Hmm. . And then also it’s like some people hold, hold these big events and conferences at churches. Are that mostly only, is that mostly only just pastors who are doing that kind of a thing and
CN (32:24):
Yeah, so that’s, that’s a really interesting thing. So I mean, my old denomination, we used to call it pulpit supply and I used to do a lot of that when I was a pastor where, you know, for a couple hundred bucks, you speak at my church, I’ll speak at your church or whatever. I think with mega churches there is guest preaching that happens where you bring people in. I almost always say no to that. I can’t think of the last time I did guest preaching. Interesting. And the reason is, you
RV (32:51):
Mean you going there or someone coming to connect us?
CN (32:54):
Oh no, we, my successor, I, I used to bring people in to guest preach at our church, and my successor has definitely done his share of that, which I think is awesome. Okay. I don’t see that as my personal calling. I feel like my personal calling is to help leaders that I’m there to serve leaders. And it’s not that there’s not leaders on a Sunday morning in a church, but I, I really feel like if you’re doing a conference to the second part of your question, that’s more my jam. That’s what I love. I love talking to leaders. I love it when the leaders of a church or the leaders from industry gather and we get to talk or where sometimes that, that’s often hosted. Occasionally it’s hosted by churches. I did an event in Indianapolis that was hosted by a church and they invited business leaders and church leaders from their area.
CN (33:44):
But often I’m just speaking to church leaders or to bus, well I’m speaking to industry leaders too. So I’m speaking to Christian broadcast executives. I’ve done a number of events like that over the last few years. Or I’ll speak to chartered accountants who have a faith base or I’ll speak to just pastors who have gathered for a conference. And sometimes that’s hosted as a separate K not-for-profit or a for-profit company. Sometimes that hosted by marketplace people. Occasionally it’s hosted by a church, but that would be more of the kind of speaking that I do. Mm-Hmm. and that’s by choice. I I used to get a lot of invites to do and maybe I still get them, I don’t see every invi invite that comes, but I’m just like, no, I don’t do guest preaching as
RV (34:30):
A rule, but, but that, that is a business model. You can get paid to go guest preach yet.
CN (34:34):
Oh, there are people who, yeah, they would be itinerant teachers and they could go and, you know, speak almost every weekend at a church around the country. I’m, I’m just don’t feel like that’s a good calling for me.
RV (34:48):
Ah-Huh . And what, like, you know, roughly speaking, if you’re doing that, it, I’m, I’m assuming the fees for those are lower than what you would experience in the corporate market. Maybe more like an association, maybe like a few thousand bucks for a weekend or something like that.
CN (35:02):
Probably. You know, I’m not really in that field so I couldn’t tell you. Yeah. But like the conference circuit would definitely, I assume pay more more. Yeah. And you know, it would be like, well, you know, premier speakers and agencies like that, that it would be more like what you get paid at a leadership conference wouldn’t be quite what you get paid to keynote at a business conference, but it would be more on par with that.
RV (35:26):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it when we have, I mean, when Crosspoint in Nashville we have, we have guest preachers come in probably, I don’t know, maybe like four or five times a year. And it’s always, it’s always great. It’s always great. We had Lisa Harper this last weekend and do you, have you ever met her? Do you know Lisa Harper?
CN (35:42):
I haven’t, but I have all kinds of friends who know her and I Oh man. She’s hilarious and brilliant and wonderful.
RV (35:48):
Yes. Hilarious, brilliant Moving. I mean it was, it was such an incredible, such an incredible sermon. And
CN (35:56):
See and that is such a gift and like, it’s, it’s really interesting because you know, when I was, for the three years that I was still a lead pastor, I would work like crazy on a sermon and you know, we’d get maybe 1500 people who heard it or watched it or something like that. And that was great. And then I’d whip off a blog post in an hour and a half at 6:00 AM one morning and post it and the next week a hundred thousand people would’ve read it . So I was getting really disproportionate results on the leadership content and I take that like eventually it’s like, okay God, that might be a sign that this is something you’ve equipped me for. So that’s really the lane that I focus in. And even I was talking to a client this afternoon where you know, they wanted some kind of inspirational message and I’m like, I think you got the wrong guy. Like I am, I’m a leadership guy, but here’s what I can deliver. It’ll be in bullet points, it’ll have a few stories, it’ll be interesting. They’re like, yeah, we’re good for that. I’m like, I just don’t want you to think I’m the sermon guy cuz I’m not the sermon guy that said, I’m preaching at my church in April and I’m gonna do my best. But I can promise you it won’t have the resonance or the impact that a keynote I give at a conference will have. Yeah. It’s just the way I’m wired.
RV (37:11):
Yeah. I mean, I doing the sermons, man writing a new 20 minute speech every week. Like that’s not for the faint of heart that is. So,
CN (37:19):
But I did it for 30 years, so I’m like done.
RV (37:22):
Yeah. It’s, that’s, it’s, it is really, really hard to to, to do that. And
CN (37:27):
To the same people. Like when you’re Yeah. When you’re doing the conference thing, like I give a version of the same three talks wherever I go. Right. Usually have two or three that are kind of your current roster. And I’ll vary it by the event, but like I get to tell the same stories, the same jokes Yes. All that stuff because 98% of the audience has never heard you and that’s what they expect you to do. When you’re a conference speaker and you’re doing the circuit, it’s kinda like going to see Coldplay or Taylor Swift, you know, Taylor Swift to better do shake it off or you want your money back. Right. And so there are talks that I’ve been known for on the conference circuit and they want me to do them and I actually really enjoy it because I know I’m gonna help everybody in the audience. It’s sort of like, oh, I know where this is going. I know this is really gonna help people. We’re gonna have a great time together. Whereas, you know, if you’re preaching 40 Sundays a year, you’re kind of hoping this thing’s gonna connect, but you don’t know. It’s a very special thing, a really great period of my life, but like not anxious to go back
RV (38:25):
There. Interesting. Interesting. Well man, it, the this has been, this has been an awesome sort of journey down. I’m just always curious about the path of past, you know, pastor to leadership, you know, consultant and teacher and, you know this is, this has been super inspiring. Where do you want people to go, Carrie, if they want to connect with you and like link up with what you’re doing?
CN (38:54):
So my name is really easy to spell. Just go to carrie new h.com or you can go to the art of leadership academy.com. You’ll, you’ll find us there. Also Carrie New H Leadership podcast anywhere you listen to your podcast.
RV (39:07):
Yeah, yeah. It’s a great, a great, great show. Man, it’s been, it’s been so wonderful to get to know you a little bit and, and to be your pal and thanks for the work that you’re doing and, and all the people that you’re inspiring and r and thanks for being here and just sort of sharing like a little bit of behind the scenes of how Carrie New H became ke new H Man. It’s, it’s been awesome.
CN (39:28):
Well, it’s an absolute joy to be with you Rory. Thanks for having me.

Ep 370: What Makes A New York Times Bestselling Book with Esther Fedorkevich

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode on the influential Personal Brands. AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And I’m very, very excited to have a special guest and a new friend on the show today. But she’s new to me. She’s not new to Brain Builders Group or to my husband Roy Vaden, because Esther works with tons of our clients, lots of our friends, and also some of our team members. And I was just sharing this with her before, if we didn’t already have such a tight relationship with our literary agent, Nina, like there is no one else on the planet that we would even consider to desire to work with other than Esther. So before I give her a formal introduction, I just wanna tell you guys why you need to stick around for this show because as you saw the title of the show, it’s How to Write a New York Times bestselling book.
AJV (00:48):
And here are the reasons that you wanna stick around to the end. Number one, you can’t write a New York Times bestselling book surprise. So you probably need to stick on, figure out then, well, how on God’s green Earth do you get one if it’s not writing one? So that’s the first thing. Second thing is that this is an episode for you who are in the author space. It doesn’t not matter if you dream of being one, you’re an aspiring one, you’re a first time one, or you’re an established author. This is an episode of if you have a book that you want to get into the hands of other humans you need to listen to, because that’s what we’re gonna talk about. And then the third are just what are some of the ins and outs of actually making it work in the publishing industry today?
AJV (01:32):
Because it’s changing. It’s been changing, it will continue to change. So as someone who’s in that creative space and you wanna get your thoughts on paper and that paper into the hands of many, what do you need to know of how to get a book published and out into the world today? So that’s why you wanna listen and lemme tell you mainly why you want to listen. So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about Esther formally. So Esther is the owner of the Fed Agency. Esther oh my gosh, see better Kevin? Yep. I’ve been saying for Dork for Forever Better Kevi, I’m gonna like say this in my sleep now, but she’s the owner of the Fed Agency. She started her career in a lot of different ways, but some very I think important things to know is like you were part of the Dave Ramsey organization and really helped grow that to what it is. I think that, I think I read somewhere that you have helped more than 80 books become on the New York Times bestseller list a hundred.
EF (02:28):
We’re over a hundred now. We just hit 102.
AJV (02:31):
Woo. I mean, if that doesn’t inspire you to listen to the rest of this episode, then you can just go ahead and like hop off right now. But it’s like if you’ve helped more than a hundred people hit the New York Times list, this is just extraordinary. But one of the things that I loved most about your bio that you sent over is that you’re not just in the business of helping people get their books published. This is about changing lives helping dreams come true and really being a conduit of really good messages for people all around the world. And I love that you’re also a mom. You’ve got two kids. You live in Austin, Texas, and I could go on and on and on, but Esther, welcome to the
EF (03:07):
Show. Thanks AJ for having me.
AJV (03:10):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I have like, genuinely been looking forward to this conversation. Four weeks ever since we got this scheduled because I, I wanna just be I wanna be like one of your customers today because I think there’s so much changing in this space and in the industry of what I’m gonna call thought leadership or the knowledge economy. That’s, I just, I think that we’re, if you’re not constantly having these conversations, you’re already behind. And so as we kinda like step into this and what does it look like today, I wanna know two things to help our audience get to know you is one, you could have done so many different things. Like you have sold millions and millions and millions of dollars through book publishing. You have worked with some of the largest names, household names out there. You could be doing anything you want. Why did you pick this space? So that’s my first question.
EF (04:04):
Okay. So I didn’t pick it, it kind of fell in my lap when I started working for Dave Ramsey. We were self-publishing and then publishing with publishers about 50 different products a year. And they were all financial products. So I was trying to think of like a new way to say the same thing with a new marketing. It’s all marketing guys, right? So new marketing idea, new way. And it was get, I’m like, I wanna do more than just finance books. And so I worked for Dave till the day I gave birth to my first daughter. I was 25 years old and I said, I’m gonna start my own literary agency and I think I could do this. I was good at sales. And I’m like, I love story. So what, it really fell in my lap. Cause I love story. I’m really a branding and marketing person.
EF (04:43):
A lot of literary agents come in this space because they’re literary, they’re writers. I came in this space as an entrepreneur and businesswoman, but coming in from the say I love story and I love helping people know how to market that story. Cuz there’s one thing about writing a great book and then there’s the other thing about getting it out there and selling it. So both things matter, but it kind of fell in my lap. And then I’m really good with people. I was a big Zig Zeigler fan growing up. I mean, I think I’ve listened to every Zig zeigler, you know, audio cassette back in the day. And like, I also just love people. So Dave Ramsey had us read a book. He made all of his employees read a book, how To Win Friends and Influence People. And then I did this Dale Carnegie course and I’m like, I’m really good with people. I love story and I can sell. So I kind of said, wow, that makes a good literary agent, someone who can sell Ari. Because most writers aren’t salespeople naturally. Yeah. Most writers are, you know, they have the ideas, they’re right, they’re, they don’t like bragging about themselves. So it’s perfect for someone like me coming in and helping get their message out.
AJV (05:42):
Matt, I love that. And you put in your bio statement that that’s your also your favorite book. Why is that your favorite book?
EF (05:48):
I think because it’s still relevant today. When he wrote that, think about it, it was no social media. There was no, I mean, I told my employees all the time, did you talk to them? Did you actually actually pick up the phone and talk to them? Right? Did you, so I love relationships, I love building relationships. And my whole business has been built on relationships, real genuine relationships. And I think a lot of times this younger generation comes in and they have, you know, a hundred thousand friends on Instagram or Facebook, but they couldn’t, they have never picked up the phone and talked to them. Mm-Hmm. . So that’s a big thing for me is in How to Win Friends and people like, like all those principles, if you haven’t read it, read it, it’s still relevant today.
AJV (06:26):
Oh, it’s one of my favorite books too. It was mandatory reading early in my sales career. And you said something that I think is gonna set the precedent for the rest of our conversation, which is, you’re, you’re in the literary field, but at the end of the day, you’re branding and marketing aka sales. And I think one of the things that we run into all the time with our podcast listeners to, with, with our Brain Builders Group community and just with everyday conversations is people somehow have forgotten that relationships are still the fundamental way that we do business today. And they think that you get enough followers, you get enough this and this is gonna figure itself out. And, you know, we are lucky to be behind the scenes of a lot of launches. And I’ll tell you what, lots of emails do not convert into lots of books all the time. And lots of followers do not convert into lots of sales most of the time. And so hence why I think this conversation, I’m
EF (07:23):
Glad you figured that out. Cause if there, if that was true, right? We’d all have the magic formula and no, just to sign someone if they had 10 million followers that they were gonna sell 10 million books. But that’s not the case.
AJV (07:34):
That is not the case. And so here is why we’re here today. Like what is it? Like, what do we need to be doing? So here’s my first here’s my first question which is kind of like, you know, part two of a little bit about your backstory is what, what do you think makes someone not a great writer, but a great candidate to hit a list? Because I think that’s like ultimately what so many people want is like, how do I hit that Personally, I don’t really care, but I know that it’s a big goal of most. And so I’m curious, what do you think it is not about the writing, but what makes someone a good candidate to have the list eligibility?
EF (08:16):
Well, I say like, as an agent, I look for three things, right? And you have to have two of these three things to be successful. And I think to have a chance to be a New York Times bestseller, and this is for me acquiring an author to go sell, right? But then I still think it’s relevant as when they go to brand builders and you’re helping ’em, or they’re doing it on their own. It, you have to have a great book. It still has to be a good book guys to sell. Like you can’t just write crap, right? And then think it’s gonna sell because you have 50 million followers, right? That’s, I mean, I can prove you over and over again people that have 50 million plus followers that haven’t sold a hundred thousand books.
AJV (08:53):
I, I agree.
EF (08:54):
So step one, have good content. Step one, the content’s gotta be good. And if you have the ideas and thoughts, work with a great writer or, or collaborator that can help you put those, read them in a way that you’re making the reader, you’re empowering ’em to change, you’re encouraging, you’re inspiring, you’re, you know, making ’em cry. You’re making ’em laugh, whatever the goal is of that book. But they really wanna, at the end, when they close it, they wanna get up and go their, their life has changed somehow. Mm-Hmm. number two is platform, right? And we always talk about this platform, platform platform. It’s easier for me to sell someone with a big platform than someone who’s the most incredible writer, right? But they don’t have a platform. And that’s sad. Back in the day, it was all about the writing or, you know, before social media.
EF (09:39):
When I started, I started in 2003, the only social media around was MySpace. So there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was, there was no TikTok there. So think like I like started as a young agent, right? When social media was coming out and how the older authors were thinking that we’re selling, you’d actually go into retail and find their book. So I, a quote of mine is, with the death of retail is the death of discoverability. So there’s no retail anymore. So gotta get that outta your mind. And everything is our phone. I don’t have mine here or like the computer. It’s how people are getting to you to buy that book. So platform is huge. And when I can find, even if someone doesn’t have the biggest platforms, but they have a cultish engaged platform mm-hmm. , but where people really follow ’em and respond, that’s even more important.
EF (10:27):
If you, and you can look at that by like, what’s their engagement level, what’s their likes? How many people are actually commenting? That’s super important. That means they have a tribe that’s pretty, you know, dialed into them. And then the third thing, so you got, it has to be a good book, right? A good content. It’s gotta be platform. And the third one is gotta be a creative idea. It’s gotta be a good idea. That’s why when you see some of these books that they have a saying on it, like, make Your Bed Right? Or the four Hour We Work Week, I put them the four hour work week just cause I’m like, Ooh, that sounds amazing. Four hours a week, that’s all I would have to work. Right? And it’s not even about that. So it’s like having a really cool concept where idea or thought process that like actually makes your book different is really big.
EF (11:10):
The har like when someone has a great story, so many people have great stories. It’s finding that secret thing in your story and expanding off of that. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s what we do. Because I come from marketing and branding. When I sit with an author, I never go to an author and say, you should write a book. Right? If I’m talking to a huge celebrity, they hear that all the time. I go to them and say, Hey, I’ve been studying, I look at what they engage in. You should write this book. This is the type of book you should write. And that’s why I usually sign these big, you know, celebrities because I’m actually bringing them a really creative idea of why this is the type of book they should write. And I think a lot of times people wanna write a book and it’s not the book they should write, they actually should start somewhere else. And it, and that’s where it’s great when you’re talking to marketers or branders where you’re coming up in a network of saying, this is what really makes you unique.
AJV (11:59):
No, I love that. It’s not that you should write a book, it’s you should write that book that you need to write a book about that. So like, for any of you listening, it’s just, I would just sit there and ask yourself like, what do people actually come to you for? Right? And it’s like, that’s something we talk about all a lot, a lot even in like our own like family and our own personal brands at Brand Builders Group is like, what do people come to you for? Like, what’s that superpower thing? It’s not that you have a great story, it’s the stories, the launching pad. It’s what is something that you do so well, so uniquely different that you could write a whole book about it. Yeah.
EF (12:31):
And so like a lot of times like for a pastor by, like, I work with a lot of pastors of huge megachurches, right? And let’s say they wanna write on something and that’s the sermon that got the worst downloads, right? But that’s what they really care about. And I’ll look at them and say, what’s the message that everyone comes back? They remember 10 years? Like, what’s your core message? And guess what that core message is? Their biggest selling book. Like if you look at Warren with the Purpose Driven Life or Joel o with Your Best Life Now, or like, I could go on and on. All of those were those pastor’s core message that people remembered and kept coming back to them. So it’s not the other, the new message because why haven’t any of their other books sold with that book is sold. So it’s, it’s, I think it’s really kind of identifying what that secret thing is, why people love you and are coming to you, what content is that that they’re going
AJV (13:21):
For? Yeah, I love that. Cuz so many people do. It’s like, and there’s this, I’m not saying this is right and or wrong, you can say that, but I won’t. But it’s like so many people want to tell their story, right? And it’s like, that’s for a keynote, that’s for a blog, that’s for social media and that’s a piece of the book, but it’s not the book.
EF (13:36):
Yep. You got it. You’re exactly. So a lot of times people are like, oh, I wanna tell my story. Well, memoirs don’t sell that well, right? You have to have the secret in the memoir, right? Mm-Hmm. in your story. So I’m really big on my biggest space is it’s on the New York Times, it’s the miscellaneous how to, it’s the self-help space. So we do tons of memoirs, but when we tell that celebrity story, it’s a hook about how they live their life. What, what made them successful? Yeah. What made them not quit? What made them, so that’s the angle of the book with pieces of their story throughout. But I don’t like a book where it’s like, I was born here and then I went here , and then I like, that’s boring, right? And the only person you’re selling that to is your core, core crazy cultish fan base, right? Yeah. That’s the only people that are gonna buy that book. And that’s why lots of huge celebrities that do memoirs, they’re like a bestseller for them is 40,000 books and they have mm-hmm. millions and millions of fans. It’s because they didn’t like identify what that core thing is.
AJV (14:31):
Yeah. I love that so much. And I love this whole thing. It’s, you know, it’s one, one, I kind of wrote this down, it’s like whenever you’re saying it’s like clearly you have to have good content, but it’s like, make it sticky, make it memorable. Make it shareable, right? It’s like, it’s not like, oh, that was a good book and then you forget that you ever read it. Which I’ve done lots of those two platform, it matters. And I love what you said, it’s like death of retail is death of discoverability. So you’ve got to have a platform and what is it, right? And how many people are you reaching? I love that. Number three this is just what I wrote down is it’s about the creative idea, but it’s, it’s about developing true thought leadership. Right? You know, people always say there’s, you can’t say anything that hasn’t been said that may be true, but you can say it in a new way.
AJV (15:14):
You can say it in new context. And with that slight twist, so what is your version of forwarding this thought, this idea this thing. And I, I love that so much because I feel like people really struggle with how do I take these ideas from my head, get ’em on paper, but then translate them in a way where it’s not about me, it’s about the reader, it’s about the end audience, but then getting it from there to actually having someone buy it, right? Yes. So let’s assume we have great content. It’s sticky, it’s memorable, shareable. We have a good platform, we got a great idea, a unique, awesome idea. Where do we go from there?
EF (15:58):
Okay, so let me first say, if there was a magic formula, we would all be worth a billion dollars. Okay. , I’m just like, if there was a magic formula, cause then I would only pick the winners, right? So I think a lot of times you have those three things and you’re working it and sometimes something goes viral, right? That you don’t expect goes viral. Like, I did this, my daughter did, it is a good example. My daughter was doing a TikTok and she said, Hey mom I wanna let you know I put you in this TikTok. And we, it went viral and it went crazy and we had over 2 million views and 500,000 likes. And it was the dumbest video, right? And, but hot, like it went viral. So sometimes you get lucky, something goes viral, it’s the perfect timing. You get on, you know, the Today Show in Good Morning America and it’s just like the perfect lineup, right?
EF (16:43):
But I’ve had the perfect lineup of all the major shows and it wasn’t a bestseller, which it’s just like, oh, you get so upset, you’re like, what? That’s, and then that book you see 12 months later hit the New York Times. So sometimes you don’t know. It’s not like you, you, you have to do all the right things, right? And one of the things is what worked, and you, I know h i u would agree with this and Rory would agree with this. What worked two years ago doesn’t work today. It keeps changing because people are buying differently. Yeah. And they’re using different, like it was the day of the email blast was everything, right? And then it was the day of Facebook like it all, I believe you have to, you have to do all of the things and consistently. So I kind of think it, it’s like marketing you.
EF (17:28):
You can’t just talk about your book on book launch week and then not talk about it anymore. It’s, you can’t just be onto the next thing. You really gotta give a book time and make that your core message for the whole year and let people hear it, let people talk about it. That’s why if it’s a good book and it’s changing people’s lives, guess who what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna tell your friend when someone gives you a book and it’s not that great of a book. You’re not talking about it it to others. Yeah. So it’s about, I think, I think authors give up too quick. And I see this all the time. It’s like the ones that are persistent, that keep going, that keep working it, that keep investing because you have to look at an author. It’s like when you write a book, it’s a business.
EF (18:04):
Let’s get real. It’s not a hobby. If you wanna be successful, you’re starting a new business and that book is your new business. And a book can turn into more speaking dates. A book can turn into, you know, like you are opening into new audiences that you never were before. It could get you on podcasts, it could get you on media. I mean, a book, a book opens lots of doors. But, and it also makes you that expert in that topic. When you put a book out, what does everyone think? Oh my gosh, that you’re an expert. You, you must be, cuz you have a whole book, a book’s a lot of work. It’s not like, oh, you say I wanna write a book, and then you think it’s gonna be a couple hours a week of your time. Yeah. But I think authors spends so much time writing the book and then it comes to marketing and they don’t put the same amount of time into the marketing.
EF (18:45):
And they think an agent, I always say an agent is not a magician. I I’m not this, I can’t wave my magic wand and make all my books that I do hit the New York Times bestseller list. Right? It’s hard work. And so when you go in, if you can go into with that like, perspective of publishing and your book is, this is a business, I’m gonna grow my business. If you had any other business, you’re not gonna sit open up a retail store and never go work it and never go check, check out your competition and ev I mean, you’re consistently working it. And so I think authors gotta be looking at, you know, when they write a book, it’s part of their bus, it’s a business and it, or it’s part of their business and they’re gonna spend some time growing it.
AJV (19:23):
Yeah. I love that. I think that’s such a great reminder of if you, if you just wanna talk about your book, just so it hits the list, don’t even bother writing it. But it’s like, you gotta be able to willing to talk about this book all day long, every single day for years and years and years. And if you don’t wanna talk about it for a lifetime, don’t write it.
EF (19:41):
And AJ that’s why when it’s your life message, you’re always talking about it. So though, that’s why the, there’s always a book for every author that’s the one that sells the most. It’s because they’re, they love talking about it. So I, identifying that makes it big.
AJV (19:56):
Yeah. I think for, again, for everyone listening, it’s just, if you don’t want to talk about whatever is going on the pages of your book for a lifetime, then start over. Like start over. Because if you want people to buy it, you’re gonna have to talk about it incessantly to the point where you’re sick and tired of hearing your own voice and then you do it some more. Right? And I think that is a thing for all of us, is we move on too quickly.
EF (20:19):
What drives me crazy is when an author is on a, like they have a big break, they’re on a big show, right? Let’s say they’re on Joe Rogan and they never talk about their book. And I’m like, you’re on the big, like one of the biggest podcasts and you know, you’re talking about your book, but you never mentioned that you have a book. So like really working with authors too, and I know you guys do this like on a regular basis, but in my book, you know, here’s the title. This is what I talk about in my book. Like it’s really also training the authors. You want people, people to buy your book, right? So you’ve gotta talk about your book.
AJV (20:50):
Yeah. So that kinda leads me to the second thing that I wanna talk about, which is this concept of, to be a great author, in my opinion, to be a bestselling author anyways, you have to be a great salesperson. And we, we have this saying that brain builders group that, you know, editors edit, publishers publish, but Hoover, him sells, right? And it’s like the author does, the author needs to sell. So I’d love to hear your take on how do you get people to buy your book, right? Because at some point you get big advances for authors all the time, but that big advances don’t mean anyone’s buying it. It’s like at some point you gotta, you gotta put some hustle and grind into this and say, what am I gonna do to move some books? So what moves books? Like what do you see as actually moving books today?
EF (21:40):
A bunch of things, right? All together at the same time because people look and once you see things, you know, like on your, on your feed, when you get the same thing coming up then what do you do? Oh, I gotta buy that. Right? You can’t just do it one time. You gotta keep talking. Like, if I keep seeing something over and over on Instagram, guess what? I’m gonna finally click it and buy it. So it’s consistently talking. Get on line up your podcast, do 50 podcasts, right? Do like, make sure you’re always talking about it. But okay, so when you were, when you were talking about authors have to sell their book, if you’re an author, I’m just, that is not a good salesperson that can’t sell. You better have a freaking amazing team around you that can sell for you. So if your natural skill, like I’m probably, I would say the best salesperson probably I’ve ever met.
EF (22:24):
Like honestly that’s my one gift. I didn’t think that sales actually mattered. Like, but I’m like, oh, I’m really good at selling, so let me, but I can’t sell all my authors books for them. They have to. So if I can train them a little bit how to be at least a little better than what they are at sales. And if they, if they lack that, like the truly like the writers, the introverts that can’t sell, get people around you that can help you sell mm-hmm. because there’s lots of introverts that have sold millions and millions of copies of books, right? And have had bestsellers, but they have good teams around them. So if I’m just saying that in case you’re not a naturally born salesperson, that it just comes easy to you. But be authentic to who you are. And if you love the message, you’re gonna be authentic and you won’t even realize it, but you’re selling.
EF (23:06):
Right? So I think, and I mean you guys do this right? I think it’s putting enough time in your presales up. You have to, you can’t just start promoting your book a week before your book releases. The, it’s getting longer and longer. Six months before start talking, do a cover reveal, have your audience like build up this anticipation that your book’s coming out and why they need your book. So I think it’s the building up. You can’t just start a it, I mean you can’t just start week of release. You got, I mean the best selling books, I mean we’ve have planned six months, nine months ahead of time that we’re building towards that release. Hmm. Creating multiple products. Like I love it when we have a trade book and a devotional or e-course or a bible study or a gift book like, or a children’s book like actually building where there’s other products feeding into people wanting to buy the trade book.
EF (23:58):
So everything test leads back to the trade book. So if you have a children’s book that has a some little message that kind of gears you to the trade book, it makes you wanna read the trade book. So a trade book is your, your your main book. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the non-fiction self-help book. And then you can have all these little products that kind of leads you or are magnets to lead you to the trade book. So offering free content, doing some kind of challenge before getting people for free to get invested in something that they’re like, wow, this is so great that they have to buy the trade book speaking, setting up a speaking tour around your book. That’s huge. Cuz speaking, you’re, you’re getting a hundred people or a thousand or 10,000 people at one time, all motivated talking, putting it on social media, buying it on Amazon. So that’s why I say like, it’s multiple things going at the same time. Is all of our bestsellers have had that.
AJV (24:51):
Yeah, I think that’s
EF (24:52):
Had a plan. You can’t just go into publishing your book without a marketing plan. And so many authors go into books without a marketing plan. And the biggest, biggest mistake authors make is they think the publisher’s gonna do it for them Guys, I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. The publisher is not gonna do it for you. It’s all on. You have to go in, even if you’re with the biggest publisher in the world and you ha and you got a 5 million advance and every, yeah, they’re gonna put some more money into you. That’s really what they’re gonna do. But you still have to be involved and you have to work your butt off. Like it’s just how it is. You’re never gonna get a best seller if you’re sitting back and just thinking the publisher’s gonna do it for you.
AJV (25:34):
No, I, I think this is really, really important. Going back to what you said earlier about launching a book, writing a book is like starting a business. So it needs to be treated like one or at least a part of the business because like to that it’s like how many of us would’ve actually lodged a business without some sort of plan or some sort of budget with the money and the funds that we had? And it’s like, most would not do that most, right? It’s no different with your book. It’s no different. And
EF (26:02):
If you go,
AJV (26:03):
You gotta have a plan.
EF (26:04):
If you go the business mentality into it, you’re thinking, okay, like if I was gonna start a business and I’m like, okay, it’s gonna cost me $80,000 to invest and start this business and I’m gonna be working 80 hours a week, and I that’s your book. You should be thinking with that mentality going into your book, that is a business and you’re investing in something, however it’s gonna return. You know what your revenue returns gonna be on it, great. But it’s how much work you put into it. You cannot go into a book think you don’t have to invest any money, you don’t have to invest any time. You know, it’s not gonna be a bestseller then you’re just writing a legacy book. Like a lot of, like my rich billionaire clients do they just write a book so that their family can have it. They don’t care about sales, they don’t care about, they don’t wanna talk about it. It’s just for their, their kids, grandkids, great grandkids to know about how they started their business.
AJV (26:47):
All right. So that leads me to a question that I have for you. Something you said made me think about this. So what about for the authors who want an agent wanna go the traditionally published route and they don’t really care if they ever hit a list, they want a big advance and then they just want sales to happen organically.
EF (27:04):
That’s tricky cuz most, most big one, big celebrity clients, they wanna hit a bestseller list, right? The issue I see a lot AJ, is when an author comes in, they don’t have a platform, they have a really good idea, they’re a good writer, they don’t have a big platform. And I don’t work with the smaller publishers really because the smaller publishers don’t pay advances. You’re giving up too much, you’re not controlling your rights. So we have a program here at the Fed Agency where we, we pick a select few, right? But that we publish it for them where we’re helping them grow their platform so that when they’re at the point that they’re ready for a big New York publisher, we’re able to go sell ’em and they’re of value to them. But the days of the big advances, you have to have a big platform if you’re thinking you’re good or it’s gotta be a national media story where then everybody knows the story, everybody wants to do the book and there’s a bidding war on it. And I think, I think the mistake authors make is they don’t treat a book like a business. And that’s really comes down to, so an author comes in here and they don’t care about the bestseller list, but they want a big advance, then we’ll probably get them a big advance if we can. And then the publisher’s disappointed, everyone’s disappointed, and then they’re not really doing another book anymore.
AJV (28:16):
Hmm. So that’s around
EF (28:18):
Building a publishing enterprise. Like we want authors coming in and we do have the books that the authors that they’re only gonna do one book in their career and that’s it. But most of our authors are looking at building a publishing enterprise. They’re saying, I want publishing to be part of my business, part of my brand, part of everything I do. And then we’re mapping out what that could look like.
AJV (28:36):
And if you don’t want that, then probably don’t need an agent, don’t need a publishing house. That’s really the, this is the self-published route, right? If you’re not trying to do this to grow a and treat it like a business, because at the end of the day, publishers are in business to sell books. Right. And they’re depending on you to do that.
EF (28:56):
Yeah. So like, like I’ll take 2022, we did 200 million in sales in book sales. And when you think about that, like wow, that’s $20 a book that’s 10 millions books sold last year from the Fed agency of all of our authors. Right? And that seems like a lot, but at the majority of, if you look at how many of those books actually sold over 500,000 copies, I mean you, you it’s maybe six.
AJV (29:22):
Yeah.
EF (29:24):
Lot of ’em sold a hundred thousand. And so you’re trying to get that author that sold 50,000 in the first year to the next year, saw a hundred thousand of their next book. Mm-Hmm. , you’re trying, we’re all of our authors, were trying to grow their platform. We’re not like, so that each book they do is selling more and more. So that when you get to a, a point where you’re an author that anytime you put a book out, you’re selling a quarter of a million no matter what, that’s when you’ve really arrived and you’ve really found success because you have this following that’s gonna buy anything from you. And it’s a big enough number that every publisher wants you.
AJV (29:55):
And you know, it’s so funny, it’s like when you’re thinking of selling a half a million or a million books, in theory that feels like a lot. But then if you think about it in context of even just the population of the United States is like roughly 365 million and we’re talking about people are trying to figure out how to sell 100,000. That’s such a teeny tiny, I know minuscule portion of the actual just population in the US forget North America or you know, the remain the remainder of the world. But it’s like, it’s really small. So what makes it so hard to reach even such a small percentage of the population?
EF (30:30):
I think a lot of authors give away their content for free. So people don’t think they need to buy the book cuz they’ve heard it. And that’s a big mistake. I mean, you have to give bits mm-hmm. And pieces, but you have to make the book unique that it’s a, you need to read this, right? Don’t, like PE pastors do a sermon series. You walk in, you’ve heard it, you’ve seen you get everything for free, right? So why would you spend $25 for a hardback book? You already got it for free. So it’s making that urgency, right? That need that you need to buy it. And we try to help our authors build transactional audiences, audiences that will pay money, not audiences that just get everything from you for free. And that’s where I think if you’re in business, you’re gonna be thinking, I wanna give some things for free, but I’m not gonna give the magic away for free. Right. I’m gonna make them know that there’s value and that they’re gonna pay for that.
AJV (31:18):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I’m just laughing and smiling because like, our biggest philosophy is always and forever give away the what but charge for the how
EF (31:28):
Good
AJV (31:29):
You can give away the what charge for the how.
EF (31:32):
I agree with that like that. And that’s why e-courses are doing so well, right? Because people want, but listen, it’s like if someone gives you a free ticket to a concert right? You’re chances are you probably won’t go right? But when you pay $200 for a ticket, you’re gonna
AJV (31:46):
Show up. It’s an investment. Yeah.
EF (31:47):
It’s an investment. And so I think like, I think the same thing when you, when it an e-course someone says, oh, here’s my e-course for 20 bucks join. I show up like it’s a $20 e-course. Right? But if I’m paying $3,000 for e-course, I’m gonna show up like it’s a $3,000 e-course, I’m gonna look nice. I’m gonna do my makeup, I’m gonna like, but if it’s 20 bucks, I’m like in my workout clothes with wall cap on saying, okay, let me see what the heck this is. You know?
AJV (32:10):
Yeah. Well, and like I’ll, I I tell you like last year I made this commitment that I was gonna read a book every month, right. And I did. I was like, so I, I read 15 books last year. I was so proud of myself. And so, let tell you what happened though is I was reminded of the power of a book and I had forgotten that because I had gotten away and just listening to podcasts and listening to short form contents. And I got reminded in the biggest, most profound way last year from reading 15 books that I even think about myself. Like the amount of time, like, you know, don’t take offense to this, but the amount of time that I took to prepare for this interview, right? That it’s, it’s minutes, right? It’s like 30 minutes versus the amount of time that you prepare, write, edit, rewrite, reedit.
AJV (33:02):
A book is months if not years. Versus I will throw out a podcast with 30 minutes of preparation. I’ll whip together a blog post in 30 minutes and I’ll do a short form video content with five minute prep time. And that is nothing compared to the amount of time, sweat efforts, just incredible resource to put together a book that we then only charge $25 for. Yep. And just a major shout out to when you think you listen to a podcast and you got it, you don’t, you don’t, like there is just, I’m so positively reminded of that last year.
EF (33:44):
Yeah. And there aj there’s something about highlighting in a book, right? It’s thinking about it like if you’re reading it that like I read it a lot for living. So I’m always reading but highlighting and saying, oh, this is really good. This is a sticky state statement of magic. Right? This could change someone’s life. It’s, you get to spend time and sit with it. Mm-Hmm. podcast, you’re on the run, you’re listening to it, you’re doing something like you’re not sitting with it and really thinking through it. So I, I feel like it’s a lot of value in a $25 book . And that’s why it’s so important that the marketing and branding of that book shows that value to the end consumer.
AJV (34:20):
I’m so on the same page with that because I just, I’m still reveling in the fact that some of these books, I’m like, this will change my life forever. And it was a $25 investment. I’ve spent 8,000, $10,000 on events that I’m like, I’m taking long lunch breaks and checking emails. And it’s like,
EF (34:42):
Yeah. So I represent this, this really famous therapist, right? And like, she doesn’t even do sessions anymore, but if you did a session, it’ll be like a thousand dollars an hour, right? This is here, you can get her book for $25 Right. And she can, you’ll read it and it could actually save your marriage, right? Or yes. You know, help you like deal with depression or whatever it is. Any mental health issue. And I’m like, it’s $25, right? Like that is like, that’s so amazing, right? That you could get that. You just have to read it and do the work, right? Yeah. It’s the same, like, same thing with any diet book, right? Or health book. It really can change your life, right? If you read it and apply it and it’s only 25 bucks cuz you get a personal trainer, it’s gonna cost you a hundred bucks an hour at least. Right?
AJV (35:23):
Or a coach or a consultant or counseling, all these things. Yeah. So there’s, there’s
EF (35:29):
A way, there’s a way a book, like if you actually use it, do it. You can save a lot of money and get the best value, you know? Heck
AJV (35:39):
Yeah. Cause I just, that’s part of why I wanted to have this call with you cuz I have had such a, I I’ve, I’ve re fallen in love with books and the written words because of my commitment to do this, you know, for a little personal challenge last year. And now I’m just like, I’m blown away that it’s like the amount of money I’ve spent on other things compared to the amount of money I spent on books is not even in comparison. But what I learned from the books versus what I’ve learned from all the other things I did is insurmountably bigger.
EF (36:06):
What was, okay, out of the 15 books you read last year, what was your favorite book?
AJV (36:10):
I have, well, I have to have two because one is the one that will forever change my life and my Eternity, which is the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. And I read every single word and it’s long and it’s heavy and it’s dense reading, but I couldn’t believe that I had made it through 39 years of my life without hearing about heaven in this context. It will forever change the trajectory of my life and my family. So that, and then I discovered for the first time ever, Jenny Allen, who is now my favorite author. Awesome. And I read, I read four of her books in one year. Get Outta Your
EF (36:46):
Head. Did you read that one?
AJV (36:48):
I did. That was, that’s how I finished the year was with that. But the one that was my favorite book of the entire year is Nothing to Prove.
EF (36:55):
Good
AJV (36:56):
Book. Nothing to prove. Get out of your head, find your People. We’re all Jenny Allen books that were at the top of my list. But nothing to prove would’ve been my favorites last year. And I just like, I think that’s just a great reminder for anyone who’s listening who is an author. It’s like, don’t forget that in addition to hitting the list, you’re actually changing people’s lives. That’s ultimately, yeah, ultimately that’s really
EF (37:19):
Good. But you got one Jenny Allen booking, guess what you did? You wrote, you read three more after that. So
AJV (37:24):
I have her avatar. Like she, she writes for me
EF (37:27):
like when you read that, like, then you bought, and, and that’s the best thing is like when you write something and you, and put someone loves it, they’re looking for anything else from you that you have, right? Yeah. We
AJV (37:37):
You gotta have great content, right? Have great content.
EF (37:41):
Yep. We get thousands of letters in of suicides, not committed of people coming to Christ of marriages saying family’s reunited. And we, like, I tell my staff all the time, this is why we do what we do, right? Like we’re, we’re a part of this because we help get the book out. And I like, that’s really rewarding and I mean humbling and rewarding, but that’s, that’s why you write a book is you’re, the last part is what we were talking about is that these lives are changed, right? Mm-Hmm. that someone was overweight is now healthy, someone that was depressed is now happy. Someone that, like, as you go through the list, I mean that’s what you’re hoping you’re writing to a business that was failing is now successful, right? Because they read something from you. Yeah. So that’s why I do what I do. And like aj, I know that’s why you do what you do, but let’s not forget the most important part of why you’re writing a book. It’s not only just to sell a million copies, it’s yeah, to hopefully change a million lives,
AJV (38:31):
But you’ll never sell a million copies if you don’t have incredibly great content and you’re not willing to market and sell the pants off of it. And I think that is like two really big takeaways for everybody. All right. I know we’re almost outta time, but I have two more really important questions for you. Okay. When it comes to category listings, how important is that?
EF (38:51):
When you mean like on the what it’s the one category or are you talking about Amazon?
AJV (38:58):
I would say both, but we’ll start with Amazon, right? Because I know so many people who are obsessive of has to be in this very specific category because in this category I know that on this week that I can hit X, y, Z.
EF (39:12):
So I, we do a much categories as you can, right? Like on Amazon, because you can, we have a book that hit the okay, so our youngest author, she’s 17, she did a, a c book, a children’s book on like aquarium type of thing, right? And one of the categories we picked that we put her on at Amazon was Turtles. And she hit number one bestseller in Turtles Never. But now that helps the algorithm, right? So yes, I think authors the mistake they make is like, I wanna be in self-help. Great. Let’s be a little more specific because we want you, the algorithms start kicking in and it working and I could do a whole talk with you on Amazon how it works. Cuz doing this for years and years and actually working with people on Amazon are very high level trying to figure this stuff out. You wanna, you want the algorithm working in your favor. So you, you don’t wanna be so broad, you actually wanna try to nail down be pretty specific and that’s what helps you hit bestsellers in different categories. Yeah. And nobody looks back in the day for categorizing, like for Barnes Noble people cared if it was like religious religion, right? Or sell cookbooks or nobody looks at that anymore. Mm-Hmm. , that’s the thing. It’s like you’re you’re 90% of all books are sold online. You’re not looking at that little category.
AJV (40:26):
Totally. No one even pays attention.
EF (40:29):
No one pays attention. Just like no one pays attention to what’s on a spine of a book. Like who the publisher is really only people in the business like me and you and but like the general person doesn’t know the difference between what publishers, what publisher, they couldn’t tell you Penguin Random House was the largest publisher in the world. They have no clue. Right? So Yeah,
AJV (40:46):
That’s so true. It’s so true about nobody
EF (40:50):
Else cares about
AJV (40:51):
, but as an author you’re like, oh, is this publishing house? So somehow it’s gonna be like nobody freaking knows. They don’t care, they don’t know it’s just us. Do they like the cover category? Yeah. Yeah. The same thing for category listings. And I think that’s really important because I to what you said I love is that you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta niche down, right? And that the more specific you are like, and, and no one’s really taking a screenshot that you were number one in turtles, this is that you were number one, which a lot of times seller
EF (41:19):
And you, you wanted to say number one bestseller, right? It doesn’t, they’re not looking number one best seller in turtles, right? But our marketing director did a really good job of really narrowing it down to that niche of turtles, right? Cause there’s a turtle on the cover. I’m not laughing cause I’m like, that was kind of genius, right? Because this girl doesn’t have any platform. She’s like a high school student, but here you go. She just hit number one Amazon bestseller interns.
AJV (41:41):
You know, I’m telling you like that is just so important. Back to marketing, branding, selling, writing the book is just a piece of this puzzle. But it’s like you’ve gotta have a good team who knows what they’re doing to figure out these little nuances. And a part of that is like, and I, Rory always corrects me and he goes, it’s not that hitting the list doesn’t matter, it’s just, it’s a piece of the puzzle. But the more times that you can hit the list and the more you sell, the more other people will hear about it and then it spreads. So I have to remind myself of that. Cuz I’m one of those like, it doesn’t matter, but it kinda does. Cause when you do
EF (42:19):
Exactly rose’s, right, you’re both are right. But the other side is the best part is when you see it on the list over and over and mm-hmm. over and over because then you’re like, wow, it was really a good book. Cuz people keep buying it. It wasn’t just hit the list and then left. Right, right. The best part, right? See, oh, it’s up, been on the New York Times bestseller list for 54 weeks, you know, or Yeah. That’s like, wow. We really have a winner now.
AJV (42:40):
Yeah. Not looking for the one hit wonder. Okay, last set of questions and then I have a personal question for you. What, no, you told me earlier like kinda like three things, like make it sticky, have good content, have a good platform, it needs to be unique. That’s like generally speaking, but for you personally, like working with a 17 year old girl who has no platform, right? And I just also happen to know some of your authors who don’t have big platforms and all of that. So I know that’s not the only thing you look for and I just think it’s really unique to find an agent who is willing to invest in people who you’re like, no, I see something in you. I see something in this message and I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it regardless. It may not get me the biggest advance and you may not this, this and this, but so I’m curious for you personally, what, what makes an author someone that you’re like, you, I wanna work with you.
EF (43:29):
Oh, okay. So I’m a sucker. Okay. Like, listen, like for story, right? So someone comes in and they have a crazy story. I’m like, oh my gosh. And I cry all the time. Like, I don’t know what happened in my forties. I just like . They’ll tell a story and I’ll be falling, crying and too emotional. So because we have this other publishing program where we can help, and actually more and more influencers with huge platforms are not wanting to go to traditional publishing. They wanna own all their own content and they don’t wanna wait two years for it to come out. Mm-Hmm. . So when we develop this program and we put millions of dollars into it, so it’s it, but it’s awesome. So when an author comes in and they’re looking at it like they’re, it’s a business and they really wanna get the story out, I’m like, I’m all for it.
EF (44:09):
If I’m touched by the story, I’m like, I wanna do it. I wanna help you get this message out. But that author has to wanna work. I usually, yeah. Like if an author is like, eh, I don’t need it. I really, I, I, I don’t have that much time in the day. Like, I like to help start businesses and empower people to keep going. I think the biggest mistake people make is they quit before their miracle. Like they’re right there and they just give up. So the best are the authors that are really in it. And so if I have someone that’s super passionate and really in it and know that this is a core message, it’s really hard for me to say no to that.
AJV (44:42):
Mm. I love that. So for you, it really does come down to two.
EF (44:46):
Oh yeah. I’m, I said, I was like, my whole team’s like Esther say no. I’m like, yeah, but this story’s so good and I think it’s got some legs and maybe this could be a movie or maybe we could do this. And so it’s fun like thinking through it. But yeah, like sometimes I have to bring my team in the, for them to be like, no, this isn’t,
AJV (45:04):
We all have to have people who are willing to say no in our lives. But I love that it’s like it’s, this is story, but also are you willing to work? Are you willing to work? Are you willing to work as hard as I’m gonna have to to make this come to life? I love that. I think that’s so cool. All right. Here’s a personal question for you in the group. So you kinda told us earlier what your favorite book was. Well I dunno if it’s your favorite book of all time, but How to Win Friends and Influence People. I would say, what has been the book that you would say, like, for me, heaven will be like forever change the direction of my life. But I would also say like nothing to prove and discovering Jenny Allen has been a life-changing event for me in the last 12 months of going, I’ve never read a book where I’m like, oh, I’m your avatar. It’s so clear who you’re writing to. It’s me. Hi My name’s aj. So I would say to you like, do you have a, an author or a book that you’re like, I don’t care who you are or anything, but if you read this work or read, read this book, or from this author, like, it’s gonna change your life?
EF (46:02):
I do. So everybody that knows me knows my book. Like it’s changed my life. It changed the way I thought about business. It’s changed everything. It’s actually Buck there. It’s by Mark Patterson, who’s one of my favorite authors that I have the privilege of working with. It’s called the Circle Maker. And I, I read the Circle Maker. I was agenting for seven years of my own company and I was pretty successful. And I read this book and it like, it, it just wrecked me. And you know how people are like, oh, I pray, or I, I do this right? And, and remember I get to read it before all of you guys read it. So I’m like, way ahead of thinking, you know? And I’m like, this is gonna be a bestseller. It was a New York Times bestseller. It’s sold over 5 million copies. It’s been unbelievable.
EF (46:44):
But what’s so cool about this book is this guy, it’s, we, we sold it as Hony the circle draw what’s called the Circle Maker. And it’s about praying circles, right? So I started believing God. I prayed circles around every office. I prayed circles around an office building I wanted to buy. I prayed circles like, God, if this is for me, prayed for every employee on every desk. And guess what? I started getting better employees. I started getting like more champions. I started getting bigger authors. And there was this guy, he talks about the end of the book, right? So it doesn’t ruin the book for you guys, but there was this guy named Gypsy Smith, right? And he was this evangelist that traveled all over the world. I think he did 45 trips around the world. And he was this amazing preacher speaker. And somebody asked him like, what was, was the secret?
EF (47:29):
And he’s like, was his prayer life? And he goes right away, he goes, these revival secrets were asking what was God like, what’s, how can God use me? And so when I was reading this book, I’m like, God, how can you use me in a bigger way? And he goes, go home, lock your door, kneel in the middle of the floor. Draw, take a piece of chalk, draw a circle around yourself and pray fervently and brokenly for God to do a revival inside that chalk circle. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s from this guy Gypsy Smith, this evangelist. But I started, I did that right? And I went home, I locked the door and I drew, took a piece of chalk and I drew a circle and I said, God, I want you to use me. Bring me the clients you want me to use. Bring me the employees you want me to work with. Bring me the team. Help me scale my company. Like, just use me to pick those right books or the ones that you want me to be part of. And that like totally forever changed my company. Mm-Hmm. . So it was prayer. And, and so re if you haven’t read the Circle Maker, you have to, every employee here has to read the Circle Maker and How To Win Friends With Influence People. Those are the two books that everyone, that works with me for me.
AJV (48:29):
Why? I just wrote it down. I wrote it down. Part of me is
EF (48:33):
I’m gonna send you a copy. So I’ll send you one today.
AJV (48:36):
. I’m always looking for really good books. And then, okay, last question. Do you read or do you listen?
EF (48:42):
Both. Right. So I’m a speed reader so I can read pretty fast obviously cuz I, I read like 300 books a year. But I listened to, so a lot of times I’m, I’m a big believer every book you have to do an audiobook. I don’t let my authors not do an audiobook. It really, yeah. Makes me mad if they don’t wanna do an audiobook. Audio is up to 347% in the last two years. Wow. So more people are listening than reading right now. Huge authors, and I can give you the stats. They’re selling more in audio than actual print. Print cells are still up by the way. So it’s, it’s like, it’s both, they’re buying both versions. Like I do that all the time. I buy the print version and I buy, I listen to audio and sometimes I read a little bit of books. Sometimes I listen to it. I think listening, like when I’m walking or working out or like in the car, it’s so much easier to listen. But I still love to read. So I read every one of the books I represent I or listen to it, one or the other. So I think it’s whatever, whatever your preference is.
AJV (49:41):
Yeah, I love that. I
EF (49:42):
Remember it better AJ if I’m reading it than if I’m listening to it cuz like, you can tune out or get too strong. But when I’m reading it, I feel like I really take it in more.

AJV (49:50):
Yeah, I’m with you on that. I always I always tease my husband. I’m like, you did not read that. You listened to that. That’s not, you can’t say I’ve read that. You can only say I listen to it.

EF (50:00):
I have to tell her when reading or listening. It’s the same thing, right? Because

AJV (50:03):
No, it’s not, it’s not the same thing. I’m so too, I’m so biased, but I’m, I’m very much like, I’m a speed reader. So it’s like I can, I can crush books. I crush books. But I love but I love to hold it. I love to like feel the pages fold ’em, doggier, highlight, underline. But there’s power in everything. Think

EF (50:21):
All women. I think all women like that, right? Like we like take those.

AJV (50:24):
I like to hold it. But I would also say as unbiased feedback for anyone who is listening, when you do your audiobook, at least from this one consumer’s piece of feedback, read your own book. Please do not hire someone else to read your book. I want to hear the author’s voice and connotations and I want to hear it from you. So piece of unbiased feedback. And Esther, I would just say, man, not only are you like repre representing authors that are truly changing the trajectory of this world, like the work you’re doing is changing the world. You are helping get things out there that are saving lives transforming lives. And man, it’s such an honor to get to meet you and have you on the show. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to release this episode and get it out into the world. So thanks for giving us your time today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody, stay tuned and listen to the recap conversation that I’m gonna do on my conversation with Esther. And we’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.

Ep 368: How to Build Massive Membership Sites with John Meese

RV (00:02):
Well, today we’re gonna talk about a really important topic, membership sites, and a favorite topic of mine. And you’re gonna get to hear from one of my favorite people in the world on that topic, John Meese. So I’ve known John kind of loosely for years because he’s, he’s helped multiple people build membership sites. These, you know, six figure seven figure membership sites, specifically Platform University, which used to be owned by Michael Hyatt, who of course is good friend of ours, of mine, and AJ’s, Michael and Gail. And we’ve known Michael for years and he’d been a mentor and a friend. And so that’s how I met John. And Michael sold Platform University a few years ago. And I think around that time is when John started taking his expertise out and helping coaches and, and trainers and consultants and just anybody who’s out there to build wealth by starting an online business. And specifically, I think, you know membership sites. So he’s also the author of a bestselling book called Survive and Thrive, how to Build a Profitable Business in Any Economy, including this one. He’s bilingual in Espanol, and he just moved to Puerto Rico where he’s saving money on taxes, although that’s not why he’s went there primarily. But anyways, buddy, it’s good to have you here.
JM (01:23):
Thank you, Rory. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here. Is the interview today gonna be bilingual or are we stick in English?
RV (01:28):
Yeah, no, I, yeah, we’re gonna do it in Spanish, man. Yes, you and me. It’s gonna be a back very, very short interview. . . It’s gonna be about 30 seconds, but so in all seriousness membership sites, why, let’s start with why membership sites? Sure. Why should, why should people be thinking about membership sites as a business model? And maybe even just kind of clarify what, what you classify, like what counts as a membership site and exactly what it means.
JM (02:02):
Yeah, so there are a lot of subscription type businesses, so I think it’s probably helpful to start by saying that my focus is generally helping people turn wisdom into wealth by building a thriving online education business. And so that’s a lot of the same work you do Rory, with Brand Builders Group of helping people build personal brands where there’s an educational component sometimes that looks like a course or coaching program or a life event or books. But memberships are the subscription version of that. And so some of my favorite membership sites that I’ve been a part of myself you know, you’re typically paying a monthly or annual fee to be part of a community where you get access to a combination of training, support, community. It’s more, there’s definitely more of a peer element than if you were maybe in like just watching a course.
JM (02:48):
Cuz often courses online courses are typically very kind of, you’re consuming it. And then that’s kind of it, like, there’s not usually a lot of community interaction, but community is a key part of membership sites. So there’s really two primary reasons to want a membership site in your business. One of them is kind of the obvious one, which is that when you build recurring revenue, now all of a sudden, every month you get to start knowing that you have a reliable recurring revenue coming in from customers who’ve subscribed to pay you automatically. I, like John Orlow calls this the the automatic customer, and I like that idea. I was just saying like, that’s a great book, you make the sale once. Yeah, it’s a great book. And, and it’s a great concept too, of just the idea that each month you’re like, well, I automatically have customers, I don’t have to start with zero.
JM (03:31):
So that’s huge. And recurring revenue can really grow over time to become an incredible source of generating wealth. But the flip side of that is also, it’s a phenomenal way to serve to serve your clients, to serve your customers and your audience. Because the reality is what, I mean, the academic churn is typically MOOCs or massive open online courses for like, what we know is like an online course where you buy it, it sits on the digital shelf somewhere, maybe you watch it. And historically, the, I mean just kind of industry-wide, the completion rates on online courses are very low. And the success rate of someone taking an online course and actually going to do it, actually do the work and succeed, which of course is what you want, not just their money. That’s also very low. Membership sides allow you to take the same kind of educational content and scalable educational content you might put in a course, but add ongoing community and support that allows people to stay connected to ongoing transformation. How
RV (04:26):
Do you do the community part of it? Like Yeah. Is is it, is it mostly a Facebook group? Like is it I mean, do you, do you, do you see that most people are using a Facebook group as their mechanism for hosting community? Or is there some other way that they’re achieving that? The objective of getting the members? Cuz that is a huge part of it is yeah, who do you meet and supporting people and meeting other, like referral relationships, et cetera, et cetera. How do, how do you facilitate that?
JM (04:58):
You know, Facebook groups at one point in time were kind of just the standard for membership sites because it’s kind of where everybody is or was. But I would say these days it’s still an option, really. The, the software you’re using or the platform you’re using is really secondary to the strategy for how you’re interacting with people. That said, I don’t really know, I can maybe think of one or two people I know with successful membership sites that are still on Facebook groups. Most people have used an independent platform that where you have a lot more control. There’s a lot of popular ones, but honestly I think the best one by far is circle. And so that was created by some of the early people at Teachable, which, you know, is like the biggest course platform in the world. And some of them spun off and created Circle, which is you know, essentially it’s your ability to create a private group. They even added courses within that now. So you can have courses community, you can, well, as much as I love Zoom, which you and I are talking in right now, you can actually replace Zoom by doing live streams or, or meetings through Circle as well. And they have a mobile app. And so there’s really the software secondary to the strategy strategy, but I would say Circle is like an all in one for having a great membership site.
RV (06:01):
Okay. That’s interesting. So kind of in the vein of, of retention or, or yeah, like of community is, there’s a retention, right? So the, the, to me, when it, when somebody starts a membership site, they go, oh man, recurring revenue. Like, yeah, you know, why, why, why sell a course for $500 when I can get people to pay me a hundred dollars a month and then they’ll stay forever. But I feel like the thing that we see pretty consistently is that people are gonna drop off around month three or four. So what do you think are some of the keys to retention? Because if that happens, if you were gonna sell a $500 course and now you’re just doing a hundred dollars a month membership Yeah. And now they’re only staying three or four, you actually have, you’ve gone the wrong direction, right? You’re losing money by converting it. Now there’s some other benefits of, of it, but I, I mean, what are some of the things that you see that help the retention component of this? Because to me, that’s really where the magic is, right?
JM (07:05):
Yeah. Well, it’s worth talking about your question’s. Great, Victoria, because it, it kind of illuminates sort of the ugly truth about membership sites. Cause we started with sort of the beauty of membership sites, right? It’s just recurring revenue. Your customers are getting transformation all the time. You’re getting recurring revenue all the time. That’s like the nice side. But the between the membership sites is that the minute you start a membership site, it’s upside down. And by that I mean the same way that you can be upside down at a house where you owe more than it’s worth. The minute you start a membership site, you have members who are paying, you have some members coming to pay, but for you to deliver a high value membership site, you have to give ongoing value. It has to be re not just, it’s not just kind of an on-demand library.
JM (07:43):
There has to be some sort of value giving on a regular basis to get people to stay. Because really the measure of success, the membership site is not that somebody joins, it’s that it’s retention, as you said Rory, it’s that they stay for a long period of time. Right? So I guess the first thing I would say is that if you’re looking at different products and considering a membership site, I actually don’t recommend you start with a membership site until you’ve already built a successful flagship program. Like a coaching service or a group coaching program or mastermind and a gateway product, like a low price course or a book or some, or a workshop or some other, you know, those really, those two anchors of the flagship product and the gateway product, they allow you to both bring in new customers on a regular basis, but also be able to create massive transformation in the flagship program at a, at a premium price. What those two things do is not just the revenue piece and the audience growth piece, which they do that, but they also help you refine your understanding of your target customer, their problems, their needs. And the way you sell a membership site versus the way you sell any other product that has a one-time purchase is completely different. Mm. And so it’s, it’s because are are you familiar with the concept of the the Infinite game by any chance? Rory?
RV (08:57):
I mean, you mean Simon Sinek’s book?
JM (09:00):
So Simon Sinek has a book on this, but the concept is not unique to him. But yes, his book
RV (09:04):
Is a great, no, I don’t even know what that, I don’t even know what that book’s about. I, I have read his others, but I’ve not read that book.
JM (09:09):
It’s a phenomenal book. And there are other great resources on this subject, but that’s usually the book I recommend is The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. But the point of this concept is that essentially that there are finite games. Like for example, what’s your favorite sport, Laurie?
RV (09:24):
The spot here. Oh, we’ll, we’ll go, we’ll go, we’ll go with, we’ll go with soccer. I’m Nashville Soccer Club season two. There we go. So now I’m, now I’m soccer man.
JM (09:32):
There you go. All right. So soccer or football as we call it in Puerto Rico, but that’s a whole other thing. soccer itself is a very, is a finite game. There’s a clear point where the game starts, the game ends in between, the ball kicks around a bit. Some people score points, some don’t. There’s a, but that’s not, there’s ar that’s not arbitrary, right? There’s a clear way where you know how points are scored and there’s a clear point where the game ends, it’s finite, the game ends, and you have a winner and a loser.
RV (10:01):
Yep.
JM (10:02):
Most things in life are not finite games. Most things in life that matter are infinite games. Like how do you win at marriage or raising kids or building wealth or growing a business. There’s definitely milestones along the way where you’ve achieved success, but there’s not really a finish line unless you create one arbitrarily that says you’re done. You can’t just say, all right, honey, that was our, that was our winning date night, actually. We’re done, now we’ve won the game. I’m just gonna kind of coast through the rest of this marriage. Like that does not work. I’ve been very for about a decade and I’ve already learned that lesson. So the point of this, the reason why I bring this up is kind of bring this back into products, is that when you sell like a course or a book or even a group coaching program, typically what you’re selling is a finite promise by this thing.
JM (10:50):
You will get this result, right? Like if you join my seven figure school accelerator, my flagship program, the promise is that I’m gonna help you build a personalized playbook to build a seven your seventh Figure school, which is an online education business that generates a million dollars a year from three core products. But I’m also gonna help you scale a flag share product to six figures. That’s a finite promise, right? And then when you sell a book or a course, if the course is how to get a thousand email subscribers, for example, that’s a finite promise. The only way to sell a membership site effectively and grow retention over time is actually to sell an infinite promise. Because baked into it is this idea that it’s ongoing. If I sell you a membership site, it’s like, Hey, just pay $10 a month to join my program and I’m gonna help you lose 20 pounds Immediately your brain kind of got off go, like, gets us like kind of like full break, full stop, and you’re like, wait, what? Lose 20 pounds, then I’ll just cancel the membership. Like why would I e even before you body, you’re already talking yourself out of staying as a member. Mm-Hmm.
RV (11:50):
Mm-Hmm.
JM (11:51):
Interesting. But if instead, and instead I approach that same exact membership and I say it’s $10 a month and as part of this, you’re gonna get access to all of my, all of my training and support to help you to help you build and live like a fit, a fit body and a fit life. Or I like the phrase to transform your I’m, I’m expecting my fourth son in April, so I’m definitely have a dad bought, but I wanna transform my dad bought to a father figure. Like I’ve heard that phrase a couple of times and that stuck with me. Mm-Hmm. Right? That’s, but that’s like, that’s an ongoing thing. That’s an infinite game. And so a key is you have to make an infinite promise. And so that’s, that’s really the first key to retention is really just upfront. You have to be clear on what transformation are you promising.
RV (12:31):
Yeah. I mean that’s in, that’s interesting thought. You know, cuz we’ve like of course our, our core business as you would say is a membership model. I guess we’re really a coaching company, so peop like we, we do coaching and training, but people pay a recurring fee. We don’t charge like an upfront fee. And like, you know, I’ve wrestled with, gosh, it’s so much easier to sell like a course where you go sign up for this, you’re going, we’re gonna teach you this, it’s gonna give you this result and boom is done. Whereas like, you know, we’re selling building an influential personal brand and like that never ends. It gets bigger and bigger, but the game. But sometimes I’ve wondered, should we be selling more terminal points or, you know, checkpoints along the way cuz like, you know, we’ve had 11 clients that have become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers. We’ve had four clients have Ted talks that have gone viral. We’ve had, we’ve had four clients who have, you know, grown multi seven figures, the, those kinds of things. Where it’s like, so it’s, it’s a fascinating to think about. You’re saying that it’s actually a good thing to align a membership site with more of an infinite promise, something that there’s no finish line.
JM (13:42):
I am, but I’m, but I also want to wanna say that from my experience, it is more difficult to sell some an infinite promise. And you’re probably have seen this with a coaching program like you just said. Like, yeah. And it’d be convenient if we could do, you know, a finite promise. I will say this is not on the membership side necessarily, but in my accelerator program, what I do is I really focus on selling the finite promise of my 90 day program. And then on the back end, it’s like as soon as you achieve those results, it’s like, okay, great, let’s keep working together in a mask line group. And that has an infinite promise attached to it. And so I would, I think there is a way probably to do some sort of hybrid of like taking your coaching services and figure out, okay, is there maybe a 90 day promise or a 30 day promise we could make? And you can see how that affects your conversions. Cuz my hunch is it’ll actually be a lot easier to sell. Cause that’s the thing you can go back and justify to your your bank or your spouse or, or your business partner, whatever, to say like, I’m gonna invest this money and I’m gonna get this result. That’s a finite equation. You can’t really run that math on a program that never ends. And so I Yeah,
RV (14:41):
Yeah, no, I follow, I follow you there. So let’s on the, on the topic of selling membership sites. Yeah. Another thing I want to ask you about is, is about urgency, right? So the, the the the, you know, if you think of like, so many launch models are based on this closed cart idea that’s like, yeah, you, you gotta buy it between this window or else whatever, you lose bonuses or the price goes up or, or, or whatever. When you have a membership, I mean some people keep like our membership is open year round, right? So people can come in anytime, some people only open it for certain windows. Have you seen any like best practices around how to create urgency if you leave it open year round? Do you, do you recommend one way or the other? Like how have you navigated that with mem different types of membership sites?
JM (15:31):
Yeah, it’s totally, I’ve seen done both ways and it’s totally either one’s totally legitimate. I do have my preference in what I do as well as what I’ve, I’ve done that’s done well. And it’s sort of essentially to leverage the urgency factor, especially when you launch the membership site to get your core membership base. Cuz remember, because your membership site does start upside down, you wanna get as quickly as possible to the point where you have enough recurring revenue coming in to offset all the overhead that it takes to run a really good membership site. And I don’t just mean expenses, there’s not a ton of expenses attached to running a membership site. The biggest expense is gonna be your time or your team’s time, depending upon how you’re doing that.
RV (16:09):
Cuz in terms of finite and infinite, that’s the other problem here is when you create a course, you have a finite expense, you create the course and you’re done. When you create a membership site, you have the infinite, the infinite expense
JM (16:22):
, the infinite hamster wheel is the term that I hear them most actually about the content strategy. And, and I’ve worked with clients who didn’t come outta the gate with a huge bang, and so now all of a sudden they’re on year two of their membership site and now they’ve got, you know, less than a hundred members paying them $15 a month for their membership site. And they’re, you know, they’re, they’ve got on the hamster wheel of masterclass and live q and a and customer support and, you know, guides. And it’s just, it’s this maddening amount of work for really a meager recurring revenue. And so I do think you have to come outta the gate really strong. And so I do recommend having a founding membership launch. And that could be you know, they could be short, it could be like, you know, 10 days a week or like a normal launch.
JM (17:01):
But my founding membership launch for my membership site, I did the full month of September. And so I, when this is recently, you know, I recently launched my own membership site after doing this for other people enough times that I wanted one my own. But I did that for the full month of September. And so I, throughout that month, I could just emphasize that, hey, this is a founding membership opportunity. A some people are just attracted to the idea of being an early adopter because they know they get to help shape a product. There are plenty of people who are not right. There are plenty of people who say, Nope, I’m not an early adopter, I’m gonna come back when it’s done. But I typically like to reward the early adopters as well by offering a founding membership price. Now with the membership site, I do think you have to be really careful about discounts.
JM (17:39):
They can get really complicated with the exception of when you launch it, when you launch it, you sort of have this one time opportunity to say like, Hey, here’s the normal price of membership and here’s the founding membership price. And my, what I would do here then is actually only offer the founding membership discount on annual membership. And so, for example, thrive School Pro, my membership is a hundred dollars a month or a thousand a year, but during my founding membership launch, it was $500 for the year for founding membership. And so that got a lot of these like highly invested members to join, establish the core foundation of the, of the membership of the group. And so that’s one of the things I would recommend. In terms of urgency beyond that, I do think you need to look at how a membership site fits into your full product strategy.
JM (18:24):
And so yes, urgency self for sure, but a membership site is not about converting someone from being on the fence or not knowing who you are to being, you know, all in a membership is really about nurturing your raving fans, your super fans. And so the gateway product or multiple gateway products, I do think that is a great way to really lean on urgency of having a course or a book or a workshop that’s only available for a short period of time, leaning into that, getting people into that experience. But then it’s much easier, again, for people to buy a product with a finite promise and then be able to like get that experience and choose from then if they want to go further into your membership site. So I, I’m a fan of what you’re doing, Laurie, which is keep your membership open all the time. With the exception of having a founding membership launch I can share a real life example with some numbers. Would that be helpful in terms of like Sure. How these products kinda fit into each other?
RV (19:16):
Yeah,
JM (19:16):
So in September when I knew that I was launching my membership site, at this point, I’d already scaled my flagship product so that it was doing very well. I was funding my lifestyle and I had, you know, I had a bestselling book and another gateway products in the pipeline. Then at this point I did a couple you partner workshops. So I wrote it to my own audience, but I also convert Kit asked me to come teach a workshop to their audience about my seven figure school strategy. So they’re like kind of pro, I had to put a big pause here. They’re proc creators, , they’re professional creators. So I’ve, I’ve run into that issue before mm-hmm. but converts professional creators. They asked me to teach a workshop for them, so I did. And then, well,
RV (19:55):
You do have four kids, so you’re a procreator also.
JM (19:57):
I’m a procreator, I’m a procre and I’m a professional.
RV (19:59):
Yeah, you’re you’re a double a double procreator.
JM (20:02):
I’m a double dipper. Yeah, for sure. But convert side, so I taught this free workshop and then in the workshop I met, I kind of explained this concept of having these three core products, gateway membership with flagship. And then I said, Hey, let me create a gateway product for you live as a demo just to show you how easy this is. So I, of course, I planned this, right? So I created, I opened convert IT commerce, and I created a little order form and I said, okay, here’s the product. It’s called five Figure Flagship Earn $10,000 in the next 30 days from your existing expertise by creating and selling a flagship product. It’s a hundred dollars. And then I put a little image on it, just a slide, and then I dropped a link in that chat and I said, this is for real and it’s for sale and it’s, I’m teaching it live next week.
JM (20:45):
And out of that workshop, there were a little, a little over 300 people there, 35 bought the workshop right then. And so I had made over $3,000 live from that workshop. Who bought that course of the 35 who bought that course? Nine of them in my follow up with them upgraded from $400 to my, my founding membership offer for my membership site. So remember it was, it was $500 a year, but I said, Hey, you already paid a hundred for this course. I’m gonna credit that towards this. This is a campaign just for those people. So nine of them upgraded to my membership site, one of them upgraded to my accelerator program for $10,000. So that one workshop that I taught, that audience of 300 people made me over $20,000 very quickly in terms of when you start looking at recurring revenue and the fact that many of those customers are still in my pipeline. Another one I just noticed just on my membership last week, even though that workshop was several months ago. So this is kind of, that’s just one example, but I think you can see now how the products, the products, the urgency really play into each other. It’s not just the membership site. There really has to be ecosystem.
RV (21:47):
Yeah. So let’s talk about that for a second. Yeah, that, what you’re describing there is like a concept lifetime value, right? Customer lifetime value, L t v, which is what Yeah. You know, very sophisticated digital marketers and people understand that. It’s like, okay, the, the, the whatever, the 35 people that bought you a hundred dollars, but then nine of ’em upgraded from there and then one of ’em upgraded to to $10,000. How do you calculate lifetime value and and how do you utilize that when you’re managing a membership site?
JM (22:27):
Yeah, so I mean, the civil way of calculating left hand value is, it’s easier said than done. You know, first of all, it’s just saying like, how much has someone paid you over time and adding it up. You know, I some of this Stripe, like if you’re using Azure Hanger Pro, they includes some of this data in there. I actually have a custom, you know, I call it a people profits pipeline, essentially a custom CRM or custom way to track my customers. That’s, I built a notion and that tool, basically, I have a, this is a little nerdy, but I have a Zap set up with Zapier that says whenever someone buys something, it automatically updates their lifetime value there. Now, I’ve seen some people do this really well and convert Kit and other email service providers and just having all your data there.
JM (23:09):
But lifetime value is one of the ones that I wanted to pull out, especially because I do have an actual direct outreach sales strategy to sell into my accelerator program. And so it’s not just email marketing funnels, there’s this other piece. But then the other way, the other way to look at it then, of course is to say, okay, but then what’s the average value of a subscriber? Cause if you can look at a campaign like what I just described, and if you can do the math on how many subscribers and what’s the total value, and if you can come up with a dollar value per, like your average quality email subscriber, what they’re worth to you in your business, well then all of it makes it lot easier to decide where to invest deal marketing money. I will say all of that is true, everything I just said, and even though I know how to do all that stuff, I really try not to get distracted by most of that.
JM (23:55):
And I try to keep it super simple for my clients and myself, which is that of those three core products, my gateway product, every dollar that I generate from my gateway product is my sales and marketing budget. And so my goal is not actually to make money from my gateway product, it’s basically to say whether it’s a book or a course or a workshop, when the goal of that gateway product is to create customers not cash. And so when that money comes in, great, that’s what I can use now to either partner with other affiliates and pay commission or to sponsor a newsletter to get featured. I don’t do a lot of paper click ads, but that’s something else you could do with that strategy. And then my, my flagship program is primarily how I fund my lifestyle. And the goal of the membership then is that funds sort of the core infrastructure of your business, your ability to hire, to scale things like that. And so that’s like super simple and any accountants or bookkeepers listen this are, are just like, oh my gosh, how do you put that on a p and l? That’s way too simple and Yep. Skipping all the complicated stuff. Yeah. But I, it really helps. I find when you’re selling these products to think about, especially when you’re starting from scratch, to think about how
RV (24:55):
Do you calculate the value of the email subscriber?
JM (24:59):
Well, I mean, candidly, I don’t, I don’t do that a lot. I mean, technically, yeah, I’ve done this for clients, I’ve done this in the past when I was a, like a full-time fractional chief marketing officer. And so the way you would calculate that essentially is, is look at, look at a period of time. I mean, typically it’s a long period of time. Look at your total revenue and divided by number of subscribers. And you know that the reality is that 80 to 90% of your email subscribers, they never bought anything from you. So they’re obviously gonna throw that math off. But even if you say, okay, wait a minute, a subscriber, a quality target subscriber to me is worth two or $3 when all of a sudden, or maybe $5, now all of a sudden it’s easier to make decisions about how you’re gonna get your leads.
RV (25:39):
Mm-Hmm. Interesting.
JM (25:41):
But I don’t wanna mislead you. I don’t, I don’t do that, all that tracking myself in my business.
RV (25:44):
Yeah, no. Well the, they and I know you’re kind of just in terms of running your own membership site, you’re newer to, newer to that, newer to that party. But it’s really interesting to see you doing that and to hear some of the data of how you’re kind of getting this up and running, which is cool. And so the, talk to me about free trials. So this is another real common thing that I think you, you see, right? Is either a free trial or try it for a dollar for 30 days or seven days. Have you seen those strategies work? Do they work well? Do they work not so well? Do they work only if you do it in a certain way? Like yeah. Tell me about the trial trial period.
JM (26:31):
Well, the reality is, is we’re talking about this right now. Subscription products have been on for a long time. And so the average modern consumer has subscription fatigue. You know, you’ve got Subscri, you’re subscribed to like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I mean, you know, your utility company, of course that one’s been around for a long time, but you’ve got all these different things that you’re paying for on a regular basis that are the mean that once upon a time you could sell very differently. In the early days of membership sites, there was a lot of like leading with a 30 day trial, getting people in there, they forget about it, now they’re a customer. Well, if the goal of your membership website is to create raving super fans, your goal is not to get people to become a customer by accident, right?
JM (27:14):
So there is a way to use free trials, but I just wanna put that disclaimer in there, that sort of, the way that a lot of people used to do it doesn’t really work anymore, nor do I recommend it. But there’s a, one of my favorite newsletters, I can’t even pronounce it, I think it’s called ari, but it’s academic, it’s an acronym for academic research in your hands, A R I Y H. But he dove into like the, there’s actual studies on pre-trial link. And what they found was that the order trials actually had a higher a higher effect on sales and retention, specifically seven day trials. What they found was if it’s a longer trial, people are nervous that they’re gonna forget it. And so it actually hurts your sales. But also then even if they do forget it, and then it automatically when used, they’re more likely to either cancel asper refund, but a shooter trial gives someone to say, yeah, I’ll try this this week.
JM (28:04):
And so it is a great way to get customers. I what I do is typically I use, I use free trials as an opportunity to introduce urgency to get people from a gateway product to a membership product. So like for example, I don’t do any public free trials, but what I’ll do is say like, Hey, when once you buy a gateway product, like a course, then included in that is a complimentary 30 day membership in Thrive School Pro. And that is essentially a free trial. That’s one way to do it. One of the most profitable ways we grew PLA University was we did have paid ads going to a funnel for a $1 10 day trial. Now, there’s two reasons I love this. One is it’s a short trial, and so people know going into it like, yeah, that’s, that’s realistic. Like, I’m not gonna forget, forget about it. I’m gonna actually give this thing a shot, see if I like it, stick around
RV (28:50):
Or 10 days the second one, 10 day trial.
JM (28:52):
10, yeah, yeah, we did a 10 day. The second thing I like about that is that it’s a dollar. It’s not free. That means there’s actually some money changing hands, but it’s not much. But it also means we’re actually getting real life payment information cuz we’re free trials. People will often put in fake credit, like fake payment information, but the $1 trial, it’s like we actually charge ’em, they have 10 days and then it turns into a regular membership. And that was very effective.
RV (29:17):
Yep. Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. So I got one other question for you. I knew our time was gonna sort of fly by be before I do that you know, you’ve talked about some of the things, some of the things that you do and teach people in terms of membership site, like specific where should people, where should we send people and connect them if they wanna learn more about what you’re up to? John,
JM (29:40):
Thank you so much for asking Roy. I’m honored to be here and I wanted to share some of this. So I set up a special website just for you, Rory. Nice. It’s Rory loves memberships.com. Rory loves memberships.com. You do love memberships, right?
RV (29:53):
Rory? I do love, I do love memberships. We are okay. We’re, I mean, I think of us as our real, I would say our real expertise is like coaching. That was, you know, we have built an eight figure company before Phoebe Brand Builders group will be our second. But coaching and membership have a lot of similarities. Coaching is less scalable digitally you know, it’s, it’s much more people intensive, but Yes. Yeah, but
JM (30:17):
You’re still a subscription based coaching, which is very similar.
RV (30:20):
We are, yeah. A lot of the, a lot of the mechanics are very much the same. Yep.
JM (30:24):
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So if you go to rory loves membership.com, you can download a free copy of a book I wrote could always be teaching that goes into this in more detail. But I’m also teaching at works, a live workshop there on turning your wisdom into wealth on how these different products play into each other that we talked about today. How does the Flasher product play to the gateway product play in the membership? Which do you do first? How do you scale them? And so that’s totally free Rory for anybody listening to this. So Rory loves memberships.com.
RV (30:53):
Cool. So we’ll link, we’ll link that up in the show notes and over on our website and everything. So one last question for you, John. One of the things that you guys did at Platform University, which is very, very rare is you sold or in this case Michael sold the membership site. That’s unusual. It’s unusual to see like, you know, people don’t often buy someone other creator’s video course because it’s very much connected to that person. So you guys were able to create an asset that was a brand that was sort of beyond just, just Michael. Obviously Michael was a big part of that, but you know, do you have any keys around scaling a membership beyond just like the original founder or the original brand? And like how do you go about, how do you go about doing that and setting that up? Because when you do that, it actually creates an asset that would be sellable so that, that has enterprise value, which is one of the big potential payoffs compared to Yeah. You know, a course that’s just tied directly to a course creator. How’d you do that?
JM (32:03):
Well, so now you’re tapping into my secret mission because when I was hired by Michael Hya Clocking University, I had a public mission, which is hello meet John Mes. He’s the brand director and dean of PLO University, and he now runs this thing and serves up our students whole time. I actually was a student originally, so it was a cool story of sort of like from Success student to the dean. That was my public title. My secret mission was I was hired to help separate platform university from being attached to Michael Hyatt’s brand to sell. That was explicit from the beginning. And so that was a huge part of, of my job behind the scenes for a long period of time. At this point, we’re talking about a multimillion dollar membership site with its own massive audience separate from Michael Hyatt’s audience. And so because of that, that means like we’re, this was, this was a slow process but it meant looking at the content strategy and finding out, okay, how much of this content is dependent on Michael itself and minimizing that as much as possible.
JM (33:01):
So we switched from having a hamster wheel of live content to creating a core curriculum and then recording all of that in a two day video shoot with guests that we flew in from all over to interview. And then Michael interviewed the guests for those interviews. And actually the, there was 13 interviews and the first and the 13th was actually me. It was sort of like we, Michael and I were in the book ends of like interviewing each other sort of Mm, which helped set me up in that role. But also every single one of those masterclass videos, we then created screening videos. They’d that when in detail on that subject that were, that Michael was never part of. And so we either had other people fly in, sometimes we had members of our team teach them. Sometimes I taught it, but we really just diversified the, the talent pool of who was teaching the content.
JM (33:45):
And then we took off the hamster wheel. Now all of a sudden it was all of our job to run the membership site was, was get new members in, serve the current members direct into the core curriculum and do regular weekly group live q and a coaching calls. And that was really a huge part of the process so that by the time we hired a broker and we were negotiating with different people to who were interested in buying the business, we’d already answered a lot of the questions that people were gonna ask about. Like, but what about Michael? And Michael was like, Michael could honestly say, he was like, I literally haven’t touched Pop University in more than two years and it’s still made over a million a year in revenue. Like that was, he was at that point where I was running the whole thing and he could, I mean, he knew of a financial and all that kinda stuff, but he was not involved in the day to day of that, which is really what convinced ultimately to have multiple people at the table who wanted to buy it. And then Pete Vargas was the one who ultimately struck a deal, bought Platform University and it became his
RV (34:38):
Yeah, wild. What an interesting what a really cool, really, really cool case study. And you know, that’s a, that’s a very unique potential feature of building membership sites. And just, and then giving life to people’s personal brands. Right now, here you are on your own teaching people how to do this, and that’s inside a brand builder’s group. We’ve, we’re, we’re raising up all many personalities. I mean, you were the primary one at Platform University, but like all of our strategists, you know, we’re constantly pushing forward and they genuinely get to know the content better than me because they spend more time in a more specific area and, and they just do it over and over, you know, like a specific area with clients and they, they actually really, really develop. It’s a really, really cool thing and gives life to other people. So I love that. Well, thank you for this, John. Thanks for sharing this, this. Oh,
JM (35:32):
It’s my
RV (35:32):
Pleasure. Really cool stuff, man. Congratulations on starting your Journey, your own membership site. So that’s, that’s fun. We’ll be, we’ll be cheering you on and watching you and wishing for the best my friend. So take care and, and keep going.
JM (35:47):
Thank you, Roy. Please keep up the good work.

Ep 366: How Coaches Can Use Technology to Scale with Minal Mehta

AJV (00:00):
Welcome to our latest episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And I am uniquely excited about today’s interview because we have really chosen to do a super selective conversation, really built for the coach community that’s a part of our audience. So coaches, speakers, consultants, authors, trainers, like we serve all of you. But this is like really built for this unique piece of our audience that is growing and growing and growing. And it was a decided choice to do this. So if you are a coach, this is for you. So don’t tune out. Like this is the time to like double down and tune in because this is really built to help you be a better coach, better serve your clients, and do it in the most effective and efficient way possible, using some awesome technology.
AJV (01:03):
So that is what this is about. That is why you should stick around. Now, you should want to know who’s going to be talking about all this awesome stuff because it’s not me, , it’s not me. This is a newer friend of mine. Her name is Minal Mehta, and she’s the co-founder and c e o of All Takes, which is an amazing technology platform that we’re gonna talk about today, but we’re gonna talk about so much more. Before we get to this awesome technology, all takes, which if you are watching this this episode is not being recorded on Zoom like we usually do, it’s actually being recorded on all takes. So I’ve gotten the awesome privilege to be testing this out and going, wow, like, is this what it could look like to be a coach in the future? So it’s been a really cool thing.
AJV (01:52):
But Minal has also worked at so many of the powerhouse platforms and tech companies from Amazon to YouTube to LinkedIn. There’s so much, so much wisdom and smarts. She’s just really smart behind this conversation. But then made it, she made a decided decision to tailor to this unique coaching community, develop her own technology, which is what we’re doing right now. And really why, like why did we, why did you decide to do that? And how is it gonna benefit so many people in this coaching community? So I can go on and on and on, honestly, cause I think there’s so many awesome things that I have learned about you and this technology and why you do it. And I love the heart behind it as much as I love the technology itself. So, without further ado, Manal, welcome to the show.
MM (02:42):
Thank you, aj. I’ve really enjoyed meeting you. I enjoyed your mission and I’m really excited for this conversation.
AJV (02:51):
Oh, this is gonna be so awesome. So here’s where I wanna start, is I wanna just talk about the rise of the coach, right? We are in an era where in our last conversation I shared this like statistic that I just stumbled across. Like if you just go and do a super, a, a simple LinkedIn search and you just type in coach, right? There is over, I think 1.2 something million people just on LinkedIn mm-hmm. , who self-identify as coach. Mm-Hmm. , it’s the second fastest growing industry in the world right now. It’s forecasted in more than 20 billion just in the US this year. There is a ton happening in this coaching sector, which is for the size that it is, and the weight that it carries is completely unregulated. Mm-Hmm. , right? Which means no certifications are required, no education is required. Mm-Hmm. about may change, but there is this time that we live in where there’s a rise of the coach. And so I’d love to hear your thoughts about why that is
MM (03:52):
Awesome. And I think there’s just so many things that have come together to make this happen. So, on one hand, all of us just lived through one of the craziest fla swan events in our time. The pandemic and mental health became an imperative. And as we thought about our mental health, we started going deeper into who we are, what we care about, how we show up in this world. And there’s no better person to take you on this journey than a coach who’s been there, done that, been in your shoes, gone on that journey before you, it is tailored and targeted for you. And so I do believe that people are really excited about working with very specific coaches in this moment in a way that’s never happened before. We’re all very open to both taking care of our mental health, but also really going deep and understanding who we are and showing up in the way we want to show up because mm-hmm. , you only live once and this is our moment. And all of this became so evident during the pandemic On the other hand, sorry, go ahead.
AJV (04:52):
No, go ahead. I’ll, I’ll reserve my thought for a second.
MM (04:54):
I was gonna say, then on the other hand, people who went on this inner journey realized that they also wanna be entrepreneurs. That, you know, the era of being an employee I think is also changing. You know, I myself was an employee, as you mentioned, I worked at Google and YouTube and LinkedIn, and here I am an entrepreneur. Because I do think people are looking deep inside themselves and, and trying to figure out what kind of life they wanna live. And many people are choosing the route of becoming an entrepreneur. Many people are being called to serve and share their knowledge and their wisdom with other people. And I think, like no other time before, both of these trends are happening at the same time. So we’re in this like precious moment where people need the services of coaches, coaches are being called to serve. Many coaches use the services of other coaches because it’s so interconnected and we all believe in our own growth and the growth of the planet at the same time. So we’re in this unique moment where everything is building on each other. And as you said, this is the moment the rise of the coach. It’s happening.
AJV (06:02):
Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s so interesting because I hadn’t like quite connected the parallel of, you know, the rise of this coaching industry with this rise of the entrepreneur community, right? Mm-Hmm. , and it’s mm-hmm. it’s an entrepreneur solopreneur, right? It’s like, but these people who are going, yeah, I don’t wanna go back mm-hmm. to whatever that was. I don’t wanna go back to that. So do you think that those are really intertwined mm-hmm. , it’s like people are saying, Hey, I wanna become a solopreneur and the profession I’m choosing is coaching.
MM (06:32):
I think those are very intertwined because I do think a lot of people are also realizing the expertise they have to offer. And it’s a great way to get started on building out a business that is uniquely you, right? If you go back to owning who you are and being who you are, and showing up in this world in your truest, most authentic form, then there’s no better way to do it than coaching because you, you are your business and your business is you. So I do think people are choosing to live the life that they want, and many are saying, I’ll become a digital nomad. I’ll become a consultant, all of that stuff. But I do think being a coach and serving global audiences from the comfort of your computer is something that is appealing to a lot of different people right now.
AJV (07:15):
Yeah. That’s, that’s such a great insight. I hadn’t quite connected those two until you said that. And, you know, you said something else that made me think about this. And you know, I have been in the coaching, speaking, training, consulting world for a significantly long time compared to how old I am, . And, but I started really early, right? This, like, this was like the career I jumped into at 21 years of age. And I remember being in my late twenties when I, I’d been doing this already almost eight, nine years at this point. And I was at a b and I meeting, I don’t even know if they still have those, but a B and I networking meeting. And somebody had said so what do you do? And I said, oh, I’m a coach and a consultant. And they kind of gave me a wink, wink, oh, so that you’re unemployed.
AJV (07:59):
And I was like, no, no, I mean, I’m a coach and a consultant. And they’re like, like, you actually do that. And I remember like, I remember just hearing that and there was like such a assumed insignificant component of that. And then you fast forward to today, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a coach mm-hmm. mm-hmm. or who isn’t looking for one, and that’s over the span of like 10 years, right? It went from, oh, you mean you’re unemployed to, I don’t know anyone who isn’t looking for one. Mm-Hmm. has had one needs one want, one has one. Mm-Hmm. . So there’s been this like evolutionary change of the weight and the importance and the value that is on this industry. Mm-Hmm. specifically mm-hmm. . And so I would be curious to know, because this is the community you’ve chosen to serve with this awesome platform that you have built well, what do you think it is that coaches need to know or need to do to be better coaches today?
MM (09:01):
Mm-Hmm. , that is a great question. And I think some of the work that you guys do at Brand Builders group as well, I think the power of coaching versus therapy and all these other modalities that are available to you is that coaching can be super niche. Like, who are you going to serve is like super important, right? Because the power of coaching is I get to be with a coach who has been in the shoes that I want to be in in many ways. Like coaches go back and serve who they used to be. And so this, this industry is fascinating because there can be a coach for everyone, and it’s like, you’re not competing with each other because you are serving a very unique audience. So I think the first thing coaches need to be really, really clear on is who are they serving and how are they serving that person?
MM (09:48):
Because that is their unique edge. So that’s like table stakes. I know a lot of coaches work on that. I think the second thing that I’ve realized is being part of this, this movement almost at this point in this industry and this community, as you’ve said, is that there’s a difference between coaching and building a coaching business. And I don’t think people realize that upfront, right? That like some people said, I’m really good at mentoring them, so I should become a coach. And that’s great, you have some content that you can share, but going from, I have some content I can share to really becoming a coach and then like really launching a coaching business. Like, that’s a whole journey. And I don’t think people realize that you need the mindset, skillset and tool set to make that happen. Many of of us have been employees like to switch from an employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset, to a solopreneur mindset.
MM (10:41):
Like, how do you run your business? That’s like number one, there’s a skillset set to building a business, right? I’ve spoken to so many coaches who are like, well, can you just market us? And I’m like, no, because you are serving your niche audience. You need to speak to your audience. I cannot speak to your audience for you. So you have to learn how to market yourself and how to sell your services. So like, you’ve gotta learn how to build that business, right? So that skillset in addition to the coaching work that you do, and then of course, there’s the tool set as a client of many coaches, I will admit the level of service varies not so much because the coaches are better or worse. Like most coaches I’ve worked with are excellent, but just the way they deliver their coaching is so different.
MM (11:26):
Like, I, I mean, I feel like I’ve gone through coaching programs where they’re like, here’s a zoom link. Oh, and the calendar invite is sent. People are scrambling to find the zoom link to meet after the zoom link. Where’s the recording? I can’t find the recording. Did someone take notes from that previous session that I can lean into? Where do I register for the next thing if I need to subscribe for your ongoing community? I don’t know where to find it. And like so much of my my experience as a client sucks because of the way you choose the tools, right? To, to kind of share your coaching expertise with the world. And so that’s your tool set. Like how do you actually create the right tool set to be able to build out your coaching business? So I think like anyone embarking on this journey today and say, find your niche audience and then make sure you do the work and your mindset, your skillset and your tool set to, to reach where you wanna reach.
AJV (12:24):
Yeah. I think that’s, that third thing is probably, probably the most common thing that I hear. It’s like, I love them and it’s like the content is great and they help me, but, but man, it’s like it’s a cluster. Mm-Hmm. , , it’s a cluster. It’s so disorganized that it makes me disorganized. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s like, I can’t find the notes. I never got the notes. I’m not sure if we’re on, I got the calendar invite, but I don’t have a zoom link in the invite. And it’s, it’s the disorganization that creates a little bit of chaos, even if the coaching itself is really awesome. Yes. and that’s what kind of comes back is being a great coach and building a great business aren’t necessarily the same skillsets.
MM (13:00):
Yes, exactly.
AJV (13:02):
Exactly. those are, that’s really helpful and insightful specifically for all of you coaches who are listening of going, man, it’s like, do you have the organized systems to put all the pieces together to make it easy and consolidated mm-hmm. for your clients mm-hmm. , right? And I think that’s kinda like where the technology discussion has been ever increasingly important to help improve efficiencies and effectiveness in this organization thing. So in your opinion, when you have lived in this world for a really long time, and I think this is like a, probably a good opportunity to share some of your background mm-hmm. and all the different technology platforms that you have been a part of and what you like, what is your background actually, because , like, you’re not just like building this in theory that you’re actually building it mm-hmm. . So you’re, that’s take, it’s an incredible skillset that is very rare.
MM (13:58):
Yeah. So I’m gonna take a little bit of a journey here with all of you. So I have a degree in computer science. I believe in the power of technology, right? Technology is my friend. I’m a technologist at heart. And the journey that I’ve gone on is a long journey and a short journey all at the same time. But I will start my journey almost from well after college. I, I worked at Amazon for a brief period of time.
AJV (14:23):
Well, you’re also being super humble right now. It’s not that you just went to college and got computer science degrees. It’s like you have a computer science degree from Stanford. Mm-Hmm. . And then you have an a d from Harvard. So let’s not forget those really important details.
MM (14:41):
That’s true. I will share the details. Thank you AJ, for helping me out here. So I have a computer science degree from Stanford. I actually came into Stanford thinking I was gonna be pre-med. I came from India. I chose Stanford because they gave me the most financial aid. I actually had no idea what Stanford really was. This was back in the day. And I came in 1999 and they gave me more money than anyone else. I’m like, I’ll try it out. And it was literally one of the best happy coincidences of my life. And I think that just taught me, right? Like, things show up in front of you and it’s up to you what you do with them. And I was very lucky to go to Stanford. I was very lucky to discover computer science at that period of time, right? The.Com era and all of that, and the power of technology and where technology can be used for good.
MM (15:22):
I then went and worked at Amazon where I, for those of you who you who used Amazon in sort of like the 2005 to 2010 timeframe, like everything before that buy button on the product detail page was managed by my team. So I’ve touched search on the product page and the homepage for a brief period of time. Navigation, I changed multiple times. And so I truly love making life easier for users online because I do believe in the power of technology. But when you think about how a user interacts, it marries, you know, technology, psychology, like our own feelings as we interact our own needs as we’re solving the problems. There’s like this very interesting moment that comes together when you deliver an interface to a user. So that was Amazon. I then went to business school. I went to Harvard as you mentioned, aj, and that was also a turning point in my life.
MM (16:18):
I, as part of my time at hvs, I really got involved in the career, the career community out there, the career center, like I was part of that. I led various programs for that. And so I don’t even think we’ve talked about this, but a couple years later I reached out to HBS and I’m saying, I said, you need to hire me as a coach. And they said, you are 25 years younger than any other coach we have on staff, right? Like, just go back to that time . And so we can’t hire you as a coach. We love you. We know what you’re doing. We know what you stand for. You know us, but we can’t hire you as a coach. And I said, every one of your students is gonna wanna be a product manager, and no one’s gonna want to talk to somebody who hasn’t been a product manager.
MM (16:59):
So you need me, I’m a product manager. I guarantee you 30% of MBAs are gonna try to be pro product managers in the next five years. And so they said, yeah, you’re right. Like we’ve looked at the data . So they hired me as a coach and they hired four more exactly like me after that. So that was, that was to your point, right? Like the coaching industry, it’s like going through such a change. And that was my first experience of coaching a niche because I’m like, I don’t wanna coach anyone and everyone. I don’t wanna look at your LinkedIn profile and your resume, and if you’re in interviewing a j and j, that’s not me. But if you wanna build a career as a product manager in tech, then I’m your person because I will work with you to make that happen. So that was happening in parallel while I also realized that I wanna help people with their careers at scale.
MM (17:45):
So I joined LinkedIn, and at LinkedIn I managed all of LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn messaging. So any member to member communication anything that had to do with building community like that was my area that I worked on. And you know, I think we’ve, we’ll talk a little bit about the power of community, but community is so important to all of us. And yet finding and building the right online community is really, really, really, really hard. And I got to learn a lot about that. Working on LinkedIn groups, the incentives that work, the incentives that didn’t work, all of that. From there, I went to Google. And at Google I worked on a different segment for, for the, you know, five years that I was there. Between Google and YouTube, I worked on what they called the next billion users, which is all of the high growth emerging markets.
MM (18:30):
So people who are rapidly coming online, getting their first mobile phone, don’t know what to do with the data, and how do we give them the best introduction to the internet possible. Because, you know, like these are literally baby internet people coming online. Never. Like we, we’ve been in the internet, we’ve been in the internet for like, you know, 15, 20 years by that point. And you talk about somebody like jumping in in this moment. Yeah. And how do we transition them online? So really got to understand the needs of these users. And at YouTube especially, it is the largest segment of users, the fastest growing segment of users and really understanding all of their needs and helping them with that. And all of this ties together because I was doing the career coaching at hbs. I was going through my own journey of inner growth.
MM (19:19):
Everybody has that moment. I think every coach has that moment that they deal with where they just go deep inside themselves and like turn themselves inside out and like, push forward. And all of this was happening as I was working on the next billion users. I had two kids around that time. It broke me in ways I didn’t expect it would break me cuz I have an incredibly supportive spouse. But it was a shift in identity, a shift in how I worked, a shift in how people treated me. And I found myself yeah, like really doing the inner work to stay true to me. It was hard work to just stay true to me when I worked in like from the outside, some of the best environments in the world, right? You work at Google, that’s incredible. Like, you know, 1% of 1% of people get into Google or whatever it is, right? Like, this is even harder than getting into HBS or Stanford. Like how can you complain about that? But there was a moment where I was like working so hard to keep the balance between the internal and the external. So pandemic happened early in 2021. I decided there was time for a change and I decided that I should go into coaching full-time. And I actually started this YouTube channel that no one can find right now. But I still my .
MM (20:36):
But the, but what was happening is all these women were breaking around me. 2 million women left the workforce during the pandemic in the US alone. And my friends came to me and they said, all I think about all day is, is this all there is to life? I put my kid in front of Zoom school, I cook lunch for them, I take care of them. I’m working, I’m working harder than ever before. People are expecting more from me at work. I have no time for me. Is this all there is to life? Highly educated, you know, very lucky women, like high achievers, very smart, very lucky women. Like is this all theirs to life? And they said like, you, you don’t seem to be breaking. Why is that? And I said, well that’s because I did my breaking and I did my rebuilding and I have like my center.
MM (21:22):
And they’re like, well, you should teach that. And so that’s what my YouTube channel in some ways started being about. And I wanted to become a coach to really help burnt out women in tech really find their center and their joy. And this will become relevant soon. But I wanted to do that. I started creating this content and then as I started doing it, the technologist in me reared its head again and said like, you are a coach for one type of person. There’s a coach for everyone. How can you use your skillset and tool set to make that happen? And that’s how all takes was really born, right? Like every coach should be able to connect with their clients deeply in an organized way, in a connected way, in a loving way, and really help them transform. And I wanted to make that happen. And and that’s the, the platform that you said today. I
AJV (22:10):
Mean, it’s like, this is why I wanted you to tell the story for anyone who is listening is, I think so often technology can be built, not, not from this standpoint, not from this usage standpoint and or not just technology, but businesses, right? Mm-Hmm. . And this was really built for, it’s like, no, I am doing it and I have this skillset and I know how to make this better because I’m doing it mm-hmm. and I need, and it’s like, part of that’s identifying the problems of, again, back to what you said earlier, the skillsets that often make you a great coach are not often the same skillsets that make you a great business owner or a business builder. Mm-Hmm. and the organization and the experience often is what keeps your clients and helps you get new clients. And if that part’s not working, the God-given talents and gifts that you have aren’t even being used because you’re spending all your time trying to figure out the stuff that you shouldn’t even be having to figure out.
MM (23:05):
Exactly. Exactly. And I find actually a lot of coaches use that as an excuse to not grow their business.
MM (23:12):
, I don’t know if you see that too, aj. It’s like, no, I need to create my mailing list. I need to set up my ClickFunnels, I need to do this, I need to do that. And all of a sudden they’re spending like more than half their day on just kind of like tying all this technology together. And in my deep and long journey, I realize that productivity or the illusion of productivity is its own form of addiction. And I see many coaches like doing that, right? I’m doing the work, I’ve created my Zoom account, I can now connect my email to my Zoom and like, I’ve just like, but they, they’re spending all this time doing that instead of sharing their gifts with the world, like attracting the right client and serving the right client. And it breaks my heart. And then I’ve talked to coaches who are like, I spend all this money on hiring a developer first, a designer, and then a developer to build my website or to build my, I’m not gonna name other tools here, or maybe I should, I don’t know, but like
AJV (24:09):
.
MM (24:11):
But like at a point where you need to hire a designer and a developer to take care of a software that is supposed to be quote unquote easy to use. So that, like I’ve heard coaches say, I have no profit because that’s what I’m doing. And I’m like, what is going on? This is not where you should be spending your time Definitely at all. Or your money. Like yes. Like you can always do with a little bit of help, but like, you shouldn’t be paying somebody a full-time salary to manage your technology stack
AJV (24:40):
The basics. Yeah. You know, there’s a, a level of this that we would say it’s, it’s what we would call creative avoidance. Mm-Hmm. ,
AJV (24:48):
We do, we do the work that needs to be done instead of the significant work that must be done. Or it’s a level of priority dilution. Mm-Hmm. , right? Mm-Hmm . It’s like you get caught up in the mundane and you lose sight of what is the real priority which is serving clients. Mm-Hmm. , right? That’s the priority. But we get caught up in the monotony and all the insignificant things cause they have to be done. So we lend our attention that way versus this. And I think this whole backstory, this conversation has kind of led us to this point of like, technology can be used for good and it can actually help you strengthen relationships, build deeper community, stay organized, and allow you to run a business that kind of runs itself because you don’t have to do 14 little things. And as a cotu coach, if I just remember my former coaching days, this is what it looked like and I know many of you can relate to it because it’s what it looks like for you today is I would get a client, then I would send out 12 monthly calendar invites all manually cuz they were on different days and different times due to schedule conflicts.
AJV (25:49):
I would set up the zoom link, put it in there, I would then have to set up a Word doc where I kept some coaching nuts and I would probably keep that Dropbox. Then when I did the Zoom, I would then have to download this link because they client wanted the recording and then I would have to store it somewhere on this Word doc because they would often lose it because I sent it in an email. And then I would have to keep track of this word doc and this thing, and then I’d have to keep all of the notes. And then they didn’t want the notes in an email. They wanted those in a consolidated document, but they wanted me to email that consolidated document every single time. So it was the top of their inbox. And that’s just a part of the list, right?
AJV (26:27):
And so you kind of go like, whoa, the amount of administrative operational work that it takes to even do one call is quite extraordinary. And that doesn’t even count if they reschedule last minute or cancel, but still wanna do it and on and on and on. I know that those, those of you listening can relate to some of that because I know you do it. I know some of you and I know you’re doing it. And there’s a better way. There is an easier way. So before we talk about all takes and the awesomeness that you have built and that you’re launching out into the world, I’d love to talk just about like how does technology or how can technology, and this is, you can talk about, I’ll take specifically here, but how can it actually make the coaching experience better for the coach and the client?
MM (27:15):
Yes, absolutely. And I think technology is a tool, right? Like, I know I’ve heard from many coaches that they just wanna throw their laptop out the window when they’re dealing with technology . So technology is a tool. Technology is a tool like any other tool and it can be used well or used poorly, I think in terms of being used for the coaching experience. I personally think one of the biggest differentiators is really finding something that takes care of all of your workflows for you, right? You don’t, you want something simple, you want one place to do, whether you’re doing a cohort or a community or a webinar or a workshop or a one-on-one. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was like one place to do all of these things versus I use YouTube live for this and I use Instagram live for that and I use Zoom for this and I use email for that and I use Dropbox here and then depending on what modality like I have to, so I can, I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t do group coaching because like that is a whole different tech stack that I don’t wanna, wanna take care of, right?
MM (28:11):
So that’s the first level because as a coach, we are all growing. Many coaches start out one-on-ones, but then they do groups like whatever it is that you’re doing, you want a platform that can handle all the things that you wanna do. The second thing I would say is then in the doing of those things, it needs to be really easy to set things up because if it’s not like then you’re going back to exactly what AJ described, right? Like that creative avoidance of like setting up your technology so it works perfectly and then feeling really good about you got that done, but you didn’t actually move the needle forward for your business. And so having something that you can do really easily to set up any of these modalities, in fact, the sign of truly great technology is that it all feels so familiar regardless of what you do.
MM (28:52):
And I think this is where all takes shines and where some of our, the other coaching platforms out there, it’s like depending on if you’re doing a community or if you’re doing a group, like the user interface is completely different. It feels like everything has just been tacked on and so you don’t know how to use it. And then you get to your clients, most of you probably have repeat clients, like they come to you for a webinar and then they join you for a group or they join you for a subscription and they need to relearn the language of the thing every single time. And so giving them a super, super sim simple language to start with, and then keeping that, that language of the website really consistent for them can go a long way in making sure, sure. Making sure that they engage with you.
MM (29:34):
And then the thing that is the [inaudible] the the icing on the cake is can you build connection online? You know, over and over again. Like people, coaches are like, I wanna live anywhere. I wanna work from my laptop. I want to meet my clients wherever they are. But I miss those days where I could see them in person, where we could talk to each other in a conference room when we could go for a walk with each other. And there’s something about that connection that’s really important. And I don’t, having worked on communities for a large part of my career, I don’t know that being online can fully replicate that energy exchange that happens in person, but at all takes, that is one of our guiding stars, is how can we make this online experience feel as real worldly as possible? And so if you see, if you’re watching this, you’ll see that we live in a white background, not a a dark background, right? Because when you’re sitting in a room, you’re sitting in a clean, well lit space talking to a person not in a dark room where it’s like, actually that would scare me if I was sitting in a dark room with a group of people .
MM (30:40):
You know? But you don’t, you don’t think about that when you’re there and then you leave zoom feeling, oh my gosh, like I’m feeling a little down, a little depressed. Yeah, you’ve been sitting in a freaking dark room, it makes no sense that you’re sitting in that dark room. So something as simple as that. Like other things are like, we have these like expressions that we share. We have this hard expression that I’m sharing this confetti. We’re building more, if there is more than just the two of us, like at all takes you sit in a round table and have a conversation. And I say that my kids sit in circle time. They’ve sat in circle time since they were two years old. There’s something about sitting in a circle that calms our nervous systems down. We understand it, we get it. And so that combination of the expressions, being able to emote with other human beings and sitting in a circle where, you know, where every person is sitting like people are really vulnerable and open in those settings, which is exactly what you want to build real world connection online, right?
MM (31:35):
So I think technology can be used in a, a variety of ways to not only make your life easier, but to make that connection with your client or client stronger. And then if you have a group, then even making the connection between your clients stronger, because that is a whole another level of unlock that you can, you know, you and your clients can experience. So I’ve spoken a lot about all takes, but I do think like those are the things like great ease of use for the coach, ease of use for the client, one place to do everything. Don’t manage your technology everywhere. Connection, connection, connection. Super important. And okay, my connection is unstable. I don’t know AJ if you can hear me. Let’s see. All right. I’m gonna hope we come back. Okay. So
AJV (32:24):
I, you pick it up where you said I, I’ve talked a lot about all takes, but
MM (32:29):
I think Yes, yes. So I’ve talked a lot about all takes, but I think really like the, the things you’re looking for in your technology are ease of use, ease of view, ease of use for you, for your client. One place to do everything. Not like, you know, 50 different softwares that you have to use and pay for by the way to do all the things that you need to do for connection, building that connection with your clients, even though you live in this world that is very like all over the place right now. And the last, last, last, last bit I’ll add because I do believe in the power of community is having a community of people that can help you. Because one of, one of the things I’ve heard from a lot of our coaches is that they feel very alone as they start their businesses. And I think with the brand builders group, aj, you guys are building a community of coaches that can go through this together. But you know, any platform that can give you the right community of people who believe that all boats rise at the same time, let’s help each other to make this happen, I think is really critical as part of this journey.
AJV (33:33):
I, I mean I think there’s all of that is so true and accurate and I would just say as someone who is using a bunch of different technologies right now as we try to consolidate, right? I think that’s like one of the big benefits that I have seen in all takes is it’s the consolidation of lots of different things that you’re using manually mm-hmm. and you’re consolidating them to make it easy. So it’s, it’s easier for you the coach, but it’s easier for your clients. And you know, it’s like I, right now it’s like most of our team does their coaching calls on Zoom mm-hmm. , but we have what we call these little file repositories, right? And these file repositories is a somewhat sophisticated way of, we’ve put all of our different frameworks together in a way that are editable for every single one of our clients, but those live on SharePoint, right?
AJV (34:25):
Wow. Then we create a client playlist in YouTube for every, a private playlist for every single client that we have, 600 playlists for every single client so that we’re not just recording something once and then letting it drift off into the, you know internet. But it’s a, we, we, we keep those for us, for to review for training for our team, but for the client and the coach. So it’s like even us at this stage of going, we’re trying to consolidate all of this, and that’s the nice thing. And I can only show, I will share this on my behalf of going, like, our team has been on the hunt for like, how do we make this easier mm-hmm. one for our coaches, and if it’s easier for them, it’ll be easy for our clients. Mm-Hmm. . But it’s like, if it’s easier for what we call strategists, it will be easier for the client.
AJV (35:14):
And it’s how do we consolidate conversations? I e chats. So not everything is going back and forth in email all the time because that’s exhausting. We have enough emails, we don’t need more emails. Mm-Hmm. the, the documentation, the notes that come from the call, right? Mm-Hmm. then it’s recording from the call and then it’s the scheduling of the next call and the reminders of that. And I think those are the things that I have, have all seen in all takes that they, that’s just not present in teams. It’s not present in Zoom. There’s, and that’s what most people are using, right? There’s what is, what’s the, what’s the Google space? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, and people, I get those links sometimes and I’m like that it’s not present there either, right? And there’s like all these different things, but that’s really like this really cool consolidation effort that all takes has, so why don’t you just like walk us through, like as a coach, right? Mm-Hmm. to me it’s like what is all takes gonna do for me? Yeah.
MM (36:13):
Yeah. So I think all takes is gonna actually do with all the things that we talked about, right? And I’d say that we are in, we are like our coaches in the state of permanent growth. And so one of the things actually before I even go into the specifics is I will say that we are such believers in what all our coaches are doing, that if you give us feedback, you’ll see oftentimes that the platform is implementing that within the next few weeks. And so, like one of the things we look for is in our coaches is people who are actually willing to give us the feedback and build the platform that they want, right? So I’ll start with that as one of our key principles. But if you are a coach the way you would use all takes is you would come and we’d create for you what we call your business page.
MM (36:55):
It’s one place where all of your offers can be consolidated in one single place. Your offers can be one-on-ones with you know, with as many clients as you have. Each client has its own space. It can be a group offer that you have multiple group offers that you have. It could be webinars, it could be courses. No matter what you’re doing, you have a business page where all of these offers can live. Each offer can be public so visible on your business page or unlisted. So if I’m doing, you know, AJ’s coaching me and we have a one-on-one relationship and we have a space that only she and I can access with our playlists and our recordings and our chats and everything, that can be unlisted. So no one else can find it. She and I can find it and everything we have lives there, but no one else ever needs to see it or find it unless we share the link with that person. And so you can create any type of offer when you go into each specific offer. First of all, your clients can register for an offer directly from our website, so no more Eventbrite plus Zoom, which some of our coaches use, which is really weird cuz Eventbrite wasn’t meant for this use case, right? Event freight is great for, I’m organizing a meetup and I need to sell tickets, but not, not a
MM (38:06):
Coaching call. Not a coaching call, but a lot of our coaches I’m hearing use Eventbrite to manage their registration. So with all takes with any of your offers, the registration page is super simple. The client has all the information they need, images, videos, if you have videos when any meetings are gonna take place, the description of the offer register button, when they register, they can pay directly through all takes. And so you don’t have to build a separate payment processing thing out there. Once they are registered, they then get reminders for when their various meetings are happening, so you don’t have to send out reminders, right? And then once they register, they get into that space, that locked room that only people who’ve registered for that locked room have access to. And that locked room has three key components, which we believe actually constitutes the majority of coaching.
MM (38:56):
You have your live sessions, you have any content that needs to be shared between coach and client or clients. And then you have the conversation history that happens between coach and clients. And it’s really simple. There’s three sections. Anytime people need to attend a live session, they go to the live session area, they click on it, they’re in this round table. Anytime they wanna see content, it’s right in that content section, whether it’s like agenda or recordings, course content or anything in between. And then any conversation that has been had in that community is in that chat section. And so not only is there one space, just like imagine like if, if we had a coaching group meets at, I don’t know, green Library room 1 0 5, and we all end up there and all the information about all of our coaching is stored there, that is the feeling you get when you come into one of our, our spaces.
MM (39:46):
But that space, unlike, you know, green Library 1 0 5, like stays with you. So anyone who has access to that space has access to that space forever. And so your your clients aj, who want access to that playlist six months down the road, like they know exactly where to go to find it. And there is no email back and forth. It was just the space that we shared that has the memory of everything that’s happened. And so I think that’s where technology can be used for good, right? Like the real world is great to build connection, but to like have that history privately because I think the world has also gone too far in terms of what is shared publicly. Like that’s, that’s basically what all takes is. And I think we have a community of like-minded coaches that are helping each other learn and grow while while they use these tools and really grow their coaching businesses.
AJV (40:34):
Yeah, I think that’s like the, like I think that’s like a huge part of this. It’s where technology can really be such a super beneficial asset to you is going, technology’s never gonna replace the human element mm-hmm. . but yeah, it can replace so much of the chaos Yes. Like it can eliminate a lot of the manual things that are, are quite honestly sucking up a lot of your time. And, and I just think about, I remember, you know, in my thirties I would often have 40 coaching clients that I talked to on a every other week basis plus speaking plus consulting clients. And so I was forced to have just a super tight regimented system, but then I would be left after hours with all of the administrative operational things of did I get the email out? Where are the notes? Did I download the links?
AJV (41:27):
And it’s like at some point you’re going, I’m tired like I wanna do good work, but I’m tired. Like there’s a lot of stuff there. And that’s what I love about All Takes and why I wanted to have you on the show is part of our responsibility at Brain Builders Group isn’t just to teach strategy and introduce you to ideas and concepts. It’s to go here are tools that we have found that we think can help you. And all takes, just like Brain Builders Group is not meant, meant for everybody, but it’s meant for the person who’s going, oh, I didn’t know that existed. I’ve been looking for this. And that is why I wanted to introduce this to you, our community, our audience of going, this is a tool that can help. And it’s not the only tool, but it is a tool that does the things that I can’t think of other tools exactly like it.
AJV (42:16):
I can think of ones that do lots of these things individually mm-hmm. , right? So you’ve got lots of learning management systems that host your content, but you can’t host calls on ’em. Mm-Hmm. , you’ve got places you can host calls and recordings, but they don’t have the other piece. And this is, I think the benefit is it was built by coach, with the coach in mind. Mm-Hmm. , right? And that is the benefit of this, of taking the power of technology and going and how can I help this really niche group of individuals coaches build better businesses so that they can serve their clients better? And you probably wouldn’t do this, so flagrantly, so I will, and it’s like if you’re a coach, go to all takes.com, request a demo, go see it. Don’t just take this conversation, work for it. It’s like I, I don’t get affiliate fees, I don’t have a referral partnership with all takes, even though maybe I should, I’ll be a great promoter.
AJV (43:07):
But I don’t, I’m doing this because genuinely it’s like our, I’ve had our team request, like formal demos in addition to our conversations. It’s like we need tools that allow us to do better work and this is a tool that could really help you. So go to all takes.com, request a demo and check out the work. Now I will say, and I’m watching the time cuz we only have a couple of minutes left, there is something else that you’re doing right now that is also pretty cool. And before we bounce, because this is like so timely to when this is all happening, I want you to tell people what you are
MM (43:41):
Doing. Okay? So we are doing something really fun and a little bit scary for me. So remember how I said I wanted to become a coach at some point and then I build a technology, which by the way, in addition to everything AJ said, the role of technology is not to increase your cortisol levels. It is to decrease them. And so it’s not just all the work when you go to a place like you wanna feel like this place is taking care of you. And that’s one of the things we do at all takes, right? But putting that aside I wanted to become a coach and I’m starting this company and I was like, how does this all come together and how do I bring people along who want to build out their coaching businesses who are serious about making this change and making it happen?
MM (44:25):
So we’re doing this thing called the Making of a Coach challenge and our head of sales and you know, she’s also sales marketing and mindset coach. Her name is Mary Diaz, is gonna coach me into becoming a coach. We’re going to do our coaching calls on this platform live. We will share it with everybody. We will share my mindset shifts in addition to the tool set and skillset shifts that need to happen. And within eight sessions or 30 days, we expect the coaches that go on this journey with us and do the work to be able to enroll paying clients. And whether it’s a workshop or a cohort or one-on-one, whatever it is that you wanna do, like we’ll, we’ll guide you on that journey to making this happen. And you’ll get to see me do it with you and in front of you and share with you like how I’m feeling.
MM (45:12):
Cuz this journey is one of like great grit. And the, the more you can have the tools, the technology tools of course, but also the mindset tools to make this happen and the community that pushes you forward, that that’s something that can only be a superpower that you have. So sign up for the making of a code challenge. If you go to all takes.com, there’s a banner up top click on that banner, there’s a landing page with all the information. You click yes I want in and I’ll take you down that process. We’re looking forward to welcoming the right people with open arms on the other end and holding you and supporting you as you build out this business that you’ve always dreamt of building.
AJV (45:55):
Yeah. And I would just encourage that because this episode was really designed to tailor and to reach the coach community that’s a part of our audience. And doing this life, this thing called life. We were not meant to do it alone, right? And this is a great opportunity to come alongside other people who are doing what you are doing or what you wanna do and be a part of the evolution of what does this look like and how do I come along and be a part of this journey with a group of people who are doing what I do or doing what I wanna do. So highly encourage what a cool thing to get to be a first, you know, kinda like a firsthand seat too. And also get to do the work too, right? It’s what really creates this really awesome engagement and starts to build some really amazing community, which we all do need, we all need.
AJV (46:47):
And there’s additional competition here. There’s enough for us all. So come along for the ride. That’s what this is all about. So I’ll put all the links in the show notes. So you’ve got different ways to connect, but thank you so much for coming on and one, just the background and the wisdom and the experience you have. Like we didn’t even scratch the surface of all the things that you could be talking about. Because at the end of the day, this all has culminated in this awesome thing that you’re doing right now for a really unique group of people that we happen to get the privilege to serve. And this is an awesome platform with major benefits to everyone’s involved. So I’ll do one last call to action. Go check out all takes.com, request the demo, see if it’s a fit for you. And Manal, thank you so much. We are so honored to have you on the show and I cannot wait to talk to you again soon, everybody else. I love ya. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
MM (47:47):
Thank you aj. Okay. All right. I’m gonna stop the recording and I will, yeah.

Ep 364: How To Know When You Are Ready For An App with Amanda Moriuchi

AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast AJ Vaden here, and I am with a very good friend of mine, Amanda Moriuchi. And today is always exciting to me whenever I get to do podcast interviews, but then when you get to do them with people that you actually really know personally and you get to share their business and their expertise and their brilliance just makes it extra fun. And so before I formally introduce Amanda, I want to tell you why you need to stick around for this episode. So here’s why you wanna listen to this episode. One, the main reason I have invited Amanda on to our podcast is because of the growing number of questions that our community and our listeners like you ask us all the time around, do I need an app? And if I do, how do I know when I am ready to get an app?
AJV (00:59):
And Amanda is going to answer those two question questions very specifically with real tangible data around why you should or why you shouldn’t, when you should, and what that process looks like. So that’s the first reason. The second reason is that there is this growing trend in the world called mobile apps, right? And there is a lot of things behind the scenes that most of us don’t realize when it comes to building, launching, growing, or even potentially monetizing an app. And so we’re gonna talk about some of that behind the scenes work and really what that means for the everyday entrepreneur, small business owner, coach, consultant, speaker, and what that world is gonna look like in the next five 10, so forth years. And then the third thing that you’re gonna learn, and this is also selfishly, is if you are ready for an app, what does that process look like?
AJV (01:55):
Like, does it really have to cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and does it have to take years? And we’re gonna find the answers to that too. So how further ado, let’s get right into it. So I’m gonna give you a little formal bio on Amanda, and then we’ll then we’ll jump in. And the rest of this will be super casual, but Amanda is the CEO of App Ventures, which is an award win, the inter international custom tech company. They have won lots of awards. And I actually had one, one of Amanda’s clients on our podcast just a little while ago called, the company is called Keep With. And Amanda’s team is the one who actually developed and brought that idea to life and app form. So it’s so cool to not only get to know you, but to see your business actually bring things to fruition and products and services that I actually really love and enjoy.
AJV (02:49):
But I will say, I will tell you also, she has developed and led hundreds of top tier software experts to launch over 1000 apps, which is amazing. These apps are averaging a three times return on investment she has or not to divulge your many years of experience, but more than 20 years of experience working with startups, fortune 500 government and non-profits. But I tell you, if you’re not watching this, Amanda does not look like she has been in business for more than 20 years. So, , with all that said, Amanda, welcome to the show.
AM (03:25):
Thank you so much. It’s good to see you, aj.
AJV (03:27):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited about this. And before we get into the nitty gritty details of building an app and what that process takes, I want people to get to know you a little bit and how you got into this business. But right before we do that, to kind of give people a preview of what to expect for the rest of this interview, can you just give us some very quick highlighted data, trends, insights around what this growing world of apps looks like and where you see it heading?
AM (04:00):
Ugh, I love this question. Yeah, so the biggest trend that I’m watching right now that really I think a lot of your clients and listeners are gonna care about is the shifts that kind of the larger social media companies are taking where they’re starting to lock down some of the most valuable elements of their platform. So for example, the most simple example I can share is you can no longer embed a private Facebook group into your app. And really Facebook knows that they know that people really are starting to build their own private communities mm-hmm. , and that’s where the value is. And they’re gonna wanna hang onto that. And so as I’ve been working with our clients, I want, I want them to look ahead just a few years down the line and consider how are you going to engage your audience or serve your customers if a platforms like Facebook or Twitter or, I mean, Twitter’s a big one, obviously it’s been in the news for a lot of reasons recently and Instagram, what if they start changing their algorithms, changing their rules starting to lock down their access? How are you as a thought leader, as a community leader, as somebody who’s serving your clients? How are you gonna protect your customer experience? And I’m starting to see some of these changes accelerate, and it’s on the one hand exciting, but on the other hand, something that’s giving a lot of our clients some urgency to really plan ahead.
AJV (05:39):
Yeah, so that’s a really good point because we have a private Facebook group at Brain Builders Group, but we have been urgently trying to figure out what is our long term? And for us, long term is like the next, in the next 12 to 24 months, what does that look like? Because not only do we know that that’s not a long term strategy to build our community on somebody else’s platform and that should be no one’s strategy to be honest. But one of the things that we are also seeing is we’re we’re experiencing a growing number of people who don’t wanna be a part of certain platforms.
AM (06:12):
And I’m that right. I’ve, I love you guys. I’ve been working with you guys for a couple of years now, and I’ve never been a part of Facebook as at like, when I’ve been with Brand Builders Group. I was a part of Facebook when I was a college kid when it first started forever . But you know, I think another that ties into the second big trend is really being mindful of how you’re using your customer data, right? Mm-Hmm. . So a lot of the larger platforms, how they make money is by mining data from the users. And that doesn’t serve your customers at the end of the day. In fact, it kind of puts them at risk. And so we’ve been working with our clients on thoughtful ways to gather data in a way that serves your customers instead of just taking, taking, taking, right?
AM (07:06):
That’s, and you also really need to keep an eye on some of the legal changes and regulation changes that are headed our way. I, I know everyone knows about GDPR in Europe similar laws have already passed in California, and you’re gonna start seeing those laws slowly spread across the country. And you have to be very careful as you’re planning ahead for some of that kind of stuff too. So really, I think end users are demanding more demanding more from the apps that they work with demanding more privacy, demanding more intimacy, demanding more connection, and it’s a really exciting time to be developing tech for good that really is in service to end users rather than just taking,
AJV (07:56):
I love that It’s building technology for good. Yeah, I love that. It’s like with any tool, it can be used for good or for harm. And it’s like, how do we just do it that’s got this mutual benefit for the end user. So good. Y’all, this is why you need to stick around. We’re gonna get into the nitty grits of this, but I, I am super curious, like, how did you get into this world, this business? Like, give us just a little bit of background of why apps we could have done so many different things in technology. I know you’re wicked smart, but why this
AM (08:32):
Totally on accident, to be honest with you, I, I fell into technology at an early part of my career and I think truthfully, that’s what made me successful, right? So I think a lot of times where people get frustrated with technology is you have a business person speaking to a technology engineer and they just speak past each other, right? And when I first joined the industry, I didn’t know anything about technology that wasn’t my, that wasn’t my expertise. And so I found the smartest people in my organization and I made them sit down with me and explain everything. And so I think with that, that gave me the ability to blend business and technology and make sense out of something that is really can be overwhelming if you don’t understand the nuance. And so I think I built my career on being that bridge between what a business leader wants as an outcome and what is possible from a development perspective.
AM (09:38):
And I’ve come to realize that’s kind of a rare trait to almost act as a translator between the two ends of the business. And it’s been incredibly rewarding. So the reason why I stayed was because I believe in my core that technology has the ability to level the playing field. It grants access to vulnerable populations, to affluent populations, and everything in between. It really breaks down the barriers between location, right? So, I mean, I have to say a j I found you guys through technology. Mm-Hmm. . I mean, Lori was giving a presentation a few years ago at a conference that was on the East coast that I attended from Denver. And you know, I think that’s been the, the thing that’s kept me so passionately involved in the industry is just that magic of technology to bring together ideas and to make something that wasn’t possible yesterday, possible today. And especially now more than ever connecting communities of people that are bound by a single passion or a single interest and just infusing some positivity into the industry. And it’s been so rewarding.
AJV (11:00):
You know, it’s so interesting that you say this. I’ve I actually made a post about this book that I’m reading called Find Your People by Jenny Allen. And I love Jenny Allen and I love this book specifically cuz it talks about how we’re in unprecedented times in America at least of a lack of community. And what an interesting thing with more technology availability and more interfaces and more this, that as a country we’re at an all time high of people who suffer from depression, anxiety addiction, and most of that stemming from an internal feeling of loneliness. And this entire book talks about loneliness is the real epidemic that we’re experiencing here in America. And then all these other things are the byproduct. And so I love what you say cuz it’s like, again, it’s like using technology for good and you know, we are most interested in our technology for communal purposes.
AJV (12:03):
It’s how do we stay in touch with people? How do we connect, how do we stay present and available when we are hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles apart? And I really do at some point during this interview wanna talk about the power of using apps specifically for community because as we are experiencing on the social media realms of today, and as we will continue you cannot build your audience on a borrowed platform. And that is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. That’s what they all are. And so if you don’t have a plan of building an audience that you own then at, at some point you’re at the mercy of big tech companies and big investments, bankers deciding how you’re gonna engage with the people that you have built a following with. And so I love what you’re saying about just doing it for the purpose of community and doing it for good.
AJV (12:55):
Cuz I think that’s a really critical part of where business is heading and people are building these communities that are the source of major business and revenue. Back to this like, you know, customer loyalty is like people stay with people more than they stay with companies. So how do we do more of that? So, okay, so getting into this app conversation, which I love and I’m fascinated by because I feel like I get, I feel like going into the app store is like me going into like TJ Max, oh my gosh, I’m so overwhelmed. I go walk in and I’m like, there’s like too much here. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which one. It’s like, I’m like doing it by customer ratings and it’s like, it’s so overwhelming to me. It’s like, I won’t even consider an app until like five or six people have said, you have to have this. And there’s just like, it’s so overwhelming and there’s so many of them. And so there’s my question with them being so many, how do you create something that actually does anything for good? And I guess my real, my real first question is, do you need an app?
AM (14:04):
Yes and no , so lemme say this, I couple of things on the loneliness as an epidemic. My, my belief on that is that we were sold a a bill of goods, right? Like we were said, we were sold. Facebook is a place for community, right? It’s not, it’s the town square, right? So any, any introvert would tell you, and I I’m a closet introvert, any introvert would tell you you don’t go to the Town Square or an example would be like a large concert hall to be filled up and to form an intimate connection. That’s not where you go. Like you can go meet people in the town square, you can go meet people in the concert hall, but you build connection outside of that. And, and I think we really need to be clear on what do you mean by community? Do you mean town square or do you mean intimate connection?
AM (15:06):
And somehow those two buckets have gotten muddled, right? And I think, I think that’s a crusade that I’m up against right now is like, great build your town square, right? Or build your audience in your town square, but you bring them into your community and you protect them. And that’s when you’d want an app, right? So we say, look, work with brand builders group, build your following, build your audience. And once you reach a certain kind of magic number in terms of like a certain number of engaged followers, you need to bring them to a place where they’re sheltered within your community. And then they start to form intimate bonds. And that’s the magic of an app, right? So let’s go back to the TJ Max example. I get also super overwhelmed by TJ Max because like the racks are just overwhelming. I can’t even remember that You have to like, like comb through all of the different types of brands and sizes and product types and all of that.
AM (16:17):
If you could imagine going into TJ Max and knowing, okay, it’s, it’s a Thanksgiving, right? It’s, I call it the high holiday time, right? It’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, like the best time of year to decorate, right? And so in that time of year, if I go into TJ Max, and I know I’m looking for a particular brand of a decor item. Ray Dunn is really well known in TJ Max, right? I don’t have to spend as much time as much of my attention, as much of my focus combing through all these different products if I know a very particular brand that I’m going for. Another example would be like in clothing and Under Armor, I know that I’m looking for that brand so I can go to that rack and more quickly sift through the noise, so to speak, and find the product that I’m looking for.
AM (17:11):
And that’s applying that analogy to technology, right? So one of my biggest gripes is if I’m looking for a particular type of content, not, not that different than shopping for a particular product. Let’s say I need some business inspiration, right? I’ve hit a plateau in my role. I’m tired, I’m burned out, I wanna go find some inspiration. The first thing I do is I go to Instagram and I look at all the people that I’m following and let’s pretend AJ posts something really inspiring that I haven’t seen before. And I’m like, who is this AJ Vaden? And then I start getting to know you, right? Testing you out a little bit. And then I’m like, I love what she has to say. What else does she have? And then I come upon a post where you’re like, Hey, I’ve just launched an app. All of my thoughts, my podcast, my books, any products that I’m selling, the community that I’ve built, it’s all here in this place.
AM (18:17):
Essentially come to my digital store. So we find that customers that rely on simply people finding you through the app store, they don’t succeed. Yeah. Because the app store is not going to elevate your app. The app store, I’ll, I’ll save a lot of my commentary on the challenges of posting something in an app store. That’s not the way to market your app. The way to market your app is by building an audience first. Having that foundation first and then having a plan to convert them to app users, right? You build your audience first and then you protect your community. But you can’t, you can’t protect a community that you don’t have, right? Yeah.
AJV (19:02):
So it’s such a good reminder to anyone who’s listening. Cause I think we all get tempted of what’s the newest, bright and shiny thing? What is everyone else doing? And it, it’s a really core part of mine. And my husband Rory’s philosophies and a part of Brain Builders group, it’s like there is a time and a place for all the things. And, and, and this example, an app is no different than a business model, right? It’s like you gotta have people to buy your products and services if you’re ever gonna make any money, right? And so there are two things that you said I think are really interesting and really important. And you said there’s this magic number, right? Like if you have this many followers and so care to give us any ranges of like what that ma magic number might be be Yeah.
AM (19:47):
Yeah. So our most successful clients come to us with an engaged audience of 10, at least 10,000 followers, right? And that can be across channels, right? Because you could, you can have 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. You can have 10,000 followers on Instagram. They can be divided amongst those right? Now, here’s why. So there are basically three main revenue streams in an app. The first one is pretty simple, paid subscriptions, right? And the second is advertising where essentially you can set up advertising space within your app and you can work on on a content mediation platform. They’ll fill in that ad space for you. And then the third would be like sponsors or strategic partners or people that want to have their logo in front of your community. Those are your three podcasts. Yeah.
AJV (20:43):
Podcast, okay.
AM (20:44):
Exactly. Exactly. And so let’s do some rough math here. If you can convert half of your 10,000 audience members to paid subscribers, and let’s just say you’re charging $20 a month for access to your app, and that would be content. The content that you’re producing, that would be the community that you’ve built around your content. I I describe that as like a digital country club. So this is an exclusive group of people that are building relationships around your core truth, right? So or as brand builders talks about your through line, right? And these are engaged people that are helping you along your path and building community, again, around your core truth. And then you might be selling some products, right? So my most successful clients host their podcast on the app. They will put digital versions of their book on the app. If they’re selling any physical products, you can sell a physical book if you want. You can sell shirts or mugs or whatever it is that you’re selling to further your brand. And let’s say that you have 5,000 users charging $20 a month low cost for high, high value, when you launch on launch day, you’re making a hundred thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Mm-Hmm. , I mean that’s, that’s game changing for a lot of these thought leaders that I see in the market. And yeah,
AJV (22:18):
So this, so you said something really quickly cuz I’m curious how many people, and this could be just like a wildly guesstimated number here, but how many people do you think are charging for their ad versus just getting it for free?
AM (22:33):
So,
AJV (22:34):
Or should there be some versions?
AM (22:36):
It’s, it, you could do, you could do a freemium version where you’re exposed to ads now. Okay, so let’s talk about ad revenue because a lot of people kind of have the misconception that ad revenue is based simply on number of downloads and that’s not the case. So you need to have a number of active users. I guess that’s where a number of downloads make sense. But if some, somebody downloads your app and never opens it, you’re not making money off of that user, right? So it needs to be somebody that’s in your app and stays within your app for a longer period of time. And so that’s why you need a little bit more. So you need to convert about 80% of your engaged audience to deliver revenue substantial enough revenue on the freemium side, although I spend most of my time convincing my customers to have a paid application. And the reason why is one of my sales managers way long time ago said, Amanda, people value what they pay for mm-hmm
AJV (23:42):
.
AM (23:43):
And so I would say this back to our most successful apps. They come down to, there are two paths, but the the biggest one that we’re kind of talking about right now is you form a core truth. What are you here for? What breaks your heart? As brand builders taught me, what are you here to solve? That’s your core truth. You build content around your core truth and then you build a community that’s engaged around that content. That’s incredible. Regular high value content and connections that you’re providing your users. And I would say any country club charges for admission, any movie theater charges for admission, the people that you want in your digital community must be paying because they value what they pay for. And that’s what I’ve seen with our most successful clients in this type of a scenario where you have your core truth, your content, and your community.
AJV (24:45):
Okay, so I have like 14 questions right now, . So, cause I think this is really fascinating specifically for our audience who is wildly full of speakers, authors, coaches, trainers, consultants experts, right? So it’s like you could be a more a mortgage lending expert or a physician either way. It’s like, but they are, they’re very convicted in building an audience and, and doing something good with that audience. And so just think this is a really fascinating concept. So this whole idea of having an app for your community, which I personally love, and it’s something. So I think it’s just something that’s really important as we proceed into the future with the uncertainty of the platforms and the constantly changing algorithm and new rules and laws and regulations and the fact that most of your audience already isn’t seeing your content. So just a little bit about how do you build something that you actually get to influence and you actually do get to build connection with. And so going, going down that rabbit hole, here are some of the questions I have. So I think I hear you saying a paid app is kind of the way to go. And I think that’s really wise and I actually really appreciate that. And I I’m asking myself, is there a price point that you see for a paid app for somebody who is building their audience and building a community with an app that is an appropriate price point? Any ranges? Like what’s too much little,
AM (26:14):
No. So I would say this, it, you’re, this is not a cop out. I, I apologize. It depends, right? So looking at like category types, so like fitness for example, most of the fitness apps that we’re seeing out on the marketplace are charging anywhere between 20 to $40 a month, right? But hear me out on this on the fitness side, like you’re, you’re basically getting a digital personal trainer for $40 a month and tell me where you can go in any gym across the country and get that kind of dedicated high level personalized attention. You, you can’t, right? So I think that’s kind of the, the value there. Now let’s, let’s apply, let’s say like brand builders group and what you and Rory have to share, right? You guys are high level business strategists. You guys are coaches, you guys come in and you work directly with an entrepreneur to help them build up your business.
AM (27:20):
Okay? Where else are you gonna find that in the marketplace? Person to person? And if you’re, if you’re able, I would say charge 50 to $75 a month because you’re getting people that are engaged and really wanna, wanna level up their business. And that’s just for the app aj. That’s not for like access to events, that’s not access to products, that’s not access to one-on-one coaching, right? All it is is an entrance fee into the sanctuary that you’re building for your community, right? And so I would say most of our clients start out charging $20 a month just because it’s an even easy number for people to absorb. You’re not gonna get pushback. And then a lot of our clients will engage in ab testing on pricing when we work with our clients, we’ll kind of do a competitive review of what’s in the marketplace and what you can charge. The problem is, a lot of our clients right now that are thought leaders in this space that are kind of building what we are calling like the digital country clubs, they’re at the forefront. And so when you’re at the forefront, you have to guess and when you’re guessing, you have to compare, okay, how much am I charging versus the value I’m providing? And if that gap is big enough, you’ll start seeing volume that comes in much more quickly than, than if you’re kind of just throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks.
AJV (28:49):
I love that. So, and, and I agree, I do think there is so much value in having gated content and building this gated community. And so that leads me to my next question. And you know, both, for me and everyone listening, I figured if I have these questions, so do you remember listening? So then it’s what content do you save just for your app versus what content do you continue to put out there on the different platforms in order to attract people into the app? And so have you seen any successful ratios of what type of content should be gated that people are paying for? And then you mentioned some people even put their podcast on there. So are they no longer on iTunes and Spotify? And are they only in the app? And how does that really work? So
AM (29:41):
Yeah, great question. So let, let’s talk about the podcast piece first. So I would say if you have a podcast, still put it out on iTunes, still put it out on Spotify because what you’re doing is you’re fishing, right? Like you’re putting lines in the water to attract more people from the town square into your protected community, right? That’s the purpose of having an Instagram feed, of having a podcast, of having a blog, having an email newsletter, all of these things, the purpose of those activities or putting lines in the water into the town square fishing for people to join your protected community. So a lot of times my frustration is I actually follow a, a bvg client on Apple Podcasts and I get super frustrated because Apple is now changing how they set up their podcasts without your per or oversight. They’ll put advertisements into your podcast. Yeah. And you’ll start seeing that with podcasts and iBooks even. They’re inserting ads. And so you’re starting to see the evolution of Apple from a product company to a media company, right?
AJV (30:58):
I have noticed that too. And many people who we know who have very, very, very big podcasts they are quickly going, what? Like, exactly. You can’t have ads on my show without even asking me. But yet they can,
AM (31:15):
They can because it’s rented space, right? So I would say in the podcast example, you put the, that podcast out on iTunes, Spotify, whatever for Phish purposes, you bring that also into your app as, and you can put it in front of the paywall or behind the paywall. That that’s, that’s kind of your prerogative. But what the thing is is now I know if I wanna hear from aj, I’m gonna go to AJ’s app mm-hmm. because I’m an engaged user, right? And so it’s kind of like you’re fishing by putting your podcast out on iTunes, and then maybe what you’re doing by putting your podcast in front of the paywall with some ads so you can still make advertiser revenue that advertisers you pick not that someone else has picked for you. You can put the podcast with ads in front of the paywall to reel in your customer and qualify them to make sure they’re worthy to be a part of your protected community. And the minute they start paying for the app, then they have the podcast behind the paywall without ads, right? So the idea is leveraging your content to validate the fit for the person to be in your community and the community is where the real value is. Okay. Does that make sense?
AJV (32:40):
Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think, again, back to the quickly changing landscape that we’re all living in, where now Apple is deciding, well, we’re gonna decide what ads we put on your podcasts and even YouTube. It’s like, I could put an ad on your podcast today to advertise my podcast if I wanted to, right? And I think there’s just a lot of that of going, man, it’s like I’m trying to create an experience for my audience and Exactly. Advertisers and big media companies are kind of getting in the way of that. So then, so then the question is about how much content do you reserve for the app versus what you’re just putting out there on social media?
AM (33:21):
Yep. So the biggest way I encourage our clients to delineate is the content you put out on social media or in front of the paywall. Those should be an invitation, right? So it’s free because it’s an invitation. The content that goes behind the paywall is the instruction on execution, right? So the invitation might be a sample, might be the first bite or two, but then the real getting down to the nuts and bolts of executing to solve the problem that you’re working against that sits behind the paywall. And so what happens is, if you have a, and actually the beautiful thing is you don’t really need to have a ton of content that you’re consistently refreshing that’s behind the paywall. Because what happens is people will go through that content that’s behind the paywall and through that build connections with the community that have already been around and been doing the execution.
AM (34:25):
And so people will come for the content and stay for the community, right? So what it does is it takes a little bit of weight off of the content creators. The hardest stuff is teaching on execution, right? That takes a lot of thought planning production time, production cost what you can do, once you’ve established that behind the paywall, then it alleviates the pressure. So you can focus more on generating the fresh content that is acting as the invitation, right? Almost like the advertisements to the town square. And the reason why you need to have fresh content constantly is because you as content creators are consistently diluted mm-hmm. on the town square, right? And so you have to keep up with that pace to continue to invite people in and bring people in. That’s, that’s marketing. Whereas the stuff behind the paywall is building and keeping your engaged community.
AJV (35:27):
So then this leads me to my next question cause I agree with all of that. Which is what’s the likelihood of, I don’t know, know even like, even in the app store? So I don’t know if this is true, but I was told this here recently and it stuck with me that Apple takes about 30% of revenue for every app sold. That’s about right.
AM (35:51):
, they, well, okay, so up to a million they’ll take 10%. So nice, generous bit there over 10, over a million in revenue, they take 30%. But something important to think about here is they take 30% of digital content. So if you’re selling coaching separately, that’s not digital content and therefore not subject to the 30% commission. If you’re selling physical products, you’re not, you’re not subject to that 30%. So app it, what we’ll do is we’ll work with our customers and get creative with ways to protect your revenue and shield some of that from the Apple tax. So we
AJV (36:36):
Call it, okay, the Apple tax, that’s good, but it’s like, basically if you’re under a million in annual revenue, they’re taking 10% of gross revenue. So just build that into the budget. And so I guess my question is, which I did not realize that, so I think that was really important and I came up in a conversation here lately and then my, so my question is like, what, what is the likelihood that Apple, just like all of these other platforms, as Apple is changing this with the podcast, start doing this own thing in the app store where they’re going, well now I’m gonna decide how things are done, because it too is a little bit of rented real estate in terms of, you know, the marketplace, the grocery store of sorts, so
AM (37:15):
Exactly costs
AJV (37:16):
Around that.
AM (37:16):
Yeah, so we we’re watching a lot of what’s happening with Apple and Google, especially as it relates to the app marketplaces. I, I don’t see Apple increasing commission, nor do I see them trying to make any large changes or dominate app owners or developers for a couple of reasons. First of all, they got in deep trouble with the government on how they were managing a lot of these commissions and what they were doing. And we saw Apple make a pretty abrupt change in their policies from there. The other thing is for as challenging as Apple can be, they really do love their developer community. And you have to remember, they are motivated to keep developers coming back and app owners coming back because that’s a big part of their revenue. And so this is why you’ll see like app, it was a lot, or Apple was a lot of their major updates.
AM (38:20):
They’re slowing down the impact that it has to developers because they wanna keep their developers happy. They have to, it’s a big part of their business. The one risk I would say is it’s really important for app owners to be aware of Apple’s guidelines because they do change. So one example, I’m sure any user who has an app remembers when you’d have to go through an app update and you’d have to click Ask App not to track that was a guideline change from Apple that every app owner was required to add that button back to the user. And really that’s in response to user demand on privacy and shifting laws. So building an app is no different than owning a storefront, right? Laws change, customer preferences change taxes change, revenues change. And I think that’s all the more reason to want to have your own app to give you the control to pivot in a way that works best for you.
AJV (39:22):
That’s good. All right. Well I have, we just have like five more minutes and I’ve got like two questions here I think that are really important. So this whole kind of concept, or you’ve got 10,000 plus, you know, online followers and that’s growing, then this is kind of like, okay, now let’s talk about like, should you have one maybe. So, and then give us just some high level behind the scenes, what’s that process look like? How much does it cost emotionally prepare everyone listening of real numbers, real timelines? What does it look like to have an app?
AM (39:53):
Oh my gosh, this is the hardest part of the process. Shopping for an app makes TJ Max look like a day at this spa. It’s so I, you know, I actually really empathize and I have a high level of respect for all of our clients because building custom software is not an easy thing to find the right person. It’s, it’s really hard actually. And the reason why is because you have developers from all over the world, right? And they have different salary needs. So a developer in Pakistan is going to charge a much different hourly rate than a developer in the Bay Area in California, even if they have the same level of experience and expertise. And so I think that element and also the creative element. So how an engineer would approach a, an app idea or a technical problem, it’s up to whatever’s in the mind of the engineer.
AM (40:53):
And so one engineer may think that a particular app would take 10,000 hours to build, whereas another developer would think it’s only 2000 hours. And so I think it’s those elements of very wildly varying rates and wildly varying ideas on how to tackle a problem. And that’s where, for a single project you could get a quote from anywhere from $10,000 to as high as a million. And in fact, APPT did recently we did a competitive study a a local against our local competitors and nationwide. And it blew me away. We had detailed features like, this is what we want. And we were getting quote ranges that same whip from $10,000 to a million dollars and app it. We tend to kind of come in like mid-level because we’re a hybrid. So it’s, it’s crazy. It’s really hard. And so, oh gosh, I could spend, you
AJV (42:00):
Make a decision based on, I mean, cuz I imagine most people make a decision based on, well, if I got 10,000, a million, 10,000 sounds a lot better. So, but then it’s like, what at what cost are you paying that, you know, fee? So it was like, how do you even make a decision in those types of environments? Yeah.
AM (42:19):
So I, you know what aj I might have to give you a blog on how to vet vendors. Like we had a list of questions that you should ask every single vendor to make sure that they’re a fit for your project because price is a, like, it’s, it varies so wildly that it’s not, it can’t be a deciding factor, right? Because even if you go purely offshore with a very low cost developer, so that $10,000 example, what you’re missing is cultural context. Mm-Hmm. , right? So you have to respect that offshore development or developers, they build community so much differently than we do in the us And that’s not a good or a bad thing. It just is what it is. Yeah. Right? And if you are looking to build community, you need to work with somebody that understands how you’ve built your community and how you want it to be built.
AM (43:17):
And that in and of itself, I mean, I would say about 40% of our business comes from entrepreneurs who tried to take the cheap route and have ended up spending what they would’ve spent anyways. They would’ve saved the money had they just gone with a reputable shop in the first place. So I would say this, check the reviews a really, really good place to go is Clutch. It’s a, it’s a third party website. They ranker technical service providers like app and you can start to see the rankings If you want somebody local, you can see who’s the best in your local area. But honestly I think it comes down to relationship. Like you have to work with somebody that you know and you trust or that somebody that you know, has worked with and trusted and has done a good job for them.
AJV (44:12):
Yeah, I think there’s three things that kind of to like, to wrap up our conversation cause I could ask another 36 question if we had the time. But but to everyone listening, Amanda and her team at Abbot have put together something really cool for all of our listeners. And if you’re wondering, am I ready for an app they actually have put together a cool quiz that you can take that will tell you are you ready for an app? And so if you go to app ventures.com/b bg app quiz, we will also put that in the show notes. But it’s app a p ventures.com/bbg app quiz. You can go and take this quiz to determine if you’re ready for an app. And if you are, then to kinda recap what Amanda said is that then go to Clutch, which is a great place to review different vendors.
AJV (45:11):
App is reviewed on there to do a comparative analysis of, you know, try to compare apples to apples here. Doesn’t really help if you’re comparing apples and bananas. But let’s look at apples to apples. And then if you’ll send me the blog link of great questions to add or to ask, we’ll add that to the show notes so that everyone listening, you’ve got three amazing resources to leave this interview with. Go take this quiz. Then you can go to clutch start vetting vendors, and then we’ll include this blog link where you can go and say, these are the best questions that I can ask to figure out who’s the best person to proceed down this path. But I think generally speaking, we’re all headed towards this privately owned community realm at some point. And at some point just means when you are ready, when it makes sense for you without comparing yourself to anyone else’s out there, it’s not doing it for the sake of doing it, it’s doing it for the sake of this is what my com, my community and my business requires of me at this time. Now last but not least, if people wanna connect with you personally, Amanda, where should they go?
AM (46:19):
You know, if you anybody has any questions like, Hey, I can you review this bid? Am I crazy or can you help me build out a feature summary? Have them email me, just [email protected]. This is my passion to help people start off on their right foot with technology. So email me, I will answer any question you have or you can find me on LinkedIn. Amanda, more uchi and let’s keep in touch and I’m here to help. I’m here to answer any questions, mostly because I want good tech built for good people. And it should be, it should be way easier than it is. But it’s a challenge. So,
AJV (47:05):
Well that’s outrageously generous. So Race for Impact a lot. Thank you so much, so helpful, so insightful so many just good tips, good data points, so many good things to consider. And I know that this app conversation is just like scratching like the top of, you know, the beginning of the surface of the, the iceberg. I know this is a deep dark tunnel we could spend a lot of time in, but I think it’s a worthy conversation. So appreciative of you for coming on and for everyone listening, we will catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. We’ll see you later.

Ep 362: Alternative Investment Vehicles for Entrepreneurs with Henry Yoshida

RV (00:01):
Hey, part of what we wanna be doing on this show is just sort of bringing you insights and strategies to help you, obviously as a mission-driven messenger, to become more well known, but also as an entrepreneur, to become more savvy and sophisticated. And today we’re gonna talk about a little bit about tax strategy in investing which may not seem always that exciting, but specifically I’ve asked this guest to be on the show. We’re gonna talk about a tool called Self-Directed IRAs. We’ll explain what that means why you might care about them, how you potentially use them and, you know, immediate action steps. But let me introduce you to Henry Yoshida. So, Henry was referred to me by one of the smartest people I know, Jason Dorsey. He’s been on the show se a couple times. He’s a close friend.
RV (00:51):
We we’re, we’re best friends in real life. His company is who we use to do our, our trends and personal branding, national research study. And Jason told me that Henry is one of the smartest people that he’s ever met. So that said a lot because I was asking Jason about self-directed IRAs, and then I got to learn about Henry. So Henry is the c e o and he’s the co-founder of a company called Rocket Dollar. So this is a FinTech financial technology. It’s a FinTech platform that lets people invest tax advantage retirement dollars into private alternative investments. Now, that’s a mouthful. We’re gonna, we’re gonna break that apart and help you understand what that means. But Henry is a C F P. So he’s a certified financial planner. In fact, he’s been a C F P since he was 22 years old.
RV (01:40):
He was the youngest c f CFP at Merrill Lynch, which is where he worked for 10 years. He’s also a, a professional licensed realtor. And he’s got 20 years of experience in finance. He, he actually was the founder of a venture backed company which was a robo-advisor company called Honest Dollar, that was acquired by Goldman Sachs. And he is the founder of another group that has managed had 2.6 billion in assets under management. He graduated from the University of Texas, UT at Austin has an MBA from Cornell University. And, you know, now is building his like personal brand and expertise really around these kind of like, vehicles of self-directed IRAs and Rocket dollar among other things. So with that, Henry, welcome to the show.
HY (02:24):
Thank you very much, Rory. Thanks for having me on today. Yeah, I’m really excited to be here. And Jason’s spoken very, very highly of yourself. I mean, he, he literally took time from his vacation to
RV (02:34):
Talk about I’m, I am the reason for his success. So he should be speaking highly
HY (02:40):
Denise first and you second. I’m sure
RV (02:43):
Denise first. Yes, Denise for sure. But the you know, so I was asking him about self-directed IRAs be and, and, and was something, you know, we have always had 401k. You know, I think I had a Roth, I when I, when I was 22 years old or something, and started learning about that. But only recently learned about this tool called a self-directed i r a. So can you just like high level layman’s terms, tell us what, what is a self-directed I r a
HY (03:16):
Sure. Self-Directed ira, it’s a, it’s a pretty n terribly de non-descriptive term for a type of ira. So the way we explain it and the way it’s become known, a self-directed IRA is an IRA account, very bespoke product. A lot of people in America have these accounts know generally about how they work, but a self-directed IRA is one that lets you keep the same tax treatment tax benefits of a, of a regular IRA that you would have in any brokerage firm. But instead of public stocks, bonds, mutual funds index fund ETFs, you can make private and alternative investments. So anything that the IRSs allows, which is anything from real estate to digital digital currency to making private investments into a friend’s startup technology business those all can be done inside of an IRA if you have a specialized provider that could do self-directed ira. So that’s what it is. Just think private and alt investments with the ta, same tax benefits for an IRA is what you
RV (04:18):
Can do. So, yeah, so basically this becomes a vehicle that I can take my money and if I don’t like the poll markets or don’t wanna put it there for whatever reason, or I have more there and I just wanna, I wanna invest in other things. Like some of the things you mentioned, I mean, crypto’s been obviously a hot topic in recent years. Real estate. Sure. et cetera. I can then use this account as a retirement account. I can do those investments, I can control those investments all the way to private companies and even debt instruments, et cetera. But have it have the same tax treatment, meaning I don’t, I it is tax deferred. So all the money I put in there, yes, those investments are gonna stay, those assets are gonna grow. Hopefully if I do a good job of stewarding that well and managing it well, and then when I retirement, when I retire, I take it out and then I’m taxed on the gains there. So exactly like an ira, it’s just, it has more flexibility into what kinds of things I can invest into. Yeah,
HY (05:18):
Exactly. Yeah, because the industry, you, you, you know, it’s almost so much so that you said you and Jason were talking about this, that people think that an IRA can only invest in public market securities or some derivative of it, like a mutual fund. But the reality is that the ability to invest in things that aren’t public market securities has actually existed since the inception of IRAs. It’s just not as well known. It’s not as well there aren’t a lot of providers in that space. So really, you know, my company’s mission and sort of my own personal background was thinking that, that now maybe to properly diversify someone should create a very simple, very affordable you know, household brand name to let people do private investments inside of an ira because that’s where a lot of investment opportunities are. But you’re exactly right that, that the, the gains everything is in there is tax deferred. And if and when you sell these investments in retirement, that’s when you actually pay taxes. So you can control it just like your regular IRA right
RV (06:16):
Now. And so basically there is some compliance and headaches and regulations and paperwork and details and kind of like that stuff around starting a self-directed ira. And what you guys do is you basically created a, a vehicle where it’s like you can, you know, for a, for a pretty low, very low fee, you can just, you guys can deal with all that and then now I can open an account and it gives me the ability to manage and do whatever I want to do.
HY (06:45):
Exactly. And, and our fee is structured that way because since these are self-directed, people typically find these investments on their own. So we’re not a mutual fund company creating a packaged product and then we charge the customer a management fee for however much money they put with us. But our fee is actually just a one-time flat fee because we typically are not sourcing those investments for the individual. Our fee, our ongoing fee and our signup fee are just flat dollar amounts 360 upfront and 15 a month. It’s just there to cover exactly what you mentioned. The, the not so fun part, cuz this is an audio podcast, but you know, I can see your face when you say paperwork compliance, the setting up painful and so forth. Yeah, it’s painful. So what, and that’s
RV (07:24):
Why we people do what you said earlier. You said like the, the idea of alternative investments in an I R A has existed for a long time, but you don’t hear about it because there hasn’t been as much of a way to like sort of deal with that stuff. The in, in a, in a really smooth fashion. And that’s kind of the problem you guys are trying to solve, right?
HY (07:43):
That part. And then I’ve been very public about talking about this too. It’s that the, the, the existing industry players that provide IRAs to the vast majority of the American public, they’re also the manufacturers of these these as package products as well. So it doesn’t really, there’s no real incentive for them to allow Rory to invest in Jason Dorsey’s business, for example using an account at a major existing provider because there’s no management fee that they can, that they can take for doing so because that’s a, that’s a deal between you two. Yeah.
HY (08:16):
And so forth. So that’s another reason that that’s why this industry really hasn’t become as well known. But you’ll find that sophisticated investors have been doing this for decades. Yeah. And there are several hundred billion of IRA monies inside of private investments.
RV (08:31):
Yeah. So, so here was my initial question. So I’ll ask you cuz this was the catalyst, right? So the catalyst for me was going, you know, we’ve always done 401k, I r a, we, you know, we’ve got that, we’ve got, you know, somebody that manages that and you know, but we are wanting to kind of start doing more with real estate mm-hmm. . And the thought was going, golly, we’ve got all of this money in public markets which we don’t fully understand and we don’t follow it that closely. We would love to do more in real estate and go, gosh, maybe we should take some of that money and put it over here into real estate. And my, my honest first thought was going, how can we use that money to buy a vacation home? Is there a way that we can take some of our invest, like our retirement dollars, put it into a self-directed IRA and use that to then basically buy like a second home that we would rent out and, and use. Now I think you can’t do that, right? What I’ve learned is you’re not allowed to, to do anything, not invest in real estate that you get a personal benefit from. Is that right?
HY (09:35):
Exactly. No personal benefit. It’s a, it’s a prohibited transaction is the technical term.
RV (09:40):
Dang it. so, so then you can invest in two things, but you can’t get personal benefit. So I can’t buy artwork and hang it on my wallet at my house. Like you can’t do that kind of a thing.
HY (09:56):
And artwork is a collectible. So that’s actually one of the two things that are specifically disallowed inside of an IRA generally. But, but it’s kind of interesting that we’re in a 2022, almost 2023 world now that many investments are actually now securitized. So it, it’s, it’s kind of crazy. But the private investment world now allows stock certificates that, that are, are actually backed by a piece of famous artwork or a collectible baseball card and so forth. And there’s websites that do that. And if the investment is properly securitized, then actually I RRA providers are allowed to hold shares of that. But the example you use, which is by a Picasso, hang it up in your house you wouldn’t be allowed to do that because you have the benefit of of enjoying the artwork or showing it off to your friends.
RV (10:43):
Uhhuh come over the most common vehicle or the most common investments that you would see. Well let, so actually we’ll come back to that in a second. If I look at this from an entrepreneurial tax component, tax strategy, right? So one of the issues, some, occasionally we’ll talk about tax strategies and ideas on here just because as AJ and I have been become more successful over the years, we found that almost nobody, even CPAs have like, often don’t have great tax strategy or tax planning for entrepreneurs. The, there’s not there’s still a limit to how much you can put into an ira, whether it’s a traditional or it’s self-directed. Right? And so you, you can’t, it’s not like a double, you can’t double dip here each year. You can just put it either in a traditional I rra or you could put it in self-directed, right?
HY (11:32):
Exactly. Yeah. It’s just all IRAs. These, these are just the types of IRAs. So my own vision is that sometime in the next few years people will say there’s traditional IRAs, there’s Roth IRAs, as you mentioned, you had when you were 22. And then there’s alts capable IRAs or self-directed IRAs. It, it’s just not the known third one, but it’s just, they’re all different types of IRAs Yeah. And so forth. So you’re right. And, and what’s the limit? You can put money in the limit for 2022 is $6,000. If you’re under the age of 50 then you can do another 1000 in 2023. And this is all inflation adjusted. So that’s been kind of nuts this year and probably heading into next that you, next year you’ll be able to put away 6,500 into an ira if you’re under the age of 50.
HY (12:17):
Cuz it’s, it’s just adjusting up for inflation. But remember most of these accounts, and probably a lot in your audience, Rory, that the reason why there’s so much money in IRAs is that most people actually sock away a lot of money in some sort of stint in a corporate world before be going out on an entrepreneurial journey. So, myself included, I worked for Merrill Lynch slash Bank of America for a decade and I contributed larger amounts than 6,000. It was less than at that time for IRAs in a 401k, then the company provided a match. And then when I left Merrill Lynch, that account is able to be rolled into my own IRA in my name and, and it had much more than if I’d been able to just put away three, four, $5,000 per year by the time I was there and so forth. So most IRA money is actually old 401k,
RV (13:04):
Old 401K money that then when you leave the company, it can’t be in that 401k and then it gets moved into an I R A.
HY (13:11):
Right? You’re able to leave it if you want, but you’re even more restricted because that company you know, probably only offered you 20 mutual fund choices. And then if you move to an irate at a major brokerage house, then you can buy any public stock that you want. And then if you are having a discussion to potentially buy real estate or invest in cryptocurrency or a small investment in your friend’s business, then you would need a self-directed ira. So that’s kind of the, the evolution,
RV (13:37):
Right? Yeah. And, and so, you know, a couple of the things, and just correct me if I’m wrong here, but like, as I think about this, I’m going, all right, if I wanna start investing in real estate, which typically takes a lot of money right? To, to, to, or, you know Yeah. Takes a lot of money to get to get going Yeah. Is saying part of the way that I can access capital is to pull it from my own retirement account. Whereas normally if I pulled money out of my retirement account, I would get penalized. But in this, in this mechanism, you could, you could convert from your traditional IRA into a self-directed ira. And now I have capital that I can, I can use to go out and buy real estate as an example. Right,
HY (14:18):
Exactly. You just can’t buy the one that you described, which is a vacation home that I use, you might personally use sometimes on your own up to a certain number of days. But the good news for your audience is that you could actually use a self-directed IRA to buy a vacation home that you permanently rent out on Airbnb. And any of us in your audience can actually go to your vacation home. It’s an investment for you. And it’s a, maybe like a getaway for us, for example. You just can’t use it.
RV (14:44):
Even the vacation business can a and can a and the business can’t benefit from it either. Like, can you buy a commercial property that your business is in and the commercial property is in your self-directed ira?
HY (14:56):
You can’t do that either, because if you control that business, then you can’t do it. But for example, if you bought a commercial property and you wanted to lease space to my business, I have no connection to to to your IRA or to you personally from a, just a relationship status. And then I could be your tenant paying a market rate. It, the, the basic rule thumb to make me make it easy is think that anything that you have inside of an ira, whether it’s self-directed or traditional, it just has to be purely an investment. It can’t be something that you, you know, derive personal benefit from that we talked about earlier, or that you get, you get any sort of benefit from. It has to be arm’s length you know, from you. It has to be purely an investment. And then that’s when the government allows you the opportunity to defer those taxes for years, decades and maybe even longer.
RV (15:46):
Yeah. And then, so when you think about the type, the common types of investments that somebody would do here one of the things that is potentially interesting to me about a self-directed IRA is well, first of all, you’re self-directing it so you have more control over like, what’s going on there. Mm-Hmm. , you’re going, yeah, I’m interested in real estate. I wanna do real estate, or I’m interested in crypto, I want, I wanna do crypto, or I’m interested in you know, whatever. But you, there tends to be more risk. Pri private, a private company would be another thing, right? Like, I wanna invest some money in my friend’s company. I can’t do that in my normal ira, so I’m, I’m going to open a self-directed IRA and do it, do it through there. If, you know, it’s more risky, but then also it grows, like it probably, you know, it has the chance of growing much more than typically maybe, you know, an investment that you would have that’s like a public security, right? So Exactly.
HY (16:46):
There,
RV (16:46):
There, there’s more flexibility. It gives you a chance to have bigger wins as well as typically bigger losses like Sure. So what are the other like, major types of investments that people are doing inside of a self-directed? Does that mean real estate? You got real estate, crypto, private companies? If I wanna invest in my buddies business mm-hmm. , what are the other big ones?
HY (17:09):
Another big one is, is, so the industry itself is, goes all the way back to the seventies. So IRAs were essentially created in 1974. So for probably the first 20, 25 years, the only IRAs that were not offered by the major brokerage houses to do public stocks, let’s say self-directed IRAs for the first two decades were probably only created to do real estate investments. Private credit investments and probably precious metals. So maybe another one that we didn’t talk about was actually investing in, let’s say, gold. For example, like people held gold inside of ira. So that was a big industry, maybe less so now. And again, you can’t hold the gold bar in your house while it’s in your ira. You have to actually have a custodial provider to keep it in a vault for you. But remember these were created in the seventies and eighties. So at that time, oddly enough, that was probably the last very high inflationary environment and people kind of looked at tangible assets like real estate and assets that might hold their value for the long haul, like precious metals. So the industry actually developed around those asset classes first and
RV (18:16):
So forth. That’s, that’s interesting. So then basically, you know, the market conditions back then were, you know, maybe similar to what we may or may not be heading towards, but certainly recently interest rates have been going up and things like that. Yeah. And so you’re saying that people, you know, sort of tend to start to look more towards alternative investments and these kinds of
HY (18:38):
Sequence? Yeah, and I do wanna go back and say that, you know, I, I talk a lot and people always say that, you know, all alternative investments may be, you know, may be riskier than public investments. And I don’t know if that’s actually the case cuz you know, we just talked about that if you did cryptocurrency or investing in a small private business, yes that may be riskier than buying an s and p 500 company like Tesla or Microsoft for example, or Johnson and Johnson, McDonald’s. But, you know, I think it might be argued that, that as we record this today, Tesla is down 65% year to date so far, you know, heading into the end of 2022, that’s 63, 60 5% is down year to date. And even when what you might consider like the confluence of very bad events for real estate, I’d be hard pressed to think that a single family home has dropped 65% in value, you know, just this year.
HY (19:30):
So it could be argued that that tangible investments, some of which you could do in a self-directed IRA, actually might be considered y you know, relatively more stable than some investments you do in the public markets. So some alt alternative and private deals, yes. Maybe more, I guess you could say risky. But that riskiness is usually due to either you’re investing in an early not yet mature company or there’s an illiquidity issue with that investment. But, you know, sometimes if you’re buying something tangible like precious metals or real estate I would say that that actually is very good. And, and right now there’s, we talked about this before recording, there’s 15 trillion in IRAs in America. Almost all of it is invested in stocks and mutual funds right now. And if there aren’t providers like mine that allow people to get into some more tangible investments, well that’s a risk to the American public at this point cuz they have nowhere to go. Even bonds are down actually 15% year to date right now in the us
RV (20:29):
Uhhuh . And, and that, I mean, the other, the other thing of course is that it’s physical. I mean, if real estate drops in value, I I there’s, I still actually have something physical that’s there. That’s a big difference.
HY (20:42):
A big difference. It’s tangible. You can see it versus a piece of paper that, that may or may not you know, know, represent an actual stake in, in an, in a maximum mature company that’s publicly traded.
RV (20:51):
Mm-Hmm. . Sure. Is there so when you look at like h how do, how do you see people okay, let’s stay on the self-directed IRA for a second. Sure. And then I want to, and then I want to talk a little bit more about tax strategy and things, but are there any other major benefits to a self-directed IRA that we, we haven’t talked about or yet?
HY (21:22):
I I just think that self-directed IRAs to me are maybe very similar to your audience. The, the, you’re your listeners, a lot of people are pursuing their passions or what they want to do. They don’t wanna work for a 100 to 200 or 2000 or 200,000 employee company any longer. And they go out on their own. I think self-directed IRAs are almost the embodiment of being able to invest in things that you know about that you care about and so forth. I mean, you, you could do that through your public stock investing and say you believe in, in climate change. So you invest in Tesla for example. You hate supporting the cable companies, so you buy Netflix. But in a self-directed ira, people can really say that, you know, I’m going to use my own capital support a local business if they would take an investment from me to be a passive partial owner of this or real estate in a town.
HY (22:12):
So one of our first customers, and this is one of our first customers at Rocket Dollar. I remember talking to her on the phone. She grew up in San Antonio. She went to business school in New York and was a management consultant with a great salary and said, you know, I actually want to buy all rental properties in San Antonio, like where I grew up. I live in New York, I live in a nice apartment here, great salary. But I would feel so much better if I know that I bought four homes with my I r a there. And were able to let families rent it and live and raise their children in a house that I owned. It’s an investment for me. I’m making money, making gains, making income on a monthly basis. But I also know that there’s four families that live in these homes as well and so forth.
HY (22:59):
And I remember thinking, wow, that was huge. I mean, you know, yes, you may feel some benefits on investing in a public company, but nothing like that. She knew these people you know, they were at otherwise living in an apartment, right? But now they can live in a home with a backyard. And she knew their kids and she’s like, this is the best of both worlds. I’m making money, it’s an investment for me. And I’m able to provide households like real homes with real backyards and real neighborhoods for four families. And where I grew up,
RV (23:28):
What happens with the cash flow on that real estate? So the, the, the property itself is held in the self-directed ira, it’s throwing off rental, is that flow through as personal income or does that have to stay inside the ira? Somehow
HY (23:41):
Everything stays in the ira. So IRAs that are self-directed are exactly the same as IRAs that hold public stock. So if you own a stock that pays a dividend and you bought it in your ira, that dividend stays in the IRA u unless you’re over 59 and a half, at which point you could maybe decide to get that distributed to you and then you pay taxes on it cuz you can control that. But if you’re collecting 1500 in rent times, four homes in your ira, 6,000 a month, that’s 6,000 just accumulates inside of your ira. And what we find with our customers that they end up getting to like, Hey, now I got $50,000 after one year of owning these four properties, I can go do another deal maybe not real estate, but now I’m gonna go buy a $50,000 investment into this real estate syndication for storage units. And so where they build up cash, just like if you owned a bunch of dividend stocks inside of your current ira after a couple years, you’d have a bunch of cash inside. You either redeploy it back into something or if you’re old enough, you might take it as income and just pay taxes on it while leaving the rest of the property in the ira in this case
RV (24:45):
Uhhuh .
HY (24:46):
And that’s the tax strategy component that we were kind of hinting at
RV (24:49):
Uhhuh . Right. So you’re, so it’s staying in there. And then can you pay the expenses of managing the property out of the I r a
HY (24:56):
If you own real estate, everything is done with the I rra dollars. So again, you don’t mix and mingle in, in that, in that sense. So th that’s one of the things about owning real estate is everything is done in there. And that’s actually how we’re structured at Rocket Dollar. I kind of liken our account to sort of like an I r A bank account. And you set yourself up to pay property manager landscaper, you know, if you cover some of the bills, for example, for your rental properties, you do it from the I r dollars. You don’t do it with Rory Vaden regular dollars for a property inside of an ira. You have to keep it one or the other. And that’s why a lot of our people, maybe your people as well,
RV (25:37):
Property taxes, landscaping capital improvements too.
HY (25:40):
Everything. Yeah.
RV (25:41):
Uhhuh . And so it all just happens. This money’s just staying over there and, but you’re using the, but but then any cash flow that you’re getting and then anytime you sell, if you sell the property, then that money has to stay in the R and it has to stay in there until you’re 59 and a half. Yeah. well that’s a question. You can pull it out before 59 and a half. There’s just massive penalties, right?
HY (26:03):
You would, you would pay whatever income taxes are due on that money. If, let’s say it originally was a 401k, you never paid taxes on any dollar in a 401k and now it’s an ira. If you pull out a $300,000 cash value and you’re under 59 and a half and you’ve never paid taxes, you will add that to your taxable income for that year. That year all at once. But the beauty of IRAs, just so you know, is once you become 59 and a half, you could decide to take out as much as or as little as you like to supplement you know, your own living standard or needs. So if you created, let’s say 15,000 in income but you want to keep the properties, you could just take that 15,000 out when you’re 60 years old and, and use that to supplement against like other income sources. You have follow. That’s what our
RV (26:50):
Customers do. I didn’t follow that part.
HY (26:52):
So after 59 and a half, you can take out any amount in your IRA that you want that’s available in cash and whatever you take out, if you haven’t paid taxes, you will just add that to your taxable income for that year. So if you decide that you want an extra 5,000 a month, cuz you have two properties that generate 2,500 in rental income, you could, if you’re 60 years old, for example, just take that 5,000 every month and then you’ll
RV (27:18):
Taxable income.
HY (27:18):
It’s just taxable income. But remember you were able to roll that, maybe you bought those properties 20 years ago and so forth. You, you didn’t liquidate the property, you’re just taking a distribution on the income from that property.
RV (27:33):
Right. Which is an, which is an advantage at that point cuz now you have your, you have turned your retirement account into an income stream that goes forever and ever, which theoretically you would have also from dividends I guess if you were, if you were in a like, public market or whatever. So
HY (27:48):
Yeah.
RV (27:50):
So then how do, like, if, how do companies buy real estate inside of their businesses and how do entrepreneurs typically buy their second homes? Like from a tax, you know, advantage place? How do you see those kind of tend to be structured?
HY (28:09):
Yeah, so they, they don’t really do, if it’s an ira, they don’t do that. And they, they, you know, again, we talked about it earlier, they wouldn’t really co-mingle.
RV (28:16):
Yeah. So this doesn’t, so now we, now we have to leave, we have to leave the, the self-directed ira, by the way y’all, I haven’t mentioned this yet, but so Henry’s company’s called Rocket Dollar. If you go to brand builders group.com/rocket that’s our affiliate link where you can check this out and you can learn about it. And like you said, it’s, it’s a, it’s a ridiculously low thing. It’s like 360 bucks or something at the time of this recording, one time fee and then a small monthly, like 15 bucks a month. And that, and that helps you deal with the compliance and have this vehicle and this account open and gives you some other features and stuff that allow you to sort of, it becomes the mechanism, I guess the vehicle at which you can like actually do this and, and move money around.
RV (28:59):
So, and then I, so I guess, and then we’re leaving now we’re leaving that conversation. Yeah. Behind. So we have to leave the conversation with a self-directed ira. When you go in, when you, when you start saying, okay, what are some of the tax strategies I can do as a company if I’m a higher earning, you know, entrepreneur because my personal brand is crushing it and you’re generating millions of dollars in speaking fees or your membership side or your royalties or your course sales mm-hmm. . And then you go, okay, I gotta think about ways that I’m lowering my taxes. I might also be wanting to buy a bus buy a building or some commercial property. Yes. and then also vacation homes. So like moving in that conversation, what are some of the, some of the common ways you see move people move down that path?
HY (29:47):
The big one, and, and this is actually a very known thing for a lot of your small community and regional banks here in the us they love actually financing successful cash flowing business owners to buy a commercial property that they may use up to 30% ish of the building. So let’s say you purchase a a 10,000 square foot building in the suburbs of Nashville or the suburbs of Austin. And I have friends that actually where I live, I, I have a bunch of friends that actually own these types of buildings and then they run their small business in roughly 10, 15, 20, 30% of it. And the bank is actually happy to finance that. So the business owns, owns the property or the business owner in this case your, your audience listener would buy that property and actually have a lease agreement with the with your business for 30%.
HY (30:36):
And then you’d rent out the remaining 70 and the bank and they help pay that mortgage. And in 10 years time, because commercial loans are, are not amortized over 30 years, in 10 years time, you now might own outright this building for 6 million while actually using a, a normal known expense on a monthly basis for your business. Cuz right now all of these businesses are probably paying some sort of rent right now, but instead wanna pay yourself the rent and have it pay down that loan and 10 years later you own this 6 million building in the suburbs of Nashville, for example. I see a lot of that, that that has nothing to do with IRAs, but I think that’s a great business strategy. Maybe better than the vacation home because it’s, it’s, you know, little, I think that’s something that’s a little more amenable to the local community banks that, that do that a lot right
RV (31:25):
Now. And so in that case, you then start a separate business, like a separate L L C that owns this commercial property that’s then renting it 30, renting like 30% of it, you’re saying
HY (31:37):
The part that you need. Yeah.
RV (31:39):
Back to this other business that you own, which is like, let’s call it your main business mm-hmm. . And then the other 70% of that space, you, this new L L C is now in the business of renting out that space to help cash flow the mortgage on the
HY (31:54):
Building. Exactly. Yeah. Uhhuh , I see that quite a bit. So that’s probably like in and of itself, like you know, like maybe a piece that that I guessed right for, for you and your audience. But that happens a lot and banks love that. They, they don’t always like it if you’re a, the a hundred percent tenant of the entire building because again, that’s a concentration risk of sorts and so forth.
RV (32:18):
Uhhuh
HY (32:19):
very known here. Lots of I would say these sort of like small businesses that are cash flow, cash flowing. They do this and they know it’s just another asset that they’ll own outright and they could choose to keep that building or they could choose to sell that building in 10 years down the road. And if you think about it, you’re gonna run your business and you’re gonna, you’re already allocated to pay x percent of inex expenses for rent for the next 10 years. This is a way to just get you know, use it to create equity.
RV (32:48):
Uhhuh now, now you have a separate business that you gotta manage and the rental income from the other tenants, the other 70% of the building that’s now, that’s a new business that has its own sort of income and, and tax implications. But is, and so generally, generally the goal there is just to cash flow. Generally the goal is to at least cash flow the mortgage for 10 years and then 10 years you now you have an asset that you own outright that you, you can sell. Yeah,
HY (33:16):
Exactly. Yeah. So I see that quite a bit. And then, you know, if you don’t want to be too actively involved in that business, you can, you can bring on a partner. You could just be very sort of integrated with a property manager that’s experienced. I mean, at the end of the day, you most people probably want to concentrate on their primary business. They’re not in the business of running multiple businesses and so forth. But that’s just just a strategy. The other one I would say this is maybe more specific to the business owner and doesn’t involve needing another outside thing is that if you’re a very successful cash flowing business and you have a small group of employees, let’s say anywhere from five to maybe 20, but these are, you know, maybe even up to 50 a lot of people don’t do this.
HY (33:58):
And this goes back to my pre FinTech days, but I would encourage business owners to actually look at things beyond a 401k. Like we don’t have ’em as much in America anymore, but pension plans are actually very, very good vehicles for business owners to accumulate a large amount of money for themselves while still having an attractive benefit to keep your key people for not just two years or five years, but probably 10 and 20. I mean, that’s another problem we have in, you know, today probably being a business owner is it’s very hard to retain employees. Most people think that they’re gonna stay two years at a place and then go from job to job to job. But you know, you and I, Rory, we probably know a lot of businesses where they’ve had their core group of people with them for a decade or longer.
HY (34:45):
And those tend to be very successful businesses. And if that person sets up a small business pension plan, typically the owner if their spouse is involved, they could put away over a hundred thousand dollars a year to themselves and shield it from taxes while then providing a smaller benefit to the employees in the form of a guaranteed pension. But over the course of 10 years, you’d be able to sock away like a seven figure amount that would turn into a guaranteed income stream. The lesser known, I used to set up a lot of those back in the early, you know, kind of 2000 to 2012 timeframe
RV (35:19):
Now for these businesses. And so pension plan, what is, when you say pension plan, define pension plan for me, cuz I don’t, when I think pension plan, I think very large entities and big structures. I don’t think small businesses. I get that. I get what you’re saying is basically the, the, the mechanism here is that by introducing this benefit to all of your employees or some portion of your employees, you’ve now created a way for you to put more money away each year into retirement accounts so that you don’t have short-term taxes, you don’t get to have that money, but you don’t have to pay taxes on it. And now that money, you have a larger and larger pile that’s growing tax deferred, not limited by the, the normal thresholds of like the 401K and the ira, which are much, much lower. Right. So I’m, I follow you there. Sure. But like what does pension plan mean?
HY (36:10):
Yeah, so pension plan means essentially this is a plan where only the business contributes on behalf of every employee. So you are required to cover every eligible employee. So if you have 10 people in the business, let’s say it’s a spouse and a a couple that basically own the business, the couple might be in their mid to late forties, the other eight employees may average age only 25. So you do a pension plan, it’s adjusted for accumulating retirement. So every year you have an administrator and they tell you that, hey, your business, you need to put $200,000 or $150,000 is your contribution for the whole company’s plan, all 10 people. But because you’re older and you’re more highly compensated, maybe 90% of that money goes to you and 10% goes to the other eight people. But they’re happy because they actually have a guaranteed retirement benefit down the road.
HY (37:07):
You know, pension plans actually do exist for small businesses. I think they’re gonna make a comeback here over the next like several years. But not at the big gigantic companies or government or let’s say, you know, municipal type employers. But it’s a powerful tool and, and you have a lot of audience members who you just said that maybe they’re just crushing it with their course sales or their speaking engagements. And this is a 10 person business and the, let’s say the, the couple that run it, they’re usually decade, a couple decades older than the average employee at that business. They could put away a big amount with, for tax benefit for retirement for a guaranteed income stream and shield themselves in current income. Right Now the great thing about making a million dollars in income is you made a million dollars in income. The problem is you’re probably gonna end up netting only 650,000 of that income if you make all 1 million.
RV (38:02):
Right. And the other thing is, a lot of these, if they’re small business, they don’t have tons of employees and tons of you, you know, you might have a couple assistances or whatever. Like it’s not like you have five people on the payroll that make a quarter million dollars a year doing, you know, highly, you know, complex C-level type jobs. So
HY (38:17):
You might have a great core group of eight people, that average income is 70,000 and if you’re, let’s say running the business and taking more and you’re older, you would find that you would be putting away probably a six figure amount for yourself. And you’re still doing it right by those employees.
RV (38:33):
No, you still have to have a lot of cash flow. That’s the problem is that you gotta have the cash flow. Yeah. But you’re either gonna pay it to the government in taxes or you’re gonna pay it to your employees as a benefit to them. Exactly. And and to yourself. So like that money is not gonna stay in your pocket either way. It’s basically how, unless you put it, unless you do this. So if you is a defined benefits plan is like a cash balance plan, is that the same thing as a pension plan?
HY (38:57):
It, yeah, it defined benefit pension plan. Similar cash balance is a type of, of pension plan that is kind of a, it looks a little bit like a 401k, looks a little bit like a defined benefit pension plan and so forth. Like that’s getting a little bit into the weeds. But for people that are your audience, if they say that, you know, I am one of these people, I’m, I’m more highly compensated than the general employee who’s on my team. And I’m also maybe generally older if they look into this, they, they might find that if they can sustain cash flow and of course after they work with you and aj, they surely that’s, that’s that that’s gonna happen right away. In time that they’ll have this great business, they may say to themselves that this is a way to like, you know, really have the benefit down the road because otherwise you’re gonna get taxed very heavily today.
RV (39:45):
Yeah. Well and that’s, you know, the only reason I know defined benefit plan is cuz that’s, that’s come up several time with our, and in some of our like high level mastermind circles with some of our, our, our higher level clients is we’re always, we’re telling them. So I, it’s interesting I didn’t equate that to pension plan, but it’s the same vehicle which is ef it’s effectively a completely legal mechanism by which you can increase the limits, the, the thresholds of what you would normally be able to invest into tax deferred accounts like a 401K or an ira. And you get to provide this awesome benefit for your employees, which is that they, you’re contributing to their retirement in a small business. That’s pretty wild because you go, man, I’m working with a small business, my benefits package is like as good if not better than some of the biggest companies out there. You, you know, it’s really cool thing. I love that.
HY (40:34):
Exactly. Yeah. And, and you know, we were talking, we were introduced by Jason and I was just reading his book, which is basically showing business owners and companies and corporations how they might take advantage of hiring into that Gen Z you know, generation for people younger, if there’s two levers, if they’re younger and they have lower salaries it is something to consider if, if you’re the small business very stable with your business and cash flows, that that’s how you could put away, I mean, we just talked about IRAs allow you to put away six, $7,000 a year 7,000 if you’re over 50 401ks allow you to put away 20,000. This is how people put away 100, 1 50 200,000 and shield it from taxes, which is why it probably comes up in your high level master mastermind groups.
RV (41:18):
Uhhuh, . Yeah. and you said four Oh [inaudible] limits like 20,000,
HY (41:21):
Right? It’ll be a 22,500 next year, but it’s it’s 20,500
RV (41:27):
This year. So, so yeah, that, that’s something to ask about. And it is the kind of thing where it’s like no one ever told us that. And you don’t know to ask about it now, you know, the thing is you gotta be careful is you have to commit to it for a certain number of years, right. So you have to like lock it in. So you need to have stable cash flows. But
HY (41:48):
That is true. That’s a, that’s a good point. And you know what’s funny is I’ve made my entire, I’ve always, I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years and oddly enough, someone asked me this one time, he said, you know, you’ve done it this whole time that you technically never recommend an investment strategy or an investment itself. I said, exactly, I have this belief that people are gonna invest in things, whether it’s in the private markets, to the public markets already. They’re gonna do what, what, you know, is appropriate for them. And all I’m saying is that look, if you think about how you hold that money, whether it’s in an ira, a pension plan, a 401k, that same investment that you are gonna do, if you hold it in a better way, you’ll actually make usually somewhere between 20 to 50% more per year on that investment.
HY (42:34):
You know, whether you invest in the s and p 500, someone likes that someone wants to invest in Tesla, another person wants to invest in real estate, crypto or private businesses. If you hold it the right way and I show you how to do it, you’ll make thir 20, 30, 40, 50% more per year Yeah. On the investment you were already gonna do. That’s not my job to recommend the, the, the investment to you that’s your advisor’s job or your own decision to make. But you sh people don’t pay nearly enough attention to how they hold investments.
RV (43:03):
Yeah. And I think where the magic part of where the magic is, is going, if I take that money as income and I pay taxes on it, I could still invest that money into my friend’s company. I could still invest that money into crypto and if I hold it for longer than a year, I’m still only paying capital gains tax. The the, the magic though is if I do that through the self-directed ira, all of the money that I would be paying in taxes now stays in the investment and it rolls and it rolls and it rolls and it rolls. Right. And that’s like a pretty, like over the course of time, that’s a monumental you know, IM impact. So
HY (43:44):
Exactly. You’re rolling a dollar, you’re, you’re, you’re a hundred cents. The whole dollar, $1 is going in if you do it after maybe 60, 65, 70, 70 5 cents of that dollar. So over time, that holding period, you’re compounding on either 65 cents or you’re compounding on a dollar. There’s a big difference.
RV (44:02):
Yeah. Just by the technicality of how it’s held. Now, the, now the other thing is you don’t have access to the money. So that’s the big thing is like, it’s in here, it’s staying in here, it’s not going anywhere.
HY (44:11):
Well the beauty of private investments is they typically are a liquid anyways. So the reason why there’s a premium there is because they aren’t quite as liquid as being able to buy and sell a hundred times a day or a week, let’s say some public stock. So you actually get compensated for that. So the way economics works, you’re getting a slight you know, premium for the ability not to, to always be a hundred percent liquid, which, you know, right now, maybe it’s been proven that it’s probably a good thing. You know, you read a lot of articles that say that 2022 is the year where you may not want to like overly look at your investment statements, right? Yeah. You’re, you’re probably better off just focusing on your business and, and building your audience and growing your business.
RV (44:49):
Yeah. Reinvesting
HY (44:50):
The investments are a long-term thing, so don’t really worry about what it’s gonna say here at the end of Q4 in 2022.
RV (44:55):
Henry, how do we buy our vacation home? What’s the, what’s like, what’s the smartest way to go about doing that or to think about that?
HY (45:03):
Yeah, well, inside, again, inside of an ira it wouldn’t be a vacation home that you use. So that is one thing that if you, if you just know that there’s this lock solid investment opportunity, but something that you could do with not having on your own then you can use IRA dollars if you wanna buy one on your own. I mean, this is, I I have no association with this company, but I have friends and, and I’ve seen these particular platforms develop, but where you might actually just fractionally own a vacation home. So it’s, it’s a modern digital twist on probably timeshare but only luxury properties. I just think it’s safer cuz for me, I’m a big proponent of how you hold the investment and maybe if at all possible not locking up you know, all the capital at one time and at which point, if you own the entire investment with a lot of locked up capital, you exponentially increased your risk.
HY (45:54):
So maybe you can buy one 32nd of a luxury property through one of these digital platforms instead of you coming up with a 20% down payment and making sure that you tell your tax advisor that you only stayed in the place for less than 21 days a year and tracking everything. That’s, that’s risky to me. I think that I, I do this myself. I think you should actually look at some of these digital platforms where you could just pay y you know, a set like $40,000 for example, and own one 32nd and get your allocation of time to a property. The, the, the one you know, in my mind I think about is park City, Utah. Interesting. And for example, because of 20% down payment on a $900,000, you know, luxury property there, small two-bed, two and a half bath cabin, that’s a lot of capital. We’re talking over a hundred thousand dollars in down payment plus the risk of owning it outright
RV (46:48):
Versus,
HY (46:49):
And I specifically think of Park City because there were wildfires there that severely impacted some of these properties in like a Lake Tahoe or Park City. What if that was yours? And, and you and I are col respectively, 1700 and 1300 miles away from there right
RV (47:04):
Now. Uhhuh , yeah. Risky. Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s interesting. You know, I find like, it, it feels like it’s pretty hard to cash flow some of these high-end luxury properties. Like when you add in all the property tax and all the maintenance and the HOAs and all that sort of stuff, it’s like, eh,
HY (47:23):
And you’re limited from, you know, the amount of time you can actually physically be there. Anyway, in a sense. Yeah. Anyway. And you know, people are, someone sees this as a problem to a certain subset of the population, just like Rocket dull does as well. And you know, you just stick to like very tried and true ones, which is that maybe the outlay of capital is limited, right. And so forth. So that might be a way to do it through one of these platforms. I don’t own a property, you know, in my name fully outside of my primary residence that I’m talking to you from right now, but do take advantage of these platforms because it’s a, it’s a known limited amount of capital known, limited exposure to me. And then everything I can, I consider every investment I do private, public how I hold it, you know, I got eight days here, so I think a lot about you know, where I should sort of dole out different things. Are there some, like other advantages I can take right now before the end of the year?
RV (48:21):
Interesting.
HY (48:21):
I have a very limited skillset, Rory. It’s I think about this, I’ve done this for 22 years. I’m like the I always think about optimization of how you might hold an asset. That’s, that’s sort of how I’ve been trained.
RV (48:34):
And you’re, are you an active, you’re not an active advisor, you’re not really an active advisor anymore, right?
HY (48:40):
No. I sold that practice, you know, prior to the Robo-advisor. You know, so that was back in 2000 14, you know, we had 2.6 billion in assets that we managed on behalf of individuals and, and, and businesses. But I sold my stake and, and it’s a conflict to do that right now. It, it’s actually an impact thing. It’s funny that you just asked that question here kind of as we wind down. I really just thought that by building a FinTech product company, I can actually impact more people than I could ever by just selling some little fractional portion of my business week Yeah. To certain folks. So I really thought about that way. It’s that it’s been successful for me, but the really, the real thinking is that if I create Rocket Dollar the platform, I can work with 1 million people and billions of dollars if I basically just, you know advise people for time, you know, on an assets under management basis I can maybe work with at most 30 families effectively.
RV (49:40):
Yeah. Well, and that, that was part of why, that’s part of why I, I thought to have you on the show, because, you know, we, we have, we have advisors. We love, we trust lots of clients that are advisors. Right. We’ve got lots of advisors. Yeah. But, you know, since you’re not actually, you’re incentivized to like, sell any product other than Rocket Dollar, it was like, Hey, let’s bring Henry on and ask him some of these questions. Of course, again, y’all, if you go to brand builders group.com/rocket, you can learn about this and how to open the accounts, a few hundred bucks, very low monthly fee. And then Henry’s team is taking care of the, the backend. And now you are, you’re free to self-direct your own retirement investments in a tax-deferred way. And there’s some really cool things and, and it does seem like the way the world is shifting in the economy, et cetera. It’s, it’s kind of like an, an, it’s important to at least know that this vehicle exists. And that’s why we wanted to talk about this subject and that’s why we found you, Henry. So you’ve been so generous with your knowledge, your wisdom, your experience. Thank you so much for that time. And man, we look forward to following this journey.
HY (50:47):
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And I’m, I’m glad I was able to share a little bit and explain some of these self-directed IRAs, which will become a big, big thing over the next five to seven years.
RV (50:57):
. Yeah. Yeah. We think you, we think so too. All the best, my friend. Thank you.

Ep 360: Business Automation: What You Need To Know So You Know What To Automate with Ben Rigsby

AJV (00:02):
Hey y’all, this is AJ Vaden here and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. And y’all, I’m so excited that I get to have such a good close personal friend on the show today. Before I give a formal introduction to Ben Rigsby, Ben and I are an EO together. So if you ever heard of eo, the Entrepreneur’s Organization, so, and I talk about a good post personal friend, I know all his dirty secrets for the most part, at least professionally I know it’s professional, dirty secrets and he knows all of mine. And so that gives us a good, healthy mutual level of accountability with each other. And also we get to see each other on a monthly basis. And so when I talk about like I am bringing in someone who is incredibly skilled at what they do, I say that as a firsthand perspective.
AJV (00:52):
I have also been a client of bins and I have seen him grow and exit a business and grow a new business. And I’m just so honored that he said yes to come on the show today. Probably a little bit of peer pressure made him do that. So grateful for that too. And so lemme formally introduce him. And then we’re gonna kick it off. But before I do a formal introduction, I need to tell you why you wanna stick around. And as I was talking to Ben, I was like, there’s so many things we could talk about, but what should we talk about today? And he’s the one who said, well, here are the three things that we do really, really well. And I was like, yes, those are the things we should talk about. And so here’s what we’re gonna talk about today.
AJV (01:33):
We’re gonna talk about if you are a person or a business who needs help with lead generation, this is an episode for you. If you are someone who is trying to improve your lifetime value of your customers, then this is probably an episode for you. And if you were someone who is trying to speed up the sales process and get people from point A to point Z just a little bit faster, in a more efficient and effective manner, then this is probably an episode that you want to stick around four. So with that said, I will give you some of the formal accolades of my friends, Ben, and then I will tell you something that he left off of this beautiful bio investment bay that I think is the most important of all. So Ben is the founder of Movement marketing.
AJV (02:22):
He serves as the creative, strategic and technical lead for design motion, graphics development and product innovation. I will tell you also, it’s he’s not just someone who leads those things. Ben is that he is certified and all different types of things. It’s like every single time I ask my question, he’s like, oh yeah, I know Domo. Oh yeah, I’m certified in HubSpot. Oh yeah, I do. I was my, I was a photography major. Oh yeah, I can do video editing. Oh yeah, I can build a website. And I’m like, you, and when do you have time to learn all this stuff? So he doesn’t just lead it, he’s the practitioner of it. And I, I, I think that’s a really important part of this. You are also like, not just at movement, but in his former business, they were an award-winning an award winning creative digital agency on tongue tied here.
AJV (03:13):
But I think it’s a really important thing to mention. It’s like when we talk about like how all of these things work together in this digital marketing space. I think digital marketing has a very broad umbrella of things to talk about. And what I love most about Ben is that it really is about how to use digital marketing for business. And I think that’s really important. It’s not just about how to make things pretty, it’s about how do you make them efficient and effective and so that you are improving lifetime value and you are being a more efficient and effective business. And a lot of this comes down to business automation. And I think then you are one of the best people and most robust skills of someone who is well versed in true business automation. And so that’s a huge part of what we’re gonna talk about. And then what he just always so conveniently leaves out of all of his bios is that he’s also got this wicked professional dance backgrounds. And I don’t know why you keep denying this part of your life is my favorite part, but you were on tour with some pretty big people Who’d you go on tour with?
BR (04:20):
We won’t name names, but to your point, yes. I did have a previous life of mine growing up as a male dancer, which is how I met my wife. So thank you for that entire history of my childhood. Yes, .
AJV (04:37):
Well you can just go to YouTube and you can assert Ben Rigsby dance videos and I’m sure that you will find some
BR (04:45):
That’s, that is,
AJV (04:48):
And when you say male dancer, just to clarify
BR (04:53):
Professional’s, no polls. No polls, yeah.
AJV (04:59):
Ben, to the show, thank you so much.
BR (05:02):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. That was the most professional opening that I’ve ever seen, so very much appreciate that.
AJV (05:08):
Oh, I’m so excited because I know that you know so much and I also, you’re so humble about it and you never are the first one to go, oh yeah, that’s what we do. Like, you almost never raise your hand and say, I know how to do that. Although that is what you know how to do. And so this is just an amazing opportunity for me to borrow your brain and your expertise for the benefit of our audience today. And so I’m gonna let you pick like out of these three topics that we kind of said, like improving lifetime value increasingly generation and sales enable it and ma enablements with helping speed up the sales process. Like what do you find that most of the companies and most of the clients that you’re working with today, where do you think most people are struggling most right now?
BR (05:55):
Yeah, no, totally. That’s a, that’s a fantastic question. So I would lean in probably in the lead generation area. And it’s, it is not necessarily for the lack of lead generation, but it is purposeful lead generation. So, you know, you look at what’s out there today with social and search and paid and organic email marketing networking. I mean, all of those things are channels and so many more kind of fall into the realm of lead generation. But so often do we walk into situations and the clients don’t have a leads process to begin with. And so understanding, and it’s not like, Hey, we gotta go do six months worth of work. It can take 30 minutes, quite honestly to understand what your leads process is. Because if you are a business owner or you’ve been around business, you have an idea of how you move people throughout the sales cycle. But I do think it begins with documenting and understanding what a leads process looks like. That way as leads start coming in the door, you can automate that, which allows you to scale much, much faster. So I would say leaning in with lead generation is probably where we start. Then we move into how do we actually close those leads faster and then keep those leads longer? Or those customer,
AJV (07:14):
Can you pause right there? Cause I, I don’t wanna skip over this because I know this, but I imagine a lot of people listening are going lead process, leads process mm-hmm. , what is he talking about? What is a leads process? So can you dig in a little bit and go give us some examples of like, what do you mean by this? What do you see that works really well and just some industry agnostic best practices of creating a leads process?
BR (07:42):
Yeah, absolutely. If you think about an individual and their desire to purchase, they go through all kinds of different phases. They go through some research phases, they go through some qualification phases of are you the right organization, brand, individual that I want to do business with? And then they move into the purchasing process, the procurement cycle. And so if you think about people as they’re introduced to your brand, those people are gonna be some semblance of a lead. They might be the marketing qualified lead. They might have raised their hand and say, Hey, I want to talk to you. I’m interested in your services. We might move them into what we call a sales qualified lead. Then they go into the deal kind of discussion. And those are where we start to understand opportunities. Close one close loss. So like in my world, it usually goes something like a lead to a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead to an opportunity to close one close lost in that situation. And a lot of times we’ll try to move ’em straight from lead into they didn’t close with us. And that is where people start to get frustrated and say, my lead gen isn’t working. And the reality is, it’s not that it’s not working, it’s just that, that we’re missing like three steps in the middle there and we’re wasting a whole bunch of time in that process.
AJV (09:01):
I think that’s most people’s challenge in general is they’re talking to a bunch of people who are never going to buy from them, correct? Right. And so we do something, and I’ll talk about that in a second to help qualify leads, but any best practices and going, all right, you’ve got a lead mm-hmm. and what do you do to make sure you have a qualified lead before X, Y, and z?
BR (09:27):
A hundred percent. We just worked with an organization on this and, and I should caveat, every organization’s gonna be slightly different, right? So take these examples with a grain of salt. But if you think about your ideal customer a lot of people call that their icp, some people call it their avatar, some people call it their personas. It’s all the same thing. But if you think about who that individual is, what that business is, revenue size, people size, geographic regions, right? There’s probably some common denominators across all of these ideal client profiles that you have. So when you’re thinking about lead captures, and when I say lead capture, that can be online chat, that can be a phone call, that can be a form fill, that can be a gated download, right? There’s so many lead captures. It’s trying to find what are those least common denominators that apply across all your ideal client profiles.
BR (10:18):
And I’ll take revenue as an example, add that question somehow, some way into your lead capture so that you can immediately start to kind of distill down good leads from junk leads from, Hey, these are referral leads that I need to pass out to a partner. So quite simply, if somebody comes in, fills out a form and says, Hey, I’m pre-revenue, maybe that is your sandbox, and that’s what you focus in. So now you know that’s a qualified lead if pre-revenue is not your sandbox or your ideal client profile, you know, to push them to a different resource, right? And so it helps, it’s it’s little tips and tricks like that along the leads process that help hone in your focus to your point and, and saves you time from not talking to individuals that are never gonna do business with you or focusing all of your time on individuals that you truly do have an opportunity to impact. So that’s just a quick example right there.
AJV (11:17):
No, I think that’s really good. And it’s like, you know, a part of I think why this process is really so important for all, especially if you’re selling any sort of high dollar ticket offering. So anything more than a couple of hundred bucks would qualify as a high dollar ticket offering where if somebody can’t click a button and go, I’m gonna buy that, and they’re gonna require conversation, you gotta have some sort of lead qualifying process. And so you know, a form fill, it could be a simple form. We use an application, so we have like a formal application and we went through this process of trial and error which, you know, highs and lows of that. But we recently just got it super tight. So, and I, I would love for you to share some, you know, experiences of what you’ve seen that works on applications and forms and, you know, and one of the things that we discovered, and I I’ve got two comments here that I’d love your insight on for the benefit of everyone who’s listening is one length of forms, length of applications, because we’re so data heavy when we launched our initial application, which was two years ago, so we’ve learned a lot, we’ve come a long way.
AJV (12:27):
It was a 13 minute long application and initially we convinced ourselves that it was like, well, if they’re gonna stick around that long, then they’re super qualified. And what we were finding is about we were getting about a 55% application completion rate, then six months ago we did like a whole revamp of all of our things and reevaluated everything as a more mature place in our business and said, 13 minutes, gosh, why is anyone filling this out? And we reduced it to three minutes. And so now we can fill out this application, it’s about seven questions, three minutes or less, and now we’re at 94% application completion. And that’s a major thing of just going, I wish somebody would’ve said, you’re out of your mind who has 13 minutes to answer a bunch of questions for a stranger so that they can get on a call with a stranger.
AJV (13:25):
And so some best practices around stuff like that I think would be so helpful of what’s a good link, what questions you should ask. Anything like that would be so helpful as we talk about this leads process. And then the second thing I wanna make sure you hit on is you mentioned this is revenue. Mm-Hmm. . So we ask income, not revenue. Most of we’re, you know, b2 C and here’s, so something that’s so fascinating. So two things have come up in the last couple of weeks. Now these are the 0.01% examples, but they always get me thinking. And so here are two emails that someone, I don’t know how they found my email, but they did probably on LinkedIn and contacted me and said, Hey, just wanna let you know I really love what you and your company are doing, yada, yada, yada.
AJV (14:09):
They were really nice and said, but hey, I’m not gonna fill out this application, so I guess I’m never gonna get a call. And so then I was like, well, here’s the direct Kaley link. I’d like for you to schedule a call so you can tell us why not. Because it’s so short and it was so fascinating and the, I thought it was a really interesting thing of, and we’re getting like a 94% completion rate, so it’s a very few people who aren’t completing it, but is there a another route for the people are going, Hey, it’s like, I don’t wanna fill out your application. So it got me wondering what question did they get to that made them go? And most of it is income or revenue. And so it’s kind of like rero. And so when we look at the dropout on our forms, our applications, most of them drop out when we start asking any sort of financially related questions because now pretty educated consumer, they’re going, oh no, I’m getting qualified, right?
AJV (15:07):
It’s good, bad and different, whatever it is. But I think it’s important. It’s like there’s limited resources for all companies to some degree. And so thoughts around all these things, what are the good questions? Dropout rates, questions around money, if you’ve seen any trends or best practices. And then in general, for the very few, now again, I’ve only had one email ever who have said, I won’t fill out your application, so I guess I’m not gonna get a call. But also just any thoughts around that for maybe someone who does have a very sophisticated, busy time limited customer profile where they’re just like, they’re not likely going to fill it out. Any suggestions around that? So I know that’s loaded and that’s a lot.
BR (15:49):
That’s fair. It’s fair. And, and I would caveat with, with this statement, there’s always gonna be exceptions to the rule. So you wanna solve for the 80 to 90%, right? There’s gonna be people that fall outside of that, which it sounds like that individual might have. And if that individual turned into a great customer of yours, that’s when you use that example as how should we look at this onboarding experience a little bit differently because we might be missing out on others. So that’s just a, a little pin in that one. But in terms of length, we stick to the rule of thumb, like if it’s a form, less is more. The, the old kind of rule of thumb was six fields or less to get those to get those leads in the door. Now there’s new technologies out there. I just, I was looking at one the other day, clear bit if anybody has looked into that, where it can allow you to accept even less fields and pulls back all the information by looking at aggregate sites like LinkedIn, crunch Base, all that kind of stuff.
BR (16:48):
So we stick to the rule of thumb of less is more, what is the most pertinent information that we’re looking for in that first touch experience? And that might be some qualification questions. Then as time goes on, you can employ something that’s called progressive forms. So as they come back, now that you know that you know their name, you know their email address, you’ve set a little cookie on their computer without them knowing it sounds horrible, but that’s just the way the world works. Now, you can ask them slightly different questions and you can start to build out that customer profile over time without overwhelming them right out of the gate. I think you bring up something that’s really interesting. The more work you ask someone else to do, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours. So it is how do you take the friction out of that experience?
BR (17:36):
And that is less is more. And when they fill something out, you wanna make sure that there’s a value add on the other side that’s worth it for them to give you some of that information. I think you, you also bring up a great point. Anything around budgets or dollars on the first date is dicey, right? It’s like as soon as you ask the budget question, you’ve now skipped to the third date and that person is not ready for that situation. So revenue is an easier thing to ask than, what’s your marketing budget? What’s your sales budget? What do you expect to purchase? Another one would be timeline. What’s your timeline on this? Like if you’re looking to transform who you are as an individual, what’s your timeline? Like sense of urgency? So there are, there are less riskier questions to ask. It could be, how large is your company?
BR (18:29):
Is it zero to 10 people? 10 to 20? I get asked that question all the time when I’m signing up for a service. So that feels like that’s just a default one. So there certainly are some riskier questions, budget and revenue, and there’s some lighter questions like size, industry perhaps urgency, timelines, items like that. But we really do stick to this concept of less is more. And that is sometimes a fight with, with a client. And I say a fight, but it’s, it is a good argument to have because again, there’s always gonna be exceptions to the rule. So like if you have a very in depth application where you need to know information, well, maybe that’s not the first step. Maybe that is the second step. But the first step is we’re warming them up to, hey, now that you’ve filled this out, here’s how our process unfolds.
BR (19:18):
And we explain that before they’re just launched into that experience. You mentioned something quite beautiful, which is analytics around every single one of those questions. And so you can take the subjectivity out of the mix by saying, Hey, they made it to question eight, but on question nine, that’s where we’re seeing the biggest drop off. Why is that? And so now you can start to ask some introspective questions of, is it the question? That’s the first thing we would change is let’s just change the question, see if they get past eight. Now, if they don’t, then now we’re dealing with length and time invested versus value received. And so those are really important concepts, especially on a first touch conversion. Because those are the ones you want to make super, super easy for that individual to get hooked into that. Now you can nurture some of those, those harder or more time intensive asks down the road. I don’t know if I answered any of your questions,
AJV (20:15):
. Actually I was, I was busy writing down this quote that I think is, is brilliant. So if somebody’s listening didn’t catch this, I’m gonna say this back. The more you ask someone else to do something, the less likely they are to become a customer of yours. And I think that’s a really important concept when we look at the leads process, but also the sales enablement process of if you want an effective, efficient process that moves people along, it’s like, it’s got to be easy.
BR (20:43):
It does
AJV (20:44):
To be easy. And so one other quick question on this because I think this is really good. I wrote down is like clearly less is more, but you said six fields or less mm-hmm. and of those fields, you know, one of the things that we’ve been toying around with on just some of our forms as a beta, cuz we probably have, I don’t know, 15 or 16 different points of entry and to how someone can, you know, request something from Brain Builders group. And so we have always kind of followed the, you know, marketing protocol of, we we only ask for first name and email, right? Bare minimum to get you in. But then that creates a really long term problem of we can never get you to open or respond an email. We have no other way to reach you. So we’re doing some beta tests right now in some of our forms of going first name, email, phone number Yeah.
AJV (21:34):
So that we can try some phone outreach, right? Cause you, you we’re interested enough to fill out this form, we want a little bit more. So I’m curious around any data around what’s it like between just an email, first name and email, first name, last name, email, add in phone number. Like what are the potential drop off opportunities of getting people to fill out your forms for people who are going, all right, I need to start collecting emails, I need to start doing something, but what’s the bare minimum and what should I really be asking for?
BR (22:05):
Totally. And so this is where we, in our minds, this is where it draws directly back to the leads process. So you just mentioned there’s, there’s multiple different ways for an individual to fill out a form diff varying links, right? For entry points into bbg. And so in that situation, what I heard is we’ve got some marketing qualified forms, we’ve got some sales qualified forms. So obviously the ones where people are raising their hand and saying, Hey, I want to talk to you. Those are gonna be some forms that have some additional fields because we need to make sure that we’re the right fit. But they’re willing to do it because they’ve already researched your brand, they’ve looked at your material enough, they’ve seen you speak, whatever it might be, and now they really do want to do business with you. So they’re willing to go the extra mile.
BR (22:52):
Some of those lighter forms are gonna be more on the leads or marketing qualified leads to where I’m just signing up for your email newsletter. Like, I just wanna see some content from you. And those are the individuals that quite honestly, we are probably wasting our time talking to right now. Mm-Hmm. , we want to nurture those individuals to giving us more information. And as they give us more information that introduces the concept of, now we’re ready to talk to you a little bit more proactively. So we’re willing to spend time because you’ve spent time. But the individuals that are just giving us their email address, as sacred as that is, it is those are the individuals that we want to nurture across a process. So you hear these concepts of funnels or nurture campaigns are usually the two biggest buzzwords. That is the whole concept of let’s move somebody from a lower state of marketing qualified or lead in our world, somebody that is just knows who we are and we may not know who they are, let’s qualify them over time. And that’s where nurture and funnel campaigns come in. So it is perfectly acceptable, and we do this too, especially with the clients that we work with, is we strategically design different entry points so that we can nurture some individuals, yet give the option to, Hey, let’s go have some sales conversations as well. And neither one’s right or wrong, you want to have a mix of both because that’s how you build a pipeline over time and an audience over time. So I don’t know if that helps, but Oh,
AJV (24:22):
No, I think that’s really important and insightful for people who are figuring out this digital part of their business in terms of lead generation of going, you gotta have marketing forms and then there’s sales forms and think about those as two completely different things. And on a sales form, you likely want your phone number, right? It’s like
BR (24:43):
A hundred percent like
AJV (24:44):
You, but I think those are just, those are so simple. Often they get bypassed and they’re like, oh, I only need one form on my website. It’s like, not really.
BR (24:55):
No, no, no, no. You
AJV (24:56):
Kinda have multiple points of entry. Some are just for marketing and I love that. Just a very distinction of what are your marketing forms where you’re just trying to get their emails for nurture and then what are your sales forms where it’s like, no, like there’s an opportunity here. We’re going to talk to you, we’re gonna offer a call. Right?
BR (25:12):
That’s exactly right. And, and honestly like we will even choose channels matched to forms. So like if we’re spending dollars, so paid advertising, we wanna drive a little bit higher to that SQL side of the house. Because at the end of the day, what the organization is looking for is revenue growth. And they don’t really care as much about the leads coming in the door. They really care about close one opportunities. And so when we’re spending dollars with Google or Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever the channel is, that is when we’re driving more qualified forms, going to very specific landing pages away from the marketing side of the house, more on the organic side, so social seo, search items like that, even email marketing, that is when we start to drive a little bit more of that marketing side of the forms, knowing that we’re gonna nurture them over a longer period of time. So that’s it, it’s, again, there’s exceptions to all of these rules, right? But like, just by default, that’s how we think about it until we get into conversations and unpack something and we, we say, oh, okay, well we need to do something a little bit different here because of this one, one specific thing in this client’s business. So
AJV (26:26):
Yeah, I think that’s really, I think that’s really good. And if for all of you out there, here going, what is he talking about with all these words? So sql, sales qualified lead, right? So paid media, paid traffic, make sure you’re collecting more data because it needs to lead to revenue for your return on investment. This is why I wanted you to come on the show. It’s like you are talking about a really advanced process here with like really creating the dig digital infrastructure for a thriving sales business in a marketing business. And this is a lot of work, right? This is not for the faint of heart.
BR (27:00):
It is. It is. And it, it’s, it’s, it is a process that you can certainly crawl, walk, run into and one that, to your point, we’re saying a lot of acronyms, right? We’re a bunch of geeks that found our cool doing what we’re doing, and we’ve, this is, this is our world, right? And so often and I talking to somebody that is like, what the heck are you talking about? So thank you for breaking that down. And you can certainly start very, very small and grow it over time into, into the behemoth that you know, you want it to become.
AJV (27:32):
That’s good. So, okay, so now we’ve got leads, right? Yeah. Let’s say, okay, now we’ve got leads. So give us some best practices, some highlights of now how do we make this leads process the most efficient and effective that it can be to go, all right, leads in the door, now they’re a customer.
BR (27:50):
Yes. So a lot of times there’s like this magic handoff point of lead came in the door, we’ve qualified that lead and now we’re handing it over to sales. And we talked a little bit about this at the beginning of this conversation. And you know, if you think about any organization, it can be one person in the organization or it can be 5,000 or more people in the organization. Every organization has got some concept of marketing, sales and operations. It can be the solo entrepreneur that’s doing all three that they don’t even know they’re doing all three. But the reality is that persists across every thriving business that exists. And so there is this handoff going from marketing to sales, and usually the, the clientele that we walk into, there is not a defined leads process, which creates some chaos in that situation.
BR (28:40):
And the chaos occurs when leads are coming in the door that are not ready to purchase or perhaps not the right clientele for us. And the sales team or the sales individual is flooding their time, dealing with individuals that are not ready to close. And it creates this frustration that starts to persist across the business. And so when I say we start with a leads process, it is not only to solve the understanding of who we should nurture to why we should nurture to those individuals and growing those leads in pipeline over time, but it’s also to make that handoff more effective going from marketing into sales. And that one experience can speed up the close rate of your pipeline immensely. I know it sounds crazy, but if you’re focused on the buyer that is ready to buy right now, you can close that individual in a day.
BR (29:31):
If you’re focused on the buyer that isn’t gonna buy from you for six months, you’re gonna be spinning your wheels. And so that is a huge element right there. Then you can start to do things very uniquely. Like we’ve all been in this situation where we’ve been part of sales sequences where you get those 13 emails, those 10 emails that are like, you know, they’ve got the bulleted list and then the final one is you either are stuck under a washing machine or you just don’t want to talk to me, right? Like they’re getting more and more and more creative, right? And so one of the things that we have started to see is this power of CRM technologies, right? Whether you’re using a Salesforce or an active campaign or a Dynamics or a HubSpot or something else, right? But being able to track engagement of individuals in your pipeline is hugely important.
BR (30:25):
And the most simple is, Hey, I just sent an email from my Outlook, you know, email program or from G Suite, I need, did the person ghost me? Did they not, did they not see my email? Why aren’t they picking up my phone call? Having insight into when somebody opened or clicked on something or engaged with a piece of content so you can time your sales follow up right? There is also very important. I have found over my tenure that sales is around timing, having good timing, being able to build relationships, but you gotta meet somebody where they are when they’re ready for that purchase cycle. And so from a sales enablement, it is the one to one emails. I have never really found much success with sales sequences. I know others have, and I’m still trying to unpack why that is and why I haven’t been able to do it well.
BR (31:21):
But the reality is, if you can give a sales team good leads coming in that are ready to purchase, that speeds up that process. And if you can equip that sales team with some technology around understanding engagement of content, of email reads, opens, document reads opens, it equips that sales team to time their follow ups a little bit more effectively and close those deals faster. And so we see, this is crazy, but we have seen when the marketing to sales handoff is perfected, that close rate speeds up by some crazy number like 65 to 70%. It is insane when the synergy is happening between those two pillars in the business.
AJV (32:05):
So what is the one thing or one of the top things that you can do to really better improve that synergy from marketing to sales?
BR (32:16):
So I know I’m a broken record right now, but it is working with the seal sales team to understand the leads process. And, and it it, it is, it’s crazy. But like, if you can bring the sales individual or team or think about it because you’re also the salesperson, why are these sales closing? Why are these sales not closing? You’re gonna pick up, up on patterns that are carrying from one deal to the next, from one customer to the next. And there might be one pattern in your business. There might be 20 patterns in your business, but you can design the leads process to cater to the sales team. So one of the first things we do is we ask, what’s a lead to you? Like, what makes a lead a lead? And you know, you’ll hear conversations around, well, it’s it’s this individual, it’s the owner of the business.
BR (33:07):
They’re this age, you know, it’s this size of an organization. We’re like, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, let’s talk about your customers. Why did they become a customer? All right, that’s a good story. Why did this customer become a customer? And we start to unpack that and you start to see patterns. And those patterns are gonna be demographic patterns. They’re gonna be behavioral patterns that now you can gain that system and design an entire marketing program to feed those type of leads to the sales team and take everything else and put it over on the sideline and nurture to those individuals over time trying to get them into this side of the house. And so it really is a coordinated effort. I, I am a firm believer that marketing’s job is to serve up sales leads. Like that is marketing’s job 1 0 1. And yes, it is look, tone, feel, it is brand awareness.
BR (34:00):
It is credibility of the brand. It’s all those things, right? Like we, we have to do that. Like that’s just default stuff that we have to go do. But our true job, the job of are we gonna be fired or not fired? Are we gonna be successful or not successful? Is how many leads did we deliver to a sales team that actually closed? And that is why we start with, let’s talk to the sales team, let’s understand the customers, what are good, what are not good, and how do we get more of the good to you? And that’s where we, that’s where we start.
AJV (34:30):
I think that is so incredibly important for anyone listening to just take a pulse on for a second is the best research, the best data you actually already have access to. It’s your clients. That’s right. It’s your customers. I think it’s so easy to get caught up in gotta have the crm, gotta have this, gotta have that. And it’s like we overlook the obvious, which is I need to take a good look at who has purchased from me, why did they purchase? And how do I find more people just like them?
BR (35:06):
You are spot on. Spot on. And, and honestly, the first time we engage, when we find out that somebody doesn’t have a leads process, we wanna see the last two years of customer data. And, and I say customer data, they’re like, what does that mean? I’m like, I just need to see accounts and I need to talk to an accounts person or a salesperson and understand why some of these individuals closed or d or or why they do business with you. So you are spot on because the historical context of that is what you, is the easiest, most impactful thing that you can move forward in the quickest clip. Versus trying to say, all right, let’s go spin up a search campaign, let’s go spin up a new xyz. It’s like, yes, you can go do that, but you should go do this thing first cuz you’re gonna make more money quicker doing that.
AJV (35:54):
Yeah, I think this is really, I think this is just really important for everyone who is going, well, I don’t really have money to go do X, Y, and Z. And it’s like, yeah, but you do have some time to talk to your customers to really focus in on where did you come from? Why were you attracted, why do you buy? And how can I replicate that process? Even if it’s on a very small scale. It’s like how do I replicate that until it’s a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger? You don’t have to have tons and tons of automation to do some of the basics, which is back to you gotta know who your ideal client is and you gotta get really specific on what made them buy, what attracted them. And it’s like, even as you were talking, I was thinking about in my head like, what are the commonalities that we see, the trends that we see in our sales pipeline?
AJV (36:41):
And you know, this is, you know, we consider ourselves sales professionals way before we consider ourselves marketers. Mm-Hmm. marketing is, you know, our side hobby sales is our profession. And it’s, it’s really interesting because it’s like, when we look at it on a marketing landscape there are three things that we’ve noticed that are really, really important. And the number one thing that leads our or increases our conversions is availability on the calendar. It’s the number one thing. And so we know, what we have learned is that if somebody has to wait more than seven business days to do a call, they don’t show up or they reschedule. And it’s like, so if we don’t have maximum availability on the Cal calendar in the next seven days, that’s like red flags are flying all over the company. It’s like all deck who’s, because that’s what we’ve noticed. It’s like that window of opportunity for us is about a week. And if it extends that then we know that there’s immediately gonna be a major drop off with people who were interested who go, oh man, yeah, why did I schedule this again? I’m really busy. And that’s like, that immediacy is a really important thing for us. And so just looking at those sorts of trends which just takes time, right? It just doesn’t have to take money. Just take some time and intention and effort of looking at that.
BR (38:02):
It’s so true. It’s so true. And, and even like if you’re thinking about lead captures, like you just said it right there, form fills, right? Somebody’s ready to move on it. So if you don’t have somebody looking at the forms all day long, every day, you might miss that opportunity. And if that is not a possibility for you, that’s when you might step into something like live chat. Cuz it forces the conversation a little bit differently. A click to call forces the conversation a little bit differently. So again, it, it is assessing what your availability is, what your team makeup is, and what are gonna be the best conversion metrics or conversion, I’m sorry, technologies for you in specific circumstances, but you’re right, you’re absolutely right.
AJV (38:43):
Ok. Right. I have three questions and I’m watching the clock intently. I’ll try to make these quick so these can be rapid fire if you want. Do you think that there is an ideal CRM automation software out there in the market today?
BR (38:58):
Yeah, I am biased. I will say that we work with, we work with them all, but the one we prefer to work with is HubSpot. And, and I’ll tell you why and a very quick clip, it’s because it has the crm, it has all of the marketing automation, email, social, all of that stuff built into it and it has all of the sales enablement built into it as well as long as well as customer success. So the reason we like it is because it’s the self-contained system where you don’t have to spend a bunch of time, money or energy doing integrations from one system to the next. It’s all contained. The teams are all working out of it, operations, sales, customer success, marketing and it’s super intuitive for the customer. It’s like WordPress on steroids for a crm. So that’s the one we work with the most. Now we’re also used to working with Salesforce, which that is, that is a b fee tool. So good luck with that one. And then Dynamics as well as some others. So yeah.
AJV (39:57):
All right. So HubSpot is your personal favorite. Okay, the next question I had is for this like Legion and also the sales enablement process of like converting quicker, are you finding that most people are spending money on paid traffic or is it more organic?
BR (40:16):
So it’s been an interesting shift. It really has over this concept of the deprecation of third party cookies compliance, which would be the gdpr the ccpa, all the regulatory stuff that we are now bound to as marketers. I don’t know that I’ve necessarily seen a shift. I have seen, well I haven’t seen a shift per se from paid media to organic, but what I have seen is an, an acceleration of using that historical data and building your own customer list or email marketing list and using that to push out content much more than I have seen going after similar audiences, custom audiences and items like that. So I guess after saying that, yes I have seen a shift going back towards organic moving a little bit away from paid media. Paid media is kind of a dicey thing right now in the sense of you have to have a very strong content game to be really, really effective from a paid media standpoint. So
AJV (41:18):
Yeah, I think that’s wise. And again, I ask because we’re not paid media users, we’ve haven’t had to be, and it’s like we do a little here and we do a little there, but it’s like, it’s not really our thing and it’s, I would prefer it not to be , you know, it was like there’s a time and place for all the things, but I was just curious. Okay, next one I have Rapid fire is any tips on subjects you know, subject headers to see more higher level, whatever the word is, open rates, increased open rates, yeah. Does subject matter and what are some of the tips around
BR (41:56):
That? Yeah, so subject lines and preview techs are, are gonna be very important. Also, I would suggest if you’ve got a program, most of ’em have it like I would think Constant Contact MailChimps of the world. Of course any of these more CRM heavy type technologies have this concept of AB testing, which is basically send out, you do two variations of it, send it out and it will pick the ones that’s the most top performing and send that one to the rest of your audience. It sounds like used to be AB testing was this concept that people are like, what? I’m gonna pay you a lot of money for that. That sounds awesome. Now anybody can do it. Quite honestly, now what we talk about internally is subject lines be outlandish. Like think of what are more aggressive things that are just gonna get somebody to be like, what? And do a double take on that’s what we want. If it’s an event and you’re saying something like, Hey, come to my event, like that’s not gonna work at all. Like you’ve got exactly what you’re talking about. Like give the best first, put that thing in the subject line and preview text and be a little bit outlandish. You can always pull it back, but start aggressive, see how that looks and then pull it back from there. That’s what’s
AJV (43:12):
That you a little bit, the more outlandish, the more people are going, what’s in here? What is this? What is this about?
BR (43:17):
It’s a hook. Yes. Yeah. Like we’ve pushed out some wild subject lines and I’m like, I’m gonna get in trouble for this and those that come back, they’re great. Yeah,
AJV (43:30):
I think that’s awesome. You know, it’s interesting, again, as I’m just like, as you’re talking thinking through like what, what are some of the things that we’re doing? Many things are just the process of trial and error, but the one subject line in our sales pipeline that gets the most clicks and the most replies is one that is called Meet your Chief Strategy Officer. And it’s been so interesting that out of all the ones that one is the one that people are like, what is who, who is it and what, what do they do for me? Yeah, but it’s your chief strategy officer and it’s like just you got, but again, you only know what to use once you really know who your ideal client is.
BR (44:13):
That that is true. That is absolutely true. And I would highly recommend using some tools that allow you to do some AB testing and there’s plenty of, of, of very cost effective tools out there. But I love that because it just leaves you wanting more. Like what do you mean meet my chief strategy officer? And so you’re looking for a hook, that’s all you’re looking for in a subject line.
AJV (44:34):
Love it. Okay. we only have like three minutes left but I wanna make sure we get to touch on lifetime value just a little bit. So what are some ways that we can help grow this, increase this, give us some, give us what you got, what are the I
BR (44:49):
Love it. So the number one thing that I see where customers start to churn or drop off is by lack of communication. And we kind of talked about it a little bit with the application process, right? Like if you throw somebody into something where they have zero familiarity with the odds of them bugging out are gonna get increasingly higher as those experience start to unfold. So what we have seen is when we close one a deal, now let’s, let’s start up some internal communication. Let’s make sure the teams are aware that hey, we just, we got a new customer, we got a new client, whatever we want to call them, new member whatever that is. But then there is a series of marketing nurtures and funnels that now need to go out to that newly added customer or client, kind of giving them an idea of what they can expect over the next couple of days, next couple of weeks, months, whatever that looks like in your process.
BR (45:42):
But we want to foreshadow what the delivery is before the delivery happens, right? And the more communication that we can provide to that individual that feels personal, makes them have an unbelievable experience and people that have an unbelievable experience are gonna talk about it and they’re gonna stay with you for more stuff. And so as we give them that experience, now is our opportunity to introduce some upsell, some cross sell, some other opportunities. We don’t wanna do that right out of the gate cuz that’s just disingenuous and it kind of turns people off. But at the same time, communication, onboarding that client effectively foreshadowing the delivery before the delivery happens. I mean, it’s the simple things in life that can trip us up or make the difference. Like I will tell you in our business at Snapshot, the the first agency that we started it was simply answering the phones.
BR (46:39):
Answering the phones, which is a simple thing. Created an experience that allow clients to come back to us. So it just, communication is everything. Your products are probably awesome, your service is probably awesome. The thing that creates issues in everybody’s world is communication. And so solving that through the customer experience creates happy customers. Happy customers stay with you for a much, much longer period of time. Of course there’s other things you can do, right to extend the lifetime value, but that is where we start is how do we start to automate the onboarding experience for clients?
AJV (47:18):
Oh, that’s good. So alright, same kind of thing. I wanna do rapid fire, best practice for onboarding. Like what, what should happen during the onboarding?
BR (47:26):
So we ask the customer, do you like email, text message or phone call? So let’s dial it into their preference. And we’ve got systems in place that can handle all three of those. So if they’re not an email person and they’re a text message person, all of our communication needs to go through text until it can’t and then it goes through a different channel. So that, that’s where we start is curtailing it to the customer.
AJV (47:52):
Okay, love it. Again, back to the customer, you want good customer experience and you need to ask the customer what you want their, or what they want their experience to be. Mm-Hmm. . Okay. Okay. That’s awesome. And then you mentioned something else. You said at some point this is a great opportunity, happy customers buy more, refer more. At what point in a customer’s journey with you should you breach that subject? Because it can be too soon, but it also can be too
BR (48:20):
Late. It is, it is very true. I would tell you if, if once the delivery is fulfilled, like if it’s a product or if it’s on, if it’s an ongoing service, it’s much easier to upsell along that way. But if it is a, a finite, tangible thing, once that thing is in their hands, we might have missed that opportunity. So I usually look at it from the standpoint of just the same as a lead coming in the door to a sales getting closed. There’s, there’s, let’s call it 10 touch points. There’s more, there’s less, right? But once that deal is closed and the product is in hand, there should be touch points along that way. And so once you design what those touchpoints should be, you, it will become clear. This is where we want to introduce similar products, similar experiences, similar services. And what we have found is the more effective communication in that process. You don’t even have to bring it up. The customer brings it up to you and allows you to respond to it as more of a consultant than a salesperson. And when you can start to frame your mindset of sales is just trying to understand the problem that that person is faced with and you have put yourself in a position to offer them a solution, that’s what sales is. And so in that customer onboarding experience, there’s plenty of opportunities to do that as well.
AJV (49:44):
Love that. Okay watching the clock one last question around kind of like lifetime value. What do you think, other than communication and obviously having a good product or service, right? What do you think is the most important thing that companies can do today to increase the tenure of their customer staying with that company?
BR (50:06):
That, that’s a great question. So one of the, one of the big things that we’re constantly looking at, and this is why I don’t believe necessarily that marketing is what it used to be from a marketing, like just events, look, tone, feel, right, brand awareness, all of that. But innovation. So like if you have got a service or a product and you want to keep that customer for longer, you’ve gotta keep innovating that thing, whatever that thing is, and introducing new value. Some of that new value needs to be at a freemium model to keep them engaged. If they’re on a reoccurring revenue model for you, you need to bake that into your process or into your revenue matrix. Some of it is upsell’s opportunity, but I would think outside of communication and outside of building relationships with your customers, it is continuously innovating the products.
BR (51:01):
If you look at any kind of churn that you might be having, the churn is because the problem either is around communication or the person is just either done using your product, has gotten what they needed outta your product and doesn’t need it anymore. So how do you keep that need and that desire there? And that is through introducing new features new concepts, sister products, right? That extend, you know, your your main product even longer. So there’s, there’s things there, but I think in a rapid fire state, I would say innovating on your product,
AJV (51:35):
Ben, this is so good. Like this is so good. Y’all literally just got thousands of dollars of, of free digital marketing advice. And it’s like, I probably took a page and a half of notes and was like, here are three things that our sales and marketing department need to powwow on. This is for new beginners, this is for established companies, this is for companies who are scaling. This information is just so rich. So Ben, if people want to learn more about you and what you do at Movement, where should they go?
BR (52:07):
They should go to make mvmt.com/bbg.
AJV (52:13):
So make movement mvmt.com/bbg and I will put that in the show notes. Y’all check out Ben, his company, his team, they are so awesome. But then also if Ben other than searching you on YouTube or dance videos, if people want to find you and connect with you personally, where should they go?
BR (52:35):
I am avid on Instagram and LinkedIn, so come at me at at ben Rigsby. You’ll find me on both those channels.
AJV (52:45):
Ben. So awesome. Exceeded all expectations. Thank you so much for being so great. Thank and everyone else, stay tuned for the recap of this episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later, y’all.

Ep 358: How to Build a Bestselling Brand in the Christian Market with Annie F. Downs

RV (00:02):
Well, if you have listened to this show for any amount of time, you know that I am a hardcore Bible thump in Jesus freak. It’s true. We are at Vaden villa and our church that we go to in Nashville is called Crosspoint Church. I’ve been on the board there for several years and one of our teaching pastors and leaders of the church has been a friend of mine who I have admired from afar for years. We’ve gotten to know each other a little bit. Her name is Annie F Downs. That is our guest today. You’re going to hear from her. So she is a New York Times bestselling author. She speaks all over the country. She does sermons, she does Christian conferences, a couple business gigs every year. She has an Damazing podcast like the Lineup of People on her podcast.
RV (00:45):
Her podcast is called. That Sounds Fun. And she also has a podcast network called the That Sounds Fun Network of which one of our other one of our clients, Matthew West, who’s like I’ve got major, major man crush on Matthew West . He’s a Christian musician. His show is on Annie’s network. And anyways, I get to listen to this woman preach a couple times a year, a couple times a quarter probably. And the more I’ve gotten to know her, the more I just love what she’s about. And I want to hear her story and I wanna learn a little bit about how the church market in the, you know, sort of the faith-based world works. And so I had to get Annie for you, Annie. We’re so glad to have you. Thanks for being here,
AFD (01:25):
Rory. That was the kindest introduction. You could just make me cry sitting right here. Thank you very much.
RV (01:30):
Well, you’re awesome buddy. And then you also do weddings cuz we saw you at Chris and our, our, some of our best, best friends, Chris and Lexi got married and then we’re like, what
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Annie’s doing this? How did, wait, you know, that, how did this, how
RV (01:43):
Did this happen? So,
AFD (01:44):
Hey, that’s so fun. It’s such a gift. I got started the ordination process through Crosspoint a couple of years ago because two of my friends got engaged on the same weekend and they both asked me to do their weddings. And I was like I can’t do weddings. Let me make a call . And so I called Pastor Kevin and, and I signed up for, it’s a class you take for a whole year at Crosspoint and then you write a paper and do an interview and all sorts of stuff. So it is it’s a real commitment, but it was totally worth it to get to stand up there with people in that moment is so special.
RV (02:13):
So tell me a little bit about all the things you’re going on. So like, when you think of like Annie f Downs, just give us a lay of the landscape and, and you know, I think I share with you a little bit like there’s a lot of people who listen to this show. We, we haven’t talked much about how the, the church market and the faith market and just in spirituality conference, you know, in general. Yeah. so tell us like what makes up the landscape of everything, the moving parts of the N E F Downs Empire?
AFD (02:41):
Yeah. I think that’ll help for people to kind of get a picture of what the businesses look like because we are not a ministry, we are a business. Got it. I get to do ministry work, I get to do work that is faith-based, but we want to run really successful businesses. Got it. And I think there’s a different responsibility and a different expectation when someone thinks you’re running a ministry than a business. Maybe it’s just in my own brain. Sure. And so I’m like, oh no, I wanna run a really good business. . Yeah. So in our offices, we have three companies that exist here. Down’s Books is my company. It’s named after my grandparents’ bookstore that they used to own when I was growing up. And so when I started writing books, I asked my dad Can I name my company after my your parents’ bookstore?
AFD (03:24):
And so it’s called Downs Books Incorporated. Inside of Downs Books is all the writing I do. Okay. All the speaking I do. And that, that sounds fun. Podcast and the, let’s read the Gospels podcast. So everything I make and everything my team makes is under the Downs Books co company. Got it. What is also in our office is my manager Kelly Haywood has K c h entertainment here too. So she has, I have five employees at Downs Books. She has four that help kind of run the high level things, right. Like they, when we launched the, let’s read the Gospels podcast, they’re the ones figuring out how do we do the website and how do we do the graphics and how do we, so they’re kind of the behind the scenes machine for a lot of what we do. They do what you hear music managers do or managers for people on tv. It’s, it’s the same relationship. It’s a management relationship.
RV (04:16):
Interesting.
AFD (04:16):
And then across the hall, is that, that sounds fun. Network, a podcast network for our friends listening who don’t know, it really works just like a TV network where all the shows have something in common, but they’re different. And what a network a allows is community and income because we also have a sales team that helps get advertising. So we have 17 shows on the network, although that sounds fun. Network. And we have five employees over there as well. And so we’re helping these 17 shows to help them book guests. Sometimes we help them meet each other so they can be on each other’s shows. We help them find ad partners that are really good fits for their content and their audience. And so that’s what we, we get to do. I’m, I’m a co co-owner and a founder of the Network. Okay. Both of my shows are on the network, but I’m not in the, like, daily running of that company.
RV (05:08):
Got it. Got it. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I didn’t even know that you had that. So Yes. So,
AFD (05:15):
And then I also teach at Crosspoints. I’m also on the T team. That’s
RV (05:18):
And you do weddings. Yeah.
AFD (05:19):
And I do weddings.
RV (05:20):
Right, right. Occasionally. Occasionally. That’s the other part. For close, for close friends. That’s right. And then, so, so let’s talk. So let’s go to Downs Books. Okay. And let’s talk, let’s talk in there. Cause that sounds like that’s sort of the core of like where you’re spending’s righting your, your time. Yes. how did you start, like, and, and how did you make your first dollars? Right? Like Yeah. Go all the way back to the beginning and like mm-hmm. , you go, oh, I want to be an author, a speaker. Like, okay. Before you’re standing on stage in front of thousands of people. How did you pay the bills in the beginning?
AFD (05:52):
Yeah. You know what you’re gonna love Roy, I think I may have told you this in our real life before, but I, when my fourth book released, I also applied to teach at the parent teacher store in Green Hills because I didn’t have enough money to pay my assistant. Wow. So, so it has been, I mean, it is not one of those like, and your listeners and friends probably know, like, it’s not one of those, like when you get your book deal, there you go. It’s like, no, the, if your book deal is, if your book’s coming out in a year and you get a $10,000 book deal, I’m just making an easy number. I mean, you’re, after you pay your agent, which you should have an agent and you should pay your agent once they get their percent. And once you pay taxes, you’ve made $5,000 in a year. . I mean, it doesn’t, it doesn’t go very far. It’s used pretty quickly. So for me, this started, I started writing in 2006. Okay. I moved to Nashville in 2008 to really pursue it as a career. I thought, if I’m gonna give this a shot, this is my chance. And I had a book written, I had an agent that I signed with in 2009. And by the end of 2010, Rory, we had gotten 47 rejections on that book. Mm-Hmm.
RV (06:59):
. Wow. And so
AFD (07:01):
Then I was like, that
RV (07:01):
Was your first book. That was your first book.
AFD (07:02):
Yes. Yes. Okay. And I thought, this isn’t working. And you know, you, you don’t pay your agent. You the, you know, the agent takes a percent. And so at this point I’m saying to my agent, you’re not making any money and I’m not getting the right books. So what are we doing? So, so we made, I made no money through this until a couple of years later. I mean, I was writing I was writing like for like one of those Groupon kind of websites. Okay. I was writing ads for them. So I was making like a, a small income off of that.
RV (07:37):
But not like your con not your content. You were just doing copywriting for
AFD (07:41):
Something? No, no, no. I did copywriting for probably three years behind the scenes while in front of the scenes. I’m trying to author and travel and speak. Yeah. My book does get picked up by a publisher in 2011. After I self-publish it, I self-publish it. Cause I was like, at this point I’ve written the book. I have an audience of a couple of thousand people who have been with me in this journey. I just want a book that my grandkids can have on their bookshelf that my, that their grandmother wrote one time. Right?
RV (08:09):
Yeah.
AFD (08:10):
When we put it on Amazon in the first quarter, I put it up in quarter four because I wanted to hit holidays. Okay. And it was for teen girls. And we sold about 2,500 in that quarter.
RV (08:21):
Wow.
AFD (08:22):
And when that happened, a publisher said, I’m sorry, we said no to that. We didn’t know you would sell the books. Right. And you sell the books. And so they came back, Zondervan signed me for a book deal in the winter of 11. And the book came out in August of 2012. And my first book deal, my advance was $7,000.
RV (08:45):
Nice.
AFD (08:47):
So I
RV (08:48):
Filling in to go.
AFD (08:49):
Yeah. I seriously thought, here we go.
RV (08:52):
So like that was at least, I can’t believe it, over the course of three or four years. Years, that’s like 65 cents an hour. I mean, some somewhere. It was wild. Somewhere in there.
AFD (08:59):
Yeah. Yes, yes. So what ends up happening though is, and I don’t know this behind the scenes, what I know is I’ve gotten a book deal offer and then I get a phone call from the publisher that says, Hey, would you like to travel and speak on a Teen girl tour? And it’s every other weekend for the school year. And I thought, well, yeah, the here’s I, I thought I wasn’t gonna get to do this anymore. And suddenly I see this job for the next year. And what had happened, Rory, is the publisher had made a deal with a record label here in town that had point of grace on it, the word word record label. And it was a conference called Girls of Grace that was for teen girls. Huh. And the sponsorship deal included a speaking spot. So Zondervan was a sponsor of the tour. Ah. The sponsorship included a bunk on a bus and a 20 minute slot. And I was the only new author that lived in Nashville. Wow. And so I was the only one who could bus out . And so , that’s how I got it. It was not by Skill, it was purely zip code
RV (10:00):
. Well, we’ll take it. We’ll take it.
AFD (10:03):
That’s right. I’ll take it. Cause built So was your cause built the whole thing.
RV (10:06):
So that wasn’t until 2013 then?
AFD (10:08):
Yes, 2012 and 2013. The book came out in ap August of 12. And the tour started then. And so what I would do in every city, Rory, is I, we would get there on a Friday. I would have most of Friday free, cuz the conference was on Saturday. So we bused out at midnight on Thursday would go to Columbus, Ohio. Yep. Friday I rent a car or get in an Uber and I drive to every bookstore that will look me in the face and I say, Hey, I’m Annie F Downs, do you have my new book? And if they did, I would sign ’em. And if they didn’t, I would ask them to carry it. So I’d go to three or four bookstores in every city on our first day in the city. The second day when we had our event. When I’m speaking, what’s also happening is all these youth group leaders are there. And so I’m, I have a, this is very in line with what you teach us to do. I have a thing on the screen that I say, Hey, if you want a 30 day devotional for free, here’s all you gotta do. Hit the do this QR code or whatever. And so what ends
RV (11:02):
Up happen, it wasn’t QR codes back then, I don’t think, think QR codes didn’t become popular until Covid. That’s what’re right. Covid left behind in its wake was QR codes for the work. Exactly.
AFD (11:10):
Right. I think it was probably just an a web address. Yeah. I think they just could take a picture of that, of a place on my website. And so what that, what that tour ended up doing is giving me a bunch of emails of teen girls and their leaders Wow. And a bunch of youth pastors who said, can I want her to come back and speak to our youth group or to our college ministry or to our women. So I had it for, and I ended up being on that tour for two years. Wow. So I was in front of thousands and thousands of leaders who then bring in speakers to their own
RV (11:40):
Church. Got it. Okay. And so, and so at that point you’re collecting email addresses, which good on you. Like that’s a game changer to ca to capture all that. But it’s not like millions of email addresses. It’s like no, no, no. A few thousand. You do that for a couple years, you got five or 10,000 emails maybe.
AFD (11:57):
Exactly. I pro I think we ended each year, I think we ended each year with five more. So I think the first year was about 5,000. Second year was about 10.
RV (12:04):
Okay. But now these people have seen you speak and so now they start calling you to come speak at their church. Yes.
AFD (12:11):
Yes. Interesting. So then they say, Hey, we saw you at Girls of Grace in Min Minneapolis. Our church is 30 minutes from there and we have a youth conference that has a thousand students. Will you come speak
RV (12:22):
Uhhuh ? And how much money are you getting? By the way, were you paid on the tour?
AFD (12:26):
Yes, I was paid. I feel like it was a couple of hundred dollars. It wasn’t very much and it was one bunk. So I also was my own merch person. Right. Which is very normal. This was, I was treated Yeah. Very well on this tour. That is, I mean, you know, there’s those big music tours like Winter Jam where you don’t get paid. You’re just glad to be there and you, what you get paid is how much merch you move. Right. Right. And so I, I had one bunk, so I set up my own merch table. I would train merch volunteers. I was counting in merch, I was counting out merch and and I got paid a couple hundred dollars.
RV (13:01):
I mean this is sounds more like a musician start. Like
AFD (13:04):
It totally is. And in fact, so much of what you see shaped in my career is because who we can watch here in town do this is musicians. And so my friends that are musicians, I was watching them and going, wait, you don’t do your own books at the end of an event? Who does that? Wait, you aren’t making this decision? Who does that? And so I really am, I do look as an artist, if you like, looked down from the sky at me and a country artist, we look very similar and how our businesses run versus if you look down me on mine and another author who has as many books out as me, doesn’t have the kind of team I have, doesn’t have the kind of processes I have cuz I look like a musician.
RV (13:46):
Interesting. So then, so, so then these youth leaders start calling and that’s, are you getting a thousand bucks to speak?
AFD (13:52):
No, I’m getting 500 bucks to speak and travel for two people.
RV (13:56):
Wow, okay. Yeah. So not a lot of money still going on.
AFD (14:01):
Right. So we are, that’s why, I mean it took, I put three teen books out 20 12, 20 13, 20 14. And then in 2015, my first adult non-fiction came out. That was a memoir called Let’s All Be Brave. And when that book came out is when I did not have the money to pay my assistant who, because I, I’m a big believer in like get some help before you can actually afford the help. Yeah. Like you be the hustler to make the money so that you can have help because mm-hmm. , the more you can get off your plate, what you’re not best at, the more you actually impact. Amen. Because I’m, I’m able to do more things. So at this point really Rory, like when I sit with my business coach and we just did this last month where he went through every single thing I do and everything, my C o o, Ashley Warren, who, you know everything both of us do. And I literally have nothing left on my plate that anybody else can do.
RV (14:51):
Uhhuh
AFD (14:51):
and so and so I, that is the goal, right? We wanna keep me there where I am doing this with you while they’re setting up for our lunch, while they are doing all the things that other people actually do better than me. They’re doing. And they’re, they’re getting our podcast ready to go out next week. They’re doing all the things. I’m doing the part that only I can do by talking with you.
RV (15:10):
Yep. And so then so then that book came out. So that was your fourth book. So now you’re starting to get some, some advances that are at least like, you know, more reasonable advance to kind of like build your career. Yes, yes. You have some royalties coming in
AFD (15:24):
Probably. That’s right. So the good news of taking small advances is you do usually get money on the backside. So I have 11 books out and I make money on the backside of nine of ’em. And so I’m getting mailbox money every quarter. We try to treat book money, like foundation money that we don’t touch unless we have to. So we just deposit that. What we’re actually trying to run our budget off of is speaking money and podcasting money. But the podcast didn’t start till 2014 and it didn’t start making money until 2017 probably.
RV (15:55):
Ah-Huh. . And so you start out speaking in these youth groups. So this is, this might be a conference at a church, but it’s really like the youth group putting on a youth conference. Yep. Then you release the adult book and then where and how and when do you start speaking to adults
AFD (16:14):
That, that was a muddy season, as you can imagine, because I’m still getting these calls for teen girl conferences or for college conferences even. I am, at this point I’m 34 and I am way out of actually living life as a teenager or living with teenagers. And I’m mostly talking to 20 year olds cuz I’m at Crosspoint, I’m volunteering in the college ministry. So my time is spent with people in their mid twenties. So that transition was really hard. I, we had to work really closely with my booking agent and kind of be like, Hey, we, we can’t keep taking these, we have to start setting me up. So the transition looked like if a big church called and said, Hey, we’ve got $2,000. We’d love for Annie to come speak to our college women’s group and there’s 500 girls that’ll come great. Annie would be happy to do that. Could you do a luncheon the next day for the women? Yeah. And invite any women and it won’t cost you any extra, but Annie would love to talk for 20 minutes to women in your church or could she get a meeting with your women’s minister to talk about what y’all are doing for women’s ministry? So the the transition was, if you’re gonna pay me for what I’m known for, will you let me do for free what I’m trying to do?
RV (17:32):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. That’s so good.
AFD (17:36):
And so it was muddy though. It was not fun that we had to say nos. We didn’t wanna say we had to do things cheaper than I wanted to do, but I, and I also ended up changing publishers because it was really hard to not be considered the the new girl who wrote for teenagers when I was trying to be a peer with my friends who wrote for adults.
RV (17:56):
Right. Yep. And then so then you start speaking at women’s groups and then from there it’s just like you’re speaking and the spinoff starts to come and then you speak at That’s right. So, so what’s do you the like is there’s, they’re speaking at women’s groups and then they’re speaking at like is a women’s group, like a Christian, like a conference, is that primarily then
AFD (18:20):
Probably a conference? Yeah, that’s right. And a lot of churches do their own like women’s retreats and women’s conferences that are for whatever they are. You know, it could be a hundred women in a room or it could be 10,000 women that go to some of these. And the ones that, you know, one of the things that happens a lot is they will end up reading your book or, or going through a Bible study I’ve written and, and, but they don’t have the money to fly me or to bring my assistant or whatever. And so the opportunity is to go like, man, who in your community could do this? There’s people right there. Right. But the transition started happening where people would bring me in Saturday and say, will you stay and speak on Mother’s Day to our Sunday morning? And so then I started being able to, to get invitations that were not just female audiences but we’re men and women together. And that’s when I started doing more Sunday mornings.
RV (19:16):
Do people get paid to speak at a church on a Sunday?
AFD (19:19):
Sometimes, yeah. I mean if, if you are traveling and you’re leaving your normal life, yes. I think it’s, it’s considered an event. So a most ti Sundays, if I’m speaking somewhere else, there is some honorarium attached to it. For me with Crosspoint, that is not, that is not true. Only because that’s my, that is how I serve my local church and I only teach four or five times a year. And so it’s, it’s the way I get to give back to the church that gives me so much. And so there are exceptions to the rule, whereas with a conference, there is no exception for me. Like, if, if you can’t, if you can’t bring me in and and pay me to do my job, then I’m not the right fit for you. That means that God has somebody else for y’all. That’s a little bit different on Sunday mornings to me. I don’t do merch tables on Sunday mornings. There’s just some changes that are not rules that anybody else has to follow, but are rules that are for me that I’ve created that are like, nah, we’re not gonna sell books on a Sunday morning. I just don’t like the way that feels, so I don’t do that.
RV (20:21):
Got it. But so they might, and then, I mean I’m sure it varies, but like when you get, when you get into the Christian market, ultimately you have local churches doing program for their membership. Yes. And they might be bringing somebody in and they’re paying that speaker to come in or maybe doing like a rev share, like a ticket sale kind of a thing. Yes. Or you have conferences where it’s like a regional kind of lots of churches sort of promoting, there’s a promoter, either a church is hosting it and then you have speaking on Sundays and all of those can be paid things in the church world.
AFD (20:58):
Yes, that’s right. And the conferences, that’s, that’s exactly right. Those are the three options. You’re gonna do something local, you’re gonna do something community sized or you’re gonna do Sunday mornings.
RV (21:06):
Mm-Hmm. . Got it. Okay. and then yeah, I mean the, the, the clearly speaking on like doing a sermon on a Sunday is a different set set up like merch wise and all that kind of stuff. But yeah,
AFD (21:20):
For some people it’s okay if it’s not for everybody. Yeah. I, it just, it is for me. Yeah.
RV (21:25):
Lots of, I mean lots of authors, lots of Christian authors, that’s what they kind of do. I feel like they do like a, a big church tour of the whole country and that’s, that’s part of how they sell their, they how
AFD (21:34):
They sell. Especially in July and August or June and July when pastors want some time off. I mean that’s why you see so many authors and pastors sharing their stages with other people is they want, they need some weeks off and understandably Uhhuh . And so that’s, that’s why you see a lot of authors teaching, particularly in the summers.
RV (21:53):
Tell me about, so let’s talk about the podcast. So I’m b I’m Curious cuz that’s part of like, you have the, that sounds Fun network and then you also have your two, your two podcasts. Yep. So when do you start making money from that and how, how do you make money from the podcast and like, tell us about that a little
AFD (22:09):
Bit. Yeah, so it’s, it’s ad revenue, right? So it’s, it is the same as a TV show. It’s commercials and, and there are multiple ways to do it. There is what’s called a di, which is just a drop in where, where it’s not the voice of the host where it literally is a commercial. So you hear that a lot on some of the shows on other networks. I think Gimlet does it. It’s, it’s not good or bad, it just is. And where they’ll have a read that goes before you start listening to the show you’re listening to. So for me, what we do, we all add host Red Ads for my show and for the That Sounds Fun Network. We do host red ads. Those are the most genuine we believe for what we are making and, and they pay the most. And so for my show I started having advertising partners want to work with us about 2017.
AFD (22:58):
So my producer at the time, Chad Sna from Sound On Sound Off Music or Sound on Sound Off Productions, he had a friend who had done ad sales for a long time. So I hired him for a while, then I joined a network. It was not a great fit, but that’s was the next move is I joined a network. When I left that network is when my manager and I kind of went like, Hey, we can build a better thing than what I’m experiencing Hmm. As a podcaster. And so we got a sales team. So they work with ad partners, they work with like advertising companies that are kind of over multiple different companies that want to advertise. And so they, it literally is a, Hey Annie, I mean it happened this morning. Hey Annie, there’s a brand that wants to be on the podcast. Can they go ahead and send you an example of of their product and you can see if you like it and see if it’s something that you’d like to talk about. And that’s how we do.
RV (23:50):
So how, how does that, like how big of a pod, like how big does a podcast have to be before it can start advertising?
AFD (23:57):
That’s a great question. So it, depending on what kind of money you wanna make, you can start advertising with someone like Anchor that’s run through Spotify. You can do ads for Anchor starting immediately now. You’ll get paid if you have five listeners, you’ll get five pennies or something. You know, like, but there, there is a availability for anyone who starts a podcast to start making advertising money right away when you really make money that can pay for your production and actually help run, run your ministry, your company, your brand. We see that about 10,000 listeners in the first 10 weeks is when advertising partners are really interested in working with you in the
RV (24:38):
First, that’s the, that’s 10 weeks like each,
AFD (24:39):
That’s the number they look at episode. Yep. So you look at an episode that releases on January 1st, you’re gonna what the advertiser partner doesn’t they like the first week that matters to them, but what they actually look at is what’s the arc of the whole show? So how at the end, so when we look at stats every week, you, you know me Rory, I look at stats constantly. It’s like I
RV (24:58):
Love it. I did not know that about you.
AFD (24:59):
Oh you did? Oh listen,
RV (25:00):
I didn’t know that that
AFD (25:01):
Is about you. That is science. Like that will tell, we can say I think everybody loved that episode. Well no they didn’t, nobody listened. So we gotta look at the science. So I love the stats. So every Monday in our staff meeting we look at how did our shows do it one week just cuz we’re interested. But what we really go back and look at is the show that released 10 weeks ago, how many people have listened? And usually we have about double from one week to 10 weeks. So what, what what happens in one week happens again in week two through 10 of listenership. And so that’s what advertising partners look at. So when we’re looking at shows to add to the network that really want, that are hoping it’ll be a financial benefit to that show where the host is like, Hey, I need to make money off of this if I’m gonna put time in. Then we say man, well as soon as you get to 10 thousands when you’ll really start seeing ad partners be interested
RV (25:50):
And how much do they pay? Like how much does it cost? Let’s just use 10,000. Like let’s say it’s, yeah, let’s say you’re at 10,000, which means if I calculate you’re saying you release an episode, you get 5,000 downloads this week and then another 5,000 downloads over the next nine’s weeks’. That’s right On that on that episode. Yep. How do you price it and what do they like, what do they pay kind of thing?
AFD (26:11):
Well this is outta my expertise level because I don’t know any of that. What I know is we do CPM cost per million and, and I know that it actually varies based on the partner. So someone like a Thistle Farms who we really believe in and love and want to talk about, they may not have the same cost or same ability to pay for a show that, that a huge brand like Better Help does. And so we can work with Thistle Farms and say, Hey Annie loves y’all, so here are the, the five ad slots. This one is the one we will get to you at a price that works for your company, but we can’t give you this one because this one is double that cost or whatever. Right. And so, and each show is different. And so it really varies. Our sales team, we have two full-time sales team members here and that’s what they do constantly. And the other thing Roy, is they’re not just doing, do you wanna buy this show? They’re saying, do you wanna buy a year worth? And so that’s the bigger number that they’re looking at is can we find ad partners that believe in us? Like we believe in them enough to go, Hey, for a year let’s make a contract. Mm-Hmm. , that’s what we try to do with most of our shows.
RV (27:18):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So yeah, that’s fascinating. So, and then if you get to 20,000 downloads or so, it’s not like a total monthly downloads, it’s a per episode is what you’re really
AFD (27:29):
Watching. It’s per episode. Yeah. Because for example, let’s use Thistle Farms again because we love them. Everyone go shop at Thistle Farms. But if Thistle Farms, you know, if they they don’t actually care how we did this month, they care how we did on the show that they’re on. Right. And so they wanna look at the 10 weeks. It’s cool, you’ll see people do all time. We hit 2 million, we hit 3 million downloads. That’s awesome. We do it for the network, we celebrate with everyone and we celebrate on our show. But what advertising partners really care about. And so therefore what podcasters should really care about is how did each episode do after 10 weeks?
RV (28:01):
And and if you, let’s just say you have a show that does about 10,000 downloads per episode.
AFD (28:08):
Yeah.
RV (28:09):
In a year, like at a high level, how much revenue do you think one show like that? You know, oh boy,
AFD (28:15):
Give or I, I don’t wanna mess this up. I mean I bet if you’re doing weekly shows, I mean this is going to be a guess Rory for real. If you’re doing weekly shows at a 10,000 downloads and you do, let’s say you do 45 shows in a year cuz you take a couple off or whatever, I mean I bet you’re gonna make maybe a thousand bucks a show. I bet you’re making 800 to a thousand bucks a show. So, you know, four $40,000 maybe.
RV (28:42):
Okay,
AFD (28:43):
Interesting. I could be really off about, I think that’s about what, but you know, also the cost to make a show is about $500 per episode. Yes. If you’re hiring outside. And so that’s, that is a thing. People don’t factor. They wanna start a podcast and they want to make advertising money. Well, y you’re gonna be outta pocket for a little bit if you c if you don’t have the skills to make it sound good. Mm-Hmm. because you’ve gotta hire people to, to do that for
RV (29:08):
You. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting cuz we had, we had a podcast that had millions of downloads that we sold as part of when we sold our last company. But we’ve never run ads on our, the only ads we run on our show are for our services. Yeah. And so that’s, and that’s, you know, because we’re offering people free calls to learn about what we do. And that’s usually when you’re starting out, that’s gonna pay a lot, a lot more money Yes. Than you’ll make from advertisers until you get really, really big.
AFD (29:35):
Absolutely. And we still, I mean still on my show and on shows on the network, we use the opportunity when we have empty ad spots to talk about the products we make. That is a hundred. And one of the things on our network that we really believe in is the community part. And so one at a quarter you’re advertising for another podcast and it’s on the network mm-hmm. . And so we have, we make space for that too. So the podcaster, so Matthew West does not pay for me to talk about his podcast this quarter. That is part of the deal being on the network is we get to tell our audience about other shows on the network.
RV (30:07):
Yeah, that’s really cool. I noticed that like Caleb is doing this now where they’ve got, they’ve got Caleb podcasts and you know, people are really doing this Interesting to see how it all happens. Well, yeah. So as we’re wrapping up, like, so tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. So I, I know Carlos Whitaker used to be really he used to be around Crosspoint a lot. I never really got to know him, but I know you, you obviously have your, your podcast. That sounds fun. You’ve got the books, but you and Carlos are teaming up on something exciting in 2023, right? Yeah.
AFD (30:40):
In June we’re going on tour together. It’s called the Here for You Tour. We just kind of wanted, he and I are good friends. We have a lot of the same audience, but also a lot of people who don’t know each other. And, and we thought, man, what we wanna do is let’s just go talk, let’s go meet up where our friends are already at and gathering. And so we’ve got about 12 cities we’re going to in June where we’re gonna get to show up and talk about Jesus and talk about what’s going on in culture and feature some local businesses. Like it’s kind of just gonna be a really fun hang night that we get to do. It’s really exciting. And the other thing we’re working on that I’m really proud of is the let’s read the Gospel’s podcast. And Roy, the idea really was like, what if there’s so many people who want to read the Bible in a year, but but don’t finish.
AFD (31:28):
Yeah. And so can we give some steps that would Enbridge people to a year? So we are gonna read Matthew, mark, Luke, John every month. And so people can start with on January one, February one, March one. And, and so the only commitment you’re making is a monthly commitment. We’re just gonna do it 12 times. So you can do it with us all 12 times or you can do it with us once, or you can do it with us in April. Or if you’ve never listened to Matthew, mark, Luke and Johnny, you don’t even know what they’re about. I’m gonna read the whole thing to you. And so, and
RV (31:56):
You’re reading it, you’re, it’s in your voice.
AFD (31:58):
It’s me. Yeah. We’re reading it 12 times man. It is an interesting year because we are really having to, it takes about 15 hours to read and so, and we have to do, so that’s two or three hours a week. So it’s really changing our rhythms next year. Cause I’m not doing any besides you, you’re my last outside conversation besides my shows until 2024. Nice. Wow. Because we just, my voice, we have to, if I’m gonna tour and travel and do a pot, do that sounds fun twice a week and read the gospels every month, that’s about all my voice can do. Yeah. So it’s changed my availability in a really interesting way. I’ll be very interested to see what happens. What happens when we focus like this next year.
RV (32:44):
Well, one thing that’ll be awesome. So, so we read the, we read the whole Bible this last year, which was the first time we ever made it through. Yeah. We’re in a, we’re in a family bible study. It’s the coolest thing is every Sunday from like three to seven, we found a Bible study. And the thing that that was a game changer was all the families pooled to buy babysitters. And so the kids go off with the babysitters and so then the family can actually like eat and do bible study. And it was, we read the whole Bible and the the thing, which was amazing, super power, powerful experience to read all the way through. But the thing that I’m most craving is you have to go so fast that we didn’t get to spend enough time in the gospels. And I’m like, man, I’m really, I’m really craving more time there in Matthew, mark, Luke and John. So that’s a really cool idea. That’s very, very, very, very powerful. Well Annie, where should people go? I got one last question for you, but before that, where do you want people to go if they wanna like learn more about you and connect up and see what you’re, what you’re up to?
AFD (33:42):
I, you know me Roy, I’m like embarrassingly easy to find. I’m just Annie F Downs everywhere. F is in fancy. So Annie f Downs will get you everything you need. Annie f Downs slash Gospels will get you access to all the resources we have to go along with the podcast. And then the here for You tour is here for you tour.com. So that’s where I’ll be all this year, all those places.
RV (34:02):
I love it. So my last question is just Annie, like thinking back, you know, let’s say somebody’s listening right now who, you know, maybe they are an aspiring author or maybe they’re an aspiring speaker, or maybe they’re in that like transition mode between like, I’m serving one audience, I’m doing one thing in my life, but I really want to be doing something else. Like, you know, those can be long dark seasons and, and Yeah. You know, those can be trying times. Like what would you, what would you say to that person if they’re listening right now?
AFD (34:30):
Yeah. You know, the thing I I, the only thing I would’ve regretted so far is if I would’ve quit. I have made mistakes along the way for sure. I don’t regret my mistakes. We had a, we’ve had some big ones that I’ve done and we have done some massive cleanup around it. I I don’t regret mistakes. I would’ve regretted quitting. And so that’s what I would say is don’t give up and get some people around you to help you because what they can help you do is not even decide whether to quit or not, but help you decide how do you pivot this thing so that it actually works for you. And so that it actually meets the needs that you believe the world has, that you are uniquely gifted to meet. And so ask, ask some, ask for some help and do not give up.
RV (35:13):
I love it. I love it. Well, we’ll link up to annie f downs.com. You can check out the tour, the shows. Thank you so much for such a transparent, open sharing, Annie, of just how all of this works and, and just hearing your story. It’s, it’s super encouraging and you know, we’re praying for you, my friend, and, and we wish you the best.
AFD (35:31):
I love you guys. I’m really glad to be friends with you and your wife, so I’m thankful for y’all and for the work you do, it matters to me.

Ep 356: Create Your Visual Identity in 30 Days or Less with Nadine Hanafi

AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody, this is AJ Vaden here, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I am here today with a one and the only Nadine and, and Nadine is a very close personal friend. She lives here in Nashville, so lucky that she moved here to Nashville from Morocco where she was born. Although she’s got dual citizenship now, she can call herself a true nashvillian. So I’m so lucky and fortunate that I get to share the same city with my dear friends but also a client of Nadine’s. And we met through mutual friends three or four years ago, and it’s like one of those phone calls when you meet someone and you’re like, I love you like this. Like I love you and I love you. That’s how I met Nadine for a friend bit. It’s like the very first time that we spoke, I was like, you’re amazing.
AJV (00:56):
And you guys are about to experience just how amazing she is with her very unique craft. And before I get her our little formal introduction, I just want to tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this particular episode. Because when you think about design and how you want your brand to look how you want it to feel how you want other people to experience it, I am here to tell you, you are most likely wrong. And we’ll tell you people that I recently made. Cause what most of us do is we look around and we go, I like this and I like this, and this is my favorite color and this is my favorite font here, put it together and make it look great. And then it comes back and you’re like, well, this doesn’t feel like me.
AJV (01:46):
And it’s because you have it all wrong. And if your brand doesn’t feel like you, it’s most likely because it’s not. And it’s because we’re making decisions on the exterior things around us, not based on really how we want or how our brand is meant to be. And so if you’re struggling with like, what is my brand and how do I want it to look like in terms of the visuals, this is an episode that you must listen to. The second thing that I think is really important is most people assume that having an expensive looking brand is expensive. And that’s not true. And that I think outside of Nadine’s incredible creative talents is making it affordable, is her next best specialty. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about that. So if you wanna look like a million dollar brand, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to do it, specifically not in the beginning.
AJV (02:48):
And she’s gonna teach you and talk about how you can do that on what I would say balling on a low budget, right? So , all the things that we’re gonna cover today. So please, please, please stick around. This is not an episode to be missed. So without further ado, let me give you a quick formal bio of my good friend Nadine, and then we’ll jump right into this interview. So Nadine is the founder of an award winning a dig a design company called We Are Visual, but she is also the creator and founder of Digital Brand Kits. And here’s what I would say about that. Like, when we think about how do you get a million dollar looking brand one is we want it to be affordable, but we also want it fast. And she has figured out how to make it look like a million bucks, make it affordable, and get it to you in 30 days or less.
AJV (03:37):
It’s going to blow your mind. But over the last 10 years, she has helped hundreds a clients from Suite execs, the Fortune 100 companies like Disney and Verizon to bestselling authors like our good friend Lori, harder from the Earner Happy podcast Sarah, she’s worked with Sarah Knight, she’s helped build beautiful slide decks for so many different Ted Talk presenters. I could go on and on and on , but instead of doing that, let’s just, let me introduce you to Nadine and we will share some of the most life changing information when it comes to building your brand visually that you will ever experience. So Nadine, welcome to the show.
NH (04:20):
Well, thank you and thank you for having me. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I have one correction to make that I was not born in Morocco, I was born in Minnesota of all places on a very cold winter day . It was negative 40, which is probably why I do not like cold weather now as an adult . But I am from Morocco and I spent four glorious years in me before moving to Nashville. So, but it’s, it’s so good to be here. Thank you for having me. And yeah, so I am so excited to talk about design.
AJV (04:57):
Before we do that, I think it’s worth giving people just a quick story about how you got into design, because it is not the traditional path. No, it’s not like you went to art school and like you came at this in a very different way, which I think is a part of your uniqueness. And what makes you so different is that this wasn’t something that you really came at for, like, this is what I’m gonna go to school for and this is what I’m gonna do in my life. It came by opposite. So why don’t you just give us a high level view of like, how did this ever even become a theme for you?
NH (05:30):
So I like to say that I am a designer who did not go to design school and does not know how to use any of the design tools. . So I don’t know how to use Photoshop. I don’t know how to use InDesign. I don’t know how to use any of the fancy design tools. I only know how to use one tool, and it’s called PowerPoint. And I can design crazy things in PowerPoint. And so I did not, I’ve never set foot in a design school. I went to business school with a specialty in marketing. And my first job out of college was in marketing. And I was a marketing manager. And really I fell into design by accident. I know I’ve always had like this designer eye I’ve always liked colors, I’ve always liked beautiful things, but not never in a formal way.
NH (06:17):
And so I accidentally fell into design because my first and last corporate job, , I was asked to take a design training because they needed, you know, more design help in the marketing department. And and so they paid for me to get this training online. At the time it was something called linda.com, which was bought back by LinkedIn. And it was the first place where you could really buy like actual professional courses in everything. And I took , they paid for me to take a Photoshop course. And so I log in, I open up the Photoshop course, and I see that it says like 15 hours vi video. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m literally gonna sit through 15 hours of videos to learn how to do Photoshop. I was not excited about that. I got started, I watched the first video about three minutes into the first video.
NH (07:10):
I was like, mm-hmm the heck no, I closed it. I was like, I am not watching this. I am not getting through this training. And so I still needed to get some sort of formal training and design for this company. And so I just went through and found other courses inside lynn.com that taught me basics of design. And that was much more interesting to me. I could actually watch hours and hours of videos of, you know, how to do design. And what I figured out is I could take all of those design principles that I was learning and actually apply them using PowerPoint since it was the one and only design tool that I knew how to use at the time. And I basically hacked PowerPoint to make it do what I wanted it to do for me. And I started creating brochures for this company, obviously besides the slide deck that I was creating, which got better and better cause I got better at design, but also brochures, sales materials, one pagers.
NH (08:02):
I even created graphics for the website. Everything I created in PowerPoint. And in this process, one, I realized PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful tool. It can do not all the things that Photoshop can, but a lot of it and all, everything that you actually really need if you’re not a professional designer, creating these, you know, crazy designs. And the second thing I realized is I have probably a monetizable skill here, , that I could probably sell to other companies. And so that’s what I did. I left that company and I started, we are visual and my, my expertise at the time was let me create really beautiful artistic presentations for you in PowerPoint. And there’ll be presentations that don’t look anything like your typical boring PowerPoint, which is, let’s face it, that’s the reputation, right? Of PowerPoint. That’s true. You would have no idea
AJV (08:56):
Of that. These were PowerPoint design, like we use PowerPoint designs that you created for every single one of our brochures, landing pages, you know, websites. It’s like you would never have an idea that these originated and PowerPoint, in fact, you should be like PowerPoint spokeswoman. This is,
NH (09:13):
I’m working on it. I am. So if anyone knows somebody who works at Microsoft ,
AJV (09:19):
Put in the universe,
NH (09:21):
I’m a spokeperson. Yes, absolutely. But
AJV (09:24):
I think it’s really amazing because what you have figured out is how to do something. And what I love about it, why I think it’s so cool is that with programs like InDesign or Photoshop for the end user, consumer like myself, it’s like I don’t know how to edit it or move something or update something. And so I’m trapped by whoever was the designer or finding someone else. And it’s like the best thing about you, the way that you’ve designed all these templates and all of these tools for our company at Brain Builders Group is that it’s like I actually do know how to use PowerPoint most people, so I can go in and make the copy edits without having to have the expense or the burden of finding someone else to go and like reformat this. And I think that’s a really important skill set, and you don’t have to be good at design to make very quick updates to something that is already very well designed. So with that said, I wanna kinda like take it up a level and just talk about some of the things that you’ve learned, you know, really over the last 15 years or so of what makes good design and what, what should people really be looking for and what should they really be asking themselves as they go on this visual process for their own personal brands. And I know without a doubt you’re gonna share the horrible mistakes that I have recently made. ,
AJV (10:45):
I’ll
NH (10:45):
Be fine,
AJV (10:47):
Totally fine. I gave you, I gave you permission to do this, but I do think it’s good. As people are kind of going, right, I’m at this place where it’s time to create some sort of visual component on either a website or a landing page, or I need something, where do I start?
NH (11:04):
Well don’t start by hiring a designer mistake number one. The, the first mistake that people make, I think when they are getting started in creating a visual identity for themselves is they go straight into the actual visual identity piece of it. And that’s a mistake because you, the visual identity that you’re going to create needs to reflect and represent you and your personality and your energy. And if you don’t, if you’re not clear on that, then you are never gonna land on a visual identity that you know is a match for you. So step one is take a step back and really meditate on who you are as a person in this, in this particular space that you’re trying to get into, right? Whatever your niche is who are you in relation to others? This is a lot of what, you know, we learned with BBG is your uniqueness and you’re positioning all of that, but really more at an energetic level.
NH (12:05):
What kind of people do you want to attract? What is the vibe that you wanna create as a brand? And who are these people that are gonna be attracted to that vibration? And so once you have done that homework first, that’s when you can really get into visual identity. So, and there’s really a science and an art to branding, visual branding, visual identity. And so the, the, the art piece is like making things beautiful and all of that. But the science piece is picking out brand elements, design elements based on certain truths, right? So we talked about this before. I am a proponent of don’t build a brand based on trends. Build your brand based on truths, okay? And so you can actually pick colors based on what those colors mean, the symbolism behind them, the emotion that they trigger, et cetera. So depending on what emotions you wanna trigger in your audience and you know what energy you wanna create, you can pick actual colors that will help you create that that energy. Exactly. And so do you want me to share , of course. The story
AJV (13:19):
Emotion to me,
NH (13:21):
Right? the
AJV (13:23):
Of what not to do. Yes.
NH (13:25):
Go. Yes. So I developed something called the Blind test and as part of a, a bigger program that I’m developing called The Color Workshop, which will actually be a workshop that I’m gonna be launching soon. And it’ll be a workshop that will take you through a step by step process to help you identify one, your signature color, the color that really embodies your essence as a brand, but also your entire color palette really. And how to, you know, make everything kind of look good together. Part of this color workshop is something I call the blind test. And the blind test is I basically give you all of these cards that have words on them, right? And they’re color cards. So behind the words are colors, but you don’t see the colors cuz the cards are black and white. And so you have to, there are 12 cards and you have to go through a process of elimination in taking out the, the words that you don’t connect with, right?
NH (14:19):
And technically at the end of this process, the last cars that you end with, we then unveil them, right? We take out the cover and then you can see what colors they are. And the reason I built it this way is because we all have preconceptions about colors, right? We might have, maybe we’re following someone on Instagram who uses yellow as their signature color and we hate that person. So we’re never gonna use yellow. And maybe yellow is actually your color . You just dunno it, right? So I don’t wanna have those preconceptions that therefore I remove the colors. And so once you’ve chosen all of your, your colors by words and we unveil them, you find out what those colors are. So the funny story is, when we did this with you aj, we were already in the process of working on a visual identity and we had already picked out color palette or a color palette that were based on colors that you had picked out
AJV (15:08):

NH (15:09):
Before. And I don’t know where those colors came from, but you probably saw them on someone else’s branding or in beautiful spaces that you had visited. But they felt right in those spaces, they felt right for that person maybe. And, and so you thought that they might be right for you. And the funny thing is, when we did the blind test the first thing I ask you is gimme your first five hard nos
AJV (15:33):
And you eliminated, it’s not exaggerating y’all. No, it’s not exaggerating.
NH (15:38):
You eliminated literally your first three hard nos. The cars that you eliminated were the three primary colors of your actual,
AJV (15:46):
For myself did not follow any sort of process or logic or process.
NH (15:53):
But the funny thing is, is you were not connecting with those colors. You had pick them out, you thought they would work and then for weeks you were, you know, thinking about it and asking people and people were reflecting this back to you. These are not your colors. You knew it in your core. These are not your colors. You just couldn’t figure out why. And then when you did this test right away, it was just so clear you realized why those colors did not feel right. It’s because they were not right for you. They did not represent your energy and we figured out what your energy is. And it was not any of those colors
AJV (16:24):
. Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s interesting cause I know there is at least one of you listening who has done this exact same thing and there is at least two of you at least listening that have a brand right now that does not represent you, right? And it’s like you can’t figure out why, but you’re just, you don’t connect with it and, and thus you don’t promote it. And there is something, and it’s most likely cuz you started with design versus trying to figure out who you really are what your uniqueness is, who your audience is. But second most likely is because you did it wrong. You hired someone who didn’t get to the heart of what are you really trying to emote out into the world. And instead just said, you know, what colors do you like? And or you came to them, which is what I did. And said, all right, love
NH (17:13):
My colors.
AJV (17:14):
I love this idea of like hot pink cluttering, I think some orange might be good, maybe this like sea shell pink. That’s pretty, I like that. And I was like, put this all together, make it look awesome. And that’s what Nadine did. And then she sent it back to me and I was like, well
NH (17:31):
That doesn’t feel right.
AJV (17:33):
Yeah, it’s a real right. And it’s like, and it’s like one of those things where it’s like, you know it, but you’re like, hmm, yeah, what happened here? And, and I think it’s so many of us do that cuz we see someone else’s brand and we go, I want mine to look like this. And what you mean is I want it to look beautiful like this. Not I need these colors. But until you go through this very personal process of going, who are you and who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to attract? And it’s not just who you are, it’s what is going to attract the audience that you want to build. And when we did this process, I’m, I literally was like definitely not that one and that was great . And then I said, the next one, definitely not that one.
AJV (18:23):
And it was pink. And I was like, definitely not that. And it was orange. I was like, there you go. That’s why I don’t connect. But here’s the thing, if, if Nate Dan would’ve showed me the colors that were truly coming out from the words, I would’ve never let her convince me of it that way. Cuz I’ve been like, Uhuh red, red is not my signature color. And let me tell you my internal reasoning of why is because I have red hair and I think bright red conflicts where my hair, so I’d never red. I was like, what a silly, ridiculous reason of going. Well I just, I don’t really have red in my wardrobe, so I don’t really think I can be a brand color. But that was like my very illogical process because emotions were tied into it versus going, no, these are the words that I say, define me.
AJV (19:08):
These are the words I wanna be known for. And then when you reveal the color, you’re kind of like, okay, and I need to like settle in with this a little bit. And I think the most amazing thing that happened for me, just as an example for all of you is I had an adverse reaction at first cuz I’m like, don’t really love red. And yet I look at the words and it’s like, bold. And it’s like, well, that’s pretty fricking bold. And it was like, I’m passionate. Well that’s pretty passionate. And it’s like all these things. And I’m like, why am I resisting this? And then it was the craziest thing. So for me, I’ll just give you this example. It was red purple, black gold, yeah. Are my colors. Did I miss one? I think those really, those were. And I walked out into my garage later that afternoon and Nadine, I haven’t even told you this story.
AJV (20:06):
And in my garage, I took a picture on my iPhone like 10 years ago of the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen in my life. And it was so breathtaking. I blew it up on this huge canvas and it’s in my garage and I walk out and I was getting in my car and it just caught my eye. And I looked up and I see this canvas there, and it is the most brilliant sunset of golds and dark shades of black and deep purple and reds and magentas. And for the first time ever I saw that and I was like, that is how I wanna be seen. I wanna be seen like that. And that’s how you should feel. That’s how you know it’s yours. And so I’m just curious, Nadine, if you could give us some examples of, could you just read off some of the words and colors that are represented that there’s 12, we don’t have time to do 12, but to kind give people an idea of what this is process is like. So if you’re not going through this process with someone that you’re working with, you should stop and go, why the heck not? Because if you’re just picking colors like I did at, at some point, you’re gonna go, man, that was fine for a season, but that’s just not really me. And you don’t have to do that. You can actually get it right the first time.
NH (21:27):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you want me to share some of what the keywords are for maybe your, your colors?
AJV (21:34):
Sure. You can do mine. I think this is just really helpful, but don’t tell us the color until after you read the words and just, I think this was a really powerful process that anyone can do if you just, like, even if you don’t, which we’re gonna give you access to do some of this really cool stuff that Nadine has created. But it’s like, just go Google these colors and go like, what words are associated with these? You can even do that.
NH (21:56):
Yeah. This is public information. So I’ll, I’ll share the words for my signature color, which you don’t know, so I’ll tell you what it is. But my words are creative, abundant, sociable, positive, passionate, joyful. Those are my words. And my signature color is orange. And I connect with orange on a very high level. I, when I did this test for myself a long time ago, and I figured out my was orange, I was like, that’s so interesting. I have so much orange in my closet. I have so many orange objects like decorative objects. And I realized that for years I was curating objects that were orange without even real because I was attracted to them without realizing that I, you know, I was attracted to that color for a reason. So that’s, that’s mine. Your secondary color. So we talked about red and what those, those words were for, for red, but your secondary color was visionary, purposeful, truthful, authentic, spiritual, ambitious, imaginative.
NH (23:02):
And that was purple, right? And so we talked about how we can marry purple with red to create these really deep fiery shades of purple that have all of those aspects of red but but still anchored in that purple color and all of that purple means. So let’s see. And another one, black is a color that is used a lot and not everybody that likes black ends up picking black as one of their cards. You did. But black is sophisticated, substantial, efficient, elegant, intelligent, confident, authoritative. So these are examples of the words. So these are the words that you need to connect with or either eliminate or choose as part of this exercise. And you know, and that’s why we do this by process of elimination, because you will find that you connect with a lot of words across a lot of different cards. But the the goal here is to connect with the cluster of word of words where you’re like, okay, I have a, you know, I identify myself with most of these words in this group of words, and that’s what leads you to, to your color. So do you want me to share?
AJV (24:10):
No, I think that’s, I think that’s good. I think, you know, for anyone who is listening, like nad has created so many different tools and quizzes and amazing things to help you do this. So if you go to brand builders group.com/db, digital brand kit db k, so brand builders group.com/db k you can go and check out and she’s got this amazing color quiz that will tell you what season you fall in, gives you all these cool different color palettes. But I think this is a really defining part of, like, this is a part that most people skip as they don’t really do this introspective work. And instead they go right into, well, I just need a website. So can you talk a little bit about like, the purpose of doing brand guidelines before you go into designing Yes. Fires, brochures, landing pages, and just kind of like talk about if you’re ready to go this route and it’s time, what is the process that someone should follow?
NH (25:08):
Yes. So I would say this, A lot of people when I ask someone, do you have your branding? They’ll say, yeah, I have my logo, I have my colors, I have my fonts, and I’m working on my, my website. So yeah, I have my branding. I’m like, yeah, where’s the rest of it? Did you not have your branding? You have the beginning, you have a style guide. That’s what you have . Those are your brand elements, but those brand elements now need to be infused into everything that you do because that’s how you accomplish brand cohesiveness. That is how you are able to create an online presence where no matter where people find you online, whatever touchpoint you have with people, everything looks like it belongs together. Everything looks like it’s you. And most people struggle with this. Like they’ll have, you know, they’ll have their look, website will look a certain way, and then their presentations, their PowerPoints will look completely different.
NH (26:02):
Usually because the website was made by a professional and the presentations were made by you trying to mimic what the professional did. and you’re struggling . And then your social media, you’re probably like curating some templates from Canada, whether they’re free or paid. And so that looks nothing like your website or anything else that you’re doing. And so your branding is a freaking mess, right? And so that is, that, that’s where you get that look. That’s, you know, not, not put together, not professional. And if you want that professional look, you need to have a cohesive brand, which means that those colors and fonts and logo that you have need to be infused into everything that you do, every brand asset. Now here’s the problem, most people don’t know what all the brand assets that they need, so they’re constantly reactive, right? You’re not proactively creating assets for your business.
NH (26:52):
You’re constantly in a oh, I need this shoot. Let, let me go hire somebody to do this. Oh, I need that. Oh man, I need to, okay, can you also create this for me? And so you’re constantly on this hamster wheel of asset creation on demand as the demand arises instead of proactively creating everything. And so digital brand is really the solution to that. Like I already surveyed and figured out, you know, surveyed people and, and, and did my homework and figured out all of the assets that a personal brand might need across all your platforms at every touchpoint from, you know, like a podcast if you have one all the way to your social media, to your webinars, to your, you know to your invoices, et cetera, et cetera. And so in order to have that cohesive brand across everything you need to infuse your, your style guide into everything. But you also need to know what all of those assets are, right? So yeah, that is, does that answer your question, ? Yeah.
AJV (27:50):
Some of the examples of like what are the assets that most people don’t even think about? Cause you said is like, I think a lot of people at some point are probably, okay, I know I need colors and I need fonts, and I need a logo. And that’s what they think is their brand guidelines. That’s what they think is their branding, but they’re missing so much more. So you can kind of just give us like a checklist of like, what are all the things that you don’t even know that you’re gonna need that you wanna make sure is cohesively done on the front end so that it’s not piecemealed together and it’s, you know, I think the benefit for me is like, if you do all of this work on the front end, it’s so much easier and cheaper and faster to do things later.
NH (28:31):
Absolutely. If you are able to execute on your ideas, like on the go quickly because you have materials that you need to execute on that idea, instead of like, oh, now I have to go create this template or buy this template and then I can create it, that saves you a lot of time. But to answer your question, some of the things that, you know, a lot of people won’t think of, it’s like, all right, so let’s say you go buy a social media, you know, Canva template pack that’ll give you, you know, like all of the little squares. But then are your, like all of those highlights at the top of your of your Instagram account, are those gonna be, you know, look the same as your Instagram picture? Are your stories going to look the same? And so it’s like, just across your social media, are your LinkedIn posts, do they look like your Instagram posts?
NH (29:19):
Are they branded the same? So just having cohesiveness within your social media is is something to look out for. But also I mean if I’m gonna enumerate things from the db k package, we have a course kit, for example. So if you’re gonna build a digital course, you are going to need slides, right? That you’re going to actually put your content into that, you’re going to then record on your, on your video lessons. You’re going to need the PPS that you’re gonna provide to people as downloads, as free downloads with your course. You are going to need a course roadmap template so that you can paint a picture to your students of like, here’s everything that you’re going to learn in each part of this course and give that to them as a pdf. You are going to need, once you get all of your course materials put together, you’re gonna need to upload all that into a course portal like Kajabi or Thinkific.
NH (30:10):
You’re gonna need to brand that, that’s gonna need a you know, banner image and thumbnails and all of those things. I created all of those things for you already, and that’s all in the course package. So the day that you decide that you wanna build a course, you don’t even know everything you need, you’re gonna open up your course kit and you’ll know exactly what you need to build your course and you’ll have it. And as a bonus, I give you a course outline builder that you can use to actually build the outline of your course and a, you know, in a smart way that’ll make it easy for you to record the course. So it’s weave in in some of the strategy other things that people won’t think about, like your videos, for example. Like you wanna start a YouTube channel, you are gonna need video thumbnails and you cannot afford to be creating video thumbnails on the go.
NH (30:53):
Like, especially if you’re gonna have them professionally done. Cuz if you wanna create a lot of videos and every time you need to spend, you know, three hours on camera just putting together one video thumbnail, you’re not gonna get very far. Right . So I give you a library, a video thumbnail. I also give you the the the end screens that you have at the end of your videos so that you can send people to other videos from your channel, right? That’s a graphic alone that you might go on fiber and spend two weeks doing back and forth emails with somebody just to have them create the thing that you need, the way that you want it. So it, it’s all of these things I won’t go into more, but it’s all of these things that you really don’t think about and can’t really think about until you’re in motion and actually doing the thing. Yeah. That’s when you realize, oh, I need this. And so you’re, you’re, you’re constantly doing this guesswork that I, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve tried my hardest to eliminate that
AJV (31:48):
Guesswork. Well, I would, I would, I would second as a customer, as our whole company, as a customer, and then I am personally a customer. It’s like what I would say that I think is really amazing about Digital Brain Kit and what you’ve created is it is all of the design, but it’s also the strategy. And that’s been with like partnerships with a variety of different tools and resources and education that you’ve gone out and done. But I think one of the things that’s really cool for the community at Brand Builders Group is like we were able to work with you of going, here’s what everyone’s gonna need in a speaker kit or in a media kit or, and so it’s like all of those things are pre-built in there. So, and I think that’s a really unique opportunity of going, it’s like you’re gonna need color fonts and logos, yes, but you’re also gonna need imagery.
AJV (32:32):
You’re gonna need the right size dimensioned banners, you’re gonna need thumbnails, you’re gonna need the bumper slides, you’re gonna need the highlights, right? You’re gonna need a press kit at some point. You’re gonna need a media kit for podcasts or just general media. You’re gonna need a PowerPoint slides for something at some point in your life, right? Yeah. So it’s like to have all of this done and kind of prepackaged together is, it’s not just beautiful design. It’s well architected in a way that helps conversion, but it’s also the strategy of going, oh my gosh, if you just think about all those things of how much it would cost and time and money to do them separately over the course of time by finding betting new vendors all the time is outrageous. And so you’ve been able to do that in this well consolidated package. And then I know that we mentioned this earlier, it’s like a part of this is having great design that reflects you and that will attract your audience. The second thing is that it’s done in an affordable way. And so I know one of your things is, is that you, you know, you, you say you need a a beginner brand, right? What do you starter brand? A starter brand Starter brand,
NH (33:43):
Yes. Like a starter home.
AJV (33:44):
Yeah. It’s like, and I think this is a really cool concept of you don’t need to go hire a $30,000 designer to go out and build a very high end professional brand. And what you need is you need something that can get you going. So you can, can you kinda tell us about what that is and what that looks like?
NH (34:04):
Yeah. You don’t need to go hire somebody expensive to create this beautiful professional brand for you if you are just starting out Now, if you’re, you know, 5, 7, 10 years into business and you’re, you’re like, I know who I am, I know who I’m serving, I’m very clear, I’ve got the money. Yes, by all means, splurge away and get yourself the best designer ever. But if you are just starting out, first of all, it’s not a good investment because your brand at this stage of your business is very fluid. You are gonna iterate, you are still figuring out who you are in your market and also who you’re serving and who you’re attracting. And you’re not really gonna get answers to those questions of who are you and who are you serving until you actually get into motion and build momentum and start showing up and start doing things, and then let the market respond to you, and then let yourself kind of figure things out.
NH (34:56):
So as you’re figuring things out, things might change. Who you are might change who you serve. You’re like, you know what, these people are not who I wanna serve. You’ve got a lot of complainers, a lot of freeloaders, like I’m attracting all sorts of wrong people. , this is not right. I I need to, I need to pivot. So we, you cannot, I mean, it would be a shame to pivot out of a $30,000 visual identity that you just had custom made, right? that would hurt. And so what, what you need at this point in your business, do they start a brand, what I call a starter brand? A starter brand is something that you can get off the ground in, you know, less than 24 hours that’s gonna cost you less than $2,000. And that is going to give you everything that you need to get into motion to start putting yourself out there to start creating content and publishing content and building that momentum so that you can get that feedback that’s going to either confirm that you are in the right visual identity and that this visual identity could probably serve you well.
NH (35:57):
Like you could get a lot of miles out of, out of a starter brand, maybe five years, maybe seven years with that starter brand. Or maybe you’ll realize six months down the road, yeah, I picked this visual identity, it’s not serving me well. I need to pivot. Well, you’ve only lost $2,000 at this point which is not $30,000. And you also, most importantly, did not lose months and months of, of time of like going back and forth with designers to figure, you know, to build things. All of that frustration and time you now saved yourself because you got all your assets in one instant download. You didn’t go create them and, you know, invest your time and money into creating them. So, so really it’s you know, I like to say it’s like a starter home. Like you can not as a first time home buyer go out and buy your dream home.
NH (36:42):
Like that’s not the smart move. Like, you need to go buy a starter home first, , you know, build some equity and figure out what you want in a home. Like, you know, what, what are the things that you like about this home and that you wanna have or that you don’t have that you wanna have in your next home? And then you figure out what your dream home is going to be. So same thing with your brand. Don’t try to build the perfect brand right off the gate. And also don’t get hung up on on your branding too much. Don’t get too personal with it. That’s the other advice that I really wanna share because you know, it’s, it’s beyond perfectionism. Perfectionism is one thing, but getting hung up on, oh, I don’t know if this is the right combination of these colors together.
NH (37:25):
And you know, a lot of people get really personal with it. And so it’s like, well at the end of the day, this brand is not about you. It’s about your business and what you’re building and who you’re going to attract. And the goal here is to get things done, is to make things happen. So stop getting hung up on the colors and on the fonts and oh, maybe this other font looks like this one really, it’s very close, but it’s not exactly, it’s a little bit more round on the edges and it’s like you’re wasting time. You are procrastinating. Just take something and go with it and go make things happen. And then, you know, maybe two years down the road when you have a seven figure business, you can afford to then go to a designer and argue about which font is rounder and better for you
AJV (38:11):
Time
NH (38:11):
To do that.
AJV (38:12):
That’s the best advice that any designer could give someone, is the point of this is not to get caught up in the details. Because I think that’s often what designers do. And I think that’s also why I love what you do so much. Cuz it’s not about the granularity of well, this hangs this way and it’s, it’s like, no, the point of this is to get things done is to get things in motion. It is, is to start knowing that things are gonna evolve and change over time as you evolve and change as your audience evolves and change. But I, I know so many people, so many people that the only reason they haven’t launched is because of something like this holding them back. And it’s like, this is the best advice is like, hey, this is the point is not to make it perfect. The point is to get something done so you can get things in motion.
NH (39:01):
Yeah. And I, I’d wanna share one other thing that’s very important to me to share with the people is if you are going to for any reason, hire somebody to help you with your design you need to know how to choose who you’re going to hire. Oh, .
AJV (39:20):
Okay. So if we can just go from, I’m just gonna start with the point is not to make things perfect, it’s to get things done and then you’ll pick up with something else I really wanna share. Okay. So the the whole point is not to get things perfect, it’s to get things done so you can get things in motion. That’s what’s important.
NH (39:39):
Yes. And the other thing I wanna share that’s really important to me is for people who want to go out there and hire somebody to help them with this, and that’s perfectly fine if, if you choose to do so. I would just say you wanna be mindful of, of who you are hiring and how you manage the process because there are, there’s, you can make one of two decisions when you’re gonna hire somebody. You can either hire a an affordable junior designer who is going to get things done on the cheap and quickly, or you can hire a designer who’s also a creative director. The difference between the two obviously is monetary first. The creative director is gonna be more expensive than the junior designer. But the reason why is because the junior designer isn’t is somebody who executes on your vision, your creative direction, and your very specific guidelines.
NH (40:32):
And a junior designer is typically not somebody who is first in marketing, digital marketing, the online business, personal branding or any of that. They know how to make beautiful designs and they will apply exactly what you tell them. But you need to inform everything that you give them. You need to, to educate them a little bit and also give them very specific instructions and very specific feedback because that is the only way that you’re gonna get good actual good design from them. So if you are working with somebody and you are getting frustrated because they’re sending you things that you’re like, well, no, this is not what I asked for. No, this is not what I meant. No, you’re not getting this and you’re in a position, you’re, and you’re finding yourself having to write a lot of mean emails .
AJV (41:19):
Nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to. Yeah. Which
NH (41:21):
Nobody likes to write those mean emails. But if you’re finding yourself on the cusp of sending an email that says, no idiot, that’s not what I asked for . It’s probably not their fault. It’s probably yours. It’s probably because you’re not giving them the creative direction and the instructions that they need because you think that they’re mind readers first of all. And you think that they know they know anything about digital marketing or personal branding or this asset that you’re asking them to create. They don’t. So it’s your responsibility to be the creative director for that designer. That’s now, that’s a problem that you would not have when you design, when you hire a creative director. But again, this is where you are going to have to, you know drop a little bit more money there. You have to up your budget to have a creative director, which will take those kinds of things off your, off your shoulders.
NH (42:15):
But still, you have to find a creative director who is also versed in marketing and digital marketing and personal branding and is used to working with high profile brands so that they can actually, you know, steer you in the right direction with certain things and know how to create certain strategic branding assets and communication assets, et cetera. And so, again, that is the other thing that I wanted to create initially when I created the first iteration of Digital Brand Kit, I really just went to make beautiful designs for people. But as I did and I started got into motion, right? And got this into the hands of people, the feedback that I got was, well, I need strategy, I need, I need help actually executing on this. And so that is where I went out and got, you know, took classes and learned more about this. I was like, I’m certified in digital psychology and and I’m certified in all of the things that you know, so that I know how to infuse all of that into these designs so that you don’t need to make those decisions, right? Or figure those things out on your own again, so that you can go and get things done. So I just wanted to caution people about working with other designers and what that looks like and where your frustrations might be coming from.
AJV (43:31):
I think that’s good. So if you get terrible designs, it’s your fault. It’s your fault
NH (43:36):
Basically. ,
AJV (43:38):
I think that, I think there is a lot of truth in that because when you don’t go through the initial brand guidelines process in general of really defining like, what are my signature colors and what are these things, it’s like how in the world is someone else supposed to get into the inner workings of your mind? Who is your core target audience? What are you offering without a ton of time? And the more time it takes, the more costs. And so it’s like the more work you can do on the front end of being like, I want, I’m very clear on this. And if you’re not ready to invest that amount of time and money, the starter brand that, like, that’s who this was built for. But it’s like as you elevate out of that and you go, now I want something a little bit more, you know, elevated, that’s the word. It’s like you’re still, it takes it’s time and it’s introspective and I think that’s the part that people wanna skip through and they go, I just want something that’s awesome, awesome. Put it up there. And it’s like, well it’s not gonna be awesome unless we go through this process. I think that’s so wise. And I know we just have a couple more minutes yet and I just wanna do a couple of like rapid fire questions for you, for everyone out there who’s going, okay.
NH (44:48):
Hmm. ,
AJV (44:49):
What, what should I be doing? Like what are some, like the big things I should be looking for? So I’m just gonna do some like rapid fire questions outside of doing like a colorblind test, like what would you say, what should people be doing to have an idea of what their visual identity should look like?
NH (45:08):
Hmm. I’ll tell you what they should not be doing. Don’t go build a Pinterest board
AJV (45:14):
, right? Feedback.
NH (45:17):
Don’t go build a Pinterest board if you’re gonna do one thing. It would be take a piece of paper and write down who your ideal client avatar is. Mm-Hmm. and, and, and just excruciating detail, who is this person as if they’re real person, give them a name, describe him or her, what they do, who they follow. And that is probably the best time that you could spend because when you do come up with your visual identity, that’s who you need to test your visual identity against. You’re gonna need to, you know, read off your, your, your client avatar description and imagine that as a real person and imagine whether or not this person’s going to be attracted to this visual identity that you created. And that is one of the tasks that you know, that you would run your visual identity by is your ica. So that would be my answer.
AJV (46:09):
I love that. I think that’s, I think that’s really wise up going. Your visual identity is not for you.
NH (46:15):
No it’s not.
NH (46:18):
Beautiful picture is that you pinned on pinches doesn’t mean that’s your visual branding. I know you feel , I’m not talking to you aj, just a little. But you’re, the thing is, is we all, I’ve made this mistake, so I’m not above any of this. I’ve made all the mistakes. Guess that’s why I’m so wise . That’s why I know all these things is because I screwed up first. I, I went for years thinking that pink was my signature color and it’s not, it was not, it’s, it’s not my signature color orange. I like to infuse pink a lot of things just because it’s the color that is dear to me, but it’s not my signature color. I made that mistake. I made mistakes with my fonts. I made mistakes with creating p board and pinning all these beautiful pictures that I like. And what I end up with is a soup of, there’s beauty everywhere. You’ll find beauty in a lot of things, but you, if you curate a board that has a lot of different beautiful things, you’re gonna have a very hard time finding the through line that is going to bring all of that together into something that makes sense and that is cohesive. So that’s why I say don’t go build a Pinterest board. You can build one after you figure out your signature color, but not before.
AJV (47:24):
Oh, I think that’s so good. And I, I love that. You know, it’s like, as you were talking, it just made me think it’s like you’re not building a website so you can go look at it. You’re not posting social media so you can go read your own posts, right? You’re doing this so that it reaches someone that you care about serving. And so it’s, it’s gotta be reflective of who you are so that you can attract the people that you are trying to curate as your audience. And that’s, that’s so good. Cause I think the emotions of people, the reason this is so hard for people is because they want it to be so perfect for them and they forget that this is not for you, this is for your audience. That I love that. That’s so good. Okay. Other quick things just like high level, how often do you think people should be posting like visual things online?
AJV (48:15):
You know, cuz I think, you know, I see so many people where it’s like they’ve gone to just like black and we black and white text, or some people just use photography now, or some people have like curated like design posts for social media. And I’m just curious, it’s like one, how often do you think somebody should be posting something that’s like attached to their brand? Like design-wise? Mm-Hmm. mm-hmm. versus like videos and stuff that’s really just has no design elements at all. Mm-Hmm. is, so any ideas or thoughts around that?
NH (48:44):
Can, are we talking specifically about Instagram? Sure.
AJV (48:47):
Example about Instagram? I think that’s probably the most visual of all the platform. Yeah,
NH (48:51):
I would say just enough that if somebody is scrolling through your, your feed and looking at your images, they’re getting enough pops of your brand color throughout that they’re recognizing that there’s some sort of cohesive you know brand elements that are coming up, you know, over and over again. So I would say as much as you can, but not to where it’s, you know, overkill. So, but just pops of your brand color throughout would be, you know, just so it’s like cohesive with your brand. That would be my
AJV (49:23):
Just enough where it’s like you can get the feel from it. And I think that’s like all these different trends where it’s like so many people are just the, just doing photos of themselves. And so that was the second question is should you infuse your brand colors into your photography?
NH (49:39):
Yes. That’s a great question. Guess what, the only Adobe tool that as a non-designer I know how to use is light room and light room. If you buy certain presets or if you can use pre-made presets that you find in Lightroom, Lightroom will let you put a filter on your images and you can mass do this on many images and just put these filters. So why this is useful is, let’s say that your visual identity has a lot of cool tones in it, cool cooler colors, right? Maybe some blues and some lavenders, things like that. You’re not gonna wanna have your photos be very warm, have warm tones because it’ll clash with the, the, the cooler tones of your branding. So if you wanna have something cohesive in your in your feed, you’re gonna want your imagery to have those cool tones. And that’s something that you can do in Lightroom using these they’re called presets. So if you just literally Google Lightroom presets you’ll find tons of vendors that have beautiful presets that you can just put these filters on all of your images and vice versa. If you have warm colors, go with warmer filters and that will give you that nice cohesive look.
AJV (50:51):
Is Lightroom also the tool that you use where you can like do the cutouts or remove the background?
NH (50:57):
No, that would be, well technically that’s Photoshop, but I don’t use Photoshop cuz I don’t know how to use Photoshop. I use a tool called remove.bg, so the website is removed bg and it’s so awesome. It’s like, I don’t know how much I paid less than $10 a month. And you literally drag and drop an image into this thing and it’ll remove the background for you. And it’s genius. So that’s, that’s another awesome tool that I would recommend.
AJV (51:22):
I think that’s super cool. Specifically if you’re in this like starter brand mode where it’s like you’re gonna be doing a lot of this DIY and just going, how do you do this? Can’t figure it out. Yeah. It’s just knowing some of these really cool tools. So that one’s called Remove bg.
NH (51:38):
Remove bg.
AJV (51:39):
Yeah. So super cool. So any other cool design tools like that that it’s like for you out there, who is the, you know, DIY of going, man, how do I make this awesome, but I don’t, I don’t got a lot of skills, so help me out. Any other tips or tools that you think would helpful?
NH (52:00):
You’re putting me on the spot. I’m thinking I have, like, I have an entire bookmark folder that has resources in it, but there is another one that’s the equivalent of remove.bg, but for videos. So you can actually remove the background from your videos and it’s called onscreen, so I think it’s onscreen.com. But just Google onscreen and it’s basically you just load your video into it and it’ll remove the background and then you can actually po you know, put your video with any background that you want. So that’s pretty cool. I, you know easy gift.com for making gifts gifts are just such an easy way that, you know, you can add like a little motion and something that pops. You can put this in your emails, you can put it in your presentations. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways that you could do this.
NH (52:50):
, I will share one more and it’s place it, which is a tool that will allow you to create mockups. So, you know, mockups of like tablets or phones or all sorts of things, and mockups are something that you probably a lot of people don’t, don’t know to use, but don’t think to use. But it’s a great way to give physical form to all of your digital products, right? So courses or coaching programs that are these like non-physical things, this is how you give them a physical, you know, look and presence is through these mockups. And so that’s a great way to do it. By the way, digital brand has tons of mockup templates just saying, but if you wanted to use this tool, it’s also a really easy, easy tool to use.
AJV (53:39):
So I love that y’all like, this is so helpful. And it’s, you know, just, it does, again, it doesn’t matter if you are just getting started or you’re super established. We always need something refreshed with our visual identity at some point, right? You’re gonna need a new asset, you’re gonna need a refresh of social media, you know, square images. You’re gonna need new headers, you’re gonna book designs, Prescott designs, new speeches. It’s like the list goes on and on and on. And at some point you’re gonna need to keep things fresh, right? You can’t have the same thing that you used five years ago, and nothing has changed ever since. It’s gotta be refreshed. And so there’s so many different tools that Nadine has created to make that process easier for you. And the easiest thing of all is to make sure that you start with a solid set of brand guidelines that really reflect you. So one of the things that I would just really encourage is at the very least, go to this website and take this color. Yeah. And it’s like, this is an amazing tool to get you pointed in the right direction of this is what you say about yourself without looking at colors, which is a really important thing. So again, brand builders group.com/db. And go take this. Nadine, if people wanna follow you personally, where do you want ’em to go?
NH (55:00):
Well, I would say check me out on Instagram. I’m not very active on it, but , but I, I DM all the time, so I’m happy to DM with you. So that will be at nafi, aa and then otherwise just, you know, shoot me an [email protected] if you have any questions.
AJV (55:23):
Ah, so generous. If you guys have got questions, you know, dmr most of the questions are taken care of for you with digital blankets, be honest. But this is so many good tips, so many good tools. We’ll link all of those design tools in the show notes for you guys. And we’ll also link brain builders group.com Forge slash dk. Go check it out. Take the color quiz get started. Keep building, keep doing what you’re doing. Nadine, thank you so much for being here. And everyone, we’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.