Ep 250: Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study by Brand Builders Group
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 while wanted to let you know 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, call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/podcast brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Oh man, I’m so excited. I cannot, I cannot wait for you to meet Tori Gordon. Tori is someone who has become just one of my favorite people that I met in the last couple years. We met her through brand builders. So she is, she’s a brand builder. She’s one of our clients, but she is extraordinary and she’s been doing huge things long before we ever got a chance to get to know her. In 2021, she actually has been one of tos, top 100 female creators. She has over 800,000 followers on TikTok. She has transitioned that into a fantastic coaching business. Speaking, she’s doing brand deals. There’s a number of things that she’s doing. And her content is really around helping people overcome their suffering and find perspective. And it’s just super inspiring. She is also a trauma informed breathwork facilitator.
RV (01:54):
She’s been featured in outlets like NBC and Fox news and CBSs and Yahoo business insider. And she hosts a podcast called the coachable podcast, which is in the top one and a half percent of all podcasts globally. And it’s fun to see that taking off for her and just so many different things that she’s working on. And obviously she’s an influencer. So she’s, she’s doing brand deals with big companies like can bud and better help, et cetera. And just inspiring a lot of people more than that. We just think she’s cool. And and she’s someone even like so many of our clients, even though she’s a client, it’s like somebody that we look up to and we learn from and just felt like you gotta meet Tori Gordon. And she’s got some awesome stuff to share with us. So anyways, Tori, welcome to the show.
TG (02:41):
Thank you so much for having me that was such a warm intro. And it’s just fun to be here and have this conversation with you. You’re somebody that I very much you and AJ are somebody people that I look up to admire and have learned so much from. So it’s, it’s fun to have this come full circle and get to chat while we record. So I’m excited for the conversation.
RV (03:03):
Yeah. Thank you, buddy. I mean we, we totally believe in you. You’re easy to believe in. I mean you have just built, you know, a, a such a phenomenal and loyal following which we would describe as quickly only because we’ve been around for 20 years. And you know, it’s taken you less time than that, but tell us the story a little bit. I, I mean, I wanna hear, I wanna hear about TikTok and how you’ve built that, but, but before that, tell us a little bit about your personal story. And you, you know, how you got started and how you figured out what, you know, I know that led to how you figured out what type of content you were gonna start producing.
TG (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great place to start. I think for me, I never would’ve anticipated that I would be having this type of conversation or be doing the work that do with clients or online ever if you’d asked me, you know, what, what would my future look like a couple years ago? You know, I’ve, I’ve been doing this full time for less than two and a half years. And before that I was in corporate sales, outside sales, and then I was leading a sales team of about a hundred people in five countries teaching and training them in sales training and onboarding and performance management, and was really kind of growing my, my career in that, that traditional way. And for me, I grew up in Alabama in Tuscaloosa. And so and I grew up in a family of educators and teachers, my mom and dad were both professors at the university level.
TG (04:47):
And so it was really always instilled in me the value of education and learning and being a student of life. And you know, I never really had a clear idea though, growing up of what I wanted to do. And so fell into sales. Like I fell into a lot of things early in my life, looking for other people to tell me who to be and what to do. I got my degree in social work at the time because a friend of mine said, Hey, it’s easy and it’s interesting. Come get this, you know, this degree, it’s an easy a and it was in college that my sister was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She’s 21 at the time. So I was for the first time experiencing a lot of upheaval in my life and just felt kind of lost at that season about who I was and what I wanted and felt like I needed to stay close to home to cuz of everything that was going on.
TG (05:43):
And over a couple of years, you know, I lost my sister, lost her battle with cancer. We lived through a massive F four tornado that came through our hometown in Tuscaloosa. And then my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and wow, those losses just kind of piled up on each other to the point where after my mom passed away, 10 days after my 27th birthday, I kind of looked at my life and I looked around this beautiful house that I owned at 26 and the money that I had had made and all of the things, all of the boxes that I had checked that I thought were gonna make me happy and I felt alone. I felt empty. And I didn’t know what if I were to have been the one to, to have died genuinely like would I have left behind?
TG (06:39):
Would anybody care? Like, did I make an impact? Did I, did I have a powerful influence on people in a positive way? And obviously my, my mother and sister did in so many ways, not just on my life, but so many other people. And it put, set me on this path of really trying to figure out what my legacy would be. What did I wanna be remembered for and how did I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. And so that required me to do a lot of personal healing and get to know myself in a whole new way and give myself permission to do things I’d never done before. And so my journey really started from a selfish place of, of really trying to, to figure out my life path and purpose and what I needed. And it, it began with starting a podcast just to talk about the things that I was learning personally in my journey and that evolved very quickly. I actually got a call from my corporate boss and her boss right after I launched my podcast back in 2019 saying the first thing they said was we saw that you launched a podcast and were disappointed.
RV (07:45):
Really.
TG (07:46):
Yeah. And they told me, you know, we, this looks like it takes a lot of time. How do we know you’re not, you know, doing this on the side, we want you to be fully committed to this company and nothing else. And it was very clear that they hadn’t listened to the show because they had no idea what I was talking about on it. And they made a lot of accusations. And so it was clear then I think my life started to open up this natural path of saying, if, if you really want to pursue this, you’re gonna have to have a deep commitment and current to do something new, but you need to learn how to trust yourself. And so after that conversation, I put in my two weeks notice and I started on this entrepreneurial journey that I’ve been doing the last two and a half years, but had no idea was one of those jump out of the plane and build the parachute on the way down kind of thing. Wow.
RV (08:37):
I mean, so I, I wanted to share that story for so many reasons cuz it’s just, it’s such a powerful story. And there’s, I think when people think of like, you know, oh, TikTok or they’re a talker, you know, it’s easy to go, oh, it’s somebody who, you know, just wants fame or just, just, you know, waste their life away in video. Or like we have all these really stupid preconceived notions of like what that means. And we, I think specifically for brand builders and our community of mission driven messengers, I mean obviously we of the things that we say all the time is you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, your story is such a beautiful, one of going, you’re just using the tools of the day to help people walk through pain that you have already experienced. And I think it’s really important for people to catch that it’s like, it’s not vanity it’s, it’s not, it’s not even entertainment. It is. You’re, you’re just using a vehicle to reach a lot of people to, to try to help those who are going through something like what you’ve been through. I mean, to lose your mom and your, and have a, a tornado that magnitude all within a few years. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s, that’s crazy Tory.
TG (10:03):
Yeah, it was a lot. And I didn’t, you know, mention the three grandparents and the uncle and all the other people who passed in that time. So there was a lot that was going on. And, and to your point, I think a lot of people do we have these, these ideas in our head about what it means to be on social media. It’s funny. I was having a conversation in a discord channel the other day with a venture capitalist who was asking me about TikTok. And I was saying it would be an amazing opportunity for him to, to get global exposure and just to become kind of known as an expert in his space. Even if you’re not, you’re not selling, you know, your services on, on the platform, you’re just letting people know who you are. And it’s funny that no matter where people are in their journey, there’s all of these ideas that people have about, oh, people would think of me, what he said is people immediately think I’m phony.
TG (10:59):
People would think what he is really saying is people would judge me and I’m afraid of that. And the other piece is how many of us don’t think our, our ideal client is out there. And for me it was really, you know, before I was even thinking about selling to an audience or converting people that watch my content into clients or anything like that, it was just, I have a story and a message that I feel like can help somebody. And if I had had somebody, there were people in my life that I listened to that really encouraged me to, to do the work on myself that I needed at the time. And my, my goal was just to be a voice, you know, that would encourage people to to live a life that they were proud of and to, to stop avoiding things that they were, they were trying to run from.
TG (11:52):
And I think, yeah, practically, it’s just a, a smart strategic move because there’s millions upon millions upon millions of people that are on this platform. And the funny thing is when I got on TikTok, it wasn’t really strategic. It TikTok actually reached out to me and they said, Hey, it was in the middle of the pandemic. It was traditionally known as a young kid’s platform with that. A lot of kids were on dancing and doing trends like that. And they noticed a need in the market that there are so many people that are at home that can’t go anywhere and we wanna educate and inspire people through our platform. So can we bring content creators to create educat inspirational content across all these different industries? And I was one of ’em and then I just, for the first 30 to 40 videos was completely doing something I’d never done before, but it, there was this huge permission slip there because no one I knew was on TikTok at the time. So I just was doing something that was a little bit new and I a little bit fresh and ultimately resonated with people. Mm-Hmm
RV (12:59):
TG (14:03):
Yeah. I think definitely early on, I was trying to figure out what my voice was gonna be on this platform, because the thing about TikTok, if you’re coming from Instagram or any other social media platform TikTok at the time, really required me to think differently about how I was gonna share my message. And what I knew was my sweet spot was, was really just talking authentically to the camera. And so I started doing that like on my daily walks during COVID, I would have no makeup on, and I would just like be telling, you know, sharing a, a snippet of, of my day or something that you know, had just listened to in a podcast or something that inspired me. And I think the thing about TikTok is it feels really relatable and raw and real, the it’s built in such a way that you can create content on the fly and really document your real life, as opposed to what we had been traditionally kind of conditioned into, which is perfect feeds and perfect photos.
TG (15:03):
And this highlight real. So people were really hungry for authenticity and, and something that genuine. And so regardless of, of the type of content, I think the thing that helped me was just pulling, allowing myself to like put down any mask I wore on any other platform and just show up as me. The thing that really, really does well with, with audiences on TikTok is feeling like they know the person that they’re watching that you’re part of their life, or you’re part of this journey that they’re going on. And, and just telling a story is of one way to really engage an audience and take them on, you know, that journey. But yeah, we talk about deep topics and, and the thing that I’ve realized is that trauma doesn’t discriminate. You know, everybody has experienced something hard in their life and they’re all seasons that, that we need support in and can relate to.
TG (16:07):
And that’s the kind of content that moves people. It’s either funny, it’s emotional in some way, whether it, it causes you to laugh or to cry or to, to feel something think about all the, the videos you’ve seen of dogs or, or the, you know, pet of the week. And it just like makes you wanna cry. But I just talk about, you know, personal stories. And I, that’s what I encourage other people to do is let people get to know you on a deeper level that they might not see on other platforms.
RV (16:39):
So I, I have that question for you. So clearly that has been your strategy on TikTok. That’s worked really, really well for you. The, you know, and, and if y’all, don’t already follow her, if you don’t know. So if you it’s coach, coach Tory, Gordon is her TikTok handle. You’ve got videos of you crying and on camera and stuff. So do you think that other, do you think that that approach doesn’t work on other platforms? You know, just kind of like the raw authenticity thing, do you think it just especially works on TikTok? Do you think that other platforms are migrating that way now, or they’re not did it, did it really just work cuz you were early to the platform mm-hmm
TG (17:34):
Well, I’d say since Instagram has rolled out reels a lot of the, the things that you see do really well on TikTok are starting to do well on Instagram several months later. So I think there’s part, I don’t think it’s necessarily only on TikTok, but for those who’ve been on Instagram for a really long time, there has been a way that we’ve been conditioning used to seeing feeds and content there. So TikTok was for me, the first platform that kind of was this permission slip to be more vulnerable on social media. But I think that’s the way it’s trending in general, across platforms. People want realness. They want to see that they’re, we’re tired of that kind of fabricated airbrushed look all the time. And I think that showing up on Instagram different ways, whether it’s through video content or through other types of posts, but ultimately when, what I’ve experienced in trying to build a personal brand is people want to know you and TikTok makes it super easy to just post you can post a large quantity of content so that people can get to know you quickly as opposed to feeling like I can only post one post a day on Instagram.
TG (18:57):
Right? it it’s sort of like taking your Instagram stories and actually posting it. So it doesn’t go away after 24 hours. So those little snippets into your life that you might post on your, your story, people actually can go back and kind of track your history and see the things that you’ve done or the things that you’ve talked about. And, and there gets to be kind of this, this theme of what is this person’s content about? Is it, am I gonna go there and I’m gonna learn something, am I gonna go there gonna be entertained? Am I gonna go there? And I’m gonna be inspired. Am I gonna laugh? And people start to, to go to your profile cuz they’re looking for a certain type of content. And so the thing I love about TikTok is very quickly O the audience will tell you the, the kind of content that they wanna see more of. That’s just how the algorithm is built. There is so that anybody starting out, even if you have zero followers, you can get organic reach and the TikTok audience will tell you if they like it. And then you can do more create more of, of that kind of content, which is invaluable feedback to get
RV (20:14):
Mm-Hmm
TG (21:03):
Yeah. Definitely record in the app. That’s make it native to the platform. It’s a something that they really, really like when it comes to the algorithm, they they’ve built the platform in such a way that it’s easy to record right there in the TikTok app, as opposed to recording you know, with your HD camera and then uploading it. And having this perfectly curated video. It’s, it’s almost better if it’s not a lot of my content has been terribly lit, you know, when I’m walking my dog in the middle of the night or sitting in my car before going to meet a girlfriend for dinner, and it’s just like, I just whipped out my phone and I press record record, and I just started talking. So I wouldn’t over it’s it doesn’t need to be overproduced. The other thing I’ll say practically is, is definitely use the, the text overlay feature because the TikTok algorithm picks up on the text.
TG (22:02):
That’s written through the app and those key words show up show the algorithm who to show that piece of content to. So that’s really helpful. So if you have keywords such as success or motivation or mental health or anxiety that that’s gonna dictate kind of who gets to see your piece of content first, and if they like it and they watch it for a significant amount of time, that population gonna grow getting people’s attention early is another thing. So just practically doing something that kind of hooks people in. And, and this is something that’s talked about on a lot of PR platforms, but especially on TikTok, if you’re just a user of the platform, you’re gonna start to notice the types of that really gets your attention. There’s something that happens in the first couple seconds that makes you intrigued. And that can even just be a shift of, of the camera, like the camera angle that you have or a sound that you make.
TG (23:05):
So using the, the video, like for feature within the app, using the text overlay and using keywords and now I think actually it’s becoming sort of SEO driven and keyword driven. So it’s actually, your videos will show up in Google if you search for certain keywords. So it’s similar to what YouTube has done. When you’re thinking about titles or, or kind of click baby word choices, that’s gonna help people to, to click on your your content. So that’s one thing you can be thinking about, but ultimately I say people really like to be taken on a journey. So if you’re thinking about the type of content, think about either something you can teach or steps to a process something like that even, and it can be around just anything and everything. Whether it’s, Hey here, 10, 10 best things to do on a date or the 10 things you don’t wanna do on a date that can be 10 pieces of content right there, and people will come back for more. Do
RV (24:16):
You, how long does it take you to make a TikTok video?
TG (24:20):
I, the be the shorter, the better traditionally so around, I would say five minutes if you’re editing and everything that I would tell people to do 15 seconds or less, less for a TikTok, if you’re just getting started. But there’s a three minute feature now and I sometimes use that and those have done extremely well, two but ultimately I don’t overproduce my content. I really I try to make it as raw as possible because that’s kind of my, my thing and how people know me, the more edited, the more transitions there are. It actually just doesn’t do as well with my audience. They, they know me for just sitting there and talking to the camera spilling my heart out and then you know, letting that be that be it, I don’t really overthink it when I, oh, it comes to producing the content itself.
RV (25:22):
How do you make money from this? Okay. So this, that, this is a question I think that people have, right? Like you know, you start doing this, you’re incorporating it into your rhythm, even if it only takes five minutes. And of course, when you’re first learning how to use the app, like, what are all the buttons do? It’s there’s, you know, learning curve. Sure. The it’s a lot of time, there’s some risk. I mean, you’re putting yourself out there. I mean, I think to the, to, to the fear of to, to the fear of you know, that VC, that person that you were talking about earlier being judged, I think you will be judged. I mean, you will have haters. Like you will have some people who, who show up, but like, so you, you do all of this. How does it turn into money? So talk to us about that.
TG (26:11):
There’s several ways. One is just creating content on the platform. Once you have reached, I believe it’s still 10,000 followers. You can join the creators fund, which will pay you based on the number of views that you get. And you just get paid simply for creating content that gets viewed. That’s one way you can also
RV (26:39):
That’s really cool by the way, cuz that no one else has none of the other platforms have that. I don’t think of just like mm-hmm
TG (26:52):
So that’s and that’s available for any and everybody. So that’s one super easy way. The second is if you have a thousand followers, you can start to use their go live feature. That’s one of the best ways to create a real community, having some kind of cadence and consistency around going live so that you’re really building relationships with people and on your lives, people can pay you so they can pay you through coins. They can tip you just on your videos, on your channel in general, there is an option to add tips. And so people will just, if they like your content, they’ll, it’s basically like being able to support an artist or something that you like, but you can support a creator through tips. So
RV (27:37):
It’s like a band, like a band playing at a bar or something and you just like drop the money into the tip chart.
TG (27:44):
Yep. And it will interesting surprise you the other day. I just actually added that feature and I never thought, you know, anybody would, would do it. And then I looked the other day, somebody had tipped me a hundred dollars and I was like, wow, that’s so amazing. So I really felt compelled to reach out to that person and start a relationship with that person. Just thank them for their generosity. But you’ll be surprised. You know, I think especially as content creators, we forget how much of an impact we really do make on people and how one piece of content can be the thing that inspires someone to quit a job or leave a relationship or start a business or ask for help or whatever it it is. And people feel indebted to you when, when you’ve been kind of that voice, that, that was guiding them in a time that they really needed it and they want to give back and they want to say, thank you in the ways that they can.
TG (28:39):
So whether that’s through lives or tips that’s one way that you can monetize it. Then as you grow, there are so many brands that want to collaborate with content creators on TikTok. It really is. Video is the next, the next thing that’s, that’s really being pushed on social media. We moved from, from photos to, to video and now
RV (30:11):
I love that. That’s, I mean, that’s simple, but that’s, that’s, that’s a lot of different things. I mean, you’ve got the creator fund, you have the tip function, you’ve brand deals, and then you have basically just driving your audience to buy your thing, which is kind of the world that we live in mm-hmm
TG (30:51):
Yeah, well, like, like I said there are people in our lives that kind of point the way and show us, I always look to people who are, are doing the thing I wanted be doing. And as many listeners of the show know like Lewis houses is probably one of those people for many of us who we’ve watched and admired and, and listened to. And I remember hearing you on Lewis’s show and seeing all the things that he has built. I, I wanted to work with somebody who could guide me in terms of all of these opportunities. I was kind of naturally getting anyway. I didn’t know where to focus my attention or my time or my energy. And it had felt like in, in a year and a half or two years of doing this, I had been piece it all together and trying to hire somebody for, you know, a website and hire a branding person and hire somebody to help me with ads or whatever it was.
TG (31:55):
And what I really needed was a mentor. What I really needed was somebody who could, who had done it before
RV (32:59):
Yeah. I love that cuz I think that’s one of the, you know, some people we work with are like brand new in their journey and it’s like, help me get clear on all this. Somebody like Lewis is obviously way far down the path and it’s more of like help me sort out my options. But I think with everybody, we’re always trying to play that long game and go like, how do you make this substantive? Not just viral or, you know, a flash, but like a true sustainable career. You know, when meeting people like you and hearing your story is just, it’s like you, you should be, I mean, there’s such a need for, for what you’re doing. And it’s been, I think, you know, aging, a heart and, and, and mine in our teams like has been the first couple years of brand builders group, I think have been a lot about the, the curriculum.
RV (33:48):
You know, we’re just trying to formalize, like you’re saying like how have we built what we’ve built and helped the people that we have and like turning it into a process that I think the next generation of brand builders is really about
TG (34:32):
Yeah. I mean, when I think about investing now, as opposed to when I was initially investing in coaches or, or mentors or programs early on on the motivation has definitely shifted a bit. Now, obviously I care about the curriculum, but I really care about the people that are in, in the community. Who am I networking with? Who, who can I learn from? Who can I support and how can I collaborate with them? That’s really so much value that you guys bring on top of everything else that you teach is just attracting really powerful purpose driven leaders together. And that when you get people like that together, there’s just synergy. And so many idea is that, that form and how can we do this? And and that’s really exciting for me because as a entrepreneur that has built an online business, it can feel super isolating. And like you’re the only one. And you only get to connect with people, you know, via the internet. And that’s great. And sometimes you, you wanna go deeper and that’s what we get to get to do and what I’ve, I’ve had the opportunity to do with other brand builders, which has been really amazing. I love
RV (35:51):
That. Yeah, that’s that, that fill just fills me up and you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gotten no doubt. Like, you know, if I could buy stock in somebody, I would buy stock in Tory Gordon, because it’s just like the trajectory of where you’re going and, and the people that you’re hanging out with inside our community. It’s like, you, you can, you quickly spot the ones who are willing to do the work and willing to spend the time and get to know each other, speaking of the future, just while I have you. I do wanna, I know we got way over time, but, but you mentioned the metaverse, this is something I’ve started paying attention to a little bit. You know, I was late to the game with Facebook. Definitely missed the boat on Instagram, missed the boat on TikTok. Podcasting was the one thing that I kind of caught the wave early, but then we ended up selling the podcast when we sold the company.
RV (36:39):
And so that disappeared, you know? And so mm-hmm,
TG (37:14):
Like you, I have my, my hesitations and my fears around what, what the future holds, but I am also, I have learned to follow where the young people go and I’m not I’m I know I’m still young, but the, the kids are kind of on that cusp of what’s coming and what’s new and it’s, they it’s to crypto and it’s the metaverse and it’s NFTs. And I actually heard an interview that you did with, I think Tom bile talking about NFTs on success of successes page on Instagram. And that kind of got my, my wheels turning. And so I started to do my research and we just invested in our first NFT. And metaverse project over the weekend. I’m really excited about because the truth is I, I do think that’s where we are headed. And like you said, it it’s about getting in early and really adopting the, the technology and just accepting that this is kind of where the future is headed.
TG (38:20):
That the sooner I can accept that and get on board with it, the sooner I can also help to shape it and what that’s gonna look like. And so if we’re gonna be, you know, meeting virtually in the future, then that means I can help to create a safe space for people to do that and to, to connect and engage in a way that is nourishing and is supportive. And that, that’s the things that really excite me is being part of something that’s being built so that I, I can have a hand in part of that conversation. And, and what, what does that look like in the future? And typically in my experience, the, the kids are the ones that are leading the charge on that. And so I’m gonna kind of keep my eye out for where they’re headed and what they’re, what they’re into and do my research. Like everybody else. We, none of us really know, but I’m, I’m learning along with everybody. Just like you
RV (39:21):
Love it. I love it. Well, Tori, that is that’s enlightening and, and just yeah, I mean, that’s how I feel. It’s like, I, I used just for so long, I’ve been, I was always the youngest, the young guy, the young kid, the youngest one in the room and, and, and I look back and go, wow, I’m not that guy anymore. And pretty soon I’m gonna start being the old guy and the oldest person in the room. And and so I just admire how you’re learning and growing and just like, even what you’re saying, looking to the, looking to the young people. And yeah. So thank you for, thank you for your trust. Thanks for the chance of, of an, the opportunity for letting us shape, you know, some of the direction of what you’re up to. We know it’s gonna be huge, huge, even huge than it is
TG (40:14):
I’d love to connect with you guys. I’m on social Instagram, TikTok I’m coach Tory Gordon. You can also go to my website, Tory gordon.com. Find out all about me. And we’d love to give you guys access. We’ve been talking about a lot about success and how to get there, but one of the things I really teach a lot about is, is how to make that sustainable long term. And so I’ve got a free training if you guys are in should you can grab that on my site and we’ll, I’m sure we’ll put it in the show notes or something, so you can guys can get access, but to gordon.com is the best way to learn more.
RV (40:48):
I love it. Yeah, we will. We’ll link up. We’ll link up to all of that. We’ll be following you on the TikTok. And maybe looking out for you in the metaverse here at some point hopefully seeing you at a brain builders group event live, we, we got about half our events live in person next year, so that’s good. And we just, no matter what, we’re just know, we’re, we’re, we’re polling for you and praying for you and wish you the best. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Thanks
TG (41:13):
For having me, Rory
Ep 248: Tips for Growing on TikTok with Tori Gordon
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 while wanted to let you know 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, call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Oh man, I’m so excited. I cannot, I cannot wait for you to meet Tori Gordon. Tori is someone who has become just one of my favorite people that I met in the last couple years. We met her through brand builders. So she is, she’s a brand builder. She’s one of our clients, but she is extraordinary and she’s been doing huge things long before we ever got a chance to get to know her. In 2021, she actually has been one of tos, top 100 female creators. She has over 800,000 followers on TikTok. She has transitioned that into a fantastic coaching business. Speaking, she’s doing brand deals. There’s a number of things that she’s doing. And her content is really around helping people overcome their suffering and find perspective. And it’s just super inspiring. She is also a trauma informed breathwork facilitator.
RV (01:54):
She’s been featured in outlets like NBC and Fox news and CBSs and Yahoo business insider. And she hosts a podcast called the coachable podcast, which is in the top one and a half percent of all podcasts globally. And it’s fun to see that taking off for her and just so many different things that she’s working on. And obviously she’s an influencer. So she’s, she’s doing brand deals with big companies like can bud and better help, et cetera. And just inspiring a lot of people more than that. We just think she’s cool. And and she’s someone even like so many of our clients, even though she’s a client, it’s like somebody that we look up to and we learn from and just felt like you gotta meet Tori Gordon. And she’s got some awesome stuff to share with us. So anyways, Tori, welcome to the show.
TG (02:41):
Thank you so much for having me that was such a warm intro. And it’s just fun to be here and have this conversation with you. You’re somebody that I very much you and AJ are somebody people that I look up to admire and have learned so much from. So it’s, it’s fun to have this come full circle and get to chat while we record. So I’m excited for the conversation.
RV (03:03):
Yeah. Thank you, buddy. I mean we, we totally believe in you. You’re easy to believe in. I mean you have just built, you know, a, a such a phenomenal and loyal following which we would describe as quickly only because we’ve been around for 20 years. And you know, it’s taken you less time than that, but tell us the story a little bit. I, I mean, I wanna hear, I wanna hear about TikTok and how you’ve built that, but, but before that, tell us a little bit about your personal story. And you, you know, how you got started and how you figured out what, you know, I know that led to how you figured out what type of content you were gonna start producing.
TG (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great place to start. I think for me, I never would’ve anticipated that I would be having this type of conversation or be doing the work that do with clients or online ever if you’d asked me, you know, what, what would my future look like a couple years ago? You know, I’ve, I’ve been doing this full time for less than two and a half years. And before that I was in corporate sales, outside sales, and then I was leading a sales team of about a hundred people in five countries teaching and training them in sales training and onboarding and performance management, and was really kind of growing my, my career in that, that traditional way. And for me, I grew up in Alabama in Tuscaloosa. And so and I grew up in a family of educators and teachers, my mom and dad were both professors at the university level.
TG (04:47):
And so it was really always instilled in me the value of education and learning and being a student of life. And you know, I never really had a clear idea though, growing up of what I wanted to do. And so fell into sales. Like I fell into a lot of things early in my life, looking for other people to tell me who to be and what to do. I got my degree in social work at the time because a friend of mine said, Hey, it’s easy and it’s interesting. Come get this, you know, this degree, it’s an easy a and it was in college that my sister was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She’s 21 at the time. So I was for the first time experiencing a lot of upheaval in my life and just felt kind of lost at that season about who I was and what I wanted and felt like I needed to stay close to home to cuz of everything that was going on.
TG (05:43):
And over a couple of years, you know, I lost my sister, lost her battle with cancer. We lived through a massive F four tornado that came through our hometown in Tuscaloosa. And then my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and wow, those losses just kind of piled up on each other to the point where after my mom passed away, 10 days after my 27th birthday, I kind of looked at my life and I looked around this beautiful house that I owned at 26 and the money that I had had made and all of the things, all of the boxes that I had checked that I thought were gonna make me happy and I felt alone. I felt empty. And I didn’t know what if I were to have been the one to, to have died genuinely like would I have left behind?
TG (06:39):
Would anybody care? Like, did I make an impact? Did I, did I have a powerful influence on people in a positive way? And obviously my, my mother and sister did in so many ways, not just on my life, but so many other people. And it put, set me on this path of really trying to figure out what my legacy would be. What did I wanna be remembered for and how did I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. And so that required me to do a lot of personal healing and get to know myself in a whole new way and give myself permission to do things I’d never done before. And so my journey really started from a selfish place of, of really trying to, to figure out my life path and purpose and what I needed. And it, it began with starting a podcast just to talk about the things that I was learning personally in my journey and that evolved very quickly. I actually got a call from my corporate boss and her boss right after I launched my podcast back in 2019 saying the first thing they said was we saw that you launched a podcast and were disappointed.
RV (07:45):
Really.
TG (07:46):
Yeah. And they told me, you know, we, this looks like it takes a lot of time. How do we know you’re not, you know, doing this on the side, we want you to be fully committed to this company and nothing else. And it was very clear that they hadn’t listened to the show because they had no idea what I was talking about on it. And they made a lot of accusations. And so it was clear then I think my life started to open up this natural path of saying, if, if you really want to pursue this, you’re gonna have to have a deep commitment and current to do something new, but you need to learn how to trust yourself. And so after that conversation, I put in my two weeks notice and I started on this entrepreneurial journey that I’ve been doing the last two and a half years, but had no idea was one of those jump out of the plane and build the parachute on the way down kind of thing. Wow.
RV (08:37):
I mean, so I, I wanted to share that story for so many reasons cuz it’s just, it’s such a powerful story. And there’s, I think when people think of like, you know, oh, TikTok or they’re a talker, you know, it’s easy to go, oh, it’s somebody who, you know, just wants fame or just, just, you know, waste their life away in video. Or like we have all these really stupid preconceived notions of like what that means. And we, I think specifically for brand builders and our community of mission driven messengers, I mean obviously we of the things that we say all the time is you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, your story is such a beautiful, one of going, you’re just using the tools of the day to help people walk through pain that you have already experienced. And I think it’s really important for people to catch that it’s like, it’s not vanity it’s, it’s not, it’s not even entertainment. It is. You’re, you’re just using a vehicle to reach a lot of people to, to try to help those who are going through something like what you’ve been through. I mean, to lose your mom and your, and have a, a tornado that magnitude all within a few years. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s, that’s crazy Tory.
TG (10:03):
Yeah, it was a lot. And I didn’t, you know, mention the three grandparents and the uncle and all the other people who passed in that time. So there was a lot that was going on. And, and to your point, I think a lot of people do we have these, these ideas in our head about what it means to be on social media. It’s funny. I was having a conversation in a discord channel the other day with a venture capitalist who was asking me about TikTok. And I was saying it would be an amazing opportunity for him to, to get global exposure and just to become kind of known as an expert in his space. Even if you’re not, you’re not selling, you know, your services on, on the platform, you’re just letting people know who you are. And it’s funny that no matter where people are in their journey, there’s all of these ideas that people have about, oh, people would think of me, what he said is people immediately think I’m phony.
TG (10:59):
People would think what he is really saying is people would judge me and I’m afraid of that. And the other piece is how many of us don’t think our, our ideal client is out there. And for me it was really, you know, before I was even thinking about selling to an audience or converting people that watch my content into clients or anything like that, it was just, I have a story and a message that I feel like can help somebody. And if I had had somebody, there were people in my life that I listened to that really encouraged me to, to do the work on myself that I needed at the time. And my, my goal was just to be a voice, you know, that would encourage people to to live a life that they were proud of and to, to stop avoiding things that they were, they were trying to run from.
TG (11:52):
And I think, yeah, practically, it’s just a, a smart strategic move because there’s millions upon millions upon millions of people that are on this platform. And the funny thing is when I got on TikTok, it wasn’t really strategic. It TikTok actually reached out to me and they said, Hey, it was in the middle of the pandemic. It was traditionally known as a young kid’s platform with that. A lot of kids were on dancing and doing trends like that. And they noticed a need in the market that there are so many people that are at home that can’t go anywhere and we wanna educate and inspire people through our platform. So can we bring content creators to create educat inspirational content across all these different industries? And I was one of ’em and then I just, for the first 30 to 40 videos was completely doing something I’d never done before, but it, there was this huge permission slip there because no one I knew was on TikTok at the time. So I just was doing something that was a little bit new and I a little bit fresh and ultimately resonated with people. Mm-Hmm
RV (12:59):
TG (14:03):
Yeah. I think definitely early on, I was trying to figure out what my voice was gonna be on this platform, because the thing about TikTok, if you’re coming from Instagram or any other social media platform TikTok at the time, really required me to think differently about how I was gonna share my message. And what I knew was my sweet spot was, was really just talking authentically to the camera. And so I started doing that like on my daily walks during COVID, I would have no makeup on, and I would just like be telling, you know, sharing a, a snippet of, of my day or something that you know, had just listened to in a podcast or something that inspired me. And I think the thing about TikTok is it feels really relatable and raw and real, the it’s built in such a way that you can create content on the fly and really document your real life, as opposed to what we had been traditionally kind of conditioned into, which is perfect feeds and perfect photos.
TG (15:03):
And this highlight real. So people were really hungry for authenticity and, and something that genuine. And so regardless of, of the type of content, I think the thing that helped me was just pulling, allowing myself to like put down any mask I wore on any other platform and just show up as me. The thing that really, really does well with, with audiences on TikTok is feeling like they know the person that they’re watching that you’re part of their life, or you’re part of this journey that they’re going on. And, and just telling a story is of one way to really engage an audience and take them on, you know, that journey. But yeah, we talk about deep topics and, and the thing that I’ve realized is that trauma doesn’t discriminate. You know, everybody has experienced something hard in their life and they’re all seasons that, that we need support in and can relate to.
TG (16:07):
And that’s the kind of content that moves people. It’s either funny, it’s emotional in some way, whether it, it causes you to laugh or to cry or to, to feel something think about all the, the videos you’ve seen of dogs or, or the, you know, pet of the week. And it just like makes you wanna cry. But I just talk about, you know, personal stories. And I, that’s what I encourage other people to do is let people get to know you on a deeper level that they might not see on other platforms.
RV (16:39):
So I, I have that question for you. So clearly that has been your strategy on TikTok. That’s worked really, really well for you. The, you know, and, and if y’all, don’t already follow her, if you don’t know. So if you it’s coach, coach Tory, Gordon is her TikTok handle. You’ve got videos of you crying and on camera and stuff. So do you think that other, do you think that that approach doesn’t work on other platforms? You know, just kind of like the raw authenticity thing, do you think it just especially works on TikTok? Do you think that other platforms are migrating that way now, or they’re not did it, did it really just work cuz you were early to the platform mm-hmm
TG (17:34):
Well, I’d say since Instagram has rolled out reels a lot of the, the things that you see do really well on TikTok are starting to do well on Instagram several months later. So I think there’s part, I don’t think it’s necessarily only on TikTok, but for those who’ve been on Instagram for a really long time, there has been a way that we’ve been conditioning used to seeing feeds and content there. So TikTok was for me, the first platform that kind of was this permission slip to be more vulnerable on social media. But I think that’s the way it’s trending in general, across platforms. People want realness. They want to see that they’re, we’re tired of that kind of fabricated airbrushed look all the time. And I think that showing up on Instagram different ways, whether it’s through video content or through other types of posts, but ultimately when, what I’ve experienced in trying to build a personal brand is people want to know you and TikTok makes it super easy to just post you can post a large quantity of content so that people can get to know you quickly as opposed to feeling like I can only post one post a day on Instagram.
TG (18:57):
Right? it it’s sort of like taking your Instagram stories and actually posting it. So it doesn’t go away after 24 hours. So those little snippets into your life that you might post on your, your story, people actually can go back and kind of track your history and see the things that you’ve done or the things that you’ve talked about. And, and there gets to be kind of this, this theme of what is this person’s content about? Is it, am I gonna go there and I’m gonna learn something, am I gonna go there gonna be entertained? Am I gonna go there? And I’m gonna be inspired. Am I gonna laugh? And people start to, to go to your profile cuz they’re looking for a certain type of content. And so the thing I love about TikTok is very quickly O the audience will tell you the, the kind of content that they wanna see more of. That’s just how the algorithm is built. There is so that anybody starting out, even if you have zero followers, you can get organic reach and the TikTok audience will tell you if they like it. And then you can do more create more of, of that kind of content, which is invaluable feedback to get
RV (20:14):
Mm-Hmm
TG (21:03):
Yeah. Definitely record in the app. That’s make it native to the platform. It’s a something that they really, really like when it comes to the algorithm, they they’ve built the platform in such a way that it’s easy to record right there in the TikTok app, as opposed to recording you know, with your HD camera and then uploading it. And having this perfectly curated video. It’s, it’s almost better if it’s not a lot of my content has been terribly lit, you know, when I’m walking my dog in the middle of the night or sitting in my car before going to meet a girlfriend for dinner, and it’s just like, I just whipped out my phone and I press record record, and I just started talking. So I wouldn’t over it’s it doesn’t need to be overproduced. The other thing I’ll say practically is, is definitely use the, the text overlay feature because the TikTok algorithm picks up on the text.
TG (22:02):
That’s written through the app and those key words show up show the algorithm who to show that piece of content to. So that’s really helpful. So if you have keywords such as success or motivation or mental health or anxiety that that’s gonna dictate kind of who gets to see your piece of content first, and if they like it and they watch it for a significant amount of time, that population gonna grow getting people’s attention early is another thing. So just practically doing something that kind of hooks people in. And, and this is something that’s talked about on a lot of PR platforms, but especially on TikTok, if you’re just a user of the platform, you’re gonna start to notice the types of that really gets your attention. There’s something that happens in the first couple seconds that makes you intrigued. And that can even just be a shift of, of the camera, like the camera angle that you have or a sound that you make.
TG (23:05):
So using the, the video, like for feature within the app, using the text overlay and using keywords and now I think actually it’s becoming sort of SEO driven and keyword driven. So it’s actually, your videos will show up in Google if you search for certain keywords. So it’s similar to what YouTube has done. When you’re thinking about titles or, or kind of click baby word choices, that’s gonna help people to, to click on your your content. So that’s one thing you can be thinking about, but ultimately I say people really like to be taken on a journey. So if you’re thinking about the type of content, think about either something you can teach or steps to a process something like that even, and it can be around just anything and everything. Whether it’s, Hey here, 10, 10 best things to do on a date or the 10 things you don’t wanna do on a date that can be 10 pieces of content right there, and people will come back for more. Do
RV (24:16):
You, how long does it take you to make a TikTok video?
TG (24:20):
I, the be the shorter, the better traditionally so around, I would say five minutes if you’re editing and everything that I would tell people to do 15 seconds or less, less for a TikTok, if you’re just getting started. But there’s a three minute feature now and I sometimes use that and those have done extremely well, two but ultimately I don’t overproduce my content. I really I try to make it as raw as possible because that’s kind of my, my thing and how people know me, the more edited, the more transitions there are. It actually just doesn’t do as well with my audience. They, they know me for just sitting there and talking to the camera spilling my heart out and then you know, letting that be that be it, I don’t really overthink it when I, oh, it comes to producing the content itself.
RV (25:22):
How do you make money from this? Okay. So this, that, this is a question I think that people have, right? Like you know, you start doing this, you’re incorporating it into your rhythm, even if it only takes five minutes. And of course, when you’re first learning how to use the app, like, what are all the buttons do? It’s there’s, you know, learning curve. Sure. The it’s a lot of time, there’s some risk. I mean, you’re putting yourself out there. I mean, I think to the, to, to the fear of to, to the fear of you know, that VC, that person that you were talking about earlier being judged, I think you will be judged. I mean, you will have haters. Like you will have some people who, who show up, but like, so you, you do all of this. How does it turn into money? So talk to us about that.
TG (26:11):
There’s several ways. One is just creating content on the platform. Once you have reached, I believe it’s still 10,000 followers. You can join the creators fund, which will pay you based on the number of views that you get. And you just get paid simply for creating content that gets viewed. That’s one way you can also
RV (26:39):
That’s really cool by the way, cuz that no one else has none of the other platforms have that. I don’t think of just like mm-hmm
TG (26:52):
So that’s and that’s available for any and everybody. So that’s one super easy way. The second is if you have a thousand followers, you can start to use their go live feature. That’s one of the best ways to create a real community, having some kind of cadence and consistency around going live so that you’re really building relationships with people and on your lives, people can pay you so they can pay you through coins. They can tip you just on your videos, on your channel in general, there is an option to add tips. And so people will just, if they like your content, they’ll, it’s basically like being able to support an artist or something that you like, but you can support a creator through tips. So
RV (27:37):
It’s like a band, like a band playing at a bar or something and you just like drop the money into the tip chart.
TG (27:44):
Yep. And it will interesting surprise you the other day. I just actually added that feature and I never thought, you know, anybody would, would do it. And then I looked the other day, somebody had tipped me a hundred dollars and I was like, wow, that’s so amazing. So I really felt compelled to reach out to that person and start a relationship with that person. Just thank them for their generosity. But you’ll be surprised. You know, I think especially as content creators, we forget how much of an impact we really do make on people and how one piece of content can be the thing that inspires someone to quit a job or leave a relationship or start a business or ask for help or whatever it it is. And people feel indebted to you when, when you’ve been kind of that voice, that, that was guiding them in a time that they really needed it and they want to give back and they want to say, thank you in the ways that they can.
TG (28:39):
So whether that’s through lives or tips that’s one way that you can monetize it. Then as you grow, there are so many brands that want to collaborate with content creators on TikTok. It really is. Video is the next, the next thing that’s, that’s really being pushed on social media. We moved from, from photos to, to video and now
RV (30:11):
I love that. That’s, I mean, that’s simple, but that’s, that’s, that’s a lot of different things. I mean, you’ve got the creator fund, you have the tip function, you’ve brand deals, and then you have basically just driving your audience to buy your thing, which is kind of the world that we live in mm-hmm
TG (30:51):
Yeah, well, like, like I said there are people in our lives that kind of point the way and show us, I always look to people who are, are doing the thing I wanted be doing. And as many listeners of the show know like Lewis houses is probably one of those people for many of us who we’ve watched and admired and, and listened to. And I remember hearing you on Lewis’s show and seeing all the things that he has built. I, I wanted to work with somebody who could guide me in terms of all of these opportunities. I was kind of naturally getting anyway. I didn’t know where to focus my attention or my time or my energy. And it had felt like in, in a year and a half or two years of doing this, I had been piece it all together and trying to hire somebody for, you know, a website and hire a branding person and hire somebody to help me with ads or whatever it was.
TG (31:55):
And what I really needed was a mentor. What I really needed was somebody who could, who had done it before
RV (32:59):
Yeah. I love that cuz I think that’s one of the, you know, some people we work with are like brand new in their journey and it’s like, help me get clear on all this. Somebody like Lewis is obviously way far down the path and it’s more of like help me sort out my options. But I think with everybody, we’re always trying to play that long game and go like, how do you make this substantive? Not just viral or, you know, a flash, but like a true sustainable career. You know, when meeting people like you and hearing your story is just, it’s like you, you should be, I mean, there’s such a need for, for what you’re doing. And it’s been, I think, you know, aging, a heart and, and, and mine in our teams like has been the first couple years of brand builders group, I think have been a lot about the, the curriculum.
RV (33:48):
You know, we’re just trying to formalize, like you’re saying like how have we built what we’ve built and helped the people that we have and like turning it into a process that I think the next generation of brand builders is really about
TG (34:32):
Yeah. I mean, when I think about investing now, as opposed to when I was initially investing in coaches or, or mentors or programs early on on the motivation has definitely shifted a bit. Now, obviously I care about the curriculum, but I really care about the people that are in, in the community. Who am I networking with? Who, who can I learn from? Who can I support and how can I collaborate with them? That’s really so much value that you guys bring on top of everything else that you teach is just attracting really powerful purpose driven leaders together. And that when you get people like that together, there’s just synergy. And so many idea is that, that form and how can we do this? And and that’s really exciting for me because as a entrepreneur that has built an online business, it can feel super isolating. And like you’re the only one. And you only get to connect with people, you know, via the internet. And that’s great. And sometimes you, you wanna go deeper and that’s what we get to get to do and what I’ve, I’ve had the opportunity to do with other brand builders, which has been really amazing. I love
RV (35:51):
That. Yeah, that’s that, that fill just fills me up and you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gotten no doubt. Like, you know, if I could buy stock in somebody, I would buy stock in Tory Gordon, because it’s just like the trajectory of where you’re going and, and the people that you’re hanging out with inside our community. It’s like, you, you can, you quickly spot the ones who are willing to do the work and willing to spend the time and get to know each other, speaking of the future, just while I have you. I do wanna, I know we got way over time, but, but you mentioned the metaverse, this is something I’ve started paying attention to a little bit. You know, I was late to the game with Facebook. Definitely missed the boat on Instagram, missed the boat on TikTok. Podcasting was the one thing that I kind of caught the wave early, but then we ended up selling the podcast when we sold the company.
RV (36:39):
And so that disappeared, you know? And so mm-hmm,
TG (37:14):
Like you, I have my, my hesitations and my fears around what, what the future holds, but I am also, I have learned to follow where the young people go and I’m not I’m I know I’m still young, but the, the kids are kind of on that cusp of what’s coming and what’s new and it’s, they it’s to crypto and it’s the metaverse and it’s NFTs. And I actually heard an interview that you did with, I think Tom bile talking about NFTs on success of successes page on Instagram. And that kind of got my, my wheels turning. And so I started to do my research and we just invested in our first NFT. And metaverse project over the weekend. I’m really excited about because the truth is I, I do think that’s where we are headed. And like you said, it it’s about getting in early and really adopting the, the technology and just accepting that this is kind of where the future is headed.
TG (38:20):
That the sooner I can accept that and get on board with it, the sooner I can also help to shape it and what that’s gonna look like. And so if we’re gonna be, you know, meeting virtually in the future, then that means I can help to create a safe space for people to do that and to, to connect and engage in a way that is nourishing and is supportive. And that, that’s the things that really excite me is being part of something that’s being built so that I, I can have a hand in part of that conversation. And, and what, what does that look like in the future? And typically in my experience, the, the kids are the ones that are leading the charge on that. And so I’m gonna kind of keep my eye out for where they’re headed and what they’re, what they’re into and do my research. Like everybody else. We, none of us really know, but I’m, I’m learning along with everybody. Just like you
RV (39:21):
Love it. I love it. Well, Tori, that is that’s enlightening and, and just yeah, I mean, that’s how I feel. It’s like, I, I used just for so long, I’ve been, I was always the youngest, the young guy, the young kid, the youngest one in the room and, and, and I look back and go, wow, I’m not that guy anymore. And pretty soon I’m gonna start being the old guy and the oldest person in the room. And and so I just admire how you’re learning and growing and just like, even what you’re saying, looking to the, looking to the young people. And yeah. So thank you for, thank you for your trust. Thanks for the chance of, of an, the opportunity for letting us shape, you know, some of the direction of what you’re up to. We know it’s gonna be huge, huge, even huge than it is
TG (40:14):
I’d love to connect with you guys. I’m on social Instagram, TikTok I’m coach Tory Gordon. You can also go to my website, Tory gordon.com. Find out all about me. And we’d love to give you guys access. We’ve been talking about a lot about success and how to get there, but one of the things I really teach a lot about is, is how to make that sustainable long term. And so I’ve got a free training if you guys are in should you can grab that on my site and we’ll, I’m sure we’ll put it in the show notes or something, so you can guys can get access, but to gordon.com is the best way to learn more.
RV (40:48):
I love it. Yeah, we will. We’ll link up. We’ll link up to all of that. We’ll be following you on the TikTok. And maybe looking out for you in the metaverse here at some point hopefully seeing you at a brain builders group event live, we, we got about half our events live in person next year, so that’s good. And we just, no matter what, we’re just know, we’re, we’re, we’re polling for you and praying for you and wish you the best. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Thanks
TG (41:13):
For having me, Rory
Ep 246: How to Get People to Pay Attention with Peter Sheahan
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 there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming, uh, 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 we’ll someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
So I am over the top excited to introduce to you someone who I legitimately considered to be one of the smartest people on the planet. Um, in fact, if I were running a very large corporation, or if I had a good friend that was like a fortune 500 executive and they were looking for consulting advice, leadership, I would refer them to Peter Sheahan. He is, uh, when, by the time he was 30 years old, he built not one, but two multimillion dollar companies. He has spoken, uh, more than 2,500 times in 40 plus countries around the globe. And I believe might be the, I think only him and I are two people that joined the professional speakers hall of fame in our thirties. Um, and he’s a hall of fame speaker. He, his client list is, I mean is crazy apple Chick-fil-A at and T.
RV (01:51):
Um, and he’s just absolutely brilliant. I I’ve known him from the speakers world for a while. Um, and the real story here is if you’re a brand builders group member, like one of our clients, or if you’ve ever heard me on someone else’s podcast, you know, that we teach this framework called Sheahan’s Wall and it is named after Peter Shehan. Now he didn’t name it after himself. We named it after him. I saw him speak one time randomly on this. He drew this diagram and then we lost touch. Um, and we just recently reconnected and he told me, he’s like, mate, you know, I wrote a book on the topic of this diagram, which we call Shehan wall. The book is called making it happen. Um, it’s all about turning good ideas into great results. And so I was like, I dude, you gotta come on the podcast, like you’re a celebrity our people are gonna go nuts. So anyways, with all that, welcome to the show, Peter,
PS (02:53):
Hey, SwRI you wanna know my side of that story by the way, tell me, because I got like three random texts one day, all in, probably in this face of a week, actually going, Hey, I heard this, you know, R Vaden guy get interviewed on this podcast. He was talking about you and Sheahan’s wall. And I’m like, what do you mean Sheen’s wall? I’d never heard of this thing. And I’m like, I’m just gonna have to call R and find out what the heck’s going on. And so, um, you know, I often make this joke that I’m more famous for being in other people’s work than I am for my own work. And so I, you know, PR proud to be associated with your brand mate.
RV (03:22):
Well, dude, I, I, um, thank you for that. And, and I it’s been, it’s been awesome to have this book and I wanna talk to you about the original concepts of it and, and going, going through the book, I realized there was something about the way that you presented it to me, where I, I feel like I heard it a little bit different than what you’ve been taught, what you actually, the way you teach it in the actual book. And so I was like, let’s talk about it. Yeah. Um, now, so can you describe what, uh, so for those, the people who don’t know what we’re talking about, if they’ve never heard me or seen, seen Shehan wall, or if they’ve never read your book, can you, can you explain what the diagram is? What it represents? Like how did you put it together originally?
PS (04:06):
Yeah, look, here’s the biggest challenge. Most people who are trying to get a business moving and off the ground are struggling to get the attention of the audience. They most need to influence. Now in my world, that’s a very small group of people who run very large companies in your world. It’s thought leaders and people with a message who are looking to build out their personal brand, you know, insert audience here. But none of those people wake up on any given day, trying to necessarily go looking for you or trying to necessarily, you know, bring attention to your value proposition. You are offer your services. You are literally to interrupt them or get on their radar. Um, and you, and about 4 million other people on any given day. Right? And so the underlying concept of the model that underpin that book is that you are better off being very, very tight and targeted in what you do.
PS (04:58):
And the value proposition you are bringing forward to that market to grab their attention before you try and sell them everything you could possibly do. Right? So, you know, when, think about when you and I got started in our business as well, there were probably 15 things we thought we could do for our clients, maybe 15 things we thought we could do for our members, but trying to sell ’em all 15 on the first date is not a great idea, right? You’re better off picking the one that’s most likely to grab their attention and, and get super, super targeted on that one thing. And the more targeted you get, the better chance you’ve got a piercing, what I would call the mental barrier or the attention barrier. Once you’ve done a piece of work, which
RV (05:37):
Is now formerly what she is named as she heads all, is she
PS (05:40):
Okay? So you get through, she, you get through she well. So I struggle to use my name in the third person, if that’s all right with you, right? So we get through the proverbial, she, and wall. But once you have that trust, there’s almost no limit to what they might allow you to do and the services you might bring. Right? Mm-hmm
PS (06:28):
Right? And so the point being, here’s a simple metaphor. Let’s say you meet your life partner, the person you wanna make your life partner at a bar, you don’t go up to him or her and ask them to marry you in that first interaction. You go up and say, Hey, do you mind if I buy you a drink or something, you know, something small and easy to say yes to that’s the real underlying premise. Um, there are other pieces to the, to the model, you know, this idea that mental energy is as scarce currency as time. And we can get into some of those as well. But the core idea is that no one got outta bed this morning, thinking about you, you’re trying to get on their mental menu in order to do that. You’re better off being tight, not broad. And then once you have the relationship expand from there. So
RV (07:10):
Yeah, I mean, that’s so good. And, and the visual for those of you that, you know, are, you’re trying to picture this. It’s, it’s sort of like, I guess triangle it, uh, I mean, we kind of think of it as like, you know, it starts broad and then you go narrow and then that’s, that’s how you break through the wall versus bouncing off the wall is being narrow. And then as you’re narrow, you break through the wall and then once you’re on the other side of that wall, then you can expand. So to zero in on the concept a little bit here, what is the wall?Is, is it, is it mental? Is it attention? Is that what the, is that what the wall is? Is, is that what is representative of the line that
PS (07:56):
Separates? I’d primarily say it’s attention and attention can get expressed in time. Attention could get expressed in my level of engagement. Attention could be expressed in the level of research I might be prepared to do about you before I meet you, anything where I’m gonna invest something I have as a currency into understanding you and what you want to do. That’s what’s on the other side, meaning like once you have my attention, I will express it in any of those currencies. Right. And, and here’s the deal like before this podcast, or I had eight back to back calls. I mean, one hour after another, after another, I didn’t have time to be pitched a new idea. I’m not gonna read spam on any given day. And I sure say, I’m not gonna sort of listen to someone that says, Hey, I can do anyone of 4,500 things for you, which of the 4,500 would you like?
PS (08:42):
But if you are targeting me on the right day with the right problem in a very clear value proposition, I might actually give you the time of day. I might say, you know what? I really am struggling with that. Um, let’s take 15 minutes and now you ha now you’re on the other side of my wall, right? You are on the other side of my, you know, you’ve, you’ve broken through the attention barrier. Yeah. And what you do with those five or six minutes is up to you. And I know, or you teach a lot of your members how to position themselves, understand their brand, what the bits about them that are unique. I know you talk to a lot of about how do you converse and engage in a way that’s influential. They’re all super important skills once you’re through the wall. The bit that comes before that, which I know you also teach around positioning is, you know, don’t be kind of so abstract and broad that no one really knows what you do with the value you’re gonna bring, or you never get my attention
RV (09:32):
Uhhuh
PS (10:26):
I, I would say trust builds as you move. So let’s assume this is on a left to right model in the walls, in the middle. Um, as you move to the right of the model, you’re at a higher and higher level trust, cause you’ve likely done more and more things together. And if you’ve done them well, you’ve created more and more value over time. But when you are just through the wall, it’s not about trust. It’s about opportunity. You have got for the first time, an opportunity to hook that person’s interest to get them interested in what you might want to do. Next. It could be to attend an event. It could be to join a membership year. It could be to, to do corporate consulting. Like it depends on what you sell. It might be to try your restaurant out, you know? Um, and so no, I would say immediately on the other side of the wall is just an opportunity and it’s probably a very fleeting and short opportunity. So you better know how to position your value in that moment. You better make that interaction memorable. You be incredibly clear what you’re gonna do for that person, that buyer or else you, you’re never gonna get to a place of trust. So trust is further out in my opinion, uh, in terms of on the right side of that wall. Gotcha.
RV (11:31):
Okay. And I, I think, you know, one of the thing that is like the way that you kind of describe it here is in a, is in a singular instance, sort of like a singular encounter with an individual person. We’ve always thought it, we’ve thought we’ve thought about it as more general. Like you, nobody knows who you are. And then breaking through the wall is like, you know, you reach this point of like mass critical mass where it’s like, okay, now you have enough credibility. So it, it, what I hear you saying is it’s like it applies in both the granular and at the high level, um,
PS (12:13):
The way you’re describing it, RS spot on, like I could do my whole career. I could literally map my career on that model. Right? Like I started going into high schools and doing these speeches to kids on how to transition from school to work. I originally hit a brick wall where there was no, no one was willing to gimme a chance. No one was gonna gimme an opportunity. And then I heard about this thing called school to work funding where public schools were given X dollars a year to teach their kids about alternative career paths. And so I massively narrowed the offer of what I was trying to bring into schools, to target school, to work. I used all the buzzword and all the language that were in the funding application schools needed to be allowed to spend the money this, and then I’d start calling a careers advisor.
PS (12:56):
And instead of saying, Hey, do you want motivational speaker in your school? I’d say I have five specific offerings that match the school to work curriculum and framework. Um, and you know, here is what they look like. We’ll do it during a career period. We’ll do it for year 10. And so it’s like so tight, what the offer is now that’s a single interaction, right. But I, you know, after six months had got like six of those after another six months, I had 180, I did 485 speeches in schools in my second year as a public speaker. Right. And so now all of a sudden I could go back to those same buyers and go, Hey, you know, I, I know I was doing this school to work stuff, but I have this whole motivational thing as well. I have these like what we would call HSC Australia might call the S SATs here S a T prep work.
PS (13:40):
And, you know, I would start having kids join an ongoing course. And all of a sudden I’m doing all these other things that I wasn’t able to do before I had credibility and a track record. Now I could do the same model if I step out again, which is the next. So I wrote three books for that market. And then I was writing a book on what we would call the millennials or generation. Y was the, the frame I used back in the day. And I went to my publisher and my publisher was like, well, you know, that’s a, that’s a small market. And I think you should write it on all four generations, cuz there’ll be a much bigger addressable market there. And I’m like, but I don’t know anything about baby boomers or the silent generation or gen X. I know these younger people gen, why are these millennials, let me get really targeted and fo so I did the exact same process.
PS (14:28):
Again, got really tied in my value proposition and what I, what I, and, and by the way, stayed true to my actual expertise, right? Mm-hmm
RV (15:21):
Disruption.
PS (15:23):
Um, no, the book was essentially the gen Y book, the millennial book. Oh, you’re
RV (15:26):
Talking about, oh, you’re still
PS (15:27):
Okay. I’m still in the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And what I was able to that was build multiple companies off the back of that one piece of work, you know? And so yes, it’s an instance, but I actually think I could define my whole career actually using that same model. So
RV (15:44):
What’s fascinating about that is, is, uh, the way I hear you describing it now is not how I’ve actually ever thought about it. Like, um, there’s a, there’s an expression. You probably heard this, we use this in the us get your foot in the door. Yeah. Um, what as I hear you describing that now, like with a company or in an industry, it’s almost like, Hey, I’m using this to kind of get a foot in the door, which is interesting. Cuz visually it repre, it looks like a wedge almost like you would like kind of wedge into something and then once you’re in, then it’s like, okay, now more opens up inside of that company or inside of that industry to do other ancillary, other ancillary work,
PS (16:25):
All, all Rory inside of the entire marketplace, cuz your reputation is established. Yeah.
RV (16:29):
And that’s how I, and that’s how I always processed. It was more like your overall reputation is no one knows who you are to now everybody knows who you are and they want you. And so your fee, your fee goes
PS (16:41):
Up and, and the number of things that you can sell goes up as well.
RV (16:46):
Yes. Um, totally. So I get so, so I, I,
PS (16:50):
We’re just, we’re just talking about it at multiple levels and it’s the same metaphor and the same model for a one-on-one interaction. It’s the same model for a client relationship as it is for the entire trajectory of your personal brand, your co you know, your company brand, depending on what you’re representing and the reputation you now have in the marketplace. Right. And so you’re right. You get it right. Your fee goes up, but here’s what happens to most people worry, they crash against the wall and never get known by anyone. And they’re scrambling and hustling for scraps from people who figured it out, you know? And so you are talking about the right way. It just exists on multiple levels.
RV (17:24):
Yeah. And I think the, you know, what’s, what’s interesting is you, it’s like you’re playing the big game of your reputation always. Yep. But even, you know, you have some number of relationships where you’re already through the wall. There’s some number of people who trust you, there’s other people who’ve never heard of you. And it’s kind of like, you’re, you’re at the beginning of that model kind of like working your way in the door, almost like you could think of content in this way of like somebody is paying you whatever $20,000 a month for a retainer, because you’re on the other side of the wall, someone else is just reading your very first tweet for the first time. And it’s 144 characters and they go, Ooh, I like that tweet. Let me go read their blog post. And now they read a blog post and then they go, oh, let me subscribe to their newsletter.
RV (18:08):
Ah, show up for their one hour webinar and then da, da, da kinda. So it’s like each individual person. So, so here’s the, here is the thing that everybody struggles with. How do I find my thing? Like, you know, the, the whole concept, which is so powerful and brilliant is go be known for one thing. Uh, you, you you’ve described it here as being tight, like be extremely tight in your offer. How do you know which thing to do? Like if you can talk about leadership and you can talk about sales, like, what do you think? How
PS (18:47):
Do you know? Well, this is gonna rub some people the wrong way mate, but you and I have spent our lives surrounded by people who wanna make up the answer to that question. Right? As opposed to the answer should be pretty clear. What are you actually world class at? What are you an expert in where you can bring some unique contribution that other people can’t bring? Where are you capable of creating the most value for another human being? That’s where I would start that conversation. Don’t start that conversation with, well, what do other people want? And then let me see if I can pretend to be an expert in that space or, you know, you can do, you can do that, but it’s gonna be a long journey as you start to build capability. Right. It’ll be like, it’ll be like you reading a survey. Right. Now’s wow. The number one thing on fortune 500 CEO’s mind is alignment of their executive team to accelerate transformation. And you’re be like, right, I’m gonna go sell that. Well, okay. I think speakers
RV (19:41):
Do that all the time, all the time,
PS (19:43):
But you know, the time then, then they go mono or mono with me or Pete Fuda or McKinsey and they get their lunch eaten. In fact, they don’t even get it out of the conversation cuz they don’t have real expertise in that space. Right. And so I would start from a place of authenticity, really like a place of genuine credibility. I have this unique thing, right? So for me, if I go back to my example, I shared for me, it was, I knew young people. I had 300,000 kids on a database. I was able to survey them about their values. What cared about the careers. They’re interested in, why they weren’t interested in others, what they thought of alternative career paths and not going to college. So when I write a book on the millennials, which was basically the first book in the world from a business perspective on the topic, it comes from a place of deep research and deep credibility.
PS (20:27):
Now it just so happened that the market really needed the insight as well. So you do want to give that consideration, right? Which is all right, what are my authentic, true expertise and skill sets. And then where do they meet a need in the market? That’s not being satisfied or not being satisfied in the way I think I can meet that need. And you find the overlap between those two things and now you’ve got magic, right? Better, still find the overlap between those two things and what you really love to do. And now you live in the dream life. I can’t remember. What’s the name of that Japanese model? They’ve got a fourth circle. It, I can’t remember. There’s there’s like ancient models for understanding what we’re talking about right now, guy.
RV (21:06):
Yeah. I think it’s got, I think it’s Ika guy or something. Something like that. Yeah.
PS (21:08):
Yeah. In other words, we didn’t make this up, but um, funny that we stumbled on something that’s, you know, been, uh, in philosophy for thousands of years.
RV (21:17):
So to that, to that question, how did you come up with this model? Like, you know, um, and, and, and what you, what you, what you call it is just the making it, is it, is it the making it happen? Master model? Is that, I mean, that’s how you refer to,
PS (21:32):
I, I don’t know what I call it. I’d have to go back to the book or that was a few years ago, mate. Um, do you know, the last time I spoke about this model was the speech you went to in 2009.
RV (21:41):
It’s so funny. What year was it? What year was that?
PS (21:45):
Oh, it’s gotta be oh, nine, two and 10. Something like that.
RV (21:49):
Oh my gosh. That’s so funny. Yeah. I mean, it was a long time ago and I never, that’s why I never knew you had a book. Like I never, I never heard you talk about it ever again. I had never, I never heard it anywhere else again, but
PS (22:00):
It was just, you know what, there’s a lesson. There’s a lesson in that though. Right? So all my market momentum is with corporation. Right? I wrote this book cuz people were banging my door down on a daily basis going, how did you get breakthrough? What, you know, teach me how to do what you did. And I was like, you know what, I’m gonna write it in a book. This is, this was my recipe. And so as for how I came up with it, I’m sure it, the origin of it is not entirely original. Like it doesn’t seem to me like a ground break idea to teach people, to get tight and focused in what they take to market. So they’re easy to, so not only is it easy to grab attention, but you can be better at it. Right? I’m in the middle of a strategy project right now.
PS (22:39):
And I’m telling you, the business partners are so far on, they are on either sides of the spectrum, right? Like wanting to do everything for everyone, for the rest of humanity. And it’s like, good luck. Like that’s not gonna work. So the, the, the, the underlying disciplines of this, of making it happen are really sound in corporate strategy as well as personal brand strategy. Um, and so there, but the there’s a lesson in the fact that I don’t talk about it. And that’s the, that’s not my space. That’s not where I play. And you know what? I bet you, if you and I sat down and had a beer, we could find 20 other things that you could be world class at on top of what you do now and are already world class at, you could totally build your, you, you could totally build businesses in all these other areas.
PS (23:21):
The problem is you end up spreading, not just your time and energy so thin, but all of a sudden you confuse the market. Like they don’t know what your reputation is for. And so you don’t wanna go too wide. Now, the beautiful thing is once you have a reputation and you have a critical mass, you can go much wider than you started that process with, but not so wide that all of a sudden people dunno what you stand for or what you do. And so I made a really deliberate decision to not build my brand and reputation around making it happen, despite it being a pretty successful book, by the way, um, actually in some countries, not in all in a couple countries, not in most is probably more accurate, um, because I wasn’t gonna speak on it. I didn’t wanna do public seminars. I didn’t want to be selling to individuals. I, I like single buyers that write really big checks. That’s just my preference. I don’t wanna be known by that many people. There’s only about a thousand people in the world that I actually need to know who I am not a hundred thousand or AME, you know? And so it was just not, it was almost an anomaly in my body of work actually.
RV (24:22):
Mm-hmm
PS (25:43):
Yeah. Let’s talk, let’s break it down. Right. I think the real key to narrow first is clearly articulating the value to whomever and whatever market you wanna serve. Right. Like to not be so all over the place with that, that people don’t really get it. You know, like Roy, I don’t really understand what you mean by personal branding. What is that actually gonna do for me? Like, you don’t want that response to your positioning or to your content or to the way people refer you. You want people to refer you, like, I’m gonna put you in touch with my buddy. Rory has a monthly membership. And if you want to accelerate the time to profitability and high revenue on the back of your personal brand and reputation, he’s the guy to talk to. That’s, we’re gonna edit that.
RV (26:26):
We’re gonna edit that clip and put it on the website, make that a testimony. Yeah. The testimonial.
PS (26:30):
But literally it goes all the way down to referral, like how I set you up, determines how successful your conversion would be. Right. Mm-hmm
PS (27:11):
And I’ll refer them to one of three or four people that I know and trust, you know? And so I am narrow on the audience. And then the second, third question is, and now which you raised, how do I wanna serve them? I don’t do one on one coaching for executives. It doesn’t doesn’t create enough change in my opinion. Right? Not only that there’s thousands of executive coaches. And so they’re driving the price down. I wanna do something way more difficult, which is to drive alignment at a team level, much harder to do than get an executive to realize they’re showing up like a, you know, uh, not person am I allowed to swear
RV (27:47):
In your podcast? You know? I mean, you can.
PS (27:48):
Yeah. But, and so there’s three, but there’s three layers of the clarification process. One is what is the value? I wanna bring two, who do I wanna bring it to? And then three, what’s the mode. Well, what’s the business model that I want with that. And then the fourth is probably what is a of modality, right? So what’s the value who do I wanna serve? What’s the business model. And then what’s the modality. Now the business model is the question. People almost never ask. Right? But you just raise it. You said, you know what? I really want a large number of people writing a, a, a really reasonably priced check for the amount of value they get coming to together that forms a community that I’m a part of, not just leading where it’s self perpetuating a subscription model. I don’t have to start from zero every three months. Like that’s a beautiful business model.
RV (28:36):
Yeah. It’s interesting. We, you know, when we started brand builders group, we actually said in this two, two, as of right now, we’re three years in, we want a thousand me, we want a thousand people who we can, who, who will invest a thousand dollars a month, which would be about, you know, it’s a million dollars a month and that’s a business where we’ve operated a business of that size before. And we are just like, not only we did, we narrow who we wanted to serve. We, we know exactly how many of them we want. Right. We only on a thousand of these people. Um, and yeah, the business model is like, we realize one-on-one coaching is where we can really differentiate. And it’s, it’s interesting to just, even as you talk to go, like, man, if, if, if a, if a, if a, if a senior executive called me and was like, Hey, Roy, I want you to be my coach. I would, I would literally tell them, not your guy like that. If you wanna write your book, I’m your, I mean, I’m your freaking guy. Like, uh, you, you wanna turn your career into a, a, a speaker. You wanna build your following, whatever I’m like. Yeah. But, but if they’re like, Hey, I, I want you to just talk to me one on one
PS (29:41):
About how to structure my company, blah, blah. I’m like, oh my gosh. I’m not your guy. Yeah. And knowing that’s great, by the way, the great irony of this is I, as you know, I, uh, teamed up with Josh ner, Seth Madison, Ryan ESS. And we are now basically building a model, you know, not, not dissimilar to the brand builders model, but with a more targeted audience, specifically, people that wanna speak. Yeah. You know, and, and we, I mean, we have all, we have all the distribution relationships, we know all the buyers, we know what they care about. We can take someone from a 10 year journey and make it two years, you know, and it’s a different model. Now. It’s not a business that I, that, you know, I’m not doing all the oneone coaching or whatever. I still to executives and do that work, you know?
PS (30:23):
And so in some ways I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna be calling you in a few months ago. Tell me exactly how you did that thing at brand builders. Right. Cause I’m used to one, you know, I’m used to large checks. Yeah. Right. Single buyer, complex buying process, sometimes a long buying process, but one large check. And, you know, literally we used to set have this goal, um, which was alright, get your first thousand dollar check, get your first $10,000 check, get your first million dollar check, get your first $10 million check. And the largest single contract over Sams about 57 million. And I was like, right. That’s not bad for one client. You know, that’s a good deal. You know, now that was over, like that was delivery of that work was over a series of three to four years. Right? Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t all in one, three month period, but it feels pretty good to get a check that big, you know, or to get a commitment that big as it doesn’t quite work like that you get the check over time.
PS (31:15):
But the point I’m getting at is that’s a totally different business. You know, for me, it was maximizing the size of the check for you. It was max, the number of people who’d write the check totally different path. Yep. But think about this, Roy and this is, I think is the takeout for your, for your listeners, right? The clearer you are on these answers, the value you bring, who you bring it to the business model, which is the bit we’re talking about now in the modality, you know, things like coaching podcast, that’s a modality in my mind, right? Yep. Totally. The clear you are on those top three things and, and, and the fourth as well, but particularly the top three, the easier decision making gets like, it’s not hard to say, no, that’s not my client. Or, you know, you sit and you listen to this podcast and you’re like, man, you know, Pete had those three great ideas.
PS (32:00):
They might be dumb ideas for you because they don’t match the value you wanna bring. They don’t match a business model. You’re building. Then that’s the audience you wanna serve. Like in my experiences, no such thing as a good idea and a bad idea in our, like in this kind of learning space, there are aligned ideas and misaligned ideas. And that’s how I assess them. Is this a aligned idea for what I’m trying to create? I think what the, one of the most beautiful about the way you serve the, the market made is that you help people get clear and the clearer they get, the easier will be to make decisions. And by the way, the easier will be to get through the metaphorical wall. Right. You all over the map as well. No, I still can’t. Can’t do it in the third person, but yeah.
RV (32:41):
Okay. So, all right. So honest, honest, open thing here. I, I really want your, your wisdom on this. So okay. In our, in our former life, we did one-on-one sales coaching. It was super clear, right? We coach sales people, you know, B to C salespeople, real estate, financial advisors, how to sell. We scaled that was straightforward. Then brand builders group starts. We do personal brand strategy. So we do, you know, we, we coach experts, primarily speakers, authors, coaches, consultants, and then entrepreneurs like professional services, still how to build their personal brand brand builders group, super clear growing. What I personally am struggling with at this very one thing I’m struggling with at this precise moment is we have the Rory Vaden who built his career on self-discipline overcoming procrastination. And that was take the stairs. And then my Ted talk, how to multiply time, which got a couple million views.
RV (33:45):
That was how I built my career as a speaker. Then we built a company on sales coaching, and now we have brand builders group during personal brand strategy. And I’m struggling a little bit with how to tell the whole story, not with what brand builders group to us that’s straight and narrow, but what does Roy Vaden do? And I get calls for speeches, right? Not for, you know, Hey, can you come talk on something random, but it’s more like I saw your Ted talk. Will you come speak on this? But there it’s to an audience that’s not personal brands, which is what our core business, this is focused on now. And so some of that, you know, I’m trying to be like, you know, where does my personal brand sit at this point? And where am I at on Shehan wall? Cuz to, to the point you were talking about earlier about how it works on a granular level, like for an individual relationship.
RV (34:36):
And then also like at an industry or reputation level, we’ve also started to describe it really it’s a series of walls at a high level. So you, you know, you dominate your local market, then your, your, you know, your regional market, national whatever. And so I’m trying to wrestle a little bit with like, what is the story of Rory vain.com at this point in my life? Should I just go, all I care about is personal branding, ignore everything that I’ve done. Just let it go. Or, or is there some way that it all sits, sits together and I’m, I’m genuinely interested in, in uh, free consulting
PS (35:12):
Are we still on the podcast or did you just get 30 grand the coaching for, uh, nothing. Um, I have very two very strong opinions, especially. I agree that, that I didn’t think of it as multiple walls, I think, but the more the wall keeps moving, right? Like you, you’re always looking to get to the next level, the next space. And in some ways, you know, you’re the flavor of the month at one point and then people have had you, they know you they’ve moved on to the next flavor and you have to find a new way to get back on their mental menu. Right. Um, here’s my first piece of advice. Don’t try and include every part of everything you’ve done in your story. People don’t care. Okay. Like I, I, I own a SAS company called educator impact it’s suicide prevention and wellbeing tracking for kids in schools.
PS (35:51):
It also does 360 degree evaluation of teachers. It’s an incredibly successful and business and you’ve never heard me talk about that once. And I’m sure in your researcher didn’t come up. I don’t need it to be part of my story. It just confuses the buyer. I don’t need to confuse the buyer. Right? Like at our peak, we would’ve 40,000 workshops a year before. In fact, this isn’t in the company I sold to Ernston young for 1.2 million people around the world. And it never once was in my buyer because it was about community investment strategy and helping to elevate the reputations of companies in the market. But that’s not what Peter sheen was spending his personal time on. I just haven’t own that company cuz long, long story. But um, it came out of a, a client delivery. I had, I knew how to solve the problem.
PS (36:33):
I built a company around that. I don’t need to confuse my brand positioning with all of that material. Does that make sense? That’s I am great. It’s like, so the, the answer to the question, Rory, the, the easiest answer to the question is what do you want to be talking about?
PS (37:24):
Right? And so, you know, here’s the biggest mistake speakers make in terms of building a company, right? They look at their speaking fee, let’s use easy numbers. Let’s say you’re speaking fees, 15 grand, right? They tell themselves the story, they get paid thousand a day or $15,000 an hour, but they don’t. Cause they only get 50 speeches a year or a hundred of their lucky. And really they’re working like as a low price lawyer at about 500 bucks an hour. You know, you’re not anywhere near as valuable as you think you are. Right. It’s just that your modality is a short burst for a high fee and you don’t get a lot of deliveries. Right. And so I would look back and go, where is the most value gonna get created? Is it in R Vaden doing speeches or is it in R Vaden building the message of brand builders and increasing the subscription model?
PS (38:12):
Because I can tell you now the enterprise value of brand builders is gonna be way substantially higher that the enterprise value of R vaden.com is here’s the, here’s the reason that matters. One, once it gets critical, mass build starts building itself. And it’s less about your personal exertion two, if you ever sold it, not that, that’s what you’re saying. You want to do. You only pay capital gains on that rather than personal income tax. So immediately you’re 25% better off. And when someone buys it, they’ll give you a multiple on future, on your discounted future cash, which means they might buy 13 years of profit off the table at half the tax rate that you pay. Right? Like now I’m not saying that’s what you should do, but there’s, there is a value decision to be made. And so I would start with, what do you want to talk about? I would then put it through the filter of, is this gonna support what I’m really trying to build here? And what’s more important to me. And then I would say your answer shakes out of that and the closer and more aligned, those two things are the more leverage you got get.
RV (39:08):
Yeah, well, and basically what’s happened is for three and a half years, I have just ignored Rory vain personal brand because it’s been all in, on brand builders group because of exactly what you said going, at some point we will get this AJ, my wife, she’s our CEO and we’ve been business partner since 2006. We already know that at some point it will gain enough critical mass. It will start to grow. And now it’s, we’re starting to kind of turn that toward, towards that direction. Yeah. And, and so now this is coming up again and, and to what you’re saying is going, gosh, the, the closer that my personal brand is, um, anyways, that’s awesome. I think it’s super powerful for me, even to just hear don’t feel obligated. Like you have to make sense of everything you’ve ever done and share it all and make sense of it in your story. Like your customer only cares about their problem. You only need to share whatever parts of your story are relevant to solving their problem.
PS (40:08):
Yeah. The only people worry who woke up this morning, thinking about you, AJ, your wife, your two kids, yourself, and the people who are trying to steal your business. That’s a, it, everyone else woke up with their own problem and you either have positioned your value to solve that problem. Or you don’t, you either positioned in a way that appeals to that individual buyer or you didn’t, you either positioned the, the business model to serve that person in a way that they actually, you know, are willing to prescribe to and write checks for. And you’re either doing it in a modality that suits them, or it doesn’t like, it’s really that simple, you know, and that hard at the same time.
RV (40:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Um, man, this is so awesome. So the book y’all making it happen, turning good ideas into great results. She hands wall named by us created by Peter sheen.
PS (41:33):
Live every day, by the way, but live every day, you know,
RV (41:36):
Live every day. Yeah. What, um, how do you want people to think about you? Where should they find you? What, uh, what should they refer for you, et cetera?
PS (41:47):
Yeah, I would, I hit me up on LinkedIn. That’s probably the, the safest place to stay in touch. Um, you can follow me on Instagram. I’ve posted about once every three years. And so, you know, maybe into 2023, you’ll see a post from, and I get, this is such a, we should actually get at this at some point in
RV (42:04):
Again, different audiences though. Like I don’t hang out on LinkedIn very much. I hang out
PS (42:09):
Instagram, but neither is a CEO of Pepsi. You know, he’s not on Instagram looking for corporate consultants and, you know, someone to facilitate his executive offsite. Like it’s just, it’s different audiences drive different decisions. I would go after LinkedIn is a great way to stay in touch. Um, I would get on free ring, circus.com and maybe join the mailing list there. And you’ll learn more about the work we’re doing in speaking development. And, and yeah,
RV (42:34):
And we had one of your business partners, Josh Linkner. We had him on this show, another world class speaker, one of the very, very best we interviewed him that you guys are business partners in three ring circus. So yeah,
PS (42:45):
Josh is a badass. I mean, that guy is a production machine. Like that guy can market, like he would not believe. And so that’s where I’d go. Um, I think there’s a place on my website, Peter sheen.com to sign up. Um, we don’t communicate to that list a lot, but when we do, but if you’re on it, when we have something interesting, we’ll let you know.
RV (43:03):
Yeah. Um, well, man, I love this and I, I just, I guess I just wanna say like, thank you while I have you, um, you know, some times people kind of make the, the comment like, oh, you, you know, you can’t change a life with a, with a, with a 45 minute keynote. And I would say, I used to think that, and, and I think of it less because of things like you, you know, I haven’t, I haven’t talked to you in 10 years and that one thing that you put up at that one moment hit me in the right way at time, stuck with me, changed my career. And now, you know, we’re trying to pass along your legacy to people and go like, look, this is look at the power of this thing all from a one random talk that you did. Yeah. 10 years ago, you don’t even make money. You don’t even talk to those groups anymore. And it, it’s made a huge impact, man, really, really powerful. And, um, and it’s been not just for me, I mean, definitely for me, but for a lot of the people that we talk to, and I’m glad they’re texting you going like, dude, I
PS (44:13):
I, I was the one asking them, what’s she hand the wall? Look my you’re firstly, you’re welcome. I appreciate, uh, you saying, thanks. Anyone that underestimates the power of a single presentation to change a life is outside of their mind. 45 minutes with Jim RO transformed my life. And I built a company that worked with millions of kids, you know, on important life skills. I built a corporate consulting company that transforms, you know, we brought Microsoft and apple during there, like turnarounds, like it, that all came from that one day in the Horton perve in Sydney with Jim run on a platform. Right. And you know, I, you, you have other versions of that. I’m sure in your life where you something change the way you saw the world. And so I’m a deep believer in the power of what I call that a catalytic experience. And I’m, I feel honored flattered, and I take it very seriously, the responsibility we get to do that on a daily basis. Wow.
RV (45:04):
Well Shehan, uh, she hands wall, everybody from the source, Peter Shehan go grab the book, making it happen. Let’s see if we can sell some more books for him.
PS (45:31):
Brother take care.
Ep 244: How to Know if Writing a Book is for You with Tia Graham
AJV (00:02):
Y’all I am so excited to have our guest on the influential personal brand podcast today. You will, if you’re watching this on video, you’ll see her lovely face. If not, you’re about to hear from her. I am so excited because we have the opportunity to not only know miss Tia graham also get to work with her. She’s a client of ours at brand builders group. She has this amazing upcoming book. Again, if you’re watching, you’ll see me holding up a book, if not you’ll just hear me talk about it, but it’s called be a happy leader and who does not want to be that, but I think one of the reasons that I wanted to have a team on is this really cool divide and combination of how do you use your personal brand to grow your existing business while also extending the parts of your personal brand outside of your existing business, which I really love. And I also, I just love this whole concept of using happiness as a science to have more productive team members and leaders and humans as a whole. So Tia, I’m so excited about this. Welcome to the show.
TG (01:15):
Oh, thank you. I’m honored to be Here
AJV (01:16):
Oh, this is gonna be so great. So, okay. So we’re gonna keep this a little casual and as we go throughout the interview, I do want people to tell I want you to tell everyone a little bit about the book that’s coming out later this month. It’s very exciting. And then I want you to make sure you can tell people where they can get a copy of the book because it’s launching soon. Right. So, alright Tia. So you’re a guest on this show today and we don’t typically have a ton of our clients on the show for whatever reason, but I thought this would be a really great opportunity for someone who in your words would say that you’re maybe in more of the beginner mode building your personal brand, but also established in your business. And so I’m curious, what was it about you and what was it about it in general that says, yeah, I want to build my personal brand. So tell me how did that come about for you?
TG (02:12):
Sure. Yeah, so I was very intentional when I named my company and created my company, which is called arrive at happy. It’s not called Tia graham. And because I, my intention is I want it live on way past me and, you know, continue to grow and, and help people, you know, pass past my life is, is definitely, is definitely part of my intention. But I also is very cognizant that so much of arrive and happy right now is, is Tia graham. And I, I, you know, now I’m an author, but I speak, I do professional development with leaders, very active on social media platforms, et cetera. And the way, one of the main ways that I’ve built my business is through relationships, relationships with Tia Graham
AJV (03:17):
I love that, you know, and it’s something the, that we talk about all the time with our community and, and even on this podcast around everyone has a personal brand, IE, your reputation. It’s just some of it build it more proactively. So I’m curious. So how would you say, because you do have this really awesome combination of both B2C and B2B opportunities here, how would you say that you have seen building your personal brand actually help you grow, arrive at happy?
TG (03:49):
So I have, I would say the number one way is strange what I call strangers, right. I just said, I built my business through relationships and people that I’ve worked with in different companies over the past couple decades, but by focusing on building my personal brand, I’ve seen an increase in amazing, wonderful strangers reaching out to me, you know, people from different types of organizations, different locations that have found me because of my personal brand growth and the are interested in wanting to work with me, partner with me. And the, you know, whether it be because of videos that I’m creating or articles that I’m writing are all of these different things that I’m doing to to push out content that is, that is valuable to people. I think that’s the, the number one indicator that, that I measure. It’s not just people I know, it’s like, you know, as I said, loving strangers that then become clients and friends because of the focus on my personal brand.
AJV (04:53):
Ah, that’s so good. So I’m curious. So I think this is interesting, cuz we ask this all the time. So when you talk about your social, you’re putting out content, you’re putting out videos. What would you say, have you seen as when you get these loving strangers, which I love that. But what would you say, what types of content do you most often find that people are going, Hey, I saw this video and wanted to connect or this really resonated, like what type of content are you seeing? That’s really getting the most bang for the buck for you. Yeah.
TG (05:24):
It’s actually aligned with something that R said recently. I see the same. So it are it’s shorter videos, like I would say sort of in the one to three minutes, not edited, not even though I do have those, you know, edited videos, but the ones that just feel very natural, very native. And I’m speaking from the heart and truly answering questions that, and, and sharing content that I think will really help people. And when, when the people watching videos feel my energy and feel my emotions, those are the ones that get the most engagement comment, shares people reaching out to me re really thanking me and then wanting more.
AJV (06:13):
Oh, that’s so good. I know this has a whole thing that if you guys, if anyone listens to the show on the regular, like we literally have been diving into this with every single guest because we’re so fascinated, but yeah, we’ve seen the exact same thing in our company’s feed and our own feed. It’s like the more production value, the less engagement. And it’s like the more it’s like just you know, your phone out the, the woods or, you know, in the gym, it’s like, that always gets the most engagement for us right now. So that’s really interesting. You’re seeing the same another question about social media platform is what do you find like for you since you’ve kind of got this like unique combination of you do lots of different things that all fit in the personal branding world, right? You’ve got this book now, which you’re so excited about. You’re speaking and you have all these different things that you’re doing. So what would you say, what platform, when you think about LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all the things. What platforms are you using that work for you and with your more professional audience? Yes.
TG (07:21):
So for sure, number one by a long shot is LinkedIn. Although I ha I do focus and continue to focus on other platforms because not as of right now, really 90, 95% of my business and my revenue is B2B. I work with corporate some nonprofits, but really it’s it’s corporations. And so LinkedIn, whether it be for direct connections conversations doing LinkedIn lives, of course, and then, you know, pushing out relevant content. That one is, is definitely the one that, that I’ve seen the biggest ROI on. And even for example, for press like I’ve had journalists from, in, in north America and even like Australia, find me on LinkedIn and wanna interview me. So definitely number one, LinkedIn,
AJV (08:14):
I love that. So I have a question for you then about that. So was that something that you discovered organically or was that this intentional decision of I’m gonna analyze all the platforms and see which one’s getting the most engagement, or is it something that you just kind of fell into? How did you decide which platform that you were really gonna go all in on?
TG (08:34):
So it was really intentional. My background is leading sales and marketing teams in luxury hotels. And so I’ve actually been very active on LinkedIn, my whole career, just in leading sales teams previously to, to having my own company. And so already I was living in that, you know, B2B sort of corporate space. And when I started the company and was, and was growing arrive at happy, I put a lot of time and investment and intentionality towards that. So, so yeah, I think it was, is a continuation from my corporate life and as, but then also I was intentional in growing other brands. Like in Instagram, I put a lot of focus on over the last four years and, and successfully grown that, and that was, that was new. I wasn’t doing that in my corporate life before.
AJV (09:23):
Yeah. So you already had like a good established connection with your LinkedIn. And so it’s just really building that over the course of time and just transferring the content and the business. Yes,
TG (09:34):
Yes, absolutely.
AJV (09:35):
You know, we we had Jasmine star on the podcast a couple months ago. Yeah, let’s do that one. And she said something, but I probably have said like a hundred times since, so I’m gonna totally steal this, but I’ll give her credit. So I think it’s fine. But she said there’s really two types of content that you have to consider. When you’re thinking about posting social media, there’s a platform that you consume content on and then there’s the platform that you create content for. And I thought that was a really good distinction cuz very similar to you. It’s like my previous life was a B to B sales consulting, leadership consult. And so it’s like I had all these different connections and established on LinkedIn. But then when we started brand builders group, I kind of forgot about LinkedIn because in this kind of like personal branding world, it’s everyone is talking about, you know, YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and, and it’s, it was one of those interesting things where I kind went this amazing platform that I had built for 12 years of going all right now I need to expand.
AJV (10:45):
And it wasn’t only until here recently, really when I heard that interview from Jasmine and star, that I really started pulling back up my LinkedIn and realized I have a gold here, gold mine, gold mine. What have I been doing with myself for the last three years? So super refreshing to hear that. Cause I don’t feel like you hear as much conversation around LinkedIn when it comes to this world we live in, but I would totally attest to what you’re saying. It’s now that been really just since October, really back active in producing content for LinkedIn and curating for that, I’ve seen an incredible boost of, you know, anything from media to speaking requests, to just engagement. And so I’m curious because you do have such a B2B presence what would you to someone who really is building their personal brand, who has a really large B to B you know, kind of machine going mm-hmm,
TG (11:52):
Well, great question. So I think posting, like we going back to what I said before about creating, creating native videos, but also being very cognizant that it’s not Instagram and it’s not Facebook, so it shouldn’t be exactly the same that it is more of a corporate business environment. So that, those regular videos that, and thinking that I’m speaking to people who are in a community that are thinking about work that are thinking about career and all of that. Right? So, so that’s one for sure, to be very intentional and authentic with the way that you communicate with people. So there are so many people that reach out in a very inauthentic copy and paste fake salesy. I mean, I just wanna use the word icky way that it’s complete turnoff and you just want like delete, I never wanna talk to this person. And when I think about LinkedIn and say, for example, there’s a CEO or there’s a VP of sales that I would love to be working with a company that I would love to be working with.
TG (12:55):
I really look at LinkedIn as how can I start a conversation with this person? And I don’t go at it, you know, I wanna sell, or I wanna tell them what arrive at happy does, or I want them to book me as a keynote speaker. No, it’s about, you know, doing some research, looking at what’s going on in their company and really starting conversations or that they post something commenting in a, in a really off way and having conversations with people and those conversations, ideally then turn into zoom meetings and the zoom meetings then. Okay. Yes, you’re moving along. So those are the, those are the two strategies that I’ve used consistently that have been very successful of just, you know, those, those native videos. But again, you’re speaking to professional audience and then really having, having real conversations with people.
AJV (13:41):
Mm that’s so good. I want everyone to make sure that you paid attention to this native video comment of make sure that you’re creating content for the platform that you plan to put it on. I think it’s so easy in this world of feeling overwhelmed with like, I’ll just make one video and I’ll put it everywhere and it’s like no create native content for the platform that you’re curating it for. That’s so good. That’s so good. All right. I’m gonna switch gears a little bit because I really wanna talk about, be a happy leader. And I wanna talk about this book. I want you to tell us what the book is about, but I also wanna know why in your journey of building your personal brand and your business, why did you think, or why did you want to write a book?
TG (14:26):
So I very early on realized there’s a, so many people in the world and I’m not gonna be able to get to all of them. And I wanna help as many people as I can with, with the, with the lessons and, and the learnings and insight that I, that I have. And through speaking and, you know, doing leadership retreats and everything, you could only hit so many people in a year. And so I have this vision of, you know, there’s, there’s a overworked tired executive in Sweden. There’s another person in Australia and books have that power, right books, whether it’s audio books, print, ebook, et cetera. So really it was, it was impact. And that’s essentially my word for 2020 is impact of how many people I could reach. So that was one big reason for writing a book. And also I am very cognizant that it adds credibility. It, you know, and, and I I’ve seen it, you know, with, with clients and, and they’re like, oh, great, we want your books. So and, and being a part of the national speakers association, I’m very active there. Of course, there’s a lot of talk about books. So those were the two main reasons on the reason why I wanted to, and I really hope to write a lot more.
AJV (15:38):
Hi, so it’s reach and credibility reach and credibility. And I think that’s really important. I, I love what you said, cuz I don’t hear a lot of people phrase it that way where it’s like, I can only reach so many people at once, but it, like with this, it’s like I could be reaching, you know, a person in LA and a person in Sweden and a person over here. And I think that’s so true and it’s, and I love too just the reminder that if you really wanna write a book, you better have a de hearted passion for the message because you’re still in the thick of it. It, and I want you to tell everyone about the dirty, hard behind the scenes work yeah. That it takes to write a book. So for the person out there who has never written a book, but fills that tug on their heart or that longing of, I want a message that lasts beyond me. I wanna create this legacy and wanna expand my reach and I wanna help as many people as I can. And of course I want more credibility and more money, but, and you better have those first reasons cuz this is not for the faint of heart. I would love for you to just go, all right, here’s the behind the scenes truth of what it’s gonna be like to write a book. Yes.
TG (16:51):
Yes. So for short, you don’t know, you know, until you’re in it and you’re like, oh my. So one piece of advice that I recommend to anyone that asks me writing a book is to hire a writing coach. So I actually had a coach who I invested in and of course also writing a book and launching a book it’s an investment time and money and your heart and soul. So that helped me in terms of researching and designing and then writing the manuscript. But I will say, I believe writing the manuscript and actually writing the book is the easy part, which for a lot of people that seems like a big undertaking and it is, but if, if you wanted to it right and, and really get it out to as many people as possible and, and make the mark and have the reach, of course there’s the marketing and the promotion piece that comes after it.
TG (17:44):
So as soon as I finish the manuscript and all the editing and I mean, it’s like work, it feels like never, ever ending. You know, you’re also, there’s the piece and some people do this before. And so do it after depending if you want traditional publisher self-publishing hybrid publisher, but there’s the proposal piece, which is the business plan for the book. And I actually found that, and I’ve written business plans for 20 years for major hotel companies. This was more work for me in terms of how to do, you know, all of that piece. And then in a di then there’s the execution. So looking at whether it’s social media list, building the PR the influencer marketing, in my case, doing bulk sales to companies the retail sales partnerships speaking, all of it. So yeah, under the hood is a very, very big detailed engine of, of all the pieces. And I’m two years in and I, I mean, it’s launching now and I’m very aware that it’s gonna continue, you know, for, it’s not like it, it does as an end. And so you AB going to your piece about the heart, I have a mission statement that when I was writing the book and through all the work that I continuously look at on it’s the why, and, and, and the why needs to be more than money to keep you going. It needs to be more than I wanna make a lot of money
AJV (19:12):
And I wanna make sure I don’t neglect the fact that you said it’s been two years, two years, y’all one, two, right? This idea of like, Hey, I’ve got this idea and I wanna have this book published in the next six months. Sure. It can happen. But this has been two years and I think would be worthwhile of going in and talking about the book proposal process. As you know, this is something that we talk a lot about at brand builders group. We have an entire curriculum built around bestseller launch plan, how to launch a bestselling book. And it was one of the biggest mistakes that we made. Right. And it was one of the hardest lessons that we had to learn of what makes a successful book proposal because it is, it’s a full business plan with sales and marketing and content for the book. So I’m curious how was doing the book proposal different from actually writing the book mm-hmm
TG (20:12):
So I believe that for me, writing the manuscript, writing the actual book was easier because it is, it’s your planning, your research, your ideas, and most people are very intimate and close with the format of books and how books flow. Right? I’m an avid, I like devourer book, so it wasn’t foreign to me. Whereas the book proposal, this was the very first time that I had ever seen one before. Like I said, I’ve done, you know, hotel sales and marketing plans, but this book proposal is very, very different. This business plan is very different and there are very specific pieces of the proposal that you need to follow. It’s not like you could just, you know, get super creative and no, you need to have, like, what are the competing titles? You know, all of, all of these different sections. And you have to be very in with every sentence, every word you knowing that these are going to publishers, knowing that they receive the huge volume of how do you have yours stand out.
TG (21:16):
And it took me so much longer than I thought. I mean, I allocated okay these days, these weeks. No. I mean, I think it took me five times longer. And, and also I there were several people, several professional people that I were, was going to, and they were giving feedback saying, no, Tia scrap this, do it again, not good enough.
AJV (21:53):
I think that’s the gift of feedback. If you’re willing to receive it, it’s gonna make you better. It might be painful in the process, but it’s gonna make you so much better if you just take it and go, what can I do with this? How does this apply? Yeah, but it, it, I think we went back and forth with our book proposal for two years.
AJV (22:36):
And all the things that you don’t think it’s like, oh, I’m just gonna get this huge advance and we’ll take care of everything. It’s not how it works. Right. Not how it works. Yeah. all right. So now I want you to tell us, like, tell us about, be a happy leader. This is specifically for my own selfish knowledge. I wanna talk about this science of happiness and how do you apply that to what you do, and then how does that apply to the book? So give us a, give us some insight scoop of some of this amazing content you’ve been working on. Sure.
TG (23:07):
So be a happy leader is about every single day as a leader, choosing your own wellbeing, choosing your own happiness and using the science of happiness and neuroscience research to make choices, to really be the best version of yourself. And it’s also about really focusing on the happiness of your team of the organization and having a beautiful, rich life where you’re not working all of the time. You know, I say a happy leader also has time to sleep time with their family time to exercise. And so it’s in my eight step methodology that I’ve put together based on my leadership experience in the hotel industry. And then all of the happiness research I’ve been doing over the last five years and the science piece is really the research over the last few decades coming out of Harvard and Yale and Berkeley. And it’s the research that teaches us what makes humans thrive.
TG (24:08):
So how you can increase those great emotions like excitement and joy and pride and, and have more fulfillment and purpose in your life. And it’s also the research on when you’re going through challenges when you’re extremely stressed, when you’re really over when you are having, you know, whether it be, you know, personal relationships or, or professional relationships, just life’s challenges. It’s also about this resiliency toolbox. And I think the science of happiness is even more valuable when you’re going through the challenging times. And so I’ve put a lot of tactics and, and tips and research in there that people can use, they can apply right away. And it’s all research based on, on how to be a happier human.
AJV (24:55):
Yeah.
TG (25:20):
Oh, great question. One thing that every person should read is the, this section on emotional wellbeing, I think, and this is something I wish I learned when I was 16. And I learned about it when I was, you know, closer to 40 is having a really healthy relationship with all of your emotions and being very accepting of all of your emotions and being, being curious about them, seeing, seeing them as teachers, whether it’s your personal life or whether it’s work challenges that I think that is a very, a very crucial part to being a happy leader.
AJV (26:01):
Oh, I love that. All the emotions all the time. I always tell Roy Roy says, babe, don’t get mad and I’m like, I’m not mad. I’m passionate. Don’t mistake. My, what you think is anger for passion. It just comes across in an aggressive way. And it’s always, this is ongoing theme. He goes, why are you so angry? And I’m like, I’m not angry. I’m passionate. All the emotion, anger
TG (26:28):
Is a anger is a teacher. I really, you know, anger’s telling you something, whether it’s passion and anger or not. So keep, keep, keep
AJV (26:36):
Feeling it. I love that, but I think that’s so good for everyone. Building a personal brand, building a business, just being a human it’s. We all wanna be happy. Right. And we all search for happiness in the wrong places. And I think too, it’s like, we all, we try to shut out the emotions because they’re they’re time consuming or we’re told, comfortable them out uncomfortable. Yeah. It’s like, I don’t know what to do with all these. I love this. I think everyone should come out and get this book. So Tia, can you tell everyone where they should go to learn more about you and how to get a copy of be a happy leader? Aw, thank you.
TG (27:14):
You can learn more about [email protected] and for the book, happy leader, book.com. And thank you so much for, for having me and for all of brand builders support in building the brand and helping me, helping me spread
AJV (27:28):
The message. Oh my gosh. I hope every single person across the world from GU to New Zealand to Sweden gets hands on this. And it’s happy leader book. Yes.
TG (27:43):
Happy book
Ep 242: Building Million Dollar Membership Sites with Alison Lumbatis
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, you know, 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 our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/podcast, brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Well, I am honored to introduce you to a friend of mine and AJ’s Allison. Lumbatis, who we have now known for a few years. And I remember meeting her for the very first time I was actually teaching at Lewis Howes mastermind. And I specifically remember when Allison walked in the room and I could immediately tell, I was like, oh, she’s, she’s got the it factor. She’s got it. She’s sharp. She’s funny. She’s social. She’s just awesome. And the more I’ve gotten to know her, the more that I have continued to like her. And you might know her, you, you, you may have seen her online. She runs a very large blog lifestyle blog around fashion called get your pretty on. Her website is highly trafficked. And she has a membership program that’s built around that too. That has had a, to over 100,000 paying members, which is what we’re gonna talk about is how the heck did she do that? And she also just recently released a book the ultimate book of outfit formulas, the ultimate book of outfit formulas became number one on Amazon. And so we just adore her what she’s up to and felt like you need to hear Allison’s story. Plus she’s awesome. So Allison, welcome to the show.
AL (02:09):
Thanks. Rory. The feeling is mutual
RV (02:12):
AL (02:33):
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, how do you get from engineering to stylist and entrepreneur? It’s, it’s a huge leap, but I basically created the program that I needed at the time. And I had been working from home. I was in corporate America for 14 years, got the opportunity to work from home, which was an amazing blessing, but I realized very quickly within about three months of working from home, but I was never getting out of my yoga pants.
AL (03:15):
So I really started blogging from a place of this. Doesn’t feel good. I’m not motivated to get dressed every day. And it’s affecting not just the way I feel about myself, but so many things in my environment, too. Like the house is getting messier. I’m not doing laundry as much. I don’t feel like going on date nights anymore. I mean, it was literally affecting so many things. And when I sat down and thought about it, the first thing that popped in my head was can get dressed again. Like that’s a super easy, really tangible step I can take in the right direction. And sometimes it’s just about that one small thing that makes a huge difference in every other part of your life. So that’s why I started blogging. I wanted to start sharing what I was learning and blogging felt like an accountability partner to me when I did not have one at the time, I didn’t have that office to go into.
AL (04:00):
So even though I was only getting dressed for me and to feel better about myself and to get into a routine, what ended up happening is that a lot of women found me and the blog grew organically to around 50,000 page views within six months, which was crazy. And I was still working in corporate America at the time, blogging on this side, really to just enjoying this creative outlet that I had. And I really didn’t start out thinking this was gonna be a business at all. I had done little things on the side in the past, I’d done some life in business coaching. I had run a personalized gifts business. So I had dipped a toe into some entrepreneurial ventures, but nothing like this, where it was just true, really a passion project and something that I was doing because I was loving sharing what I was learning throughout the process.
AL (04:48):
It didn’t become a business until about two years later, I took a severance package from corporate and I decided to just really go all in on it and, and throw everything I had into just serving and serving and serving the commute. But what happened is I ended up with three months left in my bank account of my severance
AL (05:32):
What would that look like? And there was all of this overlap on those responses that came back to me. My reader said, please just give us a shopping list, tell us what to go out and buy each season and tell me what to friends to add to my closet and then show me ways to pair it up. So I inadvertently created a capsule wardrobe, which I didn’t even know what it was at the time. I’m not a trained stylist. I’ve just learned as I’ve gone on through this process and journey. And I was thinking, I’ll be really excited if 50 women signed up this first time out, the gate 500 women signed up. And I knew right then and there with that first launch that this was going to work and I was going to be able to replace my income. And the rest is history. We’ve, we’ve grown in season over season.
RV (06:13):
Like the first, the first, the first launch, like, you know, because I, I think I mean, obviously you’re familiar with our brand builder community and, you know, personal brands you bump into ’em a lot. And I think, you know, people see whoever Dean Graziosi, Tony Robbins, Jeff Walker, Brandon Behar, they see people launch these huge high dollar offers. Yes. And kind of go, oh, that’s you? That, that’s what it looks like that. But how much was your first, how much were you charging?
AL (06:43):
My very first program was a whopping $10. Bam.
RV (06:47):
10 bucks.
AL (06:48):
RV (06:49):
Uhhuh, but you had 500 people sign up.
AL (06:53):
I did, yes. And then I think I went to $19 shortly thereafter. I, we played around a bit with pricing between 29 and 39. And I’ve ended at $39, which is where we’re at right now and seems to be that sweet spot. But from the beginning I knew I wanted to democratize personal style and I knew I could look at this membership. One of two ways, either we’re doing the high dollar, you know, appealing to a much smaller niche, or I’m doing something at a lower amount that I’m gonna be able to reach, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of women. And that’s the path and the route that I decided to go with my pricing. So while we’re at 39, now that seems like such a huge difference between, you know, my $10 launch that I did back in 2014
RV (07:35):
Uhhuh
AL (08:31):
In that first launch, I realized a few things, number one, that this was going to be a seasonal launch. So I knew that I was gonna have recurring revenue and I would be able to, you know, basically have new product to sell to the same customers four times per year. Along with that, I also started to play around with creating evergreen programs in the business and, and realizing that, you know, I could upsell them into other programs and have other offerings available to them. And on the back end of that launch, it was actually around a $25,000 launch because the program sales weren’t the only way that we were getting rev or that I was getting revenue at the time. Oh, I was also doing affiliate sales on the back end of that. So every piece of clothing that they purchased through this shopping list in this caps wardrobe, I was earning affiliate commissions from all of the retailers that were on the list too.
AL (09:20):
So that’s always been a really big part of my business model is get, is getting those affiliate sales on the back end. So really just thinking about ways that once you get that customer and you’ve earned their trust, you know, what are some other ways that you can offer, you know, of what they want and be able to continue to bring revenue in, not just from the membership income, although now, you know, nine years down the road that has absolutely overshadowed everything else. But back then I had to get really, really creative when I didn’t have as many customers.
RV (09:52):
Yeah. Well, that’s interesting. So even like a brand builders group, you know, we’re are helping people set their strategy and then they ultimately go, I need execution. I need someone to edit my videos, do my social media posting, like, you know, do my Facebook ads, blah, blah, blah. And we started to step down the path of trying to do it and quickly realize there’s so much here for so many people. And we did the same thing. We said, let’s spend our time curating a vendor list of trusted providers that the whole community can use. And if somebody doesn’t do a good job, like we’ll just stop using them and, and do affiliate fees that way. And that’s been super powerful for us is, is just answering that question. How can I serve my current audience in a deeper way? You know, and it, and it brings business to you. So, all right, so that’s 2014. So today you have a $39. It’s not 39 a month. It’s $39 a season. So it’s really like correct $13 a month, but they pay for a season, a season it’s worth. So like, where are you at? Give us a sense of the scope of where you’re at today?
AL (11:02):
Well, it’s,
RV (11:43):
Every day for a whole season.
AL (11:44):
Yes, yes. Every day for a whole season.
RV (11:46):
And it’s for three months, you tell ’em what to wear.
AL (11:49):
Yes. And it’s created from pieces on that shopping list and they’re able to shop their closets and, and find items that are on there, check them off and then go out to the stores to fill in the blanks. And the beauty of that is they can either shop my links, which they’re more than welcome to do, or they can shop in their favorite stores. Some women shop exclusively in thrift stores and find everything that they need for the list. Others are going to Neiman’s and finding the things that they need for the list. And as is, they’re able to follow the formula, which is really just a framework of bottoms. Anything you wear on your lower half tops, topper, shoes, and accessories. Those are the five variables. And we mix and match them in different ways to create different looks every single day. That is
RV (12:27):
So cool. And you just had a, so you had a hundred thousand, you’ve recently crossed us a hundred thousand people who have purchased at least one season and they’re all women, right? Yes.
AL (12:38):
Well, we have a men’s wear program as well, but
RV (12:49):
That’s definitely true in the Vaden household. Yeah, that’s so cool. I, I mean to go in, in basically a five year, I mean, five years from zero to a hundred thousand customers, and I just think it’s cool because you, you, you know, you hear always about, oh, the million dollar launch and a multimillion dollar launch, da da, but like to say a hundred thousand customers. Now you have a hundred thousand people that trust you, which will be whatever, you know, that number grows and grows and rose. I think we don’t, we, we underestimate the importance of a customer and we often overestimate the value of just revenue by itself and be like, mm. Having a lot of people buy from you is, is super valuable. So, so let’s talk about the membership model for a second. So you do a I think memberships are one of those things that I, I kind of feel like, especially for personal brands, like so many things, it’s almost like this holy grail of, you know, it’s like this facade of going well, gosh, if, if I had a thousand members that were paying me a thousand dollars a month, that’d be a million dollars, a like, that’d be 12 million a year, but I don’t think people realize how hard it it is for the membership program and like just what it takes.
RV (14:06):
And, and, and that now, do you, do people pay monthly or they only do a, they buy a season at a time.
AL (14:15):
So we have two you different ways that they can sign up. They can either subscribe seasonally by purchasing, purchasing them one off, or we have an annual membership. So at the end of the year, I open up memberships from November through March of the following year for the next year’s membership. And with the annual membership, we offer a lot of perks, bonuses, early access because I really wanna front load the year and get as many people as possible to sign up for that annual membership so that they are locked in that they’re with us for the entire year. We have around an 85% customer retention rate, which is insane and amazing, but I also involve my customers in the process every single season. I allow them to give their input on what I’m creating. What pieces would you like to see repeated in this capsule?
AL (15:01):
What trends are exciting you the most? What did you like the most about the pieces that we had in our capsules this past year? What stores would you like to see? All of, of that data comes back in my team, boils it down, and then we incorporate as much as we possibly can into the next season. And when you’re launching four times a year, you have that ability to just course correct and easily add things in, especially if it’s not gonna be a huge investment, but just really make the program more valuable and keep your customers excited about it. When they’re involved in that process, you better believe when that cart opens. They are the first ones there, ready to sign up. They literally wait up until midnight the night before the people that aren’t annual members and even our annual members, when we open the memberships up, they wait until midnight and they are right there signing up and ready to go. It’s I love
RV (15:50):
It. Like black, black, Friday, Walmart, like knocking people, knocking each other over to say, like, get into your membership. And I’m glad it’s
AL (15:59):
Virtual.
RV (16:00):
I mean, the outfit formula,
AL (16:02):
I want my shopping list.
RV (16:04):
So so you mentioned that you launch, okay, so you, you have the annual, so they don’t really pay monthly. You have, you can basically buy a season at a time or you just pay for the pay for the year. Correct. But you,
AL (16:19):
We do a payment plan option too, for the annual membership. So if they do wanna break it out into payments, they can do that.
RV (16:24):
I gotcha. Okay. And then the four times a year, when you go through a launch, what do you do? Like how do you, you launch this thing and, and, and maybe talk a little bit about how you, how you used to do it. Like when you were first starting and you didn’t, you know, I mean, now you’ve got a hundred thousand of people in your database that are, are buyers. You gotta, you must have way more than that in your, in, you know, just in the, the database. But like, if you have, what are all the steps you would do to, of like sell a season or launch a season? Sure.
AL (16:57):
So our launch cycle is about six weeks. From beginning to our cart opening in the beginning, R it was, it was me
AL (17:42):
And then, you know, we work in as sauna. Everything is in a seasonal launch project. So every season, my business manager and I sit down and we look through all of the tasks that are in that project and everything that gets assigned out from tech support to customer support and graphic design, to marketing. And we take a look at it to make sure that everything still makes sense, and we wanna continue doing all of these steps, or if we need to add something else in or, or take something out again, because we’re launching so frequently, we are able to just really course correct and, and fix things as they come up or add things in so that we can be super nimble and, and, and change at the drop of a dime, which we had to do last year. We had, we had to shift and pivot in all those good things.
AL (18:26):
But it takes about six weeks. From the time I start gathering the Intel from our existing customers of what they would like to see included in the capsule to me, really just heading out and doing trend spotting. I go into the malls, I go into stores, I look at items. I go online, I do tons of, you know, online shopping window, shopping to choose items that I feel would work well in the capsule. Then I do my creative part, which is actually creating the capsule. Once that’s done. I hand that off to my team and then everything from that point forward, I’m not necessarily involved in it’s all the downstream stuff from creating the PDFs and the graphic design to loading everything into the membership site, to, you know, really going out and sourcing links from forever, everyone from petites to plus sizes and, and everything in between from budget friendly to higher ends. It’s like everything. We, we try to cover it all just to truly make this as easy of a process for our customers as possible. And then, you know, once all of that is done loaded into the membership site, then the very last thing we do is launch our sales pages, open our cart and, and they sign up
RV (19:35):
AL (20:01):
Yes. It’s a little bit of all of the above, but I’ll tell you what works the best. So between launches, we’re really working on capturing as many leads as possible and growing our list because our newsletter list can it’s at about 10%, which is crazy, but that’s the place where I really am able to nurture any of our new leads that come in to really explain the program to them, to give them value. I send them a newsletter on a weekly basis with tons of freestyle resources and advice. And I think that that’s really the key to that really high conversion numbers. So we work really hard on the list. I do, you know, podcasts perform extremely well. So it’s, it’s a lot of different things that are going on in between those launches to really ensure the success whenever we do launch and, and really focusing on those repeat customers too, and getting them into the seasonal programs and then ultimately selling them into the annual memberships at the end of the year as well.
RV (20:55):
So it’s really building the list and sort of building the trust. And then when the launch happens, you basically have just emailing and saying, Hey, it’s, it’s live, it’s open sign up for yes. You know, the, the new season. Exactly. And, and then in terms of, you’re just using whatever lead magnets, PDF downloads, maybe a video training, like whatever you’re using, just normal stuff to get people onto your email list. And then it’s the value every week through the newsletter building the trust in advance. And then just letting ’em know the cart is open.
AL (21:24):
Yes, definitely. We run a lot of Facebook ads to our or freebies too. So that shows us right away, like what’s performing well. And we actually make money on our lead gen, which is crazy, but how, for the most part, they sign up for freebies and then they end up purchasing something from me either, you know, an evergreen program or they end up enrolling into the seasonal program. So although it is really done as a lead magnet, we’re converting on all of those leads that are coming in and making,
RV (21:56):
AL (22:08):
So the 85% customer retention is really our customers that end up continuing to purchase from us and coming back year after year, I have some women who have been with me since 2014 and have done every single season, every single annual membership. I would say the majority of our customers have been here for at least four years. And the beauty of the program is at while some people don’t, they don’t technically graduate out. Sometimes they’ll take a break and take a year off or take a season off or whatever, if they feel like they have enough clothes or, you know, they’re in a good place right now, and they don’t need as much guidance or advice, but then they can jump back in at any time. So that’s why I decided I did want to offer the option that people can sign up on a seasonal basis instead of just getting locked in for the full year.
AL (22:51):
So again, I think that a lot of this has to do with involving the customer in the process, but also building the community around the program. We have an extremely active community. Our Facebook group has hundreds of posts per day. It’s a little bit overwhelming sometimes for the members, but it’s really a space for women into explore style where they feel supported. They don’t feel like they’re intimidated by anything. There are a lot of women in there on this journey that have never felt stylish in their lives that have never just gotten a compliment from a stranger on an outfit that are experiencing this for the first time, or that have a particular body shape. And they’re able to come into the group with thousands of other members and say, I’m struggling to find, you know, a pair of HighEd jeans, that’s flattering for my body type.
AL (23:34):
What are you finding? And, and then there’s tons of immediate feedback that’s coming in through that group. Or they snap selfies in the fitting room and say, which one would you choose this one or this one? And they’re getting that immediate response from people in the community. We’ve had women from Germany and Finland that have flown to the us, like we’ve built up this huge community. They have girls nights out in certain cities around the us. And, and it’s about so much more than the clothes it’s about really just supporting one another and the beauty of female friendships and support and the way that it can be done in the right way. We see so much, you know, so much negativity online and it’s just a space that is so opposite of that. That is truly special, especially in this day and age. And I think that that’s really the secret sauce, something that I never expected to happen. Did you create
RV (24:23):
That on purpose or did that, like, did, did, did it happen just sort of organically or like, how did that happen?
AL (24:30):
I think, you know, I was really intentional about this from day one. I wanted it to be a place where it was kind of a mean girls free zone, where women were giving their opinions, but delivering them with love where honesty was appreciated, but in a way that, you know, it wasn’t critical or hurt anybody’s feelings. And it was really about setting the tone. You know, I was very involved in the Facebook group early on and was in there, you know, trying to get people to engage in setting the tone in so many different ways of this is how we treat each other. This is how we’re kind of supportive to one another. And then it just took off on its own. And kindness spreads just as quickly as negativity does. And we really, in the past, you know, however many years of doing this, I can count on one hand the amount of members that we’ve even had to go to and say, Hey, we can’t, you can’t say that, or that’s not appropriate for this group or whatever, like moderation in this group of thousands of women is not a big deal simply because we do set that tone.
AL (25:29):
And we do have them agree to guidelines for behavior in the group. And I think we just kind of attract that more of that coming in, that when people get in that group and they’re like, oh, wait, this operates differently. This is either a good fit for me or this isn’t a good fit for me, then they stay or they leave
RV (25:46):
Is the only, the only the active members are in the, in the Facebook group.
AL (25:51):
Yes. So we start a new Facebook group every season, which is another reason why we feed them into this new group and everybody wants to be in that group with their friends. So I think that this is another key to success for the program is, is closing down the previous seasons group and then starting fresh and new each time we launch a program.
RV (26:09):
Interesting, fascinating. Is there anything that you’ve learned about a membership that like now that you’ve been doing this, you know, cuz cuz you know, like at brand builders group, you know how we talk about the, the paids P I D S and the five ways to make money and there’s, there are information pro is one of ’em and inside of that eye is there’s video courses, assessments, certification programs, membership sites. And I feel like membership sites were really hot for a while. People got to, they, they caught a taste of wow, recurring revenue is a really amazing thing and the community like you’re talking about. But you know, then sometimes it’s like back to the video course because it’s like, well, if I could sell a video course for $500 versus offered as a membership site for 40 bucks a month and they only stay for four months, then I’m not, you I’m losing money. Like what have you learned about membership sites and making them successful that you kind of go, if you’re thinking about starting a membership site, now this is what you should know. Or like, this is what I didn’t know then that I do now.
AL (27:18):
Yeah. So I think, you know, one of the keys to this is really creating something that’s sticky me, meaning you keep them coming back for more. Right. So with a seasonal program, you’re automatically, you’ve got that stickiness built in that keeps them coming back because there are new trends. Every season, there are new ways to wear things, you know, where our wardrobes change seasonally. So that is sort of built into my program and, you know, back early on when I was evaluating this, do I wanna evergreen programs to where I’m just selling people into figuring out, you know, your closet staples or building your wardrobe, or do I wanna do something that I’m going to be launching four times a year because it is a lot, it is a lot of work. It’s a lot for me, it’s a lot for my team. I’ve kept coming back to the stickiness of doing the seasonal model.
AL (28:02):
So if you have something where you can keep people coming back, then absolutely. You’re not, you know, I do have to keep the funnel full. I do have to do all the lead gen. I have to do things between our launches, but I think that this worked out really, really well. You know, stickiness works out well for a membership type model. You also have to generate a little bit of scarcity and that’s sometimes difficult to do when you are working in a membership model. Like how do you create scarcity of something that, you know, people have the opportunity to pay for on a monthly basis? And so I had to look at ways that we could build that into. So, you know, some of the things that I do is we release our shopping list, you know, on the day that it opens to the public, our annual members get the shopping list early.
AL (28:45):
What happens is that we sell out
AL (29:27):
But you know, really just kind of thinking through ways that we can create that little bit of FOMO for, for our customer base has been important. And then again, you know, I always go back to the surveys and the feedback and you know, collecting that information. If you have an audience now, if you have followers, if you’re, if you are out there anywhere on social media or you’re blogging or, or doing whatever, you’d be amazed at how much you, how much you can get from that feedback. If you’re thinking about launching a membership model, you know, it’s great for passive income and a lot of ways, if there’s something that you teach or a course that you do, that you could put into that you can do in a video series or something that you can make sticky or release new content on a regular basis. That’s really what it’s all about. Like how often are you willing to release new content, then you might wanna look at a membership model
RV (30:21):
Mm-Hmm
AL (31:26):
Honestly, it’s been the thing that’s moved the needle more than anything else, you know, just really continually investing in myself. My, my second year of doing this, I joined my first mastermind, which was on course development. And that’s when I learned about that technology, you know, that I would need for this membership. I, I didn’t know what I was doing and I wanted to get involved in something that would shortcut that process for me. So that was really my first experience in a mastermind. And I’ve enrolled in something every single year since then. And honestly like whenever I feel stuck, that’s when I know I need personal development. I need to be investing in myself. I need to get involved in something and just being a member of brand builders, you know, I’ve, I shared this not too long ago with a friend of mine.
AL (32:08):
I feel almost like everything that I learn in brand builders. It’s about a six month lead time until I’m applying it in my business in some way. Like, I feel like I’m already equipped and I have that knowledge. And even though at the moment, maybe I’m not implementing it immediately, but I’ll be go through the trainings and I’ll, I’ll learn something that’s just completely eye opening in six months down the road, low and behold, I’m implementing it. And just the 15 PS last year in our annual memberships for the first time ever, we had cold leads that had no idea what the program was that were signing up immediately without knowing much about outfit formulas at all. Because we used the 15 piece to do our annual membership sales page, my team, and I sat down and we hammered it out and it was so incredibly effective that we suddenly had a problem we hadn’t prepared for before. And that was when cold leads come in and they don’t really truly understand the program and the education process that we needed to do on the backend of that, cuz they didn’t have that nurture that was happening, that other people were having. So I just am totally a proponent for investing in yourself and continuing entrepreneurship is really a personal development journey, honestly. Like that’s what it is. And that’s what I’ve learned more than anything. And honestly it’s what I enjoy more than anything too.
RV (33:25):
I love that. That’s so cool. Yeah. You know I know Hillary is your strategy. She mentioned that to me about the 15 piece, but I had forgotten about I had totally forgotten about that that I copywriting for those of you just listening, it’s we’re using that we’re using, we’re using jargon 15 pieces, our little like copywriting formula. Well I, I think so one of the things that happened was to that point, you went through our bestseller launch plan. So I re I very much remember like, okay, like here comes Allison through through best on our launch plan. And then you did it like you did this launch and you hit number one on Amazon. Like, so tell us about the book and the book launch and like what worked for you there since it’s just like fresh. I think, you know, for, for that piece of it specifically so if those of you, if you miss said early on, we said, it’s the ultimate book of outfit formulas, the ultimate book of outfit formulas. So get your pretty on is the membership community and, and the kind of like brand, but the ultimate book of outfit formulas was the book. So can you take, tell us about like the launch and like what did, what happened? What did you learn? How did it go? Like what worked, what didn’t work?
AL (34:42):
Honestly, Roy, I just followed every single step of be seller launch plan. And I think, I
AL (35:32):
I brought on somebody who handled my street team for me, which was a huge weight off my shoulders and it just worked. It, it, it was, it was amazing. I mean, I was not entirely surprised that everything just came together the way that it did, but, you know, just taking those strategies. And I, I think that instantly what we wanna do is push it for our audience first and that’s not necessarily the best thing to do. So I learned like that there is a particular order that we need to do this in and following all of those steps was really key to it hitting that, that bestseller status. And that’s something that we’re always gonna have. So yeah, I’m, I’m really pleased with the way that this book launch went. It was traditionally published book. So I learned a ton this time around that I’m gonna take into, you know, I’m almost done with my second manuscript and I’m already, you know, I’ve got pages of debrief notes and I’m ready to go. I’m I just feel like it’s gonna be even that much more successful this time around.
RV (36:32):
I love that. And you’ve got the, the, you’ve got an asada project already built for it. Like you, yes. Run this
AL (36:39):
Rinse and repeat right. Make it easy, work smarter, not harder.
RV (36:44):
I, I, I love, I, I love this so much. Alison, like you mentioned the your street launch team. Yeah. So this is one of the things that we talk about, you know, a lot of people do this. It’s, it’s basically getting a team of why didn’t you tell us, so what is a street launch team? And then what did you have, how did you find those people? And then what did you have them do?
AL (37:09):
So a street launch team is essentially the people on the street, the word of mouth that are out there sharing about your book, but they’re doing this in a very coordinated and organized way. So you’re providing them with the graph ethics, with the quotes, with all of the assets, to be able to easily share on social media and to talk about your book and generate buzz about it so that when the time comes and, and you’re, I’m sure that anybody who’s kind of observed a launch from the outside has seen all of these big influencers doing this, where it seems like, oh my gosh, everybody’s talking about this book right now. Like what’s going on? Like, I’m excited. I wanna know about this book, right? So this is what your street team is doing for you. They’re creating that buzz in a way. That’s not necessarily these huge influencers that are doing this for you.
AL (37:49):
So so that’s exactly what it is. And I hired somebody to come in and do that for me, who managed my street team for me, who, you know, we had a Facebook group or we were doing contests and having them, you know, submit their, their reviews. I mean, they got early access to the book. They got, you know, a digital preprint of it. So they were able to read the book and really give honest reviews on multiple outlets for it. So it really just creates all of that prework before the book even comes out so that when it does launch, people are able to read reviews on good reads and target and Amazon and all the places and see what this book is all about in the words of people who have actually read it. So I highly recommend it. And if you’re able to have somebody else handle that for you, it takes a lot off the shoulders of the author because you are gonna be involved in so many other things. I did a podcast tour leading up to my launch as well. And that was, you know, that was taking so much of my bandwidth, that I was just really happy that I could turn this over to someone else to handle.
RV (38:52):
I love it. I mean, just so cool. I mean, you execute all this stuff. I mean, you, you execute and that’s what it’s like. So much of it is simple. I mean, people don’t realize it’s like on the one hand, it’s really freaking hard. On the other hand, it’s a pretty straight line. It’s like, okay, you have a lead magnet, you give somebody something of value, add ’em to your email list, give them value every week. You, you know, let ’em know something’s available, have a, have a sales page with the 15, P’s have, have a few bonuses on there. Like, and I just, I just, I love this story so much and it makes me so happy to, to, to see when people like you are, are winning Allison. And if y’all, you know, check out the book, so it’s the ultimate book fit formulas and you know, get your pretty on, obviously is the community and everything. So Alice, Allison, where do you want people to go to learn about you or stay, stay plugged in connected to what you’re doing?
AL (39:49):
Yes, definitely. So you can check me out at Allison Loba on Instagram. If you wanna see all the personal life stuff, my horses in my little mini farm, I live on
RV (40:03):
So cool. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, as they say. And Allison, thank you for being here. Thank you for just sharing your story. It’s such a great journey. It’s it’s just beautiful, I think, to, to see where it’s gone and you’re just your heart for serving people and helping people with something that you once struggled with. I mean, it, it, it just captures the essence of, you know, we, how we always are talking about your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Yes. And that’s what you start doing. And then you go, how can I serve my audience in a deeper way? How can I add more value? How can I make this easier? How can I make it easier for them to buy and and then just continue investing in yourself and just, I mean, we feel so lucky to know you and just be your friend and just excited and honored to like see you winning and knowing that you’re like, just getting started. I mean, I it’s, it’s hard to imagine where way you’re gonna be in five or 10 years. So thank you for, for all of this and we wish you all the best. Thank
AL (41:04):
You, Roy. I totally appreciate the influence that you’ve had on my business and, and personal life. I appreciate it.
Ep 240: Beating Your Inner Critic with Dr. Margie Warrell
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 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 our 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 (00:53):
I am always amazed at the people that we get a chance to meet at brand builders. And every once in a while, we just meet somebody who just kind of captures us and goes, wow, how do we not know each other? And how do we not know each other yet? And that is how I feel about Dr. Margie war, who you’re about to meet. So she is a five times bestselling author. She is a Forbes columnist. She’s a world renowned advisor on leadership and human potential. And she works with companies like NASA and Google and Deloitte and Berkshire Hathaway. And she’s a speaker. She does consulting and really has just spent 25 years doing research and kind of just working in the field to help people boost their, their courage and elevate performance and accelerate their growth. So she also lectures at Columbia and Georgetown, and she’s been on, you know, the New York times and several other success magazine today show and is, is just awesome. And we got a chance to meet here, not that long ago, visa brand builders group. And as I got to learn more about her, I felt like you needed to hear her story. So Dr. Margie to the show.
MW (02:03):
Rory it is awesome to be with you always
RV (02:08):
So tell us your story about how you got started in, in this space. You know, I, I, and, and correct me if I’m wrong. So the way that we understand now is like a, a big part of your business model is from speaking and you know, driving revenue in the last several years from speaking, but you also traveled a bunch internationally. You were a mom, like you had a lot of things going on that I think people often would go if I had those things going on, I probably couldn’t build the kind of career that you’ve been able to build. So give us a little bit of that background.
MW (02:46):
Yeah, well, I, I, I think I, as you can probably tell from my accent, I’m from the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep south
MW (03:44):
You’ve, you’ve worked in business. You, you should think about coaching. And I, I remember laughing and saying, oh my gosh, do you know how uncoordinated I am? It’s just, I’m so not athletic. I don’t know why you think I would be a good coach.
MW (04:31):
And so it was really, I was, everyone knew me as the stay at home mom with four kids. And for me, it was, how do I, how do I do what I really wanna do when no one knows who I am? And so that’s where actually I started speaking for free anywhere and everywhere that would have me, ah, to try and get some coaching clients. And and so I was just super excited if people would sign up for a free coaching session at the end of me giving a talk at like, you know, it could have been a club or it was American business women’s association, or companies would do free brown bag lunches, and I would speak anywhere and everywhere. And really over time, I, I came to realize the thread that was running through so much of what I would talk about.
MW (05:17):
And part of it was about balance and having difficult conversations and pursuing what lights you up and saying no to what doesn’t. And I realized the thread that was running through it all was, was having more courage and daring to be braver and take a risk and risk rejection and put ourselves out there. And so that led to my first book, which was called find your courage. And it was very much an act of courage for me at the time to write it. I had four kids, seven and under, and I, I wrote it in nap times in the afternoons. And and I had a huge voice in my head that was very loud often saying, who the hell do you think you are to write a book? You know, you’re just, you didn’t get a great education in rural Australia, et cetera. But it was really me, I guess, staring to make a bet on myself and, and, and thinking, you know, I don’t wanna look back one day and think I wished I’d been braver. So that’s kind of the, that was the start of the journey that love, that led me to where I am now.
RV (06:22):
I mean, with, I mean, and I think there’s lots of, I mean, lots of people have those kinds of things. And I mean, four kids is no joke. I mean, keeping, keeping track of four kids and be like, I’m gonna write a book in my spare time, which is nap time. Which, you know, if you have four kids getting a, all four of ’em asleep at the same time might last, you like 17 minutes, if you’re lucky. Oh,
MW (06:41):
No. I mean, it was threats and bribes. Can I just be clear, you stay in your room for one hour until the bell goes, you know, like
RV (06:49):
Yeah. But so you started that now. I, I, I rarely wanted to highlight cuz this is, you know, part of what we teach at at brand builders, you know, is you gotta go speak for free. I mean, that like, that’s how it starts. You just gotta go speak for free and get people a chance to sample you. So that’s interesting to hear that part of your story. I mean, everybody, I know that is a successful speaker. Like that’s how they started, like you just out there speaking. So I wanna talk about, so you started as coaching business us then became an author and then leveraged off that to get your, your speaking gigs. Is that how you got your first speaking gigs too, was just speaking for free until someone asked you to, if you can
MW (07:27):
Hire you. Yeah. I mean the book, the book came later, honestly, I couldn’t even have con I mean, I think I, I really lack confidence. I had a lot of self-doubt. It’s probably why I spoken so much about self-doubt because I, I doubted myself so much. So the speaking was how I got coaching clients. The book definitely came afterward. But yeah, the speaking was really crucial part of that all. And I hear, sometimes people say, oh, never speak for free. And you know, if you’ve come from being in some big role, you’ve already got some stellar reputation and you are well, you’re already an established brand and entity. Okay. Maybe that will work for you and great, but I would never have got anywhere. Had I been waiting on someone to pay me from the beginning? Cuz no one was gonna pay me cuz no one knew the value that I had.
MW (08:18):
I had to demonstrate at value. And that came from speaking for free. One was demonstrating the insight I had as a coach. People could go, oh, you know what? She’s got some, she’s got some wisdom and some expertise and some ideas that will be valuable to me. And I, and I like her, you know, it’s like kind of establishing that like this is someone that I would trust. And then over time, obviously the more I spoke, I started to actually develop a skill in speaking and kind of tapped into a latent talent that I honestly a gift. I didn’t know I had to be to be truthful. And so
RV (08:53):
How did you get the first, like when you first got paid to speak, was that basically referrals from people who had seen you
MW (09:00):
Speak at that was so, I mean the first time I ever spoke was at my kids’ preschool and then, you know, I, I had a coach, I had a coach. Yeah. And like two people showed up. But the woman who ran the preschool and the cleaning lady, so it was it was very humble or beginning, but the first paid speaking engagement one of my early clients, very early clients and I, I didn’t charge a lot of money. She worked for a big consulting firm and she had said, would you come in and speak there as part of a brown bag lunch, which was free. So I went in there and I spoke to working moms on work, life balance, and someone there was from HR and they said, we’ve got an international women’s day event coming up. We’re looking for a speaker. We would love you to come. We’ve got a, you know, how much do you charge? And I had no idea about fees and I remember saying R how’s $200. Nice. And she was so quick to say, yeah, that sounds great. And I remember thinking, I think, I, I think I went too low
RV (10:03):
MW (10:07):
But then someone was there and then, you know, I mean, and, and I, all of the paid speaking came from all of the unpaid speaking and then us the book amplified it. And then a lot of media when my first book came out and then, you know, it’s a ripple effect. Right. And you can’t, it’s easy to go. Well, it was one thing I did, but it was, I wrote for a women’s magazine for free. And then someone there connected me into Forbes and I got my own and I started writing for Forbes. And then I ended up with my own column and then, you know, so, you know, it was, and then I landed on the today show and then it was one thing after another, but there wasn’t one clear recipe. I couldn’t say, do this, then do this. It was just continually doing things that I hoped would, you know, make an impact and over time sure enough, you know, all of those little things, those daily strokes of effort, bam, you know, you get to another level
RV (11:02):
Mm-Hmm
MW (12:00):
I think you’ve gotta give yourself permission not to get it perfectly right. And to take risks and to try things and not have them land brilliantly. You know, you, you don’t know where everything and you are going to iterate and you’re gonna learn and you’re gonna evolve as you go along. And I think a mistake I see people making is thinking that they have to have the perfect plan and the perfectly the perfect clarity even. And yes, it’s great having a lot of clarity and it’s great having some one like you and the brand builders group to provide a roadmap, but still what works for one person isn’t gonna work exa you can’t copy and paste everything. We we’re all different. We, we have different things that we are good at and that we like to do. And I think give yourself permission to experiment and to iterate and to evolve as you move forward, because you’re gonna learn, well, this works for me, but this doesn’t work and that might work for the Margie, but it’s, it’s just not me.
MW (13:02):
Not everyone. I started out coaching, as I said. And I I’ve got friends that have been coaching for 25 years and they’re like, Margie, I couldn’t think of anything worse than speaking. It’s just not my thing.
RV (13:46):
And just kind of the, I hear you saying kind of like the mindset of approaching it as like yeah. Who cares? What happens? Just an experiment, like just kind of like, let’s see, let’s just see what happens and kind of go from there versus all of the pressure of like, it has to be perfect and dialed in and, and if it doesn’t cuz then it’s like, if it doesn’t work, it’s never gonna work. Like I, I, I’m not gonna work cuz we’ve had so much pressure.
MW (14:08):
Yeah. It’s like pressure, you know what? I tried that and you know what, it didn’t land brilliantly, but what did you learn from it? You know, I always looking for, what is the learning? How do I take that learning? And you know, I remember early on Roy, I was living in, in Dallas, Texas and I met someone and she said, oh Margie, you should be the expatriate wife coach, cuz I was a foreigner living in the us and I could coach other women who are wives. And, and I remember thinking, she’s like, you need to find your niche. And I was like, it just didn’t feel right. So sometimes people are gonna tell you what you need to do. And you know, I say get lots of advice and get it from people who know their stuff. Like honestly you are, you’re a great example of that, but not all advice is gonna be the right advice for you. And and I think that’s important, but wait, wait,
RV (14:58):
You mean not all advice for me is gonna be the right advice for you. I I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding guys.
MW (15:05):
I’m arguing your advice. Rory is about as good as it gets, but I, and, and of course you, you do it with in a way that obviously allows people to make it feel congruent, but I tell you what, there are a lot of experts out there. I mean, when I, I, I do experts in that can kind of give you their five point plan and it might not be congruent for you. And I think I think just being authentic is really important. And I think today, I mean, you guys talk about trust a lot. We want to deal with people that we can trust and who are real and authentic and not some overly curated version veneer that you go, well, who is it? Who is that really that person? And I think being congruent is super important and just being real and
RV (15:59):
Mm-Hmm
MW (16:36):
Well, all of us can be timid at times. Of course, all of us can be everything at times we can all be bold and brave and we can all be timid and overly cautious. And I believe that humidity is, is very prevalent in a, in the world in which we live because we live in a, in a, in a climate of fear, in a culture that actually sort of feeds and, and feeds on fear and fuels a lot of it and fuels a lot of self doubt and fuels a lot of timid and humidity drives people to hold back for our taking actions that would actually serve them that would help them to learn and to grow and to open new doors of opportunity and build new connections. And so we tend to fail far more from timidity than we do from over daring.
MW (17:33):
And timid in a sense is very much, much over caution. We’re being overly cautious, we’re holding back and you could say, oh, well, it’s a personality trait, but ultimately it is. It’s a decision that we make often unconsciously to, to not take an action because we are worried about the consequences of it. And often we discount the cost of timid. There’s a steep, hidden tax that comes with timid that we’re often not present to because it’s not immediate, it’s really dramatic or obvious, but we pay that tax over time in our lives because we don’t try things. We don’t experiment. We don’t put ourselves out there. We don’t try and write the book or approach someone and, or give the talk or, or whatever it is. And that really, we don’t know what doors didn’t open, but I, I really, the reason I have a passion for helping people overcome the bias toward timidity is because I see it holding potential hostage and keeping people from really, I mean, you could say shining their light, you know, really living the biggest lives, they’re capable of living. And, and ultimately a lot of people end up languishing. They kind of get stuck procrastinating. They get stuck making excuses and settling and selling themselves short. And not only do they miss out, but everyone misses out
RV (19:00):
Mm-Hmm
MW (19:28):
A AB couldn’t. Yes, that is right. And it is funny. And I, and I shared with you how, for me even starting out, it was a little voice in my head saying, who do you think you are, was like to give a talk to start honestly, a coaching business. I was like, who am I to even have my own business? And who am I to write a book? Who am I to, you know, do television or know in the more recent years do my PhD, et cetera. And I’ve just learned to identify that voice as a voice. It’s not who I am. It’s just fear. And timidity is just one expression of fear and not to give it power. Cuz too often we give that voice of Tim power call the shots it’s it’s in the driver’s seat and it doesn’t have to be that way.
MW (20:16):
I mean, that’s where courage comes into it. Courage is the decision to take action in the presence of perceived or real risks. You might fail. You mightn’t write the most brilliant book that’s ever been written. You might give a spare each and it mightn’t be brilliant. You might try something and it mightn’t be the best investment, but how will you ever know if you don’t try and how will you ever get better at it? If you don’t give yourself permission to not be brilliant starting out. And I think to your point, Rory, it’s not the barriers, the external obstacles around us that hold us back. It is the belief systems that we are buying into and the ones that fuel that timidity. And so, you know, at the end of the day, there comes a moment of choice and go, who is it I choose to be and where am I letting, where am I letting my fear of not having what it takes, keep me from taking action. And that’s, that’s having the courage to take action despite our innate, you know, timid
RV (21:19):
Mm-Hmm
MW (21:46):
Yeah. You know, I often think give it a name, you know, and you know, you’re, you’re in a chicken little, right. You know, and in, in my book, you’ve got this, I, chapter two is doubt your doubts and, and doubt your doubts is really doubting that, that, that voice, that, that, that shows up and, and fuels that ity. And we treat those little negative noises and those doubting voices that in a chicken little as though it’s the truth and it’s not the truth, but we treat it as though it’s, it’s the truth. And I think learning to challenge what you’re telling yourself and there’s a real physical element to it too, like really stepping in and holding ourselves powerfully. Like how would, how do you, where do you need to connect to your own inner, a brave heart, hold yourself that way and embrace the discomfort that is a prerequisite for overcoming humidity and for being brave and for taking those actions.
MW (22:38):
And the more we embrace discomfort as part and parcel of what it takes to do, what it is we really need to do and want to do, like in our heart of hearts, then actually the better, more comfortable we, we become with doing uncomfortable things. And I think it was Tony Robbins that said years ago, you know, you know, our success is proportionate to how willing we are to be uncomfortable. And I, and I kind of absolutely couldn’t agree more with that. It is uncomfortable work, but I think being successful, however, you define success, that’s never gonna happen if you stay comfortable and, and humidity just drives us to stay in our comfort zone, but of course, comfort doesn’t stay comfortable forever. And our comfort zone shrinks. And over time we become more timid and less confident, you know, more scared, more doubtful, less brave and, and courageous.
MW (23:36):
So it really the co over the course of our lives, I think we have to continually be challenging ourselves. And so to anyone who’s listening, I know that you’ve got an, an incredible audience of people doing great things and who want to do more great things, but perhaps sometimes get in their own way because they’re afraid of falling short. And I would say, give yourself permission to fall short. And, and when that little voice of timid pipes up. So thank you very much. I know you’re trying to keep me safe now, shut up and, and step forward anyway.
RV (24:11):
Yeah. I mean, that, that is powerful. And so tactical, I think, and so, so useful where, where Dr. Margie, should people go to connect with you? I know obviously you’ve written for a long time for Forbes. So some of them are to be already reading your Forbes column, but like where where do you want people to go? If they wanna like, learn more about what Dr. Margie is doing?
MW (24:33):
Yeah. Look, I am on, I’m pretty much all social media to Insta Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please connect with me. I’d love you to connect with me there, but you can also go to my website, Margie war.com. And if you type in slash live bravely, you can sign up for my free course on how you can be braver. It’s a four part video course that I created that is share some of my, some stories and some, and some really practical ways that you can step it up in your own life to overcome whatever fear is and is getting in your way.
RV (25:11):
I love it. Well, we’ll put links to that over in the show notes and Dr. Margie, thank you for this. I mean, this, I think just strikes right at the core of that, like that courage and, and winning that battle with that little voice. I mean, if you can, if you can beat that little voice every day than you, like pretty much can do just about anything.
MW (25:31):
Amen. Very true. Well, thank you so much for having me RO great to talk to you. All
RV (25:36):
Right. We wish you the best. We’ll follow your journey. Everyone. Go check out Dr. Margie and keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye
Ep 238: 400k TikTok Followers in 40 Days with Hilary Billings and Marshall Seese Jr.
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 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 our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
RV (02:06):
And so this was like, wait, what, what, what the, wait, what, so anyways, here to talk to us about that, Hillary and Marshall.
HB (02:15):
Woo. Hey Rory,
MS (02:16):
thanks for having us Rory excited to be on it.
RV (02:18):
You guys, I mean, you’re killing it. You are freaking killing it and I love you and I am so jealous and mad at you.
HB (02:59):
It’s so funny, Rory, because I go back to attending like the revenue engine and the high traffic strategies events, where we talk a lot about the power of being first to market. Right. And we have a really unique situation right now in the world with platforms like TikTok, like clubhouse, where personal brands have the ability to actually create a foundation and grow upon that in ways that you just can’t do nowadays on YouTube or Facebook or even Instagram. And I was probably the most vocal person in as, as a strategist and as an attendee that didn’t wanna do TikTok. Mm I was tired and I was doing all this other content and building my brand in other ways. And it just seemed like, well, one more thing I gotta do that I didn’t wanna focus on. And I think that this really came down to a divine intervention
HB (03:50):
So what happened, you know, our, our primary platforms are on Facebook and the week that I decided to get on TikTok, the only reason I did that is because was a glitch on the Facebook platform. Mm. Which essentially demonetize my page because of something on Facebook’s backend. So we were not able to make any money on it for an undetermined amount of time, potentially. They didn’t know how long it would take to fix this issue. And we had just posted a video that was viral and I was sitting there and I was watching us lose millions and millions of views in revenue and it was making me batty. So I needed to do something to take my mind off of what was this mess that was happening over here and just decided, well, I guess now’s the time let’s make some TikTok videos. And I just started posting and repurposing content much like we do with the content diamond old videos that I liked that I thought would work for the audience based upon what I was seeing on TikTok. And it just took off from there. It was, it was crazy and unexpected. And we did 400,000 followers in 40 days and then half 1,000,0 60 days. And now we’re own pace to hit a million followers by next month.
RV (05:04):
Wow. And do you think, so what, what I hear you saying there is, it’s not so much, oh, we had this am. I mean, we had, we, we, we came up with this amazing content exclusively for TikTok you’re repurposing content that you had other places. When I hear you say that in the, especially the reference to clubhouse, you’re saying that there’s basically an optimal window that you can get inside these platforms and have this accelerated growth. I mean, is that true? Is that a big part of it or not? What, what
MS (05:38):
It’s part of it? I think there is definitely when a, when a platform first gets going, they’re trying to get creators excited. And the best way to do that is to get things, you know, going viral. You reach a point of saturation to where that doesn’t become as optimal anymore. And now you have to, you know, make the way for revenue streams like advertising TikTok. However, I will caveat saying is an interesting use case because they came out even recently in the past couple months and specifically said, we want, we are giving people content. They, we think they want to watch. It’s the only platform that defaults you to a feed based upon what they think you wanna see, not who you follow. You actually have to scroll to a different area to see the only the people that you follow. Mm. So they are trying to keep themselves more open to, you know, profiles exploding if it deems that that’s content that people want to see. So I would say the ability to grow a following on TikTok is, is good. It’s still very good right now and probably will be for a little while. Interesting.
HB (06:42):
And I would also add to that again, this goes back to one of the tenants that we talk about all the time in brand builders group, which we got ourselves into this predicament where, you know, we had put all of our eggs into a piece of rented real estate, right? Mm-Hmm
RV (07:22):
That glitch that you’re talking about was not the worldwide glitch where Facebook went down for four hours. This was another one that was only on the back end for people like you that were like creators that have monetized. Cause you have to, you have to have what like 10,000 followers on your watch page to be able to monetize it. Some like that.
MS (07:40):
Yeah. There’s a whole getting monetize on Facebook is a very difficult process that requires it’s. It’s not just objective there, there are a lot of subjective qualifications with it as well.
RV (07:49):
Gotcha. So what about, let’s talk about revenue on TikTok. So I I’m curious about, I mean, other than the broad awareness kind of thing, how do you actually make money on TikTok and, and, you know, so I, I guess I understand a couple components. I understand the idea of like, Hey, a lot of people are hearing about me the same way they, they, they might hear about anybody. And from that there’s some, some runoff in terms of like recognition that you can parlay into other things. And then I also understand brand deal. Like I have a large platform. And so somebody pays me some money to talk about their product or company or service to my audience. Is that, is that how you make revenue on TikTok or is there there’s, there’s something else
MS (08:41):
There’s also a creator fund. Yeah. That is very small right now that if you have over 10,000 followers, you can apply to became a, become a part of, and that will ebb and flow and grow as they figure out what their advertising model looks like. Yeah.
HB (08:55):
So if you’re running through like the basic paids acronym, right? So you’ve got products where you can be advocating doing brand deals, doing product placements within your videos, you could be doing ads and affiliates. So ads is essentially the creator fund, right? Because they’re putting a basic ad on the front that you see when you log in, it’s not on a specific piece of content that shift in the future. We don’t know where that’s going. We highly recommend that anybody that meets the criteria for video hours watched in the followings should apply because it’s just additional monthly revenue that’s coming in that you don’t have to worry about. And you can withdraw. I think it’s every 30 or 60 days. Then you have affiliates, right? So a lot of products give you an affiliate link. You can put that in your profile. You can say, Hey, I love this type of makeup.
HB (09:41):
Go to my link in my profile for my 20% off code. And then you get an affiliate check, right? For everyone of your followers that can go there. You can drive information to courses. I know we have some clients Ram builders that do that, that they’ll utilize the content that they’re doing on TikTok to push back to their websites, back to their courses, back to their one-on-one coaching. So their, their services, then you’ve got deals right for the D which could be, you’re endorsing a product you are saying, Hey, this is the best makeup I’ve ever had. And let me do a creative TikTok to show you you that. So there’s a lot of different ways over time that you can monetize that outside of just building a following. I will also say, and I think we’re gonna talk about this a little bit, but going into the future of, of how influencers, I, I really dislike that term, but how influencers are able to monetize, we’re seeing already that the big content creators, right?
HB (10:39):
Like the Logan Pauls of the world, the top talkers, they are getting acting deals. They are getting huge spokes model deals and they are able to take and monetize off of that platform because they have such large followings. But back when I was an on-camera host, it used to be, I’d submit my resume to, to a network or an agency or a company in the hopes that they would pick me based upon my talent. Well, now talent is table stakes and your content and your personal brand is table stakes. And now it’s a matter of what else can you bring to these opportunities to show that you can add a value and make something take off. And I think that long term we’re gonna see that out more and more into monetization strategies for content creators.
RV (11:22):
Yeah. I mean, I, I, I noticed that too, that it’s like, it’s not just about, who’s talented. It’s about who can bring an audience. And yeah, there’s a huge part of that. And now that we all have our opportunities to bring our audiences to things that has real value, and you’re seeing people at cast Y you know, the, the thing that AJ and I noticed recently was on the voice that Ariana Grande has like she has hundreds of millions of followers and she was the new coach. Meanwhile, Blake Shelton and Kelly, and John legend, who are in my eyes much more well known to majority of the generations have only four or five, like, you know, a few million followers. And I, I can’t help, but think that’s no a us not an accident that she got herself cast for that fourth coaching spot.
MS (12:18):
I mean, another great example is only murders in the building, which is our, our, our current, or I guess we just finished it TV obsession with Steve Martin and Martin short, I mean, two of my all time, favorite actor comedians. And, but the third party is Celina Gomez, the second largest following on all of Instagram. And there’s so many people, especially younger generations watching this show because of Selena who had no idea who Steve Martin and Martin short were. And so it’s, it’s, it’s a really great, and the chemistry is great. It’s a really beautiful example of what that can look like when done. Well, I
HB (12:53):
Think it also speaks to, and we talk about this a lot R and brand builders, whether it’s with a book, right? Whether you’re speaking career, whatever you’re trying to do, we want to show that you have a profitable business model, right. And if you’re able to bring a following to that book proposal, if you’re able to bring a following to as a, as a keynote speaker, you know, whether it’s through YouTube or whatever, that, that particular revenue stream is that you’re trying to build through your primary business model that is attractive to whomever you’re trying to work with. So this applies across a across industries, I believe.
RV (13:28):
Yeah, well it, so the, on the topic of building an audience, one of the things that I know has been a little bit of a pain point for y’all and, and, and for, and for a lot of people is the intellectual property discussion about TikTok. And you know, there, there are some strategies that people use to grow a following that kind of go in the face as you know, of some of this copyright stuff. And I think that’s one of the things creators were worried initially about TikTok was like, oh my gosh, like anyone can take my video and post it on TikTok and now belongs to them. So what are some of the, what are some of the things that you’ve learned there in that kind of like I P intellectual property, right. Sort of world, as it relates to TikTok specifically,
HB (14:19):
Do you wanna start with that one former? I,
RV (14:21):
Why don’t we take a former as a former lawyer Marshall, former IP attorney who like to officially comment
MS (14:29):
So copyright, and there’s a big misconception around this. A lot of people have with copyright, as soon as you publish a work you have copyright protection. Now you can also go a further step and register that with the copyright office, with the government, you don’t have to, to have protection. So once you publish something, say on YouTube or TikTok or Facebook, you know, you have a date and a timestamp that has been released to the general public. You have copyright protection in that now enforcing that is an entirely other bag. And, you know, some of the platforms, Facebook has a really great rights manager where they will track and look for similar videos and show them to you. So you can say, Hey, yes, this was approved or no, this was not approved. Not every platform is developed and sophisticated enough to have that. Interesting yet it will go there. It’s coming. Yeah. And so, you know, we are very active about takedowns and, and Hillary can probably speak to, to the takedown side of things, but that’s, that’s an important part. And also a large reason why we put our content on multiple different platforms to, to kind of, you know, put our stake in the ground and make sure there is no, I don’t have to show YouTube that we put on Instagram first. You know, if you’re putting it everywhere at the same time,
HB (15:41):
I think there’s a couple of misconceptions that we get push back on, which I would like to, to clarify for people right now to help them and, and to help us too. One just because things out in the public does not mean that it’s in public domain.
MS (15:54):
Yeah. That is not what public domain means.
HB (15:56):
And that is something that we get pushed back on a lot is what do you mean? I found this on TikTok it’s in the public domain. No, it was publicly shared. That does not mean that you get to put it out on your own platform. So, Marshall, what is the definition of being in public domain? Just so we can all get, yeah,
RV (16:10):
That’s a good question.
MS (16:12):
Copyrighted piece of work goes into the public domain, which is a legal term 100 years after the author’s death.
HB (16:23):
So we can all safely assume that anything that has been created for a video on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram radio. It’s not going
MS (16:30):
Public domain anytime soon.
HB (16:34):
And then the second piece is
RV (16:36):
I think a lot of people misunderstand that I really, I mean, totally like that, that, that, so, so you’re welcome to quote the Bible freely, but yes, nothing on social media ever. So, so, but you have,
MS (16:50):
But that’s where the van go. Exhibit is so popular. You’ve seen van goes that is popping up everywhere because Vango works just went into the public domain. Oh,
RV (16:58):
Interesting. Yeah, we’re going, we’re going next week. There you go. We’re going to a Vango exhibit in Nashville next week.
MS (17:05):
That’s because we hit the a hundred year mark after his death. Yay. So, and you’re
HB (17:08):
Welcome.
RV (17:20):
Pretty safe to say Hillary, I don’t see anybody reading the community guidelines. Like, let me scroll down 73 pages here and figure out what all this Gar says pretty safe. Absolutely.
HB (17:33):
That’s and that’s a, okay. But with that, there is a very, a very specific community standard on every single platform. Mm-Hmm
MS (18:09):
And the law and
HB (18:10):
The law, throwing that out there and the law, which means that if you were to somehow make money off of that video, we can come after you for damages. So that’s like worst case scenario for you. Best case scenario for you is we get that video taken down. We can also, because platforms are now trying to prioritize and protect creators and work with their creators to protect their IP. We have taken down accounts with millions of followers because they really continually, again and again, posted videos of ours without our explicit written permission. So you need to license that content from another creator, if you’re going to do that. And that needs to come with written permission and possibly even payment of some sort, if that’s what they want. So it’s just safer to create your own everybody, cuz we, we have, and we will take down accounts for stealing our stuff.
RV (19:00):
Well, it’s not, I mean, I mean, I see that all the time, a lot of times it’s like puppy dog videos or military videos or like these really heartwarming videos. And you’re saying that, that I think it’s tricky. So a share button like hitting the share button is okay, but, but not downloading the video and then reposting it to your account. Like technically that’s,
MS (19:23):
Let’s it this way. If you’re utilizing the tools within the platform to share and or create with something, then they have built that into the terms and conditions that we as creators have signed and agreed to when putting our copyright content onto their platform. If you are doing something that requires a plugin or some sort of external third party website, or you’re having to rip something or download something, I can pretty much tell you right now, that will not be okay because
HB (19:51):
What’s happening is when you use the share button, when you’re using the retweet button, when you’re using duet features on TikTok, you are still giving, I haven’t heard of that one
RV (20:00):
Yet. Duet features on TikTok. I need you to explain that, but I kind of get the gist anyways, keep going.
HB (20:06):
So you’re, whenever you use a feature that’s built into a platform you’re still giving credit to the original creator. When you take something from somebody else’s page and re-upload it organically on your own, you are saying that that is your video and that you own that video. So you have the ability to post that video, which is untrue. And that is a violation of our IP. Does that make
RV (20:27):
Sense? I mean, everybody does this. I mean, everybody does. I mean, I like major, major are celebrities and huge accounts and, and
HB (20:36):
We don’t take downs on celebrity accounts
MS (20:38):
Too.
RV (21:28):
But you guys had, you actually had if I remember, right, not major, always talker, but you guys had a video about parallel parking. Wasn’t there a parallel parking video that you posted on Facebook that went viral and then somebody else posted it on TikTok. Like how
HB (21:44):
Many didn’t even do well on Facebook, which was the very, a frustrating part for me. Oh, that’s interesting. And I, I had written it off as a bad video mm-hmm
RV (22:29):
That’s crazy. So, so, so 30,000 people like used whatever plugin or did a whatever tool they used to rip the video and then, and then put it up. You have to go through through that, that that’s, what’s so hard about it, right. Is like who’s gonna sit there and do this for 30,000 videos. But, but the other concept that jumps out about that to me was how a video video that didn’t perform well on Facebook, the exact same video got 40 million, 40 million views. Like that’s interest. That’s a fascinating concept to me to go, what we think is going, oh, well, you know, I guess it wasn’t that good. It’s like how there’s more to the story here about the algorithms and how’s stuff gets picked up and you just don’t. I mean, what’s the explanation for that?
HB (23:14):
I think there’s a number of things. And, and what was interesting is even looking at the data on the back end of all of those stolen videos is that only a few of them had major views. Right. But I, I think part of it is, you know, depending upon the platform, right, because TikTok to face book to Instagram, to YouTube, they’re all serving different demographics. And and then depending upon your audience, right on your profile, who, who are you serving, what audience is watching your stuff. So maybe we post it and it doesn’t do well, but somebody else’s audience is a better fit for it. There there’s just so many variables that can go into something like this. And I do see often that videos that do well for us on TikTok are not the same videos that are doing well for us and other platforms and vice versa. And I think part of that is just age group and what they want to watch. So what I learned for this experience is not to judge the quality of a video just because it’s not taking off in one place. But to see how I can utilize it across multiple platforms and leverage that piece of content.
RV (24:18):
What if you have videos that all consistently underperform on all platforms should I be worried about that? Does that mean that I might have a crappy video? We should probably talk about how to make your videos
HB (24:30):
More consumable
RV (25:43):
Yes. Yeah. Is there, so on that note, like in terms of a video on TikTok, like I think about a video that I maybe post on YouTube, I mean, other than kind of knowing like, Hey, maybe the audience skews younger, although I feel like that’s probably changing or destined to change here before too long people are jumping over. Is there anything I need to know about how, how I should edit my videos on TikTok? Or and then I, I would say the other thing is kind of like the, the features, like, what are, are there, are there certain key features? Like, you know, you mentioned a few of these duets and trending sounds and trending hashtags. What are those?
HB (26:29):
Do you want us to take this one to start? No, you can. So I think for starters, like a great thing for you to do is just go to the, for anybody is to go to their four you page, which is what your TikTok is going to send you to anyway, when, as your landing page, when you open up the app and just start scrolling and seeing what’s working. Right. And I think you’ll find when I first got Onik TikTok and I showed Marshall, his response was, oh, it’s human cartoons.
RV (26:59):
What this is nice.
HB (27:00):
Yep.
MS (27:01):
And so yeah, Sunday
HB (27:01):
Comics. Got it. Yeah. So, so our question became, how do we make even, you know, these, these difficult or deep co you know, topics, how do we make ’em cartoonish? How do we make ’em more over the top? You know, there’s, there’s a couple of clients with brand builders that have very serious topics that they’re dealing with, whether that’s death or divorce, or, you know, in these really traumatic events. And they’re able to take those topics and find ways to poke fun at them, or find ways to poke fun at themselves as moms. And just making it more of that lighthearted, I think also on TikTok, at least because the platform was built on under a minute, initially, you’re gonna have much quicker edits than you would have on another platform. I’m gonna
MS (27:41):
Pull a pandemic moment and go let our dog in because we all live in this world. Now I’ll be right
RV (27:46):
Back. Nice.
HB (27:48):
He says, I dunno if y’all can hear him, but he is just downstairs and making a ruckus. And we had a conversation before we started this of okay. Let’s just hope he makes it through without, without
RV (27:57):
Working at us. It’s all good. Hear it faintly. But talk, tell me about those features. Yeah. So the light, the
HB (28:04):
Them up for you right now. Yeah.
RV (28:05):
The quick cuts make sense. The lightheartedness, I mean, that, that makes sense.
HB (28:11):
So when we come to one of the other things that’s interesting about TikTok is that you have this discover tab, which is you have your home tab, and then you have a little discover tab. And what the discover tab will do for you, which I think is so fast in comparison to most other platforms, is it will tell you now Twitter does this too, as far as like here’s the trending hashtags, but what TikTok does for you as far as how we understand it as these are the, the hashtags that it wants you to create content around, because that’s what it’s pushing out right now. Oh, so you can go through and, and look at, okay, we got hashtag arts and crafts, hashtag relationships, hashtag productivity, and you can go and see what’s trending within those and make content that fits within those topics. So that’s a really interesting feature that talk’s actually encouraging you to utilize that
MS (29:02):
There’s also, and again, something pass is that people
RV (29:06):
You’re just saying, you click on the discover button on the bottom and all those hashtags that like, if you’re gonna use a hashtag or if you’re gonna create a video natively for the platform, it’s like, use one of those.
HB (29:19):
If you don’t know what to create, I would go to the discover tab and it’ll give you 30 to how I’m probably in unlimited now of hashtags to utilize that it’s currently trending and pushing content for
MS (29:32):
Tiktok also has some really great creator resources online that give again, nobody reads just like terms and conditions, community guidelines, but they tell you how to succeed on the platform. Like do this immediately make this, your first shot, do this, and then this, and then they’ll tell you how to create and construct a good video that will work well on their platform. It’s, you know, beautiful kind of PDF and other types of, you
RV (29:57):
Know, they’re saying on just on TikTok website, mm-hmm
HB (30:00):
RV (30:54):
Frequently were you publishing?
HB (30:57):
I think when we first started, I was doing a video a day. It was not that frequent.
MS (31:01):
It, it was, it was a a day. And then you reached a certain point, I think, two weeks in. And you started to do every other day mm-hmm
HB (31:11):
Yeah. And I think what’s also interesting about TikTok is that maybe unlike other platforms, although I don’t know, I feel like it’s all changing with TikTok. I think there’s a, a understanding that if a video doesn’t perform right away, then that means that the videos are dead. But the truth of the matter is, is that it can take a few days to a few weeks for a TikTok to take off. And, and then when that happens, the ones around it that you’ve put out will get a boost. Right. And so I would encourage people, never to judge the performance of a TikTok based upon
RV (32:31):
Can deter something fascinating. I mean, even as you guys talk, like you can tell, like you mentioned earlier, you don’t like the word influencer and it’s like, the word creator is a much better term. I mean, you’re reading these stuff, you’re familiar with all the policies. Like it, it also strikes me as it’s very professional. It’s a job. Like you’re tracking things, you’re doing it consistently. Like this is not a, oh, I just like make some funny videos, like in my spare time and throw ’em up there. Like you’re, you’re working, you’re working at this. And I think it’s important for people to see that just like working at anything. And and, and right when you start anything, you have to work hard and fast and consistently, and there’s this like some natural velocity that you gotta create early on. I do have one more question in terms of advice for new Tuckers, but before we do that, where do you want people to go? If they wanna link up with you guys and get connected to, to, to you and maybe watch some of your viral videos?
HB (33:26):
I think the best place to go is probably just my website. Cuz you can find all the links there. Hillary billings.com, H I L a R Y B I L L I N gs.com. That’ll have all the links to everything and you can also get my free confidence load book as well. If you’re interested in that. And we we’ll take you on a journey from there.
RV (33:45):
I like it. I like it, but we’ll put links to that. So first if you have someone that’s new to TikTok, I mean, you mentioned like the ha the discovery trick is pretty cool. I actually was just noticed that for the first time, the other day, you mentioned duets, which I have never heard about. I’m gonna have to figure out that, but like what else, what else in terms of like practical advice or things that we should be doing, if we’re, if we’re new or if we like, okay, I need to get, I need to get serious about this.
HB (34:14):
I think for anybody that wants to be a content creator across any platform, or just in general, especially if you’re new, you and you’re starting off to this, it’s really important to take an experimental mentality. I think especially early on in my content creation, I held every piece of content, so precious and so close to me and was basing my success off the result of that video versus the system that I was putting into place to make the video. And we don’t have control over what something does, but when you take an experimental approach and say, okay, I’m gonna make 30 videos and I’m gonna throw ’em all up there and we’ll see what happens. And that’s exactly the approach that I took when I started TikTok was, well, I’m gonna post a video a day. Let’s try a different genre every day. Let’s try this one, let’s try that one and see what’s working.
HB (34:59):
And then at that point, you’ll have a data set to then work off of and say, oh, interesting. These ones worked for me. Let me do more of those. Let’s see what happens if I do more of those, oh, those aren’t working. What if I do this type of video in this genre, or try this trend or try this TikTok dance all of that can come into play, but it’s, I think that the art of mastery and we were talking about this, I think it was last month, come without holding that content so close to you. You have to be able to let it go and move on and let it go and move on in order to continue to become better.
RV (35:31):
Ah, I love it. I love it guys. Well, thank you so much for this. I mean, I learned a ton here. It’s just crazy how the world is changing and looking at this. And I mean, TikTok is powerful. It it’s honestly like it’s really good at at least mine is it’s serving up things that I’m actually interested in and funny and inspiring. And like, it, it I’ll tell you it’s a whole lot better than TV. It does a better if a job than TV does at like putting stuff in front of me that I wanna see. So keep going. I mean, this is cool. I wanna make sure we’ve got good people out there leading the world of TikTok creators and you guys are awesome. We appreciate your wisdom. We’re, we’re always cheering for you. And you know, we’ll be, we’ll be following your journey. We love you guys. Thanks Rory.
Ep 236: How to Build a Legendary Speaking Career in 5 Years with Michelle Poler
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 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 see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our 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):
So a couple of years ago, I got a chance to speak at the global leadership summit, which is the large, one of the largest, if not the largest speaking events in the world. And then last year I was part of helping my friend, Jamie Kern, Lima, get to speak there. And she shared the stage with Michelle Poler, who you’re about to meet. And I have I’ve known of Michelle because she’s a very, very successful speaker. She is very loved and respected in our industry. Several of my friends like Jason Dorsey have met her and talked so highly about her and then shared the stage together a lot. And as I got to speak, I got to see her speak at GLS and we kind of became friends a little bit. And I just think she’s darling and has the coolest story. If you haven’t heard of her.
RV (01:39):
So she is kind of a, she’s the founder of a movement that’s called hello fears. She’s reached 70 million people with this movement. There’s, you know, she did a TEDx talk. She wrote a book called hello fears. She has spoken for huge companies, ESPN, Netflix, Microsoft. She’s been on the today show and featured in pretty much every major national media, but and he was, I just wanted to hear a little bit, I wanted you to get, to hear a little bit of her story of how she got started, and then maybe we’ll sneak a few tips from her about overcoming some of our fears and building our brands. So Michelle, welcome to the welcome to the show.
MP (02:20):
I was expecting some applause or something like
RV (02:25):
Dancing. We’re alive of it. You’d be dancing.
MP (02:28):
Yeah, exactly. I would be dancing, but I get the one.
RV (02:31):
Yeah, I love it. So you know, you’re from Venezuela, which I love that is wonderful. And, and I like have have a couple of friends from Venezuela is a, you are another one. Tell us how did this all get started? Because you were a little bit of a, I mean, this all started out of reluctance from you for, for you is how I interpreted it’s. Most people go, I want to become a speaker or be an author, and I’m going to write a book, but your whole story and start of your personal brand is like came from a completely different place.
MP (03:04):
Yeah, totally. I never in my life would have expected to be where I am today. Not even in my wildest dreams, because I had no idea that what I’m doing today was a thing was a possibility. So I didn’t grow up. Like you said, I’m from Venezuela. I didn’t grow up with speakers. Like never a speaker came to my school just to motivate us, you know, if there was a speaker, maybe it was like a mathematician or something like, you know, professionally in their area. And so I would, I had no, and then I didn’t, then I went to college for arts and there were no speakers also in my school that was in the United States when I moved here. I was 19 years old. I did my career here as an art director, graphic designer. And then I, you know, I, I worked at an agency, an advertising agency and they don’t invest that much.
MP (03:57):
I don’t want to you know, just, I guess, I don’t know every agency, but from what I’ve seen in advertising, they don’t invest normally that much in the personal growth of their employees. So there were no speakers in my agency when I was working there at YNR young and Rubicam. And so I was never exposed to this speakers. And when I moved to New York to do a master’s in branding at the school of visual arts, I, I was asked to do this 100 day project where we could choose anything we want to do for 100 days in a row. And it was like a series of exercises that we did that led me to understand that it was time for me to face my fears. That I’ve been a very fearful person, but mostly comfortable person my entire life, like I was achieving a lot of things. So I never really thought I need to get uncomfortable in order to
RV (04:52):
Cool assignment. It was a school assignment to do and do something for a hundred straight days.
MP (04:59):
Yeah, you can do anything. And you had to also share your project online day after day. Like it couldn’t be just something that you keep to yourself. It had to be somewhere on social media, you could decide where. And so I decided to use YouTube and face my fears. I decided to face one for your day, for 100 days, create a video for that and post that to YouTube. So it was such a big endeavor that even my professor was concerned. She’s like, I don’t think you should go this route. This is a lot of work and this is not even your thesis. And I was working full-time in advertising while I was doing my master’s. So I had too much in my hand and I still decided to go for it because I had a hunch. This project could change my life. I had no idea where this was going to lead, but in my mind, my goal at that point was to create a project where I could not only become of course, a braver person. Cause that was my main goal, but also where I could show all of my skills, my creativity, my design, my video editing my community building all of those skills. I wanted to put them into one big project. So then I could apply to jobs in branding showing this project that was like my goal, like the best that could happen for me was to get an amazing job maybe at Instagram or Google or YouTube, like a really cool brand. That was my, my intention.
RV (06:23):
I love that. So I didn’t piece that together that it was the college project and that you were you. Cause I noted. I mean, one of the things that I noticed, I was like, well, yeah, this is an amazing story, but the videos are amazing. And that’s because you were studying that one of the reasons, cause you were studying storytelling and visual design and editing. So that
MP (06:47):
I started editing videos for my honeymoon. Like when I got married, we bought a GoPro and I was like, I have to make the best video with this GoPro. So I learned from my brother who actually is a filmmaker. And he taught me everything. I know. So I was like, this is the perfect excuse for me to create one video a day. Cause I love video-making. And storytelling and branding and design and all of that. I just put it together and created this project called 100 days without fear that ended up leading me into speaking.
RV (07:22):
So you, you, how did it work? Like functionally, did you, did you live the hundred days and film it and then go back and edit it or did you live a day? Film it, edit it that night and post it.
MP (07:38):
Let me tell you what my schedule looked like. So I would go to work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at my agency. Okay. In New York. And then from there I would go to my class from 6:00 PM to like 10:00 PM. Right. And so I would have a few times during the day to face a fear, it would be either very early in the morning. Like for example, one day I cooked something very outside of my comfort zone with a lot of boiling oil that I was, it was scary for me. And then, or I could do the lunchtime. That was the most popular time for me to go face a fear. So I was in my agency working alongside with all my peers, like my teammates. And then I’m like, be right back. I’m going to touch a snake or something. And so I would like go really quick to like central park, hold a snake, okay.
MP (08:26):
Pay the guy $2, go back to my work, keep working. And then I would go back home. I Reverend 10, 11:00 PM. And I would have to edit a video of what I, or, or I would use the nighttime. For example, I went by myself to a bar at night. So I would, or comedy show that I ended up doing standup comedy. So I would use one of those three times during the day. And then I would go back home, edit the video. Then I would do homework for my next day or whatever. I have left for my job and I was not sleeping, but I was on a high courage and excitement and living life to the fullest.
RV (09:03):
Wow. So how long did it, how long does it take you to edit one of these videos?
MP (09:08):
It was around maybe an hour and a half. It was like three minute videos. But yeah, it takes, takes a long time just to put re choose to write music. I started all my videos doing stop motion. So the, so it would say like fear number one. And it would be things that move by that by itself. And then I’m like, okay, I’m done doing stop motion. It only lasted three days. I’m like, I need to, to be able to do this in a quicker way.
RV (09:34):
All right. And so, so you, you would shoot these experiences. Most of them were pretty short, like a few minutes and then you would just come and spend like a couple of hours every night editing it and then you would post it and then you’d just go back to work the next day for a hundred.
MP (09:48):
Yes. For a hundred days. And whenever I could impose, for example, like it was a really busy day or I ended up facing a few really late or when people started to worry, they’re like, are you okay? Did you die facing your fears? Cause I’m doing scary things every day and I’m like, I’m fine. I’m fine. I just went to like to get hypnotized. And I had no time to go, sorry. So one day I would post two videos or during the weekend I would try to face more than two fears. So I have a little bit more so during the week I have more time, it was insane, but it was the best time of our lives. And I say our lives because I did it with my husband. He supported me since the beginning. We didn’t have kids at the time. And so he was like, let’s do it. I want you to become a braver person. I want you to be a braver mom one day for my kids. So he fully supported me and he faced my fears with me.
RV (10:37):
That is so crazy. So then you just made a list. Did you make a list of a hundred first and said, okay, these are the a hundred I’m going to do. And then cause like, did you have to travel for some of them or were they all in New York?
MP (10:51):
I tried to keep all of them in New York and some of them were upstate. So I would have to rent a car, maybe spend a night, something like that. But that’s, and then if I had any trips along the way, for example, I went to the how conference, you know, the branding conference. It was part of the school that I was like the school trip. So I face a lot of fears there. I was like, oh, this is a networking event. Like what can I do that is outside of my comfort zone? And so the way that I did it is I built a list of 20 things and then I couldn’t come up with any ideas. I was like, what, how am I going to start a 100 day project if I can’t come up with more than 20 ideas.
MP (11:31):
So I put this on Facebook, this was in 2015. So Facebook was like my biggest social media at that time. And I had no following. I mean, I was no one. I just had family and friends like there as my friends on Facebook. And so I posted there saying, Hey, I’m going to start a project where I’m going to face 100 fears. Can you suggest some ideas? And I think that’s the best thing that I could have done just because I started building community without realizing it, basically all the people that commented there. I had like around 60 something comments or more, I don’t remember. Everybody that commented felt like they’re part of this project since the beginning. So every time I would go out and face a fear that they suggested, for example, somebody said, you should go crush your wedding. You should go post nude in front of a drawing class. I mean, things that I know that never crossed my mind, I was like, yeah, it’s insane. So I was like, Hey, I did what you suggested. Here’s the video. So they felt like, oh, that’s so cool. I suggested something. She actually did it. And now I’m part of this. So they were the first ones to share my project and rude for me. And it was a really good feeling cause I was not alone doing this.
RV (12:45):
And when did you get the sense that this was taking off or like blowing up or cause there’s, there’s also a Ted talk that happens in here. But is that after?
MP (12:55):
Yeah, so it was, you know, it was one comment from a friend from college that she never reached out to me. And while I was doing the project, one time she reached out and said, you know, your fears, like your videos are making me a braver person. I’m daring to do more things at work. After I see you face your fears. And she knew me from college. So she was like, I remember how fearful you are. So I’m very proud of you. Thank you for inspiring me. And that comment made me realize that this project had a lot of potential. So I was like, this should be out there more people should know about this. And then one day out of the blue day, 40 of the project, it was picked up by daily mail in the UK. And they reached out and they asked for permission to publish my videos on their website.
MP (13:42):
And I was like, heck yeah, you can publish my videos, whatever you want, do whatever you want with my videos. That will be amazing. And so they published that and minutes later it was all over. It was every single website was sharing this and then contacted me like Huffington post CNN, Fox, all of them were like, we want to face fears with you. So, because I was in New York, it was really easy to just you know, get together with them some place and then go face fierce together. And that was pretty cool. Cause then it was all over the media and a lot of people started following the project. So I went from like 150 followers to 30,000. Wow.
RV (14:23):
Wow. That is so cool. So at the start of a, at the end of a hundred days, how many followers did you have? Like 30,000.
MP (14:30):
Yeah. Around that people that were like so eager to see what was the next year. And they were all really worried. Like what’s going to happen after it. Cause they’re like, we’re loving this project. We don’t want it to end. And I was so exhausted. I was like, I need this project to end, but I can’t continue facing one fear a day is taking over my life. Of course, one of my fears was quitting my job. So I didn’t have a job for the last, maybe 35 years, which was really helpful because I have more time to do this. I also graduated from my program, so I had more time to do this. And then the last fear was to speak at Ted TEDx. And so I had more time to prepare for that. It was not on the day 100. It was like a few weeks later. Cause that’s the date that the, you know, the event was taking place. And then I had a lot of people that they expecting to see what happened next.
RV (15:21):
So did you reach out to Ted? Did they find you? What, how that happened?
MP (15:26):
So when I started this project, I put TEDx as my last fear. And then I got so like the imposter syndrome selling me. Who do you think you are? Of course, you’re not going to go get into Ted who, you know, they’re not going to accept whatever. And so I removed it and I was like, yeah, I’ll forget about that. And when the project went viral, I was like, maybe I should consider reaching out. Maybe they will listen because I am all over now. And I know the impact that this project is having on so many people. So my husband found out who the organizer was for TEDx Houston and he reached out and through LinkedIn and this guy responded and then he was like, I love your project. Yes. I want you on our stage, but are you from Texas or related to Texas in any way?
MP (16:16):
Cause we won local speakers and I was like, I’m not I would love to, but now I’m not. And then he’s like, I’m sorry. And then I wrote a huge email listing, all the reasons why I should be on his stage, even though I’m not from Texas. And two weeks later he wrote back saying, okay, Michelle you’re in. And I was not only in, I was one of the highlights of the day. And it was like a really amazing experience to see that you can get the things that you want if you dare to really go after them and ask for it and you know, be persistent. Huh?
RV (16:51):
I love the smell. And so I think, but in your, your Ted talk has several hundred thousand views
MP (16:57):
Almost like half a million.
RV (16:59):
Yeah. So, which is awesome. But I think one of the, one of the things is I think people go, oh, Michelle went viral and that’s how she started her career. Which in which in some ways is true based on what you’re saying, but it’s in some ways also not true. It wasn’t like you had millions of followers or 10 million views on a Ted talk or something. So how did you then kind of parlay it? Like as we kind of go, okay, now we move this at some point, the light bulb goes on in your head like, Hey, this could be my business. I should do this. And you, you leveraged off of that and you turned it into what is now a really phenomenal business.
MP (17:41):
Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. It’s what you’re saying. It’s not like I blew up and suddenly brands all over are me. It’s not like it was just a virality wave that I was able to like capitalize for like know how to really take advantage of that for my next stage. So the question I made myself is what exactly resonated with people about this project and how can I turn that into something bigger? And so we met Jason Dorsey, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that day, he was speaking also at TEDx and he saw me and he’s like, Michelle, you should be gone a speaker at call me. And so we call him and he gave us the tips on how to start, basically build a website, build a demo reel, what’s your audience? What are your, your talking points, develop a 45 minute talk, things like that.
MP (18:35):
And so we started to work so hard on that. And then we started to pitch this talk to company. So I listed all of the friends that I have that work in different companies like corporations. For example, I have my, one of my best friends working at Google. One of my friends, someone that I know of actually works at Facebook at Netflix. So I started calling people, do you know anybody that works here or there? I wanted my resume to have like this amazing companies and logos that I admire so much. And we started pitching this, showing them my TEDx and then showing them what I recorded myself, presenting at Google and all of these different companies. And that’s how we started building the speaking business from the ground up.
RV (19:16):
And that, what year was that? What year was that?
MP (19:18):
2016.
RV (19:20):
I mean, that’s pretty crazy that from in the year 2016, you built like your first demo video. And then by the year 2021, you were speaking on the biggest, the biggest speaking stage in the world. I mean, five years, that’s pretty incredible.
MP (19:36):
It really exceeded our expectations. Like we never imagined this would go this far, this fast. And also for example, my husband was still working in finance when we started and he was helping me develop my presentation. He would practice, reach out to clients and bureaus and all of that, but he was still with his full-time job because I was not working. Like I was not making any money. And then one day he called an amazing person that represented or actually still represent brunette brown in the speaking industry. And he was like, Hey, I I’m trying to help out. My wife here develop a speaking business. This is her demo reel. This is her TEDx. What do you think it was at his job in his office having this phone call with this person called Michelle and she saw this and she was like, you should leave your job and represent your wife. And you both should work full time on this because Michelle has an amazing potential. I actually I’d love to help. So she started helping me also. And she’s still representing me today and that’s been one of the best things that happened in our lives. So my husband quit his job in finance and worked full time with me doing
RV (20:48):
This. And when you guys started, so you start this as like a little social project and you do a Ted talk, then you basically create a website, some program descriptions, you had a video editing, which is a huge, that’s a huge asset to have had it. And but then you basically just make a list of all these companies you want to speak at. And then you start calling friends and family and saying, Hey, do you know anyone who works at this company? And then you just said, they, you find out who books the meeting, and then you say, Hey, I’d like to come talk. Here’s my bio, here’s my program. And here’s my demo video. And that, and then, then that’s how you started.
MP (21:26):
Yeah, yeah. They would say, okay, I’m not in charge of this, but I know the person that organized an event last year, let me reach out. And then it would go from person to person until we find the right one. And then of course I started doing events for free for this companies. I wanted to build my resume and then they started hiring me back and paying my fee to, you know, to bring me back to all their different offices. That’s what I did with Google and all of the other companies. And I think it was just a lot of self-confidence that got me there. Like when you know that what you have has so much value and that is so unique and authentic and original, and that you’re the right person to be delivering this message and, and talking about this things and inspiring people, then I think, you know, you have half the battle won because you believe in yourself. And I actually have this sticker right here that I love that I created says, when you believe in yourself so much, you make others believe in you as well.
RV (22:24):
I love that. I love that. That w and, and so basically you just start calling on these companies, you start speaking for free, then they say, Hey, we’d love to have you come back and do something. And so then it’s like, what’s your fee. And then you have a fee and then you do that more. And people see you and they say, will you come speak at my thing? And I have a friend, and then you raise your fee and you just basically been in that cycle for like five years until you end up getting a call from the global leadership summit and say, Hey, will you come, will you come speak on, speak on our stage? And, and, and so you still book gigs and in primarily, you’ve also been very, very focused on keynotes, right? Like your core businesses. You’re a speaker.
MP (23:07):
Yeah. Actually when I started, I had so many ideas. I was like, I want to do merch. I want to do YouTube. I wanted to speak. And I also want to create a company. I want to do all these things. And then my husband is very strategic and that’s really good for me cause I’m all over the place. And I have so many ideas and I want to do them all, you know, typically like the creative personality. And I’m like, yeah, I could do this. I can do that. I could do that. But then he’s like, Michelle, let’s focus on the one thing that can help us leave our jobs and actually, you know, make a living out of this. So it’s not YouTube, it’s not merged. It’s not any of those things is speaking. So let’s do this, let’s focus on one thing. And then that’s lesson that I keep you know, putting into practice until today, every time that I’m going to commit to one project, it’s just one project at a time. And so by doing that, we were able to really get this beam to the next level. And once we were very comfortable with our new career as speakers, then I started also doing social media. I started, I wrote my book, hello fears and, and doing all the other things I did merge. And now I have a baby.
RV (24:18):
That’s the, I
MP (24:19):
Did the baby.
RV (24:21):
Yep. Once you have a baby that you, you won’t do much for five years. You’ll. You’ll, you’ll take care of that, that baby. That is so great. Well, so this has been awesome, Michelle. I, I, I, it’s so cool to just hear, hear your story about how this all happened. And you probably don’t realize this, but you’re reinforcing like every single thing that we teach to our clients and members in terms of how, how to go about doing this and on that, can we talk about fear for a second? Can we do like more of like a little coaching coaching session just for a minute. And by the way, the book is called, hello fears. If you, you didn’t pick that up, that’s the name of Michelle’s book? So on the topic of overcoming fear, this is something that I think personal brands have to face a lot because it’s like, oh yeah, I want to go speak for Google, but I’m scared.
RV (25:16):
They might not like me. I might not get ahold of them. They might reject me, or I might want to reach out to speakers, bureaus or literary agents, or I might want to get on television or even just get written up in some article and there’s fear there, or for a lot of our clients, it’s even just scary to get on camera and say, you know, I want to post a, a 62nd video, which sounds really simple, but, but you go, man, I can find a hundred reasons not to press record on my phone. So why do you think we have some of those fears? And, and obviously you had a little bit of the benefit of doing a hundred days of facing fears. And so you kind of rolled off of that momentum in this, but do you have any tips for people that are struggling with that kind of thing?
MP (26:01):
I think it’s so sad that the main reason why we don’t achieve our goals and our dreams is ourselves. Like it’s ourselves telling us for some reason, like we’re not worth it or it is not worth pursuing. So fear stops us for so many reasons, for example, and I, I talk about this also in my program. I’m like the first thing I tell people is fear stops us. Why? And so I give the example of when I wanted to lunch my online program, all the different reasons, for example, what if somebody else is already doing a program about branding and you know, why would they choose me? What if people think that I only want their money? What if I, all those what ifs, right? What if it’s not as good as people think? And then we listen to that and we stop ourselves from doing the things that we actually want to do. And if you ask me, what’s the main fear people have, what will you say? What do you think is the main fear people have
RV (26:55):
That they won’t be good enough?
MP (26:57):
I think the main fear people have is disappointing. Other people that’s one of the main things. And so we stopped doing so many things because we don’t want to be perceived as something we don’t want to disappoint other people. So and it’s such a shame because we need people’s value. We need their value. And for that, we need them to have the courage, to put their valley out there, to shut up like their imposter syndrome and all those ideas. And I can tell you a couple of things that are helpful, for example if your message can help three people, can you think of three people in your life that have asked for help in what, in the area that you teach? You can also help 3000 people. And what I mean by this is that if you know, more than other people, about a certain topic, you are qualified to do that.
MP (27:49):
That’s one of the main things that we tell ourselves, I am not qualified because for example, you want to talk about any topic like even parenting? No, there are some people with PhDs that talk about parenting. If you are a parent, you can talk about parenting to anybody that is not a parent because you know, more than people that are not parents do. Now I have a nine month old baby. I know more about babies then Michelle, a year ago. And I would’ve loved to hear this. Michelle talk about babies, you know, like, so if you do, if you know more than a group of people, you are qualified, that’s it, that’s the main thing. Yeah. You don’t need to be the best one, but it’s enough. And let me think and just try to think, well, the, the thing I teach everybody in my, in my talks that you heard is what’s the best that can happen seriously. If you dare, if you choose to go out and record that 60 minutes, 62nd video, what’s the best that can happen. What if that can lead you to accomplish those things that you’ve been wanting for so long, but you keep listening to all your excuses out there. And that is still focusing on the rewards is the main thing that will help us take action when we’re in that spot.
RV (29:02):
And, and, and it’s just that shifting it from what’s the worst thing that can happen, which is what most of us think about to, what’s the best thing that can happen. And in that moment, when you’re kind of like, Ooh, I want to do it, but I’m scared. This just like that, that one little shift is a catalyst for doing, for, for actually doing the thing that you want to do.
MP (29:24):
In my case, I promised myself that I was never going to allow my fears get in the way of my treats. That’s the simple, not as not so simple premise, I guess, or line thing that I promised myself. And so every time I want to accomplish something and I see, and I realize that my fear is the one thing getting in the way. That’s when I have to go out and do it and forget about my fear and think what’s the best that can happen and hope for the best. And most of the times, the only things you regret are the ones that you didn’t do.
RV (29:58):
And so the moment you, so you just kind of have like this mental alarm in your head that says, I want to do something, but I’m scared. And so whenever you feel that it’s like, okay, I have to do it now.
MP (30:10):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Because I see the world in two different, like in this context, every decision that you choose is either a comfort based decision or a growth based decision. So whenever we’re in front of any situation, you have two options. Are you choosing growth or are you choosing comfort? And it doesn’t look the same for everybody. So very personal thing. So you have to think which one is the scariest thing to do right now that most of the times is the growth option.
RV (30:44):
And then you just go for it.
MP (30:47):
You work on it, you work on yourself first. I think that’s the most important thing, working on yourself, working on your confidence and when you’re ready, then you go for it. But it is important to work on ourselves. People, sometimes they don’t want to go to therapy. They don’t want to learn new skills. They don’t want to work on themselves. And then they pray. They want to achieve certain things. I think it all works. It all starts with you.
RV (31:11):
Hmm. That’s interesting though. So you’re saying that like, Hey, okay, do you feel this fear? You want to do it? And then it’s, it’s not necessarily just go out, just jump in and do it. It’s like, okay, what, why do I need to learn in order to feel equipped to, to then go do that thing.
MP (31:28):
The imposter syndrome to be real, you don’t want to be an imposter. And so in order to delete, like raise the imposter syndrome from the equation, you actually need to become the person that you would admire, right? You can’t teach about finance and B being broke. You, you can teach about achieving your dreams. If you have not achieved your dreams. I think that first you have to become the person that you would admire. And then you can teach others about that. But also there’s part of ourselves, like our fear telling us that we’re never there and it’s never enough. You know, and that, yeah. So it always telling you, you need to read one more book. You need to do one more course. No, you have to stop. And also think, okay, I think I am at this point where I can teach people what I know. And you can’t just stay on the loop of doing another course, another book, because then you will never put everything you’ve learned into action.
RV (32:24):
Is there any, you have any tips for identifying the difference there between where you go, when am I just, when am I actually going? Okay, I’m equipping myself so that it’s not imposter syndrome versus I’m using it as something that we call creative avoidance. That’s a term for my first book where you’re like, you’re using it as a really a procrastination mechanism.
MP (32:49):
I think that I don’t like to compare myself with other people, but it’s okay to compare yourself with yourself. So maybe think about yourself a year ago. Where are you? Are you still kind of in the same or you, you say, whoa, I wish I could tell this things that I know now to my year ago, self, if there are some things that, you know, you’re like my, my one year ago, self would love to know this things. It would have made his life easier. Then I think Europe one where you can share what you know with other people is yes, you can always know more and you know read more and all that, but then you have to understand what and any it’s okay to start when you’re not ready. Right. That’s one of the things that, that people say, I love this quote from, I think Reed Hoffman that says if your first product doesn’t embarrass you, you launch too late.
MP (33:42):
I love it. I’m very much like I have an idea. I, if I feel I have what it takes, I started and I started trying it and then people will give you feedback. That’s also really valuable. So just maybe try it with a small group of people and see the result there, see the impact. And then you will see, yeah, definitely this is ready for a larger group. Or maybe I should work on it first because for example, my talk, my keynote presentation w the one that I started six years ago is very different from the one that I am giving today. But if I would have waited six years to make it perfect to launch it, you know, I would be nowhere. Cause I just needed all the feedback, all the things that went wrong, all those things to just build the perfect talk that I feel right now is at an amazing level where I’m so confident about this, but it took me six years to get here.
RV (34:34):
I love it. Well, the book is called, hello fears. This is Michelle Poler. You’ve been listening to Michelle. Where do you want people to go? If they want to like sync up with all the stuff you have going on,
MP (34:43):
I would love for them to join me on my community on Instagram. So hello fears on Instagram. That’s where you’ll find everything about me and we’ll just keep in touch. So just let me know that you listened to this podcast so we can connect there.
RV (34:57):
I love it. Well, we’ll link up. We’ll link up to that. As well as your website and the book and everything thanks for helping us overcome our fears. Thanks for modeling. It. It is inspiring and super helpful to actually like get inside your, your mind a little bit about how you push yourself past cause you had so much, so much experience doing it. So keep inspiring, keep doing what you do and we’re, we’re we’re pulling for you. We’re we’re fans. We believe in you. Thank you
MP (35:24):
So much. My pleasure to be here.
Ep 234: Selling with a Servant Heart with Jim Doyle
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 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 see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our 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):
If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you know, that the national speakers association has been a huge part of my journey was a huge part of my journey, especially early on as a speaker. And so I met Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and so many you know, of my personal mentors and mark Sanborn, Eric Chester, David Avin. Well, there’s a group that NSA has called the million dollar speakers group that started a handful of years ago. And through that group, I got a chance, a we got a chance, AJ and I to meet a lot of the, the, the really sustainable businesses that have been run by speakers. So they were speakers that they turned their expertise into a business, and that’s the man you’re about to meet Jim Doyle. I met Jim through that group. We’ve been friends for a lot of years now at this point he’s run a multi-million dollar training company for years, and we’ve just known each other through that.
RV (01:47):
And I’ve always admired him and looked up to him. One of the things that he did recently is he did an Aesop with some of his team and sold some of the ownership of his company back to his own team members, which is really, really a wonderful way to leave a legacy and something that you just don’t hear that much about. But anyways Jim has a book that just came out, it’s called selling with a servant heart the 10 lessons on the path to joy and increased income. And another thing, if you’ve been listening for a while, you know, we almost never have people on here to talk about sales because we have a hard time finding people who we agree with and how they teach. And we’ve got some really, really specific philosophies around selling that are pretty rare, but Jim is one of the guys that over time we’ve really come to a door and endorsed and we, we endorse this book. And so anyways, I wanted you to get a chance to meet him and learn from him along alongside of me as I learned from him. So Jim, welcome to the show.
JD (02:54):
Thank you. I, I have to laugh, but you know, Brian, Tracy Zig Ziglar Jimbo, Like I’ve arrived at to be even in the same sentence with those guys who were just legends and impacted and thought so many people I’ll take it, but I don’t I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination, what those guys have done is amazing.
RV (03:20):
Well, and I tell you, but in all, in all, like just objectivity, it’s a rare, it is a rare speaker who builds a multi-million dollar enterprise that scales beyond themselves that lasts, you know, over a decade that that actually has a wealth building, a true wealth building component. That’s a transferable asset. That’s really incredible. And so Jim, I want you started really, you, you tell us, tell us what you do. Like tell us what the company is. Obviously the book is about selling out. I want to hear that, but kind of talk to us about like how you started your career and grew the training company. So,
JD (04:03):
So I was always in the media business and the radio and TV business and like many entrepreneurs. I went broke into a deal in the early nineties and I was like, okay, what the hell do I do now? But I had always loved training and speaking. So I started a company in 1992 called Jim Dolan associates, our 30th year, it’s now called jda.media. So this is our 30th year and over a period of time and over, and I really should have been cited over a period of time. You know, it became, I think the largest training company in the TV space, for sure. And I think one of the lessons I’ve learned in that process that maybe is helpful to folks that are trying to do that and try to build a business is the line there’s riches in niches.
JD (04:54):
I think if you look at many of the members of that billion dollar group who have built big sustainable businesses, I think about our friend Roxanne Emmerich, who’s done that in the banking space, who is the guy that we knew, who, who was the guru of nursing homes and senior living centers and somebody, those people you know, people who done it in financial services, bill gates on a subject of referrals who built big businesses by being more niched focused. And I think what that allows you to do is to provide more services than just a training experience. And then you move to the next company in the next marketplace, down the road. Now you can do coaching programs, online programs build more sustainable product businesses that give you more opportunities. So I think that’s one of the lessons that we learned there’s riches in niches.
RV (05:46):
Yeah, that that’s really true. I mean and, and, and some of those folks you get, it’s like, they’re not necessarily names you would recognize, like you might somebody who, you know, speaks in marinas full of people. But in terms of the, the equity value of an, of an asset in a company that’s, you know, survive without them, they are there they’re huge and valuable and provide extraordinary wealth to the founder. And then also, you know, that the people who come after them. So one of the things that I really think is cool about what you guys do. So, so you’re, you’re saying, when you say media and TV business, you’re in media sales, you’re, you’re training you, your niche is training like advertising sales reps at like a local TV station to call on local businesses to sell air like ad ad ad time. Yeah,
JD (06:37):
Yeah, absolutely. So they’re using the, the, the TV stations platform. And then now, today, increasingly using all of the digital platforms that are available that, that television station might’ve created or represents.
RV (06:50):
Interesting. And so these are these like, like, you know, whatever, like your local news for kind of a thing, or,
JD (06:58):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve, we’ve had clients in Nashville with clients and I think right now, 75 markets around the country. So you know, we’re able to go out and actually make sales calls side-by-side with their team members with just a whole file cabinet of ideas that we’ve learned from traveling all over the country. So we’re the, we’re the king of stolen ideas. We steal an idea, we steal an idea natural and sell it in Austin for a profit. And hopefully for the benefit of the business owner, that it gets some expertise that they might not have been able to get under normal circumstances.
RV (07:34):
And I think, and I said like tongue and cheek, but the, that is really rare. What you guys do is you not, I love this. You don’t only just teach people how to do it. You kind of do it alongside them. Like your, your team actually goes on sales calls with them, shows them in real time, like how to apply the concepts and the techniques you’re teaching. Yeah.
JD (07:55):
Yeah. So correct. And I’ll give you an example. I mean, you were kind enough to allow me to interview you for the book and, and ha as well. And you talked about something that was a big takeaway for me because it crystallized, you said it in a way that I didn’t, you know, made it clear when you talked about acute listening. So we teach as most, I think effective sales trainers teach as most business owners should probably embrace on a technique of, of doing a lot of diagnosis before you present ideas. And so when we go out on a sales call with a salesperson in a market their idea of listening, maybe three questions before they start talking about advertising, how’s your business? How’s the market right now? Oh, what are you doing for advertising? So the behavior that they model with our people is, you know, a 30, 40 minute conversation, that’s all about them, about the customer’s business, their challenges, their issues. Nobody wants to buy advertising, you know, almost they want to buy the things that advertising can do for them. You know, whether it’s solving a problem, dealing with a competitive threat, taking advantage of an opportunity in the marketplace. So, you know, that, that whole idea of understanding what the customer really wants is foundational to anybody who wants to be effective in sales, whether that’s a consultant, a business owner, or a salesperson at a TV station.
RV (09:20):
Yeah. And so the, I think that that’s super cool that you actually do the sales calls with them, to your point about the niches. That’s also like if you’re serving a vertical, you can do it. Like if you worked in that vertical for years, you know, it, you know, the game, you know, the people, you know, the lingo, the like all, all the, you know, the normal objections, et cetera, you can do that kind of depth of service that someone that just says, I teach sales training for everybody. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but they can’t, they can’t do it to that level of detail.
JD (09:51):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, th the more you know about the category, the know you, the more you also understand what the needs are in that category. So you can adapt, we’re create new products based upon what an opportunity is. That may be a new opportunity just in the last year caused by the pandemic. So I’m a big believer in going deep rather than wide you know, deeper rather than why that has at least served us. Well, of course, now I’m ready to book to go and go wider, but violating all my own advice. But but I think that, I think it’s served me well for a long time.
RV (10:24):
Well, and, and I, I would say, you know, so the way that we teach it, we call it, she hands wall. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard us talk about this. We named this after Peter she hand who you probably know
JD (10:33):
Of course. Yeah.
RV (10:34):
W you know, we kind of took a, one of she hands models that he, he created for sort of like the corporate space. And we applied to personal branding saying that the way you break through the wall is by becoming known for one thing in one space. But then once you break through the wall, then you can expand into other things. After, after you have a team and you have money and you have resources and experience. And I think you’re, you’re a great example of that. So let’s talk about selling with a servant heart. There’s, there’s no shortage of books written about sales. Certainly not at this point. So why the need to write this? And what do you think is distinct or different about this philosophy compared to, you know, what other stuff people may have read or heard about sales?
JD (11:24):
So if you Google sales books and you look at the titles, it’s things like closing, winning, winning, winning you know, I, I gotta tell ya, I don’t think that great salespeople think about winning in the same way that maybe that’s the literature. And so I, I quite honestly get offended by a lot of what I read and, and one of them that I get, because we have a lot of great sales people, people who could be great, who are being taught, that this is the way to do it. And if you sell in that way, you know, maybe you’ll have some success, but I don’t believe that you’re going to find the joy that you can have in a long-term career in sales that you get, when you put your primary focus on serving people. You know, when I interviewed AIJ who, by the way you told me was the best sales person in your family. And one of the best you’ve ever seen,
RV (12:26):
She is to hand hands down. And I would, I’d say this, you know, separate of being my wife, like we work together, you know, for years, he is the best sales person hands down that I’ve ever seen.
JD (12:39):
And I would agree after having spent an hour on the phone interviewing her, but she said, you know, when you make your customer’s needs more important than your own needs. Well, in order to do that, you’ve got to believe that if it’s good for the customer, it’s ultimately going to be good for you, even though that might not be the case immediately, but if it’s good for the customer, it will ultimately be good for you. And so, and good. I mean, the first word of this book title is selling. This is not a relationship, or this is not a book to help you feel, you know, kinder in general. This is a book about being more effective in selling more effective at getting growing your business. But how do you grow your business? The more you serve, the more you get back and where you give the more you get back.
JD (13:26):
There’s a guy that I interviewed in the book Dave wall Dave if he was a, if he was an RV dealership, he’d probably be the biggest in the country. He sells these $2 million coaches, these beautiful motor home coaches, $2 million, $2 million. One of his customers who was an old client of mine said, you got to talk to this guy. And he S his customer said, this guy took a phone call from me. I didn’t, I had an issue with my coach. He took a phone call for me in the course of the conversation. I said, where are you? And he said, well, I’m on a family vacation in Argentina. And he was on a satellite phone somewhere in Argentina. And my friend said I was astounded. He took that call. So I asked Dave about it. And he said, I took you know, five minutes out of my time to help a customer.
JD (14:21):
Well, how has Dave one 60% of Dave wall’s business is repeat 60%. 30% of his business is referral. If you build relationships like Dave has you start every year at such a high level of productivity that you’re going to be an award winner. You’re going to be a high performance salesperson, all because you’ve got a commitment to customers. So you know, the idea that, you know, we’re going to win where they were going to close. You know, what I think selling is a lot more about the way you are as a person and a lot less about the words you use. And so that’s hopefully a focus of what I hope to accomplish by doing this book.
RV (15:06):
And that’s, that’s a really cool way to think about it. You know, like if you’re, if you’re just cold calling randomly every year, you start on zero with a whole bunch of people, you’ve got to cold call. If you’re, if you’re building relationships, then you come into that year, basically with an army of people that are helping generate leads for you, because they’ve all had this wonderful experience. That’s cool way of thinking about it.
JD (15:30):
I think it’s building relationships, but it’s also building trust, you know, the currency of relationships. I have a lot of salespeople that I like. I have a lot fewer that I trust and being trusted is the, is, is the pathway to really having deep, honest business conversations. But I was thinking about one of the biggest takeaways I had from doing this whole book. So I interviewed 35 people in all different industries. And so UNH we’re part of that group. And but I, I, I talked to the guy who had oversight ticket sales for the NBA and a mortgage broker who did probably 10 times the volume of a top performing mortgage broker. And as I reflected on all these conversations, one of the things I realized is man, there was a scary, real important it’s like to be trusted, has a lot of responsibility. I mean, you know, one of the guys that I interviewed said, you know, you can’t try with people’s money. You can’t try, you’ve got to do. And so there’s a responsibility of trust that. So it’s, it’s getting the relationship with trust, but then, you know, honoring that by being so good at the solutions you bring, that you continue to just build on that foundation.
RV (16:56):
Mm Hmm. Yeah. So, so what do you think to move, to move this tab to the tactical? Right. So if you buy into this sort of philosophically going, okay, you know, I’m building relationships, I’m earning trust, I’m doing what’s in my customer’s interest beyond, ultimately than what is just in my own. What are some of the things that should show up tactically? Or what are the things that we can do or say inside of, you know, how we prospect or how we qualify or ask questions? I mean, does it, what, what comes to mind in terms of the, the actual expression of how to do this in terms of selling with a servant’s heart?
JD (17:42):
That’s a, that’s a great question. I think that there are differences, but servant, heart sellers have in every part of the sales process I’ll give you Justin gurney was the guy that I talked about who oversaw ticket sales. He worked for the NBA national basketball association. So his job was to work with all 30 basketball teams to bring best practices on tickets and suite sales and, you know, the expensive sponsorship kinds of things. He said, the model has historically been a model of, you know, make a bunch of phone calls, you know, sit on the phone all day and call business owners where you probably gotten those calls from, you know, one of the international teams I’ve gotten them from the teams down at Sarasota. The Tampa teams are now that now they’ll make the phone calls slightly more sophisticated because the wait for the open, the email before you, then they then call you.
JD (18:37):
But it’s the a hundred calls a day kind of situation. He said, he found on every single team that there were outliers one or two people on a team, all of these 30 teams that did it differently, they focused on building a relationship. They spent a lot of time. If you want the specifics of tactics, we spent a lot of time, more time than any of their colleagues on, on learning about why you might use those tickets. What are the business issues that you’re trying to solve? What can an entertainment experience do to enhance your customer relationships and guess who were the top performers in every one of those teams? So fast forward a few years, Justin joins the New Jersey devils hockey team running their efforts and he tries to hire a team of outliers and he tries to hire a team and teach a culture that is very focused on diagnosis to your word and into acute listening, acute listening, really paying attention to what the answers are listening longer and in more focused than 95% of all the sellers do. That’s probably the number one skill that I think sets apart of servant heart sellers. Is that
RV (19:51):
Like the volume, the quantity of time for how long they’re listening?
JD (19:55):
Exactly. I think that most salespeople spend about 20% of their time listening and 70, 80% of their time pitching serve at heart sellers spend 70 to 80% of their time listening. And 20 to 30% of their time presenting, they can present for a lot less time because when they present a solution, they mail it. You know, it’s done really understanding what the customer’s issues are.
RV (20:22):
What are they listening for? I mean, yeah, like that’s, I guess that’s my biggest, like, so what w what are they listening for? Is it a, is it a standard set of questions they’re asking or
JD (20:35):
Well, I think that there’s going to be questions that an insurance salesperson might ask that a realtor wouldn’t or that a manufacturer, somebody selling manufacturing ask, but somebody else would, but the general principle to think about is I want to ask questions that have deep business conversations to try to uncover what is the customer potentially need, or how could they use the product that you sell in a way that solves their problems, not yours. You want to make a sale? That’s no problem. They want to, you know, solve a particular issue within, within their, their business. So, in, in Justin’s case, by having those kinds of conversations now they get to the pandemic where you think, you know, if you’re listening to this thing and you think your business had trouble, how’d you like to be a professional hockey team shut down.
JD (21:32):
Your building’s not even open. Nobody can come. At one point, I talked to him and they had no idea when they were going to even reopen. And yet they were still making sales and renewing deals because they were having the kind of conversations about how you could use that suite. They could use those tickets after the season started again. Other teams were laying off their people, the New Jersey devils kept theirs on and continued to find some impact. Now, come out the other side, who do you think is going to do the best? Who’s going to have the greatest impact. There are other specifics. I mean, one of the other specific things that I really took away from this is the idea that in your presentations, the servant heart sellers tend to teach and not sell.
JD (22:19):
So rather than here’s the greatest thing that you can do. They’ll spend a lot of time talking about what this product is going to do for your business. What is it going to, what is the problem it’s going to solve? I interviewed the only guy that I interviewed who had ever called on me. I interviewed him because he just impressed me so much, 25, 30 years ago. And he, he went on to oversee sales for arbitrage, which is a big radio company that did ratings for all radio stations in America. He said their most successful salespeople were people who started as trainers and then moved into sales. So customer would buy a product and they would train them how to use it. So when they moved into sales, that was their default. Here’s this new thing. Let me show you how this could make your station look good. And they had the highest performance across a whole sales staff from a bunch of people than people who were just coming in and trying to sell, teach, not sell, became something I really took away from the interviews that I thought was significant.
RV (23:27):
Yeah. That’s, that’s interesting. I mean, the other thing about the, I mean, yeah, that’s a powerful idea that you also kind of get the benefit of seeing what you do, being applied to people in real life, and then going to talk to a prospect. Like I was thinking about our, of strategists, how their, their conviction goes up when they actually come through the training or work with our clients and see how they apply it. And then they get to get, they get a sense of it. It helps them go out and have more conviction and clarity about what they’re selling to. And then to what you’re saying, it’s like, it’s more of a teacher’s heart than a commission breaths, salesperson kind of, kind of a thing.
JD (24:11):
Well, also also those stories not only help their own belief, but they conveyed correctly can also help their customers, their prospects.
RV (24:20):
So what are the things that you’ve you find? I mean, how do you think this applies specifically to personal brands? There’s, you know, we have, we have a one of our, one of our members only events is called pressure-free persuasion. And so there’s a time where we start talking about this sort of tactical one-on-one selling. But like, where do you think, like, even as you just look at your own career, you think back of going, here’s where I had to sell and learn how to sell in order to build the business that I have. You’ve got how do you think that this, like today, a lot of times when people think personal brands, it’s almost more like they think marketing, right? You’ve got, you’re doing videos and social media and funnels and writing books and, you know, even speaking from stage, but I would, those, those skillsets, I think, are pretty markedly different from the ability to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody and, you know, discuss their needs and eventually move them to make a decision and give you a credit card or send you a check. W so, so how do you think this applies, you know, sales still applies to personal brands?
JD (25:31):
Well, ultimately no matter how strong a brand I’ve built, I have to sit on a zoom call, be in front of a prospect or a potential client and have a one-on-one conversation. You know, if you, as you asked the question, I was thinking about you and I probably both had the experience of being with a lot of very successful speakers, very effective speakers guys who have built great personal brands, but when you spend time with them, one-on-one, they have a very, very hard time losing the spotlight. They have a very hard time not being onstage. So as a consequence, they tend to want to dominate the conversation. And, you know, I understand that probably guilty of that more than a few times myself, but it’s the opposite when you take your marketing. So my marketing is I’m out there, you know, here’s my content.
JD (26:33):
Here’s what I’ve tried to do. Here’s the messages that I’m sending out to the marketplace. Well, now somebody engages with me. I’ve got to just say, what are the issues that you’re trying accomplish? And I’ve got to, I’ve got to turn off my ego. That’s the hardest thing is turning off my ego, that desire to be special, that desire to be a star and really listen, listen acutely to what somebody is trying to accomplish. And then I can try to figure out, all right, what is it that I do that can best serve them?
RV (27:06):
You know, the part about this listening thing, which is crazy is you know, like the way I was taught on sales was just when you’re talking about it’s all a numbers game and you just like kiss, keep going no matter what. And you’re just burning through people and you know, kind of this, when they say this, you say this and, and you got to gear yourself up and you know, kind of like be, be persistent until they buy kind of a, kind of a conversation.
JD (27:36):
And they have, they have my money, got my money. I’m gonna get my money.
RV (27:40):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. They’re holding my money. I have to get my money out of their pockets. Yeah. The and that’s so hard, like it free for the sales person, like emotionally. It’s like, that’s a lot of pressure. What’s so crazy to me about asking questions is like, it’s so much easier. Like people tell you, rather than having to like gear yourself up and say, okay, I’m going to go spew a bunch of stuff at somebody and not shut up until they acquiesce. It’s like, I can sit back and do nothing while they tell me exactly what it is that they need. And they like lay out this roadmap for exactly what they need to hear and, and, and, and tell you how to like, make a sale.
JD (28:31):
Right. And if you, if you spend just 15 or 20 minutes on Google before you make that call looking at the business issues in that category tried to find out some of the competitive issues that are going on. So I did a few minutes on their website so that you can, so your questions are not just how’s business or what’s going on in your business, but rather lead to more in-depth business conversations. They’ll tell you everything. And they tell you everything because such few people do that. And that’s, that becomes a competitive advantage. You know, it’s interesting if we have this conversation that you know, I am more focused on listening or I’ve talked a lot about listening, but listening also has a, a partner. And that’s a good question. It’s you, you can’t just listen, you know, how, you know, did you watch the game?
JD (29:23):
What do you think about the Titans? You know, how’s your business? I mean, blahblahblahblahblah now I want to be able to engage in a business conversation. So w I, and when an organization does it, I know you have a ton of entrepreneurs who follow the podcast, follow your work. And I had a banker, you know, this is a banker who took this into his entire bank’s culture. Rather than call his people commercial lenders, they call them commercial bankers and they were instructed to have business conversations, train taught drilled to have business conversations with, with every prospect. Where do you see the future of your business? Do you have anybody identified who might be a buyer for this company down the road? They’re trying to look at the longer term business issues so that they can help this this business owner oriented business to that, and provide perhaps the capital to do all of those things. Unbelievable loyalty, less pressure on rates for, you know, borrowings, because I’ll pay a little bit more for that degree of service, if I’m trying to borrow money for something. And when the pandemic hit and this bank, landmark bank in Kansas could fulfill PPP loans in a hurry. When the big banks couldn’t do anything, they got hundreds of customers. We’re now extraordinarily loyal to the bank. So this is, these are, you know, this whole idea of, of asking good questions is a partner with listening, has to be.
RV (30:57):
And you’re the questions you’re trying to ask there are, how do you, how do you know what questions to ask? I mean, one is to do the research. It’s funny, you mentioned this. So one of the recent interviews we did with Sam Richter about, I don’t know if you know, Sam, all the customer intelligence and the online research stuff that he uses, which has been really
JD (31:15):
Good stuff. So,
RV (31:17):
So once that, you know, it’s kind of educating yourself on some of the industry dynamics, maybe the company dynamics, et cetera, what are the other triggers or, or things that we’re paying attention to, or how do we reverse engineer and come up with the right kind of questions.
JD (31:38):
I’m listening in every business conversation, obviously for opportunity for problems. So I’ll give you one specific technique. I learned this from a guy who was a producer on a 60 minutes type of interview show. And he said and this is, this goes to your comment in our interview about acute listen. He said, when they would do an interview, they would train reporters that after the person answered the question to not immediately jump in with another question, you said, pause, don’t fill up the space, nature, abhors, a vacuum. And most people will start speaking. And he said, we would get the most compelling soundbite, the most interesting piece, the less rehearsed idea after the pause. So people would have the rehearsed, but then they give you maybe something really honest. And if I hear that really honest bit of pain or problem, then you keep asking a few more questions to see, is this going to be something that might create an opportunity on it’s the understanding that whatever business you’re in the customer is not buying that they’re buying what that can do for their business, how they can solve a problem and, and, or take advantage of an opportunity.
JD (33:08):
So that’s the kind of listening that I have to be able to do to understand what are their needs.
RV (33:14):
I love it. I love it. Well, Jim Doyle is the author selling with a servant heart is the book long time friend. Check this out, Jim, where else do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you and learn, learn more about what you’re doing, and heck if you’re trying to sell some media stuff, you’re the guy for sure.
JD (33:34):
So LinkedIn Facebook, for sure. Love to connect with folks on LinkedIn. And the there was a specific website for the book which is servant selling book.com. Love to see people there. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity to do this. I have such admiration and respect for you and what you built. And so this is an honor for me. I I had the privilege of interviewing you when you brought out, take the stairs. And so I was thinking today, what an honor to get the to do the reverse, thank you for doing, for, for doing this.
RV (34:10):
Yeah, of course, man. It’s, it’s our pleasure. And you want over AIG AIG’s heart with your interview and then the, all, all the information about Maine and the lobsters and everything is just really, really, really, really wonderful.
JD (34:26):
So we still have to have lobsters on the coast of Maine
RV (34:29):
Sometimes. That’s right. Well, she is, she’s convinced that we are going there at some point soon, so I’m sure. We’ll see. I’m sure you’ll be, he’ll be the first, the first call would make
JD (34:40):
Thank you
RV (34:42):
All the best, my friend. Thanks
Ep 232: Sales Intelligence and Advanced Online Research Strategies with Sam Richter
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 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 see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our 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):
Well, it was by special request that I was hunting out a specific man for a specific job to talk about a specific topic that I wanted for you. And that is my friend, Sam Richter. I’ve known Sam for a lot of years. We just kind of been casual friends through the speaking profession. He is in the national speakers hall of fame and he is one of the top rated keynote speakers in the world. And he’s a CSP he’s written books. He is the but when I think of Sam, I, I think specifically of like a very deep expertise on a topic sales intelligence. And so I want to, I remember seeing him the first time and it just blew my mind the first time I heard him talk and I know that he teaches companies how to do this for big, big money. And so I was like, I wonder if we could call it a favor and have him come on the podcast and talk about some of these things. So Sam, welcome to the show.
SR (01:54):
Well, thank you, Rory. And you know, I love what you do. The sales intelligence is really how to find information on other people. So you can be relevant. It’s basically the modern day version of Dale Carnegie. You know, Carnegie said the sweetest sound language language is the sound of someone’s name. And I believe with all the information that we have access to at our fingertips, the sweetest sound in English language is the sound of someone’s name based on what do they care about? Well, the flip side of sales intelligence, or I guess another way of saying it is ethically spying on people and ethically using it to help them. Well, the flip side of that is personal branding. It’s assuming people are spying on you and as you know, better than most everybody’s spying on us. And I’m not just talking like the government or anything like that. I’m talking about prospective employees, current employees, certainly prospective customers bankers, funders, they’re all, you know, spying on us or searching us. How do you control what they find? And that’s what you speak about. So you know, our messages are incredibly complimentary to each other.
RV (02:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I think everybody has heard of Google clear clearly. But I don’t think people understand, like the average person goes right to Google types in something real quick. It’s usually three words or less, and that’s how they use it. 99% of the time when I heard you speak, it blew my mind that it’s like, there is so much power in understanding how to use Google.
SR (03:31):
And w as, as some, as a personal brand, there’s all these things that we need to find, right? Like we want to find potential events. We can speak at, we wanna find potential podcasts. We could be on, we need to find literary agents or publishers or, or we need to sign a virtual assistant or a graphic designer or video editor or, you know, on and on and on. And I think we’re under utilizing, you know, Google specifically. And I guess is that that’s primarily the tool we’re talking about here, right. Is, is, is advanced Google searches. Let’s Google, it’s also social media, LinkedIn, Twitter. It’s also in Mo but most people don’t know and I’ll kind of shock them with this. Google actually gets to a very small percentage of the free and publicly accessible internet. The rest is what we call the invisible web, know the invisible web.
SR (04:20):
You you’ve probably heard of the deep web or the dark web that’s where bad guys hang out. And that makes up even an incredibly tiny percentage of the invisible web. So that 95% of the free and publicly accessible internet is just websites. That for whatever reason, Google can’t vacuum up. And so there’s a lot of those kinds of websites when, I mean, by vacuum up, if you think of Google as like nothing more than a big vacuum cleaner, cause that’s kind of what it is. It just goes around and finds websites with words on the page. You, you it sees those websites flips on the vacuum. Cleaner sucks up the word stores, the words and the Google vacuum cleaner bag or the database you go into Google and type one or two, three words. There’s a human being sitting in the background. It’s basically Google saying, where do those three words appear most often now the challenge now Google is awesome.
SR (05:06):
Right? And we know that that the channel and its algorithms are amazing. The challenges let’s say I go in and type in the word speaker, well do I mean professional speaker or Bose stereo speaker again, Google is pretty good. He said, probably knows what you’ve searched on in the past and knows what websites you’ve looked at. So it’s probably going to give you the, the, the right information. And you know, it’s, it’s job is to do that. But remember, the Google is not, Google is a search engine, but they’re not a search engine company. They’re an advertising company, meaning they want you to get really good results, but they wouldn’t mind if you clicked on an ad once in a while. So what I teach is how to really refine those results, whether it’s on Google or the invisible web using mathematical algorithms. And then I also teach and build tools that automate that. Yeah. So
RV (05:57):
Let’s talk about the [inaudible]. What does that mean? You know, like when I hear, I could use an algorithm, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t, you know, algorithms use me, don’t use the algorithms. So tell me about what does that mean to have an algorithm that you use on Google?
SR (06:14):
It’s just a fancy way of saying it’s a simple mathematical equation. So for example, let’s use that one. I just gave, I go into Google. I type in speaker and I get a bunch of results on stereo speakers. A very simple switch is to go back into speaker and then type in the minus sign and attach that to the word stereos, the minus sign needs to touch the S in the word stereo. Now every result you’re going to get, we’ll have the word speaker in it, but if any of those results have the word stereo in it, those results won’t show up. And I can do that about 30 times. So I can start out with a super broad search term and in seconds, get down to the information that we care about. Another simple trick is using quotation marks. Now, if you go into Google and type in Karen Jane Anderson, as an example, we’ll, you’ll get some really good results.
SR (07:06):
Probably the first page of results will be Karen Jane Anderson, but you’ll also get close to a million results because you’re also going to get every website that has the word. Karen has the word Jane, and has the word Anderson. So if there’s a webpage that has Karen Johnson, Jane Smith, bill Anderson on the same webpage, you’re going to get that result. A simple thing like using quotation marks. When you put a word, a job title, name of a person, name of a company, or even a phrase like digital reputation management or a phrase like a personal branding. If you put that in quotation marks, you’ll treat the words within quotation marks as a single entity. So those two tricks alone, the minus sign in quotation marks will probably save you an hour a day. Oh. And by the way, it not only works in Google. Those techniques will work in social media, the work when you’re searching your email, you know, how many times, if you’ve gone in your email, oh, where’s that email I sent to Rory, where is it textual work, or even your network drive. Where’s that presentation I sent to the widget corporation. You can go in and put widget corporation within quotation marks. You’ll get better results.
RV (08:17):
Interesting. So this is this is your you’re referring to Boolean logic, right?
SR (08:23):
Yep. That’s very correct. Yep. And then there’s other things beyond bullying, but in general, that’s correct. So,
RV (08:29):
So what is w what is Boolean logic? Like? What does that mean and how many, how many elements are considered part of it? Cause this is what you’re talking about is, is a really big deal. It was like, you know, the problem with Google is that it searches like this gigantic universe. And so finding, and for most of our clients, they wouldn’t be searching for speakers. It’s more like they’re searching for events that have speakers, right. And so if you said, you know, insurance association speakers, I mean, who knows what comes up, but if it could have stuff like you’re saying, like, you know, musical stuff because of the
SR (09:06):
Right, right. So bullying actually is from a 19th century mathematician, a guy named George Boole and the first modern use of a bully and George bull is kind of credited with, for lack of better term coming up with the zeros and the ones. So 19th century, the mathematical patterns that make technology work. Now, the, the beauty of really great technology is it’s intuitive, right? I fire up Google, I type into words, results, just show up. That’s kind of the problem, a really good technology. I type into words, results to show up. So I never really learned for lack of a better term, the good stuff, and the good stuff is the Boolean or reading the manual. The good news is it’s very easy. Just most people don’t do it. And frankly, most people don’t need to do it. It’s really when you’re, when you’re wanting to laser focus, a search where you might need that information.
SR (09:55):
So for example, if I wanted to find the meeting planner at the here, here would be a good one, the meeting planner at the speaker association, but not the national speakers association, the stereo speakers association, I’m making this up. I don’t know if there is, there probably is a stereo speaker association, you know, high fidelity stereo speaker, but that’s where you use these combinations of quotation marks and minus signs plus signs. There’s other bunch of other ones as well to really refine your results again, you’re going to do just fine typing words into Google. It’s, it’s really more when you want to, Hey, I really want to laser focus my results into something specific where you need these techniques. Okay.
RV (10:39):
And so is it primarily like, are the, are the big ones, quotation signs plus signs and minus signs?
SR (10:47):
Yes. There’s lots of others if we want to get really technical. So for example if you think of how people save a word document on their computer, well, most people use fairly logical titles for their documents. So for example, if I was saving a document, I might call that document widget corporation proposal. Well, you can actually limit your search to just titles of webpages, just like you might do when you’re searching for a word document. The nice thing about web pages is they’re usually titled something that’s very logical because that’s how you get higher up in search engines. And so for example, you can use a Boolean term called entitle, I N T I T L E and then the colon, those two dots in title. So for our listeners, let’s say I wanted to find a list of associations in the medical industry, right?
SR (11:45):
I could go into Google and type in medical association and I’ll get some good results. Also get a bunch of junk, or I can say entitle medical title association, meaning the only results that are allowed to appear are, were our results with the word medical as part of the title of the document, or excuse me, an association as the title of the document. Now I can also use quotation marks. So that exact phrase has to be in the title. So in title, colon medical association, put medical association within quotation marks, and it will pull up that exact result, that exact phrase, medical association, as the title of the document.
RV (12:26):
And can you also search by you? Can you search Google? This was one of the things that I remember was you can search for file types. What are all the file types that you can search into Google and how do you find them? And, and, and, and by the way, when you say invisible web is this, like, these are things that people store on the internet, but are not things that you would get to by like going to their website and clicking through their menu, or is invisible web
SR (12:56):
Well, there’s, there’s, there’s, I guess there’s two definitions that I use for the invisible web. The first definition are websites that for whatever reason, Google can’t back you up, I’ll give you an example. There are many websites that you have to create a, a login to access Facebook as an example. So Facebook, you can access some Facebook pages via Google book, but in general, you have to have a free Facebook username and password. Well, Google can’t create the username and password, and frankly, if you could find it, everything you wanted via Google search, there’d be no reason to have a Facebook account, right? So that would be an example, it’s the free and publicly accessible internet, but you have to have a username and password to get in it, not once you’re in it. Many times, Facebook, unfortunately, is not one of them, but many times you can use the same Boolean techniques to search once you’re inside that website.
SR (13:49):
So again, Facebook, as an example, if we think of every picture, every post as a page on the internet, well, I don’t know the number, but it would have to be trillions of pages that are on the invisible web. So you couldn’t access those via Google. You’d have to log in to access those. Now, there are, that’s one definition of the invisible one. The other definition is I’ll just give you, is my personal definition. Anything past page two on Google search results is invisible. Meaning no one’s ever going to find it, which is where you come in, really on, on reputation, right? And personal branding is to make sure that you show up number one. That’s why people should be getting interviewed should be you know, doing speeches. So they show up high up in Google search results, because if you’re on page two or three on Google search results, it may as well be in the invisible web cause no, one’s going to find you sure.
SR (14:40):
Getting back to your question as it relates to documents. Well, there are trillions of documents that people post online, right? It could be Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoints, and you can find those by using what’s called a file type colon search in Google. So file type colon PPT, or file type colon. PPTX, we’ll find PowerPoint documents. Now, why do we care? Because I could go in and type in Rory Vaden within quotation marks file type colon PPT, or file type Poland PPTX. And if there’s any PowerPoints that ever been posted out there about you or featuring you they’ll show up, including that one time where you were the, you know, you were cornered, right? You were sitting there after you gave your speech standing ovation, someone in the back said, this was awesome. Can we get a copy of the slides? And the, and the event planner stood up and says, yes, we’ll be posting his slides online on our super-duper James Bond, you know CIA NSA protected website, which of course wasn’t protected at all because we can find it, you know? So that’s where, that’s where you can find those kinds of document.
RV (15:48):
Well, and some of that’s like you know, the other time where I think about using this as like w w women to your words, sales intelligence. So there there’s one part of it is how do I find a list of people to contact that would be hyper relevant to what I do to where there’s such, you know, they’re going to know me or a lot of the people I know, et cetera. The other thing is, you know, maybe I get a, I get a lead to be like a, hold on an event to go speak at. And I get a meeting with them and I want to go, how can I customize my presentation, either my sales presentation or my actual presentation to prepare. And so you can find, I mean, you can find all tore, all sorts of internal power points and meeting notes and stuff like that.
SR (16:36):
Absolutely. And that, that level of customization is really, what’s going to differentiate you from your competition, from those who go out to, as I like to say, they wing it. Or they, you know, in, in Aurora, you and I have both seen this before where the speaker gets up and Hey, it’s so great to be a part of. And there’s a pause. They look down the financial industry in, because yesterday they did the exact same speech for the automotive industry the day before that the medical device industry. So that level of customization is so important. A couple of quote, unquote, invisible websites. And they’re invisible because Google doesn’t know they exist because I created them and I don’t let Google know they exist. One is a news search engine called you got the news.com that’s Y O U G O T T H E N E w S.
SR (17:22):
You got the news.com, which will pull up not only Google search results, but it will pull up local newspapers, trade journals, industry journals. So for example, when I did it, you got the new search on you, Rory. Well, I clicked on the regular news, which would be Google news. I think about if I recall maybe 12 articles showed up, but when I clicked on the more news button, and now that features again, local newspapers, trade journals, industry articles, thousands of articles showed up. And there’s also a tab on there for press releases, social media posts, blog posts, again for prayer, preparing for it, whether it’s preparing for a sales call or customizing your presentation, use something like you got the news five minutes before the meeting, frankly, five minutes before you step on stage, you’re going to massively impress the number of times where I’ve done that five minutes before I go on stage.
SR (18:12):
And I get up in the first words out of my mouth are instead of saying, Hey, thank you St. Louis it’s Hey, congratulations. Many of you might not even know, but your company just won a fortune, you know, fortune best places to work or something like that. That massively differentiates. Another one is a site I built called. You got research, Y O U G O T research.com. And that one will specifically find a credible objective research, white papers on different trends, survey results, but every single result is a PDF file. Why a PDF file? Because I found in doing Google searching, oftentimes when I’m searching for reports, all I get are places that want to sell me the report. In this example, I actually get the report. I get the PDF file, and there are things I teach on what to do with PDF files and, and how you can use those in sales, but, but for preparing for a speech, it’s great stuff.
RV (19:06):
Well, that’s funny. Yeah. So we are this Wednesday releasing our trends in personal branding, national research study, it’s a PDF. It will live on a, on a hidden URL of which it will be behind the gated. We’re not selling it, we’re giving it away for free, but it will be behind a gated page.
SR (19:24):
And we won’t be able to find that we won’t be able to get behind the gated page, but if somebody downloads your document and then post it on their server, then we’d be able to find it
RV (19:34):
Interesting of which surely they would mean somebody in the world that might, might do that. Yeah. So that just means like, and you’re saying that you got research.com is like, if I’m trying to research a subject of any kind, then I’m going and just saying, show me all kind of like statistically valid research studies and
SR (19:54):
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve I’ve modified it. So there’s different buttons. So one would be trend reports. So that would be research reports that talk about trends and other ones, survey results. So specifically dealing with survey results and there’s overlap between the two market outlooks, and then there’s even a button in there that it’s called. I think it’s industry statistics. I don’t have it in front of me, but that actually minds the invisible website, the department of labor. So for example, if you went in and typed in construction and then click the click that button, it will pull up all the latest statistics as it relates to types of employees, how much money they make, how many employees they are in that industry, again, help you, whether it’s doing business planning or whether it’s preparing for a presentation, just get you that information, credible objective information in seconds. Again, could you do it on your own? Absolutely. But knowing these and knowing where to look, I think can save you potentially hundreds of hours per year.
RV (20:53):
I mean, yeah. I mean talk about like podcast topics or blog topics or book, you know, site having. I mean, I think I’ve had incredible information to site in an actual book or something that is like, it needs to be statistically like sound. That kind of thing is really is, is huge. So that in that case, those tools that you built, they are just layered on top of Google.
SR (21:18):
That’s correct. It’s sitting on top of Google and I’m adding a 30 to 50 word Boolean algorithm. All you’ve got to do is type in, let’s say you want a trend report. You just type in construction. If that’s the industry, you care about trend reports, there’s a pull down menu that allows you to search by by date range. So you choose past a year typing construction, click trend reports in a 50 word algorithms going to be running in the background. Now here’s another little trick for you to finding PowerPoint documents. So that would be file type colon PPT or PPTX, here’s where there’s a great one. You know, it’s kind of one of those sayings when people talk about writing or jokes or something like that, right? Like everything that’s already been written or everything that already could be written has already been written by somebody in some shape or form.
SR (22:04):
What I mean by that is and I, for those of you with kids in the audience, this can help a lot with their homework because my kids would never call me. When they’ve got a research report due in college you know, they’ve known about it for three weeks. They happened to call me for hours before it’s due. That would never happen. Right? So here’s a little trick you go in and you search for a PowerPoint document on your topic. So let’s say your topic is a, you’re doing a report or again, in, in, in using our, our examples here, maybe you’re going to be speaking in the automotive industry. So whether it’s doing a report or you’re speaking in the automotive industry, go into Google type in say, automated automotive trends. And then now here’s a little trick or, or in all upper case proceeding or right after the, or if you type an or an uppercase a space before and after the, or not lowercase, but uppercase or you’ll get either or so you expand your search.
SR (23:00):
So I might type in automotive or excuse me, automotive trends or, or an all upper case issues, file type colon, PPT, X I’m telling Google, go find me a PowerPoint document. Only PowerPoint documents with the word automotive, with the word trends or the word issues somewhere inside that PowerPoint. Now, if I want to refine it even further, I can say in title automotive trends or issues, file type colon, PPTX a bunch of PowerPoints will appear now, how is this a huge time saver? You click on a few and you see, you try to find other people’s data. Now you’re not going to plagiarize. You’re not going to their PowerPoint, but in the lower right or left corner, what do we all do if we’re decent and we’re ethical at what we do, we put our source for the data, you know, a widget, a widget corporation, 2020 study, right?
SR (23:59):
You’re going to find that in the lower right corner of PowerPoint life, we’re going to grab the name of the source, go back into Google, paste that in, put it within quotation marks. Now we’re going to go find the original source of that data. So it was a little complex. What I just described much easier if we were on zoom and I was showing you, but, but hopefully people get it because what I’m doing is I’m looking at somebody else’s PowerPoint presentation, not to steal their content, but to see what data sources did they use. Now, I’m going to go back into Google finding the original data source. Well, heck I’ve just saved myself three hours of research.
RV (24:35):
Ah, yeah. I feel like that happens a lot too where people will cite it, but then sometimes people will say things and they’ve never actually liked the one I think of as the like statistics you hear about how much of the workforce is disengaged. Like so many people use that and it’s like a Gallup survey. Yeah. Most of the people who use that have never actually read the actual exactly. And being able to kind of like add the context and see the full report is a super powerful and, and on the topic of reports, I guess if you’re looking at PDFs, you could also pull up people’s annual reports. Now, if they’re public companies they’re available anyways. But even if you’re certain, certain private companies might have versions of their annual reports posted online.
SR (25:20):
Absolutely. So, you know, file type colon PDF, or file type colon doc or docx would be word documents XL would be XLS or XL SX. So what kind of Excel spreadsheets are out there? All, everything from budgets to member lists, attendee lists all sorts of different types. And it really it’s, you know, it’s kind of a science and an art. So the science is the plus the minus the quotes, the file type, the entitles, there’s a bunch more as well. And the art is kind of knowing when to use it. So you just try different things until something shows up that you like.
RV (25:56):
Yeah. So, but if I wanted to, let’s say that I had a you know, I wanted to get more speaking gigs and I wanted to go, like, I need all of the associations, you know, I want to get all the, you know, whatever the financial, financial advisors and like associations. So I could just theoretically say, you know, I might go on and do something like in title, financial associations file type, colon dot XLS.
SR (26:30):
Yeah. You could do that. But what I would also recommend is, is that a phrase I like to use is think like the author. So if I wanted to find a list of associations that paid speakers and I was creating that list. So if I’m the author of that list, what words would I put in there? Now, the obvious ones would be all association lists. No, here’s kind of a backdoor way of doing it. So already let’s say I want to find a, a list of more places, more associations that would hire Rory Vaden. Well, what I might do is pull up, pull up my past client list and say, Hey, I’m going to type in three associations who paid me in the past, you know, the medical association, the automotive Otis association, and the banking association put, put the name of the association in quotes file type colon PDF.
SR (27:25):
All right. So what I’m saying is those three associations have to be in the PDF file, but then I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m also going to add the phrase member directory. So I’ll put that in quotes or, or an all uppercase membership directory, but that in quotes or a, or an all uppercase attendee list, what I’m looking for is a PDF document where all three of those associations have appeared. The concept being is if there’s a list of great associations out there, if those three aren’t in it, it’s not a good list, but if those three are in it, it’s probably a really good list. So it’s kind of, again, that phrase, thinking like the author. Well, if I was creating a list of great associations for it to be any good, what three associations would have to be in their search for those, instead of just searching for the phrase association lists,
RV (28:17):
I need the Sam Richter keynote past keynote client fee range, greater than X type dot XLS file. That’s I mean, this is amazing. These are free searches. These are free Boolean logic is all free. Theoretically, you could just go to Google and start messing around with plus minus file type. In, in title,
SR (28:45):
All in quotes you know, all in text in URL. I mean, there’s a bunch of them, but you know, the key is it. You don’t have to get too fancy. I mean, it, I guarantee if you just start using quotation marks and minus signs, just forget all the rest of it. Quotation marks and minus signs. You’ll save yourself two hours a day
RV (29:05):
And the minus sign, does it have to be, yes, there’s a minus sign and then a space, or does it have to be,
SR (29:09):
And the minus sign must touch the word that you want to remove. Now, if you want to remove a phrase. So if I wanted to remove a stereo speaker, I’d put stereo speaker within quotes, and then the minus sign would touch the first quote. Got it.
RV (29:24):
I got it. The other way that we can do this is you actually have a tool. Well, you, you also build a bunch of tools. You build, you build them for different industries, where you basically take, how does this work? You basically take, you create your own user interface. Cause some your searches will use 30 parts of Boolean logic that are all in this query, but you build a custom graphic user interface where you can just go type stuff in, and then it’ll run all the searches for you. It’s basically as if you were sitting there like personally doing this.
SR (29:57):
Correct. So what I, what I do in, in the industries in which I speak, you know, my kind of stake in the ground is, is very high content. So obviously entertaining, motivational those kinds of, you know, we’ve got to do that. But also very high context. And kind of my, what I like to say is, is, you know, hire me and the learning and most of most important, the implementation or the execution of what I share, doesn’t have to stop once the ovation subsides. So I produce what’s called a sales Intel engine for just about every industry in which I speak in a sales intelligence. So I’ll, I’ll interview my prospects. And I’ll say, you know, who, who are the types of companies that you call on? What are the types of decision-makers? Why does somebody buy from you? Why somebody buys might be, I call that a sales trigger what’s going on in their life, where they need you today.
SR (30:45):
And then I will build Boolean algorithms and, you know, it could be 20 to 50 different words. And then I’ll add a button on top of that, if you will. So instead of somebody having to type the 30 to 50 word bullying algorithm, let’s say that they sell to electronic electrical engineers. So instead of having to search the 30 to 50 or typing the 30 to 50 word algorithm to find electrical engineers, I just have a field that says location. They type in Dallas, there’s a button that says electrical engineers, they click on the button and it’ll instantly pull up all the electrical engineers in Dallas.
RV (31:20):
So you can even search, you can narrow searches by location. I mean, you can narrow your search by anything with Google.
SR (31:25):
Yup. Yup. But that, but that’s a very specific bull. I wouldn’t even want to try to explain it to you. Cause it’s, it’s pretty complex in terms of being able to yes, you could type in Dallas, but to do, to, to literally get the city of Dallas is a pretty long equation.
RV (31:46):
Interesting. So where do you go to, how do we go learn about these? So you said you, you call them sales, Intel and engines, and you built them. You have built these for different verticals for different industries. Yeah.
SR (31:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I build them all the time and I have a holding page for lack of better term of my catalog where after I do them for a company, I’ll say, Hey, I wonder if anybody else would want something like this. And I’ll S I’ll take out some of the personal things related to that company then make it available on an industry basis. So I’ve got a webpage. My catalog is Intel engine, I N T E L. And then engine is spelled weird. N G I N. So I N T E L N G I n.com. And that will have, I think right now there’s probably a dozen engines on there. I’ve got about three dozen more that I still need to frankly, build their landing page and put them on there. But in general, I mean, you’ll go there, you’ll see ones for the conveyor belt industry for the electronics industry, for the speaker industry. And then there’s a general one that’s called the premium engine. That just kind of is all things to all people for financial advisors. I’ve got a really powerful one. So those are the kinds of engines I’ve developed.
RV (32:58):
Hmm. Fascinating. So then we don’t have to actually know any of this stuff. We can just, whatever, pay us little monthly fee and then just like type in the filters and it’ll deal, pull it all up. And then it just sends us to Google and just says, here, here’s exactly what you need.
SR (33:14):
Yeah. It’s just designed to save you time and, and hopefully help you find information that you might not even have other known otherwise, knowing that existed now, inside the engines, I also search other other search engines and other databases beyond Google. Google is the primary one. I’d say 80% of the results will show up in Google, but the 20% I’m also searching other other if you recall earlier, invisible websites.
RV (33:39):
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just, you know, I think about if I had to do a book launch and I wanted to grab a list of book reviewers or media writers or podcast hosts, or I wanted to grab, you know, a bunch of associations or I wanted a list of a membership directory of everybody in this industry that, you know, the way my mind would normally go about that is hire a VA, giving them parameters and let them go search for hours and hours and hours. But if I just search for file type like a membership directory and the right things like that, probably all those things, those things that I’m looking for have likely been compiled by somebody somewhere. And if I know how to do the Boolean logic, I can like go right to it. If it’s, if it’s on the web somewhere.
SR (34:25):
Yeah. If it’s on the web. Now the challenge today, especially in today’s world with certainly a lot of these member directories and attendee list show up, you still have to be careful because as you know, again, depending on what statistic you read, who knows which one’s right, but a good percentage, 30 to 40% of people have left their jobs or will leave their jobs either in the past year or the next year, whatever that number is. I don’t know. And so that means that a lot of those lists may no longer be valid. That’s why I also use LinkedIn. A lot of these techniques, you know, the same bullying techniques you can use within LinkedIn, but theoretically people keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date. So that’s why I like LinkedIn. So for example, I could go into LinkedIn and in the main search forum, I’ll type in book reviewer. Now, if I type in book reviewer with no quotation marks, I’ll get book reviewers, but I’ll also get anybody who’s. Any, I’ll get a music, I’ll get a music reviewer, who’s read a book. So book reviewer within quotation marks will tell LinkedIn only find that exact phrase.
RV (35:29):
Yeah. That’s so powerful and simple. So all right. So Intel and Intel engine, but without the ease and engine, right? The Intel engine.com. So that’s where you could go to check out one of these. I want to look at, I want to look at the speaker one, cause I want to use it and maybe we can do a deal or something with, for sure, for brand builders members. I want to talk to AJC. Maybe we can buy this for every, all of our members and provide it. Cause this is pretty, pretty powerful stuff. And where else do you want people to go Sam? Or if they want to connect with you and learn more about what you’re up to
SR (36:01):
Just go to Sam richter.com. Sam, R I C H T E r.com or frankly Rory, if if you can’t find it, just go to Google type in my name with, or without quotation marks. That’s my business card. I mean, if you couldn’t find me that way, don’t listen to anything I have to say, because I’ve also had to learn the, the flip side of this. Right. So if I’m going to teach how to find people, I better be able to be found. Yeah,
RV (36:25):
Absolutely. Well, Sam, so cool, man. I’ll always pick up so many tactical like tips of like, oh, that’s so, so good. And appreciate you being willing to share here. And as always brother, we wish you the best.
SR (36:37):
Thank you. You too. Keep up your great work. It’s so needed in today’s world and I’m just super excited for all that. You’ve accomplished. Congratulations. Thanks buddy.