Ep 278: Building an Empire with Life Changing Content with Cary Jack
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden. Here I am. One of your co-hosts as well as the CEO and one of the co-founders of brand builders group, along with my partner in crime, Rory Vaden, who is not here with me today, this is my solo episode, but my good friend, Cary Jack, whom I’m so excited to have on the show. And I know Cary personally, I got to be on his podcast a few months ago, which was probably one of the funnest podcasts that I’ve ever been on. And so total shout out to the happy hustle podcast. You should definitely go check it out. It was so fun and I love all the things that you do with that. But before we get started and I turn it over to Cary and help you guys learn a little bit about Cary, I do have a professional bio, but I will read because undoubtedly, I will forget some of these really awesome accolades, but I think are also fascinating about Cary.
AJV (00:58):
So, all right, I’m gonna give you kind of like what to me sticks out that you should really know listening to this, why you should stick around and why this is a really important episode for you. So Cary Jack is a lifestyle entrepreneur. He’s an author, he’s a podcast host. He’s also a professional actor and model. He’s a biohacker eco warrior, martial artist, humanitarian. I mean, it’s like, what aren’t you do? So there’s so many things going up, but when I say like he is doing really extraordinary things, he’s also worked with extraordinary brands. I mean, I’m talking about like he’s represented international brands like Burberry EZ top man, Corona Marriott Royal Caribbean Cadillac, Vogue home Depot, like the list goes on and on and on. So with all of that said, we literally could talk about just interesting things for the next 40 minutes, but in an effort to keep this call very focused, we’re gonna talk about some really unique things that I think are gonna help our listeners. So Cary, welcome. I’m doing the show,
CJ (02:05):
AJ, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here and yep. We definitely could go down many rabbit holes, but I’m all about adding value to the audience and ID. I have, you know, a really great insight to building and growing and izing your personal brand. And I really am excited to share. So some of the wisdom that I’ve acquired and the mistakes that I’ve learned from along the journey,
AJV (02:28):
Oh my gosh, this is gonna be such a great episode one, because I know your background and I know your story. And I’ve seen so much of it firsthand over the last few years, but also just because you’re so humble and you’re just such a, a joyful human being. I’m so excited for this. So all right. So I know a ton about you, our listeners do not so help everyone kinda get to know, like, how did you get to where you are? And then tell us a little bit about where are you, right? Like what are you doing? And how’d you get there?
CJ (02:59):
Oh yeah. So I grew up half in Sarasota, Florida surfing the beaches and you know, enjoying that, that Florida lifestyle and then half in the mountains of red lodge, Montana camp and fishing, hunting, hiking. And, you know, that’s where I first realized the importance of balance, you know, both balance with my environment, but also just balance, you know, professionally and personally, my, my childhood, wasn’t the easiest. Everyone has a story, but you know, I, I actually was dropped on my head as a child. I don’t even know if you know that AJ, but I had a very severe stutter. I couldn’t speak I was very angry. I a very angry kid because I couldn’t articulate myself. And my mom actually cured me with chiropractic and she would adjust my cranial SAC bones and I can speak okay now. And I, but due to that, I, I was very angry. I went to many years of anger management, which is odd because I run a company called the happy hustle now. And
AJV (04:00):
You’re so joyful. I said that,
CJ (04:04):
Yeah, well, I wasn’t always and then I got into some trouble when I was young, you know, there was a gut wrenching divorce mixed in and, and mental and physical and emotional abuse. And I actually ended up moving 24 times before the age of 18. So I was on the move a lot got into some, some crime. I’ll, I’ll leave a lot of that out, but I ended up in jail that’s for a
AJV (04:27):
Happy hour conversation.
CJ (04:28):
Yeah. That’s for drinks. And and you know, one on one where I can’t incriminate myself, but I learned the hard way basically. And I’ve always been a, a hustler I’ll say, but I ever, I, wasn’t always a happy hustler. You know, always been an entrepreneur at heart. Fast forward, you know, I changed my ways. I operate now with a hundred percent integrity and I really, you know, like I just completely did a 180 because I saw that path and where I was headed and I just didn’t want to go that direction. And I actually launched a company in New York city with my brother business partner in friend grant. And, you know, we were grinding AJ. I mean, we were working our, our tails off just a hundred plus hour weeks, you know, getting less than five hours of sleep and you know, all for what, for profit success, ego, you know, title.
CJ (05:15):
And I feel like a lot of people out there can resonate with, you know, grinding, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Yeah. You know, and, and I was no different. We had this big tech company that we were soliciting, these seven figure VC funding deals. And we actually ended up getting the seven figure VC funding deals. We inked partnerships with Microsoft and IBM. And we had everything for this like grandiose tech company that could have had a five year exit and multiple millions of dollars come with. And I just realized, right, when we were sitting down to sign the contract, that I couldn’t take the money, like my brother and I were just so unhappy, we were so burnt out and I just feel, now there’s an epidemic going on. Sure. There’s a pandemic, but there’s an epidemic and it’s this entrepreneurial burnout. Yeah.
CJ (06:00):
And I just made up my mission to solve that problem for myself. And I had to make a choice. I, I said no to the money, my brother and I folded the company in 18 months of hard work scrapped, you know, completely, I, I then moved to ANCO Thailand for 10 months and I just figured out a better way to work and live over there a, a way to truly be happy within the hustle. And that’s where the happy hustle was born. And that’s kind of where I’m at now is, you know, running this, this company that helps entrepreneurs mainly, but really anyone who’s struggling with balance imbalances. My one word, if you know, BBG, you know, your one word problem imbalance is the one word problem that I solve for people. And I do that in a multitude of ways, but that’s really kind of the journey in a nutshell.
AJV (06:48):
Wow. You know what I love so much about almost every single person who comes on this show and really anyone who has really ingrained themselves in the BG community is they all have done it over this like mission focused of, I wanted to make a difference for myself, for someone else. It’s like, it’s like money has always been the byproduct of it, not at the forefront. And I love that. It’s like I turned down the money because I wasn’t happy and I had to figure out a better way to live. And so I’m so curious what happened in Thailand? Like what did you discover in Thailand?
CJ (07:26):
Well, a lot of things happened in Thailand. You know, I traveled around a bunch went to all sorts of really cool places from Vietnam to Singapore, to Bali and everywhere in between. But what really had happened was I made my first dollars online, you know, and I was like, I rented this amazing penthouse apartment for like 400 us dollars, you know, and I was working from a laptop and I just realized that you don’t have to like sell your soul to make a living. You could actually make money and a difference, you know, if you get clear on who you wanna help. And so it kind of just came full circle when I was over there, like, okay, I want, I really want to enjoy my everyday, you know, journey. And I, I think what happens with a lot of people especially type a driven individuals is, you know, lack there of a better cliche. They get to the top of the mountain and they realize they’re the only one there. And they isolated everyone. And then they gotta go all the way back down and then climb a different mountain. And that’s kind of how it happened to me. And, you know, I just, when I was over there, I realized I can enjoy every single day. I can enjoy the journey, not just the destination, you know, as a happy hustle life that I actually love.
AJV (08:44):
Ah, I love that. And I’ve been there too. I felt like I, I spent 10 years basically putting myself in this like tiny little corner where I missed every wedding, every birthday party, every baby shower, all in the sake of revenue and profit ambition. And I’ve been there. I know that feeling. And so, okay. So you kinda like figured out, like, this is my life cannot be about money. If there there’s gotta be this balance here, I have to figure this out. You go to Thailand, you travel around, you start money online, right? Yep. So walk us through that for everyone’s listening, because we have a ton of people who listen that they are in the grind and they’ve got a full time, you know, corporate job and maybe they plan on leaving, maybe they don’t, but how did it all start? Like what did you start doing online? How did you generate that first dollar? Like what did that look like?
CJ (09:35):
Yeah. Well, for me, you know, I kind of evolved my, my brand and my messaging, which I think a lot of people out there will end up doing as well. You know, what you start as, will not be what you finish as, or even in the middle where you end up it’s, it’s honestly getting clear on like who you want to help first and foremost, and what problem you actually wanna help them solve? Just like, you know, the brand builders group, like core three questions is what’s the one word problem that you wanna solve for people who do you wanna solve it for exactly. Right. Customer, demographics and psychographics. And then what’s your uniqueness. And like, although I didn’t do it that specific, you know, with that specific terminology, although I am a BG client, as well as a BG evangelist, you know, I’m going back to Thailand. I wasn’t in that mindset. I just said, you know what? I can help these people just through a webinar. I just sold a webinar. And I just started, you know, open with like accountability and mindset. And it was just really like basic stuff, you know, but I, I just, it was, and it was a very low price point, but it, it gave me social proof that, wow, I can, I can do this. I
AJV (10:53):
Can do this. So for anyone out there, who’s going, would anyone actually want what I have to say? Would anyone sign up? Would anyone pay for this? Like, what would you tell for that person who just is hesitant to take that first step of saying, I’m gonna do a webinar, I’m gonna do it for free. I’m gonna charge for it. I’m just gonna start. Like, what would you say to them?
CJ (11:15):
I would say 100%. Don’t let the fear hold you back. You know, we all have that, that little voice inside our head. We all have the self-limiting beliefs and the compare and despair, who am I to share this message, you know, X so and so is so much more qualified. And as soon as you he R’s advice, which I love, you know, when the mission to serve is clear, there is no fear. And so I think if you can just get out of your own head and start to focus on service and realize that you have a message, you have a gift and the world needs it. Then you, you can push past that fear and, and really just start and, and that, and you nailed it, AJ. That’s what it is. It started like you have to take action and, and just start.
AJV (12:00):
Hmm. That’s so good. I’ve never actually heard it. Say I’ve never heard anyone say it that way. Compare and despair because that’s what happens when you compare, you immediately like self isolate and go, well, I can’t do this, this person’s already doing this. It’s like, the more that you compare, it’s like that fear just like takes over and tells you no, you can’t.
CJ (12:19):
Yep. Yep.
AJV (12:20):
That’s so good. I love that. Right. So that’s amazing. So clearly you don’t live in Thailand anymore. You’re back in the states. You’re in good. All of Montana. So tell us a little bit about like, what are you doing right now? Because you just recently had a major accomplishment with your first book. Right? I already talked about your podcast. So how did you go from, I think I’m gonna do this one thing online to now you’re a published author. You’re a speaker. You’re got this amazing podcast. Like, how did that happen?
CJ (12:54):
Yeah. Well, I do have to give credit to BBG. I, I went to finding your brand DNA and that was the catalyst. Like, it’s always easier to reverse engineer, you know, the process looking backwards and say, oh, that’s what the step was. And then the next step. Yeah. But truly when I look at my journey, you know, I was thrown to spaghetti on the walls for like the three years, you know, I was like, oh, I can help this person. And I can help this person. Oh, you need help. And fitness coaching, oh, you need business or entrepreneur, you know, and I wasn’t clear. And you know, when you try to be everything to everyone, you actually become nothing to know one. And so you have to get clear. And, and when I went to the finding your brand DNA event in Nashville, you and R you know, this was like, this was like, oh, G B B G, just when it started, it was like
AJV (13:37):
Very in the earlys.
CJ (13:38):
Yes, it was. And, and that, you know, that event really helped me crystallize my message. And it just helped me clarify the, the vision. And I’ve always been big into goal setting. However, when you actually go through and get someone like AJ or Rory, or the BBG personal brand strategist to help give you perspective, you know, sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. And that is really what happened. It gave me perspective. It helped me identify, who’s my perfect target, avatar. Who, where do they hang out? You know, how do I reach them? What problem am I actually gonna solve for them? And I actually gonna solve a forum so fast forward, you know, I’ve, I’ve run high level masterminds for my perfect avatar of, you know, imbalanced entrepreneurs. I’ve I’ve done, you know, all sorts of online courses. I’ve done books and, and speaking and events right now, what I’m focused on is my podcast, which, you know, that’s been a great tool to build the know like, and trust with my tribe.
CJ (14:42):
Yeah. However, it’s also a great tool to network. And I know you and Roy talk about the power of networking through a podcast. I, so I essentially use my podcast to add as much value as possible. And then I have my free plus shipping book funnel, which my book acts as a lead magnet. And then it transitions into my online course. And I have this blisful bouncer whiteboard, fridge magnet that then par lays into a reoccurring membership model. And then I have a high level, a mastermind, epic camping adventure, where I actually take high level entrepreneurs into the back country, Montana wilderness for five days. And we, we camp out we hike in about 10 miles and we bring in a primitive survival expert, a fly fishing expert. You know, we have a back country chef and we have a business mastermind in the wilderness, completely connected.
AJV (15:30):
I’m gonna right here. Cuz I think this is really significant to anyone who is out there trying to build their personal brand, trying to monetize it. I’m just realizing it’s like, you really have one set of curriculum, but with that you have a podcast, you have a course, you have a book, you have a lead magnet. You have speaking, you have this membership program, you have this high level mastermind, but it’s all centered around one set of curriculum. And I think that’s a really significant thing of going. You don’t have to have tons and tons of tons of content. You need one set of life changing content that actually makes a difference. And then you just create it in a variety of, to meet people where they are.
CJ (16:15):
You nailed it. So how did,
AJV (16:16):
How did you determine which formats were best for you and your audience? Cause I think that’s a really important thing is people are trying to figure out with so many things that I could do. How do I know what I should do?
CJ (16:29):
Yeah. Well again, just echoing your point. You’ve really want to get crystal clear on your framework, your content, how you solve the problem. You should know who you solve the problem for, but how you solve. The problem is going to determine where you are going to solve the problem in terms of medium, right? Someone potentially who listens to my podcast, maybe isn’t ready to invest in the Montana mastermind, camping adventure. So I need to meet them where they’re at with free content, a free lead magnet, you know, all sorts of valuable things that build that no like, and trust. Then when they’re ready, I can nurture them to potentially joining my online course. You know, that’s a scalable offer that can really add a ton of value, but further nurture that relationship. Then when they’re ready for more, then they could, you know, ascend themselves or through my marketing to an online membership model. And I just think anyone out there listening, who’s struggling, you know, in, in terms of where to start, you have to think who is your perfect avatar? Like, you know, if you’re, if you’re working with busy entre who are, you know, maybe 40 to 50 years of, of age, well, they’re probably not gonna be on TikTok. Okay. They’re probably gonna be on LinkedIn. Right. Maybe they’ll be on TikTok. I feel like who knows these days? Who knows?
CJ (17:50):
I don’t, I don’t know. My team handles all that. I, I, I just can’t do the dancing as I love dancing, but that’s with my fiance and at the, you know, at the dance hall anyway, the point is, you gotta think about like, they’re not gonna think of where your avatar is and then serve them there where they’re already at. Like again, like BBG does these high level strategy days, you know, some people aren’t like, aren’t going to sit in front of a course. They’re just not gonna watch a video on their laptop on a Saturday. They, they want one on one hand holding, you know? So you have to think about where your perfect avatar is. And then where is going to be best to connect with them, to be relatable for them to share your story and your, your process and your message so that you can make a positive impact in their life.
AJV (18:37):
Oh man, I’ll tell you what I took away from that, that I think is so significant is stop looking around at what everyone else is doing and look directly at the people you need to serve, that you are meant to serve and go, what do they need need? How can they consume this? Yep. And stop trying to do the next trendy thing just because someone else is doing it, they may not have your audience. So focus on your audience, focus on the person that you’re trying to serve and build it for them.
CJ (19:05):
Yep. And into that,
AJV (19:07):
I love that. That’s so good. Now, speaking of this curriculum one of the things that I, I do wanna talk about, cause we mentioned this earlier is you don’t need five different sets of curriculum or all this content and five different keynotes. Like that’s not necessary to build an empire worthy business. You need one life changing set of content. So let’s talk about content from in it because yours is really good. And it’s, it’s really awesome. And I just want two things out of this kind of like last piece of our conversation. I know we’re almost out of time. So I think the first thing is how did you come up with this content? Like how did you actually go, this is a book, right? This needs to be in a book and in a course, and here’s what I’m gonna do. And then two, what is it like give us some of the fruits of all of your labor.
CJ (19:59):
Yes. Well, again, it starts by just, it started for me at least by scratching my own it, you know, I was outta balance. I needed to get back to flow in, in a, in alignment, you know? And so I just broke my life into these 10 different areas. I’m now calling them 10 alignments. And this was basically, you know, me just determining how I can get back to this state of blissful balance. And for me, I broke it down into an acronym. It didn’t start as an acronym. Obviously it evolves, you know, we
AJV (20:29):
Love an acronym, Cary.
CJ (20:30):
I know you love an acronym. Yep. And that’s really, you know, one of the things that I realized is acronyms and frameworks for everyone listening are so imperative because people have a lot going on. And if they can’t remember your content, well, chances are, it’s not going to positively impact their life. You know? So you have to think through this and you wanna make it so easy to consume and so easy to implement, but not necessarily, you know, repetitive, you don’t wanna like be a copycat. So for me, my framework’s not rocket science. I’ll be the first one to tell you, it’s not rocket science. It’s just, I broke my life down to these 10 different areas. It’s called the soul mapping, you know, framework it, it’s essentially your soul’s mapped to the blissfully bounce promise land. And you know, AJ, I’ll, I’ll run through this real quick for the audience, but I want everyone out there to actually quantify where they’re at in each of these 10 different areas, these 10 different alignments and AJ, if you wanna get put on the spot, I’ll if you’re feeling brave, I’ll ask you where you’re, where you’re at in these.
CJ (21:39):
But basically I want you to think about five is like an a you’re crushing it. You know, you’re, you’re really happy hustling in this alignment, like an F you’re failing. And as you know, what you measure you can manage. So it’s really important to measure yourself in each of these 10 alignments. And I do it every Sunday. I take my own medicine every Sunday and I look at where I am lacking in the week, you know, prior and where I need to prioritize change in the week ahead. And so it’s this cons ebb and flow of adjustments. Now S stands for selfless service. Are you living for yourself and your own personal gain or are you giving back to others, your, your expertise, your time, your money, think right now where you’re at in the last, just give yourself in the last seven days where you’re at in selfless service five as an a, as an F, write it down.
CJ (22:30):
Okay. And everyone out there listening, be an active participant here. I get the most outta podcasts like this. When I take action, I actually, you know, implement, but also do the work O stands for optimized health. Are you, you know, optimize mentally, physically, and emotionally or not so much, I are you, you know, shoving garbage down the, your pie hole at, you know, feeling sluggish and just not, you know, not nearly optimized and, and be honest with yourself. One to five, five’s an a, one’s an F you unplugged digitally. Are you constantly plugged in connected to your devices? Like looking at social media, watching Netflix and Amazon prime and all these other things that we’re inundated with, or are you being diligent and having barriers and using your tech, not letting it use you L loving relationships, are you, you know, having love in your life? I mean, what’s it all for, if you don’t have love in your life, right. AJ, I mean, you, you want to make sure that you’re connected with your personal relationships, your family, your friends, but also your lover, you know, making sure that that relationship doesn’t, you know, get sacrificed in the process of your Ascension. Right. So this is the sole part. Okay. In AJ, do you wanna run through yours for the so part real quick?
AJV (23:51):
Yeah. I have no shame in this. So and the Fs, I’m a four. I feel like I’m, I’m pretty good with that. On the O I’m a four to feel pretty good about that. Yeah. On the U I’m a one I fail. It’s a major, your F terrible I need help. And on the L I’ll give us a five, I got lots of love. I feel lots of love it’s all around so that I feel really good about.
CJ (24:14):
Yep, exactly. And that’s, and here’s the thing, guys, just give yourself grace, you know, right now this is just your baseline and you have to be honest with yourself, but you also wanna give yourself grace. Now we get to the map and part M stands for mindful spirituality, you know, are you connected to a higher power? Are you, you know, meditating and praying and, and, you know, practicing breath work, like, are you believing in something bigger than yourself, right. That’s, that’s an M rank five is an, a, one is an F a, a above financially, you know, are you living paycheck the paycheck, or are you doing what you want when you want with who you want? You know, are, are you abundant? And, you know, oftentimes many people think this is the most important alignment, but it’s not rank where you’re at. It is important, but it’s not the most important.
CJ (25:03):
They’re all equally important. First P personal development, are you growing every day? You know, learning and reading and, you know, listening to a podcast like this and watching inspiring and educational shows or not so much, you know, decide where you’re at in personal development. The second P which I find a lot of driven, you know, entrepreneurs and, and type a high performers lack is this one passion hobbies, you know, are you doing fun things for yourself? Are you like getting out there and actually enjoying things that you used to really enjoy? Maybe it’s a martial art or fly fishing or horseback lighting like me, or maybe it’s painting or singing or whatever it is for you rank where you’re at in passionate hobbies. And then you got eye impactful work, you know, are you getting up every day and really excited about what you’re doing infused in your passion, which is, you know, that, that inward calling on your heart strengths with your purpose, just that outward serving mission to make a positive impact, right?
CJ (26:11):
Like, what’s it all for, if you don’t make a positive impact, you know, so rank where you’re at, maybe you’re, maybe you’re not, you know, feeling very fulfilled by your work and that’s okay. But just, you know, recognizing it awareness is the first step to change rank where you’re at one to five in that alignment and then N nature connection. Are you actually connected to nature? Are you getting outside and, you know, tapping into Pacha mama, our beautiful planet and, oh, by the way, are you protecting it? You know, like this is where being a conscious consumer actually plays. Like, are you voting with your dollar and supporting B corporations? And I have a whole nother company with my brother and business partner and best friend, you know, called eco breakthroughs. And, and we’re fighting the plastic pollution epidemic. And we’re up to some very big things in this realm. And I’m really excited about this, but it’s so important now more than ever that we take care planet. So this all falls in nature connection. So, Hey, Jay, you should have your mapping scores. Let’s hear it.
AJV (27:10):
These are good. I love this. I love this kind of stuff too, because I think it’s so important to have that gut check. Yeah. And again, like back to what you said, what I love about this, and then I promise, I’ll tell you, my scores is that this came from knowing where you were out of a line. It’s like, if you know, you are, there’s a likelihood, someone else is too. So it’s solve the problem that you have, knowing that it’s simultaneously gonna solve problems for other people. And I love that. I think this is so clever on the M mindfulness. I gave it spirituality connection to God. Like I gave that a five. Like, that’s probably the strongest for me that, and love, I feel good about really a, I gave it a four, right. So pretty good. The first P I gave it a four feel pretty good about that. The second one I said at first I said, this was like the hobbies, right? Passions. Yes. I said one, but then I remembered not my goal for this year is half more fun. And then I was like, actually, I’ve been, I’ve been doing some new things. It’s like, went surfing.
CJ (28:09):
Oh
AJV (28:10):
Yeah, hiking. We’re in a little bike gang that my five year old has named whirlwinds where the whirlwinds we go biking. So I feel maybe I gave myself a two. And then on the eye of four, and then on the end a two.
CJ (28:25):
Mm, yes. Well, I will say you’re crushing it in many regards, but those ones, the unplugged digitally, you know, the nature connection and the passion of hobbies, you know, these are all very important areas of your life. If you want to achieve that blisful balance. And you know, right now, if you tally your scores up, everyone listening and, and you’re above a 37, congratulations, you’re happy hustling. If you’re a 36 or below, well, you got some work to do. And so this is again, a, a tool, a system and assessment will you, that I do every single week and the happy hustlers in my community do every single week be cuz balance. Isn’t this finite destination.
AJV (29:09):
You said 37 is a happy hustler. Yep. Oh, I fell short. I’m a 34. I got work to
CJ (29:15):
Do. Yep. You do. Hey,
AJV (29:17):
What I tell you about, for everyone listening to this too, like who doesn’t like to do stuff like this? It’s like, am I hustling, happy hustling? I don’t know. I need to take this quiz. So in things like this into your content, make it so engaging.
CJ (29:29):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it’s so important be that you do it regular because I’m gonna give ultimately one of the, the biggest, happy hustling principles that I could ever bestow upon the BBG community and anyone listening. And that is, you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time. Hmm that’s right. So you must give each area of your life equal importance, but focus on one at a time I’m on this podcast with AJ, I’m all here. Hundred, 10%. When I go on my date night with my lover later, I’m gonna be a hundred percent there. When I go to my martial arts karate class, I’m a hundred percent there. You know, it’s like people, I feel like where the, the disconnect is, is when they’re at work, they’re thinking about their family. And when they’re with their family, they’re thinking about work. And so we’re not doing anything to our a hundred percent capability or effectiveness. So it’s really important that you give of equal importance to each of these 10 different alignments, but you must focus on one at a time.
AJV (30:25):
Okay. So I have a question for you about that, because I think that’s that really plagues, most human beings is, you know, we’re at work, but we’re thinking about this problem at home, or we’re at home and we’re consumed with checking our emails. And so I’m curious, right? Just in your opinion, why, why, why are we such a distracted community right now? And it’s like, why can’t we put one thing down to focus on the thing right in front of us. And then two, any tips on how to do that? Better?
CJ (30:54):
Why one, I would say is because our human brains are not necessarily built to encounter thousands of notifications in one day or thousands of pieces of information. We were, you know, we were cave men and women, you know, for millennia. And here, we now have little smartphones that have more capabilities than, you know, like hundreds of thousands of years prior in our pocket. And so we’re just inundated constantly by these dopamine dumps. And we become addicted because the people who are designing them are, you know, these are that’s, their sole job is to help make sure that their product and services are addicting for you. So we’re, we’re outgunned, we’re outgunned as human beings. And so you have to create barriers, stance to, to parlay into the second part of this question. You have to create barriers. You have to have discipline. You know, I have rules in my life that I adhere to the majority of the time, you know, 60 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes before bed, no devices, right? Just Sundays, you know, 24 hour digital detox. For the most part, I just did a seven day dopa meeting detox where no social media, no you know, YouTube or like movies or stream shows or any of that stuff. And I’d made more money and was more effective than I have been in. I don’t even know how long, you know, and it’s like, we’re so distracted. So the, the answer is create barriers, have discipline to adhere to them and have consequences if you don’t.
AJV (32:24):
Those are good. Those are really good. Any specific examples, just one tip of like, what’s one barrier that you’ve said in your PLA in your life that you feel like has really made a significant difference.
CJ (32:37):
One barrier would be, I, I would say time blocking, you know, just in terms of work, we’re all trying to build, grow and monetize our personal brand and, and really spread our message and make a positive impact specifically, in terms of work, I have a be focused timer on my computer and I’ll, I’ll airplane mode, my phone, and I’ll do a 30 minute block and then I’ll do a five minute break, you know, and then I jump on my rebound as a break which I think is really important to shake out the lymphatic drainage system, going back to my biohacking days, you know, I used to run a biohacking company where for the top, you know, 1% highest performers. And I took a lot of those little biohacks and that, that one barrier, that one time block, I can be ultra productive and I work 20 hours per week. Like, that’s my, that’s like my sweet spot. And, you know, I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur, you know, so I’m not looking to like run this massive conglomerate, but I will tell you, you know, the reason I can work so little and still be where I’m at is because I time block and I, and I’m disciplined in those time blocks.
AJV (33:38):
Hmm. So all right. Last question. I’m just genuinely curious when you’re doing all the other things and the other 20 hours of your week, how are for, for all of us aspiring to one day, have a 20 hour work week and still be where we are. How are you spending the rest of your time?
CJ (33:56):
Well as I mentioned to you pre ATT, I was just at that hot Springs here, and I was soaking in thermal natural, hot water. And then I went and I, I do a hot and cold thermogenesis, so there’s a cold pool and a hot pool. And I, I, you know, get a workout in. And then I have you know, the ski mountain here in Montana where I go snowboarding regularly. And, you know, I IM training to get my black belt in Eastern Ru KA with my fiance. And, you know, I go fly fishing and horseback riding, and I stay busy. I volunteer with a, a bunch of organizations here. And yeah, so I find, I find things to do,
AJV (34:37):
But here’s what I know. It’s like, that is not a pipe. Your that’s a created intentional life.
CJ (34:44):
Exactly.
AJV (34:45):
Anyone can have it if that’s actually what you try to create for yourself. I believe truly that most of us are living a default life that we’ve just set into whatever has been around us. And we keep moving and going, actually that’s not the life I want.
CJ (35:00):
Yeah.
AJV (35:00):
And you’re living a super intense created life. I love it. You live your content, which is why it’s so successful. You can, it just exudes out of you. I love this soul mapping. I’m a 34. By the time we talk again, I’m gonna be a 37, Cary. I’m on it. Hit a
CJ (35:15):
Girl, get a girl. It’s
AJV (35:16):
So good. Right. My last question. And then we’re gonna wrap this and I’m so grateful. Thank you so much. So I would just want you’ve been building your personal brand for several years. You’ve also built and scaled companies like you’ve done so many successful things. I wanna know, like, what is one lesson that you think has made the most dramatic change or impact in your life that you think all of our listeners should hear
CJ (35:43):
The compound effect? Darren Hardy, great book. I know you guys know him, but that book really resonated with me little actions consistently. Over time, I live by this, this phrase, persistent consistency every single day, getting better than who you were yesterday. Don’t look at other people in compare and despair, look at who you were yesterday. And I know it’s cliche again, but I’m gonna hit you with the truth that persistent consistency every single day has that compound effect. And I wanna leave one question with everyone listening. And this is what allowed me to create this lifestyle. And it is what does success act actually look like for you? Because a lot of people chase other, you know, versions of success, society deems this successful. So we chase it. But truly that’s not what success looks like for you. So you end up achieving it and then you’re unhappy and unfulfilled. So you have to answer that question. What does success look like for you?
AJV (36:37):
Ah, so good. And it’s true in every area of your life small, consistent step taken over an ongoing amount of times. You hear this all the time. It’s like, what’s the key to content creation, consistency. What’s the key to growing your online, following consistency. What’s the key to staying outta debt, being consistent, right? It’s don’t spend money. It’s like be consistent with what we’re doing. What’s the key to staying in love. Be consistent with time with each other. It’s consistency, consistency, consistency. We can talk about that every single area of your life. And most specifically for this podcast, how it relates to your personal brand it, you have got to be consistent with what you do. It doesn’t happen overnight. This is a marathon, not a sprint Cary Jack. Yes. So good to have you on this show. Thank you so much. This was awesome. Yeah. So, so good. Love it. For everyone else please follow Cary Jack. We’re gonna put these links and the show notes, but we want you to go to the happy hustle book.com. You can get the free ebook. You can do his free plus shipping. You can check out his membership. You can come camping with him this summer in Montana. Whatever it is, check out his podcast, that the happy hustle book.com. We’ll put that in the show notes, Cary, we love you so grateful for this. So good.
CJ (37:56):
Let me give one, one special give to the BBG community, cuz I’m a, I’m a part of it. And I, I love this community, AJ, and I wanna do something special as you know, time is our most precious commodity. I very diligent with mine. I want to give anyone who does pick up a copy of the happy hustle book. If you read it and you send me a DM on Instagram with your biggest takeaway, I’ll have my team send you my Calendarly link and we’ll get on the 20 minute happy hustle huddle. I’m gonna help you happy hustle your dream reality, whatever that looks like. It’s there’s no ulterior motive except me to just give value to you. So take action. If you wanna connect with me and I I’d love to serve however I can. Oh,
AJV (38:31):
I love that. That should be another incentive. Go to the happy hustle book.com. Get it, read it, get that Kaly link. Schedule some call what they wanna only Cary Jack. Y’all so good. Catch us next time on the influential personal brand.
CJ (38:46):
Peace and love y’all.
Ep 276: How to Build Your Business with Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know the there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from Martin team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Ah, I am so excited to introduce you to Lisa Bilyeu . So we’re newer friends, but y’all know that me and AJ, our business partners and AJ is our CEO and my wife and I have been business partners from the beginning. We started as business partners and then a year after we started dating and then we fell in love. And so I love and just admire when a couple can work together. And so Lisa and tom were the co-founders of a company called quest nutrition. And this company grew 57000% in three years. It was number two on the inc 5,000. And then in 2014, they sold it for a billion with a B so a billion dollars. I met Tom the very first time on my old podcast. I interviewed him right after he had the right after the exit.
RV (01:50):
Oh. And then him and Lisa started a brand that you’re probably familiar with. So they, they started impact theory studios. They host the impact theory podcast, the women of impact podcasts. They have over seven and a half million people who listen to this. Lisa has had over 20 million views on her YouTube channel. She’s got over a million followers on social and she has a new book that is called radical confidence. And I tell you, I was just flipping through, I got a, a release copy just recently. So I haven’t read it all the way through, but I was flipping through it. And this is like, it’s an kicking book from an kicking lady. And y’all know I don’t cus very often. So that’s, you know, that’s powerful. So anyways, Lisa, I’m so excited to have you and meet you. Welcome to the show.
LB (02:38):
Oh my God. R this is such a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.
RV (02:42):
So can you just like tell us your journey? You know, I like just in the little of what I see from a distance is like, you, you started out in your own words, you know, unfulfilled housewife like that was, and, and then there’s this big transformation you become an entrepreneur. Quest goes crazy. I mean, that’s like massive growth. And then you reinvent yourself with impact theory and women of impact. And now you’re an author. So like, can you just talk to us a little bit about why you wrote a book on confidence and how that’s like tied into that whole journey?
LB (03:19):
Yeah, absolutely. So I get asked a lot right now, Lisa, how do you get your confidence? I want confidence just like you and you have no idea, Roy. I was like, are they talking about someone else? Like I would like, look over my shoulder, just thinking they were talking to someone else, cuz in my head I don’t feel confident in head. I have a negative voice that is constantly telling me I’m not good enough. Who do I think I am to dare to go after this, my entire life. And so I think what P what I identified was people saw me doing it anyway and they equated my actions with confidence. And that’s where I started to think about the book, cuz I was like, it’s the fact that I use tools and techniques in order to show up every day to try and be confident to try things.
LB (04:08):
And when I fail, how do I get back up? It’s not confidence is I use specific tools. So that was like, okay, I understand how my journey goes, but what about other people? Where, how are people struggling? And it really is so many people resonate with me saying I was stuck for eight years and you know, what’s happened to the world over these last few years. So many people are feeling that. And so it all comes back down to people say, if I had the confidence, I would do this. And what I realized Rory is we are using that as a way as a, a thing that we think we need in order to get started. And what I started to ask people was, hang on a minute, you want confidence in order to do what? Because people are so focused on, I want the confidence that they’re losing sight of what they’re using confidence to get to.
LB (05:02):
So I say to people and I want people to think right now, what is that goal you have now? Don’t worry about how you feel about getting there, right? Cause confidence is feeling good, feeling good about doing it. Don’t worry about that. Focus on the goal and then come up with a strategy and steps on how you are going to get there. Because if I only went by, do I feel confident? And that’s, if I say yes, is when I’m going to take my take that action, I will still, I would really, I really, really would be right now. The person that is completely unfulfilled, you know, and housewife is just a thing that wasn’t feeling my soul. So that’s just my journey, but I, what is the journey people are on now? And is it feeling your soul? And don’t wait to feel confident to do it because that isn’t the end goal.
LB (05:49):
You want confidence in order to tell your boss, you wanna pay rides. You want confidence in order to tell your parents, you no longer want to study math and you actually wanna be a standup comic. You want confidence to tell your partner, you’re not happy in the relationship, but you want the confidence to do something. So that’s where I just start. And that’s where I wrote the book, radical confidence in order to try and get people out of their own heads about feeling confident to get started and let people, no, it, the most amazing news is that you don’t need confidence to get started. You can actually use radical confidence, which is a set of tools and you can be scared and do it in a way. And now you’re taking control of your life and you are not worried about if you feel good about it or not.
LB (06:34):
You just focused on how do I get to my goal? How do I get to that dream life I want? And that’s the whole purpose behind it. And each chapter gives a very succinct lesson and no BS lesson on this is what I actually had to do to go from being the completely unfulfilled person for eight years to then really living the life of my dreams and all it being the hero of my own life because I was waiting, I was waiting for someone to save me. I was waiting for my husband to come home and bring me some fun and the emotion that I was looking for. And I realized that the day my life changed was the day I stopped waiting for confidence and started to look inwards and say, I can control if I’m the hero of my own life.
RV (07:19):
It, it reminds me, my mom used to say this thing, like you know, I did martial arts when I was really really little. I was, I was raised by a single mom and I was in martial arts and I, you know, would tell her, I don’t like this. I don’t enjoy this. And she used to say, that’s okay, Rory enjoying it. Isn’t a requirement of doing it.
RV (08:08):
They’re basically like each of these different affirmations that you have. And one of the, one of the first ones that you talk about is betting on yourself and the why I wanna bring this up is because I actually think that I personally struggle with this is going all in on yourself, like saying, like taking, taking the, you know, like the, the, the, the gamble. So can you talk about that? Like, if somebody is listening or right now, and they kind of have a dream, they’re like moving in a direction, but it’s like, they haven’t really gone all in on themselves. Like what what’s going on there.
LB (08:53):
Yeah. It want, you know, and so it’s do, do you want to go all in? That’s a thing. Everyone needs to judge for themselves, because for me, let’s take this book for instance, as I was writing the book, I said to myself, okay, what is a result I want to get? And what are the steps I’m going to take in order to get there? And what, and I like to call it no BS, what would it take? So once you’ve laid that out and say, well, what would it take for me to get in New York times? Number one, let’s just say, right? It’s like, okay, Lisa, in order to get in New York times, number one, you have to do 400 podcast interviews. Let’s just say, and I just go, wow, that’s a lot. Is that the life I want? What does that look like? And am I committed to it?
LB (09:33):
Because it becomes a decision. And I don’t think we should beat ourselves up over the decisions we make, but I do urge everyone to make the decision with their eyes wide open. And so in those situations where let’s say worry, you’re saying that you’re struggling with going all in. Are you reaching your goal? Yes or no. And if you went all in, would you reach your goal, looking at it like that, and then saying, what would to take for me to get there? Maybe you’re not willing to do it. Maybe that isn’t the life you want. And I think that being able to look with your eyes wide open is imperative to then go, okay, I’m gonna go all in. And that means betting on yourself because let’s face it. No, one’s gonna freaking fight for your dream harder than you. No one. So if you are not willing to go all in, why would anyone else around you be willing to go in for your dream or your life?
LB (10:21):
And so I also, for me, I like to take away the excuses that I make for myself. So if I’m not achieving my dream, what excuses am I using? Right. Oh, well I, I didn’t wanna work on days. Okay. Well, that’s, it’s not an excuse. It’s a valid thing. Or that’s how I want to live my life. Mm-Hmm
LB (11:06):
And I decided not to go all in, but you gotta identify what is actually holding you back from going all in. Is it what comes with the life that, that, that brings so running your business right? There is no nine to five. You know, if you are expecting your team to work hard and you are putting videos out on a Saturday at 3:00 AM, let’s say right, there is no nine to five, but is that the life you want? So you need to identify what are the things that are holding you back and is it a valid reason or is it an excuse that you’re using?
RV (11:41):
Mm-Hmm
LB (12:04):
So timing was very big. It was just as Facebook was kind of getting hot. And there were multiple things. So more, we created a product that we really wanted and didn’t exist. So my husband at the time, my husband, my husband and his business partners at the time were all building a technology company that was kind of like, oh, he was going out. He was working. He was trying to make, make enough money for us to actually make movies. Cause our background film. So the problem is when you’re just chasing money, he got caught up in the, in the you know, the hamster wheel. So what was supposed to be, he’s just gonna work for a year. I’m gonna support him. We’re gonna earn enough money so that we can make movies turned into eight years of him just chasing money. We forgot our dreams and left them behind.
LB (12:51):
So as we were doing that it re I realized that money doesn’t bring happiness. And in seeing my husband chase money, I was like, I want my happy husband back. So what does that mean? So he went to his business partners. They all agreed. They were unhappy. So they sat down and they said, what would make us happy? Something predicated on passion. And because when you’re just chasing money, it’s empty. And so when they stepped back and said, okay, what are the, what is the product or the thing that we really feel passionate about? Everyone was into fitness. And at the time, I dunno, if you remember protein bars, there was basically two types of protein bars, bars on the market. One, it tasted so good, but it had so much sugar in it. So it was like, it had 30 grams of sugar and five grams of carbs, but they can call it a protein bar, sorry, pro five grams of protein.
LB (13:44):
Or it was the opposite. It literally tasted like soar dust where you have to hold your breath and drink a glass of water as you’re chewing it. And so it was like, okay, well, what if you can make a protein bar that is actually shelf and taste wonderful. Now of course, every expert, every expert said we were nuts. That protein bar would’ve been made already. If it ex if it could be done, there’s a reason why that protein bar doesn’t exist. Did you know there’s 1400 protein bars on the market currently, who the hell do you guys think you are? You guys know nothing. That’s all the feedback we got.
RV (14:20):
Wow.
LB (14:21):
But we all believed in the product and we believed that can we overcome the hurdles that were ahead of us? So that’s the big thing is do you believe in the product and is it possible in your mind? Forget about what other people and not just, is it possible? Are you, you willing to keep pushing to see that when you hit a roadblock, are you able to get past it? So there were so many multiple things. And then that last piece was the marketing. Was that when everybody else was like, the prestigious is going into stores, if you’re in stores, it means that you are official. If you’re online. I mean, this is 2010. So just to give context, people like online meant that you were lame selling your product online meant that you were pretty bad and that no store would ever hold you.
LB (15:09):
And so everybody was like, we need to sell in stores. We need to sell in stores. And my husband who just has, he understands marketing and human nature. And he was just like, well, shouldn’t we do, what’s convenient. Like online is where we don’t have to pay a third party. Right. And there’s a whole thing about if you sell to stores and it doesn’t sell, they ship you back and you’ve invested all this money and it’s, it’s just bad for business. So my husband was like, no, we were selling stores. And we will make the people eating it believe by proving ourselves and let the people speak. And now obviously that’s what everyone does, right? Social media. And it’s like the influence of the people that had the most voice back then no one was doing it. So the idea behind find authenticity, giving product to people and be asking them for their honest feedback.
LB (15:58):
So what we would do is we would, if with every single product, we had this little piece of paper that said, please, if you like this bar, please talk about us. If you hate this bar, please talk about us. We want truth. And we were one of the first companies to have these letters. So what we ended up doing is so many people, cause it was a brand new product that so many people wanted, but no one had, we were selling online. So we were actually marketing to the really, really experienced people. The people that understood nutrition to a, a high, a high level. And then we just used the trickle down effect. So we were sending them free products. If they really believed in us, they were telling the people that were following them, the people that were following them were the fitness junkies, the fitness junkies, who were like the real, like the, the trainers and the hard school people. They were hearing them. Then they loved the product. They were telling their clients, clients were hearing, they were telling their friends. So before you knew it, it became this wildfire of everyone and their mothers were eating quest bars because they had heard it through people speaking about it. So it was the real accumulation of having something that is hot and new, a product that doesn’t exist, exist. And in the true freaking leaf that you are gonna work and bust your to make it happen and succeed.
RV (17:18):
And you guys sent so just to catch that. So you sent free bars originally to influencers. Like that was like the beginning of influencer marketing, even right there.
LB (17:29):
It was, we’ve had two bars cause we had two flavors and literally we had zero, but we were making bars just to send out to people for free. And so we had a budget and we said, how much can we afford to send out us and the business partners, how much can we afford to send out on a weekly basis? And what is the letter we’re gonna have in? Are we gonna follow up with them and see if they got it, see if they like it, see if they have any friends that like it. And it was just free. It literally was free, free, free for free. If you like it, let us know if you hate it, let us know. And because of that, it becomes a brand that you trust. And so all of that contributed to the new way I think of, you know, marketing and social media and things like that.
RV (18:15):
Well, and you also like with impact theory. Okay. So when I hear about the start of impact theory real quick, because so then you do this, you build this consumer package goods company, like you’re doing you’re, you’re, you’re selling bars. Then one day that’s done, it’s all over. And then you start all over again. And but even like what you do now, you give away free. I mean, you’re like giving away content for free hooking people on that. So like, you didn’t go back into making movies. You guys jumped into the whole personal development space. So like what, what was the thinking there on starting pack theory? Did you know, by that point, did you know you wanted to do it? Did you know, you wanted to write a book one day and you’re like, okay, we gotta build the audience. Or like that’s a, you know, a whole new level, a whole new chapter.
LB (19:01):
Yeah. So the reason why I really wrote the book is I spent eight years not following my dreams, not trying anything new, being scattered, make a start on anything. And now, because I so learned that lesson, I just committed and promised myself, I would never go the rest of my life, not trying new things that excite me. And so I just try things and see if I like it. And giving ourselves the, the space to play is so important. So at quest, when we built the bar and the, a lot of it was, we were creating content behind it. So we started the YouTube channel when other products weren’t doing YouTube channels. And so what we were doing is we weren’t making the bar about us. We were making the bar about the consumer and then what the consumer could do to it. So we started the cooking show that blew up.
LB (19:47):
We started a transformation show that blew up. So cause we were making it about the people and it’s where my experience was. It was about making content. And so when I started to learn at quest and I was helping build our shipping department, I realized the opportunity of the social media side and our marketing, our head of marketing at the time just had that vision. And so I was like, let me build the studio. Like I really, I wanna like try. So I went in, never done it before. And my first task was literally build a kitchen set. And so I just figured it out. And as I was doing it, it still tapped into the love that I had of movie making, which was using visual visuals and all your senses to impact someone. Right? So that’s what film is to me. You use music, use edits, use action, use character, use lighting, all this to make a person feel a certain way.
LB (20:39):
And you have the ability to make someone feel amazing about themselves. You have the ability to make someone cry. Like, just think about that for a second. You could, how many, you know, sad movies are there, but you can change people’s emotion with video. And I just loved that form. And so we still took the core of what my husband and I believe in. And we started to do content and that’s where he, he started to do his show inside quest. And that was really the catalyst of bringing will people on and talking to them about mindset that led us to the idea of wow, true transformation, like actually changing someone’s life. Isn’t just about impacting the body. It’s about like my mom, my mom, as quest was getting bigger. My mom was getting heavier and heavier and more and more in hell. And as I was trying to just fix it by throwing money at it, which obviously is the wrong solution.
LB (21:32):
But I was like, mom, I can, you know, I can hire you a professional trainer. I can get you a share the words that would come out of her mouth worry were I’m too old. I can’t lose the weight. And all of it. I started to realize it was mindset. It was mindset. And so the people we weren’t reaching were the quest bar were the people that were too anxious to walk into the gym in the first place. It was the people that were too depressed, depressed to even believe they’re good enough to look after their health. So me and my husband, we basically were like, well, are we just playing impact? Or are we actually going to impact people? Because put your money where your mouth is, put your money, where your mouth is. And so for Tom and I, that was where it was like, we started to realize our passion really was behind the creating content side of it.
LB (22:22):
And his business partners wanted to focus on the body. So that’s where I’m like, well, you know, effort, let’s just take a, our money and do something that’s really meaningful to us. So we started the studio, but there’s a big picture. There’s the long vision. So going back to your question is we actually see, these are all stepping stones. So right now we’ve actually got, I think eight, we may have nine, but we have eight fiction stories going on. So we’ve got storytelling, got writers on board. We’ve got artists on board board. We’re creating comic books. We’re putting them up on web tunes. Cause storytelling, everything comes back to storytelling for us. So now with what we did with the quest bar is how do you make something yummy? And people wanna eat it. And it happens to be good for them. How do you translate that into content movies growing up? I dunno what movies you watch growing up, but things like the karate kid or like adventures in babysitting.
RV (23:21):
Oh, I lived on the karate kid girl. That’s now you’re now you’re talking about both my jams right there.
LB (23:25):
Okay. Now think about that. It was so fun. So, but you know how many times I use the analogy as an adult of waxing on and off? Yeah. I probably say wax on wax off at least twice a week.
RV (23:42):
I knew. I like you for a reason and now it all makes sense. Now it all comes together.
LB (23:48):
It’s the analogy, right? Of being prepared, doing things that you may not like for the greater good, good of a vision or a dream that you have. And eventually you get so good, but you have to put in the time you have to put in the work, how many blisters did he get on his? Cause he was freaking waxing. It’s like, it’s the most beautiful metaphor. But as a kid, you don’t necessarily get it. So how do you blend entertainment and impact? So that’s where me and my husband come in. And so we’re like, great. There’s gonna be different divisions to our company. And it’s gonna be a graduation process. The very top of the, the tier is impact theory, university, whereas actually classes and courses that you can take that people wanna study. They wanna take it seriously then below that there’s that our content, it’s still very heady.
LB (24:36):
Right? We do like our interviews where you’re talking about deep things. Sometimes, you know, I talk about suicide with, you know, some of my guests and therapists and things like that. So it’s very deep and hard. And then it’s the next tier, which is entertainment. So it’s like, then, so now you’re just entertaining and you’re threading through the empowerment so that people can meet you where they are. So you hope to empower them with our entertainment, with all the, the storytelling, the movies that we are working on, the, in that we’re working in the comic books that we’ve got in production. And then they take that to the content that is on YouTube. And then they take that to impact their university where now they actually take a curriculum. And then the book is so new to me that it becomes part of that where it’s like a physical guide step by step of what you need to do.
RV (25:29):
Yeah. That, I guess it’s never hit me quite the way that it is now. Just like hearing you sort of riff on this, that like you guys deliberately are making content that’s so entertaining. You would watch it anyways, but it happens to be good for you. Like it’s the same thing you were doing with the quest bar. It’s like, you build a candy bar. That’s so good. You would eat it anyways, but it happens to be good for you. And that that’s basically like what your secret formula is, is mm-hmm
LB (26:09):
Absolutely.
RV (26:11):
I also you know, I think the video editing, like hearing you talk about that of just like the passion for the music you’ll use and the lighting, because it creates this emotional experience for people. So were, were you involved, are you still involved very much with like the production element of like the content and things that you do?
LB (26:31):
Oh yeah. So I’m still our chief creative officer
LB (27:17):
Whose idea is it bring in making sure they’re heard, like sometimes, like we, we literally have massive meetings and anyone’s welcome to bring any idea to the table. If you’re an intern. Great. I wanna hear it. If it’s a hot idea, come on over, you are now leading this project because I, I don’t freaking always have the best ideas. Neither does Tom. So it’s about bringing the most amazing team together that love being with each other that have the same passion and desire for content. And then the, the last final thing is making sure that everyone is aligned on that goal. So for, so going back to your question, I do oversee new content that gets created to make sure that it’s kind of established as this is the field. This is the form. And then we have just an amazing team that it now goes to, but I have those moments that there are certain things that my heart still wants to make sure that I see
RV (28:05):
Mm-Hmm
LB (29:03):
Yeah. It was one of those things RO where everyone kept saying, be kind to yourself, don’t talk, you know, like you need to be nice. You have to always love yourself. And the truth was, I didn’t find that actually was true with me. Like, so then I started to beat myself up over the fact that I wasn’t able to be kind to myself. Right. And now it’s like this like double edge sword and you like, know where to go. So I kind of thought about
RV (29:25):
You idiot to yourself. You moron,
Speaker 4 (29:29):
LB (29:32):
Even get yourself to shut up. So it was one of those. Okay. I, every time I fail, every time I do something wrong, I, I find myself beating myself up. You shouldn’t have done that. And so I was like, okay, how do I, how on earth do I spin this around? Because I recognize it’s holding me back. And I go to I’m very goal oriented. So does this voice in my head help me towards my goal? Yes or no, the truth wasn’t didn’t right. It was just making me more fearful to try new things. It was becoming more crippling for me to start new things. And so just like, I think it’s Tony Robbins that said something like, you know, how can you take the most amazing the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and make it the most amazing thing. So it all comes to perspective.
LB (30:15):
So I was like, okay, I know about perspective. I’ve done enough mindset work to know perspective is very powerful. So how do I use a perspective right now on my negative thought? I love superheroes and allergies and you know, I wear a wonder woman, necklace. I have superheros behind me. So I was like, okay, what if, instead of it being your cryp tonight, it was your superpower. So now I’m using language around it, right. To soften. So I even use cryp tonight and superpower as to step out of the sting of the negative thought. And then I start to think, how can I actually do that? Okay. Thery is it holds me back? So how can I use it to propel me forward? Which is your superpower. Okay. It’s like, what if it’s trying to tell me something, because really when you think about it, a negative thought is actually a ti tied to your ego.
LB (31:01):
The reason why my ego is telling me don’t you dare do that. Oh my God, you’re gonna embarrass yourself. You know, nothing. It’s because it’s trying to protect me from being embarrassed. It’s the ego. It doesn’t wanna get bruised. So if I can see as the mean, girl is my ego, trying to protect me now, maybe what if it was a friend or a family member that tries to protect you, right. Tried to give you advice like your, maybe you shouldn’t try this and maybe they’re trying to highlight something in your life that you are blind to. So I actually flipped it. And I was like, what if this negative voice, this mean voice in my head is my best mate. If she was my best mate, what would I do? Would I, would I try and shut her up and throw her out? No, she was my best me.
LB (31:44):
I’d actually like welcome her. I’d give her a cup of tea. I’d put a blanket around her. And if you can, when your friend is giving you advice, if you trust them, you listen. So I was like, what if I just listened to her? And so what I realized was my ego was actually telling me all the things I was bad at. And she was right. I was bad at things. And so I go, okay, let’s say, I want, I wanted to start my show, this perfect example. I’m I wasn’t comfortable being in front of the camera.
RV (32:12):
You’re talking the women of impact show.
LB (32:14):
Yes. Thank you. Okay.
RV (32:16):
So you’re gonna start that one. Cause that came after the, like, after impact theory started women of impact came later, right?
LB (32:22):
Correct. Yes. Okay. So as an example though, of how you use your negative voice, so getting in front of the camera. So we built impact theory, get in front of the camera like five years later because everyone was urging me to, everyone was like, oh my God, you know, you really impacted me when I heard you talk to Tom about this. So I go, okay, I wanna get in front of the camera, but I’m so scared. Like I literally would freeze up in front of the camera and not know what I’m saying, not know what I’m doing. And the negative voice would come in and tell me, I’m no good. You’re gonna embarrass yourself. Lisa. You’re not as good as Tom. And everyone’s gonna have high expectations of you and you’re gonna, you know, totally mess up. And everyone’s gonna think that you are a moron, right?
LB (33:05):
And I’m, I’m like tech, this isn’t the negative voice. So I go, okay, if this was my ego and I can flip it, what is it saying? It’s telling me, I dunno what I’m doing. And the truth was I didn’t, I wasn’t expert at being in front of the camera. So it was given and me warning. So I go, okay, negative voice. What are you actually saying? He’s like, you need to get prepared because you don’t know what you’re doing. So get prepared so that you don’t embarrass yourself in front of the camera. Mm-Hmm
LB (33:46):
And that, that flipping perspective now has changed everything. So now, now when the voice comes back, cause it’s absolutely still here because I’ve positioned it as a friend. It’s no longer crippling at all. In fact, when it comes up, it gets that like three seconds sting. And then I’m like, thank God. She was, she was helping me because I was about to go in this situation and I would’ve messed up or I would’ve failed or whatever. So I’m very grateful now that I have this kind friend that is warning me of the, is that the traps I may get myself into.
RV (34:24):
Yeah. It’s like it’s very similar to feedback externally, right? Like if people give you feedback, you go, oh, you know, like screw them. They had, they gave me feedback. But so many of the successful people are like, no, that’s the gold or your customers. Like you talked about this earlier with quest where you’re like, if it’s positive, tell us, but if it’s negative, tell us we, he want to know. I heard recently there’s like a little author mastermind group that I was in and somebody was J talking about James clear. And James has, James is not in this, in this group. But they were saying that one of the things they learned from him, he wrote ATO author of atomic have, is sells Bazi.
LB (35:01):
Oh, oh my God.
RV (35:03):
It’s crazy. So what he said was one of the things that he did was he went and looked at the reviews of other people’s books that were in the category of the book he was writing. And he said, but I ignore the five star reviews. Mm-Hmm
LB (35:59):
Mm. I love that.
RV (36:02):
That’s really, really cool. So Lisa, so I, I have one more question for you before we leave, but before we do that, I wanna make sure where do people go to if they, if they want to check out radical confidence, get the book where would you point people?
LB (36:18):
Yeah, thanks. So people can go to radical confidence.com where we’ve actually got a ton of bonuses over there. Or you can go to Amazon or target anywhere books are sold target and Amazon have been just great partners to me or so far already. So I wanna make sure that I shout those guys out as well.
RV (36:35):
I love it. I love it. So all right. I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask you that if there’s, there’s, let’s, let’s, let’s say somebody is listening to this right now and they kind of have a dream. Right. They kind of have it in their, in their head. That there’s something that I want to do, but they don’t feel like they have confidence and they don’t feel like they’re equipped and they don’t feel like they’re smart enough. And, you know, to, to take it back to where you were, where you were kind of like at home and going, you know, who, who am I to do this? What, what, what, what encouragement or advice, like, what would you say if that, if that person was just like sitting here in the room right now with the two of us, and it was just like the three of us talking, what would you say to that person?
LB (37:30):
I think it’s gonna be super important to identify where they are currently and what their belief system is, because everything I’ve spoken about doing, you know, radical confidence, showing up to do the hard work. You know, I’ve got a chapter where I really talk about asking yourself the hard questions and I call it, you know, open the can of worms and embrace the I, because that’s, I think something that holds us back a lot is that we don’t necessarily look at the reality of certain things and ask ourselves, does this feel right? Is this right? And yes, yes or no. And why not? And what am I gonna do about it? So for instance, the example that I like to go to is, let’s say you are married and you find yourself, you’re no longer happy in the relationship and you’re stuck and you dunno what to do.
LB (38:20):
You have to actually ask yourself, is this a relationship I wanna be in? Like, when you ask that question, like, do I have to do I need to leave? And the reason why people don’t ask those hard questions is cuz sometimes we’re so fearful of the answer, you know? Because what if the answer is yes, and now you’ve got four kids, a mortgage and now you have to go, oh my God. Well, does he, is he willing to do therapy? Am I willing to do therapy? If when, if this relationship won’t work, who gets the kids who gets some Christmas, who gets them all weekends or do we do about the mortgage? Like there’s so much that comes with asking a hard question and answering the hard question that so many of us, it’s just easier to go. Well, screw it. I’m not gonna do it anyway.
LB (39:07):
Right? And so that’s where I think we all get stuck over time. And I’ve had so many therapists on my show, worry. So many therapists and women of impact who turn around and say, you have no idea just sticking to relationships for now as the analogy, you have no idea how many people come relationships come on my couch. And they say they did something five years ago or whatever. And I knew it was a deal breakup, but I stayed cuz I thought it was easier. And they like the therapists say they always end up breaking up, but you stay in this period where you fear leaving cuz you fear doing the hard things and the unknown. And so going back to right now, if someone’s feeling stuck, I think it’s gonna be imperative to ask yourself the hard questions on what is you not working in your life right now?
LB (39:58):
Like nobodys take away the emotion of what you have to do about it. You just have to identify what is it in your life that isn’t satisfying and that isn’t making you happy and don’t judge yourself for it. Like when I started, when I realized I didn’t want children anymore. And I went from wanting four kids to not wanting any because I realized how much I loved being in business. I had to actually say, I have to talk to my husband about it. And the, the, just bringing up the subject and telling him, babe, I love you more than life itself, but I never wanna take care of you again. I don’t wanna put out your clothes. I don’t wanna cook for you anymore. That’s a hard discussion to have. And so I stayed there for eight years cause I didn’t wanna have the discussion cuz it was too hard. So I beg people to just look with no judgment and actually identify what those things are cause until you do. I don’t think you can move forward.
RV (40:55):
Mm-Hmm
LB (42:15):
Thank you so much for having me pleasure.
Ep 274: Spiritual Truths About Marketing Bestselling Books with Gabby Bernstein
RV (00:02):
Well, as sometimes happens, I tend to make a lot of friends whenever somebody is launching a book because we are involved with lots of book launches. And of course, right now, things have been pretty hot and heavy with ed my let’s book launch. And part of that led me to meet Gabby. Gabby Bernstein was in the middle of her launch. And so she’s a recent friend of mine. And I have to tell you, I adore her. She is so sweet and charming and kind. I followed her for years. Like she’s brilliant and intelligent and all those things, but if you, if you’re not familiar with her, she is the number one New York times bestselling author of nine books including the universe has your back super at attract and then be days, which is her newest Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday called her the next a next generation thought leader. The New York times has referred to her as a new role model and she’s just extremely insightful and warm. And anyways, I somehow suckered her to coming onto our show to hear the, of how she built her writing career and share some of her secrets with us. And so with that Gabby, welcome to the show.
GB (01:11):
What’s up, man? Well, you’re welcoming me and my kitten, Jimmy blue. She everyone’s gonna probably hear her purring in the background because she’s very attached to her mommy and she wants to be in the room with me.
RV (01:22):
Jimmy blue.
GB (01:24):
Yes, girl. She says, hi. She says hi to every blue
RV (01:29):
So Gabby tell us, like, how do you get started as a writer? Like I know, I know you get this question all the time. So that’s part of why I want to ask you is you go somebody’s listening. Did, did you think you were gonna be a writer? Like, did you, when you were a kid, you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna grow up a and I’m gonna, I’m gonna write a bunch of books and, and podcast and like do social media lives and all that.
GB (01:50):
Well, I didn’t know that I was gonna be a writer growing up, but I did have the desire to be a spiritual teacher. And I, when I was in my early when I was about 14 years old, I was the president of a regional Jewish youth group from my temple. And we went all around and we would host these big weekends with hundreds of young Jewish kids. And I was the leader, right? So I was there kind of like this spiritual Sherpa for these high school students and fast forward a decade later, that’s what I started to do as my career. But I, and so I often think that the things that we do by choice is children can often reflect what we end up doing in our, in our career path. I was led to becoming a spiritual teacher, also through my own personal growth journey.
GB (02:39):
When I was in my early twenties, I ran a PR company and was a nightlife PR or firm. I worked really hard to be seen and heard, and ultimately got very addicted to drugs and alcohol, given the nature of the type of work I was doing, where I was doing it. And the age I was in New York city, but also because we become addicts when we’re running from something. So for me, I was running from something I wasn’t even aware of. I became addicted to drugs and alcohol and by the grace of God, I got sober at 25 on my own with, you know, finding a, finding a, a program and not going to treatment traditional treat, just recognizing I had a problem in getting myself clean and sober. But the reason I was able to also get to that level of understanding and awareness was my devotion to my spiritual practice, even when I was using.
GB (03:31):
And so I had, you know, all the stack of self help books next to my bed, my original mentors who are now my friends and, and sometimes deceased mentors, Wayne Dyer, and Louise hay. They were all my mentors even before they were my mentors sitting me sitting next to my bedside. And I, I would even be in after hours parties with people that I didn’t even know, and I’d be pointing to my books and I’d say, I’m gonna be a self-help book, author and motivational speaker. And at the time they’d be like, yeah, good luck with that. But I had the vision and upon getting sober, I got very spiritual. I reconnected to my spiritual roots and I started speaking about it publicly. And the more I started speaking about it, the more I started coaching people, it became very clear to me that I had many, many books in me.
GB (04:13):
And that was the plan and the path I was great at sales. I was, I knew how to sell myself. And I knew I had a very important message to share. And I sold my first book. But when I sold that book, I was really freaked out. It was like that, holy moment of uhoh. How am I gonna write this book?
RV (04:41):
I, I had, I had a very similar, so the very first I, I had a very similar experience. It took us four years to get our first book deal. And I was so focused on like, gotta get a deal, gotta get agent, gotta get a deal, gotta get deal. Like, and then it happened. And I like, when I sat down to write the first word, I had like a, a, a panic attack, I had not even realized the gravitas of what I had just committed myself to. You know, and that’s something I don’t think people always realize is that, you know, when you self-publish, there’s not as much of that, cuz it’s like, oh, if it works out great, you know, if not, it’s like, it’s kind of just you. But when you do, when you do a traditional book deal, there’s real money on the table and a lot of, a lot of lives and livelihoods at, at stake. So that’s interesting. I, I had similar experience.
GB (05:27):
Yeah. And thankfully I was 27. I’ve always had this. And so I was sort of like, I’ll figure it out. And I’ve, I’ve always had that mentality of, if I wanna do this, I’m gonna do it. I can do anything that I want to do. If I don’t wanna do it, I can’t do it. Like if it’s not something I’m excited about and it’s not something that’s passion driven for me. And so I was willing to do whatever it took to figure it out. And so at the time I hired a writing coach and she just taught me how to structure a book and how to structure the outline very quickly. I found my voice as a writer. My, my literary expertise ended in eighth grade. You know, my literary education ended in eighth grade. So I didn’t have any awareness of how to string a sentence together, but I was self-taught.
GB (06:12):
I, I, I wanted to get my message out. And that first book, when look back to the writing, my writing now is much more, much more effective, much more colorful, just a lot better grammar, but you can always have an editor fix those things for you. If you have a message and you wanna get that out to the world, there is a way to do that through a book. And so for me, I’ve written nine books now in 11 years, I think I I’m an excellent writer now, without any experience as a writer, I write very, very vulnerable, authentic stories. I write clear messages, and if anyone’s out there, like I wanna write a book or I have a message I wanna share, but I don’t know how to write or don’t know where to start. I hope my story’s really empowering to for people because I didn’t have anything going for me other than a really important message that I wanted to share and where there is a will, there is a way. And I think that’s the perfect example of that.
RV (07:09):
It is. I, and I, I think I, you know, I texted you a picture. We had a recent leadership retreat of brain builders group, you know, there’s like 10 of our leaders, our all together, and we’re sitting on the beach and two of them had Gabby Bernstein books, two different books of yours. And you know, that like, you know, your impact is, has been, has been really in incredible. Like I talk, talk to me about the vulnerable part. Okay. Like, because this is something that I think there has been a trend in recent years, I feel like more and more for authors to, I guess, share the very intimate details of their life. And to some extent, that’s been really, really healthy for people to see because they read and they, oh, this person’s not that much. You know, that person just like me, on the other hand, there’s been some backlash of life. Oh, well, this person isn’t like maybe who I thought they were or whatever what’s here. My question is, how do you establish the line of what you share and what you don’t. So like is there, and, and this could apply to social media too, but I’ll, I’ll say specifically for books since that’s kind of the thread of our conversation, is there no limit to what I should share with the audience? Nothing. Should I hold back? Or like, what’s your philosophy there,
GB (08:30):
There’s a big limit. I think that you can only share what you are safe in. So if you share about something that’s too vulnerable, still triggering for you, you haven’t fully processed it or moved through it, or you’re kind of good at it, but you’re not a full expert in it quite yet. If it’s something that, you know, if you don’t believe in your own ability, recovery, whatever that may be, that lack of confidence, safety belief is gonna come through in the book. And if you’re too vulnerable in a way that in a time when you’re not fully grounded and steady in your own recovery, that will trigger you and trigger your reader. My most recent book happy days is a great example of that. I wa I wanted to write this book in 2016, I was 36 years old. I just remembered a dissociated trauma. I knew I had to write a book about trauma, but I knew I could not do it until I was on the other side. So the book didn’t come out until, well, I was 42 years old and I had lived a lot of recovery and had done a tremendous amount of work to be safe enough grounded enough and enough of an expert in that experience to really tell that story safely and to take care of my reader at the same time.
RV (09:50):
Hmm. Yeah, that’s a really good, that’s a really great litmus text. So as long as were able to tell the story safely, not be triggered by it. Mm-Hmm,
GB (10:04):
But you don’t have to be like the expert in your field to write what you wanna write. For instance, every book I’ve written, I was an expert in what I knew then, and I look back to my first book and to the today’s book, and there’s a lot of depth. That’s still congruent, even though there’s so much more psychological mentions and, and, and references neuro biological met references my own personal training and therapeutic practices referenced this most recent book than there was 11 years ago. But the depth, the intention, the authentic vulnerability was matching where I was then as much as it is matching where I am now.
RV (10:50):
Mm-Hmm
GB (11:25):
Yes.
RV (11:26):
So why like how do you balance the frequency of writing a book and marketing a book and how do you know, like, do you think that the fact that you’ve written nine books in 11 years is why all your books have done so well, cuz you’re constantly marketing a new book or do you kind of look back and go, gosh, I think maybe some of the books would’ve done better if I would’ve spent more time marketing them before turning my focus to the next one. Like, I’m curious about that, like interval frequency of writing and marketing mm-hmm
GB (12:00):
Well, the number one reason that my books do so well is cuz they’re really good. They’re really good books. And I think that’s probably one of the things that’s overlooked often in the marketing space and when people are talking about like launching and like, you know, making sure you’re buying bulk books and you know, doing all the right events and promotions and keeping your launch going all right, cool. Like maybe you have a big platform. Maybe you can get on the number one New York times bestseller. Maybe you can, maybe you can, you know, sell a tremendous amount of books, but if the book isn’t good, then it’s just that launch. It just it’s it’ll flatline. And you know, I think about my book, the universe has your back. It still just sells tons, thousands and thousands of copies every week because it’s a very good book, you know, are all my books that caliber and some, some are not as great as others in the sense of like, they gonna have that wow power.
GB (12:54):
That’s gonna be so shareable, but they all are good. They all are healing. They all have had a major impact on people and you could meet 10 people and they may all say, yeah, I’ve read the universe has your back. And then one will say, but I also loved judgment detox and I was willing to go there with her or I loved may cause miracles cause of that 40 day practice, you know? So the content has to be really good.
RV (13:56):
Which is what ha, which is what most books do. I mean, there there’s a it’s everything is in the first few weeks and then it just kind of is a slow fade to zero.
GB (14:05):
Yeah, exactly. So you don’t wanna slow fade to zero, so that’s where you write a good book. But I, to answer your question about the cadence with which I’ve written these books and how so in some or early on I would have launched a book and that same week sold the next book and then on the flights of the book tour of the most recent book, I’d be writing that next book. Wow. I do not recommend that to people.
RV (14:33):
It’s insane. I mean, that sounds so crazy.
GB (14:35):
It was so crazy. And some of it was related, you know, some of the speed with which that was happening was related to the, my agent’s advice, you know, like let’s sell the next book, right? When you’re number one, New York times bestseller, it’s a very hot time to sell the next book. Like great. Okay. some of that advice was related. Some of that was related to the fact that I had a book that wanted to come out of me. And so I was ready to, for instance, my book universe has your back. There was a chapter about judgment. And when I was writing that chapter, I was like, oh, Gabby. Like this is a book, you know? And so I needed to get it out because I was like, I was just like sitting on it, you know? So some of it was, it had to come out some of it. And as I got a little bit further along in my literary journey and maybe I’d had about seven or six or seven books out, I actually started to put more space in between the books because give myself a year to write it. So it wasn’t like every year I was putting out a new book, it was almost like every year and a half suppose. And
RV (15:32):
Which is still super fast. I mean, it’s still super fast,
GB (15:36):
So fast, but you know, my most recent book came out two years, so my super tractor came out and that’s actually totally not true. Super tractor came out in the fall in 2020 and then, oh no. So target 2019 in the fall. And I had an audio book that I had come out in March of 2020, and then I hadn’t had a new book until now, 2022
RV (16:01):
Mm-Hmm
GB (16:03):
So, so yeah.
RV (16:04):
So you’re always, it seems like your path has always been like, you see the next one coming already and you go, okay. Like, oh
GB (16:10):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just sold my public. Sure. One of my publish, I, I have two publishers. I publish separately two separate types of platforms, but one of my publishers just like, you know, they’re like, what’s next. And I was like, this is what I wanna write about. And they’re like, great. So I kind of already sold the next one, but I’m not gonna start writing it until the fall. You know, I, I have, I wanna have time because the most recent book just wrote, I, it needs air, it needs breathing room. It needs space. It needs nurturing. You know, you’re like, oh, are you winding down? And I’m like, yeah, the launch is winding down, but the, the movement is revving up.
RV (16:46):
Right.
GB (16:47):
And that’s a important distinction.
RV (16:49):
Yeah. the other thing is your platform is always being built consistent. I mean, you have been someone who has just dominated on social media. And so it’s like, you’re, it feels like every book is like growing the audience grows, the, you know, grows the audience.
GB (17:07):
It is, it’s a big platform builder. Yeah. Books are a big platform builder, because think about it. You know, you take your ideas, you put them into writing. It’s such an easy way for someone to act access you. It’s a great beginning of the customer journey. They, they, they read this, they have an experience with you. They sleep next to you every single night on their bedside, you’re on their bedside and you have this intimate relationship with them. And so of course that really is a platform builder. It’s also a beautiful time when you just get a tremendous amount of, of publicity when you’re in that law launch mode and you give the, the media something to write about and you give the podcast or something to talk about. And it really, if you, if you are in that personal growth business, a book is a V a very important asset for you to have absolutely without a shadow of a doubt.
GB (17:55):
And in fact, look, you know, I, I, don’t always recommend that people put their face on the cover of their books. I started that from the get, from the get go, and it has benefited me, but with, but my vision for my, my writing was so that my books would be a, a huge part of the movement I was creating and the brand that I was building. And so all of my books to date have my cup face on the cover. I think this one smaller book I’m gonna print won’t because it’s, it’s the title is you are the guru it’s I it’s an audio, but I’m gonna print it in, in print. And so I think that you gotta take, you know, the teacher off of the cover when you’re saying you are the guru. So that will be one that won’t have my face on it, but the rest of them do, and for me, that has been a platform builder, for sure. You know, people recognize me from whatever they, other places they may have seen me. But a lot of times people like, oh, you’re that girl on that book cover that woman. I’m not a girl anymore.
RV (18:50):
So you’ve, but you’ve done that. You’ve done that deliberately and intentionally, and you’ve never had any, you’ve never had any worry about self-promotion or vanity or like, cuz cuz I’ll say this like a lot of we, we describe our, our audience as mission driven messengers. They’re exactly the people you’re talking about. They’re they’re not writers per se. They’re someone who goes, I have a message. And I would say that I feel like a strong number of our clients, Gabby. One of the biggest I’ll call it a limiting belief that they have is self-promotion they, they, they they’re stuck. They’re stuck. It’s like they’re trapped in these two prisons. One says you have to get this message out to the world. The other says that’s arrogant and vain and don’t be shallow. Like, you know, whate whoever like it’s and they just like, it’s a real pickle. It’s a connector
GB (19:44):
Beautiful point. Yeah. You know, I’ve had the privilege of, of training authors. I, and I have a training, the bestseller masterclass training. And in that training, I address this head on because I think that writing and publishing a book is a spiritual practice. The first step is having the bravery to reveal the truth, particularly for your audience that are just like me, they’re, they’re wanting to carry an empowering message. And then the next step is really establishing the worthiness. Like who am I to be the expert here? Who am I to tell this story? And in that training, I have a lot of meditations and spiritual practices for grounding yourself in the, who am I not to because we have, in order to show up with our highest purpose in this lifetime, we have to dissolve all boundaries to the expression of that truth. And that must come from a place of who am I not to do this.
GB (20:48):
And more importantly, really grounding yourself in the empowering message that you’re here to share and the impact that it can have. And the message mainly is making it less about you and more about the impact that it will have. And I do this whole me in the bestseller master class about visualizing your reader and really grounding yourself in that experience of the reader, taking in your content. And when you can see your reader in that way, and you can sort of have that, that visceral experience of feeling into that journey that you’re gonna take them on. It really takes your, in your feelings of inadequacy, your feelings of unworthiness out of the picture, it makes it bet something so much bigger. And so, you know, we gotta get our own ego out of it.
RV (21:39):
Yeah. But that that’s beautiful. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a beautiful thought and I, I I’ll tell you so, so by the way, Y also if you go to and builders group.com/gabby, we’re, we’re part of why we have Gabby here is because she’s someone who practices what she preaches. And we like to, we like to celebrate people who do that. And so we’re, we’re, we’re helping her promote this bestseller masterclass. And if you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, you can, you can learn about it. Depending on when you get there, there’s a free training going on. So go, go Pronto ASAP. And when you and I were first talking about this Gabby and you were telling me one of the things that really hit me was what, like, to what you just said, that writing a book is a spiritual practice. It’s this and that really hit me both as a power concept that I think people think of it as like a tactical thing.
RV (22:33):
Oh, I’m just gonna like put some words on a page, but it’s actually a tremendously, you know, spiritual practice. It, it, it also really felt like a great example of you living in your uniqueness, that you apply your, your expertise to spiritual teacher, this topic of writing and marketing books. Mm-Hmm
GB (23:27):
Yeah. And I think that, that, you know, as much as I am writing this, creating this course from the lens of spiritual teacher, which there’s no way I couldn’t cause that’s who I am. I’m also a really great marketer. And I have been very unapologetic about carrying my message and putting my face on the cover and being the ex the very loud mouthpiece for my great work. And that is required of us if we wanna get our books out to the world. And I, and I believe that it is our, it is our responsibility to UN ally share our great work with the world. And so that comes through in all of the marketing techniques that comes through in all the spiritual practices that comes it through in all of the, you know, the practices on how to craft and write your outline and your core message.
GB (24:19):
Every single module of that course is infused with the spiritual foundation in the marketing, the, and the profound gift of, of marketing, because it’s, there’s so many people out there that have so much to give, but they have no idea how to give it. They have no, or they have no idea how to ma market it message it, and they have no confidence or they lack the value and the understanding and the awareness of the importance of how much it has to get out to the world. And so that’s what this training offers you. It does. It’s more than just, and I think that’s just in general, what I think my my literary journey has been, has been a journey of having this, this experience of allowing my books to heal so much that I’m, I can hold this book happiness right here. You know, I’m holding this book and I gotta tell you with my friend, you asked me like, is the launch over no way? Like this book has so much value in this world. This book will save lives. This book will transform people on a molecular level, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that every human that needs it finds it.
RV (25:36):
And when you say the term responsibility, that’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking
GB (25:40):
About a hundred percent. Yeah. I wrote a book called happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace is the most important book I’ve ever written. Yeah. Maybe it’s not as sexy as super attractive about manifesting, but it’s life changing and it is profound and it is healing. And it is giving a reader who, who may identify as having some kind of trauma with a big tier or small tea, giving them the guided path that I wish I had had when I went through that. And so I’m gonna do anything I can to get it out into the world.
RV (26:11):
Love that. I mean, that, that to me is, is such a huge part of this because, you know, like there’s, there’s tactics, right? Like, oh, you can, you know, dig it on, do PR and like do free events and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff is super helpful. But if you don’t believe that the world desperately your message, you will find a way to self sabotage, like, and you’ll blame it on the tactics. But the reality is it’s the beliefs that are holding you back. Mm-Hmm
GB (26:41):
RV (26:45):
Yeah. I love, I, I, I, I think that’s so good that said, okay, just a couple minutes. So do, do you have a few tactics? Cause like the tactics are helpful, right? Mm-Hmm
GB (27:28):
For you actually an interesting point. Yeah. See. So with regard to getting the book out, I, I created a six month marketing plan for in inside my bestseller masterclass. It’s actually, one of the modules is teaching it and then they can download the plan. Like they can really walk away with that plan it, if you follow those steps, you will be able to launch a bestselling book. And the thing that you’re saying, that’s so important in terms of tactical practical methods is giving yourself the space to prepare for birthing something so valuable into the world. And of all the products that I launch in the, you know, podcast and everything that I do in my life the most time, attention and energy goes into launching a book because for me, and I really go six months out. And, and now I’m thinking about that as it relates to, you know, pregnancy, right?
GB (28:22):
Like the first three months, you’re kind of like fun and then six months out, you start to plan. Right? And so that, that planning period, and I, I actually even start planning even for further back than that, but it’s really a six month journey of marketing this book out into the world. And then sort of what happens after the book the, the, the strategy and the, and the commitment and the planning is effective and necessary. In addition, there’s other tools I could give people right now, and I go deep into this, in that free training that you mentioned, and these are, and the free training, I actually share my four secrets to your best seller. And they’re, it’s a good sneak preview of what you get inside the bestseller masterclass, but to touch into some of that. Yeah,
RV (29:04):
So real quick. So just again, Y so if, if, if you’re hearing this podcast, right, when it comes out, you can, you can get the free training because it we’re gonna publish this right before it happens. If you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, the free training will be happening. So hit, as soon as you hear this episode, go to that lake. And then if you it’s, It’s live
GB (29:25):
Right now.
RV (29:27):
Oh yeah. It’s a live free training. Yeah.
GB (29:28):
Live free training. Yeah.
RV (29:29):
If you miss it, if you miss it, we’ll have that link redirected to either, you know, something other free training she’s got or to, or just to the masterclass itself. Okay. Go ahead. So, so brand builders, group.com/gabby, don’t miss it. Okay. Continue on your four secrets.
GB (29:44):
And so I’m gonna share these secrets in the training. And what I’ll touch into right now is that the number one thing you have to know to write and market a best selling book is what your core message is. And your core message is the through line of your book, an example of a core message, happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace that is often the subtitle of the book is the core message, right? So the universe has your back transform fear into faith, the super methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams. Having that clear core message is so crucial to making sure that you don’t write five books in one, it’s so crucial to making sure that you’re sticking to the message rather than, you know, veering off into a thousand different directions. And it’s so crucial to the marketing process, because if you have written a book that has five different core messages, then you don’t know how to market what you’re marketing. You don’t know who you’re marketing to you. Don’t right. So it’s like the, the core message is so important. And I give a practice on how to establish core message inside that free training and a whole module on it inside the bestseller masterclass.
RV (31:06):
Yeah. that, it’s, it’s interesting, cuz we think of that, that message. It’s almost like a litmus test for what makes it in the book and what doesn’t get, make the cut. Exactly. And then, you know, less like the podcast that you, that you, you take on, you know, like which, which media appearances do you take, which speaking engagements do you take? Like who do you go? How
GB (31:25):
Do I pitch it? How do I even pitch it? Right. It’s like, if you don’t, if you’re trying to tell people how to manifest and how to overcome trauma, you don’t, what are you pitching? You know what I mean? Like it’s not the same book. And so you really need to have that clear core message before you start.
RV (31:39):
Well, Gabby, I, I think I will take you know, I will take away so much from this conversation and, and this idea that writing a book is a spiritual practice and marketing book is a spiritual practice. It is a responsibility that you owe to a reader who’s out there that needs you and they need the work that you’ve been called to be a conduit for. And so check out brand builders, group.com/gabby follow Gabby online. You probably already are. She’s got millions of people, but thank you so much for this time and your insight and your wisdom. And I just, I, you know, I’m honored to, to feel like I’m a little bit of a friend of yours and to, to know the true GE you’re on of all the people you’re gonna impact just in the years to come Gabby. So we wish you the best.
GB (32:30):
Thank you. Thank you. So to talk about this.
Ep 272: How to Make Money Selling Online Courses with Amy Porterfield
RV (00:02):
Oh, oh, I’m so excited and happy for you to meet someone who is a, a newer friend of mine, but somebody that I’ve known for years, I mean, she is the definition of someone whose reputation precedes her, which is what we’re always talking about is building trust, building reputation, doing things that last in her significant over time. And those are all things that I think of when I think of Amy Porterfield. Amy is one of the, I would say original, like or online marketing experts. One of the founding people of this space that is digital marketing and course creation and content creators. She’s extraordinary. She has one of the biggest podcasts in the world it’s called online marketing made easy. I mean, if you go on iTunes, you’ll see it like every week, it’s right in the top five. And before, before she, you know, started this business you know, she’s got several different things that she does, but DCA digital course academy is like one of her flagship products that really, really became well known and really helped create the space that a lot of us live and operate inside of.
RV (01:13):
She worked with mega brands like Harley Davidson and she worked with Tony Robbins actually is where she started before. And so she just does things the right way. She believes in action. She helps people take, you know, small steps and she just has a really amazing track record of success. And I’ve had an awesome time just getting to know her a little bit here and there over the years. And so anyways, Amy, welcome to the show.
AP (01:37):
Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I love that. We’ve gotten to know each other more and more, and now that I’m in Nashville, we’re practically neighbors, so that’s a lot of fun. So thanks for having me.
RV (01:47):
Totally. So I know that, you know, so much about online marketing, but what I would love to hear is the story of how you got started, because I think it’s really easy to go, oh, you know, one day, you know, a lot, I know a lot of people, a lot of our clients, a lot of our team members look up to you and go, oh, I, you know, Amy Porterfield, like, she’s amazing which you are, but how did you get started in the beginning? Like before anyone knew your name before you had the email list before you had hundreds of thousands of social media followers in a top rank podcast, like, can you take us back to that moment for a bit?
AP (02:23):
Yes. And I have to say it’s a little bit of a Rocky start for sure. So let me first take you back to when I was working for Tony Robbins. So I was the director of content development, which really meant I was lucky enough to get to travel the world with Tony and work on the content that he did at his live events, unleashed the power within date with destiny, all these amazing events that he still does. Well, I got to be a part of that from a content standpoint and work on his infomercials back in the day when he was doing his infomercials. So it was an incredible time, but I had this one fateful meeting where Tony invited a bunch of internet marketers to come into our San Diego office and talk about their digital courses in their online businesses. So people like Frank Kern, Brenda Rashard, Evan pagan, Jeff Walker were all at this table.
AP (03:12):
Now I didn’t really know who these guys were, and this is very humbling. It’s a big table. I was asked to come in and notes. So I was literally sitting at a different table, taking notes while these guys went around and talked about their online businesses. Tony wanted to sell digital courses at a, a deeper level. And he always looks at people who are getting it right, and figuring out how they’re doing it. So it was a really cool meeting, but I took the worst notes ever because once these guys started talking, all I heard was freedom. All I heard was like, I get to create my own content, call my own shots. I get to build my audience and work with people I love to work with. And they had lifestyle freedom, financial freedom, time, freedom. And I just thought, I don’t know what these guys are doing. And it was all guys. I don’t know what these guys were doing, but I want a piece of it. So my life was forever changed in that one very specific meeting. And over the next year, I
RV (04:07):
Decided what year was that?
AP (04:08):
So that was 2008. Wow. And so for the next year I worked on how would I have my own online business? And I remember turning to a girl I was working with at Tony Robbins and saying, you’re a writer. You have a skillset that can translate into freelancing and doing your own thing. I’ve been in corporate all my life, like from Harley Davidson publishing, before that I’m a corporate girl. Like I have no idea what I would do as an online business, but I was so wrong because I believe that everybody has some in them that they could take and turn into an online business. I am a, a huge believer in that. So fast forward about a year when I finally said, okay, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna take the leap. I’m gonna start my own business. I quit my Tony Robbin’s job and start my, how have
RV (04:58):
You been there business? How long had you been at Tony Robbins?
AP (05:01):
Almost seven years. So I was there for a
RV (05:03):
Good that’s long time, a long time.
AP (05:05):
And it was an amazing job. They paid me well, I had a lot of clout. I got to call, you know, make big decisions. They respected me like it was, and I got to travel with Tony. I mean, come on. It was an amazing experience, but I wanted that freedom so bad, so bad. You know, I was traveling probably 200, 250 days a year to these events and these other things that we were doing, I had just gotten married. I never saw my husband. So shout
RV (05:33):
Up to Hoby, shout out to what’s up, man.
AP (05:36):
He’s such a good man. So I wanted to spend more time with him. So I thought, okay, I need to change. So I quit my job about a year after that meeting. And I started to do consulting for social media. So I would do I say consulting, but if I really looked at it, I was doing social media for small businesses. And social media was the wild wild west 13 years ago. And so basically I got to kind of just be in a market that was very, very hot at the time, but I hated it. So for two years I built a business I hated. And what I mean by that is I went from one big boss. Literally Tony’s is a huge guy to like eight mini bosses. My clients who I literally let treat me like an employee, I had no boundaries.
AP (06:24):
I was the yes girl. And so I would work way more hours than I did at my Robin’s job, which was a lot of hours. And I didn’t know what freedom was. And I thought, I don’t know who said being your own boss is a great thing, but this is not my cup of tea. So for the first two years, when I started this business, I didn’t like I had a a situation with a free contractor. I was a contractor for the guy in internet marketing, and he had a problem with something, decided to take it out on me. I was getting off of a plane going marketing conference, and he’s on the phone and he’s screaming at me like you did this wrong and you did that wrong and this, and he just needed someone to blame. And I was the girl. And I thought in that moment, I am done with doing this kind of work. It is not the thing I wanna do. I literally fired all my clients. I said, I’m not doing this anymore. I gave him a little runway. That is the day that I started creating digital courses in order to sell online and teach people how to do marketing. So it was a rough two years. I, I went into debt. Things didn’t work out, but it finally did. Thank God.
RV (07:31):
Wow. So, okay, so that’s a, that’s awesome. I, I didn’t realize that you were at Tony Robbins for that long. I mean, that’s pretty cool, like to get really good working knowledge of what a personal brand, you know, operating at that scale. So, so fast forward now, okay. To today, can you still make money selling courses? Like do, like, because people, I hear all the time, right? It’s like, nah, you know, like everyone has a course, like everyone makes courses on courses and how to do courses. Like no one courses anymore, no one finishes courses. Like, but then I go, I don’t know. Like I think my friend Amy’s like doing pretty well and like a lot of our clients are like doing pretty well.
AP (08:11):
Yes. Okay. So the, the short answer is absolutely you can make money with courses, but we’ve also seen the landscape change over time. And I think one of the biggest changes I’ve seen with people who create courses and deliver courses is that people are craving that interaction. We just came out of a two year pandemic. So yeah, people are craving that engagement, that interaction and wanting to get involved with the course creator or the course creators team, so that there’s some and catching going on. And so what we’ve seen is the best courses that are making the most money and the most impact are those were the course creators, willing to show up or willing to create workshops within their courses to actually implement and get things done. I think that’s a shift we’re seeing where back in the day, when I first started creating courses, you could create a course. You didn’t have a community. You didn’t even have live Q and A’s. People could email you if they have a question gone are those days, for sure. But I’m glad that that’s how it is because I love that. I get to see the transformations happening in inside of my courses, but courses are alive and well, and not going anywhere. If anything, we’re continuing to see the climb in people taking courses and really smart people, creating courses.
RV (09:26):
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of like, I mean, as long as there’s something to learn, there’s gonna be a reason for a course. And it’s like the more and more, it, it becomes easy to produce a high quality product. You know, just using like digital tools. I think to me, the real pressure is gonna be put on like colleges and institutions like that of going like, wait a minute. Like, why should I spend a hundred thousand dollars going somewhere to like, learn from people who have never done it when I can spend a few thousand bucks and learn from the someone who’s the master at this
AP (10:01):
It’s so true. I’ve heard over and over again, not to too my own horn, but to answer that question or to address that where people have said, I have a college education, I have an MBA and I got more out of this, the specifics of what to do than I’ve ever gotten out of that college education. And I think that is very normal for people who create courses that really take it seriously, like find great value in creating impeccable content. I think that’s what’s happening.
RV (10:29):
So, so let’s look at the course then and you go, like, there’s a lot of people. I mean, you know, and a lot of like our listeners and our are like profess service people, right? Like they might be an accountant or they’re a, you know, they’re a dentist or they’re a lawyer or, you know, something like that. And, and, and in those industries, you know, course creation is, is kind of even just coming, you know, just becoming a thing. So how long does a course have to be? I mean, like, I I’d be totally curious in some of these really fundamental questions, just like you said, you’ve been there from the beginning. You’ve seen the transformations that like how long does a course have to be, do I have to, can I shoot it on an iPhone? Does it have to be a six camera shoot? Like how much, how much does it cost? Like just the making of the, of the course itself. Like, okay,
AP (11:16):
I love where
RV (11:16):
We’re at today.
AP (11:18):
Love this question. So first of all, let’s talk about investing and creating a course. Absolutely. You can create it on a smartphone. Absolutely. But you can also even do it easier and use a simple software and do slides in audio. So they hear you, but you’re using slides and you’re educating in that way or a nice little mix of both, but you can do that at on a very tight budget. So number one, you do not need a big budget. Definitely don’t need a crew to help you six cameras, none of that. And I don’t do any of that either. So you could keep it really simple. Also when you ask how long does a course need to be? I teach three different courses and really four with a caveat. So let me tell you about the three courses. Okay. First I teach a starter course where that’s, where you’re helping people just dip their toes in the water just to get started, get that instant momentum.
AP (12:07):
So that could be a course that they get through over the weekend, three modules, a few videos in each module. It’s just the basics. So that’s a starter course, usually around a hundred dollars or so, the second type of course is a spotlight course where you’re gonna take one area of your expertise and you’re gonna go deep. So one of my students is a photographer and he did a spotlight course on flash photography that looked like natural light. So that was his spotlight course, really deep in one topic, never launched anything ever online made $12,000 with this first launch with a list of a hundred people. Wow. So $12,000, just some of you’re like, I wanna make way more than that. Well, yeah, when you have an email list of a hundred, that’s incredibly impressive. Imagine what he can do when he grows his email list.
AP (12:52):
And so that’s a spotlight course, usually around $250 to $500 is what you’ll charge. And then the third type of course is a signature signature course. I call this the Mac daddy of all courses. That’s where you’re giving someone a total transformation from start to finish everything they need to know for that total transformation, how to go from never running in your life, to running a marathon, how to go from never creating a digital course to creating and launching a digital course. So it’s total transformation, usually between 500 and all the way up to $3,000. You got a lot of wiggle room there. So those are the three different types of courses. But I wanna add one thing to that. I was actually reading an apple article about how they’re moving away from the word pro to studio for some of their products and this concept that you need to be pro is going away.
AP (13:43):
And I’m so excited cause I’ve been preaching this forever. You don’t need to be the ultimate pro in your topic, the expert of all experts in order to teach it, all you need is what is what I call a 10% edge. So Jill and Josh Staton are dear friends of mine. They first said this. And I was like, I’m stealing that. That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about. A 10% edge, which means you’re 10% ahead of those that you serve. You’ve done something or you’ve gotten results for, let’s say clients or customers. Now you’re gonna teach how you got those results. As long as you’ve got results in an area. And you’re a few steps ahead of those you serve. You’re perfect to create a course.
RV (14:22):
I love that now. So going back to, okay, so the starter course, you said it might be three modules, three videos in each module, you’re talking about nine, nine videos. How, or yeah, maybe like nine videos. How long are each of the videos?
AP (14:37):
Okay. So an ideal situation and where the market is right now, shorter videos, but multiple videos is better than, let’s say one hour long video. So if, if you need to teach something, it’s gonna take you an hour to teach. Let’s break that up into 15 minute short videos where they’re progressing on each other. People
RV (14:54):
Like four or 15 minute videos, you’re saying
AP (14:56):
Yes. Yes. Okay. Because what you had said earlier makes a lot of sense that people aren’t finishing their courses, we’re obsessed with, with the psychology behind how to get someone to finish a course. So we do a lot of things in our own course and I teach how to get people to the finish line. And one of the ways to get people to the finish line is allowing them to feel as though they have momentum quick 15 minute videos gives you that feeling of momentum. So for a starter course, yeah, you could do three modules in each module. There’s three or four videos let’s say. And that, but I think the more important quite is what do you need to do to teach them how to get the results, whatever it’s gonna take te you know, to get them to that place that you’ve promised that roadmap is really important, but when you’re looking at, how am I going to get them results, if you can do it in the fastest way possible people want instant gratification, let’s give them what they want as close as we can so long, drawn out courses, not ideal.
RV (15:57):
So then you might have, so I love that answer, right? I love that answer of going. It should be as long as it needs to be. Right? Yeah. The the one of, one of my, my speaking mentors in the world champion chip of public speaking said, Rory, tell the audience every single word they need to know and not a word more.
AP (16:18):
Yes, exactly.
RV (16:20):
Very similar to that. And, and so I love that. But like, and so if you’re putting your mind around it, it’s like, okay. It, it might be, if it’s 45 minutes long, like you have nine videos, they’re five minutes. Each that could be a starter course. Like it, it
AP (16:35):
Really could a couple hours. It could really get that way. Absolutely.
RV (16:39):
And then a signature course might be longer.
AP (16:43):
Yeah. So you’ve seen the courses out there like Marie Folio’s B school, it’s a six week course, digital course academy. It’s a seven week course. And there’s seven modules in that seven week course. And they’re gonna take you a few hours to get through now. And I said, you know, don’t create a long out, drawn out course if you don’t need to. But I’ve, if I’m teaching someone how to create and launch a digital course, who’s never done. So might not even have an email list to start out with there’s some things I’ve gotta teach. So then one of the things we do in our course is if it’s a longer course bake in pep talks, it’s a very big deal. So when someone’s going through your course, you’re teaching them something very specific, let’s say nutrition, or how to get their babies to sleep at night or whatever. It might be. There’s moments in the course, you have to stop and say, okay, this is gonna be a tough module. You’re gonna get stuck here and here. And you’re likely gonna think X, Y, Z going. And here’s why like stopping for the pep talks in a digital course are essential to someone getting to the finish line. So the longer, the course, the more mindset type of content you’re going to need to bake in.
RV (17:48):
Ah, that’s so good. I mean, cuz that it’s funny, cuz people are always like, Ooh, I want the, you know, I want the meat, like give me the technique, cut to it. But the reality is the reason they don’t execute is not cuz they don’t know what to do. It’s cuz they get scared and burnt out and frustrated and discouraged and it’s like, they need the pep talk. Like they need, they need that pep talk. Okay. So let’s say this is a big, you know, fast forward, but all right. I created the course, right? Like whatever I did, I, I have the thing now. Yes. how do I get people to buy the thing? Okay. So I got the thing, but if you build it, they don’t come and you go, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of social media followers. And I, you know, I’m, I’m not a like, you know, TV star. I don’t have millions of followers. Like what do I do to sell the thing?
AP (18:40):
I’m so glad you asked this question because one of the things I tell my students is a digital course with, let’s say a sales page is not a build it and they will come kind a situation. You need what I call a marketing vehicle in order to drive traffic. So what I wouldn’t do is I wouldn’t create a course and then create a sales page and then go on social media and email my list and say, I’ve got a course. Here’s what it’s about. Go check it out. I don’t believe that that is the most valuable way for you to get the word it out there about your course. So what I believe is you need a marketing vehicle. My favorite is a webinar. Now it’s funny. Some people will say aren’t webinars going away. 13 years ago, when I came on the scene full time, they would say aren’t webinars going away where they kind of just started.
AP (19:28):
So it’s just people like to, if they’ve a webinar, it hasn’t worked for them. Well, webinars don’t work. Well, let me tell you, I’ve got thousands of students who would disagree with you. Webinars are valuable because if you do it right, and in my course, I literally teach slide by slide by slide because it’s that important when you do a webinar, right? You are giving immense value for about 45 minutes, which I say is you are earning your right to sell. You are giving value before asking anything in return. They see how you teach. They see your personality, your teaching style is so important for them to know and just they get a good sense of what you’re about. And you start changing their mind through that webinar. What do they need to know or believe or understand before they’re ever ready to buy? You’re answering that question in your webinar.
AP (20:14):
So when you get to the selling portion, they’re more likely to buy your conversions will increase so much more. If you do, let’s say a webinar to a sales page. And then of course, if they don’t buy on the webinar, you use email marketing to a sales page. But also there’s other things you can do. You can do challenge challenges. Challenges are really big right now converting. Well, one thing that we’re doing in may that we’ve never done before is a paid challenge. So we’ve done tons of free ones, but now we’re having people. Is it really a paid workshop that we’re then going to sell our course in that workshop? So we’re trying different things, but webinars, workshops, challenges, it’s that vehicle that then gets them to the sales page.
RV (20:55):
Yeah. And I, so, you know, it’s funny when I was in college, Amy, I, I went door to door for five summers knocked on 15 hours a day. This is in, this is the year 2000 to 2005. And people would say, nobody will buy from a door door salesperson. I made $250,000 in five years, five summers knocking on doors. And it was like, there could not be a more antiquated old school doesn’t work anymore. And it’s like, when it comes to content marketing, like here’s the thing, you can call it a video funnel. You can call it a webinar funnel. You can call it a challenge. You can call it a summit. You can call it an IGT or a TikTok. The bottom line is if you give value to people first, if you teach ’em what you know, through whatever the medium is or the modality, the, they will trust you. And then they will buy from you. If, if you want more yes. Or like, yes,
AP (21:55):
Yes, yes. And yes, it’s so true. I love that you use the door to door example. Yeah. People will knock it, but then the people who have actually done it, taken it seriously, look, you’ve gotten amazing results with fit. And I think that the, the thing that people get a little bit stuck on webinars, is it that, that live aspect going live? What if the technology breaks down? I’ve been on many, many webinars where the technology broke down. Yeah. Real quick. When my very first webinar that I’ve ever done was with Tony Robbins and it was back years before I left the position and Tony was doing his very first webinar. Like he had never done it. It was on go-to webinar. He’d never done a webinar before. And he was selling people to unleash the power within, through this webinar. But they paid a hundred dollars cuz Tony’s Tony. So he can get ’em to pay a hundred dollars even be on that webinar. Right. And then he was selling them into U P w we had 800 people signed up the night before Tony and I. He was at his home. I was still in the office and we were practicing. And then he’s like, okay, I’m good to go. I pressed a button. And all of a sudden Tony goes, Amy, why did I just get an email saying our webinar has been canceled? I’m like, no, no, no, no. It’s not no
RV (23:06):
Way
AP (23:07):
Everybody got an email saying your webinar has been canceled. Yes. I literally deleted the webinar. I will say there were tears. I literally stayed in the office all night. Never went home that night. Thank God. Go to webinar, pieced it all together after hours and hours of figuring out what we’re going to do. But yeah, we had to send out an email saying just joking, it’s not canceled. I’m sure Tony wanted to fire me in that moment. But things happen. And I think as an entrepreneur, building a brand that you firmly believe in and that you’re here for the long haul, you have to roll with those challenges. You have to say like, I’m gonna look like a fool on this webinar. Maybe it might not go as planned. I’m gonna figure it out. And I think I’m better because of all the many mistakes I’ve made along the way.
RV (23:51):
Yeah. That’s such a, such a great story. And it’s people like to blame a tactic or blame a tool. And it’s just like, they all work. Like none of ’em, none of ’em are, none of ’em are perfect. They all work. If you work, like if you work it and you gotta, you just gotta keep going now. Okay. So, you know, this is helpful for me. Like even we have, you know, we see a lot of courses and all that stuff. We, we don’t sell a ton of them cuz we’re coaching. But Tony Robbins is using webinars to, to sell events. You’re using webinars to sell courses. We use webinars to drive people to free calls and then we sell ’em coaching. Like, like it, it, you can’t say it doesn’t work. It totally works. Cuz it’s just, it’s not the webinar. It’s human psychology.
RV (24:32):
It’s like I’m teaching, I’m giving value. What, what I am curious while I, while I have you, I know we only have a few, few more minutes, but like while I have you since we haven’t been, you know, all in on courses like, like this, I wanna kind of move to more of the, a little more of the advanced stages and talk about scale. So how many, how many courses can you really sell of the same one? Cuz I hear people be like, well, you know I sold 500 or I sold a hundred and I need a new course. Like, do you have any thoughts on like how often do I need to create a new course?
AP (25:09):
Okay. So you and I are new friends, so you don’t know this, but this is my favorite question ever, because I teach my students that it only takes one course to essentially make a million dollars. I made a million dollars with a $97 course that I did with Louis House. Back in the day, we partnered on a course and also I’ve made a million dollars with courses that were more expensive in a very short period of time. Now the million dollars is not what we should be chasing. That’s not a number that I want my students to fixate on. What I’m saying is that if you create one course and you launch it over and over and over again, and each time you relaunch it, you marketing gets better. Your webinar gets better. Your course is updated each time based on the feedback from the last student group, you can create one course and continue to launch it.
AP (25:57):
And I want you to launch it at least three to four times before you ever move to anything new. Every single one of my mentors, my peers that have done really well with digital courses, they don’t jump ship. They stay with that same thing, keep it simple, get fancy later. And what I mean by get fancy later is once you’ve dialed that in once, that course is making you money. You might wanna turn it on evergreen. You go from a live launch to evergreen and then you wanna add something else to the mix. So right now I have two courses on evergreen, one that I live long lunch once a year and I have a membership. And the only way you can get into that membership is if you go through my signature course. So I have four core things that I do and I do them really well, but I don’t do a lot of other things as well. I get asked to do a bunch of stuff and I gotta get on the no train because I wanna be really good at what I do. The last thing I’ll say to that though, is I’ve never added something new until what I was working on was fully optimized and dialed in and could run itself so that I could move on to something else. So my answer is you don’t need a lot of courses. You don’t need a lot of memberships do one thing. Well Del will down and don’t move on until you’ve perfected that
RV (27:06):
That’s so good. Like y’all, if you, those of you that have heard us talk about Shehan wall and if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Yes. You just heard it from the mouth of the queen of this, of this whole space. Like how many years you’ve been doing this? Amy? Oh,
AP (27:23):
Al over 13. So almost 14,
RV (27:26):
13 years. And after 13 years you got three courses, 1, 2, 3, and a membership site, which is just a place to, for people to go after they’ve been through the three. Yeah, they
AP (27:35):
Have. Yeah. You don’t even market it publicly. Yeah.
RV (27:38):
So three courses, 13 years you said.
RV (27:42):
And, and you go, I mean just, if you think about it, you go, if you spend 13 years perfecting the, the sales of three things, do you think you’ll figure it out? The answer is yes. Anybody could figure it out, but when you spend 13 days and then you launch something new and then you go, I didn’t like that. And that webinar didn’t work and I need a new CR am and I need a new social media strategy and a new, I mean, that is so powerful. Like you’ve made millions and millions of dollars from three courses. How many students is this? How many people can you, can you really reach before you go? The market is saturated.
AP (28:20):
So we’ve served over 40,000 students over my
RV (28:23):
Lifetime. Oh man. That is awesome.
AP (28:25):
Yeah. Of building the business. So we’re really proud of that. And this whole idea that the market is saturated. I just feel like you could say that in so many different places, but then you always see people coming out on top. And I always think, well, why not me? Why can’t that be me? And I also really know what I do. Well, I do many things wrong and I’m weak in a lot of areas, but I know step by step teaching. I know taking people through the details, holding their hand virtually. And so I just bank on what I know best and whoever likes that kind of style of teaching, they’re gonna like what I have. So I just don’t focus on the saturation cause I just don’t think it serves us.
RV (29:03):
I mean, well, even if we say, okay, 40, thousand’s the number. Once you’ve sold 40,000, then we’ll call Amy back and we’ll say, Amy, our market is saturated. What do we do next? But
AP (29:13):
Call me then
RV (29:14):
We know 40,000. Okay. So 40,000 times $500 course. Eh, that’s a good bit of coin that you can make between between here and there. Amy, this has been so great. I know you just, you have so much information. One of the things that you mentioned that I wanted to get into that we’re not gonna have time to get into is list building and you building your email list. I know you did a, you did a ton with that. You did a brilliant job of building your own list. You have a a program called list builder society. Yeah. And we’re, we are a new affiliate for Amy because of this. If you go to brand builders, group.com/porterfield, brand builders, group.com/porter you can learn about this. So te so tell us a little bit about what that is and like, you know, the email list.
AP (30:07):
So I always say that the energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. I wanna repeat that one more time. The energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. Notice I did not say size because I know lots of my students was small email list, doing big things. But the energy that I’m talking about is your impact, your revenue, your engagement, your audience, building, all of that is surrounded by what you can do with this email list. Social media is fickle that algorithm, you can’t trust it. People will see two to 3% of your post on social media, but email can convert at four times higher than any social media post. So I always tell my students, if you’re asking, where do I start? What do I do? How do I make my business more profitable? You have to focus on your email list, the best time to do so was yesterday the best next time is today. So I created this free master class. It’s called we, why is starting an email list. So dang hard and what to do instead. And it’s all about what you can do to make your email list grow quickly, free masterclass. Whether you buy from me or not, you’ll walk away with value. So go check it out. I’d love to help people get started with that.
RV (31:17):
Yeah. See. So there you go. So brand builders, group.com/porterfield, you can check this out, you know, okay, Amy’s going to deliver 45 minutes of the best stuff she has.
AP (31:26):
Absolutely.
RV (31:28):
This is one reason we’re aligned. One of our mantras that we talk about all the time, Amy is we say, save the best for first. Save the best
AP (31:35):
First. Oh, I love that.
RV (31:36):
Just and, and, and you do this, you give the goods like, so go there brand builder, group.com/porterfield, go there, watch the training. You don’t have to buy the course. The training’s gonna be awesome. Watch Amy do this, right? Like here she is. Right. What? And do what she’s doing. You go on podcasts, you make friends, you share tips on social. And then you say, go watch my free training. And that’s how you, that’s how you build your email list. And on the free training, you say, she check out my course and that’s how you, how you sell the course. It’s. I mean, I think one of the things that’s gonna stick with me the most from this, especially since you and I haven’t like spent a ton of time together is just you know, you, from a far Amy, you look at somebody like you who’s accomplished so much.
RV (32:20):
You’re so influential in the space. You know, so many people like you, you know, everybody that is an, is OG in this whole space. It’s easy to get enamored. Like, well, of course she would, or she started earlier or you know, all of these stories, but to hear you go, I use webinars. I sell courses, I got three courses. I teach people as much value as I can in 45 minutes. And then I show ’em how to take the next step. It’s like, you’re, it’s, it’s, you know, not to take away from your magic whatsoever, but you are, you are a master at the fundamentals.
AP (32:56):
That is like the biggest compliment ever. I appreciate you saying that.
RV (33:01):
It’s awesome. So it it’s
AP (33:02):
Important. So thank you for recognizing that. No one’s ever said that about me before like that, and I appreciate it cause it’s important. And I hope I’m an example to people that it doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to have a tons of tons of bells and whistles to make this work. And, and I hope people see that today.
RV (33:19):
I love it. I love it. So anyways, we’ll link up to Amy’s free training. You can check it out, follow her on social. Amy, we wish you the best. I know you’ve got some big things coming up here in your future, which we’ll be praying for and cheering for. Thank you. And
AP (33:33):
Well, you’ve been such a, a great new friend and I’m, I’m excited for us to get to know each other even more. So thanks for having be me.
RV (33:40):
Yeah. You’re part of the Nashville posse. Now, like once you move into Nashville, it’s just like, we gotta, we gotta stick together,
AP (33:46):
Bring it on. I love it.
RV (33:48):
All right, friend. All the best. Thank you so much.
AP (33:50):
Thank you.
Ep 270: Building Your Personal Brand as A Small Business Owner with Jill Flodstrom
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. Today I have a good friend and a BBG client as my special guest. Before I formally turn it over and let you guys meet the one and only Jill Flodstrom let me give you just a little bit of her what I’m gonna call professional bio and then I’ll help fill in the gaps with all the things that are not on here, which should be, which I think are a really impressive part of who Jill is and what she’s done. But here are some things that might be relevant to you specifically, if you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, right? Because Jill is a serial entrepreneur, she has created and built five separate businesses in three separate industries. And so she is no stranger to jumping off the cliff without a parachute and trying to figure out how do we make this all work as she’s a flying down the mountain which I think is a unique component of deciding to take that leap and be an entrepreneur and build a small business.
AJV (01:09):
But I would say when it comes to her personal brand, separate of all these businesses that she’s created and runs, she really specializes in helping her clients mitigate feelings of overwhelming chaos when it comes to growing their businesses. And as an entrepreneur and a small business owner, there is a lot of chaos and a lot of overwhelm. And I also know that Jill is not just passionate, but also just very skilled at efficiency and organization. And so she has really I would say made that leap from not just entrepreneur and small business owner, but also a thriving personal brand. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Jill,
JF (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
AJV (01:53):
Yes, we are too. I love it. When we get to feature our clients and you’re not just a client, like you’re one of like the OG clients. You’ve been a part of our community for three years. We’re so honored and blessed to have, get to be a small part of your journey and to see all the amazing stuff that you’ve built over the last three years. But I know all this, but the people listening do not. So to help everyone get to know you a little bit, just to tell us how you got to where you are what are these businesses that you’ve been building? And that was just a little bit about all the things that are Jill
JF (02:27):
They’re. They are all so different. I, I think a lot of people probably tried to create businesses within the same industry. Not me. I’m just like, you know what, I wanna try that let’s go for it. But my career started in banking, which led to financial services because I used to work at the coroners office. I used to meet a ton of people that were not prepared for retirement, not prepared for the bad things that can happen to us. And I just thought, you know what, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be people that we can talk to that really understand, you know, what’s kind of working, using my medical background to, so it just kind of was a natural evolution. And then with the way that the reform has come about with healthcare and financial services, just thought, you know, what it need to create a personal brand, something that I can control. And it’s just kind of led to where we’re at today and it’s been a natural evolution and it’s just, it’s been an awesome, awesome journey.
AJV (03:25):
Oh, I love that. And I love how you just, so always casually mentioned this, this brief stint of your life in the coroner’s office and the Morgue I think it’s so fascinating knowing you and you were like the most bubbly, bright, friendly person on the planet. Like how that ever worked. I don’t know. Maybe it’s like the perfect just juxtaposition of roles and positions in that. But so I, I want everyone to know, it’s like, kinda give like people, like when you talk about building and scaling small businesses and all these different industries, it’s like you have a real estate entity, you’ve got your financial service services and insurance practice like you’re really all across the board. And so I’m curious for you knowing that when it comes to like your personal brand and this personal passion of yours around organization and efficiency, it’s like, like, how do you, like, I even know, like right now, as you sit right here, like you’re sitting in Las Vegas, you do not live in Las Vegas, you live in Washington, but you’re flipping a house for your real estate business. It’s like, how do you keep all these different businesses, like siloed and centered and organized and efficient and running all at the same time, because that’s a lot going on.
JF (04:36):
It is. I always tell people, it’s like, kind of like a marathon. Like you have to make sure that all these businesses are running at the same pace as each other, which is kind of a juggling, you know, situation. But I think the most important thing is we try to complicate things so much as human beings and really just keeping things super simple, allows me to do all these different and keeping these businesses running is quite the adventure, but keeping it simple has really, really helped me.
AJV (05:08):
Okay. So this is an amazing topic to talk about because I doesn’t, I do not care what it is that you do. It’s like we do overcomplicate it. Like we try to make it as complicated as possible. Even if it’s emotionally, it’s like, it’s not that big of a deal, but yet we build it up as some catastrophic event that’s gonna happen. And so as an entrepreneur, small business owner, this thriving, personal brand with this awesome reputation for doing great work, it’s what are the things that you find other small business owners, entrepreneurs overcomplicate, and, and wanna know personally too. It’s like, how would you help someone to simplify things?
JF (05:48):
I think the first one, because we all are suffering from overwhelm in our email. And so I love to focus with my clients first on the email, like let’s tame the email monster, and then we can kind of move on to some other things. But there’s a way that I organize my inboxes within my email inbox, which makes it so much easier to just manage that flow of emails, because I think there’s so many more people that are, are just, they look at their inbox and they’re like, oof, I’m not even gonna deal with it today. I’m just gonna set it aside. And if somebody really needs me, they’ll email me again and it’ll move to the top of the stack because I used to be one of those people that when you would look at my phone, it said like 50,000 messages, like I was that person and now I am reformed and I am inbox zero. Like that’s the team I’m on. And let me tell you, if you are suffering with email overwhelm, that inbox zero is like, it it’ll change your life.
AJV (06:47):
How is that even possible?
JF (06:50):
Right.
AJV (06:51):
What I know. So, okay. So when it comes to email, like give us one tip from the Jill floods from book of how do you, I don’t know if this is a word decom, simplify, let’s go simplify. How do you simplify email? Like how do you make progress towards this concept of zero inbox?
JF (07:10):
Well, I think the main thing is using templated responses. That is huge because when you think about, you know, all the emails that you get in every day, you might be typing the exact same words
AJV (07:23):
All the time,
JF (07:23):
A bunch of different people over and over and over again. And when you think about creating a templated response for that, it just makes it so easy to just click one button versus having to type that whole string. And if you’re somebody that uses your own for email, like you’re not a desktop or a laptop person, you can use the hot keys inside your phone to do the same thing. So instead of having to type all that out and use up all that extra time and energy, you just couple key strokes and you’re done. I mean, it’s, it’s been a huge game changer.
AJV (07:55):
Okay. Well, I’m gonna sound really uneducated right now. What is the templated response of, how do I get one? What is this?
JF (08:02):
Well, depending on what
AJV (08:04):
Email. Okay. I use office 365.
JF (08:07):
Okay. So mine’s probably gonna look a little bit different than yours because I am a Gmail person for business. So basically what it is is you just go into your settings and there’s different things, very similar to how you set up your S line in your email. So it’s similar to that and it’s probably in a very similar spot in your settings. So you go in there and you type like Hey, thanks so much for your email. I’ll get back to you in a couple hours with it. That’s just an easy one. Well, you can create that templated response and then just use certain keys. You know, I usually set them as like weird key strokes, like X, you know, Y, Z something like that, that you wouldn’t normally type, like don’t use ha S or something like that, cuz you type that all the time, but then it just automatically populates it in your email inbox, inside that message that you’ve opened and you just click send and it’s gone. And same thing with your phone. There are, if you’re an apple user, it’s probably probably something similar for Android, but for apple people you can literally type like just one letter like Z and then that responsible pop send and off you go
AJV (09:17):
Fascinating. Well, I know what I will be doing when I get off this interview with you. Okay. So this concept of like templated responses. Yeah. Can you have lots of them?
JF (09:29):
Oh, heck yeah.
AJV (09:30):
Okay. You have
JF (09:31):
Lots and lots and lots of them. And so I always encourage people to look through your sent file and see what you’re sending to people because what you probably don’t realize is that you’re sending the same thing pretty consistently. And so that’s what you can use to turn into a template and response and it just makes it so much easier. So that way you’re not sitting at your computer going, okay, I know I wanna do this, but I have no idea what I would use for just go look through your sense and you’ll be able to see it.
AJV (09:58):
That’s great. So what’s one thing that you use it for to give us some context.
JF (10:02):
I use it. I mean, I use it for a response to a general email. Like let’s say I’m in the car or I’m traveling and I really want this person to know that I receive their email and that I’m aware of it. I’ll send a templated response for that. That’s probably the easiest, but a lot of times for specific business, like for health insurance, like we are sending the same response that says, Hey, I would love to help you with that. Here’s my scheduling link. Schedule an appointment when it’s a great time for you. That’s a templated response. I don’t need to type that out every time, just
AJV (10:34):
Right.
JF (10:35):
Strokes. And off I go.
AJV (10:37):
Mm y’all that’s huge like little things of like even using it internally. Like if you have team members of, Hey, everyone’s like, Hey, can I get to this? It’s like, Hey, here’s my calendar link. Instead of having to type that up or try to coordinate. But that’s the thing that I love too about working and talking with other entrepreneurs. There’s these little hacks, right? It’s all these like little things. It’s nothing Mo which I also dunno if that’s a word, but it’s like just enough making up words today. It’s just enough to like free up a little bit of that mental space of going. It’s one less thing that I have to like type out think about and get to it also probably makes it easier to respond quicker of, you know, just like template, response, go template, response, go
JF (11:22):
Well. And I always tell people too, like when we sit down and we talk about, you know, we have this massive project that we wanna do and we, a lot of us don’t have a full half a day or two hours to carve out to dedicate to just this one thing, but we have two minutes. And so using those little templated responses, you’ll be shocked at how much time you get back into your schedule. And it’s like anything, you know, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you do, you will be to the point where I’m like, I can’t live without it. Like I’m sending templated responses all the time.
AJV (11:54):
Oh, that’s so true because it’s like, how many times are we just trying to like, like we’re in Starbucks line or we’re sitting out of red lights, definitely not driving right safety first, but maybe sitting at the red light, going out two minutes and it’s like, you can maybe get through three or four things versus one thing. Just trying to type this out. I love that. I love this little hacks. I love, I love everything about just trying to be more efficient. And this is also a part of your personal brand, right? Yes. So it’s like in addition to your insurance business and your real estate business and everything else we have going on, it was really this passion for efficiencies and little tips and tricks of the trade that you kind of leaned into your personal brand. So I kind of wanna know as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, it’s like, what was that trigger point for you of going, I have a lot going on, I’m managing a lot. I’m growing and leading multiple companies like this isn’t ne necessarily something you had to do. You wanted to do it. So why make the choice to lean in to building your personal brand as a small business owner?
JF (13:00):
Well, you know, it kind of started as something that kind of surprised me to be honest, because I thought everybody was doing it. Like, I think we just kind of get into our own zones and we don’t realize that not everybody is doing the same things. So I would go to these events and I would talk about these random things that I do and people would be like, why are you keeping that to yourself? Like you need to tell people about that. People need to know because everybody needs more time. Right. I mean, that’s the one thing that we cannot get back. And so I just kind of was like, what, like, people really don’t know that. And so when I started about the email organization or like how to categorize your to-do list or all these different things, people were just like, say what, I I’ve never heard of that before.
JF (13:43):
So it was kind of that, but also knowing that with the way that things are changing in the financial services world and the health insurance world and the government becoming more involved in that, I really like the idea of being able to control more of the business than giving that to someone else to control. And so it just kind of was this Mary of two things that I loved, you know, all these random things that I do every day, I thought everybody did. And then also creating this business around it because I think as we, as entrepreneurs, when we stick together and we help each other, it is like the growth of that is just massive. And so if I can help other people with these little random things, I feel like it can really, really change their life.
AJV (14:31):
Oh, I love that so much. And that’s so true. It’s like every really great business idea truly should stem from this could really help someone else. So really, as an entrepreneur, a small business owner, it’s like, you were at these events with other small business owners and they’re like, Hey, why are you keeping all these secrets to yourself? How do we like build this? And so you really started building your personal brand to help people just like you.
JF (14:57):
Absolutely. Yep. Because I think you get to a certain point in your business where if you don’t control it, it will start to control you. And you’ve gotta kind of like take the reins and be like, okay, I don’t have all this mass amount, amount of time, but I do have two minutes. I have 30 seconds. I have these random little pockets of time that I can be doing things. So that way, at the end of the day, I can actually go be with my family and not be working until midnight or three o’clock in the morning. Like so many of us do a really capturing back that family time, which I think is so important and sometimes kind of gets lost when you become an entrepreneur, because you’re so focused on building this business and getting clients and earning money and doing all the things that, that stuff kind of gets pushed to the side. But I think we need to bring that back because there’s nothing more important than our families.
AJV (15:49):
Great. All about that message. Yeah. It’s like if we had a happier home life, we would naturally have a happier work life, all of us. Okay. So about three years ago, then you started leaning in and building your personal brand, which is how I got to be connected with you. And this, a beautiful relationship with brand builders group and you started to emerge. And so I’m so super curious and for everyone listening, what has this process been like for you as a small business owner of going all right, I’m gonna lean in and do this thing that I feel really called to do because unlike many of our clients who are building their personal brands for their actual businesses, yours is a little bit of a delineation from that. And it’s like, this is naturally having positive byproduct, but it’s almost like a whole new business. And so you’ve really built out this entire like productivity for entrepreneurs and small business, those owners owners course, which does, and doesn’t necessarily really connect to your other businesses. So I would love to hear your journey about it’s ultimately creating a new business, but why did you go the course route? And how has this process been for you as both the face of your business and also this kind of like growing personal brand?
JF (17:12):
I think the main thing is that this started many years before I even had found brand builders because it was something that I knew that I wanted to do, but it’s like, where do you start? And so I know, I mean, because my whole high school career, I loved sports and you know, in sports you always have a coach, someone who’s pushing you, someone who’s making you better, someone who’s guiding you. And I really found that when you have an idea, but you don’t really know what else is around that idea. You know, I can build a business. That’s not a problem. But when you take this idea, this little tiny baby, and you’re like, how do I make this grow? Like what could this become? I really think that the course route and having the coaching is huge. And I always tell people that there’s no way that we could have created what we’ve created without brand builders, because there’s so many people that I meet throughout this journey that are like, Hey, I’ve already got this book.
JF (18:17):
I’ve already got this thing. And I really came here with just an idea and like a calling. And like, I know that I can make a difference in someone’s life. I don’t really know how I’m gonna do that, but I’m gonna figure it out and you guys are gonna help me. So it was just really this journey that looking back, it’s like, holy smokes, we’ve accomplished a lot in the last couple years. It’s kind of crazy when you look back. But I think the, the main thing that I wanna tell everyone listening is that if you have an idea, do not give up on that. I idea find the person that supports you, find whatever you need to make that idea a reality, because you don’t wanna let those ideas just sit in a notebook or stay on the shelf. You’ve gotta get them out there because they really truly can change other entrepreneurs lives.
AJV (19:07):
Oh, that’s such wisdom from your mouth right now. It’s so good. I think one of the things I love about that, and we’ll just stay here for just a second is it’s like, if the idea is in you, there’s a reason, right? Whether you see a need or you feel the need, or it’s a need, that’s finally been fulfilled for you or it’s something you see people around you struggling with. And like, I wouldn’t even say like today, it’s like in our short conversation already, it’s like templated responses. Like I already know like three different ways of like, this could really help me, like may not change every part about my business, but I don’t need a hundred new ideas. I need a couple that just help me move a little faster. And I think it’s such a great reminder to all of us. It’s like, if that idea has been placed on your heart, if you feel like you have this calling, like it’s for a reason, it’s like somebody out there needs it. They need you, but they also need you to step out of this place of fear or uncertainty and go, I I’ll tape a leap, a leap of faith and we’re gonna see what happens.
JF (20:12):
Absolutely.
AJV (20:13):
All right. So tell us a little bit more
JF (20:15):
Part
AJV (20:15):
Too. Oh, definitely. The scariest part into the unknown. My favorite song from frozen is like all the things, right. So I wanna know more about like what you’ve been working on when it comes to this personal brand of yours and a huge part of it. I know that you are launching a new course, right? It’s a huge part. We’re so excited to get to help you with that. And so it really is a course about helping people get their time back. Right. So we talked a little bit about this email and templated responses, but give us a sneak peek. And then for everyone listening we’re also gonna include a link in the show notes of where you can go and get Jill’s free productivity guide for entrepreneurs. In fact, I’ll go ahead and give you like a little sneak peek of where you can go to get that.
AJV (21:06):
And you will go to scale scale your small business.org/clear, right? We’ll also put that in the show notes. That’s a really awesome place to go with this free guide that Jill has teed up for everyone listening today. But all right, Jill, so in this course of building this out, like there’s a whole process to figuring out, like, how do I take all of this knowledge and all of these things that I’ve been doing. And also what I think would actually help someone else and put that together in a way that other people can digest it. So if you were to tell everyone listening, here are the three things that you are gonna come away within this course. And like, here’s why people need help with productivity. They need help with becoming more efficient or just doing less. Like what would those three things be?
JF (21:56):
I think the main thing is we’ve divided it up into nine pillars, but there is so much in each one, but I think the most important thing that makes this course different is each one is short and sweet. So you literally can take what we talk about and go do it very similar to how my podcast is and the fact that it’s like these short, actionable things that you can do right away. So we’ll start off with what’s in the productivity guide is about your to-do list, the different steps that I go through, that the different from what other people do, and just even organizing your to-do list, focusing on certain things, getting those knocked out first. So they don’t turn into the big, ugly, scary monsters, and just working through that list every single day. But there’s stuff in there from working with your team, how do you organize your organiz
JF (22:51):
Bills in your organization? Like all sort like it runs the gamut because there are so many things that I have learned from running all these businesses and of course, feedback from other business owners that I’ve helped. But I mean, there’s a calendar in there that just talks about what to do on the 10th, the 25th, once a year, once a quarter. And I feel like that has been a huge help for people because when you’ve got a checklist, just print it out, you pin it up on your board and you’re just like, oh, that’s the day. Gotta get that done today.
AJV (23:20):
Oh, that’s so good. So I have to add three questions about that and kind of like back to these three things that you should do. So I think you said a couple of things there I’m gonna like tee in of like knowing you and knowing your content, like three things. So the first one is this to do list. Yes. So if you were to say, if I was just gonna give you one tip right now to everyone listening of like, here’s one thing you should do to better maximize your to-do list or however it is that you would say, it’s like, what’s the one thing on the to-do list that we need to know.
JF (23:48):
Definitely do the stuff that makes you money. First. I think sometimes we get lost in the busyness and the easy stuff, but really you’ve gotta make sure that stuff that has the firm date deadline and the stuff that makes you money has to get done first. But sometimes that’s the stuff that we per procrastinate the most. So that’s huge do those things
AJV (24:08):
First. So do the things that make you money first. Everything else is second to that short sweet, but that’s super helpful. Just being able to look at every single thing that you have to do on a day in a week, in a month and go, which ones of these things actually co correlate to dollars sense. Absolutely that first. Okay, awesome. Super, super tangible. And again, it’s just a mental processing of when there’s so much to do, where do I start? We start with what makes you money? That’s good. Okay. Now you mentioned something else that I laughed out loud about organizing your organization. What, what is that?
JF (24:47):
So that is, you know, a lot of people are still like a sole proprietor and it’s like, should you be something else? Should you be a different entity? What, what should you even be? So we go over a little bit of that. And I also talk about, you’ve gotta create your of people. You’ve gotta get your accountant. You’ve gotta get your attorney. You’ve gotta get these people because you are gonna be talking with them a lot. And we don’t know what we don’t know. So you need a good team of people to protect you because you’re gonna make some mistakes and they can prevent you from making some costly ones.
AJV (25:25):
Oh yeah. So it’s just like making sure it doesn’t matter if you’re a, a one person show or you have a team of a hundred, it’s like, like these are all the people that touch all the parts. It’s my attorney, it’s my financial person. It’s my CPA. It’s, you know, whatever. Right. We’re walking through it. Okay. So it’s getting everything organized in a way and in a place where it’s like, this is who I go to for what?
JF (25:51):
Exactly. Okay. Yep. And knowing who those who those people are, what roles do they fill?
AJV (25:56):
Okay. That’s awesome. But yeah. And I think that’s really good. It’s like that also helps you uncover any gaps.
JF (26:02):
Absolutely.
AJV (26:03):
Yeah. Like as an entrepreneur I’m a part of EO entrepreneurs organization here in Nashville and I still find it so amazing how I’ll be in like these small group discussions with other entrepreneurs and people don’t have an actual attorney. Like people don’t have a formalized tax person and they have multi seven figure businesses and they’re still kind of just winging it. I’m I personally am way too OCD for that. So but it, it is amazing to me. It’s like, for so many of us, it’s like, we’ve been successful in spite of ourselves. And there’s a certain point where it’s like, okay, I actually have to create some formality to what I’m doing in case of X, Y, and Z. So organizing your organization, making sure you’ve got the right people in place to take care of the things when and if needed. Okay. Second awesome thing. Okay. Third thing. And I’m just like super curious about, is you talk a lot about email in terms of time saving tips, other than email, what do you think is the other next biggest thing that people need to work on? Who are entrepreneurs our small business owners to get their life back in check?
JF (27:17):
Well, I think the most important thing is finding some sort of software to keep track of everything because cause we, a lot of us keep so much stuff in our head and then we wonder why we’re so stressed out, why we forget things, why people are like, you’re never listening to me. And so being able to put all that stuff somewhere, whether that’s a calendar, you know, some sort of, you know, con bond, board, whatever that looks for you, having a holding place where you can put all those ideas. So that way, you know, when you’re ready to come back to them, you haven’t forgotten them. And I think it’s something there’s so many things that are just, it’s simple and you’re like that can’t work because it’s so simple, but that’s what does work,
AJV (28:01):
Do you have some favorite softwares?
JF (28:03):
I do. I do. I love Asana, but I’m testing out a new one that is called click up and I’m very intrigued. So I’m kind of, I’m kind of looking at it dabbling a bit to see if it’s a better match to, you know, bring all these things, you know, and all of our team together to see if it’s a better fit.
AJV (28:23):
Okay. So Asana’s the one that you’ve been using, but you’re kind of like testing with click up. Would you say that click up would be like super comparable to Asana?
JF (28:33):
It’s very similar, but there’s different things about it, which I think kind of make it even cooler is that you can import like all this stuff. Like I’m always on the hunt for like, what’s a hub that my team can use where everything comes into that and goes out of it. And I think that that software might be it now. It might not once we, you know, get into it and see, but I’m always on the hunt to see, you know, what people are creating. I mean, it is fascinating what people are coming up with. I agree. Cause I’m excited to test it out and see if it works for us.
AJV (29:06):
That’s awesome. We use at brand builders group internally, we use monday.com. Yes. Very similar. Yeah. So super similar. But we integrated monday.com into our daily operations, maybe a year and some change ago, it has revolutionized our lives. It’s like, we literally, like we run every single meeting now off of our Monday boards. Awesome. And its like, but it’s to that point, it’s like, it’s like even we a year and a half ago as a multi seven figure business were running all of our project management out of email.
JF (29:42):
I know it’s and there’s so many
AJV (29:44):
Crazy that
JF (29:44):
Too,
AJV (29:45):
It’s crazy. Crazy, bad, not crazy good. And so we totally shifted everything to the goal of 2021 for us was get organized right. As an entity. And it took a whole year to get everyone re acclimated, had situated, getting all the boards loaded. But now I literally look at these and I’m like, how are we functioning? Like, like how are we actually functioning as a company? Even as me for an individual like I, like one of the things that I do is I have Monday boards with my EA. So I have visibility into what she’s doing. And so of saying, Hey Maggie, what are you doing today? Hey, Maggie, are you doing today? It’s like, go look for yourself on the Monday board. So, so much of that is about creating transparency and work activity and communication. So. All right, well I’m super interested to hear what you find with click up.
AJV (30:37):
So make a personal note to let me know what you find click up. So all right. Well I know we just have a couple of more minutes here together. And so I’m curious with just one or two other quick things for our listeners that I think would be so super cool. And again, as a reminder to everyone Jill’s offered up this really cool free guide, go to scale your small business.org Ford slash clear. We’ll put that in the show notes, her course goes live on April 7th, April 7th, April 7th which is just a few days from the launch of this episode. So you can learn more about that too, at scale, your small business.org. You can check that out if you’re so inclined. But okay. So as we kinda wrap up here, Jill, so I’m really curious for the everyday small business owner, an entrepreneur who does not think they need a personal brand, what’s your thoughts on that?
JF (31:35):
Well, you probably already are. You just don’t realize it. And so you’ve really gotta shift your perspective and that you are, and everything that you’re doing or not doing is affecting your reputation, even though you don’t realize it. And so really getting a handle on that whole idea will shift the way that you do things, the way that you respond to things and making sure that you really have all your stuff organized and together, because if you’re a disorganized mess, people know it. They can see,
AJV (32:14):
Even
JF (32:15):
Though you don’t realize they can,
AJV (32:17):
But you know, what’s so funny is like too, that for the person who’s going, like, I don’t need a personal brand. You’re saying, no, you already have one. You already are a personal brand. And if you’re a disorganized mess, maybe that is your brand. So, and
JF (32:31):
You probably wanna change it. You should wanna change it for
AJV (32:34):
Sure. Don’t that be your brand? But I think that’s a great point. I know that was a part of our conversations of it’s not whether or not you need one. It’s like, no, you already have one. It’s just, are you the one creating it or is it being created for you by other people’s perceptions? Absolutely. That’s good. All right. Last question of the day for you, and this is back this like concept of entrepreneurship and running and scaling small businesses. So it, this is, this does not have to do with productivity or time management or anything, but if you were to give just one piece of advice from all the businesses that you’ve started scaled sold, dismantled, like, what would you say is the number one lesson that you have learned that you will carry forward into the future when it comes to being an entrepreneur
JF (33:25):
Hire before you’re ready?
AJV (33:27):
Oh, that’s good. So tell, tell me more about that.
JF (33:31):
So a lot of times when I visit with people, they’re like, oh, I don’t have the money. Oh, I’m not ready. And I think by hiring someone that really pushes you forward and you, it takes a lot of things off your plate and allows you to really focus on your business. But for so many people, it’s just something that they’re like, oh, I can do it all myself. I got it, I got it. But you don’t got it. And by having someone, bringing someone in which, which has a fr fresh perspective on your business, the way that you’re doing things and by using software or, you know, whatever it is to empower them, your business can grow exponentially. But a lot of times like most things you gotta do it before you’re ready.
AJV (34:17):
Oh my gosh. Have you been talking to my husband? I have to feel like that that was planted in this conversation. Yeah. We literally had this talk last night. Advice heard if not for anyone else for me, I hear you. I’m with you, Jill. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited for this episode to go live. It, if you guys if, once you check this out, go get her free guide, go check out her course. Also check out the recap episode. That’ll be just sharing my top points and highlights from this Jill. So honored to have you in my life. So happy you’re on the show. Thank you so much. And to everyone else we will catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 268: Turning Your Struggles into Your Story with Chris Norton
RV (00:02):
Well, one of the joys of my life of being a speaker is that I get to see other speakers and my entire life I’ve come across speakers, who I’ve gotten to know personally who have climbed Mount Everest and walked out of the Andy’s mountains on barefoot and won, you know, national championships and world championships, Epson just overcome really amazing things. And today I feel like I’m, I’m meeting one of those people for the first time. You’re about to meet Chris Norton. We new friends, so we’ve never even talked. But I have been familiar with his story. He knows my friend Tyler Dickerhoof and you know, a lot of the same people and some of the same circles that we’ve been. We’ve been hanging out with David nurse. And I’ve heard really great things about Chris and he had a a spinal cord injury when he was playing college football and lost all feeling and movement from his neck down.
RV (01:02):
He was only given a three chance of ever really moving and walking again. And it was, you know, clearly a, a difficult and dark moment in his life. But with the support of his friends and family like you know, his, the love of his life, Emily Chris proved the Dr. Wrong. He walked across the stage at graduation and the video of that went viral like around, around the world. And later he walked his, his bride, Emily seven yards down the aisle at their wedding. So his story has been published in, in a book. It was been a documentary about his life story is out right now on Netflix and Amazon prime and apple TV. It’s called seven yards referring to the seven yards of Chris walking, his wife down the aisle, seven yards, the Chris Norton story. And he is a, a, a really fast rising speaker and just an awesome guy. It’s a Chris, it’s great to meet you. Welcome to the show.
CN (02:07):
Yeah. Thank you, Rory, for having me and for that great introduction. And it’s just an honor to talk with you and I’ve heard so many great things about yourself, so great to be here.
RV (02:17):
So tell me your, so tell me this story, man. So you are living the dream. You’re playing college. One, one moment. You’re playing college football and then in a second it changes.
CN (02:28):
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll take you back. 11 years ago, freshman year Luther college in decor, Iowa live the dream. I had these big plans for myself, be this all American football player, meet the girl, my dreams. And then I was hoping to make enough money to on a lake house or better yet the girl of my dreams family already on lake house. But then you know, life happens and it was during the sixth game of my college football season, a third quarter were mounting a comeback. So I ran out to the field and a kickoff and the kicker huddles us up. He calls a play mortar kick, right. Which is simply a, a short, high arching kick to the right side of the field. And I don’t know why would, didn’t just call it kick, right? Because our kicker was so bad. Every kick was short and high arching, but yeah, anyway, you know, I’m pumped because I play on the right side of the field.
CN (03:23):
So it’s my opportunity to make an impact. That’s why I line up the boss kicked. I sprint down, feels hard as I possibly can go. I see an opening for me and my instincts are telling me that ball carrier, he’s in, try running through that gap. I gonna stop. I’m gonna drive my shoulder so hard through his legs. He’s gonna drop the ball. I go for it. I collide with him at full speed, full force, but I miss time my tackle by a split second, instead of getting my head in front of the ball, carry my head, cor collides, right with his knees in an instant, I was all feeling a movement for my I’m. Listening to the players, crashing to each other above me. Now the whistle blows, the pile clears off, but I can’t get up no matter how hard I try to push through my arms and onto the ground, nothing is working. I was completely conscious. Not in any pain, just couldn’t move. It felt like someone just flipped the power off to my body. And what I didn’t know at the time was I just suffered a severe spinal cord injury in my life was about to drastically change.
RV (04:39):
So the was the reason you weren’t any pain was just cuz you lost all feeling.
CN (04:46):
Yeah. So your spinal cord the, the nerve nervous system, it communicates with your brain. So pretty much it got almost completely severed where even all pain feeling, everything was disconnected temporarily from the neck down. So that’s why I couldn’t feel any pain, anything, no movement was because of the damage done to the spinal cord.
RV (05:11):
Wow. So, so what happens next? So they clearly, they wheel you off the field. You start going to doctors and getting tests and like when, when when’s the first time that you hear that you’re not gonna be able of the walk again.
CN (05:26):
Yeah. I’m flown out to Mayo clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Get x-ray all these tests done to get me ready for surgery. And it was right before surgery. I haven’t been asking questions. I’ve been too scared to ask, like what’s gonna happen because I wanted to make sure they had all their, all the information that they needed to give me the best answer possible. At least the most informed answer possible. And when I asked the surgeon right before I put the slate, you know, Hey, will I walk again? And in my mind that’s a huge compromise. I, I was, you know, praying and bargaining with God. Like, Hey, I will give up sports. I don’t need to play another sport in my life, which at the time, like that’s a huge deal. Like I, I was an athlete. That was my identity. I love competition.
CN (06:14):
I love competing and the weight room, everything involved with athletics. I love, and I could give that all up, but just let me walk. And when I ask him that I could just see in his face, the answer was no. And he just looks down at the ground and says, I don’t know. And then I’m put to sleep after that. And I, when he said that too, I just started crying. Like I lost it. I was like really holding it in trying to be tough, trying to be strong, trying to be optimistic that things are gonna be okay, it’s gonna work out because leading up to this point, everything always worked out for me. I never had gone through anything. Life altering, not even, not myself or even people close to me. It just wasn’t on my radar that something like this could happen to me. I thought it happened to people you read about in the newspaper, you watch on television, but not my life. I thought I was immune to that and it was just my world was just shattered in that moment. And then I wake up the next day blurry.
RV (07:17):
So how long were you, how long were you in surgery?
CN (07:21):
The surgery lasted about four hours. Wow. And then I, I wake up, you know, the next day, you know, groggy, blurry, eyed thinking. I just had the worst nightmare of my life. But then, you know, the surgeon comes in and confirms my worst nightmare is now my new reality. And he says, Chris, you have a 3% chance to ever move or feel below the neck. And that’s not a 3% chance to walk. That’s a 3% chance to move or to feel, to scratch and itch on your face to feed yourself. And it was just so surreal. I, I could hardly process it because yes, at this time I was walking now I was suiting up for my college football game. And then all of a sudden I’m lying in the hospital, paralyzed from my neck down with a 3% chance to ever move or feel again. And I’m.
RV (08:12):
And so you can’t move your, you can’t move your hands, your toes, you can’t raise your arm. You’re just completely still, but totally conscious and full mentally aware.
CN (08:22):
Yeah, completely. Wow. Like I know how to move my body. Like I know what it takes to, you know, move my hand in my face or to adjust my leg or pull the covers up. But like literally nothing would respond or work. I felt like I was ahead detached for my body and just looking at the rest of body, it was just a foreign object because I had no connection to it at all.
RV (08:48):
So the doctor tells you that. So that happens like within a day or two. And then, and then how long are you in the hospital? And like, when do you, when do you come home? Cuz I have to think it starts to really become real when you leave the hospital and like your whole life is different. I mean can’t shower, can’t eat, can’t get dressed.
CN (09:10):
Yeah. It was a, a slow than just kind of a grind from that moment on of I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get a little bit better. I’m gonna be part of that 3%. I won’t be that 97% who don’t recover from this. And so I just make that commitment of just understanding that, you know, your future will take care of itself when you take care of today. And I kept reminding myself that your future will take care of itself when you take care of today. And so I just kept trying to get a little bit better each and every day. And you know, by the, you know, grace of God and perseverance and grit, family and friends, I slowly started to make a recovery where I had some movement in my legs, some movement in my arms, unable to like walk independently or do much.
CN (09:55):
I depend independence wise. But I was inpatient for about four months outpatient for about three months. And that was all in Rochester, Minnesota, which is about three hours from my home. So when I officially made that move back home in Des Moines, Iowa, it was a huge transition like you’re suggesting going from, you know, your house, you know, my room was upstairs. So I I’ve never been back to my, my bedroom because I can’t it’s stairs. And just realizing all these obstacles that you have to navigate. And the way of life, you have to look at it from an accessibility mindset and of not just being able to breeze over opposite goals. So it was definitely a large change. But thankfully, you know, my parents were very encouraging. They, they pushed me to get outta my comfort zone and they weren’t gonna let me just, you know, stay home and you know, feel sorry for myself.
CN (10:50):
They got me out there and eventually I went back to college, actually the following fall and my buddies became my caregiver and my sister relocated to apartment just off campus to help with a huge transition. And then slowly started to kind of get my life back together. And, and that’s when I started to realize too, like, you know, happiness is not measured in steps, right there there’s people who can run, jump and swim who are unhappy. So, you know, clearly happiness has nothing to do with your fits strength or possession, everything to do with your mindset and your mental health. And I began to, to see those pieces as I kind of got my life back into a new routine.
RV (11:31):
How, how soon did you really embrace that? I mean like, I mean, there’s gotta be, I mean, have to feel like there’s that some there’s like this wave of hopelessness and despair, right. Has to be of like, oh my gosh, like I’m not gonna be running and jumping maybe ever again, maybe walking, never again to, to, to, to then going, well, that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy ever again. And realizing like what you just shared that like, there’s a lot of people who can do those things who are unhappy.
CN (12:05):
Absolutely. so it, wasn’t a flip of a switch. I’ll tell you that and know me talking about it might make it sound easy and it’s not for anybody who’s gone through something life altering, it, it takes time to kind of pick up the pieces and to learn a new, a new way of living and a new beginning really kind of restarting your life. And it, it took years actually for me to come to that conclusion that, you know, I can still live a meaningful life, you know, adversity and failure are a part of life. And if you try holding onto it, it’s gonna Rob you of your future. Now things will never be perfect, but just because you aren’t getting the results you want or living the life you dreamed of doesn’t mean you stop trying, or that’s not a life we’re living for.
CN (12:53):
And so by, you know, getting back out there, getting my education, being with my buddies, starting to date again, met Emily started my own foundation, started speaking. I began to see, you know, I could still live a meaningful life right from my wheelchair. And at first, when I was first injured and even those first couple years, I thought that would be impossible. Like for me to get my life back meant me getting back to walking on my own, no wheelchair. And so if I wasn’t gonna be walking, being in a wheelchair would mean failure. And that for some reason I thought that I would not be a good enough person or I would not be seen as valuable by being in a wheelchair. But I put in my self out there building friendships, relationships starting the business, getting back to others, serving others.
CN (13:42):
I begin to realize, you know, that’s, that was a lie. It’s not true. I was attached to this idea that you have to be walking to live a good life and it’s just not true. And I know it gets portrayed all the time though. I mean, I go out in public, I get P people all the time. I don’t hold it against them, but they’re always like, man, I feel so sorry for you. Oh my gosh, you’re in a wheelchair like, oh man, I, I can’t imagine like they’re, they’re very sympathetic. And I, cause they’re kind of projecting their own fears like onto me that I think about it all the time and that I’m miserable all the time and I’m not like I, I focus on what I can do and, and what people don’t fail to realize too, being in a wheelchair and having a spinal cord injury actually have some CRA perks to it.
CN (14:26):
And in fact, like a couple of my favorite perks is like, you can, there’s no standing in line. Like while people are waiting in line complaining that their feet hurt, their legs are tied. You know, I’m just chilling my chair. Like this is really, or like when you go somewhere, there’s a front row parking spot for like, you get the best parking now where I live in south Florida, it’s really competitive here for those parking spots. You, you hear little things like that and you can’t feel mosquito bytes. I can have 30 mosquitoes on my legs at a campfire now. I don’t feel a thing. It’s awesome. So there’s so many little things that you can find in your life to appreciate if you have the will. And that’s what I’ve really kind of develop the muscle for is focusing on what I can do.
CN (15:12):
Where are the areas that I can influence and make a change and, and not keep my attention on what I, I can’t control or what I, I can’t do. And that’s easier said than done. Obviously, like there are definitely moments where I’m just like, man, this sucks. Like I see my kids playing in the pool. I wanna jump in there. I wanna throw ’em around. I want to play catch with them with the baseball and teach. ’em How to swing a bat. There. There’s so many things, you know, like that are hard and frustrating, but I have to then just go back to okay, what kind of dad can I be? What, what kind of husband can I be? Not the one I wish I could be. You can still be a great dad, even though I’m, I’m not in the pool with him or I’m teaching, ’em how to throw a ball. And so there’s definitely things that you have to just embrace and accept, but that’s that’s life too, right there. There’s things that you have to just learn to let go of, if you wanna live a meaningful, purposeful life.
RV (16:08):
And you said that like the first year or so, was that, was it like a year or two to where you really started to come around? Cuz I can sense that just in talking to you that you, you know, you’re not unhappy, you’re really happy. You’ve got all these great friendships and you’ve got kids and a family, like you’re doing all these great things with your business. Is, is it, was it like a year or two to get to that point?
CN (16:30):
Yeah, it was, it was big, very gradual. You know, it is just little moments that just kept, you know, opening my eyes to that possibility of like, well maybe if I don’t walk, I’ll still be okay. And it takes time. It took, yeah, like I said, years, probably three or four years to really come to terms with that. Probably probably more like maybe four years to really come to terms with that like peacefully where I stopped holding onto this idea of, I must walk and cause I trained all the time I was putting in you know, even with full load of school credits, you know, sometimes six to eight hours of training on top of college and trying to do everything to live a college experience. Like I was obsessed with working out and trying to get my strength back and you know, I’m glad I did.
CN (17:28):
I’m glad I tried it cuz I can look back now and say, you know what? I gave it a try. I tried to get as much strength back as possible. And I, I brought myself a long ways, but it, it just wasn’t in the card. Like at some point you kind of realized Theios in the wall that you need to make a transition, right? You need to make a pivot. And that’s what I did. And I started to focus more on contributing back to others, serving others through my motivational speaking that I love to do. And through my foundation, the Chris Norton foundation, and then we, you know, began fostering and adopting. So I have a load of kids like seven kids right now, bro.
RV (18:03):
Wow, wow. Seven kids.
CN (18:05):
Yeah. And then like documentary and the books. And so I’m just trying to give back, serve others. I feel like I was called to do this and to use my story and my testimony to give people hope and to see the possibilities, even with the adversity that they’re facing, even when their lives have completely been flipped upside down, there is still a way forward. Even it’s not the way that you wanted to go.
RV (18:34):
Wow, man. What a, what an amazing perspective. Like, so, so walk us through like the, a little bit of your personal brand story. Like, so this happens to you. So like what year does this happen? And then is the first like real big development. They filmed you at graduation and that went viral. Was that kind of like the first like, whoa, my story is inspiring. A lot of other people,
CN (19:00):
It actually happened right when it took place with my injury. So my family when I was injured, a lot of people were messaging them. Like, what’s the updates? Like how, how Chris doing today? Like, is there any progress? And instead of messaging back individually, like a hundred people, they started what’s called like a caring bridge page. It’s pretty much just like an online blog set up for families who are updating others on a, when they’re in the hospital or something. So you don’t have to you know, like I said, message everyone individually. So they post updates on what I was doing, what the family was doing, the progress. And people began following that blog very closely. I think it had like 400,000 hits or something of people just following along this story and how people were inspired by my attitude that I was gonna beat the, and I was gonna get better and I wasn’t gonna quit.
CN (19:54):
And stop working and people were writing like, Hey, like I, I stopped going to church. I’m dealing with depression. And after, you know, hearing your story, it’s given the courage to, to get back out there to, to go back to church or to, to find a job or to pick up my, although it may feel broken at the moment. And so when you start reading these stories and you’re being told how, you know, just me trying to get better, I wasn’t trying to be an inspiration. I was just trying to get my life back. But when people are writing to you and saying like, they have a different perspective on life because of how you live yours, like, wow. Like that gave me motivation. That gave me more is cuz there were times when I wanted to give up on myself where I wanted to quit.
CN (20:37):
But when I thought about the other people who were looking to me for inspiration and hope, I didn’t want to give up on them. I, I wanted them to find their own courage through me. And so that’s why I kept going a lot of cases and why I keep even going today. Just feel like there’s an opportunity to inspire others. So that’s all to say that next year. Maybe like a small group, like an FCA group at a high school, like, Hey, can you share your testimony with us? Like how do you stay positive and get through your, your challenges? And so I started just sharing my story just very off hand, just from the hip and people were leaning in, they were listening. They, they wanted to know what I had to say about life and staying hopeful and how to get through adversity.
CN (21:24):
And I liked it. I liked the fact that they, they were leaning in, they wanted to know more and I could, you know, kind of captivate an audience and entertain them and, and give them the tools to, to improve their lives. And like this feels good. And then someone told me, Hey, you know, you can make money by being a motivational speaker. Like what you can get paid to just beat the people on a stage. I thought that was just like a, like an honor or like a privilege just to get up there. And it’s like a free thing. And like, no, like this is something people do for a living full time. And if it’s something you you want to do, you could, you should definitely pursue it. And ever since I heard that and I knew I could, you know, make a living from helping others and living out my purpose, like sign me up. And so I started just speaking everywhere. I could, I mean, anybody who would listen and doesn’t matter how small the group was or how far away I, I wanted to share my story and testimony and it just kind of snowballed into, you know, a business that can take care of my whole family and live comfortably.
RV (22:27):
So yeah. So is the, so with those fairly early speaking engagements, like you, you start out doing ’em for free. How many do you think you did before you started charging? And did you just kind of like, did most of the people find you just from hearing your story from other people and they came to you or did you have some way of contacting them and finding them?
CN (22:47):
Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. So some of it, it was like go for the low hanging fruit, like my old high school and elementary and middle school, like get to speak to them. That’s pretty easy entry point or just a local elementary or church group. I just tried to reach out to as many people that I knew who had a group and that who would want bring in speakers. I, I did a ton of rotary clubs cause I know they would bring in guests and I would say, you know, 95% of those were all free. Just I knew I needed the practice. I needed the at bats. It wasn’t something that just came natural to me. I felt comfortable on stage, but I didn’t have a, I just like charismatic, entertaining way of doing it unless I practiced and worked on it.
CN (23:35):
I started videotaping every single speech so I could go back and watch it as painfully as I was. I knew I had to watch the film and then I, you know, started hiring coaches and people that could help, you know, transform my message and get me even further. And when I realized that, you know, to get more speeches, you have to have a, a killer speech. Like that’s how you get more. It’s, it’s a referral business. And I didn’t wanna depend on my viral moments or my story to, to get me in the door. I wanted my presentation and the transformation that can occur from it to be what opens a door for places. And I knew that was gonna be what would sustain my business long term. So think I’ve gotten good advice, good people around me to kind of point in the right direction and to get it to where he is today. But I don’t wanna my story to be well, it is, you know, what definitely draws people in to wanna hire me. It’s not what lifts my business, it’s the, the presentation and the, the time I feel that I put into it to make it very entertaining and humorous and, and uplifting.
RV (24:50):
And, and so, so talk us through the how does the Netflix thing happen? How, like how, how does a documentary come about? Was that something that you kind of went out and, and were seeking or did somebody come to you and like, what are the mechanics of getting a documentary film and putting it together? And how long does that take? Like the whole, the whole thing?
CN (25:11):
Yeah, it was a long process. It was after my graduation walk, video went viral, a small production company at a Dallas. The photo philanthropy was the name and they loved sharing, uplifting, inspiring stories. Now first they just offered, Hey, we would love, love to give you a gift by just filming your wedding. We would come there, they have, you know, professional cameras and a crew and capture it, maybe put together like a little short, inspirational video for people, but then they just kind of snowballed from that to let’s do a full below documentary. They done two before, so this would be their third one. And it was just the right timing. And so we began, you know, filming, promoting it even before the walk actually. So we named the movie seven yards before I could even walk seven yards. That was a little scary.
RV (26:05):
Wow.
CN (26:06):
But I knew it, it gave me something you for gave me something to really work on. But yeah, it’s a lot of so they’re a small production house. It’s not like a big Hollywood thing where they have a bunch of funding and money to do this or that basically what we had to do. It was a nonprofit. So basically we’d have to fundraise then we’d film a little bit. And then once money ran out, we stopped, you know, try to get some fundraising, get some money. And then once we did, we go out and do some more filming, so really stop and go stop and go strung together over years, really. Wow. Filming in 2017 and the movie came out in 2021 to kind of give you an idea of four years in the making wow. Before it happened.
CN (26:54):
But so we, we kept shooting, kept filming. They put it together, found an agent that would, you know, get, be able to get in the doors of somewhere like a Netflix and apple TV and Amazon prime. And thankfully by the, you know, Chris of God that Netflix wanted it. And so we were able to get it in there. And then at first I’m thinking it’s not a Netflix original. So, you know, some tie titles on their platform have the, the end in the corner and that’s a Netflix original film. They, they give the most marketing and promotion and, and back backing. Well, so this one’s just an independent title. So my mind it’s gonna get on there. It’s gonna get buried. Netflix is loaded with films, docu memories, all these things like no one’s ever gonna see it. And then it just exploded. Like it was on trending and popular. It started to receive thousands of messages of just how encouraged inspired they were from this film. So I was so blown away by the response to that, that film. And I’m so glad that it could get out there and really make a difference to many people.
RV (28:10):
That’s so that’s really, really cool. How much does it cost to, like how much fundraising, like what does it cost to film a documentary? Is it like millions of dollars? Is it a couple hundred thousand dollars?
CN (28:21):
It, I mean, it kind of depends on what you’re using and the different elements to it, but this one would be like 250,000, I think all in when you pay all the people involved, the,
RV (28:35):
All the editing, the equipment, the rentals, the travel, like it’s a ton of stuff,
CN (28:40):
Ton of stuff. And they were able to get it like a 250,000, which is considering, is on Netflix or what’s out there. That is a very low budget film.
RV (28:51):
Wow. That’s really, really cool, man. So like so what now? So what, what next? So you have seven kids. So you normally got married. You’ve, you’ve adopted seven kids
CN (29:05):
Adopted six and then we’re fostering one right now. So we have fostered a total of 19 kids in all. Wow. So that’s something that was a, a passion of my wife that she then passed on to me and helped open my eyes to all the kids who don’t feel loved, who are coming from abusive homes. And they’re either put with a fam foster family, they’re put into group homes, which is, you know, they used to call it orphanages. And now it’s, they’re called group homes. And so we, we just breaks our heart and we hear these stories of these kids needing a home and a place to go. They don’t feel loved and wanted and like they belong. And so try to help them to see their value and how loved they are by by us and by God and everybody it’s been a really neat calling and it’s really made our lives just gives us more me, these kids.
CN (30:01):
And, you know, we kind of went into it. We’re, we’re gonna help them, but you know, they, they give just as much back to you just having them in your lives, they’re all very special and, and unique. So that’s been an incredible thing. That’s and then what’s next though. Yeah. Is sorry, add that too is yeah. Now I’m gonna do a an unscripted TV show now with Netflix of just how to help people find a way forward of how can you pick up the pieces of something life altering and continue down the road. So kind of like a, a fixer upper, but for the soul really is how we are calling it. So we’d like to get this show up and going and find a home for it. But that’s kind of my, my next project outside of speaking, like speaking’s always gonna be, I feel my number one thing. I love doing it, but I also want to get, do some more TV stuff and try to do something reality. TV wise, that’s meaningful and purposeful, and it’s gonna help people’s lives.
RV (31:06):
Yeah. I never, I guess I never even realized that that was how cuz that’s how the book business works. Right? You create a book proposal, get a literary agent, litera agent takes a proposal, shops it to publishers. They give you an advance and then you sell a bunch of copies are not your advance. And then you get royalties, I guess that that’s probably the same way a documentary is. They pay you some amount of money and then based on the streams or something, you get, you earn royalties after that.
CN (31:29):
There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. But that’s probably the basic way is you, you come up with a project and an idea, and then you hope that you get initial funding from like a big streaming platform, like a Netflix where they say, yeah, we want this. And then they’ll give you a budget. They’ll give you directors, producers, they’ll give you kind of a team of that. They kind of want you to work with, and then they let you kind of run with it or you come to them with a finished product. And you try to get that onto their, their platform with when when’s already finished. So there’s different ways to kind of go about it, but yeah, very similar to a book.
RV (32:11):
Yeah. Well that’s awesome, man. So you’re still like just speaking and, and maybe reality TV. Some, I love the fixer upper for your soul. Kind of an idea. I mean, there’s so many people that are hurting and broken and it just, it seems like you’re really just drawn to doing that work.
CN (32:31):
Yeah. I, like I told you about the kind of that transformation for me of thinking, oh my gosh, I’m in a wheelchair. Like my life is now over. I can’t do the things that I want to do. Like the fun has stopped. I’m not gonna be able to do anything exciting. Well, that’s not true. I, you know, I’ve been skiing and I’ve gone on jet skis and concerts and traveling what snorkeling and, you know, scuba diving and like there’s so many things, hiking, mountain climb, like there’s so many things I’ve been able to do and have a family and start a business. There’s that? I’m not like some I’m not cut from a different cloth. Like I’m just I’m from a small town in Iowa, just like, there’s nothing special about me other than just, I just try to focus on the possibilities to try to see way forward.
CN (33:19):
And, and thankfully too, I’ve had good people to help me too, kind of open my eyes to what is possible. And I want to help be that person for more people who feel like, oh my gosh, this life altering thing. Life is over. It stops now. Cause I’m not living the life that I pictured that it would look like. And so I want to break that bear for them and, and with a team of people to show them what is possible and empower them to, to continue to move forward. So that’s again a passion project now that I’m working on that there’s a lot of work ahead, but something that I’m hoping to get going,
RV (33:58):
Where do you want people to go, Chris, if they wanna connect with you and kind of follow your journey, like what’s the best place for them to, to keep up with you these days?
CN (34:05):
Yeah. I mean go to my website, Chris norton.org to learn even more about me and connect, but Instagram and Facebook are probably my two primary places that I update and, and share what’s going on.
RV (34:22):
Wow, man. It, it really is an inspiring story. And thank you for choosing to have that attitude and for continuing to see what’s possible. And cuz it is, it, it inspires me and I know it’s gonna inspire a ton of people, listen to this. And and I can sense you’re just getting started in the impact that you’re gonna have globally with, with sharing your story. So we’re, we’re grateful for, for you and your family and your wife and man, we just wish you the best stay, stay connected with us and, and let us know how we can help and just keep going, brother.
CN (34:59):
Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate that RO and like I said, it’s be here. Talk with you. I’ve always followed you and looked up to you as a, as a man, as a, as a business owner, husband, father, all those things. And so it’s great to be able to speak with you today.
Ep 266: How To Leverage Business Experience to Build Your Personal Brand with Tiffany Taylor & Leon Chen
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is one of your co-host AJ Vaden here. I am so excited to have two newer friends on the show today that are about to head into a very se, a very busy season of launching their first book together. But I’ll, before I formally introduce these individuals, here’s a couple of things that you need to know and why you need to stick around to the very end of the show today. First thing is that this is a married couple in business, and as we all know, that brings lots of wonderful benefits and lots of challenges. And so we’re gonna get to learn a little bit about that, but this particular couple their business idea started from an accidental nohow on a first date. So we’re gonna talk about how a business opportunity can really come from anywhere.
AJV (00:56):
If your eyes are open to it and then not last, but definitely not least. They are writing their first book. They have been insanely successful well into the nine figures with their business, which started with some warm cookies because of a no-show on a date to a healthy nine figure business. Now they’re building their personal brands, launching their first book. So we’re gonna learn about how do you go from being these incredible entrepreneurs, being married together, raising a together, and now also writing a book and starting this new journey of their lives, sot and Leon, welcome to the show.
TT (01:30):
Thank you. Thanks
LC (01:31):
An intro. Yeah. Thanks for having us. We gotta have you introduce us everywhere.
AJV (01:36):
Well, I we’re so excited and I was such a treat to learn that we had some mutual friends in common behind the scenes, and I love learning your story. And I loved also getting to like peruse through the book. And I think you guys have really done it uniquely well in the way that you’ve like outlined these business practices and cookie recipes and all these things that you’ve intertwined. That’s just really true to who you guys are. But before we get into the book, we wanna talk a little bit of business, right? So for everyone who does not know you, so you guys are the owners and founders of Tiff’s treats, which is now a incredibly successful business. You guys have almost 70 locations across the United States. I was telling Leon right before we started that there’s one right down the street from our house here in Nashville, Tennessee, we get Tiff’s treats deliveries all the time. The cookies are spectacular, highly recommend them. My kids love ’em. My husband loves ’em way too much. But you guys have done all these amazing things, but the way you started is quite unique. And so towel everyone actually, how did this business come about?
LC (02:43):
Yeah, it’s quite simple. She was not super nice and stood me up on a date is how it really started.
TT (02:49):
Well, we were sophomores at the university of Texas in Austin, and I did stand him up on a date. But I did apologize. And the way I did that was to bake him a set of cookies. And I drove him over to his house and they just so happened to be warm when I got there, the cookies and he took one bite and immediately thought, Hey, we should do this as a business. Now keep in mind. We were 19 years old and we were going to college
LC (03:12):
And, and this was
TT (03:15):
19 99, 19 99. And so he said, we should, you know, instead of pizza delivery, it’ll be warm cookie delivery. We’ll bake the cookies when people order them and deliver them to their houses. And so I immediately didn’t wanna do that. And I said, no, thank you. But then we got to talking the rest of that afternoon and he convinced me to at least think about it. And I ended up at the grocery store pricing out. What, what do we, how much does it cost to make cookies? And what other kinds of cookies besides chocolate chip could we offer? And we spent the next couple weeks just researching the basics, you know, what, what would be the basics that we would do? And then two weeks later, we opened right out of his college apartment
LC (03:52):
And, and waited three days and didn’t get a single order for three days too. So right off the bat, I already felt like it was gonna be a failure and maybe even the relationship too.
AJV (04:02):
So I think part of this is so fascinating to me because how many people honestly get stood up on a date and one even have the courage to go and apologize much less, bring some sort of consolation gift. But then more than that, who has the idea after this no-show date to go, you know what? We should go in business together. This is an amazing idea. So I’m really fascinated to go to know, how did you guys go from, sorry, I no-showed you, I I’m really, I feel bad about this. I’ve brought you some cookies to actually, I think there’s a business here and here’s why this is so interesting to me, because to me it proves the point that there is an idea in every single situation, there’s an opportunity to be creative and to do something. And no matter what happens, good, bad or whatever, and think most of us don’t see it, but you guys did. So how did that happen?
LC (05:00):
You, you know, I think the easy answer for that is we were 19 and you need to be a little bit naive. We call our, we call it, we call it young, dumb and naive. You know, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think as we age that the 25 year old version of ourselves, would’ve said, no, like that’s too insane of an idea, but when you’re that naive, you just have no idea the hardships and the difficulty. And you don’t think in terms of why we shouldn’t do something, you, you, you’re just thinking the world is your oyster. And I think that that was weirdly our biggest advantage is that you, we just were just naive.
AJV (05:41):
I love that. So I’m curious Tiffany, why did you take him cookies? Like why even go back and apologize? Like you could have just easily been like, oh, I’ll probably never run into him again up.
TT (05:54):
So I should clarify. We were dating at the time.
AJV (05:58):
There
TT (05:58):
Wasn’t a random, because that would be bizarre to just nohow and then apologize and then go into business. So we were dating and cookies was my thing. So I used to all through high school, I would, and even junior high before then it was just my hobby to bake cookies. And so when I needed to apologize, it came naturally, this is something nice I can do for him to say, I’m sorry about this. And I certainly always expected to see him after that. I did not think we would be going into business together or
LC (06:27):
Getting married
TT (06:28):
Or that happens way later. So yeah.
AJV (06:32):
Well that does make a lot more sense reading this. Cause it did say an accent, dental nohow in your bio. And I was thinking, I dunno what accidental means, but I do know what nohow means. So I’m curious though, just something that you said now, you guys have two kids. How old are they?
TT (06:50):
Seven
AJV (06:50):
They’re seven. So I have a two and a four year old. Oh
LC (06:53):
Yeah, you’re
AJV (06:54):
In. And so, yeah, we’re in the thick of it. But I’m curious new knowing this about yourselves of going, Hey, when we were 19 thinking that the world is our oyster and it’s more about what we can do, not what we can’t do. And even saying that maybe our 25 year old selves would’ve said, no, I’m curious to know. It’s like hindsight 20/20 with all the success that you guys have had and all that you challenges that you’ve overcome. What would you want to instill in your kids about keeping this kind of, what is possible mentality versus can’t do it mentality?
LC (07:29):
It’s funny cuz when it comes to our kids, we’d probably be like, just be in accountant, just go into something safe. Like we, you know, we, you
TT (07:38):
Can definitely, I see why parents do that. Yeah. Right. Cause the looking back on it, the odds of it going poorly were so much more in favor than the odds of it going the way it did ultimately go. And there’s so many chances along the way, one tiny tweak and it wouldn’t have gone this way at all. And so I think as an older person, you see that you can see the whole playing field for your kids. So it’s scary for you to even want them to have their eyes quite open. Yeah. But you should. I mean, yes you, I think you’re right. You, we should absolutely in, in instill that in them to, to have that dream. And I think that’s that’s to us to knowing better not to crush in anyway.
LC (08:16):
Yeah. And it might even be harder for us to, to say, go ahead, do it because we know what that really means. We know the hard we used to, we used to joke about the things that we had to go through to make this business work. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, you know, it’s that stressful. It’s that intense. And so it is hard to hard to think that man, our kids might go through this, but again, you definitely want them to realize their dreams that’s for sure.
AJV (08:43):
Yeah. Well I would say it’s being on the entrepreneurial journey in our own business, that’s like, yeah, there’s lots of ups and downs. And I can’t remember who said this, but someone said being an entrepreneur is like jumping off of a cliff and building the parachute as you plummet down to the ground. Right. That’s exactly it. And you guys clearly have figured this out. You guys are 500 million. You’ve got famous people all across, you know, you’ve mark Cuban, you’ve got Brooklyn, Decker, Kendra, Scott, all these people advocating what you guys are doing. You built an incredible brand and for those of you who don’t know, it’s like T streets have cookies. They deliver them warm, they’re cooked and delivered within an hour of them being baked. We get them as appreciation gifts all the time from vendors and clients. And I’m, I’m curious to know, it’s like at what point did you guys go, okay, I think this is gonna work. Like, was there a moment that you’re like, I think we’re gonna make it here.
LC (09:44):
Well, before I answer that, I, I need to clarify. I don’t, I do not believe mark Cuban is an investor. We have Navitzky of the Mavericks. Mark has been gracious to give us some good advice and everything that we have Derek and Kendra and, and rod Brooklyn Decker. But yeah, maybe mark, you shouldn’t invest if you’re listening to this,
AJV (10:02):
Your chance.
LC (10:03):
Yes. but to, to answer your question, I don’t feel like we still feel like we have it, I think, and you know, that maybe part of I’m I’m, maybe we’re afraid to feel that way because for the longest time that kind of is what kept us going. And so you know, we need a, we do need to stop the smell of roses, so to speak more often.
TT (10:26):
Yeah. I mean, when your goals are bigger than where you are, then you never feel like I’ve done it or it’s going to work or certainly never we’ve made it. We’ve never won once for one second, felt that the whole way through, I think there were times when we could see that perhaps one store was viable in the beginning. It took a while, but I would say five years in what we had always said is we were busy in certain chunks of the day. And then we were not busy in other chunks of the day. And we had said, if we can just get this busy during this time period, then we’ll know we’ve done it. And eventually we did that. And I, I think that was the starting point of thinking, well, okay, at least th this would work. I mean, they, but we always had dreams of expansion.
TT (11:12):
And so I think we go into it in the book a little bit that as soon as we got some, our footing under us a little bit, then we would take a next bite, which would then make what we had done now completely at risk. So we never were in a position where, okay, great. We could buy a house and pay those payments and we’d be fine because we always have this, whatever, because whatever next step we did completely could have put out of business already, what we, but that’s kind of the only way to grow.
LC (11:40):
Yeah. The, the, the margin is in the risk. Right. And so that’s the way we look at it. Now we are trying to keep things in perspective on really stressful days. I, I do, I do think back and say like, look, we’re so fortunate to be where we are today. And if, if you know, you told 19 year old me, we’d be at this stage. And I would just say, okay, I take it. You know, but when you’re in the moment, it’s hard to keep things in perspective.
AJV (12:06):
What would you guys tell someone who is wants to venture out and start their own BI business, whatever kind of business it is. Like if there was one entrepreneurial lesson that you would wanna impart on someone else just getting started. Do you guys have any idea of what it would be?
TT (12:24):
My, what comes to mind for me is don’t do it unless it can be your number one priority or your number one focus, because if it’s purely a side gig and there are several other things that are legitimately more important to you, it’s not that you can’t do that, but it’s gonna be very, very difficult to make that a smashing success.
LC (12:44):
Yeah. Now you could start as a side gig, but know that if you want to make that next step, it, it might mean making some really difficult life choices. For me, when it comes to tactical strategic of the business, it’s along the lines of focus to one of the mistakes that we probably were best at not making that it’s harder to make the bigger we grow. And we see a lot of businesses of all different sizes make, is focusing on being absolutely great at a very narrow niche. And especially as you become more successful as a business, there’s more and more opportunities and different opportunities. And I I’ve, we’ve seen businesses really falter by trying to get into doing too much instead of focusing on that niche.
AJV (13:31):
Oh my gosh. I’m so happy that you guys said that, cuz that’s like one of the things that we talk about all the time to our audience here at brand builders group is you know, my husband has this saying the more specific, the more terrific, right. It’s like that is right. But it’s like there’s power and being known for one thing. Yep. And then doing that exceptionally well, which to your point, Tiffany, it takes a lot of focus and intention and you can’t often achieve excellence if you have divided attention. Right. But it’s really focusing in on what is it that we really wanna be known for. And so for you guys, what do you guys wanna be known for when you think about T’s treats and then your own personal as individuals, what do you guys wanna be known for?
TT (14:19):
Well, it started and, and still is being best in the world at, on demand, warm cookie delivery. And we feel that, you know, we have been able to do that. And then we’re sort of opening up now a little bit to being best in the world at, on demand gifting know with, with warm cookie as the base. But what we realized it’s really about that giftable moment, that moment of connection between people more so than it is really just about the cookie, but we started with the cookie.
LC (14:47):
Yeah. Well, we’re what we realized on a, almost on accident that we’re very good at is making sure that there’s this incredible moment, the intended moment, whether it’s you’re at the office and you just need some downtime and you and your coworkers order some cookies. And for that brief 10 minutes of your day, it’s awesome. And you’re talking or across the country and your best friend have a tra has a tragedy or something or they’re sick or something’s going on. And you’re able to go online and send them a box of warm cookies with a message that’s super meaningful. We’re very good at making sure that those moments are, are intact. And that’s what we want to be known for what we call it, connecting people through warm moments.
AJV (15:36):
Yeah. I love that. And I think the, to me, it’s like the ultimate uniqueness in all of that is this on demand component. Right? It’s, it’s so easy to have great intentions with really poor execution cuz you miss this window of opportunity. And you guys provide this real, really unique opportunity to do it in the moment. And it’s, to me, it’s like with the cookies at least, right? It’s like, it really means something to have warm, fresh cookies come and it’s like, oh man, like these are fresh. Right. It’s like, yes. And it makes you wanna eat them right then. Right.
LC (16:10):
And for the like, I’ll give you you an example that we put in the book, just a quick story. We started to realize how powerful these moments could mean when early on we had someone from a downtown office, an admin call to place an order. And she was talking to our manager who was taking the order manager was like, oh, what’s going on? How are you doing today? And she’s like, oh, you know what? We’re ordering these for my boss. And it’s raining today outside. And whenever it rained, my boss always loved to tell us a story about when he was a little kid, his mom would bake him cookies every time it was raining at school. So he knew when he came home from school, there’d be a batch of warm cookies on a rainy day. And she went on to say, well, this is the first day. It’s rained since his mother passed away. And so we’re here in the office, we’re all gonna celebrate and order some cookies. And so we realized right then and there in the, on demand nature, we were able to get cookies to the office while it was still raining and the whole company had a moment together for their boss. And so that’s the kind of power we see in these moments.
AJV (17:11):
Oh, I love that. Y’all and I think some of, of this what I love is like the, the way speaking of the book, right? The way that you’ve outlined this book I think is so interesting. As you look at all the chapters, clearly there’s business principles and there’s all these things, but then also you have incorporated recipes for every chapter. So this has been on my mind ever since I was fortunate enough to get a gal copy of your upcoming book, are the recipes somehow directly connected to all the lessons in each chapter?
TT (17:44):
Not directly, we started with chocolate chip because that’s the base. And that’s, you know, you gotta have chocolate chip. So we knew we had to have that one first. And then we sort of grouped them based on cookie. And then we’ve got kind of a grouping of bars. We’ve got some truffles. And so they’re kind of grouped based on category a little bit more than, than story related.
AJV (18:05):
Oh my gosh, this is so funny cuz in my mind I’m like, what’s this secret message behind yeah. For each of these chapters. And so OK. Well there’s one chapter in particular that I think is going to be really relevant to our audience as we kind of talk about building a business, building a brand and you guys have a chapter chapter four called building a brand and I would love to know like what, what is your philosophy on building a brand?
TT (18:34):
Yeah, I think gosh, building a brand is so delicate and I think that’s the biggest takeaway for us is that when we started, we were building a service and we weren’t considering building a brand and kind of what that afforded us was the ability for some breath space to let customers tell us what was meaningful to them. And we were able to sort of shape the brand in reverse. Not us saying here’s what we are. I hope you like it. But we sort of started with the service and then shaped along the way. And then some of the things that happened during that were really, you know, the warm was the, was the biggest shaping piece, realizing why people were using us not just what they were buying or when they were buying, but what it was meaning to them. And that’s the piece of the brand puzzle.
TT (19:25):
I think that’s so important to us and we’re the two ambassadors of the brand. We’re the protectors of the brand. And there’s tons of other people here that are as well. But then there’s always gonna be a along your journey, other people that are protectors of the bottom line, other people that are protectors of the expenses, people that are protectors of, you know, are the legal yeah. And some of that can be at odds with what you want for the brand. And so sometimes it can be challenging, especially if you get to, let’s say the board of directors level because they’re not there every day and really that that’s not their role, but it is your role because to us, at least without the brand, you have nothing. And so sometimes you have to really fiercely protect, say, listen, I know by doing whatever this program, if you wanna put in place, we will make more money or we will save more money or we will, whatever it is. But I’m also telling you that that is not right for the brand. It’s either not right for the customer experience. It’s not right for the overall our connection with our customers. It doesn’t speak to us and what we believe in and you have to stand up and say, we’re gonna make choices that sometimes don’t make financial sense, but that do make sense for, for our brand.
LC (20:35):
Yeah. We always think of it opposite from financially, but cash and revenue today is less important than cash and revenue tomorrow next week, next month, next year, that’s not true when it comes to financial world, but when it comes to building a brand, your, the, the more important cash is what is gonna come in later. And so we delay a lot of revenue. We delay a lot of sales. We could, you know, we’re at 75 locations. Now we could be at 200 locations right now, if all we cared about was revenue, but it’s equality experience that we care about. And that makes our brand special is the white glove service. And so for us, that’s delaying a lot of things that a lot of businesses, it takes a lot of what am I trying to say, willpower willpower. Yeah. To, to go at the pace that is best for the brand. And so that’s really something that we have to remind ourselves the, the kind of the bigger we get.
AJV (21:34):
Well, yeah. And I would say that’s quite rare, right? It’s easy to be tempted into grow quickly, right? Double revenues, double locations. Yes. But growth doesn’t always mean scale. But I think that’s good. So I, I have three follow up questions to this. So Tiffany, you mentioned we really let our clients kind of tell us, so for anyone out there, who’s listening to this episode going, well, how do you do that? So how did you get that information from your clients?
TT (22:07):
So in the, the beginning, you know, we were taking all of our orders by phone. So you actually have a phone conversation with people. So, you know, that’s not relevant today, but truly you could hear why they were ordering. And especially, let’s say when we started, we were focusing on the university. And so we had a lot of parents calling in and I’ll tell you, they want to tell you everything about why they’re are ordering. You’ll be on the phone 15 minutes because they’re ordering it for their college age child. And there’s nothing more exciting and, and more fun for them to chat with you about. So a lot of times customers do want to chat, but in a more modern way it’s social media comments and, and people are very free about emailing in. They will email you, they will live chat.
TT (22:47):
You, they will put comments on social media. You just have to read them and listen to them. And, you know, I don’t know if this is surprising or not, but we get so many positive stories coming in out of the blue and just say, Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I, I did an order and this is why. And it was so meaningful me to me because of X, Y, and Z. And we get that a lot. It’s, it’s a fun place to, to see all this neat humanity, right. That’s there. And sometimes you, not, everybody gets to see it,
LC (23:16):
Especially these days. Right. We get to,
AJV (23:19):
I mean, that’s the good stuff, right? It’s like but I love that. And it’s, I think for everyone listening, like the takeaway is create opportunities to actually hear the stories of your customers, right. If thing is, how quick can we do it? How can we get you in and get you out? It’s like, you’re gonna miss the humanity, the actual reasons why you’re doing this. And let those help shape and form how the business grows. And I love that. The second thing that you kind of both alluded to a little bit is this idea of being protectors of the brand. And I love that so much because I like one of the things that we believe in really strongly at our company brand builders group, is that the individuals, right? The owners of the company, it’s like your reputation is the most important thing.
AJV (24:04):
Same thing as a company, it’s like the reputation is the most important thing that you can have. And so to consider yourselves as the brand protectors is a really incredible concept. And so I’m curious, what would you tell other business owners out there when it comes to, Hey, it’s like many people will have different roles, but there needs to be a brand protector, someone who’s going to, you know, create garner, establish, and then protect the reputation that you’ve worked so hard to build and other people’s opinions start to come into play. Any tips, insights, advice you would give to someone on how to do that.
TT (24:44):
Yeah. I’m gonna start really quickly. Then I’ll hand it off to Leon. But one of our values that we have up on the wall is we protect the brand. Hmm. And so I think part of it too, is it doesn’t have to be just the two of us. So we’ve got an army of people that believe in what we’re doing and believe in those values on the wall and know that we protect the brand is one of them and are there to help catch you when you are tempted or you are making, you know, if, if you have an environment where you’ve got people close to you, that can do things like that. We recently, well, a couple of years ago had a big decision to make. And we had people come to us and say, look, the answer is we protect the brand. And there’s only one choice between these choices. There’s only one of these two things that protects the brand. So while it’s gonna cost us $20,000, how are you gonna make any other decision besides that? And so it’s really helpful to have people buy
LC (25:37):
Into it. Yeah. When you set your own, when you set values for your brand, that you truly believe in and your team believes in, they hold you accountable, as much as you hold them accountable. And specifically what she’s talking about is on our milk bottles, we have brand new, beautiful milk packaging. Somehow some way we let it slip. And the word pasteurized was misspelled very small somewhere there. And it was so tempting. We’re like, oh, we could just send it out and let someone call us. And, and, and we, you know, we know, and our team was like adamant, no, I know it’s $20,000, but you know, we protect the brand. We protect the brand and, and, and part of that, you have to get really good at being okay with saying no to a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts distinguishing, just because an idea is good. Doesn’t mean that it deserves a yes. Oh, that’s good. You say saying no to good ideas all day long. And that’s really hard for a lot of people to, to, to understand because they’ll they’ll think, man, my idea was good. I don’t understand. But if you say no to every good, I there’s millions of good ideas, you gotta really hold out for those monumental great ideas.
AJV (26:50):
Oh man. I think that is such a good reminder and lesson for not just people in business, just humans, it’s a learning what to say yes to and what you need to say. No. Oh, to that’s really good. Y’all, I’m so excited for this book to come out. This is your first book together. What on God’s green earth made you guys decide to write a book and do it together? I’m so curious, like what instigated all of this?
LC (27:19):
Well, what
TT (27:20):
Instigated, I mean, we’ve been part of it is just kind of getting our story down because we’ve been doing this for a long time. Now this is our 23rd year of business. And so we have a lot of stories and at a certain point we wanted to kind of get those on paper. We, yeah,
LC (27:37):
We do. From time to time, we do speaking events, corporate speaking events, and we go speak to some university classes and stuff and we get a lot of interest. So every chapter in the book is based on what do we get asked the most people wanna know? And that’s why it ranges the, you know, from business to building a brand, to working together with your spouse and having kids and raising kids it’s because people are the most curious about that. So we kind of just said, let’s put in one book what everyone is most curious about. And so it’s from our experience in talking to people really what we wanted to write about.
AJV (28:13):
Mm that’s good. How has it been? So so many of the people in our audience are on the journey of publishing a book, want to publish a book, how’s it been?
TT (28:23):
It’s, you know, it’s so interesting because it’s a totally new industry and you’re learning it. And there’s so many facets to it that I feel like if there were a second book, then you kind of know everything. Yes. And there’s just so many small things that I would do differently only because I didn’t understand the process. You know, and I’m like, don’t hard. Well, it’s too late now. I can’t change X, Y, or Z, but if we ever wrote another book, then now I know here, you know, here are the things I, I would’ve, I would tweak. But it’s fun. And, you know, it’s fun to, to do something.
AJV (28:59):
If there was one thing that you could go back and do differently for you, what would it be?
TT (29:05):
You know, the thing that comes to mind to me is understanding the editing process better and sort of curating that initial draft in a different way than, than what we did and what we ended up doing was turning in something more rough than I would’ve. And, and then kind of the editing process got sort of squished to the end and then in a rush because it had to go to print at a certain time. Yeah. So I would maybe almost like do an internal editing, more internal editing before turning a draft.
LC (29:38):
Cause our editor was awesome, but we misunderstood that process, how it would run and,
TT (29:45):
And the timing of it too. Yeah. The timing, you know, so yeah. We misunderstood sort of the timing of when do those edits happen at what cadence do they happen? And so it ended up being more truncated in terms of timeline than I thought it would be, but you know, all came out great. It just wasn’t wasn’t I didn’t realize the, the, the timing.
AJV (30:05):
Oh yeah. I remember when we wrote our first book, which we celebrated 10 years ago in February. So just last month. I remember we turned in, I don’t remember how, like how many thousand words it was like, you know, 80,000 and like they came back and gave us like 50 and we’re like, that’s like a third of the book. Like you read a third of the book and it was like such a aha moment of you just never know. And it’s like, we wrote it as if like this is going to print.
LC (30:36):
Right, right.
AJV (30:37):
Yeah. It’s like, indeed, no, like a third of that is going to print. We will help rewrite the other half. And we did
TT (30:45):
The opposite opposite. Yeah. Where we turned in, what we thought we knew our, our word limit. So we turned in about 10,000 extra words to that, that way we’ve got buffer cuz we knew stuff was gonna get cut. And we thought it was just gonna get torn apart, ripped to shreds, put back together and we were ready for that. And then didn’t and so that’s the thing that we were like, oh shoot, we should have turned in something a little bit more ready to go.
AJV (31:09):
Oh interesting. Yeah. We went through reverse. And it was a very eye opening experience.
TT (31:14):
That would be tough. That what we
AJV (31:17):
Very and very wordy and we needed to
TT (31:23):
Yeah, you gotta yeah. Truncate what your, you don’t need 10 words to say one thing. Yeah.
LC (31:27):
That’s my problem. I, I, I went too crazy with the extra words and comas and run ons and stuff.
AJV (31:34):
So since so many people in our audience are on this path to publishing a book, I’m curious if you guys were to write another book and you could have different answers on this. My husband and I often disagree. It’s a beautiful part of being married. Lots of disagreements. Would you guys self-publish, would you want to traditionally publish again or do something in the middle and why?
LC (31:57):
You know, I, since we don’t know what self-publishing entails, it’s hard to kind of say we liked having are handheld a little bit for sure. Yeah. With, with the publisher I, I really wouldn’t be able to know.
TT (32:12):
Yeah. And also since we haven’t really, yeah. We haven’t gone through the full cycle, but I think I would go publish again to Leon’s point to have somebody to handhold. And, and, you know, especially, even from the printing end and all of
AJV (32:23):
That. Oh yeah. Just a guide through the process. Right. I love that. All right. Well, I know that we are approaching the end of our time here. But I want for you guys to have a chance to tell everyone who’s listening, what this book is all about, who it was really written for and why everyone needs to go grab a copy.
TT (32:44):
Well, the book is all about our story, our journey, and I would say number one, our failures we’re pretty open about the failures that we’ve had along the way, and some of the mishaps and hoping to give other people some not tips, but just inspiration and, and get a little bit out of that of, of maybe what not to do or, or maybe just inspiration that it happens to other people too. And then of course, gosh, the recipes are really fun and they’re very easy. So you don’t need to be a baker to pick this up and get some really great results out of the book. And anybody’s, who’s a also interested in sort of peeking behind the curtain of what a husband and wife team looks like. We tried to be as honest as possible. So
LC (33:25):
I too honest,
TT (33:27):
Too honest,
LC (33:28):
And it’s a beautiful, full color book. It’s a great coffee table book. The pictures are the, the baked goods, pictures are beautiful in there. So it makes a great gift as well. We wanted to have just something that people would be proud to have sitting on their coffee table. But also with substance beyond just pictures.
AJV (33:47):
Ah, I love that. Who do you think is the ideal target for this book?
TT (33:53):
I think anybody who ha I don’t think you have to have a strong interest in business, but anybody who’s a little bit curious about business and really just wants to see sort of the honest side of what goes on behind the curtain.
AJV (34:08):
I love that. Well, I know from even just spending the little bit of time getting to know you both and then even in the interview today, I think one of the reasons that everyone should go and check out this book is the fact that you guys created an entire business off of an apology effort and creating those opportunities in everyday life to go, there is an opportunity in everything that happens if we are just willing to keep an eye out for it. And then I think the best part of all of this is that you guys are so transparent and honest to about, it’s not easy, let’s not kid ourselves. But at the end of the day, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Yeah. Yeah. We’re so excited. This book comes out. What’s the official launch date,
TT (34:55):
April 5th,
AJV (34:56):
April 5th. So I mean, we’re here. It’s like right now. So I, I would encourage everyone. We’ll put this in the show notes, but go to cookie delivery.com/vaden. That’s our last name? V a D E N. So cookie delivery.com/vaden. They have given us some awesome discount codes. You can get 20% off actually ordering some tips treats. There’s also a link right there to go and buy the a book y’all need to do it. Learn some, learn from people who have been on this journey, who are doing the thing. They’re building their business, growing a family. Now they’re launching a book Tiffany, Leon, thank you guys so much for being on the show. This was awesome.
TT (35:36):
Thank you so much, AJ.
LC (35:37):
Thanks for having us. This is awesome.
AJV (35:39):
All right, everyone, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 264: Finding an Aligned Business Model with Jesse Terranova
RV (00:02):
Well, if you’ve listened to this show for a while, you’ve probably picked up the theme that the influential personal brand podcast is all about sharing the stories of people who are influential personal brands and how they got that way. And so, you know, we interview New York times bestselling authors and seven figure entrepreneurs and people with millions of followers. And I, and, and then we’re trying to glean the wisdom that we can. Well, one of the things that my wife, my co-host, our CEO, my business partner, AJ did over Christmas was she did this thing called the 12 days of BBG Christmas. And it was filled with lots of bad singing for me and her. And, you know, some mediocre prize is of brand builders, group swag. But one of the things that we thought would be cool was to highlight one of our real life clients who is on the journey right now of building their personal brand.
RV (00:56):
Since, you know, so many times you hear the story of somebody who like, you know, made it so to speak, but, but we Don have that many folks that are going I’m, I’m living it, I’m working it right now. And so that’s how we got to meet Jesse Terranova, who you’re about to meet. He’s an awesome guy. We’ve been working together for a few months at this point, I guess several months you could say, and we’re just gonna talk to Jesse. You’re going to hear a little bit about his story. And I think my hope is that you’ll be encouraged as you hear the, the path that Jesse has been on and maybe it will help highlight some things for yourself on your own path. So Jesse, welcome to the show, man.
JT (01:40):
R it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me here.
RV (01:43):
So I wanna start with how you, you heard about us because that I’m always, you know, the marketing person in me is always like, okay, what are we doing? That’s working. How are people finding out about us? And, and then, you know, I just love the, almost like the spiritual side of me loves looking at how our intersect with people and what relationships that we have bring us to, to, to people. So how did you first, how did you first find brand builder’s group?
JT (02:16):
Yeah, that’s great. Well, actually from Louis, which I know Louis House which I know is a big big kind of yours, a good friend of yours. And so, yeah, I believe it was back to in 2017. I first was introduced to Lewis, listening to his podcast, reading a couple of his books and he absolutely transformed my life.
RV (02:36):
Wow. So you, you were, you had never heard of him before that. And then what does a friend send you like his podcast or a book, or do you even remember?
JT (02:45):
Yeah, well, I’ve always, I’ve been a very curious person by nature. And so I’ve, I’m big into self betterment and improving my life and, and I’ve always kind of been that way. And so when I started looking into podcasts Lewis’ came up pretty much at the top. At that time. He was he’s he’s, you know, been, been the game since the beginning, as you know. And so I started listening to it and, you know, he was always inspiring, but it’s always the guests that he brings on that, that really helped to you know, bring it all together and, and helped to transform a lot of people’s lives. I know I’m not the only one.
RV (03:20):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, so yeah, so I was one of those guests, I guess. Okay. You
JT (03:25):
Were, you, you were,
RV (03:26):
You had, so had you, you had never heard, like never had heard of me or brand builders group, like just, you were listening to Lewis’ show and then you’re just like, whatever, whatever one’s next in the playlist. And, and up by up, I come, right.
JT (03:39):
You, yeah, I had not. You, you just came up and a lot of the things that you had said at the time really resonated with me because I think, you know, for me personally it, it’s interesting because you, you help people turn their reputation into revenue, right. And so that’s why I think it was a great match, but, you know, I had, without even knowing it in the past five years had been creating a personal brand on my social media, you know, without a call to action without a monetization strategy. And that’s why you came into my life at a really good time. Cause I said, well, I have all of this these amazing people in my life, these amazing connections, but I guess I just needed more of a direct path to get me to where I wanted to go. And I’m a big believer in proponent in coaching and mentoring. So this was just a relationship way to happen.
RV (04:25):
Yeah. It’s, it’s funny that you mentioned that because one of the things that AJ talks about all the time is how, you know, people think of personal brand as like, oh, it’s social media, or it’s a course, or it’s like, you know, followers, et cetera, but really the way that we define it, it is the digitization and the monetization of reputation that it, all of us have a reputation and, you know, personal branding is basically just digitizing that it becomes visible and then making the conscious choice to say, I wanna, I wanna monetize this. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna do something. So, so you said that there was like five years that you were basically just on social giving, giving out stuff. The you know, like just, were you, were you sharing advice of any kind or were you just sort of like sharing your life?
JT (05:18):
Yeah, I was sharing my life. I, I was sharing my experiences with, with individuals. I mean, I feel like your experiences are deeply etched into your being and your soul. And so it depends on what you do with those experiences. Right. And so I’ve lived a very adventurous life. I’ve traveled to over 40 countries you know, over five continents. And so I’ve just wanted to share what’s possible for people in terms of my story. And I just found it difficult, I guess, with all the noise around us, these days with wanting to do too many different things and, and, you know, understanding now that you need to break through the wall with one niche, with one specific you know, path before you can go ahead and do multiple things,
RV (06:03):
You know, you’re, you’re, you’re spoken like a true brand builder’s member with like the focus and breaking through the wall. Is that, is that, what is that, what jumped out at you most? And that, and that kind of first interview was just how, you know, we always talk about, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results and, or, or what were, what were some of the things that kind of like you IME you kind of latched onto that was like, ah, I, I think maybe there’s something here for me.
JT (06:31):
Well, man. Yeah, definitely that, but it was more to that. I think, you know, when you hear people speak the words they use sometimes, you know God speaks through other people to you directly. And so I felt at that time, for me personally, you know, you were kind of speaking to me and directly to me on the podcast on a lot of things you were saying in terms of the impact and the meaning. And so, you know, I, I I’ve felt this for a long time. I, I, I believe the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it. And so, you know, it’s interesting how, you know, you are leading a group of mission driven messengers essentially on that path to, to greatness and, you know, that’s, Lewis’s uniqueness, that’s who it resonates with me so much, but you know, that is Lewis asked on this podcast after every, you know, episode is how do you define greatness? Right. And so that is the ultimate goal for me. And that’s kind of been, and that’s why I Lewis has changed my life.
RV (07:32):
Yeah. That’s awesome. So what, when you first came, okay, so when we start working together, so you kind gonna have this, you know, realization of going, ah, I’ve been sharing my experiences, my travels, you know, these adventures I’ve been on, I think there’s an opportunity to maybe turn this into a business or like make this a more formal kind of part of my, my life, my career. And then what, what were some of the things that you were still struggling with early on in, in, in terms of where you said, Hey, I think, I think brand builders can maybe help me.
JT (08:07):
Yeah. You know, I was going through a really difficult time when I was introduced to Louis originally. I believe it was, it was back 2017, 2018. I had been living in San Diego, I’m originally from the Northeast New Jersey. And, you know, I just, I just think that was lost RO I think that you know, I was just lonely because I had made that relocation out to the other side of the country and I deprived myself, you know, I deprived myself because I, I didn’t create connection in the relationship with myself, others in the world around me. And so I had to learn the hard way, you know? It’s, it’s interesting. It, it took me you know, for, for an evening when I was driving and, and, you know, came to a red light and I was lost.
JT (08:52):
I was confused. I look up and I see you know, a, a big sign right above me near the red light. And it says, you know, Terranova drive. And, and so I’m like, okay, like, that’s interesting. I, I looked to the right and looked to the left and there’s a road that leads up to the left and sure enough, I’m like, okay, I’ll play along. So I drive up the road and then I look on my GPS and as Terranova park. And so, you know, I make a left into this development that leads me to Terranova park. I’m like, this is really interesting. This place is really familiar and uncanny. Like, I feel like I’ve been here before. Right. It was just this really interesting moment. And as I got to the park, R I, I parked there, looked around, it looked very familiar.
JT (09:36):
It was something that I’ve, that I’ve seen before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And I looked to my left across the park. That’s a development. And it says Parkside port, and for your audience that is, you know, where I grew up. That’s my parents still live in the development Parkside. And so, you know, in, in the madness you know, there’s meaning. And so you’re, you know, through the breakdowns, you know, that creates breakthroughs. And it took me to hit rock bottom in this time of my life to really understand how important connection is. I was robbing people from the opportunity of helping me. And so part of what I’m doing now is, is trying to cure my loneliness through the years. And I know that’s a problem for a lot of people, you know, and so connection is the cure. And so that’s how, that’s why I feel that what I’m doing right now in the work that I’m in is impactful and is meaningful. Cause it it’s a big problem in, in the world right now.
RV (10:38):
So to, so to use brand builders speak. And for those of you that aren’t aren’t members or aren’t yet members like the, the you know, we, the brand positioning statement is sort of like the, the core foundational work of our first you know, event of we’ve got 14 events, like at 14 parts to our whole journey, but the brand positioning statement is just getting super clear on what is your uniqueness and what problem were you uniquely created to solve in the world. So is loneliness the, the problem of your brand positioning statement?
JT (11:15):
It is.
RV (11:17):
I love that. So, so interesting to hear you talk this out in a, in a public format, you know, like usually when we’re working with clients, it’s very private and going, I love the connect. Like the, I love the alignment of that between, you know, your life and your story of what you’re talking about is like, in this moment, and, and we are always talk, we are always saying how you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so there you are in San Diego feeling totally alone, isolated. And now several years later looking back, realizing there’s a lot of people that feel that way. And so, and then is connection your uniqueness. That’s kind of like what you you’re called to, to bring to the world.
JT (12:00):
Exactly. Yes. The brand is the connection creation.
RV (12:07):
So I got it. So, and, and you said that Parkside court was like the name of the street you grew up up on, back in the Northeast,
JT (12:16):
Roy, it’s the entire development that I grew up in. Oh, it’s an unexplainable event in my life. I love asking people this question, you know, is there something that’s unexplainable that has happened to you? And for me, that is the most unexplainable thing cuz it’s just it doesn’t make much sense that that would happen, but it did, you know, all the way across the country.
RV (12:37):
Yeah. So then talk to us about, so you got clear on your positioning, the brand positioning statement. You go, this is the problem I wanna dedicate my life to, to helping people solve loneliness. Connection is my vehicle or my mechanism or the term we use. My uniqueness are helping them solve the problem. And then how did you talk to me about the monetization strategy that you came up with or, or have come up with is still fairly early, right? Because you’ve only, you’ve only been with us for what? A few months. Six months it’s
JT (13:08):
Yeah, it’s been about six months now, Roy. Yeah.
RV (13:10):
Okay. So then what’s the monetization strategy that you started with or, or are doing like, has it, have you, has it pivoted, has it like, are you still trying to figure it out?
JT (13:21):
No, I, I have a pretty good grasp on it, but it’s funny to individuals who are interested in BBG brand builders group or who are going through the journey right now as you say, in a lot of the, the speakings and recordings, it’s, you know, what we’re trying to do is a lifetime’s work. And so it’s, you know, condensing maybe 15, 20 years for some into, you know, a couple sentences. And so it’s really difficult. And so, you know, when you go through that journey, just have patience with yourself and, you know, it’s, it’s similar to really any journey you go on. It’s just to have patience with yourself and kind break it down. But, you know, in terms of our monetization strategy what I’ve really noticed in the marketplace is obviously, you know, the problem of loneliness, but you know, through all of my travels the main problem that I’ve, that I’ve, that I’ve noticed is, you know, when we are traveling, we’re, you know, more inclined to take, to step to our comfort zone, to meet new people, to try new things, to live our true, authentic selves.
JT (14:22):
And then unfortunately we come home, we gain all this amazing momentum and we take our experiences and we sometimes put them in the closet. We shove ’em away and we don’t integrate anything that we learned into our everyday life. We kind of go back into that rut. And so something that it is we’re looking to create and that we are creating is an experience for individuals in a group travel style, where we bring people together and we show them what’s possible. And it’s really interesting and unique because we’re actually on our first experience right now. It’s interesting as the, the podcast date lined up with, with where we are now, we’re right now, that’s
RV (14:59):
Crazy right now, where, where are, where are so, so you’re so wait a minute. So this is, I just wanna make sure I understand this. So you sign up with us, you join, you decide you’re are gonna lead these kind of like small group experiences, these destination experiences. And then you are at your first one with your first group of clients today, which is the time of this is the recording, right? This will air, but like you’re actually recording from a, the destination.
JT (15:28):
You can’t make it up. I am literally here with eight clients. Wow. and so it’s, it’s a really incredible moment and a really amazing experience for all of us. And like right now, like I chartered a yacht for them. We’re we’re on St. John and the Caribbean the us Virgin islands. And so they’re out on the boat right now. I’m gonna pick them up in a little while, but so it’s, it’s it’s interesting that, wait a
RV (15:51):
Minute, you pat a step on a, a yacht trip
JT (15:53):
To
RV (15:53):
Record a, to record a short podcast. What are you thinking? You’re
JT (15:58):
Crazy. Well, something about me is I also, I worked on a 18 million super yacht for a year and a half, so I I’ve had enough full time. So I’ve done that. I’ve been there, done that, but I just want everybody to enjoy their experience. Of course, someone like yourself, I’m just so excited to be here and chat with you. So, you know, it’s hard to pass up.
RV (16:18):
Well, so well, I can’t resist the opportunity to, to, to you know, work with you on like, so, so what are you, what are you working? Like, what are you working on right now? Like, is there anything that I can help or like we can sort of talk through cuz so you seem like you have a very clear brand positioning statement. So I love, I love, I mean, the problem of loneliness is very clear. It’s widespread. There’s a lot of people out there who are struggling with that. You have an aligned business model that aligned with your brand positioning statement. So if connection is the uniqueness, you know, and for those of you that are listening, one of the, like the way that we do monetization is not like what’s the easiest way to make money. That is that’s not how we teach it the way we teach it is going what does your audience need from you the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way?
RV (17:18):
What does your audience need the most and how can you serve them in the deepest way? So instead of going like, oh, I wanna, you know, I wanna create this or that. You get really, really clear on who you’re trying to serve. And as you get clear on who they are, you get clear on what they need. And as you get clear on what they need, that helps you, that informs your decision to instruct and architect an offering for them. And, and so a lot of times when people don’t make money, it’s, it’s because there’s this breakdown of like, they wanna sell this thing, but it’s not actually the format or the modality that sort of serves the people that they’re with. And, and you gotta, you know, the magic is sort of syncing that up. Well, when I think of Jesse here. So when I think about you, Jesse, you’ve actually got a great alignment there that your, your business model is literally pulling people together in these groups, creating connection, which helps, you know, remove loneliness. It also does all the things that you believe. And clearly you spent a ton of time traveling, whatever you said, 40 countries like, and, and so it aligns with your uniqueness and you’re, you’re teaching people to do things that you’ve done. So, so I love all that. So that feels totally aligned to me.
JT (18:33):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and my message is to create meaning in the relationships with yourself, others, and the world around you. And so this, the journey that I’ve been on, I want to share with others, and that’s why I’m very vocal and open with my story. I feel like it’s transformed my life and, and it is a bit of a testimonial when I do share it with people. They’re impacted by it. And so, you know, it’s not, it’s not about, you know, for me, per se the monetization strategy in terms of Mo monetizing monetizing it. I know that’s very important component of it, but for me, it’s impacting lives and touching lives and serving people and, you know, helping individuals. Cause I know, like I said, after these past two years, you know, I miss the smiling faces of people. I miss the laughter. I miss the connection. I miss the, the experiences that people have and what I’d like to do is, and you know, in the past five years I have worked in travel and, and Toros and design. And so I have design experiences for people itineraries, things like this, and, you know, people, people are looking for something like this. I think that the demand is there. I just think the awareness is missing. I think people aren’t really aware that this is something that is possible for them.
RV (19:47):
So what do you think is the biggest challenge that you’re like struggling with right now in your personal brand, where you go, like, I, I got this clear brand positioning statement, you know, it aligns with my uniqueness, I’ve got a business model you got here, you are in real life in the flesh, like living it, it came true six months, you know, later this dream is a reality, you’re on your first experience, which I love. And you know, I’m proud of you. It’s kind of a weird thing to say, but like, I’m, I’m so proud to like
JT (20:16):
Thank you or living
RV (20:17):
That. So what’s the biggest challenge you think you’re having with your personal brand right now?
JT (20:23):
Well, I think going forward now in, in terms of scalability it’s something that I’ve been putting a lot of thought in, cuz there’s a lot of directions I can go. And for me personally, when I, you know, know joined BBG and this journey I like to, you know, incorporate my own thoughtfulness into the experience that I want to create for others. And so when people arrive, they will receive two books. One is a, a book by Sarah Samuel called mindful traveling. Another book is a journal that people will, will write in and you know, kind of capture their experiences. So when they go home and they’re feeling a little off one day, they can kind of go back and revisit that. But to answer your question, the problem is like I had said a awareness and, and showing people that, you know, Roy, I just think there’s so much fear right now in the world.
JT (21:13):
You know, whether it be people who are, who are not in traveling because of the COVID restrictions because of, they they’ve been, you know, trapped, stuck in their house, you know, loneliness is a bigger killer than obesity and smoking, you know, so it’s interesting how a lot of people are feeling stagnation and, and limited in where they want to go and, and who they want to be. And so, you know, travel can be used in that fashion, in that manner to help people transform their lives. And you know, when people arrive home there’s, you know, this incredible amount of value that I want to add to their lives in terms of courses, in terms of blogs in terms of coaching programs, I mean, that’s kind of why this took a little longer than I wanted it to cause I wanted to, you know, build out a coaching program for myself, but I also wanted to do these experiences and I said, well, which one can I do first? And so I broke it down through your process in the S Asian strategy of which one, not made more sense, but you know, where is, you know, your uniqueness lies at the intersection of who you were me to be, who you, your intersection lies, your uniqueness, lies the intersection of who you were designed to be and who the world needs you to be. And once you find that out,
RV (22:30):
I love it. Jesse. You’re like a, you’re like a, you’re like a brand builder’s fortune cookie, dude. I, you, I love it. Like you, you, I could tell you’re like watching the stuff and you’re doing it. Yes. So I’ll, I’ll I love that. So, so the yeah, if you, if y’all didn’t catch that, so you’re unique to, at the intersection of who you were created to be and who the world needs you to be like the, so, so is it just awareness, like, is that the biggest problem that you’re having is sort of you, you mentioned scalability and then also just like awareness, like drawing more people to it.
JT (23:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I think when people see the word retreat it can means something different for everyone. I like to use the word experience. And so it’s just, you know, depending on how I build it out in terms of the experiences, do I have entrepreneurs come on the experience, do I have people who are really struggling who, you know, may not be able or willing to take that leap and book the flight tomorrow, you know, for the experiences to start now, I, I have, you know, eight people who I shared the experience and they booked their flight in a day. And so those are the people that I like, those people who are spontaneous, who see the vision, who see the value in what it is that I’m trying to create. And, and, and they see the alignment there that I do. But yeah, I think, you know, just, you know, as the, the COVID restrictions start to dwindle away and people get back out there I think it’s a really good time right now to launch this type of business and this type of model because I think it’s very desirable.
JT (23:59):
But it’s just proof of concept and getting the experiences under my belt, leading them, learning you know, as I’m leading them, I’m also, you know, bringing people together. And so that’s basically all I’m really doing other than leading orchestrating and facilitating these experiences with the questions I ask with the different activities that we do. You know, but I think at the end of the day, it will be a bit of a challenge to to show that in the beginning. But, you know, we have some amazing content creators right now on the experience with us. Like they got their drones up in the air and they’re doing some really cool stuff, Roy. So we’re excited to see these promotional videos that we’ll create and all the amazing content that, that we’re creating. So I think we’re gonna be in good shape.
RV (24:43):
Well, yeah, so that’s, that’s great. Well, so one thing that just sort of like pop, pop, pops up for me as you, as you were talking about this, because there are, there are a lot of our members who, you know, when you go through, so phase one, so we, yeah, I mentioned we’ve got these like 14 part processes broken up into four phases. Phase one is really about your branding and positioning. It’s really understanding your identity, who are you defining your uniqueness, clarifying your business model, creating your content, your intellectual IP. And then when you get to phase two, you, we that’s like the marketing phase, which is kind of going out and telling the world that you’re there, which is sort of like where you’re at Jesse. So one, I, I feel compelled to sort of share with you and with you listening and I’ve been talking a lot about this is that for some reason, the default that everybody has right now is thinking that their next customer is go, gonna come from social media, they think, or they think that like their next customer is gonna come from, you know, online or something like that.
RV (26:02):
In reality, almost always when you’re a small business, your next customer doesn’t come from being online, it comes from offline. It comes from the relationships of the people, you know, in real life. Like we spend too much time being consumed with trying to make strangers fall in love, like strangers on the internet. We want strangers on the internet to fall in love with us and follow us. And then like, like all of our stuff and then pull out their credit card and give us five grand or 10 or 20 grand, or like whatever the number is. Meanwhile, the, the, the common misconception, the, the common thing that people overlook is that they’re, they ignore a lifetime full of real life, meaningful, trusted relationships that they have developed with people offline. And so, you know, I’m sharing this to Jesse just because he’s here.
RV (27:10):
But I’m really talking to, to everybody that if I am Jesse, the first place I am looking for my next eight clients is from my current eight clients. It is not strangers on the internet. It is. So, and this is, we actually teach this in pressure free persuasion, which technically is a phase three event, but it’s, it is how we do one-on-one selling. And it is the referrals from the people who have actually experienced the thing that you have done. They are, they are the best forms of marketing, like a changed life. The best form of marketing is a changed life, a transformed life. You know, like we talked about Lewis house, cuz that’s how you, how we met you, right Jesse. But like that was an all offline relationship I met, I met Lewis in real life. We became friends. I helped him.
RV (28:11):
We helped him with some offline stuff that was going on. And then he reached out to us a few years later, asked if we could help. We said we could, he came, we had an in-person experience, you know, here at our house. And then we had a transformed life and, and then he went and told a bunch of people, right. And he just happened to have access to a lot of people. So, you know sure. That’s the other, the other tip is, you know, have Lewis house as your first client, if you can, is a good, a good thing, but it’s well,
JT (28:44):
There you go. RO, there you go. I know that, I know, I know the residual you’re earning is, is off the charts from him. So congratulations there.
RV (28:51):
Well, yeah, no, it’s the, it’s the opposite. It’s the residual that he is earning. But there is you know, the, the point is it was a real life convers, a real life thing. And so it is the, your next customer, the contact information for your next customer is not owned by Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and TikTok the, the contact information for your next customer lives in the cell phone of your current customer. The contact information for your next customer does not, is not owned by Facebook or Instagram or social media. It lives inside the cell phone of your current customer. Your current customers know who your next customers should be. They know better than anyone, including you, your current customers know who’s a, who’s a better fit for your program, even then you, because they are that person. You are not that person.
RV (30:01):
You know, you might have been that person five years ago. But so I, I just wanna make sure that everybody knows that, you know, we call it the law of AJ because she’s, she’s the one always talking about this. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars, your, it, it comes from your real life relationship. So anyways, don’t know what your plan is, Jesse. But like, when I think about if I were in your spot and I was, I was, you know, doing this business model the way that you were doing it. And I, and I go, okay, I need to, I need to increase my awareness. And you know, and my, my scalability, I would start with the people who are there. And I would, you know, at some point like before they leave, may maybe even before they leave, I would say, you know, you just, I go around the room and just say, what has been your favorite highlight from the last three days?
RV (31:00):
Right. And people will say it was this, and it was this and was this. And then you just kind of simply say, you know, this has been amazing for me. And you share what your highlight is. And you say, if there’s anybody in your life that you think would benefit from having an experience, like the one that we just had, would you be open to introducing them to me? And I would love to just get to know them. If they’re a friend of yours, I’d love to just do a call with them and get to know them. And when you couch it in that way, which is really how it is, they’re going, it’s not, can you refer someone to me so I can sell them? Like, so you can do the work of selling them for me and I can close them and take their money.
RV (31:49):
It’s going, if you truly believe that what you just experienced was amazing. If it Tru, if you truly believe it was incredible, is there someone else in your life you would like to, you know, give, give that, that same gift to, and, and that is one of the things that I think is really missing from the marketplace. And so I know you haven’t been through pressure free persuasion yet because you haven’t, you haven’t, you haven’t been in the program long enough, but that’s, that’s where we’re taking you and that, but, but since you’re in that moment right now, so
JT (32:26):
Precursor, thank you,
RV (32:28):
Pre sure. I would be thinking, I would be thinking about that if you’re, if you’re not sure.
JT (32:32):
Sure.
RV (32:34):
Absolutely. So the, the other thing, so that in terms of awareness, so the other thing, like one of the other things that we have people do is we call it the fast 50 is you know, we, we tell ’em to make a list of 50 people they know in real life, right? So 50 people, you know, in real life. And then what you do is you just call ’em and you just, you, we call it the check in method. But you, you just calling, you check in with them and you say, Hey, how’s, how’s it going? What’s going on? And then you tell ’em what you’re doing. You say, Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I wanna let you know an update. And the update is that I am now doing blank. And the, the, the little elevator pitch formula that we teach is I help blank to blank.
RV (33:24):
I help blank to blank. So I help insert your avatar to insert your payoff. So you, you know, let’s say Jesse and I were friends, I’d say, Hey, Jesse, I know we have, you know, I know we haven’t talked a while. I wanted to give you a little bit of an update. Like my wife and I started this new business and we are now helping experts to become more well known. And then this is the key don’t try to sell to the person you’re talking to, because these are 50 people that are like, you know, ’em in real life. These are your friends, this is your family. This is like, you know, your, your, your, your roommate from college, don’t try to sell to the people that, you know, that will feel weird for you. You’ll find yourself reluctant to do it. And they will feel reluctant.
RV (34:07):
They, they, they can sometimes feel weird too. So the key is don’t sell to the people, you know, ask the people, you know, for referrals. So what you would do is you say, you know, Jesse my wife and I now started a business. We’re helping experts to become more well known. Is there anybody, you know, who is trying to, you know, anybody, you know, who is a coach? Is there anyone, you know, who is a speaker or an aspiring speaker? And then you ask them and, and another little key is don’t ask to be introduced to people who need what you have ask to be introduced to the type of people you do it for, right? For us, it’s coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, trainers, professional service providers, anybody whose face is attached with their business. Right. But it’s like, we’re actually not typically trying to meet fortune 500 CEOs.
RV (34:57):
We’re typically trying to meet more like small business owners. So you say, is there anyone that you, who is a coach and Jesse would, would immediately go, he wouldn’t have a hundred people. He knows, but he might have three, which is even better. Actually, it’s better for them to not have an overwhelming number. They just go, oh, there’s one specific person that I know. And you go awesome. If I sent you a little note that you could copy and paste, would you be in minded to introducing us? And that’s it. And for most of us, that is, it, it, that is where your first revenue is gonna come from, not from launching a huge podcast or getting a book deal or, you know, going viral on, on social media.
JT (35:43):
Worry. That’s, that’s something that really resonates with me. And, and it’s been coming into my life more. So in terms of my intuition, like, look for the answers from within, right? And it also can branch off and say, look for the answers within your own network and the people that you do know, and the relationships that you have cultivated over time. Cause that’s where, that’s where the value is. Those are the people who know you best. Like you said, people, those people know you better than you know yourself sometimes. And it’s definitely interesting to hear you say that, cuz you know, when you lean into that people will come to your aid and I’ve experienced that in the last couple weeks and months, you know, people have been, I’ve been sharing my story and people are coming, coming to help me out and, and helping to inspire me and to, to, to help propel me forward. And it’s, it’s been a really great journey thus far.
RV (36:27):
Yeah. I love that. And it’s like lean on the people who already trust you versus trying to create trust with strangers on the internet, 60 seconds at a time when only 1% of ’em are gonna see the thing that you’re putting up anyways. So I think, you know, that’s where awareness for everybody. The, the other thing about scalability so scale scalability is also something that we’ve always spent a lot, a lot of time thinking about and studying. And it’s, it’s, it’s actually something that we’ve, we’ve been fairly successful at. You know, that’s one of the, of things, a lot of personal brand struggle is to get to, you know, seven, especially multi seven figures and very few ever get to eight figures. But you know, whenever you think in terms of scalability, the key there is just realizing that custom custom fails standard scales, custom fails standard fails.
RV (37:21):
It’s not so much that custom fails, but custom fails to scale any. And if you just think like conceptually the more customized something is and has to be the less, it is able to be, you know, routine and rhythmic and process oriented. I mean, if you think about manufacturing plot, the they’re they’re mass producing, how are they mass producing they’re mass producing because they do everything the same way every time. So if you wanna, if you want to scale your business and, and scaling your business, isn’t always a good answer. You know, sometimes people think growth just for the sake of growth, but oftentimes it’s like, no, how, what do you, how much do you really, they need to be happy, but if you do wanna scale, you gotta think in terms of, okay, custom fails, but standard scales. So when I think of like your business, Jesse, and I go, okay, what does standardization look like in my business?
RV (38:12):
That’s basically, you know, the way a, a more narrow question of scale is not so much, how do I scale as much as what does standardization look like in my business? So, you know, to me, it’s going, you would either, you would either take kind of like the same group of people you already have. And so you already have the customers taken care of and you go, let me design a new experience for them because then, you know, there’s, there’s like two parts. There’s getting the customers and then delivering the thing. And if you can standardize one part of it, it automatically is gonna scale faster. So you go, okay, well, if I already have the customers, let me rate a new experience. And that thing is for them. The other thing would be to go, let me keep the experience exactly the same and then bring in new people where it gets dicey is if you’re a small, if you’re small and you’re trying to scale is to go, I wanna get a whole new group of people and do a whole different experience. That is just, it’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s gonna be difficult because you have, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. So yeah, you know, and if you have a great, if you have a great location and you have a yacht contr, like if you have, you know, where all the restaurants are and you go, we can just keep running trips back here. You, you have the perfect agenda. Now you can train someone else to facilitate and, you know, et cetera, et cetera,
JT (39:39):
You got it. That’s the idea, you know, over time in, in terms of scaling it out, something that I have in my mind, and I don’t know if it will come to fruition, but it is a vision of mine is to hire other trip, experience leaders around me to go ahead and lead their own experiences. And so once I have each destination one, my, my favorite parts of creating an itinerary, putting, putting experience together is, you know, speaking with the people on site and putting it together, the people at the Villa or the hotel, the torque company, the cars, like all of
RV (40:09):
Design, you used that term early. Yeah. That’s
JT (40:11):
So good. That’s me. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, you know, I’ve worked in design, I’ve worked in design, traveling tourisms and design the last five years and it’s been amazing. And all of my experiences that I have in the past have brought me to this place that I’m at right now. I’ve worked you know, as, as a recruiter for a couple years. And I don’t know if you, I don’t know if you attest to this, but in my opinion, you know, recruiting is one of the most difficult sales jobs in the world because you’re selling people and what’s more, what’s more, you know, what’s, people are more unpredictable than the stock market. And so it’s really difficult, you know, in those relationships. And, you know, I, I actually have a similar similar beginning point similar origin. I, I was an accountant as well. I wasn’t as great in in Excel as you were, but
RV (40:55):
Well, I I’m decent at Excel, but I, I was not a great accountant. It was actually the worst grade that I ever got in school was accounting in college. So, but that’s funny. So you, you, but, but that the you’re like an architect. I mean, you are designing this experiential, this experience for people and, you know, know, and I, I think, I, I think that’s, I think that’s awesome, Jesse, and I would go getting other people to lead. It becomes even easier once you’ve done it five times, and this is the agenda, here’s the exercises. And here, it’s just, you can run that. You can run on a autopilot. It’s,
JT (41:35):
It’s a proof of concept. Exactly. It’s, you know, hiring those individuals and having a built out framework with my values with the things that I want to spread, you know, in, in my experiences. And so once we have that all figured out people will go ahead and, and run those experiences under my philosophy under my framework, under my values. And, you know, for example, this is called experience St. John. And so I’ve, I lived on St. John 2019 and 2020. I know the islands really well. I have some amazing contacts here. And then, you know, who’s to say in, in, you know, a couple years, you know, I can’t be running it for my laptop. Right. Or, you know, I want to year, but there are other destinations that I wanna also build out. Like I live in Portugal now. I moved there last November, so there’s gonna be an experience Portugal. And so it’s just really exciting to see how things are, are going.
RV (42:27):
Yeah, that’s great, man. I, I, I love that. I, and I love that for you. And it’s like, I think if you’re, if you’re drawing in a energy from that, and that’s what you’re passionate about, that’s totally unique. Like how many people are there in the world that do tourism design, you know, in this kind of way, like versus, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of courses. Like there’s a lot of people that make courses, for sure. I think this, this can really be magical and unique. And if you make it unique, right? Like if you focus on this thing and you go, how can I make this extraordinary? How can I make it life changing? Mm. What, what can, how can I serve my audience in the deepest way? They will have a transformed life and then they will go do the marketing for you, right?
RV (43:14):
Like they will help tell people, versus if you’re always having to create new things, you’re it, you’re when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Like you become spread across so much stuff versus just going, what would make this over the top life changing transformational to where they went back and they had to tell everybody, I just had the most unbelievable three days of my life. That’s what Tony Robbins did when people walked on fire, that’s exactly what he did with the whole fire walking thing. It was like, it was remarkable, worth remarking about it. And you, and if you, you dedicate some time, you know, to that, by having, you know, fewer, fewer things, then you, it it’ll, it’ll spread and do everything you need, man. So I love it. I love, I love this idea, tourism design. I think, I mean, Jesse, you’re so warm and, and humble and uplifting and encouraging. And man, I, I, I feel like there’s, there’s no doubt, like you’re on such a great path. Congratulations on your first experience that you’re leading. Although I, the only thing I don’t understand is why you would miss out on the yacht just to talk to us,
JT (44:28):
But we,
RV (44:30):
We are, we’re so grateful for you, man. We’re so grateful.
JT (44:34):
Thank you, Ru it’s a, it’s a pleasure to be here and it’s been amazing connecting with you and and thanks for all of the tips and advice. I I appreciate it and I value it.
RV (44:44):
Yeah, well we, we we’re excited to continue following your journey and being a part of your journey and, and you know, if somebody is out there right now, Jesse, and they’ve kind of been listening to the podcast and they’re going, eh, I don’t know about if BBG is for me, like, is there anything that you would say that you would go, ah, here’s, here’s how, you know, this is for you, or like, here’s, here’s, you’re looking to get blank. This is what I’ve really, that I think would help.
JT (45:14):
Yeah. I think, like I had mentioned with travel we find that travel is an accelerator in the connection process. You’re more inclined to take those risks to step outside your comfort zone and live your true, authentic self while you’re traveling. And so, you know, it’s, it’s difficult to hop on a plane for the first time, eight hours across the world, not be terrified. Cause of course I was when I first did that. Right. So you can always start out you know, going to the city that you live in right now over the weekend doing a quick trip to walk around in different restaurants, different areas that you’ve never been to, you know, taking advantage of the weekends. But you know, it’s interesting because people are scared right now and they’re fearful. So all I say is, you know, for me personally, it’s been really difficult in terms of my journey. But there’s a reason why planes take off against the wind and not with the wind. So I’m excited to continue to take off and, and thanks for all your help and, and with BBG, I’m just so blessed to be a part of it.
RV (46:10):
Yeah. All right. My friend, well, we wish you the best and we’ll stay in touch. We’ll talk to you soon.
JT (46:18):
Worry. Thank you again. Talk soon.
Ep 263: How To Grow a Million Dollar Membership Site With YouTube with Jonny May
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden. One of the co-founders and CEO at brand builders group. Welcome to another episode of the influential personal brand. And today I’m so excited. And also just quite honestly, I’m so honored to have a personal friend on this show. So I’m gonna introduce Jonny in just a second, and really today is kind of one of those episodes that if you are building a digital business of any kind, if you are trying to grow your audience trying to scale your course, create online content. This is an episode you do not want to miss. So do not fast forward. This do not get off or early, make sure you listen to the whole thing. Take notes, listen to the recap episode and then go follow Jonny because this is exactly the episode that was built for you.
AJV (00:54):
So this is very, a very specific invitation of bringing Jonny onto the show to share some really cool expertise. So let me formally introduce you to my good for and Johnny May. So Jonny is an internationally acclaimed pianist. He is a pianist educator, founder of piano with johnny.com, which you should go check out which is an online piano course platform with more than 10,000 active monthly members across the world. He’s also a viral YouTuber and his videos have earned more than 70 million views with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s also one of the youngest or the youngest ever a pianist to perform at the Disneyland main street as a main street pianist. He’s also just an awesome human being with a heart and just all things good. So welcome to the show, Jonny.
JM (01:49):
Wow, AJ, thank you so much. That was an amazing introduction. Thank
AJV (01:52):
You. I should be like a professional introducer one day. You’re good
JM (01:57):
At it. Yeah, you should start
AJV (01:58):
Business, future business. So welcome. I’m so excited to have you on, because I know that so many of listeners are trying to build their digital platform. They’re trying to grow memberships courses increase their recognition online. And that is something that you have done extraordinarily well and really a short amount of time. And so we ask this question to everyone who comes onto this show and what we really wanna is how did you get to where you are? And so personally knowing a little bit of your background, what I really want everyone to hear from you is how did you go from being a professional musician to a membership site that has 10,000 monthly members, and you have grown a multi seven figure your business in a really short amount of time by leveraging your skillset as a musician to teach others how to do the same thing. So we wanna know how’d you do it.
JM (02:57):
Thank you so much. Well, you did a great job again leading into this. And so my story is so I was a professional musician. I still play professionally, but I did basically, I giggled for a living starting at age at age 18. I got, well, actually before that I was gigging at 16, like little like local restaurants and bars. And then I landed the Disneyland main street ragtime gig. I did that for nine years. I was hired at age 18 and love a gig. That’s a long time, long time. Yeah. Nine years. Yeah. Right. It’s like a little career. And I just like hustled as a musician and I, I remember playing seven nights so a week and I was playing restaurants and hotels and weddings and private parties and just bust, you know, really working hard.
JM (03:46):
And, and I, it was a lot of fun. I loved it. And basically around this time, it was 2012. My brother-in-law, who’s also a professional musician. He had just graduated college, graduated college, and we were driving home from a, a date night, a double date with my sister. He was dating my sister and then my, my girlfriend girlfriend at the time who was later become my wife. And he said, Hey, why don’t we record some of your piano lessons and put ’em online and sell them. And it was like, at the time, not a lot of people were doing this right. 2012 to was one guy who was doing it piano with Willie. So we said, well, we’ll call it piano with Johnny. And so we that’s awesome. Yeah. It was like, okay, you know, whatever cool. So he kind of put things together.
JM (04:33):
He arranged the session and we hired a friend of ours. You know, he set up the cameras, we went to my brother-in-law’s old college, his almond modern, and we recorded three courses and we had no idea what we were doing. I had never filmed like that. So I literally, AJ, I could not talk on the camera. Like I could not just talk the way I’m talking to you right now. I was stumbling over my words. I didn’t know what to say. My brother-in-law had to write out cue cards. And I was like reading these cue cards. It’s like super obvious. But it was just fun. It was like this cool idea. And I was teaching a bunch of private lessons at the time and it was like, Hey, why don’t, why don’t we try this? You know, it was just an experiment.
JM (05:14):
And so we made these three courses. We were like, okay, we gotta make a website. So we went on WordPress and like built basically like kind of pieced it together and hired a couple guys, but it looked horrible. Like it was like tons of texts. And we had, we had these three courses and we made a boogie woogie course, a blues course and a rag time course. And we started a YouTube channel called piano with Johnny. And I started putting up like performances of me, just me playing. And then little, we put up like a free version of the courses, like a 10 minute version. And we, some, we sold a course. We’re like, we’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. How much was it for 40? I think it was 40. And I was like, woo, woo, big money. You know, being a musician.
JM (05:59):
And, you know, I was all excited cuz it was like passive a little bit passive. And so we just kind of kept selling courses and my brother-in-law would call me and say, Hey, let’s make another course. And we ended up filming in his apartment. He had like a one bedroom apartment with a grand piano in his living room. And I actually have a, a picture. Maybe I can share it with you, but like I’m teaching at this piano. And he’s like, he’s got the two dining room, table chairs with the tripod legs. And he’s like, looking over me, it’s super awkward, but we had so much fun and we just went for it. It was like, let’s do it. And so we just kept making more courses. And I remember there was a big moment for me. It went from, okay, this is just a fun, little hobby to like, oh my gosh, like this could be a real business. And it was in the summer of 2014, we did our summer special and we made $4,000 that month. And I was like, what? This is, this is awesome. You know, that was a big deal for a musician be making that kind of money. And I just, oh,
AJV (07:00):
On that note, I think this is really important. I think you shared this like your best year ever as a full-time professional musician you made how much?
JM (07:09):
Oh my gosh. I think my best year and I, I took every single gig. Every single, I think I made $60,000
AJV (07:18):
Thousand in a month,
JM (07:20):
4,000 a month. Big deal. That was a big deal. I mean, that was like almost what I was making anyway. And it was a big deal and, and I, but I just remember something went off. I was like, oh, this, this could be a business. This isn’t just like another gig, another side thing. And so I started taking it more seriously. And then basically a few things happened that I lost a couple gigs at Disneyland. They like closed a showdown and they like changed the performers and I suddenly didn’t like, didn’t have work. And I had to like go scramble for work. And I kind of realized, you know, I had been at Disneyland for nine years and like, I, I really did not want to be playing piano at a theme park, you know, in 30 years. And so I had a, a lot of deep interest, a lot of prayer, as you know, I’m a believer and really turned to God said, you know, what, what do you want me to do with my life?
JM (08:06):
And I loved teaching and I had this opportunity and then we had the summer sale and long conversations with my wife and just like, what’s your purpose? And I, I was like, you know, I really, I really think I wanna be an entrepreneur. And it was like, okay, like, wait you’re gig musician. No, no, I I’m still a gig musician, but I wanna do, I wanna be an entrepreneur as well. And so I kind of fused together. These two things that I had always loved as a little side note when I was 16. No, no, no. I was younger. I was 13. I started an eBay business selling pirate at software. And I did that for a couple years. I made like $10,000. So like ripped off soft software. I was like copying these CDRs. I like Napster
AJV (08:52):
The days of Napster.
JM (08:53):
Yeah. It was the days of Napsters downloading music and copying games and making labels. And it was so illegal and this guy emailed me one day and he was like, I’m turning you in. This is like, he, I, he bought one of the products and I was, I emailed him back and I was like, dude, I’m only, I’m only 14 years old, man. I’m so sorry. You know, I’ll never do this again. I was like apologizing and my parents had no idea that I was like running this like illegal eBay business from like my bedroom. But I was always an entrepreneur. I always like liked creating things. And so, you know, as a, you know, I left Disneyland when I was 27 and I had this, like this desire to start a business, this like unfulfilled potential. And I was like, I think this is the time to do it.
JM (09:35):
And so I struck out from Disneyland, we sold our condo. And oh, so this was a big part of my journey as I went back to school to learn business, cuz I was like, I don’t know anything about business, you know? And so I went back to college. This was in 2014 and I got my business degree while running piano with Johnny. And it was really, really hard to do by it. I, I did it. And then we just kept making courses and kept learning from our audience you know, growing, using YouTube. And we launched a membership that was a really big deal for us is we were selling courses up till 2015. And we were like always like running sales and Hey, you know, buy the blues course, whatever. And we were like, Hey, why don’t we just have a membership? And just people can pay for access. That was one of the smartest decisions. And I think when we did that, we had like a hundred members right off the
AJV (10:23):
Bat. Oh my gosh. OK. So I wanna pause right here. Cause I think there’s three things about your story so far that I think are pretty significant to people who are listening to this. Is that one you really built your business leveraging YouTube.
JM (10:37):
Yes, absolutely.
AJV (10:38):
Okay. So, so let’s pause and like talk about that for a few minutes of like, what were some of the keys of building your YouTube following? And like even today, now it’s like YouTube is still like your primary social media platform, right? It’s like, that’s where your go to is. So for those of us who are going, okay, I really want to leverage video and YouTube and I wanna use that to build my business. Like how do you do it? Like, what are some of those insider tips and secrets of growing and utilizing YouTube?
JM (11:07):
Yeah. I mean, you’re so insightful. And this is when people ask me, like, how did you do it? How did you do it? I say YouTube. It is YouTube. Like literally like to your point from 2012 to 2019, we did zero paid ads, zero paid ads. It was all on YouTube. And we, I think we grew in 2019, I mean the business was almost a seven figure business by that point. So YouTube is huge. I don’t think people realize if you get a video that goes viral, it’s the traffic is incredible. So here’s what I’ll first start off by saying is we did not do YouTube very well when we started, when we started well we did some things well, so as a performer that drove a lot of the traffic, but we did not do a good job making content for YouTube.
JM (11:52):
So what we were doing, we had these courses and then we, we would take like 10 minutes from a course and we would do like a demo version and then it would like fade out and say, Hey, you want the full course and the YouTube channel. I would say didn’t grow as quickly as it could have until several years later that we started actually making content for YouTube and making weekly content. So that’s a big, big thing is our YouTube channel did not really take off until we started making weekly content and it was for YouTube. So, okay. I’m gonna make a 10 minute video and it’s gonna feel really good for the rather than give 10 minutes of a larger course, I’m gonna make content for that audience. And I’m gonna get to know that audience really well. That was a big deal. And we started doing that much later in 2019. So
AJV (12:35):
I have a question. You said we created content for YouTube,
JM (12:40):
Correct.
AJV (12:41):
What does that look like?
JM (12:42):
So it’s, it’s knowing the YouTube audience, knowing the content that they wanna see and then creating a short video that they get to the end of the video and feels they, they have this great sense of satisfaction that they learned something. It’s I, I guess the, to me, it’s not as promotional. I think the demos were more like, Hey, it’s a little piece, but you really need to watch the course. This was like the feeling I think for the user was, wow, this is like free like, oh my gosh, this is great instruction. And it was really hard to get to that point because I was like, wait, I’m not gonna just give away my knowledge. Like, no, you have to buy the course. You know, I had that attitude like, no, I’m not gonna give and I cannot tell you how wrong I was about that. As I started giving more, I received more. And that was like so bizarre. Like I would make longer videos for YouTube and like make them really like put everything I had into these videos. And then the, the videos would do really well. And so that’s, I guess that’s what I mean is they weren’t promotional. It was like, it was, I was really actually giving for free and not, it
AJV (13:46):
Was like truly curated content on how to, right. So it wasn’t like here’s a little preview by the course. It was like, no, I’m gonna give it all to you. Here’s a, how to video on X, Y, Z.
JM (13:57):
Exactly. And then of course I would say, Hey, if you want to go deeper check out course. But I, it was like, I think a lot of it was like an attitude thing of mine. And I, I imagine that it came out also in the way I taught in those videos, you know? And then the other thing is a lot of the courses, you know, we weren’t releasing a course every week. We’d really, of course, every two months. So I was only putting out one video every two months. Oh wow. My new strategy was like, oh, I can make a 10 minute video every week. And that’s, I guess the second piece is so not only making content free content with the intention of it being free, but secondly is you have to put yourself on a schedule. And I I’ve talked to so many people who they’re like, yeah, you YouTube, I’m doing this, but you know, I’m not sure what to post and I haven’t posted a month or two. And I always say to them, like, you need to post, this is my opinion. You might disagree with it, but post every week post something. And a lot of the reason people don’t post is they’re nervous on camera, you know? And so you, but you overcome that as you post more, it’s like, well, you need to do the thing that you don’t wanna do to overcome that. And so anyway, I just made a habit of that and that’s when the channel really took off on YouTube. So consistent,
AJV (15:05):
Consistent weekly. It’s like, yeah, I would say daily, weekly, just make it like consistent. So people know when can hear from you. Right. So it’s like consistent but free curated content really to just give like, ultimately give value on how to, for YouTube. I love that. And then every single person we talk about talks about consistency. Right? I think it, I think it was Gary V maybe giving credit to the wrong person here. You said, content may be king, but consistency is queen.
JM (15:37):
Mm. Right. Absolutely.
AJV (15:38):
Content only goes so far. Cause we need to have that expectation of when are you gonna give me more? But then you mentioned something else about when a video goes viral and I know that at this point you’ve posted thousand and thousands of videos. So I’m curious to know, it’s like, do you guys have predictions and indicators of what you think will go viral? Or is it kind of like, who knows? Wait and see,
JM (16:02):
You know, it’s funny, AJ, I’ve not solved the puzzle of YouTube. I’ve been doing YouTube eight years. Right. And just tons of videos. I still, it still blows my mind. I’ll do a video on like, man, this is the video. Oh man. People are gonna love the title and the thumbnail. It’s perfect. And then it’s like, w wa you know, it’s like, and it’s so disheartening too, you know? And then, and then I’ll do a video and I’m like, Hey, like I barely like take any time. And it, it like gets hundreds of thousands of views or millions of views. And so I, you know, there, there are certain things that I do. I mean, yes, absolutely. That I’ve learned that do better, but I wouldn’t say like, well, here’s like the formula I’ve noticed. I mean, I can, I can offer your audience some tips that I’ve
AJV (16:46):
Yes, please. I’ve
JM (16:47):
Realized. So the thumbnail is huge, you know, keeping the thumbnail really simple. And in using images, I’m sure you’ve talked to your audience about this, but try using less text and images to represent whatever you’re trying to say. I try to keep the word, I do put words on my images, but I, I usually try like five words, six words, because it’s that it needs to be that guttural thing, cuz people are St scrolling and it’s the first thing they see. And then actually you shared something that was very profound with me last year and it actually helped my thumbnails. I don’t think I’ve ever shared this with you. Oh,
AJV (17:21):
I’m so in, I’m sorry. I’m trying to hear what this is.
JM (17:23):
Yeah. You, you did, you shared it with me when we were in the Florida retreat, but you said for the thumbnail, it needs to be the, I want to, right. I want to, and I was like, oh, like I never thought of it that way, but that’s true. Right. It’s the, I want, and so I started restructuring the thumbnails that way and I noticed an increase. So it needs to be that, that gut thing, I want to play jazz piano. I want to and so that’s worked well. And then there’s a lot of strategies for like the title, but short titles, not too many emoticons. I like the, the carrot at the end of the stick. Like here’s how to, you know, improvise, you know what, something with this or the top thing I do it like, it’s like, well with that thing. So creating a sense of curiosity. And then I wouldn’t say we’re the best that our thumbnail, our thumbnails don’t look amazing. They’re very simple. But I would say there is definitely a strategy behind the video itself. I can talk about too. I don’t know how deeply you want me to go.
AJV (18:21):
This is so helpful. It’s like titles, thumbnails, the video themselves, like all, whatever you have bring it on.
JM (18:26):
Well, okay. So it’s branded around me, you now with Johnny. So I’m in every video, that’s it doesn’t have to be that way, but that’s a decision we made. There’s always a keyboard because Hey, you know, we’re about the keyboard, but then we don’t do fancy backgrounds. Almost every one of our thumbnails. It’s the same angle. It’s, it’s not like we do a lot of production. One of the advantages of our production is it’s incredibly simple. So we don’t do a lot of product. And you know, we don’t have a lot of camera angles. It’s just me at the camera. I’m usually holding an object pointing to something and just trying to convey a very simple message. Then so, but this is actually in some ways, not what matters the most. Cuz people get to the content. If it’s good, they stay. If it’s bad, they go right.
JM (19:07):
And so really like those are gateways. They’re entry ways to the content. The content has to be excellent. Right. Wow. You know this right? And so we try to make 10 to 15 minute videos. Sometimes they’re 25. We just did a 27 minute video. That’s fine. We’ve done six minute videos. I think the key is teaching. What needs to be taught no more, no less. And then what I found that really works, and this is for me as a pianist is the moment people open the video, you need to show them something they really want. And in my case, it’s like, Hey, I wanna play like that. And you need to show authority. You need to show credibility. And so almost every video, I try to open with me playing something, just like freaking awesome. Right. And I wanna hook them in and then go, ah, I wanna play that.
JM (19:55):
That’s awesome. And I see a lot of YouTube YouTubers start their videos with talking. I think that’s cool. But I just think if you can establish that hook right away, that’s extremely important. And then I structure the inner, I always say, Hey, you know, do you want to learn this thing? Usually it starts with a question to engage them. And then I’ll say, and then rather than give ’em the answer, I’ll say, well, many teachers would say this or a lot of students think this, right. It’s kind of challenging in an assumption. I, again, this is a very like general way of presenting a video and then I’ll go into, but actually this is the case, but no, no can do it this way. And then I’ll say, but you need to learn this thing, right. Again, the, the carrot, right? You gotta keep them engaged and excited about.
JM (20:41):
Right. So, and then I transition to the teaching and then for my staff teaching, I try to get right to the point. I try to, you know, people don’t wanna sit there and listen 15 minutes. So it’s a weird balance of getting to the point, but like having, having more. And so this has taken a lot of time for me to learn, but in the video you always need to be like saying, well, I’m going to, I’m gonna show you this other thing, like in a little bit. Right. Or like, okay, I’ll show to put together a little bit. And so, so it’s a real art I would say to the teaching, but how
AJV (21:10):
Did you learn all of that? I know you’ve been doing it a long time, but for those people who are going what you just said could change my business. How do I learn how to do that better? Like how did you do that? Like, did you watch videos, courses, classes, trial, and error. Watch yourself. Yeah. What’d you guys do
JM (21:27):
Well, I’ve watched a lot of other guys do what I do. Like I’m very aware of the competition. I, I see what works and I try to integrate it. I’m a big Steeler steel so much like, yeah. I mean, I mean, think about it. Like I’m playing the freaking piano, like a sea. I didn’t invent a sea major chord. Like all this stuff I’m teaching like I’m regurgitating, right? Yes. I think what we need to do, this is really relevant for your audience is you need to repackage information, sorry. You know, you’re, you’re not inventing what you do. You learned it somewhere. Another thing that comes to mind is you, is it’s important to coin language. A, a lot of what I’ve done as a pianist and as a teacher is make up my own language around what I do. Because there’s certain chord progressions that there’s not a name for there’s certain scales or techniques.
JM (22:12):
And so there’s real opportunity. I think all of your listeners who, you know, maybe your field is beauty or your field is fashion or your field is, you know weightlifting or whatever. You, there are opportunities to, to sort of own a little space of that field. I mean, I’ve literally made up words for a, I made a, a scale. It was called the major blue scale. Right. It’s kind of a technical name. And I was like, it’s the gospel scale? Right? It’s the gospel scale. And literally it’s now like people search the gospel scale.
AJV (22:43):
That’s awesome.
JM (22:44):
And it was like, you know, I’ve made up, I made up a a technique called pops, Sten. It’s like a pop chord progression and an AA, which is like a boring, kind of a boring classical term. And I was like, it’s, but it’s a pop Sten, like, you know, the sentimental chord progression. Like, so my point is like, I think it’s important if you’re building a brand is to actually build language
AJV (23:05):
Absolutely.
JM (23:07):
In that space that you can kind of own, right. If you’re the first person to coin it. And I certainly wouldn’t go about just doing it, you know, willynilly or just for the sake of it, because you know, there’s a, there’s an advantage to having the language. But I think in every field, there’s what I’m trying to say is an opportunity to kind of use your own language.
AJV (23:23):
Absolutely. I love that so much. I’ve never heard you say anything like that, but I think that’s a whole point of put your uniqueness on what you do. It’s like the, so many of the things that all of us do are commoditized. And the only thing that makes us different is us.
JM (23:40):
Yeah.
AJV (23:40):
Right, right. The, the beauty of what we’re doing and what we’re talking about at brand builder’s group, and what you’re talking about is if you simply be you, what you do is unable. Cause no one else is you. Right. Right. And it’s like, the more that you can infuse you into the language, the culture, the imagery, the feel, the essence of it. No one can copy it. Right.
JM (24:01):
Totally. Totally. Yeah. We call it, you know, barriers to entry in business. Right. I don’t own, I mean, I do have copyrights on my sheet music, but my biggest beer entry to entry is there is no other Johnny Mae. Yeah. And you’re totally right. Like all of your listeners, you know, each one of you guys are watching this, you possess a very incredible and unique skill and you need to own it 100%. Like I’ve never, like, I like, I, I wear this type of shirt, like as a collared shirt. And I’m just, I’m like, you know, the, I just do it. Like, it’s my thing. And, and I think if you can own that and build, as I said, language around it, don’t like, copy’s like the worst thing you could do. And I know I just said how much copying works, but I think in terms of, it’s like a weird balance, I guess. Yeah. You want to copy and you also want to be yourself.
AJV (24:49):
No, I, no. It is a unique balance that it’s like to some degree it’s like, no matter what you do is copying a little bit. It’s like, what is really new today, but it’s how you put your spin on it. Right? Your take your unique perspective and view. And I, I love that those are so many really good little nuggets there. Y’all, it’s like simplicity in the thumbnail. Right? Keeping it about the imagery, the way that you start getting quick to it creating those little cliff hanger moments where it’s like, but stick around because in a minute, we’re gonna talk about and we, we shared this a lot that it’s like, you, you said it and I love that you brought this up and it totally, it was like, ding, ding, ding, ding in my head. Because like, you know, you always hear people say like, save the best for last. Yeah. Our philosophy is you always save the best for first, like lead with your best content lead with whatever you have. That’s going to like grab people’s attention and suck ’em in. And that’s exactly what you said. It’s like, no, it’s like lead with your best stuff. Show ’em what you got. Bring it and bring the heat from the beginning.
JM (25:50):
Oh my gosh, AJ, I need some like organ music right now. Like you’re preaching it girl like that. Like it is so true. And it’s like, it’s like a relationship, right? I mean, when you are courting a customer, you want somebody to post a customer. You, you show off your best, you dress off your best. And then you build a relationship. Like that’s another mistake. I see. So many people ache like in YouTube is they, they ask for a lot before they give, yeah, you need to not only give, but you need to give over a long period of time. Our sales cycle is not based on YouTube. I am not looking for a sale from YouTube. I’m looking actually for their email. That’s the most important thing, cuz email’s a little bit closer to their heart, right? We’re all we will. As consumers, we will subscribe new channel, whatever.
JM (26:32):
Right? It’s not a big deal, but, but who gets my email address? Not many people. Right? You’re a little more protective of that. And so it’s, it’s gradual. And then once I have their email, it’s we drip the content and honestly be people won’t become a customer customer of ours for six months because they’re getting this content weekly and it’s like, okay, you know, you need to build trust with these people. So to your point, give your absolute best. And that should be the first thing they experience. I did have a couple other things I wanted to say about YouTube that I think are really that have helped us. And it, I guess it actually relates to this, but when you’re making a YouTube video, start with the easiest ask, don’t start with a big ask. So, you know, a, a big ask in my case might be by a or sign up for the membership.
JM (27:19):
I will always start usually two minutes in with, Hey, if you like this video hit the like button and subscribe, right? It’s like no big deal. Then the second is generally related to an email address. And then the third is related to a course. And so I follow, if you watch my videos, I almost always follow this structure is very easy. Ask to you know, putting the, the carrot out there. They may or may not wanna get the course, but I think some people ask for a lot early, they’ll start promoting their, like their thousand dollars membership. Two minutes in it’s like, wait a second. I don’t even know you dude. So
AJV (27:51):
It’s building that. Yes. Momentum. So, Hey, if you like this, yes. You’re conditioning their behavior from the get go. It’s like, like this, subscribe to this sign up for this. Oh and Hey, by the way, you can buy this core. So it’s like that gradual conditioning.
JM (28:06):
Exactly. Yeah. You have to be very, very mindful of what you ask from people. And especially if they don’t know you, it’s like, well, you’re just another guy on YouTube making piano videos. You have to build a relationship and there’s so much trust involved. You know, we sell our, our membership is a, you know, 40 bucks a month. It’s not a product, but you you’ll be amazed how long people wait to sign up for a $40 month product or the $300 annual membership. So, you know, I just wanna drill this point to all of your listeners is build a relationship with your customer and don’t ask for the full buy on the front end, defer it, defer it as much as possible. I’d say at least six months. And it depends on your product. If you have a thousand dollars product, like it might take a year, that’s a big, that’s a big chunk of money for people.
AJV (28:53):
Yeah. You know, it’s so funny. There’s been this like ongoing growing conversation and the brand builders group community around. I just thought I would be at a certain place by now. I thought I would have this many followers or this many ERs or this many members. And, and it’s I think this is such a great reminder. And I’ve heard maybe this message is from me today because I heard this from like four people today about the importance of patience.
JM (29:18):
Yeah, totally.
AJV (29:20):
It’s like, it’s like, you gotta win the trust. Then you win a relationship. But that take time. It’s like you wouldn’t ask, you know, your girlfriend to marry you after, you know, six weeks. I don’t know. Maybe you would, but for most people it’s gonna take a little bit of time, but it’s like, why are we asking our customers to buy the moment they show up on our page? Where’s the relationship, where’s the trust. And there’s just some things you can’t expedite so much. And those are such good reminders and a little bit of patience is a good, healthy reminder to all of us, no matter what we’re doing. That’s so good. So, okay. So I have two other quick things for you. Cuz I know that we I literally could continue this conversation. It’s like, I’m gonna have to steal you for coffee and talk more about YouTube.
AJV (30:06):
Cause that is not, I would say our, our wicked skillset, it’s not YouTube, but we want it to be, so I really need to steal some of your brain. But you said two other things I think are really important. You went from a course format to a membership format. Yes. So I’d love for you to talk about how did you make that successful transition because you don’t just have a membership format, you have 10,000 active monthly members and a multi seven figure business. Yeah. And that’s, that is what so many people in this community are trying to do. And it’s like, how do you do it? Like, so what are some of those like simple steps, maybe not easy, but they’re simple.
JM (30:43):
Yeah. It’s a great question, AJ. I would say if you wanna build a a membership business the first, well, the first thing is you gotta have enough content to justify a membership, right? You, you have three courses, you know, it’s like really I’m gonna pay monthly for this. I just wanna buy the course. But for us, the breaking point was about 20 core. Okay. It was about, you know, Hey, you’ve got 20 courses, we’re selling them 40 bucks, a pop that’s $800 of a worth of a catalog and sell to sell someone. A actually, when we launched our membership, we were selling it at $15 a month. It was pretty cheap. So I don’t know if that comes out too, but that’s like, you know like 200, 200 and it was like, well, okay, that makes sense. Right. I’m I’m paying $200 a year for $800 worth of content.
JM (31:27):
Right. That’s like a no-brainer. So I think you have to get to that point, you have enough content. I think you need to be making regular content. A lot of people make their flagship course and then it’s like, they’re done. It’s like, no, if you’re gonna have a membership, people expect, you know, you go on Netflix, you expect new movies. And so we were, we were making about one new course per month. That was, that was a big thing. Let’s see. What are the, what were the big things? I think those, those were key. Just having the content. We didn’t have a lot of people, like a ton of people sign up for it, but we had a hundred and that was kind of pre of concept was like, okay. You know, and then we just kind of grew it from there
AJV (32:08):
Four year membership site. And this is like a pretty technical question. What, what do you guys use in terms of payment processing and a membership access, do you guys use like an LMS or what do you use?
JM (32:21):
We use member mouse.
AJV (32:23):
Okay.
JM (32:24):
We and great. They integrate really well with WordPress. So then there’s a bunch of platforms out there. And there’s ones that make it a lot easier. You know, it’s interesting when we started the business there weren’t teachables and Cajas and all these platforms, you know, we just kind of to do it ourselves. So we have a custom built website, but it was like by necessity, I would say to a lot of people, like don’t spend a ton of money, like just use one of these. You can build a membership site on, on a lot of these platforms and get started there. And then if at some point you need a custom site. Great. But don’t go spend $20,000. Yeah. Don’t do it.
AJV (32:59):
If you use member mouse, then there’s like Meum Thinkific, teachable Cajabi okay. So that’s cool. And so, okay. Another question I have I’m trying to think of all the questions that we get. Yeah. In our community. It’s how did you set your pricing? Like how did you, and then, cause you said it, you started off really cheap and then you’ve increased it. So how did you said it and then how did you decide when to increase it?
JM (33:23):
So a lot of the price setting was just the market. Like what are other people charging? We, our strategy has been not to be at the high side, not to be the low side. We don’t want it cheap and people will, will equate the value to the price. If we put it for a dollar, people go that’s cheap, you know, $60. Right. It’s, it’s somewhere in the middle. I think for a lot of people, you have to be aware of the market. People would disagree with me and say, no, you, you gotta price it to what you think it’s worth, but you’re competing. There’s other places to learn piano. So so $15 just seemed like a reasonable price. If seemed affordable, like it was like a lot of things at the time were 15 bucks like Netflix or Spotify, it was like, yeah. 15 bucks, whatever. What changed for us was it was actually, I was doing a presentation in my college program and I had all these like investors, you know, CRI critiquing it. And several of them were like, you’re undercharging. And I was like, really 15, really? Like, it’s like passive income. Like it’s just so great. They’re like, no, it’s worth 40.
JM (34:22):
And I was like, like really people pay $40 a month. That’s a lot of money. Like, that’s not your like, you know, Spotify music, right. That’s like, that’s like a gym membership or something. And sure enough, I, I couldn’t believe it, but we’re like, let’s try it. And we, you know, if you still business, we talk about, talk about elasticity, right. And the getting the right price points. Like if you raise the price, do your sales go down, our sales didn’t go down. And so it was like, oh my gosh, like we can charge 40 people. We’re still buying our, you know, profits went up and you know, we could have gone up and there’s other people who charge 60 a month or 80, but it’s just, you know, fell it right. It felt like, okay, this is worth 40. And then it gave us some also wiggle room. This is important for your, for your audience is you need to have, if you’re gonna run sales, like you need to, you be able to drop it. And so it’s kind of a sweet spot for us. We can do we can do sales based on that and still feel happy. I will say to your audience, you need a set of a, a base, you know, for us, we never go below 15. We have never offered our membership for $10. That’s where we just say it’s, it’s worth it.
AJV (35:29):
Not worth it. Yeah. So it’s interesting. I have two thoughts here on this. So a part of this is going, how much content curriculum do you have, where people would stay. And then it’s looking at how much are you charging for each piece of content and going, what would be worth it? So I think about like, even like our content and brand builders group, we have 14 full two day curriculums and to come to our two day event it’s a $3,000 ticket, right? We’ve got 14 of those and our flagship program’s a thousand bucks a month. So it’s 12,000. I’m going. Maybe we’re undercharging. Right. It’s like, whoa, there, that was a big light bulb for me of going what we’re literally giving you 50, $60,000 of curated education for 12, right? Yeah. So part of that is like that spectrum. But then another part of it, what I hear you saying is like some, and I, I think this is true for any business owner, for any entrepreneur.
AJV (36:27):
I think most people undercharge, they undervalue what they’re doing, because that’s just the nature of what we do is like we don’t see our own value. So having outside people weigh in to give you perspective, and I can think about this one very particular time and mine and R’s speaking career. And this was like, I don’t know. Our first work came out in 2012. So this month we celebrate 10 years of our first book coming out, which seems impossible. But I remember like three or four years after that, we were meeting with a really good friend and he was sitting down and at this point, like the book had hit like the New York times list and it was doing really well. And he was like, so what are your speaking fees? And we were like $7,500. And he literally said, get up outta your seat, walk out of this room, increase your fiefs to $15,000 and come back, I’m getting a P a cup of coffee. A, we were like double our fees. Are you insane? Yeah. And it was like, the rest of that day was convincing us of how like, no, like $7,500, like that is not 70. That that is not what you should be charging. Totally. We were terrified. We increased our fees to $15,000. Nothing else changed. And we were book solid. Yep.
JM (37:38):
Totally. But
AJV (37:38):
It was some by weighing in and carrying that confidence and seeing the value that we did. And so for everyone listening, it’s like, who are those wise counselors in your life that can give you wise Sage business advice on how you’re doing, what you’re doing and what you’re charging. Right. I think that’s really important for all of us.
JM (37:59):
Well, oftentimes we lack that perspective of ourselves, right? Absolutely. We tend so critical of ourselves, but absolutely. Yeah. You need to build, you need to build like your tribe of people around you. You know, we can, we wouldn’t have gotten to 10,000 members, if not, for all of the support, encouragement, I mean our wives and just a great team. That’s another piece of all of this is you can’t do it alone, like you to, you need the right people. So
AJV (38:22):
I love that. Okay. I have two last questions for you and I promise I’ll keep this on time. So I wanna know, how did you guys grow to 10,000 members? Right. So it’s like you started, I mean, clearly something happened along the way that was like, okay we figured out something, do you know what that, something was like, was there a moment a trigger? Like how did you go from a hundred to a thousand to 10,000?
JM (38:48):
I’m so glad you asked AJ, this was a big piece of it. I think your listeners all should. I mean, I think it’s helpful for them to know this because it was really slow growing. Like I remember we started launched the membership in 2015, in 2018, 2018. I think we had just hit a thousand members. Okay. So we’ve gone from a thousand in 2018 to 10,000, like three years later. So we did three things. Okay.
AJV (39:15):
Everyone write this down.
JM (39:16):
Okay. Write this down. The first is what I already said, which is we started making weekly YouTube content. Our, we, our YouTube channel had about 10,000 subscribers in 2018. And now it has 250,000 subscribers it’s because we started making weekly content make content weekly. And if you think it sucks still it because you’re gonna get better at it. So that was number one second, we launched a funnel. Okay. And I copied this company that all of you guys should be aware of called jump cut. Okay. That’s two guys that were YouTubers and they teach people how to become famous YouTubers. And they had a very successful funnel and I studied it. I analyzed it. I read every email. I watched every video and I took notes and literally copied their format with my words. So that’s what I mean by copy. Look at the people, doing it well and copy them.
JM (40:08):
And so we launched a 10 day blues challenge and we started running ads on Facebook and Instagram. And it was like, Hey, you wanna learn? The blue were free, sign up, you get five free videos, stream, email inbox. And basically we used lead pages for that. It was really easy to set up my business partner. And I literally made the pages ourselves and then connected it to MailChimp. Like we, we did it ourselves. We’re not computer guys. We’re like musicians and then made the email automations. And then at 10 days, Hey, you get 40 per sent off all the sales stuff. And that grew, so our strategy with that, AJ was not to make money. Our strategy with that was to break even and build our email list.
AJV (40:48):
Yeah. Preach.
JM (40:49):
That’s when our email list went from 10,000 to, to like, I mean, we have 150,000 now on our email list because of that. Right. And so the, the funnel was really helpful started doing paid ads. And then the other third thing was we, we needed a new website and we took out a loan for a website at that point. Wow. Yeah. I know, like we didn’t, it was like 20, it, I think it was $30,000, but like we didn’t have the money. And so that was a smart, a decision for us because we had a much better experience. And so those were the three things in 2019 that kicked us up into, I think, 3,400 members. By the end of that year, 2020, we were up to almost 8,000 members. Yes.
AJV (41:33):
Doing the same thing,
JM (41:34):
Doing the same thing we’d always done. But with the paid ads, with the weekly YouTube content, we still have the same website. Of course we’re making improvements on it, but there is a fourth thing. And it’s something that was not in my control, but we were ready for, it was COVID. Yeah. You know, every, everyone stuck at home. And so we did a quarantine offering, like the month of proof, like terrible. It’s like, you’re stuck at home and your life is miserable, but you can learn jazz piano. That’s. And so we gave away a month membership and we had a huge influx of people who came in, it was like, Hey, I get a month for free. And then, you know, people who liked it stayed. And so we were just kind of positioned for that for that event. And so right now the membership’s still growing.
JM (42:16):
It’s not growing as kind of hockey puck as, as we were. But yeah, I would say to your audience is it’s those three things is get the, get the organic traffic right now. We’re actually focusing a ton on SEO. In fact, we just hired a full-time SEO blog writer. But I, I would just really encourage your audience if you’re doing anything, visual people go to YouTube. In fact, if people search on Google for something, Google pushes all the YouTube videos to the top. So you’re not only getting all the traffic from people on YouTube, but you’re getting all the Google traffic. I mean, that is like the world, right? So, so video, I think is key. And then second is the paid is like paid ADSS, you know, funnels all that.
AJV (43:00):
Oh my gosh, this has been so insightful on so many levels. And I love to your humility and all of this goes, and I asked you if you wanted to come on the show, you’re like, I mean, what would I talk about? Like, are you kidding? Like this, this has been so brilliant. So, so awesome. So if people want to connect with you and I’ll put all of this in the show notes for the listeners, so make sure you go to brain builders, group.com/podcast. You can get all the show notes with Johnny Mae but just go to piano with johnny.com and it’s J O N N Y piano with johnny.com. And then if they wanna follow you to see how you’re doing this on YouTube what’s your YouTube channel?
JM (43:45):
Well, we have two, we have the piano with Johnny channel. It is exclusively piano education. So it’s literally me teaching all the, all the time. I have a second channel. That’s Johnny May, it’s just my name. And it’s just me playing the piano and I’m playing on a rooftop somewhere and I’m playing on a hill somewhere and I’m playing a beautiful, like sparkling grand piano. It’s all performances. And I imagine a lot of your audience, you know, if you wanna learn piano, go to piano with Johnny, but if, yeah, if you just like enjoy piano music, then go to just look up Johnny Mae and you’ll have tons of piano videos to your hearts content.
AJV (44:16):
Oh, I love it. All right. So here’s my last question for you. And totally gonna catch you up guard, but where do you see this business going in the next five years?
JM (44:27):
Oh my gosh. That is something I think about every single day. And to be honest with you, it’s something that I, I don’t really know. I, I think right now piano with Johnny has I don’t know if it’s hit, like it’s sweet spot and it’s something to just ride out. I think for me being an entrepreneur and loving the building process, I want to take it to the next level. Something that really, it sites me is taking our model, taking our system and making it accessible to other teachers. It’s like, oh my gosh, I was able to grow this seven figure business. It’s like, why? Like I see so many talented musicians struggling. I’m like, ah, I wish I could help them. It’s like, what if I could like white label what I’m doing for them? And so I, I toy with that idea, but I think minimally getting other teachers involved is quite exciting. We’re actually starting to hire other teachers. So yeah, but it’s like, it’s the journey. It’s the fun part. It’s like, ah, I don’t know. I don’t know. Where do I want take this?
AJV (45:25):
It’s the blessing and the curse of being an entrepreneur. And I think the here’s what I, and here’s why ask this question for all of you. I, I don’t know if you’ve picked this up, but there isn’t a whole huge staff and team. Like you guys are a pretty lean mean operations and production team, and you guys have built a multi seven figure business. You have 10,000 plus members, you have viral videos with millions of use. And you have done that off of being consistent and having exceptional content.
JM (45:55):
Yes, absolutely.
AJV (45:57):
Everyone listening can do that too.
JM (45:59):
Right. And I will say to your audience, you know, you might look at piano with Johnny and go, oh wow, you have this big team. Do you know that we have three full-time employees? That’s it, three full-time employees, our growth, our business has been around great content and doing what I love and sharing it with the world and being authentic and, and being mindful about the business. But I think to your point is your audience has everything it takes right now. It is unbelievable how many resources you have at your fingertips. I didn’t have almost 10 years ago that are plug and play. You just need to do it. You need to take the first step.
AJV (46:32):
Oh my gosh. I need to have be back on the show again, too. This was so good. It was so insightful. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time today. I so greatly appreciate it. This was an incredibly valuable episode and I hope everyone listening comes back, shares this, likes it connect with Johnny and then make sure you come back to listen to another episode of the influential personal brand.
JM (46:58):
Thanks AJ
AJV (00:02):
All right. Y’all AJ Vaden here on your recap episode of the influential personal brand. Here are my key takeaways from my conversation with Johnny May and Johnny and I are really good personal friends. We both live here in Nashville, Tennessee. We are both in EO, which stands for the entrepreneur organization. He’s in my forum, which means I get to spend an entire half a day with this genius every single month. Just learning and sharing best practices in business. And I’ll tell you what, like, this is like one of those conversations that I had and I pinged him after and I was like we’re are gonna need to continue this conversation over coffee or dinner. So how can I bribe you to continue this? There is so much strategy and wisdom and firsthand experience and expertise in this interview.
AJV (00:57):
Y’all if you were trying to do anything on YouTube or you’re trying to grow and scale a membership model, this interview was literally built for you so highly, highly recommend it specifically if you are trying to grow and scale on YouTube. So here’s just a couple of my key takeaways and I’m gonna heavily lean into, please go listen to this entire episode. It is one of my favorite episodes. It’s so tactical and so strategic and so much firsthand experience and wisdom in this Johnny Mae. So, all right, here’s the first thing. I kind of feel like at brand builders group, we are very new beginner novice when it comes to YouTube. That is not probably our strongest, strongest skillset and terms of leveraging that to grow and scale our business. So this is probably why I’m also so inclined to listen and re-listen, and then re-listen to this episode again.
AJV (01:56):
So first thing as talks about the massive importance of thumbnails and titles, and it’s like, in theory, I get that. But it in practice, are we actually doing that? And he goes simple works, right? Keep the titles very short so they can fit and you can read ’em. He says he keeps his, all of his titles, five to seven words, max make sure that the images are something that actually demonstrates what the video is actually about so that people know, make sure the titles lean into what you’re gonna get from this video. So the first thing was just very strategic tips around your thumbnails, titles and images in the thumbnail. So really important, subtle, but significant. They’ve been at this game for over 10 years. They have a eight figure memberships. And what I mean by that is they have more than 10,000 recurring monthly members, a seven figure BI business of people who are subscribing to learn piano lessons from Johnny piano, with Johnny.
AJV (03:02):
And so he goes like, literally, like our full time thing is focusing on what titles work, what thumbnails work, what goes viral and what does, and he goes, that’s our full-time job. So this is what I’m doing all day every day. And I love it, right? He’s doing it, not as a, an agency, but as the actual business owner. So the importance of titles and thumbnails keep ’em simple, keep ’em clear, make sure that they demonstrate what the video is actually about. Make sure that the title is short and is also very indicative of what you’re gonna get in the video. Loved it. That was the first thing. Second thing is the video itself, because you always wanna start the video, not out with some introduction of who you are or what you’re gonna get. He goes, no, you immediately wanna start the video with a sample of what you’re gonna get.
AJV (03:46):
Then pause, explain it, do a little introduction and tease them of why they need to stick around. He goes, but most people you get into their video and you say, Hey, this is AJ Vaden. And here’s what we’re gonna do today. He goes, they don’t want, you want to get right in and go, all right, this is what you’re here for. Let me show you and get to it in his case, it’s a very tangible show cuz he is teaching piano. But for so many of us, it’s like, how can we start with the best stuff that we have, right? That’s a saying that, and we have a brand builder’s group. As you save your best for first leave with lead, with your best content, that’s gonna catch ’em right in the beginning. Then you can introduce yourself. Then you can explain what’s happening, give context, but then tease why you need to stick around to the very end.
AJV (04:32):
So the first part of this, like, you know, successful three tip trio here is titles and thumbnails. The importance of that, the second is actually how you start the video. I think that makes a really big difference. And then the third thing he talks about is you have different types of videos. Some videos need to be just for content, that’s it? No ask, no offer other videos. You wanna make sure that they’re there to build your email list. He goes, that’s the most important thing we do. He goes, we invest all of our paid traffic, not into converting them into calls or converting them into sales. It’s converting that fan, that follower into an email on our list. He goes, that is what we’re doing. They have a hundred more than a hundred thousand people on our email list by just doing this. And so again, it’s how much of your content is strategically just to provide value.
AJV (05:25):
How much of it is to give something away for free, where you can get their email. And then there’s a separate type of video where there’s the ask, right? He goes, but all the content that we’re making for YouTube is YouTube specific content do not repurpose. He goes, we make content for YouTube. We do not make a piece of content and then repurpose it and all the different channels. He goes, no, we make, we make our content for YouTube. So be intentional about that. And he goes, and we create a ton of free content and we’re monitoring what goes viral and what doesn’t that has to do with the value of the content, the titles, the, the images, how they lead with it. But all of those things are this very, you know, somewhat simple, but yet complicated formula of how do you build your business on social in this particular case on YouTube he goes, build your content for the channel.
AJV (06:21):
That’s really uniquely important. He goes, this is content specifically designed for YouTube. And we have three different types of content. We have content that is just for value just to get people interested. Some is to help us collect emails so they can get ’em onto our list. And then some it’s encouraging them to sign up for our membership. But the majority of what they’re making is unique content just for value, add specifically built for YouTube. Again, I cannot tell you how many more ideas and tips and strategies just like this were in this episode. So if you have listened to this and you’re like, huh, that sounds like me. I would you to go listen to this entire episode. It’s extraordinarily good. You can also follow Johnny May on YouTube or on Instagram to learn more, see it firsthand of what they’re doing. And then please always come back, check out another episode on the influential personal brand. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 262: How to Build a Digital Media Empire with Nathan Chan
RV (00:02):
I am absolutely delighted to introduce you to Nathan Chan, who really I’ve known him for years. Very, very briefly. We’ve had very brief interactions, but we, we probably have like four or five pretty close mutual friends. And I’ve always heard the sweetest about this guy and the best things about him. And there, his, the brand that he has built is one that I have respected from afar. So he is the CEO and publisher of a magazine called founder magazine. So it is a digital magazine. It’s really like a digital media group that reaches well over 4 million people. Every single month they’ve got more than 3 million people on Instagram alone. And so they’re especially known for the magazine. I’m sure that you’ve seen them. It’s founder without the E F O U N D R. And so they’ve, they’ve had featured cover stories with people like Richard Branson and mark Cuban and Ariana Huffington.
RV (01:06):
And it just goes on and on. And so Nathan knows how to build a brand. He knows how to build a company. He spent a lot of time interviewing some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet. And then he’s also had quite a nice personal brand he’s developed, although is he would describe it. It would be sort of casual and not so strategic, I think. And so I wanted to hear a little bit of his philosophy of personal branding in relation to what he does as an entrepreneur, actually, as the, as the CEO founder, but also to understand a little bit about the business model of a digital magazine and what does that mean and how does it work and how do you make money? And and most of all, just to introduce you to this delightful lad and somebody that I’m hopeful will become a closer and closer friend. So Nathan, welcome to the show.
NC (02:02):
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Rory be here, appreciate the kind introduction and yeah. Really excited to share with you kind of how I’ve thought about personal brands. And yeah, as I said, I haven’t been that strategic around it.
RV (02:19):
Well, let’s talk about, let’s talk about founder first because you’ve been very strategic around that you’ve done phenomenally well, you’ve built a, a very large following, a lot of reach. I a very respectable brand. I mean, it’s very clear that you know how to build a, a great brand. So can you just tell us a little bit of like, tell us the story of how you started founder and how you built that brand?
NC (02:46):
Yeah, sure thing. So started about seven, eight years ago now started just as a magazine digital magazine on the app store, Google play store. First business knew nothing about business. So I thought, I thought I’d start a magazine around entrepreneurship so I could learn literally just started it to try and get a job in marketing. Cuz I just finished my masters of marketing. Couldn’t get a job. So launched the magazine just literally as a side hobby, passion project, no grand vision, no thoughts of raising capital or anything of that sort like, you know, how can people have a business idea for me, it was like literally a, a side hobby passion project. And then I launched March, 2013 and we made $5 and 50 cents with the magazine. The magazine didn’t even have a, a successful person on the front cover. I had no idea what I was doing. And when I launched, I was like, okay, well we got two subscribers now. Now I’ve gotta a commitment. I gotta, I gotta keep producing the next one. Yeah. And then so cuz I’m the kind of person that wouldn’t wanna let others down, especially first business paying customers. It’s like, wow, okay. Especially
RV (04:08):
Two people. I mean you could afford the risk to your reputation.
NC (04:12):
Yeah, exactly. So, so, and I was doing it on the side while I was still working my day job and, and then off I go and then so about, for a year I built it up the recurring revenue to, in the subscriber base so I could, could go full time on it. And then the rest was kind of history. So then as time went on, I was like, okay, I can do more than just the magazine. I can start producing content to build like out a media platform and, and start doing all of that. And, and then over time I, I looked at leverage around like if we do interviews with people for the magazine, then it could be a podcast. It could be a video interview, it could be an article, it could be all these other things could be social content and you know, the, the game, like you chop it up and you can really sweat that asset.
NC (05:00):
And then cuz that’s what, that’s what content is. It’s an asset, right? When you produce one piece of content, it’s an asset. So over time just started to build that out and, and really build the building blocks one brick at a time of each channel, whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s written, whether it’s social, whatever social channel. And then started to get into the online education space felt that there was something special we could do there. There isn’t really a well known platform or a go-to platform where it’s like a masterclass, but particularly focus on entrepreneurship or business building or like a digital marketer.com. That’s purely focused on marketing. Yeah. So, so then that, that was the vision that we started to build out about four or five years ago and, and it’s been a journey, but, and so, so then found it became more of a kind of media company plus online education company.
NC (06:04):
We’ve got, I think like 23 courses in our platform and we’re looking to really scale that up. We’re looking to have at least a hundred plus in the next three to five years. Wow. with, with all sorts of different diverse founders teaching topics that our audience wants to know from founders that have actually done it, founders that have built real businesses like, like yourself, right. You’ve built a real business. And yeah, we’re, we’re gonna work on a membership product. We’re gonna launch that in the next three to four months and, and yeah, along the way have slowly built the brand and it’s been an incredible ride thus far.
RV (06:45):
How much, what just if you don’t mind me asking, how did you make the leap? So, so that, you know, that’s something that a lot of our members and our clients and the, you know, our, our listeners are going, okay, I’m starting this as a, that this, the passion project sort of side hustle. How much, like, how did you know when to make the leap or how much, how much recurring revenue did you have to have to where you felt like there was enough to go or, or like talk about that transition a bit.
NC (07:14):
Yeah. So look eight years ago, I wasn’t, I wasn’t on like a high salary. I wasn’t an executive, I wasn’t a manager. I was, I was working in it support. So I was earning about, I think 50,000 Australian dollars a year. That was my annual salary. So I think that worked out to be around after tax around 3000 Australian dollars a month. So I was living out of home and I was like in this kind, like with a housemate and I was in this kind of really old rundown house. So rent wasn’t much. And then you could work. I could just work out my cost of living pretty quickly then. So
RV (07:58):
Did you just wait till it was exactly equal? Like, did you go say it was fit, say it was 50,000? Did you wait until you had 50,000 or whatever, 3000 a month? Or was it kind of like 75% of that or 60% of that? Like how close did you have to get before you went for the leap?
NC (08:15):
So there was a couple of key things. One I made sure I had six months of living expenses saved. I used to love traveling. I always had like right. Living off my credit card. So I made sure I had no credit card debt. I had six months of savings and yeah, ITAC exactly that. I replaced the revenue from the business a little bit more in fact, a little bit more because obviously the business had expense, but it was fairly profitable and such a small business looking back compared to, you know, and then so yeah. How, how did I make around three and a half, $4,000 in MRI to then go, okay, I can safe constantly take two of that and then live. And then the rest I could just keep slowly multiplying capital very, very slowly. And, and I could work on it full time.
NC (09:13):
So, so that was the argue. The argument was if I was working on it nights and mornings, first thing all into the night, all into the morning that if I could work on it full time, I was actually losing money. It got to a point. And that was something that somebody taught me. It got to a point where being in my job was actually losing me money because if I had have been able to apply myself to it full time, I would’ve been able to make a lot more, which it that’s what ended up happening.
RV (09:44):
Yeah. Like the opportunity cost of that time on your business becomes greater than the actual pay for time in your, in your company. I think it was interesting part of, what’s always fascinated me a about you and you even kind of alluded it to it here was like, why a magazine? Like what, what, what, what an interesting choice. But but you know, like you said, there, there, there wasn’t, there, there there’s, there’s, you know, there wasn’t a lot totally in that space and, and the recurring revenue is a wonderful and so is, did the business model, it sounds like really started purely as a magazine. And it was, I want people to pay me a monthly fee to subscribe to this magazine and I’m gonna curate content and do these interviews and produce this beautiful digital thing. Correct. And, and, and support my subscribers. And then how did the BI model evolved to there that it then did it go to courses? And that was how you monetize next?
NC (10:43):
Correct. And what was really interesting was I didn’t need traffic for the app store or the traffic come from the app store. There were people searching for the magazine every day, organically through organic search. And I worked out how to, if somebody typed in Forbes, if somebody typed in entrepreneur, if some type body typed in success, magazine, founder would show up. And then I used, so in the first four months, I got an interview with me, Richard Branson. And we, I, I really capitalized on that. And I used that front cover as a way to build the authority of the magazine. And I made that magazine addition free. So I learned this concept by E pagan called moving the free line, giving your best stuff away for free. So yeah, the magazine piece was not strategic. Rory just fell into it. There was this software that I could per that I purchased that allowed me to produce the magazine and build the app.
NC (11:55):
And it just so happened that it was a smart move because you talk about like your, like part of your process or your unique me methodology working with clients is producing a book. Why do you produce a book? It’s because it build authority. It makes it builds, thought leadership. I believe a magazine is even a higher, a, a higher level of thought leadership people really want to be on that front cover. It actually says something. And then once you build it up around like the people that have been on that front cover, then you’ve built a really strong authority. And it, it is, it has a lot of weight and I didn’t know that at the time, but you know, you get, you get your clients on front covers versus publishing their own book. Even if it is, you know, they’re signed by penguin ran house or whatever, like if they’re on a front cover of a well known magazine and they can use that in their social media profile, like I know like board apes is the new flex for your social profile, but if you wanna build your own personal brand and your you’re on the front cover of entrepreneur magazine, success magazine for like rappers, they rap about how they want to be on the cover Forbes or, or like that’s aspirational like that, that, but then owning the magazine, owning the property, then that yields the, I believe even stronger authority and leverage.
RV (13:32):
Yeah. I remember to this, the new owner of success magazine is a, is a brand builders group, client, and a friend of ours. And I actually just recently finished a term as I, I was an inter I was the interim entrepreneurship editor just like an associate, a kind of stand in when, when they acquired the company. But I, I, you used to be close with Darren Hardy, who was the publisher of success magazine for years. And I remember Darren telling me one time, he said, Roy, the magic of the magazine is it opens the door to any interview in the world of just like, it’s the relationships going? You try to, you try to, you know, sell something to someone they’re not answering. You try to get an endorsement. They’re not answering even try to get ’em on your podcast or something.
RV (14:20):
But if you call and say, I would like to talk to so-and-so about being on the cover of the magazine. Every one of those calls pretty much gets returned and it’s probably not everyone, but I, it made a lot of sense to me. And you know, here you are edifying the same, the same commentary. So what I think is inter another thing that’s fascinating about this to me, Nathan is, okay, so you started with the magazine, which is kind of like, you know, people would go, oh, magazines are dead. You can’t make money with magazines. And yet you’ve built this amazing business from it. And then I actually feel like a lot of people talk about courses that way, like people kind of go, oh, you know, the courses have, have, have run their, have run their road. But you know, you’re doubling down on courses. We, we had an interview with a, a brand builders group client, a friend of ours, Darcy, Ben and Costa was on this podcast. She’s doing seven figures a year from a few courses and she’s just crushing it. And, and, you know, some courses are 40 bucks and other ones are 400 bucks and others are four, 4,000 bucks. But like, you know, so now you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re moving in into the course world heavy.
NC (15:28):
Yeah. So the idea is how can we get a lot of the people like the aspiration is how can we build a platform or an educational platform, like a masterclass.com for entrepreneurship, and how do we get a lot of the people that are on the covers of our magazine, or even not on the covers to actually teach. And really we kind of democratize entrepreneurial education. So you know, we sell our courses, but I think now we’re in a position where we have enough that we can charge a member. We can, we can create an all access pass and, and have a membership. And then also start to build an incredible learn earning platform that is much more than just a course, you know, like, and really take the market because there are you’re right. There are a lot of people selling courses, and it’s so hard to know who to trust, what to follow.
NC (16:28):
We wanna create a membership that effectively is, is the superior product in the marketplace, which is extremely cost affordable. And, and the stuff that you learn is incredible. And your learning experience is, is, is like off the chain. Like, you know, we, we’re gonna build a learning recommendation and engine, we ask you a series of questions and then you’ll have a customized learning journey to fully tailored to your learning needs around where your areas of development are. And then the teachers will be just really next level, legit teachers that have actually done what, you know, they like, they’re so focused on their business that they don’t really need to teach or want to teach. Yeah. So, so that’s kind of the next evolution for us. So, so yeah, that, that was, and then like, it’s, it’s kind of like a really nice natural extension, to be honest with you R because you know, a lot of media companies, they produce a lot of free content.
NC (17:33):
Like we do 99.9% of our content is free, but then they have premium content, like premium paid content. Right. that’s all we’re doing. We’re just creating a, a, you know, premium content. If you want to know about let’s just say social media growth, and you’re reading an article, but actually you wanna do an in-depth course on how to grow your to organically. Then you can, you can get the full program or so to the membership. So it’s like, you can read an article, you can watch a video, but it’s only skirting the surface. You wanna actually go deep and actually get an actionable framework that is unpacked step by step with templates and like, to get you the result faster then. Yeah. That’s what we’re thinking, that’s the vision
RV (18:24):
And, and the course is like, are these kinda like $2,000 Jeff Walker type courses? Or are they, you know, $50 kind of thing?
NC (18:34):
Yeah. So, so that’s two bucks.
NC (18:38):
So it, all our courses range anywhere from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand dollars. So that’s why the, the me, that’s why once we move to the membership model, it’s gonna be, you know, incredibly valuable product. And eventually we’ll work to the, the evolution will be, we’ll only have one product and it’ll be the membership for an annual or monthly fee. And when we launch it, we’ll start with an annual. And honestly, the, the cost of the annual will be an absolute, no brainer. Like the it’ll be a no brainer. Hmm. And then it’s, we move from this idea of people purchasing a course as a form of ownership, to a membership where they’re just renting, they’re renting and that product will get significantly better over time. And that is our number one focus to build the most superior, largest online business school in the world.
RV (19:38):
Mm.
NC (19:39):
Interesting. But then, but then over time, cuz we’re building a platform, we can help founders in many other ways too. Well just be through education. It can be through events. It can be through tools in, can be through services. But one step at a time.
RV (19:59):
Yeah. Well so talk to us about your personal brand for a second, because you don’t have a personal brand website. You do have some personal social media, but this is another thing that’s really amazing. Like it’s not super easier. At least we haven’t found it super easy to grow on social. I mean to grow. Yes. But to, to get to where you have millions of followers is not an easy feat and you did it under a company name and a company profile, which is, I feel like even harder, like there’s fewer companies with millions of followers than there are people, but you’ve been able to do that. Meanwhile, you’ve kind of like not focused so much on the personal brand, which to me is a move that classic entrepreneurs would make classic entrepreneurs would go, no, I wanna, I want the business to operate independent of me or irrespective of me as the founder.
RV (20:49):
And that’s what building a company, a, a company that has equity value. Like we’ve had several we’ve had business valuation expert. We did an episode with Jim Comby, who’s one of our favorite business valuation experts is a Harvard, Harvard, JD MBA guy. And you know, the whole thing the business has to operate without you. So anyways, just talk to us about your personal philosophy for, you know, growing the company versus growing your personal brand and why you, you know, you actually haven’t, you know, gone all in on your personal brand. Like most of the people probably that we, we highlight and, and interview.
NC (21:26):
Yeah. So it’s really interesting R I, this time last year hired like a really experienced executive assistant. And she said to me, Nathan, what’s the plan for your personal brand? And I said, I don’t have one. We just gotta focus on growing founder first. And you talked about kind of the opportunity cost, right? You talked about the opportunity cost right. Of when I was in my day job and sacrificing that time to go all in on founder, I still see it as the same thing I could spend right now, I’m building my personal brand, but I think it would be an opportunity cost to not just double down on founder and still be the face. Right. So you were spot on, I found your study that you were talking about offline really fascinating because that’s, that’s correct more, more and more, the rise of personal brand is happening, right?
NC (22:34):
You look at the Logan, Logan, Paul, the Jake Paul, like it is incredible what those guys have done and, you know, they, they are spinning off businesses like you wouldn’t believe right. More and more people are much far interested in, in the who behind the brand or the person who from they are buying. So for me, in my particular situation and circumstance, I do have the ability to still build my personal brand without creating a Nathan Chan website without creating nation Nathan Chan’s social accounts, where I’m creating custom tailored content, because I can do all of that through founder. And also at the same time, I want to continue to build founder as an asset based business, not as a cashflow based business. So I’m aggressively reinvesting and slowly but surely building out founders. So it’s one for me, opportunity cost. But two, I do have the ability to, to, to build the, the Nathan Chan personal brand, somewhat strategically by still doing the interviews and by still producing content around topics that I believe I have the right to speak about like Instagram growth or social media growth, or building an online educator business.
NC (24:05):
I will strategically talk about those topics because I believe I’m qualified to share. So yeah, I will, I do plan to get myself off the interviews though. That is, that is a master plan. I haven’t quite got there yet. I’ve just rebuilt my whole leader ship team and hire some really, really experienced executives that, that are very familiar with scaling companies. And slowly I’m slowly, slowly getting off the tools. One of the last things is doing the interviews and also doing our, like when, when we sell our courses we, we use a model called a masterclass model, right, where it’s like an old automated webinar, but the way that we do it, because we have other talent that we work with to produces all of our courses we do it like an interview. I still do those. So those are those are those still like the two things that I’m on the tools, but eventually the master plan is to build a podcast network where we have quite a few shows in our podcast network that it will be total acceptable, fine, not even know a difference, who’s doing the interviews.
NC (25:28):
And then I will still create some other shows to have that Nathan Chan who’s behind the brand feel. Because one thing that I found very, very interesting, and this is not me pumping my own tires or anything, but people do like to follow the founder journey and they do, they are in interested to hear what we are doing. Like not everybody, but the people, there are people, there are people that notice, there are people that are interested and I’m not saying this to put my tires. So I have to keep like, like fueling that. I have to keep telling that story, that kind of, that heroes journey starting from nowhere. And then let’s see how far we can build it. It’s like how Gary V is like, I’m gonna buy the jets and people that’s part of his hero’s journey because people are following along. People wanna see how far people wanna champion the underdog, the person coming from nowhere. So there’s a little bit of that where people do follow the founder journey, what we’re up to, how far we’re taking this thing and how big we’re gonna build it. So I have to yeah. Keep, keep feeling that.
RV (26:38):
I think it’s kinda interesting though, cuz it’s like, you know, like the way that we, we would think about it or describe it as even I would say this is you have a great personal brand, you’re actually quite deliberate about building it because you do the interviews, you do speak at the conferences here, you are doing an interview. You’re also guest appearing in places and contributing both on your site. You just don’t have your own com. And I think people sometimes MIS misinterpret to go, oh, a personal brand means I must have a website in the way that brand builders would describe it is no, your personal brand means you have a reputation. And you know, we think of personal branding as simply the digitization of reputation, which you do have, you got a lot of digital assets and like you’re saying, cuz cuz Richard Branson does the same thing.
RV (27:28):
Richard Branson doesn’t have Richard branson.com, but he writes and [email protected] or what, whatever, you know, the, the URL is, but everybody knows Richard Branson. And you know, I, I think it’s really interesting almost even that evolution of what’s happening with personal brand and what that means. Cuz I think you have a great personal brand, even though you don’t have a website, but, but I would say, I mean the, the way that you guys have grown on social is amazing. You’ve really done a great job with that and you know, know where do you see that headed? Because right now I feel like it’s harder. It’s get it’s there is so much noise and it is, it is so difficult to get organic reach. And are you still, you know, optimistic about organic social media growth and still seeing big numbers real in and if so, why and if not, why not?
NC (28:29):
Yeah. So I love the way you think about it and you spot on like, I, I guess I am strategically building a personal brand, but maybe not a traditional way with the, you know, producing a bulk producing content. Nathan’s this guy, you know what I mean? Like, so yeah, you’re right. But no that I used, I’ve only done the interviews Rory because there was nobody else to do at the start and it just got outed that way. But yeah, no, it’s, it’s really cool. And I don’t really do podcast interviews. I, but I am starting to ramp it back up now. So yeah, I’ve gone in and now I don’t speak at, I don’t speak at conferences either. I, I cut that about three, four years ago. So yeah. It’s funny you say that cuz you can, you can go I’m I’m going up and back, but yeah, at the moment I’m, I’m, I’m wanting to double down again because I feel like it’s powerful and I’m finding more time, but yeah.
NC (29:28):
So coming back to answering your question around organic and social growth is it still powerful? Yes. I think there’s a couple of key things to take away there. It depends on the platform like right now I think Instagram is still a very, very powerful platform and we will continue to double down on it. I’m not happy with our creative. Yes. We still grow like 1000, 2000 new followers a day. But I think we can do a better job on the creative and that’s gonna be a focus for us this year, but then also there’s always emerging platforms, right? Like TikTok, TikTok will probably be the next big platform. And, and you see that there are people that grow really fast on there and it’s a different platform. It’s different kind of content and yeah, I think you can of doing incredible things.
NC (30:23):
It’s, it’s crazy some of the numbers and things that you can see, I can’t share them publicly, but you know, we, we know like a significant amount of customers that, that find us. They start with Instagram doesn’t mean they end with Instagram because you’ve only got a couple of ways to drive traffic through stories or that link in buyer. But we know that people ended up finding us via Instagram because when someone becomes a customer or a student and enrolls in one of our programs, we, we have a survey and we find out you can’t, it’s an onboarding survey. We, we find out and that that’s, that’s actually the largest way, most voted way that people find it. So it’s funny, you know, you look at that, but then also you look at you’re retargeting with paid advertising. You know, how much are you spent spending on retar
RV (31:23):
Use to be anyways, like pre that, that the apple iOS update last year was been, I mean, has that that’s gotta have affected you is feel like it’s affected everybody and you guys did a lot, a lot of paid. I mean, you’ve done a lot of paid advertising and I guess presumably you’re driving paid ads to your free masterclass and the free masterclass to, you know?
NC (31:45):
Yep, yep, yep. Correct. Yep. So everybody’s taken a hit on paid advertising. Does it still work for us? Yes. do we get the returns that we used to get? No. Do we have to spend more? Yes. Do we have to become better? Yes. It’s just a fact, right? It was whether it was iOS 14 or something else costs were always going to rise. It was always going to get more competitive. So yeah, I’m not sitting here from an ivory tower saying like, yeah, we’re killing it. Like we have had challenges, but we still sign frequently spend a lot of money on paid advertising because it works still. It still works. It’s just not as effective. So it’s your job as the founder owner CEO to, to, to find ways to make it work. Cuz it still can or diversify look, you know there, there, you know, it’s, it’s just classic business, right?
NC (32:47):
You can’t rely on one channel like anything, you know, you gotta diversify your channels, you gotta diversify your revenue. So yeah, but yeah, coming back. Yeah. So we find that yeah. Top of funnel social still works top of funnel. We still drive a significant revenue from our social channels, but at the same time we’re working on always new channels like SEO, like YouTube, YouTube, massive one massive, massive what you can do there. We still haven’t cracked it. It, it drives substantial revenue, but not, not to the, not to the, not to the size that I believe is the potential. So to answer your question, yes. Social organic still works. You have to look at it from not that being your only play though. I think you’ve got it’s, it’s a multi omnichannel approach. And we see, we, you know, from paid from retargeting, from customers ending up on our email list or, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a varied approach, but yeah, it still works. It’s more competitive than ever. But even when I started seven, eight years ago, it felt super competitive. To be honest, it didn’t feel like, oh wow, this is Greenfield. I like, there’s no one playing in this space. Like it was still the same. And it was still the same feeling that it’s like, all right, now, now we’ve gotta crack to few hundred thousand followers. Like you ain’t cutting it.
RV (34:27):
What is just like off the top of your head, when you think of like a cost per lead, like what you would pay for an email address, what do you kind of go? Yeah. If we’re in this range, we’re probably doing okay. If we’re not like we gotta shut it down and you know, come up with a, a new creative or something,
NC (34:43):
Look, to be honest with you you, you, we could, we can get leads for a dollar. Right. We can get leads for a dollar. Like we can go Facebook ads, Facebook lead ad form. And we get, we can get leads for a dollar, but doesn’t mean they’re buyers. So, so we don’t use that as a metric, but yeah, we, we, you know, anywhere between three, five, $10, $15 a lead. Yeah. It, it, but it depends. Right. Cause cuz for us, it’s not about leads. It’s about direct response. How, how much did we put in and then how much did we get back?
RV (35:22):
So you’re looking at more like a, see like a cost per acquisition, like number and metric is much more what you’re looking at.
NC (35:30):
Yep.
RV (35:31):
Yep. And do you guys typically kind of ascend people like you go, Hey, let’s offer a masterclass and then a low dollar thing and we try to send them or do you have like sometimes we’re selling the $500 sometimes the a thousand dollars sometimes the two.
NC (35:44):
Yeah, no we, we don’t, we don’t we don’t have like a, a value ladder like that, to be honest with you from a business model standpoint we just have certain courses and we have you know, free trainings that can give you a taste tester of that instructor, their frameworks, their beliefs, their ideas. And then if you really like the instructor, you can roll on the full program. The next evolution for us is, is the membership product. So it’s like, you can buy one course or you can, and then you can go to the membership. And yeah, yeah. We’re, we’re probably not that good at that. If I’m being honest, I’m, I’m looking at it like quite honestly, how do we build a large, like I look at ed tech platforms for inspiration, like what is skill doing? I know creative live was sold to fiber and they kind of went backwards a bit, but like, you know, what is creative live doing?
NC (36:45):
What is skill share doing? What is masterclass doing? What is mine valley doing? What is, yeah. Like companies like that, how, how are they building out their brands? How are they building out their platforms? But still using and being inspired by online marketing or the Jeff walkers of the world. Jeff Walker, you know, launch PLF. We’ve done, we’ve done that before. Right. But you know, it’s interesting when you look at kind of like, you know, the, the, the PRLF stuff, like we’ve done that for, and it didn’t work as effective as just doing the model that we do. And it’s just like, you can do it with one course. Right? You can do it with one course or a second course, but how do you do something like that with 20 courses? How do you do something like that with 50 courses or a hundred courses?
NC (37:38):
And at the end of the day, you want to be able to, of the operations of these things as well. And so when you look to create a $5 product or a trip trip wire for 20 bucks, then you wanna upsell somebody to something to $300, then you wanna do 500. Then you wanna do a thousand. Like there’s a big operational cost when you wanna do out by 20 or hundred or 50. You know what I mean? So like, that’s why, yeah. We don’t, it’s, we’re not very good at that kind of classic online marketing, kind of some of that kind of value ladder stuff. And it, it is working for us now. Yes, we will. You know, I think there’s a great book that I love called ready fire aim had to go from zero to a hundred million flat and they talk about there’s two kinds of products. There’s the product with the sole purpose to acquire a customer. And then there’s a product with the sole purpose to generate profit. That all makes sense. And we are not there yet. Like we, we still have, we, we, there’s a, there’s a little bit of evolution and little bit of work for us to be done there, to be honest with you.
RV (38:52):
Yeah. I mean, that’s so great to have, I mean, that’s I’d say we very much feel that way. I mean, we’ve, we’ve been through this journey once before building from scratch and growing it and exiting the company. And now it’s like we’re three years into the new thing and very much like, oh my gosh, we have so much work to do. Like, we are still so far away from where we wanna be. But I mean, this has been awesome, Nathan, this is so into inspiring. Like I really appreciate you kind of just like sharing the story and opening up a little bit about like what the journey has been. Obviously people can follow founder on Instagram. I know that’s, you know, you got a big presence there. Where else would you direct people to? If they wanna like find out more about, you know, what founder is, is, is doing and you,
NC (39:36):
Yeah. Just go to founder.com founder without the E
RV (39:40):
Founder.Com without, without the E Nathan Chan friends. Buddy, this is so great to reconnect with you and wish you all the best, but look forward to following your journey and, and seeing you, how you, how you do this. So keep in touch.
NC (39:57):
Thanks so much, Roy. Appreciate your time.
RV (00:02):
Love love, love that chat with Nathan Chan and longtime friend. We’ve been colleagues and just seeing what they’ve done over there at founder is awesome. Just such a quality brand and obviously a great guy, right? Like super humble and really intelligent and and just really smart and service mind. So I, I, I love that there, there were, there were a couple big tape takeaways from me or for me from that interview, I mean, like always I learned so much from every, every single guest that we have, but, you know, so the first one is how to make the leap full time. Right. So his personal story about how did he actually do that was really inspiring to me. And, and hopefully something that you picked up too. And, you know, there were a couple, two, two things specifically, well, three, three things.
RV (00:51):
So first of all, he said, I had no debt. And that to me is really important, right? A lot of people believe in debt and using debt in different ways. We come from the school of, of not at having debt. I grew up, you know, financially speaking, being raised, so to speak by Dave Ramsey was where I learned about money. And we just don’t believe in debt. We don’t wanna have debt. We want to be free and clear of, of owing people stuff. And so you know, hearing Nathan talk about that was, was, I’m always into, to hear when other successful people, you know, say, yeah, I didn’t bring on investors. I didn’t go out and get bank loans. I didn’t leverage credit cards. I, I didn’t, you know, mortgage the house. Like you, you, you could, there is a way to do it.
RV (01:36):
Right. And, and that’s how AJ and I have done it. Like, we, we don’t have debt. So we have some lines of credit that are like for emergencies, but their emergencies to the emergencies, which is the second thing he said is he said I had six months of living expenses saved up. Right. And so if, cuz if you’re in that mode of going, okay, how do I make the leap full time? The question is, is typically like, how am I gonna survive in the first few months? Because that, that’s the reality of the being successful at anything. Like, even if you’re busting it hardcore, like when you’re doing something new, it takes a minute, like you can’t just automatically start a business and be successful or start a brand and be successful. Like it takes a while to even get your first revenue dollars in sometimes.
RV (02:21):
So being debt free gives you an opportunity that extends the runway. Why? Because you don’t owe money every month, right? Like if I have a bunch of car payments and a bunch of credit card bills and a bunch of student loans, and you know, now you might have a mortgage. Like that may be the one thing that you have, but like, you know, hopefully there’s not much more than that. And if there’s a way you cannot have a mortgage, then that’s even better. Right. And that’s why so many entrepreneur stories start of like, you know, Lewis, how tells the story of sleeping on his sister’s couch. And you know, people moving back in with their parents and just like, yeah. Two and whatever it takes for a minute, but you don’t, when you don’t have debt, it extends the runway. When you have debt, you’ve got monthly payments that are due and you’re chained to those, right?
RV (03:04):
Like that’s why the Bible says the borrower, the borrower is slave to the lender. You’re, you’re chained to those. You’re, you’re tied in, you’re committed. You can’t break free. And the only way to break free is to pay it off. And you know, there’s there’s to do that, but it’s almost like that’s a season in and of itself. You get debt free and then you gotta stay on that really like frugal fight where you’re, whatever you’re working extra hours at work, you’re making extra sales calls, you’re garage sailing, you’re pitching, you’re doing some side hustle. You’re, you’re taking a second job. And then you save up to where you have six months of limb expenses. Now you can make the leap, right? Like, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna be set and it’s gonna be easy, but it’s like, okay, you can survive. And you gotta give yourself some runway.
RV (03:51):
You be, and this is what it means to be an investor. I mean, when, when you’re a financial investor in a company, they use this term runway, they’re, they’re creating runway. They’re saying, we’ll give you this much money. Not because that’s the only amount of money we have, but that’s the amount of money we’re willing to put at risk for this idea. And when you, when you bootstrap a company, you are the investor. And, and the way that you’re investing is if you don’t have a lot of money, it is through sacrificing some luxuries in your life and, and selling off some stuff and downgrading your quality of life for a while and increasing your work ethic and your output so that you can, so you, you can create some runway. And that I think a lot of people stay trapped in a job.
RV (04:34):
They hate for the rest of their life because they can’t take that risk and they don’t know how to break free. And so I, that, that’s really an important function here about how do you, how do you start a business? And, and when do you make the leap? And then, and then, you know, so you, you know, get debt free, then stay frugal and save up six months of living expenses, which by the way, this is, this is, these are part of Dave, Ramsey’s seven baby steps, too. You know, so if you’re following on that plan, you’re, you’re doing this. And then the third thing that Nathan said is once you can replace the revenue, once you feel confident that you can generate enough revenue in your new thing, that to replace what you’ve got from your current thing, or if you can at least get, you know, like 60% of the way they, or 50 or 40% of the way they’re doing it as a side hustle.
RV (05:21):
And then you give yourself a six month runway and then you go, all right, I’m gonna take the leap. And I gotta get myself from 40% to a hundred. That’s how it happens. Like, if you don’t wanna lose your house and like do the thing, but it’s not easy. Like it’s not easy. Who told you it was gonna be easy? Like when did you think this was gonna be easy? Like, what guest have we ever had on this show who has made and, and built a huge business or a huge brand who was like, oh yeah, it was, it was easy. It’s never easy. It’s hard, it’s difficult. That’s why most people don’t do it. And you have to be prepared to make the sacrifice for at least a little while. It’s why, so that you can have your dream so that your dream can come true so that you can impact people, make a difference in the world, but there are tactical practical steps and strategies that can do it.
RV (06:07):
That, that just like we’re talking about here, like you gotta be willing to pay the price you gotta be. As, as my, one of my, my long time friends, Randy G always says, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream. You gotta bet on you. You gotta take the shot. You gotta take the chance. And why would anyone else give you money if you’re not willing to, to, to, to pay the price of saving up and doing yourself. So that was huge. I always, I love that story. I thought that was tactical. The second thing, which I have never heard be for at least not so clearly, which really hit me from this interview with Nathan. And this will stick with me, is there are two different types of products. There is the product that you create, where the sole purpose is to acquire a customer.
RV (06:52):
And then there is the product that you create to generate a profit. That, that was fascinating to me. And now he, he quoted the book ready, fire aim, which I had never heard of. So I guess apparently that that’s a big concept out of, out of that book, but that’s a really powerful idea. And, and when we have a, one of our, one of our stop on the brand builder journey, like one of our courses that’s called high traffic strategies and it’s about running paid traffic. And it’s more, it’s one of the more advanced courses that, that people get to once you’ve built your whole infrastructure. But one of the things that we talk about there is, you know, this concept of like a self-liquidating funnel or you know, a, a, a recovery or a break even where you’re able to pay money for ads to drive traffic.
RV (07:44):
And then you’re just trying to sell enough of those items to recover your ad spend. And you, wait, why would you do that? Like, why would I spend a bunch of money to only just barely get that money and, and have the risk? Well, the reason why is because in the process, you grow your brand awareness, you grow your email list, you grow your social following, you grow your presence, your street cred. There’s more people that hear about you. So there’s all of these other positive ancillary byproducts. If you can set that up, that’s what he’s talking about here is one product you create exists for the sole purpose to acquire a customer. That’s kind of that concept, right? At least in digital marketing world, that is, is that concept. Then the second type of product you create is to generate profit. So the other reason why you would do this sort of self-liquidating funnel concept is not just because of those, those things like, Hey, I would, I would get more impressions, more, reach, more awareness, more emails, but it’s because if you capture their contact information, that’s an actual asset that you can monetize directly in the future.
RV (08:53):
So just think about it as an email address. Let’s say I put $10 in the machine and I get, you know, $10 outta the machine. I made no money. I spent a bunch of time. I took risk. I made no money. Well, why would I do it still? Well, because the, the byproduct is an email address. And you say, well, what difference does it make you, you don’t get paid for addresses. Well, that’s true. You don’t get paid on the first sale, but you do on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the 10th, the 50th that you go, oh, well, then I’m monetizing it later. And this is this little part right here is like, honestly, functionally. One of the biggest differences, like you think the biggest personal brands in the world are the biggest, because they’re the smartest or they’re, they’re the best, or they have the most original ideas.
RV (09:39):
They’re not, they understand this concept I’m talking about right here, and they’re willing to take risk. And they’re willing to bet on themselves. They’re willing to say not by followers, but by attention, by awareness, by reach by impact. And say, I will put in a ton of work to impact lives, even if I don’t make money from it, because I wanna impact a lot of people. And it’s, you know, there’s a lot of functionality to it, which is one of the reasons why brand builders group exists. Right? But that, that’s the concept here and Nathan’s telling the same story. And then the third thing, which again, is sort of this one’s more classic entrepreneurship is when he was just saying, find a way, find a way you gotta find a way, like, are you gonna take a hit on paid advertising? Yes. Did I, the iOS 14 updates, crush a bunch of us.
RV (10:28):
Yes. I say us, we weren’t actually running paid ads, but the, the, it has, it changed the landscape you yes. Does. Does every time a new social media come on, you know, TikTok comes out. Does that change things? Yes. Is the metaverse gonna affect the future? Yes. Are there new competitors coming in? Yes, it’s hard, but you gotta find a way you gotta make the decision to make the resolution, make the commitment that I’m gonna find a way. Like I have a goal. I have a destination in that I am pursuing, and I am currently on a path that path might get blocked. I am not committed to, to having to follow one path. I am committed to the destination. I am committed to finding a way to get there. The way that I get there might have to change. Right? It’s just like driving somewhere.
RV (11:16):
You have your destination. There might be a traffic jam. There might be road construction. There might be an accident, but you go, I’m going to do whatever I have to do. And it might take longer than I thought I might have to go different. I might have to go, you know, do something new, but I’m still committed to the destination. It’s exactly how it is. And yet most of us go, oh, I had, you know, I, I had destination and the path I was walking it down. It didn’t, it didn’t work out. And so it’s over. I mean, that’s not wrong. It’s not bad. It’s just not what successful people do. And so are you really somebody who’s willing to make that decision to find a way to commit to the destination, to, to go the entire journey, to do whatever it takes, because there is a way like there is a way to get there.
RV (12:01):
It just may not be the way, you know, and, and you gotta, you know, you need help. You need other people to guide you and show you the workarounds. And, and, but there is always a way. And, and what it matters is not so much that, you know, the way as what matters is that, you know, the destination, you don’t have to know the way, but you have to know the destination and you have to be committed to the destination. And if building your personal brand is a really important destination for you, we know a lot of ways to get there and we’ve run into a, out of the roadblock and we know where the construction is, and we know where the traffic jams are and we can help you. And, and we have a track record of figuring out for ourselves and for a whole host of hundreds of clients, figuring out ways around them, because things are always changing, but this is, you know, this is the game that we play.
RV (12:52):
And so if you’re serious about building a personal brand, you need to request a call with our team, right? You need to take advantage of, of the, you know, the, the opportunity to do that and, and request a call and talk to us, we’ll do the first call for free because all of us have had to have that journey. And you hear about ’em every single week, Nathan Chan was no different. They’ve built a really, really wonderful brand a founder magazine, 3.4 million followers. I mean, that gets the attention of the biggest people in the world. I mean, some of our, our very high profile clients are people that we’ve been connecting to, to Nathan Chan, because it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a legit reputation and it’s not easy, but it can be done and you can do it. So keep coming back, keep staying plugged in. We’re gonna keep bringing you hopefully valuable insights and inspiration and inspiring stories and guests right here on the influential personal brand podcast catch you next time.